*(long email incoming)*
Dear Sanskrit Wikimedians,
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is organizing a call for
feedback about community selection processes between February 1 and March
14. Below you will find the problem statement and various ideas from the
Board to address it. We are offering multiple channels for questions and
feedback. With the help of a team of community facilitators, we are
organizing multiple conversations with multiple groups in multiple
languages.
During this call for feedback we publish weekly reports and we draft the
final report that will be delivered to the Board. With the help of this
report, the Board will approve the next steps to organize the selection of
six community seats in the upcoming months. Three of these seats are due
for renewal and three are new, recently approved.
*Participate in this call for feedback and help us form a more diverse and
better performing Board of Trustees!*
*Problems:* While the Wikimedia Foundation and the movement have grown
about five times in the past ten years, the Board’s structure and processes
have remained basically the same. As the Board is designed today, we have a
problem of capacity, performance, and lack of representation of the
movement’s diversity. This problem was identified in the Board’s 2019
governance review, along with recommendations for how to address it.
To solve the problem of capacity, we have agreed to increase the Board size
to a maximum of 16 trustees (it was 10). Regarding performance and
diversity, we have approved criteria to evaluate new Board candidates. What
is missing is a process to promote community candidates that represent the
diversity of our movement and have the skills and experience to perform
well on the Board of a complex global organization.
Our current processes to select individual volunteer and affiliate seats
have some limitations. Direct elections tend to favor candidates from the
leading language communities, regardless of how relevant their skills and
experience might be in serving as a Board member, or contributing to the
ability of the Board to perform its specific responsibilities. It is also a
fact that the current processes have favored volunteers from North America
and Western Europe. Meanwhile, our movement has grown larger and more
complex, our technical and strategic needs have increased, and we have new
and more difficult policy challenges around the globe. As well, our
Movement Strategy recommendations urge us to increase our diversity and
promote perspectives from other regions and other social backgrounds.
In the upcoming months, we need to renew three community seats and appoint
three more community members in the new seats. What process can we all
design to promote and choose candidates that represent our movement and are
prepared with the experience, skills, and insight to perform as trustees?
*Ideas:* The Board has discussed several ideas to overcome the problems
mentioned above. Some of these ideas could be taken and combined, and some
discarded. Other ideas coming from the call for feedback could be
considered as well. The ideas are:
1. *Ranked voting system*. Complete the move to a single transferable
vote system, already used to appoint affiliate-selected seats, which is
designed to best capture voters’ preferences.
2. *Quotas*. Explore the possibility of introducing quotas to ensure
certain types of diversity in the Board (details about these quotas to be
discussed in this call for feedback).
3. *Call for types of skills and experiences*. When the Board makes a
new call for candidates, they would specify types of skills and experiences
especially sought.
4. *Vetting of candidates*. Potential candidates would be assessed using
the Trustee Evaluation Form and would be confirmed or not as eligible
candidates.
5. *Board-delegated selection committee*. The community would nominate
candidates that this committee would assess and rank using the Trustee
Evaluation Form. This committee would have community elected members and
Board appointed members.
6. *Community-elected selection committee*. The community would directly
elect the committee members. The committee would assess and rank candidates
using the Trustee Evaluation Form.
7. *Election of confirmed candidates.* The community would vote for
community nominated candidates that have been assessed and ranked using the
Trustee Evaluation Form. The Board would appoint the most voted candidates.
8. *Direct appointment of confirmed candidates*. After the selection
committee produces a ranked list of community nominated candidates, the
Board would appoint the top-ranked candidates directly.
*Call for feedback:* The call for feedback[1] runs from February 1 until
the end of March 14. We are looking for a broad representation of opinions.
We are interested in the reasoning and the feelings behind your opinions.
In a conversation like this one, details are important. We want to support
good conversations where everyone can share and learn from others. We want
to hear from those who understand Wikimedia governance well and are already
active in movement conversations. We also want to hear from people who do
not usually contribute to discussions. Especially those who are active in
their own roles, topics, languages or regions, but usually not in, say, a
call for feedback on Meta.
You can participate by joining the Telegram chat group[2], and giving
feedback on any of the talk pages on Meta-Wiki. We are welcoming the
organisation of conversations in any language and in any channel. If you
want us to organize a conversation or a meeting for your wiki project or
your affiliate, please write to me. I will also reach out to communities
and affiliates to soon have focused group discussions.
An office hour[3] is also happening tomorrow from 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm
(IST) to discuss this topic. Access link will be available 15 minutes
before the scheduled time. In case you are not able to make it, please
don't worry, there will be more discussions and meetings in the next few
weeks.
Regards,
Krishna Chaitanya
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call…
[2] https://t.me/wmboardgovernancechat
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call…
Hello all,
It's only 6 days left for Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021 (WMWM) submissions
to be closed. we have received quite a good responses. Please show your
interest and take a step ahead for the submission if you have any plan or
idea. Please do hurry up and submit your submission before 24-01-2021. For
more information, you can visit here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions>.
If you need any sort of help or if you have a concern about your
submissions please feel free to reach out to me or any A2K member.
