Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: transition to implementation begins

2020-06-09 Thread Gerard Meijssen
 Hoi,

The biggest problem of this strategy document that I see is that it is
oriented towards our own internals. This is best understood from the first
sentence: *People-centeredness means that every aspect of our Movement must
address the needs and challenges of the people who power it and whom it
serves, so that each one can contribute in their best way to the sum of
human knowledge.*

It does not mention what we do and why we do it. It follows that based on
this we cannot give priority to our biggest bias; what we do first and
foremost is service wants in English. This bias is huge and when we were a
company, we would recognise that around 50% of Wikipedia traffic is in
English. We would realise the extend that scholarly publications are in
English studying aspects of English Wikipedia. We would know that we do not
have much data on everything else. We would be aware of our other products
and strategise how to improve their market value. For our movement, market
value is in the number of people it serves. We would for instance know that
Wikisource books are marketed in India external to us and we would consider
what it takes to provide a proper interface so that people find what is
available to them thanks to a non-English community. A community we do not
notice nor respect.

We are so happy with American students (doing good work) on English
Wikipedia but we do not engage high school students, even primary school
students who could write in their language expanding Wikipedias often with
less than 10.000 articles.

We have an opportunity to turn this around. We have this notion that we are
going to do things differently in this strategy. We have the papers that
for many are too long to read and we have the Special:MediaSearch (publicly
available for two weeks now) that enables search in Commons in all our
languages. When we support it in the Wikiway, we will allow for it not to
be perfect. We will find that as we add items to pictures that we will find
more results or even only results.. Try to find هيلين كوبر using text based
search in Commons and compare the results.

As a product, Commons only serves our own needs. We do not know the number
of downloads of pictures we do not know the extend Commons has been
searched in other languages. This is true for Wikidata as well. We may know
the volume of queries it serves but in what language and how do we extend
the usefulness of Wikidata in languages other than English? What strategies
are in place is this a key performance indicator? How can we show that we
care?

With Commons enabled for search in any language thanks to the
Special:MediaSearch, we have the perfect tool to start address this bias.
We can measure in what language Commons is searched. We can measure the
number of labels added to Wikidata that help people find images. We can
measure the number of downloads from Commons that happen as a result. We
can then demonstrate the pent up need there is.

This will likely be very much driven by the Wikimedia Foundation itself.
There will be outcries from vested interests that it detracts from
other/their priorities. People will state that they are disgusted with us
giving priority in this way. But do realise, white black of yellow, when
your language is English you are well served and others are not. English is
only about 50% of our traffic and you would not say so from what we
advertise we do.

Thanks,

  GerardM
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 


[Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: transition to implementation begins

2020-06-09 Thread Ryan Merkley
Dear all,

It’s my pleasure to be writing to you about the Movement Strategy. We have come 
together over the past 3 years to develop our Strategic Direction [1] and then 
the recommendations [2] to guide our collaborations and future. So many of you 
contributed to the process — some for only a part, and others throughout the 
entire process. With the recommendations complete, our focus now shifts to 
implementing the recommendations in a collaborative, open, and transparent way. 

Transition
To make the transition from the publication of the recommendations to their 
implementation, we need to do some planning. It’s a 10-year strategy, with 
dozens of initiatives, dependencies, and connected goals, to be delivered in a 
more distributed, deliberative, and open collaborative model than ever before. 
We’ll need to work together to define how we prioritize, sequence, resource, 
and support each initiative. 

So much of our work is done online, but a lot of strategic work also happens in 
person. We can’t do that now, and so we’ve had to adapt to engage broadly, and 
in inclusive ways.  To create this plan, movement-wide virtual events will kick 
off in September. We will use the Movement Strategy principles [3] as a guiding 
framework to ensure the planning will be inclusive and empowering for our 
diverse range of communities, without leaving anyone behind.

As a result of the pandemic, we lost the chance to work together in-person on 
the transition to implementation at the Wikimedia Summit in Berlin [4]. Yet we 
gained an opportunity to include a higher number and a more diverse profile of 
participants. Engaging with online contributors, technical developer 
communities, and smaller user groups throughout the process will be a key 
priority.

Successful virtual engagements with a high number of diverse participants are 
difficult to do well. Therefore, a Design Group will collaborate to prepare for 
the virtual transition discussions. This group will consist of community 
members reflecting different parts and perspectives of the movement, including 
representatives of regional collaboratives (CEE, ESEAP, Indaba, Iberocoop, 
North America, South Asia, WikiArabia, WikiFranca), the EDs and chairpersons 
groups, and WMF staff.

Anyone who is interested can contribute. Regular summaries of the preparation 
work and design discussions will be published on meta so that anyone interested 
will be able to share insights and help improve the process, even if not part 
of the Design Group itself. 

Participation
I look forward to: 
Working with many of you at the virtual transition events.
Ways  to participate and the schedule of events will be determined by the 
Design Group. The current plan is to start the virtual transition discussions 
with the movement in September.
The virtual events is where major discussions will take place on sequencing, 
prioritizing, and resourcing the recommendations across the movement.
Seeing those of you interested participate in the open review of the transition 
preparations.
The task will be to review the work of the Design Group and share your 
perspective, enriching the thinking to improve the events.
Open review will happen in parallel to the work of the Design Group from the 
end of June to the end of July / beginning of August.
Having nominations from different movement groups and collaboratives (mentioned 
above) for the Design Group.
The task will be to design as a group how the transition process of online 
events will be set up.

Want to know more?
We have put together a placeholder meta page [5] and will keep updating it as 
more information becomes available.
Join office hours with the Movement Strategy core team on Wednesday. June 10 @ 
17:00 UTC (Google Meet ) [6] or Thursday. 
June 11 @ 08:00 UTC (Google Meet ) [7] to 
share any comments and ask questions.
Our email channel is always open: strategy2...@wikimedia.org 
.

Best,
Ryan Merkley
Chief of Staff, Wikimedia Foundation


[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017 

[2] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations
 

[3] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations/Movement_Strategy_Principles
 

[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Summit_2020/Report 

[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/2030 

[6] https://meet.google.com/uun-pzmb-kti 
[7] https://meet.google.com/rva-yqaq-zdk

Re: [Wikimedia-l] June 4 1800 Maggie Dennis office hour (with a twist)

2020-06-09 Thread Maggie Dennis
Hello, all!

The notes of the hour are out now! Apologies for the delay; I wanted to get
answers to a few questions that came in after the session and where I
wasn't able to answer at the time before reading a link. They have been
marked for translation.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours/Office_hours_2020-06-04

Thanks to Ad for saving me from myself and moving them from July to June.
:)

I also thank those of you who said kind things about the hour...and who
asked even hard questions in kind ways. I plan to do this again in a few
months, with more notice this time.

Warm regards,
Maggie

On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 3:37 AM RhinosF1 -  wrote:

> Thanks for offering to answer questions. I asked one but couldn't log onto
> Zoom due to being busy.
>
> Do we know when notes of the hour will be out?
>
> Samuel/RhinosF1
>
> On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 at 08:30, Pine W  wrote:
>
>> Agreed that office hours are a nice idea, although
>>
>> 1. For privacy reasons,I don't think that they need to be on video.
>> Sue had them on IRC. In the Wikimedia Cafe several of us use audio
>> only.
>>
>> 2. I'm digesting what Maggie said about the incidents of last July.
>> I'm not sure that the version of events that was communicated to her
>> captures how I would describe the multiple bad decisions that
>> happened, and I'm not inclined to believe that the problems can be
>> summed up as poor communications. I don't mean to put words in
>> Maggie's mouth, and I don't think that she was trying to provide a
>> comprehensive view of her briefing, but I also have concerns regarding
>> what I heard in her summary, and I would encourage Maggie to probe
>> extensively into what happened while she was on leave.
>>
>> I don't know what all was going on inside of WMF, but I would have
>> wanted an outsider -- that is, not someone inside of WMF -- to review
>> the actions of the staff, similar to how police departments are
>> sometimes reviewed by outside agencies after high profile incidents,
>> and I would want the report from that review to be public. Given my
>> perspective on what happened, I think that at least one WMF staff
>> person probably should have been demoted or fired, and perhaps more
>> than one, up to and including Katherine. However, I don't have enough
>> information to decide what accountability measures should have been
>> taken. I would have more faith in the integrity of WMF if there had
>> been an outside review as I describe here, including public
>> accountability for the actions of individual staff, much as we do on
>> English Wikipedia for administrators and functionaries.
>>
>> Pine
>> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 6:30 AM Natacha Rault via Wikimedia-l
>>  wrote:
>> >
>> > Yes thank you very much. I really liked the sincerity and the straight
>> to the point amswers. It feels great to be listened at and given sincere
>> answers.
>> >
>> > Make this call a best practice, it rocked.
>> >
>> > Warm regards,
>> >
>> > Nattes à chat
>> >
>> > Envoyé de mon iPhone
>> >
>> > > Le 4 juin 2020 à 22:16, Tito Dutta  a écrit :
>> > >
>> > > True, (because of connectivity issues I was disconnected for some
>> time).
>> > > Thanks Maggie for answering the questions and clarifying things. All
>> the
>> > > best and good wishes.
>> > >
>> > > Thanks
>> > > Tito Dutta
>> > > Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel free to
>> remind
>> > > me over email or phone call.
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >> On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 at 01:17, Aron Manning 
>> wrote:
>> > >>
>> > >> Thank you, Maggie, Elena and Nick for this meeting!
>> > >>
>> > >> The event was very well organized on the first try, focused and
>> > >> informative.
>> > >> Special thanks to Maggie for tirelessly answering all the questions
>> and
>> > >> giving insight to the wide spectrum of challenges.
>> > >>
>> > >> It was great to hear that transparency will be an important part of
>> the
>> > >> processes to be developed and that the communities will be involved
>> in
>> > >> working out the details. I think this is going in the right
>> direction to
>> > >> establish trust and cooperation with the communities and a mutually
>> > >> agreeable outcome.
>> > >>
>> > >> Thank you to all participants and I hope there will be more meetings
>> as
>> > >> this project progresses!
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >> Aron
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>> On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 at 23:24, Maggie Dennis 
>> wrote:
>> > >>>
>> > >>> We will post notes from the meeting, with the identity of
>> question-askers
>> > >>> anonymized, afterward. Questions can be submitted on Telegram [1],
>> on IRC
>> > >>> [2] or in the YouTube Chat or by email in advance to
>> > >> answ...@wikimedia.org
>> > >>> (To make sure they are presented during this meeting, please use
>> “Trust &
>> > >>> Safety” as the subject line.)
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >> ___
>> > >> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
>> > >> https://meta.wi

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Brand Project] Rescheduling Naming Convention Proposal community review

2020-06-09 Thread Фархад Фаткуллин / Farhad Fatkullin
FYI: I volunteer interpreting Wikimedia broadcasts live into Russian whenever I 
know and available, usually via parallel Facebook Messenger call - announcing 
this on Wikimedia Languages of Russia Facebook group & then uploading the 
recording in various places - like 
https://ru.wikinews.org/wiki/File:Ru-Wiki4HumanRights-Webinar.oga for June 2 
event with Office of UN High Commissioner of Human Rights

If you ever use Zoom-casts in webinar mode, there's a good interface for 
choosing desired interpretation channel (worked in a conferece with 7 languages 
with no problems, ready to share experience if Wikimedia will go multilingual 
during live events).
By default, principle audio goes at about 20%, chosen interpretation language 
at ~80%.

regards,
farhad

-- 
Farhad Fatkullin - Фархад Фаткуллин http://sikzn.ru/ Тел.+79274158066 / 
skype:frhdkazan / Wikipedia:frhdkazan / Wikidata:Q34036417


