The Wikimedia Foundation is pleased to announce Lori Byrd Phillips as
the *United
States Cultural Partnerships Coordinator* in 2012. Read all about it in
our blog post and FAQ:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/07/us-cultural-partnerships-coordinator-l…
Asaf Bartov
Wikimedia Foundation
_______________________________________________
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Foundation-L, the public mailing list about the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects. For more information about Foundation-L:
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WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
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Hi everyone,
This is a reminder that in about 20 minutes Geoff Brigham, our General
Counsel, will be in #wikimedia-office to answer your questions.
This is Geoff's first office hours, so please take a moment before we start
to read the introduction that he wrote:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Geoffbrigham/Strategy
Thanks!
Steven Walling
Hi all,
please find below the WMF report for November, in plain text.
As always, the editable and formatted version is on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_November_2011
and the reports are posted on the Wikimedia blog, too:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/c/corporate/wmf-monthly-reports/
We are now also publishing a separate "Highlights" summary. Please
consider helping non-English-language communities to stay updated, by
providing a translation:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_November_2011
Many thanks to those who translated last month's "Highlights" into
Vietnamese, Dutch, Japanese, Italian, French, Finnish, Spanish,
German, Danish, Russian and Simplified Chinese!
While continuing to focus on WMF activities, the "Highlights" now
include a small selection of the most noteworthy events from the whole
movement. Suggestions for the upcoming December issue are welcome at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights (until the first
week of January).
Regards, Tilman
--
Wikimedia Foundation Report, November 2011
* 1 Data and Trends
* 2 Financials
* 3 Highlights
o 3.1 WikiConference and Hackathon in Mumbai, India
o 3.2 A new tool for helping new editors
o 3.3 Fundraiser
o 3.4 Sue Gardner visits European Wikimedia chapters
* 4 Technology
o 4.1 Operations
o 4.2 Features Engineering
o 4.3 Mobile
o 4.4 Special projects
o 4.5 Platform engineering
* 5 Research
* 6 Community
o 6.1 Projects
o 6.2 Fundraiser
o 6.3 Fellowship Program
* 7 Global Development
o 7.1 Grants Awarded and Executed
o 7.2 East Asia Visit
o 7.3 Brazil Catalyst
+ 7.3.1 Research on Portuguese Wikipedia
+ 7.3.2 Hiring National Program Director
o 7.4 Arabic Catalyst
o 7.5 Wikimania Scholarships
o 7.6 Mobile and Business Development
o 7.7 Offline Wikipedia
o 7.8 Global development research
o 7.9 Wikipedia Education Program
o 7.10 India Programs
+ 7.10.1 Global Education Program
o 7.11 Communications
+ 7.11.1 Major announcements
+ 7.11.2 Major Storylines through August
+ 7.11.3 Other worthwhile reads
+ 7.11.4 Wikipedia Signpost
+ 7.11.5 WMF Blog posts
+ 7.11.6 Media Contact
* 8 Human Resources
* 9 Finance and Administration
* 10 Legal
* 11 Visitors and Guests
== Data and Trends ==
Global unique visitors for October:
477 million (+4.9% compared with September; +16.7% compared with the
previous year)
(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will
release November data later in December)
Page requests for November:
16.8 billion (-0.1% compared with October; +12.3% compared with the
previous year)
(Server log data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects including mobile
access)
Active Registered Editors for October 2011 (>= 5 edits/month):
84,426 (+1.4% compared with September / +0.8% compared with the
previous year)
(Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects except for
Wikimedia Commons)
Report Card for October 2011: http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/
The report card is currently undergoing a redesign as a more
fully-featured dashboard (integrating various statistical data and
trends about WMF projects).
== Financials ==
(Financial information is only available for October 2011 at the time of
this report. All financial information presented is for the period of
July 1, 2011 - October 31, 2011)
Revenue: $4,253,486
Expenses:
* Technology Group: $3,021,534
* Community/Fundraiser Group: $1,066,080
* Global Development Group: $1,116,890
* Governance Group: $336,150
* Finance/Legal/HR/Admin Group: $1,989,659
Total Expenses: $7,530,312
Total surplus/(loss): ($3,276,826)
Revenue was ahead of plan due to grants of $2.8 million and additional
donations ahead of plan of $385,254.
Expenses were below plan at $7.5 million actual versus $9.1 million
plan. Expenses were below planned due to lower than planned expenditures
in capital expenditures, chapter grants, recruitment cost and other
activities due.
Cash of $14.9 million, which is six months of cash reserves at current
spending levels.
== Highlights ==
=== WikiConference and Hackathon in Mumbai, India ===
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hackathon_Mumbai_2011_Groupshot.jpg
Participants of the Mumbai Hackathon/>
From November 19 to November 20, Wikimedia staff and volunteers gathered
together in Mumbai for the India Hackathon 2011
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/India_Hackathon_2011>, focusing on
mobile access, localization, and offline distribution. The hackathon was
held simultaneously with WikiConference India 2011
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2011>, an event
organized by Wikimedia India. The WikiConference had nearly 700
participants, making it one of the largest Wikimedia events ever
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/02/wikiconference-india/>, and
certainly the largest so far in India. More than 50 sessions
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2011/Programs>
provided insights on community building, improving project quality,
establishing partnerships, best practices in outreach and opportunities
for general experience sharing.
=== A new tool for helping new editors ===
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MoodBar-Rollover-Confused.png />
Since August, the experimental “Moodbar” function has invited new users
on the English Wikipedia to quickly and easily provide feedback on their
editing experience by entering a 140 character comment. All these
comments are posted as a public feed on the Feedback Dashboard. In
November, we added a new functionality
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/11/30/helping-new-editors-by-responding-to-…>
that enables experienced editors to easily respond to this feedback
without leaving the dashboard. Wikimedia Foundation Community Organizers
Steven Walling and Maryana Pinchuk have started a Response Team
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:New_editor_feedback/Response_team>
of experienced editors willing to help out new users in this way.
We're continuing to improve this system and assess its impact;
specifically, whether new users read the messages they receive, and
whether editing activity increases as a result of active coaching.
=== Fundraiser ===
The annual Wikimedia fundraiser launched on November 16th with over $1M
donated on the first day. $10,433,402.89 were donated until the end of
the month, in a total of 545,362 donations. The significant increase in
contributors across more regions of the world can largely be attributed
to the increase in the number of currencies Wikimedia is able to accept
this year - more than 80.
In addition to the annual personal appeal from Jimmy Wales, this year's
fundraising campaign features new voices, including community members
and Wikimedia Foundation staff.
Compared with the previous year, four times as many volunteers are
contributing to the translation of banners and appeals, including over
700 logged out users (readers?). The Article Feedback Tool enables
anyone to rate the quality of the translations.
== Sue Gardner visits European Wikimedia chapters ==
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:11-11-20-talk-with-sue-69.jpg
Discussion of the image filter in Hanover />
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WLM_AT_025.jpg Award
of Wiki Loves Monuments and Heritage Day. November 17th, 2011 in
the offices of the Federal Monuments Office Vienna, Hofburg />
In November, the Wikimedia Foundation sent a delegation to Europe, in
which Executive Director Sue Gardner, her assistant James Owen, General
Counsel Geoff Brigham and Community Organizer Maryana Pinchuk visited
seven cities in three weeks. The main purpose of the trip was to spend
time with chapters, with the goal of listening to chapters' hopes and
fears, particularly with regards to fundraising and funds dissemination.
A secondary purpose was to spend time with the German community, with
the goal of improving mutual understanding particularly with regard to
ongoing controversy about the possible implementation of a personal
image filter.
The trip also involved a number of other activities, such as meet-ups,
talks and media interviews. The delegation visited Paris, Utrecht,
London, Vienna, Hanover and Berlin. The trip included meetings and/or
meals with five chapter boards, as well as four community meet-ups, and
a variety of other small informal gatherings with chapters people and/or
editors. The group visited the UK National Archives with members of the
UK Board, and helped present awards to the winners of the Wiki Loves
Monuments competition in Vienna. Sue Gardner gave three presentations,
to the UK Board, the German chapter, and to Imperial College in London,
and did six media interviews, in London and Berlin.
The Wikimedia Foundation is grateful to the boards of Wikimédia France,
Wikimedia Nederland, Wikimedia UK, Wikimedia Österreich and Wikimedia
Deutschland, for their hospitality, openness and candour. Our particular
thanks to the following individuals: Christophe Henner, Rémi Mathis,
Adrienne Alix, Ziko van Dijk, Jan-Bart de Vreede, Roger Bamkin, Andrew
Turvey, Andy Mabbett, Jon Davies, Fiona Apps, Marek69, Kurt Kulac,
Manuel Schneider, Barbara Neubauer, Jo Pugh, Pavel Richter, Sebastian
Moleski, Julia Kloppenburg and Catrin Schoneville.
== Technology ==
A detailed report of the Tech Department's activities for November 2011
can be found at:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2011/November
Department Highlights
Major news in November include:
* The completion of the coding challenge, and two coding events in
India and the UK;
* Continued infrastructure work in our data centers to improve
performance and reliability, and on the Labs project;
* Progress on the Visual editor and its back-end;
* New versions of the Feedback Dashboard and the Upload Wizard,
bringing new and long-awaited features;
* Fundraising engineering going full-swing, in parallel with the
annual fundraising campaign;
* The final release of MediaWiki 1.18.0.
=== Operations ===
* *Data Centers* — Eight new database servers for external storage
were deployed in our Ashburn and Tampa data centers (EQIAD and
SDTPA), to retire about 30 aging servers. The goal was to add
capacity, improve performance, consume less power and provide cross
data-center data recovery and redundancy. This gave us back one rack
of server space, which is significant given the space constraint at
SDTPA. In Amsterdam, SSDs were added to the Squid servers to improve
read performance, and we upgraded the core switch. In Tampa, 66
servers were retired, donated and shipped to various non-profits.
More generally, our configuration management tool Puppet was
upgraded and deployed to all of our lab and production servers.
* *Wikimedia Labs* — OpenStack Nova was upgraded from /cactus/ to
/diablo/. A GlusterFS filesystem was added on all compute nodes via
puppet, to act as storage for the instances. A default sudo policy
was also added for instances: project members now have sudo
permissions, excluding global projects. Shared home directories are
also available in a per project manner. 15 projects and 36 instances
have been created, and 46 people have been given Labs accounts so far.
=== Features Engineering ===
* *Visual editor* — Trevor Parscal fixed issues blocking the
synchronization of structural edits to the user interface,
refactored and cleaned up the code, and mapped out tasks and
features to be supported. He also finished the document transaction
functionality and made progress on an undo/redo system. Roan Kattouw
added tests, rewrote some code to make the tests pass, and fixed a
number of bugs and issues, notably in Internet Explorer. Inez
Korczynski continued to work on content insertion, deletion and
selection and fixed numerous bugs. Gabriel Wicke improved WikiDom
compatibility, and evaluated alternatives to the PEG parser for
robust larger-scale parsing. He defined an interface between the
tokenizer and HTML parsers and started to improve the parser test
system. He also implemented several wikitext features (lists,
nowiki, pre, italics, bold) as token stream transformations.
* *Feedback Dashboard* — Dario Taraborelli updated the research page
dedicated to MoodBar to include responses. Benny Situ fixed bugs,
and implemented and deployed the feedback response API. Rob Moen
deployed in-line reply functionality, giving experienced editors the
ability to respond to MoodBar feedback while staying on the
dashboard, as well as bug fixes and admin action enhancements. (see
also "Highlights" section above)
* *UploadWizard* — Neil Kandalgaonkar and Ian Baker deployed a set of
important improvements, including multi-file selection for browsers
which support it, custom wikitext licenses, an improved licensing
workflow, basic support for location data extraction, and more.
Support for chunked uploading (which improves reliability of large
file transfers) was temporarily backed out and is still being worked on.
=== Mobile ===
* *MobileFrontend* — Phil Chang announced that all Wikimedia wikis
would see their mobile version converted to the new mobile platform
by the end of November, and explained how to make home pages
compatible with it. This prompted a discussion about the design
choice to hide any content on the main page that isn't specifically
labeled for mobile display. Mobile was also a focus of the India
hackathon, during which new features were developed.
=== Special projects ===
* *2011 Fundraiser* — The annual fundraiser launched, with support for
76 new credit card currencies, including some which have been
long-desired: Rupees, Russian Rubles, and Brazilian Reals. The
fundraising engineering team added support to the DonationInterface
extension for JCB credit card donations, BPay in Australia, three
new real time banking options including iDeal, direct debit for six
countries, manual bank transfers in more than 50 countries, and
Webmoney, with more on the way. DonationInterface also benefited
from enhancements to the RapidHtml credit card form templating
system. From an operations perspective, databases were migrated for
increased capacity and stability and the data center failover
capacity was consolidated. We also added the ability to have
translated 'thank you' emails. The ContributionReporting extension
was enhanced to allow custom selection of fundraising years to
display, but the entire feature was disabled after it caused a brief
site outage due to cache stampeding. The FundraiserLandingPage
extension was developed and deployed, making it easier to
dynamically construct template calls for fundraiser landing pages
depending on a potential donor's country. Last, the team fixed a
number of new bugs and issues, surfaced because of the increased
usage of the donation pipeline.
=== Platform engineering ===
* *MediaWiki 1.18* — Developers sprinted to fix the last blocker bugs,
and the ones uncovered by testers. Sam Reed announced the first beta
release and first release candidate of MediaWiki 1.18. Mark
Hershberger followed up on comments on the English Wikipedia's
Village pump related to the deployment of 1.18, bugs reported in
Bugzilla, and installation and upgrade reports. Sam announced the
final 1.18.0 release on November 27th, as well as the 1.17.1
security release.
