Thank you Asaf for your mail!
Hereby a cuteness report on Wikimania 2017, written on behalf of Wendy the Weasel.
We had a great Wikimania in Montreal with a lot of cuteness.
First of all, everyone who showed support for (more) cuteness in the Wikimedia movement received two stickers: the logo of the WCA + "Cuteness approved!". This support was indicated on Meta in the section
Users that support cuteness in the Wikimedia movement of the Wikimedia Cuteness Association page. This was very successful and resulted in 109 new indicators of support on this Meta page, and more have promised to sign up.
The Wikimedia Cuteness Advisory Committee has reviewed the text and has come with some remarks. Two major issues exist with the current draft: it misses the word "cuteness" at least once, and second more cute words are suggested to have the direction much better fit with how Wikimedia will be in 2030: much more cute!
On Sunday 13 August, during the closing event of Wikimania 2017, many of the present cuties from the Wikimedia movement had a reserved seat close to the speakers. One of the speakers was Jimmy Wales. During his speech, one of the cuties could no longer hold it up and threw himself down. It is not a good idea to speculate on the exact cause, but maybe the next time the Wikimedia Cuteness Advisory Committee can give an advice to Jimmy Wales wherever needed.
after the closing event of Wikimania 2017 the group photo was taken in the Ballroom. On the front row the many cuties from the Wikimedia Cuteness Association sat on the front row. (Group photo not yet found on Commons...)
After the closing ceremony and the group photo, the General Assembly (
AGM) of the Wikimedia Cuteness Association took place, present were 30 (!) cuties, supported by their assistants and many other supporters of cuteness. Also group photos were made.
On Sunday evening we also got informed (seriously!) by a member of the
Affiliations Committee that the Wikimedia Cuteness Association can become an official user group of the Wikimedia movement, and after two years the user group can become a thematic organisation. The benefit of being recognised is that we can send a board member to the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin and that we can receive grants, like for buying the copyrights on the designs of members of the Boards of Cuties.
It is obvious that cuteness supports the mission and vision of the Wikimedia movement, but some humanoids are still in denial. A member of the Learning & Evaluation team from the Wikimedia Foundation indicated that it would be good to do research on how cuteness effects the performance of contributors in quantification and numbers. Perhaps an questionnaire can be executed.
Before the Wikimania conference, the Hackathon took place. During the hackathon there was a
goat-a-thon to close the goat-gap as there are not enough goats on Wikimedia projects. As goats are special members of the Wikimedia Cuteness Association, and knowledge gaps in the Wikimedia projects are a( )cute problem, the Board of Cuties is very happy that a special activity has been organised to address this gap. Goatification is important for the Wikimedia movement, therefore also a
goatification project exists on Phabricator, on Wikidata the
WikiProject Goats exists, and one
submission about goats was held at Wikimania.