Thanks for your replies, and for John's very kind offer. As this involves various inactive and semi inactive bot operators I will give John an off list response re that.
On MzMcBride's points, I don't know the relative costs of employing programmers in San Francisco v other parts of the world. I am more familiar with the huge contrast in relative labour costs of London v Tbilisi. My point was that Python programming could be done pretty much anywhere so if we launched such a team we might as well do it where movement money would go furthest.
As for the idea that we want scalable, sustainable, and secure tools, I agree and think my suggestion would contribute to that. We still want volunteers to write bots that do useful things. Some of those will be deemed so useful and essential that they need to be incorporated into mediawiki, some will be transient things that might run for a few years but only be needed by their bot operator. Having a bot adoption resource would be useful for things that fit in between, ones where the wiki can live without them for a weekend whilst their bot operator needs their server for something else. But which if they don't run for months leave a loophole in our quality improvement programmes. So more scale able and sustainable than bots are today, but not as much as things that need to be added into the mediawiki code.
Regards
Jonathan Cardy
> On 22 Feb 2015, at 21:04, wikimedia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Funding bot maintenance (WereSpielChequers)
> 2. Re: Funding bot maintenance (John)
> 6. Re: Funding bot maintenance (MZMcBride)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------
>
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2015 11:53:53 -0500
> From: John <phoenixoverride(a)gmail.com>
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Funding bot maintenance
> Message-ID:
> <CAP-JHpm7g+FPosjye2=XH+iQYh8XCBPFb8Ee3tDSpKpdWKEhKw(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> I am a dev and am willing to replace a tool when it dies. I have a fairly
> large infrastructure of code that makes it fairly easy
>
> On Sunday, February 22, 2015, WereSpielChequers <werespielchequers(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> One of the areas that I would like to see the foundation putting in money
>> is for the running and maintenance of wanted orphan bots. Wanted in the
>> sense that editors are using them or would if they were still running, and
>> orphan in the sense that the original developer isn't around or available
>> to run them/migrate them to the latest platform.
>>
>> If we work on the premise that community funds should go for things that
>> volunteers want to have happen but aren't volunteering to do, then this is
>> a classic and uncontentious niche. Programmers like to write new code and
>> solve new problems, but the person with the idea or who writes new code
>> doesn't always have the time and motivation to keep maintaining and running
>> that code, let alone creating slightly bespoke version for scores of our
>> thousand wikis.
>>
>> Now it may be that we are in an unusual situation that the migration from
>> toolserver to labs has cost us a number of bots that would otherwise have
>> continued for years. But there will always be demand to localise existing
>> bots for wikis where they don't currently run, and in the long run all of
>> our volunteer bot writers are likely to move on.
>>
>> Employing a python programmer or two somewhere cheap like India or South
>> America would not be a huge investment for the foundation, but it would be
>> a valuable service to the community, and unlike mediawiki development this
>> could be completely volunteer driven with wikimedians deciding which bots
>> are worth maintaining and their relative priority.
>>
>> Disclosure: whilst I'm not pitching for the money for this, I would be
>> front of the queue to ask such a maintainer to take on bots that I used to
>> use the results of and in at least one case which I designed.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Jonathan/WereSpielChequers
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2015 16:04:31 -0500
> From: MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com>
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Funding bot maintenance
> Message-ID: <D10FA52D.4D2B0%z(a)mzmcbride.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>
> WereSpielChequers wrote:
>> One of the areas that I would like to see the foundation putting in money
>> is for the running and maintenance of wanted orphan bots.
>
> I think specific examples might help here. If we're talking about category
> renaming bots or talk page archiving bots, I wouldn't mind if they died.
> The key is having suitable replacements in place first, of course.
>
>> Employing a python programmer or two somewhere cheap like India or South
>> America would not be a huge investment for the foundation, but it would
>> be a valuable service to the community, and unlike mediawiki development
>> this could be completely volunteer driven with wikimedians deciding which
>> bots are worth maintaining and their relative priority.
>
> Do you have a ballpark estimate of how much money we're talking about per
> year per programmer? I'm mostly just curious how it would compare to
> hiring someone in San Francisco, for example.
>
> Was the Wikimedia Foundation intended to be a technology company? Is the
> current Wikimedia Foundation suited to be a technology company or would it
> be better off contracting out development? These are probably higher level
> questions, but they're inter-related with what we're discussing here.
