Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Bishakha Datta]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 11:36 PM, Thehelpfulone
wrote:

>
> Thus, in the future (this is for both Board members and WMF staff) it would
> be much better, when announcing *any* potentially controversial changes
> like this to *proactively* provide such documents, than potentially give
> the impression that you are intentionally trying to hide something by
> waiting for a community member to request it.
>

I agree that this needs improvement, but I think we must also allow for the
possibility that not pro-actively providing a document does not necessarily
translate into an intention to hide something.

I find this underlying layer of impressions very interesting - to me, it
speaks of much work needed to increase levels of trust between different
movement players.

Best
Bishakha
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Bishakha Datta]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 11:33 PM, ENWP Pine  wrote:

> Could I ask about what information the Board had in addition to these
> slides?
>

In addition to the slides, we referred to the proposal on meta and the
discussion on the talk page.

Best
Bishakha
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Democratizing the Wikimedia Foundation

[Bishakha Datta]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 11:11 PM, Lodewijk wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I have set up a brainstorming page on metawiki (
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Democratizing_the_Wikimedia_Foundation)
> where I would like to invite you to think about ways to democratize the
> Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> This doesn't mean that the Wikimedia Foundation is totally undemocratic,
> but it does mean that in my humble opinion, improvements are possible.


Agree with the reading that improvements are possible - the page name is a
bit dramatic, with an underlying whiff of revolution: Democratize!
(exclamation mine).

Personally, I think this is a timely, useful and constructive initiative
and I've added a bunch of comments to the page.

Hope we will hear from a wider cross-section of the community.

Cheers
Bishakha
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] 2012 Editor survey launched

[John Vandenberg]

Thanks Tilman. Good to see the offer is in the public FAQ.

I was on my phone at the time I saw it, and having some time on my hands I
tried to fill it in. I managed to screw up the survey software on the
languages selection by trying to select more than one, and then it wouldnt
let me pick any. I quit thinking I would get another chance...on my desktop.

I dont remember if the survey told me that I would only have one chance...

Do you know how many people have seen the banner vs how many have completed
it?

Is there a page which lists pros and cons of this approach?

I think the WMF should collect all the survey data they can. Maximum ROI
and all that.
You can use models to select a subset of the 2012 data that would be
comparable to the 2011 data.

John Vandenberg.
sent from Galaxy Note
On Nov 3, 2012 10:58 AM, "Tilman Bayer"  wrote:

> Hi John,
>
> On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 6:05 PM, John Vandenberg  wrote:
> > Hi Tilman,
> >
> > Could you explain the logic behind the survey link not being static until
> > the user completes the survey or dismisses the notice?
> I guess you are referring to the fact that the survey invitation
> banner is designed to be shown only once to each user? This is
> explained in the Q&A for the survey:
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_2012#Why_will_a_user_see_the_link_to_the_survey_only_once.3F_How.3F
> In short, it's intended to reduce bias towards more frequent editors.
> There are reasons for and against this setup, but it's one of the many
> things that we want to keep consistent with the last survey so as to
> be able to do longitudinal analysis, i.e. identify trends.
>
> (In case this is not what you meant, feel free to rephrase the
> question and I will try to reply again.)
>
> >
> > I appreciate that you're offering, via email, to give people the survey
> > link if they missed it, but that will influence who ends up your survey
> > population. Not everyone on your target population is subscribed to a
> list
> > whetr this offer has been made.
> I understand this concern from a theoretical standpoint, but
> considering the fact that only four people have requested such a link
> so far, the bias that this introduces is likely to be negligible. - If
> one goes down that road, one would need to worry much more about the
> effect of announcements and discussions about the survey on mailing
> lists and on Meta before it has completed, but this is a price we are
> happy to pay to involve the community and achieve transparence.
>
> >
> > John Vandenberg.
> > sent from Galaxy Note
> > On Oct 31, 2012 7:26 AM, "Tilman Bayer"  wrote:
> >
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> we have just launched the Foundation's 2012 editor survey; with
> >> invitations to participate being shown to logged-in users on Wikipedia
> >> and Commons.
> >>
> >> A few quick facts about the survey (for more refer to
> >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_2012
> >> ):
> >>
> >> * This is the third survey of editors as envisaged in the Foundation's
> >> 2010-15 strategic plan "in order to take the pulse of the community
> >> and identify pressing issues or concerns", after the April 2011 and
> >> December 2011 surveys.
> >>
> >> * The first main purpose of this survey is to continue the work of the
> >> 2011 studies (conducted by Mani Pande and Ayush Khanna), with a focus
> >> on tracking changes since last year and identifying trends.
> >> Which is why many questions are being repeated from last time.
> >>
> >> * The second emphasis in this instance of the survey is to measure the
> >> satisfaction of the editing community with the work of the Wikimedia
> >> Foundation.
> >>
> >> * This is the first editor survey that includes a non-Wikipedia
> >> project (Commons, for the questions that are non Wikipedia-specific).
> >>
> >> * Thanks to everyone who commented on the draft questionnaire after we
> >> solicited feedback on this list and in and IRC office hour, as well as
> >> to those who commented about the last survey. We made several changes
> >> based on the feedback, and tried to reply to all concerns.
> >>
> >> * Also many thanks to all volunteer translators who reviewed or
> >> contributed translations; the questionnaire is available in 14
> >> languages (Italian, Polish and Portuguese will launch a bit later).
> >>
> >> * As with the previous two surveys, the results will be published in
> >> the following forms: A "topline" report detailing the percentage of
> >> responses for each question, a series of posts on
> >> https://blog.wikimedia.org analyzing the results, and a data set
> >> consisting of anonymized responses which others can use to do their
> >> own analyses. This time we will also aim to produce language-specific
> >> topline reports (an approach we already tested for Chinese with the
> >> data from the December 2011 survey).
> >>
> >> --
> >> Tilman Bayer
> >> Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
> >> Wikimedia Foundatio

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Bishakha Datta]

On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 6:23 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:

> Bishakha Datta, 02/11/2012 17:08:
>
>  On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 9:31 PM, Benjamin Lees wrote:
>>
>>  This doesn't seem too unreasonable in itself, but it is somewhat
>>> surprising
>>> that you didn't readjust the board's composition accordingly.  The
>>> justification for having unelected seats is to ensure that the board has
>>> people with specific skills or backgrounds, and my impression was that
>>> getting someone with accounting experience to serve as treasurer was part
>>> of that.
>>>
>>>
>> And that accounting experience is still very much needed on the Board - to
>> head the Audit Committee and to oversee the treasurer.
>>
>
> This seems quite a weak answer to Benjamin's point: if the experience of
> an "expert" board member is relevant/needed only for one committee which
> can consist also of non-board members (who in principle can also head it),
> then the board may well decide to restrict his/her partecipation to that
> committee, to take advantage of that experience where it's most effective
> and free a board position to allow further diversification and expansion of
> board member experiences.
>
> The point I didn't make explicit is that someone on the board needs to
embody the notion of financial accountability - although all of us, as
trustees, see this as part of our fiduciary duties, it is extremely useful
to have among us, a trustee, who 'owns' the overall concept, and pushes to
consistently strengthen financial accountability (as part of overall
accountability), both at the Foundation and across the movement.

Best
Bishakha
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Samuel Klein]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 6:46 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:

>
> My apologies. I read your previous suggestion during the travel guide
> discussion and the only real route for communicating with a Board member to
> solicit a proposal seemed to me to be private user-to-user e-mail. Are
> there
> other (a)venues available? Should people be using wiki user talk pages for
> this?
>

At times one does need a clear way to send private messages, perhaps to a
new ombudsman position on the Board, now that the secretary is not a
Trustee.  (Or is this is a reason to expand the scope of the ombudsmen
committee?)


> Drafting resolutions on Meta-Wiki sounds good. Does the Board do that? (-:
>

Increasingly, yes; as does the ED.   We could (should?) do more.  See:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=WWMzMcD&oldid=4413588#Draft_more_Board_resolutions_on_Meta

Sam.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] 2012 Editor survey launched

[Tilman Bayer]

Hi John,

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 6:05 PM, John Vandenberg  wrote:
> Hi Tilman,
>
> Could you explain the logic behind the survey link not being static until
> the user completes the survey or dismisses the notice?
I guess you are referring to the fact that the survey invitation
banner is designed to be shown only once to each user? This is
explained in the Q&A for the survey:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_2012#Why_will_a_user_see_the_link_to_the_survey_only_once.3F_How.3F
In short, it's intended to reduce bias towards more frequent editors.
There are reasons for and against this setup, but it's one of the many
things that we want to keep consistent with the last survey so as to
be able to do longitudinal analysis, i.e. identify trends.

(In case this is not what you meant, feel free to rephrase the
question and I will try to reply again.)

>
> I appreciate that you're offering, via email, to give people the survey
> link if they missed it, but that will influence who ends up your survey
> population. Not everyone on your target population is subscribed to a list
> whetr this offer has been made.
I understand this concern from a theoretical standpoint, but
considering the fact that only four people have requested such a link
so far, the bias that this introduces is likely to be negligible. - If
one goes down that road, one would need to worry much more about the
effect of announcements and discussions about the survey on mailing
lists and on Meta before it has completed, but this is a price we are
happy to pay to involve the community and achieve transparence.

>
> John Vandenberg.
> sent from Galaxy Note
> On Oct 31, 2012 7:26 AM, "Tilman Bayer"  wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> we have just launched the Foundation's 2012 editor survey; with
>> invitations to participate being shown to logged-in users on Wikipedia
>> and Commons.
>>
>> A few quick facts about the survey (for more refer to
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_2012
>> ):
>>
>> * This is the third survey of editors as envisaged in the Foundation's
>> 2010-15 strategic plan "in order to take the pulse of the community
>> and identify pressing issues or concerns", after the April 2011 and
>> December 2011 surveys.
>>
>> * The first main purpose of this survey is to continue the work of the
>> 2011 studies (conducted by Mani Pande and Ayush Khanna), with a focus
>> on tracking changes since last year and identifying trends.
>> Which is why many questions are being repeated from last time.
>>
>> * The second emphasis in this instance of the survey is to measure the
>> satisfaction of the editing community with the work of the Wikimedia
>> Foundation.
>>
>> * This is the first editor survey that includes a non-Wikipedia
>> project (Commons, for the questions that are non Wikipedia-specific).
>>
>> * Thanks to everyone who commented on the draft questionnaire after we
>> solicited feedback on this list and in and IRC office hour, as well as
>> to those who commented about the last survey. We made several changes
>> based on the feedback, and tried to reply to all concerns.
>>
>> * Also many thanks to all volunteer translators who reviewed or
>> contributed translations; the questionnaire is available in 14
>> languages (Italian, Polish and Portuguese will launch a bit later).
>>
>> * As with the previous two surveys, the results will be published in
>> the following forms: A "topline" report detailing the percentage of
>> responses for each question, a series of posts on
>> https://blog.wikimedia.org analyzing the results, and a data set
>> consisting of anonymized responses which others can use to do their
>> own analyses. This time we will also aim to produce language-specific
>> topline reports (an approach we already tested for Chinese with the
>> data from the December 2011 survey).
>>
>> --
>> Tilman Bayer
>> Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>> IRC (Freenode): HaeB
>>
>> ___
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list
>> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>>
> ___
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-- 
Tilman Bayer
Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Mark]

On 11/2/12 6:43 PM, Sarah Stierch wrote:
If you live outside of Washington, D.C. and New York City vicinities, 
the Wikipedia world in the US is a VERY lonely place. Perhaps not for 
everyone, but for many more than you'd think. I meet Wikipedians in 
the US who have no clue there is a grant program. Like some countries 
in global south - I know Wikipedians in Chicago who attend meet-up's 
with 2 people on a regular basis. I mean Chicago? Really? Yup.


True to some extent, but I think a lot of U.S. Wikipedians are active, 
just in a more decentralized, "movement-lite" manner where they stick to 
editing and ignore the meta-stuff. Heck, I've been editing en.wiki for 
~10 years, and have made >40,000 edits, so am "active" in a sense, but I 
didn't know there was a grant program either. And I've been to maybe 3 
meetups ever! I'm even more "meta-active" than most Wikipedians I know, 
having gone to *any* meetups, and being subscribed to a mailing list. 
The other Wikipedia-editing folks I know tend to just see themselves as 
people who edit Wikipedia in an area they're interested in (mostly math, 
cs, or history), but don't want the commitment of joining a Movement or 
organization or social scene. It's sort of a different approach to being 
a "Wikipedian" I guess: a lightweight commitment where it's just a thing 
you can do, if you have some spare time on a weekend and find an 
interesting subject to improve.


Now as for whether that's more prevalent in the U.S. than elsewhere, 
and/or why that'd be, I have no idea.


-Mark


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] 2012 Editor survey launched

[John Vandenberg]

Hi Tilman,

Could you explain the logic behind the survey link not being static until
the user completes the survey or dismisses the notice?

I appreciate that you're offering, via email, to give people the survey
link if they missed it, but that will influence who ends up your survey
population. Not everyone on your target population is subscribed to a list
whetr this offer has been made.

