(sent on behalf of Guillaume Paumier)
Copied from the article on the Wikimedia blog:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/11/30/upload-wizard-launches-beta-wikim…
Please refer to the article for the formatted content with hyperlinks
==============================================================
Today, we’re launching a new upload wizard in beta phase to make it easier to contribute multimedia works to Wikimedia Commons. “Commons” is the free, collaborative media repository associated with all Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia. Although Commons contains over 7 million images, videos and sounds, uploading a file has long been an arduous path reserved to the most adventurous souls. The new upload wizard aims to make the uploading experience simpler and more pleasant for all users.
The new upload tool consists of a step-by-step wizard guiding the user through the successive stages of the process, rather than presenting a huge complicated form. It allows the user to upload multiple files at once, and grant permission for them in batch.
The wizard integrates our brand new illustrated licensing tutorial to help new participants understand the basics of copyright and free licenses. Since its publication, the tutorial has been translated and localized into about eighteen languages, and more are underway.
This new feature is one of the main outcomes of the Multimedia Usability project, a one-year project funded by the Ford Foundation, aiming to increase multimedia participation on Wikimedia websites. Although the grant is now officially over, the Wikimedia Foundation will fund subsequent development of the wizard to make it more robust and feature-rich.
We unveiled a prototype version of the wizard a few months ago, and we’ve got a lot of useful, constructive feedback from Commons testers. Since then, many bugs have been fixed, and the interface is much cleaner. The other main accomplishment has been the development of a private temporary holding area for files missing mandatory information.
The upload wizard is available in beta version as an additional uploading option. It’s far from perfect, and there are still bugs and missing features. But we do think it will provide a useful alternative to participants who want to use it and help us improve it.
The new wizard will eventually become the default uploading option on Commons, but it won’t replace the regular upload system until it provides a satisfying (and hopefully improved) coverage of the use cases currently supported by the “old” one.
You’re warmly invited to try the new system (you’ll need an account on Commons) and report issues you encounter with it. Please be sure to save your time by checking the Questions & Answers page and the list of open issues first.
If your issue hasn’t been reported yet, you can enter it directly in our tracker, or leave a note on the feedback page.
Since this concludes the Multimedia usability project, we’ll publish a full project report shortly for people interested in the details. In the meantime, you may be interested in two behind-the-scenes articles about the licensing tutorial: one by our illustrator, Michael Bartalos, and one by myself, focusing on the collaboration with the Wikimedia community.
Guillaume Paumier
Product Manager − Multimedia usability
Wikimedia Foundation
--
Jay Walsh
Head of Communications
WikimediaFoundation.orgblog.wikimedia.org
+1 (415) 839 6885 x 609, @jansonw
Hi,
earlier this year we fell behind on the monthly reports, and
April-June were never published. For historical completeness, we're
writing up reports for these missing months. April is below. Thanks to
Steven Walling for helping with this.
So, this is for reporting enthusiasts. ;-) Please consult our most
recent reports for up-to-date information.
As always, the formatted version is on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_April_2010
Cheers,
Erik
----
==Highlights==
* More than 120 chapter representatives and developers meet at the
Wikimedia Conference Berlin
* Bishakha Datta joins the Board of Trustees
* Air travel disruptions lead to stranded Wikimedians and limited Board meeting
* Wikimedia Commons becomes first production site to adopt MediaWiki's
new look and feel
==Key Metrics==
:Global unique visitors: 375 Million (+1.1% compared to previous
month, +17.1% compared to previous year)
:Page requests: 11.7 Billion (-0.1% compared to the previous month,
+7.4% compared to the previous year)
The monthly report card for April 2010 can be found at:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2010_04_detailed.html
Please note the errata published at:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2010_04_errata.html
==Key Financial Metrics==
:Operating revenue year-to-date: 14.6MM vs. plan of $9.3MM.
:Total annual plan is $10.4MM.
:Operating expenses year-to-date: $7.3MM vs. plan of $7.8MM.
:Total annual plan is $9.2MM.
On the revenue side, business Development is still behind, all other
areas well over plan. YTD spending is closing gap and only 7% below
plan.
As of May 12th, unrestricted cash and cash equivalents were $13.4MM,
of this amount $10MM are in unrestricted CDs and US Treasury Bonds.
==Wikimedia Conference Berlin, 2010 and volcano aftermath ==
On April 14-16, the Wikimedia Conference Berlin brought together more
than 120 Wikimedians from over 30 countries, including representatives
of international chapter organizations, MediaWiki developers, and
Wikimedia Foundation staff for presentations, workshops, and informal
conversations. The conference was organized by Wikimedia Germany. It
was co-sponsored by Wikimedia Germany, other Wikimedia chapters, and
the Wikimedia Foundation.
The conference was split into a chapters meeting and a developers
workshop. During the chapters meeting, each Wikimedia chapter was
given the opportunity to present its program activities as well as the
current state of the chapter in lightning talks. There were additional
deep-dive sessions and presentations focusing on issues such as
institutional partnerships, Wikimedia in developing countries, and
others.
The developers conference consisted of informal hacking and
unconference-style workshops on a number of key issues such as user
experience, accessibility, and metadata.
The conference took place in the Zanox Campus building near the river
Spree. More information about the conference can be found at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2010
Many attendees, including Wikimedia Foundation staff, were affected by
the ash cloud from the eruption of the Icelandic volcano
Eyjafjallajökull, which caused major air traffic disruption throughout
Europe. Wikimedia Germany and Wikimedia Foundation administrative
staff provided support to stranded attendees to ensure that everyone
could make their way home safely. The disruption resulted in
significant additional hotel and travel costs.
The engineering community assigned the blame for the volcano to
Icelandic developer Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason in the form of a bug
report, initially called "Developers (and WMF Staff) need way out of
Europe" and finally suggesting a new branch office in Europe:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23223
== Bishakha Datta joins the Board; April Board meeting ==
In April, following an extensive search process, Bishakha Datta was
appointed to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Board chair
Michael Snow wrote in his announcement:
: We have now filled that seat by appointing Bishakha Datta, a
journalist, filmmaker, and nonprofit leader from India. (...) By way
of background, Bishakha runs a nonprofit based in Mumbai that focuses
on conveying women's perspectives in culture and the media. She also
has been involved in other international nonprofit work, and her
knowledge of India should be a great help to us as we move forward
with the strategic plan. In general, her experience will be a
wonderful asset and I think she is an ideal fit for the remaining
board seat.
:http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-April/057537.html
Several Trustees were unable to attend the April 2010 Board of
Trustees meeting in person due to the volcanic ash cloud. Trustees
unable to physically attend were connected to the meeting through
Skype and IRC. As a result the Board meeting was led by Vice-Chair
Jan-Bart de Vreede. The Board condensed agenda items to make the
meeting manageable for the remote attendees.
The two main activities conducted at the meeting were a recap of the
strategic planning project, including creation of a draft resolution,
and a restructuring of the Board commitees include clear mandates,
assignment of chairs for each commitee, and a discussion of what (if
any) needed decommissioning.
== Strategic Planning and Business Planning ==
In April, Eugene and Philippe joined the Berlin meetings, taking the
opportunity to talk to developers about core infrastructure needs, and
to meet with chapters about their role in the strategic planning
process. The Strategy task force was created to manage the broad
questions around the mechanics of writing the final strategic plan.
Draft language was moved out, and discussion of the plan began.
All departments contributed to the development of the organization's
2010-11 annual plan and five-year projections for hiring and program
activities as an outcome of the strategic planning process.
== Technology ==
=== Usability and Features ===
Wikimedia Commons was the first Wikimedia Foundation production wiki
to adopt the user experience improvements that resulted from the
Wikimedia Usability Initiative. This first deployment helped surface
additional issues both related to various browser/platform problems as
well as language-specific issues. Blog update:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/04/06/vector-meets-commons/
The Commons tech community supported making gadget and user scripts
compatible prior to the switch, which helped tremendously. The overall
reaction was positive:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/a-quick-update-on-vector-acceptance-by-commo…
The engineering team prepared for a roll-out of the user experience
improvements to the English Wikipedia in May. As the English Wikipedia
accounts for half of our traffic, careful planning for the switch took
place. The operations team increased caching capacity. Guidelines for
localization of a revised Wikipedia logo were prepared to cascade the
new design of the new logo to 270+ languages. Communications materials
such as an FAQ and a feedback page were set-up to handle the high
volume of inquiries openly and quickly.
Preparation continued for a first usability study to assess the media
uploading interface, as well as development work on the new upload
wizard.
Work continued on LiquidThreads (an enhanced Wikimedia discussion
system) bug triage and resolution, which benefited from the production
use on StrategyWiki. Other LiquidThreads improvements included support
for LQT data in the Wikimedia datatabase dump system, as well as work
on live preview.
At the Berlin meeting, the team met Maria Schiewe, an accessibility
expert and board member of Wikimedia Germany, and learned how
to make the site accessible to people with challenges with vision and
hearing. A Wikimedia Accessibility Initiative was kicked off by Maria
Schiewe, Samuel Klein, and DannyB to improve the accessibility of
Wikimedia projects, and in order to incorporate the accessibility
support into the user experience work going forward:
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Accessibility_Initiative
Engineering presentations by Trevor Parscal and Neil Kandalgaonkar can
be found at:
:http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/index.php?title=File:Trevor_Parscal_-_Wikimedia_Developers_Workshop_-_Berlin_2010.pdf&page=1
:http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/index.php?title=File:NeilK_Gpaumier_Uploadwizard_WMDEV_2010_Berlin_presentation.pdf&page=1
=== General Engineering ===
Preparation continued for a 1.16 release of MediaWiki core, including
backports and bug fixes. Varnish was tested to work as a reverse proxy
for the Selenium grid and the usability prototype wikis.
===Operations===
We made the Amsterdam network fully redundant with a new topology and
through the use of high availability protocols, and tested it in
practice by pulling plugs. We also performed a successful failover
test for Amsterdam to Florida. We made a wish list to support a
possible in-kind donation of equipment for the planned new Primary
Data Center.
