Does anyone else suffer from this problem, whereby you listen to or
watch any kind of programme and think "I could add that to Wikipedia!"
For me, there's so many facts I encounter every day that having that
thought becomes overwhelming.
I just wonder if I'm alone.
User:Bodnotbod
Report to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
Covering: November 2009
Prepared for: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
MILESTONES FROM NOVEMBER
1. Kick-off of 2009 Annual Giving Campaign
2. Multimedia Usability Meeting in Paris
3. Board meeting in San Francisco
4. Second usability study published
5. New hire: Neil Kandalgaonkar (software developer)
KEY PRIORITIES FOR DECEMBER
1. Annual Giving Campaign
2. Wikimania 2010 planning meeting
3. CTO search continues
THIS PAST MONTH
KEY PROGRAM METRICS
Reach of all Wikimedia Foundation sites:
346 million unique visitors (rank #5)
+23.1% (1 year ago) / +0.4% (1 month ago)
Source: comScore Media Metrics
Pages served:
11.3 billion
+7.7% (1 year ago) / -2.8% (1 month ago)
Active number of editors (5+ edits/month): 96,521
+4.0% (1 year ago) / +0.1% (1 month ago)
Source: November 2009 Report Card
<http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2009_11_detailed.html>
KEY FINANCIAL METRICS
Operating revenue year to date: USD 3.7MM vs. plan of USD 3.93 MM
Operating expenses year to date: USD 3.0MM vs. plan of USD 4.1 million
2009 ANNUAL GIVING CAMPAIGN LAUNCHES
On November 11, the Wikimedia Foundation kicked off its 2009 Annual
Giving Campaign under the theme “Wikipedia Forever”, with a campaign
goal of USD 7.5 million in individual donations (including individual
gifts received year-to-date), out of our budget of USD 10.4 million.
This is the sixth WMF fundraising campaign.
The Wikimedia Foundation was supported by Fenton Communications and
Sea Change Strategies in the development of messaging for the
campaign. After some initial rapid iteration of messaging in response
to both fundraising results and community feedback, daily results
began to outperform previous fundraisers on November 17, and by
November 27, the cumulative total exceeded the success of previous
fundraisers. The full progression of the fundraiser relative to
previous ones can be followed here:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics
For the purpose of this fundraiser, several important changes were
implemented:
-The Wikimedia Foundation now offers “white label” credit card
processing. While we still use PayPal to process credit card
information, this can now be done without leaving the Wikimedia
Foundation website. This change is meant to address potential
confusion and fear associated with making payments through a separate
website.
-International Wikimedia chapters are more deeply integrated into our
annual campaign than ever before. An IP address lookup determines the
country-of-origin of potential donors, and gives them relevant chapter
information on the donation landing page. Revenue sharing agreements
are in place with all participating chapters.
-The tracking infrastructure for comparing the success of individual
banners, landing pages, and payment gateways has been and continues to
be significantly improved. Tracking data is publicly shared at <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:ContributionTrackingStatistics
>.
-In spite of some hiccups with the first banners, the browser testing
process was significantly improved compared with previous years.
-As a result of the communications support and improved tracking, we
could test more messages more quickly than ever before.
-For the first time, mobile giving was added as an option for US-based
donors.
Press release about the campaign:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_launches_2009_…
STRATEGIC PLANNING PROJECT
The strategy project is almost halfway through: it started in July
2009 and will conclude in July 2010. In October, 14 task forces were
created covering the following areas: increasing reach and
participation in China, India, and Arabic-speaking countries;
stimulating development of smaller “local language” Wikipedias;
increasing Wikimedia project readership among the five billion people
who don't currently have internet access; improving quality; expanding
into additional content areas beyond what Wikimedia currently offers;
increasing participation, particularly from high-potential under-
represented groups; fostering a healthy, productive editing community;
determining what organizational structures are required to support the
Wikimedia movement and how they should intersect; ensuring financial
sustainability; identifying the partnerships that are most critical to
advancing Wikimedia's mission; identifying the ideal technology
infrastructure, and ways to increase usability and foster technical
innovation; and developing recommendations for strategically
supporting high-priority advocacy.
Throughout November, the task forces began their discussions, designed
to culminate in recommendations in January. The strategy project is
the first group using the LiquidThreads extension for these types of
conversations, and its usage has helped drive the further evolution of
the tool. The strategy wiki has had over 150 unique contributors to
its LiquidThreads discussions, and has averaged over 25 posts/day.
