Talk:EU policy

FOP

Should the statement of intent also give some idea of the means? For instance, I think that for FOP it would be valuable to pursue the application of a so-called "clause of the most favourable law" available in EU (à la Nice Charter article 53), so that the whole EU defaults to the most favourable national legislation on the matter. --Nemo 10:51, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Open Access

moreover, why in this statement there is no mention of Open Access? It was clearly in the first positions in the survey. --Aubrey (talk) 10:59, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi, guys. I absolutely agree that points are missing here. However, this document is built on top of the three consensual points we agreed on during the meeting in Brusssels in April. Since this is the very first time we are trying to have a common, European advocacy effort, we need to take small steps that don't overwhealm anybody. I believe once we figured out how to work together and have a consensus on the entire project, it will over time become easier to do other stuff as well.

Considering that most OA eligilbe material is produced by public funds, this would actually give us some security to work on this front. To be honest, we already cooperated with Alma Swan (SPARC Europe) and CC (Gwen Franck) to push for OA in the Horizon 2020 programme. We would need free licensing, which the Commission is currently not willing to define, but we could have these actions covered by the PD-Gov statement.

If you want to push for a more global and broader effort in advocacy, please help comment the page set up by WMF legal asking whether we should have a position on copyright reform: Talk:Advocacy.

--Dimi z (talk) 01:41, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's reasonable to ask research to be PD: it isn't anywhere, so it can't be included in that point. If you want OA to be there, you probably want it to be about CC-BY (for cultural works) and CC-0 (for data): PD is unneeded (for cultural work) or useless (for data, which has database rights). --Nemo 07:26, 29 November 2013 (UTC) P.s.: Nobody asked "a more global and broader effort" here, it's only about the EU policy.

Agree! I do think that we should have an explicit OA position in general, beyond what is described in this document. However, I cannot propose it on my own. This is what was agreed upon during a two day meeting in April. On the basis of that consensus we have created this document. I plan on having annual meetings on EU policy where we can discuss including new things in our "programme". I also believe that we need to approve this document now, because it would make including OA in the future much easier. Approving this in now way means that the list of issues and goals will be closed. It also doesn't contradict anything in the field of OA. It actually supports OA, even if we all agree it doesn't go far enough in that area. --Dimi z (talk) 13:17, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

No. I don't think it supports OA, because it goes in a different direction than OA. I'm not sure WMIT would sign such a document, we'd have to discuss it. What's this April discussion? I don't see any such conclusions in Brussels or Milan documentation, nor anything which could ever explain the focus on PD. --Nemo 21:17, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Do you see anything that says OA is bad and we don't want that? Do you see anything at all that would stand in the way to support and stand up for OA? Do you think OA is the only important topic in the Wikimedia Movement, or could you agree that Freedom of Panorama and government works in the public domain are important as well? Would you really go against FoP and PD-Gov, just because they don't explicitly mention OA? --Dimi z (talk) 00:10, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

In order. Yes, yes (OA gold is not PD). No, yes, no. --Nemo 08:53, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Please, help me out here. Let me know where you think the proposed document is against OA. I honestly don't see it.--Dimi z (talk) 13:22, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Open Access is definitely something we care about. Back in Brussels, we discussed on whether to include it among those basic aims; however, we thought rather to talk about the "PD-gov", for various reasons (e.g., OA is less directly relevant for Wikimedia projects - and therefore at the time we were unsure about the support among the community - and there is already a strong movement in favor of OA, thus we may be more useful somewhere else).

I realize that this Statement of Intent, in its formulation (i.e., explicitly asking for public domain), is in contrast with the current practices of OA, where CC-BY is commonly used; however, the intent of the "public works for the public" idea do include OA, and I reckon every signatory of this statement do support OA.

