Dear all,
Over the last few months, a small team at the Wikimedia Foundation has been
working on a project that has been discussed by many people in our movement
for many years: building ‘enterprise grade’ services for the high-volume
commercial reusers of Wikimedia content. I am pleased to say that in a
remarkably short amount of time (considering the complexity of the issues:
technical, strategic, legal, and financial) we now have something worthy of
showing to the community, and we are asking for your feedback. Allow me to
introduce you to the Wikimedia Enterprise API project – formerly codenamed
“okapi”.
While the general idea for Wikimedia Enterprise predates the current
movement strategy process, its recommendations identify an enterprise API
as one possible solution to both “Increase the sustainability of our
movement” and “Improve User Experience.”[0] That is, to simultaneously
create a new revenue stream to protect Wikimedia’s sustainability, and
improve the quality and quantity of Wikimedia content available to our many
readers who do not visit our websites directly (including more consistent
attribution). Moreover, it does so in a way that is true to our movement’s
culture: with open source software, financial transparency, non-exclusive
contracts or content, no restrictions on existing services, and free access
for Wikimedia volunteers who need it.
The team believes we are on target to achieve those goals and so we have
written a lot of documentation to get your feedback about our progress and
where it could be further improved before the actual product is ‘launched’
in the next few months. We have been helped in this process over the last
several months by approximately 100 individual volunteers (from many
corners of the wikiverse) and representatives of affiliate organisations
who have reviewed our plans and provided invaluable direction, pointing out
weaknesses and opportunities, or areas lacking clarity and documentation in
our drafts. Thank you to everyone who has shared your time and expertise to
help prepare this new initiative.
A essay describing the “why?” and the “how?” of this project is now on
Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/Essay
Also now published on Meta are an extensive FAQ, operating principles, and
technical documentation on MediaWiki.org. You can read these at [1] [2] and
[3] respectively. Much of this documentation is already available in
French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
The Wikimedia Enterprise team is particularly interested in your feedback
on how we have designed the checks and balances to this project - to ensure
it is as successful as possible at achieving those two goals described
above while staying true to the movement’s values and culture. For example:
Is everything covered appropriately in the “Principles” list? Is the
technical documentation on MediaWiki.org clear? Are the explanations in the
“FAQ” about free-access for community, or project’s legal structure, or the
financial transparency (etc.) sufficiently detailed?
Meet the team and Ask Us Anything:
The central place to provide written feedback about the project in general
is on the talkpage of the documentation on Meta at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Enterprise
On this Friday (March 19) we will be hosting two “Office hours”
conversations where anyone can come and give feedback or ask questions:
-
13:00 UTC via Zoom at https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/95580273732
-
22:00 UTC via Zoom at https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/92565175760 (note:
this is Saturday in Asia/Oceania)
Other “office hours” meetings can be arranged on-request on a technical
platform of your choosing; and we will organise more calls in the future.
We will also be attending the next SWAN meetings (on March 21)
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Wikimedia_Affiliates_Network, and
also the next of the Wikimedia Clinics
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Clinics
Moreover, we would be very happy to accept any invitation to attend an
existing group call that would like to discuss this topic (e.g. an
affiliate’s members’ meeting).
On behalf of the Wikimedia Enterprise team,
Peace, Love & Metadata
-- Liam Wyatt [Wittylama], Wikimedia Enterprise project community liaison.
