Hi Wikimedians,
Today WMF's Community Resources team is joined by Delphine Ménard as our
newly appointed Annual Plan Grants
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG> (APG) Program Officer. In that
role, Delphine will support both funding streams included in the Annual
Plan Grants program, including Simple Annual Plan Grants and the Funds
Dissemination Committee's
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee>
(FDC) full process APG, with her focus on the FDC. We are excited to have
her join our team.
Some of you may know Delphine as [[user:notafish]]. She's a longtime
Wikimedian who has played many roles in our movement. She was WMF's
Chapter's Coordinator many years ago, then a member of the Board of
Wikimedia Deutschland, and most recently, a member of the Funds
Dissemination Committee herself. Her wide array of experiences and roles
will serve her well as the new APG Program Officer.
In the weeks ahead, Delphine will be reaching out to the FDC-funded
organizations and will also be leading the Board's recruitment to fill four
open seats on the FDC. I know she is looking forward to working with all of
you. :)
Cheers,
Katy Love
Whenever a serious problem raises and after years of hesitation I
finally realize that I have to speak about it publicly, I have a drive
to drink some rakija, feel good and forget all of the stress the new
issue would give to me.
But this is very important and we have to start talking about it.
This issue lasts for years. I was first approached with this problem
during the Wikimania in London. Because of my firm belief into the
random nature of the nature, I thought it would be solved randomly.
Of course my intuition was wrong. Two years later nothing has changed.
Serbia has 7 millions of inhabitants, India has 1.3 billion. In few
years India will have 2000 times more inhabitants of Serbia.
And when I see what a mess good people from the West [1][2] are making
in Serbia, multiply that number with 2000 and realize that I have a
number of Wikimedia friends from India, my anxiety freaks out.
We are not the worst, it's likely we are even the best, but we are
mostly doing the same things that has been proved to be plainly wrong.
Fortunately, it's just "mostly", not "completely", as we have the way
to see what is wrong.
The problem we have there is bigger than any inequality gap we have in
all OECD countries combined, as Wikimedia is doing poor job in solving
any problem for approximately 1.2 billion of humans.
I will start with with the simple fact that Hindi, the fourth language
by number of speakers [3] has Wikipedia at the 58th place by number of
articles [4]. And, no, Hindi Wikipedia is not at all in the category
"smaller number of very good articles".
I will continue with my completely unscientific approximation that 1/7
of the world population has been constantly represented on Wikimanias
by 1/7 Wikimedians if we count genetics and 0 (zero) if we count
social reality.
For those who didn't yet get it, if the upper classes of India consist
even 20% of population, we don't have any representation of 1 billion
of humans.
I could continue here with the background of the issue, various
problems mentioned to me, frustration expressed to me, but I don't
think it's useful at all.
What I think it's most useful is to start fixing the problem *now*. I
want to hear Indian Wikimedians what they see as problems that should
be solved, how they think that they should be solved, as well as WMF
and other Wikimedia movement bodies to start tackling that problem.
This is the part of the bigger problem. All of us have similar
problems in our own societies. And I think everybody should follow the
resolution of this problem and think how to do the similar things in
their own capacities in their own societies. (Hint for American
Wikimedians: Trump supporters are your next target for positive
discrimination.)
[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/120178/problem-international-development-an…
[2] http://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someone_shut_up_and_l…
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias
--
Milos
Seconding Lodewijk here. I can already count at least 5 phrases or
statements that David Emrany has said which made me cringe and wonder why
hasn't this been blocked/moderated already?
Hostile, accusatory, and vulgar behavior degrades this entire forum (beyond
its already damaged capacity for inclusion of multiple voices).
Please do something.
Jake Orlowitz (User:Ocaasi)
Hi Everyone,
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees met in Esino Lario during
Wikimania. The minutes will be published in the coming days, but we deemed
it too important to wait to share the outcome of this really great meeting.
