[Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation Report, December 2011
Tilman Bayer
tbayer at wikimedia.org
Fri Jan 13 01:55:51 UTC 2012
Hi all,
please find below the WMF report for December, in plain text.
As always, the editable and formatted version is on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_December_2011
and the reports are posted on the Wikimedia blog, too:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/c/corporate/wmf-monthly-reports/
We are now also publishing a separate "Highlights" summary. Please
consider helping non-English-language communities to stay updated, by
providing a translation:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_December_2011
Many thanks to those who translated last month's "Highlights" into
Danish, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Dutch and Vietnamese!
While continuing to focus on WMF activities, the "Highlights" now
include a small selection of the most noteworthy events from the whole
movement. Suggestions for the upcoming January issue are welcome at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights (until the first
week of February).
Regards, Tilman
--
Wikimedia Foundation Report, December 2011
* 1 Data and Trends
* 2 Financials
* 3 Highlights
o 3.1 Visual editor prototype
o 3.2 Fundraiser ends with record-breaking donations
o 3.3 Annual Report published, for the first time with
translations
o 3.4 Collaborative drafting process for Terms of Use update
completed
* 4 Technology
o 4.1 Operations
o 4.2 Features Engineering
o 4.3 Mobile
o 4.4 Platform Engineering
* 5 Research
* 6 Community
o 6.1 Projects
o 6.2 Fundraising
o 6.3 Fellowship Program
o 6.4 Community Relations
* 7 Global Development
o 7.1 Grants Program
+ 7.1.1 Grants Awarded and Executed
o 7.2 Brazil Catalyst
o 7.3 Arabic Language Initiative
o 7.4 Wikimania Scholarships
o 7.5 Mobile and Business Development
o 7.6 Global development research
o 7.7 Wikipedia Education Program
o 7.8 India Programs
+ 7.8.1 Indic Languages
+ 7.8.2 India Outreach
+ 7.8.3 India Education Program
+ 7.8.4 Other
o 7.9 Communications
+ 7.9.1 Major announcements
+ 7.9.2 Major Storylines through December
# 7.9.2.1 WMF's 2010-11 Annual Report launched (December
17)
# 7.9.2.2 Wikipedia visual editor (December 13)
# 7.9.2.3 WMF opposes SOPA / WP shut down?
+ 7.9.3 Other worthwhile reads
+ 7.9.4 Wikipedia Signpost
+ 7.9.5 WMF Blog posts
+ 7.9.6 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 November:
474 million (-0.4% compared with October; +15.6% compared with the
previous year)
(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will
release December data later in January)
Page requests for December:
16.3 billion (-6.2% compared with November; +17.1% compared with the
previous year)
(estimate from Server log data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects
including mobile access)
Active Registered Editors for November 2011 (>= 5 edits/month):
83,444 (-1.2% compared with September / comparison data for November
2010 currently unavailable)
(Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects except for
Wikimedia Commons)
Report Card for November 2011:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2011_11_detailed.html
The report card is currently undergoing a redesign as a more
fully-featured dashboard (integrating various statistical data and
trends about WMF projects).
== Financials ==
(Financial information is only available for November 2011 at the time
of this report.)
All financial information presented is for the period of July 1, 2011 -
November 30, 2011
Revenue: $14.5 million
Expenses:
* Technology Group: $3,916,000
* Community/Fundraiser Group: $1,732,000
* Global Development Group: $1,454,000
* Governance Group: $406,000
* Finance/Legal/HR/Admin Group: $2,419,000
Total Expenses: $9,927,000
Total surplus/(loss): $4,573,000
Revenue was ahead of plan due to grants of $2.8 million and additional
donations ahead of plan of $2.1 million.
Expenses were below plan at $9.9 million actual versus $11.6 million
plan. Expenses were below planned due to lower than planned expenditures
in capital expenditures, chapter grants, recruitment cost and other
activities due.
Cash of $22.8 million, which is twelve months of cash reserves at
current spending levels and ten months of cash per the annual plan.
== Highlights ==
<Image https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Visual_Editor_(side-by-side).png
Wikitext (right) and its representation in the Visual Editor (left)>
=== Visual editor prototype ===
The team developing a Visual Editor for Wikipedia and our other projects
presented a first prototype for testing
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:VisualEditorSandbox> on December 13.
Its development has been one of the Foundation’s top priorities
according to the 2011-2012 Annual Plan. Wiki-markup is a substantial
barrier that prevents many people from contributing, and it is hoped
that the Visual Editor will make editing easier.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/13/help-test-the-first-visual-editor-developer-prototype/
=== Fundraiser ends with record-breaking donations ===
<Image https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WCI(2011),sengai_podhuvan_with_victor_grigas3,TN505.jpg>
Tamil Wikipedia Editor Dr. Sengai Podhuvan being interviewed by Victor
Grigas for a fundraiser testimonial>
The 2011 annual fundraiser ended on January 1, 2012 raising a
record-breaking USD 20 million from more than one million donors in
nearly every country in the world. This year’s campaign highlighted
staff and volunteers who help to create Wikipedia. It featured
testimonials from volunteer editors in countries such as Argentina,
Brazil, India, Kenya, the United Kingdom and the United States ranging
in age from 18 to 76.
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/02/wikimedia-fundraiser-concludes-with-record-breaking-donations/
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_AR11_SHIP_spreads_15dec11_72dpi.pdf>
WMF annual report 2010-2011
=== Annual Report published, for the first time with translations ===
The Wikimedia Foundation's latest Annual Report
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report> was posted in PDF and
wiki format in mid-December. This year's report focusses on the
Foundation's major strategic efforts: supporting growth in India,
expanding our mobile reach, improving and simplifying our software, and
building our global education program. The report also highlights
accomplishments within our community through the last fiscal year, and
features a center spread article about the creation of the Arab Spring
article on Wikipedia. For the first time, we produced 'summary' versions
in seven languages.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/17/our-latest-annual-report-how-the-world-tells-its-story/
=== Collaborative drafting process for Terms of Use update completed ===
After more than 120 days, the comment period for the proposed user
agreement comes to an end with powerful and effective community
participation. See the present version of the proposed user agreement
and extensive discussion here <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use>.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/31/terms-of-use/
== Technology ==
A detailed report of the Tech Department's activities for December 2011
can be found at:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2011/December
Department Highlights
Major news in December include:
* The deployment of WebFonts
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/11/ready-for-a-webfonts-soft-launch/>
to selected Indic wikis;
* The first developer prototype
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/13/help-test-the-first-visual-editor-developer-prototype/>
of the Visual editor (see also general "Highlights" section above);
* A new version
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/20/a-new-way-to-contribute-to-wikipedia/>
of Article Feedback being tested on the English Wikipedia;
* Progress on the Swift media storage project.
=== Operations ===
* Data Centers — The team deployed the puppetmaster dashboard, and a
new UDP-based profiling tool to better identify potential
performance issues. Some database servers were moved to newer
hardware, including OTRS.
* Media Storage — As part of our preparation for the migration of our
media service to Swift, a distributed storage back-end, we need to
keep the current system afloat a bit longer. We reclaimed some space
by purging thumbnails not newly generated and not in use on any of
our projects. We also performed Swift thumbnail integration and
stress testing.
* Wikimedia Labs — 15 projects
<https://labsconsole.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Ask/-5B-5BResource-20Type::project-5D-5D/-3FMember>
and 36 instances
<https://labsconsole.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Ask/-5B-5BResource-20Type::instance-5D-5D/-3FInstance-20Name/-3FInstance-20Type/-3FProject/-3FImage-20Id/-3FFQDN/-3FLaunch-20Time/-3FPuppet-20Class/-3FModification-20date/-3FInstance-20Host/-3FNumber-20of-20CPUs/-3FRAM-20Size/-3FAmount-20of-20Storage>
have been created and 46 people
<https://labsconsole.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:ListUsers> have been
given Labs accounts so far. OpenStack Nova was upgraded from
/cactus/ to /diablo/. A GlusterFS filesystem was added on all
compute nodes via puppet, to act as storage for the instances.
