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
On behalf of Wikimedia Taiwan, we would like to say that this is long overdue. For more than half a decade, good faith volunteers from Hong Kong, the Chinese mainland, and Taiwan have raised concerns about dangerous members of that organization, including in the Signpost(1) (repeatedly(2)). It is not the kind of threat that communities or even larger ones, like our wiki, can deal with entirely on their own. We have been having very exhausting years.
Now there is some hope. But we have a lot of work ahead of us as a volunteer community, and we call upon the Foundation to meet its commitment of support as we do. We need to rebuild an inclusive wiki that welcomes everyone from all places who wants to contribute to Chinese language Wikipedia in good faith. Many people have felt very unsafe for years, so restoring a shared sense of comfort will likely take a long time. Doing this work is very important to get back to focusing on knowledge and Wikipedia’s five pillars that should unite our community.
Yuan Chang, Chairman of Wikimedia Taiwan
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/In_fo…
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-07-25/Speci…
中文版本:
在此僅代表台灣維基媒體協會聲明，這個行動是遲來的努力。多年來，香港、中國大陸和台灣的用戶一再呼籲對該組織中的危險成員與行為的關切，包括但不僅止於之前於Signpost報導(1) (另一則報導(2))中所提及。這不是社群，或甚至整個中文維基，可以自行處理的威脅。這些年我們心力交瘁。
現在的處置，讓我們覺得終於有了一些希望。但作為志願者組織，我們仍有很多工作要做，並希望基金會能大力支持。我們需要重建一個具有包容性的維基百科，歡迎來自所有地區，願意真誠貢獻中文知識的參與者。這幾年來，許多參與者感到不安，要恢復原本平和的氛圍，需要相當長時間的努力。這個工作非常重要，有助於我們把心力集中在知識，以及團結我們社群的維基百科的五大支柱上。
台灣維基媒體協會理事長 張遠
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/In_fo…
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-07-25/Speci…
Original Link of the statement: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Taiwan/Declaration/Wikimedia_Taiw…
Dear All,
Please join me in welcoming Luis Bitencourt-Emilio to the Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustees. Luis was unanimously appointed to a 3-year
term and replaces a board-selected Trustee, Lisa Lewin, whose term ended in
November 2021 [1].
Currently based in São Paulo, Luis is the Chief Technology Officer at Loft,
a technology startup in the real-estate industry. He brings product and
technology experience from a globally diverse career that has spanned large
technology companies including Microsoft, online networking sites like
Reddit, and a series of entrepreneurial technology ventures focused in the
USA and Latin America. Luis has led product and technology teams across
Latin America, the United States, Europe and Asia. He is passionately
involved in building and promoting the entrepreneurial ecosystem for Latin
American-based startups.
Luis has more than two decades of experience across product development,
software engineering, and data science. At Microsoft, he led engineering
teams shipping multiple Microsoft Office products. At Reddit, he led the
Knowledge Group, an engineering team that owned critical functions such as
data, machine learning, abuse detection and search. He was deeply involved
in Reddit’s growth stage and worked closely with Reddit’s communities in
that evolution. Luis also co-founded a fintech startup to help millennials
manage and automate their finances.
His career has also been shaped by a visible commitment to recruiting
diverse leaders. At Reddit, Luis was a key member of the recruitment
efforts that achieved equal representation of women engineering directors.
Luis says his proudest achievement at Microsoft was building their
Brazilian talent pipeline by working closely with local universities to
place thousands of engineering candidates at Microsoft, as well as his
involvement in expanding global recruitment to markets including Ukraine,
Poland, Great Britain, the EU and Mexico.
Luis was educated in Brazil and the United States, receiving a Bachelor of
Science in Computer Engineering with Honors from the University of
Maryland. He is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish and English. He is also a
proud father and dog lover.
I would like to thank the Governance Committee, chaired by Dariusz
Jemielniak, for this nomination process as well as volunteers in our
Spanish and Portuguese speaking communities who also met with Luis or
shared their experiences.
You can find an official announcement here [2].
PS. You can help translate or find translations of this message on
Meta-Wiki:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Janu…
[1] Lisa Lewin served from January 2019 till November 2021:
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Renewing_Lisa_Lewin%E2%80%…
[2]
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/01/12/luis-bitencourt-emilio-joins-wikimedi…
Best regards,
antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv
Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
*NOTICE: You may have received this message outside of your normal working
hours/days, as I usually can work more as a volunteer during weekend. You
should not feel obligated to answer it during your days off. Thank you in
advance!*
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 WMF accounts staff,
Could you kindly clarify whether the "Salaries, other compensation,
employee benefits" figure in Part I, line 15 of the Form 990 relates solely
to the 291 employees indicated in Part I, line 5, or whether it also
includes salaries, compensation and benefits for the 82 contractors listed
in Part V, line 1a of the Form 990.
