I do not see what community this is being
controlled by;
1. there are no notice boards, or request for
administrators, like they have in other wiki’s etc..
2. there is no
arbitration committee, or problems resolution section to go to,
etc..
3. there are no open rules on blocking.
4. there
is no unblocking feature, and yet there is a review page.
https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Category:Requests_for_unblock
5. there is nothing in place to review an
administrators abuse of there blocking powers etc..
6. for
newbies there is no active user talk page to request an unblock and if you
try,
to that gets blocked
to.
7. there is no OTRS.
Dear fellow Wikimedians,
We are happy to announce our plans to engage Wikimedia communities in the
strategic and structural reform discussions of our global movement. The
Movement Strategy Process requires input and participation from all of our
communities and we are looking for Liaisons for the Movement Strategy
Process to engage with some language communities and facilitate their
participation in global strategic discussions. Liaisons will ensure that
the voices and perspectives of these communities are heard and considered
in the Movement Strategy Process and that members of these communities
actively engage and participate in the discussions in their own language.
Based on criteria of reach of the language, projects, as well as existing
editor base, the Core Team has identified the following language
communities for further engagement and will be hiring a Strategy Liaisons
for each:[1]: Arabic, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese,
Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
The Liaisons are expected to: engage with the communities in their native
language; coordinate and facilitate discussions; support healthy
communication; provide details and context when needed, and monitor
different communication channels of the communities to surface ideas
related to the Strategy Process. Liaisons will be expected to identify
opportunities where the ongoing Movement Strategy Process discussions can
benefit and solicit ideas from interested community members. Liaisons will
also be expected to summarize the most important discussion points,
coordinate translations of these summaries to share them with Liaisons
Coordinator, Working Groups and wider global community.
Ideal candidates will have a good connection with the local communities,
strong communication skills, fluency in English and one of the nine
identified community languages as well as organizational and collaborative
skills.
The Liaisons positions will be part time (up to 20 h/week) and will be in
place from February to December 2019. If you are interested in the role or
would like to have more information, you can find the full description of
the role on respective application page
<https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/1478679?gh_src=2a6a8b121> [2].
Please note that we are also recruiting for a full-time Liaisons
Coordinator to ensure engagement of the communities in the Movemement
Strategy Process and manage the work of the Strategy Liaisons. You can
find the full description of this role on respective application page
<https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/1460548?gh_src=abf396081> [3].
We look forward to collaborating with many of you in the upcoming year and
working with the Strategy Liaisons to engage our communities in the
Movement Strategy Process. If you have any questions or specifications
regarding the role, please do not hesitate to reach out to our Project
Manager Jodi McMurray ( jmcmurray{{at}}wikimedia.org ).
With all the best wishes,
Kaarel and the Core Team
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Partici…
[2] https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/1478679?gh_src=2a6a8b121
[3] https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/1460548?gh_src=abf396081
--
*Kaarel Vaidla*
Process Architect for
Wikimedia Movement Strategy
2030.wikimedia.org
Dear Wikimedians,
The very fist Wikimedia+Education Conference will be organized this April in Donostia, Basque Country. We have received more than 50 programme proposals so far, and registration is now open. You can register or send your programme proposals here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia%2BEducation_Conference_2019
Thanks you very much and hope to see you soon.
Galder
*Wiki Loves Love
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Lo…>*
(WLL) is an International photography competition of Wikimedia Commons
happening in the month of February 2019 to document love testimonials.
The primary goal of the competition is to document love testimonials
through human cultural diversity such as monuments, ceremonies, snapshot of
tender gesture, happenings like Valentine's Day, and miscellaneous objects
used as symbol of love; to illustrate articles in the worldwide free
encyclopedia Wikipedia, and other Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) projects.
February is around the corner and Wiki Loves Love team invites you to
organize and promote WLL19 in your country and join hands with us to
celebrate love and document it on Wikimedia Commons. The theme of 2019
is *Festivals,
ceremonies and celebrations of love*.
To organize Wiki Loves Love in your region, sign up at WLL Organizers
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Love_2019/Organise>
page. You can also simply support and spread love by helping us translate
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Lo…>
the Commons page in your local language which is open for translation
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Love_2019/Translations>.
The contest runs from 1-28 February 2019. Independent from if there is a
local contest organised in your country, you can help by making the photo
contest Wiki Loves Love more accessible and available to more people in the
world by translating the upload wizard, templates and pages to your local
language. See for an overview of templates/pages to be translated at
our Translations
page
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Love_2019/Translations>.
Imagine...The sum of all love!
Wiki Loves Love team
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Love_2019/Internation…>
Hi everyone!
I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
[1] the Wikimedia Community of Tatar Language User Group [2] as a Wikimedia
User Group. The group aims to develop Wikipedia in Tatar into most popular
content portal of the Tatar-language internet; to grow other Wikimedia
projects in the Tatar language; and to teach new generations of
Tatar-language Wikimedians, developing their skills through sharing
experiences.
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_of_Tatar_language_User_…
I have written a long text today (posted in my FB) which the readers of
this mailing list might find interesting. I copy it below. I understand
that it is very easy to critisize me for side issues, but if you want to
comment/reply I would appreciate if you address the main issue. The target
audience I was thinking about was general (not necessarily
Wikimedia-oriented), and for the readers from this mailing list the first
several paragraphs can sound trivial (or even trivial and wrong). I
apologize in advance.
Cheers
Yaroslav
_________________
I currently have a bit of time and can write on the future of Wikipedia.
Similarly to much of what I write it is probably going to be useless, but
someone may find it interesting. For simplicity, I will be explicitly
talking about the English Wikipedia (referring to it as Wikipedia). I am
active in other projects as well, and some of them have similar issues, but
there are typically many other things going on there which make the picture
more complicated.
Let us first look at the current situation. Wikipedia exists since 2001,
and in a couple of weeks will turn 18. Currently, it has 5.77 million
articles. I often hear an opinion that all important articles have already
been created. This is incorrect, and I am often the first person to point
out that this is not correct. For example, today I created an article on an
urban locality in Russia with the population of 15 thousands. Many articles
are indeed too short, badly written, or suffer from other issues, and they
need to be improved. There are new topics which appear on a regular basis:
new music performers, new winners of sports competitions or prizes, and so
on. As any Web 2.0 project, Wikipedia requires a regular cleanup, since
there are many people happy to vandalize the 5th website in the world in
terms of the number of views. However, as a general guideline, it is not so
much incorrect to state that all important things in Wikipedia have been
already written. Indeed, if someone looks for information in Wikipedia -
or, more precisely, uses search engines and gets Wikipedia as the first hit
— they are likely to find what they need with more than 99% chance.
In this sense, Wikipedia now is very different from Wikipedia in 2008 or
Wikipedia in 2004. Ten and especially fifteen years ago, everybody could
contribute something important. For example, the article on the 1951 film
"A Streetcar Named Desire", which won four Academy Awards, was started in
2005, as well as an article on Cy Twombly, at the time probably the most
famous living artist. This is not possible anymore. This is why the number
of active editors is currently dropping - to contribute to the content in a
meaningful way, one now has to be an advanced amateur - to master some
field of knowledge much better than most others do. Or one can be a
professional - but there are very few professionals contributing to
Wikipedia in their fields, and there are very few articles written at a
professional level. Attempts to attract professionals have been made for
many years, and, despite certain local success, generally failed. They have
been going now for long enough to assume they will never succeed on a large
scale. Wikipedia is written by advance amateurs for amateurs. However,
despite the decline in the number of editors, there are enough resources to
maintain and to expand the project. It does not mean there are no problems
- there are in fact many problems. One of the most commonly discussed one
is systemic bias - there is way more information on Wikipedia on subjects
pertaining to North America than to Africa, and if a topic is viewed on
differently in different countries, one can be sure that the American view
dominates. But it is usually thought - and I agree with this - that these
drawbacks are not crucial, and Wikipedia is atill a useful and sustainable
project. Wikipedia clearly has its ecosystem, there are no competitors to
talk about, and all attempts to fork it were unsuccessful. There is a
steady development, and everybody is happy.
Does this mean that everything is fine and we do not need to worry?, just
to wait until missing articles get written, or even to help this by writing
them ourselves?
Absolutely not. To understand this, we can look again at the editor base.
There are detailed studies, but, for a starter, it is a nightmare to edit
Wikipedia from a cell phone. It is possible but not much easier to edit it
from a tablet. The mobile version is different from a desktop one, and it
is not really optimized for editing. This is a known problem, but one
aspect of it is clear. Most Wikipedia editors actually own a desktop and a
laptop. This brings them into 18+ category. There are of course exceptions,
but the fact is that the editor base gets older, and this is a problem. The
problem is not so much at this point that we all die and there will be
nobody to edit Wikipedia. The problem is that the next generation (18-) has
very different ways of getting information. And I guess they are not
interested in editing Wikipedia, and they will not get interested when they
grow up - possibly beyond introducing minor corrections, which can be done
from a phone.
Traditionally, students were always among the core of the editors base.
They already have some knowledge and they still have time to edit. When
they graduate, find a job and start a family, they have way less time and
typically stop editing. The next group are retirees. Between students and
retirees, we have a tiny fraction of dedicated enthusiasts who are ready to
take time from work and family, but they are really not numerous. Well, and
very soon we are going to lose students as editors. And we should be happy
if we do not lose them as readers.
I am 51, and I do not know much about the 18- generation, but I know two
important things about them. They have a very short attention span and
difficulties to concentrate. And they get a graphical and visualized
information much more easier than texts. For example, my son is capable of
watching three or four movies per day, but he has difficulties to read 20
pages from a book.
Well, the first question is whether an encyclopedia is an appropriate / the
best format for them to get knowledge (as it is for us). I do not know the
answer. What I write below assumes that the answer is positive, otherwise
the rest of the text does not make sense.
The next question is what should be done. How Wikipedia should look like to
be accessible to this generation? The answer seems to be obvious. Articles
must be short and contain a lot of graphic information. May be they need to
be videoclips. Short clips. Or, at lest, they must contain clips, with more
voice and less letters. If one needs more detailed information or just
further information - one hops to the next article or watches the next clip.
This is a paradigm shift. Currently, the editors generally consider that it
is good to have long Wikipedia articles - because long means more complete.
Sometimes there are even proposals (fortunately isolated and without
followup) to delete all short articles even if they describe notable topics
and contain verified information. Clips are almost not in use. Of course
they still need to be made, but this is not such a big problem - there are
plenty of school students who have their own youtube channel, if they can
make clips, everybody can.
The most difficult question is how this can be realized. I believe it is
not possible to just transform Wikipedia like this - make articles shorter
and simpler and spit them. First, this might be good for the young
generation, but this is still not good for the 18+ generation. Second, such
reforms should be either be approved by Wikipedia community through
consensus, or be imposed by the Wikimedia Foundation who owns the project.
The likelihood of either is zero. Just to give one argument, the community
is, well, the community of editors, of the same 18+ people with laptops who
have no difficulties reading long texts.
I envision it differently. Ideally, we have the Wikipedia as it is now, but
on top of this, every article has a collection of shorter companion
articles, simple and a paragraph or two long, so that each of them can be
read in half a minute, They should not have excessive markup, references,
categories or anything else which can be found in the main article if
needed. References in Wikipedia are required not for the sake of having
references, but as a means to ensure that the information is verifiable -
and if the main article does it the companion articles do not need to. Some
of these companion articles can be in fact clips - there is a difficulty
that clips can not be edited collaboratively, but I am sure this one can be
solved. If anybody wants to solve it.
The status of what I have written above is science fiction. I am sure if I
come with this proposal to a village pump of Wikipedia, it will be dead
within a day. In addition, it requires some modifications of MediaWiki
which can only be done by the Foundation. And I am not really looking
forward for the Foundation implementing this either. I have a lot of
respect for some of the Foundation employees, but it has now grown up into
a big corporation now and behaves as a big corporation, where some people
care less about the product and more about other things, and some look at
Wikipedia editors, aka "unorganized volunteers", as some annoying
phenomenon, which they can tolerate but are not willing to listen to. My
forecast is pretty pessimistic. Unless a miracle happens (and I currently,
at least not from my perspective, do not see any reasons for a miracle to
happen), soon or late will realize this, It might be a startup company, or
a non-commercial. And Wikipedia will stay as it is, and, after the
standards change many times, it will not be readable / accessible to most
of internet users, and will slowly die. And the results of what were were
doing for 20 years will disappear. This is a usual development and happens
to almost every human activity. We know that only a few percents of pieces
of Ancient Greek and Roman literature survived until now.
Yaroslav Blanter, editor and administrator of the English Wikipedia, 125
000 edits.
Yes the greying of the pedia is a real phenomena, and I am sure that an editor survey would confirm that on average we are getting older.
You posit two reasons for the community to be in decline, that the easy articles have been written and that it is difficult to edit Wikipedia on a mobile. I agree with the second reason, and it is possible that the 2015/16 rally has run its course. Editing volumes in late 2018 are dropping, but still above late 2014 levels, however I am not sure whether that is a real drop or a symptom of some of the infobox work moving to Wikidata. I am not convinced about your first reason. But there is a third that we should not underestimate, over the last decade or so expectations have risen and there is now little room for editors who add unsourced content. In quality terms this is a good thing, but it has repercussions on the quantity of editors (and I am sure contributes to the greying of the pedia). If as I suspect it is true that our decline is only among those who add uncited content, and that we are replacing those who add cited content as fast or faster than we lose them, then we can dismiss editor decline as no longer being an existential threat to the project.
I am sanguine about the mobile editing problem. It is a known issue. People are working on it, so we may get a technical fix. Fashions in technology have changed in the past and will change again, so we may find that more people in the future have suitable devices to edit with. My own medium turn fix would be to launch an intermediate platform for tablets. This would leave the mobile platform for smartphone users, and I know we have at least a couple of editors who use smartphones, but the ratio of editors to readers is very much lower than among PC users. A Tablet platform would enable us to offer tablet users a more editor friendly environment than could fit on the mobile platform.
As for screenagers with damaged attention spans, I think that some research would be useful. My expectation is that we would find that a maximum section size would be helpful to mobile users, and maybe we should also break up some lists into categories of stub articles. But the way to convince the community that such changes were useful would be first to commission some research so that we could propose evidence based changes. My hope is that if we knew that mobile users could only handle sections of a certain length, the Manual of Style would be changed and such indigestible articles would at least get subheadings.
To go back to the heading. No the death of Wikipedia is not imminent. I have known charities and not for profits where the volunteer community was far older and more closed than we are, and such volunteer communities can persist for decades even if a new generation doesn’t come along. Wikipedia is about to have its 18th birthday, if anything kills it in the next decade or two it will be something as yet scarcely on our radar as a risk.
~~~~
Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>
________________________________
Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2018 22:34:27 +0100
From: Yaroslav Blanter <ymbalt(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?
Message-ID:
<CAM-kgDPugq2NtZx-54P_t+Jp-CSErQzogLN7M_ZvznvB0VYVNg(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
I have written a long text today (posted in my FB) which the readers of
this mailing list might find interesting. I copy it below. I understand
that it is very easy to critisize me for side issues, but if you want to
comment/reply I would appreciate if you address the main issue. The target
audience I was thinking about was general (not necessarily
Wikimedia-oriented), and for the readers from this mailing list the first
several paragraphs can sound trivial (or even trivial and wrong). I
apologize in advance.
Cheers
Yaroslav
_________________
I currently have a bit of time and can write on the future of Wikipedia.
Similarly to much of what I write it is probably going to be useless, but
someone may find it interesting. For simplicity, I will be explicitly
talking about the English Wikipedia (referring to it as Wikipedia). I am
active in other projects as well, and some of them have similar issues, but
there are typically many other things going on there which make the picture
more complicated.
Let us first look at the current situation. Wikipedia exists since 2001,
and in a couple of weeks will turn 18. Currently, it has 5.77 million
articles. I often hear an opinion that all important articles have already
been created. This is incorrect, and I am often the first person to point
out that this is not correct. For example, today I created an article on an
urban locality in Russia with the population of 15 thousands. Many articles
are indeed too short, badly written, or suffer from other issues, and they
need to be improved. There are new topics which appear on a regular basis:
new music performers, new winners of sports competitions or prizes, and so
on. As any Web 2.0 project, Wikipedia requires a regular cleanup, since
there are many people happy to vandalize the 5th website in the world in
terms of the number of views. However, as a general guideline, it is not so
much incorrect to state that all important things in Wikipedia have been
already written. Indeed, if someone looks for information in Wikipedia -
or, more precisely, uses search engines and gets Wikipedia as the first hit
— they are likely to find what they need with more than 99% chance.
In this sense, Wikipedia now is very different from Wikipedia in 2008 or
Wikipedia in 2004. Ten and especially fifteen years ago, everybody could
contribute something important. For example, the article on the 1951 film
"A Streetcar Named Desire", which won four Academy Awards, was started in
2005, as well as an article on Cy Twombly, at the time probably the most
famous living artist. This is not possible anymore. This is why the number
of active editors is currently dropping - to contribute to the content in a
meaningful way, one now has to be an advanced amateur - to master some
field of knowledge much better than most others do. Or one can be a
professional - but there are very few professionals contributing to
Wikipedia in their fields, and there are very few articles written at a
professional level. Attempts to attract professionals have been made for
many years, and, despite certain local success, generally failed. They have
been going now for long enough to assume they will never succeed on a large
scale. Wikipedia is written by advance amateurs for amateurs. However,
despite the decline in the number of editors, there are enough resources to
maintain and to expand the project. It does not mean there are no problems
- there are in fact many problems. One of the most commonly discussed one
is systemic bias - there is way more information on Wikipedia on subjects
pertaining to North America than to Africa, and if a topic is viewed on
differently in different countries, one can be sure that the American view
dominates. But it is usually thought - and I agree with this - that these
drawbacks are not crucial, and Wikipedia is atill a useful and sustainable
project. Wikipedia clearly has its ecosystem, there are no competitors to
talk about, and all attempts to fork it were unsuccessful. There is a
steady development, and everybody is happy.
Does this mean that everything is fine and we do not need to worry?, just
to wait until missing articles get written, or even to help this by writing
them ourselves?
Absolutely not. To understand this, we can look again at the editor base.
There are detailed studies, but, for a starter, it is a nightmare to edit
Wikipedia from a cell phone. It is possible but not much easier to edit it
from a tablet. The mobile version is different from a desktop one, and it
is not really optimized for editing. This is a known problem, but one
aspect of it is clear. Most Wikipedia editors actually own a desktop and a
laptop. This brings them into 18+ category. There are of course exceptions,
but the fact is that the editor base gets older, and this is a problem. The
problem is not so much at this point that we all die and there will be
nobody to edit Wikipedia. The problem is that the next generation (18-) has
very different ways of getting information. And I guess they are not
interested in editing Wikipedia, and they will not get interested when they
grow up - possibly beyond introducing minor corrections, which can be done
from a phone.
Traditionally, students were always among the core of the editors base.
They already have some knowledge and they still have time to edit. When
they graduate, find a job and start a family, they have way less time and
typically stop editing. The next group are retirees. Between students and
retirees, we have a tiny fraction of dedicated enthusiasts who are ready to
take time from work and family, but they are really not numerous. Well, and
very soon we are going to lose students as editors. And we should be happy
if we do not lose them as readers.
I am 51, and I do not know much about the 18- generation, but I know two
important things about them. They have a very short attention span and
difficulties to concentrate. And they get a graphical and visualized
information much more easier than texts. For example, my son is capable of
watching three or four movies per day, but he has difficulties to read 20
pages from a book.
Well, the first question is whether an encyclopedia is an appropriate / the
best format for them to get knowledge (as it is for us). I do not know the
answer. What I write below assumes that the answer is positive, otherwise
the rest of the text does not make sense.
The next question is what should be done. How Wikipedia should look like to
be accessible to this generation? The answer seems to be obvious. Articles
must be short and contain a lot of graphic information. May be they need to
be videoclips. Short clips. Or, at lest, they must contain clips, with more
voice and less letters. If one needs more detailed information or just
further information - one hops to the next article or watches the next clip.
This is a paradigm shift. Currently, the editors generally consider that it
is good to have long Wikipedia articles - because long means more complete.
Sometimes there are even proposals (fortunately isolated and without
followup) to delete all short articles even if they describe notable topics
and contain verified information. Clips are almost not in use. Of course
they still need to be made, but this is not such a big problem - there are
plenty of school students who have their own youtube channel, if they can
make clips, everybody can.
The most difficult question is how this can be realized. I believe it is
not possible to just transform Wikipedia like this - make articles shorter
and simpler and spit them. First, this might be good for the young
generation, but this is still not good for the 18+ generation. Second, such
reforms should be either be approved by Wikipedia community through
consensus, or be imposed by the Wikimedia Foundation who owns the project.
The likelihood of either is zero. Just to give one argument, the community
is, well, the community of editors, of the same 18+ people with laptops who
have no difficulties reading long texts.
I envision it differently. Ideally, we have the Wikipedia as it is now, but
on top of this, every article has a collection of shorter companion
articles, simple and a paragraph or two long, so that each of them can be
read in half a minute, They should not have excessive markup, references,
categories or anything else which can be found in the main article if
needed. References in Wikipedia are required not for the sake of having
references, but as a means to ensure that the information is verifiable -
and if the main article does it the companion articles do not need to. Some
of these companion articles can be in fact clips - there is a difficulty
that clips can not be edited collaboratively, but I am sure this one can be
solved. If anybody wants to solve it.
The status of what I have written above is science fiction. I am sure if I
come with this proposal to a village pump of Wikipedia, it will be dead
within a day. In addition, it requires some modifications of MediaWiki
which can only be done by the Foundation. And I am not really looking
forward for the Foundation implementing this either. I have a lot of
respect for some of the Foundation employees, but it has now grown up into
a big corporation now and behaves as a big corporation, where some people
care less about the product and more about other things, and some look at
Wikipedia editors, aka "unorganized volunteers", as some annoying
phenomenon, which they can tolerate but are not willing to listen to. My
forecast is pretty pessimistic. Unless a miracle happens (and I currently,
at least not from my perspective, do not see any reasons for a miracle to
happen), soon or late will realize this, It might be a startup company, or
a non-commercial. And Wikipedia will stay as it is, and, after the
standards change many times, it will not be readable / accessible to most
of internet users, and will slowly die. And the results of what were were
doing for 20 years will disappear. This is a usual development and happens
to almost every human activity. We know that only a few percents of pieces
of Ancient Greek and Roman literature survived until now.
Yaroslav Blanter, editor and administrator of the English Wikipedia, 125
000 edits.
Hi,
For four years now, since Wikimania 2014 in London, the chairpersons of the
recognized chapters have met as a group twice a year, during Wikimania and
the Wikimedia Conference (now the Wikimedia Summit), usually for 1 - 2
hours during one of the lunch breaks.
I started to arrange these meetings as an opportunity for the chairpersons
to meet, and the concept of these meetings at the beginning was to host
every time a different person from our movement.
Later on, Tim Moritz Hector (WMDE) and Frans Grijzenhout (WMNL) joined to
help me arrange and plan these meetings, and as result also from the
feedback of the other chairs, we changed the concept to discussions and
presentations format in order to speak about issues related to the
organizations we represent and our movement in general. We also created a
mailing list as a place to get updates but also to raise questions and
share information (such as questions related to the organization's
policies, ED, board issues and other).
About half a year ago, Frans and me thought we had to take these meetings
to a higher level, and, for the first time, we proposed to organize a two
days meeting, where we can have a dedicated time, without interruptions
(and lunch on our tables...) in order to focus on bigger issues.
We already have board trainings for new board members, but we don’t have
any program which supports the chairpersons as leaders of their boards and
their organizations. So we decided to focus on improving the interpersonal
skills and leadership competencies of chairpersons and give them other
tools to become better and more effective in their roles.
In order to achieve this, we decided to contract an experienced external
trainer & facilitator.
In the beginning, we planned to have this meeting with all the
chairpersons, from the big and from the small chapters. But as the WMF’s
grants program were temporarily not accepting new grants requests, we
weren't able to get support to finance the participation of the small
chapters which didn’t have the budget to cover the costs.
So in the end, we hold a smaller meeting a week ago (hosted by WMCZ in
Prague), with 17 chairpersons which could cover the travel and meeting
costs (with a small grant from the WMF to help to support part of the
facilitator's fee).
During the meeting (or you can also call it a retreat) we had workshops and
sessions to know each other better, to speak about effective and
accountable boards, team dynamics, failures (and how to continue) and work
on interpersonal skills and more.
We decided to share with you the results and feedback we received, which
may be used by other groups or similar events:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MOBru_m1wQu-IESItb5IWjWp9mVVdRuG/view?usp=…
You can read more about the meeting on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_Chairpersons_meeting_November_24_…
And also the notes of some of the session:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Affiliate_Chairpersons_meeting_Novembe…
We felt this information will be valuable to share with the rest of the
movement.
Yours,
Itzik, Frans, and Vojtěch (WMCZ)
*Itzik Edri*
Chairperson
itzik(a)wikimedia.org.il
+972-54-5878078
Dear All,
Wish you a Happy New Year, I am writing this email to inform you that we
will be having the Pan-Indian community IRC on 13-01-2019 (@8:00 PM)[1].
The agenda of the meeting will be as follows:
- General discussion and recent development related to Wikisource.
- TTT-2019 General discussion.
- Wikidata General discussion.
- Open for General discussion after the above-mentioned points.
[1].https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#cis-a2k
Thanks and Regards,
*ANANTH SUBRAY P V*
Programme Associate
Access to Knowledge program
The Centre for Internet & Society
+91-9739811664