Hi, everyone.
I just wanted to let you know, so you could mark your calendars if
interested, that the May IRC office hour to discuss VisualEditor will be
held on Monday the 19th at 1800 UTC. (See
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours for time conversion links.)
The log will be posted on meta after the office hour completes. You'll find
it, along with logs for older office hours on the topic, at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:VisualEditor_office_hours_logs
Please see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours for more
information on what office hours and how to join in.
Hope to see you there. :)
Thanks!
Maggie
--
Maggie Dennis
Senior Community Advocate
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Hi, guys.
The WMF Incoming Executive Director Lila Tretikov will be hosting an office
hour on IRC starting at 2330 UTC on Wednesday 5/21 and ending at 0030 on
Thursday 5/22. (See
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?hour=23&min=30&sec=0&d…
time conversion links.)
The log will be posted after the office hour completes.
For more information about office hours, including how to join, please see
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours
Hope to see you there!
Best,
Maggie
--
Maggie Dennis
Senior Community Advocate
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
[x-posted]
Hello,
The Wikimedia Language Engineering team will be hosting the next
monthly IRC office hour on Wednesday, May 21 2014 at 1700 UTC on
#wikimedia-office. The event is delayed this month as the team was
traveling.
In this office hour we will be discussing about our recent work, which
has mostly been around the upcoming first release of the Content
Translation tool[1]. We will also be taking questions during the
session.
Please see below for event details and local time. See you at the office hour.
Thanks
Runa
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation
Monthly IRC Office Hour:
==================
# Date: May 21, 2014 (Wednesday)
# Time: 1700 UTC/1000PDT (Check local time:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20140521T1700)
# IRC channel: #wikimedia-office
# Agenda:
1. Content Translation project updates
2. Q & A (Questions can be sent to me ahead of the event)
--
Language Engineering - Outreach and QA Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation
hi Pine,
this is an excellent point, and I believe there are definitely too few
systematic studies on the topic, as well as targeted programs.
<blatant promotion mode on>
In my book, "Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia", which has
left the press last week, I have a whole chapter ("Between Anarchy and
Bureaucracy: Wikimedia Governance") dedicated to issues of governance and
internal leadership.
http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=24010
Unfortunately, Google Books preview has most of the pages limited (and
Stanford University Press is not too keen on open access of their
publications, sadly).
http://books.google.pl/books?id=hBpuAwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA178&dq=jemielniak%20comm…
</blatant promotion mode off>
best,
dariusz "pundit"
On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 7:12 AM, ENWP Pine <deyntestiss(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> I've heard the word "leadership" used a lot in WMF, synonymously with
> "management" in my experience. That makes sense in a somewhat hierarchical
> organization like WMF, although this model has received some criticism from
> the community for allegedly excessive top-down thinking. I'm not familiar
> enough with the culture in the WMF Office to comment about its strengths
> and weaknesses, but I would like to ask questions about leadership in the
> community.
>
> In the community, which is diffuse and where roles are highly flexible,
> there have been some studies done done about leadership but the ones I know
> about usually focus on hierarchies within the community, especially how
> people get chosen for administrator roles on-wiki. As we are thinking about
> our online culture, we can be thinking about movement leadership. Who are
> the leaders, how are they trained, how are they selected, what do they do,
> what makes them effective, and how can they be given ongoing support and
> training? I think many of us would agree that adminship and leadership are
> not always synonymous, and there are many ways that people exercise
> leadership in non-hierarchical ways.
>
> I hear frequently about stress from members of English Wikipedia's Arbcom,
> and I hope WMF is thinking about how to train and support people who get
> chosen for such visible, important, and often stressful volunteer roles.
>
> I would also like to point out that Wikimedia is developing training
> materials for leaders of chapters and programs.
>
> Is there anyone at WMF who is taking a holistic view of community
> leadership and how to understand, train and support it in ways that support
> the strategic plan goals?
>
> Training that might be relevant could include how to create friendly
> spaces online,
> resolve online conflicts, engage in cross-cultural communication,
> encourage strategic thinking, influence change, and maintain morale. I
> think a series of five-minute training modules could be helpful for online
> and offline volunteers, along with dedicating some Program & Evaluation or
> Research time to understanding leadership in the non-hierarchical
> community. These initiatives could help with encouraging teamwork and
> collaboration online by influencing and training "leaders".
>
> I would also be interested in hearing about how WMF thinks about
> "leadership" internally, since there seems to be some community feeling
> that WMF's thinking about leadership is incompatible with the community's.
> I don't have an opinion but I would like to be more informed, and hopefully
> encourage WMF to think about how the organization as a whole interacts with
> the community.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Pine
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
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--
__________________________
dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak
profesor zarządzania
kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego
i centrum badawczego CROW
Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego
http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl
członek Akademii Młodych Uczonych Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Hi all,
I've heard the word "leadership" used a lot in WMF, synonymously with "management" in my experience. That makes sense in a somewhat hierarchical organization like WMF, although this model has received some criticism from the community for allegedly excessive top-down thinking. I'm not familiar enough with the culture in the WMF Office to comment about its strengths and weaknesses, but I would like to ask questions about leadership in the community.
In the community, which is diffuse and where roles are highly flexible, there have been some studies done done about leadership but the ones I know about usually focus on hierarchies within the community, especially how people get chosen for administrator roles on-wiki. As we are thinking about our online culture, we can be thinking about movement leadership. Who are the leaders, how are they trained, how are they selected, what do they do, what makes them effective, and how can they be given ongoing support and training? I think many of us would agree that adminship and leadership are not always synonymous, and there are many ways that people exercise leadership in non-hierarchical ways.
I hear frequently about stress from members of English Wikipedia's Arbcom, and I hope WMF is thinking about how to train and support people who get chosen for such visible, important, and often stressful volunteer roles.
I would also like to point out that Wikimedia is developing training materials for leaders of chapters and programs.
Is there anyone at WMF who is taking a holistic view of community leadership and how to understand, train and support it in ways that support the strategic plan goals?
Training that might be relevant could include how to create friendly spaces online,
resolve online conflicts, engage in cross-cultural communication, encourage strategic thinking, influence change, and maintain morale. I think a series of five-minute training modules could be helpful for online and offline volunteers, along with dedicating some Program & Evaluation or Research time to understanding leadership in the non-hierarchical community. These initiatives could help with encouraging teamwork and collaboration online by influencing and training "leaders".
I would also be interested in hearing about how WMF thinks about "leadership" internally, since there seems to be some community feeling that WMF's thinking about leadership is incompatible with the community's. I don't have an opinion but I would like to be more informed, and hopefully encourage WMF to think about how the organization as a whole interacts with the community.
Thanks,
Pine
Have a look at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Learning_patterns/Safe_space_policy
Making our *online* culture be friendly has turned out to be a big challenge. We have lots of due process and vague definitions for civility, so pushing out bad actors and keeping good citizens feeling somewhat protected from personal attacks can be surprisingly difficult. Not surprisingly, good people leave.
Pine
Hello all,
I had a discussion with Fabrice about how a culture of Kindness and Fabrice also made a submission for Wikimania about it: https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/A_Culture_of_Kindness
In the past years I notice very much how easy discussions can go in the wrong direction as all the facial expressions and intonation are lost when users write a message on a talk page. Many many times this goes wrong, and users have a different interpretation of what someone else said what causes a fight on the wiki. If users are smart they find out that in fact the difference between them is very small with (usually) only a very slight difference in focus, but in general they agree with each other, but they don't realize that on the moment of the discussion. (If users with good will aren't that smart to discover that, such can grow out to a fighting situation for many years.) If I estimate I would say at least 50% of all troubled discussions are causes by miscommunication as the result of words being read differently as result of missing facial expressions and intonation what most people are used to have in the communication with people around them.
If certain users are deaf, autistic or dyslectic, or have such background, this is even worsened.
For some years I say that if I can follow a training to improve textual communication to better understand how things are perceived, I really like to follow such training. As I don't know of any, I started to figure out and collect what communication mistakes are made what cause troubles between users with the intention of creating a guide for users, to let them understand why some communication gives worse results.
Romaine
Hey,
We are pleased to announce that Wikimedia Israel been accepted to the
Google Grants program. Google Grants is an in-kind advertising program that
awards free online advertising to nonprofits via Google AdWords up to
10,000$ per month.
This grant will help Wikimedia Israel to uses another way to reach people
in Israel and to invite them to learn about Wikipedia, attends editing
workshops and to donate to Wikipedia.
Google is a longtime supporter of Wikimedia Israel – They sponsored Wiki
Loves Monuments on 2012 and 2013 and hosted many Wikimedia Israel's events
at their Google Campus in Tel Aviv (Hackathons and community meet-ups).
P.S. Happy 66th Israel's Independence Day!
*Regards,Itzik Edri*
Chairperson, Wikimedia Israel
+972-(0)-54-5878078 | http://www.wikimedia.org.il
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment!