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.
Hello friends!
Nigeria proclaimed independence from British rule on 1 October 1960. On
this day we celebrate Nigeria independence.
The Wikimedia Nigeria Foundation Inc. is inviting all our friends in the
Wikimedia movement to join us on the 1st of October, 2021 for a 24hrs
online edit-a-thon to mark and celebrate the independence of Nigeria by
improving any Nigerian-related articles on
on any language Wikipedia.
Please add #NG to the summary of all articles improved or created as part
of this event.
The community is also planning a one-hour virtual meet-up on the same day.
You can join the virtual meet-up via the link below;
Time: Oct 1, 2021 12:00 PM West Central Africa
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89726776105?pwd=dVQvNmFpZGsrVENSUUxHSTE2ZS9vZz09
Meeting ID: 897 2677 6105
Passcode: 545487
Thank you.
Olaniyan Olushola
Chair, Wikimedia Nigeria Foundation Inc.
Hi all,
Join the Research Team at the Wikimedia Foundation [1] for their monthly
Office hours next Tuesday, 2021-10-05, at 16:00-17:00 UTC (9am PT/6pm
CEST). To participate, join the video-call via this link [2]. There is no
set agenda - feel free to add your item to the list of topics in the
etherpad [3] (You can do this after you join the meeting, too.), otherwise
you are welcome to also just hang out. More detailed information (e.g.
about how to attend) can be found here [4]. Through these office hours, we
aim to make ourselves more available to answer some of the research related
questions that you as Wikimedia volunteer editors, organizers, affiliates,
staff, and researchers face in your projects and initiatives. Some example
cases we hope to be able to support you in: - You have a specific research
related question that you suspect you should be able to answer with the
publicly available data and you don’t know how to find an answer for it, or
you just need some more help with it. For example, how can I compute the
ratio of anonymous to registered editors in my wiki? - You run into
repetitive or very manual work as part of your Wikimedia contributions and
you wish to find out if there are ways to use machines to improve your
workflows. These types of conversations can sometimes be harder to find an
answer for during an office hour, however, discussing them can help us
understand your challenges better and we may find ways to work with each
other to support you in addressing it in the future. - You want to learn
what the Research team at the Wikimedia Foundation does and how we can
potentially support you. Specifically for affiliates: if you are interested
in building relationships with the academic institutions in your country,
we would love to talk with you and learn more. We have a series of programs
that aim to expand the network of Wikimedia researchers globally and we
would love to collaborate with those of you interested more closely in this
space. - You want to talk with us about one of our existing programs [5].
Hope to see many of you, Emily on behalf of the WMF Research Team [1]
https://research.wikimedia.org [2]
https://meet.jit.si/WMF-Research-Office-Hours [3]
https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Research-Analytics-Office-hours [4]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Office_hours
[5] https://research.wikimedia.org/projects.html
--
Emily Lescak (she / her)
Senior Research Community Officer
The Wikimedia Foundation
TL;DR: Upvote your favorite Movement Charter Election Compass statements
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Charter/Drafting_Committee/Electio…>
until October 3rd.
///////////////////////////////////////
Hello everyone,
in roughly 10 days, on October 11, we will start the voting on the
community candidates for the drafting committee that will draft the
Movement Charter. We got 72 candidates running for the committee!
To be able to guide all of you through so many candidacies, we want to
provide a Voting Advice Application. You can find the prototype here on
Toolforge <https://mcdc-election-compass.toolforge.org/>.
Over the last week, we got 110 statements proposed by community members: On
values and principles, on resource allocation, on the charter drafting
process. Thank you very much!
*The next step is now to select 15 to 20 of these statements for the final
advice application -- your turn! *Upvote the statements you would like to
see included in the voting advice application:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Charter/Drafting_Committee/Electio…
You can vote on as many statements as you like, but only one vote per
statement. *Think about which statements you would like to see the
candidates positioning themselves to, which might help you in your
decision-making.* The ~20 statements with the most votes will be selected
and send to the candidates on Monday, October 4th.
All of this is an experiment, we're happy to get feedback!
Best regards
Cornelius
--
Cornelius Kibelka (he/him)
Event Coordinator
Movement Strategy + Governance
2030.wikimedia.org
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. Donate.
<https://donate.wikimedia.org/>*
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hoi,
There are some people who repeatedly argue that we raise way too much
money. Given a set of assumptions an argument can be constructed to make
this point. In my opinion there is little merit to the argument. We do need
money to operate the Wikimedia projects and a positive outcome per year
enables us to do more.the next year. I have some ideas about raising money
and raising expectations.
- We want to raise less money in the Anglo-Saxon world. When people
donate money everywhere they too will gain a sense of ownership. This sense
of ownership is to be distributed more equally around the globe
- With our projects owned more equitably around the globe, the notion
that "any child of nine year old can find pictures in Commons" is
reasonable and self-evident; the world pays for results that
are globally relevant ..
- We need a delivery manager, his/her task is to research and define
what it is our projects deliver to their public. The objective is to
increase both quantity and quality of what is delivered by a project and
discuss with project communities what it is that can be done to improve the
service to its public. Commons does provide material to Wikipedia, that is
good but not enough.
