Wikimedia-l April 2014

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173 participants
124 discussions

[WMFr] Feedback on the last 2 years
by Christophe Henner 15 Apr '14

15 Apr '14

Hi everyone, For the past few weeks, many people approached me asking for feedback on what Wikimedia France went through in the past 18 to 24 months. We realize we poorly communicated on the topic, time to fix that. I'll try to be as exhaustive as I can be without writing too much (even though you already know this is going to be a long email). == Short WMFr history == Before going into the heart of the situation, here are some informations about Wikimedia France. We were founded in 2004. At some point, in 2007 iirc, we went from 30K€ in our bank account to 200K€ over night as, at the time, we were payment processing. In 2010, we hired a first employee as a project manager. A year later, he left the organization. If we look back at why, at the core, he did leave, one of the reason is that we weren't ready to have an employee. Though at the time we might have not realized that. Afterwards we hired three new employees, one head of programs, one project manager for education and research programs and one technical project manager. We weren't able to manage them correctly because we underestimated the amount of work it required, especially as back then we were still payment processing. So we decided to hire a new employee, an Executive Director, to manage our employees for us and to hire a fundraiser. It didn't work out, and the new ED left the organization after a few months. That is where the story starts. == Facing failures and making radical changes == When the new ED left we took the time to try to understand why Wikimedia France had those issues. We could have hired a new ED straight ahead, but we believed that, even though it would have been a good thing on the short run we weren't sure we wouldn't repeat past mistakes. We then started to wonder if the organization of Wikimedia France was the right one, perhaps at the core we were doing things wrong. So we decided to get help to sort this out and hire a HR company to audit us and advise us on what to do. Mostly at the same time, something else happened: the FDC rejected our first proposal and gave us a gap funding just to get through until the next FDC round. At the same time we were auditing the organization we had to rethink everything we were doing and how we were working. We had no ED, so the board and staff had to pick up on the tasks the ED used to do. We first splitted the tasks amongst us and then asked an interim company to help us hire an administrative assistant to help us with day-to-day administrative burden. Before her arrival, we introduced processes used at companies we (board members) worked at (such as "buying request" that means that every spending of the association is matched with a sheet that summarize what the money was used for and that the use of the money has been checked by two differents people). Once she arrived we worked, as a board, to define our needs and our role. We identified that one of our mistake was that, even though we had employees, we failed to build up trust and confidence and that we were looking too hard on small details and not enough on the big picture. We saved that thought for later: as we had no ED we had to look at those details. But when we defined what we needed from our ED, we kept that in mind. We needed an ED with whom we were able to build a trust relationship and at the same time have the tools to oversee their job. We also took the time to improve the board maturity. As we had no idea, our board meetings were really frequent and long. So we laid some board rules such as nothing said during a board meeting is personal, or that everyone should speak its mind but once a decision is made the board has to commit to support that decision. As said before we also started to better define the roles of each board member. After a few months, we started our search for our next ED. The HR company we hired for auditing us was charged with selecting 3 persons we would then interview. We believed that thanks to the audit, the HR company would have a good understanding of who we were and what we would need. == New ED, "new" board, new organization == After a 5 months process, we hired our new ED. We then enforced what we've set aside a few months before, the board would focus to the big picture while the ED would provide the board with the tools to oversee how the organization is doing. First things first, we needed to redesign how we worked (more there https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/Wikim…). We created 5 working groups : * Internal organization: closed group made of the chair, the vice-chair and the ED. This group is in charge of sorting out day to day things and to ensure the organization is running smoothly. * Internal controls: closed group made of the treasurer, the deputy treasurer and the ED. This group is in charge of designing and implementing internal policies and processes. Their goal is to ensure we do everything we can so the organization is runned in a healthy manner. * Quality group: open group to every WMFr member. This group goal is to design and update the metrics we're using to measure our efficiency. * Strategy group: open group to every WMFr member. This group ensures our strategic process is going forward and includes everyone's input. * Communication group: open group to every WMFr member. This group is in charge to make sure the voice of WMFr members and Wikimedians is taken into accounts and is also in charge of international relationships. We also restructured the staff organization, for the curious it’s all detailed there : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/Wikim… By doing this clear split within the board, we ensured that the few tactical tasks the board has to be in charge of are taken care of. We all agreed to trust each group with the topic they're in charge of. This limits the possibility of burnout, as no one has to care everything is being done, and efficiency as every board member focuses on a clear defined set of tasks. Following that reorganisation, we redesigned the interactions between board, members and staff. The goal was to improve the way we communicate and work with each other. One thing we've done is to write down the clear mandate of the ED. What the ED can and can't do and what the board can and can't do. Then we designed a clear vision and strategy for Wikimedia France: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/Wikim… Once that was done, we tackled THE issue: being able to measure how efficient we are. Based on our strategic goals, we designed a matrix of indicators. Every project we now do goes through that matrix. It's far from being perfect, but at least we now have a common matrix for everything we do, evaluate our effectiveness and make decisions. == Where we are now and where we're going == Now where are we? We are in the best situation we've ever been. WMFr board is a working efficient body, with an internal organization that prevents burnout and also ensures continuity. The staff now has clear goals and knows where the organization wants to go. They also have a clear mandate on what they can and can't do. We have an evaluation process and people in charge of improving it over time. I'm not sure this reflects what we went through. But to sum it up, at some point, we decided to make radical and urgent changes. To be better, even if that meant to spend months in a painful situation. We believed back then, and I guess we were right, that it was better for us to go through a hard time willingly, identify and face our mistakes and fix them rather than find a quick solution. Now, it could seem that we're at the end of the process. Well it's quite the opposite. Everything we did was just the start of our "getting better" process. We share in an other email the next steps of the process. == Finally...== We wanted to share our experience because we believe some of the other Wikimedia organizations could learn from it. We also wanted to share that because we believe that it is important for organizations like us to face mistakes, to have a critical eye on everything you do, even if you've done it for years, and some time make radical changes in order to improve things on the long run. If anyone has questions, please, feel free to ask them either on list or off list. We hope that sharing this will help some of you. All the best, Christophe HENNER | Vice-chair ------------------------------------------------------------------- › Mail : christophe.henner(a)wikimedia.fr › Mobile : +33(0)6 29 35 65 94 › Tel : +33(0)5 62 89 12 01 › Twitter : @Wikimedia_Fr ----------------------------------------------------- Wikimédia France | Association pour le libre partage de la connaissance | Visitez notre blog http://blog.wikimedia.fr

