[Wikimedia-l] Re: Are you considering running for the 2022 Wikimedia Foundation board elections?

[Bence Damokos]

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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Open proxies and IP blocking

[Bence Damokos]

Thanks Mario - indeed it seems to be a bit random, maybe there was an
update recently- on Hungarian Wikipedia as an anon I today see an edit
button but then it tells me I am blocked (it doesn't give any real
explanations, but at least the link to contact the stewards goes directly
to the contact form) , on English Wikipedia when logged out I get the edit
button and block message, whereas if I am logged in I get a locked pencil
edit button and a nightmare of a block message: it is a wall of text that
asks me to put something on my talk page, and then instead of linking to my
talk page, it links to a help page that explains what talk pages are... Or
alternatively it leads to an unblock request system, but also asks for my
IP address that I should get by going to an other wikipedia page that
should load my IP address, but in fact doesn't neither logged in or out...

Anyways, long story short - whoever designed this blocking system and the
corresponding messages, should try to follow the path it sets to the users
with the eyes of a newbie (maybe ask an outsider in front of you to see if
they understand it) and see if they see an opportunity to streamline the
hell out of it.

Best regards,
Bence

On Tue, 26 Apr 2022 at 12:32, Mario Gómez  wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 25, 2022 at 11:14 AM Peter Southwood <
> peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:
>
>> “the block message only shows up when I try to save the page”
>>
>
> Block messages generally appear when opening the editor. However, support
> is lacking in some cases for mobile web and apps [1]. There may be other
> issues depending on the editor, registered/unregistered, or type of block.
> Also it is possible that the warning was displayed, but it was easily
> ignored because of the lack of visibility in some scenarios.
>
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mobile_communication_bugs
>
> Best,
>
> Mario
>
>
>
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Open proxies and IP blocking

[Bence Damokos]

tuation. This has become a
> regular occurence.
> There are cases and complains every week. Not one complaint per week.
> Several complaints per week.
> *This is irritating. This is offending. This is stressful. This is
> disrupting activities organized in good faith by good people, activities
> set-up with our donors funds. **And the disruption** is primarlly taking
> place in a geographical region supposingly to be nurtured (per our strategy
> for diversity, equity, inclusion blahblahblah). *
>
>
> The open proxy policy page suggests that, should a person be unfairly
> blocked, it is recommended
>
>- * to privately email stewards[image: (_AT_)]wikimedia.org.
>- * or alternatively, to post a request (if able to edit, if the
>editor doesn't mind sharing their IP for global blocks or their reasons to
>desire privacy (for Tor usage)).
>- * the current message displayed to the blocked editor also suggest
>contacting User:Tks4Fish. This editor is involved in vandalism fighting and
>is probably the user blocking open proxies IPs the most. See log
>
>
> So...
> Option 1: contacting stewards : it seems that they are not answering. Or
> not quickly. Or requesting lengthy justifications before adding people to
> IP block exemption list.
> Option 2: posting a request for unblock on meta. For those who want to
> look at the process, I suggest looking at it [3] and think hard about how a
> new editor would feel. This is simply incredibly complicated
> Option 3 : user:TksFish answers... sometimes...
>
> As a consequence, most editors concerned with those global blocks... stay
> blocked several days.
>
> We do not know know why the situation has rapidly got worse recently. But
> it got worse. And the reports are spilling all over.
>
> We started collecting negative experiences on this page [4].
> Please note that people who added their names here are not random newbies.
> They are known and respected members of our community, often leaders of
> activities and/or representant of their usergroups, who are confronted to
> this situation on a REGULAR basis.
>
> I do not know how this can be fixed. Should we slow down open proxy
> blocking ? Should we add a mecanism and process for an easier and quicker
> IP block exemption process post-blocking ? Should we improve a process for
> our editors to pre-emptively be added to this IP block exemption list ? Or
> what ? I do not know what's the strategy to fix that. But there is a
> problem. Who should that problem be addressed to ? Who has solutions ?
>
> Flo
>
> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/No_open_proxies
>
> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Log/Tks4Fish
>
> [3]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Steward_requests/Global_permissions#Requests_for_global_IP_block_exemption
>
> *[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/No_open_proxies/Unfair_blocking
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/No_open_proxies/Unfair_blocking>*
>
>
>
>
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: An Uzbek praktical joke and Wikimedia Enterprise

[Bence Damokos]

Still, consider that if the spoken  feature is exposed to all users, it
would raise awareness to more people when articles are not well formated
for screen readers… And screen readers are not available in all languages,
so the effort put into the speech synthesizer in new languages could
benefit a wider userbase.

Best regards,
Bence

Le mer. 27 oct. 2021 à 16:18, Andy Mabbett  a
écrit :

> On Wed, 27 Oct 2021 at 13:59, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
>
> >> > Not sure that duplicating the work of a range of screen readers is the
> >> > best use of our resources.
> >>
> >> I agree; such functionality belongs in the user client (screen reader,
> >> browser, whatever), not in the subject website.
> >
> > an excerpt from the marketing text
>
> As a professional web manager (1994-2011), I had companies trying to
> sell me such services regularly. And why wouldn't they, given the
> number of websites they could sell it to, over, and over, and over,
> again?
>
> Equally consistently, people who /needed/ such assistance told us they
> wanted it in the client, not the website; and that all they required
> of the websites was to be web-standards-complaint (by which they meant
> WCAG[1]).
>
>
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Content_Accessibility_Guidelines
>
> --
> Andy Mabbett
> @pigsonthewing
> http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Welcoming María Sefidari as a Foundation consultant. :)

[Bence Damokos]

Thank you for sharing the link to the recording, unfortunately I could not
follow it live.
I am reassured by the open approach and speed taken to transparently
address the issue and hope that the commitments promised will be followed
through. With the high turnover at the WMF and many leadership positions
still to be filled, this was an encouraging signal.

I did not want to come in earlier, as I believe the perception and what is
expected of a major and mature organisation was well described by others.

I only want to draw attention to one point in the interest of our growing
or future affiliates in that the examples brought forward from affiliate
policies enforced by the WMF all concerned mature organisations with an
established separation of staff and board roles (can't be sure, but I don't
believe this was a policy systematically promoted to affiliates). Some
smaller affiliates might find themselves in the position where a given
board member might be putting in the 30 hours a week as a volunteer, and
when it comes to hiring the first employee, the choice is between giving
this "unicorn" board member a chance (provided the position is advertised,
s/he is properly recused and qualified) or getting an outsider on-boarded
probably by the same board member who was already working 30 hours a week
for free and who might be asked to continue to do so.
(There's already a lot on this topic on Meta which is a bit off topic in
this thread, and just my short hypothetical example here raises a myriad
assumptions or side discussions on the right approach to take -- the point
is that our movement is more varied than has been represented in the few
posts on the mailing list here and any future harmonisation in this area
should keep this diversity and Dariusz' perspective at the end of the
recording  in mind in our efforts to
setting up a movement wide minimum standard on the experience of this
oversight at our supposedly most mature organisation.)

Best regards,
Bence


On Tue, 29 Jun 2021 at 19:06, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> An important item of information that transpired during the Office Hour
> just now is that the envisaged contract is for consultancy services of up
> to 40 hours per week.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQTND98b_Yg
>
> (The event also featured, it must be said, a very photogenic cat.)
>
> Andreas
>
> On Tue, Jun 29, 2021 at 5:16 PM Maor Malul  wrote:
>
>> Hi Amanda,
>>
>>
>>> It is obvious that despite our best intentions, the Board and Transition
>>> Team did not have all the relevant facts and circumstances in mind when
>>> this decision was made.
>>
>>
>> I'm trying hard to understand how the Board and Transition team failed to
>> realize the WMF expects standards of transparency, ethics, and governance
>> from affiliates that the WMF itself is not able to meet, and worse, than
>> hiring María as a consultant with this level of transparency wouldn't be
>> considered unethical. I certainly understand the need, and value
>> tremendously María's advice, but t's not the first time incidents like this
>> happen, and the reply we always receive is "going forward, we'll do this
>> better" or something along those lines.
>>
>> Many volunteers around the globe have worked very hard for years to meet
>> the standards the WMF expects from us. This feels like a slap on the face.
>> Or, another.
>>
>>
>>
>>> This is a separate issue from whether or not a COI exists, which I plan
>>> for us to discuss together on Tuesday. I will take tangible steps to
>>> address these issues now that they have been brought to our attention. I
>>> want to make sure we do that with proper reflection, to avoid worsening
>>> those mistakes with poorly thought-out solutions. I would like to partner
>>> to repair this together, and grow stronger as a result.
>>>
>>> I look forward to seeing many of you tomorrow for Movement Strategy
>>> conversations and then again to discuss these and other transition matters
>>> on Tuesday.
>>>
>>> Sincerely,
>>> Amanda
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> *"Jülüjain wane mmakat ein kapülain tü alijunakalirua jee wayuukanairua
>> junain ekerolaa alümüin supüshuwayale etijaanaka. Ayatashi waya junain."*
>> Maor Malul
>> Socio, A.C. Wikimedia Venezuela | RIF J-40129321-2 | www.wikimedia.org.ve
>>
>> Member, Wikimedia Israel | www.wikimedia.org.il
>> Member, Wiki Cemeteries User Group
>> Phone: +972-52-4869915
>> Twitter: @maor_x
>> ___
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list 

[Wikimedia-l] New Board of Wikimedia Hungary

[Bence Damokos]

Dear all,

At its General Meeting  on 21 November, Wikimedia Hungary has elected a new
board as follows:


   - Péter Gervai (grin), president (reelected)
   - Bence Damokos, executive vice-president (reelected)
   - Balázs Viczián (Vince), financial vice-president (reelected)
   - Anna Sárközy (Nyiffi), board member (reelected)
   - Timea Baksa (Teemeah), board member (new to the board)

We thank former board member George Kerese (Eniport) for his work on the
board.

Best regards,
Bence Damokos
Vice-president,
Wikimedia Hungary
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Greener travel and the ethics of carbon offset for Wikimedia community events

[Bence Damokos]

The price really depends on the project selected and can vary from less
than a dollar to close to $20 per tonne, and the cheaper projects do not
necessarily have less of an impact (more likely they have fewer levels of
independent verification).

Do note that apart from the company recommended on the Wikimania wiki,
there are other options out there. For example, on the UNFCCC portal you
will find many in even under the $1/tonne range:
https://offset.climateneutralnow.org/allprojects if you check the
individual projects, there is quite a lot of detail and documentation
included to be able to have confidence that the money goes to the correct
place.
The ones that come with further certification can cost more of course, with
the projects on the Gold Standard website being on the $10-15/tonne price
range (they have a "basket" of projects option at $11[1]), and Terrapass
chosen by the organisers of Wikmania also seem to be around the $9 mark
(they count in pounds for some reason on their website).

For personal offsetting I am quite happy to go by the UN site and I think
that is a good start to starting offsetting if one did not do it before. If
one has more resources or time, they can spend it on selecting projects
that meet their specific criteria (for example, social impacts beyond
climate impacts, projects in specific geographic regions, or an extra level
of certification) taking into account the extra cost.

Best regards,
Bence


[1] https://www.goldstandard.org/take-action/offset-your-emissions,
https://www.goldstandard.org/projects/climate-portfolio-variety-projects


On Mon, 14 Oct 2019 at 17:24, Osmar Valdebenito 
wrote:

> Maybe it's cheap... for European participants in a conference.
> People coming from developing nations tend to live further and require
> longer trips to participate in events and conference, mostly hosted in
> Europe or the US.
> So, not only you are asking us to spend larger hours on flights but also
> pay (or make someone else pay more) for it.
> I calculated how much carbon offset costed for my Wikimania travel, using
> the websites offered at the WM wiki, and it wasn't 1 or 2 usd. It was 107
> euros, around 10% or more of the cost of the trip.
> I'm all for making a greener Wikimedia movement, but we should do it not
> affecting those that, supposedly, we want to include more in our movement.
>
> El sáb., 12 de oct. de 2019 a la(s) 11:27, Andrea Zanni (
> zanni.andre...@gmail.com) escribió:
>
> > I agree with Bence.
> > Right now, offsetting is cheap, likely 1-2 percentage points of the cost
> of
> > travel.
> > Those money could be asked directly in the grant to the WMF, for example,
> > because offsetting several tonnes in bulk is probably cheaper than doing
> it
> > person by person.
> >
> > But carbon offsetting is just one strategy. Those money could be also
> > invested in charities that conserve rainforest (and thus native people,
> and
> > thus native culture > perfectly aligned with Wikimedia goals), or manage
> to
> > plant new trees and forests.
> >
> > I know for sure that Wikimedia Deutschland has contacts with Ecosia¹, a
> > search engine that plant trees with revenue from web ads. There are
> surely
> > ways we could partner with them in reforestation projects, or other.  And
> > they surely know a lot more than us about carbon offsetting, so we could
> > just ask for suggestions.
> >
> > ¹ https://www.ecosia.org/
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Oct 12, 2019 at 10:00 AM Henry Wood 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Mike
> > >
> > > > Paying for carbon offsets does not further Wikimedia’s goals.
> > >
> > > Not directly, any more than paying for petrol or aviation fuel does.
> > > If you regard it as part of the cost of travel, and that travel does
> > > indeed further the Foundation's goals, then it seems reasonable to pay
> > > for it.
> > >
> > > Henry
> > >
> > > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Greener travel and the ethics of carbon offset for Wikimedia community events

[Bence Damokos]

Even at the scale of the WMF, the costs of offset would not be high.
At the scale of individual travellers where a typical trip would cause less
than 1 tonne of emissions, and offsets available already at the 1$/tonne
price range and below - I would argue that if you or your organisation has
the resources to pay for your flight, you are likely to be able to afford
offsetting your emissions.

In any case, buying offsets or going climate neutral in other ways does not
preclude us contributing to knowledge about climate change - it is merely
one of the ways of being good global citizens (like paying taxes,
respecting copyrights, insisting on inclusive spaces).

Best regards,
Bence


On Sat, 12 Oct 2019, 00:21 Mike Peel,  wrote:

> I would suggest taking a different approach. Paying for carbon offsets
> does not further Wikimedia’s goals. It is, at best, a shortcut to brownie
> points as measured by other organisations. Requiring volunteers to pay
> extra for carbon offsets is doubly worse as they can’t then spend that
> money on their other Wikimedia activities.
>
> Instead, perhaps we could invest in projects that will improve our
> coverage of climate change? Imagine the impact that improving our freely
> licensed information about climate change could make. Good/featured
> articles about the organisations that have been named here already? More
> referenced information in the articles on this topic? More images to
> illustrate those articles? If that doesn’t make a difference, then we have
> to answer a rather more fundamental question about our impact on the world.
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
>
> > On 11 Oct 2019, at 22:27, Bence Damokos  wrote:
> >
> > In case it is interesting, for the tenders at my workplace that require
> > offsetting, we include this requirement:
> >
> > "
> > Carbon offsetting will be achieved by means of projects of the following
> > type: CDM (Clean Development Mechanism), JI (Joint Implementation) or VER
> > (Voluntary Emissions Reduction), all certified as 'Gold Standard' by
> bodies
> > accredited by the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
> > Change)."
> >
> > In practice, https://offset.climateneutralnow.org/ is a place I've used
> > personally where one can easily find projects meeting the above criteria.
> >
> > For more context, to save a bit of Google-ing:
> >
> > CDM projects are those assessed and verified by the United Nations
> > Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in developing countries
> > which can sell certified emission reduction (CER) credits, each one
> > equivalent to one ton of CO2. These CERs can be traded and sold and are
> > currently used by industrialized countries to meet a part of their
> emission
> > reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol(link is external)
> > <
> http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/mechanisms/clean_development_mechanism/items/2718.php
> >
> > .
> >
> > Gold Standard projects are CDM or voluntary offset projects giving an
> > additional guarantee concerning sustainable development benefits. These
> are
> > projects awarded the 'Gold Standard'(link is external)
> > <http://www.goldstandard.org/> quality label by a Swiss-based non-profit
> > foundation, supported by a group of 50 NGOs.[1]
> >
> >
> >
> > [1] From
> >
> https://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/funding/faqs-toolkit-and-glossary/frequently-asked-questions-general_en
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Bence
> >
> > On Fri, 11 Oct 2019, 22:55 Fæ,  wrote:
> >
> >> Any general questions like catering for virtual attendees can be
> >> raised at the talk page for the 2020 LGBT+ conference.[1] The
> >> conference is at the proposal stage with funding yet to be agreed with
> >> the WMF. The proposers will be happy to receive feedback and respond
> >> to questions.
> >>
> >> If no previous conference within our wider Wikimedia movement has used
> >> carbon offset projects to benefit its green footprint, that's an
> >> interesting fact to confirm as this may well be a great opportunity to
> >> try this out.
> >>
> >> Links
> >> 1.
> >>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:Conference/Kawayashu/Queering_Wikipedia
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Fae
> >>
> >> On Fri, 11 Oct 2019 at 20:47, Chris Keating  >
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>> This has nothing to do with how green WMF operations might be. It has
> >>>> to do with the greener choices /we/ as volunteers can make for /our/
> >>&

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Greener travel and the ethics of carbon offset for Wikimedia community events

[Bence Damokos]

In case it is interesting, for the tenders at my workplace that require
offsetting, we include this requirement:

"
Carbon offsetting will be achieved by means of projects of the following
type: CDM (Clean Development Mechanism), JI (Joint Implementation) or VER
(Voluntary Emissions Reduction), all certified as 'Gold Standard' by bodies
accredited by the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change)."

In practice, https://offset.climateneutralnow.org/ is a place I've used
personally where one can easily find projects meeting the above criteria.

For more context, to save a bit of Google-ing:

CDM projects are those assessed and verified by the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in developing countries
which can sell certified emission reduction (CER) credits, each one
equivalent to one ton of CO2. These CERs can be traded and sold and are
currently used by industrialized countries to meet a part of their emission
reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol(link is external)

.

Gold Standard projects are CDM or voluntary offset projects giving an
additional guarantee concerning sustainable development benefits. These are
projects awarded the 'Gold Standard'(link is external)
 quality label by a Swiss-based non-profit
foundation, supported by a group of 50 NGOs.[1]



[1] From
https://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/funding/faqs-toolkit-and-glossary/frequently-asked-questions-general_en

Best regards,
Bence

On Fri, 11 Oct 2019, 22:55 Fæ,  wrote:

> Any general questions like catering for virtual attendees can be
> raised at the talk page for the 2020 LGBT+ conference.[1] The
> conference is at the proposal stage with funding yet to be agreed with
> the WMF. The proposers will be happy to receive feedback and respond
> to questions.
>
> If no previous conference within our wider Wikimedia movement has used
> carbon offset projects to benefit its green footprint, that's an
> interesting fact to confirm as this may well be a great opportunity to
> try this out.
>
> Links
> 1.
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:Conference/Kawayashu/Queering_Wikipedia
>
> Thanks,
> Fae
>
> On Fri, 11 Oct 2019 at 20:47, Chris Keating 
> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > This has nothing to do with how green WMF operations might be. It has
> > > to do with the greener choices /we/ as volunteers can make for /our/
> > > conferences.
> > >
> >
> > Since a fortnight ago you were haranguing* the WMF for using too much air
> > travel and lacking "any actual measurable commitment to picking up a
> > telephone, holding a video conference, or holding a VR conference
> session",
> > it will be interesting to see what solutions you can come up with for
> this
> > conference you're organising. Did you consider the options other than an
> > in-person conference that you recommended the WMF adopt, out of interest?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > *
> >
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-09-30/News_from_the_WMF
> > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation joins the global climate strike

[Bence Damokos]

In fact, there are countless offset projects in the $1-$15/tonne range, as
well: https://offset.climateneutralnow.org/allprojects

The total offsetting budget would not need to be too enourmous, yet it
could be impactful.

Best regards,
Bence

On Mon, 23 Sep 2019, 18:28 Henry Wood,  wrote:

> Surely it doesn't really matter who within the organisation is racking
> up the CO2?  More important is the fact that the Foundation
> acknowleges itself responsible for about 2,000 tonnes of CO2 emission.
> At an offset price around $100/tonne, presumably we may expect that as
> an interim measure, WMF will purchase $200K worth of offsets -- an
> eminently affordable sum on its current budget.
>
> Henry
>
> On Fri, 20 Sep 2019 at 14:28, Adrian Raddatz  wrote:
> >
> > I'm more interested in the numbers for the WMF as a whole. One CEO does
> not
> > make an emissions problem, and in a global-reaching organization I'd hope
> > that the CEO would be flying around a bit. Focusing on the ten or so
> > executives at the Foundation seems like a sensational approach rather
> than
> > a useful one.
> >
> > Adrian
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Sep 20, 2019 at 9:24 AM Fæ  wrote:
> >
> > > Nice to see that https://wikimediafoundation.org has a banner linking
> > > to the global climate strike today.
> > >
> > > Can anyone produce some verifiable metrics that the WMF has taken
> > > significant action to reduce the total number of aircraft flights the
> > > WMF uses?
> > >
> > > I am asking as though there are no transparently published figures for
> > > how much the WMF spends on air travel, I recall that the Katherine
> > > Mahler was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, where is was part
> > > of her impressive executive profile to be "on the road" for 200 days
> > > of the year. This probably puts Katherine in the very top numbers for
> > > CEOs with damaging carbon footprints resulting from travelling so
> > > often by flying.[1] If the WMF wants to be seen as an ethical company
> > > when it comes to reducing their organizational impact on climate
> > > change, perhaps this could start with publishing travel figures for
> > > the CEO and the rest of the management team, so that everyone can see
> > > whether there is year on year improvement, or none.
> > >
> > > Thanks again for the banner, it does help increase the sense of
> urgency.
> > >
> > > Links:
> > > 1.
> > >
> https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-35-year-old-executive-director-of-wikimedia-travels-1529588701
> > >
> > > Fae
> > > --
> > > fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
> > >
> > > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: Draft recommendations are here!

[Bence Damokos]

There is merit in discussing that recommendation for what it is about
(perhaps in a separate thread or on the Meta talk page), but it was not
about paid editing.


