Wikimedia-l December 2019

81 participants
56 discussions

[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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NEW Instructional website for Arabic WP editors and writers!‏
by Michal Lester 15 Oct '20

15 Oct '20

Dear all, I am writing to share some good news! After two years of brainstorming and planning, our instructional website in Arabic is out! This is yet another step for Wikimedia Israel in developing instructional tools. We’re thrilled to introduce Wiki Warsha ويكي ورشة <http://wikiwarsha.org/>! Wikiwarsha.org <http://wikiwarsha.org/> is a multimedia instructional website designed to introduce Wikipedia to Arabic readers, to invite new editors to write and edit content on Arabic Wikipedia, to assist teachers in school activities, and instructors in editing workshops. Warsha is the Arabic word for ‘workshop’, the website includes short instructional films, texts and images and is divided into 13 informative and instructional lessons: - Wikipedia homepage structure - About Wikipedia articles - Create account - Sign in to a registered account - Create a userpage - Create a new article - Edit an article - Formatting the article - Request edits approval on Arabic Wikipedia - Adding image - Adding internal and external links - Adding references - Adding categories In addition to those lessons, the website contains informative sections about copyright issues, FAQs, good article criteria, and talk pages, all in order to facilitate understanding how Wikipedia communities function. For further details and info: warsha(a)wikimedia.org.il Michal Lester Bekriah Mawasi [[user: bks-WMIL]] Michal Lester Executive Director Wikimedia Israel

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Politics
by Bill Takatoshi 26 Apr '20

26 Apr '20

>>> The people who are loudest in their demands for consensus >>> do not represent the Wikimedia movement. >> >> The voices loudest for the WMF doing something against the >> Trump administration are not representative of the Wikimedia >> movement either.... > > Is the Community Process Steering Committee currently > prepared to "engage more 'quiet' members of our community" > with a statistically robust snap survey to resolve this question? Anyone can go to Recent Changes and send a SurveyMonkey link to the most recent few hundred editors with contributions at least a year old, to get an accurate answer. Will a respected member of the community please do this? I would like to know what the actual editing community thinks of the travel ban and their idea of an appropriate response. I don't want to see community governance by opt-in participation in obscure RFCs. I would offer to do this myself, but I value keeping my real name unassociated with my enwiki userid. -Will

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fallout from 2018 Wikimedian of the Year announcement
by Фархад Фаткуллин / Farkhad Fatkullin 07 Apr '20

