Hello Folks,
I am pleased to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation Mid-Year
Financial Statements (covering the period July 1 through December 31,
2008) are now posted to the WMF website at:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#Mid-year_financial_st…
We have also posted answers to anticipated questions:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports/July_2008_to_December…
The upshot is: The Wikimedia Foundation's financial situation is
strong. Spending is very slightly below plan, and revenues are
slightly exceeding plan. Our projections say we will finish the year
on target. This is primarily due to the terrific performance of the
online fundraiser campaign, which exceeded its targets and enabled us
to close the fundraiser early, as our core operating budget was met
ahead of schedule. We think this is great news, particularly in a very
difficult global economy.
Please feel free to email with any questions or concerns you have.
Veronique
--
Veronique Kessler
Chief Financial and Operating Officer
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
vkessler(a)wikimedia.org
Office: (415) 839-6885 ext. 612
Support Free Knowledge today by donating to
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
--- On Thu, 3/12/09, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pissed off at en:Wikisource
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Thursday, March 12, 2009, 3:03 AM
> Birgitte SB wrote:
> > Sorry but there is no reason to have a RFC on Meta for
> anything remotely like this situation. And I would say
> that if were regarding any wiki (I am sure I have said that
> for similar situations on other wikis in the past).
> The wikis are autonomous on these issues. If someone
> has reason why en.WS adminship rules are incompatible with
> the general purposes of the project, then please
> share. Otherwise discuss in the proper forum which is
> en.WS.
> >
> >
> I have since the very beginning been a strong supporter of
> project
> autonomy, and have usually been very critical of anyone who
> tries to
> impose the rules of other projects in Wikisource.
> Last summer, when
> another de-sysop process happened, I also spoke strongly
> against
> allowing ourselves to be overly influenced by that person's
> overly bad
> behaviour on other projects; I conservatively concurred
> with what
> happened based solely on events at wikisource.
>
> In the course of the discussion about me, I considered
> coming here at an
> early stage, but decided that I would let things play out
> on wiki
> first. I did not raise the issue here until a few
> days after the
> decision was closed and implemented.
>
> If I had not commented on events here, would you have
> noticed it, and
> would it even have crossed your mind to comment as you did
> above?
I don't follow exactly what you mean. I often comment here that some new thread is an internal issue and not a Foundation one. If you had commented on-wiki, I would have responded there. If you hadn't commented about the situation at all, I wouldn't have commented either.
Given
> the still relatively small community at en:ws, where does
> one turn for a
> calmer and more objective analysis from someone who is not
> a part of the
> apparent piling on?
You can approach community members who were not part of the apparent piling on and ask them for such an analysis. You can ask someone who is not part of the community and that you respect for generally giving calm and objective analysis to share their opinion on en.WS. I am not against people from out of the community helping out with this. I just don't believe either such a wide announcement nor having the opinions being placed outside of en.WS should be encouraged.
If the result of raising the
> issue here is a fairer
> discussion on wiki, I can't complain about that.
> There should always be
> a place for off-wiki safety valves.
>
> I see that you have asked a question on my talk page, so I
> will address
> more specific matters there shortly.
>
> Ec
Thank you for bringing the specifics back on-wiki..
Birgitte SB
Hi everyone,
I've appointed two new volunteers into the role of email system team leader
(commonly known as OTRS admin), Daniel Bryant and Mark Wesbeeg.
Daniel is a longtime OTRS agent since March of 2007, an administrator on
en.wikipedia, and a bureaucrat on meta. His unified account name is
User:Daniel.
Mark is an OTRS agent since the beginning of 2008, an administrator on
nl.wikipedia, and a board member of Wikimedia NL. Mark's unified account is
User:Mwpnl.
I'd like to offer my thanks to everyone who expressed interest in applying
and hope you all show your support for the two new administrators.
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator
Should someone handle this?
http://www.blackwikipedia.org/
BlackWikipedia is a nonprofit private organization to support WMF, the
Foundation working to maintain and develop the free online
encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Wikipedia is constantly looking for donors as
you can see in the banner top of each wikipedia.org page, in order to
support the huge costs of maintenaince and adminsitration. Now it's
posible for any user, throught BlackWikipedia, participate supporting
WMF, without having to make a donation.
