September 2016 - Wikimedia-l - lists.wikimedia.org

[Foundation-l] Improving search in Wikipedia through quality and concept discovery
by Brian J Mingus 09 Sep '22

09 Sep '22

This paper (first reference) is the result of a class project I was part of almost two years ago for CSCI 5417 Information Retrieval Systems. It builds on a class project I did in CSCI 5832 Natural Language Processing and which I presented at Wikimania '07. The project was very late as we didn't send the final paper in until the day before new years. This technical report was never really announced that I recall so I thought it would be interesting to look briefly at the results. The goal of this paper was to break articles down into surface features and latent features and then use those to study the rating system being used, predict article quality and rank results in a search engine. We used the [[random forests]] classifier which allowed us to analyze the contribution of each feature to performance by looking directly at the weights that were assigned. While the surface analysis was performed on the whole english wikipedia, the latent analysis was performed on the simple english wikipedia (it is more expensive to compute). = Surface features = * Readability measures are the single best predictor of quality that I have found, as defined by the Wikipedia Editorial Team (WET). The [[Automated Readability Index]], [[Gunning Fog Index]] and [[Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level]] were the strongest predictors, followed by length of article html, number of paragraphs, [[Flesh Reading Ease]], [[Smog Grading]], number of internal links, [[Laesbarhedsindex Readability Formula]], number of words and number of references. Weakly predictive were number of to be's, number of sentences, [[Coleman-Liau Index]], number of templates, PageRank, number of external links, number of relative links. Not predictive (overall - see the end of section 2 for the per-rating score breakdown): Number of h2 or h3's, number of conjunctions, number of images*, average word length, number of h4's, number of prepositions, number of pronouns, number of interlanguage links, average syllables per word, number of nominalizations, article age (based on page id), proportion of questions, average sentence length. :* Number of images was actually by far the single strongest predictor of any class, but only for Featured articles. Because it was so good at picking out featured articles and somewhat good at picking out A and G articles the classifier was confused in so many cases that the overall contribution of this feature to classification performance is zero. :* Number of external links is strongly predictive of Featured articles. :* The B class is highly distinctive. It has a strong "signature," with high predictive value assigned to many features. The Featured class is also very distinctive. F, B and S (Stop/Stub) contain the most information. :* A is the least distinct class, not being very different from F or G. = Latent features = The algorithm used for latent analysis, which is an analysis of the occurence of words in every document with respect to the link structure of the encyclopedia ("concepts"), is [[Latent Dirichlet Allocation]]. This part of the analysis was done by CS PhD student Praful Mangalath. An example of what can be done with the result of this analysis is that you provide a word (a search query) such as "hippie". You can then look at the weight of every article for the word hippie. You can pick the article with the largest weight, and then look at its link network. You can pick out the articles that this article links to and/or which link to this article that are also weighted strongly for the word hippie, while also contributing maximally to this articles "hippieness". We tried this query in our system (LDA), Google (site:en.wikipedia.org hippie), and the Simple English Wikipedia's Lucene search engine. The breakdown of articles occuring in the top ten search results for this word for those engines is: * LDA only: [[Acid rock]], [[Aldeburgh Festival]], [[Anne Murray]], [[Carl Radle]], [[Harry Nilsson]], [[Jack Kerouac]], [[Phil Spector]], [[Plastic Ono Band]], [[Rock and Roll]], [[Salvador Allende]], [[Smothers brothers]], [[Stanley Kubrick]]. * Google only: [[Glam Rock]], [[South Park]]. * Simple only: [[African Americans]], [[Charles Manson]], [[Counterculture]], [[Drug use]], [[Flower Power]], [[Nuclear weapons]], [[Phish]], [[Sexual liberation]], [[Summer of Love]] * LDA & Google & Simple: [[Hippie]], [[Human Be-in]], [[Students for a democratic society]], [[Woodstock festival]] * LDA & Google: [[Psychedelic Pop]] * Google & Simple: [[Lysergic acid diethylamide]], [[Summer of Love]] ( See the paper for the articles produced for the keywords philosophy and economics ) = Discussion / Conclusion = * The results of the latent analysis are totally up to your perception. But what is interesting is that the LDA features predict the WET ratings of quality just as well as the surface level features. Both feature sets (surface and latent) both pull out all almost of the information that the rating system bears. * The rating system devised by the WET is not distinctive. You can best tell the difference between, grouped together, Featured, A and Good articles vs B articles. Featured, A and Good articles are also quite distinctive (Figure 1). Note that in this study we didn't look at Start's and Stubs, but in earlier paper we did. :* This is interesting when compared to this recent entry on the YouTube blog. "Five Stars Dominate Ratings" http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.html… I think a sane, well researched (with actual subjects) rating system is well within the purview of the Usability Initiative. Helping people find and create good content is what Wikipedia is all about. Having a solid rating system allows you to reorganized the user interface, the Wikipedia namespace, and the main namespace around good content and bad content as needed. If you don't have a solid, information bearing rating system you don't know what good content really is (really bad content is easy to spot). :* My Wikimania talk was all about gathering data from people about articles and using that to train machines to automatically pick out good content. You ask people questions along dimensions that make sense to people, and give the machine access to other surface features (such as a statistical measure of readability, or length) and latent features (such as can be derived from document word occurence and encyclopedia link structure). I referenced page 262 of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to give an example of the kind of qualitative features I would ask people. It really depends on what features end up bearing information, to be tested in "the lab". Each word is an example dimension of quality: We have "*unity, vividness, authority, economy, sensitivity, clarity, emphasis, flow, suspense, brilliance, precision, proportion, depth and so on.*" You then use surface and latent features to predict these values for all articles. You can also say, when a person rates this article as high on the x scale, they also mean that it has has this much of these surface and these latent features. = References = - DeHoust, C., Mangalath, P., Mingus., B. (2008). *Improving search in Wikipedia through quality and concept discovery*. Technical Report. PDF<http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/6/68/DeHoustMangalat…> - Rassbach, L., Mingus., B, Blackford, T. (2007). *Exploring the feasibility of automatically rating online article quality*. Technical Report. PDF<http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/d/d3/RassbachPincock…>

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[Foundation-l] Fwd: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers
by GerardM 09 Aug '22

09 Aug '22

Hoi, I have asked and received permission to forward to you all this most excellent bit of news. The linguist list, is a most excellent resource for people interested in the field of linguistics. As I mentioned some time ago they have had a funding drive and in that funding drive they asked for a certain amount of money in a given amount of days and they would then have a project on Wikipedia to learn what needs doing to get better coverage for the field of linguistics. What you will read in this mail that the total community of linguists are asked to cooperate. I am really thrilled as it will also get us more linguists interested in what we do. My hope is that a fraction will be interested in the languages that they care for and help it become more relevant. As a member of the "language prevention committee", I love to get more knowledgeable people involved in our smaller projects. If it means that we get more requests for more projects we will really feel embarrassed with all the new projects we will have to approve because of the quality of the Incubator content and the quality of the linguistic arguments why we should approve yet another language :) NB Is this not a really clever way of raising money; give us this much in this time frame and we will then do this as a bonus... Thanks, GerardM ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: LINGUIST Network <linguist(a)linguistlist.org> Date: Jun 18, 2007 6:53 PM Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers To: LINGUIST(a)listserv.linguistlist.org LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831. Mon Jun 18 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875. Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar(a)linguistlist.org> Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry(a)linguistlist.org> Reviews: Laura Welcher, Rosetta Project <reviews(a)linguistlist.org> Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/ The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, and donations from subscribers and publishers. Editor for this issue: Ann Sawyer <sawyer(a)linguistlist.org> ================================================================ To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html ===========================Directory============================== 1) Date: 18-Jun-2007 From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org > Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers -------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:49:35 From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org > Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers Dear subscribers, As you may recall, one of our Fund Drive 2007 campaigns was called the "Wikipedia Update Vote." We asked our viewers to consider earmarking their donations to organize an update project on linguistics entries in the English-language Wikipedia. You can find more background information on this at: http://linguistlist.org/donation/fund-drive2007/wikipedia/index.cfm. The speed with which we met our goal, thanks to the interest and generosity of our readers, was a sure sign that the linguistics community was enthusiastic about the idea. Now that summer is upon us, and some of you may have a bit more leisure time, we are hoping that you will be able to help us get started on the Wikipedia project. The LINGUIST List's role in this project is a purely organizational one. We will: *Help, with your input, to identify major gaps in the Wikipedia materials or pages that need improvement; *Compile a list of linguistics pages that Wikipedia editors have identified as "in need of attention from an expert on the subject" or " does not cite any references or sources," etc; *Send out periodical calls for volunteer contributors on specific topics or articles; *Provide simple instructions on how to upload your entries into Wikipedia; *Keep track of our project Wikipedians; *Keep track of revisions and new entries; *Work with Wikimedia Foundation to publicize the linguistics community's efforts. We hope you are as enthusiastic about this effort as we are. Just to help us all get started looking at Wikipedia more critically, and to easily identify an area needing improvement, we suggest that you take a look at the List of Linguists page at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguists. M Many people are not listed there; others need to have more facts and information added. If you would like to participate in this exciting update effort, please respond by sending an email to LINGUIST Editor Hannah Morales at hannah(a)linguistlist.org, suggesting what your role might be or which linguistics entries you feel should be updated or added. Some linguists who saw our campaign on the Internet have already written us with specific suggestions, which we will share with you soon. This update project will take major time and effort on all our parts. The end result will be a much richer internet resource of information on the breadth and depth of the field of linguistics. Our efforts should also stimulate prospective students to consider studying linguistics and to educate a wider public on what we do. Please consider participating. Sincerely, Hannah Morales Editor, Wikipedia Update Project Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable ----------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831

