Re: [Wikimedia-l] Feedback on the last 2 years
Hi, I will try to put up the matrix and its documentation in english on meta later this week. You can find the matrix itsel in english there on meta : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/Wikim%C3%A9dia_France/Proposal_form#4._How_will_your_organization_measure_and_report_the_results_of_this_program.3F As said before, this is a first step. It is far from being perfect, but it's the first step. Now we have something to build on and draw experience from. Thanks to all the person that said this feedback was interesting. We will try to make such reports, more governance oriented than program oriented, more oftenly to keep you up to date with what works and what doesn't. All the best, -- Christophe On 14 April 2014 16:27, Andrea Zanni zanni.andre...@gmail.com wrote: Thank you Christophe. This mail is really useful and I really hope, as Pine said, you will be able to share some of the documentation in English. It would be really helpful for chapters to understand these issues and, above all, the solutions. Aubrey On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 11:26 PM, Jon Davies jon.dav...@wikimedia.org.ukwrote: Merci Christophe - very useful and echoes many issues WMUK experienced. On 12 April 2014 20:38, ENWP Pine deyntest...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Christophe, Thank you for these interesting emails. I'm cc'ing Anasuya on this discussion with the hope that what you've learned can be disseminated to other Wikimedia affiliates, especially new or aspiring chapters. Is the decision matrix that you use for your programs available in English? I would like to have a copy of it on Meta along with these emails. I am interested in this subject partly because of the discussion about WMF's Annual Plan and partly because there are occasional discussions about forming a new thematic organization or chapter in my region. Thanks, Pine ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- *Jon Davies - Chief Executive Wikimedia UK*. Mobile (0044) 7803 505 169 tweet @jonatreesdavies Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). Telephone (0044) 207 065 0990. Visit http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/ and @wikimediauk ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@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 Wikimedia-l@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 Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Feedback on the last 2 years
Thanks Christophe, The metrics are easy to understand, I like their simplicity. This makes your goals easy to track, such as both number of volunteer hours and numbers of volunteers being used to analyse volunteer involvement. It would be neat if all chapters were to make these standard, cheap and easy to understand measurements available centrally, as year by year trend charts so that everyone can see the long term impact (or non-impact) of changes, such as changing employee numbers or chapter membership. As with most organizations, it can be hard to see the wood for the trees, especially once we are locked in a 12-month cycle of bidding and funding and the 3 year plus trend is then never worth reporting, as the FDC did not ask for it. Fae On 15 April 2014 09:54, Christophe Henner christophe.hen...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I will try to put up the matrix and its documentation in english on meta later this week. You can find the matrix itsel in english there on meta : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/Wikim%C3%A9dia_France/Proposal_form#4._How_will_your_organization_measure_and_report_the_results_of_this_program.3F As said before, this is a first step. It is far from being perfect, but it's the first step. Now we have something to build on and draw experience from. Thanks to all the person that said this feedback was interesting. We will try to make such reports, more governance oriented than program oriented, more oftenly to keep you up to date with what works and what doesn't. All the best, -- Christophe On 14 April 2014 16:27, Andrea Zanni zanni.andre...@gmail.com wrote: Thank you Christophe. This mail is really useful and I really hope, as Pine said, you will be able to share some of the documentation in English. It would be really helpful for chapters to understand these issues and, above all, the solutions. Aubrey On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 11:26 PM, Jon Davies jon.dav...@wikimedia.org.ukwrote: Merci Christophe - very useful and echoes many issues WMUK experienced. On 12 April 2014 20:38, ENWP Pine deyntest...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Christophe, Thank you for these interesting emails. I'm cc'ing Anasuya on this discussion with the hope that what you've learned can be disseminated to other Wikimedia affiliates, especially new or aspiring chapters. Is the decision matrix that you use for your programs available in English? I would like to have a copy of it on Meta along with these emails. I am interested in this subject partly because of the discussion about WMF's Annual Plan and partly because there are occasional discussions about forming a new thematic organization or chapter in my region. Thanks, Pine ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- *Jon Davies - Chief Executive Wikimedia UK*. Mobile (0044) 7803 505 169 tweet @jonatreesdavies Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). Telephone (0044) 207 065 0990. Visit http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/ and @wikimediauk ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@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 Wikimedia-l@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 Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae Personal and confidential, please do not circulate or re-quote. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Feedback on the last 2 years
Thank you, Christophe! You demonstrate that the idea of sharing experiences is more than only sharing success stories. And what sounds so easy is so hard to realize and we all are not really experienced in it. You've shown how it can be handled and we all can learn from you and follow your example. Thanks, Alice. On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 11:26 PM, Jon Davies jon.dav...@wikimedia.org.ukwrote: Merci Christophe - very useful and echoes many issues WMUK experienced. On 12 April 2014 20:38, ENWP Pine deyntest...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Christophe, Thank you for these interesting emails. I'm cc'ing Anasuya on this discussion with the hope that what you've learned can be disseminated to other Wikimedia affiliates, especially new or aspiring chapters. Is the decision matrix that you use for your programs available in English? I would like to have a copy of it on Meta along with these emails. I am interested in this subject partly because of the discussion about WMF's Annual Plan and partly because there are occasional discussions about forming a new thematic organization or chapter in my region. Thanks, Pine ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- *Jon Davies - Chief Executive Wikimedia UK*. Mobile (0044) 7803 505 169 tweet @jonatreesdavies Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). Telephone (0044) 207 065 0990. Visit http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/ and @wikimediauk ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@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 Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
[Wikimedia-l] Wiki Education Foundation website
I came across this press release today on the Wiki Education Foundation,[1] which announces that the WEF is getting $1.39 million from the Stanton Foundation. When I went to the WEF's website,[2] I must say I was disappointed that the website isn't developed at all, although there is a link to basic information on Meta. And going to the About page,[3] my first thought was Ahhh Lorem ipsum, we meetum againem. I must also say that the photos stood out; a Foundation which has education as its mission, and the imagery that the WEF is putting its name to is people schmoozing, drinking and gambling in a Las Vegas casino. Probably not the sort of image you want to portray to people so early on. It also struck me as odd that the WEF would already have a Flickr account, and upon looking it appears the WEF has no Flickr account, but rather the photos are from a set[4] belonging to thewhir.com, and where they are evidently marked © All Rights Reserved.[5] Are these images used with permission of WHIR? Even if so, it doesn't look good that the WEF is using ARR imagery when Commons is home to almost 21 million freely licenced images that could be used, and probably be more appropriate to illustrate your mission. I look forward to seeing a properly developed WEF website, with hopefully appropriate freely licenced content, in the near future. Cheers Russavia [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Education_Foundation/Press_Release_14_April_2014 [2] http://www.wikiedfoundation.org/ [3] http://www.wikiedfoundation.org/about [4] https://www.flickr.com/photos/thewhir/sets/72157637847519144/with/10952943715/ [5] https://www.flickr.com/photos/thewhir/10951076296/in/set-72157637847519144 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Education Foundation website
Congratulations to the Wiki Education Foundation -- this is a big accomplishment, and should bode well for Wikipedia engagement in the U.S. and Canadian educational systems for a long time to come! The Wiki Education Foundation has documented its progress well on-wiki. Currently its home page is on Meta Wiki: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Education_Foundation I'm sure they will have more than a parked domain for their web site before long, but for now, it doesn't really seem like the top priority. -Pete p.s. If anybody's looking for more wiki-appropriate parked domain imagery though, isn't this Wikipe-Tan's sister? http://www.blogcdn.com/www.urlesque.com/media/2010/11/parker-ito-9.jpg On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 9:27 AM, Russavia russavia.wikipe...@gmail.comwrote: I came across this press release today on the Wiki Education Foundation,[1] which announces that the WEF is getting $1.39 million from the Stanton Foundation. When I went to the WEF's website,[2] I must say I was disappointed that the website isn't developed at all, although there is a link to basic information on Meta. And going to the About page,[3] my first thought was Ahhh Lorem ipsum, we meetum againem. I must also say that the photos stood out; a Foundation which has education as its mission, and the imagery that the WEF is putting its name to is people schmoozing, drinking and gambling in a Las Vegas casino. Probably not the sort of image you want to portray to people so early on. It also struck me as odd that the WEF would already have a Flickr account, and upon looking it appears the WEF has no Flickr account, but rather the photos are from a set[4] belonging to thewhir.com, and where they are evidently marked © All Rights Reserved.[5] Are these images used with permission of WHIR? Even if so, it doesn't look good that the WEF is using ARR imagery when Commons is home to almost 21 million freely licenced images that could be used, and probably be more appropriate to illustrate your mission. I look forward to seeing a properly developed WEF website, with hopefully appropriate freely licenced content, in the near future. Cheers Russavia [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Education_Foundation/Press_Release_14_April_2014 [2] http://www.wikiedfoundation.org/ [3] http://www.wikiedfoundation.org/about [4] https://www.flickr.com/photos/thewhir/sets/72157637847519144/with/10952943715/ [5] https://www.flickr.com/photos/thewhir/10951076296/in/set-72157637847519144 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@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 Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
[Wikimedia-l] Documentation of the Wikimedia Conference 2014
Hi Wikimedians, on behalf of the Documentation Team of the Wikimedia Conference 2014 I'm happy to announce that we published all the minutes and photos of all sessions, as far as they were available and ready. Check them out on https ://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2014/Documentation. We tried to summarise the sessions (too long, didn't read). However, sometimes this was not possible due to the most different opinions. Furthermore, you find most of the presentation slides and photos of the Conference on Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki /Category:Wikimedia_Conference_2014) Any comments, any questions, drop me a line. Best regards Cornelius on behalf of the Documentation Team of the conference (Benjamin, Conny, Lukas and Cornelius) Cornelius Kibelka Twitter: @jaancornelius ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
[Wikimedia-l] Introducing the newly redesigned WMF Shop
Hello, We are pleased to announce the Wikimedia Shop[1] has undergone a redesign as of this afternoon. One of the shop's primary priorities for 2014 was to make it more visually appealing and user friendly. It is our hope that these changes will enable us to increase sales so that we can support more community events through merchandise giveaways. Thus far in 2014, the shop has supported chapters and community groups in Thailand, Ghana, and Indonesia, and will be supporting a Wikipedia Zero event in Bangladesh later this year. Our team has also reinvigorated the Merchandise Giveaways Program [2], sending shirts to nominated users on a weekly basis. We want our merchandise to help bring even more people to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects, and make currently involved community members feel good about their work. The shop redesign also marks the release of a new product: the limited edition Wiki Loves Monuments Calendar[3]. While we are already a few months into 2014, the quality of the images and work put in by Wikimedians was reason enough to produce these calendars, but buy them while you can as there is a very limited quantity! We look forward to displaying more Wikimedia artifacts like this one in the future. Please give us your comments on the new site design and help us continue to improve the way we represent Wikimedia through discussion on the Wikimedia Merchandise talk page[4], or feel free to contact me directly. Thank you! Caitlin [1]https://shop.wikimedia.org/ [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Merchandise_giveaways [3] http://shop.wikimedia.org/collections/accessories/products/2014-wiki-loves-monuments-calendar [4]https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikimedia_merchandise -- Caitlin Cogdill Fundraiser Program Associate Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
