Dear friends of free knowledge and education,
On Tuesday, March 30th 2021, we will have our next Open Meeting!
Please feel welcome to join us at 4:00pm UTC.
See for your own timezone: https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1617120044
This is the link to the meeting room:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87586733540?pwd=SVp0YmZrTEtlWWxxT3Y2UjZxNnFkZz09
We will discuss the shutdown of the WMF's Outreach Wiki and other topics.
Our special guest will be Mossab Banat who will talk about content in
Arab language. He is a passionate Wikipedian, physician and Wikipedia
Education Program team leader at Hashemite University in Jordan. He is
an editor and admin at Arabic Wikipedia. He also a board member at
Wikimedia medicine and associate editor at wikijournal of Medicine. He
founded a wiki club under the name of Digital Arabic Content Club at
the same university. Currently mossab works as Teaching and Research
Assistant at the Hashemite and as representative of graduate students
at the University council.
I myself will present a plan for a discussion on ethical questions.
When we use wikis for educational goals, we have not only to follow
the rules of the wiki (or an institution we work with). We want to
make sure that no harm is done - to the wiki or to the learners or
others involved. We want to give educators and others guidelines or
recommendations on how to deal with ethical questions and how to avoid
problems.
So, we hope for a large crowd at our meeting which will last for one
hour and a half.
Kind regards,
Ziko van Dijk
secretary,
Wikipedia & Education User Group (EduWiki UG)
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_%26_Education_User_Group
Estimados y estimadas Wikimedistas,
Les escribo para invitarles a la segunda reunión regional de Wikimedia y
educación[1]. Este mes será nuestra primera reunión para Latinoamérica y
tendrá lugar el 31 de marzo 2021 a las 14:00 UTC. Esta reunión es una
oportunidad para aprender y compartir proyectos, herramientas, o ideas con
la comunidad de Wikimedia y educación de la región. Será liderada en
español por Jose Reyes, Oficial de Educación de Wikimedia México, y parte
del equipo de EWOC como especialista de comunidades de la región.
En esta reunión regional de educación para Latinoamérica contaremos con las
presentaciones de:
-
José Reyes, sobre el estado de programas de educación en México
-
Novedades desde Wikimedia Argentina
-
Y la experiencia del programa ¡Leamos Wikipedia! en Bolivia
Si tienes otros temas, ideas, o preguntas que quieras añadir a la agenda,
puedes dejarlas aquí[5] y trataremos de incluirlas durante la reunión.
¡Esperamos verles ahí!
Cordialmente,
José, equipo EWOC, Sailesh, y equipo de Educación de la Wikimedia Foundation
---
Dear Wikimedians,
I am writing this email to invite you all to the second regional education
meeting[1]. This month we are starting with our community members based in
the Latin America region[2]. You can use these regional office hours as an
opportunity to learn and share your projects, tools, or ideas with the
education community from the region.
These regional education meetings are planned by the community specialists
of the EduWiki Outreach Collaborators (EWOC)[3] and the Education team. We
are using this as an opportunity to strengthen the EduWiki network, explore
collaboration opportunities, and identify common practices or challenges
that are faced by our community members in different regions of the world.
We are launching these regional office hours as a pilot initiative to
complement our general monthly office hours[4], we encourage you to
participate, share your ideas, and help this become a fully community-led
initiative.
Our first LatAm regional education meeting will take place on 31st March
2021 at 14:00 UTC, it will be led in Spanish by José Reyes, Education
Program Manager of Wikimedia Mexico and EWOC community specialist for the
region.
At this LatAm regional education meeting, we will hear from:
-
Jose on the state of education in Mexico
-
Some updates from Wikimedia Argentina
-
And the experience of running Reading Wikipedia in the classroom program
by Wikimedistas de Bolivia.
If you have other ideas, topics, or questions you want to ask, you can add
them to the agenda here[5]. We will try to answer them during the meeting.
We are looking forward to seeing you there!
Best!
José, EWOC community specialist team, Sailesh, and Education team
[1]
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/About/Office_Hours/Regional_M…
[2]
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/About/Office_Hours/Regional_M…
[3]
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/EduWiki_Outreach_Collaborators
[4] https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/About/Office_Hours
[5]
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/About/Office_Hours/Regional_M…
--
Sailesh Patnaik (He/Him)
Program Associate, Education
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hello,
tl;dr: https://lists-next.wikimedia.org is running mailman3. Please help us
test the software before we upgrade the real mailing list server.
Kunal and I have been working on deploying the new mailman (version 3) to
replace mailman2 serving https://lists.wikimedia.org and powering all of
our mailing lists.