09.06.2020, 01:58, "Zack McCune" :
> Hi GerardM,
>
> Indeed!
>
> As I mentioned in my earlier message, the process will be multilingual. We
> want to ensure that as many people as possible from across the movement
> have the opportunity to participate, so we are working hard to make that
> happen. When it comes to naming in particular, we need to understand the
> localization opportunities and challenges of the different proposals in
> order to arrive at a system that works globally. We are having both the
> survey and the proposals translated into Arabic, Chinese, French, German,
> Russian and Spanish. All materials will also be made available on Meta-Wiki
> so that volunteers can translate to other languages. Our team will be
> analyzing survey responses and discussion themes in all languages.
>
> We look forward to talking names with all parts of the movement.
>
> Best,
>
> Zack
>
> On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 8:11 AM Gerard Meijssen 
> wrote:
>
>>  Hoi,
>>  How will you cope in other languages, other scripts. Is engaging all over
>>  the world NOT in English a consideration>
>>  Thanks,
>> GerardM
>>
>>  On Thu, 4 Jun 2020 at 05:34, Zack McCune  wrote:
>>
>>  > Hi Tito -
>>  >
>>  > Your observation is fair and welcome. The project team will update the
>>  > timeline on Meta-Wiki to reflect the latest rescheduling and our
>>  relaunched
>>  > consultations.
>>  >
>>  > The priority is on completing the collaborative design activities of the
>>  > project (naming, design, and style guides) in time for the birthday in
>>  > January. The process of adoption will follow the completion of this work,
>>  > so it too will be adjusted in the timeline.
>>  >
>>  > The project team is working to keep this timeline as accurate as we can
>>  > amidst much global uncertainty, so I want to be the first to acknowledge
>>  > that timing will likely remain at the monthly estimate level and may
>>  > further change.
>>  >
>>  > Thanks,
>>  >
>>  > - Zack
>>  >
>>  > On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 7:59 PM Tito Dutta  wrote:
>>  >
>>  > > With kind permission, I would like to further explain my question (in
>>  > case
>>  > > it was unclear, and kindly assume good faith):
>>  > > The resolution (linked above and at [1]) states that "the Board affirms
>>  > its
>>  > > support for the brand project and its strategic importance for the
>>  > > movement, mission, and 2030 strategy, and the Board directs the
>>  > Foundation
>>  > > to complete this work by Wikipedia's 20th birthday."
>>  > > – what is "this work" that is to be completed by January 2021?
>>  > > I believe it includes implementation (first phase) as well? On
>>  Meta-Wiki
>>  > > the /Timeline page mentions[2] "January 2021" as "Organizational
>>  > > implementation: adoption by the Foundation with opt-in system for
>>  > > affiliates.
>>  > > I see an almost clear action point here that by January 2021 the opt-in
>>  > > naming comes into picture for the communities, where the brand value of
>>  > > Wikipedia will be experimented with a few communities/projects with
>>  > direct
>>  > > attention.
>>  > > Wait, aren't we yet to start the review process?
>>  > > Kindly note, other than the 3 or so models, I have noticed that there
>>  was
>>  > > always another (robust) voice, and that's a "no".
>>  > > Sincerely,
>>  > > User:Titodutta
>>  > >
>>  > >
>>  > > [1]
>>  > >
>>  > >
>>  >
>>  
>> https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Brand_Project_Support_(May_2020)
>>  > > [2]
>>  > >
>>  > >
>>  >
>>  
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Communications/Wikimedia_brands/2030_movement_brand_project/Timeline&oldid=20140879#Post-project:_Adopt_and_advance_brand_(pending_approval_from_the_Board_of_Trustees_and_executive_leadership)
>>  > >
>>  > > Thanks
>>  > > Tito Dutta
>>  > > Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel free to
>>  > remind
>>  > > me over email or phone call.
>>  > >
>>  > >
>>  > > On Thu, 4 Jun 2020 at 04:34, Tito Dutta  wrote:
>>  > >
>>  > > > Hello,
>>  > > > From the resolution page (
>>  > > >
>>  > >
>>  >
>>  
>>