Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Changes to Product and Technology departments at the Foundation

[Victoria Coleman]

Hi Pine,

the wording in quotes bellow refers to the Technology Department. We have made 
the change this year (and we will continue down this path in future years) in 
order to be able to articulate clearly the impact our work has on the mission 
and the movement. In the Tech world it’s really easy to get lost in what we do 
vs why we do it and this programmatic focus across all of our work will let us 
be much clearer on the impact we are aiming for. We hope that this transparency 
will allow us to have broader conversations with the community about our work  
and our direction. It’s a change for us and we are working to implement it in 
the way we report on our work but we are looking forward to sharing our 
progress with the community in the coming months. Meantime you may want to take 
a look at 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2017-2018/Draft/Staff_and_Contractors
 

 where we are reporting out our investments for fiscal 2017-18 both on a per 
program as well as per team basis. So that we can easily tell what we are 
investing in what initiatives. 

All the best,

Victoria

> On Jun 7, 2017, at 7:20 PM, Pine W  wrote:
> 
> Hi Toby,
> 
> Thanks for sharing the reorg information. From my perspective as an
> outsider, this sounds good.
> 
> I have a question about the sentences "The biggest change is that all of
> our work in fiscal year 2017-2018 will be structured and reported in
> programs instead of teams (you can see how this works in our proposed
> 2017-2018 Annual Plan). This will help us focus on the collective impact we
> want to make, rather than limiting ourselves to the way our organization is
> structured."
> 
> I would like to see WMF move fully to project-based budgeting (there are a
> variety of names for similar approaches), and the change that you describe
> here sounds like a step in that direction. Will WMF move fully to
> project-based budgeting by the time of the 2018-2019 Annual Plan? That
> would involve each project (such as "redesign of www.wikimediafoundation.org")
> having a project budget, and the collection of chosen projects with their
> budgets would constitute the Annual Plan. (The methodology for choosing
> projects varies among organizations that do this kind of budgeting; I would
> imagine that WMF could use its values, the outcomes of the strategy
> process, and the annual Board guidance about the budget as major factors in
> selecting projects.)
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Pine
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jun 7, 2017 at 2:12 PM, Toby Negrin  wrote:
> 
>> Hi everybody,
>> 
>> We have made some changes to our Product and Technology departments which
>> we are excited to tell you about. When Wes Moran, former Vice President of
>> Product, left the Wikimedia Foundation in May, we took the opportunity to
>> review the organization and operating principles that were guiding Product
>> and Technology. Our objectives were to improve our engagement with the
>> community during product development, develop a more audience-based
>> approach to building products, and create as efficient a pipeline as
>> possible between an idea and its deployment. We also wanted an approach
>> that would better prepare our engineering teams to plan around the upcoming
>> movement strategic direction. We have finished this process and have some
>> results to share with you.
>> 
>> Product is now known as Audiences, and other changes in that department
>> 
>> In order to more intentionally commit to a focus on the needs of users, we
>> are making changes to the names of teams and department (and will be using
>> these names throughout the rest of this update):
>> 
>>   -
>> 
>>   The Product department will be renamed the Audiences department;
>>   -
>> 
>>   The Editing team will now be called the Contributors team;
>>   -
>> 
>>   The Reading team will be renamed the Readers team.
>> 
>> You might be asking: what does “audience” mean in this context? We define
>> it as a specific group of people who will use the products we build. For
>> example, “readers” is one audience. “Contributors” is another. Designing
>> products around who will be utilizing them most, rather than what we would
>> like those products to do, is a best practice in product development. We
>> want our organizational structure to support that approach.
>> 
>> We are making five notable changes to the Audiences department structure.
>> 
>> The first is that we are migrating folks working on search and discovery
>> from the stand-alone Discovery team into the Readers team and Technology
>> department, respectively. Specifically, the team working on our search
>> backend infrastructure will move to Technology, where they will report to
>> Victoria. The team working on maps, the search experience, and the project
>> entry portals (such as Wikipedia.org) will join the Readers team. This
>> realignment will allow us t

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Changes to Product and Technology departments at the Foundation

[Pine W]

Hi Toby,

Thanks for sharing the reorg information. From my perspective as an
outsider, this sounds good.

I have a question about the sentences "The biggest change is that all of
our work in fiscal year 2017-2018 will be structured and reported in
programs instead of teams (you can see how this works in our proposed
2017-2018 Annual Plan). This will help us focus on the collective impact we
want to make, rather than limiting ourselves to the way our organization is
structured."

I would like to see WMF move fully to project-based budgeting (there are a
variety of names for similar approaches), and the change that you describe
here sounds like a step in that direction. Will WMF move fully to
project-based budgeting by the time of the 2018-2019 Annual Plan? That
would involve each project (such as "redesign of www.wikimediafoundation.org")
having a project budget, and the collection of chosen projects with their
budgets would constitute the Annual Plan. (The methodology for choosing
projects varies among organizations that do this kind of budgeting; I would
imagine that WMF could use its values, the outcomes of the strategy
process, and the annual Board guidance about the budget as major factors in
selecting projects.)

