Dear all,
We hope this email finds you well and safe. The COVID 19 situation
continues to affect many of us across the globe and our thoughts are with
everyone affected. We are also aware that there are several processes
currently in progress that demand volunteer time and we do not want to add
more work to anyone's plate.
We do want to draw your attention to our new Regional Committees for Grants
though as they are an opportunity for you to have an active say in the
future of our Movement!
đź“Ł So today, we invite you to join our new Regional Committees for Grants!
đź“Ł
We encourage Wikimedians and Free Knowledge advocates to be part of the new
Regional Committees that the WMF Community Resources team is setting up as
part of the grants strategy relaunch [1]. You will be a key strategic
thought partner to help understand the complexities of any region, provide
knowledge and expertise to applicants, to support successful movement
activities, and make funding decisions for grant applications in the region.
👉Find out more on meta [2].
Regional Committees will be established for the following regions:
- Middle East and Africa
- SAARC [3] region (Includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the
Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka)
- East, Southeast Asia, and Pacific (ESEAP) region
- Latin America (LATAM) and The Caribbean
- United States and Canada
- Northern and Western Europe
- Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)
👉All details about the Committees and how to apply can be found on meta
[4]. Applications have to be submitted by *June 4, 2021*!
If you have any questions or comments, please use the meta discussion page
[5].
Please do share this announcement widely with your Network.
Best wishes,
Julia on behalf of the Community Resources Team
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunc…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunc…
[3] https://www.saarc-sec.org/index.php/about-saarc/about-saarc
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunc…
[5]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Re…
--
*Julia Brungs*
Senior Community Relations Specialist
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Dear all,
My intent is contributing to drafting a text of the Movement Charter which will be ratified by the communities, the affiliates, and the WMF. IMHO this will have to be an iterative process of community consultations. The committee will produce texts and gather feedback from the communities - and other stakeholders - in multiple rounds. This will be an open consultative process, based on consent decision making. In the feedback rounds anyone is allowed to raise objections against parts of the text. For the Charter to be ratified in the end, the drafting committee will have to have resolved any blocking objections, before asking anyone to ratify the text. A succesfull committee will gather feedback frequently, and resolve issues swiftly.
To come up with a workable first draft it would be convenient to have "the whole system in the room", to be inclusive of the perspectives of all major types of stakeholders involved. The composition of the committee, and the method of selection of committee members should be without prejudice for the composition of the Global Council, and the method of selection of Global Council members. The major types of stakeholders within the Wikimedia Movement are IMHO volunteer contributors to online content project wikis (aka editors, users, or community members), members of small affiliates, members of large affiliates, board members of affiliates, staff of affiliates, board members of the Wikimedia Foundation, and staff of the WMF.
The method of selection of Movement Charter Drafting Committee members will be different for each group of stakeholders, of which there are three: the WMF, the affiliates, and the community. IMHO I do belief the WMF board and staff to be well capable through their internal decision making processes to appoint to the Committee one or two board members, and a couple of staff. Nobody outside WMF has any business in trying to influence or determine who the WMF will appoint from their ranks. IMHO I do belief the affiliates are well capable of through their method of liking, select, elect, or appoint to the Committee some affiliate members, some affiliate board members and some affiliate staff. Nobody outside the affiliates has any business in trying to influence or determine who from the affiliates will be on the Committee.
So, what about the community members on the Community. IMHO neither the WMF nor the affiliates should even think of trying to influence which community members will be on the Committee. How will the community make such a movement wide decision? That is a problem to be solved by the ratified Movement Charter, which we are about to create.
Lacking such a defined process to select community members to the committee, there are IMHO two options (which have been discussed many times):
1 Hold elections
2 Appointments
And I do assume both options to be based on self-nomination.
The objection to 1 is mainly that it takes too much time. This whole discussion is going around in circles for six months, which would have been sufficient time for two rounds of elections. To resolve this objection, people who dislike elections propose appointments. Who will appoint? Only recently Pharos proposed the community sourced board members to act as electoral college for the community members of the committee. That is, the people who are going to be elected in the upcoming elections. That will necessarily take more time than starting an elections for the community members to the Committee right now. However, elections are only necessary if there is anything to choose for the voters, that is (many) more candidates than room in the committee. Another option is to delegate the screening of candidates, and selecting to for example to the members of the Roles and Responsibilities Working Group, or the Election Committee as someone proposed in the Telegram channel. What I would like to see is how the committee matches the diversity matrix and expertise matrix as presented in the Global Conversations on June 12 and 13.
On the weekend of June 26 and 27 there will be another round of Global (and local) Conversations about how to form a committee. A third option is that anyone who would like to be on the committee as community member (and not selected by the affiliates nor the WMF) express their interest publicly, either by replying to this mail, or on meta before June 26, so all present at the Global Conversations in the weekend of June 26 and 27 can screen candidates and raise objections if necessary to the size, or composition of the committee, or raising doubts against individual candidates, or make proposals towards their preferred composition of community members on the committee, or maybe nominate themselves to remedy a problem they see.
In case we can't reach consensus or consent in the weekend of June 26 and 27 who of the community will be on the committee, maybe because there are too many people who have expressed their interest, than a resolution could be to hold elections, starting with a call for candidates through a central banner.
In case you don't want to express your interest - assuming you don't want to be on the committee and you do want to participate in the Global Conversations on June 26 and 27, please start participating in the discussion now, by replying to this mail, state your intent for participating in the Global Conversation, and what you do want to achieve, or accomplish in this process. If you do participate to block the creation of a Movement Charter, please state your objections against a Movement Charter. If you do participate to block the creation of a Global Council, please state your objections against a Global Council. If you do participate out of fear this process will intrude the autonomy of local community of the content project wikis, please state so, and come up with ways to resolve this issue, or, what should in your opinion be explicitly in the Movement Charter to reduce this fear.
The stakes are high, and there are multiple competing interest in the movement, while we all do serve the same mission. Given this complexity I do expect robust (but amical) debate within the committee, and I will not exclude harsh criticism - or outright rejection - from multiple community members to whatever text the committee produces as their first draft. To deal with this, we need a committee consisting of members willing to deal with this complexity, and willing to process, and digest any feedback given by the community, with an eye on resolving objections raised.
Regards,
Ad Huikeshoven
About me: Economist - graduated in 1992 from University Maastricht, civil servant, certified Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSP I), certified Prince2 Foundation projectmanagement, experience in Theory U and hosting u.lab, trained facilitator, trained in Art of Hosting, Wikipedian since 2005, former Audit Committee member, former board member of Wikimedia Nederland, presenter of Virtual Friendly Space Policy at Wikimania Hong Kong 2013, former election facilitator of the 2019 Affiliate Selected Board Seats process (I drafted the initial version of the Resolution 2019, amending the previous Resolution), facilitator of the discussion tools consultation 2019 at the Dutch Wikipedia, member of UCoC enforcement drafting committee of Wikimedia Nederland, father of two kids - one in university, one about to start. My native tongue is Dutch. Fortynine languages have globally more native speakers than Dutch.
Also posted on meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Charter/Movement_Charter_Drafting_…
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
Dear Lisa, Megan and all,
The current issue of the Signpost contains an interview about my recent
Daily Dot article on WMF fundraising.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-06-27/Forum
The piece has sparked quite substantial discussion, and there is a pretty
good consensus on the fundraising issue in the comments. Here are
representative excerpts of what people have said:
"I agree with Smallbones that one should raise funds before the situation
becomes dire, but they should be raised *honestly*. Portraying the
situation as dire when it isn't is dishonest and unethical."
"I also feel that the WMF is too pushy with its donation advertising, and I
am far from the only OTRS (VRT) agent who hates December because of some
distinctly distressing emails we get along these lines. I have also talked
to a number of WMF staffers on the topic, though I suspect they'd struggle
to go on the record on the issue, who share the concerns."
"'The WMF is asking [readers in India] for about US $2.00' - the median per
capita annual income in India is $616."
"If I thought it had any chance of passing, I would start an RfC on the
English Wikipedia to ban all fundraising banners"
"I was certaily under the impression that WP was under financial duress
because of the banners."
"I do think the daily dot article raises some fair questions; namely, *why* is
the WMF doing all of this?"
"I find Andreas's point about the (unwarranted) urgency implied by the
language of fundraising banners very compelling (though I think the US
politics tangent is one that's liable to create more heat than light).
