In the light of the posts by Mina Theofilatou, could the list admins
take action to either ban the use of this list by Mina or moderate all
future posts in line with the UCoC and TCoC?
The facts are that in these posts:
24 June:
Mina presented as a "valid concern" for Wikimania that there have been
incidents of trans women harassing women at events. This promotes that
myth that trans women are more dangerous than anyone else.
29 June:
Mina promoted the myth that there is a "era of self-identification",
where trans women might "exits the bathroom stall with his penis in
his hand" which spreads fear of trans women and attempts to normalize
the idea that trans women are exposing penises - and it's normal to
call trans women men, so it's normal to misgender trans women if you
feel like it.
Mina attacked trans men using myths about fear of their menstruating.
Mina derided the idea of respecting trans people by presenting her
clearly transphobic views as self-evident "common decency", therefore
making everyone genuinely respectful of LGBTQIA inclusion outside of
common decency.
Hopefully after these long confessional emails from Mina, no Wikimedia
funded events will be hosting Mina or her unnamed friend who is
irrationally frightened of trans women. This would be perfectly in
line with Wikimedia event and Wikimania safe space policies. I
recommend we also remove this email list platform as a way for Mina to
permanently publish and promote transphobic myths.
As a reminder, persistently avoiding calling trans women "trans women"
or trans men "trans men" by using peculiar terms like AMAB, AFAB, MTF,
born male, "males who identify as women", is itself an expression of
transphobia. It is a sure sign that someone has spent far too long on
anti-LGBTQ forums.
Reference
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org…
Dear all,
The Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee>
(Elections Committee) [1] is, from today until April 24, seeking an
additional 2–4 members to help facilitate the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Trustee (Board) selection process.
The Elections Committee oversees the Board Community- and Affiliate seat
selection process. This is a volunteer role, and the appointment is for
three years. Please note that while you are a member of the Committee, you
will not be able to run for any election overseen by the Committee – this
includes the upcoming 2024 Wikimedia Foundation Board elections and any
other election for 18 months following the end of your term on the
Committee. You will also be restricted in your ability to publicly advocate
for community members running in those elections. You can read more in the
Elections Charter [2], recently updated by the Wikimedia Foundation
Governance Committee (GC) based on the lessons learnt from the previous
Elections and the feedback received.
The term of the previous members of the Elections Committee expired on
March 31, 2023, and some of them confirmed their willingness to continue.
After their paperwork is done (if needed), they will be reappointed by the
GC along with the new members.
Please read carefully the information below before applying or recommending
that somebody applies.
== Duties and time commitment ==
The purpose of the Elections Committee is to assist with the design and
implementation of the process to select Board Community- and
Affiliate-Selected Trustees. The Committee may also assist with similar
community-selected positions as determined by the Board.
The Committee has responsibilities throughout every phase of the selection
process for Community- and Affiliate-Selected Trustees, as established
in Article
IV, Section 3(C) in the Foundation Bylaws
<https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal:Bylaws#(C)_Community-_and_Affil….>,
including:
-
Timeline – Work with Foundation staff to determine and communicate
election timeline specifics, based on target end date set by the Board.
-
Candidacy – Working with Foundation staff and in consultation with the
Board, design the process for collecting and reviewing candidate
declarations.
-
Outreach – Work with Foundation staff to reach the various Wikimedia
communities with information about the election, including voting and the
call for candidates.
-
Volunteers – Determine whether additional volunteers are needed to
assist with election administration, and work with Foundation staff to
recruit and coordinate those volunteers.
-
Communications – Review communications about the election drafted by
Foundation staff and collaborate in determining when communications should
be issued by the Committee, by staff, or by the Board.
-
Evaluation – Assist in reviewing candidates based on criteria set by the
Board.
-
Campaigning – Set and enforce rules regarding how candidates can
campaign, and oversee the process of asking candidates to answer campaign
questions.
-
Voting – Determine the voting method and voter eligibility criteria, and
work with Foundation staff to determine the voting platform and review
voter eligibility requests.
-
Results – Review and announce vote results.
You can see a more detailed matrix of responsibilities for different groups
organising the Elections here [3].
Elections Committee members sign up for three-year terms and will be asked
to sign a confidentiality agreement. Members can expect to contribute 2–5
hours per week before the selection process and 5–8 hours per week during
the selection process.
As an Elections Committee member, you will be responsible for:
-
Attending online meetings between now and the next election (mid-2024)
-
Attending onboarding and online training in May–June 2023
-
Working with the Committee to fulfill its other responsibilities [2]
The wider Wikimedia community votes for candidates to be considered for
community-and-affiliate selected seats of the Wikimedia Foundation Board
[4]. In 2024, the Elections Committee will oversee this selection process
for the four community-selected seats with expiring terms. This process
will be supported by the Wikimedia Foundation.
== Requirements ==
New members should have the following qualities:
-
Fluency in English
-
Responsiveness to email collaboration
-
Knowledge of the movement and movement governance
== Application Process ==
If you would like to volunteer for this role, please submit your candidacy
by April 24, 2023, at 23:59 AoE (anywhere on Earth) on Meta at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee/No…
After this the shortlisted candidates will be asked to participate in an
interview with members from the Governance Committee. The interview will be
approximately one hour, and a member of Foundation staff will likely be
present for note taking purposes. The Governance Committee (GC) will most
likely appoint new members at its meeting on May 15, 2023.
Given the private information that committee members handle, you must be 18
years of age or older, and be willing to sign the confidentiality agreement
for nonpublic information [5] if you haven't already. You can view
information on how to sign this on Meta-Wiki [6]. You will need to submit
proof of your identity and age to the Wikimedia Foundation at
secure-info(a)wikimedia.org. You would be able to hold this position on the
Committee under a pseudonym, but the Foundation needs to confirm your age
and identity.
To sum it up:
-
Please carefully read the information in this letter, and follow the
links in it, pay attention to the time commitment requirements
-
Submit your application by Apr 24, 2023 at 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth)
on Meta at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee/No…
[7]
-
Submit proof of your identity and age to the Wikimedia Foundation at
secure-info(a)wikimedia.org
-
If you are shortlisted, please attend an 1 hour interview with the GC
members
-
Sign the documents needed if appointed
Thank you in advance for your interest! If you are not interested, but know
someone who might be, share this message with them. Please let me know if
you have questions.
Best regards,
antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv
Elections Committee Board Liaison
Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee
[2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Elections_Committee_Charter
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee/Ro…
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees
[5]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Confidentiality_agreement_for_nonpublic_inf…
[6]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Confidentiality_agreement_for_nonpublic_inf…
[7]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee/No…
*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!*
Hi all,
I’m writing to let you know that Wikimedia Ukraine published and submitted
our annual reports for 2022.
Most of the past year was overshadowed by Russia’s all-out invasion of
Ukraine, which started in late February. Still, the Ukrainian wiki
community and Wikimedia Ukraine have continued active work to advance free
knowledge in our country.
We supported the community of volunteers during the war and told their
stories, helped organize two major international content campaigns
(international Wiki Loves Earth + Ukraine’s Cultural Diplomacy Month), held
two photo contests and over a dozen article campaigns on the Ukrainian
level, led major community events, cooperated with educators and the GLAM
community, worked to improve gender balance on Wikipedia, and much more.
Our full report (in Ukrainian) is available here:
https://ua.wikimedia.org/?curid=8626
You can read a Diff post with key highlights in English here:
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/01/18/wikimedia-ukraines-work-in-2022-in-10…
Other English-language materials that shed light on our work in 2022:
* Stories of Ukrainian Wikimedians during the war: https://w.wiki/5ZLi
* Results of Wiki Loves Monuments in Ukraine 2022:
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/04/20/ukraine-presenting-10-winning-picture…
* An entry in the education newsletter on our article campaign for
educators devoted to secondary school curriculum subjects:
https://w.wiki/68uC
* And finally, a look at our cutest project :) –
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/03/13/wikimedia-ukraines-cutest-project-rew…
Best Regards
Anton Protsiuk
Programs Coordinator at Wikimedia Ukraine
Dear Wikimedians,
In response to expressed needs of the communities in sub-Saharan Africa to
help achieve growth of the editing communities in the region, the Wikimedia
Foundation is working on an experiment-based project dubbed the Africa
Growth Project. The project seeks to enhance already existing community
efforts by creating a more effective online learning component, which would
allow in-person efforts to focus on already-engaged newbies who have
obtained a solid foundation in Wikipedia policies and collaboration norms,
maximizing the return on investment of human volunteer effort. The
hypothesis guiding this experiment is that providing high-quality training
to new and existing Wikimedians covering the basics of contribution to
Wikimedia (including introducing the many ways to contribute beyond article
writing) can double the retention rates of active editors in the region.
For the pilot, we will be developing four modules, and we are inviting you
to share feedback on outlines for these training modules, which are:
-
Module 1: Preparing to participate in Wikimedia projects
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Africa_Growth_Pilot/Live_Tutorials_on_Core_…>
-
Module 2: 101 Ways to Contribute to Wikimedia
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Africa_Growth_Pilot/Live_Tutorials_on_Core_…>
-
Module 3: The Voice of Wikipedia: Neutral Point of View
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Africa_Growth_Pilot/Live_Tutorials_on_Core_…>
-
Module 4: Sourcing knowledge: Verifiability on Wikipedia
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Africa_Growth_Pilot/Live_Tutorials_on_Core_…>
We hope to benefit from your experience as a Wikimedian in sharing your
input on these module outlines, to ensure that they capture what is needed
to support community understanding of those policies.