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Fresh data on the gender gap in content
by Asaf Bartov 10 Feb '20

10 Feb '20

Hullo everyone. I was asked by a volunteer for help getting stats on the gender gap in content on a certain Wikipedia, and came up with simple Wikidata Query Service[1] queries that pulled the total number of articles on a given Wikipedia about men and about women, to calculate *the proportion of articles about women out of all articles about humans*. Then I was curious about how that wiki compared to other wikis, so I ran the queries on a bunch of languages, and gathered the results into a table, here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ijon/Content_gap (please see the *caveat* there.) I don't have time to fully write-up everything I find interesting in those results, but I will quickly point out the following: 1. The Nepali statistic is simply astonishing! There must be a story there. I'm keen on learning more about this, if anyone can shed light. 2. Evidently, ~13%-17% seems like a robust average of the proportion of articles about women among all biographies. 3. among the top 10 largest wikis, Japanese is the least imbalanced. Good job, Japanese Wikipedians! I wonder if you have a good sense of what drives this relatively better balance. (my instinctive guess is pop culture coverage.) 4. among the top 10 largest wikis, Russian is the most imbalanced. 5. I intend to re-generate these stats every two months or so, to eventually have some sense of trends and changes. 6. Your efforts, particularly on small-to-medium wikis, can really make a dent in these numbers! For example, it seems I am personally responsible[2] for almost 1% of the coverage of women on Hebrew Wikipedia! :) 7. I encourage you to share these numbers with your communities. Perhaps you'd like to overtake the wiki just above yours? :) 8. I'm happy to add additional languages to the table, by request. Or you can do it yourself, too. :) A. [1] https://query.wikidata.org/ [2] Yay #100wikidays :) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/100wikidays -- Asaf Bartov Wikimedia Foundation <http://www.wikimediafoundation.org> Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! https://donate.wikimedia.org

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Arbital, another Wikipedia competitor/complement
by David Gerard 01 Apr '17

01 Apr '17

Being put together by Eliezer Yudkowsky of LessWrong. Content is cc-by-sa 3.0, don't know about the software. https://arbital.com/p/arbital_ambitions/ Rather than the "encyclopedia" approach, it tries to be more pedagogical, teaching the reader at their level. Analysis from a sometime Yudkowsky critic on Tumblr: http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/140995096534/a-year-ago-i-remember-be… (there's a pile more comments linked from the notes on that post, mostly from quasi-fans; I have an acerbic comment in there, but you should look at the site yourself first.) No idea if this will go anywhere, but might be of interest; new approaches generally are. They started in December, first publicised it a week ago and have been scaling up. First day it collapsed due to load from a Facebook post announcement ... so maybe hold off before announcing it everywhere :-) - d.

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New tools: pronuncify and pronuncify.net
by Asaf Bartov 27 Jan '17

27 Jan '17

Hello, everyone. (this is an announcement in my capacity as a volunteer.) Inspired by a lightning talk at the recent CEE Meeting[1] by our colleague Lars Aronsson, I made a little command-line tool to automate batch recording of pronunciations of words by native speakers, for uploading to Commons and integration into Wiktionary etc. It is called *pronuncify*, is written in Ruby and uses the sox(1) tool, and should work on any modern Linux (and possibly OS X) machine. It is available here[2], with instructions. I was then asked about a Windows version, and agreed to attempt one. This version is called *pronuncify.net <http://pronuncify.net>*, and is a .NET gooey GUI version of the same tool, with slightly different functions. It is available here[3], with instructions. Both tools require word-list files in plaintext, with one word (or phrase) per line. Both tools name the files according to the standard established in [[commons:Category:Pronunciation]], and convert them to Ogg Vorbis for you, so they are ready to upload. In the future, I may add OAuth-based direct uploading to Commons. If you run into difficulties, please file issues on GitHub, for the appropriate tool. Feedback is welcome. A. [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Meeting_2015/Programme/Lightn… [2] https://github.com/abartov/pronuncify [3] https://github.com/abartov/Pronuncify.net -- Asaf Bartov

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2015 - 2016 Fundraising Report just published
by Samuel Patton 04 Nov '16

04 Nov '16

Hi all, My name is Sam and I'm part of the online fundraising team. I'm writing to let you know that we just published our 2015 - 2016 Fundraising Report, and would love for you to check it out. Link here: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2015-2016_Fundraising_Report I've been a happy and small part of the fundraising team for almost two years. And I think I speak for everyone when I say *thank you* for the time and energy you put into making the Wikimedia projects the vibrant, priceless resources that they are for millions of people around the planet. It's a joy to help share your work with the world. Let us know what you think and what we can clarify. Regards, Sam

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Wikiobject - Project Proposal
by Quico Prol 29 Oct '16

29 Oct '16

Hi, how about a wikipedia about objects? Instead of generic articles of , for example, "Ballpoint pen" or "Bic cristal" it would be "Ballpoint pen Bic cristal 2014" Doing these for millions of objects would allow people to have an open, free, universal and central place to refer specific objects. *Some possible applications:* - Creating neutral and standard lists: Nowadays if anyone create, for example, a tutorial for building something (DIY projects, receipts, ...) they have to link all items to a comercial or no-neutral web which could change its url in the future or redirect it to adds or whatever. Lists could be created in external webpages linking wikimedia objects webpage or/and could be created as category pages in Wikipedia. For example, currently, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_of_the_Year article lists cars which won COTY award but not links to the specific car (AUDI A3 Hatchback 2012 - Present) but generic serie (Audi A3). The good thing at this point it's that to start creating object lists only item name is necessary, no infoboxes or description needed. - Universal repository for inventories: Lot of business fill their inventories again and again with same data ("cardboard box 50x30x15", "step by step nema motor 17", ... ) they should be able to import this data from a open website with their corresponding info like GTIN , SKU , Barcode... and more in the future weight, size, ... - Encourage Recycling and Reutilitation: Imagine if we use wikidata properties ( https://m.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:List_of_properties/Generic) like "has part" and "part of" , people will find other uses for objects, or discover were to find - Social activism and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Companies have info and metrics about their costumers (habits, location, ...) why not costumers have info about companies products, who manufacture what?, what products have a good carbon footprint <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint>?, what products have been retired from some problem?, what are Fair Trade?. This also can moved companies do better. *Very rough roadmap*: 1. At the very begining, using wikidata infrestructure, objects would only have common info like "name", " image", "related links" (datasheets?), GTIN. First use cases could be doing lists or grouping objects by categories. 2. Step by step new fields could be added like "manufacturer" , "tags", ... 3. A separated website could be created. wikiobject.org isn't availiabe so url could be something like objects.wikpedia.org 4. In a long-term in order to explote all the possibilities of this project more complex fields and relations would have to be managed, like for example "fridges with energy class A+++ and width less than 80 cm", which could be easy if all always were similar but nothing further from reality A friend of mine and me tried to build a demo version in an home-made apache cassandra cluster four years ago, but we don't have enough resources and knowledge for that. *Funding* In my humble opinion, problem with wikipedia funding It's that most part of its users don't see culture as a need (sorry for that, I am a sporadic donor). In Wikiobject case I think it could rather be different. If part of companies business lies on this project, companies will be very inclined to donate to improve performace, usability, etc.. maybe similar to what happens in Linux. Where came this need from? Data needed for some software to run, product vissibility, costumer requests, etc ... , no advertisement needed, It could be a need and standart. I trully believe that world need something like this, and the correct people to do it, to warranty openness and independence, are you. thanks for your time and attention, grettings

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General Counsel Search | Job Description
by Amy Elder 05 Oct '16

05 Oct '16

Hi all, Over the past few weeks, we have been working with the Legal and executive teams to develop a job description (attached) for the General Counsel role. I would like to share it with you early as well, before the job description is posted and the process starts. I am very grateful to our legal staff and leaders here at the WMF for collaborating on both the description and the process. If you have any nominations or recommendations, please email me directly over the next few days. Thank you all for engaging. With appreciation, Amy Amy Elder Director of Recruiting Wikimedia Foundation Join Us: WorkWithUs <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Work_with_us> Follow us on Twitter @wikimediaatwork

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Fwd: Call for participation: Wikimedia Developer Summit 2017
by Quim Gil 30 Sep '16

30 Sep '16

Hi, the call for participation for the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2017 is now open: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_ Summit/Call_for_participation We welcome especially proposals related to these main topics: * A plan for the Community Wishlist 2016 top results * Handling wiki content beyond plaintext * A unified vision for editorial collaboration * Building a sustainable user experience together * Useful, consistent, and well documented APIs * How to manage our technical debt * Artificial Intelligence to build and navigate content * How to grow our technical community If you want to propose an activity pre-scheduled in the Summit program, you have time until Monday, October 31. There is no deadline to propose Unconference sessions. ABOUT The Wikimedia Developer Summit is the annual meeting to push the evolution of MediaWiki and other technologies supporting the Wikimedia movement. We welcome all Wikimedia technical contributors and third party developers using the Wikimedia APIs or MediaWiki. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_Summit (This information wants to be forwarded!) -- Quim Gil Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil

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If your wiki wants numerical sorting in categories
by Johan Jönsson 22 Sep '16

22 Sep '16

Hi everyone, In the Community Wishlist survey[1] that the WMF Community Tech team[2] did last year, the #5 wish was numerical sorting in categories[3] (e.g. let 99 come before 101). This is now working and has been rolled out to Swedish and English Wikipedia. If your wiki wants it, the Community Tech team is happy to help, of course. Re-sorting the categories is done using a script, which can take a day or so to complete, depending on the size of the wiki. During the time that the script is running, sorting in some categories will be unreliable.This issue goes away when the script is done. If you’d like numerical sorting on your wiki: 1) Please start a community discussion – RfC, vote, or however your wiki normally decides these things – to make sure there’s support for it. 2) Once you’re sure it has support, post on User:DannyH (WMF)’s talk page on Meta to with a link to the discussion: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DannyH_(WMF) [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2015_Community_Wishlist_Survey [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Tech [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Tech/Numerical_sorting_in_categor… Regards, //Johan Jönsson, User:Johan (WMF) --

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New Readers research presentation
by Anne Gomez 22 Sep '16

22 Sep '16

*“Wikipedia is a social network. You’d use it if a friend in the US was on it and you wanted to connect with them.”* —Man, Construction Worker, 25-36, Lagos Please join us NEXT WEDNESDAY September 28th to review the research findings of the New Readers project. In this 1.5 hour presentation, we will review critical research findings from Mexico, India, and Nigeria. We will share discoveries from more than 5 months of research, including phone surveys in 13 languages, and more than 150 in-person interviews. More details on the project can be found at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers See you on Wednesday at 9 AM PDT / 4 PM GMT / 9:30 PM IST! YouTube link <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYymUXRzpU4> [1] / Blue Jeans link <https://bluejeans.com/354618595> [2] Thanks, Anne + the New Readers team [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYymUXRzpU4 [2] https://bluejeans.com/354618595 On Thu, Sep 15, 2016 at 4:59 PM, Joe Sutherland <jsutherland(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: > Hello all! > > Please join us on September 28 at 16:00 UTC to review the research > findings of the New Readers project > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers>! This 1.5 hour presentation > will share findings from user research in Mexico, India, and Nigeria. > > Why should you come? > > > - India, Nigeria, and Mexico represent more than 1.5 billion people, > more than 20% of the world > - Current Wikipedia awareness and usage in these countries is low – > less than 25% of people in Nigeria and India have even heard of Wikipedia > - In pursuit of the Wikimedia vision to make knowledge accessible to > “every single human being”, we aim to better understand users around the > world and meet their real needs > > Specifically, we will discuss: > > - Information seeking habits > - Internet use, devices, and general knowledge patterns > - Wikipedia awareness and usage > - User personas developed from findings > - Potential next steps and opportunities to better serve New Readers > in Asia, Africa, and Latin America > > More details on the project can be found on Meta-Wiki.[1] > > Join us on September 28 at 9am PDT / 4pm UTC / 9:30pm IST through our > YouTube stream[2] or with conferencing app BlueJeans.[3] > > best, > Joe Sutherland > > [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers > [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYymUXRzpU4 > [3] https://bluejeans.com/354618595/ > > > -- > *Joe Sutherland* > Community Advocate > Wikimedia Foundation > joesutherland.rocks > -- *Anne Gomez* // Reading Product Manager, New Readers <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers> https://wikimediafoundation.org/ *Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. Donate <http://donate.wikimedia.org>. *

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Invitation to WMF September 2016 Metrics & Activities Meeting: Thursday, September 29, 18:00 UTC
by Limayli Huguet 22 Sep '16

22 Sep '16

Dear all, The next WMF metrics and activities meeting will take place on Thursday, September 29, 2016 at 6:00 PM UTC (11 AM PDT). The IRC channel is #wikimedia-office on irc.freenode.net, and the meeting will be broadcast as a live YouTube stream. Meeting agenda: * Welcomes * Community update * Review of WMF top-level metrics * Feature Presentation * Research Update * Product Demo * Questions/discussions * Wikilove Please review https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_metrics_and_activities…> for further information about the meeting and how to participate. We’ll post the video recording publicly after the meeting. Thank you, -- Limayli Huguet Front Office Coordinator Wikimedia Foundation

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Research Showcase, September 21, 2016
by Sarah R 21 Sep '16

