Hi,
I'll separate this out as I think it is a really interesting conversation,
and as I have heard the two arguments below repeated numerous times, it
might be useful to think about it and the future shape of things a bit more.
I think the fundamental question is how legitimate can an interest group
(chapters in this case) be if it's membership is significantly smaller than
its potential membership (at least 30% of editors come from countries with
well established chapters in afaik good standing with their local
community)?
The difference in the answer to this question could be behind the two
"memes" on chapters being seen as insignificant or significant parts of the
community based either on their membership or potential membership size.
I like to believe that people who go beyond online editing (or in the case
of readers and donors, beyond online donations and reading) into the
offline world are among the most dedicated of our volunteers, and knowing
their background, they usually are well embedded in their
local/national/linguistic communities, to the point that they are able to
recognize and represent their interests.
(Especially, as chapters tend to have open structures, often giving the
right to be heard to any non-member and generally not making it difficult
to become a member even for those advocating different directions.)
However, as our communities are very diverse (someone active on Wikipedia
and the chapter might not be aware of recent developments in Wiktionary and
vice versa), we need to constantly think about ways of informing and better
engaging those whose interests we wish to represent (be this at the WMF or
the individual chapter level).
Even if we don't subscribe to the wider interpretation of representation of
the potential members, the actual members are still showing a level of
dedication that I think makes it worthwhile hearing their voice in e.g.
board selections.
All that said, the chapter selected board seat is related to the
communities the chapters are embedded in at a further step of remove
because of the way the process is conducted. (The list of candidates and
questions to them, etc. are in theory non-public – although the candidate
may choose to make it public on Meta – so the boards of chapters might not
be in a position to directly survey their members' preferences and have to
bring the decision on their own.)
Therefore, I think there are definite possibilities to improve on the
selection process, even with just chapters.
Best regards,
Bence
On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 9:26 AM, Jan-Bart de Vreede <jdevreede(a)wikimedia.org
> wrote:
> Hey
>
> I think that chapters represent a different part of the movement, and that
> their input in board composition results in different candidates than we
> would possibly elect :) At the same time the increased scope of affcom also
> gives us the option of increasing the scope of these two selected seats to
> include thematic organisations and user groups (giving them more "community
> coverage" than is the case now). That would be a good discussion to have
> over de coming months as the selected seats term expires in july next year…
>
> thoughts anyone?
>
> Jan-Bart
>
>
> On Feb 19, 2013, at 8:42 AM, James Alexander <jamesofur(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Snipping a bunch for simplicities sake
> >
> > On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 11:14 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede <
> > jdevreede(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> I simply don't agree.
> >> a) Chapters are part of the community
> >> b) Whenever a vote comes up for an appointed seat that seat obviously
> does
> >> not vote, therefore the (s)elected seats have a majority vote on any
> >> appointed seat (5 our of 9 votes) Apart from that I would say that
> Jimmy's
> >> seat is a community seat, but recognise that not all share that
> viewpoint.
> >>
> >> Jan-Bart
> >>
> >
> > :-/ To be honest I don't particularly like this meme that the chapter are
> > part of the community either. The chapters may be part of the community
> > (and so the statement not false) but we use the phrasing in such a way as
> > to say that they are more then they are. There may be a part of the
> > community but they are really a very small part of it overall.
> >
> > Their power in board selection and movement voice (both formally and
> > informally) is disproportionately huge and we set them up to represent
> the
> > community when that is a serious misstatement. They represent their
> members
> > who are a very small subset of the community and often have a very
> > different goal and interest set then the, much larger, remainder of the
> > community and depending on the chapter may include more donors or readers
> > then editors.
> >
> > That is not to say they don't do good things at times (or that it is a
> > problem to include donors or readers, personally I think they are part of
> > our larger community) but we should not confuse what they actually are.
> >
> > Jimmy is a whole different question ;) I would certainly say he deserves
> a
> > seat at the table, I prefer to just categorize him as "Jimmy" because
> he's
> > just a class of his own in all ways :).
> >
> > James
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list
> > Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>
>
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>
Hi all,
Just to let you know that we have board changes in Wikimedia Taiwan. At December 15 Saturday we have held AGM in Taipei and we have elected the new board. Here's the new board members:
* Hsiang-Tai Chien (aka Ted, User:Htchien), Chairman (former Secretary), hsiangtai.chien(a)gmail.com (mailto:hsiangtai.chien@gmail.com)
* Jui-Lin Chen (aka Dennis, zh:User:Supaplex), Secretary (new), b92612009(a)gmail.com
* Chung-Ming Wang (zh:User:Mingwangx), Member (re-elected), mingwangx(a)gmail.com
* Yuan Chang (zh:User:Ffaarr), Member (reelected)
* Shih-Han Lin (aka Alex, User:Alexsh), Member (new), alexsh.tw(a)gmail.com
* Tsun-En Chang (aka Andrew, User:Ch.andrew), Member (new), chandrew1119(a)gmail.com
* Yu-Chen Hsu (aka KJ, User:KaurJmeb), Supervisory Member (former Member)
* Cheng-Yi Chang (aka MGDesigner, User:Shoichi), Supervisory Member (former Member), shoichi.chou(a)gmail.com
* Hsiao-Ting Yu (User:Littlebtc), Supervisory Member (new)
We also approved the followings in the AGM:
* 2012 Activity & Financial Annual Report
* Future Plans for 2013:
** Rework plan for our official website (it's been scheduled to be online before end of February).
** Wikimedia Promotional Project
We have planned to do promotional activities in following aspects in 2013:
1. Promotions in Campus.
2. Local Wikis (Wikis for local residents)
** Wikimedia Volunteer Certification Program
Currently Universities in Taiwan are been requested by the government to make students to attend some volunteer programs to get credits each semester, so we wish to approach them via this program.
More reports from Wikimedia Taiwan will be available soon.
--
Ted Chien
Software Engineer (Android / iOS / Windows)
Chairman, Wikimedia Taiwan
Board member, Chinese Christian Network Development Association
Volunteer, Taipei Google Technology User Group
Volunteer Lead of Chinese Translation Team, YouVersion.com (http://youversion.com/)
--
Skype / MSN: htchien(a)livemail.tw (mailto:htchien@livemail.tw)
Blog: htttp://htchien.tw (http://htchien.tw/)
Facebook: http://facebook.com/htchien
Twitter: http://twitter.com/htchien
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/htchien
--
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://donate.wikimedia.org (http://donate.wikimedia.org/)
--
Chinese Christian Network Development Association
http://www.ccnda.org
--
Taipei Google Technology User Group
http://www.taipei-gtug.org (http://www.taipei-gtug.org/)
Sent with Sparrow (http://www.sparrowmailapp.com/?sig)
Hello,
One of my favorite wikimedia project is the wiktionary, I probably use
it everyday and I like to contribute on the french chapter here and
there.
As I'm learning esperanto, I wanted to improve the french wiktionary on
this topic. My first thought was to begin by gathering a list of
vocabulary, make a todo page with links and go on.
But I found that there is already a free/libre dictionary out there :
Reta Vortaro[1]. Morever this dictionary provide definition in several
languages, so I thought instead of making a word by word contribution
only for the french chapter, I could add a whole esperanto dictionary to
several chapters in once. It sounds great doesn't it ?
Unfortunately, this dictionary is under GPL which is a well known free
license (but a strange choice for a non-software project). So I would
like to know, can I mix up a GPL content with a CC-by-sa page (in cases
where such a page already exist), and more generaly can I add GPL
content into the wiktionary.
If no, could we approach their community and ask them for a relicensing
under CC-by-sa, so we could add their great work into our wiktionaries.
I also send this message to email I found to contact them[2].
