The on-wiki version of this newsletter is here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2021-01-07
We are very happy to welcome Cory Massaro, who is joining the Abstract
Wikipedia team as a software engineer.
I will let Cory introduce himself in his own words:
“I obtained my B.A. in creative writing and classical languages in 2010,
then studied comparative literature with a focus on oral history and epic
before switching to computational linguistics. I then spent several years
working on speech recognition systems and internationalization. More
recently, I’ve taken on mentorship and educational roles with a particular
focus on helping entry-level workers build class consciousness.
“My core passions are teaching/learning, the arts, language, and the
relationship of these to workers’ rights. If there is a throughline uniting
these interests, it is this: I care deeply about knowledge. I want to
contribute to a culture where people possess sufficient education, leisure,
and resources to relate to knowledge and act on it. To these ends, I have
contributed research analyzing how ideology can create dialect. I also
conduct workshops on political rhetoric. In my free time, I write, learn
languages, create text adventures, and play music.
“I discovered programming as a matter of necessity. Many career paths
seemed unreachable due to student loans, while the for-profit tech sector
offered a path to stability. Only later did it become clear that
values-driven tech work existed.
“For this reason, I’m delighted to be joining an organization built on
principles of freedom, openness, and cultural/linguistic pluralism. I can’t
wait to help make knowledge more accessible and am excited to learn more
about this fundamentally democratic approach to language and community
engagement. Plus, if there is a modern global analog to the ancient keepers
of oral history, Wikimedia is probably it, and that is beautiful.”
Please, join me in welcoming Cory to the team!
Also, as you may already know, in December we finalised the name for the
new Wikimedia wiki. The name for the repository of algorithms will be
Wikifunctions, as voted for by the community. The domain name
wikifunctions.org has been secured.
The next step will be to start the process to select the logo concept for
Wikifunctions, which is slowly kicking up its speed. Submissions can be
made here <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Logo>, and in
the following days we will publish a few supporting documents and re-do the
timeline for the process in order to make it a bit simpler. This is similar
to the approach used for the Wikidata logo. I am very much looking forward
to seeing the process play out!