Wikimedia's mission is to make the sum of all knowledge available to
every person on the planet. We do this by enabling communities in all
languages to organize and collect knowledge in our projects, removing
any barriers that we're able to remove.
In spite of this, there are and will always be large disparities in
the amount of locally created and curated knowledge available per
language, as is evident by simple statistical comparison (and most
beautifully visualized in Erik Zachte's bubble chart [1]).
Google, Microsoft and others have made great strides in developing
free-as-in-beer translation tools that can be used to translate from
and to many different languages. Increasingly, it is possible to at
least make basic sense of content in many different languages using
these tools. Machine translation can also serve as a starting point
for human translations.
Although free-as-in-beer for basic usage, integration can be
expensive. Google Translate charges $20 per 1M characters of text for
API usage. [2] These tools get better from users using them, but I've
seen little evidence of sharing of open datasets that would help the
field get better over time.
Undoubtedly, building the technology and the infrastructure for these
translation services is a very expensive undertaking, and it's
understandable that there are multiple commercial reasons that drive
the major players' ambitions in this space. But if we look at it from
the perspective of "How will billions of people learn in the coming
decades", it seems clear that better translation tools should at least
play some part in reducing knowledge disparities in different
languages, and that ideally, such tools should be "free-as-in-speech"
(since they're fundamentally related to speech itself).
If we imagine a world where top notch open source MT is available,
that would be a world where increasingly, language barriers to
accessing human knowledge could be reduced. True, translation is no
substitute for original content creation in a language -- but it could
at least powerfully support and enable such content creation, and
thereby help hundreds of millions of people. Beyond Wikimedia, high
quality open source MT would likely be integrated in many contexts
where it would do good for humanity and allow people to cross into
cultural and linguistic spaces they would otherwise not have access
to.
While Wikimedia is still only a medium-sized organization, it is not
poor. With more than 1M donors supporting our mission and a cash
position of $40M, we do now have a greater ability to make strategic
investments that further our mission, as communicated to our donors.
That's a serious level of trust and not to be taken lightly, either by
irresponsibly spending, or by ignoring our ability to do good.
Could open source MT be such a strategic investment? I don't know, but
I'd like to at least raise the question. I think the alternative will
be, for the foreseeable future, to accept that this piece of
technology will be proprietary, and to rely on goodwill for any
integration that concerns Wikimedia. Not the worst outcome, but also
not the best one.
Are there open source MT efforts that are close enough to merit
scrutiny? In order to be able to provide high quality result, you
would need not only a motivated, well-intentioned group of people, but
some of the smartest people in the field working on it. I doubt we
could more than kickstart an effort, but perhaps financial backing at
significant scale could at least help a non-profit, open source effort
to develop enough critical mass to go somewhere.
All best,
Erik
[1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/animations/growth/AnimationProjectsGro…
[2] https://developers.google.com/translate/v2/pricing
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Wikipedia and our other projects reach more than 500 million people every
month. The world population is estimated to be >7 billion. Still a long
way to go. Support us. Join us. Share: https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Dear all,
This afternoon Kat Walsh, Chair of the Board of Trustees for the
Wikimedia Foundation announced the kick-off of the search for the next
ED of the Wikimedia Foundation:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/05/21/search-for-next-wikimedia-foundation-…
Please take a moment to read through Kat's note, and please support
this process by sharing the news of the ED search throughout your
networks (be they digital or analog :). We are hoping to get
significant, international coverage of this opportunity, something
that will help us reach a wide range of amazing candidates.
We'll also be sharing the opportunity via twitter/identi.ca
(@wikipedia and @wikimedia) and on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Thanks for your help,
Jay Walsh
---
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/05/21/search-for-next-wikimedia-foundation-…
Kicking off the search for our next Executive Director
Posted by Kat Walsh on May 21, 2013
Today we launch our search for the next Executive Director of the
Wikimedia Foundation.
About six weeks ago, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Executive Director Sue
Gardner told us she will be stepping down from her role. Happily, she
is staying on until we find her successor, and we are now launching
that search.
