Of course. No doubt about it. We have now reached a level beyond
personal attacks. Now my name is used as a thread. So much for "focus
on the comment, not the person making the comment."
Will I ever address the comments made? As sure as day follows night.
Sincerely,
Virgilio A. P. Machado (Vapmachado)
My apologies for not posting in the proper sequence. This is in
reference to John Vandenberg's post of Sun Apr 10 05:54:28 UTC 2011,
under this same subject.
The two links provided are just the tip of the iceberg. My unwelcome
posts to this list go back, as far as I can tell, to May 2009. I am
therefore about to celebrate two years of being an inconvenience and
a nuisance to this list Masters. With so much material readily
available, a narrative of all those events will be initiated very soon.
Sincerely,
Virgilio A. P. Machado (Vapmachado)
In reply to Virgilio's comments:
1 "What would happen if all administrators, bureaucrats and so on were
told to take a hike"
I don't know about other projects, but within a few days, perhaps
hours the English Wikipedia would be trashed. With no admins to block
vandals or delete attack pages, and no pages that were admin only for
editing then not only would spammers and cyber bullies have a field
day and the most common templates would be magnets for penis picture
vandalism. Within a few days or at the most a week or two the
foundation and all the wiki mirrors would either have to go offline or
revert to the last "clean" version of the pedia in read only mode.
Then the foundation and or one or more other organisations would
reopen for editing having recruited a set of moderators. I'd hope that
one of the forks would be an advertising free volunteer run wiki much
like Wikipedia and with many of the current administrators, I'd be
surprised if at least one of the forks wasn't commercially run,
advertising funded with paid moderators. Assuming there was some
notice of the decision to tell the admins to "take a hike" the
transition to a fork might be quite seamless, and the mirrors would
probably have the sense to stop taking updates from the moment you
handed Wikipedia over to the vandals.
2 What would happen if new requirements for being administrator and so
forth included assuming real identities,
Even if you paid them, a lot of people would baulk at disclosing their
real world identities when blocking paedophiles and the point of view
warriors of every contentious issue on the planet. There are sites
that went down the route of requiring all editors to identify, and
providing you aren't ambitious and don't want a large community that
can work. But I'm not aware of any site that has allowed anyone to
edit but required those who deal with its vandals to disclose their
real identity, more common I think is to allow anyone to create an
account but pay moderators whose real identity is known to the office
but who have role accounts for editing.
3 and a set of real world qualifications.
Interesting but what qualifications would you require? Better
qualified people cost more and expect work that requires some of their
expertise. For deleting spam and attack pages and blocking vandals you
certainly don't need a high school diploma. IT literacy, written
fluency in the relevant language and some communication skill and the
ability to spot vandalism is required. I'm not aware of a relevant
real world qualification, but our existing though flawed request for
adminship process is effective at weeding out those without such
skills.
4 What it would be like to grant amnesty to all that are currently
banned and/or blocked.
It is just fine, providing we continue to only grant amnesty to those
who accept the terms of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Standard_offer
A blanket amnesty on other terms would only make sense if we wanted to
compete with Encyclopaedia dramatica.
5 What it would be like if there was separation of powers,
Not very different from today. At the moment the same admin can't
block someone and decline their unblock. If you had two different
groups, admins who blocked and another group of editors who considered
unblocks then things would be a little slower, especially when an
admin blocked someone by accident and had to get an unblocker to
reverse their mistake. So slower, more bureaucratic and less
efficient, but most editors would never notice a difference.
6 and secret balloting.
We use Secret ballots for Arbcom elections, it makes sense to do so
when you are deciding which 8 out of 13 candidates to support and you
wind up voting against some candidates because you think that others
are better for the role. We don't use secret ballots for appointing
administrators because, speaking from experience, rejected candidates
want to know why they were deemed unsuitable and what they need to
change or learn before trying again.
7 I wonder what it would be like if Wikimedia projects would borrow a
little more from democratic principles.
It would be much easier to change things, and we would all have to get
used to changes happening that didn't attempt to compromise with our
objections. In a democracy if 51% want to implement a change and 49%
prefer the status quo then the 51% win and the 49% lose. In Wikimedia
both "sides" need to understand each other and try to come up with a
solution that achieves what the 51% wanted but without doing the
things that the 49% didn't want. In practice that isn't always
possible and sometimes you get a logjam where most people want change
but we don't have consensus for a particular change, however we are
only just over ten years old and I doubt if any of our logjams are
even as old as that. One of the interesting things for our next few
decades will be to see how successful we are at eventually getting
consensus solutions to problems that currently seem intractable.