[0]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recomme…
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/FAQ
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/Principles
[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise
*Liam Wyatt [Wittylama]*
WikiCite <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCite> Program Manager & Wikimedia
Enterprise <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Okapi> Community Liaison
Wikimedia Foundation
This paper (first reference) is the result of a class project I was part of
almost two years ago for CSCI 5417 Information Retrieval Systems. It builds
on a class project I did in CSCI 5832 Natural Language Processing and which
I presented at Wikimania '07. The project was very late as we didn't send
the final paper in until the day before new years. This technical report was
never really announced that I recall so I thought it would be interesting to
look briefly at the results. The goal of this paper was to break articles
down into surface features and latent features and then use those to study
the rating system being used, predict article quality and rank results in a
search engine. We used the [[random forests]] classifier which allowed us to
analyze the contribution of each feature to performance by looking directly
at the weights that were assigned. While the surface analysis was performed
on the whole english wikipedia, the latent analysis was performed on the
simple english wikipedia (it is more expensive to compute). = Surface
features = * Readability measures are the single best predictor of quality
that I have found, as defined by the Wikipedia Editorial Team (WET). The
[[Automated Readability Index]], [[Gunning Fog Index]] and [[Flesch-Kincaid
Grade Level]] were the strongest predictors, followed by length of article
html, number of paragraphs, [[Flesh Reading Ease]], [[Smog Grading]], number
of internal links, [[Laesbarhedsindex Readability Formula]], number of words
and number of references. Weakly predictive were number of to be's, number
of sentences, [[Coleman-Liau Index]], number of templates, PageRank, number
of external links, number of relative links. Not predictive (overall - see
the end of section 2 for the per-rating score breakdown): Number of h2 or
h3's, number of conjunctions, number of images*, average word length, number
of h4's, number of prepositions, number of pronouns, number of interlanguage
links, average syllables per word, number of nominalizations, article age
(based on page id), proportion of questions, average sentence length. :*
Number of images was actually by far the single strongest predictor of any
class, but only for Featured articles. Because it was so good at picking out
featured articles and somewhat good at picking out A and G articles the
classifier was confused in so many cases that the overall contribution of
this feature to classification performance is zero. :* Number of external
links is strongly predictive of Featured articles. :* The B class is highly
distinctive. It has a strong "signature," with high predictive value
assigned to many features. The Featured class is also very distinctive. F, B
and S (Stop/Stub) contain the most information.
:* A is the least distinct class, not being very different from F or G. =
Latent features = The algorithm used for latent analysis, which is an
analysis of the occurence of words in every document with respect to the
link structure of the encyclopedia ("concepts"), is [[Latent Dirichlet
Allocation]]. This part of the analysis was done by CS PhD student Praful
Mangalath. An example of what can be done with the result of this analysis
is that you provide a word (a search query) such as "hippie". You can then
look at the weight of every article for the word hippie. You can pick the
article with the largest weight, and then look at its link network. You can
pick out the articles that this article links to and/or which link to this
article that are also weighted strongly for the word hippie, while also
contributing maximally to this articles "hippieness". We tried this query in
our system (LDA), Google (site:en.wikipedia.org hippie), and the Simple
English Wikipedia's Lucene search engine. The breakdown of articles occuring
in the top ten search results for this word for those engines is: * LDA
only: [[Acid rock]], [[Aldeburgh Festival]], [[Anne Murray]], [[Carl
Radle]], [[Harry Nilsson]], [[Jack Kerouac]], [[Phil Spector]], [[Plastic
Ono Band]], [[Rock and Roll]], [[Salvador Allende]], [[Smothers brothers]],
[[Stanley Kubrick]]. * Google only: [[Glam Rock]], [[South Park]]. * Simple
only: [[African Americans]], [[Charles Manson]], [[Counterculture]], [[Drug
use]], [[Flower Power]], [[Nuclear weapons]], [[Phish]], [[Sexual
liberation]], [[Summer of Love]] * LDA & Google & Simple: [[Hippie]],
[[Human Be-in]], [[Students for a democratic society]], [[Woodstock
festival]] * LDA & Google: [[Psychedelic Pop]] * Google & Simple: [[Lysergic
acid diethylamide]], [[Summer of Love]] ( See the paper for the articles
produced for the keywords philosophy and economics ) = Discussion /
Conclusion = * The results of the latent analysis are totally up to your
perception. But what is interesting is that the LDA features predict the WET
ratings of quality just as well as the surface level features. Both feature
sets (surface and latent) both pull out all almost of the information that
the rating system bears. * The rating system devised by the WET is not
distinctive. You can best tell the difference between, grouped together,
Featured, A and Good articles vs B articles. Featured, A and Good articles
are also quite distinctive (Figure 1). Note that in this study we didn't
look at Start's and Stubs, but in earlier paper we did. :* This is
interesting when compared to this recent entry on the YouTube blog. "Five
Stars Dominate Ratings"
http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.html…
I think a sane, well researched (with actual subjects) rating system
is
well within the purview of the Usability Initiative. Helping people find and
create good content is what Wikipedia is all about. Having a solid rating
system allows you to reorganized the user interface, the Wikipedia
namespace, and the main namespace around good content and bad content as
needed. If you don't have a solid, information bearing rating system you
don't know what good content really is (really bad content is easy to spot).
