Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Serbia office
Congratulations to Wikimedia Serbia:-) Tonmoy ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Serbia office
How exciting! Let me know if I can be of any (remote) help somehow! Cheers, John - - - - John Andersson Wikimedia Sweden Event Manager Europeana Awareness Phone: +46(0)73-3965189 Email: john.anders...@wikimedia.se Skype: johnandersson86 Be sure to follow us on Twitter at @wikieuropeana Visit http://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Projekt:Europeana_Awareness/English for more information about our project! Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2012 23:09:37 +0100 From: dungod...@gmail.com To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Serbia office Hello everyone, I'm writing to inform you that Wikimedia Serbia has opened an office in Belgrade starting November 1, thanks to the grant by WMF [1]. That means that we have our first employee, which is very exciting for us, but also brings a lot of responsibilities. So, the office is located in Bulevar Kralja Aleksandra (King Alexander Boulevard) 20, which is in the city center, on the fifth floor, with a view on the National Assembly building, the main post office building, church of Saint Mark and Trg Nikole Pašića, one of the two central squares. Anyone who's been to Belgrade can attest that this is one of the most central and most beautiful parts of the city. :) The office space is about 95 square meters and we're still in the process of buying furniture and equipment, but our conference room is pretty much set. We'll use the antechamber (which is quite large by itself) to display the 15 finalist photos from the WLM contest 2012 (we've just had a ceremony of announcing winners and exhibiting them in a local gallery). Our employee is Mile Kiš, our General Secretary. He's been a tremendous help for us in the past years and he's been doing more than full time work for us as a volunteer, so I'm especially glad that he's going to be able to help us as an employee, as well as be able to work on his personal professionalization. [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_RS/Annual_plan_2012-2013 Cheers, Filip Maljković Vice-president Wikimedia Serbia ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] Help needed to complete and expand the Wikimedia glossary
I support this effort to create a common glossary/vocabulary. And I add, since I tried to translate some of these words/expressions into French some time ago, and since it’s quite hard to obtain great and intuitive translations for many of these expressions, it would be great if new expressions could be thought with an internationalisation spirit as far as possible. As an example, in the Wikimedia Highlights of September, it’s hard to translate Curation Toolbar since curation don’t have a direct equivalent in French for this exact meaning (of tacking care of articles, curation is usually translated by conservation but quite different of this meaning). This is just an example but it illustrates a common difficulty for translators, probably for many languages. Thanks, Seb35 Le Tue, 20 Nov 2012 19:55:04 +0100, Guillaume Paumier gpaum...@wikimedia.org a écrit: Hi, The use of jargon, acronyms and other abbreviations throughout the Wikimedia movement is a major source of communication issues, and barriers to comprehension and involvement. The recent thread on this list about What is Product? is an example of this, as are initialisms that have long been known to be a barrier for Wikipedia newcomers. A way to bridge people and communities with different vocabularies is to write and maintain a glossary that explains jargon in plain English terms. We've been lacking a good and up-to-date glossary for Wikimedia stuff (Foundation, chapter, movement, technology, etc.). Therefore, I've started to clean up and expand the outdated Glossary on meta, but it's a lot of work, and I don't have all the answers myself either. I'll continue to work on it, but I'd love to get some help on this and to make it a collaborative effort. If you have a few minutes to spare, please consider helping your (current and future) fellow Wikimedians by writing a few definitions if there are terms that you can explain in plain English. Additions of new terms are much welcome as well: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Glossary Some caveats: * As part of my work, I'm mostly interested in a glossary from a technical perspective, so the list currently has a technical bias. I'm hoping that by sending this message to a wider audience, people from the whole movement will contribute to the glossary and balance it out. * Also, I've started to clean up the glossary, but it still contains dated terms and definitions from a few years ago (like the FundCom), so boldly edit/remove obsolete content. Thank you, ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Help needed to complete and expand the Wikimedia glossary
On 20 November 2012 18:55, Guillaume Paumier gpaum...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi, The use of jargon, acronyms and other abbreviations throughout the Wikimedia movement is a major source of communication issues, and barriers to comprehension and involvement. The recent thread on this list about What is Product? is an example of this, as are initialisms that have long been known to be a barrier for Wikipedia newcomers. A way to bridge people and communities with different vocabularies is to write and maintain a glossary that explains jargon in plain English terms. We've been lacking a good and up-to-date glossary for Wikimedia stuff (Foundation, chapter, movement, technology, etc.). Therefore, I've started to clean up and expand the outdated Glossary on meta, but it's a lot of work, and I don't have all the answers myself either. I'll continue to work on it, but I'd love to get some help on this and to make it a collaborative effort. If you have a few minutes to spare, please consider helping your (current and future) fellow Wikimedians by writing a few definitions if there are terms that you can explain in plain English. Additions of new terms are much welcome as well: Been done: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiSpeak -- geni ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] Fwd: [Tech/Product] Engineering/Product org structure