Personally I'm optimistic and think that a measurable minority of the
problems that currently evade a consensus solution will have been
resolved even before the end of our second decade.
8 Scary thoughts aren't they?
No. But thanks for posing them.
Regards
WereSpielChequers
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2011 05:43:41 +0100
> From: "Virgilio A. P. Machado" <vam(a)fct.unl.pt>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Board Resolution: Openness
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <mailman.35468.1302418463.28183.foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
>
> I know that nobody has the guts to do it, but I wonder... I wonder
> what would happen if all administrators, bureaucrats and so on where
> told to take a hike. What would happen if new requirements for being
> administrator and so forth included assuming real identities, and a
> set of real world qualifications. What it would be like to grant
> amnesty to all that are currently banned and/or blocked. What it
> would be like if there was separation of powers, and secret
> balloting. I wonder what it would be like if Wikimedia projects would
> borrow a little more from democratic principles. Yes, I wonder...
> Scary thoughts aren't they? No surprise though, coming from someone
> who is the scourge of countless Wikimedia projects and a troll
> according to many.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Virgilio A. P. Machado
>
> What is the purpose of all those questions? I've always provided that
> information to this list and if anything ever come out of it, besides
> being scolded by the list masters for making off-list posts, was to
> gain a new following of admirers.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Virgilio A. P. Machado
The reason to ask is because if there is a problem we might be able to
resolve it. At this point I don't know what your problem was or is. You
seem to be nursing a grievance; trying to milk it rather than solving it.
I'm sorry if I've not paid perfect attention, but I don't think I've got
the tone wrong.
Fred
>
>
> At 19:47 09-04-2011, you wrote:
>
>>Was there an arbitration case? Or other dispute resolution events? If
>> so,
>>could you share your reactions to the fairness and comprehensiveness of
>>what happened? Please give us some links...
>>
>>Fred
>
>
> I know that nobody has the guts to do it, but I wonder... I wonder
> what would happen if all administrators, bureaucrats and so on where
> told to take a hike. What would happen if new requirements for being
> administrator and so forth included assuming real identities, and a
> set of real world qualifications. What it would be like to grant
> amnesty to all that are currently banned and/or blocked. What it
> would be like if there was separation of powers, and secret
> balloting. I wonder what it would be like if Wikimedia projects would
> borrow a little more from democratic principles. Yes, I wonder...
> Scary thoughts aren't they? No surprise though, coming from someone
> who is the scourge of countless Wikimedia projects and a troll
> according to many.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Virgilio A. P. Machado
We have real world experience, building and maintaining Wikipedia;
attaching a name to most of us is rather immaterial, it just invades our
privacy. We do need to welcome back users who have had trouble for one
reason or another, including you, and assure them that their
contributions to editing and policy deliberations is welcome. Wikipedia
really is open to anyone who is patient enough to work with us.
I've repeatedly advocated for second chances for some of our more serious
banned users, and occasionally unblocked them, resulting in general
dismay, "What are you thinking" is one of the kinder responses. However,
even given a second chance in good faith, nearly all revert to what got
them banned. Once a strong commitment has been made to be oppositional it
is rare to see a turn-around.
Fred
What is the purpose of all those questions? I've always provided that
information to this list and if anything ever come out of it, besides
being scolded by the list masters for making off-list posts, was to
gain a new following of admirers.
Sincerely,
Virgilio A. P. Machado
At 19:47 09-04-2011, you wrote:
>Was there an arbitration case? Or other dispute resolution events? If so,
>could you share your reactions to the fairness and comprehensiveness of
>what happened? Please give us some links...
>
>Fred
On 9 April 2011 23:39, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 9 April 2011 23:27, Casey Brown <lists(a)caseybrown.org> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 11:20 PM, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> > This is an area where every project is going to have its own take on
>> things,
>> > and we can probably learn from each other's experience; however, what
>> > information there is seems to be housed on the strategy wiki, which many
>> > users avoid because it's not part of the WMF matrix (i.e., SUL doesn't
>> > apply). With that in mind, I wonder if there can be a place where
>> projects
>> > discuss what has helped and not helped, located somewhere on Meta.
>>
>> Since when does SUL not apply on strategywiki?
>>
>>
> As far as I know, since always, Casey. One must log in separately there;
> going from another WMF project, one's login doesn't follow. One of the main
> reasons for the creation of SUL was so users could go from WMF project to
> project without having to log in again; partly for ease of use, but also
> because there are an awful lot of editors who don't want to link their
> usernames to their IP addresses, even accidentally. Especially now that most
> experienced users take SUL for granted, it's a barrier to participation when
> a link to a WMF project seeking broad participation requires editors to log
> in again, and hope that someone else hasn't created an account with their
> username first.
>
> Risker/Anne
>
[FYI]
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: 2011/4/9
Subject: March 2011 Wikimedia Foundation Report
To: wikimediaannounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
As always, the wiki version with images is on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_March_2011
All best,
Erik
==Data and Trends==
:Global unique visitors for February:
:379 million (-8.3% compared to previous month / +9.9% compared to
previous year)
:(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will
release March data later in April)
:NB: Drop is caused by shorter number of days in February; comScore
does not normalize the data.
:Page requests for March:
:15.1 billion (-2.5% compared to previous month / N/A for accurate
previous year comparison)
:(Server log data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects including Wikipedia mobile)
:Report Card for February 2011:
: http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2011_02_detailed.html
==Financials==
(Financial information is only available for February 2011 at the time
of this report.)
:Operating revenue for February: USD 0.2MM vs plan of USD 0.2MM
:Operating revenue year-to-date February: USD 19.9MM vs plan of USD 17.1MM
The successful 2010 fundraising campaign has resulted in the Wikimedia
Foundation exceeding its revenue targets year-to-date.
:Operating expenses for February: USD 1.3MM vs plan of 1.7MM
:Operating expenses year-to-date: USD 11.9MM vs plan of 13.5MM
Expenses MTD and YTD are under due to both the timing of capex
spending related to the build-out of the data center, as well as to
personnel-related expenses, which were under due to slower hiring.
Underspending was partially offset by spending in outside contract
services and travel.
Cash and investments as of February 2011 totaled USD $20.4MM
(approximately 12 months of expenses).
==Highlights==
=== Editor Trends Update Published ===
On March 11, 2011, Executive Director Sue Gardner shared a message
with the global Wikimedia community focusing on the trends we are
seeing with regard to participation in Wikimedia projects, and
specifically the retention of new users. This message summarized data
from the simultaneously published Editor Trends Study, a project
undertaken by Diederik van Liere and Howie Fung under the supervision
of Erik Moeller. The Editor Trends Study specifically examined changes
in the long-term retention of users newly joining Wikimedia projects.
>From Sue Gardner's update:
: Here’s what we think the Editor Trends Study tells us: Between 2005
and 2007, newbies started having real trouble successfully joining the
Wikimedia community. Before 2005 in the English Wikipedia, nearly 40%
of new editors would still be active a year after their first edit.
After 2007, only about 12-15% of new editors were still active a year
after their first edit. Post-2007, lots of people were still trying to
become Wikipedia editors. What had changed, though, is that they were
increasingly failing to integrate into the Wikipedia community, and
failing increasingly quickly. The Wikimedia community had become too
hard to penetrate.
: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/March_2011_Update
Since it was posted, Sue's update has been fully or partially
translated into more than 20 languages. The software and data
underlying the editor trends study is available to the community as
well.
The update also summarized the Wikimedia Foundation's priorities for
the year ahead with an eye to this data:
* Create a visual editor
* Improve the new user experience
* Support growth in developing countries
* Serve audiences on all devices
* Create an improved experience for contributing and reviewing multimedia
With regard to the product development priorities, a more detailed
analysis can be found in the Wikimedia Foundation Product Whitepaper,
which summarizes both internal and external trends, presents a full
taxonomy of product development opportunities, and justifies product
development priorities according to our strategic plan and the overall
data:
: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Product_Whitepaper
=== Chapters, Wikimedia Foundation Staff and Board meet in Berlin ===
The annual Chapters Conference was held in Berlin from March 25-27.
The conference was hosted by Wikimedia Germany and brought together
representatives from Wikimedia's 30 chapters and additional groups
that are in the formation stage, including South Africa (which became
an official chapter on March 27), Canada, Kenya and Chile. WMF had
eight staff members in attendance. The conference covered a range of
topics including the Editor Trends Study, cultural and educational
partnerships, chapter-WMF communications and chapter organizational
development.
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees met in Berlin alongside the
Chapters Conference. The meeting was chaired by Ting Chen and attended
by trustees Phoebe Ayers, Bishakha Datta, Jan-Bart de Vreede, Matt
Halprin, Samuel Klein, Arne Klempert, Kat Walsh and Stuart West, as
well as Executive Director Sue Gardner and Executive Assistant James
Owen. Jimmy Wales was unable to be in Berlin, but attended part of the
meeting via Skype. The agenda for the Board meeting included:
*An audit committee update (Stu);
*An update from the Movement Roles working group (Arne);
*A discussion about the chapters (Ting and Stu);
*A Board governance update (Matt);
*A presentation of materials related to the Editor Trends Study and a
discussion about Wikimedia's difficulty retaining new editors (Sue);
*A report from the Controversial Content working group (Phoebe);
*An update on the community elections (Jan-Bart).
The Board was also able to attend several of the chapters' meeting
sessions. There was also a large all-day meeting of the Movement Roles
working group, prior to the Board meeting.
=== 2009-10 Annual Report Released ===
We released the Annual Report for the fiscal year ending June 30,
2010. In addition to the print and PDF versions, we have also
published the report as a set of wiki pages for easier collaborative
improvement and translation. Highlights of the 2009-10 Annual Report
include:
* Usability and multimedia upload initiative
* Wikimedia's strategic plan goals
* Wikimania 2009
* The Hoxne Hoard and British Museum collaboration
* 2009/10 annual giving campaign
The Annual Report can be found at:
: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report
==Technology==
As always, detailed info about the Tech Department's activities for
February 2011 can be found at:
: http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2011/04/wikimedia-engineering-march-2011-repo…
Highlights below:
=== Developer Community Outreach ===
==== Google Summer of Code Submissions ====
We have received a record number of excellent student proposals for
this year's GSoC. Final deadline is April 8th for student
registration/submission, and we will be sorting through and accepting
proposals as soon as we can after the deadline.
: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2011
==== Berlin Hack-a-thon ====
The good folks at Wikimedia Deutschland are again hosting a
Hack-a-thon in May. We will be sending a large contingent of staff
engineers and are planning to host discussions about our plans for
MediaWiki development. Community members interested in attending
should register before April 10 at:
: http://de.amiando.com/hackathon2011.html
=== Hiring ===
This month we welcomed Ops Engineer Peter Youngmeister, and welcomed
back Brion Vibber as Lead Architect:
: http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2011/03/brion-vibber-to-rejoin-wikimedia-foun…
=== Operations ===
==== Data Dumps ====
Ariel Glenn and other ops staff and community members continued their
work to restore and improve data dump services after the failure of
the old system in December. The January run of the complete English
Wikipedia dumps was completed in March, and the March run was almost
completed. We are also working with Google to enable regular mirroring
of the most recent dumps to Google storage for download.
==== New Data Center Buildout ====
Ashburn Data Center work continues. All machines are racked and
cabled and we have been working through configuring the individual
servers. We will not be able to switch over to using Ashburn for
daily traffic until we get a connection established from Tampa to
Ashburn, which we have ordered (but it is taking longer than expected
to set up). Meanwhile, we expect to hold a coding sprint on setting
up replication/failover for all of our sub-systems during the Berlin
Hack-a-thon in May.
=== Features ===
==== Article Feedback ====
The second phase of this feature was released on the English Wikipedia
in mid-March. Reviewers can now specify the source of their knowledge,
e.g. if they have an academic degree in a related field. Experiments
to encourage user engagement are being performed as well. Dario
Taraborelli also published an analysis of the first phase experiment.
We are currently expanding the scope of the experiment to include
several thousand articles, in order to get results that are more
statistically meaningful.
==== Wikilove 0.1 ====
Because many automated patrolling tools and gadgets are focused on
making it easy to warn or reprimand users, Ryan Kaldari wrote a user
script to facilitate nice behavior between editors. For example, it is
now possible, on the English Wikipedia and other wikis, to give a
“virtual kitten” to another editor. The script was adapted for use by
the Russian and Tamil communities, and Ryan is helping support other
communities willing to use it.