Thank you.
Andreas
Hello everyone,
TLDR; Wikimedia will soon be applying as a mentoring organization to Google
Summer of Code 2022 <https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com> [1] and Outreachy
Round 24 <https://www.outreachy.org/> [2]. We are currently working on a
list of interesting project ideas to include in the application. If you
have some ideas for coding or non-coding (design, documentation,
translation, outreach, research) projects, share them here: <
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T299453> [3].
*Timeline*
As a mentor, you will engage potential candidates in the application period
for both programs between March and April. You will help candidates make
small contributions to your project and answer any project-related queries
during this time. You will work more closely with the accepted candidates
during the coding period between May and August.
*New changes are coming to GSoC*
GSoC has exciting changes this year, including:
* Eligibility criteria redefined–the program is now open to all open-source
newcomers 18 years and older. It will no longer be solely focused on
university students or recent graduates.
* Multiple sizes of projects supported–ranging from ~175 to ~350 hr long.
* Increased flexibility in project timing–project deadline can be extended
to up to 22 weeks.
*Tips for proposing projects*
* Follow this task description template when you propose a project in
Phabricator: <
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/outreach-programs-projects> [4]. Add
#Google- Summer-of-Code (2022) or #Outreachy (Round 24) tag.
* Project should require an experienced developer ~15 days and a newcomer
~3 months to complete.
* Each project should have at least two mentors, and one of them should
hold a technical background.
* Ideally, the project has no tight deadlines, a moderate learning curve,
and fewer dependencies on Wikimedia's core infrastructure. Projects
addressing the needs of a language community are most welcome!
* If you don't have an idea in mind and would like to pick one from an
existing list, check out these projects: <
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/outreach-programs-projects/> [4]
* To learn more about the roles and responsibilities of mentors, visit our
resources on MediaWiki.org: <
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Outreachy/Mentors> [5], <
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code/Mentors> [6].
Cheers,
Srishti
[1] https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com
[2] https://www.outreachy.org/
[3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T299453
[4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/outreach-programs-projects/
[5] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Outreachy/Mentors
[6] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code/Mentors
*Srishti Sethi*
Senior Developer Advocate
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hello everyone,
(This statement is available on Meta-Wiki for translation and wider
distribution)
Today, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees published a statement
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Janu…>
supporting a community vote on the proposed enforcement guidelines
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Enforcement_guide…>
for the Universal Code of Conduct
<https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct> (UCoC).
One of the key recommendations
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recomme…>of
the strategic goals for 2030 was the collaborative creation of a UCoC to
provide a global baseline of acceptable behavior for the entire movement
without tolerance for harassment. The global Wikimedia community must work
well together in producing knowledge resources for the benefit of the
world. Forging welcoming, inclusive, harassment-free spaces in which people
can contribute productively and debate constructively is critical for the
movement’s success.
The Board continues to stand by its May 2020 statement
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/May_…>
on “Healthy Community Culture, Inclusivity, and Safe Spaces” that,
“harassment, toxic behavior, and incivility in the Wikimedia movement are
contrary to our shared values and detrimental to our vision & mission” and
to our joint strategic goals
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recomme…>
for 2030.
The ratification of the collaboratively created UCoC last year was a
notable milestone, and hopefully the discussion on the ratification process
for the collaboratively created enforcement guidelines proposal today will
lead to another one.
The enforcement guidelines proposal is a major achievement of thoughtful
co-creation for the global communities that took part in the months of
consultations, the volunteers leading the drafting committee itself, and
the Foundation. The Board is very grateful to the volunteers and staff
members who collaboratively co-created first the UCoC itself that the
trustees ratified last year, and now the enforcement guideline proposal.
While the UCoC is already in effect, the completion and ratification of the
guidelines will allow everyone to begin a period of assessing how they
function, in action. We should collectively discover where both the
original document and the pathways to enforce it work well and where they
need to be improved. Once the guidelines are adopted, communities and the
Foundation will begin to collect information on how they are working for
the subsequent review of both after a year.
The Board strongly supports the proposal made by the joint letter of
Arbitration Committees
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_from_Arbcoms_to_the_Board_of_Tr…>
for community voting on the enforcement guidelines proposal prior to the
Board’s own ratification of the final guidelines. Trustees also recognize
the support of such a vote expressed by surveyed volunteer functionaries,
affiliate members, and the drafting committee.
Based on their input, and aligned with processes used for the Wikimedia
Foundation Board Elections, all registered Wikimedia contributors who meet
minimum activity requirements, affiliate and Foundation staff and
contractors (employed prior to 1/17/22), and current and former Foundation
trustees, will have the opportunity to vote on the enforcement guidelines
proposal in SecurePoll.