Best regards,
Bence

On Sun, 25 Aug 2019, 13:16 Ilario valdelli,  wrote:

> Hi Bence,
>
> I think that this recommendation is ambigous. There is a specific sentence:
>
> "We need to pay or otherwise compensate people to participate"
>
> which can be opened to any interpretation.
>
> I think that this recommendation is quite complicated to be accepted by
> the community because it associates the diversity to the privileges and
> would justify the paid activities on this basis. Wikimedia projects and
> Wikimedia structure has been based always on volunteering time, as soon
> it will be open to paid activities, the sense of participation will be
> distorted.
>
> Basically, if we would explain to the man of street, why the community
> should continue to contribute on volunteering basis if some activities
> are paid? The reason that there are unprivileged members is weak in my
> opinion.
>
> This is a distortion itself.
>
> On 25/08/2019 12:09, Bence Damokos wrote:
> > The recommendation you link to was about ensuring diversity on decision
> > making committees, and has this part “We are currently not sure about
> ‘paid
> > editing’, and leaning towards not supporting that. ”.
> >
> > I think it would help the discussion if we did not distort the content of
> > the recommendations, especially as there may be people who read and
> engage
> > with this list who have not had time to study the recommendations (or
> > indeed the Fram saga cited a number of times earlier).
> >
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Bence
> >
> > Todd Allen  (időpont: 2019. aug. 25., V, 11:44)
> ezt
> > írta:
> >
> >> Well then, why aren't you listening?
> >>
> >> We've been begging WMF for years to come up with a solution for paid
> >> editing. If you actually put something in the ToU against it, we can get
> >> paid edit requests removed  from sites like Upwork, since they will not
> >> allow requests that violate another site's terms of service. But we've
> been
> >> completely unable to get WMF to do something unequivocal like that, so
> we
> >> get left to deal with the spam and crapvertising. Wikipedia admins get
> to
> >> deal with the fallout.
> >>
> >> In the meantime, we get a WMF "working group" wanting to not only allow
> >> paid editing, but have WMF do the paying. That is the direct, exact
> >> opposite of what we've been asking for! No paid editing, and certainly
> no
> >> paid editing from WMF!
> >>
> >>
> >>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_Groups/Resource_Allocation/Recommendations/C
> >>
> >> Why on Earth are we getting this garbage from WMF "working groups"? Do
> they
> >> know nothing at all about how the projects work, or do they not care and
> >> are trying to override them?
> >>
> >> On Sat, Aug 24, 2019 at 4:07 PM Dariusz Jemielniak 
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>> On Sat, Aug 24, 2019 at 6:00 PM Todd Allen 
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Then, why'd we hear something so dismissive as this?
> >>>>
> >>> My intent was not dismissive, but factual (I basically made a point
> that
> >> a
> >>> majority of our communities is not interested in administration,
> >>> organization, structures, etc., so as to address an estimation error in
> >> the
> >>> discussion).
> >>>
> >>> 5-10 thousand people are still a large and definitely worth listening
> to
> >>> group.
> >>>
> >>> best,
> >>>
> >>> dj
> >>>
> >> ___
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> >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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>
> --
> Ilario Valdelli
> Wikimedia CH
> Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
> Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre
> Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera
> Switzerland - 8008 Zürich
> Wikipedia: Ilario
> Skype: valdelli
> Tel: +41764821371
> http://www.wikimedia.ch
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Movement Strategy: Draft recommendations are here!

[Bence Damokos]

The recommendation you link to was about ensuring diversity on decision
making committees, and has this part “We are currently not sure about ‘paid
editing’, and leaning towards not supporting that. ”.

I think it would help the discussion if we did not distort the content of
the recommendations, especially as there may be people who read and engage
with this list who have not had time to study the recommendations (or
indeed the Fram saga cited a number of times earlier).


Best regards,
Bence

Todd Allen  (időpont: 2019. aug. 25., V, 11:44) ezt
írta:

> Well then, why aren't you listening?
>
> We've been begging WMF for years to come up with a solution for paid
> editing. If you actually put something in the ToU against it, we can get
> paid edit requests removed  from sites like Upwork, since they will not
> allow requests that violate another site's terms of service. But we've been
> completely unable to get WMF to do something unequivocal like that, so we
> get left to deal with the spam and crapvertising. Wikipedia admins get to
> deal with the fallout.
>
> In the meantime, we get a WMF "working group" wanting to not only allow
> paid editing, but have WMF do the paying. That is the direct, exact
> opposite of what we've been asking for! No paid editing, and certainly no
> paid editing from WMF!
>
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_Groups/Resource_Allocation/Recommendations/C
>
> Why on Earth are we getting this garbage from WMF "working groups"? Do they
> know nothing at all about how the projects work, or do they not care and
> are trying to override them?
>
> On Sat, Aug 24, 2019 at 4:07 PM Dariusz Jemielniak 
> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Aug 24, 2019 at 6:00 PM Todd Allen  wrote:
> >
> >> Then, why'd we hear something so dismissive as this?
> >>
> >
> > My intent was not dismissive, but factual (I basically made a point that
> a
> > majority of our communities is not interested in administration,
> > organization, structures, etc., so as to address an estimation error in
> the
> > discussion).
> >
> > 5-10 thousand people are still a large and definitely worth listening to
> > group.
> >
> > best,
> >
> > dj
> >
> ___
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-- 
-- Bence Damokos Sent from Gmail Mobile
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fram en.wp office yearlock block

[Bence Damokos]

I think it is important that the WMF is taking the question of harassment
seriously.
If the community processes are not adequate, it is not an incorrect
response to take direct action to protect the individuals that are being
harassed. Ideally, community processes should be improved and WMF can give
a hint, but it would be too much to expect the victim to continue to be
harassed while the long discussion around changing community processes
takes place.

As I understand, community health is an important element of the on-going
strategy work and WMF has repeatedly drawn attention to solving the issue
of harassment on wiki[1], so it is not like they have not told the
communities that this is an issue that should be dealt with or that the
community discussions needed to empower the communities to do so are not
happening at all.

Best regards,
Bence

[1] https://blog.wikimedia.org/tag/harassment/

On Thu, 13 Jun 2019 at 17:36, Fæ  wrote:

> This misses the point, as others have highlighted already.
>
> The WMF can and /should/ globally and permanently ban paedophiles,
> terrorists, system hackers and people making multiple cross-wiki death
> threats or threats of suicide. There are perfectly good and
> understandable reasons as to why the evidence behind these attacks and
> threats would be kept unpublished, it's seriously personal or criminal
> stuff.
>
> The WMF making topic bans, interaction bans and limited project
> specific bans against Wikipedians is a brand new invention, which goes
> against the pre-existing understanding that the WMF do not replace
> existing and perfectly adequate community agreed procedures for
> banning bad behaviour on our projects. Once full time WMF employees
> start doing in parallel what volunteer administrators already do, then
> we should question why we do not *pay* volunteers administrators the
> same hourly rate and we are likely to see a mass exodus of
> administrators. After all, would you, say, deliver the post for free
> in your area for fun, but thereby take away decent full time
> employment with a guaranteed pension for your local postie?
>
> If the reason for the WMF stepping in to ban Fram for a year is
> because the WMF do not trust Wikipedia administrators or Wikipedia's
> Arbcom to take sensible action in harassment cases, then they should
> be raising that honestly and openly with Arbcom. If the English
> Wikipedia's policies are not fit for purpose, or implementation of
> policy is incompetent, we need a much bigger discussion than whether
> Fram did something so terrible it cannot be named, but oddly was not
> worth a global ban but only the equivalent of a 12 month block on
> Wikipedia while they are free to do whatever they feel like on other
> Wikimedia projects.
>
> Fae
> --
> fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
>
> On Thu, 13 Jun 2019 at 15:35, John Erling Blad  wrote:
> >
> > When you bad mouth other users there should be, and will be,
> consequences.
> > An admin got desysoped and banned after repeated warnings? So what? The
> > only ting to be learned is that some people believe they can do whatever
> > they want and it has no consequences, and other people goes ballistic
> when
> > consequences happen.
> >
> > I would have given desysoped fram and 14 days to cool off, and if that
> did
> > not work out repeated with one month. Banning someone for one year is
> like
> > telling them to leave and don't come back. Someone at WMF is clearly
> overly
> > sensitive, but not reacting would also be wrong.
> > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Contents of annual reports from Wikimedia affiliate organizations

[Bence Damokos]

Dear Pine,

Just as a thought experiment try to think through how your proposal would
work for an all-volunteer organisation:
A small group of volunteers starts some programme, and at the same time
they hire a contractor (issue an ad, check CVs, hold interviews, draw up a
contract, monitor and pay invoices, pay any applicable taxes and social
security contributions) whose job it is to keep track of the hours and
money the volunteers spend on the programme and on the administration of it
(including the resources spent on hiring, managing and overseeing the
contractor), plus the global metrics. (The situation is not much better if
the contractor is hired at the end of the project and his job is to
interview everyone, and for the volunteers they need to keep records in
order to be able to reply to the questions.)

In the end, you have to retain proportionality of invested resources vs.
level of reporting burden.

Best regards,
Bence

On Fri, 30 Nov 2018, 01:12 Pine W  I'm going to respond to both Chris and Gerard in one email.
>
> Gerard:
>
> * I agree that it's possible to over-bureaucratize projects, including
> small projects. This is one of the reasons that I think that performance
> analysis should mostly be done with staff or contractor time rather than
> volunteer time. I don't want small projects to get exempted from
> accountability, but I also don't want small projects to be weighed down
> with unreasonable administrative overhead.
>
> * I agree that WMF Community Resources has room for improvement. I may have
> accidentally implied that I think that WMF always does things well and
> always makes good decisions. I too have had experiences of WMF Community
> Resources staff taking far too long to respond to inquiries. However, WMF
> has the money for grants for Wikimedia activities, and there are few
> alternatives to WMF for financial support of Wikimedia affiliate and
> individual projects. If WMF Community Resources' level of responsiveness is
> going to improve then WMF will need to choose to make changes.
>
> Chris:
>
> * I make a distinction between the formation of a user group, and that user
> group running programs. If a user group runs a single small program, and
> correspondingly has little money, then there should be little to report. A
> user group which runs multiple programs and is handling many thousands of
> dollars' worth of funds will have more extensive reporting requirements. I
> think that staff or contractors should complete most of the reporting and
> analysis so that volunteers are not burdened with that work. I would like
> volunteers to be able to focus on mission, on the creation and execution of
> programs, on developing supportive relationships, and on the strategic
> decision-making for their user group, rather than spending significant time
> and effort on administrative activities like writing reports.
>
> * I don't see a way to get out of having multiple reporting systems, such
> as for national tax authorities and for grantmakers such as WMF. Many
> charities deal with this. I think that most of the reporting work can be
> done with staff or contractor time rather than volunteer time.
>
> * Regarding "There is no consensus around what metrics actually matter.
> Global Metrics were only ever presented as a first draft of an answer, and
> for many projects they are simply poor metrics. The movement's focus for
> the last 3-4 years has been on movement entities developing their own
> metrics that are relevant to their own activities. Standardising on naive
> metrics would be a step backwards.", I partly agree and partly disagree. I
> think that we should have ways to compare performance of programs
> affiliates, so that everyone can learn which affiliates and programs tend
> to be especially good or problematic. Over time, as affiliates learn from
> each other, ideally this should lead to more efficient uses of resources,
> and to more effective programs and affiliates. Having common metrics goes a
> long way toward determining which practices are most effective and which
> should be changed or discontinued. I agree that custom metrics may in
> various cases be good to have in addition to Global Metrics. Maybe a way to
> think about this is that Global Metrics are necessary but not always
> sufficient.
>
> * I have very mixed feelings about WMF and Affcom issuing edicts to
> affiliates. I want affiliates and WMF to make good use of money and
> volunteers' time. For better and for worse WMF owns the trademarks and is
> the most significant source of funds for Wikimedia affiliates. Also, Affcom
> currently sets the reporting requirements for affiliates' annual reports.
> So WMF and Affcom have significant ability to use their authorities for
> good purposes. In the longer term, I would like to see more peer leadership
> from affiliates and less reliance on WMF for both grantmaking and
> trademarks. Perhaps in the course of the strategy work there will be some
> good 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] How to communicate compassionately with non-native English speakers

[Bence Damokos]

asy, but because we
> > care
> > > > about collaborating with people who are different from us [...]. And
> > > > non-native speakers are committing to this collaboration even more
> than
> > > we
> > > > are: they’re reaching out to us by working in English. [...]
> > > >
> > > > n.b. Yes, there are some over-generalizations and stereotypes in
> there.
> > > > It's still good overall, though! ;-)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > I'd like to link it on Metawiki, but I'm not sure where; Any
> > suggestions?
> > > > I've gotten (happily) lost in the [[Multilingual]] disambig page, and
> > the
> > > > [[Grants:Learning patterns]] pages, but the only place I can find
> that
> > > > collects advice like this, is the first section at
> > > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/Manual#Guidelines - What
> > page
> > > > might I have missed?
> > > >
> > > > Quiddity
> > > > ___
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-- 
--
Bence Damokos

Sent from Gmail Mobile
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your questions about KE.

[Bence Damokos]

Thanks Lila for posting this.
Just as a courtesy to those who follow the topic here on the mailing list,
can you please send an update to this list whenever there is new content on
the page, or at least when there are significant changes?

Best regards,
Bence

2016-02-17 18:40 GMT+01:00 Lila Tretikov :

> Hello, everyone.
>
> There are a lot of questions still floating around around the Knowledge
> Engine, in a lot of different places. I want to answer them fully, directly
> and in one central place. To that end, I’m going to be putting together an
> FAQ
> page  on Meta to ask
> and answer questions and - with the help of our staff -- to address them.
> We will release answers as we are able to collect and address them, so
> depending on the number of questions we get it may take a while, but we
> will begin responding during Pacific working hours today.
>
> If you have questions, please send them or leave them there. We may
> aggregate similar questions, but we will do our best to answer all of them
> to your satisfaction.
>
> Thank you for sharing,
>
> Lila
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [AffCom] Affiliations Committee appointments, January 2016

[Bence Damokos]

Apologies for the thankspam. :)

Congratulations to all the newly appointed members.
And indeed a huge thank you to Greg for his dedicated work on the committee
in the past years, and Josh for his outreach efforts and work over the
years.

Best regards,
Bence

2016-01-24 20:11 GMT+01:00 Lodewijk :

> Thank you Kirill.
>
> Also from me a warm welcome to the new committee members! Seems like a good
> new influx of qualified members. There were many good candidates this time
> around.
>
> Also, I'd like to express my sincere thanks to the committee members that
> have not been reappointed: Gregory Varnum (who left the committee a little
> while ago upon his appointment at the WMF as staff member) and Josh Lim,
> who have both served in a very valuable role at this Committee. Thank you
> for allt hose hours that you have spent!
>
> Best regards,
>
> Lodewijk
> (currently advisor to the Affiliations Committee)
>
> On Sun, Jan 24, 2016 at 7:30 PM, Kirill Lokshin 
> wrote:
>
> > Hello everyone,
> >
> > I'm pleased to announce that, following the recent call for applications,
> > the following candidates have been appointed to seats on the Affiliations
> > Committee:
> >
> > - Salvador Alcantar Morán (re-appointment)
> > - Carlos M. Colina (re-appointment)
> > - Galileo Vidoni (re-appointment)
> > - Emna Mizouni
> > - Tanweer Morshed
> > - Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight
> >
> > The newly appointed (and re-appointed) members will serve two-year terms,
> > ending in December 2017.
> >
> > On behalf of the Affiliations Committee, I would like to thank each of
> the
> > applicants, as well as all of the community members who took the time to
> > offer their feedback on the candidates during the public review process.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Kirill Lokshin
> > Affiliations Committee
> >
> > ___
> > Affiliations Committee mailing list
> > aff...@lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/affcom
> >
> >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Advertising in Central notice?

[Bence Damokos]

My first guess would be that the company is mentioned as a way to notify
users that they will be sending data to an outside company if they click on
the link (but the text you quote is not that clear on the privacy aspect
here).

Best regards,
Bence

2015-11-06 12:33 GMT+01:00 Itzik - Wikimedia Israel 
:

> "We invite you to participate in a survey about online harassment on
> Wikimedia projects.
> *Survey powered by Qualtrics"*
>
> It's not the the first survey runs through the Qualtrics, but that's the
> first time I see credit to them. We most of the time, even in GLAM and
> others partnerships trying to avoid as much as we can mentions
> organizations names, as it can be consider to be advertising.
>
> But mention a company (that we even paid them), and linking to their
> website? that's new and concern a bit. I'll be happy if someone related to
> this decision can give more information about the idea behind it.
>
> Thank you.
>
>
>
> *Regards,Itzik Edri*
> Chairperson, Wikimedia Israel
> +972-(0)-54-5878078 | http://www.wikimedia.org.il
> Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
> sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment!
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] New WMF funding option for groups and organizations with annual plans

[Bence Damokos]

Hi Pine,

There is a new committee proposed for these grants (see the second point of
the summary). FDC members are not eligible for the new committee, but I
guess GAC members could join and volunteer some more of their time :)

Best regards,
Bence

2015-09-30 21:48 GMT+02:00 Pine W :

> Hi Winifred,
>
> Thanks for the info.
>
> Which grants committee is reviewing these applications? My understanding
> from CR is that the grants committees have more work than capacity, so I'm
> curious as to who is involved in reviewing the simplified APGs and what the
> impacts will be on the capacities of the FDC and GAC to review proposals in
> their domains other than the new simplified APG proposals.
>
> Thanks,
> Pine
> On Sep 30, 2015 11:52 AM, "Winifred Olliff"  wrote:
>
> > *Summary: *
> > *1. Groups and organizations, a
> > **pply
> >  by 1 November for
> > funding by 1 January! *
> > *2. Volunteers, join the committee
> >  today!*
> > *4. Help us out with translation, please (see list of pages below).*
> >
> > Dear Wikimedia colleagues:
> >
> > We are piloting the *Simple Annual Plan Grants option, for groups and
> > organizations* that choose to include program and operating expenses as
> > part of one application each year. We are excited to move forward with
> this
> > new option after making some changes to this idea based on what we
> learned
> > from the recent consultation about Reimagining WMF Grants
> > <
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Reimagining_WMF_grants/Outcomes
> > >
> > .
> >
> > *Amazing benefits!*
> > 1. *One application*. Funding for programs, operating expenses, and staff
> > all in one application for the year, to enable organizations to plan with
> > better, and to show how their programs are leading to impact.
> > 2. *Simple process.* Simpler and speedier application, review, and
> > reporting processes than grants through the FDC, with more flexible
> > eligibility requirements, and open to informal groups as well as
> > organizations.
> > 3. *Targeted support*. WMF will be developing more guidelines and online
> > resources specifically for groups and organizations, this option will
> > include more support from WMF program staff during the application
> process
> > and during each grant, and participants will be part of a learning
> > community with other groups and organizations doing similar work.
> >
> > *Join us, in creating something new together!*
> >
> >1. *Applications from groups and organizations that need funding by 1
> >January will be due 1 November. *More applications will also be
> accepted
> >throughout the year. You can learn more about the program and how to
> > apply
> >here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Simple. If you are
> >interested, but have questions about the timing of your application,
> > please
> >contact us.
> >2. If you want to review annual plan grants, we need you to join the
> >committee! Add your name here if you want to help:
> >https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Simple/Committee.
> >3. We need your help translating the pages about the pilot,
> especially:
> >   - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Simple
> >   - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Simple/About
> >   - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Simple/Eligibility
> > (top)
> >
> > Groups and organizations with annual plans will still have the option to
> > request funding through the Project and Event Grants program during the
> > pilot. The pilot phase will be a time to learn together, and will be
> > evaluated in several stages (at least one in early 2016, and one in early
> > 2017), to discover if this program benefits applicants and grantees.
> > Questions, comments, and suggestions are welcome on Meta! We've already
> > received some helpful suggestions, and we hope to make improvements as we
> > learn.
> >
> > Please contact me at woll...@wikimedia.org with questions specific to
> your
> > group or organization.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > Winifred
> >
> > --
> > Winifred Olliff
> > Program Officer
> > Wikimedia Foundation
> >
> > ___
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> > directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please report to Google [was Re: Warning: Wikimedia-l Google Group]

[Bence Damokos]

I found the same issue. The best thing to do is to send a letter to the
unsubscribe address from your various adresses (change the from field in
Gmail), and it should do it. (Doesn't work for the opt out option for
resubscribing.)

Best regards,
Bence

On Sun, Jan 11, 2015 at 2:36 PM, Cristian Consonni kikkocrist...@gmail.com
wrote:

 2015-01-10 10:56 GMT+01:00 Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org:
  This sounds silly, but somehow it seems quite hard to unsubscribe from
 this
  group, if you have multiple google accounts (google thinks you're trying
 to
  unsubscribe with an account that is not subscribed etc).

 (sorry for the maybe even sillier answer)
 Have you tried logging out and/or uising different browsers?

 Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

[Bence Damokos]

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 3:33 PM, Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com wrote:

 Nope. Gendergap is about the gap in female participation, not in
 female-related topics.


I would say it is both, but in either case this would be important to
define if that is the criteria on which to solicit proposals. (The vision
of Wikimedia is to share the sum of all human knowledge, so from that
standpoint the end is to close the gap in coverage, diversity in the
editorship is a  very important means to it.)

In any case, experimentation with the grants programme is probably for the
benefit of the community, but so is reliability and predictability. If the
original assumptions are clear, announcing a major policy change for the
grants programme only with 3 weeks of planned lead time seems to go againts
those latter expectations unfortunately.

Best regards,
Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why is bank transfer no longer possible?

[Bence Damokos]

On Sun, Nov 30, 2014 at 7:40 PM, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.com
wrote:

 On 11/30/2014 10:19 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:

 Michael Snow, 30/11/2014 01:03:

 One avenue for fraud that's facilitated by posting account numbers is
 small payment fraud, usually involving stolen credit cards.
 [.]


 So what all this message have to do with IBAN?

 As the rest of the message discussed, the fraudsters can use the IBAN to
 make a donation in order to test that stolen card information belongs to
 a real credit card.

Thinking through your example, the fraudsters would need to have an online
interface for transfering money from a credit card to a bank account, and
getting some form of verification that the transfer went through. I am not
sure it was clear from your explanation how knowing the bank account number
any help in getting the two components for the fraud (the transfer system
and the verification), as opposed to the donation system itself (which does
not have to reveal the destination account number, and which in the case of
the WMF is likely a different account then the bank account whose number
was previously displayed online).

Best regards,
Bence



 --Michael Snow


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [AffCom] Quarterly goals for WMF Legal

[Bence Damokos]

Hi Pine,

We are actively following the case of Cascadia Wikimedians to see whether
we can facilitate the signing of the user group agreement between the user
group and WMFLegal (the group's recognition has been approved by AffCom in
September -- apologies in any delays you have experienced up to that
point).

Also, thank you for your helpful suggestions in general.
Without repeating Lodewijk's letter, I feel it important to point out that
despite a few hiccups, and a higher than usual turnover in volunteers,
AffCom has been very active this year in seeking and responding to
feedback, communicating and improving our processes (including the launch
of the liaison programme, a Twitter feed, simplified user group
recognition). There are still ways to go, and the changing processes,
services and expectations do bring new challenges, andoccassional mistakes
as we have to relearn the way we do things, and adjust to an
increasing/changing workload.

Please do e-mail the AffCom list directly to ask for an update, or to ping
us with regard to your specific application. The high reply time you
experience is an outlier, and there might be an easily to solve
misunderstanding that could be cleared up through the regular channels.

Best regards,
Bence
(personal view)



On Sat, Oct 11, 2014 at 10:05 PM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi Lodewijk,

 Let me make a few points:

 1. I appreciate that Affcom is working to make its outputs more timely,
 especially for user group decisions.

 2. I hear you say that you are under-resourced with volunteers and staff
 support. I appreciate that serving on Affcom is probably one of the more
 thankless jobs in the Wikimedia movement, and I understand that there is
 a Wikimedia-wide shortage of volunteers, particularly volunteers who do
 their jobs skillfully, who avoid conflicts of interest, and who volunteer
 in less visible roles in order to keep the Wikimedia movement functioning.

 3. I don't hear of a need for more staff support for Affcom from the most
 recent Grantmaking quarterly review [1], so I am not sure if and when
 this is going to happen. This may be a point that Asaf can address.

 4. We in Cascadia Wikimedians (and I imagine other thematic
 organizations) have our own timelines that we need to deal with, and
 needing to wait indefinitely for Affcom and Legal to make decisions makes
 planning difficult on our end. Also, we are losing organizational momentum
 while we wait. Momentum is important for the creation of organizations, and
 possibly for their survival. It would be a disappointment to have groups
 such as ours lose volunteer interest and partnership opportunities because
 of delays such as those that we are experiencing.