==== Community Features Experiments ====
Trevor Parscal deployed a change to the placement of the Edit button
for section-level edits as a feature experiment. Initial data
indicates a dramatic increase in edit actions and a significant
increase in edit completions. We're continuing to investigate the data
before making a final decision on whether to productize this change.
==== Media Upload Wizard ====
The Upload Wizard is a significantly improved media uploading tool for
Wikimedia Commons. Neil Kandalgaonkar and Ryan Kaldari continued to
fix bugs, test functionality, and generally prepared the software for
wider usage. Try it here:
: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:UploadWizard
=== General Engineering ===
==== Performance Optimization ====
Tim Starling and volunteer developer Platonides have been working on
two great projects designed to enhance MediaWiki performance:
* '''PoolCounter''' - Tim Starling deployed this extension, written by
Platonides to control the number of simultaneous parses that happen on
a single page (to avoid the “Michael Jackson” effect -- see
http://dom.as/2009/06/26/embarrassment/ ). It was later disabled
because of a bug now fixed; Platonides also added integrated
statistics to this tool. We plan a second deployment attempt in April.
* '''Ehcache deployment''' - Tim Starling investigated Wikimedia’s low
parser cache hit ratio and suggested an increase in the parser cache
size to reduce Apache CPU usage. After researching available options
for disk-backed object caches, he selected Ehcache and wrote a
MediaWiki client for it. Our test deployments showed promising
results, but also surfaced additional problems that we need to sort
out.
==Research and Strategy==
=== Internal Research Progress ===
We publicized and explained the results of the Editor Trends Study
(see highlights). A paper by Howie Fung and Diederik van Liere
describing the results from the Editor Trends study was submitted and
is currently under review for the WikiSym 2011 conference.
As a result of the launch of v.2 of the Article Feedback tool in
March, we started collecting and analyzing data on rater expertise and
calls to action following the rating completion, complementing the
previous results on article ratings.
=== Research Committee Activity ===
The survey on expert participation in Wikipedia [1] conducted by
Wikimedia Foundation Research Committee members Daniel Mietchen, Dario
Taraborelli and Panagiota Alevizou was covered by Zoe Corbyn in an
article for ''the Guardian'' published on March 29, 2011 [2] (and
followed by an editorial on April 6 [3]) also featuring interviews
with Mike Peel, a postdoctoral researcher at Jodrell Bank Observatory
and secretary of the Wikimedia UK chapter, Mark Graham from the Oxford
Internet Institute, Paul Goldberg from the University of Liverpool,
and Suzie Sheehy from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. The survey
was also featured in a Slashdot story [4] that generated 385 comments
as of April 6. The survey is still accepting participants and will
close on April 15.
=== Research outreach initiatives ===
The preparation for the data competition (in partnership with Kaggle)
and the data visualization challenge (co-organized with WikiSym)
continued throughout March. The focus of the first data visualization
challenge will be on Wikipedia's ''external impact'' and both the
Foundation and WikiSym are involving a number of organizations to
sponsor this competition. A call for contributions for both
initiatives will be published in April.
:1. http://survey.nitens.org/?sid=21693
:2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/mar/29/wikipedia-survey-academic-c…
:3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/06/in-praise-of-academic-wiki…
:4. http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/03/30/1957240/Wikipedia-Wants-More-Contri…
== Community ==
The Community Department made progress on several community organizing
and research projects in March.
=== Wiki Guides Project ===
With 60 volunteers taking part, the Wiki Guides program continues to
be exciting. The program follows and protects new users through their
initial days by offering a sheltering and supportive atmosphere. In
particular, we have emphasized rescuing articles created by new users.
Statistics are being posted on meta, but one early finding shows we
have to move very quickly to intervene before the new users lose
interest. Each guide is following nearly 100 users. We are analyzing
against a control group, and look forward to presenting those results
to the community.
: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Guides
: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Guides
=== OTRS Analysis ===
Christine is beginning a 360 degree analysis of the OTRS e-mail
ticketing system from both a technical and social perspective. She is
reaching out to administrators, users, and "customers" to determine
whether our current system is sufficient, has glaring needs (such as
training or technology), and is appropriately scalable to support
growth in India and other areas where readership is rising quickly.
=== Contribution Taxonomy ===
Steven Walling and others in the Community Department resumed work on
the Contribution Taxonomy Project. The methodology description on Meta
has been updated, [1] work began on defining metrics for measuring
specific editing activities, [2] and public tracking of the data
analysis was added. [3] The community is invited to help refine the
metrics, research questions, and help run analyses using the open
source "Wikilytics" toolkit developed during the Editor Trends Study.
