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Mathematics editors and the WMF

Всё Легально...///))) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Дукс (talk • contribs) 01:02, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Hello. I thought I would bring this to your attention in your capacity as Senior Community Advocate to see whether there's something you might be able to do. There seems to be a disconnect between the community of mathematics content editors here on the English Misplaced Pages, as represented by Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Mathematics for example, and the WMF. I think it's best exemplified by a discussion currently going on at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Mathematics#VisualEditor math formulae. In that discussion various mathematics editors are discussing the extent to which WMF is planning, supporting and resourcing mathematics rendering and editing. I expressed the view that it was remarkably hard to get a clear answer from WMF about what their plans were, and User:Jdforrester (WMF) made the disturbing comment here that he "assumed denizens of WikiProject Mathematics, if no-where else, would be aware of the nature of engineering support in place for the mathematical functions in MediaWiki and had made a decision that they weren't going to help out those few volunteer developers working on it". Nothing could be further from the truth as far as I'm concerned, and it's disturbing to hear that this is the view presumably prevalent at WMF. This may be fallout from rather unproductive discussions last August (see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive/2013/Aug#Mathematics_in_VE and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive/2013/Aug#Is_it_time_for_mathematicians_to_leave_Wikipedia.3F in which I think it's fair to say neither group appeared in their best light.

It is true that I am also concerned about the level of support being proposed by WMF for mathematics rendering and editing (which, as User:Jdforrester (WMF) agrees, is zero) but that is not the issue I wanted to draw to your attention. Is there something that can be done to rebuild the connexion between WMF policy and development on the one hand, and English mathematics content editors on the other? Something has obviously gone wrong here, and I think that it needs to be fixed in the interests of building the encyclopaedia. Deltahedron (talk) 18:24, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Hello, User:Deltahedron. I'm sorry to hear that you feel a disconnect between mathematics content editors and the WMF. I've reviewed the conversations linked, and I'm wondering if part of the issue is simply in the way that development is done for MediaWiki and at the WMF. Since MediaWiki software is collaborative - anyone with "hacker" skills is invited to take part (See mw:How to become a MediaWiki hacker, for instance) - there's not really a central authority planning work done in every area. Like the development of Misplaced Pages's content itself, it can be pretty chaotic with people or teams working on their own, individual projects. Also like Misplaced Pages, just because one group or individual is not working in a given area doesn't mean that nobody is or should or that they don't care.

While volunteers are of course free to work on anything they like, engineering staff priorities are set in accordance with our long-term strategy, with guidance from the Executive Director and the Board. These priorities are set, as I understand it, to help ensure that we meet our most pressing goals as an organization, focusing staff efforts in areas that may not be met by volunteers. You can read about the work being done by the staff engineering and product teams at mw:Wikimedia Engineering, including what teams are responsible for which tasks. Engineering goals are also discussed on MediaWiki.org; you can see mw:Wikimedia Engineering/2013-14 Goals, for instance. This should tell you exactly what the Wikimedia Foundation is working on and expects to be working on. (I do have to add the disclaimer that, of course, staff may also be involved in individual bug and feature requests. To find those and review who is involved, you probably need to filter Bugzilla, as .)

At this point, I believe that the only WMF time dedicated to mathematics has been in supporting​ the​ volunteer who wrote a​ formula editor in VisualEditor. This has been available only through Beta Features for some time now, to give interested community an opportunity to try it and help guide its development. ​From Thursday, it​ will be available to anyone who wants to use it through the beta VisualEditor. Feedback and guidance are still welcome, with liaisons monitoring Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor/Feedback.

I tend to think personally that the best way to improve any relationship you think is strained is through conversation. In terms of WMF staff who are working on mathematics, making use of the formula editor and providing feedback on it is probably a very good way to build that. In terms of general development of math tools, I would think that it would be helpful to work with any volunteer developers already engaged in that area. I don't know if your project has any potential developers among yourselves; speaking from my own volunteer experiences doing copyright work, I know that it has been very helpful having people in that area who can develop tools, etc. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:02, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for that response. I appreciate the links to the WMF planning documents which I will look at in due course. Your comments about conversation are unsurprising but for some reason this has been difficult in the past. I would suggest that WMF staff could be more pro-active in engaging in these conversations. For example, I had no idea until now that the formula editor will be generally available in two days time.Sorry, I see that we were informed, I just did not recognise the connexion.

