Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[James Alexander]

On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 5:12 AM, James Alexander 
wrote:

> A completely un deduped (and so is double+ counting anyone who is eligible
> on multiple wikis because of activity there) number is 207911 for 2013.
>
> Caveats:
>
> This number is quick and dirty and 'reasonable' as a starting point but
> far from perfect, among other things:
>
>- It doesn't include 100% of the staff or developers, only the staff
>who had staff rights or asked and developers who asked because they
>couldn't vote in other ways). This is a relatively small amount of missing
>people.
>- It still includes bots and blocked users, because that was checked
>later in the process. I, again, think this is a relatively small amount
>given number of bots + blocked users with more then 300 edits relative to
>the total. It is possible some of the bots are very active across the board
>though which will be helped by the de dupping.
>- It is not de dupped meaning it double+ counts people who were active
>on many wikis or accounts, sometimes a lot (for example there are 7 entries
>for my personal account, 7 for my work account, and 69 for the steward
>DerHexer given global work). Sorting through the crap that the script spat
>out is more then I'm willing to do at 5am but I will try to do this later
>today and get this number down. My guess is this is in the 10k range.
>
>
>

So I was wrong about the extent of the de duplication. In the end there
were about *50124* unique people marked off on the voter list (again, like
above, that does still include some bots/blocked on multiple wiki users but
they are only counted once each)  so call it 50k.

Using that number:

   - With a total of 1809 valid votes that is about a 3.6% turnout.
   - We know that another 534 people authenticated to vote but did not
   actually cast a valid vote (and so most likely left after seeing the
   ballot)[1]. That would account for an additional 1%


[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Post_mortem#Voter_participation
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[Dan Garry]

Just to reiterate, the engineering work is almost done. We do plan to begin
the community engagement and announcements in 2014, but it's going to take
a while to make sure everyone's contacted and to give them time to digest
the announcement and act accordingly.

As we're almost done with the engineering work it's not really a matter of
engineering resources anymore (which is why SUL no longer features in the
engineering top 5 priorities in Q2), it's just about making sure we do the
communications right, and that takes time.

Dan

On 5 October 2014 22:19, Dan Garry  wrote:

> On 5 October 2014 22:08, Pine W  wrote:
>
>> Thanks Dan. Can you share an approximate completion date?
>>
> Not at this stage, I'm afraid. I will only give a date when I can say with
> some confidence that we can meet it, and there are too many free variables
> for me to be able to say that right now.
>
> What I can say with confidence is that the SUL finalisation will not
> happen in 2014. :-)
>
>> (What is with half of the WMF staff responding to routine emails on
>> weekends? All you workaholics and overachievers...)  :)
>>
> The weekend is when we're free from all the meetings and we actually get
> to focus on our work. ;-)
>
> Dan
>
> --
> Dan Garry
> Associate Product Manager, Mobile Apps
> Wikimedia Foundation
>



-- 
Dan Garry
Associate Product Manager, Mobile Apps
Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[Dan Garry]

On 5 October 2014 22:08, Pine W  wrote:

> Thanks Dan. Can you share an approximate completion date?
>
Not at this stage, I'm afraid. I will only give a date when I can say with
some confidence that we can meet it, and there are too many free variables
for me to be able to say that right now.

What I can say with confidence is that the SUL finalisation will not happen
in 2014. :-)

> (What is with half of the WMF staff responding to routine emails on
> weekends? All you workaholics and overachievers...)  :)
>
The weekend is when we're free from all the meetings and we actually get to
focus on our work. ;-)

Dan

-- 
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Associate Product Manager, Mobile Apps
Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[Pine W]

Thanks Dan. Can you share an approximate completion date?

(What is with half of the WMF staff responding to routine emails on
weekends? All you workaholics and overachievers...)  :)

Pine
On Oct 5, 2014 8:55 PM, "Dan Garry"  wrote:

> On 5 October 2014 10:00, Pine W  wrote:
>
>> How are we doing on SUL finalization anyway? If I remember correctly the
>> lead on this is Dan so I'm pinging him.
>>
> Hey Pine,
>
> Progress is pretty good. As noted in Erik's presentation at Monthly
> Metrics last Thursday, we're wrapping up the necessary engineering work and
> starting to figure out a date that makes sense to perform the finalisation.
> The engineering work is mostly feature complete (with the notable exception
> of one half of one of the initiatives, which is half finished). The work
> still needs rigorous testing, which I can arrange by getting everything
> deployed to testwiki once we're finished developing it all.
>
> We're not quite at where I had hoped we would be (I'd hoped the
> engineering work would be totally featured complete), which was noted by
> Erik colouring the SUL box yellow rather than green during Metrics. That
> said, the progress we've made towards the SUL finalisation this quarter has
> been more than the progress in all previous quarters combined... at least,
> while I've been at the WMF. So I'm pretty pleased.
>
> Dan
>
> --
> Dan Garry
> Associate Product Manager, Mobile Apps
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[Dan Garry]

On 5 October 2014 10:00, Pine W  wrote:

> How are we doing on SUL finalization anyway? If I remember correctly the
> lead on this is Dan so I'm pinging him.
>
Hey Pine,

Progress is pretty good. As noted in Erik's presentation at Monthly Metrics
last Thursday, we're wrapping up the necessary engineering work and
starting to figure out a date that makes sense to perform the finalisation.
The engineering work is mostly feature complete (with the notable exception
of one half of one of the initiatives, which is half finished). The work
still needs rigorous testing, which I can arrange by getting everything
deployed to testwiki once we're finished developing it all.

We're not quite at where I had hoped we would be (I'd hoped the engineering
work would be totally featured complete), which was noted by Erik colouring
the SUL box yellow rather than green during Metrics. That said, the
progress we've made towards the SUL finalisation this quarter has been more
than the progress in all previous quarters combined... at least, while I've
been at the WMF. So I'm pretty pleased.

Dan

-- 
Dan Garry
Associate Product Manager, Mobile Apps
Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[Risker]

On 5 October 2014 20:51, Marc A. Pelletier  wrote:

> On 10/05/2014 08:24 AM, John Mark Vandenberg wrote:
> > I checked a few of the WMF admin staff who have been employed more
> > than a year, and many dont look likely to reach the 300 threshold,
> > even with wikitech and foundation wikis included.
>
> An interesting question, I think, is /whether/ anyone from the
> Foundation ever voted that would not otherwise have had sufferage from
> the edits requirement?
>
>
Pretty sure they have, Marc.  It's difficult to tell for certain, because
some of the applicable wikis where people might be posting are not included
in the SUL grouping (for example, FDC wiki or other non-public wikis,
Foundation wiki, etc).

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[Marc A. Pelletier]

On 10/05/2014 08:24 AM, John Mark Vandenberg wrote:
> I checked a few of the WMF admin staff who have been employed more
> than a year, and many dont look likely to reach the 300 threshold,
> even with wikitech and foundation wikis included.

An interesting question, I think, is /whether/ anyone from the
Foundation ever voted that would not otherwise have had sufferage from
the edits requirement?

-- Marc


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraising reports after 2011

[Lisa Gruwell]

Thanks for the timely question!  We are actually just double checking the
numbers in our FY 2013-14 Fundraising Report right now.  We are aiming to
publish it toward the end of the week.

On Sat, Oct 4, 2014 at 6:56 AM, rupert THURNER 
wrote:

> that would be indeed valuable information.
>
> rupert
>
>
> On Sat, Oct 4, 2014 at 10:19 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
>  wrote:
> > Since 2012 it's almost impossible to get information about the WMF
> > fundraising... Does someone have insight in how WMF could be made again
> > interested in fundraising transparency? Poking doesn't help.
> >
> > For instance: me, Perohanych and Mike Peel have been waiting 16 months
> for
> > two simple and crucial pieces of information: how many times the
> fundraising
> > banners have been displayed; what are the totals raised per country.
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2012/Report
> >
> > Nemo
> >
> > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quarterly reviews of high priority WMF initiatives

[Tilman Bayer]

Minutes and slides from Wednesday's quarterly review meeting of the
Foundation's Editing (formerly VisualEditor) team can now be found at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Editing/October_2014
.

On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 6:49 PM, Erik Moeller  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] Quarterly reviews of high priority WMF initiatives

[Tilman Bayer]

Minutes and slides from Wednesday's quarterly review meeting of the
Foundation's Core features (Flow) team are now available at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Core_features/October_2014
.

On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 6:49 PM, Erik Moeller  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
>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l



-- 
Tilman Bayer
Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quarterly review for Grantmaking

[Pine W]

I agree to a point. I think if we had some carefully chosen people
involved, like a representative from the FDC in the case of Grantmaking, or
a representative from the proposed Technology Committee in the case of a
Product or Engineering team, there might be some value. I agree though that
the handling of this might prove to be more effort than it's worth.

This particular discussion with Grantmaking was 1.5 hours.

Here's another thought: there could be a live broadcast of the quarterly
review for 1.5 hours, and have a half hour after that made available for
community Q&A through IRC, including questions and comments that are queued
during the first 1.5 hours.

Pine

On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 11:25 AM, Risker  wrote:

> I do not think it is a good idea to have community members directly
> involved in these meetings.  First off, any community member who
> participates is in no way representative of the broad international
> community as a whole, so granting individuals access gives them a radically
> disproportionate influence on the outcome of these meetings.
>
> Secondly, this is the team's ONE chance per quarter to have the undivided
> attention of the Executive Director, and they need to be able to
> communicate directly with her for the purpose of evaluation of their work.
> They have one hour, and they have to be able to ensure that they cover
> the essential points of their message.  Even a few off-point
> questions can have a significantly adverse effect on their ability
> to update the ED on their progress on the responsibilities within their
> portfolio.  This is part of the evaluation of the performance of the teams
> and its individual members, which is directly a responsibility of the ED
> and the executives, and is absolutely not a responsibility of the
> community.
>
> I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask community members to put their
> questions on the talk pages of the minutes, and for the community to expect
> that questions relevant to the responsibility of the team will receive a
> response.
>
> Risker/Anne
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 5 October 2014 14:13, Pine W  wrote:
>
> > Hi Tilman,
> >
> > Thanks for redirecting the thanks to Anna and Maria.
> >
> > Erik mentioned quarterly reviews accounting for community feedback:
> > http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/471142. Involving
> > community members directly in meetings could be interesting if done
> > carefully, and/or there could also be ways of amplifying the weight given
> > to community feedback already received about projects like Flow when
> > conducting quarterly reviews. I believe that Communications already wants
> > to find someone who will perform sentiment analysis, and perhaps
> > summarizing community sentiment for quarterly reviews could be part of
> > their job.
> >
> > Let me quote the end of the notes from this quarterly review of
> > Grantmaking:
> >
> > Anasuya: As we are. If we are moving to a much more proactive structure,
> we
> > are going to need much more tech support internally. There needs to be a
> > larger long term strategy around that.
> > Lila: it should show success and then Product can invest. We need to
> > integrate these projects in the communities. Let's say the library is a
> > good one, someone in product needs to look at it and see what is the
> > threshold of success and how much staffing do we need so that we can
> match
> > it. And it seems like Growth may be the place to evaluate these things.
> > Erik: We also need to look at your team's short term needs. Like I did on
> > Friday with Frank Schulenburg and Floor with regard to the education
> > program's needs.
> > Lila: I think the next steps is to group about this and determine next
> > steps.
> >
> > To me it sounds like there is further significant business to be
> discussed
> > that is effectively a part of this quarterly review but time expired for
> > this particular meeting, so I am hoping that there will be notes from the
> > discussion that follows. In order for me to comment usefully, it would be
> > good to know if that follow up discussion has already happened and if so
> > what was decided in that discussion, or if that discussion is planned for
> > the near future.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Pine
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 8:27 AM, Tilman Bayer 
> wrote:
> >
> > > (For other readers: Pine appears to refer to the publication of the
> > > minutes from the quarterly review meeting for the Wikimedia
> > > Foundation's Grantmaking team, announced in a separate thread at
> > >
> >
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-October/074824.html
> > > )
> > >
> > > On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 1:14 AM, Pine W  wrote:
> > > > Tilman, thanks for those notes.
> > > >
> > > As mentioned at the top of the page, these minutes were actually taken
> > > by Anna Koval and Maria Cruz. (I had been unable to attend this
> > > particular review due to a conflicting meeting.) So the thanks should
> > >

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quarterly review for Grantmaking

[Risker]

I do not think it is a good idea to have community members directly
involved in these meetings.  First off, any community member who
participates is in no way representative of the broad international
community as a whole, so granting individuals access gives them a radically
disproportionate influence on the outcome of these meetings.

