This statement is also available online:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Sue_Gardner_statement_p…
Statement from Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation,
in response to paid advocacy editing and sockpuppetry
Editors on the English Wikipedia are currently investigating allegations of
suspicious edits and sockpuppetry (i.e. using online identities for
purposes of deception). At this point, as reported, it looks like a number
of user accounts -- perhaps as many as several hundred -- may have been
paid to write articles on Wikipedia promoting organizations or products,
and have been violating numerous site policies and guidelines, including
prohibitions against sockpuppetry and undisclosed conflicts of interest. As
a result, Wikipedians aiming to protect the projects against non-neutral
editing have blocked or banned more than 250 user accounts.
The Wikimedia Foundation takes this issue seriously and has been following
it closely.
With a half a billion readers, Wikipedia is an important informational
resource for people all over the world. Our readers know Wikipedia's not
perfect, but they also know that it has their best interests at heart, and
is never trying to sell them a product or propagandize them in any way. Our
goal is to provide neutral, reliable information for our readers, and
anything that threatens that is a serious problem. We are actively
examining this situation and exploring our options.
In the wake of the investigation, editors have expressed shock and dismay.
We understand their reaction and share their concerns. We are grateful to
the editors who've been doing the difficult, painstaking work of trying to
figure out what's happening here.
Editing-for-pay has been a divisive topic inside Wikipedia for many years,
particularly when the edits to articles are promotional in nature. Unlike a
university professor editing Wikipedia articles in their area of expertise,
paid editing for promotional purposes, or paid advocacy editing as we call
it, is extremely problematic. We consider it a "black hat" practice. Paid
advocacy editing violates the core principles that have made Wikipedia so
valuable for so many people.
What is clear to everyone is that all material on Wikipedia needs to adhere
to Wikipedia's editorial policies, including those on neutrality and
verifiability. It is also clear that companies that engage in unethical
practices on Wikipedia risk seriously damaging their own reputations. In
general, companies engaging in self-promotional activities on Wikipedia
have come under heavy criticism from the press and the general public, with
their actions widely viewed as inconsistent with Wikipedia's educational
mission.
Being deceptive in your editing by using sockpuppets or misrepresenting
your affiliation with a company is against Wikipedia policy and is
prohibited by our Terms of Use. We urge companies to conduct themselves
ethically, to be transparent about what they're doing on Wikipedia, and to
adhere to all site policies and practices.
The Wikimedia Foundation is closely monitoring this ongoing investigation
and we are currently assessing all the options at our disposal. We will
have more to say in the coming weeks.
About the Wikimedia Foundation
http://wikimediafoundation.org<br/>
http://blog.wikimedia.org
The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. According to comScore Media Metrix,
Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation
receive 500 million unique visitors per month, making them the fifth-most
popular web property world-wide (comScore, August 2013). Available in 287
languages, Wikipedia contains more than 29 million articles contributed by
a global volunteer community of roughly 80,000 people. Based in San
Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation is an audited, 501(c)(3)
charity that is funded primarily through donations and grants.
Press contact
Matthew Roth
Global Communications Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
Tel. +1 415-839-6885 x6635
mroth{{at}}wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from the Wikimedia Foundation press release list, reply with
"unsubscribe" to this email.
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The Wikimedia Nederland report for September is available:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederl…
It is also included as text in this message.
COMMUNITY: supporting and mobilising volunteers and editors
-
Our two-weekly Wiki-Saturdays remain successful: on a Wiki-Saturday the
WMNL office is open for members of the community as a venue for meetings, a
quiet place to work on projects or just to have a coffee and a chat with
fellow Wikimedians. In September, the office was open twice, hosting
volunteers and board members working on our annual conference, wiki loves
monuments and the annual work plan 2014.
-
Preparations for the Wikimedia Nederland Conference (November 2,
Utrecht) are in full swing. WMF chair of the Board Jan Bart de Vreede has
agreed to give the keynote speech. See for conference programme:
http://www.wikimediaconferentie.nl/
-
There was a Wikipedia Café in Amsterdam on September 6. Four community
members attended.