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Introducing the newly redesigned WMF Shop
by Caitlin Cogdill 15 Apr '14

15 Apr '14

Hello, We are pleased to announce the Wikimedia Shop[1] has undergone a redesign as of this afternoon. One of the shop's primary priorities for 2014 was to make it more visually appealing and user friendly. It is our hope that these changes will enable us to increase sales so that we can support more community events through merchandise giveaways. Thus far in 2014, the shop has supported chapters and community groups in Thailand, Ghana, and Indonesia, and will be supporting a Wikipedia Zero event in Bangladesh later this year. Our team has also reinvigorated the Merchandise Giveaways Program [2], sending shirts to nominated users on a weekly basis. We want our merchandise to help bring even more people to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects, and make currently involved community members feel good about their work. The shop redesign also marks the release of a new product: the limited edition Wiki Loves Monuments Calendar[3]. While we are already a few months into 2014, the quality of the images and work put in by Wikimedians was reason enough to produce these calendars, but buy them while you can as there is a very limited quantity! We look forward to displaying more Wikimedia artifacts like this one in the future. Please give us your comments on the new site design and help us continue to improve the way we represent Wikimedia through discussion on the Wikimedia Merchandise talk page[4], or feel free to contact me directly. Thank you! Caitlin [1]https://shop.wikimedia.org/ [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Merchandise_giveaways [3] http://shop.wikimedia.org/collections/accessories/products/2014-wiki-loves-… [4]https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikimedia_merchandise -- Caitlin Cogdill Fundraiser Program Associate Wikimedia Foundation

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Wiki Education Foundation website
by Russavia 15 Apr '14

15 Apr '14

I came across this press release today on the Wiki Education Foundation,[1] which announces that the WEF is getting $1.39 million from the Stanton Foundation. When I went to the WEF's website,[2] I must say I was disappointed that the website isn't developed at all, although there is a link to basic information on Meta. And going to the "About" page,[3] my first thought was "Ahhh Lorem ipsum, we meetum againem". I must also say that the photos stood out; a "Foundation" which has education as its mission, and the imagery that the WEF is putting its name to is people schmoozing, drinking and gambling in a Las Vegas casino. Probably not the sort of image you want to portray to people so early on. It also struck me as odd that the WEF would already have a Flickr account, and upon looking it appears the WEF has no Flickr account, but rather the photos are from a set[4] belonging to thewhir.com, and where they are evidently marked "© All Rights Reserved".[5] Are these images used with permission of WHIR? Even if so, it doesn't look good that the WEF is using ARR imagery when Commons is home to almost 21 million freely licenced images that could be used, and probably be more appropriate to illustrate your mission. I look forward to seeing a properly developed WEF website, with hopefully appropriate freely licenced content, in the near future. Cheers Russavia [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Education_Foundation/Press_Release_14_… [2] http://www.wikiedfoundation.org/ [3] http://www.wikiedfoundation.org/about [4] https://www.flickr.com/photos/thewhir/sets/72157637847519144/with/109529437… [5] https://www.flickr.com/photos/thewhir/10951076296/in/set-72157637847519144

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Feedback on the last 2 years
by ENWP Pine 15 Apr '14

15 Apr '14

Hi Christophe, Thank you for these interesting emails. I'm cc'ing Anasuya on this discussion with the hope that what you've learned can be disseminated to other Wikimedia affiliates, especially new or aspiring chapters. Is the decision matrix that you use for your programs available in English? I would like to have a copy of it on Meta along with these emails. I am interested in this subject partly because of the discussion about WMF's Annual Plan and partly because there are occasional discussions about forming a new thematic organization or chapter in my region. Thanks, Pine

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Chaptersplanet.org
by Bence Damokos 14 Apr '14

14 Apr '14

Hi all, As we have been discussing communication and sharing of experiences at various sessions here at the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, I wanted to remind people of the chaptersplanet.org website i set up a few years ago that aggregates blog posts, reports and newsletters from the various affiliates and the WMF. You can follow the site at chaptersplanet.org, or @chaptersplanet (http://twitter.com/chaptersplanet ) on Twitter. The name is only a historical artifact -- if your group or organisations blog, newsletter, etc. is not represented yet (or has moved to a new location since I added it), please drop me a line. Best regards, Bence

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Wikipedians in Residence -- what makes a good program
by Pete Forsyth 14 Apr '14

14 Apr '14

I thought it might be worthwhile to put some attention on what a well planned and effective Wikipedian in Residence program looks like. Especially for anybody on this list whose introduction to the topic was the Belfer Center program, this might be a worthwhile read: Five things a Wikipedian in Residence can do: http://wikistrategies.net/5-things-wikipedian-in-residence/ This is of course only "5 things" -- not "the" 5 things. Perhaps others will post ideas about what a great WiR does. Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]

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ASBS sessions update
by Chris Keating 14 Apr '14

14 Apr '14

I just wanted to drop everyone a note about the two sessions in Berlin on Sunday morning about the Affiliate Selected Board Seats. I regret it proved impossible to stream or properly record the Q&A session - we did not have appropriate equipment to capture audio. Nevertheless we heard speeches from Alice, Frieda and Patricio, the latter taking part remotely from Argentina. Unfortunately some nearby church bells started ringing during Patricio's speech, but after they fell silent Patricio was able to continue. Anders was not able to join in by videocall, but was able to answer questions posed to him by email. I would also like to say a little about the closed discussion session. About 40 people attended, including at least one person from most of the chapters present and Amical. We also invited User Group representatives to participate in the discussion and a number did so. Generally, it was a thoughtful discussion about the needs of the WMF Board and the movement. Everyone is welcome to continue to pose questions on Meta, here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2014/Questio… A final list of candidates will be announced on or shortly after 15 April (tomorrow) and organisations have until 31 May to cast votes. Many thanks, Chris Keating

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[Wikimedia Announcements] The Signpost -- Volume 10, Issue 14 -- 09 April 2014
by Wikipedia Signpost 13 Apr '14

13 Apr '14

Special report: Community mourns passing of Adrianne Wadewitz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-04-09/Specia… News and notes: Round 2 of FDC funding open to public comments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-04-09/News_a… Traffic report: Conquest of the Couch Potatoes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-04-09/Traffi… WikiProject report: Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-04-09/WikiPr… Featured content: Snow heater and Ash sweep http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-04-09/Featur… Single page view http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signpost/Single PDF version http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-04-09 https://www.facebook.com/wikisignpost / https://twitter.com/wikisignpost -- Wikipedia Signpost Staff http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost _______________________________________________ Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l

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[Wikimedia Announcements] Adrianne Wadewitz (User:Wadewitz)
by ENWP Pine 12 Apr '14

12 Apr '14

Hi all, As you may have heard, we recently lost Adrianne Wadewitz (User:Wadewitz) to a climbing accident. Adrianne served on the board of the Wiki Education Foundation. She had a Ph.D. in English Literature and was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Digital Learning and Research at Occidental College. You can watch a video of her discussing Wikipedia at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Impact_of_Wikipedia_Adrianne_Wa…. You may recognize her from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Impact_Of_Wikipedia.webm. Relevant links are below. Condolences are being left on her talk page on English Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Wadewitz. Her partner has posted on her talk page that memorial services will be held Monday, April 14 in Los Angeles and Saturday, April 26 in Indiana. Pine * https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikimedian_activist_Adrianne_Wadewitz_dies * http://www.hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/2014/04/10/remembering-adrianne-… * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wadewitz _______________________________________________ Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l

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[Wikimedia Announcements] Cynthia Ashley-Nelson (Cindamuse)
by Bence Damokos 12 Apr '14

12 Apr '14

It is with great regret that we need to confirm that Cynthia Ashley-Nelson (User:Cindamuse, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cindamuse ) passed away on Friday, April 11. Our thoughts are with Cindy’s family, friends and the Wikimedia community. Her next of kin have been informed prior to releasing this announcement. Cindy was elected vice-chair of the Wikimedia Affiliations Committee on April 10, 2014. She had traveled to Berlin in order to attend the Affiliations Committee’s annual meeting during the international Wikimedia Conference. Both a long-time Wikipedia editor and an expert in organizational development with a professional background of 25 years, she devoted her time, passion and vast expertise to contribute in numerous ways to the free knowledge movement. Cindy was deeply committed to supporting the Wikimedia Foundation’s Global Education Program and to tackling the gender gap issue on Wikipedia. In the short time since January that Cindy has been with us in the Affiliations Committee, we have come to value her thoughts, passion and refreshing ideas. She was working very enthusiastically with us, and we are all saddened that we won’t have the chance to learn from all of her ideas, insights and experiences. The months we shared proved her to be a very valuable and engaged member of the committee, which led to her election as AffCom vice-chair. We are sad beyond words and so is everyone who came to Berlin to participate in the Wikimedia Conference. Her passing is a great loss for everyone in the Wikimedia movement. This morning all the conference attendees gathered together to grieve and talk about the loss of Cindy. We decided that all of us at the Wikimedia Conference could choose to continue the conversations about the future of the movement Cindy cared so much about, as well as spending our time here to remember and celebrate her. She will be greatly missed. You can share your condolences and memories of Cynthia on her user talk page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Cindamuse ). On behalf of the whole Affiliations Committee, and the other community members gathered here in Berlin: Carlos Colina, Chair, Wikimedia Affiliations Committee Bence Damokos, Outgoing chair, Wikimedia Affiliations Committee _______________________________________________ Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l

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