Secondly, this is the team's ONE chance per quarter to have the undivided
attention of the Executive Director, and they need to be able to
communicate directly with her for the purpose of evaluation of their work.
They have one hour, and they have to be able to ensure that they cover
the essential points of their message.  Even a few off-point
questions can have a significantly adverse effect on their ability
to update the ED on their progress on the responsibilities within their
portfolio.  This is part of the evaluation of the performance of the teams
and its individual members, which is directly a responsibility of the ED
and the executives, and is absolutely not a responsibility of the
community.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask community members to put their
questions on the talk pages of the minutes, and for the community to expect
that questions relevant to the responsibility of the team will receive a
response.

Risker/Anne







On 5 October 2014 14:13, Pine W  wrote:

> Hi Tilman,
>
> Thanks for redirecting the thanks to Anna and Maria.
>
> Erik mentioned quarterly reviews accounting for community feedback:
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/471142. Involving
> community members directly in meetings could be interesting if done
> carefully, and/or there could also be ways of amplifying the weight given
> to community feedback already received about projects like Flow when
> conducting quarterly reviews. I believe that Communications already wants
> to find someone who will perform sentiment analysis, and perhaps
> summarizing community sentiment for quarterly reviews could be part of
> their job.
>
> Let me quote the end of the notes from this quarterly review of
> Grantmaking:
>
> Anasuya: As we are. If we are moving to a much more proactive structure, we
> are going to need much more tech support internally. There needs to be a
> larger long term strategy around that.
> Lila: it should show success and then Product can invest. We need to
> integrate these projects in the communities. Let's say the library is a
> good one, someone in product needs to look at it and see what is the
> threshold of success and how much staffing do we need so that we can match
> it. And it seems like Growth may be the place to evaluate these things.
> Erik: We also need to look at your team's short term needs. Like I did on
> Friday with Frank Schulenburg and Floor with regard to the education
> program's needs.
> Lila: I think the next steps is to group about this and determine next
> steps.
>
> To me it sounds like there is further significant business to be discussed
> that is effectively a part of this quarterly review but time expired for
> this particular meeting, so I am hoping that there will be notes from the
> discussion that follows. In order for me to comment usefully, it would be
> good to know if that follow up discussion has already happened and if so
> what was decided in that discussion, or if that discussion is planned for
> the near future.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Pine
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 8:27 AM, Tilman Bayer  wrote:
>
> > (For other readers: Pine appears to refer to the publication of the
> > minutes from the quarterly review meeting for the Wikimedia
> > Foundation's Grantmaking team, announced in a separate thread at
> >
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-October/074824.html
> > )
> >
> > On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 1:14 AM, Pine W  wrote:
> > > Tilman, thanks for those notes.
> > >
> > As mentioned at the top of the page, these minutes were actually taken
> > by Anna Koval and Maria Cruz. (I had been unable to attend this
> > particular review due to a conflicting meeting.) So the thanks should
> > go to them ;)
> >
> > > There was discussion awhile ago about involving the community in
> > quarterly
> > > reviews,
> > I don't recall that discussion, do you have a link?
> >
> > > and I have some questions and comments about this review, mostly
> > > for Lila.
> > Sure! Feel free to leave them on the talk page - as community members
> > have already been doing with other reviews this week.
> >
> > >
> > > However, I would like to see the notes from the "group" mentioned at
> the
> > end
> > > of the quarterly review before I make comments, or if there is an
> > > opportunity for community participation in the "group", I would like to
> > > participate in a community capacity, if that is ok. (:
> > >
> > Well, again, I wasn't at the meeting myself, but my interpretation of
> > that sentence is that "to group about this" simply was a somewhat
> > colloquial expression meaning to have a smaller followup mee

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quarterly review for Grantmaking

[Pine W]

Hi Tilman,

Thanks for redirecting the thanks to Anna and Maria.

Erik mentioned quarterly reviews accounting for community feedback:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/471142. Involving
community members directly in meetings could be interesting if done
carefully, and/or there could also be ways of amplifying the weight given
to community feedback already received about projects like Flow when
conducting quarterly reviews. I believe that Communications already wants
to find someone who will perform sentiment analysis, and perhaps
summarizing community sentiment for quarterly reviews could be part of
their job.

Let me quote the end of the notes from this quarterly review of Grantmaking:

Anasuya: As we are. If we are moving to a much more proactive structure, we
are going to need much more tech support internally. There needs to be a
larger long term strategy around that.
Lila: it should show success and then Product can invest. We need to
integrate these projects in the communities. Let's say the library is a
good one, someone in product needs to look at it and see what is the
threshold of success and how much staffing do we need so that we can match
it. And it seems like Growth may be the place to evaluate these things.
Erik: We also need to look at your team's short term needs. Like I did on
Friday with Frank Schulenburg and Floor with regard to the education
program's needs.
Lila: I think the next steps is to group about this and determine next
steps.

To me it sounds like there is further significant business to be discussed
that is effectively a part of this quarterly review but time expired for
this particular meeting, so I am hoping that there will be notes from the
discussion that follows. In order for me to comment usefully, it would be
good to know if that follow up discussion has already happened and if so
what was decided in that discussion, or if that discussion is planned for
the near future.

Thanks,

Pine







On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 8:27 AM, Tilman Bayer  wrote:

> (For other readers: Pine appears to refer to the publication of the
> minutes from the quarterly review meeting for the Wikimedia
> Foundation's Grantmaking team, announced in a separate thread at
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-October/074824.html
> )
>
> On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 1:14 AM, Pine W  wrote:
> > Tilman, thanks for those notes.
> >
> As mentioned at the top of the page, these minutes were actually taken
> by Anna Koval and Maria Cruz. (I had been unable to attend this
> particular review due to a conflicting meeting.) So the thanks should
> go to them ;)
>
> > There was discussion awhile ago about involving the community in
> quarterly
> > reviews,
> I don't recall that discussion, do you have a link?
>
> > and I have some questions and comments about this review, mostly
> > for Lila.
> Sure! Feel free to leave them on the talk page - as community members
> have already been doing with other reviews this week.
>
> >
> > However, I would like to see the notes from the "group" mentioned at the
> end
> > of the quarterly review before I make comments, or if there is an
> > opportunity for community participation in the "group", I would like to
> > participate in a community capacity, if that is ok. (:
> >
> Well, again, I wasn't at the meeting myself, but my interpretation of
> that sentence is that "to group about this" simply was a somewhat
> colloquial expression meaning to have a smaller followup meeting
> between staff from the Product team and from the Grantmaking team,
> including Erik and possibly Lila, about the particular issue in
> question - technical support for grantmaking work which would need
> dedicated time from WMF software developers in the Product team. I'm
> not sure what you meant by "the notes" - please be aware that not
> every WMF staff meeting has a designated minute-taker - and in any case
> "group" was a verb here, not a noun ;)
>
>
> --
> Tilman Bayer
> Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
> Wikimedia Foundation
> IRC (Freenode): HaeB
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 05.10.2014 19:44, Risker wrote:

On 5 October 2014 13:35, Yaroslav M. Blanter  wrote:


On 05.10.2014 14:24, John Mark Vandenberg wrote:


On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 3:49 PM, Itzik - Wikimedia Israel
 wrote:


Pine,





I think most of the staff (not sure specifically about Danny) have
"normal" (not WMF) accounts which are eligible to vote, and they 
should not

be voting from two accounts anyway.

Cheers
Yaroslav





Speaking as one of the election monitors for the last election,
we specifically checked for those types of duplicate votes, and would 
have

de-activated the earliest vote(s) keeping only the last one.  As it
happens, nobody did that; the only votes we needed to strike were test
votes.[1]

Risker/Anne



Thanks Anne. By no means was my intention to suggest that anybody has 
done it in the past or wants to do it in the future. My point was that 
many staffers are community members in their free time, and they may be 
eligible to vote as volunteers - meaning we are probably talking about 
even smaller numbers of people who may need special treatment to meet 
eligibility rules.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[Tomasz Ganicz]

Yes.. But which wikis are about to be eligible? For example: Wikimedia
Polska wiki is on WMF servers within SUL framework so it is possible
to start voting from our wiki. So our secretary, who is not active ony
other WMF projects can vote because she made enough "secretarial"
edits on our wiki, as she maintains regularly severa pages...  But if
our wiki would be on separate servers she could not vote... So.. what
about outreach wiki, some internal wikis etc?

If taking the idea of wiki "citzenship" seriously, there is question
of definition of this "citzenship"... Maybe in order to became
"wiki-citizen" one need enough edits in "content" WMF wikis? So no
meta, no outrech and other "internal" wikis but only Wikipedia,
Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikicites, Wikimedia Commons, Wikisources and
Wikivoayage?




2014-10-05 14:09 GMT+02:00 Craig Franklin :
> I think the issue is that the employee vote is now a significant proportion
> of the electorate.  When this was originally set up, nobody complained too
> loudly about giving WMF staff the vote simply because their numbers were
> small and they were too small a constituency to sway the result on their
> own.  The number of voters choosing to exercise their suffrage is
> decreasing, while the number of staff are increasing.  While this
> illustrates a problem all on its own, it also means that WMF staff who may
> not be participants on the projects may now have enough pull to decide a
> closely fought election.
>
> I know it's too late to change the rules for this year, but I'd really
> recommend getting rid of the complex criteria for the next election, and
> dialing it back to a simple "X number of edits, or Y number of patches"
> rule.  Not only would this be simpler to administer and easier to
> understand, but I would imagine most of the WMF staff who care enough to
> actually vote would probably qualify through those criteria anyway.  A few
> "worthy" folk might miss out on the chance to lodge a ballot, but then
> that's going to be the case in any situation other than complete and
> universal suffrage.
>
> Cheers,
> Craig Franklin
>
> On 5 October 2014 18:04, Pine W  wrote:
>
>> Hi Itzik,
>>
>> If I understand you correctly, you are asking about whether WMF and
>> thematic organization bylaws should allow employees to vote in trustee
>> elections for their own orgs.
>>
>> I can see how this could create interesting conflict-of-interest problems.
>>
>> However, in all non-autocratic republics that I know about, government
>> employees can vote as any other citizens can. I'm also of the view that WMF
>> operates like a university, and a modest amount of staff involvement in
>> selecting their supervisors in that environment is ok.
>>
>> Pine
>> On Oct 5, 2014 12:41 AM, "Itzik - Wikimedia Israel" <
>> it...@wikimedia.org.il>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Hey,
>> >
>> > Don't worry, we indeed have a lot of time till the next elections, but as
>> > this issue had been raised during the last elections - and we decided
>> that
>> > we can't change the rules few weeks before the elections, now I want to
>> > raise the discussion enough time before.
>> >
>> > According to the current rules  [1], in order to influence and vote in
>> the
>> > elections, you need to be active editor, developer or WMF
>> staff/contractor.
>> >
>> > Last year this issue concern some of us. The foundation is not small
>> > organizations as it been before, and by comparison, the number of people
>> > participating in the elections every year is not high.
>> >
>> > For example, last elections there were 1809 valid votes. By comparison,
>> the
>> > number of WMF staff this days is 218, what makes there voting power 12%
>> of
>> > the total voters last year. This consider to be a great amount of power
>> > when we are talking about elections (In the last election you would have
>> > around 650 votes in order to be elected...)
>> >
>> > Wikimedia thematic organizations staff and contractors for example don't
>> > have the same privilege to vote only because they are employees of the
>> > movement, only if they are editors as well. The question - what make the
>> > WMF staff different, and if this is not a little bit problematic that the
>> > staff have such power to decide on their direct board, but in general -
>> the
>> > board of the whole movement.
>> >
>> > Do we need to give the same privilege also to all the staff in our
>> > movement?
>> > Should we limited the elections to staff (both WMF and chapters) that are
>> > active editors or developers as additional to their work in the movement?
>> >
>> > I'll be happy to hear yours input.
>> >
>> > [1]
>> >
>> >
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Vote_Questions
>> >
>> > [2]
>> >
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Results
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > *Regards,Itzik Edri*
>> > Chairperson, Wikimedia Israel
>> > +972-(0)-54-5878078 | http://www.wikimedia.org.il
>> > Imagine a world in which ever

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[Risker]

On 5 October 2014 13:35, Yaroslav M. Blanter  wrote:

> On 05.10.2014 14:24, John Mark Vandenberg wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 3:49 PM, Itzik - Wikimedia Israel
>>  wrote:
>>
>>> Pine,
>>>
>>>
>  IMO the minimum thresholds should be set at levels such that any staff
>> member who has employed for a reasonable period of time is likely to
>> be eligible, if they are engaging with the community on public
>> projects, which is how a person becomes part of 'the community', and
>> would be a suitable voter for community seats on the board.
>>
>> e.g. Danny Horn joined in April 2014, and now has 284 edits globally,
>> albeit spread across seven projects.
>>
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth/DannyH_(WMF)
>>
>>
> I think most of the staff (not sure specifically about Danny) have
> "normal" (not WMF) accounts which are eligible to vote, and they should not
> be voting from two accounts anyway.
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
>
>
>

Speaking as one of the election monitors for the last election,
we specifically checked for those types of duplicate votes, and would have
de-activated the earliest vote(s) keeping only the last one.  As it
happens, nobody did that; the only votes we needed to strike were test
votes.[1]

Risker/Anne

[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Results
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 05.10.2014 14:24, John Mark Vandenberg wrote:

On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 3:49 PM, Itzik - Wikimedia Israel
 wrote:

Pine,




IMO the minimum thresholds should be set at levels such that any staff
member who has employed for a reasonable period of time is likely to
be eligible, if they are engaging with the community on public
projects, which is how a person becomes part of 'the community', and
would be a suitable voter for community seats on the board.

e.g. Danny Horn joined in April 2014, and now has 284 edits globally,
albeit spread across seven projects.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth/DannyH_(WMF)



I think most of the staff (not sure specifically about Danny) have 
"normal" (not WMF) accounts which are eligible to vote, and they should 
not be voting from two accounts anyway.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[Pine W]

How are we doing on SUL finalization anyway? If I remember correctly the
lead on this is Dan so I'm pinging him.

Pine
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] First Wikipedia Article has been Formally Peer Reviewed and Published

[Lila Tretikov]

James -- this is really great, thank you for sharing.

On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 4:24 PM, James Heilman  wrote:

> Article published by the journal Open Medicine
> http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/viewFile/562/564
>
> Will soon be pubmed indexed. Editorial regarding the efforts are here
> http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/652/565
>
> Hope these sorts of efforts will improve the reputation of Wikipedia and
> the number of contributors. I guess we will see.
>
> --
> James Heilman
> MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
>
> The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
> www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quarterly review for Grantmaking

[Tilman Bayer]

(For other readers: Pine appears to refer to the publication of the
minutes from the quarterly review meeting for the Wikimedia
Foundation's Grantmaking team, announced in a separate thread at
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-October/074824.html
)

On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 1:14 AM, Pine W  wrote:
> Tilman, thanks for those notes.
>
As mentioned at the top of the page, these minutes were actually taken
by Anna Koval and Maria Cruz. (I had been unable to attend this
particular review due to a conflicting meeting.) So the thanks should
go to them ;)

> There was discussion awhile ago about involving the community in quarterly
> reviews,
I don't recall that discussion, do you have a link?

> and I have some questions and comments about this review, mostly
> for Lila.
Sure! Feel free to leave them on the talk page - as community members
have already been doing with other reviews this week.

>
> However, I would like to see the notes from the "group" mentioned at the end
> of the quarterly review before I make comments, or if there is an
> opportunity for community participation in the "group", I would like to
> participate in a community capacity, if that is ok. (:
>
Well, again, I wasn't at the meeting myself, but my interpretation of
that sentence is that "to group about this" simply was a somewhat
colloquial expression meaning to have a smaller followup meeting
between staff from the Product team and from the Grantmaking team,
including Erik and possibly Lila, about the particular issue in
question - technical support for grantmaking work which would need
dedicated time from WMF software developers in the Product team. I'm
not sure what you meant by "the notes" - please be aware that not
every WMF staff meeting has a designated minute-taker - and in any case
"group" was a verb here, not a noun ;)


-- 
Tilman Bayer
Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[James Alexander]

On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 5:09 AM, Craig Franklin 
wrote:

> I think the issue is that the employee vote is now a significant proportion
> of the electorate.  When this was originally set up, nobody complained too
> loudly about giving WMF staff the vote simply because their numbers were
> small and they were too small a constituency to sway the result on their
> own.  The number of voters choosing to exercise their suffrage is
> decreasing, while the number of staff are increasing.  While this
> illustrates a problem all on its own, it also means that WMF staff who may
> not be participants on the projects may now have enough pull to decide a
> closely fought election.
>
> I know it's too late to change the rules for this year, but I'd really
> recommend getting rid of the complex criteria for the next election, and
> dialing it back to a simple "X number of edits, or Y number of patches"
> rule.  Not only would this be simpler to administer and easier to
> understand, but I would imagine most of the WMF staff who care enough to
> actually vote would probably qualify through those criteria anyway.  A few
> "worthy" folk might miss out on the chance to lodge a ballot, but then
> that's going to be the case in any situation other than complete and
> universal suffrage.
>
> Cheers,
> Craig Franklin


First off, setting aside the question about what I (personally) think
should be the requirements I would say that it is in no way too late to
change the rules. The election is not until mid year next year (I think we
usually do it in June?) The election committee hasn't even been sat yet and
they will be the ones to decide that in the end (that is not to say that we
shouldn't have the discussion now too if people want, just that the
decision makers aren't even decided yet).

I don't have exact numbers, but I do remember that there are already very
few people who wanted to vote, were only eligible as staff, and couldn't.
Most of them were developers and so would be eligible via patches anyway
(and most of THEM were eligible by edit count as well), among the non
developers people like myself and Philippe refrained from voting because we
were working with the election committee and felt that most appropriate. I
don't believe there was an overwhelming vote of staff members in proportion
to the total.


Voter turn out is something I really want to see better though, it's
something that I know we've discussed in the office and I'm sure that the
election committee will have as a top priority. The biggest things I see
right now is finishing SUL unification which will allow us to have '1
click' voting (and not sending people to meta first to learn about the
election/candidates then to their undefined 'home wiki' to see if they can
vote) completely anecdotally that seems to have consistently scared a lot
of voters off and confused even some of our more experienced users (it also
seems to be a bigger complaint each year) SUL will allow us to just have
everyone click a start voting button on Meta and not have to go back to
their home wiki. I also seriously wonder about the joint FDC/Board ballot
giving people too much to look at, we know for example that over 500 people
'saw' the ballot but never submitted their vote.

I also really think notifications could be incredibly helpful to get the
word out, but so far that does not seem very likely to be available by then.


James Alexander
Legal and Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation
(415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[John Mark Vandenberg]

On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 3:49 PM, Itzik - Wikimedia Israel
 wrote:
> Pine,
>
> As far as I know, government employees in most of the countries can vote
> only if they are citizens. So yes, of course we are not taking there
> democratic voice. As I didn't said a staff member can't vote because he is
> a staff member. Just saying that it is not enough to be a staff member in
> order to get the vote privilege.

IMO the minimum thresholds should be set at levels such that any staff
member who has employed for a reasonable period of time is likely to
be eligible, if they are engaging with the community on public
projects, which is how a person becomes part of 'the community', and
would be a suitable voter for community seats on the board.

e.g. Danny Horn joined in April 2014, and now has 284 edits globally,
albeit spread across seven projects.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth/DannyH_(WMF)

Danny will no doubt hit the 300 global edit mark by the cutoff date
which would be ~March 2014., roughly one year after he started.  I
suspect he may also meet any sensible criteria established for merged
patches, but havent checked that.

If we include the wikitech and foundation wikis in the edit counts,
many more staff and contractors will likely reach the thresholds we
set.

I checked a few of the WMF admin staff who have been employed more
than a year, and many dont look likely to reach the 300 threshold,
even with wikitech and foundation wikis included.  Maybe they are
editing on a private wiki?  Maybe those private wiki edits can be
imported to meta??

We could include different criteria geared more towards including
staff, based around edits per year.  e.g. 50 contributions per year
during employment at an approved movement entity, sounds to me like a
reasonable expectation of most roles at WIkimedia organisations.  That
would be inclusive of staff like Anna Lantz, whose role includes
documentation of our movement, using our public wiki projects.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:ALantz_(WMF)

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth/ALantz_(WMF)

(sorry Danny and Anna for using you as examples)

-- 
John Vandenberg

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[James Alexander]

A completely un deduped (and so is double+ counting anyone who is eligible
on multiple wikis because of activity there) number is 207911 for 2013.

Caveats:

This number is quick and dirty and 'reasonable' as a starting point but far
from perfect, among other things:

   - It doesn't include 100% of the staff or developers, only the staff who
   had staff rights or asked and developers who asked because they couldn't
   vote in other ways). This is a relatively small amount of missing people.
   - It still includes bots and blocked users, because that was checked
   later in the process. I, again, think this is a relatively small amount
   given number of bots + blocked users with more then 300 edits relative to
   the total. It is possible some of the bots are very active across the board
   though which will be helped by the de dupping.
   - It is not de dupped meaning it double+ counts people who were active
   on many wikis or accounts, sometimes a lot (for example there are 7 entries
   for my personal account, 7 for my work account, and 69 for the steward
   DerHexer given global work). Sorting through the crap that the script spat
   out is more then I'm willing to do at 5am but I will try to do this later
   today and get this number down. My guess is this is in the 10k range.


James Alexander
Legal and Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation
(415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur

On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 4:36 AM, James Alexander 
wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 3:44 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) 
> wrote:
>
>> (*) No official numbers exist... but I already opened one thread on
>> transparency this week.
>>
>>
> Just to clarify so that I know what you're looking and can try and
> prioritize it. You are looking for the total number of eligible voters so
> that we can determine the actual turn out percentage? It could be a bit of
> a pain because of the lack of SUL and the fact that people can be eligible
> on multiple wikis but if I assume that 'same name = duplicate' then it
> shouldn't take too much manual jiggering after the scripts run. I will try
> to do that this afternoon (Sunday).
>
> I always intended to release more stats after the last election (and I
> know you've asked before), sadly issues came up in the pipeline and other
> work over came it priority wise so at the moment it would have to be in my
> personal time I do still want too or to find someone else who is able too
> :(.
>
>
> James Alexander
> Legal and Community Advocacy
> Wikimedia Foundation
> (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[Craig Franklin]

I think the issue is that the employee vote is now a significant proportion
of the electorate.  When this was originally set up, nobody complained too
loudly about giving WMF staff the vote simply because their numbers were
small and they were too small a constituency to sway the result on their
own.  The number of voters choosing to exercise their suffrage is
decreasing, while the number of staff are increasing.  While this
illustrates a problem all on its own, it also means that WMF staff who may
not be participants on the projects may now have enough pull to decide a
closely fought election.

I know it's too late to change the rules for this year, but I'd really
recommend getting rid of the complex criteria for the next election, and
dialing it back to a simple "X number of edits, or Y number of patches"
rule.  Not only would this be simpler to administer and easier to
understand, but I would imagine most of the WMF staff who care enough to
actually vote would probably qualify through those criteria anyway.  A few
"worthy" folk might miss out on the chance to lodge a ballot, but then
that's going to be the case in any situation other than complete and
universal suffrage.

Cheers,
Craig Franklin

On 5 October 2014 18:04, Pine W  wrote:

> Hi Itzik,
>
> If I understand you correctly, you are asking about whether WMF and
> thematic organization bylaws should allow employees to vote in trustee
> elections for their own orgs.
>
> I can see how this could create interesting conflict-of-interest problems.
>
> However, in all non-autocratic republics that I know about, government
> employees can vote as any other citizens can. I'm also of the view that WMF
> operates like a university, and a modest amount of staff involvement in
> selecting their supervisors in that environment is ok.
>
> Pine
> On Oct 5, 2014 12:41 AM, "Itzik - Wikimedia Israel" <
> it...@wikimedia.org.il>
> wrote:
>
> > Hey,
> >
> > Don't worry, we indeed have a lot of time till the next elections, but as
> > this issue had been raised during the last elections - and we decided
> that
> > we can't change the rules few weeks before the elections, now I want to
> > raise the discussion enough time before.
> >
> > According to the current rules  [1], in order to influence and vote in
> the
> > elections, you need to be active editor, developer or WMF
> staff/contractor.
> >
> > Last year this issue concern some of us. The foundation is not small
> > organizations as it been before, and by comparison, the number of people
> > participating in the elections every year is not high.
> >
> > For example, last elections there were 1809 valid votes. By comparison,
> the
> > number of WMF staff this days is 218, what makes there voting power 12%
> of
> > the total voters last year. This consider to be a great amount of power
> > when we are talking about elections (In the last election you would have
> > around 650 votes in order to be elected...)
> >
> > Wikimedia thematic organizations staff and contractors for example don't
> > have the same privilege to vote only because they are employees of the
> > movement, only if they are editors as well. The question - what make the
> > WMF staff different, and if this is not a little bit problematic that the
> > staff have such power to decide on their direct board, but in general -
> the
> > board of the whole movement.
> >
> > Do we need to give the same privilege also to all the staff in our
> > movement?
> > Should we limited the elections to staff (both WMF and chapters) that are
> > active editors or developers as additional to their work in the movement?
> >
> > I'll be happy to hear yours input.
> >
> > [1]
> >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Vote_Questions
> >
> > [2]
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Results
> >
> >
> >
> > *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!
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[James Alexander]

