Please find below the WMF report for August, in plain text.
As always, the editable and formatted version is on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_August_2011
Starting this month, the reports are posted on the Wikimedia blog, too:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/c/corporate/wmf-monthly-reports/
Regards, Tilman
--
* 1 Data and Trends
* 2 Financials
* 3 Highlights
o 3.1 Wikimania
o 3.2 Summer of Research wraps up
* 4 Technology
o 4.1 Operations
o 4.2 Features Engineering
o 4.3 Mobile
o 4.4 Special projects
o 4.5 Platform Engineering
* 5 Research
* 6 Community
o 6.1 Projects
o 6.2 Fundraiser
o 6.3 Public Policy Initiative
o 6.4 Fellowship program
* 7 Global Development
o 7.1 Department Highlights
o 7.2 Grants Awarded and Executed
o 7.3 Chapter Relations
o 7.4 Global South
o 7.5 Brazil Catalyst
o 7.6 Mobile Strategy and Business Development
o 7.7 Editor Survey
o 7.8 Readers Survey
o 7.9 Mobile Research
o 7.10 Offline
o 7.11 Global Education Program
+ 7.11.1 Student organizations
o 7.12 India Programs
o 7.13 Communications
+ 7.13.1 Major announcements
+ 7.13.2 Global Communications
+ 7.13.3 Storylines through August
+ 7.13.4 Global media coverage
+ 7.13.5 Other worthwhile reads
+ 7.13.6 Wikipedia Signpost
+ 7.13.7 WMF Blog posts
+ 7.13.8 Media Contact
* 8 Human Resources
o 8.1 Staff Changes
o 8.2 Statistics
o 8.3 Department Updates
* 9 Finance and Administration
* 10 Legal
* 11 Visitors and Guests
== Data and Trends ==
Global unique visitors for July:
393 million (-1.5% compared to June; +9.2% compared to previous year)
(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will
release August data later in September)
Page requests for August:
14.2 billion (+1.0% compared to July; +3.1% compared to previous year)
Report Card for July 2011: The Report Card is undergoing a redesign
as a more fully-featured dashboard. Current prototype can be found
at:
http://project2.wikimedia.org/reportCard/reportcardModules.html
== Financials ==
(Financial information is only available for July 2011 at the time of
this report.)
Financial information as of July 1, 2011
Revenue: $1,204,031
Expenses:
* Technology Group: $731,415
* Community/Fundraiser Group: $250,872
* Global Development Group: $146,003
* Governance Group: $64,873
* Finance/Legal/HR/Admin. Group: $484,462
Total Expenses: $1,677,625
Total surplus/(loss): ($473,594)
Revenue was on plan at $1.2M, including $1M from the second Sloan
Foundation grant.
Expenses were below plan at $1.7M actual vs. $2.2M plan.
Cash of $17.1M, which is seven month of cash reserves at current
spending levels.
== Highlights ==
=== Wikimania ==
<Image:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimania_2011_-_Group_Picture_(2).j…
Group photo at Wikimania 2011, Haifa, Israel>
From August 4 to August 7, Wikimedians from around the
world came
together in Haifa, Israel for this year's annual Wikimania
conference,
organized by volunteers from Wikimedia Israel.
The first day of the conference saw the keynote of Wikimedia Foundation
Executive Director Sue Gardner
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtE-IlhbM-A&t=3m32s ) followed by a Q&A
session with the Board of Trustees
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtE-IlhbM-A&t=30m30s ). Wikipedia
founder Jimmy Wales concluded the event with his customary "State of the
Wiki" address, highlighting the importance of making it easier to edit
Wikipedia. He also awarded the first annual "Global Wikipedian of the
Year" award to Rauan Kenzhekhanuly of the Kazakh Wikipedia.