Thanks & Best Regards
Nitesh Gill
Hello Wikimedians,
CIS-A2K is glad to announce Train the Trainer programme 2020 (TTT 2020)
from 28 February - 1 March 2020. This is the 7th iteration of this
programme. We are grateful to all the community members, resource persons
for their consistent enthusiasm to participate and support. We expect this
to continue as before.
Please see the event page for more details here -
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Train_the_Trainer_Program/20…
The important dates are as follows -
- Main event: 28, 29 Feb & 1 Mar (Participants are expected to reach
before 5 pm on 27 February i.e. Day 0)
- Last date of registration - 5 February 2020
Please share this information widely among the Wikimedians.
Thanks and Regards,
*ANANTH SUBRAY P V*
Programme Associate
Access to Knowledge program <https://cis-india.org/a2k/cis-a2k>
The Centre for Internet & Society
+91-9739811664
Hello everyone,
Greeting's from CIS-A2K, Hardware support applications
(Chromebooks/Internet Stipends) for Project Tiger 2.0 was opened on 25
August 2019 and the deadline to apply is 14 September 2019. If you are
interested in applying, please visit the support[1] page on meta.
The Project Tiger 2.0, Article writing contest will be happening from
October 2019. Google has given a list of articles, which can be created as
part of the article writing contest. The list suggested by Google can be
seen here[2]. We request the community to have a look at the list suggested
by few community members can be seen here[3] if you would like to add more
topics please add those before 28 September 2019.
If you have any queries please let us know.
[1].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Growing_Local_Language_Content_on_Wikipedia…
[2].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Growing_Local_Language_Content_on_Wikipedia…
[3].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Growing_Local_Language_Content_on_Wikipedia…
Thanks and Regards,
*ANANTH SUBRAY P V*
Programme Associate
Access to Knowledge program <https://cis-india.org/a2k/cis-a2k>
The Centre for Internet & Society
+91-9739811664
Hello everyone,
As it is said, "A picture is worth a thousand words but vector
illustrations are even better", [Attribution
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2016/Submissions/A_pic…>].
I am delighted to announce the "SVG Translation Campaign 2019 in India".
SVG Translation Campaign 2019 in India is a planned 38-day long campaign to
translate the English-labelled SVG files into Indian languages for use on
regional language Wikipedias. During Wikigraphists Bootcamp in September
2018
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/KCVelaga/Wikigraphists_Bo…>,
we had several Wikimedians from India who were trained on using Inkscape
and other tools, to create vector illustrations (SVG is a file format for
vector graphics, like JPG for raster graphics). This campaign is a
follow-up of that project and also with a goal to promote the idea of
vector graphics among the larger Indian community. Often, we see
English-labelled SVG files being used on Indian Wikipedias, this campaign
also helps us to have localised SVG files with labels in regional languages
to be used on Wikipedias.
More about the campaign can be seen at:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:SVG_Translation_Campaign_2019_in…,
where all the required material to understand about vector graphics and
SVGs is already listed. There will be campaign specific tutorials for the
campaign posted soon at:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:SVG_Translation_Campaign_2019_in…
.
This message is to notify the community about the planned campaign, more
details to follow soon. The campaign starts on 21st. February 2019, marking
"International Mother Language Day", and will continue till 31st March
2019. To make it easy for the participants, a list of images (inclusive,
but not limited to) will posted at:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:SVG_Translation_Campaign_2019_in…
.
All the communities are invited to actively take part in the campaign, you
can sign-up yourself as a "Community organiser" for your language at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:SVG_Translation_Campaign_2019_in…
(max
two per community), or just sign up as a participant at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:SVG_Translation_Campaign_2019_in…
.
If you would like to organise a small onsite event, please sign up at:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:SVG_Translation_Campaign_2019_in…,
before 21st January 2019. So that it'll help us to finalise the budget.
It might sound confusing, but all the resources required for smooth
participation will be online far before the campaign starts on 21st
February 2019. If you have any questions, please email me or post at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:SVG_Translation_Campaign_20…
.
Thanks,
Rajeeb Dutta
User:Marajozkee
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Krishna Chaitanya Velaga <kcvelaga(a)gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2018 at 8:36 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [TWL Con - 2019 India] Call for Applications
To: <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Dear all,
Tomorrow is the last day for applying to TWLCon - 2019 India. The
applications will close at 23:59 hrs on 25 November 2018.
If there is anyone who are interested to take part, kindly apply as soon as
possible.
Event page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/TWLC19IN
Application: https://goo.gl/forms/NvwYttEeCFfl30rG3
Thanks,
Krishna
On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 1:33 AM Krishna Chaitanya Velaga <kcvelaga(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I am happy to announce that the applications for "TWL Con (2019
> India)"[1], a mini-conference around The Wikipedia Library (TWL)[2] and
> library outreach for Wikimedia projects in India are now open. Due to
> limited time, we're not able to spare much time for responses, kindly
> accept my apologies. The application period is 19–25 November 2018.
