[Wikimedia-l] Re: Chat GPT

[Victoria Coleman]

Hi Christophe,I had not thought about the threat to Wikipedia traffic from Chat GPT but you have a good point. The success of the projects is always one step away from the next big disruption. So the WMF as the tech provider for the mission (because first and foremost in my view that?s what the WMF is - as well as the financial engine of the movement of course) needs to pay attention and experiment to maintain the long term viability of the mission. In fact I think the cluster of our projects offers compelling options. For example to your point below on data sets, we have the amazing Wikidata as well the excellent work on abstract Wikipedia. We have Wikipedia Enterprise which has built some avenues of collaboration with big tech. A bold vision is needed to bring all of it together and build an MVP for the community to experiment with.Best r
 egards,Victoria ColemanOn Feb 4, 2023, at 4:14 AM, Christophe Henner  wrote:?Hi,On the product side, NLP based AI biggest concern to me is that it would drastically decrease traffic to our websites/apps. Which means less new editors ans less donations. So first from a strictly positioning perspective, we have here a major change that needs to be managed.And to be honest, it will come faster than we think. We are perfectionists, I can assure you, most companies would be happy to launch a search product with a 80% confidence in answers quality.From a financial perspective, large industrial investment like this are usually a pool of money you can
  draw from in x years. You can expect they did not draw all of it yet.Second, GPT 3 and ChatGPT are far from being the most expensive products they have. On top of people you need:* datasets * people to tag the dataset * people to correct the algo* computing powerI simplify here, but we already have the capacity to muster some of that, which drastically lowers our costs :) I would not discard the option of the movement doing it so easily. That being said, it would mean a new project with the need of substantial ressources. Sent from my iPhoneOn Feb 4, 2023, at 9:30 AM, Adam Sobieski  wrote:?






With respect to cloud computing costs, these being a significant component of the costs to train and operate modern AI systems, as a non-profit
 organization, the Wikimedia Foundation might be interested in the National Research Cloud (NRC) policy proposal: https://hai.stanford.edu/policy/national-research-cloud .






"Artificial intelligence requires vast amounts of computing power, data, and expertise to train and deploy the massive machine learning models behind the most advanced research. But access is increasingly out of reach for most
 colleges and universities. A National Research Cloud (NRC) would provide academic and
non-profit researchers with the compute power and government datasets needed for education and research. By democratizing access and equity for all colleges and universities,
 an NRC has the potential not only to unleash a string of advancements in AI, but to help ensure the U.S. maintains its leadership and competitiveness on the global stage.



"Throughout 2020, Stanford HAI led efforts with 22 top computer science universities along with a bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers proposing legislation to bring the NRC to fruition.
 On January 1, 2021, the U.S. Congress authorized the National AI Research Resource Task Force Act as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021. This law requires that a federal task force be established to study and provide an implementation
 pathway to create world-class computational resources and robust government datasets for researchers across the country in the form of a National Research Cloud. The task force will issue a final report to the President and Congress next year.





"The promise of an NRC is to democratize AI research, education, and innovation, making it accessible to all colleges and universities across the country. Without a National Research Cloud, all but the most elite universities
 risk losing the ability to conduct meaningful AI research and to adequately educate the next generation of AI researchers."




See also: [1][2]




[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2023/01/24/national-artificial-intelligence-research-resource-task-force-releases-final-report/

[2] https://www.ai.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/NAIRR-TF-Final-Report-2023.pdf




From: Steven Walling 
Sent: Saturday, February 4, 2023 1:59 AM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Chat GPT
 







On Fri, Feb 3, 2023 at 9:47 PM Gerg? Tisza  wrote:


Just to give a sense of scale: OpenAI started with a $1 billion donation, got another $1B as investment, and is now getting a larger investment from Microsoft (undisclosed but rumored to be $10B). Assuming they spent most of their previous funding,
 which seems likely, their operational costs are in the ballpark of $300 million per year. The idea that the WMF could just 

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Chat GPT

[Victoria Coleman]

Good article. I think it underlines the truth that without human curation all 
these models produce is junk. The trick (which is far from simple btw) is to 
figure out ways of harnessing the power of these models without breaking lives 
or hearts. I think that’s what engineering is all about. We don’t hear the term 
AI engineering or language model engineering but that’s where we need to get to 
if we can ever rely on these things. It’s a bit like combustion. It can cause 
explosions and hurt people. Harnessing it into the internal combustion engine 
has changed transportation for ever. 

Victoria

> On Dec 31, 2022, at 11:06 AM, Raymond Leonard 
>  wrote:
> 
> Of relevance to this conversation:
> 
> https://www.wired.com/story/large-language-models-artificial-intelligence/ 
> <https://www.wired.com/story/large-language-models-artificial-intelligence/>
> On Fri, Dec 30, 2022 at 9:32 AM Neurodivergent Netizen 
> mailto:idoh.idreamofhor...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> One concern I have is that all “oldbies” like myself have all seen bots 
> basically decay after whomever is maintaining goes inactive. Of course, this 
> could be mostly rectified by having the AI be open source. This leaves the 
> “people” aspect; that is, not only does the AI need to be maintained, but 
> interest needs to be maintained as well.
> 
> From,
> I dream of horses
> She/her
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Dec 30, 2022, at 8:53 AM, Victoria Coleman > <mailto:vstavridoucole...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Anne,
>> 
>> Interestingly enough what these large companies have to spend a ton of money 
>> on is creating and moderating content. In other words people. Passionate 
>> volunteers in large numbers is what the movement has in abundance. Imagine 
>> the power of combining the talents and passion of our community members with 
>> the advances offered by AI today. I was struck recently during a visit to 
>> NVIDIA how language models have changed. Back in my day, we would have to 
>> build one language model per domain and then load it in to the device, a 
>> computer or a phone, to  use. Now they have one massive combined language 
>> model in a data center full of their GPUs which is there so long as you are 
>> connected. My sense is that within the guard rails offered by our volunteer 
>> community, we could use AI to force multiply their efforts and make 
>> knowledge even more accessible than it is today.  Both for those who create 
>> and record knowledge as well as those who consume it. In the case of Chat 
>> GPT, our volunteers could use supervised learning for example to narrow down 
>> the mistakes the bot makes - which should be many fewer that the Open AI 
>> version since the Wikipedia version would be trained on good, clean 
>> Wikipedia content which is constantly reviewed by the community. 
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> 
>> Victoria Coleman
>> 
>>> On Dec 30, 2022, at 12:21 AM, Risker >> <mailto:risker...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Given what we already know about AI-like projects (think Siri, Alexis, 
>>> etc), they're the result of work done by organizations utilizing resources 
>>> hundreds of times greater than the resources within the entire Wikimedia 
>>> movement, and they'renot all that good if we're being honest.  They're 
>>> entirely dependent on existing resources.  We have seen time and again how 
>>> easily they can be led astray; ChatGPT is just the most recent example.  It 
>>> is full of misinformation.  Other efforts have resulted in the AI becoming 
>>> radicalized.  Again, it's all about what sources the AI project uses in 
>>> developing its responses, and those underlying sources are generally 
>>> completely unknown to the person asking for the information.  
>>> 
>>> Ironically, our volunteers have created software that learns pretty 
>>> effectively (ORES, several anti-vandalism "bots").  The tough part is 
>>> ensuring that there is continued, long-term support for these volunteer-led 
>>> efforts, and the ability to make them effective on projects using other 
>>> languages. We've had bots making translations of formulaic articles from 
>>> one language to another for years; again, they depend on volunteers who can 
>>> maintain and support those bots, and ensure continued quality of 
>>> translation. 
>>> 
>>> AI development is tough. It is monumentally expensive. Big players have 
>>> invested billions USD trying to develop working AI, with some of the most 
>>> talented programmers and developers in the

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Chat GPT

[Victoria Coleman]

Anne,

Interestingly enough what these large companies have to spend a ton of money on 
is creating and moderating content. In other words people. Passionate 
volunteers in large numbers is what the movement has in abundance. Imagine the 
power of combining the talents and passion of our community members with the 
advances offered by AI today. I was struck recently during a visit to NVIDIA 
how language models have changed. Back in my day, we would have to build one 
language model per domain and then load it in to the device, a computer or a 
phone, to  use. Now they have one massive combined language model in a data 
center full of their GPUs which is there so long as you are connected. My sense 
is that within the guard rails offered by our volunteer community, we could use 
AI to force multiply their efforts and make knowledge even more accessible than 
it is today.  Both for those who create and record knowledge as well as those 
who consume it. In the case of Chat GPT, our volunteers could use supervised 
learning for example to narrow down the mistakes the bot makes - which should 
be many fewer that the Open AI version since the Wikipedia version would be 
trained on good, clean Wikipedia content which is constantly reviewed by the 
community. 

