Dear all,
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is organizing a call for
feedback about community selection processes between February 1 and March
14. Below you will find the problem statement and various ideas from the
Board to address it. We are offering multiple channels for questions and
feedback. With the help of a team of community facilitators, we are
organizing multiple conversations with multiple groups in multiple
languages.
During this call for feedback we publish weekly reports and we draft the
final report that will be delivered to the Board. With the help of this
report, the Board will approve the next steps to organize the selection of
six community seats in the upcoming months. Three of these seats are due
for renewal and three are new, recently approved.
*Participate in this call for feedback and help us form a more diverse and
better performing Board of Trustees!*
*Problems:* While the Wikimedia Foundation and the movement have grown
about five times in the past ten years, the Board’s structure and processes
have remained basically the same. As the Board is designed today, we have a
problem of capacity, performance, and lack of representation of the
movement’s diversity. This problem was identified in the Board’s 2019
governance review, along with recommendations for how to address it.
To solve the problem of capacity, we have agreed to increase the Board size
to a maximum of 16 trustees (it was 10). Regarding performance and
diversity, we have approved criteria to evaluate new Board candidates. What
is missing is a process to promote community candidates that represent the
diversity of our movement and have the skills and experience to perform
well on the Board of a complex global organization.
Our current processes to select individual volunteer and affiliate seats
have some limitations. Direct elections tend to favor candidates from the
leading language communities, regardless of how relevant their skills and
experience might be in serving as a Board member, or contributing to the
ability of the Board to perform its specific responsibilities. It is also a
fact that the current processes have favored volunteers from North America
and Western Europe. Meanwhile, our movement has grown larger and more
complex, our technical and strategic needs have increased, and we have new
and more difficult policy challenges around the globe. As well, our
Movement Strategy recommendations urge us to increase our diversity and
promote perspectives from other regions and other social backgrounds.
In the upcoming months, we need to renew three community seats and appoint
three more community members in the new seats. What process can we all
design to promote and choose candidates that represent our movement and are
prepared with the experience, skills, and insight to perform as trustees?
*Ideas:* The Board has discussed several ideas to overcome the problems
mentioned above. Some of these ideas could be taken and combined, and some
discarded. Other ideas coming from the call for feedback could be
considered as well. The ideas are:
1. *Ranked voting system*. Complete the move to a single transferable
vote system, already used to appoint affiliate-selected seats, which is
designed to best capture voters’ preferences.
2. *Quotas*. Explore the possibility of introducing quotas to ensure
certain types of diversity in the Board (details about these quotas to be
discussed in this call for feedback).
3. *Call for types of skills and experiences*. When the Board makes a
new call for candidates, they would specify types of skills and experiences
especially sought.
4. *Vetting of candidates*. Potential candidates would be assessed using
the Trustee Evaluation Form and would be confirmed or not as eligible
candidates.
5. *Board-delegated selection committee*. The community would nominate
candidates that this committee would assess and rank using the Trustee
Evaluation Form. This committee would have community elected members and
Board appointed members.
6. *Community-elected selection committee*. The community would directly
elect the committee members. The committee would assess and rank candidates
using the Trustee Evaluation Form.
7. *Election of confirmed candidates.* The community would vote for
community nominated candidates that have been assessed and ranked using the
Trustee Evaluation Form. The Board would appoint the most voted candidates.
8. *Direct appointment of confirmed candidates*. After the selection
committee produces a ranked list of community nominated candidates, the
Board would appoint the top-ranked candidates directly.
*Call for feedback:* The call for feedback[1] runs from February 1 until
the end of March 14. We are looking for a broad representation of opinions.
We are interested in the reasoning and the feelings behind your opinions.
In a conversation like this one, details are important. We want to support
good conversations where everyone can share and learn from others. We want
to hear from those who understand Wikimedia governance well and are already
active in movement conversations. We also want to hear from people who do
not usually contribute to discussions. Especially those who are active in
their own roles, topics, languages or regions, but usually not in, say, a
call for feedback on Meta.
You can participate by joining the Telegram chat group[2], and giving
feedback on any of the talk pages on Meta-Wiki. We are welcoming the
organisation of conversations in any language and in any channel. If you
want us to organize a conversation or a meeting for your wiki project or
your affiliate, please write to me.
Regards,
Krishna Chaitanya
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call…
[2] https://t.me/wmboardgovernancechat
Hey everybody,
just a quick note to give you some news about the Universal Code of
Conduct,[1] and the consultation we're currently having on Wikidata.
