*Fixing my list addressing errors...*
TLDR: The Foundation will be conducting a retrospective on the Technical
Decision Making Process.
To the entire Wiki technical community,
For quite some time now, we have experienced issues with the Technical
Decision Making Process (TDMP). Volunteer contributors and staff have asked
if we are still operating the Technical Decision Forum (TDF, the member
body that participates in the TDMP). Communication about it from the
Foundation has been inconsistent, and interest from the volunteer community
in joining has been low. Some of our most senior engineers on Foundation
staff have expressed that the process is flawed, doesn’t create room for
discussion about the technical issues surrounding a decision, and doesn’t
ensure participation by all stakeholders who may be affected by the
decision. Suffice it to say, the current state of affairs leaves many
participants wanting more.
We must also remind ourselves of the purpose of a decision making process.
The decisions are not meant to be random or isolated. They should be
aligned to our technical strategy, and we should be able to look at the
decisions we have made and understand how they advance our progress against
that strategy. If the process is working as it should, the decisions that
are produced should represent settled wisdom, and not need to be revisited
too quickly. The goals for a well-run process include:
-
A straightforward, widely understood decision making process, that
-
Facilitates impactful technical decisions to be made in a timely manner,
-
Incorporates input from staff and volunteers in our technical community,
with
-
Decisions that align with accountability for decision outcomes, and
-
Clear communication and transparent operations throughout the process.
On examination of the contributing factors that have led us to this point,
the factor that stands out to me is the need for clear accountability:
accountability for the TDMP itself and accountability for each of the
decisions we make. Technical decision making, beyond a certain magnitude,
is a core organizational process for any engineering organization. It is
therefore important for us to examine and improve this process from time to
time to ensure organizational effectiveness. Not unrelated, regular
retrospectives are a routine agile software engineering practice to enact
continuous improvement. To keep our decision making process effective and
efficient, we need to conduct regular retros. Overall accountability for
maintaining an effective decision making process should rest with a person
who is sufficiently able to marshal resources and address problems at a
large scale – here at the Foundation, that resides in the executive level.
The Foundation will be conducting a retro on the TDMP over the next couple
of months. Because we don’t yet have a habit of doing retros on this
process, and because there is a wide range of stakeholders we seek to hear
from, the process will be a bit more structured than an ordinary retro, and
will take more time. As we do more of these, we should get better at them.
The feedback gathered through the retro will be used to make changes to
improve the TDMP.
Foundation staff will follow up with more information about the kickoff of
the retro and what steps will follow. I am looking forward to wide
participation in this retro.
Here are the links to the relevant wiki page and Phab ticket:
- Wiki page
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Technical_Decision…>
- Phabricator ticket <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T333235>
Thank you! And apologies for all the crossposting.
Tajh Taylor (he/him/his)
VP, Data Science & Engineering
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hi Everyone,
Today, Tuesday, March 28 is the final date of submission.
We are elated to receive more than 300 program proposal submissions for
Wikimania 2023.
This is not just for onsite in Singapore. Please consider submitting a
poster session proposal or a pre-recorded video session format. We love to
see your proposals under these session formats as well!
To submit one, just click the blue button at
https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2023:Program/Submissions
Kind regards,
*Butch Bustria*
Event Lead, ESEAP Wikimania 2023 Core Organizing Team
Hi Folks,
We encourage each and everyone of you to create a program submission. You can submit an interactive workshop or panel, a lecture, a short lighting talk or a poster for our dedicated poster session. Submissions are catered to both onsite and online (live or pre-recorded) or a hybrid combination. We would love to see submissions from all over the world, and this year there is an 'Open Data' track for projects relating to Linked Open Data (Wikidata and/or Wikibase).
The theme for this year's Wikimania is Diversity, Collaboration, Future. Topics that strengthen collaboration on Open Data are topics we like to see this year.
Session submissions for Wikimania 2023 are open until 28 March.
Visit the following links for further info:
Wiki page: https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2023:Program/Submissions
Diff post: https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/02/28/be-part-of-the-wikimania-2023-program/
Program Submission Form: https://pretalx.com/wm2023/cfp
Kind regards,
Butch Bustria
Chair, Program Subcommittee
Event lead, ESEAP Wikimania 2023 Core Organizing Team
Hi!
We are working in the international campaign of this April "Every Book its Reader" https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EveryBooksItsReader_2023 and we wanted to create or modify articles about banned books.
We realised that from all the different classes that are related to banned books, we think that only Classe Index Librorum Prohibitorum (http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q22765) provides the especific works (books) that have really been banned. For example if we query https://w.wiki/6Uwy and we take for example the 1st result Paradise Lost (http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q28754) we find the statement part of Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Most of the other classes what they do is providing links to lists in Wikipedia about banned books. We think that some work needs to be done in order to clarify the components of Wikidata ontologies about banned books. And we think there is the need to transfer data from Wikipedia (for example one list about banned books like this https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Autoren,_deren_Werke_auf_dem_Index_…) into Wikidata and make sure that the class banned books is provided.
Is there anybody that will like to work with this challenge?
Thanks,
Núria Ferran Ferrer<https://fima.ub.edu/directori/ficha391>
Professora de la Facultat d'Informació i Mitjans Audiovisuals (FIMA)
Departament de Biblioteconomia, Documentació i Comunicació Audiovisual
Centre de Recerca en Informació, Comunicació i Cultura (CRICC)
Comissió d'Igualtat de la Facultat
Universitat de Barcelona (UB)
Melcior de Palau, 140
08014 Barcelona
IP Projecte de Recerca: Women&Wikipedia<https://www.ub.edu/wikiwomen/>
Co-directora de la revista BiD<https://bid.ub.edu/>
[cid:45b7b38b-84fa-41cf-9186-ab62c33ba3bc]<http://www.ub.edu/>
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