Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] Quarterly reviews of high priority WMF initiatives
Tilman Bayer wrote: Quarterly review minutes and/or slides of the following teams have been posted in recent days: Multimedia: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarte rly_reviews/Multimedia/January_2015 Legal Community Advocacy: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LCA_Q2_Slides.pdf (abridged slides only) Fundraising and Fundraising Tech: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarte rly_reviews/Fundraising/January_2015 Communications: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Communications_WMF_Quarterly_Revie w,_Q2_2014-15.pdf (slides only, as a report - no actual meeting took place) Hi. I'm trying to understand why certain groups seem to have had a formal quarterly review (with minutes on a corresponding Meta-Wiki page) and why others seem to have bypassed this process. Why wasn't there a review for two of the four groups mentioned (Communications and Legal Community Advocacy)? Publishing slides is better than nothing, I suppose, but it seems strange to not hold a formal quarterly review for these two teams. MZMcBride ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] Quarterly reviews of high priority WMF initiatives
On Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 8:57 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Tilman Bayer wrote: Quarterly review minutes and/or slides of the following teams have been posted in recent days: Multimedia: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarte rly_reviews/Multimedia/January_2015 Legal Community Advocacy: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LCA_Q2_Slides.pdf (abridged slides only) Fundraising and Fundraising Tech: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarte rly_reviews/Fundraising/January_2015 Communications: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Communications_WMF_Quarterly_Revie w,_Q2_2014-15.pdf (slides only, as a report - no actual meeting took place) Hi. I'm trying to understand why certain groups seem to have had a formal quarterly review (with minutes on a corresponding Meta-Wiki page) and why others seem to have bypassed this process. Why wasn't there a review for two of the four groups mentioned (Communications and Legal Community Advocacy)? Publishing slides is better than nothing, I suppose, but it seems strange to not hold a formal quarterly review for these two teams. MZMcBride This was actually the first time that groups outside Engineering and Grantmaking took part in the quarterly review process. While indeed almost every team or department was conducting quarterly review meetings this time, bear in mind that the process is still being worked on and rethought, e.g. regarding the amount of detail covered in each meeting (corresponding to its length), and what level of involvement from senior management should be required in each case. As recorded on the overview page, Legal Community Advocacy held in fact a quarterly review meeting on January 30, it's just that we decided not to publish minutes because much of the discussion was confidential and sensitive - perhaps unsurprisingly, considering the department's work area. Because the Communications department is still in build-up mode, there was a sense that a formal quarterly review meeting did not yet make sense for them this time. But the team decided to nevertheless produce a full slide deck that, I think, contains a lot of relevant information about its Q2 work. -- Tilman Bayer Senior Analyst Wikimedia Foundation IRC (Freenode): HaeB ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
[Wikimedia-l] Thinking about the WMF Board composition
Hi all, during our last meeting the WMF Board started to discuss its composition and how to ensure diversity and bringing in the necessary variety of voices and minds to serve our mission and to support the Wikimedia Foundation. We want to listen to your thoughts and ideas about Board composition before we take the dicussion further with concrete bylaw changes. Please take a look at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Thinking_about_the_WMF_Board_composition where you find our first thoughts and comment, amend and discuss. This discussion is independent from the upcoming community election, which will be prepared soon. Regards Alice. -- Alice Wiegand Board of Trustees Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Engineering Community
First, thanks to John Vandenberg for considering co-mentoring the accuracy review project for the Indonesian Wikipedia. I think he would be an excellent co-mentor. But ideally I also hope to also obtain at least one co-mentor from WMF engineering, design, or education divisions, and a co-mentor from the WEF too, please: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Accuracy_review#Mentors_needed_.28at_least_two_co-mentors_required.3B_please_sign_up_here_if_you_are_interested.29 Oliver Keyes wrote: ... the question Rachel [asked] was (to rephrase it): 'community people, what ideas do you have for better ways for us to communicate around software?' 'Work on my thing' does not answer that question. Co-mentoring the accuracy review project is literally nothing but communication. Community members ask for the Foundation's help all the time. And even if the mentors end up helping with some of the code, Rachel asked about interacting with the community, not just communicating with it. And it should not be my thing -- it is supposed to improve wikipedias and similar references in all languages, by addressing their primary existential crisis: more out of date content than volunteer editors are willing or able to maintain. It's lucky that we may be able do that with the side effect of creating the largest automatic computer-aided instruction system ever, by several orders of magnitude. But that's more than just I can possibly do just in my spare time. It will have to be a community effort. The Foundation can't directly sponsor content improvements, but creating a system to support the community's efforts in that regard is fine. Assuming everyone approves after testing, either Foundation could, if they wanted to, cause it to be used in many ways which would not risk the WMF's safe harbor provisions. That would be more difficult for the community. Furthermore, there was no way 2.5 years ago, when I was asking that the Foundation pay market rate for technical staff to compete in retaining and attracting the best and brightest, that I would have known this would become a GSoC proposal under a new co-mentor requirement today. So the insinuation that there is some kind of a preconceived attempt at quid-pro-quo is absurd. There are some very serious downsides to repeatedly being the only one opposed to groupthink, and I have no regrets about bringing up the fact that I've repeatedly had to deal with that kind of impediment to progress without even a single word of thanks. I'm not asking for a medal, just common courtesy. And maybe people who find themselves in situations where they might be involved with groupthink mistakes should be a little less harsh against those who are trying to fight such mistakes. Our contemporary top-heavy economic predicament is the result of too much groupthink leveraged by the sociopathic few, resulting in the vast majority of consumers having lost ground during the current economic expansion (e.g., as shown in http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/27/upshot/the-benefits-of-economic-expansions-are-increasingly-going-to-the-richest-americans.html -- especially its graphs.) If there is a better example of unsustainability, I would like to see it. Yes, I stick my neck out to fight for people who are getting the short end of the stick, and causing their own organizations, whether they be foundations or nations, to be less effective because of it, and I'm proud I am one of the very few who do. On Saturday, 14 February 2015, James Salsman jsalsman at gmail.com wrote: Rachel diCerbo wrote: ... Community Engagement is continuously considering effective ways of interacting with you around product development and would love your suggestions. What kinds of communications from WMF would you like to see? Please volunteer to co-mentor my GSoC proposal: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Accuracy_review There is absolutely no way I can possibly do this without a co-mentor from the WMF or WEF. It's not a hard task, and one of the major benefits I just learned yesterday is a robust implementation of per-word text attribution, which amazingly still hasn't been available to the wider community in a way that handles reverted blanking and text moves since WikiTrust went offline. Maribel Acosta, Fabian Floeck, and Andriy Rodchenko did a suitable replacement algorithm in 2013, but it hasn't been folded back into the Wikimedia Utilities distribution Best regards, James Salsman ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
[Wikimedia-l] [VisualEditor] 2nd weekly triage meeting; office hours in February and March
Hi everybody, and apologies for cross-posting. Here are some reminders and announcements about upcoming appointments related to VisualEditor. This Wednesday (18 February) the second *triage meeting* is scheduled for 4pm UTC [1]. You can find all the relevant information at mediawiki.org. [2] This email also serves as a reminder that the next VE *office hour* is on Thursday 19 February at 7pm UTC [3], in case you had not added it to your calendar yet! Please notice that March's appointment has been scheduled as well: we'll meet on Friday 27 at 3pm UTC [4]; previous logs and other information, including how to participate, can be found at Meta [5]. Talk to you soon! Elitre (WMF) https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Community_Engagement_(Product) [1] http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?hour=16min=00sec=0day=18month=02year=2015 [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:VisualEditor/Portal#How_to_join_the_triage_meetings [3] http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?hour=19min=00sec=0day=19month=02year=2015 [4] http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?hour=15min=00sec=0day=27month=03year=2015 [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [treasurers] Accounting software for thematic orgs
Hi Pine, That's great to hear, I was really pleased with how Xero worked for our organisation and I hope it's just as good for you. If you (or any other user group) need a hand with it, please feel free to drop me a line as I've a few years experience with it now. Cheers, Craig Franklin On 16 February 2015 at 15:59, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Treasurers and other finance people, I realize that we had this discussion some months ago about accounting software. I just wanted to follow up by letting you know that Cascadia decided to go with Xero as we start. Your advice was helpful and I greatly appreciate it. I hope to meet many of you at the Wikimedia Conference in Germany this year. Regards, Pine (now Executive Director for Cascadia Wikimedians User Group) On Aug 20, 2014 4:12 AM, Richard Symonds richard.symo...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote: Hi Pine, I started off doing the accounts at WMUK several years ago and looked at a fair few different systems, including open source. Initially we used Gnucash, I believe, but because no-one else used it - including our auditors - it was not very useful when we needed to create year end accounts. I also considered CiviCRM after viewing a talk from the Swedish chapter in 2012. However, the talk was not encouraging - CiviCRM needs a *lot *of work to be useable as an accounting system. I would not therefore recommend Gnucash or CiviCRM or any other open source system: you will find it almost impossible to find an accountant who uses them, and also almost impossible to find a CiviCRM developer who is also an accountant! Your auditors will not know how to use the data and will not have the programs to access it, so in the end you will have to pay extra for the free software. In short: open source programs are good for small charity accounts, but the moment you start hiring staff (of any sort), or have fixed assets or non-cash donations, the system does not scale and as a result you will incur large overheads trying to get it to work. You might run into a problem with CiviCRM if you need to generate invoices for a conference you run in three or four