[Wikimedia-l] Re: [Marketing Mail] Re: Auction at Christie's

[Peter Southwood]

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Cheers,

P

 

From: Adam Wight [mailto:adam.m.wi...@gmail.com] 
Sent: 03 December 2021 17:32
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: [Marketing Mail] [Wikimedia-l] Re: Auction at Christie's

 

This is a good opportunity for us to take a look at the new conflict of 
interest policies [1], in light of preventing this sort of email in the future. 
 In my opinion, the WMF Board had the right idea—this is a personal project, 
and broadcasting to a movement list gives a strong sense of capitalizing on 
fame and networks, at the expense of nudging us towards venal boosterism.

 

I'm sure this was an innocent idea and something good will be done with the 
money, but that's beside the point, we're not a forum for major donor press 
releases.  Thank you for sharing some of the thought process behind your post.

 

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest_policy/2021_updates

 

On Fri, Dec 3, 2021 at 3:10 PM Jimmy Wales  wrote:

Hi all,

I am writing to let you know that I am doing an auction with Christie’s auction 
house, commencing today and closing on December 15th. 

We’re auctioning two things - the original Strawberry iMac that I used during 
the founding time period of Wikipedia, and an NFT artwork that I created to 
commemorate the earliest moment of Wikipedia.

A bit of Q

**What is an NFT?**

NFT stands for ‘non fungible token’, there is a fairly thorough article about 
it on English Wikipedia   
.

**What is this NFT exactly?**

I saw earlier in the year that Tim Berners-Lee did an NFT of “the original 
source code of the web”.   In his own words: “"I’m selling a picture that I 
made, with a Python program that I wrote myself, of what the source code would 
look like if it was stuck on the wall and signed by me.”

I thought I should try to push forward from that and so instead of just doing a 
picture (screenshot) of what Wikipedia looked like when I first installed the 
Usemod software and typed “Hello, World!” I would prefer to do something 
interactive.

The artistic concept is not just to see what Wikipedia looked like to me in 
that moment, but to relive the experience: here is this incredible vulnerable 
thing, a wiki, and you dream of it becoming an encyclopedia for the whole 
world, but will it?  Will it be taken over by vandals and trolls instantly?  
What policies will you need?  What kind of community can you attract? 

**Will any portion of the proceeds go to the WMF?**

The Wikimedia Foundation board has explicitly asked that I not pledge any funds 
to Wikimedia.  (They aren’t asking me not to donate, just not to pledge to do 
so up front.)  I am pledging to donate to “help support a variety of charities 
working in the free culture world.”  I’ll decide after we see how it goes in 
terms of what exactly I’ll do!  (Advice welcome!  I’d be interested in a 
community process to help choose.)

I’ve worked with the WMF per the board’s instructions on getting approval on 
all the marketing materials to make sure that it’s clear that this is a 
personal project of mine and not a WMF thing at all.  I believe the WMF will 
also post about that.

**What about the environmental costs of creating an NFT?**

Ethereum is moving from 'Proof of Work' to 'Proof of Stake', which requires a 
lot less energy per NFT - I’m happy to see that and hope it happens soon.

In the meantime, I’ve looked for the highest estimate of the amount of 
electricity consumed to mint an NFT.  I’ve found an estimate that the average 
NFT minting consumes 340kWh.  For scale, my friend has a Tesla Model X, and 
340kWh would charge it about 3 ½ times.  This is roughly 81.6 kg of CO2.  For 
further comparison an economy-class ticket to NYC from London generates about 
1800 kilograms of CO2. (Citation needed, and very happy for anyone with 
expertise to help me improve these calculations.)

While I generally think it is better not to generate emissions than to generate 
and offset, I also think that generating withOUT offsetting is much worse.  So 
I’ll be finding the most pessimistic estimate of the CO2 that I’ve generated 
and offset it by 5x.

** What is the estimate for the auction? **

Christie’s was unable to offer any public estimate for either the computer or 
the NFT.  I can sincerely say that I have absolutely no idea what to expect.  
Given the current state of the NFT market, I’m very hopeful that some crypto 
whale will find this irresistible, who knows though?

I’ll be around for the next 8 hours or so to answer any questions but to keep 
it all centralized, let’s keep it on my English wikipedia talk page, 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales  
 


Article at Christie’s website here:

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Auction at Christie's

[Nathan]

I too expected a stronger reaction from the rigid idealogues and the
attention-seekers (although I see that did indeed occur on-wiki, courtesy
of the same old grandstanding admins), and thought the minimal response was
perhaps a sign of progress!

Might just be disinterest and the ever-shrinking profile of Wikimedia-L.
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Auction at Christie's

[Andreas Kolbe]

Hi Mike,

No, not on Meta – on English Wikipedia. You had best go through the page
history:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales=history

The final section removal (there was a bit of back and forth) was here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales=1058461602=1058461154

As mentioned in the edit summary, there was a discussion at an
Administrators' Noticeboard (AN/I) as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents=1058842599#Self_promotion_on_en.wiki_by_User:Jimbo_Wales

So, muted reaction here, not so muted elsewhere. :)

Best,
Andreas

On Sun, Dec 5, 2021 at 10:57 PM Mike Peel  wrote:

> I missed this. Link to the on-wiki discussions? (Presumably on meta, since
> this isn’t just enwiki-specific?)
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
>
> On 5 Dec 2021, at 22:51, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
>
> 
> Well, all the sturm und drang on this one is on Facebook, in the Wikipedia
> Weekly group:
>
> https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/posts/4534171036630692/
>
> Other than that, there was a bit of drama on Jimmy Wales' talk page, where
> an admin removed the talk page section Jimmy had created about this as
> self-promotional, and Smiley on Wikipediocracy found bits of the long-lost,
> original Bomis test wiki in the Internet archive.
>
> And Joseph Reagle wrote a blog post:
>
> https://reagle.org/joseph/pelican/social/wikipedias-wiped-edit.html
>
> Andreas
>
> On Sun, Dec 5, 2021 at 10:26 PM Mike Peel  wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> tl;dr: huh, this is weird.
>>
>> I'm amazed at the muted reception to this. Even prodding David Gerard on
>> Facebook (who even wrote a book about the badness of Blockchain) didn't
>> go very far.
>>
>> The concept of NFT seems to go against the very principles of Wikipedia.
>> On one hand, we share our work freely, both in terms of access and by
>> using a copyleft license. On the other hand, this NFT takes something
>> that was shared freely, and then restricts it so that it can be sold.
>>
>> Copyright-wise, it actually looks OK: presumably the edit was released
>> under the GFDL (if that was even applied back then), and I think that
>> Jimmy owns all of the copyright here (maybe not some of the MediaWiki
>> interface?). So, while it's weird, it seems OK?
>>
>> On the other hand, I'd have loved to see an email thread here about
>> "Auction at Christie's" that would have seen Christie's releasing
>> text/media of the items they were selling under CC licenses, so that
>> they could be used on the Wikimedia projects.
>>
>> Or even better: we work with museums a lot, why not donate memorable
>> moments/equipment to them? Or perhaps we've already done that with
>> servers or later edits?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Mike
>>
>> On 3/12/21 13:03:40, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> > *Hi all,
>> >
>> > I am writing to let you know that I am doing an auction with Christie’s
>> > auction house, commencing today and closing on December 15th.
>> >
>> > We’re auctioning two things - the original Strawberry iMac that I used
>> > during the founding time period of Wikipedia, and an NFT artwork that I
>> > created to commemorate the earliest moment of Wikipedia.
>> >
>> > A bit of Q
>> >
>> > **What is an NFT?**
>> >
>> > NFT stands for ‘non fungible token’, there is a fairly thorough article
>> > about it on English Wikipedia
>> > .
>> >
>> > **What is this NFT exactly?**
>> >
>> > I saw earlier in the year that Tim Berners-Lee did an NFT of “the
>> > original source code of the web”.   In his own words: “"I’m selling a
>> > picture that I made, with a Python program that I wrote myself, of what
>> > the source code would look like if it was stuck on the wall and signed
>> > by me.”
>> >
>> > I thought I should try to push forward from that and so instead of just
>> > doing a picture (screenshot) of what Wikipedia looked like when I first
>> > installed the Usemod software and typed “Hello, World!” I would prefer
>> > to do something interactive.
>> >
>> > The artistic concept is not just to see what Wikipedia looked like to
>> me
>> > in that moment, but to relive the experience: here is this incredible
>> > vulnerable thing, a wiki, and you dream of it becoming an encyclopedia
>> > for the whole world, but will it?  Will it be taken over by vandals and
>> > trolls instantly?  What policies will you need?  What kind of community
>> > can you attract?
>> >
>> > **Will any portion of the proceeds go to the WMF?**
>> >
>> > The Wikimedia Foundation board has explicitly asked that I not pledge
>> > any funds to Wikimedia.  (They aren’t asking me not to donate, just not
>> > to pledge to do so up front.)  I am pledging to donate to “help support
>> > a variety of charities working in the free culture world.”  I’ll decide
>> > after we see how it goes in terms of what exactly I’ll do!  (Advice
>> > welcome!  I’d be interested in a community process to help choose.)
>> >
>> > I’ve 

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Auction at Christie's

[Mike Peel]

I missed this. Link to the on-wiki discussions? (Presumably on meta, since this 
isn’t just enwiki-specific?)

Thanks,
Mike

> On 5 Dec 2021, at 22:51, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
> 
> 
> Well, all the sturm und drang on this one is on Facebook, in the Wikipedia 
> Weekly group:
> 
> https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/posts/4534171036630692/
> 
> Other than that, there was a bit of drama on Jimmy Wales' talk page, where an 
> admin removed the talk page section Jimmy had created about this as 
> self-promotional, and Smiley on Wikipediocracy found bits of the long-lost, 
> original Bomis test wiki in the Internet archive.
> 
> And Joseph Reagle wrote a blog post:
> 
> https://reagle.org/joseph/pelican/social/wikipedias-wiped-edit.html
> 
> Andreas
> 
>> On Sun, Dec 5, 2021 at 10:26 PM Mike Peel  wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> tl;dr: huh, this is weird.
>> 
>> I'm amazed at the muted reception to this. Even prodding David Gerard on 
>> Facebook (who even wrote a book about the badness of Blockchain) didn't 
>> go very far.
>> 
>> The concept of NFT seems to go against the very principles of Wikipedia. 
>> On one hand, we share our work freely, both in terms of access and by 
>> using a copyleft license. On the other hand, this NFT takes something 
>> that was shared freely, and then restricts it so that it can be sold.
>> 
>> Copyright-wise, it actually looks OK: presumably the edit was released 
>> under the GFDL (if that was even applied back then), and I think that 
>> Jimmy owns all of the copyright here (maybe not some of the MediaWiki 
>> interface?). So, while it's weird, it seems OK?
>> 
>> On the other hand, I'd have loved to see an email thread here about 
>> "Auction at Christie's" that would have seen Christie's releasing 
>> text/media of the items they were selling under CC licenses, so that 
>> they could be used on the Wikimedia projects.
>> 
>> Or even better: we work with museums a lot, why not donate memorable 
>> moments/equipment to them? Or perhaps we've already done that with 
>> servers or later edits?
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Mike
>> 
>> On 3/12/21 13:03:40, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> > *Hi all,
>> > 
>> > I am writing to let you know that I am doing an auction with Christie’s 
>> > auction house, commencing today and closing on December 15th.
>> > 
>> > We’re auctioning two things - the original Strawberry iMac that I used 
>> > during the founding time period of Wikipedia, and an NFT artwork that I 
>> > created to commemorate the earliest moment of Wikipedia.
>> > 
>> > A bit of Q
>> > 
>> > **What is an NFT?**
>> > 
>> > NFT stands for ‘non fungible token’, there is a fairly thorough article 
>> > about it on English Wikipedia 
>> > .
>> > 
>> > **What is this NFT exactly?**
>> > 
>> > I saw earlier in the year that Tim Berners-Lee did an NFT of “the 
>> > original source code of the web”.   In his own words: “"I’m selling a 
>> > picture that I made, with a Python program that I wrote myself, of what 
>> > the source code would look like if it was stuck on the wall and signed 
>> > by me.”
>> > 
>> > I thought I should try to push forward from that and so instead of just 
>> > doing a picture (screenshot) of what Wikipedia looked like when I first 
>> > installed the Usemod software and typed “Hello, World!” I would prefer 
>> > to do something interactive.
>> > 
>> > The artistic concept is not just to see what Wikipedia looked like to me 
>> > in that moment, but to relive the experience: here is this incredible 
>> > vulnerable thing, a wiki, and you dream of it becoming an encyclopedia 
>> > for the whole world, but will it?  Will it be taken over by vandals and 
>> > trolls instantly?  What policies will you need?  What kind of community 
>> > can you attract?
>> > 
>> > **Will any portion of the proceeds go to the WMF?**
>> > 
>> > The Wikimedia Foundation board has explicitly asked that I not pledge 
>> > any funds to Wikimedia.  (They aren’t asking me not to donate, just not 
>> > to pledge to do so up front.)  I am pledging to donate to “help support 
>> > a variety of charities working in the free culture world.”  I’ll decide 
>> > after we see how it goes in terms of what exactly I’ll do!  (Advice 
>> > welcome!  I’d be interested in a community process to help choose.)
>> > 
>> > I’ve worked with the WMF per the board’s instructions on getting 
>> > approval on all the marketing materials to make sure that it’s clear 
>> > that this is a personal project of mine and not a WMF thing at all.  I 
>> > believe the WMF will also post about that.
>> > 
>> > **What about the environmental costs of creating an NFT?**
>> > 
>> > Ethereum is moving from 'Proof of Work' to 'Proof of Stake', which 
>> > requires a lot less energy per NFT - I’m happy to see that and hope it 
>> > happens soon.
>> > 
>> > In the meantime, I’ve looked for the highest estimate of the amount of 
>> > electricity consumed to mint an NFT.  I’ve found an 