We upgraded equipment and software in both the Tampa Data Center and
in the European Caching Center, including: 32 new Squid servers and 10
miscellaneous servers ordered, racked and installed in Haarlem, all
Florida Squids upgraded to newer Squid and Ubuntu releases,
infrastructure prepared for automatic installations of the new Ubuntu
8.10 Lucid LTS release, 10 new database servers brought online,
decommissioned servers shipped out to interested non-profits.
System Administration is testing monitoring software called WatchMouse
as an alternative to Keynote, and setting up a trial page.
===Offline===
Our New Dataset server is back up and receiving page hit counts.
Barring any more hardware issues we will be switching to it and
increasing the amount of data sets. Unfortunately, we found a show
stopper bug on the existing snapshot system
[https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23264].
WikiReader finalized its packaging and is deployed in some markets in
the US. We are about to make a final decision on a multi-partner
project for Wikipedia offline USB sticks.
===Mobile===
We've released a new version of the Wikipedia App - Now with
GeoLocation and also lots of bugfixes and performance tweaks for
server to support rapid growth. We also drafted new policies for
supporting additional mobile partners.
===Fundraising===
We've successfully hired 2 new engineers, and have drafted and
prioritized a new set of projects for 2010-2011. There have been
ongoing system issues with PayPal that will need to be actively
debugged in May. We have a manual work-around using the Audit System,
and are processing orders but it is taking a lot of Program Staff
time. We were forced to turn off credit card processing in mid-April
due to excessive fraudulent $1 charges. We are investigating
implementation of improved fraud detection by contractor Four
Kitchens. Transaction audit system drafted and put into place.
==Other Program Activities==
===Outreach===
In April a final grant proposal was submitted to the Stanton
Foundation for the Public Policy Initiative, a proposed large-scale
project to improve Wikipedia articles in partnership with university
courses. This was in concert with work on budgeting, strategic
planning, and communications planning for both the Public Policy
Initiative and the "Bookshelf" public outreach resource development
project, as well as on-boarding the new Bookshelf Project Manager.
As part of the Bookshelf project, a video by Common Craft was
published on Wikimedia Commons as a tutorial of the Verifiability and
Neutral Point of View policies and practices within the community, and
a framework for localization of the video was created. The video can
be found at:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Verifiability_and_Neutral_point_of_v…
===Communications===
Through early/mid-April the Foundation experienced a relatively quiet
media exposure. With Larry Sanger's public allegations about materials
on Wikimedia Commons, coverage began to rise up around the story,
ultimately leading to mainstream coverage of the story after Fox News
published Sanger's comments and further repeated a number of false
claims on its site. Much of late April was spent working internally
and externally on this issue.
Communications efforts were also focused on preparations for the user
experience roll-out and outreach with Wikimedia's chapters at the
conference in Berlin.
An announcement regarding Bishakha Datta was released:
''Indian Journalist and filmmaker Bishakha Datta joins Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustees'' (April 5, 2010)
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Bishakha_Datta_to_join_W…
Media organizations the communications department interfaced with this
month include: Heise Online (Germany), V3.co.uk (London, UK), ABC
Nightly News (New York, NY), NewTeeVee.com (San Francisco, CA), Wired
News (London, UK), San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, CA).
===Fundraising and Grants===
The Community Gifts team spent the month of April budgeting for the
coming year and setting up CiviCRM for effective management of middle
and major donor relationships. The benefactors page was also updated,
with old listings being asked to renew their gifts or be archived to
another page. In response to this appeal 25% of gifts were renewed. At
the end of April the team planned their trip to Bristol for the
Fundraising Summit and attended CiviCon where they presented
Wikimedia's use of CiviCRM.
April was a busy month for major donor programs. Jimmy and Rebecca
spent three days in New York meeting with donors, and logistics for
the Harnisch Foundation NYC event were established (to be held in
October). Major gift activities also focussed on streamlining our
communication with all donors, major and otherwise.
===Business Development===
In late April a partnership with Facebook was announced which enabled
the large scale inclusion of Wikipedia articles by the new Community
Pages on the site. This arrangement allowed for wider distribution of
free content from Wikipedia.
Foundation-l mailing list announcement by Kul Wadhwa:
:http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-April/057598.html
===Finance & Administration===
Form 990 was filed with the IRS and posted (with FAQs) to Wikimedia
Foundation website. Negotiations continued for the 6th floor lease. A
rough draft of 2010-11 financial plan was completed. An agreement was
signed with Altour travel agency to replace Egencia in order to
improve flexibility in travel.
Form 990:
:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/5/54/WMF_2008_2009_Form_990.pdf
:http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Form_2008_Questions_and_Answers
===Legal===
Mike Godwin developed settlement plans with the Wikimedia Foundation
French lawyers over a defamation case in France. The settlement mainly
involved meeting to allow the plaintiffs to express their grievances,
and did not involve a monetary settlement.
Godwin worked with Outeach Officer Pete Forsyth to negotiate free
licenses with academic authors who want to submit materials to
Wikimedia projects. In collaboration with Rob Halsell of Operations
and outside counsel, Wikimedia worked on the transfer of domain names
we've won through trademark enforcement. Legal also aided Wikimedia
Germany in responding to press queries about outcomes in a German
legal case.
