This week the creation of racial categories like "Nordic race A" was
discussed on Commons. On digging further there is a fundamental problem
with the way modern portraits of living people are being misused to
"illustrate" these 1930s race myths. Rather than using available real
archive material from the 1930s, a user created collage of modern portraits
being used to illustrate these pseudo-scientific racial classes on Wikidata
as well as Wikipedia in German, Hebrew, Italian, Ukrainian, and the Tamil
wiktionary.
It is certain that if portraits of WMF board members were misused and
labelled "Nordic race" or "Negroid race", then WMF legal would be swept
into action in line with the terms of the website. However, as the modern
portrait photographs illustrating offensive 1930s racist terminology are
not us personally, apparently, we can wikilawyer this to one side rather
than taking action.
The rationale on Wikimedia Commons will default to the faux anti-censorship
trope of "if there is one Wikipedia that uses it, we cannot delete it" even
though the use of modern photographs to illustrate racist theories of
Nordicism or Nazism are clearly anti-educational and so out of scope.
Consequently, this appears to need a cross-project consensus to not use our
Wikimedia websites to promote race hate or white supremacy, possibly with
the authority of WMF Legal to take action behind it.
Feedback and pragmatic suggestions on how to move this forward would be
welcome.
Links:
1. Commons VP discussion
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Correctly_represent…
2. Wikidata discussion
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Project_chat#Correctly_representing_…
3.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_races_according_to_Coon_(coll…
4. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasse
5. https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razza_(categorizzazione_umana) (where an
attempt to remove the problematic image has been reverted)
6.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Human_rac…
deletion
request for the modern collage of portraits used to promote 1930s racist
language
Thanks,
Fae
Hello everyone!
*Please disseminate this email to anyone who may be interested.*
As you are probably aware, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees[1]
contains three community-selected seats which are voted in by the wider
Wikimedia community on a regular cycle. In 2020, we will be hosting another
one of these selection processes, which are coordinated by the Wikimedia
Foundation in collaboration with the Elections Committee[2].
We are seeking 2–3 new members for the committee to join us in time for the
first meetings in January 2020. Applicants will be vetted by Foundation
staff and ultimately approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board Governance
Committee[3]. The term is three years, though the bulk of the work involved
occurs in the buildup to an election.
This role comes with the following responsibilities:
* Attending 3–4 meetings between January and April 2020 with the Foundation
and the rest of the committee
* Setting up the wiki pages for the board election (example from last cycle)
* Helping to mark pages for translation and potentially import translations
as required
* Working with the committee to fulfill its other responsibilities[4]
Ideally, you would have the following qualities:
* Fluency in English
* Experience with advanced wikitext markup
* Responsiveness to email outreach
We are particularly interested in those who come from a traditionally
under-represented background. If you are interested in volunteering for
this role, please let me know by *emailing me directly before January 19,
2020*.
Thank you in advance for your interest! Please let me know if you have
questions; I'm more likely to see these questions if you send them to me
directly.
best,
Joe
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Governance_Commi…
[4]
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Elections_Committee#Respon…
--
*Joe Sutherland* (he/him or they/them)
Trust and Safety Specialist
Wikimedia Foundation
Hello,
I am writing to invite anyone to join the next online meeting of Wikimedia
Café on Saturday 25 Jan 2020 4:30 PM UTC. Details for joining are at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Café
----> (video room open at that time) https://virginia.zoom.us/my/wikilgbt
The agenda for this month includes discussing Wikipedia holidays, Wikipedia
video tutorials, and the Wikimedia Strategic recommendations.
Wikimedia Café is a modest, one-hour, monthly online meeting which for the
past few months has had fewer than 10 attendees. At these meetings anyone
can propose to discuss any topic of broad Wikimedia community interest, as
if we all were able to meet in person over coffee. The meetings themselves
are an experiment in small group Wikimedia community conversation with
video chat, phone access options, and online shared notetaking.
Anyone interested in joining may.
Anyone interested in reading notes of past meetings can find them on the
meta page.
If there is anyone who wants to get their ideas published in the wiki
world, consider looking at how this Café works, because voice chat with
notetaking could be a way to organize your own wiki community.
Thanks,
--
Lane Rasberry
user:bluerasberry on Wikipedia
206.801.0814
lane(a)bluerasberry.com
Hi all, and apologies if you receive this email several times – I will be
posting it to multiple mailing lists.
Wikimedia Norge would like to organize a regional Wikimedia Diversity
Conference in 2020 for Europe, with the hope of many other regional
conferences on the same topic being held in the near future. The Wikimedia
Diversity Conference 2020 will provide a meeting place for discussing,
debating and generating recipes for change concerning diversity in the
Wikimedia movement.
We will be sharing more updates regarding a possible conference later in
2020. For now, we are working on drafting a grant proposal to the Wikimedia
Foundation to support the conference. As part of the drafting the proposal,
a Community Engagement Survey is crucial to understand what community
members are expecting out of such conference. In that regard, Wikimedia
Norge invite all those who are interested in the topic of diversity to take
part in the survey.
