[Wikimedia-l] The full draft of the Wikimedia Movement Charter will soon be shared

[Movement Charter Drafting Committee]

Hi there, 

The Movement Charter Drafting Committee is happy to announce that the full 
draft of the Movement Charter will be published on April 2nd, 2024. This 
will kick off the community engagement period from April 2nd to April 22nd. 

The Movement Charter  is 
a proposed document to define roles and responsibilities for all the 
members and entities of the Wikimedia Movement, including to lay out a new 
Global Council for movement governance. 

Everyone in the Wikimedia Movement is invited to share opinions on the full 
version of the Charter draft – this is the last chance to offer feedback 
before the Charter draft is updated for the ratification vote in June 2024. 

How to share your feedback? 

   - 
   
   share your message or question on the Movement Charter Talk page 
   ;  
   - 
   
   attend a community drop-in session 
   

 
   on April 4 at 15.00-17.00 UTC (details forthcoming); 
   - 
   
   or email movementchar...@wikimedia.org.
   

Read the Committee's latest updates 
 
for 
more information.

On behalf of the MCDC,

Anass 
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: We need more interactive content: we are doing it wrong

[Felipe Schenone]

Hi everyone, good news!

Thanks to this humble change

(deployed
today) it is now possible to load a specific gadget when a specific
template is used in a page. This opens the door (or perhaps a window?) to
interactive content using JavaScript. See for example this article in the
Spanish Wikipedia  for an
interactive instance of Conway's Game of Life, and scroll down for more
instances!

I started documenting the system at MediaWiki.org, under the title template
gadgets , and included
many working examples. Check it out!

Perhaps the system isn't as friendly or powerful a solution as some might
hope. But it's very real, and it only depends on us now. Next week, when
the documentation and examples are a bit more cooked, I'll propose adding a
few "template gadgets" to the English Wikipedia, since my experience has
taught me that when something hits the English Wikipedia, it quickly
spreads elsewhere. I'll link to the proposal when I do, in case you want to
participate.

There's so much more that could be said about this, but I'd rather keep it
short. If you have questions or ideas, feel free to write them here or at the
relevant talk page .

Kind regards,
Felipe (User:Sophivorus)

On Thu, Feb 8, 2024 at 5:31 AM danboy12342 Mui 
wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> I agree that Wikipedia needs to spend a few quarters spending time on our
> main product. The website is very impressively still the top result of a
> huge number of searches and in this new AI age; despite the controversy
> around it, wikipedia is the top source for many LLMs. Therefore while it
> doesn't need to be the only focus or even *the* focus most of the time it
> does need to be kept working but not just kept as is, it needs to be
> innovative and continue to meet the growing demands of a "modern" and
> "useable" site that allow users to get the information they need as fast
> and effectively as possible, these days that means interactivity.
>
> I feel I'm repeating others but a quick burst of very serious investment
> into the site and its many sister pages needs to happen sooner rather than
> later.
> Finally I'd like to thank Marshall again for his remarkable comments. It's
> good to see that this issue is clearly a priority that foundation staff are
> already looking at.
>
> - Daniel.
>
> -
>
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 7, 2024, 09:17 Gnangarra  wrote:
>
>> Hi
>>
>> I just like to highlight one point, that raises concerns;
>>
>>
>> perhaps enabling other platforms/apps to use our content to make
>> interactive or video materials there.
>>
>>
>> While this sounds like an easy solution we run into a number of hidden
>> costs.  These are significant when we push for reusers to present what we
>> are doing in better ways we lose the movement's revenue stream as less
>> people see our donation banners.  With less direct traffic we also
>> sacrifice the ability to convert readers into contributors which has always
>> been our primary source of community sustainability and growth.   I know
>> other providers will find different ways to present our efforts in part or
>> in whole that is part of our purpose, to do our mission and achieve our
>> goals we need prioritise internal solutions.
>>
>> This also leads us to a related issue that our mission is to make the sum
>> of all knowledge freely available. When we look to outside parties to share
>> our efforts we lose our ability to ensure that the information is neutral,
>> and that it's freely accessible.  Butch is right in noting that when we put
>> funding into third party sites it is taking resources away from the
>> movement, yet those same funds were donated to us on the basis of
>> maintaining and building our infrastructure.  It would be a wise investment
>> to enable some of those much needed interactive and video content here
>> through purchasing rights.
>>
>> On Wed, 7 Feb 2024 at 12:20, Butch Bustria  wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Everyone,
>>>
>>> My earnest hope that the Wikimedia Foundation on its 2024-2025 Annual
>>> Financial Plan prioritize and I mean put first among all is the technical
>>> infrastructure among all its budgetary items. We can scale down budgets to
>>> 3rd party organizations like the Knowledge Equity Fund, Movement Strategy
>>> Governance funding, campaign grants, and other "wants" to accomodate a
>>> highly technically reliable and stable Wikimedia online projects ("needs"),
>>> future proof, and user friendly experience which require investments on
>>> quality manpower, hardware, applications and the like. We love open source
>>> but we also be pragmatic and wise on selection of choices because we want
>>> our content be conveniently available and reliable to our readers, users,
>>> consumers and also editors.
>>>
>>> A welcome development is the 

