Wikimedia-l January 2022

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

117 participants
68 discussions

Happy #May17 #IDAHOT #IDAHOTBITQ
by Željko Blaće 17 May '24

17 May '24

What is May 17th? The International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia was created in 2004 to draw the attention to the violence and discrimination experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex people and all other people with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities or expressions, and sex characteristics. The date of May 17th was specifically chosen to commemorate the World Health Organization’s decision in 1990 to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder. https://may17.org One year ago in 2020 we started QueeringW in hope #1 Queering Wikipedia conference would be happening with a year of delay...now we hope it is in 2022! Meanwhile we are "Together, we Resist, Support, and Heal" <https://twitter.com/may17org> Happy #May17 #IDAHOT #IDAHOTBITQ for those who celebrate and would support https://www.instagram.com/QueeringW @may17org <https://twitter.com/may17org> #IDAHOT <https://twitter.com/hashtag/IDAHOT?src=hashtag_click> #IDAHOT2021 <https://twitter.com/hashtag/IDAHOT2021?src=hashtag_click> https://twitter.com/QueeringW

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The Wikimedia Enterprise API project
by Liam Wyatt 11 Feb '23

11 Feb '23

Dear all, Over the last few months, a small team at the Wikimedia Foundation has been working on a project that has been discussed by many people in our movement for many years: building ‘enterprise grade’ services for the high-volume commercial reusers of Wikimedia content. I am pleased to say that in a remarkably short amount of time (considering the complexity of the issues: technical, strategic, legal, and financial) we now have something worthy of showing to the community, and we are asking for your feedback. Allow me to introduce you to the Wikimedia Enterprise API project – formerly codenamed “okapi”. While the general idea for Wikimedia Enterprise predates the current movement strategy process, its recommendations identify an enterprise API as one possible solution to both “Increase the sustainability of our movement” and “Improve User Experience.”[0] That is, to simultaneously create a new revenue stream to protect Wikimedia’s sustainability, and improve the quality and quantity of Wikimedia content available to our many readers who do not visit our websites directly (including more consistent attribution). Moreover, it does so in a way that is true to our movement’s culture: with open source software, financial transparency, non-exclusive contracts or content, no restrictions on existing services, and free access for Wikimedia volunteers who need it. The team believes we are on target to achieve those goals and so we have written a lot of documentation to get your feedback about our progress and where it could be further improved before the actual product is ‘launched’ in the next few months. We have been helped in this process over the last several months by approximately 100 individual volunteers (from many corners of the wikiverse) and representatives of affiliate organisations who have reviewed our plans and provided invaluable direction, pointing out weaknesses and opportunities, or areas lacking clarity and documentation in our drafts. Thank you to everyone who has shared your time and expertise to help prepare this new initiative. A essay describing the “why?” and the “how?” of this project is now on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/Essay Also now published on Meta are an extensive FAQ, operating principles, and technical documentation on MediaWiki.org. You can read these at [1] [2] and [3] respectively. Much of this documentation is already available in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The Wikimedia Enterprise team is particularly interested in your feedback on how we have designed the checks and balances to this project - to ensure it is as successful as possible at achieving those two goals described above while staying true to the movement’s values and culture. For example: Is everything covered appropriately in the “Principles” list? Is the technical documentation on MediaWiki.org clear? Are the explanations in the “FAQ” about free-access for community, or project’s legal structure, or the financial transparency (etc.) sufficiently detailed? Meet the team and Ask Us Anything: The central place to provide written feedback about the project in general is on the talkpage of the documentation on Meta at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Enterprise On this Friday (March 19) we will be hosting two “Office hours” conversations where anyone can come and give feedback or ask questions: - 13:00 UTC via Zoom at https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/95580273732 - 22:00 UTC via Zoom at https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/92565175760 (note: this is Saturday in Asia/Oceania) Other “office hours” meetings can be arranged on-request on a technical platform of your choosing; and we will organise more calls in the future. We will also be attending the next SWAN meetings (on March 21) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Wikimedia_Affiliates_Network, and also the next of the Wikimedia Clinics https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Clinics Moreover, we would be very happy to accept any invitation to attend an existing group call that would like to discuss this topic (e.g. an affiliate’s members’ meeting). On behalf of the Wikimedia Enterprise team, Peace, Love & Metadata -- Liam Wyatt [Wittylama], Wikimedia Enterprise project community liaison. [0] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recomme… [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/FAQ [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/Principles [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise *Liam Wyatt [Wittylama]* WikiCite <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCite> Program Manager & Wikimedia Enterprise <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Okapi> Community Liaison Wikimedia Foundation