Mailman2 is a dinosaur that should have gone extinct years ago. Pretty old
user interface (especially for admins and moderators), storing passwords in
plain text, lack of any database (everything is file on disk), pretty old
code, lack of ability to search in archives or send email from web
interface, running on EOL python (python2), encoding issues with non-Latin
languages, hard to redact archives, and the list goes on and on.
The new version has been developed/puppetized/tested in the Cloud and is
now ready for proper testing! Give it a try:
https://lists-next.wikimedia.org. We have created some mailing lists you
can join and can test. If you want to test the experience as a list
administrator/moderator, we can give those permissions out as well.
WARNING: All data on the lists-next server will be deleted after the test
period is over.
We will also need help updating documentation on wikis and elsewhere.
If you find any bugs/issues (yay!), please file a ticket in the
“Wikimedia-Mailing-lists” Phabricator project and we’ll check it out.
In the coming days/weeks will also import some public mailing lists from
the old version to the new version to check archive size, search index
size, and other aspects. There are other TODOs left as well like
monitoring, logging, anti-abuse, etc.
Slowly and after testing (hopefully soon), we expect to deploy this on
lists.wikimedia.org and mailing lists one by one or in batches can be
upgraded to the 21st century.
The overall task tracking this project is T52864
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T52864> and a big thank you people who
are helping this move forward.
Regards,
Kunal and Amir
Hi,
I have observed that there is a global renaming policy but a global
username policy is absent? As we all know that usernames are global
following SUL, and literally the same username will be used across multiple
wikis.
So, a very simple question is raised: shall there be a draft of the global
username policies, considering usernames are now global?
Also, also due to SUL, it seems that username blacklists should be put at a
global scale, or it may just be not logical as one may just escape one
wiki's username blacklist through creating it at another project, and use
SUL to circumvent such block.
I hope for broad input, considering this may mean a broad policy change,
and what I have in my mind is just a very primary idea to install a Global
Username Policy that acts similar to the current Global Rename Policy that
is in enforcement.
P.S. I put it here before placing it on meta RFC is not to avoid
circumvention but hope to seek more input instead of just bumping a very
large policy change without any external input.
Regards,
William
User:1233
Hello!
The WMF Community Events team are proposing a short training series *for
Wikimedia community event organizers* (volunteers and affiliate staff)
where we will bring in *an expert facilitator and event producer both with
international event experience to discuss the importance of incorporating
quality facilitation into your events and how to do it.* This will likely
be a two part series of 75 - 90 minute sessions where *each session will
include training, active facilitation practice and modeling, and some
discussion around how this fits specifically into the Wikimedia context and
how this can help strengthen your community building efforts with diverse,
multi-modal facilitation best practices*.
Depending on the interests of the participants we will focus more heavily
on in person or remote events - but both event types will be covered.
Please read more about this training series and express interest here *before
April 2: *
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Events_Team_Portal/FacilitationSeries
Questions welcome on the talk page!
--
Rachel Farrand
Senior Program Officer
Community Events Team
Wikimedia Foundation
Hi everyone,
We have started a Wikipedia 20 Scrapbook on meta wiki [1]. This is a space
where we all can document the celebration events we held or are planning to
hold to celebrate Wikipedia 20.
You can add any photos you have of your event, share a moment, a link to
the event page, screenshots of your virtual event, a photo of your cake or
anything else you want to post in the scrapbook to document your
celebration.
There is a link in the header with instructions on how to add a new section
for your event. You can also find sample image galleries on the page.
We look forward to seeing all the wonderful images and memories from the
celebrations around the world!
We also wanted to remind you that Rapid Grants are available to support
your Wikipedia 20 planned events. For events taking place in May, please
submit your grant application by 15 April, and for events taking place
through the end of July 2021, please submit your application no later than
15 June 2021. You can find more information on Rapid Grants for Wikipedia
20 and the application form on meta.[2]
Best,
Lena and the Wikipedia 20 team
[1] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_20>
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_20/Scrapbook
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_20/Grants
Lena Traer (she/her)
Creative Project Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Dear Community,
(apologies for cross-posting!)
Prizes or awards are key to volunteer organisations such as Wikimedia. It's
one way of providing motivation or encouraging continuous participation.
Even so, it's often very hard to decide on what could be an ideal prize for
a campaign. We have been hearing lots of questions from organizers about
appropriate criteria, types and amounts as prizes for a campaign. The
Wikimedia Foundation Campaigns Team invites you to our next virtual office
hour on 25th March at 3:00pm UTC via zoom[1] to discuss this topic with
organizers experienced at using prizes as part of competitions.[2]
The Campaigns Office hour is an opportunity to learn about how others have
organized content campaigns, new or emerging tools and tactics, and ask
questions about how campaigns have been implemented by other organizers.
