So my 2p:
The issue for me is the selection of topics more than the presentation of
each topic.
I'm not concerned that the document's written differently and with
different standards of sourcing to a Wikipedia article. That's fairly
natural.
But selecting 2x refugees and climate change in a list of 10 things (half
of which are internally focused anyway) and those angles on things - that
does read like someone decided that the WMF annual report was the place to
give Donald Trump a slap. Which isn't what that document is there for.
Yes our mission is political in the broad sense - and as Trump doesn’t seem
to believe in the concept of facts or truth, one could argue our mission
is fundamentally anti-Trump. But that doesn't mean we should aim pot-shots
at him.
Chris
(The Land)
On 2 Mar 2017 21:59, "Tilman Bayer" <tbayer(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 4:33 AM, WereSpielChequers <
werespielchequers(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Otherwise, I haven't fact checked the whole thing, but one problem with
the
> second sentence:
>
>
> *Across the world, mobile pageviews to our free knowledge websites
> increased by 170 million <http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/>.*
> This needs a time element, otherwise it comes across as not really in the
> same league as most stats about Wikipedia. The previous sentence was about
> a whole year's activity and the following one about monthly activity. So
it
> reads like an annual figure or an increase on an annual figure. But the
> stats it links to imply something closer to a weekly figure. From my
> knowledge of the stats I suspect it could be an increase in raw downloads
> of 170m a day or week or unique downloaders of 170m a week. Any of those
> would actually be rather impressive.
>
> I saw this too and was wondering about the same. I think your guess is
plausible that this refers to an increase of 170 million in *weekly* mobile
pageviews (for context, mobile web pageviews on all Wikimedia sites for
December 2016, normalized to 30 days, were 7.4 billion, up 11.6% from
December 2015
<https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_
Product&oldid=2399861#Reading_Audience>).
Even so, there are some details of the calculation that I'm still curious
about, but in any case, the increase in mobile pageviews remains a real and
notable trend worth calling out (cf. https://commons.wikimedia.org/
wiki/File:Wikimedia_mobile_pageviews_year-over-year_comparis
on_(since_May_2013).png ).
BTW, the linked report card is deprecated, as one may infer from the fact
the last numbers date from August 2016. Here is a current pageviews
dashboard maintained by the WMF Analytics team: https://analytics.
wikimedia.org/dashboards/vital-signs/#projects=all/metrics=Pageviews
(click "Break Down by Site" to restrict to mobile views).
For the definition of pageviews in general, refer to
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Page_view .
--
Tilman Bayer
Senior Analyst
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
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I'm keen on surveys, used to work in that line a few years ago, and the first we did was I think at least in part a response to a proposal I made on the 2009 Strategy wiki. In hindsight the big mistakes of that survey were that we didn't repeat it annually, and the lack of community input in setting and analysing the questions.
I'm not convinced that we need to move to a monthly survey, I could live with quarterly but still prefer annual as the ideal interval - long enough to avoid survey fatigue, short enough that we can plan around it and use it to answer questions worth addressing. As for recruiting people, make it annual and I'd hope we could get consensus for a site notice. I'd like that site notice to be tailored to ask different and relevant questions based on people's number of edits. - not much point asking someone with less than a 1000 edits if they are an admin.
The place to set the questions is on meta, not on some external site.
There are of course biases in self reported surveys, there could even be a seasonal bias, but biases tend to even out as your sample size grows, and an annual survey of the editing community could get a very high turnout. Also biases don't necessarily hide trends, provided the biases are consistent. If we were doing an annual survey of the editing community I suspect we wouldn't need many years before we knew whether our gender skew was stable, growing or improving.
As well as the gender skew, it would be good to have an updated age profile of the community. We still sometimes see people referring to teenage admins without realising that the adolescents who were our youngest crats and admins ten years ago are now mostly graduates. I suspect that a new survey would confirm the theory of the greying of the pedia - our growing number of silver surfers combined with our near total failure to recruit very active editors from tablet/smartphone only users means that the average age of our most active editors is going up by more than a year a year.
