I haven't seen any mention on this list of this recent news:
This year The Diary of Anne Frank entered into the public domain in the
Netherlands, allowing millions of people around the world to read it for
free.
However, under U.S. law the book remains copyrighted, which prompted the
Wikimedia Foundation to remove a copy of the book from its servers,
under protest.
It's worth noting, if only to increase awareness of the excessive length
(95 years) of some US copyright terms.
Some people outside the Wiki world have noticed: see blog post here:
https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-copyright-law-forces-wikimedia-to-remove-publi…
Michael
Reminder that these lightning talks are happening tomorrow, Tuesday
February 16, at 1900 UTC / 11:00 AM Pacific. Because there are 3 presenters
and a 1-hour block of time, each presenter has about 15 minutes including
time for questions. We might finish early.
On the agenda:
* Pine: "LearnWIki" Instructional video series on Wikipedia mechanics
(Including VE and citoid) and community practices
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Motivational_and_educational_vid…>
* Madhu Viswanathan: "Counting unique devices accessing Wikipedia projects
using Last access method"
* Rosemary Rein: "Program Capacity and Learning-Building a Roadmap Together"
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Program_Capacity_and_Learning_Roadm…>
Hope to see you there!
Pine
On Tue, Feb 2, 2016 at 5:47 PM, Kevin Leduc <kevin(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Thanks for forwarding Pine! I welcome any 10 minute talks from GLAM and
> Education as well. If you add your name to the list [1], email me as well
> so I can contact you and forward notes for Lightning Talk speakers.
>
> [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Lightning_Talks#February_2016
>
> On Tue, Feb 2, 2016 at 4:59 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Boldly forwarding* in case others would like to view or present a
>> lightning talk. I plan to give a lightning talk about the video series
>> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Motivational_and_educational_vid…>
>> which I'm in the process of producing with the support of an individual
>> engagement grant.
>>
>> Although these talks can be about technical topics like video formats, I
>> think that there are education and GLAM activities that could fit under the
>> umbrella as well, especially if they have technical or research aspects.
>> For example, I'll probably focus much of my presentation on my background
>> research and project design process.
>>
>> Hope to see you there!
>> Pine
>>
>> * To boldly forward where no one has forwarded before
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Kevin Leduc <kevin(a)wikimedia.org>
>> Date: Tue, Feb 2, 2016 at 4:23 PM
>> Subject: [Wikitech-l] Fwd: February 2016 Lightning Talks
>> To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Kevin Leduc <kevin(a)wikimedia.org>
>> Date: Tue, Feb 2, 2016 at 4:22 PM
>> Subject: February 2016 Lightning Talks
>> To: "Staff (All)" <wmfall(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>>
>>
>> Hi All,
>>
>>
>> The next Lightning Talks are scheduled for February 16th (two weeks from
>> today). We hope at least 4 people will sign up for the talks by Friday
>> February 12th otherwise we will postpone them another month. Lightning
>> Talks are an opportunity for teams @ WMF & in the Community to showcase
>> something they have achieved: a quarterly goal, milestone, release, or
>> anything of significance to the rest of the foundation and the movement as
>> a whole.
>>
>>
>> Each presentation will be 10 minutes or less including time for questions.
>>
>> Sign up here:
>> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Lightning_Talks#February_2016
>>
>>
>> Next round of Lightning Talks:
>>
>> When: Tuesday February 16, 1900 UTC
>> <
>> http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Lightning+Talks&is…
>> >,
>> 11am PST (We have added this Lightning Talk to the WMF Engineering, Fun &
>> Learning, and Staff calendars)
>>
>> Where: 5th Floor
>>
>> Remotees: On-Air google hangout will be provided just before the meeting
>>
>> IRC: #wikimedia-tech
>>
>> YouTube stream: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3fyCgBWvFc
>>
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Kevin Leduc, Megan Neisler, Brendan Campbell
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>
>>
>
This Grant document for a “Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia” is
*specifically and overtly stating* that its purpose is to start work
on an search engine as a rival for Google/Yahoo. That is the end goal
of the project. Near near the bottom of page 10 it summarises the
whole project as:
"knowledge Engine by Wikipedia will be the internet's first
transparent search engine, and the first one originated by the
Wikimedia Foundation". It will, "democratize the discovery of media,
news and information – it will make the Internet's most relevant
information more accessible and openly curated, and it will create an
open data engine that's completely free of commercial interests.
Today, commercial search engines dominate search engine use of the
internet...". A separate summary on page 2 states, "The project will
pave the way for non-commercial information to be found and utilised
by internet users".
At the bottom of page 13, the primary risk identified is "interference
by Google, Yahoo or another big commercial search engine could
suddenly devote resources to a similar project". As SarahSV pointed
out above, If the "Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia" is only about
improving the inter-connectedness of the Wikimedia sister projects by
improving how internal systems work - which no one is disputing is a
very useful goal - then google/yahoo releasing a new search engine
product would not be counted as the project's "biggest challenge".
- "Non commercial" -
The document itself refers to "non commercial" several times, and
seems to be using the term loosely. Nevertheless, it seems clear to me
that any reasonable person who is not deeply-immersed in
copyright-debates about the definition of "free" would understand the
words "non-commercial" in the context of *this document* to mean that
the search engine is *operated* non-commercially. Now, I do
acknowledge that a grant-request is by definition a “sales pitch” and
you have to write your request using the terminology and focus areas
of the grant-giver. However, it is my understanding that Lila
specifically wanted to build this - a competitor to Google - and that
this is most clearly expressed in the summary on page 10. It describes
the 6 principles through which the “Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia”
will "upend the commercial structure [of search engines]". These are
Public Curation, Transparency, Open Data, Privacy, No Advertising and
'Internalisation'. Nothing in this document talks about ways to limit
the *content* of the search engine to only "non-commercial" stuff (and
I if it did, then we would be talking about this:
https://search.creativecommons.org/ ).
- Lack of Strategy -
Now, maybe an open-source search engine would be a good thing for the
WMF to create! But that would be a major strategic decision. It would
be, in effect, a new sister project to sit alongside (above?)
Wikipedia, Commons, Wikidata etc. However, this concept appears
*nowhere* in the current strategy consultation documents on Meta. As I
wrote on my blog last week: "Of 18 different approaches identified in
the...consultation process only one of them seems directly related to
[search]: 'Explore ways to scale machine-generated, machine-verified
and machine-assisted content'. It is also literally the last of the 18
topics listed".
http://wittylama.com/2016/01/30/strategy-controversy-part-2/
It seems to me extremely damaging for the relationship with the Knight
Foundation if Lila has approached them for funding a search engine,
without first having a strategic plan. Either the Board knew about
this and didn't see a problem, or they were incorrectly informed about
the grant's purpose. Either is very bad. And let me be very clear -
this is not a case of the Grants team going off by themselves. This is
an executive decision by either the Board to Lila, or Lila by herself.
The latter seems more likely given her own statement on her talkpage:
“I saw the Wikimedia movement as the most motivated and sincere group
of beings, united in their mission to build a rocket to explore
Universal Free Knowledge. The words “search” and “discovery” and
“knowledge” swam around in my mind with some rocket to navigate it.
However, “rocket” didn’t seem to work, but in my mind, the rocket was
really just an engine, or a portal, a TARDIS, that transports people
on their journey through Universal Free Knowledge.”
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:LilaTretikov_(WMF)#Knowledge_Engi…
As pointed out by Risker back in May 2015, the Search team had already
been created and seemed *disproportionately* large
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2015-…
It seems clear to me that this was done in anticipation of the
“Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia” project, as it is described in this
grant document. I also understand that this very high initial target
has since been reduced, a lot. From a fully-fledged competitor to
Google, to a search engine of freely-licensed works, and now to this:
"improving the existing CirrusSearch infrastructure with better
relevance, multi language, multi projects search and incorporating new
[external] data sources for our projects."
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Discovery/FAQ#Are_you_building_Goo…
However, this change is NOT represented in the actual grant document.
That either means we misled the Knight Foundation at the start, or we
changed our mind since then but didn't tell them. Both of these
options are grounds, as per the contract page 5, for handing back the
money. Much more likely, in my opinion, is that the Knight Foundation
knew that trying to create a non-profit search engine was high-risk or
at the very least extremely ambitious. But, because they like us, they
gave a small amount to explore the concept and to fund the actually
useful stuff (the "outcomes" of this first stage, as listed on page 3
and also page 12).
Let me reiterate - improving the "discoverability" of our own content
across wikis/sister-projects is a very good goal.
Consolidation/Integration of projects' content is a much desired goal
(see also the strong desire for the 'structured data' project on
Commons). However that is NOT what has been "sold" in this grant.
- Cost -
Page 10 of this text specifically says that the cost of the first
stage of "Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia" is $2.5 million, and that the
grant is for 1 year starting in September 2015. Page 2 says that the
whole project is in 4 stages, each lasting approximately 18 months =
6 years. This grant of $250,000 therefore only covers 10% of the cost,
of the first stage, of the total project.
As SarahEV said above:
"The document says the ‘Search Engine by Wikipedia’ budget for
2015–2016 ($2.4 million) was approved by the board [page 9]. Can you
point us to which board meeting approved it and what was discussed
there?" I second this question, because I'm not seeing it in the
annual plan: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2015-2016_Annual_Plan
(as also noted by Pine, earlier in this thread)
There is no way that Lila approached the Knight Foundation asking to
fund only 10% of the first year of a 6 year project. Instead, $250,000
seems to me to be the lowest possible outcome of a grant request
negotiation. Clearly we would have asked for a large proportion of the
total amount and we've been rejected right the back down to 10% of
stage 1. Assuming that the first stage is also the cheapest of the 4
stages ("discovery, advisory, community, extension" - as per page 2)
then we can reliably extrapolate that the $2.5million x 4 = $10Million
is the absolute *minimum* amount that was planned to be spent, and we
would have originally asked for at *least* 50% of that. As pointed out
by Doc James on the [public] WikipediaWeekly Facebook group -
estimates presented to the board were in the range of
tens-of-millions.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/permalink/956660811048417/
Unless the WMF expected to fund the difference between their initial
request to the Knight Foundation (let alone the much reduced amount
they actually received) with funding from *other* grants, then the
expectation is that a *significant proportion* of the remaining cost
would be borne by the WMF’s “annual fundraiser”. If so, that should
have meant that the financial demands of this project should be
disclosed to the community and to the donors.
It is, therefore, inconceivable to me that the Executive Director
would privately propose to an external partner that they would
undertake a 6 year project to build a search-engine that will have
massive cost, staffing, strategic and content implications - entirely
without an official WMF strategy covering that period, no indication
in the current annual plan, without the awareness of the community,
and unclearly communicated to the Board. I find the fact that this
could have been done to be a deep breach of our values - and not
wholly unrelated to the current sudden exodus of long-serving members
of WMF staff.
Liam / Wittylama
Hi all,
I am forwarding you this message from Davide, the Wikipedian in
Residence at Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso in Rovereto (TN).
You find him in copy, please contact him directly if you interested in
the projec.
Cristian
On behalf of Wikimedia Italia
---
Dear Wikimedians,
I am the Wikipedian-in-Residence at Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso
(OBC), an italian research centre, and I am coming to you looking for
help in concluding my project on press and media freedom in East and
South-East Europe.
in in these months at OBC I've been developing a series of pages of
the "Media of <Country X>" series. I've added information on the media
system and media freedom in several countries of East and South East
Europe (Caucasus is coming soon too), by building upon reports of
international organisations such as the EJC, Freedom House, etc. You
will find the links in the GLAM/OBC page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/OBC.
Now, I would like to ask for your collaboration as citizens and native
speakers. It would be good if one or more of you could "adopt" the
article concerning your own country, check it for mistakes and update
it where needed, with native-language sources too. Secondly, once
verified, it could be good to translate the article in the original
language of the country concerned too.
Will you be able find some time in the coming weeks to help me with
this project? I hope so :) Just get in touch, either here or on the
related page.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Best regards,
Davide
Davide Denti
Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso - WiR ECPMF
email: denti(a)balcanicaucaso.org
skype: davide.denti
On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 5:02 PM, Cristian Consonni
<kikkocristian(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Wikimedians,
>
> Wikimedia Italia has started since this month a project with
> "Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso" (Balcan and Caucasus Observatory,
> <http://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng>).
>
> Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso (OBC) is a research institute focused on
> South-East Europe, Turkey and the Caucasus which was launched in the
> year 2000 and which is based in Rovereto (Trento), in the north-east
> of Italy. The main focus of OBC is to produce studies and reports
> related to freedom of the press in the 26 countries that they monitor.
> They collaborate with a net of over 50 correspondents, including
> journalists, researchers, and activists in the various countries.
>
> With the help of WM-IT, OBC selected a Wikipedian in Residence for the
> next months. His name is Davide Denti[1] and you can find his contact
> in copy. Davide is a long-time Wikipedian, contributing on it.wiki
> since 2007, he is also a PhD candidate at the University of Trento, in
> Trento in the north of Italy, where is working on his thesis about EU
> enlargement policies with respect to the western balkans and in
> Bosnia-Herzegovina in particular.
>
> The residence is fully founded through a EU project called "European
> Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)" <http://www.ecpmf.eu/>
> with partners - both individuals, for example journalists, and
> organisations - in several countries[2a][2b].
>
> In the scope of this project we would like to come in touch with
> Wikipedians in the region of Balkans that may find this project of
> interest, we also think that you may be interested in building
> relations with institutions in your country that participate in this
> project.
>
> We look forward to collaborating with you to make this project, and
> the content on Wikipedia about Balkans and Caucasus, better.
>
> Cristian
> on behalf on Wikimedia Italia
>
> [1] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Davide_Denti_%28OBC%29
> [2a] http://ecpmf.eu/members
> [2b] http://ecpmf.eu/ecpmf/people-and-partners/consortium
Hi, today it's a holiday for US-based WMF employees, so let me add the
information already public while a more complete reply arrives:
On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 3:16 PM, Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Jaime Villagomez, I have a question about a small example of
> procurement governance that I hope you can help with as the WMF CFO,
>
> QUESTION
> Can you please publish the specification of work used to support
> contract review by WMF Finance and WMF Legal for the work placed with
> Valerie Aurora and Ashe Snyder, and confirm how many other suppliers
> were given the opportunity to bid for the work?
>
> Though it is healthy that the WMF support their management team to
> make local decisions on resourcing, I am concerned that an informal
> and undocumented way of potentially selecting friends or old
> colleagues as suppliers has become a tacitly accepted default for
> placing WMF project contracts, rather than ensuring open bid processes
> with independently verifiable good governance. This appears to
> contradict the WMF Finance commitment to "core values of transparency
> and accountability".
>
> BACKGROUND
> During discussion of the proposed Code of Conduct for Wikimedia
> Technical spaces[1], it was stated that Valerie Aurora and Ashe Snyder
>
Ashe Dryden (the mistake is originally mine)
> had been given contracts for "expert advice". I asked to see the
> invitation to tender.
I replied at
https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ACode_of_Conduct%2FDraft&…
-- text pasted here for convenience:
The two contracts have small budgets covering an amount of hours of
consulting. They were organized by me as part of my responsibility as
Engineering Community Manager, checking with the Code of Conduct promoters
and the Wikimedia Developer Summit organizers (Valerie helped us
co-organizing this event as well). I followed the normal WMF procedures for
contracting vendor services, going through WMF Finance and Legal review as
well as approval by my manager. Both consultants are recognized experts in
their field and are fit for the tasks requested.
The rest of the discussion can be found at
https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ACode_of_Conduct%2FDraft&…
See also
* https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T90908#1859995 + following comments,
and my summary for the Developer Relations quarterly review
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T90908#1927563
> The question has since been hidden from view,
> without a confirmation that a specification for the work was written
> before the contracts were offered, nor has any statement been made
> about how much money will be paid for the (unspecified) review work.
> As far as I can tell, no expert advice by Aurora or Snyder has yet
> been made public, even though the Code of Conduct was intended to be
> created using open community processes. Quim Gil wrote "Feel free to
> continue via email or elsewhere", so I am posing the question as an
> open letter by email, asking again on-wiki appears now impossible.
>
> The WMF policy for procurement states that "Purchases that involve
> contracts need to go through contract review", and Quim Gil has
> confirmed that "I followed the normal WMF procedures for contracting
> vendor services, going through WMF Finance and Legal review as well as
> approval by my manager". Without a specification for the work, a
> meaningful contract review is impossible.
>
> It should be a mandatory requirement in professional procurement
> policies for all contracts to have a signed off statement of work,
> before contract are agreed, and only in exceptional pre-defined
> circumstances (such as contract extensions or applying formal
> preferred supplier lists) should the management team be allowed to
> place contracts with people they may happen to know, without an
> opportunity for anyone else to fairly bid for the work.
>
> I have asked for the specification of work to be published, ideally
> the budget should be published so there is better awareness of how
> much is normal for "expert advice". As the advice must be published to
> be useful, as the Code of Conduct is a public consultation, there can
> be no reason of privacy or confidentiality that applies.
>
> Links
> 1. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_Conduct/Draft
>
> P.S. as Jaime Villagomez, WMF Chief Financial Officer has no published
> email address that I can track down, I have copied this email to Lila,
> CEO.
>
> Thanks,
> Fae
> --
> faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
>
--
Quim Gil
Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
Dear Jaime Villagomez, I have a question about a small example of
procurement governance that I hope you can help with as the WMF CFO;
QUESTION
Can you please publish the specification of work used to support
contract review by WMF Finance and WMF Legal for the work placed with
Valerie Aurora and Ashe Snyder, and confirm how many other suppliers
were given the opportunity to bid for the work?
Though it is a reasonable decision that the WMF support their
management team to make local decisions on resourcing, I am concerned
that an informal and undocumented way of potentially selecting friends
or old colleagues as suppliers has become a tacitly accepted default
for placing WMF project contracts, rather than ensuring open bid
processes with independently verifiable good governance. This appears
to contradict the WMF Finance commitment to "core values of
transparency and accountability".
BACKGROUND
During discussion of the proposed Code of Conduct for Wikimedia
Technical spaces[1], it was stated that Valerie Aurora and Ashe Snyder
had been given contracts for "expert advice". I asked to see the
invitation to tender. The question has since been hidden from view,
without a confirmation that a specification for the work was written
before the contracts were offered, nor has any statement been made
about how much money will be paid for the (unspecified) review work.
As far as I can tell, no expert advice by Aurora or Snyder has yet
been made public, even though the Code of Conduct was intended to be
created using open community processes. Quim Gil wrote "Feel free to
continue via email or elsewhere", so I am posing the question as an
open letter by email, asking again on-wiki appears now impossible.
The WMF policy for procurement states that "Purchases that involve
contracts need to go through contract review", and Quim Gil has
confirmed that "I followed the normal WMF procedures for contracting
vendor services, going through WMF Finance and Legal review as well as
approval by my manager". Without a specification for the work, a
meaningful contract review is impossible.
It should be a mandatory requirement in professional procurement
policies for all contracts to have a signed off statement of work,
before contract are agreed, and only in exceptional pre-defined
circumstances (such as contract extensions or applying formal
preferred supplier lists) should the management team be allowed to
place contracts with people they may happen to know, without an
opportunity for anyone else to fairly bid for the work.
I have asked for the specification of work to be published, ideally
the budget should be published so there is better awareness of how
much is normal for "expert advice". As the advice must be published to
be useful, as the Code of Conduct is a public consultation, there can
be no reason of privacy or confidentiality that applies.
Links 1. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_Conduct/Draft
P.S. as Jaime Villagomez, WMF Chief Financial Officer has no published
email address that I can track down, I have copied this letter to
Lila, CEO and Quim Gil.
Thanks,
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
Hello fellow Wikimedians,
On this very special day I would like to share with you yesterdays post by
Rosemary Rein and todays post by Nicole Ebber. [1] & [2]
This installation of Discourse is a pilot to test. Your data belong to you.
You can download your own posts and replies from your user page. Maybe you
like an archive of all posts. You can download all posts from the
wikimedia-l category from the export page. [3] Discourse is a labs project
and I don't promise anything will be kept here for long. Expect things to
change. Thanks for the support by Erik Bernhardson.
The wikimedia-l mailing list can also be accessed as a newsgroup. [4] Some
people have asked for synchronization between the wikimedia-l mailing list
and the wikimedia-l category here, which is discussed at Discourse. [5]
Setting up a sync will require some research and experimentation. The
mailing list to newsgroup bridge might serve as a model. Austin Hair
volunteered to look into this.
The number of people signing up for an account at Discourse is slowly
growing. On this special day, spread the love.
Best wishes,
Ad
This message has been sent from the gmane webinterface to the wikimedia-l
mailing list. I wonder if it might be possible to set up the discourse
installation as a web interface as well.
[1]:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ _
programevaluation/permalink/565662480251322/
[2]:
https://blog.wikimedia.de/2016/02/14/ _
wir-lieben-freie-software-eine-homage/?utm_content=bufferc272b& _
utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
[3]: https://discourse.wmflabs.org/exports/
[4]: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation
[5]: https://discourse.wmflabs.org/t/synchronization/74