¿How's that possible? Income generated by Black Wikipedia ads, minus
the cost of maintenance and administration for servers, will be used
by the WMF with ordinary donations. Therefore, each person using
BlackWiipedia is directly participating in Wikipedia supporting.
That's a translation from http://www.blackwikipedia.org/es/wiki/Portada:
Black Wikipedia
BlackWikipedia es una organización privada sin fines de lucro para
apoyar a la Fundación Wikimedia, la fundación que trabaja para
mantener y desarrollar la enciclopedia libre en línea Wikipedia.
Wikipedia es constantemente en busca de donaciones, como usted puede
ver en el banner que aparece al principio de cada página de
wikipedia.org, para apoyar a los enormes costos de mantenimiento y
gestión. Ahora es posible para cualquier usuario, a través de
BlackWikipedia, participar en apoyo de la Fundación Wikimedia, sin la
necesidad de hacer una donación.
¿Cómo es esto posible? Los ingresos generados por anuncios en
BlackWikipedia, eliminado el coste de la gestión y mantenimiento de
los servidores, serán utilizados por la Fundación Wikimedia con
ordinarias donaciones. Por lo tanto, cada persona que utiliza
BlackWikipedia están participando directamente en el apoyo de la
Wikipedia!
Wikipedia es un mirror negro de Wikipedia. La base de datos será
reajustado periódicamente a la base de datos de la Wikipedia. Los
cambios a los articulos dell'Enciclopedia será ejecutado en la
Wikipedia, y entonces se añade a BlackWikipedia durante las
actualizaciones periódicas de la base de datos.
Also in italian (although very slow page):
http://www.blackwikipedia.org/it/wiki/Pagina_principale
BlackWikipedia è un'iniziativa privata no profit per sostenere la
wikimedia foundation, la fondazione che si occupa di mantenere e
sviluppare l'enciclopedia libera online Wikipedia. Wikipedia è alla
continua ricerca di donazioni, come si può vedere dal banner che viene
visualizzato all'inizio di ogni pagina di wikipedia.org, per poter
sostenere le ingenti spese di mantenimento e gestione. Da oggi sarà
possibile per qualsiasi utente, tramite Blackwikipedia, partecipare al
sostegno della Wikimedia Foundation, senza il bisogno di effettuare
una donazione. (...)
Report to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
Covering: February 2009
Prepared by: Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Prepared for: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
MY CURRENT PRIORITIES
1. Hiring interviews: CPO, usability team members
2. Development of the mid-year financial statements
3. Planning begins for 2009-10
4. Stanton Usability project starts up
5. Bits and pieces: normal fundraising activities, grant proposal
development, strategic plan, etc.
THIS PAST MONTH
FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION
In February, Veronique Kessler developed the Wikimedia Foundation's
mid-year financial statements, covering the period of July 1, 2008 to
December 31, 2008. Upshot: the Wikimedia Foundation is on plan and
expects to stay on plan for the rest of the fiscal year, which we
believe is excellent news given the state of the global economy. We
are very grateful to all our donors. The statements include a
comparison of actuals versus plan; a year over year comparison showing
how we are doing against the same period last year; a comparative
balance sheet, and a chart depicting revenues and expenses, with plan
compared against actuals to date and projections to fiscal year end.
The package also included a Q and A answering questions that Board or
community members might be expected to have. The statements were
released to the Board on February 26, and will be published to the
community a few weeks later.
On February 17, the Wikimedia Foundation launched a Chapters Funding
Request process, inviting the chapters to ask for money for projects
or initiatives they would like to carry out during 2009-10, but which
require funding. The process is described here
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/WMF_grants. The
process is open for requests now, and the deadline for submissions is
April 7. The contact person for the process is Frank Schulenburg.
This process is the precursor to one slated to launch in August, which
will be open for funding requests from all volunteers.
Also in February, Sue, Veronique, and Daniel Phelps reviewed the
Wikimedia Foundation's human resources processes and practices with
Board chair Michael Snow and Board member Kat Walsh, who were in San
Francisco for hiring interviews for the Chief Program Officer
position. The purpose of the review was to demonstrate for the Board
the appropriateness and sufficiency of the Wikimedia Foundation's
human resources systems and procedures, as well as to assure it of
legal and policy compliance.
