February 2024 - Wikimedia-l - lists.wikimedia.org

February 2024 Update
by Maryana Iskander 30 Sep '25

30 Sep '25

This message will be translated into other languages on Meta-wiki <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chi…> ‎العربية • español • français • português • Deutsch• 中文 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chi…> You can help with more languages <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chi…> Hi everyone, Since joining the Foundation I have tried to regularly write to you <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chi…> here and elsewhere, and I wanted to share a few updates since my last letter. In October 2023 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Com…>, I reflected that we were in a period of compounded challenges across the world with escalating wars, conflict, and climate reminding us each week that global volatility and uncertainty was on the rise. That feels even more true now. My instinct then was to ask us to make more time to talk to each other and to try and pull closer together. This feels even more needed now. I noted that the return of in-person gatherings has been essential for a subset of our volunteers, providing spaces for reconnecting, recharging and working through difficult issues together in the same room. Foundation leadership has also been working harder to share organizational news and have individualized conversations on-wiki and in other digital forums. Our goal has been to put more effort and intentionality into communicating the right information, at the right time, and in the right way, even knowing that we can never meet everyone's expectations. Most importantly, we had to keep talking to each other – formally and informally – throughout the year. This was the basis of an open invitation to Talking: 2024 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Com…>, an effort designed to listen intently to what is on your minds now, to share progress at the Foundation, and to also reflect on the needs for multi-year strategic plans. (A reminder that our priorities for long-range planning <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Comm…...>, informed by movement strategy, are Wikimedia’s financial model, product/technology needs, and roles/responsibilities.) So far, Wikimedia Foundation Trustees, executives, and staff have hosted 130 conversations <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Comm…> on-wiki, with individuals, and in small groups. These conversations have stretched across all regions of the world. We have learned from prolific community members to recent newcomers, from technical volunteers to stewards, event organizers, and affiliate leaders. Since these discussions were intended to improve deliberations at the Board’s strategic planning retreat next week, here is a summary of some of the feedback I've heard so far! Continue focusing the Foundation on supporting product/technology needs. As early as my first letter to you in January 2022, <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chi…> I understood that the central role of the Wikimedia Foundation is in enabling our projects, which is core to every aspect of our movement's mission. This was reinforced in most of the Talking:2024 conversations that we hosted over the last five months – from the need for the Foundation to remain focused on upgrading technical infrastructure to supporting volunteer needs for tool maintenance and metrics. Our annual planning continues to center the Foundation’s product and technology priorities. More deliberate conversations are taking place at the Foundation about what a multi-generational view of Wikimedia projects requires of us all. For me, this remains perhaps the most critical topic for our strategic efforts as we make tangible and practical a mission <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Mission> that calls for our work to continue in perpetuity. Recent discussions on this mailing list remind me that we can’t get to everything fast enough, but we continue to move more in the right direction. Chief Product & Technology Officer Selena Deckelmann recently shared <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/02/20/thinking-about-annual-planning-in-the…> that: “In the last couple of months, we shipped changes that enabled a better backbone for PageTriage <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:PageTriage>, and worked closely with volunteer developers to ensure future sustainability. Going forward, we have a number of initiatives ranging from projects like Edit Check <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Edit_check>, Discussion Tools <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:DiscussionTools>, Dark mode <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/11/24/dark-mode-is-coming/>, Patrolling on Android <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Team/Android>, Watchlist on iOS <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Team/iOS>, Automoderator <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Moderator_Tools/Automoderator>, Community Configuration <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth/Community_configuration>, the Wikimedia Commons Upload Wizard <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Upload_Wizard>, and others. We've resolved over 600 volunteer-reported issues in Phabricator in the last 6 months, and we're using research methods that solicit prototypes directly from volunteers <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Accessibility_for_reading/Commun…> for informing typography decision making. And we're learning not just the basics of font size and spacing, we're also getting important information about context, devices and cultural aspects of the use of Wikipedia which are vital for helping make our software easier to use as how people use and access it changes (and it has changed a lot over 20 years!).” She has also already published draft objectives for the product and tech teams, and your input and on-wiki comments are always welcome <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Ann…> . ‘Human-led, tech-enabled’ means that the humans still lead. While tech featured prominently in most of these conversations, there remains no doubt that Wikimedia is a human-led movement (“It’s all about people.”). This led to exploring even more solutions that can address a familiar dilemma about how to balance the needs of existing editors with initiatives to welcome newcomers (“It’s always the war between ‘we need to protect the existing content’ and ‘do we care about new users with a tolerance for errors.’”). While some shared wonderful stories of their own journeys (“I wanna say that the Newcomer tools have been a really great project and very glad to see that energy was expensed there”), there was vocal urgency about the sustainability of the projects for generations to come (“We are sending away people who could be helpful to the projects”). In this regard, several discussions highlighted the value of the Universal Code of Conduct <https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Universal_Code_of_Conduct> as a “game changer” in signaling to all communities that they are actively invited and welcomed to safely contribute to the mission of free knowledge, while still acknowledging there is more to do (“It’s probably a good thing, but I don’t know if it will solve what I have faced.”). I learned in my initial listening tour that we have to make all contributions count <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chief_Executive_Office…>, and all contributors feel welcomed. I found that the Talking:2024 conversations deepened my own understanding of the peer support and mentorship needed for volunteers to thrive as active community members. (One example are these reflections <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Clovermoss/Editor_reflections> where 140 other editors participated). Finally, our human-led values came up in several conversations about Wikimedia’s role in shaping the next generation of artificial intelligence, a topic of ongoing discussion in the world <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/18/magazine/wikipedia-ai-chatgpt.html?unloc…>, in our communities <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Future_Audiences>, and at the Foundation. This is complemented by ongoing discussions about the role of AI-generated content on our platform by various project communities. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Large_language_model_policy)> A recent effort to contribute to a shared research agenda on AI <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Artificial_intelligence/…>can be found here – including the need for more research to understand human motivation to contribute to the knowledge commons – it was created by a small group working in the open who rushed to publish a ‘bad first draft’ that will benefit from more input. <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Talk:Artificial_intellig…> Can our financial model provide more certainty, and also force difficult trade-offs? In my last letter, <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Com…> I shared that future projections indicate that, for a range of reasons, fundraising online and through banners may not continue to grow at the same rate as in past years. We have several long-term initiatives underway to help mitigate this risk and also diversify our revenue streams, including the Wikimedia Endowment <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Endowment> and Wikimedia Enterprise <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Enterprise>. Over the past two years, we have slowed the rate of growth <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Ann…> for the Foundation itself, while increasing financial resources <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Ann…> that support other movement entities. The Talking:2024 conversations provided a space for movement entities to share a need for multi-year financial certainty in their support from the Foundation, which we will take into our planning for next year. Other conversations highlighted the need to continue prioritizing limited resources and being more explicit about trade-offs (“[We must] use the money we have as wisely as we can”). These discussions have already improved the thinking for the Foundation’s current and upcoming planning cycles. <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/01/31/progress-on-the-plan-how-the-wikimedi…> Movement roles need more clarity. The task of defining a Movement Charter <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Movement_Charter> came up in several conversations with contributors of all kinds. These ranged from reflections about movement strategy recommendations and principles (“Will it always be first come, first served in this movement?”) to questions about the purpose of different structures (“What decisions do we need the global council to make? Why are decisions moving from one center to another?” “We are taking a hammer to solve this issue when they are simple screws.”). Unsurprisingly, there were varying perspectives (“The editing community in many regions doesn’t see an immediate benefit in affiliates, hubs, or other governance structures.” “The community still feels unheard by the Foundation.” “The good work that affiliates do in certain regions is commendable, especially where those affiliates are deeply engaged with the community.”) And a deep recognition of the complex task at hand (“The community is so huge and it’s hard to tie everyone together.” “How do we make change in the movement in a way that is understandable and doesn’t scare people.” “There has to be control and risk management with empowering the community, inviting everyone, and trying to grow while protecting what we have meticulously built over the past 23 years.”). Considering the investment of time and resources going into the charter, we need to make sure that this effort will provide us all with clearer strategic direction on what is needed to serve the future needs of our movement, and meet the expectations of a rapidly changing world around us. The Wikimedia Foundation recently shared these questions <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement_Charter#Wikimedia_Foundation_…> with the Movement Charter Drafting Committee to identify areas of key focus and concern. We will continue to review and comment on new drafts as they are produced in the weeks and months ahead. The Board of Trustees will dedicate time at its next Open Conversation with Trustees on March 21 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Comm…> to talk more about this process and the Foundation’s hopes for a Movement Charter. +++ Talking: 2024 kicked off a useful check-in to hear how we are collectively doing, and it continues. Your voice and contributions would help add to the feedback we have already received—whether that is on-wiki, in 1:1 conversations, in small groups, in person. What we learn will continue to inform the Foundation's long-term planning. Please consider joining a conversation <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Com…'s_talk> . For me, each conversation has been a reminder that what drives this movement is the people. We remain at a pivotal moment, where the world needs Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects more than ever. As one of you shared, “I feel like there is a way because we have made a way, an experience of community that connects people across the world.” As always, I welcome your feedback either on my talk page <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/User_talk:MIskander-WMF> or emailing me directly at miskander(a)wikimedia.org. Maryana Maryana Iskander, Wikimedia Foundation CEO

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We need more interactive content: we are doing it wrong
by Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga 01 Feb '25

01 Feb '25

Dear wikimedians, Nearly one year ago, the Graphs extension was disabled from all wikis, because there was a security issue that should be solved (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T334940). A wide team from the WMF worked on a solution for some weeks, but after Northern Hemisphere spring ended, summer came, then the monsoon season, and now it is again summer in the Southern Hemisphere... and Graphs are still disabled. All the solutions proposed have been dismissed, but every two months there's a proposal to make a new roadmap to solve the issue. We have plenty of roadmaps, but no vehicle to reach our destination. Seven years ago, we were discussing our Strategy for 2030. We used thousands of volunteer hours, thousands of staff hours and millions of dollars to build a really well-balanced strategy. There we concluded that "By 2030, Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge". We also made some recommendations to improve the User Experience (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Recommendations/Improve_U…) and claimed that we wanted to Innovate in Free Knowledge (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Recommendations/Innovate_…). Well, the situation is now worse than it was seven years ago, let me give some examples: * Graph extension is used in thousands of pages, some of them highly relevant, as COVID or Climate Change information. There are thousands of graphs broken now, and the only partial solution give is loading these graphs as images, instead of promoting an interactive solution. * Meanwhile, a place like Our World in Data has been publishing data and interactive content with a compatible license for years. (Remember, "By 2030, Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge"). Trying to add this data and graphs to Wikimedia projects has been done by WikiMed, and it is technically possible, but still blocked to deploy (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T303853). * Wolfram Alpha is like a light year ahead us on giving interactive solutions to knowledge questions, even the silliest ones (https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=how+many+oranges+fit+in+the+Earth%3F). We have good technical articles about a lot of things, but sometimes "becoming the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge" needs to provide solutions to exact problems, like the answer to an equation, and how to solve it. That's also "free knowledge". * Brilliant (https://brilliant.org/) is brilliant if you want to learn lots of things, like geometry or programming. Way better than Wikipedia. But... you need to pay for it. How could we even try if we can't add anything interactive to our platforms? * We can build interactive timelines using Wikidata, but we can't embed them at Wikipedia. Weird, because I can do it in any external page. Hopefully, Histropedia will do it better. http://histropedia.com/<http://histropedia.com/> * We could have something very special: inline links in video and audio subtitles. We used to have them, but the new video infrastructure doesn't allow it. Imagine a world where you can watch a video and link a link in the subtitles just to know more about that. * ... The list can go on an on ("which phase the moon is today?"), but I think that the idea is clear. We could have interactive content, but we are going in the opposite direction, and every year we are further from our goal, because other platforms are doing it better, way better. And this seems like some wild ideas, but then I read the 2023-2024 annual plan section called "Wiki Experiences" (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-2024/…) and it looks like we should be going there. But we aren't. I'm sorry if this e-mail feels bitter. My experience in the last years is that we are now further of what we need that we were before, even if many chapters and volunteers are trying to overturn it. Thank to everyone who have been trying. Galder

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Feedback invited on proposed requirements for affiliates & user groups recognition changes
by Nataliia Tymkiv 18 Nov '24

18 Nov '24

Dear all, I would like to share with you the outputs of the Wikimedia Foundation Affiliate Strategy process [1], and to invite you to give feedback on the proposed changes to requirements for all affiliates & to user groups recognition process (more below). The 2017 Strategic Direction <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017> says that we, the Wikimedia Movement, would build “the services and structures that enable others to … advance our world by collecting knowledge that fully represents human diversity” while carrying on “our mission of developing content”. As Wikimedia affiliates are a key and integral part of the Wikimedia movement and have knowledge and expertise to share, the movement’s success depends greatly on affiliates as they help people join us in doing mission-aligned work. The Wikimedia Foundation Affiliates Strategy report [2] identified a need to streamline the role of the Affiliations Committee (AffCom) on recognition of Wikimedia Affiliates, and identified issues with the current state of the process. After conversations with AffCom, the Board liaisons to AffCom identified two areas for improvement. These areas are about the relevant work and mandate of the Board related to affiliate recognition: 1) requirements for affiliates; and 2) improving the workflows around the process for the creation and recognition of a user group. The proposal on Meta [3] is suggesting to change the requirements for all existing Wikimedia affiliates, not just the legal entities. There are ten proposed criteria for a healthy affiliate. Examples include focusing on continuity by being an active group and welcoming new users, having good governance, and actively delivering on mission goals. Compliance with these requirements would be self-reported by the affiliates. The Board liaisons will work with the Affiliations Committee to publish a resolution outlining how affiliates would be expected to fulfill these requirements to remain in good standing. Throughout the Wikimedia Foundation Affiliate Strategy process, there was also feedback about user groups. Initially, user groups were meant as a first step toward creating chapters or thematic organizations. Over the years, user groups have evolved and there are now legally incorporated user groups, user groups with boards, etc. Getting started does need to be easy, but also needs to make sense, and so there is a proposal for changes to the current workflow. The recommendations [3] include an outline of the sequential steps of a revised process. The feedback can be given from today up till March 20, 2024 (Anywhere on Earth). Hopefully a fairly long feedback period will allow affiliates to consult with their membership, thinking it through practically. To provide your feedback, please review the page here, on Meta, [3] and leave comments on the talk page. Alternatively, you can join an open call (February 14 and 28 at 14:00 to 14:30 UTC) or request a conversation as a part of Talking:2024 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Comm…>. You can use the Wikimedia Foundation Community Affairs Committee/Talking: 2024#Let’s Talk|Let’s Talk <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Comm…'s_talk> feature to sign up for a time to speak with me and other trustees about this conversation or any other topic regarding the Wikimedia Foundation Board, Movement Strategy, and more. Note: New user group applications will be placed on hold for the duration of this conversation – but the ones received before will be reviewed according to the current process. Best regards, Nat & Mike & Lorenzo Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Liaisons to the Affiliations Committee [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Affiliates_Strategy [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Wiki… [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Affiliates_Strategy/Re… 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!*