21 Sep '16

Hi Everyone, The next Research Showcase will be live-streamed this Wednesday, September 21, 2016 at 11:30 AM (PST) 18:30 (UTC). YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTDkVeqjw80 As usual, you can join the conversation on IRC at #wikimedia-research. And, you can watch our past research showcases here <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase#September_2016>. This month's showcase includes. Finding News Citations for WikipediaBy *Besnik Fetahu <http://www.l3s.de/~fetahu/> (Leibniz University of Hannover)*An important editing policy in Wikipedia is to provide citations for added statements in Wikipedia pages, where statements can be arbitrary pieces of text, ranging from a sentence to a paragraph. In many cases citations are either outdated or missing altogether. In this work we address the problem of finding and updating news citations for statements in entity pages. We propose a two- stage supervised approach for this problem. In the first step, we construct a classifier to find out whether statements need a news citation or other kinds of citations (web, book, journal, etc.). In the second step, we develop a news citation algorithm for Wikipedia statements, which recommends appropriate citations from a given news collection. Apart from IR techniques that use the statement to query the news collection, we also formalize three properties of an appropriate citation, namely: (i) the citation should entail the Wikipedia statement, (ii) the statement should be central to the citation, and (iii) the citation should be from an authoritative source. We perform an extensive evaluation of both steps, using 20 million articles from a real-world news collection. Our results are quite promising, and show that we can perform this task with high precision and at scale. Designing and Building Online Discussion SystemsBy *Amy X. Zhang <http://people.csail.mit.edu/axz/> (MIT)*Today, conversations are everywhere on the Internet and come in many different forms. However, there are still many problems with discussion interfaces today. In my talk, I will first give an overview of some of the problems with discussion systems, including difficulty dealing with large scales, which exacerbates additional problems with navigating deep threads containing lots of back-and-forth and getting an overall summary of a discussion. Other problems include dealing with moderation and harassment in discussion systems and gaining control over filtering, customization, and means of access. Then I will focus on a few projects I am working on in this space now. The first is Wikum, a system I developed to allow users to collaboratively generate a wiki-like summary from threaded discussion. The second, which I have just begun, is exploring the design space of presentation and navigation of threaded discussion. I will next discuss Murmur, a mailing list hybrid system we have built to implement and test ideas around filtering, customization, and flexibility of access, as well as combating harassment. Finally, I'll wrap up with what I am working on at Google Research this summer: developing a taxonomy to describe online forum discussion and using this information to extract meaningful content useful for search, summarization of discussions, and characterization of communities. Hope to see you there! Sarah R. Rodlund Senior Project Coordinator-Engineering, Wikimedia Foundation srodlund(a)wikimedia.org

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Cascadia Wikimedians board and officer update
by Pine W 21 Sep '16

21 Sep '16

Dear colleagues, I am writing to let you know of transition plans at Cascadia Wikimedians. Over the next few months, my Cascadia officer responsibilities will transfer to Peaceray and Brianhe, who are already Cascadia officers and are members of the Affiliates mailing list. I plan to resign my Cascadia officer and board roles sometime around November. I will remain active in the Wikimedia community and with Cascadia Wikimedians, but for the forseeable future I need to focus on activities other than affiliate board and officer work. Peaceray and Brianhe are well aligned with the Cascadia Wikimedians mission, and I am grateful for their willingness to accept additional responsibilities. Cascadia's annual meeting will likely happen in December, and it is possible that there will be further leadership transitions at that time in the normal course of business. Regards, Pine

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We need your input: Building a shared vision of “Leadership”
by Maria Cruz 21 Sep '16

21 Sep '16

*TL:DR: The Community Engagement department invites you to participate in the Leadership Development Dialogue now through October 16th [1].* Hello there, One of the really valuable parts of our community, is the growing number of volunteers who step beyond their comfort zone, and become guides, mentors, and leaders for other parts of the volunteer community. This act of emerging, to take on responsibilities that strengthen our community is widespread, but also something that we need to embrace, refine and improve, so that we have the capacity to meet our broader mission. >From now through October 16th, the Community Engagement department invites you to participate in an online dialogue about just how to describe and build the leadership capacity. Please invite all who may be interested by forwarding to your local community mailing lists, and be sure to join us at: [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Engagement/Leadership_Development… In particular, we need your help: - Improving the “Learning Days” and other leadership development programs supported by the WMF and other organizations - Refining the language and concepts we use to describe “leadership” -- in our initial exploratory engagement of focus groups, we found that the word “leader” does not translate well across language and cultures. In behalf of the Community Engagement department, we hope to see you on the wiki! *María Cruz * \\ Communications and Outreach Coordinator, L&E Team \\ Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. mcruz(a)wikimedia.org | Twitter: @marianarra_ <https://twitter.com/marianarra_>

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thoughts about upcoming Wikimedia strategy
by Rogol Domedonfors 17 Sep '16

17 Sep '16

As a follow-up to my posting yesterday, I have received a response from WMF staff at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/2016-2017 which states "We know that a common challenge for strategy and vision development work is that people everywhere have a tendency to frame their thinking through their current circumstances. We are open to ideas on how to challenge that tendency so we can expand the scope of creative ideas we receive - it will be essential to both developing ideas that will move us forward, and being receptive to more the challenging ones." In the absence of any other designated venue for those ideas and challenges, I suggest the talk page I refer to for members of the community to discuss lessons learned from previous consultations and discussions, and to propose ideas for how the community-wide consultation should be structured. "Rogol"

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thoughts about upcoming Wikimedia strategy
by Rogol Domedonfors 16 Sep '16

16 Sep '16

The page at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/2016-2017 makes it clear that there are two stages to the strategy consultation being planned by the WMF: up to December the work is to define the process; from January the work is to execute that process. It has been a matter of some disappointment that the process definition is very largely by a closed consultation with WMF Staff and Board members, which does not seem a good way of discovering what works well or badly from the point of view of the Community. Indeed, I posted some comments to that effect at the talk page https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategy/2016-2017 I was surprised and disappointed to discover that the response from the WMF was to add a header to the page stating "*the Wikimedia Foundation staff will not be able to properly monitor discussions right now" *That reads to me like a clear snub to the community: their input to the planning of the consultation is not wanted and will not be heard. It is perhaps revealing that while the "Listening and Learning" part of the process concentrates on a narrow set of stakeholders, the "Community Engagement" in this planning stage is all about talking to the community, not about engaging with it in any real sense. The people WMF are currently listening to are people deeply involved in the WMF and the current ways of doing things, and with a likely predisposition to the continuation of doing the same things and in the same way. As an explicitly distinct activity, the notion of engagement with the community in this phase is telling them things. This is not a model of community engagement; it is not the way to develop an effective, innovative and engaging process; and it is not the way to develop a consensus around the results of that process. "Rogol"

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Thoughts about upcoming Wikimedia strategy
by Pine W 16 Sep '16

16 Sep '16

Below are some thoughts I have possible themes that can be included in the strategy update. I'm sharing these in public in case other Wikimedians would like to discuss strategy. 1. Design experience Move the design and intuitive ease of use of the Wikimedia user experience away from a 2000s experience and toward a 2020s experience, both on desktop and mobile platforms. 2. Social experience Decrease the frequency and intensity of negative experiences, and increase the frequency and intensity of positive experiences. 3. Governance Decentralize the functions currently managed by the Wikimedia Foundation to reduce dependencies and increase resilience of the Wikimedia projects, communities, and affiliates. Empower Wikimedia affiliates and the online communities to be capable of continuing operations, fundraising, and growth even if WMF becomes incapacitated or corrupted. 4. Openness Transform WMF and the affiliates into models of open governance and open culture, particularly concerning Board activities and the use of financial resources. Make information be public by default rather than private by default. Proactively publish the expenses and compensation for all individuals and organizations spending or receiving funds from WMF and other Wikimedia affiliates. With limited exceptions for discussions for which there is a strong reason for confidentiality, livestream all Board and Board committee meetings of WMF, chapters, and thematic organizations. 5. Finance Acquire adequate financial resources to achieve goals 1 through 4 within the lifespan of the strategic plan's time horizon. I look forward to hearing the thoughts of others in the months ahead, both on Wikimedia-l and on Meta. Regards, Pine

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New Readers research presentation
by Joe Sutherland 15 Sep '16

15 Sep '16

Hello all! Please join us on September 28 at 16:00 UTC to review the research findings of the New Readers project <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers>! This 1.5 hour presentation will share findings from user research in Mexico, India, and Nigeria. Why should you come? - India, Nigeria, and Mexico represent more than 1.5 billion people, more than 20% of the world - Current Wikipedia awareness and usage in these countries is low – less than 25% of people in Nigeria and India have even heard of Wikipedia - In pursuit of the Wikimedia vision to make knowledge accessible to “every single human being”, we aim to better understand users around the world and meet their real needs Specifically, we will discuss: - Information seeking habits - Internet use, devices, and general knowledge patterns - Wikipedia awareness and usage - User personas developed from findings - Potential next steps and opportunities to better serve New Readers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America More details on the project can be found on Meta-Wiki.[1] Join us on September 28 at 9am PDT / 4pm UTC / 9:30pm IST through our YouTube stream[2] or with conferencing app BlueJeans.[3] best, Joe Sutherland [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYymUXRzpU4 [3] https://bluejeans.com/354618595/ -- *Joe Sutherland* Community Advocate Wikimedia Foundation joesutherland.rocks

