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
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
Hi everyone!
I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
[1] *Wikimedia Community User Group* *Rwanda *[2] as a Wikimedia User
Group. The group aims to improve articles on Wikimedia Foundation project
websites and promote free and open access to knowledge locally in
Kinyarwanda & English. They also invest in projects that sensitize and
train different communities in Rwanda about Wikipedia with much emphasis on
Kinyarwanda Wikipedia*.*
Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Recognit…
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Rwanda
Regards,
*Camelia Boban*
*Chair*
*Affiliation <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee>*
Hello everyone,
I’m writing as Acting Chair of the Community Affairs Committee to invite
you to our next Conversation with the Trustees, which will take place on 21
April at 10:00 UTC <https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1650535215>. This is a
chance for you to speak directly with members of the Wikimedia Foundation
Board of Trustees about our work guiding the Wikimedia Foundation’s
activities.
We welcome you to join us on Zoom. Request the Zoom link by emailing
askcac(a)wikimedia.org, or stream live on YouTube
<https://youtu.be/3cd2FxovdXE> instead. You can also email
askcac(a)wikimedia.org to submit questions ahead of time or request language
interpretation for the call.
Agenda items include the Foundation’s Annual Plan and how the community can
participate in shaping it. More agenda items will be added on the event
Meta page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Comm…>
closer to the date.
Hope to see you there!
Rosie
*Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight *(she/her)
Acting Chair, Community Affairs Committee
Board of Trustees, Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hi all,
Join the Research Team at the Wikimedia Foundation [1] for their monthly
Office hours this Tuesday, 2022-04-05. Find your local time here
<https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1649199600>.
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 are welcome to add questions / items to the etherpad in advance,
or when you arrive at the session. Even if you are unable to attend the
session, you can leave a question that we can address asynchronously. If
you do not have a specific agenda item, you are welcome to hang out and
enjoy the conversation. More detailed information (e.g., about how to
attend) can be found here [4].
Through these office hours, we aim to make ourselves available to answer
research related questions that you as Wikimedia volunteer editors,
organizers, affiliates, staff, and researchers face in your projects and
initiatives. Here are some example cases we hope to be able to support you
with:
-
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].
To improve the impact and accessibility of our sessions, we invite you to
share your feedback in a brief optional survey [6]. We estimate that it
will take about 5-10 minutes to complete. We welcome your input even if you
have not attended Office Hours. If you prefer to not respond via Google
form, you can provide your feedback via email. We will accept responses
until April 15, 2022.
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
[6] https://forms.gle/Y5zJ7gunk4RvqvJX8
--
Emily Lescak (she / her)
Senior Research Community Officer
The Wikimedia Foundation
Hello Wikimedians!
The *Campaigns Product Team *will be hosting the next office hour to share
exciting updates on the Registration Tool
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Campaigns/Foundation_Product_Team/Registrat…>
and new proposed namespaces for events. We will also be sharing community
updates on the usability tests and design highlights of the latest mobile
and desktop wireframes.
Join us and share your thoughts on these developments!
Date: *March 31, 2022*
Time: 15:00 UTC
Zoom: https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/82046580320
You may also watch Campaigns Office Hour: Introducing the Campaigns Product
Team <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jT8fRUWjfI> to learn more about the
Team and the previous wireframes.
Feel free to send us a message if you want to receive a reminder for this
meeting.
Thank you.
Best,
Imelda
--
*Imelda Brazal*
Senior Content Campaign Fellow
Campaign Product Team, Wikimedia Foundation
ibrazal-ctr(a)wikimedia.org
Hello everyone! [Sorry for the crossposting]
We are currently organizing a workshop with the title “Wiki-M3L: Wikipedia
and Multi-Modal & Multi-Lingual Research” at ICLR [1], in which we bring
together researchers working on topics around Wikipedia, with a focus on
multilingual projects as well as multi-modality (e.g., text and images). In
this workshop, we want to foster collaboration between researchers and the
Wikimedia community, so we allocated a session for researchers to exchange
with Wikimedians. Therefore we are looking for participants interested in
joining us at ICLR for the workshop and would like to exchange ideas and
answer some questions of researchers working on Wikipedia. The workshop
will happen virtually on the 29th of April 2022, and the session will take
around 30 minutes from 14:15 CET. Please reach out to us if you are
interested in participating!
Cheers,
Lucie and Tiziano
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki-M3L
Dear community members,
We are going into the last days of Wikimania 2022 survey but we still want to hear from you.
This is a reminder for you to please give us your event suggestions by March 31.
Read more via https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/03/17/save-the-date-and-help-us-create-wiki…
Wikimania 2022 is coming August 11-14!
Looking forward to your survey completion.
Thank you.
Kayode