This paper (first reference) is the result of a class project I was part of
almost two years ago for CSCI 5417 Information Retrieval Systems. It builds
on a class project I did in CSCI 5832 Natural Language Processing and which
I presented at Wikimania '07. The project was very late as we didn't send
the final paper in until the day before new years. This technical report was
never really announced that I recall so I thought it would be interesting to
look briefly at the results. The goal of this paper was to break articles
down into surface features and latent features and then use those to study
the rating system being used, predict article quality and rank results in a
search engine. We used the [[random forests]] classifier which allowed us to
analyze the contribution of each feature to performance by looking directly
at the weights that were assigned. While the surface analysis was performed
on the whole english wikipedia, the latent analysis was performed on the
simple english wikipedia (it is more expensive to compute). = Surface
features = * Readability measures are the single best predictor of quality
that I have found, as defined by the Wikipedia Editorial Team (WET). The
[[Automated Readability Index]], [[Gunning Fog Index]] and [[Flesch-Kincaid
Grade Level]] were the strongest predictors, followed by length of article
html, number of paragraphs, [[Flesh Reading Ease]], [[Smog Grading]], number
of internal links, [[Laesbarhedsindex Readability Formula]], number of words
and number of references. Weakly predictive were number of to be's, number
of sentences, [[Coleman-Liau Index]], number of templates, PageRank, number
of external links, number of relative links. Not predictive (overall - see
the end of section 2 for the per-rating score breakdown): Number of h2 or
h3's, number of conjunctions, number of images*, average word length, number
of h4's, number of prepositions, number of pronouns, number of interlanguage
links, average syllables per word, number of nominalizations, article age
(based on page id), proportion of questions, average sentence length. :*
Number of images was actually by far the single strongest predictor of any
class, but only for Featured articles. Because it was so good at picking out
featured articles and somewhat good at picking out A and G articles the
classifier was confused in so many cases that the overall contribution of
this feature to classification performance is zero. :* Number of external
links is strongly predictive of Featured articles. :* The B class is highly
distinctive. It has a strong "signature," with high predictive value
assigned to many features. The Featured class is also very distinctive. F, B
and S (Stop/Stub) contain the most information.
:* A is the least distinct class, not being very different from F or G. =
Latent features = The algorithm used for latent analysis, which is an
analysis of the occurence of words in every document with respect to the
link structure of the encyclopedia ("concepts"), is [[Latent Dirichlet
Allocation]]. This part of the analysis was done by CS PhD student Praful
Mangalath. An example of what can be done with the result of this analysis
is that you provide a word (a search query) such as "hippie". You can then
look at the weight of every article for the word hippie. You can pick the
article with the largest weight, and then look at its link network. You can
pick out the articles that this article links to and/or which link to this
article that are also weighted strongly for the word hippie, while also
contributing maximally to this articles "hippieness". We tried this query in
our system (LDA), Google (site:en.wikipedia.org hippie), and the Simple
English Wikipedia's Lucene search engine. The breakdown of articles occuring
in the top ten search results for this word for those engines is: * LDA
only: [[Acid rock]], [[Aldeburgh Festival]], [[Anne Murray]], [[Carl
Radle]], [[Harry Nilsson]], [[Jack Kerouac]], [[Phil Spector]], [[Plastic
Ono Band]], [[Rock and Roll]], [[Salvador Allende]], [[Smothers brothers]],
[[Stanley Kubrick]]. * Google only: [[Glam Rock]], [[South Park]]. * Simple
only: [[African Americans]], [[Charles Manson]], [[Counterculture]], [[Drug
use]], [[Flower Power]], [[Nuclear weapons]], [[Phish]], [[Sexual
liberation]], [[Summer of Love]] * LDA & Google & Simple: [[Hippie]],
[[Human Be-in]], [[Students for a democratic society]], [[Woodstock
festival]] * LDA & Google: [[Psychedelic Pop]] * Google & Simple: [[Lysergic
acid diethylamide]], [[Summer of Love]] ( See the paper for the articles
produced for the keywords philosophy and economics ) = Discussion /
Conclusion = * The results of the latent analysis are totally up to your
perception. But what is interesting is that the LDA features predict the WET
ratings of quality just as well as the surface level features. Both feature
sets (surface and latent) both pull out all almost of the information that
the rating system bears. * The rating system devised by the WET is not
distinctive. You can best tell the difference between, grouped together,
Featured, A and Good articles vs B articles. Featured, A and Good articles
are also quite distinctive (Figure 1). Note that in this study we didn't
look at Start's and Stubs, but in earlier paper we did. :* This is
interesting when compared to this recent entry on the YouTube blog. "Five
Stars Dominate Ratings"
http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.html…
I think a sane, well researched (with actual subjects) rating system
is
well within the purview of the Usability Initiative. Helping people find and
create good content is what Wikipedia is all about. Having a solid rating
system allows you to reorganized the user interface, the Wikipedia
namespace, and the main namespace around good content and bad content as
needed. If you don't have a solid, information bearing rating system you
don't know what good content really is (really bad content is easy to spot).
:* My Wikimania talk was all about gathering data from people about articles
and using that to train machines to automatically pick out good content. You
ask people questions along dimensions that make sense to people, and give
the machine access to other surface features (such as a statistical measure
of readability, or length) and latent features (such as can be derived from
document word occurence and encyclopedia link structure). I referenced page
262 of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to give an example of the
kind of qualitative features I would ask people. It really depends on what
features end up bearing information, to be tested in "the lab". Each word is
an example dimension of quality: We have "*unity, vividness, authority,
economy, sensitivity, clarity, emphasis, flow, suspense, brilliance,
precision, proportion, depth and so on.*" You then use surface and latent
features to predict these values for all articles. You can also say, when a
person rates this article as high on the x scale, they also mean that it has
has this much of these surface and these latent features.
= References =
- DeHoust, C., Mangalath, P., Mingus., B. (2008). *Improving search in
Wikipedia through quality and concept discovery*. Technical Report.
PDF<http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/6/68/DeHoustMangalat…>
- Rassbach, L., Mingus., B, Blackford, T. (2007). *Exploring the
feasibility of automatically rating online article quality*. Technical
Report. PDF<http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/d/d3/RassbachPincock…>
Hoi,
I have asked and received permission to forward to you all this most
excellent bit of news.
