Foundation board member James Heilman is forking Wikipedia

[tarantino]

Random tangent that this topic just reminded me of.

Doc James hasn't edited since 30 May, a few days before the Medicine Arbitration Case was closed.

Interesting tangent. It was probably mentioned back then (I largely missed the fallout from this case), but see some discussion here and here.

Doc James has been busy forking wikipedia's medical content to mdwiki, where those arbcommies can't tell him what to do. By the way, is it kosher that he only links to the enwiki article in an edit summary, and doesn't provide a list of contributors?

[Vigilant]

That's some serious butthurt.

How does that work with him being on the board of the WMF?

[AngelOne]

So he's taken his Wiki Project Med Foundation ball and gone home to make his own Wiki where he can do what he wants and no one can tell him no. From the main page:

We encourage the inclusion of video, including video under NC and ND licenses. The later are hosted locally. We only accept CC BY SA, CC BY, and PD text. An example of an article using NC is here.
Costs of medications are not only permitted but encouraged. And we will include medication doses.
We write for a general audience, with efforts to approach a grade 12 reading level, with the understanding that many of the people who use this resource may speak English as a second language.
Editing is currently not open to everyone. An application process is coming soon.
We will have a code of conduct.
Paid conflict of interest editing is not permitted (disclosed or otherwise). Case by case exceptions may be made following discussion.
Finally we are open to innovation. The goal is to provide the best product possible for our users.

Wiki Project Med is a Wikipedia Affiliate; are they allowed to start their own wikis like thi? (I don't know anything about Affiliates). Is heading up Wiki Project Med as its own site, in competition with and not controlled by Wikimedia, a conflict of interest with being on the Wikimedia Board of Directors?

[Carcharoth]

That's some serious butthurt.

How does that work with him being on the board of the WMF?

That's a serious question that deserves some discussion (both here and on Wikipedia and by the WMF).

This might be one of those defining moments that actually makes a difference. Or it could be another failed attempt at a fork. Difficult to tell right now.

[Vigilant]

That's some serious butthurt.

How does that work with him being on the board of the WMF?

That's a serious question that deserves some discussion (both here and on Wikipedia and by the WMF).

This might be one of those defining moments that actually makes a difference. Or it could be another failed attempt at a fork. Difficult to tell right now.

It should be a hot topic of discussion.

However,
1) Jimmy is basically in absentia but has a lifetime appointment to the board.

2) The Fram/Laura Hale/Maria Sefidari Huici/Trust & Safety scandal is still a huge issue for fraud, self dealing, conflicts of interest and lying on the part of the Chair.

3) The Universal Code of Conduct, Rebranding, Diversity is more important than an Encyclopedia, and other weird, pointless and irritating directives undertaken by the WMF are still running open loop.



I'm going to guess that WP/WMF will just toss the Doc James thingy on the pile of other dumpster fires that are raging out of control.



You guys need to clean out the board and put better governance structures in place.

[AngelOne]

It looks like one of the ongoing requirements for Affiliates like wpmedf is to post financial and activity reports on Meta. Doc James recently moved those reports onto his new wiki.

If he's cutting ties with WP, and he certainly appears to be, then he is no longer a representative of the community. He needs to resign from the Board. Like right the fuck now.

(Maybe these Doc James posts should be split out onto another thread?)

[tarantino]

Topic split from this thread, and oops, I misspelled James' name. Zoloft or Jake can fix that, since I can't.

--Fixed

[OhKayeSierra]

From WikiProjectMed:Technical efforts

(T-C-L)
1) All pages will mirror Wikipedia until edited. When one clicks the view history button it will be possible to see the history of the page in question from WP. And when one hits talk one will also see the talk page as mirrored.
2) Once a page is edited it will bring over the history of the page with a line like

MDwiki _______________________________________________________________________ Wikipedia

That separates the edits that occured in the two different places
3) In certain cases one may want to turn back on mirroring for a page. This may work by deleting the page and then having a button under "more" that says "restore page mirroring". This will leave the ability to delete a page and have it remain deleted in the fork.
4) When a page is edited locally the talk page will also be brought into the fork. But if the talk page is edited locally the article will not be brought into the fork.
5) When a page is edited and thus brought into the fork, all the templates used for that page will also be automatically brought over. For example all the reference templates and infoboxes etc. As should the categories.
6) Might be useful to have the ability to switch between the fork version of any article and the current Wikipedia version of the article. Would make it easy to check functionaility / do updates.

I hope that live-mirroring the way it’s being described wouldn’t actually be kosher with the W?F sysadmins. I’m not entirely sure why Doc hasn’t just imported a database dump into his walled garden instead of opting for the path of most resistance by live-mirroring. It certainly seems like less of a technical headache to do it that way, at least.

[AngelOne]

Thanks for splitting these posts out into their own thread.

The situation is now being discussed on Iridescent (T-C-L)'s Talk page here. The discussion is mainly focused on copyright because Doc James' new site doesn't properly attribute the copies. Not really a surprise, as he's not known for his attention to detail. Quick, sweeping decisions and stubbornly defending them, yes. Making sure that all the ts are crossed and is dotted, no.

WO got a mention, too:

(While I assume the Board is not going to approve legal action against Doc James, I assume the Wikipediaocracy crowd will be gleefully emailing every journalist they can think of as soon as they notice, and the WMF doesn't like bad publicity.)

I'm pretty sure James the Trustee would argue against legal action against James the Forker.

If he won't even follow the legal rules and could be sued for that, he's not fit to be on the Board.

[Poetlister]

Fred Bauder had his own wiki when he was on Arbcom, although it didn't claim to copy over articles from Wikipedia wholesale.

[Eric Corbett]

The title of this thread is misleading, as James Heilman isn't forking Wikipedia, he's only forking a very small part of it, which I think is a great idea. There should be many more of these mini-forks as I'll call them, leading perhaps one day to a federated version of Wikipedia with each mini-fork under proper control, not the chaos that is WP.

[Poetlister]

The title of this thread is misleading, as James Heilman isn't forking Wikipedia, he's only forking a very small part of it, which I think is a great idea. There should be many more of these mini-forks as I'll call them, leading perhaps one day to a federated version of Wikipedia with each mini-fork under proper control, not the chaos that is WP.

Medical articles are among the most important on Wikipedia. Errors in them due to vandalism or well-meaning idiots could cost lives. Heilman isn't perfect, but far better to have him as the god-king of a medical wiki than leave those articles to the perils of crowdsourcing.

[Eric Corbett]

The title of this thread is misleading, as James Heilman isn't forking Wikipedia, he's only forking a very small part of it, which I think is a great idea. There should be many more of these mini-forks as I'll call them, leading perhaps one day to a federated version of Wikipedia with each mini-fork under proper control, not the chaos that is WP.

Medical articles are among the most important on Wikipedia. Errors in them due to vandalism or well-meaning idiots could cost lives. Heilman isn't perfect, but far better to have him as the god-king of a medical wiki than leave those articles to the perils of crowdsourcing.

I agree.

[MrErnie]

At the very least Doc and his co-editors at the new site who are parties to the recent Arbcase should be indef'd on wiki for NOTHERE. As in, literally taking the hard work from HERE and putting it THERE. This may be the most extreme case of throwing the toys out of the pram I can think of. Just throw them into another pram where you can play with them how you want.

Some more thoughts: Does Doc personally proof every article before he copies it over? What if there's hidden vandalism? What if there are deliberate falsehoods? Is this quest to insert medicinal costs really this important? Imagine this guy is your ER doc, furiously running off to copy over some pharma prices and typos while you're laying there busted up from a bike wreck. "I'll be right back! It's not like you can go anywhere...And I get paid for this!"

[Giraffe Stapler]

Medical articles are among the most important on Wikipedia. Errors in them due to vandalism or well-meaning idiots could cost lives. Heilman isn't perfect, but far better to have him as the god-king of a medical wiki than leave those articles to the perils of crowdsourcing.

Sure, if the articles ceased to exist at Wikipedia, but they won't. So anyone who Googles their disease du jour will still get Wikipedia first. Probably the "knowledge panel" will come direct from Wikipedia. So Heilman abandoning Wikipedia's medical articles will actually make things worse.

[AngelOne]

They've locked down the new wiki so that a login is required to view even the main page. I'm thinking it's because it was getting attention on WP. After all, the best way to not have a copyright problem is to make your site private, right?

[No Ledge]

Doc James has been busy forking wikipedia's medical content to mdwiki, where those arbcommies can't tell him what to do. By the way, is it kosher that he only links to the enwiki article in an edit summary, and doesn't provide a list of contributors?

When importing articles, it is essential to import the entire edit history as far as possible. Can we please make sure the box "Copy all history revisions for this page" is always ticked? I know this means a slower import, but the conditions for attribution require either that or an unambiguous link back to the revision exported from enwiki. Obviously the former is always preferable. Can we go back and re-import the full history for all articles where that hasn't been done? That may result in some wasted effort, but I do feel it's important to get this right. --Doug

...Looks to me like they just shut down the site to outsiders to even read it, shortly after I copied that from Doc James' talk page. Now a login is required to see it.

[tarantino]

There's also some discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine.

[lonza leggiera]

They've locked down the new wiki so that a login is required to view even the main page. I'm thinking it's because it was getting attention on WP. After all, the best way to not have a copyright problem is to make your site private, right?

Maybe, but I'd argue that a better way would have been to limit the possibility of any copyright infringements in the first place, by adhering strictly to the not very stringent conditions of the material's purported licence.

[Vigilant]

They've locked down the new wiki so that a login is required to view even the main page. I'm thinking it's because it was getting attention on WP. After all, the best way to not have a copyright problem is to make your site private, right?

lol

The actions of guiltless people...

[Randy from Boise]

Random tangent that this topic just reminded me of.

Doc James hasn't edited since 30 May, a few days before the Medicine Arbitration Case was closed.

Interesting tangent. It was probably mentioned back then (I largely missed the fallout from this case), but see some discussion here and here.

Doc James has been busy forking wikipedia's medical content to mdwiki, where those arbcommies can't tell him what to do. By the way, is it kosher that he only links to the enwiki article in an edit summary, and doesn't provide a list of contributors?

His right and yes, respectively. Ideally the link should be to the history page, not the article itself.

tim

[AngelOne]

It looks like one of the ongoing requirements for Affiliates like wpmedf is to post financial and activity reports on Meta. Doc James recently moved those reports onto his new wiki.

Now with the wiki locked down, those reports are no longer publicly viewable. Idiots. They should never have been moved over before everything was ready.

[Carcharoth]

There's also some discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine.

Your link is wrong, should be this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... ne#MD_Wiki

[Vigilant]

Sounds like a site ban should drop on Doc James' head.

[tarantino]

There's also some discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine.

Your link is wrong, should be this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... ne#MD_Wiki

That section was started after I posted the above link. Sometimes I can't see in to the future.

[Carcharoth]

There's also some discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine.

Your link is wrong, should be this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... ne#MD_Wiki

That section was started after I posted the above link. Sometimes I can't see in to the future.

Ah, OK. That makes sense.

[Poetlister]

Medical articles are among the most important on Wikipedia. Errors in them due to vandalism or well-meaning idiots could cost lives. Heilman isn't perfect, but far better to have him as the god-king of a medical wiki than leave those articles to the perils of crowdsourcing.

Sure, if the articles ceased to exist at Wikipedia, but they won't. So anyone who Googles their disease du jour will still get Wikipedia first. Probably the "knowledge panel" will come direct from Wikipedia. So Heilman abandoning Wikipedia's medical articles will actually make things worse.