We are interested to hear your thoughts on what's missing, what's good,
what could be improved, and any suggestions on the modules' and sections'
order and pace, great illustrative examples and helpful exercises that
would be useful to incorporate.
We await this input and will take it all into consideration as we develop
the full modules based on these outlines (including whatever change
suggestions we accept). We will also be publishing the complete modules on
the WikiLearn platform when they are ready.
See the details of each module here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Africa_Growth_Pilot/Live_Tutorials_on_Core_…
And share your comments here;
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Africa_Growth_Pilot/Live_Tutorials_on_…
For your input to be useful in our module development, please share your
feedback by July 21st, 2023.
Thank you,
From the Africa Growth Pilot team (Dumisani Ndubane, Veronica Thamaini,
Asaf Bartov)
--
Veronica Thamaini | Manager of Regional Programs, Community Resources
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hi all,
The next Research Showcase, with the theme of *Wikimedia and LGBTQIA+*,
will be live-streamed Wednesday, June 21 at 16:30 UTC. Find your local time
here <https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1687365012>.
YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOD2ZdxRNfo
You can join the conversation on IRC at #wikimedia-research or on the
YouTube chat.
This month's presentations:
- *Multilingual Contextual Affective Analysis of LGBT People Portrayals
in Wikipedia*
- *Speaker*: Chan Park, Carnegie Mellon University
- *Abstract*: In this talk, I present our research on analyzing the
portrayal of LGBT individuals in their biographies on Wikipedia, with a
particular focus on subtle word connotations and cross-cultural
comparisons. We aim to address two primary research questions: 1) How can
we effectively measure the nuanced connotations of words in multilingual
texts, which reflect sentiments, power dynamics, and agency? 2)
How can we
analyze the portrayal of a specific group, such as the LGBT
community, and
compare these portrayals across different languages? To answer these
questions, we collect the Multilingual Contextualized Connotation Frames
dataset, comprising 2,700 examples in English, Spanish, and Russian. We
also develop a new multilingual model based on pre-trained multilingual
language models. Additionally, we devise a matching algorithm to
construct
a comparison corpus for the target corpus, isolating the attribute of
interest. Finally, we showcase how our developed models and constructed
corpora enable us to conduct cross-cultural analysis of LGBT People
Portrayals on Wikipedia. Our results reveal systematic differences in how
the LGBT community is portrayed across languages, surfacing cultural
differences in narratives and signs of social biases.
- *Paperː* Park, C. Y., Yan, X., Field, A., & Tsvetkov, Y. (2021,
May). Multilingual contextual affective analysis of LGBT people
portrayals
in Wikipedia. In Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web
and Social Media (Vol. 15, pp. 479-490).
<https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.10820.pdf>
- *Visual gender biases in Wikipediaː A systematic evaluation across the
ten most spoken languages*
- *Speaker*: Daniele Metilli, University College London
- *Abstract*: Wikidata Gender Diversity (WiGeDi) is a one-year
project funded through the Wikimedia Research Fund. The project
is studying
gender diversity in Wikidata, focusing on marginalized gender identities
such as those of trans and non-binary people, and adopting a queer and
intersectional feminist perspective. The project is organised in three
strands — model, data, and community. First, we are looking at how the
current Wikidata ontology model represents gender, and the
extent to which
this representation is inclusive of marginalized gender
identities. We are
analysing the data stored in the knowledge base to gather insights and
identify possible gaps and biases. Finally, we are looking at how the
community has handled the move towards the inclusion of a wider
spectrum of
gender identities by studying a corpus of user discussions through
computational linguistics methods. This presentation will report on the
current status of the Wikidata Gender Diversity project and the
envisioned
outcomes. We will discuss the main challenges that we are facing and the
opportunities that our project will potentially enable, on Wikidata and
beyond.
- *Paperː* Metilli D. & Paolini C. (in press). ‘Non-binary gender
representation in Wikidata’. In: Provo A., Burlingame K. & Watson B.M.
Ethics in Linked Data. Litwin Books. <https://wigedi.com/chapter.pdf>
You can watch our past Research Showcases here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase
Hope you can join us!
Warm regards,
--
*Pablo Aragón (he/him)*
Research Scientist
Wikimedia Foundation
https://research.wikimedia.org
Hi All,
The June edition of Afrika Baraza is happening this *Friday, 23 June at
17:00 *
*UTC.*
We have great conversations lined up in the quest to define the African
Agenda within the Wikimedia Movement. Please Sign up
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ef1LB-bFHAnNoTgdzG26E-amJfM1vhDkHYsAb47…>
today, to choose a break-out room for your prefered topic.
Otherwise you can join by using the link below:
Meeting Link <https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/84739608024>
Looking forward to seeing you all this Friday!
Kind Regards,
Bobby Shabangu,
On Behalf of Afrika Baraza Organizing Team