Dear Wikimedia Colleagues:
As you may know, Annual Plan Grants are funds allocated to support an
organization’s annual plan to achieve mission objectives, and the Funds
Dissemination Committee (FDC) is a group of Wikimedians who make
recommendations to the WMF Board about Annual Plan Grant (APG) proposals.
Proposals to the APG program are accepted twice each year, in April and
October. You may read more about the APG process and upcoming milestones
here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Information.
Today, we are pleased to confirm that six of the seven organizations that
submitted letters of intent for 2014-2015 Round 2 of the APG process are
eligible to submit proposal forms for 2014-2015 Round 2 by the upcoming *1
April 2015* proposal form due date. Only eligible organizations that have
already submitted letters of intent will be able to submit proposal forms
using their proposal hub pages that were created at the time the letters
were submitted.
The eligible organizations are The Centre for Internet and Society,
Wikimedia Armenia, Wikimédia France, Wikimedia Italia, Wikimedia Norge, and
Wikimedia South Africa. One organization that submitted a letter of intent
for 2014-2015 Round 2 withdrew its intent to apply on 10 March: Wikimedia
Suomi. You may view a detailed summary of how eligibility was determined
here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Eligibility/2014-2015_round2
.
Proposal forms for Annual Plan Grants will be due by 1 April 2015. Here are
some upcoming milestones:
* Eligibility confirmed: 15 March 2015
** Proposals due: by 1 April 2015*
* Community review: 1 April 2015 - 30 April 2015
* Staff assessments published: by 8 May 2015
* FDC deliberations: middle of May 2015
* FDC recommendations published: by 1 June 2015
* Board decision: by 1 July 2015
* Start of new grant terms: 1 July 2015
All eligible organizations must continue to comply with any agreements with
WMF and meet all requirements listed in column (T) of the eligibility
checklist in order to maintain eligibility until and after a grant is
received, and the organization may not be able to receive a grant (or funds
may be withheld) if the organization stops being eligible at any point. *Once
proposal forms are submitted, a 30-day public review period will begin on **1
April 2015, when comments on the proposal forms are considered as an
important input into the FDC process. *
We encourage you to contact FDCSupport(a)wikimedia.org with any questions
about the eligibility process or the proposal process. If you have general
questions or concerns, you may also post them here on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Comments.
Best regards from FDC staff!
Winifred Olliff
Program Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
--
Winifred Olliff
Program Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:BLP_overwrites
A quick reminder about this report which helps vandalism patrollers
for the English Wikipedia spot when images used in Wikipedia
biographies are being overwritten by "newbie" accounts. I recommend
more admins add the report to their watch-list. It is not too much of
a pest, as in a day it tends to change between 4 to 10 times with
normally only 1 or 2 new images being added.
The report has been running continuously on Labs for 5 months, changes
being added to the on-wiki report within 5 minutes of upload. In that
time there has not been another "revenge porn" type attack. Commons
remains open for contributors to overwrite images and vandalism can
happen. Based on this report a number of less desirable image
overwrites have been promptly spotted and reverted, mostly with the
only action being an explanation to the uploader of the the Commons
overwriting policy as they were acting in good-faith.[1]
I consider the report useful and very stable, the only recent change
being to filter out svg format images as this was adding a lot of
flags and symbols used in BLPs that have not been an issue to date.
The most active Commons patrollers I have noticed taking action on
reported images being Deniss and Mattbuck; so hats off to them for
lots of useful admin work. :-)
If there are other Wikipedias that may benefit from a similar report,
please drop me a note on Commons or email me.
P.S. If haphazard copyright violations being uploaded from Flickr have
worried you, then you may enjoy taking a look at my "Flickrstreams of
concern" report which has a more than 50% hit rate for identifying
problem sources that may need to be black-listed.[2]
Links:
1. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Overwriting_existing_files
2. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Faebot/Flickrstreams_of_concern
Cheers,
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
On 20 October 2014 at 08:51, Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Based on discussion with 99of9 at
> <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:F%C3%A6/BLP_overwrites#Boundar…>
> the report has been changed to include editors with up to 1000 edits
> on Commons and 2000 edits on Wikipedia. The images list has jumped to
> 20 from 6, still a small and manageable list for new image patrollers.
> A previous minor change was to how often the report runs - checks are
> made every 5 minutes now, previously it was every 15.
>
> If you would like to see other improvements, please raise suggestions
> on the above talk page and I would be happy to discuss what would be
> sensible to include or adapt.
>
> Fae
>
> On 17 October 2014 08:37, Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> Due to recent vandalism a new report on Commons for page patrollers
>> has been started at
>> <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:F%C3%A6/BLP_overwrites>.
>>
>> This page shows images actively used on English Wikipedia biography
>> articles, where a new upload has overwritten the original by a
>> "newbie"* account. The report should be automatically refreshed within
>> 15 minutes of a new image upload/overwrite of this type.
>>
>> Instances of deliberate image vandalism of this type are rare, but
>> important to handle promptly. If you have suggestions for improvement
>> of this report, I would be happy to do my best to accommodate them.
>>
>> Notes:
>> * For convenience newbie accounts have been arbitrarily taken as
>> accounts with fewer than 200 edits on the English Wikipedia or fewer
>> than 100 edits on Wikimedia Commons.
>> * The report is maintained by Faebot and should be considered in a
>> draft state as it may be moved to a more 'official' location or be
>> taken on by more skilled bot operators.
The Wikimedia Nederland chapter report on January and February is available
on meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederla…
It is also included in this message as plain text.
Sandra Rientjes
Directeur/Executive Director Wikimedia Nederland
tel. (+31) (0)30 3200238
mob. (+31) (0)6 31786379
www.wikimedia.nl
*Postadres*: * Bezoekadres:*
Postbus 167 Mariaplaats 3
3500 AD Utrecht Utrecht
==Community and Participation==
====Erasmus Prize awarded to Wikipedia community====
On 15 January (the 14th birthday of Wikipedia) the Erasmus Prize Foundation
announced during a seminar in Amsterdam that Wikipedia will receive the
Erasmus Prize 2015. The prize is awarded annually to a person or
institution that has made an exceptional contribution to culture, society
or social science. Wikipedia was chosen because the Internet encyclopedia
provides worldwide access to knowledge in open and democratic way. The
award goes specifically to the international Wikipedia community, the
volunteers behind Wikipedia. Wikimedia Nederland hopes that this
prestigious award will open doors for new partnerships and encourage more
people to become involved. We are planning a program of activities
throughout the year.
====New Years Reception====
Saturday, January 17th the Institute for Vision and Sound hosted Wikimedia
Nederland's annual New Year's reception. The meeting was attended by more
than 80 members, donors, Wikipedians and other interested parties. The day
was opened by Jan Müller (Managing Director of Vision and Sound). The
guests could explore the Sound and Vision Experience or join a tour of the
building
==== Video on Wikipedia ====
After our New Years reception at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and
Vision, we received a number of questions about the use of video on
Wikipedia. We built a small project page on our local chapter Wiki with a
few instructional videos on how to upload and use video. The community
reacted with enthusiasm and created a new help page out of this
projectpage. Some volunteers became more actively involved with trying to
find open video content online to use on Wikipedia.
==Content==
===== Education program - call for translation requests =====
The education program has started with a pilot project on translations.
Interns from ITV (a school for interpreters and translators) can translate
selected articles from French, German, Spanish, Italian, English and
Russian to Dutch. These interns will translated articles requested by the
community. In January, a call for translation requests was posted and got
a very positive response from the community. The first intern will start in
April and will translate articles from German into Dutch.
===== World War II =====
A number of meetings took place with archives that have collections related
to WWII. We expect to see some media donations over the next few months. We
are also working with our partner NIOD (the national institute for war,
conflict and genocide research) to prepare an editathon on the role of
women during the Second World War. Work is also continuing on a
Verzetskranten project about the underground press during World War II.
This is a cooperation between NIOD, the National Library and Wikimedia
Nederland. The aim is to improve the number and quality of articles about
illegal newspapers on Wikipedia, and then use these to provide extra
content to the National Library's database holding the digitized version of
the actual newspapers.
===== Project Nature =====
The Museum for Natural History Naturalis has started the search for a
Wikipedian in Residence. The volunteers involved in project nature are
starting work on processing a content donation by De Vlinderstichting
(Butterfly Foundation). Information on and images of the dragonfly species
of the Netherlands was released under a Creative Commons licence.
===== Gendergap =====
Preparations have begun for the Gendergap project. Plan is to have a
projectplan written in April. We are exploring possibilities and we are
talking to possible partners for our gendergap project. At the same time,
we are preparing activities for the international Women's day in March. We
were approached by the feminist magazine Opzij, who want to increase the
number of articles about women on Dutch Wikipedia. We are cooperating with
them in an editathon at their offices on March 9. We hope this will be the
start of longer cooperation.
