Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [Toolserver-l] [TS logo] Fwd: Free as in Wikimedia Foundation
well put. I think that clearly WMF legal department assumed that having the trademark registered is such a good idea that it does not require a dialogue with the community, while the symbolic beginnings and the history of logo creation make such a move, especially without a prior discussion and explanation, clearly awkward. I believe that a lot of unnecessary ruckus and bad faith assumptions stem from poor dialogue between WMF and the community at large... dj On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 11:17 PM, Heather Ford heather.f...@oii.ox.ac.ukwrote: +1, Nathan. I think you very articulately pointed out the key problem that's been misidentified in this i.e. that the problem is *not* in WMF's protection of Wikimedia TM's generally (although I think there is still much to be improved about a process that results in stories like this https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/wikipedia-threatens-) but rather where the WMF chose to register a logo that was specifically designed by a member of the community to be used by groups who do not purport to represent the WMF but want something they can remix for their own thematic projects or use for unaffiliated events. And I think it's unfair to suggest that any time someone complains about something the Foundation is doing they're exhibiting bad faith. If that was true, any critique would be an act of bad faith. We're all, in our own way, trying to help Wikimedia grow and flourish. The truth is that we have different ideas about how to get there. best, Heather. On Mar 19, 2013, at 9:00 PM, Nathan wrote: I won't argue the fact that there is value in protecting the iconography of the Wikimedia movement from abuse. What I argue with is the approach of the legal department - to unilaterally, and without notice, contradict the purpose of a set of logos by declaring ownership over them, and then to at the same time suggest the community hold a contest to create a whole new set of logos over which the WMF will supposedly not take the same action. To then frame the discussion with repeated notes about the distinction between copyright and trademark makes it sound like they see this as a problem of a lack of knowledge and understanding on the part of their critics', which simply isn't the case. The reality is if they had suggested last year that hey, the Foundation wants to make sure these marks are protected from abuse, would anyone mind if we registered them just to make sure they aren't abused? We'll allow them to be used with a standard permission set that doesn't require a request process. then the response would've been absolutely minimal and positive. But they didn't. If you're familiar with my posts to this list, I'm not normally on the anti-WMF side of debates (for instance, wrt WCA). But when they make a boob move, I don't think its bad faith to point it out. And, not for nothing, accusing others of bad faith is generally ill advised. Anyway, this is a small bore issue, and the consequences of any outcome are mild to say the least. But, a few posts on a wiki and on wikimedia-l don't cost much ;) ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto: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] Fwd: [Toolserver-l] [TS logo] Fwd: Free as in Wikimedia Foundation
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 7:54 AM, Dariusz Jemielniak dar...@alk.edu.pl wrote: well put. I think that clearly WMF legal department assumed that having the trademark registered is such a good idea that it does not require a dialogue with the community, My _general_ problem, however, that I have seen in the past some quite awkward dance steps from the WMF (and other free software entities) to protect their (our) intellectual property, sometimes referencing legal requirements for trademark protection, which very much reminds me of the Firefox trademark, where the community, (not a direct quote) would very much like to share the trademark with all the world for free but we cannot since if we would the unrestricted usage would legally nullify the protection, so we must, very unfortunately, immediately ask you to cease and desist and prefer to change the name of your project as well thank you bye. Debian had to change the name to Iceweasel to be able to actually patch and package the beast (since patching was required to package the damn thing). Wikipedia and Wikimedia logos (and plenty of them) are clearly a nice example, where the community is generally forbidden to use them, apart from some very strict cases. It's not a Wikimedia problem, same goes for almost any protected logo of any open projects. So protecting a logo means good intents but entering some dark legal alley where anything might happen, including some possibly friendly legal guy informing us that our use does not conform something so we should please to choose another logo. My 2 'cents. Peter ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [Toolserver-l] [TS logo] Fwd: Free as in Wikimedia Foundation
2013/3/20 James Alexander jameso...@gmail.com: On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: I won't argue the fact that there is value in protecting the iconography of the Wikimedia movement from abuse. What I argue with is the approach of the legal department - to unilaterally, and without notice, contradict the purpose of a set of logos by declaring ownership over them, and then to at the same time suggest the community hold a contest to create a whole new set of logos over which the WMF will supposedly not take the same action. I'll be the first to say I think the idea of having a contest to create a new logo is a bit silly. I think we should continue to use the meta/community logo and that it's allowed use for the community should be very very broad (much broader then we would allow for the Wikipedia Globe for example). I think we have enough issues with branding given what I would consider mistakes in the past and present and we don't need 'yet another' for the community (given that we also use all of the other logos to represent the community at times). I agree - it hardly make any sense, especially because the story may happen again. If the new logo is popular it will be trademarked by WMF as well :-) I don't, however, think that they did the wrong thing here. I've been around meta and the community for a long time and I would have honestly assumed long ago that the community logo was trademarked and the foundation was just very free in letting it be used. All of the foundations trademarks were going through registration processes around the world because they realized that our portfolio did not cover us very well. This made total sense to be included in it. Well, actually the legal situation is defined by trademark policy of WMF: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Trademark_policy According to this policy it applies to the following logos: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_official_marks so it includes MediaWiki and community logos as well in similar way as Wikipedia logo. You can read in the policy: The following basic guidelines apply to almost any use of the Wikimedia Marks in printed materials, including marketing, articles and other publicity-related materials, and websites: Proper Form - Wikimedia Marks should be used in their exact form — neither abbreviated nor combined with any other word or words (e.g., Wiki or MyWikipedia rather than Wikipedia); Notice - The following notice should appear somewhere nearby (at least on the same page or on the credits page) the first use of a Wikimedia Mark: [TRADEMARK] is a ['registered', if applicable] trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation; Distinguishable - In at least the first reference, we ask that the trademark should be set apart from surrounding text, either by capitalizing it or by italicizing, bolding or underlining it. In addition, we ask that your website avoid copying the look and feel of the Wikimedia websites — again, we do not want the visitor to your website to be confused about which company he/she is dealing with. Attention Paid to Visual Guidelines - any use of the Wikimedia Marks should substantially comply with our Trademark and Logo Usage Policy and our Visual Identity Guidelines. And - when you take a look at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:MediaWiki_logos and to: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_Community_Logos you see that all of them (except originaly trademarked) broke the trademark policy rules :-) The are combined with other words and graphs, they have no notice, they do not follow any visual guidelines etc. :-) So - in fact they should be deleted as a WMF trademark policy violation - or trademark policy should be modified. Bear in mind that even toolserver logo - which is obviously a derivative work of community logo - should not be used according the current WMF trademark policy. I think it is not intended, and WMF will never do any legal action towards the creators and users of this derivative logos - but all this situation is unclear at the moment. I think this is a job for WMF Board of Trustees to clarify the situation - for example by excluding MediaWiki and community logos from the rules forbiding creation of derivative logos and Visual Identity Guidelines. -- Tomek Polimerek Ganicz http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/ http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29title=tomasz-ganicz ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Info: Markus Glaser is elected Chair of the Wikimedia Chapters Association Council
Congratulations to Marcus! Tonmoy On Mar 19, 2013 4:52 PM, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org wrote: Thanks Fae indeed for the hard work. It is a pity that things went as they went - and that you had to work under tough circumstances. Of course it is the council as a whole that bears responsibility, but when things go wrong, you get the heat of it... Best, Lodewijk 2013/3/19 Delphine Ménard notafi...@gmail.com Hi Fae, Wikimedia Deutschland is thankful for Markus' election, and we will support him as best as we can in his future endeavours. But this email is more to you Fae. I wanted to thank you for the work done on the WCA so far. I know it hasn't been easy on you. Nevertheless you kept going forward, pushing and prodding and making sure things would happen, with sometimes great critic, other times hopefully great support. For this I am thankful. Sometimes politics is ungrateful to the hard working, and I am sorry it came to this, but I applaud how you managed all possible situations, and especially how you made sure that the WCA and the spirit of chapters working together live on. I strongly believe that Wikimedia's diversity is one of its biggest strengths, and I am convinced that working towards sustainability of chapters definitely is one way to make sure this diversity lives on. I look forward to working with you on all the tasks still to accomplish, within or outside the WCA. Best, Delphine Delphine Ménard Vice-president Wikimedia Deutschland On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 1:08 AM, Fae fae...@gmail.com wrote: Congratulations to Markus on becoming the Chair of the WCAC. The election results is available at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Elections/2013_Chair#Votes , with an associated detailed QA from the candidates on the associated talk page. Thank you to all candidates for coming forward and taking part in the public debate so well. I look forward to supporting Markus in his role as our Chair, and the discussions with everyone at the Milan conference next month. Cheers, Fae -- Ashley Van Haeften (Fae) fae...@gmail.com Chapters Association Council sChair/s http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WCA Heh. ;) ___ 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] Fwd: [Toolserver-l] [TS logo] Fwd: Free as in Wikimedia Foundation
This is indeed why I dislike the whole trademark move. Not because I don't understand the difference between trademarks and copyright, but probably I have different goals in mind. It is a natural state for a legal team to play defensive, and protect. I can't blame them for that, although the communication is in this case particularly poor (and being overloaded with work should perhaps have meant postponing the request in the first place until after community consultation). We have had the same discussion about the Wiki Loves Monuments trademark internally a while ago, and we decided as volunteers we didn't want to trademark it at all - because it brings along all kind of bureaucracy and we didn't consider that worth the 'benefits'. Using the logo/name would mean you need to sign (and negotiate) a contract, it means you have to create and follow silly policies as explained before (I mean, this whole is a registered trademark of just doesn't work in many situations). The downsides are clear. Then you should consider what you're going to exactly winning with a registration. It looks nice on the wall of registered marks of course, but that protection you get, how helpful would that exactly be? That is a valid discussion to have - but it should be had as a community. Especially since this was ironically named a community logo. In any case, we can still have this discussion. And if we agree to not like the trademark, we could either ask the WMF to drop it, or we could simply design a new one. But before we do that, we should probably create a good RfC, and get a clear overview of what exactly are all the benefits and downsides of a registered trademark versus an unregistered one. Best, Lodewijk 2013/3/20 Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com 2013/3/20 James Alexander jameso...@gmail.com: On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: I won't argue the fact that there is value in protecting the iconography of the Wikimedia movement from abuse. What I argue with is the approach of the legal department - to unilaterally, and without notice, contradict the purpose of a set of logos by declaring ownership over them, and then to at the same time suggest the community hold a contest to create a whole new set of logos over which the WMF will supposedly not take the same action. I'll be the first to say I think the idea of having a contest to create a new logo is a bit silly. I think we should continue to use the meta/community logo and that it's allowed use for the community should be very very broad (much broader then we would allow for the Wikipedia Globe for example). I think we have enough issues with branding given what I would consider mistakes in the past and present and we don't need 'yet another' for the community (given that we also use all of the other logos to represent the community at times). I agree - it hardly make any sense, especially because the story may happen again. If the new logo is popular it will be trademarked by WMF as well :-) I don't, however, think that they did the wrong thing here. I've been around meta and the community for a long time and I would have honestly assumed long ago that the community logo was trademarked and the foundation was just very free in letting it be used. All of the foundations trademarks were going through registration processes around the world because they realized that our portfolio did not cover us very well. This made total sense to be included in it. Well, actually the legal situation is defined by trademark policy of WMF: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Trademark_policy According to this policy it applies to the following logos: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_official_marks so it includes MediaWiki and community logos as well in similar way as Wikipedia logo. You can read in the policy: The following basic guidelines apply to almost any use of the Wikimedia Marks in printed materials, including marketing, articles and other publicity-related materials, and websites: Proper Form - Wikimedia Marks should be used in their exact form — neither abbreviated nor combined with any other word or words (e.g., Wiki or MyWikipedia rather than Wikipedia); Notice - The following notice should appear somewhere nearby (at least on the same page or on the credits page) the first use of a Wikimedia Mark: [TRADEMARK] is a ['registered', if applicable] trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation; Distinguishable - In at least the first reference, we ask that the trademark should be set apart from surrounding text, either by capitalizing it or by italicizing, bolding or underlining it. In addition, we ask that your website avoid copying the look and feel of the Wikimedia websites — again, we do not want the visitor to your website to be confused about which company he/she is dealing with. Attention Paid to Visual Guidelines - any use of the Wikimedia
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Le 2013-03-18 13:01, Fae a écrit : I suggest you step away from the technology component before this becomes a mantra. Given a span of 100 years, assumptions become rather large. We can start to assume that within one or two decades, *everyone* on the planet is data-connected, we can assume that language barriers break down or become irrelevant, we can assume that connection and hardware costs become vanishingly small and we can assume that engagement with human knowledge is fully immersive. Your assumptions seems really big to me. I won't discuss the *everyone* on the planet is data-connected, I hope you are right, but to my mind it sounds like a very optimistic point of view. This depend a lot on the global economic developpement, as well as mankind ability to find a way to sustain such a huge energy requirement: electronic devices for everyone imply electricity for everyone (hopefuly clean produced/stored/delivered). Now language barriers break down or become irrelevant. That statement is so big that I am wondering wether I am misintrepreting an ironic statement as a serious one or not. After all I am not an english native speaker, so excuse me if you were ironic, but otherwise this is just a real case example of how huge the language barriers are. They are many challenges on the language barriers. And to my mind we, as wikimedia contributors, can play an important role in this challenges. We know that many language are disapearing right now, impoverish human culture. Unfortunately I discovered that even on this present list some people were using metric like how many scientific papers where published in this language last year to evaluate wether it was an important language or something which we may let completely disapear (sum of all human knowledge?). So not only there is work to preserve language (and culture) diversity, but there's even work to do to convince people that it's important in the first place (for scientific-centric mind, think about what you need to realize works in anthropology and history, for example). An other thing in which we will, to my mind, be really helpful, will be the wikiomega/wiktionnaries integration into wikidata. This will enable to see which concepts are covered into which languages, and possibly help to build equivalent neologisms with respect to the equivalent etymological path/construction in the target language. Moreover this could help build new languages, possibly yet another attempt for an international language. Not that I would be enthusiast with such a project, I'm fine with learning esperanto which as far as I know is the current most successful project in this category. Now, many linguistic critics (and also non-linguistic ones, not relevant here) where published on esperanto, so maybe some linguists may come with something better and that they could be helped with a the semantic cartography wikidata could become. It doesn't look like UNO and other international organsiation are realy interested to give ressources to build and promote an international language, so may be __we__ could do it. Developing a strategy would require some big thinking of scenarios: * Does Wikimedia get subsumed into a new ecology of open knowledge organizations? * Does operations become irrelevant as it will be naturally factored out? * In a future of cheap as chips access, does access mean socialization and education? Classically, one might bounce around environmental scenarios such as religious division, hyper-connection social instability (meme threats), population crisis etc. It's a big talk, and above was mentioned spending 5 years on this. Consider how darn slow us unpaid Wikimedia volunteers are to nit-pick our way forward, thinking of how we take longer than a year+ to reach some conclusions is not unreasonable, and it is not as easy as saying quote examples as if this was a discussion short-cut. Are refering to something like Basic income guarantee ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee -- Association Culture-Libre http://www.culture-libre.org/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Report, February 2013
Le 2013-03-18 21:45, Garfield Byrd a écrit : Pine: Our relationship with JP Morgan Chase is that they handle part of our international banking. This is a separate division of the bank from the one that had the trading losses. I agree with you that this type of news report is not good news. I have reviewed the information I have available, and have determined that the money JP Morgan Chase is holding for the Wikimedia Foundation is not at risk. When we did a review of banks that can handle our international banking, unfortunately all of the banks we looked at were involved in some sort scandal, from risky trades to LIBOR manipulation. This is not an ideal situation for a community based movement and I am continuing to look at options for all or some parts of our international banking needs. Interesting, do you plane to make a public report on this topic? -- Association Culture-Libre http://www.culture-libre.org/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] open positions at WMF
Daniel, On Mar 19, 2013, at 6:33 PM, Daniel Zahn dz...@wikimedia.org wrote: BTW, why is WMF looking for a WordPress Developer? So is it just design or is it developing? If it is actual software development, i'd have to think who is going to review and maintain that code after the super short-term contractor is gone. The changes to the plugins and themes that would happen (have happenend) are and would continue to be in gerrit code review. Communications wants to simply update existing install, and while I can review, I don't really have time to code (or if I code, I can't self-review). This would most likely be in the form of an update of the existing custom plugin and a new theme (to replace Victor). Remember it also has to be deployed to production somehow and i'd already like to point out now that it should have reviews from other devs, not just asking ops to merge it, especially with Wordpress' history of exploits. The blog is already deployed in production (by you and RobH), so I assume you've firewalled it already as much as possible, so the main concern if exploited would would be privacy leak from *.wikimedia.org As for updating it, I'm open to ideas on how we can handle this. I can ask around in Features for someone willing to help. Right now the process is ad hoc and ends up being a pain to keep up to date from Ops's side (basically someone notices the plugins and core are out of date and requests an update). ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] open positions at WMF
On Mar 19, 2013, at 7:06 PM, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 9:20 AM, Jay Walsh jwa...@wikimedia.org wrote: We're really interested in wiki-fying the blog at some point too, or at least marrying more of the technologies. I'd love to us to use a wiki-based system, but that's a bit further down the pipeline. I'd like to see us incorporate SUL so Wikimedia project usernames could be used for comments and posting. I think that will be a question of using our very limited resources, but I'm super interested in that. MediaWiki + LQT (or the likes) for the comments and you are basically there. In addition you have less to worry about in regards to the WordpRess exploits (as pointed out by Daniel) and you open up to a whole new ecocycle of developers we already have. That's an interesting idea (after all, WordPress and MediaWiki's are redundant CMSs), and it would fix some annoying issues of the blog workflow (signon for commenting/publishing, and the redundant cycle comm takes on drafting on wiki and translating for WordPress), but it sounds like a larger scope of work than a temporary WordPress contractor (and a longer review cycle). I can't commit that much resources out of Features for anything beyond reviews of tweaks to the blog and Communications budget for developing this is very modest. Are you suggesting that we add this to next fiscal year's plan and repurpose one of our teams for this? Right now I'm assuming the priorities of Visual Editor, Parsoid, Editor Engagement (Echo, Flow), and E3 take precedence and are pretty much set well into 2013-14. If I had extra room, I'd probably prioritize global profile and affiliations/wikiprojects support moving the blog to MediaWiki. :-( terry chay 최태리 Director of Features Engineering Wikimedia Foundation “Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment.” p: +1 (415) 839-6885 x6832 m: +1 (408) 480-8902 e: tc...@wikimedia.org i: http://terrychay.com/ w: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tychay aim: terrychay ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Mid-Year Financial Statements
Hi Pine! *We overtly recruit outside of SF. I think our latest hire was from Texas! Last year 23% were remote employees, and that percentage has increased to 31% this year. Of that 31%, 17% live abroad. **As of February 2013, 27% of staff is female, 28% minority, 34% are foreign nationals, and 69% have lived or worked abroad. ** We'd like more. :) If anyone knows interested candidates, current jobs can be found at jobs.wikimedia.org.* * * *Warmest regards, Gayle* * * -- From: *ENWP Pine* deyntest...@hotmail.com Date: 11 March 2013 13:06 To: gb...@wikimedia.org gb...@wikimedia.org, wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Garfield, Thanks for the report. Congrats again to the fundraising team for what they accomplished this for this round of fundraising. The QA for the mid-year report talks about a hiring pace that is slower than planned, and says We attribute this to the fact that the market for engineers is extremely competitive in San Francisco right now. I'd like to ask you or Gayle about how aggressive WMF is about recruiting outside of SF. I think there are probably engineers at large tech companies outside of SF who would enjoy a change of culture from their current employers to WMF if they're willing to take a pay cut. I think that they would be good candidates for the recruiting team, so I'd strongly encourage aggressive recruiting outside of San Francisco. Thanks, Pine -- Gayle Karen K. Young Chief Talent and Culture Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415.310.8416 www.wikimediafoundation.org ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] open positions at WMF
On 20 March 2013 02:06, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 9:20 AM, Jay Walsh jwa...@wikimedia.org wrote: We're really interested in wiki-fying the blog at some point too, or at least marrying more of the technologies. I'd love to us to use a wiki-based system, but that's a bit further down the pipeline. I'd like to see us incorporate SUL so Wikimedia project usernames could be used for comments and posting. I think that will be a question of using our very limited resources, but I'm super interested in that. MediaWiki + LQT (or the likes) for the comments and you are basically there. In addition you have less to worry about in regards to the WordpRess exploits (as pointed out by Daniel) and you open up to a whole new ecocycle of developers we already have. Cobbling together blog software is a one-man project; having a versatile, well-maintained and mature blog engine with ubiquitous third-party support is another matter. You could turn WordPress into an encyclopedia CMS too, but it would be well below optimum. WordPress has all manner of problems (I am painfully aware of this, I have to hit it with a hammer in my day job) but it is basically the best available for the job. MediaWiki has all manner of problems (you are painfully aware of this, I'm certain) but, similarly, there's nothing better for the job. It's possible we could do better with something adapted, but not from MediaWiki. For one thing, WordPress's visual editor works ... - d. - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Tomorrow: Office hour inside out (program evaluation)
Hi folks, Tomorrow at 17:00 UTC, I will be holding an office hour about program evaluation on #wikimedia-office. The target audience for this office hour will be chapter representatives and volunteers who are currently running (or planning to run) programs and programmatic activities. You'll find some background information about why program evaluation might be worth talking about in my most recent blog post on the Foundation's blog: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/03/01/lets-start-talking-about-program-evaluation/ As we all know, most office hours follow a certain rule: there's one poor staffer who is getting grilled by the people on the IRC channel – people ask a variety of questions and the staff person tries to answer every question in a limited amount of time. It's a lot of fun (I guess, at least for the people who're asking the questions) and it has been a good way of direct communication between WMF employees and the community. Now, this office hour will be different. Not that I don't enjoy being grilled for one hour :-) I've done IRC office hours several times before and I always enjoyed answering questions. The reason for this office hour to be different is that I want to _listen to you in the first place_. I would like to learn more about * _your_ thoughts about why evaluation might be important * _your_ experiences with making evaluation a part of program design * _your_ hopes and fears when it comes to increasingly evaluating programs and programmatic activities in the future * _your_ ideas and feedback on evaluation practices Ideally, we would have some people in the room tomorrow who have done some kind evaluation in the past or who are planning to embark on evaluation work in the near future. With that said – if you have no idea about what program evaluation is and you'd like to learn more about it, you're invited as well! Or maybe you're just curious to see if this office hour inside out is going to play out well ;-) I'm looking forward to meeting you tomorrow at 17:00 UTC, Frank ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] open positions at WMF
