Re: [Wikimedia-l] No access to the Uzbek Wikipedia in Uzbekistan
On 27/12/2012 5:54 AM, Anonymous User wrote: thank you again for your answers so far. I would have had hoped to have more voices participating, but everyone who did agreed that it should be done. I think this is the closest I've ever seen to universal support on Wikimedia-l ever. :-) -- Coren / Marc ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: IRC Office Hours
On 12/27/2012 12:16 AM, Dan Rosenthal wrote: Not really excessive during a holiday season where people may not see the message for several days. And a month is a good amount of lead time for something like this. I don't get what the problem is... I don't see it as a problem either. More lead time is always good for people who want to make sure they can join in. However, this is sufficiently far in advance that it would be helpful to also send out a reminder as the date gets closer, say during the week leading up to the office hours. I expect Gayle may already have planned to do that as well, but didn't think it necessary to spell that out. --Michael Snow ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] *** DATE CHANGE *** Invitation to WMF December 2012 Metrics and Activities Meeting: Thursday, Jan. 10, 19:00 UTC
Dear all, The next WMF metrics and activities will take place on Thursday, January 10, 2013 at 7:00 PM UTC (11 AM PST). Please note that on this occasion we are holding this meeting on the second Thursday of January, but we will resume holding the meetings on the first Thursday of each month thereafter. The IRC channel is #wikimedia-office* *on irc.freenode.net and the meeting will be broadcast as a live YouTube stream. The current structure of the meeting is: * Review of key metrics including the monthly report card, but also specialized reports and analytics* Review of financials* Welcoming recent hires* Brief presentations on recent projects, with a focus on highest priority initiatives* Update and QA with the Executive Director, if available Please review https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings for further information about how to participate. We'll post IRC logs and the video recording publicly after the meeting. Thank you, Praveena -- Praveena Maharaj Executive Assistant to the VP of Engineering and Product Development +1 (415) 839 6885 ext. 6689 www.wikimedia.org ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Annual Audit of the Wikimedia Foundation
The annual audit of the Wikimedia Foundation, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012 and the corresponding FAQ have been posted on the financial reports http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports page of the Wikimedia Foundation web site. Please contact me with any questions. Garfield, During your IRC office hours of April 12, 2012, you appeared to accept and speak highly of the suggestion that the Foundation transfer the bulk of its cash reserves from Citibank certificates of deposit to federally insured credit union certificates of deposit, which were then and still paying about four times as much interest. It is unclear from the auditors' statements whether you accomplished this. Did you? Sincerely, James Salsman ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] fundraising status?
On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 12:18 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 10:12 AM, Zack Exley zex...@wikimedia.org wrote: Maximizing for us means raising our budget with as little negative impact on the projects as possible Where do you find that meaning or any suggestion of it in the unanimous resolution of the board of 9 October 2010? https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Wikimedia_fundraising_principles That is in fact what was meant (evident on the discussion page on Meta): the foundation should aim to maximize fundraising efficiency; or support raised per unit of fundraising activity. Maximizing the activity itself - fundraising 24/7/365.2524 - would reduce the usefulness of the projects. SJ [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Draft_Guiding_principles_with_regards_to_fundraising ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Annual Audit of the Wikimedia Foundation
On 12/27/2012 10:30 AM, James Salsman wrote: The annual audit of the Wikimedia Foundation, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012 and the corresponding FAQ have been posted on the financial reports http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports page of the Wikimedia Foundation web site. Please contact me with any questions. Garfield, During your IRC office hours of April 12, 2012, you appeared to accept and speak highly of the suggestion that the Foundation transfer the bulk of its cash reserves from Citibank certificates of deposit to federally insured credit union certificates of deposit, which were then and still paying about four times as much interest. It is unclear from the auditors' statements whether you accomplished this. Did you? Reviewing the log from those office hours, it appears Garfield did not accept and speak highly of the suggestion, he merely said he would look into the possibility. I'm also rather skeptical of the underlying claim about the superiority of credit union CDs in this context, and as an audit committee member would want to see a much clearer and better documented case for undertaking such an effort. It appears that your generic information