Dear Wikimedians,
We hope this message finds you well and that you are in good spirits. We
are the Let’s Connect working group
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Knowledge_Sharing/Connect/Team>- a
team of movement contributors/organizers who are liaison representatives of 7/8
regions <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_regions>. We are
connecting with you to see if you are interested in and/or know about the
peer-to-peer program, Let’s Connect
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Knowledge_Sharing/Connect>!
The program creates an open and safe learning space for any Wikimedian who is
part of an organized group to share and learn different skills
(organizational/interpersonal / grant related / learning & evaluation ...)
with other peers to add value and contribute collectively to the community.
The purpose is to further develop skills, share knowledge and promote human
connections and mutual support between different groups and communities, in
alignment with the Movement Strategy
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy>.
Every month, we host 2-3 live 2-hour learning clinics
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Knowledge_Sharing/Connect#Live_learn…>
with interesting topics selected by our team and our interested sharers.
Our live learning sessions have up to 4 interpreters translating the clinic
for our participants. Our main languages are Spanish | Arabic | French |
Portuguese. If there is a specific language you would like to see in the
calls, we are happy to see how we can accommodate it.
Let’s Connect is directed at Wikimedians in all regions that are part of
organized groups (this can range from a group of individuals that are not
formally organized user groups, chapters and mission-aligned
organizations). Please see our Meta page for more criteria
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Knowledge_Sharing/Connect#Who_is_Let…>.
To participate as a sharer, you can register in this initial registration
form
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdiea87tSYmB2-1XHn_u8RLe7efMJifJBz…>
where you can register your learning and sharing interests and state if you
want to share your knowledge through Learning Clinics.
Below, you will find our team of 8 who are excited to meet with you if you
are interested. Please email our team at letsconnect(a)wikimedia.org if you
have any questions :)
We look forward to hearing from you.
Best,
The Let’s Connect Working Group
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03/19/24,
11:52:00 PM
Hi everyone,
The next Research Showcase will be live-streamed on Wednesday, March 20, at
9:30 AM PST / 16:30 UTC. Find your local time here
<https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1710952200>. In line with Women's History
Month, the theme for this showcase is *Addressing Knowledge Gaps*.
You are welcome to watch via the YouTube stream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6wrr9WShTk. As usual, you can join the
conversation in the YouTube chat as soon as the showcase goes live.
This month's presentation:
Leveraging Recommender Systems to Reduce Content Gaps on WikipediaBy *Mo
Houtti*Many Wikipedians use algorithmic recommender systems to help them
find interesting articles to edit. The algorithms underlying those systems
are driven by a straightforward assumption: we can look at what someone
edited in the past to figure out what they’ll most likely want to edit
next. But the story of what Wikipedians want to edit is almost definitely
more complex than that. For example, our own prior research shows that
Wikipedians prefer prioritizing articles that would minimize content gaps.
So, we asked, what would happen if we incorporated that value into
Wikipedians’ personalized recommendations? Through a controlled experiment
on SuggestBot, we found that recommending more content gap articles didn’t
significantly impact editing, despite those articles being less “optimally
interesting” according to the recommendation algorithm. In this
presentation, I will describe our experiment, our results, and their
implications - including how recommender systems can be one useful strategy
for tackling content gaps on Wikipedia.Bridging the offline and online-
Offline meetings of WikipediansBy *Nicole Schwitter*Wikipedia is primarily
known as an online encyclopaedia, but it also features a noteworthy offline
component: Wikipedia and particularly its German-language edition – which
is one of the largest and most active language versions – is characterised
by regular local offline meetups which give editors the chance to get to
know each other. This talk will present the recently published dewiki
meetup dataset which covers (almost) all offline gatherings organised on
the German-language version of Wikipedia. The dataset covers almost 20
years of offline activity of the German-language Wikipedia, containing 4418
meetups that have been organised with information on attendees, apologies,
date and place of meeting, and minutes recorded. The talk will explain how
the dataset can be used for research, highlight the importance of
considering offline meetings among Wikipedians, and place these insights
within the context of addressing gender gaps within Wikipedia.
Best,
Kinneret
--
Kinneret Gordon
Lead Research Community Officer
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Dear friends
A few days ago, in a diff article (1), we told you the story on how we
improved the ISA Tool (2) during a co-organized Hackathon (3).
Key outome is... we are happy to announce that a new version of the ISA
Tool is now available on toolforge for you to use. Whilst the tool would
still welcome your technical attention, we were able to fix critical
bugs and to implement some improvements.
After nearly a year dormant, ISA is back !
*
What is the ISA Tool ? *
ISAis a fun, multilingual, mobile-first/microcontributions/tool, that
makes it easy for (groups of) people to addstructured data
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Commons:Structured_da…>to
images on Wikimedia Commons.
With ISA, you can choose a pre-defined set of images on Commons and then
ask contributors to 'tag' these with multilingual structured metadata.
Points are counted for each contribution, and therefore it is possible
to organize 'tagging' or microcontributions competitions or challenges
with ISA. Or you can compete against yourself :)
ISA was originally built to provide better multilingual and structured
descriptions of Wiki Loves Africa images (4). But it is also developed
to be useful to all of the Wiki Loves X competitions, and eventually
ended up being meant forall media fileson Wikimedia Commons. More info
here: (5)
*Campaign #300*
To celebrate both the relaunch AND Women's Rights Month, and to
demonstrate how the ISA tool works, we are launching an ISA campaign
about Women in Art.
This is happening here : https://isa.toolforge.org/campaigns/300
Your contributions, small or big, are welcome to improve the
category:Women in Art
*Create your own campaigns ?*
You are welcome to create your own campaigns (or join older ones). Just
make sure to log-in and you are good to go.
A piece of advice though... make sure not to create very big campaigns
with thousands and thousands of images. Toolforge does not digest huge
sets very well.
500 is ok. 8000 is ok. 200 000 images... is beyond its capacity. We are
still testing and improving. If you see anything weird or broken, please
report here (7)
Best regards
Anthere
(1) the diff article :
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/03/13/the-triumph-of-wiki-mentor-africas-fi…
(2) the tool : https://isa.toolforge.org/
(3) the January hackathon :
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:Wiki_Mentor_Africa_Hackathon_2024
(4) the tool page on Commons :
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:ISA_Tool
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:ISA_Tool>(5) opportunity to
remind that Wiki Loves Africa is happening right now :
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Africa_2024
(6) women in art campaign : https://isa.toolforge.org/campaigns/300
(7) phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/3981/
Hello everyone,
The call for proposals for Wikimania 2024 is now open. We are looking for
session proposals that help bring to life this year's spirit: Collaboration
of the Open. We want to hear from you - what work are you doing to foster
collaborations across regions, languages, disciplines, and beyond? How are
you and your community contributing to building the open ecosystem?
Apply to lead a workshop, host a panel, present a poster, or run a tool
demonstration that helps us all see the power of openness and collaboration.
You can apply to speak in person, virtually, or in a hybrid format. More
information, including FAQs and the full list of questions from the call for
proposals, is available <https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2024:Program>
on the Wikimania Wiki.
Best regards
Wojciech Pędzich, COT member, Wikimania 2024 Programme Lead
Dear Wikimedians,
It has been a year since we were formally recognized, and we are grateful
for all the volunteers who have contributed to making our program a
success. We also appreciate the supportive Wikimedians who have
collaborated with our efforts and have always been on our side in promoting
our activities. On behalf of the Wiki Advocates Philippines User Group
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Advocates_Philippines_User_Group>, I
would like to present our 2023-2024 annual report on Meta.
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Advocates_Philippines_User_Group/Repor…>
Best regards,
*Anthony Diaz*
*Wiki Advocates Philippines Inc., Co-founder*
Hello,
We are now only three weeks away from the Wikimedia Wishathon! Exciting
news - User:Lucas Werkmeister has signed up to host a piano concert during
a social hour 🎉
Join us and contribute to the development of community wishes between March
15th and 17th! Participate in discussion sessions and work on user scripts,
gadgets, extensions, tools and more!
The full event schedule is available here: <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:WishathonMarch2024>.
Explore the event wiki for project ideas and keep an eye out for
non-technical tasks (documentation and design-related) that will soon be
added to the Wishathon workboard: <
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/view/5906/>. Project breakouts
will also be added to the schedule, where you can participate in wish
development or explore innovative solutions as a user, developer, or
designer.