On the other hand, how hard could it be to just write an extension to integrate a wordpress database and interface into a mediawiki? Call it a new namespace on the mediawiki end, and... uh... horrible things on the wordpress end... I was going to say that if I had enough spare time I could probably pull that off, but putting this down in text it now occurs to me how utterly insane that is, especially considering how hard a time I had just making my own wordpress and mediawiki installs look the same. Even so, it definitely could be done, and it'd probably be easier to maintain and update than making something from scratch. I mean, they're both php, with somewhat similar structures... On 20/03/13 18:57, David Gerard wrote: On 20 March 2013 02:06, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 9:20 AM, Jay Walsh jwa...@wikimedia.org wrote: We're really interested in wiki-fying the blog at some point too, or at least marrying more of the technologies. I'd love to us to use a wiki-based system, but that's a bit further down the pipeline. I'd like to see us incorporate SUL so Wikimedia project usernames could be used for comments and posting. I think that will be a question of using our very limited resources, but I'm super interested in that. MediaWiki + LQT (or the likes) for the comments and you are basically there. In addition you have less to worry about in regards to the WordpRess exploits (as pointed out by Daniel) and you open up to a whole new ecocycle of developers we already have. Cobbling together blog software is a one-man project; having a versatile, well-maintained and mature blog engine with ubiquitous third-party support is another matter. You could turn WordPress into an encyclopedia CMS too, but it would be well below optimum. WordPress has all manner of problems (I am painfully aware of this, I have to hit it with a hammer in my day job) but it is basically the best available for the job. MediaWiki has all manner of problems (you are painfully aware of this, I'm certain) but, similarly, there's nothing better for the job. It's possible we could do better with something adapted, but not from MediaWiki. For one thing, WordPress's visual editor works ... - d. - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- -— Isarra ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] open positions at WMF
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 1:54 PM, Isarra Yos zhoris...@gmail.com wrote: On the other hand, how hard could it be to just write an extension to integrate a wordpress database and interface into a mediawiki? Call it a new namespace on the mediawiki end, and... uh... horrible things on the wordpress end... I was going to say that if I had enough spare time I could probably pull that off, but putting this down in text it now occurs to me how utterly insane that is, especially considering how hard a time I had just making my own wordpress and mediawiki installs look the same. Even so, it definitely could be done, and it'd probably be easier to maintain and update than making something from scratch. I mean, they're both php, with somewhat similar structures... I actually don't think it would be. Mediawiki is an awesome tool for many things but we really shouldn't be using it for things it isn't good for/meant for. Wordpress is a very good, modular, option for bogs in particular and is, in my opinion, a perfectly acceptable thing to use for that. In order to have any good design setup for the blog on mediawiki we would have to be using a fair bit of rawhtml (something that mediawiki allows but was never really meant for) and very complicated templates. We would also need to have a much more understandable comment system then mediawiki has right now. Liquid threads isn't meant for this type of conversation, mediawiki itself sucks horribly for a comment type system and while flow type stuff may be helpful it is down the road and not really in scope currently from my understanding. In order to make it flexible enough for those running the blog on the front end (Staff / Volunteers etc) we would have to make it relatively easy to understand that rawhtml/template system at least at some level which is, in my opinion, too much to ask of them. They should be focused on what they are writing and other work, not trying to work around the page itself. Our current visual editor is also unlikely to be workable with that complicated of a template system in any near future. It would create an enormous amount of complication for something that doesn't need it. Dogfooding our product is great but shouldnt' be done just because it should be done where the product makes sense for the task. James James Alexander Manager, Merchandise Wikimedia Foundation (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [Toolserver-l] [TS logo] Fwd: Free as in Wikimedia Foundation
Hi, Nathan- On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: I won't argue the fact that there is value in protecting the iconography of the Wikimedia movement from abuse. What I argue with is the approach of the legal department You're right that we could have communicated this better, and I apologize for that on behalf of legal. If you're familiar with my posts to this list, I'm not normally on the anti-WMF side of debates (for instance, wrt WCA). But when they make a boob move, I don't think its bad faith to point it out. I agree, and I'm glad your email gives the legal team the same benefit of the doubt. I've posted a much more extensive discussion of each of these points (and several others Nathan and other people have raised) on the talk page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Logo#Follow_up_on_discussion_here_and_on_wikimedia-l In the interests of keeping things in one place, I'd ask that we move the discussion there. Thanks- Luis -- Luis Villa Deputy General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext. 6810 NOTICE: *This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity.* ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] open positions at WMF
On 20/03/13 21:09, James Alexander wrote: On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 1:54 PM, Isarra Yos zhoris...@gmail.com wrote: On the other hand, how hard could it be to just write an extension to integrate a wordpress database and interface into a mediawiki? Call it a new namespace on the mediawiki end, and... uh... horrible things on the wordpress end... I was going to say that if I had enough spare time I could probably pull that off, but putting this down in text it now occurs to me how utterly insane that is, especially considering how hard a time I had just making my own wordpress and mediawiki installs look the same. Even so, it definitely could be done, and it'd probably be easier to maintain and update than making something from scratch. I mean, they're both php, with somewhat similar structures... I actually don't think it would be. Mediawiki is an awesome tool for many things but we really shouldn't be using it for things it isn't good for/meant for. Wordpress is a very good, modular, option for bogs in particular and is, in my opinion, a perfectly acceptable thing to use for that. In order to have any good design setup for the blog on mediawiki we would have to be using a fair bit of rawhtml (something that mediawiki allows but was never really meant for) and very complicated templates. We would also need to have a much more understandable comment system then mediawiki has right now. Liquid threads isn't meant for this type of conversation, mediawiki itself sucks horribly for a comment type system and while flow type stuff may be helpful it is down the road and not really in scope currently from my understanding. In order to make it flexible enough for those running the blog on the front end (Staff / Volunteers etc) we would have to make it relatively easy to understand that rawhtml/template system at least at some level which is, in my opinion, too much to ask of them. They should be focused on what they are writing and other work, not trying to work around the page itself. Our current visual editor is also unlikely to be workable with that complicated of a template system in any near future. It would create an enormous amount of complication for something that doesn't need it. Dogfooding our product is great but shouldnt' be done just because it should be done where the product makes sense for the task. James James Alexander Manager, Merchandise Wikimedia Foundation (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l MediaWiki is good for revision control and some forms of categorisation and has all our users. Wordpress works for blog displaying and organising pages and tagging stuff and generally throwing it at the readers. What I am suggesting would take both of those, stuff the -admin interface and editing and revisions into mediawiki, but have wordpress handle the content and displaying it to readers (just dealing with the current revisions on that end)... in a mediawiki skin, even, and then... well, explode, probably. I dunno, if it didn't explode I know plenty of folks who would use this, but it probably wouldn't actually help Wikimedia that much, considering what they're apparently looking for specifically. -- -— Isarra ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Report, February 2013
Mathieu: As I make progress on this issue, I will be reporting to the Wikimedia Foundation Audit Committee. Any significant changes, on this topic, will be included as part of the scheduled reports of the Wikimedia Foundation. Regards, Garfield On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 3:54 AM, Mathieu Stumpf psychosl...@culture-libre.org wrote: Le 2013-03-18 21:45, Garfield Byrd a écrit : Pine: Our relationship with JP Morgan Chase is that they handle part of our international banking. This is a separate division of the bank from the one that had the trading losses. I agree with you that this type of news report is not good news. I have reviewed the information I have available, and have determined that the money JP Morgan Chase is holding for the Wikimedia Foundation is not at risk. When we did a review of banks that can handle our international banking, unfortunately all of the banks we looked at were involved in some sort scandal, from risky trades to LIBOR manipulation. This is not an ideal situation for a community based movement and I am continuing to look at options for all or some parts of our international banking needs. Interesting, do you plane to make a public report on this topic? -- Association Culture-Libre http://www.culture-libre.org/ __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Garfield Byrd Chief of Finance and Administration Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext 6787 415.882.0495 (fax) www.wikimediafoundation.org Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! *https://donate.wikimedia.org* ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] open positions at WMF
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 5:48 PM, Isarra Yos zhoris...@gmail.com wrote: Dogfooding our product is great but shouldnt' be done just because it should be done where the product makes sense for the task. Supporting more flexible designs - particularly in the realm of extensions - would be good for Mediawiki in the long term, however. MediaWiki is good for revision control and some forms of categorisation and has all our users. Wordpress works for blog displaying and organising pages and tagging stuff and generally throwing it at the readers. What I am suggesting would take both of those, stuff the -admin interface and editing and revisions into mediawiki, but have wordpress handle the content and displaying it to readers (just dealing with the current revisions on that end)... in a mediawiki skin, even, and then... well, explode, probably. I dunno, if it didn't explode I know plenty of folks who would use this, but it probably wouldn't actually help Wikimedia that much, considering what they're apparently looking for specifically. And there are already extensions such as http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WPMW and http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WordPress_Comments ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
SJ: I have been asked by the Audit Committee to do a report on the Endowment Issue and present the report at their next meeting, which will take place in this summer. Regards, Garfield On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 10:12 AM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 12:53 PM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Nathan wrote: To return to the endowment again as the main topic, I think there are some risks we need to consider in an endowment. In general I think having an endowment is a good idea for a charitable institution, Yes and yes. I suggested quite recently that the Board pass a resolution creating a committee to examine the points you raise and additional questions outlined here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment/Questions. I continue to think that we (as a community) are still not at a place where we can make good judgments about whether to set up an endowment. There simply isn't enough information available to make a sound decision, in my opinion. That said, the idea of creating an endowment does seem like an idea that has broad support for further consideration and exploration, which is why I think an investigative or exploratory committee would make a lot of sense here and now. Thoughts? More information is certainly needed. It is bound up in other strategic thinking, as others have noted. I think we should set up a strategy committee, with a subgroup focused on an endowment and long-term investment options. SJ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Garfield Byrd Chief of Finance and Administration Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext 6787 415.882.0495 (fax) www.wikimediafoundation.org Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! *https://donate.wikimedia.org* ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Mid-Year Financial Statements
Thomas: Our plans for the reserve are included in the WMF Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for the 2010-11 Audited Financial Statements: *The cash balance has increased from $12 million to over $21 million. What is the * *Wikimedia Foundation's view on its increasing cash reserve?* * * *The Wikimedia Foundation wants to have an appropriate amount of cash in reserve. * *This is important for stability and the overall financial health of the organization. * *A nonprofit wants to ensure it has a sufficient amount of cash available to it, so that it doesn't * *face a crisis in the event that unforeseen costs arise, or that an external or internal event hurts its ability to fund-raise.* *Different non-profits have different levels of reserves: it is common for young or very * *small non-profits to have as little as a few months' spending available in their reserve * *fund and while others may have as much as three years' spending in theirs. There is no * *generally accepted consensus on what size of reserve is appropriate but the Wikimedia * *Foundation has been able to grow its reserve over time. The current reserve represents * *less than one year of funding, at our current spending level. We believe that's * *appropriate for a growing non-profit of our size and age, with our goal to have one year * *of operating funding available over time.* Each of our annual plans, including the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan for 2012 - 2013http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4f/2012-13_Wikimedia_Foundation_Plan_FINAL_FOR_WEBSITE.pdf on page 54, show that the reserves of the Wikimedia Foundation are built up intentionally consistent with the above statement. Any surplus from operations are in addition to the planned growth in the reserves of the Wikimedia Foundation. Regards, Garfield On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 2:55 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: On 18 March 2013 20:00, Garfield Byrd gb...@wikimedia.org wrote: Thomas: The Wikimedia Foundation is looking at its capacity to hire and is reviewing how many positions we can hire next fiscal year. We are working overall to have a good annual plan that matches our outcomes, but with a dynamic movement like this one, variance from plan is a part of the process as we want to make sure we are spending money prudently and not just to meet plan. In statistics we don't call it variance if it is always in the same direction - we call it bias. A high variance is often unavoidable, but bias is generally a bad thing. You'll note, my question wasn't about changing the spending, it was about changing the planning process. You shouldn't spend money just to meet your plan, certainly, but you should plan as accurately as possible. Prudence should be explicitly allowed for in reserves or a contingencies budget, it shouldn't appear accidentally due to biased planning. In addition, since unspent money goes into the Wikimedia Foundation reserves, which we are still in process of building, we have some time to calibrate the the annual planning process to the needs of the Wikimedia Movement and the Wikimedia Foundation. Can you elaborate on your plans for the reserves? When I search for reserves policy on the foundation wiki, it doesn't find anything. That is extremely worrying... Reserves should be built up intentionally, not as a result of accidental underspends. Either you need the reserves, in which case you should plan to save the money, or you don't, in which case you should either spend the money or not raise it in the first place. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Garfield Byrd Chief of Finance and Administration Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext 6787 415.882.0495 (fax) www.wikimediafoundation.org Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! *https://donate.wikimedia.org* ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Mid-Year Financial Statements
Yes, I've seen the mentions in the FAQs. That doesn't constitute a reserve policy and is very vague. In the absence of a reserve policy, we must assume your policy is to have the planned level of reserves. If you underspend and put the extra in reserves, that means you have too much in reserves. If you have some long-term target and you simply reach that target earlier by underspending, that could be reasonable, but you don't seem to have long-term plans for your reserves. On Mar 21, 2013 12:31 AM, Garfield Byrd gb...@wikimedia.org wrote: Thomas: Our plans for the reserve are included in the WMF Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for the 2010-11 Audited Financial Statements: *The cash balance has increased from $12 million to over $21 million. What is the * *Wikimedia Foundation's view on its increasing cash reserve?* * * *The Wikimedia Foundation wants to have an appropriate amount of cash in reserve. * *This is important for stability and the overall financial health of the organization. * *A nonprofit wants to ensure it has a sufficient amount of cash available to it, so that it doesn't * *face a crisis in the event that unforeseen costs arise, or that an external or internal event hurts its ability to fund-raise.* *Different non-profits have different levels of reserves: it is common for young or very * *small non-profits to have as little as a few months' spending available in their reserve * *fund and while others may have as much as three years' spending in theirs. There is no * *generally accepted consensus on what size of reserve is appropriate but the Wikimedia * *Foundation has been able to grow its reserve over time. The current reserve represents * *less than one year of funding, at our current spending level. We believe that's * *appropriate for a growing non-profit of our size and age, with our goal to have one year * *of operating funding available over time.* Each of our annual plans, including the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan for 2012 - 2013 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4f/2012-13_Wikimedia_Foundation_Plan_FINAL_FOR_WEBSITE.pdf on page 54, show that the reserves of the Wikimedia Foundation are built up intentionally consistent with the above statement. Any surplus from operations are in addition to the planned growth in the reserves of the Wikimedia Foundation. Regards, Garfield On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 2:55 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: On 18 March 2013 20:00, Garfield Byrd gb...@wikimedia.org wrote: Thomas: The Wikimedia Foundation is looking at its capacity to hire and is reviewing how many positions we can hire next fiscal year. We are working overall to have a good annual plan that matches our outcomes, but with a dynamic movement like this one, variance from plan is a part of the process as we want to make sure we are spending money prudently and not just to meet plan. In statistics we don't call it variance if it is always in the same direction - we call it bias. A high variance is often unavoidable, but bias is generally a bad thing. You'll note, my question wasn't about changing the spending, it was about changing the planning process. You shouldn't spend money just to meet your plan, certainly, but you should plan as accurately as possible. Prudence should be explicitly allowed for in reserves or a contingencies budget, it shouldn't appear accidentally due to biased planning. In addition, since unspent money goes into the Wikimedia Foundation reserves, which we are still in process of building, we have some time to calibrate the the annual planning process to the needs of the Wikimedia Movement and the Wikimedia Foundation. Can you elaborate on your plans for the reserves? When I search for reserves policy on the foundation wiki, it doesn't find anything. That is extremely worrying... Reserves should be built up intentionally, not as a result of accidental underspends. Either you need the reserves, in which case you should plan to save the money, or you don't, in which case you should either spend the money or not raise it in the first place. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Garfield Byrd Chief of Finance and Administration Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext 6787 415.882.0495 (fax) www.wikimediafoundation.org Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! *https://donate.wikimedia.org* ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour inside out (program evaluation)
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:31:57 -0700 From: Frank Schulenburg frank.schulenb...@gmail.com To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Tomorrow: Office hour inside out (program evaluation) Message-ID: cakoobqbk6rcui1bthp41mbvjtdzdqvvsjrlgsfywxuuogap...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Hi folks, Tomorrow at 17:00 UTC, I will be holding an office hour about program evaluation on #wikimedia-office. The target audience for this office hour will be chapter representatives and volunteers who are currently running (or planning to run) programs and programmatic activities. You'll find some background information about why program evaluation might be worth talking about in my most recent blog post on the Foundation's blog: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/03/01/lets-start-talking-about-program-evaluation/ As we all know, most office hours follow a certain rule: there's one poor staffer who is getting grilled by the people on the IRC channel – people ask a variety of questions and the staff person tries to answer every question in a limited amount of time. It's a lot of fun (I guess, at least for the people who're asking the questions) and it has been a good way of direct communication between WMF employees and the community. Now, this office hour will be different. Not that I don't enjoy being grilled for one hour :-) I've done IRC office hours several times before and I always enjoyed answering questions. The reason for this office hour to be different is that I want to _listen to you in the first place_. I would like to learn more about * _your_ thoughts about why evaluation might be important * _your_ experiences with making evaluation a part of program design * _your_ hopes and fears when it comes to increasingly evaluating programs and programmatic activities in the future * _your_ ideas and feedback on evaluation practices Ideally, we would have some people in the room tomorrow who have done some kind evaluation in the past or who are planning to embark on evaluation work in the near future. With that said – if you have no idea about what program evaluation is and you'd like to learn more about it, you're invited as well! Or maybe you're just curious to see if this office hour inside out is going to play out well ;-) I'm looking forward to meeting you tomorrow at 17:00 UTC, Frank I'd encourage people who are interested in this subject to read up on program management and related subjects. This sort of management has been studied extensively in academia and in business, and in some ways I feel that WMF has catch-up work to do and lacks expertise, although I'm hopeful that WMF is trying to improve in this area. I'd also suggest that people read the report about projects that encountered significant problems at WMF, particularly the IEP, and a more recent example is the mixed reception to AFT5. I hope that program managers at WMF learn both good practices and what to avoid. I also hope that WMF ties program metrics to evaluations for the responsible supervisors when considering whether to continue or renew employment contracts, as well as when considering promotions. Cheers, Pine ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Mid-Year Financial Statements
Thomas, I agree with you that it would make sense to have a more thoroughly defined reserve policy, but I also caution against micromanaging the reserve. I believe that I said in my previous email directed to Erik that I'm wondering what the downside is of having some underspend for payroll due to hiring that happens later than planned. Unless the underspend is significant enough that it should impact the targets used by the Annual Fundraiser in a significant way, believe that the underspend isn't much of a concern. The issue that worries me about delayed hiring is the possibility of delays or disruptions to program schedules. Pine ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour inside out (program evaluation)
I hope the Grants Retrospective comes up as one possible model for evaluation. Its output had some useful features and side effects. On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 12:48 AM, ENWP Pine deyntest...@hotmail.com wrote: Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:31:57 -0700 From: Frank Schulenburg frank.schulenb...@gmail.com To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Tomorrow: Office hour inside out (program evaluation) Message-ID: cakoobqbk6rcui1bthp41mbvjtdzdqvvsjrlgsfywxuuogap...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Hi folks, Tomorrow at 17:00 UTC, I will be holding an office hour about program evaluation on #wikimedia-office. The target audience for this office hour will be chapter representatives and volunteers who are currently running (or planning to run) programs and programmatic activities. You'll find some background information about why program evaluation might be worth talking about in my most recent blog post on the Foundation's blog: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/03/01/lets-start-talking-about-program-evaluation/ As we all know, most office hours follow a certain rule: there's one poor staffer who is getting grilled by the people on the IRC channel – people ask a variety of questions and the staff person tries to answer every question in a limited amount of time. It's a lot of fun (I guess, at least for the people who're asking the questions) and it has been a good way of direct communication between WMF employees and the community. Now, this office hour will be different. Not that I don't enjoy being grilled for one hour :-) I've done IRC office hours several times before and I always enjoyed answering questions. The reason for this office hour to be different is that I want to _listen to you in the first place_. I would like to learn more about * _your_ thoughts about why evaluation might be important * _your_ experiences with making evaluation a part of program design * _your_ hopes and fears when it comes to increasingly evaluating programs and programmatic activities in the future * _your_ ideas and feedback on evaluation practices Ideally, we would have some people in the room tomorrow who have done some kind evaluation in the past or who are planning to embark on evaluation work in the near future. With that said – if you have no idea about what program evaluation is and you'd like to learn more about it, you're invited as well! Or maybe you're just curious to see if this office hour inside out is going to play out well ;-) I'm looking forward to meeting you tomorrow at 17:00 UTC, Frank I'd encourage people who are interested in this subject to read up on program management and related subjects. This sort of management has been studied extensively in academia and in business, and in some ways I feel that WMF has catch-up work to do and lacks expertise, although I'm hopeful that WMF is trying to improve in this area. I'd also suggest that people read the report about projects that encountered significant problems at WMF, particularly the IEP, and a more recent example is the mixed reception to AFT5. I hope that program managers at WMF learn both good practices and what to avoid. I also hope that WMF ties program metrics to evaluations for the responsible supervisors when considering whether to continue or renew employment contracts, as well as when considering promotions. Cheers, Pine ___ 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