PRIORITIZATION WORKSHOP
The Wikimedia Foundation staged a full-day facilitated workshop in San
Francisco, bringing together most of the San Francisco staff to
discuss the process used to prioritize large organizational
initiatives (with total costs estimated to be greater than USD
250,000). The group reviewed and revised a prioritization tool which
had been created by Erik before the meeting: the tool assigns a value
to each initiative based on its fit against the Wikimedia Foundation
strategy. Going forward, all large initiatives will be assessed,
prioritized and tracked using this tool, at the weekly Restricted
Gifts meeting which was launched in January.
OUTREACH AND PROGRAMS
In February, Sue, Erik, Michael and Kat interviewed four candidates
for the role of Chief Program Officer. Michael and Kat had been
invited to join the hiring boards because the CPO will be a highly
community-facing position: besides being responsible for Jay, Frank
and Cary, the CPO will help develop the organization's strategy with
regard to outreach, partnership and content initiatives. All CPO
candidates were given a takeaway assignment. The CPO search is
expected to conclude in late March. Many thanks to Kat and Michael
for contributing to the process: your help is much appreciated.
In February, several of the Wikimedia Foundation staff began preparing
workshops for the all-chapters meeting to be held in Berlin on April
3-5. Sue will be attending the Board meeting, also in Berlin on
those dates, and Erik will therefore represent her at the chapters
meeting. At the meeting, Frank will present an outreach workshop,
Rand Montoya will present a workshop on fundraising, and Mike Godwin
will present a trademark agreement / chapters agreement workshop.
In February, Frank met with the new New York chapter, giving them an
outline of recent activities, sharing experiences and discussing
possible future outreach activities. He and Sara Crouse attended the
Wikipedia Loves Arts event at the Brooklyn Museum, and met with
representatives of the New York Public Library. Frank also contributed
to various funding proposals, and supported a volunteer initiative to
reach out to the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (Society of German
Chemists).
Cary Bass and Ariel Glenn attended RecentChangesCamp in Portland,
Oregon, an annual wiki-unconference, to meet and interface with other
members of the broader wiki community. (Session notes available at:
http://2009rcc.org/wagn/Session_Notes )
COMMUNICATIONS
The Wikimedia Foundation did not publish any press releases in February.
In February, the Wikimedia Foundation and its representatives
participated in interviews with the following organizations: the Daily
Northwestern, the student newspaper published by Northwestern
University in Evanston, Illinois; the Denver, Colorado news site
Examiner.com; ABC Nyheter in Norway; Wired magazine in San Francisco,
California; the “Tech Ticker” program of Yahoo Finance; BBC Radio 5;
the daily newspaper USA Today; UK newspaper the Sunday Times; Caras
magazine in Mexico City, and UK newspaper The Independent.
Jay posted an advertisement on the Wikimedia Foundation website
seeking a part-time communications intern (up to 30hrs/week) for 3-6
months beginning March 2009.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Communications_Intern
The communications intern will support and assist Jay, as well as
other Wikimedia Foundation staff and/or Board members, in the overall
execution of the Foundation's public relations and communications
strategy.
FUNDRAISING AND GRANTS
In the month of February the Wikimedia Foundation received 1,100
donations totalling approximately USD 32,644.04.
During February, Rand worked on aggregating information for a report
on the online fundraiser, with help from volunteers. He also explored
mobile giving options which could be used in conjunction with our new
mobile portal. The fundraising team worked together on identifying
needed improvements for our database, preparing for a database
upgrade, ensuring that we have full data for offline gifts (such as
wire transfers to our European account), that all donors are
acknowledged, that address information is correct, etc. Major donor
cultivation and grant proposal development activities continued
normally.
Sue, Erik, Sara and Frank visited the Sloan Foundation in New York to
give an update on the organizational progress of the Wikimedia
Foundation, subsequent to our official report. The Sloan Foundation
awarded the Wikimedia Foundation a USD 3 million grant of
institutional support, with a focus on quality initiatives, over three
years beginning in 2008.
TECHNOLOGY
In February, Trevor Parscal was seconded from the technical team to
work on the Stanton Usability project
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Usability_Initiative -
bringing to the project technical knowledge and skills as well as
extensive experience working at a usability firm in interface design
and development. The usability team created a project workspace at
usability.wikimedia.org. Planning has begun and a firm was selected
for user tests (both remote testing and lab testing) to take place in
March, in order to identify key barriers to entry for new Wikipedia
contributors. And, the first in a new set of features designed to
help build consensus on usability improvements has been rolled-out at
usability.wikimedia.org, the workspace for the WP Usability
initiative.
