I guess I see this as making it easier for people to generate files to put
on their ipod or for those with a limited ability to read who might not
have figured out more complicated solutions. Those who are blind have
likely already figured out good solutions. It is those of us who are
sighted that need the help.
I know that I personally would find such a button helpful. But through a
great many steps I could likely figure out a work around. People prefer
stuff that is simple.
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
While human read articles are great they quickly become out of date and are
available for only a fraction of our articles.
Why don't we have a "Listen" button beside our read button that when
clicked will read the article for the person in question?
There are 37 open source text-to-speech listed here
http://www.findbestopensource.com/tagged/text-to-speech. Some of them
support up to 50 languages. This of course would require the support of the
Wikimedia Foundation.
I guess we could also do it with a gadget initially. Thoughts?
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
Dear Wikimedians,
This is my last day as the CIS-A2K Program Director.
The last 2 years and 3 months have been immensely exciting with tons of
learning and work!
I have loved meeting many Wikimedians, face to face, across the length and
breadth of India. The interactions I had with many of the Wikimedians in
India have been immensely useful to my learning.
The diversity of our community and the Wikimedia projects in India is so
rich and intricate - I wish I could map out my entire set of impressions,
to only give a slight glimpse of it!!
Signing off as the Program Director for now. See you on-wiki, here on the
lists and in real life whenever our paths cross.
A quick update: The next A2K Program Director selection is under process
and hopefully we should all be able to welcome the new incumbent in June,
2015. Until then the A2K team is being internally monitored by CIS
leadership.
Best wishes,
Vishnu
What is the status of the Wiki Towns effort? I first heard of it at Wikimania 2012, but looking at the list of actual projects, it appears to have had limited appeal. Noting also that in a couple of cases there were controversies.
I tracked down a "Wikitown" email list, but no reply to an inquiry there.
TIA for any info,
Don Osborn
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
[x-posted announcement]
Hello,
The next IRC office hour of the Language Engineering team of the Wikimedia
Foundation will be on May 5, 2015 (Tuesday) at 1430 UTC on
#wikimedia-office. We missed a few of our regular monthly office hours, but
from May onwards we will be back on schedule.
There has been significant progress around Content Translation[1] and it is
now available as a beta feature on several Wikipedias[2]. We’d love to hear
comments, suggestions and any feedback that will help us make this tool
better.
Please see below to check local time and event details. Questions can also
be sent to me ahead of the event.
Thanks
Runa
[1] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/04/08/the-new-content-translation-tool/
[2]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation/Languages#Available_lang…
Monthly IRC Office Hour:
==================
# Date: May 5, 2015 (Tuesday)
# Time: 1430 UTC (Check local time:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20150505T1430 )
# IRC channel: #wikimedia-office
--
Language Engineering - Outreach and QA Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation
Greetings,
*FINAL DAY: The candidacy submission phase ends at 23:59 UTC April 30 for
the FDC and FDC Ombudsperson.*
Additionally, the questions and discussion phase of the FDC elections will
begin soon, you are invited to begin submitting questions to the FDC
election
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/FDC_election…>
and FDC Ombudsperson election
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/FDC_Ombudspe…>
.
This year the Board and the FDC Staff are looking for a diverse set of
candidates from regions and projects that are traditionally
under-represented on the board and in the movement as well as candidates
with experience in technology, product or finance. To this end they
have published
letters
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Call_fo…>
describing
what they think is needed and, recognizing that those who know the
community the best are the community themselves, the election
committee is accepting
nominations
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015#Informa…>
for
community members you think should run and will reach out to those
nominated to provide them with information about the job and the election
process.
This year, elections are being held for the following roles:
*Board of Trustees*
The Board of Trustees is the decision-making body that is ultimately
responsible for the long term sustainability of the Foundation, so we value
wide input into its selection. There are three positions being filled.
More information about this role can be found at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Board_e….
*Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC)*
The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) makes recommendations about how to
allocate Wikimedia movement funds to eligible entities. There are five
positions being filled. More information about this role can be found at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/FDC_ele…
.
*Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) Ombud*
The FDC Ombud receives complaints and feedback about the FDC process,
investigates complaints at the request of the Board of Trustees, and
summarizes the investigations and feedback for the Board of Trustees on an
annual basis. One position is being filled. More information about this
role can be found at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/FDC_Omb…
.
The candidacy submission phase lasts from 00:00 UTC April 20 to 23:59 UTC
May 5 for the Board and from 00:00 UTC April 20 to 23:59 UTC April 30 for
the FDC and FDC Ombudsperson. This year, we are accepting both
self-nominations and nominations of others. More information on this
election and the nomination process can be found at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015.