The linguist list, is a most excellent resource for people interested in the
field of linguistics. As I mentioned some time ago they have had a funding
drive and in that funding drive they asked for a certain amount of money in
a given amount of days and they would then have a project on Wikipedia to
learn what needs doing to get better coverage for the field of linguistics.
What you will read in this mail that the total community of linguists are
asked to cooperate. I am really thrilled as it will also get us more
linguists interested in what we do. My hope is that a fraction will be
interested in the languages that they care for and help it become more
relevant. As a member of the "language prevention committee", I love to get
more knowledgeable people involved in our smaller projects. If it means that
we get more requests for more projects we will really feel embarrassed with
all the new projects we will have to approve because of the quality of the
Incubator content and the quality of the linguistic arguments why we should
approve yet another language :)
NB Is this not a really clever way of raising money; give us this much in
this time frame and we will then do this as a bonus...
Thanks,
GerardM
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: LINGUIST Network <linguist(a)linguistlist.org>
Date: Jun 18, 2007 6:53 PM
Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers
To: LINGUIST(a)listserv.linguistlist.org
LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831. Mon Jun 18 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.
Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers
Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar(a)linguistlist.org>
Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry(a)linguistlist.org>
Reviews: Laura Welcher, Rosetta Project
<reviews(a)linguistlist.org>
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The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University,
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Editor for this issue: Ann Sawyer <sawyer(a)linguistlist.org>
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===========================Directory==============================
1)
Date: 18-Jun-2007
From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org >
Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers
-------------------------Message 1 ----------------------------------
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:49:35
From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org >
Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers
Dear subscribers,
As you may recall, one of our Fund Drive 2007 campaigns was called the
"Wikipedia Update Vote." We asked our viewers to consider earmarking their
donations to organize an update project on linguistics entries in the
English-language Wikipedia. You can find more background information on this
at:
http://linguistlist.org/donation/fund-drive2007/wikipedia/index.cfm.
The speed with which we met our goal, thanks to the interest and generosity
of
our readers, was a sure sign that the linguistics community was enthusiastic
about the idea. Now that summer is upon us, and some of you may have a bit
more
leisure time, we are hoping that you will be able to help us get started on
the
Wikipedia project. The LINGUIST List's role in this project is a purely
organizational one. We will:
*Help, with your input, to identify major gaps in the Wikipedia materials or
pages that need improvement;
*Compile a list of linguistics pages that Wikipedia editors have identified
as
"in need of attention from an expert on the subject" or " does not cite any
references or sources," etc;
*Send out periodical calls for volunteer contributors on specific topics or
articles;
*Provide simple instructions on how to upload your entries into Wikipedia;
*Keep track of our project Wikipedians;
*Keep track of revisions and new entries;
*Work with Wikimedia Foundation to publicize the linguistics community's
efforts.
We hope you are as enthusiastic about this effort as we are. Just to help us
all
get started looking at Wikipedia more critically, and to easily identify an
area
needing improvement, we suggest that you take a look at the List of
Linguists
page at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguists. M
Many people are not listed there; others need to have more facts and
information
added. If you would like to participate in this exciting update effort,
please
respond by sending an email to LINGUIST Editor Hannah Morales at
hannah(a)linguistlist.org, suggesting what your role might be or which
linguistics
entries you feel should be updated or added. Some linguists who saw our
campaign
on the Internet have already written us with specific suggestions, which we
will
share with you soon.
This update project will take major time and effort on all our parts. The
end
result will be a much richer internet resource of information on the breadth
and
depth of the field of linguistics. Our efforts should also stimulate
prospective
students to consider studying linguistics and to educate a wider public on
what
we do. Please consider participating.
Sincerely,
Hannah Morales
Editor, Wikipedia Update Project
Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable
-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831
Hoi,
There is a request for a Wikipedia in Ancient Greek. This request has so far
been denied. A lot of words have been used about it. Many people maintain
their positions and do not for whatever reason consider the arguments of
others.
In my opinion their are a few roadblocks.
- Ancient Greek is an ancient language - the policy does not allow for
it
- Text in ancient Greek written today about contemporary subjects
require the reconstruction of Ancient Greek.
- it requires the use of existing words for concepts that did
not exist at the time when the language was alive
- neologisms will be needed to describe things that did not
exist at the time when the language was alive
- modern texts will not represent the language as it used to be
- Constructed and by inference reconstructed languages are effectively
not permitted
We can change the policy if there are sufficient arguments, when we agree on
a need.
When a text is written in reconstructed ancient Greek, and when it is
clearly stated that it is NOT the ancient Greek of bygone days, it can be
obvious that it is a great tool to learn skills to read and write ancient
Greek but that it is in itself not Ancient Greek. Ancient Greek as a
language is ancient. I have had a word with people who are involved in the
working group that deals with the ISO-639, I have had a word with someone
from SIL and it is clear that a proposal for a code for "Ancient Greek
reconstructed" will be considered for the ISO-639-3. For the ISO-639-6 a
code is likely to be given because a clear use for this code can be given.
We can apply for a code and as it has a use bigger then Wikipedia alone it
clearly has merit.
With modern texts clearly labelled as distinct from the original language,
it will be obvious that innovations a writers needs for his writing are
legitimate.
This leaves the fact that constructed and reconstructed languages are not
permitted because of the notion that mother tongue users are required. In my
opinion, this has always been only a gesture to those people who are dead
set against any and all constructed languages. In the policies there is
something vague "*it must have a reasonable degree of recognition as
determined by discussion (this requirement is being discussed by the language
subcommittee <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee>)."* It
is vague because even though the policy talks about a discussion, it is
killed off immediately by stating "The proposal has a sufficient number of
living native speakers to form a viable community and audience." In my
opinion, this discussion for criteria for the acceptance of constructed or
reconstructed languages has not happened. Proposals for objective criteria
have been ignored.
In essence, to be clear about it:
- We can get a code for reconstructed languages.
- We need to change the policy to allow for reconstructed and
constructed languages
We need to do both in order to move forward.
