Hi all,
*Summary: Cycle 2 discussions have started on Meta-Wiki and a wiki near
you![1]*
The core team and working groups have completed reviewing the more than
1800 thematic statements we received from the first discussion. They have
identified 5 themes that were consistent across all the conversations -
each with their own set of sub-themes.[1] To be clear, these are not the
final themes! They are just an initial working draft of the core concepts.
There are more conversations yet to come.
Starting this week, you are invited to join the online and offline
discussions taking place on these 5 themes. This round of discussions will
take place between now and June 12th.[2] You can discuss as many as you
like; we ask you to participate in the ones that are most (or least)
important to you.
For each theme, we are asking five questions. These questions are intended
to help us understand the impact of these potential themes and the
tradeoffs we will have to make. To succeed in any strategic venture, we
must not only declare what we will do, but also what we will not! If you
have research and other citable data related to your opinions, please
include them! Finally, we ask that you participate in an honest and
respectful manner.
Each theme has a page on Meta-WIki with more information about the theme
and how to participate in that theme's discussion. Here are the five major
themes, and their brief descriptions:
*== Healthy, inclusive communities == [3]*
By 2030, the Wikimedia volunteer culture will be fun, rewarding, and
inclusive for both existing contributors and newcomers. We will welcome new
volunteers to our movement and mentor them to ensure that they have a great
experience and continue to engage in the projects. People from every
background will feel included in an ecosystem of unique groups and
organizations that deepen connections with each other. As a result, our
movement will grow both in size and in character, as our projects flourish
from the healthy community we cultivate together.
*== The augmented age == [4]*
By 2030, the Wikimedia movement will collaborate with learning machines to
help our volunteers be much more creative and productive. We will use
prediction and design to make knowledge easy to access and easy to use with
novel, humanized, intelligent interfaces. Volunteers will collaborate with
machine translators to deepen the quality and quantity of content in more
languages – at a heightened pace and scale. We will curate knowledge in
structured and interactive formats that enhance and reflect the way people
learn and contribute — beyond the browser, the app, and the encyclopedic
format. We will embrace technological innovation as the most viable path
toward meeting our vision.
*== A truly global movement == [5]*
The Wikimedia movement will turn our attention to the places in the world
that were underserved during the first 15 years of our history. We will
build awareness of Wikimedia and make it more useful to people. We will
overcome barriers to accessing knowledge, so more people can freely share
in the Wikimedia projects. We will support communities in underserved parts
of the world and make space for new forms of contribution and citations
that meet global knowledge traditions. By 2030, we will be a truly global
movement.
*== The most respected source of knowledge == [6]*
By 2030, Wikimedia projects will be regarded as the most trusted,
high-quality, neutral, and relevant source of free knowledge in the world.
We will uphold the accuracy and verifiability of our content by integrating
high-quality secondary sources and supporting the existence of reliable
sources in society. We will improve public understanding of the processes
that make Wikimedia reliable, and we will invite experts to join us and
share their knowledge. We will surface the most relevant information to
people when and where they need it. We will expand the depth of knowledge
available, while upholding our standards for verifiable, neutral and
comprehensive knowledge.
*== Engaging in the knowledge ecosystem == [7]*
By 2030, the Wikimedia Movement will have dramatically improved the
quality, diversity, and global availability of free knowledge by working
with diverse institutions and organizations that collaborate toward free
knowledge for all. Wikimedia content, technology, and communities will be
embedded in formal and informal learning throughout the world, in
partnership with the world’s leading institutions in education, the arts,
entertainment, civil society, government, science, and technology. Through
strategic partnerships across our movement, we will build a diverse new
generation of knowledge providers and seekers who will build and care for a
growing body of freely accessible knowledge. We will make Wikimedia an
integral part of a global knowledge ecosystem.
On the movement strategy portal on Meta-Wiki, you can find more information
about each of these themes, their discussions, and how to participate.[2]
We also have efforts underway to collect feedback from people who are not
currently involved with Wikimedia - and may not even have internet access.
We will be summarizing how we’re collecting this information, and the
perspectives themselves, and sharing them on Meta-Wiki as they become
available.[2]
One more thing - hopefully you are already aware that we are in the final
days of the community selection process for the Wikimedia Foundation's
Board of Trustees![8]
If you are eligible to vote and have not already done so, please consider
doing so before voting ends at 23:59 (UTC) on Sunday, 14 May 2017. You can
find out more information about the candidates and how to vote on
Meta-WIki: https://meta.wikimedia.org/?curid=10240438. Thank you!
مع أطيب التحيات (Arabic translation: “Best regards”)
Katherine
PS. A version of this message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.[9]
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Cycle_2
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Participate
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Cycle_2/He…
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Cycle_2/Th…
[5]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Cycle_2/A_…
[6]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Cycle_2/Th…
[7]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Cycle_2/En…
[8]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2017/Board_o…
[9]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Updates/12…
--
Katherine Maher
Wikimedia Foundation
149 New Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
+1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635
+1 (415) 712 4873
kmaher(a)wikimedia.org
Hi folks,
I'd like to ask for your thoughts about (1) whether it would be a good
idea, and if so (2) how, to get non-WMF funding sources for community work
which WMF can't, won't, or shouldn't fund, and could benefit from paid
human resources.
Two areas that I have in mind that could benefit from paid human resources
for community work are
(1) the *Signpost*, which seems to me like it requires enough skilled work
to produce on a weekly
basis that its staff should be paid in a manner similar to the staff of US
college weekly newspapers. (For a time I was a regular *Signpost*
contributor, but no longer. I know how much work was involved in doing a
good job with creating and publishing the *Signpost* weekly.)
and
(2) conflict of interest work, in three domains: (a) education of COI
editors, particularly those who express interest in abiding by community
norms and policies; (b) reviews of changes that have been made or proposed
in a manner consistent with the spirit of community norms of policies; and
(c) investigations of potential COI problems such as undisclosed paid
editing.
Perhaps there are other areas which would also benefit from additional paid
human resources, but which WMF can't, won't, or shouldn't fund.
Let me repeat the questions that I asked at the top of this email. (1) How
would people feel about non-WMF funding for these kinds kind of work, if
funding can be found? (2) If funding for these kinds of work would be
beneficial, how might the funding be possible to obtain it without WMF
involvement?
A third question which will need some thought, if there aren't a lot of
objections to the concept and if funding can be found, is "who should
administer the funding?" WMF shouldn't, and my initial thought is that
setting up a new 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization would be a good way to
go. I suggest waiting to think about this question for the moment, and
first focusing on the two other questions.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
Pine
Dear all,
Yesterday (8.5.17) Wikimedia Israel (WMIL) held a general assembly meeting,
during which the members held the elections for members of the Board of
WMIL.
The results of the elections are as follows:
Itzik Edri,(reelected)
Deror Lin, (reelected)
Ido Ivri, (reelected)
Hana Yariv (reelected)
Dana Dekel (reelected)
Audit committee: Oved Cohen (reelected).
The new Board then proceeded to reelect Itzik Edri as the chairperson, and
to elect Ido Ivri as the Board Secretary
Regards,
Itzik
Hey all,
I'm delighted to announce here that you can now use ISBNs to add
automatically-generated citations to Wikipedia. This is thanks to a
partnership with OCLC, a global non-profit library cooperative, whose
WorldCat database of books is the largest in the world.
One of the editing features for which we've had the most praise is the tool
to generate citations. This tool, started back in 2014, allows you to type
in a URL, DOI, or PMCID and have it suggest a filled-in citation. Making it
quicker and easier for new and existing editors alike to do the right thing
is a key part of our work.
However, Wikimedians love our books, and the most-requested feature was to
add to this the most common identifier for books, ISBNs. I know that a few
wikis built their own custom gadgets to do this, but I felt that we should
provide a proper, reliable tool that works on mobile as well as desktop
platforms, for all users and in all languages.
Over the past while, we agreed a partnership with OCLC to provide this data
for editors to use, to make referencing stronger and clearer for our
readers around the world. Identifiers for books will help them find further
information on topics that catch their interest, using our long-standing
BookSources tool and OCLC's WorldCat database.
This is now live on all wikis which have Citoid set up. If your wiki
doesn't have it, we'd love to help your community out – ask on the talk page
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Citoid/Enabling_Citoid_on_your_wiki>.
You can read more in the blog post
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/05/11/wikimedia-oclc-partnership/>, and of
course I'd love for you to try it out on a wiki that's configured with it
near you.
My very big thanks to OCLC, in particularly Merrilee Proffitt, and to my
colleagues at the Wikimedia Foundation, particularly Marielle Volz, Marko
Obrovac, and Jake Orlowitz, for making this possible.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Lead Product Manager, Editing
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
jforrester at wikimedia.org
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l> |
@jdforrester
OK, so something amazing just happened: A Hebrew Wikipedia editor told me
that he uses the translated API Sandbox.
This probably sounds cryptic, so let me explain why is this significant.
The "API Sandbox" is a technical part of the MediaWiki software that shows
all the actions that are available for developers of extensions, bots,
scripts, etc. There are hundreds of such actions, and there are thousands
of English strings that document each action. You can see the API Sandbox
in English here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox
In the past these documentation strings could only be written in English,
but in 2014 it became possible to translate them. So now it's possible to
see the API Sandbox in French, for example:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox
I do my best to keep the translation of MediaWiki into Hebrew at 100%, so I
translated them all for the sake of completeness, but I was sure that
nobody will ever use it, because programmers usually know English.
So now I have proof that it's _usually_, but not _always_. A developer of
gadgets in the Hebrew Wikipedia found it more comfortable to use the API
Sandbox in Hebrew than in English. And he's probably not alone. There are
probably a lot of people who would be good programmers if they had more
documentation in their language.
And this makes me happy because:
1. This translation actually enables more people to develop more useful
technical tools for Wikimedia projects.
2. More philosophically, this makes the gap between people who know English
and people who don't a little bit smaller. This gap is huge, but hard to
notice for people who know English (even for me).
3. More personally, now I know that the time I invested in translating
these strings was not wasted :)
Moral of the story: Localization is awesome, nobody should assume that
everyone knows English, and everything should be translatable.
Thanks to Brad Jorsch (User:Anomie) for making the API documentation
translatable!
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
2017-05-08 9:06 GMT+03:00 Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com>:
> I was happy to see the final WMF list of GSoC 2017 and Outreachy Round 14
> projects.
>
> What's making you happy this week?
>
> Pine
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>
> Hello,
>
> Please join me in welcoming Wikimedia's accepted candidates for Google
> Summer of Code 2017 and Outreachy Round 14!
>
> Google Summer of Code 2017
>
> 1.
>
> Alexander Jones, Texas, United States, Implement Thanks support in
> Pywikibot <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161426> - John Mark
> Vandenberg
> 2.
>
> Amrit Sreekumar, Kerela, India, Improvements to ProofreadPage Extension
> and Wikisource <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161111> - Yann
> Forget, Tpt
> 3.
>
> Feroz Ahmad, New Delhi, India, Add a "hierarchy" type to the Cargo
> extension <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161609> - Yaron Koren,
> Nischayn22
> 4.
>
> Harjot Singh Bhatia, New Delhi, India, Adding Data storage feature and
> upgrading Quiz extension <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T160257> -
> Marielle Volz, Sam Reed
> 5.
>
> Harsh Shah, India, Build a similar to @NYPLEmoji bot for Commons images
> - Dereckson, Ariel
> 6.
>
> Keerthana S, India, Automatic editing suggestions and feedbacks for
> articles in Wiki Ed Dashboard <https://phabricator.
> wikimedia.org/T160840>
> - Sage Ross, Jonathan Morgan
> 7.
>
> Sejal Khatri, India, Provide enhanced usability for Wikimedia Programs &
> Events Dashboard managed by Wiki Education foundation <
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161929> - Sage Ross, Jonathan Morgan
> 8.
>
> Siddhartha Sarkar, India, Single Image Batch Upload <
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161670> - Basvb
>
> Outreachy Round 14
>
> 1.
>
> Ela Opper, Tel Aviv, Israel, "Remind me of this article in X days"
> MediaWiki notification <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161823> -
> Matthew Flaschen and Moriel Schottlender
> 2.
>
> Medha Bansal, New Delhi, India, WikiEduDashboard: Allow Programs &
> Events Dashboard to make automatic edits on connected wikis <
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161568>- Jonathan Morgan, Sage Ross
> 3.
>
> Sonali Gupta, Rajasthan, India, Document process for creating new Zotero
> translator and getting it live in production <
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161191> - Marielle Volz
>
>
> We would like to encourage accepted candidates to introduce themselves on
> this thread, share with us where they are coming from and give a brief
> overview of the project they will be working on.
>
> We’re so proud of the contributions they have made so far to our community,
> and we look forward to having a wonderful time working with them over the
> summer! Also, a huge shout-out to the project mentors for their enthusiasm
> and commitment!
>
> Thank you to Sumit and Anna for coordinating this round along with me!
> Best,
> Srishti
>
> --
> Srishti Sethi
> Developer Advocate
> Technical Collaboration team
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:SSethi_(WMF) <javascript:void(0)>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> 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>
The proposed project, Wikifiction, would collect a lot of information about
existing fictional material. It should not collect fanfiction or original
fictional material, which would be disallowed by the proposed project.
Unlike Wikia, Wikifiction would be ad-free and easier to load.
Link: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikifiction_%28In-
universe_encyclopedia%29
Hello everyone,
Please join us for the Wikimedia Foundation Technology and Product Q&A
Session #2 by Victoria Coleman (CTO) and Toby Negrin (Interim VP of
Product) on May 9, 2017, at 17:00 UTC via YouTube live.
Link to live YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4kfgU9SZcg
IRC channel for questions/discussion: #wikimedia-office
More details:
This talk is a follow-up of the Wikimedia Developer Summit session
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0JdtauJkKs> and will address the next set
of questions gathered via a voting survey for the summit:
-
For WMF dev teams, what is the right balance between pushing own work
versus seeking and supporting volunteer contributors?
-
Do we have a plan to bring our developer documentation to the level of a
top Internet website, a major free software project?
-
How can volunteers bring ideas and influence the WMF annual plans and
quarterly goals? (Currently, when plans are published it's too late)
-
What vision do you see for MediaWiki and volunteer developers five years
from now?
Looking forward to your presence!
Best,
Srishti
--
Srishti Sethi
Developer Advocate
Technical Collaboration team
Wikimedia Foundation
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:SSethi_(WMF)
A couple of weeks ago, Wikimedia Sweden organised the Wikipedia Day,
which will hopefully become an annual event. Some programme items,
some socialising, and the presentation of a new award,
Wikimediapriset, to be given to someone who's been furthering open
knowledge. I don't think anyone's mentioned it on this list, and in
the spirit of sharing good things, we should talk about Holger.
The receiver was Holger Ellgaard, User.Holger.Ellgaard, for his vast
amount of Wikipedia articles related to Stockholm. A retired architect
and nowadays – it seems – full-time Wikipedian, Holger mainly writes
about buildings, neighbourhoods and city planning. His articles (a
couple of thousand in total) are generally well sourced, easy to read
and understand, and well illustrated. Some Wikipedia articles have a
large number of illustrations because the photographer wanted
somewhere to put their pictures; Holger's articles are heavily
illustrated because it adds to the understanding of the subject at
hand. He wants to visit the places he's to write about, to get a
feeling for them as well as to get the images.
Some of my favourites:
City planning in Stockholm
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadsplanering_i_Stockholm
Public toilets in Stockholm:
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offentliga_toaletter_i_Stockholm
Street lighting in Stockholm:
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatubelysning_i_Stockholm
Public bomb shelters in Stockholm:
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allmänna_skyddsrum_i_Stockholm
The Swedish standard kitchen:
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svensk_köksstandard
Skokloster Castle:
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skoklosters_slott
In addition to creating good articles, Holger is polite and willing to
help other editors when they're writing within his field of expertise.
We, and everyone who can read Swedish, are lucky this is what he
decided to spend his time on.
//Johan Jönsson
--
_in_the_drift_ice_region_north_of_Svalbard.jpg){kind=link}