 5. Prior to this discussion on Wikimedia-l, I sent emails to the liaisons
 and/or Affcom and/or Legal that went unanswered. Regarding our most
 recent subjects of discussion, we did not even hear a simple we'll get
 back to you by early next week until taking this matter to Wikimedia-l
 and Geoff. In the meantime during the past few weeks, I have received
 multiple communications from Cascadians asking what is happening, and I
 can only tell them that we are still waiting for Affcom and WMF Legal.

 6. From my perspective as a client of Affcom, I continue to believe
 that a 14-day timeline is reasonable for most decisions or for further
 substantive questions to be asked. There may need to be process tweaks in
 order to make that happen, for example Affcom members may be given fixed
 deadlines by which to vote in consensus processes. Perhaps this is a
 discussion that Affcom should have with Asaf once it has onboarded new
 members with fresh energy and ideas, and perhaps Affcom could ask Anna
 Stillwell for ideas as well. There are trade-offs to be made between the
 comprehensiveness of internal discussions and timely outcomes for those
 discussions, and from recent experience I would say that more weight should
 be given to the value of timely outcomes, in addition to more transparency
 and frequent communication.

 7. I appreciate that you are giving attention to this matter and that
 Affcom is making efforts to improve the situation that will achieve
 benefits over the next few months. I hope that Affcom will provide
 updates to the community and affiliates.

 Thank you,

 Pine

 [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF
 _Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Grantmaking
 /September_2014








 On Sat, Oct 11, 2014 at 2:55 AM, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org
 wrote:

 Hi Pine,

 I think nobody wants to say that questions should take longer to get
 answered - we all would like your inquiries to be answered sooner rather
 than later. To accomplish this, the Committee has made changes in its
 workflow several times in the past year, to especially make user group
 applications less time consuming. Previously, decisions on User Groups had
 to be taken by a formal committee vote, after a period of consensus
 building. 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Conference 2015

[Bence Damokos]

I believe names and how we treat them both hold great power and tell a lot
about the name-giver and power relationships.

Wikimedia means different things to different people (possibly all
valid), it is both the name for the concept of the different sister
projects and their combined ethos forming a network or movement [which
involves some people interested in Meta issues who have not been invited to
the Wikimedia Conference, and many many people who have been], as well as
the name for anything that comes under the substituent parts of the network
(all the individual editors, photographers, etc.) and sets of these groups
(and individuals can be members of Wikimedia under a multitude of ways
often belonging to both groups at the same time). The Wikimedia Conference,
nor Wikimania will ever be truly open to all people of the second group
(also rightfully called Wikimedia), but it can aim to be representative of
the first. Hundreds of volunteers have put their time into building up the
Wikimedia Conference idea and brand, and taking it away just because they
have yet to achieve 100% success on one difficult to define metric seems
ill-advised.

I don't think taking away the name of the conference by trying to box it
into overspecification (by way of adding extra words) would be the right
direction: it sends the wrong message to the  Wikimedians (who happened to
be chapter members at one time or another) who have built up the event for
the past 5-6 years as if they are not eligible to conduct activities under
the Wikimedia name unless they invite absolutely everyone, and it opens the
door for lazyness (if you call it the Affiliates Conference, don't complain
if non-affiliates are not invited, whereas if you call it the Wikimedia
Conference that will keep the organisers and participants accountable to
making it more representative).


Just as background, the conference has over the years and almost from the
start went beyond chapters: first the WMF Board and staff, Chapters
Committee members (including people who were not a member of any actual
chapter at the time), then the movement roles discussion group was invited,
followed by user groups, AffCom (still having members not part of any
affiliate at the time) and thorgs, as well as the FDC (again, with members
who are not members in any affiliate) were invited with some side meetings
that had wider participation. It is no longer tied to just the affiliate
organisations but simply to the governance and Wikimedians active offline
[as well as online] side of the movement (people falling under one of the
 interpretations of Wikimedia).

Last year I made the proposal to some of the organisers to think about
opening a certain number of places for volunteers dedicated to the future
of the movement, strategic and governance issues to be able to freely
attend, to better live up to the name and the valid concern that tying
participation to organisational roles leaves some people out that should be
included. I could see that happening for the 2015 conference if the
organisers work out the details, but even in that case I don't see the
conference as being attractive to 80 thousand editors and that is perfectly
fine.

In any case, renaming the conference without the consent of the pool of
participants (which might be given, after all the Conference had a
different name in the first years) seems like a move out of power that
belittles the work of the people involved. (And I think this is valid
statement, even considering the valid anguish of all the brilliant
volunteers who could not attend in previous years - this change has to come
from the organisers to be real.)

Best regards,
Bence

(Personal view, though I was lucky to organise the 2011 conference and
participate in various roles in others; I don't at the moment hold any
position serving as an entry ticket to the 2015 event, though I am
considering paying my way if the conference opens up places)



On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 8:48 PM, Isarra Yos zhoris...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 11/09/14 18:42, Ilario Valdelli wrote:

 On 11.09.2014 20:06, James Forrester wrote:

 On 11 September 2014 10:52, Ilario Valdelli valde...@gmail.com wrote:

  Against the funds of WMF.

 A second conference open to the public would be a second yearly
 Wikimania,
 and to open it means to have a budget more or less equal to Wikimania.

  Indeed, which is why we keep asking for the name to stop being a lie.

 J.


 Considering it a lie is an extreme evaluation in my opinion.

 In Wikimedia conference there are chapters (~40) and user groups (~15).
 At the start it was called chapters conference, now it's called Wikimedia
 Conference because it's more open.

 In my opinion it's not a problem to call it again chapters conference.

 To participate it's sufficient to be representative of a group, not
 only of himself.

 Considering the principle of delegation, it may be considered a
 Wikimedia Conference.

 Regards


 I'm part of the Wikimedia movement, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Conference 2015

[Bence Damokos]

The name could be changed if the participants/organisers want to change it.
As I tried to point out, I don't see the name as the underlying problem
people really have, and changing it will not solve the problem of exclusion
people see.

We can make a conference that has a participants list that involves people
that *should *or at least the people that really *want* to be there, we can
also rename the conference for the people that *are *currently there and
forget about those that want and should be there. I'd rather focus on the
former.

Regardless, I do feel an emotional connection to the name and I expect many
people that have participated or organised it might feel this and I
appreciate that those who have not been there can see it as a minor thing
that can be changed without any cost. It might not be perfect, but it does
have history and I do contend that the people that first started using it
are Wikimedia, and they should not feel guilty about having come up with
the idea first. Indeed, at this time, resources have been invested into the
name and confusion is ebbing around the Wikimedia Conference name due to
the years of history behind it.

But in closing, I will once again point to my statements that names are
symbolic and they can be changed. If the participants change the name that
sends a totally different vibe than if the change is imposed on the
participants, even if the end result is the same new name.

Best regards,
Bence

On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 10:02 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi Bence,

 We strive not to be bound by bureaucracy, don't we? If we discover that a
 simple name (as generic as Wikimedia Conference) is slightly misleading,
 or not completely accurate, then why should we avoid changing it?
 Particularly as it appears that no process has begun to plan the next
 coming conference?

 If a group of people in New England USA (my geographic area) got together,
 perhaps with some of the chapters in the Eastern US, and created an
 event... We would not call it Wikimedia Conference, even though we would
 have as much right to that name as the affiliate conference. That would be
 confusing, and misleading.

 So at a moment when there is no cost to the change, no chance of further
 confusion, and before resources are invested in this name for the next
 cycle... This is the perfect opportunity to address what is, you must
 admit, a minor concern easily solved.

 On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 3:53 PM, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote:

  I believe names and how we treat them both hold great power and tell a
 lot
  about the name-giver and power relationships.
 
  Wikimedia means different things to different people (possibly all
  valid), it is both the name for the concept of the different sister
  projects and their combined ethos forming a network or movement [which
  involves some people interested in Meta issues who have not been invited
 to
  the Wikimedia Conference, and many many people who have been], as well as
  the name for anything that comes under the substituent parts of the
 network
  (all the individual editors, photographers, etc.) and sets of these
 groups
  (and individuals can be members of Wikimedia under a multitude of ways
  often belonging to both groups at the same time). The Wikimedia
 Conference,
  nor Wikimania will ever be truly open to all people of the second group
  (also rightfully called Wikimedia), but it can aim to be representative
 of
  the first. Hundreds of volunteers have put their time into building up
 the
  Wikimedia Conference idea and brand, and taking it away just because they
  have yet to achieve 100% success on one difficult to define metric seems
  ill-advised.
 
  I don't think taking away the name of the conference by trying to box it
  into overspecification (by way of adding extra words) would be the right
  direction: it sends the wrong message to the  Wikimedians (who happened
 to
  be chapter members at one time or another) who have built up the event
 for
  the past 5-6 years as if they are not eligible to conduct activities
 under
  the Wikimedia name unless they invite absolutely everyone, and it opens
 the
  door for lazyness (if you call it the Affiliates Conference, don't
 complain
  if non-affiliates are not invited, whereas if you call it the Wikimedia
  Conference that will keep the organisers and participants accountable to
  making it more representative).
 
 
  Just as background, the conference has over the years and almost from the
  start went beyond chapters: first the WMF Board and staff, Chapters
  Committee members (including people who were not a member of any actual
  chapter at the time), then the movement roles discussion group was
 invited,
  followed by user groups, AffCom (still having members not part of any
  affiliate at the time) and thorgs, as well as the FDC (again, with
 members
  who are not members in any affiliate) were invited with some side
 meetings
  that had wider participation

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Conference 2015

[Bence Damokos]

I can see that people who are (also/only/additionally) part of different
interpretations of the word Wikimedia might feel excluded by the use of the
name by a subset of people who also make up a valid constellation under the
name Wikimedia. I cannot tell if this feeling involves the small number of
posters on this list or is a  wider feeling. Similarly, I can only speak
for my own opinion.

Changing the name going forward could alleviate those feelings and I am not
opposed to such a decision by the participants.

Nevertheless, I still claim that the conference needs to continue to be
improved rather than renamed (as the latter will unlikely to solve wider
issues about the questions of who makes certain decisions and where
important discussions are had in the movement), and I tend to agree with
Ilario that the Wikimedia Conference X does not necessarily have to be
exclusively used for this conference.

Best regards,
Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] AffCom - Call for candidates 2015 [UPDATE]

[Bence Damokos]

Thank you for the suggestion, Anne!

As some background, the reason the private e-mail address is used instead
of the AffCom mailing list is that  it allows the incoming applications to
be looked at all at the same time - thus not giving anyone an advantage or
disadvantage based on the time they apply  especially if there are any
outgoing AffCom members who are reapplying for another term (which may not
be relevant this time around, I am not sure, but we tend to rely on
existing processes and improve on them iteratively where we can based on
suggestions like yours).

Having a @wikimedia.org address would be cool, but they are not allocated
to individual volunteers - we did ask a while ago. AffCom itself does have
a mailing list on a wikimedia server, which we are not using for this
purpose.Setting up a separate mailing list for the purpose might be
something to consider next year.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
Bence
(A member of AffCom, with some experience on how this process runs, but
this is my personal view)


On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 8:50 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:

 A gmail address?

 I am sure if you ask nicely the committee can be granted a wikimedia.org
 email address through Mailman that will allow more than one person to
 handle applications. It could probably be done pretty quickly.

 Risker/Anne


 On 4 September 2014 14:35, Carlos M. Colina ma...@wikimedia.org.ve
 wrote:

  Dear all,
 
  Please note that, due a technical issue, direct your emails to
  salvador1...@gmail.com instead.
 
  Kindly apologize for the inconvenience.
 
  Regards,
  Carlos
 
 
  Sent from Samsung Mobile
 
   Original message 
  From: Carlos M. Colina ma...@wikimedia.org.ve
  Date: 03/09/2014  19:58  (GMT+02:00)
  To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org,Wikimedia Chapters general
  discussions chapt...@wikimedia.ch
  Subject: [Wikimedia-l] AffCom - Call for candidates 2015
 
  (in the case you received it already, sorry for re-sending it, my
   Thunderbird crashed just as I clicked the send button :-( )
 
  Dear all, The Affiliations Committee [1], the committee that is
  responsible for guiding volunteers in establishing Chapters, User Groups
  and Thematic Organizations and approving them when they are ready is
  looking for new members.
 
  The main focus of the AffCom is to guide groups of volunteers in forming
  affiliates. We make sure that the groups are large enough to be viable
 (and
  advise them on how to get bigger), review bylaws for compliance
  with the requirements and best practices, and advise the Board of the
  Wikimedia Foundation on issues connected to Chapters, Thematic
  Organizations and User Groups.
 
  This requires communication with volunteers all over the World,
  negotiating skills and cultural sensitivity and the ability to understand
  legal texts. We try to get a healthy mix of different skill sets in our
  members.
 
  The key skills/experience that we are looking for in candidate members,
  are typically the following:
 
* Excitement by the challenge of helping to empower groups of
  volunteers worldwide
* Willingness to process applications through a set, perhaps
  bureaucratic process
* Readiness to participate in (movement roles) political discussions
  on the role and future of affiliates, models of affiliations, and
  similar questions
* 5 hours per week availability [2], and the time to participate in a
  monthly ~2 hour voice/video meeting
* International orientation
* Very good communication skills in English
* Ability to work and communicate with other languages and cultures
* Strong understanding of the structure and work of affiliates and the
  WMF
* Knowledge of different legal systems; experience in community
  building and organising is a plus
* Effective communication skills in other languages are a major plus
* Experience with or in an active affiliate is a major plus
* Willingness to use full (real) name in committee activities
  (including reaching out to potential affiliates) when appropriate
 
  In 2012, new types of affiliations were introduced, and the role of the
  Committee has increased in guiding through volunteers towards
  affiliation models that empower them to further our mission, and making
  sure these models meet both the needs of the volunteers and the
  movement. We are looking for new people to help, who are not afraid of
  the workload and are motivated by helping other volunteers to get
  organized and form communities that further our mission around the world.
 
  Members are usually selected every twelve months for staggered two-year
  terms. The applications will be voted on by the current members not
  seeking re-election, taking into account comments put forward by the
  committee's members, advisers, WMF staff and board liaisons based on the
  above membership criteria. A final decision will be made by the end of
  the year, with new 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Translators-l] We have an awesome Translation Tools....made for English speakers first

[Bence Damokos]

Thanks Niklas for the reply.
Notwithstanding the subject line's snark, and despite the fact that
components of the problem have been solved for a long time, from a user's
perspective there hasn't been progress on the handicap (not being able to
translate from languages other than English on Meta) as a whole for years
now, which does run counter to our ethos of being multilingual and
encouraging contributions in all languages.
If Kunal succeeds, that would be great, but if he doesn't or it takes too
long to integrate his work, I would recommend prioritising this issue
somewhat higher and giving it the necessary resources at the WMF.

Best regards,
Bence


On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 5:50 PM, Philippe Verdy verd...@wanadoo.fr wrote:

 This is good development, but I don't see why we need a special page to
 define what is metadata of the page itself. May be it will be accessible
 from the VisualEditor; like we edit categories, but such metadata is a
 general need for lots of other applications. The general need would be to
 be able to associate metadata with a symbolic type to any page: just a few
 metadata is currently handled in MediaWiki: categories, default
 sortkeys, interwiki links, plus a few other flags inserted by using magic
 words (like __NOINDEX__).

 There are also external metadata stored in Wikidata for some wiki
 projects. More are needed (e.g. for different typing sort keys).
 Any way I expect to see soon a reliable way to detect the page language
 including for translated pages; but more importantly for sources of
 translations without having to assume they are in English, or create thme
 in another language and creating a pseudo-translation to the original
 language by copying keys, then modifying the English source again but
 keeping the original text.
 At least, when we mark a new page for translation, we should immediately
 have an option asking in which language is the source; if it's not specifid
 by the new experimental Special:PageLanguage page (which is not necessarily
 needed).

 And once a source page has been marked for translation, the Translate tool
 should have a simple API to query its language or the language used in the
 generated translations, And ideally, we should be able to swithc from one
 source language to another (for example some projects start in English, but
 are later managed in German or Chinese, or a local Chapter initially
 creates documents in its own local language such as French, Hindi or
 Spanish, and will not use English as the reference (this is important for
 pages reporting local projects mostly done in other languages, outside
 countries or regions with a majority of native English-speakers, i.e: most
 countries of the world, including Europe (and even North America where
 French and Spanish are very present too ; Spanish and Chinese are also
 growing fast in US, and here there are aslo local communities that would
 like to promote their own local projects in their native non-English tongue
 : do you remember that US does not have any official language ?).



 2014-08-14 16:52 GMT+02:00 Niklas Laxström niklas.laxst...@gmail.com:

 Translate extension has supported for a long time having any language
 as the source language. There just has not been an interface in
 MediaWiki to set the source language of a page.

 The good news is that Kunal Grover, a GSoC student has created
 Special:PageLanguage to do just that. [1] I expect it will be
 available quite soon.


 In the future, please use a subject line which does not sound like an
 accusation.

   -Niklas

 [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Kunalgrover05/Progress_Report

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quarterly reviews of high priority WMF initiatives

[Bence Damokos]

Thanks for sharing, Tilman!
(These are really useful pages, and nice to see them continue to be
maintained).

Best regards,
Bence


On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 11:39 PM, Tilman Bayer tba...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 Minutes and slides from last week's quarterly review of the
 Foundation's Mobile Contributions team are now available at

 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Mobile_contributions/May_2014
 .

 On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 6:49 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote:
  Hi folks,
 
  to increase accountability and create more opportunities for course
  corrections and resourcing adjustments as necessary, Sue's asked me
  and Howie Fung to set up a quarterly project evaluation process,
  starting with our highest priority initiatives. These are, according
  to Sue's narrowing focus recommendations which were approved by the
  Board [1]:
 
  - Visual Editor
  - Mobile (mobile contributions + Wikipedia Zero)
  - Editor Engagement (also known as the E2 and E3 teams)
  - Funds Dissemination Committe and expanded grant-making capacity
 
  I'm proposing the following initial schedule:
 
  January:
  - Editor Engagement Experiments
 
  February:
  - Visual Editor
  - Mobile (Contribs + Zero)
 
  March:
  - Editor Engagement Features (Echo, Flow projects)
  - Funds Dissemination Committee
 
  We’ll try doing this on the same day or adjacent to the monthly
  metrics meetings [2], since the team(s) will give a presentation on
  their recent progress, which will help set some context that would
  otherwise need to be covered in the quarterly review itself. This will
  also create open opportunities for feedback and questions.
 
  My goal is to do this in a manner where even though the quarterly
  review meetings themselves are internal, the outcomes are captured as
  meeting minutes and shared publicly, which is why I'm starting this
  discussion on a public list as well. I've created a wiki page here
  which we can use to discuss the concept further:
 
 
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews
 
  The internal review will, at minimum, include:
 
  Sue Gardner
  myself
  Howie Fung
  Team members and relevant director(s)
  Designated minute-taker
 
  So for example, for Visual Editor, the review team would be the Visual
  Editor / Parsoid teams, Sue, me, Howie, Terry, and a minute-taker.
 
  I imagine the structure of the review roughly as follows, with a
  duration of about 2 1/2 hours divided into 25-30 minute blocks:
 
  - Brief team intro and recap of team's activities through the quarter,
  compared with goals
  - Drill into goals and targets: Did we achieve what we said we would?
  - Review of challenges, blockers and successes
  - Discussion of proposed changes (e.g. resourcing, targets) and other
  action items
  - Buffer time, debriefing
 
  Once again, the primary purpose of these reviews is to create improved
  structures for internal accountability, escalation points in cases
  where serious changes are necessary, and transparency to the world.
 
  In addition to these priority initiatives, my recommendation would be
  to conduct quarterly reviews for any activity that requires more than
  a set amount of resources (people/dollars). These additional reviews
  may however be conducted in a more lightweight manner and internally
  to the departments. We’re slowly getting into that habit in
  engineering.
 
  As we pilot this process, the format of the high priority reviews can
  help inform and support reviews across the organization.
 
  Feedback and questions are appreciated.
 
  All best,
  Erik
 
  [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Narrowing_Focus
  [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings
  --
  Erik Möller
  VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
 
  Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
 
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 --
 Tilman Bayer
 Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
 Wikimedia Foundation
 IRC (Freenode): HaeB

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia movement affiliates liaisons

[Bence Damokos]

Hi Nathan,

There is a shortish overview at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Reports/2012#State_of_affiliates
.

In general, we very rarely reject applications outright publicly -- more
often than not, an application will run until we have worked with the group
to the point that they meet the requirements for approval, or they realise
that they do not want to pursue approval. You can follow all the groups
that are seeking approval in our Meta garden at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters#Chapters_in_discussion_phase,
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_thematic_organizations#Planned_thematic_organizations
 and
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_user_groups#Planned_user_groups.
(Cannot guarantee that all groups have listed themselves there, but it is a
wiki, so anyone can add the missing ones.)

On the same pages you will find all the approved ones with links to the
relevant resolutions that give some explanations to the reasons (although
they are quite general, as they all assert the belief of AffCom that the
affiliate in question meets the requirements for recognition).

Best regards,
Bence


On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 3:44 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote:

 Does AffCom report on the status or disposition of applications for
 affiliation? Is there a grid of pending applications, prior applications
 and outcomes (with explanations, if negative)? That would be a handy way of
 increasing transparency for this process for both participants and
 community observers. I looked for one in the AffCom meta garden but
 couldn't find anything quite like that.

 ~Nathan
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia movement affiliates liaisons

[Bence Damokos]

On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 7:02 PM, Samuel Klein s...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 3:48 PM, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote:

  Also, somewhat unfortunately in my view, there is a requirement for user
  groups is to have a history of projects, which was not further defined
  but in theory makes it impossible to form a user group before there has
  been a history.

 I see, thank you for explaining.  I believe this refers to the language in

 https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Recognizing_Models_of_Affiliations

 Would it be more helpful if the clause you mention were changed to
 read an established contact person and a wikipage describing the
 group's activity?  I believe that is equally representative of the
 thinking behind the resolution.

 If the the Board can remedy unfortunate wording that is slowing things
 down, I will propose a change right away.

Yes, that would be an improvement and closer to the current interpretation.



  In any case, the more automation and simplification we can introduce into
  the process, the better.

 Agreed.  :)


 Greg writes:
  Bence describes it a bit more, but basically a request comes in, someone
 is
  assigned it, we ask them some questions, if that person feels okay or
  doesn't have questions, they send the info to the group, post a
 resolution,
  and we vote.

 If the process can't be done in a single pass, it's probably too
 complicated.

 Compare the process of forming a Meetup group.  There are basic
 standards of behavior and usage -- applied via review after the fact,
 soft-security style -- and measures of activity.  But as soon as you
 finish filling out a form describing your group, it has been created +
 is visible online + has its events included in a global calendar, and
 starts to get updates and support.

I might be mistaken, but meetup.com groups cost money to maintain, don't
they? (And that might itself be a security feature.)

Obviously, having more user groups would be great, but we do not currently
know how many are not being created due to the process.
It is entirely possible, that the creation of active user groups (without
further investments and interventions into seeding communities) is
currently maxed out already. Even in the case of review after the fact, we
might just be shifting the burden on volunteers down the line in time to
prove that they have measured up to the requirements. (On the other hand,
it is also a possible hypothesis, that there is a ratio of active to
inactive user groups that is natural, and just by increasing the numbers,
we can maintain the ratio and grow the number of active ones.)

