Cross-posting.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 11:03 PM
Subject: Office hour regarding "Motivational and educational video to
introduce Wikimedia"
Hi all,
I will have an office hour regarding the development of the Motivational
and educational video to introduce Wikimedia
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Motivational_and_educational_vid…>
project. I would appreciate your comments and questions about:
* The outline of the subjects that will be included in the videos
* Good practices for onboarding newcomers that may be leveraged in the
video series
* What to name the video series when it is released to the general public
* Translation of the public communications related to the videos, and
translation of the script
* Anything else related to the series
Please participate in a Doodle poll to help with scheduling the office
hour: http://doodle.com/poll/eu4m62ccdq4senuv
I also welcome questions and comments on the project talk page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:IEG/Motivational_and_educationa…>
.
Thank you!
Pine
Dear Patricio Lorente,
I request that the WMF board take immediate action to publish a
comprehensive account of why you appointed Geshuri as a trustee,
despite his direct involvement and being named as a defendant in the
on-going scandal of anticompetitive agreements at Google, or that
Geshuri chooses to step down from his new position of trust.
This is being separated out as an open letter to the board in a new
discussion thread, to avoid getting confused with other issues. In the
light of recent challenges to the WMF with regard to a dramatic loss
of confidence in their senior management and the politicking behind
the loss of James Heilman as a trustee openly advocating for
transparency to the actions of the WMF board, Geshuri's background
with anticompetitive practices can only damage confidence in the WMF
board with regard to their duty to hold WMF senior management to
account and acting with the highest possible accountability and public
transparency.
Links showing Geshuri's public footprint on this issue:
1. http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/27/2753701/no-poach-scandal-unredacted-steve…
2. http://www.lieffcabraser.com/Antitrust/Apple-Google-Silicon-Valley-No-Cold-…
3. http://www.courthousenews.com/2015/03/23/google-shareholders-miffed-over-wa…
4. https://www.quora.com/How-is-Arnnon-Geshuri-current-VP-HR-at-Tesla-and-form…
Yours sincerely,
Fae
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Andrew Green <agreen(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: 7 January 2016 at 08:58
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcing new Wikimedia Foundation Trustees
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Interesting to note Arnnon's role in the Silicon Valley anti-poaching
affair: http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/27/2753701/no-poach-scandal-unredacted-steve…
- Andrew
--
faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
Hi Magnus,
thanks for bringing yourself into the discussion.
I agree on several aspects you point out in the first half of your mail
about improvements, expectations and "prominent subgroups".
When it comes to re-emphasize this "castle"-narrative, I had the feeling
you wanna connect reasonable ideas of other ways into the future with all
the nay-sayers you described so detailed before. Same goes for the
"Wikidata is killing Wikipedia"-statement. Nobody in this
mailinglist-thread used this word "killing" or similiarly hard analogies.
So, what's again is the mission? You say: Dissemination of free knowledge.
Well, who would disagree on that. Nobody. But wait, isn't the whole
strategic debate about *HOW *to disseminate free knowledge? And assuming
that a simple "the more third parties use the Wikiprojects knowledge the
more we fulfill our mission"-answer is…wrong.
Even if 400 million of the 500 million (or so) readers would visit the
Wikipedia just to look up the birthday of Elvis Presley, it is *the
*characteristic
feature of an encylopedia in general and Wikipedia in special that you can
discover more knowledge about Elvis even without asking or even knowing
that you wanna know more about Elvis.
Knowledge unequals information. Knowledge is information plus culture, plus
personal interests, plus serendipity. That's why the same article has
different arrangements in different languages. That's why it is not only
about the facts, but also about the overview of the possible
classifications around the facts a good article is presenting.
Knowledge is about discovering and not about checking some facts with a
Q&A-mobile app. So the question is surely not about should we disseminate
free knowledge, but how can this be done with a spirit that comes from the
idea of an encyclopedia. Information is in the machine. Knowledge is in the
people. Without the (editing, programming, linking) people as an integral
part of the "dissemination procedure" the mission isn't the mission of
Wikipedia.
This idea might be not that fashionably going together with the recent
trends in web tech business developments, but it is surely not
"conservative" or castle-wall-building as some people try to frame it.
It is also not easy. It is even more complicate than good writing good
code, because it is about involving more people in this not so trendy, not
so quick'n'dirty, not so infotainmental, mobile app-stylish way of
"knowledge dissemination".
So the debate is not about castle-building, but about how we together
re-shaping the ship called Wiki(pedia) to sail a daily demanding longterm
mission and not following every techbubble-trends just because "more is
better".
I hope that the upcoming strategic debate is as open as it needs to be. A
strategic debate which framework is already decided upon would only
increase the distance created also by recent events.
I hope this clarifies my POV, and doesn't offend too many people ;-)
Best regards,
Jens Best
2016-01-18 21:33 GMT+01:00 Magnus Manske <magnusmanske(a)googlemail.com>:
> OK, long thread, I'll try to answer in one here...
>
> * I've been writing code for over thirty years now, so I'm the first to say
> that technology in not "the" answer to social or structural issues. It can,
> however, mitigate some of those issues, or at least show new ways of
> dealing with them
>
> * New things are not necessarily good just because they are new. What seems
> to be an improvement, especially for a technical mind, can be a huge step
> backwards for the "general population". On the other hand, projects like
> the Visual Editor can make work easier for many people, but few of them
> will realize what a daunting undertaking such a project is. The complexity
> of getting this right is staggering. Expectations of getting it all
> perfect, all feature-complete, on the initial release, are unrealistic to
> say the least. And many of the details can not be tested between a few
> developers; things need to be tested under real-world conditions, and
> testing means they can break. Feedback about problems with a software
> release are actually quite welcome, but condemning an entire product
> forever because the first version didn't do everything 100% right is just
> plain stupid. If Wikipedia had been judged by such standards in 2001, there
> would be no Wikipedia today, period. Technology improves all the time, be
> it Visual Editor, Media Viewer, or Wikidata; but in the community, there is
> a sense of "it was bad, it must be still bad", and I have a feeling that
> this is extended to new projects by default these days.
>
> * In summary, what I criticize is that few people ask "how can we make this
> better"; all they ask is "how can we get rid of it". This attitude prevents
> the development of just about any new approach. If the result of a long,
> thorough analysis is "it's bad, and it can't possibly be made better",
> /then/ is the time to scrap it, but no sooner.
>
> * Of course, "the community" is an ill-defined construct to begin with.
> When I use that phrase above, I do mean a small but prominent subgroup in
> that demographic, mostly "old hands" of good editors, often with a "fan
> club" of people repeating the opinions of the former on talk pages, without
> really investigating on their own. After all, they are good editors, so
> they must know what they are talking about, right?
>
> * As I tried to say in the interview, I do understand such a conservative
> approach all to well. We worked hard for Wikipedia to get where it is now,
> and with trolls, on the left, vandals on the right, and half-done tech
> experiments in front, retreating into the safety of the castle seems like a
> good choice. And sometimes it is. But while we can defend the castle
> comfortably for some years to come, we will never grow beyond its walls. I
> think we are already seeing the first fallout from this stagnation, in
> terms of dropping page views (not to mention editors). If people stop
> coming to a Wikipedia with 5 million articles, 10 million articles would
> not make much difference by themselves; more content is good, but it will
> not turn this supertanker around on its own. We do have some time left to
> change things, without undue haste, but we won't have forever.
>
> * Just to make sure, I am NOT saying to throw away all the things that have
> proven to work for us; I'm just saying we shouldn't restrict us to them.
>
> * As for this "Wikidata is killing Wikipedia" sentiment - bullshit. (I
> would like to be more eloquent here, but for once, this is the perfect
> word.) Wikipedia and Wikidata are two very different beasts, though they do
> have an overlap. And that overlap should be used on Wikipedia, where it can
> help, even in the gigantic English Wikipedia, which covers but a third of
> Wikidata items. Transcluded data in infoboxes; automatically generated
> lists; a data source for timelines. Those are functions that will improve
> Wikipedia, and will help especially the hundreds of smaller language
> editions that are just getting towards critical mass. And there,
> automatically generated descriptions can help get to that mass, until
> someone writes an actual article in that language.
>
> * So Google is using Wikidata in their search results? Good! In case you
> have forgotten, our mission is not to have a nice article about your pet
> topic, or have humans write articles that are little better than
> bot-generated stubs, or have your name in ten thousand article histories;
> the mission is the dissemination of free knowledge. And the more third
> parties use the knowledge we assemble, even (or especially!) if it is that
> other 800 pound gorilla on the web, the better we fulfil that mission.
>
> I hope this clarifies my POV, and doesn't offend too many people ;-)
>
> On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 7:10 PM Andrew Lih <andrew.lih(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I cannot speak for Magnus, but there’s a distinction that needs to be
> made:
> >
> > Writing, “… all have been resisted by vocal groups of editors, not
> because
> > they are a problem, but because they represent change” is not maligning
> all
> > editors who complain.
> >
> > It simply says that those who resist innovation because it is a change
> from
> > the status quo, and without solid reasoning, should reconsider. The
> > detailed analysis of Jonathan Cardy and Risker criticizing VE’s
> suboptimal
> > 2013 launch are well-informed and legit. But many, unfortunately, don’t
> > apply such high standards for analysis.
> >
> > -Andrew
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 12:13 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > After the assertion "From the Media Viewer, the Visual Editor, to
> > Wikidata
> > > transclusion, all have been resisted by vocal groups of editors, not
> > > because they are a problem, but because they represent change," I would
> > > suggest a very large "citation needed" tag.
> > >
> > > Pine
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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> _______________________________________________
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>
Hey folks :)
I'll be doing another office hour to talk about all things Wikidata.
As usual I'll give an overview of the past 3 months and what's ahead.
It'll be in #wikimedia-office on Freenode. It'll be on January 21st at
17:00 UTC. For your timezone please see
https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?hour=17&min=00&sec=0&….
Cheers
Lydia
--
Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
Product Manager for Wikidata
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24
10963 Berlin
www.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg
unter der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das
Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
Hi,
In the Hebrew Wikipedia there's a page [1] that highlights editors who
recently became active - shows a short interview with them and welcomes
them to the community in a nice way.
It's not so much a help and a support page like English Wikipedia, but more
like a newsletter or a blog that describes newcomers, in a form of an
regularly updating wiki page.
Is there anything like that in other projects and languages? (Not
necessarily Wikipedia, of course.)
Thanks!
[1] https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:BIK
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
Thank you for this interesting thread (and thank you for the interesting
blog post in the first place). I'll pick a quote and I will try to propose
ways forward about other comments made.
On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 11:35 PM, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske(a)googlemail.com
> wrote:
> I would hope the Foundation by now understands better how to handle new
> software releases.
I think so, although I'm sure the Foundation still needs to understand
better how to handle new software releases -- and the communities too.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WMF_product_development_process is the
common protocol where we want to apply all the learning. Clarifying
how community engagement works in this WMF product development process is a
main priority for us during this quarter (
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T124022
), and everybody is invited to join.
I do think that we have many problems as software partners, the first
problem being that we all got used to this situation of
confrontation-by-default as something natural, they way it is. We are
software partners, we really are, and in order to make this partnership
productive we need to be in a mood of collaboration-by-default.
We need a climate where new ideas are welcomed and encouraged. Today
someone comes with a new idea and the chances are that the first replies
setting the tone will be more discouraging than encouraging. We need a safe
and exciting place where everybody can share new concepts, collaborate on
them, learn from each other.
