Hi.
Please, help protect the trustworthiness of the Wikimedia movement in
Slovakia - help WUG WMSVK to do a mass fundraising only after it will have
solved its governance issues (and stop it from using Wikipedia's site
notices until that).
The Wikimedia User Group Wikimedians of Slovakia (WUG WMSVK) is currently
using Sitenotice and Anonnotice of Slovak Wikipedia for local fundraising.
While I appreciate the effort for a non-WMF revenue source, it is not a
good timing right now. Currently, WUG WMSVK is still under investigation of
AffCom for their governance issues and is recovering too slowly from
repeated bylaws violations done in the past under lead of current Chair
Matej Grochal and current Vice-Chair Radoslava Semanová. Much of it is
published on [1]. Some non-public violations will be published after a 6
months period of AffCom investigations (which is going to end sometime
before 16th of June).
The use of Sitenotice and Anonnotice is based on skwiki Village Pump
request from the Vice-Chair Dávid Štefan done 23th March 2021 [2] and
executed by WUG WMSVK's Chair himself less than 3 day later [3]. This is a
clear example of Conflict of Interests - Matej Grochal mixing his role of
WUG WMSVK's Chair and skwiki's admin (that part would be OK, according to
me, if the activation of site noticies would be done by some other admin).
The time for Community reaction was very little (less than 3 days). The
community reaction is very weak, but at this point clearly against such use.
I have right now contacted AffCom. But they are a volunteer based committee
with meetings once in a month, so it is probable that they would react too
slowly (like, AffCom haven't reacted until now to my message about probable
bylaws violation of WUG WMSVK from 3 weeks ago, even despite my personal
calls).
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Slovakia/history#2019
[2] https://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Diff/7180661
[3] https://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Diff/7182017
I hope for quick reaction
Best regards
KuboF Hromoslav
Dear friends and colleagues,
As we announced a few days back, we're compiling a video farewell for
Katherine, and we would love for you all to participate and send her off
with a few words. This takes 30 seconds! Maybe a thank you or a joke in
your language, maybe parts of a song, maybe just a hand-held picture and a
few words, maybe a funny memory you have with her so that she gets to keep
a live feeling of all of her Wikimedia community friends and colleagues for
years to come.
Katherine’s last day as ED of the Wikimedia Foundation will be next
Thursday, April 15. If you’d like to share a short message, please record
the video via your phone or computer by going to the Tribute webpage
<https://www.tribute.co/katherine-maher/> [1]. Please keep your message
under 30 seconds! The deadline to submit a video is Monday, April 12.*
This will be shared with her and something she'll get to look at to recall
all the people who make our movement, beyond the nicknames and the
editcount.
Please share this message on other mailing lists as widely as you can!
Thank you for your participation!
Delphine
[1] https://www.tribute.co/katherine-maher/
*Tribute is a third party service based in the United States, with its own
terms of service [2] and privacy policy [3]. Please review their terms and
privacy policy before submitting your video. In order to submit your video,
you may need to provide Tribute with a name and email address. If you are
not comfortable submitting your real name or email, we recommend using a
username or pseudonym instead. By submitting a video, you are giving the
Foundation consent to include your segment in a video montage that will be
shared with Katherine.
[2] https://www.tribute.co/termsofservice/
[3] https://www.tribute.co/privacy/
--
*Delphine Ménard* (she/her)
Lead Orientation Specialist
User:Delphine_(WMF)
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hi everyone!
I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
[1] Arabic Wikimedians User Group [2] as a Wikimedia User Group. The group
aims to simplify resource sharing and skill development among Arabic
speaking community in order to strengthen and empower Arabic speaking
Wikimedians, and to promote Wikimedia projects around the world,
particularly in the MENA region.
Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!
Regards,
*Mehman IbragimovVice-Chair, Affiliations Committee*
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Recognit…
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Arabic_Wikimedians_User_Group
Hello, all. :)
I’m Maggie Dennis <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Mdennis_(WMF)>,
Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability>,
a division of the Legal Department at the Wikimedia Foundation. I oversee
the functions of Community Development, Trust & Safety Policy, Trust &
Safety Operations, Human Rights protection, and, now, Movement Strategy.[1]
That last point is the purpose of my outreach. Many of you are aware that
our Chief of Staff, Ryan Merkley, has recently chosen to depart the
Foundation. Movement Strategy was housed with him. A long time Wikimedian
myself - user Moonriddengirl; pretty dormant right now but still very
interested! - I am delighted to step in to do all I can to keep the
momentum of this critical work going and to support however I can the
movement and the Foundation in meeting these strategic goals. Kaarel Vaidla
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:KVaidla_(WMF)>, with whom many of you
have connected during this process, will be part of my division, reporting
to Quim Gil <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Qgil-WMF>.
