Dear Wikimedians,
We are delighted to announce the maiden edition of WikiConference Nigeria,
the national conference of all Nigerian Wikimedians.
WikiConference Nigeria, organized by a group of Wikimedia affiliates in
Nigeria, will be held in Nigeria's capital Abuja from 12th to 15th
September, 2024.
The primary aim of the conference is to promote the growth and
sustainability of Wikimedia projects in Nigeria, strengthen the
relationship between various Wikimedia communities across the country,
foster collaboration and engender cross-affiliate projects. The conference
will also serve as a platform for capacity building, knowledge sharing and
give room for aligning strategic discussions of Wikimedians in Nigeria to
the Movement Strategy 2030.
We invite all Wikimedians and individuals interested in open knowledge to
join us for this maiden edition of the conference.
*Programs*
Do you want to present your work or project or run a workshop? The
organizing team will seek for proposals for presentations, capacity
building workshops as well as panel
discussions. The conference will offer a wide range of session styles and
flexible time slots. We will announce the details for Program submissions
soon.
*Travel scholarship*
To support participation, scholarships for domestic travel are available.
We will share the details for the scholarship application process soon.
*Volunteers for Conference Committees*
The conference organizing committee is looking for interested volunteers to
join the various committees of the conference including Scholarship,
Logistics, Communications, Program, and Partnership. The application is
open at https://bit.ly/wikinigeria-call-for-volunteers. The deadline for
committee volunteers applications is 28th May, 2024.
We look forward to welcoming you in Abuja!.
Kind regards,
Ammar Abdulhamid,
On behalf of the Conference Organizing Team
Dear all,
I am writing on behalf of the Community Affairs Committee of the Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustees [1] to invite you to give feedback on the
draft Procedure for Sibling Project Lifecycle from today until the end of
the day on June 23, 2024 (anywhere on Earth). This is a long read; thank
you in advance for your attention to its details.
== Terminology: what are “Sibling Projects”? ==
The term “Sister Project” has historically been used to describe all the
publicly available wikis (“Wikimedia Projects”) operated by the Wikimedia
Foundation, including Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, and others
[2]. Some community members have also used the term “Sister Project” in the
context of language versions of the same wiki, such as English Wikipedia,
Bengali Wikipedia, etc., or Vietnamese Wikisource, Catalan Wikisource, etc.
Still, other community members have interpreted “Sister Projects” as
synonymous with “WikiProjects”, such as English:Wikipedia:WikiProject
Military history or Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings.
To address the confusion and to disambiguate the terms, a working term -
“Sibling Projects” - will be used to distinguish separate content projects
(wikis) from language variants of the same content project. Under this
naming scheme, Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wikidata are “Sibling Projects”.
Thus, the French Wikisource and Polish Wikisource would be “language
versions (French and Polish) of the same Sibling Project (Wikisource)”.
This is a working terminology, and it might change.
== Context ==
Historically, when Wikimedia Siblings started to be added to Wikipedia,
there was a surge of new projects, sometimes with and sometimes without
strategic or clear goals. At that time, the Wikimedia Foundation Board was
approving new Sibling projects (for example, Wikivoyage [3], Abstract
Wikipedia [4]). There is a separate committee (Language Committee) that
makes decisions on whether a new language version (subdomain) of existing
Wikimedia projects can be opened [5]. Still, there was nothing for other
“kinds of Wikimedia projects”. Since 2021, the responsibility to “address
new (...) site applications, including creating a formalized procedure,
from application to approval/disapproval” is the mandate of the Community
Affairs Committee (CAC), a Wikimedia Foundation Board Committee [6].
In the last 10 years, the Wikimedia Foundation Board has become cautious
about opening new Sibling Projects because of a lack of clear strategy
around approval, maintenance, and closure, a lack of understanding of their
impact, and questions around their sustainability in light of the
Foundation's mostly flat budget [7]. In addition, the technical work
necessary to maintain different Sibling Projects has often stretched the
Wikimedia Foundation’s capacity.
A little over a year ago, CAC created a Task Force [8] to help the
Wikimedia Foundation develop a direction on if, how, what, and when to
invest in the opening of new Sibling Projects, in order “to make sure that
any newly approved project is set up for success, and has the resources it
needs to function well” [9]. The Foundation needs to understand better what
services it would need to commit to this process while taking into account
the organization's limited capacity and budget. This task has to be
addressed in cooperation with the Product & Technology Department of the
Wikimedia Foundation, led by the Chief Product & Technology Officer, Selena
Deckelmann.
=== Assessment ===
To make space for the inflow of innovative ideas while maintaining and
continuing support for the existing Sibling Projects, it is important to
establish a clear process for the Sibling Projects’ lifecycle.
The application evaluation process preceding “opening a new Sibling
Project” will require considerable time as well as financial and human
resources, which needs quantification. An assessment of the needed
investment in the technology could be significant depending on the scope of
the proposed project (for example, Wikifunctions [10] needs very different
resources than a new project that uses standard mediawiki installations),
especially in cases of possible maintenance of the project in perpetuity.
Evaluating a new application to validate the concept, its impact on the
existing Wikimedia technical ecosystem, the human and financial resourcing
implications, and future maintenance costs will be time-consuming and might
need considerably more staff.
At the same time, an evaluation of the existing Sibling Projects needs to
occur as not all are meeting their potential with promoting the Movement's
mission. We need to develop an evaluation process for a Sibling Project's
success and sustainability. We also need clearly defined approaches for
splitting, merging, sunsetting, and/or possibly adopting Sibling Projects
by different organisations.