>
> But more to your point about hiring cheaper labor, we don't know if a
> popular tool means that the approach taken was the best or should be
> sustained. We ideally want scalable, sustainable, and secure tools. I'm
> pretty wary of the idea that we could easily outsource this work.
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
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>
> End of Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 131, Issue 48
> ********************************************
Hopefully this was just an error than. When is Nemo being un-moderated?
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
Without referring to who is involved and who isn't - -
Five years ago, I was part of the work on a strategic plan for the
> Wikimedia movement. Much has changed since then. Now, I’m back...and
> we’re working on strategic direction again. :-)
> Today, we're kicking-off a two-week community consultation about the future
> of Wikimedia.
> I hope you'll participate in the online discussion about new internet
> trends and how Wikimedia responds to these changes, which will help to
> shape the future of Wikimedia.
Why only these two questions? And why only two weeks? I fear this is not
really a consultation but a survey.
Also: Is the strategy for 2015? 2015-2016? Longer?
If the process has already begun, I wish the community (or at least a few
stakeholders outside WMF staff and BoT) were more involved, and the process
was transparent. After all, we're all learners here...
I don't want to sound negative, I'm all for thinking about lofty goals and
how to better prepare for the future. But this seems to me the wrong way to
go about it. Still, I answered and hope the outcomes are useful somehow...
--
-Ido
"There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary,
and those who don't."
(unknown)
Hello all,
Five years ago, I was part of the work on a strategic plan for the
Wikimedia movement. Much has changed since then. Now, I’m back...and
we’re working on strategic direction again. :-)
Today, we're kicking-off a two-week community consultation about the future
of Wikimedia.
I hope you'll participate in the online discussion about new internet
trends and how Wikimedia responds to these changes, which will help to
shape the future of Wikimedia.
The discussion is on meta, at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2015_Strategy/Community_consultation
For more background on this consultation, check out this blog post:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/02/23/strategy-consultation/
Your vision matters. I look forward to hearing from you as we chart the
way forward.
Regards,
Philippe Beaudette
Director, Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation
*Philippe Beaudette * \\ Director, Community Advocacy \\ Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc.
T: 1-415-839-6885 x6643 | philippe(a)wikimedia.org | : @Philippewiki
<https://twitter.com/Philippewiki>
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-------- Messaggio inoltrato --------
Oggetto: [Commons-l] Help fund a macro lens for a Commons contributor
Data: Sun, 22 Feb 2015 12:26:05 +0000
Mittente: Tomasz W. Kozłowski <twkozlowski(a)gmail.com>
Rispondi-a: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List
<commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
A: wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
CC: commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Hi list,
this is just to let you know that a group of Commons volunteers have
just launched a crowdfunding campaign at Indiegogo to fund a macro
lens for Jeevan Jose a.k.a. Jkadavoor so as to allow him to take even
better pictures of the amazing biodiversity in his home state of
Kerala, India.
The pictures, of course, are released by Jee under a free licence and
uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, and then used in Wikipedia articles in
multiple languages.
As an uninvolved person who has just been made aware of this, all I
can say is: have a look at the campaign page at
<http://igg.me/at/jkadavoor> and decide for yourselves whether this is
a project you want to help with.
[CC-ing this to the Commons mailing list as well.]
Regards,
--
Tomasz W. Kozlowski
a.k.a. [[user:odder]]
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Hi all,
As Erik announced in November [1], the Foundation has changed its
reporting from the monthly cycle that has been in place since 2008 to
a quarterly rhythm. A main reason being to better align it with the
quarterly planning and goalsetting process that has been extended to
the entire organization since Lila took the helm. The first of these
new quarterly reports has now been published here, in the format of a
slide deck suitable for a 90 minute presentation:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Quarterly_Repo…
As discussed before [2], the main objectives and design principles for
this report were:
* Accountability: Help our movement and our supporters understand how
we spend our effort, and what we accomplish.
* Learning together: Highlight important internal & external data,
trends and lessons.
* Presentable: Anyone, from volunteer to the executive director,
should be able to present the work of the WMF using this report.
* Reasonable effort: Pull as much as possible from existing sources,
e.g., quarterly review slide decks & minutes.
Please refer to the linked PDF for the full report (I will see to
provide a wiki version on Meta in the next few days, exploring the
best technical process for this kind of conversion). But to offer an
excerpt from the “Key insights and trends” part (slide 5):
--
* Readership: Globally, pageviews are flat. Mobile is growing, desktop
is shrinking. Given a growing global potential audience, this means we
need to invest in the readership experience, with focus on mobile.
