Wikimedia-l February 2010

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[Foundation-l] Wikipedic OCD
by Bod Notbod 19 Feb '10

19 Feb '10

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

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[Foundation-l] November 2009 Report to the Board of Trustees
by James Owen 19 Feb '10

19 Feb '10

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.htm http://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-shhh http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10396864-93.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/us/13wiki.html?_r=1 http://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.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10403467-93.html http://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.stm http://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

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Re: [Foundation-l] Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2 million
by Gregory Kohs 19 Feb '10

19 Feb '10

Wow, this is big news! Now with Google cooperating with the National Security Agency, everything seems to be lining up for Wikimedia. Gregory Kohs

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[Foundation-l] Overview chapter reports mid December 2009 - mid February 2010
by Lodewijk 18 Feb '10

18 Feb '10

Hi all, several Wikimedia chapters produce monthly (or bi/trimonthly) reports for the other chapters, the foundation and the community at large. These reports are posted publicly, and give an overview of what the chapters are doing. I would like to give a bit of attention to these reports on this list, and that is why I send you an overview of these reports - mainly links. You can always find the whole archive on http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/ . If you want to subscribe to this list, please visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/chapters-reports . If you are from a chapter board, and would like to post a report too, please send it to chapters-reports-l at lists.wikimedia.org or contact me privately if you have questions. There are several Wiki-versions available through: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports Some of my favorite pieces of information from these months: * Wikimedia Nederland organized a New Years event in the Tropenmuseum in January * Wikimedia Polska hired a part-time employee as secretary and opened an office in Lodz * Wikimedia CH participates in the Third Age Online program * Wikimedia Nederland launched cooperations with the National Archive and the Library Association You want to know more? Read the reports, and ask the sender for more information! With kind regards, Lodewijk ==== Overview Wikimedia CH Newsletter January 2010: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2010-January/000057.h… Wikimedia Italia January 2010: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2010-January/000056.h… Wikimedia Nederland December 2009: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2010-January/000054.h… January 2010: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2010-February/000058.… Wikimedia Polska October - December 2009: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2010-January/000055.h…

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[Foundation-l] Media like Toolserver logo (as I do) :)
by Milos Rancic 18 Feb '10

18 Feb '10

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…

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[Foundation-l] Mobile Wikipedia
by Gerard Meijssen 18 Feb '10

18 Feb '10

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.

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Re: [Foundation-l] committee placement
by r.davey13＠googlemail.com 18 Feb '10

18 Feb '10

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 foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to foundation-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org You can reach the person managing the list at foundation-l-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of foundation-l digest..." 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. ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l End of foundation-l Digest, Vol 71, Issue 19 ********************************************

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[Foundation-l] Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2 million
by Sue Gardner 17 Feb '10

17 Feb '10

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

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[Foundation-l] At school
by Tyler 17 Feb '10

17 Feb '10

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.

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[Foundation-l] Money for the Prishtina Insight
by jamesmikedupont＠googlemail.com 17 Feb '10

17 Feb '10

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

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Wikimedia-l February 2010