Re: [Wikimedia-l] Farewell, Erik!

[Philippe Beaudette]

Like so many others, I was blown away by wikistats. I can’t begin to count
the number of times I turned to it in my years at the WMF.  And it goes
without saying that Erik was an exemplary colleague, and a true gentleman.
Enjoy your well earned retirement.

Philippe


On Wed, Feb 6, 2019 at 9:27 PM Leinonen Teemu 
wrote:

> Hi Erik,
>
> When I saw the Wikistats the very first time in mid 2000 (?) I was very
> impressed. After meeting with Erik, I respected the project and him even
> more. The impact of the Wikistats to researchers and students around the
> world, but also to the open data movement in general, has been incredible.
> I hope the future historians will notice this.
>
> Thanks Erik. Your new project looks very interesting.
>
> - Teemu
>
> ---
> Prof. Teemu Leinonen
> http://www.teemuleinonen.fi
> + 358 50 351 6796
>
> On 6 Feb 2019, at 23.17, Dario Taraborelli  > wrote:
>
> “[R]ecent revisions of an article can be peeled off to reveal older layers,
> which are still meaningful for historians. Even graffiti applied by vandals
> can by its sheer informality convey meaningful information, just like
> historians learned a lot from graffiti on walls of classic Pompei. Likewise
> view patterns can tell future historians a lot about what was hot and what
> wasn’t in our times. Reason why these raw view data are meant to be
> preserved for a long time.”
>
> Erik Zachte wrote these lines in a blog post
> <
> https://web.archive.org/web/20171018194720/http://infodisiac.com/blog/2009/07/michael-jackson/
> >
> almost
> ten years ago, and I cannot find better words to describe the gift he gave
> us. Erik retired  this
> past Friday, leaving behind an immense legacy. I had the honor to work with
> him for several years, and I hosted this morning an intimate, tearful
> celebration of what Erik has represented for the Wikimedia movement.
>
> His Wikistats project —with his signature
> pale yellow background we've known and loved since the mid 2000s
>  >—has
> been much more than an "analytics platform". It's been an individual
> attempt he initiated, and grew over time, to try and comprehend and make
> sense of the largest open collaboration project in human history, driven by
> curiosity and by an insatiable desire to serve data to the communities that
> most needed it.
>
> Through this project, Erik has created a live record of data describing the
> growth and reach of all Wikimedia communities, across languages and
> projects, putting multi-lingualism and smaller communities at the very
> center of his attention. He coined metrics such as "active editors" that
> defined the benchmark for volunteers, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the
> academic community to understand some of the growing pains and editor
> retention issues
> <
> https://web.archive.org/web/20110608214507/http://infodisiac.com/blog/2009/12/new-editors-are-joining-english-wikipedia-in-droves/
> >
> the movement has faced. He created countless reports—that predate by nearly
> a decade modern visualizations of online attention—to understand what
> Wikipedia traffic means in the context of current events like elections
> <
> https://web.archive.org/web/20160405055621/http://infodisiac.com/blog/2008/09/sarah-palin/
> >
> or public health crises
> <
> https://web.archive.org/web/20090708011216/http://infodisiac.com/blog/2009/05/h1n1-flu-or-new-flu-or/
> >.
> He has created countless
>  visualizations
> <
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/10/27/new-interactive-visualization-wikipedia/
> >
> that show the enormous gaps in local language content and representation
> that, as a movement, we face in our efforts to build an encyclopedia for
> and about everyone. He has also made extensive use of pie charts
> <
> https://web.archive.org/web/20141222073751/http://infodisiac.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/piechartscorrected.png
> >,
> which—as friends—we are ready to turn a blind eye towards.
>
> Most importantly, the data Erik has brougth to life has been cited over
> 1,000 times
> <
> https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en_sdt=0%2C5=stats.wikimedia.org
> >
> in the scholarly literature. If we gave credit to open data creators in the
> same way as we credit authors of scholarly papers, Erik would be one of the
> most influential authors in the field, and I don't think it is much of a
> stretch to say that the massive trove of data and metrics Erik has made
> available had a direct causal role in the birth and growth of the academic
> field of Wikimedia research, and more broadly, scholarship of online
> collaboration.
>
> Like I said this morning, Erik -- you have been not only an invaluable
> colleague and a steward for the movement, but also a very decent human
> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Farewell, Erik!