The goal of this office hour will be to evaluate organizer concerns and
challenges, with a particular focus on helping photography campaigns and
content writing campaigns in creating consistent prize philosophies within
the Wikimedia Movement. Our recent office hour explained the 2021
WikiForHumanRights Campaign dubbed “Right to a Healthy Environment” (watch
video).[3] We talked about decentralized activities around the theme and
how to access mentoring and rapid grants.
Join us for the next office hour:
-
25th March at 3:00pm UTC
-
Via Zoom - https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/95921708595
<https://www.google.com/url?q=https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/95921708595&sa=D&s…>
-
Topic: Evaluating ideal use of prizes or rewards for campaigns
Looking forward to learning, discussing and sharing with you!
Cheers,
Felix Nartey
[1] - https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/95921708595
<https://www.google.com/url?q=https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/95921708595&sa=D&s…>
[2] -
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Campaigns/Foundation_Campaigns_Team#Office_…
[3] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_QEE60hcFk
--
Felix Nartey
Senior Program Officer, Campaigns
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hi everyone!
We have concluded the Call for Feedback: Community Board seats. Thank you
everyone who participated.
During the Call for Feedback period from February 1 to March 14, a team of
10 facilitators organized open and inclusive community discussions to
gather feedback about ideas for trustee selection processes for
community-and-affiliate Board seats. Some facilitators had a regional
focus; some had a language focus. The intention was for the combined
facilitation team to obtain a fair representation of the movement’s
diversity and create a report for the Board. The facilitation team used
the Weekly Reports as the main source of information to create the main
report. [1]
*A draft of the Call for Feedback: Community Board seats main report is now
available. It will be available for community comment until Sunday, March
28. *[2]
After the community comment period the facilitation team will send the main
report to the Board. The feedback in the main report informs the Board’s
decision about these potential changes to trustee selection processes,
procedures, and tools to meet the goals of the Board.
Please reach out if you have any questions or comments.
Best,
--
*Jackie Koerner*
*she/her*
Board Governance Facilitator
*English language and Meta-Wiki*
[1] Weekly Reports
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call…
[2] Main Report
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call…
Hello, everybody!
The Arctic Knot Wikimedia Language Conference
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Knot_Conference_2021> will take
place online 24–25 June 2021.
At the Arctic Knot Wikimedia Language Conference we want to look at the
future of indigenous and underrepresented languages and their presence and
use on the Wikimedia projects. The conference will provide space and focus
for indigenous and underrepresented language communities to connect, learn
from each other, and collaborate.
The *call for submissions
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Knot_Conference_2021/Call_for_submis…>*
is now open (until 15 April)!
With 20 billion page views every month, Wikipedia is one of the first stops
when people search for information. It is a cornerstone of the digital age,
but the information within it is not evenly represented across languages.
The Wikimedia movement is about to start implementing the 2030 movement
strategy <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_2030>, and the UNESCO
Decade of Indigenous Languages
<https://en.unesco.org/news/upcoming-decade-indigenous-languages-2022-2032-f…>
will
start in 2022. The Decade of Indigenous Languages points to the potential
of digital technologies in supporting the use and preservation of
indigenous languages. These two milestones give us the opportunity to look
into our future efforts for language diversity on the Wikimedia projects,
and during the conference discuss how we can work together to make
indigenous and underrepresented language communities grow.
More information about the conference will be shared on the Arctic Knot
Wikimedia Language Conference page over the next few weeks. Registration
will open in May. We hope you will join the conference!
The Arctic Knot Wikimedia Language Conference is part of the Wikimedia
UK Celtic
Knot <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Knot_Conference> series of
conferences. Arctic Knot Wikimedia Language Conference is led by Wikimedia
Norge in collaboration with The Arctic University of Norway
<https://en.uit.no/startsida>, Wikimedia UK
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/> and Wikimedia
Deutschland <https://www.wikimedia.de/>, and will focus on Arctic and Sámi
languages. We are also happy to have Wikitongues <https://wikitongues.org/>
and Art+Feminism <https://artandfeminism.org/> as part of the organization
team for the conference.
We hope to see many of you there!
--
*Jon Harald Søby*
Prosjektleder / Prosjektleiar / Prošeaktajođiheaddji / Project Manager
Wikimedia Norge / Wikimedia Noreg / Wikimedia Norga
+47 977 67 510
jhsoby(a)wikimedia.no