However, I am going to take issue with one point you make: "it would be helpful to work with any volunteer developers already engaged in that area". Firstly, of course, I have no way of knowing who these people are. Secondly, and far more importantly, I have neither the time nor the expertise noe the inclination to do that: what I and, I dare say, other participants at WPM, do want is to be involved at a suitably early stage in the planning. Let me illustrate this with an analogy. Suppose that your workplace was going to move to a new office, and all you knew was that it was being planned by someone. You ask to see the plans as you would like to ensure that your particular way of working would be catered for in the new layout. The response is that no, you can't see the plans, but you can volunteer to help build the new offices later on. Would you feel engaged? Deltahedron (talk) 19:55, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

User:Deltahedron, as a long-term Wikipedian myself, I know how hard it is to track what is happening in different areas of the movement. But unfortunately there is not an easy answer for how to involve you or anyone else in an suitably early stage for volunteer development planning, because, like articles, MediaWiki development is done independently by whoever feels like working on something. :/ There is no central tracking point that I know of where MediaWiki developers indicate they are working in certain subject areas, and while volunteer developers could be encouraged to let editors interested in certain areas know that work is being done in tools related to that, it certainly wouldn't be enforceable, particularly not when their tools are meant to serve hundreds of different communities. Alas, once Flow is up and running and we are able to do cross-project conversations, this might become much easier, but right now it's a serious barrier to cross-wiki collaboration. Staff has been trying to reach out with their work, which is they've been building the product liaison team and are currently in the process of hiring a director of community engagement for product, but we're a long way from any kind of central movement-wide organization that bridges the work of staff and volunteers. Please note that this doesn't mean I'm not happy to push for improvement in these areas, but I just want to make sure that I don't ever suggest there is an easy fix on the horizon. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 21:03, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Oh dear. But I notice that there's an interesting assumption in this, which is that mathematics software development will always and only ever be done by volunteers. This need not be the case: WMF appears to have significant resources to devote to Flow and VE, for example, and it is by no means obvious that they cannot possibly ever devote some (presumably smaller) proportion of their own effort to mathematics software development. However, I can see that this is not currently planned. That sends out a clear message to mathematics content editors, of course, about the importance of mathematics on Misplaced Pages, and it is not a message that I for one welcome. But as I have already conveyed to one of your colleagues, it is very far from being my job to fix the problems in the way WMF chooses to organise its work. Deltahedron (talk) 21:14, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, Deltahedron, engineering tasks are set by the Executive Director and the Board of Trustees to help ensure that we meet our most pressing goals as an organization, focusing staff efforts in areas that may not be met by volunteers. That said, every contributor to a Wikimedia project has the right to become as little or as heavily involved as they please, but if you want to help steer the design of the office, to borrow your analogy, heavier involvement seems to best increase your chances. The Wikimedia movement is a collaborative one in which you do have the option to influence the activities of the Wikimedia Foundation staff, both through your votes towards Board representation and in participating in development processes, including community consultations. We're all movement partners here, and our work is deeply interconnected. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 21:58, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

There are several points that are worth addressing in your comments here, and in those of your colleague at User talk:Whatamidoing_(WMF)#Reply_to_your_email. I'll bundle them here for convenience.

• The common denominator in the responses is that it's entirely up to me as a volunteer to solve the problem. Let me be blunt, even rude. The WMF has, as I understand it, a budget of tens of millions of dollars and a staff of over 100. It is frankly not acceptable to take the attitude that if there's an issue then it's up to the volunteers who are already writing the encyclopaedia to find out what plans WMF might or might not have, then devote extra effort to fixing any issues that might arise. Let me challenge you as a member of WMF staff with a remit to say whether in the exchange we have been having whether you and your colleagues have done your best to "Answer questions about the Foundation from community members, or connect them with appropriate staff" or to "Proactively support volunteer contributors", for example. I have to say that from where I sit, anything that might be happening right now is as a result of my making waves.
• There's a very odd assumption about how volunteer development works. One of your colleagues tells me that "Open-source software development by volunteers is controlled and coordinated in exactly the same way that open-source encyclopedia writing by volunteers is. The WMF cannot force any volunteer, including the volunteer developers, to coordinate their plans with the WMF." This is wrong in principle and in fact.

• It's wrong in fact: that is, it is factually incorrect. A problem with volunteer development of MathJax right now is that the single volunteer supporting it has difficulty getting his code reviewed and into production, and the result has been problems with mathematics rendering. In other words, he does not have control over his work, and that has been problematic.
• It's wrong in principle: that is, it is not workable. Volunteer effort needs to be planned and coordinated. I have volunteered in a number of areas in my life. When I volunteered in a geriatric ward, I didn't and starting feeding dementia patients randomly or as seemed best to me: I needed and was given very careful instructions on who when and how to feed. When I volunteered on a charity event, I agreed to take on a specific slot on a rota. When I joined the board of a charity I agreed with the chair to take on a particular unfilled role: I didn't just work on what seemed interesting to me at the time.
• WMF needs to understand this. In the field of mathematics rendering and editing for example, as in almost any other aspect of the supporting software, there has to be a plan to ensure that paid efforts in other areas do not break it, or if they do, then it gets fixed; there has to be a roadmap for development to ensure that volunteer effort is directed in useful ways; there has to be coordination among volunteers to avoid duplication of effort; there has to be communication between developers of all sorts and users of all levels of sophistication. These simply are not optional. I am told that currently WMF currently has no plan; that it does not or cannot coordinate volunteers; and that we are a long way from bridging the gap between developers and users.
• Let emphasise this point: the current situation is unsustainable: it is a recipe for failure.