In the process of driving towards recommendations, the Task Forces are
synthesizing and generating a lot of their own research. Much of this
research is being captured in the form of “Wikimedia-pedia”, an
encyclopedia about Wikimedia. By the end of the process, the
Foundation not only expects to have a five-year strategic plan, but
also a well-organized body of knowledge about the Wikimedia universe.
This will serve as a collective snapshot of what Wikimedia knows about
itself, as well as open, ongoing questions.
In late November, the strategy team launched a new feature on the
strategy wiki called, "Question of the week," which features a slice
of data collected by Bridgespan along with a provocative strategic
question. This is essentially a large-scale version of the exercise
Bridgespan led the Wikimedia Foundation board through at its meeting
in early November. Additionally, Bridgespan has continued to
aggressively identify and interview key external voices to help inform
the overall process. As of the end of November, 26 interviews had been
posted on the strategy wiki, including ones with Advisory Board
members Angela Beesley Starling and Mitch Kapor, board members Ting
Chen and Samuel Klein, experts Ed Chi and Rima Kupryte, and staff
members Sue Gardner and Frank Schulenburg. The interviews can be found
here:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interviews
Themes extracted from them have been collected here:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interviews/Summary_of_interviews
BOARD MEETING IN SAN FRANCISCO
On November 13-15, the Board of Trustees met in San Francisco. This
was the first Board meeting in the new Wikimedia Foundation offices.
Its agenda included an update from the Audit Committee, a walkthrough
of some major donor case studies, review of an update to the bylaws,
an update on the strategy plan, an update on the advisory board, and
an update on the board seat vacancy appointment process. Summary by
Board chair Michael Snow:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-November/056295.html
TECHNOLOGY - CORE
Significant staff effort was directed toward support of the Annual
Giving Campaign. Hardware purchases and deployments were also in full
swing, with purchases of new media storage servers, transcoding
servers for video, a new mobile server, a new server for PDF
generation, a new payment server. Large orders for new Squid servers,
database servers, and application servers will follow. (New purchases
also necessitate new investments in space, racks, networking
equipment, etc.) Code review for MediaWiki 1.16 continued.
USABLITY INITIATIVE
The report of the second usability study was published by Parul Vora
via WMF's blog [1] on November 18th. The study confirmed that changes
are progressing in the right direction - towards greater ease of use
for novice users. The majority of such users interviewed in this study
showed less intimidation, completed tasks faster and with greater
ease, and employed the tools and features we have implemented without
instruction and with success. By the end of November the usability
beta was visited and tested by close to 380,000 users. The beta has
been drawing roughly 100,000 users every month, and close to 300,000
users have kept the beta enabled by the end of November. The beta
program was adopted relatively well by the beta users of English
Wikipedia (83% retention rate), and in other English language projects
such as the English Wikinews (95% retention rate). Spanish and
Portuguese Wikipedia beta users have the second highest retention rate
at 81%. German, Russian, Chinese, French and Italian Wikipedia beta
users are retained in the range between 70% and 79%. Retention rate
for Polish and Japanese was relatively low, with 65% and 60%
respectively. Analysis on browser dependency and language specific
issues are described in the WMF blog. [2] [1] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/11/18/ux-usability-study-take-two/
[2] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/12/03/how-is-the-usability-beta-doing/
MULTIMEDIA USABILITY From November 6 to 8, a group of about thirty
people met in Paris to discuss how to improve the processes and
technologies for contributing multimedia to Wikimedia projects. It was
the first meeting of its kind, sponsored and organized by one of
Wikimedia’s chapter organizations, Wikimedia France, in partnership
with the Wikimedia Foundation. [3] Outcomes of the meeting included a
demo of editable video subtitling on Wikimedia Commons, and a first
test deployment of the GlobalUsage extension that shows usage of
multimedia files across Wikimedia's sites.
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/11/fun-with-subtitles/http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GlobalUsage
Neil Kandalgaonkar [4] joined the multi-media usability team as a
software developer. Neil brings the breadth of experience in software
engineering from major social networking web sites such as Flickr and
Upcoming.org. Neil oversaw improving payment system and performance of
FlickrMail interface at Flickr, integrated Upcoming.org into Yahoo
properties and helped expand the team. Prior to Yahoo!, Neil was with
Google and his main responsibility was to enable Google Checkout
system for non-US markets. Neil holds Bachelor of Arts in
Communication Studies from Concordia University, in Montreal, Canada.
