resending, was bounced.
2013/7/16 Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org>
> Maybe this has been asked elsewhere already, apologies in that case, but
> could someone clarify why the Wikimedia Foundation is not eligible any more
> (and did not seem to send a letter of intent) for the FDC process? Does
> this mean WMF will only do core programs and shut down all other? Or is
> there another explanation I did not think of yet (this is of course,
> assuming the WMF is still intending to eat it's own dog food)?
>
> Best,
>
> Lodewijk
>
>
> 2013/7/16 Garfield Byrd <gbyrd(a)wikimedia.org>
>
>> Dear members of the Wikimedia community:
>>
>> Today, July 15, the Wikimedia Foundation published a list of Funds
>> Dissemination Committee (FDC) eligible entities [1] based the eligibility
>> criteria [2] established in the FDC framework. Entities that submitted
>> Letters of Intent [3] are categorized in 'Yes', 'Yes, If', and 'No'
>> categories based the eligibility criteria. Please let us know if you
>> believe there are any corrections to be made to this list.
>>
>> A more detailed eligibility checklist document has also been created.
>>
>> [4]
>>
>> This document outlines eligibility gaps that need to be closed by September
>> 15, 2013. Any entity in the "Yes, If" category must post all missing
>> documents on Meta by September 15 to be eligible for FDC funding.
>> Entities in the “No” column who are currently ineligible for FDC funding or
>> those who decide not to proceed with an FDC application are welcome to
>> consider applying to the WMF Grants program. [5]
>>
>> On September 15, WMF will post the final list of the entities eligible
>> to apply for FDC funding if they are eligible. Please note that entities
>> will need to remain in compliance with all Chapter Agreements and Grant
>> Agreements until funds are sent in order to receive a grant through the FDC
>> process, even if eligibility is confirmed as "Yes" on 15 September.
>>
>> The detailed eligibility checklist has improved since the last round.
>> You’ll now note that the final column now outlines upcoming requirements
>> (e.g. per chapter or grant agreements or current grant requirements) to
>> maintain FDC eligibility status. These are noted as “potential gaps,” and
>> as those deadlines come up, entities will need to fill those gaps (for
>> example, by posting their documents and linking to them from the Reports
>> page on Meta) in order to maintain their eligibility status with the
>> FDC. We hope this change allows entities, the FDC, and the FDC staff to
>> track eligibility better and ensure that everyone is informed of potential
>> as well as current issues that may affect eligibility.
>>
>> All entities that apply for FDC funding will be required to maintain
>> eligibility throughout the duration of the proposal review process until
>> funds are sent (or until the decision on whether to send funds is made). We
>> encourage you to get in touch with us if you have any questions about your
>> entity's gaps or potential gaps.
>> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Index>
>>
>> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Index>
>>
>> As a reminder, all applications for FDC funding from eligible entities
>> must be submitted by October 1, 2013 via the FDC portal. [6] The FDC
>> proposal form will be posted by August 15, 2013 on the FDC portal.
>> Please contact us if you have any questions about submitting your proposal.
>>
>> WMF staff will reach out to all the of the entities that submitted
>> Letters of Intent individually to discuss their eligibility.
>>
>> In addition, the FDC support staff has scheduled two IRC office hours to
>> provide more explanation about the eligibility status. [7] We look forward
>> to meeting with you on Thursday, July 18 at 0:00 UTC or at 16:00 UTCthat same day. Please feel free to submit any questions in advance.
>>
>> Do let me know if you have any questions, clarifications or concerns
>> about the eligibility process, or if you need clarifications. We are here
>> to support you.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Garfield Byrd
>>
>> [1]
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Eligibility_status/2013-2014_rou…
>>
>> [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Eligibility_criteria
>>
>> [3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:FDC_2013-2014_Round_1
>>
>> [4]
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Eligibility_checklist/2013-2014_…
>>
>> [5] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Index
>>
>> [6] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal
>> [7] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours#Upcoming_office_hours
>>
>> --
>> Garfield Byrd
>> Chief of Finance and Administration
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>> 415.839.6885 ext 6787
>> 415.882.0495 (fax)
>> www.wikimediafoundation.org
>>
>> Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
>> the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
>>
>> *https://donate.wikimedia.org*
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Internal-l mailing list
>> Internal-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/internal-l
>>
>>
>
Luis Villa wrote:
>...
> we'll continue to look out for opportunities that make sense
> ourselves, and of course the community should always feel
> able and empowered to start things as well....
The Foundation uses Google Drive/Docs internally. And extensively so,
right? Why don't you publish a request that Google secure it such that
you are able to abide by your existing international privacy policy
obligations when using their systems, such as by developing a secure
end-to-end encrypting client for Drive, Docs, and Gmail, as they are
already rumored to be working on in
http://rt.com/usa/google-experimenting-nsa-encryption-report-230/
You could ask the same of Apple, Yahoo, Skype, Microsoft, etc. Is
there any reason this would not be prudent?
I hope your move went well.
Best regards,
James
Hi all,
please find below the WMF report for June 2013, in plain text.
As always, the editable and formatted version has been published on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_June_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,_June_2013
Many thanks to those who have translated the May "Highlights" into
German, Spanish, French, Italian, Norwegian Bokmål, Dutch, Russian
and Chinese (while translations are still ongoing into Asturian,
Hindi, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese and other languages)!
While still focusing on WMF activities, the "Highlights" include a
small selection of the most noteworthy events from the whole movement.
Suggestions for the upcoming July issue are welcome until July 31 at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Highlights
Regards, Tilman
--
Wikimedia Foundation Report, June 2013
<Video: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Monthly_Metrics_Meeting_July_11…>
Video of the monthly Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting
covering the month of June
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/2013-07-11>
(July 11, 2013)
Contents
* 1 Data and Trends
* 2 Financials
* 3 Highlights
o 3.1 First workshop on how to evaluate the success of organized
Wikimedia activites
o 3.2 Preparations for the launch of VisualEditor and Universal
Language Selector
o 3.3 Community input invited for privacy policy update
* 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
o 6.1 Strategic Goals Metrics
o 6.2 Funds Dissemination Committee
o 6.3 WMF Grants
+ 6.3.1 Grants awarded in June 2013
+ 6.3.2 Reports accepted in June 2013
+ 6.3.3 Participation Support
# 6.3.3.1 Requests awarded in June 2013
# 6.3.3.2 Reports accepted in June 2013
o 6.4 Individual Engagement Grants
o 6.5 Learning & Evaluation
o 6.6 Brazil Catalyst Project
+ 6.6.1 Data Analyses
+ 6.6.2 Communications
+ 6.6.3 Outreach
+ 6.6.4 Institutional Partnership
+ 6.6.5 Education
* 7 Program Development
o 7.1 Wikipedia Zero
o 7.2 Wikipedia Education Program
o 7.3 Program Evaluation and Design
* 8 Human Resources
o 8.1 Staff Changes
o 8.2 Statistics
o 8.3 Department Updates
* 9 Finance and Administration
* 10 Legal, Community Advocacy, and Communications Department
o 10.1 LCA Report, June 2013
+ 10.1.1 Contract Metrics
+ 10.1.2 Trademark Metrics
+ 10.1.3 Domains Obtained
+ 10.1.4 Coming & Going
+ 10.1.5 Other Activities
o 10.2 Communications Report, June 2013
+ 10.2.1 Major announcements
+ 10.2.2 Major Storylines through June
+ 10.2.3 Other worthwhile reads
+ 10.2.4 WMF Blog posts
+ 10.2.5 Media Contact
+ 10.2.6 Wikipedia Signpost
* 11 Visitors and Guests
== Data and Trends ==
Global unique visitors for May:
*522 million* (+0.97% compared with May; +5.97% compared with the
previous year)
(comScore data
<http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/unique_visitors> for all
Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release June data later
in July)
Page requests for June:
*21.1 billion* (+0.7% compared with May; +17.1% 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 May 2013 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month,
excluding bots):
*80,611* (-0.19% compared with May / -1.92% 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):
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_May_2013_-…>
Wikimedia Foundation YTD Revenue and Expenses vs Plan as of May 31, 2013
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Expenses_by_Functions_May_2013.…>
Wikimedia Foundation YTD Expenses by Functions as of May 31, 2013
(Financial information is only available through May 2013 at the time of
this report.)
All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and
Year-To-Date May 31, 2013.
Revenue $50,559,430
*Expenses:*
Engineering Group $13,523,471
Fundraiser Group $3,265,731
Grantmaking & Programs Group $8,284,686
Governance Group $692,321
Legal/Community Advocacy/Communications Group $2,777,192
Finance/HR/Admin Group $5,272,075
Total Expenses $33,815,476
Total surplus $16,743,954
* Revenue for the month of May is $0.12MM versus plan of $0.28MM,
approximately $159K or 57% under plan.
* Year-to-date revenue is $50.56MM versus plan of $45.79MM,
approximately $4.77MM or 10% over plan.
* Expenses for the month of May is $2.97MM versus plan of $4.01MM,
approximately $1.04MM or 26% under plan, primarily due to lower
personnel expenses, internet hosting, and grant expenses (FDC
grants) partially offset by higher capital expenses, outside
contract services, and travel expenses.
* Year-to-date expenses is $33.82MM versus plan of $38.08MM,
approximately $4.26MM or 11% under plan, primarily due to lower
personnel expenses, internet hosting, grant expenses (FDC grants),
and travel expenses partially offset by higher legal expenses, bank
fees, outside contract services, and personal property tax expenses.
* Cash position is $42.7MM as of May 31, 2013.
== Highlights ==
=== First workshop on how to evaluate the success of organized
Wikimedia activites ===
On June 22–23, the first workshop on the design and evaluation of
programs
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/11/finding-out-what-works-first-workshop…>
(organized activities) in the Wikimedia movement took place. The event
was held Budapest, Hungary by the Wikimedia Foundation, in partnership
with Wikimedia Magyarország, the local chapter. The workshop brought
together 21 program leaders from 15 countries to learn the basic
concepts of program evaluation
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/program_evaluation>. The success of the
workshop itself was evaluated, too: Surveys before and after the
workshop showed that a majority of the participants left with a better
understanding of these terms and concepts.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VisualEditor_-_Editing_references_1…>
One of the tasks made easier by VisualEditor: References can now be
edited and added in a format that is more convenient than the <ref> tags
in the middle of the page’s source wikitext.
=== Preparations for the launch of VisualEditor and Universal Language
Selector ===
In June, work was completed on major new features for VisualEditor (the
visual interface to edit wiki pages without markup), in preparation for
its launch for all logged-in editors on the English Wikipedia on July 1
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/01/visualeditor-beta-rollout/>. It
is becoming available to most other Wikipedians during the rest of July.
Also in June, the Universal Language Selector
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/01/universal-language-selector-uls-deplo…>
began to be deployed to all Wikimedia projects. It allows users to
configure language settings like interface language, fonts, and input
methods (keyboard mappings) in a flexible way. By July 1, it was
available on more than 150 wikis.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ULS-Display-Settings.png>
Universal Language Selector: A logged-in user is choosing the language
which they prefer for the interface menus on the English Wikipedia
=== Community input invited for privacy policy update ===
In preparation for an update of the Wikimedia Foundation's privacy
policy (the first since 2008), the Legal and Community Advocacy
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_and_Community_Advocacy> (LCA)
team has invited
participation in a community discussion period
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/18/input-on-wikimedia-foundation-privacy…>,
lasting until July 18. The goal was to get initial input about what
privacy concerns community members have, what they find important, and
what they would like to see in the next version of the privacy policy.
The community was also asked to provide input on practices regarding the
Wikimedia trademarks
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Trademark_practices_discussion>.
== Engineering ==
A detailed report of the Tech Department's activities for June 2013 can
be found at:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2013/June
Department Highlights
Major news in June include (see also general "Highlights" section
):
* The preparation for the activation of VisualEditor
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/06/preparing-for-visualeditor-on-all-wik…>
to most Wikipedia sites, and its debut on the English Wikipedia
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/01/visualeditor-beta-rollout/>
on July 1;
* News around Language engineering
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/03/language-engineering-development-upda…>,
including the activation
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/01/universal-language-selector-uls-deplo…>
of the Universal Language Selectors on many wikis;
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VisualEditor-Parsoid_-_2013-07_Metr…>
VisualEditor presentation slides (July 11)
=== VisualEditor
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/VisualEditor/Portal>
===
In June, the team completed major new features for VisualEditor (the
visual interface to edit wiki pages without markup) in preparation for
making it available to most Wikipedia users in July. The editor is now
capable of letting users edit the majority of content without needing to
use wikitext: it supports text, as well as adding and editing inclusions
of references, templates, categories and media items. We organized an
A/B test for new user accounts on the English Wikipedia, with half of
them getting VisualEditor ahead of the wider release. There were also a
number of user interface improvements, and many bugs uncovered by the
community were fixed. The team was expanded with four dedicated new
members, who will help community members use VisualEditor, and ensure
that feedback will be focused and lead to rapid improvements.
VisualEditor relies on Parsoid, the software that converts wikitext to
annotated HTML behind the scenes. This month, Parsoid was activated on a
new set of servers, and started to track all edits and template / image
updates from all Wikipedia sites. The goal was to test Parsoid's
performance in preparation for the activation of VisualEditor on almost
all Wikipedia sites. Optimization improvements made earlier (notably
using caching) proved effective, as servers seemed to handle the
increased load well. Good performance allowed the team to focus on
improving the conversion to wikitext, in order to avoid conversion
errors and wikitext corruption.
=== Editor engagement <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/New_editor_engagement> ===
In June, we released more features and bug fixes for Notifications
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo_(Notifications)> on the English Wikipedia
and mediawiki.org. We added a confirmation button for the "Thanks"
feature, and added a link to the difference between versions of the page
for talk page and interactive notifications. Development of HTML Email
notifications
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo/Feature_requirements#HTML_single_email_…>,
as well as of new metrics dashboards
<http://ee-dashboard.wmflabs.org/dashboards/enwiki-features>, continued.
We ran a week-long A/B test of new user activity
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Notifications/Experiment_1/Results>,
and results show
that new users who received Echo notifications made more edits than
those who did not, but their edits were reverted slightly more often.
Later this Summer, we plan to enable Notifications on more wikis,
starting with Meta and the French Wikipedia.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Metrics_Meeting_July_2013_04.jpg>
Erik Möller explaining first results about the impact of GettingStarted
This month, we also activated features and fixed bugs for the Article
Feedback Tool <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Version_5>
(AFT5) on the English, French and German Wikipedia. An opt-in feature
now allows to enable or disable feedback on a page. The metrics
dashboards
<http://ee-dashboard.wmflabs.org/dashboards/enwiki-features#article_feedback…>
show how the new moderation tools are being used: for example, about
half of moderated feedback is marked as 'no action needed', and about a
tenth as 'useful'. The team supported a wider activation of AFT5 on over
40,000 articles on the French Wikipedia; as for the German community,
they elected not to adopt the tool. Feature development has now ended
for this project, and we plan to make AFT5 available to other wiki
projects in the coming weeks.
The Editor Engagement Experiments (E3) team continued work on its
experiments related to onboarding new Wikipedians
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/onboarding_new_Wikipedians>, and launched
several new tools to Wikimedia projects. The team began running
campaigns <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Campaigns> to learn about
how many editors sign up on the top 10 Wikipedias, and how many sign up
via the invitation to "Join Wikipedia" on the login page (see the list
of active campaigns
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Account_creation_campaigns>
and
analysis). Another tool, the CoreEvents extension
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CoreEvents>, now logs MediaWiki core
activity, like preference updates and page saves across all projects.
For the GettingStarted
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GettingStarted> project, the team
conducted usability testing
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Onboarding_new_Wikipedians/user_testing#Test…>
of new designs. the E3 team also improved and refined the guided tours
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/guided_tours> extension, including adding
usability enhancements like new interface animations, support for
community tours, and bug fixing. Work has begun on an experiment to
deliver guided tours
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Guided_tours> to all
first-time
editors. After the VisualEditor launch on the English Wikipedia, we
started a micro-survey of newly-registered users
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Gender_micro-survey> to give
us a first systematic look
at the gender diversity of those creating accounts.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia-Metrics-Meeting-July-11-2…>
Maryana Pinchuk presenting about mobile uploads
=== Mobile <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Mobile_engineering> ===
This month, the Mobile team launched a new Wikipedia Zero
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero> partnership with Dialog in Sri
Lanka. On the technical side, we fixed user interface bugs and enhanced
the tool to configure partnerships. We also improved logging and
debugging for identification of anomalous access.
We also focused on improving education around mobile uploads
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile_design/Uploads>, including an
interactive Commons tutorial and first-time user copyright and scope
check. The "Nearby" feature
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/05/29/wikipedia-nearby-beta/> was
activated on the default mobile site, allowing users to find articles
near them that are in need of images, take photos and upload them via
mobile.
In beta, we started working on an improved navigation
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile_design/Wikipedia_navigation> for the
site and for articles. This includes design tweaks to the left
navigation menu, and a new in-article contributory navigation that
combines article actions (edit, upload, and watch) with a talk page
link. We also experimented with integration of user Notifications, which
now work on the English Wikipedia mobile site. We hope make this feature
available to all mobile users in July.
== Fundraising ==
=== Major Gifts and Foundations ===
We received a $300,000 grant from the Knight Foundation. This is the
first installment of a two-year grant we were awarded for winning the
Knight News Challenge for Wikipedia Zero.
=== Annual Fundraiser ===
* The team prepared to begin fundraising worldwide with the start of
the new fiscal year in July. An update on this testing
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2013#July_1.2C_2013_Update>
was posted on Meta.
* Spent three days working with the fundraising staff from the German
chapter to prepare for the 2013 fundraiser.
== Grantmaking ==
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grantmaking_team_photo_June_2013.JPG>
Fun photo of the WMF Grantmaking Team. Taken in the Hub, San Francisco,
during a team retreat to work on planning for FY2013-14 (see below).
=== Strategic Goals Metrics ===
Metric Value MoM MoM% Chart
Global South Active Editors (5+ edits in main namespace) 15.6k +563
+3.7% Increase [1]
<http://gp.wmflabs.org/graphs/global_north_south_active_editors>
=== Funds Dissemination Committee ===
* Two new members were elected to the FDC, and the ombudsperson was
re-elected! The FDC welcomes Delphine Ménard and Cristian Consonni,
and also welcomes back the ombudsperson, Susana Morais.
* FDC staff summary
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Proposals/2012-2013_round1/Staff…>
of the first round of progress reports for 2012-2013 Round 1
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Proposals/2012-2013_round1>
was published after
the reports <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Reports>
were submitted by 30 April.
The next round of progress reports for 2012-2013 Round 1
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Reporting_requirements>
will be due by 30 July.
* were submitted by 8 June.
* WMF staff is preparing to announce eligibility for FDC 2013-2014
Round 1 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Eligibility>
on 15 July for the. Final
eligibility will be confirmed by 15 September, and proposals are due
on 1 October.
* The ombudsperson's annual report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Ombudsperson_annual_report_-_201…>
was published.
* The FDC portal is being re-worked to improve user experience.
Feedback is being collected
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Feedback>.
* A 2012-2013 Round 2 Process Survey was conducted, and analysis is
underway. A report is forthcoming.
=== WMF Grants ===
* 3 new project grants were approved in June.
* 7 grant reports were accepted in June.
==== Grants awarded in June 2013 ====
* Grant to continue encouraging GLAM institutions in Denmark to have
Wikipedians-in-Residence:
Grants:WM_DK/Wikipedian-in-Residence_Scholarship,_II
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_DK/Wikipedian-in-Residence_Schola…>
* Grant to purchase 500 WikiReaders and distribute them to selected
schools that have limited or no internet access:
Grants:Aislinn_Dewey/Distribute_WikiReaders_to_Schools
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Aislinn_Dewey/Distribute_WikiReaders…>
* A project aiming to increase Wikipedia coverage of iconic buildings
around Johannesburg with historic and heritage importance:
Grants:WM_ZA/joburgpedia-2013
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_ZA/joburgpedia-2013>
==== Reports accepted in June 2013 ====
* Grants:WM_RS/Wikimedia_CEE_Conference_2012
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_RS/Wikimedia_CEE_Conference_2012>
* Grants:WM_ES/Conferences_and_meeting_for_tenth_anniversary_of_the_Galipedia
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_ES/Conferences_and_meeting_for_te…>
* Grants:WM_RS/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_in_Serbia_2012
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_RS/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_in_Serbia…>
* Grants:User:HstryQT_-_GLAMWiki_US_Consortium/Advisory_Group_Meeting
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:User:HstryQT_-_GLAMWiki_US_Consortiu…>
* Grants:WM_PH/Open_Web_Day
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_PH/Open_Web_Day>
* Grants:WM_FI/Tervetuloa_Wikipediaan!