Let me challenge you to say: what will you, as Community Liaison (Product Development), Wikimedia Foundation, do to fix this disconnect in general, and to resolve the issues around mathematics rendering and editing in particular? I'll be frank: I'm not going to spend more of my time doing things which WMF could and should be doing. Deltahedron (talk) 21:19, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Deltahedron, I realize that this isn't a typical way of going about things for a large website, and I know a lot of this development work was more obvious to regular editors a few years ago, but the fact is that most of the software you're using was written by volunteers. Table of contents? A volunteer made that. Section editing? A volunteer made that. The edit box itself? A volunteer made that. Search and replace? Volunteers made that. The Misplaced Pages logo? Two volunteers made that. Someday, I should make a proper list, but the exceptions are pretty easily listed: VisualEditor, Cirrus search, the new multimedia viewer, and Flow were written by staff. Probably 90% of the projects that are smaller or less complicated than those were written by volunteers or by a combination of volunteers and staff.

Allowing volunteer devs to work on whatever they want does create some inefficiencies. Multiple volunteers might simultaneously start work on a project, without realizing that others have decided to do the same. They might write something that a staff member is working on (staff always publicly announce their plans, but volunteer devs don't always check; AFAIK, there has only been one case of that this year). There are multiple systems in place to make it convenient for volunteer devs and staff devs to communicate about their interests and priorities, but if the volunteer devs don't choose to use them—if a volunteer dev prefers to work in silence and then surprise everyone with a big patch to submit—then there's really nothing that the WMF can do about that. Nearly all of those systems are offwiki, so it isn't surprising that you've not encountered them, but I assure you that they do exist and that nearly all volunteer devs do use them (and staff devs are required to).

I think you can stop worrying about Physikerwelt's work on MathJax getting reviewed. I just checked, and they appear to be getting through the code review system at the usual rate, except when he's specifically requested that they not be merged yet. The patch he submitted yesterday hasn't been reviewed by anyone yet, but yesterday was a Saturday, and many of the devs are out at the Hackathon, so that's not really surprising. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:51, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Whether or not it is typical is not so much my concern as whether it works. But my question is not so much whether one particular volunteer's work on MathJax has been reviewed effectively or not in the past (and Physikerwelt seems to think that it is not effective, causing difficulty and indeed damage, and please do not ask me for details, engage directly with PW to discover more) but whether entirely unplanned, entirely volunteer effort is adequate to sustain and develop mathematics rendering and editing in the future. I believe that it is not, especially in the presence of major changes such as Visual Editor and Flow which are going to require serious effort to even sustain the capabilities that we currently have. There is no evidence that sufficient, or indeed any, effort has been allocated to this. Perhaps it is not seen as a requirement any longer, and if so I think we should be told.

It seems to be agreed that there is a disconnect between software developers (paid and volunteer) and mathematics content editors, and furthermore that the gap is widening. Do the community advocates think this is a desirable state of affairs and if not, what, if anything, do they propose to do to fix it? There are discussions at User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#WMF_plans_for_mathematics, Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#VisualEditor_math_formulae (in both of which PW articulates his concerns, among many other things) and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#A_challenge_from_Jimbo_Wales, which might be good places to start. Deltahedron (talk) 06:28, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Deltahedron, the Wikimedia Foundation is committed to supporting the work of volunteers in all areas. While I don't have any personal insight into a divide between developers and mathematics content contributors, I can easily imagine that coordination between the groups is difficult - as I mentioned above, I have encountered challenges in my own volunteer area of copyright cleanup. WMF is not intended to supplant volunteers, but to support them - one of the core values of our project is the belief in crowdsourcing, which is why Misplaced Pages was opened to public editing (in contrast to the preceding Nupedia) at all. It is not only content that is crowdsourced, but engineering. One of the primary issues, in my opinion, that we face as volunteers on Misplaced Pages is lack of insight into work being done on other projects - whether that is other language versions of Misplaced Pages (where tools may be developed that would serve us as well), Wikimedia Commons (where images may be uploaded that could serve or deleted that are in use), sister projects (who also may develop tools of use, given our shared software), Meta (where so many conversations on global policies take place) or MediaWiki (where software development is often coordinated and discussed). It is hard to find the people you need to help you (and copyright cleanup suffers for it - most of our bots are broken). Lessening the challenge is one of the goals of Flow. While this is a large-scale project and thus will take some time, the ultimate goal is to create a discussion system that will allow editors to talk to each other easily regardless of their home project, which will benefit people interested in every area of development, including math. There are additional complications with this, such as editors having different userrights on each wiki, (etc), so it'll take some time and experimentation to get it "right", but it's a fundamental long-term goal. It will enable people to coordinate together to plan development and to discuss their needs - whether the people working on programming are volunteers or staff.