WORK: content, collaboration and activity development
-
Wiki Loves Monuments. September is Wiki Loves
Monuments<http://www.wikilovesmonuments.nl/>month. There were
photo-safari’s (Wiki Takes) in Groningen, Nijmegen and
The Hague. One of our volunteers arranged a special tour of Kasteel de Haar
so that photographs could be taken inside the castle.
-
World War II. A group of active community members has decided to focus
on World War II. We cooperated with the National Committee for the
Commemoration of World War II earlier this year in a small pilot-project to
gather photographs of war monuments for Wikimedia Commons. We are looking
to expand this cooperation.
-
Fashion edit-a-thon Antwerpen. The MoMu fashion museum hosted an Europeana
Fashion Edit-a-thon<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/nl:Wikipedia:GLAM/MoMu_Fashion_edit-a-thon_20…>in
Antwerp. Around 25
participants<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/nl:Wikipedia:GLAM/MoMu_Fashion_edit-a-thon_20…>worked
on
articles<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/nl:Wikipedia:GLAM/MoMu_Fashion_edit-a-thon_20…>and
a special tour through the museum was given.
-
Public Libraries. BiSC Utrecht <http://www.biscutrecht.nl/>, the service
organisation for libraries in the province of Utrecht, and Wikimedia
Nederland organised a workshop for libraries. The goal of the workshop was
to generate ideas for cooperation. The workshop was inspired by the
earlier Wiki
Loves Bieb <http://www.wikilovesbieb.nl/> project.
-
25/9 Creative Commons Conference. Wikimedia Nederland attended the
celebration of 10 years of Creative Commons in the Netherlands. The future
of the licenses and their use was being discussed at the event.
-
ECNC. Volunteers of Wikimedia Nederland supported the ECNC photo
competition <http://www.ecnc.org/photo-competition/> by setting up
the upload
wizard<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:UploadWizard%3Fcampaign%3DECNC-B…>.
One of the goals for Wikimedia Nederland to support this competition is to
see if and how we can support initiatives by other organisations that lead
to more content on commons and/or other Wikimedia projects.
-
Tropenmuseum. The
Tropenmuseum<http://www.tropenmuseum.com/smartsite.shtml?ch=TMU&id=5853>is
looking for the fourth Dutch Wikipedian in Residence (job
description in
Dutch<https://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vacature_Wikipedian-in-Residence_op_expeditie>)
for their project about
expeditions<https://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/De_grote_Wikipedia_Expeditie>
.
Money
-
WMNL submitted its application for FDC
funding<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Proposals/2013-2014_round1/Wikim…>in
time of the October 1 deadline. We are requesting € 356,068, a 20%
increase on the 2013 FDC allocation.
GLOBAL: International collaboration
-
Board member international affairs Ziko van Dijk visited the
Wikipedia-Stammtisch in Bochum (DE)
-
Wiki Loves Monuments International: WMNL is acting as fiscal sponsor to
the Wiki Loves Monuments International team, taking care of accounting and
payments.
-
Kira Kraemer (WMDE) visited the WMNL offices as part of the Chapters
Dialogue programme. She interviewed representatives of board, community and
staff.
ORGANISATION: board, management and support
-
The board met in Utrecht on September 5.
-
The Algemene Ledenvergadering (General Assembly) took place on September
21 (the second in 2013). Main points on the agenda were the Annual Workplan
and Budget 2014. Both were approved by the members.
