Wikimedia-Cascadia February 2015

wikimedia-cascadia@lists.wikimedia.org

15 participants
24 discussions

Annual plan modifications based on conversation with Alex
by Pine W 18 Mar '15

18 Mar '15

Hi Cascadians, I had a conversation about our draft annual plan with Alex this afternoon. Alex believes that at this point in our development, our priority should be expanding the number and the capacity of our volunteers, and that we are too early in our development for the temporary / part-time paid positions that we proposed in our budget. This means that our goals to develop institutional partnerships and to do outreach work must be significantly reduced in proportion to the capacity of our volunteer network. We know that we have many opportunities for partnerships and public engagement in the Cascadia region, and hopefully we will still be able to pursue those partnerships and engagement opportunities at a low intensity level that our volunteers can support in a sustainable way. Again, Alex believes that our first goal should be to expand our volunteer network. We will need to reorient our plans and our budget to focus on development and support of our volunteer network. I will work on redrafting the goals, calendar, plan and budget over the course of the next week, and have a conversation with Alex about the possible revisions next week. I have also asked Alex to create a learning pattern that describes the development path of organizations such as ours; I think that such a learning pattern would have been very helpful to us when we were first discussing our goals for this year. After the conversations with Alex have finished, I plan to re-engage with our Board to discuss the goals and funding that Alex and WMF feel that they are willing to support. I am cc'ing this email to Alex and hope that she will add any comments or clarifications that she has. It would probably be best to direct any questions or comments from Cascadians directly to Alex, preferably on this list so that others can benefit from the discussion. Thanks, Pine *This is an Encyclopedia* <https://www.wikipedia.org/> *One gateway to the wide garden of knowledge, where lies The deep rock of our past, in which we must delve The well of our future,The clear water we must leave untainted for those who come after us,The fertile earth, in which truth may grow in bright places, tended by many hands,And the broad fall of sunshine, warming our first steps toward knowing how much we do not know.* *—Catherine Munro*

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Suggested reading for Board members
by Pine W 26 Feb '15

26 Feb '15

http://www.sos.wa.gov/_assets/charities/QuickGuideHandbook.pdf Pine *This is an Encyclopedia* <https://www.wikipedia.org/> *One gateway to the wide garden of knowledge, where lies The deep rock of our past, in which we must delve The well of our future,The clear water we must leave untainted for those who come after us,The fertile earth, in which truth may grow in bright places, tended by many hands,And the broad fall of sunshine, warming our first steps toward knowing how much we do not know.* *—Catherine Munro*

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Outreach events and event logistics
by Pine W 25 Feb '15

25 Feb '15

Hi all, If the plan is to have us focusing on developing a volunteer base, I think that natural places for us to start would be UW (including UW libraries, archives and museums), the Seattle Public Library, and the King County Library System. To that end, how would people feel about making some of our editing workshops more externally focused on training new editors, probably with the use of VisualEditor from the start? For example, we might consider having one social unconference type meetup like we have had at Cafe Allegro each month, and one outreach-focused editing training and editathon combination event at an institution that is well placed for recruiting. I am also thinking that we could have one event each month in Seattle, and one event each month on the eastside, with the locations alternating for the unconference-social and the workshop-edititathon. We could also try a variety of focuses for the workshop-content contribution events. For example, instead of or in addition to content improvements on English Wikipedia people might be interested in photo uploads or editing for Commons, technical events such as the CDSW events, or subject-matter focused events such as highlights of particular subjects at libraries or museums. What do you think? I'm brainstorming ideas here. I think some variety would be good, but if we're also interested in recruiting new long-term contributors then we might also want some continuity, so I'm trying to find the right balance, especially with our limited volunteer resources. If we expand our volunteer base then it will be easier for us to have a broader range of events. I'm cc'ing Alex and WMF Evaluation here to see if they have suggestions. I'll incorporate everyone's input here into the revised draft goals and budget. Some of the tasks that we had originally planned for this year may be moved to next year since WMF is unwilling to fund them this year. Thanks, Pine *This is an Encyclopedia* <https://www.wikipedia.org/> *One gateway to the wide garden of knowledge, where lies The deep rock of our past, in which we must delve The well of our future,The clear water we must leave untainted for those who come after us,The fertile earth, in which truth may grow in bright places, tended by many hands,And the broad fall of sunshine, warming our first steps toward knowing how much we do not know.* *—Catherine Munro*