We need a prioritization process where great concepts receive initial
support for planning and prototyping, and where good plans and prototypes
receive support to start their way toward production. The WMF needs to open
that process to the participation of our communities, and our communities
need to understand that this is the best point of time to discuss new plans.
We need design and build processes that volunteers find easy to follow and
participate in. There are many and very diverse groups of people (at
Wikimedia and beyond) that would give their feedback about design concepts
or alpha releases if they would only know about them.
We need to make our deployment process more flexible and predictable,
allowing development teams and communities to agree on beta releases, A/B
tests, opt-in/opt-out approaches, first/last waves... Some ideas:
* In order to enter the deployment phase, a project would need to have a
deployment plan proposed, agreed, and documented -- which can be adapted
based on data and feedback gathered.
* For every new product or significant feature, each community could have
the chance to determine whether they want to be early adopters (first
waves) or, on the contrary, be placed in the last waves, after seeing how
the new software is being used by others and is being matured.
* Communities would focus not so much on {{Support}} / {{Oppose}} decisions
about the totality of a feature, but on the identification of specific
blockers, allowing development teams to negotiate and change their plans
under clearer terms.
This common protocol should allow us to move away from the current
situation where both communities and development teams fear that a single
strike might disrupt their work overnight, without even seeing it coming.
A more predictable path with specialized checkpoints should allow
communities and development teams understanding better what is going on and
when to talk about what. It should also help recruiting more and more
diverse participants, who could contribute their time and skills in more
daring and productive ways.
What makes me optimistic about this common product development process is
that we don't need to finalize all the pieces to make it work. As long as
we agree that we are software partners and we agree that iterations are
good, we can start agreeing on improvements and implement them one by one.
Get involved, please. You can either join the more theoretical work about
the overall process or you can pick a specific improvement and help pushing
it forward in very practical terms. See you at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:WMF_product_development_process (where
we have been a bit slow lately but not anymore now that is a top goal).
--
Quim Gil
Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
Hi all, (cross posting on purpose, no excuses)
Great news for everyone interested in cultural heritage.
Wikimedia Sverige, along with partners UNESCO, Wikimedia Italia and
Cultural Heritage without Borders, has received a $300,000 grant from
Kulturstiftelsen (the Swedish postcode lottery) to work on a project
called Connected
Open Heritage.[1]
The project lasts until July 2017, and during that time we will work on:
-
Migrating the information in the WLM database to Wikidata
-
Updating and adding new data about monuments, including from ten
countries where cultural heritage is at risk
-
Uploading tens of thousands of images and media files from cultural
heritage institutions
-
Increasing awareness about what the Wikimedia movement is doing in the
cultural heritage field, both to the Wikimedia communities, general public
and also to experts in the field
-
Promoting open data and free licenses
-
Organizing a photo exhibition with images of cultural heritage in at
least three countries.
All info on the project, including who to contact if you want to get
involved, timeplan, activities and such are available on Meta. The talk
page on Meta is open for comments and questions, and all input on this is
welcome.
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Connected_Open_Heritage
Best regards,
/axel
====================================
Axel Pettersson
Projektledare GLAM/Outreach
Wikimedia Sverige
+46 (0)733 96 55 65
axel.pettersson(a)wikimedia.se
Twitter: @Haxpett <https://twitter.com/#%21/haxpett>
Stöd fri kunskap, bli medlem i Wikimedia Sverige.
Läs mer på *wikimedia.se/sv/blimedlem <http://wikimedia.se/sv/blimedlem>*
Hello,
CIS-A2K going to organize a multi-lingual edit-a-thon during 25-31 January
2015. The goal of this edit-a-thon is to create and improve Indian
Geographical Indications articles.
So far 7 Indic Wikipedia communities have shown interest to join this
edit-a-thon
If you want to participate or if you think your community members may be
interested to join (non-Indic communities are welcome too), please create
an event page on your Wikipedia or let us know.
If you any have suggestion or feedback to improve this initiative, please
share with us.