As there is not enough evidence to suggest that user group status in itself
can act as a catalyst where there is not a strong seed of community in
place, or that we are failing en masse in recognising those communities
that actively seek recognition (we may be slow, but the failure rate should
be within normal levels), simply opening the gates will not necessarily
going to result in more Wikimedia activity in more places of the world (the
ultimate end goal of the exercise).
This is not to say that there is no need to simplify the process -- there
is lots -- but there should be a holistic picture: there is need for
helping communities be created, for helping communities grow, there is need
to provide recognition to volunteers, there is need for providing support,
resources and advice to existing groups, there is a need to provide some
level of oversight [somebody has to read the reports that are being
produced at the least] -- we can stress the system by adding hundreds of
user groups [the recognition element in the picture] but that will not
result in a successful user group model unless we can provide the resources
for all the connected services so that we can set them up for success.

Best regards,
Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia movement affiliates liaisons

[Bence Damokos]

On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 12:57 AM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm still stuck on bylaws.  Why is AffCom asking for bylaws?

 Depends on the context.

We do review them, or at least try to, whenever a group (chapter, user
group, thematic organisation) decides to have them, in order to make sure
they comply with with the requirements for the given affiliate type and
some general best practices. If a user group doesn't have a bylaw, then we
are not asking them to create one - in fact, the choice over bylaws was one
of the original design points for the user group model.

Best regards,
Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia movement affiliates liaisons

[Bence Damokos]

On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 12:17 AM, Leigh Thelmadatter osama...@hotmail.com
wrote:

  Obviously, having more user groups would be great, but we do not
 currently
  know how many are not being created due to the process.
  It is entirely possible, that the creation of active user groups (without
  further investments and interventions into seeding communities) is
  currently maxed out already.
 This cannot be true because we know of at least one group with established
 contact, a web page and a history of projects which is NOT recognized. If
 even one group, especially one with a track record, is being marginalized
 under the current process, that process needs to be looked at.

 Leigh, I understand your frustration, and I am sorry that the recognition
process for your group has not finished yet, nor have we given a definite
answer. For the purposes of this public discussion a focus on the more
general topic may be helpful. The marginal utility of publicly poking us is
decreasing fast and slowly turning into the negative, I am afraid. We may
take it as read that AffCom is not perfect.

 If I understand the rest of Bence's email, the issues seem to be that 1)
 approving more groups may mean a higher rate of failure and 2) more groups
 means that resources (time, money) will be taken from established groups.
 If these are the main concerns, why create the categories of thematic
 groups and user groups in the first place?   Why does AffComm place a
 higher priority on already-recognized groups over those looking already
 working but lacking the same status?  Is anyone on AffCom not already part
 of a chapter or other recognized affiliate?  If not, who speaks for those
 who are still outside the system?

My main point was that there is more to creating an ecosystem of successful
user groups than just recognising more groups. There is a need for an
extended support system, and the movement is putting more and more
attention towards this issue in recent years -- the liaison system that
this thread is originally about is one such step that the AffCom is working
on, but there is a wider picture with on-going efforts by other volunteers,
chapters, and the WMF. Similarly, there is an on-going, perhaps multi-year
conversation around what level of resources to channel into this area --
perhaps one of the main outcomes, thanks to the support of the WMF, is that
AffCom is given more resources to work with (access to staff and Board;
ability to provide scholarships and endorse grants, etc.).

In these developments and processes, it is important to note that there
does not seem to be a constraint, where support to one type of affiliate
limits available support to other types of affiliates. There is however a
possible constraint in the overall number of affiliates we could handle
with the current levels of resources and structures and we have not bumped
into those caps yet, and will likely won't in the foreseeable future.
Changing the rate at which we add new affiliates from dozens a year to say
a hundred, would be a change that could strain our systems -- a change that
would be worth it if we had hundreds of Wikimedia communities that we could
empower thusly.

You can learn more about the background of AffCom members at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Members, you will
see that people come with diverse background, but nobody is there to
represent a particular niche, per se. We do try to consider what the
various stakeholders might think, and then we usually ask them to check if
we were correct (like in the recent RFC on user group logos, or the
sessions we had with the attendees and WMF Board at the Wikimedia
Conference in Berlin).

Best regards,
Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia movement affiliates liaisons

[Bence Damokos]

Hi Sam,

If all the steps could happen at the same time, and decisions were made by
a single person, then the process could indeed be done in 30 minutes under
ideal circumstances (a person being 24/7 online, and all information being
available at the time of application).

However, currently there are a number of checks and procedural safeguards
in place that add to the process and utilize the knowledge and wisdom of
the whole AffCom.
After taking into account such practicalities as limited and
non-overlapping volunteer schedules (i.e. non-work time, non offline time
across different time zones) of both the applying group and the group
processing the application, a few weeks seem to be the ideal we can aim for
at this point without giving up guarantees of due diligence.

As a breakdown of this idealised process, see:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/9/97/User_group_process.svg

Best regards,
Bence

P.S.: I myself have argued for the 30 minute recognition process many
times, but at the same time understand that the movement relies on the
Affcom seal of approval to mean something, which in turn requires a bit
deeper due diligence somewhere along the line.


On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 7:44 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote:

 Quick question:

  The ultimate goal is for the user group recognition
  process to be shortened to a few weeks.

 When the user group model was proposed, the idea was that this should
 take no more than 15 minutes.  What currently takes time?

 Sam

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia movement affiliates liaisons

[Bence Damokos]

On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 8:52 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 1:58 PM, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote:

  Hi Sam,
 
  If all the steps could happen at the same time, and decisions were made
 by
  a single person, then the process could indeed be done in 30 minutes
 under
  ideal circumstances (a person being 24/7 online, and all information
 being
  available at the time of application).
 
  However, currently there are a number of checks and procedural safeguards
  in place that add to the process and utilize the knowledge and wisdom of
  the whole AffCom.
  After taking into account such practicalities as limited and
  non-overlapping volunteer schedules (i.e. non-work time, non offline time
  across different time zones) of both the applying group and the group
  processing the application, a few weeks seem to be the ideal we can aim
 for
  at this point without giving up guarantees of due diligence.
 
  As a breakdown of this idealised process, see:
  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/9/97/User_group_process.svg
 
  Best regards,
  Bence
 
  P.S.: I myself have argued for the 30 minute recognition process many
  times, but at the same time understand that the movement relies on the
  Affcom seal of approval to mean something, which in turn requires a bit
  deeper due diligence somewhere along the line.
 
 
 Is it necessary for the full committee to weigh in on user group decisions?
 If you have a relatively straightforward rubric for assessment, couldn't it
 be completed by a single member of the committee? Given the low weight of
 consequences anticipated by user groups, you could either permit an
 individual member to issue a decision on behalf of the group or ask them to
 distribute the completed rubric for up/down votes by the body.

Yes - I wasn't entirely precise in my description - the process is  lead by
the one or two person (confusingly also called liaisons) assigned to the
case and the rest of the committee allowed to weigh in if there are any
ambiguities or there are any concerns. In extreme cases at the end of the
process, but generally at the various intermediate stages.

In practice, the final resolution phase is where most time could be saved
as that is mostly a structural legacy of housing the process at a committee
that makes public decisions via resolutions;but we try to work out most
issues and concerns beforehand. Making sure that everyone had a time to do
the extra due diligence in addition to the liaisons themselves adds some
time, but can help us avoid recognising groups that are not made up of long
term Wikimedians, are possibly more interested in gaining money, respect or
padding their CVs than furthering the mission or groups that are not going
to stay together as a group for any meaningful amount of time.

(One has to keep in mind, that we encourage groups to contact us as early
in their group creation phase as possible, which means that the process'
time will include time spent by the applying group on figuring out who they
are and what they want to do.
And also, that my fellow AffCom volunteers are doing a lot - not
necessarily all inside AffCom -, often having multiple responsibilities
inside the movement, in addition to having demanding jobs or families. This
means a couple of things, including the fact that time is limited --- e.g.
 if a volunteer sends an e-mail in the evening before going to bed, even if
there is a very quick reply, they will only be able to react the next
evening [~24 hours later] ---; the shared desire to simplify our processes,
and that we can use all the help we can get to achieve the goals we set
ourselves.)


Again, a fuller picture with roles is given at the graph I shared in the
previous e-mail, which is as of now  non-narrated, but part of the project
to increase transparency around the process and to use as a sort of metric
to aim for and improve over time.

Best regards,
Bence


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia movement affiliates liaisons

[Bence Damokos]

On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 9:18 PM, Sam Klein sjkl...@hcs.harvard.edu wrote:

 Thanks, Bence and Greg.  I appreciate all of the thought going into this.
 Can you describe the groups that might have been problematic as UGs?
 I think both becoming and stopping to be a UG should be a simple process.


Thanks Sam - your thinking is always refreshing.

I believe, I and Greg have mentioned a few examples without naming names,
but in general, the question we ask is whether a group is genuine (i.e. are
they who they say they are; are they part of the Wikimedia community), do
they mean well (i.e. do they want to make a quick buck with the name or
some quick grant and disappear, or are they genuinely trying to further the
mission), and often can they be a constructive part of the movement (a sort
of human, interpersonal factor that takes more time to ascertain where
groups that have relationships with other groups or where they have
non-standard relationships with us).

Also, somewhat unfortunately in my view, there is a requirement for user
groups is to have a history of projects, which was not further defined,
but in theory makes it impossible to form a user group before there has
been a history. Defining this requirement and whether any non-standard
(as compared to existing examples) group meets the requirement creates a
whole  meta process in each process where by executing the process we are
defining what the outcome (i.e. user groups) are supposed to be. I wish
this could be a one man job, as there would be so much more agreement, but
perhaps the results would be less optimal then when we rely on the
consensus of a committee with years of experience and a multitude of
viewpoints.

In any case, the more automation and simplification we can introduce into
the process, the better. Unfortunately, those that are first in some way,
will have to live through the meta process while we check the boxes, but
they get to write history the same way supreme court cases do :)

Best regards,
Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia movement affiliates liaisons

[Bence Damokos]

On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 9:48 PM, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote:


 On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 9:18 PM, Sam Klein sjkl...@hcs.harvard.edu
 wrote:

 Thanks, Bence and Greg.  I appreciate all of the thought going into this.
 Can you describe the groups that might have been problematic as UGs?
 I think both becoming and stopping to be a UG should be a simple process.


 Thanks Sam - your thinking is always refreshing.

 I believe, I and Greg have mentioned a few examples without naming names,
 but in general, the question we ask is whether a group is genuine (i.e. are
 they who they say they are; are they part of the Wikimedia community), do
 they mean well (i.e. do they want to make a quick buck with the name or
 some quick grant and disappear, or are they genuinely trying to further the
 mission), and often can they be a constructive part of the movement (a sort
 of human, interpersonal factor that takes more time to ascertain where
 groups that have relationships with other groups or where they have
 non-standard relationships with us).

 Also, somewhat unfortunately in my view, there is a requirement for user
 groups is to have a history of projects, which was not further defined,
 but in theory makes it impossible to form a user group before there has
 been a history. Defining this requirement and whether any non-standard
 (as compared to existing examples) group meets the requirement creates a
 whole  meta process in each process where by executing the process we are
 defining what the outcome (i.e. user groups) are supposed to be. I wish
 this could be a one man job, as there would be so much more agreement, but
 perhaps the results would be less optimal than when we rely on the
 consensus of a committee with years of experience and a multitude of
 viewpoints.

 In any case, the more automation and simplification we can introduce into
 the process, the better. Unfortunately, those that are first in some way,
 will have to live through the meta process while we check the boxes, but
 they get to write history the same way supreme court cases do :)

 Best regards,
 Bence

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia movement affiliates liaisons

[Bence Damokos]

On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 11:49 PM, Kevin Gorman kgor...@gmail.com wrote:

 other active GAC members given the
 relatively low bar required for UG status - we'll be paying way more
 attention at the details of the grant and the applicant(s) than on whether
 they have AffCom recognition.  I'd definitely rather give a grant to four
 well-established Wikimedians with no official status than four less
 well-established Wikimedians who happen to be a recognized user group all
 things being equal, and I suspect the same is true of other GAC members.
  We definitely take people's previous histories in to account when
 considering whether or not to make a grant, but I don't think being an
 officially recognized user group would make a  group of people meaningfully
 more likely to get a grant than a group of people with an equivalent track
 record without that status.

 Although usually some form of history with the projects - or at least a
 strong endorsement from someone with a solid history with the projects - is
 needed to secure a sizable grant, we give out grants to individuals, groups
 of individuals that are not officially recognized, organizations aligned
 with our values that don't have Wikimedia affiliate status, and all kinds
 of other entities all the time, and I've never heard a GAC member express
 reservations about a particular grant based on whether or not a group of
 people were a recognized UG or not.  Moreover, I'd be pretty surprised to
 hear someone do so.

 We'd love to receive any and every solid proposal for a mission aligned
 grant, whether it comes from an individual, a group of three friends, a
 recognized usergroup, or a chapter or thorg that doesn't yet qualify for
 FDC funding (or that seeks funding for a project that the GAC can grant
 that the FDC can't - political advocacy is the only thing that comes to
 mind.) If anyone reading this who has a cool idea that can be facilitated
 by a PEG grant and advance the Wikimedia mission,  Please come visit us :)
  We approve most grants that we deal with, and work hard with applicants to


Thanks Kevin with this explanation. I have a similar understanding of the
grantmaking landscape at Wikimedia.
There are groups, or individuals that every once in a while contact AffCom
that are not that aware of the realities of the grants process (i.e. that
only real projects get funded, but they do get funded regardless of
status). While they do not reach the stage of getting to the various grants
programmes, or being recognised as an affiliate, that does not mean they do
not exist.

Best regards,
Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia movement affiliates liaisons

[Bence Damokos]

Hi Leigh,

Actually, we were discussing your group's application even before your
writing here. I do apologize for the lack of communication or clarity,
although there was no news to communicate.

In general, I would advise everyone to be bold in following the
recommendation that is on the Meta page to send us a friendly reminder if
they are waiting for us to respond. It helps us keep on top of things, and
can speed up the process. (Bringing up the issue repeatedly on public
mailing lists, and involving further WMF bodies usually slows down the
process even if it might seem like a good idea, and even though it might
actually be a good idea in a very small minority of cases.)

Best regards,
Bence


On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 11:35 PM, Leigh Thelmadatter osama...@hotmail.com
wrote:

 OK so then why no action, no communication until I write something
 here?

  Date: Thu, 29 May 2014 22:52:40 +0300
  From: ma...@wikimedia.org.ve
  To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
  Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia movement affiliates liaisons
 
  Hi Leigh,
 
  As Greg just said it, we are all aware that your application has more
  complications. We are doing the best we can to speed the process up, but
  the AffCom is not the only actor involved in our investigations, as it
  is with other cases. We also know that you have included the WMF Board
  on your communications, and let me remind you that WUG recognitions do
  not depend on the WMF Board, as the AffCom has a mandate from it to
  recognize those groups seeking to affiliate. -and more than that, there
  are two Board Liaisons on the AffCom mailing list, so all the
  communication between us has been read by them. I don't think is
  necessary to send two copies of the same e-mail to the same people :-)
 
  M.
 
  El 29/05/2014 10:31 p.m., Leigh Thelmadatter escribió:
   We have been doing all of that including the board members for a year
 now. This is the first bit of information Ive had from you in months.  This
 seems to work a lot faster.
  
  
  
   Date: Thu, 29 May 2014 15:28:49 -0400
   From: gregory.var...@gmail.com
   To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
   Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia movement affiliates liaisons
  
   As Leigh and people who follow this list and others know, the Wiki
 Borregos
   application has more complications. I do not think rehashing that on
 this
   public list is the best way to resolve that. Leigh, we are discussing
 it
   actively now, and you are welcome to email us for an update. You are
   welcome to CC a couple of board members if you feel that will help the
   process along.
  
   -greg
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  --
  *Jülüjain wane mmakat* ein kapülain tü alijunakalirua jee wayuukanairua
  junain ekerolaa alümüin supüshuwayale etijaanaka. Ayatashi waya junain.
  Carlos M. Colina
  Vicepresidente, A.C. Wikimedia Venezuela | RIF J-40129321-2 |
  www.wikimedia.org.ve http://wikimedia.org.ve
  Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Affiliations Committee
  Phone: +972-52-4869915
  Twitter: @maor_x
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[Wikimedia-l] Affiliations Committee Vice-Chair

[Bence Damokos]

Hi all,

It is with great pleasure that I can announce that the Affiliations
Committee has selected Greg Varnum as its vice chair for the next year.

He ran on a platform of helping the committee improve communication with
the WMF Board (and other stakeholders) and shifting the committee's work
toward a more active capacity building role.

You can learn more about Greg at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Members#Current_members(scroll
down).

The appointing resolution has been posted at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Vice_Chair_selection_2014_-_May_2014

Best regards,

Bence Damokos,
Affiliations Committee
@WikimediaAffCom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] simple and effective creation process for chapters

[Bence Damokos]

Thanks Rupert for thinking about this. The chapter creation process[0]
is indeed under-going review following the Board's November decision,
and all comments, input is welcome.

There are some reasons that make it a bit difficult to enact your
suggestions or to come to the results you suggest in the chapter
creation process. Just to take one practical limiting factor, setting
up an incorporated entity takes some time and money[1] even if
Wikimedia itself did not add any further burdens.

This was one of the reasons the non-incorporated user group concept
was envisioned largely following along the lines you draw. (Membership
organisations with wide trademark use rights, etc.)

Best regards,
Bence

[0] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Step-by-step_chapter_creation_guide
[1] http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploretopics/starting-a-business
- not sure if there is an equivalent easily accessible study for
membership organisations, but this is a good proxy

On Sat, May 3, 2014 at 9:02 AM, rupert THURNER rupert.thur...@gmail.com wrote:
 hi,

 out of the experiences of creating 50 chapters, and the recent
 frustrated feedback from persons involved in the creation of new
 chapters, e.g. belgium and ghana, could we please find a simple and
 effective way to organize the chapters creation process? existing
 chapters not meeting the requirements have 3 years to adjust their
 bylaws.

 target and purpose of chapters:
 chapters match a country as defined by the league of nations defined
 in 1939 and reaffirmed by the united nations in 1945 [1], to follow
 local jurisdiction. they are membership organizations.

 requirements to be a chapter in the bylaws:
 * support the mission of the wmf
 * be a membership organization, i.e. the highest body is
   the assembly of members
 * be a member must be possible for everybody who
   contributes (i.e. edits, writes software used by wmf projects)
   at zero cost (or low cost, e.g. price of one meal?)
 * meet the tax exemption criteria. justification needed
   if not possible, reviewed regularly.
 * an audit committee, consisting of members, who are also
   allowed to seek professional help

 this means chapters can created within days, not years. the rules are
 clear right from the beginning. measures are already in place if
 something goes wrong.

 problems addressed:
 * creating a chapter is possible immediately one
   finds the legal minimum number of contributors in a
   country, most of the time 2 or 3.
 * the bylaw requirements guarantee contributors can
   easily join any time and no lockout can happen.
   negative example: german football federation,
   allowing a red bull club (rb leipzig) with 7 members, exorbitant
   membership fee, existing rb leipzig board decides who can
   become member.
 * proper names may be used immediately, current negative
   example: planning wikimedia ghana registers facebook, and
   other social accounts with a temporary name to gather
   people. the risk is that it is planning forever. later change
   of such accounts is nearly impossible without breaking history.
 * bank accounts with limited liability are used immediately,
   allowing to properly pursue misuse in local jurisdiction. negative
   example: kenya, where money disappeared from a
   personal account.
 * the bylaw requirements allow the inclusion or lockout of people
   not contributing at the chapters discretion. example: germany,
   switzerland allowing persons and even legal entities to become
   member.
 * it allows to organize itself in some federal way within a country,
   at the discretion of a chapter.
 * it guarantees to have the highest level of local jurisdiction control
   by meeting tax exemption criteria. examples: germany, uk.
   there critieria are in place which can be fulfilled, austria. criteria
   exist what cannot be matched, but discussions are ongoing to
   change the law.
 * initial signing of policies and contracts with the wmf is not required.
   using trademarks without approval is easily controlled by established
   procedures (legal, fdc, etc). the movement is used to deal with
   people and organizations trying to do that every day, in many
   countries.
 * contributing is easily and globally defined by commits, and edits,
   as currently used for elections [2]
 * no block is there by enforcing auditing costs, as well preventing a
   chapters board to appoint a best friend auditing firm. negative
   examples: enron, which was audited by arthur anderson, and
   anyway exploded. positive examples: wmf, using volunteers and
   kpmg, most chapters.
 * there is no different treatment of newborn chapters, chapters with
   experienced boards, and chapters who just changed the whole board.

 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country
 [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013

 kind regards,
 rupert.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Assessing this round of FDC proposals, including the WMF's proposal

[Bence Damokos]

While this is a compelling interpretation - for the sake of argument -
I am not sure the words of the ED of the WMF can bind the Board of the
WMF in the decisions they make. I could imagine situations where they
could, and normally the ED advises the Board on what direction to
take, but normally it should be the other way around when it comes to
binding statements.

Best regards,
Bence

On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 8:28 AM, Russavia russavia.wikipe...@gmail.com wrote:
 Marc,

 On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 11:15 AM, Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org
  wrote:

 On 04/28/2014 10:29 PM, Russavia wrote:
  because the
  WMF Executive Director's words are pretty clear, and the movement
 should
  not be putting one cent into such positions.

 That's an interessing conclusion you reach, because the Executive
 Director's words *are* indeed clear - as you quoted:

  In the future, *the Wikimedia Foundation* will not support or
  endorse the creation of paid roles that have article writing as
  a core focus [...]
 (emph. mine)

 I'm pretty sure I don't see the movement mentionned anywhere in there.

 Whether the chapters intend to take such a position themselves is indeed
 an interesting question, but that they are obligated to do so or that
 the FDC is obligated to ensure that they do does not follow from what
 Sue has been saying.


 My native language is English, and understanding the sentence:

 In the future, the Wikimedia Foundation will not support or endorse the
 creation of paid roles that have article writing as a core focus,
 regardless of who is initiating or managing the process.

 is a case of simple comprehension.

 Let's use another way of putting across what this sentence is saying.

 Timmy's parents are noted anti-drug activists, speaking out against the
 horrors of drugs. But, Timmy is a drug addict, and whilst his parents
 publicly speak out against drugs, they had been quietly paying for Timmy's
 habit. When this was brought to the attention of the public, Timmy's
 parents put out a statement that read:

 In the future, we (Timmy's parents) will not support or endorse Timmy's
 drug addiction, regardless of who buys or enables the supply of drugs.

 Now, Timmy continues to do drugs, and it later comes out that his continued
 habit was as a result of Timmy getting money from his uncle, who in turn
 was given money by Timmy's parents, with Timmy's parents knowing full well
 that a percentage of the money which was being given to Timmy's uncle was
 continuing to feed Timmy's habit.

 Wouldn't Timmy's parents be totally hypocritical in this instance? Wouldn't
 anyone who pointed out that the statement only said we (Timmy's parents)
 be avoiding the issue that Timmy's parents are in fact continuing to
 support Timmy's habit, when they have explicitly said that they would not?

 I know that the chapters have a reason for not asking, but unlike the
 chapters (and over parties), I don't have a financial and vested interest
 in WMF funds.

 So, Marc, perhaps, movement was the incorrect word to use, but other than
 that the obvious intent of the comments and questions I've raised stay the
 same. So, I will rephrase to allow for zero semantics.

 Can chapters please advise what paid editing positions are planned, and
 whether those positions will be covered as part of WMF allocated funds, or
 whether outside organisations will be covering funding of such positions,
 because the WMF Executive Director's words are pretty clear, and the WMF
 will not be putting one cent into (supporting) such positions.

 I await an official response from the WMF on this issue.

