The Wikimedia chapters and thematic organizations are seeking to appoint
two candidates to sit on the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees for
two years, starting in summer 2014.
The two new members of the board will help to decide the future direction
of the world's leading non-profit website. Wikimedia projects are
constructed by hundreds of thousands of volunteers worldwide, supported by
a growing number of staff and an international network of affiliate
organizations. Board membership is unpaid.
The chapters and thematic organizations wish to appoint two excellent board
members and believe this can best be achieved by selecting from a large
number of varied and skilled candidates. Therefore, the chapters and
thematic organizations call for nominations by everyone who believes they
or someone they know would be suitable. This call for candidates should be
distributed as widely as possible through such forums as mailing lists,
village pumps, and blogs.
The successful candidates will be committed to the Wikimedia mission and
willing and able to engage constructively with the stakeholders of the
movement, including the volunteers and the affiliate organizations that
provide it with essential support. The successful candidates will have:
* the ability to provide expertise to the board in its goal of implementing
a coherent vision on how the projects' communities, the foundation, the
chapters, the thematic organizations, the user groups, and other affiliated
groups work together;
* sensitivity to complex issues surrounding the multiplicity of languages,
cultures, and jurisdictions served by the foundation's projects;
* knowledge and understanding of the governance of international non-profit
organizations, balancing autonomy and subsidiarity;
* the ability to think strategically and to work both as part of a team and
independently;
* a good standard of written and oral English (fluency in additional
languages would be well regarded);
* sufficient time to devote to the role of board member, and the ability
and willingness to travel.
Increasing the geographical diversity of current board membership would be
an advantage.
The selection process is set out at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats
Nominations must be submitted no later than 31 March (24:00 UTC) using the
form on the following Meta page:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2014/Nominat…
The facilitators of the ASBS election,
James Hare
Chris Keating
Lorenzo Losa
(Excuse the cross-posting.)
All,
During even-numbered years, the Wikimedia chapters have had the responsibility to select two persons to serve on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. These seats are known as the "chapter selected board seats."
The Board of Trustees has been considering an amendment to the Wikimedia Foundation's bylaws[1] which would allow thematic organizations[2] to participate in this process equally with chapters. The proposed amendment—consistent with language in the current bylaws—requires that the selection process be agreed to by a majority of chapters and thematic organizations (which I will refer to collectively as "affiliate organizations" for this purpose) and by the Board of Trustees. In January, the affiliate organizations began debating how this process should be carried out, culminating in a resolution which was voted upon by the organizations. After voting took place from February 1–28, a majority of organizations have voted to approve the process. The resolution is printed at the bottom of this email.
We now request that the Board of Trustees approve the resolution. In the meantime, the Election Facilitators selected by the resolution (Chris Keating, Laurentius, and myself) will begin the work of accepting nominations. The relevant Meta page[3] will be updated shortly.
I would like to thank Chris and Laurentius for volunteering to serve as Election Facilitators, the community for providing feedback on the proposed resolution, the various affiliate organization boards for debating and voting on the resolution, the Board of Trustees for their cooperation in this matter, and María Sefidari for coordinating with the affiliate organizations on behalf of the Board of Trustees.
If you have any questions, feel free to send an email.
On behalf of the affiliate organizations and Election Facilitators,
James Hare
****
Whereas the Wikimedia chapters and thematic organizations (collectively, "the affiliate organizations") are responsible for selecting two members of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees during even-numbered years,
Whereas it is necessary for the affiliate organizations to agree on a process by which such Board members are selected, and
Whereas the Foundation's bylaws require that the selection process be determined by the Board of Trustees and a majority of the affiliate organizations,
We, the affiliate organizations, resolve that:
1. There shall be an election among the affiliate organizations to determine the two Board members selected by the affiliate organizations.
2. There shall be three Election Facilitators who are jointly responsible for overseeing and carrying out the election. Election Facilitators shall not be candidates in the election and shall not endorse any candidate nor shall they participate in any public discussions of candidates' merits. Where they are Board members of organizations voting in the election they are expected to recuse themselves from any decision about how the organization's vote is cast.
3. James Hare, Chris Keating, and Laurentius shall serve as Election Facilitators until the conclusion of the 2014 election process. For subsequent elections, the Election Facilitators shall be selected by the consensus of the affiliate organizations no later than March 1 of each even-numbered year. Those who wish to serve as Election Facilitators shall indicate their interest on a designated Meta-Wiki page.
4. The Election Facilitators shall determine the dates of each biennial election, provided that there is a nomination period of at least 30 days, a nomination finalization period of at least 15 days, and a period for discussion and voting of at least 45 days.
5. Candidates who seek to represent the affiliate organizations on the Board of Trustees shall post their names and nomination statements on a designated Meta-Wiki page. For a candidate to be listed on the ballot, he or she must submit a nomination statement during the nomination period and shall have secured the written endorsement of at least one affiliate organization. Endorsements may be posted until the time that nominations are finalized and the ballot is prepared. [Footnote added February 12: The Election Facilitators wish to note that "representation" in this context refers to the role of the affiliate organizations as a constituency, not that the selected trustees will be acting as advocates for the affiliate organizations. Per the Bylaws of the Wikimedia Foundation, the selected trustees will be required to represent the entire interest of the Foundation as an organization and not just the affiliate organizations. We are keeping the text of the resolution as-is, since voting has already begun.]
6. The Election Facilitators shall conduct voting through a designated page on the private Chapters Wiki in the form of a table. The Election Facilitators shall ensure that each organization has access to this wiki. Each organization is responsible for determining by what process it casts its vote, as well as who has the authority to cast the vote on behalf of the organization; a statement shall accompany each vote describing such process. A majority of organizations voting during the election period shall constitute a quorum. Votes cast following the conclusion of the election period are invalid.
7. Each organization shall rank candidates in order of preference, with a vote of "1" indicating the strongest preference. If the same number is used to rank more than one candidate, it shall be deemed a statement of equal preference, with the organization's vote split equally among the candidates selected. An organization leaving a candidate unranked shall not count as a vote for or against such candidate.
8. Within 15 days of the conclusion of the voting period, the Election Facilitators shall calculate the outcome of the election in the manner of the single transferable vote, using the Droop quota to determine the number of votes needed to be elected. The Election Facilitators shall announce the results to the Board of Trustees and to the Wikimedia community, and publish the calculations used to determine the outcome of the election to allow others to check the results.
****
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws/January_2014_-_…
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_thematic_organizations
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapter-selected_Board_seats
(This is the second in a series of monthly blog posts by the members
of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. This month's post is by
Board member Alice Wiegand on the topic of Board governance, and is
available in English, Deutsch, Español, and Indonesian.)
From: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/28/board-service-every-board-needs-a-bit…
Board service: Every board needs a bit of maintenance
Posted by Alice Wiegand on February 28, 2014
For all the differences among the 40 regional organizations (chapters)
and one thematic organization in the Wikimedia movement, there is one
feature that is found at all the registered Wikimedia organizations: a
volunteer-basedsupervision and control committee. For the Wikimedia
Foundation, it is the Board of Trustees, at Wikimedia France, it is
the Conseil d'administration, with Wikimedia Germany, it is the
Präsidium, and of course there are a number of other different names.
For simplicity, here I use the term "board" for all these bodies.
Enable the board to do its job
We often take for granted that a committee composed of individuals
with different expectations, experiences and knowledge can find its
way into its tasks just by itself. That it manages them well and
effectively, always acting and communicating openly and
professionally. But can that really always be assumed? Is it not in
fact extremely difficult to come together as a group to figure out
individual strengths and weaknesses, and build up trust? Two things
that I think are essential for functional boards: a) the ability and
willingness to delegate and b) the ability and willingness to accept
and promote different positions and constructive confrontation within
the board. Both are only possible if the committee has agreed on basic
internal rules and procedures and if it accepts that it needs to
evolve constantly as a body.
A board needs to keep pace with the organization's development, to
fulfill its oversight obligations at each stage of development of the
organization, and at the same time support the organization, promote
its development and frame its strategic direction. If the entire board
deals with the question of how to become or how to remain able to
work, it is running in circles, and tasks are not carried out. What
could be more appropriate than to entrust a smaller group with these
issues, thereby relieving the entire body immensely?
BGC - a committee in the background
Since 2010 there is such a group in the board of the Wikimedia
Foundation: the Board Governance Committee (BGC), whose chairman I
have been since joining the Board in 2012. Why am I doing this kind of
work in particular? I actually find it fun to deal with policies and
the development of processes. I believe that it is generally helpful
to have a resource for looking things up, a resource that is
understandable for everyone, and I know that the Board of Trustees has
not yet reached its own ideal conception of a board. And to this, I
can and I want to make a contribution. Even though we publish our
annual agenda and the minutes of our meetings on Meta, our work is
naturally more in the background and is only known to few people.
The BGC's purpose is to ensure that the Board fulfills its legal and
fiduciary obligations, and that it improves its control function,
efficiency and effectiveness. Sounds good, but what does that mean?
Traditionally, a BGC takes care of the composition of the board,
finding suitable candidates and preparing the appointments. Since the
Foundation's Board only partly consists of appointed board members,
and we consider additional areas such as policies and our own
evaluation to be as important as the composition of the board, our BGC
has an extended scope of tasks. In essence, the Wikimedia Foundation's
BGC takes care of three areas: 1. policies and processes, 2.
composition of the board, 3. training and evaluation of the board.
Specifically, this includes - for example - the Board Handbook, the
search for new board members like most recently Ana Toni, the support
of the community and Wikimedia organizations in the respective
selection processes for board members by the Board liaisons or an
Elections Committee, the 360-degree feedback for board members and the
evaluation of the entire body. The latter is currently taking place in
close collaboration with the HR Committee. In the board's daily
business, the BGC is positioned especially well to regularly question
processes and threads. From time to time, this includes reminding the
Board to concentrate on tasks that nobody else can do. Depending on
the size and structure of the organization, this can mean different
things. For example, the board of the Wikimedia Foundation does not
itself create the annual plan, that's the job of the ED, in person of
Sue Gardner (see the process summary). Our responsibility as the Board
is to provide directive input for the annual planning. In contrast, at
organizations without full-time employees, the annual plan is created
by the board itself. It is important to identify this explicit area of
responsibility for each board. Because that is the challenge to face,
which should be any Board's main focus.
Development is not an end in itself
A Board must not only take care of itself - but it may not lose sight
of its own development, either. Under the assumption that a Board's
constellation in the wikiverse changes relatively quickly, it must
ensure to become able to work effectively within a short time (and
continue to be so). The board must develop as the organization does,
because only then can it ensure a trusting and fruitful cooperation in
the board and - if applicable - between the board and the management.
Regularly questioning its own working methods and self-conception is
part of this. The trick is to implement the necessary legal or
rational procedures and processes, without losing yourself in a cage
of rules. A working group, whether it is called BGC or completely
different, can provide valuable support - in every board.
I'm looking forward to the Boards Training Workshop in early March in
London. We all can learn from each other, we only haven't yet found
the right ways to share our ideas and experiences in this matter.
