Dear all,
It is an honor to announce that the Affiliations Committee has resolved
[1] recognizing the Wikimedia User Group China as a Wikimedia User
Group; their main focus areas are getting more chinese people know and
use Wikipedia, encouraging people to become contributors to the
different Wikimedia projects, and maintain the community healthy and
growing. Let's welcome the newest member of the family of affiliates
-and the fourth from the Sinosphere!
Regards,
Carlos
1:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Wikimedi…
--
"*Jülüjain wane mmakat* ein kapülain tü alijunakalirua jee wayuukanairua
junain ekerolaa alümüin supüshuwayale etijaanaka. Ayatashi waya junain."
Carlos M. Colina
Vicepresidente, A.C. Wikimedia Venezuela | RIF J-40129321-2 |
www.wikimedia.org.ve <http://wikimedia.org.ve>
Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Affiliations Committee
Phone: +972-52-4869915
Twitter: @maor_x
Dear friends and colleague,
I would to share with you the post we published on Wikimedia Blog (November
13, 2015) [1]. It describes how WMIL works with few *Wiktionary* volunteers
in a process of revitalization of *Wiktionary* community. I believe it
could be useful case study for those of you who deal with similar issues.
I would be happy to provide more info. to anyone who is interested
Michal
[1]
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/11/13/hebrew-wiktionary-community-revitaliz…
*Regards,*
*Michal Lester,*
*Executive DirectorWikimedia Israel*
*http://www.wikimedia.org.il <http://www.wikimedia.org.il/> *
*972-50-8996046 ; 972-77-751-6032 *
Hello,
It is only a few months until someone will need to organise the 2016
Affiliate Selected Board Seats process.
Thinking about the process last time I have set up a discussion here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Affiliate-selected_Board_seats#Request…
Comments are invited from everyone, including the WMF Board, affiliates and
the community at large.
Regards,
Chris
(writing in a personal capacity but informed by my role as one of the 2014
selection facilitators)
Hi all-
For several years, the Wikimedia movement has been having discussions
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment> about whether and when to begin
building an endowment. I put an essay up on meta recently in an attempt to
rekindle this conversation with the community. We included launching an
endowment in the FY 2015-16 annual plan. We also plan to have this
conversation as a part of the larger strategic planning process because
building an endowment means prioritizing some future needs over some
current needs.
Before we can begin to support an endowment, there is strategic groundwork
that should be completed to ensure that the effort is both thoughtful and
successful. To help get the conversation moving, I seeded the discussion
page with a few questions that we are hoping you will help us answer.
Please add the questions I didn't think to ask, too. We'd appreciate
hearing your thoughts on this and your help in thinking through some of the
strategic questions.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment_Essay
Best regards,
Lisa Gruwell
I've created a Phabricator task for this at
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T119888, if anyone would like to track
this there, add your thoughts, etc.
Joe
--
*Joe Sutherland*
Communications Intern [remote]
joesutherland.rocks | @jrbsu <http://twitter.com/jrbsu>
We have a new problem to face in the coming months assuming countries
ratify the Trans Pacific Partnership
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership
The text of the agreement has been released in the last 24 hours, early
commentary is indicating that copyright changes will occur restoring
copyright to some works that are currently PD.
http://boingboing.net/2015/11/06/how-tpp-will-clobber-canadas.html
According reports this will affect media sourced in Canada where copyright
will be extended from 50-70 years meaning that image sin this period may
need to be deleted both on commons and on en:wp, Australian sourced images
face a similar issue as will other countries.
Rather than a piece meal commons copyright battle, and a duplicate one on
en:wp being lead by unqualified wikilawyers resulting in project
discrepancies. I'm calling on the community to take more holistic approach
and request that the WMF ask for its legal eagles to give an edict we can
take or communities to explain what will happen in each jurisdiction as the
TPP is ratified.
This will also give us guidance as to how Affiliates can approach and
support activities locally to ensure material that is already freely
available remains so.
--
G
ideon
President Wikimedia Australia
WMAU: http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/User:Gnangarra
matanya moses wrote:
>tl;dr: The FDC’s recommendations for this round of the APG grant
>requests have now been published at:
>https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Permalink/14803740
>
>The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) meets twice a year to help
>make decisions about how to effectively allocate movement funds to
>achieve the Wikimedia movement's mission, vision, and strategy. [1] We
>met for four days last week in San Francisco to review 11 proposals
>submitted for this round of funding. [2]
>
>[...]
>
>This round, the eleven proposals came from ten chapters and one
>thematic organisation, totaling requests of approximately $3.8 million
>USD. Ten affiliates were returning to the APG program, and one was a
>new applicant. This round, one organisation requested a restricted
>grant to support one particular program. All other grant requests were
>for general funding.
Hi.
Apologies if these questions have already been asked/answered elsewhere, I
did try to skim this thread, the Meta-Wiki page, and its talk page first.
The Wikimedia Foundation has a section under "Organisation-specific
remarks", but isn't included in the "Funding recommendations" chart and
there's no amount requested, amount allocated, or proposal listed for the
Wikimedia Foundation. Why is that?