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_FI/Tervetuloa_Wikipediaan!>
* Grants:WM_CL/Start-up
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_CL/Start-up>
==== Participation Support ====
* 3 new requests were approved in June.
* No grant reports were accepted in June.
===== Requests awarded in June 2013 =====
* Participation:Futureimperfect/_Free_Minds_free_People_and_IDEC_2013
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Participation:Futureimperfect/_Free_Minds_f…>
* Participation:Thelmadatter/2013_Congreso_de_La_Asociación_Centroamericana_de_Lingüística_(ACALING)
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Participation:Thelmadatter/2013_Congreso_de…>
* Participation:Iopensa/WikiSym_2013
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Participation:Iopensa/WikiSym_2013>
===== Reports accepted in June 2013 =====
No reports were accepted in June 2013.
=== Individual Engagement Grants ===
* A work sprint
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Build/May_2013_sprint_plan>
on
the Grants:IdeaLab
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab> continued, in
preparation
for a July (re)launch of the space aimed at cultivating ideas for
proposals in advance of August’s IEG open call. The updates will
make it easier to browse and connect with ideas, and will highlight
recent activity.
* IEG midpoint and final report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG#ieg-reporting2>
templates have been completed and made available to grantees. The
first 5 IEGrantee midpoint reports are due July 15th.
* Siko Bouterse and IEGrantee Ocaasi, along with volunteer Wikimedians
the wub and Valeriej, attended Open Help Conference
<http://openhelpconference.com/2013/sessions/> to present, discuss
and worksprint on Wikimedia projects like Teahouse, IdeaLab, the
Wikipedia Adventure, and the Help Project. Outcomes and learnings
are shared in a blog post
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/03/wikipedians-open-help-conference/>.
* A small July meeting was organized to brainstorm and strategize on
the gender gap for the coming year. Outcomes will be reported in July.
* The Wikipedia Library
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/The_Wikipedia_Library>,
our
8th and final round 1 IEGrant project to begin work, launched this
month. IEGrantee Ocaasi visited San Francisco to participate in a
tech roundtable and while in the Bay Area he met with staffers and
local organizations to kickoff the project. A full account of June
activity is reported on the project page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/The_Wikipedia_Library/Timeline>.
* All IEGrantee projects continue! Some grantees are contributing to
the WMF blog
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/tag/individual-engagement-grants/>, and
all grantees' progress is chronicled each month 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>
o Grants:IEG/MediaWiki_and_Javanese_script/Timeline
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/MediaWiki_and_Javanese_script/Ti…>
* Haitham Shammaa transitioned from Contribution Research Manager into
a new role in the Grantmaking Department’s Learning & Evaluation
team. As Learning Strategist, Global South, Haitham will support
Grantmaking and Global South strategy with research,
experimentation, and tools to enhance learning and data-driven
decision making.
* Learnings from an experiment aimed at recruiting editors from the
Philippines on English Wikipedia have been shared in a blog post
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/02/english-wikipedia-editor-pilot-philipp…>.
=== Learning & Evaluation ===
* Learned a lot from the Grantmaking for Effective Organizations
(GEO)'s learning conference in Miami. Met with various grantmakers
to talk about how to promote learning internally as well as amongst
grantmakers. Joined group of grantmakers that are working on funding
networks and evaluating results – a tricky thing to do! Conference
notes and speakers can be found here
<http://geofunders.org/conferences/learning-conference-2013>.
* Hosted our first grantmaking team retreat (see photo above)! We
hosted various outside panelists, including Kate Kroeger, Pete York,
and Judd Antin. We spent time developing our action calendar and
learning goals for the next fiscal year.
* Supported program evaluation team in the development of the Budapest
workshop
* Began planning for Wikimania Learning Day – a day to host a few of
the different grantees to work on our collective strategies for
learning and evalution of programs and organizations.
* Transitioned Grantmaking Data Manager Evan Rosen over to the WMF
Analytics team. Fortunately, Evan still is specifically supporting
the needs of the Grantmaking & Programs teams! Evan is still working
on the UMAPI tool; update for the tool should be included in the
Analytics' monthly overview report.
* Collected feedback (via survey) on the FDC Round 2 process.
* Working on survey development for the Grants Program
* Working on the tiger team behind the IdeaLab to create a great
collaboration space for new ideas. Mostly did bot work to spotlight
different contributors and ideas to encourage participation and
collaboration. Work included:
o CONTRIBUTORS: regular profiles are found here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Introductions>,
and are created by the
users themselves. GrantsBot sorts this list so that the profiles
of people who have been most active in recent weeks are listed
at the top.
o CONTRIBUTORS: featured profiles are placed on one of six
rotating 'gallery' pages (like this one
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Introductions/Featured/6>)
and will be
displayed on the IdeaLab front page, a mockup of which is here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Heatherawalls/sandbox>.
Currently, the most active
participants are 'featured' every week, but we can also set
other criteria for who we choose to feature (such as people who
just joined).
o IDEAS: regular idea profiles have to be created from scratch.
GrantsBot does this by grabbing metadata about each Idea
proposal
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Accessibility_-_reading,_reusing…>
(such as the creator name and the summary text listed in the
infobox) and dumps those into a profile template. The different
categories of idea proposal (currently 'new', 'participants
wanted', and 'IEG draft') are then displayed on this page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Ideas>. This
allows IdeaLab visitors to
browse the current ideas without having to visit each individual
proposal page.
o IDEAS: featured idea profiles are just a simplified version of
regular idea proposals. They go in a gallery page just like
person profiles and will be displayed on the front page of the
IdeaLab.
=== Brazil Catalyst Project ===
==== Data Analyses ====
* Second phase of data collection on CAPTCHA
<https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio(a):HAndrade_(WMF)/Pesquisa_Vanda…>
took place.
* Under development:
o Configuration of Portuguese Wikipedia Data for automatic update
on Limn
o localization of Snuggle for the PT-WP
o Timeline: advancements on timeline prototype connecting events
to data on the PT-WP
<https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio(a):JXavier_(WMF)/Linha_do_tempo>
==== Communications ====
Correio da Wikipedia: a site notice about the community newsletter -
Correio da Wikipedia, recently reactivated - was published and daily
accesses
<http://stats.grok.se/pt/latest90/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Correio_da_Wikip%C3%A9dia>
increased from 50 per day to up to almost 4300 a day.
