(Forwarding on behalf of Zita)
Hello everyone,
Thank you to everyone who expressed interest in joining the Elections
Committee. If you would like to volunteer for this role, please submit your
candidacy on Meta at
Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee/Nominations/2023
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee/No…>
by April 24, 2023, at 23:59 AoE (anywhere on Earth). You can find more
information in the original message here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Wiki…>
.
Once again, thank you for your support and interest in this role.
Best regards,
Zita Zage <zuz-ctr(a)wikimedia.org>
Hi everyone,
I am excited to share with you that next Tuesday April 18, the winners of
Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 will be announced.
Wiki Loves Monuments is a federated photo competition around built
heritage, which is held annually since 2010.
As always, we'll be hosting our award ceremony through our social media
channels on Twitter <https://twitter.com/wikimonuments> and Instagram
<https://www.instagram.com/wikilovesmonuments/>, where we will have a
countdown from the number 25 to number 1.
We have scheduled two countdown windows: we will announce the honorary
mentions on Monday April 17, starting at 6pm UTC with number 25 and
counting down to number 16 at 10.30pm, announcing one image per 30 minutes.
We'll have a little break after that and will return with the number 15 at
7am on Tuesday April 18 and again announcing one winner per half hour, to
finish with the celebration of the international winner of Wiki Loves
Monuments 2022 at 2pm UTC.
Please keep an eye out for our posts, and join us in admiring these
beautiful images of built heritage around the world, and congratulating the
winners.
A gallery with all the winning photos will be published on our own blog
<https://www.wikilovesmonuments.org/> and on the WMF Diff site afterwards.
Our thanks go to the national organisers, the national juries and, of
course, the 2022 WLM international jury, without whom none of this would
have been possible.
On behalf of the Wiki Loves Monuments international organising team,
Best,
Ciell
Hi Everyone,
The Wikimedia Youth Conference 2023 scheduled to be held in Spain in
September will be the first youth conference in the movement.
The conference grant team is eager to provide all relevant support in order
to ensure that the conference is successful. But in order to do this, more
time other than what is available will be needed. Therefore, they did
recommend that the conference be moved to 2024 in order to avail more time
to work on addressing relevant needs where possible.
We are therefore advised to keep our preparations still going. We also
understand that we could use this additional time to strategize more on the
conference planning.
We know that we had made a call for the conference subcommittees. We will
reach out to the selected applicants to explain how the engagement could
look like given this circumstance.
Beyond that, we will still be working on the conference design and
planning. We hope to keep you informed of all the updates as they come.
We are happy to answer any questions or concerns.
Best regards,
James Popoola
On behalf of the WikiYouthCon COT.
--
Best regards,
James Popoola
President, Wikimedia Fan Club University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria
Co-founder, Wiki Loves SDGs Nigeria & TCD Africa
Instagram <http://instagram.com/TheJamesPopoola> | Facebook
<https://www.facebook.com/jamespopoola247> | Twitter
<http://twitter.com/TheJamesPopoola> | Linkedin
<http://linkedin.com/in/JamesPopoola> |Website
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:James_Moore200>
Hello everyone!
Are you getting ready for the GLAM Wiki: The Culture, Heritage and
Wikimedia Conference? The Conference will take place in Montevideo,
Uruguay, in November 16-18, 2023, in the School of Communication &
Information Sciences of the University of the Republic of Uruguay.
We are looking to create a Program & Scholarship Committee, so we are
inviting YOU to take part in helping us to draft the conference. If you are
interested, you can apply through the form [1]. You can apply till April
23rd, end of your day.
Want to know more about the event? You can check our grant application [2]
and our Launch Event [3], where we clarified some questions and doubts.
Looking forward to seeing you all in beautiful Uruguay.
