Hi everyone!
I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
the Wikimedia Tool Developers Group [1] as a Wikimedia User Group. The
group is international cooperative of developers who create freely-licensed
tools for improving the Wikimedia projects.
Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!
Regards,
Kirill Lokshin
Chair, Affiliations Committee
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Tool_Developers_Group
FYI,
I am forwarding this here as I believe it would be useful for future
Wikimania applicant.
Regards,
Isaac (*who has never received a wikimanian scholarship or apply for one
this year)*
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Deryck Chan <deryckchan(a)gmail.com>
Date: Wed, May 24, 2017 at 5:59 AM
Subject: [Wikimania-l] Successful scholarship applications
To: "Wikimania general list (open subscription)" <
wikimania-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
It's good that we're discussing the hurdle for someone to get their first
scholarship to participate in Wikimania. In addition to the suggestions in
the other thread, I'd like to lead an initiative to help future applicants
who want their first-ever Wikimania scholarship.
As a successful Wikimania 2017 scholarship applicant, I'm publishing
on-wiki all my answers to the scholarship application form, except personal
information:
https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Deryck_Chan/Sc
holarship_application
I encourage all other successful scholarship applicants to do the same. If
you kept a draft of your application form, redact any personally
identifiable information and publish it on wikimania2017wiki. This will
help future scholarship applicants get a feeling of what the reviewers are
looking for.
Deryck
Hello,
Please join me in welcoming Wikimedia's accepted candidates for Google
Summer of Code 2017 and Outreachy Round 14!
Google Summer of Code 2017
1.
Alexander Jones, Texas, United States, Implement Thanks support in
Pywikibot <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161426> - John Mark
Vandenberg
2.
Amrit Sreekumar, Kerela, India, Improvements to ProofreadPage Extension
and Wikisource <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161111> - Yann
Forget, Tpt
3.
Feroz Ahmad, New Delhi, India, Add a "hierarchy" type to the Cargo
extension <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161609> - Yaron Koren,
Nischayn22
4.
Harjot Singh Bhatia, New Delhi, India, Adding Data storage feature and
upgrading Quiz extension <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T160257> -
Marielle Volz, Sam Reed
5.
Harsh Shah, India, Build a similar to @NYPLEmoji bot for Commons images
- Dereckson, Ariel
6.
Keerthana S, India, Automatic editing suggestions and feedbacks for
articles in Wiki Ed Dashboard <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T160840>
- Sage Ross, Jonathan Morgan
7.
Sejal Khatri, India, Provide enhanced usability for Wikimedia Programs &
Events Dashboard managed by Wiki Education foundation <
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161929> - Sage Ross, Jonathan Morgan
8.
Siddhartha Sarkar, India, Single Image Batch Upload <
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161670> - Basvb
Outreachy Round 14
1.
Ela Opper, Tel Aviv, Israel, "Remind me of this article in X days"
MediaWiki notification <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161823> -
Matthew Flaschen and Moriel Schottlender
2.
Medha Bansal, New Delhi, India, WikiEduDashboard: Allow Programs &
Events Dashboard to make automatic edits on connected wikis <
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161568>- Jonathan Morgan, Sage Ross
3.
Sonali Gupta, Rajasthan, India, Document process for creating new Zotero
translator and getting it live in production <
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161191> - Marielle Volz
We would like to encourage accepted candidates to introduce themselves on
this thread, share with us where they are coming from and give a brief
overview of the project they will be working on.
We’re so proud of the contributions they have made so far to our community,
and we look forward to having a wonderful time working with them over the
summer! Also, a huge shout-out to the project mentors for their enthusiasm
and commitment!
Thank you to Sumit and Anna for coordinating this round along with me!
Best,
Srishti
Hi!
I'd like to welcome you to join us at the CREDIT showcase next week,
Wednesday, 5-April-2017 at 1800 UTC / 1100 Pacific Time. We'd like to see
your demos, whether they're rough works in progress or polished production
material, or even just a telling of something you've been studying
recently. For more information on the upcoming event, as well as recordings
of previous events, please visit the following page:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/CREDIT_showcase
And if you'd like to share the news about the upcoming CREDIT showcase,
here's some suggested verbiage. Thanks!
