WikiTeam[1] has released an update of the chronological archive of all
Wikimedia Commons files, up to 2013. Now at ~34 TB total.
<https://archive.org/details/wikimediacommons>
I wrote to – I think – all the mirrors in the world, but apparently
nobody is interested in such a mass of media apart from the Internet
Archive (and the mirrorservice.org which took Kiwix).
The solution is simple: take a small bite and preserve a copy yourself.
One slice only takes one click, from your browser to your torrent
client, and typically 20-40 GB on your disk (biggest slice 1400 GB,
smallest 216 MB).
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Emijrp/Wikipedia_Archive#Image_tarballs>
Nemo
P.s.: Please help spread the word everywhere.
[1] https://github.com/WikiTeam/wikiteam
Hello Everyone,
Like every year the Wikimedia Board of Trustees will have a board meeting in the days preceding Wikimania. Our meeting in London has the following agenda:
== August 6, 2014 ==
Special items from Committees
Lila's first three months
Strategy planning
Chapter site visits and evaluations
User groups
Funds Dissemination Committee
Wikimedia Belgium
== August 7, 2014 ==
Board appointments
Board legal duties
Board officer elections
Chapter's Dialogue
Trustee evaluation
Executive session
If you have additional comments or questions please feel free to leave a message on the Board noticeboard: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard
Alternatively, if you are lucky enough to be able to attend Wikimania it is good to know that we are attending as well. Please come and find us if you have something that you think the board should be aware of. At the same time you will probably meet a lot more people at Wikimania who have a very practical approach in making “cool projects reality”, so I would encourage you to seek out other attendees to see if you can make great things happen!
Finally I would like to draw your attention to the annual Board Q&A which takes place at Wikimania on the 8th of August at 15:00. Please feel free to leave questions at: https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Questions_for_the_Q%26A_with_Wikim…
but we are also just going to answer questions from the audience. I commit that all written questions left on the above page will be answered in some online way if we do not get to them during the Q&A. This might take a few weeks but it will happen.
Jan-Bart de Vreede
Chair Board of Trustees
Wikimedia Board of Trustees
Hi everyone,
I'm very pleased to welcome Kirsten Lans to the Wikimedia Foundation, as
the first ScrumMaster [1][2] hire into the newly formed Team Practices
Group [3]. Kristen will be taking over ScrumMaster duties for the Mobile
Web and Mobile Apps Engineering teams.
Prior to joining WMF, Kristen worked for six years with the TED
prize-winning Encyclopedia of Life project [4], a free, open resource that
aims to provide access to knowledge about all life on Earth. Kristen helped
to pilot and facilitate the Encyclopedia of Life organization's agile
development and planning processes, and enjoyed working with the project's
global community of contributors. Kristen is thrilled to be continuing to
work towards open knowledge sharing for all at an even larger scale.
Kristen currently lives in Cape Cod, Massachusetts with her husband and
dog, and is planning to relocate to the Bay Area by the end of the year,
and is looking forward to eating her way through the San Francisco's tasty
restaurants and taking advantage of the amazing outdoor activities in the
area.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScrumMaster#Scrum_Master
[2]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Mobile_engineering/imported/Mobile…
[3]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/Team_Practices_Group
[4] http://eol.org
--
Arthur Richards
Team Practices Manager
[[User:Awjrichards]]
IRC: awjr
+1-415-839-6885 x6687
Hi folks,
It’s my great pleasure to announce Arthur Richards as Team Practices
Manager for WMF. Arthur will lead a group of ScrumMasters and coaches
to scale up our ability to support teams in developing robust
processes for software delivery. In this new role, Arthur will report
to the VP of Engineering (currently, me).
Arthur’s first engagement in this role will be with the MediaWiki core
team in October. He’s also still transitioning responsibilities for
the mobile web team to Kristen Lans, who just joined WMF as
ScrumMaster. I am very excited about the work ahead. Please join me in
congratulating Arthur and wishing him success in this new role. :-)
What follows is some more background about this new group and about
Arthur’s leadership in case you’re interested (long):
Arthur joined WMF in June 2010 [1] to support fundraising tech. In the
context of team process pains, this team was the first one to adopt an
agile development process (specifically, Scrum), and Arthur was in the
middle of it all. He took this experience with him when he joined the
mobile development team under Tomasz Finc in 2012. The mobile team,
too, would soon adopt Scrum, and Arthur took on the role of
ScrumMaster later that year to be the "process owner" for the team.
What does that actually mean? It means facilitating the "rituals" that
are part of an agile team’s work (e.g. the daily stand-ups, the sprint
planning meetings, retrospectives, etc.) and continually facilitating
the team’s discovery of improving the way they work. Say it turns out
week after week that the team is introducing preventable regressions
-- in a situation like this, the ScrumMaster will work with the team
to better understand what’s going on and work towards a solution
(e.g. collaboration with QA, improved test coverage, etc.).
In my experience, every team benefits from process improvement, and
the highest performing ones view this as a continuous part of the
team’s work. Arthur embodies this and I've long viewed the mobile web
team as the canonical example in our org that illustrates the benefits
of agile development done right.
Throughout his experience as ScrumMaster, Arthur has always made a
point of emphasizing the spirit of agile (continued iteration and
improvement, problem solving from the bottom up) rather than sticking
dogmatically to a specific methodology. He’s also led the development
of new processes in the organization that reduce siloed development
and improve coordination, e.g. the Scrum of Scrums.
Through most of this time we relied on external consultants to get
other teams up to speed on agile development practices. While this has
worked reasonably well, the ever-changing personal relationships (a
new consultant for every project) and the lack of institutional memory
has meant that it was hard to customize and scale the process to our
needs.
When we spun up the Flow team last year, we had to make a decision:
Will we continue to rely on external consultants, or will we start
building internal capacity for this? We decided to experiment with the
latter, and Arthur Richards and Tomasz Finc led a one-time agile
workshop with the team which was universally well-received and didn't
suffer from some of the false starts of consultant engagements.
So, in the budget planning cycle this year Tomasz and Arthur made a
pitch to formalize this function in the organization: the Team
Practices Group [2]. Given his experience, Arthur is perfectly
positioned to lead this group. He’s demonstrated level-headedness,
patience, and openness that you want from a coach, guiding teams
gently and always focusing on improvements that will be carried
forward by the team as a whole.
After consulting with multiple teams who were hungry for more support
(e.g. a full-time ScrumMaster, or just agile process support), we
decided that Arthur would initially bring on two full-time staffers.
It’s already become clear that this won’t be sufficient. For example,
Analytics is expressing a strong need for a full-time ScrumMaster to
support the growing team so that developers can focus on development.
Whether this is always the right answer remains to be seen. Arthur
will work with teams to find a good balance between custom tailored
solutions and process consistency for the org.
Ultimately, this new group’s function will be similar to what in
traditional organizational models would be a "Project Management
Office" - except that, instead of having a group of Project Managers
assign work, we want to facilitate self-organizing and increasingly
fluid teams coming up with a process that works for them.
We draw lots of inspiration from other orgs (e.g. Spotify’s seminal
Scaling Agile paper [3]) but also need to account for the unique
requirements of our org (transparency, commitment to open source,
etc.).
Working with Arthur is a privilege and a pleasure, and I’m thrilled
that he’s agreed to take on this new role. If you're interested in
being part of the ongoing conversation about process improvements, we
have the public teampractices mailing [4] list for this purpose.
Warmly,
Erik
[1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2010-June/000027.h…
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/Team_Practices_Group
[3] https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1018963/Articles/SpotifyScaling.pdf
[4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/teampractices
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Hi All,
I'm happy to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation has won a significant
defamation lawsuit in Italy brought by Italian politician, Antonio
Angelucci, and his son, Giampaolo.
You can read more about this victory on the Wikimedia blog:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/07/22/victory-in-italy-based-on-freedom-of-u…
Best,
Michelle
--
Michelle Paulson
Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
149 New Montgomery Street, 6th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
mpaulson(a)wikimedia.org
415.839.6885 ext. 6608 (Office)
415.882.0495 (Fax)
*NOTICE: This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you
have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the
mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation and for legal/ethical
reasons, I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community
members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more
on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer>.*
The report on Wikimedia Nederland activities in June is available:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederl…
It is also included as text in this message.
Sandra Rientjes
Directeur/Executive Director Wikimedia Nederland
*COMMUNITY: supporting and mobilising volunteers and editors*
· Wiki-Saturdays.
The WMNL office was open for community members on June 7 and 21. The event
on the 7th was visited by 10 members. The first ideas for the year plan
2015 were collected by the 12 participants on the 21st. (see below)
*WORK: content, collaboration and activity development*
- Wiki Loves Earth events
In total, the Wiki Loves Earth competition resulted in 1349 images of Dutch
nature, wildlife and landscapes uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. The
Institute for Vision and Sounds donated 500 videos of Dutch birds (see
below under content donations for more info) and launched a competition to
integrate the films in the relevant Wikipedia-articles. We also met with
Naturalis, the museum of natural history, to discuss content donations and
an editathon, and are approaching volunteer organisations working on nature
and wildlife for future cooperation.
· Education Programme
WMNL has commissioned a small consultancy firm to carry out a study into
the feasibility of starting an education programme in the Netherlands. The
consultants did desk research and interviewed relevant stakeholders. In
their report, they conclude that there is definitely potential for an
education programme focussing on higher education (universities and
colleges. They recommended carrying out three pilotprojects, exploring
improving content of articles, translating articles from other language
versions of Wikipedia and improving language and style of articles. More
information can be found on the project page.
· World War Two
Volunteers working on the World War Two project made an inventory of topics
whose content could be expanded and improved. This will serve as a
framework for content donations by the National Institute for War Research
NIOD and the Institute for Vision and Sound. We also decided to approach
local history groups and museums. More information on the project page. And
we are also still looking for more volunteers to work on this activity!
· Wikipedia workshops at libraries
Two workshop were organised: a monthly open workshop in Amersfoort (June
13) and a workshop for 9 employees of the public library in Amsterdam (OBA,
June 24). The workshop in Amersfoort attracted people that specifically
came to the library for the workshop and the director of the archive (the
archive is located in the same building).
· Music Edit-a-thon
On Saturday June 14th an Edit-a-thon was organized at the Netherlands
Institute for Sound and Vision. About 30 people showed up to write about
Dutch music from the first half of the twentieth century. There were 15
first-time editors present. About twenty articles were written (see the
course page for all the contributions of the day). Photos of the day.
· Content donations
*The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision: 500+ videos of birds*
The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision has just finished uploading
over 500 video's of bird filmed in The Netherlands by a professional film
producer. This is a donation made possible by the Foundation for Nature
Footage (Stichting Natuurbeelden) and the Netherlands Institute for Sound
and Vision. The entire collection can be found in the category
commons:Category:Stichting_Natuurbeelden_on_Open_Images Stichting
Natuurbeelden on Open Images.
*Atlas of Mutual Heritage on Commons: 2.500 old maps, prints and drawings*
2500 images related to the overseas history of The Netherlands have been
uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Hay Kranen. More information about this
upload can be found on the project page and in Hay's email to the GLAM
mailinglist.
· Re-source fashion conference
Sebastiaan ter Burg was a panellist at the Re-source fashion conference in
Arnhem.
*WMNL*
· Newsletter
The newsletter was published on June 30. 69 people signed up for the WMNL
newsletter, mainly as a result of the Wiki Loves Earth events.
· Linux-group meeting
Board members Ad Huikeshoven and Justus de Bruijn attended the annual
summer meeting of the Netherlands Linux Usersgroup. They presented WMNL and
explored possibilities for synergy and cooperation.
*GLOBAL*
· Free Culture Weekend
Sebastiaan ter Burg attended the Culture Weekend in London (notes).
· Wikimania Scholarships
WMNL provided Wikimania scholarships to 11 members of the Dutch Wikimedia
community. In addition, several staff and boardmembers will also attend the
event in London.
*GOVERNANCE*
· Board
The WMNL Board met on June 12.
· Annual plan 2015
We started drafting of the annual plan 2015 with a brainstorming meeting on
June 21, which was attended by 12 people. The process has now moved
on-wiki. Members of the Wikimedia community can provide input on the
WMNL-wiki.
*OTHER EVENTS*
These events are relevant to the Netherlands or Dutch language
Wikimedia-projects but were not organized/supported by WMNL:
· Brazil writing weeks. The Dutch Wikipedia community organised two
writing weeks (May 31 - June 15) about Brazil. Some [1] 260 articles were
written or improved.
· 2,228 photos of objects from the Rijksmuseum Japanese art
collection were uploaded to Commons with the GLAMwiki Toolset through the
kind help of Fae.