Hello, all.
Yesterday some questions were raised in this channel about Trust & Safety’s
response to an issue of harassment reported via our emergency email
address. The director of that team reports to me, as I am the Vice
President of Community Resilience & Sustainability, so I wanted to speak to
that, to clarify our approaches in the hopes of avoiding unnecessary
confusion and distress to individuals in the future. I also wanted to give
you an update on the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) drafting committee. :)
Apologies in advance for the length of this!
Let’s start with the UCoC.[1] As a brief recap, there is a drafting
committee working on a global policy that will set basic minimum standards
for conduct in the Wikimedia movement. The committee is making good
progress, but time challenges in part around the current global health
crisis has led them to ask for two more weeks to prepare this draft for the
month-long community review period on Meta. This means we will be asking
for community comment from September 7 to October 6, which will push the
delivery of the policy to the Board from September 30 to October 13. The
full timeline is on the main Meta page.
In terms of the Foundation’s Trust & Safety team and how and when to reach
out to them, Trust & Safety’s team handles several key workflows with
different addresses according to urgency.[2]
Our emergency@ channel is set up to deal with threats of physical harm -
ranging from terrorism to suicide - which the team triages and escalates as
appropriate to law enforcement and other emergency services for them to
handle. (“As appropriate” is under an escalation protocol defined for the
Foundation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who helped build this
multinational crisis line.) The team’s sole role here is to act as a
switchboard putting these threats into the hands of professionals trained
to handle them, around the world. This channel is staffed 24 hours a day, 7
days a week, and the team has strong direction not to handle other matters
through this channel. In order for it to function effectively, it deals
with nothing else. (See the Meta page on this process - [3].) Other
matters, including behavioral investigation requests, should be sent to
Trust & Safety via the email address ca(a)wikimedia.org.
I’d like to acknowledge that it is not unusual for the Trust & Safety team
to encounter problems caused by lack of clarity as to what constitutes
harassment and what to do about it when it is encountered. There are
differences in how different projects define and handle issues, including
how many resources they have to dedicate to investigating and responding to
these and where and when concerns should be raised. This is one of the
reasons that the Movement Strategy working groups recommended the Universal
Code of Conduct to begin with, with clear escalation mechanisms. We are
working with communities on this, with an expectation that over the next
few months international conversations will help everyone better understand
what behavior is acceptable in the movement and better navigate and choose
where to report their concerns to find effective help.
How the Foundation will support communities in these governance issues is
important, with an essential balance of giving targets of harassment the
care they need while also respecting that communities are better positioned
to self-govern. Our role is and should remain to assist with issues that
are beyond the capacity of communities to handle. Our goal should be to
empower communities to handle as much as they can.
The Trust & Safety team has a small division of people who review
behavioral investigation requests they receive. Their first task is to
assess whether the issue is for some reason not solvable through community
self-governance mechanisms. This is most often because the situation
crosses a threshold of legal responsibility, but sometimes because it falls
into an area where community self-governance processes are lacking:
sometimes this is cross-wiki abuse; other times this is because the
projects where the issues are happening lack robust self-governance;
sometimes this is because the situations reported may involve the
individuals usually tasked with self-governance. If they determine a case
does not require Foundation involvement but is instead better suited for
self-governance, they will direct the individual to local processes. We
have committed not to intervene in cases that community self-governance can
reasonably handle. Sometimes even when a case does rise to the level of
Foundation involvement, they will advise the person who reached out of
appropriate community self-governance processes as a more rapid solution
while they complete their investigation, including the essential legal
review, before they are able to take sanctions. This is important because
those investigations and legal reviews are generally not quick. It’s not
uncommon for the Foundation to issue sanctions against a person who has
been locally blocked, and we regard this as a healthy functioning of the
system, at least until the Universal Code of Conduct can be created to
potentially streamline the process.
I would like to encourage people to take part in the Universal Code of
Conduct conversations as they happen. The distress conflict causes people
in our movement is real. Helping to find the best way to minimize this
distress and to guide conflict in healthy directions will serve us all.
Best regards,
Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Trust_and_Safety
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Threats_of_harm
--
Maggie Dennis
Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Dear fellow Wikimedians,
A quick reminder that in a little over three hours, at 19:00 UTC, we have
Wikimedia Clinic #009, featuring Denny Vrandečić presenting about Abstract
Wikipedia.
It's a great opportunity to find out what this exciting new project is all
about, if you haven't yet.
The meeting will be hosted on free-software Jitsi-based Wikimedia Meet, at
https://meet.wmcloud.org/WikimediaClinic009
Note you'll need to install the Jitsi app if you're on a mobile device.