=== Features Engineering
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Features_engineering>===
* Visual editor — The team deployed a developer prototype of the
visual editor sandbox to mediawiki.org for public feedback and
testing: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:VisualEditorSandbox .
Work continued on the parser test runner and the parser pipeline
including the tokenizer and its grammar and template expansions.
* Internationalization and localization tools — The WebFonts extension
was deployed to select Indic languages and projects, making it
possible to read content in languages using non-Latin fonts without
installing fonts manually. The deployment uncovered bugs and issues
that were addressed by the team, like cross-site font loading. The
team also improved the Narayam and Translate extensions, and the
latter was enabled on mediawiki.org to facilitate the translation of
software documentation.
* Article feedback — The team launched three test versions of the new
feedback forms on a sample of pages on the English Wikipedia, and
began evaluation of feedback comments.
=== Mobile <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects> ===
* MobileFrontend — We quietly launched mobile user login and better
support for tiered JavaScript. We also fixed long-standing issues
like the locked viewport and we updated image description pages.
Finally, we deployed HTTPS support on mobile for Wikipedia, with
plans to enable it for sister projects soon.
* Android Wikipedia App — Several release candidates were released
over the month and we're nearing completion of the first version of
the app. Nightly builds are available for testing.
=== Platform Engineering
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Platform_Engineering>===
* MediaWiki 1.19 — As of December 31st, about 600 revisions remain to
be reviewed in trunk before a new release can be deployed. Brion
Vibber proposed a feature freeze in trunk, to catch up on code
review and get the backlog down to zero in preparation for full
adoption of continuous integration.
* Continuous integration tools — The TestSwarm package was Debianized
and its configuration almost entirely entered into Puppet. TestSwarm
was then deployed to production and is now running at:
http://integration.mediawiki.org
* Volunteer coordination and outreach — Eleven developers got commit
access, all from the non-staff MediaWiki community. Sumana also
prepared for the January San Francisco hackathon and the February
Pune hackathon and recruited participants. Partly in preparation for
these coding events, Sumana and Guillaume Paumier continued to
consolidate training documentation to facilitate the onboarding of
new developers.
== Research ==
* The Research Committee held an extraordinary meeting [1] to review
the implications of the Berkman study – a large-scale online
experiment which was launched in December and recruited participants
among enwiki editors for a few hours [2] – and to discuss the way
forward to support subject recruitment for research purposes.
* We launched a public consultation to understand how to best serve
the research and developer community with open data from our
projects [3]. The consultation will remain open through January and
the full set of responses will be released at the end of the month
under a CC0 license.
* We continued reviewing, supporting and documenting research projects
and collaborations. We concluded the first six months of existence
of the Wikimedia Research Index with a total of 81 projects
(including the 2011 Summer of Research sprints) documented in the
project directory [4].
* We published the 6th issue of the Wikimedia Research Newsletter [5].
In the past half year it has covered a total of 93 references from
the recent scholarly literature on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia
projects.
[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee/Meetings/Meeting_2011-12-22
[2]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Dynamics_of_Online_Interactions_and_Behavior
[2]
http://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&formkey=dGNBSGFUcTdJLUxLcGpoWUNoQXM0SGc6MQ
[4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Projects
[5] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/2011-12-26
== Community ==
Department highlights
* Sarah Stierch joined as WMF's first Community Fellow focused on the
gender gap (see fellowships section below for more info)
* Over 1600 volunteers translated the banners and appeals for the
annual fundraiser into 112 languages, helping reach hundreds of
millions of people.
=== Projects ===
Editor Retention
* Karyn Gladstone joined the team as Director of Community Operations.
She will drive the operational agenda of the Community Department;
take initiative to relieve the CCO of detail work and create a
central coordination of activities so that we can achieve our
primary goals.
* Maryana Pinchuk and Steven Walling have continued their A/B testing
of the content of user warning template notifications to new users.
In December, they concluded tests for Huggle and XLinkBot, and began
new tests for SDPatrolBot, ImagetaggingBot, and shared IPs [1].
Together with Stuart Geiger, Aaron Halfaker and others, work was
completed on an automated analysis infrastructure for template
tests, with publishable results expected early in January.
* Basic planning is underway for our first "community convenings" —
meetups for community members interested in solving specific editor
retention issues. We're reaching out to the community for
participants for convenings of bot herders (users who manage
applications that take care of automated tasks - like adding a
template to an article), convenings about policy simplification, and
convenings focused on learning from the good governance decisions of
growing Wikipedias.
* Recruitment is underway for 2012 Community Summer Analysts, building
off of last year's Wikimedia Summer of Research. This summer,
analysts will focus on tackling practical analytic questions for
answering longstanding editor retention questions to help us
determine our next projects [2].
* See also Teahouse Project below
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_user_warnings/Testing
2.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Summer_Community_Analytics
== Fundraising ==
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Fundraiser_Boiler_Room-1-3.jpg
Boiler room banner analysis during the fundraiser>
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Fundraiser_Boiler_Room-1-4.jpg
Life in the boiler room>
Fundraiser
(see also general "Highlights" section)
* The 2011 annual fundraiser ended on January 1, 2012 raising a
record-breaking USD 20 million from more than one million donors in
nearly every country in the world.
* This year’s campaign highlighted staff and volunteers who help to
create Wikipedia. It featured testimonials from volunteer editors in
countries such as Argentina, Brazil, India, Kenya, the United
Kingdom and the United States ranging in age from 18 to 76,
explaining why they edit Wikipedia and why they think readers should
support the Wikimedia Foundation.
* Daily testing of messaging, form optimization, and payment methods
continued throughout the campaign. [1]
* A full report of the 2011 fundraiser will be posted in 2012.
* The fundraiser was translated by over 1600 volunteers into more than
100 languages. See fellowships section below for more info on the
translation project.
1. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011
Major Gifts and Foundations
* Secured a $100,000 grant from the Kaphan Foundation
* Brought in $500,000 in $5000+ individual donors and family
foundation gifts during the annual fundraiser
* Received $400,000 installment from the Hewlett Foundation
=== Fellowship Program ===
Program Activities
* Launched a recruitment drive for 2012 Community Fellowships.[1]
We're using various communication channels to get the message out
around the world, including chapter outreach and the Global Message
delivery system to post an open call to over 500 on-wiki community
spaces.
* Liam Wyatt's Cultural Partnerships Fellowship wrapped up this month.
Many thanks go to Liam for his year spent building enthusiasm,
awareness, and working models for cultural institutions to partner
with Wikipedians in producing open content for the public.[2]
* Sarah Stierch began work as our first Community Fellow focused on
gender gap projects, visiting the Community Department towards the
end of the month to plan her first project (see also Teahouse,
below).[3]
Translation Project
* Over 1600 volunteers translated the banners and appeals for the
annual fundraiser into 112 languages, helping reach hundreds of
millions of people. [4] 19 batches of text containing 7663 total
source words have resulted in 567 completed translations. The final
report is in progress.[5] The Community Department hosted Fellow Jon
Harald Søby is to wrap up this project and begin planning the next
translation project for 2012.