[Leinonen Teemu]

Hi Erik,

When I saw the Wikistats the very first time in mid 2000 (?) I was very 
impressed. After meeting with Erik, I respected the project and him even more. 
The impact of the Wikistats to researchers and students around the world, but 
also to the open data movement in general, has been incredible. I hope the 
future historians will notice this.

Thanks Erik. Your new project looks very interesting.

- Teemu

---
Prof. Teemu Leinonen
http://www.teemuleinonen.fi
+ 358 50 351 6796

On 6 Feb 2019, at 23.17, Dario Taraborelli 
mailto:dtarabore...@wikimedia.org>> wrote:

“[R]ecent revisions of an article can be peeled off to reveal older layers,
which are still meaningful for historians. Even graffiti applied by vandals
can by its sheer informality convey meaningful information, just like
historians learned a lot from graffiti on walls of classic Pompei. Likewise
view patterns can tell future historians a lot about what was hot and what
wasn’t in our times. Reason why these raw view data are meant to be
preserved for a long time.”

Erik Zachte wrote these lines in a blog post

almost
ten years ago, and I cannot find better words to describe the gift he gave
us. Erik retired  this
past Friday, leaving behind an immense legacy. I had the honor to work with
him for several years, and I hosted this morning an intimate, tearful
celebration of what Erik has represented for the Wikimedia movement.

His Wikistats project —with his signature
pale yellow background we've known and loved since the mid 2000s
—has
been much more than an "analytics platform". It's been an individual
attempt he initiated, and grew over time, to try and comprehend and make
sense of the largest open collaboration project in human history, driven by
curiosity and by an insatiable desire to serve data to the communities that
most needed it.

Through this project, Erik has created a live record of data describing the
growth and reach of all Wikimedia communities, across languages and
projects, putting multi-lingualism and smaller communities at the very
center of his attention. He coined metrics such as "active editors" that
defined the benchmark for volunteers, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the
academic community to understand some of the growing pains and editor
retention issues

the movement has faced. He created countless reports—that predate by nearly
a decade modern visualizations of online attention—to understand what
Wikipedia traffic means in the context of current events like elections

or public health crises
.
He has created countless
 visualizations

that show the enormous gaps in local language content and representation
that, as a movement, we face in our efforts to build an encyclopedia for
and about everyone. He has also made extensive use of pie charts
,
which—as friends—we are ready to turn a blind eye towards.

Most importantly, the data Erik has brougth to life has been cited over
1,000 times

in the scholarly literature. If we gave credit to open data creators in the
same way as we credit authors of scholarly papers, Erik would be one of the
most influential authors in the field, and I don't think it is much of a
stretch to say that the massive trove of data and metrics Erik has made
available had a direct causal role in the birth and growth of the academic
field of Wikimedia research, and more broadly, scholarship of online
collaboration.

Like I said this morning, Erik -- you have been not only an invaluable
colleague and a steward for the movement, but also a very decent human
being, and I am grateful we shared some of this journey together.

Please join me in celebrating Erik on his well-deserved retirement, read
his statement  to learn
what he's planning to do next, or check this lovely portrait
 Wired published a
while back about "the Stats Master Making Sense of Wikipedia's Massive Data
Trove".

Dario


--
*Dario Taraborelli  *Director, Head of Research, Wikimedia Foundation

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Analytics] Farewell, Erik!

[Leila Zia]

Erik,

It's been an incredible honor to work with you as a colleague and a
volunteer. Thank you for the stats and all the conversations about
categories, topics, languages, ..., but even more so for showing me
the path and the purpose, time after time. I will dearly miss you in
Wikimedia Foundation, and I hope that I can be a steward of what you
stood for (or at least I can say that I will continue to try:).

Enjoy your new endeavors and see you around.