It will be a challenge to find someone who is able to fill Sue’s
shoes, but I am glad to say that the Board of Trustees, Sue and the
senior staff of the Wikimedia Foundation are aligned in our quest for
a successor who will build on Sue’s considerable accomplishments, and
steer the Wikimedia Foundation toward even greater success in the
future.
The Wikimedia Foundation is the internationally-active San
Francisco-based non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia. It supports a global community of tens of thousands
of volunteers in collecting, developing, and making the sum of all the
world’s knowledge freely available. Over half a billion people use
Wikipedia and its sister projects every month. We are the fifth most
popular website in the world, and the only donor-supported site in the
top 100. We’re widely recognized as the most influential and important
organization in the free knowledge movement.
Our Executive Director reports to the Board of Trustees and acts in
partnership with the global volunteer community, providing the
leadership and setting the strategy for the Wikimedia Foundation,
while managing its day-to-day operations and activities. The Executive
Director is responsible for modernizing the user experience and
nurturing, growing and diversifying the community of people who write
our projects. He or she also ensures our grantmaking supports
innovation across the Wikimedia movement and enables contributor
growth in underrepresented demographics and geographies.
Our Executive Director needs to understand and advance the Wikimedia
movement’s core values. They need to have proven management skills in
technology and product development in order to effectively lead a
high-traffic website, and have experience designing and implementing
planning processes with a high built-in assumption of fast and
iterative change. He or she will need to have exceptional
communication skills, and possess both a drive to achieve
transformative results and a deep respect for collaborative processes.
The Executive Director’s ability to effect change in partnership with
Wikimedia’s community will be decisive not just to their success, but
to Wikimedia’s lasting impact.
It’s impossible to know where our next Executive Director will come
from: there is no career path that makes running the Wikimedia
Foundation somebody’s obvious next step. The right person might or
might not currently work at a big web site. They might or might not be
in the non-profit sector. They could have a background in education,
or product development, or media, or community development, or
something entirely different. They may live in the United States, or
outside it. In this search, we want to cast a wide net for candidates,
so that we can find the person with the rare mix of skills,
experiences and values needed for this important role.
If you’re reading this post you know how much the work of the
Wikimedia Foundation matters. I’m asking you for your help in
spreading the news of this unique opportunity. Please share this post
widely in your networks.
For more information, to suggest potential candidates or to put
yourself forward, please write to info(a)moppenheim.com.
Some details on the recruitment:
We have retained the search firm m/Oppenheim Associates to assist in
finding and screening candidates. We’ve worked successfully with
m/Oppenheim in the past to fill senior roles at the Foundation. They
know us well, and we trust they’ll do a great job with this hire.
The full position description is available on the Wikimedia Foundation
site, hosted at jobs.wikimedia.org.
The hiring process will unfold over the next three to six months; we
hope to have a new Executive Director in place by October. That said,
we’re going to take the time we need to find the best possible
candidate. We are glad to restate that our current Executive Director,
Sue Gardner, will stay with us throughout the recruitment process
until we have a new Executive Director in place.
Following initial screening of the candidates a short-list of
applicants will be interviewed by Board members and members of the
senior staff, and we will encourage them to get involved with the
Wikimedia community (if they aren’t already) to learn more about our
movement. (We would also encourage anyone interested in the role to
take a look at our guiding principles, or to pick up one of the books
documenting and describing the Wikimedia movement.)
We’ve set up some pages on meta wiki, the central collaboration wiki,
where Wikimedia community members can find more information and also
get involved in a public discussion about the role and the recruitment
process.
Thanks in advance for helping spread the word about this rare and
important opportunity.