Maybe we could find a better phrasing which avoid this problem? - Laurentius (talk) 08:31, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Survey

Splitting here a more general point. Above it was said that this document is based on some April discussions. So does the survey we made have no value for this statement? How are we going to convince those who participated into that survey that we're not just trashing their input? I personally promised people that the survey was a way to be heard; if it isn't, I'll need to apologize with them. --Nemo 21:28, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I am working very hard to stand in for the topics that were explicitly wished for in the survey. I really am! I would LOVE to have each chapter say they support all the policy topics requested for in the survey. Believe me! That would give all of us a lot more freedom to mameuver.They are already being taken into account at Talk:Advocacy. Please help getting them through there. If they are valid on a global level, they will also be valid in Europe. As for this document, let's just call it the smallest common denominator to unite everybody. It is not supposed to be exclusive, just a first step. --Dimi z (talk) 00:03, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not interested in WMF advocacy, stop going OT. --Nemo 08:59, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

It is not off-topic. If the WMF decides what we're doing is incompatible, they can stop it. On the other hand, if they accept something, that gives us the freedom to act on it. --Dimi z (talk) 13:20, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Archived Messages

Public Message 1 Hey all, Timothy from Creative Commons here. I appreciate what you guys are doing on tracking EU policy. Very helpful. Wondering if you'd be available to meet up sometime to discuss if there's a way CC can help (we're most likely interested in some of the same policy issues). We have many CC affiliates in Europe, including some persons very interested in policy work. I'm based in the US but will be in Geneva for OKCon and perhaps in Brussels for another event in early October. tvol@creativecommons.org — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dimi z (talk) 09:01, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

TweetYourMEP

Hi folks, you may find useful this application gathering Twitter account of MEPs: TweetYourMEP -- CristianCantoro (talk) 14:03, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Cleanup

This set of pages is rather confusing. Can you please move them to subpages and categorise them properly? It's very hard to follow updates to such dispersed information. Thanks, Nemo 17:15, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Nemo! Thanks for pointing out that weakness of the current setup. I will of course try to redevelop it in a more sophisticated way as soon as possible, but please keep in mind that any help is welcome. --Dimi z (talk) 22:21, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I've already helped with the moves and categories; as for structuring the discussions and activities, I've no idea how to do it, the confusion of the pages just reflects the confusion of the project itself. :) It's one of the things people developing the project will have to solve. --Nemo 11:33, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Dude, I know we have problems and believe me I am trying to solve them. It's a ton of work and I am really trying here, so please don't be so harsh. I feel like you're saying that this work is terrible but that you have no idea how to do it better. That hurts and is very un-wiki.

Now, to the productive side of the conversaiton :). I have to better split the descriptive, monitoring and discussion part of the project. This could be done by a three level hierarchy (e.g. main page>monitoring>position mapping). I however would like to keep things as flat as possible and remain at a two-level structure. This would require mroe menu items, which is not very favourable itself. That my dilemma. --Dimi z (talk) 17:18, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry if it felt harsh and un-wiki. On the contrary, I recognise that you can do much better than me here and that being a wiki it's obviously a work in progress. --Nemo 08:41, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Don't worry, it's all good now. I know a ton of things have to change on this site and that expecially the sections need reorganising, but I have decided to wait until after the first meeting of the EU Policy Advisors groups to redesign it. --Dimi z (talk) 20:59, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Just passing by to say that this looks great now! PiRSquared17 (talk) 00:13, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

National parties

On the Wikimedia EP Election Questionnaire, I suppose it will also be sent to the EU formations? Considering only the national parties is an outdated approach and I don't know how far it can get; also remember that Schulze has been insisting a lot to get consensus for the concept that the party winning the majority at EU level should get the president of the Commission. --Nemo 17:53, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Nemo!

I will make sure the the groups in the European Parliament are also asked the questions. We will also try to send it to national parties running for elections in each member state. How far these are an outdated concept or not is besides the point in this case. They are the ultimate legislative decision-makers in the current political system. Changing this isn't our topic. --Dimi z (talk) 02:45, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

As far as I know, they are not the ultimate decision makers for EU legislation; national governments (and EU parliament) are. But sure, this is beyond the scope of this initiative. --Nemo 14:08, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

After some talks at the Wikimania, I was convinced to try and send out the questionnaire in each language and country. If you have a volunteer in Italy that would like to help do this, it would be great! --Dimi z (talk) 07:06, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Let me know by email or talk message when the questionnaire is ready for translation (translation can happen here on wiki, can't it?) and distribution and I'll do what possible. --Nemo 13:33, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

A proposal to send a questionnaire to political parties has been advanced on it.wiki's Village Pump, referring to this page. Very frankly speaking, I do believe that contacting national, as well as international parties is very far from being a safe and correct move for the Wiki Movement. This kind of contacts are usually made, IRL, to find "a friend in the room" in political contexts, i.e. a party that would support our battles - but this would necessarily put us in contraposition to other parties which happen to oppose to our new "friend". Political parties don't behave like Wikimedians do among themselves when we need to reach a consensus on something. Apart from Wiki Projects and little more, nothing is for free, in life. So I would never ever in my life, tell a politician something that would unavoidably sound like "you promise me, I vote for you". Because I would never ever come back to a wiki Community and tell them "he promised, let's vote for him", which is the ordinary price to pay for such a political support and a mistaken tool with which to believe we are still following our principles. And, well, just try to guess if I am going to tell anything similar to a reader...
Decidedly, I don't believe we have a common attitude in bargaining with politicians; I do believe, instead, that what we are building together has much more to do with public institutions, even those which depend on local governments or EU's Authorities, because we are here to stay for more than a voting round and this is not a little difference. Besides, the gigantic results we already achieved were reached without any lobbying; sometimes against some powers, though, against which we (i.e. for it.wiki's famous blackout) were able to resist mainly because we had really nothing to do with any single party or any coalition of parties, we were the "neutral" Wikipedia, and without any possible uncertainty about our neutrality we could successfully stand up for our rights. Therefore, I would strongly suggest to forget involving the Projects' neutrality with political parties, whatever these might be. Rather, let's make our voice heard by institutions, which are the true interlocutors we need to set up a valid relationship with. Institutions must receive the questionnaire, not the parties.
Hope I wasn't unpleasant, but honestly I cannot see this proposed scheme as coherent with our scopes and our (successful) policies. --g (talk) 00:51, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

«This kind of contacts are usually made, IRL, to find "a friend in the room" in political contexts, i.e. a party that would support our battles - but this would necessarily put us in contraposition to other parties which happen to oppose to our new "friend".»: that's the point! The proposal here is nothing like this. There is no room here. The idea is to do any action in an open, transparent and neutral way. «"you promise me, I votefor you"»: that might be the implicit assumption when you talk with one party only, but clearly can't be the case when you talk with all of them. - Laurentius (talk) 09:15, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

It is great to see some feedback. I have to second Laurentius that there is not secrecy here. We are publicly and officially just asking public organisation about some topics we care about. They may chose to answer or not. We are not going to reocmmend who to vote for, we're just going to see what they say. The problem that we have to admit to ourselves is that our topics are not on the agenda or in the minds of parties and people alike. A questionnaire ahead of elections might be just the right way to start a conversation. An open, public and traceable way to start a conversion. Far away from dark rooms in shabby bars. Of course if a larger part of the community believes this is not a good approach we can just do it in Germany (where it has been done for a while now without any conversations) and the EU Parliament Groups. --Dimi z (talk) 12:01, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Ok, let's figure out, just for a single minute, that you have publicly asked your questions, and as a result only one party supports you. In this case, we have one party supporting our ideas, and the other parties may freely wander around between a harsh refusal and an uninterested silence. How would you describe such a situation? To be neutral and objective, we would say that we have now one party and WMF running for the same goals. It's up to you to explain that they are not running together for the same goals; it would be a privilege for me if you invite me to attend while you try this explaination... :-)

And little could change if 2, or – say – 3, 4, 5 or a whole coalition answers you that yes, you are right, and they are ready to fight your battle. Still you would have WMF and a coalition running for the same goals, and still you haven't explained yet why they are not together.

Because the fact is that we simply cannot be together with anything which is not neutral.

So, since we don't do anything for the only sake of doing something, when you are asking questions to someone you have two alternatives, only: either you are going to give attention to the eventual answers, or you are going to be rude and will avoid taking care of other people's attention towards yourself. Forget the latter, I'd say, you are honest and correct and you would never be so savage. Thus, we only have one case, and it is the case in which when you ask a question, you do it because you are interested in the answer you are consequently going to take in attentive account.

Here we are: when a party supports your battle, are we going together with that party towards somewhere? Necessarily yes. Unavoidably yes. And we cannot.

The WikiWorld is an economical and social entity, not a political one, we have relationship with parties only passing through institutions. Ask them all the questions you like. If parties do have an interest in our themes, it will be their duty to collect the social instances from our relationship with institutions. If parties do what they are there to do, they themselves will understand what from a certain part of the society is being told to the other part of the society.

But, who do you think you are going to meet in EU groups? Groups are made by those who are sent there from single national parties, and it.wiki's experience, unfortunately, is to have been in "disagreement" with all of the major ones, when they were governing Italy. We were in contrast with the government of Mr. Prodi (former EU Commission president), with the government of Mr. Berlusconi and when it was Mr. Monti's turn, there was nothing left to say, because those attempts to write "unfriendly" acts aborted as a collateral effect of other issues. We have experienced a 360° contrast. We won because we were out of the arena, completely out, and because we had nothing in common with parties. This is what really urged Italian parties, when we blacked out the site, to quickly meet and solve in only a few hours the trouble caused by something in which they just couldn't involve themselves into. This is why we are safe today.

My personal point of view is a very pragmatical one, because I personally would never let WMF's Projects depend on political promises: right now, after only a dozen of years, we can correctly tell anyone that governments pass, while we are here to stay. We are those who kept their promises, in these twelve years, and overtook the limits we thought we had and we could think of. I trust in WikiPeople, in what they show to be when they are online, at least. Going to the real life, instead, I have to keep in touch with other kinds of mentalities I am aware of. And evaluate whether certain moves are really necessary or not. Did you really need to go lobbying through parties to obtain the German pictures archive? (a really great score) I think not. And you were WikiPeople, and less known than today, less important in the society than today. You went to an institution and you obtained because you were bringing with yourself, into your request, the incredible success and prestige of the common neutral work of all the Users in all the Projects.

Besides, maybe you work in a calm and uniform Community, where such discussions can be held in a very confortable way, like in a climax community. But if you bring similar proposals to other Communities like mine, very high is the risk that this could cause endless conflicts and, what's worse, distract from production. The victory in the blackout story still costs us to keep on explaining almost everyday that we have nothing to do with that party or with the other one: two years have already passed, and still we are there. We can't afford that every given day press (we don't enjoy neutral press in Italy) will attack us from any side, readers will ask us whether we are this or that, donors could stop giving to WMF because they can think there's a a possibility we are not neutral any more. We simply cannot. Please reflect about this point, because my position on this issue is exclusively meant to defend the work you make in Wiki Projects, as I defend mine and anyone else's work for free knowledge in free web, which is my motto and I put it in my signature whenever there's trouble getting close. So, bear in mind that I am always ready to fight for the ideas in which I believe, but I also consider that some 15 km, or so, from Brussels, there's Waterloo; let's choose the right destinations ;-)))

It is always great to see new ideas, so if you can accept mine, in turn, I'd just beg you to try to imagine how easy it could be to ask and obtain that a WMF representative, let's say the Great Founder (;-), can give a speech to the European Parliament to explain all the issues this extraordinary international Community is everyday silently working on. Let's look at this possibility. Could such a simple request be refused? Wouldn't it obtain more than simple lobbying? Is there anything, by chance, which forbids us to give it a try?

Maybe it can't be done, but there are many other things we could try, at this stage, better than trying to get into useless troubles ;-) --g (talk) 18:54, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Mailing list

The "Engage" section says that the relevant mailing list is mail:advocacy_advisors, however its description is "Advocacy Advisory Group for WMF LCA" which obviously doesn't cover EU policy. Something needs fixing. --Nemo 08:41, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Fwd: The draft EU Data Protection Regulation

FYI: [1]. --Nemo 08:41, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Net neutrality

FYI: Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014 round2/Wikimedia Foundation/Proposal form#Net neutrality. --Nemo 06:26, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

May 2015

Nice page, this monthly TL;DR report with a link to an archived mail, thanks. A list of the seven persons could improve File:FoP EP event 3.jpg, plus a joke that the same photo taken at the other EU parliament building would presumably not survive a "no FoP in France" deletion request on commons. –Be..anyone (talk) 01:16, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Help plan a new software feature for easy subscription to newsletters

We are developing a MediaWiki extension that will enable users to subscribe to community newsletters much more easily. We are very excited to hear your feedback on the features we have planned. Feel free to share your thoughts here. - Tinaj1234 (talk) 12:38, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

EU observatory

http://www.communia-association.org/2014/11/06/representing-the-public-domain-at-the-eu-observatory-on-infringements-of-ipr/

Should we try to join too? We have at least two points to promote:

• users must be protected from privacy and freedom invasions;
• most copyright plunder is performed by corporations against users, see e.g. Facebook terms of use but also the many exploiters of Creative Commons works.

--Nemo 23:00, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi Nemo, we're are already members since a year see article 3. And the Observatory also included an "economic contribution of PD and open licensing" study to their 2015 work plan. As we felt we need more help with the methodology and making sure they don't produce something terrible, we've asked Communia to join, which they did. Details about the study are discussed on the mailing list. --Dimi z (talk) 13:17, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Right, I remembered discussions about something similar but I wasn't sure it was the same one. [2] confirms, but is this membership documented somewhere? I only find a blog post. --Nemo 21:27, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

You have a point! Now that the work is becoming more we should spend more time on documenting the steps. Here are two letters I received from them: Welcoming us to the Observatory and about the economic contribution of PD study --Dimi z (talk) 08:33, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

The Valuation of Unprotected Works: A Case Study of Public Domain Photographs on Wikipedia

Might be interesting: w:en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-04-29/Recent research. --Nemo 14:01, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Update?

Could someone update the contents, please? This page talks about past as if it still were the future. There should be new future now, like the Big Fat Brussels Meeting #3. Or is there no future? --Oop (talk) 10:47, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

You can fix the verbs yourself. :) As for the future, IIRC plans for the winter were already published, the most relevant update is perhaps the status of negotiations in EC. Nemo 16:19, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

I can fix the verbs but I cannot help with the plans as I have no idea whether promises given here came true and what has been done since. And I see a chronic problem with the information exchange: constantly building new channels and letting the old ones rot is not a good communication policy. It is not much help that some information has been published somewhere. --Oop (talk) 15:00, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Commission

"Everyone" seems to agree that the European Commission's proposals are crazy. Either they have some extremely subtle plan where they propose everything they want rejected and not propose anything they want approved, or they really seem to be just stupid. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Given this, is talking with the allegedly divided Commission a mere waste of time? The Parliament seems more productive and the only positive news in recent times is that pro-users MEPs from majority group S&D came out of the closet. Nemo 09:13, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Cases

Should we add the Wikimedia Sweden case and the w:Reiss Engelhorn Museum one? --Nemo 07:30, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Refactor to make one talk page

The EU policy pages previously each either had their own talk page or had no activity.

I refactored all these talk pages to this single discussion forum. This means that anyone discussing any subpage of the EU policy pages will post here.

I did this because the amount of discussion in all these pages is of an amount and general focus that merits centralization. If in the future anyone wants to re-create an individual discussion page for any topics then feel free to do so. By default I propose that future pages direct here, until and unless there is a reason for an individual discussion. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:13, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Help requested - Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market initiative

Some Wikimedia community members are considering what response the English Wikipedia should have to the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market.

• en:Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market
• d:Q55110225

There is a flood of information coming in about this which is unclear. There is a rumor that some staff at the Wikimedia Foundation who have relevant expertise are saying that this EU initiative is an existential threat to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects. If that is the case, and if the mission of Wikimedia projects is to deliver an encyclopedia in the way that it has since 2001, then that means that this law is in conflict with the nature of Wikimedia projects and that support of this law is contrary to Wikimedia community goals.

While Wikimedia community members sometimes debate when certain laws might support or impede Wikipedia projects, the community does not have experience discussing Wikipedia-ending threats to the entirety of Wikimedia projects. If the rumors are correct and that an end to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects is a potential outcome to this then this EU policy team should plan whatever is necessary to advance this discussion, set goals, and most importantly communicate to the Wikimedia community about what is at stake.

Right now I am serving a neutral role in this and executing a migration of some discussion at English Wikipedia into a sub-page of this meta project. Please see what I moved at the behest of others at EU policy/2018 European Parliament vote. Anyone should feel free to rework the title, text, etc. Right now I am seeking a place here on Meta-Wiki to stage this conversation for all languages and I think this project is the correct place.