See you there!
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
Dear all,
I have the great pleasure to announce two new grant programs for projects
that support the goals of WikiCite: the promotion open citations and linked
bibliographic data to serve free knowledge.
The steering committee is now accepting applications for the following two
types of grants. For both types the application deadline is 1 October 2020,
and all projects must be completed by 1 May 2021.
--- Project & Event grants ---
Grants between $2,000 and $10,000 (USD equivalent) are available to
individuals, groups, and organisations with a project that supports the
goals of Wikicite.
All the details, the eligibility criteria (especially for in-person
events[1]), and the application form are available on the WikiCite project
& event grants homepage:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCite/grants
Individuals, groups, and organizations may apply, and projects may be of
any nature. This includes technical (e.g. software, tools), event (online,
or in-person), resources (training materials, documentation), or other
forms not mentioned – as long as it supports the goals of WikiCite.
--- e-Scholarships ---
The e-scholarship program is a new kind of grant in Wikimedia, created in
response to an era of COVID-19 quarantines, and the 2030 Movement strategy
goals.
An e-scholarship provides a per-diem equivalent allowance for 1-5 people to
stay at their home(s) and work for 2-4 days on a project supporting the
mission of WikiCite. e-scholarship recipients' projects can be the kinds of
things they might have previously undertaken with a scholarship for an
in-person hackathon, unconference, or research trip, for example.
All the details, eligibility criteria, program design principles, and the
application form are available on the WikiCite e-scholarships homepage:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCite/e-scholarship
Funding will:
- be provided in advance;
- be calculated at the WMF per-diem rate for the city where the
e-scholarship recipient lives;
- and (as it is a living allowance) not require recipients to submit
expense reports.
"Remote group" applications are encouraged, as are projects which focus on
content or communities which are historically underrepresented in Wikimedia
projects. Building a bot, fixing a tool, wrangling a dataset, writing
complete documentation... all are valid e-scholarship projects. A
confirmation letter (in advance) and/or participation certificate
(afterwards) can also be provided.
Liam Wyatt [Wittylama]
--
Program Manager for WikiCite <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCite>
Wikimedia Foundation
- WikiCite is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Wikimedia
Foundation -
[1] Applications for in-person events are eligible. The WMF will release a
risk assessment calculator for in-person events and a checklist of
precautions in early September. This protocol will apply to all Wikimedia
Foundation supported events. Applicants may publish a draft of their
proposals now, and edit it before the submission deadline to include a copy
of the results from the risk assessment protocol once it is published.
Dear Wikimedians,
Join us for the August education office hours on 20th at 12:00 PM 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.
You can find more details and agenda of the meeting here:
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/About/Office_Hours/August_20_…
Looking forward to seeing you then, Please let me know if you have any
questions.
Do you want to reach out to the education team for a 1:1 consultation?
Request for a slot for consultation for your education work (
ttps://outreach.wikimedia.
org/wiki/Education/About/Office_Space
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/About/Office_Space> ) by
filling this google form ( http://bit.ly/EduOfficeSpace )
Dhanyabaad!
--
*Sailesh Patnaik*
Program Coordinator, Education
Dear Wikimedians,
I have posted the digest for Wikimedia Clinic #008. [1]
The topics discussed were:
* WMF Research (Presentation by Leila Zia (WMF))
* Wiki Studies
* Pitching ideas for development to WMF
* Harassment
I encourage those of you interested in any of the above topics to read the
digest. [1]
On Friday, August 21st, at 19:00 UTC[2], we will be hosting Wikimedia
Clinic #009.[3] The scheduled segment this time would be an introduction
to Abstract Wikipedia, featuring project founder Denny Vrandečić himself!
As always, beyond this scheduled segment, there will be time to bring up
any Wikimedia-related questions or topics other call attendees are
interested in.
PLEASE NOTE: experimentally, this call will take place using the free
software Jitsi-based Wikimedia Meet. Desktop/laptop computers can connect
directly via the link[3] but if you want to connect using a mobile device
(phone or tablet) you will need to download the Jitsi app[4] first and use
that to connect via the link[3].
Cheers,
A.
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Clinics/008
[2] Here is a WorldTimeBuddy link to help you figure out what that means
for your time zone.
https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/?qm=1&lid=100&h=100&date=2020-8-21&sln=19-20…
[3] https://meet.wmcloud.org/WikimediaClinic009
[4] https://jitsi.org/downloads/
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 all,
The next Research Showcase will be live-streamed on Wednesday, August 19,
at 9:30 AM PDT/16:30 UTC, and will be on the theme of readership and
navigation.
YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeUl0zjHdF8
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:
What matters to us most and why? Studying popularity and attention dynamics
via Wikipedia navigation data.
By Taha Yasseri (University College Dublin), Patrick Gildersleve (Oxford
Internet Institute)
While Wikipedia research was initially focused on editorial behaviour or
the content to a great extent, soon researchers realized the value of the
navigation data both as a reflection of readers interest and, more
generally, as a proxy for behaviour of online information seekers. In this
talk we will report on various projects in which we utilized pageview
statistics or readers navigation data to study: movies financial success
[1], electoral popularity [2], disaster triggered collective attention [3]
and collective memory [4], general navigation patterns and article typology
[5], and attention patterns in relation to news breakouts.
-
[1] Early Prediction of Movie Box Office Success Based on Wikipedia
Activity Big Data. PLoS One (2013).
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0071226
-
[2] Wikipedia traffic data and electoral prediction: towards
theoretically informed models. EPJ Data Science (2016).
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-016-0083-3
-
[3] Dynamics and biases of online attention: the case of aircraft
crashes. Royal Society Open Science (2016).
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.160460
-
[4] The memory remains: Understanding collective memory in the digital
age. Science Advances (2018). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1602368
-
[5] Inspiration, captivation, and misdirection: Emergent properties in
networks of online navigation. Springer (2018).
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:73baed3c-d3fe-4200-8e90-2d80b11f21cf
Query for Architecture, Click through Military. Comparing the Roles of
Search and Navigation on Wikipedia
By Dimitar Dimitrov (GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences)
As one of the richest sources of encyclopedic information on the Web,
Wikipedia generates an enormous amount of traffic. In this paper, we study
large-scale article access data of the English Wikipedia in order to
compare articles with respect to the two main paradigms of information
seeking, i.e., search by formulating a query, and navigation by following
hyperlinks. To this end, we propose and employ two main metrics, namely (i)
searchshare -- the relative amount of views an article received by search
--, and (ii) resistance -- the ability of an article to relay traffic to
other Wikipedia articles -- to characterize articles. We demonstrate how
articles in distinct topical categories differ substantially in terms of
these properties. For example, architecture-related articles are often
accessed through search and are simultaneously a "dead end" for traffic,
whereas historical articles about military events are mainly navigated. We
further link traffic differences to varying network, content, and editing
activity features. Lastly, we measure the impact of the article properties
by modeling access behavior on articles with a gradient boosting approach.
The results of this paper constitute a step towards understanding human
information seeking behavior on the Web.
-
Different Topic, Different Traffic: How Search and Navigation Interplay
on Wikipedia. Journal of Web Science (2019).
https://doi.org/10.34962/jws-71
--
Janna Layton (she/her)
Administrative Associate - Product & Technology
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hello folks,
As you may know from my earlier email, we launched the initiative 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-Thons and competitions dedicated
to this topic. So far we have about ten interested organizers and several
GLAM institutions who will launch the project in its form. I am very much
looking forward to working with all of you. There is still time to join and
welcome aboard.
Informations about the initiative you can see on Meta page:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/World_War_II%E2%80%A6_75_Years_After/Partic…
.
Feel free to email me if you have a question or suggestion!
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.“*
Hi all,
I’m writing to share an update on the Wikimedia Foundation’s Annual Plan
for the 2020-2021 fiscal year. Usually, by this point in the year we would
have already presented the plan to the Board for approval, and shared the
approved Annual Plan and strategic priorities for the coming year on Meta.
However, this year has been anything but normal. As Nataliia shared in the
Board minutes from April [1], the Board approved a revised timeline for
annual planning due to the pandemic.
Starting in March, our annual planning process shifted to include rigorous
scenario planning based on the potential social and financial impacts of
COVID-19. As the global economic outlook became more uncertain, we wanted
to ensure that we were in the best possible position to support our
communities and projects. While this does mean that our Annual Plan has
been delayed, the good news is that it allowed us time to collect more
information about how to secure the long term health and sustainability of
this movement even during crises.
This year’s Annual Plan continues to deliver on the Foundation’s
medium-term plan[2], our next milestone in achieving the Wikimedia 2030
Strategic Direction to become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem
of free knowledge[3]. I will be presenting our FY20-21 Annual Plan to the
Board of Trustees at their meeting in late September, and we will then post
the Board-approved Annual Plan on Meta in October to share with the
community and allow for clarifying questions.
Thank you for your patience. I look forward to sharing the final plan with
you in the coming months
Take care,
Katherine Maher
Executive Director,
Wikimedia Foundation
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_not…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-term_plan_2019
[3]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20
--
Katherine Maher (she/her)
CEO
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>