about interest rates was based on either the highest rates available, which also require the longest terms, or on promotional rates that I doubt would fit with the Wikimedia Foundation's circumstances. In practice, investment of cash reserves must balance the return on investment with the need to maintain liquidity, which is after all the primary reason to keep cash on hand. That means shorter-term investment vehicles, and from what I know the rates for CDs of this type do not diverge significantly between banks and credit unions. In the current interest rate environment, basically the rates are pathetically low either way, and even if there is some difference the return would be relatively trivial and unlikely to be worth the effort of switching. Again, the point is not absolute maximization of the possible return, it's more to avoid a return of nothing at all while ensuring the funds can be available if needed. None of this is meant as a statement on the relative merits of banks versus credit unions generally. On a personal level, I transitioned from a bank to a credit union as my primary financial institution long ago. But the logic that may apply for a typical consumer doesn't necessarily translate over to something like institutional management of cash reserves. --Michael Snow ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] No access to the Uzbek Wikipedia in Uzbekistan
On 12/27/2012 10:46 AM, Marc A. Pelletier wrote: On 27/12/2012 5:54 AM, Anonymous User wrote: thank you again for your answers so far. I would have had hoped to have more voices participating, but everyone who did agreed that it should be done. I think this is the closest I've ever seen to universal support on Wikimedia-l ever. :-) -- Coren / Marc So, I just asked Chris Steipp (WMF engineer in charge of software security) for his thoughts on this: I can add a, I think it's a good idea to the list, but Ops will need to be ok with the shift. I don't think it would be a problem, but it does mean google spidering our https site, and that may concern them. I think ops would also be the ones to implement the actual change. So in my opinion we can move discussion over to https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43466 (when serving Uzbek Wikipedia, make HTTPS canonical). I've asked a bug wrangler to contact Ops about it as well. -- Sumana Harihareswara Engineering Community Manager Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] No access to the Uzbek Wikipedia in Uzbekistan
On 12/27/2012 03:08 PM, Sumana Harihareswara wrote: So in my opinion we can move discussion over to https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43466 (when serving Uzbek Wikipedia, make HTTPS canonical). I've asked a bug wrangler to contact Ops about it as well. (Maybe I should just include a link to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Glossary in every email I send because I do use a lot of jargon! Sorry about that.) -- Sumana Harihareswara Engineering Community Manager Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] No access to the Uzbek Wikipedia in Uzbekistan
I wish that http://208.80.154.225/wiki/Bosh_Sahifa and https://208.80.154.225/wiki/Bosh_Sahifa would work, too, but the foundation apparently can't or chooses not to afford separate IP addresses for each language's Wikipedia. As one of the network folks, I will answer this. We do not have enough public IP(v4)s for an address for each language in each project, and unless someone gives us a major donation of IPv4 addresses (anyone have a spare /20 laying around?), I don't think we will be able to make this happen as we are frugal with our existing IPs and the allocating authorities (RIPE and ARIN) are being quite strict with their new IPv4 allocations. If you'd like to read more about IP allocation policies, here's a few links https://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#four3 https://www.arin.net/resources/request/ipv4_depletion.html https://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-553 (see section 5.6) Leslie -- Leslie Carr Wikimedia Foundation AS 14907, 43821 http://as14907.peeringdb.com/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] No access to the Uzbek Wikipedia in Uzbekistan
Leslie Carr lc...@wikimedia.org schrieb: I wish that http://208.80.154.225/wiki/Bosh_Sahifa and https://208.80.154.225/wiki/Bosh_Sahifa would work, too, but the foundation apparently can't or chooses not to afford separate IP addresses for each language's Wikipedia. As one of the network folks, I will answer this. We do not have enough public IP(v4)s for an address for each language in each project, and unless someone gives us a major donation of IPv4 addresses (anyone have a spare /20 laying around?), I don't think we will be able to make this happen as we are frugal with our existing IPs and the allocating authorities (RIPE and ARIN) are being quite strict with their new IPv4 allocations. If you'd like to read more about IP allocation policies, here's a few links https://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#four3 https://www.arin.net/resources/request/ipv4_depletion.html https://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-553 (see section 5.6) Just an idea, which is not very beautiful: What about a router forwarding ports to the correct machine by using iptables? Would that also work in connection with search engines? Cheers Marco ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] fundraising status?
On 25 December 2012 14:00, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: For those outside of the U.S., http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wikimedia-Foundation-Reviews-E38331.htm (2.8, 55%) should resolve correctly. Because Glassdoor is susceptible to sour grapes, it is probably best read in comparison to similar nearby companies. For example: (...) I hope the Board and leadership find some way to exceed the employee satisfaction scores of at least one of those nine others in the coming year. Of the other nine companies, seven have a fairly clear bell curve distribution of rankings (peaking around 3-4) and several hundred comments; the two exceptions are Wikia (four comments) and Twitter (19). In the case of WMF, as well as having a low number of respondents (currently 13, it's had another since your first email), the distribution looks very different - it's skewed to the extremes and has no neutral rankings at all. My gut feeling would be that this is a sign not to place too much weight on it; it's a very small sample, not helped by it being a small organisation, and the data doesn't really look like the theoretically similar companies. The comments are interesting, but any interpretation of the numbers should probably be treated very cautiously. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] No access to the Uzbek Wikipedia in Uzbekistan
On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 1:39 PM, Marco Fleckinger marco.fleckin...@wikipedia.at wrote: Leslie Carr lc...@wikimedia.org schrieb: I wish that http://208.80.154.225/wiki/Bosh_Sahifa and https://208.80.154.225/wiki/Bosh_Sahifa would work, too, but the foundation apparently can't or chooses not to afford separate IP addresses for each language's Wikipedia. As one of the network folks, I will answer this. We do not have enough public IP(v4)s for an address for each language in each project, and unless someone gives us a major donation of IPv4 addresses (anyone have a spare /20 laying around?), I don't think we will be able to make this happen as we are frugal with our existing IPs and the allocating authorities (RIPE and ARIN) are being quite strict with their new IPv4 allocations. If you'd like to read more about IP allocation policies, here's a few links https://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#four3 https://www.arin.net/resources/request/ipv4_depletion.html https://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-553 (see section 5.6) Just an idea, which is not very beautiful: What about a router forwarding ports to the correct machine by using iptables? Would that also work in connection with search engines? Are you suggesting we use different nonstandard ports for each different wiki/language combo that resides on the same IP ? Cheers Marco ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Leslie Carr Wikimedia Foundation AS 14907, 43821 http://as14907.peeringdb.com/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] bond funds? (was Re: Annual Audit of the Wikimedia Foundation)
Another thing I want to point out, because I just noticed it. The recent years' yields on bond funds has been slightly higher than equity (stock) mutual funds, but with only a very small fraction of the volatility: http://news.morningstar.com/fundReturns/FundReturns.html?category=$FOCA$HY I'm not sure what the current thinking among fiduciaries is on diversified high grade bond funds is, but the statistical distribution of those long-term returns looks as if a variety of them for a portion of the reserves would have a far better risk-to-return ratio than sticking with certificates of deposit and treasury securities (which currently pay negative real interest rates, i.e., less than inflation) as we have been. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] No access to the Uzbek Wikipedia in Uzbekistan
Leslie Carr lc...@wikimedia.org schrieb: On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 1:39 PM, Marco Fleckinger marco.fleckin...@wikipedia.at wrote: Just an idea, which is not very beautiful: What about a router forwarding ports to the correct machine by using iptables? Would that also work in connection with search engines? Are you suggesting we use different nonstandard ports for each different wiki/language combo that resides on the same IP ? Yes exactly! ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] fundraising status?
On Thu Dec 27, 2012 at 1:08 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj at gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 12:18 PM, James Salsman jsalsman at gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 10:12 AM, Zack Exley zexley at wikimedia.org wrote: Maximizing for us means raising our budget with as little negative impact on the projects as possible Where do you find that meaning or any suggestion of it in the unanimous resolution of the board of 9 October 2010? https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Wikimedia_fundraising_principles That is in fact what was meant (evident on the discussion page on Meta): the foundation should aim to maximize fundraising efficiency; or support raised per unit of fundraising activity. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Draft_Guiding_principles_with_regards_to_fundraising That appears to be a draft which was never deliberated by or approved by the Board of Trustees. Is there any reason it should take precedence over the Board's unanimous resolution to achieve the highest possible overall financial support for the Wikimedia movement, in terms of both financial totals and the number of individuals making contributions? Maximizing the activity itself - fundraising 24/7/365.2524 - would reduce the usefulness of the projects. I am certainly not suggesting that fundraising occur 24/7, but only that it follow our established traditional patterns in a manner which allows us to pay salaries competitive with similar labor performed in the same area. It is quite clear that relying on the mission in lieu of competitive pay for junior employees does not support the kind of employee retention and satisfaction which the Foundation has enjoyed in the past. On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Matthew Roth mroth at wikimedia.org wrote: On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 10:18 AM, James Salsman jsalsman at gmail.com wrote: During the past year has the ratio of the Foundation's top executive pay to the pay of junior staff and contractors increased by more than 50%? James, I'm not going to get too far into the other specifics of this really (for me) perplexing and troubling thread, but I personally wish this piece of your litany would stop Matt, the rest of your message had absolutely nothing about the Foundation's salary ratios in it, but I can understand why it might be the most