Please feel free to post a note about the election on your project's
village pump. Any questions related to the election can be posted on the
talk page on Meta, or sent to the election committee's mailing list,
board-elections(a)wikimedia.org
On behalf of the Elections Committee,
-Gregory Varnum (User:Varnent)
Volunteer Coordinator, 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
Text on-wiki:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/MassMes…
Hi folks,
This is a response to Martin's note here:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-August/073936.html
.. and also a more general update on the next steps regarding disputes
about deployments. As you may have seen, Lila has also posted an
update to her talk page, here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:LilaTretikov#Working_Together
I want to use this opportunity to respond to Martin's and other
people's criticisms, and to talk about next steps from WMF’s
perspective following discussions with Lila and the team. I’m also
sending a copy of this note to all the stewards, to better involve
them in the process going forward.
I am -- genuinely -- sorry that this escalation occurred. We would
have preferred to avoid it.
I would like to recap how we find ourselves in this situation: As
early as July, we stated that the Wikimedia Foundation reserves the
right to determine the final configuration of the MediaViewer feature,
and we explicitly included MediaWiki: namespace hacks in that
statement. [1] When an admin implemented a hack to disable
MediaViewer, another local admin reverted the edit. The original admin
reinstated it. We then reverted it with a clear warning that we may
limit editability of the page. [2] The original admin reinstated the
hack. This is when we protected the page.
Because all admins have equal access to the MediaWiki: namespace,
short of desysopping, there are few mechanisms to actually prevent
edit wars about the user experience for millions of readers.
Desysopping actions could have gotten just as messy -- and we felt
that waiting for a "better hack" to come along (the likeliest eventual
outcome of doing nothing) or disabling the feature ourselves would not
be any better, either from a process or outcome standpoint.
Our processes clearly need to be improved to avoid these situations in
the future. We recognize that simply rejecting a community request
rather than resolving a conflict together is not the right answer.
We’ve been listening to feedback, and we’ve come to the following
conclusions:
- We intend to undertake a review of our present processes immediately
and propose a new approach that allows for feedback at more critical
and relevant junctures in the next 90 days. This will be a transparent
process that includes your voices.
- As the WMF, we need to improve the process for managing changes that
impact all users. That includes the MediaWiki: namespace. For WMF to
fulfill its role of leading consistent improvements to the user
experience across Wikimedia projects, we need to be able to review
code and manage deployments. This can be done in partnership with
trusted volunteers, but WMF needs to be able to make an ultimate
determination after receiving community feedback regarding production
changes that impact all users.
- We are prepared to unprotect MediaWiki:Common.js on German Wikipedia
and enter constructive, open-ended conversations about the way
forward, provided we can mutually agree to do so on the basis of the
current consistent configuration -- for now. We would like to request
a moratorium on any attempts to disable the feature during this
conflict resolution process. The goal would be to make a final,
cross-wiki determination regarding this specific feature, in
partnership with the community, within at most 90 days.
With regard to the German Wikipedia situation, we’d like to know if
stewards want to at all be involved in this process: In a situation
like this, it can be helpful to have a third party support the
conversation. Stewards are accountable to "valid community consensus
within the bounds of the Foundation's goals" [3], which seems to be
precisely the intersection of concerns at issue here. We would like to
suggest an IRC meeting with stewards ASAP to talk about the specific
question of stewards’ involvement, if any. If stewards prefer not to
be involved, we understand, but it's probably a good idea to have a
sync-up conversation regardless.
I hope we can move forward in good faith from here, and find better
ways to work together. As Lila has expressed, we believe there is a
need for a clear understanding of our role. It is as follows:
Managing software development, site configuration and deployment is a
core WMF responsibility. The community leads in the development of
content; the Wikimedia Foundation leads in the development of
technology.
Because these processes are deeply interdependent, we need to develop
better protocols for timely feedback and resolution of disagreements.
At the same time Lila’s and the Board’s statements make it very clear
that the WMF will not accept RfCs or votes as the sole determining
factor in global software deployments.
This means that technology and UX changes should not be decided by
vote or poll and then disabled at-will: where we disagree, we need to
talk to each other (and yes, that means a more judicious application
of RESOLVED WONTFIX on our end, as well!). We need to ensure a
process where the community voice is heard earlier at critical
junctions in the product development. All of this is consistent with
the principle of "shared power" articulated in the Guiding Principles
[4] approved by the Board of Trustees.
At the same time, as noted above and earlier, the superprotection
feature should be replaced with a better mechanism for code review and
deployment in the MediaWiki: namespace. This is discussed in [5] and
ideas and suggestions are welcome. Let’s be upfront about control
structures for production changes to avoid misunderstandings and
ambiguity in the future.
We are exploring options on how to improve dispute resolution
mechanisms -- whether it’s e.g. a standing working group or a better
protocol for responding to RfCs and engaging in discussions. We've
started a brainstorming page, here, which we hope will usefully inform
the process of conflict resolution regarding German Wikipedia, as
well, so we can arrive at a more concrete conflict resolution process
soon. Your thoughts/suggestions are welcome, so we can (in NPOV style)
look at different possibilities (e.g. workgroups, committees, votes,
surveys) that have been discussed in the past:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Engagement_(Product)/Process_ideas
We’re absolutely not saying that WMF simply wants to be able to
enforce its decisions: we completely understand there need to be
mechanisms for the community to influence decisions and outcomes at
all stages of the development and release of software. We need to
arrive at this process together.