[Wikimedia-l] Sponsorship/donations to other organizations
Hi folks, I'd be interested in hearing broader community opinions about the extent to which WMF should sponsor non-profits purely to support work that Wikimedia benefits from, even if it's not directed towards a specific goal established in a grant agreement. This comes up from time to time. One of the few historic precedents I'm aware of is the $5,000 donation that WMF made to FreeNode in 2006 [1]. But there are of course many other organizations/communities that the Wikimedia movement is indebted to. On the software side, we have Ubuntu Linux (itself highly indebted to Debian) / Apache / MariaDB / PHP / Varnish / ElasticSearch / memcached / Puppet / OpenStack / various libraries and many other dependencies [2], infrastructure tools like ganglia, observium, icinga, etc. Some of these projects have nonprofits that accept and seek sponsorship and support, some don't. One could easily expand well beyond the software we depend on server-side to client-side open source applications used by our community to create content: stuff like Inkscape, GIMP and LibreOffice (used for diagrams). And there are other communities we depend on, like OpenStreetMap. So, should we steer clear of this type of sponsorship altogether because it's a slippery slope, or should we try to come up with evaluation criteria to consider it on a case-by-case basis (e.g. is there a trustworthy non-profit that has a track record of accomplishment and is in actual need of financial support)? I could imagine a process with a fixed giving back annual budget and a community nominations/review workflow. It'd be work to create and I don't want to commit to that yet, but I would be interested to hear opinions. MariaDB specifically invited WMF to become a sponsor, and we're clearly highly dependent on them. But I don't think it makes sense for us to just write checks if there's someone who asks for support and there's a justifiable need. However, if there's broad agreement that this is something Wikimedia should do more of, then I think it's worth developing more consistent sponsorship criteria. Thanks, Erik [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Freenode_Donation [2] Cf. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Upstream_projects -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Sponsorship/donations to other organizations
Hi Erik, I'd say 'maybe'. I think this sort of work is worth supporting in general, but the question should be whether providing the support would improve the content and/or provision of the Wikimedia projects. I'd like to see a good community-driven process that would determine whether such sponsorship would be helpful or whether it would be a waste of money. Thanks, Mike On 15 Apr 2014, at 20:50, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi folks, I'd be interested in hearing broader community opinions about the extent to which WMF should sponsor non-profits purely to support work that Wikimedia benefits from, even if it's not directed towards a specific goal established in a grant agreement. This comes up from time to time. One of the few historic precedents I'm aware of is the $5,000 donation that WMF made to FreeNode in 2006 [1]. But there are of course many other organizations/communities that the Wikimedia movement is indebted to. On the software side, we have Ubuntu Linux (itself highly indebted to Debian) / Apache / MariaDB / PHP / Varnish / ElasticSearch / memcached / Puppet / OpenStack / various libraries and many other dependencies [2], infrastructure tools like ganglia, observium, icinga, etc. Some of these projects have nonprofits that accept and seek sponsorship and support, some don't. One could easily expand well beyond the software we depend on server-side to client-side open source applications used by our community to create content: stuff like Inkscape, GIMP and LibreOffice (used for diagrams). And there are other communities we depend on, like OpenStreetMap. So, should we steer clear of this type of sponsorship altogether because it's a slippery slope, or should we try to come up with evaluation criteria to consider it on a case-by-case basis (e.g. is there a trustworthy non-profit that has a track record of accomplishment and is in actual need of financial support)? I could imagine a process with a fixed giving back annual budget and a community nominations/review workflow. It'd be work to create and I don't want to commit to that yet, but I would be interested to hear opinions. MariaDB specifically invited WMF to become a sponsor, and we're clearly highly dependent on them. But I don't think it makes sense for us to just write checks if there's someone who asks for support and there's a justifiable need. However, if there's broad agreement that this is something Wikimedia should do more of, then I think it's worth developing more consistent sponsorship criteria. Thanks, Erik [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Freenode_Donation [2] Cf. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Upstream_projects -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@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 Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Sponsorship/donations to other organizations
On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 9:50 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi folks, I'd be interested in hearing broader community opinions about the extent to which WMF should sponsor non-profits purely to support work that Wikimedia benefits from, even if it's not directed towards a specific goal established in a grant agreement. This comes up from time to time. One of the few historic precedents I'm aware of is the $5,000 donation that WMF made to FreeNode in 2006 [1]. But there are of course many other organizations/communities that the Wikimedia movement is indebted to. On the software side, we have Ubuntu Linux (itself highly indebted to Debian) / Apache / MariaDB / PHP / Varnish / ElasticSearch / memcached / Puppet / OpenStack / various libraries and many other dependencies [2], infrastructure tools like ganglia, observium, icinga, etc. Some of these projects have nonprofits that accept and seek sponsorship and support, some don't. One could easily expand well beyond the software we depend on server-side to client-side open source applications used by our community to create content: stuff like Inkscape, GIMP and LibreOffice (used for diagrams). And there are other communities we depend on, like OpenStreetMap. So, should we steer clear of this type of sponsorship altogether because it's a slippery slope, or should we try to come up with evaluation criteria to consider it on a case-by-case basis (e.g. is there a trustworthy non-profit that has a track record of accomplishment and is in actual need of financial support)? I could imagine a process with a fixed giving back annual budget and a community nominations/review workflow. It'd be work to create and I don't want to commit to that yet, but I would be interested to hear opinions. MariaDB specifically invited WMF to become a sponsor, and we're clearly highly dependent on them. But I don't think it makes sense for us to just write checks if there's someone who asks for support and there's a justifiable need. However, if there's broad agreement that this is something Wikimedia should do more of, then I think it's worth developing more consistent sponsorship criteria. Thanks, Erik [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Freenode_Donation [2] Cf. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Upstream_projects -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation Hi Erik, It's a difficult question. I'm in favour in general, and I think it's a good idea to support projects that we use and need the money. The problem I have with it (and that is absent in your points above) is in how far we have the moral right to spend the money donors gave us on other projects. Transparency to sponsors - especially since we get a lot of small donations - is something I feel strongly about. If this were set up in a way integrated in our fundraising policy (Donate X, allow for Y to be spent on projects we are dependent on for example) I'd be in favour, but I'm uncomfortable with re-gifting some random donors money to Varnish. --Martijn ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@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 Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Sponsorship/donations to other organizations
On 15 April 2014 21:08, Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoeks...@gmail.com wrote: It's a difficult question. I'm in favour in general, and I think it's a good idea to support projects that we use and need the money. The problem I have with it (and that is absent in your points above) is in how far we have the moral right to spend the money donors gave us on other projects. In the case of CC, OSM or Freenode, we prevail upon these organisations' resources considerably; it's akin to outsourcing infrastructure. We use their stuff to a degree that I think it's an obviously right thing, and defensible as such, to support them financially. - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Sponsorship/donations to other organizations
There is a reason if the last precedent is in 2006. Search your mail archives for later discussions on FreeNode. Erik Moeller, 15/04/2014 21:50: MariaDB specifically invited WMF to become a sponsor, Do they only accept unrestricted donations? If not, they could consider that the WMF grants are very flexible. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Start Most IEG proposals, for instance, seem to propose software development projects (and other contractor work) with wages in the tens thousands dollars. Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Sponsorship/donations to other organizations
In general, I do think Wikimedia should do this. Briefly: Wikimedia is in an extremely fortunate position: it can raise all the money it needs from many small donors, and can expect to be able to do so continually into the future. This is partially because it is a great thing that many people value, of course, but it's partially by accident because of the type of thing it is--a public resource that most potential donors visit directly on its website, probably even every day. Part of that fortunate position is because of the work of other organizations which have much less visibility--infrastructural software, which silently and invisibly makes Wikimedia's work possible and means we don't have to spend the resources we do take in reinventing the wheel because they have already done it. The tools that make it possible for us to create, edit, and display multimedia content freely--whose users often download once and then have no other contact with the organization's site or materials. The organizations who are working with us to advance our common goals, but who do so less visibly. Almost none of these have the same ability to raise money as Wikimedia does, even if they were doing so as effectively as possible, and this is especially true if they also wish to minimize their dependence on corporations and foundations with differing goals. But Wikimedia's mission depends on their survival also--we are able to do what we do more effectively because of them, and it seems only right that some of the value we get from them should go back to supporting them. -Kat (Disclaimer: I work for CC now, which has received a donation from Wikimedia since my leaving the board; however, this is an opinion I've held for a long time.) On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 12:50 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi folks, I'd be interested in hearing broader community opinions about the extent to which WMF should sponsor non-profits purely to support work that Wikimedia benefits from, even if it's not directed towards a specific goal established in a grant agreement. This comes up from time to time. One of the few historic precedents I'm aware of is the $5,000 donation that WMF made to FreeNode in 2006 [1]. But there are of course many other organizations/communities that the Wikimedia movement is indebted to. On the software side, we have Ubuntu Linux (itself highly indebted to Debian) / Apache / MariaDB / PHP / Varnish / ElasticSearch / memcached / Puppet / OpenStack / various libraries and many other dependencies [2], infrastructure tools like ganglia, observium, icinga, etc. Some of these projects have nonprofits that accept and seek sponsorship and support, some don't. One could easily expand well beyond the software we depend on server-side to client-side open source applications used by our community to create content: stuff like Inkscape, GIMP and LibreOffice (used for diagrams). And there are other communities we depend on, like OpenStreetMap. So, should we steer clear of this type of sponsorship altogether because it's a slippery slope, or should we try to come up with evaluation criteria to consider it on a case-by-case basis (e.g. is there a trustworthy non-profit that has a track record of accomplishment and is in actual need of financial support)? I could imagine a process with a fixed giving back annual budget and a community nominations/review workflow. It'd be work to create and I don't want to commit to that yet, but I would be interested to hear opinions. MariaDB specifically invited WMF to become a sponsor, and we're clearly highly dependent on them. But I don't think it makes sense for us to just write checks if there's someone who asks for support and there's a justifiable need. However, if there's broad agreement that this is something Wikimedia should do more of, then I think it's worth developing more consistent sponsorship criteria. Thanks, Erik [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Freenode_Donation [2] Cf. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Upstream_projects -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- Your donations keep Wikipedia free: https://donate.wikimedia.org ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Sponsorship/donations to other organizations
