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Media Viewer fails the grade

Wikipedia volunteers at war with the Wikimedia Foundation over new software feature

By Andreas Kolbe

The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) is facing yet another community backlash over the introduction of a major new software feature, the Media Viewer. One month after implementation, volunteer administrator Pete Forsyth unceremoniously switched the new feature off, only to find his change reverted by none other than the Wikimedia Foundation’s Deputy Director and VP of Engineering and Product Development, Erik Möller, who threatened to remove Forsyth’s administrative privileges. Möller in turn has now been hauled in front of Wikipedia’s arbitration committee, accused of overstepping his authority.

The spat follows similar controversies over other new software features the Foundation has tried to deploy in recent years, such as the now-defunct “Article Feedback Tool” and the “VisualEditor”, both of which were met with concerted resistance from the international volunteer community. The VisualEditor, too, was disabled by a volunteer administrator last year. Faced with massive community rebellion, the Wikimedia Foundation backed down then, allowing the change to stand. But this time, fearing a complete loss of authority, the Foundation seems to want to stand its ground.

The Media Viewer

Media Viewer zoom prototype

Media Viewer zoom prototype

The Media Viewer, a Facebook-like feature enabling users to view larger versions of images included in Wikipedia articles, had been in beta testing since November 2013. According to the Foundation’s 8-strong Multimedia team led by Fabrice Florin, the rate of favourable feedback had been “increasing across all languages over time”. This changed rapidly, however, when the tool was finally launched on June 3, 2014, becoming the English Wikipedia’s default image viewer.

Four days later, the English Wikipedia community began an

…continue reading Media Viewer fails the grade

Child Pornography on Wikimedia Commons

by Delicious carbuncle

 

Let’s be very clear about this – in my experience, the Wikimedia Foundation (who own Wikipedia and the site’s image repository, Wikimedia Commons) takes the issue of child pornography very seriously. The WMF has no tolerance for explicit images of people who are underage. This may be simply because hosting child pornography is illegal in the jurisdictions where the Wikimedia servers are, but whatever the reason, my reporting of child pornography to WMF employees has always resulted in swift and decisive action. The trouble is that Wikimedia projects are not administrated by WMF employees, they are administrated by volunteers. And some of those volunteers do not share the WMF’s concerns about hosting child pornography.

Meet Matt Buck

Matt Buck is an admin on Wikimedia Commons, where he goes by the clever pseudonym Mattbuck. He’s not the Matt Buck who is a talented illustrator, or the Matt Buck who is a bodybuilder and fitness model. He’s this Matt Buck, who is a maths PhD student at the University of Nottingham.Mattbuck is very active on Commons and one of the more prominent admins there. When someone believes an image on Commons should be deleted for some reason, they start a deletion discussion. Commons editors will discuss the rationale for deleting or keeping the image and an admin will close the discussion (and delete the image if that is the decision reached). Mattbuck is one of a group of editors who tend to appear at deletion discussions about images relating to nudity or sexuality to offer reasons why the image should be kept. Since he is an admin, Mattbuck also closes a lot of these types of discussions. Mattbuck also keeps galleries of “sexuality” and “nudity” images in his userspace, presumably so that he can spot problem images. These

…continue reading Child Pornography on Wikimedia Commons

Busy day at the Wikimedia Foundation office?

by Roger Hogsky

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UPDATE: There has been a response to this story from the Wikimedia Foundation, which is reproduced at the bottom of this piece.

Many businesses and organizations operate their offices from a central Internet connection that establishes just one IP address for all of its employees (and visitors) to use. However, by doing so, it can lead to situations where one employee or one visitor is up to no good on the Internet, leaving behind the IP address breadcrumbs that incriminate the whole organization.

You would think that an advanced technology juggernaut like the Wikimedia Foundation would be very careful and secure about how it allocates its publicly-viewable IP addresses to employees and visitors to their headquarters, but perhaps this is not the case. Let’s juxtapose some activities taking place within or regarding the Wikimedia Foundation, on some particular days in recent history, shall we now?

 

 

April 2, 2008: Wikimedia Foundation board chairperson Florence Devouard asks the WMF lead attorney Mike Godwin:

Let’s say… if the board was to decide on a dual governance between a “board of trustees” and a “program council”, what would the legal comment you would provide ?

Same day, over on Wikipedia, from the Wikimedia Foundation’s IP address, regarding the Bean (T–H–L) article:

They have a very distinct taste to them. They kind of resemble the smell of cat litter. They are really dark green like a crayon.

 

July 5, 2010: Wikimedia Foundation dignitary, Samuel Klein, discusses prioritization of spending:

I agree we should have specific goals for resources, both short- and long-term. The reason to allocate a fund for long-term infrastructure support, is to

…continue reading Busy day at the Wikimedia Foundation office?