Hi all --
Starting this month, WMF will be shifting its organization-wide
reports from a monthly to a quarterly cadence. This reflects our
growth as an organization, and is intended to make important
developments more visible internally and externally.
== Background ==
Shortly after Sue became WMF’s Executive Director, she started giving
updates to the Board of Trustees about her work. These reports were
compiled for accountability purposes, and not without some
trepidation, Sue started sharing them publicly in January 2008. [1]
The reports have grown in scope and depth alongside the organization.
Where we think we can do better is in the following areas:
- We've not defined the threshold for report-worthy work clearly
enough, so work that represents a few person hours’ effort could get
more space than a whole team’s work over the course of the quarter;
- We've not consistently mapped reporting against organizational priorities;
- We’re not presenting a strategic view on what we’re learning, where
we’re changing direction and why;
- We’re not helping users of the reports consistently discover
quarterly review minutes, slides and other materials related to a
specific area, in part due to the reports not being aligned with the
quarterly rhythm.
In addition, given the dependency on an increasing multitude of inputs
(from across an organization that had fewer than 20 staff when these
monthly reports were launched, and now has more than 200), the reports
have increasingly gotten backlogged, to the point that we’re just now
releasing the August report.
At the same time, under Lila the organization has shifted into a
recognizable quarterly rhythm. Priorities are defined quarterly, and
reviews are being introduced following the end of each quarter for all
significantly staffed projects.
== A New Reporting Process ==
It’s come time for us to revisit the model we use for reporting, to
clearly define the purpose/audience for these report, and to iterate
on the monthly format.
Purpose: The purpose of this report is accountability and learning
within the movement. The report is not a storytelling tool. Any
evaluation will be done with these objectives in mind.
Audience: Its audience is chiefly internal, including community
members, WMF staff, and interested donors/funders.
Format: Effective immediately, we are shifting to a quarterly
reporting format. This will impact our reporting, and the October
through December reporting period, in the following ways:
- Instead of three monthly reports for October, November, and
December, we will publish our first quarterly report in February 2015.
- We are reviewing the key organization-wide metrics and will improve
the selection and presentation of numbers at the top level of the
quarterly report.
- We will closely align quarterly reports with quarterly reviews, and
re-use high level findings from the quarterly reviews, while referring
to the slide decks and minutes from the reviews for details.
- We will aim to provide high-level synthesis and lessons learned, as
well as strategy updates, through this format as well.
Many of the more granular updates in the monthly report will no longer
be reported.
As above, the deadline for publication of the first report, covering
October 1 - December 31, is February 15. For this first report, we are
being conservative with regard to the deadline, as we will have our
resources directed at our staff all-hands and developer summit in
January.
Tilman and I will begin creating a draft structure for this new report
in coming weeks, and will do so in public from the get-go. We will
also rethink the “Wikimedia Highlights” alongside other multilingual
movements news formats, likely detaching them from reporting
functions.
Out of scope of this effort for now:
- Providing more timely updates on initiatives with high user impact.
We’re continuing to provide updates to Tech News [2] and similar
newsletters, but we’re not currently doing a major overhaul here.
- Replacing the monthly engineering report and its inputs, which also
serve as a project status dashboard. [3]
We are of course discussing how to improve on those mechanisms, and
feedback is welcome.
Let me know if you have any immediate questions or thoughts.
Thanks,
Erik
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2008-January/084883.html
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News
[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/Dashboard
--
Erik Möller
VP of Product & Strategy, Wikimedia Foundation
Hi all,
Please take a minute to review a new project idea the page for which I created just today at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiTribute
I am interested in feedback, suggestions, etc.
Thank you!
Matt
Hi Lodewijk,
Currently IDEAL is temporarily down on our pages (it went into maintenance
mode after our annual campaign), but should be back up soon :) We know
the importance of this method for Dutch donors and have supported this
option since we started fundraising in the NL. We also support offline bank
transfer (IBAN) and donors can get the account number with our Donor
Services team.
We had an extremely successful Fundraising campaign this year, and there
will be some great mobile optimization coming up in the next few months,
which will allow mobile donors to complete their donations in a much faster
and easier way.
Thanks!
Pats
On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 11:28 AM, Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org>
wrote:
> A while back now, the chapters were no longer allowed to fundraise, because
> the Wikimedia Foundation argued they would be better able to do this. At
> the time, this sounded somewhat reasonable. However, since then, there have
> been some disturbing developments - at least for Dutch donors.
>
> No longer it is possible to pay electronically (iDEAL, one of the most
> common methods is no longer supported - 'electronic banking' simply refers
> you back to the credit card page) or even via regular bank transfer (using
> an IBAN) in the Netherlands. The donation page
> <
> https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:FundraiserLandingPag…
> >
> only
> allows credit card and paypal, and the 'other ways to give' simply sends
> you to the helpdesk if you want to make a bank transfer payment.
>
> What is the reasoning behind this? Have bank transfers become a legal
> swamp? Are there statistics suggesting that this method was no longer
> required by donors? Did the European bank account somehow get temporarily
> suspended?
>
> If it has become so hard to donate, maybe it makes more sense to send the
> donors to the local chapter pages where they can actually donate in the
> local suitable methods (in this case, Wikimedia Netherlands offers both
> iDEAL and IBAN
> <http://www.wikimedia.nl/pagina/doneren-aan-wikimedia-nederland>).
>
> One of the Dutch OTRS team members asked for elaboration, but didn't quite
> get a satisfying answer. I hope this is a temporary situation, and that
> this threshold will be removed again. It would be sad if we go through all
> kind of trouble to enable long tail methods like bitcoin, but skip bank
> transfer...
>
> Best,
>
> Lodewijk
> _______________________________________________
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--
Pats Pena | Sr. Manager, Global Operations
Wikimedia Foundation
office +1 (415) 839 6885 x6764
cell: +1 (415) 816 3349
fax: +1 (415) 284 9511
ppena(a)wikimedia.org
*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. Donate.
<https://donate.wikimedia.org/>*
Forwarding at Frieda's request.
Austin
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Frieda Brioschi <fbrioschi(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 9:19 PM
Subject: [Wikimedia Announcements] Board approval of FDC
Recommendations Round 1 2014-2015
To: WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Dear members of the Wikimedia community,
On behalf of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, I
write to share the news that we have approved [1] the full slate of
the FDC’s Round 1 2014-2015 recommendations [2] for the Annual Plan
Grants. In this round, 11 Wikimedia organizations will be receiving a
total of $3,817,956 in grants. This leaves approximately $2 million
for organizations likely to apply for Annual Plan Grants in Round 2 of
this year. [3]
One organization, Wikimedia CH, submitted an appeal to the Board
regarding their funding recommendation. [4] We carefully reviewed this
appeal, including their proposal, the inputs into the FDC’s proposal
review process, and the notes from the deliberation on the chapter's
proposal. We appreciate the effort that its Board and staff put into
creating the proposal and the appeal. Ultimately, however, we decided
not to override the recommendation of the FDC.
We’re conscious and appreciative of the fact that WMCH is investing a
lot in Kiwix — a valuable offline project for access to Wikipedia and
one that we know is being used in innovative ways. This project indeed
required us to evaluate the financial sustainability of all technical
projects, which is currently not explicitly guaranteed by unrestricted
grants; we will review our grant strategy to see how we can
accommodate these needs. We have asked the WMF staff to provide a
recommendation on how to adapt the grant program to help ensure
continued funding of certain projects when they are considered
high-priority to our movement goals and needs. Subject to our review,
such a process may be appropriate in the future for projects like
Wikidata and Kiwix.
We congratulate all eleven organizations on their grants, and we look
forward to seeing what the year ahead will bring. We know that the
volunteers, staff, and boards of these organizations are working hard
to advance the goals of the movement. We thank them for their work in
doing so.
We continue to optimize the Annual Plan Grant/FDC process and
anticipate further improvements to the APG grant program in 2015 based
on our ongoing impact analyses of grants as well as input and feedback
from the communities.
Sincerely,
Frieda and Bishakha, on behalf of the WMF Board of Trustees
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Board_decisions/2014-2015_round1
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2…
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Appeals_to_the_Board_on_the_reco…
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Dear Wikimedians,
I would like to draw your attention to the Med GLAM Project from
India[1]. The main objective of this project is to create, curate and
make openly available images from the Department of Pathology (DoP),
Calicut Medical College (CMC), India; for the benefit of medical and
para-medical students specifically and for the larger medical fraternity
across the world.
I am glad to inform you that this project has kick-started in October
2014 and is gaining momentum. Netha Hussain, is the
Wikipedian-in-Residence for this project.
Dr. K.P. Aravindan, Head of DoP, CMC and Netha Hussain have played a
pivotal role in putting this project together and successfully
partnering with the CMC. So far 146 images are uploaded on the Commons
under the project and are available here [2]. Most of the credit goes to
Netha for this successful Med-GLAM project in progress.
Help and support, especially from Wikimedians with Pathology background,
is welcome in writing descriptions for the images uploaded, categorizing
them and reviewing the quality of images. Any other feedback would be
useful.
Thank you,
Vishnu
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Work_plan_July_20…
[2]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_from_Department_of_Patho…
Attention : LILA TETRIKOV
MY EMAIL ON PENDING SEXUAL HARASSMENT COMPLAINT AT LEGAL + ARBCOM, and
further to some emails from WMF Gender Gap mailing list
Please reply as follows
1) What action WMF has taking on penalizing on-wiki sexual harassment
by WMF's user SITUSH based on my complaints to a) WMF LEGAL b)
EN:ARBCOM.
2) NB: WMF's user SITUSH is now a NOTABLE online sexual harasser from
news reports published as far afield as Australia and discussed on
Gender Gap as a "rancorous, sexist, elitist, stupidly bureaucratic
mess. "
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/gendergap/2014-December/005181.htmlhttp://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/12/14/comment-will-editing-disputes…
3) What action WMF has taking to ban User SITUSH who is part of a
notorious MEATFARM known as "Manchester Mafia" which is nothing but a
pack of extortionist sexist, rancorous and racist blackmailers who
extort money for correcting defamatory Wikipedia articles on
non-Wikipedians.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Manchester_Wikimeet_Feb_2012-5.jpg
4) Further to my public correspondence with WMF Community Advocate
Patrick Early, by when is WMF prepared to either disclose real world
identity of User Sitush, or else confirm that s/he is impersonating as
Simon Tushingham of AON Insurance from Manchester UK as disclosed
on-wiki from this account so that I may sue the user properly.
5) In the meantime by when will my Wikipedia USER account be restored
by WMF as an OFFICE ACTION so that I can create and develop an English
Wikipedia article on the notable newsworthy Simon Tushingham
"@Si.tush" impersonator and his unchecked harassment of declared
female editors by using culturally abusive terms like "piss off",
"fuck off", "cunt" etc. with them on-wiki
6) Why a MEATFARM like the extortionist manchester mafia is tolerated
by WMF, and its male sexist accounts with privacy violating CHECKUSER
privileges not terminated, whereas female users are banned ?
7) Is WMF prepared to identify the MEATFARM male persons in the
photographic image at point 3 ?
Linda
Purpose: big set of algorithms and its implementations. Descriptions of
algorithms should be in various human languages and implementations in many
computer languages. Each algorithm will be described clear and easy as to
possible with sample code. This source code also should editable by many
users and under Apache or similar licence to use it in free or commercial
product.
I have written about my Wiki-Algorithm proposoal in
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiAlgorithms.
Several months ago, Wikimedia Israel conducted a survey on attitudes of the
Israeli public towards Wikipedia. 751 respondents, which provides
arepresentative
sample of the population of Israel, responded to the questionnaire.We paid
particular attention to the fact that the sample included a representation
of young people and the Arabic-speaking population in Israel.
According to the findings, 84 percent of the respondents said they rely on
the online encyclopedia for information, and 60% said they visit the
Wikipediawebsite at least once a week. Almost three-quarters (74%) said the
information found in Wikipedia articles provides all that they need, and
they don’t seekadditional resources.
The survey also showed gaps in relation to Wikipedia between the Arab and
Jewish populations in Israel. While around 60% of the population uses
Wikipedia once a week or more. Within the Arabic-speaking population, the
percentage of daily usage is larger than that of the Hebrew-speaking
population (27.9% versus 21.6%). In addition, 54% of the Arab-speaking
respondents
were interested in editing Wikipedia compared to only 33% in the Jewish
population.
41% of the Arab-speaking population said that they search Wikipedia
for articles
in scientific fields, compared to 36.2% among the Hebrew speakers.
Only 8% of respondents had ever edited a Wikipedia article, even though 20%
encountered information they deemed to be in need of amending.
For the results, please see:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Awareness_of_Wikipedia_and_its_usa…
Michal Lester
Executive Director
Wikimedia Israel
http://www.wikimedia.org.il/ 972-50-8996046 ; 972-77-751-6032
*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. **That's our commitment.*