Hello Erik, there are cases in which this is clearly the right thing for us to do. 1) An annual 'supporting the ecosystem' program, that channels grants and visibility to important partners, seems interesting. Could this be implemented as a targeted grants program? Or just targeted outreach encouraging groups to apply for existing programs? I wouldn't call it 'giving back' -- that seems to minimize the way in which this is integral to our work. (I see almost no difference, from the perspective of our mission, between supporting OSM or Wikieducator and supporting Wikiversity). However we should be clear that this is where some of our resources go, and update related messaging; or raise funds specifically for those goals with their own campaigns. 2) We need a free toolchain that we can build upon and digitize / gather / curate / format / publish knowledge with. There are currently major gaps in this toolchain -- core projects and collaborations rely on non-free tools or non-free hosted service. Every time we use or work to interoperate with such tools and services, we should also support replacing them with free ones. (That support can include everything from publicity and matchmaking to in-kind support to funds) So we should be supporting, in some fashion: free formats; free fonts; free tools for annotation, real-time text collaboration, spreadsheet editing, media editing; the ecosystem needed to support free media codecs. We should be framing and broadcasting to the FK ans FOSS world where the biggest gaps lie and what needs to be done. And we should be able to point to how and where we are investing in this -- for instance when we get into debates about whether or not to include non-free fonts in our default fontstack; or about how to support people trying to convert and publish media in encumbered formats. 3) Many projects that we rely on run on a very small budget, but may need specific skills. I would separate how we think about supporting this sort of work, from how we think about supporting larger projects such as CC and OSM. SJ On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 3:50 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi folks, I'd be interested in hearing broader community opinions about the extent to which WMF should sponsor non-profits purely to support work that Wikimedia benefits from, even if it's not directed towards a specific goal established in a grant agreement. This comes up from time to time. One of the few historic precedents I'm aware of is the $5,000 donation that WMF made to FreeNode in 2006 [1]. But there are of course many other organizations/communities that the Wikimedia movement is indebted to. On the software side, we have Ubuntu Linux (itself highly indebted to Debian) / Apache / MariaDB / PHP / Varnish / ElasticSearch / memcached / Puppet / OpenStack / various libraries and many other dependencies [2], infrastructure tools like ganglia, observium, icinga, etc. Some of these projects have nonprofits that accept and seek sponsorship and support, some don't. One could easily expand well beyond the software we depend on server-side to client-side open source applications used by our community to create content: stuff like Inkscape, GIMP and LibreOffice (used for diagrams). And there are other communities we depend on, like OpenStreetMap. So, should we steer clear of this type of sponsorship altogether because it's a slippery slope, or should we try to come up with evaluation criteria to consider it on a case-by-case basis (e.g. is there a trustworthy non-profit that has a track record of accomplishment and is in actual need of financial support)? I could imagine a process with a fixed giving back annual budget and a community nominations/review workflow. It'd be work to create and I don't want to commit to that yet, but I would be interested to hear opinions. MariaDB specifically invited WMF to become a sponsor, and we're clearly highly dependent on them. But I don't think it makes sense for us to just write checks if there's someone who asks for support and there's a justifiable need. However, if there's broad agreement that this is something Wikimedia should do more of, then I think it's worth developing more consistent sponsorship criteria. Thanks, Erik [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Freenode_Donation [2] Cf. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Upstream_projects -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Sponsorship/donations to other organizations
TL;DR: Yes, I think we should be pro-actively putting significant financial resources into the open source ecosystems we rely on. Thanks Erik! This is a great discussion to have. As I see it, we have a whole lot of potential fundraising revenue that we leave unraised, simply because WMF doesn't have effective ways of spending it or allocating it within the movement. The fundraising system has become extremely efficient, so we've increasingly shifted toward minimizing reader annoyance instead of increasing raising money. But the annoyance factor of fundraising is so low right now that (to me) it seems wasteful *not* to be raising and distributing more, if it can be done in ways that support our mission (broadly construed). Wikipedia is the most prominent project of the top, public-facing layer of a deep free culture / free software ecosystem. It wouldn't be able to exist without that ecosystem, but because it's in that top layer that directly serves the public, it generates most of the goodwill and donation potential. But much of what donors love and value and want to support about Wikipedia has deeper roots than they realize. I used to be a regular donor to Wikimedia Foundation, but as I've learned more about that deeper ecosystem, I've felt it my responsibility -- because I know how things work beneath that surface layer -- to focus my giving elsewhere in the free software and free culture ecosystem. I would happily donate to WMF if I knew that the fundraising system was aggressively working to gather money to improve that whole ecosystem. (Instead, donating right now would feel like making a donation to slightly decrease the number of fundraising banners seen by readers; if I don't donate, I know there are more than enough readers who will.) One strategy for supporting other free software/free culture organizations would be to make few-strings-attached grants for specific work that will benefit us. (For example, we give a grant that lets them pay a developer's salary for a year to work on this or that project that will result in better MediaWiki performance, or easier management of our stack.) That would be consistent with what our donors intend when they give. -Sage (ragesoss) On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 3:50 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi folks, I'd be interested in hearing broader community opinions about the extent to which WMF should sponsor non-profits purely to support work that Wikimedia benefits from, even if it's not directed towards a specific goal established in a grant agreement. This comes up from time to time. One of the few historic precedents I'm aware of is the $5,000 donation that WMF made to FreeNode in 2006 [1]. But there are of course many other organizations/communities that the Wikimedia movement is indebted to. On the software side, we have Ubuntu Linux (itself highly indebted to Debian) / Apache / MariaDB / PHP / Varnish / ElasticSearch / memcached / Puppet / OpenStack / various libraries and many other dependencies [2], infrastructure tools like ganglia, observium, icinga, etc. Some of these projects have nonprofits that accept and seek sponsorship and support, some