Thanks Erik for the extensive response. Ultimately what counts is ongoing progress. If the model proposed is an improvement from the current, solving specific problems we currently have, then fine and I'm all or it. I'm still stuck in one point: On 11/19/2012 07:54 PM, Erik Moeller wrote: 3) Why not have an even flatter structure? My prediction with a structure like the one you propose would be the following: If you increase the number of direct engineering-related reports to Sue from 1 to 5, her ability to meet and seriously interact with any one of them will drop to close to zero, with no time for goal-setting conversations, career pathing, or serious conflict resolution. One could ask why so many things need to be reported to or pass through a single person? This is the factor defining the angle of verticality of an organization. Why not having more decentralized reporting (broadcasting), goal-setting, career path, or serious conflict resolution? Why not betting on a more brave contemporary model being a non-profit foundation, with hundred-something employees, an open source culture, an Internet culture, a wiki culture, a remote work culture, a contributors culture, an online community culture, a San Francisco Bay tech startup inspiration? I understand what you are explaining about the board being the first body defining this kind of game. As for today the board is an entity too unilateral and abstract for me, but I'm willing to help bringing this type of message to them if these opinions are shared by others. BUT Well, at least your proposal doesn't go against this scenario. Perhaps is one step in that direction. Good enough here and now, I guess. Thank you for trying! And for opening this discussion. Just please consider further steps flattening and decentralizing the WMF. There is a blog post video circulating these days, about how GitHub Inc is organized as a company. They also manage a version control system promoting decentralized collaboration, plus other tools supporting this core goal and the big community around it. They are also hundred-something. They have also offices in San Francisco. They are also a young organization growing fast. Etc. The video is interesting and entertaining. The slides are simple and fun. I'm not a person for watching 40min YouTube videos, even less about HR business management topics - but this one was very interesting to watch. Even if only as a documentary of how certain company running certain product I like happens to work: Your team should work like an open source project http://tomayko.com/writings/adopt-an-open-source-process-constraints http://youtu.be/mrONxcyQo4E -- Quim ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] Fwd: [Tech/Product] Engineering/Product org structure
On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 6:02 PM, Quim Gil q...@wikimedia.org wrote: There is a blog post video circulating these days, about how GitHub Inc is organized as a company. They also manage a version control system promoting decentralized collaboration, plus other tools supporting this core goal and the big community around it. They are also hundred-something. They have also offices in San Francisco. They are also a young organization growing fast. Etc. Yeah, I'm familiar with it. There's also a similarly interesting description of the organizational culture at Valve (makers of Half-Life, Portal, etc.) in the form of their employee handbook: http://newcdn.flamehaus.com/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf I like a lot about the picture these presentations and documents paint, and I think there's a ton we can learn from them. There are of course also crucial differences between Wikimedia and a Git hosting company or a game developer, and less obvious ways that power is exercised in both organizations (e.g. the role of the founders). Well, at least your proposal doesn't go against this scenario. Perhaps is one step in that direction. [Fair warning, below is really starting to drift away from being on-topic for wikitech-l and going into general OD stuff.] I believe so. I do think we should have bigger conversations about what kind of organization we want to be, and what tradeoffs we'd need to accept if we wanted to move away from what's stilll in many ways a fairly hierarchical model. Like I said, I don't think you can make major structural changes in isolation, or you'll just end up with mismatched expectations and broken hearts. ;-) I do think flat structures are pretty enticing, though. I encourage you (and anyone) to look a bit more into the way things currently work if you want to help be part of continued evolutionary change. I've had conversations with Sue about this and she's pretty open to supporting well-justified structural changes (hence this discussion). The Board, too, is generally open-minded and responsive. An example where I think change is badly needed is the Annual Planning process. There are few aspects of WMF that follow as conventional a hierarchical model as this one. You see the output: a 71 page document [1] describing the organization's planned financials, key activities and targets, etc. To get to that point, we went through a multi-month process driven primarily by managers, sending drafts and submissions up and down and up the organizational ladder, with final review by Sue and ultimate approval by the Board. This was followed by the Narrowing Focus resolution, the Narrowing Focus process (with again lots of leadership involvement), the Narrowing Focus document and its approval, the Wikimedia Foundation FDC submission and its approval, etc. That's a lot of time spent on meta-level work. I'm not arguing it's time and effort wasted, but I do think there's a lot of room for streamlining and consolidating processes. I also think it's predicated on the assumption that creating a more comprehensive plan will lead to a better outcome, and I would challenge that belief -- there's a threshold at which point the opposite is true, and I think in a lot of our work that threshold is very low because the unknowns are pretty large and new ideas and opportunities may emerge all the time. Moreover, to get back to the point you were making, I think this is the kind of thing that creates a lot of dependency on conventional management approaches -- time that could be spent, by those same people, on doing the actual work the plan talks about, while creating a less rigid harness for the organization as a whole, in turn allowing for structures to be simplified and enabling greater autonomy across the board. So, I'm not arguing against deeper structural changes -- just for change that's harmoniously managed in concert with the various other factors at play. Cheers, Erik [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4f/2012-13_Wikimedia_Foundation_Plan_FINAL_FOR_WEBSITE.pdf -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