On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 3:44 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) 
wrote:

> (*) No official numbers exist... but I already opened one thread on
> transparency this week.
>
>
Just to clarify so that I know what you're looking and can try and
prioritize it. You are looking for the total number of eligible voters so
that we can determine the actual turn out percentage? It could be a bit of
a pain because of the lack of SUL and the fact that people can be eligible
on multiple wikis but if I assume that 'same name = duplicate' then it
shouldn't take too much manual jiggering after the scripts run. I will try
to do that this afternoon (Sunday).

I always intended to release more stats after the last election (and I know
you've asked before), sadly issues came up in the pipeline and other work
over came it priority wise so at the moment it would have to be in my
personal time I do still want too or to find someone else who is able too
:(.


James Alexander
Legal and Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation
(415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[Richard Symonds]

Is there a way in which people who volunteer, but not through editing or
coding, can vote? For example, Wikimania volunteers from this year, or
those who volunteer time with financial or  administrative matters rather
than through adding content?
On 5 Oct 2014 11:44, "Federico Leva (Nemo)"  wrote:

> The title should be "WMF Board of Trustee elections".
>
> Itzik - Wikimedia Israel, 05/10/2014 09:40:
>
>> For example, last elections there were 1809 valid votes.
>>
>
> And this is the issue we should be talking about: the ~99.5 % abstention
> rate.*
>
>  By comparison, the
>> number of WMF staff this days is 218, what makes there voting power 12% of
>> the total voters last year. This consider to be a great amount of power
>> when we are talking about elections (In the last election you would have
>> around 650 votes in order to be elected...)
>>
>
> Did you check how many actually voted?
>
>
>> Wikimedia thematic organizations staff and contractors for example don't
>> have the same privilege to vote only because they are employees of the
>> movement, only if they are editors as well. The question - what make the
>> WMF staff different, and if this is not a little bit problematic that the
>> staff have such power to decide on their direct board, but in general -
>> the
>> board of the whole movement.
>>
>
> This unequality must indeed be rectified. It's not hard to do so.
> 1) Just remove the WMF staffers exception: after it was introduced,
> requirements have been greatly reduced and most staffers have at least one
> merged patch or 300 edits. There could be some minor "discrimination" for
> some administrative staff.
> 2) Extend it to any Wikimedia affiliates. This could cause some minor
> inequality in what different affiliates consider "staff". Mostly, there
> would be some administrative overhead; but it's trivial to fix with
> standard electoral methods: publish the electors list beforehand and let
> interested voters report errors.
> I wouldn't spend too much time discussing this topic, flipping a coin to
> pick either option is fine. :-)
>
> Nemo
>
> (*) No official numbers exist... but I already opened one thread on
> transparency this week.
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

The title should be "WMF Board of Trustee elections".

Itzik - Wikimedia Israel, 05/10/2014 09:40:

For example, last elections there were 1809 valid votes.


And this is the issue we should be talking about: the ~99.5 % abstention 
rate.*



By comparison, the
number of WMF staff this days is 218, what makes there voting power 12% of
the total voters last year. This consider to be a great amount of power
when we are talking about elections (In the last election you would have
around 650 votes in order to be elected...)


Did you check how many actually voted?



Wikimedia thematic organizations staff and contractors for example don't
have the same privilege to vote only because they are employees of the
movement, only if they are editors as well. The question - what make the
WMF staff different, and if this is not a little bit problematic that the
staff have such power to decide on their direct board, but in general - the
board of the whole movement.


This unequality must indeed be rectified. It's not hard to do so.
1) Just remove the WMF staffers exception: after it was introduced, 
requirements have been greatly reduced and most staffers have at least 
one merged patch or 300 edits. There could be some minor 
"discrimination" for some administrative staff.
2) Extend it to any Wikimedia affiliates. This could cause some minor 
inequality in what different affiliates consider "staff". Mostly, there 
would be some administrative overhead; but it's trivial to fix with 
standard electoral methods: publish the electors list beforehand and let 
interested voters report errors.
I wouldn't spend too much time discussing this topic, flipping a coin to 
pick either option is fine. :-)


Nemo

(*) No official numbers exist... but I already opened one thread on 
transparency this week.


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] product roadmap

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Article review is important. The argument presented is that it needs action
in the light of fewer people involved in article review. The reality is
that at present only a subset of the articles are reviewed and only in a
few Wikipedias. In addition to this, these people all use fixed positions
and the reality of new editors is very much mobile.

Article review is text review first and foremost. With the influx of data
in Wikidata from many sources, review of facts is increasingly possible. A
first example is available in a tool that allows for the comparison of
dates of death. Arguably when Wikidata and its sources, including en,wp
cannot agree, it means that we have a problem that can be resolved. This
new tool exists thanks to the work in pywikipedia by Amir Ladsgroup.

My point is very much that the exclusive attention to the needs of single
projects will not help Wikipedia as a whole. Yes, it makes sense that
article review gets attention but arguing that it is only for the WMF to do
AND is to concentrate on existing practices will only lead to more
stagnation for the totality that is Wikipedia.
Thanks,
  GerardM

On 5 October 2014 01:17, James Salsman  wrote:

> Re the request for discussion about the product roadmap during the
> metrics meeting at
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJGC9zpbJpU&t=1h06m30s
>
> Do Foundation officials intend to address supporting article accuracy
> review?
>
> I have asked several specific questions about
>
> https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Develop_systems_for_accuracy_review
> and I am certain that the proposal or something very similar is
> urgently needed for the transition from content creation to content
> maintenance on the largest projects. However at present there have
> been no response. Does the Foundation have an alternative contingency
> plan for article updating if active editors continue to decline? Or
> are all the eggs being put into the basket of hoping that someone
> thinks of something to reverse active editor decline, after at least a
> dozen such attempts have yielded zero results over the past half
> decade?
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[Itzik - Wikimedia Israel]

Pine,

As far as I know, government employees in most of the countries can vote
only if they are citizens. So yes, of course we are not taking there
democratic voice. As I didn't said a staff member can't vote because he is
a staff member. Just saying that it is not enough to be a staff member in
order to get the vote privilege.

