Hey all,
I've got some personal news to share.
After 8 years with Wikimedia, I have decided to leave the Foundation to
take up a new role focused on open science. This has been a difficult
decision but an opportunity arose and I am excited to be moving on to an
area that’s been so close to my heart for years.
Serving the movement as part of the Research team at WMF has been, and will
definitely be, the most important gig in my life. I leave a team of
ridiculously talented and fun people that I can’t possibly imagine not
spending all of my days with, as well many collaborators and friends in the
community who have I worked alongside. I am proud and thankful to have been
part of this journey with you all. With my departure, Leila Zia is taking
the lead of Research at WMF, and you all couldn't be in better hands.
In March, I’ll be joining CZI Science—a philanthropy based in the Bay
Area—to help build their portfolio of open science programs and technology.
I'll continue to be an ally on the same fights in my new role.
Other than that, I look forward to returning to full volunteer mode. I
started editing English Wikipedia in 2004, working on bloody chapters in
the history of London
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithfield,_London>; hypothetical
astronomy <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Nine>; unsung heroes among
women in science <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Potter>; and of
course natural <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_South_Napa_earthquake>,
technical <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2016_Dyn_cyberattack>
and political
disasters
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_State…>.
I’ve also developed an embarrassing addiction to Wikidata, and you’ll
continue seeing me around hacking those instances of Q16521
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16521> for a little while.
I hope our paths cross once again in the future.
Best,
Dario
--
*Dario Taraborelli *Director, Head of Research, Wikimedia Foundation
research.wikimedia.org • nitens.org • @readermeter
<http://twitter.com/readermeter>
Dario,
As I said earlier “Looks like you found yourself another worthy and inspiring endeavour. The project is huge in ambition, resources and time scale. BTW this is the first mission statement I’ve seen that sets its targets for 2100 😉“
Your first post to our mailing lists was almost (to the month) 10 years ago, about this project of yours: WikiTracer. I remember being much impressed about this project, which aimed to expand analytics to the wider wikiverse. WikiTracer brought a uniform scheme and layout, somehow overcoming the countless discrepancies between the wikis under study. Not the least of those challenges being babylonical confusion (on syntax, that is). Not long thereafter we spoke at length about your project, and mine, and how we shared other interests, among those Leiden and photography. The domain name wikitracer has since been reoccupied. You must have been too ‘distracted’ by this new mission of yours 😉
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-February/041747.html
Your first visualization that focussed on Wikipedia solely (that I know of) was Notabilia. This was published roughly a year later, in 2010, and still exists, is still relevant, is still visually stunning, and represents my first introduction to d3, which I also came to love over the years.
http://notabilia.net/
With this piece, you and you co-creators received a gold prize at the Kanta ‘Information is Beautiful’ contest. Well done.
https://www.informationisbeautifulawards.com/showcase/443-notabilia
You‘ve been a visually oriented person all along. I mentioned your photography already. Your Flickr expo with 566 followers speaks to that. https://www.flickr.com/photos/dartar/albums/with/72057594056207061
When my wife Carolina and I started our new project, an OSM based tree map of Leidens park Groenesteeg, I remembered ‘Dead Letters’, your detailed photo-study of typography, showing graves in that very park. Your expo is now featured as one more layer of awesomeness in our tribute to urban nature [1]
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dartar/sets/72057594056207061
BTW typographically you came a long way 😉. Your own site only mentions you love to write about TeX and digital typography. Which is also cool, don’t get me wrong.
http://nitens.org/taraborelli/home
Further proof of your visual keenness is the neat layout of the landing page for Wikimedia Research Team (in B&W, which by itself lends it a ‘pro’ appearance already)
https://research.wikimedia.org/index.html
I came to know you as (expanding on your own bio here) a [+very caring and sociable] ‘social computing researcher’ and [+very knowledgeable] ‘open knowledge advocate’ and just an overall very friendly guy. So once more: THANK YOU for the years we worked together, which I found most pleasant and constructive. I hope we meet again.
http://nitens.org/taraborelli/bio
Congratulations to Leila for her new role. You’re the best successor I could have wished for. 😊
Erik Zachte
PM I did not yet mention Darios sense of humor. Today’s notes on Twitter reveal all:
https://twitter.com/readermeter?lang=en
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Now we’re at the Groenesteeg anyway, please pardon the click bait.
This copper beech may well be the largest beech the reader has ever seen:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leiden-Groenesteeg-11.jpg
( featured on http://j.mp/groenesteeg )
In January, the WMF fundraising team asked our donors a single question: is
there anything you want to say to the volunteers who make the Wikimedia
projects possible?The result was enchanting. More than 5,000 donors took
the opportunity to express their thanks, gratitude, and love for the
contributors who give the world the joy of free and open knowledge. Today
is Valentine’s Day, a holiday that, at least in our modern world, is about
expressing love for the individuals in our lives who make the world just a
bit sweeter.We thought this was the perfect opportunity to pass all this
wikilove over to you. Today, we get to play Cupid, nurturing the lasting
partnership between our contributors and donors that has helped Wikipedia
blossom in its 18 years of existence.
*Read our donors' messages to you, the contributors to Wikimedia projects,
here: *
*https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/Donor_love
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/Donor_love> *
--
Caitlin Cogdill
Senior Fundraising Email Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
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 <https://donate.wikimedia.org/>*
Dear colleagues of Wikimedia-l,
I learned today of the 2018 passing of User:Corinne. I feel that Corinne's
substantial contributions to Wikimedia merit forwarding the news of her
passing to this email list [0]. Corinne had a Master's degree in Teaching
English to Speakers of Other Languages. User:Miniapolis wrote, "Corinne was
a fellow coordinator of the Guild of Copy Editors, and we had come to know
each other off-wiki as well. Corinne's specialty was request articles, and
her copyediting skill (second to none) was a factor in many Good and
Featured Articles." Corinne made over 25,000 contributions to English
Wikipedia.
Contributors have written memorials on her talk page [1]. She was
posthumously added to the Guild of Copy Editors Hall of Fame.
May she rest in peace.
Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
[0]
https://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=833499445#Passing_of_Alice_Dacuba_(User:Cor…
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Corinne#You_will_be_missed
“[R]ecent revisions of an article can be peeled off to reveal older layers,
which are still meaningful for historians. Even graffiti applied by vandals
can by its sheer informality convey meaningful information, just like
historians learned a lot from graffiti on walls of classic Pompei. Likewise
view patterns can tell future historians a lot about what was hot and what
wasn’t in our times. Reason why these raw view data are meant to be
preserved for a long time.”
Erik Zachte wrote these lines in a blog post
<https://web.archive.org/web/20171018194720/http://infodisiac.com/blog/2009/…>
almost
ten years ago, and I cannot find better words to describe the gift he gave
us. Erik retired <http://infodisiac.com/back_to_volunteer_mode.htm> this
past Friday, leaving behind an immense legacy. I had the honor to work with
him for several years, and I hosted this morning an intimate, tearful
celebration of what Erik has represented for the Wikimedia movement.
His Wikistats project <https://stats.wikimedia.org/>—with his signature
pale yellow background we've known and loved since the mid 2000s
<https://web.archive.org/web/20060412043240/https://stats.wikimedia.org/>—has
been much more than an "analytics platform". It's been an individual
attempt he initiated, and grew over time, to try and comprehend and make
sense of the largest open collaboration project in human history, driven by
curiosity and by an insatiable desire to serve data to the communities that
most needed it.
Through this project, Erik has created a live record of data describing the
growth and reach of all Wikimedia communities, across languages and
projects, putting multi-lingualism and smaller communities at the very
center of his attention. He coined metrics such as "active editors" that
defined the benchmark for volunteers, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the
academic community to understand some of the growing pains and editor
retention issues
<https://web.archive.org/web/20110608214507/http://infodisiac.com/blog/2009/…>
the movement has faced. He created countless reports—that predate by nearly
a decade modern visualizations of online attention—to understand what
Wikipedia traffic means in the context of current events like elections
<https://web.archive.org/web/20160405055621/http://infodisiac.com/blog/2008/…>
or public health crises
<https://web.archive.org/web/20090708011216/http://infodisiac.com/blog/2009/…>.
He has created countless
<https://twitter.com/Infodisiac/status/1039244151953543169> visualizations
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/10/27/new-interactive-visualization-wikiped…>
that show the enormous gaps in local language content and representation
that, as a movement, we face in our efforts to build an encyclopedia for
and about everyone. He has also made extensive use of pie charts
<https://web.archive.org/web/20141222073751/http://infodisiac.com/blog/wp-co…>,
which—as friends—we are ready to turn a blind eye towards.
Most importantly, the data Erik has brougth to life has been cited over
1,000 times
<https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=stats.wikimedia.org>
in the scholarly literature. If we gave credit to open data creators in the
same way as we credit authors of scholarly papers, Erik would be one of the
most influential authors in the field, and I don't think it is much of a
stretch to say that the massive trove of data and metrics Erik has made
available had a direct causal role in the birth and growth of the academic
field of Wikimedia research, and more broadly, scholarship of online
collaboration.
Like I said this morning, Erik -- you have been not only an invaluable
colleague and a steward for the movement, but also a very decent human
being, and I am grateful we shared some of this journey together.
Please join me in celebrating Erik on his well-deserved retirement, read
his statement <http://infodisiac.com/back_to_volunteer_mode.htm> to learn
what he's planning to do next, or check this lovely portrait
<https://www.wired.com/2013/12/erik-zachte-wikistats/> Wired published a
while back about "the Stats Master Making Sense of Wikipedia's Massive Data
Trove".
Dario
--
*Dario Taraborelli *Director, Head of Research, Wikimedia Foundation
research.wikimedia.org • nitens.org • @readermeter
<http://twitter.com/readermeter>
Hello, our fellow Wikifriends,
On 19 January 2019, Wikimedia Indonesia elected the new boards. The current
structure consists of 5 females and 4 males with various ethnicity
background (Javanese, Lampungnese, Bataknese, Mollucan, Achinese, etc) and
native languages (Indonesian, Javanese, Achinese, etc.). We are proud to
say that our background representing our country motto, Bhinneka Tunggal
Ika <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhinneka_Tunggal_Ika>(Unity in
Diversity).
*Board of Executive*
- Biyanto Rebin, Chair, re-elected
- Ivonne Kristiani, Deputy Chair, re-elected
- Rachmat Wahidi, Secretary-General, re-elected
- Hillun Vilayl Napis, Deputy Secretary General, new
- Djohan Satria Hasibuan, Treasurer, re-elected
- Thirza Ria Vandari, Deputy Treasurer, new
*Board of Trustees*
- Rinto Jiang, re-elected
- Fachria Y. Marasabessy, new
- Fajarwati, new
We hope we can bring our best for Wikimedia movements in Indonesia.
Best regards,
Biyanto
===========================================================
*Profile*
Board of Executives
Biyanto Rebin is an active Wikimedian at the Indonesian Wikipedia since
2006 using “Beeyan” as his username. He graduated from Chinese Literature
at the University of Indonesia. In 2014, he was appointed as the Member of
Board of Executive in the position of Deputy General Secretary. In 2016, he
was elected as Wikimedia Indonesia Chairperson and re-elected in 2019. In
the spirit of open access, he supports the mission of free knowledge as it
is one of the important keys to open the widest channel of knowledge to the
wider community.
Ivonne Kristiani obtained her Master in Sociology and Political Philosophy
from Université Paris Diderot, France. She is now based in Jakarta and is
the Project Manager for Cipta Media Ekspresi arts & culture grant for
women, funded by Ford Foundation. She started editing in Indonesian
Wikipedia as “06Ivonne” when joining the Free Your Knowledge writing
competition in 2010.
Djohan Satria Hasibuan is the Treasurer of Wikimedia Indonesia and
graduated from Accounting Degree at the University of Persada Indonesia
Y.A.I who is currently domiciled in Jakarta. He joined the Wikimedia
Indonesia since 2012 as a financial supervisor on several projects, such as
Cipta Media Bersama, Cipta Media Seluler, and Cipta Media Ekspresi.
Thirza Ria Vandari has been a member of the Wikimedia Indonesia since 2017
and was graduated from Accounting Degree at the University of Indonesia.
With her expertise in finance, she is involved in several projects run by
Wikimedia Indonesia, such as the FAVANO Project, SAPG 2018, and APG 2018.
She sometimes voluntarily edits in Wikipedia under her username “Thirzaria”.
Rachmat Wahidi is an active Wikimedian at the Indonesian and the Acehnese
Wikipedia using “Rachmat04” as his username. He graduated from English
Language Education at Syiah Kuala University, and currently attending a
master degree at the same major. He joined Wikimedia Indonesia since 2012,
and was involved in the Content Digitization Project since 2014. In 2019,
Rachmat was appointed to the position of Secretary General of the Wikimedia
Indonesia.
Hillun Vilayl Napis graduated from Communication at the University of
Indonesia. She started editing on Wikipedia under “Hillun Vilayl Napis” as
her username and joined the Free Your Knowledge writing competition in
2014. She joined Wikimedia Indonesia in 2015. Currently, she involves in
APG 2018 project as Competition Coordinator (photography and writing
contests). In 2019, she is appointed to serve as Deputy Secretary General
of Wikimedia Indonesia.
Board of Trustees
Rinto Jiang is a Wikimedian since 2004 and also one of the founders of
Wikimedia Indonesia who is currently domiciled in Taiwan. He graduated in
engineering at National Cheng Kung University. He is re-elected as one of
the Board of Trustees in 2019. His professional career is as an engineer in
a company. His main goal is to place Wikimedia Indonesia as a forum to
contribute to the advancement of free and equitable knowledge, especially
in Indonesia, in supporting the advancement of formal education.
Fachria Y. Marasabessy was a graduate of the Department of Education in
Jakarta State University and a Wikimedian since 2017. She joined Wikimedia
Indonesia in 2016 and interested in being actively involved in Wikimedia
Indonesia's activities. In 2019, she was trusted to serve as the Member of
Board of Trustees.
Fajarwati is a member of the Wikimedia Indonesia since 2016 and graduated
from Jakarta State Polytechnic in Accounting Degree and Bachelor of
Accounting at the University of Persada Indonesia Y.A.I. Before joining the
project Keterlibatan Masyarakat dalam Teknologi (KMT) and Peningkatan
Kinerja Teknologi Cipta Media (PKT) as an accountant in 2016–2017, she
worked in the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Indonesia in the same position.
She is currently working as a Project Assistant at the
Kemitraan-Partnership for Governance Reform. Having involved in many
projects and considerably contributed to Wikimedia Indonesia in providing
financial insight, she is elected as one of Member of Board of Trustees.
--
Biyanto Rebin | Ketua Umum (*Chair*) 2016-2018
Wikimedia Indonesia
Surel: biyanto.rebin(a)wikimedia.or.id
-------------------------------------------------
Dukung upaya kami membebaskan pengetahuan:
http://wikimedia.or.id/wiki/Wikimedia_Indonesia:Donasi
Hi,
You probably all know that the Commons contest Wiki Loves Love (WLL) started since last friday.
What you might not know yet is that we are now having a multilingual wikipedian contest running at the same time from February 10 to March 31st.
The idea is to generate wikipedian content on the same very theme : festivals, ceremonies, testimonies, gestures and other symbols of love, and if possible use the photos generated by Wiki Loves Love to illustrate content on Wikipedia, with a special focus on reducing the gender gap, as this idea stems from les sans pagEs who has been asked by Psychoslave to collaborate with WLL. We thought adding encyclopedic content would create a win win for everybody and bring visibility to what we are all doing.
We have set up a multilingual and multi project page on meta with Rupika.
To participate you have two options: subscribe individually, or via another project. Several projects have already joined and we hope we can have others too!
Main page on Meta : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Love_2019#Timeline <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Love_2019#Timeline>
Registration page (individuals AND projects most welcome) : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Love_2019/Project_Page <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Love_2019/Project_Page>
We would gladly accept help to pimp up the page and add ideas on the working list as well….
Kind regards,
Nattes à chat
With Wiki Love !
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
Hi, folks.
I'm just writing to let you know that I've been nominated for election
to the Internet Society Board of Trustees.
I stressed in my submissions to the nominating committee that I
believe responding to growing demands for more content regulation by
infrastructure providers, as well as the need to preserve free and
open-source information and other resources, should be central
priorities for the Internet Society going forward. I hope most (or
all!) of you agree!
The nominees are listed below:
https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-trustees/elections/2019/nominees/?…
Best regards!
Mike Godwin
