Samuel Klein, 02/11/2012 16:01:

...

• Institutional support for the GLAM related activities in the US (until

the US Federation is fully functional, if ever)

I agree there is room for a global GLAM support for regions that don't have local [chapter] organization. Why do you feel this is a special problem for the US, compared to other archive-rich parts of the world - given the two regional chapters and numerous present and past Wikipedians in residence?

The problem is always the same, i.e. that the WMF acts as WM-USA while a chapter is missing, rather than being truly global. Random (unfair?) recent example: WLM-USA uses the allegedly global "Wikimedia blog" https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/10/31/wiki-loves-monuments-us-top-ten-photos-announced/ unlike all the other national editions. But perhaps Lodewijk meant something else.

Nemo

BTW, a lot of the organizing work for Wiki Loves Monuments in the US was done by three volunteer Wikimedians who also happen to be WMF employees (Kaldari, Sarah and Matthew), but did this in their spare time.

Not trying to underestimate their contribution, I am afraid this is better worded as "some fair share of the organizing work..." . For example, User:Thundersnow spent, as I can see, all of their free time in September (essentially, all of their time except for sleep) working here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_National_Register_of_Hist...

He was complimented on the NRHP project, but, as I could see, nowhere else.

There were more users like Thundersnow.

Cheers Yaroslav

On 11/2/12 8:15 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:

Samuel Klein, 02/11/2012 16:01:

...

...

• Institutional support for the GLAM related activities in the US

(until the US Federation is fully functional, if ever)

I agree there is room for a global GLAM support for regions that don't have local [chapter] organization. Why do you feel this is a special problem for the US, compared to other archive-rich parts of the world - given the two regional chapters and numerous present and past Wikipedians in residence?

The problem is always the same, i.e. that the WMF acts as WM-USA while a chapter is missing, rather than being truly global. Random (unfair?) recent example: WLM-USA uses the allegedly global "Wikimedia blog" https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/10/31/wiki-loves-monuments-us-top-ten-photos-announced/ unlike all the other national editions.

There is a US blog: http://www.wikilovesmonuments.us/

I'm not sure why it was posted on the WMF blog. I'm sure if other countries submitted their top ten's they'd be posted to the WMF blog.

Remember: anyone in the movement - around the world - can write a blog for the WMF blog, in any language they want. So do it!

-Sarah

Sarah Stierch wrote:

I'm not sure why it was posted on the WMF blog. I'm sure if other countries submitted their top ten's they'd be posted to the WMF blog.

Remember: anyone in the movement - around the world - can write a blog for the WMF blog, in any language they want. So do it!

I'm going to fork this thread as I think this point should be highlighted.

Currently, looking at https://blog.wikimedia.org/, I'm not sure it's obvious at all that anyone in the Wikimedia community is encouraged to draft a blog post. As far as I can see, there's no "submit a post" or "contribute your own story" or other invitation to participation anywhere on the blog.

Even adapting the Creative Commons license note in the sidebar might work. "This blog is licensed under blah blah. You can submit your own draft of an article here!" or something.

I'm as big a fan of security through obscurity as anyone, but it does occasionally help to give people a decent pointer to a page such as http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog#Drafting_a_post. Currently, it looks like there _is_ a "Guidelines" link in the sidebar, but it's painfully buried in the left-hand sidebar's list of links and its target (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog/Guidelines) is a wall of text.

I'm not sure who could resolve this issue or how it's best tracked. I guess via filing a bug in Bugzilla? If there's a central point of contact for the blog, it'd be great to know who that is.

MZMcBride

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 11:20 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:

Sarah Stierch wrote:

...

I'm not sure why it was posted on the WMF blog. I'm sure if other countries submitted their top ten's they'd be posted to the WMF blog.

Remember: anyone in the movement - around the world - can write a blog for the WMF blog, in any language they want. So do it!

I'm going to fork this thread as I think this point should be highlighted.

Currently, looking at https://blog.wikimedia.org/, I'm not sure it's obvious at all that anyone in the Wikimedia community is encouraged to draft a blog post. As far as I can see, there's no "submit a post" or "contribute your own story" or other invitation to participation anywhere on the blog.

We installed the public drafting process for the blog a few months ago and it was a bit of an experiment at first. But yes, now that this has matured a bit, such a more prominent link on the blog itself sounds like a great idea - we'll definitely look into it.