Please take the survey here
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdEaXc2AIaaFgKiQUWCDdnJKLd26KA8_DD…>
or copy and paste the URL below into your internet browser:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdEaXc2AIaaFgKiQUWCDdnJKLd26KA8_DD…
*Participants*
For a Wikimedia Diversity Conference 2020 we would like to invite
participants who are decision-makers in the movement (volunteers, board or
staff members of a Wikimedia affiliate) or highly engaged in projects about
knowledge equity and diversity. The conference will be an opportunity for
the participants to discuss solutions for implementation of the 2030
movement strategy
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20> on
knowledge equity.
Best regards,
*Jon Harald Søby*
Prosjektleder / Prosjektleiar / Prošeaktajođiheaddji / Project Manager
Wikimedia Norge / Wikimedia Noreg / Wikimedia Norga
+47 977 67 510
jhsoby(a)wikimedia.no
Not sure this made it to the Wikimedia-L - I couldn't find it easily, at
least. But the candidates for the new mandate in AffCom are under
discussion now (and have been for some time already.
Interested ppl, please follow the link and comment/endorse/ask questions to
them there:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Candidates/December_…
Best,
Paulo - DarwIn
Dear all,
I wanted to share some news with you: the first version of the movement
strategy recommendations document has been published on Meta [1]. On behalf
of the movement strategy working groups and recommendation writers, I am
honored to present them to you. We ask you to please take a moment to read
through, review, and comment.
In 2017, we set about building the future we want, together. In 2020, your
fellow Wikimedians have written and shared a framework for how we can bring
to life our vision of becoming the essential support system of the
ecosystem of free knowledge.
== Review the recommendations ==
These recommendations are the result of 18 months of in-depth discussions
and consultation among global Wikimedia community members and research
into opportunities for our future. The volunteer working groups [2],
writing teams [3] and strategy liaisons [4] have all invested a significant
amount of energy into this, and I want to wholeheartedly thank each and
every person who contributed to creating this work.
I would like to encourage everyone to read this work. There are 13
recommendations (condensed from 89), accompanied by an explanation of the
principles [5] that underlie the recommendations, an outline of how these
recommendations work together [6], as well as an overview of how the
recommendations were produced and next steps [7].
The core of this material is online in Arabic, English, French, German,
Hindi, Portuguese, and Spanish. We also have an overview available in
Catalan, Dutch, Farsi, Hebrew, Polish, and Russian that offers a condensed
introduction to the recommendations material.
== Share your feedback ==
In order to produce a final document that is representative of and relevant
to the diverse project communities as well as groups and organizations that
make up our movement, we are calling on everyone to review the
recommendations and share their thoughts.
Specifically, we ask you to look at what impact these recommendations might
have on you and your group or community’s context. Discussions are
happening on-wiki in many languages, as well as in discussion groups on
other, off0wiki platforms, and within movement groups and structures.
This round of community conversations will run until the first week of
March [8]. After this five-week period, the Core Team will publish a
summary report of input from across affiliates, online communities, and
other stakeholders for public review. [9] Your input will play a role as
the recommendation writers finalize the strategy document, and move us
towards discussions around implementation.
You will find more information about the process in the FAQs [10], and
please direct any additional questions or remarks to the respective meta
pages.
Our movement is the sum of its parts. Each member brings to it invaluable
skills, expertise, and ideas to capture, collect, and share free knowledge.
And every single contribution made by every community member from the
beginning has helped us grow into the global, diverse, and unique movement
we are today.
I am honored to share this on behalf of everyone involved, and am looking
forward to insights from across the movement over the next few weeks.
Katherine
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recomme…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working…
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/People#…
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/People/…
[5]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recomme…
[6]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recomme…
[7]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recomme…
[8]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Frequen…
?
[9]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Overvie…
[10]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Frequen…
--
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Dear All,
As a follow up and in addition to our standard practice of documenting and
publishing the Audit Committee meeting minutes [1] regarding the review and
approval of the Wikimedia Foundation’s Independent Auditors’ Report by the
Audit Committee - a board subcommittee, we want to inform you that The
Independent Auditors’ Report for the fiscal year ending 30 June 2019 is now
published and available at:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/
We have also posted on Meta-Wiki answers to frequently asked questions
(“FAQ”) about the Independent Auditors’ Report:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_reports/Financial/Audi…
The external audit is conducted annually by an independent third-party
audit firm (KPMG) as a part of our financial oversight, and provides an
overview of basic information about the organization's financial position
and its financial activities.
Please contact us via email if you have any questions.
Best regards,
Jaime
*[1] Audit Committee Meeting Minutes - September 23, 2019
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Audit_Committee/2019-0…>*
Jaime Villagomez
Chief Financial Officer
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment.Donate.
<https://donate.wikimedia.org/>*
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