Alice Wiegand (User:Lyzzy) has been serving on the WMF Board of
Trustees since 2012 as a Chapter selected trustee. She has been
involved with chapter and movement issues for many years and served on
the Board of Wikimedia Deutschland from 2008 to 2011.
Deutsch
Board-Service - Ein wenig Pflege braucht jedes Board
Bei allen Unterschieden zwischen den 40 regionalen Organisationen
(Chapter) und einer thematischen Organisation (Thematic Organization)
im Wikiversum gibt es ein Merkmal, dass sich bei allen eingetragenen
Wikimedia-Organisationen wiederfindet: ein ehrenamtlich tätiges
Aufsichts- und Kontrollgremium. Bei der Wikimedia Foundation ist es
das Board of Trustees, bei Wikimedia France das Conseil
d'administration, bei Wikimedia Deutschland ist es das Präsidiumund
natürlich gibt es noch eine Reihe weiterer unterschiedlicher
Bezeichnungen. Der Einfachheit halber nutze ich hier den kurzen
Begriff "Board" für all diese Gremien.
Das Board arbeitsfähig machen
Wir nehmen es so oft als gegeben hin, dass ein Gremium,
zusammengesetzt aus Individuen mit unterschiedlichen Erwartungen,
Erfahrungen und Kenntnissen, von alleine in seine Aufgaben findet,
diese gut und effektiv bewältigt und dabei immer offen und
professionell agiert und kommuniziert. Aber kann das wirklich
vorausgesetzt werden? Ist es in Wirklichkeit nicht ungemein schwer,
als Gruppe zueinander zu finden, individuelle Stärken und Schwächen
herauszufinden und Vertrauen aufzubauen? Zwei Dinge sind meiner
Meinung nach unabdingbar für funktionsfähige Boards: a) die Fähigkeit
und die Bereitschaft zur Delegation und b) die Fähigkeit und
Bereitschaft, unterschiedliche Positionen und konstruktive
Konfrontation innerhalb des Boards zu ermöglichen und zu fördern.
Beides ist nur möglich, wenn das Gremium sich auf grundlegende interne
Regeln und Abläufe geeinigt hat und es akzeptiert, dass es sich als
Gremium ständig weiterentwickeln muss.
Ein Board muss mit der Entwicklung der Organisation Schritt halten, um
seine Aufsichtspflichten in jedem Entwicklungsstadium der Organisation
erfüllen zu können und diese gleichzeitig zu stützen, ihre Entwicklung
zu fördern und ihre strategische Ausrichtung zu gestalten. Wenn sich
das gesamte Board damit beschäftigt, wie es arbeitsfähig wird oder
bleibt, beißt sich die Katze in den Schwanz und die eigentlichen
Aufgaben bleiben liegen. Was liegt näher, als mit diesen Fragen eine
kleinere Gruppe zu beauftragen und so das gesamte Gremium immens zu
entlasten?
BGC - ein Komitee im Hintergrund
Seit 2010 gibt es eine solche Gruppe im Board der Wikimedia
Foundation, es ist das Board Governance Committees (kurz BGC), dessen
Vorsitzende ich seit meiner Aufnahme in das Board 2012 bin. Warum ich
gerade das mache? Ich habe tatsächlich Spaß an der Beschäftigung mit
Richtlinien und der Entwicklung von Prozessen. Ich glaube, dass es
grundsätzlich hilfreich ist, etwas zum Nachschlagen zu haben, was
jeder nachvollziehen kann und ich weiß, dass auch das Board der
Foundation seine Ideal-Vorstellung eines Boards noch nicht erreicht
hat. Und hierbei kann und möchte ich einen Beitrag leisten. Auch wenn
wir unsere jährliche Agenda und die Protokolle unserer Treffen auf
Meta veröffentlichen, bleibt unsere Arbeit naturgemäß eher im
Hintergrund und ist nur wenigen bekannt.
Zweck des BGC ist es sicherzustellen, dass das Board seine rechtlichen
und treuhänderischen Verpflichtungen erfüllt, und dass es seine
Steuerungsfunktion, Effizienz und Effektivität verbessert. Klingt gut,
aber was bedeutet das? Traditionell kümmert sich ein BGC darum, die
Zusammensetzung des Boards zu prüfen, geeignete Kandidaten zu finden
und die Ernennungen vorzubereiten. Da das Board der Wikimedia
Foundation nur zum Teil aus ernannten Board-Mitgliedern besteht und
wir weitere Arbeitsfelder wie Richtlinien und unsere eigene Evaluation
für ebenso wichtig wie die Zusammensetzung des Boards erachten, ist
das Aufgabenspektrum unseres BGCs erweitert. Im Wesentlichen kümmert
sich das BGC der Foundation um drei Bereiche: 1. Richtlinien und
Prozesse, 2. Zusammensetzung des Boards, 3. Ausbildung und Bewertung
des Boards.
Konkret zählen dazu zum Beispiel das Board-Handbuch, die Suche nach
neuen Boardmitgliedern wie zuletzt Ana Toni, die Unterstützung von
Community und Wikimedia-Organisationen bei den jeweiligen
Auswahlprozessen für Board-Mitglieder durch Board-Kontaktpersonen oder
eine Arbeitsgruppe Wahlen, das 360-Grad-Feedback für Board-Mitglieder
und die Evaluation des gesamten Gremiums. Letztere erfolgt derzeit in
enger Zusammenarbeit mit dem HR-Komitee. Im Tagesgeschäft ist es
funktionsbedingt vor allem das BGC, das regelmäßig Abläufe und
Diskussionsfäden in Frage stellen kann. Dazu zählt von Zeit zu Zeit
auch, das Board daran zu erinnern, sich auf das zu konzentrieren, was
niemand sonst machen kann. Abhängig von Größe und Struktur der
Organisation kann das unterschiedlich sein. So erstellt das Board der
Wikimedia Foundation den Jahresplan nicht selbst, das ist Aufgabe der
Geschäftsführung, in Person von Sue Gardner (siehe den Überblick über
den Planungsprozess). Unsere Aufgabe als Board ist es aber,
richtungsweisenden Input für die Jahresplanung zu geben. Bei
regionalen Organisationen ohne hauptamtliche Mitarbeiter wird ein
Jahresplan im Gegensatz dazu von dessen Board selbst erstellt. Wichtig
ist, diesen expliziten Aufgabenbereich eines jeden Boards zu
identifizieren. Denn dem muss es sich stellen, und der sollte auch
Arbeitsschwerpunkt eines jeden Boards sein.
Weiterentwicklung ist kein Selbstzweck
Ein Board darf sich nicht nur um sich selbst kümmern - es darf aber
seine eigene Weiterentwicklung auch nicht aus den Augen verlieren.
Unter der Voraussetzung, dass sich die Konstellation eines Boards im
Wikiversum relativ schnell ändert, muss es dafür sorgen, in kurzer
Zeit arbeitsfähig und effektiv zu werden (und zu bleiben). Das Board
muss sich wie die Organisation weiterentwickeln, denn nur so kann es
sicherstellen, dass eine vertrauensvolle und befruchtende
Zusammenarbeit im Board und - wenn gegeben - zwischen Board und
Geschäftsführung stattfindet. Das regelmäßige Hinterfragen der eigenen
Arbeitsweisen und des Selbstverständnisses gehört dazu. Die Kunst
dabei ist es, die juristisch notwendigen oder vernünftigen Verfahren
und Abläufe einzuführen, ohne sich dabei selbst in einem Käfig aus
Vorschriften zu verlieren. Eine Arbeitsgruppe, egal ob sie BGC oder
ganz anders heißt, kann hierbei wertvolle Unterstützung leisten - in
jedem Board.
Ich freue mich auf den Boards Training Workshop Anfang März in London.
Wir alle können voneinander lernen, auch wenn wir noch nicht die
richtigen Wege gefunden haben, um uns in diesem Sinne auszutauschen.
Alice Wiegand (User:Lyzzy) ist seit 2012 ein von den regionalen
Organisationen ausgewähltes Mitglied im Kuratorium der Wikimedia
Foundation. Sie beschäftigt sich seit vielen Jahren mit Belangen der
regionalen Organisationen und der Bewegung und war Mitglied des
Vorstands von Wikimedia Deutschland von 2008 bis 2011.
Español
Servicio de la Junta: cada junta necesita algo de mantenimiento
Debido a todas las diferencias entre las cuarenta organizaciones
regionales (capítulos) y unaorganización temática en el movimiento
Wikimedia, existe una característica que se encuentra en todas las
organizaciones Wikimedia registradas: un comité de supervisión y
control integrado por voluntarios. Para la Fundación Wikimedia, esta
se trata de la Junta Directiva; en Wikimedia Francia, se trata
delConseil d'administration; en Wikimedia Alemania, es el Präsidium; y
por supuesto que hay una serie de otros nombres diferentes. Para
simplificar, aquí utilizo el breve término <<Junta>> para todos esos
órganos.
Permitir que la junta pueda hacer su trabajo
A menudo damos por sentado que un comité integrado por individuos con
diferentes expectativas, experiencias y conocimientos, puede encontrar
su camino en sus tareas por sí mismo. Eso es lo que gestionan bien y
efectivamente, siempre actuando y comunicándose abiertamente y
profesionalmente. ¿Pero en verdad puede asumirse que siempre es así?
¿No es en los hechos extremadamente difícil reunirse como grupo para
descubrir las fortalezas y debilidades individuales, y construir
confianza? Creo que son esenciales dos cosas para las juntas
funcionales: a) la aptitud y disposición para delegar y b) la aptitud
y disposición para aceptar y promover diferentes posiciones y
confrontaciones constructivas dentro de la Junta. Ambas son posibles
sólo si el comité acordó reglas internas básicas y procedimientos, y
si acepta que necesita evolucionar constantemente como órgano.
Una junta tiene que seguir el ritmo de desarrollo de la organización,
para cumplir con sus obligaciones de vigilancia en cada etapa del
desarrollo de la organización, y al mismo tiempo apoyar a la
organización, promover su desarrollo y el marco de su dirección
estratégica. Si toda la junta se ocupa de la cuestión de cómo ser o
cómo seguir siendo capaz de trabajar, se está ejecutando en círculos,
y las tareas no se llevan a cabo. ¿Qué podría ser más apropiado que
que confiara a un grupo más pequeño estos temas, aliviando así el
cuerpo entero inmensamente?
BGC - un comité en segundo plano
Desde 2010 existe un grupo como esté en la Junta Directiva de la
Fundación Wikimedia Comite de Gobernanza de la Junta(Governance
Committee o BGC, en inglés), del cual soy presidente desde que me uní
a la Junta en 2012. ¿Porqué hago este tipo de trabajo en particular?
Actualmente encuentro divertido lidiar con políticas y desarrollo de
procesos. Creo que por lo general es útil contar con un recurso para
onservar las cosas, un recurso que sea entendible para todos, y sé que
la Junta Directiva todavía no ha alcanzado su propia concepción ideal
de una Junta; y para ello, Yo puedo y quiero hacer una contribución. A
pesar de que publicamos nuestra agenda anual y las actas de nuestras
reuniones en Meta, nuestro trabajo es naturalmente mayor en segundo
plano y es conocido por pocas personas.