==Wikimedia at Museums and the Web conference ==
On Tuesday, 13 April 2010 over 50 leaders from the global museum
sector were invited to meet with 11 Wikimedians for a day-long
workshop in Denver, Colorado, to discuss collaboration between the two
communities. Wikimedia staff and community representation included
Liam Wyatt, Mathias Schindler, Guillaume Paumier, Erik Moeller, Kat
Walsh, Samuel Klein, Adrianne Wadewitz, Maarten Dammers, and Richard
Knipel.
:http://www.archimuse.com/mw2010/abstracts/prg_335002379.html
:http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Museums_and_the_Web_2010
:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-04-26/Museums_conference
==Personnel==
* Aradhana Datta Ravindra, temporary Project Manager for the Bookshelf
Project, was hired.
* Philippe Beaudette was promoted to Head of Reader Relations.
* Howie Fung was hired full time as a Senior Product Manager.
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hi all,
As a few of you know, I have a fellowship in the Wikimedia
Foundation's Community Department, working for Chief Community Officer
Zack Exley on a variety of projects. One of these projects is making
Wikipedia's 10th anniversary one to remember by supporting Wikimedians
who want to celebrate online and off.
To that end, we've opened up a new space for collaboration at http://ten.wikipedia.org/
. Many thanks to the editors who've already showed up to participate.
For who haven't had a chance to explore it yet, we started the wiki
for four core activities, which are outlined in our FAQ (http://ten.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAQ
). They are:
1. Gathering a single, detailed list of events that we can point
interested people to.
2. Hosting some interesting ways to reflect on the anniversary online,
across Wikipedia communities. If you have ideas for celebrating, this
is the place to share them.
3. Providing resources for organizers, including a press kit, freely-
licensed designs that can be localized, and instructions on how to get
a free set of t-shirts, stickers, buttons etc. for your event.
4. A place to document everything. This wiki will be a great place to
look back and see what we did to celebrate our first double digit
anniversary.
Hopefully that gives you a better idea of what we're working on. As
usual, please be bold and join in! If you have questions that can't be
answered on the wiki or mailing list (https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikix-l
), I am your best point of contact.
Thanks for reading,
Steven Walling
[[User:Steven (WMF)]] on ten.wikipedia.org
Seventh Annual Campaign to Support Wikipedia Kicks Off
/Yearly fundraising campaign sets goal of $16 million and invites
readers to become editors /
SAN FRANCISCO, November 15, 2010 --- The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the
non-profit behind Wikipedia, today announced the launch of its annual
fundraising campaign. This year's goal is to raise $16 million so that
Wikipedia and its sister projects can remain freely available to people
around the world. The $16 million raised in this campaign will help fund
the Foundation's total 2010-11 operating budget of $20.4 million. And
for the first time this year, the campaign will also invite readers to
donate time as well as money, by joining the Wikimedia community of
volunteer editors. Once the financial goal has been met, the campaign
will encourage Wikipedia's nearly 400 million monthly readers to become
editors.
"Over the past 10 years, Wikipedia has become a vital public resource
for hundreds of millions of people. We've come to depend on it being
there for us -- free to use, without any bias or interference, and
without advertising," said Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. "If you can
afford to make even a small donation, that's important. You're helping
to keep Wikipedia available not just for yourself, but for others
--kids, people in poor countries-- who themselves can't afford to donate."
The 2010 campaign seeks to raise the funds needed to preserve Wikipedia,
the world's fifth-most-popular site, as a space for the free and open
sharing of human knowledge. As Wikipedia continues to grow in size and
readership, it needs to increase spending on servers and bandwidth, and
to invest in supporting the continued health and diversity of the
editing community.
"Wikipedia is the people's encyclopedia: it's written by ordinary
people, and it makes sense that ordinary people would pay to support
it," said Sue Gardner, Executive Director. "Having a broad base of many
donors from everywhere around the world is important to us: it means the
encyclopedia is free to evolve to meet the needs of its readers, rather
than being distorted or thrown off course by special interests. I'm glad
so many people appreciate Wikipedia, and I'm delighted when they choose
to support it financially."
In 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation raised just over $8 million from more
than 240,000 individual donations (up from 139,000 donations during the
2008 campaign). The average donation in 2009 was $33, and donations came
in from over 100 countries.
The 2010 campaign will run through January 2011, with notices at the top
of pages on Wikipedia and its sister sites, asking readers for their
support.
Make a donation now:
* http://donate.wikimedia.org
Follow us on:
* http://identi.ca//wikipedia
* http://identi.ca//wikimedia
* http://twitter.com/wikimedia
* http://twitter.com/wikipedia
Follow or share your thoughts with the tag #keepitfree
<http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23keepitfree>
or
Facebook.com:
* http://www.Facebook.com/Wikipedia
*About the Wikimedia Foundation*
* http://wikimediafoundation.org
* http://blog.wikimedia.org
The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization which operates
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. According to comScore Media Metrix,
Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation
receive 398 million unique visitors per month, making them the 5th most
popular web property world-wide (Sept, 2010). Available in more than 270
languages, Wikipedia contains more than 16 million articles contributed
by a global volunteer community of more than 100,000 people. Based in
San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation is an audited,
501(c)(3) charity that is funded primarily through donations and grants.