A threshold of above 50% support of participating users will be needed to
move on to Board of Trustees ratification. If the majority of voters oppose
the adoption of the guidelines as written, they will be asked which
elements need to be changed and why. This would allow for another round of
edits to address community concerns prior to another vote, if needed. Both
the UCoC and the enforcement guidelines (after ratified), will also be open
for review and voter-endorsed amendments annually.
The Board asks every member of the Wikimedia communities to continue
creating a safe and welcoming culture that stops hostile and toxic
behavior, supports people targeted by such behavior, and assists good-faith
people.
The Board believes these enforcement guidelines, once finalized, will be an
important step in encouraging productive work on the Wikimedia projects.
The Board hopes that you will step in to review and provide your feedback
and thoughts in the vote, so that the ratification process can start with a
strong preliminary approach.
On behalf of the Board,
Shani Evenstein Sigalov
Vice Chair, Board of Trustees.
Chair, Community Affairs Committee.
Shani Evenstein Sigalov
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/profile/shani-evenstein-sigalov/>
Vice Chair, Board of Trustees
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hello everyone,
( Read this message in other languages on Meta
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Com…>:
العربية • deutsch • español • français • Русский • 中文)
You are invited to join our next *Conversation with the Trustees* on *17
February at 18:30 UTC* (check your local time
<https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1645122658>).
The event is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation’s Board of Trustees’ Community
Affairs Committee (CAC)
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Com…>.
The Board of Trustees is a volunteer body of movement leaders and external
experts in charge of guiding the Wikimedia Foundation and ensuring its
accountability. This forum is an opportunity for the community to directly
engage with Trustees and talk openly about our work.
We will be hosting this conversation on Zoom with a live YouTube stream
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCU7aObkG84>.
The call will be 90 minutes: a 10 minute introduction, then a 20 minute
update from Trustees and Wikimedia Foundation staff, and the remaining time
dedicated to open Q&A and conversation.
We want to make these calls interactive, so we encourage as many of you as
possible to join us directly in Zoom. All community members in good
standing will be able to join us there.* Request the Zoom link by emailing
askcac(a)wikimedia.org <askcac(a)wikimedia.org>*.
If you would like to be added to a list to receive emails with Zoom links
for these calls in the future, please indicate that in your email.
We will work to provide interpretation for languages with five or more
interested community members. *To request interpretation, please email
askcac(a)wikimedia.org <askcac(a)wikimedia.org>. *You can do this up until 5
days before the meeting to allow us to make the necessary arrangements.
Closer to the date we will send out a *reminder with more information about
the agenda*, but for now please *save the date and register* for the Zoom
room!
A final note -- in our last meeting (October 2021), we shared that we plan
to meet again on December 2021. This meeting was pushed to Jan, and then
Feb, in order to allow for more of the Trustees and Foundation leadership
to join, including our new CEO.
We have made necessary arrangements so that this year we will be able to
meet the community more regularly (every other month). You will find
the planned
dates of future meetings throughout the year
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Comm…>
on Meta, so you can hopefully "save the date" in advance.
Hoping to see as many of you as possible,
Shani (on behalf of the CAC).
Shani Evenstein Sigalov
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/profile/shani-evenstein-sigalov/>
Vice Chair, Board of Trustees
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hi all,
We've just published a blog post summarising the new features and
functionality available to active Wikipedia editors in The Wikipedia
Library:
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/01/19/the-wikipedia-library-accessing-free-…
The Wikipedia Library is a tool providing active Wikipedia editors with
free access to otherwise-paywalled resources, including journals, books,
newspapers, magazines, and databases. Over the past 5-10 years the library
has built up a large collection of content from a wide range of publishers.
In the past couple of years we've been finalising the centralised Wikipedia
Library tool used for accessing all this content:
https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/. I'm really pleased to announce that
we've finished work on some long-requested and planned features which make
it really simple to use!
The library now has:
- Proxy-based authentication for direct access of resources without a
secondary login
- A centralised search feature for browsing multiple collections from
one place
- An on-wiki notification to let editors know about the library when
they have crossed the eligibility threshold (rolling out in stages
throughout January)
As the project I first joined the Wikimedia Foundation to work on years ago
I'm personally thrilled that we've finally been able to deploy all these
features!
If you're eligible to use the library (500+ edits, 6+ months editing) you
can jump in and start using the library straight away. We're now working on
expanding and diversifying the content available in the library, so let us
know on the suggestions page if there are collections you want us to make
available: https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/suggest/
If the tool isn't currently localised into your language, you can translate
it on TranslateWiki:
https://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Wikipedia_Library_Card_Platform
We're planning to host some Office Hours, which will be a chance to get a
walkthrough of how to use the library, as well as discuss your research
needs and requests for new collections with the team. Look out for more on
that in the coming weeks.
--
Sam Walton
Product Manager, The Wikipedia Library
swalton(a)wikimedia.org