Hello,
Today we are excited to share with you all that the 2020 Wikimedian of
the Year award has been announced! Sandister Tei, a community
organizer and contributor from Accra, Ghana, is this year's award
recipient.
Learn more about Sandister with the blog post below on Diff and
another one by Jimmy Wales on Medium, and join us in celebrating and
congratulating Sandister!
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2020/10/15/meet-the-2020-wikimedian-of-the-year-…https://medium.com/@JimmyWales/meet-the-2020-wikimedian-of-the-year-a761e0a…
Yours,
Chris Koerner (he/him)
Community Relations Specialist
Wikimedia Foundation
Dear all,
I am writing to share some good news! After two years of brainstorming and
planning, our instructional website in Arabic is out! This is yet another
step for Wikimedia Israel in developing instructional tools.
We’re thrilled to introduce Wiki Warsha ويكي ورشة <http://wikiwarsha.org/>!
Wikiwarsha.org <http://wikiwarsha.org/> is a multimedia instructional
website designed to introduce Wikipedia to Arabic readers, to invite new
editors to write and edit content on Arabic Wikipedia, to assist teachers
in school activities, and instructors in editing workshops.
Warsha is the Arabic word for ‘workshop’, the website includes short
instructional films, texts and images and is divided into 13 informative
and instructional lessons:
-
Wikipedia homepage structure
-
About Wikipedia articles
-
Create account
-
Sign in to a registered account
-
Create a userpage
-
Create a new article
-
Edit an article
-
Formatting the article
-
Request edits approval on Arabic Wikipedia
-
Adding image
-
Adding internal and external links
-
Adding references
-
Adding categories
In addition to those lessons, the website contains informative sections
about copyright issues, FAQs, good article criteria, and talk pages, all in
order to facilitate understanding how Wikipedia communities function.
For further details and info:
warsha(a)wikimedia.org.il
Michal Lester
Bekriah Mawasi [[user: bks-WMIL]]
Michal Lester
Executive Director
Wikimedia Israel
Hi everyone,
We have just completed and published our annual report that summarises
fundraising activities for the financial year covering July 1, 2019 - June
30, 2020. Wikipedia is supported by people — people around the world who
read knowledge on the site, editors who contribute their time to add and
improve articles with up-to-date information, and donors who chip in to
keep Wikipedia thriving. We are proud to present our 2019-2020 Fundraising
Report <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2019-20_Report> and
share insights into how the Wikimedia Foundation earns revenue to sustain
the Wikimedia projects. Thank you to everyone who supports our mission to
ensure that everyone, everywhere, can share in and access free knowledge.
Long term financial sustainability is at the core of our department’s
activities, an importance that holds further weight given the ongoing
challenges faced globally. The report highlights the importance of growing
support to the endowment and notes the ongoing focus on our monthly giving
donor program.
A huge thanks to all those across the Wikimedia Foundation, affiliates, and
volunteers, who have contributed to the success of this year's fundraiser.
Without that support, we wouldn’t be able to deliver the resources needed
for the movement to fulfill and achieve its mission. I'd also like to thank
everyone who contributed and collaborated on this report: Online
Fundraising, Major Gifts & Endowment, Fundraising Operations, Donor
Services, Fundraising Tech, Legal, Communications, Finance, Product
Analytics and more! Special thanks to Runjini Murthy for project managing
this entire effort.
We welcome your feedback and questions on the talk page.
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising/2019-20_Report> [1]
Thank you,
Pats
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising/2019-20_Report
--
*Pats Pena (she/her) *
Director, Online Fundraising I Wikimedia Foundation
1 Montgomery Street I San Francisco, CA 94104
ppena(a)wikimedia.org I +1 (415) 816 3349
*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/>*
Please Note: If I am emailing after hours or on the weekend, it's because
Wikimedia allows me an awesome flexible schedule. Please do not respond
until reasonable business hours in your timezone, unless of course I am
shouting for help ;-)
Dear all,
We’re really happy to announce the second edition of the Coolest Tool Award
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Coolest_Tool_Award>!
Tools play an essential role at Wikimedia, and so do the many volunteer
developers who experiment with new ideas, develop & maintain local & global
solutions and enhance the experience for Wikimedia communities.
There are incredible many great tools out there. It’s time to celebrate
this & to make the great work volunteer developers do more visible to
everyone :-)
The Coolest Tool Award ceremony will take place virtually this year, given
the current circumstances around events and travel. We will provide more
details soon about the specific logistics and dates.
The award is organized & selected by the *Coolest Tool Academy 2020*
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Coolest_Tool_Award#Coolest_Tool_Award_2020>.
We plan to recognize the greatest tools in a variety of categories, for
examples you can look at last year’s categories
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Coolest_Tool_Award/2019>.
As no one can possibly know all the cool tools out there, we’re looking for
some help & inspiration: Please point us to the tools that you think are
great - out of any reason you can think of!
Please use this form:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf5ZmXXamn9sRsagEiiZcUZDn1Ga0sF3Xm…
to recommend tools *by October 14, 2020*. You can nominate as many tools as
you want by filling out the form multiple times.
This survey will be conducted via a third-party service, which may subject
it to additional terms. For more information on privacy and data-handling,
see the survey privacy statement:
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Coolest_Tool_Award_2020_Survey_Privac…
Thank you very much for your ideas & recommendation(s)!
We will continue to spread the word over the next 1-2 days, but if you get
the chance, please feel welcome to share this information with others too!
Thanks :-)
Joaquin, for the Coolest Tool Academy 2020
--
Joaquin Oltra Hernandez
Developer Advocate - Wikimedia Foundation
Hi all,
Join the Research Team at the Wikimedia Foundation [1] for their monthly
Office hours on 2020-10-13 at 16:00-17:00 PM UTC.
To participate, join the video-call via this Wikimedia-meet link [2]. There
is no set agenda - feel free to add your item to the list of topics in the
etherpad [3] (You can do this after you join the meeting, too.), otherwise
you are welcome to also just hang out. More detailed information (e.g.
about how to attend) can be found here [4].
Through these office hours, we aim to make ourselves more available to
answer some of the research related questions that you as Wikimedia
volunteer editors, organizers, affiliates, staff, and researchers face in
your projects and initiatives. Some example cases we hope to be able to
support you in:
-
You have a specific research related question that you suspect you
should be able to answer with the publicly available data and you don’t
know how to find an answer for it, or you just need some more help with it.
For example, how can I compute the ratio of anonymous to registered editors
in my wiki?
-
You run into repetitive or very manual work as part of your Wikimedia
contributions and you wish to find out if there are ways to use machines to
improve your workflows. These types of conversations can sometimes be
harder to find an answer for during an office hour, however, discussing
them can help us understand your challenges better and we may find ways to
work with each other to support you in addressing it in the future.
-
You want to learn what the Research team at the Wikimedia Foundation
does and how we can potentially support you. Specifically for affiliates:
if you are interested in building relationships with the academic
institutions in your country, we would love to talk with you and learn
more. We have a series of programs that aim to expand the network of
Wikimedia researchers globally and we would love to collaborate with those
of you interested more closely in this space.
-
You want to talk with us about one of our existing programs [5].
Hope to see many of you,
Martin (WMF Research Team)
[1] https://research.wikimedia.org/team.html
[2] https://meet.wmcloud.org/ResearchOfficeHours
[3] https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Research-Analytics-Office-hours
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Office_hours
[5] https://research.wikimedia.org/projects.html
--
Martin Gerlach
Research Scientist
Wikimedia Foundation
Dear Wikipedians and Wikimedians,
Hope you are all doing well! Now is the time to sign up for Wikipedia Asian
Month 2020, which will take place this November.
No matter you want to be an organizer for the event or be a participant to
enjoy the joy of editing, we are looking forward to meeting you all online.
Here are some information for organizers and participants.
▎For organizers:
Here are the basic guidance and regulations for organizers. Please remember
to:
• use Fountain tool, or else you and your participants’ will not be able
to receive the prize from WAM team. See:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fountain_tool
• Add your language projects and organizer list to the meta page before
October 29th, 2020. See:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Asian_Month_2020
• Inform your community members WAM 2020 is coming soon!!!
• If you want WAM team to share your event information on Facebook /
twitter, or you want to share your WAM experience/ achievements on our
blog, feel free to send an email to info(a)asianmonth.wiki or PM us via
facebook.
• If you want to hold a thematic event that is related to WAM, a.k.a. WAM
sub-contest. The process is the same as the language one.
－－－
▎For participants:
Just join us! Let’s edit articles and win the prizes! See:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Asian_Month_2020
－－－
▎Here are some updates from WAM team:
• Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year we hope all the Edit-a-thons are
online not physical ones.
• The international postal systems are not stable enough at the moment,
WAM team have decided to send all the qualified participants/ organizers
extra digital postcards/ certifications. (You will still get the paper
ones!)
• Our team has created a meta page so that everyone tracking the progress
and the delivery status.
－－－
If you have any suggestions or thoughts, feel free to reach out the WAM
team via emailing info(a)asianmonth.wiki or discuss on the meta talk page. If
it’s urgent, please contact the leader directly (jamie(a)asianmonth.wiki).
Hope you all have fun in Wikipedia Asian Month 2020
Sincerely yours,
Wikipedia Asian Month International Team 2020.10
Hi everyone,
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, following the recommendation of
staff, has resolved to pause the Movement Brand Project until the next
calendar year.[1] We recognize that much of the Wikimedia movement’s
activities, events, and key collaborations have been put on hold or
restructured due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and we have received formal
requests to pause Movement Brand Project activities to reflect this
need.[2]
The Board remains persuaded that there is potential value in making change
to our branding system in service of our goals of engaging more people in
our mission. However, we also know that change moves at the speed of trust.
We have asked staff to meaningfully engage with community concerns and
address the request for equitable decision-making within the process. We
also ask members of the community to use this pause to consider how equity
may ask us to let go of some aspects of our past, in order to create space
for what could be. Making these decisions together, with so many passionate
perspectives, will be challenging, but building this capacity is essential
for how we grow together as a thriving global movement.
In the meantime, we will establish a small ad-hoc Board committee to liaise
with staff, and develop a process of collaboration and decision-making
appropriate for the Movement’s brand. This committee will constitute
Trustees James Heilman, Raju Narisetti, and Shani Evenstein Sigalov. We
hope and intend for this committee to include a small number of community
representatives from affiliates, open letter signatories, and emerging
communities, and Foundation staff to be designated by the Executive
Director. We’ll update you with more details on the committee soon.
In 2021, using insights and recommendations gleaned through the ad-hoc
committee, the Brand Project team will restart collaboration and
communicate next steps accordingly. This resolution was ratified on
September 24, 2020.
Kind regards,
María Sefidari
[1]
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Pause_of_Brand_Development…
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_open_letter_on_renaming
--
María Sefidari Huici
Chair of the Board
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>