Kat Walsh
Chair, Board of Trustees, Wikimedia Foundation
--
Jay Walsh
Senior Director, Communications
WikimediaFoundation.orgblog.wikimedia.org
+1 (415) 839 6885 x 6609, @jansonw
--
Jay Walsh
Senior Director, Communications
WikimediaFoundation.orgblog.wikimedia.org
+1 (415) 839 6885 x 6609, @jansonw
Dear all,
This afternoon Kat Walsh, Chair of the Board of Trustees for the
Wikimedia Foundation announced the kick-off of the search for the next
ED of the Wikimedia Foundation:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/05/21/search-for-next-wikimedia-foundation-…
Please take a moment to read through Kat's note, and please support
this process by sharing the news of the ED search throughout your
networks (be they digital or analog :). We are hoping to get
significant, international coverage of this opportunity, something
that will help us reach a wide range of amazing candidates.
We'll also be sharing the opportunity via twitter/identi.ca
(@wikipedia and @wikimedia) and on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Thanks for your help,
Jay Walsh
---
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/05/21/search-for-next-wikimedia-foundation-…
Kicking off the search for our next Executive Director
Posted by Kat Walsh on May 21, 2013
Today we launch our search for the next Executive Director of the
Wikimedia Foundation.
About six weeks ago, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Executive Director Sue
Gardner told us she will be stepping down from her role. Happily, she
is staying on until we find her successor, and we are now launching
that search.
It will be a challenge to find someone who is able to fill Sue’s
shoes, but I am glad to say that the Board of Trustees, Sue and the
senior staff of the Wikimedia Foundation are aligned in our quest for
a successor who will build on Sue’s considerable accomplishments, and
steer the Wikimedia Foundation toward even greater success in the
future.
The Wikimedia Foundation is the internationally-active San
Francisco-based non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia. It supports a global community of tens of thousands
of volunteers in collecting, developing, and making the sum of all the
world’s knowledge freely available. Over half a billion people use
Wikipedia and its sister projects every month. We are the fifth most
popular website in the world, and the only donor-supported site in the
top 100. We’re widely recognized as the most influential and important
organization in the free knowledge movement.
Our Executive Director reports to the Board of Trustees and acts in
partnership with the global volunteer community, providing the
leadership and setting the strategy for the Wikimedia Foundation,
while managing its day-to-day operations and activities. The Executive
Director is responsible for modernizing the user experience and
nurturing, growing and diversifying the community of people who write
our projects. He or she also ensures our grantmaking supports
innovation across the Wikimedia movement and enables contributor
growth in underrepresented demographics and geographies.
Our Executive Director needs to understand and advance the Wikimedia
movement’s core values. They need to have proven management skills in
technology and product development in order to effectively lead a
high-traffic website, and have experience designing and implementing
planning processes with a high built-in assumption of fast and
iterative change. He or she will need to have exceptional
communication skills, and possess both a drive to achieve
transformative results and a deep respect for collaborative processes.
The Executive Director’s ability to effect change in partnership with
Wikimedia’s community will be decisive not just to their success, but
to Wikimedia’s lasting impact.
It’s impossible to know where our next Executive Director will come
from: there is no career path that makes running the Wikimedia
Foundation somebody’s obvious next step. The right person might or
might not currently work at a big web site. They might or might not be
in the non-profit sector. They could have a background in education,
or product development, or media, or community development, or
something entirely different. They may live in the United States, or
outside it. In this search, we want to cast a wide net for candidates,
so that we can find the person with the rare mix of skills,
experiences and values needed for this important role.
If you’re reading this post you know how much the work of the
Wikimedia Foundation matters. I’m asking you for your help in
spreading the news of this unique opportunity. Please share this post
widely in your networks.
For more information, to suggest potential candidates or to put
yourself forward, please write to info(a)moppenheim.com.
Some details on the recruitment:
We have retained the search firm m/Oppenheim Associates to assist in
finding and screening candidates. We’ve worked successfully with
m/Oppenheim in the past to fill senior roles at the Foundation. They
know us well, and we trust they’ll do a great job with this hire.
The full position description is available on the Wikimedia Foundation
site, hosted at jobs.wikimedia.org.
The hiring process will unfold over the next three to six months; we
hope to have a new Executive Director in place by October. That said,
we’re going to take the time we need to find the best possible
candidate. We are glad to restate that our current Executive Director,
Sue Gardner, will stay with us throughout the recruitment process
until we have a new Executive Director in place.
Following initial screening of the candidates a short-list of
applicants will be interviewed by Board members and members of the
senior staff, and we will encourage them to get involved with the
Wikimedia community (if they aren’t already) to learn more about our
movement. (We would also encourage anyone interested in the role to
take a look at our guiding principles, or to pick up one of the books
documenting and describing the Wikimedia movement.)
We’ve set up some pages on meta wiki, the central collaboration wiki,
where Wikimedia community members can find more information and also
get involved in a public discussion about the role and the recruitment
process.
Thanks in advance for helping spread the word about this rare and
important opportunity.
Kat Walsh
Chair, Board of Trustees, Wikimedia Foundation
--
Jay Walsh
Senior Director, Communications
WikimediaFoundation.orgblog.wikimedia.org
+1 (415) 839 6885 x 6609, @jansonw
_______________________________________________
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
_______________________________________________
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WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski
<tomasz(a)twkozlowski.net> wrote:
> I'm not going to respond to all the points raised in your e-mail, Sue
> (partially because most of them are just too general), so let me just
> mentioned some of them.
>
>On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 6:48 PM, Sue Gardner <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> The editors are responsible for the projects: the Wikimedia Foundation
>> knows that, acknowledges it, and is deeply appreciative (as are all
>> readers) for the work that volunteers do in the projects. The Wikimedia
>> Foundation is responsible for the Wikimedia Foundation wiki (and the
>> blog).
>
> Then it should perhaps be renamed as the Wikimedia Foundation Blog With
> Guests Post from Community Members.
uh ... i never noticed this. it seems really that WMF is considering
blog.wikimedia.org as "their" personal blog. it even says "(This is a
guest post by Carol Ann O’Hare of the French Wikimedia chapter.)" e.g.
here:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/05/10/wikimedia-france-research-award-winner/
while the domain http://www.wikimedia.org/ contents clearly states
"Wikimedia is a global movement whose mission is to bring free
educational content to the world."
i would have expected a "movement blog" behind this URL, appropriate
to the usage of the domain, but i am not sure if i am completely
misreading this?
rupert, wondering ...
Hello folks,
So... I caught bits of this while I was on layover between plane flights,
so I've had time to have the multiple reactions that one has (nothing like
an 11-hour flight to think about a situation). I've had time to feel
defensive, insulted, opened, humbled, curious, thoughtful, regretful,
optimistic...
This is an earnest “I'm sorry, I'll do better” and I don't perfectly know
what that looks like yet, because I (and I suspect like you) go from day to
day within in a complex life trying to do the best I can. I'll respond more
later, as I've got some scheduled time a way and like all human beings I
need it, but will circle back when I return to work next Monday.
I was thinking that I would be a very different person if I never made
mistakes. :) In fact, contemplation of that is rather funny if any of you
know me or the circumstances of my life. I could have done the process
differently.
I DO sometimes forget we're all on the same side. That's a darned shame. I
do it sometimes because part of my job is to deal with how beleaguered some
members (not all – I'm trying to find my way back to nuance and ask you to
too) because sometimes they ask me for help, because I deal every day with
burnout and chaos and challenging interpersonal dynamics, and I see some of
the downright abusive messages that no person (staff or admin or user or
each and any one of you reading this) should be subject to while pursuing
work they love. (I also get to see some of the grateful messages, the way
we support one another, not just tear people down. That part is /awesome/.)
I find our staff and volunteers that I've worked with remarkable - people
who I'm ridiculously grateful to work with and for. And I have no doubt
that some of you have experienced staff (myself included) in ways I'm blind
to, and I think there's room for all of us to get better. But I wish people
could see how, even though it's our job, it can be sometimes just
exhausting to try to please so many different voices. Some of you may think
that the Foundation doesn't think about the community – and I think we
sometimes listen so much that it's a little crazy because, as has been
explained to us, the community is not one voice, not one thing, not one
person. It's a vast, beautiful, sometimes conflicted, sometimes coordinated
people working on this enormous shared endeavor. So it's not that community
is not worth listening to, but how and where and to what pieces, and how do
we get better at it and how do we amplify the constructive voices and not
let deconstructive voices (both within the Foundation and without) tear us
down because this work is hard. All our work is hard. I do appreciate the
volunteers who have stepped and kept things going when I was personally at
capacity.