El propósito del BGC es asegurarse de que la Junta cumpla sus
obligaciones legales y fiduciarias, y que mejore su función de
control, eficiencia y efectividad. Suena bien, pero ¿qué significa
esto? Tradicionalmente, un BGC se encarga de la composición de la
Junta, buscando candidatos adecuados y preparando los nombramientos.
Ya que la Junta Directiva de la Fundación se compone sólo en parte por
miembros designados, consideramos otras áreas como políticas y nuestra
propia evaluación tan importantes como la composición de la Junta,
nuestro BGC tiene un amplio espectro de tareas. En esencia, El comité
de Gobernanza de Junta de la Fundación Wikimedia se ocupa de tres
áreas: 1. Políticas y procesos, 2. Composición de la Junta, 3.
Capacitación y evaluación de la Junta.
Específicamente, esto incluye - por ejemplo - la Guía de la Junta, la
búsqueda de miembros nuevos de la Junta como Ana Toni, la más
reciente, el apoyo a la comunidad y a las organizaciones de Wikimedia
en sus respectivos procesos de selección de miembros de sus Juntas por
los coordinadores de la Junta Directiva o un Comité Electoral,
laretroalimentación de 360-grados para miembros de la Junta una
evaluación completa. Esta última se está llevando a cabo en
colaboración con el Comite de Recursos Humanos. En los asuntos
cotidianos de la Junta, el BGC está especialmente bien posicionado
para cuestionar procesos y subprocesos. Cada cierto tiempo, esto
incluye recordar a la Junta concentrarse en tareas específicas que
nadie más puede realizar. Dependiente del tamaño y estructura de la
organización, esto puede significar diferentes cosas; por ejemplo, la
Junta de la Fundación Wikimedia no crea por si misma el plan anual,
que es el trabajo del Director Ejecutivo, Sue Gardner (ver el Resumen
del proceso). Nuestra responsabilidad como Junta es proporcionar de
información directiva par ala planificación anual. En contraste, en
las organizaciones que no tienen empleados a tiempo completo, el plan
anual lo realiza la Junta en sí misma. Es importante identificar esta
área específica de responsabilidad de cada Junta; debido a que este es
el desafío a encarar, que debe ser el foco principal de cualquier
Junta.
El desarrollo no es un fin en sí mismo
Una Junta no sólo debe ocuparse de si misma - pero tampoco debe perder
e vista su propio desarrollo. Asumiendo que la constelación de una
Junta cambia relativamente rápido en el wikiuniverso, debe asegurarse
de ser capaz de trabajar de manera efectiva en un lapso corto de
tiempo (y continuar siéndolo). La Junta debe desarrollarse como lo
hace la organización, porque sólo entonces puede asegurarse un
cooperación en confianza y fructífera en la junta - y en su caso -
entre la junta y la gerencia. Cuestionar regularmente sus propios
métodos de trabajo y su concepción de sí mismo es parte de esto. El
truco es poner en práctica los procedimientos y procesos legales o
racionales necesarios, sin perderse en una jaula de reglas. Un grupo
de trabajo, ya sea que se llame Comite de Gobernanza o tenga un nombre
completamente diferente, puede proporcionar un valioso apoyo - en cada
junta.
Con miras al próximo Taller de capacitación de juntas a principios de
marzo en Londres; todos nosotros podemos aprender de cada uno, aún no
hemos encontrado la manera correcta de compartir nuestras ideas y
experiencias al respecto.
Alice Wiegand (User:Lyzzy) es parte de la Junta directiva de WMF desde
2012 miembro elegido de un Capítulo. Ella ha estado involucrada en
aspectos realacionados con el capítulo y el movimiento por varios años
y fue parte de la Junta de Wikimedia Alemania desde el 2008 al 2011.
Bahasa Indonesia
Layanan Dewan: Setiap dewan membutuhkan sedikit pemeliharaan
Untuk semua perbedaan diantara 40 organisasi regional (majelis) dan
satu organisasi tematik di gerakan Wikimedia, salah satu fiturnya
dapat ditemukan di semua organisasi terdaftar Wikimedia: yaitu
berdasarkan kesukarelaankomite pengawasan dan pengendalian. Untuk
Yayasan Wikimedia, ada Dewan Pengawas, di Wikimedia Perancis, ada
Conseil d'administration, di wikimedia Jerman, adaPräsidium, dan
tentunya masih banyak lagi dengan nama lain. Untuk kemudahan, kami
disini memberikan nama pendek "dewan" untuk semua badan organisasi.
Memudahkan dewan melakukan pekerjaan mereka
Kami juga sering mengetahui bahwa komite terdiri dari
individual-individual dengan harapan, pengalaman, dan pengetahuan yang
dapat menemukan cara untuk menyelesaikan tugasnya dengan sendirinya.
Komite tersebut dapat mengatur diri mereka dengan baik dan efektif,
selalu bekerja dan berkomunikasi secara terbuka dan profesional. Namun
dapatkah itu selalu dapat diasumsikan? Bukankah pada kenyataannya
sangat sulit untuk bekerja bersama-sama dalam tim untuk memahami
kekuatan dan kelemahan setiap individual, dan membangun kepercayaan?
Dua hal saya pikir sangat penting untuk dewan fungsional; kemampuan
dan kerelaan untuk menerima dan mempromosikan setiap posisi dan
konfrontasi yang konstruktif secara berbeda di dalam dewan. Keduanya
hanya akan terjadi jika komite telah menyetujui peraturan dan prosedur
internal yang dasar, dan jika diterima maka akan berevolusi secara
konstan sebagai sebuah lembaga.
Dewan perlu menjaga langkah dengan pengembangan organisasi, untuk
memenuhi kewajiban pengawasan pada setiap tahap pengembangan
organisasi, dan pada waktu yang sama mendukung organisasi,
mempromosikan pengembangannya dan kerangangka arah strateginya. Jika
seluruh dewan setuju dengan pertanyaan bagaimana untuk menjadi atau
bagaimana untuk tetap dapat bekerja, bekerja di dalam lingkaran serta
tugas yang tidak dilakukan. Apa yang dapat lebih tepat dari
mempercayai kelompok kecil dengan masalah ini, sehingga meringkankan
tugas lembaga secara keseluruhan?
BGC - komite yang melatar belakangi
Sejak 2010 terdapat kelompok di lembaga dari Wikimedia Foundation:
Board Governance Committee (BGC), di mana saya sebagai ketua telah
bergabung dengan dewan sejak 2012. Mengapa saya melakukan pekerjaan
ini secara khusus? Saya benar-benar menemukan minat untuk bertransaksi
dengan kebijaksanaan dan pengembangan dari proses. Saya percaya bahwa
secara umum sangat membantu untuk menemukan sumber daya untuk mencari
apapun, sumber daya yang dimengerti oleh semua orang, dan saya tahu
bahwa Dewan Pengawas belum mencapai konsep yang ideal untuk dewan. Dan
untuk ini, saya dapat dan saya ingin untuk memberikan kontribusi.
Walaupun kami telah menerbitkan agenda tahunandan pertemuan di Meta,
pekerjaan kami tentu saja berada di belakang layar dan hanya diketahui
oleh beberapa orang saja.
Tujuan BCG ialah untuk menyakinkan bahwa Dewan memenuhi kewajiban
pergadaian dan keabsahan, dan meningkatkan fungsi kontrol, efisiensi
dan efektivitasnya. Kedengarannya bagus, namun apa artinya? Secara
tradisional, BGC mengurus komposisi dari dewan, menemukan kandidat
yang tepat dan mempersiapkan pertemuan. Sejak Dewan Foundation hanya
sebagian yang terdiri dari anggota dewan tertunjuk, dan kami
mempertimbangkan area tambahan seperti kebijakan dan evaluasi kami
sendiri menjadi sepenting susunan dewan, BGC kami telah memperluas
cakupan tugas. Secara esensial, BGC Wikimedia Foundation mengurusi
tiga area: 1. Kebijakan dan proses, 2. Susunan dewan, 3. Pelatiahan
dan evaluasi dewan.
Khususnya, hal ini termasuk -contohnya- Buku pegangan anggota Dewan,
perekrutan anggota dewan paling terbaru Ana Toni, dukungan komunitas
dan organisasi Wikimedia di bagian prosed tertentu untuk anggota dewan
perwakilan atau komite pemilihan, 360-degree feedback untuk anggota
dewan dan evaluasi seluruh badan organisasi. Yang terakhir saat ini
sedang berlangsung kerjasama erat dengan Komite Humas. Dalam tugas
dewan sehari-hari, ikut diingatkan bahwa Dewan harus berkonsentrasi
pada tugas yang dimana orang lain tak dapat lakukan. Tergantung dari
ukuran dan struktur organisasi, ini bisa berarti banyak. Contohnya,
Dewan Yayasan Wikimedia sendiri tidak menentukan jadwal tahunan,
dikarenakan penentuan tersebut adalah tugas ED, orangnya adalah Sue
Gardner (lihat ringkasan proses). Tugas kami sebagai Dewan adalah
untuk menyediakan masukan langsung untuk perencanaan tahunan.
Sebaliknya, dalam organisasi dengan pegawai tetap, rencana tahunan
dilakukan oleh dewan itu sendiri. Sangatlah penting untuk menentukan
area tugas untuk tiap dewan. Dikarenakan banyak halangan yang akan
dihadapi, yang tentu harus menjadi fokus utama Dewan.
Pengembangan bukanlah tujuan akhir
Dewan tidak boleh hanya mengurus hal ini - tetapi juga tidak hilang
sasaran pada pengembangannya sendiri. Dengan asumsi konstelasi Dewan
di dunia wiki yang secara relatif terus berganti, diharuskan mampu
bekerja secara efektif dalam waktu yang pendek (dan berterusan). Dewan
harus berkembang dan bergerak seperti organisasi, dikarenakan hanya
dengan ini dapat dipastikan kepercayaan dan hasil dari kerja sama
dalam dewan dan -mungkin saja- di antara dewan dan manajemen. Secara
reguler mengevaluasi metode pekerjaan sendiri dan pembuatan konsep
sendiri adalah bagian dari ini. Triknya adalah untuk menerapkan
prosedur dan proses yang legal dan rasional, tanpa kehilangan arah di
kungkungan peraturan. Kelompok kerja, terserah apakah itu BGC atau
sesuatu yang berbeda sama sekali, dapat memberikan dukungan yang
berharga - di setiap kedewanan.
Saya menantikan untuk ikut serta di Lokakarya Pelatihan Dewan diawal
maret nanti di London. Kami dapat mempelajari satu sama lainnya, kami
hanya belum menemukan jalan yang tepat untuk membagi ide dan
pengalaman tentang hal ini.
Alice Wiegand (User:Lyzzy) telah melayani Dewan Pengawas WMF sejak
tahun 2012 sebagai anggota Majelis yang dipercaya. Dia telah terlibat
dengan majelis dan isu isu organisasi untuk beberapa tahun dan
melayani Dewan Wikimedia Jerman dari tahun 2008 sampai pada tahun
2011.
