Hi everyone,
We are excited to share that we have chosen the first round of grantees for
the Knowledge Equity Fund pilot. The Equity Fund Committee selected six
grantees across the Middle East, Africa, and North and South America who
focus on issues of access, education and equity within the regions they
support. You can read an overview of the six grantees and their work on
Diff[1]. We’ve also added information about the grantees and what’s next
for this pilot program to our Meta page[2].
We are happy to welcome these new grantees, and look forward to their work
as movement partners to support the free knowledge ecosystem. Let us know
if you have questions on the Talk Page[3].
Thank you,
Lisa Gruwell and the Equity Fund Committee
[1]
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/08/welcome-to-the-first-grantees-of-the-…
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Knowledge_Equity_Fund&act…
--
Lisa Seitz Gruwell
Chief Advancement Officer
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Jan Böhmermann <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_B%C3%B6hmermann>
published an amazing expose on political WP editing in Germany; it gets
good around 15 minutes in
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNsTaKwyAzI&t=900s>. In the video he
exposed the workings of a paid editing farm run (by Olaf Kosinsky (Wikidata
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30108329>; CheckUser discussion
<https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Umgang_mit_bezahltem_Sc…>
; archived PR-services site
<https://web.archive.org/web/20210416110100/https://kosinsky.eu/>), an
excellent long-time editor with over 3 million edits.
*We need to distinguish paid editing from general COI editing*. Paid
editing is COI editing by professionals, who have strong external
incentives to persist, no leeway in the outcome they are aiming
for, experience in doing this in dozens of cases, and may have colleagues
who can drop in as 'uninvolved' editors to forge consensus or social
proof.[1]
This is one of our great recurring challenges, siphoning off both our
reputation and our community. There are many things we can do about paid
editing, starting with maintaining *paid-editing metrics and a dashboard*
of known and estimated paid editing. We can estimate its prevalence by the
availabiity of services online[2]; and look for patterns of such editing on
wiki. Even with large error margins, this would be a step above simply
waiting for outbreaks to be discovered and reacting to the visible bits of
the iceberg.
What sort of metrics like this do we have already? Who is working on such
things?
Since the above video came out, de:wp started a table of WP editing services
<https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Umgang_mit_bezahltem_Sc…>.
It currently includes an initial dozen examples, with no estimate of
activity (the 1 account known to be associated with each is in most cases
blocked; but most have active websites soliciting work) This would be
useful in all languages.
SJ
[1] as Melmann wrote
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_167#L…>
recently:
"*in my experience, **all the most difficult edits are WP:PAID
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PAID>**. Most non-paid COI comes
from a place of desire to make things better, and often can be relatively
easily guided towards a better place... [or] it is relatively easy to use
existing enforcement mechanisms to to correct and ultimately control their
behaviours. PR professionals, on the other hand, are subtle and sometimes
downright deceptive, and it takes lots of effort to check their edits when
most of the time you lack context and expertise and you really have to
research in depth to see their edits for what they really are. I think that
one of the fundamental mistakes of the current policy is lumping paid
editors with general COI editing as paid editors are fundamentally playing
on a different level in terms of PR expertise and incentives*"
[2] Just searching for this online led to ads from dozens of services. The
first 10 below seem to be clones of the same service (perhaps run by the
same farm)
Elite Wiki Writers
Wiki Curators
Wiki Genies
Wikipedia Legends
Wiki Page Writing
Wiki Page Creator
WikiProfs
Wiki Specialist LLC
Wiki Writers Workshop
Wikipedia Publisher
Wikipedia Services
360 Ghostwriting
Contentfly
Otter PR
Premium Content Writing
ReputationX
Upwork
Hi all,
Join the Research Team at the Wikimedia Foundation [1] for their monthly
Office hours next Tuesday, 2021-09-07, at 16:00-17:00 UTC (9am PT/6pm
CEST).
To participate, join the video-call via this link [2]. There is no set
agenda - feel free to add your item to the list of topics in the etherpad
[3] (You can do this after you join the meeting, too.), otherwise you are
welcome to also just hang out. More detailed information (e.g. about how to
attend) can be found here [4].
Through these office hours, we aim to make ourselves more available to
answer some of the research related questions that you as Wikimedia
volunteer editors, organizers, affiliates, staff, and researchers face in
your projects and initiatives. Some example cases we hope to be able to
support you in:
-
You have a specific research related question that you suspect you
should be able to answer with the publicly available data and you don’t
know how to find an answer for it, or you just need some more help with it.
For example, how can I compute the ratio of anonymous to registered editors
in my wiki?
-
You run into repetitive or very manual work as part of your Wikimedia
contributions and you wish to find out if there are ways to use machines to
improve your workflows. These types of conversations can sometimes be
harder to find an answer for during an office hour, however, discussing
them can help us understand your challenges better and we may find ways to
work with each other to support you in addressing it in the future.
-
You want to learn what the Research team at the Wikimedia Foundation
does and how we can potentially support you. Specifically for affiliates:
if you are interested in building relationships with the academic
institutions in your country, we would love to talk with you and learn
more. We have a series of programs that aim to expand the network of
Wikimedia researchers globally and we would love to collaborate with those
of you interested more closely in this space.
-
You want to talk with us about one of our existing programs [5].
Hope to see many of you,
Martin on behalf of the WMF Research Team
[1] https://research.wikimedia.org
[2] https://meet.jit.si/WMF-Research-Office-Hours
[3] https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Research-Analytics-Office-hours
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Office_hours
[5] https://research.wikimedia.org/projects.html
--
Martin Gerlach
Research Scientist
Wikimedia Foundation
Hi everyone,
TL;DR
-
Apply for EduWiki Outreach Collaborators (EWOC) by signing up in this
form
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeA3l-xTQlIl4rhXqaONAUFFxPnhzS4yJM…>
. <https://bit.ly/eduwikiccc>(Please check the privacy statement below
before clicking on the google form link)
-
Find the roles for EWOC here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/EduWiki_Outreach_Collaborators#Ro…>
.
-
Stay tuned for some live interviews with our former EWOC members over
the Education team’s Facebook page.
<https://www.facebook.com/WikimediaEducationTeam>
I hope you are doing well, I am writing this email to announce the call for
applications for the second cohort of EduWiki Outreach Collaborators. EduWiki
Outreach Collaborators or EWOC are a dynamic group of Wikimedians who
collaborate with the education team at the Wikimedia Foundation to provide
support, effective collaboration, and learning opportunities for the
education community in the Wikimedia movement.
In 2020, we started this pilot initiative to work with community leaders of
our movement to support volunteers in the movement with better networking,
communication practices for growth, and to work together to spread the
awareness on the value of Wikimedia in education. As a result of which we
had the opportunity to work with 14 Wikimedia community members from
various parts of the world. These volunteers helped in publishing 12
Education newsletters issues, shared many community stories from their
regions, and helped in hosting 3 regional education meetings with 54
participants from 20 countries.
This year we are planning to expand the program and we are planning to work
with 20 volunteers in 8 different roles. To have more information regarding
this program, please visit our Meta page.
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/EduWiki_Outreach_Collaborators#Ro…>
The strategic goals are designed by the 2020-2021 cohort of volunteers.
We encourage volunteers from all regions and genders to be a part of this
project! We expect the group of EWOC to represent the diversity of our
movement and the call for participation will be open until we achieve this
goal. Respecting the privacy of the members, personal information provided
will not be shared with an external audience. To apply for this
opportunity, please complete this form.
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeA3l-xTQlIl4rhXqaONAUFFxPnhzS4yJM…>
To encourage participation and to recognise the works of the collaborators,
we have decided on certain rewards for completing different milestones.
Find more about EWOC, roles and recognitions here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/EduWiki_Outreach_Collaborators#Re…>
.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns, I will be happy
to answer them. Looking forward to working closely with you on this
project. Feel free to share this in your network.
*This survey will be conducted via a third-party service, which may subject
it to additional terms. For more information on privacy and data-handling,
see the survey privacy statement:*
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Sign-up_for_Community_Communications_…
Best!
