Fun with statistics

A form of advertising not likely
to be directly seen on WMF!
Image via Wikimedia CommonsAdvertising as a funding source for Wikimedia Foundation projects is a fairly controversial topic, and there has been much discussion in the past. Opinions on the matter are held quite strongly by some folk.

Apparently Jimmy Wales ran a poll on advertising via a facility on Facebook that lets you poll things. Some analysis of this poll was carried out and posted on Meta (and, to my chagrin, although I'm active on Meta, I didn't find out about it that way).

The analysis is quite interesting, if only to show what sort of fun can be had with statistics.

Facebook: Image via Wikipedia
(fair use claimed)According to Techcrunch, Facebook demographics are somewhat skewed. this is not surprising when you think about it, but I did not realise it was apparently 2/3 female in make up. Lonely male geeks, take note!

So clearly the demographic of these polls is not necessarily representative of the entire population. That's OK and not necessarily a drawback if one is just trying to get some preliminary sense of matters and doesn't plan to use the findings for actual decision making, absent more study.

Personally, I think the thing I found most amusing, and significant, was the large number of people that were not sure what the project's current structure actually is, and were not aware that the project does not currently have ads on it.

This is something to remember... it's true that the english wikipedia is the 7th most visited site on the internet, but it's also true that many people don't know much at all about its project structure or funding sources. Or care, presumably.

What do you think?

Stemming the rise of the machines?

The machines are reading
(c) Wikimedia Foundation Sometimes events move faster than we plan.

Another tidbit of my visit to the Wikimedia Foundation office Monday was that I got a preview of this post by Cary Bass, which addresses robots.txt, the bit of magic that controls what is searched and what is not. (more specifically, well behaved robots/spiders honor what it says and do not scan pages it names off... Less well behaved robots/spiders eventually get blocked completely once their bad behaviour is discovered.) Specifically, it makes the case that non articlespace pages ought not to be quite as visible in searches as articles, because unlike articlespace pages, which were designed to be read by the intended audience of the encyclopedia itself, they often contain bickering, name calling, or even worse, "userified" pages that contain clear BLP violations, fringe theories given undue weight or all sorts of other problematic content.

Unbeknownst to Cary, after Cary had written that blog post but before it published (the wonders of delayed publishing) Newyorkbrad posted this to the english wikipedia and foundation mailing lists. In it, he advances a remarkably similar thesis, that we should act to avoid giving undue weight to material that really isn't intended for the readership.

Bugzilla mascot, Image
via Wikimedia Commons
Partially in support of this, I entered an enhancement request in Bugzilla for code changes to make it easier to control what is and isn't in robots.txt... your thoughts or comments on that bug would be appreciated.

See also this mailing list post by Jimmy Wales in which he expresses agreement with the general idea that we should use this as a way to avoid doing unnecessary harm. Bravo!

As it turns out, this topic (among others) has been getting considerable discussion at the dreaded Wikipedia Review, but I believe Brad advanced the idea because it's a good idea, not because of the pressure that some were trying to exert. More on that topic later, but for a taste of it you can review this thread.

governance uproar?

I did not steal any pencils.
Image by kaurjmeb via FlickrIronically (or not) I'm writing this from the Wikimedia Foundation office... (although since I'm using Blogger's draft mode, I can queue it up for posting tomorrow morning, I hope they promote that from draft to production soon...) I happen to be in San Francisco on business and popped in to visit. There is a certain cachet to doing so, I guess

The announcement of the board's restructuring seems to have caused a bit of an uproar in some circles... Danny posted, and then referenced Durova's "community petition" part II post... maybe it's fashionable to express ... concern? dismay? outrage? what?

Myself, I think I'll just hang back and let others comment further, because I'm not sure I'm concerned... or dismayed, or outraged, or whatever... the structure doesn't seem completely unreasonable to me... some allocation to the chapters, which are growing in importance, some to the community, and some internal. If I had any concern it would be about the notion of experts being seated rather than being consulted but I'm fairly sure things will sort out on their own soon enough.

So call me unfashionable I guess. I'm more worried about the more immediate things like BLPs and the Checkuser policy churn that's been manifesting itself lately than I am about board structure.

Would you vote for this man?

My cousin, Jerry Swartz, is a long time educator and labor activist, is running (or I should say, recently ran, by the time you read this, the election will be over) for MEA Secretary Treasurer of the MEA, the Michigan chapter of the National Education Association.

Jerry is one of four candidates running. I'd like to tell you who the other three are but I haven't sussed that out yet. The MEA website has a search capability but I wasn't able to find that information.

Jerry and I are, you could say, diametrically opposed on a lot of matters... (He's a union organizer, after all) but he's a very hard working and well meaning person who has done a lot of good for his local and who is not afraid of keeping those in power honest.

The state MEA would do a lot worse than Jerry Swartz as Secretary Treasurer...

Besides, I don't have any other relatives who have had their picture taken with Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm!

Governance Reform for Wikipedia?

WMF logo as a mosaic of images
Image via Wikimedia CommonsPreviously, I wrote about a Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) wide Wikicouncil. That idea continues to spark discussion (whether I think it's a good idea or not is another matter :) ) ... it has been the subject of discussion by the WMF board, but it appears that the idea is shelved, at least for now.

There is another initiative brewing, perhaps somewhat more grass roots, to foster "governance reform" on the English Wikipedia. The proposal and the talk page make interesting reading.

The argument put forth by proponents is that there has been a failure to get many proposals for reform enacted using the existing (consensus based) processes, and very few reform proposals imposed by fiat either, and that therefore a new process is needed.

Wikimedia Foundation wikis tend to operate using policy that is "descriptive", that is, policy lags behind practice and is written to describe how things are actually done, and as practice changes, policy changes to follow it, or lags practice. By contrast, "prescriptive" policy is written to describe how things ought to be done, and it is changed to force a change in actual practice, that is, policy leads practice.

If this proposal were adopted it would be a major change away from descriptive policy, and, some argue, away from the "wiki way".

Given the number of abortive attempts to change BLP policy that there have been lately, and the frustration I and others have expressed, this proposal has a certain attraction. Heck, it's a siren song... to think that if this were passed, 50 (or however many) reasonable people would now be able to change policy to be as I think it should be, regardless of "consensus" not being for the change. (we have seen things get 65% support and then be declared as dead, lacking consensus)

But there's the rub... who's to say that the 50 (or however many) people selected to be on this thing will be "reasonable", "thoughtful", "bold", etc? If the process used to select them is anything like the Request for Adminship process of late, it's just as likely that they will be popular, non controversial people who have never annoyed anyone or taken a stand on anything... and how do we know if they've never taken a stand what their stand will be on matters going forward? We won't know.

So I don't see this as a good idea, even if we wanted to change away from the wiki way of descriptive policy.

What do you think? Do you think the English Wikipedia has a problem with getting policy to change? If so, do you think the way to solve it is to change to prescriptive policy? And if so, do you think this governance reform is the way to achieve that?

I'd like to know! Tell me! Put your comments in on the talk page as well!

Bauer Power

Solar cells, Image
from Wikimedia Commons
Previously I wrote about SolarCity and Sungevity, two California based companies. I've been searching hard to see if there was anyone local, because I would rather give less money to the power company if at all possible.

I have found an outfit called Bauer Power (hey, rhymes with flower power!) local to me, in Wayland... They also offer the turn key solution I crave but time will tell whether it's what I want. Unlike the two Cali companies I profiled, Bauer charges you for the initial design. This may be to keep people serious. But it's worth it to me to find out if I'm right that our house would be ideal, and to see what they propose. So I've scheduled them to come out in mid May and evaluate things.

I'm not totally clear on what our utility, Consumers Energy, actually provides for customers that want to be bidirectional. Their net metering page is a big vague (and hard to find), but this PDF brochure gives a bit more information. Time will tell.

How easy or hard is it to use renemable energy where you live?

Britannica free access... gotcha?

EB building name plate with thistle
Image by Robert Brook via FlickrPreviously, I wrote about Encyclopaedia Britannica's free access offer. I may have more to say later but I thought I'd update you a bit with a couple of things I ran into

First, it seems I can't edit my previous post! I'm very used to just going into already published posts and tweaking them (I always find typos after I publish them! Why is that???, er, don't answer....).

For whatever reason, an attempt to edit that post blanks it out. I'm not sure if this is a glitch at my end or what (further testing is needed) but the only think that is different about that post is the widget I embedded. If in fact I can't edit posts that have those widgets that's a strong disincentive to embed them. Hopefully just a glitch that will be sorted out.

A somewhat more serious matter was blogged about by the author of Pattern Recognition, who sat down and analyzed the Terms and Conditions of use. It seems that the T&C has that dreaded "non commercial use" clause... (I was going to put a link to it about here, but Jason Griffey is a better searcher than I am, I can't find the page that has the Ts and Cs!... silly me...)

Now, on my blog, if you look over to the left, and if you look between every second posting, you're going to find ads... so far I think I've raked in a total of 24 cents or so from them but it's commercial use, technically. So if you come back one day and find that first posting gone and any and all links to Britannica content gone, that's why...

For now, though, I'm going to assume they don't really mean exactly what they seem to say by that, since (thanks again, Jason) their next paragraph says:

If you want to post, publish, or use content from (or contained within) the Services on your Web site or in any other Internet activity, you will need permission from Britannica, even though your Web site or Internet activity is free of charge.

Well hmm... wasn't that what I just signed up for the ability to link to EB articles? Color me confused I guess.

What do you think? Does EB really mean that?