Brion Vibber and Tomasz Finc attended the Free and Open Source
Software Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) in Belgium, to meet and
share ideas with the local Wikimedians as well as others in the open
source community. Brion gave a presentation summarizing recent
MediaWiki developments (
http://leuksman.com/images/7/73/Brion-fosdem2009.odp ).
The code of the new mobile portal at http://m.wikipedia.org/ was
significantly improved, and the portal has been publicized for wider
testing. ( http://leuksman.com/log/2009/02/18/mobile-browser-links/ )
We're hoping to switch certain mobile devices to the new gateway by
default, with a link to the classic version, in future.
The technical team launched the wiki-to-print feature in six
additional Wikipedia language editions: French, Polish, Dutch,
Portuguese, Spanish, and Simple English, making it possible for
readers of those Wikipedia to make collections of Wikipedia articles,
share them, download them as PDF and OpenDocument files, or order them
as printed books. It was also activated in the English Wikipedia for
signed-in users only: the technical team is monitoring server load and
user feedback, due to the massive load of the English Wikipedia. If
all goes well, it will be deployed on all relevant projects for all
users, in March.
The technical team installed 36 new application servers to improve
editing and page rendering performance, especially at peak times.
IN COMING WEEKS
All Staff meeting (March 12-13 in San Francisco)
Hiring of the Chief Program Officer (late March)
Board Meeting and All Chapters Meeting (April 3-5 in Berlin)
Development of the 2009-10 Annual Plan
--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
--- On Wed, 3/11/09, John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> From: John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pissed off at en:Wikisource
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Wednesday, March 11, 2009, 3:49 AM
> On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 7:05 PM,
> Yaroslav M. Blanter <putevod(a)mccme.ru>
> wrote:
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> I think this is a communety thing. Its to bad that
> you lost your
> >> adminship but why should people from other
> projects step in?
> >> I mean this is something on the en.source not a
> global thing.
> >> huib
> >>
> >> --
> >
> > I have no idea of the en.ws situation, nor do I want
> to have any idea, but
> > I would like to remark that leaving such things to the
> community decision
> > is a good idea only if the community itself is big
> enough. Otherwise, it
> > is easy for a group of individuals, or even for an
> individual to introduce
> > their own rules which may be incompatible with the
> general purposes of the
> > project. In this case, an external help may be needed.
> For instance, this
> > is what happened a year ago on ru.wb when the only
> admin has been
> > desysopped after it has been discovered and reported
> on this very list
> > that he arbitrarily abused and blocked other users and
> removed edits.
> >
> > Again, I am not really aware of the situation on
> en.ws, I have no idea
> > whether this project is big enough to solve their own
> problems within the
> > project, and I do not want to make any statements
> about any users over
> > there. (As a matter of fact, I never logged in to
> en.ws). I just wanted to
> > say that not every project is capable with solving its
> own problems.
>
> I agree with this. English Wikisource does not have a
> mediation
> framework, and I didnt participate in that desysop
> discussion as much
> as I should have, due to time constraints. The next
> step would be a
> meta RFC, or something like an offwiki discussion. I
> am happy to
> participate in something like that if it would help.
>
> What I will say now is that Eclecticology is a great
> contributor to
> the English Wikisource project, and I hope he continues to
> be. The
> main project that he has been working on, [[s:Dictionary of
> National
> Biography, 1885-1900]], has been exempt from the structure
> imposed on
> the rest of the project, as a way of reducing the
> tensions.
>
Sorry but there is no reason to have a RFC on Meta for anything remotely like this situation. And I would say that if were regarding any wiki (I am sure I have said that for similar situations on other wikis in the past). The wikis are autonomous on these issues. If someone has reason why en.WS adminship rules are incompatible with the general purposes of the project, then please share. Otherwise discuss in the proper forum which is en.WS.
Birgitte SB
Hi all,
Since January there has been a proposal at Meta to facilitate image
restoration. Support has been nearly unanimous.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Restoration.wikimedia.org
To keep the discussion centralized, please post comments or questions to the
proposal talk page.
Many thanks to the people who are working to make this possible.
-Durova
--
http://durova.blogspot.com/
Resending Sue Gardner's report for January, for the list archive.
I really like to be able to link to it. (Sue, you have a habit of
starting paragraphs with "From" and this bug is still there.)