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WMF Language team office hour and online meeting on September 21, 2016 (Wednesday) at 1300 UTC
by Runa Bhattacharjee 15 Sep '16

15 Sep '16

[x-posted announcement] Hello, The next online office hour session of the Wikimedia Language team is scheduled for next Wednesday, September 21st, 2016 at 13:00 UTC. This session is going to be an online discussion over Google Hangouts/Youtube with a simultaneous IRC conversation. Due to the limitation of Google Hangouts, only a limited number of participation slots are available. Hence, do please let us know if you would like to join in the Hangout. This time we will be taking questions from youtube viewers, only on the IRC channel #wikimedia-office. The channel will be open for interactions during the session. Questions can also be sent ahead of time to us. Our last online round-table session was held in June 2016. You can watch the recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rANCUuJRTE8 Please read below for the event details, including local time, youtube session link and do let us know if you have any questions. Thank you Runa == Details == # Event: Wikimedia Language team's office hour session # When: September 21, 2016 (Wednesday) at 13:00 UTC (check local time http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20160921T1300) # Where: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXgMZ7myEA4 and on IRC #wikimedia-office (Freenode) # Agenda: Updates from the Language team and Q & A. -- Language Engineering Manager Wikimedia Foundation

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Invitation to IRC office hour on copyright strategy
by Charles M. Roslof 15 Sep '16

15 Sep '16

Hi all, You may have seen my email earlier this week announcing the copyright strategy—a new effort to improve how we identify, prioritize, and address copyright issues throughout the Wikimedia movement. (I’ve copied it below, in case you missed it.) As part of getting feedback on the strategy and communicating its vision, goals, and process, the Wikimedia Foundation legal team will be holding an office hour on IRC: *Thursday, September 15, 2016. 14:00 UTC (07:00 PDT).* Please stop by #wikimedia-office at that time to discuss the copyright strategy and ask any questions you have about it. There are instructions for participating on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours We have timed the office hour to correspond with when we expect to shift our focus from meta-discussion about the strategy to following the strategy and addressing individual copyright issues. In the meantime, please take a look at the copyright strategy itself, and feel free to provide feedback on the talk page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Copyright_strategy Best, Charles > Hi all, We on the Wikimedia Foundation Legal Team have been working on creating a > better and more collaborative process for organizing, streamlining, and > completing Wikimedia’s copyright-related work. We’d like to hear from you > about it in the next couple weeks, and then we’d like to work together to > identify, prioritize, and address copyright issues. You can read more about the copyright strategy on Meta at > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Copyright_strategy and leave questions and > comments on the talk page. Thanks! == Charles M. Roslof Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation croslof(a)wikimedia.org (415) 839-6885 NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer>.

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Ray Saintonge has died
by Milos Rancic 14 Sep '16

14 Sep '16

He died yesterday. As he was an important member of our community, I think we should make something appropriate so he would be remembered. -- Milos

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Ray Saintonge has died
by aude 13 Sep '16

13 Sep '16

On Sep 13, 2016 12:00, "Milos Rancic" <millosh(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > He died yesterday. As he was an important member of our community, I > think we should make something appropriate so he would be remembered. So sad to hear :( It was great to know him since meeting him at Wikimania 2007 and to see him every year. As member of the chapters committee, he was supportive of us when we were establishing Wikimedia DC in 2011. Will greatly miss him. Katie > > -- > Milos > > _______________________________________________ > 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>

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Open call for Project Grant proposals (Sep 12-October 11)
by Marti Johnson 12 Sep '16

12 Sep '16

Hi everyone, The Wikimedia Foundation Project Grants program launches its second open call today, September 12. We will be accepting proposals through October 11 for new ideas to improve Wikimedia projects. Funds are available to support individuals, groups and organizations to implement new experiments and proven ideas, whether focused on building a new tool or gadget, organizing a better process on your wiki, researching an important issue, coordinating an editathon series or providing other support for community-building. Ideas from the current Inspire Campaign on addressing harassment are very welcome. <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire> Do you have have a good idea, but would like some feedback before applying? Put it into the IdeaLab, where volunteers and staff can give you advice and guidance on how to bring it to life. < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab> Once your idea is ready, it can be easily migrated into a grant request. Marti Johnson and I will also be hosting weekly proposals clinics via Hangouts for real-time discussions about the Project Grants Open Call. We’ll answer questions and help you make your proposal better. Dates and times are as follows: * Fri, Sep 16, 1400- 1500 UTC * Tues, Sep 20, 0100 - 0200 UTC * Wed, Sep 28, 1400 - 1500 UTC * Tue, Oct 4, 2200 - 2300 UTC * Tues, Oct 11, 0200 - 0300 UTC * Tue, Oct 11, 1600 -1700 UTC Links for Hangouts are available here: < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project> We are excited to see your grant ideas that will support our community and make an impact on the future of Wikimedia projects. Put your idea into motion, and submit your proposal between September 12 and October 11! < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Apply> Please feel free to get in touch with me (mjohnson(a)wikimedia.org) or Alex Wang (awang(a)wikimedia.org) with questions about getting started with your project! Warm regards, Marti *Marti JohnsonProgram Officer* *Individual Grants* *Wikimedia Foundation <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home>* +1 415-839-6885 Skype: Mjohnson_WMF Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share <http://youtu.be/ci0Pihl2zXY> in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! Support Wikimedia <https://donate.wikimedia.org/>

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Please take part in the Flow satisfaction survey
by James Forrester 12 Sep '16

12 Sep '16

All, *TL;DR*: Communities using Flow are invited to fill out a survey about what they want to see from Flow,[Y]. It is administered by a third-party service. It will not require an e-mail or your username. See our privacy statement.[Z] We in the Collaboration Team have currently paused major development of Flow. We continue to maintain it, fixing urgent bugs and adding minor features, but we're not planning to put large-scale efforts into improving it further in the current fiscal year (until June 2017). Flow is currently enabled on ten wikis as a beta feature, which allows intrepid users to convert their user talk page to Flow.[X] Some other communities are trying it in various ways. We plan to support these communities in the future, and we need their input to build a strategy. This survey is so that you can help us make decisions about the way forward in this area by sharing your thoughts about Flow — what works, what doesn't, and what should be improved? We remain interested in the structured discussions that the Flow project provides, and have a list of five big areas we think are most needed (based on community requests and user feedback) to make it more useful: searching, categorising, moving, watching activity, and dealing with history. This survey will help us to prioritise future development of Flow. However, there are lots of other things on which we could instead work, and we hope that through this survey we will identify the key areas for everyone so that it is as useful as possible for those that wish to use it. There are some areas in which Flow is currently weak for some use cases, and we don't advocate its active use by wikis which lack the expertise on how to use it. Because of this, we're not actively looking for further wikis to get the beta feature at this time, but if your wiki wants it, you can request it on this page.[X] Please fill out the survey,[Y] which is administered by a third-party service. It will not require an e-mail or your username. See our privacy statement.[Z] Thank you! [X] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow/Request_Flow_on_a_page/Beta_feature [Y] https://wikimedia.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cHm4YCZ4AaoAOr3 [Z] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Survey_Privacy_Statement_for_Spring_20… -- James D. Forrester Lead Product Manager, Editing Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. jforrester at wikimedia.org <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l> | @jdforrester

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Fixed the citation issue yet?
by Gerard Meijssen 10 Sep '16

10 Sep '16

Hoi, This is a topic that deserves its own thread. Citations are problematic on so many levels it is hard to decide where to begin. When the question is can we get a lot of citations in Wikidata, relevant citations, the answer is yes. It takes a lot of work and a lot has been done by the lovely people of DBpedia. They have data ready to link citations from Wikipedia to statements and it is fairly easy to gamify this. It means that it will be people who judge if a citation actually fits an existing statement. When this is to be done with a high level of confidence, it helps when links and red links get the same treatment as interwiki links. They would all be associated with Wikidata. It will improve the quality of all Wikipedias measurably and it will also do a lot to improve disambiguation. The improvement may not be that much in the wiki links compared with the interwiki links but the red links will bring us the confidence what articles exist in other Wikipedias that have many red links in "your" project. Citations are part of the quality issue. When Wikidata is to improve its quality there are several other approaches that will increase the confidence of the quality of Wikidata. When multiple sources agree on a statement, the statements where there is no agreement are the best targets for attention. With a relation between citations in both Wikipedia and Wikidata (the DBpedia link), it will be easy to signal to a Wikipedia for help with such issues. This may bring our communities more together as well. Citations itself have a problem of their own. What do we do with debunked sources. Do we agree that a program of a conference is a source. How do we signal unease about sources when an author proves to be "problematic". What to do with the inherent conflict of interest that is pushed by people in an industry who want to include their data in Wikidata.. A fringe benefit of providing links and red links with Wikidata items is that it becomes easy to update the lists in use by "Women in Red". Many more of the subjects they want to write about will become available and, when an article is written it is easily removed from the lists. They already use this approach by using the Listeria lists. When you read all this, you may ask yourself is this technically hard to do. It is not. Much of the software / functionality / data already exists in an embryonic way. BUT it works. There is only one question left: Are we ready to fix these quality issues? Thanks, GerardM

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Wimedia on line?
by Peter Southwood 10 Sep '16

10 Sep '16

I have been unable to access Wikipedia, Wikivoyage or Meta since last night. Maybe 8 to 10 hours ago. Are the servers on line? Other internet seems OK Cheers, Peter

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Fundraising Update - Japan - Focus Group and Survey Findings
by Joseph Seddon 10 Sep '16

10 Sep '16

Hello wikimedia-l! Back in February of 2015, the fundraising team engaged Lake Research Partners (LRP) to conduct a detailed survey of English language Wikimedia readers <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/c/c2/Wikimedia_Survey_201…>. As we look to continue to improve our efforts fundraising in non-EN languages we decided to conduct a similar fact finding exercise in one of our larger fundraising countries. Japan, being an affluent country with a large population and where our projects have had a large reach, has in some ways under-performed and seemed ripe to deliver the greatest impact for such efforts. With that in mind we again partnered with Lake Research Partners to run two focus groups consisting of readers and donors, and an online survey of 1000 Wikipedia readers and I am pleased to provide the findings of these <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/e/ef/Report.WikimediaJapa…> . We found the results show mostly favorable attitudes toward Wikipedia, with positive ratings on quality, look and feel, and readability, while accuracy is rated lower and mentioned as a concern among focus groups participants. We found a more urgent, direct translation was perceived as better than a more natural translation. This may be because Japanese readers are less likely to donate spontaneously than some of our Western audiences; donors are generally motivated by significant events like natural disasters. We will have to balance an urgent tone with frank politeness when crafting our appeals, and are still working to find the right balance of direct and natural translation. Soon there will be a follow up survey of the Japanese Wikimedia community to help further our understanding and one of several means by which we are improving and strengthening the community involvement in movement fundraising. Regards -- Seddon Advancement Associate (Community Engagement) Wikimedia Foundation

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Peter Baldwin joins the Wikimedia Endowment Advisory Board
by Marc H. Brent 09 Sep '16

09 Sep '16

Hi all, I wanted to share an announcement that I’ve posted to the Wikimedia blog <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/09/09/peter-baldwin-endowment-board/>. The Wikimedia Endowment Advisory Board has appointed Peter Baldwin as the third founding member of the Endowment Advisory Board. Peter and his wife Lisbet Rausing have been longtime supporters of the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia vision. He has supported a number of free knowledge and open access projects throughout his work with Arcadia, the nonprofit he and Lisbet founded in 2002, dedicated to preserving cultural heritage, the environment, and supporting open access resources. We are thrilled to have his expertise in nonprofit Board management and shared passion for free knowledge on the Board. Please join me in welcoming Peter! Best, Marc Brent -- Marc H. Brent Endowment Director Wikimedia Foundation (617) 416-4624 <16174164624> mbrent(a)wikimedia.org www.wikimediafoundation.org

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thinking outside the box
by Rogol Domedonfors 08 Sep '16

08 Sep '16

I think Pine's message rather illustrates my point. Pine seems to assume that the alternative is between people experienced in the WMF ways of doing things and novices. Actually, there are plenty of people in the world with experience in being trustees of non-proft organisations, and technical expertise, and experience of knowledge representation and dissemination, and the robustness to hold senior employees to account, who are not closely connected with the WMF or its affiliates. They mainly live a long way from Silicon Valley, too. For the avoidance of doubt, I have never been a candidate for, let alone held, any position, paid or voluntary, in or related to the WMF or any associated organisation. "Rogol"

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New functionality: cross-wiki search results
by Deborah Tankersley 07 Sep '16

07 Sep '16

The Discovery Search Team wants to enable search results on Wikipedia that will include articles gathered across all sister wiki projects – within the same language – but we need your feedback. Please read t he specifics of how this new functionality <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements> [1] might work and add comments, concerns, or alternative ideas for design options <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements/Design> [2] on the talk pages . See an image <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:Search_results_page-enwiki_right-hand-b…> [3] that shows one of many example display options that have been mocked up, after considering what other wiki communities have done. Thank you for your time and c heers from the Search Team! [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cross-wiki_Search_Result_Improvements/Design [3] *https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:Search_results_page-enwiki_right-hand-box-general-projects.png <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:Search_results_page-enwiki_right-hand-b…>* -- Deb Tankersley Product Manager, Discovery IRC: debt Wikimedia Foundation

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New edition of the Signpost: AffCom, Olympics, ethics & research, and more
by Pete Forsyth 07 Sep '16

07 Sep '16

The Signpost, Volume 12 #25 is out, covering English Wikipedia and beyond: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Single/2016-09-06 Contents: NEWS AND NOTES: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-09-06/News_… AffCom still grappling with WMF Board's criteria for new chapters SPECIAL REPORT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-09-06/Speci… Olympics readership depended on language IN THE MEDIA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-09-06/In_th… Librarians, Wikipedians, and a library of Wikipedia coverage WIKIPROJECT REPORT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-09-06/WikiP… Watching Wikipedia FEATURED CONTENT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-09-06/Featu… Entertainment, sport, and something else in-between TRAFFIC REPORT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-09-06/Traff… >From Phelps to Bolt to Reddit TECHNOLOGY REPORT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-09-06/Techn… Wikimedia mobile sites now don't load images if the user doesn't see them RECENT RESEARCH: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-09-06/Recen… One study encounters critique of its ethics from Wikipedians; another critiques the ethics employed by Wikipedia BLOG: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-09-06/Blog Upload of free photos from Swiss library underway -- Pete Forsyth [[User:Peteforsyth]] co-Editor in Chief, The Signpost enwp.org/WP:POST

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Thinking outside the box
by Rogol Domedonfors 06 Sep '16

06 Sep '16

We have seen various appointments to influential committees within the WMF "system" in recent weeks: the Funds Dissemination Committee and the Board Governance Committee Volunteer and Advisory members; the Board Election Committee is being geared up and new Board members will soon be selected by the Board itself and via community nomination. While I am sure that those people who have volunteered their time to serve in those capacities are well-meaning, conscientious and effective, and well-versed in how things have been done in the past, it seems to me that the selections have leaned too heavily on people already connected with the movement and its existing structures and processes. I suggest that in line with the Strategy/2016-17 process [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/2016-2017] being planned, these committees, and especially the Board itself, needs an element not predisposed to the mere continuation of the current ways of doing things. In short the WMF needs to raise its game and to do that it needs constructive criticism from outside the existing cadres; it may be that the movement as a whole needs to see disruptive change of a sort unlikely to commend itself to a WMF/Silicon Valley view of the world. I urge those responsbile for selection of these important and influential groups to challenge themselves to look more widely and occasionally choose the uncomfortable option. "Rogol Domedonfors"

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FDC appointments
by Dariusz Jemielniak 03 Sep '16

03 Sep '16

Dear Wikimedians, We are pleased to inform you that the WMF Board of Trustees has come to a decision about which four candidates to appoint to the FDC for the next 2 years. It wasn't easy, as the caliber of candidates[*] was extremely high, and their range of skills and expertise extremely impressive. The resolution is now published in https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Funds_Dissemination_Committ… We have selected four appointees as follows: 1) Garfield Byrd (User:Gtbiv) 2) Anne Clin (User:Risker) 3) Bishakha Datta (User:Bishdatta) 4) Candelaria Laspeñas (User:Cande_laspe) On behalf of the Board, we want to thank Dumisani, Matanya and Osmar for their service to the FDC. We deeply appreciate the years they have served the committee and all the work they have done during many rounds of FDC recommendations. Their insights, perspectives and experiences have been invaluable to the work of the committee, and have gone a long way in shaping the development of the APG process into a successful and important part of grant-making in the Wikimedia world. We hope they will continue to remain engaged in the movement in different ways in the years ahead. We also want to thank all the candidates that participated in this round of nominations, and encourage them to consider re-applying for the committee next year, when new members will be elected to serve on the committee. Best, Dariusz & Guy

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Fwd: [Translators-l] Purodha passed away
by Pine W 03 Sep '16

03 Sep '16

Forwarding news of the passing of a Wikimedian, User:Purodha. May he rest in peace. Condolences to his family and friends. Pine ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Johan Jönsson" <jjonsson(a)wikimedia.org> Date: Sep 2, 2016 12:38 Subject: [Translators-l] Purodha passed away To: "Wikimedia Translators" <translators-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Cc: Hi everyone, One of the most active members of our small translator community and on this list, Purodha, has passed away, his political party states <http://www.seidenstadt-piraten.de/2016/08/26/wir-trauern-farewell-purodha/>. On his Meta talk page, he reported having had a serious health breakdown in mid-August, but was recovering and even resumed translating. Unfortunately, his recovery didn't last long. We'll have fewer Ripuarian translations in the future. He was active in the German-speaking community and there's a condolences page on German Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Purodha/Kondolenzliste //Johan Jönsson -- _______________________________________________ Translators-l mailing list Translators-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/translators-l

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Publicpolicy] WMF Transparency Report
by James Salsman 02 Sep '16

02 Sep '16

Jan, Regarding my questions on https://transparency.wikimedia.org/ below, it has been three weeks since I forwarded them to you. Would you please answer them? Were the five requests for content removal based on the right to be forgotten included in the 243 requests to alter or take down content? Can you please say what proportion of those involving living people claiming defamation were discussed by the community e.g. on the English Wikipedia's WP:BLPN? I am also interested as to why these questions have not been allowed on the publicpolicy mailing list. My questions to the moderator Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov of August 15 have not been answered, either. > On Fri, Aug 12, 2016 at 12:37 PM, Jan Gerlach <jgerlach(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: >> Hi all >> >> Many of you may have already seen it and we are really excited about the >> transparency report that we released earlier this week: >> >> https://transparency.wikimedia.org/ >> >> Highlights: >> >> 243 requests to alter or remove content from the projects. None were >> granted. >> >> 13 requests to disclose nonpublic user information. None were granted. >> >> 22 requests under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act to remove >> copyrighted material from the projects. Six were granted. >> >> >> Please find more info about the report in this blogpost. >> >> Best, >> Jan >> >> == >> >> >> Jan Gerlach >> Public Policy Manager >> Wikimedia Foundation >> 149 New Montgomery Street, 6th Floor >> San Francisco, CA 94105 >> jgerlach(a)wikimedia.org

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New Elections Committee
by Dariusz Jemielniak 02 Sep '16

02 Sep '16

Dear members of the Wikimedia community, As you know the board passed a resolution allowing for the creation of a standing Elections Committee in November of last year [1]. Per the implementing resolution, the Board Governance Committee (BGC) has appointed the initial members from the recommendation of the Executive Director and her staff. We will be starting with 6 committee members: - User:Ajraddatz <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth/Ajraddatz> - User:Mardetanha <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth/Mardetanha> - User:Ruslik0 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth/Ruslik0> - User:Philippe <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth/Philippe>slate - User:KTC <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth/KTC> - User:Atropine <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth/Atropine> They will be joined by two official advisors from the Wikimedia Foundation: - James Alexander (Manager, Trust & Safety) from Community Engagement - Stephen LaPorte (Senior Legal Counsel) from the WMF Legal team They will also be working closely with the BGC as a whole and especially Nataliia and me. Because I may consider applying as a candidate in the upcoming community-selection process I will be recusing for any discussions involving that election[2]. The new committee, along with the BGC, will, of course, be able to choose how many members and advisors they truly need and how to recruit the best candidates. One of the first orders of business for the committee will be to decide on a process for expanding its membership through some form of open call. While there is an enormous amount of work for the committee to do, it can be expected that they will begin looking at: - The selection of a committee Chair - The dates and process for the upcoming community selection process (and consider shortening the terms and having community elections in early 2017, so that the elected members would join the Board at April meeting[3]). - The method of voting for that process both for the upcoming selection and the future and - The composition of the board and how to ensure a steady supply of good candidates (in particular, making sure that the candidates have the skills and expertise matching the Board skill matrix while making sure that the process is still owned by the community[4]). Just as the BGC is committed to greater transparency (see for example our recent minutes[5]), the committee will likely consult with the wider Wikimedia community in developing and revising election procedures within the scope of this charter to the greatest extent possible. This day has been a long time coming and is the result of requests made by multiple different temporary election committees over the years. I'm glad to finally see it come to fruition and hope that it will allow our selection process to continue to expand and improve well beyond the record-breaking election we had in 2015. Before I sign off I also wanted to call out the amazing work of the 2015 temporary Election Committee[6]. They were put together in 2015 to do one thing: run an election. They did that well (with almost 3x the participation of the next largest year) but then they went well beyond the call of duty in serving as an advisory body to the board, offering invaluable feedback on how to fill the empty community selected seats we saw this year. They did not have to do this, but they did it anyway, and I hope that everyone can acknowledge the stress and courage that took. Please join me in thanking the 2015 committee and welcoming the new standing committee! Dariusz Jemielniak ("pundit", current Board member) - [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Elections_Committee - [2] See also my disclosure to the BGC on that matter: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Governance_Commi… - [3] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-June/084592.html - [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Governance_Commi… - [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Governance_Commi… - [6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Committ…

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UG participation in a TV program in Brasil
by Rodrigo Padula 02 Sep '16

02 Sep '16

Hello all, Yesterday we participated in a TV program at Futura Channel (an important educational tv channel in Brasil) talking about collaboration and Wikipedia, including some information about our scientific event http://ccbwiki.wikimedia.org.br/. The video is published online and listed in our site at http://www.wikimedia.org.br/participacao%20no%20canal%20futura (PT only) That is the first Brazilian participation in a TV program with good local repercussion transmitted to the entire country. Regards! Rodrigo Padula Coordenador de Projetos Grupo Wikimedia Brasileiro de Educação e Pesquisa http://www.wikimedia.org.br 21 99326-0558

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Marketing jobs at the Wikimedia Foundation
by Gerard Meijssen 02 Sep '16

02 Sep '16

Hoi, At the research mailing list two relevant activities were mentioned that do not adequately take place. * *Gamified interfaces for microcontributions à la Wikidata game* ** **Ubiquitous outreach, supported by dedicated technology* The notion exists that it is possible to do all kind of technological things to make things stand out more but the big problem is imho not technological. It is not content, it is the awareness that marketing is more than selling things. A respected Wikimedian made the bold statement that "Wikipedia could absolutely have 100x the number of editors it has now".I would argue that this is correct My question is not could marketing methods make a difference but what objectives do we have that will benefit from a marketing approach. What does it take to be more pro-active towards our objectives? Thanks, GerardM

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Wikimedia Indonesia Digitization Effort
by Biyanto Rebin 02 Sep '16

02 Sep '16

Hello all, We want to share our effort in digitization in this and last year. Our recent effort is doing collaboration with Horison magazine, a prominent literature magazine since 1960. They're enthusiast to share their magazine via Wikimedia Commons and licencing under CC-BY-SA 4.0, since this year on 50th anniversary, their magazine will only publicized online via horison-online.com. If you have any questions, please contact Rachmat Wahidi, project leader for this project, via rachmat.wahidi(a)wikimedia.or.id. Happy reading Wikimedia Indonesia are collaborating with institutions to enrich Indonesian books in Commons Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Syukuran_hasil_kerja_sama_Proyek_Di…, CC-BY-SA 4.0 Wikimedia Indonesia, in collaboration with the Dewantara Kirti Griya Museum, ran a six-month GLAM project <http://wikimedia.or.id/wiki/Digitalisasi_Karya_Jawa_Cetak_dari_Koleksi_Muse…> which digitized Javanese-language printed books from the museum's collections. Between May and November 2015, this project digitized more than 100 books. More than half of these are now in the public domain in their source country (Indonesia) and/or in the United States and have thus been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Books_in_the_Dewantara_Kirti_Gr…> or (for books still in copyright in Indonesia) the English Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Books_in_the_Dewantara_Kirti_Griya_M…>. Those books still under copyright in both Indonesia and the United States have been uploaded to a closed-access website until such time as they are in the Public Domain. [image: Serat_Kaweritan p. 1.jpg] Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Serat_Kaweritan.pdf, page 1, public domain The digitization effort has not only benefited the museum, but also the general populace. It has been of special benefit to academics and researchers who are interested in Javanese-language books and print culture. It has also had the effect of convincing the Office of Libraries and Archives, Yogyakarta, to continue digitization efforts, albeit without allowing open access to the results. [image: Book_collections_at_Museum_Dewantara_Kirti_Griya.jpg] Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Book_collections_at_Museum_Dewantar…, CC-BY-SA 4.0 "This project received a warm reception among academics and students with on Indonesia. For instance, Mohammad Rokib of the State University of Surabaya wrote " I'll share this to sanskrit students and colleagues in my uni," and the Indonesian Studies program at Leiden University shared the initial project announcement, noting that "digitized old Javanese print books (pre-independence, many from the 1910s and 20s) from the Taman Siswa Museum in Yogyakarta" were now online and available for use.". Another similar project is the collaboration with Horison magazine, a notable magazine published in Indonesia which intended to focus on poetry and literature. In March 2016, Wikimedia Indonesia was invited by Horison staffs asking the possibility to digitize their magazine collections. Wikimedia Indonesia undertook their demands to scan the magazine from July 1966 edition. [image: Horison_07_1966.jpg] Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Horison_07_1966.pdf, CC-BY-SA 4.0 This digitization lasts for approximately six months since February 2016. Scanned magazines from July 1966 to December 1990 editions are now available in Wikimedia Commons <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Majalah_Horison> for free under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Letters of permissions from representative author are being sent to OTRS team to be reviewed. In addition, this year, Wikimedia Indonesia intends to continue its digitization program, focusing on the more than 600 Dutch-language letters written by Ki Hadjar Dewantara - the founder of Taman Siswa and widely considered the father of modern education in Indonesia. This is meant to further develop the collaboration and relationship between the Dewantara Kirti Griya Museum and Wikimedia Indonesia. -- Biyanto Rebin | Ketua Umum (*Chair*) 2016-2018 Wikimedia Indonesia Nomor Ponsel: +62 8989 037379 Surel: biyanto.rebin(a)wikimedia.or.id ~~~~ Dukung upaya kami membebaskan pengetahuan: http://wikimedia.or.id/wiki/Wikimedia_Indonesia:Donasi

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Fwd: [WikimediaMobile] Mobile site is now lazy loading images
by Jane Darnell 01 Sep '16

01 Sep '16

Interesting to see the drop in bytes sent to the Japan article and this makes me think we should "fold up" article sections on desktop too for very long articles, such as the Japan article. The benefits for mobile are obvious, but this may be beneficial for slow desktop connections as well. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jon Robson <jrobson(a)wikimedia.org> Date: Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 5:20 PM Subject: [WikimediaMobile] Mobile site is now lazy loading images To: mobile-l <mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Wikimedia developers < wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> FYI after much experimentation, research and testing the mobile site has been lazy loading images [1] since Thursday 18th August. This means if you do not see an image you will not download it. We have taken care to ensure users without JavaScript can still view images and that most users will barely notice the difference. We are currently crunching the data this change has made and we plan to write a blog post to reporting the results. In our experiments on Japanese Wikipedia we saw a drop in image bytes per page view by 54% On the Japanese Japan article bytes shipped to users dropped from 1.443 MB to 142 kB. This is pretty huge since bytes equate to money [3] and we expect this to be significant on wikis where mobile data is more expensive. In a nutshell Wikipedia mobile is cheaper. As I said blog post to follow once we have more information, but please report any bugs you are seeing with the implementation (we have already found a few thanks to our community of editors). ~Jon [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Projects/ Performance/Lazy_loading_images [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Lazy_loading_ of_images_on_Japanese_Wikipedia [3] https://whatdoesmysitecost.com/ _______________________________________________ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l

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Wikimedia Education Newsletter: September 2016
by The Wikimedia Education Newsletter Team 01 Sep '16

01 Sep '16

Hello all, We've just published the 3rd quarterly Education Newsletter. This newsletter contains as many as 15 stories of various education programs around the globe. Hope you enjoy reading about the great work our program leaders are doing! On behalf of the Education Newsletter team, Sailesh Patnaik (User:Saileshpat <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Saileshpat>) ------------------------------ Wikimedia Education Newsletter – Volume 5, Issue 3, September 2016 <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Education/Newsletter…> ------------------------------ *Headlines <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Education/Newsletter…> · Highlights <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/September_2016/Hig…> · Single page <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/September_2016/Sin…> · Newsroom <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/Newsroom> · Archives <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/Archives> · Unsubscribe <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery/Targets/This_Month_…>* ------------------------------ - *Armenia:* Armenian students inspire their parents to join Wikipedia <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/September_2016/Arm…> - *Brazil:* Brazilian Wikimedians interview editor of academic journal *Wiki Studies* <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/September_2016/Bra…> - *Egypt:* Cairo University students wrap up their eighth term and start their ninth term on WEP <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/September_2016/Cai…> - *Egypt:* Egyptian Wikimedians celebrate eighth WEP conference <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/September_2016/Egy…> - *Greece:* Online wiki training for educators in Greece <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/September_2016/Onl…> - *Israel:* Outcomes report on a Wikipedia Course “Skills for Producing and Consuming Knowledge”, Tel Aviv University <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/September_2016/Out…> - *Israel:* Wikipedia as a Teaching and Learning Tool in Medical Education at IAMSE Medical Education Conference <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/September_2016/Wik…> - *Israel:* "Writing a new article is a special experience that feels new every time" <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/September_2016/%22…> - *Mexico:* Video projects redefine student Wiki work and student community service <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/September_2016/Vid…> - *Russia:* Wiki Workshop at Saint Petersburg Internet Conference 2016 in Russia <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/September_2016/Wik…> - *Sweden:* Swedish National Agency of Education endorses Wikipedia Education Program <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/September_2016/Swe…> - *Turkey:* Psychology students of Uludag University are very proud of contributing Turkish Wikipedia <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/September_2016/Psy…> - *West Africa:* West African schools will test Kiwix, the offline Wikipedia reader <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/September_2016/Wes…> - *Global:* Programs and Events Dashboard Update <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/September_2016/Pro…> - *Global:* Articles of interest in other publications <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/September_2016/Art…> If you want this message on your home wiki's talk page, update your subscription <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery/Targets/This_Month_…> . *--* *Wikimedia Education Newsletter Team* https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter <http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter>

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Wikimedia-l September 2016