The on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2023-06-22
--
Team offsite in Delft
Last week, our team had our annual in-person meeting, this year in Delft
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delft>, in the Netherlands. It is the second
ever offsite for the team, following last year’s in New York City. The
offsite was also the reason we didn’t find the time to give an update last
week.
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abstract_Wikipedia_Team_Delft_2023.jpg>
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abstract_Wikipedia_Team_Delft_2023.jpg>
Abstract Wikipedia team at Delft offsite 2023. From left to right, back:
Amin Al Hazwani, Cory Massaro, Genoveva Galarza Heredero, Elena
Tonkovidova, David Martin, Stef Dunlap, Amy Tsay, Denny Vrandečić, James
Forrester; in front, kneeling: Nick Wilson and Luca Martinelli. Taken in
front of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag
This time, we were focused heavily on launching Wikifunctions. We discussed
the necessary work still ahead of us, and carefully reviewed and removed
many of the open tasks from blocking launch. Instead, the tasks were either
marked as “it would be great to have this before launch” (nice-to-have) or
simply as after-launch tasks. You can see our new, simplified board with
the current status in Phabricator
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/view/4964/>.
We also discussed and had retrospectives on the way the team works. All of
these discussions benefited heavily from being in person, especially when
we were figuring out which steps still need to happen before launch, and
which ones can be moved back. After three years, we certainly are both
excited and worried about launching – everything feels like it could use
just some more polish, and every feature feels like it would be great to
have it available at launch, so it was good to come together and push back
on this together.
For team-building, we visited two local museums: the Royal Delft manufactury
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Koninklijke_Porceleyne_Fles> in Delft,
and the Kunstmuseum <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunstmuseum_Den_Haag> in
The Hague, where we particularly enjoyed the temporary exhibition on M. C.
Escher <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._C._Escher>, who beautifully
combined functions with art. We also visited the local Makerspace, where we
gave a presentation on Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions and met with
some local members of the Wikimedia community.
Wikifunctions at Wikimania
We just learned this week that our submission to present Wikifunctions
at Wikimania
2023 <https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2023:Wikimania> in Singapore has
been accepted by the program committee. Wikimania will offer the
opportunity to attend remotely. We are looking forward to presenting our
work to the community. We will share more details as they become known to
us.
The team is currently meeting for our offsite, and because of that we can't
find the time to write an update.
We will return to our scheduled programming next week.
The on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2023-06-02
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Hackathon in Athens
May 19-21 was the Wikimedia Hackathon in Athens, Greece. A few of our team
members could attend and were spreading the word about Wikifunctions and
Abstract Wikipedia, answering questions, and inviting people to join.
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikifunctions_%26_Abstract_Wikipedia_t…>
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikifunctions_%26_Abstract_Wikipedia_t…>
The Abstract Wikipedia team at the Hackathon 2023 in Athens
We were represented (from left to right) by Nick Wilson, James Forrester,
Luca Martinelli, and Elena Tonkovidova. It was great to see the community
again and meet with other developers.
Monday is volunteer’s corner
This upcoming Monday will see our monthly Volunteer’s corner. The meeting
will be on Monday, June 5, 2023, 17:30-18:00 UTC
<https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1685986233> and you can join on Jitsi on
the following link: meet.jit.si/AWVolunteersCorner
Bring your questions, your ideas, or even just your curiosity, and we will
find and help with places you can contribute.
Last time we had issues with Jitsi. If we have issues again, we will
provide a Google Meet link on short notice in the IRC / Telegram chat.
The on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2023-05-17
--
Thank you, Julia!
Julia Kieserman had joined the Wikimedia Foundation and the Abstract
Wikipedia team in the latter half of 2021. She had made significant
contributions to the user interface and the interaction design of
Wikifunctions. She has been particularly instrumental in working together
with the Design System team, thus ensuring that Wikifunctions has a solid,
common foundation in Wikimedia-wide technologies such as Codex.
I want to let Julia speak in her words:
So long, Abstract!
It’s been an honor to be part of a project with a mission as important and
ambitious as the Abstract team’s mission. Trying to do anything in a way
that works for all languages and best serves a diversity of people and
perspectives is certainly not an easy thing to do, and I am grateful for
the doggedness of this team in the face of that challenge. I’ve learned a
lot of valuable lessons that I’m excited to carry with me to the next
adventure.
Cheers to a successful Wikifunctions launch - I’m excited to see how the
community helps transform it into something beyond our imaginations.
We are sad to see Julia leave the team, but we are happy to know that Julia
is staying with the Wikimedia Foundation, and will support the Trust and
Safety team in their numerous and important tasks as a senior engineer.
Thank you, Julia, for everything you did!
The on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2023-05-12Welcome
Carrie!
We are welcoming Carrie Coxwell to the team! Carrie is joining us as a full
stack software engineer, and her first task will be to support the
development of the frontend to get us ready for launch. Here is Carrie’s
introduction in her own words:
Hi, all!
I'm writing to you from Memphis, Tennessee, where I have been living for
the last nine years. I'm a senior software engineer with a focus on
front-end technologies. My professional background is an eclectic one: in
addition to being a software engineer, I've worked as a parking garage
attendant (a bucket list item of mine; go figure), copy editor, classroom
teacher, professional musician, and as a (truly terrible) waitress.
My interests are many and varied. I am passionate about animals, language,
teaching, open source hardware, canceling plans, music, Japanese and
Taiwanese stationery, Bob's Burgers, and rainbows — just to name a few. I
dream of high-quality, free, and equitable public K-12 education for all
kids.
When I'm not working, these days you can catch me engaged in my current
hyperfixations: knitting and trying to reverse engineer NYT's Wordlebot
(though not at the same time). I'm thrilled to be joining the Abstract
Wikipedia team.
Join me in welcoming Carrie to the team and the Wikimedia movement! We are
looking forward to working with her.
History of Wikidata
Last week, Denny presented the "History of Wikidata" at The Web Conference
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Web_Conference> WWW2023 in Austin,
Texas. The Web Conference is the leading academic conference on all topics
Web. The presentation was part of the History of the Web special track,
which was inaugurated last year, and I can recommend the track for its
talks and papers.
The paper “Wikidata: The Making Of” has been written with Markus Krötzsch
and Lydia Pintscher. It is available as Open Access. It was written on the
occasion of celebrating ten years of Wikidata last fall. Abstract Wikipedia
is mentioned in the outlook.
A fifteen minute video presentation of the paper (but not a recording of
the presentation) is available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3-nklyrDx4
The paper is available as PDF here:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3543873.3585579
As HTML here: https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3543873.3585579
Volunteer’s corner
The Volunteer’s corner this Monday was well attended, but unfortunately
pretty botched by technical difficulties with Jitsi. Next time, we hope
that the situation will have improved, and we will try Jitsi again. But we
will have a Google Meet link handy in case we run into issues. See you in
June!
The on-wiki version of this newsletter is available at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2023-04-28
Wikimedia Endowment awards $1 Million grant to Abstract Wikipedia
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Endowment_logo.jpg>
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Endowment_logo.jpg>
Logo of the Wikimedia Endowment
We are happy to highlight the grant of one million US Dollar made by the
Wikimedia Endowment to support Abstract Wikipedia.
The Wikimedia Endowment <https://wikimediaendowment.org/> is an investment
fund which uses a part of its gains to fund Wikimedia projects and the free
knowledge movement. Launched in 2016 to support the future of Wikimedia
projects, the Wikimedia Endowment is a permanent fund that supports
Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in times of uncertainty, and enables
long-term investments to support their growth and innovation. The endowment
is a safety net that helps protect Wikipedia now and into the future. The
Endowment was established as an independent organisation in 2022.
This year, for the first time, the Endowment is making some grants. We
congratulate the other recipients: Wikidata, the Machine Learning
programmatic work at the Wikimedia Foundation, and the offline reading
project Kiwix. The endowment made $3.2 million dollars available this year.
We express deep thanks to the Wikimedia Endowment for their support. You
can read more about the grant on a post on Diff
<https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/04/13/launching-the-first-grants-from-the-w…>
by
Phoebe Ayers, Chair of the Grantmaking and Community Committee of the
Wikimedia Endowment Board of Trustees.
The team’s manifesto, OKRs, and communication principles
Currently, the Wikimedia Foundation is going through the process of annual
planning for the upcoming financial year
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-2024>
(July
2023 to June 2024), receiving and incorporating feedback. We want to give a
huge shout out to the folks working on the process and implementing it. You
can join the conversation and the collaboration around the plan until
Friday 19 May 2023.
Our team is slightly outside of this process, since we already have a
development
plan <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Plan> that we are
following. Adding to this plan we now also published our team’s manifesto
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia_team/Single-page_manifesto>,
including our Objectives and Key Results (OKRs
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR>), and our communication principles
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia_team/Communication_princi…>
.
The manifesto summarises the why and what of our team and project. It is a
good, succinct summary of the work we are doing, and the motivation behind
the work. As we say in conclusion:
*“The ultimate objective of the Abstract Wikipedia effort is to make
knowledge more accessible and usable for everyone, regardless of their
language or background.”*
The objectives and key results that we have set ourselves define a number
of concrete metrics which we hope to achieve with Wikifunctions. They cover
the growth of the community, the usage and maintenance of the content on
Wikifunctions, and the diversity of contributors and multilinguality of
content. It feels very difficult to come up with meaningful numbers here,
but we have tried our best. We are sharing those numbers to keep ourselves
accountable, and we would be .
Finally, the Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions team is a distributed
team, and thus communication plays a heightened role for the success of our
team. The communication principles arise from the team’s values, and make
explicit the commitments we share for communicating with each other.
Although the communication principles only apply to our team and our
interactions with the community, we hope that by modelling our interactions
and by listing them publicly, we will also lead the Wikifunctions community
to adopt similar principles. We are hoping that the community that will be
participating on Wikifunctions will assume good faith, allow for an
environment where people can safely raise ideas and concerns, and where we
all remember to consider the human behind the user account. We have no
claim to novelty on these principles.
Volunteer’s Corner on Monday 8 May
Usually, the Volunteer’s Corner is on the first Monday of the month. Given
that this falls on May Day, the International Workers’ Day, we have decided
to move it to May 8th, at the usual time, instead. Bring your questions and
ideas!
The next Volunteer’s Corner will be on May 8th, 2023, at 17:30 UTC
<https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1683567008> on Jitsi at
meet.jit.si/AWVolunteersCorner
Oleg Parashchenko’s presentation on his experience implementing a natural
language generation system from earlier this week can be found recorded here
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ilzQV1TNeh3qtUdLqBC5-RVcvD8IitXD/view>.
Hello all,
Next week, Tuesday April 25, 16:30-17:30 UTC [1], we are having a public
NLG SIG meeting. In this one, Oleg Parashchenko will share his experience
and thoughts about implementing a multilingual NLG system. The meeting can
be joined using Jitsi at https://meet.jit.si/AWVolunteersCorner
The NLG SIG (Natural Language Generation Special Interest Group) is the
continuation of the NLG workstream (which was the last remaining
workstream).
Oleg is a software developer living in Germany. Oleg's work on Github can
be found here: https://github.com/olpa/multi-nlg
Oleg
[1] https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1682440203