years time - will your system be able to handle it, or will you need to upgrade everything at much greater cost? We also looked at Quickbooks, Sage, and a few others. In the end, we picked Sage - not because it was cheap, or because it was ethical - but because it is the UK standard and practically all UK accountants know how to use it. It has a huge support network, and it is scalable from a self-employed person up to an organisation with many thousands of employees. Sage is not used much in the USA though, so Quickbooks may be a better idea for you. My advice to you would be: - Plan for the future - ten year's time. Your solution needs to be scalable with little fuss. - Use something that has a proven track record - don't got for anything like a startup, because you need it supported in future and you can't take the risk. - Cloud-based is good, but the Treasurer really needs to understand what's happening - things should go through him where possible. - Don't be afraid to spend money if money needs to be spent. - Don't be afraid to ask the WMF directly for their advice. They know their stuff and it'd be good if your accounts were run on a similar system to theirs - cheaper in the long run, and you've got someone to turn to if it all breaks. I hope this helps! Feel free to drop me an email if you have any more specific questions. Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992 Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.* On 20 August 2014 10:57, Manuel Schneider manuel.schnei...@wikimedia.ch wrote: Hi Pine, you may want to evaluate CiviCRM. It is not perfect but supports accounting (rather than just recording donations as before) about a year. The advantage of CiviCRM is the fact that it integrates membership management, mailings, donors management and that it can be used centrally by all the committee members. The setup and customization is not so easy with CiviCRM but there are plenty of people in the movement who gathered some experience with that. /Manuel -- Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Lausanne, +41 (21) 34066-22 - www.wikimedia.ch ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quarterly reviews of high priority WMF initiatives
Quarterly review minutes and/or slides of the following teams have been posted in recent days: Multimedia: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Multimedia/January_2015 Legal Community Advocacy: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LCA_Q2_Slides.pdf (abridged slides only) Fundraising and Fundraising Tech: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews/Fundraising/January_2015 Communications: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Communications_WMF_Quarterly_Review,_Q2_2014-15.pdf (slides only, as a report - no actual meeting took place) With this, documentation from all 20 quarterly review meetings that took place about Q2 (October-December 2014) has been published. On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 6:49 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi folks, to increase accountability and create more opportunities for course corrections and resourcing adjustments as necessary, Sue's asked me and Howie Fung to set up a quarterly project evaluation process, starting with our highest priority initiatives. These are, according to Sue's narrowing focus recommendations which were approved by the Board [1]: - Visual Editor - Mobile (mobile contributions + Wikipedia Zero) - Editor Engagement (also known as the E2 and E3 teams) - Funds Dissemination Committe and expanded grant-making capacity I'm proposing the following initial schedule: January: - Editor Engagement Experiments February: - Visual Editor - Mobile (Contribs + Zero) March: - Editor Engagement Features (Echo, Flow projects) - Funds Dissemination Committee We’ll try doing this on the same day or adjacent to the monthly metrics meetings [2], since the team(s) will give a presentation on their recent progress, which will help set some context that would otherwise need to be covered in the quarterly review itself. This will also create open opportunities for feedback and questions. My goal is to do this in a manner where even though the quarterly review meetings themselves are internal, the outcomes are captured as meeting minutes and shared publicly, which is why I'm starting this discussion on a public list as well. I've created a wiki page here which we can use to discuss the concept further: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_reviews The internal review will, at minimum, include: Sue Gardner myself Howie Fung Team members and relevant director(s) Designated minute-taker So for example, for Visual Editor, the review team would be the Visual Editor / Parsoid teams, Sue, me, Howie, Terry, and a minute-taker. I imagine the structure of the review roughly as follows, with a duration of about 2 1/2 hours divided into 25-30 minute blocks: - Brief team intro and recap of team's activities through the quarter, compared with goals - Drill into goals and targets: Did we achieve what we said we would? - Review of challenges, blockers and successes - Discussion of proposed changes (e.g. resourcing, targets) and other action items - Buffer time, debriefing Once again, the primary purpose of these reviews is to create improved structures for internal accountability, escalation points in cases where serious changes are necessary, and transparency to the world. In addition to these priority initiatives, my recommendation would be to conduct quarterly reviews for any activity that requires more than a set amount of resources (people/dollars). These additional reviews may however be conducted in a more lightweight manner and internally to the departments. We’re slowly getting into that habit in engineering. As we pilot this process, the format of the high priority reviews can help inform and support reviews across the organization. Feedback and questions are appreciated. All best, Erik [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Narrowing_Focus [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Tilman Bayer Senior Analyst Wikimedia Foundation IRC (Freenode): HaeB ___ 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, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
