This is a more solemn email than is usual. I recognize that this email
reflects my personal view, and if this email is not something that you
appreciate then I invite you to disregard it and write your own email
regarding something that makes you happy or grateful this week.
The 11th of November is commemorated in some parts of the world as
Armistice Day, Remembrance Sunday, or Veterans Day. The year 2018 marks the
100th anniversary of Armistice Day. I would like to take a moment to
reflect on the subject of Armistice Day, and on the roles of Wikimedia --
especially Wikipedia -- in sharing knowledge of history and being a
repository of our collective memory.
"Armistice Day is commemorated... to mark the armistice signed between the
Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation
of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I, which took effect at
eleven o'clock in the morning—the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the
eleventh month" of 1918." [1 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_Day>]
World War I was one of the deadliest conflicts in human history, with a
total of approximately 17 million civilian and military deaths. [2
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties>]
I would like to share a story.
John McCrae (photo here
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_McCrae_in_uniform_circa_1914.jpg>)
was a medical doctor and Canadian soldier during World War I. He wrote a
famous poem, “In Flanders Fields
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:In_Flanders_fields_and_other_poems,_hand…>”.
The poem refers to the red poppies that grew over the graves of soldiers
who died in the Second Battle of Ypres in Belgium. There are variants of
the wording of the poem. I quote one of them below.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields."
Here are a few images:
* Poppies in the sunset on Lake Geneva, Montreux, Switzerland
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Poppies_in_the_Sunset_on_Lake_Geneva.jpg>
* Canadian Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Canadian_Tomb_of_the_Unknown_Soldier_wit…>
* Remembrance Day 2010 in Ottawa, Canada
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Remembrance_Day_National_War_Memorial_Ot…>
* Memorial of "In Flanders Fields"
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Inflandersfieldslestweforget01.JPG>
In our contemporary world where there are many disputes about history,
resources are limited, and sometimes it is difficult to be optimistic about
human nature, I am especially grateful for Wikipedia's aspiration to be a
place to share neutral, reliable, and verifiable information with an open
license.
Wikimedia has remarkable success at being a collaborative endeavor for the
education and information of humanity. Wikimedia content is collaboratively
developed by thousands of diverse individuals, many of whom are volunteers
and never meet in person. Content that is shared on Wikimedia sites is
viewed by millions of people around the world. Although we sometimes
caution the public that Wikipedia is not a primary source, for many people
Wikipedia seems to be a good starting point, and the references that we
provide allow people to perform their own research regarding history and
many other topics.
Thank you to everyone who documents history on Wikimedia, and to the people
who support this effort behind the scenes. We all benefit from your
generosity to our common memory. By documenting and learning about our
history, I hope that we improve our understanding of ourselves and our
potential, and can make wise decisions about our future.
I close with a poem by Catherine Munro
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CatherineMunro>:
THIS IS AN ENCYCLOPEDIA
One gateway to the wide garden
of knowledge, where lies
The deep rock of our past,
in which we must delve
the well of our future,
The clear water we must leave untainted
for those who come after us,
The fertile earth, in which
truth may grow in bright places,
tended by many hands,
And the broad fall of sunshine,
warming our first steps toward knowing
how much we do not know.
Ever onward,
Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
The Wikimedia Foundation 2018-19 Annual Plan includes the goal Managing Personal Data [1], which aims, among other things, to give users control over their personal data. A sub-portion of that overall goal, “Data Portability,” lays out two specific, user-facing objectives: to enable users to download their wiki contributions and, if possible, to let users download the data we have about them or their accounts.
Starting in November of 2018, those became the goals of the "Data Portability" project, which has been assigned to the Community Tech team. I just published a page on Meta for this project [2]. Anyone interested can follow its progress there; please have a look and share your ideas and questions with the team on the talk page.
Yours,
Joe
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2018-2019/…
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Tech/Data_Portability <https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/04/news-feed-fyi-more-context/>
_____________________
Joe Matazzoni
Product Manager, Community Tech
Wikimedia Foundation, San Francisco
Does anyone have any objections to running fundraising experiments to
measure the cost of donations from https://ads.nextdoor.com and
https://ads.google.com similar to the recent Facebook ads experiment?
I predict NextDoor will offer the best value, and I'm guessing Google
will place a relatively weak second of the three.
Best regards,
Jim
The Foundation has been accepting BitCoin donations. Unfortunately,
BitCoin is very wasteful in terms of electricity, and is therefore a
dirty cryptocurrency.
I recommend that the Foundation immediately cease accepting BitCoin,
and require donors who wish to donate in cryptocurrency to convert to
FoldingCoin instead. Please see: FoldingCoin (FLDC)
http://foldingcoin.net/ whitepaper:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y4MV9AwGLTRFqD-kjC4uN0AX59kHOpO1OWsabnx…
This conversion will place the Foundation at the forefront of
cryptocurrency technology, and stop it from contributing to extremely
dirty waste. As other cryptocurrencies based on proofs of useful work
instead of useless work emerge, the Foundation should consider those.
FoldingCoin is based on proofs of useful prediction of protein
folding, which is useful for computer-aided antibody design, and used
in turn for cancer therapies and many other applied and research
medical fields.
I also invite anyone in the community interested in co-authoring my
forthcoming derivative whitepaper on proofs of useful intelligibility
remediation work to contact me off-list, please. I am also willing to
help with proofs of useful encyclopedia article improvement, but I am
not certain if ORES is yet robust enough to support such proof in a
secure fashion.
Best regards,
Jim Salsman
Hi everyone!
I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
[1] Muj(lh)eres latinoamericanas en Wikimedia [2] as a Wikimedia User
Group. The group aims to engage Latin American women as contributors on all
Wikimedia projects, to narrow the gender gap, and to foster a meeting space
for Latin American women contributors to strengthen ties and a sense of
belonging and community identity.
Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!
Regards,
Kirill Lokshin
Chair, Affiliations Committee
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Recognit…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Muj(lh)eres_latinoamericanas_en_Wikimedia
