[Wikimedia Announcements] Thank you for our time together.

[Lila Tretikov]

Dear fellow Wikimedians,



It is with great respect that I have tendered, and the board has accepted,
my resignation as Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation earlier
this week. I am both inspired by, and proud of, the many great things we
have all accomplished at the Foundation over the last two years, most
significantly reversing the loss of our editorial community. I would like
to thank our Board of Trustees
 and Advisors
, our Foundation staff
, as well as
the many outstanding community members
 for their support
and encouragement on this journey. I remain passionate about the value and
potential of open knowledge and Wikimedia to change the world. My last day
at the Foundation will be March 31, 2016.

Wikimedia occupies a special place in the world. It is a cultural and
technological revolution. Change is necessary to keep it thriving. In
bringing me in as the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation the
Board tasked me with making changes

to serve the next generation and ensure our impact in the future. Driving
these changes has been challenging, and I have always appreciated the open
and honest discourse we have had along the way. However, I am moved by the
accomplishments we have achieved during this time:


   -

   Strategically, we laid out our summary of the vision for united in
   knowledge
   

   and future of Wikimedia last June.
   -

   Operationally, we have reformed our procedures and initiated key performance
   metrics and reviews
   
.

   -

   Technologically we have introduced innovative approaches such as machine
   learning
   
   and mobile
   
   applications, started improvements in search
   ,
   grew translations
   
   and dramatically improved website performance
   
.
   In 2015, we made visual editor the default for all new users on English
   Wikipedia.
   -

   We united our community support departments and created a new community
   tech team to address community needs
   
.

   -

   Profoundly, for the first time in seven years, highly active editor
   numbers have increased
    and
   overall editor decline has stopped.
   -

   Equitably, I am proud of our efforts to address the gender gap
   
,
   our growing focus on site safety and anti-harassment
    initiatives and child
   protection -- I believe these are essential to protecting the fundamental
   principles of tolerance, open discourse and mutual respect -- our greatest
   strengths.
   -

   We fought against censorship and surveillance
   
,
   which  pose severe existential threats to our mission of free knowledge.
   -

   Financially, we grew rapidly in 2014 to seed and launch the Wikimedia
   Endowment  and secure our
   future for years to come.


I move on with confidence that the Foundation can meet new challenges in a
challenging environment. I believe in our ability to continue to lead
through this change. At this critical juncture for the Foundation, and for
the free and open knowledge movement as a whole, solidarity, creativity,
adaptability and passion will continue to propel our movement forward, and
empower our vision towards our future.

I will support the process of identifying our new leadership in every way
that I can, and offer my assistance to the Board as they conduct their
search for my successor. It has been an honor to serve and to contribute to
our great movement.




With warm regards,

Lila
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Re: [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation IEG program will fund 14 community-led projects

[Lila Tretikov]

Thank you Marti, committee. And congratulation to all of the grantees.

Lila

On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 4:58 PM, Marti Johnson 
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> In the latest round of Individual Engagement Grants
> , 29 eligible proposals were
> submitted for review. The committee recommended 14 for funding, with 19
> grantees selected to receive $83,113 overall.  WMF has now approved all
> 14 grants.  Here’s what we’re funding.[1]
>
> Tools - 7 projects funded
>
> * Batch Uploader for small GLAM projects
> 
> :
> This project will create a simple batch content upload tool in order to
> address the needs of smaller GLAM institutions who may not have the
> necessary resources, including budget, time, or staff expertise, to operate
> the existing tools used by larger galleries, libraries, archives, and
> museums.[2]
>
> * Pan Scandinavian Machine Assisted Content Translation
> 
> :
> Using Apertium, an open-source machine translation platform, this project
> will create translation data for closely-related languages Swedish, Danish
> and Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk) for use in Content Translation, an
> on-wiki translation tool.[3]
>
> * StrepHit: Wikidata Statements Validation via Reference
> 
> :
> Using natural language processing, this project will take online content
> from a selection of (non-Wikimedia) websites and documents and then
> automatically convert the raw text into references to external sources
> thereby verifying the data provided in existing Wikidata statements.[4]
>
> * Wikimaps Warper 2.0
> :
> This project will focus on improvements to Map Warper, an open-source tool
> used for digitally aligning and overlaying historical maps, in order to
> make the software more accessible to Wikimedians and better integrated with
> Wikimedia projects.[5]
>
> * Wiki Needs Pictures
> :
> By centralizing multiple sources of data including local templates,
> category labels, and Wikidata item properties in one application, this
> project will create a coordinated image request system with a
> mobile-friendly map-based interface that allows contributors to easily
> discover where there is demand from Wikimedia projects for specific
> images.[6]
>
> * Semi-automatically generate Categories for Vietnamese Wikipedia
> 
> :
> By implementing natural language processing patterns, this project aims to
> create and apply English Wikipedia category structures to Vietnamese
> Wikipedia with the help of the community to evaluate and standardize the
> naming convention process.[7]
>
> * Proofreading semi-automatically the Catalan Wikipedia with LanguageTool
> 
> :
> Using the open source program LanguageTool, this project will supervise
> the analysis of content, document common grammar errors, and develop bots
> and scripts to replicate their corresponding edits in Catalan Wikipedia.
> [8]
>
> Offline Outreach & Partnership - 5 projects funded
>
> * Editing Maithili Wikipedia
> :
> This project will deliver a series of in-person training sessions to
> students in Nepal’s Satpari District in order to create and nurture an
> active group of editors on Maithili-language Wikipedia.[9]
>
> * Increase Awareness of and Participation in Indic Language Wikipedias in
> Colorado
> 
> :
> Small group instruction and training in native language typing in multiple
> Indic scripts are the focus of this project which seeks to eliminate some
> of the barriers preventing the Indian diaspora community of Colorado
> Springs, CO from editing on Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi,Telugu, and Tamil
> Wikipedias.[10]
>
> * Motivational and educational video to introduce Wikimedia Video
> 
> :
> This project will create a modular series of instructional videos that can
> be updated and translated as needed, and that can be used to successfully
> onboard new editors en masse, for example, at edit-a-thons and other events
> where it is not possible to have the involvement of experienced
> Wikimedians.[11]
>
> * Wikitherapy :
> An 

[Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: A new structure for WMF Engineering.

[Lila Tretikov]

Dear Wikimedians,

Today we had a meeting at the Foundation to announce changes in our Product
and Engineering team structure. They represent the outcome of many
conversations with people from across the Wikimedia community and within
the Foundation. These changes will organize our teams around the needs of
people they serve, and empower them to focus deeply on their audiences to
deliver great outcomes.

We’re bringing together our Product and Engineering departments to form new
audience teams, reporting to Damon Sicore, our VP of Engineering. We’re
grouping core research, architecture, performance, and security functions
together, and will begin the search for a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to
lead our engineering future. And we’re integrating support for Community
Engineering into the broader Community Engagement team. These changes are
effective today.

Earlier this year we set out some goals for our work at the Foundation,
described in our Call to Action
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/State_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation#2015_Call_to_Action
for 2015. These goals came out of conversations with you, and with
Foundation staff. You’ll see that the first thing we identified was the
need to improve our technology and execution. These goals focused on
defining commitments, data-driven decision making, support for community
engineering requests, and a commitment to engineering leadership.

The new changes reflect these commitments. We have organized our product
engineering around six teams each with unique audiences. This includes a
Community Tech team dedicated to supporting tools for core contributors, as
well as teams for Editing, Reading, Search  Discovery, Infrastructure, and
Fundraising Tech.

In particular, I wanted to share more about the plans for the Community
Tech team. The creation of this team is a direct response to community
requests for more technical support. Their mission is to understand and
support the technical needs of core contributors, including improved
support for expert-­focused curation and moderation tools, bots, and other
features. Their mandate is to work closely with you, and the Community
Engagement department, to define their roadmap and deliverables. We are
hiring for a leader for this team, as well as additional engineers. We will
be looking within our communities to help. Until then, it will be incubated
under Toby Negrin, with support from Community Engagement.

We’re also committed to our long-term technology future. A new CTO will
support teams and functions dedicated to performance, architecture,
security, privacy, structured data, user experience, and research. Their
mandate is to keep Wikimedia fast, reliable, stable, and secure -- and to
support the Engineering team in their development of excellent products and
features.

You may notice there is no standalone Product department. We are moving
away from a matrix management structure. Instead, product managers,
designers, analysts, engineers, and others working together will report to
the same manager, who will report through to the VP of Engineering. This is
because we believe that everyone is responsible for user experience and
each team is ultimately responsible for delivering on the product vision
and a roadmap. It also gives teams ability to make decisions that are best
for their audiences, based on their user’s feedback. This represents a
maturation of our organization and processes, and will give each new teams
more focus, dedicated focus, and more support.

I want to thank everyone who has worked so hard to bring this new structure
together. Thank you to everyone in the community, for being thoughtful and
honest with your needs, criticisms and encouragements. Thank you to our
engineers, designers, researchers, and product managers, who have given us
extensive feedback about what works best for you. Thank you to our new team
managers and leads for stepping up into new roles. And thank you to Erik
and Damon, who have worked closely for many months to make this happen.

You can find more information about this new structure, the new teams,
their missions, and leadership, as well as other questions in a FAQ on
Metawiki
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Engineering_reorganization_FAQ.
We will update the Wikimedia Foundation site Staff page soon to reflect
these new teams.

Lila
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[Wikimedia Announcements] Announcing interim COO

[Lila Tretikov]

Dear Wikimedians,



At the Wikimedia Foundation, our mission is to empower, support and engage
people around the world to share in free knowledge. One of our top
priorities for the WMF in 2015 is improving organizational effectiveness in
service of this mission. This means we need to strengthen WMF's ability to
set and deliver on commitments, improve organizational discipline around
decision making, and mature internal processes and systems.

To ensure we can execute on our vision, mission, forthcoming strategy and
our Call to Action, we have hired for a new position within our C-level
team. Terry Gilbey will be joining us as interim Chief Operating Officer,
responsible for building rigor and discipline around our operational
processes. Terry’s role will help WMF stabilize our core operations so we
will be ready and able to adapt and innovate in our changing environment.
It will also help me find more time to focus on our products and
communities.

Terry comes from managing his own consulting firm and has been in a
consulting role at WMF working on a number of projects such as
goal-setting, financials, and budgeting. He has first-hand experience
working with the WMF leadership team, and we are all excited to work more
closely with him. Previously, Terry was the Executive Director of
Enterprise Operations at Kaiser Permanente, a nationwide healthcare
organization, and served in various management roles at IBM Global Services.

Terry is originally from England and has lived in the U.S., Europe, Asia,
and Central America. He currently lives in the South Bay, but also spends a
lot of time in Panama on a rural farm. He spends his spare time pursuing
unusual hobbies, such as bull riding, surfing, and more recently,
supporting a women’s flat track roller derby team. He also rides
motorcycles, does metal work, and has an avid interest in sustainability.
An early adopter of Tor, Terry believes strongly in the right to privacy
and the free and open access to knowledge as an equalizer.

With the COO position, we will be organizing our HR and Finance teams to
report to Terry. Garfield will continue as the CFO for the organization, a
member of the C-level team, and Treasurer of the Board. His roles and
responsibilities will remain unchanged, reporting to Terry. Terry and
Garfield will manage all financial and business planning activities and are
already making progress together. We’ll introduce Terry properly with a
short QA at the April metrics meeting.

It is with sadness that I report to you that Gayle Karen Young, Chief
Talent and Culture Officer has decided move onto her next adventure. Gayle
let me know she has been looking to move on some time ago, and she felt
this was the right moment in time. In her three and a half years within the
Foundation, she has made a tremendous impact creating a HR department that
is fundamentally about caring for the people in the organization and
offering services that allow people to do their best work, which has
supported our mission to help our communities thrive and curate knowledge.
While we will miss her wisdom and warmth, we thank her for her leadership
and celebrate her future adventures. HR will report directly to Terry at
this time.

Our purpose is to help Wikimedians around the world make the sum of all
knowledge available to everyone. We believe these changes, effective
immediately, will help us focus on our continued service to our community
and readers, and progress toward this mission.

Please join me in welcoming Terry as the newest member of our leadership
team and wishing Gayle well.  We have much exciting work in 2015, and I’m
looking forward to all the great things we will accomplish as we work
together to support our vision.

Lila
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[Wikimedia Announcements] Announcement: A new structure for WMF Community Engagement

[Lila Tretikov]

Dear Wikimedians,

Among the WMF’s top priorities for 2015 is strengthening our engagement
with Wikimedia editors and volunteers. Today we are taking the first step
by bringing together the people who know our communities best and asking
them to break barriers and improve engagement. Everyone at the WMF who
carries responsibilities directly related to the communities will join a
new Community Engagement department.

I have asked Luis Villa to lead the Community Engagement organization as
the Senior Director of Community Engagement, reporting to me. Promoting
from within the WMF for this critical role will allow us to leverage the
knowledge and experience with our communities and reinforce the strengths
of our people.

Luis’s experience with communities is lengthy and deep. He has been
involved in open communities since the late 1990s, from communities as
small as the Lego Mindstorms hackers to those as large as Mozilla. He
worked in open communities as a lawyer, a programmer, a bugmaster, an
engineering lead, a community leader, and a board member. Luis has
performed exceptionally within the Foundation and supported some of our
most fruitful community engagements. The Grantmaking, LE, Education,
Community Advocacy and Community Liaisons teams will join the new Community
Engagement department [2] under his leadership.

Unfortunately, Anasuya Sengupta -- our beloved leader of grantmaking --
will be leaving us due to personal health concerns at the end of March. We
will invite you soon to celebrate her time with us, her work at the WMF and
the deep insight she brought to the Foundation. We are saddened to see her
go. The team she has nurtured will provide an important foundation for our
upcoming work.

Siko Bouterse will move up to lead  the day-to-day work of the Grantmaking
team as Director of Community Resources, supervising all department Grant
programs and the Global South strategy. Siko has been instrumental in
innovating programs at the WMF, including initiatives like the Teahouse[1]
and the IdeaLab[2] combining vision with strong support for volunteer
community, tough decision making, and great project management skills.

These changes are an opportunity to improve the coordination of our work
supporting the communities. To accelerate this, I have asked Luis to lead
an internal “tiger” team to better understand the needs, concerns and
priorities of our volunteers, and to develop recommendations for future
programs. This work will be shared with all of you as it becomes available.

Please join me in congratulating Luis and Siko and in supporting our teams.
The Wikimedia communities are what makes the projects strong, unique, and
irreplaceable. This is the next step forward in our support to them, and in
service of our mission.


Lila



[1] As Director of Community Resources, Siko will oversee the IdeaLab,
Annual Plan Grants, Project and Event Grants, and Travel and Participation
Support. Her team will include Katy Love, Winifred Olliff, Alex Wang,
Janice Tud, Jonathan Morgan, and Asaf Bartov. Asaf will also take on a new
title as Senior Program Officer, Emerging Wikimedia Communities.

[2] Rachel DiCerbo, Philippe Beaudette, Siko, and Anasuya’s other direct
reports, and their respective teams (CL, CA, and Grantmaking/GLEE) will
report to Luis. The Engineering Community team will be part of the tiger
team but will continue to report to Engineering.

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse

[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab
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