Thanks @Nemo bis: for being an organizer for the move from English Wikipedia to meta. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:31, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

Seeking sign off

I posted EU policy/2018 European Parliament vote as a subpage of this project.

Can any regulars at this project either sign off on my posting it here, or otherwise recommend that this page be split off as a stand-alone project page? Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:52, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

• Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Statement Opposing the EU Copyright Package - the board of the Wikimedia Foundation has stated opposition. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:02, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
• How the EU copyright proposal will hurt the web and Wikipedia - Eileen Hershenov, General Counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation, states opposition on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:05, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

---

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Note -- because we're apparently going to have a lot of readers looking at a sitewide banner about this issue, I think they need their own separate talk page at Talk:EU policy/2018 European Parliament vote If they come in and see all this random stuff about EU policy they'll be lost, and this page will be swamped in the process. I have archived this to encourage future replies to the content above to be made on that page. Wnt (talk) 00:25, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Request for comment from JGerlach (WMF)

@JGerlach (WMF):

1. Who is Allison Davenport and what is this person's wiki account?
   1. Why is this person publishing policy statements with the WMF?
   2. Where is the WMF policy team page, and what are the WMF policy positions?
2. I am going to give you the feedback that the Wikimedia community is getting information overload and activism fatigue from WMF calls for community mobilization.
   1. What plans do you have in place to greatly simplify your communications and as concisely and clearly as possible explain policy risks to the Wikimedia community?
   2. To what extent are you satisfied with the WMF relationship you have with the Wikimedia community? To what extent would you be satisfied if the relationship developed for the next few years at the pace at which it is developing now?
   3. Who is your target audience in pieces like Time is running out to defend user rights online? Personally I have trouble understanding this. There is no clear call to action.
3. You posted Time is running out to defend user rights online.
   1. Can you briefly state your opinion about the extent to which this policy's text and intent conflicts with the Wikimedia mission?
   2. Answer clearly - how much does it seem that the "Proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market" is an existential threat to the Wikimedia mission and business as usual for the Wikipedia community to present an encyclopedia?
4. How important do you think it is for there to be good Wikipedia articles on related topics?
   1. What do you think of the Wikipedia en:Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market? I find it inaccessible and I cannot imagine a typical person getting much insight from this.
   2. To what extent is Wikimedia content development a part of the WMF strategy for advocating for Wikimedia community interests in law and policy?
   3. What are your plans to encourage the Wikimedia community to develop the information it needs in Wikimedia articles to be informed about issues relating to Internet policy and Wikimedia projects?

I am throwing these questions out to start a conversation. I know almost nothing about you, your WMF department, or why you are posting messages. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:50, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi Bluerasberry

Thanks for the feedback on information overload. There is a lot going on, and we're always looking to improve and refine how can engage. The blog post you link to actually answers some of the questions you're throwing at me. I'm pretty busy right now with work around the EU copyright reform, but I'll try to respond to the most important things in your message briefly:

- Allison is the Technology Law and Policy on the Wikimedia Foundation's Legal Team. We were a little behind with setting up her staff page, but it's up now. The blog post also shows her title in the byline.

- The public policy team is housed within the Legal Team. I'm a public policy manager on that team and we present our policy positions at policy.wikimedia.org.

- I think the blog post by our General Counsel Eileen Hershenov explains why we're worried about the current EU copyright proposal: it restricts freedom of expression on the internet and does not include strong exceptions that would make more content available for Wikipedia. The blog post also has a clear call to action to call your MEP (if you have one), or share the issue on social media.

I can follow up on some of the broader points when time permits. Thanks for your message and your patience.

Best, JGerlach (WMF) (talk) 17:25, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

@JGerlach (WMF): This is enough of a reply. Consider all my questions satisfied and thanks for the response.

I have one further request and want your longer term, multi-year attention: I have no advice for how to do this, but please develop the WMF strategy for communication and cooperation with the Wikimedia community on activist issues. When WMF posts an activist issue, work with the community to give advance notice about the desired community response. If you want an action say so; if you do not then say that it is safe to be informed and not more. Keep a permanent public record of requests for community responses and manage activism fatigue and calls for attention.

