Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Blog post about new WMF affiliate-nominated trustees

[Ed Erhart]

We now have translations of Spanish and Italian!

https://blog.wikimedia.org/es/2016/05/26/conoce-a-los-dos-nuevos-miembros-de-la-junta-directiva-de-la-fundacion-wikimedia-christophe-henner-y-nataliia-tymkiv
https://blog.wikimedia.org/it/2016/05/26/ecco-i-due-nuovi-membri-del-consiglio-direttivo-della-wikimedia-foundation-christophe-henner-e-nataliia-tymkiv

On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 7:26 PM, Ed Erhart  wrote:

> If someone does translate the post, please ping me and I'll put it up as
> soon as possible. In particular, I'd love to have a French-language version
> of the post. Thank you!
>
> Best,
> --Ed
>
> On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 5:17 AM, Vira Motorko 
> wrote:
>
>> Can be translated on Meta page
>>
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog/Drafts/Meet_the_Wikimedia_Foundation
>> ’s_two_newest_trustees:_Christophe_Henner_and_Nataliia_Tymkiv
>>
>> *--*
>> ​user:Ата​
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>
>
>
> --
> Ed Erhart
> Editorial Associate
> Wikimedia Foundation
>



-- 
Ed Erhart
Editorial Associate
Wikimedia Foundation
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[Wikimedia-l] Classical piano performances on Wikimedia Commons and WikiRadio

[Pine W]

There is so much good content on Wikimedia that it's difficult to choose
what to highlight, and I try to be mindful of my number of posts to email
lists. I feel that this is worth a special mention because it's beautiful
and unusual. Courtesy of User:La Pianista, we have good quality recordings
of classical piano works:

https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikiradio/index.php?channel=La_Pianista

I particularly recommend her performance of Chopin's Scherzo No. 3:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chopin_-_Scherzo_No._3_%28re-recorded%29.ogg
. Quote (admittedly opinionated!) from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scherzo_No._3_%28Chopin%29
: "The Scherzo No. 3, Op. 39, in C-sharp minor by
Frédéric Chopin, completed in 1839, was written in the abandoned monastery
of Valldemossa on the Balearic island of Majorca, Spain. This is the most
terse, ironic, and tightly constructed of the four scherzos, with an almost
Beethovenian grandeur."


Hope you enjoy,

Pine
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[Wikimedia-l] Inspire Campaign on Addressing Harassment to Begin on May 31st

[Chris "Jethro" Schilling]

Hi everyone,

We’ve had two Inspire Campaigns so far -- on the gender gap and on content
curation & review -- to encourage ideas and grant proposals on challenging
issues affecting the Wikimedia projects you work on.  The third Inspire
Campaign, starting on May 31st, will run for one month and focus on
addressing harassment that occurs on Wikimedia projects:



The 2015 Harassment Survey[1] has shown evidence that harassment is
pervasive; 38% of participants reported experiencing it, and 51% reported
witnessing harassment.  These include behaviors such as name calling,
threats of violence, discrimination, stalking, and impersonation, among
others.  Furthermore, available methods and systems to deal with harassment
are considered to be ineffective.  These behaviors are clearly harmful, and
in addition, many individuals who experience or witness harassment
participate less in Wikimedia projects or stop contributing entirely.

Starting May 31st, everyone is invited to submit and work together in
developing ideas to prevent and handle cases of harassment.  Ideas can
include research, software, events, training programs, outreach efforts,
etc.  If you need funding, ideas can easily be submitted as a proposal for
a WMF grant.  Ideas can also encourage discussions to consider changes in
policies, guidelines, or best practices on your local Wikimedia project(s).


An FAQ page about this campaign and Inspire Campaigns generally is
available.[2]  An announcement e-mail will be sent out on the 31st.  For
folks who are interested in helping translate so we can reach a wide
audience, I welcome your help on the FAQ page[2] and main landing page.[3]


If you have an idea or want to help develop ideas to address harassment, I
encourage you to join me so that we can work together in addressing this
important and difficult issue.

With thanks,

Chris "Jethro" Schilling
I JethroBT (WMF) 
Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation


--
[1] <
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Harassment_Survey_2015_-_Results_Report.pdf
>
[2] 
[3] 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Blog post about new WMF affiliate-nominated trustees

[Ed Erhart]

If someone does translate the post, please ping me and I'll put it up as
soon as possible. In particular, I'd love to have a French-language version
of the post. Thank you!

Best,
--Ed

On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 5:17 AM, Vira Motorko 
wrote:

> Can be translated on Meta page
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog/Drafts/Meet_the_Wikimedia_Foundation
> ’s_two_newest_trustees:_Christophe_Henner_and_Nataliia_Tymkiv
>
> *--*
> ​user:Ата​
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> 
>



-- 
Ed Erhart
Editorial Associate
Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community Tech survey on watchlist use

[Trillium Corsage]

My English Wikipedia talkpage is watchlisted by a surprising number of users 
that I have no cooperative or friendly editing relationship with. Some of them 
refer to themselves as "talkpage stalkers." Might it be possible for a user to 
prohibit such persons from watchlisting him or her? If it's not possible to 
selectively prohibit, how about an on/off switch, i.e. *no-one* may watchlist 
an editor's individual talkpage.

Trillium Corsage

21.05.2016, 02:20, "Johan Jönsson" :
> On Sat, Mar 26, 2016 at 1:06 AM, Danny Horn  wrote:
>>  Hi everyone,
>>
>>  WMF's Community Tech team is starting to work on a Cross-wiki watchlist,
>>  one of the top 10 wishes in the Community Wishlist Survey that we conducted
>>  at the end of last year. [1]
>>
>>  We're running a survey on how people use their watchlists, to help inform
>>  our work.
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> A couple of months ago, the Community Tech team ran a survey to gather
> information on how Wikimedians use their watchlists. You can see the
> results here:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Tech/Cross-wiki_watchlist#Survey_results
>
> If you're interested, there are also some very early and rough
> wireframes available on the project page:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Tech/Cross-wiki_watchlist#Current_work.2C_for_discussion
>
> //Johan Jönsson
> --
>
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> 

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] April 2016 minutes for the Board of Trustees

[Chris Keating]

>
>
> So the confidentiality agreement which was passed seems like it will
> represent
> a regression in transparency. One of the things I pointed out in the last
> controversy is that it wasn't clear that the non-executive session portion
> of
> the board meeting was actually confidential. This closes that gap with 1.b.
> and 1.c defining as confidential "the Foundation’s nonpublic plans,
> strategies,
> budgets, or financial information;" and "nonpublic information shared in
> connection with Board meetings, deliberations, and discussions, including
> nonpublic communications on private mailing lists or private wikis"
>
> This effectively silences trustees from offering any information, lest they
> befall what happened to James (who didn't even give any information to his
> constituents, the community, only staff).



I can't see why you'd read it this way, but I think the Code of Conduct
document presents things in a different light: points 2,3 and 7 are
particularly relevant here.

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct_of_the_Board_of_Trustees

To my mind that sets a (welcome) expectation that Trustees will communicate
proactively about what is going on and also clarifies that Trustees are
free to speak in a personal capacity in many circumstances.

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] April 2016 minutes for the Board of Trustees

[Dariusz Jemielniak]

hi,

On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 5:12 PM, Ben Creasy  wrote:

> Last month, "Geoff and Stephen prepared a draft set of basic best-practice
> recommendations [on governance]". These weren't released publicly as far
> as I
> am aware. "Maria and Dariusz were tasked with preparing a proposal for a
> lightweight structure to increase transparency" but as far as I am aware
> we've
> received no color on what this proposal might end up looking like. Someone
> on
> this list asked Dariuszand he declined to offer details; if I recall
> correctly
> he said the boardshoulddo what it can internally first. I disagree with
> this:
> if you do a bunch of work without consulting your stakeholders, there's a
> good
> chance you'llhave to scrap all that work. In the software world we call
> early
> feedback from the stakeholders "Agile", and it is widely viewed as a
> superior
> process to long efforts without feedback.
>

I generally agree with the principle of consulting first, it is just that I
believe that in our efforts to increase transparency we do not necessarily
have to work on all-encompassing and mutually exclusive initiatives, but
rather add modules and alements to the system. The reason why I suggested
slight delay is also that our ideas will be soon published (we're currently
voting the minutes from May meeting). I definitely do not perceive our
initiative as the end of discussion about transparency, but rather a
beginning.

I've personally also had a feeling of urgency that we need to start working
on increasing transparency (even if through an imperfect way) rather than
await community consultations. I just believe that the community
conversation is unlikely to scrap all of that work, but rather improve it.

In principle, I would hope that the Board should accept a policy in which
the content of our discussion is public, unless needed otherwise. As a
person coming from a different cultural background I care much more about
the actual practices of communicating within our community, than the
procedures and policies, although I am well aware that the latter have some
influence on the former.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] April 2016 minutes for the Board of Trustees

[Ben Creasy]

>Stephen LaPorte  writes:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> The Board of Trustees has published minutes from the Board meeting on April 
> 22, 2016. You can find the meeting minutes and accompanying documents on the 
> Foundation Wiki: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2016-04

So the confidentiality agreement which was passed seems like it will represent 
a regression in transparency. One of the things I pointed out in the last 
controversy is that it wasn't clear that the non-executive session portion of 
the board meeting was actually confidential. This closes that gap with 1.b. 
and 1.c defining as confidential "the Foundation’s nonpublic plans, strategies, 
budgets, or financial information;" and "nonpublic information shared in 
connection with Board meetings, deliberations, and discussions, including 
nonpublic communications on private mailing lists or private wikis". Why it is 
necessary to have a blanket everything as confidential rather than narrowly 
defining the scope to specifically documents and deliberations is unclear. This 
seems to run contrary to the suggestions which came out of discussions in 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_transparency_gap

This effectively silences trustees from offering any information, lest they 
befall what happened to James (who didn't even give any information to his 
constituents, the community, only staff). Historically Samuel Klein and Phoebe 
spoke to the community to some limited degree about their board involvement, 
but I wonder how comfortable a trustee could feel in providing even such 
limited information with this confidentiality agreement in place.

For an example of how this affects our conversations with our elected 
representatives:

Last month, "Geoff and Stephen prepared a draft set of basic best-practice 
recommendations [on governance]". These weren't released publicly as far as I 
am aware. "Maria and Dariusz were tasked with preparing a proposal for a 
lightweight structure to increase transparency" but as far as I am aware we've 
received no color on what this proposal might end up looking like. Someone on 
this list asked Dariuszand he declined to offer details; if I recall correctly 
he said the boardshoulddo what it can internally first. I disagree with this: 
if you do a bunch of work without consulting your stakeholders, there's a good
chance you'llhave to scrap all that work. In the software world we call early 
feedback from the stakeholders "Agile", and it is widely viewed as a superior 
process to long efforts without feedback.

Would Maria and Dariusz even be able to share thoughts on their proposal if 
theyhad provided any initial information in the board room? The way this 
confidentiality agreement reads, once something is discussed in the boardroom, 
it becomes off-limits for public conversation until the Chair approves it. 
The presentation by Geoff and Stephen also seems off-limits, and it's hard to
imagine why this should be treated as proprietary/secret. Or is it public since
we know that such a draft exists?

I really think we need to see the best-practices recommendation that Geoff and 
Stephen presented.

Do we have a champion for transparency left on the board with James gone?

I did like the PDF overview. And I was happy to see that the board ended the
meeting with a no-staff executive session. That's a well-recognized best
practice which really helps the board assert itself and form a more 
consistent voice.


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation Form 990 for FY 2014-2015 now on-wiki

[Lodewijk]

Thanks Greg for the responses.

As for the ED team, that answers part of my question. That Sue was
appointed as special advisor, was indeed public knowledge - but for what
duration was that? And was that a full time position (or anything near full
time), given that her compensation was as high as that of the ED herself?
People suggested that this included compensation for earlier years - was
that the case? That would explain again a bit more.

Also part of the question was why the raise was so steep - was this simply
matching the reality of the current job market, or was there something else
behind it (i.e. a bonus mechanism etc).

It would be great if you could clarify! Thanks!

Lodewijk

2016-05-25 12:45 GMT+02:00 John Mark Vandenberg :

> On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 6:31 AM, Gregory Varnum 
> wrote:
> > Greetings,
> >
> > Thank you to everyone for your questions and thoughts regarding the
> Wikimedia Foundation's Form 990.
> >
> > Regarding Lodewijk's first question about the legal services (totalling
> US$1.7M) which were conducted by Jones Day (page 61 - Part VII): As our
> global reach has grown over time, we felt it was important to strengthen
> the trademark portfolio and solidify the protection of Wikimedia’s marks
> globally. In December 2013, we began working with Jones Day on our global
> trademark filings, registrations, and oppositions. During the 2014-2015
> fiscal year we filed 1,500+ new trademark applications for 35 different
> trademarks in 100+ countries. A significant portion of the legal services
> expenses in 2014-2015 went toward the mandatory government trademark
> application filing fees.
> >
> > These new trademark applications contained expanded coverage and revised
> descriptions to ensure better protection of Wikimedia's marks and projects,
> including countries where readership was growing through targeted programs
> or distribution (such as Wikipedia Zero and mobile readership). Going
> forward, we anticipate (and are beginning to realize) a decrease in
> trademark expenses year over year, now that we have this initial foundation
> is in place. This investment immediately benefits Wikimedia and its
> communities by ensuring that our trademark portfolio reflects the maturity
> and breadth of the Wikimedia movement, and protects us against certain
> forms of infringement or misuse.
>
> Hi Gregory,
> Just to confirm, the stated US$1.7M stated on page p.61 includes
> filing and other fees paid by Jones Day to relevant government bodies
> around the world?
> If so, any chance you can separate it into such fees paid *through*
> Jones Day, vs the consultation fees of Jones Day.
> You say it was a 'significant portion', but that is very vague
> terminology, meaning very different things to different people; it
> would be nice to have a ball park figure.
>
> Also there was a USD ~5.2 M investment in Europe listed on p. 35 as
> not being program services.  I didn't see any reference to it in the
> FAQ; apologies if I missed it (It would be lovely if the source
> document was posted on meta for easier navigation, etc.).  Could we
> have a little more info about this line item?
>
> --
> John Vandenberg
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation Form 990 for FY 2014-2015 now on-wiki