[1] https://forms.gle/mbRvMqksJKnxYSyV9
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Programs/Wikimedia_Community_Fund/Co…
[3]
https://us06web.zoom.us/rec/share/IRRfnhR7skybhdpCX13gbwWK9KkYH_-x-qG4YH-Gc…
--
Evelin Heidel
Encargada de Programas
Wikimedistas de Uruguay
Hi, I did not want to prolongue this lengthy exchange but since it refuses to stop, and our Australian colleague keeps repeating on "moral bankruptcy"... As a CEE person I would like to share a different perspective. Dear Gnangarra, I am pretty sure your messages come from good intentions but in fact they are pretty offensive for a lot of people on this list, and in the Movement. Firstly, like a number of other people on this list I work in a medium-income country for a multinational, and I find this narrative offensive. I don't think I am "morally bankrupt", nor that my employer is. Certainly, it could be nice to be priviledged and be born in a high-income country and work from there but the majority of the world - including a big chunk of the Wikimedia Movement - does not have this luxury. And dear Gnangarra, we need to work for a living, probably even more often that the high-income part of the world. In the past, people in my world had very limited options; now I believe it is much better, at least in some professions, to not be forced to migrate to another country and culture, take a very low-income job, or both (a sad fate of many migrants). In fact, I think my society wins as a whole when I can export my high value services and spend locally - and you can see it observing my country for the past 30 years. Secondly, I am not even sure why you believe that the working conditions are universally worse outside of e.g. the U.S. Actually, in many terms they are much better (considering US labour laws, amount of free days, medical and social care etc.). What less capitalized countries lack is firstly capital and high value contracts, and denying them jobs worsens the situation, not improves it. And is my income the same as in the high-income country? Not really neither now nor in a close future - but cutting me and others from the job market will make it even worse. Thirdly, before picking on Romania in this context, I would check actual working conditions there. Otherwise it is "westsplaining" "why you people can't have this position" at best, and perpetuating some unclear stereotypes at worst. Finally, I would like to remind that we are on a very difficult mission, with few resources, and probably fewer in the future. We need to be responsible to our auditorium, our members and our donors, and seek effectiveness and efficacy in spending. These decisions are always difficult, multi-dimensional and require a lot of good discussion. I would like to invite everyone to such discussions in an open yet friendly manner. End of my rant. from Poland with love, Michał Dnia 20 kwietnia 2023 10:21 Gnangarra <gnangarra(a)gmail.com> napisał(a): No, what I said was that firing people in one country then hiring some else in another country with the same skills to do the same job just because employment conditions are cheaper is morally bankrupt. With that just hiring from certain countries because its cheapest with the least amount of conditions, is also morally bankrupt. On Thu, 20 Apr 2023 at 16:02, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood(a)telkomsa.net > wrote: So leave them to rot because their standard of living is low and their government is crap? Right. From: Gnangarra [mailto: gnangarra(a)gmail.com ] Sent: 18 April 2023 13:49 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Reflecting on my listening tour Hiring people because they are in such countries as the basis for saving money is morally bankrupt, yet we'll happily draw from the pool of donations that primarily come from those more expensive countries. Much like we talk about equity but decide that some places arent worth engaging in because its too far to travel leaving others to shoulder the burden of travel. On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 at 19:35, Felipe Schenone < schenonef(a)gmail.com > wrote: Yet in some countries, like mine, paying for food, renting a place, buying a house, etc. is far cheaper than in the US, so paying a lower salary (in USD) wouldn't amount to a lower standard of living at all, and doesn't feel immoral, at least to me. On Tue, Apr 18, 2023 at 8:00 AM Gnangarra < gnangarra(a)gmail.com > wrote: Either we make software development cheaper somehow (move the WMF to Romania or something) Hiring in countries with the worst labour laws and cheapest minimum wages is totally immoral. Especially in a community where equity is part of our culture we must endeavour to ensure that employees/contractors regardless of where they live paid fairly and equally subject to skills and responsibilities of the role. WMF already has many employees that are based in countries where such immoral employment conditions dominate. On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 at 05:49, Dan Garry (Deskana) < djgwiki(a)gmail.com > wrote: I agree with much of what Amir has said here, except one little bit... On Mon, 17 Apr 2023 at 20:52, Amir Sarabadani < ladsgroup(a)gmail.com > wrote: And even if a software would have an owner, it used to be that the team was under so much pressure to produce new things instead of maintenance that the software would practically be without a maintainer (or worse, as even volunteers couldn't unofficially take the role). I can example a few. I think pressure on a team to deliver new things is one reason why this situation has come about, but it's far from being the only one. Here's a few others off the top of my head: Owning so many things that even if there was zero pressure to deliver new features, the team still couldn't maintain everything that they own. Incredibly powerful and incredibly complex