First of all, WMF Board of Trustees officially approved the draft of
the UCoC last February 2,[2] making it into an official policy that
will apply to all Wikimedia online and offline activities, as a
baseline of do's and don'ts that we all are expected to follow (and in
many cases we already do that).
The text was slightly amended in order to fix some potential
confusions. Please refer to [3] if you want to see what has been
changed.
Secondly, but not less important, it's time for the second round of
questions about the ways of implementing the Universal Code of
Conduct! This time, the questions will focus on the reporting
system.[4] I tried to better formulate the questions, but please
remember that I have to be as much general as possible in formulating
questions.
As I said for the first round questions,[5] there are *other* aspects
that will be taken into consideration in the next two rounds, but if
you think something's missing, please do bring it up in the
discussion! Be bold and have your say! Also, if you haven't answered
the first round questions, go give them some love. ;)
As always, if you have questions or doubt, please contact me via email
or on my talk page or intervene on the UCoC consultation page.
Cheers,
Luca Martinelli [Sannita]
UCoC Facilitator for Wikidata
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Policy_text
[2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Approval_of_a_Universal_Co…
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Board_ratificatio…
[4] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:Universal_Code_of_Conduct_consu…
[5] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:Universal_Code_of_Conduct_consu…
Hi everyone,
I’m excited to announce the new roadmap of the Wikidata development team
for Wikidata and Wikibase for the year 2021!
In 2021 we will continue developments to increase data quality and trust in
Wikidata. Among the initiatives are to find more ways for people to find
biases and gaps in the data and compare Wikidata’s data against other
databases to find mismatches. We will also finish up the work from last
year on a visual query builder to simplify querying.
We will be releasing the first version of the new REST API to make it
easier for 3rd-party developers to build applications using data from
Wikidata.
We will also work on making interface improvements for lexicographical data
to make it more usable and attractive for contributors.
On the Wikibase side of things, we will officially release the lightweight,
first version of Wikidata-Wikibase Federation that allows accessing remote
Wikidata properties in a custom Wikibase instance. We will then develop and
release an enhanced version of this feature after incorporating feedback
from users.
We will also:
1.
Implement a new release strategy and infrastructure for Wikibase
packages and create user documentation for the Wikibase Docker update
process
2.
Investigate how to give Wikibase admins the option to change certain
configuration options through a UI without directly editing
localsettings.php.
3.
Develop a web service for users to instantly create a temporary Wikibase
sandbox so they can quickly and easily evaluate if the software is a fit
for their project.
4.
Continue to collaborate with OPEN!NEXT <https://opennext.eu/> to provide
support for partners including set up of Wikibase instances, data
modelling, maintenance, and API development.
The most up-to-date versions of the roadmap can be found here:
-
Wikidata
<https://eu-rm.roadmunk.com/publish/f247f2e06ee338c9997893bd1f9a696fbf2a40ed>
-
Wikibase
<https://eu-rm.roadmunk.com/publish/695c6bc0060b5a1a0b4a74131acd35137db8b97a>
You can click on the different items to see further information, like a
description or planned start date.
In addition, we’re also presenting status updates
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Development_plan/archive2020/status_…>
on what was achieved for each of the 2020 goals.
Please note that the roadmap only presents the main projects that the
development team will work on during 2021. Critical and ongoing tasks (e.g.
maintenance of the software and fixing pressing bugs) are not mentioned in
the roadmap, but will be included in the workflow over the year. The
roadmap is based on estimations and will evolve during the year. The
roadmap does not contain events we are attending or organizing.
If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to add them on this talk
page <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:Development_plan>.
Cheers,
--
Mohammed Sadat
*Community Communications Manager for Wikidata/Wikibase*
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24
10963 Berlin
www.wikimedia.de
Hello all!
Here is a summary of what the Search Platform team is doing around WDQS:
* The database responsible for unit conversions [7] has been updated on
Friday Jan 29. It means that entities served from WDQS and updated since
this date will use the new conversion data for normalized quantities. The
WDQS database will be fully reloaded this month [8] so that all entities
will be coherent with the new conversion data.
* Now that we have the full functional coverage on the Flink based WDQS
Streaming Updater [1], we've done some more testing, and as expected we
found a few bugs and are correcting them.
* Exposing a test server [2] to gather feedback both on this new Flink
based Streaming Updater and on the long standing issue of solemnization of
blank nodes. We'll make an announcement when ready.
* Architecture review of the new Flink based Streaming Updater
with Ververica (the company behind Flink). We will probably uncover a few
more things that need to be improved.