John Vandenberg.
sent from Galaxy Note
On Oct 31, 2012 7:26 AM, "Tilman Bayer"  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> we have just launched the Foundation's 2012 editor survey; with
> invitations to participate being shown to logged-in users on Wikipedia
> and Commons.
>
> A few quick facts about the survey (for more refer to
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_2012
> ):
>
> * This is the third survey of editors as envisaged in the Foundation's
> 2010-15 strategic plan "in order to take the pulse of the community
> and identify pressing issues or concerns", after the April 2011 and
> December 2011 surveys.
>
> * The first main purpose of this survey is to continue the work of the
> 2011 studies (conducted by Mani Pande and Ayush Khanna), with a focus
> on tracking changes since last year and identifying trends.
> Which is why many questions are being repeated from last time.
>
> * The second emphasis in this instance of the survey is to measure the
> satisfaction of the editing community with the work of the Wikimedia
> Foundation.
>
> * This is the first editor survey that includes a non-Wikipedia
> project (Commons, for the questions that are non Wikipedia-specific).
>
> * Thanks to everyone who commented on the draft questionnaire after we
> solicited feedback on this list and in and IRC office hour, as well as
> to those who commented about the last survey. We made several changes
> based on the feedback, and tried to reply to all concerns.
>
> * Also many thanks to all volunteer translators who reviewed or
> contributed translations; the questionnaire is available in 14
> languages (Italian, Polish and Portuguese will launch a bit later).
>
> * As with the previous two surveys, the results will be published in
> the following forms: A "topline" report detailing the percentage of
> responses for each question, a series of posts on
> https://blog.wikimedia.org analyzing the results, and a data set
> consisting of anonymized responses which others can use to do their
> own analyses. This time we will also aim to produce language-specific
> topline reports (an approach we already tested for Chinese with the
> data from the December 2011 survey).
>
> --
> Tilman Bayer
> Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
> Wikimedia Foundation
> IRC (Freenode): HaeB
>
> ___
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> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Bishakha Datta, 02/11/2012 17:08:

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 9:31 PM, Benjamin Lees wrote:


This doesn't seem too unreasonable in itself, but it is somewhat surprising
that you didn't readjust the board's composition accordingly.  The
justification for having unelected seats is to ensure that the board has
people with specific skills or backgrounds, and my impression was that
getting someone with accounting experience to serve as treasurer was part
of that.



And that accounting experience is still very much needed on the Board - to
head the Audit Committee and to oversee the treasurer.


This seems quite a weak answer to Benjamin's point: if the experience of 
an "expert" board member is relevant/needed only for one committee which 
can consist also of non-board members (who in principle can also head 
it), then the board may well decide to restrict his/her partecipation to 
that committee, to take advantage of that experience where it's most 
effective and free a board position to allow further diversification and 
expansion of board member experiences.


Nemo

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[Wikimedia-l] Chapter reports Wikimedia Nederland, September and October 2012

[Ziko van Dijk]

Hello,

Here are the reports for WMNL, September and October 2012.

Kind regards
Ziko

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederland/201209
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederland/201210


-- 

---
Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland
dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter
http://wmnederland.nl/

Wikimedia Nederland
Postbus 167
3500 AD Utrecht
---

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[MZMcBride]

Samuel Klein wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 3:07 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:
>> In the past, Sam has said that private solicitation of Board members to
>> introduce a resolution was the best approach.
> 
> *Public* solicitation, actually. I can't think of any reason to privately
> solicit individual Board members.
> 
> Proposed resolutions should be drafted in public on Meta.
> 
> What I believe I said is: the policy for moving to vote on a Board
> resolution is simple (per
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Board_deliberations ) : any
> resolution that two Trustees move/second for a vote will be reviewed and
> voted on within ~3 weeks.

My apologies. I read your previous suggestion during the travel guide
discussion and the only real route for communicating with a Board member to
solicit a proposal seemed to me to be private user-to-user e-mail. Are there
other (a)venues available? Should people be using wiki user talk pages for
this?

At some point, there's a (somewhat awkward) divide between the way other
non-profit boards operate and wiki culture. E-mail seemed like the only
logical bridge in this context, but perhaps there are better solutions.

Drafting resolutions on Meta-Wiki sounds good. Does the Board do that? (-:
 
>> Developers use Bugzilla to track issues. I'm not sure what Board members
>> use. Mandatory notification prior to bylaws changes seems like an issue
>> that
>> has suffered from poor issue tracking, as a request that ultimately needs a
>> (Board) resolution. Perhaps a page at Meta-Wiki could track such requests?
> 
> How about a Board board?  https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/BN

:-)

MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Michael Snow]

On 11/2/2012 2:17 PM, phoebe ayers wrote:

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 2:03 PM, Samuel Klein  wrote:

How about a Board board?  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/BN

If bored, go aboard Board board?


-- phoebe, who some days just cannot help it.

You should be bored full of holes for that. Or boarded up in your office.

--Michael Snow

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 2:03 PM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
> How about a Board board?  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/BN

If bored, go aboard Board board?


-- phoebe, who some days just cannot help it.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Samuel Klein]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 3:07 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:

> Phoebe writes:

> > * a formal Board resolution that states the procedure for bylaws
> > changes (mirroring the other procedural resolutions, such as voting
> > transparency and deliberation rules).
>

+1.  We have a procedure, it's just not a good one - it's not enough to
notify the Trustees N days in advance, that should be a public
notification.  We do this infrequently, and can take our time: 1 month of
public notice for discussion seems reasonable to me.  (That said: if there
are revisions or rollbacks proposed by the community thanks to something
that was overlooked in the latest bylaws revision, we don't *need* to do
this infrequently and could get to it at our next voice or in-person
meeting.)


> > * a better (more public) standing rules/procedures type of document
> > that lays out the procedure for how the board works -- i.e. what the
> > best practice is for notification of meetings, etc. etc.
>

A guideline rather than policy here makes sense.  Public posting of an
agenda with supporting docs a week in advance, and a note to the
wikimedia-l list seems like a reasonable target.  Along with public
solicitation of suggestions for future meetings.


> > I guess now that I've made these suggestions I've also volunteered
> > myself to work on them, huh :P
>

:)


> In the past, Sam has said that private solicitation of Board members to
> introduce a resolution was the best approach.


*Public* solicitation, actually. I can't think of any reason to privately
solicit individual Board members.

Proposed resolutions should be drafted in public on Meta.

What I believe I said is: the policy for moving to vote on a Board
resolution is simple (per
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Board_deliberations ) : any
resolution that two Trustees move/second for a vote will be reviewed and
voted on within ~3 weeks.

Developers use Bugzilla to track issues. I'm not sure what Board members
> use. Mandatory notification prior to bylaws changes seems like an issue
> that
> has suffered from poor issue tracking, as a request that ultimately needs a
> (Board) resolution. Perhaps a page at Meta-Wiki could track such requests?
>

How about a Board board?  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/BN

Sam.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia-blog] Wikimedia blog contributions; make participation invitation more obvious

[Guillaume Paumier]

Hi,

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 8:07 PM, Tilman Bayer  wrote:
>
> (Guillaume has indeed done most of the work on the blog design in the
> past, but nowadays his time for working on the blog is unfortunately
> very limited by his other duties.)

Indeed. I continue to help a bit as a volunteer, but I can't devote
work hours to it any more.

> We are currently throwing around ideas for a redesign of the whole
> blog in a "Newsroom" style, with a stronger emphasis on thematic
> sub-blogs and widening participation further. Also, Daniel and I have
> recently been talking about the possibility of having the blog in
> Labs, which in this case would have enabled you to suggest that
> invitation link by just coding it yourself ;)

Actually, if all we want is some text and / or picture in the sidebar
to encourage participation, it's trivial to add that using a widget.
The sidebar used to be hard-coded in the theme, but I changed that to
use widgets, so now any blog admin can add, remove and edit widgets.

That said, improvements to the theme are welcome as well. If someone
is familiar with WordPress, I actually have a few outstanding commits
that would love to be reviewed :)
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/q/status:open+owner:Guillom,n,z

-- 
Guillaume Paumier
Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation
https://donate.wikimedia.org

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On Fri, 2 Nov 2012 15:25:59 -0400, Nathan wrote:

While I'm sure most readers understand these principles well already,
they are worth restating: the Foundation is not a wiki. It is not
purely a democracy. Greater democracy has not, to my knowledge, been
shown to correspond with greater effectiveness in non-profit
management. The WMF is not a membership organization. Legally, the
practice of allowing the editing community to elect members to its
board is voluntary.



Sure. But we should be grateful to Internet Brands for explaining us 
recently in very clear terms what happens if an organization running a 
Wiki project does not listen to volunteers.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Ocaasi Ocaasi]

I take the need for more organized and constructive movement in the U.S. as a 
given.  It's shocking to me that we have *two* chapters in all of the country.  
There's much important work to be done with GLAM, with the Education Program, 
partnerships with universities, non-profits, libraries and museums, and with 
general outreach.  Which is why I was so surprised by the resistance to the 
idea of creating a US Federation that would have made forming local/regional 
U.S. chapters extremely easy.  For some reason it was seen as a power grab or 
an unneeded layer of bureaucracy, but from my perspective it was just the right 
step to bootstrap tens and tens of active U.S. organizations.  While the WMF is 
'narrowing focus' and spinning off more and more responsibilities to affiliated 
groups, the opportunity to advance the U.S. towards working on the many needed 
areas of improvement should not be missed. --Jake Orlowitz (Ocaasi)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Nathan]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 12:14 PM, Ilario Valdelli  wrote:

> Basically there is a weak evaluation costs/benefits. An organization
> spending 30 millions of USD should produce benefits for 30 millions of USD
> and should be evaluated as an organization spending 30 millions of USD. Big
> budget -> stronger evaluation and stronger measures.
>
> An organization (for instance a small chapter) spending 500K USD should be
> evaluated as an organization spending 500K USD and this organization should
> produce benefits for 500K USD. Small budget -> weak evaluation and flexible
> measures.
>
> Basically if a small chapter, spending 500K USD, is evaluated using the
> same parameters of WMF, it should spent an additional amount of 500K USD to
> create an organization and a paid staff in order to be able to be evaluated
> at the same level of WMF and to receive the 500K USD for their projects
> (total = 1 million of USD).


This would only make sense to me if the organization spending $500k is
spending its own money. In this case, it's spending money donated to
the WMF; that means it is subject to the level of scrutiny applied to
the WMF, even if that money is spent on its behalf instead of by it.

~Nathan

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Nathan]

While I'm sure most readers understand these principles well already,
they are worth restating: the Foundation is not a wiki. It is not
purely a democracy. Greater democracy has not, to my knowledge, been
shown to correspond with greater effectiveness in non-profit
management. The WMF is not a membership organization. Legally, the
practice of allowing the editing community to elect members to its
board is voluntary.

I'm not arguing that the community doesn't often have good input, or
that a general ethic of transparency and cooperation isn't an
extremely positive characteristic of the Foundation. In fact, the
support of the community is absolutely crucial to its survival. I
merely want to suggest that the tone of entitlement evident in some
recent posts to wikimedia-l is misplaced.

Nathan

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Alice Wiegand]

Hi Phoebe,
thank you for your thoughts. I must admit that I don't remember these
discussions and yes, I understand the frustration even more with this
background. Like Bishakha and Sam I will support to publish as much
information as possible before our meetings. I agree that this issue
would have been a good start to do this, and we missed to realize
this. Most of the changes are somewhat cosmetical (continuous
designations, adjustments on former decisions). The change for
secretary and treasurer are critical to get the best of the Trustees
where it is needed and not to waste lots of energy and concentration
on things that are originally grounded and better placed in the hands
of staff. (Personally, I'm just happy to have Bishakha involved as
much in our discussions as any other Trustee without the
responsibility to take notes at the same time.)

Since I've joined the board I've wondered how things are done. And
after having asked lots of questions, peeved my colleagues and found
several places with descriptions for the public but without concrete
directions for the board, I've decided to build a set of rules of
procedures for the board. Since this has to do with processes and
standards to ensure and hopefully improve the board's work the
creation of it will be led by the Board Governance Committee. The
committee has agreed to start with it in 2013.

There will be a Meta page with the BGC's agenda in the next days and
I'm glad to get more input from the community.

Regards, Alice.


On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 7:16 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 10:35 AM, Lodewijk  wrote:
>
>>
>> I don't see how this validates the fact that you did not consult the
>> community on these changes. If the changes are fairly trivial and
>> legalistic, then the community will likely have little objection. But as
>> you noted, there was at least one significant change (I haven't been able
>> to check myself) and I'm having a hard time understanding why you (the
>> board) would /not/ want the input of the community on such decisions.
>
> Hi Lodewijk (and all),
>
> Here's my thoughts on this... and a little history.
>
> As I recall, the last time the Board revised the bylaws in 2010 the
> board also didn't notify the community, except via resolution after
> the fact, and I remember that you and I had a long conversation about
> it where you basically made this same argument, and I agreed with you.
>
> I brought your points up to the board at the time, and I believe
> (though my memory is flawed) I proposed something like a two-week
> notification period to notify the community for bylaws changes. I
> think at the time there was general agreement that the principle
> seemed good, though there were questions about how to integrate
> feedback and some discussion that the bylaws themselves don't require
> such notification. There may be other points that I'm forgetting.
> Nothing really happened though (nothing formal was drafted) and the
> issue didn't arise again during my term since we didn't need to make
> further bylaws revisions.
>
> So I totally understand your frustration, Lodewijk, because it must
> seem like you've been having this exact same conversation with the
> board for years. And this particular bylaws change is even more
> complicated -- it is difficult to know how best to refer legal changes
> to the community for review, when they need to be made for compliance
> reasons.
>
> Regardless, in the spirit of being constructive, I propose (as a
> community member) two changes to the Board and community at large:
> * a formal Board resolution that states the procedure for bylaws
> changes (mirroring the other procedural resolutions, such as voting
> transparency and deliberation rules).
> * a better (more public) standing rules/procedures type of document
> that lays out the procedure for how the board works -- i.e. what the
> best practice is for notification of meetings, etc. etc. Currently
> some of this information is in the board manual, some is in the
> bylaws, some is in resolutions and some is in informal private
> documents like the notes the secretary uses. It would be nice to bring
> that all together into one place on meta, and such a document would
> help future boards -- compared to many nonprofits, we have a lot of
> turnover on our board, and it takes a while for each member as well as
> each secretary to come up to speed. I'm imagining a document that is
> more like an English Wikipedia guideline, rather than policy -- best
> practices that the board follows unless there are good reasons not to.
>
> I guess now that I've made these suggestions I've also volunteered
> myself to work on them, huh :P
>
> cheers,
> Phoebe
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog contributions; make participation invitation more obvious

[Tilman Bayer]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 11:20 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:
> Sarah Stierch wrote:
>> I'm not sure why it was posted on the WMF blog. I'm sure if other
>> countries submitted their top ten's they'd be posted to the WMF blog.
>>
>> Remember: anyone in the movement - around the world - can write a blog
>> for the WMF blog, in any language they want. So do it!
>
> I'm going to fork this thread as I think this point should be highlighted.
>
> Currently, looking at , I'm not sure it's
> obvious at all that anyone in the Wikimedia community is encouraged to draft
> a blog post. As far as I can see, there's no "submit a post" or "contribute
> your own story" or other invitation to participation anywhere on the blog.
>
We installed the public drafting process for the blog a few months ago
and it was a bit of an experiment at first. But yes, now that this has
matured a bit, such a more prominent link on the blog itself sounds
like a great idea - we'll definitely look into it.

By the way, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog/Drafts is
as much meant as an invitation to copyedit and comment on others'
drafts as it is for submitting new ones; we'd love to see more
participation of both sorts.

> Even adapting the Creative Commons license note in the sidebar might work.
> "This blog is licensed under blah blah. You can submit your own draft of an
> article here!" or something.
>
> I'm as big a fan of security through obscurity as anyone, but it does
> occasionally help to give people a decent pointer to a page such as
> . Currently,
> it looks like there _is_ a "Guidelines" link in the sidebar, but it's
> painfully buried in the left-hand sidebar's list of links and its target
> () is a wall of
> text.
>
> I'm not sure who could resolve this issue or how it's best tracked. I guess
> via filing a bug in Bugzilla? If there's a central point of contact for the
> blog, it'd be great to know who that is.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog/Guidelines#Blog_team
(Guillaume has indeed done most of the work on the blog design in the
past, but nowadays his time for working on the blog is unfortunately
very limited by his other duties.)

We are currently throwing around ideas for a redesign of the whole
blog in a "Newsroom" style, with a stronger emphasis on thematic
sub-blogs and widening participation further. Also, Daniel and I have
recently been talking about the possibility of having the blog in
Labs, which in this case would have enabled you to suggest that
invitation link by just coding it yourself ;)

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

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[MZMcBride]

phoebe ayers wrote:
> Regardless, in the spirit of being constructive, I propose (as a
> community member) two changes to the Board and community at large:
> * a formal Board resolution that states the procedure for bylaws
> changes (mirroring the other procedural resolutions, such as voting
> transparency and deliberation rules).
> * a better (more public) standing rules/procedures type of document
> that lays out the procedure for how the board works -- i.e. what the
> best practice is for notification of meetings, etc. etc. Currently
> some of this information is in the board manual, some is in the
> bylaws, some is in resolutions and some is in informal private
> documents like the notes the secretary uses. It would be nice to bring
> that all together into one place on meta, and such a document would
> help future boards -- compared to many nonprofits, we have a lot of
> turnover on our board, and it takes a while for each member as well as
> each secretary to come up to speed. I'm imagining a document that is
> more like an English Wikipedia guideline, rather than policy -- best
> practices that the board follows unless there are good reasons not to.
> 
> I guess now that I've made these suggestions I've also volunteered
> myself to work on them, huh :P

I always enjoy reading your mailing list posts. :-)  And yes, any
demonstration of sanity will be used against you (cf. David Gerard's law:
).

In the past, Sam has said that private solicitation of Board members to
introduce a resolution was the best approach. This came up in the context of
the travel guide idea, I believe. I'm beginning to think that we need a
better process for this (and perhaps planning for a better process should
take place at Lodewijk's new Meta-Wiki page).

Developers use Bugzilla to track issues. I'm not sure what Board members
use. Mandatory notification prior to bylaws changes seems like an issue that
has suffered from poor issue tracking, as a request that ultimately needs a
(Board) resolution. Perhaps a page at Meta-Wiki could track such requests?

MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Lodewijk]

Hi Phoebe,

thanks a lot for the history :) I indeed remember this discussion. I also
remember having this discussion even before that (I believe with Florence
who was chair at the time, but I'm not sure) and indeed thought to
recollect that it was generally agreed upon to do this differently in the
future. I couldn't find any written statements to that effect though, so
that is why I left it out here.

I hope that you will join me in the discussion on
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Democratizing_the_Wikimedia_Foundation.
Your suggestions of a seperate procedural document makes sense. In several
chapters they have such a procedural document - of a lower importance than
the bylaws, but still a governing document. Considering that the Foundation
is a foundation though (and not an association) and that bylaw changes
/only/ require a simple majority and no supermajority, I also can imagine
this to be part of the bylaws themselves - but that is procedural.

Best,
Lodewijk

2012/11/2 phoebe ayers 

> On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 10:35 AM, Lodewijk 
> wrote:
>
> >
> > I don't see how this validates the fact that you did not consult the
> > community on these changes. If the changes are fairly trivial and
> > legalistic, then the community will likely have little objection. But as
> > you noted, there was at least one significant change (I haven't been able
> > to check myself) and I'm having a hard time understanding why you (the
> > board) would /not/ want the input of the community on such decisions.
>
> Hi Lodewijk (and all),
>
> Here's my thoughts on this... and a little history.
>
> As I recall, the last time the Board revised the bylaws in 2010 the
> board also didn't notify the community, except via resolution after
> the fact, and I remember that you and I had a long conversation about
> it where you basically made this same argument, and I agreed with you.
>
> I brought your points up to the board at the time, and I believe
> (though my memory is flawed) I proposed something like a two-week
> notification period to notify the community for bylaws changes. I
> think at the time there was general agreement that the principle
> seemed good, though there were questions about how to integrate
> feedback and some discussion that the bylaws themselves don't require
> such notification. There may be other points that I'm forgetting.
> Nothing really happened though (nothing formal was drafted) and the
> issue didn't arise again during my term since we didn't need to make
> further bylaws revisions.
>
> So I totally understand your frustration, Lodewijk, because it must
> seem like you've been having this exact same conversation with the
> board for years. And this particular bylaws change is even more
> complicated -- it is difficult to know how best to refer legal changes
> to the community for review, when they need to be made for compliance
> reasons.
>
> Regardless, in the spirit of being constructive, I propose (as a
> community member) two changes to the Board and community at large:
> * a formal Board resolution that states the procedure for bylaws
> changes (mirroring the other procedural resolutions, such as voting
> transparency and deliberation rules).
> * a better (more public) standing rules/procedures type of document
> that lays out the procedure for how the board works -- i.e. what the
> best practice is for notification of meetings, etc. etc. Currently
> some of this information is in the board manual, some is in the
> bylaws, some is in resolutions and some is in informal private
> documents like the notes the secretary uses. It would be nice to bring
> that all together into one place on meta, and such a document would
> help future boards -- compared to many nonprofits, we have a lot of
> turnover on our board, and it takes a while for each member as well as
> each secretary to come up to speed. I'm imagining a document that is
> more like an English Wikipedia guideline, rather than policy -- best
> practices that the board follows unless there are good reasons not to.
>
> I guess now that I've made these suggestions I've also volunteered
> myself to work on them, huh :P
>
> cheers,
> Phoebe
>
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[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog contributions; make participation invitation more obvious

[MZMcBride]

Sarah Stierch wrote:
> I'm not sure why it was posted on the WMF blog. I'm sure if other
> countries submitted their top ten's they'd be posted to the WMF blog.
> 
> Remember: anyone in the movement - around the world - can write a blog
> for the WMF blog, in any language they want. So do it!

I'm going to fork this thread as I think this point should be highlighted.

Currently, looking at , I'm not sure it's
obvious at all that anyone in the Wikimedia community is encouraged to draft
a blog post. As far as I can see, there's no "submit a post" or "contribute
your own story" or other invitation to participation anywhere on the blog.

Even adapting the Creative Commons license note in the sidebar might work.
"This blog is licensed under blah blah. You can submit your own draft of an
article here!" or something.

I'm as big a fan of security through obscurity as anyone, but it does
occasionally help to give people a decent pointer to a page such as
. Currently,
it looks like there _is_ a "Guidelines" link in the sidebar, but it's
painfully buried in the left-hand sidebar's list of links and its target
() is a wall of
text.

I'm not sure who could resolve this issue or how it's best tracked. I guess
via filing a bug in Bugzilla? If there's a central point of contact for the
blog, it'd be great to know who that is.

MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 10:35 AM, Lodewijk  wrote:

>
> I don't see how this validates the fact that you did not consult the
> community on these changes. If the changes are fairly trivial and
> legalistic, then the community will likely have little objection. But as
> you noted, there was at least one significant change (I haven't been able
> to check myself) and I'm having a hard time understanding why you (the
> board) would /not/ want the input of the community on such decisions.

Hi Lodewijk (and all),

Here's my thoughts on this... and a little history.

As I recall, the last time the Board revised the bylaws in 2010 the
board also didn't notify the community, except via resolution after
the fact, and I remember that you and I had a long conversation about
it where you basically made this same argument, and I agreed with you.

I brought your points up to the board at the time, and I believe
(though my memory is flawed) I proposed something like a two-week
notification period to notify the community for bylaws changes. I
think at the time there was general agreement that the principle
seemed good, though there were questions about how to integrate
feedback and some discussion that the bylaws themselves don't require
such notification. There may be other points that I'm forgetting.
Nothing really happened though (nothing formal was drafted) and the
issue didn't arise again during my term since we didn't need to make
further bylaws revisions.

So I totally understand your frustration, Lodewijk, because it must
seem like you've been having this exact same conversation with the
board for years. And this particular bylaws change is even more
complicated -- it is difficult to know how best to refer legal changes
to the community for review, when they need to be made for compliance
reasons.

Regardless, in the spirit of being constructive, I propose (as a
community member) two changes to the Board and community at large:
* a formal Board resolution that states the procedure for bylaws
changes (mirroring the other procedural resolutions, such as voting
transparency and deliberation rules).
* a better (more public) standing rules/procedures type of document
that lays out the procedure for how the board works -- i.e. what the
best practice is for notification of meetings, etc. etc. Currently
some of this information is in the board manual, some is in the
bylaws, some is in resolutions and some is in informal private
documents like the notes the secretary uses. It would be nice to bring
that all together into one place on meta, and such a document would
help future boards -- compared to many nonprofits, we have a lot of
turnover on our board, and it takes a while for each member as well as
each secretary to come up to speed. I'm imagining a document that is
more like an English Wikipedia guideline, rather than policy -- best
practices that the board follows unless there are good reasons not to.

I guess now that I've made these suggestions I've also volunteered
myself to work on them, huh :P

cheers,
Phoebe

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The new narrowed focus by WMF - notification methods for important Meta discussions

[ENWP Pine]

I must have missed the announcement in the Signpost. I think of Signpost as an 
ENWP publication, not a Meta publication. Do we have an equivalent list of 
announcements for Meta somewhere? I would have at least expected to see 
something posted in https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Goings-on, and I don’t see 
a reason *not* to make a separate post to this list, given the importance of 
these changes for WMF and the interest of many subscribers of this list.

Thanks,

Pine
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[MZMcBride]

Bishakha Datta wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 8:30 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:
>> It would be nice if someone could export the linked presentation from Google
>> Docs and upload it to wikimediafoundation.org (or Wikimedia Commons) as a PDF
>> or ODP (or both). I don't think we should rely on external resources in the
>> context of historical Board archives unless absolutely necessary.
> 
> Taken your feedback and done the needful,

You're wonderful. Thank you very much. :-)

MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Democratizing the Wikimedia Foundation

[Lodewijk]

Hi Patricio,

I am especially focussing on democracy (community involvement) and
transparency. I am afraid 'improving governance' is too broad and vague for
most of us to grasp. I realize that the title is a bit challenging and
tickling - that was intentional :)

I'm glad you appreciate it, and i hope you will also participate in it.

Best,
Lodewijk

2012/11/2 Patricio Lorente 

> 2012/11/2 Lodewijk :
> > Dear all,
> >
> > I have set up a brainstorming page on metawiki (
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Democratizing_the_Wikimedia_Foundation)
> > where I would like to invite you to think about ways to democratize the
> > Wikimedia Foundation.
> >
> > This doesn't mean that the Wikimedia Foundation is totally undemocratic,
> > but it does mean that in my humble opinion, improvements are possible.
> This
> > was triggered by me after the third time in my memory that the Foundation
> > board has changed the bylaws of the Foundation without even consulting
> the
> > community - but this doesn't have to be the only possible improvement.
> >
> > This is not intended as a huge complaint 'moo, the WMF is evil and
> > dictatorial' but rather as a constructive exercise. I invite you to
> > approach this also constructively, and think about possible improvement
> to
> > current procedures - to ensure that there is a large community
> involvement
> > in the governance of the Wikimedia Foundation - directly or indirectly -
> > and that processes are transparent.
> >
> > I hope that our community selected board members will take this up as
> well,
> > think along and bring the proposals to the board when the time is there
> > (Alice, Kat, Patricio, SJ, and Ting: I'm looking at you) but of course
> I'm
> > counting on it that also other board members will support the thought
> > behind this. Any input on how to make this process more constructive
> would
> > be appreciated. I also hope that the legal team will be watching the page
> > and advise when something is legally impossible and how it could be made
> > possible.
>
> Hi Lodewijk! I really appreciate this initiative -although I think the
> subject does not make too much sense: it would be better "Improving
> governance", perhaps-. Anyway, it will be an important input for us.
>
> Patricio
>
> --
> Patricio Lorente
> Blog: http://www.patriciolorente.com.ar
> Identi.ca // Twitter: @patriciolorente
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Report, September 2012

[ENWP Pine]

Thank you for those replies, Tony and Tilman.

Pine
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Thehelpfulone]

On 2 November 2012 16:06, Bishakha Datta  wrote:

> Ok, I've added a reference link into the resolution at:
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Amended_Bylaws
>
> Please go through this to compare old and revised versions of the bylaws;
> since there are many small changes, I have uploaded the entire document.
>
> The document showing the revisions can also be directly accessed from this
> link:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Bylaws_posted_mark-up.pdf
>

Thank you for doing this, but (correct me if I'm wrong) it looks like this
document had already been created by Kelly, presumably for easy review
internally of the changes to the Bylaws.

Please don't forget that there's a huge online community that all have
different interests and pay particular attention to certain things - some
clearly with the WMF as evident from this mailing list thread.

Thus, in the future (this is for both Board members and WMF staff) it would
be much better, when announcing *any* potentially controversial changes
like this to *proactively* provide such documents, than potentially give
the impression that you are intentionally trying to hide something by
waiting for a community member to request it.

-- 
Thehelpfulone
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Thehelpfulone
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Lodewijk]

Hi Sam,

some people have excellently answered as well - I especially agree with
what Bence and Matthew wrote. I will answer some things myself as well
though.

2012/11/2 Samuel Klein 

> Hello Lodewijk,
>
> These are good questions.  I expect effort will be required in the short
> term to delegate effectively and help move to a narrower focus.   A few
> clarifying questions for you in return:
>
> On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 7:47 AM, Lodewijk  >wrote:
>
> >
> > * PR support by WMF PR staff when writing press releases for an
> > international audience
> >
>
> Do you have an example in mind of a recent press release that took
> advantage of this support?
> How useful to you find ComCom, as a list and network, compared to direct
> personal facilitation by WMF staff?
>
>
I have two very specific occasions which I recall - but please forgive me
if I forgot several. In 2011 I had quite some interaction with Moka, who
advised me on how to run an international press release. This was the first
time we were running Wiki Loves Monuments in multiple countries, and none
of the chapters participating had any experience in international press
releases. The results of this were very thin - mostly because of language
issues (national releases work better, that was a valuable lesson) but the
help was great and helpful. This year I had quite some interaction with
Matthew who did a lot of help on drafting a good template release that
could be used by multiple countries and attractive blog posts. I honestly
don't know where his job stopped and his free time started - but what
counts to me most is that his skills were very valuable.

To some extent ComCom is helpful - but to be honest comcom has degraded
into not much more than a mailing list and a helpful place to shout for
help. It is not a great place to transfer skills or get help in
confidential stuff (such as the Guinness World Record press release).

Maybe this specific set of facilitation could move to the WCA - but at the
short term this is unlikely to happen.


>
> > * Networking support by Asaf (who to approach), specifically for "global
> > south" countries and chapters to be.
> >
>
> Do you think the WMF should be the arbiter of who to approach to connect
> with chapters-to-be?  It seems to me that this level of support and
> connection could be provided well and in a variety of languages by a
> support network (or a community body such as AffCom or the WCA), even
> today.
>

No, in an ideal world I would prefer the WMF not to be necessary for this.
However, unfortunately this ideal world doesn't exist. Again the WCA could
become helpful - but that is midlong term thinking. Dropping these
functions /right now/ would hurt the movement - I prefer a transition
process.


>
>
> > * Tech support for initiatives
> >
> * Layout/design support for education related activities
> >
>
> How do you feel the above worked for WLM this year, as an example?
> What tech and design support was needed, and where did it come from?
>
>
I think the tech support for Wiki Loves Monuments was very helpful (both
the upload wizard in 2011 (Jeroen!) and 2012 as the mobile app). I think
the current setup of the Toolserver and Labs is quite open for improvement
though - especially when it comes to access and reliability. i'm not a very
technical person though, so I suggest you ask some other people if you want
details. Thing is, sometimes volunteers need some last minute flexible
support to make a project work. To make their efforts effective.

Design work I mostly remember from the education program - I haven't been
much directly involved, so probably others can speak better for it.


>
> > * Institutional support for the GLAM related activities in the US (until
> > the US Federation is fully functional, if ever)
> >
>
> I agree there is room for a global GLAM support for regions that don't have
> local [chapter] organization.  Why do you feel this is a special problem
> for the US, compared to other archive-rich parts of the world - given the
> two regional chapters and numerous present and past Wikipedians in
> residence?


I think Sarah answered this very well in the mean time. The US is a big
country, and currently mostly not covered by any kind of chapter. If the
WMF doesn't support it at this point, there will not be any organizational
support. Grant making is not enough - skill transfer and some basic
backbone support is simply necessary to make volunteers do what they are
best at. This is also why GLAM seems to be most successful in countries
with chapters.

I do feel that the WMF isn't best placed in the longer term to support
this. I think that the US federation idea that is currently being
considered might be a good step in the direction of organizational support
- and a US chapter might even be better. The GLAM-Wiki consortium might be
a great step. But again: a transition process is imho necessary and
invaluable. If you drop it now, there is a risk of loosing important
momentum. Give 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[ENWP Pine]

Could I ask about what information the Board had in addition to these 
slides? The slides provide little in the way of hard numbers for financial 
and ROI information, such as expected improvements to editor retention or 
the Visual Editor's progress that should occur with the changes to funding 
and FTE assignments.


Thanks,

Pine 



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Matthew Roth]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 10:51 AM, Sarah Stierch wrote:

> On 11/2/12 8:15 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
>
>> Samuel Klein, 02/11/2012 16:01:
>>
>>> * Institutional support for the GLAM related activities in the US (until
 the US Federation is fully functional, if ever)


>>> I agree there is room for a global GLAM support for regions that don't
>>> have
>>> local [chapter] organization.  Why do you feel this is a special problem
>>> for the US, compared to other archive-rich parts of the world - given the
>>> two regional chapters and numerous present and past Wikipedians in
>>> residence?
>>>
>>
>> The problem is always the same, i.e. that the WMF acts as WM-USA while a
>> chapter is missing, rather than being truly global.
>> Random (unfair?) recent example: WLM-USA uses the allegedly global
>> "Wikimedia blog" > monuments-us-top-ten-photos-**announced/>
>> unlike all the other national editions.
>>
>
> There is a US blog: 
> http://www.wikilovesmonuments.**us/
>
> I'm not sure why it was posted on the WMF blog.


Mostly because I wrote the blog post on Tuesday night after work :)
I'm happy to publicize more of the other country winners as well. I'll
check on Elke's and Lodewijk's posts at
http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org/and coordinate with them and anyone
else who would like to publicize them.

We'll also be doing PR around the final announcement of the overall winners
in December, as discussed with Lodewijk.

thanks,
Matthew



> -Sarah
>
>
> --
> *Sarah Stierch*
> */Museumist and open culture advocate/*
> >>Visit sarahstierch.com <<
> __**_
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> Unsubscribe: 
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
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-- 

Matthew Roth
Global Communications Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
+1.415.839.6885 ext 6635
www.wikimediafoundation.org
*https://donate.wikimedia.org*
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Samuel Klein]

It's a good idea to make prep materials available a week in advance, to the
community as to the board.
Exceptions can be made for any materials that are sensitive in nature.

I can think of only one or two examples from the past few meetings.  Much
of the material is published afterwards anyway.

On the same subject, most draft resolutions can be worked out on meta as
well.  This might encourage more community-proposed resolutions for the
Board to consider, which would also be healthy.

SJ


On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 12:33 PM, Bence Damokos  wrote:

> Hi Bishakha,
>
> In my opinion, given the generally curious nature of our movement, it might
> be a good idea to make more preparatory material for the board meetings
> available publicly in advance.
> Not necessarily as a way to allow comments or input, but as a matter of
> transparency. Especially for proposals that are not likely to be changed
> during the meeting (e.g. the technical bylaw amendments) and that will
> become public as a result of the board vote, it might be possible to
> publish them in advance without any adverse consequences, and resulting in
> greater transparency.
>
> (In this regard, the fact that Sue's recommendations were on Meta already
> was a great step; without knowing the exact deliberations that happened at
> the meeting, probably the bylaw amendments and the committee charters could
> have been made public in advance.)
>
> Best regards,
> Bence
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 5:21 PM, Bishakha Datta  >wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 4:53 PM, Lodewijk  > >wrote:
> >
> > > Dear Bishakha,
> > >
> > > could you please elaborate why the board has chosen for a secretive
> > > amendment procedure here, rather than sharing the proposed amendments
> > with
> > > the community and asking their input on it? Especially where it
> concerns
> > > such non-trivial changes.
> > >
> > > Ok, now that the document showing old and new has finally been
> uploaded,
> > I
> > will try to answer your question.
> >
> > The legal team proposed that we amend the bylaws, primarily to ensure
> > compliance with Florida non-profit laws.
> >
> > Since most of the changes are legal in nature, they were not referred to
> > the community for prior input.
> >
> > I understand how this action can be seen as secretive or opaque, even
> > though it may not have been intended as such.
> >
> > Is it also possible to see this action as reasonable, given the nature of
> > most of the changes?
> >
> > Just asking! Feel free to disagree,
> > Bishakha
> > ___
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> >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Democratizing the Wikimedia Foundation

[Patricio Lorente]

2012/11/2 Lodewijk :
> Dear all,
>
> I have set up a brainstorming page on metawiki (
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Democratizing_the_Wikimedia_Foundation)
> where I would like to invite you to think about ways to democratize the
> Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> This doesn't mean that the Wikimedia Foundation is totally undemocratic,
> but it does mean that in my humble opinion, improvements are possible. This
> was triggered by me after the third time in my memory that the Foundation
> board has changed the bylaws of the Foundation without even consulting the
> community - but this doesn't have to be the only possible improvement.
>
> This is not intended as a huge complaint 'moo, the WMF is evil and
> dictatorial' but rather as a constructive exercise. I invite you to
> approach this also constructively, and think about possible improvement to
> current procedures - to ensure that there is a large community involvement
> in the governance of the Wikimedia Foundation - directly or indirectly -
> and that processes are transparent.
>
> I hope that our community selected board members will take this up as well,
> think along and bring the proposals to the board when the time is there
> (Alice, Kat, Patricio, SJ, and Ting: I'm looking at you) but of course I'm
> counting on it that also other board members will support the thought
> behind this. Any input on how to make this process more constructive would
> be appreciated. I also hope that the legal team will be watching the page
> and advise when something is legally impossible and how it could be made
> possible.

Hi Lodewijk! I really appreciate this initiative -although I think the
subject does not make too much sense: it would be better "Improving
governance", perhaps-. Anyway, it will be an important input for us.

Patricio

-- 
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Blog: http://www.patriciolorente.com.ar
Identi.ca // Twitter: @patriciolorente

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Sarah Stierch]

On 11/2/12 8:15 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:

Samuel Klein, 02/11/2012 16:01:
* Institutional support for the GLAM related activities in the US 
(until

the US Federation is fully functional, if ever)



I agree there is room for a global GLAM support for regions that 
don't have

local [chapter] organization.  Why do you feel this is a special problem
for the US, compared to other archive-rich parts of the world - given 
the

two regional chapters and numerous present and past Wikipedians in
residence?


The problem is always the same, i.e. that the WMF acts as WM-USA while 
a chapter is missing, rather than being truly global.
Random (unfair?) recent example: WLM-USA uses the allegedly global 
"Wikimedia blog" 
 
unlike all the other national editions.


There is a US blog: http://www.wikilovesmonuments.us/

I'm not sure why it was posted on the WMF blog. I'm sure if other 
countries submitted their top ten's they'd be posted to the WMF blog.


Remember: anyone in the movement - around the world - can write a blog 
for the WMF blog, in any language they want. So do it!



-Sarah

--
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*/Museumist and open culture advocate/*
>>Visit sarahstierch.com <<
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Sarah Stierch]

Hi all,

I have a comment inline below. Humor me on my rampage about the US and 
our desperate need for a more organized GLAM movement in this giant 
country.



On 11/2/12 8:01 AM, Samuel Klein wrote:



* Institutional support for the GLAM related activities in the US (until
the US Federation is fully functional, if ever)


I agree there is room for a global GLAM support for regions that don't have
local [chapter] organization.  Why do you feel this is a special problem
for the US, compared to other archive-rich parts of the world - given the
two regional chapters and numerous present and past Wikipedians in
residence?




The United States is a legendary place when it comes to this discussion. 
Numerous fellow-US-Wikipedians and myself have spent countless nights 
mulling over this. If you live outside of Washington, D.C. and New York 
City vicinities, the Wikipedia world in the US is a VERY lonely place. 
Perhaps not for everyone, but for many more than you'd think. I meet 
Wikipedians in the US who have no clue there is a grant program. Like 
some countries in global south - I know Wikipedians in Chicago who 
attend meet-up's with 2 people on a regular basis. I mean Chicago? 
Really? Yup.


I live in San Francisco. I'm lucky: I'm wrapping up a year long 
fellowship, I'm a social butterfly, but it took me almost one year of 
doing GLAM projects on my own budget before I realized that I could 
apply for a grant to go to a conference. I thought there was no way I'd 
get a grant to attend a museum conference. Lori Phillips has done a lot 
of work in her one year coordinator position. She has tried her best to 
bring together US Wikipedians - and for many of us, that's like herding 
cats. She's redone our website, she's created a blog, and she's got 100 
GLAMs breathing down her neck who want Wikipedians in Residence - all 
this while GLAMs are undergoing hiring freezes and are lucky if they can 
send one staff member to a conference where Lori, myself, and/or Dominic 
speak about the subject.