By the way, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog/Drafts is as much meant as an invitation to copyedit and comment on others' drafts as it is for submitting new ones; we'd love to see more participation of both sorts.

Even adapting the Creative Commons license note in the sidebar might work. "This blog is licensed under blah blah. You can submit your own draft of an article here!" or something.

I'm as big a fan of security through obscurity as anyone, but it does occasionally help to give people a decent pointer to a page such as http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog#Drafting_a_post. Currently, it looks like there _is_ a "Guidelines" link in the sidebar, but it's painfully buried in the left-hand sidebar's list of links and its target (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog/Guidelines) is a wall of text.

I'm not sure who could resolve this issue or how it's best tracked. I guess via filing a bug in Bugzilla? If there's a central point of contact for the blog, it'd be great to know who that is.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog/Guidelines#Blog_team (Guillaume has indeed done most of the work on the blog design in the past, but nowadays his time for working on the blog is unfortunately very limited by his other duties.)

We are currently throwing around ideas for a redesign of the whole blog in a "Newsroom" style, with a stronger emphasis on thematic sub-blogs and widening participation further. Also, Daniel and I have recently been talking about the possibility of having the blog in Labs, which in this case would have enabled you to suggest that invitation link by just coding it yourself ;)

Hi SJ,

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 4:01 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:

Hello Lodewijk,

These are good questions. I expect effort will be required in the short term to delegate effectively and help move to a narrower focus. A few clarifying questions for you in return:

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 7:47 AM, Lodewijk <lodewijk@effeietsanders.org

...

wrote:

...

• PR support by WMF PR staff when writing press releases for an

international audience

Do you have an example in mind of a recent press release that took advantage of this support? How useful to you find ComCom, as a list and network, compared to direct personal facilitation by WMF staff?

While not recent or international; I have taken advantage of both personal WMF staff support and ComCom in the past, in slightly different circumstances. For planning a communications strategy, the direct input, coaching and concentrated involvement of a Comms manager of WMF was instrumental; while ComCom in my experience has been useful in providing advice on how to react to a situation, which required less time of any given participant. In the former case the help might have been an "unmandated task", and the person providing the help did not need to be WMF staffer (after all, Wikimedia Deutschland also had similar levels of communications expertise at the time, though still no mandate to be available to the global community). One important result of this interaction (and also other similar interactions in other fields of expertise, as well as that of the WMF-funded organizational development pilot) was the transfer of skills, ways of thinking that has been useful beyond the one project in question, and has perhaps resulted in not requiring to contact WMF again.

Sue's recommendations include "crisis support" as something to maintain, but I hope this will not be seen as exclusively crisis support, i.e. interactions between the WMF and the community will not be intentionally narrowed to the times of crisis. Grants are a good tool for problems that can be solved by money, but it is an imprecise and slow tool, e.g. to solve the above problem that one could rely on the help of WMF, would require writing a grant to engage a communications consultant (the grant would need a month to be reviewed and a week or so more for the bank transfer; the consultant would need to be found, the consultant needs to be educated about our values, an evaluation report needs to be written etc.). In the long run, when a certain region or entity is big enough it will make sense to hire a local comm person through grants, but until then the grants-only approach, without attendant focus on capacity development has the potential, I fear, to lead to lost opportunities and waste. Over time, other entities in the movement will adapt to serve the needs of the international community, but if WMF is not careful, it stands to lose a big chunk of interactions with the wider community, the resulting good relationships and more sadly the transfer of skills and experience in non-technical areas between the WMF and the volunteers might cease, leading to a less empowered and skillful volunteer base. I sincerely hope that this is not the intention or the result.

...

• Networking support by Asaf (who to approach), specifically for "global

south" countries and chapters to be.

Do you think the WMF should be the arbiter of who to approach to connect with chapters-to-be? It seems to me that this level of support and connection could be provided well and in a variety of languages by a support network (or a community body such as AffCom or the WCA), even today.