troubling for you because of the problems that income inequality is causing in society in general. There are three times as many homeless children today as in 1983, a new record high this year: http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/pages/state-of-the-homeless-2012 But how often do we hear about that on the news? salaries have been pegged to be somewhere between similar non-profits and similar tech companies, understanding that our sweet spot is both as a tech company and also as a mission-driven change-the-world type of place. Is this a data-derived conclusion, or was this sweet spot which has resulted in record employee turnover derived without measurement? Can you find any San Francisco nonprofits with worse employee satisfaction scores on Glassdoor.com than the Foundation's? I haven't been able to. We also have excellent benefits. I was recently married and my wife will be joining my health insurance on January 1 because it is more generous than hers (she works at an emergency room in the premier hospital in the area). As someone who believes that Canadian style single payer health care is the only reasonable option for the U.S. at this point, I wonder how much this desensitizes you and your colleagues. Please see http://lanekenworthy.net/2011/07/10/americas-inefficient-health-care-system-another-look this is the most current iteration of a type of thread that I find contributes a great deal of stress to my work here. There are a number of assumptions that strike me as bad faith and many of them are targeted at people I work with (some of them I consider friends), so it is very difficult for me to read this I find it extremely difficult to believe that anyone could think my proposal that the salaries of Foundation employees be increased so that none of them are less than 50% of the top executive salary is made in bad faith or targeted towards anyone. Sincerely, James Salsman ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] No access to the Uzbek Wikipedia in Uzbekistan
On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 2:37 PM, Marco Fleckinger marco.fleckin...@wikipedia.at wrote: Leslie Carr lc...@wikimedia.org schrieb: On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 1:39 PM, Marco Fleckinger marco.fleckin...@wikipedia.at wrote: Just an idea, which is not very beautiful: What about a router forwarding ports to the correct machine by using iptables? Would that also work in connection with search engines? Are you suggesting we use different nonstandard ports for each different wiki/language combo that resides on the same IP ? Yes exactly! I guess that is theoretically possible with a more intrusive load balancer in the middle. We need the HOST information from the http header to be added as we have our varnish caches serving multiple services, not one(or more) per language/project combo. I'm pretty sure that lvs doesn't have this ability (which we use). Some large commercial load balancers have the ability to rewrite some headers, but that would be a pretty intensive operation (think lots of cpu needed, since it needs to terminate SSL and then rewrite headers) and would probably be expensive. If you have another way you think we can do this, I am all ears! We may want to move this discussion to wikitech-l as all the technical discussions probably bore most of the people on wikimedia-l Leslie ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Leslie Carr Wikimedia Foundation AS 14907, 43821 http://as14907.peeringdb.com/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Annual Audit of the Wikimedia Foundation
On 12/27/2012 1:46 PM, James Salsman wrote: I'm also rather skeptical of the underlying claim about the superiority of credit union CDs in this context So I googled credit union 6 month certificates of deposit best rate and found http://www.gobankingrates.com/cd-rates/6-month-cd/ which shows offers of 1.47% for six month and 1.86% for 12 month CDs from Metropolitan Service Credit Union, all of which are federally guaranteed for up to $250,000, the same amount the government guarantees all Citibank deposits per depositor for any total. Their next four top rates, all over 1.0%, are also from federally guaranteed credit unions. None of those rates are current, from quick investigation they appear to be anywhere from two weeks to two months old. As any published rate sheet will tell you, rates are subject to change without notice. Where the actual websites, as opposed to this aggregator, are more up-to-date, it looks like the rates are often significantly lower. Furthermore, even the outdated published rates have significant limitations that may render them unworkable. For example, while deposits may be guaranteed up to $250,000, the institution may not actually offer certificates up to that amount. In at least one of the examples I found with that link, the credit union is publishing rates for CDs that are not actually available, and it appears the only products actually available are for 17- and 23-month terms. Credit unions also have membership requirements, and while the limitations around those have loosened significantly in recent years, it's not as simple as finding the highest rate and opening an account. Even a consumer would need to figure out which ones they can join first before shopping based on rates. The membership question alone would probably rule out any of the examples found, and for an organization like Wikimedia you'd have the additional issues of whether they support business accounts and what services they offer in that capacity. As Garfield also mentioned in the IRC office hours, part of his mandate is low risk. In finance, that tends to be reflected in wariness of institutions as small as these. They're less accessible, less equipped to provide the level of services needed, and more vulnerable to change (which can mean either failure or acquisition). While consolidation is a bigger factor in the volatile small banking industry, small credit unions are hardly immune themselves. And while it's easy to talk about federal insurance as a backstop in case of outright failure, as a practical matter there may be a lot of time and hoops involved to recover your deposits in such situations, which runs counter to the focus on liquidity for cash reserves. Donor funds need to be managed wisely, but simply performing a Google search for the best interest rates is not all that useful a tool here. If somebody wants to come to Garfield and tell him, I've had some of my own money in a CD with Bank or Credit Union X for the last 6 months, I've been getting X% and I'm about to renew at a similar rate, and I know they can handle business accounts like yours, I think information like that might have more practical value. In the meantime, I won't try to micromanage the work of our financial professionals without having clear options for improvement ready to suggest. --Michael Snow ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] [PRESS RELEASE] Wikimedia Foundation raises $25 million in record time during 2012 Wikipedia fundraiser
(This press release is also available online at: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_raises_25_million_in_2012_fundraiser The Wikimedia Foundation raises $25 million in record time during 2012 Wikipedia fundraiser More than 1.2 million Wikipedia readers donated to keep Wikipedia and sister sites ad free and free to all SAN FRANCISCO, December 27, 2012 - The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia and its sister projects, today announced the successful completion of its ninth annual fundraising campaign in record time. Wikipedia readers donated $25 million and once again affirmed the value of the project by guaranteeing that the online encyclopedia will remain ad-free. I'm grateful that the Wikipedia fundraiser was so successful. Our supporters are wonderful and without them we could not do the job of delivering free content worldwide, said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. We're thrilled to be able to introduce our readers to the editors around the world who create Wikipedia and to invite our readers to join in editing. Donations help the Wikimedia Foundation maintain server infrastructure, support global projects to increase the number of editors, improve and simplify the software that supports our projects, and make Wikipedia accessible globally to billions of people who are just beginning to access the internet. More than 1.2 million donors contributed to the 2012 campaign, which ran on English Wikipedia in 5 countries (United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand) for only 9 full days, down from 46 days in 2011. The most successful 24-hour period for donations this year brought in $2,365,564 million from 145,573 donors. Messages and formats optimized in this year's campaign will be used in another short fundraising drive for the rest of the world in April 2013. Though the fundraiser is an important part of Wikipedia's success, volunteer contributors are the heart of the world's largest encyclopedia. To highlight the tens of millions of hours they put into the projects each year, the Wikimedia Foundation will conduct a thank you campaign with short videos that showcase some of the roughly 80,000 volunteer editors, photographers and free-knowledge advocates from around the world who regularly contribute to Wikimedia projects. The campaign starts on December 27th and runs through the end of the year. Meet all the Wikimedians who we're profiling in our thank you campaign here: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Thank_You_All Some of the Wikimedians being profiled: Mei Jiun Kwek is a botanist from Malaysia who uploads photos to Wikimedia Commons to accompany her work on crop species in her country. She encourages researchers to share their material on a freely licensed database to improve open access to knowledge. (Video link on Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Impact_of_Wikipedia_-_Mei_Jiun_Kwek.webm and on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcGotJ927YM) Dumisani Ndubane is an electrical engineer from South Africa who started uploading his circuit analysis class notes to Wikiversity, a project supporting open educational resources, which did not have much information in his field at the time. By participating with volunteers from around the world, Ndubane not only grew to appreciate the value of collaboration, he helped improve the quality of free tutorials and coursework. (Video link on Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Impact_of_Wikipedia_Dumisani_Ndubane.webm and on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXvhABH-jFs) Adrianne Wadewitz is a professor from California who uses Wikipedia as a teaching tool in her classroom and helps her faculty peers to incorporate digital technology in their teaching and research methods. She describes a memorable moment when one of her students turned in an essay largely plagiarized from a Wikipedia article Wadewitz had written. (Video link on Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Impact_of_Wikipedia_Adrianne_Wadewitz.webm and on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qwZ7jL4xyY) About the Wikimedia Foundation http://wikimediafoundation.org http://blog.wikimedia.org The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. According to comScore Media Metrix, Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation receive more than 483 million unique visitors per month, making them the fifth-most popular web property world-wide (comScore, November 2012). Available in 285 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 24 million articles contributed by a global volunteer community of roughly 80,000 people. Based in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation is an audited, 501(c)(3) charity that is funded primarily through donations and grants. Press contact: Matthew Roth Global Communications Manager
[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [PRESS RELEASE] Wikimedia Foundation raises $25 million in record time during 2012 Wikipedia fundraiser
Forwarding on from Wikipedia Announce list. For those who haven't already seen the thank you banner at the top of English Wikipedia, you need to be logged out to view it. -- Forwarded message -- From: Matthew Roth mr...@wikimedia.org To: press-rele...@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2012 15:46:51 -0800 Subject: [PRESS RELEASE] Wikimedia Foundation raises $25 million in record time during 2012 Wikipedia fundraiser (This press release is also available online at: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_raises_25_million_in_2012_fundraiser The Wikimedia Foundation raises $25 million in record time during 2012 Wikipedia fundraiser More than 1.2 million Wikipedia readers donated to keep Wikipedia and sister sites ad free and free to all SAN FRANCISCO, December 27, 2012 - The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia and its sister projects, today announced the successful completion of its ninth annual fundraising campaign in record time. Wikipedia readers donated $25 million and once again affirmed the value of the project by guaranteeing that the online encyclopedia will remain ad-free. I'm grateful that the Wikipedia fundraiser was so successful. Our supporters are wonderful and without them we could not do the job of delivering free content worldwide, said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. We're thrilled to be able to introduce our readers to the editors around the world who create Wikipedia and to invite our readers to join in editing. Donations help the Wikimedia Foundation maintain server infrastructure, support global projects to increase the number of editors, improve and simplify the software that supports our projects, and make Wikipedia accessible globally to billions of people who are just beginning to access the internet. More than 1.2 million donors contributed to the 2012 campaign, which ran on English Wikipedia in 5 countries (United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand) for only 9 full days, down from 46 days in 2011. The most successful 24-hour period for donations this year brought in $2,365,564 million from 145,573 donors. Messages and formats optimized in this year's campaign will be used in another short fundraising drive for the rest of the world in April 2013. Though the fundraiser is an important part of Wikipedia's success, volunteer contributors are the heart of the world's largest encyclopedia. To highlight the tens of millions of hours they put into the projects each year, the Wikimedia Foundation will conduct a thank you campaign with short videos that showcase some of the roughly 80,000 volunteer editors, photographers and free-knowledge advocates from around the world who regularly contribute to Wikimedia projects. The campaign starts on December 27th and runs through the end of the year. Meet all the Wikimedians who we're profiling in our thank you campaign here: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Thank_You_All Some of the Wikimedians being profiled: Mei Jiun Kwek is a botanist from Malaysia who uploads photos to Wikimedia Commons to accompany her work on crop species in her country. She encourages researchers to share their material on a freely licensed database to improve open access to knowledge. (Video link on Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Impact_of_Wikipedia_-_Mei_Jiun_Kwek.webm and on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcGotJ927YM) Dumisani Ndubane is an electrical engineer from South Africa who started uploading his circuit analysis class notes to Wikiversity, a project supporting open educational resources, which did not have much information in his field at the time. By participating with volunteers from around the world, Ndubane not only grew to appreciate the value of collaboration, he helped improve the quality of free tutorials and coursework. (Video link on Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Impact_of_Wikipedia_Dumisani_Ndubane.webm and on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXvhABH-jFs) Adrianne Wadewitz is a professor from California who uses Wikipedia as a teaching tool in her classroom and helps her faculty peers to incorporate digital technology in their teaching and research methods. She describes a memorable moment when one of her students turned in an essay largely plagiarized from a Wikipedia article Wadewitz had written. (Video link on Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Impact_of_Wikipedia_Adrianne_Wadewitz.webm and on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qwZ7jL4xyY) About the Wikimedia Foundation http://wikimediafoundation.org http://blog.wikimedia.org The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. According to comScore Media Metrix, Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation receive more than 483 million unique visitors per month,
Re: [Wikimedia-l] bond funds? (was Re: Annual Audit of the Wikimedia Foundation)
This mailing list is not a suitable venue for a detailed discussion about investment strategy. There are a lot of different things you have to take into account when choosing investments. If the foundation wants to investigate other investment options they need to get a professional investment consultant (if they don't have one already) who will go through their specific needs and appetites and advise on what investments are suitable for them. We can't do that in a useful way on a mailing list. On Dec 27, 2012 10:08 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Another thing I want to point out, because I just noticed it. The recent years' yields on bond funds has been slightly higher than equity (stock) mutual funds, but with only a very small fraction of the volatility: http://news.morningstar.com/fundReturns/FundReturns.html?category=$FOCA$HY I'm not sure what the current thinking among fiduciaries is on diversified high grade bond funds is, but the statistical distribution of those long-term returns looks as if a variety of them for a portion of the reserves would have a far better risk-to-return ratio than sticking with certificates of deposit and treasury securities (which currently pay negative real interest rates, i.e., less than inflation) as we have been. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] fundraising status?
On Dec 27, 2012 10:50 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: this is the most current iteration of a type of thread that I find contributes a great deal of stress to my work here. There are a number of assumptions that strike me as bad faith and many of them are targeted at people I work with (some of them I consider friends), so it is very difficult for me to read this I find it extremely difficult to believe that anyone could think my proposal that the salaries of Foundation employees be increased so that none of them are less than 50% of the top executive salary is made in bad faith or targeted towards anyone. I suspect the assumption of bad faith is because he doesn't believe anyone could genuinely propose such a ridiculously bad idea. When limits on such ratios are discussed the usual figure I hear is a limit of 10%. 50% is completely unrealistic. Either you would have to massively overpay your junior staff (wasting donor's money) or you wouldn't be any to attract any experienced senior staff. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] fundraising status?
On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 4:34 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: I suspect the assumption of bad faith is because he doesn't believe anyone could genuinely propose such a ridiculously bad idea. When limits on such ratios are discussed the usual figure I hear is a limit of 10%. 50% is completely unrealistic. Either you would have to massively overpay your junior staff (wasting donor's money) or you wouldn't be any to attract any experienced senior staff. As a comparison, Doctors Without Borders/MSF USA had a policy of paying the E.D. no more than 3 times the rate of the entry level positions. When I left at the end of 2004, the entry level salary was $35,000 and the E.D. was $105,000. Not sure what it is now. -- Matthew Roth Global Communications Manager Wikimedia Foundation +1.415.839.6885 ext 6635 www.wikimediafoundation.org *https://donate.wikimedia.org* ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] fundraising status?