features that teams are afraid of touching lest they break them and make community members angry. Conservatism and fear of community outrage causing reluctance to deprecate functionality. Lack of understanding of the impact of the feature. Lack of a clear roadmap (a list of bug reports and feature requests is not a roadmap). There's more but those are some that come to the top of my head. And, not everyone one of those always applies to every situation, e.g. I definitely don't think all of the items in your list should be deprecated! This causes the path of least resistance to be, for everyone involved, to leave things in limbo and hope for the best. Dan _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org , guidelines at: meta.wikimedia.orghttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and meta.wikimedia.orghttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at lists.wikimedia.orghttps://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org… To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org -- Boodarwun Gnangarra 'ngany dabakarn koorliny arn boodjera dardoon ngalang Nyungar koortaboodjar' _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org , guidelines at: meta.wikimedia.orghttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and meta.wikimedia.orghttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at lists.wikimedia.orghttps://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org… To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org , guidelines at: meta.wikimedia.orghttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and meta.wikimedia.orghttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at lists.wikimedia.orghttps://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org… To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org -- Boodarwun Gnangarra 'ngany dabakarn koorliny arn boodjera dardoon ngalang Nyungar koortaboodjar' www.avg.com Virus-free. www.avg.comwww.avg.com _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org , guidelines at: meta.wikimedia.orghttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and meta.wikimedia.orghttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at lists.wikimedia.orghttps://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org… To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org -- Boodarwun Gnangarra 'ngany dabakarn koorliny arn boodjera dardoon ngalang Nyungar koortaboodjar' _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: meta.wikimedia.orghttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and meta.wikimedia.orghttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at lists.wikimedia.orghttps://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org… To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org
On Thu, 2023-04-13 at 20:06 -0700, bawolff wrote:
> > "I think there are lots of promising opportunities to incentivise
> > people to pay off technical debt and make our existing stack more
> > sustainable. Right now there are no incentives for engineers in
> > this regard."
>
> Interesting. Personally to me, it can sometimes feel like we never
> stop talking about technical debt. While I think paying off technical
> debt is important, at times I feel like we've swung in the opposite
> direction where we are essentially rewriting things for the sake of
> rewriting things.
"Technical debt" spontaneously brings the following items to my little
mind. They should not be about rewriting but rather "maintenance":
* librsvg for SVG rendering is a five year old version:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193352 /
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T265549
* Graph extension on old Vega version 2.6.3: see subtasks of
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T292341
* Scribunto extension on old Lua version 5.1 (last 5.1.x release was
in 2012): https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T178146
* 3D extension on a five year old three.js library in
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T277930#7636129
* Removing the OpenStackManager extension from wikitech.wm.org:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161553
* Removing WVUI from MediaWiki
core: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T310244
* Replacing jsduck with JSDoc3 across all Wikimedia code bases:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T138401
* Undeploy VipsScaler from Wikimedia wikis:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T290759
* https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T151393 (a non-public task)
This is not a complete list. Plus there are also separate "waiting for
someone to make a decision" and "improving communicating & documenting
already-made decisions" categories which would be different lists.
Of course there might be valid reasons not to look into some of this
technical debt (other higher priorities, high risk, complexity, etc).
Cheers,
andre
--
Andre Klapper (he/him) | Bugwrangler / Developer Advocate
https://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/
Dear Wikimedians,
Yesterday it was announced that the Graph extension has been disabled due
to security vulnerabilities. Having the ability to visualize data is a
powerful tool in presenting information within a wikipedia page, so it is
great to have such an extension.
But this could be the moment to reach out to Our World in Data (
https://ourworldindata.org/), who have an even better set of data
visualization tools, based on similar libraries, that are actively
maintained by a strong community. Perhaps there is an opportunity for
collaboration. This will not be a short term solution, as forging OWID
software into an extension will take some time and backwards compatibility
is essential. But in the medium to long term it will result in better tools
and more compelling wiki pages.
