As always, you can find the formatted version on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_February_2011
Plain text below & feedback welcome :-)
All best,
Erik
Contents
* 1 Data and Trends
* 2 Financials
* 3 Highlights
o 3.1 Strategic Plan Summary Published
o 3.2 New General Counsel
o 3.3 MediaWiki 1.17 Deployment
o 3.4 Data Summit
o 3.5 Gender Gap Conversations Begin
o 3.6 History of the Russian Wikipedia Published
* 4 Technology
o 4.1 Conferences
+ 4.1.1 GNUnify 2011 (February 11-12, Pune, India)
o 4.2 Operations
+ 4.2.1 Data Center Racking Party
o 4.3 Features
+ 4.3.1 Personal Image Filter
+ 4.3.2 Community Feature Prototyping
o 4.4 General Engineering
+ 4.4.1 Wikilytics
o 4.5 Moblie/Offline
+ 4.5.1 openZim for Collections
* 5 Research and Strategy
o 5.1 Internal Research Progress
o 5.2 Research Committee Activity
o 5.3 Research Outreach Initiatives
* 6 Community
o 6.1 Wiki Guides Experiment
o 6.2 New Account Creation Project
o 6.3 Fundraising
o 6.4 Public Policy Initiative
* 7 Global Development
o 7.1 Global Development Highlights
o 7.2 Chapter Relations and Grants
o 7.3 Brazil Catalyst
o 7.4 India Programs
o 7.5 Mobile Strategy
o 7.6 Editor Survey 2011
o 7.7 Offline
o 7.8 Global University Programs
o 7.9 Communications
+ 7.9.1 Major Stories and Coverage through February
+ 7.9.2 Major Announcements and Releases in February
2011
+ 7.9.3 Major Product Releases in February 2011
+ 7.9.4 Blog during February 2011
+ 7.9.5 Media contact through February, 2011
* 8 Human Resources
o 8.1 Staff Changes
o 8.2 Statistics
o 8.3 New Events
* 9 Finance and Administration
o 9.1 Finance
o 9.2 Administration
* 10 Legal
* 11 Visitors and Guests
== DATA AND TRENDS ==
Global unique visitors for January:
414 million (+4.7% compared to previous month / +13.5% compared to
previous year)
(comScore for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will
release February data later in March)
Page requests for January:
15.2 billion (+8.8% compared to previous month / +21.7% compared to
previous year)
Page requests for February:
15.5 billion (+1.9% compared to previous month / +24% compared to
previous year)
(Server log data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects including
Wikipedia mobile)
Report Card for January 2011:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2011_01_detailed.html
== FINANCIALS ==
(Financial information is only available for January 2011 at the time of
this report.)
Operating revenue for January: USD 1.6MM vs plan of 1.7MM.
Operating revenue year-to-date: USD 19.7MM vs plan of 16.8MM.
The successful 2010 fundraising campaign has resulted in the Wikimedia
Foundation exceeding its revenue targets year-to-date, despite lower
than planned revenue for the month of January. Revenue for January
includes a USD 108K donation from Wikimedia Switzerland.
Operating expenses for January: USD 2.9MM vs plan of 1.8MM.
Operating expenses year-to-date: USD 10.6MM vs plan of 11.8MM.
Expenses are over plan for the month due to data center purchases, which
were budgeted over 12 months but occured primarily in January, with some
additional spending in subsequent months. The Wikimedia Foundation is
underspent year-to-date due to the timing of additional capex spending
and Internet hosting, as well as under-spending in staffing costs.
Cash and investments as of January 2011 totaled USD $21.5MM
(approximately 13 months of expenses).
== HIIGHLIGHTS ==
Strategic Plan Summary Published
On February 25, we released the summary report of the Wikimedia
Foundation's five-year strategic plan. It synthesizes the effort of the
collaborative strategic planning process that took place through 2009
and 2010 and involved more than a thousand participants. A wiki version
and links to the PDF can be found here:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Strategic_Plan_Summa…
New General Counsel
In February, Geoff Brigham was announced as the Wikimedia Foundation's
new General Counsel, replacing Mike Godwin who left the organization in
October. Geoff has been a lawyer for 20 years, including eight years at
eBay during its main growth period, which gives him important experience
managing the legal challenges and risks inherent in operating a popular
site. His work at eBay encompassed North America, Europe, Asia and
Australia. He held a variety of positions there, at offices in San Jose,
California, Bern, Switzerland and Paris, France: his most recent title
was Vice President and Deputy General Counsel.
MediaWiki 1.17 Deployment
After a long wait, we deployed a new version of the MediaWiki software
to all our production sites, containing a vast number of small fixes and
improvements, and a new subsystem for more efficient delivery of
JavaScript and stylesheets, the ResourceLoader.
Deployment was initially problematic because of major performance issues
that caused an outage. The problems were investigated, and we decided to
try heterogeneous deployment (meaning not all wikis would run the same
version of the software). On February 11, a first wave of small wikis
were switched to MediaWiki 1.17. On February 16, other small and
medium-sized wikis were switched. In retrospect, the issues encountered
during deployment were due to the large amount of code changes since the
last release (almost 5,500 changes reviewed over 7 months). In the
future, MediaWiki release deployments should be smaller and more
frequent, reducing deployment pains.