Best regards,

Victoria Coleman

> On Dec 30, 2022, at 12:21 AM, Risker  wrote:
> 
> 
> Given what we already know about AI-like projects (think Siri, Alexis, etc), 
> they're the result of work done by organizations utilizing resources hundreds 
> of times greater than the resources within the entire Wikimedia movement, and 
> they'renot all that good if we're being honest.  They're entirely dependent 
> on existing resources.  We have seen time and again how easily they can be 
> led astray; ChatGPT is just the most recent example.  It is full of 
> misinformation.  Other efforts have resulted in the AI becoming radicalized.  
> Again, it's all about what sources the AI project uses in developing its 
> responses, and those underlying sources are generally completely unknown to 
> the person asking for the information.  
> 
> Ironically, our volunteers have created software that learns pretty 
> effectively (ORES, several anti-vandalism "bots").  The tough part is 
> ensuring that there is continued, long-term support for these volunteer-led 
> efforts, and the ability to make them effective on projects using other 
> languages. We've had bots making translations of formulaic articles from one 
> language to another for years; again, they depend on volunteers who can 
> maintain and support those bots, and ensure continued quality of translation. 
> 
> AI development is tough. It is monumentally expensive. Big players have 
> invested billions USD trying to develop working AI, with some of the most 
> talented programmers and developers in the world, and they're barely 
> scratching the surface.  I don't see this as a priority for the Wikimedia 
> movement, which achieves considerably higher quality with volunteers 
> following a fairly simple rule set that the volunteers themselves develop 
> based on tried and tested knowledge.  Let's let those with lots of money keep 
> working to develop something that is useful, and then we can start seeing if 
> it can become feasible for our use. 
> 
>  I envision the AI industry being similar to the computer hardware industry. 
> My first computer cost about the same (in 2022 dollars) as the four computers 
> and all their peripherals that I have within my reach as I write this, and 
> had less than 1% of the computing power of each of them.[1]  The cost will go 
> down once the technology gets better and more stable.  
> 
> Risker/Anne
> 
> [1] Comparison of 1990 to 2022 dollars.
> 
> 
> 
>> On Fri, 30 Dec 2022 at 01:40, Yaroslav Blanter  wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> just to remark that it superficially looks like a great tool for small 
>> language Wikipedias (for which the translation tool is typically not 
>> available). One can train the tool in some less common language using the 
>> dictionary and some texts, and then let it fill the project with a thousands 
>> of articles. (As an aside, in fact, one probably can train it to the 
>> soon-to-be-extint languages and save them until the moment there is any 
>> interest for revival, but nobody seems to be interested). However, there is 
>> a high potential for abuse, as I can imagine people not speaking the 
>> language running the tool and creating thousands of substandard articles - 
>> we have seen this done manually, and I would be very cautious allowing this.
>> 
>> Best 
>> Yaroslav
>> 
>>> On Fri, Dec 30, 2022 at 4:57 AM Raymond Leonard 
>>>  wrote:
>>> As a friend wrote on a Sla

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Chat GPT

[Victoria Coleman]

Thank you Ziko and Steven for the thoughtful responses.

My sense is that for a class for readers having a generative UI that returns an 
answer VS an article would be useful. It would probably put Quora out of 
business. :-)

If the models are not open source, this indeed would require developing our own 
models. For that kind of investment, we would probably want to have more 
application areas. Translation being one that Ziko already pointed out but also 
summarization. These kinds of Information retrieval queries would effectively 
index into specific parts of an article vs returning the whole thing.

Wikipedia as we all know is not perfect but it’s about the best you can get 
with the thousands of editors and reviewers doing quality control. If a bot was 
exclusively trained on Wikipedia, my guess is that the falsehood generation 
would be as minimal as it can get. Garbage in garbage out in all these models. 
Good stuff in good stuff out. I guess the falsehoods can also come when no 
material exists in the model. So instead of making stuff up, they could default 
to “I don’t know the answer to that”. Or in our case, we could add the topic to 
the list of article suggestions to editors…

I know I am almost day dreaming here but I can’t help but think that all the 
recent advances in AI could create significantly broader free knowledge 
pathways for every human being. And I don’t see us getting after them 
aggressively enough…

Best regards,

Victoria Coleman

> On Dec 29, 2022, at 5:17 PM, Steven Walling  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Thu, Dec 29, 2022 at 4:09 PM Victoria Coleman 
>>  wrote:
>> Hi everyone. I have seen some of the reactions to the narratives generated 
>> by Chat GPT. There is an obvious question (to me at least) as to whether a 
>> Wikipedia chat bot would be a legitimate UI for some users. To that end, I 
>> would have hoped that it would have been developed by the WMF but the 
>> Foundation has historically massively underinvested in AI. That said, and 
>> assuming that GPT Open source licensing is compatible with the movement 
>> norms, should the WMF include that UI in the product?
> 
> This is a cool idea but what would the goals of developing a 
> Wikipedia-specific generative AI be? IMO it would be nice to have a natural 
> language search right in Wikipedia that could return factual answers not just 
> links to our (often too long) articles.
> 
> OpenAI models aren’t open source btw. Some of the products are free to use 
> right now, but their business model is to charge for API use etc. so 
> including it directly in Wikipedia is pretty much a non-starter. 
> 
>> My other question is around the corpus that Open AI is using to train the 
>> bot. It is creating very fluid narratives that are massively false in many 
>> cases. Are they training on Wikipedia? Something else?
> 
> They’re almost certainly using Wikipedia. The answer from ChatGPT is: 
> 
> “ChatGPT is a chatbot model developed by OpenAI. It was trained on a dataset 
> of human-generated text, including data from a variety of sources such as 
> books, articles, and websites. It is possible that some of the data used to 
> train ChatGPT may have come from Wikipedia, as Wikipedia is a widely-used 
> source of information and is likely to be included in many datasets of 
> human-generated text.”
> 
>> And to my earlier question, if GPT were to be trained on Wikipedia 
>> exclusively would that help abate the false narratives
> 
> Who knows but we would have to develop our own models to test this idea. 
> 
>> This is a significant matter for the  community and seeing us step to it 
>> would be very encouraging.
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> 
>> Victoria Coleman
>> ___
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> Public archives at 
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/CYPO3PEMM4FIWPNL6MRTORHZXVTS2VNN/
>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> Public archives at 
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/G57JUOQ5S5ZHXHWJN7LPYEBZMFVMJGVO/
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikime

[Wikimedia-l] Chat GPT

[Victoria Coleman]

Hi everyone. I have seen some of the reactions to the narratives generated by 
Chat GPT. There is an obvious question (to me at least) as to whether a 
Wikipedia chat bot would be a legitimate UI for some users. To that end, I 
would have hoped that it would have been developed by the WMF but the 
Foundation has historically massively underinvested in AI. That said, and 
assuming that GPT Open source licensing is compatible with the movement norms, 
should the WMF include that UI in the product?

My other question is around the corpus that Open AI is using to train the bot. 
It is creating very fluid narratives that are massively false in many cases. 
Are they training on Wikipedia? Something else?

And to my earlier question, if GPT were to be trained on Wikipedia exclusively 
would that help abate the false narratives?

This is a significant matter for the  community and seeing us step to it would 
be very encouraging.

Best regards,

Victoria Coleman
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/CYPO3PEMM4FIWPNL6MRTORHZXVTS2VNN/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Update from the Wikimedia Foundation Board chair

[Victoria Coleman]

Maria,

You personify the movement. It has been an incredible privilege to get to know 
you and work with you. Thank you for being a free knowledge warrior!

Best regards,

Victoria Coleman

> On Jun 4, 2021, at 2:06 PM, rnarise...@wikimedia.org wrote:
> 
> Was a privilege to work with María Sefidari on the Wikimedia board these 
> past four years. Thank you Maria for your work and service to Wiki 
> communities globally, and so happy that you agreed for a one year-extension 
> given Covid last year, and are able to find time to help WMF staff on 
> Movement Strategy projects in coming months. Glad your knowledge and 
> expertise will remain close to the Movement. Raju Narisetti
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org

[Wikimedia-l] NYTimes.com: They Met Online. Through Wikipedia, That Is.

[Victoria Coleman]

A lovely story from From The New York Times:

They Met Online. Through Wikipedia, That Is.

Courtney Thurston and Matthew Del Buono first met in chat rooms they frequented 
as contributors to the online encyclopedia.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/style/they-met-online-through-wikipedia-that-is.html?smid=em-share


Best regards,

Victoria Coleman
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid API?

[Victoria Coleman]

Rupert,

My comment below referred to the point Kunal made about hosting should the 
movement decide (and it is a movement decision in my view) to go forward with a 
paid API. There is a healthy debate as you point out about the wisdom or 
otherwise of doing so. But should a decision be made to go forward, I believe 
that the hosting can be done on WMF clusters run by the Cloud Services team to 
avoid putting our content on 3rd party commercial services. While I was on 
staff, and I don’t think this has changed since my departure, the preference 
was to maintain control of content - including accessing it  - internally to 
protect movement privacy. If I had a penny for every time I got an offer of 
“free” hosting from AWS and others, my penny jar would be overflowing!

All the best,

Victoria

> On Jul 22, 2020, at 12:50 AM, rupert THURNER  wrote:
> 
> victoria, discussions to monetize the wikipedia content in one or the other
> way are as old as wikipedia. some people say "why should i continue editing
> and supporting wikipedia in my free time, or donate money, attracted by the
> vision to make it available to all, without condition, when WMF starts
> selling parts of it?" while the others feel that wikipedia relying on
> donations only keeps them at a shoestring budget, which meanwhile grew to
> 100 million USD a year. up to now the discussion always ended with a
> similar result: wikipedia would loose more than it would gain, and the
> initiative stopped. why this time it would be different? even more so as
> this API idea was already there when sue gardner joined 10 or more years
> ago. but maybe it becomes a good idea over time if it is brought up often
> enough and the environment changes. in 20 years or so, when the wikipedia
> content is auto-generated, auto-translated and WMF has no employees any
> more and no need of voluntary work this for sure would work.
> 
> rupert
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 9:19 PM Victoria Coleman <
> vstavridoucole...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> +1 Kunal! The WMF Cloud Services team can totally provide the needed
>> support. The Foundation would have to invest them to build up the team
>> which is over stretched but that should easily pay for itself as revenue
>> starts flowing in from the paid API.
>> 
>> Victoria
>> 
>>> On Jul 9, 2020, at 1:38 PM, Kunal Mehta  wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> On 2020-07-09 13:15, Dan Garry (Deskana) wrote:
>>>> Which cloud provider would you recommend?
>>> 
>>> Wikimedia Cloud Services, which incidentally, has the fastest network
>>> connection to Wikimedia sites by virtue of it being hosted *inside* the
>>> cluster.
>>> 
>>> -- Legoktm
>>> 
>>> ___
>>> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>>> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>> <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
>> 
>> 
>> ___
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>> <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>


___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
<mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcing a new Wikimedia project: Abstract Wikipedia

[Victoria Coleman]

Denny,

This is extraordinarily good news! I am thrilled that the Foundation and the 
Community has taken it on board. I think it is a truly seminal, pivotal project 
for promulgating free knowledge to all corners of humanity. I just could not be 
happier to know that you will be shepherding the work! Warmest congratulations!

Victoria 

> On Jul 2, 2020, at 9:38 AM, Denny Vrandečić  wrote:
> 
> Katherine, thank you for the warm welcome and your kind words!
> 
> I am very happy to be given the opportunity to start this new project, and
> deeply honored by the trust and confidence of the Board and the Foundation.
> 
> Thanks to the many who have listened to me talking about this project in
> the last few years, read my papers and plans, commented on them,
> scrutinized them, and offered encouragement, criticism, and advice. Thanks
> to everyone who expressed their support and raised their concerns on the
> proposal page on Meta [1]. It is thanks to you that the Board was confident
> enough to make this decision.
> 
> There is a lot of work in front of us, and I will continue to rely on your
> guidance and collective wisdom. We will need to foster a new community.
> Just as with Wikidata, I hope that some of you will become active in the
> new community, and I also want to make sure that we will be welcoming to
> new contributors. We want to extend and grow the Wikimedia movement not
> only with new functionalities, but also with new people.
> 
> Settling in this new position will take quite a bit of my attention in the
> next few weeks, so please forgive me if I may be slow with answering your
> questions between now and then. One of the first things we’ll do is to set
> up new communication channels. We will continue discussing the project and
> planning on Meta [2] for now and also welcome you to the new, dedicated
> mailing list [3].
> 
> One of our first tasks together will be to find a name for the project. A
> first set of proposals have already been made [4], and I invite you all to
> come up with more ideas. We will start that off in July or August. Did I
> mention that you can join us on Meta [2] to discuss proposals for names,
> the project itself, and much more?
> 
> Again, thank you all! I am super excited about figuring this thing out with
> you, and am looking forward to coming back to Wikimedia full-time.
> 
> Stay safe,
> Denny
> 
> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia
> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia
> [3] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia
> [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Name
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:24 AM Brion Vibber  wrote:
> 
>> I'm extremely excited about this project!
>> 
>> Not only will this be directly useful on its own (and a fascinating project
>> in its own right!), but it will help our volunteer editors to ramp up good
>> base material to work with on the "prose" Wikipedias we already know and
>> love.
>> 
>> The idea is really to make the structured data we've all been putting into
>> Wikidata available in a human-readable form at a big scale, that's still
>> able to be shaped and made into something real and readable by human
>> editors. By moving around where in the chain the data gets expressed as
>> human language, we hope to make something that's just as editable but much
>> more maintainable in the future and across multiple languages.
>> 
>> -- brion
>> 
>> 
>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:04 AM Katherine Maher 
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> (A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta [1])
>>> 
>>> Hi all,
>>> 
>>> It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project that
>> has
>>> been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.
>>> Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic
>>> content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more
>>> readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach that
>>> aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase
>> the
>>> sustainability of our movement through expanding access to participation,
>>> improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate in
>>> free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to
>>> create something new.
>>> 
>>> This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia was
>>> submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020 [2]
>> after
>>> years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and lively
>>> discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and the
>>> creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers, and
>>> information that is available in one language may not make it to other
>>> language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a
>>> Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid API?

[Victoria Coleman]

+1 Kunal! The WMF Cloud Services team can totally provide the needed support. 
The Foundation would have to invest them to build up the team which is over 
stretched but that should easily pay for itself as revenue starts flowing in 
from the paid API.

Victoria

> On Jul 9, 2020, at 1:38 PM, Kunal Mehta  wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On 2020-07-09 13:15, Dan Garry (Deskana) wrote:
>> Which cloud provider would you recommend? 
> 
> Wikimedia Cloud Services, which incidentally, has the fastest network
> connection to Wikimedia sites by virtue of it being hosted *inside* the
> cluster.
> 
> -- Legoktm
> 
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
> 


___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Next steps on Wikimedia Space

[Victoria Coleman]

+1 to Guillaume’s comment. 