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Happy #May17 #IDAHOT #IDAHOTBITQ
by Željko Blaće 17 May '24

17 May '24

What is May 17th? The International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia was created in 2004 to draw the attention to the violence and discrimination experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex people and all other people with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities or expressions, and sex characteristics. The date of May 17th was specifically chosen to commemorate the World Health Organization’s decision in 1990 to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder. https://may17.org One year ago in 2020 we started QueeringW in hope #1 Queering Wikipedia conference would be happening with a year of delay...now we hope it is in 2022! Meanwhile we are "Together, we Resist, Support, and Heal" <https://twitter.com/may17org> Happy #May17 #IDAHOT #IDAHOTBITQ for those who celebrate and would support https://www.instagram.com/QueeringW @may17org <https://twitter.com/may17org> #IDAHOT <https://twitter.com/hashtag/IDAHOT?src=hashtag_click> #IDAHOT2021 <https://twitter.com/hashtag/IDAHOT2021?src=hashtag_click> https://twitter.com/QueeringW

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The Book Creator
by Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga 18 Apr '24

18 Apr '24

Dear all, Some years ago, when we started the Education Program at the Basque Wikipedia, we used a lot the Book Creator (or Collections) extension. It allowed to bind some articles and download them in PDF or DOC/ODT formats for further editing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Book). This was a great feature, as it allowed us to send the teachers and students a collection of articles they had created. The teacher could create free learning materials from the articles created by their students, and download them in DOC/ODT format allowed to edit them, rearrange and add other materials. Some teachers said us that they have created learning materials using Wikipedia articles created by their students. Anyway, in 2017 the Wikimedia Foundation decided to break the book creator, because there were some errors in the PDF creator. So they disabled the book creator and added a note saying that the system is "Undergoing changes". The message is still visible, but no changes are being done. (You can follow the last messages of redesigning the book creator here:https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T175681). I know that this is not the most important feature that is broken. There are many other broken things. But creating materials for students, and being able to read them offline or edited by teachers is a feature that aligns with our mission and vision. As always happens, no one is accountable for having something broke for six years. And it doesn't seem that this feature will return in the future. At least, the PediaPress link is still working, but there you can't edit your book, only pay for have it printed. I think no one knows what will happen with this feature. I write this message simply to say that I miss it a lot. Thanks Galder Gonzalez

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Re: @Wikipedia losing opportunities in Twitter
by Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga 08 Apr '24

08 Apr '24

Dear Pete and The Cunctator, Surely, Twitter is getting worse by the day, and, surely, Elon is not the best practices person in the world. And, indeed, the WMF has lots of things to tackle and worry about. Nevertheless, the WMF has a Communications Team and the Communications Team has a Social Media department, and the Social Media department's job is to handle social media. So, even if these shouldn't be our main concern, is something we may talk about. Sincerely, Galder ________________________________ From: Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth(a)gmail.com> Sent: Wednesday, May 3, 2023 2:44 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: @Wikipedia losing opportunities in Twitter Twitter has a poor recent record on protecting its users from government interference and privacy invasion, an area in which the Wikimedia community and the WMF have typically taken a keen interest. In 2015, Wikimedia's then-general counsel took pride in the WMF's perfect score on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) rating system for ethical response to government interference, a series that ran under the title "Who Has Your Back?" https://diff.wikimedia.org/2015/06/29/whos-got-your-back/ As far as I can tell, the EFF hasn't run these ratings since 2019. In that year they focused on the issue of censorship (the specifics of the ratings varied in different year. They didn't consider Wikimedia that year, but Twitter got 3 stars out of a possible 6, putting it behind such companies as YouTube, Medium, the Google Play Store, and the Apple Store. Now, in 2023, Twitter has apparently ceased self-reporting relevant data altogether to the Lumen group, which is connected to Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. But according to the report linked below, it has not refused even one government request for data since Elon Musk took over in 2022. It previously refused about 50% of requests. One example that may resonate for Wikimedians: "Under previous ownership, Twitter actively resisted requests from many of these same regimes. For two weeks in 2014, the platform was banned from Turkey, in part due to its refusal to globally block a post accusing a former government official of corruption. (The executive who led that charge was Vijaya Gadde, one of the first executives fired after Musk took over.)" https://restofworld.org/2023/elon-musk-twitter-government-orders/?ref=nobsb… Twitter's choice to stop submitting data to Lumen as of April 15, 2023: https://twitter.com/shreyatewari96/status/1651865580629114880 I prefer to see the WMF follow the leadership of such organizations as the (USA-based) National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and officially de-emphasize Twitter as a means for public communication. Wikimedia already has one of the top websites in the world; it is better to stand up for important shared values than to overlook this mismanagement of a highly popular website. -Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]] On Tue, May 2, 2023 at 5:27 AM The Cunctator <cunctator(a)gmail.com<mailto:cunctator@gmail.com>> wrote: I honestly think the WMF has better things to do than worry about engagement on what is clearly a grossly mismanaged website. On Tue, May 2, 2023, 3:53 AM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <galder158(a)hotmail.com<mailto:galder158@hotmail.com>> wrote: Dear Justice, Yes, it works that way, because we are not measuring the total engagement (where @Wikipedia wins @euwikipedia bat not @viquipedia) but the engagement rate per tweet, which is balanced with the number of followers. Another topic is that the take-over by Elon Musk is affecting our engagement, but this should also be taken in account by the Social media team. In fact, there should be a discussion following up here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Social_media#Twitter_verification_chec…. Since the changes on the algorithm affects everyone, the @Wikipedia team should be interested in learning about successful stories and how other social media handles continue having engagement while the one that should be leading is losing engagement every month. Finally, I don't think that any discussion is "settled" if there's no answer. For the moment, the answer to the proposal of working together is silence. Thanks Galder ________________________________ From: Justice Okai-Allotey <owulakpakpo(a)gmail.com<mailto:owulakpakpo@gmail.com>> Sent: Tuesday, May 2, 2023 9:47 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: @Wikipedia losing opportunities in Twitter Hi Galder, Twitter has consistently seen a downward trend since the take over by Elon Musk. A lot of people are not using that platform like they did in the past. And I thought this conversations was settled when WMF brought their social media strategy and engagement plan. But it looks like you keep bringing it up. Again you don't expect accounts with less following to have same engagements with accounts with higher following it doesn't work that way. Organizations define their own metrics and so success may mean different things to different organizations. Regards, Justice. On Tue, 2 May 2023 at 07:41, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <galder158(a)hotmail.com<mailto:galder158@hotmail.com>> wrote: Dear all, The impact of @wikipedia continues going down on Twitter. There's no strategy to turn this trend and the team seems happy with the numbers .https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Social_media#Organic_social_media_strategy_update. For context, the "Engagement Rate per Tweet" (this is the metric that the Communications Team proposed as a benchmark) felt to 0.011% (benchmark average is 0.035% and 0.05% for non-profits). Compare it with 0.27% of the Basque Wikipedia or the Catalan Wikipedia accounts (both have the same impact factor), or the 0.23% of the French Wikipedia account. We are talking about strategies with x25 impact. Some months ago, some users made an offer to collaborate in making the social media communication strategy better, but there's no answer from the Wikimedia Foundation. I'm still waiting for an aswer to the offer. Sincerely, Galder ________________________________ From: Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <galder158(a)hotmail.com<mailto:galder158@hotmail.com>> Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2023 11:36 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Re: @Wikipedia losing opportunities in Twitter Dear all, I write to send a small update on this. In a message about the methodology followed to measure success (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Social_media#Re:_Twitter_engagement_qu…), Laura Dickinson posted this: "According to its 2022 report<https://www.rivaliq.com/blog/social-media-industry-benchmark-report/>, the median Twitter engagement rate for brands across all industries is 0.037%; for nonprofits specifically, it is 0.054% [our engagement] over the last 28 day period is 2.7%." I have measured the engagement with that methodology (https://www.rivaliq.com/blog/social-media-industry-benchmark-report/#title-…) for @Wikipedia in January (Likes+RT+Comments / Number of followers) and the result is: 0.012%, three times lower than the industry standard and 4.5 lower than for non-profits. For context, Basque Wikipedia had 0.055%, Catalan Viquipedia 0.060% and Indonesian Wikipedia an astonishing 2.79%. (You can check the numbers here: https://www.rivaliq.com/free-social-media-analytics/twitter-head-to-head) There's an open question about the strategy followed and a sincere proposal of opening this account to a shared volunteers/WMF administration. Sincerely, Galder ________________________________ From: Àlex Hinojo <alexhinojo(a)gmail.com<mailto:alexhinojo@gmail.com>> Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2023 7:42 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: @Wikipedia losing opportunities in Twitter +1 On Thu, 19 Jan 2023 at 07:13, Peter Southwood <peter.southwood(a)telkomsa.net<mailto:peter.southwood@telkomsa.net>> wrote: A Wikipedia account should be under the control of Wikipedians, following the editorial policy for Wikipedia, but they could let WMF do the technical work if such exists. WMF can and should run Wikimedia accounts. WMF running a Wikipedia account could be misrepresentation. Cheers, Peter From: Andreas Kolbe [mailto:jayen466@gmail.com<mailto:jayen466@gmail.com>] Sent: 19 January 2023 02:46 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Cc: F. Xavier Dengra i Grau Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: @Wikipedia losing opportunities in Twitter Dear all, The obvious question surely is: Why not let volunteers (co-)run the Wikipedia Twitter account? A number of Wikipedia language versions (French, Catalan, Portuguese, Basque, Waray, etc.) seem to have volunteer-managed Twitter accounts that are doing fine. If volunteers are good enough to write the encyclopedia and curate the main page of each language version, aren't they good enough to write (or suggest) the occasional tweet? Andreas On Wed, Jan 18, 2023 at 11:20 PM F. Xavier Dengra i Grau via Wikimedia-l <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>> wrote: Hi/Bona nit, This last tweet from @Wikipedia is a good example of what some of us have been mentioning in this list during the past days: https://twitter.com/wikipedia/status/1615756186640334848?s=46&t=7wB7VI4gwIS… Despite the fact that many Wikipedias have already had this new skin deployed since months ago as voluntary testers, not a single mention on their huge contribution was explained on Twitter (neither back then nor today…). We need to go to the 8th tweet of today's publication to read something like "The new features, which start rolling out on English Wikipedia today, were built in collaboration with Wikipedia volunteers worldwide." If this is the situation in which the main account is monopolized only to the English version and its news/articles, why not specifying it as "English Wikipedia" in the profile and in the main link? Days pass by and we keep sharing to this list proofs, data and justified arguments (even collagues offering themselves and willing to trace a joint planning!), but still not a word or single thought from the Comms department. Disappointing, I am sad to say. Kind regards/Salutacions Xavier Dengra El ds, 14 gen., 2023 a 09:52, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <galder158(a)hotmail.com<mailto:galder158@hotmail.com>> va escriure: Egun on Boodarwun/Gnangarra, You are righth in one thing: it is very difficult to prove a point only from one puntual statistic. That's why I have been tracking statistics for a long time, because patterns are here the most important thing. Neverthless, there is only one way to know if the point me and some other users in this thread are rising is valid: experimenting. @Wikipedia should try something: tweeting 6-7 times a day, with varied topics, "on this day" like tweets, varying timezones and even curiosities about how Wikipedia works (https://twitter.com/depthsofwiki/status/1614045362985082881 2 million impressions in 9 hours). Then, after -let's say- one month, if the results (engagement, followers, retention) are better, it would be quite obvious that there's a point changing the social media strategy. If not, if engagement is the same, no obvious uprise in followers or RTs is visible, the current strategy could be validated. Me, personally, I'm ready to help the Communications Team with this task, proposing intercultural items that could be tweeted and promoted. If they want help, they know where to go for it. Again, I think that following the same pattern is a bad communication strategy (as we can see by our own eyes) and trying something new could be better. Is up to the communications team to aknowledge this and give a try. Sincerely, Galder ________________________________ From: Gnangarra <gnangarra(a)gmail.com<mailto:gnangarra@gmail.com>> Sent: Saturday, January 14, 2023 6:00 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: @Wikipedia losing opportunities in Twitter Kaya Galder The assumption that despite there being a wider audience the interests of those audience members is exactly the same, if that was true why have multiple channels. What I am saying is that in different communities that doesnt and will never hold true. Using statistics to compare the two is the issue and then complaining about different audience responses to the same event being caused by those posting to the channel. Its not the channel operators, it's the underlying expectation that all audiences are the same and react exactly the same way every time even as the audience is increasing by many orders of magnitude. Boodarwun On Sat, 14 Jan 2023 at 02:06, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <galder158(a)hotmail.com<mailto:galder158@hotmail.com>> wrote: @Gnangarra: I would doubt on the idea that Pelé is not relevant to the English audience, as it was the most visited article by far that day (https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/topviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=a…), and the second most visited next day, just after the less known Andrew Tate. Also, the account is not ENGLISH Wikipedia. Is called Wikipedia, so it should take into account, even if it tweets only about English Wikipedia (as pointed by @Xavier Dengra) a global audience. Because, again, the goal is "By 2030, Wikimedia is to become the central infrastructure for Free Knowledge on the Internet.". Not only for US centered people, but by a global audience. Even with that in mind, Pelé was the most visited article in English Wikipedia. @Yaroslav: Basque Wikipedia is not one of the few accounts tweeting about Pelé, and in perspective, there are more Basque tweeting accounts per speaker, than there are for other larger languages. We are not competing with major news outlets; we are competing to be "the central infrastructure for Free Knowledge on the Internet". Wikipedia is doing well on that: nearly 2,5 million visits in two days for the article about Pelé only in English. I think that there may be very few web services having 2,5 million visits for a page about Pelé in two days, if there's any. Also, next day the most visited article was about Andrew Tate. So, you are right: we are not a news outlet, but we are visited according to the news. Any strategy that doesn't have this in mind, will fail. You also ask how many tweets a day would be enough. I don't have an answer for this. I would like the communications team to come with one, but they don't seem either to have one. I don't think that tweeting every hour is better, but I'll explain why one tweet per day is a bad strategy, based only in what we know about the Twitter algorithm: * The Twitter algorithm tends to show a tweet to followers and others more often if it gets more engagements (RTs, likes, comments...). So, maximizing engagements seems a something positive if we want to reach to new people. * It also shows an account more often if the user interacts with it. If someone likes, RTs or comments a tweet, it seems that this account will be shown again soon. That's why you see more often tweets from your friends than others. And that's why ideological bubbles are created. * If people are engaged with a tweet, it will be shown more regularly after a tweet by other people you follow once you scroll down. This is why if you open a tweet by a far-right politician, you will see below other tweets by far-right sided politicians and the opposite for left, libertarian, green or vegans. It shows you similar content, based on people's interaction. So, tweeting more doesn't maximize engagement (if you tweet every minute, you will lose it), but tweeting less minimizes engagement. If you only tweet once a day, and you don't get too much attention, your next tweet will be less important for the algorithm, and so on. The only valid strategy is one that gets people engaged to your tweet, so you get more impressions, and this drives more interactions, and this drives more followers. Because, at the end of the day, we want to be "the central infrastructure for Free Knowledge on the Internet". I don't know how much is the ideal thing. In Basque Wikipedia our strategy is to publish 5-6 tweets every day, and then also interact with people talking about Wikipedia or speaking about articles they have created (like @viquipedia does, with great success). Our topics from the 5-6 daily tweets now (2023) are like this: every morning (yes, most of our followers live in the same time-zone) a biography of someone who was born/died on this day; then, something that happened 100 years ago. At noon, an artwork. If the artwork is depicting something interesting, a second tweet linked to that explaining the artwork itself. Two tweets in the afternoon: the first one, optional, about something related to Wikipedia itself (Statistics, projects, some user who has created something cool...) and then science/technology in a broad sense. At evening, we like to tweet something related to current events, if this is interesting. We have a shared doc with the daily tweets and we program them some days in advance. Also, we use MOA to have them copied to Mastodon. I don't know, again, if this is the optimal. I know that is better than one-per-day, because data is obviously better. Engagements, followers and interactions are better this way, as I have proved above. Best, Galder ________________________________ From: F. Xavier Dengra i Grau via Wikimedia-l <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>> Sent: Friday, January 13, 2023 3:37 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>> Cc: F. Xavier Dengra i Grau <xavier.dengra(a)protonmail.com<mailto:xavier.dengra@protonmail.com>> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: @Wikipedia losing opportunities in Twitter Hi/Bon dia Yaroslav: Also, you say one tweet per day is too little, how may do you think is normal? If I personally see an account which tweets more than say 10 per day (not counting threads) I start thinking may be it is a spam generator. Since 4 years ago we updated the social media methodology for the Catalan Wikipedia Twitter account (approx 4.5M native speakers, 10M audience), we boosted from 15.3K to 45.4K speakers, now being the 4th most followed language of Wikipedia. Our method in a nutshell: we have up to 23 knowledge themes that we oblige ourselves to post at least once every week. The number of our daily tweets vary from 6 to 10 only in content (i.e., articles). This depends on, ofc, whether it's a working day vs a weekend or other time aspects (peak hours). Plus the interactions (RT+kudos) with our wikipedians that share their new articles tagging us, which has been a massive way to appreciate their task and to visibilize to others the task of being a volunteer in Wikipedia. In fact, the latter has been especially critical to bring us huge additional views and to renew a few of our new, most active editing community (especially young users!). If our account, managed by volunteers, can conduct this organized work for a small-medium size language, why should we accept that a whole staffed team from the WMF, firstly, rejects to provide engagement data on our common, biggest handle? And secondly, why should we give up on them preparing a strategy to improve its scope and objectives? Regarding the last question, I'd like to add a last thought: never ever in the 4 years that I've been upfront in the handles in my language, the @Wikipedia account has given a simple, courtesy RT of any knowledge content (articles) from the Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, Basque, Catalan, Galician, French, Suda or Portuguese (etc.) existing handles. That should be a key aspect in our debate. Because if @Wikipedia is mostly used as the “central account” for the project, then it should also be very careful 1) to not always post in English and give some room to interact with the other language handles, 2) to stop centering their tweets on English-speaking culture, and 3) to post without clear range of topics to stay balanced. Oppositely, if it is decided that @Wikipedia is only the English-language handle, then it may change its profile name to "English Wikipedia" and not continue as the reference speaker either for the WMF nor for significant news or events. Best/Salutacions, Xavier Dengra ------- Original Message ------- On divendres, 13 de gener 2023 a les 14:56, Yaroslav Blanter <ymbalt(a)gmail.com<mailto:ymbalt@gmail.com>> wrote: Hi Galder, on the other hand.. Basque Wikipedia is one of very few accounts twitting on the Pele death in Basque, whereas a lot was twitted in English. I do not think English Wikipedia twitter can compete with major news outlets, they operate on a completely different scale.The low-hanging fruit would be twitting DYKs, FAs, GAs, or may be some other randomly picked stuff. Also, you say one tweet per day is too little, how may do you think is normal? If I personally see an account which tweets more than say 10 per day (not counting threads) I start thinking may be it is a spam generator. Best Yaroslav On Fri, Jan 13, 2023 at 2:26 PM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <galder158(a)hotmail.com<mailto:galder158@hotmail.com>> wrote: Some months have gone since I started this topic in this list, and still, we can't know how much engagement we have at Wikipedia, because data is not available. Twitter is now owned by Elon Musk, things are changing, there are more accounts in Mastodon daily, but still Twitter matters. I have been looking at the Twitter activity in the last days for @Wikipedia and I'm still very worried about the (lack of) strategy followed here. A full team, with staff members, which only produces one tweet per day, a lonely message in the vastness of the ocean, and gets really poor engagement numbers. A couple of weeks ago Pelé, one of the greatest football players of all time, died. (English) Wikipedia Twitter account needed 7 days to tweet about it, even if the article was changed in a few minutes after the death (https://twitter.com/Wikipedia/status/1611363972174778368). The tweet had 13.729 impressions (now we can know the number of impressions), 14 RTs and 129 likes. Wikipedia account has nearly 644.000 followers. If we divide these two numbers, we get a rate of 2,13% of impressions per follower. The same day Pelé died, Basque Wikipedia made a tweet. Not a week after, just when it was news (https://twitter.com/euwikipedia/status/1608541274491211776). The tweet had 964 impressions, 3 RTs and 2 likes. Basque Wikipedia account has 7,956 followers. This is a rate of 12,11% of impressions per follower. x5.68 times larger, relatively than (English) Wikipedia Twitter account. (English) Wikipedia Twitter account has nearly 81 times more followers than the Basque one. English Wikipedia is more visible, because it has a (now golden) verified account symbol, so tweets are more often promoted. English has 1.500 million speakers around the world. Basque has fewer than one million. English Wikipedia should have around 1.000 more followers than Basque Wikipedia. English Wikipedia article about Pelé had 2,5 million pageviews in the two days after his death. Basque had 250 pageviews. This is 10.000 times more pageviews. @Wikipedia has 644.000 followers, and @euwikipedia has nearly 8.000. Audience of English Wikipedia is 10.000 times larger for the same event. Why Wikipedia is not 10.000 times larger? Why doesn't Wikipedia account have 80 million followers? YouTube's Twitter account has 78 million followers. "By 2030, Wikimedia is to become the central infrastructure for Free Knowledge on the Internet.". How could we if Youtube's account has 100x more followers than we have? How can think that we are in a good shape if our tweets are only seen by less than 2% of our followers? I hope that 2023 comes with a change. A change to open these accounts, have a fresh way of thinking on social media ,and building engagement, both with momentum, not losing opportunities, and promoting good content. Sincerely Galder ________________________________ From: Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <galder158(a)hotmail.com<mailto:galder158@hotmail.com>> Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2022 3:21 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Re: @Wikipedia losing opportunities in Twitter Dear all, Some weeks ago, we had a discussion here about the different approaches we have for the @wikipedia account at Twitter. We don't know yet how many interactions does the account has, but as I said in the discussion, we try to find ways to measure our work at @euwikipedia. Today I want to share with you that this account was ranked last week as the most influential social-movements account in Basque language (https://umap.eus/ranking/gizartea) and the 10th most influential account in all categories (https://umap.eus/ranking/orokorra). This is a good metric we use to know if we are doing fine or not. Sincerely, Galder ________________________________ From: Andy Mabbett <andy(a)pigsonthewing.org.uk<mailto:andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk>> Sent: Friday, August 5, 2022 8:50 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: @Wikipedia losing opportunities in Twitter On Mon, 18 Jul 2022 at 18:48, Lauren Dickinson <ldickinson(a)wikimedia.org<mailto:ldickinson@wikimedia.org>> wrote: > Also, Andy, we will follow up this week regarding your questions > about the @WiktionaryUsers and @Wiktionary accounts. Three working weeks have passed since the above was written; I've seen no such follow-up. Have I missed something? -- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing https://pigsonthewing.org.uk _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org… To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org… To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org… To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org> -- Boodarwun Gnangarra 'ngany dabakarn koorliny arn boodjera dardoon ngalang Nyungar koortaboodjar' _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org… To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org> [X]<http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_cam…> Virus-free.www.avg.com<http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_cam…> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org… To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org> -- Àlex Hinojo _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org… To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org> -- Regards Justice Okai-Allotey Board Member Wikimedia Ghana User Group<https://wmgh.org/> Communications Officer Humanists Association of Ghana<http://www.ghanahumanists.org> Africa Coordinator Young Humanist International<https://humanists.international/about/young-humanists-international/> Freelance Digital Marketer Freelance Visual Storyteller Mobile: +233 (054) 039 4970 Skype: okai_allotey |Avenger - 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Reminders about Wikimedia Wishathon
by Srishti Sethi 14 Mar '24

14 Mar '24

Hello, We are now only three weeks away from the Wikimedia Wishathon! Exciting news - User:Lucas Werkmeister has signed up to host a piano concert during a social hour 🎉 Join us and contribute to the development of community wishes between March 15th and 17th! Participate in discussion sessions and work on user scripts, gadgets, extensions, tools and more! The full event schedule is available here: < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:WishathonMarch2024>. Explore the event wiki for project ideas and keep an eye out for non-technical tasks (documentation and design-related) that will soon be added to the Wishathon workboard: < https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/view/5906/>. Project breakouts will also be added to the schedule, where you can participate in wish development or explore innovative solutions as a user, developer, or designer. We are seeking volunteers to assist with a wide range of activities such as monitoring discussion channels during hacking hours, answering technical queries, and helping with session note-taking. Check out the Help desk schedule and add yourself to a slot where you are available and interested in providing assistance: < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:WishathonMarch2024/Help_desk>. If you have any questions about the Wishathon, reach out via Telegram: < https://t.me/wmhack>. Cheers, Srishti On behalf of the Wishathon organizing committee *Srishti Sethi* Senior Developer Advocate Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

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Annual report 2023 les sans pagEs user group
by Laurence Grignon 07 Mar '24

07 Mar '24

Dear all, I am Laugriville, board member of les sans pagEs. We are pleased to share with you our 2023 user group annual report. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Les_sans_pagEs/Report_2023 Hoping that your projects are thriving and sending you friendship and power as you need them to advance. Warm regards. Laugriville Chers toutes et tous, Je suis Laugriville, membre du comité de les sans pagEs. Nous avons le plaisir de partager avec vous le rapport annuel de notre user group https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Les_sans_pagEs/Report_2023. Espérant que vos projets prospèrent, nous vous envoyons amitié et force pour les faire avancer. Chaleureuses salutations. Laugriville.

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Call for Participants; 2024 Afrosport Writing Contest.
by Hopeabby Onuh 29 Feb '24

29 Feb '24

Hello everyone, Free Knowledge Africa is organising a contest; The 2024 Afrosport Writing Contest! Whether you're passionate about football, athletics, traditional games, or any other sport, this is your chance to showcase your creativity and love for sports. Afrosports is an African games and sports writing contest on Wikipedia. There is a huge content gap on the internet/Wikipedia as regards contents on African Sports in English and other Languages. This contest aims to bridge the African Sports content gap on Wikipedia by writing articles about the historical and contemporary African Sports Scene focusing on the English Wikipedia and 5 African languages; Wikipedia (Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba, Swahili and Kinyarwanda.) This is another opportunity to promote sports in your local community, write about the favourite games and sports you grew up playing, translate sport related articles on wikipedia to your local languages, or anything related to the Sports scene in your country, join us on this exciting venture! Come join us on the 15th of March in The Afrosports Writing Contest. There are amazing prizes to be won and also there will be training sessions. Register here <https://bit.ly/Afrosport24> Visit the project page on Meta <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Afrosports_Contest_20…> to know more about the contest. Remember, If we don’t write stories about Africa, who will? Best regards, Hopeabby Associate, Free Knowledge Africa (FKA)

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[OFFICE HOURS] Wiki Loves Folklore 2024 Office Hour Part Two
by Chabota Kanguya 28 Feb '24

28 Feb '24

Dear Community members, I hope you're doing well. We're excited to invite you to the upcoming Wiki Loves Folklore 2024 Office Hour Part Two, where we'll be discussing how to make our jury processes better. Event Details: - Date: March 2nd, 2024 - Time: 4:00 pm UTC https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1709388000 - Where: Zoom https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88637039784?pwd=AIGFVXsrMPB2piCVZ17acvacHuaZgR.1 What's Happening: - Introduction by Isaac Chabota Kanguya (Communication Officer): Isaac will start things off with a quick 10-minute talk. He'll explain why having fair and inclusive jury procedures is important for Wiki Loves Folklore. - Presentation by Suyash (Jury Coordinator for Wiki Loves Folklore 2024): Next, Suyash will speak for 20 minutes about "How to Set Up a Good Jury for Wiki Loves Folklore Photography Contest." He'll help to choose good pictures - Presentation by Nokib Sarkar (Lead Tool Developer for WLF 2024): Then, Nokib will talk for 20 minutes about "How We Judge Writing Contests using Campwiz Tool." He will show how to use the jury functionality in campwiz. - Questions and Chat Time: After the presentations, we'll have 10 minutes for you to ask questions and share your thoughts. We think this event will be really helpful, and we'd love for you to be there. To save your spot, just click here <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Folklore_2024_Office_Hour_2#Part…> Thanks so much for all your support with Wiki Loves Folklore. We're looking forward to chatting with you soon! Best, Isaac Kanguya Communication Officer International Team WLF 2024

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Celebrating Donatien Kangah
by Mahuton Possoupe 28 Feb '24

