Please join for the following tech talk:
*Tech Talk**:* Automated citations in Wikipedia: Citoid and the technology
behind it
*Presenter:* Sebastian Karcher (Syracuse University, Zotero)
*Date:* February 29th, 2016
*Time: *20:00 UTC
<http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Tech+Talk%3A+Autom…>
*Length:* 1 hour
Link to live YouTube stream <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltEL-kPURKs>
*IRC channel for questions/discussion:* #wikimedia-office
*Summary: *The talk provides a very brief introduction to Marielle Volz's
Citoid, the tool providing Wikipedia's new automated citations.I then focus
on the technology underlying Citoid, Zotero translators, and discuss how
interested users/developers can help improve that functionality to better
serve the Wikipedia community.
Hello there,
We are importing a large zh-minnan dictionary into zh wikisource and it
requires some installation of dialect han script. We have a group of
engineer built a tool for this and it's been tested and ready to deploy on
wmflab. However there is a bug on the wmflab, although the engineers have
been requested to fix this on phabricator for a week, but it seems like
there is no response yet.
Please refer https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T118094 . We really need
help to make it works. Thank you.
Liang (WMTW)
Hello, I have been selected as finalist for Women in Open Source by Red
Hat. Next is a public voting round where your votes will make a difference.
Please go to
https://engage.redhat.com/opensourceawards-winners-votingform-2016 , enter
your email address and cast your vote. Spread this among your friends.
Thanks a lot!
PS- Here's a list of the finalists (redhat.com/en/about/women-in-open-source).
And of course, vote for the best one you think deserves to win! :)
--
Thanks and Regards,
Ankita Shukla
Computer Science Engineering
B.Tech Final Year (Senior)
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee
Searching for articles is getting a much needed boost in intelligence. When
searching for an article on any Wikimedia project, a list of possible
matches appear as you type. This incremental search
<https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Incremental_search> 'completion
suggester' helps narrow down possible results for your search query.
Currently the completion suggester is very literal - mistype a word and you
won't see any suggestions. The Discovery team has an update that will make
the search better at detecting typos and spelling mistakes. The list of
suggestions is also tends to be more accurate and relevant to the original
search query. You can see the improvement for yourself as a beta feature
<http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures>.
The plan is to begin rolling out this update in the coming month.
This improvement will impact all Wikimedia sites (with the exception of
Wikidata). With the initial rollout, there will be a few limitations. For
technical reasons, the completion suggester will only affect articles in
the mainspace, not other pages like policy or user pages. Those searches
will continue to use the existing incremental search. We're hoping to
expand the scope of the completion suggester to include other pages in the
future, but this will not be a part of the initial release.
Why are we making this change? The success of our A/B tests on the
completion suggester show a reduction in users who find zero results when
searching. We also have a fairly large number of Wikimedians (nearly 19,000
editors since December 2015) using the beta feature, and we've received
positive feedback on the feature so far. The completion suggester has the
potential of lessening the need for redirects based on spelling mistakes as
well.
The goal is to bring these updates to the default search across all
Wikimedia projects in the coming month. This change will affect the
completion suggester in the main search box on desktop, mobile apps, adding
links in VisualEditor, and the search box on the Wikimedia Portal.
Here are two animations showing the completion suggester before and after
(using a misspelling of "Abendessen", with a missing "s").
* Completion Suggester results for "Abendesen" on German Wikipedia before
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Completion-suggester-before-de.gif>
* Completion Suggester results for "Abendesen" on German Wikipedia after
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Completion-suggester-after-de.gif>
Since December 2015, nearly 19,000 editors have already opted into the
completion suggester beta feature. We encourage you to try it out and share
your feedback on the Completion Suggester discussion page
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:CirrusSearch/CompletionSuggester>.
If you'd like to read a little more about the work of the Discovery
Department and other improvements to search, please check out the Wikimedia
blog
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/12/23/search-and-discovery-on-wikipedia/> or
read about CirrusSearch
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CirrusSearch>, the Mediawiki
Extension that powers our search.
--
Yours,
Chris Koerner
Community Liaison - Discovery
Wikimedia Foundation
FYI
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ginevra Sanvitale <ginevra.esse(a)gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 2:52 PM
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Call for posters, discussions and trainings at
Wikimania opened
To: "Wikimania general list (open subscription)" <
wikimania-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Wikimedia Mailing List <
wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, chapters(a)wikimedia.ch
(Sorry for the crossposting)
Hi people,
the calls for posters, discussions and trainings for Wikimania 2016 are
officially opened, you can find all the relevant links on the conference
wiki:
https://wikimania2016.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions
The calls will be closed on March 20.
Posters will be reviewed just to make sure that there aren't things
which are too much out of scope. Since we have a whole village we will
surely find places to attach them, even if we they will be a lot!
Discussions will be managed by a guiding committee who will work on the
wiki to meld all the proposals and suggestions.
Trainings will be reviewed by the programme committee. Please note that
we request that each training has at least 3-5 interested attendees in
order to be put in the programme.
By the beginning of April we will have a first list of all the accepted
proposals.
If you have questions we suggest you to ask them on the discussion pages
on wiki, so that everyone will be able to see them (and their answers,
of course).
We are looking forward to read your ideas!
Ginevra
Wikimania 2016 Programme Committee
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--
Quim Gil
Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
Thanks again for your responses, Denny. I think it really helps to get a
clearer perspective on things "on the inside", and that informs the kind of
things we need to think and talk about as a company and as a movement.
I know it's a super awkward position to be putting all of you in,
especially at this juncture. I hope we'll all get through this sanely and
we can talk about ways to better align our various structures to our needs
with less immediate stress.
-- brion
On Feb 25, 2016 9:16 AM, "Denny Vrandecic" <dvrandecic(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Thanks to all the answers to my response. I am still reading them, and I
> probably will not be able to answer to all in a timely manner (I have to
> work, after all), but I wanted to make a few things clearer, quickly:
>
> Milos, I indeed do not care about reelection. And if I have to choose
> between truth and political wisdom, I hope to continue to choose the first.
>
> More importantly, Milos, I did a massive error in my formulation, as I know
> realize, which lead to a misunderstanding. I have to apologize for that.
> When I said that the Board has to make a decision in the interest of the
> Foundation when there is a conflict between the Communities and the
> Foundation, I was phrasing myself very badly, I now realize. I actually did
> not mean a direct conflict between a single Community and the Foundation,
> i.e. with these two as being directly opposed to each other and fighting
> over something, but rather the more complicated case of a decision where
> there is a conflict of interests between the Foundation and the
> Movement-at-large, the Board is obliged to decide in the best interest of
> the Foundation.
>
> I do not buy in the mythology of an "evil community" at all. I do not even
> buy into the mythology of a great divide between the communities and the
> foundation. There are plenty of people who are active and constructive in
> both, and who bridge both. The cases where the Foundation and the Movement
> are directly opposed to each other should be extremely rare, and,
> thankfully are. I don't think there was anything even close to that brought
> to the Board in my tenure so far.
>
> More often though is the case that there is a third-party situation, e.g.
> an imminent and considerable legal threat to the Foundation. In that case,
> the interests of the Movement at large has to be secondary for the Board.
>
> I regard the Movement-at-large as much more resilient than any and each of
> its parts. And I am thankful for that, because I think our mission is much
> too important to leave it with a small NGO in the Bay Area. It has to be a
> mission carried by every single one of us, it has to be a mission that is
> inclusive of every one who wants to join in realizing it.
>
> I have overstated my point in my last mail, obviously, and also
> intentionally to make a point (and thanks for everyone to calling me out on
> that). But as many have confirmed, there is truth in this overstatement. I
> don't think that such situations will occur often. But when they occur, and
> that is what I said, they will be painful and frustrating and potentially
> shrouded in confidentiality / secrecy. Therefore it remains my strong
> belief, that reaffirming the current Board as the movement leadership body
> is a bad idea, because the overstated incompatibility that I have described
> remains.
>
> I could imagine with a much smaller Board of Trustees, which itself is a
> constituent of a body representing the whole Movement.
> I could imagine a wholly new body to represent the whole movement.
> I could imagine many, many small new bodies who somehow make local
> decisions on the one side and bubble up to an ineffective, but extremely
> resilient and representative voice.
> I could imagine many other models.
> But I have a hard time to imagine the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
> Foundation sincerely filling out the role of the movement leadership, due
> to the inherent constraints and incompatibilities between these roles. As
> rare as they appear, they do appear.