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Anyone in Seattle up for edit-a-thons on weekend of 3/7-3/8?
by Raymond Leonard 23 Feb '15

23 Feb '15

Folks, I am contemplating driving to either or both of the Portland, OR & Vancouver, BC edit-a-hons. - March 7: Art+Feminism – Portland Art Museum, Noon to 5pm - March 8: Art+Feminism – University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 11-5pm Last September, for Portland's Feminist and Queer Art Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, I drove down the night before & stayed with cousins for the weekend. This time also I would prefer not to drive down & back the same day, but might consider it if there was interest. Ideally folks might arrange a place to crash. It is at least a 3-hour drive to Portland from where I live here in Bothell. I do want to drive home Saturday evening. The Vancouver edit-a-thon is marginally closer, about 2½ hours from here.Of course, anyone making that journey needs a passport or an enhanced driver's license. I have not crossed the WA-BC border since 1992, so I do not know how long the actual crossing takes. Anyone interested? Yours, Peaceray

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Re: [Wikimedia Cascadia] [Wikimedia Education] Editor training with VisualEditor
by Pine W 23 Feb '15

23 Feb '15

I am very happy to see such strong interest in VE from the education communitty. FYI, if we don't hear back about a lesson plan for VE training in the next few days, either in Hebrew or English, I will contact our colleague Michal who is the executive director of WMIL to see if she can provide us with at least a Hebrew version that we can use for inspration. Pine On Feb 22, 2015 2:14 PM, "Vojtěch Dostál" <vojtech.dostal(a)wikimedia.cz> wrote: > I also wondered if there is a VE-oriented training somewhere. It seems > there isn't - because VE is in a state of flux. > > Because Czech Republic uses VE to train students we are in a great need of > such a training, and are currently asking for a small contract to write a > simple wiki-based tutorial, mostly based on Wikipedia:Training module > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Training/For_students> for > students. > > If there is a Hebrew VE training could someone please link it? It would be > lovely to see it, at least to get some inspiration. > > thanks > > > Vojtěch Dostál > > místopředseda / vice-chairman > Wikimedia Česká republika / Wikimedia Czech Republic > http://www.wikimedia.cz > Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/Wikimedia.CR> | Twitter > <https://twitter.com/Wikimedia_CR> | Newsletter <http://eepurl.com/FsHJr> > > > 2015-02-22 14:02 GMT+01:00 Leigh Thelmadatter <osamadre(a)hotmail.com>: > >> I still do not use VE in my training (despite having 200+ students >> working on three campuses) because there are too many things it cannot do. >> I dont have time to constantly play with it to see if it is now good enough >> to use. I will likely not use it until it is accepted by the wider >> community. However, the lack of a viable VE does make scalability very very >> difficult, especially with older teachers who adjust less to idea of coding >> in any form. >> >> +1 on the frustrations for those with new accounts. I understand the need >> for protections with new accounts, but why in the heck does the captcha >> "error" message appear at the top and the captcha itself at the bottom? >> Students only see the red "error" and I have to tell them to go to the >> bottom and its only a captcha. In addition, because we use wireless with >> the same IP address, we get errors when I am having a class move text into >> sandboxes or copy/paste finished articles into the mainspace. Most students >> cant use the move function as they dont have enough errors. Even if they >> did, using it would render the sandbox worthless because of the redirect. >> Add to this trigger-happy bibliotecarios in es.wiki who erase student work >> with little or no explanation, the last two times being wrongly done. >> >> ------------------------------ >> Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2015 11:55:31 +0000 >> From: charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com >> To: education(a)lists.wikimedia.org >> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia Education] Editor training with VisualEditor >> >> On 22 February 2015 at 10:33, Filip Maljković <dungodung(a)gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >> It is my impression that the VE should be ideally made in such a way that >> a tutorial isn't really necessary. But I guess we don't live in an ideal >> world :) >> >> That is the "ideal world according to Silicon Valley", not the world we >> inhabit as Wikimedians. >> >> The projects want useful content, and how people write for Wikipedia >> matters much more than how they do on Facebook. The world of no manuals, no >> help pages, no support is not one in which we can easily grow our community >> of productive Wikimedians. >> >> And the way the WMF releases software makes life very hard for trainers. >> >> It is literally true that you need to check the night before giving a >> workshop, with a new account, what the current experience for a newcomer to >> Wikipedia is (capchas, strange messages, moving buttons and all). >> >> I believe the latest WMUK training leaflet takes the VE as a given. I >> know their older leaflet on images mentions it, in a way found confusing to >> a newcomer (as I found - she was a Computer Officer). >> >> Charles >> >> >> _______________________________________________ Education mailing list >> Education(a)lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Education mailing list >> Education(a)lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Education mailing list > Education(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education > >