Hi all,
The Wikimedia Foundation and the Individual Engagement Grants Committee
invite you to submit and review proposals for community-led experiments to
improve Wikimedia!
Individual Engagement Grants support individuals and small teams to
organize projects for 6 months. You can get funding to turn your idea for
improving Wikimedia projects into action, with a grant for online community
organizing, outreach and partnerships, tool-building, or research. Funding
is available for a few hundred dollars up to $30,000.
Proposals for this round are due 31 March 2014:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG
We're also seeking new committee members to help review and recommend
proposals for funding. Candidates are invited to sign up by 9 March 2014:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Committee
Some examples of projects we've funded in the past:
*Organizing social media for Chinese Wikipedia ($350 for materials)[1]
*Improving gadgets for Visual Editor ($4500 for developers)[2]
*Coordinating free access to reliable sources for Wikipedians ($7500 for
project management, consultants and materials)[3]
*Building community and strategy for Wikisource (EURO 10000 for organizing and
travel)[4]
You can read more on the WMF blog:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/tag/individual-engagement-grants/
Hope to have your participation in this round!
Best wishes,
Siko
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Build_an_effective_method_of_pub…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Visual_editor-_gadgets_compatibi…
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/The_Wikipedia_Library
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Elaborate_Wikisource_strategic_v…
--
Siko Bouterse
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org
*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. *
*Donate <https://donate.wikimedia.org> or click the "edit" button today,
and help us make it a reality!*
Hi all,
please find below the WMF report for December 2013, in plain text.
As always, the editable and formatted version has been published on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_December_2013
and the reports are being posted on the Wikimedia blog, too:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/c/corporate/wmf-monthly-reports/
As usual, we are also publishing a separate "Highlights" summary.
Please consider helping non-English-language communities to stay
updated, by providing a translation:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_December_2013
Many thanks to those who have translated the November "Highlights"
into Spanish, French, Indonesian, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese,
Russian, Ukrainian, and Chinese (help continues to be welcome for
completing the partial translations in Hebrew, Italian, Turkish,
Albanian and some other languages)!
Apologies for the unusually late posting of the December report. The
January report should go out shortly.
Regards, Tilman
--
Wikimedia Foundation Report, December 2013
<Video: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Monthly_Metrics_Meeting_January…>
Video of the monthly Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting
covering the month of December
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/2014-01-09>
(January 9, 2014)
Contents
* 1 Data and Trends
* 2 Financials
* 3 Highlights
o 3.1 New brochure explains how to edit Wikipedia
o 3.2 "Drafts" feature provides a gentler start for Wikipedia
articles
o 3.3 Recipients of Annual Plan Grants (FDC) and Individual
Engagements Grants (IEG) announced
o 3.4 Successful year-end online fundraising campaign
* 4 Engineering
o 4.1 VisualEditor
o 4.2 Editor engagement
o 4.3 Mobile
* 5 Fundraising
o 5.1 Major Gifts and Foundations
o 5.2 Annual Fundraiser
* 6 Grantmaking
o 6.1 Annual Plan Grants (Funds Dissemination Committee)
o 6.2 Project and Event Grants
+ 6.2.1 Grants awarded in December 2013
+ 6.2.2 Reports accepted in December 2013
o 6.3 Travel & Participation Support
+ 6.3.1 Requests awarded in December 2013
+ 6.3.2 Reports accepted in December 2013
o 6.4 Individual Engagement Grants
+ 6.4.1 Reports accepted in December 2013
o 6.5 Grantmaking Learning and Evaluation
* 7 Programs
o 7.1 Wikipedia Zero
o 7.2 Wikipedia Education Program
+ 7.2.1 Global programs
+ 7.2.2 Arab World Program
+ 7.2.3 Communications
o 7.3 Program Evaluation and Design
* 8 Human Resources
o 8.1 Staff Changes
o 8.2 Statistics
o 8.3 Department Updates
* 9 Finance and Administration
* 10 Legal, Community Advocacy, and Communications Department
o 10.1 LCA Report, December 2013
+ 10.1.1 Contract Metrics
+ 10.1.2 Trademark Metrics
+ 10.1.3 Domains Obtained
+ 10.1.4 Coming & Going
+ 10.1.5 Other Activities
o 10.2 Communications Report, December 2013
+ 10.2.1 Major announcements
+ 10.2.2 Major Storylines through December
+ 10.2.3 Other worthwhile reads
+ 10.2.4 WMF Blog posts
+ 10.2.5 Media Contact
+ 10.2.6 Wikipedia Signpost
* 11 Visitors and Guests
== Data and Trends ==
Global unique visitors for November:
*533 million* (+9.95% compared with October; +0.42% compared with
the previous year)
(comScore data
<http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/unique_visitors> for all
Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release December data
later in January)
Page requests for December:
*18.270 billion* (-4.0% compared with November; -9.4% compared with
the previous year)
(Server log data
<http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthlyAllProjects.htm>,
all Wikimedia Foundation projects including mobile access)
Active Registered Editors for November 2013 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month,
excluding bots):
*74,803* (-1.33% compared with October / -4.88% compared with the
previous year)
(Database data
<http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/active_editors>, all Wikimedia
Foundation projects.)
*Report Card* (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF
projects):
http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/
(Definitions <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Analytics/Metric_definitions>)
== Financials ==
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Revenue_%26_Expenses_November_2…>
Wikimedia Foundation YTD Revenue and Expenses vs Plan as of November 30,
2013
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Expenses_by_Functions_November_…>
Wikimedia Foundation YTD Expenses by Functions as of November 30, 2013
(Financial information is only available through November 2013 at the
time of this report.)
All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and
Year-To-Date November 30, 2013.
Revenue 14,609,876
*Expenses:*
Engineering Group 6,589,458
Fundraising Group 1,439,053
Grantmaking Group 720,055
Programs Group 723,516
Grants 950,624
Governance Group 302,012
Legal/Community Advocacy/Communications Group 1,367,697
Finance/HR/Admin Group 3,029,513
Total Expenses 15,121,928
Total deficit (512,052)
/in US dollars/
* Revenue for the month of November is $2.96MM versus plan of $8.83MM,
approximately $5.87MM or 66% under plan.
* Year-to-date revenue is $14.61MM versus plan of $16.71MM,
approximately $2.1MM or 13% under plan.
* Expenses for the month of November is $2.89MM versus plan of
$3.73MM, approximately $844K or 23% under plan, primarily due to
lower personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting,
payment processing fees, and travel expenses partially offset by
higher outside contract services and recruiting expenses.
* Year-to-date expenses is $15.12MM versus plan of $18.43MM,
approximately $3.31MM or 18% under plan, primarily due to lower
personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, legal fees,
payment processing fees, staff development expenses, and travel
expenses partially offset by higher outside contract services and
recruiting fees.
* Cash position is $38.8MM as of November 30, 2013.
== Highlights ==
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Editing_Wikipedia_brochure_EN.pdf>
The new "editing Wikipedia" brochure
=== New brochure explains how to edit Wikipedia ===
The Education Program team completed work on an entirely new version of
the Welcome to Wikipedia brochure
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/01/14/editing-wikipedia-print-guide-new-con…>
(now titled "Editing Wikipedia
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Editing_Wikipedia_brochure_EN.pdf>").
It is also available
for translation into other languages
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_Wikipedia_(Bookshelf)/2013_e…>.
=== "Drafts" feature provides a gentler start for Wikipedia articles ===
In December, the new Draft namespace
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Draft_namespace> was launched on the English
Wikipedia <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/20/new-draft-feature/>, as
requested by the local community. It gives all users (registered or
anonymous) the option start new articles as a draft, instead of
publishing them immediately (which can carry the risk that the new
article is nominated for deletion before it can be improved). Drafts are
marked by a "Draft:" in the page title, and are not visible to search
engines.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mbazzi_Farmer_association.JPG>
Paul Kikuba is leading an IEG project to set up a Wikipedia center in
the village of Mbazzi, Uganda
=== Recipients of Annual Plan Grants (FDC) and Individual Engagements
Grants (IEG) announced ===
In December, 11 Wikimedia organizations
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round1>
were awarded annual plan
grants totaling $4.4M, following the recommendations of the
volunteer-run Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) in the first round of
requests for 2013/2014. The approved amount was lower than the overall
requested amount of US$5.94M, affirming the FDC's guidance to the
organizations to be thoughtful about growth.
Also in December, the selection of seven projects for the second round
of Individual Engagements grants (IEG) was announced
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/16/new-individual-engagement-grantees-to…>.
They focus on activities from outreach to tool-building, all aimed at
connecting and supporting the community.
=== Successful year-end online fundraising campaign ===
The WMF fundraising team ran the year-end online fundraising campaign
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2013> in the US, UK,
Canada, Australia, and New
Zealand. Roughly $18.7 million USD was raised from more than one million
donors in December. During the two weeks when the campaign ran at full
capacity, the team created and tested approximately 250 different
banners. Banners will be run in other countries and languages throughout
2014.
== Engineering ==
A detailed report of the Tech Department's activities for December 2013
can be found at:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2013/December
Major news in December include:
* a retrospective on Language Engineering events
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/10/language-engineering-events-language-…>,
including the language summit in Pune, India;
* the launch of a draft feature
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/20/new-draft-feature/> on the
English Wikipedia, to provide a gentler start for Wikipedia articles.
=== VisualEditor
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/VisualEditor/Portal>
===
In December, the VisualEditor team worked to continue the improvements
to the stability and performance of this interface that allows users to
edit wiki pages visually rather than using wiki markup. Most of the
team's focus was on major new features and fixing bugs. There is now
basic support for rich copy-and-paste from external sources into
VisualEditor, and a basic tool to insert characters not otherwise
available on users' keyboards. Work also continued on a dialog for
quickly adding references using citation templates.
The Parsoid <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid> team, which is developing
the parsing program that converts wiki markup to annotated HTML (and
back) behind the scenes of VisualEditor, continued their relentless work
to eliminate bugs and incompatibilities. Problems arose during the
migration to node 0.10, the platform that runs Parsoid. The team rolled
back the upgrade, investigated and fixed the issue. Testing has also
been improved so that similar issues are caught in the future. Last, the
team created several requests for comment
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/requests_for_comment> concerning architectural
components of the MediaWiki platform.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Growth_team_update_Jan_2014.pdf?pag…>
Presentation slides from the Growth team
=== Editor engagement <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/New_editor_engagement> ===
In December, we enabled Flow <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow> to a few
selected pages on mediawiki.org (Talk:Flow
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Flow> and Talk:Sandbox
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Sandbox>) and collected feedback about
the features and design to date from the community (read the summary
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow/Research#Experienced_Users>). Throughout
the feedback period, we worked on implementing design changes, such as a
more compact view of the board and a different interface for topic and
post actions, as well as different visualizations of history
information, based on the comments of users testing the software.
We also began a straw poll about launching Flow as a beta trial in the
discussion spaces of WikiProject Breakfast, WikiProject Hampshire, and
WikiProject Video Games on the English Wikipedia. Based on the outcome
of these polls, we hope to deploy Flow to those pages in January.
The Growth <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth> team spent time working on
product development and research for upcoming Wikipedia article creation
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_article_creation> improvements.
First and foremost, the team fulfilled a request from the English
Wikipedia community to launch the new Draft namespace
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Draft_namespace> there (see also the general
"Highlights" section). Pau Giner and others on the team
simultaneously began design work on future improvements to drafts
functionality
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/20/new-draft-feature/>, including
recruiting for usability testing sessions.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Metrics_update_mobile_apps_20140109…>
Presentation slides from the mobile apps team
=== Mobile <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Mobile_engineering> ===
During the last month, the Wikipedia Zero
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero> team continued to make it
easier to configure partnerships with telecommunications carriers that
offer access to Wikipedia at no data cost to their mobile subscribers.
They also implemented a global landing page redirector for mobile
Wikipedia website access. Last, the team started working on an HTML5
webapp proof of concept as an option for rebooting the Firefox OS app.
The Mobile web projects <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile_web_projects>
team has been working on finishing the redesign of the overlays and
mobile on-boarding. The "Keep going" feature has been changed to a
workflow that asks users to add blue links and includes a tutorial. This
is consistent with what we've learned about how guiding users helps
accomplish more edits, and it fits into more of micro contributory
workflow that we want to experiment with. We've also worked on an A/B
test displaying an edit guider for users signing up from the left nav
menu. This is mirroring the edit guider that displays for users signing
up through the edit call to action. It also is consistent with the
behavior that the desktop site will be displaying to users as a result
of the OB6 A/B test
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Onboarding_new_Wikipedians/OB6>.
The mobile apps <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps> team added
saved pages, article navigation, and language support to the mobile
Wikipedia app. During the quarterly planning meeting, it was decided to
postpone photo uploads from our market release plan in favor of text
editing.
== Fundraising ==
Department Highlights
We completed the Big EN fundraising campaign for the 2013-2014 FY.
=== Major Gifts and Foundations ===
* We received a $1 million grant from Brin Wojcicki Foundation.
* We raised over $1.5 million in mid-sized gifts from family
foundations, donor advised funds, and large individual donations.
=== Annual Fundraiser ===
* The fundraising team ran the year-end online campaign in the US, UK,
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Roughly $18.7 million USD was
raised from more than one million donors in December (preliminary
numbers as donations are still settling). Year-to-date,
approximately $32 million has been raised from online fundraising
banners. The campaign ran full blast for two weeks. In that time,
the team created and tested approximately 250 different banners and
sent 2.6 million emails to donors from previous years asking them to
give again. The team responded to 15,000 reader emails during the
month of December. A full report will be posted publicly in 2014,
and we will continue to update the Fundraising page on Meta-Wiki
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2013>. Banners will
be run in other countries and
languages throughout 2014.
== Grantmaking ==
Department highlights
(See also the general "Highlights" section)
* The WMF Board of Trustees approved the recommendation of the *Funds
Dissemination Committee for 2013-2014 Round 1*, awarding 11 annual
plan grants to the 11 entities applying in this round
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round1>.
The overall request
was for $5.94M, and the final approval was for $4.4M, affirming the
FDC's guidance to Wikimedia organizations to be thoughtful about growth.
* At the end of the second quarter of FY2013-14, ~$6.2M has been
distributed in *grants spent*, 25% to groups or individuals in the
global south. Overall, 4% of the total spend has gone directly to
individuals, and <1% has gone towards work related to redressing the
gender gap. See Grants Quarterly Metrics
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Learning_%26_Evaluation/Quarterly_Me…>
for
breakdown by grants program.
* Conducted overview analysis of the Travel & Participation Support
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Support/Analysis>
program. We are excited by the
diversity of the program, and launching a discussion to discuss
future scope of work <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Design>.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Annual_Plan_Grants,_FDC_presentatio…>
Presentation slides
=== Annual Plan Grants (Funds Dissemination Committee) ===
* The WMF Board of Trustees approved
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Board_decisions/2013-2014_round1>
the
*recommendation of the Funds Dissemination Committee for 2013-2014
Round 1
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2…>*,
awarding 11 annual plan grants to the 11 entities applying in this
round <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round1>.
New grant terms
will begin on 1 January 2014 for most grantees, who are currently
working with WMF to execute grant agreements and receive funding.
* The WMF Board of Trustees also responded to *the two appeals made
after the committee's recommendations, by Wikimedia India and
WIkimedia Israel
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/Appeals_to_the_Board_…>*.
The WMF Board of Trustees upheld the recommendation of the Funds
Dissemination Committee in both cases.
* The *staff summary of Q3 progress reports* for grants awarded in
2012-2013 Round 1 and Q1 progress reports for grants awarded in
2012-2013 Round 2
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2012-2013_round1/Staff…>
was published on 21 December 2013, along with comments on the
discussion page of each entity's report, which are linked to from
this summary page.
* Q3 is the last cycle of progress reports for most grants awarded in
2012-2013 Round 1, as impact reports will be due by 31 March 2014
for most entities with a grant term ending 31 December 2013. Q2
reports for entities awarded funding in 2012-2013 Round 2 will be
due by 30 January 2014.
* The *initial list of eligibility* for Round 2 2013-2014 has
[[Grants:APG/FDC_portal/Eligibility_checklist/Current_round|been
published]. All organizations that submitted Letters of Intent
expressing their interest in the Round 2 for Annual Plan Grants are
categorized by their current eligibility status on this table.
Entities will have until 15 March 2014 to complete these gaps.
Please reach out to FDCsupport at wikimedia.org if you have any
questions about this status table.
=== Project and Event Grants ===
* 3 grants were approved and 2 grant reports were accepted in December
2013.
==== Grants awarded in December 2013 ====
* Grants:WM_CZ/Presentation_&_Outreach_II
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_CZ/Presentation_%26_Outreach_II>
supports the
promotion of Wikimedia projects and cultural partnerships in the
Czech Republic, and consolidates on the successes of its previous grant.
* Grants:PEG/Jayanta_Nath_-_Kolkata_Wiki_Community/Kolkata_Book_Fair_2014
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Jayanta_Nath_-_Kolkata_Wiki_Comm…>
to set up a Wikimedia booth at the Kolkata Book Fair, the world's
largest non-trade book fair, Asia's largest book fair and the most
attended book fair in the world (1.5M people are estimated to attend).
* Grants:PEG/WM_ID/Areca_Vestiaria_Bird_Club_-_Discover_Biodiversity_of_Sulawesi_Photographs
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WM_ID/Areca_Vestiaria_Bird_Club_…>
to upload photographs demonstrating the biodiversity of Sulawesi
(Indonesia).
==== Reports accepted in December 2013 ====
* Grants:PEG/Wikimedia Cipta
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Wikimedia_Cipta> was
provisionally accepted on 24 December 2013, pending final submission
of complete receipts to document grant expenses.
* Grants:WM_US-NYC/Short_term_funding_program
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_US-NYC/Short_term_funding_program>
was accepted on
4 December 2013.
=== Travel & Participation Support ===
* A Scope of Work
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Design> document is
underway, for
a phase 1 redesign of Travel and Participation Support program
pages. Simplicity, accessibility, and publicity will be key goals of
this phase. Complete plans for the redesign and accompanying process
changes will begin in January 2014.
* 3 grants were approved and 2 grant reports were accepted in December
2013.
==== Requests awarded in December 2013 ====
* Grants:TPS/Daniel_Mietchen/22nd_Annual_International_Conference_on_Intelligent_Systems_for_Molecular_Biology
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Daniel_Mietchen/22nd_Annual_Inte…>
* Grants:TPS/Ben_Moore/22nd_Annual_International_Conference_on_Intelligent_Systems_for_Molecular_Biology
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Ben_Moore/22nd_Annual_Internatio…>
* Grants:TPS/Daniel_Mietchen/58th_Annual_Meeting_of_the_Biophysical_Society
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Daniel_Mietchen/58th_Annual_Meet…>
==== Reports accepted in December 2013 ====
* Grants:TPS/Seeris/PanelFreeCulture/Report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Seeris/PanelFreeCulture/Report>
* Grants:TPS/Oren_Bochman/WikiSym_2013/Report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Oren_Bochman/WikiSym_2013/Report>
=== Individual Engagement Grants ===
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Monthly_Metrics_Meeting_January…>
Siko Bouterse presenting about IEG (slides
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jan_2014_Metrics_IEG_-_TPS.pdf>)
*Round 2 grantees* have been announced
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/16/new-individual-engagement-grantees-to…>.
7 projects were recommended by the IEG committee and approved for
funding by WMF, representing a broad range of projects focusing on
activities from outreach to tool-building, all aimed at connecting and
supporting community. Grantees are trying out new ways of engaging with
women and young Wikipedians, fostering participation in Africa, and
supporting cartographers, researchers and developers to better engage
with projects like Commons, Wikidata, and Wikipedia.
The selected projects for 2013 round 2 are:
* *Wikimaps Atlas
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Wikimaps_Atlas>*, led by
Arun
Ganesh and Hugo Lopez, funded at $12,500. Hugo and Arun will be
building a system to automate the creation of maps in standardized
cartographic style using the latest open geographic data. With new
workflows and scripts, they aim to make it easier for Wikimedia's
cartographers to generate and update maps for use in Commons,
Wikipedia, and beyond.
* *Mbazzi Village writes Wikipedia
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Mbazzi_Village_writes_Wikipedia>*,
led by Paul
Kikuba with collaboration from Dan Frendin, funded at $2880. This
project is a collaboration between Mbazzi villagers, Wikimedia
Sweden, and the Wikimedia Foundation to build a Wikipedia center in
Uganda where volunteers can to contribute to Luganda Wikipedia,
particularly focusing on articles related to sustainable development.
* *What is about - C'est quoi. A series of communication tools about
Wikipedia in Cameroon
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/What_is_about_-_C%27est_quoi._A_…>*,
led by Marilyn Douala Bell and Iolanda Pensa with collaboration from
Michael Epacka, funded at EURO 15,000. The team in Douala, Cameroon will
engage local artists to create comics, video, and other materials to
raise awareness about Wikipedia and free knowledge.
* *Visual editor gadgets compatibility
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Visual_editor-_gadgets_compatibi…>*,
led by
Eran Roz and Ravid Ziv, funded at $4500. The team aims to map,
organize, and surface lists of gadgets used in different language
versions of Wikipedia to improve sharing of gadgets across language
communities. They'll also be piloting and documenting an approach
for adapting the most-used gadgets for Visual Editor compatibility.
* *Wikidata Toolkit
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Wikidata_Toolkit>*, led by
Markus Krötzsch with collaboration from students and researchers at
Dresden University of Technology, funded at $30,000. Markus' team
will develop a demonstrator toolkit for loading, querying, and
analysing data from Wikidata. The project experiments with ways to
give developers, researchers, and Wikimedians easier access to use
Wikidata in applications, research, and other projects.