28 Feb '24

Hi all, Wikimedia projects would not be possible without the work of the countless volunteers, passionately working on bringing free knowledge to the world. This month we Wikicelebrate <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/WikiCelebrate>one of such volunteers: Donatien Kangah (User:Papischou), a Wikimedian from Côte d'Ivoire, editor of French language Wikipedia, a community leader active on local, regional, and global levels, a huge football fan, and the co-creator of the Wikimedia Community User Group Côte d'Ivoire. Donatien is an experienced Wikipedia trainer, and a member of Wikifranca micro grant committee. He supported Wikimania through his activity in the scholarship committee, worked in the capacity building group for Movement Strategy and collaborated with communities from Senegal, Togo, Chad and Guinea. Most of his engagement is connected to the Community User Group Côte d'Ivoire, which he co-founded and which he now leads. For Donatien the value of editing lies in learning through sharing. “Each act of sharing knowledge in Wikipedia is about checking sources, discovering new facts. Even if I already know a lot about the topic, I discover new facts in sources. It is like swimming in information. Sharing knowledge is not a passive process, it is a constant discovery. Through contributing I have learned a lot about my country, Africa and the world. Editing allows you to grow through giving”, says Donatien. Learn more about Donatien, and his amazing work on Diff <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/02/23/donatien-bridging-wikipedias-goalpost…> or on Meta <https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Papischou>. Each month we WikiCelebrate a different Wikimedian, acknowledging the amazing community, the pillars of our movement. We warmly invite you to participate in the celebrations. If there’s an outstanding Wikimedian that you think should be celebrated, recommend <https://wikimediafoundation.limesurvey.net/WikiCelebrate>them. Happy Celebrating, Mahuton, Mehrdad and Natalia

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Advocacy updates: Wikimedia and the US Supreme Court
by Franziska Putz 27 Feb '24

27 Feb '24

Dear all, I’m Ziski from the Global Advocacy team. I’d like to draw your attention to important hearings happening this week at the United States Supreme Court. The hearings on two cases that will be crucial for Wikimedia have just started: NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice, LLC. Both cases are challenges to state laws in Texas and Florida, which impact content moderation on social media websites. You may recall that back in December, the Foundation issued a "friend of the court <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amicus_curiae>" brief urging the Justices to strike down these laws, explaining that they pose a serious threat to projects like Wikipedia. You can read about our position on Diff, in our <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/12/07/texas-and-florida-laws-are-unconstitu…>press release <https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2023/12/07/wikimedia-foundation-calls-…>, and in the <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/12/07/texas-and-florida-laws-are-unconstitu…> brief <https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-555/292649/20231207143139081_2…> itself. <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/12/07/texas-and-florida-laws-are-unconstitu…> The US Supreme Court is hearing the cases now, and we are there in person talking to stakeholders and observing the proceedings. We expect the Court to rule this year and will be providing updates as we know more. The problem: As they are written, these laws prohibit website operators from banning users or removing speech and would generally risk Wikipedia’s volunteer-led systems of content moderation. That’s because these laws were designed to prevent social media platforms from engaging in politically motivated content moderation, but were drafted so broadly that they would also impact Wikipedia. The case is also important beyond the impact it might have on our projects. It represents a scenario that is part of a trend globally, where governments introduce legislation to address harms from big tech actors, yet Wikimedia ends up as the dolphin inadvertently caught in the net. This is one reason that WMF is working alongside affiliates to raise awareness about how Wikimedia’s model of community-led content governance works and why it is important to protect. What to watch for: We will be monitoring these developments closely in the United States, with an eye to possible ripple effects in other countries. We will provide updates on how the Court rules later this year. In the meantime, please reach out with any questions or comments and look at the resources we’re compiling on how to explain the Wikimedia model <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_Advocacy/Resources> to policymakers. All the best, Ziski Franziska Putz (she/her) Senior Movement Advocacy Manager Global Advocacy, Wikimedia Foundation Fputz(a)wikimedia.org UTC Timezone

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Re: We need more interactive content: we are doing it wrong
by Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga 25 Feb '24

25 Feb '24

Thanks Marshall for your pointing out an official answer from the WMF, Let me say that this is not only disappointing, you are also presenting a false dichotomy where we can only "save a kitten" OR "plant a tree", while we have budget, staff and enough talented volunteers to do both. The dichotomy is presented in a way that makes us think that an estimation of the cost of solving this problem has been done and it is out of all the possibilities, but we don't know what the estimation is. Is there an estimation of how much would this cost? If so, could you please share it so we know why this is out of our possibilities? I say that this dichotomy is false and I will try to explain why: * When Maryana Iskander assumed her CEO role, she pointed that the way the annual plan is done should be changed, because the previous monolithic assumption that only things reflected in the annual plan can be done (and nothing else) was preventing us from going forward. You can read it the full reflection here:https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chief_Executive_O…. Claiming that a high priority problem can't be solved now because it wasn't planned one year ago is not the way it was supposed this to be done. * The message is not about the Graphs extension. It has some weight there, but reading this message about interactive content in terms of "if we solve the graphs issue, our job here is done" is also a wrong reduction. But let's think that, indeed, this was the only problem we should solve. Arguing that it is not in the Annual plan so it can't be solved is a fallacy, as explained above, but even then, the annual plan was done AFTER the graph extension was broken. Waiting two years for a high importance problem to be solved can't be the way to do things. * Two weeks after Iskander's message, Yael Weissburg wrote in Diff this post: https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/01/28/what-does-the-world-need-from-us-now-…<https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/01/28/what-does-the-world-need-from-us-now-…>. In this post Weissburg wrote about "trends that we should expect to accelerate in the years to come because they relate to key changes in how people access, interact with, and share knowledge". You can read the post by yourself, but there is an important takeaway: people is searching for content in another way, and we should give them "rich content". Whatever it takes. * One year after Iskander assumed she wrote an update. There we can read that the number 2 priority is "Re-centering the Foundation's responsibility in supporting the technology needs of the Wikimedia movement by understanding the needs of our contributor communities, as well as emerging topics like machine learning/artificial intelligence and innovations for new audiences." We should be doing that "innovations for new audiences", but from you message it seems that we still need "a conversation to happen" https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chief_Executive_Office… * Later that year, Selena Deckelmann wrote that "The Foundation needs to exhibit better accountability in maintaining essential services (e.g. 2-factor authentication), and to be explicit about the technical tasks that it is definitely leaving for volunteers to own." (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Executive_and_Leadersh…). Yes, I understand that the example given is another one, but the idea is there: "the foundation needs to exhibit better accountability in maintaining essential services". The message follows with an elephant in the room, but we are not going to talk again about the elephant, for sure. * Finally, last two years annual plans were said to be rooted in the 2030 Strategy (which talks about this issue) and, more specifically, on the 2019 Medium Term plan.https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-term_plan_…. This Medium Term plan (which, again, is the one used as a roadmap) has only two high priority topics, the second one being: "2. Modernize our product experience. We will make contributor and reader experiences useful and joyful; moving from viewing Wikipedia as solely a website, to developing, supporting, and maintaining the Wikimedia ecosystem as a collection of knowledge, information, and insights with infinite possible product experiences and applications.". Then, there's a priority named "Platform evolution" which says literally this: "The Platform Evolution priority encompasses improving and modernizing Wikimedia’s technical ecosystem to respond to a landscape where Artificial Intelligence is creating content, rich media dominates learning, content is structured, and collaboration tools work across multiple devices and have minimal technical requirements. (...)Addressing content gaps also includes making it easier to incorporate rich media, which requires more storage and server power, and better tooling for editing, uploading, and incorporating more types of media. On the engineering front, better automation of the software release process through continuous integration, and a more intentional focus on code quality and testing will allow for more innovative and faster experimentation". Again, this is not something new that happened two months ago, this was written in 2019 coming for an extremely long conversation that already happened between 2017-2019 and that is the guiding principle of our current Annual Plan, stated by the authors of the annual plan. If we are not moving in the way we decided, we are doing it wrong. I could continue making a list of claims, but I think that is enough to understand that the conversation has happened, that we can save the kitten and plant the tree, that we already have decided that we need this and that it is already written in the annual plan. Claiming that there's no budget is also a bad move, because we don't know how much would this cost. In fact, knowing the cost would be the result of having a plan, but if there's no plan, we can't know if we can pay for it. Let me end pointing again the big issue here: if we don't go forward with our top importance strategic goals because they are too complex to be solved, then every year will be more difficult to get there. The only way to solve complex issues is to start doing them. Postponing them while we try to take the low hanging fruits is a bad move; claiming that we are not working on them ("one that we have not yet started given the other priorities we’ve been working on") because we have been solving other issues is the worst news we can have. Have a nice day Galder * ________________________________ From: Butch Bustria <bustrias(a)gmail.com> Sent: Wednesday, February 7, 2024 5:19 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: We need more interactive content: we are doing it wrong Hi Everyone, My earnest hope that the Wikimedia Foundation on its 2024-2025 Annual Financial Plan prioritize and I mean put first among all is the technical infrastructure among all its budgetary items. We can scale down budgets to 3rd party organizations like the Knowledge Equity Fund, Movement Strategy Governance funding, campaign grants, and other "wants" to accomodate a highly technically reliable and stable Wikimedia online projects ("needs"), future proof, and user friendly experience which require investments on quality manpower, hardware, applications and the like. We love open source but we also be pragmatic and wise on selection of choices because we want our content be conveniently available and reliable to our readers, users, consumers and also editors. A welcome development is the MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference, the successor to EMWCon. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Users_and_Developers_Conference_20… The said conference will be held in Portland, Oregon, from April 17–19, 2024. I also hope the Foundation invest in more technical gatherings, both onsite, hybrid or online to engage and reach out to more technical contributors, within and beyond the Wikimedia movement. I also hope WMF to start exploring eastward to Asia or elsewhere in the world as well fully diversify the technical community. Kind regards, Butch Bustria On Wed, Feb 7, 2024, 4:54 AM Brion Vibber <bvibber(a)wikimedia.org<mailto:bvibber@wikimedia.org>> wrote: Thanks for weighing in, Marshall! I agree wholeheartedly that we need to do a proper architecture for a sandbox for interactive media, that will be safe (first and foremost), perform well in the browser, work across device types (desktop web, mobile web, mobile apps), and maintain our key requirements on editability and reusability, balanced against the security and privacy needs of users if we're going to invest the effort. Backing up to do it right rather than patch up Graphs “one more time” is the right thing, and I’m very happy to see a confluence of interest around this now! My hope is we can figure out how to make that architecture & testing work happen in the near term until we collectively (inside WMF and out) can wrangle resources to make the implementation production-ready. Once we have a common infrastructure to build on, it’ll be easier for work to progress on individual types of media (graphs, charts, maps, animations, editable simulations, coding examples, etc, as well as classics like panorama viewers and integrating the audio/video player into a sandbox for heightened security). My biggest hope is that we’ll enable more work from outside WMF to happen – letting volunteers and other orgs who might have their own specialty areas and work funding to progress without every change being a potential new security risk. When we have succeeded in the past, we have succeeded by making tools that other people can use as their own basis to build their own works. I’m confident we can get there on interactive media with some common focus. Let's all try to capture some of this momentum while we've got it and set ourselves up for success down the road. – b On Tue, Feb 6, 2024, 12:27 PM <mmiller(a)wikimedia.org<mailto:mmiller@wikimedia.org>> wrote: Hi everyone – My name is Marshall Miller, I am a Senior Director of Product at the Wikimedia Foundation, and I work with many of the teams that are involved with the user experience of our websites and apps, such as the Editing, Web, Growth, and Mobile Apps teams (among others) [1]. I’m part of the leadership group that makes decisions about how the WMF teams approach things like graphs, interactive content, and video. Thank you all for having this in-depth and important discussion. I know that issues with graphs [2] are what started this discussion, but I agree that it makes sense to think about this in terms of the broader category of “interactive content”, because other kinds of interactive content, such as maps or timelines, would share architecture with what is needed for graphs (video is a different and more complicated content type). I wrote a lot in this email, but here are a couple of the main points up front: to support graphs and other interactive content, we would need to take a step back and make a substantial investment in sustainable architecture to do it – so that it works well, safely, and is built to last. And because that’s a substantial investment, we need to weigh it against other important investments in order to decide whether and when to do it. I know that it is very frustrating that the Graph extension has not been operational for many months – it means readers haven’t been seeing graphs in articles, and editors haven’t been able to use graphs to do things like monitor backlogs in WikiProjects. Over the months of trying to find a way to turn graphs back on, it has become clear that there isn’t a safe shortcut here and that the path forward will require a substantial investment – one that we have not yet started given the other priorities we’ve been working on. Every year we have to make difficult tradeoffs around what areas of our technical infrastructure we can and cannot take on. In the current fiscal year, the Product and Technology department has made experienced editors a priority [3], and many things that volunteers have asked for are either accomplished or in flight: Improvements to PageTriage (complete) [4] Watchlist in the iOS app (complete) [5] Patrolling in the Android app (in progress) [6] Dark mode (in progress) [7] Improvements to the Commons Upload Wizard (in progress) [8] …and other projects. But I know this conversation isn’t as much about what editors need as what current and future readers need. Between talking about interactive content and talking about video, it sounds like we’re having the larger conversation of what we should be offering today’s and tomorrow’s readers to help them learn from encyclopedic content – whether we need to be offering interactivity, or video, or perhaps enabling other platforms/apps to use our content to make interactive or video materials there. This is a really important conversation, because even working together we probably will not be able to build all of it – we’ll have to make hard choices about where to invest. One place where this broader conversation is happening is called “Future Audiences”, which does experiments on how to reach newer generations who use the internet differently than previous generations – and thinking particularly about video. Future Audiences has regular calls with community members to shape the direction of those experiments, which in turn inform how the broader Foundation prioritizes. I hope many of you will get involved in those conversations – you can sign up here. [9] Focusing back on graphs, since that’s what kicked this thread off, the several approaches we’ve attempted for quickly re-enabling the extension have ended up having security or performance problems. Therefore, we think that if we were to support graphs and other interactive content, we would need to plan substantial investment in sustainable architecture. This way, our approach would work securely and stably for the longer term. But that would take significant resources, and we’ll need to weigh it against many other important priorities, like tools for functionaries, improvements to the editing experience, automated ways to stop vandals, etc. To be clear, if we do assign resources to the planning and building of an architecture for graphs (and other interactive content), it means that we are still at least several more months away from having a working Foundation-supported architecture. Therefore, I think we should also be having the additional conversation that many others have brought up about what volunteers can do in these intervening months to make graphs somewhat available to users. I know people are talking about that concretely on the Phabricator task, and I will join that conversation as well. For the bigger question, I would like to start with some more learning about which kinds of interactive content are important for our encyclopedia, and how our community members see the evolution of the reading experience on our projects. I’d like to have some small conversations with many of you so that we can get into the details and ideas, joined by some of my colleagues. I’ll start reaching out to see who is interested in talking – and please let me know directly if you’d like to talk. Thank you for weighing in so far, and let’s keep talking and planning together. Marshall [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MMiller_(WMF) [2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T334940 [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-2024#… [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Page_Curation/2023_Moderator_Tools_…! [5] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Team/iOS/Watchlist#October_20… [6] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Team/Android/Anti_Vandalism [7] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Accessibility_for_reading [8] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:WMF_support_for_Commons/Upload_W… [9] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Future_Audiences#Sign_up_to_participate! _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org… To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org… To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org>