Full list of changes in 1.17:
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/branches/REL1_17/phase3/RELEASE-N…
Data Summit
On February 3-4, 2011, the Foundation organized a Data Summit in
Sebastopol, CA, to present and formally discuss Wikimedia data-related
issues and ongoing projects [1].
The *Data Analytics session* (chaired by Rob Lanphier) presented results
from the fundraiser's analytics, discussed how WMF is planning to use
analytics to support its initiatives, how to address existing gaps in
information collection and analysis, and how to meet the needs of
different stakeholders (WMF, researchers, the community). Several
working groups were established for further progress on analytics
functionality focusing on: (1) how to make revision data more accessible
via a NoSQL database, (2) defining requirements for session tracking,
(3) improving the data dump generation process, (4) addressing privacy
issues in light of WMF's privacy policy, (5) defining the requirements
for a dedicated data mining infrastructure, and (6) assessing the
existing analytics system.
In the *Parsers session* [3] (chaired by Danese Cooper) a number of
demos were presented with examples of how to build and exploit new data
structures to provide a better understanding of Wikimedia content. The
session also discussed the design of a new parser which would support a
standard intermediary format for representing Wikimedia content. WMF
expects to continue the discussion on parsers and data structures at the
WMDE Developer Meetup, currently scheduled for May 2011.
In the *Structured Data session* [4] (chaired by Erik Möller), the
capabilities of existing structured data systems (such as DBPedia,
Freebase, Shortipedia, SMW and other) were reviewed and several
questions were formulated on the technical requirements to support and
enhance Wikimedia's Structured Data functionality. The discussion
started at the Data Summit will continue on wiki-research-l and
wikitech-l and open up to all interested parties.
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_summit_2011
[2] http://eiximenis.wikimedia.org/DataSummitAnalytics
[3] http://eiximenis.wikimedia.org/DataSummitParsers
[4] http://eiximenis.wikimedia.org/DataSummitSMW
Gender Gap Conversations Begin
On January 31, Noam Cohen of the New York Times published a piece about
Wikipedia's gender gap (13% of editors responding to the UNU-Merit
Survey of 2008 self-identified as female), which prompted dozens of
media stories and blog coverage in publications such as the Telegraph,
Mother Jones, Discover magazine, Jezebel, the Atlantic, and NPR. It also
gave rise to dozens of online comments and conversations from both women
and men, including readers, aspiring editors, current editors and lapsed
editors. Many women reached out to the Wikimedia Foundation offering
their help to fix the problem. As a result, the Wikimedia Foundation
created the “gender gap” mailing list, a place for Wikimedians and
interested outsiders to talk about strategies for solving the gender gap
problem. Since then, a number of initiatives have been undertaken to
drive up women's participation in the projects, including the
establishment of an Australian group called Women4Wikipedia, the staging
of a women editors meet-up in New York, discussions about Wikipedia and
gender at Recent Changes Camp 2011 in Boston, and the planning of a
women's wiki workshop in Kolkata, India.
In addition, in February, Sue was invited to join the board of the Ada
Initiative, a new non-profit aimed at promoting the visibility and
participation of women in open-source technology and culture.
Gender Gap community portal:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_Gap
Related blog posts by Sue Gardner:
http://suegardner.org/2011/02/19/nine-reasons-why-women-dont-edit-wikipedia…http://suegardner.org/2011/01/31/new-york-times-prompts-a-flurry-of-coverag…
History of the Russian Wikipedia Published
One of the goals of the Community Department is to build a repository of
knowledge about practices and experiences in different Wikimedia
languages and projects, to inform both the work of the Wikimedia
Foundation and the larger community. For example, what is the experience
of a Wikipedia language that never created an Arbitration Committe? How
do processes like "speedy deletion" or "featured article candidates" get
handled in different languages? How did mass media attention affect the
development of our projects?
Within our large multilingual community, a diverse set of strategies to
solve similar problems have been attempted. Surfacing the hidden
knowledge about these strategies could be immensely valuable. To this
end, last year, the Community Department commissioned a first
"WikiHistory", a history of the Russian Wikipedia, written by Wikimedia
Foundation fellows Marayana Pinchuk and Victoria Dorovina. In February,
it was published on Meta and on the Russian Wikipedia:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/RuWiki_History
It generated a considerable amount of interest both on Meta and in the
Russian community, where it was the subject of a lot of discussion,
which Victoria moderated and Maryana translated and moved to the talk
page of the English version. A methods page and discussion summary
postscript were also added.
Maryana worked in February to begin recruiting PhD candidates and
Wikimedians for a summer project to create at least a few more Wikipedia
histories, and to begin faciliating community-led processes for creating
project histories.
== TECHNOLOGY ==
As always, detailed info about the Tech Department's activities for
February 2011 can be found at
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2011/03/wikimedia-engineering-february-report/
Highlights below.