[4]
: [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Contribution_Taxonomy_Project#Methodology
: [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Contribution_Taxonomy_Project/Research_Quest…
: [3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Contribution_Taxonomy_Project/Progress
: [4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilytics
=== Account Creation Improvement Project ===
Fellow Lennart Guldbrandsson continued testing modifications to the
account creation experience. Statistics gathered so far show a slight
increase in edits made by people creating new accounts as a result of
changed user interface messages.
: http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Account_Creation_Improvement_Project
=== Fundraiser ===
The fundraising team welcomed Josh VanDavier as our permanent
Development Associate to support the growth and integrity of our donor
database, help prepare for the next fundraiser, and respond to donor
inquiries. For a full description of the role:
: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Development_Associate
We also posted several open positions for the next fundraiser that can
be seen here:
: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings
Chapter and WMF fundraising representatives have started planning a
summit to be hosted by WMAT in July to collaborate on the 2011
fundraiser.
=== Public Policy Initiative ===
Approximately 1.4 million characters (or about 900 pages) of content
were added to the English Wikipedia in March by students participating
in the Public Policy Initiative (a project focused on improving
articles in the domain of public policy and funded by a grant). With
some PPI classes scheduled to start editing Wikipedia articles in
April, we will continue to watch the numbers climb. For more
information on how the students and classes are doing, check out the
new Leaderboard:
: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Pol…
LiAnna Davis and Amy Roth successfully presented at the SoTL
Conference for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Georgia and
drew lots of interest in Wikipedia in Higher Education as well as
potential universities to work with next fall. Frank, Rod, and Annie
met with Wikimedia chapter members from Germany, the UK and Italy. The
three-day meeting was hosted by the German Chapter to discuss
Wikipedia in Higher Education and what aspects of PPI could be
adapted/modified to work in the various countries.
=== Fellowship Program ===
The Wikimedia Fellowship Program now has a public application process
posted on Meta. [1] Since its announcement on September 15, 2010, [2]
the fellowship program has been experimental, with both the Global
Development Department and Community Department engaging with
community members on an ad hoc basis. The new process outlines two
different kinds of fellows and a public procedure for applying or
proposing a fellowship.
:[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships
:[2] http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/09/15/wikimedia-foundation-fellowship-p…
==Global Development==
===General===
* Asaf Bartov joined Global Development as a contractor to work on
Global South Relationships.
* In addition to the chapters conference (see highlights), several
Wikimedians including WMF staff participated in Global Melt 2011 in
Berlin, an unconference about event organizing in the Open
Code/Data/Content movements. We made some promising contacts and
hatched some ideas for collaboration with Mozilla, CC, and others.
* Posted two new positions for the Communications team:
: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Movement_Communications_Ma…
: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Design_Communications_Mana…
===Chapter Relations and Grants===
* Updates to the Grants program were introduced by Asaf and discussed
at Wikimedia Conference in Berlin.
* Outreach materials mini-grants were made available under WMF's grants program.
====Grants awarded in March====
*WikiSym Conference (USA): $20,000.00 USD in support of The
International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration (WikiSym).
: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_XX/WikiSym_2011.
*Wikimedia Ukraine: $6,400.00 USD to help WMUA build up its structural
support base in order to sustain the projects which it plans to
pursue.
: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_UA/Chapter_startup.
*Recent Changes Camp 2011 Boston (USA): $1,500.00 USD to support
Boston's recent changes camp.
: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_RecentChangesCamp2011_Boston.
*Wikimedia Indonesia: Beacon of Theology: $2,400.00 USD to support a
72-day wiki-based writing competition.
: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_ID/Beacon_of_Theology_2011.
*Launch of a Chapter Organizational consulting pilot initiative to
work with Wikimedia Netherlands, Sweden, Czech Republic and Hungary.
====Chapter Relations====
* WMF and chapters have been working to ensure that we have chapter
agreements in place that help to clarify our relationship and
responsibilities. We had 24 of 30 chapter agreements in place at the
end of March. Current status here:
: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapter_Agreements#Table_of_chapters_and_the…
* WMF and the chapters who participate in fundraising continue to have
reporting and fund transfer responsibilities. The attached page shows
the status of completion of these responsibilities:
: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tracking_Progress_for_2011_chapters_fundrais…
===Communications===
* The 2009/10 annual report was released (see highlights).
* There was light media activity through March overall, with few major
stories or issues breaking headlines.
* Communications welcomed nine new members to the Communications
Committee, including members from the UK, Japan, Hungary, Germany,
Hong Kong, South Korea, Cambodia, India, and Egypt.
* Communications worked to revamp current social media practices to
make them more open and inclusive.
* The IRC channel dedicated to communications discussions has been
revived and anyone interested in participating is encouraged to join
#wikimedia-comcom on irc.freenode.net.
====Major Stories and Coverage====
A two-day visit from Fast Company freelancer Karen Valby yielded a
large story in the April issue of Fast Company, which was released in
March. Valby interviewed WMF ED Sue Gardner, and explored the
details of the Wikimedia strategic plan and the history and future of
Wikimedia:
: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/154/librarian-to-the-world.html
There were only three incoming media inquiries in March from the
Guardian (UK), Der Freitag (Germany) and Convergance Magazine (Canada)
: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#March_2011
Other worthwhile reads:
*http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/221632/5_women_leaders_who_are_shaping_it.html
*http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate-uk/2011/03/06/women-and-the-science-education-question/
*http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0303-wiki-20110303,0,3948115.story
*http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/22/reinventing-your-business-wikipedia-style/
*http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/mar/29/wikipedia-survey-academic-contributions
====Blogging through February, 2011====
Topics of March Blogs included:
* “How Wikipedia Works” hits our shelves
* Brion Vibber rejoins Wikimedia Foundation
* Wikipedia celebrates International Women’s Day
* Update on Offline Wikipedia Projects
* Presenting our 2009-10 annual report
* Welcoming more ubuntu spirit to the Wikimedia movement
* Campus Ambassador program tackles gender gap
See: http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2011/03/
===Mobile===
*Hired external contractor to work with Global Development Research on
qualitative field research in India (and then Brazil) on mobile user
behaviour to inform future mobile strategy and feature development.
*Device testing: Analyzed mobile and other Internet connected devices
in strategically important global dev regions for user testing.
*Currently adjusting the focus of relationships with exisiting mobile
partners Telefonica and Orange to include greater access to Wikipedia
in priority regions of Latin America,the Middle East and Africa.
*Developing a new affiliate partner program to increase mobile
partnerships worldwide. Currently in discussions with multiple
companies to test pilots.
*Soliciting community input on how to balance confidentiality
requirements of companies with our culture of transparency and
openness.
===Editor Survey===
*An editor survey across the Wikimedia sites is scheduled to launch in
April with the goal of increasing our understanding of the current
state of the editor community. This survey will be repeated regularly
to provide us (the Wikimedia movement) with regular feedback from the
editor community.
: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Editors_Survey_2011
*The editor survey will be available in 22 languages thanks to the
efforts of volunteers Casey Brown and Alex Zariv, the Engineering team
and global development staff along with our outside research
organization, Resolve Market Research.
===Offline===
*Blog post: http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2011/03/16/update-on-offline-wikipedia-proje…
*Wikipedia 0.8 came out: a huge effort spearheaded by volunteer
Martin Walker to create a high quality, high importance subset of
articles from English Wikipedia.
*Created an offline portal consolidating all offline work:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline_Projects.
===Global Education===
* Finalized white paper outlining the benefits of expanding to a
global university program (comments would be appreciated):
: http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_University_Program
===India Programs===
Hisham Mundol visited San Francisco and used the opportunity to
conduct intensive face-to-face meetings across functions, with the
objective of socialising and detailing the India Plan. Hisham also
attended the Chapters Conference in Berlin to engage with other
chapters as well as Wikimedia's Board, with the objective of learning
from others' experiences and to further sharpen the India Plan.
On the ground in India:
*Detailed the India Plan and shared it with Community.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_programs
*Worked on legal/corporate structure for India entity.
*Started reaching out to community for inclusion in Fellowships/Staff Members.
*Started to identify potential communications agencies about
partnerhips with WMF.