Perhaps what was meant here is that Asaf told people which WMF staffer to approach with certain requests or simply questions (e.g. for trademarks, comms help, merchandise, the WMF blog, accounting etc.). WCA and AffCom, etc. will certainly be able to provide similar assistance, but the big question is whether people at the WMF will be allowed to receive such contact (or which functions will not be), and then figuring out who can act as a substitute. (As a number of functions are available at multiple places in the movement, it is not a movement-wide tragedy if certain functions become unavailable at the WMF, but the WMF is seen as the cornerstone of the movement, if it closes off, it will lead to a readjustment of that picture. It is not necessarily all bad, it might lead to non-WMF orgs seen as more equal and responsible parts of the movement, but it might lead to certain volunteers being unserved without a default fallback to the WMF.)

-- I really hope the way the WMF understands grantmaking will include a strong emphasis on proactively building the capacities of the potential grantees and not only in a pull matter, but also in a push matter where opportunities (even if technically called grants) are actively offered to the other entities.

Best regards, Bence

Hi all,

I have a comment inline below. Humor me on my rampage about the US and our desperate need for a more organized GLAM movement in this giant country.

On 11/2/12 8:01 AM, Samuel Klein wrote:

...

• Institutional support for the GLAM related activities in the US (until

the US Federation is fully functional, if ever)

I agree there is room for a global GLAM support for regions that don't have local [chapter] organization. Why do you feel this is a special problem for the US, compared to other archive-rich parts of the world - given the two regional chapters and numerous present and past Wikipedians in residence?

The United States is a legendary place when it comes to this discussion. Numerous fellow-US-Wikipedians and myself have spent countless nights mulling over this. If you live outside of Washington, D.C. and New York City vicinities, the Wikipedia world in the US is a VERY lonely place. Perhaps not for everyone, but for many more than you'd think. I meet Wikipedians in the US who have no clue there is a grant program. Like some countries in global south - I know Wikipedians in Chicago who attend meet-up's with 2 people on a regular basis. I mean Chicago? Really? Yup.

I live in San Francisco. I'm lucky: I'm wrapping up a year long fellowship, I'm a social butterfly, but it took me almost one year of doing GLAM projects on my own budget before I realized that I could apply for a grant to go to a conference. I thought there was no way I'd get a grant to attend a museum conference. Lori Phillips has done a lot of work in her one year coordinator position. She has tried her best to bring together US Wikipedians - and for many of us, that's like herding cats. She's redone our website, she's created a blog, and she's got 100 GLAMs breathing down her neck who want Wikipedians in Residence - all this while GLAMs are undergoing hiring freezes and are lucky if they can send one staff member to a conference where Lori, myself, and/or Dominic speak about the subject.

The development of the US GLAM Consortium[1] was a concept Lori hoped could make up for a few things: the lack of chapters in the US (the US is like Russia - it's freaking huge, and having two small chapters on one side of the country doesn't necessarily help those of us in Oklahoma, Indiana, New Mexico, or Oregon, per se), the lack of GLAM organization around the subject, etc. We've got a great group of advisors from some of the biggest GLAMs in the US - however, the Consortium has no money. GLAMs don't have the free cash to throw at organizing it, and the Foundation won't support it unless a GLAM steps up to throw money in - if they do the Foundation will match them. And we've had little to no luck thus far at getting outside funding. But, most of these GLAMs have hiring freezes, can't even afford to pay a Wikipedian in Residence a small stipend, and all of the staff members on the US Consortium project are doing it as volunteers. One of the most important things we need to do is have a Consortium meeting - in person, not online - and we can't financially fund it because of this matching. I don't blame anyone we're working with - Asaf is great and he works his ass off and cares a lot for what we're all doing. But, in the US - we can't financially do a lot of things because we're limited by distance, lack of chapters, and situations like this matching thing. I get we can't rely on the Foundation for everything, but in the US, outside of one area, it's the only thing we have.

And trust me - having "numerous present and past Wikipedians in residence" doesn't make up for having financial and chapter support. While it's great that museums want to fly us around the country to talk about our projects - they can't afford it. I was asked to speak at one of the finest museums in the United States - the Met of the West, so to say, and they had to cease planning the talk because they can't afford to bring me down from San Francisco to LA, and I surely can't afford to do that myself. And a ticket to fly to LA generally costs about $150 - not expensive. And there is only so much that me, Dominic and Lori can do. (And that's having families, jobs and school)

I could go on and on and on about this, but, a few of us in the GLAM US movement have learned that we can ask the Foundation for grants when needed, and we are grateful, but, other than that, you're on your own - and many of us also know that if we had a US GLAM Consortium - who needs to meet in order to get the ball rolling - then we'd probably have a chance to bring in outside funding and so forth. I'm continuously grateful for the support participation grants have given me, but this isn't about me, I'll be okay - it's about the large scale impact in the US which we still need to make.