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Auction at Christie's

[Andreas Kolbe]

Well, all the sturm und drang on this one is on Facebook, in the Wikipedia
Weekly group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/posts/4534171036630692/

Other than that, there was a bit of drama on Jimmy Wales' talk page, where
an admin removed the talk page section Jimmy had created about this as
self-promotional, and Smiley on Wikipediocracy found bits of the long-lost,
original Bomis test wiki in the Internet archive.

And Joseph Reagle wrote a blog post:

https://reagle.org/joseph/pelican/social/wikipedias-wiped-edit.html

Andreas

On Sun, Dec 5, 2021 at 10:26 PM Mike Peel  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> tl;dr: huh, this is weird.
>
> I'm amazed at the muted reception to this. Even prodding David Gerard on
> Facebook (who even wrote a book about the badness of Blockchain) didn't
> go very far.
>
> The concept of NFT seems to go against the very principles of Wikipedia.
> On one hand, we share our work freely, both in terms of access and by
> using a copyleft license. On the other hand, this NFT takes something
> that was shared freely, and then restricts it so that it can be sold.
>
> Copyright-wise, it actually looks OK: presumably the edit was released
> under the GFDL (if that was even applied back then), and I think that
> Jimmy owns all of the copyright here (maybe not some of the MediaWiki
> interface?). So, while it's weird, it seems OK?
>
> On the other hand, I'd have loved to see an email thread here about
> "Auction at Christie's" that would have seen Christie's releasing
> text/media of the items they were selling under CC licenses, so that
> they could be used on the Wikimedia projects.
>
> Or even better: we work with museums a lot, why not donate memorable
> moments/equipment to them? Or perhaps we've already done that with
> servers or later edits?
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
>
> On 3/12/21 13:03:40, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > *Hi all,
> >
> > I am writing to let you know that I am doing an auction with Christie’s
> > auction house, commencing today and closing on December 15th.
> >
> > We’re auctioning two things - the original Strawberry iMac that I used
> > during the founding time period of Wikipedia, and an NFT artwork that I
> > created to commemorate the earliest moment of Wikipedia.
> >
> > A bit of Q
> >
> > **What is an NFT?**
> >
> > NFT stands for ‘non fungible token’, there is a fairly thorough article
> > about it on English Wikipedia
> > .
> >
> > **What is this NFT exactly?**
> >
> > I saw earlier in the year that Tim Berners-Lee did an NFT of “the
> > original source code of the web”.   In his own words: “"I’m selling a
> > picture that I made, with a Python program that I wrote myself, of what
> > the source code would look like if it was stuck on the wall and signed
> > by me.”
> >
> > I thought I should try to push forward from that and so instead of just
> > doing a picture (screenshot) of what Wikipedia looked like when I first
> > installed the Usemod software and typed “Hello, World!” I would prefer
> > to do something interactive.
> >
> > The artistic concept is not just to see what Wikipedia looked like to me
> > in that moment, but to relive the experience: here is this incredible
> > vulnerable thing, a wiki, and you dream of it becoming an encyclopedia
> > for the whole world, but will it?  Will it be taken over by vandals and
> > trolls instantly?  What policies will you need?  What kind of community
> > can you attract?
> >
> > **Will any portion of the proceeds go to the WMF?**
> >
> > The Wikimedia Foundation board has explicitly asked that I not pledge
> > any funds to Wikimedia.  (They aren’t asking me not to donate, just not
> > to pledge to do so up front.)  I am pledging to donate to “help support
> > a variety of charities working in the free culture world.”  I’ll decide
> > after we see how it goes in terms of what exactly I’ll do!  (Advice
> > welcome!  I’d be interested in a community process to help choose.)
> >
> > I’ve worked with the WMF per the board’s instructions on getting
> > approval on all the marketing materials to make sure that it’s clear
> > that this is a personal project of mine and not a WMF thing at all.  I
> > believe the WMF will also post about that.
> >
> > **What about the environmental costs of creating an NFT?**
> >
> > Ethereum is moving from 'Proof of Work' to 'Proof of Stake', which
> > requires a lot less energy per NFT - I’m happy to see that and hope it
> > happens soon.
> >
> > In the meantime, I’ve looked for the highest estimate of the amount of
> > electricity consumed to mint an NFT.  I’ve found an estimate that the
> > average NFT minting consumes 340kWh.  For scale, my friend has a Tesla
> > Model X, and 340kWh would charge it about 3 ½ times.  This is roughly
> > 81.6 kg of CO2.  For further comparison an economy-class ticket to NYC
> > from London generates about 1800 kilograms of CO2. (Citation needed, and
> > very happy for anyone with expertise to help me improve 

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Auction at Christie's

[Mike Peel]

Hi all,

tl;dr: huh, this is weird.

I'm amazed at the muted reception to this. Even prodding David Gerard on 
Facebook (who even wrote a book about the badness of Blockchain) didn't 
go very far.


The concept of NFT seems to go against the very principles of Wikipedia. 
On one hand, we share our work freely, both in terms of access and by 
using a copyleft license. On the other hand, this NFT takes something 
that was shared freely, and then restricts it so that it can be sold.


Copyright-wise, it actually looks OK: presumably the edit was released 
under the GFDL (if that was even applied back then), and I think that 
Jimmy owns all of the copyright here (maybe not some of the MediaWiki 
interface?). So, while it's weird, it seems OK?


On the other hand, I'd have loved to see an email thread here about 
"Auction at Christie's" that would have seen Christie's releasing 
text/media of the items they were selling under CC licenses, so that 
they could be used on the Wikimedia projects.


Or even better: we work with museums a lot, why not donate memorable 
moments/equipment to them? Or perhaps we've already done that with 
servers or later edits?


Thanks,
Mike

On 3/12/21 13:03:40, Jimmy Wales wrote:

*Hi all,

I am writing to let you know that I am doing an auction with Christie’s 
auction house, commencing today and closing on December 15th.


We’re auctioning two things - the original Strawberry iMac that I used 
during the founding time period of Wikipedia, and an NFT artwork that I 
created to commemorate the earliest moment of Wikipedia.


A bit of Q

**What is an NFT?**

NFT stands for ‘non fungible token’, there is a fairly thorough article 
about it on English Wikipedia 
.


**What is this NFT exactly?**

I saw earlier in the year that Tim Berners-Lee did an NFT of “the 
original source code of the web”.   In his own words: “"I’m selling a 
picture that I made, with a Python program that I wrote myself, of what 
the source code would look like if it was stuck on the wall and signed 
by me.”


I thought I should try to push forward from that and so instead of just 
doing a picture (screenshot) of what Wikipedia looked like when I first 
installed the Usemod software and typed “Hello, World!” I would prefer 
to do something interactive.


The artistic concept is not just to see what Wikipedia looked like to me 
in that moment, but to relive the experience: here is this incredible 
vulnerable thing, a wiki, and you dream of it becoming an encyclopedia 
for the whole world, but will it?  Will it be taken over by vandals and 
trolls instantly?  What policies will you need?  What kind of community 
can you attract?


**Will any portion of the proceeds go to the WMF?**

The Wikimedia Foundation board has explicitly asked that I not pledge 
any funds to Wikimedia.  (They aren’t asking me not to donate, just not 
to pledge to do so up front.)  I am pledging to donate to “help support 
a variety of charities working in the free culture world.”  I’ll decide 
after we see how it goes in terms of what exactly I’ll do!  (Advice 
welcome!  I’d be interested in a community process to help choose.)