During the meeting, the Board felt that it was important to establish three
clear priorities for the coming year: We will focus on three specific
topics:
* Improving the Board itself
* Supporting the Executive Director, Katherine Maher
* Fostering the creation of a strategy for the movement
Every trustee acknowledges that there's a clear need for the Board to
assume a leadership position for our movement. That being said, the eight
of us are only temporary stewards of our positions. We need to work toward
creating the best environment for all of us to push our mission forward.
That is the reason our first topic is about Board improvement — to work to
become the trustees you all need. The governance committee [1] is
continuing its work on incremental improvements, as well as on defining the
further actions we need to take.
Our second priority is to support the Executive Director. As you all know,
the Board proposed to Katherine Maher to move from her interim ED position
to a permanent one. We are thrilled she agreed.
We must not consider this decision as the end of the process, but as a
beginning. In order for the Wikimedia Foundation to achieve great things,
the Board needs to be supporting the ED. This means providing her with a
consistent and clear explanation of the intentions in our decisions, and to
act as sparring partners to her.
The HR committee[2] will work toward that end, and the Board as whole is
ready to take any steps necessary to provide her, and the staff, with the
best environment possible.
Finally, the lack, or fuzziness, around movement strategy has been a
pending question for years. One that we never managed to tackle. And
perhaps because no one wanted to take on that charge. The Board of Trustees
decided that within the next 12 months we will have to define our vision
and strategy. A strategy that is suited with our goals, our values, and is
inclusive of every agent of the movement.
The past fifteen years were amazing. But now we have to think of the next
fifteen years. There are many challenges ahead of us if we want to keep on
changing the world.
We must not shy away from those challenges, nor from the decisions we have
to make.
Within the Board of Trustees, Maria Sefidari and I take the lead on the
necessary steps are being taken. Katherine and Foundation staff already
have worked on the first steps to reach that goal.
Our goal is to make sure we — as a movement — will have a strategy that we
can all embrace and push forward together.
As ever, decisions need action, and we will take them and share them
quickly so that you know that we walk the talk, and we want to walk it with
all of you.
We will be happy to answer any questions you have whether on list or off
list.
Thank you to everyone for those past fifteen years, and I’m looking forward
to what we'll achieve in the coming ones!
Christophe
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Governance_Commi…
[2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/HR_Committee
Thank you both, Patricio and Alice.
//Johan Jönsson
--
Den 23 juni 2016 6:02 em skrev "Patricio Lorente" <
patricio.lorente(a)gmail.com>:
Hello everyone,
I am happy to share that as of today, Christophe Henner and Nataliia Tymkiv
have formally joined the Board of Trustees as affiliate Board-selected
members. They both bring deep expertise in the Wikimedia community, and in
their respective fields. I’m confident they will serve as excellent
contributors, rooted in the values of our movement. You can learn more
about them in an announcement we made in May:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/05/24/affiliate-selected-board-trustees-ele…
Today the Board also voted to appoint Christophe Henner as Chair, and María
Sefidari as Vice Chair. Both Christophe and María have a long history of
involvement in the Wikimedia community, and have held leadership roles at
Wikimedia France and Wikimedia Spain, respectively.
More about Christophe, María, and Natallia is below. I hope you will join
me in congratulating them on their new positions and wish them success in
their terms ahead.
I would like to thank my friend Alice for working with me in her role as
Vice Chair, and many thanks to you all for your support during my time as
Chair.
Patricio Lorente
About Christophe Henner
Christophe Henner is the former Chair of Wikimedia France and current
deputy CEO of Webedia <http://www.webedia.com>'s gaming division, the
international digital media group headquartered in France.
He has deep and varied experience across the marketing sector, including
leadership roles at at Webedia and L'Odyssée Interactive.
Christophe has been an active member of the Wikimedia community for more
than 12 years. In 2007, he joined the Board of Wikimedia France
<http://www.wikimedia.fr/> and has remained an active Board member in
various positions for the past ten years. He has served as both Chair and
Vice Chair of the Board of Wikimedia France. During his time on the Board,
Christophe helped lead Wikimedia France through a significant period of
growth. This included leading the development of the chapter’s brand, and
supporting the development of a clear organizational strategy and vision
for the chapter.
