Basque Wikimedians User Group (BWUG) is proud to announce the creation of WikiBizi1, a project created as a summer proposal for COVID-19 times. It will gather an open travel guide of the Basque Country, three photo-contests superseding our current WikiLoves__________ contests and GLAM collaborations. The main project page is here: https://eu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiBizi.
1Bizi means both life and live: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bizi#Basque
== An open travel guide ==
This will be a very special summer: without mass-tourism, without long travelling and without festivals, many people is engaging in short excursions. BWUG thought that this could be a great opportunity to start working in an open travel guide, but creating an instance of Wikivoyage would be out of scope. So we have created an open travel guide at Wikibooks: https://eu.wikibooks.org/wiki/Euskal_Herriko_bidaia-gida. Every municipality has been linked to Wikipedia (https://eu.wikibooks.org/wiki/Euskal_Herriko_bidaia-gida/Herriz_herri), and we have agreed with Berria newspaper (the only newspaper in Basque, which is published under cc-by-sa license) to take all their travel routes and upload them to Wikibooks (https://eu.wikibooks.org/wiki/Euskal_Herriko_bidaia-gida/Ibilbideak), so people can collaborate with images, corrections or even link to other routes. There's a button in every route so you can easily upload images from your experience directly into Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Euskal_Herriko_Bidaia_Gida.
== Three-in-one photo contests ==
WikiLovesMonuments, Earth and Folk are dead! Long live to WikiBizi! We will run this three contests from July 1st to September 30th, so people have more time to take and upload photos. We will have three categories: Monuments (https://eu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiBizi/Ondarea), Nature (open concept: https://eu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiBizi/Natura) and Culture (so people can upload old photos from their home fiestas: https://eu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiBizi/Kultura). Each photo contest will have prizes and its own campaign.
== GLAM collaboration ==
Summer is for museums. Most museums here have started opening in the last week, and we want to help them and collaborate with them. We have written to all the museums in the Basque Country and some of them are answering. From the simplest collaboration (adding a line and a link to the travel guide) to a full day visit and collaboration to free some of their collection with wikimedians, we hope to have some GLAM activity during this summer. And who knows, may this be the beginning of a beatiful friendship. We have created a page for them: https://eu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiBizi/Museoak.
== WikiTakes ==
When wikimedians visit a place like a swarm, they tend to document everything. This is WikiTakes, a proposal we learnt from Wikimedia Spain (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wiki_Takes_by_Wikimedia_Espa%C3…). We will try to adopt this kind of events this summer, and take villages or routes together. Of course, is about living a place showing that our towns are alive. That's why they won't be called WikiTakes but WikiBizi.
_____
Best,
Galder
Dear WMF Board members,
The Ombuds Commission acts on your behalf as part of the movements
governance processes and it is, therefore, the WMF board that
authorizes Ombuds policies. The Wikimedia project systems and policies
for the commission were established many years ago with rare
amendments since, and are not harmonized on the use of the word
"ombuds". For example, though the email contact group uses "ombuds",
the detailed policy page on Meta uses "ombudsman" and refers to
members of the group as "ombudsmen". As a gender-neutral form is in
common International English and American English usage and is already
used in some places and not others, can the WMF board agree that the
gender-neutral term is desirable in line with the goals of the
Wikimedia Foundation strategy and should be applied systematically?
With your agreement, this would then harmonize in the names of email
groups, the group name configured into the system on Meta and the
wording of policies, and help avoid an accidental bias towards
identifying ombuds members as men. As this is a question of
harmonization, rather than a change in process, policy or scope, this
is a style issue rather than a change that required a resolution or a
community RfC.
For those unaware, the Ombuds Commission "investigates complaints
about infringements of the Privacy Policy, the Access to nonpublic
personal data policy, the CheckUser policy and the oversight policy on
any Wikimedia project for the Board of Trustees. They also investigate
for the Board the compliance of local CheckUser or Oversight policies
or guidelines with the global CheckUser and Oversight policies."[1]
Links:
1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_commission
2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:GlobalUsers/ombudsman
Thanks,
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
Hi Alice,
I'm sorry I didn't reply to your question sooner. We retain the
contract information so we can reach out if we have more clarifying
questions. The survey didn't properly indicate this, but those fields are
optional. You can submit a nomination without filling out those fields, but
we may be unable to follow up.
