Hi all,
We wanted to let you know the fundraising team is starting up testing in
February. We're starting at low levels, so most people will not even
notice banners to start with. 5% of anonymous users will see a banner just
one time. We are not showing any banners to logged in users.
There was an announcement in November about us splitting up the fundraiser
this year. Just a very quick recap: We ran the end-of-year campaign in
November and December in the top 5 English-speaking countries (US, UK,
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand). The campaign was successful and we
were able to take the banners down a few weeks ahead of schedule:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_ra…
We are now working on starting up testing in countries that were not
included in the end-of-year campaign. We'll be working on translations and
optimizing our donation pages in many countries over the coming months.
We will post a report of the year-end campaign with much more detailed
information and will send a note to this mailing list when it's available.
We always need help making improvements in different countries and
languages. If you have any suggestions, please do leave us a note on the
fundraising meta discussion page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2013
Thanks!
Megan
--
Megan Hernandez
Head of Annual Fundraiser
Wikimedia Foundation
Witam,
przypominam o projekcie całodniowego szkolenia 5 kwietnia 2013 (piątek) w Instytucie Informacji Naukowej i Bibliotekoznawstwa Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego. Moim zdaniem jest to świetna okazja dotarcia do środowiska naukowego, promocji Wikipedii, pozyskania cennych edytorów, nawiązania współpracy oraz zdobycia kolejnych doświadczeń.
Szkolenie jest na wiele osób i zgłosiłem część praktyczną. Ponieważ wszyscy szkolący wiedzą, jak przydatny jest bezpośredni kontakt szkolącego się z instruktorem, wciąż chętnie przygarnę ochotników chętnych pomóc w warsztatach z edycji wiki.
Zachęcam do zgłaszania się, dysponuję nawet pewnym budżetem na kieszonkowe/zwrot kosztów. Dobre towarzystwo i pożytecznie spędzony czas w pakiecie. :)
Szczegóły organizacyjne by nie spamować na priv. :)
Pozdrawiam,
michał "aegis maelstrom" buczyński.
> Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:31:57 -0700
> From: Frank Schulenburg <frank.schulenburg(a)gmail.com>
> To: wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Tomorrow: Office hour inside out (program
> evaluation)
> Message-ID:
> <CAKooBQbK6rCui1BThp41MBvjTdzDQVvsJRLGsFYwXUUoGApSxQ(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Hi folks,
>
> Tomorrow at 17:00 UTC, I will be holding an office hour about program
> evaluation on #wikimedia-office. The target audience for this office
> hour will be chapter representatives and volunteers who are currently
> running (or planning to run) programs and programmatic activities.
> You'll find some background information about why program evaluation
> might be worth talking about in my most recent blog post on the
> Foundation's blog:
>
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/03/01/lets-start-talking-about-program-eval…
>
> As we all know, most office hours follow a certain rule: there's one
> poor staffer who is getting grilled by the people on the IRC channel –
> people ask a variety of questions and the staff person tries to answer
> every question in a limited amount of time. It's a lot of fun (I
> guess, at least for the people who're asking the questions) and it has
> been a good way of direct communication between WMF employees and the
> community.
>
> Now, this office hour will be different. Not that I don't enjoy being
> grilled for one hour :-) I've done IRC office hours several times
> before and I always enjoyed answering questions. The reason for this
> office hour to be different is that I want to _listen to you in the
> first place_. I would like to learn more about
>
> * _your_ thoughts about why evaluation might be important
> * _your_ experiences with making evaluation a part of program design
> * _your_ hopes and fears when it comes to increasingly evaluating
> programs and programmatic activities in the future
> * _your_ ideas and feedback on evaluation practices
>
> Ideally, we would have some people in the room tomorrow who have done
> some kind evaluation in the past or who are planning to embark on
> evaluation work in the near future. With that said – if you have no
> idea about what program evaluation is and you'd like to learn more
> about it, you're invited as well! Or maybe you're just curious to see
> if this "office hour inside out" is going to play out well ;-)
>
> I'm looking forward to meeting you tomorrow at 17:00 UTC,
>
> Frank
>
>
>
I'd encourage people who are interested in this subject
to read up on program management and related subjects.
This sort of management has been studied extensively in
academia and in business, and in some ways I feel that
WMF has catch-up work to do and lacks expertise,
although I'm hopeful that WMF is trying to improve
in this area.
