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…>
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
Hi folks,
to increase accountability and create more opportunities for course
corrections and resourcing adjustments as necessary, Sue's asked me
and Howie Fung to set up a quarterly project evaluation process,
starting with our highest priority initiatives. These are, according
to Sue's narrowing focus recommendations which were approved by the
Board [1]:
- Visual Editor
- Mobile (mobile contributions + Wikipedia Zero)
- Editor Engagement (also known as the E2 and E3 teams)
- Funds Dissemination Committe and expanded grant-making capacity
I'm proposing the following initial schedule:
January:
- Editor Engagement Experiments
February:
- Visual Editor
- Mobile (Contribs + Zero)
March:
- Editor Engagement Features (Echo, Flow projects)
- Funds Dissemination Committee
We’ll try doing this on the same day or adjacent to the monthly
metrics meetings [2], since the team(s) will give a presentation on
their recent progress, which will help set some context that would
otherwise need to be covered in the quarterly review itself. This will
also create open opportunities for feedback and questions.
My goal is to do this in a manner where even though the quarterly
review meetings themselves are internal, the outcomes are captured as
meeting minutes and shared publicly, which is why I'm starting this
discussion on a public list as well. I've created a wiki page here
which we can use to discuss the concept further:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_r…
The internal review will, at minimum, include:
Sue Gardner
myself
Howie Fung
Team members and relevant director(s)
Designated minute-taker
So for example, for Visual Editor, the review team would be the Visual
Editor / Parsoid teams, Sue, me, Howie, Terry, and a minute-taker.
I imagine the structure of the review roughly as follows, with a
duration of about 2 1/2 hours divided into 25-30 minute blocks:
- Brief team intro and recap of team's activities through the quarter,
compared with goals
- Drill into goals and targets: Did we achieve what we said we would?
- Review of challenges, blockers and successes
- Discussion of proposed changes (e.g. resourcing, targets) and other
action items
- Buffer time, debriefing
Once again, the primary purpose of these reviews is to create improved
structures for internal accountability, escalation points in cases
where serious changes are necessary, and transparency to the world.
In addition to these priority initiatives, my recommendation would be
to conduct quarterly reviews for any activity that requires more than
a set amount of resources (people/dollars). These additional reviews
may however be conducted in a more lightweight manner and internally
to the departments. We’re slowly getting into that habit in
engineering.
As we pilot this process, the format of the high priority reviews can
help inform and support reviews across the organization.
Feedback and questions are appreciated.
All best,
Erik
[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Narrowing_Focus
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
FYI
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 5:38 PM
Subject: [Tech/Product] Engineering/Product org structure
To: Staff All <wmfall(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hi folks,
consistent with Sue's narrowing focus mandate, I’ve been thinking &
talking the last few weeks a fair bit with a bunch of different people
about the future organizational structure of the engineering/product
department. Long story short, if we want to scale the dept, and take
seriously our identity as a tech org (as stated by Sue), it’s my view
that we need to split the current department into an engineering dept
and a product dept in about 6-8 months.
To avoid fear and anxiety, and to make sure the plan makes sense, I
want to start an open conversation now. If you think any of the below
is a terrible idea, or have suggestions on how to improve the plan,
I’d love to hear from you. I’ll make myself personally available to
anyone who wants to talk more about it. (I'm traveling a bit starting
tomorrow, but will be available via email during that time.) We can
also discuss it at coming tech lunches and such.
There’s also nothing private here, so I’m forwarding this note to
wikitech-l@ and wikimedia-l@ as well. That said, there’s no urgency in
this note, so feel free to set it aside for later.
Here’s why I’m recommending to Sue that we create distinct engineering
and product departments:
- It’ll give product development and the user experience more
visibility at the senior mgmt level, which means we’ll have more
conversations at that level about the work that most of the
organization actually does. Right now, a single dept of ~70 people is
represented by 1 person across both engineering and product functions
- me. That was fine when it was half the size. Right now it’s out of
whack.
- It’ll give us the ability to add Director-level leadership functions
as appropriate without making my head explode.
- I believe that separating the two functions is consistent with Sue’s
recommendation to narrow our focus and develop our identity as an
engineering organization. It will allow for more sustained effort in
managing product priorities and greater advocacy for core platform
issues (APIs, site performance, search, ops improvements, etc.) that
are less visible than our feature priorities.
A split dept structure wouldn’t affect the way we assemble teams --
we’d still pull from required functions (devs, product, UI/UX, etc.),
and teams would continue to pursue their objectives fairly
autonomously.
It’s not all roses -- we might see more conflict between the two
functions, more us vs. them thinking, and more communications
breakdowns or forum shopping. But net I think the positives would
outweigh the negatives, and there are ways to mitigate against the
negatives.
The way we’d get there:
I’m prepared to resign from my engineering management responsibilities
and to focus solely on my remaining role as VP of Product, as soon as
a successor for VP of Engineering has been identified. We would start
that hiring process probably in early 2013. I’m recommending to Sue
that we seriously consider internal candidates for the VP of
Engineering role, as we have a strong engineering management team in
place today.
So realistically we'd probably identify that person towards the end of
the fiscal year.
Obviously I can’t make any promises to you that in that brave new
world, you’ll love whoever gets hired into the VP of Engineering role,
so there’s some unavoidable uncertainty there. I’ll support Sue in the
search, though, and I’m sure she’d appreciate feedback from you on the
kind of person who you think would be ideal for the job.
The VP of Product role would encompass a combination of functions.
Howie and I would work with the department to figure out what makes
sense as an internal structure. My opening view is that Analytics and
User Experience are potential areas that may benefit from dedicated
Director-level support roles. (Analytics is tricky because it includes
a strong engineering piece, but also a research/analyst piece working
closely with product.) The new structure would therefore be as
follows:
* VP of Engineering -> Directors of Engineering
* VP of Product -> Director of Product Development, plus new
Director-level functions (we've discussed UX/Design as a likely new
leadership function, and Analytics as a _potential_ area to centralize
here because it works so closely with product)
Why Product? I’m happy to help the org in whatever way I can; I
believe I’d be most useful to it in focusing there and helping build
this relatively new organizational function. Based on my past
experience, Howie & I make a great team. I know how engineering
operates, which could help mitigate against some of the aforementioned
issues. Plus, our product priorities generally already reflect lots of
thought and consideration, and we have no intent of reopening
questions like "Is Visual Editor the top product priority".
I look forward to hearing your thoughts & discussing this further in
coming weeks.
All best,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 10:30 AM, Siko Bouterse <sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org>wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 11:42 PM,
> <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org<wikimedia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> > wrote:
>
> >
> > > Anasuya will be responsible for running all grantmaking processes (for
> > > both individuals and entities) and for helping movement entities, like
> > > chapters and thematic organizations, to develop and mature. Reporting
> > > to Anasuya will be Asaf Bartov, Jessie Wild, Oona Castro and Siko
> > > Bouterse, as well as a Senior Program Officer for the FDC (a new
> > > position that will be filled within the next month or so).
> > > * The Senior Program Officer will be responsible for facilitating the
> > > FDC process, which recommends funding allocations for the largest and
> > > wealthiest Wikimedia organizations such as Wikimedia Germany and
> > > Wikimedia France.
> > > * Asaf continues to be responsible for the Wikimedia Grants Program,
> > > supporting younger, smaller Wikimedia organizations like Wikimedia
> > > Venezuela and Wikimedia Mexico, and for finding non-Wikimedia
> > > organizations that we can fund to carry out good programmatic
> > > activities in developing countries, particularly where there are no
> > > chapters.
> > > * Jessie will be responsible for evaluation and learning for all our
> > > grantmaking --- both helping us internally optimize our processes, and
> > > helping us and the grant recipients assess organizations? development
> > > (for Anasuya) and the impact of the programs funded by movement
> > > dollars (for Frank).
> > > * Oona will continue to run the Brazil program. Consistent with the
> > > Narrowing Focus plan, she is actively seeking a partner to continue
> > > the work in Brazil within a grants structure similar to the one we
> > > recently negotiated with CIS in India.
> > > * Siko is taking over responsibility from Asaf for all funding for
> > > individuals. This will make it possible for us to grow our individual
> > > grant-making, and it will also free up Asaf to do more small
> > > organization development. Siko will also be responsible for
> > > documentation and analysis of all grants except the ones funded by the
> > > FDC. It?s important for us to grow grantmaking to individuals because
> > > individuals create 99% of the value in the projects. They do it with
> > > practically no funding, but in some cases a little money will be able
> > > to make something great happen.
> >
>
> Hi all,
> As Sue mentioned, we're looking at growing WMF's grant-making to
> individuals. This allows us to accomplish the goals of narrowing focus (on
> WMF's capacity as grant-makers, in this case), while finding new ways to
> support projects led by individual community members. Some more specifics
> are on meta:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Individual_Engagement_Grants
> Please share your thoughts on-wiki if possible.
> Thanks!
--
> Siko Bouterse
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>
>
Likewise, we're starting to put up some initial thinking regarding Learning
& Evaluation for Grantmaking & Evaluation!
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grantmaking_and_Programs/Learning_%26_Evalu…
Feel free to jump in on-wiki as it is being developed; definitely work in
progress :)
Jessie
--
*Jessie Wild*
*Wikimedia Foundation*
*
*
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
Donate to Wikimedia <https://donate.wikimedia.org/>
Hello!
I'll be doing an open office hours on IRC at #wikimedia-office on January
28th. I'll talk about my first full year at WMF, and answer any questions
to the degree that I'm able to about current HR practices and where I see
the trajectory of needs for the coming year. I'm looking forward to meeting
and chatting with people!
Date: Monday, January 28
Time: 1000 PT/1800UTC
In the meantime, I wish you all a very happy holiday season and a great
start to 2013. :) Live long and prosper.
Warm regards,
Gayle
--
Gayle Karen K. Young
Chief Talent and Culture Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
p. 415.839.6885 x6691
c. 415.310.8416
www.wikimediafoundation.org
I read the official blog [1] about it, but it doesn't have rationale.
And I am too lazy to analyze it.
So, may someone give us the reasons why this fundraising finished so quickly.
I have to say that I'm very positively surprised by this fact, as I
was much more pessimistic in relation to the future fundraising.
The main question -- which could be just guessed if we have accurate
rationale for this fundraising record -- is how sustainable is the
growth (or even the stagnation with this amount of money)?
In relation to the question above, I'd be much more happy to hear that
this is the product of staff's work, than the product of some global
social changes. Although it would be great if the world is changing so
quickly, it's much more unpredictable variable than work inside of the
organization.
[1] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/12/27/wikimedia-foundation-raises-25-million…
Hello,
in the last few months and years the Uzbek Wikipedia has shown promising
growth, and it is turning into a potentially relevant source of knowledge
for the Uzbek people.
But due to a technical 'glitch', access to the Uzbek Wikipedia in
Uzbekistan via the HTTP protocol is for some reason redirected to msn.com.
The same is not true for the HTTPS protocol, and also for all other
language editions.
The glitch is not with the WMF infrastructure, but with providers in
Uzbekistan.
Requests by community members to the providers and official agencies have
been met only with silence, there is no official statement or recognition
about this.
We discussed both with search engine providers and Wikimedia developers if
there is a way to resolve this issue, and there is: by making the HTTPS
version of the Uzbek Wikipedia canonical the search engines would list the
HTTPS version in the search results, thus circumventing the glitch. As far
as I understood the technical folks at Wikimedia this can be done with a
small amount of effort.
Using HTTPS would have the additional advantage of a higher level of
anonymity and privacy of Wikipedia editors from inside Uzbekistan.
There is a risk with that, though: it could be that the glitch will
suddenly extend to HTTPS too, and this would cover all language editions of
Wikipedia, not only the Uzbek one. This would raise the issue to more
visibility too, and one could hope that it would get resolved then. But
just to make it obvious: the action proposed here could escalate the issue.
It could resolve it, but this is not necessarily the case.
There have been some discussions within the Uzbek Wikipedia community, and
as far as I can tell there is consensus that the step suggested here should
be taken, but there is no visible account of this consensus that I can link
to, and that is probably to the better for those involved. The Foundation
asked to have this discussion on this mailing list, and to reach a decision
here about this step.
The question this list would need to find agreement on is: should the Uzbek
Wikipedia be set up in a way that makes access via the HTTPS protocol the
canonical one?
For Uzbeks at home it is not possible to access Wikipedia in their native
language. Whereas in the big cities that is not so much of an issue, as
most people speak Russian, this is decreasingly true for the towns and
villages of the country. I think it is fair to say that it is part of our
mission as the Wikimedia movement to provide these people with access to
the sum of human knowledge too.
Warmest regards.
P.S.: Yes, this is a sock puppet mail account, as I prefer my name not be
widely visibly associated with this measure due to private reasons. For the
same reasons I might have slipped in an euphemism or two in this mail.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 6:49 PM
Subject: Wikimedia/mapping event in Europe early next year?
To: maps-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Hi folks,
it's been a long time coming, but we're finally gearing up for putting
some development effort into an OSM tileservice running in production
to serve Wikimedia sites. This is being driven by the mobile team but
obviously has lots of non-mobile use cases as well, including the
recent Wikivoyage addition to the Wikimedia familiy. This work will
probably not kick off before January/February 2013; before then, the
mobile team is working to finish up the GeoData extension (
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Geodata ).
To get broader community involvement and sync up with existing
volunteer efforts in this area, it'd IMO be useful to plan a
face-to-face meetup/hackfest just focused on geodata/mapping related
development work sometime around Feb/March 2013.
WMF is not going to organize this, but we can help sponsor travel and
bring the key developers from our side who will work on this. Are
there any takers for supporting a 20-30 people development event in
Europe focused on mapping/geodata? I'm suggesting Europe because I
know quite a few of the relevant folks are there, but am open to other
options as well.
Cheers,
Erik
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Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
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Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
SJ,
I have been looking for the commitment you mentioned in Board and
related records, but I can not find it:
> We have committed to ending the active banner-driven fundraising once we meet our targets.
Does that commitment take precedence over the unanimous resolution of
the board of 9 October 2010 that Nemo pointed out at
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Wikimedia_fundraising_princ…
which directs the Executive Director to "implement ... 1) Maximizing
public support: Fundraising activities in the Wikimedia movement
should generally be directed at achieving the highest possible overall
financial support for the Wikimedia movement, in terms of both
financial totals and the number of individuals making
contributions...."? If so, could you please share the background and
Board deliberation records pertaining to it? I am concerned that the
Foundation is bowing to the wishes of op-ed critiques in the press to
the exclusion of the Board's unanimous resolutions.
Again, I would not be so concerned if it were not for the evidence of
the deception regarding measured fundraising message effectiveness,
the nearly two million dollars in missing reserve funds, the sharply
widening ratio between executive and junior staff pay, the high staff
turnover, late vital projects, insufficient staff for the Education
Program, employee dissatisfaction and below par compensation reported
on Glassdoor.com, lack of a meaningfully wide call for community
consultation or reasonable numbers of community members commenting on
the recent "narrowing focus" changes, and lack of telepresence options
for Wikimania attendees. Many of these issues dwarf the ignominious
events of the Foundation's past, so I hope you, the other trustees,
and the Foundation leadership will address all of them swiftly.
Sincerely,
James Salsman