[Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation Report, September 2011
Erik Moeller
erik at wikimedia.org
Sat Oct 15 06:31:10 UTC 2011
Hello all,
please find below the WMF report for September, in plain text.
As always, the editable and formatted version is on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_September_2011
The reports are posted on the Wikimedia blog, too:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/c/corporate/wmf-monthly-reports/
As an experiment, we are publishing a separate "Highlights" summary of key
Wikimedia Foundation reports.
Please consider helping non-English-language communities to stay updated
on the most important WMF activities in the past month, by providing a
translation:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Highlights,_September_2011
Let us know how we can make this more useful for you :-)
Many thanks,
Erik
--
* 1 Data and Trends
* 2 Financials
* 3 Highlights
o 3.1 Public Policy Initiative and Global Education Program
o 3.2 Technology
o 3.3 Community
o 3.4 Global Development
* 4 Technology
o 4.1 Tech Highlights
o 4.2 Operations
o 4.3 Features Engineering
o 4.4 Mobile
o 4.5 Special projects
o 4.6 Platform Engineering
* 5 Research
* 6 Community
o 6.1 Projects
o 6.2 Fundraising
o 6.3 Public Policy Initiative
o 6.4 Fellowship Program
* 7 Global Development
o 7.1 Grants Awarded and Executed
o 7.2 Chapter Relations
o 7.3 Global South
o 7.4 Brazil Catalyst
+ 7.4.1 Research on Portuguese Wikipedia
o 7.5 MENA Catalyst
o 7.6 Mobile Strategy and Business Development
o 7.7 Editor Survey
o 7.8 Reader Survey
o 7.9 Mobile Research
o 7.10 Global Education Program
o 7.11 Student organizations
o 7.12 India Programs
o 7.13 Communications
+ 7.13.1 Global Communications
+ 7.13.2 Storylines through August
+ 7.13.3 Other worthwhile reads
+ 7.13.4 Global media coverage
+ 7.13.5 Wikipedia Signpost
+ 7.13.6 WMF Blog posts
o 7.14 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 August:
422 million (+7.9% compared with July; +13.7% compared with the
previous year)
(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will
release September data later in October)
Page requests for September:
15.8 billion (+5,1% compared with August; +9.0% compared with the
previous year)
Report Card for August 2011: The report card is currently undergoing
a redesign as a more fully-featured dashboard.
== Financials ==
(Financial information is only available for August 2011 at the time of
this report.)
Financial information as of August 31, 2011
Revenue: $1,415,075
Expenses:
* Technology Group: $1,474,075
* Community/Fundraiser Group: $493,102
* Global Development Group: $552,953
* Governance Group: $183,732
* Finance/Legal/HR/Admin. Group: $921,318
Total Expenses: $3,625,273
Total surplus/(loss): ($2,210,198)
Revenue was ahead of plan at $1.4M due to an increase in donations.
Expenses were below plan at $3.6M actual vs. $4.5M plan. Expenses were
below plan due to lower than plan expenditures in Capital Expenditures,
Chapter Grants and other activities due to being only two months into
the fiscal year.
Cash of $15.5M, which is six months of cash reserves at current spending
levels.
== Highlights ==
=== Public Policy Initiative and Global Education Program ===
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia-Ambassador-Program-Logo.png
Logo of the Wikipedia Ambassador Program (which originated as part of
the Public Policy Initiative) >
In September, the Public Policy Initiative wrapped up after 17 months.
Collaboratively, the team created a final report for the Stanton
Foundation (awaiting financial summary) and documented achievements,
best practices and lessons learned. Other team activities included:
Overall project documentation for Chapters Report; last PPI Regional
Ambassador trainings throughout the United States; wrapping up the
project research components and presenting results on-wiki, in papers
and at the end of the month in a final presentation to the rest of the
staff at one of the Wikimedia Foundation's brown bag meetings.
Additionally, we transitioned specific project activities to the new
Global Education Team. With the end of the Public Policy Initiative, the
contracts of three team members, Sage Ross, Amy Roth and Mishelle
Gonzales, ended by convention. We thank them for their hard work and
their commitment to our mission. Sage's, Amy's and Mishelle's
involvement in the Public Policy Initiative was key in linking Wikipedia
peer production with higher education. We wish them all the very best
for their future.
Also in September, the new Global Education Program team worked on
preparing the first "Global Education Program Metrics and Activities
Meeting" (October 25). This new monthly meeting is targeted at everybody
(educators, students, Wikimedia chapters, individual volunteers) who is
interested in outreach activities at educational institutions. The
meeting aims at ensuring that best practices and lessons learned get
shared across different countries. More information:
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_Education_Program_Metrics_and_Activities_Meeting
Ayush Khanna, who joined the Global Education Program team as a
half-time contractor at the end of the month, will be in charge of
providing quantitative data on our programmatic activities at
universities around the globe.
The Global Education Program team also worked on preparing the start of
a Wikipedia university initiative in the Middle East and North Africa
(MENA). Supported by Sara Yap, Catalyst Project Associate for the Global
Development team, the team embarked on developing a strategy for
kicking-off a MENA Education Program in spring 2012.
=== Technology ===
* The deployment of protocol-relative URLs
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/27/protocol-relative-urls-enabled-on-all-wikimedia-foundation-wikis/>
paved the way for native HTTPS support.
* Major progress was made by our new Internationalization &
localization team
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/14/the-l10n-team-brings-you-input-methods/>.
=== Community ===
Jon Harald Søby transitioned into a Fellow position, focused on
community translations [1] and long-time research fellows Steven Walling
and Maryana Pinchuk transitioned into full time Community Organizer
positions to focus 100% on turning around editor decline.
1.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/27/announcing-community-fellow-jon-harald-soby/
=== Global Development ===
* Launch of a research project on Portuguese Wikipedia
* Preliminary work for launching projects in the MENA region is underway.
== Technology ==
A detailed report of the Tech Department's activities for September 2011
can be found at:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2011/September
=== Tech Highlights ===
Apart from progress regarding HTTPS and
internationalization/localization (see general "Highlights" section
above), September's Tech highlights include:
* The deployment of our new mobile front-end
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/14/new-mobile-site-launched-on-wikipedia-soon-for-sister-wikis-too/>,
now the default mobile experience;
* The start of the deployment of MediaWiki 1.18
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/16/mediawiki118iscomin/> to
Wikimedia sites;
* The completion of the Google Summer of Code
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/22/gsoc-students-reach-project-milestones/>
project;
* Ongoing preparation for the upcoming coding events in the USA
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/NOLA_Hackathon>, the UK
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Brighton_Hackathon_2011>, India
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/India_Hackathon_2011> and online
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Weekend_of_Code>;
* A revamped, and now maintained, roadmap
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/roadmap> for Wikimedia engineering efforts.
=== Operations ===
* *Tampa Data Center* — Our new data center contractor in Tampa has
finalized the installation of three new racks, which will be used
for networking, application serving, caching and data storage. Two
racks (72 servers) worth of application servers have also been
installed. With each server having 12 CPU cores, this is almost
doubling our existing application server capacity. To-date, we have
deployed and added 58 (of the 72) new application servers to
production capacity.
* *Virginia Data Center* — We completed replicating external storage
(article texts) data to our new data center in Ashburn, for disaster
recovery and usage by eqiad application servers in the future.
Preparations are also being made to deploy bits.wikimedia.org in
eqiad using Varnish 3.
* *HTTPS* — Protocol-relative URLs have been enabled on all sites
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/27/protocol-relative-urls-enabled-on-all-wikimedia-foundation-wikis/>.
SSL termination servers have arrived and are in the process of being
installed, to prepare for the full deployment of HTTPS to all wikis.
* *Virtualization test cluster* — All services except for DNS are up.
The puppet repository has been released in a public repository
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/19/ever-wondered-how-the-wikimedia-servers-are-configured/>.
We've switched to using git/gerrit for our production puppet
process. New instances have been tested building from scratch using
puppet.
=== Features Engineering ===
* *Internationalization and localization tools
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization_tools>*
(i18n/l10n) — A list of initial Indic target languages was created
to improve support in MediaWiki for India's 28 official languages.
The Babel extension
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/21/babel-extension-live-on-the-wmf-projects/>
was deployed. MediaWiki's logging system was rewritten to better
support internationalization, and the Narayam extension, which
provides input methods, was improved and deployed to select
Wikimedia wikis
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/14/the-l10n-team-brings-you-input-methods/>.