The development of the US GLAM Consortium[1] was a concept Lori hoped 
could make up for a few things: the lack of chapters in the US (the US 
is like Russia - it's freaking huge, and having two small chapters on 
one side of the country doesn't necessarily help those of us in 
Oklahoma, Indiana, New Mexico, or Oregon, per se), the lack of GLAM 
organization around the subject, etc. We've got a great group of 
advisors from some of the biggest GLAMs in the US - however, the 
Consortium has no money. GLAMs don't have the free cash to throw at 
organizing it, and the Foundation won't support it unless a GLAM steps 
up to throw money in - if they do the Foundation will match them. And 
we've had little to no luck thus far at getting outside funding. But, 
most of these GLAMs have hiring freezes, can't even afford to pay a 
Wikipedian in Residence a small stipend, and all of the staff members on 
the US Consortium project are doing it as volunteers. One of the most 
important things we need to do is have a Consortium meeting - in person, 
not online - and we can't financially fund it because of this matching. 
I don't blame anyone we're working with - Asaf is great and he works his 
ass off and cares a lot for what we're all doing. But, in the US - we 
can't financially do a lot of things because we're limited by distance, 
lack of chapters, and situations like this matching thing. I get we 
can't rely on the Foundation for everything, but in the US, outside of 
one area, it's the only thing we have.


And trust me - having "numerous present and past Wikipedians in 
residence" doesn't make up for having financial and chapter support. 
While it's great that museums want to fly us around the country to talk 
about our projects - they can't afford it. I was asked to speak at one 
of the finest museums in the United States - the Met of the West, so to 
say, and they had to cease planning the talk because they can't afford 
to bring me down from San Francisco to LA, and I surely can't afford to 
do that myself. And a ticket to fly to LA generally costs about $150 - 
not expensive. And there is only so much that me, Dominic and Lori can 
do. (And that's having families, jobs and school)


I could go on and on and on about this, but, a few of us in the GLAM US 
movement have learned that we can ask the Foundation for grants when 
needed, and we are grateful, but, other than that, you're on your own - 
and many of us also know that if we had a US GLAM Consortium - who needs 
to meet in order to get the ball rolling - then we'd probably have a 
chance to bring in outside funding and so forth. I'm continuously 
grateful for the support participation grants have given me, but this 
isn't about me, I'll be okay - it's about the large scale impact in the 
US which we still need to make.


Things have started to move a bit though - organizations like the Open 
Knowledge Foundation have taken notice that we need better organization 

[Wikimedia-l] Democratizing the Wikimedia Foundation

[Lodewijk]

Dear all,

I have set up a brainstorming page on metawiki (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Democratizing_the_Wikimedia_Foundation)
where I would like to invite you to think about ways to democratize the
Wikimedia Foundation.

This doesn't mean that the Wikimedia Foundation is totally undemocratic,
but it does mean that in my humble opinion, improvements are possible. This
was triggered by me after the third time in my memory that the Foundation
board has changed the bylaws of the Foundation without even consulting the
community - but this doesn't have to be the only possible improvement.

This is not intended as a huge complaint 'moo, the WMF is evil and
dictatorial' but rather as a constructive exercise. I invite you to
approach this also constructively, and think about possible improvement to
current procedures - to ensure that there is a large community involvement
in the governance of the Wikimedia Foundation - directly or indirectly -
and that processes are transparent.

I hope that our community selected board members will take this up as well,
think along and bring the proposals to the board when the time is there
(Alice, Kat, Patricio, SJ, and Ting: I'm looking at you) but of course I'm
counting on it that also other board members will support the thought
behind this. Any input on how to make this process more constructive would
be appreciated. I also hope that the legal team will be watching the page
and advise when something is legally impossible and how it could be made
possible.

With kind regards,

Lodewijk
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Lodewijk]

Hi Bishakha,

2012/11/2 Bishakha Datta 

> On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 4:53 PM, Lodewijk  >wrote:
>
> > Dear Bishakha,
> >
> > could you please elaborate why the board has chosen for a secretive
> > amendment procedure here, rather than sharing the proposed amendments
> with
> > the community and asking their input on it? Especially where it concerns
> > such non-trivial changes.
> >
> Ok, now that the document showing old and new has finally been uploaded, I
> will try to answer your question.
>
> The legal team proposed that we amend the bylaws, primarily to ensure
> compliance with Florida non-profit laws.
>
> Since most of the changes are legal in nature, they were not referred to
> the community for prior input.
>
> I understand how this action can be seen as secretive or opaque, even
> though it may not have been intended as such.
>
> Is it also possible to see this action as reasonable, given the nature of
> most of the changes?
>

I don't see how this validates the fact that you did not consult the
community on these changes. If the changes are fairly trivial and
legalistic, then the community will likely have little objection. But as
you noted, there was at least one significant change (I haven't been able
to check myself) and I'm having a hard time understanding why you (the
board) would /not/ want the input of the community on such decisions.

If people talk rubbish, it is easy to ignore. But maybe they have a very
good point that you want to take into account. If they come up with an
argument that changes your mind - wouldn't that mean that the goal has been
accomplished?

Especially with the second most important governing document of the
Wikimedia Foundation (after the Articles of Incorporation) I don't
understand why changing it is not considered to be relevant to the
community. Maybe this specific change was a good one (I'm not sure yet I
agree, until I heard the explanation of the why) but maybe next time the
changes are more drastic and infringing. I find it silly that we do require
chapters to let their bylaws approved by the Affiliations Committee
(although enforcement of that could be improved), and make them public
before doing so - but that the Wikimedia Foundation wouldn't have to follow
the same standards.

But let me make this constructive: I will set up a page on meta (I'll send
a separate email about that) where the community can discuss measures to
make the Wikimedia Foundation more democratic.

Kind regards,

Lodewijk
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Erik Moeller]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 4:05 AM, Lodewijk  wrote:

> The question I am missing in this analysis (but perhaps it was discussed
> orally) is 'which organization/group/individual is best placed to execute
> this' and then I definitely agree that many events etc are probably better
> executed at a chapter level than by the WMF.

\o/

I really like this part of the strategy. I'd love to see more small
hackathons around the world organized by chapters and attended by
smaller groups of WMF staff along with volunteers and chapters staff.

> I do have one more specific question. In discussions previously on meta,
> there were some insinuations (maybe only my interpretation) that the
> organizational support (so not just money) for chapters and other
> affiliated groups would be reduced as a consequence of this narrowed focus.

I can speak mostly for the tech side, where our general approach is to
try to ensure that we've got scalable review/integration processes
that advance as much trust and autonomy to other individuals and
organizations as reasonably possible. For example I think WMF needs to
make sure that Labs runs smoothly, and can be used to build tools from
start to the finish line. We may then still have to help pushing it
over the last few inches, but most of the work should not require our
help.

Similarly we're continually expanding the "circle of trust" for folks
who can review and merge code. We're a bit more conservative with the
final "deployment" button push, but we're pretty close to letting
anyone with the right talents and inclinations push code into
production.

Where WMF really is the only older of certain expertise, we try to
provided it when needed, but we should also make a continuing effort
to reduce expertise bottlenecks. The changes in this regard over the
last 2 years have been huge -- more of our infrastructure than ever is
now versioned as code and testable in Labs.

Erik

-- 
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VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Thomas Dalton]

On Nov 2, 2012 3:07 PM, "Bishakha Datta"  wrote:
>
> On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 5:26 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
>
> >
> > The responsibilities of the Secretary and Treasurer are board
> > responsibilities. While the day-to-day work of the role may be
delegated to
> > staff, it is still the job of the board to ensure that everything is
done
> > correctly. How does the board intend to do that in future? Have
individual
> > trustees been appointed as liaisons to these new officers? Or are there
> > committees to oversee their work?
> >
>
> Yes, both will be overseen by Board members. The Treasurer will be
overseen
> by the Audit Committee head, while the Secretary will be overseen by the
> Board Governance Committee head.

Thank you!
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Matthew Roth]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 9:26 AM, Bence Damokos  wrote:

>
> > Do you have an example in mind of a recent press release that took
> > advantage of this support?
> > How useful to you find ComCom, as a list and network, compared to direct
> > personal facilitation by WMF staff?
>

I spent a fair amount of time supporting Lodewijk and the international
team with press work around Wiki Loves Monuments, drafting press releases,
communications strategy, etc. When I couldn't continue to spend time in a
staff capacity given the many other demands for time, I did other work as a
volunteer, much as I did for other elements of organizing the U.S. version
of the contest. It was a great deal of fun and I look forward to helping
again next year, in both capacities.


> >
> While not recent or international; I have taken advantage of both personal
> WMF staff support and ComCom in the past, in slightly different
> circumstances. For planning a communications strategy, the direct input,
> coaching and concentrated involvement of a Comms manager of WMF was
> instrumental; while ComCom in my experience has been useful in providing
> advice on how to react to a situation, which required  less time of any
> given participant. In the former case the help might have been an
> "unmandated task", and the person providing the help did not need to be WMF
> staffer (after all, Wikimedia Deutschland also had similar levels of
> communications expertise at the time, though still no mandate to be
> available to the global community).
> One important result of this interaction (and also other similar
> interactions in other fields of expertise, as well as that of the
> WMF-funded organizational development pilot) was the transfer of skills,
> ways of thinking that has been useful beyond the one project in question,
> and has perhaps resulted in not requiring to contact WMF again.
>
>
In addition to working with folks on ComCom around reactive situations, or
PR training/planning, we continue to seek out material for the
communications channels that we manage, including the Wikimedia Foundation
blog  and several large social media
channels . Several chapters
and many individual Wikipedians have taken advantage to contribute material
to blog.wikimedia.org. We're working on a process to re-design that blog so
that we can better incorporate more voices beyond the Foundation and in
many more languages (think more of a news magazine format and not just a
chronological blogroll). We've been expanding the number of multi-lingual
posts  and utilizing the
great translate extension as much as possible. We'd welcome many more posts
about movement activities from chapters or other event and activity
organizers. The best way to do that is to contact me or anyone else listed
under the guidelines section of the Meta page for the blog here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog

We can get you help with editing the posts and put them on the calendar.
We're also happy to help share/re-tweet/further spread the word on social
media channels where applicable.

So hopefully the changes you see coming from the WMF communications team
include more support for the work you do, a more robust infrastructure to
make it easier to publicize your work, and much better multi-lingual
communications across the many channels available to us. Please feel free
to reach out to me directly or anyone at communications at wikimedia dot
org for any reason.

Matthew

-- 

Matthew Roth
Global Communications Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
+1.415.839.6885 ext 6635
www.wikimediafoundation.org
*https://donate.wikimedia.org*
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Bishakha Datta]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 8:30 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:

>
> It would be nice if someone could export the linked presentation from
> Google
> Docs and upload it to wikimediafoundation.org (or Wikimedia Commons) as a
> PDF or ODP (or both). I don't think we should rely on external resources in
> the context of historical Board archives unless absolutely necessary.
>
> Taken your feedback and done the needful,
Bishakha
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Bishakha Datta]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 10:03 PM, Bence Damokos  wrote:

> Hi Bishakha,
>
> In my opinion, given the generally curious nature of our movement, it might
> be a good idea to make more preparatory material for the board meetings
> available publicly in advance.
> Not necessarily as a way to allow comments or input, but as a matter of
> transparency. Especially for proposals that are not likely to be changed
> during the meeting (e.g. the technical bylaw amendments) and that will
> become public as a result of the board vote, it might be possible to
> publish them in advance without any adverse consequences, and resulting in
> greater transparency.
>
> (In this regard, the fact that Sue's recommendations were on Meta already
> was a great step; without knowing the exact deliberations that happened at
> the meeting, probably the bylaw amendments and the committee charters could
> have been made public in advance.)
>
> Fair point. And kudos to Sue for creating her recommendations on Meta.

But I do (now speaking personally) actually agree with your larger point,
and this is something we will discuss on the Board and, hopefully, take on
board more fully.

Bishakha
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Bence Damokos]

Hi Bishakha,

In my opinion, given the generally curious nature of our movement, it might
be a good idea to make more preparatory material for the board meetings
available publicly in advance.
Not necessarily as a way to allow comments or input, but as a matter of
transparency. Especially for proposals that are not likely to be changed
during the meeting (e.g. the technical bylaw amendments) and that will
become public as a result of the board vote, it might be possible to
publish them in advance without any adverse consequences, and resulting in
greater transparency.

(In this regard, the fact that Sue's recommendations were on Meta already
was a great step; without knowing the exact deliberations that happened at
the meeting, probably the bylaw amendments and the committee charters could
have been made public in advance.)

Best regards,
Bence


On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 5:21 PM, Bishakha Datta wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 4:53 PM, Lodewijk  >wrote:
>
> > Dear Bishakha,
> >
> > could you please elaborate why the board has chosen for a secretive
> > amendment procedure here, rather than sharing the proposed amendments
> with
> > the community and asking their input on it? Especially where it concerns
> > such non-trivial changes.
> >
> > Ok, now that the document showing old and new has finally been uploaded,
> I
> will try to answer your question.
>
> The legal team proposed that we amend the bylaws, primarily to ensure
> compliance with Florida non-profit laws.
>
> Since most of the changes are legal in nature, they were not referred to
> the community for prior input.
>
> I understand how this action can be seen as secretive or opaque, even
> though it may not have been intended as such.
>
> Is it also possible to see this action as reasonable, given the nature of
> most of the changes?
>
> Just asking! Feel free to disagree,
> Bishakha
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Ilario Valdelli]

Yes, there is a misunderstandings.

I am not speaking about how the FDC committee is judging, but about the
overall process which is the same for an organization asking 30 MUSD and an
organization asking 100K USD.