Conferences
GNUnify 2011 (February 11-12, Pune, India)
This year’s GNUnify Wikimedia track was an opportunity to present the
general Wikimedia technical architecture, how to hack MediaWiki, the use
of Drupal and CiviCRM at the Wikimedia Foundation, and the current and
future state of Wikimedia mobile. An Android prototype of WikiSnaps (a
mobile photo upload application) was also developed there. Along with
attending the technical tracks, numerous Wikipedians attended and gave
presentations on the Schools offline projects, challenges within India,
and basics on how to edit. Blog reports about the conference by an attendee:
http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/gnunify-day-1/http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/gnunify-day-2/
Operations
Data Center Racking Party
By the end of February, nearly all hardware was delivered to the new
data center in Virginia. More than 50 pallets of equipment were unboxed,
stacked and installed in the 16 racks by a four person team. Almost
everything has now been cabled, and we are working on the finishing
touches, as well as the initial setup of all devices to make them
available for management on the network. In March, configuration of the
first clusters of servers and services will begin, while we wait for
network transport and transit services to be installed.
Features
Personal Image Filter
Following the 2010 Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content, UI Brandon
Harris created mock-ups of a personal image/media filter in partnership
with the product strategy team, including initial UI design
recommendations. They will be presented to the Board of Trustees
controversial content workgroup for further discussion.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Personal_image_filter
Community Feature Prototyping
In February, the Community and Tech departments started a joint
experiment in which engineers work even more closely with Community
department staff. Developers are “embedded” in the Community department
to try out a more agile way to prototype and A/B test features. Trevor
Parscal started in this role in February, and will continue in March.
General Engineering
Wikilytics
During the Data Summit, Diederik van Liere released and presented the
Python toolkit he developed as part as his work on data analytics for
the Editor Trends Study. It is now available in SVN at
http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/tools/editor_trends/
Mobile/Offline
openZim for Collections
PediaPress has wrapped up their first development push for adding
openZim support to the collections extension. We are now collecting bug
reports before deploying it to the live site.
== RESEARCH AND STRATEGY ==
Internal Research Progress
In February, Dario Taraborelli visited WMF and presented some
exploratory analysis of data collected as part of the *Article Feedback
project* [5], with the goal of informing the design of Phase 2 and
identifying possible issues in rolling out this functionality globally.
Erik Möller and Howie Fung started drafting a report of the Editor
Trends Study [6]. Work also continued on the drafting of the Product
Whitepaper [13].
Research Committee Activity
The Wikimedia Research Committee (RCom) held its 3rd meeting on February
25, 2011 [9]. The meeting focused on discussing progress on a number of
initiatives run by the RCom, including: subject recruitment procedures
[10], the open-access policy for Wikimedia research [11], and the
current participation in a survey on barriers to expert participation [12].
The *survey on barriers to expert participation* in Wikipedia [14] was
formally launched on February 9, 2011 and disseminated via a number of
social media and scholarly outlets, including /PLoS/, the /Wellcome
Trust/, /Nature Blogs/, the /Encyclopedia of Life/, and the /Open
Knowledge Foundation/ among others. The survey is due to close in March
with the publication of early results.
Research Outreach Initiatives
Diederik van Liere and Howie Fung started to define the goals, technical
requirements and submission procedure for a *data challenge* to be
hosted by /Kaggle/ [7] on behalf of WMF and focusing on statistical
models to predict editor participation. The call for contributions will
be formally announced in March or April. Winners will have the
opportunity of presenting their work at the /O'Reilly Strata Conference/
in New York [8].
Dario Taraborelli, Howie Fung and Felipe Ortega (WikiSym '11 general
chair) also started organizing a *visualization challenge* that will run
in Q2-Q3 of 2011. The challenge will focus on novel visualisations of a
number of datasets from Wikimedia projects that will be released in
April 2011. The winners will be announced in September 2011 and invited
to present their work at /WikiSym '11/ (October 3-5, 2011 – Mountain
View, CA) [15].
[5]
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Public_Policy_Pilot/Early_Da…
[6] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editor_Trends_Study
[7] http://kaggle.com
[8] http://strataconf.com/stratany2011
[9] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee/Meeting_2011-02-25
[10]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee/Areas_of_interest/Subject…
[11]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee/Areas_of_interest/Open-ac…
[12]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee/Areas_of_interest/Expert_…
[13] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Product_Whitepaper
[14] http://survey.nitens.org/index.php?sid=21693
[15] http://www.wikisym.org/ws2011/
== COMMUNITY ==
The Community Department made progress on several community organizing
and research projects in February.
Wiki Guides Experiment
Philippe Beaudette and James Alexander began a project called "Wiki
Guides." This is an experiment designed to organize volunteers to
support and protect newbies through their first 100 or more edits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Guides
50 volunteer Guides joined the project and began their work with a
discussion of the newbie experience and potential interventions. One of
the early pages created by the Wiki Guides project is a place to share
stories of what it was like to be a new user:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Wiki_Guides/What_was_your_new_u…
At the end of the month, each Guide was assigned a list of new users to
support. The project will change its tactics and structure weekly to try
out new approaches.
New Account Creation Project
Community fellow Lennart Guldbrandsson published the results of an
additional account creation survey:
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Account_Creation_Improvement_Projec…
About 9,500 people who had previously created a new account, responded
to the survey. As a result, we have a better understanding of what
motivates people to create a user account on Wikipedia and what new
users' expectations are. Based on the survey results, Lennart started
testing the first iterations of improved account creation pages on the
English Wikipedia.
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Account_Creation_Improvement_Project
Fundraising
The Fundraiser team continued their analysis of the 2010 fundraiser
testing experience and their work on a report to the community. Sara
Crouse completed new funding proposals.
Public Policy Initiative
The Public Policy Initiative team started to plan the first "Wikipedia
in Higher Education Summit", an event to be held in July 2011. The event
aims at celebrating the volunteers who participate in Wikimedia's
university based program activities, building a community of educators
and Wikipedia volunteers, and sharing skills, best practices and success
stories. In 2011, the Wikipedia in Higher Education Summit will also be
the final event for the Wikimedia Foundation's Public Policy Inititative.
>From February 10-13, LiAnna Davis and Amy Roth attended the APSA
(American Political Science Association) Teaching and Learning
conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They presented a workshop about
integrating Wikipedia into the classroom and provided outreach and
education at an exhibitor booth. Conference website:
http://www.apsanet.org/content_31632.cfm
== GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ==
Global Development Highlights
* India Catalyst activities in support of the community accelerated
with the appointment of Hisham Mundol as consultant for India
Programs (
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2011-February/0001…
); Barry traveled to India to introduce Hisham to communities in
Pune, Mumbai and Bangalore.
* Progress on several key GD initiatives (see below for details and
links): Brazil Catalyst draft report, Global Education program,
Mobile Research and Editor Survey Research
* Shared draft fundraising agreement with the chapters for
discussion and made progress with chapters on getting chapter
agreements in place consistently.
Chapter Relations and Grants
* Announced the hiring of Asaf Bartov as Head of Global South
Relationships (to start in March), along with Moushira Elamrawy as
contractor supporting Chapter Relations:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2011-February/0001…
* Prepared draft of 2011/12 Fundraising agreement with the community
for comment:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011/Chapters_Agreement
* WMF and 9 of 12 chapters participating in the 2010/11 fundraiser
met the deadline to share information about their online revenue
through January 31:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tracking_Progress_for_2011_chapters_fundrais…
No new grants were funded in February.
Brazil Catalyst
For a full update: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Catalyst_Project
* A draft of the Brazil "Action Plan" was completed with the help of
about 20 interviews of Brazilian Wikimedians. Based on the
detailed work led by Carolina Rossini, the general macro-actions
proposed are:
o Establish WMF's presence in Brazil and hire a National
Program Director.
o Engage in projects that recruit entirely new sets of readers
and editors such as national events, global events, and
university partnerships.
o Establish a new dynamic with the existing community.
India Programs
* Barry Newstead traveled to India for a brief trip during which he
introduced Hisham to the Indian community and chapter, and held
community meetings in Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore to introduce and
discuss community activities and expectations.
* Met with chapter in Bangalore to discuss chapter's way forward and
its collaboration with the community.
* Met and conversed with multiple community members, Bishakha Datta,
and Achal Prabhala to discuss Foundation activities in India.
* Reviewed existing information on India programs, and prepared a
draft "India Plan" including objectives, key initiatives, time
plans, and team structure:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_programs.
* Initiated discussions with Foundation staff on key initiatives:
campus outreach, research and communications; all to be taken
forward and fleshed out in Hisham's upcoming SF visit.
Mobile Strategy
We finalized the schedule and methodology of conducting research to
understand mobile user experience in India and Brazil.
Editor Survey 2011
The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a new, comprehensive survey of the
Wikipedia editor community. In February, we:
* Finalized the questionnaire after several iterations.
* Hired a vendor for programming and cleaning of the survey.
* Began work with volunteer translators to get the survey translated
in several languages.
* Began work with the engineering team to launch the survey on the
website.
We should launch the survey in the last week of March or the first week
of April.
Offline
* Worked with community members on the best ways to select high
quality and important articles to create article collections. Tech
began helping us think about how we can develop tools to assist.
* Distribution is happening already in several parts of the world.
For example, enabled by a grant provided by WMF, a group of Kenyan
Wikimedians began uploading prototype offline versions of offline
Wikipedia (via DVD & USB sticks) onto computers in schools
throughout Kenya. Demand is very high here.
Global University Programs
Frank Schulenburg, Jessie Wild, Rod Dunican and Annie Lin kicked off the
strategy planning process for a Wikimedia Global University Program. A
preliminary version of their strategy paper can be found on the outreach
wiki:
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_University_Program
This is still in the planning and discussion phase. At this point, the
general recommendations are to
1. Create a platform for professors from all countries to be able to
easily incorporate the editing of Wikipedia in the classroom and,
2. Empower students to form student groups to facilitate outreach and
editing.
Communications
/February saw a range of media coverage, mostly following up on the
global activites around Wikipedia 10 and on the presence of a gender gap
within Wikipedia's editor community (see highlights, omitted below). The
Foundation distributed a press release in conjunction with up-time
monitoring service 'WatchMouse' and finalized design and released the
Strategic Plan summary document./
Major Stories and Coverage through February
After its January story about the gender gap, the New York Times set
up a special debate portal and invited scholars on the topic to
contribute views, and dozens of other outlets followed up on the
question, e.g..
* http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/02/02/where-are-the-women-in-wiki…
* http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/01/31/133375307/facing-serious-gen…
* http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/8293217/Why-Wikipedias-edit…
*Behind the Scenes at Wikipedia.IN*
A thoughtful overview of the Wikimedia movement in India and the
diversity of activities taking place in all corners of the country.
The story features an interview with Jimmy Wales and focuses on work
being done to support Indic language projects.
* http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/PUBLICATIONS/HT/HM/2011/02/13/ArticleHtmls…
*Other worthwhile reads:*
* http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/our-wiki-wiki-ways-beautiful-i…
* http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/feb/19/interview-jimmy-wales-wik…
* http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wikipedias_goal_1_billion_monthly_visi…
Major Announcements and Releases in February 2011
*Wikimedia Foundation selects Watchmouse monitoring service* (February
9, 2011):
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/February_2011_Wikimedia_…
Major Product Releases in February 2011
*Wikimedia's Strategic Plan Summary*:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Strategic_Plan_Summa…
Blog during February 2011
During the month of February, WMF's blog highlighted 8 topics:
* Wikipedia’s gender gap
* WikiProject Medicine urges medical community to edit.
* Wikimedia selects Watchmouse for global monitoring services.
* Welcome Wikimedia’s 30th Global Chapter, Wikimedia España.
* Wikipedia Contribution Team Plans Events Throughout UK and Beyond.
* Wikipedia Enters the Sun King’s Court.
* Sue Gardner joins Ada Initiative advisory board.
* Wikimedia presents its five-year strategic plan.
All posts for February can be found at:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2011/02/.
Media contact through February, 2011
WMF received 15 media contacts from organizations including BBC World
Service, ABC Australia, Marie Claire, Times of London, Fast Company,
Communications Daily, Read Write Web, NOS Dutch Public Television, The
Guardian (UK), Women in Business, Data Center Dynamics, and Visionary
Productions "On the road in America".
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#February_2011
== HUMAN RESOURCES ==
Staff Changes
*New Hires*
* Geoffrey Brigham, General Counsel (Legal) – FT Permanent
* Jon Davis, Interim Office IT Manager (Finance) – Temp Full Time
* Tony Le, Controller (Finance) – FT Permanent
* Janice Tud, HR Generalist (HR) – FT Permanent
*New Contractors*
* Hisham Mundol (Global Development)
* Moushira Elamwray (Global Development)
*Extended Contracts*
* Michelle Paulson (Legal) – Temp Full Time
* Christine Moellenbrandt, Community Associate (Community) – Temp
Full Time
* Joshua VanDavier, Development Associate (Community) – Temp Full Time
*New Job Postings*
* Senior QA Engineer (Tech)
* Office Assistant, Travel (Finance/Admin)
* Major Gifts Associate (Community)
* Grants & Information Officer (Community)
*Contract Ended*
* Deniz Gultekin, Community Associate
* Tara Harwood, Head of Office Admin
* Steven Ma, Community Associate
Statistics
*Vital Stats:* Total Employee Count
Plan: 81
Actual: 63
Attrition: 3
Remaining Open positions to fiscal year end: 29
*Diversity stats:*
* 63 Total Employees (includes people considered international
employees)
* 42.9% female employees; 6.9% increase from 7/1/10
* 31.8% ethnic minorities; 5.8% increase from 7/1/10
* 38.1% foreign nationals; 1.9% increase in U.S. hiring from 7/1/10
* 42.9% Wikimedians; 0.86% increase from 7/1/10
* 71.4% have lived abroad; 1.4% increase from 7/1/10
Real-time feed for HR updates:
http://identi.ca/wikimediaatwork or http://twitter.com/wikimediaatwork
New Events
The HR Department has been digging into some exciting work since the new
year began. Here's a recap of what we've been working on broken out by
function:
*Recruiting*
We worked on increasing our hiring capacity by adding new recruiting
firms and optimizing and streamlining our recruiting pipeline. We also
worked very closely with hiring managers to collaboratively rethink the
current process and address any challenges we're finding.
*HR Documentation*
The HR department, with the addition of our new generalist Janice Tud,
undertook a documentation project to raise level of awareness regarding
process in hiring and staff development.
*HR Metrics*
HR started tracking diversity stats (see below) to better understand the
make up of our culture. We were excited to see that we are well above
the average for technology companies in several areas.
We also worked on tracking our capactiy to hire. This information is
imperfect, but we are getting closer to understanding our hiring
ability. As we get better data we will talk about it in more detail.
*Staff Development*
Cyn and Daniel attended a seminar at LinkedIn to learn about thier new
recruiting funtionality. While the seminar was fairly cheesy and
targeted at less tech savvy organizations than ourselves, it was a good
learning experience. It may lead to a deeper level of engagement with
LinkedIn to help us find the right people for our organization.
*HRIS (HR Information System)*
The HR team decided on, and began implementation of, a new database to
help track and manage personnel information. The software is called
OrangeHRM and is an open source project:
http://www.orangehrm.com/
The implementation team at OrangeHRM has been great, and we will be
ready to launch in March. This will go a long way towards
professionalizing our department and providing us with accurate data.
== FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION ==
Finance
* Mid-year financials were published on the Foundation website at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports.
* Started planning for the development of the 2011-12 annual
financial plan.
* Built rough forecast of revenue and spending for end of 2010-11
fiscal year; expect to be approximately 5 to 10% underspent at
year-end.
* Continued to work with Marcin to warp up Wikimania Gdansk
reporting, funds collections and invoice payment.
Administration
* Departments received individual purchasing cards, which will make
the coding and reporting of expenses paid by credit card more
efficient.