Yours,
Chris Koerner (he/him)
Community Relations Specialist
Wikimedia Foundation
Dear Wikimedians,
This is an update on the Wikimedia Clinics[1] pilot:
On June 15th we hosted the first Wikimedia Clinic call. It was well
attended (~25 volunteers, not counting WMF staff), with a good mix of
experience levels and countries of origin. As promised, we publish a
*digest* of the call[1], edited for clarity and brevity, and aiming for
maximal value to readers whether or not they attended the call, with links
and information added after the call to complement the information given
during it.
To accommodate different time zones, we are about to host the second
Wikimedia Clinic in a few hours, June 17th at 8:00am UTC. The meeting link
is [3].
We have also added three more Wikimedia Clinic time slots, which you can
always see in the Clinics page on Meta[1], where the meeting links are
given too. I also paste the times here for your convenience:
Wednesday, June 17th, 08:00am UTC (today, soon!)
Tuesday, June 23rd, 08:00am UTC
Sunday, June 28th, 17:30 UTC
Wednesday, July 1st, 17:30 UTC
We at the Community Development team are already finding this a useful
model, and have already drawn some valuable feedback that will translate
into future work from us. One example is a *movement-facing* Introduction
to the Wikimedia Foundation module (see the digest[2]).
Cheers,
A.
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Clinics
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Clinics/001
[3] https://meet.google.com/iex-jebd-due
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/A chairdeWe are very excited to announce that registration
<https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/celtic-knot-wikimedia-language-conference-20…>
and the schedule
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Knot_Conference_2020> are now live
for the Celtic Knot Conference 2020, taking place remotely on 9-10 July
with satellite events throughout the week of 6-12 July.The Celtic Knot
Wikimedia Language Conference aims to bring people together to share their
experiences of working on sharing information in minority languages. We aim
to help people learn how to direct the flow of information across language
barriers and support their communities. As in previous years we will have a
strong focus on Wikidata and its potential to support languages. This year,
it’s hosted by Wikimedia Community Ireland in collaboration with Wikimedia
UK. The conference will be a mixture of live streamed and pre-recorded
content also available to allow for participation and engagement across
time zones. We will have space for social activities, so that we can
connect and hopefully learn a little about Irish culture. There is also the
chance for anyone to host a satellite event
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Knot_Conference_2020/Satellite_events>
during the week of the conference to showcase projects, campaigns or other
work being done that is relevant to the conference themes.We look forward
to seeing you all in July!From the organization team,Wikimedia UK (Daria
Cybulska, Director of Programmes)Wikimedia Community Ireland (Rebecca
O’Neill, Project Coordinator)*
--
PhD in Digital Media
Project Coordinator Wikimedia Community Ireland <http://wikimedia.ie>
She/Her
Hi all,
The next Research Showcase will be live-streamed on Wednesday, June 17, at
9:30 AM PDT/16:30 UTC.
In the era of 'information explosion,' we strive to stay informed and
relevant often too quickly, and hence run into the peril of consuming false
or distorted facts. This month, our invited speakers will help us
understand these dynamics, especially in the context of Wikipedia's content
and readership. First, Connie will talk about an initiative she's been
leading to source and rank credible information from the news, and its
overlap with Wikipedia. In the second talk, Tiziano will present his recent
work on quantifying and understanding how the readers of Wikipedia interact
with an article's citations to verify specific claims.
YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS9Jc3IFhVQ
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
This month's presentations:
Today’s News, Tomorrow’s Reference, and The Problem of Information
Reliability - An Introduction to NewsQ
By: Connie Moon Sehat, NewsQ, Hacks/Hackers
The effort to make Wikipedia more reliable is related to the larger
challenges facing the information ecosystem overall. These challenges
include the discovery of and accessibility to reliable news amid the
transformation of news distribution through platform and social media
products. Connie will present some of the challenges related to the ranking
and recommendation of news that are addressed by the NewsQ Initiative, a
collaboration between the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism
at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and Hacks/Hackers. In
addition, she’ll share some of the ways that the project intersects with
Wikipedia, such as supporting research around the US Perennial Sources list
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources
).
Related resources
-
NewsQ Initiative site (https://newsq.net/)
-
DUE JUNE 15 (Please apply if interested!): Social Science Research
Council Call for Papers, “News Quality in the Platform Era”
https://www.ssrc.org/programs/component/media-democracy/news-quality-in-the…
-
M. Bhuiyan, A. Zhang, C. Sehat, T. Mitra, 2020. Investigating "Who" in
the Crowdsourcing of News Credibility, C+J 2020 (
https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/express.northeastern.edu/dist/d/53/files/2020…
)
Quantifying Engagement with Citations on Wikipedia
By: Tiziano Piccardi, EPFL
Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, is one of the
most visited sites on the Web and a common source of information for many
users. As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is not a source of original
information, but was conceived as a gateway to secondary sources: according
to Wikipedia's guidelines, facts must be backed up by reliable sources that
reflect the full spectrum of views on the topic. Although citations lie at
the very heart of Wikipedia, little is known about how users interact with
them. To close this gap, we built client-side instrumentation for logging
all interactions with links leading from English Wikipedia articles to
cited references for one month and conducted the first analysis of readers'
interaction with citations on Wikipedia. We find that overall engagement
with citations is low: about one in 300 page views results in a reference
click (0.29% overall; 0.56% on desktop; 0.13% on mobile). Matched
observational studies of the factors associated with reference clicking
reveal that clicks occur more frequently on shorter pages and on pages of
lower quality, suggesting that references are consulted more commonly when
Wikipedia itself does not contain the information sought by the user.
Moreover, we observe that recent content, open access sources, and
references about life events (births, deaths, marriages, etc) are
particularly popular. Taken together, our findings open the door to a
deeper understanding of Wikipedia's role in a global information economy
where reliability is ever less certain, and source attribution ever more
vital.
Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.08614
--
Janna Layton (she, her)
Administrative Assistant - Product & Technology
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Dear Wikimedia-l subscribers.
I write to you in my volunteer capacity of list-admin, to inform you that
the entire Wikimedia-l mailing list is now under moderation, meaning all
posts will have to be manually reviewed and approved by one of the admins.
Here's why:
Comments on the thread titled (and seeking to remove) "Promotion of
scientific racism in Wikipedia articles" have upset a large number of
people, quite a few of whom wrote to the list-admins requesting that the
thread be shut down.
Reviewing the thread, we see some comments that AT BEST (assuming good
faith) are ignorant, insensitive, and tone-deaf, especially in the current
moment. As always when ASSUMING good faith, the assumption may not be
correct, and some of the comments may be deliberate trolling, i.e.
calculated to upset people.
Be that as it may, people are indeed upset, and the prospects of
constructive conversation about Fae's original topic -- which was
essentially an instance of a well-known systemic problem of Wikipedia, viz.
its susceptibility to relying on outdated or debunked sources, and the
difficulty to dislodge some such sources -- seem very poor.
Shutting down a single thread is not technically possible on a plain
mailing list, so we have moderated the entire list as a stopgap measure.
Our goal is to restore unmoderated list access AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.
Toward that end, we ask the following:
============================
1. Make no more responses AT ALL on that thread started by Fae.
2. Recognize that the list is for coordination and discussion of matters
related to our work as Wikimedians in service of the Wikimedia mission. It
is *not* the appropriate venue to debate content issues, including the
concept of "race", various racial theories, etc.
3. If you would like to pursue work around this systemic issue, I encourage
you to create an on-wiki task force or WikiProject, where you would be able
to clarify methodological questions and plan the on-wiki work. If you
start such a project, announcing it publicly on this list to let people
know it exists would be permitted.
4. Recognize that whether or not you are personally feeling anything
special is going on, *a lot* of people around the world are undergoing a
trying time right now -- over and beyond the already-trying pandemic
conditions -- specifically involving the diverse phenomena of racism and
bigotry. People experience it in many different ways, but quite a few are
hurting, quite a few are raging, quite a few are frustrated and upset, etc.
Whatever your opinions about these complex and charged issues, it would be
an act of empathetic kindness and collegiality to your fellow Wikimedians
who *are* experiencing an exceptionally trying time if you *avoid* choosing
this time to air out those opinions.
============================
We shall do our best to monitor the moderation queue at closer intervals,
to support regular list activity on all other topics. People who would not
heed our requests above will remain on moderation after the entire list is
unmoderated. (We will announce when that happens.)
Your list moderators.
--
Asaf Bartov <asaf.bartov(a)gmail.com>
It is remarkably easy to find various language Wikipedia articles that
actively promote scientific racism. The forthcoming WMF universal code
of conduct is unlikely to directly address this type of damaging
anti-educational content, or require projects to take action.
This may surprise some, but here are two examples, and if you follow
the multiple language links in each, you will find many other language
examples:
[1] Wikipedia article in Russian about "Negroid race" (Негроидная
раса) and associates Negroid as being defined by genetics. Nowhere in
the article is it explained that these are debunked racist theories.
[2] Wikipedia article in Italian about "Mongoloid" (Mongoloide),
defines being Mongoloid by physical characteristics and presents it as
a scientific term with a section explaining how the Mogoloid race is
geographically spread.
Unfortunately, as these outdated racist theories are Wikipedia
articles, Wikimedia Commons still hosts multiple *user created*
"racial maps" of the human race as if this were a current scientific
race taxonomy for humans. These maps are not even required to have
warnings that their content is scientific racism or why that's a bad
thing.[3]
At the current time, nobody is solving this problem with systemic
racism and I am unaware of the WMF funding a project that will take
action to fix it, nor even tracking this repugnant material. The idea
that we might still be vaguely talking about how bad it is that
Wikipedia is being used to promote "Negroid race" as science in
several years time, without any systematic action to get rid of it or
at least correctly reformat the article to describe it as debunked,
should alarm everyone concerned that donor's money is supporting this
content.
Links
1. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B5%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0…
2. https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongoloide
3. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Average_E…
Thanks,
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
Dear Wikimedians,
In these complex times of pandemic, and the coming complex times of
post-pandemic, live human contact with fellow Wikimedians, even mediated
through a video call, can be helpful, relaxing, and fun. It can also offer
opportunities to ask questions you have been meaning to ask but never got
around to, or to explain complex situations that may be hard to articulate
in writing.
To better support members of the community during this time, the Community
Development team at the Wikimedia Foundation is interested in trying an
experiment: scheduling open video calls (using Google Meet) where any
active Wikimedian would be welcome to attend and ask questions or ask for
advice about whatever Wikimedia-related goal or problem they're working on.
You can also just share what you're working on and invite feedback, even if
you don't have a specific question. Or people can just connect to hang out,
or to offer their own experience to the people asking questions.
We are thinking of calling these calls Wikimedia Clinics, and would host
them once a week (in alternating time zones, to accommodate as many people
as possible).
Each clinic session:
* would be 70-120 minutes in length depending on topics presented and
volume of conversation
* would have at least two Wikimedia Foundation staff members guaranteed to
be present. They are not guaranteed to have the answers you need, but they
are committed to helping you get them, even if not during the call itself,
but as later follow-up.
* would be summarized in an in-depth *digest* of the call that would be
edited for clarity and available to all volunteers interested. These notes
would link to any tools and resources mentioned on the call and will be
shared on this mailing list and archived on Meta[0].
These calls are *not* replacing any existing channels or
regularly-scheduled calls! Every channel or call you are already using
continues to exist. No important announcements will be made on these
calls, and no one should feel stressed or obligated to attend them.
Rather, they are a new form of live-communication open support calls, less
narrow in focus than some of the existing channels (where only specific
topics are expected), and, we hope, more approachable and welcoming for
people not sure whether their question or dilemma is appropriate for one of
the other channels.
If these calls are found useful, we'll try to offer them in some other
languages, to increase access to those not comfortable speaking English.
So, let's give this a try! The first two calls are scheduled for:
Monday, June 15th, 17:30 (5:30pm) UTC, and this is the Google Meet link[1].
Link to a WorldTimeBuddy event for timezone convenience[2].
and
Wednesday, June 17th, 08:00am UTC, and this is the Google Meet link[3].
Link to a WorldTimeBuddy event for timezone convenience[4].
Remember, there's no set agenda and no particular preparation needed. Feel
free to join us with anything Wikimedia-related that's on your mind, or
just to hang out.
Feedback and questions welcome.
Cheers,
Asaf
[0] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Clinics
[1] https://meet.google.com/kha-nghc-mky
[2]
https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/event?lid=100&h=100&sts=26536320&sln=17.5-19…
[3] https://meet.google.com/iex-jebd-due
[4]
https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/event?lid=100&h=100&sts=26539200&sln=8-10&a=…
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
Hi everyone!
I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
[1] Para-Wikimedians Community User Group [2] as a Wikimedia User Group.
The group aims to facilitate, inform, support, and advocate for Wikimedians
with special needs (Special Needs communities) globally, to provide a more
diverse and inclusive environment.
Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!
Regards,
Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight
Chair, Affiliations Committee
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Recognit…
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Para-Wikimedians_Community_User_Group
Respectfully,
Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight (she/her)
Chair, Affiliations Committee
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