Please see the event page:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Geographical_Indications_in_…
Thank you. :)
Hi everyone,
We've posted the Community Tech team's first status report on our progress
with the Community Wishlist Survey, and you're invited to come and check it
out:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2015_Community_Wishlist_Survey/Status_repor…
In November and December, we invited active contributors to Wikimedia
projects to propose, discuss and vote on the features and fixes that they
most want to see. 634 people participated in the survey, voting on 107
proposals.
Our team has committed to investigating and responding to the top 10
wishes. In many cases, our team will be designing and building tools
ourselves, or collaborating with other teams and volunteers who are working
in that area. For the wishes that we can't build this year -- because it's
too big for our team, or there's a problem that we can't solve -- then we
can at least offer open discussion on the problem, and detailed
documentation explaining what we've learned, so the information can be used
by other developers in the future.
We've done a preliminary assessment of the top 10, which is described in
the status report. As of right now (mid-January), the two items that we're
actively working on are #1) Migrate dead links to the Wayback Machine, and
#7) Pageview Stats tool. Why are we working on those two and not the
others? Check out the status report for all the answers.
I'm going to post the quick overview of the top 10 wishes here. Each of
these wishes is discussed in detail on the status report page.
1. Migrate dead links to the Wayback Machine: Currently in progress,
working with a community developer and the Internet Archive. This is one of
the two projects we're actively working on now (mid-January).
2. Improved diff compare screen: Needs investigation and community
discussion to define the problems that we want to solve.
3. Central repository for templates, gadgets and Lua modules: Needs
underlying technical work that's currently under discussion by another team.
4. Cross-wiki watchlist: Needs technical investigation on the existing
Crosswatch tool, and the Collaboration team's cross-wiki notifications.
5. Numerical sorting in categories: Investigation is underway. There are a
couple potential solutions that we need to figure out.
6. Allow categories in Commons in all languages: Currently talking with
Wikidata about using structured metadata to solve the underlying problem.
7. Pageview Stats tool: Currently talking with the Analytics team about
their new pageview API. Needs some community discussion to define the
front-end spec. This is one of the two projects we're actively working on
now (mid-January), because the Analytics team is eager to use the new API
that they've developed.
8. Global cross-wiki talk page: Needs community discussion to define the
product.
9. Improve copy and paste detection bot: Need to work with volunteer
developers to define scope on improving the existing Plagiabot.
10. Add a user watchlist: We've heard significant pushback about the
vandal-fighting use case, because of the risk of enabling harassment.
Currently investigating an opt-in version that would be useful for mentors,
classes, editathons and WikiProjects.
Here's the status report link again, for lots more information:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2015_Community_Wishlist_Survey/Status_repor…
Our team is really excited about the work that we'll get to do this year,
and we're looking forward to talking and working with you as we go along.
Thanks,
Danny Horn
Product Manager
WMF - Community Tech
User:DannyH (WMF)
Hello All:
Thanks to an alert Community Member, it has come to our attention that due
to an oversight, the 2015-16 Risks Document was not posted with the 2015-16
Annual Plan. We apologize for that.
Traditionally the Risks Document has been a part of the Annual Plan, either
included in the text of the plan or in the appendix. The decision was made
last year to create the Risks Document separately and it was inadvertently
not posted when the 2015-16 Annual Plan, Budget and FAQ were posted.
The document was completed in July 2015; therefore the language may not
reflect any recent developments.
You will find the 2015-16 Risks Document posted here as part of the Annual
Plan:
2015-16 Annual Plan and Risk Document
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2015-2016_Annual_Plan>
Thank you,
Amy
--
*Amy Vossbrinck*
*Executive Assistant to the*
*Chief Financial Officer and to *
*the Vice President of Human Resources*
*Wikimedia Foundation*
*149 New Montgomery Street*
*San Francisco, CA 94105*
*415.839.6885 ext 6628*
*avossbrinck(a)wikimedia.org <avossbrinck(a)wikimedia.org>*