don't. One could easily expand well beyond the software we depend on server-side to client-side open source applications used by our community to create content: stuff like Inkscape, GIMP and LibreOffice (used for diagrams). And there are other communities we depend on, like OpenStreetMap. So, should we steer clear of this type of sponsorship altogether because it's a slippery slope, or should we try to come up with evaluation criteria to consider it on a case-by-case basis (e.g. is there a trustworthy non-profit that has a track record of accomplishment and is in actual need of financial support)? I could imagine a process with a fixed giving back annual budget and a community nominations/review workflow. It'd be work to create and I don't want to commit to that yet, but I would be interested to hear opinions. MariaDB specifically invited WMF to become a sponsor, and we're clearly highly dependent on them. But I don't think it makes sense for us to just write checks if there's someone who asks for support and there's a justifiable need. However, if there's broad agreement that this is something Wikimedia should do more of, then I think it's worth developing more consistent sponsorship criteria. Thanks, Erik [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Freenode_Donation [2] Cf. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Upstream_projects -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@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
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Sponsorship/donations to other organizations
Just mentioning it because David mentioned the Internet Archive. The IA is actively interested in collaborating with Wikimedia, and I think they have a lot to offer us - the reason nothing has come to fruition yet has been a combination of funding constraints and time constraints for everyone involved in the discussions. They have the technical infrastructure to eliminate deadlinks pretty much universally across our sites, and Andrew Lih and I have also been speaking with them about a very interesting video project that would get around a lot of the video limitations we currently have. So even if we don't currently use them heavily, I think there are a lot of opportunities there :) Best, Kevin Gorman On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 1:27 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 15 April 2014 20:50, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: I'd be interested in hearing broader community opinions about the extent to which WMF should sponsor non-profits purely to support work that Wikimedia benefits from, even if it's not directed towards a specific goal established in a grant agreement. Creative Commons, OpenStreetMap spring to mind. What are their budgets like? I expect ours dwarfs theirs. We should throw money at Freenode on a regular basis. CC is a charity, I think OSM is a nonprofit but not actually a UK charity as yet (though WMUK achieving charity status makes that more achievable if they want to go for that). Internet Archive and Archiveteam is not something we use as heavily as any of those, but they need it too. Is there anyone else whose stuff we prevail upon that we really should be helping? - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@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 Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Sponsorship/donations to other organizations
I agree with Mike Peel on 'maybe' - I think donations from the WMF to non-profit organizations could be great and very useful, but that the WMF should 1) ensure that the donations have a substantial impact (i.e. not $500 to ICRC, where WMF funds would get lost in a sea of other contributors), 2) that donors have a strong track record of management such that the WMF does not find it necessary to oversee how the funds are used (i.e. a donation and not a grant), 3) and that the mission of the organization is linked to the overall mission of the WMF (avoid general good thing advocacy such as is sometimes suggested on this list). I'd also personally support in-kind donations (i.e. dedicate an FTE or portion of an FTE to integration work that benefits a non-profit, or implements a feature that is requested for a specific platform, etc.). Training or consultation provided by a paid employee to a non-profit at no charge would also fall into this category. I don't know that it would be beneficial to have the vetting process be community driven, and I'd like to see the implications for affiliates considered (i.e. does the WMF/FDC have a position on whether affiliates should be redirecting WMF funding to third party non-profits?). ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Sponsorship/donations to other organizations
On 15 April 2014 21:57, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: I'd also personally support in-kind donations (i.e. dedicate an FTE or portion of an FTE to integration work that benefits a non-profit, or implements a feature that is requested for a specific platform, etc.). Training or consultation provided by a paid employee to a non-profit at no charge would also fall into this category. I don't know that it would be beneficial to have the vetting process be community driven, and I'd like to see the implications for affiliates considered (i.e. does the WMF/FDC have a position on whether affiliates should be redirecting WMF funding to third party non-profits?). Yeah, one of the first things to do is to talk to these partner organisations (because they are partner organisations) and ask what would actually be helpful, rather than helpy. Perhaps an engineer, perhaps some server space, perhaps just an unrestricted grant (on the principle that if you trust a charity enough to donate, you trust them enough to do good stuff with it). - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [WMFr] Feedback on the last 2 years
Thanks for that, And because I’m one of those who ask repeatedly I thank you twice :-) What I like in your feedback is that it echoes the « let’s do better mistake tomorrow » last saturday in Berlin. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2014/Programme#21_Let.E2.80.99s_make_better_mistakes_tomorrow I really think that sharing bad experience, is actually building the good experience of the movement. We use to share our success because it’s never easy to share failure and because we naturally want to share positive experience that people can replicate, we always forget to share bad experience that people can avoid to replicate if they are aware. of In 2013 in WMCH we learn a lot by trying to expose our challenges in the FDC quarterly report. In wikimedia movement we are not good at reporting, we do not like to do report, I hate that. But honestly taking the time to understand why something goes wrong is always good, and lot of the time the initial failure was to have not really investigating why we wanted to do it in the first place :-D Earlier this year I share this sentence on a social network: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. » Samuel Beckett I would just add that in our movement we have the chance to benefit of the experience of a lot of people and that we may be able to remove the fail again and add a succeed at the end my 2 useless cents, but it's late :-) Charles ___ I use this email for mailing list only. Charles ANDRES, Chief Science Officer Wikimedia CH – Association for the advancement of free knowledge – www.wikimedia.ch Skype: charles.andres.wmch IRC://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-ch Le 12 avr. 2014 à 15:40, Christophe Henner christophe.hen...