Hi folks,
to increase accountability and create more opportunities for course
corrections and resourcing adjustments as necessary, Sue's asked me
and Howie Fung to set up a quarterly project evaluation process,
starting with our highest priority initiatives. These are, according
to Sue's narrowing focus recommendations which were approved by the
Board [1]:
- Visual Editor
- Mobile (mobile contributions + Wikipedia Zero)
- Editor Engagement (also known as the E2 and E3 teams)
- Funds Dissemination Committe and expanded grant-making capacity
I'm proposing the following initial schedule:
January:
- Editor Engagement Experiments
February:
- Visual Editor
- Mobile (Contribs + Zero)
March:
- Editor Engagement Features (Echo, Flow projects)
- Funds Dissemination Committee
We’ll try doing this on the same day or adjacent to the monthly
metrics meetings [2], since the team(s) will give a presentation on
their recent progress, which will help set some context that would
otherwise need to be covered in the quarterly review itself. This will
also create open opportunities for feedback and questions.
My goal is to do this in a manner where even though the quarterly
review meetings themselves are internal, the outcomes are captured as
meeting minutes and shared publicly, which is why I'm starting this
discussion on a public list as well. I've created a wiki page here
which we can use to discuss the concept further:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_r…
The internal review will, at minimum, include:
Sue Gardner
myself
Howie Fung
Team members and relevant director(s)
Designated minute-taker
So for example, for Visual Editor, the review team would be the Visual
Editor / Parsoid teams, Sue, me, Howie, Terry, and a minute-taker.
I imagine the structure of the review roughly as follows, with a
duration of about 2 1/2 hours divided into 25-30 minute blocks:
- Brief team intro and recap of team's activities through the quarter,
compared with goals
- Drill into goals and targets: Did we achieve what we said we would?
- Review of challenges, blockers and successes
- Discussion of proposed changes (e.g. resourcing, targets) and other
action items
- Buffer time, debriefing
Once again, the primary purpose of these reviews is to create improved
structures for internal accountability, escalation points in cases
where serious changes are necessary, and transparency to the world.
In addition to these priority initiatives, my recommendation would be
to conduct quarterly reviews for any activity that requires more than
a set amount of resources (people/dollars). These additional reviews
may however be conducted in a more lightweight manner and internally
to the departments. We’re slowly getting into that habit in
engineering.
As we pilot this process, the format of the high priority reviews can
help inform and support reviews across the organization.
Feedback and questions are appreciated.
All best,
Erik
[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Narrowing_Focus
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hi folks,
While watching the current changes to Wikimedia France microgrants program
implemented, I was curious to know which Wikimedia entities had similar
funding programs for individuals - how they worked, how we could learn form
each other.
Since apparently there was no Meta page for that(tm) (yet!) I went ahead and
drafted <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jean-Frédéric/Funding_programs
>
I dug my information out of my email archives and FDC proposal forms, so I
could totally have missed some programs - please add the ones you know
about!
Of course, it would be more useful to have more detailed information on
every program.
Together with Caroline & Pierre-Selim we threw some ideas on what we
thought was interesting to know about the programs, but that's still very
alpha - please add more ideas!
Looking forward to your thoughts about this!
Cheers,
--
Jean-Frédéric
Wikimédia France
Have come across a collection of basic college textbooks that appear to be
more or less based on text from Wikipedia. There are 21 of them. The
company claims that they are being used by more than 2 million students.
They are under a CC BY SA license and if you follow the links seen here
http://books.google.ca/books?id=7avpAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA2058 they do eventually
attribute Wikipedia.
They are being offered for free on amazon.comhttp://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywo…
and
are being sold for $19.99 on their website. https://www.boundless.com/
So the question is should we have a response? I think this could generate
position press for our movement. Attribution could be better (I would
consider theirs to be borderline). Additionally should we be adding this
textbooks to Wikiversity or Wikibooks to make sure they stay free available?
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
Hi all.
Would Wikimedia like to have anything similar to https://input.mozilla.org/ (it runs on an open-source platform)? I see this as a useful and transparent (!) channel for feedback; useful to see what majority of users actually have issues with. While most WMF projects have a village pump, a talk page, mailing lists, they're sort of to solve issues on the spot without leaving a trace. This one leaves output: a pattern of what users are displeased with. Output classifiable by language, by project, by time. Similarly what they're pleased with, likewise.
Gryllida.
Forwarding for info.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: James Forrester <jdforrester(a)gmail.com>
Date: 1 November 2013 18:43
Subject: Wikimania 2015 - Call for Jury volunteers
To: "Wikimania general list (open subscription)" <
wikimania-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Dear all,
Soon we will be kicking off the selection process for deciding where we
will hold Wikimania 2015[0].
The Requests for Proposals (RfP) is being written right now[1], and will be
coming out soon, but in this e-mail we would like to invite volunteers to
serve on the selection jury[2]. The jury will select the winning bid based
on published criteria, reviewing the bids from January onwards until the
final selection is made in April 2014.
This is roughly 30-40 hours' work, and is key to us making Wikimania a
strong, healthy community conference that we all can enjoy. The Wikimania
Committee will select a jury that is a balanced representation of the
community, from a diverse range of backgrounds, sexes, languages, cultures
and regions of the world.
The main criteria are as follows:
* You want to help make Wikimania as great a celebration of the community
as we can make it;
* You can represent some of the Wikimedia community's varied projects and
activities;
* You have some experience of community events, meetings, conferences, or
want to learn;
* You have some free time during the selection period, especially late
March and early April; and
* You are not closely involved in any bid (it's a conflict of interest).
If you would like to serve on the jury, please e-mail Florence Devouard
(off-list) [[Wikipedia:User:Anthere]] at fdevouard @ wikimedia.org by 12
November. We will announce the jury in two weeks' time.
Please help us by translating this message and passing it on to your wiki's
community for those that don't read these mailing lists.
Thank you, and good luck to all Bids.
[0] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015
[1] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015_bids
[2] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_jury
On behalf of the Wikimania Committee.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
jdforrester(a)gmail.com
[[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] (speaking purely in a personal
capacity)
--
James D. Forrester
jdforrester(a)gmail.com
[[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] (speaking purely in a personal
capacity)
Please find below a link announcement for the hire of two Wikipedians in
Community (*).
One candidate is meant to be working in Uganda whilst the other will be
working in Ivory Coast. Positions are for one year
:http://www.wikiafrica.net/call_for_wir_en/
If you know people/media associated to Uganda or Ivory Coast, please
relay the call !
More info about Kumusha:
* https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kumusha_Takes_Wiki/en (EN)
* https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kumusha_Takes_Wiki/fr (FR)
(*) After much thinking, we decided to name the people we are looking
for, "WiC" as in Wikipedian in Community rather than Wikipedian in
Residence as previously. Our reasoning was that in most cases, WiR are
typically Wikipedians "planted" in institutional context (Museums,
libraries etc.) whilst we wanted to avoid this situation and get us to
focus on people or communities (already-existing or to-be-created).
Hence the new name.
Thanks
Anthere
Hello community,
this is to inform you that in response to the trademarking of the
Wikimedia community logo[1], created in 2006 by Artur “WarX”
Fijałkowski, which was discussed on this mailing list[2] as well as on
Meta[3] back in March, a small group of community members—Artur, myself,
Federico Leva (Nemo) and John Vandenberg—have initiated a formal process
of opposition against the registration of the trademark by the
Foundation in order to *reclaim the logo* for unrestricted use by the
community.
We appreciate the Foundation’s protection of the other trademarks they
have registered so far, including the logos of Wikipedia, Wikisource and
some other sister projects. In the case of the community logo, however,
it is our belief that the Foundation’s actions are exactly opposite to
what the community logo stands for and contradict the purpose behind its
very existence.
We would like to make it clear that it is not our intention to damage
anyone; our actions are a challenge against what we perceive as
unilateral declaration of ownership of an asset that has always belonged
to the wider community, and not to one or another organisation that is
part of the movement. By formally opposing the registration of the
trademark we hope to ensure the history of this logo is not disregarded,
and we wish to protect the community against unnecessary bureaucracy
and, to use another quote, let “groups who do not purport to represent
the WMF”[4] to continue to be able to freely associate with a logo that
has been part of their identity for so long.
We also want to note that this is in no way a legal action against the
Foundation, but a simple notice of opposition against the registration
of the logo in the European Union. If we assume good faith, we can only
be confident that the WMF, having now a formal occasion, will withdraw
its registration of the logo rather than continue using movement
resources to force the community into lengthy, expensive proceedings.
We invite all community members interested in this issue to express
their opinions at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Logo/Reclaim_the_Logo
If any of you would like to help us in any way (covering the costs of
the opposition, promoting the discussion, etc.), please feel free to
contact us off–list.
Artur Fijalkowski (WarX)
Tomasz Kozlowski (odder)
Federico Leva (Nemo)
John Vandenberg (jayvdb)
== References ==
* [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Community_Logo.svg
* [2]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March/124715.html
* [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Logo
* [4]
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March/124730.html
Dear all,
The next WMF metrics and activities meeting will take place on Thursday,
December 5, 2013 at 7:00 PM UTC (11 AM PST). The IRC channel is
#wikimedia-office on irc.freenode.net and the meeting will be broadcast as
a live YouTube stream.
The current structure of the meeting is:
* Review of key metrics including the monthly report card, but also
specialized reports and analytic
* Review of financials
* Welcoming recent hires
* Brief presentations on recent projects, with a focus on highest priority
initiatives
* Update and Q&A with the Executive Director, if available
Please review
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings for further
information about how to participate.
We’ll post the video recording publicly after the meeting.
Thank you,
Praveena
--
Praveena Maharaj
Executive Assistant to the VP of Engineering and Product Development
+1 (415) 839 6885 ext. 6689
www.wikimedia.org
Hi,
Looking at the summary reports per language, I've noticed a linear,
significant increase in pageviews for many European languages (ro, bg,
hu, fr) Wikipedias in the last 3 months. This is not happening for
Asian languages or Russian and is not obvious from the report card.
Has anything changed in the reporting or the visit patterns for these
Wikipedias? It looks pretty weird to have a 100% increase for Romanian
in just 3 months [1].
Thanks,
Strainu
[1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/SummaryRO.htm
