Hi everyone,
I was just curious, I did not see the survey results for the 2012
survey, and it seems there has not been any general editor surveys since
then (with the exception of the more narrowly focused Global South User
Survey), I was wondering if there was any reason for this lack of
surveys and for the lack of 2012 survey results (perhaps some long
policy discussion lost in the bowels of the mailing list)
Rand McRanderson
Dear friends and colleagues,
Many of who have already heard from Jessie in multiple ways, but for those
who haven't: Jessie Wild, who currently heads the Learning and Evaluation
team in the Grantmaking department at WMF, is leaving for a year's
fellowship with Ideo.[1] Her last day at the Foundation is tomorrow.
We are going to miss her. Jessie has been an extraordinary and integral
part of WMF for the last four years, and demonstrated her initiative,
insight and leadership in each of the positions she’s ably held here. For
many of you, you may remember Jessie's first role was part of the
consultant team working on the 5 year strategy. Most recently and
importantly, she’s led the Learning and Evaluation team in the past year to
do some significant baseline research and impact analyses of our grants and
programs across the movement. This is work that lays the foundation for a
great deal of our strategic vision and direction going forward. Thank you
so much, Jessie, for all your strategic leadership, but even more: thank
you for who you are, and the heart you’ve always brought to your team, WMF
and the communities we support.
We are hoping that Jessie will rejoin us when she’s completed this
brilliant opportunity at IDEO (she’s one of four chosen from over 450
applicants!). However, the work we are doing with all of you on impact and
strategic outcomes for the movement is urgent and will need to be ramped up
even further over this year. We will be opening up this position to lead
the L&E team soon, and keep you posted on it.
Jessie, thank you again for all your manifold contributions.
Warmly,
Anasuya
[1] http://www.ideo.org/fellows
--
*Anasuya SenguptaSenior Director of GrantmakingWikimedia Foundation*
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
Support Wikimedia <https://donate.wikimedia.org/>
Hi all,
After working on an article on English Wikipedia, I came to realise that it
might be useful if we had a slideshow feature for media for use in articles.
I was informed that Hebrew Wikipedia has a fantastic slideshow template
that can be used in articles.[1] The slideshow is created with this
template.[2]
The design is very sleek and it would no doubt be a fantastic addition to
all Wikipedias.
I've left a message for the person responsible for this template on he.wp
asking if they can help create it for English Wikipedia, but I have been
informed that they are basically semi-retired/on extended wikibreak.
Would anyone out there like to take this on board and get it created for
English Wikipedia at the earliest convenience. It can be tested live on the
article I am working on at the moment if need be.[3]
Cheers
Russavia
[1]
https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A2%D7%96%D7%A8%D7%94:%D7%9E%D7%A6%D7%92%D…
:
[2]
https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%AA:%D7%9E%D7%A6%D…
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobrolet_(low-cost_airline)
Hi all,
As we announced earlier this month[1], September is the month to apply for
an Individual Engagement Grant[2]. The deadline to submit a proposal is
September 30.
To help you turn your ideas and projects into successful proposals, we’re
hosting a few IdeaLab Proposal Clinics in Hangouts and IRC this month.[3]
The first one took place on September 16. Newcomers had a chance to talk to
current and past grantees, as well as WMF Grantmaking staff, to workshop
ideas and strengthen their proposals.
If you have an idea you would like to submit, but feel unsure about how to
draft or finalize your proposal, join a session! There are three events
left before the deadline:
* IRC office hours in #wikimedia-office - Sept 23, 1600 UTC (Tuesday)
* Hangout - Sept 25, 1700 UTC (Thursday) [4]
* Hangout - Sept 28, 1700 UTC (Sunday) [5]
Join us next week to discuss your ideas, and bring any questions you have
about IEG!
Cheers,
Siko
[1]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-September/074239.html
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Events#Upcoming_events
[4]IdeaLab Clinic II. Join via Hangout:
https://plus.google.com/events/cvk8hivoih04ifc6pp3sl0se6s8?hl
[5] IdeaLab Clinic III. Join via Hangout:
https://plus.google.com/events/c82527nlv8jhkv17j963gs9gp6s?hl
--
Siko Bouterse
Head of Individual Grants
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org
*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. *
*Donate <https://donate.wikimedia.org> or click the "edit" button today,
and help us make it a reality!*
Lsjbot has now completed its run of generating articles for all species,
with 310 000 on plants, making the total number generated above 1 300
000 (source used: Catalogue of Life). With Naskobot, having earlier
generated some 85 000 articles on Swedish lakes and French communes
etc., the total botgenerated articles on svwp are now 1,4 M
The botgenerating efforts have received overwhelmingly positive feedback
from the svwp community, with comments like:
*for editors it has become more stimulating writing new articles on
related subjects. When we write of a place in Sweden we know that all
mentioned lakes have articles, making the article better and more
correct (no lakes mentioned are spelled incorrectly any longer). Also
photo safaris are more fun when all lakes, even very small ones, are
relevant to take photos of and include in articles
*experts are more attracted participating when they are guided to the
stub from Google. Also we get feedback it is much easier to enter
information on Wikipedia when the base skeleton is there already
(taxobox, category, links in wikidata, picture, base sourceref). We see
an increasing number of University classes in biology given he
assignment to write (expand) articles on (not so known) species
We are also gladdened by the hard numbers. Reader accesses show a
healthy increase even from our already high number. And a trend of a
slight decrease of editors has now turned into an increase. We can not
say for certain why and it could be temporary but we believe the
botgenerated articles has a part of this positive development.
Encouraged by this, we will now start what we call Bot Academy. A dozen
of our experienced editors will, with the support from WMSE, learn more
of running bots. First by sessions on basics, common knowledge stuff, in
order for us to be able to use bot as a complement in our editing
efforts. And after that we will have sessions for advanced use, taking
in the learning from Lsjbot and Naskobot, in order to see if also we
can find areas where we from excellent sources can generate articles.
For 2015 we are contemplating the following botgenerating efforts
*lsj (sverker) will support other versions interested to run Lsjbot. He
is now in discussion with Farsi and Arabic wp, where there are some
interesting technical challenges related to the different alphabeticscript
*we will scan best practices of bot generation on other versions (it,
nl, id, vt, serbocroatia, farsi, ru etc) (it seems we have nothing to
learn of this from the biggest seven...)
*lsj will look into using the database used by Swedish libraries, with
info of authors and books. Would it be feasible to generate articles on
authors?
*for myself I am continuing my initiative with the aim of fully
integrate 100000 article of Swedish geographic entities with wikidata,
in order to by the end to generate, if wanted, up to 100000 articles
related to Swedish geography on 200 other versions. There is a lot
needed of quality improvement of the articles first and also the
Wikidata must get better before this can work, but perhaps it will be
possible to get this going for a subset of articles in 2015 even if the
full set will take some years longer before being ready to deploy
Anders
for examples, press "slumpartikel" (random artiicle) on
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Huvudsida
In the recent discussion of editor engagement effectiveness on
wiki-research-l, the question of Flow's affect on talk page wikitext
practice arose. I would like to know whether anyone shares my concern that
eliminating wikitext talk pages will remove what has, for the past few
terabytes of edits, served the same purpose as the "sandbox" pages which we
encourage new editors to practice with.
Legoktm just reminded me of something I've been meaning to ask for a
while. I like to keep up-to-date with blogs that feature discussions
about Wikipedia. What I've found so far I've kept track of by
following with my own blog. If you care enough to google it, keep in
mind that I'm the guy who isn't a Christian AM radio station. Even
after I did some of my own google jockeying, I missed David's and no
doubt others.
Does anyone know of a list of blogs covering Wikimedia issues that is
kept relatively current either onwiki or elsewhere? I suspect others
might find it useful, so if such a thing doesn't exist yet I'll create
it myself.
Hit me up at wllm(a)wllm.com if you'd prefer to discuss offlist.
Since no one 's told me I can't promote other people's blogs yet,
here's a link to David's: http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/. He's a
great blogger with a unique, entertaining voice. Almost required
reading for the Wikipedianz4Life crowd.
Deuces.
,Wil