Dear all,
it is my pleasure to announce that Dario Taraborelli (User:DarTar) is
joining the Wikimedia Foundation as Senior Research Analyst, Strategy,
reporting to me. As of this week, Dario is based in San Francisco,
having relocated from the UK. Dario joins Howie Fung and me as part of
the Wikimedia Foundation Strategy Team. Our job is to advance
Wikimedia's strategic thinking on an ongoing basis, and to help
organize relevant research and analytics.
Dario most recently was a postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre
for Research in Social Simulation, University of Surrey in the UK.
Previously he was Marie Curie Fellow at the Department of Psychology,
University College London. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Science from
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France, an MSc in
Cognitive Science, and an MA in Philosophy of Science. He has taught
at various universities, including Sciences Po in Paris, Université
Paris 7, and École Normale Supérieure. He has served as advisor and
editor for numerous scientific publications, organizations and
conferences.
Notably, Dario has participated in wiki-related research and
development since 2004. He is lead developer of WikkaWiki, an open
source wiki engine; developer of WikiTracer, a prototype toolkit for
wiki analytics; and founder and developer of ReaderMeter, a mashup
visualizing readership of scholarly publications. He has led or
participated in many other projects relevant to wikis and social
media. See http://nitens.org/taraborelli/research for a list of his
research projects and publications.
Dario has supported the Wikimedia Foundation as a contractor since
December 2010. Since then he has worked on a number of projects for
us, including:
- Analysis of data from the pilot of the Article Feedback Tool. You
can see his initial findings here:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Public_Policy_Pilot/February…
- Organizing meetings and priorities of the Wikimedia Foundation
Research Committee. See:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee
- With Daniel Mietchen and Giota Alevizou (members of RCom),
organizing a survey of expert participation in Wikipedia projects.
See:
http://survey.nitens.org/?sid=21693
- In collaboration with Moritz Stefaner and Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia,
an analysis and visualization of AfD discussions in the English
Wikipedia:
http://notabilia.net
I'm very excited to have Dario on our team. He and his family are
still settling in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dario's official start
date is April 18. Please join me in welcoming him!
All best,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
I'm pleased to announce the release of the 2009-10 Wikimedia Foundation annual report today.
The report, licensed under CC BY SA, has been posted in PDF format on Wikimedia Commons, and on the WMF wiki:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report
The report is published in 2 PDF sizes - one for on-screen reading and a higher resolution version for printing. The Foundation prints copies of the report every year. Copies will be made available to chapters and other affiliate groups in small quantities.
This year, following in the footsteps of the Strategy plan summary report, we've also prepared a fully wiki-based version of the report, hosted on meta to facilitate localization and reuse:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation/2009-10_Wikimedia_Found…
The meta version is also a very good place to post any comments or feedback. I'm very keen to hear anyone's suggestions for future editions.
We are releasing a bit later than preferred, but as we pull resources together for future design projects in the coming year we're poised for a 2011 'anniversary' year report to be released by November 2011.
Many thanks to folks in the community who helped us sort out some of the details for the stories throughout the report. And of course we owe great thanks to the generous photographers whose work makes the report look pretty darn good, cover to cover. Free is beautiful!
--
Jay Walsh
Head of Communications
WikimediaFoundation.orgblog.wikimedia.org
+1 (415) 839 6885 x 6609, @jansonw
Dear Chapters,
Please find below the chapter report of Wikimédia France for July, August,
September, October, November and December 2010.
It is also available on Meta <
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_France/…
>
== Partnerships ==
=== French National Library − BnF ===
After several years of talks, a partnership was concluded between Wikimédia
France and the French National Library (Bibliothèque nationale de France).
Signed in April 2010, it consisted of two parts. First, an experiment in
collaborative proofreading taking place on Wikisource, with the donation of
1400 books in the public domain, including scans and OCR text (automatically
generated during the digitization process and prone to many errors,
especially with old texts). Second, the exploitation of the authority files
of the Library on Wikimedia projects.
A team of three chapter members undertook the technical work. Three board
members oversaw their work, acting as a steering committee, and interfaced
with the Library staff; one acted as a Library Science and Wikisource
advisor. Their work consisted in an extensive study of the formats used by
the BnF and on Wikisource, and in the design and creation of a production
line for the material. This line had to be able to sustain the sheer load of
1400 books, and handled the analysis and processing of metadata, format
conversions, smart trimming and cropping of the scans, and preparation of a
deliverable for the final upload to Wikimedia Commons. Because of the number
and size of books, the actual upload was requested to WMF system
administrator Tim Starling and was done in July.
After that, the team produced various documents, help pages, project reports
for the chapter, and a progress report. This last document contains fairly
advanced statistical analysis of the characteristics of the proofreaders
body, and the work done, making use of mathematical tools to measure the
amount of work accomplished during the proofreading process.
See the the hub-page on Meta <
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/BnF_%E2%88%92_Wikim%C3%A9dia_France_cooperat…
>
=== City of Toulouse ===
As part of the partnership with the City of Toulouse, signed in October
2010, two projects were undertaken with local cultural institutions.
The first one, named Phœbus project, was with the Muséum of Toulouse. It
involved mobilizing Wikimedians to take high-quality photographs of objects
in the non-permanent collections of paleontology and prehistory. The
photographs taken in June by volunteers Rama and Ludovic were uploaded in
November, and join the ones uploaded by Didier Descouens in April.
More than 450 documents are available on Wikimedia Commons, many of which
were assessed Featured Pictures, Quality Images or Valued Images.
See on Wikimedia Commons the project page <
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Projet_Phoebus>
and the images <
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Supported_by_Projet_Phoebus>
The second project involved the Archives of the City of Toulouse, who
contributed digitised photographs by its former curator, French naturalist,
mountaineer, geologist and photographer Eugène Trutat. A Wikimédia France
volunteer processed the extensive metadata provided by the Archives, in
order to fit it into Wikimedia Commons auto-translated templates and provide
accurate categorisation.
The 200 resulting files hit Commons in December.
See on Wikimedia Commons the project page <
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Archives_municipales_de_Toulouse>
the images <
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Fonds_Trutat_-_Archives_municipa…
>
and brief Signpost coverage <
http://enwp.org/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-01-10/News_and_notes#In_b…
>
== Rencontres Wikimédia 2010 ==
On 3–4 December, Wikimédia France organised the « Rencontres Wikimédia 2010
» in Paris, in an annex of the Palais Bourbon, the building of the French
National Assembly. The event aimed to gather "as many cultural actors as
possible to discuss new online collaborative practices and opportunities to
take free access to culture a step further". The conference was part of the
Glam-Wiki series, and included a series of talks and panels given by
wikimedians, professionals from the cultural sector, local representatives,
and representatives of government cultural agencies.
See the detailed Signpost coverage <
http://enwp.org/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-12-13/Rencontres_Wikimédia
>
and Wikimédia France blog posts<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/tag/rencontres-wikimedia-2010>
== Activities ==
=== Participation to international Wikimedia events ===
==== GlamWiki UK ====
Five members of the chapter and staff Bastien Guerry attended the GlamWiki
conference in London. They gave two talks, about the partnership with the
French National Library and about the partnership with the City of Toulouse.
==== Wikimania 2010 ====
Twelve chapter members (including four board members and one staff) attended
the conference in Gdańsk in July.
=== Presentations, conferences, workshops ===
==== Novela Festival ====
On October 2nd, the partnership between Wikimédia France and the City of
Toulouse was made public and signed during the inauguration of the “digital”
side of the Novela, the festival of shared knowledge. During the whole
afternoon, we showed the public the genesis and the contents of the
partnership which ties us to the City of Toulouse, and took that opportunity
to raise awareness about free dissemination of knowledge.
The afternoon began with the signature of the partnership, between Pierre
Cohen, Mayor of Toulouse, and Wikimédia France. It continued with joint
presentations of institutional actors of this partnership and Wikimedians
involved.
Didier Descouens, president of the Institut Picot de Lapeyrouse,
paleontology enthusiast, Wikimedian and a driving force behind this
partnership since 2009, presented the terms and the value of the
partnership. Pierre Gastou and Catherine Bernard, from the Archives of the
City of Toulouse, presented their vision of the partnership involving
uploading on Wikimedia Commons a collection of photographs from Eugène
Trutat, taken in the early twentieth century. Pierre Gastou presented Eugène
Trutat and the collection (ethnography and daily life, collections of the
Museum of Toulouse and monuments) and their historical significance.
Catherine Bernard explained how this partnership is part of a wider project
of digitisation and connection between archives and the Internet.
Wikimedian Rama presented Wikimedia Commons, explaining the organisation of
the project, what it contains and how to contribute, and demonstrated the
importance of free and open licenses for the dissemination of culture. He
relied particularly on the report that Wikimédia France provided two years
ago to the Ministry of Culture on the subject. Ludovic Péron ended the
afternoon by showing the work done on the Wikimedia projects about the
historical monuments, and the rise of this project bringing together more
and more Wikimedians. It aims to identify, photograph, geotag and describe
as many historical monuments as possible, in France and abroad, to provide a
coherent and reusable body of knowledge.
==== Other events ====
RMLL − July 2010, Bordeaux
As every year since 2005, Wikimedia France was at the ''Rencontres mondiales
du logiciel libre'' in Bordeaux, from July 6 to 10. Nojhan gave a 20 minute
talk titled "What's really in Wikipedia?" (''« Qu’y a-t-il vraiment dans
Wikipédia ? »''), and several members held the booth during five days.
JMLL − September 2010, Rouen
During the ''Journée Mondiales du Logiciel Libre'', David gave a talk about
the MediaWiki software and how it can be used, with the example of the
Wikimedia projects.
Grande Braderie − September 2010, Lille
several members held a display and answered queries at the world's biggest
open air market
9e forum E-culture − September 2010, Lausanne
Florence Devouard presented Wikipedia at the ''9e forum E-culture'' in
Lausanne, on September 8, 2010. The meeting was about "''Netizenship -
citoyenneté numérique et cyberintimidation''"
Bibliothèque du Chesnay − September 2010, Chesnay
Thierry gave a conference on Wikipedia on September 21, 2010 followed on
Saturday and Wednesdsay by two workshops by Benjamin et Thierry.
Open-air conference
On September 29 2010, asked by local association "Carrefour culturel Arnaud
Bernard" (by the name of a city district), Adrienne Alix gave an open-air
talk, right in the district square; many passers-by stopped to listen to the
conference.
Festival des sciences − October 2010, Acigné
Nicolas gave a talk in October at the multimedia library of Acigné
(Ille-et-Vilaine), as part of ''Festival des sciences'' ("Science
festival"). The conference was followed by a workshop, with four other
chapter members helping the attendees.
Ubuntu Party − November 2010
In Paris, several members held a booth and answered queries during the
Ubuntu Party. Thierry gave a presentation about Wikipedia, and Aude held a
workshop for middle-school students as part of a project to help young
people understand the Internet.
In Toulouse, four members held a booth on Saturday 20, and Adrienne gave a
talk titled 'Beyond software: free licenses as a mean to disseminate
culture"
Talk at the CEMAF − November 2010, Paris
As part of an ongoing project with the ''Centre d'études des mondes
africains'', a CNRS laboratory, Kropotkine_113 gave a talk to researchers
and PhD students. The CEMAF members are looking into contributing to
Wikipedia, and the chapter will help by holding workshops in 2011.
Contact with the IT department of the multimedia libraries of Paris −
November 2010, Paris
Following several contacts with the multimedia libraries of Paris, Julien
presented the Wikimedia projects and the chapter works to the IT department.
Congrès RESTART − November 2010, Lisboa (Portugal)
Florence gave a keynote during the APDC<http://congresso10.apdc.pt/>, as
part of the session "Digital Natives & Crowd Sourcing".
== Media interventions ==
*October 23 : Thierry was invited on national radio network RTL for a radio
debate. It was moderated by journalist and author Patrick Poivre d'Arvor,
and the other invitee was the director of Who's Who. The talk lasted for
about ten minutes, and was focused on the issues with Biographies of living
persons on Wikipedia
*December 5 : Florence Devouard was invited on TV show ''Vivement dimanche''
on France 2 <http://youtu.be/-66RWWVGfqI>, presented by Michel Drucker and
with politician François Bayrou.
*December 20 : Adrienne Alix talked about the fundraiser on national radio
network Europe 1
== Workgroups ==
=== Strengthening of communication with members ===
At the end of the year, a taskforce was set up to focus on writing the
monthly newsletter to the chapter members. It also contributes to the
chapter annual report, due to be published early 2011.
=== Promotional documents ===
A complete revamp of the promotional documents was undertaken this year. It
gained great momentum when Benoît Evellin worked for the chapter as part of
an internship during the month of August. Most of the work was wrapped-up
for the Rencontres Wikimédia.
The documents created include:
*leaflets for Wikimédia France and for each Wikimedia project ;
*a booklet aiming to introduce the chapter, the Wikimedia projects and
previous partnerships to institutions ;
*a small reference guide summing up in 10 key-points how to edit Wikipedia ;
*chapter business cards.
=== Photographs & accreditations ===
==== Photo workshop in Paris ====
On September 4 and 5, 2010, a photo workshop organised by Rama, and
financially supported by the chapter, was held in the Cité des Sciences et
de l'Industrie in Paris. The workshop was primarily intended for Wikipedia
and Commons contributors to share their experiences, but was also open to
the general public. The event gathered around thirty people, mainly
Wikimedians, and was livetweeted with the hashtag #wikiphoto.
On the first afternoon, several Commons contributors gave presentations on
specific aspects of photography. Inisheer taught the basics of photographic
composition; Ceridwen talked about licenses and personality rights; esby
explained the techniques used to create panoramas. As part of a "Museum"
track, Jastrow made a general presentation about museum photography, and Zil
focused on techniques used to take pictures of paintings. The last track was
about photojournalism, with Rama and Ceridwen talking about concert
photography and Ludo29 and Inisheer about sport events.
On the second day, after Ludo29 explained how to begin with a digital reflex
camera, several workshops were held, about various subjects such as image
editing, panoramas or macrophotography. In the afternoon, the contributors
strode the streets of Paris, trying out their new-found knowledge,
particularly on listed historical monuments. Some of the pictures taken can
be found on Wikimedia Commons. As many more contributors were interested and
as early feedback is very positive, a new edition is already being planned.
See Wikimédia France blog post <
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/4-septembre-un-atelier-photographie-pour-commons-1…
>
and Signpost coverage <
http://enwp.org/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-10-04/News_and_notes#In_b…
>
==== North Cape raid ====
In July, members Ludovic and Fanny took part in the "Raid Paris – Cap Nord",
a photographic challenge where competitors are ranked by a jury on the basis
of the pictures they take during the trip. The journey starts in Paris, goes
through Finland, Sweden and Norway, up to North Cape in Norway, the
northernmost point of Europe, and ends back in Paris. Over the four weeks,
the raiders drove 12,000 km in a car branded with the logos of Wikipedia,
Wikimedia Commons and Wikimédia France. The French chapter provided
financial support.
See Signpost coverage <
http://enwp.org/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-09-20/News_and_notes#Pari…
>
and Wikimédia France blog post <
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/la-wikimobile-vers-le-cap-nord-1822>
==== Other events ====
The chapter helped with getting accreditations for members for many events.
*Festival de Cornouaille − July 2010, Quimper
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Festival_de_Cornouaille_2010>
*Bibliothèque Sainte-Barbe − June, Paris
<
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_made_by_courtesy_of_the_B…
>
*O Tour de la Bulle − September 2010, Montpellier
<
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Festival_BD_O_Tour_de_la_Bulle_-…
>
*Mondial de l'automobile − October 2010, Paris
<
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mondial_de_l%E2%80%99Automobile_…
>
- Masquer le texte des messages précédents -
*Toulouse Game Show − November 2010, Toulouse
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Toulouse_Game_Show_2010>
=== Fundraising ===
Wikimedia France participated in the annual fundraiser of the Wikimedia
movement.
All revenue data mentionned below are (good) approximations.
November 2010
*Total amount fundraised : 241 171 euros
*Total number of donations : 6196 (including 254 in checks)
December 2010
*Total amount fundraised : 227 422 euros
*Total number of donations : 5382 (including 418 in checks)
January 2011
*Total amount fundraised : 22 775 euros
*Total number of donations : 619 (including 116 in checks)
Fundraising was organised largely with volunteers, with the administrative
support of a freelance secretary, Elisabeth (who has been working for
Wikimédia France since the summer of 2009).
Wikimédia France does not use (yet) a CRM such as CiviCRM (data is collected
using a spreadsheet).
Link to the donation platform <http://dons.wikimedia.fr/dons.phphttp://dons.wikimedia.fr/dons.php>
== Wikimédia France blog posts summary ==
=== July ===
The Wikimobile towards North Cape <
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/la-wikimobile-vers-le-cap-nord-1822
The Royal Cup bridges Wikipedia and the British Museum<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/wikipedia-rencontre-le-british-museum-autour-de-la…>
Wikisource gains books donated by the BnF<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/wikisource-senrichit-de-livres-donnes-par-la-bnf-1…
>
=== August ===
September 4: a photo workshop for Wikimedia Commons<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/4-septembre-un-atelier-photographie-pour-commons-1…
>
=== September ===
Google Health Speaks – Google wants to translate Wikipedia articles about
health in Arab, Indian and Swahili<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/google-health-speaks-google-veut-traduire-des-arti…
>
National monuments have pride of place on the Dutch-language Wikipedia <
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/les-monuments-nationaux-a-l%E2%80%99honneur-sur-la…
>
Enriching Wikipedia: the European Heritage Days<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/enrichir-wikipedia-les-journees-europeennes-du-pat…
>
Wikimedia Foundation: various information <
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/informations-diverses-1952>
Wikimédia France welcomed at the Sainte-Barbe Library<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/wikimedia-france-accueillie-a-la-bibliotheque-univ…
>
Rencontres Wikimédia 2010 take place on December 3 and 4 at the 101 rue de
l’Université (Paris)<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/les-rencontres-wikimedia-2010-cest-le-3-et-4-decem…
>
Live-watch the creation of the millionth article of the French speaking
Wikipedia!<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/assistez-en-direct-a-la-creation-du-millionieme-ar…
>
Wikipedia reaches one million articles in French!<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/wikipedia-atteint-un-million-darticles-en-francais…
>
=== October ===
Umberto Eco, Wikipedia, and collaborative editing<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/umberto-eco-wikipedia-et-l%e2%80%99edition-collabo…
>
Wikimédia France signs an agreement with the City of Toulouse<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/wikimedia-france-signe-un-accord-avec-la-ville-de-…
>
The Rencontres Wikimédia 2010 website is live<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/le-site-des-rencontres-wikimedia-2010-est-en-ligne…
>
Wikimédia France at the Novela: recap of the partnership with the City of
Toulouse<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/wikimedia-france-a-la-novela-retour-sur-le-partena…
>
Rencontres Wikimédia 2010: subscriptions opening<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/rencontres-wikimedia-2010-ouverture-des-inscriptio…
>
=== November ===
GLAM-WIKI:UK conference announcement<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/annonce-de-la-conference-glam-wikiuk-2267>
Open Street Map appears on Wikipedia articles<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/osm-apparait-sur-wikipedia-2256>
Wikipedia, Michel Houellebecq and the ''droit d’auteur'' (copyright).<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/wikipedia-michel-houellebecq-et-le-droit-dauteur-2…
>
=== December ===
Wikimédia France at GLAM-WIKI:UK<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/wikimedia-france-a-levenement-glam-wikiuk-2281>
==== Rencontres Wikimedia 2010 series ====
Event introduction<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/rencontres-wikimedia-2010-introduction-aux-journee…
>
Wikimedia projects presentation<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/rencontres-wikimedia-2010-presentation-des-projets…
>
Presentation of Wikimedia and its objectives for 2015<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/rencontres-wikimedia-2010-presentation-de-wikimedi…
>
The partnership with the French National Library<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/rencontres-wikimedia-2010-le-partenariat-entre-wik…
>
Cultural partnerships with Wikimedia in the world<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/rencontres-wikimedia-2010-partenariats-culturels-a…
>
The partnership between Wikimédia France and Toulouse<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/rencontres-wikimedia-2010-le-partenariat-entre-tou…
>
National monuments on Wikipedia: outcome of Wiki Loves Monuments<
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/les-monuments-nationaux-sur-wikipedia-bilan-de-wik…
>
== Contributors ==
* Contributors to the monthly newsletter in French (from which this report
is derived) in July-August-September-October-November-December: Bzg,
Jean-Frédéric, Ash Crow, Thesupermat, Trizek, VIGNERON, Ludo29, Bapti,
Zetud, Serein, (:Julien:), TCY, Crochet.david, David Berardan, Kropotkine
113, Gdgourou, Citron, Pymouss, O2
* Contributors to this chapter report : Jean-Frédéric, Bapti, Ofol, Gribeco,
Anthere, notafish
--
Adrienne Alix
Présidente | Wikimedia France
adrienne.alix(a)wikimedia.fr | 06.33.40.70.80
http://www.wikimedia.fr
As always, you can find the formatted version on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_February_2011
Plain text below & feedback welcome :-)
All best,
Erik
Contents
* 1 Data and Trends
* 2 Financials
* 3 Highlights
o 3.1 Strategic Plan Summary Published
o 3.2 New General Counsel
o 3.3 MediaWiki 1.17 Deployment
o 3.4 Data Summit
o 3.5 Gender Gap Conversations Begin
o 3.6 History of the Russian Wikipedia Published
* 4 Technology
o 4.1 Conferences
+ 4.1.1 GNUnify 2011 (February 11-12, Pune, India)
o 4.2 Operations
+ 4.2.1 Data Center Racking Party
o 4.3 Features
+ 4.3.1 Personal Image Filter
+ 4.3.2 Community Feature Prototyping
o 4.4 General Engineering
+ 4.4.1 Wikilytics
o 4.5 Moblie/Offline
+ 4.5.1 openZim for Collections
* 5 Research and Strategy
o 5.1 Internal Research Progress
o 5.2 Research Committee Activity
o 5.3 Research Outreach Initiatives
* 6 Community
o 6.1 Wiki Guides Experiment
o 6.2 New Account Creation Project
o 6.3 Fundraising
o 6.4 Public Policy Initiative
* 7 Global Development
o 7.1 Global Development Highlights
o 7.2 Chapter Relations and Grants
o 7.3 Brazil Catalyst
o 7.4 India Programs
o 7.5 Mobile Strategy
o 7.6 Editor Survey 2011
o 7.7 Offline
o 7.8 Global University Programs
o 7.9 Communications
+ 7.9.1 Major Stories and Coverage through February
+ 7.9.2 Major Announcements and Releases in February
2011
+ 7.9.3 Major Product Releases in February 2011
+ 7.9.4 Blog during February 2011
+ 7.9.5 Media contact through February, 2011
* 8 Human Resources
o 8.1 Staff Changes
o 8.2 Statistics
o 8.3 New Events
* 9 Finance and Administration
o 9.1 Finance
o 9.2 Administration
* 10 Legal
* 11 Visitors and Guests
== DATA AND TRENDS ==
Global unique visitors for January:
414 million (+4.7% compared to previous month / +13.5% compared to
previous year)
(comScore for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will
release February data later in March)
Page requests for January:
15.2 billion (+8.8% compared to previous month / +21.7% compared to
previous year)
Page requests for February:
15.5 billion (+1.9% compared to previous month / +24% compared to
previous year)
(Server log data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects including
Wikipedia mobile)
Report Card for January 2011:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2011_01_detailed.html
== FINANCIALS ==
(Financial information is only available for January 2011 at the time of
this report.)
Operating revenue for January: USD 1.6MM vs plan of 1.7MM.
Operating revenue year-to-date: USD 19.7MM vs plan of 16.8MM.
The successful 2010 fundraising campaign has resulted in the Wikimedia
Foundation exceeding its revenue targets year-to-date, despite lower
than planned revenue for the month of January. Revenue for January
includes a USD 108K donation from Wikimedia Switzerland.
Operating expenses for January: USD 2.9MM vs plan of 1.8MM.
Operating expenses year-to-date: USD 10.6MM vs plan of 11.8MM.
Expenses are over plan for the month due to data center purchases, which
were budgeted over 12 months but occured primarily in January, with some
additional spending in subsequent months. The Wikimedia Foundation is
underspent year-to-date due to the timing of additional capex spending
and Internet hosting, as well as under-spending in staffing costs.
Cash and investments as of January 2011 totaled USD $21.5MM
(approximately 13 months of expenses).
== HIIGHLIGHTS ==
Strategic Plan Summary Published
On February 25, we released the summary report of the Wikimedia
Foundation's five-year strategic plan. It synthesizes the effort of the
collaborative strategic planning process that took place through 2009
and 2010 and involved more than a thousand participants. A wiki version
and links to the PDF can be found here:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Strategic_Plan_Summa…
New General Counsel
In February, Geoff Brigham was announced as the Wikimedia Foundation's
new General Counsel, replacing Mike Godwin who left the organization in
October. Geoff has been a lawyer for 20 years, including eight years at
eBay during its main growth period, which gives him important experience
managing the legal challenges and risks inherent in operating a popular
site. His work at eBay encompassed North America, Europe, Asia and
Australia. He held a variety of positions there, at offices in San Jose,
California, Bern, Switzerland and Paris, France: his most recent title
was Vice President and Deputy General Counsel.
MediaWiki 1.17 Deployment
After a long wait, we deployed a new version of the MediaWiki software
to all our production sites, containing a vast number of small fixes and
improvements, and a new subsystem for more efficient delivery of
JavaScript and stylesheets, the ResourceLoader.
Deployment was initially problematic because of major performance issues
that caused an outage. The problems were investigated, and we decided to
try heterogeneous deployment (meaning not all wikis would run the same
version of the software). On February 11, a first wave of small wikis
were switched to MediaWiki 1.17. On February 16, other small and
medium-sized wikis were switched. In retrospect, the issues encountered
during deployment were due to the large amount of code changes since the
last release (almost 5,500 changes reviewed over 7 months). In the
future, MediaWiki release deployments should be smaller and more
frequent, reducing deployment pains.
Full list of changes in 1.17:
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/branches/REL1_17/phase3/RELEASE-N…
Data Summit
On February 3-4, 2011, the Foundation organized a Data Summit in
Sebastopol, CA, to present and formally discuss Wikimedia data-related
issues and ongoing projects [1].
The *Data Analytics session* (chaired by Rob Lanphier) presented results
from the fundraiser's analytics, discussed how WMF is planning to use
analytics to support its initiatives, how to address existing gaps in
information collection and analysis, and how to meet the needs of
different stakeholders (WMF, researchers, the community). Several
working groups were established for further progress on analytics
functionality focusing on: (1) how to make revision data more accessible
via a NoSQL database, (2) defining requirements for session tracking,
(3) improving the data dump generation process, (4) addressing privacy
issues in light of WMF's privacy policy, (5) defining the requirements
for a dedicated data mining infrastructure, and (6) assessing the
existing analytics system.
In the *Parsers session* [3] (chaired by Danese Cooper) a number of
demos were presented with examples of how to build and exploit new data
structures to provide a better understanding of Wikimedia content. The
session also discussed the design of a new parser which would support a
standard intermediary format for representing Wikimedia content. WMF
expects to continue the discussion on parsers and data structures at the
WMDE Developer Meetup, currently scheduled for May 2011.
In the *Structured Data session* [4] (chaired by Erik Möller), the
capabilities of existing structured data systems (such as DBPedia,
Freebase, Shortipedia, SMW and other) were reviewed and several
questions were formulated on the technical requirements to support and
enhance Wikimedia's Structured Data functionality. The discussion
started at the Data Summit will continue on wiki-research-l and
wikitech-l and open up to all interested parties.
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_summit_2011
[2] http://eiximenis.wikimedia.org/DataSummitAnalytics
[3] http://eiximenis.wikimedia.org/DataSummitParsers
[4] http://eiximenis.wikimedia.org/DataSummitSMW
Gender Gap Conversations Begin
On January 31, Noam Cohen of the New York Times published a piece about
Wikipedia's gender gap (13% of editors responding to the UNU-Merit
Survey of 2008 self-identified as female), which prompted dozens of
media stories and blog coverage in publications such as the Telegraph,
Mother Jones, Discover magazine, Jezebel, the Atlantic, and NPR. It also
gave rise to dozens of online comments and conversations from both women
and men, including readers, aspiring editors, current editors and lapsed
editors. Many women reached out to the Wikimedia Foundation offering
their help to fix the problem. As a result, the Wikimedia Foundation
created the “gender gap” mailing list, a place for Wikimedians and
interested outsiders to talk about strategies for solving the gender gap
problem. Since then, a number of initiatives have been undertaken to
drive up women's participation in the projects, including the
establishment of an Australian group called Women4Wikipedia, the staging
of a women editors meet-up in New York, discussions about Wikipedia and
gender at Recent Changes Camp 2011 in Boston, and the planning of a
women's wiki workshop in Kolkata, India.
In addition, in February, Sue was invited to join the board of the Ada
Initiative, a new non-profit aimed at promoting the visibility and
participation of women in open-source technology and culture.
Gender Gap community portal:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_Gap
Related blog posts by Sue Gardner:
http://suegardner.org/2011/02/19/nine-reasons-why-women-dont-edit-wikipedia…http://suegardner.org/2011/01/31/new-york-times-prompts-a-flurry-of-coverag…
History of the Russian Wikipedia Published
One of the goals of the Community Department is to build a repository of
knowledge about practices and experiences in different Wikimedia
languages and projects, to inform both the work of the Wikimedia
Foundation and the larger community. For example, what is the experience
of a Wikipedia language that never created an Arbitration Committe? How
do processes like "speedy deletion" or "featured article candidates" get
handled in different languages? How did mass media attention affect the
development of our projects?
Within our large multilingual community, a diverse set of strategies to
solve similar problems have been attempted. Surfacing the hidden
knowledge about these strategies could be immensely valuable. To this
end, last year, the Community Department commissioned a first
"WikiHistory", a history of the Russian Wikipedia, written by Wikimedia
Foundation fellows Marayana Pinchuk and Victoria Dorovina. In February,
it was published on Meta and on the Russian Wikipedia:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/RuWiki_History
It generated a considerable amount of interest both on Meta and in the
Russian community, where it was the subject of a lot of discussion,
which Victoria moderated and Maryana translated and moved to the talk
page of the English version. A methods page and discussion summary
postscript were also added.
Maryana worked in February to begin recruiting PhD candidates and
Wikimedians for a summer project to create at least a few more Wikipedia
histories, and to begin faciliating community-led processes for creating
project histories.
== TECHNOLOGY ==
As always, detailed info about the Tech Department's activities for
February 2011 can be found at
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2011/03/wikimedia-engineering-february-report/
Highlights below.
Conferences
GNUnify 2011 (February 11-12, Pune, India)
This year’s GNUnify Wikimedia track was an opportunity to present the
general Wikimedia technical architecture, how to hack MediaWiki, the use
of Drupal and CiviCRM at the Wikimedia Foundation, and the current and
future state of Wikimedia mobile. An Android prototype of WikiSnaps (a
mobile photo upload application) was also developed there. Along with
attending the technical tracks, numerous Wikipedians attended and gave
presentations on the Schools offline projects, challenges within India,
and basics on how to edit. Blog reports about the conference by an attendee:
http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/gnunify-day-1/http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/gnunify-day-2/
Operations
Data Center Racking Party
By the end of February, nearly all hardware was delivered to the new
data center in Virginia. More than 50 pallets of equipment were unboxed,
stacked and installed in the 16 racks by a four person team. Almost
everything has now been cabled, and we are working on the finishing
touches, as well as the initial setup of all devices to make them
available for management on the network. In March, configuration of the
first clusters of servers and services will begin, while we wait for
network transport and transit services to be installed.
Features
Personal Image Filter
Following the 2010 Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content, UI Brandon
Harris created mock-ups of a personal image/media filter in partnership
with the product strategy team, including initial UI design
recommendations. They will be presented to the Board of Trustees
controversial content workgroup for further discussion.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Personal_image_filter
Community Feature Prototyping
In February, the Community and Tech departments started a joint
experiment in which engineers work even more closely with Community
department staff. Developers are “embedded” in the Community department
to try out a more agile way to prototype and A/B test features. Trevor
Parscal started in this role in February, and will continue in March.
General Engineering
Wikilytics
During the Data Summit, Diederik van Liere released and presented the
Python toolkit he developed as part as his work on data analytics for
the Editor Trends Study. It is now available in SVN at
http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/tools/editor_trends/
Mobile/Offline
openZim for Collections
PediaPress has wrapped up their first development push for adding
openZim support to the collections extension. We are now collecting bug
reports before deploying it to the live site.
== RESEARCH AND STRATEGY ==
Internal Research Progress
In February, Dario Taraborelli visited WMF and presented some
exploratory analysis of data collected as part of the *Article Feedback
project* [5], with the goal of informing the design of Phase 2 and
identifying possible issues in rolling out this functionality globally.
