Subject line: Affiliations Committee 2020 Mid-Term Election results
Dear everyone,
We are happy to share that Başak Tosun, Bunty Avieson, Jeffery Keefer,
Ravan Al-Taie, and Suyash Dwivedi are new members who have been appointed
to the Affiliations Committee, while Camelia Boban has been re-appointed.
Here are Başak Tosun, Bunty Avieson, Jeffery Keefer, Ravan Al-Taie, and
Suyash Dwivedi, in their own words:
1.
Başak Tosun:
I have been a contributor to Wikimedia projects since 2005. I mainly
contribute to Turkish Wikipedia. For a long time, I was only an online
contributor; I discovered that contributions to free knowledge could go
beyond editing after I joined an international WikiCamp in 2015. Then I
contacted fellow wikipedians to form a user group in Turkey and became one
of the founder members of Wikimedia Community User Group Turkey. I took the
responsibility of Wikipedia Education Programs in the group and organised
Education Programs in several courses at 8 different universities.
Additionally, I take part in organising edit-a-thons, partnership search,
organising local contests.
1.
Bunty Avieson:
I am a media academic at University of Sydney and a member of Wikimedia
Australia. I learned to edit at an Art & Feminism event in March 2017 and
immediately followed up with an online course. I have since hosted
edit-a-thons in Sydney and Bhutan, but my interest goes beyond editing to
the larger goals of the Wikimedia movement, particularly around knowledge
equity and diversity. I’m currently leading two research projects to build
smaller language Wikipedias. One is a collaboration with Tata Institute of
Social Sciences in Mumbai to train two groups of retired Tamils, in both
Sydney and Mumbai, to edit Tamil Wikipedia. The other is a three-year
project funded by the Australian Research Council, to train Bhutanese to
publish on both English Wikipedia and also develop their Dzongkha site. I'm
an active member of Women Write Wiki and Women In Red.
1.
Jeffery Keefer:
I serve as a Wikimedian in Residence for the Patient-Centered Outcomes
Research Institute (PCORI). I started editing Wikipedia three years ago
while attending an open education conference in London where I went to a
workshop and was challenged to learn to try editing Wikipedia. Between then
and now Wikimedia has become my online home, where I edit and teach
students how to use our Wikimedia projects, am active across all three
types of Affiliates, and was one of the writers of the Movement Strategy
Recommendations. I have a PhD in educational research. I am or have been
involved in a number of Wikipedia + Wikimedia projects across the Movement:
Wikimedia Movement Strategy: Integrator, Writer, and Co-Coordinator of the
Capacity Building Working Group; Election Facilitator for the
Affiliate-Selected Board Seats (ASBS) election, 2019; Member of the Board,
Wikimedia New York City; Member, Project Grants Committee; AffCom Reporting
Representative, LGBT+ User Group; Member, Editorial Board of the
WikiJournal of Humanities; Member, Wikimedians in Residence Exchange
Network; Member, Wiki Project Med Foundation Member; WikiConference
North America User Group.
1.
Ravan Al-Taie:
I am Ravan Al-Taie. I'm the founder of Iraqi Wikimedians User Group. I
am an engineer, working as a professional in the Oil industry. I started
editing Wikipedia in 2008, edited Arabic wikipedia and became an admin in
2013 for more than 6 years. In 2015, My mother language is Arabic, but I
speak Kurdish language fluently as well, that's why I helped in Kurdish
Wikipedia and currently helping other colleagues to correctly start Kurdish
Wikipidian user group as per the foundation process because I strongly
believe the more diverse we are the best to be in representing the global
knowledge heritage. I've led several offline activities such as organizing
WLM for 3 years in Iraq, as well as starting the first editathon and
learning workshop in all Iraq with great success. After that, I've focused
on bringing more women to the movement in order to decrease the big gender
gap that we have in Arabic Wikipedia.
1.
Suyash Dwivedi:
I have done my graduation in Electronics Engineering and have been a
Wikimedian since 2013. Mostly I edit on Commons, Hindi, English, Wikidata,
GLAM, Wikivoyage and sometimes on other Wikipedia projects. I have
organized many outreach activities, including conferences and edit-a-thons.
I am the founder member of Hindi Wikimedians User Group. Apart from Hindi,
I also contribute to English Sanskrit, Marathi, and Punjabi language
Wikimedia projects. I was the Lead Organizer of Wiki Loves Monuments 2017
in India, hosted Wikimedia 2030 Movement Strategy Salon in Bhopal,
organized Wikipedia Asian Month for Hindi and Sanskrit languages in
2016-2017-2018 and 2019 (for Sanskrit). I have also worked on a short term
contract with the Trust and Safety team as ‘Universal Code of Conduct
Facilitator’. Currently, I am working on the Internet in a Box (IIAB)
hardware to make this device easy to install and control in public places.
I also contribute to various other projects like-Creative Commons, ‘Common
Voice’ by Mozilla. Raspberry Pi Foundation (JAM organizer), OSM, OpenCon,
and Internet Archive. I am volunteering in various UN Environment Programme
and campaigns, Google Local Guides (Level 9) and a member of the National
Ataxia Foundation.
Please join me in welcoming the newly-appointed members of AffCom.
Respectfully,
Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight (she/her)
Chair, Affiliations Committee
Doc James raised the issue of pragmatism v idealism and that essay is
indeed rather focussed on the idealistic arguments against NC.
EmuFarmers has touched on the pragmatic side of the debate, and I think it
worth reminding ourselves about that dimension as well. So here are some
pragmatic arguments against us hosting NC content:
1 For some users NC content and the ambiguity about it is a commercial
opportunity. There is minimal cost to distributing emails threatening
takedown notices and other legal sanction, and for many small resusers the
cost of checking their case with a lawyer is less than the cost of paying
to use what they thought was free to use and maybe writing a letter of
complaint to the media library that let them down. Few of our volunteers
are going to be keen to volunteer to handle such complaints, whether or not
the use was clearly NC, clearly commercial or down right ambiguous.
2 We have been hosting openly licensed material for nearly two decades and
we now have a lot of it. If we now change to allowing NC on Commons, some
of our contributors, institutional or individual, will want to shift their
material from an open licence to NC. Whether or not we allow this, the
disruption and complications are not something that the Commons volunteer
community is geared up to handle.
3 Ideally when we choose an image to illustrate a Wikipedia article we are
choosing the best image available to us on Commons. OK there are people
whose ego gets in the way and prefer to use the images they have taken, and
occasionally there are other arguments, but it is rare for anyone to have a
commercial incentive to choose one image over another. Once you allow NC
imagery you make Wikipedia a shop window for content from image libraries
and others who are prepared to forego the genuinely non commercial uses,
and the uses in parts of the world where copyright is hard to enforce, in
return for revenue from the unwary in parts of the world where they can
charge for any use they can argue is "commercial". Wikipedia has enough on
its hands combatting spammers and reputation managers who want our content
to promote their business, Opening up a whole new front in that conflict,
against a group of editors "upgrading" images to ones they strongly assert
are "better quality" without necessarily disclosing their conflict of
interest re those images is not something that the Wikipedia volunteer
community is geared up to handle.
Those are three pragmatic reasons why it would be a mistake for us to allow
NC images on Commons and the English Wikipedia. This is one of those areas
where pragmatism and idealism both push us in the same direction.
Regards
WereSpielChequers
>
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2020 18:31:54 -0600
> From: James Heilman <jmh649(a)gmail.com>
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses
> Message-ID:
> <CAF1en7UHgi=
> Zv8XsA4KFknGpBWrTyMaPCMPkcg1B69m0XdPTig(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>
> Yes one of the stronger reasons to reject all use of the NC license is that
> it increases incentives for other organizations to actually adopt open
> licenses. I simply wish that such a position would convince more
> organizations. WHO has repeatedly told me that we, as a non-profit, are
> already free to use their work and if we chose not to, that is on us.
>
> James
>
> On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 6:19 PM Erik Moeller <eloquence(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi James :)
> >
> > (This is my last reply for today, given the recommended posting limit
> > on this list.)
> >
> > > We all agree that NC licenses are exceedingly poor due to the reasons
> > > listed, yet we leave a lot of useful content (such as Khan academy
> > videos)
> > > less accessible to our readers because we disallow any such use.
> >
> > I completely agree. I'm wondering if efforts have been made at the WMF
> > or chapter level to partner with these organizations on new
> > initiatives, where a more permissive license could be used? This could
> > perhaps help to introduce CC-BY-SA/CC-BY to orgs like Khan Academy,
> > and help lay the groundwork for potentially changing their default
> > license.
> >
> > > This is a balance between pragmatism and idealism.
> >
> > I disagree with your framing here. There are many pragmatic reasons to
> > want to build a knowledge commons with uniform expectations for how it
> > can be built upon and re-used. It's also pragmatic to be careful about
> > altering the incentive structure for contributors. Right now,
> > Wikimedia Commons hosts millions of contributions under permissive
> > licenses. How many of those folks would have chosen an "exceedingly
> > poor" (your words) option like NC, if that was available? And if a
> > nonfree carve-out is limited to organizations like Khan Academy, how
> > is such a carve-out fair and equitable to contributors who have, in
> > some cases, given up potential commercial revenue to contribute to
> > Wikimedia projects?