@wikimedia.fr a écrit : Hi everyone, For the past few weeks, many people approached me asking for feedback on what Wikimedia France went through in the past 18 to 24 months. We realize we poorly communicated on the topic, time to fix that. I'll try to be as exhaustive as I can be without writing too much (even though you already know this is going to be a long email). == Short WMFr history == Before going into the heart of the situation, here are some informations about Wikimedia France. We were founded in 2004. At some point, in 2007 iirc, we went from 30K€ in our bank account to 200K€ over night as, at the time, we were payment processing. In 2010, we hired a first employee as a project manager. A year later, he left the organization. If we look back at why, at the core, he did leave, one of the reason is that we weren't ready to have an employee. Though at the time we might have not realized that. Afterwards we hired three new employees, one head of programs, one project manager for education and research programs and one technical project manager. We weren't able to manage them correctly because we underestimated the amount of work it required, especially as back then we were still payment processing. So we decided to hire a new employee, an Executive Director, to manage our employees for us and to hire a fundraiser. It didn't work out, and the new ED left the organization after a few months. That is where the story starts. == Facing failures and making radical changes == When the new ED left we took the time to try to understand why Wikimedia France had those issues. We could have hired a new ED straight ahead, but we believed that, even though it would have been a good thing on the short run we weren't sure we wouldn't repeat past mistakes. We then started to wonder if the organization of Wikimedia France was the right one, perhaps at the core we were doing things wrong. So we decided to get help to sort this out and hire a HR company to audit us and advise us on what to do. Mostly at the same time, something else happened: the FDC rejected our first proposal and gave us a gap funding just to get through until the next FDC round. At the same time we were auditing the organization we had to rethink everything we were doing and how we were working. We had no ED, so the board and staff had to pick up on the tasks the ED used to do. We first splitted the tasks amongst us and then asked an interim company to help us hire an administrative assistant to help us with day-to-day administrative burden. Before her arrival, we introduced processes used at companies we (board members) worked at (such as buying request that means that every spending of the association is matched with a sheet that summarize what the money was used for and that the use of the money has been checked by two differents people). Once she arrived we worked, as a board, to define our needs and our role. We identified that one of our mistake was that, even though we had employees, we failed to build up trust and confidence and that we were looking too hard on
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Sponsorship/donations to other organizations
In a period where all the fund dissemination of the movement is driven by the question what's the impact on wikimedia project and a community-driven process, I would suggest that any redistribution of the funds done by the WMF would follow the same rules. Charles Le 15 avr. 2014 à 21:57, Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net a écrit : Hi Erik, I'd say 'maybe'. I think this sort of work is worth supporting in general, but the question should be whether providing the support would improve the content and/or provision of the Wikimedia projects. I'd like to see a good community-driven process that would determine whether such sponsorship would be helpful or whether it would be a waste of money. Thanks, Mike On 15 Apr 2014, at 20:50, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi folks, I'd be interested in hearing broader community opinions about the extent to which WMF should sponsor non-profits purely to support work that Wikimedia benefits from, even if it's not directed towards a specific goal established in a grant agreement. This comes up from time to time. One of the few historic precedents I'm aware of is the $5,000 donation that WMF made to FreeNode in 2006 [1]. But there are of course many other organizations/communities that the Wikimedia movement is indebted to. On the software side, we have Ubuntu Linux (itself highly indebted to Debian) / Apache / MariaDB / PHP / Varnish / ElasticSearch / memcached / Puppet / OpenStack / various libraries and many other dependencies [2], infrastructure tools like ganglia, observium, icinga, etc. Some of these projects have nonprofits that accept and seek sponsorship and support, some don't. One could easily expand well beyond the software we depend on server-side to client-side open source applications used by our community to create content: stuff like Inkscape, GIMP and LibreOffice (used for diagrams). And there are other communities we depend on, like OpenStreetMap. So, should we steer clear of this type of sponsorship altogether because it's a slippery slope, or should we try to come up with evaluation criteria to consider it on a case-by-case basis (e.g. is there a trustworthy non-profit that has a track record of accomplishment and is in actual need of financial support)? I could imagine a process with a fixed giving back annual budget and a community nominations/review workflow. It'd be work to create and I don't want to commit to that yet, but I would be interested to hear opinions. MariaDB specifically invited WMF to become a sponsor, and we're clearly highly dependent on them. But I don't think it makes sense for us to just write checks if there's someone who asks for support and there's a justifiable need. However, if there's broad agreement that this is something Wikimedia should do more of, then I think it's worth developing more consistent sponsorship criteria. Thanks, Erik [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Freenode_Donation [2] Cf. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Upstream_projects -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@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 Wikimedia-l@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 Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Sponsorship/donations to other organizations