The visa application process has started so that Neil can join the
team in San Francisco. [3] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/12/01/beyond-text-report-from-the-multimedia…
[4]http://brevity.org/
OTHER PROGRAM ACTIVITIES
During November, Frank Schulenburg and Pete Forsyth embarked upon the
development of a model for how to systematically improve articles of a
specific topic areas on Wikipedia. They met with professors of several
U.S. universities (Harvard University, the University of Georgia, the
University of Syracuse, George Washington University, Tufts
University) seeking input to help them plan a large quality-
improvement initiative that is intended to start in 2010. In
preparation for this initiative, Frank worked with the best practices
documentation team on the "Assigning Wikipedia articles as coursework
to students" pages on the outreach wiki.
Frank also attended the Multimedia Usability Project Meeting in Paris
and led documentation of the cooperation between Wikimedia and the
German Federal Archives:
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/German_Federal_Archives_case_study
Marlita Kahn interviewed potential vendors, reviewed their proposals
and then hired the Bookshelf core vendor team. She confirmed the
Bookshelf relationship with Common Craft regarding video production,
built the draft schedule and developed a more detailed budget. Marlita
also recruited volunteers from the Wikipedia community to act as
advisers for the Bookshelf materials. Marlita prepared for the
December 1 kick off meeting with the entire Bookshelf team.
Cary Bass opened up the call for invitation to join the Wikimania 2011
Jury and gave ongoing support to the 2009 Annual Fundraiser. Cary also
moderated office hours for Rand Montoya, Naoko Komura and Veronique
Kessler.
COMMUNICATIONS
The communications team with the assistance of contractors Fenton
Communications and Sea Change focused on finalizing the first round of
the annual giving campaign messages, drafting the campaign press
release, offering strategy and counsel on next-steps following the
delayed start of the campaign, and offering strategies to shift lesser
performing messages through the first week of the campaign. The team
has been actively involved in developing later stage messaging as
well, providing the fundraising team with a sufficient supply of
messages to test varied concepts through November and December.
Major coverage during November revolved around the following stories:
1. ComScore/WMF announcement draws coverage (Novmber 4)
Modest, largely positive coverage of the comScore/WMF partnership
announcement in early November. Most outlets re-posted press coverage,
several bloggers and microbloggers highlighted the data points
revealed by comScore, namely the visit time length data in countries
like Colombia.
http://www.mrweb.com/drno/news10801.htmhttp://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=1168…
2. German ex-convicts attempt to sue WMF (November 10)
Lawyers, representing two German men released on parole after serving
time in prison for killing a German actor in 1990, attempted to have
their clients' names removed from Wikipedia. The German language
Wikipedia complied with the request, and the English language version
did not. This received considerable attention from American media,
most of whom criticized German privacy law, or used the story to
highlight the difficulty of applying national law to an international
medium.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/11/murderer-wikipedia-shhhhttp://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10396864-93.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/us/13wiki.html?_r=1http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/opinion/28iht-edmorozov.html?_r=1
3. WMF Announces 2009 Annual Giving Campaign (November 10)
Launch of the Wikimedia Foundation's 2009 annual giving campaign
received some coverage.
http://deals.venturebeat.com/2009/11/10/wikipedia-seeks-to-raise-7-5m-in-wi…http://www.webuser.co.uk/news/top-stories/430382/wikipedia-launches-fundrai…
4. Craig Newmark joins WMF Advisory Board (November 13)
News of Craig Newmark's appointment to the WMF Advisory Board received
highly favorable mentions in mostly online news outlets. Shortly
afterwards, Craig hailed Wikipedia in the Newsweek story "Unknown in
1999, Indispensable today," which received wide coverage in social
media.
http://2010.newsweek.com/top-10/unknown-in-1999-indispensable-now/wikipedia…http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g3mMtCWnCOEJ__mrN8MBK9XWJ…http://www.cnewmark.com/2009/11/wikipedia-is-a-big-deal-so-if-i-can-help-a-…http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/13/craigslists-craig-newmark-joins-wikime…
5. Webby Awards name Wikipedia's launch one of “the top 10 Internet
moments of the decade” (November 19)
The Webbys named Wikipedia's launch as one of the top ten Internet
moments of the decade, which received considerable coverage. CBC.CA in
Canada, the Associate Press, ABC (US), and dozens of blogs highlighted
the story.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ghMwkdsA8fOJBWds1YDhRaLR…http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/top-10-internet-moment…http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/11/18/webby-internet-awards-decade.…
6. Sue Gardner: Huffington Post readers' 'media game changer of the
year' (November 19)
Sue Gardner was chosen by Huffington Post readers as 'Media Game
Changer of the Year,' a story which drew considerable attention from
online blogs, microblogs, and media outlets. More than 1.7 million
votes were cast in 10 categories over a period of three months, with
Sue emerging victorious over competitors Tina Brown, Katie Couric, Tim
Westergren of Pandora and Alberto Ibarguen of the Knight Foundation.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/huffpost-game-changers-yo_…
7. Wall Street Journal claims 'volunteers logging off' (November 23)
A front-page story in the November 13 Wall Street Journal ignited a
firestorm of alarmist coverage, much of it wrongly claiming that
Wikipedia's editors were declining in number. The article said that
English Wikipedia suffered a net loss of 49,000 editors during the
first three months of 2009, analysis attributed to researcher Felipe
Ortega. In actual fact, editing peaked in late 2007, declined
slightly, and has remained stable since. A follow-up blog post by Erik
Moeller and Erik Zachte challenging the general tone of media coverage
received good blog pickup.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125893981183759969.htmlhttp://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10403467-93.htmlhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/23/editors-quit-wikipedia-as_n_367414…
and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/26/wikipedias-jimmy-wales-de_n_371810…http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/11/23/is-wikipedia-too-unfriendly-to-newbi…http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8379566.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8382477.stmhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1231192/Wikipedia-founder-di…http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/11/26/wikipedias-volunteer-story/
* Other worthwhile coverage/reads:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hux1AJECDOq8ITPkdeJvetoRU…
(Wikimedia at the Vatican)
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS179904+04-Nov-2009+PRN20091…
(Jimmy receives Nokia prize)
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/11/06/jimmy-wales-on-wikipedia-quality-and…
(PR moves and increased coverage of Hudong.com)
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/hudongcom-confirms-expansion-into-o…http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704222704574501434029141444.h…http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-11/20/content_9015012.htm
* Blog posts through Nov, 2009
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/11/
* Media interviews and interaction through Nov, 2009
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact_2008#November_…
In November, the Wikimedia Foundation put out three press releases.
“Wikimedia Foundation Appoints Craig Newmark to its Advisory Board”
13 November 2009: Craigslist.org founder to share customer service and
public service experience in support of Wikipedia.
“Sixth Annual Campaign to Protect Wikipedia Kicks Off”
10 November 2009: Wikimedia Foundation invites readers, editors and
contributors to show support and help raise over $7.5 million.
“Wikimedia and comScore partner to improve understanding of the reach
and impact of free knowledge on the Web”
3 November 2009: Digital market intelligence leader expands
Wikimedia’s global user research horizon.
During November, the Wikimedia Foundation participated in interviews
with the Associated Press (New York, New York, USA); Heise (Germany);
the New York Times (New York, New York, USA); San Francisco Chronicle
(San Francisco, California, USA); The Aquinian (Fredericton, New
Brunswick, Canada); the Canadian University Press (Fredericton, New
Brunswick, Canada); the Fredericton Daily Gleaner newspaper
(Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada); CBC Radio New Brunswick
Afternoon Show (Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada); CBC Radio Ideas
(Toronto, Canada); VentureBeat (San Francisco, California, USA);
Poynter Online (St. Petersburg, Florida, USA); Nextgov.com (Washington
DC, USA); Sunday Mirror (London, United Kingdom); CNN (Atlanta,
Georgia, USA); WGN Radio (Chicago, Illinois, USA); the Wall Street
Journal (Chicago, Illinois, USA); Nikkei (Tokyo, Japan); the Financial
Times (San Francisco, California, USA); Diamond Publishing (Tokyo,
Japan); NHK (Tokyo, Japan); New York One News (New York, New York);
Bloomberg (Atlanta, Georgia, USA); Spanish Wire Press (San Francisco,
California, USA); and the Associated Press (Washington DC, USA).
FUNDRAISING, GRANTS, & PARTNERSHIPS
The Wikimedia Foundation received 36,794 donations in November,
totaling approximately USD 1,270,246. Year-to-date, the Foundation has
raised USD 1,792,177 in donations, 24% of its annual goal of USD
7,500,000. This puts it slightly ahead of plan. Including revenue from
restricted and unrestricted gifts the foundation has raised USD
3,342,177, 36% of the USD 9,297,000 goal.
FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION
In November, the Audit Committee and Board of Trustees approved the
Foundation's 2008-09 audited financial statements. The statements are
accessible on the Foundation's wiki at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4f/FINAL_08_09From_KPMG.…
.
In November, Veronique Kessler created for the Audit Committee an
analysis of major risks facing the Wikimedia movement. It assesses
major internal and external risks threatening the continued success of
Wikimedia, including the following: serious decline in participation;
a failure of the movement to evolve structurally; a lack of innovation
(technical and otherwise); the risk of scandal; the inability of poor
people to contribute to Wikipieda due to lack of leisure time,
creating a context in which rich people write an encyclopedia for poor
people; erosion of the Wikimedia readership by competitors; a shift in
the policy landscape that doesn't favour Wikipedia; a plateauing of
donations; decline in core editing community, and a destruction of our
core legal protections. The full analysis is available here: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Top_risks_2009
OTHER ACTIVITIES
Erik Zachte attended a Wikipedia Academy in Stockholm, Sweden. This
was the second Wikipedia Academy hosted by the Swedish Chapter. During
his visit to Sweden, Erik also gave a presentation at the FSCONS
conference in Gotenburg.
Jay Walsh was invited by the organizers of the first-ever
Wikiconference Japan (WCJ 2009) to be their keynote speaker. This was
the first official gathering of Wikimedians in Japan, with a specific
focus on discussing the work of Japanese Wikimedians across all
projects, and inviting academics and enthusiasts in the Foundation's
projects to discuss research, theories, and ideas for new projects and
initiatives. The full-day seminar, held at the Department of
Engineering, at the Hongo campus of the University of Tokyo, on
November 22 brought in over 300 attendees, almost double the original
number planned for by the organizers. Major media attended the event,
in the form of Nikkei business on-line and NHK, the national public
broadcaster.
On November 12, Sue Gardner was the inaugural speaker for Google's
women's speaker series.
On November 18, Sue gave the Dalton Camp memorial lecture at St.
Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, in which she
argued that – contrary to the conventional wisdom and to what we're
often told by the media – we are actually experiencing a golden age of
information. The volume of information available is greater than ever
before, censorship is less prevalent and less effective, and
information is cheap and easy to get. The lecture was later broadcast
on the CBC Radio program Ideas, and is available here:http://castroller.com/podcasts/Ideas/1386039.g
Today Wikimedia Serbia announced in Serbian media that Google donated
$2m. Announcement has been published first at Telekom Srbija portal
Mondo [1]. The most interesting part of it is that they've put TS logo
instead of Wikimedia or even Wikipedia logo or even Wikimedia
community logo.
BTW, I like TS logo, too, but I didn't tell them that :) We are using
very plain memorandum with WM RS logo on it.
[1] - http://www.mondo.rs/s161177/Magazin/Komunikacije/Google_pomaze_zaduzbinu_Wi…
At translatewiki.net we support many different projects and, it is important
for us to have the best information on the different products. The
localisation for MediaWiki for instance can be updated using the
LocalisationUpdate while the localisation updates for "Mobile Wikipedia" and
most other projects are on a schedule that differs from project to project.
I am preparing some changes to the translatewiki.net main page and in it I
refer to the projects and use icons for them. As we found that there is an
interest in localising this project as a priority, it makes sense to make it
more visible. What I would like is a logo for this project. I asked Hampton
who is working on the software and he thought it would be a good idea to
have one. So our request is who can help us with a logo .. even a
placeholder will be fine for now.
Thanks,
GerardM
PS I blogged about projects on translatewiki.net ...
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2010/02/doing-what-i-am-not-good-at.html
PS I do not appreciate if this software can also be used for projects
outside of the WMF .. I think it would be great if would be "Mobile
MediaWiki" in stead.
Hi I am very interested in working as a team on your committe ,I am from england,I wondered if you could forward more detail like pay? And hours? Location?
Many thanks
Rebecca Davey
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:18:07
To: <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: foundation-l Digest, Vol 71, Issue 19
Send foundation-l mailing list submissions to
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When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
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Today's Topics:
1. Chapters Committee - Call for Candidates (Lodewijk)
2. Re: Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2 million
(Samuel Klein)
3. Re: Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2 million (Bod Notbod)
4. Re: Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2 million
(Domas Mituzas)
5. Re: Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2 million
(Gerard Meijssen)
6. Re: Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2 million (Anthony)
7. Re: Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2 million (Bod Notbod)
8. Re: Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2 million (Jimmy Wales)
9. Re: Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2 million
(Philippe Beaudette)
10. Re: Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2 million (Judson Dunn)
11. Re: Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2 million
(David Gerard)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:06:20 +0100
From: Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org>
Subject: [Foundation-l] Chapters Committee - Call for Candidates
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
<73f3ff1b1002170606o7dfd521w86f6af1241caaefd(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
This is a reminder. The deadline for applications is on February 22 (in
about 1 week). Please forward this call to people you might think to be
interested and might make a good candidate.
Kind regards,
Lodewijk
=====
Dear all,
As some of you will know, the Chapters Committee [1] is a Wikimedia
Foundation board-appointed committee that is mainly responsible for
the preparation of approval of new chapters. Currently, there are six
members in the committee, and we are asking for candidates to increase
the membership again.
The chapters committee mainly reviews applications for the forming of
a chapter on legibility and viability and reviews the bylaws of the
organization. This requires communication with chapter candidates all
over the world. Sometimes are applications straight forward and is the
job mainly about reviewing the bylaws and ensuring stability in the
long term that way, sometimes it involves more complex conversations
about whether there are for example enough people involved in the
candidate chapter. At the end of the process, the committee advices
the board of the WMF on the decision to approve the chapter or not.
The board makes the formal decision, but usually follows the advice.
Key skills/experience that we are looking for in new members, are typically:
* willing to work in a sometimes bureaucratic process (reviewing
bylaws is boring)
* 1-2 hour per week (on average) available
* internationally oriented
* Good communication skills in English
* Communication skills in other major world languages are a plus
* able to work and communicate with other cultures
* a strong understanding of the structure and work of both
chapters and the WMF
* experience with or in an active chapter
* an active position in a chapter is a plus
The number of applications is increasing and help is wanted! You can
send your applications with your name, contact data, experience and
motivation to the ChapCom email address, chaptercommittee-l AT lists
DOT wikimedia DOT org before February 22. The applications will be
considered by the current members (in cooperation with the WMF) and
the proposal for the new membership will be reviewed by the Board
before acceptence. I hope for many suitable applications. If you have
any questions, please don't hesitate to email me privately.
With kind regards,
Lodewijk Gelauff
Member, Chapters Committee
[1]: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:20:46 -0500
From: Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2
million
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
<5396c0d11002170620s4523b115p1990eaa44e342b40(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Congratulations to the foundation team for the work that went into this!
On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 9:37 PM, James Alexander <jamesofur(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> That is amazing! Congrats guys! It actually seems quite surprising to me to
> see such a large gift be totally unrestricted when most gifts of this size
< always seem to have ifs/ands or buts attached.
It is rather amazing, and a lovely sign of support.
SJ,
hoping to see an endowment set up soon
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:38:08 +0000
From: Bod Notbod <bodnotbod(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2
million
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
<3ae0a6ac1002170638w3c638c2ah233273ba80fac1b(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Excellent news. I'm a big fan of Google (not saying they won't ever
turn evil!) and switching between Google and Wikimedia
products/projects accounts for 90% of my time online. It's great to
see them both in harmony with each other.
The question is, how do we thank the company that has everything?
I vote we remove everything from our Google articles regarding privacy
concerns for one day and put a banner on the articles saying:
"Wikimedia Thanks Google with This Slightly More Positive Article Than Usual!"
And then tomorrow we just revert our own edits.
Does anyone have a better idea?
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:44:26 +0200
From: Domas Mituzas <midom.lists(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2
million
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <635E928C-AF58-4AF7-ABFA-140F1EDAD33B(a)gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Hello,
> The question is, how do we thank the company that has everything?
We can thank them by providing better content to everyone. That is both what they and us want.