 Regards,

 Russavia
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Assessing this round of FDC proposals, including the WMF's proposal

[Bence Damokos]

What is currently stopping a community assessment from being carried
out? (If indeed the community has the actual desire to do it -- I
assume the data is as public as it gets at the WMF's current level of
transparency.)

Best regards,
Bence

On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 8:45 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 27 April 2014 14:35, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote:

 Risker, 27/04/2014 19:49:

  Well, no, I'm not misunderstanding.  If a staff assessment is needed, then
 it needs to be done by staff.


 Inappropriate metonymy here, staff doesn't equal WMF staff. Anyway,
 [citation needed].



 Nemo, my position is that it shouldn't be being done at all because the
 request is outside of the FDC's scope, and that assessment is done, then
 community assessment will be more useful than a quasi-official, partial
 assessment by a conflicted group that isn't staff, has no experience
 using the analytical metrics, and doesn't have the wherewithal to do a
 complete the full assessment.  The FDC does not have its own staff; it has
 WMF staff appointed to assist them by creating staff assessments, in accord
 with the FDC structure approved by the Board.  The FDC doesn't get to pick
 who does the assessments.


 Risker
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Assessing this round of FDC proposals, including the WMF's proposal

[Bence Damokos]

On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 9:14 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 27 April 2014 15:01, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote:

 What is currently stopping a community assessment from being carried
 out? (If indeed the community has the actual desire to do it -- I
 assume the data is as public as it gets at the WMF's current level of
 transparency.)

 Best regards,
 Bence



 In the past, the WMF budget and programmatic proposals were separate from
 all others, and were widely advertised as the WMF proposal.  Now they are
 buried in FDC proposal with no specific metion that there is a WMF
 proposal there.  I've seen no banners. I got a personal talk page message
 because I'd been identified as a useful person to comment.

 In other words, there is much less transparency or effort to reach out to
 the broader community for the WMF proposal, which is radically different
 from all other proposals.
It might just have been me, but I seem to recall big banners on
Wikipedia advertising the fact that the WMF's proposal was up for
review (among the others).
In any case, as someone who has followed the WMF's budgets over the
year, I rarely do recall any formal community consultation (apart from
their non-core proposal last year to the FDC), so this is a welcome
step in the right direction. (I find it difficult to get on board with
the implied argument that the fact that other organisations are as
transparent or more at the same time as the WMF is a bad thing).

Best regards,
Bence

 Risker
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] ASBS sessions update

[Bence Damokos]

Thanks Chris for the update.
I was not in the session, but there is an Etherpad I will be looking
at: http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/wmcon14-14

Best regards,
Bence

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] ASBS sessions update

[Bence Damokos]

(For that matter, most if not all sessions have associated public
Etherpads: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2014/Schedule.
Not the same as being in the room, or watching the videos that might
come later, but at least gives the gist for those who could not be
there for whatever reason.)

Best regards,
Bence

On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 5:23 PM, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote:
 Thanks Chris for the update.
 I was not in the session, but there is an Etherpad I will be looking
 at: http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/wmcon14-14

 Best regards,
 Bence

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Chaptersplanet.org

[Bence Damokos]

Hi Base,

1) and 2) It is a service run by a busy individual volunteer who has
set up the site in his spare time, hoping it might be useful to some.
(While the service is based on open source software, I cannot comment
on whether there is any interest in porting it to MediaWiki.
Especially as meta.wikimedia.org already exists and runs on the MW
platform :) ).
3) The software the site runs on has no obvious way of paginating and
archiving the content and the Wikimedia affiliates and the WMF create
over 46 pages worth of communications content in a 10(?)-day period.

Hope the above helps, I do recommend using the Twitter (or e-mail
newsletter) editions on slower connections, older computers and
smaller resolution devices.

Best regards,
Bence




On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 8:46 PM, Bohdan Melnychuk bas...@yandex.ru wrote:
 Omg, why isn't it 1) on WMF servers 2) based on MediaWIki ? And why on Earth
 it's so large page. My browser started to lag badly while opening that page
 which is 46 A4 pages if we print it.

 Yours sincerely,
 Base
 13.04.2014 15:20, Bence Damokos написав(ла):

 Hi all,

 As we have been discussing communication and sharing of experiences at
 various sessions here at the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, I wanted
 to remind people of the chaptersplanet.org website i set up a few
 years ago that aggregates blog posts, reports and newsletters from the
 various affiliates and the WMF.

 You can follow the site at chaptersplanet.org, or @chaptersplanet
 (http://twitter.com/chaptersplanet ) on Twitter.

 The name is only a historical artifact -- if your group or
 organisations blog, newsletter, etc. is not represented yet (or has
 moved to a new location since I added it), please drop me a line.

 Best regards,
 Bence

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[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Cynthia Ashley-Nelson (Cindamuse)

[Bence Damokos]

It is with great regret that we need to confirm that Cynthia
Ashley-Nelson (User:Cindamuse,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cindamuse ) passed away on Friday,
April 11. Our thoughts are with Cindy’s family, friends and the
Wikimedia community. Her next of kin have been informed prior to
releasing this announcement.


Cindy was elected vice-chair of the Wikimedia Affiliations Committee
on April 10, 2014. She had traveled to Berlin in order to attend the
Affiliations Committee’s annual meeting during the international
Wikimedia Conference. Both a long-time Wikipedia editor and an expert
in organizational development with a professional background of 25
years, she devoted her time, passion and vast expertise to contribute
in numerous ways to the free knowledge movement. Cindy was deeply
committed to supporting the Wikimedia Foundation’s Global Education
Program and to tackling the gender gap issue on Wikipedia.


In the short time since January that Cindy has been with us in the
Affiliations Committee, we have come to value her thoughts, passion
and refreshing ideas. She was working very enthusiastically with us,
and we are all saddened that we won’t have the chance to learn from
all of her ideas, insights and experiences. The months we shared
proved her to be a very valuable and engaged member of the committee,
which led to her election as AffCom vice-chair.


We are sad beyond words and so is everyone who came to Berlin to
participate in the Wikimedia Conference. Her passing is a great loss
for everyone in the Wikimedia movement. This morning all the
conference attendees gathered together to grieve and talk about the
loss of Cindy. We decided that all of us at the Wikimedia Conference
could choose to continue the conversations about the future of the
movement Cindy cared so much about, as well as spending our time here
to remember and celebrate her. She will be greatly missed.


You can share your condolences and memories of Cynthia on her user
talk page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Cindamuse ).


On behalf of the whole Affiliations Committee, and the other community
members gathered here in Berlin:


Carlos Colina,

Chair, Wikimedia Affiliations Committee


Bence Damokos,

Outgoing chair, Wikimedia Affiliations Committee

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[Wikimedia-l] New Affiliations Committee leadership

[Bence Damokos]

Hi all,

It is with great pleasure that I can announce today that the Affiliations
Committee has appointed Carlos Colina as the chair (who previously served
as the vice-chair), and Cynthia Ashley-Nelson as the vice-chair of the
committee for a one year term ending in April 2015.

I am happy to leave the committee in the very capable hands of Carlos and
Cynthia, and will remain an ordinary member of AffCom going forward.

Best regards,
Bence Damokos
Member, Affiliations Committee
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fuck the community, who cares

[Bence Damokos]

I am not sure it would qualify as a public statement rather than a sentence
taken and quoted out of context from a closed meeting  - in other words, it
was not made at a public, accessible location, rather at a closed meeting
(with limited places, an entrance fee, etc.). While there are published
notes, the apparent quote is not present in them, and I would not be
surprised if the person in question was merely making a point to foster
debate.

For what its worth, rules like the one at the meeting can in theory foster
open debate on controversial topics (see e.g. the [[Chatham House Rule]])
and we should respect them. I for one would be sad if we were not able to
experiment with new models that foster open debate (while still maintaining
a level of transparency).

Best regards,
Bence


On Mon, Apr 7, 2014 at 2:25 PM, Fæ fae...@gmail.com wrote:

 Michael,

 Wikimedia UK is in the fortunate position that due to my original work
 with Peter on governance, you and all trustees on your board have
 signed a trustee code committing them to the Nolan principles. This
 makes it obvious that if any of the UK Trustees that made public
 statements of this sort (this was a publicly funded workshop with
 public minutes) they would be required to resign their position.
 Making public personal attacks against community members I would say
 could easily be a resigning matter too.

 Other chapters are not so fortunate to have such a professionally
 created body of bureaucracy.

 I am disappointed, for reasons already expressed in this thread.

 Fae

 On 7 April 2014 13:09, Michael Maggs mich...@maggs.name wrote:
  I am really saddened by the incessant demands that the community needs
 public investigations, heads to roll, public apologies and so on.  I am
 also saddened by repeated demands that specific community members state
 publicly whether they do or do not agree with something allegedly said by a
 third party, but restated shorn of all context.
 
  One would have thought that we would all have learned from history that
 witch hunts never turn out well, but apparently not. It’s almost as if
 the community has a death wish and has far greater interest in internecine
 warfare than in actively attempting to work together to further our mission
 (which we all agree on, surely?).
 
  I was not myself at the governance workshop, and have no idea who said
 that, if anyone, but I do find it odd that Fae would find it necessary to
 demand of a trustee whether he does or does not accept the alleged quote as
 a “philosophy”.
 
  Would it help if I, as WMUK chair, said that such a “philosophy” would
 be anathema to us?  No, that probably won’t help, as it is an entirely
 self-evident statement. Answering direct questions, unfortunately, does not
 make much difference to those who find witch hunts fun.
 
  Michael
 
 
 
  On 7 Apr 2014, at 12:27, Fæ fae...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  Chris, rather than again[1] using school-boy politics by defaming
  people you don't like with personal attacks, please read Tomasz'
  request: the idea that chapters can fuck the community is
  absolutely unacceptable and should by rejected by all chapters
  immediately.
 
  Now, show some leadership and answer a simple direct question. Do you,
  or do you not as a trustee of Wikimedia UK and the person that was
  responsible for leading this costly workshop, reject the philosophy of
  fuck the community?
 
  I have asked for the person that made this statement to come forward
  and explain themselves. If they cannot, then they must realise they
  can no longer claim to be accountable to the community and neither can
  their board.
 
  Links:
  1.
 http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Administrators/Requests/F%C3%A64diff=116374702oldid=116372563
  Fae
 
  On 7 April 2014 12:10, Chris Keating chriskeatingw...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  I'd certainly hope not. One of the ground rules for the workshop was
 that
  individual contributions were made on a confidential and
 non-attributable
  basis.
 
  This was exactly because we wanted people to speak freely and not worry
  about a witch-hunt on an email list if a couple of trolls got hold of
 some
  out-of-context quotes.
 
  Chris
  On 7 Apr 2014 11:56, Fæ fae...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  Steffen, the Wikimedia movement expects board members on Wikimedia
  organizations to be fulfilling their role as representatives of our
  movement. If you misquoted please explain that this is the case.
 
  As at a public workshop that cost the movement a significant amount of
  our donor's money to pay for, there is no reason for secrecy about
  this, everyone there is accountable for their time spent at that
  workshop. The quote has not been challenged. It would benefit us all
  to hear why this was said and to be open to questions about their
  leadership role, from the person that made this public statement.
 
  Personally, if an elected or appointed board level member of a chapter
  is making public statements 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Cost of Wikimedia Conference 2014

[Bence Damokos]

Please note that this year the invitation to the conference states
Organizations
who would like to send more than two persons will have to book and pay for
all their travel and accommodation themselves.  -
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2014/Registration -
There is no more a blanket recommendation against sending more than two
people.

Nevertheless, a discussion on who should attend such a conference in
general, and if there is a specific goal WMUK is hoping to achieve this
year are still valid.

Best regards,
Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Timothy Sandole and (apparently) $53, 690 of WMF funding

[Bence Damokos]

Thanks Erik, for looking into it constructively. Looking forward to the
report and the learnings from the assessment.

Best regards,
Bence


On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 8:37 AM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 11:55 PM, Fæ fae...@gmail.com wrote:

  Eric, in this thread you are officially speaking for the WMF. Does the
  WMF really want to say it is ethical to have different
  accountability rules for funding organizations that want to use the
  Wikimedia brand because there are different rules for the rich?

 No, that's not the point. The point is that a grant given to us goes
 through a different process than, say, a grant from us to WMFR, and
 that necessarily leads to different practices -- the grant-giver has
 their own expectations on how to do accounting, reporting, etc.

 The project was publicly announced through a blog post, the
 responsibilities for the Wikipedian in Residence were publicly posted,
 and the user in question publicly disclosed their affiliation (that
 disclosure didn't, but should have, included more details including
 the WMF sponsorship). The edits are, as any, a matter of public record
 and easily scrutinized, criticized, and corrected or reverted if
 needed, to fully expose Harvard's evil agenda and the secret workings
 of the reptilian order which most WMF senior staff are part of.

 Timothy noted [1]  hat there's a report which he compiled as part of
 his residency. I've reached out to Lisa, and we're looking into
 publishing the report at the earliest opportunity. Hopefully this will
 make it possible to collectively draw some more conclusions about the
 project. I've added [2] the residency to the public directory and also
 created a holding space for capturing observations and conclusions.
 [3] Contributions welcome, and I hope we can avoid personalizing
 things as I'm sure Timothy worked in good faith and did his best to
 meet the expectations of the project. :)

 Cheers,
 Erik

 [1]
 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Timothysandolediff=600543335oldid=600410517
 [2]
 https://outreach.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedian_in_Residencediff=65415oldid=65414
 [3]
 https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence/Harvard_University_assessment
 --
 Erik Möller
 VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Link to Wikimedia Shop now included in the English Wikipedia sidebar

[Bence Damokos]

I seem to remember it was geotargeted to the US, wasn't it?

The change seems to have been made at the end of January, if I am reading
Gerrit right (to which there is no guarantee):
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/98885/

Best regards,
Bence


On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 5:00 PM, Philippe Beaudette
phili...@wikimedia.orgwrote:

 I'm confused.  That link has been there, like, forever, hasn't it?  Or for
 quite a long time?  Or am I misremembering that?

 pb


 *Philippe Beaudette * \\  Director, Community Advocacy \\ Wikimedia
 Foundation, Inc.
  T: 1-415-839-6885 x6643 |  phili...@wikimedia.org  |  :
 @Philippewikihttps://twitter.com/Philippewiki


 On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 7:59 AM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski 
 tom...@twkozlowski.net
  wrote:

  I wonder what next will we be offered to buy.
 
  Tomasz
 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board decisions on movement funding and approval issues

[Bence Damokos]

Dear Community Members,

The Affiliations Committee has put together a public response to the
Board's decision to express the dissatisfaction with the process and
outcome of the decision, and thereby the opportunity lost to actually
discuss and address the Board's underlying concerns. This opportunity can
be restored with an open, sustained dialogue - we will be available online
as well as in person at the Berlin Wikimedia Conference, among other venues
- we hope the Board and other community members will commit to
participating.

You can find our statement at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:WMF_Board_meetings/2013-11-24/FAQ#AffCom_response(translations
can be provided at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/February_2014_Statement).
The English version is copied below for your convenience.

Best regards,
Bence Damokos
Chair, Affiliations Committee



Dear Community Members,

The Affiliations Committee shares the surprise and disappointment felt by
many in the community with the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees’
recent decision to require all new chapters and thematic organizations to
exist as affiliated user groups for two years prior to being allowed to
formally organize, and the restrictions placed on the Funds Dissemination
Committee.

We remain committed to serving the Wikimedia mission by advising the Board
and the movement at large and fulfilling the mandate given to us, but we
feel the way this decision was taken and its potential negative effects
warrant public comment.

We are deeply saddened by the demotivating effect this decision will likely
have on the volunteers building future affiliates, especially those who
have already begun their organising work only to find out that the rules
have suddenly changed. As a committee, we will continue to provide maximum
support to current and future user groups, but that might not be enough to
mitigate the immediate and long-term repercussions of this decision.

We are concerned that the decision sets a negative example for good
governance and transparency in the movement. This decision was not made in
a process consistent with Wikimedia movement values, and the Affiliations
Committee has seen no evidence that this decision will achieve the Board’s
stated goals. This approach taken by the board and the contradictory
messages sent by this decision and subsequent communications will only
demotivate the very volunteers the Foundation proclaims it is working with
to engage and empower.

We share the Board’s desire to take a strategic view on how Wikimedia
organisations can best achieve the goals of the movement and how we can
support them in building up the necessary capacity for long-term
effectiveness. Unfortunately, making a decision without any prior
consultation or research does not further that discussion -- it merely
introduces an arbitrary change with unclear goals, impacts, and
consequences.

While we appreciate the logic presented by the board, we feel ultimately
that this decision was a lost opportunity to address the board’s underlying
concerns. The limitations this places on future organizations creates an
unfair disadvantage for developing countries and sends conflicting messages
about fostering dependency on the Wikimedia Foundation for local
programmatic work. By announcing the decision without proper consultation,
the board has sent several mixed messages about process, alarmed groups
impacted most, and discouraged affiliates from commenting by bundling and
framing the two decisions in a way they fear will label them as being
financially motivated to comment on.

It is our hope that the Board sees the publication of its decision as the
start of a conversation and that it will commit to engage the wider
community, the movement stakeholders, and experts in evaluating it. We hope
the conversation will be constructive, focusing on how volunteers can best
be empowered to fulfill our joint mission. We are ready to participate in,
facilitate, or aid that discussion in the interests of the movement.

We encourage candidate affiliates, existing affiliates, and community
members to leave questions, comments, viewpoints, factual briefings, and
feedback on the Board
noticeboardhttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_noticeboard or
the talk page of this
decisionhttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:WMF_Board_meetings/2013-11-24/FAQ
on
Meta. We are also happy to hear community members’ perspectives and hope to
engage the Board in an open dialogue.


Best regards,
the Affiliations Committee


On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 6:33 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi all,

 I want to draw your attention to two Wikimedia Board of Trustees decisions
 that were recently published, regarding funds allocated to the FDC/Annual
 plan grant process and Board approval of chapter/thematic organization
 status. In a nutshell, the Board decided to allocate approximately the same
 amount of funding to the FDC for the next two years

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board decisions on movement funding and approval issues

[Bence Damokos]

Speaking in my personal capacity, I echo the surprise that the Board has
decided to move a motion before they had full or close to full consensus on
the issue - which is in general a departure from the usual.

I can only assume that there was a better reason behind the urgency than
the need to pause and reflect 8-9 months before the next reflection period
(the strategy process) actually began and that the Board will be able to
share that reason in a transparent manner with the community.

Best regards,
Bence


On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 10:49 PM, Cristian Consonni kikkocrist...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 2014-02-11 19:22 GMT+01:00 Cynthia Ashley-Nelson cindam...@gmail.com:
  Yes, I agree that the consensus of the Board is clear.

 IMHO, I wouldn't say that for two decisions taken with 7-3 and 6-4[1],
 when you can see that most of the times[2] the vote was unanimous.

 Cristian

 [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2013-11-24#Movement_roles
 [2] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Recognition of two new user groups

[Bence Damokos]

Hi Laura,

The Brasilian community has a long history with many twists. At one time
there was a proposed chapter that the  Board has recognized but was never
founded; and the Affiliations Committee has recommended the user group
route for the community in their current aspiration to form a chapter. I am
really glad that the community has accepted the recognition and opened the
way for a real Brasilian chapter to be founded in the near-future.

Best regards,
Bence


On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 5:24 PM, Laura Hale la...@fanhistory.com wrote:

 On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 5:16 PM, Michel Castelo Branco 
 michelcastelobra...@gmail.com wrote:

  Unity was achieved two years ago for a Brazilian chapter. This user group
  proposal is a condition imposed by AffCom for a future apply as a chapter
  after1 year. The group accepted it in an open discussion. So, here we
 go...
 
  Michel Castelo Branco


 Did aff-comm initially recommend to the Wikimedia Foundation board that
 Wikimedia Brazil be approved as a chapter? Or did aff-comm talk them into
 becoming a usergroup before any approval?

 --
 twitter: purplepopple
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[Wikimedia-l] Recognition of two new user groups

[Bence Damokos]

Dear Community Members,

It is with great pleasure that I can announce that the Affiliations
Committee has recognized two new user groups in the movement in December.

The Wikimedia Community User Group Brasil and New England Wikimedians are
two active groups of Wikimedians on the American continents with a history
of projects and great plans for the future. You can learn more about their
work on their respective websites at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Brasil_user_group
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_England_Wikimedians

The resolutions are published at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions, and the
groups are in the process or have already completed the execution of the
user group agreement, the final step in the process towards recognition.

Please give a warm welcome to these groups and provide them encouragement
for their future.

Best regards,
Bence Damokos
Chair, Affiliations Committee
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[Wikimedia-l] Affiliations Committee election results

[Bence Damokos]

Dear Community Members,

I am happy to let you know that the Affiliations Committee has finished the
selection process for the 2014-2015.

The six sitting members of the Committee will be joined by four very
experienced Wikimedians:


   - Cynthia Ashley-Nelson
   - Kirill Lokshin
   - Galileo Vidoni (re-appointment)
   - Lodewijk Gelauff (re-appointment)

Along with the vast Wikimedia experience they bring to the Committee, we
really appreciate the organisational development, governance and language
skills that are being brought on-board (and stays on-board with the
re-appointments).

I would like to thank everyone who has applied to a position in the
Committee. While due to practical reasons, we could not accept everyone,
but anyone who has considered applying and helping other volunteers through
this Committee are a huge asset to this movement, and I really hope they
will all find places and roles where they can help our movement grow.

I would also like to thank our vice-chair, Carlos, who has run much of the
selection process behind the scenes ensuring that both the applicants and
the Committee members have a smooth experience.

The appointing resolution has been published at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Membership_%E2%80%93_January_2014

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Membership_%E2%80%93_January_2014
If you are considering on becoming a member in the future, please sign up
here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Affiliations_Committee#Future_members.
The next call for candidates is expected in November 2014, with new members
joining in January 2015.

Best regards,
Bence Damokos
Chair,
Affiliations Committee
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Extensive feedback from WMDE to the FDC process

[Bence Damokos]

Thanks Pavel for sharing this.

I think a bigger conversation will be on-going on Meta and in general on
where to continue it in the real world. It might be useful to keep in mind
that the movement has already invested and committed to bringing all
chapters (and possibly thorgs) to the Wikimedia Conference [the potential
funded entities] - it would be a marginal increase in cost to bring 10 more
members of the FDC (and anyone else who is required); whereas having a
meeting before or after Wikimania could lead to increased costs to every
single participant and could possibly leave out chapters and stakeholders
who cannot afford to send someone to Wikimania or to stay the extra days.
Either way, if we want to have an inclusive in-person consultation, we have
to invest in it - Wikimania might not be the smallest possible marginal
investment and without right policies in place could not be the ideal to
ensure fair participation (where all stakeholders are present, and
individual volunteers are not inconvenienced by having to pay from their
personal pockets for either food, travel or accommodation just to
participate).

Best regards,
Bence


On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 6:22 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak dar...@alk.edu.plwrote:

 thanks indeed! I agree with many of the comments (and yes, I don't like
 bureaucracy neither, I also am very much in favor of moving towards a
 collaborative and trusting process, although the way you phrased it sounds
 as if you've assumed we, at the FDC, are against it :)

 I think that beyond high-level philosophical comments there needs to be an
 actual down-to-earth discussion about details. There is a need for
 constructive proposals on what can be done differently and how, rather than
 what we don't like. This conversation should be done collaboratively, I
 think. I do not believe that the upcoming chapters conference is the best
 possible venue for such a discussion. First, most of the FDC members will
 not be there, and I think that our presence could be useful. Second, the
 whole FDC cycle has not finished yet (and it will finish in May). Finally,
 much more movement activists will be present at Wikimania.

 That's why I think that 1-2 days before or after Wikimania would be the
 best time to have an intensive, constructive session on the FDC model.
 Also, please note that there is an FDC review process ongoing (there is a
 community driven FDC-advisory group, etc.). Perhaps a good first step would
 be to coordinate this, mocking mode on rather than schedule WMDE-driven
 redesign /mocking mode off.

 In any case, I'm glad the conversation is starting, and I think it would be
 good to actually schedule some time for a workshop about this. My
 suggestion is before or after Wikimania, as it is by far the easiest timing
 for many, including those who do not receive chapter support to attend.

 best,

 dariusz pundit




 On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 6:05 PM, Itzik Edri it...@infra.co.il wrote:

  Thank you Pavel and WMDE board, this is indeed a great constructive
  feedback and I strongly agree with most of the your arguments and
 concerns.
 
  Itzik
  WMIL
 
 
  On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 6:36 PM, Pavel Richter
  pavel.rich...@wikimedia.dewrote:
 
   Hello everybody,
  
   I have just posted an extensive feedback from WMDE on the FDC process
  here
   on meta:
  
  
 
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/Comments/Extensive_feedback_from_WMDE_to_the_FDC_process
  
   The statement was drafted by WMDE's Supervisory Board and myself.
  
   We are very much looking forward to a discussion and I would like to
   encourage everybody to share their thoughts. At the same it would be
  great
   if we could keep the discussion on meta so that we have everything in
 one
   place.
  
   All the Best,
  
   Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
  
   Pavel Richter
   Vorstand
  
   Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
   Tel.: +49 - 30 - 219 158 260
   Twitter: @pavel
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 --

 __
 dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak
 profesor zarządzania
 kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego
 i centrum badawczego CROW
 Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego
 http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Extensive feedback from WMDE to the FDC process

[Bence Damokos]

Those are all concerns I understand, and i am not in the mood to argue this
to win. Either result would be fine with me after a well considered
decision.

i merely put forward considerations of people (should all possible funded
entities be present - they are not guaranteed presence at one of the two
events) and cost (should volunteers, including volunteers of the FDC and
chapters, as well as independent activists, use their own money to discuss
how the movement should divide its existing money - at the current level, I
do not think it would be fair, at least it would not lead to an equitable
situation if certain volunteers and staffers are funded while others
aren't).

As for timing and outside participation, this is a judgment call to make.
You have to see if the FDC has the spare capacity to work on the current
round while discussing the future. Especially, as predictability would
normally require that changes be introduced with a delay so as not to
disrupt the current round and the planning for the upcoming one.
You also have to make an estimate, how many knowledgeable outside
participants are likely to be there and whether they (like the FDC advisory
group and participants of the Meta discussions) could be invited to either
Wikimania, WMCON or a separate workshop.

In all likelihood, I see two or more discussions and two overlapping groups
of participants. One of them are the technicalities of the FDC process,
where the people most likely to participate and be knowledgeable are the
FDC and the current and future applicants.
There is also a wider discussion of movement wide goals and strategy which
should not happen in any venue that excludes the wider movement, but could
still benefit from the input of in-person meetings of experts and movement
activists at numerous venues.

These are just ideas for consideration.

Best regards,
Bence


On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 8:03 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak dar...@alk.edu.plwrote:

 hi Bence,

 I think that a discussion about the movement sources should be more open
 to people from outside of chapters, too and their input may nevertheless be
 valuable. Also, my wild guess is that Wikimania will attract many more
 activists of the movement than the chapter conference anyway (especially
 from outside Europe). The specific workshop can possibly be even squeezed
 in during Wikimania, although organizing it before/after it would likely
 allow to go into more details, and the increase in costs would be just by
 one night (and some of us could stay on our own, as I will if I don't get
 WMF coverage). Finally, I believe it makes much more sense to gather
 comments and feedback on redesigning the FDC process after Round 2 is
 finished (in May).

 best,

 dariusz




 On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 7:49 PM, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote:

 Thanks Pavel for sharing this.

 I think a bigger conversation will be on-going on Meta and in general on
 where to continue it in the real world. It might be useful to keep in mind
 that the movement has already invested and committed to bringing all
 chapters (and possibly thorgs) to the Wikimedia Conference [the potential
 funded entities] - it would be a marginal increase in cost to bring 10 more
 members of the FDC (and anyone else who is required); whereas having a
 meeting before or after Wikimania could lead to increased costs to every
 single participant and could possibly leave out chapters and stakeholders
 who cannot afford to send someone to Wikimania or to stay the extra days.
 Either way, if we want to have an inclusive in-person consultation, we
 have to invest in it - Wikimania might not be the smallest possible
 marginal investment and without right policies in place could not be the
 ideal to ensure fair participation (where all stakeholders are present, and
 individual volunteers are not inconvenienced by having to pay from their
 personal pockets for either food, travel or accommodation just to
 participate).

 Best regards,
 Bence


 On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 6:22 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak dar...@alk.edu.plwrote:

 thanks indeed! I agree with many of the comments (and yes, I don't like
 bureaucracy neither, I also am very much in favor of moving towards a
 collaborative and trusting process, although the way you phrased it
 sounds
 as if you've assumed we, at the FDC, are against it :)

 I think that beyond high-level philosophical comments there needs to be
 an
 actual down-to-earth discussion about details. There is a need for
 constructive proposals on what can be done differently and how, rather
 than
 what we don't like. This conversation should be done collaboratively, I
 think. I do not believe that the upcoming chapters conference is the best
 possible venue for such a discussion. First, most of the FDC members will
 not be there, and I think that our presence could be useful. Second, the
 whole FDC cycle has not finished yet (and it will finish in May).
 Finally,
 much more movement activists will be present

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Become a member of the Affiliations Committee!

[Bence Damokos]

Hi all,

This is a reminder that we are accepting membership applications to the
Affiliations Committee until the 5th of December (midnight UTC).
We are looking for multiple people, so please do go ahead and apply if you
think you fit the profile.

Also, a big thank you for everyone who has already applied. (You should
have received a confirmation of your application - if you have not, please
do get in touch with Carlos at the address below.)

The call is copied below. A translated version is available at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Call_for_Candidates_2014
.

Best regards,
Bence


On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 5:52 PM, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote:

 // For translated versions, please consult
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Call_for_Candidates_2014
  //

 Dear all,

 The Affiliations Committee [1], the committee that is responsible for
 guiding volunteers in establishing Chapters, User Groups and Thematic
 Organizations  and approving them when they are ready is looking for new
 members.

 The main focus of AffCom is to guide groups of volunteers in forming
 affiliates. We make sure that the groups are large enough to be viable (and
 advise them on how to get bigger), review bylaws for compliance with the
 requirements and best practices, and advise the Board of the Wikimedia
 Foundation on issues connected to Chapters, Thematic Organizations and User
 Groups.

 This requires communication with volunteers all over the World,
 negotiating skills and cultural sensitivity and the ability to understand
 legal texts.  We try to get a healthy mix of different skill sets in our
 membership.

 Key skills/experience that we are looking for in candidate members, are
 typically:
 is
 * Excitement by the challenge of helping to empower groups of volunteers
 worldwide
 * Willingness to process applications through a set, perhaps bureaucratic
 process
 * Readiness to participate in (movement roles) political discussions on
 the role and future of affiliates, models of affiliations, and similar
 questions
 * 5 hours per week availability[2], and the time to participate in a
 monthly ~2 hour phone meeting
 * International orientation
 * Very good communication skills in English
 * Ability to work and communicate with other cultures, languages
 andcultures
 * Strong understanding of the structure and work of affiliates and the WMF
 * Knowledge of different  legal systems, experience in community building
 and organising is a plus
 * Communication skills in other languages are a major plus
 * Experience with or in an active affiliate is a major plus

 In 2012 new types of affiliations were introduced and the role of the
 Committee has increased in guiding through volunteers towards affiliation
 models that empower them to further our mission, and making sure these
 models meet the needs of the volunteers and the movement. We are looking
 for new people to help, who are not afraid of the workload and are
 motivated by helping other volunteers come together forming communities
 that further our mission around the world.

 Members are usually selected every twelve months for staggered two year
 terms. The applications will be voted on by the current members not seeking
 re-election, taking into account comments put forward by the committee's
 members, advisers, WMF staff and board liaisons based on the above
 membership criteria. A final decision will be made by the end of the year,
 with new members expected to join on or around 1 January 2014.

 If you are interested, You can send your applications with your full name,
 contact data (e-mail address, wiki username), relevant experience and
 motivation letter to our vice-chair Carlos Colina at jewbask AT
 wikimedia.org.ve by December 5, 2013. You will get a confirmation that
 your application came through.

 If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email me or Carlos. We
 are happy to chat or have a phone/VoIP call with anyone about our work, if
 this helps them decide to apply.

 Please distribute this call among your networks, and do apply if you are
 interested.[3]


 Best regards,
 Bence Damokos
 Chair,
 Affiliations Committee



  [1]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee (please
 follow the links and familiarize yourself with our work)
  [2]: Our member standards of participation are at:
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Standard_of_participation_%E2%80%93_September_2012
 [3] A translatable version of this call is avaliable at
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Call_for_Candidates_2014,
 please help translate and distribute it among your networks!


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[Wikimedia-l] Wikisource Community User Group recognized

[Bence Damokos]

Hi,

It is with great pleasure that I can announce that the Wikisource Community
User Group has been recognized as the 7th user group of our movement.

The group aims *to support the Wikisource community in international
communication tasks, outreach to external groups, coordination of software
tools development, and facilitate fundraising according to its member
needs.*

You can learn more about the group and how to join at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource_User_Group

The Affiliations Committee resolution is at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Wikisource_Community_User_Group_%E2%80%93_November_2013.
The group has already signed the user group agreement, their first round of
recognition runs until 31 November 2014.

Please join me in welcoming them and wishing them luck.

Best regards,
Bence Damokos
Chair, Affiliations Committee

P.S. The Affiliations Committee is still accepting membership applications
at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Call_for_Candidates_2014
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[Wikimedia-l] Become a member of the Affiliations Committee!

[Bence Damokos]

// For translated versions, please consult
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Call_for_Candidates_2014
 //

Dear all,

The Affiliations Committee [1], the committee that is responsible for
guiding volunteers in establishing Chapters, User Groups and Thematic
Organizations  and approving them when they are ready is looking for new
members.

The main focus of AffCom is to guide groups of volunteers in forming
affiliates. We make sure that the groups are large enough to be viable (and
advise them on how to get bigger), review bylaws for compliance with the
requirements and best practices, and advise the Board of the Wikimedia
Foundation on issues connected to Chapters, Thematic Organizations and User
Groups.

This requires communication with volunteers all over the World, negotiating
skills and cultural sensitivity and the ability to understand legal texts.
 We try to get a healthy mix of different skill sets in our membership.

Key skills/experience that we are looking for in candidate members, are
typically:
is
* Excitement by the challenge of helping to empower groups of volunteers
worldwide
* Willingness to process applications through a set, perhaps bureaucratic
process
* Readiness to participate in (movement roles) political discussions on the
role and future of affiliates, models of affiliations, and similar questions
* 5 hours per week availability[2], and the time to participate in a
monthly ~2 hour phone meeting
* International orientation
* Very good communication skills in English
* Ability to work and communicate with other cultures, languages andcultures
* Strong understanding of the structure and work of affiliates and the WMF
* Knowledge of different  legal systems, experience in community building
and organising is a plus
* Communication skills in other languages are a major plus
* Experience with or in an active affiliate is a major plus

In 2012 new types of affiliations were introduced and the role of the
Committee has increased in guiding through volunteers towards affiliation
models that empower them to further our mission, and making sure these
models meet the needs of the volunteers and the movement. We are looking
for new people to help, who are not afraid of the workload and are
motivated by helping other volunteers come together forming communities
that further our mission around the world.

Members are usually selected every twelve months for staggered two year
terms. The applications will be voted on by the current members not seeking
re-election, taking into account comments put forward by the committee's
members, advisers, WMF staff and board liaisons based on the above
membership criteria. A final decision will be made by the end of the year,
with new members expected to join on or around 1 January 2014.

If you are interested, You can send your applications with your full name,
contact data (e-mail address, wiki username), relevant experience and
motivation letter to our vice-chair Carlos Colina at jewbask AT
wikimedia.org.ve by December 5, 2013. You will get a confirmation that your
application came through.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email me or Carlos. We
are happy to chat or have a phone/VoIP call with anyone about our work, if
this helps them decide to apply.

Please distribute this call among your networks, and do apply if you are
interested.[3]


Best regards,
Bence Damokos
Chair,
Affiliations Committee



 [1]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee (please follow
the links and familiarize yourself with our work)
 [2]: Our member standards of participation are at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Standard_of_participation_%E2%80%93_September_2012
[3] A translatable version of this call is avaliable at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Call_for_Candidates_2014,
please help translate and distribute it among your networks!
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[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Conference 2014 location decision

[Bence Damokos]

Dear all,

Following considerable deliberation it is with great pleasure that we
announce that the Location Committee has selected Berlin as the location
for the 2014 Wikimedia Conference.

We received a total of four bids from Germany, India, Italy and Sweden. In
selecting the Berlin location we have taken into consideration the
experience and capacity of the team; the travel time and cost for
attendees; the cost of hosting the conference; and the facilities and room
configuration of the proposed venues.

Throughout our deliberations we kept an open mind towards having the
conference in a new location/country, and we have appreciated the compact
solutions offered by having all participants close to each other or staying
at the same lodging; however, we felt that the Berlin bid provides – by a
small margin – the best combination of price, distance and experience this
year.

We thank all the organisations that have entered a bid for their time and
effort and we hope that even if they were not selected this year, they can
make use of the experience when they organise other meetings that will
further the Wikimedia mission.

In closing, we would like to thank all Wikimedia organisations for placing
their trust in this process and committee, which was an interesting
experience for all of us. In the hope that the Wikimedia organisations keep
the hosting choice an open process, we would like to propose a number of
potential process improvements[1], and we would invite all the bidders and
other interested parties to provide their own feedback.

Best regards,

Asaf Bartov, Bence Damokos, Arnau Duran, Itzik Edri, Mike Peel, Osmar
Valdebenito, Ilario Valdelli
Wikimedia Conference 2014 Location Committee

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2014/Bids/Learnings
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Request for consultation about the Community logo

[Bence Damokos]

Thanks for posting this and for putting in the work on a short notice.

Just to clarify: your preferred/proposed course of action has changed over
the weekend, from registering a standard trademark to a community mark?

And to further our mission: do we have a Wikipedia article about this type
of trademark, and if not, who can write it? :)

Best regards,
Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Request for consultation about the Community logo

[Bence Damokos]

(correct slip of the tongue...)
On Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 4:05 AM, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote:

 Thanks for posting this and for putting in the work on a short notice.

 Just to clarify: your preferred/proposed course of action has changed over
 the weekend, from registering a standard trademark to a scommunity/s
 collective membership mark?

 And to further our mission: do we have a Wikipedia article about this type
 of trademark, and if not, who can write it? :)

 Best regards,
 Bence



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Request for consultation about the Community logo

[Bence Damokos]

(And to answer my own second question - with the correct search term, there
is indeed an article in 3 languages.)


On Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 4:09 AM, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote:

 (correct slip of the tongue...)
 On Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 4:05 AM, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote:

 Thanks for posting this and for putting in the work on a short notice.

 Just to clarify: your preferred/proposed course of action has changed
 over the weekend, from registering a standard trademark to a
 scommunity/s collective membership mark?

 And to further our mission: do we have a Wikipedia article about this
 type of trademark, and if not, who can write it? :)

 Best regards,
 Bence




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who will host Wikimedia Conference 2014? Bidding process is open!

[Bence Damokos]

The name conference doesn't mean that it has to stick to the traditional
conference format.
Indeed, one of the suggested discussion topics (both in general, and for
the actual programme committee) is to consider different formats and
approaches (e.g. using the event for capacity building workshops,
leadership training for board members, etc.) – input, and volunteers with
good ideas for the programme committee would be very welcome at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Future_of_the_Wikimedia_Conference

Best regards,
Bence


On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 2:15 PM, Balázs Viczián balazs.vicz...@wikimedia.hu
 wrote:

 You;re still not getting my point so let me reword myself: I'm debating
 wheter specifically this event (in its current form, as it seemingly lacks
 general interest plus turns into a 'mini Wikimania') is the best way for
 that what Jon says; no argument against wheter it is necessary or not.

 Small, dedicated workshops are usually have more success and value than
 such general conferences. Also, I saw many arguments that these
 unscheduled, here-and-there advertised thematic meetups (paralel to the
 main body of the conference) were more useful and fruitful than the main
 body. A lot of guys holding 'important' positions are usually missing the
 main body of the event at all due to these. Then why to stick to a
 conference? Set up workshops: you may put them paralell if you want for
 cost effectiveness. (for example 3 days, 6 workshops in two streams)

 Balazs


 2013/9/20 Craig Franklin cfrank...@halonetwork.net

  Hi,
 
  A few people asked me with varying degrees of seriousness about this in
  Hong Kong, so I'll just put this out there and say that Wikimedia
 Australia
  will not be in a position to host this event in 2014.
 
  Regards,
  Craig Franklin
  President - Wikimedia Australia
 
 
  On 16 September 2013 22:11, Nicole Ebber nicole.eb...@wikimedia.de
  wrote:
 
   Dear Wikimedia friends,
  
   following up on the emails Asaf and I sent a few weeks ago, I have now
   drafted the bidding process to decide upon the location for next
   year’s Wikimedia Conference. This event will not only host the annual
   Chapters’/Affiliates’ conference, but also the WMF board, FDC and
   AffCom meetings and is meant to take place in April 2014 (tbc).
  
  
  
 
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Future_of_the_Wikimedia_Conference#Bidding_process_for_hosting_the_next_Wikimedia_Conference
  
   == LOCATION COMMITTEE ==
   I would like to see a small location committee (3 representatives of
   affiliates, 1 AffCom and 1 WMF) to decide about the hosting chapter.
   Asaf and Bence already agreed upon joining the committee, and it would
   be nice to see someone from WMIT there, as they have the freshest
   experience. So if you have severe experience with conference
   organisation, please consider joining the committee now!
  
   == WANNA HOST WMCON 2014? ==
   All chapters who are interested in organising the conference in 2014
   are invited to place a short bid on Meta. The bids should be made
   until 30 September, a decision should be available before 15 October.
   The winning organisation will be responsible for all the logistics, as
   in: venue, catering, travel and visa arrangements, accommodation,
   technical equipment, social events, communication with and support for
   the participants, coordination with the programme committee and the
   facilitators.
  
   I hope that if we can take the logistics and location for granted,
   this will help us focus on the content and sustainability of the
   event. I have written more about the programme part on Meta.
  
   Thanks to Asaf and Bence for giving their valuable input to the set-up
   of this process. Since WMDE has kind of a traditional interest in
   having a good conference, I am happy to take a leading role in
   organising this process. Any help is highly appreciated! I am looking
   forward to an exciting Wikimedia Conference 2014. \o/
  
   Nicole
  
  
   --
   Nicole Ebber
   International Affairs
  
   Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin
   Tel. +49 30 219158 26-0
  
   http://wikimedia.de
  
   Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.
   Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg
   unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das
   Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's have the courage to sit down and talk about VisualEditor

[Bence Damokos]

Can somebody summarize the concerns raised in that RfC?

Best regards,
Bence


On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 2:36 AM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski tom...@twkozlowski.net
 wrote:

 Hi,
 there is a famous quote on courage by Winston Churchill, a British Prime
 Minister, who once wisely said: Courage is what it takes to stand up and
 speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

 Over the weekend, more than 440 editors of the German Wikipedia took part
 in an RfC-like process (Umfragen) at https://de.wikipedia.org/**
 wiki/Wikipedia:Umfragen/**VisualEditor_Opt-inhttps://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Umfragen/VisualEditor_Opt-in
 and voted against the activation of the VisualEditor for anonymous users,
 asking the WMF to revert to an opt-in phase instead of the currently
 existing opt-out.

 This is yet another signal coming from the community that there is
 something very broken about the process in which VisualEditor is being
 rolled out. Most of the criticism has been ignored so far, but on the other
 hand, we haven't yet seen such an enormous community objection against the
 VisualEditor anywhere.

 Let us therefore use this opportunity, and have the courage to sit down
 and listen. Or, perhaps, in the wiki spirit, let's edit this quote, and let
 us sit down and talk.

 And, together, let's learn a lesson from this, and correct the errors so
 that they don't become mistakes.

   Tomasz

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[Wikimedia-l] Approval of WCUG Greece as Wikimedia User Group

[Bence Damokos]

Dear all,

I am happy to inform you that the Affiliations Committee has recognized a
Wikimedia User Group today:  Wikimedia Community User Group Greece

Please give them a warm welcome, and keep your eyes on the cool Wikimedia
activities taking place in Greece.

== WCUG Greece ==

WCUG Greece is a group of enthusiastic Greek Wikimedians  who are
interested in organizing and participating in outreach activities on a
national level. They have been active for the past two years already, doing
among others workshops, presentations in free software events, educational
partnerships, Mediawiki Geek Day 2013 and organized an edit-a-thon recently
on el.wp as part of the World War I edit-a-thons.

The group is also working towards chapterhood in the future.

The Affiliations Committee's recognition is valid until 31 July 2014.




Best regards,
Bence Damokos
Chair, Affiliatons Committee
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Use of YouTube videos in fundraising banners

[Bence Damokos]

On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 7:52 AM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski tom...@twkozlowski.net
 wrote:

 However, as you correctly write, that banner only served those millions of
 our viewers a cached image that was uploaded to donate.wm.org (so it was
 cached the usual way) and /only/ if they had clicked the play button were
 they served the full video. I'm no specialist when it comes to server
 loads, but if YouTube does not lie to me, that particular video was viewed
 only 78,000 times, which does not seem that much.


As far as I understand, YouTube does not count views when the video is
played automatically (as happened in the banner when a person clicked on
the placeholder image), so the actual view count is probably quite higher.
(Don't know if  Wikimedia servers would have been able to handle it at the
time.)

Best regards,
Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Use of YouTube videos in fundraising banners

[Bence Damokos]

On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 3:48 PM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski tom...@twkozlowski.net
 wrote:

 Victor Grigas wrote:

  This was because much of the material surrounding the video was
  written in English, and there was a lot of it, so translation would
  have been slow, expensive and prone to error.

 That's what community translations are perfect for; they are free (in
 terms of licence) and gratis (in terms of WMF costs), and if properly
 managed might be quick in creation and might not contain too many errors
 (just require a peer review before publishing).


  We learned that YouTube does not count views from embedded videos on
  external sites. (The actual view count for that video is more like
  around half a million views.)

 My Wikipedia nature tells me to ask you for a source that can back up
 these claims; both for the number of views and the fact that YouTube does
 not count views from videos embedded in iframe / elements. I'd personally
 be very suprised if they didn't; lots and lots of websites include their
 videos that way, and not counting views would result in serious
 miscalculations that would go into tens (or perhaps hundreds) of millions.


https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1714329?hl=en  Note that just
active views will be counted and that it won’t include views from videos
set to autoplay.

Best regards,
Bence



   Tomasz


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Internal-l] 2013-2014 Round 1 FDC eligibility status IRC office hours

[Bence Damokos]

Hi Itzik,

As far as I understand, the activity report is a requirement in the
chapters agreement, which the WMF is finally starting to take somewhat
seriously. (§8 [1])

But otherwise I agree that the FDC process requires quite a bit of time
spent on it throughout the year.