On Dec 28, 2012 12:52 AM, Matthew Roth mr...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 4:34 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: I suspect the assumption of bad faith is because he doesn't believe anyone could genuinely propose such a ridiculously bad idea. When limits on such ratios are discussed the usual figure I hear is a limit of 10%. 50% is completely unrealistic. Either you would have to massively overpay your junior staff (wasting donor's money) or you wouldn't be any to attract any experienced senior staff. As a comparison, Doctors Without Borders/MSF USA had a policy of paying the E.D. no more than 3 times the rate of the entry level positions. When I left at the end of 2004, the entry level salary was $35,000 and the E.D. was $105,000. Not sure what it is now. How are they structured? Was there another layer of management at the international level? $105k sounds very low for the top person in an organisation of any significant size. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] fundraising status?
Le 27/12/2012 21:34, Thomas Dalton a écrit : On Dec 27, 2012 10:50 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: this is the most current iteration of a type of thread that I find contributes a great deal of stress to my work here. There are a number of assumptions that strike me as bad faith and many of them are targeted at people I work with (some of them I consider friends), so it is very difficult for me to read this I find it extremely difficult to believe that anyone could think my proposal that the salaries of Foundation employees be increased so that none of them are less than 50% of the top executive salary is made in bad faith or targeted towards anyone. I suspect the assumption of bad faith is because he doesn't believe anyone could genuinely propose such a ridiculously bad idea. When limits on such ratios are discussed the usual figure I hear is a limit of 10%. 50% is completely unrealistic. Either you would have to massively overpay your junior staff (wasting donor's money) or you wouldn't be any to attract any experienced senior staff. Hello Thomas, are you saying that NOBODY can and will do a good job for five times less money? There are extremely talented people in the third world, and extremely passionated people in the first world, that may accept such a pay. I'm dubious about your statement. Cheers. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] fundraising status?
On Dec 28, 2012 1:02 AM, cyrano cyrano.faw...@gmail.com wrote: Le 27/12/2012 21:34, Thomas Dalton a écrit : On Dec 27, 2012 10:50 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: this is the most current iteration of a type of thread that I find contributes a great deal of stress to my work here. There are a number of assumptions that strike me as bad faith and many of them are targeted at people I work with (some of them I consider friends), so it is very difficult for me to read this I find it extremely difficult to believe that anyone could think my proposal that the salaries of Foundation employees be increased so that none of them are less than 50% of the top executive salary is made in bad faith or targeted towards anyone. I suspect the assumption of bad faith is because he doesn't believe anyone could genuinely propose such a ridiculously bad idea. When limits on such ratios are discussed the usual figure I hear is a limit of 10%. 50% is completely unrealistic. Either you would have to massively overpay your junior staff (wasting donor's money) or you wouldn't be any to attract any experienced senior staff. Hello Thomas, are you saying that NOBODY can and will do a good job for five times less money? There are extremely talented people in the third world, and extremely passionated people in the first world, that may accept such a pay. I'm dubious about your statement. Well, I suppose any is a bit of an exaggeration. It would be extremely difficult though. Why would someone from the third world come to San Francisco and accept a salary 5 times lower than they could get at a similar organisation ? ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] fundraising status?
On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 4:57 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: On Dec 28, 2012 12:52 AM, Matthew Roth mr...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 4:34 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: I suspect the assumption of bad faith is because he doesn't believe anyone could genuinely propose such a ridiculously bad idea. When limits on such ratios are discussed the usual figure I hear is a limit of 10%. 50% is completely unrealistic. Either you would have to massively overpay your junior staff (wasting donor's money) or you wouldn't be any to attract any experienced senior staff. As a comparison, Doctors Without Borders/MSF USA had a policy of paying the E.D. no more than 3 times the rate of the entry level positions. When I left at the end of 2004, the entry level salary was $35,000 and the E.D. was $105,000. Not sure what it is now. How are they structured? Was there another layer of management at the international level? $105k sounds very low for the top person in an organisation of any significant size. That's what the E.D. probably thought :) and it was definitely scuttlebutt among folks at the office. MSF was structured in some ways like WMF and its chapters. MSF USA was a non-operational chapter of the overall MSF, meaning that we raised funds and did recruitment of volunteers, but we were not allowed to organize any operations (i.e. missions in the field to administer aid). The five operational organizations were all in Europe: France, UK, Spain, Switzerland and Netherlands. Each of the 19 chapters had it's own organizational hierarchy. I'm not sure about the compensation of the other chapters at MSF, but I imagine they were not compensated too much higher. This was one of the points of pride in maintaining the golden rule there (15% of money raised spent on admin, 85% spent on programs), so salaries were lower than peers like the IRC and others (ironically, another point of pride and similarity with us is that MSF also moved away from taking govt money). MSF USA got its first operational mission in Guatemala in 2004 (soon followed by Nigeria). I imagine that trend has increased as the chapter matured so to speak. Sorry to digress. -Matthew -- Matthew Roth Global Communications Manager Wikimedia Foundation +1.415.839.6885 ext 6635 www.wikimediafoundation.org *https://donate.wikimedia.org* ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] fundraising status?
Le 27/12/2012 22:12, Thomas Dalton a écrit : Well, I suppose any is a bit of an exaggeration. It would be extremely difficult though. Why would someone from the third world come to San Francisco and accept a salary 5 times lower than they could get at a similar organisation ? I don't understand how it matters, Why. His or her reasons are his or her owns. Though I never met to imply that he or her should work in one of the most expensive places of Earth. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] No access to the Uzbek Wikipedia in Uzbekistan
How many languages _need_ this? Is it only one language-project? If you only need one IP address, to avoid censorship by one country, it should be achievable. John Vandenberg. sent from Galaxy Note On Dec 28, 2012 4:21 AM, Leslie Carr lc...@wikimedia.org wrote: I wish that http://208.80.154.225/wiki/Bosh_Sahifa and https://208.80.154.225/wiki/Bosh_Sahifa would work, too, but the foundation apparently can't or chooses not to afford separate IP addresses for each language's Wikipedia. As one of the network folks, I will answer this. We do not have enough public IP(v4)s for an address for each language in each project, and unless someone gives us a major donation of IPv4 addresses (anyone have a spare /20 laying around?), I don't think we will be able to make this happen as we are frugal with our existing IPs and the allocating authorities (RIPE and ARIN) are being quite strict with their new IPv4 allocations. If you'd like to read more about IP allocation policies, here's a few links https://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#four3 https://www.arin.net/resources/request/ipv4_depletion.html https://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-553 (see section 5.6) Leslie -- Leslie Carr Wikimedia Foundation AS 14907, 43821 http://as14907.peeringdb.com/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] bond funds? (was Re: Annual Audit of the Wikimedia Foundation)
Thomas is right. [And yes, bonds are on the radar.] SJ On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 6:28 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: This mailing list is not a suitable venue for a detailed discussion about investment strategy. There are a lot of different things you have to take into account when choosing investments. If the foundation wants to investigate other investment options they need to get a professional investment consultant (if they don't have one already) who will go through their specific needs and appetites and advise on what investments are suitable for them. We can't do that in a useful way on a mailing list. On Dec 27, 2012 10:08 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Another thing I want to point out, because I just noticed it. The recent years' yields on bond funds has been slightly higher than equity (stock) mutual funds, but with only a very small fraction of the volatility: http://news.morningstar.com/fundReturns/FundReturns.html?category=$FOCA$HY I'm not sure what the current thinking among fiduciaries is on diversified high grade bond funds is, but the statistical distribution of those long-term returns looks as if a variety of them for a portion of the reserves would have a far better risk-to-return ratio than sticking with certificates of deposit and treasury securities (which currently pay negative real interest rates, i.e., less than inflation) as we have been. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF HR and leadership questions
On 28/12/12 12:14, Gayle Karen Young wrote: *2d. Does WMF have a talent retention problem and if so what is being done about this? The short answer is No. The simplicity of this question is a bit misleading. I don't think we have a talent retention problem because we have amazing people working for us who have and will continue to. The reasons that people move on are sometimes but not always problematic. I think it's GOOD for people to leave the organization at various points - for their own career development, because the things that were more endemic to a start-up environment are a little less prevalent at our stage of organizational growth, etc. A count of office.wikimedia.org account deactivations suggests that about 59 people left the WMF in 2012, for whatever reason. To me, that seems like a lot of people. Maybe it's occasionally good for people to leave, but so many? -- Tim Starling ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF HR and leadership questions
It would. And Fellows, etc. ___ Philippe Beaudette Director, Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 415-839-6885, x 6643 phili...@wikimedia.org On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 11:31 PM, Matthew Roth mr...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 9:53 PM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: On 28/12/12 12:14, Gayle Karen Young wrote: *2d. Does WMF have a talent retention problem and if so what is being done about this? The short answer is No. The simplicity of this question is a bit misleading. I don't think we have a talent retention problem because we have amazing people working for us who have and will continue to. The reasons that people move on are sometimes but not always problematic. I think it's GOOD for people to leave the organization at various points - for their own career development, because the things that were more endemic to a start-up environment are a little less prevalent at our stage of organizational growth, etc. A count of office.wikimedia.org account deactivations suggests that about 59 people left the WMF in 2012, for whatever reason. To me, that seems like a lot of people. Maybe it's occasionally good for people to leave, but so many? Does that include interns? I know my interns get access to Office Wiki, so it might skew the numbers higher. I believe LCA has had at least 8-10 (?) interns cycle through in 2012. I've had a couple. -Matthew -- Tim Starling ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Matthew Roth Global Communications Manager Wikimedia Foundation +1.415.839.6885 ext 6635 www.wikimediafoundation.org *https://donate.wikimedia.org* ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
