Hi,
The 2010-11 Annual Plan and Questions and Answers have just been posted
to the Foundation website
(http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2010-2011_fiscal_year).
The plan was approved by the Board last week.
The 2010-11 plan differs from previous years in that this plan is rooted
in the five-year (2010-2015) Wikimedia Strategy which has been developed
collaboratively over the past year. In 2010-11, we have planned
continued growth over previous years reflecting continued and increased
investments to serve our mission and increase our impact.
The 2009-10 year is projected to exceed revenue targets and to be
underspent in expenses primarily due to underspending in the first
quarter of the 2009-10 fiscal year.
Veronique
I have been working with Sam and others for some time now on brainstorming a
proposal for the Foundation to create a centralized wiki of citations, a
WikiCite so to speak, if that is not the eventual name. My plan is to
continue to discuss with folks who are knowledgeable and interested in such
a project and to have the feedback I receive go into the proposal which I
hope to write this summer. The proposal white paper will then be sent around
to interested parties for corrections and feedback, including on-wiki and
mailing lists, before eventually landing at the Foundation officially. As we
know WMF has not started a new project in some years, so there is no
official process. Thus I find it important to get it right.
The basic idea is a centralized wiki that contains citation information that
other MediaWikis and WMF projects can then reference using something like a
{{cite}} template or a simple link. The community can document the citation,
the author, the book etc.. and, in one idealization, all citations across
all wikis would point to the same article on WikiCite. Users can use this
wiki as their personal bibliography as well, as collections of citations can
be exported in arbitrary citation formats. This general plan would allow
community aggregation of metadata and community documentation of sources
along arbitrary dimensions (quality, trust, reliability, etc.). The hope is
that such a resource would then expand on that wiki and across the projects
into summarizations of collections of sources (lit reviews) that
make navigating entire fields of literature easier and more
reliable, getting you out of the trap of not being aware of the global
context that a particular source sits in.
To give all a more concrete view, here is an example from some software that
I have implemented in our lab called WikiPapers. Please take note that while
this is a scientific literature example, the idea is general to *all
publications ever*. Also, while I have implemented a feature-full version of
a WikiCite, it's important to point out that for the WMF project we will
need a new extension that handles the needs of the project exactly, and in
PHP (I use Python :).
The name of the wiki article is a unique key that is a combination of the
author names and the year, in the following format:
Author1Author2Author3EtAl10b. This works for scientific articles, but we may
find we need to modify the key for other kinds of sources. The content of
the wiki article is composed of an infobox constructed via the Citation
template, and any other text and media the community determines it is useful
and legal to include in the article. Example article:
Screenshot of how this infobox renders on our wiki:
http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/0/0e/KangHsuKrajbich…
Title: KangHsuKrajbichEtAl09
{{Citation
|publisher=SAGE Publications
|dateadded=2010-07-17
|author=Kang M.J. and Hsu M. and Krajbich I.M. and Loewenstein G. and
McClure S.M. and Wang J.T. and Camerer C.F.
|url=http://pss.sagepub.com/content/20/8/963.full
|abstract=Curiosity has been described as a desire for learning and
knowledge, but its underlying mechanisms are not well understood. We scanned
subjects with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they read trivia
questions. The level of curiosity when reading questions was correlated with
activity in caudate regions previously suggested to be involved in
anticipated reward. This finding led to a behavioral study, which showed
that subjects spent more scarce resources (either limited tokens or waiting
time) to find out answers when they were more curious. The functional
imaging also showed that curiosity increased activity in memory areas when
subjects guessed incorrectly, which suggests that curiosity may enhance
memory for surprising new information. This prediction about memory
enhancement was confirmed in a behavioral study: Higher curiosity in an
initial session was correlated with better recall of surprising answers 1 to
2 weeks later.
|title=The Wick in the Candle of Learning
|bibtex type=article
|number=8
|volume=20
|owner=Sethherd
|journal=Psychological Science
|year=2009
|cites=O'ReillyFrank06,Cowan95,Wise04,Fuster80,Panksepp98,KakadeDayan02b,DelgadoLockeStengerEtAl03,BrewerZhaoDesmondEtAl98,DelgadoNystromFiez00,Beatty82,Baddeley92,Waanabe96,Roland93lm,DelgadoNystromFissellEtAl00,WagnerSchacterRotteEtAl98,SeymourDawDayanEtAl07,ODoherty04,BandettiniMoonen99,ODohertyDayanFristonEtAl03,RogersOwenRobbins99,KnutsonWestdorpKaiserEtAl00,CircuitryMemory,OReillyFrank06,Watanabe96a,BrewerZhaoGabrieli98,WagnerSchacterBuckner98,RogersOwenMiddletonEtAl99,Baddeley86,Watanabe96,Rolls96a,PallerWagner02
|cited_by=Author1Author2Author3EtAl10,etc...
|pages=963
}}
Then, any other WMF wiki, or any other MediaWiki, could cite this universal
entry by simply typing {{cite|KangHsuKrajbichEtAl09}}
Additionally, if a technology such as Semantic MediaWiki is used (as it is
in WikiPapers), arbitrary lists of collections of literature can be
generated by constructing simple queries that are boolean combinations of
template properties. Given that SMW does not scale well, I have a plan that
uses Lucene instead for fast, scalable dynamic generation of collections of
citations. Imagine the possibilities..
Feel free to provide your feedback on this idea, in addition to your own
ideas, in this thread, or to me personally. I am especially interested in
the potential benefits to the WMF projects that you see, and to hear your
thoughts on the potential of this project on its own, as that will feature
prominently in the proposal. Additionally, what do you think WikiCite would
eventually be like, once it is fully matured?
Brian Mingus
Graduate Student
Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab
University of Colorado at Boulder
On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 11:22 AM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki(a)gmail.com>wrote:
> There have been a number of proposals floated in the Wikimedia
> community over the years to build a wiki-based project for collecting
> journal citation information. For those interested in that topic, you
> might want to check out the University of Prince Edward Island's
> "knowledge for all" project proposal -- it proposes to build an open
> universal citation index (to serve as an alternative to the many
> hundreds of proprietary citation index products that libraries
> currently buy). This of course is not the first attempt at this
> problem, but it's an interesting proposal that's getting a bit of buzz
> in the library community.
> http://library.upei.ca/k4all
>
> -- phoebe
>
> --
> * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
> <at> gmail.com *
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
[[Please distribute widely to various language communities, projects,
and chapters]]
Hi All,
I'd like to begin a conversation about the 2010-2011 Fundraiser, which
isn't slated to launch for a few months, but for which we'd like to
get community involvement early and often. As you no doubt are aware,
the strategic plan calls for the "many small gifts" model to be the
centerpiece of our funding strategy, so our community fundraiser is
one of the key methods by which we finance and underwrite the
operations of the projects. The fundraiser this year will probably,
as in earlier years, be primarily banner driven. We're going to have
a strong emphasis on testing and iterating ideas, with a defined
methodological testing plan.
But the most important part of what we - all of us - are going to need
to do is what this community has always been good at: thinking,
researching, and iterating.
With that in mind, it's important to identify people who want to
help. Of course, anyone's welcome to join in and help at any time,
but there's a definite need for people who are willing to be deeply
involved from now to the wrap up... people who want to be creative but
rigorous, innovative but willing to learn from the past, and most of
all, to serve as an active part of the team working on this
fundraiser. There will, of course, be Foundation staff deeply
involved in this, but there's a real need for people from the
community to step up and help us design this thing.
If you're willing to help, would you add your name to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Committee
? We'll be in contact - soon - to get things started.
Thanks,
Philippe
____________________
Philippe Beaudette
Head of Reader Relations
Wikimedia Foundation
philippe(a)wikimedia.org
ofc: +1 415 839 6885 (x 643)
mobile: 918 200 WIKI (9454)
Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Not sure were to ask this...
A group of 20 of us from Wikiproject Medicine are working on a paper to
explain the usage of Wikipedia to the medical community. We were working on
it in Google documents but they have made some changes to their software
that makes it nearly unusable.
We wish to return to working in the wiki environment but need to do so in a
closed environment until after publication. Anyone here able to set
something like this up for us? Or have suggestions were we may do so? We
were using a private wiki for a bit but its reliability was limited.
Thanks
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, B.Sc.
Funny, we said that Monobook was too old and someone says that this gave
us an advantage over Facebook et al.:
«Compare that to Wikipedia, which is a non-profit that has had the same
user interface for years, and it’s clear that while innovation is
critical, sometimes consumers prefer evolution to revolution.»
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view…
What about Vector? (Which isn't a "revolution", anyway,is it?)
Nemo
Hoi,
In the last week we had new functionality go live in OmegaWiki that point
you to Wikipedia articles and to the Commons category. We prefer to point
you to an article in your language. A good example can be found in todays
word of the day: astronomia horloĝo.
<http://www.omegawiki.org/Expression:astronomia_horlo%C4%9Do>
We aim to give you a link to your language, but when we do not have it,
English is what we fall back to and whatever is available is next. In the
link we state that it is a "Wikipedia article" or a "Commons category". We
need your help for the translation of these expressions.
I am quite pleased that thanks to the great work of Kipcool the argument for
OmegaWiki as a WMF project started by Milos is that much stronger.
Thanks,
GerardM
http://www.omegawiki.org/Expression:Wikipedia_articlehttp://www.omegawiki.org/Expression:Commons category
For wiki-style collaboration I usually use either PBWiki (or pbworks,
whatever, it's all the sme company) or sites.google.com
Both allow for FREE, private, multi-user, instant, online collaboration
using a free online smart editing engine. Same as Wikipedia.
And the results of that collaboration on both, are mark-up pages that are
viewable privately if you wish, or publicly if you wish.
Will Johnson
Robert emailed me asking for an opinion, privately or publicly. At the
risk of another cycle ...
I can reiterate my basic argument, as father of a three-year-old and
stepfather of two teenagers.
The Wikimedia communities are sufficiently painstaking in making sure
everything is educational and in context that I'd happily let my
daughter in front of Wikimedia unrestricted. Anything sexual or
horrifying would be informative and in context.
The community works *incredibly hard* to make the contentious stuff
good. Any kid who looks up "fuck" on en:wp will come away considerably
educated, for example!
The last shock I got from en:wp was when I followed a link to
Wikipedia on another site to [[:en:Cock ring]], and was confronted
with a large, shiny, erect penis. With, of course, a cock ring on it.
Not something I'd care to have pop up on the screen at work ... on the
other hand, I have no reason to be going to an article on cock rings
at work. I think the article was entirely reasonable and the use of
the picture was entirely reasonable.
Then there is the issue of important photos of war and so on that are
*absolutely horrifying*. They should be in the encyclopedia, even if
merely describing some of them makes my stomach do flip-flops.
Basically: I think experience shows that the Wikimedia communities
take their responsibility to educate seriously enough that "Wikipedia
is not censored" is sufficient in practice. I have seen no cases that
would lead me to think otherwise.
As noted in the recent Muhammad image discussion, Wikimedia has a firm
bias to more information rather than less. It's right there in the
mission statement. This is why the community is here at all.
If you go against the mission statement, and the expectation with it
that more information is better than less information - even if the
information is horrible and shocking - the community will not accept
it. They will get up and *leave*. As Milos noted, implementing any of
the recommendations on that meta talk page will promptly lead to a
fork. As it should.
Filtering should be left to third parties. The SOS Children Wikipedia
for Schools is an excellent example, and it's quite popular and won't
get a teacher fired. Other than that, I've seen no evidence of actual
demand for a filtered Wikimedia from end users - only from people who
want to filter the projects themselves at the source.
- d.
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 6:23 PM, Oliver Keyes <scire.facias(a)gmail.com>wrote:
> Perhaps in future (for say, Haifa) it would be an idea if any chapter-based
> scholarships were put on hold until after the Foundation makes its choices?
> That way the systems could mesh, with people who don't quite meet the
> Foundation requirements/do but oh dear, we've already used up all our
> scholarships being forwarded to the chapter for its decision.
>
Just a quick note on scholarships and chapters:
Wikimedia Hungary applied for a government grant to send people to Wikimania
and we have just today received the news that we have won about €850, which
would have covered the costs of about 5 people (originally we asked for
€1160). With this unfortunate timing there were only 4 people from Hungary
(2 and a half of them got funding from the WMF, their employer and the
organisers) so we can't really utilize this grant.
There are some lessons in it for us (we could shoulder some of the costs
anticipating a successful grant application and accepting the risk
associated with not being successful or being less successful than planned
for).
It also helps a little that the Haifa Wikimania will be in August, which
gives us an extra month and a chance to get at least the results – if not
the grant money itself – before the conference.
For a successful grant application and in order to induce more participants
to go it is also helpful if cost and schedule information are available
early on (a budget has to be submitted for the grant, people need to plan
their summer accordingly and a schedule helps convince people that they
should go to Wikimania for the program as well – not only the nice other
people they can meet – and it helps in drafting the grant).
Best regards,
Bence Damokos