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 5:25 PM, Anders Wennersten
wrote:

> the evaluation (coming also
> from FDC) are focused to promote bigger organizations which are able to
> spend a lot.
>
> This must be a misunderstanding. There is now just two weeks until the FDC
> recommendation for the 12 proposals for round 1 2012 will be official where
> you can judge yourself
>
> Anders W
>
>
>
>
> Ilario Valdelli skrev 2012-11-02 17:14:
>
>  In general I agree with the narrowing focus, but what seems really strange
>> to me is that the strategies and in generale the evaluation (coming also
>> from FDC) are focused to promote bigger organizations which are able to
>> spend a lot.
>>
>> Basically there is a weak evaluation costs/benefits. An organization
>> spending 30 millions of USD should produce benefits for 30 millions of USD
>> and should be evaluated as an organization spending 30 millions of USD.
>> Big
>> budget -> stronger evaluation and stronger measures.
>>
>> An organization (for instance a small chapter) spending 500K USD should be
>> evaluated as an organization spending 500K USD and this organization
>> should
>> produce benefits for 500K USD. Small budget -> weak evaluation and
>> flexible
>> measures.
>>
>> Basically if a small chapter, spending 500K USD, is evaluated using the
>> same parameters of WMF, it should spent an additional amount of 500K USD
>> to
>> create an organization and a paid staff in order to be able to be
>> evaluated
>> at the same level of WMF and to receive the 500K USD for their projects
>> (total = 1 million of USD).
>>
>> The criteria to evaluate chapters/organizations using the same parameters
>> of WMF basically imposes to all applicants a model and this would be a
>> good
>> model, but it means that they should hire more people and should spent
>> more
>> money.
>>
>> Basically the idea to use the grantmaking or the idea to setup a FDC are
>> not bad ideas, but these ideas are not supported by a "flexible" system of
>> evaluation. The request would impose the same standards of WMF to all
>> Wikimedia's organizations, but WMF is spending 30 MUSD plus a percentage
>> of
>> the 11,4 MUSD, at the back there is WM DE spending 1,8 MUSD (5% compared
>> with the budget of WMF) and WM UK and WM FR (2% compared with the budget
>> of
>> WMF), but they are evaluated using the same parameters of WMF.
>>
>> My concern is linked to this point. The grantmaking (I include also the
>> FDC) may bar the access to the funds for smaller entities.
>>
>> This may be a benefit because the control is perfect, but it may be also a
>> big damage for the movement because the control may be stifling. There is
>> not a "proportionate" control.
>>
>> I remember that we discussed a lot during the meetings with WMF about how
>> people should manage the changes. The better solution to manage the
>> changes
>> is to have a differentiation because the changes may block a lot some
>> kinds
>> of organizations and may promote a lot some others. The changes make a
>> selection and if all of them are clones, the changes may kill all clones.
>>
>> To impose a single model or to impose stronger rules would reduce a lot
>> the
>> possibility to have a differentiation and would produce a group of
>> organizations which seems to be stronger and better, but essentially it
>> will lose the capacity to react to the changes.
>>
>> I am not speaking about anarchy, in general I defend a lot the systems of
>> control, but a system of control and a system of evaluation should be
>> "flexible".
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 12:28 PM, Anders Wennersten <
>> m...@anderswennersten.se
>>
>>> wrote:
>>> The Board has earlier decided to give WMF an budget for 2012-2013 for
>>> 30,3
>>> MUSD for core activities, up from 26,2 the earlier year, mainly
>>> engineering
>>> and thing like fundraising support.
>>>
>>> The Board has also set a budget of 11,4 MUSD for activities partly to be
>>> disseminated to chapters and to a part to WMF, where Grants make up big
>>> part. The total of 11,4 is an increase.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
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-- 
Ilario Valdelli
Wikimedia CH
Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre
Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera
Switzerland - 8008 Zürich
Tel: +41764821371
http://www.wikimedia.ch
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Upcoming: WMF metrics/activities meeting - November 1

[Victor Grigas]

Photos:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Victorgrigas#Wikimedia_Foundation_Monthly_Metrics_Meeting_November_1.2C_2012

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 12:30 AM, Erik Moeller  wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 4:28 PM, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> > The meeting will take place November 1, 2012 at 5:30 PM UTC. The IRC
> > channel is #wikimedia-metrics-meetings [1] on irc.freenode.net.
>
> All documentation [*] can now be found here:
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/2012-11-01
>
> Upcoming meeting information will always be available at
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings
>
> but we'll send out a pre-announcement as well.
>
> Cheers,
> Erik
>
> [*] With the exception of the IRC log. I only have a partial log, so
> if someone has the whole meeting, please add. Going forward it's been
> added to the logging service at http://bots.wmflabs.org/~wm-bot/logs/
> (thanks Peter).
> --
> Erik Möller
> VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
>
> Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
>
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-- 

*Victor Grigas*
Storyteller
Wikimedia Foundation
vgri...@wikimedia.org
+1 (415) 839-6885 x 6773
149 New Montgomery Street 6th floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
https://donate.wikimedia.org/
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Bence Damokos]

Hi SJ,


On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 4:01 PM, Samuel Klein  wrote:

> Hello Lodewijk,
>
> These are good questions.  I expect effort will be required in the short
> term to delegate effectively and help move to a narrower focus.   A few
> clarifying questions for you in return:
>
> On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 7:47 AM, Lodewijk  >wrote:
>
> >
> > * PR support by WMF PR staff when writing press releases for an
> > international audience
> >
>
> Do you have an example in mind of a recent press release that took
> advantage of this support?
> How useful to you find ComCom, as a list and network, compared to direct
> personal facilitation by WMF staff?
>
While not recent or international; I have taken advantage of both personal
WMF staff support and ComCom in the past, in slightly different
circumstances. For planning a communications strategy, the direct input,
coaching and concentrated involvement of a Comms manager of WMF was
instrumental; while ComCom in my experience has been useful in providing
advice on how to react to a situation, which required  less time of any
given participant. In the former case the help might have been an
"unmandated task", and the person providing the help did not need to be WMF
staffer (after all, Wikimedia Deutschland also had similar levels of
communications expertise at the time, though still no mandate to be
available to the global community).
One important result of this interaction (and also other similar
interactions in other fields of expertise, as well as that of the
WMF-funded organizational development pilot) was the transfer of skills,
ways of thinking that has been useful beyond the one project in question,
and has perhaps resulted in not requiring to contact WMF again.


Sue's recommendations include "crisis support" as something to maintain,
but I hope this will not be seen as exclusively crisis support, i.e.
interactions between the WMF and the community will not be intentionally
narrowed to the times of crisis.
Grants are a good tool for problems that can be solved by money, but it is
an imprecise and slow tool, e.g. to solve the above problem that one could
rely on the help of WMF, would require writing a grant to engage a
communications consultant (the grant would need a month to be reviewed and
a week or so more for the bank transfer; the consultant would need to be
found, the consultant needs to be educated about our values, an evaluation
report needs to be written etc.). In the long run, when a certain region or
entity is big enough it will make sense to hire a local comm person through
grants, but until then the grants-only approach, without attendant focus on
capacity development has the potential, I fear, to lead to lost
opportunities and waste.
Over time, other entities in the movement will adapt to serve the needs of
the international community, but if WMF is not careful, it stands to lose a
big chunk of interactions with the wider community, the resulting good
relationships and more sadly the transfer of skills and experience in
non-technical areas between the WMF and the volunteers might cease, leading
to a less empowered and skillful volunteer base.
I sincerely hope that this is not the intention or the result.

>
> > * Networking support by Asaf (who to approach), specifically for "global
> > south" countries and chapters to be.
> >
>
> Do you think the WMF should be the arbiter of who to approach to connect
> with chapters-to-be?  It seems to me that this level of support and
> connection could be provided well and in a variety of languages by a
> support network (or a community body such as AffCom or the WCA), even
> today.
>
Perhaps what was meant here is that Asaf told people which WMF staffer to
approach with certain requests or simply questions (e.g. for trademarks,
comms help, merchandise, the WMF blog, accounting etc.).
WCA and AffCom, etc. will certainly be able to provide similar assistance,
but the big question is whether people at the WMF will be allowed to
receive such contact (or which functions will not be), and then figuring
out who can act as a substitute. (As a number of functions are available at
multiple places in the movement, it is not a movement-wide tragedy if
certain functions become unavailable at the WMF, but the WMF is seen as the
cornerstone of the movement, if it closes off, it will lead to a
readjustment of that picture. It is not necessarily all bad, it might lead
to non-WMF orgs seen as more equal and responsible parts of the movement,
but it might lead to certain volunteers being unserved without a default
fallback to the WMF.)

--
I really hope the way the WMF understands grantmaking will include a strong
emphasis on proactively building the capacities of the potential grantees
and not only in a pull matter, but also in a push matter where
opportunities (even if technically called grants) are actively offered to
the other entities.

Best regards,
Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Anders Wennersten]

the evaluation (coming also
from FDC) are focused to promote bigger organizations which are able to
spend a lot.

This must be a misunderstanding. There is now just two weeks until the 
FDC recommendation for the 12 proposals for round 1 2012 will be 
official where you can judge yourself


Anders W




Ilario Valdelli skrev 2012-11-02 17:14:

In general I agree with the narrowing focus, but what seems really strange
to me is that the strategies and in generale the evaluation (coming also
from FDC) are focused to promote bigger organizations which are able to
spend a lot.

Basically there is a weak evaluation costs/benefits. An organization
spending 30 millions of USD should produce benefits for 30 millions of USD
and should be evaluated as an organization spending 30 millions of USD. Big
budget -> stronger evaluation and stronger measures.

An organization (for instance a small chapter) spending 500K USD should be
evaluated as an organization spending 500K USD and this organization should
produce benefits for 500K USD. Small budget -> weak evaluation and flexible
measures.

Basically if a small chapter, spending 500K USD, is evaluated using the
same parameters of WMF, it should spent an additional amount of 500K USD to
create an organization and a paid staff in order to be able to be evaluated
at the same level of WMF and to receive the 500K USD for their projects
(total = 1 million of USD).

The criteria to evaluate chapters/organizations using the same parameters
of WMF basically imposes to all applicants a model and this would be a good
model, but it means that they should hire more people and should spent more
money.

Basically the idea to use the grantmaking or the idea to setup a FDC are
not bad ideas, but these ideas are not supported by a "flexible" system of
evaluation. The request would impose the same standards of WMF to all
Wikimedia's organizations, but WMF is spending 30 MUSD plus a percentage of
the 11,4 MUSD, at the back there is WM DE spending 1,8 MUSD (5% compared
with the budget of WMF) and WM UK and WM FR (2% compared with the budget of
WMF), but they are evaluated using the same parameters of WMF.

My concern is linked to this point. The grantmaking (I include also the
FDC) may bar the access to the funds for smaller entities.

This may be a benefit because the control is perfect, but it may be also a
big damage for the movement because the control may be stifling. There is
not a "proportionate" control.

I remember that we discussed a lot during the meetings with WMF about how
people should manage the changes. The better solution to manage the changes
is to have a differentiation because the changes may block a lot some kinds
of organizations and may promote a lot some others. The changes make a
selection and if all of them are clones, the changes may kill all clones.

To impose a single model or to impose stronger rules would reduce a lot the
possibility to have a differentiation and would produce a group of
organizations which seems to be stronger and better, but essentially it
will lose the capacity to react to the changes.

I am not speaking about anarchy, in general I defend a lot the systems of
control, but a system of control and a system of evaluation should be
"flexible".

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 12:28 PM, Anders Wennersten 
wrote:
The Board has earlier decided to give WMF an budget for 2012-2013 for 30,3
MUSD for core activities, up from 26,2 the earlier year, mainly engineering
and thing like fundraising support.

The Board has also set a budget of 11,4 MUSD for activities partly to be
disseminated to chapters and to a part to WMF, where Grants make up big
part. The total of 11,4 is an increase.





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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Bishakha Datta]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 4:53 PM, Lodewijk wrote:

> Dear Bishakha,
>
> could you please elaborate why the board has chosen for a secretive
> amendment procedure here, rather than sharing the proposed amendments with
> the community and asking their input on it? Especially where it concerns
> such non-trivial changes.
>
> Ok, now that the document showing old and new has finally been uploaded, I
will try to answer your question.

The legal team proposed that we amend the bylaws, primarily to ensure
compliance with Florida non-profit laws.

Since most of the changes are legal in nature, they were not referred to
the community for prior input.

I understand how this action can be seen as secretive or opaque, even
though it may not have been intended as such.

Is it also possible to see this action as reasonable, given the nature of
most of the changes?

Just asking! Feel free to disagree,
Bishakha
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Tilman Bayer]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 9:09 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter  wrote:
>> BTW, a lot of the organizing work for Wiki Loves Monuments in the US was
>> done by three volunteer Wikimedians who also happen to be WMF employees
>> (Kaldari, Sarah and Matthew), but did this in their spare time.
>
>
> Not trying to underestimate their contribution, I am afraid this is better
> worded as "some fair share of the organizing work..." . For example,
> User:Thundersnow spent, as I can see, all of their free time in September
> (essentially, all of their time except for sleep) working here:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_National_Register_of_Historic_Places/Unused_images
>
> He was complimented on the NRHP project, but, as I could see, nowhere else.
>
> There were more users like Thundersnow.
Or User:Smallbones, for example. I said "a lot of the", not "all of the" ;)
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
>
>
>
>
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-- 
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Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

BTW, a lot of the organizing work for Wiki Loves Monuments in the US 
was
done by three volunteer Wikimedians who also happen to be WMF 
employees

(Kaldari, Sarah and Matthew), but did this in their spare time.


Not trying to underestimate their contribution, I am afraid this is 
better worded as "some fair share of the organizing work..." . For 
example, User:Thundersnow spent, as I can see, all of their free time in 
September (essentially, all of their time except for sleep) working 
here:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_National_Register_of_Historic_Places/Unused_images

He was complimented on the NRHP project, but, as I could see, nowhere 
else.


There were more users like Thundersnow.

Cheers
Yaroslav



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Bishakha Datta]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 9:31 PM, Benjamin Lees  wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 5:29 AM, Bishakha Datta  >wrote:
>
> > Please note the substantive change in Article V: Officers and Duties. As
> > per the amendments, the Secretary and Treasurer are now non-trustee
> officer
> > positions.
> >
>
> This doesn't seem too unreasonable in itself, but it is somewhat surprising
> that you didn't readjust the board's composition accordingly.  The
> justification for having unelected seats is to ensure that the board has
> people with specific skills or backgrounds, and my impression was that
> getting someone with accounting experience to serve as treasurer was part
> of that.
>

And that accounting experience is still very much needed on the Board - to
head the Audit Committee and to oversee the treasurer.