Yes, there should be some mechanism to keep the WP articles identical to those on the new wiki, but obviously the WMF wouldn't want that.

[Eric Corbett]

Medical articles are among the most important on Wikipedia. Errors in them due to vandalism or well-meaning idiots could cost lives. Heilman isn't perfect, but far better to have him as the god-king of a medical wiki than leave those articles to the perils of crowdsourcing.

Sure, if the articles ceased to exist at Wikipedia, but they won't. So anyone who Googles their disease du jour will still get Wikipedia first. Probably the "knowledge panel" will come direct from Wikipedia. So Heilman abandoning Wikipedia's medical articles will actually make things worse.

Yes, there should be some mechanism to keep the WP articles identical to those on the new wiki, but obviously the WMF wouldn't want that.

What would be the point of keeping them identical? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of forking?

[The Garbage Scow]

Sounds like a site ban should drop on Doc James' head.

Would be entertaining at least to see a board member get San Franned.

[Poetlister]

What would be the point of keeping them identical? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of forking?

I envisaged that ideally, all amendments to the WP articles would have to be considered by Heilman or others suitably qualified. There's no point in having better versions on the other wiki because Google would favour the WP versions.

[Bezdomni]

Sounds like a site ban should drop on Doc James' head.

Would be entertaining at least to see a board member get San Franned.

for creating a synced tuning fork and swiping the "media" title the W?F doesn't want anymore...

Wasn't the conclusion of one of the eight bullet points of that recent (unclosed) RiverfulloComments about T&S and ArbCom that a fork would never happen?

By shrimpfork, by pitchfork, pile higher and deeper.

[Beeblebrox]

I'm not at all sure why people are calling for a ban here. Wikipedia explicitly allows re-using its content. If he's screwing up the financial reporting, he's shooting the affiliate in the foot, and I'm sure the other members won't like that, but that is not an EN.WP problem.

[Vigilant]

I'm not at all sure why people are calling for a ban here. Wikipedia explicitly allows re-using its content. If he's screwing up the financial reporting, he's shooting the affiliate in the foot, and I'm sure the other members won't like that, but that is not an EN.WP problem.

That he's doing this because people on en.wp wouldn't let him have his way and he's attempting to circumvent the ruling?

WP:NOTHERE?

The fact that he's a twice disgraced board member is just gravy at this point.



You're a board member of a non-profit and you're actively fucking up the non-profit's primary purpose....

Perhaps you're right, a SanFranBan seems like a better solution.

[Beeblebrox]

He isn't breaking the arbcom ruling by doing what he wants on some other website not in any way under the control of arbcom or the WMF. Circumventing it, yes, but not in a manner that violates the ruling.

[Vigilant]

He isn't breaking the arbcom ruling by doing what he wants on some other website not in any way under the control of arbcom or the WMF. Circumventing it, yes, but not in a manner that violates the ruling.

Splitting hairs, especially for a board member with fiduciary duty.

[Beeblebrox]

He isn't breaking the arbcom ruling by doing what he wants on some other website not in any way under the control of arbcom or the WMF. Circumventing it, yes, but not in a manner that violates the ruling.

Splitting hairs, especially for a board member with fiduciary duty.

I don't see how it is hairsplitting at all. Arbcom rulings don't apply when you aren't on en.wp. The only exceptions I can think of are stuff like malicious doxxing , pedo grooming, that kind of thing.

Making a content fork so you can play by your own rules doesn't harm Wikipedia in any way that I can see. Even when I disagree with you I can usually at least see your point, but it's lost on me here.

The board stuff and the affiliate stuff are also outside arbcom's remit, thankfully.

[AngelOne]

He isn't breaking the arbcom ruling by doing what he wants on some other website not in any way under the control of arbcom or the WMF. Circumventing it, yes, but not in a manner that violates the ruling.

Splitting hairs, especially for a board member with fiduciary duty.