The proposal for objective criteria for constructed and reconstructed
languages is in a nutshell:
- The language must have an ISO-639-3 code
- We need full WMF localisation from the start
- The language must be sufficiently expressive for writing a modern
encyclopaedia
- The Incubator project must have sufficiently large articles that
demonstrate both the language and its ability to write about a wide range of
topics
- A sufficiently large group of editors must be part of the Incubator
project
Thanks,
GerardM
To avoid further disrupting discussion of interlanguage links and
usability, I'll address the cultural problems separately now. I must
admit, though, that in a discussion where we seemed to have agreed
(rightfully so) that a 1% click rate was significant enough to warrant
serious consideration, I was disappointed that someone could then be so
callous about the need for cultural sensitivity because it most directly
impacts "only 0.55% of the world population" in this case. There is no
meaningful difference in order of magnitude there.
We have significant distortions in the makeup of our community that
affect our culture. There are quite a few groups that are seriously
underrepresented, in part because our culture comes across as unfriendly
to them at best. I talked about African-Americans because it's what was
applicable in that particular situation and I happen to have some
familiarity with the issues. It could just as well have been Australian
Aborigines or another cultural group that has issues with our community.
I'm not as prepared to explain those concerns, but I would welcome
people who can educate us about such problems. It's legitimate to be
wary of things that promote American cultural hegemony, which is another
distortion, but that's not really warranted when the concern relates to
a minority culture in the US.
Some people seem to have gotten hung up on the issue of intent. I didn't
say there was any intent, by the community or individuals, to exclude
certain groups or to create a hostile environment for them. I actually
tried to be as careful as possible not to say that. The point is that
even in the absence of intent, it's possible for our culture to appear
hostile to such groups. We didn't have any intent to be hostile toward
living people, either, yet we've had a long struggle to cope with the
consequences of that impression created by our culture.
Consider the principle of not "biting" newcomers, which relates to a
similar problem. It's not about the intent of the person doing the
"biting", it's about the impact on those who encounter it. We need to be
more welcoming to people, and striving for more cultural awareness is
part of that.
--Michael Snow
Hi.
At ptwiki, we recently implemented a usergroup to help with the backlog of
requests for speedy deletions, articles for deletion, and others (see
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Eliminadores). This was done to try
to dismistify the admin role, and increase community participation in admin
tasks, trying to counteract the significant decrease in the number of admins
during the past two year (we currently have less than 40 admins). I invite
you all to accompany this as I believe that the success or failure of this
strategy will have valuable lessons for other projects.
Best,
GoEThe
Hello Everyone,
Recently we've been having some internal conversations regarding transparency for our hiring, recruiting and contracting. In efforts to be more proactive about sharing this information we're moving to a system of tweeting short bursts of announcements. This will be done in a "bot" style voice not unlike the WMF tech feeds. The idea is that we'll get the information out on new hires and new contractors and consultants working with us along with new job openings etc. Basically the streams will recap the comings and goings in a short and sweet format.
I invite you all to see these data streams - http://identi.ca/wikimediaatwork/all or http://twitter.com/wikimediaatwork. Eventually we also hope to find more ways to use this feed for recruiting and reaching out to a larger candidate pool and audience. There will also be times where we link the streams or feeds to longer and more detailed blog postings.
-Daniel
Gerard writes: >>The trouble is that attempts to make something that lures experts but
keeps idiots out of their faces have so far failed and/or attracted no
attention, even from the experts (Citizendium, Scholarpedia). That is,
they sound like a good idea; but in practice, Wikipedia has so far
been the least worst system.
True. But is there not some way of making Wikipedia just a little more attractive
to people who have studied the subject? I used to propose things like credentials
based on trust earned on Wikipedia (which would require getting trust from other
trusted editors, much like in financial markets). These all naturally got shot down,
and silly of me to have tried. But is there not some way of just making it a little
easier?
The problem is that until someone sits up and notices the serious errors that
are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the
folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered. The problem is that no one
*knows* there are problems, and so no one can be bothered. I've started documenting
the problem in a small way, e.g. here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html
and here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/avicennian-logic.html , but this is only
in my own area of expertise.
What is the very smallest thing that could be done, I wonder?
Peter
FEBRUARY
Report to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
Covering: February 2010
Prepared by: Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Prepared for: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
MILESTONES FROM FEBRUARY
Wikimedia Foundation receives $2 million grant from Google
Conducted Interviews and engaged candidates for the Chief Development
Officer position.
Beta roll-out of new features and updates to the usability initative
KEY PRIORITIES FOR MARCH
Finalize the Stanton Public Policy Grant
Bi-annual all-staff meeting.
Begin the business planning phase of the strategy process.
THIS PAST MONTH
KEY PROGRAM METRICS
Reach of all Wikimedia Foundation sites:
345 million unique visitors (rank #5)
+14.8% (1 year ago) / -5.3% (1 month ago)
Source: comScore Media Metrics
Pages served:
11.1 billion
+5.8% (1 year ago) / +0.0% (1 month ago)
Active number of editors (5+ edits/month): 101,730
-1.5% (1 year ago) / -4.6% (1 month ago)
Source: February 2010 Report Card
<http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2010_02_detailed.html>
KEY FINANCIAL METRICS
Operating revenue year to date: USD 14.1MM vs. plan of USD 8.8MM
Operating expenses year to date: USD 5.5MM vs. plan of USD 6.2MM
Unrestricted cash on hand as of March 24: USD 5.2MM while unrestricted
CDs and US Treasuries were USD 8.3MM
STRATEGIC PLANNING PROJECT
Following the Board's endorsement of the Wikimedia Foundation's high-
level strategic priorities moving forward, the strategic planning
process has shifted into two parallel processes. The first is the
Foundation's business planning process, led by The Bridgespan Group.
The goal is to develop a five-year action plan for the Wikimedia
Foundation and a more granular one-year business plan for 2010-2011.
This process will run through May.
The second is to complete the larger, movement-wide strategic planning
process. Late in January, a Strategy Task Force formed, which started
discussing and evaluating the recommendations and feedback from the
Phase 2 Task Force process. That Task Force will continue to work in
March to articulate and propose a set of movement-wide goals.
The sign of a good open process is that certain surprising things
emerge. The team was surprised by the success of the Call for
Proposals process in Phase 1, and are looking for ways to use those
proposals as a way to activate the volunteer community. They were also
surprised by the success of the Task Force process and people's desire
to apply the processes of the strategy project beyond its original
scope. Three new Task Forces have formed (BLPs, NASA, and Analytics),
and the
team is looking forward to seeing others form as well.