Itzik



*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!


On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 10:04 AM, Pine W  wrote:

> Hi Itzik,
>
> If I understand you correctly, you are asking about whether WMF and
> thematic organization bylaws should allow employees to vote in trustee
> elections for their own orgs.
>
> I can see how this could create interesting conflict-of-interest problems.
>
> However, in all non-autocratic republics that I know about, government
> employees can vote as any other citizens can. I'm also of the view that WMF
> operates like a university, and a modest amount of staff involvement in
> selecting their supervisors in that environment is ok.
>
> Pine
> On Oct 5, 2014 12:41 AM, "Itzik - Wikimedia Israel" <
> it...@wikimedia.org.il>
> wrote:
>
> > Hey,
> >
> > Don't worry, we indeed have a lot of time till the next elections, but as
> > this issue had been raised during the last elections - and we decided
> that
> > we can't change the rules few weeks before the elections, now I want to
> > raise the discussion enough time before.
> >
> > According to the current rules  [1], in order to influence and vote in
> the
> > elections, you need to be active editor, developer or WMF
> staff/contractor.
> >
> > Last year this issue concern some of us. The foundation is not small
> > organizations as it been before, and by comparison, the number of people
> > participating in the elections every year is not high.
> >
> > For example, last elections there were 1809 valid votes. By comparison,
> the
> > number of WMF staff this days is 218, what makes there voting power 12%
> of
> > the total voters last year. This consider to be a great amount of power
> > when we are talking about elections (In the last election you would have
> > around 650 votes in order to be elected...)
> >
> > Wikimedia thematic organizations staff and contractors for example don't
> > have the same privilege to vote only because they are employees of the
> > movement, only if they are editors as well. The question - what make the
> > WMF staff different, and if this is not a little bit problematic that the
> > staff have such power to decide on their direct board, but in general -
> the
> > board of the whole movement.
> >
> > Do we need to give the same privilege also to all the staff in our
> > movement?
> > Should we limited the elections to staff (both WMF and chapters) that are
> > active editors or developers as additional to their work in the movement?
> >
> > I'll be happy to hear yours input.
> >
> > [1]
> >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Vote_Questions
> >
> > [2]
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Results
> >
> >
> >
> > *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!
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
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[Wikimedia-l] Quarterly review for Grantmaking

[Pine W]

Tilman, thanks for those notes.

There was discussion awhile ago about involving the community in quarterly
reviews, and I have some questions and comments about this review, mostly
for Lila.

However, I would like to see the notes from the "group" mentioned at the
end of the quarterly review before I make comments, or if there is an
opportunity for community participation in the "group", I would like to
participate in a community capacity, if that is ok. (:

Thanks,
Pine
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[Pine W]

Hi Itzik,

If I understand you correctly, you are asking about whether WMF and
thematic organization bylaws should allow employees to vote in trustee
elections for their own orgs.

I can see how this could create interesting conflict-of-interest problems.

However, in all non-autocratic republics that I know about, government
employees can vote as any other citizens can. I'm also of the view that WMF
operates like a university, and a modest amount of staff involvement in
selecting their supervisors in that environment is ok.

Pine
On Oct 5, 2014 12:41 AM, "Itzik - Wikimedia Israel" 
wrote:

> Hey,
>
> Don't worry, we indeed have a lot of time till the next elections, but as
> this issue had been raised during the last elections - and we decided that
> we can't change the rules few weeks before the elections, now I want to
> raise the discussion enough time before.
>
> According to the current rules  [1], in order to influence and vote in the
> elections, you need to be active editor, developer or WMF staff/contractor.
>
> Last year this issue concern some of us. The foundation is not small
> organizations as it been before, and by comparison, the number of people
> participating in the elections every year is not high.
>
> For example, last elections there were 1809 valid votes. By comparison, the
> number of WMF staff this days is 218, what makes there voting power 12% of
> the total voters last year. This consider to be a great amount of power
> when we are talking about elections (In the last election you would have
> around 650 votes in order to be elected...)
>
> Wikimedia thematic organizations staff and contractors for example don't
> have the same privilege to vote only because they are employees of the
> movement, only if they are editors as well. The question - what make the
> WMF staff different, and if this is not a little bit problematic that the
> staff have such power to decide on their direct board, but in general - the
> board of the whole movement.
>
> Do we need to give the same privilege also to all the staff in our
> movement?
> Should we limited the elections to staff (both WMF and chapters) that are
> active editors or developers as additional to their work in the movement?
>
> I'll be happy to hear yours input.
>
> [1]
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Vote_Questions
>
> [2]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Results
>
>
>
> *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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> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
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[Wikimedia-l] Board of Trustee elections

[Itzik - Wikimedia Israel]

Hey,

Don't worry, we indeed have a lot of time till the next elections, but as
this issue had been raised during the last elections - and we decided that
we can't change the rules few weeks before the elections, now I want to
raise the discussion enough time before.

According to the current rules  [1], in order to influence and vote in the
elections, you need to be active editor, developer or WMF staff/contractor.

Last year this issue concern some of us. The foundation is not small
organizations as it been before, and by comparison, the number of people
participating in the elections every year is not high.

For example, last elections there were 1809 valid votes. By comparison, the
number of WMF staff this days is 218, what makes there voting power 12% of
the total voters last year. This consider to be a great amount of power
when we are talking about elections (In the last election you would have
around 650 votes in order to be elected...)

Wikimedia thematic organizations staff and contractors for example don't
have the same privilege to vote only because they are employees of the
movement, only if they are editors as well. The question - what make the
WMF staff different, and if this is not a little bit problematic that the
staff have such power to decide on their direct board, but in general - the
board of the whole movement.

Do we need to give the same privilege also to all the staff in our
movement?
Should we limited the elections to staff (both WMF and chapters) that are
active editors or developers as additional to their work in the movement?

I'll be happy to hear yours input.

[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Vote_Questions

[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013/Results



*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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