Hello, fellow Wikimedians,
We are pleased to share this update with you, regarding the Wiki Indaba
2024 conference <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiIndaba_conference_2024>
which will take place in Johannesburg, South Africa from 4th-6th October
2024.
The organizing team would like to inform you that to ensure adequate
preparation, particularly regarding visa applications, the call for
scholarship applications is now open. Through this form
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13Mu25R0yp4QpFauCKlns138l3408DOUi1vKDL3pf-2Q>
(available in Arabic, French, and English), all interested candidates can
apply for a scholarship to join the conference. The international
scholarships will cover air tickets, ground travel, accommodation and
catering, and Visa fees for Active African Wikimedians in Africa and the
Diaspora and other mission-aligned institutions in the Open knowledge
movement.
There will also be other scholarships for participants based in South
Africa, to enable local Wikimedians to join this conference.
The scholarship application is open until May 15, 2024.
Regards,
The Wiki Indaba 2024 Organizing Team
*French*
Bonjour chers amis Wikimédiens,
Nous sommes heureux de partager avec vous cette mise à jour concernant la
conférence Wiki Indaba 2024
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiIndaba_conference_2024> qui aura lieu
à Johannesburg, en Afrique du Sud, du 4 au 6 octobre 2024.
L'équipe organisatrice tient à vous informer que l'appel à participation
pour les demandes de bourse est désormais ouvert, afin d’assurer une bonne
préparation, notamment en ce qui concerne les demandes de visa. À travers ce
formulaire
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13Mu25R0yp4QpFauCKlns138l3408DOUi1vKDL3pf-2Q>
(disponible en arabe, français et anglais), tous les candidats intéressés
peuvent demander une bourse pour rejoindre la conférence. Les bourses
internationales couvriront les billets d’avion, les déplacements
terrestres, l'hébergement et la restauration, ainsi que les frais de visa
pour les Wikimédiens africains actifs au sein du continent et dans la
diaspora, ou membres d'autres institutions alignées sur la mission du
mouvement du savoir ouvert. Il y aura également d’autres bourses pour les
participants sud-africains, afin de permettre aux Wikimédiens locaux de se
joindre à cette conférence.
Les demandes de bourse seront ouvertes jusqu'au 15 mai 2024.
Cordialement,
L'équipe d'organisation du Wiki Indaba 2024
*Arabic*
الأعزاء الويكيميديون،
يسعدنا مشاركة هذا التحديث معكم، بخصوص مؤتمر ويكي إندابا 2024
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiIndaba_conference_2024>، المزمع عقده
في مدينة
<https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A3%D9%83%D8%A7%D8%AF%D9%8A%D8%B1>جوهانسبرغ
بجنوب إفريقيا، في الفترة ما بين 4 إلى 6 أكتوبر 2024.
يود فريق التنظيم إبلاغكم بأنه في إطار التحضير الاستباقي للمؤتمر، لا سيما
طلبات التأشيرة، قد تم فتح باب تقديم طلبات المنح. يمكن لجميع المرشحين
المهتمين التقدم بطلب للحصول على منحة للانضمام إلى المؤتمر عبر هذه الاستمارة
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13Mu25R0yp4QpFauCKlns138l3408DOUi1vKDL3pf-2Q>
(متوفرة باللغات العربية والفرنسية والإنجليزية) . تشمل المنح الدولية تذاكر
الطيران والسفر المحلي والإقامة والمطاعم ورسوم التأشيرة للويكيميديين
الأفارقة الناشطين داخل القارة وخارجها، والمؤسسات الأخرى المتوافقة مع المهام
في حركة المعرفة المفتوحة. سيمنح المؤتمر أيضا منحا للمشاركين الجنوب
إفريقيين، وذلك لتمكين الويكيميديين المحليين من الانضمام إلى هذا المؤتمر.
طلب المنحة مفتوح حتى يوم 15 مايو 2024.