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Fundraiser_2011_Translation_Project-1.jpg
The translation project spreadsheet>
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jon_Harald_S%C3%B8by-1-2.jpg
Fellow Jon Harald Søby working at translation>
Teahouse Project
* Community Department hosted Fellows Jonathan Morgan and Sarah
Stierch were in San Francisco this month to continue planning for
the Teahouse Project, an initiative to reach out and offer help to
promising new editors, particularly women, in a many-to-many peer
support environment.[6]
1. http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/07/open-call-for-community-fellows/
2. http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM
3.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/20/announcing-community-fellow-sarah-stierch/
4. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011/Translation
5.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011/Translation/Project_Report
6. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Teahouse
=== Community Relations ===
* Working with the tech team, we were really pleased to be able to
help get Corensearchbot, which is a heavily used bot on the English
Wikipedia, back up and back to its job detecting copyright
violations. The same work supports other bots on several different
language projects.
* Of the emergency reports, 28 were passed on to law enforcement
(33%). Of these, two are confirmed to have been life saving
telephone calls. While we don't often receive outcome data from
local police, we know that several others resulted in successful
welfare checks.
* Approximately 30% of the cases were either returned to the community
for their handling or rejected as something the Foundation would not
interfere with. 51 are still actively being worked.
== Global Development ==
Department highlights
* The communications team finalized the annual report.
* Successful launch of 2nd Editor Survey.
* Preliminary meetings in Cairo to discuss global education pilot.
* Developed a proposal for unrestricted operating grants for chapters
based on annual plans. Now discussing this with the community at:
Grants:Annual/Draft <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Annual/Draft>
* Hired Lori Byrd Phillips as *US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator*
--
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/07/us-cultural-partnerships-coordinator-lori-byrd-phillips/
=== Grants Program ===
==== Grants Awarded and Executed ====
* *Wikimedia Grants* <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Index>
o http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_KE/Start-up
o http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WMAR/Programs_2012
o http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_IN/Kolkata_Book_Fair_2012
o http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Sudhanwa/CMDA_IT_Expo,_Pune
* Wikimedia *Participation Grants*
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Participation>
o http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:B1mbo/GLAMcamp_Amsterdam
o http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:LauraHale/Amsterdam_GLAMCamp
o http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Nasir8891/WikiConference_India_2011
o http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:SarahStierch/DISH2011
o http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:MetalBrasil/Campus_Party_2012
o http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Solstag/CulturaDigitalBR2011
o http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:R.T.Argenton/CulturaDigitalBR2011
* Proposed revision of the Wikimedia Grants program process and
criteria: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:Annual/Draft
=== Brazil Catalyst <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Catalyst_Project> ===
* Education Program: Contractor Everton Z. Alvarenga will lead the
education work for Brazil. He has been working with the community to
restructure the "standard" GEP to fit with Brazil and its needs /
intricacies. The pilot is planned to start this upcoming academic
year, in March 2012.
* WMF branch in Brazil: Contracted with executive search firm Michael
Page to work on hiring a country program director in Brazil.
=== Arabic Language Initiative ===
* Finalizing preparation for *Cairo* Wikipedia Education pilot,
including staff, campus ambassador and on-line ambassador recruitment
* Supported a series of Arabic Wikipedia community events in Cairo,
including celebration the Arabic Language International day in
collaboration with Engineering students of Cairo University, and a
Wikipedia editing session for Cairo geophysics community. WMF staff
gave Wikipedia talks in language schools in Cairo university.
* Currently preparing for community gathering in *Tunis* from January
26 to January 31 to include tabling and sessions at the national
school of engineers (http://www.enit.rnu.tn) and gathering with FOSS
and CC community. (One WMF staff member will be accompanied by three
active Arabic Wikipedia admins.)
* Barry Newstead will visit Cairo and Beirut next February, when he
will participate in public talks and meetings with community folks
and like-minded organizations.
=== Wikimania Scholarships ===
Travel and accommodation scholarship applications open in the beginning
of January 2012. Stay tuned to the mailing lists for more information!
=== Mobile and Business Development ===
* Continued project planning with partner operators in India, Africa,
Middle East and Southeast Asia for Q1 2012 launch of programs
focused on mobile accessibility.
* Worked on implementation plan and testing for Wikipedia Zero (Mobile
Wikipedia access without data charge) to roll out for Q1.
* Began discussions and contract process with new potential partners
in same priority regions with launch potential of Q2 2012 and later.
* Set plans for launching Android app publicly and with partners in
mid-January.
=== Global development research ===
Successfully concluded the second Wikipedia editor survey. (After data
cleaning we have about 7,000 completed responses - a big increase from
the 5000 responses we had last time.) Data analysis is in progress.
=== Wikipedia Education Program ===
<Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ArabicWikimediansCairo.jpg
Wikipedia Education Program staff meet with Arabic Wikimedians in Cairo,
Egypt, in December 2011.>
* In the first half of December, Frank Schulenburg and Annie Lin
traveled to Cairo, Egypt, and met with professors, students and
local Wikipedians. The trip was part of the preparation for a small
pilot for the Wikipedia Education Program to be conducted during the
spring 2012 semester. Supported by Moushira Elamrawy and Essam
Sharaf, Annie and Frank had a number of in-person meetings with
professors from Cairo University and Ain Shams University. Frank and
Essam also gave Wikipedia presentations at Cairo University and at
the German University in Cairo. As a result, six professors have
been identified as participants of the pilot that will start in
early February 2012. More information about this trip on the
Wikimedia blog:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/31/education-program-gets-ready-for-cairo-pilot/
* KALW, a public radio station in San Francisco, California, covered
the Wikipedia Education Program on its "Crosscurrents" show. The
journalist, Nicole Jones, interviewed University of California at
Berkeley Professor Brian Carver, some of his students, and Wikipedia
Education Program Communications Manager LiAnna Davis. The segment
discusses the benefits of using Wikipedia as a teaching tool in
higher education classrooms:
http://www.kalwnews.org/audio/2011/11/29/colleges-take-chance-wikipedia_1483272.html
* On December 17 and 18, Frank Schulenburg led the first
train-the-trainer event for the new Wikipedia Education Program in
Germany. Ten longterm Wikipedians were trained as "Referenten", who
will support professors and teaching assistants to integrate
Wikipedia into the classroom at German Universities. The training
slides (in German) are available on Wikimedia Commons:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:K%C3%B6ln_Orientierungsworkshop_f%C3%BCr_Referenten_Dezember_2011.pdf
* On December 20, the third monthly Wikipedia Education Program
Metrics and Activities Meeting took place. Representatives from the
programs in the U.S., Canada, India, Egypt, and Germany all spoke
about their plans for the forthcoming term. The meeting notes are
available on the Foundation's outreach wiki:
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program_Metrics_and_Activities_Meeting/December_2011
* As the U.S. branch of the Education Program wrapped up the fall 2011
semester, LiAnna Davis started to document its success stories. A
blog post published on the Wikimedia Foundation blog
(http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/19/pitt-undergrad-learns-the-ways-of-wikipedia/)
describes the experiences of undergrad Karl Wahlen, enrolled in a
University of Pittsburgh class called Sociology of Marriage, taught
by longterm Wikipedian Piotr Konieczny. Another blog post tells the
story of Katy Lederer
(http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/30/milwaukee-brise-soleil-video-featured-thanks-to-student/),
who is in her final year of school at Alverno College, a women’s
college in Milwaukee. As part of her Advanced Media Studies class,
Katy created a video of the Milwaukee Art Museum's brise soleil,
which appeared as the Wikimedia Commons Media of the Day on November 26.
* Jami Mathewson continued working with Regional Ambassadors in the
U.S. and Canada to organize the in-person training for Campus
Ambassadors in January 2012. This will be the last iteration of
in-person trainings in North America, before the training will be
transitioned to an online training model.
=== India Programs ===
==== Indic Languages ====
Concluded a series of discussions with a host of Indic language
Wikimedians across the India (and indeed the world) to try and
understand, document and share their experiences and thinking and
suggestions for Indic languages in order to cross-pollinate ideas,
encourage greater community conversations, and help identify community
initiatives or community-endorsed pilots for India Programs through a
series of suggestions that have been shared and conversations we are
trying to foster on respective village pumps.
==== India Outreach ====
* Initiated work on supporting general outreach efforts of the
community by documenting and sharing best practices and tips as well
as presentation material and guidelines.
* Planned out outreach efforts across the country to kick-start outreach.
==== India Education Program ====
v 1.0 of the pilot has concluded and we are in the process of analysing
results to determine next steps. This includes internal analysis,
Ayush's data analysis, and Tory Read's evaluative report, which are
likely to be in place after mid-January, after which we will start a
collaborative exercise to determine v 2.0. (We already know of many
problems, such as scale, faculty selection/involvement, Campus
Ambassador/student selection/training, engagement with the global en-WP
community, but we want to make sure we capture everything before we
attempt anything further.)
==== Other ====
* Subhashish Panigrahi was selected for Consultant, Community &
Program Support. Welcome, Subha!
* Provided ad hoc support to number of communities on local
initiatives like the Pune and West Bengal outreach efforts.
* Continuing work on the right legal and regulatory framework /
structure to operate within India.
=== Communications ===
The communications team finalized the Foundation's 2010-11 Annual Report
in December, both the print/PDF version and a wiki version (see general
"Highlights" section above). Communications also provided
major support to the annual fundraising campaign team, though much of
our efforts by mid-December were focussed on press strategy around WMF's
opposition to SOPA in the US, including responses around the Wikipedia
community's discussion of a Wikipedia site block and coordination with
many of the Foundation's NGO and mission-supporting partners.
==== Major announcements ====
(No major press announcements in December)
==== Major Storylines through December ====
===== WMF's 2010-11 Annual Report launched (December 17) =====
(cf. general "Highlights" section above)
===== Wikipedia visual editor (December 13) =====
Following the news (of a demo) of a new visual editor interface for
Wikipedia (see general "Highlights" section above) global
press eagerly reposted and shared the news of what may be the "most
significant change in Wikipedia's short history." Most coverage of the
news was favorable and positive.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/12/changes-wikipedia
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/246251/help_test_wikipedias_new_visual_editor.html
===== WMF opposes SOPA / WP shut down? =====
Global attention was drawn to discussion of the Stop Online Piracy Act
before a congressional committee in Washington in December. WMF opposes
the bill
(http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/13/how-sopa-will-hurt-the-free-web-and-wikipedia/
), which would hurt the open and free web, and significantly hamper
global projects like Wikipedia. A straw poll on Jimmy Wales' talk page
regarding the possibility of a Wikipedia shutdown in protest of the bill
drew significant international media attention as well. Much of the
coverage (and social media response) has been critical of the bill.
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/software/wikipedia-threatens-blackout-over-privacy-law-50006392/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/12/wikipedia-blackout-sopa_n_1144580.html
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70554.html
==== Other worthwhile reads ====
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16084861 (on Bell Pottinger and PR
editing)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-arms-company-the-oligarch-and-the-expms-sisterinlaw-lobby-firms-wikipedia-hit-list-6274541.html
http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/wikistream-shows-off-the-unbelieveable-amount-of-work-that-goes-into-wikipedia-2011126/
==== Wikipedia Signpost ====
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-12-05
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-12-12
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-12-19
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-12-26
==== WMF Blog posts ====
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/
==== Media Contact ====
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#December_2011
== Human Resources ==
=== Staff Changes ===
New Contractors
* Everton Zanella Alvarenga
* Erek Dyskant
* Yuvaraj Pandain
* Maxim Semenik
* Lori Byrd Phillips
Contract Extended
* Karen Chelini
* Jeroen De Dauw
* Andrew Garrett
* Roan Kattouw
* Niklas Laxstrom
* Siebrand Mazeland
* Gerard Meijessen
* Neel Punatar
* Angela Robeson
Contract Ended
* Greg DeKoenigsberg
* Christine Moellenberndt
* Rebecca Neumann
* Linda Pennington
* Stark Thom
New Postings
* Interaction Designer
* Office IT Support Specialist
* Summer Community Analytics
RFP
* Executive Dashboard – Analytics
=== Statistics ===
Total Employee Count
December Plan: 109, December Filled: 0, December Attrition: 0,
YTD Filled: 24, YTD Attrition: 8, Actual: 90
Remaining Open positions to fiscal year end: 27
=== Department Updates ===
We have a new CTCO (Chief Talent and Culture Officer) - Gayle Karen
Young - and we're in process of hiring a Director of HR and
restructuring roles until the HR director comes on board. We have vision
of an effective, smooth, and supportive department. As Gayle gets her
feet under her, we will be identifying our key priorities and
communicating to the organization about them.