:* My Wikimania talk was all about gathering data from people about articles
and using that to train machines to automatically pick out good content. You
ask people questions along dimensions that make sense to people, and give
the machine access to other surface features (such as a statistical measure
of readability, or length) and latent features (such as can be derived from
document word occurence and encyclopedia link structure). I referenced page
262 of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to give an example of the
kind of qualitative features I would ask people. It really depends on what
features end up bearing information, to be tested in "the lab". Each word is
an example dimension of quality: We have "*unity, vividness, authority,
economy, sensitivity, clarity, emphasis, flow, suspense, brilliance,
precision, proportion, depth and so on.*" You then use surface and latent
features to predict these values for all articles. You can also say, when a
person rates this article as high on the x scale, they also mean that it has
has this much of these surface and these latent features.
= References =
- DeHoust, C., Mangalath, P., Mingus., B. (2008). *Improving search in
Wikipedia through quality and concept discovery*. Technical Report.
PDF<http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/6/68/DeHoustMangalat…>
- Rassbach, L., Mingus., B, Blackford, T. (2007). *Exploring the
feasibility of automatically rating online article quality*. Technical
Report. PDF<http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/d/d3/RassbachPincock…>
Hoi,
I have asked and received permission to forward to you all this most
excellent bit of news.
The linguist list, is a most excellent resource for people interested in the
field of linguistics. As I mentioned some time ago they have had a funding
drive and in that funding drive they asked for a certain amount of money in
a given amount of days and they would then have a project on Wikipedia to
learn what needs doing to get better coverage for the field of linguistics.
What you will read in this mail that the total community of linguists are
asked to cooperate. I am really thrilled as it will also get us more
linguists interested in what we do. My hope is that a fraction will be
interested in the languages that they care for and help it become more
relevant. As a member of the "language prevention committee", I love to get
more knowledgeable people involved in our smaller projects. If it means that
we get more requests for more projects we will really feel embarrassed with
all the new projects we will have to approve because of the quality of the
Incubator content and the quality of the linguistic arguments why we should
approve yet another language :)
NB Is this not a really clever way of raising money; give us this much in
this time frame and we will then do this as a bonus...
Thanks,
GerardM
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: LINGUIST Network <linguist(a)linguistlist.org>
Date: Jun 18, 2007 6:53 PM
Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers
To: LINGUIST(a)listserv.linguistlist.org
LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831. Mon Jun 18 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.
Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers
Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar(a)linguistlist.org>
Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry(a)linguistlist.org>
Reviews: Laura Welcher, Rosetta Project
<reviews(a)linguistlist.org>
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/
The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University,
and donations from subscribers and publishers.
Editor for this issue: Ann Sawyer <sawyer(a)linguistlist.org>
================================================================
To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at
http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html
===========================Directory==============================
1)
Date: 18-Jun-2007
From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org >
Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers
-------------------------Message 1 ----------------------------------
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:49:35
From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org >
Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers
Dear subscribers,
As you may recall, one of our Fund Drive 2007 campaigns was called the
"Wikipedia Update Vote." We asked our viewers to consider earmarking their
donations to organize an update project on linguistics entries in the
English-language Wikipedia. You can find more background information on this
at:
http://linguistlist.org/donation/fund-drive2007/wikipedia/index.cfm.