Thanks,

Pine


On Wed, Jun 7, 2017 at 2:12 PM, Toby Negrin  wrote:

> Hi everybody,
>
> We have made some changes to our Product and Technology departments which
> we are excited to tell you about. When Wes Moran, former Vice President of
> Product, left the Wikimedia Foundation in May, we took the opportunity to
> review the organization and operating principles that were guiding Product
> and Technology. Our objectives were to improve our engagement with the
> community during product development, develop a more audience-based
> approach to building products, and create as efficient a pipeline as
> possible between an idea and its deployment. We also wanted an approach
> that would better prepare our engineering teams to plan around the upcoming
> movement strategic direction. We have finished this process and have some
> results to share with you.
>
> Product is now known as Audiences, and other changes in that department
>
> In order to more intentionally commit to a focus on the needs of users, we
> are making changes to the names of teams and department (and will be using
> these names throughout the rest of this update):
>
>-
>
>The Product department will be renamed the Audiences department;
>-
>
>The Editing team will now be called the Contributors team;
>-
>
>The Reading team will be renamed the Readers team.
>
> You might be asking: what does “audience” mean in this context? We define
> it as a specific group of people who will use the products we build. For
> example, “readers” is one audience. “Contributors” is another. Designing
> products around who will be utilizing them most, rather than what we would
> like those products to do, is a best practice in product development. We
> want our organizational structure to support that approach.
>
> We are making five notable changes to the Audiences department structure.
>
> The first is that we are migrating folks working on search and discovery
> from the stand-alone Discovery team into the Readers team and Technology
> department, respectively. Specifically, the team working on our search
> backend infrastructure will move to Technology, where they will report to
> Victoria. The team working on maps, the search experience, and the project
> entry portals (such as Wikipedia.org) will join the Readers team. This
> realignment will allow us to build more integrated experiences and
> knowledge-sharing for the end user.
>
> The second is that the Fundraising Tech team will also move to the
> Technology department. This move recognizes that their core work is
> primarily platform development and integration, and brings them into closer
> cooperation with their peers in critical functions including MediaWiki
> Platform, Security, Analytics, and Operations.
>
> The Team Practices group (TPG) will also be undergoing some changes.
> Currently, TPG supports both specific teams in Product, as well as
> supporting broader organizational development. Going forward, those TPG
> members directly supporting feature teams will be embedded in their
> respective teams in the Audiences or Technology departments. The TPG
> members who were primarily focused on organizational health and development
> will move to the Talent & Culture department, where they will report to
> Anna Stillwell.
>
> These three changes lead to the fourth, which is the move from four
> “audience” verticals in the department (Reading, Editing, Discovery, and
> Fundraising Tech, plus Team Practices) to three: Readers, Contributors, and
> Community Tech. This structure is meant to streamline our focus on the
> people we serve with our feature and product development, increase team
> accountability and ownership over their work, allow Community Tech to
> ma

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's set up a Tor onion service for Wikipedia

[Andrea Zanni]

Quick update,
as this story went on Motherboard
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wikipedians-want-to-to-put-wikipedia-on-the-dark-web
;-)

Aubrey


On Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 12:22 PM, Cristian Consonni 
wrote:

> On 06/06/2017 02:10, Risker wrote:
> > As far as I can tell (and from comments made in the past by actual Tor
> > users), there is no problem whatsoever for Tor users to read Wikipedia
> > while using Tor.
>
> Let me put it this way, I am sure that the WMF will always do its best
> to protect the privacy of our readers and editors. Alas, I am much more
> concerned by third parties trying to snoop on our users. We also know
> that this kind of surveillance happened and that's also why the WMF is
> currently engaged in a lawsuit against the NSA.
>
> Using Tor to visit (i.e. read) wikipedia.org provides additional privacy
> and users can also circumvent blocks in their country, if necessary.
> Having an onion service gives similar benefits.
>
> Furthermore, I think it is very important that major Internet websites
> provide themselves as an onion service. Even Facebook did it (at
> https://www.facebookcorewwwi.onion/) and there are good privacy and
> censorship-circumventing reasons for this[1]. I think that the least
> difference between the "privacy enhanced" (aka dark) net and the regular
> internet there is the more people will consider to use Tor. I think this
> is a good thing.
>
> Frankly, I hate it when I hear Tor and onion services nominated by
> newspapers and newscasts only when talking about illegal activities.
> Then I remind myself that Snowden used Tor extensively and without it we
> probably would have not know about the NSA mass surveillance.
>
> I think that having an onion service may be useful, but I also think
> that we could have it just because we should.
>
> >  Editing is a completely different situation - and well it
> > should be, given the pure unadulterated trash that tends to come in
> > whenever a Tor exit node is missed in the routine lockdowns.
>
> I understand the difficulties. Again, I don't think we should conflate
> the idea of providing Wikipedia as an onion service with the issues
> related to editing Wikipedia over Tor or open proxies.
>
>
> [1]:
> https://blog.torproject.org/blog/facebook-hidden-services-and-https-certs
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Copyright enforcement?

[Strainu]

2017-06-05 19:32 GMT+03:00 The Cunctator :
> I've been a bit out of the loop on this for a while, so please be kind to
> the oldbie - what's current Wikimedia policy on adaptive reuse of Wikipedia
> content into non-free publications?
>
> E.g. Graphiq
> https://www.graphiq.com/terms-and-conditions
> http://colleges.startclass.com/l/1929/Harvard-University
>
> and Google
> https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/
> https://www.google.com/search?q=harvard+university
>
> I recognize that Google gives Wikimedia a lot of money, even if the
> foundation isn't very transparent about that, but I'd think that doesn't
> free the company from following CC BY-SA.

I think you're bang on one of the main topics of the copyright reform
discussion currently happening in Europe - should people and companies
be allowed to link and/or display a small part of a copyrighted work?
I haven't followed the issue in the last few months, but the latest
proposals from the Commission basically meant no more links or
excerpts (experts: please bear this oversimplification, I know the
wording is not exactly this).

AFAIK our public policy team has the opposite position - that such
reuse should be permitted. Remember, we're also content consumers, not
just content producers, so such legislation would also hit us hard.

If you want to know more about these debates, a good place to start
would be the public policy portal [1]. Also check out the wiki page
[2] and the mailing list [3].

Regards,
  Strainu

[1] https://policy.wikimedia.org/
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Public_policy
[3] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy

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