Another turn of phrase that stuck out to me in a recent banner was "Show
the volunteers who bring you reliable, neutral information that their work
matters." (example banner
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fundraising-Banner-India-2020.jpg>). As
one of those volunteers who has spent hundreds (thousands?) of hours
editing Wikipedia, I was disappointed that WMF would presume to speak for
me in this way."
"I have always found the fundraising banners annoying at best and downright
pandering and hypocritical at worst."
"It is very sad that even in 2020s there are not many promising open
knowledge and free content projects. So please stop criticizing them for
raising funds, rather make them focus on solving issues of Wikimedia
projects."
"I've long believed that were the WMF to fire half its staff, the average
volunteer to any project -- the people who contribute content, not those
who regularly interact with the Foundation -- would not notice any
difference. [...] I believe it is a significant cause for resentment
towards Foundation fundraising. (The aggressive fundraising tactics is, of
course, another cause.)"
A contributor to the discussion has pinged you and asked for your comment:
@Lgruwell-WMF <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lgruwell-WMF> and
MeganHernandez
(WMF) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MeganHernandez_(WMF)>: - it's not
quite obvious who the fundraising leads are, so please feel free to ping
someone who may be more appropriate. If you've got 15 minutes, could you
have a read of the interview
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-06-27/Forum>,
and then the discussions/concerns above. As you can see, while many of us
don't agree with everything claimed by Kolbe, concerns about the aggressive
tone, as well as claims about editors, are common. Your thoughts and
participation would be appreciated
I'm not sure how often you log into Wikipedia, so I thought I would notify
you here.
Your participation in the discussion would be welcome.
Andreas
[1] https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundraising/
Hi everyone,
I am happy to share Wikimedia Deutschland’s annual report 2020.[1]
In 24 articles on a total of 13 topics, we look back on a year marked
by the pandemic and present what we have done to set knowledge free.
The report features our work and the people behind topics like
diversity in Wikipedia, Wikidata and artificial intelligence as well
as programs like “public money - public good”, Unlock - innovate in
free knowledge, and Movement Strategy Wikimedia 2030.
Take a look!
Nicole
[1] https://www.wikimedia.de/2020/en/homepage/
--
Nicole Ebber
Director Movement Strategy and Global Relations
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 30 219 158 26-0
https://wikimedia.de
Keep up to date! Current news and exciting stories about Wikimedia,
Wikipedia and Free Knowledge in our newsletter (in German):
https://www.wikimedia.de/newsletter/
Wikimedia Deutschland – Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.
V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts
Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnĂĽtzig
anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin,
Steuernummer 27/029/42207.
_______________________________________________
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
_______________________________________________
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To unsubscribe send an email to wikimediaannounce-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Dear Movement members,
Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE) launched UNLOCK last year, an acceleration program
which aims to “innovate in free knowledge” by promoting and supporting
teams that are working on free knowledge projects and helps them turn their
idea into a functional prototype [1]. In the context of movement strategy,
WMDE is interested in building the innovative capacity of our movement, and
with UNLOCK we seek to actively contribute to recommendation 9 "Innovate in
Free Knowledge".
The first edition of the program was held in Germany in 2020 and was a
great success [2]. This year, we scaled to Europe. UNLOCK is open to
volunteers from the existing Wikimedia projects, but also to those who are
not yet part of the Wikimedia movement. We are looking for change makers,
activists, technologists and creative minds who are eager to turn their
idea into a concrete prototype or product/service.
UNLOCK 2021 is now ready! 24 project teams from 17 countries (13 of them
from the European region, 4 even from outside Europe) applied and submitted
their ideas for our program focus *Trust in the Digital Age *[3]. 3 project
proposals were submitted by members of Wikimedia project communities. Five
(out of 24) of the teams were selected to participate in our three-month
accelerator program. This is a brief summary of the participating teams and
their approaches (a more detailed description can be found at the UNLOCK
website [4]):
- FollowTheVote – a mobile app that makes political engagement a fun and
informative habit for young people by combining facts with gamification.
- Government Online Presence Directory – a crowdsourced and fact-checked
directory of official governmental online accounts and services around the
globe. This project is run by two active members of the Wikidata community
and the directory itself will build on Wikidata.