[John Mark Vandenberg]

On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 6:31 AM, Gregory Varnum  wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> Thank you to everyone for your questions and thoughts regarding the Wikimedia 
> Foundation's Form 990.
>
> Regarding Lodewijk's first question about the legal services (totalling 
> US$1.7M) which were conducted by Jones Day (page 61 - Part VII): As our 
> global reach has grown over time, we felt it was important to strengthen the 
> trademark portfolio and solidify the protection of Wikimedia’s marks 
> globally. In December 2013, we began working with Jones Day on our global 
> trademark filings, registrations, and oppositions. During the 2014-2015 
> fiscal year we filed 1,500+ new trademark applications for 35 different 
> trademarks in 100+ countries. A significant portion of the legal services 
> expenses in 2014-2015 went toward the mandatory government trademark 
> application filing fees.
>
> These new trademark applications contained expanded coverage and revised 
> descriptions to ensure better protection of Wikimedia's marks and projects, 
> including countries where readership was growing through targeted programs or 
> distribution (such as Wikipedia Zero and mobile readership). Going forward, 
> we anticipate (and are beginning to realize) a decrease in trademark expenses 
> year over year, now that we have this initial foundation is in place. This 
> investment immediately benefits Wikimedia and its communities by ensuring 
> that our trademark portfolio reflects the maturity and breadth of the 
> Wikimedia movement, and protects us against certain forms of infringement or 
> misuse.

Hi Gregory,
Just to confirm, the stated US$1.7M stated on page p.61 includes
filing and other fees paid by Jones Day to relevant government bodies
around the world?
If so, any chance you can separate it into such fees paid *through*
Jones Day, vs the consultation fees of Jones Day.
You say it was a 'significant portion', but that is very vague
terminology, meaning very different things to different people; it
would be nice to have a ball park figure.

Also there was a USD ~5.2 M investment in Europe listed on p. 35 as
not being program services.  I didn't see any reference to it in the
FAQ; apologies if I missed it (It would be lovely if the source
document was posted on meta for easier navigation, etc.).  Could we
have a little more info about this line item?

-- 
John Vandenberg

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation Form 990 for FY 2014-2015 now on-wiki

[Chris Keating]

>
> Regarding Lodewijk's first question about the legal services (totalling
> US$1.7M) which were conducted by Jones Day (page 61 - Part VII): During
> the 2014-2015 fiscal year we filed 1,500+ new trademark applications for 35
> different trademarks in 100+ countries. A significant portion of the legal
> services expenses in 2014-2015 went toward the mandatory government
> trademark application filing fees.


That makes sense - must have been a massive undertaking. Many thanks for
clarifying.

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Blog post about new WMF affiliate-nominated trustees

[Vira Motorko]

Can be translated on Meta page
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog/Drafts/Meet_the_Wikimedia_Foundation’s_two_newest_trustees:_Christophe_Henner_and_Nataliia_Tymkiv

*--*
​user:Ата​
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[Wikimedia-l] Museums of 100 masterpieces from Brussels

[Romaine Wiki]

Hello all,

In the past week the council of museums in Brussels started the project of
100 masterpieces in Brussels. Based on their list we have checked which
museums have an article in Wikipedia and which not.

On the Dutch Wikipedia we miss only one article at the moment, and someone
started writing it.

On the French Wikipedia we miss only 6 articles of the 40 museums with
masterpieces:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Le_Bistro/25_mai_2016#100_chefs-d.27oeuvre_des_mus.C3.A9es_bruxellois

On the English Wikipedia we miss 18 articles of the 40 museums with
masterpieces:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Romaine/100_masterpieces_from_Brussels

We now try to get at least in these three languages an article about these
museums with masterpieces from Brussels.

An article in other languages are welcome as well.


The next step will be talking to the museums to show our interest in them
and we hope they want to donate images for usage in these and other
articles.

Thanks!

Romaine
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