My overall mood about these recent posts is confusion of how to respond, trouble understanding the issues, anxiety about how much action anyone is requesting for how many issues and on what schedule, and protectiveness over my fellow Wikimedia community members about anyone tapping into them as a resource to mobilize. Wikimedia community time, attention, labor, and conversation is a limited resources and we have to have gates to regulate how anyone uses the good will of our community. I trust that you can develop the right systems for this. I have some fears that the WMF legal team might be over-stretched and understaffed. I hope that somehow you can access the staff time and expertise of some kind of staff liaison to make long term plans about being thoughtful about when to call on scarce Wikimedia community attention, and when to simply publish for the sake of education but not make a resource-consuming call to action.

I need no further response. Please focus on other matters and if anything, develop the longer term communication plans of the policy team. Please do prioritize setting up official profiles for anyone who speaks on behalf of the WMF. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:22, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

@JGerlach (WMF) and Bluerasberry: I would like to support and thank Blueraspberry here: we need a far stronger coordination, badly. In particular Wikimedia chapters need to be informed and consulted ASAP with clear expectations and ideas communicated - and vice-versa, non English language / US-centric initiatives need to be aggregated, highlighted and encouraged. The same should be said about the communication to the general public and creating press kits - as your primary recipients should be EU citizens, official translation to EU languages is more than welcome.

At the moment I started to edit the Meta page with e.g. chapters' reactions but as I am pretty busy with ironing out and promoting the message of Wikimedia Polska and pl.wikipedia community, I shall just note it begs for a global coordinator.

Best, aegis maelstrom δ 08:56, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

EU policy/Consultation on the White Paper on Artificial Intelligence (2020)

• EU policy/Consultation on the White Paper on Artificial Intelligence (2020)

I see that this page requests Wikimedia community feedback until 31 May 2020. Thanks @Mattia Luigi Nappi: for drawing attention to this page.

I want to be

• supportive
• collaborative
• concise

I expect that many people in the Wikimedia community have opinions on this, but I also expect that for such a broad policy and so little time, somehow the most useful response is some quick, clear statement.

• Wikimedia projects use AI
• The point of AI or any technology is to raise quality of life for the most people
• We are a world-class, world-influencing project which is peer to peer with any other stakeholder on this issue
• we in Wikimedia projects stand for equality and do not, for example, support any claim that any elite power can exclusively use AI in a way to bring benefit to an elite minority at the expense of a less empowered minority

What more should I say or do? If anyone has any clever statement drafted then I would support it. I am unclear how I am supposed to respond to that page. Advise? Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:01, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

What's unclear about the page's request to add comments in the various sections? Do you disagree with the format? Nemo 08:23, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

@Nemo bis: It is a bit strange! This is a multiple choice survey which receives feedback as freeform wiki edits. If we solicited survey responses from a group of people then it would be hard to interpret the results. So far no one has given responses as requested. Should this be a form instead?

Also, if we get survey data, then what of it? Someone has to interpret it into a statement anyway. If we are pressed for time, then can we just say yes/no to the statement? This is a lot to take in a few days. What is the quickest and easiest way to resolve this? Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:53, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

I think you're overthinking this. The EC consultations are always messy, in that we generally disagree with 95 % of the premises and questions to start with. So we just reply to the parts we're interested in and inject our opinion where not requested. The free-form discussion is a way to identify what matters for the Wikimedia community; not being constrained by what the EC says is a feature.

Yes, someone will have to collate a statement/response out of the discussion, but that's not a big deal, compared to actually coming up with something relevant to say. If there's no agreement on what to say in response to a question, that part can also be skipped. Besides, there will be other opportunities: it's not like the EC will solve AI in a few months. Nemo 19:12, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Ah, I just had an idea of a good contribution you might like to provide: in such consultations it's sometimes useful to point out some academic research we find is particularly worth considering and aligned with our interests. If you want to do some literature review and suggest a few articles, I think that would be a great addition to the Wikimedia response! Nemo 19:15, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

These news from the UN seem interesting: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-un-rights-race/u-n-decries-police-use-of-racial-profiling-derived-from-big-data-idUKKBN28620F?il=0 Nemo 06:36, 27 November 2020 (UTC)