Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-03-02/News and notes

Cautious optimism from "the dolphin inadvertently caught in the net" at US Supreme Court hearings "crucial for Wikimedia"

 * For prior Signpost coverage, see see Section 230 report (February 2023)

On the Wikimedia-l mailing list, two members of the Wikimedia Foundation's "Global Advocacy" team drew attention to

The Foundation has previously weighed in on these cases with an amicus brief and several blog posts, and is present at the current hearings "in person talking to stakeholders and observing the proceedings. We expect the Court to rule this year and will be providing updates as we know more."

Asked about the worst-case scenario (from a Wikimedia perspective), Stan Adams of the Global Advocacy team elaborated:

However,

– H

U4C Charter vote
The Wikimedia Foundation advised on Meta-Wiki that –

You can find more information on the U4C's purpose and scope here. – AK

2024 Requests for adminship review
Are more changes afoot for the Requests for adminship process? Open proposals from Phase I include the following (some others were already rendered unsuccessful).
 * Proposal 2: Add a reminder of civility norms at RfA
 * Proposal 3: Add three days of discussion before voting (trial)
 * Proposal 3b: Make the first two days discussion-only (trial)
 * Proposal 4: Prohibit threaded discussion (trial)
 * Proposal 5: Add option for header to support limited-time adminship (trial)
 * Proposal 6: Provisional adminship via sortition
 * Proposal 6b: Trial adminship
 * Proposal 7: Threaded General Comments
 * Proposal 8: Straight vote (trial)
 * Proposal 10: Unbundling 90% of blocks
 * Proposal 12: Abolish the discretionary zone and crat chats
 * Proposal 12b: Abolish crat chats and allow discretionary relisting
 * Proposal 13: Admin elections
 * Proposal 14: Suffrage requirements
 * Proposal 16: Allow the community to initiate recall RfAs
 * Proposal 16b: Require a reconfirmation RfA after X years
 * Proposal 16c: Community recall process based on dewiki
 * Proposal 16d: Community recall process initiated by consensus
 * Proposal 17: Have named Admins/crats to monitor infractions
 * Proposal 18: Normalize the RfB consensus requirements
 * Proposal 20: Make RFA an internal non public process
 * Proposal 21: Reduce threshold of consensus at RfA
 * Proposal 22: Change the name from RFA to "Nominations For Adminship"

Phase I is still open, and you may weigh in with your thoughts here: Requests for adminship/2024 review. – B

WMF publishes draft "research agenda on the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for the knowledge commons"
From February 19 to February 23, 2024, "a group of 21 Wikimedians, academics, and practitioners" met at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center in Northern Italy "to draft an initial research agenda on the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for the knowledge commons." The aim is "to focus attention (and therefore resources) on the vital questions volunteer contributors have raised, including the promise, as well as risks and negative impacts, of AI systems on the open Internet." The agenda is available on Meta-Wiki, together with a brief report on the meeting.

Members of the "Wikimedia AI" Telegram group expressed their surprise about hearing about this effort first from organizations outside the Wikimedia movement, and about the fact that the term "open source" isn't mentioned in the document (despite open-source AI being an important topic of debate in AI currently, and WMF's general commitments to the use of open source software). While the announcement appears to be speaking on behalf of "volunteer contributors", the "Wikimedians" involved in drafting the document appears to have consisted exclusively of Wikimedia Foundation staff (largely from its Research department), according to the attendee list. Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander subsequently clarified that this "effort to contribute to a shared research agenda on AI [...] was created by a small group working in the open who rushed to publish a ‘bad first draft’ that will benefit from more input."

In other AI-related news, the Wikimedia Foundation recently received a $2.2 million grant from the Sloan Foundation (a longtime supporter) for the purpose of "leverag[ing] AI for the benefit of Wikipedia's readers and contributors, including tools to address vandalism" over the next three years. (These funds come on top of a $950,000 grant announced in April 2023 by WMF's own Wikimedia Endowment for "building and strengthening AI and machine learning infrastructure on Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects", similarly highlighting "the development of algorithms to measure the quality of Wikipedia articles and machine learning models that help catch incidents of vandalism on Wikimedia projects.")

– AK H

Brief notes

 * Annual reports:
 * Wikimedians for Sustainable Development,
 * Wikipedia & Education User Group,
 * Wikimedians of Republic of Srpska, Wikimedia Belgium,
 * Wikisource Community User Group,
 * Wikimedia South Africa,
 * Wikimedia Community Ireland User Group,
 * Wiki Advocates Philippines User Group.
 * Les sans pagEs


 * New administrator: The fourth user to receive administrator rights this year is Sdkb, whose request for adminship was closed as successful with 265 votes in support and 2 against. The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrator.
 * Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is Economy of South America, followed by Community service (beginning March 4). Please be bold in helping improve these articles!
 * New sources at the Wikipedia Library: The WMF and Taylor & Francis have announced that users of The Wikipedia Library will have free access to all T&F and Routledge journals going forward. If you've never used the Wikipedia Library, it's an incredible resource for research! The Signpost covered the library in detail last September.