> >
> > If a license is "exceedingly poor" and harmful to the goals of the
> > free culture movement, incorporating more information under such terms
> > strikes me as neither idealistic nor pragmatic -- it would just be
> > short-sighted.
> >
> > Warmly,
> > Erik
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
>
>
>
> --
> James Heilman
> MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
>
>
>
Hi everyone,
I’m excited to share an update from Movement Strategy. It’s been two months
since the final recommendations were shared [1] and we remain indebted to
numerous individuals from across our movement that brought us to this
milestone. We have 10 recommendations and 10 principles to work with and
collaboratively create the future that we want for our movement. This
necessitates building on our strengths and creating cultural and structural
changes where needed.
The recommendations and principles as well as blogs and other supporting
materials have been prepared in text, audio, and video formats and in a
variety of languages so they can be accessible for many. [2] Familiarize
yourself with them at your own time, if you haven’t already.
The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a series of virtual events from
September to November where, as a movement, we will transition to
implementing the recommendations. Organizing online events at such a scale
requires a lot of thinking and consideration. How to make sure everyone
interested can participate? How to provide language, technical, and
facilitation support to overcome participation barriers? How to allocate
resources and nurture commitments for implementation? For this, we have
convened a collaborative Design Group [3] that over the next two months
will create a plan for the transition events. We have also assembled a
small team to support this work. [4]
Design discussions are underway and will be open and shared on-wiki for
concurrent input. [5] There will also be a more dedicated feedback sprint
planned for the initial draft in early August. This way we can prepare for
transition events that are inclusive and transparent for deciding what
ideas from the recommendations will be implemented when, in what order, by
whom, and with what resource and support structures. [6] All interested
individuals are encouraged to participate in the design discussions as
reviewers and later in the actual transition events that will shape
implementation. Watch our page as we continue to share materials and
updates.
Many of the ideas in the recommendations stem from longstanding discussions
in the movement that predate movement strategy. It has been one of the
purposes of the process to provide a clear and public platform for these
conversations. These ideas include better coordination mechanisms for
individuals and affiliates, organizational structures for a more equitable
movement, enhanced skill building, movement-wide generation and allocation
of resources, researching our impact in the world, and evaluating ourselves
and our work. Advancing these complex and essential topics needs learning
and experimentation. As examples, the Universal Code of Conduct [7] and
OKAPI [8] [9], which are also part of the recommendations and under the
umbrella of our Strategic Direction, are progressing with movement
consultations. We can learn from these discussions and integrate lessons
learned in the planning for the implementation of other initiatives in the
recommendations during the transition.
In short, a summary from the first Design Group discussion has been
uploaded. [5] and we look forward to a fruitful design period ahead and
lively implementation discussions starting in September.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts in our meta space or at the
virtual events later this year!
On behalf of the Support Team,
Kaarel
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recomme…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recomme…
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transit…
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transit…
[5]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Tr…
[6]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transit…
[7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
[8] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OKAPI
[9] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/OKAPI
--
Kaarel Vaidla (he/him)
Movement Strategy <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/2030>
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
World War II… 75 Years After
Soon, will be 75 years since the end of the deadliest episodes in human
history. Over 60 countries took part in the 6-years long military
conflict. World War II took over 50.000.000 lives, and more 35.000.000 was
wounded. Many of them lost their lives after the war. Hundreds of battles
were fought on dozens of fronts. Thousands of buildings were demolished and
hundreds of new ones built. Despite that, life was renewed and continued
after this catastrophe of global proportions. New ideas, new movements, -
new history were born.
Events from the past have largely defined our present and left us the
obligation to document and preserve them for the future.
So, we invite you to use the month of September for marking the 75th
anniversary of the end of the Second World War with a series of
Edit-a-Thones and competitions dedicated to this topic.
Also, actions and cooperation with GLAM institutions, that are treasures of
information and materials, are welcome. Please note that if you fund such
actions with WMF grants, you must follow the instructions about COVID-19
pandemic.
All informations about project you can find on Meta
(https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/World
War II… 75 Years After
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/World_War_II%E2%80%A6_75_Years_After>).
Looking forward to work with all of you!
Best regards,
Bojana Podgorica, Wikimedia Community of Republika Srpska
*„**Замислите свијет у коме **свака особа на планети има **слободан приступ
цјелокупном људском знању.* *То је *
*оно на чему ми радимо.“*
World War II… 75 Years After
Soon, will be 75 years since the end of the deadliest episodes in human
history. Over 60 countries took part in the 6-years long military
conflict. Word War II took over 50.000.000 lives, and more 35.000.000 was
wounded. Many of them lost their lives after the war. Hundreds of battles
were fought on dozens of fronts. Thousands of buildings were demolished and
hundreds of new ones built. Despite that, life was renewed and continued
after this catastrophe of global proportions. New ideas, new movements, -
new history were born.
