The on-wiki version of this newsletter is here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2020-12-09

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One of the great things in the Wikimedia movement is our opportunity to partner with open source and open access communities across the Internet. Today we'd like to introduce you to two new members of our effort who join us via such a partnership.

The Wikimedia Foundation regularly partners with the Outreachy program https://www.outreachy.org/, which offers three-month internships to work remotely in Free and Open Source Software ("FOSS") with experienced mentors. The program is open to both students and non-students, and encourages applications from people who face under-representation, systemic bias, or discrimination in the technology industry of their country.

We have the good fortune in Abstract Wikipedia to welcome two Outreachy interns this round! Please join me in welcoming Aisha and Jade, who will be focusing on analysing and understanding how templates and Lua modules are used across Wikimedia wikis. This knowledge will be crucial in helping us work out how the central wiki of functions can best support existing community use cases, alongside the novel features that Abstract Wikipedia will also provide. There's more detail on the outline project definition on Phabricator https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T263678.

In their own words:

*Aisha*

I completed my Computer Science undergraduate degree in February 2020, then worked as a Machine Learning Engineer for 7 months before I joined Wikimedia as an Intern. I am passionate about data and natural language processing, to which I was introduced through my undergraduate thesis research. I cook as a hobby and someday I wish to travel to far lands and experience lots of cultures.

Communities have inspired me and have been my source of motivation for quite some time. I owe my skills and knowledge to them and I am enthusiastic to keep the process of dissemination going. And what is a better place than an open-source community where free and open information is not only celebrated but people work towards making it possible for everyone else? This makes software and data so much more organic and gives it the kind of atmosphere I love hanging around in. I am so glad to have joined Wikimedia! Hoping to learn a lot and make valuable contributions!

*Jade*

I am a CS student, who will most likely finish the Bachelor's degree in the summer of 2021.

While I was studying in school, for a long time, I was thinking that linguistics would be my future - but learning to code through high school made me choose another path. I felt that creating new things and easily solving problems with programs created by yourself is really exciting, so I stick to that decision.

In the University I was lucky enough to find the lecturer whose main interest was computer linguistics, so I was able to combine both of my passions, creating projects about predicting the style of the text (which has far less flexible classification in Russian than in English) and about translating poems to Interslavic.

Reading Abstract Wikipedia papers made me feel really enthusiastic, as it showed me the really different point of view to the translation problems. You don't have to strive for variety - but for simplicity, unambiguity and richness of the language at the same time. And what can be better if this initiative will help many more people find the knowledge they are looking for?

We're so pleased to have the opportunity to work with Aisha and Jade, and look forward to their contributions. You'll see them on IRC and on their project repository https://github.com/wikimedia/abstract-wikipedia-data-science (just set up) in the coming months. Please do say hi!

Aisha and Jade will be blogging about their experience. We encourage you to have a read of their first posts about their application for Outreachy internship:

- Aisha's blog https://tanny411.github.io/2020/12/01/Getting-Started-With-Outreachy/ - Jade's blog https://dev.to/lost_enchanter/scaredy-cat-s-guide-to-outreachy-admission-20lh

While you're at it, you may want to add the reports page https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Outreachy/Round_21/Bi-weekly_Reports to your watchlist, too, and see the fine work from all of our Outreachy interns.

Thank you, Aisha and Jade, for joining us!

--The Abstract Wikipedia Team