Beyond these, the schedule
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Schedule> included the following
presentations and panels by Wikimedia Foundation staff, fellows and
contractors:
Community
* Philippe Beaudette, /"Get Jimmy off my screen!" - the donations
model for the 2010-2011 fundraiser
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/%22Get_Jimmy_off_my_screen!%22_-_the_donations_model_for_the_2010-2011_fundraiser>/
* Frank Schulenburg, /Taking Wikipedia in Higher Education to the next
level
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Taking_Wikipedia_in_Higher_Education_to_the_next_level>/
* Maryana Pinchuk and Victoria Doronina, /War and Peace: Writing
Wikipedia Social Histories
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/War_and_Peace:_Writing_Wikipedia_Social_Histories>/
* Lennart Guldbrandsson, /Account Creation Improvement Project
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Account_Creation_Improvement_Project>/
* Liam Wyatt, /What next in GLAM?
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/What_next_in_GLAM%3F>/
* James Alexander, /WikiGuides and new users
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/WikiGuides_and_new_users>/
* Ryan Kaldari, /Wikipedia Takes Your City (How to organize a
Wikipedia photo scavenger hunt)
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Wikipedia_Takes_Your_City>/
* Ryan Kaldari, /Wikimedia and the Public Domain
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Wikimedia_and_the_Public_Domain>/
Global development
* Barry Newstead, /Understanding Wikipedia Editors: Results from the
Editors Survey
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Editor_Survey>/
* Erik Zachte, /Global distribution of our community and readers
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Global_distribution_of_our_community_and_readers>/
* Kul Wadhwa: /Wikimedia Mobile: What we've learned and where we're
headed
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Wikimedia_Mobile_Panel>/
(panel, with Patrick Reilly)
Technology
* Ryan Lane, /The Site Architecture You Can Edit
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/The_Site_Architecture_You_Can_Edit>/
* Patrick Reilly, etc., /Wikimedia Mobile: What we've learned and
where we're headed
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Wikimedia_Mobile_Panel>/
* Rob Halsell, /Wikimedia Operations Overview
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Wikimedia_Operations_Overview>/
* Roan Kattouw and Timo Tijhof, /ResourceLoader, modernizing
client-side development
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/ResourceLoader>/
* Guillaume Paumier, /A Qt library for MediaWiki, and what you can do
with it
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/A_Qt_library_for_MediaWiki,_and_what_you_can_do_with_it>/
* Brion Vibber, /Editing 2.0: MediaWiki's upcoming visual editor and
the future of templates
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Editing_2.0:_MediaWiki%27s_upcoming_visual_editor_and_the_future_of_templates>/
* Sumana Harihareswara, /How to get what you want from MediaWiki
developers
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/How_to_get_what_you_want_from_MediaWiki_developers>/
* Brandon Harris, /Identity, Reputation, and Gratitude
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Identity,_Reputation,_and_Gratitude>/
* Markus Glaser, Timo Tijhof, Ryan Lane, /Testing for Mediawiki
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Testing_for_Mediawiki>/
* Andrew Garrett, /A brief introduction to MediaWiki extension
development
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/A_brief_introduction_to_MediaWiki_extension_development>/
Research and Strategy
* Dario Taraborelli (with Daniel Mietchen and Giota Alevizou),
/Barriers and opportunities for expert participation in Wikipedia:
Results from a survey
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Barriers_and_opportunities_for_expert_participation_in_Wikipedia:_Results_from_a_survey>/
* Erik Möller, Guillaume Paumier, /Quality and Engagement: Making the
Connection
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Quality_and_Engagement:_Making_the_Connection>/
* Dario Taraborelli (with Mathias Schindler, Angelika Adam, Denny
Vrandecic), /Participation in research projects
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Participating_in_research_projects>/
* Dario Taraborelli (with Daniel Mietchen), /An open-access and
open-data policy for projects of the Wikimedia Foundation
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/An_open-access_and_open-data_policy_for_projects_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation>/
Cross-departmental
* Howie Fung, Steven Walling, Barry Newstead, and Diederik van Liere,
/How the Wikimedia Foundation is Studying Editing Trends: 2010-2011
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Submissions/How_the_Wikimedia_Foundation_is_Studying_Editing_Trends:_2010-2011>/
* Moka Pantages and Steven Walling, /How to Start a Party on Six
Continents
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/How_to_Start_a_Party_on_Six_Continents>/
* Brandon Harris, Howie Fung, Steven Walling, /Encouraging
Participation in Wikimedia Projects
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Encouraging_Participation_in_Wikimedia_Projects>/
* Dario Taraborelli, Diederik van Liere, Ryan Lane, /Opening up
Wikipedia's data: A lightweight approach to Wikipedia as a platform
<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Opening_up_Wikipedia%27s_data:_A_lightweight_approach_to_Wikipedia_as_a_platform>/
The Foundation supported Wikimania participants with 77 full
scholarships and 52 partial scholarships (awarded to a diverse group of
recipients, selected by a volunteer scholarship review committee), in
collaboration with Wikimedia Germany. In addition, various other
Wikimedia chapters provided self-administered scholarships.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/07/30/wikimania-2011-scholarships/
At Wikimania, the Wikimedia Board of Trustees announced the 2011-2012
Board members and elected officers:
* Ting Chen, Board Chair
* Jan-Bart de Vreede, Vice-Chair
* Stuart West, Treasurer
* Phoebe Ayers, Secretary
* Samuel Klein
* Bishakha Datta
* Matt Halprin
* Arne Klempert
* Kat Walsh
* Jimmy Wales
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/08/03/shalom-from-wikimania-2011/
=== Summer of Research wraps up ===
<Image:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Summer_of_Research_Presentation_Augu…
Presentation of Wikimedia Summer of Research results (August 25, WMF
offices)>
The Community Department concluded the inaugural Wikimedia Summer of
Research program, where eight academics from a variety of fields visited
the Foundation from June to August in order to take an intensive look at
the dynamics of Wikipedia’s editing community. They employed a variety
of qualitative and quantitative methodologies to tackle some of the most
pressing questions about current and historic editor trends. Their work
was organized as a series of weekly sprints, each devoted to a new topic
related to participation in Wikipedia by editors. In particular, they
focused on the participation of new editors, from the time they register
to how they first contribute and collaborate with existing community
members.
In the final weeks the researchers gave a presentation on the findings
to staff, released code on public repositories, and documented their
work on Meta wiki. A comprehensive summary of the topics covered and the
key findings can be found at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikimedia_Summer_of_Research_2011/S…
.
== Technology ==
A detailed report of the Tech Department's activities for August 2011
can be found at:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2011/August
Department Highlights
* Technical discussions at Wikimania (see also general "Highlights"
section) and adjacent Hacking Days;
* Progress on HTTPS, and generally better processes in Operations;
* The kick-off of the Internationalization and localization tools project;
* New features in UploadWizard, including major work on customized
campaigns for the Wiki Loves Monuments event;
* MediaWiki 1.18 and the new Mobile platform approaching deployment
readiness;
=== Operations ===
* *Tampa Data Center* — Mark Bergsma put into production the second
router, which means we have now router redundancy in the Tampa
network infrastructure. Mark also standardized LVS implementation
and puppetized the configuration. Other highlights in August include
software upgrade to Squid servers, and upload performance issues
(now solved).
* *Virginia Data Center* — Asher Feldman deployed the new Mobile
Varnish servers in the Eqiad data center. All six LVS servers are
ready and two of them are in production now, load-balancing the
mobile Varnish servers.
* *HTTPS* — Roan Kattouw and Ryan Lane fixed issues that surfaced
during the internal testing period. Ryan also set up SSL servers in
eqiad, enhancing Varnish to deal with X-Forwarded-For and
X-Forwarded-Proto HTTP headers, and making necessary changes to
Squid. On August 31st, HTTPS was enabled on
wikimediafoundation.org
and Wikimedia Commons.
* *Virtualization test cluster* — The puppet configuration used in the
production sites has been split into public and private
repositories, and all sensitive information has been moved to the
private repository. Gerrit has been configured, and the public
puppet configuration will soon be moved into a public repository
there. Labs LDAP and SVN LDAP are currently being merged, so that
SVN users will more easily have access to Labs.
=== Features Engineering ===
* *Visual editor* — Trevor Parscal and Inez Korczynski worked on a
transaction-based model for the visual editor, where the document is
built as a series of events (instead of saving it entirely at every
change), which makes it easier to undo actions. Neil Kandalgaonkar
continued to work on real-time collaboration and is close to
presenting a demo of Etherpad working inside a MediaWiki edit
window. Ian Baker investigated and started to work on a chat system
to be integrated to the concurrent editing interface, for
collaboration and live help.
* *Internationalization and localization tools* — Siebrand Mazeland,
Niklas Laxström and Gerard Meijssen joined the project in August.
Niklas focused on code review for MediaWiki 1.18 regarding
internationalization issues; he also introduced more flexible
language fallback sequences. Siebrand worked on the product roadmap
for 2011-2012, and started to plan hackathons & localization sprints
in India in November. The Kiwix offline app was added to
translatewiki.net, where it can now be localized.
* *Article feedback* — Dario Taraborelli analyzed the volume of edits,
and couldn't yet find any statistically significant difference in
edits before and after the activation of the feature on English
Wikipedia articles. In order to clarify licensing and privacy
policies regarding the data, an explanation was published, stating
that user feedback data were considered public contributions just
like any edit.
* *UploadWizard* — Ian Baker worked on the TitleBlacklist API, as well
as bug fixes for UploadStash. Jan Gerber added XHR FormData support
to UploadWizard, and chunk uploads. Jeroen De Dauw's code to support
customized campaigns was deployed to Wikimedia Commons. Neil
reviewed Jeroen's and Jan's code, and generally prepared the code
for deployment.
* *ResourceLoader* — Roan Kattouw and Timo Tijhof got together in late
August to do back-end work on Global gadgets. They improved the
format for defining gadgets, which will eventually be done via a
user interface. Gadget internationalization is now also fully supported.
=== Mobile <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects> ===
* *Mobile Research* — Mani Pande and Parul Vora continued to
synthesize the findings from field research in India and Brazil.
They launched user experience research in US with AnswerLab, and
have started recruiting readers and editors for ethnographic
research to be conducted in San Francisco, Dallas and Chicago.
* *MobileFrontend* — Tomasz Finc sent a second call for testers to try
out the new mobile platform developed by Patrick Reilly. The
MediaWiki community provided code feedback on the wikitech-l list,
which was addressed by Patrick. Tomasz called for developers to help
fix the last remaining bugs before full deployment, planned for
early September.
=== Special projects ===
* *2011 Fundraiser
<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/2011_Wikimedia_fundraiser>* — Ryan
Kaldari built views and filters to facilitate reviewing changes to
CentralNotice campaigns and banners. Katie Horn added an API to the
ContributionTracking extension as well as minor bug fixes to some
Drupal/CiviCRM modules. Arthur Richards added a new log parser and
made bug fixes to the contribution auditing framework. Jeff Green
analyzed the server architecture and began taking strides to
increase resiliency and security.
=== Platform Engineering
<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Platform_Engineering> ===
* *MediaWiki 1.18* — Code review on MediaWiki 1.18 progressed well in
August and should be over by mid September. Gradual deployment to
Wikimedia wikis is planned over September, using the newly completed
heterogeneous deployment system.
* *Continuous integration* — Chad Horohoe continued to set up the
virtual machine environment, while the Operations team set up the
physical hardware in the Virginia data center. The final server will
use Jenkins instead of CruiseControl.
* *Wikitext scripting* — Volunteer Victor Vasiliev worked on a
MediaWiki extension to embed scripts into pages; this was a result
of discussions over the years about replacing ad-hoc template- and
ParserFunctions-based logic by a more efficient and powerful
solution. Tim Starling discussed the extension with Victor to become
more familiar with his work, and researched other alternatives. He
wrote a PHP extension embedding a Lua interpreter, and added support
for it to the existing Lua MediaWiki extension for backward
compatibility.
* *Summer of Code 2011* — In August, the GSoC students finished their
projects and students and mentors turned in their final evaluations;
all seven remaining students passed. They started to write to the
wikitech-l mailing list to summarize what they finished and what
still needs to be done.
=== Research ===
Research on new features continued with a particular focus on Moodbar, a
feature that was deployed in the English Wikipedia at the beginning of
this month. We also continued work on Article Feedback and contributed
to the wrap-up of the Public Policy Initiative with the collection of
data on article quality. We continued the analysis of the data collected
in the Expert participation survey (cf. Wikimania section).
Dario Taraborelli attended the DataCite 2011 Summit as an opportunity to
identify strategic partnerships on research data preservation and
publication. [1]
Members of the Research Committee continued evaluating and supporting
research proposals submitted over the last month by external researchers
and released the second issue of the Wikimedia Research Newsletter, a
monthly overview of Wikimedia research in collaboration with the
Wikipedia Signpost. [2] Daniel Mietchen led the drafting of a Wikimedia
response to the EU Consultation on scientific information in the digital
age. [3]
[1]
http://www.datacite.org/node/30
[2]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/2011-08-29
[3]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Committee/Areas_of_interest/Open-ac…
== Community ==
Department Highlight
Wrapped up Summer of Research with a rich set of results posted on Meta
at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikimedia_Summer_of_Research_2011 (see
general "Highlights" section)
=== Projects ===
Reader Relations and Support
We have implemented and field tested case management systems such as
SugarCRM to track issues that are being referred to us, and are pleased
with the results we're seeing. We continue to work closely with both
tech and legal to assure that community concerns are met. Average
time-to-close on cases is fairly extreme, because they're very complex -
they don't tend to get to us until all other avenues to resolve them
have failed.
From August 15 to August 30, the Foundation held a
referendum
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_filter_referendum> to gather
more
input into the development and usage of an opt-in personal image hiding
feature, which will allow readers to voluntarily screen particular types
of images strictly for their own accounts. Such a feature was requested
by the Board of Trustees in June 2011.
Data Competition
There are only three more weeks left in the Kaggle Data competition [1],
which challenges data-mining experts to predict the number of edits a
Wikipedia editor will make, based on a training dataset. It has already
attracted 79 teams, 167 participants and 743 submissions. An exit survey
has been prepared and will be sent out once the competition finishes.
[1]
http://www.kaggle.com/c/wikichallenge
=== Fundraiser ===
Fundraising
In August, the fundraising team attended Wikimania and interviewed
nearly 50 Wikimedia contributors. We gathered this material so that we
can expand the range of voices and faces that appear (and perform well)
in our fundraiser. We are still in the process of interviewing editors,
donors, users, and staff. Please send a message to
wikistory(at)wikimedia.org if you'd like to share your story and explain
to readers in your own words why donating to Wikimedia is important.
Weekly testing of creative messages also continued in August. Please see
our test updates on meta for more information:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011
We have some hopeful signs that this year we'll have appeals from
editors, donors and others that will perform as well as the traditional
"Jimmy Appeal".
The fundraising team has started with bi-monthly fundraising drills --
full days of testing going through the motions of the real Fundraiser.
This provides insight on the daily tasks/problems we may have in the FR
and helps establish a more productive/sustainable production process.
The Production Coordinator (PC) Team worked on the localization of
Landing Pages and automating codes and processes, improving and updating
our Fundraising 2011 page [1] and creating new and more technically
robust banners and LPs.
In August, our team welcomed Peter Gehres and Alex Zariv as Production
Coordinators throughout the Fundraiser 2011.
[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011
Major Gifts and Foundations
We submitted two new requests for general support to foundations in the
month of August. Also, Jonathan Curiel joined our team as the
Development Communications Manager.
=== Public Policy Initiative ===
In August, the PPI team was actively involved in three key areas: 1)
Documenting the overall Public Policy Initiative and preparing the first
draft of the Stanton Foundation report, 2) Planning and facilitating 10
Regional Campus Ambassador trainings throughout the United States, 3)
Reporting the research findings of key aspects of the Public Policy
Initiative.
=== Fellowship program ===
Summer of Research
August was the final month of this project - see "Highlights" section.
WikiHistories Project
The history fellows, who study the virtual community history of
different Wikipedia editing communities, wrote several blog posts this
month [1], [2], [3], [4], receiving mention in the English Wikipedia
Signpost. They will submit their final reports next month, and their
findings will appear on Meta.
[1]
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/08/24/the-taj-to-the-tuk-tuk-language-in-the…
[2]
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/08/22/new-media-order-in-turkey/
[3]
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/08/10/dispatch-from-a-far-flung-corner-of-in…
[4]
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/08/03/tagalog-wikipedias-quiet-editor/
== Global Development ==
=== Department Highlights ===
* Attendance at Wikimania 2011 (see also general "Highlights" section)
* Final Report of Editor Survey Complete
* Asaf Bartov's Visit to Kenya
=== Grants Awarded and Executed ===
Grants awarded:
*
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Sarah_Stierch/MCN_Conference
*
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_PH/Software_Freedom_Day_Philippine…
*
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_IN/Bootstrap_Grant
*
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_IN/WikiConference_India_2011
=== Chapter Relations ===
* Signed chapter agreements with Macau, Chile and Canada. Finalizing
agreement with India and South Africa chapters.
* Finalizing finances for 2010-2011 Fundraising: payments of the
second installments received from Germany, UK and France. Full
report out soon.
* Discussing chapter transitional grant agreement [1]
<http://internal.wikimedia.org/wiki/Transitional_Chapter_Grant_Agreement>
with Wikimedia Australia, Wikimedia Austria, Wikimedia Hungary,
Wikimedia Sweden, Wikimedia Italy, Wikimedia Switzerland and
Wikimedia Netherlands.
=== Global South ===
* Full-day discussion on Global South growth held at Wikimania
preconference. Notes here, including much advice applicable to all
chapters and future chapters:
http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_South_Meeting/Notes
* Asaf Bartov visited Kenya Aug 15th-18th and delivered five public
talks on university campuses in Nairobi and Mombasa as well as a
tech outreach talk at the Nairobi iHub. He also led a workshop for
Kenyan Wikimedians, and visited two potential local partners for
Wikimedia in Kenya.
* Many new contacts with volunteers from communities not currently
having chapters were established at Wikimania, including
representatives from Thailand, Armenia, Viet Nam, Japan, and Belarus.
=== Brazil Catalyst [2]
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Catalyst_Project> ===
The main steps to move forward in the short term are to,
1. improve our collective understanding of the structure and work
dynamics of the Brazilian contributor community and engage in
dialogue with the community (we have one quantitative researcher who
is starting to work on this),
2. focus on outreach projects (specifically the launch of the Global
Education Program in Brazil) providing new energy for the community,
and,
3. support community-led initiatives and efforts to form Wikimedia
Brazil (Brazilian Chapter) through grants and other support.
We will also continue to work on establishing a WMF presence in Brazil,
though that will be a secondary priority for the next 3-6 months.
=== Mobile Strategy and Business Development ===
* Exploring USSD protocol with various partners to bring access to
Wikipedia, without cost to end-users, to low end mobile phones in
developing countries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstructured_Supplementary_Service_Data
* Currently working with the tech team on testing our mobile gateway,
which will be lauched in limited release in a week.
=== Editor Survey ===
The final report of the editor survey has been completed. We'll continue
to blog about the editor survey.
=== Readers Survey ===
We have received the datafile and toplines from our vendor, and are
analyzing the data.
=== Mobile Research ===
* We are working on the research report and have set up a wiki in meta
to share the data from India and Brazil:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Mobile_Strategy_Research.
* The translation process for the mobile survey is almost complete:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Mobile_Readers_Survey_2011
=== Offline ===
* For the next year, we will focus on tightening up the ability to
make offline collections as well as creating simple and clear guides
for downloading/distributing content.
* A new version of Kiwix - an offline reader - launched! We are
collecting feedback about the experience now.
=== Global Education Program ===
==== Student organizations ====
* Page creation process has been unified and streamlined, and pilot
pages are being rolled out to a test group of existing student
organizations to prepare for the start of the new school year.
* Merchandise request process is now developing: students will receive
annual welcome packs and will be able to request merchandise through
a minigrants program (this will also encourage students to make
their events public on Outreach wiki).
=== India Programs ===
* Two new consultants selected - Nitika Tandon (Participation) and
Shiju Alex (Indic Initiatives). Nitika has joined and Shiju joins at
the end of September.
* Continued support of proposed WikiConference in Mumbai in November
($40k grant from WMF; Fellowship for organizer; Advisory services).
* Wikipedia India Education Program
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program> pilot in
Pune looking good in terms of numbers (>1000 students) but requires
intensive effort to provide adequate training, enabling and
hand-holding of newbie students. Having said this, check out the
following:
o User: Abhilasha369 started a new article: Robinson Crusoe Economy
o User: basic.atari is working on the Human capital article
o User: SaurabhKB is editing Self-organizing list
o User: Aishani Sharma on Social preferences
o User: Jinchurikidan has been actively editing the article on
Animation studio
o 12 new Campus Ambassadors selected for the Pune pilot; training
expected by September 12
* Continued progress on legal registration of the proposed independent
public trust in India.
* Initial meetings with major mobile carriers / manufacturers
scheduled for next week.
=== Communications ===
* Communications conducted support for media outreach, and assistance
to the Wikimania planning committee through August 2011
* Ongoing design planning for new initiatives within the Foundation,
including the student clubs branding and identity and global
education initiative
* Work continues on the transfer of monthly reporting and broadcasting
functions to the Movement Communications area of our team. New
projects are being developed for community-facing outreach -
specifically developing new channels for mission-critical information.
* Work has also kicked off on the 2010/11 WMF Annual Report, set to
release in November 2011.
==== Major announcements ====
Wikimedia Foundation Announces 2011-2012 Board of Trustees and Elected
Officers
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/August_2011_Wikimedia_Fo…
==== Global Communications ====
* Conducted first-ever Communications committee (ComCom) meeting at
Wikimania. Lasted three hours and discussion focused on re-building
a more collaborative culture among participants, as well as sharing
best practices and working together on synchronized projects. 20
people attended and Tinu Cherian led a discussion about media
outreach in India and what we can learn from his experiences there
as a volunteer media spokesperson.
* Worked with Wikimedia Netherlands to plan media efforts around
pan-European Wiki Loves Monuments contest.
* Preliminary talks with Wikimedia Hungary to help build out a
communications plan to celebrate 100,000 article milestone for
Hungarian Wikipedia. Working to create best practices and model for
future milestone celebrations.
==== Storylines through August ====
Wikimania takes Haifa!
http://www.jpost.com/Sci-Tech/Article.aspx?id=232179
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/wikipedia-leaders-outline-their-vision…
==== Global media coverage ====
College of Engineering Pune students to co-author Wikipedia-India
http://www.dnaindia.com/academy/report_college-of-engineering-pune-students…
Sahitya Parishad to add more Gujarati pages on Wikipedia
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_sahitya-parishad-to-add-more-gujarati-…
Editing Wiki is now part of CoEP's syllabi
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-08-18/pune/29900136_1_wiki…
Oral citations to be part of wikipedia entries
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-08-25/news/29926942_1_onl…
Azerbaijanis more active than Armenians on Wikipedia
http://news.az/articles/armenia/42696
לכתוב ערך בוויקיפדיה במקום סמינר
http://www.haaretz.co.il/captain/spages/1238708.html
Wikipedia editors voting on plan to "shutter" violent and sexual images
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/08/wikipedia-editors-vote-on-shutter-f…
*Wikipedia founder: Israel-Palestine is heavily debated, but we're
vigilant on neutrality*
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/wikipedia-founder-israel-palestine-is-…
*מנכ"לית ויקיפדיה: יש לנו עקרונות נעלים יותר לגבי מקורות מאשר אתרי מדיה
קונבנציונליים*
http://www.themarker.com/advertising/digital/1.677527
==== Other worthwhile reads ====
*
http://sonetlab.fbk.eu/blog/?p=6832
*
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2011/08/11/Study-Wikipedia-shows-large-gend…
*
http://www.montrealgazette.com/Group+boost+local+photos+Wikipedia/5295626/s…
==== Wikipedia Signpost ====
*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-08-…
*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-08-…
*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-08-…
*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-08-…
==== WMF Blog posts ====
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/08/
==== Media Contact ====
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#August_2011
== Human Resources ==
HR continued to gain ground in August, as the external
recruiters/screeners started to show impact on the hiring front. We are
ahead of plan in terms of prepping for roles at this point, most of the
slow down is around candidate quality. This is a different problem from
last year where process was most of the hang up, so although it is an
issue it is an easier one to address than our challenges from 2009-2010.
If you take attrition out of our current data, we are really close to
our goal for the month, only 2 behind plan, a significant improvement.
The deployment of our HRIS continued in August, we expect to have a
working beta for our data in mid September with a proposed launch date
in October. We'd like to speed that up some so we may invest more time
in testing than we'd originally planned to get it up and running sooner.
We also started working with a company we connected with via Mitch Kapor
called Intern Match. We are in the beta of their site, and their goal is
to reach out to students actively for underserved organizations like
ours where internships may not be an obvious pathway. The community
portion of their site launches soon, so we are excited about that.
=== Staff Changes ===
New Perm Position Hires
* Garfield Byrd, Chief of Finance and Administration (Administration)
* Jeremy Postlethwaite, Software Developer Back-end (Technology)
* Jonathan Curiel, Development Communications Manager (Community)
Converted/Extended
* Aaron Schulz, Software Developer Back-end (Technology)
New Other Position Hires
* Niklas Laxström, contractor (fills the permanent role of) SW
Developer – Internationalization (Technology)
* Roan Kattouw, contractor (fills the permanent role of) SW Developer,
Back-end (Technology)
* Siebrand Mazeland, contractor (fills the permanent role of) Product
Manager – Localization (Technology)
* Alex Zariv (contract extended) & Peter Gehres (re-engaged);
contractors, (fill the permanent role of) Production Coordinator
(Community)
New Contractors
* Micheal Beattie (re-engaged)
* Ayush Khanna
* Tracey Fleming
* Gerard Meijssen (July)
* Sara Yap
New Legal Interns
* Christopher Johnson
* Laureli Mallek
* Jason Ross
Contract Extended
* Chris Leonello
* Stephanie Thommen
* Skye Kraft
Contract Ended
* Andrew Shields
* Doreen Strubhar
* Community Summer Research Fellows
o Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia
o Richard Stuart Geiger
o Aaron Halfaker
o Melanie Kill (July)
o Yusuke Matsubara
o Shawn Walker
New Postings
* RFPs
o Development and Operations Engineer
o Global Education Program
o Portuguese Wikipedia Qualitative Researcher
o Consultant, Communications - India Programs
o Consultant, Team Support - India Programs
=== Statistics ===
Total Employee Count:
Plan: 92
Filled: 8
August Attrition: 0
YTD Attrition: 5
Actual: 85
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 ==
* Beginning search for Head of Office Information Technology.
* Used tenant improvement funds to do upgrades to the third floor
break room.
== Legal ==
* Four legal interns are starting for the Fall semester, supporting us
on a wide variety of legal issues (working both part-time and
full-time for law school credit or educational experience). We are
extremely happy to have their support.
* MarkMonitor - We've engaged a domain name monitoring and management
company that will allow us to gain control proactively of domain
names that contain our project names as well as domain names that
are easily confused with our project names. This will help reduce
instances of deceptive websites that harm our users such as survey
scams, phishing sites, mirror sites, etc.
* Hiaring Smith - We have engaged this new trademark firm (with a good
international network) to help us trim our portfolio of unnecessary
fat while developing proactive strategy in regions we are
aggressively moving into. The firm itself was just named one of the
top 20 firms in CA by the World Trademark Review.
* Finalized internal legal policies:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/Legal_Policies
== Visitors and Guests ==
1. Aaron Shaw (Berkman Center for Internet and Society)
2. Thierry Coudray (board member, Wikimedia France)
3. Achal Prabhala (WMF Advisory Board Member)
4. Sarah Stierch (community member, GLAM Wikipedian-in-Residence)
5. Hai Ton (ThoughtWorks)
6. Kaitlin Thaney (Digital Science)
7. Denny Vrandecic (Semantic MediaWiki)
8. Sizhe Liu (KPMG)
9. Glenn Turner (Advanced Mobile Notary)
10. Renata Stasaityte (WMF Audit Committee)
11. Pernilla Rydmark (.SE Swedish Foundation)
12. Kristina Alexanderson (.SE Swedish Foundation)
13. Sam Mankiewicz (CTO, Kiva)
--
Tilman Bayer
Movement Communications
Wikimedia Foundation