Erik Möller and Howie Fung started drafting a report of the Editor
Trends Study [6]. Work also continued on the drafting of the Product
Whitepaper [13].
Research Committee Activity
The Wikimedia Research Committee (RCom) held its 3rd meeting on February
25, 2011 [9]. The meeting focused on discussing progress on a number of
initiatives run by the RCom, including: subject recruitment procedures
[10], the open-access policy for Wikimedia research [11], and the
current participation in a survey on barriers to expert participation [12].
The *survey on barriers to expert participation* in Wikipedia [14] was
formally launched on February 9, 2011 and disseminated via a number of
social media and scholarly outlets, including /PLoS/, the /Wellcome
Trust/, /Nature Blogs/, the /Encyclopedia of Life/, and the /Open
Knowledge Foundation/ among others. The survey is due to close in March
with the publication of early results.
Research Outreach Initiatives
Diederik van Liere and Howie Fung started to define the goals, technical
requirements and submission procedure for a *data challenge* to be
hosted by /Kaggle/ [7] on behalf of WMF and focusing on statistical
models to predict editor participation. The call for contributions will
be formally announced in March or April. Winners will have the
opportunity of presenting their work at the /O'Reilly Strata Conference/
in New York [8].
Dario Taraborelli, Howie Fung and Felipe Ortega (WikiSym '11 general
chair) also started organizing a *visualization challenge* that will run
in Q2-Q3 of 2011. The challenge will focus on novel visualisations of a
number of datasets from Wikimedia projects that will be released in
April 2011. The winners will be announced in September 2011 and invited
to present their work at /WikiSym '11/ (October 3-5, 2011 – Mountain
View, CA) [15].
[5]
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Public_Policy_Pilot/Early_Da…
[6] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editor_Trends_Study
[7] http://kaggle.com
[8] http://strataconf.com/stratany2011
[9] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee/Meeting_2011-02-25
[10]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee/Areas_of_interest/Subject…
[11]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee/Areas_of_interest/Open-ac…
[12]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee/Areas_of_interest/Expert_…
[13] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Product_Whitepaper
[14] http://survey.nitens.org/index.php?sid=21693
[15] http://www.wikisym.org/ws2011/
== COMMUNITY ==
The Community Department made progress on several community organizing
and research projects in February.
Wiki Guides Experiment
Philippe Beaudette and James Alexander began a project called "Wiki
Guides." This is an experiment designed to organize volunteers to
support and protect newbies through their first 100 or more edits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Guides
50 volunteer Guides joined the project and began their work with a
discussion of the newbie experience and potential interventions. One of
the early pages created by the Wiki Guides project is a place to share
stories of what it was like to be a new user:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Wiki_Guides/What_was_your_new_u…
At the end of the month, each Guide was assigned a list of new users to
support. The project will change its tactics and structure weekly to try
out new approaches.
New Account Creation Project
Community fellow Lennart Guldbrandsson published the results of an
additional account creation survey:
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Account_Creation_Improvement_Projec…
About 9,500 people who had previously created a new account, responded
to the survey. As a result, we have a better understanding of what
motivates people to create a user account on Wikipedia and what new
users' expectations are. Based on the survey results, Lennart started
testing the first iterations of improved account creation pages on the
English Wikipedia.
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Account_Creation_Improvement_Project
Fundraising
The Fundraiser team continued their analysis of the 2010 fundraiser
testing experience and their work on a report to the community. Sara
Crouse completed new funding proposals.
Public Policy Initiative
The Public Policy Initiative team started to plan the first "Wikipedia
in Higher Education Summit", an event to be held in July 2011. The event
aims at celebrating the volunteers who participate in Wikimedia's
university based program activities, building a community of educators
and Wikipedia volunteers, and sharing skills, best practices and success
stories. In 2011, the Wikipedia in Higher Education Summit will also be
the final event for the Wikimedia Foundation's Public Policy Inititative.
>From February 10-13, LiAnna Davis and Amy Roth attended the APSA
(American Political Science Association) Teaching and Learning
conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They presented a workshop about
integrating Wikipedia into the classroom and provided outreach and
education at an exhibitor booth. Conference website:
http://www.apsanet.org/content_31632.cfm
== GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ==
Global Development Highlights
* India Catalyst activities in support of the community accelerated
with the appointment of Hisham Mundol as consultant for India
Programs (
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2011-February/0001…
); Barry traveled to India to introduce Hisham to communities in
Pune, Mumbai and Bangalore.
* Progress on several key GD initiatives (see below for details and
links): Brazil Catalyst draft report, Global Education program,
Mobile Research and Editor Survey Research
* Shared draft fundraising agreement with the chapters for
discussion and made progress with chapters on getting chapter
agreements in place consistently.
Chapter Relations and Grants
* Announced the hiring of Asaf Bartov as Head of Global South
Relationships (to start in March), along with Moushira Elamrawy as
contractor supporting Chapter Relations:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2011-February/0001…
* Prepared draft of 2011/12 Fundraising agreement with the community
for comment:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011/Chapters_Agreement
* WMF and 9 of 12 chapters participating in the 2010/11 fundraiser
met the deadline to share information about their online revenue
through January 31:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tracking_Progress_for_2011_chapters_fundrais…
No new grants were funded in February.
Brazil Catalyst
For a full update: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Catalyst_Project
* A draft of the Brazil "Action Plan" was completed with the help of
about 20 interviews of Brazilian Wikimedians. Based on the
detailed work led by Carolina Rossini, the general macro-actions
proposed are:
o Establish WMF's presence in Brazil and hire a National
Program Director.
o Engage in projects that recruit entirely new sets of readers
and editors such as national events, global events, and
university partnerships.
o Establish a new dynamic with the existing community.
India Programs
* Barry Newstead traveled to India for a brief trip during which he
introduced Hisham to the Indian community and chapter, and held
community meetings in Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore to introduce and
discuss community activities and expectations.
* Met with chapter in Bangalore to discuss chapter's way forward and
its collaboration with the community.
* Met and conversed with multiple community members, Bishakha Datta,
and Achal Prabhala to discuss Foundation activities in India.
* Reviewed existing information on India programs, and prepared a
draft "India Plan" including objectives, key initiatives, time
plans, and team structure:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_programs.
* Initiated discussions with Foundation staff on key initiatives:
campus outreach, research and communications; all to be taken
forward and fleshed out in Hisham's upcoming SF visit.
Mobile Strategy
We finalized the schedule and methodology of conducting research to
understand mobile user experience in India and Brazil.
Editor Survey 2011
The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a new, comprehensive survey of the
Wikipedia editor community. In February, we:
* Finalized the questionnaire after several iterations.
* Hired a vendor for programming and cleaning of the survey.
* Began work with volunteer translators to get the survey translated
in several languages.
* Began work with the engineering team to launch the survey on the
website.
We should launch the survey in the last week of March or the first week
of April.
Offline
* Worked with community members on the best ways to select high
quality and important articles to create article collections. Tech
began helping us think about how we can develop tools to assist.
* Distribution is happening already in several parts of the world.
For example, enabled by a grant provided by WMF, a group of Kenyan
Wikimedians began uploading prototype offline versions of offline
Wikipedia (via DVD & USB sticks) onto computers in schools
throughout Kenya. Demand is very high here.
Global University Programs
Frank Schulenburg, Jessie Wild, Rod Dunican and Annie Lin kicked off the
strategy planning process for a Wikimedia Global University Program. A
preliminary version of their strategy paper can be found on the outreach
wiki:
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_University_Program
This is still in the planning and discussion phase. At this point, the
general recommendations are to
1. Create a platform for professors from all countries to be able to
easily incorporate the editing of Wikipedia in the classroom and,
2. Empower students to form student groups to facilitate outreach and
editing.
Communications
/February saw a range of media coverage, mostly following up on the
global activites around Wikipedia 10 and on the presence of a gender gap
within Wikipedia's editor community (see highlights, omitted below). The
Foundation distributed a press release in conjunction with up-time
monitoring service 'WatchMouse' and finalized design and released the
Strategic Plan summary document./
Major Stories and Coverage through February
After its January story about the gender gap, the New York Times set
up a special debate portal and invited scholars on the topic to
contribute views, and dozens of other outlets followed up on the
question, e.g..
* http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/02/02/where-are-the-women-in-wiki…
* http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/01/31/133375307/facing-serious-gen…
* http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/8293217/Why-Wikipedias-edit…
*Behind the Scenes at Wikipedia.IN*
A thoughtful overview of the Wikimedia movement in India and the
diversity of activities taking place in all corners of the country.
The story features an interview with Jimmy Wales and focuses on work
being done to support Indic language projects.
* http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/PUBLICATIONS/HT/HM/2011/02/13/ArticleHtmls…
*Other worthwhile reads:*
* http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/our-wiki-wiki-ways-beautiful-i…
* http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/feb/19/interview-jimmy-wales-wik…
* http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wikipedias_goal_1_billion_monthly_visi…
Major Announcements and Releases in February 2011
*Wikimedia Foundation selects Watchmouse monitoring service* (February
9, 2011):
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/February_2011_Wikimedia_…
Major Product Releases in February 2011
*Wikimedia's Strategic Plan Summary*:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Strategic_Plan_Summa…
Blog during February 2011
During the month of February, WMF's blog highlighted 8 topics:
* Wikipedia’s gender gap
* WikiProject Medicine urges medical community to edit.
* Wikimedia selects Watchmouse for global monitoring services.
* Welcome Wikimedia’s 30th Global Chapter, Wikimedia España.
* Wikipedia Contribution Team Plans Events Throughout UK and Beyond.
* Wikipedia Enters the Sun King’s Court.
* Sue Gardner joins Ada Initiative advisory board.
* Wikimedia presents its five-year strategic plan.
All posts for February can be found at:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2011/02/.
Media contact through February, 2011
WMF received 15 media contacts from organizations including BBC World
Service, ABC Australia, Marie Claire, Times of London, Fast Company,
Communications Daily, Read Write Web, NOS Dutch Public Television, The
Guardian (UK), Women in Business, Data Center Dynamics, and Visionary
Productions "On the road in America".
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#February_2011
== HUMAN RESOURCES ==
Staff Changes
*New Hires*
* Geoffrey Brigham, General Counsel (Legal) – FT Permanent
* Jon Davis, Interim Office IT Manager (Finance) – Temp Full Time
* Tony Le, Controller (Finance) – FT Permanent
* Janice Tud, HR Generalist (HR) – FT Permanent
*New Contractors*
* Hisham Mundol (Global Development)
* Moushira Elamwray (Global Development)
*Extended Contracts*
* Michelle Paulson (Legal) – Temp Full Time
* Christine Moellenbrandt, Community Associate (Community) – Temp
Full Time
* Joshua VanDavier, Development Associate (Community) – Temp Full Time
*New Job Postings*
* Senior QA Engineer (Tech)
* Office Assistant, Travel (Finance/Admin)
* Major Gifts Associate (Community)
* Grants & Information Officer (Community)
*Contract Ended*
* Deniz Gultekin, Community Associate
* Tara Harwood, Head of Office Admin
* Steven Ma, Community Associate
Statistics
*Vital Stats:* Total Employee Count
Plan: 81
Actual: 63
Attrition: 3
Remaining Open positions to fiscal year end: 29
*Diversity stats:*
* 63 Total Employees (includes people considered international
employees)
* 42.9% female employees; 6.9% increase from 7/1/10
* 31.8% ethnic minorities; 5.8% increase from 7/1/10
* 38.1% foreign nationals; 1.9% increase in U.S. hiring from 7/1/10
* 42.9% Wikimedians; 0.86% increase from 7/1/10
* 71.4% have lived abroad; 1.4% increase from 7/1/10
Real-time feed for HR updates:
http://identi.ca/wikimediaatwork or http://twitter.com/wikimediaatwork
New Events
The HR Department has been digging into some exciting work since the new
year began. Here's a recap of what we've been working on broken out by
function:
*Recruiting*
We worked on increasing our hiring capacity by adding new recruiting
firms and optimizing and streamlining our recruiting pipeline. We also
worked very closely with hiring managers to collaboratively rethink the
current process and address any challenges we're finding.
*HR Documentation*
The HR department, with the addition of our new generalist Janice Tud,
undertook a documentation project to raise level of awareness regarding
process in hiring and staff development.
*HR Metrics*
HR started tracking diversity stats (see below) to better understand the
make up of our culture. We were excited to see that we are well above
the average for technology companies in several areas.
We also worked on tracking our capactiy to hire. This information is
imperfect, but we are getting closer to understanding our hiring
ability. As we get better data we will talk about it in more detail.
*Staff Development*
Cyn and Daniel attended a seminar at LinkedIn to learn about thier new
recruiting funtionality. While the seminar was fairly cheesy and
targeted at less tech savvy organizations than ourselves, it was a good
learning experience. It may lead to a deeper level of engagement with
LinkedIn to help us find the right people for our organization.
*HRIS (HR Information System)*
The HR team decided on, and began implementation of, a new database to
help track and manage personnel information. The software is called
OrangeHRM and is an open source project:
http://www.orangehrm.com/
The implementation team at OrangeHRM has been great, and we will be
ready to launch in March. This will go a long way towards
professionalizing our department and providing us with accurate data.
== FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION ==
Finance
* Mid-year financials were published on the Foundation website at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports.
* Started planning for the development of the 2011-12 annual
financial plan.
* Built rough forecast of revenue and spending for end of 2010-11
fiscal year; expect to be approximately 5 to 10% underspent at
year-end.
* Continued to work with Marcin to warp up Wikimania Gdansk
reporting, funds collections and invoice payment.
Administration
* Departments received individual purchasing cards, which will make
the coding and reporting of expenses paid by credit card more
efficient.
* Began searches for interim Head of Office Administration,
permanent Travel Assistant and Help Desk associate.
== LEGAL ==
* Geoff began his orientation, starting to learn the ropes at the
Foundation and within the community, and beginning the development
of legal strategy and 2011-12 plan inputs.
* Geoff continues to be supported by Michelle Paulson, associate
counsel, who has maintained the legal office since last October.
* Sue and Geoff met with the staff of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation for pizza & discussion.
== VISITORS AND GUESTS ==
1. Manish Shah (Intuit - txtweb.com demo)
2. Manish Maheshwari (Intuit - txtweb.com demo)
3. Yohei Murakami (Language Grid Project)
4. Sonia Eunhai Kim Felix (South Korea) (PPI consuls wives and
honorary consul group)
5. Florence de Noray (France) (PPI consuls wives and honorary consul
group)
6. Luisa Scapolla (Italien) (PPI consuls wives and honorary consul group)
7. Satsuki Kawada (Singapore) (PPI consuls wives and honorary consul
group)
8. Gayle Evans (Great Britain) (PPI consuls wives and honorary consul
group)
9. Clelia Piragibe (Brazil) (PPI consuls wives and honorary consul group)
10. Eva Voisin (Honorary Consul Hungary) (PPI consuls wives and
honorary consul group)
11. Liliane Koziol (Honorary Consul Madagaskar) (PPI consuls wives and
honorary consul group)
12. Eny Arguelles (MD, USA) (PPI consuls wives and honorary consul group)
13. Mary Staunton (Ireland) (PPI consuls wives and honorary consul group)
14. Josette Osgood (Honorary Consul Côte d’Ivoire) (PPI consuls wives
and honorary consul group)
15. Huguette Wildschutz (Luxembourg) (PPI consuls wives and honorary
consul group)
16. Brigitte Brockmann (Germany) (PPI consuls wives and honorary
consul group)
17. Martha Hertelendy (USA) (PPI consuls wives and honorary consul group)
18. Kathleen Kimura (Great Britain) (PPI consuls wives and honorary
consul group)
19. Gerlind Rothen (Germany) (PPI consuls wives and honorary consul group)
20. Latoya Peterson (Community Member - WikiHistories project)
21. Gina Glantz (Consultant)
22. Erik Swan (Splunk)
23. Ward Cunningham (CTO CitizenGlobal)
24. Jerome Gary (Producer/Director) and 15 person crew
(arabic-speaking world 'On the road in America)
25. Valerie Aurora (Ada Initiative)
26. Cheol Ryul and Colleague (Korean Wikimedian)
27. Derrick Coetzee(Wikipedia Campus Ambassadors)
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Just wanted to draw your attention to the blog post that went out today
regarding offline:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/
Feel free to leave comments either there or on this list!
Best,
Jessie
***
*Update on Offline Wikipedia Projects *
The last week was a big week for expanding offline Wikipedia
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline_Projects> work.
Right now, /offline/ refers to supporting read access to Wikimedia
content without an Internet connection. This increases the reach of the
Wikipedia movement by providing more opportunities for people all over
the world to access the materials. Some of the recent initiatives
surrounding this project were documented in Wikimedia's tech blog
<http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2011/01/update-on-offline-wikimedia-projects/>
about a month ago (for more detail regarding the purpose for offline
work, see the offline strategy
<http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline> page).
In support of our offline readership work, we're thrilled to announce
the launch of a new feature on Wikipedia developed with our partners
from PediaPress <http://pediapress.com/>. Last week we enabled openZim
<http://openzim.org/Main_Page> (the main file format in which offline
materials are stored) export for the existing PediaPress collections
extension on English Wikipedia and numerous other wikis. This means
that individuals can now use the existing PediaPress Create a book
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Books> tool and download it in a
format which can be read offline (via an offline reader, such as Kiwix
<http://kiwix.org/index.php/Main_Page>). This is important because it
opens new avenues for the creation of offline materials, for example, an
openZim library hosting different offline "book" options.
Also, the English offline collection Wikipedia 0.8
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_0.8>was made officially
available
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_0.8/downloads>, after
much hard work by the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team>.
This collection is an iteration in the process of developing a vetted
collection of offline articles selected based on their quality and
topical importance. The main constraint with an offline product is the
data size restrictions: the entirety of Wikipedia must somehow be
condensed so that it fits on a CD, DVD, or USB stick. Wikipedia 1.0
aims at creating the highest quality and most valuable subset of
Wikipedia to meet those size requirements, and v0.8 is a precursor.
Wikipedia 0.8 is a general collection of just under 50K articles, It
is available for Mac, PC, or Linux with a Linux or Okawix reader; some
mobile phone versions will be available later this month as well.
More updates are sure to come on this offline front: Wikimedians around
the world are actively assisting in the development of offline
collections as well as distribution. We are excited to support and
document the momentum going forward.
Jessie Wild, Global Development
Hi,
A short update about Wikimedia Hungary's activities in February 2011 is now
available on Meta at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikim%C3%A9dia_Ma….
For
your convenience it is reproduced below.
You can read a slightly longer report and see a photo of the server
mentioned in the report on our blog:
http://huwiki.blogspot.com/2011/03/februar-szerver-es-eloadasok.html (in
Hungarian).
*Wikimedia Hungary Report*
*Vol 4 Issue 2*
*February 2011*
*Prepared by: Bence Damokos*
This is an update on Wikimédia Magyarország's activities covering February
2011.
Toolserver
Wikimedia Hungary's first self-owned server was delivered in February. After
our hosting contract commences, the server will serve a number of projects:
running WikiTrust and other analytical software, bots and so on. Our hope is
to be able to use the server to gather useful statistics.
Presentations
We have held two presentations at Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest, one
for a class on corpus linguistics and the other one for copy-editing
students.
Grants
We have applied for a state operating expenses grant in February. For some
strange reason, the grant that previously covered 12-month periods this year
only covers the July-September 2011 period, significantly detracting from
its usefulness. If successful, the grant could cover the development costs
of making CiviCRM compatible with our bank's online banking system.
--
Bence Damokos
Executive Vice President,
Wikimedia Hungary
http://wikimedia.hu <http://wiki.media.hu>