Regards,
Leila


On Wed, Feb 6, 2019 at 3:22 PM Christian Aistleitner
 wrote:
>
> Hi Erik,
>
> Thank you for your work!
>
> When I first came across Wikistats, it completely blew my mind. Such a
> huge collection of raw data turned into digestible information. It's
> amazing, stunning, and above all: enlightening.
> I've spent countless hours digging through Wikistats in awe.
>
> But besides the gargantuan effort that Wikistats represents, I even
> more value your passion for the data and information it holds, your
> second-to-none expertise on it, and your willingness to go through the
> details and numbers with each and everyone, regardless where they come
> from, your openness, your unbiased-ness, your constructive approach,
> and your never-shying-away from discussions about the numbers and
> trends.
>
> Enjoy your retirement from WMF, and seeing your blog post and your
> tree mapping project, I'm sure it'll be an amazing "Unruhestand" :-)
>
> Have fun,
> Christian
>
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 06, 2019 at 01:17:48PM -0800, Dario Taraborelli wrote:
> > “[R]ecent revisions of an article can be peeled off to reveal older layers,
> > which are still meaningful for historians. Even graffiti applied by vandals
> > can by its sheer informality convey meaningful information, just like
> > historians learned a lot from graffiti on walls of classic Pompei. Likewise
> > view patterns can tell future historians a lot about what was hot and what
> > wasn’t in our times. Reason why these raw view data are meant to be
> > preserved for a long time.”
> >
> > Erik Zachte wrote these lines in a blog post
> > 
> > almost
> > ten years ago, and I cannot find better words to describe the gift he gave
> > us. Erik retired  this
> > past Friday, leaving behind an immense legacy. I had the honor to work with
> > him for several years, and I hosted this morning an intimate, tearful
> > celebration of what Erik has represented for the Wikimedia movement.
> >
> > His Wikistats project —with his signature
> > pale yellow background we've known and loved since the mid 2000s
> > —has
> > been much more than an "analytics platform". It's been an individual
> > attempt he initiated, and grew over time, to try and comprehend and make
> > sense of the largest open collaboration project in human history, driven by
> > curiosity and by an insatiable desire to serve data to the communities that
> > most needed it.
> >
> > Through this project, Erik has created a live record of data describing the
> > growth and reach of all Wikimedia communities, across languages and
> > projects, putting multi-lingualism and smaller communities at the very
> > center of his attention. He coined metrics such as "active editors" that
> > defined the benchmark for volunteers, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the
> > academic community to understand some of the growing pains and editor
> > retention issues
> > 
> > the movement has faced. He created countless reports—that predate by nearly
> > a decade modern visualizations of online attention—to understand what
> > Wikipedia traffic means in the context of current events like elections
> > 
> > or public health crises
> > .
> > He has created countless
> >  visualizations
> > 
> > that show the enormous gaps in local language content and representation
> > that, as a movement, we face in our efforts to build an encyclopedia for
> > and about everyone. He has also made extensive use of pie charts
> > ,
> > which—as friends—we are ready to turn a blind eye towards.
> >
> > Most importantly, the data Erik has brougth to life has been cited over
> > 1,000 times
> > 
> > in the 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Analytics] Farewell, Erik!

[Christian Aistleitner via Wikimedia-l]

Hi Erik,

Thank you for your work!

When I first came across Wikistats, it completely blew my mind. Such a
huge collection of raw data turned into digestible information. It's
amazing, stunning, and above all: enlightening.
I've spent countless hours digging through Wikistats in awe.

But besides the gargantuan effort that Wikistats represents, I even
more value your passion for the data and information it holds, your
second-to-none expertise on it, and your willingness to go through the
details and numbers with each and everyone, regardless where they come
from, your openness, your unbiased-ness, your constructive approach,
and your never-shying-away from discussions about the numbers and
trends.