Sailesh and the Education team
--
Sailesh Patnaik (He/Him)
Program Officer, Education
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Thank you for participating in the 2021 Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Trustees election! Voting closed August 31 at 23:59. The official data,
including the four most voted candidates, will be announced as soon as the
Elections Committee completes their review of the ballots. The official
announcement of the new trustees appointed will happen later, once the
selected candidates have been confirmed by the Board.
6,946 community members from 216 wiki projects have voted. This makes 10.2%
global participation, 1.1% higher than in the last Board elections. In
2017, 5167 people from 202 wiki projects cast their vote. A full analysis
is planned to be published in a few days when the confirmed results are
announced. In the meantime, you can check the data produced during the
election.
Diversity was an important goal with these elections. Messages about the
Board election were translated into 61 languages. This outreach worked
well. There were 70 communities with eligible voters voting in this
election for the first time. With your help, next year’s Board of Trustees
election will be even better.
Links and translations here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021/2021-09…
Best,
--
*Jackie Koerner*
*she/her*
Facilitator, Movement Strategy and Governance
*English language communities and Meta-Wiki*
Dear Community Members,
We are glad to announce that the call for submission of proposals for Wiki
Indaba 2021 is now open.
WikiIndaba will be hosted by the Wikimedia Community User group Uganda and
held virtually between 05 - 07 November 2021 under the theme Rethink +
Reset : Visions of the Future.
Please check the link below for more information about submissions :
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiIndaba_conference_2021/Submissions
The deadline for submission is 24th September 2021.
Please reach out to wikiuganda(a)gmail.com if you have any questions.
Thank you.
Kind regards,
Geoffrey Kateregga, on behalf of the Wiki Indaba 2021 Local Organizing Team
Someone with the entirely authoritative email address "
hillbillyholiday(a)gmail.com" writes (apparently under the impression that I
don't know who Andreas is) the following:
'I am appalled by your sneering condescension of Andreas.'
This is an unusual misreading of a fairly straightforward, even though
ironic, text. A careful reader will have noted that did not dispute
Andreas's research or recitation of any facts. What I did dispute is his
characterization of motives, which is ungrounded in any of those facts.
In a subsequent message, Hillbillyholiday says somethingsomethingsomething
about me being a nazi, haha.
In the land where I grew up, soi-disant "hillbillies"--whether on holiday
or not--knew their Bible verses. So perhaps Hillbilly will understand why
the verse that comes to mind in reference to his attempt at a riposte is
Job 38:4.
Mike
On Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 3:35 AM <wikimedia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
wrote:
> Send Wikimedia-l mailing list submissions to
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> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2021 (Kiril Simeonovski)
> 2. Re: Wikipedia issues in UNDARK.org #Opinion article to check...
> (hillbillyholiday(a)gmail.com)
> 3. Re: Wikipedia issues in UNDARK.org #Opinion article to check...
> (Gerard Meijssen)
> 4. Re: Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2021
> (Ashwin Baindur - User AshLin)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2021 22:21:50 +0200
> From: Kiril Simeonovski <kiril.simeonovski(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2021
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <CABuEHm4TPFUibdkyXz0=
> ueFWaMMJ5Fu1mF9LEFE_e2b8QegZ3w(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
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>
> Dear all,
>
> I would like to announce the Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2021
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Online_Meeting_2021>, which
> is scheduled to take place from 5-7 November and will be a virtual event
> for a second consecutive year.
>
> This year's conference will be labelled with the slogan "Meet for a Better
> Future!" and its programme will be mostly filled with session proposals
> received through a call for submissions, while there will also be a handful
> of sessions that will feature keynote speakers or will be formatted as
> plenary discussions on important topics from the Wikimedia movement. *You
> can submit your session proposal
> <
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Online_Meeting_2021/Submissio…
> >
> until
> the extended deadline of 30 September 2021.*
>
> Considering that the event will take place in an online environment and
> there are no significant barriers for participation, we would like to
> encourage participation and session proposals by people from outside the
> region of Central and Eastern Europe.
>
> In case you have any questions regarding the conference, please do not
> hesitate to contact the Organising Committee members
> <
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Online_Meeting_2021/Developme…
> >.
> You can also read the official blog post
> <
> https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/07/20/announcing-the-wikimedia-cee-online-m…
> >
> announcing the event in order to get more information about it.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Kiril Simeonovski
>