==== Outreach ====
Participation in the International Free Software Forum (FISL) - Oona,
Henrique and Rodrigo Padula were at FISL to promote Wikimedia projects
and discuss potential partnerships (with both private and public
institutions). Henrique's presentation was featured on a tech website
("Fisl14: analista da Wikipédia ensina internautas a contribuir para
site
<http://www.techtudo.com.br/noticias/noticia/2013/07/fisl-14-analista-da-wik…>")
==== Institutional Partnership ====
Draft on project and budget
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programa_Catalisador_do_Brasil/Planejamento…>
shared for analyses
==== Education ====
* Hiring of the new education team:
o Offboarding of Everton: after 1,5 year working with us, Everton
Zanella Alvarenga has ended the transition period and left WMF
for Open Knowledge Foundation. Everton has built the education
program from scratch in Brazil, developing the pilot and
contributing very much to the catalyst program.
o Onboarding of Rodrigo Padula and Celio Costa:
+ Celio Costa (Usuário:Sturm
<https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio:Sturm>) has been a
Wikipedian since 2004 and is one of the most active editors
in the Portuguese Wikipedia. He'll be working as the
consultant for Outreach. Holding a bachelor degree at
History and Linguistics, Celio has consistently promoted
Wikimedia projects as a volunteer and also the wiki practice
and use as a professional.
+ Rodrigo Padula is a researcher at the Federal University of
Rio de Janeiro, where he leads initiatives and
implementation of the Open Source Technologies Laboratory -
LAPTEL. For almost 8 years he’s been collaborating with
Mozilla Foundation, promoting Web technology and internet
freedom.
== Program Development ==
Department highlights
* The first Program Evaluation & Design Workshop took place in
Budapest, Hungary, June 22–23 (see also general "Highlights" section
and the blog post "Improving program performance:
first evaluation workshop in Budapest
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/11/finding-out-what-works-first-workshop…>")
* Wikipedia Zero is now available in Sri Lanka for the first time on
Dialog's mobile network, reaching over 8 million subscribers.
* Faris El-Gwely attended a conference at Dr. Yahia Fares de Medea
University in Algeria celebrating the success of the pilot of the
program at the university. Dr. Fareh Abdelhak worked with one class
in Algeria this term, and the students contributed 1.6 million bytes
of content to the Arabic Wikipedia.
=== Wikipedia Zero ===
* Wikipedia Zero is now available in Sri Lanka for the first time on
Dialog's mobile network, which is part of the Axiata group. Dialog
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialog_Axiata> is Sri Lanka's largest
telecommunications service provider with the country's largest
mobile phone network of over 8 million subscribers.
* Worked with Mozilla on marketing campaigns to promote the
availability of Wikipedia on Firefox OS in Eastern Europe
(with Engineering):
* Developed faster process for mobile carrier testing using partner
configuration pages
* Created semi-automated method of updating Varnish configurations,
thus facilitating the launch and update of Wikipedia Zero partnerships
=== Wikipedia Education Program ===
United States and Canada
* Started sending out welcome packets to professors interested in
joining for the fall 2013 term.
Arab World
* Faris El-Gwely attended a celebration conference at Dr.Yahia Fares
de Medea University in Algeria to celebrate the success of the pilot
of the program at the university. Dr. Fareh Abdelhak worked with one
class in Algeria this term, and the students contributed 1.6 million
bytes of content to the Arabic Wikipedia.
* Students started editing again in Egypt after stopping for 20 days
because of final exams at the universities.
* Faris and faculty leaders started planning a celebration conference
in Cairo in August.
* Interviewed candidates for Arab World Program Manager position.
Communications
* Set up system for porting Training infrastructure to any wiki, and
tested it successfully with Czech Wikipedia.
* Launched community discussion of Commons brochure draft
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Welcome_to_Commons_brochure>.
* Worked with David Peters on a refresh of the Bookshelf piece
"Evaluating Wikipedia Article Quality".
* Reprinted "Instructor Basics", "The Syllabus", and "The Essentials"
brochures, with minor edits.
* Facilitated three blog posts on the Wikimedia blog:
o Wikipedia education projects in Thessaloniki
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/06/wikipedia-education-thessaloniki/>
(available in English and Greek)
o Communications students at Schreiner University reflect on their
Wikipedia assignment
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/10/schreiner-university-wikipedia-educati…>
o Starting an education program for small chapters 1.0
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/26/starting-an-education-program-for-smal…>
* Published two newsletters:
o 4 June 2013
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program/News/4_June…>
o 18 June 2013
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program/News/18_Jun…>
=== Program Evaluation and Design ===
* The first Program Evaluation & Design Workshop took place in
Budapest, Hungary, June 22–23. The event was held by the Wikimedia
Foundation, in partnership with Wikimedia Magyarország, the local
chapter. The workshop brought together 21 program leaders from 15
countries to learn gain a shared understanding of the basic concepts
of program evaluation and why it's a helpful skillset to learn when
executing Wikimedia focused programs such as GLAM content donations,
Wikipedia education programs, edit-a-thons/workshops, editing
contests, and photo upload contests (i.e. WikiLovesMonuments). A
blog post about the workshop is here:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/11/finding-out-what-works-first-workshop…
* Prior to the workshop, Sarah Stierch encouraged the participants to
share their experiences with their respective programs online on Meta:
o Edit-a-thons and Workshops
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Program_Evaluation/Share_Space/Edit-a-thons…>
o Wikipedia Education Program
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Program_Evaluation_and_Design/Share_Space/W…>
o GLAM content donations
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Program_Evaluation_and_Design/Share_Space/G…>
o Wiki Loves / Takes
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Program_Evaluation_and_Design/Share_Space/W…>
o Contests
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Program_Evaluation_and_Design/Share_Space/C…>
* Outcome of the workshop: Attendees were provided a pre and post
survey to fill out as part of evaluation of the workshop. The
surveys provided positive results, most participants entered the
workshop with little to moderate knowledge about program evaluation
and majority left the workshop with a better understanding. Majority
of participants also were highly satisified with the concept of
using logic models and 63% said they were "mostly" or "very" ready
to implement program evaluation in their programs.
* An announcement only mailing list has been created for Program
Evaluation & Design. Anyone is welcome to join it in order to learn
about the latest news, activities and events related to Program
Evaluation & Design:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-ped
* The team has started fleshing out a space on Meta for Program
Evaluation & Design
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Program_Evaluation_and_Design>. This
is
the main social space for everybody in the movement interested in
Program Evaluation & Design, and will serve as the main contact
point for interaction about the subject and resource center.
== Human Resources ==
The primary focus of work for June was annual reviews and annual
compensation increases and adjustments for every employee of the
Foundation. The other large pieces of work focused on adding index funds
to the portfolio of 401k plan options and hosting the annual summer
C-level retreat.