Enjoy your retirement from WMF, and seeing your blog post and your
tree mapping project, I'm sure it'll be an amazing "Unruhestand" :-)

Have fun,
Christian



On Wed, Feb 06, 2019 at 01:17:48PM -0800, Dario Taraborelli wrote:
> “[R]ecent revisions of an article can be peeled off to reveal older layers,
> which are still meaningful for historians. Even graffiti applied by vandals
> can by its sheer informality convey meaningful information, just like
> historians learned a lot from graffiti on walls of classic Pompei. Likewise
> view patterns can tell future historians a lot about what was hot and what
> wasn’t in our times. Reason why these raw view data are meant to be
> preserved for a long time.”
> 
> Erik Zachte wrote these lines in a blog post
> 
> almost
> ten years ago, and I cannot find better words to describe the gift he gave
> us. Erik retired  this
> past Friday, leaving behind an immense legacy. I had the honor to work with
> him for several years, and I hosted this morning an intimate, tearful
> celebration of what Erik has represented for the Wikimedia movement.
> 
> His Wikistats project —with his signature
> pale yellow background we've known and loved since the mid 2000s
> —has
> been much more than an "analytics platform". It's been an individual
> attempt he initiated, and grew over time, to try and comprehend and make
> sense of the largest open collaboration project in human history, driven by
> curiosity and by an insatiable desire to serve data to the communities that
> most needed it.
> 
> Through this project, Erik has created a live record of data describing the
> growth and reach of all Wikimedia communities, across languages and
> projects, putting multi-lingualism and smaller communities at the very
> center of his attention. He coined metrics such as "active editors" that
> defined the benchmark for volunteers, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the
> academic community to understand some of the growing pains and editor
> retention issues
> 
> the movement has faced. He created countless reports—that predate by nearly
> a decade modern visualizations of online attention—to understand what
> Wikipedia traffic means in the context of current events like elections
> 
> or public health crises
> .
> He has created countless
>  visualizations
> 
> that show the enormous gaps in local language content and representation
> that, as a movement, we face in our efforts to build an encyclopedia for
> and about everyone. He has also made extensive use of pie charts
> ,
> which—as friends—we are ready to turn a blind eye towards.
> 
> Most importantly, the data Erik has brougth to life has been cited over
> 1,000 times
> 
> in the scholarly literature. If we gave credit to open data creators in the
> same way as we credit authors of scholarly papers, Erik would be one of the
> most influential authors in the field, and I don't think it is much of a
> stretch to say that the massive trove of data and metrics Erik has made
> available had a direct causal role in the birth and growth of the academic
> field of Wikimedia research, and more broadly, scholarship of online
> collaboration.
> 
> Like I said this morning, Erik -- you have been not only an invaluable
> colleague and a steward for the movement, but also a very decent human
> being, and I am grateful we shared some of this journey together.
> 
> Please 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why We Read Wikipedia in your language

[Leila Zia]

Hi all,

Update time.

Given that this is a long email: there is an action item in the 5th
bullet point below for the language communities who want to
participate in the next iteration of the study. If you are interested
to have your language included in the study, we need a response by
2019-02-15. See below for more.

* The paper on Why the World Reads Wikipedia is accepted in WSDM '19
[1]. If you are planning to attend the conference, stop by to hear
Florian Lemmerich presenting the work. You can read the paper at
https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.00474 . If you have time to only read one
subsection of the paper, we would recommend section 4.4. Summary of
Results. From there, you can start reading the other parts of the
paper depending on your interest about introduction, methodology and
data, etc. If you prefer to watch a presentation about the paper, you
can check out the December 2018 Research showcase [2].

* Remember that our offer to provide presentations and discuss the
result with your language community, if your language is part of the
14 languages in the study [3], is still on the table. :) If you want
to talk with us about this topic, sign up at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Characterizing_Wikipedia_Reader_Behaviour/Contact_us#Request_a_presentation
. No pressure from us: only if having a conversation about readers
help your language community in what you do.

* We have put extensive effort to document the code [4] and data [5]
for this research such that each language community can dive in their
data as they see fit.