Sandra Rientjes
Directeur/Executive Director Wikimedia Nederland
tel. (+31) (0)6 31786379
*Postadres*: * Bezoekadres:*
Postbus 167 Mariaplaats 3
3500 AD Utrecht Utrecht
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Dear friends,
Yesterday we had our Annual Assembly in Wikimedia Argentina, and it's my
great pleasure to announce our new authorities for the next two years
(2013-2015). The new Board is composed as follows:
President: Galileo Vidoni
Vicepresident: Ivana Lysholm
Secretary: Patricio Molina
Deputy Secretary: Ivana Molena
Treasurer: Nicolás Giorgetti
Deputy Treasurer: Mariano Pérez
Board Member: Beatrice Murch
Board Member: Esteban Zárate
Board Member: Juan Ignacio Iglesias
Deputy Board Member: Nahuel Kahles
Deputy Board Member: Alberto Robles
Statutory Auditor: Leandro Ferrari
Statutory Auditor: Malena Lorente
Statutory Auditor: Leandro Kibisz
Sincerely,
*Patricio Molina*
Secretario
A. C. Wikimedia Argentina
We have great News to announce today: The Swiss National Library and Wikimedia CH are looking for a germanspeaking (mother tongue not mandatory) Project Leader to establish a strong and sustainable relationship between the Wikipedia Community and the National Library.
To get more information, please se the Job-Advertisement on our WMCH website or on the Website of the Swiss Confederation.
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact us on info(a)wikimedia.ch
Charles
___________________________________________________________
I use this email for mailing list only.
Charles ANDRES, Chief Science Officer
"Wikimedia CH" – Association for the advancement of free knowledge –
www.wikimedia.ch
Skype: charles.andres.wmch
IRC://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-ch
Dear Wikimedia friends,
Some of you may know that I've recently stepped down from my role as senior
director of communications at WMF to pursue a new direction.
I was invited to share some thoughts on the Wikimedia blog (a blog born
some fiveish years ago as one of the first big comms projects). I was happy
to do so - these are sentiments similar to those I shared with my
Foundation colleagues in September.
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/10/17/jay-walsh-farewell-letter/
Thanks for everything - it has been an enlightening transition so far, and
I look forward to following the movement's adventures.
All the best,
Jay
--
Jay Walsh
WikimediaFoundation.orgblog.wikimedia.org
@jansonw
Hi everyone,
I've asked a question on the new Program Evaluation & Design portal about
when people think the first edit-a-thons took place. (Or the very first, if
we know!)
It would be great to have your input on meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/Parlor/Questions
Thank you and please spread the word!
Sarah
--
--
*Sarah Stierch*
*Museumist, open culture advocate, and Wikimedian*
*www.sarahstierch.com*
Thanks, but in FR.Wikipedia.org you only have the opt-out option (disable visual editor) :-(
Charles
___________________________________________________________
I use this email for mailing list only.
Charles ANDRES, Chief Science Officer
"Wikimedia CH" – Association for the advancement of free knowledge –
www.wikimedia.ch
Skype: charles.andres.wmch
IRC://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-ch
Le 15 oct. 2013 à 10:10, Enock Seth Nyamador <kwadzo459(a)gmail.com> a écrit :
> Hello Charles,
>
> I don't think there is a way to for this in the registration process.
>
> To enable or disable Visual Editor. Login
>
> 1. Go to ---> Preferences --> Click Editing tab.
> 2. At the bottom of Editing page, Check or uncheck the box beside Enable VisualEditor (only in the main and user namespaces)
>
>
> OR
>
> Follow this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing
> Then repeat step 2 above.
>
> Hope it helps.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Regards,
> Enock S. Nyamador.
>
> -----------------------
> Writer | Wikimedian
> Planning Wikimedia Ghana | About.me | Blog
> C: +233 (0)27 565 7589
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 7:58 AM, Charles Andres <charles.andres.wmch(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> In our new education program with youngs in scholar difficulties, we have the problem that only half of the new accounts have the visual editor activated, it's quite annoying to have two teach two way of editing.
>
> Is there a trick to force the activation of Visual Editor for a specific user?
>
> Thanks
>
> Charles
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> Charles ANDRES, Chief Science Officer
> "Wikimedia CH" – Association for the advancement of free knowledge –
> www.wikimedia.ch
> Skype: charles.andres.wmch
> IRC://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-ch
>
> _______________________________________________
> Education mailing list
> Education(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
>
>
Dear members of the Wikimedia community,
I write to remind Wikimedia-affiliated entities interested in
submitting an annual plan grant proposal to the Funds Dissemination
Committee (FDC) in Round 2 2013-2014 that they must first submit a
Letter of Intent (LOI). The Letter of Intent is the first step in
applying for funds from the FDC, as outlined in the FDC Framework. [1]
This step has been implemented as part of the improvements for
2013-2014. In Round 1 of this year, it helped the FDC staff to work
closely with interested applicants ahead of eligibility and proposal
deadlines.