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April editing workshop
by Pine W 23 Feb '15

23 Feb '15

Hi Cascadians, TA3M is interested in an editing workshop in April or May, with the subject focus being information security, privacy, and related subjects. This time we can use VisualEditor from the start. Let's hope that WMF agrees to set up a lesson plan with VE that we can adapt easily. If not, we may create a simple one ourselves. Would our UW Wikimedians please contact me off list to discuss setting up this event at the Learning Commons or another setting that probably has good resources on information security and privacy such as the law library? Thanks! Pine

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Eastside meetup, March 24
by Brian Henry 20 Feb '15

20 Feb '15

Cascadians, Pine reserved a room for a one-time Eastside meetup at the Bellevue Library on March 25 starting at 6 PM, and I created a signup at the usual spot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Seattle If this works, and there's interest in establishing an ongoing thing, we may start doing a regular Eastside meetup. Locations and times can be a topic of discussion. - Brian

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Social media connections and pages; business cards
by Pine W 20 Feb '15

20 Feb '15

Hi all, In the good news department, we now have pages on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. I'm working on LinkedIn but it appears that I need some people to confirm connections before I'm allowed to create an organization page. If I sent you an invite then please accept it, if you didn't get an invite but would like one please email me or search my legal name on LinkedIn. My understanding is that Wikimedia organizations have found in their experience that Facebook is the most useful for organizing events. My experience with managing the SeaFOSS account is that I have a number of followers of low local relevance but good subject matter relevance. I'm hoping that WMF Communications will have an office hour sometime in the next several weeks in which we can discuss WMF and thematic organizations' goals and strategies around social media. As one of our board members has told me, social media can become a time-sink with little meaningful benefit, so we need to choose our goals and strategies wisely. I will update everyone when I have the LinkedIn account active, and I will order the generic business cards for us once I can place links to all four pages on the business cards. If you are not a board member but would like a few business cards for redistribution, then please email me off-list. Please let me know how many you would like and how you would like me to get them to you. Please distribute them wisely to people who you think are likely to make use of them such as librarians, instructors, and potential GLAM partners. Cheers, Pine *This is an Encyclopedia* <https://www.wikipedia.org/> *One gateway to the wide garden of knowledge, where lies The deep rock of our past, in which we must delve The well of our future,The clear water we must leave untainted for those who come after us,The fertile earth, in which truth may grow in bright places, tended by many hands,And the broad fall of sunshine, warming our first steps toward knowing how much we do not know.* *—Catherine Munro*

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Lunch on February 25?
by Pine W 20 Feb '15

20 Feb '15

Hi all, Impact HUB is having a members lunch around noon on Wednesday, February 25 and invites people to "bring a friend". I'm not sure yet if this is a brown-bag event but it sounds like at least some food will be provided. If you'd like to join me for lunch with other HUB occupants then please email me off-list. Pine *This is an Encyclopedia* <https://www.wikipedia.org/> *One gateway to the wide garden of knowledge, where lies The deep rock of our past, in which we must delve The well of our future,The clear water we must leave untainted for those who come after us,The fertile earth, in which truth may grow in bright places, tended by many hands,And the broad fall of sunshine, warming our first steps toward knowing how much we do not know.* *—Catherine Munro*

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Gender data by project
by Pine W 19 Feb '15

19 Feb '15

Hi all, Does anyone know if data about gender of contributors on projects other than English Wikipedia is available? In addition to other language Wikipedias, it would be interesring if we have data about Commons, Wikisource, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary, Wikispecies, etc. Also, anecodotally I obeserve a relatively high percentage of female participation in education and GLAM activities. Do we have data about the gender of participants in education and GLAM, particularly in leadership roles? Thanks, Pine

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Wikimedia-Cascadia February 2015