Domas
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:46:08 +0100
From: Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2
million
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
<41a006821002170646u2f232746m3cd39c2581829ff6(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Hoi,
You ask for a better idea :)
Google just finished the Swahili Wikipedia challenge. Google very much wants
to grow traffic, any traffic in African indigenous languages. Spending money
directly on any language is imho a bad idea but I would welcome statistics
that show what people are looking for in Wikipedia that they cannot find.
When you add statistics on new articles that proved most popular in the last
month(s), we provide ANY Wikipedian a mechanism to learn what articles make
most sense to write and show what did best.
This will benefit all our project and the smaller projects will benefit most
I expect. <grin> it is not even expensive to implement I guess.
Thanks,
GerardM
On 17 February 2010 15:38, Bod Notbod <bodnotbod(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Excellent news. I'm a big fan of Google (not saying they won't ever
> turn evil!) and switching between Google and Wikimedia
> products/projects accounts for 90% of my time online. It's great to
> see them both in harmony with each other.
>
> The question is, how do we thank the company that has everything?
>
> I vote we remove everything from our Google articles regarding privacy
> concerns for one day and put a banner on the articles saying:
>
> "Wikimedia Thanks Google with This Slightly More Positive Article Than
> Usual!"
>
> And then tomorrow we just revert our own edits.
>
> Does anyone have a better idea?
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:51:11 -0500
From: Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2
million
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
<71cd4dd91002170651o21e1d6fqda0056bcdead2b94(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 9:38 AM, Bod Notbod <bodnotbod(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> The question is, how do we thank the company that has everything?
>
The prior question is, where did the money come from? I can't seem to
figure out what the Google Fund at the Tides Foundation is...
------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:12:12 +0000
From: Bod Notbod <bodnotbod(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2
million
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
<3ae0a6ac1002170812x3e078b66ve184d7e0d9a95d70(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 2:51 PM, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote:
> The prior question is, where did the money come from? ?I can't seem to
> figure out what the Google Fund at the Tides Foundation is...
It does seem slightly opaque.
A small amount of digging suggests that Google gives money to here:
http://www.tides.org/index.php
...which then releases it again on Google's say so. Maybe. My only
evidence for this is really:
http://bit.ly/d5I3PD
------------------------------
Message: 8
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:19:43 -0500
From: Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia-inc.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2
million
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <4B7C171F.9000004(a)wikia-inc.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donor_advised_fund
"Tides Foundation offers donor advised funds and other grantmaking
vehicles as well as professional philanthropic advice, institutional
regranting services, comprehensive grants management and much more."
------------------------------
Message: 9
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:26:08 -0600
From: Philippe Beaudette <pbeaudette(a)wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2
million
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <3739EEEE-6E5E-4F56-9857-CE5028CB2EDD(a)wikimedia.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes
On Feb 17, 2010, at 10:12 AM, Bod Notbod wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 2:51 PM, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote:
>
>> The prior question is, where did the money come from? I can't seem
>> to
>> figure out what the Google Fund at the Tides Foundation is...
>
> It does seem slightly opaque.
>
> A small amount of digging suggests that Google gives money to here:
>
> http://www.tides.org/index.php
>
> ...which then releases it again on Google's say so. Maybe. My only
> evidence for this is really:
>
> http://bit.ly/d5I3PD
This response is drawn from my previous knowledge of the Tides
Foundation, and no particular knowledge of how Google is using them:
In my experience in the past, the Tides Foundation manages a
charitable fund for an entity. Essentially, the entity gives money to
this fund, and then says "Hey, these people are doing good work, let's
help them do more of it..."; Tides then goes through and handles the
legal due diligence and the paperworky stuff that no one really wants
to do. :-)
Philippe
------------------------------
Message: 10
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:28:57 -0600
From: Judson Dunn <cohesion(a)sleepyhead.org>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2
million
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
<aa08c93c1002170828t2f0e4ccfgea8dedcf2f4efa0e(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 8:44 AM, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> > The question is, how do we thank the company that has everything?
>
> We can thank them by providing better content to everyone. That is both what they and us want.
>
And making the API more awesome, which helps everyone. :D
Judson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cohesion
------------------------------
Message: 11
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:18:02 +0000
From: David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2
million
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
<fbad4e141002170918h21285b60v2214747ff6bd8448(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
On 17 February 2010 14:44, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> The question is, how do we thank the company that has everything?
> We can thank them by providing better content to everyone. That is both what they and us want.