مع التحيات
فريق تنظيم ويكي إندابا 2024 المحلي
Hi everyone,
The next Research Showcase will be live-streamed tomorrow Wednesday,
April 17, at 9:30 AM PST / 16:30 UTC. Find your local time here. The
theme for this showcase is Supporting Multimedia on Wikipedia.
You are welcome to watch via the YouTube stream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpSQD9Bc8Ek. As usual, you can join
the conversation in the YouTube chat as soon as the showcase goes
live.
This month's presentations:
Towards image accessibility solutions grounded in communicative principles
By Elisa Kreiss
Images have become an omnipresent communicative tool -- and this is no
exception on Wikipedia. However, the undeniable benefits they carry
for sighted communicators turns into a serious accessibility challenge
for people who are blind or have low vision (BLV). BLV users often
have to rely on textual descriptions of those images to equally
participate in an ever-increasing image-dominated online lifestyle. In
this talk, I will present how framing accessibility as a communication
problem highlights important ways forward in redefining image
accessibility on Wikipedia. I will present the Wikipedia-based dataset
Concadia and use it to discuss the successes and shortcomings of image
captions and alt texts for accessibility, and how the usefulness of
accessibility descriptions is fundamentally contextual. I will
conclude by highlighting the potential and risks of AI-based solutions
and discussing implications for different Wikipedia editing
communities.
Automatic Multi-Path Web Story Creation from a Structural Article
By Daniel Nkemelu
Web articles such as Wikipedia serve as one of the major sources of
knowledge dissemination and online learning. However, their in-depth
information--often in a dense text format--may not be suitable for
mobile browsing, even in a responsive user interface. We propose an
automatic approach that converts a structured article of any length
into a set of interactive Web Stories that are ideal for mobile
experiences. We focused on Wikipedia articles and developed
Wiki2Story, a pipeline based on language and layout models, to
demonstrate the concept. Wiki2Story dynamically slices an article and
plans one to multiple Story paths according to the document hierarchy.
For each slice, it generates a multi-page summary Story composed of
text and image pairs in visually appealing layouts. We derived design
principles from an analysis of manually created Story practices. We
executed our pipeline on 500 Wikipedia documents and conducted user
studies to review selected outputs. Results showed that Wiki2Story
effectively captured and presented salient content from the original
articles and sparked interest in viewers.
--
Kinneret Gordon
Lead Research Community Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
Hi everyone!
I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
[1] Wikimedia Community User Group Botswana [2] as a Wikimedia User Group.
The group aims to to promote the use of Wikimedia and its sister projects
by the residents of Botswana, and to also help in creating awareness on how
the everyday Botswana can contribute to the pool of free knowledge, which
is Wikimedia; most especially in the translation efforts into the major
local languages (Setswana).
Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!
Regards,
Jeffrey Keefer
Chair, Affiliations Committee
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Recognit…
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Botswana
Hi all,
We invite you to nominate one or more scholarly research publications to be
considered for the Wikimedia Foundation Research Award of the Year. Learn
more below.
=Purpose of the award=
Recognize recent research on or about the Wikimedia projects or recent
research that is of importance to the Wikimedia projects. Recognize the
researchers behind the research.
You can learn more about previous winners at
https://research.wikimedia.org/awards.html.
=Eligibility criteria=
Your nomination must meet the following criteria:
* The research must be on, about, using data from, and/or of importance to
Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons or other Wikimedia
projects.
* The publication must be available in English.
* The research must have been published between January 1, 2023 and
December 31, 2023.
=Nomination process=
Submit your nominations by April 18, 2024 through
https://openreview.net/group?id=wikimediafoundation.org/Wikimedia/2023/RAY.
<https://openreview.net/group?id=wikimediafoundation.org/Wikimedia/2023/RAY&…>
We will ask you to provide the following information in your nomination:
* Title of the manuscript
* A copy of the manuscript you are nominating
* A summary of the research and a clear justification for why the work
merits the award (in 350 words or fewer in English).
Note that self-nominations and nominations of others' work are both welcome.
==Winner(s)==
The winner(s) will be announced in a ceremony as part of Wiki Workshop
2024, scheduled to take place virtually on June 20, 2024.
If you have any questions, please email kgordon(a)wikimedia.org
Warm regards,
Kinneret, on behalf of the WMF RAY organizing team
--
Kinneret Gordon
Lead Research Community Officer
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
The Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC) invites qualified
Wikimedians to apply as volunteer members of the Charter Election
Commission (CEC). The MCDC will select five (5) individuals for this role.
The selected candidates will come from a variety of Wikimedia projects.
The CEC is a temporary commission formed specifically to provide guidance,
support and management of the voting process seeking ratification of the
Movement Charter. Its work will be complete at the time the vote result is
published.
Responsibilities of the Charter Election Commission:
-
Work with the selected MCDC members to finalize rules of the election
-
Formalize process for addition of voters to the SecurePoll voter list
-
Review, improve, and finalize the voting process for affiliates
-
Directly manage the affiliate voting process
-
Oversee the SecurePoll voting process
-
Resolve unplanned or unexpected issues that arise during both the
affiliate and SecurePoll voting processes
-
Act as liaisons with WMF staff assigned to the technical aspects of
SecurePoll
-
Act as liaisons with scrutineers
-
Announce the result of the affiliate and SecurePoll voting processes
Successful candidates will hold the following qualifications:
-
Must meet at least one of the voter eligibility criteria[1] for the 2024
Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election
-
Must be fluent in written and verbal English
-
Must be able to commit up to 5 hours a week between April 15 and July
30, 2024 to this project, including a weekly video call with MCDC liaisons
-
Must be willing to work using Zoom, Google Meet and Google documents
-
Must be willing to sign a confidentiality agreement[2]. as CEC members
will have access to some non-public information of persons
-
Candidates who have experience in leadership with respect to SecurePoll
election(s) or affiliate selection processes for WMF Board of Trustees
seats are preferred
-
Candidates who have experience as members of a Wikimedia movement
committee, Affiliations Committee, or similar decision-making body are
welcome to apply
Interested Wikimedians are invited to apply for consideration to the MCDC
at mcdc {AT} wikimedia.org by April 8, 2024, stating their Wikimedia user
name, their relevant experience, and identifying the Wikimedia project they
consider their main focus of contribution. Successful candidates will be
notified by April 12, 2024.
The Movement Charter Drafting Committee is responsible to develop a draft
Movement Charter for consideration by the Wikimedia movement. A full draft
of the proposed Charter will be published on April 2, 2024[3] for a final
round of community consultations. The final draft of the Charter will be
published by the MCDC in June 2024. Voting will start in mid- to late June
and results will be announced in late July 2024.
For the Movement Charter Drafting Committee,
User:Risker/Anne Clin
Notes:
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2024/Voter_e…
[2]
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal:Confidentiality_agreement_for_n…
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement_Charter#The_full_draft_of_the…
Dear fellow Wikimedians,
On the 7th of April, a joint statement was published by Wikimedia groups,
ally organization, and individual Wikimedians expressing concern over the
humanitarian catastrophe in Palestine. The statement calls on "all
Wikimedia groups, affiliates, allies, and volunteers to unite in solidarity
with humanity and demand an immediate and lasting ceasefire to halt the
tragic loss of life and destruction of Palestinian cultural heritage."
Additionally, the signatories call upon the WMF to "prioritize the
impartial dissemination of information and accurate, real-time
documentation of the current human-caused humanitarian disaster and erasure
of cultural heritage" and to "take proactive measures to ensure the safety
of volunteers, communities, partners and knowledge and memory institutions
from Palestine contributing to the dissemination of knowledge."
Since the initial release, several additional groups and individuals have
signed on to the statement, and others are kindly urged to do the same.
The statement can be found and signed here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Joint_Statement_on_Palestine
Peace and justice for all,
Farah
📢 Calling all Wikimedians! 🌍
As Rwanda solemnly marks the 30th commemoration of the *1994 genocide
against the Tutsi*, we must unite against misinformation, hate speech, and
genocide denial.
Our mission as Wikimedians is to uphold truth, accuracy, and empathy in
sharing knowledge. Let's stand together to combat these harmful narratives
that seek to distort history and perpetuate division.
Join Wikimedia Rwanda <https://wikimedia.rw/> in our collective effort to:
1. Combat Misinformation: Contribute to Wikipedia articles with accurate,
verified information about the genocide and its aftermath. Fact-check and
reference sources diligently to ensure the integrity of the content.
2. Counter Hate Speech Monitor Wikipedia pages and other Wikimedia
platforms for any instances of hate speech. Take swift action to remove or
revise such content, promoting dialogue and understanding instead.
3. Challenge Genocide Denial: Engage in respectful discourse to challenge
and correct any denial or distortion of the genocide. Provide reliable
sources and verifiable evidence to reaffirm the truth of this tragic
chapter in history.
Together, let's use our platform to honor the memory of the victims,
support survivors, and contribute to a world where truth, reconciliation,
and understanding prevail.
Join us in making a difference. Together, we can combat misinformation,
hate speech, and genocide denial.
#WikimediaAgainstMisinfo
#Rwanda30
#NeverAgain
#Kwibuka30
*Ndahiro Derrick Alter*
*Gender & Development practitioner *
*Founder & Executive Director*
*Wikimedia Rwanda <https://wikimedia.rw/>/Open Source Knowledge Rwanda*
*''Reshaping Rwanda's Narrative''.*
*Mobile:(+250) 789 162 <%2B250%20782%20701%20830>892 |*
* Town Center Building, 4th Floor, Nyarugenge, Kigali city,Rwanda
<https://maps.app.goo.gl/m68DuTyiv4KZj5xR6>*
*website: https://wikimedia.rw/ <https://wikimedia.rw/>*
This message will be translated into other languages on Meta-wiki
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chi…>
العربية • español • français • português • Deutsch• 中文
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chi…>
You can help with more languages
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chi…>
Hi all,
In my most recent email
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chief_Executive_Office…>
in late February, I shared themes from an initiative called Talking: 2024
in which Foundation leadership, staff, and Trustees spoke with many of you
in conversations intended to shape our planning process. Earlier today, the
Wikimedia Foundation published the draft Annual Plan
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2024-2025>
for the upcoming 2024-2025 fiscal year.
This year’s Annual Plan comes at a time of growing uncertainty, volatility
and complexity for the world and for the Wikimedia movement. Globally, the
role of trusted information online is increasingly important and more under
threat than ever before. Organizations and online platforms must navigate a
changing internet that is more polarized and fragmented. New ways of
searching for information, including chat-based search, are gaining
traction. The ease of creating AI machine-generated content creates both
opportunity and risk for Wikimedia’s role as a human-led, tech-enabled
knowledge system, as well as for Wikimedia’s financial model.
A few observations about this year’s draft Annual Plan:
-
2030 Strategy: As we face into these headwinds, the Foundation’s annual
and multi-year planning continues to be guided by the movement’s 2030
Strategic Direction. Changes in the world around us make this direction
more relevant than ever. A call to become the essential infrastructure of
the ecosystem of free knowledge is more than just an inspirational
statement – it is a mandate to continually assess the sustainability of our
projects and organizations in response to the shifting landscape around us.
-
Multi-year to multigenerational planning: And we must plan even further
ahead. Looking beyond 2030 is vital to our mission, which requires the
Foundation to help “make and keep useful information … available on the
internet free of charge, in perpetuity.” The shift from a link-based
search architecture – which has served our projects and financial model
well up to this point – to a chat-based search architecture is in its
early days but is likely here to stay. We believe this is part of a
generational shift in how people create and consume information online.
What emerges is a strategic paradox: Wikimedia projects are becoming more
vital to the knowledge infrastructure of the internet while
simultaneously becoming less visible to internet users. To ensure the
success of the Wikimedia projects into the future, we must consider a
multigenerational approach across key areas of future planning.
-
Trends: As we did last year, the Foundation started planning by asking,
“What does the world need from us and the Wikimedia projects now?” We
conducted research into external trends that are impacting our work,
including a larger focus on immediate, bite-sized information; increasing
presence of incentives, financial and otherwise, to attract contributors to
some platforms; legal and regulatory threats, including platform
regulations that can be weaponized against us and our contributors, as well
as opportunities to positively advance the public interest; and issues of
content veracity and the effect of AI on the information ecosystem.
-
Technology support: This year’s plan also remains focused on the
central importance of technology, given the Foundation’s role as platform
provider for volunteers and readers around the world. The Foundation’s
Product & Technology department shared their objectives last month before
the full plan was ready, to signal how their priorities for the coming year
are developing and invite feedback and questions. At a high level, our work
for the coming year is focused on improving user experience on Wikimedia
projects, providing the ongoing maintenance needed to support a top 10
global website and making future-focused investments to meet a changing
internet.
-
Consistent goals, iterative work: The four overarching goals of this
year’s plan also remain consistent with last year’s (Infrastructure,
Equity, Safety & Integrity, and Effectiveness), while the work and
deliverables within each goal iterate on the progress made in the current
year. Together, the four goals are a blueprint to improve the
technology that makes Wikimedia projects possible, support and enable our
global communities, protect our values, and do so effectively and
efficiently over the coming year.
-
Finances and budget: The plan also includes details about the
Foundation’s financial model and our budget. The Foundation’s budget
reflects ongoing trade-offs, as we see a slowing rate of new revenue
growth. To meet this new reality, the Foundation has slowed its growth
significantly over the past two years and made reductions in staffing and
expenses last year. Since 2022, funding to other movement entities has
outpaced the Foundation's growth rate, which remains the case for this
year’s plan.
Finally, this draft plan arrives during community conversations about a
proposed Movement Charter, which will undergo a community vote in June
2024. In alignment with the principles of subsidiarity
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Principles#Subsidiarity_&…>
and efficiency
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Principles#Efficiency>,
the Wikimedia Foundation remains committed to sharing and transferring
responsibilities that other Wikimedia organizations are better equipped to
own.
The Foundation has benefited from regular and direct engagement with the
Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC), and conversations with many
stakeholders worldwide to inform and shape its perspectives on future
responsibilities
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Movement_Charter&oldid=26…>.
The Board of Trustees and leadership also discussed different scenarios,
including with the MCDC, to assess the readiness of the Foundation to make
changes to the status quo from now – and independently of the ratification
results. We are already preparing these functions to be overseen jointly
with volunteers as sustained change takes time, and to do it well,
structural changes will need to begin with careful deliberation from now:
-
Participatory resource allocation: In 2020, we created the Regional
Funds Committees <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Committees> to
advise the Foundation on regional resource allocation and make funding
decisions about community grants. This year, we will ask the committees to
partner with the Foundation to advise on regional allocations, bringing us
closer to participatory resource allocation and ensuring greater equity in
grants decision making.
-
A pilot Product and Technology Advisory Council: This concept builds on
the existing Wikimedia Foundation Product and Technology Committee
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Product_and_Technology…>
and follows the Technology Council's movement strategy initiative. This
year, we will try out a pilot to review and advise the Wikimedia
Foundation's Product and technology work.
-
Improved Affiliate Strategy: In the previous year, the Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustee liaisons worked with the Affiliations
Committee, affiliates, and Foundation staff to improve the Wikimedia
Foundation Affiliate Strategy
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Affiliates_Strategy/Re…>.
This year, we will take forward the learnings and answer some key questions
from the process.
The narrative long-form draft Annual Plan is a lengthy 23,000 words to
ensure that it can serve as a comprehensive overview and also source
material for other presentations and shorter summaries. We invite your
input and questions over the coming weeks in whatever form you prefer:
on-wiki on Meta, project village pumps, and by joining virtual community
calls hosted by communities worldwide.
Thank you,
Maryana
Maryana Iskander
Wikimedia Foundation CEO