Kind regards,
mathieu
[1] http://purl.org/NET/voko/revo/
[2] http://reta-vortaro.de/revo/dok/revolist.html
Hello,
In accordance with some suggestions from the London conference, I have
started a section on the WCA/Reseach page on Meta Wiki. The Wikimedia
Movement needs more information about itself, and I would very much
appreciate if you could take a look at the page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Research
Kind regards
Ziko
--
-----------------------------------------------------------
Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland
dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter
http://wmnederland.nl/
Wikimedia Nederland
Postbus 167
3500 AD Utrecht
-----------------------------------------------------------
This mail follow the reading of an article titled "Hadopi : la mission
Lescure repoussée à avril"[1].
Pierre Lescure, former CEO of Canal+ (a french private television
group), was asked by the French governement to work on the future of the
HADOPI, the french kitchen sink aimed at punishing people who share
non-free/libre digital works through the internet.
And she come with a proposition which would deeply impact us : fordid
free/libre content sharing without charging fee. According to her the
"free sharing risk to harm the developpement of the legal offer"[2]. I
suppose that she purposely use this vocabulary so our movement seems to
act illegaly.
The article finish with statements that work to lobying at the European
level is also in progress.
Who will pretend we don't need to have an active lobying task force to
defend and promote free/libre culture after that? We have enemies: they
hate our willigness to make culture freely accessible to all without
them having means to financialy parasitize the process, and they will do
everything they can to destroy our movement.
You can sign up a petition here :
http://www.avaaz.org/fr/petition/Garder_les_Creative_Commons_libres_et_grat…
kind regards,
mathieu
[1] {{fr}}
http://www.linformaticien.com/actualites/id/28186/hadopi-la-mission-lescure…
[2] la « libre circulation risquerait de freiner le développement de
l’offre légale »
This looks pretty substantial:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_public_a…
"The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) hereby directs
each Federal agency with over $100 million in annual conduct of
research and development expenditures to develop a plan to support
increased public access to the results of research funded by the
Federal Government."
Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote:
>...
> if you have questions that you think we should ask: feel free to suggest them here :)
I have these ten questions:
1. What do you think a reasonable goal for the growth of the Wikimedia
Education Program over the next five years is?
2. Do you believe that the Foundation should establish an endowment?
If so, how large do you think such an endowment should be; in
particular, should the Foundation establish an endowment large enough
to subsist at present staffing levels and growth rates from current
investment grade bond interest rates without accepting additional
donations? If so, over how many years do you think it would be most
appropriate to establish such an endowment?
3. How often do you think the Foundation should propose advocacy
actions to the community? Do you believe the Foundation should survey
the opinion of the community and donors on this question?
4. Should the Foundation meet or exceed Silicon Valley competitive pay
to attract and retain the best talent while competing with firms able
to offer equity participation? Do you believe the Foundation should
survey the opinion of the community and donors on this question? Why
or why not?
5. Should the Foundation establish a system of awarding employee
bonuses in amounts determined by anonymous peer evaluations? Why or
why not?
6. Some proportion of long term project editors are impoverished,
probably within a few percentage points of the impoverished proportion
of the population as a whole. How do you think the Foundation could
best assist impoverished long term volunteers? Do you think it should?
Why or why not?
7. To what extent do you believe the Foundation should reimburse
travel and content development expenses for Wikinews contributors? In
particular, if you were to propose a pilot grant program to grant
travel and expense funds directly to individual Wikinews reporters,
how many such awards would you begin with and how would you measure
their effectiveness?
8. PeerWise is a popular closed-source assessment question and answer
database (http://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/) used in hundreds of
higher education institutions. Unlike textbooks, traditional courses,
MOOCs, and Moodle-style courses, PeerWise question databases can and
often are populated entirely by learners, with answers reviewed in a
style very similar to wiki content. Do you believe it would be
appropriate for the Foundation to develop an open source version of
PeerWise? Why or why not?
9. Do you believe the Foundation should employ professional fact
checkers who would not edit reader-facing content on the projects, but
who would be available to research questions pertaining to content
disputes at the request of projects' dispute resolution volunteers
(e.g. Wikipedia mediators) to prepare reports to help volunteers
resolve content disputes? Why or why not? Do you believe the
Foundation should survey the opinion of the community and donors on
this question?
10. What is your experience with editing or otherwise supporting
Foundation projects?
Sincerely,
James Salsman