Again, we are sorry that this escalation occurred - and we hope we can
move forward constructively from here.
Sincerely,
Erik
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_Diskussion:Meinungsbil…
[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki_Diskussion:Common.js&d…
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards_policy
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Guiding_Principles#Sha…
[5] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=69445
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Dear Wikimedians,
Today we had a meeting at the Foundation to announce changes in our Product
and Engineering team structure. They represent the outcome of many
conversations with people from across the Wikimedia community and within
the Foundation. These changes will organize our teams around the needs of
people they serve, and empower them to focus deeply on their audiences to
deliver great outcomes.
We’re bringing together our Product and Engineering departments to form new
audience teams, reporting to Damon Sicore, our VP of Engineering. We’re
grouping core research, architecture, performance, and security functions
together, and will begin the search for a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to
lead our engineering future. And we’re integrating support for Community
Engineering into the broader Community Engagement team. These changes are
effective today.
Earlier this year we set out some goals for our work at the Foundation,
described in our Call to Action
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/State_of_the_Wikimedia_Found…>
for 2015. These goals came out of conversations with you, and with
Foundation staff. You’ll see that the first thing we identified was the
need to improve our technology and execution. These goals focused on
defining commitments, data-driven decision making, support for community
engineering requests, and a commitment to engineering leadership.
The new changes reflect these commitments. We have organized our product
engineering around six teams each with unique audiences. This includes a
Community Tech team dedicated to supporting tools for core contributors, as
well as teams for Editing, Reading, Search & Discovery, Infrastructure, and
Fundraising Tech.
In particular, I wanted to share more about the plans for the Community
Tech team. The creation of this team is a direct response to community
requests for more technical support. Their mission is to understand and
support the technical needs of core contributors, including improved
support for expert-focused curation and moderation tools, bots, and other
features. Their mandate is to work closely with you, and the Community
Engagement department, to define their roadmap and deliverables. We are
hiring for a leader for this team, as well as additional engineers. We will
be looking within our communities to help. Until then, it will be incubated
under Toby Negrin, with support from Community Engagement.
We’re also committed to our long-term technology future. A new CTO will
support teams and functions dedicated to performance, architecture,
security, privacy, structured data, user experience, and research. Their
mandate is to keep Wikimedia fast, reliable, stable, and secure -- and to
support the Engineering team in their development of excellent products and
features.
You may notice there is no standalone Product department. We are moving
away from a matrix management structure. Instead, product managers,
designers, analysts, engineers, and others working together will report to
the same manager, who will report through to the VP of Engineering. This is
because we believe that everyone is responsible for user experience and
each team is ultimately responsible for delivering on the product vision
and a roadmap. It also gives teams ability to make decisions that are best
for their audiences, based on their user’s feedback. This represents a
maturation of our organization and processes, and will give each new teams
more focus, dedicated focus, and more support.
I want to thank everyone who has worked so hard to bring this new structure
together. Thank you to everyone in the community, for being thoughtful and
honest with your needs, criticisms and encouragements. Thank you to our
engineers, designers, researchers, and product managers, who have given us
extensive feedback about what works best for you. Thank you to our new team
managers and leads for stepping up into new roles. And thank you to Erik
and Damon, who have worked closely for many months to make this happen.
You can find more information about this new structure, the new teams,
their missions, and leadership, as well as other questions in a FAQ on
Metawiki
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Engineering_reorganiza…>.
We will update the Wikimedia Foundation site Staff page soon to reflect
these new teams.
~~~~Lila
Hey,
Don't worry, we indeed have a lot of time till the next elections, but as
this issue had been raised during the last elections - and we decided that
we can't change the rules few weeks before the elections, now I want to
raise the discussion enough time before.
According to the current rules [1], in order to influence and vote in the
elections, you need to be active editor, developer or WMF staff/contractor.
Last year this issue concern some of us. The foundation is not small
organizations as it been before, and by comparison, the number of people
participating in the elections every year is not high.
For example, last elections there were 1809 valid votes. By comparison, the
number of WMF staff this days is 218, what makes there voting power 12% of
the total voters last year. This consider to be a great amount of power
when we are talking about elections (In the last election you would have
around 650 votes in order to be elected...)
Wikimedia thematic organizations staff and contractors for example don't
have the same privilege to vote only because they are employees of the
movement, only if they are editors as well. The question - what make the
WMF staff different, and if this is not a little bit problematic that the
staff have such power to decide on their direct board, but in general - the
board of the whole movement.
Do we need to give the same privilege also to all the staff in our
movement?
Should we limited the elections to staff (both WMF and chapters) that are
active editors or developers as additional to their work in the movement?
I'll be happy to hear yours input.
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Vote_Qu…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Results
*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!