Re: [Wikimedia-l] Rethink of observability (Mingli Yuan)

[ENWP Pine]

This is an interesting topic about RecentChanges and its many uses and 
variants. I'm copying Analytics, EE and Research lists because I hope that some 
of our colleagues from these lists will hop over to Wikimedia-l to participate 
in this discussion. [a] 

In particular I would call my colleagues' attention to this section of Mingli's 
email:

"Content is only one aspect to observe, people are another:


* Who are the experts on some topics?

* Who are my buddies on some articles?

* Who did help me to improve an article originally I wrote?


In all, we may reshape our technical infrastructure in this direction for
new spaces of participation. 

And finally, one open question for the system
designer:


* Towards better content and community, what is the most important things
we want our user to observe?"

I'll just note here some observability work on user contributions that has been 
done or is in progress.

1. User Analysis Tool [b], similar to the legacy tool by User:X!. Be sure to 
look at the "Future plans" tab.

2. Listen to Wikipedia [c] visualization tool of recent changes, mostly for 
aesthetics but there may be ways to adapt some of the ideas or code used here 
for other interesting purposes.

2. Snuggle [d] which is a tool that helps to identify good-faith and bad-faith 
new editors. 

4. Finding a Collaborator [e] is a current research project, also see [f] a 
visualization example. As part of this work the researchers seem to have 
formulated a way of quantifying an editor's impact, although I haven't seen the 
formula yet. As you probably know the quality of edits and editors is a topic 
that gets discussed repeatedly.

5. WikiStats [g] which provides high-level statistics about Wikimedia projects.

6. WikiMetrics [h] cohort analysis, has a lot of potential for expanding its 
tool set.

7. For code and related technical contributions see [i].

8. There are a variety of tools next to users' requests at English Wikipedia's 
Requests for Permissions page [j] such as WikiChecker [k] and automated edits 
logs [l].

This is a good discussion and I would be happy to have an office hour meeting 
for live chat.

Pine

[a] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-June/072507.html
[b] https://tools.wmflabs.org/supercount/index.php 
[c] http://listen.hatnote.com/
[d] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Snuggle
[e] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Finding_a_Collaborator
[f] https://depts.washington.edu/reflex/
[g] https://stats.wikimedia.org
[h] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimetrics
[i] http://korma.wmflabs.org/browser/
[j] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_permissions
[k] http://en.wikichecker.com/user/?t=Jimbo%20Wales
[l] 
https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools/autoedits/index.php?user=Jimbo%20Wales&lang=en&wiki=wikipedia&begin=&end=



  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] VisualEditor on English Wikipedia

[ENWP Pine]

GerardM,

Yes, if Asaf or someone else wanted to have a low-frequency discussion about VE 
on Hebrew Wikipedia or some other wiki on this list I think that would be ok 
too. IMO this is a high-traffic general-purpose list, but Asaf is right that 
taking discussions to a more specific place is appreciated by others who may 
not want to get 50 emails about a local issue.

Let's continue discussion about VE on English Wikipedia on the pages I 
suggested.

Thanks,

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] VisualEditor on English Wikipedia

[ENWP Pine]

Asaf, I agree in some ways. ENWP's email list is a backwater though, and since 
the discussion that got me thinking about this issue started on this list it 
made sense to me to keep it on this list. Also, other wikis' experiences with 
VE are relevant. My personal experience with VE has most recently been on Meta. 
Also, you may remember that I suggested that a recent and much more intensive 
discussion about Commons would have been better elsewhere than this list, but a 
lot of it stayed here. The volume of this conversation about VE is pretty low. 
There should be a single standard on this list, not separate standards for 
Commons and ENWP.

However, I agree that we don't need to keep this conversation here. Risker and 
anyone else who's interested, please continue on my ENWP talk page or start a 
thread somewhere like VP-T.

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] VisualEditor on English Wikipedia

[ENWP Pine]

I think having a two part RfC with the first part discussing the minimum 
conditions the community would like VE to meet before having a discussion about 
more widely enabling VE in the second portion of the RfC makes sense. This 
raises the possibility that as VE becomes more and more functional that the 
community will incrementally approve of wider default use over time and 
different presentations of VE to editors.

There are a lot of options for how extensively VE could be enabled and how it 
can be presented to users with the community's consent, which we can discuss in 
the second portion of the RfC. I have a draft for that portion off-wiki that I 
will tweak depending on how the first portion looks before I put it on-wiki for 
other editors to review.

Risker, would you like to set up the first portion of this, if this arrangement 
sounds good to you?

Pine
  
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[Wikimedia-l] VisualEditor on English Wikipedia

[ENWP Pine]

Because VE has repeatedly been mentioned in this list as something that is 
improving and may help us with acquisition of editors and their knowledge, I 
have started to draft an RfC about re-enabling VE on English Wikipedia. 

I am not proposing any specific outcome in the RfC. My goal is to set up a 
framework which the community can use to decide which of several paths we would 
like to take.

This is not my personal RfC, I just happen to think that with recent 
discussions trending positively about VE's improvement over the past several 
months and with the comments in this list about its possible value to acquiring 
new editors, I'm willing to put in some time to draft a framework for a 
discussion on-wiki. I am providing this note to let the community know that 
someone (me) is drafting a framework for on-wiki discussion. If someone else 
wants to start an RfC before I get around to starting one, that's completely ok.

Cheers,

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The Signpost is (sort of) published

[ENWP Pine]

Hi Andy,

The password isn't a single point of failure in the sense that Jarry and Ed 
both had the password and either of them might have become available to publish 
hours or days later, but I felt the Signpost was already late, we had enough 
material to publish, and waiting another week would mean we would lose the work 
that had gone into the Traffic Report and we would need to reformat the 
Featured Content Report to add another week's worth of material. This is the 
first time I have felt confident enough to make a decision to publish in Ed's 
absence with Tony's agreement, so this is the first time I have needed the 
password.

Tony and I now have the password. I hope that future publications are normal 
even if Ed is absent.

Thanks for your interest in the Signpost. Do you have any other questions?

Pete, thanks for your comments. It is good to feel that the Signpost's 
all-volunteer staff is appreciated.

Pine
  
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[Wikimedia-l] The Signpost is (sort of) published

[ENWP Pine]

Hi all,

Our usual Signpost publisher and Editor-in-Chief, The_ed17, has very limited 
internet access. Tony and I have finished content for the May 28th Signpost but 
we can't work out the technical details of the publication process. We need a 
password for the automated publishing process that we don't have, and we're 
trying to get it. I have been working through some of the (complicated and 
poorly documented) Signpost templates and LivingBot for manual publication but 
there are still parts that I can't work out. Thanks for your patience until we 
normalize our publication process. 

If you go to [1] you will see that the banner says May 21st but we have updated 
content for the week of May 28th. Please enjoy the content, and apologies again 
for the delays and technical difficulties.

Pine

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost 

  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation

[ENWP Pine]

> Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2014 06:39:38 +0100
> From: Fæ 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first
>   three   weeks]
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> On 1 June 2014 04:26, James Salsman  wrote:
> ...
> >>... selects strongly against women.
> >
> > Where is the evidence that women have more difficulty understanding
> > wikitext than men?
> 
> (Probably drifting to "Increase participation by women")
> 
> As someone who has run editathons on women focused topics, I found
> this an odd comment that does not match anecdotal experience. New
> women users seem little different to men in the issues that arise, and
> though I have found myself apologising for the slightly odd syntax,
> given the standard crib-sheet most users get on with basic article
> creation quite happily.
> 
> There are far more commonly raised issues such as the complex issues
> associated with image upload (copyright!), or the conceptual
> difficulty of "namespaces" which mean that some webpages behave
> differently to others. None is something that appears to "select
> strongly against women", though the encyclopedia's way of defining
> notability can make it harder to create articles about pre-1970s
> professional women, purely because sources from earlier periods tend
> to be biased towards men.
> 
> If there are surveys that wiki-syntax is more of a barrier for women
> than men (after discounting out other factors), perhaps someone could
> provide a link?
> 
> Fae

FWIW, I think that Lila said at the Zurich hackathon that she had found 
research indicating that fewer women click the "edit" button than men do. That 
sounds like a phenomenon that could use some research and experimentation. 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2014-05-10_Wikimedia_Hackathon_Lila_Tretikov.webm


Also, the Individual Engagement Grants Committee and WMF have funded a research 
project in this IEG round focused on women's participation. 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Women_and_Wikipedia

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Ukraine's anniversary

[ENWP Pine]

Congratulations Wikimedia Ukraine on these milestones.
500,000 articles, 10 years as a language wiki, and 5 years
as an organization are great reasons to celebrate.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Feuerwerk_Dreiländerbrücke.jpg



Pine


> Date: Sat, 31 May 2014 21:13:16 +0200
> From: Richard Ames 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Ukraine's anniversary
> Message-ID: <538a29cc.7030...@ames.id.au>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
> 
> 
> 
> - оригінальне повідомлення -
> Тема: Wikimedia Ukraine's anniversary
> Від кого: Levon Azizian 
> Кому: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Копія: Правління Вікімедіа Україна 
> Відправлено: 31.05.2014 18:40,
> 
> Today, our organization celebrates anniversary - 5 years from the date
> of creation.
> 
> Exactly 5 years ago, on May 31, 2009, in Kyiv was held the constituent
> meeting, which approved the bylaws and elected its first Board of the new
> organization, known as Wikimedia Ukraine.
> 
> Our community has gone through a long and difficult path. Birthday of
> Wikimedia Ukraine for our community is the third remarkable date this
> year. On January 30 was the 10th anniversary of the establishment of
> Ukrainian Wikipedia and on May 12 Ukrainian Wikipedia has crossed the
> threshold of 500 000 articles.
> 
> We want to thank to Wikimedia Foundation Inc. for their help, to our
> neighboring communities for fruitful cooperation with us and of course
> to our community for their contributions!
> 
> Regards, Levon Azizian
> Deputy chair
> Wikimedia Ukraine
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> The greatest collection of shared knowledge in history. Help Wikipedia, 
> participate now: http://wikimedia.org/
> 
  
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[Wikimedia-l] FW: Edit #1 and Challenge #1 - user privacy

[ENWP Pine]

I was contacted off-list about this situation by someone who wants to remain 
anonymous but has given me permission to forward their input to the list. I am 
not a copyright expert and this isn't professional legal advice. It would be 
interesting to hear what WMF Legal thinks about republishing emails, both from 
the privacy angle and the copyright angle.

Thanks,

Pine



Pine, why not just suggest she invite respondents to adopt a free license, 
instead of reinventing the wheel? Like..."I'd like to have the right to 
republish these stories, but it's up to the respondents. If you're willing, 
please explicitly state that you release these under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license; 
or, if you'd rather not be identified, under the CC-0 license."


We have these tools for a reason :)   
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Edit #1 and Challenge #1 - user privacy

[ENWP Pine]

Hi Nathan, what you're describing is an opt-out practice. I believe that the
practice should be opt-in.

Take this with a grain of salt. I participate in some grantmaking and 
administrative
groups and I err on the side of privacy, but I'm fairly confident that the 
Privacy
Policy applies in this case and that the practice should be opt-in for 
republication,
even if not explicitly required by policy, because it's the more conservative 
and 
more courteous approach. In general this community is conservative about
privacy issues, although we are also interested in transparency, which makes
for an interesting mix of priorities.

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Edit #1 and Challenge #1 - user privacy

[ENWP Pine]

Hi Lila,

My read of the *new* Privacy Policy is that nonpublic emails sent 
to WMF should remain nonpublic unless the user gives consent to the 
contrary. The policy states that "We may share your information for a 
particular purpose, if you agree." Otherwise emails are considered 
personal information and their redistribution is restricted. See
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy#share-to-experiment
and 
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy#Access_to_and_release_of_personally_identifiable_information

So, please do not take the view that "Otherwise, we will consider them 
public" if you do not hear back from someone who has contacted you.

The general practice in the community is that emails are considered private
by default.

"Private" doesn't mean absolutely private, for example it's common for
members of certain committees to circulate emails among themselves,
but those emails don't usually get forwarded outside of the group or 
republished without opt-in permission from the sender. Similarly, WMF
may circulate emails internally.

User privacy is a big deal in this community. Perhaps you know more
about the Privacy Policy than I do, but my understanding is that your
announced plans are inconsistent with the current and draft policies. 
Fortunately, that is easy to fix in this situation.

I am glad you have taken an interest in the experiences of new editors. (:

Pine



Date: Thu, 29 May 2014 11:22:21 -0800
From: Lila Tretikov 
To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Edit #1 and Challenge #1
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
 
All,
 
It'd be wonderful to be able to share these stories publicly in the future.
I'm going to reach out to those who have already shared their experiences
with me to confirm they're comfortable with sharing. If you're not
comfortable with sharing your story, or want to withhold your name, please
let me know in your email. Otherwise, we will consider them public, so we
can build on your experiences and share them widely!
 
Thank you!
Lila  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] 2015 strategic plan

[ENWP Pine]

Thanks Phoebe.

Pine

  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A personal note

[ENWP Pine]

Thank you for the explanations, Lila, Molly, and everyone else.

Wil, I happen to be waiting on an email right now so I have a few minutes to 
spare. If you need clarification on anything that has been said in this 
discussion I am happy to meet you on IRC or have a Skype conversation. I would 
suggest that this thread is consuming a lot of bandwidth in this email list and 
we should move the discussion elsewhere. We can also talk on your talk page, 
although I think your more conversational style is better suited to IRC or 
Skype.

Cheers,

Pine
  
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[Wikimedia-l] 2015 strategic plan

[ENWP Pine]

Hi, can someone with knowledge of WMF's thinking expand on this statement from 
Lila?

"Starting the process for our next strategic planning exercise, which will be 
different from last time, and focused on improving our ability to react quickly 
and adjust as necessary to opportunities and challenges."

Is this implying that the entire strategic plan will focus on agility, or that 
agility will be a priority in the next strategic plan? 

Also, how was this decision reached?

Thanks,

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Participating on Wikipediocracy

[ENWP Pine]

I will say, in Lila's defense, that I've been impressed with what I've seen of 
her in public. (:

However, Wil, I agree with points others have made. I'm concerned that you're 
going to create drama with what you're doing here, and make Lila's and WMF's 
jobs more complicated. I am assuming good faith that you are well-intentioned, 
but I am worried, not so much for your sake but for the community's, Lila's, 
and WMF's. 

I would like to show you some options for places where the style of 
conversation you are using would be a better fit, where you can ask questions 
and have discussions, and which are less politically sensitive than this list 
is. Of course you are welcome on this list if you have cross-wiki suggestions 
or can't get questions answered elsewhere, and I respect your right to free 
speech, but I would ask you to consider these suggestions.

On English Wikipedia, you will find friendly and helpful people at our 
Teahouse. [1] For questions and realtime help you can also visit 
#wikipedia-en-help on Freenode IRC.

If you want to get to know Wikipedians, I suggest that you join local volunteer 
meetups such Wiknic if there is one in your area. In those circumstances most 
people are happy to socialize. [2] If you are able to attend WikiConference USA 
in New York, I think you would enjoy it. [3]

If you want to have electronic conversations that are more chatty and less 
formal than the discussions on this list, I suggest IRC. #wikipedia-en is a 
high profile channel and many of the questions that you asked here could be 
discussed in there. And as I said above, for realtime help you can visit 
#wikipedia-en-help. However, I ask as a personal favor that you don't have 
conversations in #wikimedia-office which is the main WMF channel. I can't stop 
you from talking there any more than I can take away your free speech rights, 
but I think any communications in there from you would create more 
complications. 

I feel it's ok for you or any Wikipedian in good standing to talk on WO if they 
want, but engaging in semi-official diplomacy is a very different matter, if 
that's what you're doing (I haven't checked your edits and I don't want to). 
There may come a time when you have the community's trust and can act in
 high-profile ways with the support of the community, but at the moment the 
discussion on this email list tells me that your actions are creating 
complications to the start of Lila's tenure in ways that have me worried. To 
use an analogy, imagine Michelle Obama saying in public that her personal 
opinion is that Barack Obama should have diplomatic talks with  or revoke , or that she personally 
has been conducting outreach to  without going 
through the State Department. That would create complications for Barack Obama 
and lots of other people, even though Michelle has a right to communicate her 
views.

I am available to answer questions if you have any for me. You can ask on my 
Meta talk page, on my English Wikipedia talk page, through email, or set up a 
time to meet me on IRC or Skype. I'm sure other participants in this discussion 
would also be willing to talk with you in places other than this list. 

If I have misunderstood your position please correct me. I appreciate your 
interest in Wikipedia and I hope you will be a net positive to the community. 
(: 

Pine

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wicnik
[3] http://wikiconferenceusa.org/wiki/Main_Page

  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Bad usage of money in Brazil

[ENWP Pine]

Hi Rodrigo,

Thank you for these questions. There have been questions about the India
program as well, so these questions about Brazil can be added to the list of 
issues for WMF to investigate.

I am not personally familiar with either of the Brazil or India catalyst 
programs,
but I suggest that you contact Asaf or Anasuya if you don't get a response
on this list or on the discussion page within two days.

Thank you again for bringing up these questions.

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Timothy Sandole and (apparently) $53, 690 of WMF funding

[ENWP Pine]

I'm giving this thread a poke because we're still waiting for answers to 
questions. The most recent email was from Srikanth on May 7. 

Pine
  
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[Wikimedia-l] Leadership, Wikimedia-style

[ENWP Pine]

Hi all,

I've heard the word "leadership" used a lot in WMF, synonymously with 
"management" in my experience. That makes sense in a somewhat hierarchical 
organization like WMF, although this model has received some criticism from the 
community for allegedly excessive top-down thinking. I'm not familiar enough 
with the culture in the WMF Office to comment about its strengths and 
weaknesses, but I would like to ask questions about leadership in the community.

In the community, which is diffuse and where roles are highly flexible, there 
have been some studies done done about leadership but the ones I know about 
usually focus on hierarchies within the community, especially how people get 
chosen for administrator roles on-wiki. As we are thinking about our online 
culture, we can be thinking about movement leadership. Who are the leaders, how 
are they trained, how are they selected, what do they do, what makes them 
effective, and how can they be given ongoing support and training? I think many 
of us would agree that adminship and leadership are not always synonymous, and 
there are many ways that people exercise leadership in non-hierarchical ways. 

I hear frequently about stress from members of English Wikipedia's Arbcom, and 
I hope WMF is thinking about how to train and support people who get chosen for 
such visible, important, and often stressful volunteer roles.

I would also like to point out that Wikimedia is developing training materials 
for leaders of chapters and programs.

Is there anyone at WMF who is taking a holistic view of community leadership 
and how to understand, train and support it in ways that support the strategic 
plan goals?

Training that might be relevant could include how to create friendly spaces 
online, 
resolve online conflicts, engage in cross-cultural communication, encourage 
strategic thinking, influence change, and maintain morale. I think a series of 
five-minute training modules could be helpful for online and offline 
volunteers, along with dedicating some Program & Evaluation or Research time to 
understanding leadership in the non-hierarchical community. These initiatives 
could help with encouraging teamwork and collaboration online by influencing 
and training "leaders".

I would also be interested in hearing about how WMF thinks about "leadership" 
internally, since there seems to be some community feeling that WMF's thinking 
about leadership is incompatible with the community's. I don't have an opinion 
but I would like to be more informed, and hopefully encourage WMF to think 
about how the organization as a whole interacts with the community. 

Thanks,

Pine


  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] How to Criticize with Kindness

[ENWP Pine]

Have a look at 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Learning_patterns/Safe_space_policy

Making our *online* culture be friendly has turned out to be a big challenge. 
We have lots of due process and vague definitions for civility, so pushing out 
bad actors and keeping good citizens feeling somewhat protected from personal 
attacks can be surprisingly difficult. Not surprisingly, good people leave.

Pine
  
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[Wikimedia-l] Defining "impact" for Wikimedia programs, grants and evaluation

[ENWP Pine]

Hi, I spent a few minutes searching on Meta for how "impact" is defined. What 
is the WMF definition?

Some examples of places where "impact" is used:
* https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/Impact_report_form
* https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Impact_report_form_Q%26A
* https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Learning/Round_1_2013/Impact
* 
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/05/02/beginning-understand-what-works-measuring-impact-programs/
* 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Program_evaluation_basics:_efficiency,_effectiveness_and_impact

I am not fond of the Boulmetis / Dutwin definition used in that last reference 
because short-term effects can be important and much easier to measure than 
long-term effects. For example, an administrator protecting a page can have the 
short-term effect of preventing editing and preventing an edit war, and the 
long term effects of that can be impossible to know, such as whether preventing 
an edit war prevented the situation from escalating to an Arbcom case with 
imposition of long-term blocks, and also whether preventing editing prevented 
important information from being added to the page by an occasional IP editor. 

I might suggest a rewrite of that entire page on "program evaluation basics" to 
make it simple. Right now it's a wall of text that's difficult to follow and, I 
feel, at least partly wrong. I think that Edward Galvez is working on some of 
these issues and I would be happy to have him or someone else in Evaluation 
thoughtfully redesign and rewrite that page to make it easy to follow for 
everyone including non-native English speakers. If I have a hard time with that 
page, you can imagine how difficult it is for someone who only understands 
English at an intermediate level. I would like to start with having a clear and 
simple definition of "impact" that makes sense in Wikimedia contexts, and some 
examples that are easy to follow.

Thanks,

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons' frontpage probably shouldn't prominently feature a decontextualised stack of corpses.‏

[ENWP Pine]

Hi Kevin, 

I am ok with this list being notified that a discussion is
happening on Commons that is relevant to multiple wikis, and 
am ok with asking people from this list to contribute to the 
discussion on Commons. 

I am hoping that we can keep the discussion to a single 
location, and I described some ways to encourage that
consolidation in my first post on this topic.

You are right that there have been a number of times in the past
when discussion relevant to a single wiki has moved or forked
onto this list. I still think the best practice is to consolidate
the discussion in a single place. Notifications about the discussion
and requests for more participation can be made far and wide if 
that seems proportionate to the nature of the issue being 
discussed.

I described what I feel are best practices, but I respect that
you feel differently and I respect your good intentions for
the projects.

Pine






  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons' frontpage probably shouldn't prominently feature a decontextualised stack of corpses.

[ENWP Pine]

Hi Keegan,

I looked for equivalent Meta policies before posting the links to English 
Wikipedia. 

Canvassing is referenced on Meta and Commons although there is no page on Meta 
or Commons specifically describing a canvassing policy that I see. Perhaps 
there should be, since both wikis seem to have an unwritten rule against 
canvassing.

I believe I was clear that the RfC guidelines and the Drama essay are from 
English Wikipedia but I think they are the best practice to follow here, and 
that this is my opinion only.

I agree that posting a notification to this list was appropriate, but not with 
forking or moving the discussion to here.

Pine  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons' frontpage probably shouldn't prominently feature a decontextualised stack of corpses.

[ENWP Pine]

I apologize for that formatting mess. Emails that look beautiful in my Hotmail 
editing window get mangled when I send them to lists, and this seems to happen 
on a regular basis. I'll try sending this again.

--


Hi Kevin,
 
My comment here expresses my personal opinion only.
 
I understand how bringing this issue to Wikimedia-l could seem appropriate 
because Commons is a project that has an unusual degree of cross-wiki influence 
and activity. While it's ok to notify Wikimedia-l that this issue is being 
discussed, the main body of the discussion should stay on-wiki on Commons [1]. 
Per the essay about wikidrama on English Wikipedia [2] and the "Principle of 
Least Drama", it is best not to make "the same point in multiple places", as 
split discussions are often more difficult to follow and spread the drama to 
more places. Also, when placing notices of discussions from other wikis to this 
list, I think it is best to follow the detailed guidelines for Requests for 
Comment from English Wikipedia [3] which ask users to write "a brief, neutral 
statement of the issue". In general, cross-wiki and cross-list *advocacy* (not 
mere notification) from anywhere else to this mailing list could be considered 
canvassing [4]. I think you were well-intentioned in posting a notice to this 
list but I would ask you to do it a bit differently in the future. 
 
Thank you for raising the issue for discussion. I think you have good points, 
and you should make them on Commons, where it appears that other Commons 
contributors agree with you that this situation could have been handled 
differently [1].
 
Pine
 
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Dead_bodies.3F
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Drama
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Canvassing
                   
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons' frontpage probably shouldn't prominently feature a decontextualised stack of corpses.

[ENWP Pine]

Hi Kevin,

My comment here expresses my personal opinion only.

I
 understand how bringing this issue to Wikimedia-l could seem appropriate 
because Commons is a project that has an unusual degree
 of cross-wiki influence and activity. While it's ok to
notify Wikimedia-l that this issue is being discussed, 
the main body of the discussion should stay on-wiki on Commons [1]. Per 
the essay about wikidrama on English Wikipedia [2] and the "Principle of Least 
Drama", it is best not to make "the same point in multiple
 places", as split discussions are often more difficult to follow and
 spread the drama to more places. Also, when placing notices of 
discussions from other wikis to this list, I think it is best to follow 
the detailed guidelines for Requests for Comment from English Wikipedia 
[3] which ask users to write "a brief, neutral statement of the issue". In 
general, cross-wiki and cross-list *advocacy* (not mere notification) from 
anywhere else to this mailing list
could be considered 
canvassing [4]. I think you were well-intentioned in posting a notice to this 
list
 but I would ask you to do it a bit differently in the future. 

Thank you for raising the issue for discussion. I think you have good points, 
and you should make them on Commons, where it appears that other Commons 
contributors agree with you that this situation could have been handled 
differently [1].

Pine

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Dead_bodies.3F
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Drama
[3]
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Canvassing
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thank you

[ENWP Pine]

> Date: Fri, 2 May 2014 07:57:15 -0300
> From: Everton Zanella Alvarenga 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thank you!
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> 2014-05-02 4:56 GMT-03:00 David Cuenca :
> 
>> On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 2:39 AM, Lila Tretikov  wrote:
>>
>>> I've been warned that joining the Wikimedia movement
>>> is a bit like drinking from a firehose, and so I'd consider myself, right
>>> now, to be excited, curious, optimistic, and just a tiny little bit
>>> daunted.
>>>
>>
>> Actually it is more like this :-)
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=316AzLYfAzw
>>
>>
> This video should be at WMF job positions page!
> 
> Welcome, Lila!
> 
> I wish you lots of patience. An old message I sent here I recommend:
> https://www.mail-archive.com/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/msg05071.html
> 
> Warm regards from Brazil.
> 
> Do vstrechi,
> 
> Tom
> 


David, thank you. That video is right on target. I can't decide if I should 
laugh or sigh.

Tom, that's an intriguing idea, and it's good to hear from you.

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thank you!

[ENWP Pine]

Thank you for joining us and for your message, Lila. Many of us have great hope 
for you and your work with us.

Pine


> Date: Thu, 1 May 2014 17:39:42 -0700
> From: Lila Tretikov 
> To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Thank you!
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> 
> I want to thank you all for the best wishes you've expressed since the
> announcement. I am very excited to be joining you as the new Executive
> Director of the Wikimedia Foundation.
> 
> 
> Let me tell you why I'm joining.
> 
> 
> Like everyone, I've been a Wikipedia reader for years. I use it to get
> background on events in the news, to look up quick facts and satisfy my
> curiosity, and to better understand the world around me, every day.  My
> nine year old son, like many children around him, has grown up with
> Wikipedia as his native resource for knowledge. It is incredible.
> 
> 
> But I also realize that as an educated person living in a rich part of the
> world, I have access to a wide range of information resources. That's not
> true for everyone. For people who are less economically fortunate, or who
> live in parts of the world where access to information is heavily
> constrained, Wikipedia is even more critical. It is an utterly unique
> resource that opens possibilities for more equitable and open world.
> 
> 
> That's why I want to work for the Wikimedia Foundation: to help grow the
> availability of free, unbiased information for everyone around the world,
> in their own language, unimpeded by censorship or other forms of
> interference. It's a colossal mission and I am glad and humbled to be
> playing a leadership role in helping to achieve it.
> 
> 
> I’m excited to bring my passion for building products that people love and
> growing innovative, high-performing organizations to the Foundation. In
> getting oriented I’ve done lots and lots of reading, and had some wonderful
> conversations with Board members, Sue, and the C-level team. I met a lot of
> staff today at the Metrics Meeting, and I'm hoping to meet them all before
> the end of this month. I've been warned that joining the Wikimedia movement
> is a bit like drinking from a firehose, and so I'd consider myself, right
> now, to be excited, curious, optimistic, and just a tiny little bit daunted.
> 
> 
> Thank you again for personally welcoming me to your incredible world. I
> have been lucky to have had great opportunities to join with amazing people
> on big quests. This is the largest quest and I am thrilled to be on it with
> all of you. I want to extend my gratitude to Sue for the incredible work
> she has done and all the time she has committed to help bring me on-board.
> To all of you for your warm welcome. And my deepest thanks to the Wikimedia
> Foundation Board of Trustees for giving me this extraordinary opportunity.
> 
> 
> Truly yours,
> 
> Lila
> 
> 


  
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[Wikimedia-l] Timothy Sandole and (apparently) $53, 690 of WMF funding

[ENWP Pine]

I agree with the general idea of some of the questions being raised a few 
emails above this, but can we please keep the Sandole discussion to a single 
thread if possible?

I'll restate the issue by Russavia in a different way, and I would like to 
direct this question to WMF instead of the chapters. 

Will the Foundation prohibit chapters and other thematic organizations from the 
"creation of paid roles that have article writing as a core focus,
regardless of who is initiating or managing the process" as a condition of 
receiving WMF funding and using the WMF trademarks?

I think carefully managed article writing can be done successfully by chapters 
and other organizations, for example if a Wikimedia DC wanted to sponsor a 
Wikipedian in Residence at the National Institutes of Health to improve 
articles about cancer. The responsibility for training and supervision could 
rest with the chapter and the host organization, and the edits could be tagged 
for community review. 

Pete posted some good ideas for WiRs in general in the Signpost last week: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-04-23/Op-ed.

The situation with Belfer had a lot of problems, but I don't think it should 
completely stop us from having Wikimedia-sponsored WiRs add content. That would 
be a bridge too far.

Regards,

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Assessing this round of FDC proposals, including the WMF's proposal

[ENWP Pine]

In case anyone is interested in the content of the draft Annual Plan, there is 
plenty of discussion on the talk page and any editor in good standing can 
participate. The principal commentators on the talk page so far have been Nemo 
and I. Regardless of which organization does the staff assessment I think the 
discussion on the talk page is valuable and I encourage more people to review 
the plan and make comments. It would be good to have more diversity. If anyone 
has concerns about the plan's content, now is the time to say so. (: We're 
having a good discussion, please join us. 

I'm glad WMF made the draft available for comment from the community, FDC, and 
other Wikimedia organizations.

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Report, February 2014

[ENWP Pine]

Thanks Tilman. I asked a question on the Annual Plan talk page that's relevant 
here as well,
and anyone who knows the answer can respond, especially while Anasuya is busy. 
Can 
someone explain the difference between the functions of the L&E and PED groups, 
and is 
there a plan to integrate them?

Thanks,

Pine


> 
> === Grantmaking Learning and Evaluation, and Program Evaluation & Design ===
> 
> /(The Program Evaluation and Design group, formerly situated in the
> Programs department, became part of the Grantmaking department in
> February, see announcement Q&A
> )/
> 
>   * Concluded the alpha *test of Fluxx , the
> grantmaking software*, and worked collaboratively with Fluxx labs to
> fix the reported bugs and enhance the user experience based on the
> current workflow of WMF grants programs.
>   * Started a community discussion on ArWp to set up *a new micro-grants
> program pilot
> 
> *
> that
> would directly support the needs of individual contributors via
> microgrants from the Wikimedia Foundation for access to sources.
>   * Prepared development work on *Wikimetrics* (with Analytics), with a
> contract starting 3/3/2014.
>   * In partnership with IEG, set up three Grantmaking portals (IEG,
> IdeaLab, and Grants:Start) for *translation*. Developed best
> practices and a workflow for separating translatable content from
> template structure and style in grantmaking portals (see
> Translatable Content Template
> ).
>   * In partnership with IEG, began to draft *IdeaLab sprint planning
> 
> *.
> Focusing
> on technical requirements and impact evaluation criteria.
>   * Grants Programs:
>   o Annual Plan Grants: published *cost-benefit survey results
> 
> *
>   o Project & Event Grants: Launched work with consultancy "Inspire"
> to *map out the spending over time* and prepare potential framework
>   * Released revised and expanded *learning module for Wikimetrics
> 
> *
>   * Developed plans for pre-conference workshop sessions for *Wikimedia
> Conference 2014*
> 
>   * Hosted two evaluation and learning *virtual meet-ups*:
>   o The first presented by Jaime Anstee: "Program tracking and
> reporting toolkit" (February 13, At least 9 program leaders, 4
> GLEE, and 4 PE&D team members attended live; current youtube
> view count: 24) View the toolkit
> 
> 
> or the recording 
>   o The second presented by Jessie Wild and Siko Bouterse: "How to
> be a Star IEG Grantee" (February 19), attended by at least 7
> program leaders, 5 from GLEE, and 1 PE&D member (view count at
> 25) View the report
> 
> 
> or the recording
> 
> 
> 


>> Revenue for the month of January is $3.42MM versus plan of $0.01MM,
>> approximately $3.41MM or 58,335% over plan.
>> Year-to-date revenue is $38.17MM versus plan of $45.04MM, approximately
>>$6.87MM or 15% under plan.
>
>Can we please use the word "fiscal" if we don't mean calendar year?
>
>> Expenses for the month of January is $3.97MM versus plan of $4.53MM,
>> approximately $559K or 12% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel
>> expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, legal fees, grants and travel
>> expenses partially offset by higher outside contract services and payment
>> processing fees.
>> Year-to-date expenses is $22.75MM versus plan of $27.39MM, approximately
>> $4.64MM or 17% under plan,
>> Cash position is $54.67MM as of January 31, 2014.
>
>Imagine a world in which the Foundation wanted to make life easier for
>volunteers.
  
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[Wikimedia-l] The Economist: "Wikipeaks? The popular online encyclopedia must work out what is next"

[ENWP Pine]

Here's a recent article from The Economist. Some of the reader comments about 
the article were interesting, especially considering the population that is 
likely to be reading and commenting about an article in The Economist.

http://www.economist.com/news/international/21597959-popular-online-encyclopedia-must-work-out-what-next-wikipeaks

Pine
  
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[Wikimedia-l] "Because you don't hear it enough"

[ENWP Pine]

An editor wrote this on Jimbo's talk page. I hope you will appreciate this as 
much as I do.

"Because you don't hear it enough"

"I love it here. I love Wikipedia. It's got its problems - lots of them. It has 
its issues. It's not perfect. But that, in its way, is the point. It's not a 
complete encyclopedia, it's an encyclopedia that you, and I, and everyone else 
on the planet (and maybe people not on it) are welcome to edit, as long as 
we're trying to make it a better encyclopedia. It is flawed, but that is the 
essence of humanity's works. So I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart 
for making this magical, wonderful, flawed, human endeavor. - Jorgath (talk) 
(contribs) 19:24, 2 April 2014 (UTC)"

  
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[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Adrianne Wadewitz (User:Wadewitz)

[ENWP Pine]

Hi all,

As you may have heard, we recently lost Adrianne Wadewitz (User:Wadewitz) to a 
climbing accident.

Adrianne served on the board of the Wiki Education Foundation. She had a Ph.D. 
in English Literature and was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for 
Digital Learning and Research at Occidental College.

You can watch a video of her discussing Wikipedia at 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Impact_of_Wikipedia_Adrianne_Wadewitz.webm.
 You may recognize her from 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Impact_Of_Wikipedia.webm.

Relevant links are below. Condolences are being left on her talk page on 
English Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Wadewitz. Her 
partner has posted on her talk page that memorial services will be held Monday, 
April 14 in Los Angeles and Saturday, April 26 in Indiana.

Pine

* https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikimedian_activist_Adrianne_Wadewitz_dies
* 
http://www.hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/2014/04/10/remembering-adrianne-wadewitz-scholar-communicator-teacher-leader
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wadewitz

  

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Feedback on the last 2 years

[ENWP Pine]

Hi Christophe, 

Thank you for these interesting emails. I'm cc'ing Anasuya on this 
discussion with the hope that what you've learned can be disseminated
to other Wikimedia affiliates, especially new or aspiring chapters.

Is the decision matrix that you use for your programs available in English? I
would like to have a copy of it on Meta along with these emails.

I am interested in this subject partly because of the discussion about WMF's
Annual Plan and partly because there are occasional discussions about
forming a new thematic organization or chapter in my region.

Thanks,

Pine
  
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[Wikimedia-l] Strategic goals of Wikimania

[ENWP Pine]

Have there been any discussions of the link between the purposes that Wikimania 
serves and the Strategic Plan?

I'm interested in thinking about what kinds of resources are appropriate for 
Wikimania especially regarding attendance for grants committee members. To make 
the case for significant committee attendance I think I need to know what the 
strategic purposes of Wikimania are. (:

Thanks,

Pine
  
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[Wikimedia-l] OpenSSL vulnerability

[ENWP Pine]

I'm cross-posting this email from Wikitech-l from Greg Grossmeier. I think wide 
distribution is appropriate especially for contributors who may use vulnerable 
off-wiki communication tools with their Wikimedia password or for Wikimedia 
activity.

--
Yesterday a widespread issue in OpenSSL was disclosed that would allow
attackers to gain access to privileged information on any site running a
vulnerable version of that software. Unfortunately, all Wikimedia
Foundation hosted wikis are potentially affected. 

We have no evidence of any actual compromise to our systems or our users
information, but as a precautionary measure we are resetting all user
session tokens. In other words, we will be forcing all logged in users
to re-login (ie: we are logging everyone out).

All logged in users send a secret session token with each request to the
site and if a nefarious person were able to intercept that token they
could impersonate other users. Resetting the tokens for all users will
have the benefit of making all users reconnect to our servers using the
updated and fixed version of the OpenSSL software, thus removing this
potential attack. 

As an extra precaution, we recommend all users change their passwords as
well.


Again, there has been no evidence that Wikimedia Foundation users were
targeted by this attack, but we want all of our users to be as safe as
possible. 


Thank you for your understanding and patience, 

Greg Grossmeier


  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Timothy Sandole and (apparently) $53, 690

[ENWP Pine]

I'll discuss my original email to Arbcom more specifically. I asked them to 
check if Sandole had been using an undisclosed account for Harvard-related 
editing and if discussing that account on this list would have amounted to 
outing.

However, I no longer have a reason to think that Sandole was using that 
account, so I don't see a need for Arbcom involvement and neither does WTT. He 
has given me permission to say on this list that "it's not committee business 
and therefore we won't be commenting on the matter".

There are still unanswered questions but none that need to involve Arbcom at 
this time.

Pine

> Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2014 07:32:23 -0400
> From: Risker 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Timothy Sandole and (apparently) $53,  690
>   of WMF funding
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> I'm still a bit confused as to why you "reported" this to Arbcom (Wikipedia
> in residence programs, paid editing, and general review of accounts are all
> outside of their purview), or what  they're supposedly looking at.  This is
> a community and WMF issue, and I do not see anything at all for Arbcom to
> do here.  In fact, I'd be concerned if they're poking around on this when
> there are several matters well within their mandate that are not apparently
> being addressed.
> 
> Risker/Anne
> 
> 
> On 2 April 2014 03:07, ENWP Pine  wrote:
> 
> > Although much of my original email to Arbcom about this situation is
> > outdated, I can report that Arbcom is having a look at this situation. I
> > don't think there is any action needed on their part at the moment. I am
> > only relaying my personal views and not speaking on their behalf.
> >
> > While we wait for further answers and documentation about this issue, I
> > hope those who have some spare time will look at the proposed Annual Plan
> > for the next fiscal year. I am glad WMF is providing good opportunities for
> > community and public input.
> >
> > Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Timothy Sandole and (apparently) $53, 690 of WMF funding

[ENWP Pine]

Although much of my original email to Arbcom about this situation is outdated, 
I can report that Arbcom is having a look at this situation. I don't think 
there is any action needed on their part at the moment. I am only relaying my 
personal views and not speaking on their behalf.

While we wait for further answers and documentation about this issue, I hope 
those who have some spare time will look at the proposed Annual Plan for the 
next fiscal year. I am glad WMF is providing good opportunities for community 
and public input. 

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Timothy Sandole and (apparently) $53, 690 of WMF funding

[ENWP Pine]

Thanks Sue.

I think there are ways WiRs could add valuable content directly such as doing 
mass uploads of archived documents to Commons, or add article content as 
happened here. However I don't think it's a good idea for WMF to involve itself 
so much with content generation, and the manner in which this project was 
started and managed had problems as you described. I think that WiRs need a 
higher level of training and supervision than happened here, especially if the 
WiR is not already an established Wikimedia contributor and familiar with the 
relevant policies for their work.

Could WMF also discuss the copyright issues involved? 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Timothysandole#Copyright_release_for_excerpts_from_reports

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Russia%E2%80%93United_States_relations#Recent_removal_of_apparent_copyright_violation:_context

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Russia%E2%80%93United_States_relations&diff=601379035&oldid=524953814

Thanks,

Pine
 
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Katherine Maher joins the Wikimedia Foundation as Chief Communications Officer

[ENWP Pine]

Welcome, Katherine. 

Communications are a big challenge in Wikimedia as I'm sure you know. We have 
information running in many dimensions and directions, we work in multiple 
languages, and some information about how we run this place is undocumented 
tribal knowledge. Welcome to the tribe.

Pine

Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 22:03:05 -0700
From: sgard...@wikimedia.org
To: wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org
CC: katherine.ma...@gmail.com
Subject: [Wikimedia Announcements] Katherine Maher joins the Wikimedia 
Foundation as Chief Communications Officer

Hey folks,
I'm pleased to announce we've hired a Chief Communications Officer for the 
Wikimedia Foundation, replacing Jay Walsh who left us in October. Our new head 
of communications will be Katherine Maher, and she will join us on 14 April, 
reporting to me.

Katherine comes to the WMF from Washington DC, where she was Advocacy Director 
for the global digital rights organization Access. At Access, she was 
responsible for all media and communications work, including communications 
between the organization and its 350,000 members. She also handled coalition 
work and advocacy efforts and urgent global threats to digital rights, 
participated in the organization's strategic planning, and was deeply involved 
with the production of RightsCon.

Before Access, Katherine worked on the launch of the Open Development 
Technology Alliance at the World Bank, and was a program manager for internet 
freedom projects at the National Democratic Institute. Earlier, she worked on 
the UniWiki initiative for the UNICEF Innovation team, intended to improve 
MediaWiki's usability for people who were new to computer use, using 
early-model technology, or connecting in low-bandwidth environments. Through 
her career she's been a frequent media spokesperson and writer of op-eds and 
other media materials.

Katherine has lived and worked in nine countries and visited many more. She is 
a native speaker of English, and has a basic knowledge of French, Arabic and 
German.
The purpose of the CCO role is to ensure fast, easy information flow about 
Wikimedia in multiple languages, both internally within the movement and 
outside of it, and I think Katherine will be a wonderful fit for that work. Her 
experiences advocating for the rights of ordinary internet users and 
communicating with a large global volunteer community are both rare and 
directly relevant. She's got a solid understanding of internet technologies. 
She's a crisp, clear communicator, and an experienced spokesperson.

I want to thank the people who helped with the interviewing process: Geoff 
Brigham, Jove Oliver, Gayle Karen Young, David Gerard, Erik Moeller, Lisa 
Gruwell, Frank Schulenburg, and Jimmy Wales. A special thanks to Geoff, who's 
ably overseen our communications functions for the past several years, and to 
Jay, who's generously filled in when it took us longer than we expected to hire 
for this role. Geoff and Jay will be helping Katherine get on-boarded, and I 
know she'll benefit enormously from their guidance and support.

Please join me in welcoming Katherine, who's on CC.
Thanks,

Sue
--
Sue Gardner

Executive Director

Wikimedia Foundation

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[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year 2013

[ENWP Pine]

Wikimedia Commons has concluded the Picture of the Year contest from the 2013 
Commons featured pictures.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:POTY/2013

Congratulations to RitchyBlack (Stefan Krause) from Germany and all of this 
year's winners.

Thanks to all 4000+ voters this year. Also thanks to the competition 
organizers, Beria, Rillke, Mono, and Miya.


Pine (boldly posting since no one else has yet (:)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Timothy Sandole and (apparently) $53, 690 of WMF funding

[ENWP Pine]

Before we start thinking about the implications for WiR in general or WMF's 
relationship with Stanton, I think we should focus on establishing the facts of 
what happened here. After we have a good understanding of the facts we can 
discuss the implications.

I'm still waiting for Arbcom to get back to me before I comment more 
extensively. I'm guessing that they may take awhile if they need to establish 
consensus among themselves before responding.

Pine
  
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[Wikimedia-l] Annual Plan process

[ENWP Pine]

Some time ago I requested a timeline for the Annual Plan process. It's now up 
on Meta in case anyone else is curious. 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Timothy Sandole and (apparently) $53, 690 of WMF funding

[ENWP Pine]

As important as this issue is let's remember that the big picture mission is to 
have high quality content that is easy and free to access. WMF management has a 
lot to handle in addition to this investigation and the Sandole situation 
shouldn't consume such a large portion of management's time that other 
priorities get neglected. For example I heard that WMF is very close to finally 
appointing a new ED and they're also working on VE, Flow, mobile, grants, legal 
issues, the Annual Plan, and a million other things that we also care about.

I may have more to say about the Sandole situation after I hear back from 
Arbcom. 

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Timothy Sandole and (apparently) $53, 690 of WMF funding

[ENWP Pine]

Thanks Erik.

I am going to be discussing this in private with the English Wikipedia 
Arbitration Committee before making further comments here. 

Pine


  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Timothy Sandole and (apparently) $53, 690 of WMF funding

[ENWP Pine]

Russiavia, thanks for your efforts to make a comprehensive report. It's 
certainly worth reading, although I am refraining from personally reaching 
major conclusions until after we have heard more details from WMF.

Regarding Timothy Sandole's qualifications for the job, he could have been an 
experienced Wikipedian who had solid editing experience in an anonymous account 
before he registered the Sandole account for the purpose of Belfair-related 
editing. I hope this is the case.

I'm surprised that Belfair would hire him if he knew very little about 
copyright, but Belfair may not have had enough experience with Wikipedia to 
know what questions to ask. I hope that WMF asks basic questions about 
copyright if someone will be editing for pay or training new editors.

It's very problematic to hear from Timothy that anyone at WMF was his "direct 
boss". This raises lots of red flags and adds more complex problems. This is 
also one of the reasons I hope WMF Legal is aware of this situation because I 
can think of multiple types of liability this could create.

I would encourage WMF not to rush the process of investigating what happened 
here including what seem to be contradictory statements in WMF documents and 
from WMF employees. It would be best to get a comprehensive report even if that 
takes a week or two.

I appreciate WMF investigating this and that WMF board members have taken an 
interest.

Pine



  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Timothy Sandole and (apparently) $53, 690 of WMF funding

[ENWP Pine]

Hi Jan-Bart,

I'm saying that this looks bad and asking what happened. I directed my email to 
the people who I think are in the best positions to respond or would want to 
look at this for themselves.

There is a point at which asking questions becomes trolling or wasting 
resources but I think the consensus here is that this situation should be 
investigated.

Please assume good faith (:

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Timothy Sandole and (apparently) $53, 690 of WMF funding

[ENWP Pine]

That's a very interesting blog post, and at first glance situation looks bad in 
a number of ways. I'm bothered by the lack of reporting as well as the COI 
issues involved.

Anasuya, at I don't think the $53,690 number is the right one, but regardless 
of how much money was involved,  can you look at this issue, figure out what 
happened from start to finish, and respond to the other questions raised in 
this discussion? Can you confirm what the amount of money involved was, clarify 
why Sandole was listed as a WMF Fundraiser contractor which implied that he 
raised money for WMF instead of being a grantee receiving money from WMF, that 
the money came entirely from Stanton, how it was accounted for in the financial 
statements referenced by Tomasz, and what reports were produced that may have 
been sent back to Stanton or WMF about what the outcomes of the grant were?

I would also be interested in knowing what COI rules were established as 
conditions of this grant, by Stanton, Harvard, and/or WMF. It would be 
interesting to get full copies of any contracts or grant award documents 
although that may be appropriate for review by the Board in private.

I'm also CCing this to Garfield and WMF Legal. It looks like something went 
very wrong here.

Thanks,

Pine
  
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[Wikimedia-l] UC Berkeley hires Wikipedian in Residence

[ENWP Pine]

This was covered by the Associated Press and a number of other news 
organizations. According to these stories UC Berkeley is the first US 
university to hire a WIR. I've seen WIR positions advertised at other US 
universities but this is the first paid position. Congrats to Kevin. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/uc-berkeley-hires-first-wikipedian-in-residence/2014/03/18/16b5a556-aea4-11e3-b8b3-44b1d1cd4c1f_story.html

http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2014/03/copyright/kevin-gorman-berkeleys-wikipedian-in-residence/

http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_25364220/uc-berkeley-hires-first-wikipedian-residence

I hope we'll see more universities taking this path. (:

Pine
  
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[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Honoring deceased Wikimedian Ihor Kostenko (user Ig2000)

[ENWP Pine]

In case anyone on WikimediaAnnounce-l missed the news:

http://wikimediaukraine.wordpress.com/2014/02/23/in-memoriam-of-ihor-kostenko/

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/24/wikipedia-ihor-kostenko-dies/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-02-26/Special_report





Memorials are being left on Ihor's talk page: 
https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D0%B1%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8F_%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D1%83%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%B0:Ig2000

James Alexander posted this quote on Wikimedia-l:

"Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing 
we cannot say, it is you who must say this.

We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning. We were young, they say. We 
have died; remember us."

 --Archibald MacLeish

User:Wnt has proposed that we 
create an annual award in Ihor's name. "...If the editor 
desired, he could accept the award at a WMF event in a public way, but 
the news of the selection could always be released first on February 20,
 so that reporters covering these stories would always take a moment to 
explain who Ihor Kostenko was and what the day means. And just maybe,
 by educating more people before a conflict comes to a head, some day 
one of these award winners will have stayed some future sniper's hand 
and saved some other Ihor, even if we will never know it." -- 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_158#Death_of_a_Wikipedian

I hope that we can honor Ihor in a way that takes no sides with regard to 
geopolitics while memorializing Ihor's life and promoting values which are 
important to the Wikimedia movement.

RIP Ihor.

Pine


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [Wikimedia Announcements] (press release)

[ENWP Pine]

Hi LiAnna, who wrote the FAQ for the press release? I have some concerns.
Thanks,
Pine


> Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 13:19:42 -0800
> From: LiAnna Davis 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [Wikimedia Announcements] (press release)
>   Frank Schulenburg named executive director of new Wiki Education
>   Foundation
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> Forwarding on for those of you not on the Wikimedia Announcements list.
> 
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Jay Walsh 
> Date: Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 1:16 PM
> Subject: [Wikimedia Announcements] (press release) Frank Schulenburg named
> executive director of new Wiki Education Foundation
> To: "wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org" <
> wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org>
> 
> 
> Passing along for your information. This release is posted on the WMF wiki
> at
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Frank_Schulenburg_named_executive_director_of_new_WEF
> 
> An accompanying Q&A can also be found here:
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/QA_Frank_Schulenburg_announcement_February_2014
> 
> ---
> 
> Frank Schulenburg named executive director of new Wiki Education Foundation
> 
> (San Francisco, California) 12 February 2014 -- The Wiki Education
> Foundation, a new nonprofit organization that supports the Wikipedia
> Education Program in the United States and Canada, has named Frank
> Schulenburg as its inaugural executive director. Schulenburg, formerly
> senior director of programs at the Wikimedia Foundation, will begin
> his new role February 18, 2014.
> 
> "I look forward to leading the Wiki Education Foundation," said
> Schulenburg. "We are off to a great start, and will build on the
> strong success of the Wikimedia Foundation's Wikipedia Education
> Program to further engage educators, researchers and students to
> provide more high-quality content for Wikipedia's readers."
> 
> Started by the Wikimedia Foundation in 2010, the Wikipedia Education
> Program encourages students to contribute content to Wikipedia
> articles on course-related subjects as part of classroom assignments
> developed by their faculty and instructors. Over the past four years,
> more than 6,000 students in the United States and Canada have
> contributed content to Wikipedia as part of the Wikipedia Education
> Program, adding the equivalent of 36,600 printed pages of content to
> Wikipedia and significantly increasing the amount of high-quality
> content that Wikipedia offers its half-billion readers.
> 
> In response to that success and to give the program more focused and
> specialized support, in 2012 the Wikimedia Foundation began a process
> to spin off the United States and Canada work into its own,
> independent nonprofit organization. The resulting Wiki Education
> Foundation was created in late 2013, and Schulenburg will be its first
> executive director. The Wiki Education Foundation will continue to
> support the Wikipedia Education Program in the United States and
> Canada, and will develop additional programs to promote academic
> research and teaching that engage with Wikipedia.
> 
> "I am delighted that Frank has agreed to lead the Wiki Education
> Foundation as executive director," said Dr. Diana Strassmann, Carolyn
> and Fred McManis Distinguished Professor in the Practice at Rice
> University and chair of the board of the Wiki Education Foundation,
> who began using Wikipedia as a teaching tool in her classes in 2007.
> "Under Frank's leadership, the Wiki Education Foundation will continue
> to expand engagement among educators, students, and Wikipedia, and
> will continue to diversify the community of Wikipedians, while
> improving the quality and depth of Wikipedia."
> 
> "Frank is the perfect person to lead the Wiki Education Foundation,"
> said Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner. "Frank's a
> very experienced Wikipedia contributor with a long track record of
> inventing and leading successful programs that make Wikipedia better
> and more useful for its readers. I am sorry we will lose him from the
> Wikimedia Foundation, but I look forward to seeing the Wiki Education
> Foundation thrive and succeed under his leadership."
> 
> A longtime Wikipedian and an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation
> since 2008, Schulenburg has focused on broadening participation and
> developing the public understanding of Wikipedia, especially among
> subject matter experts. He has spoken globally about efforts to
> increase the relevance of Wikipedia in academia. In 2006, he founded
> Wikipedia Academy, an event aimed at cultivating dialogue between
> Wikipedia contributors and academics. In 2009, he initiated the
> Bookshelf Project, which created the first educational materials for
> new Wikipedia contributors. In 2010 he designed and implemented the
> Wikipedia Education Program. From 2012 on he was a member of the
> executive management team of the Wikimedia

[Wikimedia-l] Annual Plan development

[ENWP Pine]

What is the plan for community and board involvement in the development phases 
of the Annual Plan?

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] My choice for ED

[ENWP Pine]

If the transition team declined the entire first panel of candidates
I think we can AGF that they're being careful.

Also, it's wrong to take out current complaints with WMF on 
the executive candidates who may want to make positive
change.

Pine




> Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2014 11:31:45 +
> From: Andrew Gray 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l]  My choice for ED
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> To me, these proposals always sound a bit like:
> 
> "We want this person to be resilient and good-humoured. So we're going to
> punch all our possible candidates in the face a few times and see where
> they want to go from there."
> 
> I know that's not the intention, but it's certainly the plausible effect...
> 
> Andrew.
> 
> On Monday, 3 February 2014, Martijn Hoekstra
> >
> wrote:
> 
> > I understand your reasoning, but we already have an extremely difficult
> > time finding a suitable candidate. While such community vetting would
> > definitely weed out the people we don't want, it will also slim down the
> > pool we do want, which currently sits  around a cool 0. I don't think we
> > can afford that either.
> > On Feb 1, 2014 4:47 PM, "Todd Allen"  wrote:
> >
> > > I'm sure dismissively calling people's legitimate concerns "playing with
> > > (a) toy" will help greatly in that regard.
> > >
> > > If someone's going to apply for a job where they'll be scrutinized by a
> > > large volunteer community, it is not unreasonable to determine if they
> > can
> > > withstand that type of scrutiny by a real world test, nor to find whether
> > > they'll be responsive and direct to concerns brought up when that
> > happens.
> > > The community has had enough of "diplomatic" null statements with lots of
> > > words, and should be. Someone needs to give an answer, not just blather
> > on
> > > and wind up saying nothing concrete at all.
> > >
> > > It is right for the community to be fed up with that and demand that a
> > > candidate go through that process. Yes, it would be hard. Yes, it would
> > > discourage some applicants. Those are the applicants we want to
> > discourage.
> > > We want someone who fits well with our particular project, and who will
> > be
> > > responsive and direct with our volunteer community. They are the
> > > underpinnings of every project WMF undertakes.
> > >
> > > Todd Allen
> > >
> > >
> > > On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 8:13 AM, Tony Souter  wrote:
> > >
> > > > Folks: are we still playing with this toy?
> > > >
> > > > I've sat here and watched this discourse - variously frivolous,
> > slightly
> > > > insulting, and embarrassing - and said nothing in the hope it would
> > just
> > > > fizzle away.
> > > >
> > > > But amazingly, it's still here.
> > > >
> > > > We have to accept that while crowdsourcing is the genius of Wikipedia
> > and
> > > > a few of its sister projects, it's totally inappropriate for choosing
> > the
> > > > executive director of a big, prominent Foundation that lives in a
> > > > competitive, complex, and often negative jungle. There's a bunch of
> > > reasons
> > > > for doing this largely away from the gaze of the rest of the world. Do
> > I
> > > > really need to spell them out?
> > > >
> > > > It would be good to move on to more useful and practical topics.
> > > >
> > > > Tony
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > On 02/02/2014, at 1:32 AM, Benjamin Lees  wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 3:29 AM, ENWP Pine 
> > > > wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > >>
> > > > >> Chad, I wonder if Rory has been considered. (:
> > > > >>
> > > > >>
> > > > > Given his history of biting newbies, I'm not sure he'd be in a good
> > > > > position to help solve the editor retention problem.
> > > > > ___

  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] My choice for ED

[ENWP Pine]

> How could you say no to a face like this?
> 
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kitty_meowing.jpg 
> 
> Have a good weekend everyone :)
> 
> -Chad

Chad, I wonder if Rory has been considered. (:

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] ED qualifications

[ENWP Pine]

> Actually, I think that we should consider it a strength in an individual to
> refuse to consider applying for a position where every aspect of their
> career and personal life would be microscopically examined by thousands of
> people. Self-respect is a positive attribute.
> 
> Risker

Risker, let's look on the bright side say that a high profile job like this 
one requires resilience. (:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_resilience
 
Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] ED profile

[ENWP Pine]

>Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote:
>>...
>> a large part will never be contacted as a potential candidate,
>> simply because they are not close to matching the profile
>
>Is the profile documented or subjective?

I think that this is the only written profile being used.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Executive_Director_Transition_Team/Position_description

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New year's plans for editor engagement

[ENWP Pine]

Sorry. Email subject line corrected.




Hi Rupert,

I agree that individual outreach can be effective. How do you suggest that we 
get a substantial number of our existing editors to feel motivated to recruit 
new editors?

I think our problems with editor retention are widespread enough that they need 
to be addressed on a meta scale, even if that is "simply" to find effective 
ways of motivating existing users to assume good faith, be civil, and invite 
new people to edit on an individual basis.

Pine


> Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2014 12:14:45 +0100
> From: rupert THURNER 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] New year's plans for editor engagement
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> hi pine,
> 
> as a volunteer, my personal stance is that editor engagement is best
> experienced on a personal, pragmatic, and not-meta level. let me give an
> example:
> 
> when i met anasuya sengupta last year i was very impressed by her. such a
> nice and welcoming person to talk to. such a bright person, making
> intelligent suggestions to topics we have. she told us at wikimedia ch,
> that we do not reach the volunteers very well - basically 50 times more
> people edit wikipedia than the ones willing to engage in any form with an
> organisation around the movement, like wikimedia.ch. besides that, she is
> kind of the "dream wikimedian" who would be able to correct two of the most
> prominent editor statistics: she is woman, she is from india. and she is
> educated, she is organized, she is successful.
> 
> after meeting, i did what i usually do, look on the contributions. to my
> great surprise, anasuya seems not have any billable edits ("billable" is,
> in my personal definition, an edit on a page where a donor would click and
> give money, so no talk page, meta, etc.). she as well does not seem to
> write open source software used by the movement. i cannot say if she really
> does not edit - she just does it in a way that a regular volunteer like me
> would not notice.
> 
> funny enough, anasuya sits for one and a half years next to sue gardner in
> the san francisco office of the wikimedia foundation. sue gardner supported
> the editor engagement program, and the india program, she put efforts in
> making wikipedia nicer for women. and wmf put hundred thousands of dollars
> into efforts which basic target is to win anasuya as a contributor.
> 
> happy new year as well!
> 
> rupert.
> 
> ps: if this mail is the cause to have one additional editor, its goal is
> fullfilled ;) and if every volunteer convinces one person to become
> wikimedia volunteer this year, you, pine, will write a different mail at
> the beginning of 2015.
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 4:32 AM, ENWP Pine  wrote:
> 
> >
> > We had a good 2013 year for readership statistics, fundraising, website
> > reliability, and many other metrics.
> >
> > We are continuing to have challenges with our editor population declining.
> > Statistics are at http://reportcard.wmflabs.org. WMF discussed some of
> > the research around these issues a monthly metrics meeting.
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/2013-07-11
> > .
> >
> > We have thousands of new accounts registered each month. However we are
> > still losing more active editors than we gain each month. To date WMF and
> > the chapters haven't solved this problem although resources are being spent
> > on it. Projects include Echo, VisualEditor, Snuggle, GettingStarted, and
> > education outreach.
> >
> > Some discussion of these issues for English Wikipedia is happening at
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Editor_Retention#Possible_paths.2C_after_some_thoughts
> > .
> >
> > Also check out the book review that is being published in this week's
> > Signpost
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus/Sandbox/Notes#.C5.BBycie_Wirtualnych_Dzikich,
> > and the 2010 editor study results
> > https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Editor_Survey_Report_-_April_2011.pdf
> > .
> >
> > I hope there will be many and sustained conversations in 2014 about
> > questions such as these:
> >
> > * What should WMF, Jimmy, chapters and affiliates, and the online
> > communities do differently regarding editor retention in 2014 and beyond?
> >
> > * What non-technical initiatives should be done to improve editor
> > recruiting and retention?
> >
> > * How can we make Wikipedia editing be as mainstream as playing mobile
> > games? I would like to see WMF take leadership on this issue and make

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 118, Issue 2

[ENWP Pine]

Hi Rupert,

I agree that individual outreach can be effective. How do you suggest that we 
get a substantial number of our existing editors to feel motivated to recruit 
new editors?

I think our problems with editor retention are widespread enough that they need 
to be addressed on a meta scale, even if that is "simply" to find effective 
ways of motivating existing users to assume good faith, be civil, and invite 
new people to edit on an individual basis.

Pine


> Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2014 12:14:45 +0100
> From: rupert THURNER 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] New year's plans for editor engagement
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> hi pine,
> 
> as a volunteer, my personal stance is that editor engagement is best
> experienced on a personal, pragmatic, and not-meta level. let me give an
> example:
> 
> when i met anasuya sengupta last year i was very impressed by her. such a
> nice and welcoming person to talk to. such a bright person, making
> intelligent suggestions to topics we have. she told us at wikimedia ch,
> that we do not reach the volunteers very well - basically 50 times more
> people edit wikipedia than the ones willing to engage in any form with an
> organisation around the movement, like wikimedia.ch. besides that, she is
> kind of the "dream wikimedian" who would be able to correct two of the most
> prominent editor statistics: she is woman, she is from india. and she is
> educated, she is organized, she is successful.
> 
> after meeting, i did what i usually do, look on the contributions. to my
> great surprise, anasuya seems not have any billable edits ("billable" is,
> in my personal definition, an edit on a page where a donor would click and
> give money, so no talk page, meta, etc.). she as well does not seem to
> write open source software used by the movement. i cannot say if she really
> does not edit - she just does it in a way that a regular volunteer like me
> would not notice.
> 
> funny enough, anasuya sits for one and a half years next to sue gardner in
> the san francisco office of the wikimedia foundation. sue gardner supported
> the editor engagement program, and the india program, she put efforts in
> making wikipedia nicer for women. and wmf put hundred thousands of dollars
> into efforts which basic target is to win anasuya as a contributor.
> 
> happy new year as well!
> 
> rupert.
> 
> ps: if this mail is the cause to have one additional editor, its goal is
> fullfilled ;) and if every volunteer convinces one person to become
> wikimedia volunteer this year, you, pine, will write a different mail at
> the beginning of 2015.
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 4:32 AM, ENWP Pine  wrote:
> 
> >
> > We had a good 2013 year for readership statistics, fundraising, website
> > reliability, and many other metrics.
> >
> > We are continuing to have challenges with our editor population declining.
> > Statistics are at http://reportcard.wmflabs.org. WMF discussed some of
> > the research around these issues a monthly metrics meeting.
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/2013-07-11
> > .
> >
> > We have thousands of new accounts registered each month. However we are
> > still losing more active editors than we gain each month. To date WMF and
> > the chapters haven't solved this problem although resources are being spent
> > on it. Projects include Echo, VisualEditor, Snuggle, GettingStarted, and
> > education outreach.
> >
> > Some discussion of these issues for English Wikipedia is happening at
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Editor_Retention#Possible_paths.2C_after_some_thoughts
> > .
> >
> > Also check out the book review that is being published in this week's
> > Signpost
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus/Sandbox/Notes#.C5.BBycie_Wirtualnych_Dzikich,
> > and the 2010 editor study results
> > https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Editor_Survey_Report_-_April_2011.pdf
> > .
> >
> > I hope there will be many and sustained conversations in 2014 about
> > questions such as these:
> >
> > * What should WMF, Jimmy, chapters and affiliates, and the online
> > communities do differently regarding editor retention in 2014 and beyond?
> >
> > * What non-technical initiatives should be done to improve editor
> > recruiting and retention?
> >
> > * How can we make Wikipedia editing be as mainstream as playing mobile
> > games? I would like to see WMF take leadership on this issue and make a big
> > push in 2014-2015 to mak

[Wikimedia-l] New year's plans for editor engagement

[ENWP Pine]

We had a good 2013 year for readership statistics, fundraising, website 
reliability, and many other metrics. 

We are continuing to have challenges with our editor population declining. 
Statistics are at http://reportcard.wmflabs.org. WMF discussed some of the 
research around these issues a monthly metrics meeting. 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/2013-07-11.

We have thousands of new accounts registered each month. However we are still 
losing more active editors than we gain each month. To date WMF and the 
chapters haven't solved this problem although resources are being spent on it. 
Projects include Echo, VisualEditor, Snuggle, GettingStarted, and education 
outreach.

Some discussion of these issues for English Wikipedia is happening at 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Editor_Retention#Possible_paths.2C_after_some_thoughts.

Also check out the book review that is being published in this week's Signpost 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus/Sandbox/Notes#.C5.BBycie_Wirtualnych_Dzikich,
 and the 2010 editor study results 
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Editor_Survey_Report_-_April_2011.pdf.

I hope there will be many and sustained conversations in 2014 about questions 
such as these:

* What should WMF, Jimmy, chapters and affiliates, and the online communities 
do differently regarding editor retention in 2014 and beyond?

* What non-technical initiatives should be done to improve editor recruiting 
and retention?

* How can we make Wikipedia editing be as mainstream as playing mobile games? I 
would like to see WMF take leadership on this issue and make a big push in 
2014-2015 to make mobile editing a popular activity.

* Since negative feedback is a major reason that editors leave, should we 
review how we revert and warn editors, how we handle content disputes, and how 
we deal with editors who are uncivil or disruptive?

* How can we be a community that is efficient while being civil and hospitable?

In the next Annual Plan I hope that someone at WMF will be appointed as a point 
person for promoting all editor engagement initiatives and regularly initiate 
discussions such as this one.

Closing thought:

"Whatever the weather
We must move 
together" 

from a Marshall Plan poster, 
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Marshall_Plan_poster.JPG, seen on the 
English WikiQuote main page on December 31, 2013.

Happy new year,

Pine

  

  
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Ombudsman Commission applications

[ENWP Pine]

Hi Maggie, what's happening with the Ombudsman Commission scope RFC? 

Thanks,

Pine


> Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2013 06:04:09 -0800
> From: Maggie Dennis 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List ,
>   Functionaries email list for the English Wikipedia
>   
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Ombudsman Commission applications
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> Hi
> 
> It's coming close to time for annual appointments of community members
> to serve on the Ombudsman commission. This commission works on all
> Wikimedia projects to investigate complaints about violations of the
> privacy policy, especially in use of CheckUser tools, and to mediate
> between the complaining party and the individual whose work is being
> investigated. They may also assist the General Counsel, the Executive
> Director or the Board of Trustees in investigations of these issues. For
> more on their duties and roles, see
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_commission
> 
> This is a call for community members interested in volunteering
> for appointment to this commission. Commissioners should be
> experienced Wikimedians, active on any project, who have previously used
> the CheckUser tool OR who have the technical ability to understand the
> CheckUser tool and the willingness to learn it. They are expected to be
> able to engage neutrally in investigating these concerns and to know when
> to recuse when other roles and relationships may cause conflict. (In the
> past, commissioners have turned in other roles that could cause conflict.)
> 
> Commissioners are required to identify to the Wikimedia Foundation and
> must be willing to comply with the appropriate board policies (such as
> the access to non-public data policy and the privacy policy). This is
> a position that requires a high degree of discretion and trust.
> 
> If you are interested in serving on this commission, please drop me a
> note detailing your experience on the projects, your thoughts on the
> commission and what you hope to bring to the role. The commission is
> deliberately quite small, so slots are limited, but all applications are
> appreciated. The deadline for applications is January 1. Any timezone. :)
> 
> Please feel free to pass this invitation along to any users who you
> think may be interested.
> 
> Thank you!
> 
> Maggie
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Maggie Dennis
> Senior Community Advocate
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
> 
> 
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Readers love you

[ENWP Pine]

Thanks very much, Megan. It's very nice to hear this.

Pine


> Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2013 19:42:06 -0800
> From: Megan Hernandez 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Readers love you
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> Each year that we run the fundraiser, readers write in really lovely notes.
>  Please take two minutes to listen to our readers.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> 
> The story I like to tell is that whilst I had heard of Wikipedia but only
> looked at it a few times thereafter, when the 2004 Tsunami occurred the day
> after Christmas, mainstream news organisations (TV, newspapers) were all
> away from their offices. That day I turned to Wikipedia to try to
> understand the scale of the event. It was Wiki editors 'on the ground' that
> created the sort of information and coverage usually considered the
> province of rolling news organisations only. This I now dub my 'Wiki
> Epiphany'.
> 
> 
> Wikipedia is an amazing service. Almost always, I am able to find
> information on subjects I am interested in. Thanks and Kudos to all staff
> and volunteers!!
> 
> My world has been opened up time and time again by Wikipedia. From studying
> Detroit and computer programming to finding unbiased information on
> America's history, Wikipedia has been a beacon of free speech and
> information for over ten years. Sometimes, I just sit in awe of the fact
> that the greatest accomplishment of man was assembled mostly by volunteers,
> people who just wanted to make the world a better place.
> 
> Its made life easier for me and expanded my knowledge by allowing me to
> more easily find trusted and verified information on the internet. It
> organizes all the noise out there on the web and gives a great concise to
> the point fact summary of what I want to know. Thank you and thank you to
> the millions of volunteer editors. Wikipedia is a necessity in my life and
> not just a luxury.
> 
> Wikipedia is a source of unbiased information. The caveats and notes from
> the editors alert to questionable information. The links within the
> articles are amazingly helpful and have led me on wonderful information
> expeditions.
> 
> I'd like to thank the entire staff of wikipedia and its editors for my high
> school graduation.
> 
> It's impossible to put in words. I cannot imagine Planet Earth without it
> [Wikipedia]. It has changed my life forever.
> 
> My 17 year old son uses you constantly. You have made him a smarter human
> being.
> 
> You guys are ^^%$#&* unbelievably awesome, keep it up!
> 
> web sites like Wikipedia are invaluable and I felt it my duty to try help
> even if only a tad.
> 
> so much of the Internet has turned into self serving and unreliable junque;
> so I am very, very grateful for the Wiki resource.
> 
> I regard "W" as the best and most reliable source of information available
> anywhere. I don't know how you do it so please keep on with your Excellence
> }i{ < That;s a butterfly for you
> This is one of the best things on the internet. It goes back to the
> original development of the internet and has remained ethical and true to
> its origins. There appears to be no discrimination and it is available to
> everyone at no cost.
> 
> I am 60 years old and I am still so cruious and interested in so many
> things. Wikipedia gives me reasonable information whenever I may want it.
> 
> 
> I use wikipedia all the time and credit it more toward my education than
> college did!
> 
> 
> It's nice to see humanity get together without any external forces for a
> common good!
> 
> 
> I am inspired by the high quality of Wikipedia and the high ideals of its
> founder and its myriad contributors and editors. What a magnificent
> collaborative human achievement you are building!
> 
> 
> It has simultaneously answered and given me more questions than I can
> comprehend.
> This represents to me what college should be like. Free and collective
> knowledge by and for all.
> 
> When I want to know something, I google it and 99% of the time Wikipedia
> has what I want to know. Even drinking arguments, about what Biff from Back
> to the Future is doing now, are solved by Wikipedia. It's all there.
> 
> Without Wikipedia I would be about 30% less intelligent. :(
> 
> it is like a gift from the gods of knowledge
> 
> I am a teacher and a writer, and I am amazed how often Wikipedia is useful
> to me. I consider Wikipedia to be one of the great democratic projects
> maybe ever, and it is one of the reasons why I try to stay optimistic about
> the world. Thank you.
> 
> I honestly feel like the next generation of humans in general, will be much
> smarter than the previous because of this site. Well, at least they will
> know a whole lot more useless shit. I've heard (don't know for sure if it's
> true, doesn't matter) that the bigger a person's brain is, typically, the
> smarter that person is. So, if that is true, I think it's likely that
> because of this site, i

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Overloaded with CentralNotices

[ENWP Pine]

For English Wikipedia I also feel that the FDC banner is annoying and probably 
not very useful for editors or effective for requesting community input. A 
watchlist notice would be more proportionate but even that is a stretch because 
FDC is far removed from most editors' on-wiki interests. The FDC's work is 
important but I think requests for community input should be better targeted. 
Along the lines of what Nemo said, I think recruiting editors to become active 
in affiliates would be a better on-wiki action and an indirect way to get more 
comments on FDC proposals. There could also be work done to have more 
affiliates do peer reviews of each others' budgets.

Pine

> Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 10:37:18 +0100
> From: "Federico Leva (Nemo)" 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Overloaded with CentralNotices (Tilman
>   Bayer)
> Message-ID: <5270d34e.5080...@gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
> 
> Jane Darnell, 30/10/2013 09:30:
> > I second your skepticism. Especially since most Dutch Wikipedians have no 
> > idea what WMNL is, according to a survey.
> 
> Good point. Maybe all those who care about a chapter and its spending 
> are already members of the chapter so that they can participate in the 
> assembly which decide on it (and related online discussions)? :)
> 
> If we want greater community review of their spending, perhaps it would 
> make sense to run campaigns for community members to join the chapter. 
> Maybe other people have different experiences, but the associations I 
> know of usually try to convince you to join the association ("it's cool 
> for X! you are important for Y!") and then they try to gradually involve 
> you more; I've never seen an association on a street distributing 
> dozens-pages books "hey! do you want to review our budget? it's great 
> fun! we value your input".
> 
> Nemo
> 
> 
> 
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour with WMF researchers

[ENWP Pine]

Yes, logs for all office hours are at 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Office_hours#Office_hour_logs.

Please consider joining the wiki-research-l mailing list if you're not already 
subscribed.

Pine


> > Reminder, office hour is happening now.
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I have missed the announcement, but I would have enjoyed to join.
> Are there some minutes or transcript of the Office hours?
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> Cristian
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour with WMF researchers

[ENWP Pine]

Reminder, office hour is happening now.

Pine

From: deyntest...@hotmail.com
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org; e...@lists.wikimedia.org; 
wiki-researc...@lists.wikimedia.org; wikitech-annou...@lists.wikimedia.org; 
wikimedia-...@lists.wikimedia.org
CC: analyt...@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Office hour with WMF researchers
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2013 00:15:16 -0700













Hi everyone,


WMF researchers have agreed to participate in an office hour. This 
will be in the same format as the meeting we had in April 2013 with 
researcher introductions followed by open Q&A and discussion.

The currently scheduled participants are:


* Henrique Andrade, Brazil Data and Experiments Consultant (Grantmaking 
Catalyst programs)
* Aaron Halfaker, Research Analyst (Analytics)
* Jonathan Morgan, Learning Strategist (Grantmaking Learning and Evaluation)

* Aaron Shaw, Assistant Professor, School of Communication, Northwestern 
University
* Dario Taraborelli, Senior Research Analyst, Strategy (Analytics)

The
 meeting will be on IRC in #wikimedia-office on Monday, September 23 at 
1800 UTC / 1100 PST. Please spread the word and join if you are 
interested.

Pine



  
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[Wikimedia-l] Office hour with WMF researchers

[ENWP Pine]

Hi everyone,


WMF researchers have agreed to participate in an office hour. This 
will be in the same format as the meeting we had in April 2013 with 
researcher introductions followed by open Q&A and discussion.

The currently scheduled participants are:


* Henrique Andrade, Brazil Data and Experiments Consultant (Grantmaking 
Catalyst programs)
* Aaron Halfaker, Research Analyst (Analytics)
* Jonathan Morgan, Learning Strategist (Grantmaking Learning and Evaluation)

* Aaron Shaw, Assistant Professor, School of Communication, Northwestern 
University
* Dario Taraborelli, Senior Research Analyst, Strategy (Analytics)

The
 meeting will be on IRC in #wikimedia-office on Monday, September 23 at 
1800 UTC / 1100 PST. Please spread the word and join if you are 
interested.

Pine


  
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[Wikimedia-l] Thoughts on Admin Rights on WMF Wiki (and other things)

[ENWP Pine]

I don't know what to do. I lost sleep thinking about this situation last night. 
I think I'm still in shock and I'm frustrated. The normal situation on wiki is 
to have this kind of discussion in public for actions that happen on any wiki 
that I know of. There were similarly public discussions about what happened in 
WMUK. Maybe that's wrong. I don't know. I worried that if I said nothing that 
it would be wrong, and I worry that saying something is wrong too. 

I'm withdrawing from this discussion for now. I wish I knew what the right 
thing to do was. I'm very sorry. 

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thoughts on Admin Rights on WMF Wiki (and other things)

[ENWP Pine]

Sigh. This is a difficult situation. I don't think anyone has suggested that 
firing Gayle or Philippe should happen. However, I have concerns about keeping 
Gayle in the Chief Talent and Culture Officer position. I directed that concern 
to her and I want to hear what she thinks. There may be good reasons to keep 
her in that position, on the other hand it might be better if she had some time 
to learn in a WMF position for which she's a better fit at the moment. At a top 
5 website I think the performance expectations for C-level positions are high 
with good reason. I have significant concerns when someone with many years of 
leadership development experience makes the kind of mistakes that she appears 
to have made, especially when that person is the C-level officer that is 
supposed to be the subject matter expert in that area for all of WMF and that 
person is heavily involved in selecting the next ED. My experiences with Gayle 
prior to this one were positive and I've heard good things about her from 
others, but this situation should be examined with great care.

I currently hope that Gayle stays with WMF, but perhaps in a different position 
for awhile with the option of returning to the C-level some distance in the 
future. I want to hear what Gayle thinks. My views at this point are based on 
the incomplete information that's publicly available, and there are important 
unanswered questions in this situation. I hope we learn more from Gayle.

I know that the easy thing to do is to drop this issue and move on to the next 
problem, but I agree with Thomasz that easy thing to do isn't necessarily the 
best thing to do. Sometimes the best things and the right things involve asking 
hard questions and having difficult conversations.

 I think it's probably tough on a lot of us to 
read and participate in this discussion. On-wiki discussions about whether 
people should be de-adminned or blocked
 are often public, and while I think it's appropriate that we have this 
difficult conversation in public since the actions that started this 
situation were public, this is an awfully difficult situation and I'm sorry 
that we're all in it. We need to deal with it as best we can. I wish it was 
easy.

Pine

  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thoughts on Admin Rights on WMF Wiki (and other things)

[ENWP Pine]

> Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 20:33:57 +0200
> From: "Federico Leva (Nemo)" 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Cc: Gayle Karen Young 
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thoughts on Admin Rights on WMF Wiki (and
>   other things)
> Message-ID: <519e6115@gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
> 
> Just in case someone wonders,
> 
> Gayle Karen Young, 23/05/2013 06:22:
> > [...]  goal was to ensure that the function of a wiki
> > adminstrator, which is often identified with community self-governance, is
> > clearly mapped against the governance model of the site: [...] [...]
> 
> doesn't answers the questions on the table at all. Especially as "the 
> governance model of the site" doesn't exist at all and nobody has any 
> idea of who is going to take care of it.
> 
> Or in other words:
> 
> Tomasz W. Kozlowski, 13/05/2013 02:04:
>  > Gayle Karen Young wrote:
>  >
>  >> Hello folks,
>  >
>  > [...]
>  >
>  >> Gayle
>  >
>  > So what did you want to say? I haven't been able to find any answers to
>  > any questions that have been asked by so many people in this thread.
> 
> So, to quote yourself, you committed criticism and now you're insisting 
> with stonewalling, with a flavour of defensiveness. I admit that my 
> knowledge of Gottman is limited to a recent magazine article I read by 
> chance a few days ago, so I may be wrong, but it seems to me that 
> there's little room to do worse in this relationship.
> 
> Nemo
> 


Nemo, I think someone posted a list of good questions in this thread awhile 
back. I tried to find them but I gave up after ten minutes. If you can find them
would you please repost them? If you can't find them either then I'd ask you
to repeat the questions that you remember and think are most important.

Gayle, I am going to be frank. I think I know a little more about you and 
your work than the average member of this list does. I appreciate your 
explanations and apologies, but I'm continuing to have a hard time with 
this situation. With your many years of leadership experience, and in your 
position as Chief Culture and Talent Officer, it's shocking that you would 
implement such a significant change in the unprofessional way that you did, 
and of all people I would have expected you and Philippe (Director of 
Community Advocacy) to be acutely aware of our consensus-based culture 
and how to implement changes in a diplomatic and professional way. This 
situation has been a disaster for WMF-Community relations, and I'm sorry 
to say that my feeling is that the credibility of you and Philippe has been 
harmed beyond repair. Do you think you should continue to be WMF's 
Chief Culture and Talent Officer? I have a hard time believing that you 
should continue in that role after this disaster, but I want to hear your 
point of view.

Thanks,

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quarterly reviews of high priority WMF initiatives

[ENWP Pine]

Tilman,

Is there a schedule for these reviews on Meta? Also, did Grants have a review 
recently? 

Thanks,

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience

[ENWP Pine]

> Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 12:47:08 -0700
> From: Michael Snow 
> To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
> Message-ID: <519537bc.6000...@frontier.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
> 
> On 5/16/2013 11:52 AM, ENWP Pine wrote:
> > I agree that patience is a very important virtue in some situations, such 
> > as when we coach newbies or seek consensus among many people. But it's 
> > sometimes not a virtue, such as in many crisis situations. As a metrics and 
> > performance enthusiast, I feel that it's possible to have an appropriate 
> > mix of patience and impatience, and people should be appropriately 
> > accountable for their performance.
> I suppose it depends what implications you attach to those words, but I 
> would not recommend using "impatience" when what you really want is 
> "urgency". In my experience, the self-discipline that goes into everyday 
> patience can actually remain a virtue in crisis situations as well, as 
> it may help you remain clear-headed and make better decisions than you 
> would if you let the circumstances overwhelm your ability to think 
> rationally. And as Fred points out, a big part of my message relates 
> especially to making emergencies out of things that are not.
> 
> I also do not believe that patience is in any way incompatible with 
> accountability. Patience does not require ignoring commitments, 
> discarding performance evaluation, or even disregarding agreed 
> timeframes. However, it does mean that the results of the evaluation 
> should be well-considered and any consequences appropriate to the 
> circumstances. Impatience tends to drive us to choose excessive 
> consequences, like a lot of the "somebody should be fired" kind of talk 
> over things that are honest mistakes.
> 
> --Michael Snow
> 
> 
> 

I think I understand your distinction between urgency and impatience in
the sense that the former doesn't necessarily imply the brusqueness
that the latter can.

Whether a situation is an emergency is sometimes subjective. I think
that someone on this list pointed out that something that's a crisis
for one entity may be viewed as a minor issue by another entity.

I agree that employment consequences for poor performance
should be carefully considered prior to implementation. However, 
sometimes demoting or firing someone is appropriate, even if a poor 
decision was an "honest mistake". Serious negligence is unacceptable.

On the other hand, it's also a good idea do praise and celebrate
success and good performance, as we're doing now with regards 
to Spanish Wikipedia's significant milestone.

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Spanish Wikipedia first million

[ENWP Pine]

   Felicitaciones a la española Wikipedia! 
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fogos_artificiais.jpg

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience

[ENWP Pine]

I agree that patience is a very important virtue in some situations, such as 
when we coach newbies or seek consensus among many people. But it's sometimes 
not a virtue, such as in many crisis situations. As a metrics and performance 
enthusiast, I feel that it's possible to have an appropriate mix of patience 
and impatience, and people should be appropriately accountable for their 
performance.

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Comments on compliance and the FDC Round 2 decisions

[ENWP Pine]

Thanks a lot for the replies, Anasuya and Jessie. It will be interesting to see 
the evolution and impact of WMF grantmaking in the months and years ahead.

Pine


> Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 15:43:15 -0700
> From: Anasuya Sengupta 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Comments on compliance and the FDC Round 2
>   decisions
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> Hi Pine,
> 
> My apologies for the tardiness of this reply; I've been away in India with
> family and am only just back.
> 
> It's an important question to ask, because the Grantmaking team's programs
> - including the FDC process - have and are being set up with a strong
> self-evaluation component. We exist to support our movement through grants
> and shared knowledge as key resources, and we can only do this well if
> we're good at listening and learning ourselves.
> 
> Overall, we're looking at multiple feedback mechanisms (including surveys
> and discussion groups at conferences like WMConf, Wikimania). As an
> example, we did a survey of the FDC Round 1 process which we shared in
> Milan, and used as a way to get more face-to-face feedback. This helps us
> know both broad and specific areas that we need to improve on and to do so
> quickly and appropriately. One thing to keep in mind with grantmaking
> programs is that process feedback is easily and quickly incorporated (like
> wiki-tables that made life miserable for FDC Round 1 applicants and we
> could improve for Round 2 applicants). However, substantive feedback (like
> the nature of questions, or entirely new sections of inquiry) need to be
> incorporated at the end of the year for the new year, so that the nature of
> the proposal doesn't change dramatically over the year, or from one round
> to the next: it's not fair on either the new folks applying, or the
> committee reviewing the proposals. We intend to do surveys of all our major
> grantmaking programs over the next few months, so that we have a good
> baseline against which to measure our progress as a team.
> 
> Again, it's useful to remember that our proposal processes might seem
> 'heavy' to many in the movement, but they're pretty light-weight (with the
> possible exception of wiki-tables) in comparison to other grantmaking
> processes that are far more demanding for far smaller grant amounts. As a
> comparison, in the human rights and social justice grantmaking world, most
> grants are in the range of 5,000-50,000 USD.
> 
> For the FDC in particular, the FDC Advisory Group will assess the first
> year, and towards the end of the second year (March 2014), give the Board a
> recommendation on whether the mechanism works (or not) and should continue
> (or not).  The FDC Ombudsperson also gives an annual report which is
> independent and autonomous on the FDC process.[1] With these various
> inputs, the staff and FDC will create a report for Year 1 which we hope
> will be shared back with the community at Wikimania.
> 
> Other forms of external or independent assessments will also be part of our
> process: Kevin Gorman's retrospective of the grants program so far, for
> instance, was really useful and we've already incorporated several of his
> recommendations.[2] With the Program Evaluation team, we're also going to
> get much better at sharing the good and best practices that already exist
> in the movement, and at pointing out work that's relevant from other
> movements.
> 
> Finally, we're planning some internal and external research to better
> provide guidance to grant applicants on issues like potential growth
> trajectories and useful ways of thinking about moving from entirely
> volunteer to staffed groups. We're obviously not working on this in
> isolation - there has already been some good thinking within the movement
> on this - and we'd be glad to be in conversation with anyone who wants to
> work with us on these issues.
> 
> The Grantmaking team is a work in progress - we didn't exist in our present
> form last year, we've essentially restructured and reconfigured ourselves
> over the past few months, set up the FDC and IEG processes, and learnt
> rapidly about what works (and what might not) - and we're always open to
> feedback. If people are uncertain about who to reach out to, please do get
> in touch with me: as the person who heads the Grantmaking team, (some
> element of) the buck does stop with me. :-)
> 
> thanks,
> Anasuya
> 
> [1]
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Framework_for_the_Creation_and_Initial_Operation_of_the_FDC#FDC_Ombudsperson
> [2]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Retrospective_2009-2012
> 
> 
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Comments on compliance and the FDC Round 2 decisions

[ENWP Pine]

Asaf,

Thank you for sharing your perspective.

This situation is complicated. I think it should be reviewed by an uninvolved 
third party, probably the FDC ombudsperson. I think it would take significant 
time and a lot of emails in this thread to accomplish what a review by the 
ombudsperson could accomplish in a faster and more thorough manner.

Would you or someone else from the Grants staff please address the more broader 
questions that I raised earlier? I realize that these may have been easily 
overlooked due to the high volume of email on this list recently, so I'll 
repeat here. 

"Several interesting comments have been made in this thread regarding the value 
of a more holistic evaluation of the FDC and GAC processes with regards to 
chapters especially regarding the hiring of a chapter's first full time 
employee. There have also been comments made regarding the "heavy" nature of 
the FDC grant application process. Would the WMF staff please indicate whether 
a review of these concerns is under consideration, if so, how they plan to 
conduct the review?" 

I think you partially addressed these questions in your response but I would 
appreciate a more direct reply from you, Anasuya, Jessie, or anyone else in the 
Grantmaking and Programs group. Please feel free to fork into a separate thread 
if you like. 
Thanks,

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resignation announcement, and a parting remark to everyone

[ENWP Pine]

This situation is regrettable. My impression is that the FDC ombudsperson 
should review the handling of WMHK's grant application, including the earlier 
investigations and communications regarding the determination of whether or not 
WMHK should have been disqualified from this FDC round. The ombudsperson may 
have access to information such as emails and accounting documents that are not 
public. I hope the ombudsperson's review will be reasonably speedy and 
thorough, and the results made public. One possible determination of an 
ombudsperson review is that the FDC's final determinations were right but that 
there are opportunities for improvement in communications with the chapter so 
that there aren't surprises late in the process which result in a high level of 
frustration for chapter volunteers.

Several interesting comments have been made in this thread regarding the value 
of a more holistic evaluation of the FDC and GAC processes with regards to 
chapters especially regarding the hiring of a chapter's first full time 
employee. There have also been comments made regarding the "heavy" nature of 
the FDC grant application process. Would the WMF staff please indicate whether 
a review of these concerns is under consideration, if so, how they plan to 
conduct the review? 

Thanks,

Pine
  
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[Wikimedia-l] Office hour with WMF researchers

[ENWP Pine]

Reminder, meeting starts in about 10 minutes.

Pine

  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour with WMF researchers

[ENWP Pine]

Credit goes to J-Mo for enthusiastically supporting this idea. I mused
that I'd like to have a WMF researcher for an office hour, and largely
thanks to J-Mo's suggestions and recruiting, there will be a panel's 
worth of researchers and analysts. Thanks also to the people at WMF
who made time on their schedules for this discussion.

For those who are unable to attend, the office hour will be logged.

Hopefully we'll have a good crowd at the meeting. (:

Pine


> BTW, this looks amazing. Thanks to you all for organizing it.  I will
> be travelling, but hope to see more office hours like this, perhaps
> also including outside/partner researchers studying related issues.
> 
> SJ

  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour with WMF researchers

[ENWP Pine]

Hi Mathieu,

I think that WMF has used a tool like this in the past for an office hour with 
Sue. For this research office hour, I believe that two researchers and I agreed 
on this time, and then J-Mo recruited additional WMF participants. So there's 
more than one way to go about scheduling an office hour. If there's significant 
interest, such as with Sue's office hours, then it's possible to have multiple 
office hours scheduled at different times about the same subject. If there's a 
lot of interest in this research office hour then we can schedule additional 
sessions, perhaps on a recurring basis, if the WMF staff agree to that. 

Pine


> Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:37:43 +0200
> From: Mathieu Stumpf 
> To: 
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour with WMF researchers
> Message-ID: 
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
> 
> Le 2013-04-17 21:11, ENWP Pine a écrit :
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > We'll meet on IRC in #wikimedia-office on April 22 at 1800 UTC. 
> > Please join us.
> 
> I won't be able to join, but I wish I was able to do so. Did you use a 
> shedule software such as [1] to organize this event? If not, please 
> consider using one in the future.
> 
> [1] http://framadate.org/index.php?lang=en_GB Note that this website is 
> powered by a free software, so Wikimedia may install its own instance if 
> needed.
> 
> Kind regards,
> mathieu
> 
> -- 
> Association Culture-Libre
> http://www.culture-libre.org/
> 
> 
> 
> --
  
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[Wikimedia-l] Office hour with WMF researchers

[ENWP Pine]

Hi everyone,

WMF researchers have agreed to participate in an office hour about WMF research 
projects and methodologies.

The currently scheduled participants are:

* Aaron Halfaker, Research Analyst (contractor)
* Jonathan Morgan, Research Strategist (contractor)
* Evan Rosen, Data Analytics Manager, Global Development
* Haitham Shammaa, Contribution Research Manager
* Dario Taraborelli, Senior Research Analyst, Strategy

We'll meet on IRC in #wikimedia-office on April 22 at 1800 UTC. Please join us.

Pine

  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour with Jessie Wild from Global Learning & Evaluation

[ENWP Pine]

Changed due to meeting collision. We'll be in #wikimedia-office-learningeval.

Pine

From: deyntest...@hotmail.com
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: RE: Office hour with Jessie Wild from Global Learning & Evaluation
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:51:53 -0700




Reminder, discussion starting in about 10 minutes. We're in #wikimedia-office.

Pine

From: deyntest...@hotmail.com
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Office hour with Jessie Wild from Global Learning & Evaluation
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2013 19:53:37 -0700







Hi everyone, Jessie plans to be available on IRC on April 15, 1800-1900 UTC. I 
plan to be there with questions about WMF program planning and evaluation, and 
I hope many of you are also able to attend the discussion.

Cheers,

Pine


  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour with Jessie Wild from Global Learning & Evaluation

[ENWP Pine]

Reminder, discussion starting in about 10 minutes. We're in #wikimedia-office.

Pine

From: deyntest...@hotmail.com
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Office hour with Jessie Wild from Global Learning & Evaluation
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2013 19:53:37 -0700







Hi everyone, Jessie plans to be available on IRC on April 15, 1800-1900 UTC. I 
plan to be there with questions about WMF program planning and evaluation, and 
I hope many of you are also able to attend the discussion.

Cheers,

Pine


  
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[Wikimedia-l] Office hour with Jessie Wild from Global Learning & Evaluation

[ENWP Pine]

Hi everyone, Jessie plans to be available on IRC on April 15, 1800-1900 UTC. I 
plan to be there with questions about WMF program planning and evaluation, and 
I hope many of you are also able to attend the discussion.

Cheers,

Pine

  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] "Adopt a page"

[ENWP Pine]

Hmm. Once again, I largely agree with WSC. Unless I'm missing something, this 
idea is largely about fundraising, and I think it could introduce more problems 
than it solves.

The evidence that I've seen suggest that WMF is very successful at fundraising, 
but has ongoing difficulties with making progress toward the goal to get 
200,000 active editors by 2015. So, I see little reason to implement page 
adoption if the goal is to fundraise, but if there is something about the 
proposal that's relevant to improving the active editor count from the current 
85,000, I'd be interested in at least learning more about that.

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour inside out (program evaluation)

[ENWP Pine]

Hi Asaf, WSC made several points here that address your question and that are 
very similar to my own views. 
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March/124824.html  

After re-reading my email to Jessie and looking again at some of the recent WMF 
Monthly Reports, I think I may be making some assumptions about how Programs 
and Evaluations works that may be incorrect. Jessie, would you be willing to 
have an IRC office hour? I think that might address my questions and concerns 
faster than a prolonged email discussion on this list, although it has the 
disadvantage that fewer people are able to participate. Please email me 
off-list if you're willing to set up a time when we're both available.

Thanks, and happy Easter.

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour inside out (program evaluation)

[ENWP Pine]

Hi Jessie,

Thanks for following up. 

I think Gayle will be responding to this thread also, but she is a little
busy right now as I think we can all understand.

In the meantime, I hope that you add to your list of "all places receiving 
movement funding resources" any major projects within WMF. I think the 
situation with AFT5 repeating some errors from IEP which were well 
documented by a consultant that WMF hired, which tells me there is need 
for improvement within WMF. I think WMF should get its own house in order 
before, or at least concurrently, with looking at evaluations and 
accountability for outside organizations like chapters. 

May I ask, if you're working on things like the Learning Portal, what
are Frank and other people within the programs and evaluations
group working on? I'm interested in seeing a list of the current 
initiatives, what their goals are, when they started, who the task
leads are, and what progress has been made so far. I think Frank's
appointment was in August 2012 and it would be great to get an
overview about what's been happening in Programs and Evaluations 
a since then. I've been hoping to see that information in the WMF
monthly reports but I've seen surprisingly little info in the
past few reports.

Thanks,

Pine

  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour inside out (program evaluation)

[ENWP Pine]

Hi WSC,

I agree with you on several points, although I think I am more 
supportive of holding project supervisors accountable for problems.

I hope that WMF is paying attention to this conversation. I'll be very 
interested in hearing what Gayle has to say. After hearing from Gayle, 
I may have some questions for Frank.

Cheers,

Pine

--

If we try out a new initiative and it turns out not to work we should  not
regard that trial as a mistake. Rather as something we have tested and
found not to work. Our focus should be on what we should learn from such
experiments, not who we should blame and fire. One of the downsides of a
hire and fire culture is that people who are running a failing project have
a vested interest in keeping it going until they can move on to something
else. It is much healthier if such people have the attitude that ending a
failing project as soon as it is clearly failed is a positive thing to do.
More importantly a culture of willingness to end experiments that have
failed would have seen both the IEP and the AFT killed far more quickly
with far less waste and angst in the process.

One of the things that the IEP and the AFT had in common was that they
required a lot of support from the existing editor community, and they were
seen by some as disrespectful to the existing community because of their
substantial cost in editor time. (Disclosure, I was one of the early
critics of the AFT, but IEP I largely ignored until February 2012 when I
made a number of proposals in edits on Meta, for example
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=IEP%2FMeasure_of_success&diff=3384211&oldid=3345498-
but I found that no-one else was editing the IEP pages there). Another
thing they had in common was that they were top down initiatives in a
community that works better with approaches that stem from the community
and start by seeing consensus.

If we truly want to learn from these two, I would suggest running an
election on meta where editors can lobby for the next initiative. This is
what I'd hoed that the Strategy wiki would foster, and it might have done
if the Strategy debate had been on Meta rather than hidden on a separate
wiki made more complex by liquid threads. Maybe the result would be Global
watchlists, maybe it would be software changes to resolve more edit
conflicts without losing edits (both currently languishing as low
 priorities in Bugzilla). The important thing is that the resulting
initiative would be likely to make a positive difference to the project and
unlikely to share the fate of liquid threads, the IEP or the AFT.


WSC   
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quarterly reviews of high priority WMF initiatives

[ENWP Pine]

Awesome. Thank you, Maryana and Steven!

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour inside out (program evaluation)

[ENWP Pine]

And speaking of mistakes, I need to remember to change the subject lines of my 
emails to this list.

Pine

From: deyntest...@hotmail.com
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: RE: Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 108, Issue 82
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2013 15:35:58 -0700




Peter, thanks, I agree on that point. Taking calculated risks is much different
from being negligent. Some risks work and some don't, and that can be OK in
some contexts.

Pine


From: "Peter Southwood" 
To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" 
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour inside out (program evaluation)
Message-ID: 
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="UTF-8";
reply-type=original
 
Make interesting mistakes.  
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 108, Issue 82

[ENWP Pine]

Peter, thanks, I agree on that point. Taking calculated risks is much different
from being negligent. Some risks work and some don't, and that can be OK in
some contexts.

Pine


From: "Peter Southwood" 
To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" 
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour inside out (program evaluation)
Message-ID: 
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="UTF-8";
reply-type=original
 
Make interesting mistakes.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour inside out (program evaluation)

[ENWP Pine]

Tom,

Thanks for the good email.

It's important to learn from mistakes, but admitting mistakes does not absolve 
someone from accountability. 
When people are being paid to do something right or to achieve a certain 
outcome, and that doesn't happen 
or it happens late, it's sometimes a very good and appropriate thing to 
consider replacing them for the sake
of the organization and the program.

In the case of IEP, the consultant said that firing people would have been 
"premature". I'm not sure
that I would have reached the same conclusion, and I think if I had been on 
WMF's board at the time that 
this report was released, I might have had things to say about holding 
individual employees accountable.
But in the here and now, I am mostly interested in making sure that lessons 
from this program are deeply 
embedded into the institutional memory of WMF throughout the organization and 
on a long-term basis. 

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Will Beback, Arbcom and Community oversight

[ENWP Pine]

> Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2013 19:00:05 +0100
> From: nemow...@gmail.com
> To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> CC: deyntest...@hotmail.com
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Will Beback, Arbcom and Community oversight
> 
> ENWP Pine, 24/03/2013 18:39:
> > If you're interested in starting a broader discussion about the usefulness
> > of arbcoms and alternatives to them, and the relationship of Jimbo to 
> > arbcoms,
> > I think the best place to do that is at Meta. [...]
> 
> I doubt it, the page would get deleted.
> 
> Nemo

An RFC about the topics that I mentioned would be within scope for Meta,
although I'm not predicting a successful RFC.

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour inside out (program evaluation)

[ENWP Pine]

Tom, I'm glad that you studied the IEP.

Gayle, I would be interested in hearing about the topics that you're
covering during your training sessions for WMF supervisors, especially
whether you make sure that every supervisor has had an opportunity
to learn about the experience of IEP. My impression is that the AFT5
leadership didn't make connections between IEP and AFT5 during
the AFT5 design and planning. I'm not sure if this is because
the AFT5 program leadership never read the IEP report, or if it's
because the AFT5 leadership didn't see how lessons from IEP could be
relevant to the AFT5 program. I hope that every program leader at WMF
makes a point of learning about IEP early in their leadership career.
I think IEP is a very useful case study in program management.

Thanks,

Pine 
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Will Beback, Arbcom and Community oversight

[ENWP Pine]

James,

If you're interested in starting a broader discussion about the usefulness 
of arbcoms and alternatives to them, and the relationship of Jimbo to arbcoms,
I think the best place to do that is at Meta. There have also discussions 
there about asking for some kind of outside intervention in the Russian 
Wikipedia due to infighting there, so your request for this kind of
discussion already has a parallel on Meta. But the consensus seems to be 
that outsiders shouldn't overrule the decision of a project's arbcom. I think
it would take a significant Meta RFC to come up with a mechanism that
changes this situation, and right now I think that's highly unlikely. If
you are dissatisfied with a decision made by ENWP Arbcom and you think that
the constitutional arrangements for ENWP Arbcom should be changed, I think
you are best served by having that discussion on ENWP and/or on the ENWP email
list. This is a long way of saying that I agree with Maria and Risker. I feel 
that the tone of Risker's first email should have been more respectful, but I
also understand that Risker and Arbcom probably get an endless series of
complaints and keeping one's composure in that situation can be difficult.

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quarterly reviews of high priority WMF initiatives

[ENWP Pine]

Tilman,

Thanks, it's great to see the momentum here in Mobile Contributions.

Was there any discussion about how to convert the "selfies" uploaders and 
people who sign up for the watchlist
feature into more active contributors? This seems like an opportunity to make 
progress on what I think should
be the #1 WMF-wide priority right now, which making progress on the active 
contributor statistics.

Pine



--

Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:32:54 -0700
From: Tilman Bayer 
To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quarterly reviews of high priority WMF
initiatives
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
 
Minutes and links to slides from this week's Quarterly Review meeting
of the mobile contributions team have been posted at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Mobile_contributions,_2013-03-18
 
 
On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 6:49 PM, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> to increase accountability and create more opportunities for course
> corrections and resourcing adjustments as necessary, Sue's asked me
> and Howie Fung to set up a quarterly project evaluation process,
> starting with our highest priority initiatives. These are, according
> to Sue's narrowing focus recommendations which were approved by the
> Board [1]:
>
> - Visual Editor
> - Mobile (mobile contributions + Wikipedia Zero)
> - Editor Engagement (also known as the E2 and E3 teams)
> - Funds Dissemination Committe and expanded grant-making capacity
>
> I'm proposing the following initial schedule:
>
> January:
> - Editor Engagement Experiments
>
> February:
> - Visual Editor
> - Mobile (Contribs + Zero)
>
> March:
> - Editor Engagement Features (Echo, Flow projects)
> - Funds Dissemination Committee
>
> We’ll try doing this on the same day or adjacent to the monthly
> metrics meetings [2], since the team(s) will give a presentation on
> their recent progress, which will help set some context that would
> otherwise need to be covered in the quarterly review itself. This will
> also create open opportunities for feedback and questions.
>
> My goal is to do this in a manner where even though the quarterly
> review meetings themselves are internal, the outcomes are captured as
> meeting minutes and shared publicly, which is why I'm starting this
> discussion on a public list as well. I've created a wiki page here
> which we can use to discuss the concept further:
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews
>
> The internal review will, at minimum, include:
>
> Sue Gardner
> myself
> Howie Fung
> Team members and relevant director(s)
> Designated minute-taker
>
> So for example, for Visual Editor, the review team would be the Visual
> Editor / Parsoid teams, Sue, me, Howie, Terry, and a minute-taker.
>
> I imagine the structure of the review roughly as follows, with a
> duration of about 2 1/2 hours divided into 25-30 minute blocks:
>
> - Brief team intro and recap of team's activities through the quarter,
> compared with goals
> - Drill into goals and targets: Did we achieve what we said we would?
> - Review of challenges, blockers and successes
> - Discussion of proposed changes (e.g. resourcing, targets) and other
> action items
> - Buffer time, debriefing
>
> Once again, the primary purpose of these reviews is to create improved
> structures for internal accountability, escalation points in cases
> where serious changes are necessary, and transparency to the world.
>
> In addition to these priority initiatives, my recommendation would be
> to conduct quarterly reviews for any activity that requires more than
> a set amount of resources (people/dollars). These additional reviews
> may however be conducted in a more lightweight manner and internally
> to the departments. We’re slowly getting into that habit in
> engineering.
>
> As we pilot this process, the format of the high priority reviews can
> help inform and support reviews across the organization.
>
> Feedback and questions are appreciated.
>
> All best,
> Erik
>
> [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Narrowing_Focus
> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings
> --
> Erik Möller
> VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
>
> Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
>
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-- 
Tilman Bayer
Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour inside out (program evaluation)

[ENWP Pine]

I agree that the general ideas about IEP and AFT5 were worth considering,
but I get the impression that there were preventable shortcomings in their 
designs and planning, and it bothers me a lot that I think I see *similar* 
flaws in the two programs. I get the impression that lessons from the IEP's
catastrophic failure were not absorbed by the AFT5 planners and designers. 
I would need to do a "deep dive" comparison of IEP and AFT5 before I'm 
sure of the commonalities in planning and design problems, but I sure hope 
that someone at WMF is looking at this and shares the lessons widely.

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Mid-Year Financial Statements

[ENWP Pine]

Thomas, I agree with you that it would make sense to have a more
thoroughly defined reserve policy, but I also caution against
micromanaging the reserve. I believe that I said in my previous 
email directed to Erik that I'm wondering what the downside is
of having some underspend for payroll due to hiring that happens
later than planned. Unless the underspend is significant enough
that it should impact the targets used by the Annual Fundraiser
in a significant way, believe that the underspend isn't much of
a concern. The issue that worries me about delayed hiring is the 
possibility of delays or disruptions to program schedules.

Pine  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour inside out (program evaluation)

[ENWP Pine]

> Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:31:57 -0700
> From: Frank Schulenburg 
> To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Tomorrow: Office hour inside out (program
>   evaluation)
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> Hi folks,
> 
> Tomorrow at 17:00 UTC, I will be holding an office hour about program
> evaluation on #wikimedia-office. The target audience for this office
> hour will be chapter representatives and volunteers who are currently
> running (or planning to run) programs and programmatic activities.
> You'll find some background information about why program evaluation
> might be worth talking about in my most recent blog post on the
> Foundation's blog:
> 
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/03/01/lets-start-talking-about-program-evaluation/
> 
> As we all know, most office hours follow a certain rule: there's one
> poor staffer who is getting grilled by the people on the IRC channel –
> people ask a variety of questions and the staff person tries to answer
> every question in a limited amount of time. It's a lot of fun (I
> guess, at least for the people who're asking the questions) and it has
> been a good way of direct communication between WMF employees and the
> community.
> 
> Now, this office hour will be different. Not that I don't enjoy being
> grilled for one hour :-) I've done IRC office hours several times
> before and I always enjoyed answering questions. The reason for this
> office hour to be different is that I want to _listen to you in the
> first place_. I would like to learn more about
> 
> * _your_ thoughts about why evaluation might be important
> * _your_ experiences with making evaluation a part of program design
> * _your_ hopes and fears when it comes to increasingly evaluating
> programs and programmatic activities in the future
> * _your_ ideas and feedback on evaluation practices
> 
> Ideally, we would have some people in the room tomorrow who have done
> some kind evaluation in the past or who are planning to embark on
> evaluation work in the near future. With that said – if you have no
> idea about what program evaluation is and you'd like to learn more
> about it, you're invited as well! Or maybe you're just curious to see
> if this "office hour inside out" is going to play out well ;-)
> 
> I'm looking forward to meeting you tomorrow at 17:00 UTC,
> 
> Frank
> 
> 
> 

I'd encourage people who are interested in this subject
to read up on program management and related subjects. 
This sort of management has been studied extensively in 
academia and in business, and in some ways I feel that
WMF has catch-up work to do and lacks expertise, 
although I'm hopeful that WMF is trying to improve
in this area.

I'd also suggest that people read the report about 
projects that encountered significant problems at 
WMF, particularly the IEP, and a more recent example 
is the mixed reception to AFT5. I hope that program 
managers at WMF learn both good practices and what 
to avoid. I also hope that WMF ties program metrics 
to evaluations for the responsible supervisors when 
considering whether to continue or renew 
employment contracts, as well as when
considering promotions.

Cheers,

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Report, February 2013

[ENWP Pine]

Sorry, I'm resending this to fix the subject line.

Pine


--




Garfield,

Sounds good. Thanks for following up. 

Pine


> Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 13:45:18 -0700
> From: Garfield Byrd 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Report, February 2013
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> Pine:
> 
> Our relationship with JP Morgan Chase is that they handle part of our
> international banking.  This is a separate division of the bank from the
> one that had the trading losses.  I agree with you that this type of news
> report is not good news.  I have reviewed the information I have available,
> and have determined that the money JP Morgan Chase is holding for the
> Wikimedia Foundation is not at risk.
> 
> When we did a review of banks that can handle our international
> banking, unfortunately  all of the banks we looked at were involved in some
> sort scandal, from risky trades to LIBOR manipulation.  This is not an
> ideal situation for a community based movement and I am continuing to look
> at options for all or some parts of our international banking needs.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Garfield
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 9:55 PM, ENWP Pine  wrote:
> 
> > I'm curious, what is the nature of WMF's relationship with JP Morgan
> > Chase? Given the stories that I'm reading in the news such as this one,
> > http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/jpmorgan-executives-face-withering-questions-at-senate-hearing/?hpw,
> > I'm uncomfortable with the idea that WMF has a business relationship with
> > JP Morgan.
> >
> > Pine
> >
> >
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list
> > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> >
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Garfield Byrd
> Chief of Finance and Administration
> Wikimedia Foundation
> 415.839.6885 ext 6787
> 415.882.0495 (fax)
> www.wikimediafoundation.org
> 
> Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
> the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
> 
> *https://donate.wikimedia.org*
> 
> 
> --
> 
> ___
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> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> 
> 
> End of Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 108, Issue 63
> 

  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 108, Issue 63

[ENWP Pine]

Garfield,

Sounds good. Thanks for following up. 

Pine


> Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 13:45:18 -0700
> From: Garfield Byrd 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Report, February 2013
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> Pine:
> 
> Our relationship with JP Morgan Chase is that they handle part of our
> international banking.  This is a separate division of the bank from the
> one that had the trading losses.  I agree with you that this type of news
> report is not good news.  I have reviewed the information I have available,
> and have determined that the money JP Morgan Chase is holding for the
> Wikimedia Foundation is not at risk.
> 
> When we did a review of banks that can handle our international
> banking, unfortunately  all of the banks we looked at were involved in some
> sort scandal, from risky trades to LIBOR manipulation.  This is not an
> ideal situation for a community based movement and I am continuing to look
> at options for all or some parts of our international banking needs.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Garfield
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 9:55 PM, ENWP Pine  wrote:
> 
> > I'm curious, what is the nature of WMF's relationship with JP Morgan
> > Chase? Given the stories that I'm reading in the news such as this one,
> > http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/jpmorgan-executives-face-withering-questions-at-senate-hearing/?hpw,
> > I'm uncomfortable with the idea that WMF has a business relationship with
> > JP Morgan.
> >
> > Pine
> >
> >
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list
> > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> >
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Garfield Byrd
> Chief of Finance and Administration
> Wikimedia Foundation
> 415.839.6885 ext 6787
> 415.882.0495 (fax)
> www.wikimediafoundation.org
> 
> Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
> the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
> 
> *https://donate.wikimedia.org*
> 
> 
> --
> 
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> 
> 
> End of Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 108, Issue 63
> 
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Report, February 2013

[ENWP Pine]

I'm curious, what is the nature of WMF's relationship with JP Morgan Chase? 
Given the stories that I'm reading in the news such as this one, 
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/jpmorgan-executives-face-withering-questions-at-senate-hearing/?hpw,
 I'm uncomfortable with the idea that WMF has a business relationship with JP 
Morgan.

Pine

  
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