* Productionizing the new Flink based Streaming Updater [8].
* Manual review of a sample of queries to WDQS. We learned a few things:
* Human intuition is not good at predicting which queries are expensive
* We have a large scope of very different queries / use cases, larger
than we expected
* Most of the request we've seen seem to be useful and valuable
* More in depth analysis and categorization of WDQS traffic [6]:
* Instead of focusing on a way to provide more performant solutions for
expensive queries that we see on WDQS, this analysis focuses on the query
groups that we see the most, even if they are already efficient.
* One key finding is that the top 90 query groups represent more than
80% of the queries we serve. Those queries are mostly "simple" queries:
only using the truthy graph, only doing a very limited number of hops in
the graph, etc... This opens the possibility to create a service that is
scalable and efficient for those classes of queries.
* This is very early work, we don't know yet what this service could
look like or if it is even feasible to create it. But it is an interesting
new approach in our problem space.
* The analysis is a bit raw, feel free to ask clarifying questions,
I'll route them to the appropriate person.
* Search Platform Office Hours are happening today (16:00-17:00 GMT /
08:00-09:00 PST / 11:00-12:00 EST / 17:00-18:00 CET) [9]. Feel free to join
if you have any additional questions, or just want to chat with the team!
Have fun!
Guillaume
[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T244590
[2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T266470
[3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T244341
[4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T264006
[5] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:REST_API_feedback_round
[6] https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Joal/WDQS_Queries_Analysis
[7] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T267644
[8] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T267927
[9] https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Search_Platform_Office_Hours
--
*Guillaume Lederrey* (he/him)
Engineering Manager
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
The Search Platform Team
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Search_Platform> usually holds
office hours the first Wednesday of each month. Come talk to us about
anything related to Wikimedia search, Wikidata Query Service, Wikimedia
Commons Query Service, etc.!
Feel free to add your items to the Etherpad Agenda for the next meeting.
Details for our next meeting:
Date: Wednesday, February 3rd, 2021
Time: 16:00-17:00 GMT / 08:00-09:00 PST / 11:00-12:00 EST / 17:00-18:00 CET
Etherpad: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Search_Platform_Office_Hours
Google Meet link: https://meet.google.com/vyc-jvgq-dww
Join by phone in the US: +1 786-701-6904 PIN: 262 122 849#
Hope to talk to you Wednesday!
—Trey
Trey Jones
Sr. Computational Linguist, Search Platform
Wikimedia Foundation
UTC-5 / EST
Hi all,
Join the Research Team at the Wikimedia Foundation [1] for their monthly
Office hours next week on 2021-02-02 at 17:00-18:00 PM UTC (9am PT/6pm
CET).
To participate, join the video-call via this Wikimedia-meet link [2]. There
is no set agenda - feel free to add your item to the list of topics in the
etherpad [3] (You can do this after you join the meeting, too.), otherwise
you are welcome to also just hang out. More detailed information (e.g.
about how to attend) can be found here [4].
Through these office hours, we aim to make ourselves more available to
answer some of the research related questions that you as Wikimedia
volunteer editors, organizers, affiliates, staff, and researchers face in
your projects and initiatives. Some example cases we hope to be able to
support you in:
-
You have a specific research related question that you suspect you
should be able to answer with the publicly available data and you don’t
know how to find an answer for it, or you just need some more help with it.
For example, how can I compute the ratio of anonymous to registered editors
in my wiki?
-
You run into repetitive or very manual work as part of your Wikimedia
contributions and you wish to find out if there are ways to use machines to
improve your workflows. These types of conversations can sometimes be
harder to find an answer for during an office hour, however, discussing
them can help us understand your challenges better and we may find ways to
work with each other to support you in addressing it in the future.
-
You want to learn what the Research team at the Wikimedia Foundation
does and how we can potentially support you. Specifically for affiliates:
if you are interested in building relationships with the academic
institutions in your country, we would love to talk with you and learn
more. We have a series of programs that aim to expand the network of
Wikimedia researchers globally and we would love to collaborate with those
of you interested more closely in this space.
-
You want to talk with us about one of our existing programs [5].
Hope to see many of you,
Martin (WMF Research Team)
[1] https://research.wikimedia.org/team.html
[2] https://meet.wmcloud.org/ResearchOfficeHours
[3] https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Research-Analytics-Office-hours
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Office_hours
[5] https://research.wikimedia.org/projects.html
--
Martin Gerlach
Research Scientist
Wikimedia Foundation