Hi all,
please find below the WMF report for March 2014, in plain text.
As always, the editable and formatted version has been published on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_March_2014
and the reports are being posted on the Wikimedia blog, too:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/c/corporate/wmf-monthly-reports/
As usual, we are also publishing a separate "Highlights" summary.
Please consider helping non-English-language communities to stay
updated, by providing a translation:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_March_2014
Many thanks to those who have been contributing to the still ongoing
translation work on the February "Highlights"!
While still focusing on WMF activities, the "Highlights" include a
small selection of the most noteworthy events from the whole movement.
Suggestions for the upcoming April issue are welcome until tomorrow at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Highlights#Movement_news_ite…
Regards, Tilman
--
Wikimedia Foundation Report, March 2014
<Video: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Monthly_Metrics_Meeting_April_3…>
Video of the monthly Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting
covering the month of March
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/2014-04-03>
(April 3, 2014)
Contents
* 1 Data and Trends
* 2 Financials
* 3 Highlights
o 3.1 New Beta feature: Hovercards show article previews
o 3.2 Typography refresh: A new look for text on Wikimedia sites
o 3.3 Draft annual plan published for feedback from the community
and the FDC
* 4 Engineering
o 4.1 VisualEditor
o 4.2 Editor engagement
o 4.3 Mobile
* 5 Fundraising
o 5.1 Major Gifts and Foundations
o 5.2 Online Fundraising
* 6 Grantmaking
o 6.1 Annual Plan Grants (Funds Dissemination Committee)
o 6.2 Project and Event Grants
+ 6.2.1 Grants funded in March 2014
+ 6.2.2 Reports accepted in March 2014
o 6.3 Travel and Participation Support
+ 6.3.1 Requests awarded in March 2014
+ 6.3.2 Reports accepted in March 2014
o 6.4 Individual Engagement Grants
+ 6.4.1 Grants started in March 2014
o 6.5 Learning and Evaluation
+ 6.5.1 Program Evaluation
+ 6.5.2 Grants Programs
+ 6.5.3 Org effectiveness
+ 6.5.4 Other
o 6.6 Wikipedia Education Program
* 7 Human Resources
o 7.1 March Staff Changes
o 7.2 March Statistics
* 8 Finance and Administration
* 9 Legal, Community Advocacy, and Communications Department
o 9.1 LCA Report, March 2014
+ 9.1.1 Contract Metrics
+ 9.1.2 Trademark Metrics
+ 9.1.3 Domains Obtained
+ 9.1.4 Coming & Going
+ 9.1.5 Other Activities
o 9.2 Communications Report, March 2014
+ 9.2.1 Major announcements
+ 9.2.2 Major Storylines through March
+ 9.2.3 Other worthwhile reads
+ 9.2.4 WMF Blog posts
+ 9.2.5 Media Contact
+ 9.2.6 Communications Design
+ 9.2.7 Wikipedia Signpost
* 10 Visitors and Guests
== Data and Trends ==
Global unique visitors for February:
*474 million* (-4.28% compared with January; -1.83% compared with
the previous year)
(comScore data
<http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/unique_visitors> for all
Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release March data
later in April)
Page requests for March:
*21.042 billion* (+0.2% compared with February; -2.3% compared with
the previous year)
(Server log data
<http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthlyAllProjects.htm>,
all Wikimedia Foundation content projects including mobile access,
but excluding Wikidata <https://www.wikidata.org> and the Wikipedia
main portal page <https://www.wikipedia.org/>.)
Active Registered Editors for February 2014 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month,
excluding bots):
*75,958* (-6.80% compared with January / -2.06% compared with the
previous year)
(Database data
<http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/active_editors>, all Wikimedia
Foundation projects.)
*Report Card* (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF
projects):
http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/
(Definitions <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Analytics/Metric_definitions>)
== Financials ==
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Revenue_%26_Expenses_February_2…>
Wikimedia Foundation YTD Revenue and Expenses vs Plan as of February 28,
2014
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Expenses_by_Functions_February_…>
Wikimedia Foundation YTD Expenses by Functions as of February 28, 2014
(Financial information is only available through February 2014 at the
time of this report.)
All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and
Year-To-Date February 28, 2014.
Revenue 39,242,310
*Expenses:*
Engineering Group 10,750,112
Fundraising Group 2,739,036
Grantmaking Group 1,078,075
Programs Group 1,205,135
Grants 3,887,562
Governance Group 469,783
Legal/Community Advocacy/Communications Group 2,425,548
Finance/HR/Admin Group 4,542,676
Total Expenses 27,097,927
Total surplus (12,144,383)
/in US dollars/
* Revenue for the month of February is $1.07MM versus plan of $0.01MM,
approximately $1.06MM or 18,244% over plan.
* Year-to-date revenue is $39.24MM versus plan of $45.05MM,
approximately $5.81MM or 13% under plan.
* Expenses for the month of February is $4.35MM versus plan of
$4.41MM, approximately $63K or 1% under plan, primarily due to lower
personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, outside
contract services, and travel expenses partially offset by higher
legal fees, grants, and payment processing fees.
* Year-to-date expenses is $27.10MM versus plan of $31.80MM,
approximately $4.70MM or 15% under plan, primarily due to lower
personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, legal fees,
payment processing fees, staff development expenses, and travel
expenses partially offset by higher outside contract services,
grants, and recruiting fees.
* Cash position is $52.44MM as of February 28, 2014.
== Highlights ==
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HoverCard_ClaudeMonet.png>
Screenshot of a Hovercard (a preview of the article en:Claude Monet
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Monet> displayed in en:Camille Doncieux
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Doncieux>)
=== New Beta feature: Hovercards show article previews ===
Hovercards <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features/Hovercards> are brief
previews of a Wikipedia article or other wiki page, displayed when the
reader hovers over a link to that page. The preview consists of the lead
paragraph and first image of the article. Users can enable this feature
by logging into their account and clicking the "Beta" link at the top
right. Hovercards were inspired by the Navigation popups
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation_popups> gadget used
by many experienced Wikimedians on the English Wikipedia and elsewhere,
and modify the idea to make it more suitable for casual readers.
=== Typography refresh: A new look for text on Wikimedia sites ===
At the end of March, an update to the typography
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/typography> on the desktop version of Wikimedia
sites was announced
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/03/27/typography-refresh/>. The
typography refresh
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Typography_refresh> is
based on four requirements: 1. Readability, 2. a consistent look across
multiple devices, 3. availability of the typefaces
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/typefaces> across various platforms (Mac OS X,
Windows, Linux, and mobile operating systems), and 4. accessibility
(even for those readers with visual impairments).
The most visible change is that headings are now displayed in a serif
font instead of a sans-serif font. Among the other modifications: The
text color is now a very dark grey instead of pure black, while the
background color remained pure white. Also, the body font size was
increased.
The changes were scheduled to be rolled out in April, with adjustments
based on user feedback.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sue_Gardner_discussing_the_2014-15_…>
Sue Gardner discussing the WMF FDC proposal
=== Draft annual plan published for feedback from the community and the FDC ===
In March, the Foundation worked to prepare its 2014/15 annual plan for
publication in draft form, as a proposal to the FDC
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/Wikim…>
(Funds Dissemination Committee). The feedback from the FDC and the
community review period (April 1 to April 30) will be taken into account
<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-April/070826.html> while
the plan is being finalized. As part of the FDC proposal, the Foundation
published a new comprehensive overview of ongoing, long-term work
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/Wikim…>
that WMF staff and contractors are carrying out in support of the
Wikimedia projects.
== Engineering ==
A detailed report of the Tech Department's activities for March 2014 can
be found at:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2014/March
Department Highlights
Major news in March include:
* Hovercards
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/03/26/hovercards-now-available-as-a-beta-fe…>
now available as a Beta feature on all Wikimedia wikis, allowing
readers to see a short summary of an article just by hovering over a
link (see also Highlights above);
* a subtle typography change
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/03/27/typography-refresh/> across
Wikimedia sites for better readability, consistency and accessibility;
* a recap of the upgrade and migration
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/03/28/wikimedias-road-to-bugzilla-4-4/>
of our bug tracking software.
=== VisualEditor
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/VisualEditor/Portal>
===
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Erik_M%C3%B6ller_explaining_citatio…>
Erik Möller explaining citation support in VisualEditor
In March, the *VisualEditor <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor>*
team continued their work on improving the stability and performance of
this visual tool to edit wiki pages. They also added some new features
and simplifications, helping users edit and create pages more swiftly
and easily. Editing templates is now much simpler, moving most of the
advanced controls that users don't often need into a special version of
that window. The media dialog was improved and stream-lined to make it
clearer what the controls are for. The overall design of dialogs and
controls was improved to make it flow better, like double-clicking a
block to open its dialog. A new system for quickly and simply inserting
and editing "citations" (references based on templates) neared
completion and will be enabled in the coming month.
The *Parsoid <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid>* team continued with a
lot of bug fixing and tweaking
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid/Deployments> of this parsing program
that converts wikitext to annotated HTML, behind the scenes of
VisualEditor. Media and image handling in particular was improved. In
the process, we discovered a lot of edge cases and inconsistent behavior
in the PHP parser, and fixed some of those issues there as well.
We revamped our round-trip test server interface
<http://parsoid-tests.wikimedia.org/> that compares the wikitext code of
a page before and after it's been converted into annotated HTML, and
back into wikitext. We fixed some issues in the round-trip test system,
and improved our error logging system.
We also designed and implemented a HTML templating library
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_template_system> which combines
correctness, security and performance. This will notably be used to
evaluate HTML templating for translation messages and eventually wiki
content.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VisualEditor_-_2013-14_Q2%E2%80%93Q…>
Presentation slides from the VisualEditor team's quarterly review
meeting
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_r…>
on March 26
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Parsoid_review_Q3,_March_2014.pdf>
Presentation slides from the Parsoid team's quarterly review meeting
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_r…>
on March 28
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Growth_team_update_April_2014.pdf?p…>
Presentation slides from the Growth team
=== Editor engagement <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/New_editor_engagement> ===
This month the *Core Features* team focused on improvements to how the
new Flow <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow> discussion system works with
key MediaWiki tools and processes. We made changes to the history,
watchlist, and recent changes views, adding more context and bringing
them more in line with what experienced users expect from these
features. We released a thank feature in Flow, allowing users to thank
each other for posts, and began work on a feature to close and summarize
discussions. Lastly, we continued work on rewriting the Flow interface
to make it cleaner, faster, and more responsive across a wide number of
browsers/devices.
In March, the *Growth <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth>* team primarily
focused on bug fixing, design enhancements, and refactoring of the
GettingStarted <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GettingStarted> and
GuidedTour <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GuidedTour> extensions,
which were recently launched on 30 Wikipedias. We updated icons and
button styles, rewrote the interface text, and refactored the interface
to be more usable in non-English languages. We also began to refactor of
the GuidedTour API, in order to support interactive tours that are
non-linear. Non-linear tours will not depend on a page load to run,
which will notably enable better support for tours in VisualEditor
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor>. Last but not least, we made
progress on measuring the impact of GettingStarted
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Onboarding_new_Wikipedians/Rollout>
across all wikis
where it is deployed, with results for the first 30 days of editor
activity expected in early April.
=== Mobile <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Mobile_engineering> ===
The *Wikimedia Apps <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps>* team
worked on logged-out editing to logged-in editing, and table of contents
refinements.
The *Mobile web projects <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile_web_projects>*
team worked on the link inspector for VisualEditor on tablets, and a
switch between VisualEditor and wikitext on tablets. Both are in alpha.
During the last month, with the assistance of the Operations and
Platform teams, the *Wikipedia Zero
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero>* team set up the upcoming
Partners Portal and continued work on reducing image size for the mobile
web. Additionally, the team added Wikipedia Zero detection to the
Wikipedia for Firefox OS app, as well as contributory features support
for users on partner networks supporting zero-rated secure connections.
With the assistance of the Apps team, new features were added to the
forthcoming reboots of the Android and iOS apps; proof of concept for
full-text search was started on iOS.
Smart, the largest mobile operator in the Philippines, is giving access
to Wikipedia free of data charges through the end of April. We arranged
a meeting with local community members and Smart to explore ways to
collaborate in support of education. The partnerships team started to
review the 27 existing Wikipedia Zero partners, to update the
implementation, identify opportunities for collaboration in corporate
social responsibility (CSR) initiatives and get feedback on the program.
The account reviews will continue for the next few months.
== Fundraising ==
=== Major Gifts and Foundations ===
* A longtime WMF donor and retired aerospace engineer from Colorado is
leaving us his entire estate in a living trust.
* The fundraising team coordinated completion of the WMF's FDC proposal.
=== Online Fundraising ===
File:Open Letter for Free Access to Wikipedia - three months later, MTN
responds.webm
<https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Open_Letter_for_Free_Ac…>
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Open_Letter_for_Free_Access_to_Wiki…>
MTN response by video
* The online fundraising team ran *banner campaigns* in the Sweden,
Thailand, Indonesia, Spain, Denmark, and Norway. Roughly $1.7
million was raised in March (preliminary numbers as donations are
still settling).
* The team prepared *translations* of fundraising messages into
multiple languages for upcoming international banner campaigns. If
you would like to help with the translation process, please get
involved <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/Translation>.
* Mobile operator MTN South Africa responds to the Sinenjongo High
School 'open letter' video and grants *Wikipedia Zero in South
Africa*, publishing a video response of their own (see right).
== Grantmaking ==
Department highlights
* The first impact reports for Annual Plan Grants (reviewed by the
FDC), for activities in 2013, were submitted on 31 March, and an
analysis will be published this May.
* The Grantmaking Learning & Evaluation and the Program Evaluation and
Design teams are integrated and will continue to focus on program
evaluation and organisational effectiveness.
* The Wikipedia Education Program team also joins Grantmaking.
=== Annual Plan Grants (Funds Dissemination Committee) ===
* No new annual plan grants were funded this month; *3 grant reports*
were reviewed this month.
* Preparations are underway for upcoming Funds Dissemination Committee
Deliberations and Funds Dissemination Advisory Group Meeting in
Frankfurt, Germany this May.
* Staff summary of Q2 *progress reports*
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2012-2013_round2/Staff…>
published, and comments on WMHU's Q4 progress report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2012-2013_round1/…>
published. Thanks to all entities that submitted reports in this cycle.
* *2013-2014 Round 2 eligibility
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/Eligibility_checklist…>*
is
confirmed and announced: 6 entities are now eligible to submit
proposals on 1 April 2014.
* /Impact reports
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals>/ for most
2012-2013
Round 1 grants submitted on 31 March, and will be analyzed before
the upcoming FD Advisory Group
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/FD…>
Meeting on 25 May - 26 May
=== Project and Event Grants ===
* Grants:PEG/Frequently_asked_questions
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Frequently_asked_questions>
is updated.
* *5 new requests* were funded and *11 reports* were accepted in March
2014.
==== Grants funded in March 2014 ====
* Grants:PEG/WM_ZA/joburgpedia-2014
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WM_ZA/joburgpedia-2014>:
Building on the 2013
pilot, to do outreach and increase Wikipedia coverage of historic
buildings around Johannesburg.
* Grants:PEG/WM_PH/Cultural_Heritage_Mapping_project_2014
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WM_PH/Cultural_Heritage_Mapping_…>:
To
support a nationwide heritage documentation and mapping project in
the Phillipines, with results feeding into Wikimedia projects.
* Grants:PEG/WikiSym_Initiative/2014_OpenSym_Conference
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WikiSym_Initiative/2014_OpenSym_…>:
To
support the 10th International Symposium on Open Collaboration.
* Grants:PEG/WM_ES/CUSL8
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WM_ES/CUSL8>: To support
Wikimedia outreach at the Spanish National Free Software
Universitary Contest Awards Conference.
* Grants:PEG/WM_PH/Annual_program_plan_2014
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WM_PH/Annual_program_plan_2014>:
To support
Wikimedia Philippines' 2014 annual project plan, including
edit-a-thons, WLM, and a rewards program.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palacio_Real_de_Aranjuez_-_130921_1…>
The Royal Palace of Aranjuez: One of the winning photos in Wiki Loves
Monuments 2013 in Spain
==== Reports accepted in March 2014 ====
* Grants:PEG/WM CZ/Presentation & Outreach/Report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WM_CZ/Presentation_%26_Outreach/…>
* Grants:PEG/WM Movement/Flow Funding Pilot Project/Report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WM_Movement/Flow_Funding_Pilot_P…>
* Grants:PEG/Katie Filbert - Wikimedians in DC/WikiXDC/Report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Katie_Filbert_-_Wikimedians_in_D…>
* Grants:PEG/Aislinn Dewey/Distribute WikiReaders to Schools/Report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Aislinn_Dewey/Distribute_WikiRea…>
* Grants:PEG/Shipmaster - Community of Arabic Wikipedia/Producer
Prize-2013/Report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Shipmaster_-_Community_of_Arabic…>
* Grants:PEG/WM AM/Wiki Loves Monuments 2013/Report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WM_AM/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2013/…>
* Grants:PEG/WM RS/Annual plan 2012-2013/Report/Q5
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WM_RS/Annual_plan_2012-2013/Repo…>
* Grants:PEG/WM ES/Wiki Loves Monuments Spain 2013/Report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WM_ES/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_Spain…>
* Grants:PEG/Wikimedia Slovakia/Start-up/Report/Wiki Loves Monuments
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Wikimedia_Slovakia/Start-up/Repo…>
* Grants:PEG/WM CL/Annual Program Plan 2013-2014/Report/Interim report
to December 31, 2013
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WM_CL/Annual_Program_Plan_2013-2…>
* Grants:PEG/WM MX/Wiki Loves Monuments 2013/Report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WM_MX/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2013/…>
=== Travel and Participation Support ===
* *1 new request* was funded and *4 reports* were accepted in March 2014.
* As part of an overall program redesign, the Travel and Participation
Support reporting form has been revised: the *new version of the
reporting form
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Reporting_template>* is
designed to
be more lightweight and more useful to participants for sharing
learning with the movement and includes an option to create learning
patterns <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/Library/Learning…>
==== Requests awarded in March 2014 ====
* Grants:TPS/Strainu/OSGEO_Cluj
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Strainu/OSGEO_Cluj>:
a request to fund an outreach presentation in OSGEO 2014 Cluj that
works toward free and open source solutions for working with
geospatial data. The presentation will have a focus on gathering and
verifying coordinates of monuments on Wikipedia.
==== Reports accepted in March 2014 ====
* Grants:TPS/Rjain/FOSS_Asia_2014/Report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Rjain/FOSS_Asia_2014/Report>
* Grants:TPS/Rahul21/FOSSASIA/Report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Rahul21/FOSSASIA/Report>
* Grants:TPS/Harsh4101991/FOSSASIA/Report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Harsh4101991/FOSSASIA/Report>
* Grants:TPS/Daniel_Mietchen/58th_Annual_Meeting_of_the_Biophysical_Society/Report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Daniel_Mietchen/58th_Annual_Meet…>
=== Individual Engagement Grants ===
* A round 1 2014 *open call for proposals* ran March 1-31. With the
support of staff, committee, and the larger community, in office
hours <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Events#Past_events>
and on-wiki, 25
proposals <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG#ieg-join>
were finalized and submitted
during this period. In April, proposals will be checked for
eligibility and offered for community comments before the
committee's formal review begins.
* *4 new members
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Committee#ieg-members>*
have joined
the IEG committee, to replace 4 retiring members.
* Templates for midpoint and final IEG reports have been improved
based on learning from the first round
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Learning/round_1_2013/impact>.
* We've *submitted 4 Wikimania session proposals* aimed at fostering
participation in grantmaking to individuals and sharing learning
from past grantee projects:
o An IdeaLab workshop for creating ideas, project plans, and
learning patterns
<https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/IdeaLab_Workshop:_Maki…>
o An IdeaLab mixer for connecting people and projects
<https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/IdeaLab_mixer>
o A panel discussing social media strategies, drawing on learning
from 2 past IEG projects
<https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Wikipedia_Goes_Viral:_…>
o A grantmaking panel showcasing past grantees from WMF's 4
Grantmaking programs
<https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/WMF_Grants_Showcase:_F…>
* We've also submitted a session idea to run an *IdeaLab workshop at
Wikiconference USA
<http://wikiconferenceusa.org/wiki/Submissions:IdeaLab_Workshop/>*.
* In other individual grantmaking news: Setup continues for the
*Arabic book grants pilot
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/ARWP_small_individual_grants…>*,
a joint
effort between WMF Grantmaking and The Wikipedia Library
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/The_Wikipedia_Library>
to fund *books and other
reliable sources for Wikipedia editors*. A reusable kit
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library/Kit> is
being designed and developed on
meta-wiki, which will be initially used to build out Arabic
Wikipedia's Library hub
<https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%88%D9%8A%D9%83%D9%8A%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%AF%D9…>.
2 volunteer account coordinators
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library/Kit/Coordinators>
have been selected
for the Arabic Library and their setup is in progress. We aim to
begin processing book requests on Arabic Wikipedia in April.
==== Grants started in March 2014 ====
* The Wikimaps Atlas <http://wikimapsatlas.github.io/> project, which
was selected
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Wikimaps_Atlas> in IEG
round 2 2013,
began work in March.
=== Learning and Evaluation ===
The month of March (and we expect the next few months) involved the
*incorporation of the former "Program Evaluation and Design" team into
the former "Grantmaking Learning & Evaluation" team*. We are now acting
as one cohesive team, with clear workstream areas carved out -- the
largest of which is program evaluation. We are thrilled about the
opportunity to coordinate more effectively on the integration of program
and organizational effectiveness.
We spent a lot of time this past month prepping for the months ahead:
annual planning for FY14-15, Wikimedia Conference 2014, Wikimania
submissions, interviews for the new community coordinator, and strategy
sessions with the new team. We are looking forward to the return on
these planning investments over the months ahead!
==== Program Evaluation ====
In addition to the work collaborating within grantmaking around our
organizational shift and annual planning (/see above/), in the month of
March the program evaluation team has also been:
* Preparing for our upcoming in-person meet-up sessions surrounding
*Wikimedia Conference 2014* ( Pre-conference Program Evaluation and
Design workshop
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/News/Wikimedia_C…>,
Open Thursday workshop sessions
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/News/Wikimedia_C…>,
a Conference Dialogue session
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2014/Programme#18_Prog…>,
and overview sessions on tracking and reporting tools
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2014/Programme#19_Prog…>)
* Submitting proposals to WikiConference USA
<http://wikiconferenceusa.org/wiki/Submissions:Growing_the_Awesome_in_your_P…>
and Wikimania
<https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Growing_the_Awesome_in…>
* Adding new *learning modules
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/Learning_modules>*
to our portal
Programs:Evaluation_portal/Library
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/Library>
* Hosting *Virtual Meet-ups
<https://plus.google.com/b/117126229120807344920/117126229120807344920/posts>*
on Setting goals and targets: A SMART Process
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7iMVOPRKhQ#t=18> (17 participants
and 95 views as of 4/1/2013) and Evaluation reports (Round II)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U2WgpaHot4> (12 participants and
34 views as of 4/1/2013)
==== Grants Programs ====
Annual Plan Grants
* Contractor *Kacie Harold* joined us near the end of the month to
help launch research to support the FDC Advisory Group convening,
taking place in May 2014. She will be pulling together the
quantitative and qualitative information from the first two years of
the FDC.
* Results from a *cost-benefit survey
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/Feedback_and_continuo…>*
following Round 1 deliberations (November 2013) are posted. Major
takeaways are that people spend on average just over 90 hours on the
application process, but primarily no financial costs are incurred.
One recomendation is to eliminate the redundancy in the process
(lots of the same Q&A).
==== Org effectiveness ====
* Led /Strategy, planning, and evaluation/ for the *Boards training
workshop <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Boards_training_workshop_March_2014>*:
a session
hosted by WMUK in London focusing on capacity building for board
members of Wikimedia organizations.
* Developed org effectiveness *research and workplan* to bring in
information around how other organizations think about
organizational effectiveness and design their movement structures.
==== Other ====
* Ran training and implemented pilot of new *grants administration
tool*, "Fluxx <http://fluxx.io/>"
* Brainstormed and implemented ideas for the *microgrants pilot*
* Prepared a prototype dashboard for Wikipedia *geo-data visualization*
=== Wikipedia Education Program ===
* The Global Education team (also known as the Wikipedia Education
Program) is now a *part of the WMF Grantmaking team*.
* Anna Koval joined the Global Education team as a *Global Education
Program Manager*, transitioning from her role at the Wikimedia
Foundation as a Community Advocate.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Education_Coop_kick-off_meeting_in_…>
Global Education Cooperative kick-off meeting in Prague
Global programs
* The Global Education Team traveled to Prague, Czech Republic, to
kick off a *Global Education Cooperative*. The Coop
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/March_2014/Educati…>
includes Wikipedia Education Program leaders from Mexico, Nepal,
Serbia, Armenia, Catalonia (Amical), Ukraine, the Czech Republic,
the Arab World, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. Areas of focus
identified are mentoring, resources, communications, and recognition
for programs and participants. Watch for more information soon.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:EduWiki_Learning_Day_Belgrade_2014_…>
Education program leaders at the EduWiki conference in Belgrade
* Rod Dunican and Anna Koval traveled to Belgrade, Serbia, for
*EduWiki 2014 in Belgrade, Serbia
<http://edu.wikimedia.rs/index.php?title=EduWiki_Conference_2014>*.
Education program leaders from 4 Wikimedia chapters (Macedonia,
Czech Republic, Germany, and the U.K.) joined hosts Wikimedia Serbia
for a learning day and a regional conference for high school and
university educators and students.
Arab world programs
* Results from the *fall 2013-2014 term in Jordan* showed a growth in
student participation and overall on-wiki contributions with 88
students contributing a total of 1.2 million bytes of new content to
the Arabic Wikipedia.
* Tighe Flanagan joined Dr. Nidal Yousef in Jordan to support local
Wikipedia Education Program outreach and present the previous term's
results at a *celebration conference at Isra University*.
* Results from the *fall 2013-2014 term in Egypt* showed a drop in the
amount of students but an increase in overall student activity
on-wiki with 109 students contributing a total of 7.8 million bytes
of new content to the Arabic Wikipedia.
* The *Training Center for Wikipedia Translation at King Saud
University* in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, welcomed a new faculty leader,
Dr. Majid Al-Humaidi, where students and professors are working to
get their Wikipedia Education Program pilot up and running.
* The *Education Program Extension*
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program> was
piloted by the Arabic Wikipedia community and did not result in any
objections and courses may begin to use this tool in the spring 2014
term.
Communications
* Sage Ross, with design support from Heather Walls, has consolidated
the various education pages on Outreach wiki into a unified
*Wikipedia Education Program portal
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program>*, in
preparation for a content update and ongoing maintenance by the
Education Cooperative.
* The biweekly *Wikipedia Education Program Update
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program/News> has
been ended*, in favor of using the This Month in Education
newsletter <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter> as
the central place for education project news.
* One blog post:
o Introducing Dr. Paola Ricaurte Quijano of Tec de Monterrey,
Mexico City Campus
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/03/07/paola-ricaurte-quijano-profile/>
(March 7)
== Human Resources ==
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:April_2014_HR_Metrics_from_WMF.pdf>
Metrics meeting presentation slides
Much of March has been spent supporting the *ED and VPE searches*, and
the first draft of the department annual plans and staffing to feed into
the Wikimedia Foundation's *FDC proposal*submission. Routine work around
benefits administration, immigration, continues. Onward.
=== March Staff Changes ===
New Requisitions Filled
* Chase Pettet (Engineering)
* Kevin Leduc (Engineering)
Conversions (Contractor to Requisition)
* Anna Stillwell (HR)
Requisition Department Changes
* Janice Tud, HR to Grantmaking
* Carolynne Schloeder, Grantmaking to Engineering
* Adele Vrana, Grantmaking to Engineering
* Dan Foy, Grantmaking to Engineering
* Jaime Anstee, Programs to Grantmaking
* Rod Dunican, Programs to Grantmaking
Requisition Departures
* LiAnna Davis (Programs)
* Ken Snider (Engineering)
New Interns
* Alex Monk (Engineering)
New Contractors
* Kacie Harold (Grantmaking)
* Teresa Cho (Grantmaking)
* Siebrand Mazeland (Engineering) (was previously requisition)
Contracts Ended
* Dashiell Renaud
* Sahar Massachi
* Jon Søby
* Steven Bernardin
* Stefan Petrea
=== March Statistics ===
Total Requisitions Filled
March Actual: 184
March Total Plan: 163
March Filled: 3, Month Attrition: 3,
FYTD Filled: 41, FYTD Attrition: 23
Remaining Open positions to fiscal year end
33 → reflects 4 total out of plan req#s 193-196 (for finance)
== Finance and Administration ==
* The *investments* of the Wikimedia Foundation of $15.4 million, have
an estimated annual income as of 2/28/14 of $462,000.
* Application was filed with the County of Loudoun, home of the
Virgina data center, for an *exemption from personal property
taxes*. If our application for exemption is approved, it will save
the Wikimedia Foundation $70,000 per year.
* Completed version one of the Wikimedia Foundation *FY 2014-15
budget* for the FDC application.
== Legal, Community Advocacy, and Communications Department ==
For LCA, March was focused on a variety of ongoing projects, including
litigation and community consultations.
* We concluded a large discussion on a *draft amendment to the Terms
of Use on undisclosed paid editing
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use/Paid_contributions_amendment>*,
with over 2,000
contributors and over 300,000 words. As a next step, this proposal
will be presented to the Board. Thanks go out to all participants
and to our interns, Jorge Vargas and Shaila Nathu, who did a lot of
hard work on this collaboration.
* After collaboration with community members on Meta and in our public
Advocacy Advisory Group
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/advocacy_advisors>,
the legal team finalized and submitted a response to the *European
Commission's request for consultation on copyright*
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/03/14/wikimedia-participates-in-eu-copyrigh…>.
We thank everyone who participated in this discussion.
=== LCA Report, March 2014 ===
==== Contract Metrics ====
* Submitted : 28
* Completed : 26
==== Trademark Metrics ====
* Submitted : 20
* Approved: 4
* Pending : 4
* Denied: 2
* Request withdrawn: 1
* Approval not needed : 9
==== Domains Obtained ====
wikimedia.voyage, wikivoyage.voyage, winkipedia.com
==== Coming & Going ====
* LCA says goodbye to Dashiell Renaud, one of our legal interns. We
wish him the best of luck as he continues his legal career.
* LCA welcomes Jessica Tam, a new legal intern and recent graduate
from Santa Clara Law.
==== Other Activities ====
* Michelle attended a *Patent and Trademark Office forum on the DMCA
Notice-and-Takedown System*
<http://www.uspto.gov/ip/global/copyrights/AGENDA_March-20_Multistakeholder_…>
to ensure Wikimedia's interests in protecting and improving the
current system were heard.
* Yana and Luis did a *panel presentation on open trademark licensing*
at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit
<http://collaborationsummit2014.sched.org/event/21e70c737d0bc54fe701adf47216…>,
focused on explaining our new trademark policy and the historical
and legal background behind it.
* Manprit Brar, a fellow in the legal team, published a blog post
titled *"Celebrating women and change in IP
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/03/21/celebrating-women-and-change-in-ip/>"*;.
This blog post highlighted relevant legal issues, and Yana's
participation in a panel discussion.
* Community Advocacy continues to build out *tools to improve and
speed up common workflows*, including a DMCA takedown tool that cuts
the time needed to handle a report by about 75%, and another for
reporting to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
with similar performance improvements.
=== Communications Report, March 2014 ===
March saw the announcement
<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2014-March/000876.…>
revealing the Foundation's *new Chief Communications Officer*, Katherine
Maher. Katherine will take on her new role in mid April. The
Communications team tracked some complex issues through the month,
including efforts by a Greek politician to *sue a Greek Wikipedian* and
fundraising issues in *Finland*, and also worked on change management
issues with Foundation leadership. And we supported the Fundraising team
in the preparation of the publication of the draft 2014/15 annual plan
in form of the *WMF FDC proposal
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/Wikim…>*,
including an appendix titled *“Ongoing work areas of the Wikimedia
Foundation
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/Wikim…>”*
which for the first time gives a comprehensive overview of recurring,
long-term work that staff across the organization carry out in support
of Wikimedia projects (see also general "Highlights" section
). We also pitched out the unveiling of the *new
typography*, leading to two stories in Fast Company magazine.
==== Major announcements ====
*A statement on Wikimedia Foundation’s fundraising delivered to the
National Police Board of Finland
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Statement_on_WMF%27s_Fi…>*
(03 March, 2014)
==== Major Storylines through March ====
Wikimedia and Bitcoin
Jimmy Wales at the forefront of the Bitcoin discussion - hints that
the Foundation might start to accept the digital currency, but
assures a consultation with the Board of Trustees before any final
decision is made. (04 March, 2014).
Mashable [1]
<http://mashable.com/2014/03/10/jimmy-wales-reddit-bitcoin/>
The Telegraph [2]
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/10687380/Influx-of-Wikipedi…>
Wikipedia on Crimea
An edit war has ensued on Wikipedia after disputes between Ukraine
and Russia have put the Crimean region's status as an autonomous
republic of Ukraine up for debate - triggering constant edits and a
spirited debate (19 March, 2014).
ABC News [3]
<http://abcnews.go.com/International/crimea-war-words-wikipedia/story?id=229…>
HNGN [4]
<http://www.hngn.com/articles/27005/20140320/wikipedia-and-national-geograph…>
Talk Radio News Service [5]
<http://www.talkradionews.com/united-nations/2014/03/20/un-map-showing-crime…>
The Voice of Russia [6]
<http://voiceofrussia.com/radio_broadcast/36172287/270304663/>
==== Other worthwhile reads ====
"UC Berkeley hires first Wikipedian-in-residence" (04 March, 2014).
Mercury News [7]
<http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_25364220/uc-berkeley-hires-first-wi…>
SF Gate [8]
<http://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/UC-Berkeley-grad-to-expand-Wikiped…>
Dallas morning news [9]
<http://www.dallasnews.com/business/headlines/20140322-fixing-wikipedia-is-h…>
"Greek politician tries to use defamation lawsuit to gag Wikipedia, is
rewarded with Streisand effect." (06 March, 2014).
Tech Dirt [10]
<http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140305/08562026441/greek-politician-trie…>
"Study finds thousands of academic papers include Wikipedia citations"
(18 March, 2014).
Academica Group [11]
<http://academica.ca/top-ten/study-finds-thousands-academic-papers-include-w…>
"Warming up to the culture of Wikipedia" (19 March, 2014)
NY Times [12]
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/arts/artsspecial/warming-up-to-the-cultur…>
"Wikihistory – Finding the World’s Leaders through the ages through
Wikipedia Social Networks" (19 March, 2014).
Knight News Challenge [13]
<https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/2014/feedback-review/wikihistory-fi…>
"The Wikipedia gender gap" (19 March, 2014).
Literacy teaching and teacher education [14]
<http://literacyteaching.net/2014/03/18/the-wikipedia-gender-gap/>
"The Geography of fame" (22 March, 2014).
NY Times [15]
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/opinion/sunday/the-geography-of-fame.html…>
The Bill Fold [16]
<http://thebillfold.com/2014/03/how-to-ensure-your-progeny-have-wikipedia-en…>
Jimmy on holistic medical practices
Jimmy Wales rejected a change.org petition to allow more positive
discussion of holistic medicine on Wikipedia, defending Wikipedia's
policicy to rely on respectable scientific journals (24 March, 2014).
TIME [17]
<http://time.com/36938/wikipedia-founder-sticks-it-to-lunatic-holistic-heale…>
Business Insider [18]
<http://www.businessinsider.com/jimmy-wales-petition-response-2014-3>
Ars Technica [19]
<http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/03/wikipedia-founder-calls-alt-medicine…>
Slate Magazine (blog) [20]
<http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/03/27/jimmy_wales_denies_petit…>
The Daily Banter [21]
<http://thedailybanter.com/2014/03/wikipedia-founder-smacks-down-petition-to…>
International Business Times [22]
<http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/wikipedias-jimmy-wales-calls-holistic-medicine-pra…>
==== WMF Blog posts ====
Blog.wikimedia.org published 26 posts in March 2014
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/3/>. Two posts were multilingual
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/tag/multilingual-post/>, with translations
in Spanish.
Some highlights from the blog include:
*Wikimedia participates in EU Copyright Consultation
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/03/14/wikimedia-participates-in-eu-copyrigh…>*
(March 17, 2014).
*Wikimedia-RU changes Russian Civil Code
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/03/17/wikimedia-ru-changes-russian-civil-co…>*
(March 17, 2014).
*For Rexford Nkansah, Wikipedia represents the future of education
for his country
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/03/19/for-rexford-nkansah-wikipedia-represe…>*
(March 19, 2014).
*Hovercards now available as a Beta Feature on all Wikimedia wikis
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/03/26/hovercards-now-available-as-a-beta-fe…>*
(March 26, 2014).
*Typography refresh: A new look for text on Wikimedia sites
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/03/27/typography-refresh/>* (March
27, 2014).
==== Media Contact ====
Media contact through March 2014: wmf:Press room/Media Contact#March
2014 <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#March_2014>
==== Communications Design ====
The Wikipedia *Teahouse* had its second birthday - still going strong,
now run by the community. We worked with Grantmaking to create a
prototype for the new *Wikipedia Library pilot on Arabic Wikipedia*, and
began a sprint to make the *IdeaLab* more flexible and reusable for
developing projects. Brena Monteiro finished her *FOSS Outreach Program
for Women project* with mentors Quim and Heather.
==== Wikipedia Signpost ====
For lots of detailed coverage and news summaries, see the
community-edited newsletter “Wikipedia Signpost” for March 2014:
* Volume 10, Issue 9
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2014-03…>,
05 March 2014
* Volume 10, Issue 10
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2014-03…>,
12 March 2014
* Volume 10, Issue 11
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2014-03…>,
19 March 2014
* Volume 10, Issue 12
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2014-03…>,
26 March 2014
== Visitors and Guests ==
Visitors and guests to the WMF office in March 2014:
1. Deji Olukotun (PEN)
2. Jason Douglas (Google)
3. Denny Vrandecic (Google)
4. Francesco Radicati (Informa)
5. Nathan Knight (Informa)
6. Pat Reed (Global Collect)
7. Tom Staudt (Global Collect)
8. Loida Veroes (Global Collect)
9. Stormy Peters (Mozilla)
10. Alexis Rossi (Internet Archive)
11. Jake Johnson (Internet Archive)
12. Kevin Gomez (Internet Archive)
13. Jesse Johnson (Internet Archive)
14. Valerie Ball (KPMG)
15. Regina Prince (KPMG)
16. Ana Akhir (KPMG)
17. Dwight Wilson (Collabriv)
18. Katrina Walker (Collabriv)
19. Alan Bird (W3C)
20. Glenn Turner (Advanced Mobile)
21. John Sebastian Gomez (Infusion)
22. Juan Vanegas (U Caldas)
23. Cristian Perez (U Caldas)
24. Gautam Chandna (Opera Software)
25. Andreas Bovens (Opera Software)
26. Randy Abreu (Thomas Jefferson School of Law)
27. Tim Seeger (TJSL)
28. Skye Anderson (TJSL)
29. Robert Wasserman (TJSL)
30. Daniel Hasson (TJSL)
31. Michael Goodman (TJSL)
32. Sean Russel (TJSL)
33. Yana Loboda (TJSL)
34. Owen Davis (Wikia Inc.)
35. Katherine Kuhns (SVIC)
36. Javier Vallaure (All Pago)
37. Phillip Bock (All Pago)
38. Tom Hehir (CCSC Inc.)
39. Richard Millington (feverbee.com)
40. Tyson Polski (USCIS)
41. Astrid Wichmann (OpenSym)
--
Tilman Bayer
Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
Hi all,
please find below the WMF report for February 2014, in plain text.
As always, the editable and formatted version has been published on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_February_2014
and the reports are being posted on the Wikimedia blog, too:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/c/corporate/wmf-monthly-reports/
As usual, we are also publishing a separate "Highlights" summary.
Please consider helping non-English-language communities to stay
updated, by providing a translation:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_February_2014
Many thanks to those who have translated the January "Highlights" into
Czech, French, Indonesian, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Ukrainian,
and Simplified and Traditional Chinese (and partially into Korean,
Dutch, Russian and some other languages)!
Apologies for the unusually late posting of the February report. The
March report should go out shortly.
Regards, Tilman
--
Wikimedia Foundation Report, February 2014
<Video: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Monthly_Metrics_Meeting_March_6…>
Video of the monthly Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting
covering the month of February
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/2014-03-06>
(March 6, 2014)
Contents
* 1 Data and Trends
* 2 Financials
* 3 Highlights
o 3.1 Frank Schulenburg named executive director of the new Wiki
Education Foundation, which supports Wikipedia courses in the US
and Canada
o 3.2 New Media Viewer: A better way to view images
o 3.3 Discussion about disclosure requirements for paid editing,
and about the new privacy policy
* 4 Engineering
o 4.1 VisualEditor
o 4.2 Editor engagement
o 4.3 Mobile
* 5 Fundraising
o 5.1 Major Gifts and Foundations
o 5.2 Online Fundraising
* 6 Grantmaking
o 6.1 Annual Plan Grants (Funds Dissemination Committee)
o 6.2 Project and Event Grants
+ 6.2.1 Grants funded in February 2014
+ 6.2.2 Reports accepted in February 2014
o 6.3 Travel & Participation Support
+ 6.3.1 Requests funded in February 2014
+ 6.3.2 Reports accepted in February 2014
o 6.4 Individual Engagement Grants
+ 6.4.1 Grants started in February 2014
+ 6.4.2 Grants funded in February 2014
+ 6.4.3 Reports accepted in February 2014
o 6.5 Grantmaking Learning and Evaluation, and Program Evaluation
& Design
o 6.6 Wikipedia Education Program
+ 6.6.1 Global programs
+ 6.6.2 Arab world programs
+ 6.6.3 Communications
* 7 Human Resources
o 7.1 February Staff Changes
o 7.2 February Statistics
* 8 Finance and Administration
* 9 Legal, Community Advocacy, and Communications Department
o 9.1 LCA Report, February 2014
+ 9.1.1 Contract Metrics
+ 9.1.2 Trademark Metrics
+ 9.1.3 Domains Obtained
+ 9.1.4 Coming & Going
+ 9.1.5 Other Activities
# 9.1.5.1 Legal
# 9.1.5.2 CA
o 9.2 Communications Report, February 2014
+ 9.2.1 Major announcements
+ 9.2.2 Major Storylines through February
+ 9.2.3 Other worthwhile reads
+ 9.2.4 WMF Blog posts
+ 9.2.5 Media Contact
+ 9.2.6 Wikipedia Signpost
* 10 Visitors and Guests
== Data and Trends ==
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Total_Active_Editors_Wiktionary_Wik…>
Total Active Editors for Wiktionary, Wikivoyage (reconstituted) and
Wikisource, 2002-2013 (from presentation slides
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListFiles&offset=20…>)
Global unique visitors for January:
*495 million* +1.05% compared with December; +1.41% compared with
the previous year)
(comScore data
<http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/unique_visitors> for all
Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release February data
later in March)
Page requests for February:
*21.001 billion* (+1.6% compared with January; -3.5% compared with
the previous year)
(Server log data
<http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthlyAllProjects.htm>,
all Wikimedia Foundation content projects including mobile access,
but excluding Wikidata <https://www.wikidata.org> and the Wikipedia
main portal page <https://www.wikipedia.org/>.)
Active Registered Editors for January 2014 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month,
excluding bots):
*81,821* (+8.24% compared with December / -2.92% compared with the
previous year)
(Database data
<http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/active_editors>, all Wikimedia
Foundation projects.)
*Report Card* (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF
projects):
http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/
(Definitions <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Analytics/Metric_definitions>)
== Financials ==
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Revenue_%26_Expenses_January_20…>
Wikimedia Foundation YTD Revenue and Expenses vs Plan as of January 31, 2014
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Expenses_by_Functions_January_2…>
Wikimedia Foundation YTD Expenses by Functions as of January 31, 2014
(Financial information is only available through January 2014 at the
time of this report.)
All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and
Year-To-Date January 31, 2014.
Revenue 38,169,215
*Expenses:*
Engineering Group 9,278,563
Fundraising Group 2,535,021
Grantmaking Group 951,930
Programs Group 1,044,778
Grants 2,378,690
Governance Group 415,129
Legal/Community Advocacy/Communications Group 2,057,675
Finance/HR/Admin Group 4,084,665
Total Expenses 22,746,451
Total surplus (15,422,764)
/in US dollars/
* Revenue for the month of January is $3.42MM versus plan of $0.01MM,
approximately $3.41MM or 58,335% over plan.
* Year-to-date revenue is $38.17MM versus plan of $45.04MM,
approximately $6.87MM or 15% under plan.
* Expenses for the month of January is $3.97MM versus plan of $4.53MM,
approximately $559K or 12% under plan, primarily due to lower
personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, legal fees,
grants and travel expenses partially offset by higher outside
contract services and payment processing fees.
* Year-to-date expenses is $22.75MM versus plan of $27.39MM,
approximately $4.64MM or 17% under plan, primarily due to lower
personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, legal fees,
payment processing fees, staff development expenses, grants, and
travel expenses partially offset by higher outside contract services
and recruiting fees.
* Cash position is $54.67MM as of January 31, 2014.
== Highlights ==
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WEFBelow.svg>
Logo of the new Wiki Education Foundation
=== Frank Schulenburg named executive director of the new Wiki
Education Foundation, which supports Wikipedia courses in the US and
Canada ===
The Wikipedia Education Program, where university students contribute to
Wikipedia as a course assignment, began in 2010 as a pilot project run
by the Wikimedia Foundation (the "Public Policy Initiative" which
focused on the subject of US public policy). Since then, the program has
expanded worldwide. In the United States and Canada alone, more than
6,000 students have contributed to Wikipedia as part of the program,
adding the equivalent of 36,600 printed pages to Wikipedia and
significantly increasing the amount of high-quality content.
The global Wikipedia Education Program will continue to be supported by
the Wikimedia Foundation. But in 2012, the Wikimedia Foundation began a
process to hand over cooperations with educators and institutions in the
US and Canada to a new non-profit organization, the "Wiki Education
Foundation <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Education_Foundation>",
created in late 2013. In
February, the new organization appointed
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Frank_Schulenburg_named…>
its first executive director: Frank Schulenburg
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Frank_Schulenburg_(Wiki_Ed)>, a
long-time German Wikipedian
and Commons contributor who left his position
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/QA_Frank_Schulenburg_announcement_Febr…>
as head of the Wikimedia Foundation's program department for the new job.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Multimedia_Roundtable_3.pdf?page=21>
Media Viewer (early sketch explaining how it works)
=== New Media Viewer: A better way to view images ===
The Multimedia Team invited
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/27/help-test-media-viewer/>
community members to test a beta version of Media Viewer, a new tool for
viewing images and other multimedia content. Currently, when a reader
clicks on a thumbnail in an article, they are taken to a separate page
showing the image in medium size, surrounded by a lot of text
information which can be confusing. Media Viewer shows images in a
larger size, as an overlay on the current page.
At the end of February, when the invitation was made, over 12,000 beta
testers had already activated Media Viewer as part of the Beta Features
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage:Beta_Features> program. The
rollout of Media Viewer to the first wikis was scheduled for April
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Release_Plan>.
=== Discussion about disclosure requirements for paid editing, and
about the new privacy policy ===
The Wikimedia Foundation's Legal Department is drafting a proposed
amendment to the Terms of Use to address further undisclosed paid
editing. Contributing to the Wikimedia projects to serve the interests
of a paying client while concealing the paid affiliation has led to
situations that the community considers problematic. The LCA team
published a draft for a community discussion
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use/Paid_contributions_amendment>.
The discussion
received significant response, and continued through March 21, 2014.
The department also announced the conclusion of the community
consultations about the new Privacy Policy
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy> (after
discussions that lasted over 8 months), together with the accompanying
Data retention guidelines
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_retention_guidelines>, and the
Access to Nonpublic Information Policy
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_to_nonpublic_information_policy>,
whose consultation
lasted over 5 months. These policies will be reviewed by the Board in
April 2014.
== Engineering ==
A detailed report of the Tech Department's activities for February 2014
can be found at:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2014/February
Department Highlights
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Media_Viewer_v0.2_Slides_-_WMF_Metr…>
Presentation slides about Media Viewer
Major news in February include:
* a call for volunteers to test the upcoming multimedia viewer
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/27/help-test-media-viewer/>;
* improvements to VisualEditor's media and template editors;
* the launch of the Flow discussion system on two pilot talk pages on
the English Wikipedia;
* the launch of guided tours to 31 more language versions of
Wikipedia, including all of the top 10 projects by number of page views;
* improvements to the tools and process used to deploy code to
Wikimedia production sites;
* the release of the first archive of the entire English Wikipedia
with thumbnails
<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/offline-l/2014-March/001238.html>,
for offline use.
=== VisualEditor
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/VisualEditor/Portal>
===
In February, the VisualEditor <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor>
team continued their work on improving the stability and performance of
this visual tool to edit wiki pages; they also added some new features
and simplifications. It is now easier to edit media items: users can set
the position, alt text, size and type for most kinds of media item. When
adding links, redirects and disambiguation pages are now highlighted to
help editors select the right link, and changing the format or style of
some text was tweaked to make editing clearer and more obvious. Adding
and editing template usages is now a little smoother, auto-focusing on
parameters and making them clearer to use. Page settings have expanded
to set redirects, page indexing and new section edit link options. The
extensive work to make insertion of "citation" references based on
templates quick, obvious and simple neared completion. The deployed
version of the code was updated four times in the regular releases.
The Parsoid <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid> team continued with bug
fixes <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid/Deployments> and improved image
support in this parsing program that converts wikitext to annotated
HTML, behind the scenes of VisualEditor.
Part of the team has continued to mentor two Outreach Program for Women
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/FOSS_Outreach_Program_for_Women/Round_7> (OPW)
interns; this program ends mid-March. Others are mentoring a group of
students in a Facebook Open Academy
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Facebook_Open_Academy> project to build a
Cassandra storage back-end for the Parsoid round-trip test server.
We have a first version of a Debian package for Parsoid ready. This
package is yet to find a home base (repository) from which it can be
installed. This will soon make the installation of Parsoid as easy as
|apt-get install parsoid|.
=== Editor engagement <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/New_editor_engagement> ===
This month, the new Flow <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow> discussion
system was launched on the talk pages of two English Wikipedia
WikiProjects that volunteered to be a part of the first trial,
WikiProject Breakfast
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Breakfast> and
WikiProject Hampshire
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Hampshire>. We've
continued to iterate on the front-end design of the discussion system
based on user feedback, releasing a new appearance during the trial and
starting work on a front-end rewrite for better cross-browser and mobile
compatibility (to be released sometime in March). We also spent time
making sure Flow integrates better with vital MediaWiki tools and
processes (e.g., suppression and checkuser) and improving the handling
of permalink URLs.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Growth_Quarterly_Review_(February_2…>
Slides of the quarterly review of the Growth team
In February, the Growth <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth> team first
focused on releasing the new Wikipedia onboarding experience
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Onboarding_new_Wikipedians> on additional
projects. The GettingStarted
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GettingStarted> extension was
deployed to 30 Wikipedias, including all of the top 10 projects by
number of page views. This marks the first time its task suggestions and
guided tours were available outside English projects. The GuidedTour
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GuidedTour> extension was also
deployed to those projects (as a dependency of GettingStarted), as well
as the Czech Wikipedia and se.wikimedia.org. Late in the month, the team
also presented its work at its first Quarterly Review of the 2014
calendar year (see slides and minutes
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_r…>).
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Metrics_Meeting_-_March_2…>
Demonstration of editing on a tablet
=== Mobile <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Mobile_engineering> ===
The Wikimedia Apps <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps> team
primarily worked on basic editing functionality (using wikitext) for
both logged-in and logged-out users, as well as account creation and login.
The Mobile web projects <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile_web_projects>
team has been working on bringing VisualEditor to tablets; the
functionality is currently in alpha. Once this feature is available,
tablet devices will be redirected to the mobile site. Work has notably
focused on "inspectors" (like the dialog used to add and edit a link)
and fixing bugs.
During the last month, the Wikipedia Zero
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero> engineering team added
zero-data charge rating for secure HTTPS connections for select
carriers, in cooperation with the Operations team. In collaboration with
the Mobile Apps team, we integrated Wikipedia Zero into the forthcoming
rebooted versions of the Android and iOS apps. We updated the legacy
Firefox OS app with bugfixes from January, and prepared other bugfixes
as well. Discussion with the Operations team and Platform Engineering
continued on how to best implement the Wikipedia Zero portal. The team
also continued the discussion on core ResourceLoader features, in
support of a proof of concept HTML5 webapp. We also started work to make
contributory features present for Wikipedia Zero users. Last but not
least, we performed extensive analytics work on pageviews and page
bandwidth consumption.
/(The Wikipedia Zero team led by Carolynne Schloeder, formerly
situated in the Programs department, became part of the Engineering
department in February, see announcement Q&A
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/QA_Frank_Schulenburg_announcement_Febr…>)/
In February, we launched Wikipedia Zero with MTN South Africa (Opera
Mini browser only). MTN South Africa responded directly to the kids of
Sinenjongo High School with an open letter to the students and the youth
of South Africa. They said they agree that Wikipedia could give a boost
to their education system, and that offering Wikipedia Zero is a small
thing that could change everything (see video
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc2lVRtWEvM> on YouTube). We also
launched Wikipedia Zero with Safaricom, the largest operator in Kenya.
We now have three partners in Kenya, covering 90% of all mobile
subscribers. South Africa is our 23rd country to launch, and Safaricom
is our 27th operator partner. The Mobile Partnerships team attended
Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where we met with existing operator
partners, prospective partners and tech companies who want to support
the mission. At the conference, our Wikipedia Text pilot with Airtel
Kenya and the Praekelt Foundation was nominated as a finalist for the
GSMA Global Mobile awards in the education category.
== Fundraising ==
=== Major Gifts and Foundations ===
* Received a *$100,000 gift* from an anonymous donor.
* All *Annual reports <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_report>*
sent out to major donors.
=== Online Fundraising ===
* The online fundraising team ran *banner campaigns* in the Czech
Republic, Poland, Hungary, Finland, and Sweden. Roughly $850,000 was
raised in February (preliminary numbers as donations are still
settling).
* The team prepared *translations of fundraising messages* into
multiple languages for upcoming international banner campaigns. If
you would like to help with the translation process, please get
involved <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/Translation>
* *Pats Pena was promoted* to Senior Global Fundraising Operations
Manager.
== Grantmaking ==
Department highlights
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IEG_barnstar_2.png>
IEG round 1 2014 open call!
* 9 requests funded and 3 reports accepted in February 2014.
* *Open call
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/28/individual-engagement-grants-call-for-…>
for round 1 2014* Individual Engagement Grant proposals and
committee members is underway! Proposals are due 31 March 2014:
Grants:IEG <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG>
* The *APG proposal form has been revised* and is now available to
2013-2014 Round 2 entities: Grants:APG/FDC_portal/Proposal_form
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/Proposal_form>.
This is in preparation
for the upcoming proposal submission date on 1 April 2014 for
2013-2014 Round 2.
=== Annual Plan Grants (Funds Dissemination Committee) ===
* *Impact report form* has been revised and is now available to
2012-2013 Round 1 entities, which may now create an impact report
form using the proposal hub page: Impact report form
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/Impact_report_form>.
This is in
preparation for the upcoming impact report submission date on 31
March for entities receiving grants in 2012-2013 Round 1 that have
completed in December 2013.
* The *proposal form* has been revised and is now available to
2013-2014 Round 2 entities: Proposal_form
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/Proposal_form>.
This is in preparation
for the upcoming proposal submission date on 1 April 2014 for
2013-2014 Round 2.
* *Staff comments on WMF's impact report form
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2012-2013_round1/…>*
have been published.
* Dates of the *FDC deliberations* for 2013-2014 Round 2 and the FDC
Advisory Group have been confirmed: 21-25 May in Frankfurt (FDC),
Germany; 25-26 May in Frankfurt Germany (FDAG). Preparations are now
underway.
* No grants were funded and no reports were received in February 2014
through the Annual Plan Grants program.
=== Project and Event Grants ===
* 5 PEG requests funded; 2 reports accepted
==== Grants funded in February 2014 ====
* WMFI - 2014
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WM_FI/WMFI_2014> : to
support
*Wikimedia Finland's 2014 programs*, including a focus on developing
the Wikimaps project.
* WMEE - 2014
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WM_EE/2014> : to support
*Wikimedia
Estonia's 2014 programs*, including outreach events, WLM, WLE, WEP,
writing competitions, and more.
* Programs in Ukraine 2014
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WM_UA/Programs_in_Ukraine_2014>
: to support
*Wikimedia Ukraine's 2014 programs*, including WLM, WEP,
wikiexpeditions, and more.
* Minority Translate
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Kruusam%C3%A4gi/Minority_Transla…>
: to support
the development of a *translation tool targeted at small language
Wikipedias*.
* Wikimedians to the Games
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WM_UA/Wikimedians_to_the_Games>
: to support
Wikimedia Ukraine volunteers to attend the *Sochi Paralympics games*
and increase coverage of disabled athletes on Wikipedia.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WLM_ZA_awards_2013f.JPG>
The Wiki Loves Monuments South Africa 2013 awards gala in Johannesburg,
South Africa.
==== Reports accepted in February 2014 ====
* Report of *WikiConference Yerevan 2013*
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WM_AM/WikiConference_Yerevan_201…>
was
accepted on 18 February 2014.
* Report of WLM-ZA-2013
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WM_ZA/WLM-ZA-2013/Report>
(*Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 in South Africa*) was accepted on 27
February 2014.
=== Travel & Participation Support ===
* 4 requests funded; 1 report accepted
* Planning for *redesign*
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Build/Spring_2014_sprint>
to simplify and improve TPS pages is underway, with improvements to
be launched as soon as March. Improvements to the reporting process
and to backend administrative processes are also being planned.
==== Requests funded in February 2014 ====
* LibreGraphicsMeeting
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Rodelar/LibreGraphicsMeeting>:
a request for two
Wikimedians to attend the *Libre Graphics Meeting to present on
WikiArS* (one Wikimedian also attended last year's meeting through
the TPS program).
* Harsh4101991/FOSSASIA
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Harsh4101991/FOSSASIA>,
Rahul21/FOSSASIA
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Rahul21/FOSSASIA>,
FOSS_Asia_2014
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Rjain/FOSS_Asia_2014>:
three requests for
Wikimedians to present their work at *FOSS Asia in Phnom Penh*.
==== Reports accepted in February 2014 ====
* *FOSDEM* - Report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Harsh4101991/FOSDEM/Report>
=== Individual Engagement Grants ===
* Open call
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/28/individual-engagement-grants-call-for-…>
for round 1 2014 Individual Engagement Grant proposals and committee
members is underway! Proposals are due 31 March 2014: Grants:IEG
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG>
* In preparation for the open call, the IEG, IdeaLab and Grants:Start
pages on Meta-wiki were set up for *internationalization* this
month, thanks to Jon Harald Søby
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jon_Harald_S%C3%B8by>
who was engaged as a contractor to work on this project. All pages
are now available for volunteer translation in the Translate
Extension, expanding the global reach of these programs.
* Sprint planning
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Build/March-June_2014_sprint…>
is underway
to *improve IdeaLab*. The sprint will run April through June, and
focuses on incorporating new features to make it easier to create,
join, and endorse ideas, as well as match project needs to people's
skills.
* In cooperation with WMF technical staff, we've developed a proposal
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/Possible_projects#A_syst…>
for a *OPW or GSoC student to work on building a system for scoring*
grant proposals and scholarship applications.
* In other individual grantmaking news: In consultation with the
Arabic Wikipedia community, planning
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/ARWP_small_individual_grants…>
is
underway for a join microgrants pilot between WMF grantmaking and
The Wikipedia Library. This pilot will fund *books and other
reliable sources for Arabic editors*, via a new Wikipedia Library
hub
<https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%88%D9%8A%D9%83%D9%8A%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%AF%D9…>
currently being built on Arabic Wikipedia.
==== Grants started in February 2014 ====
* The *Wikidata Toolkit* IEG
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Wikidata_Toolkit>
project kicked off this month, with a team assembled at TU Dresden.
==== Grants funded in February 2014 ====
* No new IEGs were funded in February 2014
==== Reports accepted in February 2014 ====
* No new IEG reports were accepted in February 2014
=== Grantmaking Learning and Evaluation, and Program Evaluation & Design ===
/(The Program Evaluation and Design group, formerly situated in the
Programs department, became part of the Grantmaking department in
February, see announcement Q&A
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/QA_Frank_Schulenburg_announcement_Febr…>)/
* Concluded the alpha *test of Fluxx <http://fluxx.io/>, the
grantmaking software*, and worked collaboratively with Fluxx labs to
fix the reported bugs and enhance the user experience based on the
current workflow of WMF grants programs.
* Started a community discussion on ArWp to set up *a new micro-grants
program pilot
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/ARWP_small_individual_grants…>*
that
would directly support the needs of individual contributors via
microgrants from the Wikimedia Foundation for access to sources.
* Prepared development work on *Wikimetrics* (with Analytics), with a
contract starting 3/3/2014.
* In partnership with IEG, set up three Grantmaking portals (IEG,
IdeaLab, and Grants:Start) for *translation*. Developed best
practices and a workflow for separating translatable content from
template structure and style in grantmaking portals (see
Translatable Content Template
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:TCT>).
* In partnership with IEG, began to draft *IdeaLab sprint planning
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Build/March-June_2014_sprint…>*.
Focusing
on technical requirements and impact evaluation criteria.
* Grants Programs:
o Annual Plan Grants: published *cost-benefit survey results
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/Feedback_and_continuo…>*
o Project & Event Grants: Launched work with consultancy "Inspire"
to *map out the spending over time* and prepare potential framework
* Released revised and expanded *learning module for Wikimetrics
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/Learning_modules…>*
* Developed plans for pre-conference workshop sessions for *Wikimedia
Conference 2014*
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/News#upcoming-ev…>
* Hosted two evaluation and learning *virtual meet-ups*:
o The first presented by Jaime Anstee: "Program tracking and
reporting toolkit" (February 13, At least 9 program leaders, 4
GLEE, and 4 PE&D team members attended live; current youtube
view count: 24) View the toolkit
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/Library/Tracking…>
or the recording <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmQ50zm_CtA>
o The second presented by Jessie Wild and Siko Bouterse: "How to
be a Star IEG Grantee" (February 19), attended by at least 7
program leaders, 5 from GLEE, and 1 PE&D member (view count at
25) View the report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Learning/Round_1_2013/Impact>
or the recording
<https://plus.google.com/events/c5sud44lefi4nv9cpqu4hck9qec>
=== Wikipedia Education Program ===
/(The Educations Program team became part of the Grantmaking department
in February, following Frank Schulenburg's departure to head the new
Wiki Education Foundation, see announcement Q&A
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/QA_Frank_Schulenburg_announcement_Febr…>)/
==== Global programs ====
* *Floor Koudijs* has joined the Wikipedia Education Program team at
the Wikimedia Foundation as a contractor to support with *program
management activities*. She's a native of the Netherlands and has
worked for the Dutch National Government as a program manager with
the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Ministry
of Justice. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and
daughter, and is looking forward to learning about the Wikimedia
world and helping support Wikipedia Education Program activities
around the globe.
* Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager LiAnna Davis is
working with volunteers to plan the *Future of Education track at
Wikimania* 2014. Interested parties are invited to join in the
planning stages
<https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fringe/Future_of_Education_Hack/Pl…>.
* Before switching focus to *editor campaigns
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Editor_campaigns>*, Developer Andrew
Russell Green and Communications Contractor Sage Ross streamlined
the *editing interface for course pages* and enabled editing by any
user for the main text area of course pages. Andrew and Sage also
began mentoring Facebook Open Academy students who are working on
additional features for course pages.
==== Arab world programs ====
* The fall 2013 terms in *Egypt and Jordan* finished up, with 109
students in Egypt contributing over 7 million bytes of new content
to the Arabic Wikipedia and 88 Students in Jordan adding
approximately 1.2 million bytes. The Wikipedia Education Program
continues to have a majority of female participants, with *88.9% and
68.8% female students* in Egypt and Jordan, respectively.
* The *Wikipedia Training Center for Translation* at King Saud
University announced a new faculty leader with the election of a new
department chair at the College of Languages and Translation.
* Graduate *students at Durham University in the UK will be
translating* articles from English to the Arabic Wikipedia, and
their course page is available in English
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects/Univ…>
and Arabic
<https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%88%D9%8A%D9%83%D9%8A%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%AF%D9…>.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bytes_contributed_per_semester_in_t…>
In the seven terms of the Wikipedia Education Program in the United
States and Canada, students have added 55 million bytes of content to
the English Wikipedia, much of it high quality.
==== Communications ====
* We released Scribus source files for Editing Wikipedia
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Editing_Wikipedia_brochure_EN.pdf>
and several other
*outreach brochures*, and completed the localization guide
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Localization_guidelines_(Bookshelf)/Edi…>
for Editing Wikipedia.
* Five *blog posts*:
o Student editors in the US and Canada add more content than ever
in fall 2013
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/04/wikipedia-education-program-us-canada…>,
4 February
o Louisiana State University faculty member supports student
Wikipedia editing
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/10/louisiana-state-university-faculty-me…>,
10 February
o Frank Schulenburg named executive director of Wiki Education
Foundation
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/12/frank-schulenburg-named-executive-dir…>,
12 February
o Wiki-Med: The Story of the First Full Wikipedia Course in Israel
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/13/wiki-med-israel-wikipedia-education-c…>,
13 February
o Editing about Mexican laws in Greater Mexico City
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/20/wikimedia-mexico-education-program/>,
20 February
* Two *newsletters*:
o 4 February
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program/News/4_Febr…>
o 18 February
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program/News/18_Feb…>
== Human Resources ==
HR has been busy in February building staff projections for *annual
planning*, supporting work on the board deck for the February *board
meeting*, and continuing with *executive recruiting*. We have also
supported Administration in *office security* issues. We did a training
on resiliency with the *community liaisons* and conducted a bi-annual
*C-level retreat* for the WMF executive team to align on strategic
priorities for the upcoming year.
=== February Staff Changes ===
New Requisitions Filled
* Leila Zia, Data Engineer (Engineering)
Conversions (Contractor to Requisition)
* Emily Blanchard, Technical Recruiter, (Human Resources)
* Heather McAndrew, Recruiter, (Human Resources)
* Oliver Keyes, Business Analyst (Engineering)
Requisition Department Changes
/none/
Requisition Departures
* Frank Schulenburg
* Diederik Van Liere
* Josh VanDavier
New Interns
* Ambrosia Lobo (Administration)
* Marshall Olin (Legal)
* Jessica Tam (Legal)
New Contractors
* Floor Koudijs (Grantmaking)
* Rachel Stallman (Administration)
* Karen Zwicker (Administration)
* Anthony Byrd (Administration)
Contracts Ended
* Leslie Carr
* Joshua Errett
* Mike Hoover
* Rubina Kwon
* Yuan Li
Real-time feed for HR updates
https://identi.ca/wikimediaatwork or https://twitter.com/wikimediaatwork
=== February Statistics ===
Total Requisitions Filled
February Actual: 163
February Total Plan: 184 → , Month Plan Hire: 1 (for finance)
February Filled: 4, Month Attrition: 3,
FYTD Filled: 38, FYTD Attrition: 20
Remaining Open positions to fiscal year end
34 → reflects 3 total out of plan requisitions (for finance)
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Metrics_Meeting_-_March_2…>
Director of Administration Lynette Logan summarizing results of a staff
discussion on space requirements in the WMF office
== Finance and Administration ==
* Working on *Annual Planning* and getting ready for submission of our
*FDC application* on April 1.
* WMF has $13.4 million in *investments* with a projected annual
income of $400,000.
* Completed *on-site financial reviews* for WMDE, WMIN and CIS, with
an additional site visit to WMHU.
== Legal, Community Advocacy, and Communications Department ==
=== LCA Report, February 2014 ===
The LCA team was proud to announce the conclusion of the *community
consultations for the proposed Privacy Policy
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/14/a-proposal-for-wikimedias-new-privacy…>,
Access to Nonpublic Information Policy
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/14/a-new-access-to-nonpublic-information/>,
and Data Retention Guidelines
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_retention_guidelines>* (see
also general "Highlights" section). These important
policies protect and govern the information of over twenty million
registered users
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians#Number_of_editors> and
490 million monthly unique visitors <http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/>, so
input from the community was invaluble. We would like to thank the many
community members who participated in the discussions. We received
hundreds of questions, comments, and suggestions. In fact, the
discussions totaled approximately 195,000 words, making it longer than
the Fellowship of the Ring
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fellowship_of_the_Ring>! The Privacy Policy
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy>, whose consultation
lasted over 8 months, and
Access to Nonpublic Information Policy
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_to_nonpublic_information_policy>,
whose consultation
lasted over 5 months, are scheduled to be reviewed for adoption by the
Board in April 2014.
==== Contract Metrics ====
* Submitted : 34
* Completed : 28
==== Trademark Metrics ====
* Submitted : 20
* Approved: 5
* Pending : 8
* Denied: 1
* Approval not needed : 6
==== Domains Obtained ====
wikimedia.voyage, wikivoyage.voyage, winkipedia.com
==== Coming & Going ====
LCA welcomed Marshall Olin, a 3rd year law student from Santa Clara
University, and Shaila Nathu, a 2nd year law student from UC Hastings,
as new *spring legal interns*.
LCA said goodbye to *Rubina Kwon*, who has been with the Foundation
since the Fall of 2012, first as a legal intern, then as a contract
attorney. Rubina was an extremely valued member of the legal team and we
wish her the best of luck!
==== Other Activities ====
===== Legal =====
* The LCA team published a draft amendment to the terms of use for a
community discussion
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use/Paid_contributions_amendment>
to clarify
*disclosure requirements for paid edits*. The discussion received
significant response, and was continuing through March 21, 2014.
* The LCA team launched a *new trademark policy* that was approved by
the Board of Trustees on February 1
<https://blog.wikimedia.org//2014/02/12/launching-an-unconventional-trademar…>,
after completing a lengthy community consultation.
* In response to community questions, the LCA team published some
research on some of the impacts of *server locations* on free
knowledge
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_and_Community_Advocacy/Wikimedia_Serv…>.
* LCA worked hard with the rest of the *Wikipedia Zero* team to
finalize the partnership agreement with MTN to provide mobile users
in South Africa free access to Wikipedia.
* LCA provided supported through its Legal Fees Assistance Program
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_and_Community_Advocacy/Legal_Fees_Ass…>
for
WMFblog:/2014/02/14/wikimedia-foundation-supports-wikipedia-user-subject-to-defamation-lawsuit-in-greece/
a Greek Wikipedia user who was targeted by a '''defamation lawsuit
in Greece'''
<https://blog.wikimedia.org//2014/02/14/wikimedia-foundation-supports-wikipe…>.
* Yana Welinder spoke at a panel on *Net Neutrality at RightsCon
<http://rightscon.org>*.
* Luis Villa and Andrei Voinigescu attended a meeting of the Advisory
Board of the *Defensive Patent License
<http://defensivepatentlicense.com/>*, in preparation for that
document’s launch in November. Discussion topics included how the
DPL can learn from free and open licenses in areas like versioning
and governance.
* Yana attended a *workshop on Intermediary Liability* with Stanford
Center for Internet & Society
<http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/focus-areas/intermediary-liability>.
* Yana and Stephen spoke about *open source trademark practices* at
Santa Clara Law School for Works-in-Progress IP 2014
<http://law.scu.edu/hightech/wipip2014/>.
===== CA =====
* *Maggie visited* home office for her quarterly time with us; led a
great discussion with the legal team, met with some of the other
staff, and attended training.
* The *Emergency response team* met with a psychologist to spend time
thinking about self-care for those who respond to critical incidents.
* Ongoing development of *lca-tools* continues, as does our long term
plan to move our *record database* off the office IT network.
* We continue to support the legal team in the communication about the
proposed *terms of use amendment*.
=== Communications Report, February 2014 ===
Another busy month for the communications department. We worked with The
Economist on a feature story about Wikipedia, and the WMF Leadership
Guide was completed and printed. We also wrapped up work on a major
document outlining the various work streams at WMF, picked up again on
the preparations to relaunch the blog, helped the legal team with
on-going issues in Finland and Greece, and supported the launch of
Wikipedia Zero with MTN in South Africa.
==== Major announcements ====
*Frank Schulenburg named executive director of new Wiki Education
Foundation
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Frank_Schulenburg_named…>*
(12 February, 2014)
==== Major Storylines through February ====
MTN Group to provide free Wikipedia via Wikipedia Zero (14 February, 2014).
MTN Group was the latest Wikipedia Zero partner to announce their
participation in the program, and the first to extend the service to
South Africans. They kicked off the news with a YouTube video issued
as part of a ‘NekNomination’ challenge in the country, and
specifically mentioned their inspiration to participate due to the
appeal letter from the learners of Sinenjongo High school.
BizTech Africa [1]
<http://www.biztechafrica.com/article/neknomination-leads-free-mobile-wikipe…>
HumanIPO [2]
<http://www.humanipo.com/news/40001/mtn-to-provide-free-wikipedia/>
Art + Feminism Edit-a-thon (05 February, 2014).
A multi-national edit-a-thon event encouraging women to get involved
with Wikipedia made media outlets around the world in February.
Outlets promoted upcoming events and touted the effort as part of a
response to the lack of women participating in Wikipedia.
Jezebel [3]
<http://groupthink.jezebel.com/wikipedia-art-and-feminism-edit-a-thon-150010…>
The Daily Beast [4]
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/witw/articles/2014/02/05/wikipedia-meets-femin…>
NY Mag [5]
<http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/02/closing-wikipedias-gender-gap-reluctantly.h…>
Finnish police examine Wikipedia’s fundraising activities. The National
Police Board demanded clarification from the website as they assessed
whether Wikipedia’s campaign to collect donations was a break in
Finland’s fundraising laws (08 February, 2014).
YLE News [6]
<http://yle.fi/uutiset/finnish_police_examine_wikipedias_fundraising_activit…>
Helsinki Times [7]
<https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/9302-finnish-pol…>
Wikimedia Foundation supports Wikipedia user subject to defamation
lawsuit in Greece. (18 February, 2014).
Media covered the recent news of a Greek Wikipedian facing a
defamation lawsuit in February. Media coverage was mostly supportive
of the user’s efforts, and highlighted the Foundation’s role in
providing legal support to the user.
Ars Technica [8]
<http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/02/wikipedia-mounts-courtroom-defen…>
WMF Blog [9]
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/14/wikimedia-foundation-supports-wikiped…>
Change in paid editing rule (26 February, 2014).
PR Week [10]
<http://www.prweekus.com/wikimedia-puts-change-to-paid-editing-rule-up-for-v…>
Forbes [11]
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhumphrey/2014/02/26/wikipedia-nobly-conf…>
==== Other worthwhile reads ====
New open source software tracks Wikipedia bot activity (13 February, 2014).
Newsweek [12]
<http://www.newsweek.com/wikipedia-edited-bots-thats-good-thing-230234>
MIT Technology Review [13]
<http://www.technologyreview.com/view/524751/the-shadowy-world-of-wikipedias…>
NDTV [14]
<http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/new-app-tracks-wikipedia-edits-by-interne…>
Printing all of Wikipedia on 1,000 books (19 February, 2014).
ABC News [15]
<http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/printing-all-wikipedia-1-000-books-it…>
Indiegogo [16]
<http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-wikipedia-books-project>
Wikipedian Ihor Kostenko dies on the Maidan Nezalezhnosti square during
protests in Kiev, Ukraine (24 February, 2014).
WMF Blog [17]
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/24/wikipedia-ihor-kostenko-dies/>
==== WMF Blog posts ====
Blog.wikimedia.org published 25 posts in February 2014
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/2/>. Four posts were multilingual
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/tag/multilingual-post/>, including versions
in Spanish, Chinese, German and Ukrainian.
Some highlights from the blog:
*Launching an unconventional trademark policy for open collaboration
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/12/launching-an-unconventional-trademark…>*
(February 12, 2014).
*Wikipedia’s Art & Feminism Edit-A-Thon and the Gender Gap
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/19/wikipedias-art-feminism-edit-a-thon/>*
(February 19, 2014).
*Editing about Mexican laws in greater Mexico City
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/20/wikimedia-mexico-education-program/>*
(February 20, 2014).
*Saqib Qayyum’s journey across Pakistan
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/26/journey-across-pakistan-saqib-qayyum/>*
(February 26, 2014).
==== Media Contact ====
Media contact through February 2014: wmf:Press room/Media
Contact#February 2014
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#February_2014>
==== Wikipedia Signpost ====
For lots of detailed coverage and news summaries, see the
community-edited newsletter “Wikipedia Signpost” for February 2014:
* Volume 10, Issue 6
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2014-02…>,
12 February 2014
* Volume 10, Issue 7
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2014-02…>,
19 February 2014
* Volume 10, Issue 8
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2014-02…>,
26 February 2014
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Park_Sang_Hak_and_Kang_Chol_Hwan_at…>
North Korean human rights activists Park Sang-hak
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Sang-hak> (center) and Kang Chol-hwan
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kang_Chol-hwan> (right), with interpreters, at
a Q&A with Wikimedia Foundation staff in the WMF office
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gayle_Karen_Young_and_Park_Sang_Hak…>
Park Sang-hak (center) after a Q&A with Wikimedia Foundation staff
organized by WMF Chief Talent and Culture Officer Gayle Karen Young
(left). Park Sang-hak has been organizing activities to provide North
Korean citizens with information via balloons carrying, among other
things, USB sticks with content from the Korean-language Wikipedia.
== Visitors and Guests ==
Visitors and guests to the WMF office in February 2014:
1. Natasha Bottari (Chase)
2. Ante Ukalovic (Infobip)
3. Jelena Keča (Infobip)
4. Shannon Farley (Spark)
5. Mike Ossipoff (comScore)
6. Beena Sharma (CIMGlobal)
7. Tom Hehir (CCSC Inc.)
8. Jeff Sheinbein (Social Imprints)
9. Kirk Arthur (USSS)
10. James Hare (Wikimedia DC)
11. Mike Schwartz (Wikia)
12. Vera Shur (VITAL Environments)
13. Lauren Tonokawa (Energy Excelerator)
14. Jarrod Lopiccolo (Noble Studios)
15. Daniel Mietchen (OKF-DE)
16. Matthias Schade (HU-Berlin)
17. Sherry Leung (Simon Fraser University)
18. Graham Ulvestad (Fluxx)
19. Kerrin Mitchell (Fluxx)
20. Catherine Thomas-Smith (UC San Diego)
21. Tony Gallippi (Bitpay)
22. John Dreyzehner (Bitpay)
23. Mike Rose (WA Law)
24. Isabella Bagueros (Twitter)
25. Park Sang-hak (North Korean human rights activist)
26. Kang Chol-hwan (North Korean human rights activist)
27. Thor Halvorssen (Human Rights Foundation)
28. Alex Gladstein (Human Rights Foundation)
--
Tilman Bayer
Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
Dear community:
Below you will find the report of activities of the month of March done by
the volunteers of Wikimedia Mexico. Don't hesitate to get in touch with us
if you require extra information about this activities or only to make some
suggestions.
Best regards on behalf our chapter.
Salvador Alcántar
WMMX Treasurer.
*March 2014*
JournalMarch 1
- First General Assembly of Wikimedia México civil association, held at
Edificio Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez of the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
(Faculty of Philosophy and Literature) of the National Autonomous
University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico City.
March 3
- Talk about Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects by Iván Martínez in the
Seminario de Humanidades Digitales of Red de Humanidades Digitales (RedHD).
Edificio Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez of the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
(Faculty of Philosophy and Literature) of the National Autonomous
University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico City.
Wikipedia monthly workshop at Telmex Hub, March 2014.
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Taller_Wikipedia_TelmexHub_Marzo_2014.…>
March 4
- Presentation meeting about Wikimedia Mexico to Biblioteca Vasconcelos
staff.
- Talk about Wikipedia and Wikimedia by Iván Martínez at Escuela
Nacional de Música (National School of Music) of UNAM.
March 5
- Talk by Gustavo Sandoval Kingwergs about "A translation on the left:
wikitranslators" (Círculo de Traductores/17, Instituto de Estudios
Culturales/Centro Cultural de España en México). Centro Cultural de España
en México, Ciudad de México.
March 8
- Meeting with Hacker Garage and Zapopan Lab representatives in
Guadalajara, Jalisco, to make possible alliances with Wikimedia México.
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Simposio_AXIS.jpg>
Attendees to Wikimedia Mexico's talk in the International Simposium of
Engineering AXIS in Sonora.
March 14
- Official presentation of Mexico City's nomination for Wikimanía
2015<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015_bids/Mexico_City>
March 20
- Meeting with the Meetropers community in Guadalajara, state of
Jalisco, and preparation for Campus Party 2014.
March 22
- Editathon in Reynosa, state of Tamaulipas, to celebrate the 265th
anniversary of the foundation of the city of Reynosa, jointly with the
municipality's government.
March 27
- Talk "Wikimedia, technology and free knowledge" by Omar Sandoval
during the Simposio Internacional de Ingeniería, Sistemas y Tecnología
(International Symposium on Engineering, Systems and Technology) "AXIS
2014". Hermosillo, state of Sonora.
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Editat%C3%B3n_Reynosa._Marzo_2014-2.jpg>
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Editat%C3%B3n_Reynosa._Marzo_2014-2.jpg>
Wikipedia workshop in Reynosa.
March 28
- Talk "What did humanity do to have a free encyclopedia?", by Christian
Cariño at the Centro Universitario de Economía y Ciencias Administrativas
(University Center of Economy and Administration Sciences) of the
Universidad de Guadalajara. Zapopan, state of Jalisco.
March 29
- Wikipedia monthly workshop at Telmex Hub, Mexico City.
- Reynosa's City Hall donation of historical photos event with the
presence of Iván Martínez, president of the chapter, and José Elías,
president of Reynosa's City Hall.
March 31
- Wikipedia edition workshop by Nohemí Chilpa at Autonomous Metropolitan
University Campus Iztapalapa (UAM-I) during the Semana de Talleres (Week of
Workshops) of UAM Iztapalapa Computer Sciences Chapter (CEUAMI). Mexico
City.
During March
- Wikimania 2015 bid for Mexico City: planning, research, meetings,
write and translations.
- Development of a new management and project management protocol for
the chapter
- Development of a content strategy for the wikimedia.mx website and for
the chapter's social networks
- Translation into Spanish of the contents of Wikimedia Foundation
social media channels.
- Diffusion tasks during
Migrahack<http://justicejournalism.org/es/events/ciudad-de-mexico-mexico-2014/>,
a hack-a-thon to tell stories about migrations with open data.
HiglightsWikimania 2015 bid
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimania_2015_Mexico_City_identity_2.…>
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimania_2015_Mexico_City_identity_2.…>
Identity of the Mexico City's bid
After at least six months of work about research, planning and meetings
among with the WMF staff, Wikimedia Mexico presents its bid for host
Wikimania in Mexico City. The bid was leaded by Iván Martínez and conduced
by Carmen Alcázar, Christian Cariño, Andrés Cruz y Corro and Omar Sandoval.
In March 21th, the staff of Wikimedia Mexico had an evaluation meeting with
the Judging Committee.
Reynosa's City Hall donation of historical
photos[editar<https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wik…>
]
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plaza_Principal_Miguel_Hidalgo,_Circa_…>
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plaza_Principal_Miguel_Hidalgo,_Circa_…>
Reynosa main place circa 1930
Reynosa <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynosa> is a border city of
Mexico<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico>,
located in the state of Tamaulipas<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamaulipas>,
and neighbor of McAllen, Texas. Reynosa's City Hall performs some Wikimedia
events to commemorate the 265th anniversary of the foundation of the city.
First, performing the "Wiki Reynosa" photo contest during the month of
March. An edit-a-thon was organized on March 22, and then, on March 29, the
City Hall performs an official event to donate historical photos of Reynosa
to Wikimedia Commons from the City Hall archives.
The Wikimedia Nederland monthly report over March is available on meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederl…
.
It is also included as text in this message.
*COMMUNITY: supporting and mobilising volunteers and editors*
· DBpedia - WikiData meeting
Volunteers working on the DBPedia project met with volunteers working on
Wikidata at the WMNL office to discuss cooperation and synergy between the
projects.
· Zurich Hackathon
Three volunteers applied for and received scholarships to attend the
Wikimedia Hackathon in Zürich.
*WORK: content, collaboration and activity development*
· Education Programme
WMNL wants to explore the feasibility of developing a successful education
programme in the Netherlands. Following a brainstorming meeting with
interested community members, we issued a call for tender asking proposals
concerning a first exploratory feasibility study. We received 7 responses
and selected a small consultancy with a good track record in the education
field. As a first step, they will interview key stakeholders. A meeting
with the community is planned on May 24. More information, including the
proposal of the 'winning' consultants can be found on the project page on
the WMNL wiki.
· Wiki Loves Earth
WMNL is organising a Wiki Loves Earth competition in the Netherlands as
part of wider drive to improve content and coverage of issues related to
nature, wildlife and biodiversity in the Wikimedia projects. A group of
volunteers is taking the lead in organising a series of activities in May.
This will be done in cooperation with the Dutch National Parks. A series
of activities are in preparation, including workshops on uploading images
and sounds, writing events and photo-safaris.
· World War II: photos of war monuments
This year, improving and adding to content on the Wikimedia projects
related to World War II is a priority for WMNL. As a first step a group of
volunteers is organising a photo-drive to obtain images of all war
monuments in the Netherlands. WMNL cooperates with the Nationaal Comité 4
en 5 mei (the official organisation in charge of remembrance). The
photo-drive kicked off April 1. (Spoiler: on April 15, already 677 images
had been uploaded.)
· Other
On March 10, Frans Grijzenhout and Wikipedian in Residence Hay Kranen
demonstrated working with Wikipedia for students of the Social science dept
of the University of Amsterdam. The students (bachelor level) take part in
a special honors program. The theme of their course is crowd findings. On
March 20, Ziko van Dijk presented Wikipedia issues at the IPON fair for
educational resources, in the Utrecht Jaarbeurs.
*WMNL*
· General Assembly and Board elections
On March 29, there was a WMNL General Assembly, which included Board
Elections. Chair Ziko van Dijk and Treasurer Paul Becherer stepped down,
both after having served on the Board for a good many years. Frans
Grijzenhout, Ad Huikeshoven en Jan Anton Brouwer were re-elected. They were
joined on the Board by newcomers André Engels, Ronn Boef, Marlon Thé and
Justus de Bruijn.
The General Assembly also approved the annual report and the accountsof
WMNL.
· Newsletter
An issue of the newsletter was sent out.
*FUNDING*
· A private grant making foundation donated €30,000 to WMNL. This
is in support of our planned work with public libraries (with a possible
focus on Dutch literature and writers) and a pilot project to provide
access to relevant Wikipedia articles via image recognition of objects in a
museum collection.
*GLOBAL*
· Board Governance Training Workhop London
On March 1 and 2, WMUK organised a training workshop for Board members of
Wikimedia affiliates. WMNL Board member Frans Grijzenhout took part in the
training. Executive director Sandra Rientjes was involved as a facilitator.
*GOVERNANCE*
· Reporting
March was a busy month for reporting. The Annual report and accounts over
2013 were approved by the auditor. Also WMNL submitted its impact report to
the Funds Dissemination Committee.
· Board
The (old) board met on March 13 and discussed i.a. last preparations for
the annual assembly.
*Upcoming*
· April: War monuments photo-drive
· May 24: Education Programme - presentation and discussion at the
Wikimedia office in Utrecht
· May - June: Wiki Loves Earth
Sandra Rientjes
Directeur/Executive Director Wikimedia Nederland
tel. (+31) (0)30 3200238
mob. (+31) (0)6 31786379
www.wikimedia.nl
*Postadres*: * Bezoekadres:*
Postbus 167 Mariaplaats 3
3500 AD Utrecht Utrecht
At the request of the WMF Board of Trustees, I am posting the minutes of
the January 31 - February 1, 2014 meeting, which you may find here:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2014-01-31
Best,
Stephen LaPorte
Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
*For legal reasons, I may only serve as an attorney for the Wikimedia
Foundation. This means I may not give legal advice to or serve as a lawyer
for community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal
capacity.*
_-_group_photo.jpg){kind=link}