Indeed. Note, by the way, I believe we've previously received money
from Microsoft Bing. (Who heavily link and I think mirror Wikipedia
content in their results.)
- d.
------------------------------
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End of foundation-l Digest, Vol 71, Issue 19
********************************************
Hi all,
I am delighted to tell you that Google is giving Wikimedia a grant of
USD 2 million. It will come to us via the Google Fund at the Tides
Foundation, which handles all of Google's philanthropic activity, and
it is completely unrestricted.
We'll be putting out a press release tomorrow, but I wanted to tell
you beforehand. This is really great news. It's important to us
financially, of course, but I see it as equally important from a
symbolic perspective. I believe that Wikimedia and Google are natural
allies and partners --- we both want to help provide people everywhere
around the world with information. It seems natural to me that Google
would want to support Wikimedia's work, and I am happy they are doing
it.
You probably know that Google and Wikimedia -–both editors and
Wikimedia Foundation staff-- have, from time to time, collaborated on
projects together. (For example, the Google team has created
functionality inside the Google Translate Toolkit that enables editing
and uploading of translated articles to Wikipedia.) This grant will
not be channeled specifically towards Google-related activities: it
will go into our general operating revenues. Having said that, I look
forward to Google and Wikimedia continuing to do good work together.
The press release is below. It will go out tomorrow morning , but you
don't need to keep this news confidential. Feel free to tell your
friends :-)
Thanks,
Sue Gardner
Wikimedia Foundation announces $2 million grant from Google
Donation will support capacity investments in Wikipedia and other free
knowledge projects
EMBARGOED UNTIL 8:00AM PST, February 17 2009
SAN FRANCISCO, CA February 17, 2009 -- The Wikimedia Foundation, the
non-profit that operates Wikipedia, today announced that it has
received a $2 million (USD) grant from the Google Inc. Charitable
Giving Fund of Tides Foundation. This is the Wikimedia Foundation's
first grant from Google. The funds will support core operational costs
of the Wikimedia Foundation, including investments in technical
infrastructure to support rapidly-increasing global traffic and
capacity demands. The funds will also be used to support the
organization's efforts to make Wikipedia easier to use and more
accessible.
"Wikipedia is one of the greatest triumphs of the internet," offered
Google co-founder Sergey Brin. "This vast repository of
community-generated content is an invaluable resource to anyone who is
online."
Wikipedia founder and Wikimedia Foundation board member, Jimmy Wales,
also commented on the Google gift. "We are very pleased and grateful.
This is a wonderful gift, and we celebrate it as recognition of the
long-term alignment and friendship between Google and Wikimedia. Both
organizations are committed to bringing high quality information to
hundreds of millions of individuals every day, and to making the
Internet better for everyone."
The two organizations have a long-standing working relationship. Most
recently, Google and the Wikimedia Foundation have partnered to
support translation of Wikipedia content into key languages with
relatively small Wikipedia editions. Google's Translation Toolkit
supports direct online translation of Wikipedia articles, and has been
used by Google in Wikipedia translation pilot projects with speakers
of Arabic, Hindi, and Swahili.
Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, offered:
"It is wonderful that Google has stepped forward as a major supporter
of a global, non-profit information commons. With this generous grant,
we will be able to fund additional operations and development work to
increase access and contributions to our free knowledge projects
globally."
Wikimedia's support comes primarily from individual donations made by
regular users of Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation completed its
2009-10 fundraiser in January. During the drive, 240,000 individuals
donated more than $8 million, representing three quarters of its
planned revenue for the fiscal year.
--
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
Kids at my school are criticizing the heck out of your Foundation and will not trust Wikipedia because anyone can edit it. If anyone can edit, then why do you exist? There could be a billion vandals. When the old ones get banned, there could be new ones.
Hi,
I wonder if you know about :
http://prishtinainsight.com/
They have a great newspaper that is very informative. Problem is: it is
lacking funding.
My idea is that we would raise funding from wikimedia to buy articles from
them to put in the wikipedia.
Or we would raise funding from other sources for purchasing the articles for
putting them in wikipedia.
They do great journalism. I am thinking about factual articles about kosovo
that are maybe older, maybe we could have them work on some wikipedia things
in agreement, like 1-2 articles from every issue for the wikipedia.
This would benefit the wikipedia and allow them to continue to work on their
newspaper that lacks funding.
What do you think?
Just an idea,
mike