Dear Wikisourcerors, I'm writing you because as a Wikisource Community User Group we'd need to ask for renewal.
TL:DR: go here and write: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource_Community_User_Group/2014_Report
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For those of you who are not aware of this Wikimedia "politics", User Groups are affiliates of the Wikimedia movements, recognized groups of individuals that officially state their existent as a community.
The advantages of such a situation is that we are recognized as a "representatives" of Wikisource communities around the world. It is a much better situation regarding lobbying, advocacy, and even, if needed grantmaking. For example, last year Micru could come in Berlin for the Wikimedia Conference. Every Wikimania, the group of wikisourcerors grows bigger and bigger. There's still a long way to go, but we don't need, in my humble opinion, to draw back. It is important to continue to grow in organization and impact as an international community. We'll win, eventually :-).
The issue though is that from March I'm president of a Chapter (and I have much to do), and Micru is on a loong wiki break. We didn't follow through as we wanted the User Group. On 31st november, the one-year term of recognition given by the AffCom in the resolution of last year has ended.
If we want to continue, we need to apply for a renewal. These are the riteria we have to comply to. [1] We can do it. The Affiliation Committee is very proud of us :-)
We'd basically need to write a 2014 report: an annual report of our activities telling our experience during this year as affiliates. Our achievements, fails, needs, insights and suggestions. Besides, we can tell our plans for the next year.
My humble opinion is that we can put under the umbrella of the Wikisource Community User Group things that we do as single communities or individuals, for the profit of the whole Wikisource and Wikimedia movement.
For example, things we did this year: we did the Wikisource Birthday proofreading contests, (which is BIG [2] :-), and we need to continue doing more and more). we helped Siko in evaluating the IEG proposals related to Wikisource (I did). We are maintaining the migration of WS related tickets from Bugzilla to Phabricator (thanks Billinghusrt!), and we are discussing the perennial problem of structured data on WS (thanks all!) An I'm not mentioning the hidden but precious work of Phe, Tpt, Ricordisamoa and other coders who maintain the Proofread Extensions, do Wikidata things and more.
So, in the end. PLEASE, help me fill this report here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource_Community_User_Group/2014_Report
Write whatever we, as a community of wikisourcerors, have done. Put also important things you havedone in your local wiki. If it's too local, we'll delete it, but it's also a good opportunity to learn stuff from each other!
Thanks!
Aubrey
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_user_groups/Requirements [2] https://tools.wmflabs.org/phetools/graphs/Wikisource_-_validated_pages_per_d...
I have added some dot points of the components that I can remember, and from memory we have done things like
* Google Books -> archive.org -> Commons uploads * ia-upload bot had an update with labs
and those who have some detail would be worthwhile adding this.
Beyond the population of the report, what is it that you think that is needed for the Wikisource CUG itself? From your experience of this in the last year, and with you and Micru unable to do what you did this year, what needs to you see need filling? What commitment would be needed?
If we can identify specific needs, we can put these back to individual communities, and we can especially give a shove to the enWS community which can be solely focused on its own needs as it has some people resource, though less so in the developer space. So I suppose it would be useful to get your insights onto that page as the leader of the inaugural group, and what you see that it needs to go forward for the group, and we can use that same information back to our communities.
Regards, Billinghurst
On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 8:26 PM, Andrea Zanni zanni.andrea84@gmail.com wrote:
Dear Wikisourcerors, I'm writing you because as a Wikisource Community User Group we'd need to ask for renewal.
TL:DR: go here and write: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource_Community_User_Group/2014_Report
For those of you who are not aware of this Wikimedia "politics", User Groups are affiliates of the Wikimedia movements, recognized groups of individuals that officially state their existent as a community.
The advantages of such a situation is that we are recognized as a "representatives" of Wikisource communities around the world. It is a much better situation regarding lobbying, advocacy, and even, if needed grantmaking. For example, last year Micru could come in Berlin for the Wikimedia Conference. Every Wikimania, the group of wikisourcerors grows bigger and bigger. There's still a long way to go, but we don't need, in my humble opinion, to draw back. It is important to continue to grow in organization and impact as an international community. We'll win, eventually :-).
The issue though is that from March I'm president of a Chapter (and I have much to do), and Micru is on a loong wiki break. We didn't follow through as we wanted the User Group. On 31st november, the one-year term of recognition given by the AffCom in the resolution of last year has ended.
If we want to continue, we need to apply for a renewal. These are the riteria we have to comply to. [1] We can do it. The Affiliation Committee is very proud of us :-)
We'd basically need to write a 2014 report: an annual report of our activities telling our experience during this year as affiliates. Our achievements, fails, needs, insights and suggestions. Besides, we can tell our plans for the next year.
My humble opinion is that we can put under the umbrella of the Wikisource Community User Group things that we do as single communities or individuals, for the profit of the whole Wikisource and Wikimedia movement.
For example, things we did this year: we did the Wikisource Birthday proofreading contests, (which is BIG [2] :-), and we need to continue doing more and more). we helped Siko in evaluating the IEG proposals related to Wikisource (I did). We are maintaining the migration of WS related tickets from Bugzilla to Phabricator (thanks Billinghusrt!), and we are discussing the perennial problem of structured data on WS (thanks all!) An I'm not mentioning the hidden but precious work of Phe, Tpt, Ricordisamoa and other coders who maintain the Proofread Extensions, do Wikidata things and more.
So, in the end. PLEASE, help me fill this report here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource_Community_User_Group/2014_Report
Write whatever we, as a community of wikisourcerors, have done. Put also important things you havedone in your local wiki. If it's too local, we'll delete it, but it's also a good opportunity to learn stuff from each other!
Thanks!
Aubrey
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_user_groups/Requirements [2] https://tools.wmflabs.org/phetools/graphs/Wikisource_-_validated_pages_per_d...
Wikisource-l mailing list Wikisource-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisource-l
On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 12:25 PM, billinghurst billinghurstwiki@gmail.com wrote:
Beyond the population of the report, what is it that you think that is needed for the Wikisource CUG itself? From your experience of this in the last year, and with you and Micru unable to do what you did this year, what needs to you see need filling? What commitment would be needed?
If we can identify specific needs, we can put these back to individual communities, and we can especially give a shove to the enWS community which can be solely focused on its own needs as it has some people resource, though less so in the developer space. So I suppose it would be useful to get your insights onto that page as the leader of the inaugural group, and what you see that it needs to go forward for the group, and we can use that same information back to our communities.
Thank you for the question. As you are aware of, two years ago, when we decided to create the WCUG, me and Micru we granted by the IEG. It was not a ridiculous amount of money (the contrary) but it was enough for us to take this as a true commitment, and spend hours per day *thinking* and *doing* (global) Wikisource related stuff. So, my first answer (as I always say in Wikimedia Italia) is **proactivity**: if you feel committed, think, write, discuss, stay on topic and follow a project. It can be literally anything: but you should feel responsible for that, and follow it to the end.
Another thing is: if you do it, say it. It's a common burden in communities like ours: we do stuff but we can't/forget to/don't want to communicate it.
I think that en.WS, specifically, could do much better. It is a bit unfortunate that the more vocal group in the WS community is made by members of non -English speaking countries (with wonderful exceptions, of course :-)
EnWS members could teach us a lot, with their big community, with their technological advancement, and also with the simple fact that for them is much *easier* to write messages in English :D
The same, but different, can be said about de.WS and fr.WS. These are big communities and big projects and we could learn so much.
We need people. We need more involvement, and the rest will follow. I deeply believe that we have, right now, all the competences, the experience, the technological expertise to make Wikisource scale globally. But we can do that only if we are together, and the best of us teach the rest when they can.
This is important because complex problem (like, Structured Metadata, or Wikidata integration) *need* to have different minds and competences to be coped with. Few scattered people won't solve them.
We probably need to feel more like a community. I think we are, or at least I think that we can be it :-)
These are broad principles. I can think of more concrete and specific things too, but I wanted to give you my main insight as well :-)
Aubrey
wikisource-l@lists.wikimedia.org