The transition phase was wrapped up
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transit…>
last quarter, and it is time to start the implementation phase, looking at
which projects can move forward first.[2] Among these, the Movement Charter
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transit…>
is an essential tool for the implementation of the Strategy 2030, and it is
important to begin its draft.[3] There is also a lot of curiosity
around regional
and thematic hubs
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transit…>,
and also many questions, and we are ready to support resolving some of
these.[4]
It has been my goal to do quarterly community meetings, but because of this
and other transitions, I’m a little behind. I had hoped to be able today to
invite you to meet me on Saturday, April 17, and I may be able to do that
in just a few days! If not that week, soon thereafter. There are some
details still being worked out. In that meeting, I will be available to
talk about all matters related to the work of Community Resilience &
Sustainability - which includes Movement Strategy and the Universal Code of
Conduct, among others. You can send your questions now (in any language) to
answers(a)wikimedia.org. Please use the term “CR&S” in the subject line so
that it is identified as a question for me. :) We will be inviting people
to join the meeting via multiple platforms to ask “live” as well. After the
event, we will release a video recording and a written summary of the
meeting. You can find details of our office hours past, including links to
videos and summaries, at the bottom of our Meta page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability>.[1
again!]
I’m very excited about all the implementation work ahead of us! :)
Warm regards,
Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transit…
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transit…
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transit…
--
Maggie Dennis
She/her/hers
Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
As a consequence of the promotion of a Google forms based survey this
week by a WMF representative, a proposal on Wikimedia Commons has been
started to ban the promotion of surveys which rely on third party
sites like Google Forms.[1]
Launched today, but already it appears likely that this proposal will
have a consensus to support. Considering that Commons is one of our
largest Wikimedia projects, there are potential repercussions of
banning the on-wiki promotion of surveys which use Google products or
other closed source third party products like SurveyMonkey.
Feedback is most welcome on the proposal discussion, or on this list
for handling impact, solutions, recommended alternatives that already
exist, or the future role of the WMF to support research and surveys
for the WMF and affiliates by using forking open source software and
self-hosting and self-managing data "locally".
Links
1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#Use_of_of…
Thanks
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
#WearAMask
Hello,
After more than one year of design, discussion, vote, iteration, and months
of legal work, I’m happy to announce that the logo of MediaWiki has been
officially changed. This applies to both the software and logo of
https://mediawiki.org.
The old logo of MediaWiki was adopted slightly more than fifteen years ago.
This logo was featuring the nice concept of a sunflower representing
diversity, constant growth and also wilderness.
However, with years, the logo became outdated and we realized that it had
several problems, including but not limited to:
- It was a bitmap picture so it’s unusable in large sizes
- Its high details (“too realistic”) made it unusable in small sizes
- Its fixed and realistic style made it hard to have variations or
adaptations
Most, virtually all, software products use a simpler and more abstract form
following basic logo design guidelines and best-practices to avoid above
(and more) issues. For example, docker, kubernetes, Ubuntu, Vue.js, React,
Apache Kafka and many more.
You can find the discussion of changing the logo in
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Proposal_for_changing_logo_of_MediaW…
. As you can see on this page, a lot of interesting practical and
theoretical exchanges happened, leading to the final vote and decision.
The new logo represents a collection of projects built on our engine: each
petal is one of the many wikis that we support, and the lack of an explicit
core shows that we are part of these projects, as well as and they are part
of MediaWiki. The new logo also reflects the fact that evolution never
stops, and like the petals of a flower, the development of each project,
the growth of each community built on our engine allows everyone else to
grow.
The designer of the new logo is [[User:Serhio Magpie]]. With the nice
abstraction baked-in, you can use it in large or small sizes or you can
adapt it for different usecases (there’s one already for mediawiki on
docker: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T274678). There is a logo
guideline for MediaWiki now:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:MediaWiki_logo_guidelines
We already deployed changes to mediawiki.org and landed related patches on
master, meaning from 1.36 release onwards, it’ll come with the new logo.
You can follow the work of rolling it out in
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T268230.
I humbly ask Wikimedians to update their wikis, for example usages on the
main pages, Wikipedia articles, templates, and more. You can use the logos
in this category on Commons. The files are already protected against upload
vandalism. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:MediaWiki_logo_(2020)
A big thank you to all who helped this project to finish. From designers,
community members, people who voted and discussed it intensively for
months, Wikimedia Legal for doing all the necessary work for transferring
the rights, clearing it and filing it for trademark. And many many more
people.
Best
--
Amir (he/him)