[Foundation-l] Report to the Board of Trustees: February 2009
Report to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Covering: February 2009 Prepared by:Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation Prepared for: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees MY CURRENT PRIORITIES 1. Hiring interviews: CPO, usability team members 2. Development of the mid-year financial statements 3. Planning begins for 2009-10 4. Stanton Usability project starts up 5. Bits and pieces: normal fundraising activities, grant proposal development, strategic plan, etc. THIS PAST MONTH FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION In February, Veronique Kessler developed the Wikimedia Foundation's mid-year financial statements, covering the period of July 1, 2008 to December 31, 2008. Upshot: the Wikimedia Foundation is on plan and expects to stay on plan for the rest of the fiscal year, which we believe is excellent news given the state of the global economy. We are very grateful to all our donors. The statements include a comparison of actuals versus plan; a year over year comparison showing how we are doing against the same period last year; a comparative balance sheet, and a chart depicting revenues and expenses, with plan compared against actuals to date and projections to fiscal year end. The package also included a Q and A answering questions that Board or community members might be expected to have. The statements were released to the Board on February 26, and will be published to the community a few weeks later. On February 17, the Wikimedia Foundation launched a Chapters Funding Request process, inviting the chapters to ask for money for projects or initiatives they would like to carry out during 2009-10, but which require funding. The process is described here http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/WMF_grants. The process is open for requests now, and the deadline for submissions is April 7. The contact person for the process is Frank Schulenburg. This process is the precursor to one slated to launch in August, which will be open for funding requests from all volunteers. Also in February, Sue, Veronique, and Daniel Phelps reviewed the Wikimedia Foundation's human resources processes and practices with Board chair Michael Snow and Board member Kat Walsh, who were in San Francisco for hiring interviews for the Chief Program Officer position. The purpose of the review was to demonstrate for the Board the appropriateness and sufficiency of the Wikimedia Foundation's human resources systems and procedures, as well as to assure it of legal and policy compliance. PRIORITIZATION WORKSHOP The Wikimedia Foundation staged a full-day facilitated workshop in San Francisco, bringing together most of the San Francisco staff to discuss the process used to prioritize large organizational initiatives (with total costs estimated to be greater than USD 250,000). The group reviewed and revised a prioritization tool which had been created by Erik before the meeting: the tool assigns a value to each initiative based on its fit against the Wikimedia Foundation strategy. Going forward, all large initiatives will be assessed, prioritized and tracked using this tool, at the weekly Restricted Gifts meeting which was launched in January. OUTREACH AND PROGRAMS In February, Sue, Erik, Michael and Kat interviewed four candidates for the role of Chief Program Officer. Michael and Kat had been invited to join the hiring boards because the CPO will be a highly community-facing position: besides being responsible for Jay, Frank and Cary, the CPO will help develop the organization's strategy with regard to outreach, partnership and content initiatives. All CPO candidates were given a takeaway assignment. The CPO search is expected to conclude in late March. Many thanks to Kat and Michael for contributing to the process: your help is much appreciated. In February, several of the Wikimedia Foundation staff began preparing workshops for the all-chapters meeting to be held in Berlin on April 3-5. Sue will be attending the Board meeting, also in Berlin on those dates, and Erik will therefore represent her at the chapters meeting. At the meeting, Frank will present an outreach workshop, Rand Montoya will present a workshop on fundraising, and Mike Godwin will present a trademark agreement / chapters agreement workshop. In February, Frank met with the new New York chapter, giving them an outline of recent activities, sharing experiences and discussing possible future outreach activities. He and Sara Crouse attended the Wikipedia Loves Arts event at the Brooklyn Museum, and met with representatives of the New York Public Library. Frank also contributed to various funding proposals, and supported a volunteer initiative to reach out to the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (Society of German Chemists). Cary Bass and Ariel Glenn attended RecentChangesCamp in Portland, Oregon, an annual wiki-unconference, to meet and interface with other members of the broader wiki
Re: [Foundation-l] phishing with wikipedia?
2009/3/13 Pedro Sanchez pdsanc...@gmail.com Should someone handle this? http://www.blackwikipedia.org/ BlackWikipedia is a nonprofit private organization to support WMF, the Foundation working to maintain and develop the free online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Wikipedia is constantly looking for donors as you can see in the banner top of each wikipedia.org page, in order to support the huge costs of maintenaince and adminsitration. Now it's posible for any user, throught BlackWikipedia, participate supporting WMF, without having to make a donation. ¿How's that possible? Income generated by Black Wikipedia ads, minus the cost of maintenance and administration for servers, will be used by the WMF with ordinary donations. Therefore, each person using BlackWiipedia is directly participating in Wikipedia supporting. That's a translation from http://www.blackwikipedia.org/es/wiki/Portada: Assuming their good faith, they will change the domain name (and the logo) into something else if someone approached them. I don't see a problem here except that they should clarify that they aren't affiliated with the WMF (nothing that binds them to send WMF any earnings etc). ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] phishing with wikipedia?
On 3/13/09, Pedro Sanchez pdsanc...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 3:18 AM, Mohamed Magdy mohamed@gmail.com wrote: Assuming their good faith, they will change the domain name (and the logo) into something else if someone approached them. I don't see a problem here except that they should clarify that they aren't affiliated with the WMF (nothing that binds them to send WMF any earnings etc). ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Yes, but that someone must come from the foundation, so I asked if someone should handle it (as I don't know who does this kind of things) Mike, whom I cc here. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Michael Bimmler mbimm...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] phishing with wikipedia?
still, their SITE SUPPORT navigation button on the left led directly to http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donaciones very best, oscar On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 11:09 AM, Michael Bimmler mbimm...@gmail.comwrote: On 3/13/09, Pedro Sanchez pdsanc...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 3:18 AM, Mohamed Magdy mohamed@gmail.com wrote: Assuming their good faith, they will change the domain name (and the logo) into something else if someone approached them. I don't see a problem here except that they should clarify that they aren't affiliated with the WMF (nothing that binds them to send WMF any earnings etc). ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Yes, but that someone must come from the foundation, so I asked if someone should handle it (as I don't know who does this kind of things) Mike, whom I cc here. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Michael Bimmler mbimm...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- *edito ergo sum* ** The information contained in this message is confidential and may be legally privileged. The message is intended solely for the addressee(s). If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, or reproduction is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by return e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message. ** ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] phishing with wikipedia?
On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 6:37 AM, Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk wrote: Is this clearly phishing? It looks like what we've always wondered about, a functioning mirror carrying advertising... -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Most mirrors don't use the trademarked wikipedia name and the logo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Two new email system team leaders
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hay (Husky) wrote: On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 4:44 AM, Cary Bass c...@wikimedia.org wrote: I've appointed two new volunteers into the role of email system team leader (commonly known as OTRS admin), Daniel Bryant and Mark Wesbeeg. Unless he has been lying to me the last few years i think it's Wesbee_k_ and not Wesbee_g_ :) That is correct! I think my secretary needs to pay better attention to my emails before sending them out! Cary -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkm6hE0ACgkQyQg4JSymDYnTRACbBNaKdgaO0/xiSk+CTUGZLOXJ p94AnR30i7A1xkHABFcM7bDQTBb3/35P =24le -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Licensing update committee open for membership applications
The licensing update committee is a group of Wikimedia community members appointed by the Wikimedia Foundation to support and facilitate the process of making and potentially implementing a community decision on Wikimedia's licensing terms. If you would like to be involved, please see: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Committee I will be processing applications over the weekend to move things forward :-) Thanks, Erik -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Pissed off at en:Wikisource
Birgitte SB wrote: --- On Thu, 3/12/09, Ray Saintonge wrote: In the course of the discussion about me, I considered coming here at an early stage, but decided that I would let things play out on wiki first. I did not raise the issue here until a few days after the decision was closed and implemented. If I had not commented on events here, would you have noticed it, and would it even have crossed your mind to comment as you did above? I don't follow exactly what you mean. I often comment here that some new thread is an internal issue and not a Foundation one. If you had commented on-wiki, I would have responded there. If you hadn't commented about the situation at all, I wouldn't have commented either. Maybe it's not just a matter of would you have, but of could you have. You were certainly aware of the debate, since you did clarify a non-controversial side issue. For you or Zhaladshar to have done anything more would have compromised your position as bureaucrats. Given the still relatively small community at en:ws, where does one turn for a calmer and more objective analysis from someone who is not a part of the apparent piling on? You can approach community members who were not part of the apparent piling on and ask them for such an analysis. You can ask someone who is not part of the community and that you respect for generally giving calm and objective analysis to share their opinion on en.WS. I am not against people from out of the community helping out with this. I just don't believe either such a wide announcement nor having the opinions being placed outside of en.WS should be encouraged. That perhaps represents an idealized perspective. When the two who spoke out in my favour were attacked the atmosphere was poisoned. I don't blame the quieter members from saying to themselves, I don't want any part of this. Even outside of the en.ws community, this sort of debate is not to everyone's taste. The wide approach may indeed not be suited to all circumstances, but there are times when it may be appropriate. There are also times, as John has suggested, when a procedure on Meta may be the best. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing update committee open for membership applications
2009/3/13 Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org: The licensing update committee is a group of Wikimedia community members appointed by the Wikimedia Foundation to support and facilitate the process of making and potentially implementing a community decision on Wikimedia's licensing terms. If you would like to be involved, please see: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Committee I will be processing applications over the weekend to move things forward :-) Thanks, Erik How exactly are people's real names relevant? Commons and to an extent en.pedia have been dealing with issues that make the relicensing look trivial for years without knowing or caring about real names. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Proposed revised attribution language
On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 7:23 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: I've reworded it slightly: b) a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to an alternative, stable online copy which is freely accessible, which conforms with the license, and which provides credit to the authors in a manner equivalent to the credit given on this website Now c) such a list of all authors doesn't make sense. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Mid-Year Financial Statements Posted to WMF website
Hello Folks, I am pleased to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation Mid-Year Financial Statements (covering the period July 1 through December 31, 2008) are now posted to the WMF website at: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#Mid-year_financial_statements We have also posted answers to anticipated questions: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports/July_2008_to_December_2008_Mid-Year_FAQ The upshot is: The Wikimedia Foundation's financial situation is strong. Spending is very slightly below plan, and revenues are slightly exceeding plan. Our projections say we will finish the year on target. This is primarily due to the terrific performance of the online fundraiser campaign, which exceeded its targets and enabled us to close the fundraiser early, as our core operating budget was met ahead of schedule. We think this is great news, particularly in a very difficult global economy. Please feel free to email with any questions or concerns you have. Veronique -- Veronique Kessler Chief Financial and Operating Officer Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. vkess...@wikimedia.org Office: (415) 839-6885 ext. 612 Support Free Knowledge today by donating to http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
