(Standard apologies for the cross-post!)
The Wiki Education Foundation's draft annual report for 2016–17 and draft
annual plan for 2017–18 is now available on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Education_Foundation/Annual_Plan_2017-…
This marks the first time that Wiki Ed staff have solicited Wikimedia
community comments and questions on our draft. We're doing so this year
based on conversations with members of the Simple APG Committee. As you can
see in our plan, Wiki Ed intends to enter the FDC process this fall. During
the review process from the Simple APG committee this spring, committee
members raised concerns about a lack of opportunity for comments on Wiki
Ed's draft annual plans. While we always publish our board-approved annual
plan on our website, we haven't offered a draft for comments in the past.
In an effort to be more transparent and respond to the Simple APG
committee's feedback, I've posted the draft of the annual plan on Meta and
invite comments and questions from the broader Wikimedia community on the
draft talk page. Comments made prior to May 28 will be taken into account
when Wiki Ed staff prepare a final version of the plan for the board to
vote upon.
As with all nonprofits, our board is the final decision-maker on our annual
plan.
LiAnna
--
LiAnna Davis
Director of Programs; Deputy Director
Wiki Education Foundation
www.wikiedu.org
Please join for the following talk:
*Tech Talk**:* A Gentle Introduction to Wikidata for Absolute Beginners
[including non-techies!]
*Presenter:* Asaf Bartov
*Date:* February 09, 2017
*Time: *19:00 UTC
<https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Tech+Talk%3A+A+Ge…>
Link to live YouTube stream <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVrAx3AmUvA>
*IRC channel for questions/discussion:* #wikimedia-office
*Summary: *This talk will introduce you to the Wikimedia Movement's latest
major wiki project: Wikidata. We will cover what Wikidata is, how to
contribute, how to embed Wikidata into articles on other wikis, tools like
the Wikidata Game, and how to query Wikidata (including SPARQL examples).
Hey everybody,
TL;DR: I wanted to let you know about an upcoming experimental Reddit AMA
("ask me anything") chat we have planned. It will focus on artificial
intelligence on Wikipedia and how we're working to counteract vandalism
while also making life better for newcomers.
We plan to hold this chat on June 1st at 21:00 UTC/14:00 PST in the /r/iAMA
subreddit[1]. I'd love to answer any questions you have about these topics
questions, and I'll send a follow-up email to this thread shortly before
the AMA begins.
----
For those who don't know who I am, I create artificial intelligences[2]
that support the volunteers who edit Wikipedia[3]. I've been fascinated by
the ways that crowds of volunteers build massive, high quality information
resources like Wikipedia for over ten years.
For more background, I research and then design technologies that make it
easier to spot vandalism in Wikipedia—which helps support the hundreds of
thousands of editors who make productive contributions. I also think a lot
about the dynamics between communities and new users—and ways to make
communities inviting and welcoming to both long-time community members and
newcomers who may not be aware of community norms. For a quick sampling of
my work, check out my most impactful research paper about Wikipedia[3],
some recent coverage of my work from *Wired*[4], or check out the master
list of my projects on my WMF staff user page[5], the documentation for the
technology team I run[9], or the home page for Wikimedia Research[8].
This AMA, which I'm doing with with the Foundation's Communications
department, is somewhat of an experiment. The intended audience for this
chat is people who might not currently be a part of our community but have
questions about the way we work—as well as potential research collaborators
who might want to work with our data or tools. Many may be familiar with
Wikipedia but not the work we do as a community behind the scenes.
I'll be talking about the work I'm doing with the ethics of AI and how we
think about artificial intelligence on Wikipedia, and ways we’re working to
counteract vandalism on the world’s largest crowdsourced source of
knowledge—like the ORES extension[6], which you may have seen highlighting
possibly problematic edits on your watchlist and in RecentChanges.
I’d love for you to join this chat and ask questions. If you do not or
prefer not to use Reddit, we will also be taking questions on ORES'
MediaWiki talk page[7] and posting answers to both threads.
1. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence
2. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ORES
3.
http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/halfa…
4.
https://www.wired.com/2015/12/wikipedia-is-using-ai-to-expand-the-ranks-of-…
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Halfak_(WMF)
6. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ORES
7. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:ORES
8. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research
9. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Scoring_Platform_team
-Aaron
Principal Research Scientist @ WMF
User:EpochFail / User:Halfak (WMF)
I'm perceiving an increase in the number of mentions of Wikidata in ways
that make me think that Wikidata may eventually become an equal of
Wikipedia in terms of impact on the Internet in general, and perhaps even
surpass Wikipedia. Also, I'm looking forward to the improvements for RC
patrol.