* *Women Scientists Workshop Development
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Women_Scientists_Workshop_Develo…>*,
led by
Emily Temple-Wood, funded at $9480. Emily is piloting a model of
regular, incentivized editing workshops aimed at college-aged women
to encourage them to become regular contributors to Wikimedia
projects and combat systemic bias with quality content. If the
approach is successful, she'll use lessons learned in order to
develop a scalable kit for other groups to use.
* *Generation Wikipedia
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Generation_Wikipedia>*,
led
by Emily Temple-Wood and Jake Orlowitz, funded at $20,000
(provisional approval only, until legal dependencies can be
satisfied). This project would pilot a week-long summer conference
for young Wikipedians and Wikimedians from around the globe to
connect, share skills and build leadership and community capacity
among our newest generation of editors.
The *10 grantees from Cameroon, Uganda, India, Israel, France, Italy,
Germany and the United States* will begin their projects in the new
year; most will run from January through June 2014. Progress and
learning will be shared regularly on their meta-wiki pages.
Complete *feedback from the IEG committee and round 2 proposers* will be
gathered in January 2014, to help us continue to improve the process for
everyone. An early learning from round 2 is that we did not have as many
proposals as we'd have liked to review, and as such we were not able to
scale up the number of grants made beyond the pilot round. For the next
round, we intend to try some new ways to publicize the program, and will
shorten/simplify the review schedule
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG#ieg-applying> to
avoid losing proposers along the way.
==== Reports accepted in December 2013 ====
* Grants:IEG/Consolidate_wikiArS_to_involve_art_schools/Final
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Consolidate_wikiArS_to_involve_a…>
* Grants:IEG/MediaWiki_data_browser/Final
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/MediaWiki_data_browser/Final>
* Grants:IEG/Elaborate_Wikisource_strategic_vision/Final
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Elaborate_Wikisource_strategic_v…>
=== Grantmaking Learning and Evaluation ===
* *First Employee Study*: conducted a light analysis of trends in
hiring of first employees by our chapters and thematic
organizations. See the full results on Meta-wiki
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikimedia_First_Employee_Survey/20…>.
We
found that chapters tend to hire once the administrative work of the
group becomes too much to be handled by volunteers or the board, and
the first position is either an executive director or an office
manager as their first employee. Regardless of job title, all jobs
seemed to contain a significant amount of administrative work.
Interestingly, we also saw that chapters are hiring sooner following
recognition of AffCom than they have in the past.
* *Survey learning resource*: Created a survey learning resource
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/Shop/Qualtrics>
for grantees and
other community members: Qualtrics. We had two IEGrantees who took
advantage of the resource, and one chapter is now experimenting as well.
Usefulness for grantees ...
"
I really enjoyed the fact that the WMF helped us with the Qualtrics
software. And it struck me as a very good way to help the wider
community: provide software and tools for evaluation, surveys,
analytics, whatever.
"
Aubrey - Individual Engagement Grant grantee, Final Report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Elaborate_Wikisource_strategic_v…>
* *Overall studies by grant program*: Created centralized space for
all evaluations by grants program
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Learning_%26_Evaluation/Research_pro…>
* *Scholarship scoring system*: Worked with the engineering team to
develop a tool to rate applications for Wikimania scholarships
(which open in January!). Thanks to everyone involved in making that
happen! This is very necessary for managing the ~1200 applications
that come in and are scored by a global committee.
* *Travel and Participation Support Program*: finalized overview study
of TPS; see: Grants:TPS/Support/Analysis
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Support/Analysis>. We
found that 77% of these
grantees are new to the grantmaking program, 49% are from the global
south, and 30% are women. We are very excited about the diversity of
the program and positive feedback of participants, and thankful for
the great ideas that emerged from this study. We are looking forward
to ongoing discussions around the scope of this program!
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amount_of_time_before_hiring_employ…>
Results from the First Employee Study
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Participation_Support_analysis_requ…>
49% of Travel and Participation Support grantees are from the Global South
== Programs ==
Department highlights
* Launched *Wikipedia Zero in Bangladesh* with Grameenphone
* The Education Program team put finishing touches on a complete
revamp
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/01/14/editing-wikipedia-print-guide-new-con…>
of the '*Welcome to Wikipedia brochure* (now titled Editing
Wikipedia <Image:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Editing_Wikipedia_brochure_EN.pdf>)
in
December. (see also the general "Highlights" section)
* The Program Evaluation team released the second *Program Evaluation
report, about Editing Workshops
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/Library/Editing_…>*.
=== Wikipedia Zero ===
* Launched Wikipedia Zero in *Bangladesh* with Grameenphone, resulting
in a 50% increase in mobile page views in the country in December.
That brings us up to 24 launched operator partners in 22 countries.
Our total free page views in December were over 47 million (note: we
are missing some operator reporting in Analytics queue).
* Airtel Kenya *Wikipedia via Text* pilot in progress, with over 40K
unique users so far.
* Ingrid Flores joined WMF as *Partner Manager* for Wikipedia Zero.
Ingrid brings a wealth of experience in mobile business development
and marketing from 12 countries across 4 continents. She is in
charge of expanding Wikipedia Zero and increasing usage in Latin
America and Asia.
* Carolynne Schloeder, Director of Mobile Programs, and Taweetham Lim,
a Thai Wikimedian, joined our *Thai partner dtac* for their
corporate social responsibility (CSR) day. dtac is equipping
computer labs and providing free internet access to schools in rural
Thailand. They are promoting Wikipedia to *students* as part of the
CSR program. This is a great model we would like to expand to other
partners in conjunction with our local communities.
* Carolynne spoke at *Telenor's Youth Summit* in Oslo. Telenor
selected social entrepreneurs from each of their markets for a
leadership program in connection with the Nobel Peace Program. The
participants had lots of ideas for Wikipedia growth in their home
markets, which we are exploring. While in Europe, Carolynne also met
with our partner Orange, and joined the Brussels community for a
meet-up (thank you Brussels Wikimedians!).
* Carolynne also presented Wikipedia Zero via Google hangout at an
event in *Yemen* organized by Rashad Al-Khmisy, a local Wikipedian.
Judging by the Q&A session, there is interest for the program in Yemen.
* The *dev team* implemented a global landing page redirector for
mobile Wikipedia website access, added support for staged
configuration submittals, enhanced interstitials based on input from
the field from Wikipedia Zero markets, amended compression proxies
support and added general bug fixes.
=== Wikipedia Education Program ===
==== Global programs ====
At the mid-point in the fiscal year, December was a time of reflection
and evaluation with a focus on strategy and next steps.
* The Wikipedia Education Program team had a two-day *strategy summit*
to evaluate our overall educational program and Arab World goals and
activities.
* We continued interviewing candidates for the *Global Education
Program Manager position*.
* Developer Andrew Russell Green and Communications Contractor Sage
Ross, in collaboration with the Growth team, began planning for a
more flexible suite of software to *replace the current Education
Program MediaWiki extension*.
* In the English Wikipedia /training for students/, we added a trial
interactive section using *GuidedTours* to test its usability and
potential.
==== Arab World Program ====
* Tighe Flanagan, the Arab World Education Program Manager, took part
in the *Arabic Web Days Conference
<https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/gallery/ctld501jlm0c5ofdkriatinn3sg?pid=…>*
organized in Sana'a, Yemen via Google Hangout to talk about the
education program in the region. Carolynne Schloeder, Director of
Mobile Programs, also took part in via Google Hangout to talk about
Wikipedia Zero.
* The *education extension* was enabled on the Arabic Wikipedia
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ar:%D8%AE%D8%A7%D8%B5:%D8%AF%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%B3>.
Since the current semester is winding down, it will be used for the
start of the spring semester in February.
==== Communications ====
* We put finishing touches on the complete revamp of the Welcome to
Wikipedia *brochure*
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/01/14/editing-wikipedia-print-guide-new-con…>
(now titled Editing Wikipedia
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Editing_Wikipedia_brochure_EN.pdf>)
in December. The
online version is now available on Wikimedia Commons. Design files
and printed copies will be available in January.
* Communications Manager LiAnna Davis worked on an *online training*
that leads people interested in starting an education program in
their region through the steps needed to create a successful pilot.
The training will be available on the Outreach wiki in January.
* Two blog posts:
o Student club Wiki Borregos contributes to Wikimedia projects
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/05/wiki-borregos-fall-2013/>
(5 December)
o Egyptian students help narrow gender gap on Wikipedia
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/09/egypt-gender-gap/> (9
December)
* Two newsletters:
o 3 December
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program/News/3_Dece…>
o 17 December
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program/News/17_Dec…>
=== Program Evaluation and Design ===
The Program Evaluation and Design had a busy month, releasing a new
evaluation report, participating in the GLAMout hangout, traveling, and
starting our call for surveys with the community.
* At the beginning of December, we launched our second Program
Evaluation *report about Editing Workshops
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/Library/Editing_…>*.
Findings from this ongoing evaluation include poor retention and
recruitment successes, but a lot of room for experimenting with
workshop program design. Community discussion has been taking place
on the talk page, and we encourage your participation.
* Our Program Evaluation Community Coordinator Sarah Stierch
participated in the December *GLAMout*. GLAMout brings together GLAM
professionals and Wikimedia community volunteers active in GLAM, to
discuss the latest GLAM-Wiki news and projects. Stierch discussed
the Program Evaluation and Design teams evaluations about
edit-a-thons and workshops, and how the GLAM-Wiki community can
partner with our team to evaluate and develop program design.
o An outcome of the GLAMout is a new pilot project with Wikimedia
DC, who will be working with our team to develop evaluation and
design techniques, including survey design, in their upcoming
2014 strategic plan.
o View the video here
<https://plus.google.com/u/0/hangouts/onair/watch?hid=AP36tYfl2IYsRm0yv4cAMx…>.
o Programs Director Frank Schulenburg *visited Wikimedia UK and
Wikimedia Switzerland* offices alongside representatives from
Grantmaking. The goal of Schulenburg's visit was to answer
questions about evaluation and help these two chapters further
examine their evaluation goals and programmatic activities.
* Our interns, Edward Galvez and Yuan Li, have been busy developing
methodology *research about the value of inputs for Wikimedia
programs*. This includes extensive research into the dollar value of
volunteer work (to implement a program, not make edits), the value
of volunteering gained from not contributing to employee benefits,
and into the standardization of purchase power of Wikimedia grants
across countries. This research work will impact our look at returns
on investment, and the value of the work that Wikimedia volunteers
put into program implementation. This report will soon be moved to
meta, and used for future evaluative work. We're excited about this
research: as far as we know it's the first of its kind in the
Wikimedia movement.
* We put out a *call for surveys* to the community ("Have you created
or collected surveys for your program implementations?
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/Parlor/Questions…>").
This ongoing collection asks that Wikimedians who have developed
surveys related to programs send them to our team so we can get a
good idea of what and who the community is surveying. This allows us
to see how we can support the community, survey-wise. We have been
receiving surveys via wiki and email, and so far have collected 21
surveys from 14 chapters, organizations, and individuals. We are
providing feedback to program leaders about their surveys, when
requested, and will continue to collect surveys as we move into the
survey support phase.
* The team continues to *evaluate other programs*, with pending
evaluation releases about: WIki Loves Monuments, other photo upload
initiatives, GLAM content donations, and the Wikipedia Education
Program, to be released in January and February.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:January_2014_Metrics.pdf?page=2>
HR presentation slides
== Human Resources ==
Conducted Executive Director and Chief Communications Officer
*interviews/, hosted the annual/* /holiday gathering'/ in coordination
with the Administration department, completed *benefits open enrollment*
for United States employees, *year-end payroll* for US employees was
wrapped up, *employee engagement survey* results are in, though they
need to be analyzed and published. Supported the Community Advocacy side
of LCA with an *FBI training* session, and the upcoming *employee
handbook* underwent another round of legal review. Ongoing heavy work in
immigration, contractor renewals, hires, and recruiting continued,
rolling into 2014.
=== Staff Changes ===
New Requisitions Filled
* Ingrid Flores, Partner Manager (Programs)
* Jeff "Gage" Gerard, Operations Engineer (Engineering)
* Nuria Ruiz, Data Engineer (Engineering)
* Sherah Smith, Software Engineer (Engineering)
* Moiz Syed, UI Designer (Engineering)
Conversions
* David Chan, Software Engineer (Engineering)
* Marc Ordinas, Software Engineer (Engineering)
New Volunteer
* Janet Go (Engineering)
New Contractors
* Manprit Brar (Legal)
* Ryan Lane (Engineering)
Contracts Extended
* Antonella Amatulli (Fundraiser)
* Michael Beattie (Fundraising)
* KaMan Bhattacharya (Fundraiser)
* Emily Blanchard (Human Resources)
* Patrick Earley (Engineering)
* Andrew Garrett (Engineering)
* Sandra Hust (Fundraiser)
* Bryony Jones (Fundraiser)
* Erica Litrenta (Engineering)
* Sahar Massachi (Fundraising)
* Heather McAndrew (Human Resources)
* Kartik Mistry (Engineering)
* Keegan Peterzell (Engineering)
* Kristie Robinson (Fundraiser)
* Sage Ross (Programs)
* Sherry Snyder (Engineering)
* Moriel Schottlender (Engineering)
Contracts Ended
* Alice DeBois-Froge
* Joey Hess
* Stefan Petrea
* Yuko Sakata
New Postings
* VP of Engineering
* Software Engineer- Growth (Features)
* Software Engineer- VisualEditor (Features)
* Software Engineer- Languages (Internationalization)
* Software Engineer (Mobile)
* QA Automation Engineer (Platform)
* Software Engineer Data Analytics (Analytics)
* Full-Stack Developer (Analytics)
* Operations Security Engineer (Technical Operations)
* Governance Administrator (Grantmaking)
* Senior Recruiting Manager (Human Resources)
* Sr. Operations Engineer (Tech-Ops)
* Operations Engineer (Tech-Ops)
=== Statistics ===
Total Requisitions Filled
December Actual: 161
December Total Plan: 182
December Filled: 7, Month Attrition: 0
YTD Filled: 29, YTD Attrition: 13
Remaining Open positions to fiscal year end
32
=== Department Updates ===
Real-time feed for HR updates
http://identi.ca/wikimediaatwork or http://twitter.com/wikimediaatwork
== Finance and Administration ==
* Continuing work on the new design of the *sixth floor space*. The
goal is to optimize the space for both capacity and functionality.
* With the Grantmaking team, KPMG completed the site work for our
*grantmaking evaluation*. The purpose of the voluntary evaluation is
be able to report to the Audit Committee on the status of the WMF
grantmaking program from a compliance, controls and best practices
perspective. The final report will be presented to the Audit
Committee <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Audit_Committee> at one of
its meetings by KPMG.
* Working on completing the *insurance renewal* process. The goal of
this renewal cycle is to continue to improve coverage on an
incremental basis.
* For the month of November our *investment fund* had a market value
of $12.8 million. It had an estimated annual return of 3.2% and
estimated annual income of $413,863.
== Legal, Community Advocacy, and Communications Department ==
=== LCA Report, December 2013 ===
* December has been a busy month highlighted by the public release of
the WMF Board's updated *governance handbook*
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/26/wikimedia-foundation-governance-handb…>,
a document prepared through extensive collaboration between the
Board of Trustees, the Board Governance Commitee, and the legal
team. The handbook incorporates many broadly applicable governance
best practices and is publicly available under the Creative Commons
CC-BY-SA 3.0 license in order to further the Foundation's commitment
to transparency and to serve as a useful resource for the community
generally and for other like-minded organizations.
* December also saw the legal team continue to engage with community
consultations on the *new draft Privacy Policy
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy> and Access to
Nonpublic Data Policy
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_to_nonpublic_information_policy>*.
The Privacy and
Access to Nonpublic Data Policies discussions have grown to more
than 150,000 words - not yet ready for the List of Longest Novels
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_novels> but getting there!
Some of the privacy discussion also expanded beyond the Meta talk
pages, with the legal team responding on the Foundation blog
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/24/handling-our-user-data-a-response/>
to an appeal from the German Wikipedian community about data protection.
* We also continued to deeply engage with the public *consultation on
the Trademark Policy*
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Trademark_policy>, which is
nearing 50,000 words. In addition, based on a 75 day community
consultation
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Logo/Request_for_consultation>
on
Meta, concluded on December 8th, the legal team recommended to the
Board that the Foundation withdraw trademark registration and
protection for the Community logo.
* Feedback has been invaluable in improving both Trademark and Privacy
Policies, and so we encourage additional comments before end of the
consultation period (January 15th for the Privacy Policy and January
18th for the Trademark Policy).
* Following a call for input from the European Commission on
*modernizing European copyright laws* to allow greater access to
online content, we launched a project to draft a response on Meta
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/European_Commission_copyright_consultation>.
We invite
interested community members to collaborate in drafting a response
to the Commission's questionnaire before January 27th. European
chapters, led by Dimitar Dimitrov, will also be drafting and
submitting a response.
==== Contract Metrics ====
* Submitted : 30
* Completed : 23
==== Trademark Metrics ====
* Submitted : 10
* Pending : 7
* Denied : 2
* Approval not needed : 1
==== Domains Obtained ====
popwikipedia.com, wikibooks.pt, wikidata.pt, wikimedia.com.pt,
wikinews.pt, wikiquote.pt, wikisource.pt, wikiversity.pt, wiktionary.pt
==== Coming & Going ====
* We are sad to say farewell to Elaine Wallace, who has been advising
the Foundation on a pro-bono basis since April 2013. She will become
the general counsel of Benetech, a technology non-profit, so we look
forward to continuing to work with her.
==== Other Activities ====
* Community Advocates came together in the office in San Francisco
with most of the community liaison team from Product to talk about
ongoing and upcoming major *product deployments and community
engagement*.
* Community Advocacy took part in training related to its work with
the *emergency email system*.
=== Communications Report, December 2013 ===
December was a relatively quiet month for Communications. The annual
fundraising campaign kicked off, accompanied by steady social media and
light media/blog traffic through the month. The team was pleased to
share the news about WMF ED Sue Gardner's receipt of the first ever
Knight Foundation Innovation Award. A slew of end-of-year media and blog
posts around the world covered a range of Wikipedia topics, including
most controversial and most-read articles, as well as a round of new
'listicle' style posts.
==== Major announcements ====
*Wikimedia Foundation launches tenth-annual online fundraising
campaign
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Press_releases/Wikimedi…>*
(3 December 2013)
The online fundraising campaign aims to raise $20 million, while the
remainder of the Wikimedia Foundation's funding will come from
individual gifts given outside the year-end campaign, and from
foundation grants.
==== Major Storylines through December ====
WMF launches its annual fundraiser (throughout December)
Coverage of this year's annual fundraiser (largely positive) ran the
gamut - from encouragement to donate, lists including WMF as a cause of
choice, and praise for Sue Gardner's donation Thank You letter.
Venture Beat [1]
<http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/03/wikipedia-starts-new-fundraising-appeal-f…>
Digital Nirvana (on Sue's letter) [2]
<http://thedigitalnirvana.com/2013/12/eight-reasons-this-wikipedia-thank-you…>
Engadget [3] <http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/31/non-profit/>
Network World [4] <http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/84377>
Researchers list most significant historical figures, thanks to
Wikipedia (10 December 2013)
Author/researchers Skiena and Ward made headlines after publicizing
their new book "Who is Bigger?" [5] <http://www.whoisbigger.com/> which
lists the most significant figures in history, and leans largely on
Wikipedia as a source. With Jesus Christ as the leading figure, mostly
favorable coverage spread widely via Christian bloggers and media outlets.
Daily Mail [6]
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2521212/Wikipedias-10-significant-p…>
PS Mag [7]
<http://www.psmag.com/culture/jesus-christ-historys-most-successful-meme-712…>
Christianity Today [8]
<http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2013/december/nine-people-jesus-…>
Draft feature makes for a gentler start for new Wikipedians (20 December
2013)
A blog post by Pau Giner and Steven Walling outlining a new draft
article writing feature for Wikipedia received significant and positive
coverage in late December. Coverage highlighted that new users should
benefit by building better, new articles that are less likely to be
rapidly deleted.
WMF blog post [9]
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/20/new-draft-feature/>
Wired UK [10]
<http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-12/23/wikipedia-draft-tool>
Engadget [11]
<http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/23/wikipedia-adds-draft-feature/>
IB Times [12]
<http://www.ibtimes.com/wikipedia-draft-feature-encourages-new-writers-creat…>
TheNextWeb [13]
<http://thenextweb.com/media/2013/12/23/wikipedia-introduces-draft-feature-g…>
Vandalism on EN Wikipedia makes news (27 December 2013)
Some briefly visible template vandalism on English Wikipedia caused a
flurry of social media and mainstream media coverage speculating that
Wikipedia may have begun to offer sponsored content. The vandalism
featured a racially charged message about the U.S. president, but was
likely visible for less than 30 minutes.
Canada.com [14]
<http://o.canada.com/technology/internet/racist-image-appears-on-wikipedia-a…>
The Atlantic [15]
<http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/no-wikipedia-is-not-e…>
Wikimedia's Erik Zachte profiled in Wired magazine (27 December 2013)
The December issue of Wired Magazine features Wikimedia's own stats guru
Erik Zachte in its pages. The lengthy profile discusses Erik's history
with the projects and his motivations and tactics for crunching the
Wikimedia project's numbers.
Wired magazine [16]
<http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/12/erik-zachte-wikistats/>
WMF's Sue Gardner receives Knight Foundation Innovation Award (16
December 2013)
Sue Gardner received the first-ever Knight Foundation Innovation Award
at a ceremony hosted by CUNY in New York in December. As part of the
award, Sue named open government platform startup MuckRock the recipient
of a $25,000 grant.
Poynter [17]
<http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/233963/knight-innovation-award…>
Knight Foundation [18]
<http://www.knightfoundation.org/press-room/press-release/wikimedia-foundati…>
WMF Blog announcement: Sue Gardner to receive first Knight
Innovation Award
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/16/sue-gardner-knight-innovation-award/>
==== Other worthwhile reads ====
Wikipedia's Secret Multilingual Workforce
MIT Technology Review [19]
<http://www.technologyreview.com/view/522681/wikipedias-secret-multilingual-…>
Royal Society appoints a Wikipedian-in-Residence
BoingBoing [20]
<http://boingboing.net/2013/12/20/royal-society-appoints-a-wikip.html>
Wikipedia to debut at Kolkata Book Fair
Times of India [21]
<http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-12-25/internet/45561187_1_…>
Israeli Wiki hackers help out 'the family' at Hackathon
Times of Israel [22]
<http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-wiki-hackers-help-out-the-family-at-ha…>
==== WMF Blog posts ====
Blog.wikimedia.org published 25 posts
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/> in December 2013. Seven posts were
multilingual <https://blog.wikimedia.org/tag/multilingual-post/>,
including versions in German, Spanish, Swedish, Chinese, Arabic, and Polish.
Some highlights from the blog:
*In legal victory, German court rules Wikimedia Foundation need not
proactively check for illegal or inaccurate content
<https://https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/02/legal-victory-german-court-wi…>*
(December 2, 2013)
*Using social media to engage Wikipedia readers and editors in China
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/04/using-social-media-to-engage-editors-…>*
(December 4, 2013)
*The Winner of Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 Is...
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/10/wiki-loves-monuments-2013-winners/>*
(December 10, 2013)
==== Media Contact ====
Media contact through December 2013: wmf:Press room/Media
Contact#December 2013
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#December_2013>
==== Wikipedia Signpost ====
For lots of detailed coverage and news summaries, see the
community-edited newsletter "Wikipedia Signpost" for December 2013:
* Volume 9, Issue 48
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2013-12…>,
4 December 2013
* Volume 9, Issue 49
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2013-12…>,
11 December 2013
* Volume 9, Issue 50
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2013-12…>,
18 December 2013
* Volume 9, Issue 51
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2013-12…>,
25 December 2013
== Visitors and Guests ==
Visitors and guests to the WMF office in December 2013:
1. Roselyn Lima (PRN)
2. Ben Knight (Loomio)
3. Vivian Maidaborn (Loomio)
4. Tommy Schroder
5. Roselyn Lima (PRN)
6. Brian Noguchi (Lever)
7. Ana Akhtar (KPMG)
8. Caitlin Durling (KPMG)
9. Kathy Reich (Packard Foundation)
10. Taylor Keep (Vital)
11. Fangjin Yang (Metamarkets)
12. Deep Ganguli (Metamarkets)
13. Cindy Hawley (Gallagher)
14. David Peters (Exbrook)
15. Dwight Wilson (Collabriv)
16. Pam Dannenberg (EK Health)
17. Bryan Hurren (Facebook/Internet.org)
--
Tilman Bayer
Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
Hi all!
the new bulletin from Wikimedia Italia (#70) is available. This time we
wrote about our forthcoming Members' Meeting, "Adopt a Wikipedia article at
Degasperi" and "Wikipedia goes to school" educational initiatives, Museums
and the Web conference, and future appointments
As usual, a link has been added to meta, at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Italia…;
more-or-less raw text of the bulletin follows below.
ciao, .mau.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
== Members' Meeting: the date is set ==
It is again time for the members of Wikimedia Italia to come together! The
event is scheduled for '''Saturday, April 5, in Florence''' at [
http://florence.impacthub.net/about-us/faq/ The Hub].
It is particularly important to participate in this assembly, given the
weight that the items on the agenda will have on the future of Wikimedia
Italia: the participants will renew part of the Board, approve the budgets,
screen the positions of members who do not comply with the fee payments (
all those members whose membership has expired in December 2012 will be
considered forfeited). We invite you to regularize as soon as possible your
membership status by paying the annual membership fee, in order to
participate actively in the meeting: as usual, only members in good
standing with the payment may vote.
Do not miss the forthcoming communications: full agenda, logistical details
and the link to the list of on-line registration are coming!
== Adopt a Wikipedia article at Degasperi ==
About 400 students of the [http://www.istalcidedegasperi.it/ Istituto di
Istruzione Alcide Degasperi] at Borgo Valsugana in Trentino are
participating in the project
[[Adotta_una_voce_di_Wikipedia_al_Degasperi|Adopt a Wikipedia article at
Degasperi]]. Guided by a series of lectures by expert Wikipedians
[[Utente:Jaqen|Jaqen]] and [[:it:Utente:CristianNX|CristianNX]], students
had the opportunity to learn how to contribute to the world's most popular
online encyclopedia. The workshops were completed in December 2013, but the
project has yet to live its most intense phase: each class has adopted a
set of articles, and will have until April 5, 2014 to publish them on
Wikipedia. The stakes are high: every boy of the working group judged best
will receive as gift an iPad mini 16GB Wi-Fi. For the number of students
and for the great synergistic work which involved the Institute, Wikimedia
Italia and the local community, the initiative has had a strong echo: [
http://wiki.wikimedia.it/wiki/Adotta_una_voce_di_Wikipedia_al_Degasperiseve…
newspaper articles] were published and RAI had a [
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=390882157723176 television service] in
their local news. That the best ones win!
== Museums and the Web: Archeowiki, present! ==
[http://mwf2014.museumsandtheweb.com/ Museum and the Web] is the largest
international conference devoted to the relationship between museums and
cultural venues on one side and digital culture (social media, mobile tour,
augmented reality) on the other side. This year the event takes place in
Italy, '''in Florence, from February 19 to 21''' at Palazzo Vecchio. The
title of the 2014 edition is '''Open Museums and Smartcities: Storytelling
and Connected Culture''': at the heart of the debate there will be tools
and best practices that enable one to link the cultural heritage with the
communities of the ''smart-cities'' of the future.
Among the proposed projects that have passed the selection which ended on
December 31, there is also our [http://www.archeowiki.it/ Archeowiki - New
"archaeologists" in Lombardy. Real and virtual paths], a project by
Wikimedia Italia together with other partners (Association MiMondo - Gruppo
Archeologico Ambrosiano (G.A.Am.) - Non-European collections of the
Castello Sforzesco - Fondazione Passaré) and supported by Cariplo
Foundation.
To recount the [
http://mwf2014.museumsandtheweb.com/proposals/archeowiki-when-open-source-s…
of Archeowiki], arrived in recent weeks in its peak stage, Anna
Antonini and Sara Chiesa (Non-European collections of the Castello
Sforzesco) will be present in Florence. To participate in the conference it
is necessary to [http://mwf2014.museumsandtheweb.com/attending/ register on
the site].
Archeowiki is a project that is giving us great satisfaction and makes us
really proud: it approaches young students, elderly and disabled people to
the less known cultural heritage of Lombardy and makes young guides and
Wikipedians protagonist in this journey to discover the collections of
archaeological finds. You can browse through photos of the project
activities [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Archeowiki here], or
support it by going to
[http://www.sostienilacultura.it/chi-siamo/progetti/this page].
== Wikipedia goes to school @ Asti ==
The '''educational potential of Wikipedia''' seems to be more and more
evident, together with the importance of educating young students on how to
make good use of it. The associations [http://www.we-land.com/ weLand] and [
http://www.creativeasti.com/design/ CRE[AT]IVE], already partners
of Wikimedia Italia in the realization of Wiki Loves Monuments, are
launching [http://www.we-land.com/wikipedia-va-a-scuola/ a pilot project]
to bring Wikipedia in the high schools of Asti. Teachers of the territory
are offered the opportunity to attend a training course taught by expert
Wikipedians; to apply and participate, teachers need to download the
appropriate [
http://wiki.wikimedia.it/wiki/File:Modulo-adesione-Wikipedia-va-a-scuola-As…],
fill it and send it to the address [mailto:
info(a)we-land.com info(a)we-land.com] before the end of February 2014. At that
same e-mail address, the promoters of the project will also respond to any
other questions and inquiries related to the initiative. The best
invitation to join may be read in the letter signed by the board of Weland:
''We look forward to jointly open a new chapter in the history of education
and the sharing of culture!''
== Appointments ==
* February 22: [http://wiki.opendataday.org/Matera2014 Open Data Day Matera
2014] will be held at Palazzo Lanfranchi in Matera, from 10.00 to 19.00,
with a meeting entitled "Cultural population and transparency: for a
culture of all people." On the occasion of the
[http://opendataday.org/International Day of OpenData], Matera
organizes an event in which a
mapping of public goods will be started, also thanks to the decision of the
Municipality of Matera to adopt the [
http://www.wikilovesmonuments.it/partecipa/amministrazioni-pubbliche-enti-e…
Loves Monuments resolution] and release some cultural heritage under a
[http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licenze_Creative_Commons CC-BY-SA license].
All maps will be put on [http://www.openstreetmap.org OpenStreetMap], while
the collected data will be published on the OpenData portal of the
Municipality of Matera. The hashtag chosen to communicate the initiative on
social networks is
[https://twitter.com/search?q=%23openmatera2014&src=hash#OpenMatera2014].
* February 27: [http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Virginia_GentiliniVirginia
Gentilini] will give a presentation on Wikipedia at the
headquarters of the [http://www.fmach.it/ Fondazione Edmund Mach] in San
Michele all'Adige, as part of a collaboration between Wikimedia Italia and
the Institute of Agriculture belonging to the Foundation.
* February 27-28, Rome: L[http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Sannita Luca
Martinelli], member of Wikimedia Italia, will speak about Wikidata on the
occasion of the international conference [
http://www.aib.it/attivita/congressi/c2014/fsr2014/ Faster, smarter and
richer. Reshaping the library catalogue], promoted by the [
http://www.aib.it/ Italian Libraries' Association].
* March 1, Perugia: The [
http://www.comune.perugia.it/approfondimenti/augusta Augusta Library of
Perugia], in collaboration with the municipal administration, organizes the
first edition of
[http://www.comune.perugia.it/notizie/wiki-loves-perugia'''Wiki Loves
Perugia''']. The meeting will be held at the Colle di Porta
Sole Library from 9.30 to 13.30, and it is designed to improve Wikipedia
entries related to Perugia and its cultural heritage. This first edition
has gone so well that the entries are all booked already, so follow the
progress of the initiative to take part in the next round!
* March 14, Milan: Pierfranco Minsenti, digital librarian, will participate
in the [http://www.convegnostelline.it/relatori1.php?IdUnivoco=69 Convegno
delle Stelline] with a speech entitled ''Wikipedia as a collaborative work
environment for a cross-community of libraries''. The aim is to define the
impact on librarians of the collaboration of to Wikipedia.
Hello all,
We are asking for community input on a proposed amendment to the Wikimedia
Terms of Use regarding undisclosed paid editing. The amendment is currently
available in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Japanese, and
we welcome further translations and discussion in any language.
For your review, you may find the proposed amendment and background
information here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use/Paid_contributions_amendment
Please join the discussion on the talk page:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Terms_of_use/Paid_contributions_amendm…
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and comments.
--
Stephen LaPorte
Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
*For legal reasons, I may only serve as an attorney for the Wikimedia
Foundation. This means I may not give legal advice to or serve as a lawyer
for community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal
capacity.*
