Wikimedia-l May 2013

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Wikimedia Foundation Report, April 2013
by Tilman Bayer 25 May '13

25 May '13

Hi all, please find below the WMF report for April 2013, in plain text. As always, the editable and formatted version has been published on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_April_2013 and the reports are being posted on the Wikimedia blog, too: https://blog.wikimedia.org/c/corporate/wmf-monthly-reports/ As usual, we are also publishing a separate "Highlights" summary. Please consider helping non-English-language communities to stay updated, by providing a translation: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_April_2013 Many thanks to those who have translated the March "Highlights" into Asturian, Catalan, Danish, German, Spanish, Dutch and Simplified Chinese (and partially into some other languages like Emiliàn, Italian, Polish and Turkish)! While still focussing on WMF activities, the "Highlights" include a small selection of the most noteworthy events from the whole movement. Suggestions for the upcoming May issue are welcome until June 5 at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Highlights . Regards, Tilman -- Wikimedia Foundation Report, April 2013 <Video: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Monthly_Metrics_Meeting_May_2,_…> Video of the monthly Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting covering the month of April <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/2013-05-02> (May 2, 2013) Contents * 1 Data and Trends * 2 Financials * 3 Highlights o 3.1 New notifications system launches on the English Wikipedia o 3.2 Wikidata's content can now be used on all Wikipedias o 3.3 Wikimedia Commons app announced for iOS and Android o 3.4 Funds Disseminations Committee (FDC) publishes its recommendations about $1.2 million o 3.5 New conflict of interest guidelines * 4 Engineering o 4.1 VisualEditor o 4.2 Editor engagement o 4.3 Mobile * 5 Fundraising o 5.1 Major Gifts and Foundations o 5.2 Annual Fundraiser * 6 Grantmaking and Programs o 6.1 Strategic Goals Metrics o 6.2 Grantmaking + 6.2.1 Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) + 6.2.2 WMF Grant requests approved in April 2013 + 6.2.3 Participation Support requests approved in April 2013 + 6.2.4 Individual Engagement Grants + 6.2.5 Editor Growth and Contribution Program + 6.2.6 Brazil # 6.2.6.1 Institutional Partnerships # 6.2.6.2 Data & Experiments # 6.2.6.3 Education * 6.2.6.3.1 Partnerships with universities * 6.2.6.3.2 Events * 6.2.6.3.3 Medicin Wikiproject o 6.3 Programs + 6.3.1 Program Evaluation and Design + 6.3.2 Mobile + 6.3.3 Global Education o 6.4 Learning and Evaluation * 7 Human Resources o 7.1 Staff Changes o 7.2 Statistics o 7.3 Department Updates * 8 Finance and Administration * 9 Legal, Community Advocacy, and Communications Department o 9.1 LCA Report, April 2013 + 9.1.1 Contract Metrics + 9.1.2 Trademark Metrics + 9.1.3 Domains Acquired + 9.1.4 Coming & Going + 9.1.5 Other Activities o 9.2 Communications Report, April 2013 + 9.2.1 Major announcements + 9.2.2 Major Storylines through March + 9.2.3 Other worthwhile reads + 9.2.4 WMF Blog posts + 9.2.5 Media Contact + 9.2.6 Wikipedia Signpost * 10 Visitors and Guests == Data and Trends == Global unique visitors for March: *517 million* (+7.17% compared with February; +5.76% compared with the previous year) (comScore data <http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/unique_visitors> for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release April data later in May) Page requests for April: *20.8 billion* (-3.4% compared with March; +20.1% compared with the previous year) (Server log data <http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthlyAllProjects.htm>, all Wikimedia Foundation projects including mobile access) Active Registered Editors for March 2013 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month, excluding bots): *82,105* (+5.67% compared with February / +2.15% compared with the previous year) (Database data <http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/active_editors>, all Wikimedia Foundation projects.) *Report Card* (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects) for March 2013: http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/ (Definitions <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Analytics/Metric_definitions>) == Financials == <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Revenue_%26_Expenses_March_2013…> Wikimedia Foundation YTD Revenue and Expenses vs Plan as of March 31, 2013 <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Expenses_by_Functions_March_201…> Wikimedia Foundation YTD Expenses by Functions as of March 31, 2013 (Financial information is only available through March 2013 at the time of this report.) All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and Year-To-Date March 31, 2013. Revenue $41,573,672 *Expenses:* Engineering Group $10,569,516 Fundraising Group $2,915,969 Grantmaking & Programs Group $4,565,386 Governance Group $555,937 Legal/Community Advocacy/Communications Group $2,263,477 Finance/HR/Admin Group $4,187,115 Total Expenses $25,057,400 Total surplus $16,516,272 * Revenue for the month of March is $5.92MM versus plan of $5.28MM, approximately $647K or 12% over plan. * Year-to-date revenue is $41.57MM versus plan of $35.74MM, approximately $5.83MM or 16% over plan. * Expenses for the month of March is $3.09MM versus plan of $4.04MM, approximately $943K or 23% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, and grant expenses offset by higher bank fees. * Year-to-date expenses is $25.06MM versus plan of $29.97MM, approximately $4.92MM or 16% under plan, primarily due to personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, FDC grants executed, WMF project grants, and travel expenses partially offset by higher legal expenses and bank fees. * Cash position is $41.02MM as of March 31, 2013. == Highlights == <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Notifications-Flyout-Screenshot-Clo…> Screenshot: This user has received four new notifications === New notifications system launches on the English Wikipedia === On April 30, the Foundation's Editor Engagement Team activated the Notifications system (also known as Echo <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo>) on the English Wikipedia. It inform editors about new activity on the wiki that affects them, for example when they receive a message on their user page, or when one of their edits is reverted, or when another user thanks them for an edit. The Notifications system is still being tested and modified based on community feedback. Later, it will be made available on other language versions of Wikipedia, and on other Wikimedia projects. <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GeneaWiki_screenshot_Bach.png> Family tree of the composer Johann Sebastian Bach, generated <http://toolserver.org/~magnus/ts2/geneawiki/?q=Q1339> from Wikidata by the "GeneaWiki" tool === Wikidata's content can now be used on all Wikipedias === Wikidata <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/> has now begun to serve all language versions of Wikipedia <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/25/the-wikidata-revolution/> as a common source of structured data that can be used any Wikipedia article, e.g. in infoboxes. Wikidata's machine-readable knowledge database already contains over 11 million items. They can also be queried, evaluated and edited with the help of a growing collection of tools <http://blog.wikimedia.de/2013/05/06/the-wikidata-tool-ecosystem/>. === Wikimedia Commons app announced for iOS and Android === The Wikimedia Commons mobile app was officially announced in April <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/29/announcing-the-official-commons-app-f…>, allowing quick and easy image uploads directly from mobile devices. It is available for both iOS and Android devices. Mobile users who don't have the app installed can still upload images from the mobile web version <https://m.wikipedia.org/> of all Wikimedia projects. === Funds Disseminations Committee (FDC) publishes its recommendations about $1.2 million === Launched in 2012, the Funds Dissemination Committee is a group of Wikimedia volunteers tasked with helping to decide about the use of movement funds. On April 28 <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-April/125489.html>, after a period of evaluation by supporting staff and public review by the community, it published its recommendations <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2012-2013_ro…> to the Wikimedia Board of Trustees about the second round of funding requests, by four organizations: Wikimedia Czech Republic (requested: $14,084.50, recommended: $0), Wikimedia Hong Kong (requested: $211,660.26, recommended: $0), Wikimedia Norway (requested: $235,715, recommended: $140,000), and Wikimedia France (requested: $747,259, recommended: $525,000). === New conflict of interest guidelines === With an immediate effective date, the