If Wikimedia Deutschland is required to separate out costs for Wikidata,
does that mean that the Wikimedia Foundation is required to split out
costs for Wikipedia and its other projects? I'd be quite curious to know
how much money is being spent by the Wikimedia Foundation on Wiktionary or
Wikinews or Wikiversity.
The report includes this note:
> The FDC is appalled by the closed way that the WMF has undertaken both
>strategic and annual planning, and the WMF’s approach to budget
>transparency (or lack thereof).
Sort of inline with the first question, but perhaps more direct: what
power does the Funds Dissemination Committee have over the amount of donor
money allocated toward the Wikimedia Foundation? Can the FDC only admonish
the organization, but not actually withhold funds?
MZMcBride
Thank you FDC.
Many of the small and midsized APG requests fared well in this round. That
is nice to see.
I find it concerning that the larger the organization, the more problems
the FDC seemed to find with the org's budget and performance management
practices. One would expect the larger organizations to have mature and
robust practices in these areas. Regarding WMF in particular, my concerns
about its budget practices are well documented and I appreciate that the
FDC is also taking note of the persistence of the problems. I hope that WMF
will get serious about its financial transpatency.
A couple of questions about Wikidata:
I'm confused about the funding for Wikidata. In one place the FDC says that
"Nonetheless, the FDC is exasperated by the inability of WMDE to to
disaggregate the costs of Wikidata from other projects." and in another
place the FDC says that "We have recommended a reduced amount for WMDE in
this round with the expectation that WMDE will not cut Wikidata or their
other tech development work, but will instead find cost savings elsewhere
in its annual plan." If the FDC wants a disaggregated budget (which is
understandable) then why is the FDC expecting WMDE to dip into its other
funds and/or make cuts elsewhere in order to cover the work in this
proposal that the FDC is declining to fund in this proposal? This
expectation seems to be a bit of a contradiction.
I'm also wondering how WMDE is able to submit a dedicated request for
restricted funding for Wikidata if the Wikidata project is so integrated
into WMDE's other budgets that the FDC finds the integration to be
problematic. Can the FDC or our colleagues at WMDE explain this?
Wikidata is a high profile project with a good reputation, and I hope that
the issues can be resolved soon.
Thanks,
Pine
On Nov 23, 2015 14:09, "matanya moses" <matanya(a)foss.co.il> wrote:
> Hello Wikimedians,
>
> tl;dr: The FDC’s recommendations for this round of the APG grant requests
> have now been published at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2…
>
> The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) meets twice a year to help make
> decisions about how to effectively allocate movement funds to achieve the
> Wikimedia movement's mission, vision, and strategy. [1] We met for four
> days last week in San Francisco to review 11 proposals submitted for this
> round of funding. [2]
>
> The committee has now posted our Round 1 2015-2016 recommendations on the
> annual plan grants (APG) to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. [3]
> The WMF Board representatives to the FDC (Denny Vrandecic, Jan-Bart de
> Vreede and Dariusz Jemielniak) will lead the Board in its review of these
> recommendations. The WMF Board will review the recommendations and then
> make their decision on them before 1 January 2016.
>
> This round, the eleven proposals came from ten chapters and one thematic
> organisation, totaling requests of approximately $3.8 million USD. Ten
> affiliates were returning to the APG program, and one was a new applicant.
> This round, one organisation requested a restricted grant to support one
> particular program. All other grant requests were for general funding.
>
> Before we met for our face-to-face deliberations, the FDC carefully
> reviewed all proposals and supporting documentation (e.g., budgets, plans,
> strategies) in detail, aided by staff assessments and analysis on impact,
> finances, and programs, as well as community comments on the proposals. The
> committee had long and intense conversations about the proposals submitted
> this round. By listening and carefully considering all available data, the
> committee achieved consensus on all proposal deliberations.
>
> In addition to the above, the FDC has also included a recommendation about
> the WMF itself to improve its own level of planning transparency and budget
> detail. The WMF staff were not involved in the conception or writing of
> this additional recommendation.
>
> For your reference, there is a formal process to submit appeals about
> these recommendations or complaints about the FDC process. The processes
> for both are outlined below.
>
> Any applicant that wants to appeal the FDC’s recommendation about their
> proposal this round should submit it by 23:59 UTC on 8 December 2015 in
> accordance with the appeal process outlined in the FDC Framework. A formal
> appeal to challenge the FDC’s recommendation should be in the form of a
> 500-or-fewer word summary. The appeal should be submitted on-wiki, [4] and
> must be submitted by the Board Chair of a funding-seeking applicant.
>
> Complaints about the process can be filed by anyone with the Ombudsperson,
> and can be made any time. The complaint should be submitted on wiki, as
> well. [5] The ombudsperson will publicly document the complaint, and
> investigate as needed.
>
> Please take a look at the upcoming calendar [6] to learn about other
> upcoming milestones in the APG program.
>
> Again, we offer our sincere thanks to the 11 organisations who submitted
> annual plan grant proposals to the FDC this round.
>
> On behalf of the FDC,
>
> Matanya Moses (FDC chair), User:Matanya
>
> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG
> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2015-2016_round1
> [3]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2…
> [4]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Appeals_to_the_Board_on_the_reco…
> [5]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Complaints_about_the_FDC_process
> [6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Calendar
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list
> WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
>