I hope the community and WMF will support such an approach.
Regards,
Tim Moody
Hi all,
The next Research Showcase, with the theme of Images on Wikipedia, will be
live-streamed Wednesday, April 19, at 16:30 UTC. Find your local time here
<https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1681921857>.
YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW0waU-QArU
You can join the conversation on IRC at #wikimedia-research or on the
YouTube chat.
This month's presentations:
A large scale study of reader interactions with images on WikipediaBy *Daniele
Rama, University of Turin*Wikipedia is the largest source of free
encyclopedic knowledge and one of the most visited sites on the Web. To
increase reader understanding of the article, Wikipedia editors add images
within the text of the article’s body. However, despite their widespread
usage on web platforms and the huge volume of visual content on Wikipedia,
little is known about the importance of images in the context of free
knowledge environments. To bridge this gap, we collect data about English
Wikipedia reader interactions with images during one month and perform the
first large-scale analysis of how interactions with images happen on
Wikipedia. First, we quantify the overall engagement with images, finding
that one in 29 pageviews results in a click on at least one image, one
order of magnitude higher than interactions with other types of article
content. Second, we study what factors associate with image engagement and
observe that clicks on images occur more often in shorter articles and
articles about visual arts or transports and biographies of less well-known
people. Third, we look at interactions with Wikipedia article previews and
find that images help support reader information need when navigating
through the site, especially for more popular pages. The findings in this
study deepen our understanding of the role of images for free knowledge and
provide a guide for Wikipedia editors and web user communities to enrich
the world’s largest source of encyclopedic knowledge.
- Paperː
https://epjdatascience.springeropen.com/articles/10.1140/epjds/s13688-021-0…
Visual gender biases in Wikipediaː A systematic evaluation across the ten
most spoken languagesBy *Pablo Beytia, Catholic University of Chile*The
existing research suggests a significant gender gap in Wikipedia
biographical articles, with a minimal representation of women and gender
asymmetries in the textual content. However, the visual aspects of this gap
(e.g., image volume and quality) have received little attention. This study
examined asymmetries between women's and men's biographies, exploring
written and visual content across the ten most widely spoken languages. The
cross-lingual analysis reveals that (1) the most salient male biases appear
when editors select which personalities should have a Wikipedia page, (2)
the trends in written and visual content are dissimilar, (3) male
biographies tend to have more images across languages, and (4) female
biographies have better visual quality on average. The open database of
this study provides eight indicators of gender asymmetries in ten
occupational domains and ten languages. That information allows for a
granular view of gender biases, as well as exploring more macroscopic
phenomena, such as the similarity between Wikipedia versions according to
their gender bias structures.
- Papersː
Beytía, P., Agarwal, P., Redi, M., & Singh, V. K. (2022). Visual Gender
Biases in Wikipedia: A Systematic Evaluation across the Ten Most Spoken
Languages. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and
Social Media, 16(1), 43-54. https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v16i1.19271https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/19271Beytía, P. & Wagner,
C. (2022). Visibility layers: a framework for systematizing the gender gap
in Wikipedia content. Internet Policy Review, 11(1).
https://doi.org/10.14763/2022.1.1621https://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/visibility-layers-framework-sys…
You can watch our past Research Showcases here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase
Hope you can join us!
Warm regards,
Emily
--
Emily Lescak (she / her)
Senior Research Community Officer
The Wikimedia Foundation
I don't work for the Foundation, but my understanding is that the HR folks
there - and I'm sure many others across the organisation - have thought a
lot about the staff (and salary) implications of being an international
project with a US HQ. One particular question that seems to come up is
about whether salaries should be adjusted to the cost of living in a
particular region, which I personally agree with for the reasons that
Felipe outlined.
I do find this comment interesting: "WMF already has many employees that
are based in countries where such immoral employment conditions dominate."
I don't know who determines whether employment conditions are moral or
otherwise? As a (not entirely random) indicator, the minimum required paid
maternity leave in the U.S. is zero weeks, whereas in Romania it's a year.
Lucy
On Wed, 19 Apr 2023 at 13:05, <wikimedia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
wrote:
> Send Wikimedia-l mailing list submissions to
> wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit
>
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikimedia-l.lists.wikimedia.org/
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> wikimedia-l-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Wikimedia-l digest..."
>
> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Reflecting on my listening tour
> (Felipe Schenone)
> 2. Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Reflecting on my listening tour
> (The Cunctator)
> 3. Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Reflecting on my listening tour (Gnangarra)
> 4. Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Reflecting on my listening tour
> (Amir Sarabadani)
> 5. Re: Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 award ceremony announcement
> (Ciell Wikipedia)
> 6. Re: Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 award ceremony announcement
> (Kassia Echavarri-Queen)
> 7. Some Updates & Foundation’s 2023-2024 Annual Plan
> (Maryana Iskander)
> 8. Re: 23 March: Invitation to Open Community Call on ChatGPT,
> generative AI, and Wikimedia
> (Kimmo Virtanen)
> 9. [Wikimedia Announcements] Voting open in the seventeenth annual
> Picture of the Year contest
> (Kunal Mehta)
> 10. WikiYouthCon Update (James Popoola)
> 11. Graph Extension (Tim Moody)
> 12. Re: Graph Extension (James Heilman)
> 13. Re: Graph Extension (Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga)
> 14. Re: Graph Extension (Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2023 09:22:21 -0300
> From: Felipe Schenone <schenonef(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Reflecting on my listening
> tour
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <
> CABbLfopUW11bTNCSFGbE8Dq6TgXvJjofeiZfm-tyGXo68kvJYw(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
> boundary="00000000000042bac405f99b5eed"
>
> Just to put things into perspective, in Argentina, earning USD 4000 a month
> means you're the fucking king. You can rent almost any place you want, buy
> food and all necessities, eat out everyday, and have enough left over to
> buy some land or a house in a few years. By contrast, a quick Google search
> suggests that renting a 1-bedroom apartment in NYC costs around USD 4000,
> while in Silicon Valley costs around USD 2500. I may be wrong, but judging
> from https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries I can
> see that nowadays, WMF salaries don't go below USD 200,000 per year, or USD
> 16,000 a month.
>
> Rather than morally bankrupt, I'd argue that bringing salaries of even USD
> 5000 per month to people in countries like mine would be an economic
> bonanza and a smart use of resources, a win-win situation. Regarding labor
> laws, many non-US countries, like mine, have quite stringent labor laws
> (such as Argentina, due to a long history of syndicalism). Perhaps it's
> just a matter of finding countries that balance both criteria. I'm not sure
> that expanding development to cheaper countries is the solution to all of
> WMF software problems, but I think it could help a lot.
>
> On Tue, Apr 18, 2023 at 8:55 AM Gnangarra <gnangarra(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > or the 3am meetings
> >
> > On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 at 19:49, Gnangarra <gnangarra(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Hiring people because they are in such countries as the basis for saving
> >> money is morally bankrupt, yet we'll happily draw from the pool of
> >> donations that primarily come from those more expensive countries. Much
> >> like we talk about equity but decide that some places arent worth
> engaging
> >> in because its too far to travel leaving others to shoulder the burden
> of
> >> travel.
> >>
> >> On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 at 19:35, Felipe Schenone <schenonef(a)gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Yet in some countries, like mine, paying for food, renting a place,
> >>> buying a house, etc. is far cheaper than in the US, so paying a lower
> >>> salary (in USD) wouldn't amount to a lower standard of living at all,
> and
> >>> doesn't feel immoral, at least to me.
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, Apr 18, 2023 at 8:00 AM Gnangarra <gnangarra(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Either we make software development cheaper somehow (move the WMF to
> >>>>> Romania or something)
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Hiring in countries with the worst labour laws and cheapest minimum
> >>>> wages is totally immoral. Especially in a community where equity is
> part of
> >>>> our culture we must endeavour to ensure that employees/contractors
> >>>> regardless of where they live paid fairly and equally subject to
> skills and
> >>>> responsibilities of the role. WMF already has many employees that are
> >>>> based in countries where such immoral employment conditions dominate.
