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 all,
for those of you who do not watch the RecentChanges on the Foundation
wiki <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges>, I
think it might be somehow surprising to see that in a top-level
decision, almost all volunteer administrators of the wiki have been
stripped off their adminship yesterday evening (UTC time).
As far as I know, community members have been helping out maintaining
this wiki for as long as 2006, spending countless hours of their free
time on categorising existing pages, importing translations from Meta,
and recently, deleting unnecessary and broken pages left over by WMF staff.
Apparently, this is something that not only isn't appreciated, but
unwelcome. Let me repeat that: the WMF does not wish volunteers to help
out with running their wiki, even if they have been helping out almost
since the very start of the wiki.
Some questions come to my mind right now:
1) Who made the decision to remove adminship from all community members?
(I'm assuming it was Gayle, but it could've be someone from the
Communications department for all we know.)
2) Why did you make this decision now? What changed?
3) Why did you decide to desysop people straight away instead of
discussing things with them first?
These are questions directed at the WMF—for you regular folks, I have a
riddle (I'll give a WikiLove barnstar to the first person to submit a
correct answer). There is /at least/ one community member who does not
hold any official position within the WMF, and who has not been
desysopped in yesterday's purge—do you know who this person is?
-- Tomasz
Hi everyone,
WMF researchers have agreed to participate in an office hour about WMF research projects and methodologies.
The currently scheduled participants are:
* Aaron Halfaker, Research Analyst (contractor)
* Jonathan Morgan, Research Strategist (contractor)
* Evan Rosen, Data Analytics Manager, Global Development
* Haitham Shammaa, Contribution Research Manager
* Dario Taraborelli, Senior Research Analyst, Strategy
We'll meet on IRC in #wikimedia-office on April 22 at 1800 UTC. Please join us.
Pine
Hi Everyone,
As mentioned after Sue's announcement of her intention to depart the Foundation we will try to ensure transparency in the work of the Transition Team where possible (and respect privacy where necessary). To that end I would like to draw you attention to a set of recent changes made to the Transition Team pages on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Executive_Director_Transition_Team
These changes include a preliminary timeline, FAQ and an invitation to add people to the "connectors list". Please feel free to add more questions and other discussion points. We expect to add more information (such as the choice we made with regards to the Search firm that will assist us) in the coming week.
Regards
Jan-Bart de Vreede
Chair Executive Director Transition Team
Hi,
I noticed that when I'm searching on Google, many Wikipedia results are in the form of lang-code.zero.wikipedia.org, perhaps just since a day or two ago.
I'm not sure what items are indexed this way, but it would really be a trouble - there is no link on the page that jumps you to the standard site (even the notice links to main page of m.wikipedia.org, not the corresponding article on m.wikipedia.org)
Regards,
Benjamin Chen / [[User:Bencmq]]
All,
The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts
work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools
for our users (like cross-wiki notifications). These changes will mean
users have the same account name everywhere, will let us give you new
features that will help you edit & discuss better, and will allow more
flexible user permissions for tools. One of the pre-conditions for
this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900
Wikimedia wikis.[0]
Unfortunately, some accounts are currently not unique across all our
wikis, but instead clash with other users who have the same account
name. To make sure that all of these users can use Wikimedia's wikis
in future, we will be renaming a number of accounts to have "~” and
the name of their wiki added to the end of their accounts' name. This
change will take place on or around 27 May. For example, a user called
“Example” on the Swedish Wiktionary who will be renamed would become
“Example~svwiktionary”.
All accounts will still work as before, and will continue to be
credited for all their edits made so far. However, users with renamed
accounts (whom we will be contacting individually) will have to use
the new account name when they log in.
It will now only be possible for accounts to be renamed globally; the
RenameUser tool will no longer work on a local basis - since all
accounts must be globally unique - therefore it will be withdrawn from
bureaucrats' tool sets. It will still be possible for users to ask on
Meta for their account to be renamed further, if they do not like
their new user name, once this takes place.
A copy of this note is posted to meta [1] for translation. Please
forward this to your local communities, and help get it translated.
Individuals who are affected will be notified via talk page and e-mail
notices nearer the time.
[0] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Unified_login
[1] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Single_User_Login_finalisation_announcement
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Product Manager, VisualEditor
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
jforrester(a)wikimedia.org | @jdforrester
Hi everyone,
On July 11th at the next WMF Metrics & Activities meeting, myself, Erik
Möller, Howie Fung, Maryana Pinchuk, and Dario Taraborelli are going to
deliver a short update on the state of Wikimedia editor communities. (For
those not familiar:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings)
This is the beginning of the new fiscal year for the WMF, and we'd like to
use this time to recap what we know about the decline or growth of
Wikimedia communities. We're focusing on the following set of questions...
* Are Wikimedia projects as a whole in decline?
* Is English Wikipedia in decline?
* Which WMF projects have been successful in driving growth?
* Which non-WMF trends have driven growth (e.g. community projects)?
* How does data/measurement enable us to drive growth?
* Which future changes are expected to drive growth?
I'm reaching out to this list on behalf of the team, so that we can get a
list of the non-WMF projects that have had a measurable impact on the size
or diversity of Wikimedia projects.
One obvious example that comes to mind is Wiki Loves Monuments. Others are
the Wikipedia Challenge in Kiswahili and Setswana, and edit-a-thons, such
as this year's fashion edit-a-thon put together by Wikimedia Sverige.
What am I missing from this list?
--
Steven Walling
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Hi Tomasz,
Thank you very much for everything you and the volunteers are doing. You
people do rock.