=== Staff Changes ===
New Requisitions Filled
(see also: slides
<https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/143jtUmwGggT19y7SLvsv8zsO1ApMoMGFYJu…>
from the monthly metrics meeting)
* Peter Coombe, Fundraising Production Coordinator (Fundraiser)
* Toby Negrin, Director of Analytics (Engineering)
* Sean Pringle, Administrator, Database (Engineering)
* Ken Snider, Contractor for Wikimedia Operations team (Engineering)
New Volunteers
* Rita Chang (Legal & Community Advocacy)
* Joshua Errett (Legal & Community Advocacy)
* Alice Debois-Frogé (Legal & Community Advocacy)
* Donna Peterson (Legal & Community Advocacy)
* Sarah Mitroff (Legal & Community Advocacy)
New Legal Interns
* Matthew Collins (Columbia)
* Jenny Bloom (Harvard)
* Lukas Mezger (recent graduate from Germany)
New Contractors
* Celio Costa (Grantmaking & Programs)
* Patrick Early (Engineering)
* Erica Litrenta (Engineering)
* Kartik Mistry (Engineering)
* Rodrigo Padula (Grantmaking & Programs)
* Keegan Peterzell (Engineering)
* Sherry Snyder (Engineering)
* Dhaval Trivedi (Engineering)
* Brian Wolff (Engineering)
Contracts Extended
* Michael Guss (Administration / also a volunteer with Legal &
Community Advocacy)
* Michael Ray (Administration)
Departure
* Luke Welling
* Tiffany Li
Contracts Ended
* Everton Alvarenga
* Missy Black
* Alexander Kuiper
* Nischay Nahata
* Rebecca Neumann
* Robert Smith
* Ion Vasquez
Department Changes – move to Engineering Analytics
* Dan Andreescu
* Andrew Otto
* Evan Rosen
* Dario Taraborelli
* Diederik Van Liere
* Erik Zachte
New Postings
Fundraiser Program Manager Director of Program, Mobile Linux System
Administrator (Systems & Network) - Part Time
=== Statistics ===
Total Requisitions Filled
June Actual: 145
June Total Plan: 174
June Filled: 4, Month Attrition: 2
YTD Filled: 62, YTD Attrition: 29
4 Positions On Hold at FYE
Remaining Open Reqs to rollover into the next fiscal year
29
=== Department Updates ===
Real-time feed for HR updates
http://identi.ca/wikimediaatwork or http://twitter.com/wikimediaatwork
== Finance and Administration ==
* We have negotiated a new foreign exchange rate which will lower the
cost of sending payments in a variety of currencies.
* The Form 990 FAQ for 2011 has been posted
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Form_990_Questions_and_Answers_(2011)>.
== Legal, Community Advocacy, and Communications Department ==
=== LCA Report, June 2013 ===
The Legal and Community Advocacy Department has been working extensively
with the community regarding a number of topics, including PRISM
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:PRISM>, trademarks
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Trademark_practices_discussion>,
and privacy
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Privacy_policy/Call_for_input_(2013)>.
More detail about
these ongoing discussions can be found below under "Other Activities
".
==== Contract Metrics ====
* Submitted : 23
* Completed : 26
==== Trademark Metrics ====
* Submitted : 13
* Approved : 3
* Pending : 7
* Denied : 3
==== Domains Obtained ====
Acquired: wikipedia.in, wikimanialondon.org, wikipedia.us
==== Coming & Going ====
* We welcome our new summer legal interns, Matthew Collins (Columbia),
Jenny Bloom (Harvard), and Lukas Mezger (our first international
legal intern, from the German community)!
* We say goodbye to our fantastic summer intern, Tiffany Li
(Georgetown) as she heads back to Washington DC to spend the second
half of her summer at a start-up. We wish her the best of luck!
* We welcome Keegan Peterzell, Erica Litrenta, Patrick Earley, and
Sherry Snyder, who will be working as community liaisons to assist
with the Visual Editor roll-out (seconded to LCA from Engineering).
* We also welcome Joshua Errett, Donna Peterson, Alice Debois-Froge,
Sarah Mitroff, and Michael Guss as volunteers who will be assisting
our Communications team!
==== Other Activities ====
<Video: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Law,_Technology,_and_Social_Change_…>
Video recording of the “Technology, Law, and Social Change” presentation
and panel
* LCA launched a *community discussion
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:PRISM> about PRISM*
and what, if any, role WMF and the community should play. The
consultations showed limited support for advocacy about government
surveillance, and we are currently evaluating advocacy options that
are consistent with this guidance.
* LCA launched a *community discussion about privacy
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Privacy_policy/Call_for_input_(2013)>*
generally to
engage the community and get initial input about what privacy
concerns they have, what they find important, and what they would
like to see in the next version of the privacy policy. The
discussion is scheduled to close on July 18 and has been very
helpful in shaping the forthcoming draft of the privacy policy,
which is set for release for public comment at the beginning of
August. Special thanks to members of the community who have
participated in this important discussion. We look forward to the
community’s comments on the draft as soon as it’s completed.
* Simultaneously, LCA has been working extensively with the entire
Foundation to create a *new version of the privacy policy* that
reflects the mission and movement values. Special thanks to members
of the tech department for the continued support and guidance. They
have been essential to development of the new policy.
* LCA launched a *community discussion on trademarks
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Trademark_practices_discussion>*
to get the community’s
thoughts on how we should employ our trademarks for community
members, movement organizations, and third parties. LCA will use
this input to shape how the next version of the trademark policy is
drafted. Once this discussion closes and the draft is developed, the
draft of the new trademark policy will be released for public comment.
* LCA presented a proposed process for creating a *new Wikivoyage logo
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikivoyage/Logo_announcement>*
and the community gave
significant input on the process. Members of the community have
begun submitting potential designs
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikivoyage/Logo_2013/Submissions>
and we are looking forward
to seeing the community showcasing their creativity in the coming weeks.
* LCA worked to prepare its *first public event* with General Counsel,
Geoff Brigham, keynoting and a panel of speakers from Mozilla, the
EFF, Google, and Twitter speaking on “Technology, Law, and Social
Change” on July 10. About 100 local attorneys, law students, and
people interested in tech law attended eventually.
* LCA was happy to announce
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/26/wikimedia-foundation-legal-victory-ita…>
a *major legal victory in Italy* in a lawsuit brought by former
Italian Minister of Defense, Cesar Previti.
* LCA is working hard in cooperation with the tech department on
*Visual Editor* and has coordinated the work of the recently hired
community liaisons to do so. We are beginning to think beyond the
en-wiki deployment and are putting architecture in place to support
the deployment on non-English wikis. We have supported the triage
and elimination of almost 200 bugs since deployment and coordinated
a 24-hour coverage shift to support the deployment.
* LCA is excited to present on three topics at *Wikimania* 2013! We
encourage the community to sign up and attend any (or all!) of the
following presentations: Our Legal Strategy Going Forward: A Talk
with the WMF General Counsel
<https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Discussing_Our_Legal_S…>;
Open Culture, Open Data, Open Source
<https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Open_Culture,_Open_Dat…>;
and Working Together, But Separately: A Gathering of Functionaries
<https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Working_together,_but_…>.
=== Communications Report, June 2013 ===
Although we issued no major announcements in June, it was still a busy
month. We worked on business planning and transition details for the
Wikimedia shop, reviewed and implemented designs for revisions to the
Wikimedia blog, kicked off some new design projects, and resumed work on
an upcoming Wikipedia Zero announcement. In June we also began
collaborating with the Wikimania organizing team to coordinate press
activities for the upcoming conference.
==== Major announcements ====
No major press announcements in June.
==== Major Storylines through June ====
Wikimedia response to PRISM/NSA controversy (June 14)
The Edward Snowden-led leak of documents relating to the NSA's PRISM
program was a major global news story in June. Wikipedia and the WMF
sites received mostly neutral mentions (faring better than other top web
properties), particularly following the posting of a notice of community
discussion about the topic on the WMF blog.
(related blog post)
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/14/prism-surveillance-wikimedia/http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/06/17/wikimedia-foundation-says-it-hasnt…http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jun/19/nsa-prism-privacy-martin-sorrellhttp://www.electronista.com/articles/13/06/17/joins.open.letter.to.us.congr…
Wikimedia Foundation victorious in Cesare Previti lawsuit (June 26)
The Foundation's legal team announced a victory against former Italian
Minister of Defence Cesare Previti in June. Previti accused the
Foundation of providing a venue for hosting inaccurate and defamatory
statements. The Civil Court of Rome disagreed with Previti's claim and
found in the Foundation's favor, which resulted in major, largely
positive coverage in the Italian mainstream press.
(related blog post)
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/26/wikimedia-foundation-legal-victory-it…http://thenextweb.com/eu/2013/06/27/wikimedia-prevails-in-italian-lawsuit-b…http://www.lastampa.it/2013/06/29/tecnologia/wikipedia-non-responsabile-dei…http://www.today.it/politica/cesare-previti-perde-causa-wikipedia.html
==== Other worthwhile reads ====
Adding Our Voice to the Wikipedia Chorus
<https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere/2013/06/20/adding-our-…>
| Brooklyn Museum | June 20
Internet Hall of Fame to induct top names in tech
<http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57591045-93/internet-hall-of-fame-to-induc…>
| CNET | June 26
When The Last of Us are Left, How Long Would it Take to Transcribe
Wikipedia?
<http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/overthinking-it/2013/06/27/when-the-las…>
| Scientific American | June 27
Wikipedia contributors ‘should be proud’
<http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/wikipedia-contributors-should-be…>
| Times Higher Education | June 30
==== WMF Blog posts ====
Blog.wikimedia.org ran 33 posts <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/> in
June 2013. Thirteen posts were multilingual
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/tag/multilingual-post/>, including Spanish,
Bangla, German, French, Greek, Russian, Catalan, Italian, Ukranian, and
Armenian. Some highlights:
* *Preparing for VisualEditor on all Wikipedias
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/06/preparing-for-visualeditor-on-all-wiki…>
| June 6, 2013*
* *Wikimedians help translate renowned classical music lyrics to
Ukranian
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/07/translate-classical-music-lyrics-ukrai…>
| June 7, 2013*
* *Call for input on the new Wikimedia Foundation privacy policy
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/18/input-on-wikimedia-foundation-privacy-…>
| June 18, 2013*
* *How the Wikimedia Foundation’s values are changing the world: The
Bolivian experience
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/27/wikimedia-foundation-values-bolivian-e…>
| June 27, 2013*
==== Media Contact ====
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#June_2013
==== Wikipedia Signpost ====
For lots of detailed coverage and news summaries, see the
community-edited newsletter “Wikipedia Signpost” for June 2013:
* Volume 9, Issue 22
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2013-06…>,
5 June 2013
* Volume 9, Issue 23
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2013-06…>,
12 June 2013
* Volume 9, Issue 24
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2013-06…>,
19 June 2013
* Volume 9, Issue 25
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2013-06…>,
26 June 2013
== Visitors and Guests ==
Visitors and guests to the WMF office in June 2013:
1. Christine Cavanaugh (CCS Consulting)
2. Stephen Josephs (7 Powers Consulting & facilitator)
3. Barnet Bain (independent consultant & facilitator)
4. Frits Habberman (CTO of PopCap)
5. Jailza Pauly (Haas Business School)
6. Chema Hernández Gil (SF Bike Coalition)
7. Simone Syed (Mithril)
8. Scott Norman (Mithril)
9. Caroline Simard (Stanford University)
10. Rebecca York (Adyen)
11. Jon Fuller (Adyen)
12. Lisa Groesz (Taos)
13. Peter Cooper (Paul Hastings LLP)
14. Rishi Sharma (Paul Hastings LLP)
15. Dennis Porter (Suf)
16. Brian Andersen (Suf)
17. Tom Johnson (Oregon State University)
18. Kevin Phillips (Forte)
19. Adria Richards (BYAG)
20. Shauna Gordon-Mckeon (OpenHatch)
21. Cosimo Cecchi (Endless Mobile)
22. Debbie Wolter (CCS Consulting)
23. Mike Meghan (CB2 Construction)
24. Ohana Hernandez (SFBC)
25. Kellie Brownell (Giant Rabbit)
26. Vijay Toke (Hiaring & Smith LLP)
27. Joey Daoud (Knight Foundation)
28. Sophie Österberg (WMSE)
29. Isabella Bagneros (Twitter)
30. Tom Simonite (MIT Technology Review)
31. Ben Dierker (Walker)
32. Joe Vasquez (Hero @ Home)
33. Christophe Henner (Wikimedia France)
34. Jim Chen (CTBT)
35. Aloka Archige (Forte)
36. Sam Giroy (Forte)
37. Kevin Phillips (J&K)
38. Alexis Rossi (Internet Archive)
39. Will Norris (Google)
40. Daniel Shapiro (Wells Fargo)
41. Pierros Papadeas (Community Manager at Mozilla)
42. Alex Wafula (Wikimedian and Mozilla Rep from Kenya)
43. Josh Lim (Wikimedia Philippines)
44. Lorenzo Losa (Wikimedia Italy)
45. Pedro Lopez (Data Safe)
46. Anna Nygren (Telenor)
47. Taylor Keep (Vital)
48. Lee Eckert (Vital)
49. Sam Slater (Vital)
50. Lisa Groesz (Taos)
51. Patrick Chow (change.org)
52. Dennis Porter (Saf)
53. Pedro Torrecillas (Imagine.cc)
54. Albert Moro (Imagine.cc)
55. Laura Dubreuil (Imagine.cc)
56. Sebastian Romero (Imagine.cc)
57. Nuria Lao (Imagine.cc)
58. Phillipe Delespesse (Imagine.cc)
59. Anna Sala (Imagine.cc)
60. Luis Montes de Oca (Imagine.cc)
61. Oriana Mendez Lopez (Imagine.cc)
62. Xavier (Imagine.cc)
63. Rosa Monge (Imagine.cc)
--
Tilman Bayer
Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
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Hi all,
I'm pleased to announce that Charles Matthews and I re-licensed the text of
our book "How Wikipedia Works", and the text is now in Wikibooks:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_Wikipedia_Works
I'd like to issue an open invitation to help format and update the book. We
published HWW in 2008, and while many of the chapters hold up today, others
(especially those dealing with specific templates, etc) do not.
In addition, there's a lot of additional new material to cover. For
instance:
* When the VisualEditor is stable, there should be a chapter about using
the VE, followed up with more advanced chapters about wikitext
* The education program and GLAM projects were just getting going when we
published, and it would be nice to have a full chapter about these (since
in my experience many of the readers of the book have been educators)
* I'd love to see full chapters about each of the sister projects; I didn't
have the space in the printed book or the expertise to write these
originally, but covering all of Wikimedia was always part of my ideal book.
Also, the figures are not in Wikibooks. While I will work on uploading the
originals (it will be slow), I don't have all of them in a good format, and
most of the screenshot-type figures need to be redone anyway. I'd love help
with this.
Of course, one of my great joys about the printed book was that it was so
nicely produced; the publisher, No Starch Press, did a fantastic job of
layout and the book itself is quite high-quality. For those who want that,
the print book is still available for purchase; but making the Wikibooks
text pretty should also be a goal (the current text was cut & pasted, so
there's a lot of formatting that needs to be cleaned up).
I know this has been a long time coming; that's my fault! This has been a
side project for us for many years, and I was happy to recently find some
time to work on it again. It's my hope that the book is still useful, and
that we can make it more useful still for the future. (There's also a new
website for the book at http://howwikipediaworks.net).
best,
phoebe
--
* I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers <at>
gmail.com *
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
In the last week, the current fundraising test has stabilized at about
$100,000 per day from showing the latest banners one time (per cookie)
to 5% of logged out enwiki readers. It was falling from larger amounts
during July 1st-10th, but at that time the banner was being offered to
5% of all page views, not 5% of IP addresses, so eventually everyone
logged out was seeing them until that was fixed. The data is at
http://frdata.wikimedia.org/
That is quite a bit more than ever before. It represents a sustained
capability of $2 million per day from enwiki alone, or probably at
least $3 million per day from all projects. That would probably be
enough to raise a full endowment in less than a year, or an endowment
matching recent growth rates (not counting the last two years'
slowdowns) in less than two years.
However, we should still do multivariate testing of the remaining
untested ~300 banner messages, because the variance of the tested
messages (a minority of those submitted years ago) suggests that
there's still an undiscovered ~2.5x improvement over the current
message available from altering the goal statement in the main ask
sentence in the current banners.
On a likely related note, there has been no slowdown in the growth of
the short popular vital articles, on a byte-per-time basis. They still
continue to grow at about 4 bytes per day each. This has been constant
for so long that I am beginning to think that the apparent reduction
in the number of active editors (actually, active accounts) must be
illusory as the growth and stabilization of controversial articles and
topics reduces the motivation for editors to create replacement or
alternate accounts.
(This announcement is being shared in advance of a public release with the
Wikimedia community. We will be posting a press release, blog post, and
Ana's bio to the WMF wiki this afternoon, PT. Thanks)
Ana Toni Announced as New Wikimedia Foundation Board Member
San Francisco -- July 8, 2013 -- The Wikimedia Foundation today announced
its newest Board of Trustees member, Ana Toni. Ana is currently the CEO for
GIP (Public Interest Management), a consultancy firm based in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil, which works for foundations, non-profit organizations and
businesses on social and environmental issues.
According to Ana, "It is an honor to be part of the Wikimedia Foundation’s
Board and to participate with this amazing Wikipedia community. I
especially look forward to supporting the Foundation’s efforts to
strengthen the Wikipedia community in the Global South and to advance the
organization's mission to empower and engage people in building the common
good."
Since 2011, Ana has served as the Board Chair of Greenpeace International.
>From 2003 until 2011, Ana was the Ford Foundation’s representative in
Brazil, during which time she oversaw the Foundation’s work in the areas of
human rights, sustainable development, racial and ethical discrimination,
sexuality and reproductive health, media democratization and land rights.
She was also responsible for coordinating a regional Latin America
Initiative on Economics and Globalization, an IBSA initiative (joint work
between Brazil, South Africa and India) and the International Initiative on
Intellectual Property Rights.
>From 1998 to 2002, Ana was ActionAid’s Executive Director in Brazil,
working to contribute in the eradication of poverty and inequality through
community development projects, as well as public policy advocacy and
campaigning at both the national and international levels. Ana also worked
for ActionAid UK as Policy Advisor (1990 – 1993), representing the
organization at the United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development.
Ana worked for Greenpeace from 1993 to 1997, first as the International
Head of the Political Unit based at Greenpeace International in Amsterdam,
and subsequently as Senior Advisor for Greenpeace Germany. She was
responsible for, among other things, the work of Greenpeace on the World
Trade Organization (in particular the Committee on Trade and Environment)
and she also contributed in the development of Greenpeace’s work in the
Amazon region in its early stage.
Ana holds a masters degree in Politics of the World Economy from the London
School of Economics and is a candidate for a PhD on Social Politics at the
Rio de Janeiro State University. In addition, Ana is a member of the
Editorial Board of Le Monde Diplomatique Brazil, and a Board member of the
Baobá Fund for Racial Equity and the Forum of Women’s Leaders on
Sustainability. Ana is Brazilian and lives in Rio de Janeiro.
There are 10 seats on the Wikimedia Foundation Board and according to the
Foundation's bylaws, three members are elected by the Wikimedia community,
two are selected by the Wikimedia chapters, the Founder seat is held by
Jimmy Wales, and four members are appointed by the Board itself to provide
additional, specific expertise.
--
Jay Walsh
Senior Director, Communications
WikimediaFoundation.orgblog.wikimedia.org
+1 (415) 839 6885 x 6609, @jansonw
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Three weeks ago, the foundation asked for community input on the
surveillance program PRISM (and perhaps similar programs that have
surfaced since).
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PRISM
To quote from that page: "We will consider all feedback, but, because
events are moving quickly, we feel we need to make a decision on this by
June 21, 2013."
Has there been any response yet? Surely evaluating all the feedback
cannot take longer than two weeks...?
Cheers,
Tobias