We are seeking volunteers to assist with a wide range of activities such as
monitoring discussion channels during hacking hours, answering technical
queries, and helping with session note-taking. Check out the Help desk
schedule and add yourself to a slot where you are available and interested
in providing assistance: <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:WishathonMarch2024/Help_desk>.
If you have any questions about the Wishathon, reach out via Telegram: <
https://t.me/wmhack>.
Cheers,
Srishti
On behalf of the Wishathon organizing committee
*Srishti Sethi*
Senior Developer Advocate
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hola, Wikimedians all around the world!
Wikimedistas de Bolivia’s activity report is now available on Meta:
https://w.wiki/9TUM
Our work in the past year centered around:
-
Learning and education
-
Community and Communication Diversity
-
Free Knowledge and Culture.
Next, a brief summary of these activities:
The Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom program continued in the Santa Cruz
and Sapahaqui Municipalities, with 6 skill-building Wikijornadas
(“Wiki-days”), in which teachers from different regions also participated
online.
This resulted invmore than 100 teachers who graduated from the program
nationwide.
Due to the alliance with Internet.org, we reached the towns of Coroico,
Aiquile, and El Sena, where around 90 high school students took a day to
approach and explore critical reading.
Our work with university teachers and students continued as well, at
Communications and Digital Media, Film, History, and Architecture
departments from universities in La Paz, El Alto, Sucre, Cochabamba,
Potosí, and Santa Cruz. Some of the participants later joined the Wikimedia
community.
We took some important steps In the Community & Diversity area, in a Free
Knowledge and Culture Management Workshop we organized in collaboration
with the Flavio Machicado Foundation, in which we explored and talked about
nature with a group of over a hundred young scouts.
In the Culture & Free Knowledge area some Discussion events were organized,
which focused on feminine perspectives and experiences. Additionally, we
participated in regional events with a similar focus. With great
enthusiasm, we created 5 photo and editioncontests, along with others that
returned. We participated in Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments with
activities like explorations, heritage parcours, as well as photo
workshops.
On the global stage, we were present at IBEROCONF, Wikimania, and the
WECUDI. We actively took part in workshops and roundtables, an opportunity
that allowed us to share the perspectives and learnings we made last year.
All these activities and the alliances we reached are well documented on
our blog and our social network profiles.
--
*Olga Lidia Paredes Alcoreza*
*CO**OR**DINACIÓN GENERAL*
*WIKIMEDISTAS DE BOLIVIA*
Hi all,
Once again we celebrate an exceptional Wikimedian, this time - an admin, a
contributor, a person with many roles in Wikimedia projects.
Salicyna <https://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikiskryba:Salicyna>knows the
struggle of lacking access to knowledge all too well. Growing up in rural
Poland, she was a passionate reader with no access to well-stocked
libraries and cultural institutions. This was still in the pre-Internet
times, and her family, struggling financially, couldn't provide the
resources she yearned for. "I remember this unsatisfied hunger for
knowledge as stronger and more severe than the physical hunger," she
reflects. “Sadly”, she says “millions still face this very knowledge hunger
today, restricted by geographical location, poverty, disabilities, or
illness”. Salicyna sees Wikimedia projects, with their free access to
knowledge and culture, as a powerful tool to help alleviate this yearning,
at least partially.
Driven by a desire to offer others what she lacked as a child, Salicyna has
become a prolific contributor to the Wikimedia movement, boasting over
680,000 contributions across various projects. She wears many hats: a
Wikisource admin, an author of well-regarded medical articles on Wikipedia,
a Wikibooks contributor, and a passionate photographer on Wikimedia
Commons, specializing in roses and seedlings.
Today we WikiCelebrate
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/WikiCelebrate> her
contributions to the Wikimedia Movement!
Learn more about her Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource contributions and her
story on Diff blog
<https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/03/12/roses-are-red-salicyna-makes-their-li…>
(available in English, French, Polish, Spanish) or Meta
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/WikiCelebrate/Salicyna>
(where you can also congratulate Salicyna!).
Each month we WikiCelebrate a different Wikimedian, acknowledging the
amazing community, the pillars of our movement. We warmly invite you to
participate in the celebrations. If there’s an outstanding Wikimedian that
you think should be celebrated, recommend them
<https://wikimediafoundation.limesurvey.net/WikiCelebrate>.
Happy celebrating!
--
*Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska* (she/her)
Senior Global Movement Communications Specialist (European Region)
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>