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Wiki Advocates Philippines User Group 2023 Annual Report
by anthony diaz 24 Feb '24

24 Feb '24

Dear Wikimedians, It has been a year since we were formally recognized, and we are grateful for all the volunteers who have contributed to making our program a success. We also appreciate the supportive Wikimedians who have collaborated with our efforts and have always been on our side in promoting our activities. On behalf of the Wiki Advocates Philippines User Group <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Advocates_Philippines_User_Group>, I would like to present our 2023 annual report on Meta. <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Advocates_Philippines_User_Group/Repor…> Best regards, *Anthony Diaz* *Wiki Advocates Philippines Inc., Co-founder*

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Fwd: [Wikitech-l] Etherpad maintenance 2024-02-26 09:00 - 10:00 UTC
by Johan Jönsson 23 Feb '24

23 Feb '24

Forwarding to wikimedia-l. Best, *Johan Jönsson*Manager, Product Ambassadors Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/> ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Jelto Wodstrcil <jwodstrcil(a)wikimedia.org> Date: Fri, Feb 23, 2024 at 12:51 PM Subject: [Wikitech-l] Etherpad maintenance 2024-02-26 09:00 - 10:00 UTC Hi all, we have to do *maintenance* on etherpad.wikimedia.org next *Monday, 2024-02-26** 09:00 UTC*. The maintenance involves the switch of the underlying hardware and a version upgrade. So the estimated downtime is around *60 minutes*. If you are working on a document currently please make a backup outside of Etherpad and do not use Etherpad during the maintenance window. I'll let you know when the maintenance is finished. You can find more information in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T316421. Greetings jelto _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/

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[Wiki Loves Africa 2024] Join Maryana Iskander to Launch WLA 2024
by Wilson Oluoha 23 Feb '24

23 Feb '24

Dear Wikimedians, I trust this email meets you in great spirits! The international organising team <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_In_Africa/Team> of the Wiki Loves Africa <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_In_Africa/Wiki_Loves_Africa> contest is thrilled to extend an invitation to you for the official launch ceremony of the 2024 Wiki Loves Africa <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Africa_2024> contest and the celebration of the contest's *10 year anniversary*. Your attendance will add a special spark to this exciting virtual event! Event details: *Click to view and register on event page* <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:Wiki_Loves_Africa_2024_Contest_Launch> When: Friday, March 1st Time: 16:00 UTC Where: via Zoom. <https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87953314116> Agenda: 1. Opening Extravaganza: Get the launch started with an engaging, insightful and vibrant kickoff 2. Journey through a Decade: As we celebrate a decade of innovation, discover the amazing history and highlights if Wiki Loves Africa. 3. Spotlighting the 2024 Theme! 4. Communities (guests) Presentation: Gain inspiration from community members as they share their knowledge on the importance of visual storytelling. 5. Questions & Answers 6. Official Contest Launch The event is anticipated to last approximately 1.5 hours. Don't miss out on the excitement! We would be honoured to have you with us. Please share the event details with your fellow community members. We are very excited to share this special occasion with you! Best wishes -- *Wilson Oluoha* UTC+1 Skype: studywilson1106 | Telegram: @Wilsn_Oluoha | Whatsapp: message <https://wa.me/2348069451106> Wikimedia <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:OtuNwachinemere>| <https://www.linkedin.com/in/devouard/>LinkedIn <https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilson-oluoha-a2b4a6181/> | Website <https://www.wikilovesafrica.net/> | Instagram <https://instagram.com/i_see_a_picture> | Twitter <https://twitter.com/OluohaWilson> Hear my name <https://namedrop.io/wilsonoluoha>

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Yoruba Wikipedia: the most widely read Wikipedia in Nigeria.
by Mikaeel Sodiq 23 Feb '24

23 Feb '24

We are excited to inform the global community that Yoruba Wikipedia hits 25 million views in 2023. This groundbreaking achievement makes Yoruba Wikipedia the most read Nigerian language Wikipedia and the most visited website in Yoruba. Kudos to the Yoruba Wikipedians, and thanks to WMF for their unending supports. https://thenationonlineng.net/yoruba-wikipedia-hits-25-million-views-in-202…

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Sign up for the language community meeting on February 21st, 12:00 pm UTC!
by Srishti Sethi 22 Feb '24

22 Feb '24

Hello all, The next language community meeting is coming up in a few weeks - *February 21st, 12:00 pm UTC*. If you're interested, you can sign up on this wiki page: < https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Language_engineering/… >. This meeting is for individuals involved in creating content or managing technical aspects across different language communities. This will be a participant-driven meeting, where we collectively discuss specific technical issues related to language wikis and work together to find possible solutions. This could involve anything from fixing a broken template on the Kurdish wiki to brainstorming ideas for growing content on the Tulu Wiktionary, currently in the Wikimedia Incubator, or celebrating the creation of Fon Wikipedia, to using MinT for content translation. Feel free to add any *technical updates* related to your project or ideas for *problem-solving* discussion that you would like to share during the meeting to the notes document here: < https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/language-community-meeting-february-2024>. If you need interpretation support from English to another language, please let us know by sending an email to ssethi(a)wikimedia.org. Looking forward to your participation! Cheers, Jon, Mary & Srishti *Srishti Sethi* Senior Developer Advocate Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

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Invitation to Celebrate Women Office Hour
by Masana Mulaudzi 21 Feb '24

21 Feb '24

TL;DR: Are you organizing activities around International Women's Day or Women's History Month this March 2024? Did you know that there is a central page where you can showcase your campaigns and learn about what other Wikimedians are doing globally? Let's chat! Join the Celebrate Women conversation hour on Monday, February 19th, 2024 at 16:30 UTC. Language interpretation will be available - English, Spanish, French and Portuguese. Hi Wikimedia Organizers, To respond to the gender gap and create opportunities to grow content on women and non-binary people on Wikipedia, the Gender Organizing community in the Wikimedia Movement hosts an annual campaign every March called Celebrate Women <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Celebrate_Women>. This campaign is an important opportunity for the Wikimedia movement to engage with the work of different communities highlighting the gender gap in each Wikimedia project. The WMF Campaign Programs team is supporting the movement’s efforts in this area, working with seasoned organizers to advance coordination of efforts to #ChangetheStats on gender in the movement. We would like to invite you to this Celebrate Women 2024 conversation hour to: - Share what your community is doing for this year in campaign organizing on the Gender Gap during International Women’s Day and beyond. - Learn about this year’s volunteer-led Central Notice banner and calendar and how you can give feedback on the pages. - Learn how the event registration tool <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EventCenter/Registration/Instructions> can help improve your registration experience for newcomers joining events, and other exciting developments in the tools to support your campaign, like event invitation. - Learn about some of the work that has taken place to enhance gender equity in the movement of the past few months! Join us on February 19 at 16:30 UTC <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:Celebrate_Women_2024_conversation_hour> Interpretation will be available - English, Spanish, French and Portuguese *Masana Mulaudzi (She/Her)* Senior Manager, Campaigns Programs Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

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[Wikimedia Research Showcase] February 21 at 16:30 UTC
by Kinneret Gordon 21 Feb '24

21 Feb '24

Hi all, The next Research Showcase will be live-streamed on Wednesday, February 21, at 8:30 AM PST / 16:30 UTC. Find your local time here <https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1708533000>. The theme for this showcase is *Platform Governance and Policies*. You are welcome to watch via the YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1xYwRw1rHU. As usual, you can join the conversation in the YouTube chat as soon as the showcase goes live. This month's presentation: Sociotechnical Designs for Democratic and Pluralistic Governance of Social Media and AIBy *Amy X. Zhang, University of Washington*Decisions about policies when using widely-deployed technologies, including social media and more recently, generative AI, are often made in a centralized and top-down fashion. Yet these systems are used by millions of people, with a diverse set of preferences and norms. Who gets to decide what are the rules, and what should the procedures be for deciding them---and must we all abide by the same ones? In this talk, I draw on theories and lessons from offline governance to reimagine how sociotechnical systems could be designed to provide greater agency and voice to everyday users and communities. This includes the design and development of: 1) personal moderation and curation controls that are usable and understandable to laypeople, 2) tools for authoring and carrying out governance to suit a community's needs and values, and 3) decision-making workflows for large-scale democratic alignment that are legitimate and consistent. Best,Kinneret -- Kinneret Gordon Lead Research Community Officer Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

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WPWP Campaign: Call For 2024 Regional Ambassadors
by Ammar Abdulhamid 19 Feb '24

19 Feb '24

Dear Wikimedians, Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos (WPWP) Campaign [1] is looking for interested Wikimedians to become Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos Campaign Ambassadors to help amplify awareness and provide more tailored support to the communities and individuals participating in the 2024 edition of the contest. We welcome ambassadors who are willing to support the international organizing team in coordinating the project in their communitities and help in bridging language and regional gaps in all formal Wikimedia regions and across languages of participating communities. Interested individuals should apply at https://forms.gle/1m9hXtYhsnXMDbgB7 Application is accepted until 11th March, 2024. Kind regards, Ammar [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Pages_Wanting_Photos_2024

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Wikifunctions needs more love!
by noah poulton 17 Feb '24

17 Feb '24

Hello everyone! I have been a somewhat active user of wikipedia and other wikimedia websites, and a while ago, I found out about wikifunctions. (As well as the Mailing lists!!) At first, I thought it would be a useful programming tool, a repository of useful functions; however a lot of the functions there are seemingly trivial. Examples of such "trivial" functions are: substring exists <imap://noahpoulton2%40gmail%2Ecom@imap.gmail.com:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/%5BGmail%5D/Drafts%3E185?part=1.2&filename=Z10070> To Uppercase <https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z10018> (as well as "To lowercase") and most of the other functions "advertised" (for lack of a better term) in the "Functions to try out" section. Then I go to more functions... <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Catalogue> and there are a lot of just string and boolean functions (*). And then there are a lot of "functions" to do with natural languages. Which take up a good (70% at a guess) chunk of all of the functions. Finally at the bottom of this there are some list based functions, which all seem trivial as well. So now I want to ask a few questions. 1. In the "What Wikifunctions is not <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:What_Wikifunctions_is_not>" page it says: "Wikifunctions is not an encyclopædia of algorithms". Why not? Would it not be better to have a concentrated, standardised place for useful algorithms (like Dijkstra's or sorting algorithms)? 2. Why are pretty much all of the functions trivial or just use built-in functions/modules? I get why the languages used (Python and Javascript) are the ones that are used (easy to read, high-level, popular languages) however I feel it would be better to use less built-in functions/modules, for example there is this <https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z10127> function for SHA-256 encryption which literally imports a module, which feels like a bad thing to do. 3. Why are all the functions named something like `Z10124(Z10124K1)`? 4. Why so many natural language functions? It seems to me to be many more than all of the actual programming language functions? And, why? 5. In the FAQ, it says: "Wikifunctions is the first step towards building Abstract Wikipedia." what is meant by this? And, once again, why? 6. What can I do to help it reach it's full potential? This feels like it could be used in future to help (newer) programmers, which would require a lot more (complex) functions. I want to finish this by saying that I do not think this is bad; just extremely unfinished! I think it has lots and lots of potential, it just needs more love from the community, which I hope it gets. Thanks, Noah Poulton. (*) I am aware that in the FAQ <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:FAQ> it says " * At launch: * We have the ability to have functions that work with Strings and Booleans. " With no explanation other than it being a new project.

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Announcing Publication of the Wikimedia Foundation’s Child Rights Impact Assessment
by Ricky Gaines 16 Feb '24

16 Feb '24

Dear Wikimedians, On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, I am pleased to announce the publication of our first child rights impact assessment <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/01/17/protecting-youth-online-wikimedia-fou…> (CRIA). This report forms an important part of the Foundation’s long-term efforts to meet the commitments articulated in our Human Rights Policy <https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Human_Rights_Policy>. The assessment builds upon our 2020 organizational Human Rights Impact Assessment <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Human_Rights_Impact_As…> (HRIA), which identified risks to children’s rights as one of five categories of significant human rights risks facing the Foundation and Wikimedia communities. The HRIA recommended that the Foundation undertake a targeted assessment to better understand this category of risks. What is in the report? Publishing this CRIA represents a significant step forward in the Foundation’s human rights endeavors. The CRIA was prepared by Article One <https://articleoneadvisors.com/>, a strategy consultancy with expertise in human rights. In it, Article One identifies and analyzes the impacts, risks, and opportunities posed to children that access and participate in Wikimedia projects. It proposes recommendations that the Foundation and Wikimedia’s volunteer community could implement to mitigate those risks, so that children can fully benefit from participating in our projects Of the recommendations, the Foundation is positioned to act upon a number of them, while others provide an opportunity for collaboration between the Foundation and the volunteer community to address, and others the volunteer community is better positioned to lead. We hope these recommendations will give us all a basis for dialogue and collaboration around making Wikimedia a safer space for children. Making sense of the findings To help you digest this report, we’ve prepared a number of resources for you, including: - A Diff blog pos <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/01/17/protecting-youth-online-wikimedia-fou…>t summarizing the findings of the CRIA and what it means for the movement; - A Meta page <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Child_Rights_Impact_As…> to serve as the “home” for the report and to provide more background information on the report, including its objectives, the timeline in which it was completed, the methodology that was employed to develop the report, and actions the Foundation has taken since first receiving the report; - The full report <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ArticleOne_-_WMF_Child_Rights_Impact_A…>, which contains a foreword from the Foundation’s General Counsel, an executive summary, a risk analysis, and recommendations. The report is available in English, French and Spanish. Working together to protect child safety on Wikimedia projects We want to hear from you on this topic: What questions do you have? What are your thoughts on the risks and recommendations from the report? What is your community already doing, or what would you like to do, to ensure the safety of children on Wikimedia projects? How can we collaborate to make progress? Leave a message on the report’s Talk page <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_Chil…> or register and join us at either of the two community conversation hours scheduled for the following times: - Friday, 23 February at 13:00 UTC <https://wikimedia.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIkcOmoqDopEt38H6i8ueP2Gv_8oXQD…> - Friday, 23 February at: 18:00 UTC <https://wikimedia.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMvde-trTspHtE5a7ZAnHOrtpblIctO…> If you prefer to ask questions or share information privately, you can also email us at youthsurvey(a)wikimedia.org. We will take the information we gather across channels to prepare a map of efforts happening across the movement and ideas for collaboration and implementation. We look forward to hearing from you. Thank you, *Ricky Gaines* Senior Human Rights Advocacy Manager Wikimedia Foundation

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Invitation to Participate in Event Invitations Tool Early Testing
by Benedict Udeh 16 Feb '24

16 Feb '24

Hello, The Campaigns Products Team at the Foundation is currently developing the "*Event Invitation Tool,*" aimed at enhancing event discovery and participation. As we are in the early stages of this tool's development, we are seeking organizers of events focused on gender and/or geography from February to March 31st to participate in our initial testing phase. This tool aims to help you engage new audiences and foster impactful contributions by creating a targeted invitation list of editors for your events. Early testing is important to refining the tool's functionality and ensuring it meets the community's needs. To be part of this early testing group and share your valuable insights, please join us at the Event Invitations Consultation Hours <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event_Invitations_Consultation_Hours>. Register here <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:Event_Invitations_Consultation_Hours/…> to join the 21 February session. Your participation in this early stage is important to us. You would also get the opportunity to learn more about the use of the Event Registration Tool. Together, we can make Wikimedia events more accessible and engaging for everyone. Warm regards, -- Benedict Udeh (he/him) Community Relations Specialist Movement communications Wikimedia Foundation

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Correct link for annual report
by Wikimedia Community Ireland 16 Feb '24

16 Feb '24

Here's the correct link for the annual report: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1d7tstqp1i_4hsrjl2N-OpBpReMYZbNJS6ck… --Shannon ---------------------- Wikimedia Community Ireland Chair - Shannon Eichelberger Online: Wikimedia Community Ireland <http://wikimedia.ie> On Twitter: @WikimediaIE <https://twitter.com/WikimediaIE> On Facebook: Wikimedia Ireland <https://www.facebook.com/WikimediaIreland> On Instagram: wikimediaie <https://www.instagram.com/wikimediaie/> On Meetup: Wikimedia Community Ireland Meetup <https://www.meetup.com/Wikimedia-Community-Ireland-Meetup/>

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Wikimedia Community Ireland Report
by Wikimedia Community Ireland 16 Feb '24

16 Feb '24

Hello. The annual report for Wikimedia Community Ireland User Group for 2022-23 can be viewed here <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2022-2023_WMHKG_Annual_Report.pdf>. Regards, Shannon Eichelberger Volunteer Chair Wikimedia Community Ireland wikimedia.ie -- ---------------------- Wikimedia Community Ireland Chair - Shannon Eichelberger Online: Wikimedia Community Ireland <http://wikimedia.ie> On Twitter: @WikimediaIE <https://twitter.com/WikimediaIE> On Facebook: Wikimedia Ireland <https://www.facebook.com/WikimediaIreland> On Instagram: wikimediaie <https://www.instagram.com/wikimediaie/> On Meetup: Wikimedia Community Ireland Meetup <https://www.meetup.com/Wikimedia-Community-Ireland-Meetup/>

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Wikimedia ESEAP Conference 2024 : Dates and host location
by Butch Bustria 15 Feb '24

15 Feb '24

Hi Everyone*,* *SAVE THE DATE! *😍🗓️ *We are thrilled to announce that the Wikimedia ESEAP Conference 2024 will be hosted in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia on the 10th-12th of May, 2024! * Excitement is building as we gear up for this Wikimedia ESEAP Conference! 🌏✨ Mark your calendar and join over 100 passionate Wikimedians from around the world in the vibrant Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, for an unforgettable experience themed "Collaboration Beyond the Horizon." 🌟 Don't miss this extraordinary opportunity to unite, learn, and liberate knowledge together! 🤩 Dive into the details at https://w.wiki/7Ky9 and stay tuned for the adventure of a lifetime! For any enquiries, send your questions at persidangan(a)wikimedia.org.my. We are excited to see you 🥳❤️‍🔥 #ESEAP2024 #Wikimedia #KotaKinabalu #Malaysia Kind regards, *Butch Bustria* *On behalf of the ESEAP Conference 2024 Core Organizing Team*

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Disparity of official statistics: Stats vs Pageviews
by F. Xavier Dengra i Grau 15 Feb '24

15 Feb '24

Bon dia / Hi, I would like to ask around about the fact that we have very significant imbalances of official statistics when it comes to the traffic in our wiki projects. Let's look at the reading gross value for the English Wikipedia on January 2024. Without applying any kind of filtering to their searching method, the website Wikimedia Stats shows 12.697.373.117 visits, while the Pageviews tool from the WikimediaCloud in Toolforge yields 8.864.755.474 visits. This is a huge figure disparity, and both data repositories are hosted "under the same roog" and most likely are the two more widely used tools for this purpose. Am I wrong? For a smaller project, like the Catalan Wikipedia, there is a 19.5M vs 64.5M inconsistency... Which changes a lot our conclusions in a tech situation in which we are socially dealing with Google hiding results in our language from its search engine since a couple of years ago. What am I missing about these value differences? As an experienced editor, I have been regularly digging in our available data tools for several years. But it's difficult not to encounter frequent problems of comparability, false positives, and reliability. Not only for my personal pleasure, but when it comes to easily explain our projects' data to the outside world via referring to a trustworthy portal. That adds up to the fact that we are not able to see itemised statistics for some small countries in Wikimedia Stats. We can filter how many millions of visits does the Dutch Wikipedia get in Belgium or in the Netherlands, but we cannot see which is the language use of each Wikipedia in Belgium (% of readers that accesses it in French, Dutch, German, Walloon, Picard, English, etc). That feature disappeared in 2018 with the last update of the dismantled WiViVi portal. Altogether, it makes it impossible to tackle biases or plan actions by chapters, user groups or even academic policies regarding awareness or revitalization of minoritized and endangered languages. I am afraid that, this being my experience as a long-term editor, the ones of newcomers, journalists, or even scientists may still be much more uncertain and confusing. Hopefully someone can help to figure out some of these questions. Salutacions / Best regards, Xavier Dengra

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Wikimedia ZA 22-23 Annual Report
by Bobby Shabangu 14 Feb '24

14 Feb '24

Hey All, Wikimedia ZA has not shared its report to these streets for a long time. But following in the footsteps of other Usergroups who share with us their reports here I'm also excited to share with you our Wikimedia ZA 2022-23 Annual report <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=WM_ZA/Annual_Report_2022-23&ac…> . We tried to keep the report succinct and to the point highlighting the results and impact of our activities. Enjoy and let us know here or at my email:bobby.shabangu@wikimedia.org.za if you have questions or think we could collaborate on projects in the future. Best regards, Bobby Shabangu

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Wikisource Community UG report
by Nicolas VIGNERON 14 Feb '24

14 Feb '24

Dear all, Please find here the 2023 annual report of the Wikisource community user group : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource_Community_User_Group/2023_Report Cheers, Nicolas Vigneron on behalf of the user group

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[Wikimedia Announcements] This Month in GLAM: January 2024
by Romaine Wiki 13 Feb '24

13 Feb '24

*This Month in GLAM* is a monthly newsletter documenting recent happenings within the GLAM project, such as content donations, residencies, events and more. GLAM is an acronym of *G*alleries, *L*ibraries, *A*rchives and *M*useums. You can find more information on the project at https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM. *This Month in GLAM – Issue I, Volume XIV – January 2024* ------------------------------ Albania report: Wikipedia Day in Albania 2024 http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/Al… <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/A…> Belgium report: First international public domain day celebration in Europe coming up on March 7 http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/Be… <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/B…> Brazil report: A legal infrastructure for sharing public collections in Brazil: the case of Midiateca Capixaba http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/Br… <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/B…> Czech Republic report: January '24: Institute of Physics photos and Free culture discussion http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/Cz… <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/C…> Finland report: Photographing at the second half of 2023 http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/Fi… <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/F…> India report: Documenting ASI (Archaeological Survey of India) Museums in Bihar http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/In… <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/I…> Netherlands report: Public Domain Day & Monumental Moments http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/Ne… <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/N…> New Zealand report: Aotearoa Wikipedian at Large, and Auckland Museum updates http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/Ne… <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/N…> Poland report: An update on the Wikimatejko editing action and an invitation to the international community to join the action http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/Po… <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/P…> Portugal report: Unveiling Catrapilha: A ReacTive approach to GLAM content import http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/Po… <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/P…> Sweden report: Freedom of Panorama in Sweden http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/Sw… <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/S…> UK report: Indonesian praise for an Ottoman photograph of Arabia http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/UK… <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/U…> USA report: Wikipedia Day 2024; edit-a-thon; meetups http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/US… <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/U…> AvoinGLAM report: Events! Events! http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/Av… <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/A…> Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons report: New OpenRefine documentation for Wikimedia Commons http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/St… <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/S…> WMF GLAM report: WiLMa Updates, OpenRefine training, Biodiversity, and Librarians http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/WM… <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/W…> Calendar: February's GLAM events http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/Ev… <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Contents/E…> ------------------------------ About *This Month in GLAM* http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/About <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/About> Single page view http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Single <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2024/Single> Twitter http://twitter.com/ThisMonthinGLAM <https://twitter.com/ThisMonthinGLAM> Add your story / Work on the next edition http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/Newsroom <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/Newsroom> _______________________________________________ Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list -- wikimediaannounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikimediaannounce-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org

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[WikiForHumanRights Campaign] Join the 2024 Information Session
by Euphemia Uwandu 13 Feb '24

13 Feb '24

Hi Everyone, Happy February :) The WikiForHumanRights Campaign is gearing up for its 2024 edition with lots of exciting news and activities that would inspire the Wikimedia movement to embark on another journey of building knowledge that is relevant for a sustainable future. *As we rise up in joy in our preparations, we invite you to **register <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:WikiForHumanRights_2024_Information_S…> for the information session happening on 13 February 2024 at 15:00 UTC. During the session, we will provide interpretation support for Arabic, French and Spanish languages.* Join us to learn about the changes this year and how you can organize or participate in the campaign. Here is our December update <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/12/13/celebrating-75-years-of-international…> about the campaign to get your excitement started in the lead up to the session and *please help us lend your voice to the **survey <https://forms.gle/chTUsABdvk21CpiF9> for the WikiForHumanRights 2024 Conference happening in LATAM in November. * We are looking forward to another memorable opportunity to connect and collaborate with you. Happy to answer any questions or comments you may have. Best, Euphemia

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A new Signpost issue is out
by Andreas Kolbe 13 Feb '24

13 Feb '24

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Wikimedia Affiliations Committee: Call for New Members + Membership changes
by Nataliia Tymkiv 13 Feb '24

13 Feb '24

Dear all, TL;DR There are two topics this letter talks about – 1) the call for new members of the Wikimedia Affiliations Committee (AffCom) is open <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Legal_department/Commi…> on Meta until 17 November 2023; and 2) there are membership changes in the committee to ensure the transition process for offboarding existing members, and onboarding new ones. == 2023 Call for AffCom members == The Affiliations Committee <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee> is, until 17 November 2023, seeking additional members to help the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees (Board) support the affiliate ecosystem. As a note: two other movement groups (Ombuds commission and Case Review Committee) are also seeking members. You can read about the process and how to apply here <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Leg…> on Meta. AffCom makes recommendations to the Board on the recognition, approval, or derecognition of Wikimedia movement affiliates. It helps Wikimedians from around the world self-organise into chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups, and to gain official recognition from the Wikimedia Foundation. AffCom’s work involves the recognition of new affiliates, helping them retain their affiliate status through yearly reportings, and conflict mitigation when challenges happen within affiliates. Volunteers in this role should be experienced Wikimedians from any project, have experience working with affiliates to practice good governance. International perspectives, collaboration, teamwork and experience handling sensitive situations are among traits needed. Given the scope of work, proficiency in English is required. AffCom seeks members committing 7-10 hours monthly for a 3-year term. The members will have the option to run again after completion of their terms. Members are required to sign the Confidentiality agreement for nonpublic information <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Confidentiality_agreement_for_nonpublic_inf…> and must be willing to comply with the appropriate Wikimedia Foundation board policies (such as the access to non-public information policy <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_to_nonpublic_information_policy>). Members must also be over 18 years of age. The information about this was previously shared on village pumps of the Wikimedia projects, but as usual this call is also shared here, on the mailing list. == AffCom transition period == The number of members AffCom needs to recruit this year is not set, as there was the intentional delay in selecting new members last year (announced in December 2022, as AffCom was “a key input for the Board in developing the Wikimedia Foundation Affiliates Strategy” [1]), but it has created a need to stagger selection - as all AffCom members term come to end at the same time: December 31, 2023. The number of seats available will depend on how many existing members decide to carry on. As having a committee formed entirely of new members is not sustainable, there is an option for the current members to remain in their seats for a transition period of 6 to 12 months (maximum until December 2024). Others may choose to step down, before or after helping to onboard new members, and pass on open tasks, and some may choose to join the volunteer process to apply for another three year term as AffCom members. With the goal of ensuring continuity, we, as the Board liaisons to AffCom, have suggested to AffCom to convert two current AffCom advisors for a one year term as AffCom members – as they have been a part of the AffCom work for a while, they would need minimal onboarding, and would be able to support the current workflows. Thus as of now, AffCom has two more members joining it for a term ending 31 December 2024: * Maor Malul, also known as user:Maor X <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Maor_X>, who has considerable experience on this committee, having served even before his current role as advisor as a member between 2013 and 2019, during which time he served first as chair and then as co-chair; * Aleksey Chalabyan, also known as user:Xelgen <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Xelgen>, who has already been providing considerable value as an advisor since his appointment last year. Speaking on behalf of the Board and reflecting the sentiments voiced by AffCom itself, we are very happy that Maor and Aleksey have agreed to support us in this way. You can view more details about what this important committee does on Meta in its “What we do <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee#what-we-do>” section and also in their charter <https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee_Charter>. There will be a public comment period on applicants <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Affiliations_Committee/C…> from 17 October to 17 November. Candidates will meet with AffCom, Board liaisons and staff to discuss the role and their interest in it. The Board’s Community Affairs Committee will also review the AffCom candidates, to provide input. Per its Charter [2] the AffCom will appoint new members, taking into account also the community feedback. The new members will be announced in late December 2023, after individuals have been notified. Thank you for reading this long letter, and thank you in advance for your interest to join AffCom – or Ombuds commission and Case Review Committee! And if you are not interested but know someone who might be, please share this message with them, personal encouragement goes a long way in the Wikimedia Movement. Also please let us know if you have any questions. [1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org… [2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee_Charter Best regards, Nat & Shani & Lorenzo Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Liaisons to the Affiliations Committee ------ 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!*