> >>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 at 05:49, Dan Garry (Deskana) <djgwiki(a)gmail.com>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> I agree with much of what Amir has said here, except one little
> bit...
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Mon, 17 Apr 2023 at 20:52, Amir Sarabadani <ladsgroup(a)gmail.com>
> >>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> And even if a software would have an owner, it used to be that the
> >>>>>> team was under so much pressure to produce new things instead of
> >>>>>> maintenance that the software would practically be without a
> maintainer (or
> >>>>>> worse, as even volunteers couldn't unofficially take the role). I
> can
> >>>>>> example a few.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I think pressure on a team to deliver new things is *one* reason why
> >>>>> this situation has come about, but it's far from being the only one.
> Here's
> >>>>> a few others off the top of my head:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> - Owning so many things that even if there was zero pressure to
> >>>>> deliver new features, the team still couldn't maintain everything
> that they
> >>>>> own.
> >>>>> - Incredibly powerful and incredibly complex features that teams
> >>>>> are afraid of touching lest they break them and make community
> members
> >>>>> angry.
> >>>>> - Conservatism and fear of community outrage causing reluctance to
> >>>>> deprecate functionality.
> >>>>> - Lack of understanding of the impact of the feature.
> >>>>> - Lack of a clear roadmap (a list of bug reports and feature
> >>>>> requests is not a roadmap).
> >>>>>
> >>>>> There's more but those are some that come to the top of my head. And,
> >>>>> not everyone one of those always applies to every situation, e.g. I
> >>>>> definitely don't think all of the items in your list should be
> deprecated!
> >>>>>
> >>>>> This causes the path of least resistance to be, for everyone
> involved,
> >>>>> to leave things in limbo and hope for the best.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Dan
> >>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org,
> >>>>> guidelines at:
> >>>>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> >>>>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> >>>>> Public archives at
> >>>>>
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org…
> >>>>> To unsubscribe send an email to
> wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>> Boodarwun
> >>>> Gnangarra
> >>>> 'ngany dabakarn koorliny arn boodjera dardoon ngalang Nyungar
> >>>> koortaboodjar'
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
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<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chief_Executive_Office…>
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<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chief_Executive_Office…>
Hi everyone,
As I near my one-and-a-half year mark as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, I
intend to continue providing updates here and elsewhere every few months
based on your ongoing feedback. (You can find my note from January 2023
here [1], and all of my past letters on Meta [2]).
My top three priorities have remained consistent: (1) strategy/planning,
(2) leadership, and (3) culture/values. On strategy, Wikimedia Foundation
Board of Trustees Chair Nataliia Tymkiv recently shared the outcomes [3] of
a strategic planning retreat that brought together Foundation leadership
with the Wikimedia Endowment Board and members of the Movement Charter
Drafting Committee. On planning, I will share more below.
On leadership, last Friday, our Chief Product & Technology Officer Selena
Deckelmann reflected on her first six months on the job. Selena named some
of the big issues [4] she hopes to help us all tackle in the years to come.
Thank you to those who have already given her some initial reactions.
Finally, I continue to believe more strongly than ever that culture and
values will be the most sustainable way to make lasting, positive change
together – on this front, the Wikimedia Foundation will complete a refresh
of our organizational values [5] by July.
The main purpose of this letter is to point you to the Foundation’s draft
annual plan [6] for our coming fiscal year (July 2023 through June 2024).
One of the first tasks I named when I started this job was to reimagine the
Foundation’s annual planning processes. Last year’s plan, my first at the
Foundation, was focused on radically changing how we did our work. This
included organizing our work more regionally to better respond to varying
needs around the world, and also leveling up our own performance,
accountability, and internal collaboration. This has put us in a better
position to more meaningfully describe what we can do in the year ahead.
Five quick observations about the draft plan before you hopefully take time
to look at the 17,000+ word document:
1.