Best,


Victoria Coleman

> On Feb 19, 2020, at 2:31 PM, Guillaume Paumier  wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Le mer. 19 févr. 2020 à 10:31, Todd Allen  a écrit :
> 
>> I don't think anyone had bad intentions. It was just redundant.
>> 
>> Real time communication is on IRC. Asynchronous communication is either on
>> the wiki, preferably, or on the mailing list.
>> 
>> Quit trying to make us TwitFaceTube. The tools we already have work just
>> fine.
> 
> 
> That perspective suffers from a lack of empathy. "The tools we already
> have" may work for the limited sample of the population who are currently
> using them. Assuming that that sample is representative is flawed and is a
> classic example of survivorship bias. If we have learned anything from the
> Space experiment and from years of strategy discussions, it is that the
> tools we currently have do not, in fact, work just fine for a large number
> of people, whose voices are missing from our discussions and content.
> 
> -- 
> Guillaume Paumier
> (he/him)
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>


___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
<mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

[Wikimedia-l] Turkey's top court says Wikipedia ban is violation of rights - Turkey News

[Victoria Coleman]

Brilliant news this morning! Congratulations to community members and 
foundation staff that fought from knowledge freedom these past two years!

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkeys-top-court-says-wikipedia-ban-is-violation-of-rights-150322

Happy new year!


Victoria Coleman
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
<mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

[Wikimedia-l] A difficult goodbye

[Victoria Coleman]

Dear all,

I have some difficult news to share.

A few months ago and completely out of the blue, an opportunity came up for me 
to exercise the full spectrum of my skills as the CEO of an early stage mission 
oriented startup. It has been a mighty struggle between my commitment to my 
team, the Foundation and  the movement and this opportunity to bring all my 
skills to bear and build something from the ground up to do good in the world. 
I will not lie to you - it has not been easy. But ultimately I decided that I 
have to give it a go and I accepted the offer. I plan on starting there on Feb 
4th so my last day at the Foundation will be Feb 1st.

These past two years have been amongst the most enjoyable in my professional 
career. I’ve enjoyed getting to know the movement and what fuels it and I’ve 
been incredibly privileged to work with a Tech team like no other. We have 
together strengthened the technical infrastructure of the movement and while 
much work remains to be done we have a much stronger team in place to take the 
mission to the next level. And I have personally made friendships that will 
last a lifetime. 

The organization I will be moving to is Atlas AI, a public benefit corporation 
supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. I will be leading an exceptional team 
of AI and earth system science experts striving for improvements in human well 
being through data driven insights. Our focus areas are drawn from the UN’s 
sustainable development goals of no poverty and zero hunger with emphasis on 
Sub Saharan Africa.

I leave behind a Technology department that I am certain is well on the way to 
achieving our vision to create the infrastructure for the free knowledge 
movement. I am also pleased that during my tenure, we have built leaders who 
are equipped to take on this challenge. 

Erika Bjune will be serving as interim CTO. Erika joined us a little over two 
years ago and she has distinguished  herself as one of the finest people 
leaders I have ever worked with. Both she and Katherine will have my ongoing 
support — I will stay on in a consulting role to Erika on organizational 
matters and for the mid term planning work we have ahead of us in the remainder 
of the fiscal year.  I know that I am leaving the Tech team in good hands until 
a permanent CTO is hired. 

I want to close this difficult message with my heartfelt thanks to all of you 
for letting me be part of this incredible movement. Being a Wikimedian is a 
great privilege. I wanted you to know that I’m not walking away from something; 
I am walking towards  something that is very  important to me and the world. I 
will miss you all. Deeply. Truly. And a lot!


Victoria

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

[Wikimedia-l] C-team Statement on the Code of Conduct

[Victoria Coleman]

Hello everyone,

The executive leadership team, on behalf of the Foundation, would like to issue 
a statement of unequivocal support for the Code of Conduct[1] and the 
community-led Code of Conduct Committee. We believe that the development and 
implementation of the Code are vital in ensuring the healthy functioning of our 
technical communities and spaces. The Code of Conduct was created to address 
obstacles and occasionally very problematic personal communications that limit 
participation and cause real harm to community members and staff. In engaging 
in this work we are setting the tone for the ways we collaborate in tech. We 
are saying that treating others badly is not welcome in our communities. And we 
are joining an important movement in the tech industry to address these 
problems in a way that supports self-governance consistent with our values.

This initiative is critical in continuing the amazing work of our projects and 
ensuring that they continue to flourish in delivering on the critical vision of 
being the essential infrastructure of free knowledge now and forever.

Toby, Maggie, Eileen, Heather, Lisa, Katherine, Jaime, Joady, and Victoria


https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct 





___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

[Wikimedia-l] Announcing the Wikimedia Foundation's Technical Engagement team

[Victoria Coleman]

Hello everyone,

to better serve the technical communities that build free and open source 
software for the movement as well as the communities who use Wikimedia's APIs 
to interact with our projects, the Wikimedia Foundation is making some 
structural changes. The Technical Engagement team is a new team in the 
Technology department of the Wikimedia Foundation reporting to the Foundation's 
Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Victoria Coleman. This new team has two 
sub-teams: the Wikimedia Cloud Services team and the Technical Advocacy team. 
Bryan Davis will manage the Technical Engagement teams. He will also lead the 
hiring process for a new Developer Advocacy Manager position, which will take 
over some of the management duties.

The Wikimedia Cloud Services team will continue to focus on maintaining the 
Wikimedia Cloud VPS infrastructure as a service 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing#Infrastructure_as_a_service_.28IaaS.29>
 platform, the Toolforge platform as a service 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_service> project, and additional 
supporting technologies used in the Cloud Services environment such as the Wiki 
Replica databases and the hosting infrastructure for dumps.wikimedia.org 
<https://dumps.wikimedia.org/>. The existing team of Andrew Bogott, Arturo 
Borrero Gonzalez, Brooke Storm, and Chase Pettet will be joined by James Hare 
in the role of Product Manager. The team is also hiring for a fifth Operations 
Engineer and for a part-time technical support contractor.

The Technical Advocacy team will focus on creating improved documentation for 
Wikimedia APIs and services as well as providing support for technical 
contributors and API consumers. The new team is being formed by moving the 
Foundation's Developer Relations team to the Technology department, with the 
exception of Rachel Farrand who will remain in Community Engagement in close 
collaboration with other event organizers. Andre Klapper and Srishti Sethi are 
both taking the role of Developer Advocate in the new team. A developer 
advocate is someone whose primary responsibility is to make it easy for 
developers to use a platform. Typically they do this by producing example 
software, tutorials, and other documentation explaining how to use the 
platform's products and services. Sarah R. Rodlund will also be joining the 
team as a Technical Writer. Technical writing has many subspecialties. Sarah 
will be focusing on improving our existing documentation by helping create a 
style guide and editing existing documentation to fit with that guide. She will 
also be supporting volunteers who are interested in practicing their technical 
writing skills on Wikimedia documentation. The team will be hiring for a 
Developer Advocacy Manager role in July. This new person will help round out 
the skills of the team and will take the lead in developing their programs.

The Technical Engagement team will work with other teams inside the Wikimedia 
Foundation as well as groups at affiliate organizations and the larger 
Wikimedia volunteer community to provide technical outreach services and 
support. We hope to continue to grow the number of people involved in our 
programs until we can confidently say that we are providing the best help 
possible to the hundreds of volunteer developers, designers, technical writers, 
and end users of the Wikimedia movement's APIs and services. We will continue 
to be involved in existing programs to attract and support new technical 
contributors like the Wikimedia Hackathons, Outreachy, and Google Summer of 
Code. We also hope to find new ways to connect with new and existing technical 
contributors as we support the Wikimedia movement's 2030 strategic direction 
and the shared goals of knowledge as a service and knowledge equity.

Very excited to be getting started down the path of  strengthening our 
developer advocacy program!



Best wishes,

Victoria Coleman

Chief Technology Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600
San Francisco, CA 94104

+1-650-703-8112

vcole...@wikimedia.org








___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
<mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Does anyone know what wikimedia france are up to with the Request Network ?

[Victoria Coleman]

Yes, the platform claim is far from accurate.

Best regards,

Victoria

Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 27, 2018, at 7:27 AM, James Heilman  wrote:
> 
> While the WMF accepts bitcoin this claim is definitely concerning
> 
> "the Wikimedia Foundation reinforces its leading status by widely
> integrating blockchain technology on its platform"
> 
> Have cc'ed Chuck from legal regarding potential trademark issues.
> 
> James
> 
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 8:23 AM, Devouard (gmail) 
> wrote:
> 
>> Definitly confusing.
>> 
>> See also this : https://blog.request.network/r
>> equest-network-project-update-april-27th-2018-partnership-
>> with-wikimedia-woocommerce-plugin-c598372e9b58
>> 
>> 
>> Florence
>> 
>>> Le 27/04/2018 à 15:49, geni a écrit :
>>> 
>>> According to their twitter feed they have announced a partnership with
>>> something called the "Request Network‏" for cryptocurrency donations.
>>> Also this article here
>>> 
>>> https://www.wikimedia.fr/2018/04/27/wikimedia-france-annonce
>>> -partenariat-fondation-request-network-accepter-donations-
>>> crypto-monnaies/
>>> 
>>> Ok. I don't approve but I'm not french so not its not an area where I
>>> can reasonably expect anyone to pay any attention to my opinions.
>>> 
>>> What concerns me is that they have retweeted something claiming the
>>> partnership is with the wikimedia foundation rather than just
>>> wikimedia france:
>>> 
>>> https://twitter.com/wikimedia_fr?lang=en
>>> 
>>> Is some form of clarification possible?
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> ___
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wik
>> i/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> James Heilman
> MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
> 

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcing the Wikimedia Technical Conference

[Victoria Coleman]

Hi Pine,

Yes, you are correct. The Board has not yet approved the annual plan for next 
year so our plans for the conference and other programs are contingent on Board 
approval.

Best regards,

Victoria



> On Apr 5, 2018, at 6:56 PM, Pine W  wrote:
> 
> Hi Victoria,
> 
> Thank you very much for the explanations.
> 
> I am glad to hear that the net effect of these changes will be that travel
> costs remain flat. Does that include lodging and per diem costs?
> 
> I would suggest collaborating with the WikiConference North America
> organizers to try to arrange for there to be no overlap between the two
> conferences. That may be impossible, but I think that it is desirable. To
> the best of my knowledge, the exact WMCONNA dates have been finalized
> 
> while the WMTCON dates have not
> . Both
> conferences could be in October but on different weekends so that there
> would be no overlap.
> 
> The WMF Board has not yet adopted the 2018-2019 WMF Annual Plan, which I
> believe means that the plans for the WMTCON and for the next WMF All Hands
> Conference are contingent on WMF Board approval of that annual plan. Is
> that correct?
> 
> I would like there to be a policy that every conference which receives WMF
> funding, including the Wikimedia Conference and All Hands, should go
> through a WMF Conference and Event Grants process
> , perhaps with levels of
> detail and scrutiny that are scaled according to the sizes of budgets and
> the number of anticipated participants. Even if funding is a foregone
> conclusion, I think that compelling all conference organizers to do this
> will help with transparency and to strengthen the planning and evaluation
> of conferences.
> 
> Pine
> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
> 

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcing the Wikimedia Technical Conference

[Victoria Coleman]

Hi Pine, thank you for your feedback. Some responses inline below: 

> On Apr 3, 2018, at 7:41 AM, Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Victoria,
> I hope that you are OK with discussing this announcement on Wikimedia-l, 
> which seems to me to be the most applicable mailing list for my questions.
> I have two questions and one comment.
> 
> I think that I understand the desires here. However, it is unfortunate that a 
> likely side effect of this scheduling is an increase in total costs and time 
> spent traveling for those who will attend this conference and WMF All Hands, 
> and additional costs from the lengthening of the All Hands conference. Since 
> there are so many options for remote collaboration for WMF staff for follow 
> up to All Hands discussions, and the additional costs for these combined 
> changes sound likely to be in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, I 
> am less than enthusiastic about this aspect. Can you explain the cost-benefit 
> analysis further,

Our aim is to keep the travel costs flat from year to year. For Wikimedia 
Foundation's engineering teams, other events to be taken into account in this 
equation are the Wikimedia Hackathon and separate team offsites. The extended 
AllHands in January 2019 will allow for more team offsites co-located, being 
both types of events Wikimedia Foundation internal. Participation in the 
Hackathon and the Tech Conference (both events open to Wikimedians and third 
parties) is expected to be more balanced. We believe that this combination will 
allow us to participate at the WMF & teams AllHands, the Tech Conference and 
the Hackathon in more focused and consistent ways, getting better results from 
each event.  

> and why remote collaboration options at much lower cost are inadequate for 
> extending the conversations from All Hands?

Remote collaboration is our default way of working. Most if not all engineering 
teams are partially or totally remote, and their day to day communications are 
based on chats, hangouts and asynchronous conversations. We believe that adding 
a few more days around these events for face to face interaction will result in 
much better understanding and decisions around the many complex problems that 
our current plans and our future strategy is demanding us to solve.

> Please ensure that the dates for this conference don't conflict with Wiki 
> Conference North America.

I believe there is overlap of one day between the two events. On the other 
hand, the participation in each of these events has almost no overlap, 
according to the data from past editions.

> The cap of 50 participants, as stated on the MediaWiki page, seems to me to 
> be low given the stated goals of the conference. Have you considered a higher 
> cap?

Yes, and we discarded it. We are serious about keeping travel costs flat, and 
this is achieved through decisions like this one. In previous versions, the 
Developer Summit has increased online participation before, during, and after 
the event. This cap of 50 participants is necessary from a budget point of 
view, but it also contributes to tighter collaboration and results assuming 
that these participants represent a critical mass of stakeholders in the 
subjects discussed. We are planning to improve the dynamics and impact of 
online participation open to anyone prior to the event (see Outcome 4 and its 
related outputs in our International Developer Events program 
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Technical_Collaboration/Annual_Plan_2018-19#International_developer_events>).

> Thanks,
> Pine
> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
>  Original message From: Victoria Coleman 
> <vcole...@wikimedia.org> Date: 4/2/18  4:46 PM  (GMT-08:00) To: "Staff (All)" 
> <wmf...@lists.wikimedia.org>, MediaWiki announcements and site admin list 
> <mediawik...@lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: [MediaWiki-l] Announcing the 
> Wikimedia Technical Conference 
> Hi everyone. 
> 
> This is a time of important change for technology and the Wikimedia movement. 
> We are evolving our platform to better support, grow, and prepare the 
> movement for the future to realize our strategic goals of Knowledge as a 
> Service and Knowledge Equity. 
> 
> Our vision is to host a different type of event in 2018 — to make informed 
> decisions in the evolution of our platform while building our technical 
> community engagement and enhancing our product vision. We want to be able to 
> gather and discuss to determine our future direction and that of our shared 
> platform; to communicate more broadly our product vision and to build a solid 
> and stable base for our volunteer developer community. Future years will have 
> have different focuses and themes. 
> 
> We also want to learn from our

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Appointment of Raju Narisetti to Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

[Victoria Coleman]

Raju welcome! You bring much expertise & wisdom to us! 

Victoria


> On Oct 16, 2017, at 2:48 PM, Katherine Maher  wrote:
> 
> Thank you, Christophe, for sharing this wonderful news.
> 
> I have had the opportunity to get to know Raju during this appointments
> process, and am very excited that he is joining our Wikimedia family as a
> Foundation Trustee. It is clear to me that his values are closely aligned
> with those of our movement, and that he brings wisdom and expertise
> attained throughout his varied professional experiences. As Executive
> Director, I have the distinct pleasure of working closely with our Board,
> and I share Christophe's confidence that Raju will make an excellent
> addition.
> 
> Raju, welcome and thank you for joining one of the world's largest
> volunteer movements, and generously offering your time, talent, and wisdom
> to the advancement of our mission. I look forward to working with and
> learning from you in the years to come.
> 
> Katherine
> 
> On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 3:18 PM, Bishakha Datta 
> wrote:
> 
>> Excellent news!
>> Bishakha
>> 
>> On 17 Oct 2017 00:11, "Anna Stillwell"  wrote:
>> 
>>> Welcome, Raju.
>>> /a
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 11:19 AM, Christophe Henner <
>> chen...@wikimedia.org
 
>>> wrote:
>>> 
 Hi everyone,
 
 Over the past year, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has been
 reviewing and evolving our appointment and onboarding process for new
>>> Board
 members. While that has resulted in some lingering vacancies, we knew
>> it
 was important to update these processes to help maintain a cordial and
 productive Board.
 
 The updated appointment process provides the entire board with more
 detailed (albeit private) information about each candidate’s
>> background,
 public profile, past professional and volunteer work, and ability to
 contribute to the Board. The updated onboarding process is meant to
>> help
 Board members learn about the processes and expectations of our Board
>>> more
 quickly to help reduce productivity lost to transitions. Special thanks
>>> to
 everyone serving on the Board Governance Committee and Nataliia for the
 work they have put into these improvements!
 
 I am also incredibly excited to share that these efforts have helped us
 identify and appoint an amazing addition to the Wikimedia Foundation
>>> Board
 of Trustees! At our October meeting, the Board appointed and welcomed
>>> Raju
 Narisetti to fill one of the vacant expert seats.
 
 Raju is a veteran media executive and journalist and brings a wealth of
 communications experience to the board. He is also a veteran of
>> nonprofit
 governance and currently serves on the board for the International
>> Center
 for Journalists and Institute for International Education. I am
>> confident
 he will be a very valuable addition to the board and thrilled that he
>> has
 agreed to join us!
 
 We will continue to make improvements to our governance processes, for
 example with the learnings from the on-going governance review, and
>> apply
 what we have learned to future appointments and filling our remaining
 vacancy. Thank you for everyone’s patience as we took a pause and
>> worked
>>> on
 recruiting the best possible candidates, rather than simply rushing to
>>> fill
 the seats.
 
 In the meantime, below (and on the Wikimedia Blog) you will find the
 official announcement about Raju Narisetti and please join me in warmly
 welcoming him to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees and to the
 Wikimedia movement!
 
 Christophe
 Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
 
 Raju Narisetti joins Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
 
 Media veteran brings nearly three decades of global strategic
>> experience
>>> in
 digital media and audience development to the Wikimedia Foundation
>> Board
 
 
 Image:
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Raju_Narisetti_-_
 International_Journalism_Festival_2015.JPG
 
 San Francisco, CA, October 16, 2017 — The Wikimedia Foundation today
 announced the appointment of Raju Narisetti, a veteran media executive
>>> and
 journalist, to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.
 
 Raju brings more than 29 years of media experience across three
>>> continents.
 He is currently CEO of Univision Communications Inc’s Gizmodo Media
>>> Group,
 the publisher of websites including Gizmodo, Jezebel, Lifehacker and
>> The
 Root.
 
 “Raju has dedicated his life’s work to information as a public service.
>>> His
 commitment to editorial integrity, independence, and inclusion is
>> deeply
 aligned with Wikimedia values. His passion and expertise in digital
 strategy and international growth will be 

[Wikimedia-l] HEADS UP: Wikimedia Developer Summit 2018: Technology for the Movement Strategy

[Victoria Coleman]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to give you all a heads up about the upcoming Dev Summit. This year 
the Summit will be held in San Francisco on January 22nd and 23rd, 2018. We are 
still finalizing the details and will be sending out the call for participation 
soon. But meantime, we wanted to share a preview of the game plan with you so 
that you can hold the dates and begin to think about ways of participating. 

This has been a year of strategy making for the Foundation and our communities. 
As the way forward becomes clearer, we,  the technology community entrusted 
with delivering the products and infrastructure for supporting the community 
vision, need to reflect on what the movement strategy means for us and how to 
best prepare, plan and execute that support. This year, the Developer Summit is 
dedicated to this reflection. We invite technologists, managers and users to 
study, reflect and propose ways to support the strategic vision we are 
committed to. We would like you to capture your thoughts in a short position 
statement and join the conversation. 

Specifically, we invite you to think about ways of imagining, creating, 
planning, building and maintaining the technology foundation needed to enable 
the key tenets of our strategy:

The infrastructure for open: We will empower individuals and institutions to 
participate and share, through open standards, platforms, and datasets. We will 
host, broker, share, and exchange free knowledge across institutions and 
communities. We will be a leading advocate and partner for increasing the 
creation, curation, and dissemination in free and open knowledge.

An encyclopedia, and so much more: We will adapt to our changing world to offer 
knowledge in the most effective ways, across digital formats, devices, and 
experiences. We will adapt our communities and technology to the needs of the 
people we serve. As we include other forms of free knowledge, we will aim for 
these projects to be as successful as Wikipedia.

Reliable, relevant information: We will continue our commitment to providing 
useful information that it is reliable, accurate, and relevant to users. We 
will integrate technologies that support accuracy at scale and enable greater 
insight into how knowledge is produced and shared. We will embrace the effort 
of increasing the quality, depth, breadth, and diversity of free knowledge, in 
all forms.

This direction poses key questions for our technical community. Here are some 
example topics we would welcome ideas and discussion in:

How do we maintain and grow the technical community and ready it for the 
mission ahead?
What should the role of open source be in the next 15 years of the movement? 
How does it help or hinder? How do we promote it or adapt it? How do we 
leverage it?
What are the foundational building blocks for the language technologies we will 
need in order to be present everywhere where there are people?
Scaling. What tools do we need as the movement and the community grow? 
What are the implications of the strategic direction for our infrastructure? Do 
we have any key gaps in this infrastructure? How ready is our infrastructure 
for what is to come?
How should MediaWiki evolve to support the mission? 
What technologies are necessary for embracing mobility?
We operate in parts of the world where access to free knowledge is blocked, 
hindered or plain dangerous. What tools do we need to support these at-risk  
communities?
How and with whom should we partner to create the technologies needed to 
support the mission?
How can we leverage machine learning and analytics to support the mission and 
our communities?
What are emerging trends in technology that will impact our mission in the next 
5-10-15 years?

These conversations will be invaluable input to the next phase of the strategy 
process as we shift from exploration to definition to execution. We are 
energized, excited and hopeful for a great set of thoughtful, impactful 
conversations.

As we embark on this journey we want to have an open but focused dialog so we 
are aiming for a smaller participant cohort than previous Dev Summits. We want 
to encourage everyone to consider these questions and put forward ideas in the 
form of a short position paper or abstract. We are selecting a Program 
Committee that consists of respected technologists and best represents the 
diversity of our communities.  The Program Committee will screen and evaluate 
the position papers in a blind review process and will select those that best 
fit the strategic intent of this Summit. The authors will then be invited to 
participate. We hope to attract  those  within our community who are passionate 
about the future, hold a point of view and have concrete ideas for how we best 
use technology to support the objectives of the movement through 2030. We will 
bring the ideas and learnings from the Summit to the broader technology 
community during the upcoming hackathons and related events in 

[Wikimedia-l] We welcome Giuseppe Lavagetto to the TechCom

[Victoria Coleman]

Hi everyone,

it is with great pleasure that Daniel and I would like to announce that 
Giuseppe Lavagetto is joining the TechCom. Giuseppe works in the  Technical 
Operations team, which is responsible for the reliability, availability and 
performance of the WMF infrastructure. Within the team, he  works on a great 
deal of different problems, but mostly focuses on the MediaWiki  and the other 
services that constitute our application layer, and on automation of the 
infrastructure. He has been involved in the work to transition our 
infrastructure to use HHVM, and has put a lot of effort in our project to serve 
our application layer from multiple datacenters.  He is also  one of the early 
advocates for our current effort to use Kubernetes and containers for our 
services layer. We are very excited to have him join the TechCom where he will  
have even more impact on our mission. Welcome Giuseppe!

Warm regards,

Victoria & Daniel

PS If you would like to hear more about the TechCom and the new charter, please 
join us on Sept 5th for a webcast. I append Srishti’s announcement below:

Please join us for the *Wikimedia Technical Committee (**TechCom)
announcement webcast* by Victoria Coleman
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:VColeman_(WMF) 
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:VColeman_(WMF)>> (Chief
Technology Officer, Wikimedia Foundation) and Daniel Kinzler
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Daniel_Kinzler_(WMDE) 
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Daniel_Kinzler_(WMDE)>> (Principal
Platform Engineer, Wikimedia Deutschland) on September 5, 2017, at 17:30 UTC
<https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=TechCom+announcement+webcast=20170905T1730=1440=1
 
<https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=TechCom+announcement+webcast=20170905T1730=1440=1>>
via YouTube live.


Link to live YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtH-EmGmOWs 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtH-EmGmOWs>

IRC channel for questions/discussion: #wikimedia-office



In this webcast, we will share the revised charter of the TechCom
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Technical_Committee/Charter 
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Technical_Committee/Charter>> with
the developer community and answer any questions you might have. We will
also ask for your suggestions on how you think the committee can best
support you.

Looking forward to your presence!


Best,

Srishti

-- 
Srishti Sethi
Developer Advocate
Technical Collaboration team
Wikimedia Foundation

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:SSethi_(WMF) 
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:SSethi_(WMF)>

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
<mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: How to increase the diversity of Wikimedia technical contributors and staff?

[Victoria Coleman]

Hi everyone,

Pine and I had this exchange in diversity which I thought might be of interest 
more broadly so reposting here. 

Best,

Victoria


> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> From: Victoria Coleman <vcole...@wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: How to increase the diversity of Wikimedia technical 
> contributors and staff?
> Date: August 9, 2017 at 2:33:03 AM GMT-4
> To: Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com>
> Cc: "Addressing gender equity and exploring ways to increase the 
> participation of women within Wikimedia projects." 
> <gender...@lists.wikimedia.org>, Angel Lewis <ale...@wikimedia.org>, Maggie 
> Dennis <mden...@wikimedia.org>
> 
> Pine,
> 
> thank you for bringing up this important topic. The Google internal memo 
> certainly brought the diversity issue in sharp relief. I don’t profess to be 
> an expert on diversity in STEM but I do want to share some thoughts based on 
> my own professional experience as well as some academic research that I have 
> recently come across. 
> 
> The first thing to note is participation of women in computer science is 
> actually growing. For example, in  2015 Computer Science was the top major 
> for women at Stanford 
> (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-women-technology-stanford-idUSKCN0S32F020151009
>  
> <http://www.reuters.com/article/us-women-technology-stanford-idUSKCN0S32F020151009>).
>  I serve on the Advisory Board of the Computer Engineering Department at 
> Santa Clara University and although the numbers are not as striking, the 
> proportion of women has been steadily increasing. Of course women represent 
> only one dimension of the diversity issue but perhaps the patterns here may 
> be instructive for other groups. So I don’t think this is a “pipeline” issue 
> any more. I am sure it once was (certainly it was when I started my career) 
> but it is not so now. So if more women and minorities enter STEM professions 
> why is it that we have so little representation of these groups in mid and 
> senior levels? Well, the answer seems to be that people in these groups leave 
> STEM careers in much greater numbers than other groups. So it seems to be a 
> problem of retention vs intake. Academic research that I have recently come 
> across from UC Irvine, MIT, Rice and McGill makes for interesting reading as 
> we try to unpack why this is the case. In [1], the authors make a shocking 
> (to me) statement:
> 
>   “The field of engineering is a particularly robust site for 
> understanding gendered processes of professional socialization because it 
> remains the most gender-segregated field among STEM occupations at all career 
> stages”
> 
> Why this is the case is certainly a topic that merits both research, analysis 
> and action. In [2] the researchers found that unfairness drives turnover and  
> that unfairness is most pronounced in the tech industry especially in women 
> of all backgrounds and underrepresented men of color. [3] argues that 
> professional role confidence, in other words an individual’s confidence in 
> their ability to successfully fulfill the roles, competencies, and identity 
> features of a profession, and women’s lack of this confidence , compared to 
> men, reduces their likelihood of remaining in engineering majors and careers. 
> 
> These are my thoughts and I warmly welcome those of others in the community. 
> We have a lot of work to do to understand the diversity dynamics in our 
> communities. The Foundation is committed and actively engaged in 
> understanding the diversity challenges within staff and the volunteer 
> community. Some of our initiatives are captured in 
> https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/Diversity_and_Inclusion 
> <https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/Diversity_and_Inclusion> but I am sure 
> there is lot more that can and should be done. 
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Victoria
> 
> [1] C. Seron, S.S. Silbey, E. Cech, B. Rubineau, Persistence Is Cultural: 
> Professional Socialization and the Reproduction of Sex Segregation, Work and 
> Occupations, Vol. 43(2) 178-214, 2016
> [2] Tech Leavers Study: A first-of-its-kind analysis of why people 
> voluntarily left jobs in tech, Ford Foundation, Kapor Center for Social 
> Impact, April 27, 2017
> [3] E. Cech, B. Rubineau, S. Silbey, C. Serron, Professional Role Confidence 
> and Gendered Persistence in Engineering, American Sociological Review, Vol 
> 76(5), 641-666, 2011
> 
> 
>> On Aug 6, 2017, at 10:31 PM, Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com 
>> <mailto:wiki.p...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> I read the unofficial Google internal memo that has been the subject of some 
>> controversy, and upon reading it my Wikipedian-trained instincts were to 

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

[Victoria Coleman]

that brought us to these changes began informally shortly
>> after Victoria arrived, and took on a more formal tone once Wes announced
>> his departure in May. Katherine asked Anna Stillwell, the Foundation's
>> newly-appointed Chargée d’Affaires in the Talent & Culture department, to
>> facilitate a consultation with both departments to identify their pain
>> points, and better understand their cultural and structural needs. After
>> collecting feedback from 93 people across the two departments, as well as
>> stakeholders around the organization, she offered a draft proposal for open
>> comment within the Foundation. After making some changes to reflect staff
>> feedback, the Foundation’s leadership team decided to proceed with the
>> changes described above.
>> 
>> The leaders of some of the teams involved will be following up in the next
>> few days with the specifics of these organizational moves and what they
>> mean to our communities. If you still have questions, please ask here or on
>> the talk page of this announcement: https://www.mediawiki.org/
>> wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Engineering/June_2017_changes.
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> 
>> Toby Negrin, Interim Vice President of Product
>> Victoria Coleman, Chief Technology Officer
>> 
>> PS. An on-wiki version of this message is available for translation:
>> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/June_2017_changes
>> 
>> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_
>> Engineering_reorganization_FAQ
>> 
>> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_
>> Annual_Plan/2017-2018/Draft
>> 
>> ___
>> Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately
>> directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia
>> community. For more information about Wikimedia-l:
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>> ___
>> WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list
>> wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
>> 
>> 
> ___
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> wikitec...@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
<mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia and other 60+ organizations launch the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC)

[Victoria Coleman]

Dario and team,

this is a terrific achievement. Proud to see the Foundation create transparency 
in citation data!

All the best,

Victoria
> On Apr 6, 2017, at 11:11 AM, Dario Taraborelli  
> wrote:
> 
> Hey all,
> 
> I wanted to let you know that we launched an initiative this morning
> called: Initiative for Open Citations  (I4OC).
> 
> Prior to the launch of I4OC, only 1% of scholarly papers made citation data
> available in the open. Today, that number has jumped to 40%. We're proud to
> make a growing piece of fundamental data for open knowledge available to
> everyone, with no copyright restriction whatsoever.
> 
> The I4OC has been in the making for the past 6 months, with lots of
> individual discussions with scholarly publishers, asking them to flip the
> switch and release this data. Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia UK, the Wiki
> Edu Foundation, the Internet Archive, Mozilla, PLOS and many other open
> knowledge and open data organizations are among the official endorsers of
> the initiative.
> 
> You can read more about this initiative on a post
>  we
> published this morning on the Wikimedia Blog, on the joint press release
> , or follow @i4oc_org
>  for more updates.
> 
> Best,
> Dario
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> *Dario Taraborelli  *Director, Head of Research, Wikimedia Foundation
> wikimediafoundation.org • nitens.org • @readermeter
> 
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
> 


___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

[Wikimedia-l] Introducing the MediaWiki Platform team!

[Victoria Coleman]

Hello everyone,

I am pleased to share with you the news about the formation of the latest team 
in the Technology department, the MediaWiki Platform team![1]

The MediaWiki Platform team will be tasked with leading maintenance and 
improvements related to the core MediaWiki platform codebase. That includes 
encouraging future development of the MediaWiki platform and addressing the 
technical debt that has accumulated during the 15-year history of MediaWiki.

MediaWiki is an amazing, powerful, and complex open-source software platform. 
The number and variety of extensions, and the wide variety of communities who 
have adopted MediaWiki as their method for knowledge collection and 
dissemination, are a testament to its strength as a software platform.

Like any significant codebase with a long development history, there are 
remnants of design choices and experiments that are no longer in use, and some 
areas of code are in need of modernization. However, at its core is a large 
amount of highly functional, secure, performant code, capable of supporting a 
robust platform through the use of extensions and hooks. There is also a great 
amount of flexibility to adapt to new requirements.

This team will have a more focused purpose than the previous MediaWiki Core 
team.[2]. While the previous team was at times spread too thin, many areas are 
now covered by dedicated teams like Security and Performance. The new MediaWiki 
Platform team will center their efforts on the core codebase. The team will 
also have a dedicated Product Manager who will be creating the platform roadmap 
in collaboration with the team, the Architecture Committee and the MediaWiki 
user community. 

Specific goals for this team are to:

* Assist and encourage development of features for MediaWiki by providing 
developers with a strong core.

* Undertake feature development work which is primarily architectural in nature.

* Facilitate the development and publication of MediaWiki's roadmap to assist 
coordination between internal and external users.

* Maintain and promote guidelines and standards for the MediaWiki core.

I am thrilled that Tim Starling has agreed to lead the team, reporting directly 
to me. He will be joined by Brion Vibber, Kunal Mehta and Brad Jorsch.  The 
team officially launches on Monday April 3, and will complete the hiring and 
onboarding of additional team members in the coming months. Their initial 
workplan will include core support for multi content revisions for the 
Structured Data on Commons project and will be discussed in more detail during 
the upcoming consultation for the Wikimedia Foundation 2017-2018 annual plan.

I am excited by this latest evolution in the structure of the Foundation's 
Engineering group. We will continue to learn from our collective knowledge and 
expertise, and make adjustments to our composition and plans. I appreciate the 
input provided by many in the community that helped inform this decision. I 
also want to thank the members of the Wikimedia Foundation's Product, 
Technology, and Community Engagement departments who were involved in this 
process. In particular, I would like to thank Toby Negrin, Adam Baso, and 
Trevor Parscal - whose support was critical in bringing this plan together.

Join me in welcoming and celebrating our new team!

Victoria

[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Platform_team

[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_MediaWiki_Core_Team 


___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

[Wikimedia-l] Wes Moran

[Victoria Coleman]

Hi everyone,

By now you will all have heard that Wes  has decided to find a new adventure 
and will be leaving the Foundation.  I wanted to take a moment and offer my 
sincere thanks to him not only for his contribution to the Foundation and the 
Movement these past two years (which has been enormous) but also for his 
amazing support to me personally as I came into the CTO role and began to find 
my feet. I could not have wished for a better partner and I am truly sad that 
he chosen to follow a path outside the Foundation. But as I have told him, jobs 
may come and go but friendships last a lifetime and I know we will be friends 
for a long time! Wes, you are a man of exceptional grace and I look forward to 
continuing to work with you in the movement. 

I also wanted to say that in the time I have been in the Foundation I have come 
to know and admire what Toby Negrin and his team has achieved. Toby, you have 
shown great leadership and your drive for results is benefiting our communities 
day in day out. I look forward to working with you as you step in the acting 
Product leadership role.

We have exciting times  ahead of us. With the movement strategy coming down the 
pike later in the year, we will get the engineering side of the house ready to 
support it. And in the meantime we have so many great opportunities to build on 
our strengths to server the movement and our communities better. This is  a 
great time to be here!

Warm regards,

Victoria
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Cloud Services: new team, new name, renewed focus

[Victoria Coleman]

Hello everyone, 

Starting in April 2017, we will be taking a number of projects related to 
services we are offering "in the cloud" and creating a new team, Wikimedia 
Cloud Services (WMCS), to support a more unified approach to these efforts. The 
sub-teams currently managing these efforts - the Labs sub-team within the 
Wikimedia Technical Operations team and the Tool Labs support sub-team from the 
Community Tech team - will be merged to form this new team.

Wikimedia Cloud Services will be a new team in the Technology Department of the 
Wikimedia Foundation reporting to Victoria  as the Foundation's Chief 
Technology Officer (CTO). This team is being formed based on a proposal made by 
the members of the Labs sub-team and the Tool Labs support sub-team.

The new team will be managed by Bryan Davis, who previously managed the Reading 
Infrastructure and Community Tech teams before helping found the Tool Labs 
support team in 2016. Chase Pettet, formerly manager of the Labs team, is 
taking on the new role of Lead Operations Engineer. Andrew Bogott, Yuvaraj 
Pandian, and Madhumitha Viswanathan are transferring in their existing roles 
from the former Labs team.

The WMCS team will maintain and extend the existing Wikimedia Labs 
infrastructure as a service platform, the Tool Labs platform as a service  
 project, and many 
additional supporting technologies used in the cloud environment. The new team 
is excited to continue supporting developers who create innovative solutions to 
further the free knowledge movement, and will continue to partner with the 
larger Wikimedia volunteer community to manage the physical and virtual 
resources that power the environment and provide technical support to volunteer 
developers and other Wikimedia Cloud Services users.

This new team will focus on three areas of ongoing support and improvement:

Providing a stable and efficient hosting platform
Creating and maintaining services that empower the creation and operation of 
tools
Delivering technical and community support for users of the products

This new team will soon begin working on rebranding efforts intended to reduce 
confusion about the products they maintain.   
 This refocus and 
re-branding will take time to execute, but the team is looking forward to the 
challenge.

Stay tuned for more announcements, and as always Community members are 
encouraged to participate on lab...@lists.wikimedia.org,  
Phabricator  and the 
#wikimedia-labs IRC channel.

Thank you,

Victoria & Wes


___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

[Wikimedia-l] Hello and appreciation

[Victoria Coleman]

Hello, all.

Thank you for the many public and private good wishes. It is wonderful to meet 
you and to have an opportunity to work with such a vibrant and active community.

Like many of you, I am inspired by Wikimedia's mission and commitment to open 
and free knowledge. I am committed to serving that mission by working with my 
team and all of you to evolve our technical platform and infrastructure to meet 
the needs of our community and challenges ahead.

I am excited to see that so many of you share my passion for digital privacy 
and security. I am impressed with the steps that have already been taken by 
Wikimedia to address these issues. Please know I will be sharing all of my 
knowledge and experience in this area to help Wikimedia be even better situated.

In the coming months I will be meeting with the Technology department and our 
colleagues across the Wikimedia Foundation and movement, especially Wes and his 
team in Product, to gather more information and plan next steps. I look forward 
to opportunities to meet with more of you and learn more about your experiences 
with the movement and projects.

Again, thank you for the warm reception, and I look forward to working together!


Victoria 
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,