Was discussed here https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recomme… and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Re… James On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 1:37 PM Yair Rand <yyairrand(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian

Thanks for the pointers, I personally disagree with some parts of it (e.g. Twitter is a company and we are an NGO) BUT since it passed the community consultation (and I somehow missed it to raise my feedback), I don't want to be vocal about the high level reasoning behind the project. What I would extremely appreciate is more transparent communication to the community about such large changes (especially sooner). Something like a two-line text on a phabricator has lots of potential for misunderstanding. Thanks again. On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 9:44 PM James Heilman &lt;jmh649(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recomme… https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Re… except the ("S3 our https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ?subject=unsubscribe> , -- Amir (he/him) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

You can find some more discussion at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Re… As I mentioned there, the premise of the recommendation is that the movement needs new revenue sources; in part because the 2030 strategy is ambitious and requires a significant increase in resources, in part because our current lack of diversity (about 40% of the movement's budget is from donations through website banners, and another 40% from past banners via email campaigns and such) is a strategic risk because those donations can be disrupted by various social or technical trends. For example, large tech companies which are the starting point of people's internet experience (such as Facebook or Google) clearly have aspirations to become the end point as well - they try to ingest and display to their users directly as much online content as they can. Today, that's not a whole lot of content (you might see fragments of Wikipedia infoboxes in Google's "knowledge panel", for example, but nothing resembling an encyclopedia article). Ten years from now, that might be different, and so we need to consider how we would sustain ourselves in such a world - in terms of revenue, and also in terms of people (how would new editors join the project, if most people interacted with our content not via our website, but interfaces provided by big tech companies where there is no edit button?). The new API project aims to do that, both in the sense of making it possible to have more equitable arrangements with bulk reusers of our content (who make lots of money with it), and by making it easier to reuse content in ways that align with our movement's values (currently, if you reuse Wikipedia content in your own website or application, and want to provide your users with information about the licensing or provenance of that content, or allow them to contribute, the tools we provide for that are third rate at best). As the recommendation mentions, erecting unintentional barriers to small-scale or non-commercial reusers was very much a concern, and I'm sure much care will be taken during implementation to avoid it. Wrt transparency, I agree this was communicated less clearly than ideal, but from the Wikimedia Foundation's point of view, it can be hard to know when to consult the community and to what extent (churning out so much information that few volunteers can keep up with it can be a problem too; arguably early phases of the strategy process suffered from it). This is a problem that has received considerable attention within the WMF recently (unrelated to API plans) so there's at the very least an effort to make the process of sharing plans and gathering feedback more predictable. Also, the pandemic has been a huge disruption for the WMF. Normally, by this point, the community would have been consulted on the draft annual plan, which is where new initiatives tend to be announced; but that has been delayed significantly due to so many staff members' lives being upheaved. Movement events where such plans are usually discussed had to be cancelled, and so on. (Written with my volunteer hat on. I was involved in the strategy process and helped write the recommendation snippet Yair quoted upthread; I'm not involved in the API gateway project.) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

It's interesting that of all the strategy recommendations, two are so far being implemented. One is the Universal Code of Conduct, which has at least had plenty of discussion and publicity, that even precedes the strategy process. The other is this, which hasn't been particularly prominent before, but the WMF seems to have a team working on it just a couple of weeks after the final recommendations were published. So while doing this is one of the strategy recommendations, it doesn't seem that is is now happening *because of* the strategy recommendations.... Chris On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 10:46 AM Gergő Tisza &lt;gtisza(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Re… because tech we in by reuse implementation a the be _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

A well-provisioned bulk api has been missing for some time. Thanks for working on this. And clearing up the recommended way for WP content to appear and be linked in third-party searches and infoboxes is important -- the sort of thing that an internal policy (and way to subscribe to feeds) can help. I do hope we can host this on WM or openstack infrastructure, and do it in a way that expands and improves the solid existing frameworks for HTML dumps :) S On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 8:43 AM Chris Keating &lt;chriskeatingwiki(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: least seem https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Re… is from via can as content Ten provided you of that very ideal, know too; is recently process not -- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Hello, Why i'm recieving this message : Message not delivered There was a problem delivering your message to *donate(a)wikimedia.com*. See the technical details below. * Mohammed Bachounda <http://bachounda.com/>* Leader Wikimedia Algeria UG [image: Thumbnail for version as of 13:48, 19 April 2020] On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 2:05 AM Joseph Seddon &lt;jseddon(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: feeds) strategy of doesn't recommendations.... wrote: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Re… strategy is banners donations article). our to if want provenance to problem This Normally, being had I'm ?subject=unsubscribe> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

I tend to agree with this. I'm one of the first to criticize WMF when they deserve it (I wish they didn't as often!), but I see nothing wrong with consumers of huge amounts of data being asked to chip in to cover the costs of providing it. That is, of course, provided that there is never any fee for use of the API for users of data in regular amounts, but every plan I've seen thus far accommodates that. Todd On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 7:15 AM Ad Huikeshoven &lt;ad(a)huikeshoven.org&gt; wrote: us _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Thanks Joseph for the links. It's more clear now. I think I need to clarify something: I'm not against asking the big corps to pay. If they are using a significant amount of our computational resources (=donors money) to make even more money, they should pay. And thank you for improving the movement's financial security. I don't oppose the general idea. That being said, what worries me are the details: * WMF is creating a company (LLC) and contracts that company, this means less transparency. This is the first time I think in the history of the foundation AFAIK that WMF is creating a company for legal reasons (I'm sorry if I missed anything). * That company is contracting another company for engineering work (even less transparency). We have lots of engineering resources at WMF. * As the result, for the first time, code produced by donors money is closed source and inaccessible to public (or at least I couldn't find the code linked anywhere) * I find it ethically wrong to use AWS, even if you can't host it in WMF for legal reasons, why not another cloud provider. * There wasn't a period for giving feedback for example about the choice of cloud provider or anything, suddenly it came out ready. The rumors about it have been going around for months. * This has not been communicated properly to the community, I find this lack of communication and transparency concerning and insulting. Hope what I'm saying here makes sense. On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 7:02 PM Todd Allen &lt;toddmallen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: -- Amir (he/him) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

I agree, the lack of transparency is quite concerning, as is the use of AWS. I sure hope we're not going to be producing closed source code! On Jul 9, 2020, at 10:19 AM, Amir Sarabadani &lt;ladsgroup(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: of it they costs fee wrote: API obligate is this for , https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

ECR and GKE.

Which cloud provider would you recommend?

+1 Kunal! The WMF Cloud Services team can totally provide the needed support. The Foundation would have to invest them to build up the team which is over stretched but that should easily pay for itself as revenue starts flowing in from the paid API. Victoria https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Rupert, My comment below referred to the point Kunal made about hosting should the movement decide (and it is a movement decision in my view) to go forward with a paid API. There is a healthy debate as you point out about the wisdom or otherwise of doing so. But should a decision be made to go forward, I believe that the hosting can be done on WMF clusters run by the Cloud Services team to avoid putting our content on 3rd party commercial services. While I was on staff, and I don’t think this has changed since my departure, the preference was to maintain control of content - including accessing it - internally to protect movement privacy. If I had a penny for every time I got an offer of “free” hosting from AWS and others, my penny jar would be overflowing! All the best, Victoria wrote: other editing the wrote: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

+1 Kunal! The WMF Cloud Services team can totally provide the needed support. The Foundation would have to invest them to build up the team which is over stretched but that should easily pay for itself as revenue starts flowing in from the paid API. Victoria https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>