The speed with which we met our goal, thanks to the interest and generosity
of
our readers, was a sure sign that the linguistics community was enthusiastic
about the idea. Now that summer is upon us, and some of you may have a bit
more
leisure time, we are hoping that you will be able to help us get started on
the
Wikipedia project. The LINGUIST List's role in this project is a purely
organizational one. We will:
*Help, with your input, to identify major gaps in the Wikipedia materials or
pages that need improvement;
*Compile a list of linguistics pages that Wikipedia editors have identified
as
"in need of attention from an expert on the subject" or " does not cite any
references or sources," etc;
*Send out periodical calls for volunteer contributors on specific topics or
articles;
*Provide simple instructions on how to upload your entries into Wikipedia;
*Keep track of our project Wikipedians;
*Keep track of revisions and new entries;
*Work with Wikimedia Foundation to publicize the linguistics community's
efforts.
We hope you are as enthusiastic about this effort as we are. Just to help us
all
get started looking at Wikipedia more critically, and to easily identify an
area
needing improvement, we suggest that you take a look at the List of
Linguists
page at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguists. M
Many people are not listed there; others need to have more facts and
information
added. If you would like to participate in this exciting update effort,
please
respond by sending an email to LINGUIST Editor Hannah Morales at
hannah(a)linguistlist.org, suggesting what your role might be or which
linguistics
entries you feel should be updated or added. Some linguists who saw our
campaign
on the Internet have already written us with specific suggestions, which we
will
share with you soon.
This update project will take major time and effort on all our parts. The
end
result will be a much richer internet resource of information on the breadth
and
depth of the field of linguistics. Our efforts should also stimulate
prospective
students to consider studying linguistics and to educate a wider public on
what
we do. Please consider participating.
Sincerely,
Hannah Morales
Editor, Wikipedia Update Project
Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable
-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831
Dear friends and colleagues
Please permit me to publicise an academic conference that we're holding at
Hong Kong Baptist University on 15-17 December 2021.
The conference will be an ideal forum in which to discuss research
methodologies, issues of collaborativity, theoretical frameworks that have
proven valuable for the study of Wikipedia translation, the use of
Wikipedia in the translation classroom and by translation professionals,
and the nature of Wikipedia translation and how it differs not only from
other more traditional types of translation but also from other newly
emerging types. While the conference's main focus is interlingual
translation within the online encyclopaedia, we are also interested
in research into the multilingual Wikipedia that makes no explicit
reference to translation issues.
The conference will be online, face-to-face or mixed mode, depending on
prevailing circumstances. Please see the conference website at
https://ctn.hkbu.edu.hk/wikiconf2021/ for full details and the Call for
Papers.
I hope to see some of you there!
Mark
Professor Mark Shuttleworth 夏致遠
Department of Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies
Hong Kong Baptist University
Phone: +852 3411 6641
http://www.tran.hkbu.edu.hkhttps://ctn.hkbu.edu.hk/wikiconf2021/
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information.
Hello, all. :)
I hope and trust that everyone is keeping well during these times!
I’m Maggie Dennis, Vice President of the Community Resilience &
Sustainability group of Wikimedia Foundation, within the Legal department.
I wanted to announce with pleasure that Maria Sefidari has agreed to
consult with the Foundation on Movement Strategy and the ongoing Board
evolution for the upcoming year. Many of us know María from her role as the
chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, from which she
provided invaluable leadership in governance, oversight, and fundraising.
Others may know her from her volunteer work as User:Raystorm
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Raystorm>, in which she has a broad
range of experience.
María, based in Spain, commenced her assignment with the Foundation this
week. We intend to tap into her expertise and knowledge of the Foundation
to support a successful implementation of the Movement’s Strategy and to
tap into new opportunities. (With her Board work, she will be supporting
Quim Gil’s team with the Board election and helping Margo Lee in improving
onboarding, documentation practices, and training.) María will report to me
as part of our Community Resilience & Sustainability group. I’m excited
that she accepted our offer for a more hands-on assignment, particularly
given how important all of the work she’ll be supporting is. :) With more
than 15 years of Wikimedia experience, her contributions in the next phase
will be a tremendous benefit to me and my team as we continue settling into
our own work on Movement Strategy.
