The Wikimedia Foundation, which serves as the non-profit host for #Wikipedia, @wikidata, @mediawiki, and other free knowledge projects, has joined the Fediverse as @wikimediafoundation - welcome!!
Have you ever wanted to start editing #Wikipedia, but got overwhelmed or felt like you didn't know where to start? Every time I encourage people to start editing, I hear that, so I'm trying to help.
Since Bill Ackman and his followers have so many questions about how Wikipedia works now that his wife has been accused of plagiarizing from it, I figured I'd help him out.
In case you're not aware, French-speaking Wikipedians are pushing some highly transphobic rules approved to ensure that all bios of trans people include their deadnames, even if they were unknown before their transition.
These rules have been approved by very few people, which shows a distinct lack of respect. Any voices that disagreed with them were silenced to such an extent that Wikipedian contributors were banned.
For example, in the case of Andrea Furet (French actress and Miss France contestant), who wasn't known before her transition, they published her deadname on French Wikipedia and refuse to remove it.
In any case, it is very dangerous for trans people to have their private information (the fact that they are trans and their deadnames are private information according to French law) exposed on the internet.
We don't want Wikipedia to be a doxxing site targeting trans people like Kiwifarms is. We want to protect trans people from harassment.
They are even pushing to misgender trans people in a future poll!
We tried to get Wikipedians to understand that this is not acceptable because it puts all trans people at risk.
We failed.
Now, we want to push this information to the Wikimedia Foundation and we need your help.
We believe that one email won't be enough for the Wikimedia Foundation to take a stand against what is happening in French Wikipedia.
You can use the template below to send an email to legal@wikimedia.org (legal department of the Wikimedia Foundation).
The email below is a suggestion, but feel free to adapt it to your needs.
Please help us reach the Wikimedia Foundation and make sure they are aware of the situation.
Many thanks to all trans people and allies who are willing to help us against the transphobia in Wikipedia
Retoots are sweat and please spread this message as much as possible (even on other social network platforms)
Au cas où vous ne seriez pas au courant, les wikipédiens francophones sont en train de mettre en place des règles très transphobes pour s'assurer que toutes les biographies de personnes trans incluent leur necronyme même si elles n'étaient pas connues avant leur transition. Ces règles ont été approuvés par très peu de personnes ce qui démontre un entresoi. Toutes les voix n'allant pas dans leur sens ont été réduites au silence à tel point que des contributeurs wikipediens ont été bannis.
Par exemple, c'est le cas d'Andrea Furet (actrice française et concurrente de Miss France) qui n'était pas connue avant sa transition, ils ont exposé son necronyme sur le Wikipédia francophone et refusent de le retirer.
Dans tous les cas, il est très dangereux pour les personnes trans de voir leurs données privées (le fait qu'elles soient trans et leur necronyme sont des informations privées selon la loi Française) exposées sur Internet. Nous ne voulons pas que Wikipédia devienne un site de doxxing ciblant les personnes trans comme l'est Kiwifarms. Nous voulons protéger les personnes trans contre le harcèlement.
A ce jour, ils font également pression pour pouvoir mégenrer les personnes trans dans un futur sondage.
Nous avons essayé de faire comprendre aux Wikipédiens que ce n'était pas acceptable car cela met toutes les personnes trans en danger.
Nous avons échoué.
Nous voulons que la fondation Wikimedia soit informée de la situation et nous avons besoin de vous pour cela.
Nous pensons qu'un seul email ne sera pas suffisant pour que la fondation Wikimedia prenne position contre ce qui se passe dans le Wikipédia francophone.
Nous avons créé un modèle de mail qui peut servir à les interpeller.
Vous pouvez l'utiliser pour envoyer un mail au département juridique de la fondation Wikimedia à l'adresse legal@wikimedia.org
L'email ci-dessous est une suggestion mais vous pouvez le modifier à votre guise.
Aidez-nous à atteindre la fondation Wikimedia afin qu'elle soit bien consciente de la situation.
Merci à toutes les personnes trans et à leurs alliés qui prendront faits et actes contre la transphobie dans Wikipedia.
Le retoots sont tout doux et si vous pouviez diffuser ce message autant que possible (y compris sur d'autres réseaux sociaux) ce serait top !
He bought #Twitter and has steadily gutted it. The goal is to destroy it because it gave regular people power to organize for change.
Now he’s attacking #Wikipedia because it contains facts and education, which are antithetical to the goals of him and his type.
He might be an idiot in a lot of ways. But he is absolutely doing this with purpose. I worry it’s dangerous to view his actions through any other lens.
Unfortunately we had a small outage this weekend, but this is a good opportunity to remind everyone that you can download entire copies of #Wikipedia and other freely licensed projects for #offline use via #Kiwix!
Check out @kiwix - https://www.kiwix.org and set it up on your smartphone or laptop or boat so you can access free knowledge wherever you go.