Best
Bishakha
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Bishakha Datta]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 3:07 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:

> After the fact, I'd appreciate a readable resolution or diff as both
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Amended_Bylaws and <
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Bylaws&diff=84853&oldid=84852>
> are useless.
>
>
Ok, I've added a reference link into the resolution at:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Amended_Bylaws

Please go through this to compare old and revised versions of the bylaws;
since there are many small changes, I have uploaded the entire document.

The document showing the revisions can also be directly accessed from this
link:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Bylaws_posted_mark-up.pdf

Best
Bishakha
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Benjamin Lees]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 5:29 AM, Bishakha Datta wrote:

> Please note the substantive change in Article V: Officers and Duties. As
> per the amendments, the Secretary and Treasurer are now non-trustee officer
> positions.
>

This doesn't seem too unreasonable in itself, but it is somewhat surprising
that you didn't readjust the board's composition accordingly.  The
justification for having unelected seats is to ensure that the board has
people with specific skills or backgrounds, and my impression was that
getting someone with accounting experience to serve as treasurer was part
of that.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Tilman Bayer]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 8:15 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:

> Samuel Klein, 02/11/2012 16:01:
>
>  * Institutional support for the GLAM related activities in the US (until
>>> the US Federation is fully functional, if ever)
>>>
>>>
>> I agree there is room for a global GLAM support for regions that don't
>> have
>> local [chapter] organization.  Why do you feel this is a special problem
>> for the US, compared to other archive-rich parts of the world - given the
>> two regional chapters and numerous present and past Wikipedians in
>> residence?
>>
>
> The problem is always the same, i.e. that the WMF acts as WM-USA while a
> chapter is missing, rather than being truly global.
> Random (unfair?) recent example: WLM-USA uses the allegedly global
> "Wikimedia blog"  monuments-us-top-ten-photos-**announced/>
> unlike all the other national editions.
> But perhaps Lodewijk meant something else.


I'm a bit confused about precisely what damage that blog post has done in
your opinion. As noted on http://wikilovesmonuments.us/ , the US WLM
finalists were also announced on Commons, and on the other hand the blog
features a lot of posts from volunteers and chapters (see e.g the
subsequent post
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/10/31/the-expansion-of-wikimedia-sverige/ ,
draft blog posts can be submitted on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog ).

BTW, a lot of the organizing work for Wiki Loves Monuments in the US was
done by three volunteer Wikimedians who also happen to be WMF employees
(Kaldari, Sarah and Matthew), but did this in their spare time.

-- 
Tilman Bayer
Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Bishakha Datta]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 4:35 PM, Lodewijk wrote:

> Thanks Bishakha,
>
> while I can understand the move of the WMF to do what they are best at, for
> me it is always a bit confusing when the Board (or Sue) is talking about
> the Foundation, and when about the movement. I hope I'm correct in my
> assumption that this narrowed focus is mostly a Foundation thing.
>
> Yes, this narrowed focus relates to Foundation programs.


> I do hope that freeing up
> these resources does mean that chapters and other groups will be supported
> more in taking over these tasks and where necessary, a transition process
> is considered.
>
> As I see it, the intention of re-allocating or re-prioritizing resources
(rather than freeing it up) is to make it easier for the Foundation to
focus on two key priorities: engineering and grantmaking, and to move
towards more impactful execution of each.

I don't think the re-prioritization can be seen either as supporting or not
supporting other groups to take over these tasks; many of these decisions
are upto other groups themselves. For instance, there is scope for chapters
to fund fellowships, but that is a decision that each chapter needs to make
for itself.

A narrower focus by the Foundation does leave room for other community
entities to step up, but whether they do so or not is also dependent on
each entity's annual plans, its vision, and how it sees its own role in the
movement now and going forward in the future. As slides 13 and 16 say,
there is scope to support the growth and build the eco-system of entities
via the grants process.

Best
Bishakha
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Samuel Klein, 02/11/2012 16:01:

* Institutional support for the GLAM related activities in the US (until
the US Federation is fully functional, if ever)



I agree there is room for a global GLAM support for regions that don't have
local [chapter] organization.  Why do you feel this is a special problem
for the US, compared to other archive-rich parts of the world - given the
two regional chapters and numerous present and past Wikipedians in
residence?


The problem is always the same, i.e. that the WMF acts as WM-USA while a 
chapter is missing, rather than being truly global.
Random (unfair?) recent example: WLM-USA uses the allegedly global 
"Wikimedia blog" 
 
unlike all the other national editions.

But perhaps Lodewijk meant something else.

Nemo

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Bishakha Datta]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 5:26 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

>
> The responsibilities of the Secretary and Treasurer are board
> responsibilities. While the day-to-day work of the role may be delegated to
> staff, it is still the job of the board to ensure that everything is done
> correctly. How does the board intend to do that in future? Have individual
> trustees been appointed as liaisons to these new officers? Or are there
> committees to oversee their work?
>

Yes, both will be overseen by Board members. The Treasurer will be overseen
by the Audit Committee head, while the Secretary will be overseen by the
Board Governance Committee head.

Best
Bishakha
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Samuel Klein]

Hello Lodewijk,

These are good questions.  I expect effort will be required in the short
term to delegate effectively and help move to a narrower focus.   A few
clarifying questions for you in return:

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 7:47 AM, Lodewijk wrote:

>
> * PR support by WMF PR staff when writing press releases for an
> international audience
>

Do you have an example in mind of a recent press release that took
advantage of this support?
How useful to you find ComCom, as a list and network, compared to direct
personal facilitation by WMF staff?


> * Networking support by Asaf (who to approach), specifically for "global
> south" countries and chapters to be.
>

Do you think the WMF should be the arbiter of who to approach to connect
with chapters-to-be?  It seems to me that this level of support and
connection could be provided well and in a variety of languages by a
support network (or a community body such as AffCom or the WCA), even
today.


> * Tech support for initiatives
>
* Layout/design support for education related activities
>

How do you feel the above worked for WLM this year, as an example?
What tech and design support was needed, and where did it come from?


> * Institutional support for the GLAM related activities in the US (until
> the US Federation is fully functional, if ever)
>

I agree there is room for a global GLAM support for regions that don't have
local [chapter] organization.  Why do you feel this is a special problem
for the US, compared to other archive-rich parts of the world - given the
two regional chapters and numerous present and past Wikipedians in
residence?

Sam.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[MZMcBride]

Bishakha Datta wrote:
> At its in-person meeting on 26 October, the board unanimously agreed to
> accept the recommendation to narrow focus as presented by the Executive
> Director.
> 
> This vote has been published at:
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Narrowing_Focus

It would be nice if someone could export the linked presentation from Google
Docs and upload it to wikimediafoundation.org (or Wikimedia Commons) as a
PDF or ODP (or both). I don't think we should rely on external resources in
the context of historical Board archives unless absolutely necessary.

MZMcBride



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[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Wikivoyage EDP draft

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

In the meanwhile there are other drafts to review. ;-)

Nemo

 Messaggio originale 
Oggetto: Re: [Wikivoyage-l] Migration update
Data: Fri, 2 Nov 2012 09:23:16 -0400
Mittente: Powers 
Rispondi-a: Wikivoyage Mailing List 
A: 'Wikivoyage Mailing List' 


Formal WMF approval is not required. I suggest linking the policy from
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Non-free_content and sending a quick
note to wikimedia-l when you've got a draft ready for broader
community input.

Erik


I have created a Wikivoyage section on that page and linked our draft policy
(using the full URL since we're still waiting on the interwiki prefix), but
I'm not a member of wikimedia-l at the moment.  If anyone wants to drop a
note there I'd appreciate it.

Thanks for your help!


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Lodewijk]

Dear Bishakha,

please take your time - at this point there is no need to hurry since the
board meeting has already finished anyway.

Kind regards,
Lodewijk

2012/11/2 Bishakha Datta 

> Dear Thomas, Lodewijk and others,
>
> I will reply to this thread once I finish the work meeting at which I am
> currently.
>
> Best
> Bishakha
> On Nov 2, 2012 5:26 PM, "Thomas Dalton"  wrote:
>
> > Bishaka,
> >
> > Seeing as there was no public discussion of these amendments, to my
> > knowledge, can you at least explain them now?
> >
> > The responsibilities of the Secretary and Treasurer are board
> > responsibilities. While the day-to-day work of the role may be delegated
> to
> > staff, it is still the job of the board to ensure that everything is done
> > correctly. How does the board intend to do that in future? Have
> individual
> > trustees been appointed as liaisons to these new officers? Or are there
> > committees to oversee their work?
> > On Nov 2, 2012 9:29 AM, "Bishakha Datta" 
> wrote:
> >
> > > Dear all,
> > >
> > > At its in-person meeting of 26 October, the Board of Trustees also
> > approved
> > > the two following resolutions:
> > >
> > > http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Amended_Bylaws
> > > This resolution approved the revised and amended Foundation bylaws. The
> > > updated Bylaws are being adopted to ensure the Foundation's continued
> > > compliance with applicable laws and to further clarify certain
> procedural
> > > matters.
> > >
> > > Please note the substantive change in Article V: Officers and Duties.
> As
> > > per the amendments, the Secretary and Treasurer are now non-trustee
> > officer
> > > positions.
> > >
> > > In line with this amendment, non-trustees have been appointed to both
> > these
> > > positions.
> > > The resolution approving these appointments is published at:
> > >
> > >
> >
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Appointment_of_Foundation_Staff_Officers
> > >
> > > All resolutions from the in-person meeting of 26 October have now been
> > > published.
> > >
> > > Questions and comments, as always, are welcome.
> > >
> > > Best
> > > Bishakha
> > > ___
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> > > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> > >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Bishakha Datta]

Dear Thomas, Lodewijk and others,

I will reply to this thread once I finish the work meeting at which I am
currently.

Best
Bishakha
On Nov 2, 2012 5:26 PM, "Thomas Dalton"  wrote:

> Bishaka,
>
> Seeing as there was no public discussion of these amendments, to my
> knowledge, can you at least explain them now?
>
> The responsibilities of the Secretary and Treasurer are board
> responsibilities. While the day-to-day work of the role may be delegated to
> staff, it is still the job of the board to ensure that everything is done
> correctly. How does the board intend to do that in future? Have individual
> trustees been appointed as liaisons to these new officers? Or are there
> committees to oversee their work?
> On Nov 2, 2012 9:29 AM, "Bishakha Datta"  wrote:
>
> > Dear all,
> >
> > At its in-person meeting of 26 October, the Board of Trustees also
> approved
> > the two following resolutions:
> >
> > http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Amended_Bylaws
> > This resolution approved the revised and amended Foundation bylaws. The
> > updated Bylaws are being adopted to ensure the Foundation's continued
> > compliance with applicable laws and to further clarify certain procedural
> > matters.
> >
> > Please note the substantive change in Article V: Officers and Duties. As
> > per the amendments, the Secretary and Treasurer are now non-trustee
> officer
> > positions.
> >
> > In line with this amendment, non-trustees have been appointed to both
> these
> > positions.
> > The resolution approving these appointments is published at:
> >
> >
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Appointment_of_Foundation_Staff_Officers
> >
> > All resolutions from the in-person meeting of 26 October have now been
> > published.
> >
> > Questions and comments, as always, are welcome.
> >
> > Best
> > Bishakha
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list
> > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Thomas Dalton]

Bishaka,

Seeing as there was no public discussion of these amendments, to my
knowledge, can you at least explain them now?

The responsibilities of the Secretary and Treasurer are board
responsibilities. While the day-to-day work of the role may be delegated to
staff, it is still the job of the board to ensure that everything is done
correctly. How does the board intend to do that in future? Have individual
trustees been appointed as liaisons to these new officers? Or are there
committees to oversee their work?
On Nov 2, 2012 9:29 AM, "Bishakha Datta"  wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> At its in-person meeting of 26 October, the Board of Trustees also approved
> the two following resolutions:
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Amended_Bylaws
> This resolution approved the revised and amended Foundation bylaws. The
> updated Bylaws are being adopted to ensure the Foundation's continued
> compliance with applicable laws and to further clarify certain procedural
> matters.
>
> Please note the substantive change in Article V: Officers and Duties. As
> per the amendments, the Secretary and Treasurer are now non-trustee officer
> positions.
>
> In line with this amendment, non-trustees have been appointed to both these
> positions.
> The resolution approving these appointments is published at:
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Appointment_of_Foundation_Staff_Officers
>
> All resolutions from the in-person meeting of 26 October have now been
> published.
>
> Questions and comments, as always, are welcome.
>
> Best
> Bishakha
> ___
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> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Lodewijk]

Hi Dariusz and Anders,

Thank you for your replies. It does however not answer my questions -
although I may have worded them poorly. What I'm trying to figure out is
what will happen to the organizational support to the other movement
organizations and individuals. This support is already much lower than I'd
like, but the suggestion on meta was that it might decrease further. Some
examples:

* PR support by WMF PR staff when writing press releases for an
international audience
* Networking support by Asaf (who to approach), specifically for "global
south" countries and chapters to be.
* Tech support for initiatives
* Institutional support for the GLAM related activities in the US (until
the US Federation is fully functional, if ever)
* Layout/design support for education related activities

While I agree on principle that several of these tasks belong at the WCA,
US Federation or individual chapters, I do recognize it needs time to be
transferred. Which tasks will the Foundation (continue to) execute, and
which not? Which will it explicitely transfer? Or will it just drop it -
and then it is up to others to catch them or not?