When I read that I need to remember just who pays my salary, I think a
whole bunch of things (and have the various reactions I have, where both
assume good faith that someone means that and I also look at the
possibility that it was meant to be insulting and provoking). And at the
end of the day, millions of people do and hundreds of thousands of editors
help make that happen. I don't forget that. I do think that I am called to
this role because on my best days, it uses me well – it uses my skills and
knowledge and abilities in ways that I hope are good for the world. I am
not anyone's servant (except perhaps for this cause), and I am deeply
listening.
So sometimes I forget we're on the same side, and thank you for reminding
me. Thank you for the temperate voices, the ones who present a point of
view I hadn't considered. As you can likely imagine, I hear more that way.
Most people do.
Someone mentioned that it's easier to lay good ground than to fix something
in retrospect, and that most certainly is very, very true. :) (I really
dislike that other people had to answer for me while I was out of
commission - and my own fault for doing something on my to-do list the
Friday before leaving town. Totally get that.)
So...listening, thinking... also tired, but optimistic, and I hope and want
to keep doing better. This definitely feels like a bit of trial by fire.
Warmest regards,
Gayle
--
Gayle Karen K. Young
Chief Talent and Culture Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
415.310.8416
www.wikimediafoundation.org
April was a busy month for Wikimedia Nederland. Our report is available on
meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederla…
It is also included as text in this message. We have changed the structure
of our monthly report to match our Annual Plan 2013 and our FDC application.
COMMUNITY: supporting and mobilising volunteers and editors
- Wikimedia Nederland Conferentie
Preparations have begun for the annual Wikimedia Nederland Conference which
will take place on November 2. One of the themes will be 'editor diversity'
- we are cooperating with WMDE who will be holding an international event
on that topic a week later on November 9. We are still looking for
volunteers to take charge of programming and publicity.
- Wikipedia Training National Museum of Ethnology
A basic editing training was given to students and employees of the
National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden by volunteers Erik Zachte, Hay
Kranen and Boardmember Hans Muller.WORK: content, collaboration and
activity development
- WIki Loves Monuments
The Wiki Loves Monuments team is preparing for the 2013 competition. This
year, the focus will also be on municipal monuments and we are looking for
funds to organise a combined Wiki Loves Monuments - editor training -
publicity event in Den Haag. Wikimedia NL volunteer Els Arends published an
article in the magazine 'Monumenten' about Wiki Loves Monuments,
encouraging people to get involved.
- Wikipedian in Residence at National Library and Archives
The National Archives and National Library are going to hire a Wikipedian
in Residence, a first for the Netherlands! This promises to be the start of
a wider ranging cooperation between WMNL and these two national
institutions. Focus of the cooperation will be improving content and
recruiting editors.
- CoSyne: final presentation to European Commission
WMNL Board member Frans Grijzenhout attended the final presentation of the
CoSyne <http://cosyne.eu/index.php/Main_Page> project to the European
Commission in Luxembourg. WMNL's involvement was appreciated by the other
partners in this project.
- Wiki loves sound
Wiki Loves Sound is a new initiative to promote use of sound in Wikimedia
projects. In April, 1838 of the 2300+ sounds donated by The Netherlands
Institute For Sound and Vision were uploaded to Commons and 50+ sounds were
added to Wikipedia pages during an editathon. A Dutch spoken instructional
video about adding sounds was made.
- Wikivoyage
Field research for Wikivoyage was carried out by students of the Nijenrode
Business School. Reports and recommendations to be expected in May.WMNL:
participation and support
- The WMNL newsletter was distributed to members, donors and other
interested parties.
