Hi all,
The next Research Showcase will be live-streamed next Wednesday, December
14. Find your local time here <https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1671039024>.
The title of the Showcase is, 'A year in review from the WMF Research team:
Tying our work to the research community.'
The Wikimedia Research community is key to tackling the many strategic
challenges of the Wikimedia movement. As we are ending the year, the
Research team will reflect on why working with the community is important
to us. We will share the initiatives, tools, and resources developed
throughout 2022 to bring the community together, facilitate researchers’
contributions to the Wikimedia projects, and encourage a diversity of
research questions.
YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0ss9ckUlvQ
You can join the conversation on IRC at #wikimedia-research. You can also
watch our past Showcases here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase
Warm regards,
Emily
--
Emily Lescak (she / her)
Senior Research Community Officer
The Wikimedia Foundation
Hi everyone,
I am emailing to give you advance notice that this February, 2023 the
Foundation legal department is planning to host a consultation about
updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use.[1] We have not settled on the exact
date to start, but are aiming for mid-February, probably around the 14th.
We’ve started a meta page where we’ll be posting some information and which
we’ll use for consultation when we go live.[2] So please watch that space.
The Terms of Use (ToU) are the legal terms that govern the use of websites
hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. We will be gathering your feedback on a
draft proposal from February through April. The draft will be translated
into several languages, still to be determined, with feedback accepted in
any language.
This update comes in response to several things:
1.
Implementing the Universal Code of Conduct
2.
Updating project text to the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license[3]
3.
Bringing our terms in line with current and recently passed laws
affecting the Foundation including the European Digital Services Act
Regarding the Universal Code of Conduct, pending the upcoming vote on
enforcement paths, we are instructed to ensure that the ToU include it in
some form.[4] We are starting to prepare for that now, though we will
modify the final proposed language depending on the result of the vote.
Regarding CC 4.0, the communities had determined as the result of a 2016
consultation[5] that the projects should upgrade the main license for
hosted text from the current CC BY-SA 3.0 to CC BY-SA 4.0. We’re excited to
be able to put that into effect, which will open up the projects to
receiving a great deal of already existing CC BY-SA 4.0 text and improve
reuse and remixing of project content going forward.
Finally, regarding new laws, the last ToU update was in 2015, and that
update was a single item regarding paid editing. The last thorough revision
was 2012. While the law affecting hosting providers has held steady for
some time, with the recent passage of the EU’s Digital Services Act[6], we
are seeing more significant changes in the legal obligations for companies
like the Foundation that host large websites. So with a decade behind us
and the laws affecting website hosts soon changing, we think it’s a good
time to revisit the ToU and update them to bring them up to current legal
precedents and standards.
You can expect to hear more from the Foundation Legal Team in mid-February
as we get the proposed legal changes drafted for public discussion.
Best,
Jacob
[1] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use/en
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Legal_department/2023_…
[3] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Revised_enforceme…
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use/Creative_Commons_4.0
[6] https://wikimedia.brussels/dsa-political-deal-done/
--
Jacob Rogers
Legal Director
Wikimedia Foundation
Pronouns: He/him
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged
information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please
delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the
Wikimedia Foundation, 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>.
Hi everyone!
The fourth edition of the Coolest Tool Award
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Coolest_Tool_Award will
happen online on Friday 16 December 2022 at 17:00 UTC!
The event will be live streamed on Youtube in the MediaWiki (
https://www.youtube.com/user/watchmediawiki) channel.
See <https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1642179615>
https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1671210028 for your timezone.
The awarded tools will be showcased in a virtual event, with broadcasted
video and chat channels for socializing. We will send more details and
links soon.
Save the date, and join us celebrating the great work volunteer developers
do for the Wikimedia communities.
We hope to see you there!
Komla, for the Coolest Tool Academy 2022
--
Seyram Komla Sapaty
Developer Advocate
Wikimedia Cloud Services
Hello all,
On December 6th 2022, the Foundation undertook 16 global bans to users who
were engaging in conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia projects in the
MENA region. While we are unable to discuss Foundation office actions in
detail due to legal limitations and for the safety of our communities, we
would like to speak a little more to this situation as it involves the
safety and security of all of us.
As Wikimedia projects have risen in prominence across the world, it has
attracted increasing attention of those who would like to control the
information published on it, for political or other reasons. Community
members have addressed concerns of this sort for many years, but sometimes
volunteers who intervene in such cases may themselves face retaliation for
their actions. The Foundation does its best to support volunteers in such
cases, in order to preserve their safety.
In January of 2022, the Foundation began an investigation into alleged
conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia projects in the MENA region. In
that investigation, we were able to confirm that a number of users with
close connections with external parties were editing the platform in a
coordinated fashion to advance the aim of those parties. These connections
are a source of serious concern for the safety of our users that go beyond
the capacity of the local language project communities targeted to
address. Due to the gravity of this situation, and in order to keep our
users and the projects safe, the Foundation issued these 16 global bans.
Such actions can be distressing to those who know individuals involved and
to those who don’t. They can cause volunteers to mistrust each other and to
mistrust the Foundation and to be unsure if they can safely contribute. We
are unable to share more details about this situation due to the reasons
mentioned above, but we want to assure you that the Foundation will
continue to explore various ways to keep everyone safe and free to
contribute to the projects. We want to thank those community members across
the globe who address such situations every day and encourage all of you to
consider how to be safe in your volunteer activities. We recognize that as
we move forward, we will need to work with our communities to find a global
process to navigate safety challenges that allow such situations to be
dealt with as transparently as possible while also prioritising avoiding
risk to the safety of our users.
For anyone who feels unsafe on Wikimedia projects we encourage you to use
the local community processes or to contact us for assistance. The
Foundation and the community will work together, or in parallel, to enhance
the safety of all users whenever necessary with whatever means we can.
To contact the Trust & Safety team please email ca(a)wikimedia.or
<ca(a)wikimedia.org>g.
Kind regards,
WMF Office/Trust and Safety
Hi all,
Voting is now open in the sixteenth annual Picture of the Year contest:
<https://w.wiki/5xRn> - please vote! The first round of voting will be
open for 2 weeks.
Any user with more than 75 edits before Jan. 1, 2022 is eligible to
vote; if you're not sure the voting tool will automatically check for you.
If you have any questions, please see the help page: <https://w.wiki/5xSZ>.
P.S. You may notice this is the 2021 edition, we fell behind on starting
the contest. We can always use more volunteers to help, please let us
know if you're interested in helping in the future.
Thanks,
-- POTY Committee
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