Both the Wikimedia Foundation and the Internet Archive have projects to
document all scientific papers / output. The Internet Archive provides an
important service to the Wikimedia Foundation and we can integrate the two
projects, reduce costs and have the WMF pay the IA for its services. Closer
ties with the Internet Archive provide many other benefits. One of these
benefits is that we can bring the Wikipedia references into a modern age.
For Wikidata there is a technical limit in what we can achieve on the
current platform. Because of Wikidata the WMF is a very big fish in the
data pond. We need to (imho) pick up the challenge and develop our own
software. This will cost significantly and it demonstrates that we accept
that Free software is not Free as in Beer. With the IA as a partner, we may
find a partner in this endeavour.
The notion that we raise too much money, the notion that there is no
urgency is a fallacy. It is all too easy to identify how our service is
lacking and where we can improve our service. The arguments why the WMF
raises too much money assumes that there is only one project, their project
and they consider that its status quo suffices. The question is, sufficient
for who,for what and for how long.
Thanks,
GerardM
Hello all,
Please accept my apologies if you are receiving this a number of times
today. We have sent it out to multiple mailing lists in order to reach as
many community members as possible. Please feel free to forward this to any
other community mailing lists you believe are relevant.
It's coming close to time for annual appointments of community members to
serve on the Ombuds commission (OC). This commission works on all Wikimedia
projects to investigate complaints about violations of the privacy policy,
especially in use of CheckUser and Oversight tools, and to mediate between
the complaining party and the individual whose work is being investigated.
They may also assist the General Counsel, the Executive Director or the
Board of Trustees in investigations of these issues. For more on their
duties and roles, see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ombuds_commission
This is a call for community members interested in volunteering for
appointment to this commission. Volunteers serving in this role should be
experienced Wikimedians, active on any project, who have previously used
the CheckUser tool OR who have the technical ability to understand the
CheckUser tool and the willingness to learn it. They are expected to be
able to engage neutrally in investigating these concerns and to know when
to recuse when other roles and relationships may cause conflict.
Commissioners are required to sign the Access to NonPublic Information NDA
and must be willing to comply with the appropriate Wikimedia Foundation
board policies (such as the access to non-public data policy[1] and the
privacy policy[2]). This is a position that requires a high degree of
discretion and trust. Commissioners must also be over 18 years of age.
If you are interested in serving on this commission, please write me an
email off-list to detail your experience on the projects, your thoughts on
the commission and what you hope to bring to the role. The commission
consists of twelve members; all applications are appreciated and will be
carefully considered. The deadline for applications is the end of day[3] on
31 December, 2021.
Please feel free to pass this invitation along to any users who you think
may be qualified and interested.
Thank you!
-Karen Brown
On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Trust & Safety team
1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_to_nonpublic_information_policy
2. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
3. This deadline is flexible in terms of time zones; as long as your
application is in while it's 31 December somewhere in the world, you're
fine.
--
Karen Brown
Trust & Safety Specialist
Wikimedia Foundation
kbrown(a)wikimedia.org
Hello everyone,
The #WPWPCampaign 2021 International Team is looking for experienced
volunteer Wikipedia editors to join the campaign international jury team.
Interested person(s) should email the international team via their mailing
list: wpwp-organizers(a)lists.wikimedia.org list.
Thank you,
Euphemia and Rajeeb
For: Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos International Jury.
Dear fellow Wikimedians,
This is an update from the Movement Charter
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Charter> process. We have closed
the call for candidates on September 14 (AoE
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anywhere_on_Earth>) for the Drafting
Committee
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Charter/Drafting_Committee> and
now have a pool of candidates
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Charter/Drafting_Committee/Candida…>
with diverse backgrounds to choose from.
The 15 member committee will be selected with a 3-step process
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Charter/Drafting_Committee/Set_Up_…>
:
-
Election process for project communities to elect 7 members of the
committee.
-
Selection process for affiliates to select 6 members of the committee.
-
Wikimedia Foundation process to appoint 2 members of the committee.
Communities elect 7 members
This announcement is related to the community elections, which will take
place in a time period of 2 weeks from October 11 to October 24. We look
forward to a wide participation across the communities to create the
committee to curate the writing of the Movement Charter. The Election
Results will be published on November 1.
Affiliates select 6 members
Parallel to the election process, all affiliates asked to contribute as
well: All affiliates were divided into eight geographic and one ‘thematic’
region (check the list), and each region chooses one person who will act as
a selector for that region. These 9 selectors will come together to select
6 of the committee (from the same pool of candidates). The selection
results will be published on November 1.
Wikimedia Foundation appoints 2 members
Finally, the Wikimedia Foundation will appoint two members to the committee
by November 1.
All three processes will be concluded by November 1, 2021, so that the
Movement Charter Drafting Committee can start working by then.
For the full context of the Movement Charter, its role, as well the process
for its creation, please have a look at Meta. You can also contact us at
any time on Telegram or via email (wikimedia2030(a)wikimedia.org).
Best regards,
--
Kaarel Vaidla (he/him)
Movement Strategy <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/2030>
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>