I don't see how it is hairsplitting at all. Arbcom rulings don't apply when you aren't on en.wp. The only exceptions I can think of are stuff like malicious doxxing , pedo grooming, that kind of thing.

Making a content fork so you can play by your own rules doesn't harm Wikipedia in any way that I can see. Even when I disagree with you I can usually at least see your point, but it's lost on me here.

The board stuff and the affiliate stuff are also outside arbcom's remit, thankfully.

He's allowed to make a content fork, yes, and he's not breaking any rules by doing it once he gets attribution right (and it won't be James that does it, because detail-oriented he is not).

It's that he's a Board member and I, at least, have the impression that he is supposed to be conducting himself in a professional manner. But what's happened here is that he didn't get his way at Arbcom so he's going to a place where he can do what he wants. It's seriously childish, and not at all professional.

It also calls into question his commitment to Wikipedia, because he's walking away from the community. If he's not committed, or even part of the community, can he really fully be the voice of the community on the Board? If he doesn't want to be part of the community unless he gets his own way, he's not adhering to the spirit of collaboration, so why should he be allowed to be part of the community?

As for harm to Wikipedia, playing with his toys in his own sandbox doesn't harm Wikipedia at the moment except for causing further division among project medicine members.

[jf1970]

Someone walks up to Doc James and says they want to donate to an online encyclopedia that covers medical topics. Does DJ send them to Wikipedia or his new website? That quandary is one example of how forking Wikipedia breaches a WMF trustee's fiduciary duties. WMF's General Counsel is probably briefing the board about this. I predict he will be voted out soon.

[Vigilant]

Someone walks up to Doc James and says they want to donate to an online encyclopedia that covers medical topics. Does DJ send them to Wikipedia or his new website? That quandary is one example of how forking Wikipedia breaches a WMF trustee's fiduciary duties. WMF's General Counsel is probably briefing the board about this. I predict he will be voted out soon.

Not for at least a year.

The board postponed elections, most likely to protect Maria Sefidari Huici.

[AngelOne]

Someone walks up to Doc James and says they want to donate to an online encyclopedia that covers medical topics. Does DJ send them to Wikipedia or his new website? That quandary is one example of how forking Wikipedia breaches a WMF trustee's fiduciary duties. WMF's General Counsel is probably briefing the board about this. I predict he will be voted out soon.

Not for at least a year.

The board postponed elections, most likely to protect Maria Sefidari Huici.

They could kick him out and leave his seat vacant like they did last time.

[C&B]

Yes, it is that he should be Fucking Fired.

Got an opinion on That, Brox?!

[Carcharoth]

There's also some discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine.

Your link is wrong, should be this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... ne#MD_Wiki

That section was started after I posted the above link. Sometimes I can't see in to the future.

Well, the future interfered again, as Colin (T-C-L) (who started that section), removed it without as far as I can tell archiving a copy of it anywhere (this is something that annoys me, when people rely on the page history to preserve the history, as that is not always 100% reliable and does make it far less visible, e.g. to internal and external searches):

Diff to removal.

Really, when a discussion has been contributed to by others, even if you started it, it shouldn't be removed like that.

[Poetlister]

It's a pity that ArbCom have no influence over what WMF trustees do on other sites (and very little about what they do on ENWP). Obviously, certain things would have gone very differently if they could have influenced them. But obviously that's the position and it's not likely to change.

[Casliber]

He isn't breaking the arbcom ruling by doing what he wants on some other website not in any way under the control of arbcom or the WMF. Circumventing it, yes, but not in a manner that violates the ruling.

Splitting hairs, especially for a board member with fiduciary duty.

I don't see how it is hairsplitting at all. Arbcom rulings don't apply when you aren't on en.wp. The only exceptions I can think of are stuff like malicious doxxing , pedo grooming, that kind of thing.

Making a content fork so you can play by your own rules doesn't harm Wikipedia in any way that I can see. Even when I disagree with you I can usually at least see your point, but it's lost on me here.

The board stuff and the affiliate stuff are also outside arbcom's remit, thankfully.

We-ell, I'd slightly disagree in that a fork of material results in a splitting of editor base in an area that needs all hands on deck. Which is sad.

[Giraffe Stapler]

It also calls into question his commitment to Wikipedia, because he's walking away from the community. If he's not committed, or even part of the community, can he really fully be the voice of the community on the Board?

This is the part that resonates with me.

[Vigilant]

A new recruit

curprev 23:37, 13 August 2020‎ Tryptofish talk contribs‎ 3,089 bytes -1‎ →‎This is a work in progress: ce
curprev 23:35, 13 August 2020‎ Tryptofish talk contribs‎ 3,090 bytes +1‎ →‎How we differ from Wikipedia: ce

[Zoloft]

A new recruit

curprev 23:37, 13 August 2020‎ Tryptofish talk contribs‎ 3,089 bytes -1‎ →‎This is a work in progress: ce
curprev 23:35, 13 August 2020‎ Tryptofish talk contribs‎ 3,090 bytes +1‎ →‎How we differ from Wikipedia: ce

Tryptofish's user page:

I'm retired-and-yet-not-retired, whatever that is. I'm just flat-out disgusted with what the culture here has degraded into, and I'm only dropping in from time to time to, I guess, be a single-purpose account whose purpose is to try and do something about it. If things improve, maybe I'll eventually resume content editing, but if not, not.
I'll say to anyone reading here: remember the last time you recorded your favorite TV show on VHS tape using a VCR? Me neither. There is no fundamental reason why Wikipedia cannot become obsolete too.

The most essential feature of WP was "anyone can edit", that wiki-style crowdsourcing would actually work. It was a terrible idea on its face, and yet has worked absolutely brilliantly, and vastly better than the alternatives. So far. But I think that we are starting to bump up against the limitations of "anyone can edit", and it remains to be seen whether we can adapt. The servers aren't going to go dark as the hasten-the-day folks predict, but the creation and maintenance of content will just gradually peter out. I mean it very literally when I say that "anyone can edit" is starting to be something that is accepted without critical thinking, in the way that cults do.

--Tryptofish (talk) 3:05 pm, 8 July 2020, Wednesday (1 month, 7 days ago) (UTC−7)

[No Ledge]

It also calls into question his commitment to Wikipedia, because he's walking away from the community. If he's not committed, or even part of the community, can he really fully be the voice of the community on the Board?

This is the part that resonates with me.

This gets to the heart of the question, "What does the W?F want to be?" If they still want to be Wikimedia then Doc's medical encyclopedia is just another project inside their big tent... Commons, Wikidata, Wikisource, Dictionary, and... the newest member of the family, Med.

On the other hand, if they want to be the Wikipedia Foundation then anything that competes with Wikipedia is an unethical conflict-of-interest.

I fear they want to be Wikipedia for fundraising purposes but Wikimedia for fund-spending purposes, which to me is unethical bait-and-switch.

I don't really want to see Doc suffer the indignity of getting kicked off the board twice. I have a soft spot for him given that he's the only one connected to the foundation who has ever filled my coffee cup outside of a conference.

This could all be resolved simply by conducting the postponed, overdue, online election to reaffirm or replace the community-elected seats. It's not like the need to see the candidates together, in person, on stage has ever been necessary in the past. There is no need to postpone anything due to the need for social distancing since the community has always been socially-distanced from its representatives.

The election has been postponed to rub-it-in-our-noses that these have never really been community-selected seats. They are just another class of board-selected seats. All seats on the board are board-selected seats; the W?F is not a democratic organization.

[Vigilant]

I keep reading W?F as WtF and smirking into my tea...

[Poetlister]

It also calls into question his commitment to Wikipedia, because he's walking away from the community. If he's not committed, or even part of the community, can he really fully be the voice of the community on the Board?

This is the part that resonates with me.

As I say, nobody seemed concerned about Fred Bauder running his own wiki. However, no doubt its impact on ENWP was insignificant,