Board of Trustees approved Wikimedia guidelines on the disclosure of potential and actual conflicts of interest in requesting and allocating movement resources <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Guidelines_on_potential_conflicts_of_i…> (such as financial grants). Input provided by the community during a six-week consultation period greatly improved the original version. == Engineering == A detailed report of the Tech Department's activities for April 2013 can be found at: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2013/April Department Highlights <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Translation-ux-slides.pdf?page=9> Presentation slides about the new translation user interface (speaker notes <https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_DqIn9nl7NfqOBWbCo6T5pmOStgg44Cc5zA…>) Major news in April include: * the start of recruitment for a multimedia engineering team <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/08/breaking-through-walls-of-text-richer…>; * a better translation interface <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/09/language-engineering-sprint-update-tr…>, a new home page for translators <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/22/a-new-translation-home-page-the-maven…> and a language outreach program <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/26/join-the-language-mavens/>; * the release of Kiwix of Android <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/17/carry-the-entirety-of-wikipedia-in-yo…>, an app to download and view Wikimedia content offline on mobile devices; * the migration of Wikidata, and the English and German Wikipedias, to the MariaDB <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/22/wikipedia-adopts-mariadb/> database system; * the second phase of Wikidata <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/25/the-wikidata-revolution/>, whose content can now be displayed in Wikipedia articles; * the deployment of VisualEditor's first version <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/25/visualeditor-alpha-in-15-languages/> to 14 more language versions of Wikipedia; * the first release of Notifications <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/05/02/notifications-launch-english-wikipedi…> (Echo) on the English Wikipedia; * a new login and account creation interface <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/25/try-new-login-accountcreation/>; * the ramp-up of technical mentorship programs <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/26/floss-internship-programs-as-catalyst…>; * the launch of an official Wikimedia Commons app for iOS and Android <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/29/announcing-the-official-commons-app-f…>. === VisualEditor <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor> === In April, the VisualEditor team continued to work on major new features that will be added in the coming months. The goal is for VisualEditor to become the default editor for all Wikipedia users in July 2013, capable of letting them edit the majority of content without needing to use the legacy wikitext editor. The team has focused on four substantial areas of work: adding support for references, templates, categories and media items, all of which are currently disabled for editing in VisualEditor. Editing around images is now designed and partially implemented in our experimental code, and editing around categories is almost complete and nearly ready for activation. The early ("alpha") version of VisualEditor currently enabled on a few select sites was updated three times in April, adding speed and interface improvements, fixing bugs and making deeper changes behind the scenes to better support the new features. We also were able to enable the alpha version of VisualEditor on fourteen more Wikipedias as an opt-in <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/25/visualeditor-alpha-in-15-languages/>. This has encouraged feedback from the community on what works and is broken, and identifying language- and locale-specific issues that are now being fixed. As for the Parsoid <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid> (the program that serves as translator <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/03/04/parsoid-how-wikipedia-catches-up-with…> between wikitext code and annotated HTML, behind the scenes of VisualEditor), the team successfully activated the cumulative work done over the last four months. This includes support for non-English wikis, a rewritten system to reduce artifacts when editing with VisualEditor, support for basic template parameter editing, and a long list of other fixes and improvements. Several other features for the July target are on track. Specifications to support more features were written and are currently being implemented. This includes images and thumbnails, whose options for embedding in wiki pages will soon be ready. The team also continued to evaluate the performance of Parsoid. Caching was developed to minimize the server load, and new servers were ordered. === Editor engagement <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/New_editor_engagement> === In April, the Editor engagement team (E2) activated the Notifications <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo_(Notifications)> feature on the English Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notifications> and mediawiki.org. This first version aims to inform users about new activity that affects them on Wikipedia, such as talk page messages, page reviews, mentions, edit reverts and thanks. The team developed a new feature that lets users mark all notifications as read, and updated the fly-out and archive page. The development of metrics dashboards also started. The final version of Article Feedback v5 (a quality assessment feature) was activated on the English <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ArticleFeedbackv5>, French <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fr:Sp%C3%A9cial:ArticleFeedbackv5> and German <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/de:Spezial:Artikelr%C3%BCckmeldungen_v5> Wikipedias. A number of bugs were fixed, the feedback page was simplified, and other features such as feedback links and auto-archival were finalized. Development for this feature is now wrapping up. <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Monthly_Metric…> Brandon Harris demonstrating Flow Design continues for the first version of Flow <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow>, a feed-like interface to enable users to better interact with their projects. An interactive prototype <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/design/2013-April/000495.html> is being built to help describe multiple functions. The Editor Engagement Experiments team (E3) focused on its redesign of the account creation and log-in interface <http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/25/try-new-login-accountcreation/>. The first phase of the launch invited editors and readers on all Wikimedia projects to test the new forms on an opt-in basis, to identify bugs and localization issues across wikis. The new interface is expected to replace the legacy version in May. For the /Onboarding new Wikipedians <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Onboarding_new_Wikipedians>/ project, the E3 team completed quantitative analysis <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:OB4> of the latest version of the /GettingStarted/ landing page, and began prototyping a new version and a navigation system, which will be used for usability testing prior to further development. The launch is expected in early May as well. === Mobile <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Mobile_engineering> === An official Wikimedia Commons app <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Apps/Commons> for smartphones was released for both iOS and Android devices <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/29/announcing-the-official-commons-app-f…> in April. The team also added support for categories. Work on Wikipedia Zero <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero> mostly happened behind the scenes this month, with changes made to the configuration system to better support carrier preferences. The team also experimented with a log-in/sign-up call to action for logged-out users from the in-article upload feature <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile_design/Uploads> on the mobile site. This resulted in a spike in new contributors, but the quality of their uploads was lower than anticipated, and the quantity of inappropriate uploads was a burden on the Commons community. The call to action was therefore disabled, and uploading reserved to existing users, leading to a vast improvement in the quality of the uploads: 3/4th of the files are retained on Commons, as compared to less than 1/4 when brand-new users were uploading. To create a more focused uploading workflow, and let mobile uploaders discover more articles to illustrate, a /Nearby <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby>/ view was added to the beta site, showing users a list of articles near them and highlighting the ones that need images. This feature is expected to be activated on the full mobile web site next month. == Fundraising == === Major Gifts and Foundations === * Switched our caging service from Merkle to Arizona Lockbox. They will now process the collection, depositing, and processing of our checks. * Completed a quarterly report to the FDC. * Attended the Hewlett Foundation Grantees Conference for OER. === Annual Fundraiser === * Drafted and translated a survey to evaluate Wikipedia readers' perceptions of fundraising banners. * Analyzed donation data from the international fundraiser in March. * Analyzed success rate for donations over the past year. * Changed international processing acquirer via Global Collect (adding 60+ currencies in the future). * Prepared sample reports from our AB testing system <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/08/intro-to-the-statistics-of-ab-testing…> to post publicly. * In early April, we launched samarium (our new public data provider) in conjunction with Randall Munroe <http://www.xkcd.com/1193/> (of XKCD fame). * Supported the mobile team to document work with Wikipedia Zero negotiations (see also below); examples: <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nairobi_-_Wikipedia_Zero_-_258A9822…> Photo for Wikipedia Zero campaign: A fruit vendor in Nairobi, Kenya displays the phone she uses <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Johannesburg_-_Wikipedia_Zero_-_258…> Photo for Wikipedia Zero campaign: A cellphone repair and sales kiosk in Johannesburg, South Africa == Grantmaking and Programs == Department Highlights * New Program Evaluation and Design team established: In April, the new Program Evaluation and Design team has been established. Sarah Stierch joined the team as Program Evaluation Community Coordinator and Jaime Anstee joined the team as Program Evaluation Specialist. * The seven members of the FDC met face-to-face to deliberate on four proposals <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Proposals>. Following extensive review prior to the meetings and intense face-to-face discussion, they made their Round 2 recommendations <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2012-2013_ro…> to the Board of Trustees. On Sunday, April 28, they announced their recommendations to the community on the FDC portal <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal> and on mailing lists. The Board of Trustees will make a final decision about these recommendations by June 1, 2013. === Strategic Goals Metrics === Metric Value MoM MoM% Chart Global South Active Editors (5+ edits in main namespace) 15.9k +392 +2.5% Increase [1] <http://gp.wmflabs.org/graphs/global_north_south_active_editors> === Grantmaking === <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Funds_Dissemination_Committee_Updat…> Presentation slides from the metrics meeting <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Monthly_Metric…> Katy Love presenting about the FDC recommendations ==== Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) ==== * The FDC members and FDC staff joined the Wikimedia conference in Milan prior to their face-to-face deliberations. They co-led three conference sessions related to the FDC. One session focused on the differences between the WMF grants programs, another shared the basics about the FDC's process and ways of working, and the last was a chance to share and solicit feedback from Round 1 learning. Minutes from these meetings <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2013/Schedule> are available. These sessions provided constructive feedback for the FDC to consider as they review the application process, portal, and all the associated forms, and they continue to welcome additional feedback from applicants and the community. * Elections <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/FDC_election…> for two members of the FDC and the ombudsperson will be held in May and June. Applications are accepted on Meta from 24 April to 17 May. ==== WMF Grant requests approved in April 2013 ==== * Grants:User:Dimi z - WMBE/Start-up Grant - WMBE <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:User:Dimi_z_-_WMBE/Start-up_Grant_-_…> * Grants:User:HstryQT - GLAMWiki US Consortium/Advisory Group Meeting <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:User:HstryQT_-_GLAMWiki_US_Consortiu…> ==== Participation Support requests approved in April 2013 ==== * No new requests were approved in April. * Reports accepted in April: o Participation:Umbrellas000/US OpenGLAM Launch Weekend, Open Knowledge Foundation/Report <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Participation:Umbrellas000/US_OpenGLAM_Laun…> o Participation:Tedder/Legislative Data and Wikipedia Conference/Report <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Participation:Tedder/Legislative_Data_and_W…> o Participation:Hlong-lib/US_OpenGLAM Launch Weekend, Open Knowledge Foundation/Report <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Participation:Hlong-lib/US_OpenGLAM_Launch_…> o Participation:Bdcousineau/US OpenGLAM Launch Event/Report <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Participation:Bdcousineau/US_OpenGLAM_Launc…> ==== Individual Engagement Grants ==== <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_IEGrants_April_2013_metrics.pdf…> Presentation slides from the metrics meeting * 7 IEGrantees got setup and began work on their projects this month! Their progress will be chronicled regularly at: o Grants:IEG/Build an effective method of publicity in PRChina/Timeline <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Build_an_effective_method_of_pub…> o Grants:IEG/Consolidate wikiArS to involve art schools/Timeline <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Consolidate_wikiArS_to_involve_a…> o Grants:IEG/Elaborate_Wikisource strategic vision/Timeline <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Elaborate_Wikisource_strategic_v…> o Grants:IEG/MediaWiki data browser/Timeline <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/MediaWiki_data_browser/Timeline> o Grants:IEG/Replay Edits/Timeline <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Replay_Edits/Timeline> o Grants:IEG/The Wikipedia Adventure/Timeline <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/The_Wikipedia_Adventure/Timeline> o Grants:IEG/The Wikipedia Library/Timeline <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/The_Wikipedia_Library/Timeline> * A review of round 1 is in progress, to help us prioritize iterations on program pages and processes in preparation for round 2. o Working with Grantmaking Learning and Evaluation unit, we deployed 2 IEG participants surveys targeting IEG committee members and anyone who submitted an IEG proposal. Survey results and a list of recommendations <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Feedback/round_1_2013> based on the findings have been posted to meta. o Overall satisfaction with the experience of participating in the IEG pilot is high. 81% of proposers say they'll consider reapplying in the future, and 94% would recommend colleagues apply. 90% of the committee will consider serving again in the future and all would think about recommending that others serve. Areas for improvement we've identified include building out tips and guidelines for proposers based on past examples of selected and unselected proposals, providing more and earlier qualitative feedback to proposers through continued focus on IdeaLab sprints and other community/committee engagement strategies, and upgrading the review tools. o Committee discussion <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Committee/Workroom/Reflections> of proposed process changes is ongoing. ==== Editor Growth and Contribution Program ==== <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Editor_Growth_and_Contribution_Prog…> Logo of the Editor Growth and Contribution Program An experimental project on Geo-targeted Editors Participation has concluded, and its outcomes and learning have been shared in a summary report <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editor_Growth_and_Contribution_Program/Geo-…>. The experiment ultimately did not result in increased contribution to articles by new editors. However, we do believe there are learnings from this experiment that could be useful for future experiments to build on. ==== Brazil ==== ===== Institutional Partnerships ===== Travel of Ação Educativa representative to the Education Meeting at the Wikimedia Conference in order to allow learnings about the movement and the program, as well as to introduce Ação Educativa’s vision on Education to the Wikimedia movement. Started discussing specific ideas and principles of a partnership with Ação Educativa to become a project to be presented to WMF <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programa_Catalisador_do_Brasil/Planejamento…>. ===== Data & Experiments ===== * Translation of the Meta Page Research:Data <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Data> into Portuguese is ongoing <https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Central_de_pesquisas/Portal_de…>. * Developments on 2 prototypes of the Data Center: defined with the community the main areas to be covered <https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Central_de_pesquisas/Portal_de…> and how to display data <https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Central_de_pesquisas/Portal_de…>. * IRC Meetings to debate proposals for Analyses and Data Center page: w:pt:Wikipédia:Projetos/Wikipédia/Reuniões <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/pt:Wikip%C3%A9dia:Projetos/Wikip%C3%A9dia/Reu…> * Research released: o Geo localization comparison for contributions to Wikipedia <https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio(a):HAndrade_(WMF)/A%C3%A7%C3%B5e…> o Annual stats for the Portuguese Wikipedia <https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio(a):HAndrade_(WMF)/Estat%C3%ADsti…> * Ongoing researches: o Vandalism profile, impact and occurance <https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio(a):HAndrade_(WMF)/Pesquisa_Vanda…> (important to note this will cover the period in which the emergency mode of CAPTCHA was removed from the Portuguese Wikipedia by the Mediawiki community) * Research in the planning phase: o Opinion survey <https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Central_de_pesquisas/Pesquisa_…> led by a volunteer with the catalyst program team support. The research aims at identifying the main problems the community currently see on the Portuguese Wikipedia: ===== Education ===== <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikip%C3%A9dia_na_Universidade-_os_…> "Wikipédia na Universidade: os 5 pilares da Wikipédia" ( a video explaining Wikipedia's "Five Pillars") ====== Partnerships with universities ====== * Gama Filho university: tutorial videos have been produced for the translation course (these are being uploaded to Commons, too <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:V%C3%ADdeos_para_curso_de_tradu…>): o Wikipédia na Universidade: os 5 pilares da Wikipédia <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcDict3z8h8> o Wikipédia na Universidade: página da disciplina <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv3tT3iLe-4> o Wikipédia na Univesidade: usando uma página de testes <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXTyZ1J1lxk> o Introdução ao Projeto Wikipédia na Universidade <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c88mRu_wm8Q> o Explicação sobre os projetos Wikimedia <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZz-9r_zZqA> o WIkipédia na Universidade: Verificabilidade <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stywbDpa-uA> o Wikipéda na Universidade: usando sua página de testes para a tradução <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv6bp9pfW28> o Wikipédia na Universidade: chegando na página de tradução e navegando por ela <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2pJmGTs93s> o Wikipédia na Universidade: orientação e os 5 pilares <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pH0_JNg9FE> o Wikipédia na Universidade: navegando pelos WikiProjetos <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOtsmaZgEEI> o Wikipédia na Universidade: recursos e onde obter ajuda <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4whASxvHUU> * Gama Filho university: definition of articles to be translated <https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia_Discuss%C3%A3o:Wikip%C3%A9dia_…> ====== Events ====== * Participation of Everton in the Education Program meeting at the Wikimedia Conference, in Milan ====== Medicin Wikiproject ====== * Suggest bot <https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio(a):Wikiprojetosbot> released (only waiting final approval to run regularly) === Programs === ==== Program Evaluation and Design ==== * In April, the *new Program Evaluation and Design team* has been established. Sarah Stierch, long-term Wikipedian and free culture advocate, joined the team as Program Evaluation Community Coordinator. In this role, she will act as the community liaison for people who have questions about program evaluation. Sarah will facilitate discussions online and also ensure that community members have appropriate communication channels at hand to share learnings, updates and progress reports with each other. Jaime Anstee, former employee of the Center for Program Evaluation at the University of Nevada, joined the team as Program Evaluation Specialist. Jaime earned her Ph.D. from the University of Nevada, Reno’s Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Social Psychology and has extensive training and experience in program evaluation design and analysis. Jaime's background and professional areas of expertise include: program evaluation, decision-making, research design and analysis, intergroup dynamics, and cultural psychology. As Program Evaluation Specialist, she will empower program leaders across countries to successfully self-evaluate their programmatic activities. She will also collect, analyze, interpret, and summarize self-evaluation results, synthesizes the outcome and create written reports that will be published on Meta. Both Sarah and Jaime will report directly to Frank Schulenburg, Sr. Director of Programs. * Frank Schulenburg attended the *Wikimedia Conference* in Milan, Italy. As part of a 45-minutes workshop, he facilitated a discussion with chapters' members about the basics of program evaluation and design. The session provided answers to questions like "What is program evaluation?", "What are the benefits of evaluating programs?", and "How can evaluation drive the impact of programs?". Frank also outlined the two-year goals of the new Program Evaluation and Design team and announced the upcoming workshop for program leaders, to be held in late June 2013. Besides staging the workshop, Frank also engaged with a number of chapter's representatives in one-on-one conversations about programs and program evaluation. * Also in April, Frank Schulenburg worked with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program team on a *self-evaluation of the team's Egypt Education Program*. With support from the Foundation's Analytics team, LiAnna Davis and Rod Dunican created the first iteration of a self-evaluation report and successfully tested the new UserMetrics API. The self-evaluation report will be developed further over the course of the next months and is intended to be published on Meta as a first, tentative sample report that will help program leaders across countries understand how to write their own self-evaluation reports. As a result of this process, the Foundation's Analytics team could increase the stability of the UserMetrics API and gathered feedback on how the tool can be improved further. * In late April, the Program Evaluation and Design team embarked on planning the *first program evaluation workshop <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/05/09/program-evaluation-workshop-budapest/>* for people who are running programs within the Wikimedia movement. The workshop will be held in late June in Budapest, Hungary. Wikimédia Magyarország, the Hungarian Wikimedia Chapter, kindly agreed to help with organizing this event. More information about the workshop will be made publicly available in early May. ==== Mobile ==== * In April, the *Wikipedia Zero team met up with mobile operators in Africa* to discuss launching two different projects. Our proposal to conduct a pilot of our Wikipedia-via-text service was discussed and we reached a verbal agreement to launch pilots with two mobile operators within the next few months. * During this trip, we also were able to reach agreements with several mobile operators to move ahead with *additional Wikipedia Zero deployments in Africa*. * Our new engineer, Yuri Astrakhan, met with our South African technical partner to help contribute to the *SMS/USSD pilot program*. He worked with their engineers to learn the system and set up the necessary features to collect the analytics data for the upcoming pilots. * Our new engineers have been busy fixing our backlog of bugs, partner launches, and preparing the code base with an improved architecture. This architectural change acts as the foundation of *a web portal, which will allow the Zero program to scale* in a far more automated way than is currently possible. <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Johannesburg_-_Wikimedia_Zero_-_258…> Wikipedia Zero campaign in Johannesburg <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Johannesburg_-_Wikimedia_Zero_-_258…> Kul Wadhwa demonstrating Wikipedia Zero <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Johannesburg_-_Wikipedia_Zero_-_258…> Meeting about Wikipedia Zero in Johannesburg <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nairobi_-_Wikipedia_Zero_-_258A9458…> Meeting about Wikipedia Zero in Nairobi ==== Global Education ==== Wikipedia Education Program meetings in Milan <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Education_Workshop_group_…> Education Program Leaders Workshop group photo * Facilitated two days of educational program meetings in Milan, meeting with program leads for 25 Wikipedia Education program from around the world. * Met with several participants in the Arab Wikipedia Education program (see Arab World information below), meeting with our respresentative from Egypt and professors from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. * Discussed the transitional activities for the Brazil education program, discussing the overall program and how we can support a smooth transition. * Program leaders shared about their program and in the process we discovered new programs that we did not know were in operation. * Participants exchanged ideas on how to better share experiences and materials across countries so that they could learn from each others' successes and challenges. * Notes from the meeting. <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program/Education_P…> US/Canada * Supported student editors during their main assignment edits of the semester. Facilitated communication with relevant Wikipedia editors/Ambassadors. * Began recruiting and on-boarding professors who had indicated working with the Education Program during the Fall 2013 semester. * Implemented a redesign of the support materials and information for program participants. Working to create a central location for all volunteers, professors, and students to find the necessary information. * Worked with a group of volunteers to apply for a grant as well as thematic organization affiliation for the proposed non-profit that aims to take over program activity for the Fall 2013 term. * Ambassadors and other volunteers began discussion of how to scale the volunteer support to more professors in an online space. <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_Education_Program_Arab_Wo…> Slides from the metrics meeting presentation about the Education Program in the Arab World Arab World * Saudi Arabia: We agreed to work with two professors of translation at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. They will start in mid-May. * Jordan: Faris traveled to Jordan to officially kick off program and train Ambassadors. Volunteer leaders in Jordan are working to create a Wikipedia summer camp that includes students and Ambassadors in Jordan (at Isra University and high schools). The main goal of this camp is to add additional content and photos through a competition among editors. Isra University will coordinate with King Saud University (Saudi Arabia) soon to make a joint camp between the countries. * Egypt: Classes started at four universities (Ain Shams, Cairo, Damanhour, and Kafr El-Sheikh), and students seem to be doing well, especially in the Faculty of the Arts at Ain Shams University. * Algeria: Students started to edit articles in the Arabic Wikipedia, and they are looking at ways of expanding the program in the future. Communications * Drafted "Welcome to Commons" brochure copy, revised it based on community feedback, and initiated graphic design phase. * Extended Education Program extension roadmap, began working with Features team to plan implementation. * Developed and deployed more flexible and easy-to-use templates for creating, editing and porting Education Program trainings. * Piloted the User Metrics API tool for a preliminary draft of a program evaluation report on the Egypt program. * Facilitated three blog posts on the Foundation blog: o Teaching rural teachers in Namibia how to edit Wikipedia <http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/02/wikipedia-education-program-namibia/> o Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences+Wikipedia = True! <http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/04/sweden-agricultural-sciences-collabora…> o Education program leaders gather to share experiences <http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/26/education-program-leaders-gather-to-sh…> * Released two newsletters: o 2 April 2013 <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program/News/2_Apri…> o 16 April 2013 <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program/News/16_Apr…> === Learning and Evaluation === L&E's main focuses throughout April were around gathering and incorporating feedback, preparing evaluation materials to guide decision-making for FDC, and gathering community input into initial stages of L&E design. * *IEG (Individual Engagement Grants) Performance Management*: developed and distributed IEG survey to all applicants and recipients in order to gather useful feedback in the evolving model. * *FDC Performance Management*: analyzed the results of the process survey from Round 1 of the FDC applications and shared the results publicly at the Wikimedia Conference in Milan, Italy. These survey results were shared coupled with a session gathering additional input and feedback into the overall FDC process from entities present at the conference. Also, deployment of a survey to gather feedback from Round 2 of the deilberations. Partner * *Strategy development and sharing*: Hosted an IRC office hour <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours/Office_hours_2013-04-15jw> with some community members getting initial input into the thinking behind the L&E unit. Also, created and delivered a first overview session with the FDC at the Milan Round 2 Deliberations, explaining how L&E should and would be incorporated into the overall grantmaking process. * *"Toolkit" development*: one of the main goals of the L&E team is to provide non-monetary tools to our movement partners to better understand and improve the work they are doing. We are creating the first useful prototypes of these help materials, including: o *How to develop and use surveys <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grantmaking_and_Programs/Learning_%26_Evalu…>* (next step: set-up templates on specific tools to provide to our grant recipients) o *User Metrics API <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User_Metrics>*: tool to track the activity of cohorts of individuals. Evan Rosen took ownership of this over from Ryan Faulkner, who left WMF. We are spending time understanding the code base behind the tool, as well as planning out how it could evolve to be the most helpful and stable for broader use across the movement entities o *Visualization of geo-data*: we are working with Analytics on bringing graph creation options back into Limn - the WMF visualization software. Yay! Paired with the geo-location databases we have developed, this is the first time our movement partners in specific countries can see directly the editorship of their countries over time. Next steps are to prototype and expand the datasources available. o Initial conversations around the direction of the *L&E "portal"* and also the future of the *IdeaLab*. o *Program and Organizational Mapping*: worked with Rosie Lewis to develop a database collecting all the money we have spent across the movement and the programs they are executing. See Overview presentation <https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/presentation/d/1ryaMZz8TQuc-qfGjY0f…> for more details == Human Resources == HR activity for the month was relatively routine. HR has augmented its staff training options by providing courses on communications/presentation skills and (upcoming) negotiation. === Staff Changes === New Requisitions Filled * Jaime Anstee, Program Evaluation Specialist (Grantmaking & Programs) * Erik Bernhardson, Software Engineer (Engineering) * Brandon Black, Dev Ops Engineers/Site Reliability (Engineering) * Jan Eissfeldt, Community Advocate (Legal & Community Advocacy) * Monte Hurd, Software Developer Apps (Engineering) * Robert Miller, Facilities & Equipment Coordinator (Administration) * Sarah Stierch, Program Evaluation Community Coordinator (Grantmaking & Programs) * Julie Trias, IT Administrator (Administration) Communications Interns * Candace Metoyer * Sarah Mitroff * Donna Peterson New Contractors * Limayli Huguet (Administration) * Yukari Mitsuhashi (Fundraising) * Michael Ray (Administration) * Janet Renteria (Administration) * Adrian Rounce (Engineering) Contracts Extended * Nischay Nahata (Engineering) * Timo Tijhof (Engineering) Departures * Munaf Assaf * Christine Bocknek * Ryan Faulkner * Joslyn Lewis Contracts Ended * Stephanie Coates * Cristiana Coimbra * LaTrisha Hollines * Ava Miller * Shankar Narayan * Heather O'Malley * Alice Roberts * Joseph Silverman * Elena Strelnikova * Megumi Yukie New Postings * Software Engineer – Fundraising * Director of Technical Operations * UX Designer * Legal Intern (Fall) * Part-Time HR Administrative Assistant === Statistics === Total Requisitions Filled April Actual: 138 April Total Plan: 174 April Filled: 8, Month Attrition: 4, YTD Filled: 51, YTD Attrition: 25 2 Positions canceled for FY (decreased from 6 canceled previous month) Remaining Open positions to fiscal year end 34 (reflects 2 canceled positions for FY) === Department Updates === Real-time feed for HR updates http://identi.ca/wikimediaatwork or http://twitter.com/wikimediaatwork == Finance and Administration == Support to the FDC in providing financial analysis of FDC applications in Round 2 with both written reports and during the FDC meeting in Milan. Prepared Version 2 of the WMF Annual Plan for FY 13-14. Received transfers from the payment processing chapters Wikimedia Germany and Wikimedia France. == Legal, Community Advocacy, and Communications Department == === LCA Report, April 2013 === ==== Contract Metrics ==== * Submitted : 22 * Completed : 16 ==== Trademark Metrics ==== * Submitted : 15 * Approved : 1 * Pending : 13 * Denied : 1 ==== Domains Acquired ==== * aboutwikipedia.com * aboutwikipedia.org * wikimedia.co.nz * wikimediaa.org * wikimediac.com * wikipedia-foundation.com * wikipediacontent.com * wikipediacontent.org * toollabs.org * wikimediamail.org * wikimediamail.com * wikispecies.org * wikimediastories.com * wikimediastories.net * wikimediastories.org * border-wikipedia.de * wikipedia.is * wikipedia.us ==== Coming & Going ==== * Community Advocacy welcomed aboard its first Community Advocate (international) in the person of Jan Eissfeldt, who will be focused on German- and Spanish-language projects. They hope to hire one more person soon. <Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:COI_Slides_(April_Metrics_Meeting).…> Presentation slides about the new guidelines on potential conflicts of interest ==== Other Activities ==== * With an immediate effective date, the Board approved Wikimedia guidelines on the disclosure of potential and actual conflicts of interest in requesting and allocating movement resources <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Guidelines_on_potential_conflicts_of_i…>. Thanks to the community for their input, which greatly improved the original version. * Proposed amendment to WMF bylaws under community consultation <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws/May_2013_-…>. Final vote by Board is scheduled for May 4, 2013. * Strong support, including hiring and briefing of top counsel in Paris, to monitor situation in France where officials threatened a volunteer with detention if he refused to delete an article. We are hoping for an amical resolution. See Legal and Community Advocacy/Statement on France <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_and_Community_Advocacy/Statement_on_F…>. * Strong overall legal support, including: Milan board and FDC meetings; drafting of primer for legal interns; drafting of a WMF contracts drafting handbook; and finalizing legal strategy and budget for FY 2013-14. === Communications Report, April 2013 === April was a high-activity month for Communications, particularly with the media focus on the French DCRI’s detainment of a Wikipedian and the substantial interest in the Wikipedia discussion about the American women novelists category. The team also dedicated efforts to finishing key steps in the WP Editor Survey report and refined plans to expand the functionality of the Wikimedia Blog. ==== Major announcements ==== "The Wikidata revolution is here: enabling structured data on Wikipedia <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/The_Wikidata_Revolution>’’ (25 April 2013) A year after its announcement as the first new Wikimedia project since 2006, Wikidata has now begun to serve the over 280 language versions of Wikipedia as a common source of structured data that can be used in more than 25 million articles of the free encyclopedia. ==== Major Storylines through March ==== ‘’American women novelists on Wikipedia makes headlines’’ (late April, 2013) An op-ed in the New York Times from late April highlighted category optimization efforts on the Wikipedia category page ‘American novelists’ - efforts that the writer (and later a wide range of mainstream media) insists amount to sexism and segregation. Media coverage has been mostly negative, with some neutral to positive stories highlighting the Wikipedia discussion about the changes and encouraging women to get involved. http://www.forbes.com/sites/deannazandt/2013/04/26/yes-wikipedia-is-sexist-… http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/opinion/sunday/wikipedias-sexism-toward-f… http://jezebel.com/wikipedia-is-quietly-moving-women-off-their-american-no-… ‘’DCRI threatens French Wikipedian over military site article’’ (6 April, 2013) The major press story for the Wikimedia movement through April focused on the DCRI’s (France’s secret service) efforts to remove a French Wikipedia article, fr:Station hertzienne militaire de Pierre-sur-Haute <https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_hertzienne_militaire_de_Pierre-sur-Ha…>, from the site by detaining a French Wikipedia admin. The admin, who had never been involved with the article, faced legal repercussions if he failed to comply with an order to delete the article. International media coverage was critical of DCRI’s efforts and largely supportive of Wikipedia’s non-censorship stance. http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/affaire-dcri-wikipedia-interview-exclusive-d… http://www.laquadrature.net/node/6533 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/07/french-secret-service-wikipedia… ‘’Russian gov’t threatens WP block over articles’’ In early April Russian Wikipedians discovered that the Russian government had placed Wikipedia, as well as dozens of other websites accessible in Russia, on a blacklist due to publication of content deemed illegal in the country (primarily drug and suicide related articles). Media coverage was largely positive, focusing on the censorship threat to Wikipedia and the other projects. (blog post from Wikimedia Russia) http://www.wikimedia.ru/blog/2013/04/08/15blacklisted/ http://globalvoicesonline.org/2013/04/10/russian-censors-partially-acquiesc… http://en.rian.ru/russia/20130409/180529815.html http://rbth.ru/news/2013/04/05/russian_media_regulator_confirms_wikipedia_b… ==== Other worthwhile reads ==== * *From Brazil to Wikipedia | Foreign Affairs | April 21 <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139332/yuri-takhteyev/from-brazil-to…>* * *Iranian official explains ban on Ahmadinejad's Wikipedia page | Azernews | April 10 <http://www.azernews.az/region/52016.html>* * *Being 'Wikipedian' trumps party affiliation, study finds | LA Times | April 3 <http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-wikipedia-democrat…>* ==== WMF Blog posts ==== Twenty five blog posts in April <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/>, with bilingual posts <https://blog.wikimedia.org/tag/multilingual-post/> in Arabic, Catalan, French, German, Russian, Serbian, Spanish and Swedish. Some highlights from the month: * *Breaking through walls of text: How we will create a richer Wikimedia experience <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/08/breaking-through-walls-of-text-richer…>* * *Wikimedia projects reach more than 500 million people per month <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/19/wikimedia-projects-500-million/>* * *Wikipedia Adopts MariaDB <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/22/wikipedia-adopts-mariadb/>* * *Try the new login and account creation on Wikimedia projects <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/25/try-new-login-accountcreation/>* ==== Media Contact ==== https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#April_2013 ==== Wikipedia Signpost ==== For lots of detailed coverage and news summaries, see the community-edited newsletter “Wikipedia Signpost” for April 2013: * Volume 9, Issue 13 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2013-04…>, 1 April 2013 * Volume 9, Issue 14 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2013-04…>, 8 April 2013 * Volume 9, Issue 15 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2013-04…>, 15 April 2013 * Volume 9, Issue 16 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2013-04…>, 22 April 2013 == Visitors and Guests == Visitors and guests to the WMF office in April 2013: 1. Eli Goldberg (Microsoft) 2. Nina O'Neil (Microsoft) 3. Robert Rodriguez-Lawson (Microsoft) 4. Danese Cooper (OSHWA) 5. Alicia Gibb (OSHWA) 6. Nathan Seidle (OSHWA) 7. Windell Oskay (OSHWA) 8. Ted Pefferman (HP) 9. Rob Poole (HP) 10. Blaine Cook (author of OAuth) 11. Brian Wolff (volunteer) 12. Randall Benson (consultant) 13. Kim Dodson (consultant) 14. Jake Orlowitz (Wikipedian, tech talk speaker) 15. Nebojsa Ciric (Google) 16. Jungshik Shin (Google) 17. Norbert Lindenberg (Mozilla) 18. Stevie Benton (Wikimedia UK) 19. Kanika Thapar (Oxford) 20. Mohit Menta (Oxford) 21. Deb Wolter (Red Bamboo Consulting) 22. Kathey Ramsey (TAI) 23. Kellee Browe (TAI) 24. Shane Snow (Contently) 25. John Hazard (Contently) 26. Katherine Bavage (WMUK) 27. Sarah Pearson (Creative Commons) 28. Peter Krautzberger (MathJax) 29. Albert Szulman (Be-Bound) -- Tilman Bayer Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications) Wikimedia Foundation IRC (Freenode): HaeB

