Hi all,
We have some information on the fundraiser launch to share. We are still
planning on launching Monday, November 26, but we're going to make a change
this year in the timing of campaigns around the world.
Every year, as we get closer to the launch date, we test more frequently
and discover new messages and designs that make the fundraiser much more
efficient (i.e. more money per day, shorter fundraiser, fewer and/or
smaller banners).
In the past couple weeks, we've discovered some new designs and messages
that we believe will let us shorten the fundraiser by a lot -- *and* make
the banners much smaller than they've typically been.
But we don't have time to adapt these to all the countries and languages in
the world right away. This has pushed us to do something we've known is the
right thing to do for some time.
We're going to run this end of year campaign only in 5 countries (US, CA,
GB, AU & NZ) and then spend three months meticulously localizing and
translating (and testing for new purely local messages) before running the
global campaign in all other counties, in which our best messages and
designs developed in December will be used across the world.
We will use the time over the next month to run short tests of various
messages and payment options in other languages and countries in
preparation for the global campaign that we'll run in April. So people in
the five-country campaign will still only see a campaign once a year (in
December). And people in all other countries will still only see a
campaign once a year (in April).
*Everyone, everywhere will only see one campaign per year* -- unless they
happen to travel from, say, the US in December to India in April.
We're excited about breaking the campaign up for several reasons. Over the
next month, we will be able to focus on testing and finding the best
messages. The new "Facts" banners have opened up more testing possibilites
for us, and we'll learn a lot about our messages in the next month, while
we can test 24 hours per day. We'll use the lessons learned from the
December five-country campaign and spend the next three months applying
them correctly and testing multiple versions in other languages and
countries.
What we've learned over the past few years is that the same messages tend
to win all over the world. But that translating short, colloquial
fundraising messages takes a long time and many translators to get right.
And we're finding a new "best" message basically every day. We don't think
it's good if only English readers are getting our best messages.
So overall, we think we'll be able to run both the English banners and the
multilingual banners better by breaking up the campaign.
Our volunteer translators have already done a ton of work translating our
current best messages -- and we are very thankful! We're using all of those
translations now, in our testing and they will be the basis of the April
campaign. We will be engaging the community of volunteers, donors and
readers even more in the coming months to optimize the translations of the
new messages and ramp up testing in various languages. Moreover, there are
technical updates to the translation system that we'll be able to use
during the April campaign that are not released yet.
We are looking forward to more of our readers receiving better messages and
donation experiences in countries around the world.
More info to come! Instead of replying to this thread, please comment
on the Fundraiser
2012 meta discussion page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2012
Zack & Megan,
WMF fundraising
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121126/17190821152/apparently-all-that-…
"Tim covered the story of ICE doing its annual censorship binge in
seizing domain names without adversarial hearings (as we still believe
is required under the law). However, there were a couple of additional
points worthy of a followup. First off, if you remember, one of the
key reasons why we were told SOPA was needed was that for all of ICE's
previous domain takedowns it was "impossible" for it to take down
foreign domains. Except... as ICE's own announcement here shows that
was completely untrue. It seems to have had no difficulty finding
willing law enforcement partners around the globe to seize websites
without any due process [...] Apparently it's possible for ICE to
censor those sites if it actually does a little work and calls up its
law enforcement pals."
- d.
(also posted online at
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_an…)
The Wikimedia Foundation launches ninth annual fundraiser to support
Wikipedia and free knowledge
SAN FRANCISCO, November 27, 2012 - The Wikimedia Foundation, the
non-profit that operates Wikipedia and its sister projects, today
announced the launch of its ninth annual fundraising campaign. The
online fundraiser aims to raise $25 million, while the remainder of
the Wikimedia Foundation’s funding will come from foundation grants
and donations given outside the annual campaign.
The annual Wikimedia Foundation fundraiser brings in the resources
needed to keep the Wikimedia projects freely available to everyone
around the world in their own language, and guarantees that Wikipedia
will never have to rely on advertising. Donations help the Wikimedia
Foundation maintain server infrastructure, support global projects to
increase the number of editors, improve and simplify the software that
supports our projects, and make Wikipedia accessible globally to
billions of people who are just beginning to access the internet.
“Our fundraiser succeeds the same way Wikipedia does, with millions of
people contributing what they can so we can keep the site freely
available for everyone around the world,” said Sue Gardner, Executive
Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. “People tell me they donate to
Wikipedia because they find it useful, and they trust it because they
know it's written for them. Our readers fund the site, which keeps us
independent and able to deliver what they need and want from
Wikipedia--exactly as it should be.”
During the 2011 fundraiser, more than 1.1 million people donated an
average of $30 from nearly every country on the planet, and banners
and fundraising messages were translated into over 100 languages by
more than 1,000 volunteers.
The 2012 campaign will build on the success of previous years and will
run through the end of this year. To make a donation, click the
banners at the top of Wikipedia, or go directly to donate.wikimedia.org.
Wikipedians in the 2012 fundraiser
The 2012 campaign will showcase stories from Wikimedia editors,
photographers and free-knowledge advocates from around the world who
contribute to Wikimedia projects.
Poongothai Balasubramanian, a retired math teacher from India, has
created 250 articles on quadratic functions, probability, charts,
graphs, and has recorded pronunciations for 6,000 words in Tamil, her
native language. “I'm a volunteer. No one pays me. But helping edit
Wikipedia has become my life's work,” she said. “Even though I'm not
in the classroom, I'm still doing what I care about most: helping a
new generation of students learn, in the language I love.” (photo:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Balasubramanian_Poongothai-365.jpg
Andrea Zanni, a Wikimedia Italy chapter member and digital librarian
who contributes public domain and freely-licensed texts to Wikisource,
said his experience with the Wikimedia movement has facilitated his
self-expression and shaped his life. “Wikipedia is one of the few
things that really enables people to be useful, to have an impact with
a little effort,” he said. “Wikipedia is really empowering. It’s
really a framework of good faith, of good will.” (photo:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andrea_Zanni-7090.jpg)
Ravan Jaafar Altaie, a Wikipedian from Iraq who writes about Leonardo
da Vinci and the moons of Jupiter, tells her story of contributing to
Arabic Wikipedia and influencing hundreds of thousands of people
through articles she’s written. “This is my wish and one of my dreams
to make a real change in the world. I think Wikipedia gave me this
chance to make a huge difference in this world,” she said. “It's like
an investment for your future, for your children's future.” (photo:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ravan_Jaafar_Altaie-106.jpg)
Ken Thomas, a photographer from North Carolina, donates his photos to
Wikimedia Commons under the CC0 public domain license. “Putting a
photo on Wikipedia is an act of generosity,” he said. “I don’t own the
bird. I don’t own the light. I don’t own the tree branch that the bird
was sitting on. I take these pictures because I want people to see how
beautiful these things are. Who am I to charge for that?” (photo:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KenThomas-27527-1.jpg)
Erlan Vega, an English teacher from La Paz, Bolivia, said he improved
his English competency and earned international certifications because
of his experience editing Wiktionary and collaborating with English
speaking Wikipedians. “In my education system, people don’t usually
write or create,” he said. “Giving me the opportunity to be creative
and to be recognized for something I write has really been a turning
point in my life.” (photo:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Erlan_Vega-264.jpg)
About the Wikimedia Foundation
http://wikimediafoundation.orghttp://blog.wikimedia.org
The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. According to comScore Media Metrix,
Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation
receive more than 488 million unique visitors per month, making them
the fifth-most popular web property world-wide (comScore, October
2012). Available in 285 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 24
million articles contributed by a global volunteer community of
roughly 80,000 people. Based in San Francisco, California, the
Wikimedia Foundation is an audited, 501(c)(3) charity that is funded
primarily through donations and grants.
Press contact
Jay Walsh
Head of Communications
Wikimedia Foundation
Tel. +1 415-860-8166
jwalsh(a)wikimedia.org
(to unsubscribe from this list, reply with 'unsubscribe' in the subject line)
_______________________________________________
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l:
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[apologies for cross posting]
Hi folks,
On last Monday, 11/19, Wikimedia France had the pleasure to sign an
exceptional partnership with the
French<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Ministry_of_Culture>Ministry
of Culture and Communication<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Ministry_of_Culture>and
INRIA (National
Institute for Research in Computer Science and
Control<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_for_Research_in_Computer_Sc…>
)
This partnership installs Semanticpedia, a platform dedicated to manage
some projects about semantization of Wikimedia projects contents :
http://semanticpedia.org/
The project began one year ago, by a semantic extraction of the French
-language Wikipedia. The project became the french chapter of DBpedia.org <
http://dbpedia.org/Internationalization/>, which works since 2007 to
extract structured content from Wikipedia. What is new? We work directly on
the French-language Wikipedia. That allows us to extract *all* the
Wikipedia articles and not only the entries with an interwiki with EN
Wikipedia. That means that we have between 20 to 30% more articles, which
are more reliable with French and French-language culture.
The future of the project may give a semantic extraction of the Wiktionary
(+ 2.2 millions entries in French) and why not other Wikimedia projects.
The minister of Culture, Aurélie Filippetti, stressed the importance
of a French
presence on the web of data, which is becoming increasingly important in
many large websites and to connect contents and datas in content and reuse
projects. Recalling the importance of Wikipedia, she explained why the
Ministry of Culture wanted to support a specific project for linked data
resulting indirectly promoting French language and culture on the Internet
But going further, she also invited GLAM institutions to contribute
*directly* to Wikipedia, to enrich the content which will be extracted by
DBpedia, and widely reused.
Advocating a virtuous circle in which institutions could provide their
expert participations to Wikipedia and then redistributed to all. This
invitation is a real recognition of the position and the quality of
Wikipedia and the contributors, and a call for greater participation in
sharing knowledge for cultural institutions :
« *The partnership between the Ministry of Culture, Wikimedia France and
INRIA offers to cultural institutions the possibility to enrich
significantly the cultural resources available to users. In their areas of
expertise, cultural institutions have an incentive to reach their audiences
where they come to get the basic informations. The free and reusable
informations contained on the Wikipedia encyclopedia, available
**underseveral open licenses, is in this regard a guarantee of the
widest
dissemination of the data it contains. *
*
But this partnership can not be one-sided. Knowledge available on Wikipedia
is constantly being built and can fully benefit from the expertise of the
Ministry. This is why our institutions are invited to turn to consolidate,
enrich or correct if necessary the content on Wikipedia, so not only
increase the quality of the articles in French, but its effectiveness in
the Semantic Web.* » (Speech of Aurélie Filippetti, Minister of
Culture, November
19)
In that partnership the Ministry of Culture takes an important place to
support and finance the project. INRIA, well-known research institute,
gives the technical development and its experience on semantic web.
Wikimédia France provides the links and communication with the community of
contributors and brings its knowledge of the Wikimedia projects and their
functionning. Now hosted in INRIA, the Semanticpedia platform will be next
year hosted by Wikimedia France, with the support of the Ministry of
Culture.
Now, some cultural websites start to reuse data from Wikipedia via DBPedia
in French and organize their content, as the experimental website HDA-Lab
(Ministerial website for pedagogical content about history of art) and the
Cité de la Musique.
Wikimedia France is proud to participate to that unprecedented project of
partnership between a public Ministry, a research institute and a Wikimedia
chapter, project dedicated to sharing of knowledge and openning of data.
See photos of this event on Wikimedia Commons :
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Semanticpedia
And the slides of some presentations :
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Semanticpedia_presentation_slides
--
Adrienne Charmet-Alix
Directrice des programmes - Wikimedia France
Twitter : @AdrienneAlix
adrienne.alix(a)wikimedia.fr | +33 (0)7 62 92 42 01
http://www.wikimedia.fr
Activities report from Wikimedia Canada for first quarter to anybody who is
interested.
Thanks,
JP aka Amqui
2012/11/25 Benoit Rochon <brochon(a)wikimedia.ca>
> Hello,
>
> Here are the reports for WMCA from January to April 2012.
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/**wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/**
> Reports/Wikimedia_Canada/**January_-_April_2012<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Canada/…>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Benoit Rochon
> Coordinator | Wikimedia Canada
> brochon(a)wikimedia.ca
> --
>
>
>
Hi everyone,
Today, my term as President of Wikimedia Deutschland is coming to an end.
After five years on the board, I've decided to no longer seek re-election.
I did this because I think it's important that organizations regularly
allow "fresh blood" with new ideas, new perspectives, and new initiatives.
Every post is temporary, and so is the one I've held since 2009.
As one consequence, I will soon be leaving these mailing lists. I wish all
of you the best of luck in the future and hope that you will every day find
the courage and perseverance needed to make a difference through your work.
My personal commitment to our commone idea, to creating a world where
everyone everywhere can freely share in sum of all knowledge, has not
wavered. I will continue to support Wikimedia and am sure I will stay in
touch with many of you.
Finally, I want to thank everyone who has made the last five years truly
amazing. The progress that has been made since 2007 would not have been
possible without the inspiring, seemingly endless commitment shown by so
many outstanding individuals. Wikimedia shows what great truth lie in
Margaret Mead's famous words: "Never doubt that a small group of
thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only
thing that ever has."
Take care,
Sebastian Moleski
President
--
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V.
Obentrautstr. 72
10963 Berlin
Telefon 030 - 219 158 26-0
www.wikimedia.de
Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der jeder Mensch an der Menge allen
Wissens frei teilhaben kann. Helfen Sie uns dabei!
http://spenden.wikimedia.de/
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
Hello everyone,
I'm writing to inform you that Wikimedia Serbia has opened an office in
Belgrade starting November 1, thanks to the grant by WMF [1]. That means
that we have our first employee, which is very exciting for us, but also
brings a lot of responsibilities.
So, the office is located in Bulevar Kralja Aleksandra (King Alexander
Boulevard) 20, which is in the city center, on the fifth floor, with a
view on the National Assembly building, the main post office building,
church of Saint Mark and Trg Nikole Pašića, one of the two central
squares. Anyone who's been to Belgrade can attest that this is one of
the most central and most beautiful parts of the city. :)
The office space is about 95 square meters and we're still in the
process of buying furniture and equipment, but our conference room is
pretty much set. We'll use the antechamber (which is quite large by
itself) to display the 15 finalist photos from the WLM contest 2012
(we've just had a ceremony of announcing winners and exhibiting them in
a local gallery).
Our employee is Mile Kiš, our General Secretary. He's been a tremendous
help for us in the past years and he's been doing more than full time
work for us as a volunteer, so I'm especially glad that he's going to be
able to help us as an employee, as well as be able to work on his
personal professionalization.
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_RS/Annual_plan_2012-2013
Cheers,
Filip Maljković
Vice-president
Wikimedia Serbia
Thank you for the explanations.
On 11/07/2012 11:47 AM, Terry Chay wrote:
> It turns out we use a lot of industry
> terminology, without realizing that we are poorly communicating what
> that means to most people.
Actually I'm familiar with industry terminology, and also with the wrong
assumptions and prejudices it carries many times. I know *you* get it
right but a basic goal of any reorg is that *everybody* gets it right
now and in the future.
While it makes total sense to organize Product Management, Design and
Analytics under "Product Development", it feels old school and odd to
leave out the software engineers fully dedicated to product development.
It enforces the old vision that software development is something that
comes apart and after the product definition. But being Erik (a software
developer himself) the proposed VP in that area I don't need to insist
in this point.
The current proposal of having software developers working on products
(Language, Mobile, Platform...) together with Operations (sysadmins, not
directly involved in product development) feels just as old school and
odd. The common denominator seems to be "teams that know to code", "the
command line dudes", etc. I might be mistaken, but it feels as
consistent as a VP of Presentations overseeing Marketing, Analytics,
Design and other teams with high communications skills and able to
produce great slides. :)
And whoever leads the proposed "Engineering" team still would need to
deal at a high level with two very different agendas: those from teams
actually developing software features and those from the operations
teams, the latter probably still complaining that they don't get as much
attention at the top level.
So...
If the goals are "narrowing focus" + "scale the dept, and take seriously
our identity as a tech org (as stated by Sue)" (Erik says) then why not
flattening more all this tech structure?
Something like
- Product Management.
- Design.
- Software development.
-- Features
-- MediaWiki.
-- Language.
-- Mobile.
- Operations.
- Analytics.
This would mean 5 tech managers (already leading their teams) where now
you have Erik alone, 4 of them focused on product development +
Operations. Erik himself could act as EVP overseeing the product
development activities, since this is the narrowed focus now. He should
focus on vision, strategy and glue between the tech teams and with the
rest of WMF. The reporting and leadership of each team would be done by
those 5 managers, now interacting with Sue & "non-tech managers" more often.
Doesn't this sound like a more flat and scalable org, with a clearer
tech org identity?
PS: yes, it's easy for an outsider to shuffle proposals without much
background and knowledge of the day to day. :) But since you asked for
feedback... I hope it's useful, regardless of what you decide at the
end. Thank you for listening!
--
Quim
Hi,
The use of jargon, acronyms and other abbreviations throughout the
Wikimedia movement is a major source of communication issues, and
barriers to comprehension and involvement.
The recent thread on this list about "What is Product?" is an example
of this, as are initialisms that have long been known to be a barrier
for Wikipedia newcomers.
A way to bridge people and communities with different vocabularies is
to write and maintain a glossary that explains jargon in plain English
terms. We've been lacking a good and up-to-date glossary for Wikimedia
"stuff" (Foundation, chapter, movement, technology, etc.).
Therefore, I've started to clean up and expand the outdated Glossary
on meta, but it's a lot of work, and I don't have all the answers
myself either. I'll continue to work on it, but I'd love to get some
help on this and to make it a collaborative effort.
If you have a few minutes to spare, please consider helping your
(current and future) fellow Wikimedians by writing a few definitions
if there are terms that you can explain in plain English. Additions of
new terms are much welcome as well:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Glossary
Some caveats:
* As part of my work, I'm mostly interested in a glossary from a
technical perspective, so the list currently has a technical bias. I'm
hoping that by sending this message to a wider audience, people from
the whole movement will contribute to the glossary and balance it out.
* Also, I've started to clean up the glossary, but it still contains
dated terms and definitions from a few years ago (like the FundCom),
so boldly edit/remove obsolete content.
Thank you,
--
Guillaume Paumier
Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation
https://donate.wikimedia.org