- OpenSpeaks Accessibility – an open toolkit for language archivists on
how to create permanent, accessible and inclusive audiovisual archives. One
of the project member is a longterm Wikimedian.
- Supply-chains.us – an interactive and visual repository of resources,
information, and stories related to technology supply chains.
- ThinkTwise – open source browser extension that detects and highlights
the quality of arguments in written, digital texts.
The program will kick-off on July 1&2, 2021 and ends by beginning of
October. We are super thrilled to be able to support these promising
projects and help them further develop in the coming months. If you want to
be updated about the development of these projects, please follow us on
Twitter [5] or check out our Blog for regular updates [6].
Best
Kannika
[1] https://www.wikimedia.de/unlock/
[2]
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/UNLOCK_Lessons_Learned_…
[3]
https://www.wikimedia.de/unlock-blog/rebuilding-trust-in-the-digital-age/
[4] https://www.wikimedia.de/unlock/projects/
[5] https://twitter.com/UNLOCK_Acc
[6] https://www.wikimedia.de/unlock-blog/
--
Kannika Thaimai (she/her)Leitung / Lead UNLOCK Accelerator
UNLOCK Accelerator: We accelerate your ideas. Together we build the
future of Free Knowledge.
UNLOCK is a program initiated and implemented by Wikimedia Deutschland.
www.wikimedia.de/unlock
Keep up to date! Current news and exciting stories about Wikimedia,
Wikipedia and Free Knowledge in our newsletter (in German):
https://www.wikimedia.de/newsletter/
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Tel. (030) 219 158 26-0
https://www.wikimedia.de/
Hi Everyone,
The Foundation has just published a post on Diff with an overview of some
small changes we are making to our privacy policies:
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/06/21/small-updates-to-the-wikimedia-founda…
.
In summary, our general privacy practices are not changing. These changes
are minor and were made to make our language more consistent, and to
provide more information about how to make requests regarding the personal
data we collect.
Please take a look at the Diff post for more information. If you have
questions or comments, please contact us at privacy(a)wikimedia.org. Thanks
everyone, and take care.
Best,
Aeryn Palmer
--
*Aeryn Palmer* (they/them)
Legal Director
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
*California Registered In-House Counsel*
*NOTICE: This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you
have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the
mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation and for legal/ethical
reasons, I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community
members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more
on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer>.*
Hello all,
This month's Wikimedia Research Showcase will be held on Wednesday, June
23, at 16:30 UTC (9:30am PDT). The theme is "AI model governance" with
presentations from Haiyi Zhu of Carnegie Mellon University and Andy Craze
and Chris Albon of the Wikimedia Foundation's Machine Learning Team.
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USSBuwebWt4
Mediawiki:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase#June_2021
Talk 1
Speaker: Haiyi Zhu (Carnegie Mellon University)
Title: Bridging AI and HCI: Incorporating Human Values into the Development
of AI Technologies
Abstract: The increasing accuracy and falling costs of AI have stimulated
the increased use of AI technologies in mainstream user-facing applications
and services. However, there is a disconnect between mathematically
rigorous AI approaches and the human stakeholders’ needs, motivations, and
values, as well as organizational and institutional realities, contexts,
and constraints; this disconnect is likely to undermine practical
initiatives and may sometimes lead to negative societal impacts. In this
presentation, I will discuss my research on incorporating human
stakeholders’ values and feedback into the creation process of AI
technologies. I will describe a series of projects in the context of the
Wikipedia community to illustrate my approach. I hope this presentation
will contribute to the rich ongoing conversation concerning bridging HCI
and AI and using HCI methods to address AI challenges.
Talk 2
Speaker: Andy Craze, Chris Albon (Wikimedia Foundation, Machine Learning
Team)
Title: ML Governance: First Steps
Abstract: The WMF Machine Learning team is upgrading the Foundation's
infrastructure to support the modern machine learning ecosystem. As part of
this work, the team seeks to understand its ethical and legal
responsibilities for developing and hosting predictive models within a
global context. Drawing from previous WMF research related to ethical &
human-centered machine learning, the team wishes to begin a series of
conversations to discuss how we can deploy responsible systems that are
inclusive to newcomers and non-experts, while upholding our commitment to
free and open knowledge.
--
Janna Layton (she/her)
Administrative Associate - Product & Technology
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