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Education Program Re: Quarterly reviews of high priority WMF initiatives
by Everton Zanella Alvarenga 24 May '13

24 May '13

Hi Frank, I just saw now this report. Can you explain this line bellow, please? I didn't get it. "Strategic direction in Brazil didn't work; Tom reporting to Jessie, disconnected from our work. Unclear lines of authority for decision-making; classes ended up as not particularly successful. Also, narrowing focus shifted Tom and Oona's efforts to finding a home for the Brazil program rather than expanding classes." I also would love to know who wrote this "We anticipated focusing the majority of our efforts on Global South programs" and I would love to know if Brazil is included in this focusing of efforts. If this includes Brazil, that is false. Thanks in advance, Tom On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 12:22 AM, Tilman Bayer <tbayer(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: > Minutes, pre-prepared notes and slides from the mid-year review > meeting of the Wikipedia Education Program team have now been posted > in a similar format at > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_r… > > -- Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom) "A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."

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an open letter to Sue Gardner
by James Salsman 24 May '13

24 May '13

Dear Sue: Please assign someone to create community advocacy RFCs, preferably at least twice monthly. Then you would be happy and would not have to leave. You are a better Executive Director than anyone I can imagine the people on the "connectors list" might know, or you would be if you paid your people more and took my advice about statistics more often, i.e., on using multivariate analysis instead of A/B testing. In any case, I hope you are well. Please visit the interstellar sleeper ship prototypes in the Lagrange Point region in Second Life when you get the time. Best regards, James Salsman

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United Nations Summer School: Call for Applications (deadline 31 May)
by Everton Zanella Alvarenga 24 May '13

24 May '13

The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) is collaborating with EF Education First (EF) in the context of the firstUNAOC-EF Summer School <http://www.unaocefsummerschool.org/>, which will take place in Tarrytown, NY, USA, from 24 to 31 of August 2013. This UNAOC-EF Summer School will bring together 100 youth from all over the world for a week of discussions on pressing global challenges within the context of cultural and religious diversity. Several skills-building workshops will be offered with a view to strengthen participants’ ability on topics such as peace-building, human rights, advocacy, social entrepreneurship, etc. This year marks the fourth UNAOC Summer School. Youth (between 18 and 35) who are interested in attending this year’s summer school can apply at www.UNAOCEFSummerSchool.org <http://www.unaocefsummerschool.org/> on or before 31 May 2013. Selected participants will be provided with flight, accommodation, meals and full event access. For more information about the UNAOC-EF Summer School, please contact info(a)unaocefsummerschool.org <http://www.unaocefsummerschool.org/>. We encourage you to share this message with your networks of young people who might be interested by the UNAOC-EF Summer School. *Note: The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) and EF Education First (EF) expect to officially launch UNAOC-EF Summer School in Spring 2013. However, UNAOC and EF reserve the right to not select any applicants, or to cancel the Summer School for any reason. UNAOC and EF accept no liability for cancelling the Summer School or for anyone’s failure to receive actual notification of cancellation.* More: http://www.unaoc.org/2013/05/unaoc-education-first-summer-school-call-for-a… -- Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom) OKFN Brasil - Rede pelo Conhecimento Livre http://br.okfn.org

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Translation into new languages and meeting at the NIH
by James Heilman 24 May '13

24 May '13

A group called iDISC out of Spain has approached me regarding translating medical content from Spanish to K’iche and Q’eqchi languages. We have a Wikipedia in Q'eqchi here http://qu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qhapaq_p%27anqa but not one in K'iche. The second issue is that we are needing simple Spanish medical content to translate from as these languages have a limited medical vocabulary. I am wondering if people know of such as source? Am going to be speaking with the NIH next week to see what they have. If people are in the Maryland area and wish to attend this Wikipedia and Medicine event at the NIH please sign up here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/May_2013 Would be great to have more Wikipedians to help with the hands on editing sessions. -- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine www.opentextbookofmedicine.com