== How to provide feedback ==
Your feedback is warmly welcome. The feedback can be given from today until
the end of the day on June 23, 2024 (anywhere on Earth). We hope that a
fairly long feedback period will allow for rich discussions without feeling
rushed. There are several ways that you can provide feedback:
-
Review the page here, on Meta [11] and leave comments on the talk page.
-
Join open calls (May 23 at 02:00 to 03:00 UTC and May 30 at 16:00 to
17:00 UTC) [12]
-
Request a conversation as a part of Talking:2024
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Comm…>
by using the Wikimedia Foundation Community Affairs Committee/Talking:
2024#Let’s Talk|Let’s Talk
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Comm…'s_talk>
feature to sign up for a time to speak with me and other trustees about
this topic.
Kind regards,
Victoria Doronina, Task Force Lead
On behalf of the Community Affairs Committee of the Wikimedia Foundation
Board of Trustees
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Comm…
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_sister_projects
[3]
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2013/01/15/wikimedia-foundation-launches-wikivoy…
[4] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Abstract_Wikipedia
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee
[6]
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Affairs_Committee_Charter
[7]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-2024/…
[8]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Comm…
[9]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Proposals_for_new_projects#From_the_Bo…
[10] https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:About
[11]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Comm…
[12]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs…
--
Kind regards, Victoria
Victoria Doronina
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/profile/dr-victoria-doronina/>
Trustee
Sister Projects Taskforce Lead
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Imagine a world in which everyone can freely share in the sum of all
knowledge. Please help us make it a reality.
Dear all,
please be informed that during the annual assembly of Wikimedia Italia,
held on May 18th, new board members were elected.
The new board composition is:
- Alessio Melandri, president
- Ferdinando Traversa, vice-president
- Elena Marangoni, secretary
- Marta Cecilia Pigazzini, treasurer
- Stefano Dal Bo, councillor
The next board election will take place in Spring 2025.
Best Regards
Stefano Dal Bo
WMI Board Councillor
What is May 17th?
The International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia was
created in 2004 to draw the attention to the violence and discrimination
experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex people and all
other people with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities or
expressions, and sex characteristics. The date of May 17th was specifically
chosen to commemorate the World Health Organization’s decision in 1990 to
declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder. https://may17.org
One year ago in 2020 we started QueeringW in hope #1 Queering Wikipedia
conference would be happening with a year of delay...now we hope it is in
2022!
Meanwhile we are "Together, we Resist, Support, and Heal"
<https://twitter.com/may17org>
Happy #May17 #IDAHOT #IDAHOTBITQ
for those who celebrate and would support
https://www.instagram.com/QueeringW
@may17org <https://twitter.com/may17org> #IDAHOT
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/IDAHOT?src=hashtag_click> #IDAHOT2021
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/IDAHOT2021?src=hashtag_click>
https://twitter.com/QueeringW
Hi all,
The next Research Showcase will be live-streamed tomorrow, Wednesday, May
15, at 9:30 AM PST / 16:30 UTC. Find your local time here
<https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1715790600>. The theme for this showcase is
*Reader to Editor Pipeline*.
You are welcome to watch via the YouTube stream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-8CbpcwGV8. As usual, you can join the
conversation in the YouTube chat as soon as the showcase goes live.
This month's presentations:
Journey TransitionsBy *Mike Raish and Daisy Chen*What kinds of events do
readers and editors identify as separating the stages of their relationship
with Wikipedia, and which of these kinds of events might the Wikimedia
Foundation possibly support through design interventions? In the Journey
Transitions qualitative research project, the WMF Design Research team
interviewed readers and editors in Arabic, Spanish, and English in order to
answer these questions and provide guidance to WMF Product teams making
strategic decisions. A series of semi-structured interviews revealed that
readers and editors describe their relationships with Wikipedia in
different ways, with readers describing a static and transactional
relationship, and that even many experienced editors express confusion
about core functions of the Wikimedia ecosystem, such as the role of Talk
pages. This presentation will describe the Journey Transitions research, as
well as present its implications for the sponsoring Product teams in order
to shed light on the way that qualitative research is used to inform
strategic decisions in the Wikimedia Foundation.
Increasing participation in peer production communities with the Growth
featuresBy *Morten Warncke-Wang and Kirsten Stoller*For peer production
communities to be sustainable, they must attract and retain new
contributors. Studies have identified social and technical barriers to
entry and discovered some potential solutions, but these solutions have
typically focused on a single highly successful community, the English
Wikipedia, been tested in isolation, and rarely evaluated through
controlled experiments. In this talk, we show how the Wikimedia
Foundation’s Growth team collaborates with Wikipedia communities to develop
and experiment with new features to improve the newcomer experience in
Wikipedia. We report findings from a large-scale controlled experiment
using the Newcomer Homepage, a central place where newcomers can learn how
peer production works and find opportunities to contribute, and show how
the effectiveness depends on the newcomer’s context. Lastly, we show how
the Growth team has continued developing features that further improve the
newcomer experience while adapting to community needs.
Best,Kinneret
--
Kinneret Gordon
Lead Research Community Officer
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Dear all,
I hope this message finds you well! This is a friendly reminder that the
submission deadline for the Wikimedia CEE Meeting is approaching quickly.
We encourage you to finalize your submission by May 31st.
Looking forward to seeing you at the meeting!
--
Yılmaz Caner Özyayıkçı
Member & Designer
Wikimedians of Turkic Languages User Group
Wikimedia Community User Group Turkey
Wikimedia username: Kurmanbek
[image: emailAddress] caner.ozyayikci(a)wmturkic.org
[image: website] https://wmturkic.org/
[image: address] Türkiye (Turkey)