>
> Dariusz, you say that a disengagement from the Foundation by the community
> would increase a specific Foundation versus the rest of the movement
> situation. I don't think that the formal composition of the Board matters
> as much as its role, duties, and obligations.
>
> The German Wikimedia chapter, the one chapter I have a bit experience with,
> is a membership organization. The Board is elected by the members in its
> entirety. I don't see any claim of that Board to lead the German Wikimedia
> communities. I don't see that the German chapter is significantly closer to
> the German Wikimedia communities, or that their relation to the communities
> is considerably less strained, than the Foundation is to the overall
> communities (besides the obvious locality of their relation).
>
> Dan, Brion, James, in particular thanks to you for arguing why my
> overstatement was, well, an overstatement. But I still remain convinced
> that the view of the Board as having the role of leading the movement is
> merely an accident of the fact that we have no other obvious leadership,
> and that the Board is being sucked into that vacuum. It is not designed to
> be so, and, I argue, due to the legal and formal obligations, it shouldn't.
>
> MZMcBride, I currently lack the time to answer to your specific and
> excellent points in particular. Sorry. I hope to come back to it.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 8:24 AM, Dariusz Jemielniak <
> djemielniak(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:43 AM, Milos Rancic <millosh(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > > Thus, not the senate, but assembly is the right form of our
> > > organization: assembly which would select *paid* Board members.
> > > Besides the load, I want Board members to be accountable to
> > > Wikimedians, not to the for-profit or non-profit entities which give
> > > them money.
> > >
> >
> > I am not, and have not been employed by any Wikimedia organization.
> >
> >
> > >
> > > Yes, it's scary to be accountable to people you lead. I completely
> > > understand that.
> > >
> >
> > I have no idea where you get this idea from in my letter. I am not scared
> > to be accountable to people I lead, and I hope I have stated my readiness
> > in this department clearly.
> >
> >
> > >
> > > The costs of having 100 people assembly won't be significant at all.
> > > First of all, the most of the people in such large body would be
> > > anyways mostly consisted of those going to Wikimedia Conference and
> > > Wikimania. If you really care about money, scale the initial body to
> > > 40-50 and ask all chapters that sending three or more people to those
> > > conferences to contribute expenses for one to such body. If you put
> > > that way, the costs could rise up to ~5%, if they raise at all.
> > >
> >
> > If you envisage a large, 100 people assembly during Wikimania or
> Wikimedia
> > Conference, then indeed it is possible to arrange without significant
> > additional cost. However, I believe this is basically an entirely
> different
> > idea than the one Denny described (or at least the one I understood we're
> > discussing). An assembly would be a body who would voice their opinion
> only
> > once a year in practice, most likely. I'm not sure what exactly would it
> > do, but surely it would be difficult for it to agree/vote on situations
> > happening within a span of weeks, rather than months.
> >
> >
> > >
> > > So, please, reconsider your ideas on the line: from speaking about bad
> > > bureaucracy, while in fact increasing inefficient one -- to thinking
> > > about efficient, democratically accountable bureaucracy, with
> > > everybody content by its construction.
> > >
> >
> > I am not convinced if a body of 100 people meeting once a year is an
> > efficient way to reduce bureaucracy. Of course views may differ.
> >
> >
> > >
> > > Said everything above, I have to express that I am pissed off by the
> > > fact that the Board members are constructive as long as they are under
> > > high level of pressure. Whenever you feel a bit more empowered, I hear
> > > just the excuses I've been listening for a decade.
> > >
> >
> > I am saddened you have this perception.
> > https://xkcd.com/552/
> >
> >
> > >
> > > Please, let us know how do you want to talk with us in the way that we
> > > see that the communication is constructive.
> >
> >
> > That is a good topic for a separate thread! Currently, the list we use is
> > limited to 1500 English speakers.
> >
> > An idea that I have been trying to champion for a while was also
> > community-liaisons: community elected people whose responsibility is
> > day-to-day communication with the WMF and back. This would not be a
> > decisive role, and it is independent from whether we have a senate or
> > assembly or not, but could at least increase the reach of communication
> and
> > decision making in some areas.
> >
> > Also, discourse is a platform that perhaps will take off at some point.
> >
> > dj
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
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