Events from the past have largely defined our present and left us the
obligation to document and preserve them for the future.
So, we invite you to use the month of September for marking the 75th
anniversary of the end of the Second World War with a series of
Edit-a-Thones and competitions dedicated to this topic.
Also, actions and cooperation with GLAM institutions, that are treasures of
information and materials, are welcome. Please note that if you fund such
actions with WMF grants, you must follow the instructions about COVID-19
pandemic.
All information about project you can find on Meta
(https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/World
War II… 75 Years After
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/World_War_II%E2%80%A6_75_Years_After>).
Looking forward to work with all of you!
Best regards,
Bojana Podgorica, Wikimedia Community of Republika Srpska
*„**Замислите свијет у коме **свака особа на планети има **слободан приступ
цјелокупном људском знању.* *То је *
*оно на чему ми радимо.“*
Dear all,
Last Sunday, Wikimedia Portugal held an online only General Assembly where
we approved last year's activity and financial report (in Portuguese:
https://pt.wikimedia.org/wiki/Relat%C3%B3rios/Anual/2019; English
translation will follow). We usually have a physical location where
participants meet, and others can join through video-conference, but due to
restrictions of public gatherings issued by the health authorities and the
health risks involved we held a fully online General Assembly.
We also held our biennial election, which elects our governing bodies:
Board of directors, General Assembly Table and Audit Commision. The only
change from the previous composition is that Miguel Correia
(user:Miguelmcorreia) was elected as secretary of the General Assembly
Table. Miguel is a librarian previously at the National Library of
Portugal, and more recently at the NOVA Business School library, and has
been a Wikimedian since 2013, and has recently been involved, together with
Catarina Reis, in getting bibliographic information from NOVA researchers
into Wikidata (https://scholia.toolforge.org/organization/Q1979891). He is
also the main organizer of our upcoming WikiData Days Conference to be held
in Lisbon in 2021 (https://wikidatadays.wikimedia.pt/).
Our newly elected governing bodies are listed here: (
https://pt.wikimedia.org/wiki/%C3%93rg%C3%A3os_sociais)
Best regards,
Gonçalo Themudo
*Presid**ente*
*Wikimedia Portugal*
*Email: *go <goncalo.themudo(a)wikimedia.pt>ncalo.themudo(a)wikimedia.pt
<goncalo.themudo(a)wikimedia.pt>
*Website: *http://pt.wikimedia.org <https://sites.google.com/view/themudo>
*Imagine um mundo onde cada ser humano pode partilhar livremente a soma de
todo o conhecimento, na sua própria língua.*
Most likely since tickets can be discussed in detail on the wiki amongst agents, and therefore a protective silence on the entire wiki has been put in place.
For the other questions (such as how to remove another user as an agent), OTRS admins are not really admins as in the normal wiki-way, but more like "rulers of OTRS". Their word is law (kinda). So, to change any of this, they (or WMF staffers) would need to do it.
--
Jonatan
Wikimedians of Colorado is proud to announce we've published our report
for the past year. See it here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Colorado_User_Group/Annual_R…
I'd make a joke about it being the world's shortest report, but I'm sure
we'll really outdo ourselves with the next one, the way this year is
going, and probably have a fair bit of competition from some of the
other regional groups as well. Nothing wrong with that, though. Lots of
other ways for folks to keep involved in the meantime!
Thanks, y'all.
-Isarra
Hello. I have bad news, the kind of news we never want to have. Our
friend and colleage Elena Sanz (user ElsaBornFree) passed away last
night.
Elena Sanz was a strong, intelligent and brilliant woman. She joined
Wikimedia movement in 2014 and after two years she because secretary of
Wikimedia España, possition she had till now.
Many of you met her in many conferences and events, such as Wikimedia
Conferences, Wikimanias or Iberoconfs, but also meeting for advocacy in
the EU, the Wikipedia+education conference in Donostia, next to her home
town. A very active person, this has been a huge shock for all of us.
If you want to leave your condolences, you can write in a page created
for that on Spanish Wikipedia.[1] We wrote also a blog post dedicated to
her memory.[2]
As a president of Wikimedia España and a friend of her, I want to
express our condolences on behalf of Wikimedia España to his family and
friends. We will always remember her.
[1]
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedistas_fallecidos/ElsaBornFree
[2] https://www.wikimedia.es/2020/07/06/hasta-siempre-elena/
--
Santiago Navarro Sanz
Presidente
Wikimedia España
www.wikimedia.es