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! :)
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.*
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
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.
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
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,
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--
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.
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?