Looking outward: Like last year, the plan starts by looking outward and
persistently asking ‘what does the world need from us now’? This question
remains at the heart of the Foundation’s approach to strategy and
planning. Earlier
this year, we shared external trends [7] impacting the mission of free
knowledge, and built on those trends with a well-attended community
conversation about recent advancements in generative AI and what that may
mean for the projects. Your reflections [8] on these trends is probably
the most important way to help make sure we’re all focused on the right
things over the long term.
1.
Anchored in movement strategy: For the second year, the plan is firmly
and unambiguously anchored in movement strategy. Our intention is to
connect the Foundation’s work even more deeply with the Movement Strategy
Recommendations [9] for more rapid progress towards the 2030 Strategic
Direction [10]. This is made actionable in our commitments to advancing
knowledge equity, growing the resource base for community-driven
priorities, and making sure the Foundation’s own effectiveness measurably
improves from learning and iteration.
1.
Our role in Product & Technology: Wikimedia’s people-centered movement
is powered by product and technology delivered by the Foundation and
volunteers. We have tried to more intentionally describe our unique role
as the platform provider supporting communities who are collaborating on a
massive scale. The bulk of this effort, called “Wiki Experiences,”[11]
recognizes that volunteers are at the heart of the Wikimedian process of
sensemaking and knowledge creation, and prioritizes established editors
(including those with extended rights, like admins, stewards, patrollers,
and moderators of all kinds, also known as functionaries) to ensure that
they have the right tools for the critical work they do every day to expand
and improve quality content, as well as manage community processes.
1.
Slower growth and trade-offs: As you will see in the draft plan, an
important driver of multi-year strategic planning will focus on the
structure of the Foundation’s budget, future financial projections, and
possible revenue/product trade-offs. As I shared in my note in January,
given the revenue shortfall from the December English fundraising campaign,
as well as an uncertain global economic outlook, the Foundation is
projecting reduced expenses and slower growth than in past years. Over the
past month, we have made internal budget cuts, prioritizing non-personnel
expenses but also reducing staffing by 5 percent. These difficult decisions
were made to support a more sustainable trajectory in expenses for the
coming few years, and also to maintain our overall funding levels to
movement partners (including more funding in all regions while prioritizing
proportionally larger growth in underrepresented regions).
1.
More granular information about how the Foundation operates. To increase
visibility and accountability [12], this annual plan includes more detailed
financial projections, such as various budget breakdowns of how we allocate
our resources. It also shares more granular organizational information,
such as our department goals, people processes, global guidelines, and
compensation principles. This is meant to complement some of the
Foundation’s recently published Diff posts outlining our approach to pay
visibility [13] and describing how we support a highly-distributed remote
workforce [14]. I hope this level of detail will result in more good-faith
conversations about what is, and what is not, possible to do with the
resources that we have.
Over the next month, all of us at the Wikimedia Foundation look forward to
hearing more from you on the direction we are taking. We have tried to
enable this in whatever form you prefer: on-wiki on Meta [15], project
village pumps, and open calls both virtual and in person [16] that are
being hosted over the coming weeks, many in partnership with global
communities around the world. Your comments, reflections, and provocations
will help improve what we have proposed to do before the Foundation’s Board
of Trustees considers the plan and budget in their June meeting.
I continue to welcome your direct engagement at miskander(a)wikimedia.org or
on my talk page [17].
Maryana
Maryana Iskander
Wikimedia Foundation CEO
p.s. On a more personal note – in keeping with the tradition of
transparency on additional board roles, earlier this year I shared with the
Wikimedia Foundation Trustees that I am under consideration to join the
board of Yale University, my law school alma mater. The alumni election
process is underway now, and I will let you know the results when they are
finalized.
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chief_Executive_Office…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chief_Executive_Office…
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Marc…
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Leadership_team/Chief_…
[5]
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/04/17/we-are-in-this-mission-together-refre…
[6]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-2024
[7]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-2024/…
[8]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-2024/…
[9]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Recommendations/Summary
[10]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017
[11]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-2024/…
[12]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Principles#Transparency_&…
[13]
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/02/17/wikimedia-foundation-remote-first-and…
[14]
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/04/06/wikimedia-foundation-global-guideline…
[15]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-…
[16]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-2024/…
[17]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/User_talk:MIskander-WMF