Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quarterly reviews of high priority WMF initiatives
Eric, This is great. I think this initiative may lead to benefits on multiple fronts. Thank you for this good news! Cheers, Pine ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Request for consultation on proposed guidelines relating to potential conflicts of interest in requesting Wikimedia resources
*Hi all, * * * *We are asking for community consultation on five proposed guidelines relating to potential conflicts of interest when people ask for resources belonging to the Wikimedia movement. For your review and comments, you may find more information, a proposed Board resolution, and the proposed guidelines here: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Guidelines_on_potential_conflicts_of_interest Please feel free to join the discussion on the talk page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Guidelines_on_potential_conflicts_of_interest Thank you for your time and expertise. * Geoff Brigham General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Request for consultation on proposed guidelines relating to potential conflicts of interest in requesting Wikimedia resources
Yes. From the linked page:We encourage international participation, and, if more time is needed to allow for translations or comments, we want to take that into consideration. So please, yes! PB — Philippe Beaudette Director, Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation, Inc On Dec 21, 2012, at 9:07 AM, Mbingu Safidi mginbu.saf...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, is Wikimedia Foundation interested in involving communities that don't speak English in this consultation? Thank you, MS On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 12:42 PM, Geoff Brigham gbrig...@wikimedia.org wrote: *Hi all, * * * *We are asking for community consultation on five proposed guidelines relating to potential conflicts of interest when people ask for resources belonging to the Wikimedia movement. For your review and comments, you may find more information, a proposed Board resolution, and the proposed guidelines here: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Guidelines_on_potential_conflicts_of_interest Please feel free to join the discussion on the talk page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Guidelines_on_potential_conflicts_of_interest Thank you for your time and expertise. * Geoff Brigham General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Request for consultation on proposed guidelines relating to potential conflicts of interest in requesting Wikimedia resources
There are already a few questions on the talk page. Mbingu Safidi, 21/12/2012 16:07: is Wikimedia Foundation interested in involving communities that don't speak English in this consultation? Involving more communities is always a good thing, but (for the sake of clarity) as far as I can understand this involves only WMF administration, not Wikimedia projects: the en.wiki COI policy was linked probably by mistake and e.g. the page states clearly that paid editing is outside of the scope of the proposal. Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Translation of documents [was: Request for consultation on proposed guidelines relating to potential conflicts of interest in requesting Wikimedia resources]
Hi, Changing topic to keep the COI thread on-topic :) I understand it's frustrating to have these texts only in english, but could you also please try to get things from WMF perspective? In what languages should it translated? The most spoken in the world? The top 10 active communities? The top 10 editing community? The top 10 growing community? All of them? And if they pick 10 languages, it won't end the moaning. And translating all the documents in 10 or 20 languages would be quite expensive in the end, would it be the best use of donors money? Isn't the issue in how we organize ourselves, in the movement (and that includes everyone from community members to wikimedia organizations) to handle translations? Perhaps the best way to do it would be to have an automated translating script. Wouldn't be perfect, but it would provide a raw translation and if the community wants to get involved they just have to fix the automatic translation. I don't know though how hard it would be to code that kind of things? We could perhaps use Google Translate (even if it's a paying service it doesn't seem that expensive https://developers.google.com/translate/v2/pricing?hl=fr) -- Christophe On 21 December 2012 16:14, Mbingu Safidi mginbu.saf...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks. I see. A text only in English is very welcome to other communities know there is a consultation. Best, MS On 21 December 2012 13:09, Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: Yes. From the linked page:We encourage international participation, and, if more time is needed to allow for translations or comments, we want to take that into consideration. So please, yes! PB — Philippe Beaudette Director, Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation, Inc On Dec 21, 2012, at 9:07 AM, Mbingu Safidi mginbu.saf...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, is Wikimedia Foundation interested in involving communities that don't speak English in this consultation? Thank you, MS On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 12:42 PM, Geoff Brigham gbrig...@wikimedia.org wrote: *Hi all, * * * *We are asking for community consultation on five proposed guidelines relating to potential conflicts of interest when people ask for resources belonging to the Wikimedia movement. For your review and comments, you may find more information, a proposed Board resolution, and the proposed guidelines here: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Guidelines_on_potential_conflicts_of_interest Please feel free to join the discussion on the talk page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Guidelines_on_potential_conflicts_of_interest Thank you for your time and expertise. * Geoff Brigham General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] deliberately lowered fundraising growth rate (was: Fundraising updates?)
Hi James, How do you see the fiduciary responsibilities of the board playing into fundraising targets? Are you suggesting the Board has a duty to raise as much money as possible? I'm also curious why you highlight deliberately slowing fundraising despite the 32% increase in revenue goals for the 12-13 fiscal year. That is an aggressive increase, even if less aggressive proportionally than we've seen in prior years. Nathan ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Request for consultation on proposed guidelines relating to potential conflicts of interest in requesting Wikimedia resources
On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 10:14 AM, Mbingu Safidi mginbu.saf...@gmail.comwrote: Thanks. I see. A text only in English is very welcome to other communities know there is a consultation. Good point. Is there a short three-word message like Please translate this! that we can put in a template and translate into every language? We used to use templates like this one: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:TranslationDescML SJ Best, MS On 21 December 2012 13:09, Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: Yes. From the linked page:We encourage international participation, and, if more time is needed to allow for translations or comments, we want to take that into consideration. So please, yes! PB — Philippe Beaudette Director, Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation, Inc On Dec 21, 2012, at 9:07 AM, Mbingu Safidi mginbu.saf...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, is Wikimedia Foundation interested in involving communities that don't speak English in this consultation? Thank you, MS On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 12:42 PM, Geoff Brigham gbrig...@wikimedia.org wrote: *Hi all, * * * *We are asking for community consultation on five proposed guidelines relating to potential conflicts of interest when people ask for resources belonging to the Wikimedia movement. For your review and comments, you may find more information, a proposed Board resolution, and the proposed guidelines here: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Guidelines_on_potential_conflicts_of_interest Please feel free to join the discussion on the talk page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Guidelines_on_potential_conflicts_of_interest Thank you for your time and expertise. * Geoff Brigham General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] deliberately lowered fundraising growth rate (was: Fundraising updates?)
I think raising a lot more money because its possible to raise a lot more money is a for-profit mentality; the WMF has been actually narrowing its scope, in the understanding that it can't solve all problems or be all things, and it makes a lot of sense to me to raise only what it already knows can be spent on core, planned activity. To David's point, I do believe that it's financially responsible to have a cushion (i.e. a reserve or endowment) - and if the WMF decided to establish a true endowment, and fund-raise for that, you wouldn't hear an objection from me. But otherwise, it would be wrong to raise money purely based on the amount you thought you could raise and without regard to what you plan to responsibly spend. Nathan ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] deliberately lowered fundraising growth rate (was: Fundraising updates?)
How do you see the fiduciary responsibilities of the board playing into fundraising targets? The employees of the board share their fiduciary responsibilities. Are you suggesting the Board has a duty to raise as much money as possible? No. When actual fundraising far exceeded expectations, it was scaled back to meet expectations based on the nonquantative predictions of the Chief Revenue Officer. That is questionable behavior to say the least, and suggests that the current leadership does not want to continue to grow the organization to reach the full potential of the current programs. In addition to the pageview growth continuing at exponential rates, much of the Strategic Plan has been abandoned in a recent reorganization, while employees other than executives are paid far less than typical technology workers in San Francisco, and some of the best performing Foundation efforts, such as the Education Program, are so woefully understaffed that they continually cause serious problems for the community. Have you seen how few Education Program article talk page templates contain the correct date? Meanwhile, the senior staff's most vaunted projects are behind schedule and lack meaningful community volunteer participation. The leadership has not been able or willing to address these issues. I'm also curious why you highlight deliberately slowing fundraising despite the 32% increase in revenue goals for the 12-13 fiscal year. That is an aggressive increase, even if less aggressive proportionally than we've seen in prior years. If pageviews weren't increasing at double that rate, projects were on time, and junior staff didn't have to live in high crime area Oakland hovels, I would be less concerned. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] deliberately lowered fundraising growth rate (was: Fundraising updates?)
Costs don't scale linearly with pageviews. Nor do donations, especially when you consider that much of that growth in pageviews now comes from the 'Global South' (where people generally have less disposable income to donate) and from mobile devices (which we don't really fundraise on, although I believe this is something WMF wants to work on next year). This very reasonable sounding theory is contradicted by measuring the actual data at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics I have heard so many reasonable sounding theories from Foundation staff who refuse to measure the corresponding data over the past year that I am beginning to wonder whether I should compile them for publication. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] deliberately lowered fundraising growth rate (was: Fundraising updates?)