RESOURCES: Strong and sustainable financial position
- Finalising Q1 report
The first quarterly report following our FDC application was completed on
time.GLOBAL: International collaboration *NB: reports by WMNL volunteers,
board and staff who have attended international events can be found on the WMNL
Wiki <http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Internationaal>*
- Milano Wikimedia Conference
WMNL Chair Ziko van Dijk, Treasurer Ad Huikeshoven and Executive Director
Sandra Rientjes attended the Milano Wikimedia Conference. WMNL volunteer
Lodewijk was also there on behalf of the Wiki Loves Monuments International
coordination group.
- EU policy working group meeting
On April 6 and 7, representatives of WM-chapters met in Brussels to discuss
EU-policy affecting copyright and internet freedom. Lodewijk and Romaine
represented WMNL. A full
report<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_Policy/Big_Fat_Brussels_Meeting/minutes>
of
the meeting is available on Meta.
- GLAM-Wiki
Volunteers Lodewijk, Romaine and Maarten attended the Glam WIki event in
London, as did GLAM coordinator Sebastiaan ter Burg.
- International Amsterdam Hackathon preparations
Preparations for the International Hackathon picked up pace in April with
the programme being finalised and arrangements made to support visa
applications and travel. It is expected that 140 participants will gather
in Amsterdam, May 24-26.ORGANISATION: board, management and support
- Board retreat weekend 6-7 April
Board and Executive Director attended a two-day meeting, following the
Board elections in March. Topics on the agenda were: division of tasks
within the Board, cooperation and communication, recruiting new volunteers.
- Hiring part-time staff member for finances
Tom Kisters will start work on May 1. He will work on finances and office
management.
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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Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l:
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A new major botgenerating effort is now under way on sv:wp. All lakes
(30000, all down to ones of pondsizes with no name) is now produced
based on lake data from Swedish metereology institute and all lake
environment data from a newly set up authority demanded by EU, in order
to register and track all data of lakes in all Europe.
The articles are generated by AWB and with some manual effort to take
care of text in existing articles and a major effort taking care of all
with the same name (Little lake, Black lake etc)
Examples
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96ren,_Sm%C3%A5landhttp://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunn
Also on maps from Google or Bing you can localize all lakes if you do
not know the name (and for the ones missing name)
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://toolserver.org/~para/cgi-bin/kmlexpor…
or
http://www.bing.com/maps/?mapurl=http%3A%2F%2Ftoolserver.org%2F%7Epara%2Fcg…
As you can see the text is substantial around 5000 characters and even
thing like fisharts in the lakes are generated from databases.
We are now starting to contemplate to put these type of basedata in
Wikidata (we are experimenting with this for some adm units), and to
generate the articles from that as a base instead of from database
extracted from the authorities and put on personal PCs
We have excellent relations with involved authorities that are really
happy with the result, and we are now being approached by other
authorites who wants to follow and get their data from theirs databases
used to generate qualified Wp articles (like all runestones, all
archaeological excavations sites, all artworks placed on official
grounds etc)
Are there any other effort like this going on, especially if any one
come further in establish links from authorities databased to wikidata?
Anders
Dear all,
On last Friday, Hong Kong seventy-seventh Wikimedia meetup, the 3rd
Directory of Wikimedia Hong Kong was officially assembled and swore
in.
List of the new board as follows:
Rover WONG
President
Ivy WONG
Deputy President
Vincent TSUI
Secretary
Tango CHAN
Treasurer
Alexander CHEUNG
Director
Raymond HUI
Director
The Directors are expected to serve a two-year term until 2015.
--
Simon Shek
3rd Directory Electoral Affairs Committee, Wikimedia Hong Kong
Wikimania 2013
Dear trusty Wikimedians,
The FDC decisions are out on Sunday. Despite my desperate attempts to
assist WMHK's board to keep up with deadlines and comply with seemingly
endless requests from WMF grantmaking and FDC support staff, we received an
overwhelmingly negative assessment which resulted in a complete rejection
of our FDC proposal.
At this point, I believe it's an appropriate time for me to announce my
resignation and retirement from all my official Wikimedia roles - as
Administrative Assistant and WCA Council Member of WMHK. I will carry out
my remaining duties as a member of Wikimania 2013 local team.
My experience with the FDC process, and the outcome of it, has convinced me
that my continued involvement will simply be a waste of my own time, and of
little benefit to WMHK and the Wikimedia movement as a whole.
My experience with the FDC process has confirmed my ultimate scepticism
about the WMF's direction of development. WMF has become so conservative
with its strategies and so led into "mainstream" charity bureaucracy that
it is no longer tending to the needs of the wider Wikimedia movement.
My experience with the FDC process has shown me that WMF is expecting fully
professional deliverables which require full-time professional staff to
deliver, from organisations run by volunteers who are running Wikimedia
chapters not because they're charity experts, but because they love
Wikimedia.
My experience with the FDC process has demonstrated to me that WMF is
totally willing to perpetuate the hen-and-egg problem of the lack of staff
manpower and watch promising initiatives dwindle into oblivion.
WMHK isn't even a new chapter. We've been incorporated and recognised by
WMF since 2007. Our hen-and-egg problem isn't new either. We've been vocal
about the fact that our volunteer force is exhausted, and can't do any
better without funding for paid staff and an office since 2010. Our request
for office funding was rejected. The year after, our request to become a
payment-processing chapter was rejected. The year after, we've got
Wikimania (perhaps because WMF fortunately doesn't have too much to do with
the bidding process), which gave us hope that we might finally be helped to
professionalise. But it came to nothing - this very week our FDC request
was rejected.
And the reason? Every time the response from WMF was, effectively, we
aren't good enough therefore we won't get help to do any better. We don't
have professional staff to help us comply with the endless and
ever-changing professional reporting criteria, therefore we can't be
trusted to hire the staff to do precisely that.
My dear friends and trusty Wikimedians, do you now understand the irony and
the frustration?
Wikimedia didn't start off as a traditional charity. It is precisely
because of how revolutionary our mission and culture are, that we as a
movement have reached where we are today. A few movement entities,
particularly the WMF, managed to expand and take on the skin of a much more
traditional charity. But most of us are still youthful Wikimedia
enthusiasts who are well-versed with Wikimedia culture, but not with
charity governance. Imposing a professional standard upon a movement entity
as a prerequisite of giving it help to professionalise, is like judging
toddlers by their full marathon times.
Is this what we want Wikimedia to become? To turn from a revolutionary idea
to a charity so conservative that it would rather perpetuate a
chicken-and-egg problem than support long-awaited growth? I threw in days
and days of effort in the last few years, often at the peril of my degree
studies, with the wishful thinking that one day the help will come to let
WMHK and all the other small but well-established chapters professionalise.
I was wrong.
With the FDC process hammering the final nail into my scepticism about
where WMF and the movement is heading, I figured that with a degree in
environmental engineering from Cambridge my life will be much better spent
helping other worthy causes than wasting days on Wikimedia administration
work only to have them go unappreciated time and time again.
But I feel that it is necessary for me to leave a parting message to my
fellow Wikimedians, a stern warning about where I see our movement heading.
I feel that we're losing our character and losing our appreciation for
volunteers, in particular the limitations of volunteer effort.
I leave you all with a final thought from Dan Pallotta: charitable efforts
will never grow if we continue to be so adverse about "overheads" and
staffing.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dea…
With Wiki-Love,
Deryck
PS. I wish there was an appropriate private mailing list for me to send
this to. Unfortunately, most of the important WMF stakeholders aren't
subscribed to internal-l, and most veteran chapters folks know what I want
to say already. I just hope that trolls wouldn't blow this out of
proportion. Or perhaps I do want this to be blown out of proportion so that
my voice will actually be heard. Thanks for reading.
*
Hey all,
For the last 18 months, the Engineering & Product Development department
has been experimenting with the role of “Community Liaison, Product
Development” - a staff member embedded in the Product team and tasked with
factoring community concerns into our software development process, keeping
editors informed about what we’re doing, and maintaining a dialogue between
those who write code and those who write articles.