>
> In brief about the event:
>
> TWL helps active editors access reliable sources to improve Wikipedia.
> Among several other programs, it also helps knowledge professionals share
> their collections with the public. TWLCon (2019 India) is an upcoming
> conference to increase awareness about TWL to Wikimedians in India and
> discuss strategising TWL activities in India. This event has been primarily
> designed to understand the needs and document the insights from experienced
> Wikimedians about libraries/sources (references) in India. More about the
> event may be referred from the event page.
>
> The application form is at: https://goo.gl/forms/NvwYttEeCFfl30rG3; last
> date 25 November 2018.
> The event is to be held in the first or second weeks of Jan 2019
> (tentative); Venue will be informed later.
> The eligibility guidelines are applicable as mentioned here [3].
>
> Kindly let me know if you have further questions.
>
> Thanks
> User:KCVelaga
>
> [1]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/TWLC19IN
> [2]:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/TWLCon_(2019_India)#Eligibility_and_guideli…
> [3]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library
>
> _______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
--
Regards
Dr Shweta Yadav
Sent from my iPhone. Please excuse brevity and typos.
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Krishna Chaitanya Velaga <kcvelaga(a)gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2018 at 1:29 AM
Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] [TWL Con - 2019 India] Call for Applications
To: <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Dear all,
I am happy to announce that the applications for "TWL Con (2019 India)"[1],
a mini-conference around The Wikipedia Library (TWL)[2] and library
outreach for Wikimedia projects in India are now open. Due to limited time,
we're not able to spare much time for responses, kindly accept
my apologies. The application period is 19–25 November 2018.
In brief about the event:
TWL helps active editors access reliable sources to improve Wikipedia.
Among several other programs, it also helps knowledge professionals share
their collections with the public. TWLCon (2019 India) is an upcoming
conference to increase awareness about TWL to Wikimedians in India and
discuss strategising TWL activities in India. This event has been primarily
designed to understand the needs and document the insights from experienced
Wikimedians about libraries/sources (references) in India. More about the
event may be referred from the event page.
The application form is at: https://goo.gl/forms/NvwYttEeCFfl30rG3; last
date 25 November 2018.
The event is to be held in the first or second weeks of Jan 2019
(tentative); Venue will be informed later.
The eligibility guidelines are applicable as mentioned here [3].
Kindly let me know if you have further questions.
Thanks
User:KCVelaga
[1]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/TWLC19IN
[2]:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/TWLCon_(2019_India)#Eligibility_and_guideli…
[3]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
--
Regards
Dr Shweta Yadav
Sent from my iPhone. Please excuse brevity and typos.
Greetings,
This is an open call for memberships to Wikimedia India Chapter. Membership is open to Indian citizens (aged 18 years and above) and Institutions registered in India. As a member, you'll have voting rights in the chapter's elections and also represent Wikimedia India in dealing with institutions, after appropriate authorization.
The annual membership fee is ₹100/- for Individuals and ₹1000/- for Institutions. All the new memberships and renewals of previous memberships are effective through 31 March 2019. The membership fee can be paid either by NEFT/Statebank Interbranch transfer/DD/Cheque to Chapter Bank account. If you would like to deposit cash/outstation cheques into Chapter SBI Bank account, at SBI branches, please add ₹25/- as collection charges. However it is advised to transfer the amount through NEFT as the charges are much lower, and helps in expediting the process.
Membership forms are as follows:
For individuals: http://wiki.wikimedia.in/File:WikimediaChapterMembershipFormIndividual.pdf
For institutions: http://wiki.wikimedia.in/File:WikimediaChapterMembershipFormInstitution.pdf
The duly completed membership application along with payment instrument/or details of payment needs to be sent to Chapter office: Wikimedia Chapter, No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bangalore - 560071.
To comply with the legal requirements, it is mandatory that an applying member should also send either a hard or soft copy of an identity proof which mentions their name, along with date of birth, photo and address. The typical identity documents acceptable are: (i) Voter ID (ii) Passport (iii) PAN card (iv) Driving License (v) Aadhaar Card
The Chapter membership committee will endeavour to process all applications within four weeks. WMC reserves the right to reject membership applications, with reason. In such cases, if payment is already made, the same will be refunded without any interest for the intervening period otherwise, the payment instrument (Cheque/DD) will be returned. However, the Rules and Regulations of the Wikimedia Chapter provide for appeal in such cases in Article IV-1. “In cases where the Executive Committee does not approve the application for membership of a person, said person may appeal to the General Body at the next Annual General Meeting.”
Kindly let me know if you have any queries.
Regards,
Krishna C V.
Greetings,
Four more days left to apply for Wikigraphists Bootcamp (2018 India), to be tentatively held in the last weekend of September 2018.
This is going to be a three-day training workshop to equip the participants with the skills to create illustrations and digital drawings in SVG format, using software like Inkscape.
Please apply before 16th June 2018, share the news with your fellow Wikimedians. Kindly refer the link for more details: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikigraphists_Bootcamp_(2018_India)/Partici….
Regards,
Krishna Chaitanya V.