WMF is getting professional translations in German, French, Spanish, and
Japanese, and will post by Tuesday. We are doing this because of the fast
timing situation and our desire to hear international voices. We are
asking for translations by volunteers in the other languages. If the
community says that we need to push out the dates, we will listen of
course. My competing consideration is that we don't miss opportunities if
the right course is to proceed forward as recommended in the blog post.
Apologies for any confusion here. Any fault is mine.
Again ... many thanks.
Geoff
*Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 03:19:55 +0200
From: "Tomasz W. Kozlowski" <tomasz(a)twkozlowski.net>
To: wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] PRISM, government
surveillance, and Wikimedia: Request for community feedback
Message-ID: <51BBC13B.10809(a)twkozlowski.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Geoff,
I'm a bit lost here now that I've read that translation notice more
carefully — are you really saying you want to have this post translated
into German, French, Spanish and Japanese by Tuesday, June 18, and then
for the local communities to comment on it by Friday, June 21?
There is just no way that this can scale in this world.
FYI, I posted a message asking for translations at
<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/translators-l/2013-June/002311.html>,
and I'm sure that our amazing volunteer translators can get it
translated into those four languages (and more) by noon on Sunday (PST).*
(And again—doing this kind of things on a Friday is a Very Bad Idea[TM].)
-- Tomasz
Dear all,
The next WMF metrics and activities will take place on Thursday, July
11, 2013 at 6:00 PM UTC (11 AM PDT). Please note that on this occasion
we are holding this meeting on the second Thursday of July, but we
will resume holding the meetings on the first Thursday of each month
thereafter.
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:
* Welcoming recent hires
* Review of key metrics including the monthly report card, but also
specialized reports and analytics
* Review of financials
* 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
FYI
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 5:38 PM
Subject: [Tech/Product] Engineering/Product org structure
To: Staff All <wmfall(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hi folks,
consistent with Sue's narrowing focus mandate, I’ve been thinking &
talking the last few weeks a fair bit with a bunch of different people
about the future organizational structure of the engineering/product
department. Long story short, if we want to scale the dept, and take
seriously our identity as a tech org (as stated by Sue), it’s my view
that we need to split the current department into an engineering dept
and a product dept in about 6-8 months.
To avoid fear and anxiety, and to make sure the plan makes sense, I
want to start an open conversation now. If you think any of the below
is a terrible idea, or have suggestions on how to improve the plan,
I’d love to hear from you. I’ll make myself personally available to
anyone who wants to talk more about it. (I'm traveling a bit starting
tomorrow, but will be available via email during that time.) We can
also discuss it at coming tech lunches and such.
There’s also nothing private here, so I’m forwarding this note to
wikitech-l@ and wikimedia-l@ as well. That said, there’s no urgency in
this note, so feel free to set it aside for later.
Here’s why I’m recommending to Sue that we create distinct engineering
and product departments:
- It’ll give product development and the user experience more
visibility at the senior mgmt level, which means we’ll have more
conversations at that level about the work that most of the
organization actually does. Right now, a single dept of ~70 people is
represented by 1 person across both engineering and product functions
- me. That was fine when it was half the size. Right now it’s out of
whack.
- It’ll give us the ability to add Director-level leadership functions
as appropriate without making my head explode.
- I believe that separating the two functions is consistent with Sue’s
recommendation to narrow our focus and develop our identity as an
engineering organization. It will allow for more sustained effort in
managing product priorities and greater advocacy for core platform
issues (APIs, site performance, search, ops improvements, etc.) that
are less visible than our feature priorities.
A split dept structure wouldn’t affect the way we assemble teams --
we’d still pull from required functions (devs, product, UI/UX, etc.),
and teams would continue to pursue their objectives fairly
autonomously.
It’s not all roses -- we might see more conflict between the two
functions, more us vs. them thinking, and more communications
breakdowns or forum shopping. But net I think the positives would
outweigh the negatives, and there are ways to mitigate against the
negatives.
The way we’d get there:
I’m prepared to resign from my engineering management responsibilities
and to focus solely on my remaining role as VP of Product, as soon as
a successor for VP of Engineering has been identified. We would start
that hiring process probably in early 2013. I’m recommending to Sue
that we seriously consider internal candidates for the VP of
Engineering role, as we have a strong engineering management team in
place today.
So realistically we'd probably identify that person towards the end of
the fiscal year.
Obviously I can’t make any promises to you that in that brave new
world, you’ll love whoever gets hired into the VP of Engineering role,
so there’s some unavoidable uncertainty there. I’ll support Sue in the
search, though, and I’m sure she’d appreciate feedback from you on the
kind of person who you think would be ideal for the job.
The VP of Product role would encompass a combination of functions.
Howie and I would work with the department to figure out what makes
sense as an internal structure. My opening view is that Analytics and
User Experience are potential areas that may benefit from dedicated
Director-level support roles. (Analytics is tricky because it includes
a strong engineering piece, but also a research/analyst piece working
closely with product.) The new structure would therefore be as
follows:
* VP of Engineering -> Directors of Engineering
* VP of Product -> Director of Product Development, plus new
Director-level functions (we've discussed UX/Design as a likely new
leadership function, and Analytics as a _potential_ area to centralize
here because it works so closely with product)
Why Product? I’m happy to help the org in whatever way I can; I
believe I’d be most useful to it in focusing there and helping build
this relatively new organizational function. Based on my past
experience, Howie & I make a great team. I know how engineering
operates, which could help mitigate against some of the aforementioned
issues. Plus, our product priorities generally already reflect lots of
thought and consideration, and we have no intent of reopening
questions like "Is Visual Editor the top product priority".
I look forward to hearing your thoughts & discussing this further in
coming weeks.
All best,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate