Rachel diCerbo wrote:
>... as the new Director of Community Engagement in Product
> I'm looking forward to getting to know you and others within
> this community.
Welcome, Rachel! I am so glad they hired you to do [1].
which as I'm sure most people reading this know, is the engineering
effort with the most agile story points, or, as we used to say before
statisticians became data scientists, has the maximum utility function
for critical path goals, those being the only Foundation strategic
objectives which have not been satisfactorily met, namely attracting
additional editors. I have been trying to measure the ways Wikimedians
think we can best meet those goals, and my preliminary results are
promising but I wish your team would do the task because the last time
I tried something like this, the outcome was unsatisfactory. I will
gladly let you take my survey if you want to. Its is at [2]. The
evolution of the ranking of its components over time never fails to
amuse me, so please forgive me if it does not interest you.
If you step back and ask why attracting additional editors is
important, then if your logic is anything like mine, and I believe
correct logic is objective essentially for the same reason that 1+1
always equals 2, you will quickly come to the conclusion that [3]
needs to be done the most. So, trying to automate general accuracy
review is what was called "truth maintenance" around Boston in the
late 1980s, and there are still "truth maintenance systems" associated
with automatic theorem proving because of a functional isomorphism not
unlike the isomorphism between reading and pronunciation tutors, but I
digress. The point is that automating accuracy review is a lot more
like negotiation of requirements in the agile scrum methodology than
truth maintenance of even second order predicate calculus, because
humans are involved.[4]
Please let me know your thoughts on whether a survey or accuracy
review system would engage the community more. I believe that both
would go further towards meeting the previously unresolved goals of
the Foundation more than any other engineering effort undertaken so
far to improve community engagement.
Best regards,
James Salsman
[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/2014-15_Goals#Community…
[2] http://www.allourideas.org/wmfcsdraft
[3] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Engineering/2014-15_Goals#Accu…
[4] Khan, U.Z., Wahab, F., & Saeed, S. (2014). Integration of Scrum
with Win-Win requirements negotiation model, Middle-East Journal of
Scientific Research, 19(1), 101–104.
doi:10.5829/idosi.mejsr.2014.19.1.11770.
http://www.idosi.org/mejsr/mejsr19(1)14/18.pdf
Hi there,
We've scheduled the August and September IRC office hours to discuss
VisualEditor, to be held on Thursday 14 August at 900 UTC and on Thursday
18 September at 1600 UTC, and we hope you'll join us. Please see
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours for time conversions and
more information.
The logs will be posted on meta after the office hour. You'll find them
along with logs for older office hours on the topic, at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:VisualEditor_office_hours_logs
Thank you for participating in this product development process. By the
way, hello: I haven't spoken much just yet, but as the new Director of
Community Engagement in Product I'm looking forward to getting to know you
and others within this community.
Cheers,
Rachel
--
Rachel diCerbo
Director of Community Engagement (Product)
Wikimedia Foundation
Rdicerb (WMF) <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:Rdicerb_%28WMF%29>
@a_rachel <https://twitter.com/a_rachel>
The Wikimedia Research Hackathon on August 6 and 7 takes place parallel to
the general Wikimania Hackathon in London.
Wikimania Hackathon information is available at
https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hackathon
Research Hackathon information is available at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Labs2/Hackathons/August_6-7th,_2014
>From the Research Hackathon info page: this "is an opportunity for anyone
interested in research on wikis, Wikipedia, and other open collaborations
to meet, share ideas, and work together. It's being organized by
researchers in academia and the Wikimedia Foundation, but we want anyone
interested in research to participate. Whether or not you consider yourself
a researcher, or would ever want to be one, come with questions, answers,
data, code, crazy ideas... or just your insatiable curiosity."
Local participation will occur at Wikimania London and in Philadelphia, PA,
US. Remote participation is possible and will include researchers and
community members globally.
Please see the Research Hackathon information page for scheduling and
sign-up details.
Further questions may be directed to Aaron Halfaker (ahalfaker(a)wikimedia.org)
or Leila Zia (leila(a)wikimedia.org).*
Pine
*A $1 fine will be imposed by Oliver Keyes on anyone who misspells Leila's
name or misdirects emails to the WMF Executive Director.
While we're talking about technology issues on WIkimedia-l, I'd like to say
that now that I've worked my way over a few speedbumps with mobile editing
I'm happy with the direction that mobile editing is going, so thank you
Mobile team.
Pine
(With apologies for cross-posting)
Hello everyone,
tl:dr - Wikimedia UK and Demos are looking to community-source a submission
to the Speaker's Commission on Digital Democracy and we need your help! Get
involved here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Connecting_knowledge_to_power:_the_future_o…>
Recently the Speaker of the House of Commons established a commission
<http://www.parliament.uk/business/commons/the-speaker/speakers-commission-o…>
to
investigate the opportunities digital technology can bring for
parliamentary democracy in the UK. This consultation is a public exercise
which attempts to explore various themes relating to digital democracy.
Wikimedia UK <https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Main_Page> and Demos
<http://www.demos.co.uk/>, working with Wikimedians, have been exploring
whether the norms and values of the Wikimedia community can be applied to
this kind of consultation, especially the consensus-based approach to
writing and enacting Wikipedia policy.
The experiment has been going well and led to a community-sourced
submission to the first theme which was looking at how technology can
facilitate better scrutiny of the work of Parliament. You can view this
submission here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Connecting_knowledge_to_power:_the_future_o….>.
The talk page is also worth a look as the discussion offered some really
useful insights into how the content was reached.
However, we need your help. The second theme of the consultation has now
been published and it is about digital representation. We would love for as
many people to take part in this exercise as possible. The Commission was
really appreciative of the efforts of the community first time around and
it would be great to come up with another excellent community-driven
submission. You can view the questions that are being asked, and
participate in creating the submission, here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Connecting_knowledge_to_power:_the_future_o…>
.
A third theme will follow in the next couple of months and a similar
approach will be taken then. Finally, once the Commission closes for
submissions, Demos and Wikimedia UK will write up a comprehensive report on
the process and what we have learned which we will, of course, make
available to the community.
Thank you for any and all help, it is very much appreciated.
Stevie
--
Stevie Benton
Head of External Relations
Wikimedia UK
+44 (0) 20 7065 0993 / +44 (0) 7803 505 173
@StevieBenton
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England
and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513.
Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street,
London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a
global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the
Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
*Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal
control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.*