What's making you happy this week?
Pine
Hello Wikimedia community,
To help better understand how teams at the Wikimedia Foundation work on
partnerships, staff from multiple departments have been regularly meeting
over the last year to exchange ideas and reflect on this important area of
our work.
In these discussions we realized that the Foundation had not laid out the
common practices that we developed for managing partnerships. It wasn’t
clear why, how, or with whom we partnered, what worked best, and what was
best to avoid.
If it wasn’t clear to us, then it couldn’t be clear to the community
either. Inspired by Wikimedia France’s Démarche partenariale
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikim%C3%A9dia_France/D%C3%A9marche_partena…>,
we recognized the value of sharing our own best practices with the
community.
After much drafting and revising, we are happy to announce the publication
of what we have learned in our *Wikimedia Foundation partnership
reflections*
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia%20Foundation%20partnership%20refl…>,
now live on Meta-Wiki. The page will be an evolving document, and we
encourage feedback from the community: please join us in the conversation
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia%20Foundation%20partnership%2…>
.
**What we hope this can be used for**
We hope that the reflections document offers an expression of what we do as
Wikimedia Foundation employees and also helps the volunteer community and
Wikimedia movement Affiliates think about how they define the scope and
measure the impact of their work on partnerships.
We also want this document to help facilitate better interaction between
the Foundation the global community. Take for example, the Partnerships &
Global Reach team’s recent collaboration with the Iraqi Wikimedian User
Group <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Wikimedians>. They were able
to work closely with the local community over the course of a year to
develop a partnership with one of the leading mobile organizations in Iraq
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/02/28/wikipedia-zero-iraq/>, providing
data-free Wikipedia access over mobile phones through the Wikipedia Zero
program.
Departments at the Foundation including Legal, Communications, and
Community Engagement frequently work with volunteers and organizations to
find the right combination of tools and support for their partnerships. We
look forward to doing more with you.
**Doing even more in collaboration with Affiliates**
The Wikimedia Foundation is certainly not the only organization within the
Wikimedia movement with expertise and experience creating partnerships with
external organizations. With the lead of Wikimedia Sverige, Wikimedia
France, and Wikimedia Deutschland, an informal working group has been
meeting to bring together Wikimedians working on developing and maintaining
partnerships.
This ‘Affiliate Partnerships Group’ helps support activities and has
collected the public learning and resources from their experience doing
partnerships in a Partnerships and Resource Development portal on Meta-Wiki
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Partnerships_%26_Resource_Development/Team>
that includes support materials, lessons learned, frequently asked
questions, and other resources.
After meeting at the Wikimedia Conference 2017
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2017> in April, the
Affiliate Partnerships working group have launched a Facebook group:
the *Wikimedia
& Partnerships Learning Circle*
<https://www.facebook.com/groups/313443389072903/>. If you participate in
Wikimedia Partnerships for your local volunteer community, we encourage you
to join the group, and ask questions of various teams that work on
partnership activities.
**Join the conversation**
This effort has involved contributions from multiple individuals and team
at the Wikimedia Foundation, including Strategic Partnerships, Legal,
Communications, Community Programs, Community Resources, Language
Engineering, and more. We want to hear what you think!
Please join us in conversation at the Partnership Reflections page and in
the Wikimedia & Partnership Learning Circle: we want to learn from and with
you on how to best benefit the community with partnerships.
*Wikimedia Foundation partnership reflections on Meta:*
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia%20Foundation%
20partnership%20reflections
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia%20Foundation%20partnership%20refle…>
>
*Partnerships learning circle on Facebook:*
<https://www.facebook.com/groups/313443389072903/>
Thank you!
Jake Orlowitz
User:Ocaasi (WMF)
jorlowitz(a)wikimedia.org
Head of the Wikipedia Library
Wikimedia Foundation
[1] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikim%C3%A9dia_France/D%
C3%A9marche_partenariale/en >
[2] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia%20Foundation%
20partnership%20reflections
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia%20Foundation%20partnership%20refle…>
>
[3] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia Foundation partnership
reflections <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia>
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia>>
[4] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Wikimedians>
[5] <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/02/28/wikipedia-zero-iraq/>
[6] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Partnerships_%26_
Resource_Development/Team>
[7] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2017>
[8] <https://www.facebook.com/groups/313443389072903/>
Wikimedia has put in a submission against this - but the entertainment
industry is still lobbying as absolutely hard as possible. (Their goal
is to remove safe harbour protection from YouTube so they can demand
money that presently doesn't exist, and that they know doesn't exist.)
Do we have any status updates on what's going on with this?
- d.
I'd like to highlight two videos (some people may have already seen these)
that demo upcoming changes to edit review / RC patrol that take advantage
of ORES. I feel that that the changes look promising, and I hope that RC
patrollers, Teahouse hosts, newbie adopters, and others will find that the
changes make their work easier. I also hope for improved retention of
good-faith contributors.
0. A succinct overview by Joe Matazzoni (WMF):
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3ANew-feature_demo%E2%…
1. A more extensive overview, also by Joe, including valuable context, from
the WMF Metrics Meeting for May 2017:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAGwQdLyFb4 between 15:00 and 28:15.
Pine
We are please to announce the upcoming launch of the recruiting process for
the Chief Communications Officer.
As part of the process, we wanted to share the job description (below). A
big thank you to the Communications team for their collaboration, support
and guidance in creating it.
We also wanted to out put a call, if you have any nominations or
recommendations, we'd love to hear from you. Just email me directly over
the next few days.
Thanks!
Joady
Job Title:
Chief Communications Officer
Summary
The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a creative, collaborative,
forward-thinking Chief Communications Officer to join our executive team in
San Francisco, California. We’re looking for a leader who is
mission-driven, transparent by default, has a truly global worldview, and
can champion our values and voice in the world. You will lead a highly
collaborative, multidisciplinary team of eleven storytellers, media
strategists, marketers, and designers. Together, you will share our story
and vision with the world, with the purpose of raising awareness of and
increasing engagement in our work.
The Wikimedia Foundation is an open and transparent organization operating
within a decentralized global network of volunteers. We tend to speak
openly rather than aiming to control or restrict access to information
about us. We seek to inspire, engage, and bring people along in our free
knowledge vision.
As CCO, we’d like you to do these things:
-
Work with the executive team to think and act in service of the future
of our projects (e.g. How does our story and message advance our strategic
objectives? What kind of communications, marketing, or engagement strategy
will we need to grow our work in the world? How will we better define
and position our brand? Which stories do we want told about us? To what
end?).
-
Lead the collaborative definition of long-term strategies to increase
awareness and relevance of our brand, meeting priorities in audience growth
and development (including contributors, readers, and donors),
international language growth, open culture advocacy, and media relations.
-
Develop and lead messaging campaigns that achieve global impact in
support of the Wikimedia movement’s strategic needs.
-
Lead a strong, diverse communications team guided by a clear vision.
-
Co-create the vision and direction for the team
-
Clarify and / or delegate the planning to work toward that vision:
the roles, the responsibilities, the tools, the budget
-
Counsel and mentor the team across a broad range of disciplines
(e.g., brand, identity, digital and social media, PR, messaging,
marketing,
audience growth and development)
-
Build a sustainable system and culture for team members’ continued
professional growth and advancement
-
Create clear workflows for Foundation staff and Wikimedia volunteers
to collaborate with the Communications team
-
Develop succession planning.
-
Serve the Wikimedia vision by working collaboratively with and
empowering people to tell our story and narrate the movement.
-
Support the Foundation, Executive Director, and leadership in public
messaging, issue management, and internal communications.
-
Be a compelling advocate for the Wikimedia movement and Foundation.
-
Oversee and guide the work of staff and volunteers in the continued
development of communications systems that utilize contemporary publishing
practices and reach diverse audiences with engaging content.
We’d like you to have this experience and these skills:
-
10+ years in strategic-level communications and marketing (or marcom)
roles
-
Proven track-record of leading high-impact global marketing and
communications initiatives with measurable results
-
Experience leading multi-disciplinary teams, developing talent, and
creating systems for creative and sustainable workflows
-
A clear, effective communications style, including experience guiding
messaging for major organizations, political candidates, or movements
-
Significant experience navigating complex international organizations,
movements, or networks
-
Experience and comfort in a highly collaborative, transparent environment
-
A track record of building consensus among large, dispersed stakeholder
groups. Must have informed cultural sensitivities, intellectual curiosity,
and a deep passion for the Wikimedia mission
And it would be even more awesome if you had the following:
-
Experience with the internet industry including comfort with concepts
and vocabulary related to product development and engineering
-
Familiarity with internet-related issues: laws limiting freedom of
expression, open culture/free culture, the free and open source software
movement, and online surveillance, privacy and security
-
Significant skilled personal use of communications, creative, and social
technologies
-
The ability to work in a fast-moving, highly-diverse grassroots
environment, while effectively prioritizing and leading a variety of
activities
-
Experience working with nonprofit organizations is a plus
-
Fluency or familiarity with languages in addition to English are a plus.
-
Having lived or worked outside your country of origin is a plus
-
Experience as a member of a volunteer community is a plus
About the Wikimedia Foundation:
The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that supports and
hosts Wikipedia and several other Wikimedia free knowledge sites. Every
month, the Wikimedia sites are accessed by more than a billion unique
devices. Wikipedia consists of more than 40 million articles across
hundreds of languages. Every month, more than 70,000 volunteer editors
contribute to Wikipedia. Based in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia
Foundation is an audited, 501(c)(3) non-profit that is funded primarily
through donations and grants. It currently employs over 240 staff members.
At the Foundation, we build technology to help people everywhere access
Wikipedia, across devices and in nearly 300 languages. We engineer privacy
for our readers and editors so they can safely and securely explore
Wikipedia. We create programs
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero> and initiatives to
make Wikipedia freely available to more people in more parts of the world.
We build new tools <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation> for
the community of editors so they can continue to improve and grow
Wikipedia. Roughly a quarter of our budget goes to supporting the community
that make the site possible, including through grantmaking programs
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Start> that enable volunteers and
enrich the information on the sites.
The Wikimedia Foundation is an equal opportunity employer, and we encourage
people with a diverse range of backgrounds to apply.
Benefits & Perks*:
-
Fully paid medical, dental and vision coverage for employees and their
eligible families (yes, fully paid premiums!)
-
The Wellness Program provides reimbursement for mind, body and soul
activities such as fitness memberships, massages, cooking classes and much
more
-
The 401(k) retirement plan offers matched contributions at 4% of annual
salary
-
Flexible and generous time off - vacation, sick and volunteer days, plus
19 paid holidays - including the last week of the year.
-
Family friendly! 100% paid new parent leave for seven weeks plus an
additional five weeks for pregnancy, flexible options to phase back in
after leave, fully equipped lactation room
-
For those emergency moments - long and short term disability, life
insurance (2x salary) and an employee assistance program
-
Pre-tax savings plans for health care, child care, elder care, public
transportation and parking expenses
-
Telecommuting and flexible work schedules available
-
Appropriate fuel for thinking and coding (aka, a pantry full of treats)
and monthly massages to help staff relax
-
Great colleagues - diverse staff and contractors speaking dozens of
languages from around the world, fantastic intellectual discourse,
mission-driven and intensely passionate people
* for benefits eligible staff, benefits may vary by location
More Information:
http://wikimediafoundation.orghttp://blog.wikimedia.org <http://wikimediafoundation.org/>
--
Joady Lohr
Chief Talent & Culture Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
p. 415.839.6885 x6824
www.wikimediafoundation.org
Please Note: If I am emailing after hours or on the weekend, I am naughty.
Please do not respond until reasonable business hours in your timezone,
unless of course I am shouting for help ;-)
*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment.* https://donate.wikimedia.org/
*Want to work with us?
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:This_is_the_Wikimedia_Foundation.we…>*
Here's an update on various activities pertaining to our the upcoming
Wikimania '17 which is being held August 9-13 in Montréal, Québec, Canada.
WMF Scholarship Program: 110 people were offered and subsequently accepted
a full or partial scholarship to attend. The awardees are listed by user
names and the list is posted here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Wikimania_scholars
Submissions: The program committee has just finished it's review and
deliberations. Rejections and acceptance emails are going out this week
and next. We expect to post the program by the end of this month.
Registration and accommodation information is now up for everyone at:
https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/Registrationhttps://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/Accommodation
If you are a scholarship or other WMF funded attendee (staff, contractor,
board, etc), please wait until you hear from the WMF with your registration
and accommodation instructions.
If you have any questions about the conference, please email
wikimania-info(a)wikimedia.org
Please spread the word!!!!
Thanks, Ellie
--
Ellie Young
Events Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
eyoung(a)wikimedia.org