📷: The Goodall Family uses Kiwix on their boat while sailing the Pacific (CC BY-SA 3.0)
The #Arabic-language #Wikipedia has gone "dark" in solidarity with Palestinians, calling for peace and an end to the war. Articles can be read but not edited for the next 24 hours.
"This action stems from the community's sense of moral duty to combat injustice. Wikipedia communities have previously stood up for human rights such as by protesting legal travesties like SOPA and PIPA or by showing solidarity with Ukrainians following Russia's invasion of their country."
Bon, c'est tranché : première sortie de route en 19 ans d'inscription, première sanction : le blocage indéfini.
Fini dès lors pour moi de contribuer en quoi que ce soit à #WikipediaFR.
Le contributeur connu sous le pseudo de "Chouette bougonne" qui a multiplié en discussion les messages irrespectueux et dénigrants sur moi, la communauté #trans/#LGBT et les contributeurices en général, s'en sortira probablement avec un administrateur qui lui fera les gros yeux avant de l'inviter à aller boire une pinte, et ce en dépit des multiples remarques et du blocage temporaire qu'il a déjà subis ces deux dernières années, soit à peu près l'âge de son compte.
Il n'était pas le seul, mais c'était clairement le plus acharné du lot.
#Wikipedia n'est pas une encyclopédie libre et collaborative.
C'est une encyclopédie privée, largement financée hors des contributions du public, qui a bénéficié de collaborations ouvertes de la part de personnes qui se sont cooptées pour garder leur petit pouvoir pendant plus de 20 ans, et dont un des administrateurs m'a dit pas plus tard que la semaine dernière qu'il ne s'agissait pas non plus d'une "démocratie", et qu'après tout ce temps, ils "tâtonnent" toujours au niveau de la gouvernance de leur bastringue.
Ne perdez pas votre temps et votre énergie. Ces gens ne changeront jamais à moins d'être débarqués de l'extérieur.
Navrée pour vous si vous croyez encore en un monde meilleur : il ne passera pas par eux.
Fun little thing about #Mastodon. I've spent time as a #Wikipedia admin, and I know other Wikipedians are nodding their heads and chuckling because it's such a part of Wikipedia culture that they already know what I'm about to talk about.
Collaborative editing on Wikipedia is supposed to follow standards of civility. The uncivil behavior that I used to see on Wikipedia sometimes is pretty much the norm on #Twitter. What's ironic and funny about it is that there is a long-standing (unofficial) community mantra on Wikipedia known as "No Angry Mastodons." We (people) are hard-wired with fight-or-flight responses and, when confronted, either dig in and become super defensive, or we just check ourselves out of the situation and skedaddle. It's an evolutionary response to stress, because it helped us defeat and/or escape from predators in prehistoric times.
The idea behind No Angry Mastodons is that our fight-or-flight response is misplaced on the internet. On Wikipedia, there are "no angry mastodons" that are going to come after us. We don't have to worry about getting squished by prehistoric pachyderms. The TL;DR of No Angry Mastodons is that there is nothing that happens online that is worth subjecting yourself the stress of facing down an Angry Mastodon - there aren't any, so just chill.
french wikipedia admins are now perma-banning #lgbtq contributors with years of experience who dared voicing some opposition to the "how shall we deadname trans people" poll.
this is ridiculous and revolting. how can an open-source project of this size lack a proper CoC and measures for its enforcement ?
Dear #trans people, #LGBT#Queer#LGBTQIA and allies from the Fediverse, if you have a #Wikipedia account with at least 50 edits before January 29, you may help the French Wikipedia to become a better place to read quality articles involving trans people.
Under the pressure of trans and allied contributors, the French Wikipedia moderators have opened a survey on "how to handle #deadname mentions in our articles".
The survey proposes 6 questions and multiple possibilities, including harmful and insensitive ones.
At the moment, the answer ratio is not in favour of trans people. Most of the time, people insist on mentioning the deadnames like it's a data like any other, including when unnecessary.
This must change, and here's why I'm making a call to you.
French trans people with no account matching the rules will need yours to give their voice. Please manifest yourself here and propose them to reply to the survey for them.
Action and reskeets may save young trans people from shitty behaviours from careless cis people.
Thank you by advance 🙏🏼
Pour les européens : pensez au décalage horaire avec les États-Unis, n'oubliez pas d'attendre quelques heures avant de repoueter 😉
This week marks 10 years since Edward #Snowden's global surveillance revelations started, including that the NSA's #XKeyscore program was specifically targeting #Wikipedia users.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a recap of the past decade discussing the things we learned, the privacy battles we all won, and what we're still fighting for:
Last month the long-awaited switch to version 4.0 of the @creativecommons license went into effect for #Wikipedia and its sister projects! :cc: :ccby: :ccsa:
Learn how this will enable the reuse of more free content in Wikipedia, simplify attribution requirements and more in a post by the #Wikimedia Foundation legal team:
#Wikipedia is fighting a #SLAPP suit in Portugal where the appeals court seems so keen to rule for the rich plaintiff that it is filling in the arguments he forgot to make!