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Urgent attention required because Commons is blocked in Pakistan

[Benedict Udeh]

Dear Saqib,

If you receive press enquiries, you can ask journalists to email
pr...@wikimedia.org and our external communications team will provide them
with the relevant information. They don’t usually post statements on
long-running issues like traffic disruptions unless there's more clarity on
what is happening and why.

Thanks,

Benedict Udeh (he/him)

On Fri, Mar 22, 2024 at 12:16 PM Saqib Qayyum 
wrote:

> Dear Mr. Stephen LaPorte
>
> Thank you for commenting.
>
> Recently, I have been in contact with several journalists who have
> expressed their interest in covering this issue and have been attempting to
> reach out to WMF for an official statement. but unfortunately, they have
> reported difficulty in obtaining any response from WMF despite their
> repeated efforts. As a result, they are unable to proceed with their
> stories without an official statement from WMF.
>
> I wanted to inquire if we can expect a statement or a press release from
> WMF explicitly addressing the Commons blockage ? Providing clarity on this
> matter would not only assist journalists in their reporting but also help
> prioritize efforts to unblock the website.
>
> --
> Saqib Qayyum
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Saqib
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 10:23 PM Stephen LaPorte 
> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I am Stephen LaPorte, the General Counsel at the Foundation.
>>
>> We have received reports that Wikimedia Commons has been partially
>> inaccessible in Pakistan—depending on the user's Internet Service
>> Provider—for multiple years, starting as early as 2021. My understanding is
>> that it does not affect the display of images on Wikipedia, and it predates
>> the blocking and unblocking
>> 
>> of Wikipedia in February 2023.
>>
>> We have not received any formal notice or a recent legal demand related
>> to Wikimedia Commons, so we do not know on what grounds the site is
>> partially inaccessible or how many people have been affected since this
>> started. Overall, traffic to Wikimedia Commons from Pakistan before 2020 is
>> too low to establish a clear pattern that shows when this started or the
>> extent of the disruption. All these factors have made understanding the
>> situation difficult and require a balanced response, and we remain
>> committed to knowledge access in the country.
>>
>> After Yaroslav reported
>> 
>> not being able to access the site last year, we investigated further. We've
>> shared information about this situation with other organizations that
>> monitor internet censorship and advocate for internet freedom in Pakistan.
>>
>> We believe that access to knowledge is a human right, and we oppose
>> internet censorship in all forms. We believe that limiting access to
>> projects like Wikimedia Commons deprives people of access to important
>> historical and educational content and makes it more difficult for local
>> volunteers to share their media with the world.
>>
>> If you experience censorship of the Wikimedia projects, you are welcome
>> to report this directly to the Wikimedia Foundation at <
>> answ...@wikimedia.org> and we can help route the question to the right
>> technical experts within the Foundation.
>>
>> Best,
>> Stephen
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 20, 2024 at 10:06 AM Yaroslav Blanter 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> My understanding is that only Commons is currently blocked in Pakistan.
>>>
>>> In July 2023, when I visited, I could (and did) edit Wikipedia and
>>> Wikivoyage in several languages, as well as Wikidata. To be honest I did
>>> not try Urdu Wikipedia, but I guess if it were blocked in Pakistan we would
>>> know this.
>>>
>>> My impression from the communication with WMF I described earlier was
>>> that they learned about the Commons block from me. I might be wrong of
>>> course.
>>>
>>> Best
>>> Yaroslav
>>>
>>> On Wed, Mar 20, 2024 at 5:14 PM Risker  wrote:
>>>
 Could someone please explicitly state which Wikimedia projects are
 blocked in Pakistan?  This thread starts around the blocking of Commons,
 but information provided by James Heilman implies that (at least one point)
 ALL Wikimedia projects are blocked.  So, to be clear, are Wikipedias also
 blocked?  Other projects?  Understanding the extent of the block will help
 the broader community to best assist our Pakistani colleagues in continuing
 to contribute, and for helping the broad Pakistani citizenship to access
 our work.

 It may be helpful for someone from the WMF who is in a position to
 report to tell us exactly which projects are currently blocked, and whether
 or not any of the originally blocked projects have now had blocks lifted.

 Risker/Anne

 Risker/Anne

 On Wed, 20 Mar 2024 at 

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Outcomes from the March Meeting for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

[Philip Kopetzky]

Hi!

Concerning the point about the WMF BoT's perspective on the Global Council,
the European affiliates discussed these perspectives at a recent online
meeting last Monday. Here's a summary of this discussion (the points I
highlight here are my personal editing choice, you can find a link to the
full response on Meta (which also links the full Etherpad notes) at the end
of this email.

* Concerning the Global Council running the grants/funding system for
non-WMF entities
** The Global Council should have more competencies than just administering
grants
** The position or vision of the WMF on the Global Council could be clearer
** Statement doesn’t explain how the WMF will be held accountable within
the new system
** The Global council doing grant making would effectively make the
communities argue amongst each other, leaving the decision-makers at the
WMF out of it.
** We still have no resources to onboard new affiliates. Once a new one is
approved, they are left alone to fend for themselves.

* Concerning the Global Council running the affiliates system
** Huge amount of work and bureaucracy of managing an affiliate system is
being outsourced to the Global Council and it is unclear who is paying for
the resources needed to manage this or who decides how much that is.
Looking at AffCom right now a repeat of a massively understaffed system is
in no one's interest.
** Suggestions by the WMF BoT for the Global Council appear like they’re
supposed to make the Global Council “busy & weak”

* Concerning online banner fundraising on Wikimedia projects
** The "current principles for banner fundraising" do not exist in written
form and favor the status quo over any meaningful change within the 2030
strategy
** The WMF not using this donor data to share information or message by the
local affiliates is a huge wasted opportunity; there have apparently been
instances where this has been done, but there is no written process or
documentation
** "Looking for funds elsewhere sometimes requires starting capital" (for
example borrowing money from the WMF); requires are more thought through
approach to enable affiliates to do this

The full response can be found here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement_Charter#Wikimedia_Foundation_perspectives_on_the_Global_Council


Best regards, Philip


On Wed, 20 Mar 2024 at 13:42, Victoria Doronina 
wrote:

> As far as I remember, yes—the rate of account creation, making more than
> one edit, and the percentage of unreverted edits was higher than in other
> methods. I think this is a spectacular result and a completely unexpected
> source for the new editors.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2024 at 2:47 AM Samuel Klein  wrote:
>
>> These updates keep getting better.  (I left out the board updates from my
>> recent thanks for regular newsletters lifting all of our boats :)
>>
>> I realize this is the smallest footnote of a long and significant update,
>> but: does this mean *3% of donors* who saw a thank-you note inviting
>> them to edit went on to make an account and at least one unreverted edit?
>> 3% of all donors is almost as many new editors as we get each year.  That's
>> spectacular, staggering, superb.  Let's please see how this scales in
>> various dimensions.
>>
>> W♥, SJ
>>
>> We heard from the Advancement team about donor thank-you page changes
>>> ,
>>> which invited donors to edit and yielded 4,398 new user accounts being
>>> created [8
>>> ].
>>>
>>>
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[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Ukraine's annual report for 2023

[Anton Protsiuk]

Hi all,

I’m writing to let you know that Wikimedia Ukraine published and submitted
our annual reports for 2023.

In 2023 we continued to live under Russia’s full-scale military invasion.
On the one hand, the past year was more stable than 2022, and we were able
to bring back many of the projects that had to be cancelled at the
beginning of the all-out war, as well as start brand-new ones. For example,
we brought back Ukraine’s local edition of the Wiki Loves Earth photo
contest, as well as CEE Spring and WikiGap article campaigns.

On the other hand, the war continued to have a significant negative impact
on the Ukrainian wiki community and its capacity, and as a result on
Wikimedia Ukraine’s work. At the same time, apart from our traditional
programs, we continued work around supporting the community under wartime
conditions and expanded to cover Ukrainians abroad e.g. during our annual
Wikimarathon campaign.

Our full report (in Ukrainian) is available here:
https://ua.wikimedia.org/?curid=9363

You can read a Diff post with key highlights in English (and Japanese!)
here:
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/02/01/wikimedia-ukraines-work-in-2023-in-10-projects/


Other English-language materials that shed light on our work in 2023:

* Stories of Ukrainian Wikimedians during the war: https://w.wiki/5ZLi

* Our presentations at Wikimania 2023: https://w.wiki/9X3w

* Insights from Wikimarathon 2023, a nationwide-turned-worldwide series of
events for Ukrainian Wikipedia’s birthday:
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/03/29/35-events-1900-wikipedia-articles-how-wikimedia-ukraine-held-its-annual-wikimarathon-for-wikipedias-birthday-in-2023/


* Short report from Ukraine’s annual Wikiconference:
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/11/08/ukraines-annual-wikiconference-brings-over-100-participants-across-three-cities-and-online/


* Results of our first-ever mass open online course for educators:
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/10/19/reading-wikipedia-in-the-classroom-in-ukraine-300-teachers-for-now-big-plans-for-the-future/


Best Regards
Anton Protsiuk
Programs Coordinator at Wikimedia Ukraine
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Urgent attention required because Commons is blocked in Pakistan

[Saqib Qayyum]

Dear Mr. Stephen LaPorte

Thank you for commenting.

Recently, I have been in contact with several journalists who have
expressed their interest in covering this issue and have been attempting to
reach out to WMF for an official statement. but unfortunately, they have
reported difficulty in obtaining any response from WMF despite their
repeated efforts. As a result, they are unable to proceed with their
stories without an official statement from WMF.

I wanted to inquire if we can expect a statement or a press release from
WMF explicitly addressing the Commons blockage ? Providing clarity on this
matter would not only assist journalists in their reporting but also help
prioritize efforts to unblock the website.

--
Saqib Qayyum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Saqib


On Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 10:23 PM Stephen LaPorte 
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I am Stephen LaPorte, the General Counsel at the Foundation.
>
> We have received reports that Wikimedia Commons has been partially
> inaccessible in Pakistan—depending on the user's Internet Service
> Provider—for multiple years, starting as early as 2021. My understanding is
> that it does not affect the display of images on Wikipedia, and it predates
> the blocking and unblocking
> 
> of Wikipedia in February 2023.
>
> We have not received any formal notice or a recent legal demand related to
> Wikimedia Commons, so we do not know on what grounds the site is partially
> inaccessible or how many people have been affected since this started.
> Overall, traffic to Wikimedia Commons from Pakistan before 2020 is too low
> to establish a clear pattern that shows when this started or the extent of
> the disruption. All these factors have made understanding the situation
> difficult and require a balanced response, and we remain committed to
> knowledge access in the country.
>
> After Yaroslav reported
> 
> not being able to access the site last year, we investigated further. We've
> shared information about this situation with other organizations that
> monitor internet censorship and advocate for internet freedom in Pakistan.
>
> We believe that access to knowledge is a human right, and we oppose
> internet censorship in all forms. We believe that limiting access to
> projects like Wikimedia Commons deprives people of access to important
> historical and educational content and makes it more difficult for local
> volunteers to share their media with the world.
>
> If you experience censorship of the Wikimedia projects, you are welcome to
> report this directly to the Wikimedia Foundation at 
> and we can help route the question to the right technical experts within
> the Foundation.
>
> Best,
> Stephen
>
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2024 at 10:06 AM Yaroslav Blanter 
> wrote:
>
>> My understanding is that only Commons is currently blocked in Pakistan.
>>
>> In July 2023, when I visited, I could (and did) edit Wikipedia and
>> Wikivoyage in several languages, as well as Wikidata. To be honest I did
>> not try Urdu Wikipedia, but I guess if it were blocked in Pakistan we would
>> know this.
>>
>> My impression from the communication with WMF I described earlier was
>> that they learned about the Commons block from me. I might be wrong of
>> course.
>>
>> Best
>> Yaroslav
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 20, 2024 at 5:14 PM Risker  wrote:
>>
>>> Could someone please explicitly state which Wikimedia projects are
>>> blocked in Pakistan?  This thread starts around the blocking of Commons,
>>> but information provided by James Heilman implies that (at least one point)
>>> ALL Wikimedia projects are blocked.  So, to be clear, are Wikipedias also
>>> blocked?  Other projects?  Understanding the extent of the block will help
>>> the broader community to best assist our Pakistani colleagues in continuing
>>> to contribute, and for helping the broad Pakistani citizenship to access
>>> our work.
>>>
>>> It may be helpful for someone from the WMF who is in a position to
>>> report to tell us exactly which projects are currently blocked, and whether
>>> or not any of the originally blocked projects have now had blocks lifted.
>>>
>>> Risker/Anne
>>>
>>> Risker/Anne
>>>
>>> On Wed, 20 Mar 2024 at 11:21, Saqib Qayyum 
>>> wrote:
>>>
 I remember this statement was issued when Wikipedia was briefly blocked
 last year.
 --
 Saqib Qayyum


 On Wed, Mar 20, 2024 at 7:54 AM James Heilman  wrote:

> Here is the press release from Feb 3, 2023 from the WMF urging
> Pakistan to unblock Wikimedia Projects.
>
>
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2023/02/03/wikimedia-foundation-urges-pakistan-telecommunications-authority-to-restore-access-to-wikipedia-in-pakistan/
>
> Appears the reason has to