Hello everyone,
If you are interested in organizing or joining a hackathon event, but
cannot attend the in-person Hackathon event in May in Athens, Greece, this
email is for you!
We encourage communities, user groups or chapters to organize satellite
events connected to the in-person Hackathon. These events are to be
organized autonomously and share the hackathon's purpose: bringing the
global technical community together to connect, hack, run technical
discussions, and explore new ideas.
You can work with your wiki community to organize these events before,
during, or after the main event to onboard newcomers to the technical
aspects of the Wikimedia movement, hosting watch parties or meetups in your
region to offer an alternative to people who cannot join the in-person
event in Athens.
To obtain help with organizing an event, you can apply for funds via the *Rapid
Grants* maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation. The deadline to apply for
funding is *March 20*. When preparing for your event, you can reach out to
the Hackathon organizing team for support with resources, designing the
program, and guidance on getting involved in the global event.
Learn more about the satellite events, funding process, and a checklist for
organizing on the wiki page: <
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023/Satellite_events>
[1]
Cheers,
Srishti
On behalf of the Hackathon organizing team
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023/Satellite_events
*Srishti Sethi*
Senior Developer Advocate
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hello everyone,
The next Research Showcase will be livestreamed next Wednesday, February 15
at 9:30AM PT / 17:30 UTC. The theme is The Free Knowledge Ecosystem.
YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VJmR-3lTac
We welcome you to join the conversation on IRC at #wikimedia-research. You
can also watch our past research showcases:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase
This month's presentations:
The evolution of humanitarian mapping in OpenStreetMap (OSM) and how it
affects map completeness and inequalities in OSMBy *Benjamin Herfort,
Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology*Mapping efforts of
communities in OpenStreetMap (OSM) over the previous decade have created a
unique global geographic database, which is accessible to all with no
licensing costs. The collaborative maps of OSM have been used to support
humanitarian efforts around the world as well as to fill important data
gaps for implementing major development frameworks such as the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs). Besides the well-examined Global North - Global
South bias in OSM, the OSM data as of 2023 shows a much more spatially
diverse spread pattern than previously considered, which was shaped by
regional, socio-economic and demographic factors across several scales.
Humanitarian mapping efforts of the previous decade have already made OSM
more inclusive, contributing to diversify and expand the spatial footprint
of the areas mapped. However, methods to quantify and account for the
remaining biases in OSM’s coverage are needed so that researchers and
practitioners will be able to draw the right conclusions, e .g. about
progress towards the SDGs in cities.
Dataset reuseː Toward translating principles to practiceBy *Laura Koesten,
University of Vienna*The web provides access to millions of datasets. These
data can have additional impact when used beyond the context for which they
were originally created. But using a dataset beyond the context in which it
originated remains challenging. Simply making data available does not mean
it will be or can be easily used by others. At the same time, we have
little empirical insight into what makes a dataset reusable and which of
the existing guidelines and frameworks have an impact.In this talk, I will
discuss our research on what makes data reusable in practice. This is
informed by a synthesis of literature on the topic, our studies on how
people evaluate and make sense of data, and a case study on datasets on
GitHub. In the case study, we describe a corpus of more than 1.4 million
data files from over 65,000 repositories. Building on reuse features from
the literature, we use GitHub’s engagement metrics as proxies for dataset
reuse and devise an initial model, using deep neural networks, to predict a
dataset’s reusability. This demonstrates the practical gap between
principles and actionable insights that might allow data publishers and
tool designers to implement functionalities that facilitate reuse.
We hope you can join us!
Warm regards,
Emily
--
Emily Lescak (she / her)
Senior Research Community Officer
The Wikimedia Foundation
Hello,
We are conducting a survey to better understand the ontology issues within
Wikidata and their impact on data reuse.
You may recall that in 2021 and 2022 we run the Data Quality Days, which
generated a lot of very useful discussions on the processes around
increasing/maintaining data quality and utility on Wikidata. We identified
various types of ontology issues, and we would like to get input on which
of these are the most problematic for you in your use of Wikidata's data.
This survey has two sections and will take 20-25 minutes to complete.
Optional open-ended questions may lengthen the completion time.
In the first section, we will present descriptions of the ontology issues
we have found. We will ask you to evaluate the impact of these issues on
your work, and you are also invited to share any other ontology issues you
have detected in case we missed them.
The second section focuses on how you use data from Wikidata. Most of the
questions in this section are optional, meaning you do not have to share
details of your work unless you find them relevant to the issues you would
like to share with us. They are helpful to us in understanding the context
of your issues better, however.
This survey is anonymous, but there is an optional email field at the end
for follow-up questions. Providing an email will make your responses not
completely anonymous. A summary of the results of the survey will be
published as a whole at Wikidata:Ontology issues prioritization
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Ontology_issues_prioritization> and
will not include any identifying information.
If you would like to participate, please use this link (LamaPoll):
https://wikimedia.sslsurvey.de/ontology-issues/
We kindly request your participation by Friday, February 17th at 23:59 UTC.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to let us know by
replying directly to this message or leaving a note at Wikidata
talk:Ontology issues prioritization
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:Ontology_issues_prioritization>
.
Many thanks in advance for your participation.
--
Mohammed Sadat
*Community Communications Manager, Wikidata*
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0) 30 577 116 2466
https://wikimedia.de
Grab a spot in my calendar for a chat: calendly.com/masssly.
Keep up to date! Current news and exciting stories about Wikimedia,
Wikipedia and Free Knowledge in our newsletter (in German): Subscribe now
<https://www.wikimedia.de/newsletter/>.
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. Help us to achieve our vision!
https://spenden.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland – Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207.
Hi all,
As a part of the ongoing work to ensure that Wikidata Query Service (WDQS)
continues to be available and functional for users, *we have implemented a
Service Level Objective (SLO) for WDQS uptime*. We currently aim to
maintain a *95% uptime* based on a *90 day rolling window*, in keeping with
Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) SLO reporting standards
<https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/SLO#SLO_reporting>.
Effectively this means that the WMF will be responsible, along with
Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE), for *making sure that WDQS is available at
least 95% of the time*, which equates to the following acceptable amounts
of downtime:
*Daily*: 1h 12m
*Weekly*: 8h 24m
*Monthly*: 1d 12h 13m 27s
*Quarterly*: 4d 12h 40m 22s
*Yearly*: 18d 2h 41m 28s
It also means that we can focus on other priorities if we are meeting this
SLO. We believe that this should help formalize our commitment to ensuring
WDQS is available for users while still making time to work on long-term
scaling initiatives for the future of WDQS. It will also formalize the
limitations of what we are able to support, allowing us to avoid being
overly reactive to fluctuations in inherently unstable system performance
in a way that has previously required us to wake people up on weekends to
resolve.
The current status of the SLO is available here:
https://grafana.wikimedia.org/d/l-3CMlN4z/wdqs-uptime-slo?orgId=1
The gauge (top left) indicates the current WDQS uptime over the past 90
days. The WDQS Uptime SLO graph (top right) indicates the historic
point-in-time uptime based on user traffic, with the red horizontal line at
our SLO of 95%. For specifics on how our uptime metric is computed,
see our WDQS
SLO documentation
<https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/SLO/WDQS#Service_Level_Indicators_(SLIs)>
.
As always, we appreciate your patience as we work on improving WDQS. If you
have further questions about the new uptime SLO, please don’t hesitate to
respond to this email.
Best,
Ryan Kemper
Site Reliability Engineer, Search Platform
Hello all!
The Search Platform Team usually holds an open meeting on the first
Wednesday of each month. Come talk to us about anything related to
Wikimedia search, Wikidata Query Service (WDQS), Wikimedia Commons Query
Service (WCQS), etc.!
Feel free to add your items to the Etherpad Agenda for the next meeting.
Details for our next meeting:
Date: Wednesday, February 1st, 2023
Time: 16:00-17:00 UTC / 08:00 PDT / 11:00 EDT / 17:00 CET
Etherpad: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Search_Platform_Office_Hours
Google Meet link: https://meet.google.com/vgj-bbeb-uyi
Join by phone: https://tel.meet/vgj-bbeb-uyi?pin=8118110806927
Have fun and see you soon!
Guillaume
--
*Guillaume Lederrey* (he/him)
Engineering Manager
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
The *deadline* for applying for a Scholarship to attend Wikimania 2023 in
Singapore on August 16-19 is:
** Sunday, 5 February 2023 23:59 AoE
<https://iw.toolforge.org/zonestamp/1675684740> **
Please spread the word to anyone you know who might qualify.
A full scholarship covers travel, accommodation, and registration. There
are also partial scholarships. To learn more:
https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2023:Scholarships
To apply for a scholarship, fill out the application form on:
https://wikimediafoundation.limesurvey.net/799477
** Special call for technical contributors **
If you are a tool creator, maintainer, user, or otherwise contribute to our
movement’s technical ecosystem and are willing to teach and mentor others,
collaborate on technical projects, and help onboard tech folks new to our
technical communities – please do apply and make sure you elaborate on what
technical mentorship you could contribute in your application. This will
greatly increase your chances to be selected.
If you have any questions, please contact:
wikimania-scholarships(a)wikimedia.org or leave a message at: 2023
talk:Scholarships
<https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2023_talk:Scholarships>Thank you,
Slavina, on behalf of the Wikimania Scholarship Committee
--
Slavina Stefanova (she/her)
Software Engineer - Technical Engagement
Wikimedia Foundation