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Results from the U4C Charter vote
by Patrick Earley 12 Feb '24

12 Feb '24

Dear all, Thank you everyone for following the progress of the Universal Code of Conduct. I am writing to you today to announce the outcome of the ratification vote <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Universal_Code_of_Conduc…> on the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee Charter <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Universal_Code_of_Conduc…>. *1746* contributors voted in this ratification vote with *1249* voters supporting the Charter and *420* voters not (*74.84%* in support). 69 voters did not choose an option. The ratification vote process allowed for voters to provide comments about the Charter. A report of voting statistics and a summary of voter comments will be published on Meta-wiki in the coming weeks. Please look forward to hearing about the next steps soon. On behalf of the UCoC Project team, Patrick -- Patrick Earley Lead Trust & Safety Policy Manager Wikimedia Foundation pearley(a)wikimedia.org

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Wikimedia Community Ireland Podcast Launch
by Sophie Fitzpatrick 12 Feb '24

12 Feb '24

Dear Community Members, I am delighted to announce that last week Wikimedia Community Ireland launched our new podcast in tandem with the Wiki Loves Folklore 2024 Campaign <https://wikimedia.ie/2024/02/08/join-wiki-loves-folklore-2024-international…> . The podcast’s premiere sees guest Orlagh Costello from the Irish Pagan School, take us on a fascinating exploration of the legendary figure, Brigid. Through Brigid's multifaceted identity, the podcast initiates a nuanced conversation about the intersection of feminism, folklore, and Irish history, providing listeners with an insightful glimpse into the rich traditions and diverse stories that Wikimedia Community Ireland aims to champion. Moving forward we hope to use the podcast as a platform to explore all things Wiki and the free knowledge movement, showcase the exciting projects we are working on, and continue to elevate the Irish language in the digital space. You can find out more about the inaugural episode, and listen to it here <https://wikimedia.ie/2024/02/12/wikimedia-community-ireland-launches-podcas…> . If you enjoy the episode please share it freely with friends or online! If you have any ideas or any guests you would like to see WCI interview, don't be afraid to reach out! Keep an eye out for our next episode coming soon! Kind regards, -- Sophie Fitzpatrick *Project and Communications Manager* [image: Wikimedia Community Ireland Bi-Lingual Logo] Pobal Wikimedia na hÉireann | Wikimedia Community Ireland https://wikimedia.ie/

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Wiki Loves Earth 2024 is on its way!
by Olesia Lukaniuk 12 Feb '24

12 Feb '24

Dear community, the WLE photo contest has prepared some exciting news for you!💚 The Wiki Loves Earth 2024 <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Earth_2024> is on its way! Wiki Loves Earth is an annual international photographic competition. Participants take pictures of local natural heritage in their countries and upload them to Wikimedia Commons. For all participating countries, there are separate competitions organized by local teams. ⏳When? This year, WLE also will take place between the 1st of May and the 31st of July. We have a flexible approach regarding local dates, and local organizers decide when exactly to hold their contest within the international timeframe. 🌞How can you join the contest this year as an organizer? For that, you need the following: - Team of volunteers with clear roles and timelines; - Defining eligible natural sites (must be officially protected); - Preparing a landing page for the local contest; - Promotion for the contest in social networks; - Jury to evaluate the photos (select top-15 local winners for an international contest); - Awards for your winners. Find out more about the process in our detailed guidelines <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Earth_2024/Organise> for the local teams. This year, we also continue to raise awareness about environmental problems so that we will launch our special nomination "Human Rights and Environment" for the 4th time. And one more new special nomination, which can represent natural heritage in a wider way! Stay tuned for the announcements soon! Follow our channels for local organizers to receive the most important information: - Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/wlecommunity/ - Telegram chat: https://t.me/+jtPfBWQVCGkzMmIy - A mailing list for local organizers: wikilovesearth(a)lists.wikimedia.org Also, subscribe on our social media channels: - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wikilovesearth/ - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/interwle - Twitter: https://twitter.com/WikiLovesEarth <https://mobile.twitter.com/WikiLovesEarth> - Website: https://wikilovesearth.org/ If you have any questions or need any help, please contact the international team at wle-team(a)wikimedia.org.ua Stay tuned for the Wiki Loves Earth 2024, and don’t hesitate to participate!🌳 *Find translations here <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Earth_2024/Announceme…> * -- Best regards, Olesia Lukaniuk Project Manager for Wiki Loves Earth

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Wikimania 2023 Evaluation Report
by Butch Bustria 09 Feb '24

09 Feb '24

Hello everyone, I am writing to share with you the evaluation report for Wikimania 2023, Wikimedia movement's largest activity, which took place virtually and in person in Singapore, in August 2023. The report covers results from the attendee and scholar surveys, as well as the impact of our communication, social media and media strategies. The report was written by a team of colleagues from the Wikimedia Foundation Communications department, and you can find it here: https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2023:Evaluation Here is a brief summary of the main findings: - Wikimania 2023 was the largest Wikimania to date, with 2866 Wikimedians from 142 countries attending - 761 in person and 2105 remotely. - The theme for the 18th Wikimania edition was Diversity. Collaboration. Future., reflecting the goals and challenges of the Wikimedia movement in the next decade, including Artificial Intelligence (AI). - Survey respondents were highly satisfied with the event (over 90%), and felt that it contributed to their learning and sense of belonging (over 90%). - Scholarship recipients felt that the experience would encourage them to share lessons learnt with their communities and continue to improve their overall contributions to the movement. - Communications strategies were utilized to raise awareness about Wikimedia amongst youth in ESEAP, as well as the general public in the region and beyond. - Wikimania 2023 featured a rich and diverse program, with over 300 main program sessions, the first ever WikiWomen Summit, a 5-day hackathon, Wikimedia Basic workshops for beginners, and more. I hope you enjoy reading the report and learning more about the outcomes and impact of Wikimania 2023. Please feel free to share your feedback, comments, and questions on the report's talk page: https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=2023_talk:Evaluation Thank you for being part of this amazing event and community! Kind regards, *Butch Bustria* ESEAP Wikimania 2023 Organizing Team

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[Wikitech-I] Call for Projects and Mentors for Google Summer of Code 2024 and Outreachy Round 28 is OPEN!
by Onyinyechi Onifade 08 Feb '24

08 Feb '24

Hello everyone, Wikimedia is gearing up to apply as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code 2024 < https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code/2024>[1] and Outreachy Round 28 <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Outreachy/Round_28> [2]. Currently, we're crafting a list of exciting project ideas for the application. If you have any suggestions for projects, whether coding or non-coding (design, documentation, translation, outreach, research), please share them by February 5th via this Phabricator task: < https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T354734> [3]. Note that for non-coding projects eligible for Outreachy, slots are limited and will be allocated to mentors on a first-come, first-serve basis. Timeline In your role as a mentor, your involvement spans the application period for both programs, taking place from March to April. During this time, you'll guide candidates in making small contributions to your project and address any project-related queries they may have. As the application period concludes, you'll further intensify your collaboration with accepted candidates throughout the coding period, which extends from May to August. Your support and guidance are crucial to their success in the program. Guidelines for Crafting Project Proposals: - Follow this task description template when you propose a project in Phabricator: < https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/outreach-programs-projects> [4]. You can also use this workboard to pick an idea if you don't have one already. Add #Google- Summer-of-Code (2024) or #Outreachy (Round 28) tag. - Project should require an experienced developer ~15 days and a newcomer ~3 months to complete. - Each project should have at least two mentors, including one with 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. * Learn more about the roles and responsibilities of Mentors for both programs:* - Outreachy: <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Outreachy/Mentors> [5] - Google Summer of Code: < https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code/Mentors> [6] Thank you, Links: [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code/2024 [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Outreachy/Round_28 [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T354734 [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 -- *Onyinyechi Onifade * Technical Community Program Manager Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

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Steward elections 2024: Voting is now opened
by Martin Urbanec 06 Feb '24

06 Feb '24

Hello everyone, It is a pleasure to announce the Steward elections 2024 [1] now accept votes. I would like to invite everyone to review the list of candidates and vote. Voting will remain open until February 27, 2024, 14:00 (UTC). As always, the confirmation of existing stewards [3] takes place at the same time as the election itself. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or any other Election Committee member [4]. Questions can also be asked in the #wikimedia-stewards-election-chat IRC channel; updates are posted in #wikimedia-stewards-elections. Best regards, Martin Urbanec (on behalf of the Election Committee) [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2024 [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2024/Guidelines [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Confirm/2024 [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2024#Election_Committee

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WIKIMOVE Podcast: Grants and Hubs
by Sissela Björk 06 Feb '24

06 Feb '24

Dear Wikimedians, WIKIMOVE's first episode of the year is out! In this episode, Eva and Nikki talk with two women who have been instrumental in implementing Movement strategy. Yop Rwan Pam tells about the WMF Movement strategy grant program, how it works and some of the innovative ideas it already has helped to bring on the road. Barbara Klen shares about the Central and Eastern European Hub, how it started and how it is going. You can find this podcast on our website <https://www.wikimedia.de/podcast/episode-17-grants-and-hubs/> and, as always, feel free to share your thoughts on potential future topics and guest suggestions on our meta page. <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WIKIMOVE/Suggestions> WIKIMOVE is also available on the following platforms: Spotify <https://open.spotify.com/show/7olhgddgj7KpWGOzSkPOQJ?si=8907893eb0cd402f> | Apple Podcast <https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wikimove/id1635535328>| Google Podcast <https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5hY2FzdC5jb20vcHVibGljL3…> | Soundcloud <https://soundcloud.com/user-536754242/wikimove-17-grants-and-hubs> Deezer <https://www.deezer.com/de/show/4629487> | JioSaavn <https://www.jiosaavn.com/shows/wikimove/1/Te3xsXx-My8_> | Podchaser <https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/wikimove-4759781> | Youtube <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP9bfvFVQMI&t=183s> Your WIKIMOVE Team Nikki, Eva & Sissela -- Sissela Björk Werkstudentin Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin Phone: +49 (0)30-577 11 62-0https://wikimedia.de Keep up to date! Current news and exciting stories about Wikimedia, Wikipedia and Free Knowledge in our newsletter (in German): Subscribe now <https://www.wikimedia.de/newsletter/>. Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us to achieve our vision!https://spenden.wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Charlottenburg, VR 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207. Geschäftsführende Vorstände: Franziska Heine, Dr. Christian Humborg

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New Board of Wikimedia Bangladesh
by Tanvir Rahman 05 Feb '24

05 Feb '24

Dear all, On 27 January 2024, the Annual General Meeting of Wikimedia Bangladesh and the Executive Committee Members Election (Board election) [1] were held in the presence of the registered members of the chapter. The nine elected Members of the Executive Committee are: 1. Shabab Mustafa (President) 2. Masum al Hasan (Secretary) 3. Moheen Reeyad (Treasurer) 4. Ali Haidar Khan 5. Tanvir Rahman 6. Ankan Ghosh Dastider 7. R K Hannan 8. Dolon Prova 9. Tanbin Islam Siyam The members were elected for a two-year long term ending in 2025. Later, the elected board members elected the office bearers after an internal discussion[2]. I wish the new board a successful term. Best regards, T. -- Tanvir Rahman Wikitanvir on Wikimedia [1] https://bd.wikimedia.org/s/2i3 [2] https://bd.wikimedia.org/s/2ks

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Yoruba Wikimedians User Group launched the first storytelling event in Nigeria
by Mikaeel Sodiq 04 Feb '24

04 Feb '24

Dear community members, In an effort to promote free access to knowledge in the Yoruba language, yesterday we launched the first storytelling event in Nigeria. This is part of our Yoruba Oral Traditions project, designed to document and preserve Yoruba oral traditions. It's in the news! You can learn more about the event and if you need help implementing this program in your community, we are happy to help and support you. https://thenationonlineng.net/yoruba-wikimedians-launch-annual-storytelling… Thank you. Mikaeel Sodiq President, Yoruba Wikimedians User Group

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Research on association of new members in mature affiliates by Wiki Movimento Brasil
by Érica Azzellini 02 Feb '24

02 Feb '24

Hi! Wiki Movimento Brasil just released the public version <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Movement_Brazil_User_Group/Pesquisa_so…> of a research we conducted over the last semester on the association of new members in mature affiliates. The goal of the research was to identify which risks and opportunities mature affiliates face when the associate body of the organization is growing and how to deal with that in order to maintain internal sustainability. The document highlights themes such as procedures for the association of new members, membership categories, association fees, financial/donation policies, and the staff and associated body relationship. It observes a landscape for how membership evolves along with the organizational structure of the affiliate. The research analyzed statues and interviewed representatives of the following affiliates: Wikimedia Argentina, Wikimedia Chile, Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia France, Wikimedia Indonesia, Wikimedia Italia, Wikimedia Mexico, Wikimedia Netherlands, Wikimedia New York, Wikimedia Österreich, Wikimedia Portugal and Wikimedia South Africa. On behalf of Wiki Movimento Brasil, I’d like to thank our colleagues from the Wikimedia Movement that kindly agreed to contribute to this research! The research’s content of public interest is now available on Meta <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Movement_Brazil_User_Group/Pesquisa_so…> in PT-BR, with translation soon to be added. The specific recommendations the researcher designed for Wiki Movimento Brasil will be internally discussed during our General Assembly later this month. Hope you find value in the information gathered and in the analysis. Best, *Érica Azzellini | Usuário(a):EAzzellini (WMB)* *Gestora de Comunidade | **Wiki Movimento Brasil* *wmnobrasil.org <http://wmnobrasil.org/>*

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Podcast on Wikimedia Strategy in Brazil
by João Alexandre Peschanski 02 Feb '24

02 Feb '24

Hello all! I hope you are doing well! I'm reaching out to inform you about the *podcast* "Sopa Wiki" (Wiki Soup), which was produced by the Brazilian affiliate *Wiki Movimento Brasil* (WMB) last year. The podcast comprises five episodes, each addressing one of the five *strategic priorities *outlined in the strategic plan <https://br.wikimedia.org/wiki/Estrat%C3%A9gia_Wiki_Movimento_Brasil_2023-20…>of Wikimedia in Brazil [1]. These priorities revolve around technology, community practices, partnerships, knowledge equity, and Wikimedia governance. The episodes also introduce local initiatives that contribute to strengthening the open knowledge ecosystem within our context. The podcast episodes are in Portuguese and have been uploaded to Commons <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sopa_Wiki> exclusively in that language [2]. However, for those interested in the content but not fluent in Portuguese, we have added *English subtitles* on YouTube <https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEmJ1V6HikFS_ULB39w2Cd0y4d4_-Xyij> [3]. I hope some of you find this material intriguing, and I'm open to discussing it further should you have any questions or suggestions. Best regards from São Paulo, Brasil, João __ References [1] https://br.wikimedia.org/wiki/Estrat%C3%A9gia_Wiki_Movimento_Brasil_2023-20… [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sopa_Wiki [3] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEmJ1V6HikFS_ULB39w2Cd0y4d4_-Xyij -- *João Alexandre Peschanski | Usuário:JPeschanski (WMB)* *Diretor Executivo | **Wiki Movimento Brasil* *wmnobrasil.org <http://wmnobrasil.org/>*

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Next steps for Community Wishathon
by Srishti Sethi 02 Feb '24

02 Feb '24

Hello, Community Wishathon is coming next month: March 15th-17th, 2024! So far, 78 participants have signed up to attend this online event since its first announcement in December 2023 🎉 You can check out the project ideas and schedule on the event page at < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:WishathonMarch2024>. These ideas come from the wishes people share in Community Wishlist Survey < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey>. If you're a user, developer, designer, or product lead, you are welcome to join! You can sign up for the event on the wiki page and add your name, time zone, and preferred contact method to a project by *February 15th, 2024*. Before the event, you can learn about the projects and connect with others who are interested. You can contact them using their preferred contact method and consider forming project groups on Telegram. During the event, there will be an opening session to introduce the event and project ideas, async time for working on projects, self-organized virtual project group meetings, and a showcase ceremony to share what each group accomplished during the event. If you want to help with the event or have questions, let us know on the event's talk page. Cheers, Srishti On behalf of the Wishathon organizing committee *Srishti Sethi* Senior Developer Advocate Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

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Commemorating Ulo Senthamizh Kodai
by pavan＠cis-india.org 02 Feb '24

02 Feb '24

பயன்தூக்கார் செய்த உதவி நயன்தூக்கின் நன்மை கடலின் பெரிது. (௱௩ - 103) திருவள்ளுவர் (Payandhookkaar Seydha Udhavi Nayandhookkin Nanmai Katalin Peridhu (Transliteration)) The contribution made without weighing the return, When weighed, outweighs the sea. - Thiruvalluvar Dear Wikimedians, With deep sorrow, we announce the passing of Ulo Senthamizh Kodai (December 22, 1945 – February 1, 2024), a distinguished technologist, author, academician, and prolific contributor to the Tamil Wikipedia community.[1] Born on December 22, 1945, in the village of [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiruvallur_district | Puducherrypalli ] in Thiruvallur district, Tamil Nadu, India, He devoted his life to engineering, science, and promoting scientific knowledge in Tamil. Ulo Senthamizh Kodai earned his Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_of_Engineering,_Guindy | Guindy Engineering College ] and a Master's degree from [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSG_College_of_Technology | PSG College of Technology ] in Coimbatore. His illustrious 33-year career at the [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNEB | Tamil Nadu Electricity Board ] included earning a Ph.D. He authored the acclaimed book " [ https://www.noolulagam.com/tamil-book/1188/makkal-ariviyal-ilakiyam-nokkum-… | Makkal Ariviyal Ilakkiyam: Nokkum Pokkum ] " and received the Tamil Nadu Government's award for best book in engineering and technology in 2007. Passionate about Tamil Nadu's science and technology history, Ulo Senthamizh Kodai contributed extensively to scientific vocabulary in Tamil. He served on the editorial board of the [ http://www.aubit.edu.in/library/Journals_magazines.html | Bharathidasan University Journal of Science and Technology ] and significantly contributed to the [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_Virtual_Academy | Tamil Virtual Academy ] 's glossary of technical terms. In addition to academia, He was a luminary in the Tamil Wikipedia community, starting his contributions in 2014. He created over 2000 articles and had an edit count of 28513 in [ https://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%AE%E0%AF%81%E0%AE%A4%E0%AE%B1%E0%AF%8D… | Tamil Wikipedia ] , focusing mainly on scientific articles. He was actively involved until his final days, participating in discussions and editing articles until January 29, 2024. Ulo Senthamizh Kodai leaves behind a legacy continued by his son Vanchi. His impact on Tamil science and the Wikipedia community is immeasurable, with notable contributions to projects like the [ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/100wikidays | 100 WikiDays ] and the Tamil Teachers' Articles Cleanup Drive. Members of the Tamil Wikipedia community mourn his passing. Fellow Wikipedian Mahalingam noted, "The passing of Ulo Senthamizh Kodai is a great loss to us all." Former colleague Jambulingam remembered his dedication and encouragement, while longtime contributor K. Murthy recalled Ulo Senthamizh Kodai's resilience despite physical challenges. Ulo Senthamizh Kodai's contributions were recognized with accolades, including featuring on the main page of Tamil Wikipedia in 2016 and various barnstars and medals from fellow Wikipedians. As we bid farewell to Ulo Senthamizh Kodai, we remember him not only for his significant contributions to Tamil science and Wikipedia but also for his unwavering dedication to knowledge, education, and the Tamil language. His passing leaves a void in the community, and he will be dearly missed. We are planning to host a condolence meeting online and we will soon provide information about that. We encourage people to share their memories/experiences of their association with Ulo Senthamizh Kodai on this thread. Tamil Wikimedians & CIS-A2K. [1] [ https://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%89%E0%AE%B2%E0%AF%8B._%E0%AE%9A%E0%AF%… | Biographical Article about Ulo Senthamizh Kodai ] in Tamil Wikipedia [2] [ https://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%AA%E0%AE%AF%E0%AE%A9%E0%AE%B0%E0%AF%8D… | Userpage of Ulo Senthamizh Kodai ] in Tamil Wikipedia Ulo Senthamizh Kodai During Wiki Advanced Training 2018 at Ranchi; Photo Credits: [ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Saileshpat | Sailesh Patnaik, ] Via Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 4.0

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Announcing the 2024 Ombuds Commission
by Karen Brown 01 Feb '24

01 Feb '24

Hello, everyone, I'm writing with information about the Ombuds Commission (OC), the small group of volunteers who investigate complaints about violations of the privacy policy, and in particular concerning the use of CheckUser and Oversight tools, on any Wikimedia project for the Board of Trustees. I apologize for the length of the announcement. :) The application period for new commissioners for 2024-26 recently closed. The Wikimedia Foundation is extremely grateful to the many experienced and insightful volunteers who offered to assist with this work. This year’s OC will consist of thirteen members and one Steward-Observer. We are experimenting this year with expanding the committee's "regular" member headcount and leaving vacant the "advisor" positions, which historically have basically functioned as alternates in case of committee member attrition. I am pleased to announce the composition of the 2024 OC: Ombuds Commission membersだ＊ぜ < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth?target=%E3%81%A0%EF%BC%… > だ＊ぜ, who also may be referred to as Dasze, has been contributing to Wikimedia since 2015. He's primarily active on Chinese Wikimedia projects, where he later served as a director of Wikimedia Community User Group Hong Kong from 2019 to 2023 while users in Hong Kong were suffering various affection in and out of Wikimedia projects. His expertise is international law, human rights law, and statistical and quantitative analysis thereon. He speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, English and some Japanese. This is Dasze's first year on the Ombuds Commission and he has been appointed for a 2-year term. AGK <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth?target=AGK> AGK has been editing Wikimedia projects since 2008. He is primarily active on English Wikipedia, where he has been an administrator, Checkuser, and Oversighter and has served as an Arbitrator. AGK served on the Ombuds Commission in 2020 and 2021 and again in 2023. AGK's term on the Ombuds Commission expires in 2026. Ameisenigel< https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth?target=Ameisenigel> Ameisenigel has been editing Wikimedia projects since 2015. He is primarily active on German Wikipedia, where he served as an Arbitrator from 2020 to 2022, and on Wikidata and is an administrator on both projects. He is also active as a translation admin in several projects. Ameisenigel speaks German and English. He has been on the Ombuds Commission since 2021 and his current term expires in 2026. Bennylin < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth?target=Bennylin> Bennylin has been editing Wikimedia projects since 2004. He's primarily active on Indonesian and Javanese Wikiprojects, where he's sysop in 6 of them, Checkuser in Indonesian Wikipedia, bureaucrat in Indonesian Wiktionary, and also active in Commons, Meta, Wikidata, and MediaWiki. He has previously served as a global Steward. He speaks Indonesian, English, Javanese, Chinese and some Spanish. Bennylin has been on the Ombuds Commission since 2023 and his term expires in 2025. Daniuu <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth?target=Daniuu> Daniuu has been editing Wikimedia projects since 2019. They are primarily active on Dutch Wikipedia, where they are a sysop and have been a member of the Arbitration Committee. They are also a global sysop and focus on counter-vandalism work. Daniuu speaks Dutch and English. Daniuu has been on the Ombuds Commission since 2023 and their term expires in 2025. Doǵu<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth?target=Do%C7%B5u> Doğu Abaris (Doǵu) has been editing Wikimedia projects since 2012. He is primarily active on Turkish Wikipedia, where he has served as an administrator, interface administrator, and oversighter. Additionally, he is a volunteer MediaWiki developer and is currently working on the Auditor MediaWiki extension. He is studying software and data engineering at Singidunum University in Belgrade. His term on OC runs through 2026. Emufarmers < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth?target=Emufarmers> Emufarmers has been editing Wikimedia projects since 2005. He is a Metapedian who primarily edits the English Wikipedia; he is also a bureaucrat and sysop on MediaWiki.org, and has provided software support to many third-party, non-Wikimedia wikis over the years. He has served as a VRTS administrator since 2015 and has been on the Elections Committee since 2023. He served on the Ombuds Commission from 2019-2021 and again in 2023. His current term expires in 2026. Faendalimas < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth?target=Faendalimas> Scott Thomson, user:Faendalimas, has been editing Wikimedia projects since 2006. Originally Australian though based in Brazil, he is a taxonomist and evolutionary biologist with a background in International Wildlife Policy, his main editing interest is reptiles and amphibians. He is most active on WikiSpecies, where he is a bureaucrat, Checkuser, and administrator. Faendalimas speaks Portuguese and English. He has served on the Ombuds Commission since 2021 and as Chair from 2022 to 2023, and has been appointed for a two-year term this year. MdsShakil < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth?target=MdsShakil> MdsShakil has been contributing to Wikimedia projects since 2019. He is active on Bengali Wikipedia, Bengali Wikibooks, Wikidata, and Commons. He is an administrator on Bengali Wikipedia and Bengali Wikibooks and serves as a global renamer, global rollbacker, and global sysop. He speaks Bengali and English. MdsShakil has been on the Ombuds Commission since 2023, and his term expires in 2025. Minorax <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth?target=Minorax> Minorax has been active on Wikimedia projects since 2019. They are a Metapedian who is active on a large number of projects, including Commons, where they have over 400,000 edits, English Wikipedia, and Meta, where they are a Checkuser. They are also a global sysop. Minorax speaks English and Chinese. Minorax has been on the Ombuds Commission since 2023 and his term expires in 2025. Nehaoua<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth?target=Nehaoua> Nehaoua holds a master's degree in Highway and Bridge Engineering and currently works as a Civil Engineer. However, his true passion lies with knowledge and its free access for all. Since 2009, Nehaoua has been an active Wikimedian, contributing significantly across various projects like French and Arabic Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikisource, and Wiktionary. Nehaoua is fluent in Arabic and French, and is actively improving his English language skills. Nehaoua's term on OC expires in 2026. Renvoy<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth?target=Renvoy> Renvoy has been editing Wikimedia projects since 2014. He is primarily active on Ukrainian Wikipedia, where he serves as administrator. Also he holds roles of global sysop and global rollbacker. Renvoy speaks Ukrainian, Russian, English, Polish and Lithuanian. His current term runs through 2026. RoySmith < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth?target=RoySmith> Roy Smith has been editing Wikipedia since 2004. He has been an admin on English Wikipedia since 2005 and a checkuser since 2021. Previously an active sockpuppet hunter, as of late 2023, he has dialed that back to concentrate more on content creation. He is looking forward to working on the Ombuds Commission and meeting new colleagues from other wiki projects. His term on OC runs through 2026. Steward-Observer The Steward-Observer serves as a liaison between the Ombuds Commission and the Stewards. The Steward-Observer is a non-voting, advisory role. The Steward-Observer was nominated by the Stewards and is appointed by the Wikimedia Foundation to a one-year term. This year's Steward-Observer is… Vermont <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth?target=Vermont> Vermont (they/them) has been contributing to Wikimedia projects since 2016. They have been a steward since February 2022, and previously a global sysop and rollbacker. Vermont is an administrator and checkuser on Meta-Wiki and the Simple English Wikipedia, and formerly volunteered on the UCoC Phase 2 and Revisions drafting committees. They served as Steward-Observer for the Ombuds Commission in 2023-24 as well. Vermont's term as Steward-Observer expires in 2025. Departing members Please join me in thanking the following volunteers who are leaving OC, who have given substantially of their time to serve the commission: JJMC89 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth?target=JJMC89> JJMC89 has been contributing to Wikimedia projects since 2015. He is primarily active on the English Wikipedia, where he has more than 300,000 edits and is an administrator and bot operator, and Commons. He also serves as a tool administrator on UTRS. He speaks English. He has been on the Ombuds Commission since 2021. -- Karen Brown Trust & Safety Specialist Wikimedia Foundation kbrown(a)wikimedia.org

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WMBE Wikimedia Belgium 2023 reports
by Geert Van Pamel 01 Feb '24

01 Feb '24

Please find the Wikimedia Belgium (WMBE) reports over 2023: * <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Belgiu…> WMBE activity report 2023 * <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Belgiu…> WMBE Financial report 2023 Geert Van Pamel

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Language & Internationalization newsletter #02 (January 2024)
by Srishti Sethi 01 Feb '24

01 Feb '24

Hello everyone, The second edition of the Language & Internationalization newsletter (January 2024) is available at this link: < https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Language_engineering/Newsletter/20… >. This newsletter is compiled by the Wikimedia Language team. It provides updates from October–December 2023 quarter on new feature development, improvements in various language-related technical projects and support efforts, details about community meetings, and contributions ideas to get involved in projects. To stay updated, you can subscribe to the newsletter on its wiki page. If you have any feedback or ideas for topics to feature in the newsletter, please share them on the discussion page, accessible here: < https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikimedia_Language_enginee… >. Cheers, Srishti On behalf of the WMF Language team *Srishti Sethi* Senior Developer Advocate Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

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Wikimedia-l February 2024