Those of you who are involved with Movement Strategy are used to seeing her
at related meetings and still will. :) I anticipate María will be joining
one or more of the Movement Strategy global conversations
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Updates/June_15,_2021>
this weekend. Advertisement alert: maybe you can, too? Here’s more detail
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Updates/June_15,_2021>!
I myself will be attending at least one of those sessions and look forward
to seeing some of you there.
Warm regards,
Maggie
--
Maggie Dennis
She/her/hers
Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Dear All,
On behalf of the Foundation Board, I’m writing to share with you that Chief
Creative Officer Heather Walls and Chief Technology Officer Grant Ingersoll
will be leaving the Wikimedia Foundation, at the end of July.
We, along with the Foundation Transition Team, have been working with them
for several weeks on a smooth transition in their respective functions. We
are grateful to them for their service and dedication to the Foundation and
the movement. In their time with us, both Heather and Grant have used their
unique talents and skills to preserve and provide free knowledge to the
world while also elevating the voices of community members around the globe.
Heather has been with the Foundation for almost ten years, driving creative
and communication efforts. In that time we’ve seen a revolution in how our
projects are perceived by the world. She has played a pivotal role at the
Foundation, shaping its identity and strengthening our mission to be a
trusted and valued resource for sharing and accessing knowledge globally.
Heather brought communities around the world closer together by developing
and executing innovative means of communications and leading campaigns that
helped grow our community and elevated the voices of our community
members. Most recently, on Wikipedia’s 20th Birthday, she, with her team,
connected people in more than 70 countries so that we could celebrate “20
Years Human” and our important movement together.
In her words:
“There is nothing that can sum up nearly a decade with Wikimedians. The
joy, the conflict, the evolution, and the unchanging. I’ve seen things
change for the better; focused effort to bring more equity into our
movement including a ground-breaking global code of conduct—and I’ve seen
things stay the same in ways that matter; Wikimedians holding true to their
values in face of new challenges like censorship and misinformation. As I
reflect on the past almost 10 years, I am amazed by the pace and strength
of our growth and the evolution of our brand from an internet experiment to
one of the most trusted places on the web. It was a pleasure to see this
work reach a pinnacle during Wikipedia’s 20th Birthday celebrations, with
headlines, brand partnerships, and community events that shine a light on
how far we’ve come. My appreciation of the people I have met through this
journey and the incredible team I leave behind, is immense.”
Grant, who joined the Foundation two years ago and was based in North
Carolina, worked to strengthen Wikimedia’s online infrastructure to
increase its reliability and to ensure that people around the globe could
access free knowledge whenever they needed it. While Grant and his growing
team work largely behind the scenes, they are the reason we have the
platform and ability to elevate the voices of our community members and
provide free knowledge to the world.
In Grant's words:
“My last two years serving the free knowledge movement have been incredibly
rewarding and challenging. I’m so proud of what the Foundation Technology
team has accomplished, especially with the unique set of challenges this
year has brought. There is never a perfect time to leave, but I am
confident that this work is in the most capable hands. It’s been a
privilege to support my team as they have worked side-by-side with movement
volunteers to strengthen our online infrastructure and ensure that
Wikimedia remains a trusted source for open knowledge. Together, we evolved
and scaled our platform to ensure that people across the globe have 24/7,
uninterrupted access to our information when they need it most.”
While transitions are always challenging, they are also a natural part of
evolution and growth of organizations. The Foundation's Transition team -
Amanda, Jaime, and Robyn - is working closely with the Board Transition
Committee, as well as other relevant Board Committees, to ensure smooth
operations during this period. We remain very confident that together,
along with our communities, we can build a future for the Foundation that
will better serve our important movement goals and strategy. As we work
through the transition, including the ongoing process of identifying the
next CEO/ED, we will continue to provide relevant updates.
In the meantime, on behalf of the Board, please join me in wishing Grant
and Heather the best of luck.
Best,
Raju
--
Raju Narisetti
Home TimeZone: EST
My working day may not be your working day. Please don’t feel obliged to
reply to this email outside of your normal working hours.
*Have you considered supporting Wikipedia?
Wikipedia is a non-profit website which provides free, open, reliable
knowledge to hundreds of millions of people around the world every single
day.
https://donate.wikimedia.org *
Just seeking clarity:
Is there anything wrong with expressing a political opinion on a userpage?
A lot of our badges, flags, icons might have some or the other political
history behind them, just that these are seen as more "normal" by today's
standards. At one time, slavery too was considered quite legal.
Can't this be discussed in the public domain?
FN
On Wed, 30 Jun 2021 at 03:34, Gereon Kalkuhl <gkalkuhl(a)freenet.de> wrote:
> Dear 4nn1|2,
>
> Thank you for informing us about the incident. But to be clear: You write
> that it's about a Palestinian flag. Yet actually it's about a flag with a
> statement: free Palestine. There's a difference. And a member of the
> Persian Wikipedia removed the deletion request on Commons and kept the file
> on the same day. I'm not judging anything here, but please be more precise
> in your accusations.
>
> Thank you,
> Gereon
>
> Am 29.06.2021 um 20:34 schrieb Amir Sarabadani:
>
> If anyone is interested to know about this incident. Send me a private
> message and I can explain better.
>
> Best
>
> On Tue, Jun 29, 2021 at 8:17 PM 4nn1l2 <4nn1l2.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Wikimedians,
>>
>> Persian Wikipedia has reached a new level in their arbitrary and
>> nonesense adminship. They have blocked me for placing a Palestinian flag on
>> my userpage (of course they have already removed it from my userpage and
>> you need to see a previous revision of my userpage).
>>
>>
>> https://fa.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%DA%A9%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A8%D8%B1…
>>
>> Another user has nominated the file for deletion on Commons!
>>
>> I am admin on Commons myself and I'm fed up with how fawiki is managed.
>> They block users for the most friviolous reasons.
>>
>> What does this mean?
>>
>> Yours faithfully,
>> User:4nn1l2
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> Public archives at
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org…
>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
>
>
> --
> Amir (he/him)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org…
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
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--
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
_/ FN * फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या * فريدريك نورونيا +91-9822122436
_/ See a different Goa here, via
_/ https://youtube.com/c/frederickfnnoronha
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Hello, all.
Apologies for the rather late Friday notice. We had hoped to get details on
this out earlier today, but it has taken rather all day for us to get the
technical details ironed out!
***
The Wikimedia Foundation is hosting an office hour featuring Chief
Financial Officer Jaime Villagomez
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/profile/jaime-villagomez/> and General
Counsel Amanda Keton <https://wikimediafoundation.org/profile/amanda-keton/>,
two of the transition team guiding the Wikimedia Foundation during its
executive transition. It will also feature guests from the Wikimedia
Foundation’s Board of Trustees (BoT), to be determined over the next few
days, and Community Resilience & Sustainability Vice President Maggie Dennis
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Mdennis_(WMF)>. The main purpose of
the call is to discuss questions related to Wikimedia Foundation executive
transition, including the retention of María Sefidari
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Raystorm> as an advisor to Movement
Strategy and supporting and onboarding the expanding BoT. Come with your
questions or feedback, and let’s talk! You can also send us your questions
in advance.
This office hour will be on June 29 at 15:00 UTC — see
https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1624978855 for your local time.
We will officer live interpretation for German, Spanish, French, and Arabic.
To be able to listen to the interpretation, you need to join the Zoom room
(and therefore register via answers(a)wikimedia.org; <answers(a)wikimedia.org>see
below). The Youtube live-stream will be only in English.
Details
This call will be streamed and available on demand at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQTND98b_Yg
We will be fielding questions from Wikimedians in good standing (that is,
not Foundation or community banned). In order to be as efficient as
possible, we are encouraging people to send questions in advance. Please
send all questions to answers(a)wikimedia.org, by Monday June 28 (midnight,
whatever time zone you may be in). We may aggregate similar questions or
truncate them for length. Questions can also be asked live on Zoom for
in-room attendees, in Zoom chat, Telegram and YouTube.
Language support
We will offer automated closed captioning for English, and live
interpretation for German, Spanish, French, and Arabic. This is the first
time we offer such a service for an office hour, and we would like to
experiment with it and see how it works. To be able to listen to the Zoom
interpretation, you need to join the Zoom room (and therefore register, see
below), as live-streaming interpretation channels to Youtube is not
possible.
How to register
For security reasons and specifically to avoid Zoombombing
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoombombing>, we will be sending the Zoom
link only to people who have registered in advance close to the meeting and
only to Wikimedians in good standing. In order to register, please send an
email to answers(a)wikimedia.org, indicating your name, username, affiliation
if you have any. The title should be “Registration for Office Hours”. The
link will be shared with any Wikimedia in good standing (not Foundation or
community banned) who requests it within the hour before the meeting.
The meeting will be governed by the Friendly Space Policy
<https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Friendly_space_policy>. We are
committed to tackling hard questions bravely in a manner that reflects the
values of our Universal Code of Conduct
<https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct>.
--
Maggie Dennis
She/her/hers
Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Hello,
This is something I have been thinking about for some time. This June–July
we will see a couple of elections/selections. I think wherever a voting is
in process, an effective canvassing/promotion policy should be there. We
may need to notify our friend Wikimedians about our candidacy, that is
understandable, but there should be behavioral guidelines on what is
appropriate and what is inappropriate promotion/canvassing.
This email thread is about the process, and I won't mention any specific
example, however during every election/committee formation we see different
votestacking attempts and efforts. In such a situation there is a
possibility that if a candidate has many social media or contacts and
friends (Wimimedian), they will end up getting more votes than someone who
entirely relied on their nomination and performance.
There is a behavioral guideline on a Wikipedia project:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Canvassing
I don't think this is globally applicable, and I am note sure if we have
one global policy.
Hence,
1) We can work on "Canvassing guidelines", discussing appropriateness,
inappropriateness etc.
2) These guidelines should be effectively used and it would be great if the
candidates/contestants read and acknowledge that they will adhere to the
protocol/policy.
Kind regards,
ইতি,/Regards
টিটো দত্ত/User:Titodutta
(মাতৃভাষা থাক জীবন জুড়ে)
Hello Christophe
Thank you for your email, and always good to hear from you as I very much
appreciate your questions, and the spirit in which they’re always asked of
the Board. And you rightly pointed out that there has been a lot of change
in senior leadership at the Foundation.
Underlying these planned transitions at the Foundation (also playing out in
many organizations globally, I might add) is that they come at a time when
we are all going through a period of disruption brought on by the global
pandemic, and the toll it’s had on individuals, the Foundation, and the
movement. Most organizations are feeling this, even as we all
simultaneously work to make sure we are fully prepared with the right
leadership for the next normal of a post-pandemic world.
Amid this, a few have left citing deeply personal reasons, some in
response to changing needs, reassessment of roles, and emerging
organizational or individual work/life priorities. There have been a myriad
of factors that have led to these planned departures but, taken together,
we know they can be, at the minimum, be perceived as concerning and even
related.
On behalf of the Board, I want to reassure you and the communities that the
Transition Team is working closely with department and team leaders to
ensure that these departures will not distract from our mission and our
support of the movement. There is strong interim leadership in place to
provide continuity and support to staff, and address any questions or
concerns they may have, including in the affected teams. And the Board is
very actively engaged with Foundation leadership, and will continue to be
both available and participative, as we purposefully move toward filling
the Foundation’s leadership roles, starting with the CEO/ED.
Members of the Board are also meeting this month with full Foundation staff
to provide continuity and support to the entire team, in addition to many
of us having made ourselves fully available to the Foundation’s leaders,
realizing this is a transition period for all.
The Wikimedia Foundation today is very different from the one 10 years ago
or even two years ago, but it is still laser focused on moving our mission
forward with the help of movement leaders such as yourself. We are
optimistic about emerging from this time, with the Foundation
well-positioned to support the growth of the movement and achieve the goals
we set out with communities in our movement strategy process.
Best,
Raju
--
Raju Narisetti
Email: rnarisetti(a)wikimedia.org
Home Time Zone: EST
My working day may not be your working day. Please don’t feel obliged to
reply to this email outside of your normal working hours.
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