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State of the Map US, San Francisco June 7-10
by Tom Morris 24 May '13

24 May '13

Of possible interest to WMF staff and others in San Francisco, State of the Map US is happening in a few weeks. http://stateofthemap.us/ Schedule: http://stateofthemap.us/schedule.html They are discussing a wide variety of things which have crossover to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects including use of OSM in secondary and higher education, technical matters including building the new editor, vector maps, imports and operations, data analysis, community and social issues. Looks like fun. The main State of the Map conference this year is in Birmingham, England in September. http://2013.stateofthemap.org/ In terms of governance stuff, the OSM Foundation is going through a similar process of long-term strategy as Wikimedia did many years ago: trying to decide whether to stay small or expand, how to work with community members, businesses who use OSM data, developers and so on. In these discussions, frequent reference is made to Wikimedia as a big sister. ;-) -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/>

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Train Wikiexpedition in Poland
by Tomasz Ganicz 24 May '13

24 May '13

Hi, We are about to organize a wikiexpedition devoted to train infrastructure in Poland. It will be officially co-organised with Polish Railways. Polish Railways will provide us free tickets for traveling across Poland using any trains and special passes to legally enter and photograph rail tracks, workshops, rail yards, cargo railway stations, museums belonging to Polish Railways etc. In order to get the pass it will be obligatory to undergo a special basic one-day railtrack safety training which will be provided for free by Polish Railways employees. Actually we don't know what time it will happen - for sure during summer, but it is actually to negotiate. It is possible to have several 2-4 people teams. The requirements will be just: *being devoted wiki-photographer ready to submit photos to Wikimedia Commons under free licences *being highly crazy about railways stuff - i.e. be ready to travel across Poland using mainly slow, local trains which stops on every tiny station, sleep in low cost hostels, feed yourself for 32 PLN a day :-) *You don't need to speak Polish - we can try to organize a mixed teams fro both training and expeditions. If there is anyone ready for such a wiki-safari - just drop me an E-mail... -- Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/ http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29&title=tomasz-ganicz

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making tech journalism easier to read
by Sumana Harihareswara 23 May '13

23 May '13

When you're trying to write a blog.wikimedia.org entry or wikitech-ambassadors email about a technical topic, but you want to make sure nontechnical Wikimedians can read it, is there an automated check you can run through? For general readability we have http://www.readability-score.com/ to check, for example, the Flesch-Kincaid reading ease. My blog entry https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/02/05/how-the-technical-operations-team-sto… has a grade level of 11.5, meaning that it would be difficult for someone to read it unless they had about as much English fluency as an average US student in their last year of pre-college schooling. In the future I will probably aim more for a grade level of 10 or so; we have a lot of non-native English speakers in our community. I think it's too difficult to rewrite everything in Up-Goer 5 http://splasho.com/upgoer5/ or Simple English Wikipedia style, even for regular-person-friendly blog entries about WMF Engineering,[0] but I am willing to be told if I am wrong. Aside from general readability, I also want to be careful about using jargon, and substitute more accessible terminology where possible. I may whip up a script to check whether some text has words from https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Glossary and the other site glossaries in it, unless someone has a better idea. -- Sumana Harihareswara Engineering Community Manager Wikimedia Foundation [0] I just tried rewriting a couple sentences from my blog post in Up-Goer 5 style. "Now, we are looking forward to making more places to give people their words and pictures, more quickly. The team is planning to make another place like that."

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[Wikimedia Announcements] The Signpost – Volume 9, Issue 20 – 20 May 2013
by Wikipedia Signpost 23 May '13

23 May '13

Foundation elections: Trustee candidates speak about Board structure, China, gender, global south, endowment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-05-20/Founda…<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-05-20/Found…> News and notes: Spanish Wikipedia leaps past one million articles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-05-20/News_a…<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-05-20/News_…> In the media: Qworty incident continues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-05-20/In_the…<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-05-20/In_th…> WikiProject report: Classical Greece and Rome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-05-20/WikiPr…<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-05-20/WikiP…> Featured content: Up in the air http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-05-20/Featur…<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-05-20/Featu…> Single page view http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signpost/Single<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signpost/Single> PDF version http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-05-20<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-05-20> http://identi.ca/wikisignpost / https://twitter.com/wikisignpost -- Wikipedia Signpost Staff http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost _______________________________________________ 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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l

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[Wikimedia Announcements] [PRESS RELEASE] Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director search
by Matthew Roth 22 May '13

22 May '13

This press release is also available online here: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/The_search_for_our_next_… The Wikimedia Foundation announces search for new Executive Director to lead the Wikimedia movement SAN FRANCISCO, California -- 22 May 2013 -- The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia and its sister projects, has kicked off its global search for a new Executive Director to lead the organization through its next phase of innovation and growth. The new Executive Director will lead a thriving international organization that operates the number five most-popular web property in the world. The Wikimedia Foundation operates free knowledge projects used by more than half a billion people. Wikipedia contains more than 25 million volunteer-authored articles in 285 languages. The Wikimedia Foundation is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual, educational content, and to providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. "About six weeks ago, the Wikimedia Foundation's Executive Director Sue Gardner told us she will be stepping down from her role," said Kat Walsh, Chair of the Board of Trustees. "We're really going to miss her, but I'm happy to say she'll be staying on until we find her successor, and we're now ready to kick off an international search to find that person." The Executive Director provides the leadership and strategy for the Wikimedia Foundation and manages its day-to-day operations and activities. He or she is responsible for modernizing the user experience and nurturing, growing and diversifying the community of people who write our projects. He or she also ensures that our grantmaking supports innovation across the Wikimedia movement and enables contributor growth in underrepresented demographics and geographies. To support the process, the Wikimedia Foundation has retained the search firm m/Oppenheim Associates to assist in finding and screening candidates. The search process is expected to unfold over the next three to six months, with a new Executive Director targeted to be in place October 2013. The Executive Director opportunity can be found at: http://jobs.wikimedia.org For more information about the opportunity please email info(at) moppenheim.com. About the Wikimedia Foundation http://wikimediafoundation.org http://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 517 million unique visitors per month, making them the fifth-most popular web property worldwide (comScore, March 2013). Available in 285 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 25 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. Wikimedia Foundation media contact: Matthew Roth Communications +1 415-839-6885 ext. 6635 (San Francisco) mroth(at)wikimedia.org Reply with "unsubscribe" in the subject line to be removed from the Wikimedia Foundation press release list. _______________________________________________ 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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l

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Wikimedia-l May 2013