===== GLAM-WIKI 2015 =====
GLAM-WIKI 2015 is organized by WMNL and will take place in The Hague on
April 10 -12. The venue will be the National Library and National
Archive. The programme committee and the WMNL office are busy preparing
this event. A call for proposals was published, the scholarship request
form made available, ticket sales have started.s. The programme committee
is now reviewing the proposals.
==== Catharijne Convent Museum for religious art donates high resolution
images====
On 24 February, more than 2,500 high-resolution photos of the artifacts
from the permanent collection of the Museum Catharijneconvent were added to
the database of Wikipedia.To encourage wikipedians and interested
researchers to use the collection, the museum and Wikimedia Nederland are
going to organize various activities, focusing on editing and writing
articles on Wikipedia. On March 12, the first editathon will take place.
==Communication and publicity==
==== Campaign ====
In the final months of 2014 we worked on preparing a campaign to increase
understanding among the general public about some basic facts concerning
Wikipedia, in particular that it is written entirely by volunteers The
social media campaign started in February. M ore about the results in next
month's update.
==== Newsletter ====
The WMNL newsletters for January and February were sent out to the
subscribers.
==Governance and organization==
On February 16, Sandra Fauconnier started work as project coordinator at
the WMNL office. She previously worked as a Wikipedian in Residence.
Sebastiaan ter Burg has left the WMNL team as of March 1.
_______________________________________________
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
Hello everyone,
Apologies for cross posting.
Wikimedia UK, along with the Open Coalition <http://open-coalition.org/>
and Demos <http://www.demos.co.uk/>, are developing a project called "From
ticks to clicks - understanding and building digital democracy".
We have just made a proposal
<https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/elections/entries/from-ticks-to-cli…>
to the Knight News Challenge and we would really appreciate your feedback
and support. If you can spare just a couple of minutes please do take a
look and let us know what you think. Comments on the site, rather than
here, are especially appreciated!
With thanks and regards,
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.*
Dear Wikimedians,
This is to bring to your notice the proposed change in leadership of the
CIS-A2K Program. The current Program Director, T. Vishnu Vardhan will be
transitioning by June 2015, due to health and personal concerns.
As many of you know, Vishnu has led the A2K Programme since February
2013. We at CIS are working with Vishnu and the rest of the A2K team to
ensure smooth transition so that the momentum of the A2K program does
not lose pace.
We will soon be putting out an Advertisement for the next CIS-A2K
Program Director and will involve the community members and the
Wikimedia India in the selection process.
Best regards,
--
Subhashish Panigrahi
Access To Knowledge (CIS-A2K)
Centre for Internet and Society
@psubhashish / https://cis-india.org
We know NSA wants Wikipedia data, as Wikipedia is listed in one of the
NSA slides:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KS8-001.jpg
That slide is about HTTP, and the tech staff are moving the
user/reader base to HTTPS.
As we learn more about the NSA programs, we need to consider vectors
other than HTTP for the NSA to obtain the data they want. And the
userbase needs to be aware of the current risks.
One question from the "Dells are backdored"[sic] thread that is worth
separate consideration is:
Are the Wikimedia transit links encrypted, especially for database replication?
MySQL has replication over SSL, so I assume the answer is Yes.
If not, is this necessary or useful, and feasible ?
However we also need to consider that SSL and other encryption may be
useless against NSA/etc, which means replicating non-public data
should be avoided wherever possible, as it becomes a single point of
failure.
Given how public our system is, we don't have a lot of non-public
data, so we might be able to design the architecture so that
information isnt replicated, and also ensure it isnt accessed over
insecure links. I think the only parts of the dataset that are
private & valuable are
* passwords/login cookies,
* checkuser info - IPs and useragents,
* WMF analytics, which includes readers iirc, and
* hidden/deleted edits
* private wikis and mailing lists
Have I missed any?
Are passwords and/or checkuser info replicated?
Is there a data policy on WMF analytics data which prevents it flowing
over insecure links, and limits what is collected and ensures
destruction of the data within reasonable timeframes? i.e. how about
not using cookies to track analytics of readers who are on HTTP
instead of HTTPS?
The private wikis can be restricted to https, depending on the value
of the data on those wikis in the wrong hands. The private mailing
lists will be harder to secure, and at least the English Wikipedia
arbcom list contain a lot of valuable data about contributors.
Regarding hidden/deleted edits, the replication isnt the only source
of this data. All edits are also exposed via Recent Changes
(https/api/etc) as they occur, and the value of these edits is
determined by the fact they are hidden afterwards (e.g. don't appear
in dumps). Is there any way to control who is effectively capturing
all edits via Recent Changes?
--
John Vandenberg