Jeanie Mayall started last September, gracefully taking on a great
number of tasks when Daniel left. She is accepting a position as a
Manager of HR with a start-up down the street. In the last few months,
she has handled open enrollment with great success, immigration issues,
contractors and the contracting process, compliance, and non-California
tax issues. She has agreed to be accessible on an ongoing basis and we
are working to proactively transition open issues.
Real-time feed for HR updates: http://identi.ca/wikimediaatwork or
http://twitter.com/wikimediaatwork
== Finance and Administration ==
Isa will be transitioning, in the month of January, out of her role as
Interim Head of Office Administration. Many thanks to Isa for all of her
good work during her time at WMF.
We are continuing our search for a new Head of Office Administration and
a Senior Accountant.
We completed a review of internal security systems and began
implementing recommendations.
== Legal ==
* The 120+-day comment period for the proposed user agreement
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use> comes to an end with
strong community
participation (see general "Highlights" section above).
* Continued support of community during its review of SOPA and IP
Protect. For the community discussion page (to which we contribute),
go here <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative>.
Geoff's blog post is here
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/13/how-sopa-will-hurt-the-free-web-and-wikipedia/>.
* IRC office hours on legal strategy took place with this summary
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Geoffbrigham/Strategy>.
* Consideration of legal strategy for challenging Loriot decision on
stamps in Germany. For the legal and community discussion, go here
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Loriot_Signature_Background>
* Ninth Circuit - which decides case law applicable to the Wikimedia
sites - affirms DMCA safe harbor in an excellent decision. You can
find a summary of the decision and a copy of it here
<http://title17.net/2011/12/umg-v-veoh-ninth-circuit-affirms-dmca-safe-harbor-for-veoh/>.
Andrew, our legal intern, prepared for Geoff a summary of the
decision here
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AUMG_v._Veoh_Summary.pdf&page=1>.
* Note the recent restrictions on Internet access in Belarus that
could affect Wikimedia. See
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120103/07193917260/no-belarus-is-not-cut-off-internet-new-restrictions-are-still-pretty-bad.shtml
Stats:
* # contracts signed - 11
* # trademark requests - 8
o approved - 3
o denied - 1
o approval not needed - 1
o pending - 5
== Visitors and Guests ==
1. Deborah Bezona (D. Bezona & Company)
2. Valerie Ball (KPMG)
3. Diane Peters (Creative Commons)
4. Hana Yariv (Wikimedia Israel)
5. Jan-Bart de Vreede (WMF Board of Trustees)
6. Kat Walsh (WMF Board of Trustees)
7. Chris Bishko (Omidyar Network, Investment Director)
8. Eric E. Johnson (Affiliate Scholar, Stanford Law School Center for
Internet and Society, Associate Professor of Law, University of
North Dakota School of Law)
9. Carol Reed (National Sales Manager, Travel and Transport)
10. Christie Goodfellow and Denise Truong (Triton Hotel)
11. Lori Byrd Phillips (The Children's Museum of Indianapolis)
--
Tilman Bayer
Movement Communications
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
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