Wikimedia-Cascadia March 2015

wikimedia-cascadia@lists.wikimedia.org

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14 discussions

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Budget?
by Tim Davenport 30 Mar '15

30 Mar '15

So you're doing a budget before bylaws? Or am I missing a link somewhere? Tim Davenport Corvallis, OR

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Comments requested: Cascadia Wikimedians annual plan and budget, version 3
by Pine W 28 Mar '15

28 Mar '15

Please comment here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/UG_US-CWUG/2015_Annual_Plan I will set up a conversation with Alex in a week or two to discuss the plan, including any comments made on the Meta page. 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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WMDC Grant report; upcoming need for more bridge funding
by Pine W 28 Mar '15

28 Mar '15

Hi all, I've updated the information here with actual costs: http://wikimediadc.org/wiki/Grant:Cascadia_Wikimedians_User_Group_Quick_Sta… All receipts have been shared with Brian and James. I'm still waiting on: (1) My finalized credit card statement that shows the VistaPrint business card expense. I will scan this and black out everything that's not related to VistaPrint, and share this with Brian and James as my documentation of the costs. (2) Cost of BECU checks to be withdrawn from our online bank account. It may be another month before we have a statement that I can scan and share with James. I believe that we will have enough remaining funds to survive April, only thanks to Mako's willingness to write us a check. After that we will be underwater financially unless DC is willing to give us another short-term grant to keep us afloat until PEG approves our budget, which it sounds like will happen in May or June because WMF is busy with Inspire until near the end of April. So, Cascadia board members: you be willing for me to request another interim grant from WMDC to keep us on life support for May and June? 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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Free UW workshop series: intro to data science & programming - apply by April 3rd!
by Jonathan Morgan 26 Mar '15

26 Mar '15

*Back by popular demand! * I am helping organize another round of the Community Data Science Workshop series with UW professor Benjamin Mako Hill, UW PhD Candidate Dharma Dailey, and a growing cast of dedicated data science mentorship professionals. The workshops will be three and a half day-long workshops in April and May for anyone interested in learning how to use programming and data science tools to ask and answer questions about online communities like Wikipedia, free and open source software, Twitter, civic media, etc. These will be an improved version of the workshops we have run in the spring and fall last year <http://www.com.washington.edu/2014/03/free-community-data-science-workshop-…> . The workshops are for people with no previous programming experience and, thanks to sponsorship from UW's eScience Institute <http://escience.washington.edu/> and Department of Communication <http://www.com.washington.edu/>, are free of charge and open to anyone. Our goal is that, after the three workshops, participants will be able to use data to produce numbers, hypothesis tests, tables, and graphical visualizations to answer questions like: *- Are new contributors to an article in Wikipedia sticking around longer or contributing more than people who joined last year?* *- Who are the most active or influential users of a particular Twitter hashtag?* *- Are people who participated in a Wikipedia outreach event staying involved? How do they compare to people that joined the project outside of the event?* Details and dates are online here: http://wiki.communitydata.cc/CDSW_Spring_2015 *If you are interested in participating, fill out our registration at the link above before April 3.* Register soon because we have been oversubscribed both previous times we have run these workshops. *If you already know how to program in Python, it would be really awesome if you would volunteer as a mentor! *Being a mentor will involve working with participants and talking them through the challenges they encounter in programming. No special preparation is required. If you’re interested, there’s a link on the page above or you can send me an email. Regards, Jonathan (On behalf of Mako, Tommy, Ben, Dharma, the Community Data Science Research Group <http://communitydata.cc/>, and all the CDSW mentors.) *P.S. Apologies if you've received this announcement multiple times through multiple channels!*

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Upcoming events for Cascadia Wikimedians User Group
by Pine W 25 Mar '15

25 Mar '15

Hi Cascadians, Here is our calendar of upcoming events: 1. *March 24 (this Tuesday!): meetup at Bellevue Regional Library. *The library's address is 1111 110th Ave. NE, Bellevue, WA 98004. We will meet 6 PM to 9 PM in Room 4. *Please note that the library requires that we have 4 people present in order to use the room. *I think that we have 4 or 5 people planning to come, so I hope that we'll meet this requirement. If not, we may move ourselves to somewhere else in the library. You can email me if you can't find us. Business discussions (hopefully these will be brief): A. Washington State Secretary of State registration documents (and accompanying celebration) B. New bank account C. Annual plan updates/feedback Content agenda: D. Creation of video about how to use VisualEditor, inspired by our upcoming workshop at UW and feedback from the last workshop. E. General editing. 2. *April 19 (Sunday): Privacy and security themed editathon with Seattle TA3M at the Montlake Library*, 1 PM to 4:45 PM. New editors are welcome as well. The meeting room has capacity for 47 people. The library's address is 2401 24th Ave. E.; Seattle, WA 98112 (NW corner of 24th Ave E. and E. McGraw St.) https://www.spl.org/locations/montlake-branch/mon-getting-to-the-branch Important note: there are only 13 parking spaces at this library branch, so please carpool, bicycle, or use public transportation. Tentative schedule: *1:00 - 2:00 Introduction to Wikipedia editing and community norms (possibly using the video mentioned above) *2:00 - 2:15 discuss list of possible subjects for editing; break into small groups *2:15 - 4:30 open editing and discussion *4:30 - 4:45 wrap up, next steps 3. *April 25 (Saturday): University of Washington Learning Commons workshop and edit-a-thon, focused on the Learning Commons' labor archives special collections.* *(15 min) 10:30 Coffee and check in *(15 min) 10:45 AM Welcome (Chloe). *(30 min) 11-11:30 Subject matter introduction (Conor) *(30 min) 11:30-12 (waiting for confirmation) Representation and Wikipedia: What’s at stake? *(1 hour) 12-1 (Pine and/or Peaceray): Introduction to Wikipedia community norms and VisualEditor *(30 min) 1:00-1:30 Break; people write on a whiteboard to propose subjects for groupwork based on interest (further training on Wikipedia mechanics/community, subject matter focus, etc). *(2.25 hours) 1:30-3:45 Groups get organized; editing *(15 min) 3:45-4:00 wrap up, surveys, next steps I hope to see you at one or more of these events! 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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Inspire Campaign proposal
by Monika Sengul-Jones 19 Mar '15