*Contact*:
Moka Pantages
WikimediaFoundation.org <http://WikimediaFoundation.org>
blog.wikimedia.org <http://blog.wikimedia.org>
+1 (415) 839-6885 x 635
moka(a)wikimedia.org
(To UNSUBSCRIBE from this mailing list, please reply to this note with
'UNSUBSCRIBE' in the subject line
Formatted and editable version here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_September_2010
== Highlights ==
* Videos of Wikimedians released:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/09/24/four-videos-of-wikipedias-volunte…
* Article feedback pilot launches:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/09/22/article-feedback-pilot-goes-live/
* Public Policy Initiative coursework begins:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/08/19/wikimedia-registers-for-classes/
== Data and Trends ==
:The monthly report card for September 2010 can be found at:
:http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2010_09_detailed.html
:Global unique visitors:
:398 million (+6.6% compared with previous month / +22.1% compared
with previous year)
:Page requests:
:13.7 billion (+5.4% compared with previous month / +20.2% compared
with previous year)
:Active Wikipedia Editors (>=5 edits/month):
:82,503 active editors (-3.3% compared with previous month / -5.6%
compared with previous year)
:New Editors (editors who completed their first 10 edits in a given month):
:15,805 new editors (-10.5% compared with previous month / -17.4%
compared with previous year)
== Financials ==
:Operating revenue for September: $156K vs plan of $233K
:Operating expenses for September: $1.1MM vs plan of $1.6MM
:Operating revenue year-to-date: $440K vs plan of $631K
:Operating expenses year-to-date: $3.2MM vs plan of $4.5MM
The MTD and YTD underages are primarily in unrestricted gifts. For
both MTD and YTD, more than half of the underspending continues to be
in capex and internet hosting primarily due to amounts being budgeted
evenly over the year thus not reflecting the ramp up in costs once the
Virginia data center is built out and operational. Other underages
included personnel (salary, wages and benefits) for several open
positions and staff development costs, partially offset by recruiting
expenses, and underages in outside contract services, mainly offset by
overage in grants and awards and much smaller overages in legal
expenses, facilities and travel.
Cash as of end of October (latest available) was $11.9MM.
== Technology ==
In September, the Engineering Programs Office started publishing a
monthly public update of all projects we are working on. The
September report can be viewed at:
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/09/wmf-engineering/
The most recent report can be found here:
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/11/november-2010-wmf-engineering-update/
Notable in September, the Wikimedia Foundation published its roadmap
for the development of the "Pending Changes" feature, following
community discussion and trial of the technology. Pending Changes is
used on the English Wikipedia to moderate edits by new users on
selected pages. See the roadmap:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Pending_Changes_enwiki_trial/Roadmap
Also notable is the work done on CentralNotice in support of improving
banners for the Fundraiser. This work will be useful for any and all
banners needed in future on any Wikimedia Foundation site, including
better Geo-Location to target geographically relevant banners, and
much streamlined banner creatiion.
Another interesting bit of work in September was a new feature,
Article Feedback, which was rolled out as a pilot as part of the
Public Policy Initiative. We're watching this feature very closely to
see if it gives us plausibly accurate measures of the quality of a
given article based on reader feedback. The intention was to be
somewhat more sophisticated than a single "how many stars" popularity
measure. The team that worked on this pilot worked very quickly in
what we hope will be a more normal mode for initial features
development (to pilot stage), and are to be commended for getting to
an acceptable level of implementation on time.
What we learn from this pilot will feed into another iteration of the
feature in coming months, and possibly wider deployment. FAQs
regarding the feature can be found here:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Public_Policy_Pilot/FAQs
Work by both staff and community members has continued on deploying
Selenium, a software testing framework which will serve all MediaWiki
development, and should prove beneficial to Wikimedia for a long time
to come.
Interviews and Hires for this past month: promoted: Mark Bersgma to
Operations Engineering Program Manager, hired employee: Carrie Smith,
Assistant to the Office of the CTO, conducted interviews for Director
of Technical Operations.
Conversations: Final meetings with Co-Location providers and key
meeting with potential hardware donor for Virginia Data Center,
Meetings with Research Firm about project to look at future Mobile
trends in the developing world.
== Community ==
'''Fundraising:'''
Preparations for the fundraiser continued with short weekly tests. We
tested many different banners suggested by community members.
Unfortunately, no banner was found that beat last year's best: "Please
read: a personal appeal from Jimmy Wales". But it was found that
graphical versions of that banner performed almost twice as well as
text-only banners. More than $50,000 in revenue was raised in our
short hour-long tests in September. Several temporary staff were hired
to support the fundraiser, including Wikimedians living in India,
Egypt, and a few cities in the US. Several of these employees were
discovered through the "open call" posted on the site in July.
In September, we received 884 donations totaling $56,713.
'''Fellowship Program:'''
Also recruited through the "open call" were September's two Community
Fellows: Victoria Doronina and Maryana Pinchuk. They are working on a
history of the Russian Wikipedia. Victoria is a long time Russian
Wikipedian and former Russian Arbcom member. Maryana is a Phd
candidate at Harvard's department of Slavic Languages and Literature.
