Hi,
All emails from Wikimedia-l started to automatically drop into my Spam folder as of a few days ago. I use an "@live.com" email address (from Microsoft Outlook).
Anyone else facing this?
Thanks and regards,
User:Rehman<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rehman>
Hi everyone,
I'm pleased to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation's Annual Plan is now
on Meta.[1]
This year we are continuing to adhere to the three strategic priorities
laid out in the 2016-2018 interim strategic plan: reach, communities, and
knowledge.
Across the organization, we've introduced cross-departmental programs and
planning, with a holistic approach to program support that draws on our
community, technical, and other capacities. We feel that this new approach
creates stronger and better outcomes for programs, and is also clearer as
to what the Foundation is prioritizing. Some examples of these
cross-departmental programs include New Readers, Structured Data, and
Community Health, which have been discussed on this list and on wiki
throughout the past year.
Throughout the rest of the organization and department programs, we're
continuing to invest in the areas we identified through the 2016-2018
interim strategic plan, as well as core work such as operational
improvements, deepening diversity and inclusion, improving privacy and
security, and funding the Wikimedia endowment.
Thank you all for your support over the past year. Your participation in
the movement strategy process launched this year is deeply appreciated, and
it is remarkable to think that next year's plan will begin to incorporate
the directions we design together.
In the meanwhile, I'm looking forward to your feedback on this year's
proposed plan during this open comment period.
Yours,
Katherine
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_
Plan/2017-2018/Draft
--
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
Forwarding. This email may be of interest to folks are interested in
translations, language engineering, and contributors' interfaces.
Pine
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Trevor Parscal <tparscal(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Mon, Jul 3, 2017 at 12:46 PM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Changes in the Contributors Team
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Wikimedia Developers,
With the change to a new annual plan and fiscal year, we’ve made some
changes to how the Contributors team, formerly known as the Editing
department, is organized. I believe these changes will help us better serve
our communities and make judicious use of donor funds, by making our teams
more capable of taking on large projects while maintaining production
software. I also believe these changes will better support for our staff by
helping many of them who have been wearing many hats for a long time
achieve greater focus.
The first and most significant change is that the Language and
Collaboration teams have merged to become the Global Collaboration team.
Runa Bhattacharjee, who has managed the Language team since 2014, will
manage the new combined team. Roan Kattouw, who has led and managed the
Collaboration team for the past two years, has now taken off his people
manager hat, and is now focused on being the Lead Engineer of the new team.
By merging, this new team will have the ability to incorporate engineering,
design, QA and community engagement more fluidly, meeting the specific
needs of each project and allowing team members to share their individual
expertise to a greater number of products.
Additionally, as Toby mentioned last month, the Dan Garry has joined the
team responsible for editing tools like VisualEditor, allowing James to
step away from his 5-year stint as the Product Manager for VisualEditor and
focus on leading product for Contributors. With this change comes a new
name for the VisualEditor team, which is now (back to being called) the
Editing team.
It will likely take some time for these changes to fully propagate through
all the wikis and development tools and many staff are currently in
transitional roles. If you have any questions about these changes, please
let me know and I’ll do my best to help you.
Thanks,
Trevor Parscal
--
- Trevor
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Could an unpaid volunteer who is not a WMF employee, or contractor, or
consultant, please have a go at answering my polite request for links
to "monthly or quarterly financial reports" from a few days ago,
below? I don't think this needs any time from employees to confirm
whether published versions exist or don't exist, and I don't want to
be publicly shamed for asking a question.[1]
I have searched through the WMF web pages with regard to the 2017
movement strategy,[2] but have yet to find any references or evidence
that there are regular reports of when or how the budgeted $2.5
million is being spent. Considering the large size of this project,
and especially the significant sums of money going to consultants, I
am sure everyone can appreciate there is bound to be interest from the
wider community in the progress of the spend and any unplanned spend.
I would expect that the strategy project has regular monthly tracked
spending reports, certainly I would find it hard to believe that the
WMF CEO and CFO do not require that level of tracking and reporting.
If nothing is published, then that would be a jolly good thing for our
movement to push for improved /public/ governance of $1m+ projects,
especially those with large sums going to consultants chosen using
non-open bid procedures, to deliver better transparency in line with
our movement values. The cost of this improvement would be zero. There
can be no doubt that summary reports already exist and there is
unlikely to be any reason for secrecy that would convince the
community that when spending very large sums of donated money, we can
be ethically transparent and accountable, but be unable to answer
these simple questions publicly.
Should the WMF CEO feel that publishing monthly or quarterly reports
on $1m+ projects is a pointless burden, then perhaps the CEO and WMF
board could agree at what level of spend there should be better
transparency, perhaps any identifiable programme spending more than
$2m?
Raising as a separate thread, as we have probably drifted away from
Pine's original question and intent.[3]
Links:
1. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2017-June/087910.html
Statement from Greg and Anna.
2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017
Strategy pages on Meta.
3. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2017-June/087854.html
Pine's question.
Thanks,
Fae
On 27 June 2017 at 12:31, Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On 27 June 2017 at 04:33, Anna Stillwell <astillwell(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> ...
>>> * How much is this timeline extension projected to cost, and from what
>>> source are the funds being drawn? (Note that this doesn't assume that the
>>> decision was a bad one, but I very much want to know the source of the
>>> funds and how much is likely to be drawn from it.)
>>
>> We've got this covered, Pine. We are fiscally managing this process and all
>> of our contracts well. Thank you for your concern.
>>
>>> * Could you also discuss what measures are being taken to control costs in
>>> the strategy process?
>>>
>>
>> We have plenty of measures in place to monitor costs (e.g., we don't need
>> to control them because they are not out of control, we are within our
>> budget). Also, describing financial metrics at any lower level of detail
>> would be a waste of the strategy budget since we are within it.
>>
>> Always good to hear from you,
>> /a
>
> Anna,
>
> I'd love to examine the more detailed monthly or quarterly financial
> reports that demonstrate your assurance, and can be both examined and
> understood by volunteers like us. Could you provide a link to them
> please? No doubt the WMF wrote transparency and accountability right
> into the contracts, so that being transparent and accountable is not
> considered a "waste of the strategy budget" but instead is an activity
> absolutely critical to its success.
>
> Thanks,
> Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
Cascadia Wikimedians User Group is getting near to finishing the reports
and accounting for a WMF grant. I'm hoping that the current grant will be
"closed" in mid-July and that the organization will move forward later this
year with a new plan for outreach activities.
Additionally, I had a conversation with two people last week who liked a
Wikiemdia-related idea that I've been contemplating. I hope to have another
conversation with them in the future when my schedule is more accommodating.
What's making you happy this week?
Pine
Dear Wikimedians,
This e-mail to let you know of some changes in the Board of trustees of
Wikimédia France.
Our Chair, Émeric Vallespi, got elected as deputy Member of Parliament
during the French legislative elections in June. Although this position
does not entail an active role in Parliament, Émeric has accepted a
full-time position on his MP’s staff. Therefore, in accordance with
conflict of interests policy at WMFr and in view of his new job, Émeric
resigned from the chair position. He remains a member of the Board but his
role in our lobbying activities will be restricted regarding his position
in politics.
New officers have been elected and our Board is now composed as following:
- Samuel Le Goff - Chair ;
- Marie-Alice Mathis - Vice-Chair ;
- Édouard Hue - Secretary ;
- Guillaume Goursat - Treasurer ;
- Louise Merzeau ;
- Florian Pépellin ;
- Florence Raymond ;
- Émeric Vallespi.
On behalf of Wikimédia France Board of Trustees,
With our best regards,
--
Édouard Hue
Secretary of Wikimédia France
I like a tool for Wikidata that Hay created which is called VizQuery. More
information about it is below.
What's making you happy this week?
Pine
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Hay (Husky) <huskyr(a)gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 4:10 PM
Subject: [Wikidata] A visual way to query Wikidata
To: "Discussion list for the Wikidata project." <
wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hey everyone,
i've made a tool that allows you to query Wikidata in a visual way
without using SPARQL. It's called VizQuery:
http://tools.wmflabs.org/hay/vizquery/
The possibilities of using Wikidata to do interesting queries are
endless, and the current query service allows for very powerful
queries indeed. However, i feel that for the general public,
especially those who are not that technical, it might be a bit
overwhelming and difficult for them to learn a complex language such
as SPARQL. To make people familiar with the concept of queries i
believe a somewhat less intimidating approach might be useful, hence
this tool.
VizQuery is only capable of doing a subset of possible queries. It's
basically simple triples, variables (prefixed with '?') and literals
(between "quotes"). You can do pretty powerful queries with only those
things though. For example, here's a query with vegetarians who are
married to a vegetarian:
http://bit.ly/2sydpmW
Under the hood VizQuery uses Ruben Verborgh's SPARQL.js library to
convert between JSON and SPARQL, so theoretically every SPARQL query
you could do in the regular query service can be done in VizQuery.
However, many queries won't work because the visual interface only
supports a subset of options: it's pretty hard to create user-friendly
GUI representations of many of the complex SPARQL features. :)
Anyway, i'd like to hear what you think. Bugs, feature request and
pull requests are also welcome on my Github page:
https://github.com/hay/wiki-tools
Kind regards,
-- Hay
_______________________________________________
Wikidata mailing list
Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata