Dear Erik, (Also copying in the Cultural Partners and GLAMwiki Toolset mailing lists as Erik's email below is directly is related to them).
Thank you for this email with the explicit invitation for groups in the Wikimedia movement to directly take responsibility for supporting the technology needs of GLAM partnerships. Different groups in the movement have different capacities and different areas of priority - and that is how it should be :-) We each need to try and 'bite off what we can chew' in a way that is coordinated, mutually beneficial, and not a duplication of each others' efforts. To that end... Over the last couple of years *Europeana*[1] has been increasingly involved in supporting tech development for mediawiki that is specifically targeted at addressing the needs of the GLAMwiki community. I note that the report you linked to on the stats that GLAMs want[1] and also the GLAMwiki Toolset for mass multimedia upload which you also mentioned[2] are both *Europeana* projects - in collaboration with several European Wikimedia Chapters. On behalf of *Europeana *I would like to confirm that we wish to become even more involved in this area and has the full intention of supporting further development in partnership with interested Chapters when possible. In the fullness of time, we intend to apply for a WMF grant in order to enable precisely that. On the mediawiki.org discussion page for the 2014/15 Engineering goals there has been a fair bit of discussion about GLAM-related projects that are not in the WMF's own plans[4]. Fabrice, as "process owner" for the Multimedia section of those goals, has proposed on that talkpage a couple of meetings of interested parties to discuss how we can all work together effectively on this, notably in person at Wikimania, an offer which we definitely accept :-) I also agree with Illario's point that formalising WMF support for externally-developed software is an important criteria in any grant decisions and for organisational reputation. Fortunately Fabrice has specifically addressed this issue relating specifically to the GLAMwiki Toolset which is very helpful.[5] Sincerely, Liam / Wittylama GLAMWIKI coordinator, Europeana. [1] http://pro.europeana.eu/ [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia /commons/a/a2/Report_on_requirements_for_usage_and_reuse_statistics_for_GLAM_content. pdf [3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:GLAMwiki_Toolset_Project [4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia _Engineering/2014-15_Goals#Image_view_analytics [5] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Engineering/2014-15_Goals# GLAMwiki_Toolset wittylama.com Peace, love & metadata On 26 June 2014 05:54, Erik Moeller <e...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > Hi folks, > > At the Zurich Hackathon, I met with a couple of folks from WM-CH who > were interested in talking about ways that chapters can get involved > in engineering/product development, similar to WM-DE's work on > Wikidata. > > My recommendation to them was to consider working on GLAM-related > tooling. This includes helping improve some of the reporting tools > currently running in Labs (primarily developed by the illustrious and > wonderful Magnus Manske in his spare time), but also meeting other > requirements identified by the GLAM community [1] and potentially > helping with the development of more complex MediaWiki-integrated > tools like the GLAMWiki-Toolset. > > There's work that only WMF is well positioned to do (like feeding all > media view data into Hadoop and providing generalized reports and > APIs), but a lot of work in the aforementioned categories could be > done by any chapter and could easily be scaled up from 1 to 2 to 3 > FTEs and beyond as warranted. That's because a lot of the tools are > separate from MediaWiki, so code review and integration requirements > are lower, and it's easier for technically proficient folks to help. > > In short, I think this could provide a nice on-ramp for a chapter or > chapters to support the work of volunteers in the cultural sector with > appropriate technology. This availability of appropriate technology is > clearly increasingly a distinguishing factor for Wikimedia relative to > more commercial offerings in its appeal to the cultural sector. > > At the same time, WMF itself doesn't currently prioritize work with > the cultural sector very highly, which I think is appropriate given > all the other problems we have to solve. So if this kind of work has > to compete for attention with much more basic improvements to say the > uploading pipeline or the editing tools, it's going to lose. Therefore > I think having a "cultural tooling" team or teams in the larger > movement would be appropriate. > > I've not heard back from WM-CH yet on this, but I also don't think > it's an exclusive suggestion, so wanted to put the idea in people's > heads in case other organizations in the movement want to help with > it. I do want WMF to solve the larger infrastructure problems, but the > more specialized tooling is likely _not_ going to be high on our > agenda anytime soon. > > Thanks, > Erik > > [1] > https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Report_on_requirements_for_usage_and_reuse_statistics_for_GLAM_content.pdf > > -- > Erik Möller > VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/guidelineswikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