We have learned that we can move at highest velocity on mobile apps
due to their self-contained nature.
* Beyond editing: Inviting readers to perform classification tasks on
their smartphone is showing promise; response quality is exceeding
expectations.
* Performance: The implementation of HHVM across Wikimedia sites is an
engineering success story and demonstrates that dedicated focus in the
area of site performance can pay off relatively quickly.
* Fundraising: Mobile matters -- thanks to focused effort, we were
able to increase the mobile revenue share from 1.7% to 16.1% (2013 vs.
2014 year-end campaign).
--
Be aware that in the interest of readability, the report focuses on
the work done on a number of key priorities rather than attempting a
comprehensive list of every team’s goals - for a more detailed view,
consider referring to the documentation of that team’s quarterly
reviews [3]. This being the first report in this new format, we will
surely tweak format, content (including the choice of key metrics) and
process for the subsequent issues. Comments continue to be welcome at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_reports .
Regards, Tilman
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2014-November/001…
[2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-February/076747.html
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarter…
--
Tilman Bayer
Senior Analyst
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
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Dear all,
The Affiliations Committee has recently resolved [1] to renew the
recognition of Wikimedia Community User Group Brasil as a Wikimedia User
Group for another year. /Parabéns /to our fellow wikimedians in Brazil
and looking forward to see more activities and events from you guys!
Tudo de bom! :-)
Regards,
Carlos
1:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Renewals…
--
"*Jülüjain wane mmakat* ein kapülain tü alijunakalirua jee wayuukanairua
junain ekerolaa alümüin supüshuwayale etijaanaka. Ayatashi waya junain."
Carlos M. Colina
Socio, 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 Wikimedians,
Among the WMF’s top priorities for 2015 is strengthening our engagement
with Wikimedia editors and volunteers. Today we are taking the first step
by bringing together the people who know our communities best and asking
them to break barriers and improve engagement. Everyone at the WMF who
carries responsibilities directly related to the communities will join a
new Community Engagement department.
I have asked Luis Villa to lead the Community Engagement organization as
the Senior Director of Community Engagement, reporting to me. Promoting
from within the WMF for this critical role will allow us to leverage the
knowledge and experience with our communities and reinforce the strengths
of our people.
Luis’s experience with communities is lengthy and deep. He has been
involved in open communities since the late 1990s, from communities as
small as the Lego Mindstorms hackers to those as large as Mozilla. He
worked in open communities as a lawyer, a programmer, a bugmaster, an
engineering lead, a community leader, and a board member. Luis has
performed exceptionally within the Foundation and supported some of our
most fruitful community engagements. The Grantmaking, L&E, Education,
Community Advocacy and Community Liaisons teams will join the new Community
Engagement department [2] under his leadership.
Unfortunately, Anasuya Sengupta -- our beloved leader of grantmaking --
will be leaving us due to personal health concerns at the end of March. We
will invite you soon to celebrate her time with us, her work at the WMF and
the deep insight she brought to the Foundation. We are saddened to see her
go. The team she has nurtured will provide an important foundation for our
upcoming work.
Siko Bouterse will move up to lead the day-to-day work of the Grantmaking
team as Director of Community Resources, supervising all department Grant
programs and the Global South strategy. Siko has been instrumental in
innovating programs at the WMF, including initiatives like the Teahouse[1]
and the IdeaLab[2] combining vision with strong support for volunteer
community, tough decision making, and great project management skills.
These changes are an opportunity to improve the coordination of our work
supporting the communities. To accelerate this, I have asked Luis to lead
an internal “tiger” team to better understand the needs, concerns and
priorities of our volunteers, and to develop recommendations for future
programs. This work will be shared with all of you as it becomes available.
Please join me in congratulating Luis and Siko and in supporting our teams.
The Wikimedia communities are what makes the projects strong, unique, and
irreplaceable. This is the next step forward in our support to them, and in
service of our mission.
~~~~Lila
[1] As Director of Community Resources, Siko will oversee the IdeaLab,
Annual Plan Grants, Project and Event Grants, and Travel and Participation
Support. Her team will include Katy Love, Winifred Olliff, Alex Wang,
Janice Tud, Jonathan Morgan, and Asaf Bartov. Asaf will also take on a new
title as Senior Program Officer, Emerging Wikimedia Communities.
[2] Rachel DiCerbo, Philippe Beaudette, Siko, and Anasuya’s other direct
reports, and their respective teams (CL, CA, and Grantmaking/GLEE) will
report to Luis. The Engineering Community team will be part of the tiger
team but will continue to report to Engineering.