*Hi <FNAME>*
*I hope all is well with you! I wanted to let you know about CREDIT, a
monthly demo series that we’re running to showcase open source tech
projects from Wikimedia’s Community, Reading, Editing, Discovery,
Infrastructure and Technology teams. *
*CREDIT is open to the public, and we welcome questions and discussion. The
next CREDIT will be held on April 5th at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 18:00 UTC. *
*There’s more info on MediaWiki, and on Etherpad, which is where we take
notes and ask questions. You can also ask questions on IRC in the Freenode
chatroom #wikimedia-office (web-based access here). Links to video will
become available at these locations shortly before the event.*
*Please feel free to pass this information along to any interested folks.
Our projects tend to focus on areas that might be of interest to folks
working across the open source tech community: language detection,
numerical sort, large data visualizations, maps, and all sorts of other
things.*
*If you have any questions, please let me know! Thanks, and I hope to see
you at CREDIT.*
*YOURNAME*
Dear Katherine,
I hope this email finds you well.
As resolved from the recent Wiki Indaba 2017 in Accra, Ghana please find
attached the L2K.[1]
This letter consists of the feedback collected from participants on two
sets of questions (explained further in the letter). The organizers of
Indaba analysed this data on behalf of the African conference participants.
We would also like to take the opportunity to appreciate Wikimedia
Foundation support including Asaf Bartov and Kacie Harold from Community
Engagement, Jack Rabah from the Global Reach Team, and Zack McCune from the
Communications Team.
See you soon at our next Wiki Indaba in Tunisia.
Best,
- Felix Nartey
[1] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiIndaba_conference_
2017/Letter_to_Katherine_(L2K)
Hello everyone,
I am pleased to share with you the news about the formation of the latest
team in the Technology department, the MediaWiki Platform team![1]
The MediaWiki Platform team will be tasked with leading maintenance and
improvements related to the core MediaWiki platform codebase. That includes
encouraging future development of the MediaWiki platform and addressing the
technical debt that has accumulated during the 15-year history of MediaWiki.
MediaWiki is an amazing, powerful, and complex open-source software
platform. The number and variety of extensions, and the wide variety of
communities who have adopted MediaWiki as their method for knowledge
collection and dissemination, are a testament to its strength as a software
platform.
Like any significant codebase with a long development history, there are
remnants of design choices and experiments that are no longer in use, and
some areas of code are in need of modernization. However, at its core is a
large amount of highly functional, secure, performant code, capable of
supporting a robust platform through the use of extensions and hooks. There
is also a great amount of flexibility to adapt to new requirements.
This team will have a more focused purpose than the previous MediaWiki Core
team.[2]. While the previous team was at times spread too thin, many areas
are now covered by dedicated teams like Security and Performance. The new
MediaWiki Platform team will center their efforts on the core codebase. The
team will also have a dedicated Product Manager who will be creating the
platform roadmap in collaboration with the team, the Architecture Committee
and the MediaWiki user community.
Specific goals for this team are to:
* Assist and encourage development of features for MediaWiki by providing
developers with a strong core.
* Undertake feature development work which is primarily architectural in
nature.
* Facilitate the development and publication of MediaWiki's roadmap to
assist coordination between internal and external users.
* Maintain and promote guidelines and standards for the MediaWiki core.
I am thrilled that Tim Starling has agreed to lead the team, reporting
directly to me. He will be joined by Brion Vibber, Kunal Mehta and Brad
Jorsch. The team officially launches on Monday April 3, and will complete
the hiring and onboarding of additional team members in the coming months.
Their initial workplan will include core support for multi content
revisions for the Structured Data on Commons project and will be discussed
in more detail during the upcoming consultation for the Wikimedia
Foundation 2017-2018 annual plan.
I am excited by this latest evolution in the structure of the Foundation's
Engineering group. We will continue to learn from our collective knowledge
and expertise, and make adjustments to our composition and plans. I
appreciate the input provided by many in the community that helped inform
this decision. I also want to thank the members of the Wikimedia
Foundation's Product, Technology, and Community Engagement departments who
were involved in this process. In particular, I would like to thank Toby
Negrin, Adam Baso, and Trevor Parscal - whose support was critical in
bringing this plan together.
Join me in welcoming and celebrating our new team!
Victoria
Dear Wikimedians,
The Wikimedia Foundation is pleased to announce a small new program called
the Hardware Donation Program. In a word, it is a program designed to
donate depreciated (but fully working) hardware from the WMF office to
community members who would put it to good use.
The program, including instructions on how to apply, is described on Meta,
here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hardware_donation_program
Please read the information carefully. I especially encourage you to pay
attention to the program's design considerations, which determine most of
the decisions we'll be making.
We currently have approximately 20 laptops ready to be donated.
Applications are welcome.
The upcoming Wikimedia Conference in Berlin (in about two weeks) would be
an excellent opportunity to deliver some of those laptops in person to
approved applications, so if you think you might be interested, I'd
encourage you to apply as soon as possible.
Please also help spread the word about this program, by forwarding this
e-mail to other Wikimedia lists you're on, and posting the link to the
program page on village pumps and *community* (not public) social media
channels or other communication forms you use.
Special thanks to User:Anntinomy from Wikimedia Ukraine, who had the idea
of asking about possible donation of older machines from WMF, and inspired
this program.
Mini-FAQ:
Q: Why are you doing this?
A: WMF's Office IT determines a lifetime for work machines, and regularly
replaces older machines. This creates a stock of older, working machines,
that are available for donation. We can donate them locally to San
Francisco charities, but figure that if we can find low-cost ways to
deliver them to our own community members, that's so much better.
Q: Am I eligible?
A: Read the fine program documentation.
Q: If I'm eligible, am I guaranteed a donated laptop?
A: no.
Q: Once these 20 laptops are donated, will there be others?
A: yes, eventually.
Q: How can you ensure people would use the machines for Wikimedia purposes?
A: We can't. We'll be making a good-effort assessment of the likelihood of
Wikimedia use, and make a decision to donate (or not) the equipment. Once
donated, the equipment no longer belongs to WMF. We encourage, but can't
enforce, reporting on impact achieved using the equipment.
Q: I need a few laptops for my event in two weeks! Can I get them through
this program?
A: No. Read the fine program documentation.
Q: I'm really happy about this!
A: So are we! :)
Q: I'm really angry about this!
A: So it goes.
Q: I have more questions!
A: Hit 'Reply'. :)
Cheers,
Asaf
Wikimedia got accepted among the 201 organizations in the Google Sumer of
Code (GSOC) 2017 <https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/>!
We are trying to make it easier for prospective students to choose a
project idea and get started. And, so we are considering to showcase a
bunch of project ideas on the MediaWiki GSOC page itself:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2017.
Help us by mentoring a project from here:
- Check out the tasks in the '*Missing Mentors*' and '*Almost Ready to
be Mentored*' column on Possible-Tech-Projects
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/possible-tech-projects/>
workboard.
- Check out the ''*Wishlist 11-30 (needs owner)*" and *"Wishlist 31-50
(needs owner)"* column on the Community-Wishlist-Survey-2016
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/2420/> workboard.
- Any portion of your project, which needs some support, would be a 2-3
month long project for a beginner and overall a good learning experience.
If you are interested in mentoring a project, add "
*Outreach-Programs-Projects*" and "*Google-Summer-of-Code (2017)*" tag to
the corresponding task on Phabricator. We will follow up with you from
there.
If you are looking for design, and documentation related projects to
mentor, we are participating in the Outreachy
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Outreachy/Round_14> program as well in
parallel to GSOC. Add "*Outreach-Programs-Projects*" and "*Outreachy
(Round-14)*" tag to a task you are interested in mentoring.
Email me if you've any questions, happy to help!!
Cheers,
Srishti