I'd also suggest that people read the report about
projects that encountered significant problems at
WMF, particularly the IEP, and a more recent example
is the mixed reception to AFT5. I hope that program
managers at WMF learn both good practices and what
to avoid. I also hope that WMF ties program metrics
to evaluations for the responsible supervisors when
considering whether to continue or renew
employment contracts, as well as when
considering promotions.
Cheers,
Pine
Tom, I'm glad that you studied the IEP.
Gayle, I would be interested in hearing about the topics that you're
covering during your training sessions for WMF supervisors, especially
whether you make sure that every supervisor has had an opportunity
to learn about the experience of IEP. My impression is that the AFT5
leadership didn't make connections between IEP and AFT5 during
the AFT5 design and planning. I'm not sure if this is because
the AFT5 program leadership never read the IEP report, or if it's
because the AFT5 leadership didn't see how lessons from IEP could be
relevant to the AFT5 program. I hope that every program leader at WMF
makes a point of learning about IEP early in their leadership career.
I think IEP is a very useful case study in program management.
Thanks,
Pine
Tilman,
Thanks, it's great to see the momentum here in Mobile Contributions.
Was there any discussion about how to convert the "selfies" uploaders and people who sign up for the watchlist
feature into more active contributors? This seems like an opportunity to make progress on what I think should
be the #1 WMF-wide priority right now, which making progress on the active contributor statistics.
Pine
--
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:32:54 -0700
From: Tilman Bayer <tbayer(a)wikimedia.org>
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Quarterly reviews of high priority WMF
initiatives
Message-ID:
<CAPDdKA6M+PLM7OHfJNKQcNVp_cS0EUEeBMATjvS=jjYDv01DeQ(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
Minutes and links to slides from this week's Quarterly Review meeting
of the mobile contributions team have been posted at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_r…
On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 6:49 PM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
--
Tilman Bayer
Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
Peter, thanks, I agree on that point. Taking calculated risks is much different
from being negligent. Some risks work and some don't, and that can be OK in
some contexts.
Pine
From: "Peter Southwood" <peter.southwood(a)telkomsa.net>
To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Office hour inside out (program evaluation)
Message-ID: <EB1424C3329A454784D1EDE5684713D7@peter>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="UTF-8";
reply-type=original
Make interesting mistakes.
Tom,
Thanks for the good email.
It's important to learn from mistakes, but admitting mistakes does not absolve someone from accountability.
When people are being paid to do something right or to achieve a certain outcome, and that doesn't happen
or it happens late, it's sometimes a very good and appropriate thing to consider replacing them for the sake
of the organization and the program.
In the case of IEP, the consultant said that firing people would have been "premature". I'm not sure
that I would have reached the same conclusion, and I think if I had been on WMF's board at the time that
this report was released, I might have had things to say about holding individual employees accountable.
But in the here and now, I am mostly interested in making sure that lessons from this program are deeply
embedded into the institutional memory of WMF throughout the organization and on a long-term basis.
Pine
James,
If you're interested in starting a broader discussion about the usefulness
of arbcoms and alternatives to them, and the relationship of Jimbo to arbcoms,
I think the best place to do that is at Meta. There have also discussions
there about asking for some kind of outside intervention in the Russian
Wikipedia due to infighting there, so your request for this kind of
discussion already has a parallel on Meta. But the consensus seems to be
that outsiders shouldn't overrule the decision of a project's arbcom. I think
it would take a significant Meta RFC to come up with a mechanism that
changes this situation, and right now I think that's highly unlikely. If
you are dissatisfied with a decision made by ENWP Arbcom and you think that
the constitutional arrangements for ENWP Arbcom should be changed, I think
you are best served by having that discussion on ENWP and/or on the ENWP email
list. This is a long way of saying that I agree with Maria and Risker. I feel
that the tone of Risker's first email should have been more respectful, but I
also understand that Risker and Arbcom probably get an endless series of
complaints and keeping one's composure in that situation can be difficult.
Pine
Have started a sort of RfC regarding Arbcom's recent denial to grant Will
Beback a return to editing
here<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jmh649/Will_Beback>.
I have a number of concerns regarding this decision. One being that it was
made without community input and in secrecy and two the evidence to support
the original indefinite ban is so weak. Much of the evidence provided
pertains to Will's position regarding COI and his interactions directly
with Jimmy Wales. In light of current issues with arbcom and seperately
with COI now might be a good time to consider the need for community
oversight of abrcoms activities. Note that I was involved and did see the
private evidence in question. It however is interesting to look at the
public evidence as quoted by arbcom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jmh649/Will_Beback
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
www.opentextbookofmedicine.com