* *Git conversion* — Chad Horohoe got a lot of help from the community
on identifying unknown committers; user mapping is now complete.
Gitorious was installed on a virtual machine, and a test git
conversion of the MediaWiki code repository is now imminent.
Meanwhile, there have also been discussions about e-mail aliases for
LDAP users, to avoid disclosing private e-mail addresses. Chad and
Brion Vibber worked on changes to the development workflow
introduced by the move to git (e.g., when continuous integration
tests get run).
* *SwiftMedia* — Ben Hartshorne set up the initial development
environment for Engineering to have a platform on which to test and
continue development of the SwiftMedia extension. Ben and Mark
Bergsma continue to do performance testing on Swift prior to using
it in production. Aaron Schulz started to refactor the FileBackend
extension, a requirement to using SwiftMedia.
== Research ==
* We held the 7th Research Committee Meeting (full minutes are
available at [1]), where a proposal was discussed to launch a
Wikimedian in Residence program targeting scientific institutions,
modeled around GLAM and supported by the RCom. RCom members Daniel
Mietchen, Yaroslav Blanter and Cheryl Moy are leading this initiative.
* Former Summer of Research fellow Melanie Kill [2] joined the
Research Committee as a full member in November.
* We reviewed and supported research proposals on an ongoing basis [3]
and provided technical support for the launch of a large-scale study
by Harvard University and Sciences Po, due to go live in December.
The launch of the study will be announced on the Wikimedia
Foundation's blog. [4]
* We published the 5th issue of the monthly Wikimedia Research
Newsletter (WRN), covering 13 scholarly works on Wikimedia projects
published recently [5].
[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Committee/Meetings/Meeting_2011-11-…
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Drkill
[3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Projects
[4]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Dynamics_of_Online_Interactions_and…
[5] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/2011-11-28
== Community ==
Department Highlights
* Launched Fundraiser with $1M +/day on the first 3 days (see
"Highlights" section and details below)
* New editor feedback response team created (see "Highlights" section)
=== Projects ===
Editor Retention
* In early November, Steven and Maryana invited community members to
join a new taskforce dedicated to answering the feedback of new
editors that appears on English Wikipedia via the experimental
FeedbackDashboard created by the features team (see also
"Highlights" section). This is the first time experienced
Wikipedians may find the real-time feedback of new editors
aggregated in a single place ready for help.[1] With more than 30
team members, we are still far from our goal of getting a response
to every single piece of feedback, so please join! [2]
* Maryana Pinchuk and Steven Walling expanded their A/B testing of the
content of template notifications to new editors,[3][4] including
with new community-created templates and with the extremely active
XLinkBot, which reverts users adding potentially inappropriate
external links on English Wikipedia. The first month-long test in
Portuguese Wikipedia was also wrapped up and data analysis begun,
and the testing project was also expanded to the German Wikipedia
[5]. Last but not least, plans were laid on the English Wikipedia
for a test of the automated archiving of old, stale notifications on
the talk pages of shared or dynamic IP addresses of anonymous
editors. This project is designed to see whether providing a clean
slate on the talk pages can increase account registrations and
constructive edits from shared IP addresses.
* Maryana accompanied Sue Gardner and Geoff Brigham on their tour of
Europe (see "Highlights" section), where she met with Wikimedians in
the Netherlands, UK, Austria, and Germany and started a dialog with
those communities about expanding editor retention initiatives.
1.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/11/30/helping-new-editors-by-responding-to-t…
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:New_editor_feedback/Response_team
3. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template_A/B_testing
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:UWTEST
5. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Projekt_Warnhinweise
=== Fundraiser ===
Fundraiser
* The 2011 fundraiser launched on November 16, bringing in over USD
1.2 million in the first 24 hours.
* Donations have been received from 205 countries and territories,
from donors from 122 languages, in 66 currencies.
* The fundraiser launched with banners featuring Jimmy Wales, before
starting a phase with appeals from editors. Testing continues, see
updates on Meta (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011 )
Fundraiser Translations
* The fundraiser launched this month with full-force localization, and
Jon Harald Søby's fellowship project has boosted translation
participation four-fold for the annual fundraiser so far. 1371
translators are actively contributing to the effort (including 795
IPs), which is over 1000 more than the 361 active translators who
contributed in all of 2010.
* We have translations in 112 languages (compared to 83 languages in
2010), and 461 translations have been completed and published so far
- this is more than all translations that were begun but not
necessarily completed in 2010 combined.
