[Wikimedia-l] WMF Product department transition

[Toby Negrin]

Hi all,

I’m writing to share that I’ve decided to step down as Chief Product
Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation and my last day will be November 1.

I’ve said before that I believe this is the most interesting job in the
world. After all, what happens in the world happens on Wikipedia. I have
felt incredibly fortunate to be a part of this movement, working on some of
the most urgent problems around knowledge and access that we face today.

I first joined the Foundation in 2013 as the Director of Analytics, and if
you had told me back then that I would end up staying for eight years, I
would never have believed you. Eight years is a long time. I am proud of
the work that this department has done, and I will take many lessons with
me. And at the same time, I’ve also realized I’m ready for the next chapter
in my career.

As I leave the Foundation, I want to express my deep gratitude to all of
you - the volunteers who have built these projects into what they are
today. Your contributions, your knowledge and your time have created these
projects that have become the largest collection of open knowledge in human
history. Every technology leader seeks passionate, engaged users who are
actively sharing feedback on the platforms they build. This community has
never let us down in that regard. Our work together between the communities
and the Product department wasn’t always easy, but on the whole we operated
under an assumption of good faith[1] and with a recognition of our
respective roles in helping improve the reading and editing experience of
our projects. I’m immensely proud of the work that we’ve accomplished and
the chance to work alongside so many talented people.

The Wikimedia Foundation was the first nonprofit of my career. At the time,
it was a welcome change and a chance to use my skills for good. I have seen
the Foundation go through many iterations and transitions. I’m proud to
have been part of its incredible growth and the increasing impact we are
making in the world. There have been many successes and many challenges
too, as we have tackled the new realities of the internet, and sought to
make our projects truly global and inclusive. In considering all of this,
now feels like the right time for me to step back and get closer to why I
became an engineer in the first place —  being a builder and a developer.
I’ve been energized by the work of this department and this movement,
bringing values of privacy, respect for users, inclusion and safety to
building on the open web. I hope to carry these forward as I take on a more
hands-on role in technology innovation in my next chapter.

Thank you to everyone that I’ve had the chance to work with on powering
some of the most innovative work on the open web. I cannot wait to see what
you all achieve next.

Cheers,
Toby
-- 
Toby Negrin (he/his)
Chief Product Officer
Wikimedia Foundation

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Help need

[Toby Negrin]

Hi Bojana - a quick note that we have received this message and are looking
into the issue. We’ll follow up directly to your email address.

-Toby

On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 11:31 WМ RepublikaSrpska <
wmrepublikasrp...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello All,
>
> In Republic of Srpska there is a photo-competition Trace of Soul 2018
>  (WLE+WLM)
> in
> progress. Yesterday and today we receive a few e-mails from competitors -
> they complained that they have a problem with photo upload. We have tested,
> and in third step, after release rights a page got "freezed". Does anyone
> know what is the problem? We really need help. Thanks!
>
> Bojana Podgorica
>
>
> *Замислите свет у коме свака особа на планети има слободан приступ
> целокупном људском знању. То је оно на чему ми радимо.*
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-- 
-Toby
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

[Toby Negrin]

Hi everybody --

I just wanted to follow up quickly that this report has been published and
is available here:


> I know that some folks were wondering about all the consultation comments
> about features, interfaces, and product improvements that didn't get
> incorporated into the strategy. We knew from the beginning of the processes
> that we'd certainly get quite a few of these requests that were too
> specific to be integrated into long-term strategic thinking and planned
> accordingly to document them. The goal was to consider how they might be
> taken up by either Foundation staff or interested volunteer developers. As
> a result, we're publishing a “Features report” written by Suzie Nussel that
> summarizes these requests, and should be a useful starting point for
> specific improvements that could be addressed in the shorter term.


 The PDF version is at:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Movement_
Strategy_2017_-_2017_Features_and_programs_(cycle_1).pdf

and the wiki version of the report is at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/2017/Reports/
Features_and_Programs_report_summary

The Audiences team will be using this report as an input into future
product discussions and annual planning.

-Toby

On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 10:13 AM, Katherine Maher 
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Sorry for the delay in chiming in. It's been a busy few weeks, and while I
> haven't made a public update about strategy in a while, work has been
> continuing! We've now closed Phase 1, and we're heading into Phase 2, in
> which our objective is to start thinking about how we make the strategic
> direction into a plan of action and implementation. It's an opportunity to
> create greater clarity about how we each understand the direction, how we
> might set goals against it, what we may need to change to achieve these
> goals, and how we can contribute -- as projects, communities, and
> individuals. I’ll be sending my next weekly update shortly but I wanted to
> acknowledge the contributions in this thread first.
>
> I've read through this entire thread, and I've agreed, disagreed, agreed
> again, and started emails only to see new ones come in and have to scrap my
> drafts. While I found myself often agreeing with Erik, I dig the challenges
> you all have put forward and appreciate the diversity of opinions. Some of
> our differences stem from the unique contexts of the groups and individuals
> responding and will result in differences in implementation in each
> community. Other differences, such as questioning the very concept of
> source credibility, will certainly require additional discussion. But
> regardless of where we end up, it has been a delight to follow such a rich,
> substantive conversation. This has been one of the best, and
> most thought-provoking, Wikimedia-l threads I've read in some time, and I
> hope that it is the first of many as we go into Phase 2 of the movement
> strategy process.
>
> A few more responses inline:
>
> 2017-10-04 11:19 GMT-07:00 Lodewijk :
> >
> > I don't understand what exactly that direction is headed towards, there
> is
> > too much space for a variety of interpretation. The one thing that I take
> > away though, is that we won't place ourselves at the center of the free
> > knowledge universe (as a brand), but want to become a service. We don't
> > expect people to know about 'Wikipedia' in 10 years, but we do want that
> > our work is being put to good use.
>
> It's always helpful to read critique as a challenge to our logical
> assumptions. Lodewijk, I see where your interpretation comes from here, but
> it is vastly different than how I interpret from this statement. To the
> contrary, I wouldn’t say "service" and "brand" are mutually exclusive. I do
> think that Wikimedia should want to continue to be known as a destination
> for free knowledge, and we do want to increase brand awareness, especially
> in areas and contexts where we are not yet well (or not at all) known. Our
> brand (including our communities) and visibility are some of our most
> valuable assets as a movement, and it would be strategically unwise not to
> build on them for long-term planning.
>
> When I think about knowledge as a service, it means that we want this, *and
> much more*. It’s additive. We want to be who we are today, *and* we want to
> provide a service to other institutions. We want to use that brand and
> visibility to work with others in the ecosystem. We also want to be present
> in new experiences and delivery channels, in order to preserve the direct
> interface connection with Wikipedia's contributors and readers that we have
> on the web. I see this as essential - for our readers, it's about ensuring
> a core promise: that the chain of evidence for the information they seek is
> unbroken and transparent, from citation to edit. For our contributors, it's
> about extending ways to contribute as our digital interfaces 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Facebook test features Wikipedia

[Toby Negrin]

Hi Andy -- at about 18 seconds into the video, you can see content that's
identified, albeit in light gray font, as being from Wikipedia with links
to the article and the license.

-Toby

On Thu, Oct 5, 2017 at 3:13 PM, Andy Mabbett 
wrote:

> On 5 October 2017 at 21:20, Strainu  wrote:
> > 2017-10-05 23:14 GMT+03:00 Andy Mabbett :
>
> >> Sounds good - does anyone know of any screen-shots. or video, showing
> >> this in action?
> >
> > Check out the video in the original announcement that Toby linked to.
>
> I saw that video, but it neither mentions nor shows content from Wikipedia.
>
> --
> Andy Mabbett
> @pigsonthewing
> http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
>
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[Wikimedia-l] Facebook test features Wikipedia

[Toby Negrin]

Hi all,


You might have seen that Facebook announced a test of a new feature today
that uses English Wikipedia content.[1] The new feature provides more
context about the source of news articles users see in their News Feed on
Facebook by pulling information about publishers from Wikipedia.

We got a heads up about this feature late last week and have been talking
to Facebook since then to better understand how it works.

Here is what we know so far: The feature is an “i” link which Facebook
users can click on to get more context about a news article's source. The
information provided includes Wikipedia content in addition to other
resources. The feature will pull the first three sentences (approximately
300 characters) of an English Wikipedia article about a given news
publication with a link to “continue reading” on Wikipedia, with
attribution to Wikipedia and Creative Commons licensing information. If no
article exists for that news publication, it will note that instead.

The feature will be made available to a limited number of users based in
the United States starting today as a part of their product testing. We
don’t have information on the roll-out plan, which will depend on the
results from the testing.

On a technical basis, this test is utilizing (and regularly updating) XML
dumps to get the Wikipedia content. This does not put as much load on our
servers, but also leaves the content slightly outdated. This is an issue we
are discussing with their technical folks alongside other issues like
content in other languages.

While this new feature did not come from any partnership with a Wikimedia
organization and our open access model means this is something they are
able to do without engaging with us, we appreciate them contacting us
before it went live. We are also always happy to see Wikipedia content
being used to inform more people. We hope to continue to have conversations
with Facebook about the impact of this feature on Wikipedia and will
continue to share relevant updates with Foundation staff and community.

If you haven’t heard about it yet, here is some press:

http://mashable.com/2017/10/05/facebook-wikipedia-context-articles-news-feed/#fvjzBwrtpqqS

https://www.fastcompany.com/40477586/facebook-thinks-the-answer-to-its-fake-news-problems-is-wikipedia

https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/05/facebook-article-information-button/?ncid=rss_source=feedburner_medium=feed_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

--Toby

[1]
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/10/news-feed-fyi-new-test-to-provide-context-about-articles
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Winning photos of Wiki Loves Earth Bangladesh 2017

[Toby Negrin]

These are great - thank you for sharing!

-Toby

On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 4:51 PM, Edward Galvez 
wrote:

> Love these. Thanks Nahid and to all the organizers and photographers!
>
> On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 8:19 AM, Nahid Sultan 
> wrote:
>
> > Hey Folks,
> > We are very happy to announce the top 10 winning photos[1] of Wiki Loves
> > Earth Bangladesh 2017. These 10 photos will compete in the international
> > stage of the competition.
> >
> > Bangladesh has taken part in the international Wiki Loves Earth
> > competition for the first time this year. During the competition, a total
> > of 191 Bangladeshi participants uploaded more than 2000 freely licensed
> > photographs of 40 (of the 51 government listed protected sites of
> > Bangladesh) different protected sites in Wikimedia Commons. Thanks to the
> > volunteers and jurors who were involved in organizing the competition and
> > reviewing the entries.
> >
> >
> >   1.  http://wikimedia.org.bd/blog/50-winners-wlebd2017
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Nahid Sultan
> >
> > User:NahidSultan on
> all
> > Wikimedia Foundation >'s
> > public wikis
> >
> > Secretary, Wikimedia Bangladesh wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_
> > Bangladesh>
> >
> > Twitter: @nahidunlimited
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>
>
>
>
> --
> Edward Galvez
> Evaluation Strategist (Survey Specialist), and
> Affiliations Committee Liaison
> Learning & Evaluation
> Community Engagement
> Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Changes to Product and Technology departments at the Foundation

[Toby Negrin]

Hi Jan --

Thanks for the question. We'll be making a more specific announcement this
week about the future of the discovery projects. Sadly we don't have a lot
of new information for maps in particular and will need to do a bit more
scenario planning before we talk to the community.

As far as focus, most of our "reading" features are actually content
created by editors that is consumed by readers and maps is no different.
While we don't have specifics as far as the roadmap, both authoring and
consumption features are totally in scope.

Hope this helps to provide some information (if not clarity :) about how we
are approaching this.

-Toby

On Thu, Jun 8, 2017 at 2:21 PM, Jan Ainali <ainali@gmail.com> wrote:

> 2017-06-07 23:12 GMT+02:00 Toby Negrin <tneg...@wikimedia.org>:
>
> >
> > The team working on maps, the search experience, and the project entry
> > portals (such as Wikipedia.org) will join the Readers team. This
> > realignment will allow us to build more integrated experiences and
> > knowledge-sharing for the end user.
> >
> Does maps going to readers mean that there will be less focus on editors
> tools for adding maps to articles and more focus on the readers possibility
> to interact with the maps? If so, what is actually in the pipeline for
> maps?
>
> /Jan
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[Wikimedia-l] Changes to Product and Technology departments at the Foundation

[Toby Negrin]

work of the Technology department into
platforms and services will also allow us to treat platforms as products,
with accountable product managers and defined roadmaps.

In addition to moving the Search subteam into Technology, we are creating a
separate ORES team. These changes mark the start of something big -
investing in building machine learning, machine translation, natural
language processing and related  competencies. This is the first step
towards supporting intelligent, humanized, user interfaces for our
communities - something we’re thinking of as “human tech”.  Not because we
think that machines will replace our humans, but because these tools cans
help our humans be much more productive.

Why these changes, why now?

When the Product and Technology departments were reorganized in 2015,[1]
the stated goal was establishing verticals to focus on specific groups of
users and to speed execution by reducing dependencies among teams. These
smaller changes are meant to “tune-up” that structure, by addressing some
of its weaknesses and making additional improvements to the structure of
our engineering work.

The process that brought us to these changes began informally shortly after
Victoria arrived, and took on a more formal tone once Wes announced his
departure in May. Katherine asked Anna Stillwell, the Foundation's
newly-appointed Chargée d’Affaires in the Talent & Culture department, to
facilitate a consultation with both departments to identify their pain
points, and better understand their cultural and structural needs. After
collecting feedback from 93 people across the two departments, as well as
stakeholders around the organization, she offered a draft proposal for open
comment within the Foundation. After making some changes to reflect staff
feedback, the Foundation’s leadership team decided to proceed with the
changes described above.

The leaders of some of the teams involved will be following up in the next
few days with the specifics of these organizational moves and what they
mean to our communities. If you still have questions, please ask here or on
the talk page of this announcement:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Engineering/June_2017_changes.

Best regards,

Toby Negrin, Interim Vice President of Product
Victoria Coleman, Chief Technology Officer

PS. An on-wiki version of this message is available for translation:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/June_2017_changes

[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Engineering_reorganization_FAQ

[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2017-2018/Draft
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[Wikimedia-l] Product draft goals posted on mediawiki

[Toby Negrin]

Hi everyone --

I wanted to let you know that the product team has posted our draft goals
for next quarter (the fourth quarter of the Foundation's fiscal year aka
Q4) up on mediawiki:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/2016-17_Q4_Goals#Product

Please take a look and let us know your thoughts on the talk page. We'd
like to lock these goals and make a commitment to them in a week or two.

thanks,

-Toby
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community Wishlist Survey: Status report #2

[Toby Negrin]

Hi James -- the Community Tech team is growing! We just added another
developer and we have another position in the Annual Plan. Agreed -that
it's been really great watching this team grow and partner with the German
chapter as well as other community members.

-Toby

On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 2:43 AM, James Heilman  wrote:

> Thanks Johan for the update. The teams are working on a lot of important
> projects and have a mountain of requests ahead of them. Hopefully we will
> see the Community Tech team grow in size this coming year :-)
>
> James
>
> On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 2:42 PM, Johan Jönsson 
> wrote:
>
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > The important part of this email is this link:
> >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2015_Community_Wishlist_Survey/Status_report_2
> >
> > This is the second Community Wishlist Survey status report. In November
> and
> > December, active contributors to Wikimedia projects proposed, discussed
> and
> > voted on the features and fixes that they most want to see. The Wikimedia
> > Foundation Community Tech team has been tasked with working on
> > these. Additionally, Wikimedia Deutschland's Technical Wishes team has
> been
> > working on wishes from the German-speaking community. There's overlap
> > between the two wishlists, and the teams are collaborating on various
> > wishes, so this report includes progress made by both teams as well as
> > great work being done by volunteer developers and other WMF staff.
> >
> > So far, we (in the broad sense) have added support for:
> >
> > *) Migrating dead external links to archives (but there's more work to be
> > done!)
> > *) Pageview stats
> > *) Global notifications
> > *) A category watchlist
> >
> > We're currently working on:
> >
> > *) Improving the plagiarism detection bot
> > *) Improving the diff compare screen
> > *) Numerical sorting in categories
> > *) The possibility to add an expiry date to watchlist items
> > *) A revision slider to help editors navigate through diff pages
> >
> > For more information on these projects as well as upcoming tasks, see the
> > full status report on Meta:
> >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2015_Community_Wishlist_Survey/Status_report_2
> >
> > We're looking forward to talking and working with you as we go along.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > //Johan Jönsson
> > User:Johan (WMF)
> > --
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>
>
>
> --
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> MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
>
> The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
> www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT

[Toby Negrin]

Indeed - thank you Ori on behalf of the entire technical organization.

Dariusz - I'd ask that you consider the assumptions that you listed in your
email more closely. Ori, myself and others would be very happy to work with
you this.

-Toby

On Thursday, February 18, 2016, Moiz Syed  wrote:

> Wow, thank you Ori. +1 to everything you said.
>
> That line from Dariusz disappointed me to, but I just chalked it up to just
> another case of a board member downplaying community/staff concerns and
> plea for help.
>
> On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 10:33 AM, Ori Livneh  > wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 4:47 AM, Dariusz Jemielniak  >
> > wrote:
> >
> > > There is way too much blaming/bashing/sour expectations
> > > working both ways - we almost forget how unique we are, irrespective of
> > > many slips and avoidable failures we make (and WMF  is definitely
> leading
> > > here, too! ;)
> > >
> >
> > No, we're not. My peers in the Technology department work incredibly hard
> > to provide value for readers and editors, and we have very good results
> to
> > show for it. Less than two years ago it took an average of six seconds to
> > save an edit to an article; it is about one second now. (MediaWiki
> > deployments are currently halted over a 200-300ms regression!). Page load
> > times improved by 30-40% in the past year, which earned us plaudits in
> the
> > press and in professional circles. The analytics team figured out how to
> > count unique devices without compromising user anonimity and privacy and
> > rolled out a robust public API for page view data. The research team is
> in
> > the process of collecting feedback from readers and compiling the first
> > comprehensive picture of what brings readers to the projects. The TechOps
> > team made Wikipedia one of the first major internet properties to go
> > HTTPS-only, slashed latency for users in many parts of the world by
> > provisioning a cache pop on the Pacific Coast of the United States, and
> is
> > currently gearing up for a comprehensive test of our failover
> capabilities,
> > which is to happen this Spring.
> >
> > That's just the activity happening immediately around me in the org, and
> > says nothing of engineering accomplishments like the Android app being
> > featured on the Play store in 93 countries and having a higher user
> rating
> > than Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Netflix, Snapchat, Google Photos, etc.
> Or
> > the 56,669 articles that have been created using the Content Translation
> > tool.
> >
> > This is happening in spite of -- not thanks to -- dysfunction at the top.
> > If you don't believe me, all you have to do is wait: an exodus of people
> > from Engineering won't be long now. Our initial astonishment at the
> Board's
> > unwillingness to acknowledge and address this dysfunction is wearing off.
> > The slips and failures are not generalized and diffuse. They are local
> and
> > specific, and their location has been indicated to you repeatedly.
> > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What happened on the Board of Trustees?

[Toby Negrin]

Hi Cometstyles -

A lot of people have put much more of themselves into the project than me
but I would like to request that we maintain a civil tone and subject.
Regardless of how we feel about professional aptitude I think we should
leave personal lives and families out of these discussions.

-Toby



On Saturday, January 9, 2016, Comet styles  wrote:

> The major problem is and has been for a while  is that we have people
> in the hierarchy who do not understand how the wiki works, most have
> never made an edit out of their 'hidden' wikis or userpages on wmfwiki
> or meta..
>
> How can one trust a product in the hands of someone who does not use
> it? ..We will never get a truthful answer for his removal and the
> reason is probably quite petty as well but it shows discord amongst
> our so called 'leaders' and its sad and ironic that this had to happen
> around the time wikipedia is doing its donation drive..honestly, WMF
> has taken a  nosedive since Sue left and left the organisation in the
> hands of Lila who has failed as a leader..not to mention her
> 'baby-daddy' has been banned from most wikimedia wikis as well as IRC
> for talking nonsense and is constantly using his blogs to attack the
> same organisation his 'ex' is trying to run..
>
> ---
> Cometstyles/Warpath
>
> On 1/9/16, Tobias >
> wrote:
> > Dear all,
> >
> > right now, we know very little about the removal of James. It is hard
> > for anyone not involved (which is the vast majority of this community)
> > to come up with any safe conclusions, because there is a lack of
> > evidence. This opens up the possibility of speculation. I would prefer
> > the stating of facts instead of speculation, but since that's not
> > happening, I think speculation might be a way to incentivize more
> > insiders to come forward with facts, if only to refute the content of
> > speculation.
> >
> > I am going to attempt to do this in a neutral fashion, and I will also
> > follow another important tradition in the movement, assume good faith. I
> > do not subscribe to conspiracy theories that allege a secret plan by
> > Google or intentions of harming Wikipedia on anyone's part.
> >
> > Here's what I think might have happened:
> >
> > James, a longstanding community member, is accustomed to how we do
> > things on Wikipedia -- with transparency, an open discourse, but also
> > endless discussions on talk pages. Other members of the board have less
> > of a "Wikipedian" background, and are more accustomed to how things work
> > in companies: board meetings in secret, focus on being effective at the
> > cost of transparency, with a frank tone on the inside, and a diplomatic
> > and collective voice to the outside.
> > These very different conceptions clash, for instance when it comes to
> > the plans of a "Wikipedia knowledge engine": some prefer early community
> > involvement and plead openness, others, perhaps scared of the harsh
> > criticism of early announced and unfinished products by the community,
> > wish to wait with giving out more information. James is frustrated and
> > tries to push other board members towards more transparency, which in
> > turn makes them wary of him and they mutually develop distrust.
> > The pivotal part of the story then is the question of WMF leadership,
> > and the fact that there is a lot of discontent among WMF staff with
> > senior leadership, as indicated by an employee engagement survey. James,
> > being used to transparent discussions, pushes for a thorough and open
> > review, and talks to staff members to gain more information. The other
> > board members, perhaps somewhat in panic, think he will initiate a
> > public discussion about replacing senior leadership and (perhaps
> > inadvertently) will cause a major disruption to the entire foundation,
> > so they decide to call a halt before it's too late and remove him from
> > the board.
> >
> >
> > This is what, given the information publicly available, is in my opinion
> > at least one likely explanation of what happened. Please take it with a
> > grain of salt, it /is/ speculation. I intend this to undergo the process
> > of falsification and encourage anyone involved to call me out on what
> > they perceive is incorrect.
> >
> > Tobias
> >
> > ___
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> > 
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>
>
> --
> Cometstyles
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community revitalization

[Toby Negrin]

Hi Peter --

We're putting this feature into the Android app this quarter where we can
test and iterate on the UX. Based on user feedback, we'll have a better
idea of how to implement it on the more heavily trafficked platforms.
Clearly we'd do an automated fashion.

I'll ping the editing folks and see if there are any thoughts about a tool
for Editors.

-Toby

On Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 10:00 PM, Peter Southwood <
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:

> How about a tool to look up in Wiktionary from Wikipedia?
> Cheers,
> Peter
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> Behalf Of Pine W
> Sent: Tuesday, 17 November 2015 11:40 PM
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List; Toby Negrin
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community revitalization
>
> Thanks Michal.
> I periodically use English Wiktionary and am pleased with it as a reader.
> I am wondering what it might take to increase our readership of
> Wiktionaries in general, perhaps by increasing the prominence of them in
> Google search results. Pinging Toby to see if he has any ideas on how to
> increase the readership of Wiktionaries.
> Regards,
> Pine
>
> On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 11:14 AM, Michal Lester <mles...@wikimedia.org.il>
> wrote:
>
> > Dear friends and colleague,
> >
> >
> >
> > I would to share with you the post we published on Wikimedia Blog
> > (November 13, 2015) [1]. It describes how WMIL works with few
> > *Wiktionary* volunteers in a process of revitalization of *Wiktionary*
> > community. I believe it could be useful case study for those of you who
> deal with similar issues.
> >
> > I would be happy to provide more info. to anyone who is interested
> > Michal
> >
> > [1]
> >
> > https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/11/13/hebrew-wiktionary-community-revi
> > talization/
> >
> > *Regards,*
> >
> >
> > *Michal Lester,*
> >
> > *Executive DirectorWikimedia Israel*
> > *http://www.wikimedia.org.il <http://www.wikimedia.org.il/>  *
> > *972-50-8996046 ; 972-77-751-6032  *
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
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> > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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> > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
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> -
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] 'Design team' in Wikimedia contexts

[Toby Negrin]

Hi Isarra --

I can clarify the way design is organized at the Foundation; the actual org
page I'll have to leave to someone else.

There are currently designers sitting in the vertical teams, but as the
teams themselves are organized slightly differently, it's hard to
understand.

For example, the reading design team is composed of the designers and
engineers that work on Wikipedia and sister sites' reading experiences and
discovery is organized the same way. In editing, the designers are in the
various product teams.

There are two teams that provide support to all of the audiences teams --
Design Research and UX Standardization. Design Research lives under
Research and UX Standardization is in Reading.

This is a start; happy to provide more clarifications.

-Toby

On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 1:21 PM, Isarra Yos  wrote:

> From time to time I see references to the 'design team' on lists and on
> phabricator. But what does this really mean now? As I understood it, the
> previous monolithic Design Team was essentially disbanded toward the
> beginning of the year, with the designers themselves distributed amongst
> the other WMF teams in order to more directly integrate their services into
> the development workflow (which sounds like a pretty good idea to me, at
> least, since design is such an integral part of most development). Did this
> happen? According to
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff_and_contractors, there seem to
> still be two teams now with the word 'design' in their names, Reading
> Design and Design Research, though these both seem to have somewhat more
> specialised functions than just general design, namely Reading (sounds like
> front-end non-interactive mw stuff, the visuals perhaps?) and Research.
>
> So what is the 'design team'? Is it one of these, though the teams only
> have 5 and 4 people on them, respectively? Is it just WMF designers in
> general?
>
> As much as this is also just a plea to please be more specific, if you
> have an actual answer, or if you have been saying this, please, speak up,
> share your experience and where you're coming from. As confusing as it is,
> I suspect a discussion of what and why this has been going on could also
> clear up quite a bit.
>
> Thanks.
>
> -I
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community revitalization

[Toby Negrin]

Hi Pine, Michal -- Google SEO is a bit of a black art, but we can reach out
and see if there's any specific feedback they can give us.

We are investigating linking to Wiktionary from the Android app and
Discovery may have some plans to integrate in search results. I'll bump
those teams.

-Toby

On Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 1:40 PM, Pine W  wrote:

> Thanks Michal.
> I periodically use English Wiktionary and am pleased with it as a reader.
> I am wondering what it might take to increase our readership of
> Wiktionaries in general, perhaps by increasing the prominence of them in
> Google search results. Pinging Toby to see if he has any ideas on how to
> increase the readership of Wiktionaries.
> Regards,
> Pine
>
> On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 11:14 AM, Michal Lester 
> wrote:
>
>> Dear friends and colleague,
>>
>>
>>
>> I would to share with you the post we published on Wikimedia Blog
>> (November
>> 13, 2015) [1]. It describes how WMIL works with few *Wiktionary*
>> volunteers
>> in a process of revitalization of *Wiktionary* community. I believe it
>> could be useful case study for those of you who deal with similar issues.
>>
>> I would be happy to provide more info. to anyone who is interested
>> Michal
>>
>> [1]
>>
>> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/11/13/hebrew-wiktionary-community-revitalization/
>>
>> *Regards,*
>>
>>
>> *Michal Lester,*
>>
>> *Executive DirectorWikimedia Israel*
>> *http://www.wikimedia.org.il   *
>> *972-50-8996046 ; 972-77-751-6032  *
>> ___
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>> 
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>> 
>
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation quarterly reviews for July-September 2015

[Toby Negrin]

Sorry James -- I replied before I saw your email. Happy to continue this
discussion elsewhere Pine.

-Toby

On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 5:52 AM, Toby Negrin <tneg...@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Hi Pine --
>
> I can't speak for the other groups, but for your question on Reading and
> push notifications, we're having discussions with the echo folks about
> using this platform for push notifications for the apps. We're interested
> in combining this feature with feeds on the apps with the idea that it
> would land in the first quarter of 2016 but this is very preliminary.
>
> -Toby
>
> On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 1:35 AM, Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Thanks Tilman. I finally got around to skimming most of this. Questions &
>> Comments below:
>>
>> Communications: seems to be firing on all cylinders.
>>
>> Team Practices: seems to be making a difference in supporting other
>> individuals and teams. Some of the metrics chosen look great.
>>
>> Release engineering: great idea about the skill matrix; would HR and Team
>> Practices like to expand this to other teams?
>>
>> Grants restructuring: big job, thanks/congrats for how it was done,
>> looking
>> forward to execution
>>
>> TechOps: nice to see that OTRS upgrade is in progress; I believe that this
>> has been talked about for years
>>
>> Labs: I have a subjective impression of much improved reliability, so
>> thank
>> you
>>
>> Design research: University of Washington mentioned; what's the
>> connection?
>>
>> Performance: thank you for working on paint time
>>
>> Security: I have a suggestion for KPIs: maximum and median times for
>> resolution of critical and high priority bugs; and maximum and median time
>> for first response to bug reports on all channels (Phabricator, email,
>> etc)
>>
>> Reading: can we get an update on what's being done WRT push notifications?
>>
>> Partnerships: happy to see pre-install deal coming soon
>>
>> Editing: how is the community feedback about the split of Echo
>> notifications.
>>
>> Multimedia: yay for ability to upload to Commons from VE; excited that
>> Excel import is coming (this may stop my complaints to Grantmaking about
>> MediaWiki tables for budgets)
>>
>> High level comment: from these reports it looks like the Foundation is
>> generally making good progress. Going forward a theme that I'd really like
>> to see is closer integration of WMF priorities with community priorities.
>> I
>> hear from my colleagues at in-person meetings and online that there is a
>> sense that WMF's priorities may or may not be the community's priorities.
>> A
>> certain amount of that is understandable, but my subjective sense is that
>> there's a fair amount of frustration in the community and that the
>> situation could be better. Suggestion: take advantage of the Evaluation
>> team's enhanced survey capacity to run surveys like the one that WMIL ran,
>> and run them every 6 months. Prioritize the languages to maximize return
>> on
>> translation investment. Then adjust WMF quarterly priorities in alignment
>> with the priorities expressed in the community priorities survey. Also,
>> establish SLAs for all departments with regard to responses to community
>> questions.
>>
>> Thanks! I hope that other community members will write comments and
>> questions also.
>>
>> Pine
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 10:15 PM, Tilman Bayer <tba...@wikimedia.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Greetings everyone,
>> >
>> > the Wikimedia Foundation's quarterly reviews of teams' work in the
>> > past quarter (July-September, Q1 of the 2015-16 fiscal year) took
>> > place last week. Minutes and slides for those meetings are now
>> > available:
>> >
>> > Community Engagement:
>> >
>> >
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Community_Engagement,_October_2015
>> >
>> > Discovery:
>> >
>> >
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Discovery,_October_2015
>> >
>> > Reading and Advancement (with Fundraising Tech):
>> >
>> >
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Reading_and_Advancement,_October_2015
>> >
>> > Editing (comprising the Collaboration, Language Engineering,
>> > Multimedia, Parsing, and VisualEditor teams):
>> >
>> &

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation quarterly reviews for July-September 2015

[Toby Negrin]

Hi Pine --

I can't speak for the other groups, but for your question on Reading and
push notifications, we're having discussions with the echo folks about
using this platform for push notifications for the apps. We're interested
in combining this feature with feeds on the apps with the idea that it
would land in the first quarter of 2016 but this is very preliminary.

-Toby

On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 1:35 AM, Pine W  wrote:

> Thanks Tilman. I finally got around to skimming most of this. Questions &
> Comments below:
>
> Communications: seems to be firing on all cylinders.
>
> Team Practices: seems to be making a difference in supporting other
> individuals and teams. Some of the metrics chosen look great.
>
> Release engineering: great idea about the skill matrix; would HR and Team
> Practices like to expand this to other teams?
>
> Grants restructuring: big job, thanks/congrats for how it was done, looking
> forward to execution
>
> TechOps: nice to see that OTRS upgrade is in progress; I believe that this
> has been talked about for years
>
> Labs: I have a subjective impression of much improved reliability, so thank
> you
>
> Design research: University of Washington mentioned; what's the connection?
>
> Performance: thank you for working on paint time
>
> Security: I have a suggestion for KPIs: maximum and median times for
> resolution of critical and high priority bugs; and maximum and median time
> for first response to bug reports on all channels (Phabricator, email, etc)
>
> Reading: can we get an update on what's being done WRT push notifications?
>
> Partnerships: happy to see pre-install deal coming soon
>
> Editing: how is the community feedback about the split of Echo
> notifications.
>
> Multimedia: yay for ability to upload to Commons from VE; excited that
> Excel import is coming (this may stop my complaints to Grantmaking about
> MediaWiki tables for budgets)
>
> High level comment: from these reports it looks like the Foundation is
> generally making good progress. Going forward a theme that I'd really like
> to see is closer integration of WMF priorities with community priorities. I
> hear from my colleagues at in-person meetings and online that there is a
> sense that WMF's priorities may or may not be the community's priorities. A
> certain amount of that is understandable, but my subjective sense is that
> there's a fair amount of frustration in the community and that the
> situation could be better. Suggestion: take advantage of the Evaluation
> team's enhanced survey capacity to run surveys like the one that WMIL ran,
> and run them every 6 months. Prioritize the languages to maximize return on
> translation investment. Then adjust WMF quarterly priorities in alignment
> with the priorities expressed in the community priorities survey. Also,
> establish SLAs for all departments with regard to responses to community
> questions.
>
> Thanks! I hope that other community members will write comments and
> questions also.
>
> Pine
>
> On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 10:15 PM, Tilman Bayer 
> wrote:
>
> > Greetings everyone,
> >
> > the Wikimedia Foundation's quarterly reviews of teams' work in the
> > past quarter (July-September, Q1 of the 2015-16 fiscal year) took
> > place last week. Minutes and slides for those meetings are now
> > available:
> >
> > Community Engagement:
> >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Community_Engagement,_October_2015
> >
> > Discovery:
> >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Discovery,_October_2015
> >
> > Reading and Advancement (with Fundraising Tech):
> >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Reading_and_Advancement,_October_2015
> >
> > Editing (comprising the Collaboration, Language Engineering,
> > Multimedia, Parsing, and VisualEditor teams):
> >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Editing,_October_2015
> >
> > Infrastructure (comprising the Analytics, Release Engineering,
> > Services, TechOps, and Labs teams) and CTO (comprising the Design
> > Research, Research & Data, Performance, and Security teams):
> >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Infrastructure_and_CTO,_October_2015
> >
> > Legal, Talent & Culture (HR), Communications, Finance & Administration
> > & Office IT, and Team Practices:
> >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Legal,_HR,_Finance,_Communications,_TPG,_October_2015
> >
> > As usual, much of this information will also be available in
> > consolidated form as part of the general WMF quarterly report for Q1,
> > which is planned to be published on October 19.
> >
> > See
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews
> > 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Q1 Fundraising Update

[Toby Negrin]

Hi Folks --

I would suggest that if you are unhappy with the banners you apply your
energy to the annual planning process[1]. As long as the budget goes up 20%
year over year and page views fall, the Fundraising team will need to crank
up the banners.

It's worth pointing out that Fundraising is one of the strongest voices for
fiscal restraint at the Foundation.

-Toby

[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2015-2016_Annual_Plan

On Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 4:09 PM, Pete Forsyth  wrote:

> I want to be clear about my previous message -- I am not questioning any
> individual person's integrity in the process, and I know from firsthand
> experience that a tremendous amount of good work goes into this stuff. But
> I think the process that has evolved around developing the campaign is
> broken.
>
> In Megan's message, I see a great deal of emphasis on the specific points
> that are attributable to community suggestions/requests. But there is a
> bigger point that gets lost: It's not about where the ideas come from, it's
> about whether the final result "gets it right."
>
> If the WMF produced mission-compatible banners without any community
> consultation at all, I'd be happy, and I think most others would be too.
> Running an open process is not the right way to measure success here. An
> open process is one of many ways to surface problems, and maybe to generate
> ideas; but it's not the be-all end-all.
>
> The fund-raising department is clearly held accountable on its
> easily-measured performance. It needs to also be held accountable to the
> mission. How to do that is a difficult design and management problem, and I
> don't pretend to have the perfect answer. But it's something that needs to
> be done.
>
> Pete
> [[User:Peteforsyth]]
>
> On Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 3:58 PM, Pete Forsyth 
> wrote:
>
> > I agree, that banner does not reflect the values of this movement. Pure
> > and simple; it's not a grey area, and not worth my time to discuss for
> the
> > 97th time.
> >
> > Personally, I long ago gave up participating in these discussions, for
> the
> > most part -- because the same valid points get made over and over again,
> > and the same *AWFUL* errors are made year after year in the fund-raising
> > campaign.
> >
> > Leila's post here is heartening, and I'm glad that somebody has the
> energy
> > to articulate the concerns so well. I, myself, do not; I have simply lost
> > faith in the integrity of the Wikimedia Foundation's fund-raising
> > operation. I am, honestly, ashamed to tell people that I used to work in
> > the fund-raising department there (though I believe the work we did was
> > valuable).
> >
> > I recently heard from a high-ranking executive at a software company. She
> > told me that she had given money to the Wikimedia Foundation, and then
> > looked into the WMF's budget, and the messages in the campaign she had
> > responded to. The word she used to describe her feeling was "mortified."
> > She had considered asking for her money back, but had decided against it.
> >
> > Fortunately, she was sophisticated enough not apply her negative feelings
> > to Wikipedia, but rather to the Wikimedia Foundation. But can the WMF
> > afford to assume that will always be the case?
> >
> > Apparently, the thinking thus far is, "yes."
> >
> > -Pete
> > [[User:Peteforsyth]]
> >
> > On Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 2:56 PM, Leila Zia  wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Megan,
> >>
> >> Thank you for the update and all the hard work the team has done during
> >> Q1.
> >> My comments below.
> >>
> >> On Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Megan Hernandez <
> mhernan...@wikimedia.org
> >> >
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> > The team has used this first quarter to test a wide variety of brand
> new
> >> > banners. From images, to banners highlighting photos from Commons, and
> >> > different messages, we’ve found a few new ways to share the
> fundraising
> >> > message with Wikipedia readers. With updated designs, we’ve ended the
> >> > quarter with a banner that performs roughly 20% better than the best-
> >> > performing banner from last quarter.
> >>
> >>
> >> I saw that banner and I want to do all I can to help you not use it even
> >> if
> >> it performs 20% better. I put my story in p.s. so it's easier to skip
> for
> >> whoever chooses to skip. This is a true story. :-\
> >>
> >>
> >> > Better performing banners are required
> >> > to raise a higher budget with declining traffic. We’ll continue
> testing
> >> new
> >> > banners into the next quarter and sharing highlights as we go.
> >> >
> >>
> >> I've said this couple of times in the past through different channels
> >> (sorry to those of you who have heard this before) but I think it's key
> to
> >> repeat it here just so we are all clear about what we know and what we
> >> don't know.
> >>
> >> We know that our pageviews are not growing globally (depending on how
> you
> >> look at the trend and predictions, they are 

[Wikimedia-l] Community Tech jobs posted

[Toby Negrin]

Hi all --

I wanted to give you an update on the Community Tech team. We've posted job
descriptions for open positions on our jobs page that we'd like to bring
your attention to:

Community Tech Developer
https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/62666?t=m5pcy0#.VUgfhjvF_FI

Community Tech Engineering Manager
https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/62669?t=d51bks#.VUgfhjvF_FI

Please encourage qualified folks to apply!

I want to say that I'm really excited to be working with Luis to help build
this team. I'm very appreciative that Lila and the other execs have
identified this gap in our community support and have made resources
available to address it.

-Toby
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation quarterly reviews

[Toby Negrin]

Analytics/UX/Product and TPG are here:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Analytics-Product-UX-TPG-Quarterly_Report_Q3_FY14-15.pdf

-Toby

On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 9:53 PM, Tilman Bayer tba...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 Hi all,

 the quarterly reviews for the past quarter (January-March 2015) took
 place last week. Minutes and slides are now available for the
 following meetings:

 Community Engagement, Advancement (Fundraising and Fundraising Tech):

 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Community_Engagement_and_Advancement/April_2015

 Mobile Web, Mobile Apps, Wikipedia Zero:

 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Mobile_and_Wikipedia_Zero,_April_2015

 Parsoid, Services, MediaWiki Core, Tech Ops, Release Engineering,
 Multimedia, Labs, Engineering Community:

 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Parsoid,_Services,_MW_Core,_Ops,_RelEng,_MM,_Labs_and_ECT,_April_2015

 Editing (covering VisualEditor), Collaboration (covering Flow),
 Language Engineering:

 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Editing,_Collaboration_and_Language_Engineering,_April_2015


 As mentioned in February [1], the quarterly review process has been
 extended to basically all groups in the Foundation since Lila took the
 helm last year, and it was further refined this quarter, reducing the
 number of meetings to six overall, each combining several areas.
 Minutes and slides from the remaining two meetings should come out
 soon, too. (And naturally, all the engineering team names above refer
 to the structure before the reorganization that has just been
 announced.)

 [1]
 https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-February/076835.html

 On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 6:49 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org 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.