Dear all,
The Affiliations Commitee has approved the recognition[1] of the
Wikimedia Community Brazilian Group of Education and Research as a
Wikimedia User Group. The focus[2] of this new group is the integration
of the Brazilian and Lusophone academic community into the Wikimedia
movement, thus supporting the development of new projects, research,
contests, events and other activities.
Please, join us in welcoming the newest member of the family!
Parabéns e tudo de bom!
Carlos
1:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Wikimedi…
2:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Brazilian_Group_of_Education_and_…
I'm writing to get an answer (from anybody at the WMF) on the status of the WMF's policy access to private (i.e. IP, Browser, etc.) information. Each day thousands of people edit Wikipedia and deserve to know what measures, if any, are taken to avoid divulging to the wrong sort of people this sensitive information about them.
On 25 April last year, the board of trustees approved, in a non-public and scantily-documented meeting, a policy that accords Checkuser and Oversight and other statuses to "community" members appointed by a community process with essentially a mere two requirements: provide an email address, and assert that you are 18 or over. Name, address, NOT required. Is this truly an adequate way to protect the privacy interests of all those that edit Wikipedia? Well, I don't think so, but my purpose right now is to try to eliminate the ambiguity of what is actually occurring at this time.
One source of this ambiguity is the edit of the WMF's James Alexander (http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Access_to_nonpublic_data_p…) on 6 June, in which he wrote: "This policy has been replaced by a new [[m:Access to non public information policy|Access to non public information policy]], which was approved by the Board of Trustees on 25 April 2014. However, this policy remains in force until the new processes mandated by the new policy are put into place. A future announcement will be made to those affected before the new policy goes in effect." It's now the future (and after nine months, quite so), so what is the policy?
The old policy mandated that those seeking the accesses fax or secure email a from of identification. Casual and rank-and-file Wikipedia editors were repetitively told that the checkusers and oversighters etc. were "identified to the WMF." This was incredibly misleading because the practice of Philippe Beaudette was to shred and otherwise destroy the identifications after marking the noticeboard. It is apparent to any plain-spoken individual, I think, that you can't tell people that those granted these accesses are "identified to the WMF" when you have shredded the documents and all that is left (except in Mr. Beaudette's memory) is a checkmark by a username on a noticeboard. It wasn't a semantic dodge predicated on the definition of "identified," rather it was in my opinion a smoke-screen. Mr. Beaudette felt loyalty to the privacy of the administrators, and evidently none to the common editors whose IPs and so forth he was exposing to them.
The immediately above is not necessarily a criticism of the old policy, which taken at face value strongly implies that the WMF keeps the identifications on file, on a secure computer, or in a physical safe. It's rather that Mr. Beaudette operated for years in open defiance of the policy. To his credit though, apparently he impelled the Board to rewrite the policy in a manner corresponding to his actions.
BUT MY QUESTION NOW is: "What is the status of the policy?" For example English Wikipedia just got three new checkusers: Bbb23, Callanecc, and Mike V. What information were they required to provide? Proper documents, or merely an email address and assertion that they are over 18?
Trillium Corsage
Hi,
Last month, Andrea from Italy asked about events with journalists. You can
find at our monthly report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Amical_Wikimedia/March_2015> a highlight
about the Wikipedia Day at Catalunya Radio.
Looking forward to hear your experience at International Journalism
Festival :)
Best,
David Parreño Mont
www.davidparreno.cat
--
On 13th of March, from 8am and throughout the day, Amical Wikimedia
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Amical_Wikimedia> and Ramon Barnils Group
organized an Edit-a-thon at Catalunya Ràdio headquarters
<https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viquip%C3%A8dia:Viquimarat%C3%B3_Ramon_Barnils>,
the Catalan public radio station. The event lasted 12 hours with live
connections every half an hour. The aim of the initiative was to improve
the article of the eminent journalist Ramon Barnils
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Barnils>, a founder of Catalunya
Ràdio, updating and renewing his entry and other related items. Catalan
Wikipedia celebrated its 14th anniversary on the 16th of March, just when
it is about to reach 500,000 articles, and the 14th of March was the 14th
anniversary of the death of Ramon Barnils. 25 Wikimedians attended (8 new)
the edit-a-thon in different turns. All the radio programs of that day were
focused on Wikipedia: Wikipedians were interviewed on the factual
programmes, the analysis program discussed on the impact of Wikipedia, the
comedy show made jokes about Wikipedia, and the game show asked trivia
questions about Wikipedia. The Ramon Barnils Group and relatives released
photos of the journalist into Wikimedia Commons. The Catalan public TV and
many digital media covered it, too. In addition, Wikipedians improved the
Wikidata item and the Wikiquote page of Ramon Barnils, and made a lots of
pics and recorded the voice of the journalists of Catalunya Ràdio for
Wikimedia Commons. You can find the images here
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Viquimarat%C3%B3_Barnils> and
here <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Catalunya_R%C3%A0dio>.
Dear all,
The next WMF metrics and activities meeting will take place on
Wednesday, April 8, 2015 at 6:00 PM UTC (11 AM PDT). Please note, on
this occasion, we are holding this meeting on the second Wednesday in
April.
The IRC channel is #wikimedia-office on irc.freenode.net, and the meeting will
be broadcast as a live YouTube stream.
Each month at the metrics meeting, we will:
* Welcome recent hires
* Present reports/updates that are focused on a key theme or topic: the
theme for April's meeting is Fundraising
* Engage in questions/discussions
Please review
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings for further
information about how to participate.
We’ll post the video recording publicly after the meeting.
Thank you,
Praveena
--
Praveena Maharaj
Executive Assistant to the VP of Product & Strategy and the VP of
Engineering
Wikimedia Foundation \\ www.wikimediafoundation.org
tl;dr:[0] Please join the community review for six annual plan grant
proposals requesting USD $1.5 million in movement funds. Add your questions
and comments to the proposals until April 30!
Hello Wikimedians,
Round 2 of the Annual Plan Grants program [1] is underway, and the
Community Review process is open for your comments and questions. In this
round, six proposals were submitted to the Funds Dissemination Committee,
by the Centre for Internet and Society, Wikimedia Armenia, Wikimédia
France, Wikimedia Italia, Wikimedia Norge, and Wikimedia ZA -- with total
requests of USD $1,531,687. [2] These six proposals, developed based on the
organizations' annual plans, include programmatic and operational costs,
and are requests for general funding.
This year (2014-2015), the FDC has USD $6 million to allocate to movement
organizations to help advance our strategic goals. In Round 1, $3,817,956
was allocated to movement organizations, [3] leaving $2,182,044 for Round
2. In mid-May, the Funds Dissemination Committee will meet face-to-face,
prior to the Wikimedia conference, to deliberate on and then make
recommendations to the WMF Board of Trustees about how to grant funds to
these organizations, in order to achieve mission-related impact.
We invite you and all other community members to review any or all of the
proposals, and to share your thoughts and ask questions on the discussion
pages of the proposals. General questions or comments can also be made in
the General comments section. [4] The community review period lasts until
April 30, 2015. Applicants are also expected to respond to comments and
questions during this period, although they are not able to change the
proposal form itself after the submission date. The FDC will review the
discussion pages and will use the questions and comments as one of their
many inputs into the decision-making process. To join other community
consultations, visit the noticeboard. [5]
You can join in by reviewing the proposals [2] and adding your comments on
the discussion pages. Proposals are available in English, but comments and
questions can be made in any language. As a member of the Wikimedia
community, your review helps make the grantmaking process more transparent,
collaborative and robust. Feedback and questions from the community are an
important input into the proposal review process, and the FDC considers
them seriously.
The major milestones for the rest of this round is as follows: [6]
* Community review: 1 April 2015 - 30 April 2015
* Staff assessments published: 8 May 2015
* FDC deliberations: 12-14 May 2015
* FDC recommendation published: by 1 June 2015
* Appeals or complaints submitted: by 8 June 2015
* Board of Trustees decision: by 1 July 2015
* Start of new grant terms: 1 July 2015
Please let us know if you have any questions, concerns, or feedback about
the process. You can reach the FDC staff at FDCsupport(a)wikimedia.org
Warm regards,
Katy Love
Senior Program Officer
Funds Dissemination Committee
Wikimedia Foundation
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Too_long;_didn%27t_read
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Information
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round2
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2…
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round2/Commu…
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Current_community_consultations
[6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Information#Calendar
_______________________________________________
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While Wikipedia's medical content is far from perfect, Google knowledge
graphs however have issues as well.
For example they say that Hepatitis C is MAINLY spread by sexual contact.
This 2010 review in Hepatology states "Regarding heterosexual transmission,
the weight of evidence is that there is no increased risk of sexual
transmission of HCV among heterosexual couples in regular relationships"
WHO says it is a less common method. The main methods of transmission are
injection drug use and unscreened blood transmission.
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
Hi,
regarding the Wikimedia Foundation elections 2013, I was trying to find a
breakdown of the voters, i.e. how many voted based on which requirements,
i.e. as editors, developers, staff and contractors, and board members, but
I could not find anything.
I would appreciate a pointer to that data.
Cheers,
Denny