Things have started to move a bit though - organizations like the Open Knowledge Foundation have taken notice that we need better organization regarding OpenGLAM in the US. It just takes time, and we've wasted a lot of it already.

And no, I'm not starting a chapter anytime soon. Someone else can do that. :)

-Sarah

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/US/Consortium

Hi Sam,

some people have excellently answered as well - I especially agree with what Bence and Matthew wrote. I will answer some things myself as well though.

2012/11/2 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com

Hello Lodewijk,

These are good questions. I expect effort will be required in the short term to delegate effectively and help move to a narrower focus. A few clarifying questions for you in return:

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 7:47 AM, Lodewijk <lodewijk@effeietsanders.org

...

wrote:

...

• PR support by WMF PR staff when writing press releases for an

international audience

Do you have an example in mind of a recent press release that took advantage of this support? How useful to you find ComCom, as a list and network, compared to direct personal facilitation by WMF staff?

I have two very specific occasions which I recall - but please forgive me if I forgot several. In 2011 I had quite some interaction with Moka, who advised me on how to run an international press release. This was the first time we were running Wiki Loves Monuments in multiple countries, and none of the chapters participating had any experience in international press releases. The results of this were very thin - mostly because of language issues (national releases work better, that was a valuable lesson) but the help was great and helpful. This year I had quite some interaction with Matthew who did a lot of help on drafting a good template release that could be used by multiple countries and attractive blog posts. I honestly don't know where his job stopped and his free time started - but what counts to me most is that his skills were very valuable.

To some extent ComCom is helpful - but to be honest comcom has degraded into not much more than a mailing list and a helpful place to shout for help. It is not a great place to transfer skills or get help in confidential stuff (such as the Guinness World Record press release).

Maybe this specific set of facilitation could move to the WCA - but at the short term this is unlikely to happen.

...

• Networking support by Asaf (who to approach), specifically for "global

south" countries and chapters to be.

Do you think the WMF should be the arbiter of who to approach to connect with chapters-to-be? It seems to me that this level of support and connection could be provided well and in a variety of languages by a support network (or a community body such as AffCom or the WCA), even today.

No, in an ideal world I would prefer the WMF not to be necessary for this. However, unfortunately this ideal world doesn't exist. Again the WCA could become helpful - but that is midlong term thinking. Dropping these functions /right now/ would hurt the movement - I prefer a transition process.

...

• Tech support for initiatives

• Layout/design support for education related activities

...

How do you feel the above worked for WLM this year, as an example? What tech and design support was needed, and where did it come from?

I think the tech support for Wiki Loves Monuments was very helpful (both the upload wizard in 2011 (Jeroen!) and 2012 as the mobile app). I think the current setup of the Toolserver and Labs is quite open for improvement though - especially when it comes to access and reliability. i'm not a very technical person though, so I suggest you ask some other people if you want details. Thing is, sometimes volunteers need some last minute flexible support to make a project work. To make their efforts effective.

Design work I mostly remember from the education program - I haven't been much directly involved, so probably others can speak better for it.

...

• Institutional support for the GLAM related activities in the US (until

the US Federation is fully functional, if ever)

I agree there is room for a global GLAM support for regions that don't have local [chapter] organization. Why do you feel this is a special problem for the US, compared to other archive-rich parts of the world - given the two regional chapters and numerous present and past Wikipedians in residence?

I think Sarah answered this very well in the mean time. The US is a big country, and currently mostly not covered by any kind of chapter. If the WMF doesn't support it at this point, there will not be any organizational support. Grant making is not enough - skill transfer and some basic backbone support is simply necessary to make volunteers do what they are best at. This is also why GLAM seems to be most successful in countries with chapters.

I do feel that the WMF isn't best placed in the longer term to support this. I think that the US federation idea that is currently being considered might be a good step in the direction of organizational support - and a US chapter might even be better. The GLAM-Wiki consortium might be a great step. But again: a transition process is imho necessary and invaluable. If you drop it now, there is a risk of loosing important momentum. Give other organizations that are still growing some time to develop and come to a point where they can take over these responsibilities.

Best regards, Lodewijk