* *Article creation and patrol* — In response to a request by a
majority of English Wikipedia community members to restrict new page
creation to autoconfirmed users, discussions are underway to improve
the article creation workflow
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/article_creation_workflow> and the user
interface for new page patrolling
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/New_Page_Patrol_Zoom_Interface> as
alternative strategies to cope with the new page creation backlog
and reduce high-friction interactions with new users.
* *UploadWizard <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/UploadWizard>* — A number of
bugs were fixed, notably related to the Wiki Loves Monuments
campaign and the deployment of protocol-relative URLs to Wikimedia
Commons. Work was also done on multi-file selection, AJAX uploading
and custom licenses.
* *ResourceLoader <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ResourceLoader>* — The
back-end for .js/.css page search suggestions was completed, and the
Gadgets API overhauled. The gadget manager and the AJAX gadget
editor are nearing completion: displaying, modifying, saving of
gadgets and autocompletion in all form fields is now implemented.
=== Mobile <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects> ===
* *Mobile Research <https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile/Research>* —
The team continued to work on the report on their field research in
India and Brazil. Phone interviews in San Francisco, Chicago and
Dallas were completed.
* *MobileFrontend <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MobileFrontend>* —
MobileFrontend was deployed in September
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/14/new-mobile-site-launched-on-wikipedia-soon-for-sister-wikis-too/>
and is now the default Wikipedia mobile experience. We've reached
out to our various communities to create custom main pages, and are
rolling out new ways of viewing Wikimedia projects on mobile. We
also migrated our old WAP gateway traffic to MobileFrontend, so that
we can serve our users from one place.
=== Special projects ===
* *2011 Fundraiser
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/2011_Wikimedia_fundraiser>* — Increased
logging was added to CentralNotice changes, including interfaces and
filters to search and review them. The DonationInterface extension
was abstracted and refactored in preparation for supporting a new
potential payment processor, GlobalCollect. The team also fixed a
number of bugs and added new features.
=== Platform Engineering
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Platform_Engineering> ===
* *MediaWiki 1.18 <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.18>* —
Wikimedia engineers worked together relentlessly in September to
ready MediaWiki 1.18 for deployment. They finalized the review of
the code, and fixed all the issues they could find. The deployment
to Wikimedia sites was split into several phases using the
heterogeneous deployment system. Stages 1 and 2 were completed on
select wikis without too much trouble. Deployment to all remaining
Wikimedia sites is scheduled for October 4th, 2011
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/16/mediawiki118iscomin/>.
* *Code review management
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_review_management>* — Even though
engineering and code review efforts were focused on MediaWiki 1.18
in September, the backlog of unreviewed commits in trunk still
continued to decrease, which means we will be able to release
MediaWiki 1.19 fairly rapidly, possibly as soon as December 2011.
* *Wikimedia Report Card 2.0* — The process of statistics generation
continued to be automated; summaries for all Wikimedia wikis
<http://infodisiac.com/blog/2011/09/summary-reports-for-all-wikimedia-wikis/>
were also created, using the India report card as a model.
* *Summer of Code 2011 <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2011>*
(GSoC) — All seven GSoC students passed. Most projects are in a good
shape
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/22/gsoc-students-reach-project-milestones/>,
even if not totally complete. Work now focuses on getting the
students' code reviewed and polished before it can be merged and
used on production wikis.
== Research ==
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiviz_datatelling_WikiGlobalReach1.png
Screenshot from the winning entry of the WikiViz 2011 Data Visualization
Challenge. Lines represent readership of different Wikipedia language
versions (lower half) from countries (upper half)>
* The Research Committee (RCom) held its sixth meeting and addressed
procedures for member turnover, new candidates for RCom, the scope
and function of the RCom review process, a proposal for Wikimedians
in residence in science/higher education, licensing requirements for
WMF-supported projects and the preparation of a WMF data policy. [0]
* We continued to work on the Open Access initiative, led by Daniel
Mietchen. We submitted a response to an EU consultation on Open
Access on behalf of WMF. [1] Daniel Mietchen and Dario Taraborelli
attended COASP '11 [2] and worked with the Open Access publisher
community on a strategy to increase the visibility of OA contents on
Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. We released a tool (the Wikipedia
Cite-o-Meter) to measure citations and media used from scholarly
journals across Wikimedia projects. [3]
* We announced the winner of the WikiViz challenge (co-organized by
WikiSym and WMF): Jen Lowe, for her work titled "A Thousand Fibers
Connect Us – Wikipedia’s Global Reach" [4]. The awarding ceremony
took place at WikiSym 2011 in Mountain View, CA.
* We published the third issue of the Wikimedia Research Newsletter
and presented the project at WikiSym. [5] We continued reviewing
support requests from external research teams and testing solutions
for open data hosting.
[0] http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/RCom201109
[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Research:Committee/Areas_of_interest/Open-access_policy/EU_Consultation_on_scientific_information_in_the_digital_age&oldid=2888771
[2] http://oaspa.org/coasp/
[3] http://toolserver.org/~dartar/cite-o-meter/
[4]
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/10/06/a-thousand-fibers-connect-us-wikiviz-winner-visualize-wikipedias-global-reach/
[5] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/2011-09-26
== Community ==
Department highlights
/see general "Highlights" section above/
=== Projects ===
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Answers.tiff
Screenshot of the "answers" system>
Reader Relations and Support
We responded to 39 requests for assistance from the community and the
legal department during the month of September (on average spending
around 60 minutes per request, though some are obviously much longer).
In addition, Maggie has rolled out a trial of the "answers" system - a
system designed for community members to ask questions that they haven't
been able to find answers to before. From this, we'll be building out a
knowledge bank of frequently asked questions about the Foundation, the
communities, and hopefully developing a system that allows users to find
the answers themselves in the future.
Philippe was primarily focused on supporting the Image Filter Referendum
and data analysis from that. Philippe also supported Siko and Jon in the
creation of their translations recruiting system and worked with them to
be sure that the back end contact management system worked as designed
and coordinated form creation with PeterG.
Christine began the process of transitioning to a data analysis project
for Zack, and was on leave to support American Red Cross hurricane
relief efforts.
Data Competition
The data competition <http://www.kaggle.com/c/wikichallenge> is over! 96
teams, 193 players and 1019 submissions later we have a winner. We are
right now evaluating the models and we will announce the winners on
October 15th.
Editor Retention
Maryana and Steven are working on their first project as Community
Organizers: running a second round of the template experiment performed
by WSoR researchers Stuart Geiger and Aaron Halfaker. They will extend
the experiment to all level one warnings delivered via the
semi-automated editing tool Huggle, in order to see if changing the
content of warning messages (which has remained static since user
warnings were first created in 2006) has an impact on the users who
receive them. They are also working with community members on exploring
ways to extend these A/B testing methods to other areas, such as bots
and help spaces.
=== Fundraising ===
Fundraiser
The fundraising team has been working to integrate with a new payment
provider that will allow us to accept many more currencies and local
payment methods in different countries. We have been working to create a
more global campaign to optimize our donations worldwide.
Weekly fundraising testing continued in September. The team put a lot of
effort into designing, building, and testing several new donation form
designs to streamline the donation process.
Messaging testing also continued in September. We had already discovered
effective programmer, staff and founder messages, but this was our first
effective editor appeal. For more details on specific tests, please see
our updates on meta <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011>.
In September, we also held a focus group to learn more about our donors
and why they support the Wikimedia Foundation. A report from this
research will be posted in October.
Fundraiser Translations
We made a big leap in translator recruitment for the fundraiser in
September. We streamlined the translation coordination pages to make it
easier for translators to find new work and focus on quality checking,
and we built a signup form and process to easily add recruits to CRM for
email campaigns. As a result, 850 new translators were recruited. We now
have 1000 translators signed up and are tracking end to end
recruitment-translation-quality control for over 50 languages.
Major Gifts and Foundations
We attended a funders' conference sponsored by the Indigo Trust and the
Omidyar Network that focused on how to use technology to produce social
impact in the developing world. We received a $15,000 grant from the
Indigo Trust. Finally, submitted two new proposals for major foundation
funding.
=== Public Policy Initiative ===
/see "Highlights" section above/
=== Fellowship Program ===
Fellowships
Jon Harald Søby transitioned into a Fellow position, focusing on
community translations. Jon's announcement can be viewed here [1]. More
metrics for Jon's project are in the Fundraiser Translations update above.
WikiHistories Project
The WikiHistory fellows wrapped up their travel and blogging [2] and
submitted their final reports at the end of this month. Their full work,
as well as a summary of their findings, will go up on Meta in October.
1.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/27/announcing-community-fellow-jon-harald-soby/
2.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/02/update-on-virtual-community-history-research-spanish-language-wikipedia/
== Global Development ==
Department highlights
Apart from activities regarding the Portuguese Wikipedia and the MENA
regions (see general "Highlights" section), Global Developments
hightlights include:
* Ayush Khanna joins the Global Development Team as Data Analyst.