About Maria Sefidari
Maria is a professor in the Digital Communications, Culture and Citizenship
Master's degree program <http://cccd.es/wp/> of Rey Juan Carlos University
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Juan_Carlos_University> at the
MediaLab-Prado <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/es:MediaLab-Prado>. María
graduated with a Psychology degree from Universidad Complutense de Madrid
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complutense_University_of_Madrid>, and later
a Master's degree in Management and Tourism at the Business faculty of the
same university.
María started contributing to the Wikimedia projects in 2006, and has since
served in many different roles across the Wikimedia movement. She was a
founding member of Wikimedia España
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Espa%C3%B1a> and Wikimujeres
Grupo de Usuarias <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimujeres>, and also
created Spanish Wikipedia's LGBT Wikiproject
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/es:Wikiproyecto:LGBT>. She has served on
several Wikimedia governance committees, including the Affiliations
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee> and Individual
Engagement Grants <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG> committees.
In her time on the Affiliations committee, María served as the first
Treasurer of the committee, effectively overseeing and monitoring
disbursement of the committee's budget. Maria served a prior term on the
Wikimedia Foundation board from 2013 to 2015.
About Nataliia Tymkiv
Nataliia currently serves as Financial Director of the Centre for Democracy
and Rule of Law, a Ukrainian media policy and human rights nonprofit.
Nataliia has a Masters degree in Public Administration and a Specialist
degree in Records Management and Information Activities.
She has in-depth experience in executive leadership and financial
management. Prior to her current role as Financial Director, Nataliia
worked at a manufacturing firm and later, in finance at a construction
company. Prior to her current role as Financial Director, Nataliia worked
at a manufacturing firm and later, in finance at a construction company. On
the Wikimedia projects, she’s been an active contributor since 2011, and
shortly after became an administrator of Ukrainian Wikipedia
<https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Головна_сторінка>. She has also been a
member of the Wikimedia Ukraine <https://ua.wikimedia.org/wiki/> community
for nearly four years, and has served as the chapter’s Board Treasurer,
Vice Chair, and volunteer Executive Director.
--
_______________________________________________
Wmfall mailing list
Wmfall(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wmfall
Hello everyone,
As foreseen by the FDC Framework[1], the mandate of current appointed
members to the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) comes to an end, after
two years of service. Four of them have terms that are ending, and we are
therefore looking to appoint 4 members by September 2016.
We are looking for good volunteer candidates across our communities and
beyond to join the FDC. The next round of proposals will be submitted on
Oct 1, 2016, and the FDC will meet face-to-face to deliberate on them in
November 2016 .
Any information you might need about the FDC and this process is on this
page:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/No…
but here are a few things you might want to consider:
== Why you'd want to volunteer with the FDC ==
* You will be reviewing annual plans and budgets of Wikimedia affiliate
organisations and making recommendations about the effective spending of
more than US$5 million dollars, shaping the direction of impact of a
significant portion of our movement's financial resources.
* You will apply your analytic skills and experience in assessing programs,
financial plans and strategic plans to support Wikimedia related work.
* You will gain valuable experience in grant-making, project evaluation,
and planning on a global and multi-cultural level.
* You will be working in collaboration with 8 other great and dedicated
individuals from across the movement, to reach consensus and make high
level decisions.
== Why you might not want to volunteer with the FDC ==
* The FDC will commit to, and enforce, a high standard of participation,
and you may not be ready to seriously commit to a high level of
participation (two in person events per year, traditionally one in San
Francisco, the other one in Europe, as well as several weeks of intensive
proposal review, calls, preparation etc.) for two years.
* The FDC's work will be conducted in English, and even with maximal
support and summarization from staff, you will be required to read a lot of
text in English, and to make your contributions in English.
* You don't meet the membership criteria[2], or you're confident other
candidates are better qualified or positioned to serve on the committee, in
which case, please refer them to this announcement!
If you are interested in serving on the FDC, please add your name to the
nominations page before July 10 2016 at 23.59 UTC.:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/No…
You can write your statement and answer the questions there. We will get in
touch with you during the recruitment process, but please feel free to
contact me with any questions you might have.
Feel free to forward this annoucement anywhere you think might be
appropriate.
Thanks and have a good {{timezone}},
Delphine
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Fr…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/No…
--
Delphine Ménard
Program Officer, Annual Plan Grants
Wikimedia Foundation
Hi,
Last week a small case of copyright violation come to a positive conclusion.
Niccolò Caranti [[User:Jaqen]] is a Wikipedian and as a professional
photographer also a very prolific Commons contributor to the point
that he is a sysop both on itwiki and Commons.
He recently discovered that one of his photos was used for an event
without respecting the terms of the CC-BY-SA license, i.e. without
proper attribution to him and reference to the license.
Supported by Simone Aliprandi - a lawyer specializing in intellectual
property and author of a number of (free/libre) books on the topic of
licenses and Creative Commons in particular - they sent a formal
request to the organizers of the event.
The issue has been resolved amicably with all legal costs paid by the
agency that was working for the organizers of the event (who admitted
their mistake) and a compensation for the author.
You can read more about this case here:
https://aliprandi.blogspot.it/2016/06/photo-from-wikipedia-violation-licens…
Cristian
Dear members of the Wikimedia community,
On behalf of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, I write to
share the news that we have approved [1] the full slate of the FDC’s Round
2 2015-2016 recommendations [2] for the Annual Plan Grants, as well as
taken good note of the remarks and recommendations concerning the Wikimedia
Foundation. In this round, 4 organizations will be receiving a total of
roughly US$1,138,000, for a total of US$4,908,000 allocated in both rounds
2015-2016. Grants are made in local currency, so the USD figure is
approximate. The remaining US$1,092,000 from the FDC’s US$6 million grant
envelope this year will remain with the Wikimedia Foundation.
We congratulate the Centre for Internet and Society, Wikimedia Armenia,
Wikimédia France and Wikimedia Norge on their grants, and we are happy to
see that year after year, their work continues to further our mission. We
know that the volunteers, staff, and boards of these organizations are
working hard to advance the goals of the movement. We thank them for their
work in doing so.
Many people have put in significant work to make this process a success. As
the Board representative to the FDC, I would also like to thank the Funds
Dissemination Committee members and staff, as well as the members of our
communities who participated in the process this round.
We also particularly want to thank the FDC members for putting much effort
into the complex task of reviewing the draft annual plan of the Wikimedia
Foundation.
Volunteers are at the heart of this committee. We are lucky to have a
committee comprised of nine dedicated community members who give their time
and energy into making this funding program a reality. Four of the members
of the FDC have terms that are ending. I want to thank Anne Clin
(User:Risker), Dumisani Ndubane (User:Thuvack), Matanya Moses
(User:Matanya), and Osmar Valdebenito (User:B1mbo) for their two years of
service to this committee. The Board would like to thank you for your work
for four rounds of funding.
We are glad to witness our movement’s great efforts to further the mission
through thoughtful planning and strategic thinking and are looking forward
to the year ahead.
Sincerely,
Dariusz, on behalf of the WMF Board of Trustees
[1]
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Board_approval_of_FDC_recom…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_recommendations/2015-2016_ro…
Hello Dariusz,
Thank you for the time that you are sending working on the Governance
Committee.
I appreciate this email that shares your progress and future plans. Many of
the ideas sound helpful and effective to address some long term problems.
With the growth in new methods and processes is the Board planning to have
a method to monitor/measure the success of these activities?
Sydney Poore/FloNight
On Jun 27, 2016 2:46 PM, "Dariusz Jemielniak" <darekj(a)alk.edu.pl> wrote:
hi all,
this is an update on the work of the Board Governance Committee over the
last months that some of you have requested.