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:03:53 -0700
From: Sue Gardner <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Foundation-l] Report to the Board of Trustees: January 2009
Report to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
Covering: January 2009
Prepared by: Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Prepared for: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
MY CURRENT PRIORITIES
1. World Economic Forum at Davos
2. Annual fundraising campaign wrap-up
3. January board meeting
4. Stanton Usability project starts up
5. Bits and pieces: normal fundraising activities, grant proposal
development, strategic plan, etc.
THIS PAST MONTH
JANUARY BOARD MEETING
On January 9-11, the Board of Trustees met at the Wikimedia Foundation
office in San Francisco. Agenda items included: a recap of the
success of the online fundraiser; a financial update recapping the
basics of the 2008-09 annual plan and informing the Board that the
organization is on track to meet its targets; an overview of the
proposed plan for achieving resolution on the license migration issue;
a walk-through of changes to the Form 990, coming next year;
presentation of a resolution requiring people bound by the Conflict of
Interest policy to update their statements annually; presentation of a
resolution to approve the establishment of a new Citibank account in
France; a general discussion of the time and travel commitment for
board members; presentation of resolutions to recognize Wikimedia NYC
as Wikimedia's first sub-national chapter, and to recognize Wiki UK
Limited as a chapter; presentation of the minutes of the October board
meeting and the November IRC board meeting; a discussion of the
collaborative strategy development process requested of Sue by the
Board; a review of the role of the Ombudsman commission and the
appointment of new members; an evaluation and revamp of Wikimedia
Board-created committees; an update on the status of the hiring of the
Chief Program Officer; an executive session; a wide-ranging
conversation with a potential new Advisory Board member; an update on
the activity of the Nominating Committee, and a presentation of
comScore Media Metrix data. The minutes of the January 9-11 Board of
Trustees meeting are expected to be released within a month or two.
WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM
-From January 27 to February 1, Jimmy Wales and Sue Gardner attended
the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The main goals of the
trip were to present a proposal to a potential funder, increase
awareness of Wikipedia as a charity among WEF attendees, and actively
move forward relationships with a few key major donor prospects. Sue
was also able to meet briefly in Zurich with Board members of the
Swiss chapter. It was a successful trip, with all major goals met,
and is fully documented in a report to the Board of Trustees,
distributed to foundation-l on February 3. For further details,
please see that report.
LICENSE MIGRATION
On January 21, Erik Moeller and Mike Godwin published a proposal for
Wikimedia projects to migrate from the GFDL to CC-BY-SA, in order to
achieve greater legal compatibility with existing free educational
content, and to simplify and clarify the obligations of re-users. The
proposal invites all Wikimedia project contributors who have made at
least 10 edits prior to January 12, 2009, to participate in the
decision of whether to migrate. The vote will be made through an
implementation of the Board election software, and will be securely
administered by a third party. The proposal is here
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update. The vote is planned
to be held before April.
COLLABORATIVE STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
Earlier in 2008, Michael Snow had asked Sue to begin designing a
heavily community-consultative process for development of a
three-to-five-year strategic plan for Wikimedia. The goals of the
strategy development process: 1) To develop a better shared
understanding inside Wikimedia regarding where we're collectively
headed, and 2) To enable us to communicate our goals more clearly to
external stakeholders, partners and the general public, so they can
join us in helping reach them. This would be a highly unusual,
volunteer-centric process, which would pose unique challenges, and
create unique opportunities to innovate. At the Board meeting in
January, Sue presented an early-stage draft proposal. The Board
endorsed the work done thus far, and asked Sue to continue evolving
the plan, including beginning to work through timing and resourcing.
FUNDRAISING AND GRANTS
During January, the Wikimedia Foundation wrapped up its annual giving
campaign for 2008-09: the most successful and ambitious fundraiser in
Wikimedia's history, with donations more than double the previous
year.
Between the launch of the campaign on November 4, 2008 and its
conclusion on January 9, 2009, a total of 139,124 people contributed
USD 4,967,759.77. This is particularly notable because of the
current very difficult global economic climate, and is testimony to
the dedication and passion of Wikimedia's many supporters. The
Wikimedia Foundation is enormously grateful to everyone who
contributed to the success of the fundraiser.
Seven of the international Wikimedia chapters participated in the
campaign, committing to apply 50% of monies received towards
priorities agreed-upon by both organizations. Wikimedia Österreich
(Austria) will contribute USD 6,271; Wikimedia Deutschland (Germany)
will contribute USD 189,486; Wikimédia France will contribute USD
40,252; Wikimedia Hungary will contribute USD 184; Wikimedia Israel
will contribute USD 947; Wikimedia Nederland will contribute USD
10,879. Wikimedia CH (Switzerland) has already contributed USD
29,173, and Wikimedia Italia, which did not participate in the
fundraiser, has contributed USD 4,550. (Please note that with the
exception of the figures attributed to Wikimedia CH and Wikimedia
Italia, the amounts listed here are inexact, due to fluctuating
exchange rates and other variables.)
In the month of January, the Wikimedia Foundation received 15,033
donations smaller than USD 10,000, totalling approximately USD
546,434.55. We also received major gifts totalling USD 50,000.
In January, the Mozilla Foundation awarded a grant of USD 100,000 to
the Wikimedia Foundation to help coordinate improvements to the
development of Ogg Theora and related open video technologies.
Mozilla and Wikimedia share a strong commitment to open standards.
Version 3.1 of the Mozilla Firefox web browser will include built-in
support to play audio and video in the open source Ogg Vorbis and Ogg
Theora formats, in which all Wikipedia audio and video is stored. The
USD 100,000 grant will be used to support the work of long-time
contributors to the Ogg Theora/Vorbis codebase and related tools, such
as libraries for network seeking. The improvements will be made over
the next six months.
In January, the Wikimedia Foundation launched a weekly “Restricted
Gifts” meeting bringing together the staff members who work on
mission-related projects that need funding, with the staff members
whose jobs are to secure funding. The meeting's purpose is to create
an avenue for frequent communication, in order to enable the
revenue-generating staff to speak authoritatively with external
parties about Wikimedia's goals and priorities, and also to provide
feedback to their colleagues from potential funders.
OUTREACH AND PROGRAMS
In January, Sue continued pre-interviewing candidates for the position
of Chief Program Officer. She also invited Board member Kat Walsh and
Board Chair Michael Snow to participate in the hiring interviews,
scheduled for February.
In January, Frank Schulenburg began developing the concept of a
Wikimedia “bookshelf”: a repository of reference materials designed to
1) create awareness of the Wikimedia projects and provide basic
information about them, 2) invite people to contribute to the
projects, including information designed to overcome common objections
to participation, and 3) provide information about how to edit the
Wikimedia projects, including tip sheets, how-to's, an annotated
“anatomy of an article,” policy summaries, etc. Some of the material
will be aimed at particular audiences such as schools. Working with
Jay and others, including a variety of external contractors, Frank
will design and develop the “bookshelf” in English over the coming
year. When complete, it is intended to serve as core instructional
materials, to be translated, adapted and used for multiple purposes by
Wikimedia chapters, individual volunteers, and partner organizations
such as schools.
Frank also created a set of help pages for the PediaPress book
extension, marking the first time the Wikimedia Foundation has
provided educational support for the release of a new MediaWiki
software feature. He began developing a Wikipedia Academy brochure. He
prepared a set of priority questions to be answered from the
(UNU-Merit) Wikimedia General Survey of Contributors and Readers,
began exploring the German "Mentorenproject" and began gathering
information about best practices in the German “Wiwiwiki” project.
Also in January, John Broughton’s book “Wikipedia: The Missing Manual”
was released for free on the English language Wikipedia, enabling
Wikipedia users around the world to read and edit it. John first
contributed to Wikipedia in August 2005: he is author of the Editor’s
index to Wikipedia, a comprehensive list of reference pages and links
to useful information and tools for Wikipedia editors. “Wikipedia:
The Missing Manual” teaches new users how to contribute to Wikipedia
and gives practical advice on how to collaborate with others to
improve the free encyclopedia’s content. The book was published by
O’Reilly in January 2008 and can now be found on Wikipedia’s help
pages. The Wikimedia Foundation is grateful to John and to O'Reilly
for this great gift to Wikipedia users.