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab
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(Now continuing this discussion on Wikimedia-l also, since we are
discussing grant policies.)
For what it's worth, I repeatedly advocated for allowing IEG to support a
broader range of tech projects when I was on IEGCom. I had the impression
that there was a lot of concern about limited code review staff time, but
it serms to me that WMF has more than enough funds to to pay for staffing
for code review if that is the bottleneck for tech-focused IEGs (as well as
other code changes).
I also think that the grant scope policies in general seem too conservative
with regard to small grants (roughly $30k and under). WMF has millions of
dollars in reserves, there is plenty of mission-aligned work to be done,
and WMF itself frequently hires contractors to perform technical,
administrative, communications, legal and organizing work. It seems to me
that the scope of allowed funding for grants should be similar to the scope
of allowed work for contractors, and it would serve the purposes that
donors have in mind when they donate to WMF if the scope of allowed
purposes for grants is expanded, particularly given WMF's and the
community's increasing skills with designing and measuring projects for
impact.
In the past I think there were probably some wasteful uses of grant
funding, and the response at the time might have been to prohibit or refuse
to fund entire categories of expenses. Now that everyone has more planning
and evaluation capacity, it seems to me that this is a good time to rethink
the categorical prohibitions and replace at least some of them with
appropriate expectations for impact that would better serve our overall
mission of creating and sharing knowledge.
Pine
On Feb 21, 2015 12:05 PM, "Brian Wolff" <bawolff(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/21/15, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > In general WMF has a conservative grant policy (with the exception of
> IEG,
> > grant funding seems to be getting more conservative every year, and some
> > mission-aligned projects can't get funding because they don't fit into
> the
> > current molds of the grants programs). Spontaneous cash awards for
> previous
> > work are unlikely. However, if there is an existing project that could
> use
> > some developer time, it may be possible to get grant funding for future
> > work.
> >
>
> [Rant]
>
> I find this kind of doubtful when IEG's (which for an individual
> developer doing a "small" project is really the type of funding that
> applies) have been traditionally denied for anything that even
> remotely touches WMF infrastructure. (Arguably the original question
> was about toollabs things, which is far enough away from WMF
> infrastructure to be allowed as an IEG grant, but I won't let that
> stop my rant...). Furthermore, it appears that IEGs now seem to be
> focusing primarily on gender gap grants.
>
> I find it odd, that we have grants through GSOC and OPW to people who
> are largely "newbies" (although there are exceptions), and probably
> not in a position to do anything "major". IEG provides grants as long
> as they are far enough away from the main site to not actually change
> much. But we do not provide grants to normal contributors who want to
> improve the technology of our websites, in big or important ways.
>
> Ostensibly this is done in the name of:
> >Any technical components must be standalone or completed on-wiki.
> Projects are
> >completed without assistance or review from WMF engineering, so MediaWiki
> >Extensions or software features requiring code review and integration
> cannot be
> >funded. On-wiki tech work (templates, user scripts, gadgets) and
> completely
> >standalone applications without a hosting dependency are allowed.
>
> Which on one hand is understandable. WMF-tech has its own priorities,
> and can't spend all its time babysitting whatever random ideas get
> funded. So I understand the fear that brought this about. On the other
> hand it is silly, since a grant to existing tech contributors is going
> to have much less review burden than gsoc/opw, and many projects might
> have minimal review burden, especially because most review could
> perhaps be done by non-wmf employees with +2, requiring only a final
> security/performance sign off. In fact, we do already provide very
> limited review to whatever randoms submit code to us over the internet
> (regardless of how they are funded, or lack thereof). If IEG grants
> were allowed in this area, it would be something that the grantee
> would have to plan and account for, with the understanding that nobody
> is going to provide a team of WMF developers to make someone else's
> grant happen. We should be providing the same amount of support to IEG
> grantees that we would to anyone who submitted code to us. That is,
> not much, but perhaps a little, and the amount dependent on how good
> their ideas are, and how clean their code is.
>
>
> [End rant]
>
> Politically, I think its dangerous how WMF seems to more and more
> become the only stakeholder in MediaWiki development (Not that there
> is anything wrong with the WMF, I just don't like there being only 1
> stakeholder). One way for there to be a more diverse group of
> interests is to allow grants to groups with goals consistent with
> Wikimedia's. While not exactly super diverse (all groups have similar
> goals), at least there would then be more groups, and hopefully result
> in more interesting and radical projects.
>
> --bawolff
>
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