Among other things, the Board Governance Committee has worked on:
- Creating the Board’s competence matrix[1],
- Discussing the most critical needs for the expert seats, and proposing
technology (deep, intimate understanding of how software works, possibly
coming from open-source involvement), as well as global organization and
community management and change in non-profit world as the major ones,
- Discussing the calendar for the vacant expert seat recruitment, and
adjusting to the WMF HR staff available support (scheduled to start in
August),
- Discussing the vacant community seats solutions (and proposing shortening
the terms and having community elections in early 2017, so that the elected
members would join the Board at April meeting),
- Appointing the new Election Committee (and proposing a process in which
the further development of this body will be partially transferred to the
community),
- Reviewing the possibilities for an external Board review (as recommended
by the FDC),
- Increasing transparency (a set of concrete measures soon to be put
forward by Dariusz and Maria, following several discussions),
- Introducing a workshop[2] for external Board members about wiki-culture
and copyright (topics picked by the community[3]) at Wikimania,
- Conducting an internal Board[4] survey about our understanding of our
tasks, governance practices, etc.
- Discussing general governance improvements[5] for the Board.
We have also considered introducing one centralized place on meta for
Board-community communication, but after discussion with the staff we have
concluded that we're going to rely on small incremental improvements in
communication first.
The remaining topics still include:
- the Advisory Board redesign/restart,
- the Board's composition and structure analysis,
- possible external reviews or consulting,
- introducing workshops on best governance practices (and other topics of
interest) for Board members,
- other governance improvements and tasks.
let me know if you have any questions!
dj "pundit"
(current Trustee and BGC member, passing BGC chairing to Natalia Tymkiv)
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Governance_Commi…
[2]
https://wikimania2016.wikimedia.org/wiki/Training_sessions/Proposals/Wikime…
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Governance_Commi…
[4] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2016-03
[5]
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_Governance_Recommendations_(Apri…
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Moving this issue out of the thread about India, as it doesn't belong to it.
It seems that my explanation of explanation was not quite useful. Just
the last paragraph was a satire and I've got complaint that
satirically playing with the racist stereotypes could seem racist.
That was the target of the explanation of explanation.
However, your question that it's still not clear to you why I am
talking about Trump supporters is much more important.
If we tend to be an inclusive movement, we should do our best to
include people from as much of society as we are able to do.
The first and the most obvious problem in Wikimedia community was
striking lack of women. And, for a long time we have the programs
which promote inclusion of women in our movement.
Then we have the issue of minorities. Depending on the country, those
processes started sooner or later.
However, as we articulated Wikimedia movement as a progressive one, we
are slowly but surely losing large portions of our societies.
The metaphor for that portion is "a Trump voter", but those people
exist in every society. They do not vote for Trump; they could be even
a progressive force in their society; but, as with Trump supporter,
they've been ostracized from the dominant part of the society as less
worthy.
I've said those parts of the societies are our new underrepresented
groups. In United States it's about middle class people scared of
those who are socially in worse (immigrants) and better position
(among others, us) than themselves, voting for Trump. In Austria, it's
about working class people scared of those in worse and better
position than themselves, voting for FPO. And so on.
And if you are asking me why we should take care about their
incorporation, I will tell you that I was getting quite similar
questions when I raised the problem of lack of participation of women
in Wikimedia movement. It's the wider social role of our movement.
On Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 3:43 PM, Peter Southwood
<peter.southwood(a)telkomsa.net> wrote:
> Still not clear. Why?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Milos Rancic
> Sent: Tuesday, 28 June 2016 1:28 PM
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Our problem with India
>
> On Jun 28, 2016 09:58, "Milos Rancic" <millosh(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> (Hint for American
>> Wikimedians: Trump supporters are your next target for positive
>> discrimination.)
>
> It seems I have to clarify this sentence.
>
> I didn't say Trump, I didn't say Cruz, I didn't say Cruz supporters, I said Trump supporters.
>
> I have in mind very specific population, genuinely scared by the privileged Mexican illegal immigrants, working lazy for the American agricultural industry for $5/h or less and supported by Bay Area hipsters and Jewish lobby.
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Milos