* Began searches for interim Head of Office Administration,
permanent Travel Assistant and Help Desk associate.
== LEGAL ==
* Geoff began his orientation, starting to learn the ropes at the
Foundation and within the community, and beginning the development
of legal strategy and 2011-12 plan inputs.
* Geoff continues to be supported by Michelle Paulson, associate
counsel, who has maintained the legal office since last October.
* Sue and Geoff met with the staff of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation for pizza & discussion.
== VISITORS AND GUESTS ==
1. Manish Shah (Intuit - txtweb.com demo)
2. Manish Maheshwari (Intuit - txtweb.com demo)
3. Yohei Murakami (Language Grid Project)
4. Sonia Eunhai Kim Felix (South Korea) (PPI consuls wives and
honorary consul group)
5. Florence de Noray (France) (PPI consuls wives and honorary consul
group)
6. Luisa Scapolla (Italien) (PPI consuls wives and honorary consul group)
7. Satsuki Kawada (Singapore) (PPI consuls wives and honorary consul
group)
8. Gayle Evans (Great Britain) (PPI consuls wives and honorary consul
group)
9. Clelia Piragibe (Brazil) (PPI consuls wives and honorary consul group)
10. Eva Voisin (Honorary Consul Hungary) (PPI consuls wives and
honorary consul group)
11. Liliane Koziol (Honorary Consul Madagaskar) (PPI consuls wives and
honorary consul group)
12. Eny Arguelles (MD, USA) (PPI consuls wives and honorary consul group)
13. Mary Staunton (Ireland) (PPI consuls wives and honorary consul group)
14. Josette Osgood (Honorary Consul Côte d’Ivoire) (PPI consuls wives
and honorary consul group)
15. Huguette Wildschutz (Luxembourg) (PPI consuls wives and honorary
consul group)
16. Brigitte Brockmann (Germany) (PPI consuls wives and honorary
consul group)
17. Martha Hertelendy (USA) (PPI consuls wives and honorary consul group)
18. Kathleen Kimura (Great Britain) (PPI consuls wives and honorary
consul group)
19. Gerlind Rothen (Germany) (PPI consuls wives and honorary consul group)
20. Latoya Peterson (Community Member - WikiHistories project)
21. Gina Glantz (Consultant)
22. Erik Swan (Splunk)
23. Ward Cunningham (CTO CitizenGlobal)
24. Jerome Gary (Producer/Director) and 15 person crew
(arabic-speaking world 'On the road in America)
25. Valerie Aurora (Ada Initiative)
26. Cheol Ryul and Colleague (Korean Wikimedian)
27. Derrick Coetzee(Wikipedia Campus Ambassadors)
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Just wanted to draw your attention to the blog post that went out today
regarding offline:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/
Feel free to leave comments either there or on this list!
Best,
Jessie
***
*Update on Offline Wikipedia Projects *
The last week was a big week for expanding offline Wikipedia
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline_Projects> work.
Right now, /offline/ refers to supporting read access to Wikimedia
content without an Internet connection. This increases the reach of the
Wikipedia movement by providing more opportunities for people all over
the world to access the materials. Some of the recent initiatives
surrounding this project were documented in Wikimedia's tech blog
<http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2011/01/update-on-offline-wikimedia-projects/>
about a month ago (for more detail regarding the purpose for offline
work, see the offline strategy
<http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline> page).
In support of our offline readership work, we're thrilled to announce
the launch of a new feature on Wikipedia developed with our partners
from PediaPress <http://pediapress.com/>. Last week we enabled openZim
<http://openzim.org/Main_Page> (the main file format in which offline
materials are stored) export for the existing PediaPress collections
extension on English Wikipedia and numerous other wikis. This means
that individuals can now use the existing PediaPress Create a book
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Books> tool and download it in a
format which can be read offline (via an offline reader, such as Kiwix
<http://kiwix.org/index.php/Main_Page>). This is important because it
opens new avenues for the creation of offline materials, for example, an
openZim library hosting different offline "book" options.
Also, the English offline collection Wikipedia 0.8
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_0.8>was made officially
available
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_0.8/downloads>, after
much hard work by the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team>.
This collection is an iteration in the process of developing a vetted
collection of offline articles selected based on their quality and
topical importance. The main constraint with an offline product is the
data size restrictions: the entirety of Wikipedia must somehow be
condensed so that it fits on a CD, DVD, or USB stick. Wikipedia 1.0
aims at creating the highest quality and most valuable subset of
Wikipedia to meet those size requirements, and v0.8 is a precursor.
Wikipedia 0.8 is a general collection of just under 50K articles, It
is available for Mac, PC, or Linux with a Linux or Okawix reader; some
mobile phone versions will be available later this month as well.
More updates are sure to come on this offline front: Wikimedians around
the world are actively assisting in the development of offline
collections as well as distribution. We are excited to support and
document the momentum going forward.
Jessie Wild, Global Development
Hi,
A short update about Wikimedia Hungary's activities in February 2011 is now
available on Meta at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikim%C3%A9dia_Ma….
For
your convenience it is reproduced below.
You can read a slightly longer report and see a photo of the server
mentioned in the report on our blog:
http://huwiki.blogspot.com/2011/03/februar-szerver-es-eloadasok.html (in
Hungarian).