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Wikimedia Taiwan’s statement on the office actions of the Wikimedia Foundation on Chinese Wikipedia
by ffaarr＠wikimedia.tw 26 Dec '22

26 Dec '22

On behalf of Wikimedia Taiwan, we would like to say that this is long overdue. For more than half a decade, good faith volunteers from Hong Kong, the Chinese mainland, and Taiwan have raised concerns about dangerous members of that organization, including in the Signpost(1) (repeatedly(2)). It is not the kind of threat that communities or even larger ones, like our wiki, can deal with entirely on their own. We have been having very exhausting years. Now there is some hope. But we have a lot of work ahead of us as a volunteer community, and we call upon the Foundation to meet its commitment of support as we do. We need to rebuild an inclusive wiki that welcomes everyone from all places who wants to contribute to Chinese language Wikipedia in good faith. Many people have felt very unsafe for years, so restoring a shared sense of comfort will likely take a long time. Doing this work is very important to get back to focusing on knowledge and Wikipedia’s five pillars that should unite our community. Yuan Chang, Chairman of Wikimedia Taiwan (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/In_fo… (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-07-25/Speci… 中文版本: 在此僅代表台灣維基媒體協會聲明，這個行動是遲來的努力。多年來，香港、中國大陸和台灣的用戶一再呼籲對該組織中的危險成員與行為的關切，包括但不僅止於之前於Signpost報導(1) (另一則報導(2))中所提及。這不是社群，或甚至整個中文維基，可以自行處理的威脅。這些年我們心力交瘁。現在的處置，讓我們覺得終於有了一些希望。但作為志願者組織，我們仍有很多工作要做，並希望基金會能大力支持。我們需要重建一個具有包容性的維基百科，歡迎來自所有地區，願意真誠貢獻中文知識的參與者。這幾年來，許多參與者感到不安，要恢復原本平和的氛圍，需要相當長時間的努力。這個工作非常重要，有助於我們把心力集中在知識，以及團結我們社群的維基百科的五大支柱上。台灣維基媒體協會理事長張遠 (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/In_fo… (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-07-25/Speci… Original Link of the statement: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Taiwan/Declaration/Wikimedia_Taiw…

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Luis Bitencourt-Emilio Joins Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
by Nataliia Tymkiv 13 Dec '22

13 Dec '22

Dear All, Please join me in welcoming Luis Bitencourt-Emilio to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Luis was unanimously appointed to a 3-year term and replaces a board-selected Trustee, Lisa Lewin, whose term ended in November 2021 [1]. Currently based in São Paulo, Luis is the Chief Technology Officer at Loft, a technology startup in the real-estate industry. He brings product and technology experience from a globally diverse career that has spanned large technology companies including Microsoft, online networking sites like Reddit, and a series of entrepreneurial technology ventures focused in the USA and Latin America. Luis has led product and technology teams across Latin America, the United States, Europe and Asia. He is passionately involved in building and promoting the entrepreneurial ecosystem for Latin American-based startups. Luis has more than two decades of experience across product development, software engineering, and data science. At Microsoft, he led engineering teams shipping multiple Microsoft Office products. At Reddit, he led the Knowledge Group, an engineering team that owned critical functions such as data, machine learning, abuse detection and search. He was deeply involved in Reddit’s growth stage and worked closely with Reddit’s communities in that evolution. Luis also co-founded a fintech startup to help millennials manage and automate their finances. His career has also been shaped by a visible commitment to recruiting diverse leaders. At Reddit, Luis was a key member of the recruitment efforts that achieved equal representation of women engineering directors. Luis says his proudest achievement at Microsoft was building their Brazilian talent pipeline by working closely with local universities to place thousands of engineering candidates at Microsoft, as well as his involvement in expanding global recruitment to markets including Ukraine, Poland, Great Britain, the EU and Mexico. Luis was educated in Brazil and the United States, receiving a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering with Honors from the University of Maryland. He is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish and English. He is also a proud father and dog lover. I would like to thank the Governance Committee, chaired by Dariusz Jemielniak, for this nomination process as well as volunteers in our Spanish and Portuguese speaking communities who also met with Luis or shared their experiences. You can find an official announcement here [2]. PS. You can help translate or find translations of this message on Meta-Wiki: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Janu… [1] Lisa Lewin served from January 2019 till November 2021: https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Renewing_Lisa_Lewin%E2%80%… [2] https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/01/12/luis-bitencourt-emilio-joins-wikimedi… Best regards, antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees *NOTICE: You may have received this message outside of your normal working hours/days, as I usually can work more as a volunteer during weekend. You should not feel obligated to answer it during your days off. Thank you in advance!*

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[Foundation-l] Improving search in Wikipedia through quality and concept discovery
by Brian J Mingus 10 Sep '22

10 Sep '22

This paper (first reference) is the result of a class project I was part of almost two years ago for CSCI 5417 Information Retrieval Systems. It builds on a class project I did in CSCI 5832 Natural Language Processing and which I presented at Wikimania '07. The project was very late as we didn't send the final paper in until the day before new years. This technical report was never really announced that I recall so I thought it would be interesting to look briefly at the results. The goal of this paper was to break articles down into surface features and latent features and then use those to study the rating system being used, predict article quality and rank results in a search engine. We used the [[random forests]] classifier which allowed us to analyze the contribution of each feature to performance by looking directly at the weights that were assigned. While the surface analysis was performed on the whole english wikipedia, the latent analysis was performed on the simple english wikipedia (it is more expensive to compute). = Surface features = * Readability measures are the single best predictor of quality that I have found, as defined by the Wikipedia Editorial Team (WET). The [[Automated Readability Index]], [[Gunning Fog Index]] and [[Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level]] were the strongest predictors, followed by length of article html, number of paragraphs, [[Flesh Reading Ease]], [[Smog Grading]], number of internal links, [[Laesbarhedsindex Readability Formula]], number of words and number of references. Weakly predictive were number of to be's, number of sentences, [[Coleman-Liau Index]], number of templates, PageRank, number of external links, number of relative links. Not predictive (overall - see the end of section 2 for the per-rating score breakdown): Number of h2 or h3's, number of conjunctions, number of images*, average word length, number of h4's, number of prepositions, number of pronouns, number of interlanguage links, average syllables per word, number of nominalizations, article age (based on page id), proportion of questions, average sentence length. :* Number of images was actually by far the single strongest predictor of any class, but only for Featured articles. Because it was so good at picking out featured articles and somewhat good at picking out A and G articles the classifier was confused in so many cases that the overall contribution of this feature to classification performance is zero. :* Number of external links is strongly predictive of Featured articles. :* The B class is highly distinctive. It has a strong "signature," with high predictive value assigned to many features. The Featured class is also very distinctive. F, B and S (Stop/Stub) contain the most information. :* A is the least distinct class, not being very different from F or G. = Latent features = The algorithm used for latent analysis, which is an analysis of the occurence of words in every document with respect to the link structure of the encyclopedia ("concepts"), is [[Latent Dirichlet Allocation]]. This part of the analysis was done by CS PhD student Praful Mangalath. An example of what can be done with the result of this analysis is that you provide a word (a search query) such as "hippie". You can then look at the weight of every article for the word hippie. You can pick the article with the largest weight, and then look at its link network. You can pick out the articles that this article links to and/or which link to this article that are also weighted strongly for the word hippie, while also contributing maximally to this articles "hippieness". We tried this query in our system (LDA), Google (site:en.wikipedia.org hippie), and the Simple English Wikipedia's Lucene search engine. The breakdown of articles occuring in the top ten search results for this word for those engines is: * LDA only: [[Acid rock]], [[Aldeburgh Festival]], [[Anne Murray]], [[Carl Radle]], [[Harry Nilsson]], [[Jack Kerouac]], [[Phil Spector]], [[Plastic Ono Band]], [[Rock and Roll]], [[Salvador Allende]], [[Smothers brothers]], [[Stanley Kubrick]]. * Google only: [[Glam Rock]], [[South Park]]. * Simple only: [[African Americans]], [[Charles Manson]], [[Counterculture]], [[Drug use]], [[Flower Power]], [[Nuclear weapons]], [[Phish]], [[Sexual liberation]], [[Summer of Love]] * LDA & Google & Simple: [[Hippie]], [[Human Be-in]], [[Students for a democratic society]], [[Woodstock festival]] * LDA & Google: [[Psychedelic Pop]] * Google & Simple: [[Lysergic acid diethylamide]], [[Summer of Love]] ( See the paper for the articles produced for the keywords philosophy and economics ) = Discussion / Conclusion = * The results of the latent analysis are totally up to your perception. But what is interesting is that the LDA features predict the WET ratings of quality just as well as the surface level features. Both feature sets (surface and latent) both pull out all almost of the information that the rating system bears. * The rating system devised by the WET is not distinctive. You can best tell the difference between, grouped together, Featured, A and Good articles vs B articles. Featured, A and Good articles are also quite distinctive (Figure 1). Note that in this study we didn't look at Start's and Stubs, but in earlier paper we did. :* This is interesting when compared to this recent entry on the YouTube blog. "Five Stars Dominate Ratings" http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.html… I think a sane, well researched (with actual subjects) rating system is well within the purview of the Usability Initiative. Helping people find and create good content is what Wikipedia is all about. Having a solid rating system allows you to reorganized the user interface, the Wikipedia namespace, and the main namespace around good content and bad content as needed. If you don't have a solid, information bearing rating system you don't know what good content really is (really bad content is easy to spot). :* My Wikimania talk was all about gathering data from people about articles and using that to train machines to automatically pick out good content. You ask people questions along dimensions that make sense to people, and give the machine access to other surface features (such as a statistical measure of readability, or length) and latent features (such as can be derived from document word occurence and encyclopedia link structure). I referenced page 262 of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to give an example of the kind of qualitative features I would ask people. It really depends on what features end up bearing information, to be tested in "the lab". Each word is an example dimension of quality: We have "*unity, vividness, authority, economy, sensitivity, clarity, emphasis, flow, suspense, brilliance, precision, proportion, depth and so on.*" You then use surface and latent features to predict these values for all articles. You can also say, when a person rates this article as high on the x scale, they also mean that it has has this much of these surface and these latent features. = References = - DeHoust, C., Mangalath, P., Mingus., B. (2008). *Improving search in Wikipedia through quality and concept discovery*. Technical Report. PDF<http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/6/68/DeHoustMangalat…> - Rassbach, L., Mingus., B, Blackford, T. (2007). *Exploring the feasibility of automatically rating online article quality*. Technical Report. PDF<http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/d/d3/RassbachPincock…>

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[Foundation-l] Fwd: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers
by GerardM 09 Aug '22

09 Aug '22

Hoi, I have asked and received permission to forward to you all this most excellent bit of news. The linguist list, is a most excellent resource for people interested in the field of linguistics. As I mentioned some time ago they have had a funding drive and in that funding drive they asked for a certain amount of money in a given amount of days and they would then have a project on Wikipedia to learn what needs doing to get better coverage for the field of linguistics. What you will read in this mail that the total community of linguists are asked to cooperate. I am really thrilled as it will also get us more linguists interested in what we do. My hope is that a fraction will be interested in the languages that they care for and help it become more relevant. As a member of the "language prevention committee", I love to get more knowledgeable people involved in our smaller projects. If it means that we get more requests for more projects we will really feel embarrassed with all the new projects we will have to approve because of the quality of the Incubator content and the quality of the linguistic arguments why we should approve yet another language :) NB Is this not a really clever way of raising money; give us this much in this time frame and we will then do this as a bonus... Thanks, GerardM ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: LINGUIST Network <linguist(a)linguistlist.org> Date: Jun 18, 2007 6:53 PM Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers To: LINGUIST(a)listserv.linguistlist.org LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831. Mon Jun 18 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875. Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar(a)linguistlist.org> Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry(a)linguistlist.org> Reviews: Laura Welcher, Rosetta Project <reviews(a)linguistlist.org> Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/ The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, and donations from subscribers and publishers. Editor for this issue: Ann Sawyer <sawyer(a)linguistlist.org> ================================================================ To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html ===========================Directory============================== 1) Date: 18-Jun-2007 From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org > Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers -------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:49:35 From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org > Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers Dear subscribers, As you may recall, one of our Fund Drive 2007 campaigns was called the "Wikipedia Update Vote." We asked our viewers to consider earmarking their donations to organize an update project on linguistics entries in the English-language Wikipedia. You can find more background information on this at: http://linguistlist.org/donation/fund-drive2007/wikipedia/index.cfm. The speed with which we met our goal, thanks to the interest and generosity of our readers, was a sure sign that the linguistics community was enthusiastic about the idea. Now that summer is upon us, and some of you may have a bit more leisure time, we are hoping that you will be able to help us get started on the Wikipedia project. The LINGUIST List's role in this project is a purely organizational one. We will: *Help, with your input, to identify major gaps in the Wikipedia materials or pages that need improvement; *Compile a list of linguistics pages that Wikipedia editors have identified as "in need of attention from an expert on the subject" or " does not cite any references or sources," etc; *Send out periodical calls for volunteer contributors on specific topics or articles; *Provide simple instructions on how to upload your entries into Wikipedia; *Keep track of our project Wikipedians; *Keep track of revisions and new entries; *Work with Wikimedia Foundation to publicize the linguistics community's efforts. We hope you are as enthusiastic about this effort as we are. Just to help us all get started looking at Wikipedia more critically, and to easily identify an area needing improvement, we suggest that you take a look at the List of Linguists page at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguists. M Many people are not listed there; others need to have more facts and information added. If you would like to participate in this exciting update effort, please respond by sending an email to LINGUIST Editor Hannah Morales at hannah(a)linguistlist.org, suggesting what your role might be or which linguistics entries you feel should be updated or added. Some linguists who saw our campaign on the Internet have already written us with specific suggestions, which we will share with you soon. This update project will take major time and effort on all our parts. The end result will be a much richer internet resource of information on the breadth and depth of the field of linguistics. Our efforts should also stimulate prospective students to consider studying linguistics and to educate a wider public on what we do. Please consider participating. Sincerely, Hannah Morales Editor, Wikipedia Update Project Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable ----------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831

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Form 990 clarification request (for the attention of WMF accounts staff)
by Andreas Kolbe 20 Jun '22

20 Jun '22

Dear WMF accounts staff, Could you kindly clarify whether the "Salaries, other compensation, employee benefits" figure in Part I, line 15 of the Form 990 relates solely to the 291 employees indicated in Part I, line 5, or whether it also includes salaries, compensation and benefits for the 82 contractors listed in Part V, line 1a of the Form 990. Thank you. Andreas

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Call for projects and mentors for Google Summer of Code 2022 and Outreachy Round 24 is ongoing!
by Srishti Sethi 22 Feb '22

22 Feb '22

Hello everyone, TLDR; Wikimedia will soon be applying as a mentoring organization to Google Summer of Code 2022 <https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com> [1] and Outreachy Round 24 <https://www.outreachy.org/> [2]. We are currently working on a list of interesting project ideas to include in the application. If you have some ideas for coding or non-coding (design, documentation, translation, outreach, research) projects, share them here: < https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T299453> [3]. *Timeline* As a mentor, you will engage potential candidates in the application period for both programs between March and April. You will help candidates make small contributions to your project and answer any project-related queries during this time. You will work more closely with the accepted candidates during the coding period between May and August. *New changes are coming to GSoC* GSoC has exciting changes this year, including: * Eligibility criteria redefined–the program is now open to all open-source newcomers 18 years and older. It will no longer be solely focused on university students or recent graduates. * Multiple sizes of projects supported–ranging from ~175 to ~350 hr long. * Increased flexibility in project timing–project deadline can be extended to up to 22 weeks. *Tips for proposing projects* * Follow this task description template when you propose a project in Phabricator: < https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/outreach-programs-projects> [4]. Add #Google- Summer-of-Code (2022) or #Outreachy (Round 24) tag. * Project should require an experienced developer ~15 days and a newcomer ~3 months to complete. * Each project should have at least two mentors, and one of them should hold a technical background. * Ideally, the project has no tight deadlines, a moderate learning curve, and fewer dependencies on Wikimedia's core infrastructure. Projects addressing the needs of a language community are most welcome! * If you don't have an idea in mind and would like to pick one from an existing list, check out these projects: < https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/outreach-programs-projects/> [4] * To learn more about the roles and responsibilities of mentors, visit our resources on MediaWiki.org: < https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Outreachy/Mentors> [5], < https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code/Mentors> [6]. Cheers, Srishti [1] https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com [2] https://www.outreachy.org/ [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T299453 [4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/outreach-programs-projects/ [5] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Outreachy/Mentors [6] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code/Mentors *Srishti Sethi* Senior Developer Advocate Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

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Board statement endorsing community voting on the enforcement guidelines for Universal code of Conduct (UCoC)
by Shani Evenstein 22 Feb '22

22 Feb '22

Hello everyone, (This statement is available on Meta-Wiki for translation and wider distribution) Today, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees published a statement <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Janu…> supporting a community vote on the proposed enforcement guidelines <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Enforcement_guide…> for the Universal Code of Conduct <https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct> (UCoC). One of the key recommendations <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recomme…>of the strategic goals for 2030 was the collaborative creation of a UCoC to provide a global baseline of acceptable behavior for the entire movement without tolerance for harassment. The global Wikimedia community must work well together in producing knowledge resources for the benefit of the world. Forging welcoming, inclusive, harassment-free spaces in which people can contribute productively and debate constructively is critical for the movement’s success. The Board continues to stand by its May 2020 statement <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/May_…> on “Healthy Community Culture, Inclusivity, and Safe Spaces” that, “harassment, toxic behavior, and incivility in the Wikimedia movement are contrary to our shared values and detrimental to our vision & mission” and to our joint strategic goals <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recomme…> for 2030. The ratification of the collaboratively created UCoC last year was a notable milestone, and hopefully the discussion on the ratification process for the collaboratively created enforcement guidelines proposal today will lead to another one. The enforcement guidelines proposal is a major achievement of thoughtful co-creation for the global communities that took part in the months of consultations, the volunteers leading the drafting committee itself, and the Foundation. The Board is very grateful to the volunteers and staff members who collaboratively co-created first the UCoC itself that the trustees ratified last year, and now the enforcement guideline proposal. While the UCoC is already in effect, the completion and ratification of the guidelines will allow everyone to begin a period of assessing how they function, in action. We should collectively discover where both the original document and the pathways to enforce it work well and where they need to be improved. Once the guidelines are adopted, communities and the Foundation will begin to collect information on how they are working for the subsequent review of both after a year. The Board strongly supports the proposal made by the joint letter of Arbitration Committees <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_from_Arbcoms_to_the_Board_of_Tr…> for community voting on the enforcement guidelines proposal prior to the Board’s own ratification of the final guidelines. Trustees also recognize the support of such a vote expressed by surveyed volunteer functionaries, affiliate members, and the drafting committee. Based on their input, and aligned with processes used for the Wikimedia Foundation Board Elections, all registered Wikimedia contributors who meet minimum activity requirements, affiliate and Foundation staff and contractors (employed prior to 1/17/22), and current and former Foundation trustees, will have the opportunity to vote on the enforcement guidelines proposal in SecurePoll. A threshold of above 50% support of participating users will be needed to move on to Board of Trustees ratification. If the majority of voters oppose the adoption of the guidelines as written, they will be asked which elements need to be changed and why. This would allow for another round of edits to address community concerns prior to another vote, if needed. Both the UCoC and the enforcement guidelines (after ratified), will also be open for review and voter-endorsed amendments annually. The Board asks every member of the Wikimedia communities to continue creating a safe and welcoming culture that stops hostile and toxic behavior, supports people targeted by such behavior, and assists good-faith people. The Board believes these enforcement guidelines, once finalized, will be an important step in encouraging productive work on the Wikimedia projects. The Board hopes that you will step in to review and provide your feedback and thoughts in the vote, so that the ratification process can start with a strong preliminary approach. On behalf of the Board, Shani Evenstein Sigalov Vice Chair, Board of Trustees. Chair, Community Affairs Committee. Shani Evenstein Sigalov <https://wikimediafoundation.org/profile/shani-evenstein-sigalov/> Vice Chair, Board of Trustees Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

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Next Conversation with the Trustees on 17 February
by Shani Evenstein 16 Feb '22

16 Feb '22

Hello everyone, ( Read this message in other languages on Meta <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Com…>: ‎العربية • deutsch • español • français • Русский • 中文) You are invited to join our next *Conversation with the Trustees* on *17 February at 18:30 UTC* (check your local time <https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1645122658>). The event is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation’s Board of Trustees’ Community Affairs Committee (CAC) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Com…>. The Board of Trustees is a volunteer body of movement leaders and external experts in charge of guiding the Wikimedia Foundation and ensuring its accountability. This forum is an opportunity for the community to directly engage with Trustees and talk openly about our work. We will be hosting this conversation on Zoom with a live YouTube stream <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCU7aObkG84>. The call will be 90 minutes: a 10 minute introduction, then a 20 minute update from Trustees and Wikimedia Foundation staff, and the remaining time dedicated to open Q&A and conversation. We want to make these calls interactive, so we encourage as many of you as possible to join us directly in Zoom. All community members in good standing will be able to join us there.* Request the Zoom link by emailing askcac(a)wikimedia.org <askcac(a)wikimedia.org>*. If you would like to be added to a list to receive emails with Zoom links for these calls in the future, please indicate that in your email. We will work to provide interpretation for languages with five or more interested community members. *To request interpretation, please email askcac(a)wikimedia.org <askcac(a)wikimedia.org>. *You can do this up until 5 days before the meeting to allow us to make the necessary arrangements. Closer to the date we will send out a *reminder with more information about the agenda*, but for now please *save the date and register* for the Zoom room! A final note -- in our last meeting (October 2021), we shared that we plan to meet again on December 2021. This meeting was pushed to Jan, and then Feb, in order to allow for more of the Trustees and Foundation leadership to join, including our new CEO. We have made necessary arrangements so that this year we will be able to meet the community more regularly (every other month). You will find the planned dates of future meetings throughout the year <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Comm…> on Meta, so you can hopefully "save the date" in advance. Hoping to see as many of you as possible, Shani (on behalf of the CAC). Shani Evenstein Sigalov <https://wikimediafoundation.org/profile/shani-evenstein-sigalov/> Vice Chair, Board of Trustees Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

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Wikimedia-l January 2022