==Human Resources==
===Staff Changes===
New (RE)Hire
* Brion Vibber, Lead Software Architect (Tech) – FT employee
Conversion
* Josh VanDavier, Development Associate (Community) – FT Employee
Extended
* James Alexander, Community Fellow (Community) – Temp Full Time
New Postings
* Storyteller
* Software Engineer – Community R&D
* Movement Communications Manager
* Data Analyst and Researcher
* Engineering Program Manager – Data Analytics
* Community Liaison
* Fundraiser Production Coordinator
* Design Communications Manager
No Contracts Ended
===Statistics===
Vital Stats: Total Employee Count
:Plan: 88
:Actual: 64
:Attrition: 3
: Remaining Open positions to fiscal year end: 28
Diversity stats:
* 64 Total Employees (includes people considered international employees)
* 42.9% female employees; 6.9% increase from 7/1/10
* 31.8% ethnic minorities; 5.8% increase from 7/1/10
* 38.1% foreign nationals; 1.9% increase in U.S. hiring from 7/1/10
* 43.8% Wikimedians; 1.75% increase from 7/1/10
* 71.4% have lived abroad; 1.4% increase from 7/1/10
Real-time feed for HR updates:
: http://identi.ca/wikimediaatwork or http://twitter.com/wikimediaatwork
===Department Updates===
During the month of March, the HR team continued building out a more
efficient hiring pipeline in collaboration with hiring managers. The
goal was to evaluate how to better reach qualified candidates,
specifically those who understand the open source movement and
particularly the Wikimedia movement. We also had a few conversations
with folks outside of WMF to discuss their ideas and suggestions.
The results of this work should start to become apparent when we
report out again in April.
Internally, we are continuing to implement OrangeHRM. This is a human
resource information system that will make some pieces of HR more
efficient by automating some of the more transactional pieces, such as
data tracking and internal resource management. The second step will
be creating a database behind the job opening process that allows
people to apply directly into an internal/secure database, making our
hiring process more streamlined and efficient.
We have also been collaborating with the other departments to create
the annual plan and budget for the 2011-12 fiscal year.
==Finance and Administration==
*Invoiced chapters related to 2010-11 fundraiser participation
*Presented 2009 Form 990 tax return to audit committee for review and approval
*Held budget meetings with various departments to begin preparation
for 2011-12 annual plan development
*Hired interim IT Project Manager and set date for Google Apps
Migration (April 22-25)
*Completed search for interim Head of Office Administration (will
start April 25)
*Completed search for interim IT Help Desk positions (started April 4)
==Legal==
*Received strong WIPO opinion underscoring that the Wikipedia
trademark is "widely known around the world for providing information
in the field of general encyclopedic knowledge."
*Started search for Deputy General Counsel (with an emphasis on
transactional work).
*Will sign on to amicus brief in Golan v. Holder, where the Supreme
Court must decide whether the Copyright Clause gives Congress
authority to take a work out of the public domain.
*Worked on policies to help guide WMF employees on how to approach
content issues.
==Visitors and Guests==
#Anna Sew Hoy (San Jose Museum of Art)
#JoAnne Northrup (San Jose Museum of Art)
#Victoria Bellotti (PARC)
#Dmitry Buslaev (CitizenGlobal)
#Eben Moglen (Software Freedom Law Center)
#Harshad Gune (Open Source Initiative Board Member)
#Ed Bice (CEO of Meedan)
#Sebastian Moleski (Board President of Wikimedia Germany)
#Heather Ford (former Advisory Board member for WMF and a CC activist)
#David Peters (ExBrook)
#David Weir (Consultant for Annual report)
#Ben Lowenstein and Lee Jacobs (Colingo.org)
#Michael Lopez (Solid Ground)
#Lennart Guldbrandsson (community fellow)
#Randy Tan (AV and journalism at San Mateo College)
#Sara Godwin (UCSF student for PPI)
#Anhika Kline (UCSF student for PPI)
#Pamela May (Design Media)
#Sarah Hargrave (Hargrave Consulting)
#Michael Snow (former Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees)
#Latoya Peterson (Social Media Consultant)
#Ward Cunningham
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hi everyone,
With great regret, I tell you that Herbythyme has found it necessary to
withdraw from the Ombudsman commission [1] due to extenuating personal
circumstances. We wish him all the best and thank him for his service. He
will be resuming his permissions as before.
This leaves one position open. If you wish to self-nominate, or to nominate
another user, please feel free to send me their name.
Best wishes,
pb
[1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_commission
___________________
Philippe Beaudette
Head of Reader Relations
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
415-839-6885, x 6643 (office)
philippe(a)wikimedia.org