TECHNOLOGY
On January 2, Naoko Komura began work for the Wikimedia Foundation
managing the Stanton usability project. The goal of the project is to
measurably increase the usability of Wikipedia for new contributors by
improving the underlying software on the basis of user behavioral
studies, thereby reducing barriers to participation. Naoko had worked
for Wikimedia for the prior three months as a contractor shepherding
two important projects: the Wikimedia General Survey of Readers and
Contributors, which was successfully launched and received tens of
thousands of responses in late 2008, and the Wikimania 2008
postmortem. Prior to joining Wikimedia, Naoko has worked as a Senior
Program Manager and Project Manager for Yahoo! Mail, Postini, and
Cygnus Solutions. She has an MA in International Development Policy
from Stanford University and an MS in Economics from Kobe University
in Japan. Naoko is a native speaker of Japanese.
On January 21, Naoko announced that, following a rigorous search
process, the new usability team will be housed at the offices of
Wikia, Inc. Wikimedia will pay market rent to sublease two Wikia
conference rooms, two blocks from the Wikimedia Foundation. The
deciding factors were proximity to the Wikimedia office, and readiness
of the space for immediate use. This will have the added benefit of
bringing Wikimedia's usability team into contact with Wikia
developers, who have been doing intensive work on Mediawiki usability.
Wikia, Inc. was co-founded by Wikimedia Foundation board member Jimmy
Wales: Jimmy was not involved in the decision to sublease from Wikia.
Naoko also posted three usability team job openings on the Wikimedia
Foundation website: an interaction designer, a senior software
developer, and a software developer. All will be located in San
Francisco, and are contract positions from February 15, 2009 to April
16, 2010.
In January, Brion Vibber posted a job advertisement on the Wikimedia
Foundation website, seeking a full-time system administrator to help
monitor, maintain, and document the 400+ Linux/Unix servers that
operate Wikipedia and its sister projects. This position will be based
at our San Francisco headquarters, but will work closely with our
remote staff and volunteers. A full-time system administrator will
let us be more responsive to site issues when they happen, and more
importantly be more proactive about planning for and averting problems
before they affect the folks back home.
The AbuseFilter extension (
http://mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:AbuseFilter ) by Andrew Garrett, a
Wikimedia contractor, was enabled for testing on test.wikipedia.org.
It allows privileged users to set specific controls on user activity
and create automated reactions for certain behaviours. It can
potentially be used to handle many tasks that are currently performed
by bots, and to improve detection of problematic activity. A study
last year indicated that a particular filter, if applied in August
2007, would have blocked 60% of all page-move vandalism on English
Wikipedia over the subsequent year, with just five false positives
(0.6%).
The Drafts extension by Trevor Parscal (
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Drafts ) was enabled for
testing on test.wikipedia.org. It automatically saves draft copies of
pages the user is working on to the server in regular intervals, to
allow edit recovery in case of browser or system crashes.
In October, the technical team rolled out the “wiki to print” feature
enabling users to generate PDF files, OpenDocument word processor
files, and on-demand printed books in one of our smaller sister
projects, Wikibooks. In January, wiki-to-print was enabled on the
German Wikipedia. Readers can now compile a wiki-book from any number
of Wikipedia articles, download a PDF or OpenDocument version, or
order a printed version from our technology partner, PediaPress.
COMMUNICATIONS
On January 2, the Wikimedia Foundation issued a press release
announcing the successful conclusion of its annual giving campaign.
On January 13, the Wikimedia Foundation issued a press release
announcing the appointment of Roger McNamee to the Foundation's
Advisory Board. Roger McNamee is Managing Director and Co-Founder of
Elevation Partners, which invests in media and consumer technology
companies. He is a long-term San Francisco Bay Area resident, a
professional musician, and a prominent Wikipedia supporter.
During the month of January, the Wikimedia Foundation and its
representatives had contact with the following media outlets: the
Reuters TV program “Davos Today;” BBC Radio; the German-language Swiss
daily paper Neue Zürcher Zeitung; the New York Times; the LA Times;
Italian news magazine Panorama; SWR Radio in Baden Baden, Germany; CBC
Radio in Toronto, Canada; Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia; Dutch
portal OneMoreThing.nl; Green 960 AM Radio in San Francisco,
California; technology news site TG Daily; New Delhi magazine SPAN;
news/blog site The Huffington Post; the weekly IT publication Network
World; the Las Vegas Sun; KFOG, an FM rock radio station in San
Francisco, California; the Dutch daily newspaper Nederlands Dagblad;
the Associated Press, and the Canadian daily newspaper the Globe and
Mail.
FINANCE AND ADMIN
In January, the Wikimedia Foundation enriched its employee health
insurance coverage by providing more comprehensive health and dental
coverage and adding vision coverage, while lowering the cost of the
plan. The Wikimedia Foundation also expanded its business insurance,
while lowering costs. And, we negotiated a reduction in Paypal fees,
including for amounts received during the online fundraiser.
IN COMING WEEKS
* Mid-year financial statements will be released
* Chief Program Officer hiring interviews will take place
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dirk <hunter(a)iis.sinica.edu.tw>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:58:07 +0800
Subject: A question about Attribution survey and licensing next steps
To: foundation-l-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org
What is your purpose on this statistics? Can you explain it for me? I saw a
news about your ranking on CC web site
I can not understand why you choose those six options and what each means
Sincerely
Dirk
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG.
Version: 7.5.557 / Virus Database: 270.11.9/1988 - Release Date: 2009/3/6 ??
07:17
--
Michael Bimmler
mbimmler(a)gmail.com
The behaviour of three people in driving me out of adminship at
en:wikisource has left me bitterly disappointed with and deeply offended
by the length to which some will go to rid themselves of someone whom
they personally dislike. I cannot but view their efforts as anything
but a series of concerted personal attacks. The details can be found at
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Administrators/Archives/Eclecticol…
The process began in the context of an annual confirmation at
Wikisource. John Vandenberg began stirring the pot with a series of
five claims which were all easily refuted. He later commented:"there is
no expectation that evidence is provided here, nor is there a
requirement to have attempted to "fix" the admin conduct prior to the
vote of confidence." This is clear hostility to any peaceful resolution.
Pathoschild did not hesitate to distort and exaggerate individual
incidents to suit his purposes. If I call a certain type of edit
"useless", it can hardly be construed as a comment about the person.
When he went so far as to say that I was belittling others, that was a
bald-faced lie. His comment, "Of course he can reapply at any time, but
I'll likely object then for the same reasons," tells me that he is
willing to hold on to his grudges indefinitely.
Although, to his credit, Thomas V did not cast a vote because his
en:wikisource activities have recently been sparse, that did not prevent
him from dragging in old settled issues pre-dating the division of
Wikisource into separate domains. He did not hesitate to attack two
individuals who supported my continued adminship. For one he complained
that his support was based entirely on the way I looked in a picture of
me taken at a Portland meetup. There was no doubt more to the IRC
conversation than that, but I am not privy to how those
behind-the-scenes conversations may have influenced opinions.
The grudges with the latter two individuals have been ongoing for a long
time, and in the past year I have been more than happy to keep my
contact with them to a minimum. I certainly have not had the energy to
wantonly dig up dirt on them when their confirmations came up.
The underlying issues for the complaints against me would be laughable
in certain other projects. NPOV issues are fairly uncommon in
Wikisource; persistent copyvios are not an issue; no questions of
edit-warring are involved. Much of the problems had to do with cleaning
up backlog, or differing views about how articles should be named, or
banners on an author page to say that we had no works by that author
even though that fact was already obvious because all the links were
red. I have also had strong differences with the more technically
minded people (including all three named above) over technical solutions
and how we use templates. I happen to believe that an overuse of such
techniques will drive away desperately needed help from non-technical
people, and that some of the more rigid structures actually hinder our
ability to become a value-added project. I have no compunctions about
expressing my visions forcefully, or allowing for multiple solutions to
a problem without feeling obliged to choose one as superior. If one is
indeed superior it will eventually prevail without being forced. Being
an admin should not prevent anyone from strongly arguing views that are
different from those that currently prevail, and the fear that those
tools may be taken away should not serve to intimidate admins away from
taking unpopular actions. Proceeding with fairness and integrity is
more important than popularity, and if it means that my actions will
occasionally be reversed I'm not too worried about that
I have participated in these communities for seven years already, and my
loyalty to their success is beyond question. I was active on the
original Wikisource from the day that it opened, and have always
maintained a vision for that project that goes far beyond the current
trends.
In the course of the confirmations I did express my willingness to
consider mediation, but that received no response at all. The
Wikisource community is too small to have a regular arbitration or
appeal process, and seeking a review from the same people who drove the
tyranny of the majority is not likely to be successful. They are not in
a position to take a fresh unbiased approach to the matter. I would
appreciate it if someone could give a fresh look at this, and perhaps
provide a degree of mediation.
Ec