Hey All!
Many of you know that the Wikimedia Endowment <
https://wikimediaendowment.org/> was launched in 2016. The purpose of the
Endowment is to act as a permanent safekeeping fund to generate income to
ensure a base level of support for the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity.
When the Endowment is fully funded, it will provide revenue to support the
projects of Wikimedia. It will not fully fund WMF’s work, so it is not a
replacement for annual fundraising, but it will supplement it in the future.
Since its launch, we’ve helped support the Endowment in part with
contributions from our annual fundraising campaigns. We will be repeating
this over the next few weeks with some of our banner and email fundraising
efforts being directed towards the Wikimedia Endowment with dedicated
messaging.
Wikipedia portal, Wikipedia app, and major gifts fundraising will remain
focused on raising for the annual plan budget. Fundraising banners will
most likely come down over Christmas with a final push in the run up to New
Years Eve. There will be a follow up thank you campaign for a few days in
January.
Thank you all!
--
Seddon
*Community and Audience Engagement Associate*
*Advancement (Fundraising), Wikimedia Foundation*
Hi everyone!
*The Affiliations Committee (AffCom)* – the committee responsible for
guiding volunteers in establishing Wikimedia chapters, thematic
organizations, and user groups – *is looking for new members!*
The main role of the Affiliations Committee is to guide groups of
volunteers that are interested in forming Wikimedia affiliates. We review
applications from new groups, answer questions and provide advice about the
different Wikimedia affiliation models and processes, review affiliate
bylaws for compliance with requirements and best practices, and update the
Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees as well as advise them on issues
connected to chapters, thematic organizations and Wikimedia user groups.
The committee consists of fourteen members, selected every twelve months
for staggered two-year terms. Those joining the committee during the
current process will serve a two-year term ending in December 2021.
AffCom continues to closely monitor the Wikimedia 2030 Strategy process
that was initiated in 2016. While the affiliation models continue to be
discussed as part of the broader strategy discussion, as no decisions have
been made to change the current affiliation models yet, AffCom will
continue to work in the same manner with regard to affiliate recognitions
and intervention support for affiliates with issues of non-compliance in
2020. Specifically, AffCom will continue to process applications for user
group and chapter/thematic organization creation, while we await the
strategy next steps and begin to prepare for a smooth transition of the
committee and affiliates ecosystem to any changing movement structures and
systems in 2021.
Being a part of the Affiliations Committee requires communication with
volunteers all over the world, negotiating skills, cultural sensitivity,
and the ability to understand legal texts. We look for a healthy mix of
different skill sets in our members.
*Required and Recommended Skills for Affiliations Committee Members*
Across all committee members there are additional relevant skills as well
as requirements which help to support the committee and its sustainability
which include both required and relevant general skills
*Required Skills*
-
Fluency in English
-
Availability of up to 5 hours per week, and the time to participate in a
monthly one and two-hour voice/video meetings.
-
Willingness to use one's real name in committee activities (including
contacts with current and potential affiliates) when appropriate.
-
Strong track record of effective collaboration
-
International orientation
*Relevant Skills*
- Skills in other languages are a major plus.
- Public Communications (English writing and speaking skills)
- Strong understanding of the structure and work of affiliates and the
Wikimedia Foundation.
- Documentation practices
- Interviewing experience
- Knowledge of different legal systems and experience in community
building and organizing are a plus
- Experience with, or in, an active affiliate is a major plus.
- Teamwork
- Focusing on shared goals instead of disagreements
- Focusing on the conflict at hand and not past ones
- Ensuring each member of the team has a clearly defined role, which
can help reduce disagreements over areas of responsibility
- Project and people management to coordinate different parties on a
shared plan and seeing it through to completion.
- Problem-Solving
- Ability to evaluate various solutions
- Ability to consider multiple interests and points of view
- Willingness to revisit unresolved issues
- The capacity to recognize and respond to important matters
- The ability to seek compromise and avoid punishing
- Ability to work and communicate with other languages and cultures.
Given the expectations for maintaining course in 2020 and preparing for
potential 2021 transitions, it is important that we are also clear about
two different skill sets critical to committee support at this time. The
first skillset is oriented to understanding affiliate dynamics and
organizational development patterns to successfully process affiliate
applications for recognition; the other is oriented to conflict prevention
and intervention support for affiliates in conflict.
*Affiliate Recognitions Relevant Skills*
- Administration
- Willingness to process applications through a set, perhaps
bureaucratic process.
- Attention to detail
- Monitoring & Strategic Development
- Readiness to participate in political discussions on the role and
future of affiliates, models of affiliation, and similar topics.
- Organizational Awareness
- Understanding of and community building and organizational
development
- Understanding of group dynamics
- Awareness of the affiliates ecosystem and models
*Conflict Prevention & Intervention Relevant Skills*
- *Communication*
- Active listening
- Reading nonverbal cues
- Knowing when to interrupt and when to stay quiet
- Being culturally sensitive at the same time remaining clear and
concise when explaining a concept or opinion
- *Stress Management*
- Patience
- Positivity
- Ability to inject a dose of humor to dilute anger and frustration
when needed
- Taking well-timed breaks that can bring calm in the midst of flared
tempers
- Ability to manage stress while remaining alert and calm
- *Emotional Intelligence*
- *Being emotionally aware, *
- Ability to control emotions and behaviors,
- Ability to practice empathy,
- Impartiality,
- Don’t take anything personally,
- Being aware of and respectful of differences.
- *Facilitation skills*
- Meeting facilitation experience
- Peer or community mediation training
- Peer or community mediation experience
Do you have any of these skill sets and an interest to support movement
affiliates?
We are looking for people who are excited by the challenge of empowering
volunteers to get organized and form communities that further our mission
around the world. In exchange, committee members selected will gain the
experience of supporting their world-wide colleagues to develop their
communities as well as personal development in guiding organizational
development, facilitating affiliate partnerships, and professional
communications.
*Selection process*
As a reflection of our commitment to openness, transparency, and bilateral
engagement with the Wikimedia community, the 2019 member selection process
will include a public review and comment period. We invite you to share
with us you applications, specifying your focus area you’re interested in.
All applications received by the committee will be posted on Meta, and the
community will be invited to provide comments and feedback about each
candidate.
At the end of the public comment period, the applications will be voted on
by the members of the committee who are not seeking re-election, taking
into account comments put forward by the committee's members, advisors,
Wikimedia Foundation staff and board liaisons, and the community. A final
decision will be made by mid-January 2020, with new members expected to
join later that month.
*How to apply*
If you are interested in joining the committee, please post your
application on *the nomination page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Candidates/December_…>*
and send an email *announcing your application to
AffCom(a)lists.wikimedia.org <AffCom(a)lists.wikimedia.org> by 10 January 2020*.
Your application must include the following information:
- Your full name and Wikimedia username
- A statement describing your relevant experience, skills, and
motivation for joining the committee.
- Answers to the following three questions:
How do you think affiliates work best together to partner on effective
projects and initiatives?
What do you see as the role of affiliates in the Wikimedia movement in the
next three years?
What do you feel you will bring to the committee that makes you uniquely
qualified?
Which subcommittee are you most interested in serving on: Recognitions OR
Conflict Prevention & Intervention?
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me and/or the
committee as a whole. We are happy to chat or have a phone call with anyone
about our work if this helps them decide to apply. Please distribute this
call among your networks, and do apply if you are interested!
In behalf of the committee,
Camelia Boban
AffCom member
Could we please update them with a slightly more up-to-date skin?
Take a look at our Norwegian competitor in the lexicon field.
https://snl.no/kunstig_intelligens
John Erling Blad
/jeblad
"I think we all generally endorse incremental improvements, instead
of drastic overhauls."
Um, that is clearly not true, since otherwise, for example, the original
poster would not have sent out his message.
For readers, I think many, if not most, would want a look and feel that
works for them, aesthetically and functionally, regardless of how much a
redesign was evolutionary or revolutionary. Many websites have gone through
major redesigns successfully. (And of course some have been utter
disasters, but many of those disasters came about because of poor design,
not just because the design was a significant departure from the previous
design.)
For WMF wikis with very small editor bases, the degree of change may be
less important than the quality of the change. A meaningful change, however
small or large, may enable that community to recruit new editors who were
previously turned off by wiki syntax (or other) complexities.
As a WP editor myself, I would absolutely welcome a drastically different
design, if it were a great design, that facilitated the editing and reading
activities I want to engage in, and was pleasant to the eye. I welcome each
change, regardless of size, that is an improvement.
One side benefit of a revolutionary design change is that it can make
long-term users reassess their use of a website, sometimes discovering a
"new" feature, which has actually been there all along, nevertheless
creating more engaged users. Another, I imagine, is that often there is a
spike in word-of-mouth surrounding a major redesign, which can also have
positive recruitment effects. A third might be that a drastic redesign
would re-level the playing field, so to speak. New editors might be less
subject to poor conduct from some long-term editors who lord their arcane
wiki knowledge over newbies.
Paul
Millions of people donate to our projects because we have in some way
bettered their life. They don't just give money, they take the time to say
thank you as well. In their tens of thousands. .
To brighten your day a little, just read a handful of some of these notes
of thanks:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/Donor_Thanks
With that, from the Fundraising teams, we thank you all for your ongoing
support. We couldn't do this without you! Have a wonderful day!
Kind Regards
--
Seddon
*Community and Audience Engagement Associate*
*Advancement (Fundraising), Wikimedia Foundation*
Hi everyone,
I wanted to share an overview of what’s been happening in movement
strategy and where things are at with the recommendations.
== Synthesizing the recommendations, writing group meeting ==
The work to refine the recommendations is advancing well. Members of
the writing group [1] came together in person in Berlin last week and
spent five energetic and successful days consolidating the 89
recommendations. They brought together overlapping ideas from amongst
the previous thematic areas with the aim of creating a coherent set of
recommendations.
A number of common areas for change were reflected in the 89
recommendations, and the writers assessed and clustered them around
these areas. The goal is to outline the overall direction of the
change and present one set that is clearly understood, implementable,
and demonstrates the reasoning behind each.
The clusters also address issues identified in phase 1 as well as
needs surfaced during the conversations with the movement between
March and September of this year. These areas for change include
improving coordination in our movement, skills and leadership
development, distribution of power and decision-making, and enhancing
user experience and infrastructure to help us move toward becoming the
essential support system of the ecosystem of free knowledge.
Beyond this, the group also worked on building a narrative that
outlines a common vision to see: where we’ve come from as a movement;
what is driving us toward change; and where we want to get to as a
movement – the recommendations will put forward a proposal for how we
arrive there.
In a highly collaborative atmosphere, the writers are now busy
refining their work and preparing a document with the synthesized
recommendations and the narrative that can be presented to the
movement. We are quite excited about this progress!
== Movement conversations next year ==
The synthesized recommendations will serve as the basis for the
upcoming round of movement conversations, which will run from
mid-January through February. The facilitated conversations will take
place on-wiki for the Arabic, French, German, Hindi, Spanish, and
Portuguese language communities, on English Wikipedia, Commons, and
Meta-Wiki, as well as through targeted outreach to additional language
communities and affiliate groups. This will be an opportunity for the
movement to review and respond to the recommendations before they are
finalized.[2]
We encourage you to take part and are looking forward to your input
next year, so please stay tuned for more details about how to do so.
Best wishes,
Nicole
P.S.: One of our Resource Allocation working group members and
writers, Daria Cybulska from Wikimedia UK, has written a wonderful
post about her experience, insights and challenges from the last 1.5
years on the process. Please note that this is an externally facing
piece, providing a very broad brush view of our movement. In line with
this, the piece does not go into detail about the complexities of
Wikimedia. Check it out! “Funding utopia when you’re already a free
knowledge utopia.”[3]
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Synthes…
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Overvie…
[3] https://medium.com/a-funding-utopia/funding-utopia-when-youre-already-a-fre…
--
Nicole Ebber
Leiterin Internationale Beziehungen
Program Manager Wikimedia 2030 Movement Strategy
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Tel. (030) 219 158 26-0
https://wikimedia.de
Unsere Vision ist eine Welt, in der alle Menschen am Wissen der
Menschheit teilhaben, es nutzen und mehren können. Helfen Sie uns
dabei! https://spenden.wikimedia.de
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.
Hello all, and apologies for crossposting!
I hope you are doing well!
As you may have noticed when we announced the partnership in August [1]:
the Wikimedia Foundation is working with the UN Human Rights to help expand
the availability of knowledge about human rights online.
As one of our first collaborations, we are going to be running a campaign
from November 15 - January 30 to add and improve knowledge about human
rights on Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects. The initial focus of the
campaign will be on improving articles about topics related to the UN
Declaration of Human Rights and youth standing up for human rights. More
information about the campaign is also available here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiForHumanRights
We would like to invite you to get involved in the campaign in one of
several ways:
Help us build the list!
-
We need your help identifying more topics related to youth involved in
human rights that don’t have articles on Wikipedia or could use further
improvement. We would like to represent many different languages and
geographies in the campaign. To propose topics for the list, see
instructions at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiForHumanRights/List#Adding_a_topic_to_t…
Organize an online or offline event!
We need your help finding community leaders from throughout the Wikimedia
to:
-
Host an online campaign on your language Wikipedia! To learn more about
hosting a local topical campaign see the kit here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiForHumanRights/Organize#Campaign
-
Hold an in person editathon with local human rights organizations or
partners! To learn more, check out the kit here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiForHumanRights/Organize#Editathon
Promote the campaign starting Dec. 10 for International Human Rights Day!
Help us amplify your efforts around the campaign and publicize it to wide
audiences. We’ll be sharing a communications toolkit (including graphics)
soon with suggestions on reaching out to folks about the campaign.
-
Reach out to local media and supporters: Journalists and the public
can help add momentum to the campaign through storytelling and spreading
the word.
-
Promote the campaign on social media: We’ll be using
#WikiForHumanRights to promote the campaign on social media, when we
increase the communication to the public on 10 December
If you want to help in other ways, let us know on the discuss space
#human-rights tag
<https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/do-you-have-questions-about-organizing-…>
or by emailing Alex Stinson <astinson(a)wikimedia.org and Luisina Ferrante <
educacion(a)wikimedia.org.ar>
If you are interested, let us know by indicating your interest to organize
in the Organize sections linked above!
Note: We are still updating the communications assets for the campaign! To
watch for those materials, add
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiForHumanRights/Share to your meta
watchlist.
Have questions?
If you have questions, we are going to be hosting an office hour next
Tuesday
<https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/community-office-hour-wikiforhumanright…>,
or you can ask questions on the discuss space #human-rights tag
<https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/do-you-have-questions-about-organizing-…>
.
Looking forward to your engagement with the campaign!
Alex Stinson, Wikimedia Foundation
Luisina Ferrante, Wikimedia Argentina
[1]
https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2019/08/16/wikimedia-and-un-human-righ…
--
Alex Stinson
Senior Program Strategist
Wikimedia Foundation
Twitter:@glamwiki/@sadads
Learn more about how the communities behind Wikipedia, Wikidata and other
Wikimedia projects partner with cultural heritage organizations:
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM
Hi all,
This is a reminder that we are still accepting applications for membership
on the 2020 Ombuds Commission. This commission works on all Wikimedia
projects to investigate complaints about violations of the privacy policy,
especially in use of CheckUser tools, and to mediate between the
complaining party and the individual whose work is being investigated. They
may also assist the General Counsel, the Executive Director or the Board of
Trustees in investigations of these issues. For more on their duties and
roles, see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_commission
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_commission>
This is a call for community members interested in volunteering for
appointment to this commission. Commissioners should be experienced
Wikimedians, active on any project, who have previously used the CheckUser
tool OR who have the technical ability to understand the CheckUser tool and
the willingness to learn it. They are expected to be able to engage
neutrally in investigating these concerns and to know when to recuse when
other roles and relationships may cause conflict. (In the past,
commissioners have turned in other roles that could cause conflict.)
Commissioners are required to identify to the Wikimedia Foundation and must
be willing to comply with the appropriate board policies (such as the
access to non-public data policy and the privacy policy). This is a
position that requires a high degree of discretion and trust.
If you are interested in serving on this commission, please drop me a note
detailing your experience on the projects, your thoughts on the commission
and what you hope to bring to the role. The commission is deliberately
quite small, so slots are limited, but all applications are appreciated.
The deadline for applications is December 31. Any timezone. :)
Please feel free to pass this invitation along to any users who you think
may be interested.
Thank you!
-Karen Brown
--
Karen Brown
Trust & Safety Specialist
Wikimedia Foundation
kbrown(a)wikimedia.org