Entities interested in applying for funding in Round 2 must submit an
Letter of Intent before submitting a proposal. For Round 2 of
2013-2014, the LOI is due on November 8. The LOI asks potential FDC
applicants to state their intentions to apply and to include a
notional dollar figure (or local currency figure). The LOI can be
created on the FDC portal [2], and a sample is here for your
reference. [3] The LOI is non-binding, but it is required.
Milestones from Round 2 can be found on the portal [4] and below:
* Letter of Intent deadline: 8 November 2013
* Deadline for WMF Staff to post eligibility: 15 December 2013
* Deadline for entities to meet eligibility requirements: 15 February 2014
* Proposal submission deadline: 1 March 2014
* Community review period: 1 March 2014 - 31 March 2014
* Staff assessment deadline: 8 April 2014
* FDC recommendation due: 1 May 2014
* Board decision due: 1 June 2014
Also, I want to bring to your attention the current Round 1 community
review process for the eleven Round 1 proposals just submitted to the
FDC. We ask you, members of the community, to share your thoughts and
questions on the Discussion pages of the submitted proposals! [5]
Have any questions or comments? Reach out to us at:
FDCsupport(a)wikimedia.org. The FDC staff is here to help you understand
and navigate the process!
Cheers,
Katy Love and the FDC support team
[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Framework_for_…
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal#fdc-portal-start
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Sample_letter_of_intent
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Timeline#2013-2014_Round_2
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Proposals/Community/Review
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Hello dear all,
the following was one of the documents I created for my ED application.
It took me quite some time to create it and thus it was clear for me at
the beginning that I would publish it at some time point. I struggled a
long time with myself though about when to publish it. I didn't want to
publish it as long as I was an aspirant for the position since this
seems to me to be unfair to the other candidates. And now that I am out
of the run I think it is a good time to do this. Many of you may find
your own ideas reflected in it. I think it is not surprising that ideas
doesn't come from nowhere but from the interaction of people with each
other. I want to thank you all for the thoughts you published here or
elsewhere (like on Wikimania or on meta). I didn't change the wording of
the text and I know it is quite inappropriate for this forum. And as I
said before, since I am out of competition it is quite outdated, what
makes it bit of embarrassing. I appologize for that.
Greetings
Ting
In 2012 the Wikimedia Foundation conducted a cultural study about
itself. As a result it identified its current corporate culture as that
of the archetype of an Innocent. And the Foundation decided to transform
itself into the archetype of a Sage in the coming years.
For me to be a sage means to speak with wisdom, means people will pay
attention to what you say, means own leadership. For me it is a
leadership that is different from what is taught in schools. For me
leadership does not mean to own a title, an impressive shoulder mark, a
reward, or to be claimed an authority. For me leadership means to be
able to convince people by wisdom, to let people follow you because they
see the benefit by following you.
I would like to lead the Foundation into such an organization. Into a
small, in comparison to other world wide operating organizations with
similar impact, but highly efficient organization that operates as the
core of a movement with strong partners. I would like to describe in
more detail about what I mean by this on three most important fields on
which the Foundation is working: On software development, on community
engineering and on movement leadership.
Software development is a critical component of what the Foundation is
doing. The Foundation need to keep improve the usability of its project
sites, both for readers and for editors, and it needs to make the
knowledge millions of volunteers contributed accessible by as many
people as possible. As a board member of the WMF I have repeatedly urged
the Foundation to increase the efficiency and organizational maturity of
our tech department. For me the most important tasks on the technology
side of the Foundation are the following two: Keep step with the
contemporary technological and design progress, provide a good and
modern foundation for other third party developers so that they can tap
on the vast data set collected by the Wikimedia projects, and keep the
development as near as possible to the users.
In the past few years we see a dazzling development in communication and
IT technology. Almost every year there was a new generation of mobile
devices coming onto market and substitutes the older devices in just one
or two years. And the currently dominating phones, tablets or even
glasses will not necessarily be the dominating models in five or ten
years. We saw major companies like Nokia or RIM lost hold on
technological trend and thus fall out of the favor of the market in the
past five years. Keeping pace with this tremendous development speed is
almost impossible for an organization like the WMF.
The Foundation had improved its software development efficiency in the
past two years tremendously. Since one year we are using SCRUM as our
software development method. Nevertheless I see further potential for
improvement, especially with the use of SCRUM. For example the SCRUM
method requires the involvement of the customer as part of the project.
In theory the customer should be the project owner. For the WMF, the
customers are its users (both editors and readers). Use the SCRUM
philosophy on the WMF means that users should be given a possibility to
be involved in the software development as early and as frequently as
possible. For that reason the WMF should build up a test server where it
can deploy part of its prototype development and invite users to test
and comment the features in a very early phase.
Another possibility to involve users as part of the project is to let
users decide part of development priority. Take from the Bugzilla some
of most asked feature requests and let users vote on Meta about which
one should be resolved at first. Dedicate part of the engineering team
on that request and build a project. After the feature is deployed, ask
users vote for the next feature to be prioritized. This approach will
also improve our goodwill inside of the community.
Another way to keep pace with the technological development is to
provide a solid and up-to-date foundation, with which we can give room
to the broad developer community the possibility to build on. By that I
mean to provide a good set of APIs (application programming interfaces),
which can be used by other developers so that they can tap on the data
and do their own development. The WMF cannot afford to work on all
fronts of contemporary technology. It cannot afford teams working on the
desktop front-end, as well as on the mobile front-end and on other
forthcoming devices. It should have experts on all these fields, who
constantly keep eyes on the newest development, and experimenting with
prototypes of these new technologies. But most importantly, they should
bring their experience back to the API developers so that these can keep
their interface with the newest development. We should let the broad
developer community build on this foundation, so that they can create
the most modern, most sophisticated applications for each special
device. This is also perfectly in accordance with the philosophy of the
Foundation, which is to empower people and to free their creative spirit.
A third topic that is for me of a certain priority is to periodically
provide a whole database dump of all Wikimedia projects. The reason for
this is that nothing lasts forever, starting with organizations like the
Wikimedia Foundation and not at last ending with social and political
systems in which it is currently embedded in. The WMF need to take care
that the human knowledge that is contributed to its projects by
uncountable volunteers will even survive the Foundation itself. And
there is only one way to do it: to periodically provide and distribute a
copy of its database.
Currently, except a very small portion, the main engineering team of the
Foundation is based in San Francisco, although for the Foundation
distributed teams are not something that is totally new. The Foundation
cooperated for example with the Indian team working on localization of
the indic languages and worked with the Wikidata team which is mainly
based in Germany. Many companies, for example WorldPress, explored
distributed developer teams in an extreme way, and very successful. I
worked with distributed developer teams in the last five years in
different roles. I think WMF should explore more with distributed
developer teams. There is a philosophical and a practical reason for the
Foundation to do this. The philosophical one is the principle guidance
of the Foundation that we are a decentralized movement. And the
practical one is that many things, especially related to localization is
better done where it is needed: where the users are.
Just as there is an intrinsic conflict inside of the engineering
department between the software development and the system maintenance
teams (this is not a unique problem for the WMF but actually for all
companies that operate both of them) there is an intrinsic conflict
inside all WMF projects between the keepers and the builders. The WMF
projects collect and keep human knowledge. And at some degree these two
tasks are in a conflict of interest. At the beginning of the projects,
when the collected content was still few and incomplete, the builders
prevailed. When the projects get larger and more prominent, the keepers
gain terrain. The WMF need to work out a way to keep the spirit of
innovation and at the same time take care of the reliability of the
content it is hosting. And it needs to find a way to resolve the
conflict between the two aspects in a human and civil way.