I’ve worked with the WMF per the board’s instructions on getting 
approval on all the marketing materials to make sure that it’s clear 
that this is a personal project of mine and not a WMF thing at all.  I 
believe the WMF will also post about that.


**What about the environmental costs of creating an NFT?**

Ethereum is moving from 'Proof of Work' to 'Proof of Stake', which 
requires a lot less energy per NFT - I’m happy to see that and hope it 
happens soon.


In the meantime, I’ve looked for the highest estimate of the amount of 
electricity consumed to mint an NFT.  I’ve found an estimate that the 
average NFT minting consumes 340kWh.  For scale, my friend has a Tesla 
Model X, and 340kWh would charge it about 3 ½ times.  This is roughly 
81.6 kg of CO2.  For further comparison an economy-class ticket to NYC 
from London generates about 1800 kilograms of CO2. (Citation needed, and 
very happy for anyone with expertise to help me improve these calculations.)


While I generally think it is better not to generate emissions than to 
generate and offset, I also think that generating withOUT offsetting is 
much worse.  So I’ll be finding the most pessimistic estimate of the CO2 
that I’ve generated and offset it by 5x.


** What is the estimate for the auction? **

Christie’s was unable to offer any public estimate for either the 
computer or the NFT.  I can sincerely say that I have absolutely no idea 
what to expect.  Given the current state of the NFT market, I’m very 
hopeful that some crypto whale will find this irresistible, who knows 
though?


I’ll be around for the next 8 hours or so to answer any questions but to 
keep it all centralized, let’s keep it on my English wikipedia talk 
page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales 

[Wikimedia-l] Invitation to Wikimedia Research December Office Hours

[Emily Lescak]

Hi all,


Join the Research Team at the Wikimedia Foundation [1] for their monthly
Office hours this Wednesday, 2021-12-08 at 00:00-1:00 UTC (16:00 PT 12-07 /
19:00 ET 12-07 / 1:00 CET 12-08). Find your local date and time here
. Please note the time change!
We are experimenting with our Office hours schedules to make our sessions
more globally welcoming.

To participate, join the video-call via this link [2]. There is no set
agenda - feel free to add your item to the list of topics in the etherpad
[3]. You are welcome to add questions / items to the etherpad in advance,
or when you arrive at the session. Even if you are unable to attend, you
can leave a question that we can address asynchronously. If you do not have
a specific agenda item, you are welcome to hang out and enjoy the
conversation. More detailed information (e.g. about how to attend) can be
found here [4].

Through these office hours, we aim to make ourselves more available to
answer research related questions that you as Wikimedia volunteer editors,
organizers, affiliates, staff, and researchers face in your projects and
initiatives. Here are some example cases we hope to be able to support you
with:

   -

   You have a specific research related question that you suspect you
   should be able to answer with the publicly available data and you don’t
   know how to find an answer for it, or you just need some more help with it.
   For example, how can I compute the ratio of anonymous to registered editors
   in my wiki?
   -

   You run into repetitive or very manual work as part of your Wikimedia
   contributions and you wish to find out if there are ways to use machines to
   improve your workflows. These types of conversations can sometimes be
   harder to find an answer for during an office hour. However, discussing
   them can help us understand your challenges better and we may find ways to
   work with each other to support you in addressing it in the future.
   -

   You want to learn what the Research team at the Wikimedia Foundation
   does and how we can potentially support you. Specifically for affiliates:
   if you are interested in building relationships with the academic
   institutions in your country, we would love to talk with you and learn
   more. We have a series of programs that aim to expand the network of
   Wikimedia researchers globally and we would love to collaborate with those
   of you interested more closely in this space.
   -

   You want to talk with us about one of our existing programs [5].


This is also a good opportunity to learn more about the Research Fund [6]!

Hope to see many of you,
Emily on behalf of the WMF Research Team

[1] https://research.wikimedia.org

[2] https://meet.jit.si/WMF-Research-Office-Hours

[3] https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Research-Analytics-Office-hours

[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Office_hours

[5] https://research.wikimedia.org/projects.html

[6]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Programs/Wikimedia_Research_%26_Technology_Fund

-- 
Emily Lescak (she / her)
Senior Research Community Officer
The Wikimedia Foundation
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