* What's next?
The previous results made one point clear to us: geography and
language matter and depending on from where in the world the reader is
accessing a specific Wikipedia language, they may have different needs
and motivations [6]. We hypothesize that age, gender, education,
native language, as well as geographic region the reader is from can
help us understand and characterize the needs and motivations of
Wikipedia readers better. As some of you may already be guessing:
there are some big questions ahead of us. For example, are there
disparities in access to content depending on the readers' age or
gender? Does the trajectory of readers differ depending on their
demographics? We'd like to start addressing questions along these
lines and better understand the needs and motivations of
sub-populations within a country or language community.

To do the above, we will rerun the study and this time we will include
some demographics questions as part of the study.

* How can your language community participate in the upcoming study of
reader demographics?
As always, research on this front is not possible without a very close
collaboration between the language communities who will participate in
this study and the researchers. If you want your language to be
included in this round of the study, please sign up at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Characterizing_Wikipedia_Reader_Behaviour/Demographics_and_Wikipedia_use_cases#Interested_languages
on or before 2019-02-15 .

Please note that the priority will be given to the 14 languages that
participated in the previous round and that we will do our best to
include new languages. Also note that we may not be able to run the
study in all the languages that sign up: the traffic to the language
edition, the diversity that the inclusion of the language can bring to
the language pool, our capacity to run the analysis in the language,
the availability of the point of contact from the language for
translations will all play a role in the final list of languages that
we can include in the study. This being said, please don't shy away
from listing your language there if you're interested. :)

Best,
Leila, on behalf of the researchers (Isaac Johnson, Florian Lemmerich,
Diego Saez, Markus Strohmaier, Bob West, and myself)

[1] http://www.wsdm-conference.org/2019/
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase#December_2018
[3] ar, bn, de, en, es, he, hi, hu, ja, nl, ro, ru, uk, zh
[4] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Characterizing_Wikipedia_Reader_Behaviour/Code
[5] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Characterizing_Wikipedia_Reader_Behaviour/Data
[6] The needs and motivations themselves don't change, but the
distribution over possible options can change, as well as the reader
characteristics that can describe them.
[7] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Characterizing_Wikipedia_Reader_Behaviour/Demographics_and_Wikipedia_use_cases

On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 5:43 PM Leila Zia  wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> Update time.
>
> Thank you all for your patience and support as we went through the
> different stages of the analysis for this study. We have now concluded
> the study based on the survey of the 14 Wikipedia languages [1]. Here
> is what will happen next:
>
> * We are doing some relatively major documentation at
> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Analytics] Farewell, Erik!

[Brad Patrick]

Erik:

From the early days until now, your quiet leadership and excellence have been a 
great credit to the organization and most importantly, your leadership by 
example has been an inspiration to untold numbers of people. But, actually, 
it’s not untold numbers because of your work! You tell it with numbers. 

All the best in your next chapter. Thank you so much for your work!

BradPatrick

b...@baplegal.com
Sent from my iPhone

> On Feb 6, 2019, at 5:21 PM, effe iets anders  wrote:
> 
> I have always enjoyed Erik's insightful input - especially the insights
> that people don't like to hear at first. I trust that much more of that is
> to come in the future, so I'm not ready to say farewells :). I wouldn't be
> able to accurately summarize it anyway.
> 
> Erik, I hope that you'll find a lot of joy in the beautiful tree project
> that you're working on these days (folks, definitely check it out if you're
> interested in Leiden's horticulture). It is another beautiful example of
> how you manage to visualize the things that sound dull without you
> explaining them. Your presentations at Wikimania were for that reason
> usually the ones I most looked forward to.
> 
> What maybe not everyone realizes, is that Erik is one of the people that
> the French Wikipedia would categorize as 'Grand Ancients
> ',
> having been active since 2001. A unique understanding of the history of
> Wikipedia combined with dedication and understanding data has clearly
> resulted in good work. Thanks for summarizing this so elaborately, Dario :)
> 
> Until soon,
> 
> Lodewijk
> 
>> On Wed, Feb 6, 2019 at 1:54 PM Pine W  wrote:
>> 
>> Thanks for your work, Erik. I hope that we will see you in the future.
>> 
>> This is the first time that I can recall hearing about a person retiring
>> from WMF. Volunteer retirements and semi-retirements happen regularly, and
>> the reasons that I hear for those retirements are often sad. It's nice to
>> hear of someone who is retiring after years of success and is moving in a
>> positive direction.
>> 
>> I think that you leave a good legacy in the Wikiverse, and as you might
>> guess from my username, I like what you chose for your next project.
>> 
>> Best wishes,
>> 
>> Pine
>> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
>> 
>> 
>> ___
>> Analytics mailing list
>> analyt...@lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics
>> 
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
> 

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Analytics] Farewell, Erik!

[effe iets anders]

I have always enjoyed Erik's insightful input - especially the insights
that people don't like to hear at first. I trust that much more of that is
to come in the future, so I'm not ready to say farewells :). I wouldn't be
able to accurately summarize it anyway.

Erik, I hope that you'll find a lot of joy in the beautiful tree project
that you're working on these days (folks, definitely check it out if you're
interested in Leiden's horticulture). It is another beautiful example of
how you manage to visualize the things that sound dull without you
explaining them. Your presentations at Wikimania were for that reason
usually the ones I most looked forward to.

What maybe not everyone realizes, is that Erik is one of the people that
the French Wikipedia would categorize as 'Grand Ancients
',
having been active since 2001. A unique understanding of the history of
Wikipedia combined with dedication and understanding data has clearly
resulted in good work. Thanks for summarizing this so elaborately, Dario :)

Until soon,

Lodewijk

On Wed, Feb 6, 2019 at 1:54 PM Pine W  wrote:

> Thanks for your work, Erik. I hope that we will see you in the future.
>
> This is the first time that I can recall hearing about a person retiring
> from WMF. Volunteer retirements and semi-retirements happen regularly, and
> the reasons that I hear for those retirements are often sad. It's nice to
> hear of someone who is retiring after years of success and is moving in a
> positive direction.
>
> I think that you leave a good legacy in the Wikiverse, and as you might
> guess from my username, I like what you chose for your next project.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Pine
> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
>
>
> ___
> Analytics mailing list
> analyt...@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics
>
___
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https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
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New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Analytics] Farewell, Erik!

[Pine W]

Thanks for your work, Erik. I hope that we will see you in the future.

This is the first time that I can recall hearing about a person retiring
from WMF. Volunteer retirements and semi-retirements happen regularly, and
the reasons that I hear for those retirements are often sad. It's nice to
hear of someone who is retiring after years of success and is moving in a
positive direction.

I think that you leave a good legacy in the Wikiverse, and as you might
guess from my username, I like what you chose for your next project.

Best wishes,

Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
___
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https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
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New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

[Wikimedia-l] Farewell, Erik!

[Dario Taraborelli]

“[R]ecent revisions of an article can be peeled off to reveal older layers,
which are still meaningful for historians. Even graffiti applied by vandals
can by its sheer informality convey meaningful information, just like
historians learned a lot from graffiti on walls of classic Pompei. Likewise
view patterns can tell future historians a lot about what was hot and what
wasn’t in our times. Reason why these raw view data are meant to be
preserved for a long time.”

Erik Zachte wrote these lines in a blog post

almost
ten years ago, and I cannot find better words to describe the gift he gave
us. Erik retired  this
past Friday, leaving behind an immense legacy. I had the honor to work with
him for several years, and I hosted this morning an intimate, tearful
celebration of what Erik has represented for the Wikimedia movement.

His Wikistats project —with his signature
pale yellow background we've known and loved since the mid 2000s
—has
been much more than an "analytics platform". It's been an individual
attempt he initiated, and grew over time, to try and comprehend and make
sense of the largest open collaboration project in human history, driven by
curiosity and by an insatiable desire to serve data to the communities that
most needed it.

Through this project, Erik has created a live record of data describing the
growth and reach of all Wikimedia communities, across languages and
projects, putting multi-lingualism and smaller communities at the very
center of his attention. He coined metrics such as "active editors" that
defined the benchmark for volunteers, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the
academic community to understand some of the growing pains and editor
retention issues

the movement has faced. He created countless reports—that predate by nearly
a decade modern visualizations of online attention—to understand what
Wikipedia traffic means in the context of current events like elections

or public health crises
.
He has created countless
 visualizations

that show the enormous gaps in local language content and representation
that, as a movement, we face in our efforts to build an encyclopedia for
and about everyone. He has also made extensive use of pie charts
,
which—as friends—we are ready to turn a blind eye towards.

Most importantly, the data Erik has brougth to life has been cited over
1,000 times

in the scholarly literature. If we gave credit to open data creators in the
same way as we credit authors of scholarly papers, Erik would be one of the
most influential authors in the field, and I don't think it is much of a
stretch to say that the massive trove of data and metrics Erik has made
available had a direct causal role in the birth and growth of the academic
field of Wikimedia research, and more broadly, scholarship of online
collaboration.

Like I said this morning, Erik -- you have been not only an invaluable
colleague and a steward for the movement, but also a very decent human
being, and I am grateful we shared some of this journey together.

Please join me in celebrating Erik on his well-deserved retirement, read
his statement  to learn
what he's planning to do next, or check this lovely portrait
 Wired published a
while back about "the Stats Master Making Sense of Wikipedia's Massive Data
Trove".

Dario


-- 
*Dario Taraborelli  *Director, Head of Research, Wikimedia Foundation
research.wikimedia.org • nitens.org • @readermeter

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Affiliates] Recognition of Wikimedia Community User Group Albania

[Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l]

 I guess... probably one include also the majority of Kosovo, Albanian-speaking 
regions of Greece, P.Y.R.O.M./North Macedonia and maybe even Southern Italy and 
the other one is just centered on Albania as a state. This is not the same 
scenario as Brazil (not sure if, partially, also Greece) since in that case we 
had two group precisely centered on one country. 

It's not totally practical but the geopolitical situation is not practical in 
the end by itself...  You cannot force people to get rid of a group that might 
become a future national chapter because their language is spoken by many other 
people in neighboring countries who already clustered in a  previous UG. So it 
should not be considered a critical situation per se, although the interaction 
of the two UGs should be closely monitored and addressed since the beginning. 

What is missing is a precise guideline or attention to UG related to languages 
(of minorities or globally spoken). You could have the same problem with a 
future Italian minor languages UG active in Corsica or Croatia, with a 
Retho-romance Alpine language user group, with a gender gap UG active in a 
language distributed along various borders... and so on. They don't seem to 
show huge problems when similar situation exist in reality but they could 
degenerate, stop cooperation, or never start it with other UGs or national 
chapters.
I value plurality, I want UG to be created and catalyze activities, and I think 
that the problem is mostly the character of people. However, I strongly 
advocate a more structured architecture of language-based UG to be implemented. 
Basically what I suppose was done with Catalan Wikimedia Thematic Organization, 
although in that case there is no main entity competing on the area of a 
sovereign country where Catalan is spoken (which is not necessarily a better 
scenario, just complex in a different way). We call them almost all "User 
groups" but they are sometimes local geographical unions of users and 
volunteers (embryonic future national chapters or just regional associations), 
language-oriented associations created to involve minorities or cross-projects 
of interested users unified by a topic. They all have different purpose and 
should be rationalized somehow. I think I pushed a little bit in that direction 
on the application to WikiSummit, stressing the importance to make order in the 
field.
IMHO, we should have single-language thematic organizations (specifically for a 
language), cross-language thematic organization or local UG centered on a vague 
historic geographical area or a very precise administrative one. And think 
carefully about their status. This is however just a vague idea.

Alessandro
   Il mercoledì 6 febbraio 2019, 18:11:57 CET, Philip Kopetzky 
 ha scritto:  
 
 Just to close off this thread, there seemingly is no plan and others are
left to deal with the fallout of this decision.

