Wikimedia-l February 2018

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99 participants
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Let's map capacities! (Announcing the CCM)
by Asaf Bartov 05 Feb '18

05 Feb '18

Dear Wikimedians, *How many Wikimedia communities have embraced advanced Wikidata use? How many have active social media accounts, and are there geographic or cultural patterns to which groups have and have not? Which groups have a written, current strategy? What are the most common gaps in capacity in Latin America? or in Eastern Europe? What kind of investment in capacity building would be likely to bring the most value?* To answer these questions and more, we invite all of you to participate in the new *Community Capacity Map (CCM)*: a *self-assessment exercise* for communities, groups (whether formally recognized user groups or not), thematic organizations, and chapters, to *map capacities* across the movement, with a view to identifying *existing gaps* as well as *opportunities for capacity-building*. The CCM is here on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Capacity_Map The context for this work, as well as "likely-asked questions, with answers" ("LAQ"?), are explained here, including an answer to "*why should I take the time to read all this?*" -- https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Capacity_Map/About (and also pasted at the bottom of this e-mail, for your convenience.) The self-assessment is to be done based on the detailed *Guidelines* provided here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Capacity_Map/Guidelines I am looking forward to learning more about your groups' and orgs' capacities and gaps, and to do my best to play matchmaker between those needs and our available resources and opportunities. While I encourage you to begin contributing straightaway, *there is no deadline *-- this is envisioned to be a long-term, ongoing, and tracked-over-time tool -- so contribute if and when your group is able to make the time. (don't forget to scroll down to the LAQ!) Warmly, Asaf Bartov Senior Program Officer, Emerging Wikimedia Communities ========================================== Likely-asked questions, with answers this exists with working links and [modest] formatting here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Capacity_Map/About#Likely-asked_q… Why do this at all? The Community Resources team is doing this to attempt a more *comprehensive* view of capacities and gaps across the movement, to enhance our existing, anecdotal and ad-hoc, impressions of only some of the communities and affiliates. See the goal statement above. Why now? The CCM experiment is an implementation of one of the recommendations made at the conclusion of the Community Capacity Development pilot year <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Capacity_Development/Overall_pilo…> . Why should I spend the time to read through it or go through the self-assessment? There are a couple of reasons you may want to put in the time: First, by self-assessing your group/organization's capacities and gaps, you are giving WMF and other potential investors in community capacity a chance to provide your group/org with resources and opportunities to *build up* those capacities. Secondly, self-assessing according to the Guidelines page <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Capacity_Map/Guidelines> may be in itself a worthwhile exercise and discussion-starter for your group/org, pointing at potential areas for proactive work by *your org/group itself*, for example in your next annual plan. Finally, self-assessing (at least some) capacities today would enable you to review and re-assess in six months, or two years, and see how your group/org has developed (or not) in each of these aspects. So does WMF expect all groups and organizations to do this? No. This is an opportunity and a tool. Like all other tools, you are free to use it or not, and we certainly understand that it would take time and that you may have more pressing priorities in your group/org. We *hope* as many groups, organizations, and communities eventually take the time to self-assess, at least on some capacities, but it is not mandatory, and there would be no penalty for not participating. Would we have to provide self-assessments for *all* of the capacities? No. Feel free to self-assess on as many or as few capacities as you are able to, interested in, or find relevant. You can also add assessments gradually, as your group/org finds time to discuss and agree on assessments. Should I assess capacities in the context of my wiki community, my user-group/chapter, or what? It depends. It may make sense to do separate assessments, or just one. For example, while the English community has plenty of bot builders and technical experts, you may belong to a small community contributing in English in a country with little or no bot-building expertise, such as Wikimedians in Uganda. In this case, it would make sense to describe the capacities of the Ugandan group you're part of, and not of the whole English Wikipedia community. On the other hand, it is possible that there is a very high degree of overlap between the Estonian community's capacities and the Estonian chapter's capacities, and in that case, it may be most useful to assess just once, for the Estonian community *or* Wikimedia Estonia, or possibly once for the community for on-wiki capacities, and separately for Wikimedia Estonia only for the organizational and off-wiki capacities. See the Guidelines <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Capacity_Map/Guidelines> page for more details. Okay, and suppose we did put in the time and provided some assessments. What can we expect next? You can expect, at the very least, one program officer at Community Resources paying attention to your contribution, and possibly, depending on each specific capacity and assessment, that officer may have resources or opportunities to suggest to your community/group/org. *The more groups provide assessments, the better-informed WMF would be*, and the more likely it would be that *WMF could allocate resources and create training opportunities* for your group. Shared needs in a region would increase the likelihood of WMF acting even further, as it would allow economizing on the investment by training/supporting several groups/communities at once. Are you saying if X number of communities demonstrate need Y, WMF is *guaranteed* to allocate resources to fill that need? I'm afraid not. But it does make it *more likely*, in that it demonstrates the need, making it easier to argue for it in internal budgeting and allocation discussions, and to marshal internal WMF resources (such as borrowing the time of subject experts at WMF to conduct training or mentor groups). Okay, so how would WMF decide which communities to offer resources to? There's no simple deterministic algorithm, but WMF would prioritize emerging communities <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Engagement/Defining_Emerging_Comm…> over other communities, larger groups serving larger populations over smaller ones, and at least at first, would probably prioritize "low-hanging fruit" -- lower-cost/lower-risk investments, as we learn and improve this program's use of resources. Wouldn't the fact these are self-assessments mean we'd be comparing apples to oranges, given some groups would overestimate or underestimate their own capacities? No. We do understand there are some cultural tendencies (some cultures are more self-critical than others, or have rosier or more pessimistic views of future prospects and current capabilities). However, we think the fairly coarse granularity of the assessments (none/low/medium/high), coupled with *the Guidelines <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Capacity_Map/Guidelines>* for self-assessing, would lead most groups to make reasonably comparable assessments. Ultimately, these would remain subjective and unscientific assessments; but they would certainly at least indicate a group/org's *own* perception of their capacity. And before WMF (or others interested in investing in capacity building) make a decision to tackle a particular capacity with a particular community/group/org/region, we would be sure to take into consideration *all the relevant context* we have, i.e. not just the aggregate of the self-assessments in the CCM, but also all the accumulated experience, context, and history we are aware of at WMF, regarding that community/group/org/region. Okay, this may not be *the worst* idea ever to come from WMF We're glad you think so. :) What if none of this turns out the way you hope? Then we'll archive these pages and look for other ways to do effective capacity building. The CCM is an experiment, based on observed needs and an expectation that it would be useful. But we are ready to learn that it may not, and to change course if necessary. Let's give it a shot, though! What if I have another question? Use the talk page! :)

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[Wikimedia Announcements] The Signpost – Volume 14, Issue 2 – 5 February 2018
by Wikipedia Signpost 05 Feb '18

05 Feb '18

Op-ed: Do editors have the right to be forgotten? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-02-05/Op-ed Featured content: Wars, sieges, disasters and everything black possible http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-02-05/Featur… Recent research: Automated Q&A from Wikipedia articles; Who succeeds in talk page discussions? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-02-05/Recent… Blog: New monthly dataset shows where people fall into Wikipedia rabbit holes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-02-05/Blog Interview: Interview with The Rambling Man, Wikipedia's top contributor of Featured Lists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-02-05/Interv… Traffic report: TV, death, sports, and doodles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-02-05/Traffi… Special report: Cochrane–Wikipedia Initiative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-02-05/Specia… Arbitration report: New cases requested for inter-editor hostility and other collaboration issues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-02-05/Arbitr… In the media: Solving crime; editing out violence allegations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-02-05/In_the… Humour: You really are in Wonderland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-02-05/Humour Single-page view http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signpost/Single https://facebook.com/wikisignpost https://twitter.com/wikisignpost -- Signpost team http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signpost _______________________________________________ Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l

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Wikimania 2018 Call for Submissions
by Liam Wyatt 05 Feb '18

05 Feb '18

Dear Wikimedia community, We are pleased to announce that Wikimania 2018 is now accepting proposals for workshops, discussions, presentations, or research posters to give during the conference. To read the full instructions visit the event wiki and click on the link provided there to make your proposal: https://wikimania2018.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions The deadline for submissions is 23:59 UTC on *Sunday March 18, 2018*. This is approximately 6 weeks away. Whether you are a community member of one of the Wikimedia projects, or a fellow open content creator or consumer, we welcome your proposal for a session. *Theme* This year, the conference will be taking place in Cape Town, South Africa, where the organisers are giving this Wikimania a unique flavor — an explicit theme based in African philosophy: “Bridging knowledge gaps, the *ubuntu* way forward.” Read more about this theme, why it was chosen, and what it means for the conference program at the Wikimedia blog: *https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/02/05/wikimania-cape-town-ubuntu/ <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/02/05/wikimania-cape-town-ubuntu/>* Throughout the conference program, this theme will be tightly held, but loosely defined - in order to encourage a diverse range of responses to the theme. It is our hope that this theme will give us the opportunity to further our goal of creating the “sum of human knowledge”, by encouraging greater diversity and inclusion in who participates and what we discuss at Wikimania. To learn more, and to make a proposal for the conference, please visit: https://wikimania2018.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions Please forward this announcement to other lists and groups across the Wikimedia movement. <https://wikimania2018.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions> We look forward to reading your submissions. Sincerely, *Program committee co-chairs Emna Mizouni, Felix Nartey, and Liam Wyatt.*

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Serbian Wikipedia 15
by Filip Maljković 04 Feb '18

04 Feb '18

Hello everyone! I am writing here because we have a great landmark ahead of us. Namely, Serbian Wikipedia turns 15 years of age in less than two weeks, so that's naturally an important event for both Serbian Wikipedia and Wikimedia Serbia. The birthday is on February 16, but we will be celebrating it on February 19 with a formal event. For the past 15 years, we have been working hard and putting a lot of effort into creating one of the largest South Slavic encyclopedias. Let's celebrate that! With this in mind, we are organizing various birthday activities. They are the ones which represent the diversity of our vast community, and the impact which we can achieve when we unite in sharing free knowledge. That is why we are now addressing the entire movement, because we want to celebrate this jubilee together and feel that we are all together part of an important story of mankind. The idea is very simple, it does not take much time, and our community will be encouraged to continue creating free content on Wiki projects. We would like our friends from chapters, thematic organizations and other entities to write the message "Happy birthday to Serbian Wikipedia! from {{{country name}}}," to take pictures with it and put that image in the Serbian Wikipedia 15 category on Wikimedia Commons [1] and social networks with the hashtag #vikipedija15. We will then share it on our social network profiles and finally make a slideshow at the celebration event. Therefore, this message will be a gift to the community from their friends and associates from all over the world. It would be ideal, but not necessary, if you could be photographed next to a particular landmark / symbol of the country which you are coming from. We hope you will help us surprise our volunteers by showing them how rich and diverse our movement is, and the number of friends around the world with whom they are working on the largest collaborative project. We want to give them encouragement for the next 15 years at least! :) Thanks in advace, Filip Maljković on behalf of Wikimedia Serbia [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Serbian_Wikipedia_15

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What's making you happy this week? (Week of 4 February 2018)
by Pine W 04 Feb '18

04 Feb '18

I liked the Metrics and Activities Meeting in Berlin <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFzqTxTfq2Y> that was hosted by Wikimedia Deutschland. The change in focus to affiliates was interesting. Perhaps affiliates would like to hold meetings like this in parallel to the WMF meetings in the future. I also liked this post in the WMF Blog <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/01/29/glam-multimedia-metadata-commons/> about structured data on Commons. This overview <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/01/30/community-digest-wikipedia-day-17/> of Wikipedia birthday celebrations was fun to read. There were reports from Armenia, Poland, Israel, India, Tunisia, Macedonia, Egypt, Bangladesh, Ghana, Algeria, Bulgaria, and the United States. What's making you happy this week? Pine <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine> P.S. Do people like these "What's making you happy this week" emails? Few people respond to them, so I don't know whether people like them, feel that they are a nuisance, or are indifferent. If you would like to share feedback, you can email me off-list or leave a message on my Meta talk page <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Pine>. If you like these threads then you are welcome to contribute your own Wikimedia-related good news to them, which I would be glad to read.