Best regards,
Bence

[1]
http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Agreement_between_chapters_and_Wikimedia_Foundationoldid=86480




On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 3:12 PM, Itzik Edri it...@infra.co.il wrote:

 Hi Garfield,

 I must say I'm surprised from the new requirements. Eligible entities of
 last year now need to send by 15 September documents about 2012 - a year
 that is totally unrelated to the FDC process that started only this year?
 Why it been decided only now?
  We are not hiding a thing, but not only by 30th July we need to send FDC
 Q2 report, by 1st October annual plan budget for 2014, and by 31 October
 FDC Q3 report.. Hey, not everyone are big chapters, and we are really need
 time also to *work* and execute the program we asked the money for...

 So financial report can be translated from the financial report we sent to
 the Israeli authority (again, more money spends on translation as probably
 our employees don't have time for that and have other paper work, and this
 is also going to work if there is no special format and different numbers
 and metrics requsted by the FDC and not different from what we already have
 on the report we made..). But about the 2012 activity report? What format?
 what information need to be there? this is totally something we need to
 collect from start and mean more administrative work.


 Itzik


 On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 3:06 AM, Garfield Byrd gb...@wikimedia.org
 wrote:

  Dear members of the Wikimedia community:
 
  Today, July 15, the Wikimedia Foundation published a list of Funds
  Dissemination Committee (FDC) eligible entities [1] based the eligibility
  criteria [2] established in the FDC framework.  Entities that submitted
  Letters of Intent [3] are categorized in 'Yes', 'Yes, If',  and 'No'
  categories based the eligibility criteria.  Please let us know if you
  believe there are any corrections to be made to this list.
 
  A more detailed eligibility checklist document has also been created.
 
  [4]
 
  This document outlines eligibility gaps that need to be closed by
 September
  15, 2013. Any entity in the Yes, If category must post all missing
  documents on Meta by September 15 to be eligible for FDC funding.
  Entities in the “No” column who are currently ineligible for FDC funding
 or
  those who decide not to proceed with an FDC application are welcome to
  consider applying to the WMF Grants program. [5]
 
  On September 15, WMF will post the final list of the entities eligible to
  apply for FDC funding if they are eligible. Please note that entities
 will
  need to remain in compliance with all Chapter Agreements and Grant
  Agreements until funds are sent in order to receive a grant through the
 FDC
  process, even if eligibility is confirmed as Yes on 15 September.
 
  The detailed eligibility checklist has improved since the last round.
  You’ll now note that the final column now outlines upcoming requirements
  (e.g. per chapter or grant agreements or current grant requirements) to
  maintain FDC eligibility status. These are noted as “potential gaps,” and
  as those deadlines come up, entities will need to fill those gaps (for
  example, by posting their documents and linking to them from the Reports
  page on Meta) in order to maintain their eligibility status with the
 FDC. We
  hope this change allows entities, the FDC, and the FDC staff to track
  eligibility better and ensure that everyone is informed of potential as
  well as current issues that may affect eligibility.
 
  All entities that apply for FDC funding will be required to maintain
  eligibility throughout the duration of the proposal review process until
  funds are sent (or until the decision on whether to send funds is made).
 We
  encourage you to get in touch with us if you have any questions about
 your
  entity's gaps or potential gaps.
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Index
 
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Index
 
  As a reminder, all applications for FDC funding from eligible entities
  must be submitted by October 1, 2013 via the FDC portal. [6] The FDC
  proposal form will be posted by August 15, 2013 on the FDC portal. Please
  contact us if you have any questions about submitting your proposal.
 
  WMF staff will reach out to all the of the entities that submitted
 Letters
  of Intent individually to discuss their eligibility.
 
  In addition, the FDC support staff has scheduled two IRC office hours to
  provide more explanation about the eligibility status. [7] We look
 forward
  to meeting with you on Thursday, July 18 at 0:00 UTC or at 16:00 UTC that
  same day. Please feel free to submit any questions in advance.
 
  Do let me know if you have any 

[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Uruguay recognized as newest chapter

[Bence Damokos]

Dear all,

It is my pleasure to bring to your attention the Board's latest resolution
that recognizes Wikimedia Uruguay as the newest Wikimedia chapter:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Recognition_of_Wikimedia_Uruguay

Please welcome them to the Wikimedia family with open arms and wish them
success in furthering our mission in Uruguay!

Best regards,

Bence Damokos,
Chair, Affiliations Committee
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[Wikimedia-l] Recognizing the GLAM-Wiki U.S. Consortium as a Wikimedia User Group

[Bence Damokos]

Hi all,

It is my pleasure to draw your attention to the resolution adopted by the
Affiliations Committee yesterday [1] that recognizes the GLAM Wiki U.S.
Consortium[2] as the fifth Wikimedia User Group.

The GLAM-Wiki US Consortium will bring together cultural organizations,
Wikipedians, Wikimedia chapters, and individuals in an independent
community of practice devoted to supporting the GLAM-Wikimedia initiative
in the United States

Wikimedia User Groups[3] are one of the three new types of affiliations
created last year to empower volunteers wanting to conduct offline work.
User group status is meant to be an easy form of affiliation, where the
main requirements are an agreed goal, plans for offline work and a history
of projects, and at least three people participating, as well as a public
wiki page with all the relevant information.

Please join me in welcoming the Consortium to the Wikimedia affiliate
family, and go ahead and sign up to be a member if you would like to
participate in its work.

Best regards.
Bence Damokos,
Affiliations Committee


[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/GLAM-Wiki_U.S._Consortium_%E2%80%93_June_2013
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/US/Consortium
[3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_User_Groups
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikipedia for Diplomats (June 21)

[Bence Damokos]

I will be representing myself as a Wikimedia volunteer, who happens to hold
a title related to AffCom and has a somewhat theoretical education of what
diplomacy is supposed to be.
I hope I am not totally unqualified to speak about the Wikipedia topics.

The webinar will be broadcast using Google Hangouts probably on the Diplo
Foundation's channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/DiploFoundation), but if
you register, you will get the link to the broadcast.

Best regards,
Bence


On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 8:48 PM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski tom...@twkozlowski.net
 wrote:

 Everton Zanella Alvarenga wrote:

  
 http://www.diplomacy.edu/**calendar/webinar-wikipedia-**diplomatshttp://www.diplomacy.edu/calendar/webinar-wikipedia-diplomats


 Is it just me who was surprised to see that Bence will be representing the
 Affiliations Committee during that webinar? I know for a fact that AffCom
 involves a lot of behind–the–scenes talks et al., but I don't think it's
 directly related to diplomacy issues?

 -- Tomasz



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikipedia for Diplomats (June 21)

[Bence Damokos]

On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 9:03 PM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski tom...@twkozlowski.net
 wrote:

 Bence Damokos wrote:

  I hope I am not totally unqualified to speak about the Wikipedia topics.


 Quite the contrary, I think you're very knowledgeable about the
 subject—but what does AffCom have to do with it? If you're going to talk
 about Wikipedia's role in disseminating information about diplomacy issues,
 then I think it should be simply 'Bence Damokos, Wikipedian'.

 (No offence intended, etc.)

None taken and thanks for the suggestion. In this case, I believe the best
solution would have been to mention that I am the chair of AffCom, to make
it clear that this is a position I hold (like the director level officials
who will be the other participants) and not my qualification.

Best regards,
Bence
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[Wikimedia-l] Approval of Wikimedians of Nepal user group

[Bence Damokos]

Dear all,

I am happy to inform you that the Affiliations Committee has approved the
recognition of a Wikimedia User Group today:  Wikimedians of Nepal.

Please join me in welcoming this new group into the fold of Wikimedia
entities, and let's celebrate their success and hard work as Wikipedia
turns eleven in Nepal!

== Wikimedians of Nepal ==

Wikimedians of Nepal http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Nepal is a
group of enthusiastic Nepali Wikimedians working towards developing and
promoting Wikimedia projects in Nepal. They've been actively working to
help expand the community, launch projects in more languages of Nepal and
promote and support the existing ones.

The group is working towards chapterhood, and have a good chance of
attaining that status this year. Granting them user group recognition
allows the movement to express its appreciation for their hard work even
while they are working on the bureaucratic aspects of meeting the
requirements of chapterhood. The timing is fortuitous  in that the group is
going to mark the 11th anniversary of Wikipedia in a Nepali language on 3
June, next Monday.

Ganesh, the group's interim president has been invited to this year's Milan
conference, where he gave a comprehensive overview of the group's history,
its projects (including a successful 'wikiwomen programme) and its
ambitions. The slides are at:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/WMNepal_WMC_2013.pdf

The Affiliations Committee's
recognitionhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Wikimedians_of_Nepal_-_May_2013is
valid until 28 May 2014, or until they are recognized as a chapter.


== Wikimedia User Groups ==

Wikimedia User Groups are one of the three new types of affiliations
created last year to empower volunteers wanting to conduct offline work and
provide them recognition from the Wikimedia movement.

User group status is meant to be an easy form of affiliation, where the
main requirements are an agreed goal, plans for offline work, at least
three people participating and a public wiki page with all the relevant
information).

Under the movement roles
recommendationshttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_affiliation_models/User_Groups
, user groups are to be recognized in a quick and easy process directly by
the Affiliations Committee, for a fixed, renewable time-period and they are
to enjoy limited trademark use and simplified access to grants.



Best regards,
Bence Damokos
Chair, Affiliatons Committee
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thoughts on Admin Rights on WMF Wiki (and other things)

[Bence Damokos]

Personally I think this line of the conversation (people resigning/fired)
is taking the situation a bit too far.
At the least not having volunteers administer the WMF's wiki is just
punishment already.

It seems that the WMF is unlikely to change its policy, so the best they
can do to heal the hurt caused by their action is to apologise (and perhaps
explain their reasons), which they have done.
If they had restored the admin rights, that would have healed some part of
the hurt but not all of it, and the affected volunteers would still have
the option to punish the WMF by not caring about their wiki (i.e. the
same situation the WMF has chosen for itself). Apart from this tit-for-tat
satisfaction and giving enough time to heal and restore the trusts and
relationships, I do not think that further debating this decision would
lead to any good results.

I have the feeling that we will not get more satisfactory answers as the
line of questioning going on creates a situation where the WMF can only
defend themselves - I am sure they have shared their best arguments that
can be published and the harder they are pushed the more likely they are
going to scramble to make up further reasons (instead of either changing
the decision or admitting that they had no better reasons) a situation that
is unlikely to improve the situation in the way the questioners hope.[1]

I would recommend for those personally hurt by the WMF's decision to accept
the WMF's apology, stay in the movement but if they feel any satisfaction
in it, mete out the punishment of not caring about the WMF's wiki, and move
on. The people working at the WMF are multidimensional persons, one mistake
does not defy them and I am sure the existing relationships will be healed
through other channels of interaction and working together.

For those of us who were not hurt (this time), I think it would be helpful
if we moved the discussions towards more constructive areas: for example,
helping come up with some guidelines on community-WMF interactions,
including suggestions on best timing of news and the appropriate level and
venue of consultations before major decisions, and making sure this kind of
training is provided to WMF employees.

Best regards,
Bence


[1] It is just an intuition, but I fear that this property of some
questions (their pre-coded response) can be lowering the quality of some
of the other community review discussions (FDC, GAC, AffCom) that rely on
the QA format.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thoughts on Admin Rights on WMF Wiki (and other things)

[Bence Damokos]

(typo fix)


On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 10:58 AM, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote:

 Personally I think this line of the conversation (people resigning/fired)
 is taking the situation a bit too far.
 At the least not having volunteers administer the WMF's wiki is just
 punishment already.

 It seems that the WMF is unlikely to change its policy, so the best they
 can do to heal the hurt caused by their action is to apologise (and perhaps
 explain their reasons), which they have done.
 If they had restored the admin rights, that would have healed some part of
 the hurt but not all of it, and the affected volunteers would still have
 the option to punish the WMF by not caring about their wiki (i.e. the
 same situation the WMF has chosen for itself). Apart from this tit-for-tat
 satisfaction and giving enough time to heal and restore the trusts and
 relationships, I do not think that further debating this decision would
 lead to any good results.

 I have the feeling that we will not get more satisfactory answers as the
 line of questioning going on creates a situation where the WMF can only
 defend themselves - I am sure they have shared their best arguments that
 can be published and the harder they are pushed the more likely they are
 going to scramble to make up further reasons (instead of either changing
 the decision or admitting that they had no better reasons) a situation that
 is unlikely to improve the situation in the way the questioners hope.[1]

 I would recommend for those personally hurt by the WMF's decision to
 accept the WMF's apology, stay in the movement but if they feel any
 satisfaction in it, mete out the punishment of not caring about the WMF's
 wiki, and move on. The people working at the WMF are multidimensional
 persons, one mistake does not define them and I am sure the existing
 relationships will be healed through other channels of interaction and
 working together.

 For those of us who were not hurt (this time), I think it would be helpful
 if we moved the discussions towards more constructive areas: for example,
 helping come up with some guidelines on community-WMF interactions,
 including suggestions on best timing of news and the appropriate level and
 venue of consultations before major decisions, and making sure this kind of
 training is provided to WMF employees.

 Best regards,
 Bence


 [1] It is just an intuition, but I fear that this property of some
 questions (their pre-coded response) can be lowering the quality of some
 of the other community review discussions (FDC, GAC, AffCom) that rely on
 the QA format.


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Affiliations Committee 2012 Annual Report

[Bence Damokos]

On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 6:56 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.comwrote:

 Gregory Varnum, 12/05/2013 19:47:

  Nemo,

 I'm not sure what you mean by a single person's POV.  Are you referring
 to Stephen?


 No. It doesn't matter who that is.

Geoff speaking and signing his post as General Counsel is definitely
carrying weight. Due to their initial nature, it was necessary to see
whether it would change based on discussions, but if only by nature of the
time elapsed and the repeated commitments from the legal department
confirming that these guidelines are operative make them policy.




 While it is true that WMF Legal did the final writing of some guidelines
 - a few points:
 1. They are guidelines - and AffCom has flexibility if it so desires and
 finds necessary.
 2. They were written based on feedback from non-AffCom folks on talk
 pages, Milan, and elsewhere - as well as based on input from AffCom.
 3. Naming guidelines exist for chapters and other entities - this is
 nothing new.
 4. A final summarizing guideline or document being written by one person
 with unique skills, such as legal, is also nothing new, unusual, or implies
 that only their views are represented - that's just not true.


 A talk page post is not a final summarizing guideline. At best, it
 should be moved to main namespace and tagged properly (explaining how it
 got to guideline status etc. etc.).


Indeed, I think now we can consider those initial thoughts to have stuck
and as general clean up we will be incorporating it by reference or
directly into the guidelines on setting up thematic organizations. (It is
already included in the user group guidelnies by reference, but a cleaned
up version on a separate page or a summary would be the way to go).

Thanks,
Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] AffComs $40,000 Hong Kong junket

[Bence Damokos]

.
 
  BTW. 40,000$ it's about 25 scholarships we can give. Not saying AffCom
  don't need to attend Wikimania, but having much less fancy budget is
 always
  welcome.
 
 
 
 
  On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 12:01 AM, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com
  wrote:
 
   Hi Tomasz,
  
  
  
   On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 10:14 PM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski 
   tom...@twkozlowski.net wrote:
  
Gregory Varnum wrote:
   
 I am not sure what you mean by none of the members being willing to
comment.
   
 Our chair has responded several times on Meta and many others have
responded
 to Odder via email about this.
   
Let me just straighten this, Greg. Nobody has ever contacted me via
   e-mail
about this except for the insults aimed at me after my first blog
 post
  on
the matter — and you as an AffCom member should be especially aware
 of
this, as the whole of AffCom was CC'd to every message that I
 received.
   
   
   I apologise if the tone of some of the e-mails you have received were
   harmful, and I am sorry for my involvement in that.
   I think it really came down to the fact that we were quite surprised at
  the
   time that as a committee member or adviser you did not feel able to
 raise
   the issue or issues that you were perceiving. This lack of trust or
  ability
   to communicate openly really saddened me.
  
   
 The hotel is in-line with WMF guidelines and as has been noted, we
  look
to
   
 the staff to book those reservations and make appropriate
 cost-saving
decisions.
   
Which is opposite to what the Committee has been doing so far; for
instance, during the last Committee meeting, the then-ChapCom members
   have
been using the same accommodation as the rest of the conference
participants — and that was a true a cost-saving decision.
   
   If I remember correctly, at the time the Committee did not have a
 budget
   and a number of details around fiscal responsibility ended up very
   complicated out of sheer goodwill (with certain chapters paying AffCom
   members' travel, Wikimedia Germany kindly offering to pay for those who
  had
   to stay only an extra night, and the WMF paying from the Board's budget
  for
   the rest) and the choice was probably made by me to stay with the
 chapter
   delegates as that was the default.
  
   In any case, with the dedicated budget we have taken steps to greater
   clarity and accountability and this involves making sure that the WMF
  pays
   for AffCom travel, and that in turn we follow WMF policy on
 reimbursement
   and choice of accommodation and in any other way they may prescribe for
   spending our budget.
   Technically and individually we could decide on anything that is
 cheaper
   than what is allowed by policy (e.g. shared accommodation, or different
   level of comfort), but those decisions would be made on the grounds of
  such
   factors as the accommodation choice of others with whom we would want
 to
   meet in off hours (including other AffCom or community members),
 medical
   reasons, or strong personal aversion to a particular lodging.
  
   I believe that the details of the travel policy of the WMF are up to
 the
   WMF to set and I don't think it is a good use of AffCom time to
  micromanage
   the WMF's travel budget. If the WMF did decide that from now on it
 would
   choose five-star hotels or only hostels with communal showers, would
 both
   be unfortunate, but AffCom would then follow that policy. This is
   regardless of whether personally I believe the WMF is making the best
   choices when it comes to choosing accommodation, it is simply not our
  role
   as AffCom to fix the WMF's travel policy, nor do I see much benefit in
   setting an example when in reality AffCom only makes up a fraction of
  WMF
   travellers (including those going to Wikimania).
  
   I am quite confident in the level of financial oversight the board and
  WMF
   staff provide in making sure our budget is reasonable in the context of
  WMF
   spending. I personally have spent a lot of time making sure our budget
  was
   not seen as unreasonable or bloated by the WMF.
  
   We have made the decision to spend on an annual meeting, scholarships
 for
   affiliates to be (for Wikimania and other events), start up grants, and
   travel in general to be represented at events and to visit affiliates
 – I
   think it would be more interesting to have a discussion about these
   decisions than the choice of hotels or whether we could save a few
  dollars
   by walking instead of taking the bus from the airport.
  
  
   Best regards,
   Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] AffComs $40,000 Hong Kong junket

[Bence Damokos]

Hi Tomasz,



On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 10:14 PM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski 
tom...@twkozlowski.net wrote:

 Gregory Varnum wrote:

  I am not sure what you mean by none of the members being willing to
 comment.

  Our chair has responded several times on Meta and many others have
 responded
  to Odder via email about this.

 Let me just straighten this, Greg. Nobody has ever contacted me via e-mail
 about this except for the insults aimed at me after my first blog post on
 the matter — and you as an AffCom member should be especially aware of
 this, as the whole of AffCom was CC'd to every message that I received.


I apologise if the tone of some of the e-mails you have received were
harmful, and I am sorry for my involvement in that.
I think it really came down to the fact that we were quite surprised at the
time that as a committee member or adviser you did not feel able to raise
the issue or issues that you were perceiving. This lack of trust or ability
to communicate openly really saddened me.


  The hotel is in-line with WMF guidelines and as has been noted, we look
 to

  the staff to book those reservations and make appropriate cost-saving
 decisions.

 Which is opposite to what the Committee has been doing so far; for
 instance, during the last Committee meeting, the then-ChapCom members have
 been using the same accommodation as the rest of the conference
 participants — and that was a true a cost-saving decision.

If I remember correctly, at the time the Committee did not have a budget
and a number of details around fiscal responsibility ended up very
complicated out of sheer goodwill (with certain chapters paying AffCom
members' travel, Wikimedia Germany kindly offering to pay for those who had
to stay only an extra night, and the WMF paying from the Board's budget for
the rest) and the choice was probably made by me to stay with the chapter
delegates as that was the default.

In any case, with the dedicated budget we have taken steps to greater
clarity and accountability and this involves making sure that the WMF pays
for AffCom travel, and that in turn we follow WMF policy on reimbursement
and choice of accommodation and in any other way they may prescribe for
spending our budget.
Technically and individually we could decide on anything that is cheaper
than what is allowed by policy (e.g. shared accommodation, or different
level of comfort), but those decisions would be made on the grounds of such
factors as the accommodation choice of others with whom we would want to
meet in off hours (including other AffCom or community members), medical
reasons, or strong personal aversion to a particular lodging.

I believe that the details of the travel policy of the WMF are up to the
WMF to set and I don't think it is a good use of AffCom time to micromanage
the WMF's travel budget. If the WMF did decide that from now on it would
choose five-star hotels or only hostels with communal showers, would both
be unfortunate, but AffCom would then follow that policy. This is
regardless of whether personally I believe the WMF is making the best
choices when it comes to choosing accommodation, it is simply not our role
as AffCom to fix the WMF's travel policy, nor do I see much benefit in
setting an example when in reality AffCom only makes up a fraction of WMF
travellers (including those going to Wikimania).

I am quite confident in the level of financial oversight the board and WMF
staff provide in making sure our budget is reasonable in the context of WMF
spending. I personally have spent a lot of time making sure our budget was
not seen as unreasonable or bloated by the WMF.

We have made the decision to spend on an annual meeting, scholarships for
affiliates to be (for Wikimania and other events), start up grants, and
travel in general to be represented at events and to visit affiliates – I
think it would be more interesting to have a discussion about these
decisions than the choice of hotels or whether we could save a few dollars
by walking instead of taking the bus from the airport.


Best regards,
Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Affiliations Committee 2012 Annual Report

[Bence Damokos]

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 3:05 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.comwrote:

 phoebe ayers, 01/05/2013 21:54:

  Dear Bence and all,

 This is a very good report! It is very clear, just the right length and
 gives a good picture of all of the activity of the committee -- both
 accomplishments and frustrations. AffComm did a lot in 2012! Thank you
 very
 much for all of your and the committee's work on behalf of Wikimedia.


 +1

 I'm very concerned about this issue, which comes up in many points: «[...]
 failure to come up with a naming guideline to be applied to new affiliates
 that has caused significant delays and uncertainty in processing
 applications [...] unclear situation has caused a number of delays in the
 full roll-out of the new models and finding solutions that are faster and
 less resource intensive on the legal team [...] any name that incorporated
 a Wikimedia trademark would need to be pre-approved by the WMF Legal
 Department [...] until finalised, easier to apply guidelines are adopted
 that can be used independently by the volunteers behind proposed affiliates
 and the Affiliations Committee, the act of naming proposed affiliates will
 be a difficult and lengthy process.»

 As usual, process, role and responsibilities as clear as mud.

 Yes, to be fair, since the closing of the report, we had made some
progress on this issue (e.g. we've had some user group name templates
pre-approved[1] during a meeting in Milan with Stephen from the legal team
and had clarified the process and responsibilities for names that don't
match those templates for example in the case of thorgs). It remains to be
seen if things do go smoother going forward with these improvements, but
the goodwill is there on each side.

