Wikimedia-l September 2016

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

73 participants
42 discussions

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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Wikimedia-l September 2016