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New language code for Western Armenian language
by David Saroyan 03 Feb '18

03 Feb '18

Dear all, I'm pleased to announce that the efforts of Wikimedia Armenia to get separate ISO 639-3 language code for Western Armenian [1] were finally succeeded. SIL International, the ISO 639-3 Registration Authority, decided to create the code element [hyw] for Western Armenian. [2] We initiated this process three years ago when we started the collaboration with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation [3] in order to foster and improve free content in Western Armenian. This resulted in "Western Armenian project" where Wikimedia Armenia through different events and activities started to disseminate and support the creation of Western Armenian content with the help of local and diasporan Western Armenian community members. >From the launch of the "Western Armenian project" we were challenged with the problem that Western Armenian has no ISO 639-3 language code which did not allow the community to split Western Armenian content into a separate language Wikipedia. This problem made lots of trouble for us, as hy.wiki often had two versions of the same page. Wikimedia Armenia with Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation eventually decided to apply for code split. [4] This was done mainly with the help of Michael Everson. [5] Besides WM AM and Armenian Communities Department of Calouste Gulbenkian foundation there were also other parties involved, such as the department of Armenian Studies of the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris and other academic institutions. Today is a special day for Wikimedia Armenia and Western Armenian speaking community as our proposal was accepted. Thanks all Wikimedians who supported us in this work. Best, Davit Saroyan Program Manager Wikimedia Armenia 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Armenian 2. http://www-01.sil.org/iso639-3/cr_files/PastComments/CR_Comments_2017-023.p… 3. https://gulbenkian.pt/en/ 4. http://www-01.sil.org/iso639-3/cr_files/2017-023.pdf 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Everson

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Invitation to the Wikimedia Foundation January 2018 Metrics & Activities Meeting: Thursday, February 1, 16:00 UTC (WMDE edition)
by Nicole Ebber 01 Feb '18

01 Feb '18

Dear all, We are excited to host the January metrics and activities meeting next week and invite you all to join! It will take place on Thursday, February 1, 2018 at 4:00 PM UTC (8:00 AM PST) in our office in Berlin. You can join in person, tune in via a live YouTube stream[1] or via the IRC channel #wikimedia-office on https://webchat.freenode.net. During the January metrics meeting, we'll hear from different presenters about past, present and future endeavours, each with a specific movement-relevant angle. We will not only present successes but strive to also talk about things that did not go so well – and what we learned from these setbacks. Meeting agenda draft (subject to change): * Introduction and welcomes * Coding da Vinci * WMF topic (tba) * Wikidata/Wikibase (tbd) * Guest speaker (tba) * To wiki or not to wiki * WMCON sneak preview * Wikilove * Questions and discussion Please review the meeting's Meta-Wiki page for further information about the meeting and how to participate: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_metrics_and_activities… We’ll post the video recording publicly after the meeting. All the best, Nicole [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFzqTxTfq2Y On 24 January 2018 at 02:09, Gregory Varnum <gvarnum(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: > Hello everyone, > > The currently-scheduled January metrics and activities meeting is scheduled > to occur during the Wikimedia Foundation's annual meeting for staff and > contractors (known as All Hands). Given this, we have a need to reschedule, > and decided to use that change to experiment. > > So, I am very excited to share that the January metrics and activities > meeting will be hosted by Wikimedia Deutschland on February 1 from 16:00 to > 17:00 UTC (8:00-9:00 PT). > > Please stay tuned for more details from Wikimedia Deutschland in the days > to come! I hope that you will turn out and support our friends in Germany > in this experiment as part of our ongoing efforts to make the monthly > metrics and activities meetings representative of our global movement. > > Best, > Greg and Sam > -- > Gregory Varnum > Communications Strategist > Wikimedia Foundation <http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/> > gvarnum(a)wikimedia.org > _______________________________________________ > 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> -- Nicole Ebber Adviser International Relations Movement Strategy Track Lead: Organized Groups Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207.

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Duty of care
by Renée Bagslint 01 Feb '18

01 Feb '18

Looking at a couple of situations that have arisen recently on one of the projects, where the health and well-being of volunteers might have been affected by their participation, I wonder where we can find a clear statement of the Foundation's Duty of Care towards the volunteers? I looked on Meta, but the search appeared to return only pages relevant to the Trustees duty towards the Foundation. I was looking for something about the Foundation's duty towards the community? Can anyone help?

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Wikimedia-l February 2018