Our first fellow, Steven Walling dug into a couple of projects, one
supporting the Board in thinking about harassment policies, and
another to support organizing around 10th anniversary events.
'''Public Policy Initiative:'''
:http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Public_Policy_Initiative
:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Policy
The fall terms at US universities participating in the Public Policy
Initiative started in earnest in September. Most of the Wikipedia
Campus Ambassadors visited classes, giving students an introduction to
Wikipedia and answering their questions; several Ambassadors have also
led lab sessions or office hours, where students get a hands-on
tutorial of the first steps of becoming an editor. Many classes have
become active on Wikipedia, with students creating accounts, testing
the wiki in sandbox, choosing Online Ambassadors as mentors, and
selecting articles to work on.
Annie Lin has also been traveling throughout the eastern part of the
country, visiting most of the professors and Campus Ambassadors
participating in the fall semester as well as meeting with people
interested in coming on board for the spring semester. These
face-to-face conversations have served as effective check-ins,
allowing different parties to discuss what is working well and what
could be improved (and how).
Interest in article assessment for the Public Policy Initiative is
picking up. Amy Roth ran some preliminary data analysis which
indicates that Wikipedians are fairly consistent in their assessment
of article quality. A group of public policy expert volunteers has
started assessing articles, so there will some comparative results
soon. Also, the Article Feedback Tool is piloted on the public policy
and readers have started rating public policy articles on Wikipedia
(see [4] for first results)
'''Wikipedia Ambassadors:'''
The outreach team proposed a draft set of Wikipedia Ambassador
Principles [5], which we will work with the Ambassadors to refine and
hopefully officially adopt in the coming weeks. Frank, Annie and Sage
initiated the "Ambassadors Steering Committee" in mid-September, and
quickly added four Wikipedia Ambassadors to the committee. This is the
beginning of the process of turning control of the Wikipedia
Ambassadors program over to volunteers. The committee, chaired by
Campus Ambassador PJ Tabit, will be working with all the Ambassadors,
as well as the broader community, to chart the course of the Wikipedia
Ambassador Program, both in the next academic term as well as
subsequent terms after the Public Policy Initiative concludes. The
committee has been meeting weekly; meeting notes are available at [6].
'''Public Outreach Resources:'''
In September, we created a landing page for the bookshelf materials on
the outreach wiki. It contains all finalized materials of the
Bookshelf Project as well as other educational materials relevant to
our projects. The page can be reached through
http://bookshelf.wikimedia.org.
Also in September, Pete Forsyth organized and led the "Screensprint
meeting" in San Francisco. This screencast initiative is based on the
observation that there are some pretty big challenges involved in
producing a good screencast, especially if you're on a tight budget
and/or want to use free and open source software. Consequently, the
goal of the 3-day Screensprint meeting was to create a framework of
resources for creating screencasts on the English Wikipedia, intended
to serve as a model for other language versions. During the meeting, a
group of volunteers from different countries started the WikiProject
Screencast [7] and created a number of brief videos that demonstrate
how to create screencasts as instructional tools for Wikipedia
newcomers.
'''Account Creation Research:'''
Frank Schulenburg kicked off the new Account Creation Improvement
Project [8] on the outreach wiki. The project aims at increasing the
number of people who create a user account and actually start editing.
It is rooted in the observation that the current process of account
creation is not welcoming, it often looks complicated, it is
overwhelming, and there is no follow-up. During its 8 month timeframe,
the project will aim at improving the overall knowledge about what
drives people who create a user account to start editing. For this
purpose, it will experiment with different methods of welcoming and
supporting new editors.
:[1] http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/09/07/wikipedia
:[2] http://www.foxprovidence.com/dpp/rhode_show/wildcard_93/collegebound-fixing…
:[3] http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Public_Policy_Initiative#Media_coverage
:[4] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Public_Policy_Pilot/Early_Da…
:[5] http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Ambassador_Principles
:[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Steering_Committee
:[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Screencast
:[8] http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Account_Creation_Improvement_Project
== Global Development ==
Barry Newstead visited India for introductory conversations with the
Wikimedia community in India. The community had the first ever
recorded meetups in Mumbai & Delhi. We had a meetup in Bangalore.
Barry, board member Bishakha Datta and advisory board member Achal
Prabhala met with the Wikimedia India chapter. In addition, Barry
held meetings with the Free Software Foundation, Microsoft Research,
Google, Omidyar Network, Ajay Sud (attorney), State of Karnatika's
Knowledge Commission and Indian Institute for Science & Technology.
We had a range of press interviews during the week
(http://wikimedia.in/wiki/In_the_news) and have begun to develop key
messages about Wikimedia's work in Inda. Barry also met with an
initial group of candidates for the National Program Director for
India.
WMF worked with several chapters on the legalities of our fundraising
relationship. WMF hired Jane Peebles as counsel and we have hired
counsel to support conversations with chapters in the United Kingdom,
the Netherlands, France, Italy and Switzerland.
WMF and Wikimedia Germany came to an agreement on a new arrangement to
support our fundraising relationship. Wikimedia Germany began work on
a new subsidiary to support the relationship.
Kul Wadhwa traveled to Germany, France, Greece and Japan to build
relationships to support global work in mobile and offline. He met
with our partner Orange, and also attended two technology conferences
where Mobile was a major topic of discussion. A key takeaway is that
data services are of growing importance for mobile providers in the
developing world, despite their immaturity. The challenge for mobile
users is that data plans may be expensive and for Wikimedia, we need
to figure out how to make access to Wikimedia affordable (ideally
free).
We had a visit from members of the Wikimania Haifa team as part of
their planning work. We also had a visit from Bruno Souza from
Brazil. Bruno is a leading innovator within the Java Users Groups
within Brazil and he provided us with helpful advice on Brazil.
== Communications ==
The communications team released four videos that highlight the global
volunteers of Wikipedia (
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/09/24/four-videos-of-wikipedias-volunte…
). These videos feature Wikimedians from around the world. The footage
was captured during Wikimania in Poland. Direct links:
* http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_User_Name_MEDIUM.ogv
* http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nice_People_MEDIUM.ogv
* http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edit_Button.ogv
* http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Feeling.ogv
The purpose of these videos is to serve as an instrument for public
outreach, helping us to invite more people to contribute to our
projects. Beyond online use, they will be used by the Wikimedia
Foundation and Wikimedia chapters at conferences, in meetings, and at
other opportunities. Along with other public outreach resources, the
videos (and subtitled versions thereof) can also be found through the
Public Outreach Bookshelf: http://bookshelf.wikimedia.org/
The communications team also supported the development of the
strategic plan synthesis that was shared with the Wikimedia Board of
Trustees in advance of their meeting in October.
During September Foundation staff and spokespeople were in contact
with the following media outlets - note a particular concentration of
interviews in India during high profile visits: New York Times, NPR,
CEO Middle East magazine (Dubai), SEmana magazine (Colombia), Heise
(Berlin), SiliconFlorist.com (Portland, Oregon), Ars Technica,
Software Design Magazine (Tokyo), and Pagina 12 from Buenos Aires.
Interviews and coverage from India included Financial Express, Times
of India, Silicon India, DNA India, Business Standard (Mumbai), Daily
Bhaskar, Indian Express Buzz, and The Hindu.
:For a complete listing of media contact through September:
:http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#September_2010
:High profile media coverage through September:
:"Wikipedia reveals mousetrap finale"
:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/18/business/media/18spoiler.html
:"Wikimedia opening offices in India"
:http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/internet/article797083.ece
:http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/wikipedia-to-open-india-office-soon-54911
:"Wikipedia in the classroom" (coverage related to the Public Policy Initiative)
:http://www.sdsucollegian.com/opinion/wikipedia-cuts-through-bureaucracy-gets-down-to-the-meat-1.1654878
:http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/09/07/wikipedia
:http://www.thehoya.com/news/Wikipedia-A-Class-Tool-917104/
:Other worthwhile reads:
:http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/42799/
:http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/i-stole-from-wikipedia-but-its-not-plagiarism-says-houellebecq-2073145.html
:Blog posts through September, 2010:
:http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/09/
:For lots of detailed coverage and news summaries, see the
community-edited Wikipedia Signpost editions for September 2010:
:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2010-09-06
:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2010-09-13
:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2010-09-20
:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2010-09-27
== Human Resources ==
In September the Wikimedia Foundation added four permanent hires (Cyn
Skyberg - Chief Talent and Culture Officer; Melanie Brown - Office
Assistant; Dana Isokawa - Assistant to the Office of the Executive and
Deputy Directors; and Carrie Smith - Assistant to the CTO) and one
fellowship recipient (Steven Walling).
The HR/Culture department spent some time this month planning and
preparing for the All Staff meeting in the last week of October. The
meeting was planned for Half Moon Bay, CA, and was a joint project
with the Admin department in terms of operations and logistics. We
met with the facilitator we ultimately ended up using for the All
Staff, and built a potential agenda and outline for the meeting. The
team also met with Phoebe Ayers, current board member, about
potentially doing the opening talk for the meeting, which she
evetually agreed to do.
Additionally, HR/Culture spent time reconciling the hiring plan and
creating processes for tracking, managing and planning for staffing
changes and development over time. In her new role, Cyn spent several
hours getting to know the existing processes and walking through
current procedures for hiring and onboarding. She and Daniel created a
framework for future development of the department and began a goal
setting exercise for the department for the month of October.
Further conversation for the month included the potential for an HRM
system, which we are just starting to investigate. OrangeHRM
(http://www.orangehrm.com/), is a serious candidate.
:Total Employee Count:
:Plan: 65, Actual: 59
:Remaining Open positions to fiscal year end: 27
Real-time feed for HR updates: http://identi.ca/wikimediaatwork or
http://twitter.com/wikimediaatwork
== Finance and Administration ==
General updates from Finance and Administration:
* Draft audited financial statements were completed in September (and
approved by Audit Committee in October).
* Upgraded broadband internet services to improve speed and capacity.
* Upgraded phone and voicemail systems to improve capacity and functionality.
* Drafted an initial floor plan for the 6th floor office space.
The audit committee requested that the finance department prepare some
information about chapters, financial controls and movement-wide
transparency. This was prompted by a desire to ensure appropriate
controls are in place to manage donations flowing into and throughout
the Wikimedia movement. In response to this request, the finance
department spent much of September pulling together basic information
about Wikimedia chapters (e.g., legal status, current fundraising
practices, current state of reporting), including an assessment of
potential risks associated with current roles-and-responsibilities
between chapters and the Wikimedia Foundation.
== Office of the Executive Director ==
Executive Director Sue Gardner spoke at the New York chapter's
Wiki-Conference
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Wiki-Conference/2009)
at the end of August, held at the Tisch School of Arts at New York
University.
Later in September, Sue returned to New York with Erik, Zack and Sara,
to present an update to the Sloan Foundation as we enter the final
year of Sloan's three-year three-million-dollar grant to the Wikimedia
Foundation.
In May, the board had asked Sue to commission a study of what, if
anything, should be done about controversial content on the Wikimedia
projects. During September, consultants Robert Harris and Dory
Carr-Harris continued their work, reviewing applicable research [1],
and consulting with community members and external experts. In the
final report, which can be read here,
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Content,
Robert and Dory recommend 1) that no changes be made to the way in
which text-based controversial material is handled in the Wikimedia
projects. They also 2) make a number of recommendations for action
that falls within the bailiwick of the Wikimedia community:
recommending that Wikimedia consider development of a Wikijunior
project and that Commons admins consider how to tighten up some
policies and their application, including elevating the 'principle of
least surprise' to the level of official policy. And, 3) they
recommend that the Wikimedia Foundation develop a feature to allow
Wikimedia project users to opt into a system that would allow them to
easily hide classes of images from their own view.
The controversial content study will be presented to the board at its
meeting in San Francisco, in October.
[1] This included examination of cultural attitudes, regulation and/or
filtering practices in over 70 countries including: Australia, Brazil,
Canada, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Israel,
Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia,
Singapore, Sweden, Syria, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, the
United Kingdom and the United States.
Throughout September, the Wikimedia Foundation continued the process
of distilling the material on the strategy wiki into a high-level
document to be shared with Wikimedia partners and supporters. To that
end, Sue proposed to the board, and received approval for, five
high-level targets for the Wikimedia movement, to be achieved by 2015.
Also in September, our external writer developed several further
drafts of the strategy document (including the targets), which were
reviewed and refined by various parties including senior staff and
board members. The near-final text of the strategy document will be
presented to the board at its meeting in San Francisco in October.
With new board member Phoebe Ayers, Sue went to the the Quaker Center
in Ben Lomond, California, attending a workshop called Business Among
Friends: Clerking as a Spiritual Discipline, to explore methods of
business decision-making used in the Quaker community. See Sue's blog:
* http://suegardner.org/2010/09/20/raw-notes-from-the-quaker-clerking-worksho…
* http://suegardner.org/2010/09/20/what-wikimedia-can-learn-from-the-quakers-…
==September 2010 Visitors to the San Francisco Office==
* Clay Shirky (Wikimedia Foundation- Advisory Board)
* Kate Filbert (Screen Sprint)
* Quiddity (Screen Sprint)
* Another Believer (Screen Sprint)
* Peregrine Fisher (Screen Sprint)
* John Broughton (Screen Sprint)
* Orangemike (Screen Sprint)
* Laura Hale (Screen Sprint)
* HJ Mitchell (Screen Sprint)
* Dave Cummings
* Mark Gibson
* Daniel Scarpelli
* Xochi Birch
* Itzik Edri (Wikimedia Israel)
* James Forrester
* Austin Hair
* Timothy Garton Ash
* David Munir Nabti
* Yasuda Yutaka
* Rose Shuman
* Special Agents from the San Francisco FBI Field Office,
Cybersecurity Division (invited brown bag presentation)
* Harel Cain (Wikimania Haifa Planning Team)
* Deror Avi (Wikimania Haifa Planning Team)
* Shay Yakir (Wikimania Haifa Planning Team)
* Amir Aharoni (Wikimania Haifa Planning Team)
This is the Chapters Report for Wikimedia Sverige, October 2010. It
can also be found on Meta.
== Internet dagarna ==
The Internet days is a conference arranged by the organisation that
runs .se, the Swedish top domain.It is the most important internet
conference in Sweden. Lars Aronsson, one of our board members, gave a
short talk there.
== Motion plagiarizing Wikipedia ==
Four members of the parliament submitted a motion that contained text
from Wikipedia without mentioning the source at all. Lennart
Guldbrandsson, our chairman, blogged about it in Swedish. [1]
== Board meting ==
We had one board meeting in October. Minutes are available in Swedish. [2]
== Numbers ==
The Northern Sami Wikipedia passed 3000 articles. [3] It is an
official minority language in Sweden.
== Coming up ==
* 5 November, Nordic chapter meeting (at Free Society Conference and
Nordic Summit).
* 25-26 November, Wikipedia Academy
== References ==
* [1] http://wikimediasverige.wordpress.com/2010/10/29/riksdagsmotion-plagierar-w…
* [2] http://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6tesprotokoll/Protokoll_2010-10-11
* [3] http://se.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics