Jakob Hammarbäck is Wikimedia Swedens new secretary. He started his
position on Friday and is going to manage the association's daily
operations. The hiring is another step towards professionalization by
reducing the load of the board, but also a step to increase the
support to the Wikimedia community and the association's partners.
-To find new associate partners is an important work to extend the
activities. Another important task for me will be the support for
ongoing and future projects, says Jakob Hammarbäck.
During the last years Jacob Hammarbäck worked with organizational
development, both as a self-employed and as an employee of nonprofit
organizations. He also worked with usability and IT development, and
one thing he is looking forward to the new job is to work for the
continue development of Wikimedia in the future. He is placed in
Stockholm and a helping hand in the daily work operations to support
the community. Jakob will, among other things, organize the technology
pool of Wikimedia Sweden where volunteers borrow camera and video
equipment to create photos and films.
-The recruiting committee had the pleasant problem with a lot of
strong applications to consider, where Jakob finally was the best
candidate with a mixture of competence, record of results and ideals
that coincide with the association, says Jan Ainali, chairman of
Wikimedia Sweden.
Something that will be easier for the association is to work with, for
example, museums and schools that have their operations in the
daytime. Volunteers who themselves are working or attending school
during the day find it difficult to attend the meetings when the
partners have their working hours. Jakob will also involve the
community and be cohesive in the projects to be implemented this year.
-I am especially looking forward to editathons where people in a
particular area of interest meet together to update Wikipedia.
Together, it becomes an opportunity to deepen knowledge and pass it
on, says Jakob Hammarbäck.
Articles about cycling and kayaking will not get an instant facelift
although they are some of Jakob's hobbies. The secretary will not be
editing articles during working hours but make it easier for
volunteers to create articles, correct errors, take photos and create
new partnerships.
-We now take a major step in making it easier for our volunteers to do
what they are passionate about by relieving them from the
administrative burden, says Jan, and continues, Jakob has an extensive
experience in organizational development and working with volunteers,
which is exactly what Wikimedia Sweden needs at this point.
=== Contact ===
'''Jakob Hammarbäck''', Secretary Wikimedia Sweden
* telephone: 0739-237193
* e-mail: jakob.hammarback(a)wikimedia.se
'''Jan Ainali''', Chairman Wikimedia Sweden
* telephone: 076-2122776
* e-mail: jan.ainali(a)wikimedia.se
'''Axel Pettersson''', press contact Wikimedia Sweden
* telephone: 0730-59581
* e-mail: press(a)wikimedia.se
Holger Motzkau
--
Styrelseledamot, kassör
Wikimedia Sverige
Box 500
SE-101 29 Stockholm
Org.-nr. 802437-8310
http://www.wikimedia.se/
The following translation are now available for the January 2012
"Wikimedia Highlights", which combine some of the most relevant
information from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia
engineering report for January 2012 with a selection of other
important events from the Wikimedia movement. Help is welcome in
spreading the translated versions among the project communities for
these languages, where this has not already been done. Many thanks to
all translators!
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_January_2012/vi
Những điểm nổi bật từ Bản báo cáo Wikimedia Foundation và phản hồi kỹ
thuật Wikimedia vào tháng 1 năm 2012, bao gồm các sự kiện quan trọng
khác của phong trào Wikimedia
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_January_2012/nl
Hoogtepunten uit de Wikimedia Foundationrapportage en de Wikimedia
technische rapportage voor januari 2012, aangevuld met een selectie
van andere belangrijke gebeurtenissen binnen de Wikimediabeweging.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_January_2012/it
Punti salienti dal rapporto della Wikimedia Foundation e dal rapporto
ingegneristico Wikimedia di gennaio 2012, con una selezione di altre
importanti iniziative dagli eventi di Wikimedia
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_January_2012/hu
A Wikimédia Alapítvány beszámolójának és a Wikimédia mérnöki
beszámolónak fontosabb pontjai illetve más fontos események a
Wikimédia-mozgalomból 2012 januárjában.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_January_2012/fr
Éclairages sur le rapport de la Fondation Wikimédia et le rapport
d’ingénierie Wikimédia pour janvier 2012, avec une sélection d’autres
évènements importants du mouvement Wikimédia.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_January_2012/da
Hovedpunkter fra Wikimedia Foundations månedsrapport og Wikimedias
tekniske rapport for januar 2012 med et udvalg af andre
betydningsfulde hændelser i Wikimedia-bevægelsen
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_January_2012/ar
أهم المقتطفات من تقرير مؤسسة ويكيميديا و تقرير ويكيميديا الهندسي لشهر
يناير 2012، مع مجموعة من أهم الأحداث لحركة ويكيميديا
(Translations into other languages, such as Finnish, might become
available later this month, check
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_January_2012 ).
Suggestions for the movement news section in the upcoming Highlights
issue are welcome until March 1, see
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights .
Also a quick note that on the suggestion of users Timeshifter and
Buster Keaton, we have started a (still experimental) global
subscription service for the "Wikimedia Highlights", similar to that
of the Signpost. If you would like to receive a summary message
delivered to your user talk page on any Wikimedia project right after
each issue is published, add yourself to
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery/Targets/Wikimedia_H…
(at the moment this is for the English original, but eventually
subscription should become available for the translated versions as
well).
--
Tilman Bayer
Movement Communications
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
Hello all,
It’s with great pleasure that I’m announcing that Terrence (Terry) Chay is
joining the Wikimedia Foundation as Director of Features Engineering.
Terry comes to us from Automattic, where he helped improve the
WordPress.com user experience by implementing an A/B testing framework,
improving the blog domain name registration process (which contributed to
doubling the revenue for WordPress.com), creating better support mechanisms
for fist-time users, and making many other changes. In that role, he was an
individual contributor to the WordPress codebase.
Before Automattic, Terry worked as an engineering manager and software
architect for multiple start-ups and tech companies between 1999 and 2009,
most recently at Tagged and Plaxo. He has a B.S. in Physics from the
California Institute of Technology and an M.S. in Physics from the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).
If you’ve ever been to OSCON, you may have seen Terry present one of his
infamous PHP talks there (he’s been invited back repeatedly for some
reason). All in, he’s given more than 25 public talks about web
development. He’s also a prolific blogger and photographer (
http://terrychay.com/ ), joining the nascent photography cabal at Wikimedia.
As Director of Features Engineering, Terry will be responsible for helping
ensure the success of some of our key feature teams: the visual editor
team, the editor engagement team (including the article feedback project),
and the fundraising engineering team.
This announcement also means that Alolita Sharma will be transitioning into
a new director-level role at the Wikimedia Foundation. While we’ve not
finalized all details, the role will include responsibility for the
internationalization team, for experimental features projects and
technology evaluation. We’ll announce details about that shortly. I want to
thank Alolita for her track record of excellent leadership at Wikimedia
to-date.
Terry's first day will be February 27. Please join me in welcoming Terry to
the Wikimedia movement. :-)
All best,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Greetings,
The Wikimedia Foundation is planning to upgrade MediaWiki, the
software powering Wikipedia and its sister sites, to its latest
version.
The upgrade will happen in several stages over the month, starting this week.
You can still help to test it before it is enabled, to avoid
disruption and breakage.
More information:
* Announcement on the Wikimedia blog:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/02/11/mediawiki-1-19-deployment/
* The announcement in other languages:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.19/Deployment_announcement
Thank you for your understanding.
--
Guillaume Paumier
Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation
Hi all,
please find below the WMF report for January 2012, in plain text.
As always, the editable and formatted version is on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_January_2012
and the reports are posted on the Wikimedia blog, too:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/c/corporate/wmf-monthly-reports/
Since a few months, we have been 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,_January_2012
Many thanks to those who translated last month's "Highlights" into
Danish, German, Finnish, French, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian
(Bokmål), Dutch, Polish, and Vietnamese!
While still focussing on WMF activities, the "Highlights" include a
small selection of the most noteworthy events from the whole movement.
Suggestions for the upcoming Febuary issue are welcome at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights (until March 1).
Regards, Tilman
--
= Wikimedia Foundation Report, January 2012 =
<Video: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monthly_Metrics_Meeting_February_2,…
Video of the monthly Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities
meeting covering the month of January (February 2, 2012)>
* 1 Data and Trends
* 2 Financials
* 3 Highlights
o 3.1 Foundation supports historic anti-SOPA Wikipedia blackout
o 3.2 San Francisco Hackathon
o 3.3 Mobile announcements: Official Android app, and Orange
partnership for free Wikipedia access in Africa/Middle East
* 4 Technology
o 4.1 Events
o 4.2 Operations
o 4.3 Features Engineering
o 4.4 Mobile
o 4.5 Platform Engineering
* 5 Research
* 6 Community
o 6.1 Projects
+ 6.1.1 Editor Retention
o 6.2 Fundraising
+ 6.2.1 Fundraiser
+ 6.2.2 Major Gifts and Foundations
o 6.3 Fellowship Program
+ 6.3.1 Program Activities
+ 6.3.2 Fellowship Projects
o 6.4 Community relations
* 7 Global Development
o 7.1 Announcements
o 7.2 Grants
+ 7.2.1 Policy Discussions
+ 7.2.2 Wikimedia Grants Approved
+ 7.2.3 Participation Grants Approved
o 7.3 US Cultural Partnerships
o 7.4 Research
o 7.5 India Programs
o 7.6 Brazil Catalyst
o 7.7 Arabic Language Initiative
o 7.8 Global Education Program
o 7.9 Mobile
o 7.10 Communications
+ 7.10.1 Major news
o 7.11 Press releases
o 7.12 Blog posts
o 7.13 Wikipedia Signpost
o 7.14 Media contact
* 8 Human Resources
o 8.1 Staff Changes
o 8.2 Statistics
o 8.3 Department Updates
* 9 Finance and Administration
* 10 Legal
* 11 Visitors and Guests
== Data and Trends ==
Global unique visitors for December:
457 million (-3.7% compared with November; +15.6% compared with the
previous year)
(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will
release January data later in February)
Page requests for January:
18.0 billion (+10.4% compared with December; 16.4% compared with the
previous year)
(Server log data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects including mobile
access)
Active Registered Editors for December 2011 (>= 5 edits/month):
83,293 (+0.1% compared with November / +1.6% compared with the
previous year)
(Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects except for Wikimedia
Commons) Report Card for December 2011:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2011_12_detailed.html
The report card is currently undergoing a redesign as a more
fully-featured dashboard (integrating various statistical data and
trends about WMF projects).
== Financials ==
(Financial information is only available for December 2011 at the time
of this report.)
All financial information presented is for the period of July 1, 2011 -
December 31, 2011
Revenue: $25.6 million
Expenses:
* Technology Group: $4,801,082
* Community/Fundraiser Group: $2,501,444
* Global Development Group: $2,154,912
* Governance Group: $464,533
* Finance/Legal/HR/Admin Group: $2,916,686
Total Expenses: $12,838,657
Total surplus/(loss): $12,784,247
Revenue was ahead of plan due to grants of $2.8 million and additional
donations ahead of plan of $2 million.
Expenses for the month is $2.9MM vs plan of $2.6MM, approximately 11%
higher than plan. Year-to-date is $12.8MM vs plan of $14.2MM,
approximately 10% lower than plan.
Underspending YTD is due to timing of capital expenditures ($989K -
budget was spread evenly over 12 months), internet hosting ($64K),
volunteer development ($142K), travel and conference expenses ($233K),
personnel expenses ($584K), recruiting expenses ($124K), and IT desk
equipment ($77K) offset by higher awards and grants ($261K) budget was
spread evenly over 12 months), legal and accounting fees ($81K),
professional services ($293K), and bank fees ($248K).
Cash of $30.6 million, which is thirteen months of cash reserves at
current spending levels and fourteen months of cash per the annual plan.
== Highlights ==
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_SOPA_War_Room_…
WMF staff preparing for the anti-SOPA blackout>
=== Foundation supports historic anti-SOPA Wikipedia blackout ===
On January 18, the community of the English Wikipedia made history
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/20/the-message-from-the-wikipedia-blacko…>
with its decision
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/16/wikipedias-community-calls-for-anti-s…>
to black out its entire project for 24 hours in protest of two proposed
US laws — SOPA and PIPA — that would have seriously damaged the free and
open Internet, including Wikipedia. The communities of over 30 other
Wikimedia projects supported the protest
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Actions_by_other_co…>.
Many Foundation staff assisted in the effort, handling the technical
side of the blackout as requested by the community, providing code and
design, facilitating discussions, contributing legal analysis and
handling an unprecedented amount of press coverage.
During the blackout, more than eight million US-based readers used the
CongressLookup tool to find their political representatives. A blog post
by Sue Gardner received more than 13,000 comments, with the overwhelming
majority supporting the blackout. Google News listed over 11,000 media
stories about the Wikipedia blackout and the other Internet protests of
January 18, and #wikipediablackout was tweeted almost 1 million times.
Support for both SOPA and PIPA has since dwindled. Observers expect that
they will not become law in their proposed form.
=== San Francisco Hackathon ===
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:San_Francisco_Hackathon_2012-1-16.j…
Participants at the San Francisco Hackathon>
The first San Francisco Hackathon was attended by 92 participants, many
of them complete newcomers. They attended training sessions about
Wikimedia technology, followed by team work on demo projects which were
then presented in a showcase session and judged by a jury. The first
prize went to "SMSpedia", which allows the user to text a page title to
a phone number, who is then called back by the service and can listen to
the Wikipedia entry read aloud.
=== Mobile announcements: Official Android app, and Orange partnership
for free Wikipedia access in Africa/Middle East ===
In the first partnership of its kind, mobile operator Orange and the
Wikimedia Foundation will provide more than 70 million Orange customers
from 20 countries in Africa and the Middle East (AMEA) with mobile
access to Wikipedia
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/24/free-mobile-for-wikipedia-starts-with…>
— without incurring data usage charges. Also in January, the official
Wikipedia Android app was announced
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/26/announcing-the-official-wikipedia-and…>.
It was installed more than half a million times within the first two weeks.
== Technology ==
A detailed report of the Tech Department's activities for January 2012
can be found at:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2012/January
Department Highlights
Major news in January include:
* Tech support for the black-out protesting SOPA & PIPA
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/16/wikipedias-community-calls-for-anti-s…>;
* The release of the official Wikipedia Android app
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/26/announcing-the-official-wikipedia-and…>;
* A new beta cluster
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/28/beta-cluster-test-software-before-dep…>
for Wikimedians to test upcoming software before it's deployed to
production.
=== Events ===
* *English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout>*
— The engineering team
supported this online protest by developing and deploying the
blackout code and design, including the CongressLookup extension for
helping people find and contact their representative. The Operations
team disabled editing during the 24 hour time period, and helped
keep other systems up and running, including the temporarily
overloaded Wikimedia blog.
* *San Francisco hackathon
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/January_2012_San_Francisco_Hackathon>* —
More than 90 participants learned and hacked during this
outreach-focused developers week-end. The teams of participants
demonstrated more than a dozen projects.
* *October 2011 Coding Challenge
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/October_2011_Coding_Challenge>* — The
winners of the coding challenge
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/30/october-2011-coding-challenge-winners/>
were announced. They include an Android app
<https://market.android.com/details?id=nl.michiel1972.main> for
uploading to Wikimedia Commons, a user script
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Schnark/mostEdited> for surfacing
pages with a lot of recent editing activity, and a user script
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Phiarc/October2011/> for displaying
relevant images in an article as a lightbox slideshow.
=== Operations ===
* *Data Centers* — Work continued on building up the EQIAD datacenter
in Virginia. We added new servers and upgraded the database servers
with a new chained replication topology and a heartbeat-based
replication monitoring. We have also successfully tested the new
thumbnail system and the text squid implementation, that we'll start
rolling out fully in February. At the same time, we have retired 40
old servers from our Tampa datacenter, which will be available for
donation soon.
* *Wikimedia Labs* — To keep up with project growth, we doubled the
filesystem storage available and allowed Labs to grow by up to
another 30 instances. A number of projects were added or moved to
Labs, including incubator, ganglia, deployment-prep,
globaleducation, a number of mobile projects, and a bunch more. A
number of projects were also created, implemented, and demoed using
Labs during the San Francisco hackathon.
=== Features Engineering ===
* *Visual editor* — Plans for the second phase of the editor project
were formulated. The team investigated a possible use of
contenteditable to help with input methods and text selections on
mobile devices. The parser was also extended with the ability to
fetch and expand templates in a parallel and asynchronous fashion.
The parser now supports most parts of the English Wikipedia Main Page.
* *Article feedback* — The next round of Article Feedback Tool v5
features was developed, including a new feedback page. The teal
continued to collect valuable data from the community about the
usefulness of comments coming in from each of the three forms
launched in December. A survey to get comments from readers about
the effectiveness and attractiveness of each design was also
launched. The target date for the full feedback page is Feb. 15 for
pre-deployment testing on en-labs, then full deployment on Feb. 22.
* *Feedback Dashboard* — We implemented a leaderboard of recent top
responders on the feedback dashboard. New editor feedback is now
added to a dedicated log. When feedback is marked as helpful, that
fact is displayed on the feedback dashboard itself. Other than a few
other smaller changes, we're now moving the project into maintenance
mode to focus on article creation workflow
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_creation_workflow> and New Page
Triage <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/New_Page_Triage>.
=== Mobile ===
* *Android Wikipedia App* — The Mobile team released the first version
of the Wikipedia Android application
<https://market.android.com/details?id=org.wikipedia> into the
Android Market. In just over three weeks, we've had over 900,000
downloads, became the #1 search result for "Wikipedia", became the
#1 trending app, and received a consistent 4/5 stars in the Android
Market. We released two minor updates to fix bugs, and are
processing user feedback to guide our next version.
* *FeaturedFeeds* — We deployed the first version of FeaturedFeeds
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/26/featuredfeeds-brings-syndication-feed…>
to production. Wikimedia communities can now make use of these RSS
feeds to better surface their content to other applications.
=== Platform Engineering ===
* *MediaWiki 1.19* — A new Beta cluster, replicating the production
environment, was set up to allow Wikimedians to test upcoming
software (including MediaWiki 1.19) on Wikimedia Labs before
deployment. A preliminary schedule was drafted, according to which
deployment of MediaWiki 1.19 will start on February 13th and
complete on March 1st.
* *Volunteer coordination and outreach* — In preparation for the San
Francisco hackathon, the team prepared training materials and
documentation on gadgets and the MediaWiki API. Nine developers got
commit access in January, among which seven volunteers.
* *Wikimedia blog maintenance* — The new WMBlog plugin (which brings
functionality specific to the Wikimedia blog independently of the
theme) was deployed in January, as well as tweaks to the theme. Due
to the SOPA/PIPA blackout-related traffic, the Operations team moved
the blog to a newer, more powerful server and added caching layers
(Varnish & Memcached).
== Research ==
* Daniel Mietchen lead the drafting and submission of a response
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Committee/Areas_of_interest/Open-a…>
to the White House RFI on Public Access to Scholarly Publications.
* The open data consultation
<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&formkey=dGNBSGFUcTdJL…>
we launched in December closed with 100 responses. The results will
be published this month.
* Several Research Committee and community members worked on the
English Wikipedia article for the Research Works Act
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Works_Act>, a proposed bill that
would undermine open access mandates for publicly funded research in
the US. The bill would affect our research policy as it would make
it hard for RCom to enforce any OA and open data requirements for
research collaborations. The article made it to DYK on January 15, 2012.
* Dario Taraborelli gave a podcast interview
<http://futurejournalismproject.org/post/16028914688/wikimedia-data-and-peer…>
with Michael Cervieri for the Future Journalism Project, discussing
what Wikipedia can do to support data journalism.
* Dario Taraborelli co-hosted with APS cognitive psychology professor
Greta Munger a session on Scientists and Wikipedia
<http://scienceonline2012.sched.org/event/db96864b9ce76d4792a7f0f21f7611aa>
at Science Online 2012 <http://scienceonline2012.com/> in Raleigh,
NC (slides
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Venues_for_expert_participation_in_…>).
* We set up a Wikimedia group <http://thedatahub.org/group/wikimedia>
on the /DataHub/, an open data repository powered by CKAN
<http://ckan.net>. The repository is for testing purposes but all
data deposited will be preserved and migrated once we've finalized
the configuration of the repository.
* Mayo Fuster Morell circulated a call for papers
<http://www.onlinecreation.info/?p=474> calling for contributions on
"Academic research into Wikipedia: Beyond English Wikipedia and
towards comparative perspectives". The submission deadline is March
1, 2012.
* Tilman Bayer led the publication of the first 2012 issue
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/2012-01-30> of the
Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
== Community ==
Department Highlights
* Lots of clean up/ wrap up work from the fundraiser; Lots of planning
work already done for the 2012 fundraiser
* 23 fellowship project proposals and suggestions received for the
Fellowship program.
* Community & reader relations team supported SOPA work and
fundraising and funds dissemination discussion.
* Wrapping up template testing pilot project, beginning analysis of
results
=== Projects ===
==== Editor Retention ====
* Other than new community requests to test on the Wikimedia Incubator
and Commons, the majority of template A/B tests have been wrapped
up. Ryan Faulkner, formerly part of the fundraising team, has joined
our group as the Community Research Analyst to further understand
template testing results, and the group is now publishing test
results on Meta as they come in.[1]
* The Community Dept. is hosting the first 2012 meet-up of California
Wikipedians at the Foundation offices on Saturday, Feb 4 —
coinciding with the Board of Trustees meeting. [2]
* We are planning a series of meet-ups with Brazilian editors in early
March to better understand their community and its dynamics, and
give those authors a place to voice issues that the Foundation may
be able to assist with. [3]
* Collecting resumes and scheduling preliminary screenings of
candidates for the 2012 Community Summer Analysts, whose work will
focus on providing working data and actionable recommendations for
community change programs. [4]
* Wrapping up a proof-of-concept analytic project with Odiago, who has
provided some insight into authorship questions with big data
analysis of our diff data.
1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template_A/B_testing
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/San_Francisco_17
3.
https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Convenings/Portuguese_Wikipedia
4.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Summer_Community_Analytics
=== Fundraising ===
==== Fundraiser ====
* Gathered all fundraising staff and contractors in San Francisco for
the 2011 Fundraiser Retrospective. We recapped accomplishments, and
identified pain points and successes in communications and process
so that the next fundraiser can be run more smoothly with a leaner team.
* Began writing the 2011 Fundraiser Report which will be publicly
posted in 2012.
* Held a planning session for the 2012 Fundraiser. Over two days, the
team set priorities for this year and focused on mapping out a
division of responsibility, communication and tracking processes,
ways to improve localization, testing, donor experience, and
analytics systems.
* In conjunction with the Brazilian author meet-ups, we are planning
focus groups and storyteller interviews in both Brazil and Argentina.
* Created a testing calendar to plan out regional tests throughout the
year. These tests will focus on the localization of our forms and
appeals in different countries.
* Started our global research on currencies, payment methods and
personal information fields to integrate to the regional tests.
* Began researching new payment methods requested by Wikipedia users
during the 2011 fundraiser.
==== Major Gifts and Foundations ====
* Received a 3-year grant from the Teterev Foundation
* Completed a new grant proposal for our mobile work
=== Fellowship Program ===
==== Program Activities ====
* Fellowship recruiting continues - the community generated 23
fellowship project ideas [1] in January and applications have been
submitted by candidates from 18 countries. The deadline to apply for
this round of fellowships has been extended until February 15th, and
review of existing applications is underway.
==== Fellowship Projects ====
* The fundraising translation project report is complete,[2] and Jon
Harald Søby hosted a brown bag presentation at WMF to discuss
lessons learned. A survey of the fundraiser translators is also in
progress, with nearly 300 responses so far. Feedback will be
incorporated into future fundraisers as well as an upcoming project
to improve the meta translation request process, which is in the
planning stages.
* The Teahouse project has recruited 23 Wikipedians to serve as
Teahouse hosts - they'll be inviting new editors to the space,
answering questions, and facilitating discussions during the
pilot.[3] Design of the space is in progress.
1.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships/Process#Open_project_…
2.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011/Translation/Project_Report
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse/Hosts
=== Community relations ===
* Supported the Fundraising/Funds Dissemination discussions on meta [1].
* Actively supported SOPA, and all the madness that came with it (see
also general "Highlights" section. More SOPA pictures:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Victorgrigas#SOPA )
* Developed job descriptions for new hires (new "Maggies") from around
the world to support our global capacity.
1.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_and_Funds_Dissemination/Recomme…
== Global Development ==
Department highlights
* Communications supports WMF's blackout on 18 January (see also
general "Highlights" section)
* Mobile: Partnership with Orange was announced on 24 January to
supply free access to Wikipedia to more than 70 million customers
across 20 countries in the middle east and Africa.
* Arabic-speaking Initaitive: Arabic-speaking Wikipedians met in
Tunisia this month beginning a regional outreach effort to create
new connections in the Arabic Wikimedia community..
* India program: Six outreach workshops in January in partnership with
the community as part of an effort to increase outreach and improve
conversion to editing
* Education Program: Published program plan for Cairo pilot and new
standards for participation in the global education program are put
in place
* The Global Development team midyear report is now available:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Global_Development_Midyear_report_2011-…
=== Announcements ===
* Wikimania Scholarships are open! *Encourage your networks to apply!*
https://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships
=== Grants ===
==== Policy Discussions ====
* Ongoing discussion of proposed procedure and criteria for
unrestricted operating grants based on annual plans
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Annual/Draft>.
* Ongoing discussion of Grant Advisory Committee's membership terms,
appointment procedures, and form of review
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Grant_Advisory_Committee>.
==== Wikimedia Grants Approved ====
* Grants:WM_PH/Open_Web_Day
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_PH/Open_Web_Day>
* Additional $1000 for scholarships for
Grants:WM_RS/Open_Wiki_GLAM_of_Serbia#Scholarship
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_RS/Open_Wiki_GLAM_of_Serbia#Schol…>
* Grants:WM_CL/Start-up
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_CL/Start-up>
==== Participation Grants Approved ====
* Grants:Jonas_Xavier/Campus_Party_2012
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Jonas_Xavier/Campus_Party_2012>
=== US Cultural Partnerships ====
* US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator begins work
* Preparation has continued for the Wikipedia session and table at the
*American Association of Museums conference
<http://www.aam-us.org/am12/>* in April. The Wikipedia session will
now also be part of the exclusive online conference as well.
* *GLAMcamp DC <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAMcamp_DC>*, which
will take place in early
February, is in its final stages of preparation. This has included
establishing a proposed framework for GLAM:US collaboration, which
will be presented at GLAMcamp and finalized as a goal of the event
alongside other documentation and tool development.
* Initial coordination talks have begun with Europeana and others who
will be collaborating on GLAM tools over the coming year.
* There has been ongoing follow-up on leads and expressions of
interest from GLAM institutions, as well as consolidation of
interested parties and contacts into a single, master list. This
streamlining of information will continue at GLAMcamp DC.
* In February, the US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator will be
publishing a number of GLAM-related blog posts for various
organizations , including the Center for the Future of Museums
<http://www.futureofmuseums.org/>, the Open Knowledge Foundation
<http://okfn.org/>, and the New Media Consortium <http://www.nmc.org/>.
=== Research ===
* Kicked off work on the outreach tool. Further details can be found
at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Outreach_evaluation
(early-stage UI mockups will be added soon)
* Read more about the mobile readers survey analysis here:
http://prezi.com/foyok1qpfxqa/wikipedia-mobile-readers-survey-2011/
* Successfully completed the second editor survey, data cleaning to
start soon.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMFMobilePageviewsApril2011ToNovemb…
Mobile page views across the last few months>
* Completed work on getting a more reliable estimate of mobile page
views. Work to get reliable estimates of mobile page views by
geography is continuing.
* Continued blogging about the readers survey:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/tag/readers-survey/
* Find the wiki version of the India-Brazil user experience research
here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Mobile_User_Research
* Read about India Education Program quantitative analysis here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Analysis/Qu…
=== India Programs ===
* We concluded an exercise on distilling learnings from all Indic
communities and started the process of seeding ideas with
communities. All ideas are centred around community building (and
not content creation or improvement), the rationale being that
content will follow community.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Indic_Languages
o Ideas have been customised by the community and are a
combination of what individual volunteers or volunteer groups
can do indepedently as well as potentail pilots that the India
Program team can build and run collaboratively with local
communities.
o There appears to be interesting progress in at least 6
languages : Hindi, Odia, Assamese, Kannada, Tamil & Malayalam.
* The India team is supporting outreach by sharing best practises as
well as making a central repository of outreach material. In
addition, the team is personally taking part in out outreach
sessions to provide additional momentum to existing community
efforts. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Outreach_Programs
* The team is analyzing the findings of the study and quantitative
analysis of the India Education Program and listening to additional
feedback from the community.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Analysis/In…
,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Analysis/Qu…
* We are finalizing a contract for Communications consultancy, which
closes the loop on the India consultancy team.
=== Brazil Catalyst ===
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikiSampa11_-_4.jpg
"Wikisampa 11" meetup in São Paulo>
* We have been working hand and hand with the community to hire the
Brazil National Program Director. The recruiting process has been
innovative in that we have engaged with an unprecedented level of
community involvement.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/11/brazil-recruiting-and-partnership-with…
1. We posted the role in November, and in parallel with an
executive search firm which was screening applicants, we asked
the Brazilian community to nominate two community members to
participate in the interviews with us. They selected two great
folks - Everton and Castelo - to interview 10 finalists on a
panel with Barry in Sao Paulo.
2. The next phase for the top 4 finalists was a unique assignment
to be done on the br.wikimedia.org wiki: /engage the Brazilian
community and your fellow candidates on the wiki to address the
question of how to grow the PT:WP community/? The assignment
went well and was a great learning experience for the candidates
and for us.
3. Following the assignment skype and interviews with Jessie, we
brought in a top candidate to SF at the end of the month and are
in the final stages of of the process.
* We are also starting a small *Brazil Education Pilot*
(https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_Brazil_programs/Educ…)
in March 2012. We are targeting about 5 professors (one of whom -
Juliana - pioneered this program in Brazil in 2011). Contractor
Everton Zanella Alvarenga is leading this effort from Sao Paulo.
=== Arabic Language Initiative ===
* Visited Tunisia as part of our outreach regional program, more
details are found here: [1]
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/02/01/wikimedia-in-tunisia/>
* Updated and localized some of our bookshelf material. (Printing is
currently in process.)
* Preparing for upcoming events in Egypt and Jordan
* Helped develop the Cairo education pilot - see Global Education
Program section
=== Global Education Program ===
* Frank Schulenburg published the program plan for the Cairo pilot to
start in spring 2012. The document outlines the core design elements
as well as the success criteria and the questions the pilot project
is supposed to answer:
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Pilot_program_plan
* Frank Schulenburg and Annie Lin documented the measures put in place
based on the learnings from the pilot project in Pune, India. (More
than 10 different actions have been taken in order to immediately
apply the learning points to the Cairo pilot. Among others, these
include a longer preparation phase, a heavy involvement of the local
community of Wikipedians, a strict limit on the number of
participating students, and mandatory professor orientations. More
differences on
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Comparing_the_Pune_and_the_Cairo_Pilot_…
)
* Professors joining the Wikipedia Education Program in the spring
2012 term are finding a new set of participation requirements in
place, designed to ensure that all participating professors and
students receive adequate support on Wikipedia.
o These new participation requirements are largely based on the
feedback given by members of the English Wikipedia community.
o The requirements set standards for the maximum number of
students per Wikipedia Ambassador and the number of Wikipedians
involved in the program, and they require instructors to go
through a faculty orientation.
o Currently, the requirements affect the programs in the U.S., in
Canada, and in Egypt during spring 2012, although individual
programs may enact stricter requirements as well (for example,
the Cairo Pilot will have an even smaller ambassador to student
ratio).
o So far, community reactions to these new requirements have been
very positive. More information:
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program/Participati…
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cairo_faculty_workshop6.jpg
Faculty workshop for the Cairo pilot (more photos on Wikimedia Commons
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_Education_Program_%E2…>)>
* Volunteers from the Arabic Wikipedia - supported by Education team
members Frank Schulenburg, Annie Lin and Georgetown University
professor Rochelle Davis - kicked off the Cairo pilot with workshops
for faculty members and Campus Ambassadors. These workshops were
almost 100% in Arabic.
* In late January, seven community members of the Arabic Wikipedia
completed an Online Ambassador orientation organized by other
Arabic-speaking Wikipedians and supported by Annie Lin.
* LiAnna Davis worked with Leigh Thelmadatter, who is an English as a
foreign language teacher in central Mexico, to document her
learnings with advanced English students who edited Wikipedia as
part of their class. Read more:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/27/wikipedia-as-a-foreign-culture/
* Rod Dunican published three online training modules for instructors
who are planning to participate in the Wikipedia Education Program:
o (1) Global Education Program Overview:
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Professor_Orientation/Module_…
o (2) About Wikipedia:
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Professor_Orientation/Module_…
o (3) Syllabus and Assignment Design:
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Professor_Orientation/Module_…
=== Mobile ===
* We announced a partnership with Orange on January 24 — free
Wikipedia access (i.e. no mobile data fees) for 70+ million
customers across 20 countries in the Middle East and Africa
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/24/free-mobile-for-wikipedia-starts-with…
o The announcement of the partnership got a lot of positive press
attention: 50+ articles including Mashable, GigaOM, Wired UK,
and Guardian
o There is much work ahead to implement these partnerships from a
technical and marketing standpoint: helping define how the
service is marketed by operators and how we measure it.
* "Selling in" free Wikipedia continues to be the main objective, and
we plan to announce another big partner — and new countries — in
Feburary.
* Project planning on further USSD/SMS testing in Africa with the
Praekelt Foundation began.
=== Communications ===
The Wikipedia blackout is January 2012's standout story, possibly the
story of the year for WMF and Wikipedia, and maybe the most important
story in our history. The days before and after January 18, 2012 were
almost exclusively focussed on supporting WMF's work around the
community mandate to bring about a blackout, including consulting on
messaging, design, implementation, community outreach and media
relations. January also saw the cap-off of our most successful
fundraising campaign ever, and saw the introduction of Matthew Roth to
the Communications team as Manager, Global Communications.
==== Major news ====
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:History_Wikipedia_English_SOPA_2012…
The English Wikipedia as seen by readers during the blackout>
Wikipedia blackout (January 18)
Undoubtedly one of the biggest stories in the US and the world in
January 2012 was the Internet protests on January 18, which largely
centered around the Wikipedia community decision to blackout English
Wikipedia internationally for one day. Aside from publishing three
separate press releases leading up to and after the blackout, the
Communications team worked closely with Jimmy Wales on both advance
press interviews and a deluge of interview requests the week of January 16.
In total, WMF responded to over *260 separate media inquiries* from
around the world. News.google.com reports over *11,000 media stories* on
the topic of our blackout and the Internet protests, many of which
focussed primarily on Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales had over a dozen television
appearances, effectively positioning the blackout story as the leading
story around the world on January 18. Major newswire stories were
syndicated interntaionally and in dozens of languages.
*Social media* activity around the blackout was extraordinary. Users
followed the CongressLookup system and tweeted their Representatives to
urge action around SOPA/PIPA. #WikipediaBlackout and #SOPA were trending
topics for the day. #wikipediablackout was tweeted almost 1 million
times, and SOPA was mentioned 2.3 million times.
Media interest continued well after the week of January 16 and
Communications continues to support inquiries. We're also working on a
series of feature stories about the blackout in major magazines and
placed OpEd stories in either the NY Times or Washington Post.
Wikimedia's global network of chapters also fielded dozens of requests
in their own regions and languages, further augmenting the world-wide
footprint of the blackout. Media coverage was largely positive and
supportive of the efforts of Wikipedia's community. The bill supporters
have since withdrawn both SOPA and PIPA, shelving them indefinitely,
based largely on a historic level of constituent reaction and
Congressional contact in the US.
Meta-wiki consolidation of the major coverage:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout/Media
(and great quotes about the blackout)
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout/Quotes
Social media stats:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SOPA_social_media
Wikipedia Signpost:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-01-23/In_th…https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-01-23/News_…
Orange/WMF partnership for free Wikipedia mobile (January 24)
WMF returned to one of its early business partners in January,
announcing a major partnership to make Wikipedia available at no charge
to mobile subscribers in dozens of their territories throughout Africa
and the Middle East. This was the first major partnership announced
regarding WMF's efforts to dramatically increase access to Wikipedia
through mobile channels around the world. Coverage was largely positive
and supportive of the effort.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/24/orange-wikipedia-mobile-de…http://www.itnewsafrica.com/2012/01/orange-to-provide-free-access-to-mobile…http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2012/01/how-will-free-wikipedia-acce…
==== Press releases ====
Orange and the Wikimedia Foundation partner to offer Wikipedia in Africa
and the Middle East at no extra cost, 24 January 2012
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Orange_and_WMF_partner_…
Statement from the Wikimedia Foundation regarding developments in
Washington on SOPA and PIPA, 20 January 2012
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Statement_on_Jan_20_eve…
Wikipedia blackout affirms overwhelming support for free and open
Internet, 18 January 2012
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikipedia_blackout_supp…
English Wikipedia to go dark January 18 in opposition to SOPA/PIPA, 16
January 2012
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/English_Wikipedia_to_go…
Wikimedia Foundation Rings In New Year With Record-breaking Fundraiser,
2 January 2012
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_Ri…
==== Blog posts ====
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/
==== Wikipedia Signpost ====
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2012-01…
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2012-01…
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2012-01…
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2012-01…
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2012-01…
==== Media contact ====
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#January_2012
== Human Resources ==
=== Staff Changes ===
New Hires
* Fabrice Florin, Product Manager – New Editor Engagement (VP of
Engineering & Prod Development)
* Joady Lohr, Director of Human Resources (Human Resources)
* Christopher McMahon, Quality Assurance Lead Engineer (Engineering)
* Gayle Karen Young, Chief Talent and Culture Officer (Human Resources)
New Other Roles Filled/Conversion
* Subhashish Panigrahi, Consultant Community & Program Support (India)
* Jon Robson, Contractor Software Developer-Mobile (Engineering)
* Matthew Roth, Global Communications Manager (Global Development)
New Contractors
* Christian Aistleitner
* Andreas Engels
* Andrew Otto
* Lori Phillips
* Sarah Stierch
Contract Extended
* Pavel Andreev
* Jeroen de Dauw
* Erek Dyskant
* Roan Kattouw
* Niklas Laxstrom
* Yusuke Matsubara
* Diederik Van Liere
* Susan Walling
Departed
* Neil Kandalgoankar
* Cyn Skyberg
Contract Ended
* Farhan Chaudhary
* Aislinn Dewey
* Tracey Fleming
* Stacey Merrick
* Heather O'Malley
* Neel Punatar
New Postings
* Senior Software Engineer Frontend
* Operations Engineer (Labs)
RFP
* Recruiting Engineer
* Mobile QA
=== Statistics ===
Total Employee Count
Actual: 95
January Plan: 110, January Filled: 7, January Attrition: 2
YTD Filled: 29, YTD Attrition: 10
Remaining Open positions to fiscal year end: 22
=== Department Updates ===
Joady Lohr has joined us as the new Director of Human Resources. Joady
handles aspects of human resources as related to compensation, benefits,
policies, etc. and is already an indispensible part of our team. She
comes to us with years of experience at IDEO and Business for Social
Responsibility (BSR), both of which speak to her experiences working in
HR with global organizations.
In recruiting, we are iterating changes to http://jobs.wikimedia.org ,
and hosting a focus group with community members to ensure that the page
communicates that we welcome community members applying for roles with
the Foundation. Feedback on the page is welcome. We are also rolling out
Jobvite as our recruitment and applicant tracking software to streamline
our recruiting process.
We have also begun redesigning some of our internal processes, such as
onboarding and hiring, including a revision of our hiring contracts and
agreements with heavy and wonderful support from Legal.
Real-time feed for HR updates: http://identi.ca/wikimediaatwork or
http://twitter.com/wikimediaatwork
== Finance and Administration ===
Chip Deubner joined our Office IT team and Nathan D’Annibale joined our
accounting team.
We are continuing our search for a Head of Office Administration and
will begin interviews next week.
Work was completed on an update to conference room R 33 to improve its
usability for the Tech team. Our thanks to Leslie for facilitating this
project.
== Legal ==
* New proposed terms of use have been sent to the Board for review and
potential approval.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Terms_of_use#The_terms_of_use_are_now_…
* Like the rest of the WMF office and community, Legal provided strong
support to the SOPA/PIPA blackout strategy, including advising the
community on the SOPA Initiative page, helping coordinate
cross-functional issues, and reviewing various legal issues
associated with the blackout. We are now engaged in post-blackout
strategy with other departments. Our present thinking is to leverage
the positive response following the blackout to support messages
that explain and advocate the open and free knowledge movement as it
applies to Wikimedia values.
* White paper on ACTA ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/ACTA )
and OPEN ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/OPEN_Act )
* Filed challenge against German Loriot injunction, which we will post
shortly.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Loriot_Signature_Background#Conc…
* Reviewing present privacy policy for possible revision and review
with community.
* Strong support of global development: India and Brazil.
* Strong daily contract, trademark, community, governance,
international, and content-defense support.
* Stats
o # contracts signed - 10
o # trademark requests - 11
+ approved - 4
+ denied - 2
+ approval not needed - 1
+ pending - 4
== Visitors and Guests ==
1. Daniel Long (Community member)
2. Wendy Hanamura, Cassie Gruenstein, Merin Mathew, Taylor Hadfield,
Andrea Jones, Lili Polastri (Link TV)
3. Philip Neustrom (LocalWiki)
4. Julian Nachtigal (pariSoma)
5. Victor Lobo and two colleagues (ADP)
6. 30 Harvard/Stanford students for cross dept talk
7. Steve Devetter (KPMG)
8. Daniel Kinzler (Wikimedia Germany)
9. MetaMarkets CEO Mike Driscoll and team, for a brown bag presentation
on analytics
10. Product Design Guild (hosted meet-up)
11. Derk-Jan Hartman
12. Various visiting engineering contractors
--
Tilman Bayer
Movement Communications
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
Today, we are excited to announce the start of our building of a new
department called the “Legal and Community Advocacy Department.” This new
alignment recognizes that we can combine the best of legal and community
advocacy to foster new ways to advance the interests of the community
consistent with the goals and strategies of the Foundation. For details,
please go to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/LCA_Announcement.
As part of this reorganization, I’m pleased to announce that Philippe
Beaudette has been promoted to Director of Community Advocacy. We will
start engaging our community shortly and enter into a consultation period
with it to brainstorm how to build the department. We anticipate that it
will take us about 6-12 months to get the right team and drive the new
department at full speed.
The community is invited to join us on Friday for office hours to discuss
the new Legal and Community Advocacy Department. Details for the IRC chat
can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours.
Geoff Brigham
General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
(Sharing this oped published in the Washington Post today. Will be printed
in tomorrow's paper)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-are-the-media-and-so-are-you/2012…
We are the media, and so are you
By Jimmy Wales and Kat Walsh, Thursday, February 9, 4:15 PM
It’s easy to frame the fight over SOPA and PIPA as Hollywood vs. Silicon
Valley —two huge industries clashing over whose voice should dictate the
future of Internet policy —but it’s absolutely wrong. The bills are
dead,thanks to widespread protest. But the real architects of the bills’
defeat don’t have a catchy label or a recognized lobbying group. They don’t
have the glamour or the deep pockets of the studios. Yet they are the
largest, most powerful and most important voice in the debate —and, until
recently, they’ve been all but invisible to Congress.
They are you. And if not you personally, then your neighbors, your
colleagues, your friends and even your children. The millions of people who
called and wrote their congressional representatives in protest of the Stop
Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act were
“organized” only around the desire to protect the Web sites that have
become central to their daily lives.
Change like this needed a fresh set of voices. The established tech giants
may have newfound political influence, but their fights are still the same
closed-door tussles over minor details. They have been at the table, and
they have too much invested in the process to change it. More important,
they are constrained by obligations to their shareholders and investors, as
well as by the need to maintain relationships with their advertisers,
partners and customers.
Wikipedia,its users and its contributors don’t have the same constraints.
We don’t rely on advertising dollars or content partnerships. The billions
of words and millions of images in our projects come from the same place as
our financial support: the voluntary contribution of millions of
individuals. The result is free knowledge, available for anyone to read and
reuse.
Wikipedia is not opposed to the rights of creators —we have the largest
collection of creators in human history. The effort that went into building
Wikipedia could have created shelves full of albums or near-endless nights
of movies. Instead it’s providing unrestricted access to the world’s
knowledge. Protecting our rights as creators means ensuring that we can
build our encyclopedias, photographs, videos, Web sites, charities and
businesses without the fear that they all will be taken away from us
without due process. It means protecting our ability to speak freely,
without being vulnerable to poorly drafted laws that leave our fate to a
law enforcement body that has no oversight and no appeal process. It means
protecting the legal infrastructure that allowed our sharing of knowledge
and creativity to flourish, and protecting our ability to do so on
technical infrastructure that allows for security and privacy for all
Internet users.
We are not interested in becoming full-time advocates; protests like the
Wikipedia blackout are a last resort. Our core mission is to make knowledge
freely available, and making the Web site inaccessible interrupts what we
exist to do. The one-day blackout,though, was just a speed bump. Breaking
the legal infrastructure that makes it possible to operate Wikipedia, and
sites like ours, would be a much greater disruption.
Two weeks ago we recognized a threat to that infrastructure and did
something we’ve never done before: We acknowledged that our existence is
itself political, and we spoke up to protect it. It turned out to be the
largest Internet protest ever.
The full-time advocates of freedom of information, such as the Electronic
Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge, have been fighting for decades to
help create the legal environment that makes our work possible. We cannot
waste that effort by failing to speak in our own defense when that
environment is threatened.
It’s absolutely right that Congress cares about the content industry,
recognizing its ability to innovate, to create wealth and to improve lives.
But existing copyright enforcement laws were written in a world in which
the information we had access to on a broad scale came from a few
established media outlets. The players were easy to identify. They
organized into groups with common interests and fought to protect those
interests. The “content industry” is no longer limited to those few
influential channels.
The laws we need now must recognize the more broadly distributed and
broadly valuable power of free and open knowledge. They must come from an
understanding of that power and a recognition that the voices flooding the
phone lines and in-boxes of Congress on Jan. 18 represented the source of
that power. These laws must not simply be rammed through to appease narrow
lobbies without sufficient review or consideration of the consequences.
Because we are the media industry. We are the creators. We are the
innovators. The whole world benefits from our work. That work, and our
ability to do it, is worth protecting for everyone.
---
Jay Walsh, Head of Communications
wikimediafoundation.org
+1 415 839 6885 ext 6609
.JPG){kind=link}