I'm happy with most of Will's suggestions re questions, but instead of date people started editing you really want month or quarter to keep the survey anonymous. On smaller wikis that would need to be year.
It would also be good to survey former editors and particularly those who left after only a brief period of activity. We have a long tail of people who probably don't consider themselves Wikipedians but who have fixed one or two things while they are reading Wikipedia. But we also have a huge attrition rate among editors who have started out and done 50 or 500 edits. Many will have gone because sourcing edits is too much like hard work, their view on notability was different to ours or because they couldn't work out how to deal with an edit conflict. But it would be good to get an idea of the ratio between those main reasons, and also to find out if there are other significant reasons for losing goodfaith newbies.
Regards
WereSpielChequers
> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2017 19:18:47 -0700
> From: Bill Takatoshi <billtakatoshi(a)gmail.com>
> To: wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] proposal for regular surveys of community
> opinion
> Message-ID:
> <CAETpP4uGv3O-=cjW8shgw5s6ax84O7+qn0rs1EJMozubf7nkNQ(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Over the past few weeks I have been discussing how to correct the lack
> of information about community opinion and the disadvantages of
> relying on opt-in (RFCs or less formal "speak up and stick your neck
> out") methods for addressing the problem with Foundation staff, other
> community members, and outside researchers experienced with surveying
> wikipedians. A number of themes are apparent, most prominently that I
> should, "collectively propose and work to develop additional systems,"
> as one Foundation staffer put it.
>
> So to get that ball rolling, I propose a monthly survey of editing
> community members as follows:
>
> (1) Anyone may suggest a topic or subject area to be included, for
> each of the top 20 largest language editions of Wikipedia by number of
> active editors, by sending email to an independent, outside firm
> experienced with surveying community members. All such emails will
> have their sender and other identifying information removed and then
> will be posted in a public location on the web for review by anyone
> interested.
>
> (2) Each month, the independent firm will pick the top five most
> popular topics to be included in each language's Wikipedia community
> survey, and will compose two to five opinion questions on each of
> those topics, with the goal of producing a neutral opinion
> questionnaire with about twenty likert and multiple choice tally
> questions. Every question will have an "other" option when
> appropriate, enabling a fill-in-the-blank opportunity when selected.
>
> (3) All questions will be clearly indicated as entirely optional. Each
> survey will conclude with demographic questions asking the
> respondents' age, sex, education, household income, and household
> composition, in compliance with the instructions at
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Survey_best_practices along with
> state-level geographic location, estimated hours spent editing over
> the past month, and the date each respondent started editing.
>
> (4) When each month's survey is ready, the independent firm will use
> the Recent Changes history for one day randomly selected from the past
> two weeks to select 1,000 users with contribution histories of at
> least 100 edits and going back at least one year, and who have email
> enabled, and send a link to a Qualtrics survey questionnaire to each
> of those 20,000 users. I believe this step can be efficiently
> automated, but bot approval will be necessary at least for the final
> step of sending the survey email text and links.
>
> (5) The email will indicate that the survey will be open for two
> weeks. At the end of the two week period, the raw Qualtrics results,
> expected margins or error, and any significant cross-tabulations
> information apparent in the data will be made public at a new web page
> for each language each month, all linked from a static URL where
> highlights from the results will also be summarized in paragraph form.
>
> I would be thrilled to learn what you think of this proposal. I hope
> the Foundation will consider funding such a regular opinion survey,
> and I certainly hope they will help with implementing the technical
> aspects, but if not, I am willing to pass the hat in the form of a
> GoFundMe or similar.
>
> Finally, it seems to me that more than a few of the nagging
> controversial questions concerning the Draft Code of Conduct for
> Technical Spaces, a subject of ongoing apparent acrimony on this list
> recently, could easily benefit from such a facility, were it
> available.
>
> -Will
>
>
>
Hi everyone -
Zack here from the Communications team at the Foundation. I want to say
some more about the theme for the Foundation’s annual report and why we
picked it.
We chose the theme in early October as a way to remind the world how
Wikipedia works and why our movement matters. By that time, and before the
U.S. elections, the state of fact-based information had become a
highly-discussed topic internationally. We received questions from the
media about how and why Wikipedia was able to avoid the fake news
phenomenon, while many other companies had become amplifiers for false
information. We heard from donors about the importance of Wikipedia in a
world where verifiable information is not promised. We saw, as always, an
unwavering commitment from the community to presenting the facts.
International conversations around fake news and facts only serve to
reinforce how the Wikimedia movement’s commitment to verifiability and
neutrality are indispensable.[1] This is not just an American or a
political phenomenon. Last year in India, a false story about a
surveillance chip in a new 2,000 rupee bill spread widely on WhatsApp,
which has 50 million monthly users in India (the news was eventually
debunked).[2] Just this week, 37 French news organizations came together to
launch CrossCheck a collaboration to address the spread of false
information online.[3]
In this year’s annual report we offer 10 facts as ways into our communities
and our work. They are introductions for Wikimedians who document climate
change, increase the number of women’s biographies, offer language and
learning to refugees, or add new languages to Wikipedia (welcome Tulu!).
They are stories, as are always included in the annual report, that show
who Wikimedians are and why their work is so powerful. The stories are
meant to appeal to even the most general and non-Wikimedia-familiar reader.
So we consciously work to show how the big data points of 2016 last year
are evaluated and interpreted by Wikimedians.
The 10 facts are also ways to examine the impact of Foundation projects.
>From Support & Safety to understanding New Readers, there are stories of
how collaborations between communities and departments make amazing things
happen.
Concerning the banners, we crafted that language as a broad thank you and
an invitation for the curious to learn more about the Wikimedia movement
and the Wikimedia Foundation. Quite consciously we sought language that is
not political. If you have copy ideas on how to relate that message better,
I would be happy to work with you! -> zmccune [at] wikimedia [dot] org
Yair, Florence, and everyone, I am grateful that you opened this
discussion. And I hope I can help explain more things as questions come up.
- Zack
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability
[2]
http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-technology/nope-rs-20…
[3]
http://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2017/02/28/lutte-contre-les-fau…
> From: Florence Devouard <fdevouard(a)gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 1:08 AM
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] More politics: "WMF Annual Report"
> To: wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
>
> Le 02/03/2017 à 01:15, Erik Moeller a écrit :
>
>> On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 3:44 PM, Florence Devouard <fdevouard(a)gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> For example... the message "one in six people visited another country in
>>> 2016"... illustrated by "SeaTac Airport protest against immigration ban.
>>> Sit-in blocking arrival gates until 12 detainees at Sea-Tac are released.
>>> Photo by Dennis Bratland.CC BY-SA 4.0"
>>>
>>> Really... "visiting a country" is a quite different thing from
>>> "immigrating".
>>>
>>
>> The caption is in fact misleading because it uses the phrase
>> "immigration ban", which is a mischaracterization of the ban. The
>> Executive Order was not an immigration ban; it (temporarily) banned
>> people from those countries from entering the United States, even for
>> visits, with some exceptions. See:
>>
>> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/31/us/politics/t
>> rump-immigration-ban-groups.html
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13769#Visitors
>> .2C_immigrants_and_refugees
>>
>> If the photo remains, I recommend changing this caption to use either
>> "travel ban" or "entry ban"; both phrases are used in the Wikipedia
>> article.
>>
>> Erik
>>
>
> Nod. Erik and Dan, what you say make sense.
>
> Florence
>
>
--
Zachary McCune
Global Audiences
Wikimedia Foundation
zmccune(a)wikimedia.org
This came up the other day and someone emailed me off-list suggesting
it wasn't true. Since we've never had a real discussion about it, I
should explain:
> 17 U.S. Code § 203 - Termination of transfers and licenses
> granted by the author
>
> (a) Conditions for Termination.—In the case of any work
> other than a work made for hire, the exclusive or nonexclusive
> grant of a transfer or license of copyright or of any right under
> a copyright, executed by the author on or after January 1, 1978,
> otherwise than by will, is subject to termination under the
> following conditions:
>...
> (3) Termination of the grant may be effected at any time during
> a period of five years beginning at the end of thirty-five years
> from the date of execution of the grant; or, if the grant covers the
> right of publication of the work, the period begins at the end of
> thirty-five years from the date of publication of the work under
> the grant or at the end of forty years from the date of execution
> of the grant, whichever term ends earlier.
So, we still have 19 years, but, we're almost halfway there.
Hello,
The discussion is now wrapping up. The process and its outcome were
presented last week at the Metrics and activities meeting; you're
encouraged to watch the segment in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-blWUhkm8g4&t=17m18s
You can read the full transcripts of the discussions on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Values/2016_discussion/Transcripts
as well as browse through the main themes that emerged:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Values/2016_discussion/Themes
and their synthesis:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Values/2016_discussion/Synthesis
The discussion on the talk page of the synthesis is open until March 4
to finalize the language of the descriptions.
I want to thank everyone who participated in the discussions, and
everyone who helped with the organization. It was truly a joy to see
the interest of the participants and the deep, thoughtful discussions
that resulted from it.
I believe the values that have emerged as part of this process
constitute a part of our organizational identity that we had not
entirely codified, or even been conscious of, before. As our friend
Ray aptly put it in 2007, "The values were already there. Perhaps they
might have been poorly codified. Had they not been there, neither you
nor I would have stuck around for over five years."
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2007-September/079180.html
I hope that this exercise has helped us realize why we're here, and
that its outcome resonates with many members of our communities, both
present and future.
2016-10-18 11:27 GMT-07:00 Guillaume Paumier <gpaumier(a)wikimedia.org>:
> Greetings,
>
> As a community, we've talked a lot about values in the past year. The
> core values of the Wikimedia Foundation were first formulated in
> 2007−2008 and have not really been discussed in depth since then. In
> 2013, we also developed Guiding principles, a list of more practical
> norms and expected behaviors that guide our day-to-day work at the
> Foundation. Combined with our vision and mission statements, those
> documents represent the core facets of our organizational identity.
>
> Both staff and volunteers have expressed concerns that there isn't
> currently a shared understanding (among the staff and other
> constituents) of what our core values are, and how we express them in
> our work. We've also talked about a need to revisit or reinforce them.
>
> A few months ago, a working group formed to organize a series of new
> discussions about the WMF's values. The goal is to reflect on what is
> bringing us together, identify the core beliefs that motivate our
> vision, refine our list of values, and clarify our organizational
> identity.
>
> Discussions about values in nonprofit organizations are usually done
> internally. Given the open and collaborative nature of the Wikimedia
> movement, such a closed, internal process wouldn't make sense for the
> WMF. The Foundation is part of an integrated ecosystem of individuals
> and organizations that contribute to defining its identity. Input
> should be collected not just from staff and Board members, but also
> from volunteers, affiliates, and partners who wish to participate in
> this process.
>
> On behalf of the Values working group, I would therefore like to
> invite you to this discussion on Meta. There, you will find more
> information about the process, as well as a page to share your
> perspective on the Wikimedia Foundation's values. The framing that
> we're using for this discussion is one that considers values as the
> core intrinsic beliefs that drive our participation in the movement.
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Values/2016_discussion
>
> The discussion will be open for a month, i.e. until November 20.
> Comments added after that date will still be welcome, but may not be
> included in the summary process.
>
> I hope many of you take this opportunity to help define (or refine)
> the Foundation's organizational identity.
>
> --
> Guillaume Paumier
> Wikimedia Foundation
--
Guillaume Paumier