GOOGLE GRANT AND VISIT
In February, the Wikimedia Foundation 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.
Several Wikimedia Foundation staff members met with Google product and
engineering managers in Mountain View to discuss possible
opportunities to work together, ranging from infrastructure and open
source technologies to public outreach programs. Google has designated
a liaison contact for all future Wikimedia Foundation inquiries.
TECHNOLOGY – CORE
As noted in the previous report, Danese Cooper joined the Wikimedia
Foundation as CTO, succeeding Brion Vibber. Erik Moeller and the
Wikimedia Foundation technology team organized several orientation and
transition meetings.
The process for decommissioning old, out-of-warranty Wikimedia
Foundation servers and donating them to non-profit organizations
continued in February:
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/02/server-decommissioning-donations/
A follow-up meeting took place between Wikimedia and Microsoft
Research India regarding MSRI's efforts to develop wiki language
collaboration tools.
Wikimedia's BugZilla server was updated to version 3.4.5 with REST APIs:
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/02/wikimedia-bugzilla-upgraded-to-versio…
A bug that caused 1.3 million Wikipedia article revisions from 2005 to
appear as blank pages was resolved.
TECHNOLOGY - USABILITY
The usability beta was enhanced on February 4 with the following
features:
Improvement in precision of navigable table of contents
Enhanced dialogs for links, tables, and search and replace
Language-specific icons for Bold and Italics
This release introduced an HTML iFrame element as a new technological
foundation for richer editing features. Despite extensive cross-
browser testing, the release introduced problems in editing such as
extra line breaks, and the iFrame deployment and features dependent on
it were rolled back for the time being.
Babaco Release page, http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Releases/Babaco
Blog: Deployment of Babaco Enhancements, http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/01/babaco-enhancments/
Browser Compatibility Matrix for features in Babaco,
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Releases/Babaco/Compatibility_Matrix
Blog: Iframe bugs, http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/02/iframe-bugs/
In February, design refinements and development of template collapsing
and expansion features continued and staging in the usability sandbox
started. The objective of template collapsing is to hide complex wiki
syntax from the editor, which is important because, we observed that
templates are an intimidating factors for new users..
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Citron_Designs#Templateshttp://prototype.wikimedia.org/sandbox.6/San_Francisco
Based on the evaluation of proposals submitted by usability study
firms, gotomedia was commissioned to conduct the last round of the
usability study. The focus of the study is to evaluate the template
collapsing and expansion features, and overall improvements in
usability for the last twelve months.
gotomedia: http://www.gotomedia.com/
February ended with a total of 571,579 users having tried the Beta.
Approximately 59,100 additional users tried the Beta in February. This
number is down slightly, even considering the fact that February is a
shorter month.
The cumulative retention rate across all projects held steady at 79.8%
as of February 28.
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/
Beta_Feedback_Survey#Update:_February_28.2C_2010
Regression tests across all supported browsers, interaction automation
suites were set up using the opensource quality assurance software,
Selenium. This test automation system will be used by the user
experience team to increase the efficiency of software testing and
release cycles. The plan is to open up this automation system to the
wider MediaWiki developers community.
Selenium, http://seleniumhq.org/
MULTIMEDIA USABILITY PROJECT
Development of the new upload interface continued in February and
preparations for setting up the system infrastructure for prototype
system started. Product specification for a temporary staging area for
incomplete uploads has started.
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia:NewUploadhttp://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia:Incomplete_uploads
A call for proposals for the first study of the multimedia usability
initiative was initiated. Four usability study firms submitted
proposals. A usability study firm in San Francisco, gotomedia, was
chosen based on quality, cost, and references. The study is scheduled
to be conducted in March 2010.
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia:UX_study,_March_2010/CfP
Guillaume Paumier and Neil Kandalgaonkar appeared on IRC office hours
on February 4. They received lots of interesting questions, including
technical questions, from the participants.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours/Office_hours_2010-02-04
OTHER PROGRAM ACTIVITIES
During February, Frank Schulenburg and Pete Forsyth embarked on
writing a grant proposal for the second phase of the Public Policy
Initiative. The Initiative's overarching goal is to develop a model
for how to systematically improve articles of a specific topic area by
encouraging and enabling subject-matter experts to contribute to
Wikipedia. For this purpose, the Wikimedia Foundation will reach out
to faculty members at select universities and encourage them to use
Wikipedia as a teaching tool during the fall semester 2010 and the
spring semester 2011. Over these two phases of the project, the
Wikimedia Foundation will pilot in-classroom and didactic usage and
improvement of Wikipedia in an experimental manner. Ongoing and
systematic metrics development and evaluation will measure the
project's success in terms of article improvement and educational
experience.
Pete and Frank continued to strenghten the Wikimedia Foundation's ties
to universities by giving a presentation at the John F. Kennedy School
of Government at Harvard University. Under the title "Wikipedia – the
encyclopedia that works only in practice, not in theory" they gave
students and faculty at Harvard an introduction into the internal
mechanisms of Wikipedia and answered the diverse questions of the
audience. The presentation was part of a new lecture series called
"Digital Workshops for Students" at the Kennedy School's Joan
Shorenstein Center.
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/students/digital_workshops.html
The Public Outreach Team did preliminary/exploratory work toward
developing opportunities for collaboration and education among the
community. Pete explored a possible partnership with Ontier, a
producer of screen casting software; and had discussions with Howie
Fung of the User Experience team about the dynamics that surround
editor departure. Frank launched a chapters events calendar on the
Outreach Wiki; and the Public Outreach department had preliminary
discussions with Eugene Kim and Cary Bass about establishing a
Compassionate Communications training program for community members.
Also in February, Frank hired Rod Dunican as a Education Programs
Manager. Rod is a senior learning professional with more than twenty-
five years of experience in corporate training, consulting, coaching,
and project management, working in the areas of organizational
development, operations, marketing, eLearning and instructor-led
training programs. He will be the Project Manager for the second phase
of the Public Policy Initiative.
Cary Bass worked on organizing the Wikimania Scholarships committee
for Wikimania 2010 in Gdańsk. He also a acted as a staff coordinator
for the very first meetup of San Francisco Wikipedia volunteers in the
new office. Furthermore, Cary organized the relaunch and rebranding of
the Living Persons Task Force on the English Wikipedia and selected,
appointed and installed the current ombudsmen commission.
COMMUNICATIONS
A busy, though short month for Wikimedia communications. The Google
grant announcement mid-month delivered the highest amount of coverage
- resulting in more coverage than the closing of this year's annual
campaign. Other coverage through the month focussed on general
Wikipedia topical issues and interviews with Jimmy Wales.
* Announcements
Wikimedia Foundation announces $2 million grant from Google
17 February 2010, Donation will support capacity investments in
Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_ann…
Telefónica and Wikimedia Foundation Partner to Advance Learning and
Increase Access to Free Knowledge
1 February 2010, Strategic partnership will improve access to
Wikimedia educational and informational content in Latin America and
Europe.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Telefonica_and_Wikimedia…
* Blog posts
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/02/
* Media contact
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#February_2010
* Major coverage through February
1. Wikimedia and Telefonica partner to expand access to Wikipedia
(February 1)
Considerably less coverage of the Telefonica/WMF partnership than
previous major telco partnerships. Most media outlets copied press
release verbatim or offered neutral perspective on the details.
http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/News/News-Item/Telefónica-Wikimedia-Fou…
m
http://www.finchannel.com/Main_News/Tech/57337_Telefónica_and_Wikimedia_Fou…
/
2. $2 million Google grant for Wikimedia Foundation (February 16-17)
Heavy coverage of Google's grant/gift to Wikimedia Foundation later in
February, in major blogs and mainstream media around the world.
Prompted by an advance tweet from Jimmy, news spread quickly on blogs
with mainstream coverage following the formal press release on
February 17. Mostly positive coverage, with many bloggers highlighting
the positive intentions of Google (most coverage focussed on Google
rather than Wikimedia or Wikipedia).
http://mashable.com/2010/02/16/google-wikipedia-donation/http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/16/google-donates-2-million-to-wikimedia-foun…http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewContent.act?tag=3.5721%3Ficx_id=D9DU…http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&cf=all&ncl=dfpdnb404BjC…
Other worthwhile reads
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/02/10/more-video-coming-wikipedias-wayhttp://media.www.mcgilltribune.com/media/storage/paper234/news/2010/02/02/N…http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Students-at-McGill-U-Band/21033/http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/02/why-wikipedia-beats-wikinews-as-a-collabor…http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/companies_on_wikipedia_apple_bt_nokia.…
* Communications campaign update
The Fenton communications team continued work on the three key
communications products associated with part two of the campaign: the
wikimedia story presentation, a leave-behind printed product, and a
story video. The team held a consultation with Sue Gardner in late
February to break down the basic pieces or 'acts' of a Wikimedia
presentation, and submitted an initial creative brief framing up a
collective voice for the communications products.
Fenton and SeaChange strategies also conducted survey design work with
Wikimedia Foundation staff for the first qualitative, on-line focus
groups of Wikimedia donors. This data will be combined with broader
survey results to form a draft, compound demographic analysis of our
donors - culminating in an donor audience tool to determine next steps
for strategic outreach with donors.
During Februay, the Wikimedia Foundation participated in interviews
with SWISS Magazine (Basel, Switzerland); Televisió de Catalunya
(Barcelona, Spain); NHK (Tokyo, Japan); KCBS (San Francisco,
California, USA); DataCenterDynamics (San Francisco, California, USA);
Wall Street Journal (New York, New York, USA); Associated Press (San
Francisco, California, USA);UN Special Magazine; Wall Street Journal
(New York, New York, USA); Denver Post (Denver, Colorado, USA); Parade
Magazine (New York, New York, USA); Media Bistro (New York, New York,
USA); Cell magazine (New York, New York, USA); BBC 2 (London, United
Kingdom).
FUNDRAISING, GRANTS, & PARTNERSHIPS
The Wikimedia Foundation received 3,450 donations in February,
totaling approximately USD 2,108,885. Year-to-date, the Foundation has
raised USD 11,259,228 in individual donations, 50% above its annual
goal of USD 7,500,000. In February, the Foundation also raised USD
500,000 of restricted and unrestricted grants, brining the total
fundraising related revenue for the year to USD 13,309,228, 43% above
the goal of USD 9,297,000.
The Community Giving team continued to wind down the 2009-10 Annual
Fundraiser. The team entered in the final gifts from Dexia,
Moneybookers, Citibank, and various other accounts in order to
complete the transaction record for the fundraiser. They also
processed refunds for suspected and real fraudulent credit card
transactions. The Community Giving team began the 2010 Fundraising
Survey project in conjunction with SeaChange to better access our
donors and messaging.
In the area of major gifts, the month of February was packed with
donor stewardship meetings, both to thank recent donors and explore
new partnerships. In addition, Rebecca Handler planned and led a three-
hour stewardship workshop for the board, and met with Jimmy Wales to
discuss his Davos trip and our upcoming trip to New York City. Jan-
Bart attended a donor meeting and was on message and a wonderful
ambassador for the Foundation. Rebecca helped Anya prepare for the
World Affairs Council, which ended up being a successful sold-out
program on February 22nd.
LEGAL
In February, the Legal Department won an important domain-name
decision through a Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy
(UDRP) proceeding and blocked a commercial entity from using the
domain name "softwarewikipedia.com". The decision was tweeted to
general approval in the community. Mike increased demand letters and
other actions against trademark infringers, domain-name squatters, and
other unauthorized users of Wikipedia marks. This action is in line
both with the Foundation's efforts to build positive branding of the
Wikimedia projects in the public interest world and with our business
partnerships that center on co-branding.
MARCH
Report to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
Covering: March 2010
Prepared by: Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Prepared for: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
KEY PROGRAM METRICS
Reach of all Wikimedia Foundation sites:
371 million unique visitors (rank #5)
+13.3% (1 year ago) / +7.4% (1 month ago)
Source: comScore Media Metrics
Pages served:
11.7 billion
+0.3% (1 year ago) / +0.0% (1 month ago)
Active number of editors (5+ edits/month): 100,950
~+1% (1 year ago) / -0.76% (1 month ago)
Source: March 2010 Report Card
<http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2010_03_detailed.html>
KEY FINANCIAL METRICS
Operating revenue year to date: USD 14.3MM vs. plan of USD 9.0MM
Operating expenses year to date: USD 6.3MM vs. plan of USD 7.1MM
Unrestricted cash on hand as of April 28: USD 12.8MM while
unrestricted CDs and US Treasuries were USD 8.7MM
STRATEGIC PLANNING PROJECT
The working groups have finished most of their preliminary planning
with the help of The Bridgespan Group. The strategy team will spend
April and May finalizing and integrating that work into a cohesive
plan. The Strategy Task Force has made progress toward drafting a
movement-wide set of goals and priorities. A draft for comments should
be completed by the end of April. There have also been a number of
substantive conversations about the scope of content across different
Wikimedia projects, which has resulted in a new Task Force.
