>>> The people who are loudest in their demands for consensus
>>> do not represent the Wikimedia movement.
>>
>> The voices loudest for the WMF doing something against the
>> Trump administration are not representative of the Wikimedia
>> movement either....
>
> Is the Community Process Steering Committee currently
> prepared to "engage more 'quiet' members of our community"
> with a statistically robust snap survey to resolve this question?
Anyone can go to Recent Changes and send a SurveyMonkey link to the
most recent few hundred editors with contributions at least a year
old, to get an accurate answer.
Will a respected member of the community please do this? I would like
to know what the actual editing community thinks of the travel ban and
their idea of an appropriate response. I don't want to see community
governance by opt-in participation in obscure RFCs.
I would offer to do this myself, but I value keeping my real name
unassociated with my enwiki userid.
-Will
Hullo everyone.
I was asked by a volunteer for help getting stats on the gender gap in
content on a certain Wikipedia, and came up with simple Wikidata Query
Service[1] queries that pulled the total number of articles on a given
Wikipedia about men and about women, to calculate *the proportion of
articles about women out of all articles about humans*.
Then I was curious about how that wiki compared to other wikis, so I ran
the queries on a bunch of languages, and gathered the results into a table,
here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ijon/Content_gap
(please see the *caveat* there.)
I don't have time to fully write-up everything I find interesting in those
results, but I will quickly point out the following:
1. The Nepali statistic is simply astonishing! There must be a story
there. I'm keen on learning more about this, if anyone can shed light.
2. Evidently, ~13%-17% seems like a robust average of the proportion of
articles about women among all biographies.
3. among the top 10 largest wikis, Japanese is the least imbalanced. Good
job, Japanese Wikipedians! I wonder if you have a good sense of what
drives this relatively better balance. (my instinctive guess is pop culture
coverage.)
4. among the top 10 largest wikis, Russian is the most imbalanced.
5. I intend to re-generate these stats every two months or so, to
eventually have some sense of trends and changes.
6. Your efforts, particularly on small-to-medium wikis, can really make a
dent in these numbers! For example, it seems I am personally
responsible[2] for almost 1% of the coverage of women on Hebrew Wikipedia!
:)
7. I encourage you to share these numbers with your communities. Perhaps
you'd like to overtake the wiki just above yours? :)
8. I'm happy to add additional languages to the table, by request. Or you
can do it yourself, too. :)
A.
[1] https://query.wikidata.org/
[2] Yay #100wikidays :) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/100wikidays
--
Asaf Bartov
Wikimedia Foundation <http://www.wikimediafoundation.org>
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
https://donate.wikimedia.org
Hi everyone!
I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
[1] Wikimedia Community User Group Albania [2] as a Wikimedia User Group.
The group aims to improve content about Albania across the Wikimedia
projects, including Commons and Wikidata, and to collaborate with other
Wikimedia user groups, chapters, and other free culture groups in Albania
and across the region.
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/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Albania
Hi all,
==Background==
In November 2016, I presented the result of a joint research that
helped us understand English Wikipedia readers better. (Presentation
at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIaMuWA84bY ). I talked about how
we used English, Persian, and Spanish Wikipedia readers' inputs to
build a taxonomy of Wikipedia use-cases along several dimensions,
capturing users’ motivations to visit Wikipedia, the depth of
knowledge they are seeking, and their knowledge of the topic of
interest prior to visiting Wikipedia. I also talked about the results
of the study we did to quantify the prevalence of these use-cases via
a large-scale user survey conducted on English Wikipedia. In that
study, we also matched survey responses to the respondents’ digital
traces in Wikipedia’s server logs which enabled us in discovering
behavioral patterns associated with specific use-cases. You can read
the full study at https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.05379 .
==What do we want to do now?==
There are quite a few directions this research can continue on, and
the most immediate one is to understand whether the results that we
observe (in English Wikipeida) is robust across languages/cultures.
For this, we are going to repeat the study, but this time in more
languages. Here are the languages on our list: Arabic, Dutch, English,
Hindi, Japanese, Spanish (thanks to all the volunteers who have been
helping us translating all survey related documents to these
languages.:)
==What about your language?==
If your language is not one of the six languages above and you'd like
to learn about the readers of Wikipedia in it (in the specific ways
described above), please get back to me by Monday, April 24, AoE. I
cannot guarantee that we can run the study in your language, however,
I guarantee that we will give it a good try if you're interested. The
decision to include more languages will depend on: our capacity to do
the analysis, the speed at which your community can help us translate
the material to the language, the traffic to that language, a couple
of sentences on how you'd think the result can help your community,
and your willingness to help us document the results for your language
at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Characterizing_Wikipedia_Reader_Be…
(Quite some work will need to go to have readable/usable
documentations available and we are too small to be able to guarantee
that on our own for many languages.)
Best,
Leila
--
Leila Zia
Senior Research Scientist
Wikimedia Foundation
Hey all!
I wanted to send a quick reminder that our English language fundraiser is
officially launching tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday 28th November, at 16.00
UTC) with some final systems tests running between now and then.
---Banners and Ideas---
You can see the all of our current most effective fundraising banners on
our Fundraising Ideas page where you can also contribute any specific ideas
or stories we should tell via social media, banners, emails etc:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2017-18_Fundraising_ideas
---Blog Posts---
We've recently published two blog posts about our fundraising work. The
first covers how we try to limit the disruption to our readers during
campaigns. The second is a recent tranche of research conducted into what
our readers think about our fundraising. Take a look!
Banner limiting:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/10/03/fundraising-banner-limit/
Donor research:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/11/17/fundraising-donor-learnings/
---Reporting Issues---
If you see any technical issues with the banners or payments systems please
do report it on phabricator:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/create/?template=118862
If you see a donor on a talk page, OTRS, or social media with questions
about donating or having difficulties in the donation process, please refer
them to: donate{{at}}wikimedia.org
Here is also the ever present fundraising IRC channel to raise urgent
technical issues: #wikimedia-fundraising
http://webchat.freenode.net?channels=%23wikimedia-fundraising&uio=d4
<http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=%23wikimedia-fundraising&uio=d4>
---Next Updates---
There will be a further launch announcement on the Wikimedia blog tomorrow
and I will give a brief update at the end of the week with our progress and
hopefully some interesting initial lessons learnt. A more substantial
update will follow later in the week.
Finally, I’d like to thank the community here in advance for your help and
patience over the coming weeks. From here on out, wish us luck!
Many Thanks
--
Seddon
Community & Audience Engagement Associate
Advancement (Fundraising), Wikimedia Foundation
Hi all,
On Wikipedia and in our movement we are aware of the gendergap that exists
and all kinds of activities are organised to make the gap smaller. I think
this is great as no single gap should exist in collecting all the knowledge
in the world, as well as our movement should be diverse as the world's
population is diverse.
The statistics are clear on this matter, this is something to take care of.
However, a part of the approach is causing problems, because general
statistics should not be applied on individuals as that reduces humans to
numbers only.
The reason why I bring this up is because I recently received an e-mail
from a user in the Wikimedia movement who has (temporarily?) stopped
contributing as she is not happy with a specific aspect of the atmosphere
in Wikimedia.
She does not speak out at loud, but I think we must be aware as movement of
the silent cry, therefore this e-mail to bring awareness (but with respect
for the privacy of this individual).
What has happened?
She was invited to participate in a Wikimedia activity, because:
1. she is a woman
2. she is from a minority
3. she is from an area in the world with much less editors (compared to
Europe/US)
and perhaps also because her colour of her skin is a bit different then
mine (Caucasian).
At the same time she has the impression that the work she does on the
Wikimedia wiki('s) is not valued, nor taken into account.
She does not want to be invited because she is a woman, nor because she is
from a minority, nor ....... etc. This is offensive.
She only wants to be invited because of the work she contributes on
Wikipedia/etc.
Besides the many good initiatives and intentions, this kind of approaches
to our contributors is demotivating them, please be aware of this. I
believe demotivation/frustration is the largest problem we face as movement.
I heard from people that the problem described is called tokenism
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenism>.
I believe the only way to close the gaps related to gender, minorities,
etc, is to create an atmosphere in what everyone is appreciated for what
she/he is doing, completely unrelated to the gender someone appears to
have, the ethnicity, race, area of the world, etc etc etc etc.
Thank you!
Romaine
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
Hello,
Many of you may have been receiving emails in the last 24 hours warning you
of "Multiple failed attempts to log in" with your account. I wanted to let
you know that the Wikimedia Foundation's Security team is aware of the
situation, and working with others in the organization on steps to decrease
the success of attacks like these.
The exact source is not yet known, but it is not originating from our
systems. That means it is an external effort to gain unauthorized access to
random accounts. These types of efforts are increasingly common for
websites of our reach. A vast majority of these attempts have been
unsuccessful, and we are reaching out personally to the small number of
accounts which we believe have been compromised.
While we are constantly looking at improvements to our security systems and
processes to offset the impact of malicious efforts such as these, the best
method of prevention continues to be the steps each of you take to
safeguard your accounts. Because of this, we have taken steps in the past
to support things like stronger password requirements,[1] and we continue
to encourage everyone to take some routine steps to maintain a secure
computer and account. That includes regularly changing your passwords,[2]
actively running antivirus software on your systems, and keeping your
system software up to date.
My team will continue to investigate this incident, and report back if we
notice any concerning changes. If you have any questions, please contact
the Support and Safety team (susa{{(a)}}wikimedia.org).
John Bennett
Director of Security, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Password_strength_requirements
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:ChangePassword
Hi,
I have been looking for social networking service that would be fair: not abusing personal data, funded by community, respecting privacy, accepting anonymity, free/libre/ open source etc. Haven’t found many. The Diaspora* Project[1] is not moving forward very fast and the Mastodon[2] is more a microblogging service rather than a social network service.
Would it make sense for Wikimedia movement to build its own social network service?
In the "2017 Movement strategy” we state: “By 2030, Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge”. If we consider discussions and information shared on social network services to be “knowledge”, I think we should have a role in here too.
We have 33 million registered users and fulfil all the requirements of being a “fair service”. A minimum list of features to make Wikimedia Social would be:
(1) Status updates
(2) Comments
(3) Likes
(4)Groups
maybe:
(5) Events
I am pretty sure that by integrating this to other Wikimedia services (Commons etc.) we could achieve something awesome.
- Teemu
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software)
Dear all,
It’s been a while since I sent out the last movement strategy update. A lot
has happened in the meantime, and I wanted to give you a heads-up regarding
an upcoming call for participation!
But first things first:
1. The report from the Wikimedia Conference Movement Strategy Track
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Documentation/Mov…>
has been published[1]. It captures all the conversations, insights and
outputs from three days of intense strategy work, so it’s a (quite) long
but very interesting read. It is meant to document the state of the process
and to allow for a deep dive into it. It should be especially valuable for
those of you who did not have a chance to participate in the conference or
attended another conference track.
2. Based on WMCON outputs (and various conversations we’ve been having in
our movement for years), the core strategy team has mapped eight key
thematic areas
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working…>
[2] -- and some initial guiding questions -- that should to be answered to
enable us to advance towards our strategic direction. These areas include:
- Roles & Responsibilities
- Resource Allocation & Revenue Streams
- Diversity
- Partnerships
- Capacity Building
- Community Health
- Technology
- Advocacy
3. The core team will be supporting the creation of Working Groups to take
on these critical conversations. These working groups will be asked to
assess the current situation of the thematic area, and obstacles and
opportunities. They’ll have access to all the relevant information already
collected, and the chance to do further research if needed. They’ll be
asked to identify the changes needed in movement structures and develop
concrete recommendations for the movement on how to ratify and implement
them.[3] An open call for working group members will go out to the movement
this week -- please stay tuned for an update from Nicole!
I also had the chance to present more about these plans at last week’s
Metrics Meeting. Please do take a look, either look it all up on the
Meta[3] or watch the video![4]
Cheers,
Katherine
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Documentation/Mov…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working…
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working…
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOaiU-v7PbE (from minute 24:25)
--
Katherine Maher
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600
San Francisco, CA 94104
+1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635
+1 (415) 712 4873
kmaher(a)wikimedia.org
https://annual.wikimedia.org