*Wikimedia Hungary Report*
*Vol 4 Issue 2*
*February 2011*
*Prepared by: Bence Damokos*
This is an update on Wikimédia Magyarország's activities covering February
2011.
Toolserver
Wikimedia Hungary's first self-owned server was delivered in February. After
our hosting contract commences, the server will serve a number of projects:
running WikiTrust and other analytical software, bots and so on. Our hope is
to be able to use the server to gather useful statistics.
Presentations
We have held two presentations at Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest, one
for a class on corpus linguistics and the other one for copy-editing
students.
Grants
We have applied for a state operating expenses grant in February. For some
strange reason, the grant that previously covered 12-month periods this year
only covers the July-September 2011 period, significantly detracting from
its usefulness. If successful, the grant could cover the development costs
of making CiviCRM compatible with our bank's online banking system.
--
Bence Damokos
Executive Vice President,
Wikimedia Hungary
http://wikimedia.hu <http://wiki.media.hu>
Dear fellows,
The following message is just to keep you informed about the activities developed during the last three months by Amical.
Kind regards,
J. Gustavo Góngora
(As a member of Amical)
Courses and conferences
*2nd
December. Conference about Wikipedia at Òmnium cultural. User:Gomà & User:Pallares
*21st
December. Workshop on how to edit Wikipedia at the Carlos III University of
Madrid. [[User:Gomà]]
*11th
February. Talk on Wikipedia at the Civic Centre of Porqueres. [[User:Gomà]]
*18th
February Workshop on how to edit Wikipedia at the Golferichs House of Barcelona.
[[User:Gomà]]
* Wikiproject:Viquifabricació. The test corresponding to the first
semester of the course has successfully come to an end. The following people
have taken part in Catalan: 3 teachers, 23 students that have worked on 41
articles. In Spanish: 3 teachers, 21 students and have edited 23 articles. This
test has been useful to find the list of more common mistakes, in order to
prepare the content of the first courses and to develop the
wikiprojects and bots of support for the appropriate management of the project.
Many articles still need significative improvements.
*
Wikiproject Viquibalear. The registration period and
that concerning the creation of articles have been completed. The best ones are
being moved to Wikipedia. 9 teachers and
44 students have completed the test. Up to now, 138 articles have been moved to Wikipedia. [[User:Paucabot]]
*
Wikiproject Viquiescoles. It is based on the
Viquibalear Project but its aim is to work with the richness of the many
educational systems and the diversity of languages in which many students
attend their lessons across the Catalan-speaking territories. The aim of this
year is to test and create the infrastructure which will enable its expansion.
Mediawiki has been installed and some teachers have already joined the
initiative. In total, 16 teachers from all the Catalan-speaking territories are
currently involved. [[User:Barcelona]]
*
Mediawiki course at the School
ow webcraft [[User:Esenabre|Esenabre]]
* Course
of introduction to the wiki edition corresponding to the subject Bioinformatics
of the UPF [[User:Toniher]]
Release of contents
* It has already
been
processed
by
OTRS
a permission to
publish
the book Les
Plantes Cultivades. Cereals
de Pujol Palol, Miquel
and we
have started
dumping
it
on
Wikisource: Les
Plantes Cultivades. This
book
contains
many
high-quality images on
cereals
that can be used to illustrate
Wikipedia
articles. We are currently uploading them to Commons
with
the
collaboration
of
Joancreus. (Example).
Media
There
has been much
activity
in
the
media
during
the last three months, mainly
around
four
themes:
*
300,000
articles
from
Wikipedia
in
Catalan. On 21
December
the
press
reported
that
the
Catalan Wikipedia had
reached
300,000
articles. They
were
echoed
by several means: racó
català, Bits
catalans, Directe.cat,
La
tafanera. On 24 December Ssola is interviewed by Com radio.
. * 10th anniversary of Wikipedia. Following
this,
there have been
several
videos
and
interviews on the
radio: Video
done at the Citylab of Cornellà KRLS
& Gomà, TV3
KRLS
& Gomà, L'internauta
Gomà,
L'entrevista
a Vilaweb Gomà, Ona
Mallorca Paucabot.
* Grant of €
20,000
from puntCAT Foundation
to
develop the
strategic
plan of Wikipedia: Rado
4, Endirecte.cat,
Technology911,
Diari
de Girona, Somdigitals.cat,
Tecnonews,
Comunicació21.
* In Alghero,
it has had a
strong
media
impact the
organization of a digital
photography competition to
illustrate
the
Wikipedia
articles: at Alguer.cat
in Catalan and in Italian and on Alghero’s television.
Relation with entities.
* The IEC
(Institute of Catalan Studies) has
spread
among
the
subsidiaries
a
request of collaboration with
Wikipedia. Up to
now, the Literary Section and the Society for Hebrew Studies have responded
positively.
Barcelona
* We have kept in
touch with entities
of
the
Federation of
Senior
Citizens of
Catalonia. We are also finding ways
to
make some members participate on Wikipedia. Username: Pallares.
* The relations with the
Picasso
Museum have
concluded with the
organization
of
the
1st
Conference between Catalan Museums
and
Wikipedia.
Kippelboy. We
thank
User: Witty
lama for his collaboration.
* On January
24 we had a
meeting with Escola
Massana. We
proposed
that
students
draw
portraits
of
people
whose
images are not copyleft and
make
them
run
under
free
license to
illustrate
Wikipedia
articles. The
first impression
was
good
but
then
it was concluded
that
this
may
not
take
place in the present academic course. Pallares.
* On February
14 we met
the
Torrens-Ibern Foundation Board of
Trustees. We showed
them 30 free-licensed college textbooks
in
English.
The
Foundation
will
contact university
lecturers to
assess the quality
and,
if
adequate,
finance
will
be promoted in
collaboration with the
university
to
translate
them
and
publish
them
on Wikisource. Goma.
Miscellaneous
* kippelboy
attended Glamwiki
2010 at the British Museum.
* On 16 December the puntCat Foundation provided
us with a grant of 20.000€ to develop the strategic plan of Wikipedia.
* There are two
entities
that
have
agreed
to
provide
public
information on
Wikipedia
and
make
us
a
point of contact: Centre d'estudis
comarcals del Baix Llobregat in Sant Feliu de Llobregat
and the Societat Coral el Micalet of
Valencia. These entities
will
have brochures and books
on
Wikipedia and a person who
knows
how to edit it. They
will provide information to the public and
will
contact
Wikipedia
or
the association just in case any interested person appears. Hopefully,
these
are the first steps
of
a network that
will cover the
entire territory.
* Improvements have been made to
the
Amical-bot. We have
implemented a module
which
offers
categories
and
added
more
templates
and
pages
of
ERS.
* We have developed a bot
that
works
with the statistics
of
some
French towns and villages. From
here
you
can
complement
the
content
of
the articles asking
for it with a template
or
they can otherwise be created
automatically. This
process is currently under discussion. See
examples
of
articles (in Catalan):
Improved
article or created
article.
* In December,
the
third
survey
of
Wikipedia
users took place.
The
results
were
published
in
January.
We
thank
Marc
Miquel for his hard work.
* The association
supports
the
Wiki
Loves
Monuments project. We
bought
the
domain
http://wikilovesmonuments.cat
and
are
making
efforts to
get
sponsors
and
prizes
to
the
contest. (Vriullop and
others, see
project
pages).
* The association
is
deeply
involved
in
organizing
events
for
the 10th anniversary
of the Catalan Wikipedia. More
information will be available next month.
*Free Culture Forum
and
access
to knowledge (http://www.fcforum.net). Participation
with
the launch of
a
handbook
on sustainability in the
digital
era. Gomà & User:Lilaroja.
Hello,
Yes, the rumors are true! Today I am pleased to announce that after more
than a year away, Brion Vibber will be returning as a full-time employee of
Wikimedia Foundation on March 31, 2011. The public posting is available
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2011/03/06/brion-vibber-rejoins-wikimedia-fo….
I'm really excited to be announcing this hire, especially at this time.
I've been looking for a Lead Architect for the next generation MediaWiki
platform, and Brion is of course the ultimate expert in MediaWiki internals.
He's also deeply committed to the work we are doing to keep MediaWiki
relevant for the next 10 years.
I completely enjoy working with Brion, and I'm totally looking forward to
having him back on the team full time (he has always helped out on a
volunteer basis).
Anyway, I wanted to give you all a heads up before the public announcement.
Please join me in welcoming him back!
Danese Cooper
CTO, Wikimedia Foundation
Wiki Loves Monuments
After the success of last year, Wiki Loves Monuments will go Europe in 2011!
Many countries have indicated that they want to participate this time, and
coordination is being set up. Lodewijk has participated a brainstorm meeting
in Cologne by German Wikimedians to organize their event and also in other
countries much progress is being made. More information:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2011/Progress
Strategy Weekend
On 19/20 February Wikimedia Nederland had a strategy weekend in Zeist. The
meeting is part of the Wikimedia Nederland strategy process, which is
facilitated by Anna Royon-Weigelt. The strategy process was already planned,
and has been fit into a pilot project for chapter strategy processes by Anna
and Sebastian Moleski. A report of the outcomes and the process following
this weekend will be sent to the members.
Board interest meeting
After the success of last year, also this time a board interest meeting was
organized. Potential candidates for the board could familiarize themselves
with the association, board work and/or other potential candidates.
Meetings & Conferences
A stamtafel has been organized again. The food was served cold - suggestions
for a new location are welcome!
Lodewijk has presented Wiki Loves Monuments at the Bangalore Wikimeet via
Skype on February 13.
Press attention summary
There was some more coverage on the 10th anniversary of Wikipedia, mainly
with some more in depth interviews in regional newspapers, but throughout
the country. There was also a notice about the cooperation with the National
Archive and on the National Architecture Institute choosing a more free
licensing policy.
Upcoming:
- 18-20 March: Lodewijk will attend the Wikimedia Conference in Wroclaw,
Poland
- 20 March: MaartenD will give a workshop around Wiki Loves Monuments at
WMDE's General Meeting in Berlin, Germany
- 25-27 March: Paul and Siebrand will represent Wikimedia Nederland at
the Wikimedia Chapters Meeting in Berlin, Germany
- 28-29 March: Lodewijk and Siebrand will attend Global Melt in Berlin,
Germany
- April 2: General Assembly
- June: 10 years Dutch Wikipedia
- September: Wiki Loves Monuments Europe