Dear Wikimedians,
As the year draws to a close, the Wikimedia Foundation's Community
Development team took some time to reflect on the Wikimedia Clinics
program, a pilot we created a couple of months into the pandemic.
You can read our retrospective here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Clinics/Retrospective
The next Wikimedia Clinic call is scheduled for January 12th at 6pm UTC,
and will feature a short presentation from the Foundation's *Growth*
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth>[1] team with an overview of their
recent work, followed by time for questions, and, as usual, additional time
for bringing up any Wikimedia-related topic on your mind.
See you then!
A.
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth
Asaf Bartov (he/him/his)
Senior Program Officer, Emerging Wikimedia Communities
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
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
Dear all
I would like to share, somewhat belatedly, Wikimedia UK's reports from the
last financial year. These include:
Our Strategic Report
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/File:Wikimedia_UK_Strategic_Report_2019-20.pdf>
which
provides a narrative overview of our work and a brief snapshot of our
finances
Our Impact Report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2018-2019_round_1/Wiki…>
to the Wikimedia Foundation, uploaded to Meta in March
Our Audited Accounts are also available to download here
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/File:Annual_Accounts_2019-20.pdf>.
I hope you enjoy reading about the UK Chapter and community's many
successful projects and initiatives in 2019/20!
With best wishes
Lucy
--
Lucy Crompton-Reid
Chief Executive
Wikimedia UK
+44 (0) 203 372 0762
*Wikimedia UK* is the national chapter for the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement, and a registered charity. We rely on donations from
individuals to support our work to make knowledge open for all. Have you
considered supporting Wikimedia? https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk
Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered
No. 6741827
Registered Charity No.1144513
Registered Office Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London
SE1 0NZ
The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.
_______________________________________________
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
_______________________________________________
WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list
WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
Dear Wikimedians,
Join the education team for the end of the year Education office hours on
17th December 2020 at 13:00 UTC! The office hours are a dedicated time and
an online space to have conversations and discussions related to Wikimedia
and education activities, listen and learn from each other's projects and
experiences.
Let's discuss how this year was for the education community, how did we
adapt to the new normal, and we will share some updates from the education
team. If you are interested, you can find more details to join the meeting
here:
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/About/Office_Hours/December_1…
Looking forward to seeing you then, Please let me know if you have any
questions, also reach out to me if you want a calendar invitation for this
meeting. I will share the meeting link on the 17th.
Best!
Sailesh
--
*Sailesh Patnaik*
Wikimedia Foundation | Program Associate, Education
User:SPatnaik (WMF)
Dear Wikimedians,
This year, the 8th edition of Wiki Loves Earth — the biggest international
photo contest devoted to nature heritage — was held. The competition aims
at raising public awareness about protected areas and creating the biggest
database of free photos of them. We are happy to announce the *international
winners of WLE 2020*!
We received more than 106k submissions from 34 countries all over the
world. Local teams have chosen the best pictures of protected areas
narrowing it down to 340 local winning photos that competed to get to the
top-15.
Meet the winners depicting unique nature heritage sites and their
representatives in our *blog post* — bit.ly/3r49Wug
<https://bit.ly/3r49Wug?fbclid=IwAR37gpUHkqz0FEf_toEniN5QLOq3d-Go-h8MEew217Z…>
.
Do you want to discover more about WLE 2020, its organizing and jurying
process, find out more about the authors of winning photos and hear their
stories? Watch a livestream of the WLE 2020 award ceremony on December 20
at 11 am (UTC): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgNf2Fm94WY.
Follow our social media pages to stay updated, we'll be posting stories and
facts about the winners: Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/interwle>,
Instagram <https://www.instagram.com/wikilovesearth/>, Twitter
<https://twitter.com/WikiLovesEarth>.
Best regards,
Anastasiia Petrova
Project Manager for International Wiki Loves Earth 2020
Hello,
The next Research Showcase will be live-streamed on Wednesday, December 16,
at 9:30 AM PST/17:30 UTC, and will be on the theme of disinformation and
reliability of sources in Wikipedia. In the first talk, Włodzimierz
Lewoniewski will present recent work around multilingual approaches for the
assessment of content quality and reliability of sources in Wikipedia
leveraging machine learning algorithms. In the second talk, Diego
Saez-Trumper will give an overview of ongoing work on fighting
disinformation in Wikipedia; specifically, the development of tools and
datasets aimed at supporting the discovery of suspicious content and
improving verifiability.
Youtube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9Wcc-TeaEY
As usual, you can join the conversation on IRC at #wikimedia-research. You
can also watch our past research showcases here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase
Talk 1
Speaker: Włodzimierz Lewoniewski (Poznań University of Economics and
Business, Poland)
Title: Quality assessment of Wikipedia and its sources
Abstract: Information in Wikipedia can be edited in over 300 languages
independently. Therefore often the same subject in Wikipedia can be
described differently depending on language edition. In order to compare
information between them one usually needs to understand each of considered
languages. We work on solutions that can help to automate this process.
They leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms. The
crucial component, however, is assessment of article quality therefore we
need to know how to define and extract different quality measures. This
presentation briefly introduces some of the recent activities of Department
of Information Systems at Poznań University of Economics and Business
related to quality assessment of multilingual content in Wikipedia. In
particular, we
demonstrate some of the approaches for the reliability assessment of
sources in Wikipedia articles. Such solutions can help to enrich various
language editions of Wikipedia and other knowledge bases with information
of better quality.
Talk 2
Speaker: Diego Saez-Trumper (Research, Wikimedia Foundation)
Title: Challenges on fighting Disinformation in Wikipedia: Who has the
(ground-)truth?
Abstract: Different from the major social media websites where the fight
against disinformation mainly refers to preventing users to massively
replicate fake content, fighting disinformation in Wikipedia requires tools
that allows editors to apply the content policies of: verifiability,
non-original research, and neutral point of view. Moreover, while other
platforms try to apply automatic fact checking techniques to verify
content, the ground-truth for such verification is done based on Wikipedia,
for obvious reasons we can't follow the same pipeline for fact checking
content on Wikipedia. In this talk we will explain the ML approach we are
developing to build tools to efficiently support wikipedians to discover
suspicious content and how we collaborate with external researchers on this
task. We will also describe a group of datasets we are preparing to share
with the research community in order to produce state-of-the-art algorithms
to improve the verifiability of content on Wikipedia.
--
Janna Layton (she/her)
Administrative Associate - Product & Technology
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hi everyone,
The Movement Strategy Support Team is happy to share the results from the
second set of Global Conversations. [1] There are text and video options
presenting summaries from the discussions. Please review and continue the
conversation on-wiki. [2]
We were able to organize inclusive and participatory virtual global events
– a first of such scale in our movement – thanks to the efforts of the
Transition Design Group. [3] We are grateful for their work and for many
individuals, groups, and organizations around the world who made these
discussions truly global.
Quick recap
During the first set of Global Conversations in November, eight (8) global
priorities for implementing the Movement Strategy recommendations were
identified. [4] The global priorities built on local, regional, and
thematic submissions by more than 50 affiliates and groups [5], discussions
on Meta, and live surveys during the global meetings.
The November set of global discussions asked ‘what should be the top
globally-coordinated initiatives for the movement in 2021?’ The December
global discussions went one step further and asked ‘what should be the
immediate steps for implementing an initiative?’ The top global initiatives
are:
-
The Interim Global Council and the Movement Charter
-
Improving user experience and resources for newcomers
-
Skills and leadership development
-
Regional and thematic hubs
-
Funding for underrepresented communities
-
Increased awareness about the movement
-
Alignment with environmental sustainability
-
High-impact topics and content gaps
You can read and watch summaries of the discussions for each topic. We
encourage you to share your thoughts with us in the discussion spaces.
Next steps
The Support Team will organize follow up discussions of different sizes for
the top initiatives starting in January. The aim is to bring together
interested individuals, communities, affiliates, and Wikimedia Foundation
teams to identify key steps and milestones for implementation.
There will also be two sets of focused discussions on the Interim Global
Council in late January and early February. More information to be shared
in the new year. In the meantime, you can familiarize yourself with the
thinking and remaining questions about the Interim Global Council. [6]
We are committed to support community members overcome barriers to virtual
participation, such as data packages and childcare for the duration of
meetings. We plan to offer similar support for the follow-up discussions,
so we can continue to include a diverse range of perspectives in creating
the implementation plan. We are working on details of the particular
programs and will let you know in early 2021.
On behalf of the Support Team,
Kaarel
[1] Report from the second set of Global Conversations:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transit…
[2] Designated discussion spaces for each cluster:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transit…
[3] The Transition Design Group:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transit…
[4] Report from the first set of Global Conversations:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transit…
[5] Map and table of community priorities:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transit…
[6] The Interim Global Council:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transit…
--
Kaarel Vaidla (he/him)
Movement Strategy <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/2030>
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hello everyone!