Major Gifts and Foundations
* Announced a $500,000 general support grant from the Brin Wojcicki
Foundation
* Submitted reports for the Hewlett Foundation and the Stanton Foundation
=== Fellowship Program ===
* In preparation for a December recruitment drive to bring new fellows
for 2012, program pages and process have been overhauled.[1]
* Planning and discussions are underway for WP:TEAHOUSE, a fellowship
project to be piloted in early 2012 and aimed at improving new
editor retention by modeling a social approach to newbie support,
help and socialization into the community distinct from existing
1-on-1 models and self-support options. Women are a particular
target for this peer and group-mentorship style support system. [2]
* See Fundraiser translations section above for updates on Jon's
fellowship project [3]
1. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships
2. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Teahouse
3. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011/Translation
== Global Development ==
Department Highlights
* WikiConference India (see general "Highlights" section)
* Visits to Asia for chapter development and mobile partnerships
=== Grants Awarded and Executed ===
* http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Community_of_Arabic_Wikipedia/Produce…
* http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:GLAM-WIKI_US/GLAMcamp_DC
=== East Asia Visit ===
* Liam Wyatt, as Cultural Partnerships Fellow, visited Japan, speaking
at the annual Librarians' conference in Yokohama
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ja:%E3%83%97%E3%83%AD%E3%82%B8%E3%82%A7%E3%82…>
and participating in a Wikipedia Academy in Kyoto
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ja:PJ:GLAM2011/Wittylama>
* Liam was joined by Asaf Bartov, Head of Grants and Global South
Relationships, in a visit to South Korea, where they spent some time
with the Wikimedian community in Seoul, delivered a short workshop
on chapter work, and spoke on GLAM and the Global Education Program
at the first Wikipedia Academy in Korea, held at the National
Library of Korea <http://www.nl.go.kr/nlmulti/index.php?lang_mode=e>.
* Asaf proceeded to the Philippines, where he spent a week helping
Wikimedia Philippines create partnerships and opportunities with a
number of government, academic, and non-profit partners:
o Established partnerships with Mozilla Philippines, Creative
Commons Philippines, and the Computer Professionals' Union (a
free software and open content advocacy group)
o Delivered general outreach talks at the University of the City
of Manila <http://www.plm.edu.ph/> and at St. Scholastica's
College <http://www.ssc.edu.ph/>
o Presented about GLAM and opened partnership discussions with the
National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA)
<http://www.ncca.gov.ph/main.php> and the National Library of
the Philippines <http://web.nlp.gov.ph/nlp/>
o Discussed issues of "freedom of panorama"
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Freedom_of_panorama>
and copyright on government-produced works with the Director of
the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines
<http://www.ipophil.gov.ph/>
=== Brazil Catalyst <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Catalyst_Project> ===
==== Research on Portuguese Wikipedia ====
Finalizing the Portuguese Wikipedia research project, we have come out
with a few conclusions and recommendations, which can be seen in more
detail here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Portuguese_Wikipedia_trends_and_beh…
1. Make editing more fun!
2. Welcome new users
3. Improve techniques to fight vandalism
4. Re-evaluate methods of dealing with conflict
==== Hiring National Program Director ====
We opened the position for the national program director:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/RFP/Brazil_National_Program_Director
We are working in conjunction with recruiter Michael Page in order to
fill this position, with an anticipated start date mid-January 2012.
=== Arabic Catalyst ===
* Finalized the process required for hiring a regional manager
* Planned an outreach tour across MENA that starts end of December
2011, to touch base with local communities and explore possible
cultural partners
* Starting to build a task force that should layout a strategy for an
Arabic translation project
* Sara Yap is building out the MENA Global Education Program resource
page for past, current and future information:
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_Education_Program_MENA
* Sara finalized a report on the October 2011 trip (see
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Report_for_Mid…
)
=== Wikimania Scholarships ===
Scholarship committee is beginning to kick off work again. Goal is to
broadcast the scholarships more broadly and try to get increased
applications from developing countries.
=== Mobile and Business Development ===
* Completed Proof of Concept SMS/USSD
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstructured_Supplementary_Service_Data)
testing on Tata Docomo's network, with the help of the Praekelt
Foundation, at the Mumbai Hackathon
* Other tech dev for partners accomplished at Hackathon with help from
India community developers: localization of Android app into Turkish
& Russian; localized landing pages on mobile; frames on mobile site
for operator partners on Wikipedia zero
* In discussions with multiple operators in India and SE Asia to
extend free access to Wikipedia to their customers throughout those
regions. Looking at launching pilots beginning of Q1
=== Offline Wikipedia ===
* Significant volunteer recruitment effort took place at the
WikiConference and Hackathon in India.
* Usability testing on Kiwix (offline reader) identified a few key
areas of needed improvement
* Met with potential partners throughout India about distribution of
offline Wikipedia throughout education system. Of note:
o Pratham Foundation - install offline Wikipedia into their
computer labs; incorporate into the curriculum for the
"Education for Education" which is training for their volunteers
o Akshara Foundation - install offline Wikipedia into their
computer labs and incorporate into their library lessons
o Aakash tablet - working with government and manufacturers on how
to incorporate offline Wikipedia into the distribution of the
$35 tablet
=== Global development research ===
* Editor survey version 2.0 is in translation, and will be launched
next month. We worked out an agreement with Qualtrics -- a
proprietary survey vendor in absence of Lime Survey. Ayush is
working on programming the survey, along with two interns.
* India + Brazil mobile report is finished. We are working on making
the findings available in a wiki format. Parul and Mani did a
presentation to all the stakeholders of the research. At the India
hackathon, developers worked on creating a new landing page for
India for mobile site as per the recommendation of the report.
* Mobile survey data is being cleaned.
* Mani + Ayush continued to share findings from the readers study on
the blog. http://blog.wikimedia.org/tag/readers-survey/
* See "Brazil Catalyst Project" for the Portuguese Wikipedia research
summary
=== Wikipedia Education Program ===
* The team – together with volunteers in different parts of the world
– held the second metrics and activities meeting for the Wikipedia
Education Program. All participants shared learnings and best
practices of the past couple of months.
* Annie Lin and Frank Schulenburg are working on preparing the start
of a pilot in Cairo, Egypt. They reached out to the local community
of editors on the Arabic Wikipedia, explaining the concept of the
pilot and asking for feedback. Annie also reached out to a number of
professors at different universities in Cairo in preparation for a
trip to Egypt in early December.
* Ayush Khanna created a survey to be conducted among the students who
participated in the Education Program in fall 2011. The survey has
been sent to students in India; students in the U.S. and in Canada
will answer the survey questions in December.
* Led by Rod Dunican, the team is working on a revised version of the
orientation for Campus Ambassadors, Online Ambassadors and Regional
Ambassadors. A new orientation for professors participating in the
program will be added to the list of training modules. All training
modules will be hosted on the outreach wiki, so they can be modified
and adapted to the local needs.
* LiAnna Davis and Frank Schulenburg are working with design
strategist David Peters and Head of Communications Jay Walsh on a
new visual identity for the Wikipedia Education Program. The visual
identity will follow the open approach of the Wikipedia Ten campaign.
* Annie Lin hired Jami Mathewson. As the U.S. Education Program
Associate, Jami will facilitate the growth and improvement of our
activities in the United States, to make sure that the U.S. wing of
the Global Education Program remains high-quality. In particular,
she will work through the Wikipedia Regional Ambassadors – volunteer
leaders in the Wikipedia Ambassador program – to both deepen and
broaden the support that we give to professors, Campus Ambassadors,
and Online Ambassadors regarding Wikipedia's use in the classroom.
* LiAnna Davis and Frank Schulenburg interviewed experienced Wikipedia
editors from India and educated WMF staff about India as part of the
post-mortem analysis of the India Education Program. Campus
Ambassador Abhishek Suryawanshi volunteered to conduct interviews
with students, professors, and Campus Ambassadors in Pune. Based on
these interviews, LiAnna Davis worked on an analysis of the issues
encountered during the Pune pilot.
* Frank Schulenburg and Rod Dunican provided the Wikimedia Tech Team
with a requirements document for engineering support. After a
meeting with members of the Tech Team, Frank is working with tech to
build MediaWiki extensions that enhance our ability to measure the
outcome of the program and that will also improve the on-wiki
experience for professors and students.
* Rod Dunican, Jami Mathewson and Frank Schulenburg met professors and
students at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). NJIT is
planning start a pilot in spring 2012 in order to explore the option
of further institutionalizing the program later that year.
=== India Programs ===
==== Global Education Program ====
* Students in the program have now stopped editing.
o Most classes at Symbiosis School of Economics (SSE) reached
their deadlines and have finished working on their wiki assignments.
o Because a lot of students were still carrying out some forms of
plagiarism, we had to conclude the program at College of
Engineering at Pune (CoEP).
* We are currently working on a qualitative and quantitative analysis
of the pilot. Looking for patterns across classrooms, batches,
schools etc.
o Qualitative Analysis: Tory Read is coming to Delhi & Pune to
interview Campus Ambassadors, students, professors, involved in
the India Education Program (IEP). She will also be interviewing
several community members and English Wikipedia admins to do a
thorough analysis of the pilot.
o Quantitative Analysis: Frank's research team will help us put
together numbers that will be used to draw out qualitative analysis.
* Will be using our analysis to inform the way forward.
* Online Ambassadors are working on the review project - working on
articles that IEP students have written and removing any copyvios or
poor quality content.
* The community would like Contributor Copyright Investigations (CCI)
to take over the review project. They believe that CCI being the
expert can do a better job in cleaning up the articles than the
Online Ambassadors, although they acknowledge that what the Online
Ambassadors have already done will be very valuable to the CCI
process and to Wikipedia in general.
=== Communications ===
November saw much of Communications work focussed on preparations for
the launch of the 8th annual fundraiser, including press release work,
media strategy, and fielding a wide array of media requests (see
storylines below). Work proceeded (and is now almost complete!) on the
2010-11 WMF Annual Report. Considerable communications support to the
important positioning around the proposed internet blacklist bill being
discussed in Washington, for Sue's visit to Europe, and also
considerable work on hiring for the manager, global communications post
now that Moka Pantages has moved on from WMF.
==== Major announcements ====
Wikimedia kicks off its eighth annual fundraiser (November 16)
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikipedia%E2%80%99s_Cont…
Brin Wojcicki Foundation Announces $500,000 Grant to Wikimedia (November 18)
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Brin_Wojcicki_Foundation…
==== Major Storylines through August ====
SOPA/Internet blacklist bill
Wikimedia announced its opposition to an internet blacklist bill being
reviewed in Washington DC in November. WMF joined dozens of other
popular web properties and free-culture organizations in protesting the
destructive bill, and the topic received wide (and continuing coverage)
through November - mostly opposing and criticizing the bill.
Wikimedia launches its 8th annual fundraiser
Wikimedia's annual campaign launch drew considerable media interest,
particularly this year in the social media space. Though the campaign
kicked off with several days of record-breaking successes, there was
less coverage of the kickoff than in previous years. A related
announcement of a $500K grant from the Brin Wojcicki Foundation garnered
far more positive and highly visible coverage. Significant social media
coverage focussed on the quirks of the Jimmy Wales (and/or Brandon
Harris) image placement atop article names.
http://allthingsd.com/20111118/wikipedia-gets-500k-from-brin-and-wojcicki-b…http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2011/11/18/googles-brin-wife-donate-5000…http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/27/creepipedia/
Wikiconference Mumbai and maps protests
The first-ever major wiki conference in India kicked off in November,
and resulted in considerable media coverage - much of it focussing on
the presence of youth protesters challenging the presence of what they
believe to be illegal maps and renditions of India. Most coverage was
fairly balanced of the protests, and focussed on Jimmy Wales opening
keynote insisting that Wikipedia is a place for sharing viewpoints and
staying neutral.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2640098.ecehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15803308http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/mumbai/WikiConference-concludes-wit…
==== Other worthwhile reads ====
Sue's *travels in Europe* (see also "Highlights" section) resulted in
some great coverage in the UK and Germany:
On BBC Radio 4's *World at One*
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qptc
Detailed interview from *Zeit Online*
http://www.zeit.de/digital/internet/2011-11/sue-gardner-interview
From *Heise online*
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Wikipedia-Lexikon-sucht-Frau-und-ein…
From *Berliner Morgenpost*
http://www.morgenpost.de/newsticker/dpa_nt/infoline_nt/computer_nt/article1…
Other reads
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/st_essay_wikipediawonders/http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-02/wikipedia-india-office-will-help-b…http://www.economist.com/node/21536580
==== Wikipedia Signpost ====
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-11-…
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-11-…
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-11-…
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-11-…
==== WMF Blog posts ====
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/11/
==== Media Contact ====
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#November_2011
== Human Resources ==
HR has accelerated recruiting as promised by adding another recruiter to
the mix. Karen Chelini is a very experienced recruiter, working with the
team primarily on the tech team's hires. She is a contractor and will be
with us through January.
We have several ongoing searches right now, including the CTCO role,
that are turning up some great candidates, so we hope to have more hires
rolling in soon. We continue to fill open slots, and this month there
were several key hires that we put a lot of work into. Welcome all!
We also reviewed and approved a new benefits broker for the Foundation
who has helped us find most cost efficient, and better, pricing for our
employee benefits. This is especially important as we grow not only to
remain competitive in the market, but to also ensure that we are in
compliance with labor laws that may have different requirements
depending on the size of our organization.
New Perm Position Hires
* Karyn Gladstone, Director of Community Operations (Community)
* Yue Qiang (Benny) Situ, Features Software Developer Back-end
(Technology)
* Andrew White, Office IT Manager (Administration)
New Contractors
* Karen Chelini
* Miguel Fonseca
* Diogo Gouveia
* Jami Mathewson
* Rob Moen
* Sara Oliveira
* Linda Pennington
* Crystal Shackleford
* Gayle Young
Contract Extended
* Aaron Halfaker
* Sumana Harihareswara
* Rayne MacGeorge
* Jonathan Morgan
* Guillaume Paumier
* Neel Punatar
* Angela Robeson
* Heather Walls
* Daniel Zahn
Departed
* Moka Pantages
* Carrie Smith
Contract Ended
* Daniela Fiejó
* Anthony Riley
* Sara Yap
New Postings
* Mobile Partner Development Technical Manager
* Director of Human Resources
RFPs
* Brazil Education Program Contractor
* Brazil National Program Director
* Global Education Program Online Communications Contractor
Total Employee Count
November Plan: 108, November Filled: 3, November Attrition: 2
YTD Filled: 24; YTD Attrition: 8, Actual: 90
Remaining Open positions to fiscal year end: 27
Real-time feed for HR updates: http://identi.ca/wikimediaatwork or
http://twitter.com/wikimediaatwork
== Finance and Administration ==
* The audited financial statements of the Wikimedia Foundation and
frequently asked questions for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2011
were posted <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports>
to the Wikimedia Foundation website.
* Andrew White has joined the team as the Manager of Office
Information Technology
* Getting ready for the Finance office to take over payroll from Human
Resources as of the first payroll in January with ADP as our new
payroll provider
* Leslie has begun the upgrading conference room R33 on the 3rd floor
to make it more usable for the Technology team.
* Brittany (a work-study student) has begun the organization of the
Foundation library to make it more usable.
== Legal ==
* General Counsel traveled with Sue in Europe to learn more about
chapters and communities.
* Investigating the suspicious deaths of thousands of turkeys in the
United States near the end of the month
* Engaging in a privacy review with the possibility of updating our
privacy policy
* Interviewing for our legal internship program for the Spring semester
* Starting review of legal issues related to setting up in Brazil
* Working on internal governance efficiencies with Finance
* C&D program for trademark enforcement
* Engagement of pro-bono counsel for maintenance of 501(c)(3) status
and corporate governance
* Interesting movies trademark licenses issued (e.g., Girl with the
Dragon Tattoo, Friends with Benefits, Seven Psychopaths)
* Strong support of fundraiser as well as work on Brazil and India
catalysts
* Ongoing implementation of 2011-2012 legal strategy
* number of contracts signed - 12
* number of trademark requests - 7
approved - 2
denied - 1
approval not needed - 1
pending - 3
== Visitors and Guests ==
1. Susan Lyster (Egencia)
2. Beverly Ho (Thoughtworks)
3. Hai Ton (Thoughtworks)
4. Tom Staut (CEO, Global Collect)
5. Pier Iberti (Global Collect)
6. Carl Miller (Global Collect)
7. Patrick Dennis (Paul Hastings)
8. Benjamin Mako Hill (Advisory Board Member)
9. Newyorkbrad (ArbCom)
10. Coren (ArbCom)
11. Karen Rustad (author of a paper on outreach and diversity in FOSS
communities
<http://littlegreenriver.com/stuffs/Outreach-Diversity-FOSS.html>)
--
Tilman Bayer
Movement Communications
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
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media.
Reply-To:
What to many appeared to be the abstractest of theory just
a few months ago, is now becoming frightful reality :-(
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-16044554
Kapil Sibal's position seems to be pretty much exactly in
line with our projected concept of image filtering (he
practically literally uses the term), except he then
extends the line all the way into censorship territory,
without further scrupules.
If we had already gone ahead with the image filter as
projected, we would be snookered by the time Kapil
Sibal called our Indian office folks to his office.
With an image filter in place -pretty much exactly to
Indian Government specification right off the shelf- there
would be no way to argue that such a thing was impossible,
difficult, or unconscionable.
We would have either been forced to censor some of our WM
projects "You don't have enough image taggers for commons?
I'm sure we can provide some", or withdraw from India.
Since full-on censorship is intolerable, we would have been
forced to withdraw.
Now we (still) have clean hands, and (with a bit of luck) can
probably put down a strong(er) argument that can weather
any Indian govt attacks on NPOV, should they come. If we
are careful, we can likely do so politely and assertively,
without hurting too many people's feelings.
(Also: seeing reporting on facebook and twitter activity, and
having viewed pages from eg. Hindi Wikipedia, I do not
believe that the Indian internet community shares Kapil
Sibal's position. Though they'll have to speak for
themselves, of course! :-)
sincerely,
Kim Bruning
--
Hello,
Last month I was in Qatar and introduced some people to Wikipedia. While they were creating their accounts, some of them had their initial suggested username taken, so they had to repeat it a couple of times until they finally found an available username. One of them had repeated it around 3 or 4 times until he had gotten frustrated. Which is why I'm asking if it's possible to add search type-ahead suggestions for available accounts.
//Abbas.