SJ, Thank you for your reply: Fundraising targets have been set to match our projected needs for the year, for the past few years. Does the very recent abandonment of several aspects of the Strategic Plan, after the July 2012-3 Annual Plan goal was set at $46.1 million, which itself was substantially reduced after the Chief Revenue Officer reported that significant increases in fundraising would be very difficult, and without any messaging to donors that those aspects were being abandoned, represent a breach donors' trust? Why should donors who believed they were giving to fund the Strategic Plan in line with the growth of the actual utilization of Foundation services not feel betrayed by this? Why should donors who expect the Foundation to prepare for contingency not feel betrayed by the abandonment of fundraising in the last week of December, which has over the past several years produced two to four times as much funding per day than a typical fundraising day? As Matt notes, there are many countervailing reasons for us to be moderate in our requests of readers and donors On one hand, we have anecdotal reports of a handful of opinion pieces complaining about fundraising, but nowhere near the ridicule and outrage across the web from last year's campaign. On the other hand we have actual small donor fundraising amounting to roughly double per day over last year. Which do you think is more representative of actual donor sentiment? As to your specific concerns, I encourage fleshing them out as part of a discussion of next year's budget. You may find a helpful counterpoint to your own anxiety in the discussion there, driven by people who feel that our current budget is both too high and not directed at our bottlenecks. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Budget http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_budget#2012-13 I have looked through those, and they do not seem to be a traditional accounts-based budget, or even a discussion of specific budget line items. Which specific items on those pages represents the salary ratio between executive and junior staff? Which represents the Education Program staffing level? Where is the discussion of an endowment that you mentioned? Where is the recent abandonment of much of the Strategic Plan discussed on those pages? Thomas Dalton wrote: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics There is no data on page views on that page... My first message today included a link to http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/pageviews which can also be found by searching various indices for wikimedia pageviews. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Legal Considerations: Naming of Organizations
Hi all, Some have asked me to give some thought to various considerations in the naming of thematic organizations and user groups. I'm putting some ideas here: 1. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Thematic_Organizations#Thoughts_regarding_the_naming_of_thematic_organizations; and 2. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Thematic_Organizations#Additional_thoughts_in_the_naming_of_thematic_organizations_and_user_groups I of course welcome feedback and comments as we think these issues through. Many thanks, Geoff -- Geoff Brigham General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Meet up in San Fran
*WikiProject Medicine / Wiki Med Foundation / UCSF College of Medicine is having Events Jan. 8-11 in San Francisco at the UCSF Medical Campus:* *Wikipedia/Wikimedia and Medicine Overview by me *(repeats every day at noon)** 12-1PM on Fri. in N217 12-1PM on Tues. and Thurs. in Toland Hall 12-1PM on Wed. in HSW 303 * * *Drop-in Editing Sessions* 1-3PM Tue-Fri in the Nursing Mezzanine Other Wikipedians in the area are invited. Would be great to have additional experienced Wikipedians for the editing sessions. Further details and sign up here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/UCSF -- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine www.opentextbookofmedicine.com ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] deliberately lowered fundraising growth rate (was: Fundraising updates?)
James, the Chief Revenue Officer reported that significant increases in fundraising would be very difficult I cannot speak for what Zack was thinking -- but I can tell you - as a member of the fundraising technology team - that I was shocked, utterly amazed, and astounded at how successful this years fundraiser was. There's a couple of reasons for this. One -- banner impressions were down! Yes the report card says page views went up; but did you know that when looking at only at the number of HTML pages served to the top five deskop browsers that they actually went down a couple percent from the same time last year? See [1] but you'll have to do the maths yourself. This also serves the point that next year we do need to get fundraising working on mobile devices. Two -- The tests that Zack and Megan did in the months up to the official launch showed that our old 'Sad Jimmy' banners were not pulling in anywhere as near as much money as they used to. There's a reason the test results page [2] is titled We need a breakthrough. We were persistent and lucky and got one. I strongly feel that it was extremely prudent to not gamble on an unknown. Three -- let's take a look at the numbers ceteris paribus. I'm going to assume that fundraising numbers taken straight from [3] can be modeled as an exponential because it'll make a bigger number, I've not normalized my data for the length of the fundraisers (which was 50 days last year), nor accounted for the state of the economy, nor taken out big donations, nor for the loss in number of desktop browsers all of which will reduce the number in actuality. Doing so I get ~50M raised from fundraising this year. As an engineer I was trained to over-engineer to about 20% -- that turns that number into ~40M. As you state, expected revenue from the plan would be 46.1M -- that falls in the middle of my two numbers. If Zack did reduce the expected revenue number it would be because he took a similar back of the hand model and said look how unrealistic that is -- that's just silly. Which is what I would expect from someone using reasonable judgement. Why should donors who believed they were giving to fund the Strategic Plan in line with the growth of the actual utilization of Foundation services not feel betrayed by this? I could be wrong because I wasn't a member of the foundation last year and didn't read all the banners - but I did donate my 20$ and thought I was helping support the site's programmers and servers. I was not, I recall with some clarity, donating because I'd read the strategic plan and agreed with it. I don't feel betrayed at all. Why should donors who expect the Foundation to prepare for contingency not feel betrayed by the abandonment of fundraising in the last week of December, which has over the past several years produced two to four times as much funding per day than a typical fundraising day? My opinion would be that - it's laudable the board looked at what they a considered reasonable sustainable growth curve and then held themselves too it. Anything else would be corporate greed. On one hand, we have anecdotal reports of a handful of opinion pieces complaining about fundraising. That's a fair point and I thank you for holding me accountable to my statement. I will inject here, however, that my point was not about current sentiment but about a potential growth of the vocal minority causing the majority to think again about donating in the future. In any case I routinely perform the following experiment as a small part of what I consider my job. I search google for 'wikimedia fundraising' and limit the time period to a month. I did so again this evening. In the first 20 twenty results I had 4 positive, 2 negative, and 4 neutral sites. (The other ten were Foundation pages or by foundation employees.) In them, I had a small majority of positive comments, but with some very loud naysayers in the background, the rest were fairly neutral. Your results may vary. Mine do over time -- it seems that yes people are happy with the current campaign. Possibly because we bugged them less? But in the lead up to it my fuzzy memory recalls seeing a lot more negativity. Once again, I simply state we need to be careful with public sentiment -- it's not a resource to squander lightly. ~Matt Walker [1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportRequests.htmnormalized by http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportClients.htm [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2012/We_Need_A_Breakthrough [3] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics see also http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2012/FundStatScraper.py to get the raw numbers ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