Best regards,
Bence

[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Step-by-step_user_group_creation_guidediff=prevoldid=5476169
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[Wikimedia-l] Affiliations Committee 2012 Annual Report

[Bence Damokos]

Hi all,

I am happy to let you know that the Affiliations Committee's Annual Report
for 2012 has now been published on Meta at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_committee/Reports/2012, giving
a glance into the internal workings of the Committee's last year.

It was prepared in order to update the WMF Board on Trustees on the
Committee's work and to provide a snapshot and record of what happened in
the year, especially as we have transitioned to refreshing the membership
of the Committee every year and it is our commitment to continuously
improve our practices, which require good documentation.

I hope you will find the report useful. As noted on the page, it includes
information up till 31 December 2012 and life has not stopped either inside
or outside of the Committee, we have made headway on many of the
bottlenecks and challenges of last year and I am happy with where the
Committee is at right now, even though this year is facing up to be a busy
one.

Any questions, or feedback are welcome, especially as we are still
experimenting with reporting format, content, and  the level of detail.

Best regards,
Bence Damokos
Chair, Affiliations Committee
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Proposal: [WCA][Governance] Training for chapter and thematic org. board members

[Bence Damokos]

Sounds like a great idea.

Best regards,
Bence

On Sunday, April 21, 2013, Fae f...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
 The majority of chapter boards (and the proposed thematic
 organizations) do not routinely have an induction process with
 training in expected reporting requirements, liability as directors,
 the role of oversight and how to maintain a competent and professional
 board function, etc.

 At the Milan conference, I shall be proposing that the WCA takes a
 lead in arranging a shared training course and workshop with the aim
 of this being a regular planned activity, so that chapters and other
 groups agree basic expectations for the behaviours and competencies of
 board members, and benefit from the efficiencies of a shared training
 event, hopefully hosted by one of the chapters with handy facilities
 to support it.

 I have chatted about this proposition during coffee breaks with 4
 different 'large' chapters, and the feedback so far is that this would
 be an easy way of improving the quality of our governance and of
 definite direct benefit to many of our organizations.

 Cheers,
 Fae
 --
 fae...@gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm
 Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Lack of community involvement in WMF budget planning

[Bence Damokos]

It seems that applying to the FDC for funding periods already begun has
been outruled going forward:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Frequently_asked_questions#fundingperiodinthepast.
If I read the FAQ correctly.
I am not sure if the WMF is giving itself and exception?

Best regards,
Bence


On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 1:45 PM, Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.ukwrote:

 On 9 April 2013 12:22, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote:

  Without going into unneccessary detail, let me just ask a simple
  question: are there any particular reasons why the WMF does not want
  community input on the budget, and drafts such a vital document in
  total privacy?
 
  For the sake of precision, that slide says that there is no space for
 input
  by the board either. Revisions are made only after Stu's comments, then
  the board votes no or yes (in 15 days only out of 5 months of work).

 Doesn't the community consultation *follow* this?

 The WMF works out a budget internally, and the Board vote to approve
 it by the end of June. It is released on 1 July, but isn't yet final;
 it promptly goes into...

 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Timeline

 and presumably will have a community consultation like this one:


 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:FDC_portal/Proposals/2012-2013_round1/Wikimedia_Foundation/Proposal_form

 (Please feel free to correct me if I've got this wrong!)

 --
 - Andrew Gray
   andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk

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[Wikimedia-l] Recognition of Esperanto kaj Libera Scio as user group

[Bence Damokos]

Hi all,

I am happy to inform you that the Affiliations Committee has recognized a
new Wikimedia User Group yesterday:  Esperanto kaj Libera
Sciohttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_kaj_Libera_Scio(Esperanto
and free knowledge).

Please give them a warm welcome.

Some background information follows:

== Esperanto kaj Libera Scio ==

Esperanto kaj Libera
Sciohttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_kaj_Libera_Scio is
a group of Wikimedians who speak Esperanto. Their focus is to unite
Esperanto speaking persons who  edit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia
projects, or want to support Free Knowledge in other ways.

Its activities include among others participating at Esperanto language
events promoting Wikimedia projects, organizing Wikimedia workshops, trying
to recruit new volunteers and technical cooperation on creating a
translation gadget for the Esperanto Wikipedia.

The Affiliations Committee's recognition is valid until 30 April 2014.


== Wikimedia User Groups ==

Wikimedia User Groups are one of the three new types of affiliations
created last year to empower volunteers wanting to conduct offline work.

User group status is meant to be an easy form of affiliation, where the
main requirements are an agreed goal, plans for offline work, at least
three people participating and a public wiki page with all the relevant
information).
User groups are by default non-incorporated, although they may choose to
incorporate (this is not the case with this  group).
One of the requirements of the status, and especially of its renewal is to
publish a short report of activities at least once a year.

Under the movement roles
recommendationshttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_affiliation_models/User_Groups
, user groups are to be recognized in a quick and easy process directly by
the Affiliations Committee, for a fixed, renewable time-period and they are
to enjoy limited trademark use and simplified access to grants.


Best regards,
Bence Damokos
Chair, Affiliatons Committee
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[Wikimedia-l] Recognition of Wikimedia Armenia

[Bence Damokos]

Dear all,

I am happy to announce that the the WMF Board of Trustees have resolved to
recognize Wikimedia Armenia as the newest Wikimedia chapter:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Recognition_of_Wikimedia_Armenia

This group has  already put a lot of effort into promoting Wikipedia and
the other projects in Armenia on their road to recognition and I am really
looking forward to hearing of their future endeavours.

Please give a warm welcome to Wikimedia Armenia!

Best regards,
Bence
(Affiliations Committee)
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[Wikimedia-l] WikiVoyage Association as a thematic organization

[Bence Damokos]

Dear all,

I wanted to update you on behalf of the Affiliations Committee that we are
now considering the application of a proposed thematic organisation to
support WikiVoyage, the WikiVoyage Association, the erstwhile stewards of
the project.

You can see the proposal at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikivoyage_Association

We would like to invite you to participate in the discussions, express your
interest to join the organisation and inform your home communities about
this proposal. In particular, we would like to encourage people from around
the world to apply for membership to represent the diversity of the
Wikivoyagers.

We will be monitoring the talk page at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikivoyage_Association to see if there
is any new information that might influence the recognition process.
If you have any related information you would like to share with the
committee privately, please write to aff...@lists.wikimedia.org.


A bit of background:
Wikimedia thematic organisations are a new type of movement organisation,
that are similar to chapters in supporting the Wikimedia mission through
their activities in the real world, but instead of focusing on a given
country, they focus on a given topic or theme.
For more information please see:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Thematic_Organizations.

Usually we send out announcements of new thematic organisation applications
roughly in the middle of the recognition process to allow the wider
community to express any concerns they might have and to be able to join
the organisation when it is founded. This is done in the hope that it will
help new organisations reach critical mass earlier and that the wider
community is informed about emerging entities in the movement.

Next steps in the process include the review of the organization's bylaws,
and the finalization of the standard thematic organization agreement,
before AffCom will be able to make a recommendation to the Board of
Trustees to recognize the thematic organization.

Best regards,
Bence
(Chair, Affiliations Committee)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WikiVoyage Association as a thematic organization

[Bence Damokos]

Hi Nemo,

The review of the bylaws has not yet started, hence the red links. I expect
the review and the conversation around the review to take about 3-4 weeks,
perhaps a bit less.

Any comments you or others leave on the bylaws' talk page would be taken
into account.

Best regards,
Bence


On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 7:43 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.comwrote:

 Bence Damokos, 10/03/2013 19:18:

  We will be monitoring the talk page at
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/**wiki/Talk:Wikivoyage_**Associationhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikivoyage_Associationto
  see if there
 is any new information that might influence the recognition process.


 I suppose you also mean https://meta.wikimedia.org/**
 wiki/Wikivoyage_Association/**By-lawshttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikivoyage_Association/By-laws?
 The talk is still a redlink.
 (What AffCom members was tasked with review of their bylaws?)

 Nemo

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WikiVoyage Association as a thematic organization

[Bence Damokos]

I think both of you have some good points. I would argue that currently,
only a subset of chapters is fully funded from fundraising revenues, and
many of the rest rely on membership fees to finance some or all of their
administrative costs (while individual, more expensive programmes can be
funded through WMF grants). Even in more affluent chapters the membership
fee could be an easy way to require some form of commitment from the
members towards the organization. (Participation in the work is dependent
on membership to varying degrees at different organizations.)

On the other hand, membership fees, difficult to fill out membership forms
or long periods of membership approval can all act as barriers of entry.
Therefore, making becoming a member as easy as possible and being sensible
to the different worth in different countries or personal situations of a
seemingly low membership fee are important.
(Just for example, the reason I am only a member of one chapter, although I
could sympathize with many more, is that I can not afford it.)

Indeed, this is one of the areas that AffCom tries to look at when dealing
with a new organization. Wikivoyage's current fees seem to correspond to
those of Wikimedia Germany, Austria or Italy, and are slightly lower than
that of Wikimedia Switzerland; to compare to chapters from the area where
its membership has traditionally been based. It might be suggested that
lower, discounted membership fees could encourage more members to join, as
long as that is feasible with the organization's budget (this would
probably apply to most organizations).

Best regards,
Bence


On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 8:45 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.comwrote:

 rupert THURNER, 10/03/2013 20:17:

 good point, chapters have had traditionally membership fees, because
 in the startup phase there was no other possibility to finance it. [...]


 I question this premise.
 Chapters have fees because associations have fees; they should follow the
 laws and customs of their geography and a one-size-fits-all global
 regulation would be a big mistake. (It might even be illegal in some
 jurisdictions for some associative forms.)

 I also question your secondary premise that interested people are left out
 by fees, and I encourage you to demonstrate this claim.

 Nemo


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WikiVoyage Association as a thematic organization

[Bence Damokos]

It would depend on the circumstances (e.g. the relationship between the
groups, their history), but in theory thematic organizations are not meant
to be fully exclusive in relation to their chosen theme. There could be
more thematic organizations focusing on WikiVoyage.

This possibility is one that makes naming a thematic organization an art
unto itself (see the ongoing discussion at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Thematic_Organizations#Additional_thoughts_in_the_naming_of_thematic_organizations_and_user_groups
).

Do you know of any group of WikiVoyagers who would want to have a separate
organization or are for some reason unhappy with the proposed ones? (If you
would like to discuss this in private, feel free to use the affcom e-mail
address.)

Best regards,
Bence


On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 12:00 AM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote:

 Bence,

 Out of curiosity, can you describe what would happen if a separate
 group of people sought approval for another thematic organization
 revolving around WikiVoyage?

 Thanks,
 Nathan

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Info: Call for chapter peer review participation

[Bence Damokos]

Hi all,

Speaking of chapter peer review, you might be interested in this great
cooperation between WM DE and WM AR that might serve as a model:
http://blog.wikimedia.de/2013/03/01/tutoria-in-buenos-aires/

Best regards,
Bence


On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 12:10 AM, Fae fae...@gmail.com wrote:

 In the light of Asaf's news about Wikimedia Kenya, it seems timely to
 highlight one of the positive tasks I agreed to at the last Wikimedia
 Chapters Association coordination meeting. This was to start chapter
 peer reviews. In a couple of weeks I plan to put out a call for
 involvement and set up a meta page to get this going.

 As well as using practical (and cheap to do using virtual meetings)
 and non-bureaucratic peer reviews, better to understand governance and
 share best practice for Wikimedia Chapters, it would be great to
 extend this as a means of learning about best practices for Wikimedia
 User Groups. If the WCA can adapt to helping provide better engagement
 with User Groups and other Wikimedia organizations, this will be a
 positive step for the movement; though it may require quite a bit of
 patient help from friendly Wikimedia volunteers :-)

 If anyone who is in a Chapter or User Group (or a prospective User
 Group), would like to get involved at the start in receiving or
 delivering peer reviews, please drop me a note and I'll ensure you get
 an early notice when I kick off this, interesting but tricky, bit of
 international teamwork. Expect me to be depending on you for help.

 Cheers,
 Fae
 --
 Ashley Van Haeften (Fae) fae...@gmail.com
 Chapters Association Council Chair http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WCA
 Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Provisional Wikimedia Kenya no longer a chapter

[Bence Damokos]

Hi Mike,

They have not yet incorporated and haven't signed a chapters agreement.
They are not being encouraged to incorporate without being certain that
they want to and are able to take on the responsibilities of running an
organization (with the requirements to file government reports; have annual
assemblies, etc.).

Incorporation is not needed for recognition as a user group, although it is
a possibility. It is a less formal way of association than that which is
required for a chapter, but if a user group is stable and big enough
conversion into a chapter is a possibility.

Best regards,
Bence


On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 12:27 AM, Michael Peel michael.p...@wikimedia.org.uk
 wrote:


 On 1 Mar 2013, at 23:22, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:

  On Mar 1, 2013 11:07 PM, Michael Peel michael.p...@wikimedia.org.uk
  wrote:
 
  Hi Asaf,
 
  I note that the WMF's recognition decision here was recorded at
 
 
 http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Recognition_of_Wikimedia_Kenya
 
  Please could you confirm that WM Kenya didn't sign the chapter's
  agreement before 6 Feb 2013?
 
  I'm rather surprised to hear that they're being encouraged to
 incorporate
  and affiliate as a user group rather than as a chapter - please could you
  explain the rationale here?
 
  Have you read the email to the Kenyan list? I think it explains the
  situation quite well.
 
  They haven't incorporated, which was a condition of the provisional
 chapter
  status. It sounds like the wmf thinks the kind of things they want to do
  are better suited to a user group than a chapter. I don't know enough
 about
  the Kenyan group to know if that is true, but other models of affiliation
  were created precisely because chapters are the right solution for every
  situation.

 Yes, I had read the email to the Kenyan list. My questions took that email
 into account.

 Thanks,
 Mike



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Info: Election for WCA Chairperson

[Bence Damokos]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 10:50 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote:

 On Feb 25, 2013 9:41 AM, James Alexander jameso...@gmail.com wrote:
  Err  ok, I'm sorry but this actually moves to the realms of scary.
 You
  require the new Council member to send in a statement ... pledging
 loyalty
  essentially? I don't see anything in the charter that would require
  something like that, is it in your remit as chair? Sadly that just sounds
  like a way to force out reformers, if you don't support the charter you
  can't join the council? How do you expect to get things to change when
  necessary?

 I'm hoping that was just a poor choice of words and Fae doesn't mean they
 have to support the charter, just that they have to agree to follow the
 charter. If they do have to support the charter, then that is excessive and
 undesirable.

Probably this type of discussions over the meaning of technical English
words after all, I hope that supporting the Charter includes supporting
the part about amendments) and the fact that inviting chapters to become
members was never really pursued more enthusiastically than stating that 1)
becoming a member just takes these easy steps therefore 2) logically,
every chapter can make the rational choice whether to join and if they
haven't yet decided to join that is probably because they haven't had time
to realize that this is the correct choice, probably because they are not
active or too busy with other things.
At least, this was my personal perception at the time I was still a chapter
board member; I fear that this model might not work in attracting new
members (especially as the history to process is growing, so it makes more
difficult to make an informed decision) and some more active and welcoming
outreach might bring better results.

In that light, I think Jan Bart's suggestion to give voice to all chapters
and set up structures that are open not only in principle but practice is a
good idea. (Although, with that in mind, the choice of the chairperson -
especially as he needs to be a council member - seems like an internal
matter, so there might not be big benefits in extending the right to vote.)

Best regards,
Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Info: Election for WCA Chairperson

[Bence Damokos]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 11:05 AM, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote:




 On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 10:50 AM, Thomas Dalton 
 thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote:

 On Feb 25, 2013 9:41 AM, James Alexander jameso...@gmail.com wrote:
  Err  ok, I'm sorry but this actually moves to the realms of scary.
 You
  require the new Council member to send in a statement ... pledging
 loyalty
  essentially? I don't see anything in the charter that would require
  something like that, is it in your remit as chair? Sadly that just
 sounds
  like a way to force out reformers, if you don't support the charter you
  can't join the council? How do you expect to get things to change when
  necessary?

 I'm hoping that was just a poor choice of words and Fae doesn't mean they
 have to support the charter, just that they have to agree to follow the
 charter. If they do have to support the charter, then that is excessive
 and
 undesirable.

 Probably this type of discussions over the meaning of technical English
 words (after all, I hope that supporting the Charter includes supporting
 the part about amendments) and the fact that inviting chapters to become
 members was never really pursued more enthusiastically than stating that 1)
 becoming a member just takes these easy steps therefore 2) logically,
 every chapter can make the rational choice whether to join and if they
 haven't yet decided to join that is probably because they haven't had time
 to realize that this is the correct choice, probably because they are not
 active or too busy with other things are some of the reasons for many
 chapters not joining.
 At least, this was my personal perception at the time I was still a
 chapter board member; I fear that this model might not work in attracting
 new members (especially as the history to process is growing, so it makes
 more difficult to make an informed decision) and some more active and
 welcoming outreach might bring better results.

 In that light, I think Jan Bart's suggestion to give voice to all chapters
 and set up structures that are open not only in principle but practice is a
 good idea. (Although, with that in mind, the choice of the chairperson -
 especially as he needs to be a council member - seems like an internal
 matter, so there might not be big benefits in extending the right to vote.)

 Best regards,
 Bence

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[Wikimedia-l] Are chapters part of the community and board seats for affiliates?

[Bence Damokos]

Hi,

I'll separate this out as I think it is a really interesting conversation,
and as I have heard the two arguments below repeated numerous times, it
might be useful to think about it and the future shape of things a bit more.

I think the fundamental question is how legitimate can an interest group
(chapters in this case) be if it's membership is significantly smaller than
its potential membership (at least 30% of editors come from countries with
well established chapters in afaik good standing with their local
community)?
The difference in the answer to this question could be behind the two
memes on chapters being seen as insignificant or significant parts of the
community based either on their membership or potential membership size.

I like to believe that people who go beyond online editing (or in the case
of readers and donors, beyond online donations and reading) into the
offline world are among the most dedicated of our volunteers, and knowing
their background, they usually are well embedded in their
local/national/linguistic communities, to the point that they are able to
recognize and represent their interests.
(Especially, as chapters tend to have open structures, often giving the
right to be heard to any non-member and generally not making it difficult
to become a member even for those advocating different directions.)

However, as our communities are very diverse (someone active on Wikipedia
and the chapter might not be aware of recent developments in Wiktionary and
vice versa), we need to constantly think about ways of informing and better
engaging those whose interests we wish to represent (be this at the WMF or
the individual chapter level).

Even if we don't subscribe to the wider interpretation of representation of
the potential members, the actual members are still showing a level of
dedication that I think makes it worthwhile hearing their voice in e.g.
board selections.

All that said, the chapter selected board seat is related to the
communities the chapters are embedded in at a further step of remove
because of the way the process is conducted. (The list of candidates and
questions to them, etc. are in theory non-public – although the candidate
may choose to make it public on Meta – so the boards of chapters might not
be in a position to directly survey their members' preferences and have to
bring the decision on their own.)
Therefore, I think there are definite possibilities to improve on the
selection process, even with just chapters.


Best regards,
Bence



On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 9:26 AM, Jan-Bart de Vreede jdevre...@wikimedia.org
 wrote:

 Hey

 I think that chapters represent a different part of the movement, and that
 their input in board composition results in different candidates than we
 would possibly elect :) At the same time the increased scope of affcom also
 gives us the option of increasing the scope of these two selected seats to
 include thematic organisations and user groups (giving them more community
 coverage than is the case now). That would be a good discussion to have
 over de coming months as the selected seats term expires in july next year…

 thoughts anyone?

 Jan-Bart


 On Feb 19, 2013, at 8:42 AM, James Alexander jameso...@gmail.com wrote:

  Snipping a bunch for simplicities sake
 
  On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 11:14 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede 
  jdevre...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 
  I simply don't agree.
  a) Chapters are part of the community
  b) Whenever a vote comes up for an appointed seat that seat obviously
 does
  not vote, therefore the (s)elected seats have a majority vote on any
  appointed seat (5 our of 9 votes) Apart from that I would say that
 Jimmy's
  seat is a community seat, but recognise that not all share that
 viewpoint.
 
  Jan-Bart
 
 
  :-/ To be honest I don't particularly like this meme that the chapter are
  part of the community either. The chapters may be part of the community
  (and so the statement not false) but we use the phrasing in such a way as
  to say that they are more then they are.  There may be a part of the
  community but they are really a very small part of it overall.
 
  Their power in board selection and movement voice (both formally and
  informally) is disproportionately huge and we set them up to represent
 the
  community when that is a serious misstatement. They represent their
 members
  who are a very small subset of the community and often have a very
  different goal and interest set then the, much larger, remainder of the
  community and depending on the chapter may include more donors or readers
  then editors.
 
  That is not to say they don't do good things at times (or that it is a
  problem to include donors or readers, personally I think they are part of
  our larger community) but we should not confuse what they actually are.
 
  Jimmy is a whole different question ;) I would certainly say he deserves
 a
  seat at the table, I prefer to just categorize him as Jimmy because
 he's
  just a 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are chapters part of the community and board seats for affiliates?

[Bence Damokos]

On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 2:42 PM, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote:

 All that said, the chapter selected board seat is related to the
 communities the chapters are embedded in at a further step of remove
 because of the way the process is conducted. (The list of candidates and
 questions to them, etc. are in theory non-public – although the candidate
 may choose to make it public on Meta – so the boards of chapters might not
 be in a position to directly survey their members' preferences and have to
 bring the decision on their own.)


To be perfectly fair, all the nominations for the 2012 selection were
public, so this was less of a problem than in 2010 when they were not
published.

Best regards,
Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are chapters part of the community and board seats for affiliates?

[Bence Damokos]

On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 3:32 PM, Thehelpfulone
thehelpfulonew...@gmail.comwrote:

 On 19 February 2013 13:48, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote:

  To be perfectly fair, all the nominations for the 2012 selection were
  public, so this was less of a problem than in 2010 when they were not
  published.
 


 Whilst this is true, is there a good reason as to why much of the
 discussion for chapter-elected board seats happens in private? Looking at
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapter-selected_Board_seats/2012/Processit
 appears chapter discussion happens on a private chapters wiki and
 chapters-l, a mailing list restricted to only current board members
 of chapters, during which time candidates lose their access to that
 wiki/mailing list but presumably gain access to it afterwards. Unless all
 the discussions are deleted, what is the benefit of having these
 discussions in private, especially if the candidates will see what was said
 about them after the election?

 I understand why we use private voting through SecurePoll for the
 community elections but please could someone explain what I'm missing
 with regards to Chapter selected seats?

I believe the losing access to the mailing list is meant to ensure that the
candidate has no undue advantage in the process by either influencing the
discussion or knowing the other candidates' answers in advance (I believe
those who win would not get re-added as they would become part of the WMF
and have to give up their chapter board positions, while those who lose
re-gain access once the process is over and there is no more a possibility
to have this influence).

As for the private vs. public aspect, there is a difficult balance to make
between being transparent and being able to attract candidates who might
not be comfortable in being publicly identified as unsuccessful. (The
current search for an expert seat also has this guarantee of privacy, as I
understand.) The result of this balancing was I believe (I might be
mistaken) that in the end the chapters selected candidates could opt for
publicity or the default privacy and all of them opted for the public
option. This has actually resulted in the somewhat awkward need to
duplicate everything between the private wiki and Meta.
Furthermore, the process is meant to be consensual between the different
boards involved, so there is a useful place for private discussions either
on the closed mailing list or between individual board members.

Adjusting this balance and making sure that people beyond the boards are
informed (even if the final decision is still made by the boards) will be
an important challenge for the next selection.

Best regards,
Bence
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