We would like to announce the dates for our next two upcoming rounds for
our Wikimedia Foundation conference grants program.
-
If you would like to apply for funding to hold an event between July -
December 2021 your application deadline is: February 8, 2021
-
If you would like to apply for funding to hold an event between January
- June 2022 your application deadline is: September 27, 2021
The majority of events in 2021 will likely be mostly or fully remote events
unless anything major changes in our COVID-19 risk assessment protocol
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Risk_assessment_during_COVID-19>.
Following this protocol, some local events are possible in regions with low
COVID risk.
So far we have gained a lot of experience organizing remote events and
working alongside remote event organizers and are happy to meet and chat
about options and ideas for your community before you apply. We have
created some remote event guidelines here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/Remote_Event_Guidelines>.
You can also read about some community efforts at Wikiproject: remote event
participation
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiProject_remote_event_participation>.
We are happy to announce that we have approved two events for the first
half of 2021:
-
Arctic Knot: A Wikimedia Languages conference
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/WMNO/Arctic_Knot:_A_Wikim…>
organized by Wikimedia Norge
-
WP20 Aniversario
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/WMES/WP20Aniversario>
organized by Wikimedia España
-
We are in final discussions with two other organizing groups for
possible events during this time frame and will update our meta page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/Browse_applications>
if and when they are approved.
Finally, we are also looking for any community members with event
organizing experience from Asia or South America who might be interested in
joining our conference grants committee
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference_Grants/Committee> as we
currently don’t have representation from those regions. Once you read more
about our committee, you can apply on meta directly or email us back and
ask any questions you have.
Thank you & happy end of the year!
Rachel Farrand & Chen Almog
--
Rachel Farrand
Senior Program Officer
Community Events Team
Wikimedia Foundation
Hello all,
The Community Development
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Development> team at the
Wikimedia Foundation is launching the WikiLearn (Online Learning Pilot)
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Development/WikiLearn>, a
capacity-building project. This project will deliver two courses over an
8-week period that will begin on February 1, 2021. Courses are free to take
part in and will be hosted on Moodle <https://moodle.com/>. During this
pilot project, each course will be taught, and assignments are to be
prepared, in English. At the end of the pilot, we will be making course
materials available for anyone interested in self-study, and for
translation.
The two courses we will be launching on February 1, 2021, are:
1.
Identifying and Addressing Harassment
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Development/WikiLearn/Identifying…>:
This course will focus on developing skills that will help volunteers
respond to on- and off-wiki harassment.
-
This course will combine scheduled sessions and independent study.
The weekly commitment of this course is 2-3 hours per week.
-
Target Audience: Volunteers with administrator or other advanced user
rights.
1.
Partnership Building:
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Development/WikiLearn/Partnership…>
This
intensive course will provide an in-depth curriculum on how to develop
meaningful programmatic and organizational partnerships within the movement
and with external partners.
-
This course will consist of scheduled sessions and individual
assignments with a weekly total commitment of up to 6 hours.
-
Target Audience: Volunteers with intermediate-level experience
contributing to Wikimedia projects and beginner-level experience with
building partners with Non-Wikimedia groups and organizations.
To ensure our small team can provide each learner individual support, we
are limiting each course in this pilot to 40 participants. We ask that all
interested applicants commit to attending weekly for the full course.
All efforts will be made to ensure that scheduled sessions are time-zone
friendly to the greatest number of enrolled participants. However, with the
wide distribution of volunteers, that may not always be possible.
Key Dates:
-
Applications open Today (December 1, 2020) and will close on January 14,
2021.
-
Successful applicants will be notified on January 18, 2021.
-
The first session for each course will be held on February 1, 2021.
To Take Part in the Online Learning Pilot:
To participate in the Partnership Building online course, fill out this
application form
<https://wikimedia.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cYEpR0q2CoodQTX>.
To participate in the Identifying and Addressing Harassment Online course,
fill out this application form
<https://wikimedia.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_e99EaQJPKUlhwDX>.
For more details on the Online Learning Pilot, please see our Meta page.
Feel free to ask questions on the project Talk
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Community_Development/Wik…>
page or contact us at comdev(a)wikimedia.org.
Best,
The Community Development Team
Cassie Casares
Project Coordinator
Community Development
Wikimedia Foundation
ccasares(a)wikimedia.org