Hi all,
Once again we celebrate an exceptional Wikimedian, this time - an admin, a
contributor, a person with many roles in Wikimedia projects.
Salicyna <https://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikiskryba:Salicyna>knows the
struggle of lacking access to knowledge all too well. Growing up in rural
Poland, she was a passionate reader with no access to well-stocked
libraries and cultural institutions. This was still in the pre-Internet
times, and her family, struggling financially, couldn't provide the
resources she yearned for. "I remember this unsatisfied hunger for
knowledge as stronger and more severe than the physical hunger," she
reflects. “Sadly”, she says “millions still face this very knowledge hunger
today, restricted by geographical location, poverty, disabilities, or
illness”. Salicyna sees Wikimedia projects, with their free access to
knowledge and culture, as a powerful tool to help alleviate this yearning,
at least partially.
Driven by a desire to offer others what she lacked as a child, Salicyna has
become a prolific contributor to the Wikimedia movement, boasting over
680,000 contributions across various projects. She wears many hats: a
Wikisource admin, an author of well-regarded medical articles on Wikipedia,
a Wikibooks contributor, and a passionate photographer on Wikimedia
Commons, specializing in roses and seedlings.
Today we WikiCelebrate
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/WikiCelebrate> her
contributions to the Wikimedia Movement!
Learn more about her Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource contributions and her
story on Diff blog
<https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/03/12/roses-are-red-salicyna-makes-their-li…>
(available in English, French, Polish, Spanish) or Meta
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/WikiCelebrate/Salicyna>
(where you can also congratulate Salicyna!).
Each month we WikiCelebrate a different Wikimedian, acknowledging the
amazing community, the pillars of our movement. We warmly invite you to
participate in the celebrations. If there’s an outstanding Wikimedian that
you think should be celebrated, recommend them
<https://wikimediafoundation.limesurvey.net/WikiCelebrate>.
Happy celebrating!
--
*Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska* (she/her)
Senior Global Movement Communications Specialist (European Region)
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Dear all,
(This message is also available in Arabic, French, Igbo, and more here<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2024/Announc…>)
This year, the term of 4 (four) Community- and Affiliate-selected Trustees on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees will come to an end [1]. The Board invites the whole movement to participate in this year’s selection process and vote to fill those seats.
The Elections Committee<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_ele…> will oversee this process with support from Foundation staff [2]. The Governance Committee created a Board Selection Working Group from trustees who cannot be candidates in the 2024 community- and affiliate-selected trustee selection process composed of Dariusz Jemielniak, Nataliia Tymkiv, Esra'a Al Shafei, Kathy Collins, and Shani Evenstein Sigalov [3]. The group is tasked with providing Board oversight for the 2024 trustee selection process, and for keeping the Board informed. More details on the roles of the Elections Committee, Board, and staff are here [4].
Here are the key planned dates:
* May 2024: Call for candidates and call for questions
* June 2024: Affiliates vote to shortlist 12 candidates (no shortlisting if 15 or fewer candidates apply) [5]
* June-August 2024: Campaign period
* End of August / beginning of September 2024: Two-week community voting period
* October–November 2024: Background check of selected candidates
* Board’s Meeting in December 2024: New trustees seated
Learn more about the 2024 selection process - including the detailed timeline, the candidacy process, the campaign rules, and the voter eligibility criteria - on this Meta-wiki page<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2024>.
Election Volunteers
Another way to be involved with the 2024 selection process is to be an Election Volunteer. Election Volunteers are a bridge between the Elections Committee and their respective community. They help ensure their community is represented and mobilize them to vote. Learn more about the program and how to join on this Meta-wiki page<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2024/Electio…>.
Thank you!
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021/Results…
[2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Committee:Elections_Committee_Charter
[3] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Minutes:2023-08-15#Governance_Committ…
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee/Ro…
[5] Even though the ideal number is 12 candidates for 4 open seats, the shortlisting process will be triggered if there are more than 15 candidates because the 1–3 candidates that are removed might feel ostracized, and it would be a lot of work for affiliates to carry out the shortlisting process to only eliminate 1–3 candidates from the candidate list.
Best regards,
Dariusz Jemielniak
Governance Committee Chair
Board Selection Working Group
Hi Everyone,
The WikiForHumanRights 2024 new theme *‘’Knowledge for a Sustainable
Future’’* presents an opportunity for us to organize around new topics for
impact that are relevant for a sustainable future. We want to empower
organizers and participants to be able to identify such topics that are
relevant in their context and important for the future.
*This is why we are excited to invite you to register for the topic
identification workshop
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:WikiForHumanRights_2024_Topic_Identif…>
happening
on 15 March 2024 at 15:00 UTC. You will find the workshop useful if you are
a regional coordinator, local organizer, campaign participant or even
someone seeking to learn how to identify relevant topics for campaign
organizing. *
We look forward to connecting and learning with you.
Best regards,
Euphemia
Wikimedia,
Hello. I am one of those proposing and supporting the Wikianswers<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikianswers> project proposal<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikianswers> and am excited, today, to share a new blog article about Multiagent Question-answering Systems: http://www.phoster.com/articles/multiagent-question-answering-systems/ .
The key ideas in the new article include:
1.
ideologically diverse teams of AI agents could be coordinated by manager, facilitator, or moderator agents to generate encyclopedic answers to end-users' complex questions,
2.
ideologically diverse teams of AI agents could collaborate on encyclopedic document outputs,
3.
humans could interact with teams of AI agents in accompanying spaces, e.g., structured discussion<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:StructuredDiscussions> forums, and these interactions could potentially result in automatic updates to encyclopedic contents,
4.
humans could also manually edit encyclopedic answers and teams of AI agents could learn in this way.
Any feedback, questions, or comments about these topics are welcomed! Thank you.
Best regards,
Adam Sobieski
In the past days, a new Wikipedia contributor edited Wikipedia and made a
great contribution, except... This user added zero sources, and the article
in what the edit was made was about a living person. So the verifiability
is a problem and in conflict with the policy Biographies of living persons.
This was just one example of thousands that have to be dealt with every day
in Wikimedia. And every day the community tries to maintain the quality of
Wikipedia and has to deal with this kind of edits.
I asked myself the question: why did this new contributor not add any
sources?
I logged out, went to an article and clicked edit. Made some modifications
(in the Visual Editor), and then clicked Publish changes. In the steps I
took to edit the article, I got nowhere a message that Wikipedia wants to
have sources for the information I added. Nowhere!
I hope that every experienced user by now understands the importance of
adding sources. But we cannot expect from new contributors to already know
this. They need to be informed that adding sources is needed. They do not
go first read the manual of Wikipedia with all the help and project pages,
they just start editing right away. They think, link in many other
platforms, that if they do something wrong, they get a message while
editing/uploading/etc.
For some strange reason, if you edit Wikipedia, you get no notification at
all that you need to add sources, even while this is one of the most
important pillars of Wikipedia. The result is that a lot of work of these
new contributors gets lost, because the information is removed from the
articles because of a lack of sources. If those new users would have got a
message in the Visual Editor during the editing, a lot more contributions
would be able to stay in Wikipedia, less new contributors would get
demotivated, and it would reduce the workload of existing users who do the
maintenance every day.
As with the influx of edits without sources nothing is done, the Dutch
expression "mopping with the tap open" (Dutch: dweilen met de kraan open)
applies here.
Romaine
Hello everyone,
Have you ever wanted to get involved with Wikidata but you were not sure
where to start? Do you feel like you know the basics of editing, but you
lack experience on a few useful tools (QuickStatements, Mix’n’Match,
gadgets, infoboxes…)? Then the Wikidata Leveling Up Days are made for you!
The Wikidata Leveling Up Days
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Events/Leveling_Up_Days_2024> are a
series of online events and a collection of useful contents to help people
get on board with Wikidata. The events will take place from April 5th to
7th and from April 12th to 14th, and will include a wide variety of
presentations, workshops and discussions covering the basics of Wikidata:
get started, browse and query Wikidata, enhance your editing experience,
ensure data quality, and connect Wikidata with sister projects.
The event will give the occasion to both new and seasoned editors to get
together and exchange ideas and tips. Some sessions are already planned in
the schedule, but the program is open: community trainers and organizers
are welcome to schedule their own self-organized sessions, at the time that
suits them best, and in the language that would be accessible to their
peers. If you’re interested in scheduling your own session, you’ll find
guidance on this page
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Events/Leveling_Up_Days_2024/Get_inv…>
.
The Leveling Up Days are also a collection of introduction videos, recorded
in advance with experienced Wikidata editors, that will soon be available
online. We will make sure that the videos are available ahead of the event,
so people can watch them at their own pace. The videos will include
translatable captions, so you will be able to help us make this useful
content accessible to a wide range of Wikidata newcomers.
The online event is open to everyone without registration, but if you’re
interested in attending, feel free to sign up here
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Events/Leveling_Up_Days_2024/Partici…>.
You can also join our help desk channel
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Events/Leveling_Up_Days_2024/Help_de…>
where we will have Q&A sessions.
And last but not least: please help us reach out to people who may be
interested in learning more about Wikidata: feel free to share or transfer
this message to the channels, mailing-lists and groups where it could be
relevant.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me.
See you around at the Leveling Up Days!
Best,
--
Léa Lacroix
Community Engagement & Events Consultant
Contractor for Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Hello friends
The opportunity of Women Rights Month lead me to remind everyone of the
existence of the Gender Gap portal on meta.
You may find there
* knowledge, research, data, reports about the gender gap to better
grasp the context
* Learn about the different groups active in this space and some of the
initiatives
* Read the latest news and the activities planned in March
And just as in any wiki page... {{bebold}} in updating them. And
remember that attention to the topic can happen 12 months/12 (not in
March only)
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_gap
Thanks
Anthere