Best,
Lodewijk

2012/11/2 Dariusz Jemielniak 

> Hi,
>
> as the newly appointed Chair of the FDC, but expressing my personal
> understanding, I support Anders' view. The narrowed focus means more
> activities done through the chapters, and the community at large. Of course
> the specifics will have to be established, but now WMF applies for their
> non-core activities like everybody else.
>
> Best,
>
> Dariusz
>
> 2 lis 2012 12:28, "Anders Wennersten" 
> napisał(a):
>
> > As a newly appointed secretary of FDC and just back from San Francisco
> after a four days deliberation session, where these thing has been in focus
> I can give you some facts from what I have understood.
> >
> > The Board has earlier decided to give WMF an budget for 2012-2013 for
> 30,3 MUSD for core activities, up from 26,2 the earlier year, mainly
> engineering and thing like fundraising support.
> >
> > The Board has also set a budget of 11,4 MUSD for activities partly to be
> disseminated to chapters and to a part to WMF, where Grants make up big
> part. The total of 11,4 is an increase.
> >
> > The narrowed focus in practice means that The WMF part funded through FDC
> is changed in composition, so less in direct activities by WMF personnel
> and more money in Grants to be allocated to chapters and individuals.
> >
> > The narrowed focus is only a issue for WMFs internal budget. The planned
> funds dissemination to chapters is not effected and the actual result of
> the the implementation of the Narrowed focus is that more money will be
> used by community/chapters via grant then was earlier planned
> >
> > Anders Wennersten
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Lodewijk skrev 2012-11-02 12:05:
> >>
> >> Thanks Bishakha,
> >>
> >> while I can understand the move of the WMF to do what they are best at,
> for
> >> me it is always a bit confusing when the Board (or Sue) is talking about
> >> the Foundation, and when about the movement. I hope I'm correct in my
> >> assumption that this narrowed focus is mostly a Foundation thing.
> >>
> >> The question I am missing in this analysis (but perhaps it was discussed
> >> orally) is 'which organization/group/individual is best placed to
> execute
> >> this' and then I definitely agree that many events etc are probably
> better
> >> executed at a chapter level than by the WMF. I do hope that freeing up
> >> these resources does mean that chapters and other groups will be
> supported
> >> more in taking over these tasks and where necessary, a transition
> process
> >> is considered.
> >>
> >> I do have one more specific question. In discussions previously on meta,
> >> there were some insinuations (maybe only my interpretation) that the
> >> organizational support (so not just money) for chapters and other
> >> affiliated groups would be reduced as a consequence of this narrowed
> focus.
> >> I sincerely hope the opposite will be true - and that more effort will
> be
> >> put in enabling these organizations to take over tasks where possible
> and
> >> take on new initiatives as much as possible. As long as the Chapters
> >> Association is not active (it seems to me it will be another year before
> it
> >> will be fully functional) I think it would be a waste to reduce this
> >> enabling capacity (for example the great networking function that is
> being
> >> provided by Asaf - but he could use some help!) while there is no other
> >> organization yet to take over those functions. Could you elaborate a bit
> on
> >> this?
> >>
> >> Best,
> >> Lodewijk
> >>
> >> 2012/11/2 Bishakha Datta 
> >>
> >>> Dear all,
> >>>
> >>> At its in-person meeting on 26 October, the board unanimously agreed to
> >>> accept the recommendation to narrow focus as presented by the Executive
> >>> Director.
> >>>
> >>> This vote has been published at:
> >>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vot

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Dariusz Jemielniak]

Hi,

as the newly appointed Chair of the FDC, but expressing my personal
understanding, I support Anders' view. The narrowed focus means more
activities done through the chapters, and the community at large. Of course
the specifics will have to be established, but now WMF applies for their
non-core activities like everybody else.

Best,

Dariusz

2 lis 2012 12:28, "Anders Wennersten"  napisał(a):

> As a newly appointed secretary of FDC and just back from San Francisco
after a four days deliberation session, where these thing has been in focus
I can give you some facts from what I have understood.
>
> The Board has earlier decided to give WMF an budget for 2012-2013 for
30,3 MUSD for core activities, up from 26,2 the earlier year, mainly
engineering and thing like fundraising support.
>
> The Board has also set a budget of 11,4 MUSD for activities partly to be
disseminated to chapters and to a part to WMF, where Grants make up big
part. The total of 11,4 is an increase.
>
> The narrowed focus in practice means that The WMF part funded through FDC
is changed in composition, so less in direct activities by WMF personnel
and more money in Grants to be allocated to chapters and individuals.
>
> The narrowed focus is only a issue for WMFs internal budget. The planned
funds dissemination to chapters is not effected and the actual result of
the the implementation of the Narrowed focus is that more money will be
used by community/chapters via grant then was earlier planned
>
> Anders Wennersten
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Lodewijk skrev 2012-11-02 12:05:
>>
>> Thanks Bishakha,
>>
>> while I can understand the move of the WMF to do what they are best at,
for
>> me it is always a bit confusing when the Board (or Sue) is talking about
>> the Foundation, and when about the movement. I hope I'm correct in my
>> assumption that this narrowed focus is mostly a Foundation thing.
>>
>> The question I am missing in this analysis (but perhaps it was discussed
>> orally) is 'which organization/group/individual is best placed to execute
>> this' and then I definitely agree that many events etc are probably
better
>> executed at a chapter level than by the WMF. I do hope that freeing up
>> these resources does mean that chapters and other groups will be
supported
>> more in taking over these tasks and where necessary, a transition process
>> is considered.
>>
>> I do have one more specific question. In discussions previously on meta,
>> there were some insinuations (maybe only my interpretation) that the
>> organizational support (so not just money) for chapters and other
>> affiliated groups would be reduced as a consequence of this narrowed
focus.
>> I sincerely hope the opposite will be true - and that more effort will be
>> put in enabling these organizations to take over tasks where possible and
>> take on new initiatives as much as possible. As long as the Chapters
>> Association is not active (it seems to me it will be another year before
it
>> will be fully functional) I think it would be a waste to reduce this
>> enabling capacity (for example the great networking function that is
being
>> provided by Asaf - but he could use some help!) while there is no other
>> organization yet to take over those functions. Could you elaborate a bit
on
>> this?
>>
>> Best,
>> Lodewijk
>>
>> 2012/11/2 Bishakha Datta 
>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> At its in-person meeting on 26 October, the board unanimously agreed to
>>> accept the recommendation to narrow focus as presented by the Executive
>>> Director.
>>>
>>> This vote has been published at:
>>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Narrowing_Focus
>>>
>>> Best
>>> Bishakha
>>> ___
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>>> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>>>
>> ___
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>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Anders Wennersten]

As a newly appointed secretary of FDC and just back from San Francisco 
after a four days deliberation session, where these thing has been in 
focus I can give you some facts from what I have understood.


The Board has earlier decided to give WMF an budget for 2012-2013 for 
30,3 MUSD for core activities, up from 26,2 the earlier year, mainly 
engineering and thing like fundraising support.


The Board has also set a budget of 11,4 MUSD for activities partly to be 
disseminated to chapters and to a part to WMF, where Grants make up big 
part. The total of 11,4 is an increase.


The narrowed focus in practice means that The WMF part funded through 
FDC is changed in composition, so less in direct activities by WMF 
personnel and more money in Grants to be allocated to chapters and 
individuals.


The narrowed focus is only a issue for WMFs internal budget. The planned 
funds dissemination to chapters is not effected and the actual result of 
the the implementation of the Narrowed focus is that more money will be 
used by community/chapters via grant then was earlier planned


Anders Wennersten








Lodewijk skrev 2012-11-02 12:05:

Thanks Bishakha,

while I can understand the move of the WMF to do what they are best at, for
me it is always a bit confusing when the Board (or Sue) is talking about
the Foundation, and when about the movement. I hope I'm correct in my
assumption that this narrowed focus is mostly a Foundation thing.

The question I am missing in this analysis (but perhaps it was discussed
orally) is 'which organization/group/individual is best placed to execute
this' and then I definitely agree that many events etc are probably better
executed at a chapter level than by the WMF. I do hope that freeing up
these resources does mean that chapters and other groups will be supported
more in taking over these tasks and where necessary, a transition process
is considered.

I do have one more specific question. In discussions previously on meta,
there were some insinuations (maybe only my interpretation) that the
organizational support (so not just money) for chapters and other
affiliated groups would be reduced as a consequence of this narrowed focus.
I sincerely hope the opposite will be true - and that more effort will be
put in enabling these organizations to take over tasks where possible and
take on new initiatives as much as possible. As long as the Chapters
Association is not active (it seems to me it will be another year before it
will be fully functional) I think it would be a waste to reduce this
enabling capacity (for example the great networking function that is being
provided by Asaf - but he could use some help!) while there is no other
organization yet to take over those functions. Could you elaborate a bit on
this?

Best,
Lodewijk

2012/11/2 Bishakha Datta 


Dear all,

At its in-person meeting on 26 October, the board unanimously agreed to
accept the recommendation to narrow focus as presented by the Executive
Director.

This vote has been published at:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Narrowing_Focus

Best
Bishakha
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Lodewijk]

Dear Bishakha,

could you please elaborate why the board has chosen for a secretive
amendment procedure here, rather than sharing the proposed amendments with
the community and asking their input on it? Especially where it concerns
such non-trivial changes.

I hope that also other board members will share their view on this process,
and why they didn't ask input of the community themselves. I would have
expected such questions especially from those board members that were
(s)elected by the community and/or the chapters. Do you consider such
community discussions unwanted? Was there an exceptional legal threat that
required these changes at short notice?

Kind regards,
Lodewijk

2012/11/2 Federico Leva (Nemo) 

> Just reiterating for the n-th time on this list that people would
> appreciate if you publicly shared draft bylaws amendments before approving
> them.
> The consistent lack of transparency in such fundamental decisions within
> the WMF is always astonishing.
>
> After the fact, I'd appreciate a readable resolution or diff as both
> https://wikimediafoundation.**org/wiki/Resolution:Amended_**Bylawsand
>  <
> https://wikimediafoundation.**org/w/index.php?title=Bylaws&**
> diff=84853&oldid=84852>
> are useless.
>
> Nemo
>
>
> __**_
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org 
> Unsubscribe: 
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Lodewijk]

Thanks Bishakha,

while I can understand the move of the WMF to do what they are best at, for
me it is always a bit confusing when the Board (or Sue) is talking about
the Foundation, and when about the movement. I hope I'm correct in my
assumption that this narrowed focus is mostly a Foundation thing.

The question I am missing in this analysis (but perhaps it was discussed
orally) is 'which organization/group/individual is best placed to execute
this' and then I definitely agree that many events etc are probably better
executed at a chapter level than by the WMF. I do hope that freeing up
these resources does mean that chapters and other groups will be supported
more in taking over these tasks and where necessary, a transition process
is considered.

I do have one more specific question. In discussions previously on meta,
there were some insinuations (maybe only my interpretation) that the
organizational support (so not just money) for chapters and other
affiliated groups would be reduced as a consequence of this narrowed focus.
I sincerely hope the opposite will be true - and that more effort will be
put in enabling these organizations to take over tasks where possible and
take on new initiatives as much as possible. As long as the Chapters
Association is not active (it seems to me it will be another year before it
will be fully functional) I think it would be a waste to reduce this
enabling capacity (for example the great networking function that is being
provided by Asaf - but he could use some help!) while there is no other
organization yet to take over those functions. Could you elaborate a bit on
this?

Best,
Lodewijk

2012/11/2 Bishakha Datta 

> Dear all,
>
> At its in-person meeting on 26 October, the board unanimously agreed to
> accept the recommendation to narrow focus as presented by the Executive
> Director.
>
> This vote has been published at:
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Narrowing_Focus
>
> Best
> Bishakha
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Виктория]

Great news - I propose a heading for the Signpost "Board unanimously agreed
to the Executive
Director proposal that Wikimedia movement fends for itself".

Victoria

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 7:46 AM, Bishakha Datta wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> At its in-person meeting on 26 October, the board unanimously agreed to
> accept the recommendation to narrow focus as presented by the Executive
> Director.
>
> This vote has been published at:
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Narrowing_Focus
>
> Best
> Bishakha
> ___
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> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Just reiterating for the n-th time on this list that people would 
appreciate if you publicly shared draft bylaws amendments before 
approving them.
The consistent lack of transparency in such fundamental decisions within 
the WMF is always astonishing.


After the fact, I'd appreciate a readable resolution or diff as both 
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Amended_Bylaws and 
 
are useless.


Nemo

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[Wikimedia-l] Board resolutions on bylaw amendments and appointment of Foundation staff officers

[Bishakha Datta]

Dear all,

At its in-person meeting of 26 October, the Board of Trustees also approved
the two following resolutions:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Amended_Bylaws
This resolution approved the revised and amended Foundation bylaws. The
updated Bylaws are being adopted to ensure the Foundation's continued
compliance with applicable laws and to further clarify certain procedural
matters.

Please note the substantive change in Article V: Officers and Duties. As
per the amendments, the Secretary and Treasurer are now non-trustee officer
positions.

In line with this amendment, non-trustees have been appointed to both these
positions.
The resolution approving these appointments is published at:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Appointment_of_Foundation_Staff_Officers

All resolutions from the in-person meeting of 26 October have now been
published.

Questions and comments, as always, are welcome.

Best
Bishakha
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[Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Bishakha Datta]

Dear all,

At its in-person meeting on 26 October, the board unanimously agreed to
accept the recommendation to narrow focus as presented by the Executive
Director.

This vote has been published at:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Narrowing_Focus

Best
Bishakha
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Upcoming: WMF metrics/activities meeting - November 1

[Erik Moeller]

On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 4:28 PM, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> The meeting will take place November 1, 2012 at 5:30 PM UTC. The IRC
> channel is #wikimedia-metrics-meetings [1] on irc.freenode.net.

All documentation [*] can now be found here:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/2012-11-01

Upcoming meeting information will always be available at

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings

but we'll send out a pre-announcement as well.

Cheers,
Erik

[*] With the exception of the IRC log. I only have a partial log, so
if someone has the whole meeting, please add. Going forward it's been
added to the logging service at http://bots.wmflabs.org/~wm-bot/logs/
(thanks Peter).
-- 
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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