* Working with chapters to compile program plans for 2011-2012.
=== Grants Awarded and Executed ===
* http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_DK/Wikipedian-in-Residence_Scholarship
* http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_US-DC/Bootstrapping_grant
* http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:GLAM_NARA/Events_fund
=== Chapter Relations ===
* Compiling chapters' plans at [1]
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chapters/Plans_2011-2012>
* Finalizing chapters tracker for 2011/2012 Fundraiser and identifying
chapters' FR statuses: [2]
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tracking_Progress_for_2011_chapters_fundraiser_and_reporting>
* Tracking 2011/2012 Fundraiser: [3]
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tracking_progress_for_2011-2012_chapters%27_fundraiser_reporting>
=== Global South ===
* The seTswana Wikipedia Challenge -- a collaboration between Google,
Wikimedia Foundation, BITS (Botswana) and Wikimedians in Kenya -- is
underway.
=== Brazil Catalyst <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Catalyst_Project> ===
* Said farewell to our fabulous consultant, Carolina Rossini. (She
finished her contract supporting the Brazil Catalyst Project and
left her work in great condition for us to continue pushing forward.)
* Discussions with recruiters and lawyers regarding the logistics of
opening an office in Brazil continue: we hope to have a few program
employees in place by early next year.
* Jessie Wild and Barry Newstead will visit Brazil in October to meet
with the community and visit universities.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Catalyst_Project/Agenda_October_2011
==== Research on Portuguese Wikipedia ====
Officially started a research project on the state of the Portuguese
Wikipedia in conjunction with Siko and Fabian from the Community
department. We have a qualitative researcher based out of Porto Alegre,
Brazil, who is working on contract with us as well. Results can be
tracked on the Meta wiki:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Portuguese_Wikipedia_trends_and_behavior
Some preliminary results:
* Total number of editors has remained fairly constant since 2008.
* Total number of new editors has also remained fairly constant, and
comprises over 50% of the total editors in any given month.
* According to the Editor Survey, PT-WP is the *least satisified* of
all the language projects based on the WESI score developed by Mani
and Ayush.
=== MENA Catalyst ===
* Initiated our efforts to support the growth of the Arabic Wikipedia
in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/10/04/wikimedia-foundation-to-launch-arabic-catalyst/
* Discussions with the Qatar Foundation intensify, and we are close to
announcing a partnership to work with the Arabic Wikipedia community
to grow the Arabic Wikipedia.
* The Qatar Foundation agreed to host a small Arabic Wikipedia
Convening in Doha on October 20-21.
=== Mobile Strategy and Business Development ===
* Progressing on several partnership discussions with Indian and
Southeast Asian operators to make Wikipedia more widely available on
their devices throughout those regions
* The mobile team is also working on a marketing and technical plan,
in collaboration with the engineering department, to provide
zero-rated (free data access) to Wikipedia in developing countries.
* Will post a position for a Mobile Partner Manager (Technical) later
this month.
=== Editor Survey ===
Started work on the second iteration of the editor survey. Ayush Khanna
has also joined the research team (taking the total to 2.5) as a
contractor helping support survey and research efforts. Here is the Meta
page for the survey:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_November_2011/Translation/en
=== Reader Survey ===
Have got results from the fieldwork from consultants. We have
preliminary data from 16 countries and will be sharing output in October.
=== Mobile Research ===
First draft of the report done. Working on the second iteration of the
report.
* Most searches for Wikipedia content start on Google even on the mobile.
* Search in Indic Wikipedias is very hard.
* Readers want more multimedia.
* Editing remains a blind spot for most readers.
=== Global Education Program ===
/see "Highlights" section above/
=== Student organizations ===
* After the first draft of the page creation process was tested, some
changes need to be made and a new layout has been created. Testing
will continue this month.
* WMF is reaching out to student groups to send them "welcome packs"
containing buttons, stickers, and other Wikipedia merchandise.
=== India Programs ===
* Worked on creating a support ecosystem for students in the Education
program - with additional Campus Ambassadors as well as a new layer
of Online Ambassadors. (Both got trained last month - including mock
Q&As.)
* Commenced a community-wide collaborative endeavour to develop the
Indic languages plan.
* Formally registered the Wikimedia India Program Trust.
* Initiated meetings with potential mobile partner (manufacturers,
carriers & value added service providors).
* Secured temporary office space in Delhi for the India team, and
started working out of it.
* Working on last hiring 2 team members - Communications & Program Support
=== Communications ===
* Work was completed on a monograph of activities arond the India
Catalyst efforts, set to be released in the next few days.
* Support for identity and design systems for the Global Education
Program kicked off in September.
* Updates and refinements to the Wikimedia Shop (terms of service,
privacy policy, other MOUs with vendors) were finalized in September
- launch imminent!
* We also further developed a speaking platform for Wikimedia
stakeholders around editor decline and retention > focussing on our
efforts to make Wikipedia more universal.
* Movement communications has been building out a soon-to-be-released
rapid communication tool to share our (and community) progress on
edtior recruitement (and how everyone can help).
* Work continued on the 2010/11 WMF Annual Report, set for release in
November 2011.
==== Global Communications ====
* Building on the Communications Committee's commitment to working
more collaboratively, members now have access to the Internal wiki.
ComCom will work to co-create communications materials and share
best practices on the Internal wiki.
* Global communications worked with Wikimedia Hungary to implement a
communications strategy around the Hungarian Wikipedia's 200,000
article milestone. The celebration included digital and traditional
media outreach and resulted in good media coverage in the region. An
overview of the strategies, tactics and materials are now available
on the Internal wiki to guide other volunteers when conducting
outreach around article milestones.
* Drafted communications plan for Wikimedia India's WikiConference to
be held in Mumbai in November. The team is now working to secure a
pro-bono communications firm to assist with outreach activities.
* Macedonian Wikipedia conducted light media outreach to celebrate its
50,000 article milestone and Polish Wikipedia celebrated its 10 year
anniversary.
* "Wiki Loves Monuments", a pan-European photo competition, launched,
welcomed by an outpouring of positive coverage from media all over
Europe. The contest concluded with 165,000 photos submitted.
==== Storylines through August ====
Wikipedia's cancer coverage explored
Mostly neutral to positive tone coverage of a study that examined the
quality of Wikipedia's articles about cancer topics - declaring it's of
high quality, but sometimes difficult to read.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2011/09/16/wikipedia-cancer.html
http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2011/9/19/wikipedia-content-on-cancer-is-accurate-but-dense-study-finds.aspx
Continuing coverage of Wikipedia's 'gender gap'
CBC's nationally broadcast radio show 'Spark' conducted an interview
with Sue Gardner in September focussing on the facts around Wikipedia's
gender imbalance. The Atlantic also conducted an interview on the same
topic.
http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2011/09/sue-gardner-on-wikipedias-gender-gap/
http://www.ivillage.ca/living/women-we-love/looking-powerful-canadian-women-meet-sue-gardner
==== Other worthwhile reads ====
* http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/meme-weaver/8625/
* http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/08/29/wikipedias-jimmy-wales-sp_n_941239.html
==== Global media coverage ====
Polish Wikipedia turns 10
http://www.poland.pl/news/article,Polish_Wikipedia_is_10_Years_Old,id,461162.htm
Times of India, India
You can't copy-paste this homework
http://www.timescrest.com/life/you-cant-copypaste-this-homework-6226
IT Cafe, Hungary
Hungarian Wikipedia celebrates two hundred thousandth article
http://itcafe.hu/hir/magyar_wikipedia_wikimedia_ketszazezer.html
Turisver, Portugal
Portuguese Pousadas in Wiki Loves Monuments Portugal
http://www.turisver.com/article.php?id=53722
Le Monde, France
Give the French their architectural landscape back
http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2011/09/27/rendre-aux-francais-leur-paysage-architectural_1578046_3232.html
ERR, Russia
15 European countries will participate in Wikipedia photo contest
http://rus.err.ee/culture/e2ea37cf-09a4-45f2-a907-a30a8cf0613f
Diari Andorra, Andorra
Andorra participates in a photo contest to promote the cultural heritage
http://www.diariandorra.ad/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=14581&Itemid=435
==== Wikipedia Signpost ====
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-09-05
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-09-12
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-09-19
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-09-26
==== WMF Blog posts ====
* http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/
==== Media Contact ====
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#September_2011
== Human Resources ==
=== Staff Changes ====
New Perm Position Hire
* Laura James, Office Travel Coordinator (Admin)
* Michelle Paulson, Legal Counsel (Legal)
Conversions
* Lisa Seitz-Gruwell, Development Director (Community)
* Michelle Paulson, Legal Associate (Legal)
* Maryana Pinchuk, Community Organizer (Community)
* Steven Walling, Community Organizer (Community)
New Contractors
* Greg DeKoenigsberg
* Aislinn Dewey
* Daniela Fiejó
* Christophe Henner
* Christopher Johnson (Technology)
* Jeannie Mayall
* Santosh Thottingal
* Susan Walling
New Legal Intern
* Andrew Alire
Contract Extended
* Pavel Andreev
* Tilman Bayer
* Fabrice Florin
* Fabian Kaelin
* Ayush Khanna
* Yusuke Matsubara
* Ashok Misra
* Jonathan Morgan
* Sam Reed
Departed
* Daniel Phelps
Contract Ended
* Hampton Catlin
* Mishelle Gonzales
* Skye Kraft
* Sage Ross
* Amy Roth
New Postings
* Senior Accountant
RFPs
* U.S. Education Program Associate
* Systems & Operations Engineer
* XML Dumps Help
=== Statistics ===
Total Employee Count
Plan: 98
Filled: 1
September Attrition: 1
YTD Attrition: 6
Actual: 85
Remaining Open positions to fiscal year end: 32
=== Department Updates ===
The HR team continues to make great strides, particularly in recruiting.
Steph Thommen has agreed to a longer term contract. She will be heading
up the recruiting effort, in coordination with the hiring managers,
C-levels and other contract recruiters and agencies. So far she has been
a tremendous help in coordinating and vetting candidates in a timely
manner. Steph has a superb background in hiring, management and
training, so we are lucky to have her with us. We are also welcoming
Jeannie Mayall as a generalist to help us cover some of our areas of
need. Jeanie has great experience in immigration, so she can help us
keep our visa work on track. She's also got awesome compliance chops,
and is helping us with our ongoing HRiS deployment.
The All Hands (All Staff) meeting is right over the horizon, and we've
been working hard to get it organized and ready for the team. Thanks to
the admin team for their support, in particular Isa Munne and Laura
James for travel help and assistance in finding venues and general
organizing. We think the All Hands will be super; the emphasis is on our
current progress and work towards our strategic goals, and practical
work tools for all of us to be as efficient as we can.
When it comes to the All Hands this year, you can't really say the words
without thanking Melanie Brown! She has done a fantastic job of cat
herding, coordinating, emailing and calling to make this event happen,
and we owe her a big round of applause (and probably a cookie) for her
efforts. Thanks Mel!!
Real-time feed for HR updates: http://identi.ca/wikimediaatwork or
http://twitter.com/wikimediaatwork
== Finance and Administration ==
* Completed setting up all the travel for the All Staff Meeting.
* Completed setting up all the travel for the New Orleans Hack-a-thon.
* The air conditioner on the sixth floor has been repaired.
* Laura James has joined us as permanent employee in the
Administration Department as our travel specialist.
== Legal ==
* Proposed Terms of Use shared with Community for comments and
feedback. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use
* Our Deputy General Counsel, Kelly Kay, started (Oct. 1).
* Michelle Paulson received permanent status and a promotion to Legal
Counsel.
* Engaged MarkMonitor for improved brand protection.
https://www.markmonitor.com/
* Finished webstore agreement with TOS & Privacy Policy
* Issued anti-corrupt payments policy for WMF. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act
* Issued new article feedback privacy statement.
* Issued survey protocol.
* Stats:
September 2011
1. contracts signed - 20
2. trademark requests - 2
approved - 2
August 2011
1. contracts signed in August - 8
2. trademark requests - 15
approved - 7
denied - 3
pending - 5
== Visitors and Guests ==
1. Jonathan Good (Cofounder, 1000Memories)
2. Patrick Kane (WAWD)
3. James Rucker (Citizen Engagement Laboratory)
4. Carole Tang (Board Member, Wikimedia Hong Kong)
5. Kathy Dong (Hiaring + Smith LLP)
6. Vijay Toke (Hiaring + Smith LLP)
7. Anne Hiaring (Hiaring + Smith LLP)
8. Pierre Khawand, People-OnTheGo)
9. Christophe Bisciglia (Cloudera)
10. Carrie Olson (MoveOn.org)
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