TECHNOLOGY – CORE
Operations
Wikimedia sites suffered from a global outage on March 24, that lasted
up to several hours for some users, due to a DNS corruption problem in
the standard fail-over procedure to divert traffic from Amsterdam to
Tampa. The tech team have reduced the Foundation's DNS update interval
from standard 30 minutes to 5 minutes, and will be reviewing enhancing
notification / escalation procedures to keep communications better
informed of status during outages.
The entire Tech Team came together in San Francisco for its twice-
annual Tech Meeting, and discussed both plans and issues. The plan for
Operations has been further developed in the Tech Strategy Work Group.
The Amsterdam network has been extended for the upcoming server
capacity expansion. This new network equipment will also be used to
migrate to a much more fault tolerant network topology.
Preparations were made for the caching servers expansion in Amsterdam,
and new servers were ordered. The team expects to complete the
expansion by the end of April.
External Storage (i.e. wiki revisions data) was re-compressed into a
more efficient format: from 1.9 TB to about 140 GB, a saving of 93% on
our storage servers.
Rob Halsell made progress on research and experimentation with Ubuntu
Cloud for the development server cluster.
Mobile
The technology team released a new version of the Wikimedia Mobile App
to the iTunes store which is awaiting Apple acceptance. The team is
also on the verge of deploying a new version of the Mobile Server and
migrating m.stats to stats.wikimedia.
Analytics
A planning group on analytics begun assessing different options for
web analytics and other analytics requirements across the whole
Wikimedia Foundation. Privacy issues were a key part of the discussion
to-date, and both open source and proprietary solutions have been
considered. The group expects to reach a better sense of decision
tradeoffs (features/cost/privacy/timing/risks etc.) by May.
TECHNOLOGY - USABILITY
The usability beta was updated on March 17, to decouple the HTML
iFrame, which introduces considerable additional complexity, from the
features for inserting links, tables and, search & replace. Dialog
features were enabled for over 500,000 beta users.[1] The main
features for Citron, such as template collapsing, inline expansion and
the dialog for templates were enabled for the usability study. (Citron
features are not available for wider audience due to iFrame
dependency.) [1] Usability Update: Introducing Dialogs,
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/25/usability-update-introducing-dialogs/
The third round of the usability study was conducted in March in
partnership with gotomedia[2]. Ten people participated at Fleischman
Field Research in San Francisco and eight other participants were
surveyed remotely using web conference technology. The objective of
the study was to evaluate the new features such as template handling
features (collapsing, inline expansion, and pop-up) and side-by-side
preview tab and overall evaluation of the Stanton Wikipedia usability
project. The findings from the study and videos will be published in
early May. [2] gotomedia, http://www.gotomedia.com/
The usability team is preparing to offer the usability beta as default
user interface and interaction to all Wikimedia projects. The beta has
been tried out by over 600,000 users since August 2009, and an average
of 80% of users continue using it. The plan is to roll out to Commons
on April 5, and evaluate the responses and system capacity and
continue on to Wikipedia and the rest of Wikimedia projects towards
end of the month. The announcements were made though WMF blog and tech
blogs. [3][4][5]
[3] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/25/wikimedia-gets-ready-for-some-big-chan…
[4] http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/the-change-in-interface-is-coming/
[5] http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/the-power-of-translators/
March ended with a total of 635,942 users having tried the Beta. [6]
[6] http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/
Beta_Feedback_Survey#Update:_March_31.2C_2010
MULTIMEDIA USABILITY PROJECT
Development of the new upload interface continued and the prototype
was staged in a lab environment. The two types of user flow are
staged, 1) “my own work” and 2) “found on Internet.” The user
flow which requires author's permission will be staged later time.
Once the prototype is finalized, it will be used for the usability
study and be opened up for the community for feedback.
Assets uploaded but missing mandatory information, such as author or
copyright status, require flags or some protection, so that assets are
not distributed without permission from authors or without confirming
the appropriate copyright status. A feature for incomplete uploads
that supports graceful handling of this interim status is under active
discussion.[7]
[7] http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia:Incomplete_uploads
The usability study was postponed from March 30 and 31 to early May,
in order to incorporate feedback and avoid conflicting schedule with
conferences in the second half of April. Ten study participants were
recruited and screened for the usability study through the banner on
Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. The usability study will be conducted
in partnership with gotomedia.
OTHER PROGRAM ACTIVITIES
During March, Rod Dunican, Pete Forsyth and Frank Schulenburg
finalized the grant proposal for the second phase of the Public Policy
Initiative. They started to outline a Wikipedia Campus Ambassador
training and certification program as a key deliverable of the
Initiative. Wikipedia Campus Ambassadors will serve as trainers,
working directly with classroom instructors to teach the basics of
Wikipedia editing. Furthermore, Campus Ambassadors will help to start
Wikipedia student groups, facilitate the exchange of ideas regarding
Wikipedia as a learning tool, and plan social events. The grant
proposal outlines the establishment of this Campus Ambassador Program
and includes a high-level program view of the Ambassador training
sessions.
Frank Schulenburg also participated in a video conference with the
winners of Google's Kiswahili Challenge in Nairobi/Kenya. The
participants of the Challenge discussed with Frank, Erik Möller, Naoko
Komuara and Samuel Klein Wikipedia's upcoming new usability features,
Wikimedia's outreach resources and opportunities for the contest
participants to get more involved in the Wikimedia movement.
As part of the Wikimedia Foundation's strategic planning process,
Frank Schulenburg embarked on planning the outreach department's
priorities for the fiscal year 2010/2011. Together with the members of
the Program Team Workgroup, he worked on a mission statement for the
Program Team, the Team's core processes, and the potential
implications for the future structure and activities of the Program
Team.