Hi Erik, I personally like all these ideas a lot (and I also agree with most of the comments that have been made so far); in particular, the fact that you mention both the server and the client side (as well as other communities) is very appealing to me. Within Wikimedia CH, this is an idea that we have discussed a few years ago: how can we support software and other communities that our community depends on, while avoiding to just give away money. In the end, we supported financially one edition of the Libre Graphics Meeting. This looked like a good investment, as most of the tools discussed during this meeting are used by the Wikimedia community. The money was mostly used by Swiss participants -- not necessarily members of the Wikimedia community, but people we were eager to connect to, as their competences could be useful to us (kill two birds with one stone...). We had ideas about how to collaborate further, but they haven't materialised yet. We did not further discuss this kind of funding at the level of our chapter, however, mostly because it was difficult to assess its impact (and even more its impact on the Wikimedia projects). But I can easily imagine that a global effort could have a clear impact. Talking about other communities, we also had projects planned with the local CC people, such as helping to adapt/translate the licenses to the Swiss legal system and in French. In the end they managed to fund this effort without our help (Wikimedia CH's lawyer mostly funded it, so we still helped indirectly :-). We still have some ideas there, and this is a local collaboration that could be very useful. However, I can see clearly the slippery slope you mention: in the recent past, several new friends of Wikimedia CH appeared from neighboring communities, and they had no shortage of projects they wanted us to help funding... (and we mostly had to say no). As an aside, coming back to software, I have noted that the WMF gets gets a special thank you note on the git-annex web page (https://git-annex.branchable.com/thanks/); is it a tool that has been supported financially ? (and, I assume, a tool that the WMF uses regularly) ? If it is the case, I applaud this support. Best wishes, Frédéric On 15/04/14 21:50, Erik Moeller wrote: Hi folks, I'd be interested in hearing broader community opinions about the extent to which WMF should sponsor non-profits purely to support work that Wikimedia benefits from, even if it's not directed towards a specific goal established in a grant agreement. This comes up from time to time. One of the few historic precedents I'm aware of is the $5,000 donation that WMF made to FreeNode in 2006 [1]. But there are of course many other organizations/communities that the Wikimedia movement is indebted to. On the software side, we have Ubuntu Linux (itself highly indebted to Debian) / Apache / MariaDB / PHP / Varnish / ElasticSearch / memcached / Puppet / OpenStack / various libraries and many other dependencies [2], infrastructure tools like ganglia, observium, icinga, etc. Some of these projects have nonprofits that accept and seek sponsorship and support, some don't. One could easily expand well beyond the software we depend on server-side to client-side open source applications used by our community to create content: stuff like Inkscape, GIMP and LibreOffice (used for diagrams). And there are other communities we depend on, like OpenStreetMap. So, should we steer clear of this type of sponsorship altogether because it's a slippery slope, or should we try to come up with evaluation criteria to consider it on a case-by-case basis (e.g. is there a trustworthy non-profit that has a track record of accomplishment and is in actual need of financial support)? I could imagine a process with a fixed giving back annual budget and a community nominations/review workflow. It'd be work to create and I don't want to commit to that yet, but I would be interested to hear opinions. MariaDB specifically invited WMF to become a sponsor, and we're clearly highly dependent on them. But I don't think it makes sense for us to just write checks if there's someone who asks for support and there's a justifiable need. However, if there's broad agreement that this is something Wikimedia should do more of, then I think it's worth developing more consistent sponsorship criteria. Thanks, Erik [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Freenode_Donation [2] Cf. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Upstream_projects ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
[Wikimedia-l] Mobile Operator IP Drift Tracking and Remediation
I emailed mobile-l and wikitech-l about this, now I'm moving this discussion to wikimedia-l. Here's the longer technical thread: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mobile-l/2014-April/006884.html In summary, to show Wikipedia Zero banners for the correct mobile networks, we are planning once for each cellular-based app session to log two pieces of data in a specialized logfile, deleting log entries older than 90 days. 1. MCC-MNC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_country_code code (format is ###-##), which denotes the mobile operator 2. Exit (gateway/proxy) IP address * These data points would not be logged alongside the normal web access logs. This information could be used to estimate rough demand for Wikipedia in potential Wikipedia Zero geos, although remediating the out-of-sync IP addresses on file for existing partners is primary. Internal review suggests this is in alignment with privacy policy, and we wanted to see if there were other thoughts on this approach here on wikimedia-l. -Adam ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Mobile Operator IP Drift Tracking and Remediation
Adam Baso wrote: In summary, to show Wikipedia Zero banners for the correct mobile networks, we are planning once for each cellular-based app session to log two pieces of data in a specialized logfile, deleting log entries older than 90 days. 1. MCC-MNC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_country_code code (format is ###-##), which denotes the mobile operator 2. Exit (gateway/proxy) IP address * These data points would not be logged alongside the normal web access logs. This information could be used to estimate rough demand for Wikipedia in potential Wikipedia Zero geos, although remediating the out-of-sync IP addresses on file for existing partners is primary. Internal review suggests this is in alignment with privacy policy, and we wanted to see if there were other thoughts on this approach here on wikimedia-l. Thanks for starting this thread. Sorry if I've overlooked this, but who/what will have access to this data? Only members of the mobile team? Local project CheckUsers? Wikimedia Foundation-approved researchers? Wikimedia shell users? AbuseFilter filters? And this may be a silly question, but is there a reasonable means of approximating how identifying these two data points alone are? That is, Using a mobile country code and exit IP address, is it possible to identify a particular editor or reader? Or perhaps rephrased, is this data considered anonymized? MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
[Wikimedia-l] Because you don't hear it enough
An editor wrote this on Jimbo's talk page. I hope you will appreciate this as much as I do. Because you don't hear it enough I love it here. I love Wikipedia. It's got its problems - lots of them. It has its issues. It's not perfect. But that, in its way, is the point. It's not a complete encyclopedia, it's an encyclopedia that you, and I, and everyone else on the planet (and maybe people not on it) are welcome to edit, as long as we're trying to make it a better encyclopedia. It is flawed, but that is the essence of humanity's works. So I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for making this magical, wonderful, flawed, human endeavor. - Jorgath (talk) (contribs) 19:24, 2 April 2014 (UTC) ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