On Tue, 12 Jun 2018 at 08:23, Paulo Santos Perneta 
wrote:

> Hi Kirill,
>
> I join Philip and Mardetanha on their concerns and questions. Having
> followed closely the Brazil situation - which ended up in the worst
> possible way, IMO - I'm very interested in your answer.
>
> Best,
>
> Paulo
>
> 2018-06-11 13:07 GMT+01:00 Mardetanha :
>
>> ​ Hi Kirill
>>
>>  Philip's concerns were not answered, would you please respond, I had the
>> very same question.
>>
>>
>>
>> Mardetanha
>>
>> On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 3:12 PM, Philip Kopetzky <
>> philip.kopet...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Hi Kirill,
>> >
>> > what's the difference/relationship between this group and the
>> Wikimedians
>> > of Albanian Language User Group, which is currently applying for a
>> > simpleAPG grant? How do we avoid creating more Brazilian scenarios by
>> > reconising even more user groups from the same area?
>> >
>> > Best,
>> > Philip
>> >
>> > On 22 May 2018 at 22:07, Kirill Lokshin 
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > > Hi everyone!
>> > >
>> > > I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has
>> recognized
>> > > [1] Wikimedia Community User Group Albania [2] as a Wikimedia User
>> Group.
>> > > The group aims to improve content about Albania across the Wikimedia
>> > > projects, including Commons and Wikidata, and to collaborate with
>> other
>> > > Wikimedia user groups, chapters, and other free culture groups in
>> Albania
>> > > and across the region.
>> > >
>> > > Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!
>> > >
>> > > Regards,
>> > > Kirill Lokshin
>> > > Chair, Affiliations Committee
>> > >
>> > > [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/
>> > > Resolutions/Recognition_Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Albania
>> > > [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_User_
>> > Group_Albania
>> > >
>> > > ___
>> > > Affiliates mailing list
>> > > affilia...@lists.wikimedia.org
>> > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/affiliates
>> > >
>> > >
>> > 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Affiliates] Recognition of Wikimedia Community User Group Albania

[Philip Kopetzky]

Just to close off this thread, there seemingly is no plan and others are
left to deal with the fallout of this decision.

On Tue, 12 Jun 2018 at 08:23, Paulo Santos Perneta 
wrote:

> Hi Kirill,
>
> I join Philip and Mardetanha on their concerns and questions. Having
> followed closely the Brazil situation - which ended up in the worst
> possible way, IMO - I'm very interested in your answer.
>
> Best,
>
> Paulo
>
> 2018-06-11 13:07 GMT+01:00 Mardetanha :
>
>> ​ Hi Kirill
>>
>>   Philip's concerns were not answered, would you please respond, I had the
>> very same question.
>>
>>
>>
>> Mardetanha
>>
>> On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 3:12 PM, Philip Kopetzky <
>> philip.kopet...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Hi Kirill,
>> >
>> > what's the difference/relationship between this group and the
>> Wikimedians
>> > of Albanian Language User Group, which is currently applying for a
>> > simpleAPG grant? How do we avoid creating more Brazilian scenarios by
>> > reconising even more user groups from the same area?
>> >
>> > Best,
>> > Philip
>> >
>> > On 22 May 2018 at 22:07, Kirill Lokshin 
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > > Hi everyone!
>> > >
>> > > I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has
>> recognized
>> > > [1] Wikimedia Community User Group Albania [2] as a Wikimedia User
>> Group.
>> > > The group aims to improve content about Albania across the Wikimedia
>> > > projects, including Commons and Wikidata, and to collaborate with
>> other
>> > > Wikimedia user groups, chapters, and other free culture groups in
>> Albania
>> > > and across the region.
>> > >
>> > > Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!
>> > >
>> > > Regards,
>> > > Kirill Lokshin
>> > > Chair, Affiliations Committee
>> > >
>> > > [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/
>> > > Resolutions/Recognition_Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Albania
>> > > [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_User_
>> > Group_Albania
>> > >
>> > > ___
>> > > Affiliates mailing list
>> > > affilia...@lists.wikimedia.org
>> > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/affiliates
>> > >
>> > >
>> > ___
>> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
>> > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
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>> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>> > 
>> >
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