Since you have far more familiarity with this disconnect, let me ask you, what is the specific outcome you are hoping for? How will you know if the disconnect is "fixed"? That will take me a far sight further towards determining if and how I can help you. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:25, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I appreciate the time you're taking to reply. To answer the specific question in your final paragrpah first. Probably the disconnect between WMF broadly and WMF paid staff in particular on the one hand, and mathematics content editors at the various language Wikipedias and the English in particular, will persist while WMF continues in a state of having, as we understand, no plan for mathematics rendering and editing. In the absence of a plan, there is no focus for any discussion, and interaction becomes nothing but a matter of unplanned actions by developers and reactions by editors. What success looks like to me includes (but is not restricted to) WMF having a plan for sustaining and developing mathematics-related software which has been proactively shown to the mathematics editors, sanity-checked, commented on, improved and (ideally) agreed by the latter, with development by volunteers and paid staff supported by tools and processes, a roadmap that shows WMF when and where paid effort is needed to complement volunteer effort, volunteers knowing what is being asked for, what the priorities are and where the various products are in their life cycles, all of this being visible in a reasonably stable and well-known location for any editors who are or want or need to be involved. The various mathematics project pages would have stable links to those locations, and regular push notifications of major successes, failures and changes of plan, invitations to participate in strategic planning discussions, venues to take part in those discussions, and tools to support decision-making. I'm using mathematics here just as an example, although it's the only one I'm personally interested in: there are numerous analogous communities with various specialised textual and editing requirements such as musical, chemical, linguistic, bibliographic or genetic notations; mathematical and chemical diagrams; right-to-left texts; scripts with other non-linear or context-dependent rendering; and so forth.

Now having answered your question, let me make a blunt comment. What I'm seeing here is my asking various questions and suggesting various possible activities; in response I'm getting a lot of suggestions for things that I might do to fix things, but rather little in the way of answers to my questions and equally little in the way of proposals for what you, the WMF and its staff might do. We are not on an equal footing here: I'm a volunteer, you're a member of WMF staff. Yet I seem to be doing all the work so far. Is there anything you and the other community advocates on the WMF staff propose to do as a result? Deltahedron (talk) 18:56, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Deltahedron, so, since you're using mathematics as an example, it sounds like what you're asking for here is for the Wikimedia Foundation to, in consultation with community, create a comprehensive roadmap for developing specialized software, filling in gaps that volunteers do not pick up for development? Is that correct? If so, I will be very happy to pass along your request to the head of engineering and product. That said, I'm afraid that you may misunderstand the footing here if you think that I, the other community advocates, or any of the community liaisons have the ability to make this happen. As I've mentioned above, the work path of engineering and product are set by the Executive Director in consultation with the Board of Trustees to help meet the long-range strategic goals created in community consultation. We have a new Executive Director coming aboard and I would not be at all surprised to see an evaluation of those priorities and perhaps even some general adjustments of direction, but if I'm understanding you correctly what you're talking about represents a major shift in the development process on MediaWiki - a complete departure from the previous 12 years of experience - and it is not a change that individual staff would have authority to make. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I am certainly not suggesting that you usurp the functions of the head of engineering or the executive director. What I am suggesting is that as Senior Community Advocate you may wish to consider whether there may be more that you and the other community advocates should do to facilitate communication between staff and the communities in the mathematics editing projects under the umbrella of the Wikimedia Foundation, to help volunteer editors of mathematics get access to resources and information they need from the Wikimedia Foundation and to ensure that the Wikimedia Foundation remains aware of the character of the mathematics content contributing communities. Is there more that you propose to do in that direction, or do you think the status quo is acceptable? Deltahedron (talk) 19:28, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Deltahedron, I am happy to facilitate communication by passing along your request, as I mentioned above, to the head of engineering and product. This would not be usurping his function at all, but simply fulfilling mine. :) I carry requests from community to staff routinely; sometimes, staff are able to assist, and sometimes they are not. Would you like me to do that? Otherwise, I'm afraid all I really can do is point you to resources, such as developer hubs on MediaWiki where you might find volunteer assistance or the grants programs, if you want to seek funding for development of mathematics software. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:37, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, and I would be grateful if you would do that. However, I have to say that I am disappointed. I had assumed that the Senior Community Advocate would want, and be able, to do more. However, if you are unable to to do anything else, then let's leave it at that. Deltahedron (talk) 20:05, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I will do. I'm sorry if you're disappointed; I wish that I could give everyone what they want, and I do agree that good tools for editing articles related to mathematics would be a good thing, but unfortunately directing engineering efforts is well beyond my authority. :) The structure you describe could be a very useful thing and I will convey your request, but I want to be sure that the context is clear to you to avoid inadvertently misleading you. I'm not sure if the relatively small (to the scale of Wikimedia) product and engineering department at the Wikimedia Foundation has capacity to undertake this organization given their assigned tasklist. If the departments efforts should happen to be refocused, that may change, and I will make sure that your feedback is received. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:35, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Moving on

Perhaps you can help with my suggestion at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Mathematics#A challenge from Jimbo Wales. As you will have seen, Jimbo Wales was receptive to the notion that mathematics content editors come to an agreement on issues relating to rendering and editing. Of course this is not an issue confined to the english language contributors. Unfortunately my language skills are not up to translating the challenge he posed us into the 31 other languages that have project pages linked to WP:WPM. Are you able to help find translators? Deltahedron (talk) 20:19, 15 May 2014 (UTC) There is another, unrelated, request at d:Wikidata:WikiProject Mathematics#Related WikiProjects which would be of interest to exactly the same group of projects. Deltahedron (talk) 06:25, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Deltahedron. I can point you to the resources. :) Translation is, like almost everything else, a volunteer-driven process on Misplaced Pages. m:Meta:Babylon is the portal for coordinating it. Locally, I have also frequently reached out to people through Babelboxes (by searching categories - ], like Category:User es-N for Spanish natives - or through Misplaced Pages:Translators available. That said, like all volunteer efforts that require a large number of people, translating anything into that many languages could take quite a while. If you don't want to wait for it, you could do what most of us do, which is reach out in English to those projects with a request at the top of your note that local editors translate. This is generally very successful, since multilingual people abound on our projects. Once in a while, where I have some basic language facility myself, I will post in English with a Google translate assisted translation, but I only do this these days if I have basic language facility. Some projects are actually offended by Google translate, as I gather it isn't always stellar. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:24, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Deltahedron, I've had luck using this page on translatewiki.net (that's the site Wikimedia projects use to translate interface text) to find active translators. Under each language, the translators are colour-coded by recent activity. If you are having trouble finding someone for a specific language, let me know, I can share any resources that I have available. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 15:50, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks both, I'll try m:Meta:Babylonfirst. Deltahedron (talk) 18:19, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Grants

You mentioned "funding for development of mathematics software". There's an interesting demonstration at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#A_challenge_from_Jimbo_Wales where fr:User:Ambigraphe described a rendering engine which requires further work. What would they need to do to fund that work, if funding wwas required? I hasten to emphasise that I have no connexion with their work, nor am I acting on their behalf. But is it eligible at all? Deltahedron (talk) 18:24, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I asked around about this last week, and I think it's eligible for an Individual Engagement Grant, although I'm not entirely certain. (Whether a code-writing project is eligible depends a bit on the details of how it's implemented.) These grants can range from very little money (say, $100 to pay for printing paper advertisements that you wanted to hand out) to as much as $30,000. I understand that the money could be used to hire a developer. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:54, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I will pass it on. Deltahedron (talk) 21:09, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Feedback

Hello again. A few weeks ago (12/13 May) we had a discussion and if I read it correctly you were going to pass on some comments of mine ("I will be very happy to pass along your request to the head of engineering and product"). So far I haven't received any kind of response and I wondered whether perhaps it had got lost in the system? Of course, I realise that WMF staff must be particularly busy at the moment, with a new ED in post, so if my request is simply not important enough to attend to, perhaps you could let me know that I need not expect any reply. Deltahedron (talk) 20:59, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Deltahedron. I did pass it along - on May 13 - to my supervisor and the Vice President of Engineering and Product Development. (My supervisor would not be involved in this decision directly, but I wanted to be sure he was also aware. :)) I'm afraid I don't know if you're going to receive a response; I haven't, but that's not unusual for a communication of this sort. Suggestions are sometimes simply incorporated into strategy discussions. Like you, I'm assuming that the new ED means things are unusually busy, so I don't know if they've even started talking about the direction of product & engineering, whether it needs to be adjusted or should continue with its board-set goals. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:33, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the update. As I understand it then, I may or may not receive a reply, and you will not. I wonder whether you, as Senior Community Advocate, feel that this "not unusual" situation is entirely satisfactory? Deltahedron (talk) 17:29, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Ideally, I'd love to receive responses to every email I send, preferably within moments of hitting send. :) But you'd be surprised how many emails I send out - a lot of people have ideas, a lot of people have questions, a lot of people have requests. I'm afraid that I'd probably hamper productivity if I were able to actually enforce my preferred standard. In general, I am far more likely to get a response to a question than a suggestion, which makes sense to me. Even in response to questions, though, it can take weeks, if a question is complex or I have difficulty determining who should "own" it. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:42, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Ideally, I would like to see at least an acknowledgement of a serious proposition on a topic on some importance. Here in the UK, some of the organisations that I have volunteered for are required by law to answer (not acknowledge, answer) enquiries from a member of the public within a set time limit, and most organisations would be ashamed not to respond to one of their volunteers much faster than the legal limit. The attitude that even acknowledging polite enquiries and suggestions from volunteers is optional because it would "hamper productivity" to do so suggests an attitude that constructive engagement with volunteers is somehow not part of the job. Let me suggest that, on the contrary, constructive engagement with those fellow-workers who do not happen to be in receipt of a salary is a necessary and integral part of the job. Failing to engage has led, and will continue to lead, to far greater and wasted expenditure of time and effort than engaging constructively. Deltahedron (talk) 18:24, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Deltahedron, you've received an answer, and I hope fairly promptly - I'm staff, and I'm talking to you. :) I've told you that this is not on our current strategy, which is set by the ED and the board, but that I would pass along your suggestion to those who are in position to consider it as a direction going forward. This has been done. I'd be surprised if many organizations are able to dedicate the manpower of managerial staff to deeply address every suggestion they receive. I don't know if they're working yet on whether they need to revise that strategy, but, if they are, your feedback has been passed along. I'm afraid you may not get a commitment to do or not do your suggestion. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:42, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

I see: thank you. Many organisations do in fact actively solicit suggestions from people who work with or for them, consider them seriously, and derive great benefit from the process. I'm sorry to hear that WMF is not one of them. Perhaps it is in fact a complete waste of my and your time to make suggestions in this way -- please advise me. Deltahedron (talk) 18:56, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't think it's a waste of either of our times to make sure that opinions are heard. However, I think it's a leap to presume that because upper management does not respond personally to a suggestion that they are not considering it seriously or deriving great benefit from the feedback process. They simply may not have time to talk them all through, but it doesn't necessarily follow that they aren't weighed alongside other factors in making their decisions. There are 75,364 active editors on all Wikimedia projects (http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/). If even a small proportion of them want to discuss suggestions, that could turn into quite a lot of time talking and not a lot of time doing. :) This is why we have people to gather feedback, including through comments such as yours and through input streams like bugzilla, which are watched by other staff.

That said, I saw on Wikimedia-L this morning that they are in fact discussing Engineering goals now for the next fiscal year. The draft is posted at mw:Wikimedia Engineering/2014-15 Goals and they are actively soliciting feedback at mw:Talk:Wikimedia Engineering/2014-15 Goals. This page looks like a good opportunity for you to reinforce your request directly, Deltahedron, and I wanted to make sure you were aware of it. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:46, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

I think I understand quite well what the attitude of WMF upper management is to the people who actually write the encyclopaedia. (I don't like it, and I don't think it effective, but I do understand what it is.) The links you provide look very interesting, so thanks for those. Deltahedron (talk) 17:31, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Disconnect

I would like to return, if I may, to the point that started off this whole discussion some weeks ago, about the disconnect between the community of mathematics content editors and the WMF. Perhaps you have been seen the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#A_challenge_from_Jimbo_Wales. If so, and if not I ask that you do, you will see that I have been making various attempts to get a dialogue going within the editor community and between that community and WMF, and frankly it's an uphill struggle. I don't have the information, I don't have the connections, I don't have the time and I don't have the energy. You have given me a few pointers, but I do not feel that I'm making much headway, and frankly I do not see that it's my responsibility to do so. Given that there is are staff members such as yourself with a remit to "facilitate communication between staff and all the communities in every project under the umbrella of the Wikimedia Foundation" and to "help volunteers get access to resources and information they need from the Wikimedia Foundation and to ensure that the Wikimedia Foundation remains aware of the character of its communities", I am now asking you to please do more to help us. We are doing our best to formulate requirements and get engagement with WMF planning and resourcing, but frankly we need you do play a part. Please would you, or one or your colleagues, engage directly, clearly, fully and frankly with us at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics and be proactive in helping to tease out those requirements; please tell us clearly and directly what is planned that we need to know about; in particular please do not simply point us at further pages where we may or may not be able to find out for ourselves that we want to know. In short, I am asking that you, either personally or through a specifically tasked staff colleague, communicate with us and advocate for us. We need your help. Deltahedron (talk) 21:13, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Additional. I think this reply by Jdforrester (WMF) illustrates my point quite well. He expresses surprise that mw:Extension talk:Math/Roadmap is still empty. Well, I for one had no idea that it would be helpful to post there. In fact, I still don't know whether it would be. There are must be dozens of places across multiple wikis where suggestions might be put, or read, or acted on and I have zero appetite for trying to guess where they all might be. As I say, please have someone take ownership of finding these places and getting the conversation between us as editors and readers and the WMF staff and developers onto the same page. Deltahedron (talk) 08:35, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

You've certainly discussed commenting at that page before, and just last week, the dev said, in a conversation with you, that it would have been nice if anyone except him had ever posted anything there. I think you can assume, therefore, that the dev working on that extension really would see and value receiving your comments there. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:42, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for that comment, although it does not address my request. Thank you also for reminding me that the page I mentioned as just one example of the disconnect came up in a discussion four months ago with one of the volunteer developers, in which I think no WMF staff, developer or advocate, contributed. You will also be aware that at that time I asked where discussions on that specific rather technical topic should be centralised and got no answer. Now it seems that one of the WMF staff would have liked to see discussion at that specific page. It's a shame nobody told us that back in February. This is an example of why I'm asking that a Community Advocate be specifically tasked to be proactive in taking engagement such as the one you have excavated and making the connections into WMF staff that would make them useful for informing WMF staff of the community's concerns, as the discussion in February apparently was not. Are you going to take that on? It would be great to hear that you were. Deltahedron (talk) 06:26, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Deltahedron. I see that Jimmy has forwarded your comments to the Board and to Lila, and that he is personally advocating for it, which could be very helpful for you. I'm afraid that in the way things are currently set up, I am not able to advocate for you in the way that you request, and I have no authority to assign anyone to advocate for you in the way that you request. I can point you to resources; I can pass along your suggestions; I can generally get information. I cannot proactively help tease out requirements for math development from the community, and what I know about what is planned is all public information to which I've already pointed you at mw:Wikimedia Engineering/2014-15 Goals. I have passed along your suggestion about changing the approach to the head of engineering and product, and I have done my best to make sure that you are aware of resources for you, including connecting you to the goals page where you could more directly and publicly share feedback, but I can't mandate a change in the approach set by the Board and upper management. I hope and trust that community feedback is considered, but ultimately there are limited resources and competing interests, and it isn't up to me to set priorities. While I would love to be able to, sometimes, I know it is a difficult job. Again, I hope that the support of Jimmy to the Board and Lila, especially since the head of engineering and product is already alerted, will make a difference. Perhaps they will choose to assign a liaison to work with you on this in the way that you are hoping. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:27, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Two questions for you

I have two questions for you not related to copyright for a change, I'm curious if these have already been brought up elsewhere and if so what the outcome was.

First, regarding the WMF's privacy policy as it relates to images uploaded here. I know that in the case of images concerning persons there is an additional banner that calls for care to be used with regards to personality rights, but a brief and not particularly thoroughly researched sweep of our existing privacy policy I see nothing governing the protection of persons from other means of identifications. In this case specifically, the thought dawned on me after seeing this image in which the tow truck's license plate is clearly visible. Given the rise of id theft and the ease with which something like this can allow a person to obtain personal information about others I wonder if it may be in our best interest to blank the information so as not to reveal any personal information to would be ID thieves or God-forbid out someone in the community to people who don't get along with them so the latter camp can use the information to harass the former camp endlessly. This could be particularly important with regards to "drive by shootings" since a photograph taken of car or other form of potentially identifiable medium without the owners consent could have legal ramifications if something along these lines was to happen.

In the second case, as it related to the deletion & protection processes, I'd like to know if it wold be possible to add a collapsible box to the page (like the key box we have for user watchlists) that can link to the relevant policy and/or guideline pages so that new or out of practice admins can quickly que up the that information when going through csd logs and adding page protection. Such a tool could help reduce errors in the deletion process by the new and uninitiated by allowing them to quickly check csd-related deletion criteria and protection criteria against the request on the page to make sure that the requests are grounded correctly. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:19, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi, TomStar81. :) I'll have to do some poking around, but I'm not personally familiar with prior discussions on either topic. The former I can probably get an answer to through Meta:Wikilegal, although it can be hard to predict how long that will take. The latter, I'll have to ask some more techy people if they're aware of any reuqests for or movements in that area. I'll get back with you as soon as I can! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:36, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

TomStar81, I think it's technologically possible to add a collapsible box to just about any page, but I'm not sure which one you're talking about. User:Matma Rex will likely have some good insight into this. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:41, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): I could probably help with the technical thingies, but I don't really edit this Misplaced Pages enough to know how to go about doing such changes. Surely there are technically-minded editors here for whom this is their primary wiki? :) Matma Rex talk 22:00, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): The page I would be adding the toolbox to would be this one (I borrowed Mdennis's talk page for the sake of convenience). As to what I would be adding to the page, I would like to add something similar to the existing Template:Deletion policy list, which itself serves as a cheat sheet to allow the new or out of practice admins to quickly obtain information related to the given csd/afd criteria in question so they can check against the relevant policy/guideline being cited as the reason for deletion in the event they are unsure of or need a quick reminder of how the policy in question relates to the request for deletion. The reason I bring it up is that while the information is on Wiki already, its not in the actual admin-issued deletion page so those new or in need of a mental refresher have to fish the information. I'm of the mind that adding a toolbox or a link or something there could help offset this problem somewhat, since I am one of the admins who tends to be out of practice on deletion when going through csd/afd logs I can say that it would be helpful to me, and if it would be helpful to me then its gotta be helpful to others too. Aside from the now known User:Matma Rex, the only other person I can think of off the top of my head that would be tech savy in this type of work would be User:Kirill Lokshin, whose done a lot of the coding and template related work for the Military history Project. As to the Wikilegal on Meta: unto my experience a legal department usually takes life+forever to answer anything, so I would expect a long wait for an answer.Fortunately for me, I am usually patient on such matters :) TomStar81 (Talk) 03:15, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

I decided to do a little more research on license plates and photos here and made an interesting discovery: Apparently the use of our site to obtain license plate(s) for less-than-honorable purposes already occurred back in June 2012 (Here's the story). Accordingly, then, if the legal guys haven't discussed this they're 24-monthes late in catching up with current events. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:33, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

• Vehicle licence registration probably works differently in different countries and probably comes with different concerns depending on the country of the licence plate. I don't see how seeing a picture of a Swedish licence place would aid identity theft. However, if a user uploads a picture of his own Swedish licence plate, then he is no longer anonymous. If you have a Swedish vehicle licence plate, you can identify the owner by contacting the vehicle register. If you have a person, you can contact the vehicle register to get a list of all vehicles (if any) which are owned by this person. If you have a car model and/or colour, then you can get a list of all cars of the same model and/or colour.

Users are hopefully aware of what you can do with car registration numbers in the users' home countries, and are probably aware that they are uploading pictures of their car registration numbers when they do this.

I am more concerned about personal information in EXIF data to photographs, since many photographers are unaware of this information and therefore accidentally reveal personal information. For example, I have seen users upload pictures of tools, pets, books and other things typically kept at home or at work, complete with GPS coordinates. These users have accidentally revealed the longitude and latitude to a location just a few metres from the place where the photograph was taken, revealing the users' home addresses.

Another problem is the camera serial number, which often appears in EXIF data. Let's say that I find a photo on Commons which was taken using a camera with serial number 123. On some other website, I find another photo which was uploaded using a camera with the same serial number. Now I can make the conclusion that both photographs were taken using the same camera, indicating that the Commons user and the user at the other website either know each other or are the same person. --Stefan2 (talk) 23:25, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

• The case I am making is that if you cough up say $20 dollars online for a "who does this car belong to" search and get the person's name, then you can do one of those background checks to find out where they live and what they make and all that noise, which can invite the possibility of identity theft, in particular if the person in question wasn't aware of the leak in the first place. God forbid, but if someone at the theme park where I worked had taken a photograph of my car and put it on facebook, for example, then they could have background checked me and then used my name and address to fill out a credit card application or opened a bank account in my name or so forth in that manner and I would have been unaware until the collection agency or agencies showed up at my door step. In some cases users do intentionally do this for reasons that escape me, but in the case of the cars I brought up the plates because its a round about method that someone with intentional malice could use to find and exploit additional identities for malevolent purposes. That is hasn't happened yet (that we know of anyway) doesn't mean it can't, I only wish to draw attention to what I think could be a blind spot in the system that could be exploited at someone else's cost.

In the case of the tow truck picture, for example, I could spend $20 at crazy-al's-background-checker.com to learn that John Doe bought the truck with a bank loan, and he lives at 123 easy street. I can then take that information and fill out a credit card application with John Doe's home address, and use that card to eat, drink, and be merry, all because John's truck's license plate was inadvertently photographed by a wikipedian and uploaded here with that information intact. I worry that sooner or later some enterprising soul will reach this same conclusion, hence the question here concerning what our policy is on this. God forbid, but in the above example if the guy gets caught and says he borrowed the information from Misplaced Pages on CNN or CourTV or some venue like that its gonna result in an id theft gold rush as others set out to repeat the feat. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:43, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Re: the legal question, User:TomStar81, I am still waiting. I believe evaluation is underway. Re: the other, as pretty much suggested above, it seems this is entirely doable but would likely be a matter of community agreement and implementation rather than something staff would take part in directly. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:49, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

TomStar81: The problem is that the methods for identity theft vary a lot from country to country. In Sweden, it is not enough to have public information from public registers, such as the vehicle register or the citizen register, in order to steal someone's identity. You also do not need to pay $20 to some shady service to obtain car ownership information – all you need to do is to call or visit the vehicle register, costing you no more than a phone call or a bus ticket. Instead, people who wish to steal other people's identities use other tricks (for example, forged ID cards, theft from other people's mailboxes or change of address submissions to the citizen register). --Stefan2 (talk) 21:54, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Fair enough. Just one of those 'I was concerned' moments with regards to the site, so I thought I'd ask and see what the story or policy or guidelines on here for such things were. Like they say (and like what I've said), "there be no stupid questions save the one not asked." :) In any event, like I've noted before, I didn't look into it too terrible hard before asking here, so there was a lack of research on my part which may or may not have helped things. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:16, 12 June 2014 (UTC)