While there is always room for improvement, I think this role has shown a
lot of promise. We have a number of large projects coming down the
pipeline (e.g., visual editor, discussion systems) and we need more help
reaching out to our contributor communities, especially our non-English
speaking projects, as our outreach there has traditionally been challenged.
We’d like to recruit a small number of English-speaking or multilingual
editors to do the Community Liaison job with different development teams
and focuses.
In particular we’re looking for people with a strong history of
contributions to our projects who can provide sound and reasoned judgment
and are trusted to do so by their community. Speaking other languages in
addition to English is a major plus, as one of the objectives here is to
ensure we can properly interact with and support non-English projects.
I’ve included the full job description below.
Our immediate need is for help with the Visual Editor. We’d like to hire a
few community liaisons to help inform different Wikipedia language
communities of the upcoming launch, create spaces for feedback and
discussion, synthesize feedback for the Visual Editor team, and other
activities required to support the Visual Editor launch later this year.
If this is a role that would interest you, please e-mail Philippe Beaudette
at pbeaudette(a)wikimedia.org<https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to=pbeaudette@wikimedia.org>.
And if you know someone else who might fit the role, let them know about
it :-). We’re provisionally interested in hiring 2-3 liaisons, at an hourly
rate commensurate with experience. This can be a part-time role, but we’ll
need at least 15 hours/week for the length of the engagement (minimum 3
months). Please do apply if you think it’s a role that suits you, and if
you find places we haven’t notified, spread the word!
Thanks.
Howie
*
_________________________
Howie Fung
Director of Product Development
Wikimedia Foundation
*
Community Liaison Job Description
Background Information and Statement of Purpose
The Wikimedia Foundation’s Engineering & Product Development Department is
looking at ways to more effectively incorporate broad community
perspectives in decisions and hold dialogues with our editors about the
scope, pace and features of upcoming changes to Wikimedia projects. As part
of this, it is hiring additional Community Liaisons from our volunteer
community.
Scope of Work
Support and improve our ongoing software development projects, in
particular:
-
Building up a network of volunteers from both English language and
non-English language wikis, increasing the number of projects we can
interact with;
-
Engaging the community in the software development process, by acting as
a conduit for community questions, bugs and and feature requests, talking
to editors about our work and how they can participate in it effectively,
and recruiting them for workgroups and studies;
-
Being available from time to time to provide expertise and knowledge
about our projects, including but not limited to training
externally-sourced staff in the way our projects work, answering their
questions, and providing expert advice on an ad-hoc basis;
-
Ensuring that our community is represented in the decision-making
process and that our planned software adequately reflects user needs;
-
Monitoring Wikimedia projects, with the assistance of a network of
volunteers, for emerging issues that have an impact on Engineering
programmes; and
-
Other duties as needed.
Requirements
Effective Community Liaisons will be:
-
Experienced users of Wikimedia projects, capable of representing our
community within the Foundation and vice-versa.
-
Strong communicators (both verbally and with the written word), able to
explain our products to different groups of users with different levels of
technical understanding.
-
Able to focus on the larger picture, understanding which concerns and
views are widespread and which are marginal or individual.
-
Approachable, as both users and product developers must be able to trust
these people for the relationship to function.
-
Self-motivated - they will be given important projects and expected to
execute with little to no supervision.
-
Strongly empathetic - they excel at understanding the perspectives of
others and bridging the gap between different approaches to the world.
-
Willing and able to remain resilient in the face of frustration from our
users, in order to get the job done.
Pluses
Other positive attributes or areas of knowledge include:
-
Diverse language skills. While the Wikimedia Foundation communicates
internally in English, we aim to be able to talk to our different
communities natively.
-
Experience with the software development process. You will be thrown
into teams that are actively working on new features; having a background
that reduces the slope of your learning curve is a plus.
- Familiarity with multiple Wikimedia projects is a major plus; we are
about more than just Wikipedia.
*