Rod Dunican, Wikimedia's new Education Program Manager, started to
discuss a potential meeting – "Using Wikipedia as a Learning Tool in
the Classroom" – with librarians and professors. He reached out to
instructors who are currently using Wikipedia as a teaching tool and
have first-hand knowledge of the pitfalls and successes that the
Public Policy Initiative may experience. Rod investigated their
interest in sharing their experiences with WMF and helping the
Wikimedia Foundation to develop sample lesson plans and other
instructional materials for universities.
Pete Forsyth continued his communication with schools who participated
in phase one of the Public Policy Initiative. He secured verbal
commitments from professors for the second phase of the Initiative.
Pete worked with contacts at Harvard's Taubman Center --who wish to
dedicate 18 public policy case studies under a Creative Commons
license for use in the Public Policy Initiative-- to clarify licensing
issues and seek consensus on how to move forward. He also met with the
Internet Archive, American Field Service, and BunchBall, and explored
Yahoo Answers and the Open Directory Project, in ongoing efforts to
stay abreast of current thinking about online communities and
volunteerism, and to maintain a network in that arena.
Pete also began to coordinate the setup of a Contact Relationship
Management database for the program team. Together with members of
Wikimedia's tech team he set up a CiviCRM installation for testing
purposes and started to get trained.
Furthermore, Pete started to plan a meeting with members of the German
Mentoring Team, to be held in April in Berlin. The meeting will aim at
sharing best practices and discussing the necessary steps for building
sustainable Mentoring Programs in other Wikipedia language versions.
Cary Bass worked with the User Experience team to plan and develop the
roll-out of Vector onto the Wikimedia projects; including advanced
planning for the development of the Wikipedia 2.0 logo for extended
languages. With Sara Crouse, he organized the Wikimania 2010
scholarship team. In conjunction with Austin Hair, Cary updated 2009's
scholarship application and database, submitted the call for
applications and worked with making phase one application review work
efficiently for scholarship team.
Cary coordinated the board certification of the results of the Steward
election.
On March 26 and 27, Erik Zachte attended the Critical Point of View
conference (CPOV) in Amsterdam. (Mark, Jose and Hay also attended one
day.) The CPOV conference brings together researchers and Wikipedians
from around the world to share and build insights into the complex and
messy reality of Wikipedia: What are the new processes for determining
the threshold of knowledge and how do they actually play out? What are
the new relations that emerge between this knowledge reference and
external institutions such as schools and governments? How is agency
distributed within the Wikipedia platform? The conference was staged
by the Amsterdam-based Institute of Network Cultures (INC) and the
Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS). It's the second
event staged by those two organizations: the first was 'WikiWars,' in
Bangalore, India in January 2010. In September 2010 there will be a
third even in Leipzig, Germany. Erik reported back that the conference
was very well organized, with pictures and talk summaries later put
online at networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/. About 100 people attended.
COMMUNICATIONS
March was a quiet month for media coverage and communications
operations. Major media interest focussed on Wikipedia downtime in
late March. Jay Walsh spent much of March focussing on strategy/
business plan support, support and planning for vector roll-out, and
design strategy planning.
* Blog posts
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/
(Blog traffic peaked later in March, on both techblog and Wikimedia
blog with global interest in brief WP downtime.)
* Media contact
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#March_2010
* Major coverage through January
1. Suspected gunman had Wikipedia connections (March 5)
Some neutral-tone coverage through the US about a gunman who open-
fired on the Pentagon in March, who allegedly had connections to
Wikipedia, as well as many other online properties.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/gunman-outlined-theories-online/
2. Wikipedia as a trusted news source (March 15)
Moka Pantages garnered a few tech headlines and considerable micro-
blogging mentions during a SXSW presentation in Austin focussing on
digital journalism. The claim that Wikipedia should be trusted as a
news source was backed up by bloggers and supported by reporters
attending the social media gathering.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_wikipedia_should_be_trusted_or_how…
3. "Get Video on Wikipedia!" (March 18)
The campaign to get video on Wikipedia, led by Kaltura and the HTML5
open video alliance received headlines in mid-March. The news
focussed on major advances in open video and HTML5 and how these
improvements stood to increase the quality and quantity of video on
Wikipedia. Coverage was largely positive.
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Wikipedia-Pushes-for-Users-to/22035/http://mashable.com/2010/03/18/video-wikipedia/http://digital.venturebeat.com/2010/03/18/open-source-video-company-kaltura…
4. Wikipedia down (March 24)
A one-hour plus downtime for Foundation web properties in late-March
resulted in a deluge of tech blogger and micro-blogger coverage. Most
coverage was short and neutral in tone, and quickly updated once the
site resumed service. Major media combined the news with the
similarly but unrelated timing of a youtube.com site outage.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=7795&tag=content;col1http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2361778,00.asphttp://mashable.com/2010/03/24/wikipedia-is-down/
5. Wikipedia readies for User Interface overhaul (March 26)
Largely positive coverage of the blog post from the Wikipedia
Usability team announcing the details of the forthcoming vector roll-
out on Wikimedia Foundation properties. Coverage on almost all major
tech blogs, as well as main stream media.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/29/new-wikipedia-layout-2010_n_517007…http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/are_you_ready_for_the_new_easier_wikip…http://mashable.com/2010/03/26/wikipedias-redesign-is-coming-soon/http://digital.venturebeat.com/2010/03/26/wikipedia-prepares-for-user-inter…
Other worthwhile reads
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/03/23/urnidgns852573C…http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/03/23/25575/http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/03/from_haiti_to_the_oscars_wikim.htmlhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/digital_giants/8564348.stmhttp://opensource.com/business/10/3/wikimedia-foundation-doing-strategic-pl…http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100311/you-ask-jimmy-wales-answers-a-crow…http://www.nrcu.gov.ua/index.php?id=148&listid=113390
During March, the Wikimedia Foundation participated in interviews with
the Wall Street Journal (New York, New York, USA); the Associated
Press (San Francisco, California, USA); National Public Radio
(Washington, District of Columbia, USA); PR Week (London, United
Kingdom); the National Post (Toronto, Canada); ABC News (New York, New
York, USA); CNBC (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, USA); Together
Magazine (Brussels, Belgium); Daily Princetonian (Princeton, New
Jersey, USA); Streaming Media (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA); Radio
Netherlands (Hilversum, Netherlands).
* Communications campaign update
Fenton's communications work through March focussed on refining
concepts for the executive presentation kit, as well as presenting
refined concepts for an accompanying video. Wikimedia fundraiser
research focussed on evaluating pre-existing donor research ideas and
refining ideas for the upcoming donor survey.
FUNDRAISING, GRANTS, & PARTNERSHIPS
The Wikimedia Foundation received 1,968 donations in March, totaling
approximately USD 99,095. Year-to-date, the Foundation has raised USD
11,358,323 in individual donations, 53% above its annual goal of USD
7,500,000. Including revenue from restricted and unrestricted gifts
the Wikimedia Foundation has raised USD 13,408,323, 45% above the goal
of USD 9,297,000.
In March, the Community Gifts began planning for the 2010 Annual
Fundraiser. The team began compiling reports of the make up on the
Foundation's donors and the effects of various donor cultivation and
stewardship efforts. The fundraising department plans to use the
reports to fuel planning and upcoming budgets.
In addition, the Community gifts team continued working the 2010
Fundraising Survey (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Survey
) with intents to understand the Foundation's donors, how they
perceive the foundation’s work, and what kinds of interactions would
be most valuable in maintaining long-term philanthropic relationships.
The survey will launch in May after translation efforts are completed.
With the assistance of the Technology team Community giving posted and
boarded activity recruiting for two staff positions to support the
2010 Fundraising efforts. These positions should mitigate peak demand
for engineering to support Fundraising without diverting resources
from other technology functions.
Major gifts activities in March including working with Bridgespan on
the fundraising business plan, mapping out and event for the end of
2010, developing fundraising communications for Jimmy Wales and
preparing for April donor meetings in New York. In addition, Rebecca
conducted prospect/donor meetings with over ten individuals.
LEGAL
The legal team began a pro-bono relationship with the Perkins Coie law
firm, which may be able to provide significant litigation work for the
Foundation.
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Business Development focused its attention on mobile and offline areas
and its development in the strategic plan. In March Kul and Tomasz
attended Mobile World Congress and spoke at the event about user data,
trust, and the worldwide growth of content on mobile devices. Kul is
directing developments in mobile apps with existing partners Orange
and Telefonica, and is working toward a system to engage with many
more partners in geographic regions such as Eastern Europe, the Middle
East, and throughout Asia. Kul is also working with various partners
to test several initiatives to bring Wikipedia in offline forms/
devices in markets. Currently the focus on offline Wikipedia has been
on market research and product development with market and
distributions tests soon to come.
FINANCE & ADMINISTRATION
In March Veronique and KPMG worked to finalize the 2008 Form 990 Tax
Return. The return was approved by the Audit Committee on March 24.
The Board of Trustees will be presented with the final Form 990 during
their April meeting in Berlin, Germany.
To facilitate the rapid growth of Foundation staff as outlined in the
preliminary version of the Strategy Plan, the administration team
visited a vacant office space on the 6th floor of 149 New Montgomery
Street, in San Francisco. After their visit the administrative team
began negotiating a lease and hope to obtain the 6th floor to
facilitate the Foundation's projected growth. With the current growth
rates the Foundation will likely require the extra floor by early 2011.
Bill Gong, the Foundation's accountant, began working with vendors to
find an updated accounting system for the Foundation. Currently the
organization has been using Quickbooks, but with the rapid growth of
the organization this software is no longer a practical solution. The
accounting team hopes to find a system that will be compatible with
the open-source fundraising software CiviCRM.
VISITORS AND GUESTS
In March, the following people visited the Wikimedia Foundation
offices for meetings and talks: Jesse Ansubel of the Sloan Foundation;
Melissa Hagemann, Advisory Board member and Senior Program Manager
with the Open Society Institute; a delegation from the Chinese State
Department; New York Times journalist Jenny 8 Lee; former IDEO
engineer and founder of BunchBall, Rajat Paharia; User: Erdrokan from
Switzerland; a delegation from intercultural learning and student
exchange non-profit AFS Intecultural Programs; User:Elonka; Bishakha
Datta; Meghan Murphy of the X Prize Foundation; Megan Smith of Google,
and Thomas Dalton of Wikimedia UK.
STAFF ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES
No changes were made during March.
STAFF ACTIVITIES
The bi-annual All Staff meeting was held on March 4th and 5th. Sue
opened this year with an overview of the goals and targets coming out
of the Strategic Plan for the next 5 years including a focus in on the
2010-2011 fiscal year. Bridgespan attended the meetings and helped
facilitate as we broke into groups by department to determine the
necessary positions and logistics that would get us from here to there
with an emphasis on the next fiscal year.
James Owen
Executive Assistant & Board Liaison
Wikimedia Foundation
Office +1.415.839.6885 x 604
Mobile +1.415.509.5444
Fax +1.415.882.0495
Email- jowen(a)wikimedia.org
Website- www.wikimediafoundation.org
Hi all;
I want to make a proposal about external links preservation. Many times,
when you check an external link or a link reference, the website is dead or
offline. This websites are important, because they are the sources for the
facts showed in the articles. Internet Archive searches for interesting
websites to save in their hard disks, so, we can send them our external
links sql tables (all projects and languages of course). They improve their
database and we always have a copy of the sources text to check when needed.
I think that this can be a cool partnership.
Regards,
emijrp
Just a reminder.... this is in about 11 hours :)
Philippe
On Aug 30, 2010, at 10:08 AM, Philippe Beaudette wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation,
> will be having office hours this Tuesday (Aug 31) at 23:00 UTC
> (16:00 PT, 19:00 ET) on IRC in #wikimedia-office.
>
> If you do not have an IRC client, there are two ways you can come chat
> using a web browser: First is using the Wikizine chat gateway at
> <http://chatwikizine.memebot.com/cgi-bin/cgiirc/irc.cgi>. Type a
> nickname, select irc.freenode.net from the top menu and
> #wikimedia-office from the following menu, then login to join.
>
> Also, you can access Freenode by going to http://
> webchat.freenode.net/,
> typing in the nickname of your choice and choosing wikimedia-office as
> the channel. You may be prompted to click through a security
> warning,
> which you can click to accept.
>
> Please feel free to forward (and translate!) this email to any other
> relevant email lists you happen to be on.
>
> ____________________
> Philippe Beaudette
> Head of Reader Relations
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
> philippe(a)wikimedia.org
>
> 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
>>