I have already mentioned in my resign mail from the board about the
problems our projects are facing: The community is biased toward the
better educated male population of the world. I believe this bias
currently lead to a deadlock with the smoldering conflict inside of the
projects: The conflicts and the incivility that it resulted expel users,
especially the less vocal and aggressive ones, which stiffens the bias
inside of the community. While the bias of the community leads to a more
aggressive way of the conflict.
I believe that the Foundation need to address all these problems by
doing social engineering on its project communities.
The problems, both the conflict between the keepers and the builders, as
well as embrace new communities, welcome new cultures, while keep the
value of an existing community is not new and unique for the WMF and its
projects. Many societies faced or are facing the same problem. Many had
resolved or periled on these problems in the human history.
What is new for the WMF is the phenomenon of online and virtual
communities. It is so new that until now there is only very few research
works about this topic. Little is known in theory about how online
communities evolve and how they transform, which internal and external
forces influence their development. The lack of theoretical foundation
makes every effort of change a constant try and error. On the other
hand, there is no entity in the world that can provide such a rich and
detailed and even multiple record on this field as the WMF projects.
Cooperation between the WMF and research institute for social science
can be beneficial for both sides. The Foundation can benefit from the
results of the research institutes so that it can modify rules, provide
technical environments to shift its community to be more inclusive and
more balanced while the research institutes can benefit from the open
and detailed records or even through field studies inside the
communities to develop new theories for this modern phenomenon. On a
broader way I also believe that the research on the WMF projects and its
evolution can provide solutions to many conflicts in the real world. I
want, and I believe the WMF can, build up knowledge and become a real
sage in this field. There is nowhere in the world that is more prone for
this than the WMF.
Except WikiVoyage currently all WMF projects are specialized on academic
knowledge. But this is only part of the human knowledge that the WMF
promised to collect in its vision. It is like IQ only measures some
partial aspect of human intelligence. I would like the WMF to lead and
research possibilities to open its projects for other aspects of human
knowledge: the everyday knowledge, knowledge that is undocumented, or
even be considered cannot be documented. I believe the WMF should also
gather these knowledge and should open room for volunteers who are
willing to contribute these kinds of knowledge.
The global development is another typical example where the principle of
decentralization can apply perfectly. In contrary to the earlier
approach I believe the WMF should not by itself try to set foot on the
regions that we consider has great potential to develop. This can be
done by the local organizations. The WMF should provide guidance and
principles, give support to the local organizations to establish a
strong and self sustainable infrastructure, educate people so that they
gain the skill to plan and run operations, perform controlling and
evaluation of the organizations. Out of its experience the WMF also
should be able to provide consultation on operational models and
activities that are promising. Also here, being a sage means for me the
ability to give valuable advices and helps.
For this I believe we need strong local organizations. Until today, most
of the WMF partner organizations are weak. Most importantly they are
weak on structure. Most of them have a very thin base with only the
board as active members, some don't even have an operational board. From
such weak organizations one cannot expect strong operational
performance. There is no other people out there who can make these
organizations and future partner organizations strong, only WMF itself
can do this. On the other side, I also believe that strong partner
organizations should be more closely aligned to the WMF. It is not
enough only to say that the organization supports free knowledge in its
bylaw. I believe that the partner organizations should clearly state
their recognition of the principles of the Wikimedia movement, their
involvement in the strategic planing of the movement and their
dedication and contribution to achieve the movement goals. This
statement is needed to guarantee that we are working on the same goals
and have the same understanding of principles. The alignment is
absolutely important for the future operations and for the trust building.
My goal of being the ED of the WMF will be to fulfill the transformation
of the organization from an Innocent into a Sage, in this case, even a
sage in multiple fields: In technical engineering to guarantee the
leading position of the WMF for the future years; in social engineering
to transform and develop and motivate our volunteers and fuel our
movement and projects; in leading a closely aligned group of strong
international organizations to pursue our vision and our mission.