19 Mar '15

Dear Cascadians: Thanks again to those who participated in the I Love To You event. Out of that conversation, an Inspire Idea proposal emerged. I would like to invite you to view the proposal, and offer feedback if you wish: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Full_Circle_Gap_Protocol:_Ad… All the best, Monika -- Monika Sengul-Jones www.monikasengul.com (206) 715-2320

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Re: [Wikimedia Cascadia] [Wikitech-l] Maps
by Pine W 18 Mar '15

18 Mar '15

Glad to hear of this idea. We've discussed potential collaborations with OSM in Cascadia Wikimedians meetings. Pine On Mar 18, 2015 2:08 AM, "Max Semenik" <maxsem.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, just a quick note: as part of general search and discovery work, me and > Yuri are resurrecting the project to have OpenStreetMap in Wikimedia > starting in April. Because the initial part of this work will include > researching options which will influence precise goals and this is yet to > be done, we still can't commit to a precise timeline, but as a ballpark > estimate I personally want to aim for serving PNG tiles at a reasonable, > though not necessarily "dynamic maps on every WP page" scale by the end of > Q4. Vector/multilingual maps would be the next stage. We will be mostly > using Phabricator for planning, > https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/openstreetmap/ is my first pass on > the outline of things to be done. > > Your comments and suggestions would be highly appreciated, please share > your thoughts, ideas of projects that might use these maps, or just > merciless critique! :D > > -- > Best regards, > Max Semenik ([[User:MaxSem]]) > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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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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Editor training for VisualEditor
by Pine W 16 Mar '15

16 Mar '15

Hi all, As mentioned on the Education mailing list, some thematic organizations have already, or will soon, produce training materials for VisualEditor in a variety of languages. Cascadia Wikimedians needs at least a lesson plan for our workshops in April, so I/we will produce materials in English, probably in video form that includes two major sections: about Wikipedia and its sister projects, and how to edit Wikipedia with VisualEditor. My hope is to produce a 30 to 60 minute video that can get new editors to a basic level of Wikipedia competence in one hour including competence with talk pages, notability, copyright, plagarism, conflict of interest, and deletion discussions. I also hope that new editors will feel excited to participate in the community when they finish watching the video. Stay tuned for further developments. If other English speaking Wikimedians are interested in helping with the production then please email me off list. Thanks, Pine

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Updated goals, calendar and budget
by Pine W 14 Mar '15

14 Mar '15

Cascadians and Alex, I've finished a round of major changes to our annual plan based on Alex's statements about what WMF is willing to support. If you look in the tabs designated "old", you can see the highlights that indicate that a goal or line-item has been modified (yellow) or eliminated (red). There is a lot of yellow and red. If the revised plan was funded as written, it would be about half of the previous amount, and our goals are revised downward accordingly. In our calendar I did add or note previously planned events and meetings in blue text. Because WMF is unwilling to fund my time, I am concerned when I look at this plan that I may not have the volunteer capacity to devote the time required to the organizational and financial tasks that are necessary for the execution of this downscaled plan. I hear that similar problems afflict other small thematic organizations because WMF is unwilling to pay for the necessary management work, and not many people want to spend their free time doing accounting, budgeting, negotiating with insurance agents, discussing trademark issues with WMF Legal, or writing reports. I am hoping to hear from Alex and others in the group some creative ideas about how to distribute the business workload. I'm willing to lead on these tasks and I have enough experience to feel comfortable with doing them, but I don't have unlimited free time. I am hoping that Alex and other Cascadians will provide suggestions about how to complete the necessary work in a way that volunteers (including me) will enjoy and will respect the value of everyone's time. I look forward to hearing your thoughts about the revised goals, calendar, and budget, as well as how to distribute the workload. 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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Wikimedia-Cascadia March 2015