07 Apr '20

Dear colleagues, This is a request for your input and possible ideas (if any) regarding my management of the fallout from Jimmy's announcing myself as a 2018 Wikimedian of the Year. Emails below are a copy of my ongoing consultations with Wikimedia Foundation staff and other Wikimedians I personally know, as well as a report on what's already brewing in my region of Russia after this unexpected outcome. I would be grateful, if you can advise me on how to properly steer the enthusiasm of behalf of regional government, mass-media, NGOs, etc. which have just discovered about the possibility of participation in Wikimedia movement (think anything from U.S. is not getting much in-depth coverage in Russian by sources that regional public figures, NGOs, teachers or general regional journalists read) & are now placing great hopes on teaching whole of Tatarstan about how to Wiki & also engaging all Tatars globally (3/4 outside of Tatarstan, 1/5 outside of Russia). regards, farhad Updates: * Selet WikiSchool got presented to wider public @ the press-conference for Tatar-speaking journalists (July 31), at the poster session in the framework of the World Congress of Tatars Youth Forum (Aug.3), and later at a Tatar projects fair in the Downtown park of Kazan (Aug.5) * Contribution of those writing into Wikipedia in Tatar was recognized by choosing myself as one of the current year's "For the great service to Tatar nation" medal recipients. (Aug.3) * We recorded a 40 min interview in Turkish (Aug.4, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK3tFBWMWcs ) * We didn't yet meet the President of the Republic (his schedule changed once again), but I got another firm request to meet with the Minister for Youth Affairs (another good acquaintance of mine, ex-member of local Comedy Club type activity), as well as with the Head of World Congress of Tatars' Executive Bureau, and more TV & written press interviews are lining up. * I am trying to manage these guys' optimism & desire to move quickly, keeping in mind they are not really familiar with the Wiki-way or our communities' policies & practices * Bashkir (ba) & Sakha (sah) communities have shared advice about how to assure that local Wikimedia community stays clearly independent in a cultural environment where neither Education, nor GLAM programs will attract local partners unless those have a strong support of the regional or federal government entities. * Looking forward to meet with my Wikimania-2017 roommate from the Philippines in Singapore on Aug.16 to collect some more input from Asia -------- Пересылаемое сообщение-------- 03.08.2018, 19:35, "Фархад Фаткуллин / Farkhad Fatkullin" <frhd(a)yandex.com>: Thursday, 2 August 2018 Republic of Tatarstan Ministry for Informatization & Communication @ IT-park, Kazan 18:00-20:50 Meeting with Tatarstan Deputy Prime Minister - Minister for Informatization & Communications Roman Shaykhutdinov http://mic.tatarstan.ru/eng/minister.htm on opportunities Wikimedia projects & popularization thereof among the population of the Republic can bring for Tatarstan In attendance: * Almaz A. Valiullin, Director General of Tatarstan Center for Information Technologies http://mic.tatarstan.ru/eng/valiullin.htm * Tatyana S. Kamaletdinova, CEO of Tatarstan Center for Information Technologies http://mic.tatarstan.ru/eng/kamaletdinova.htm * Anna V. Yakovleva, Head of Ministry's Press-Service http://mic.tatarstan.ru/rus/about/structure_new?department_id=80576 * Farkhad N. Fatkullin, 2018 Wikimedian of the Year, Wikimedia Russia member https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Frhdkazan Agenda: 1. Content creation contests 2. Education projects 3. How can these be organized in a systemic way, engaging students throughout all municipal districts of Tatarstan & Tatar diaspora globally, and assessing effectiveness of measures 4. Larger Tatar language internet development, promoting content creation in the language 5. .tatar domain 6. ContentTranslation 7. Generating lists for content creation 8. Free licenses 9. Wikidata 10. Regional educational Wiki-seminar for beginners, introduction & orientation 11. Smartphone oriented educational projects around Tatar & Tatar Wikipedia (beginning with Tatar version of www.kakprav.com & on to WOK Master type ) 12. OSM in Tatar 13. The way forward: visiting WMF to discover other opportunities, MoU with WMF? Decided: 1. Almaz Valiullin to head the Working Group on behalf of the Ministry 2. Next meeting set for / around 20th of August 3. Minister requested his staff to draft documents regarding moving all Regional & Municipal budget funded websites to CC-BY type free licenses 4. Minister proposed every organization website place a link to a Wikipedia article about it (in Tatar, Russian or English, depending on the language used) 5. Help is requested about developing simple samples or article creation guidelines for various institutions of Tatarstan & diaspora organizations to learn what is considered appropriate by Wiki-community & how should representatives of respective entities 6. Annual Tatar Internet Awards Ceremony to include awards to leading editors of Wikimedia projects in Tatar 7. Help is requested to develop a framework of Wikipedia Article Contests for Secondary School Children of Tatastan, with article quality assessment schemes (prizes & organization to be funded by Tatarstan goverment, promotion in local mass-media, schools & etc.) 8. Help is requested to develop a framework for a sustainable functioning of a Tatarstan & Tatar language oriented Wikimedia thematic organization to be responsible for systemic work around developing & promoting Wikimedia projects in Tatar, as well as Tatarstan-oriented content creation for various Wikis 9. Readiness to consider awarding *.tatar domain names to those, who develop attractive projects in Tatar that can't be hosted on Wikimedia platform or otherwise need a Tatar digital identity 10. Help is requested regarding drafting a program proposal, necessary budget & expected results for a Tatarstan oriented introductory Wiki-seminar, open for a wide public 11. Help is requested to provide links to Wikidata educational materials, Practical Use Cases & expert responses to the Deputy Minister (in English) 12. Help is requested in organizing a learning visit to WMF Headquarters during Tatarstan Delegation annual fall visit to Silicon Valley & other places in U.S. to discover other opportunities -- Farkhad Fatkullin - Фархад Фаткуллин http://sikzn.ru/ Тел.+79274158066 / skype:frhdkazan / Wikipedia:frhdkazan 03.08.2018, 11:42, "Фархад Фаткуллин / Farkhad Fatkullin" <frhd(a)yandex.com>: > Hi Nochole & Kui, > > Thank you for your responses & readiness to help. > > Events on the ground are developing following predictable course - we had a very constructive 3 hour long discussion last night with Tatarstan's Deputy Prime Minister (IT minister) & his team, whilst earlier Thursday I got an invite to meet with another Deputy Prime Minister (President of the National Council of Trustees for the World Congress of Tatars Association). > > More TV & magazine interviews are expected, some in detail articles in Russian promoting Wikimedia projects are in the pipelines (expecting to see the texts for necessary corrections & adding links to respective WMRU, Meta, WMF & related independent media articles (thanks to ComCom). > > I hope to find time to prepare & email both you (in English) & IT ministry's Working Group (in Russian) my summary of yesterday late evening meeting, with attendees, topics discussed, request & proposals, etc. They want to move as fast as possible, because this will help them to meet promoting Tatar language use online task they are charged with by the region's President. > > Just a few to begin with: > * Ready to move all regional and municipal government websites into CC-BY, add links to respective WP articles from all these > * Willing to have Tatarstan & Tatar language oriented thematic organization in place to work with secondary schools & Universities, GLAMS, diaspora > * Ready to sponsor prizes for article writing contests (either through WMRU or this new entity) > * Requesting guidance from myself & Wikimedia community on what's the best way to make this all successful > * Interested in supporting WMRU organized general public educational Wiki-Seminar in Tatarstan Academy of Sciences or other respected facility with a large conference hall open to all public (September-October?) > * Willing to visit WMF headquarters in November to meet, learn more about what's there (I admit I don't read all mailing lists or Meta discussions, don't have time to see all wonderful YouTube videos available, haven't yet have time to visit a single Wikimedia Conference) & possibly sign MoUs or whatever that would help speed up Wikimedia acceptance & popularity growth among the population of the region. > > I am in touch with Wikimedia RU & Wikimedia Languages of Russia Community's regarding ongoing developments, benefiting from collective wisdom of Wikimedians I know. > > Should you be ready to bring any ideas to the table, please shoot them my way. > > regards, > farhad > > -- > Farkhad Fatkullin - Фархад Фаткуллин http://sikzn.ru/ Тел.+79274158066 / skype:frhdkazan / Wikipedia:frhdkazan > > 02.08.2018, 16:35, "Nichole Saad" <nsaad(a)wikimedia.org>: >> Hi Farhad, >> >> First, congratulations on being named "Wikimedian of the Year!" We have received your letter, and are looking forward to engage with your ideas. Realistically, I'll be able to provide a more in depth response early next week. >> >> best regards, >> >> Nichole >> >> On Wed, Aug 1, 2018 at 2:45 PM Фархад Фаткуллин / Farkhad Fatkullin <frhd(a)yandex.com> wrote: >>> Dear Sirs, >>> >>> This is from Farhad, User:frhdkazan (ComCom member, now a.k.a. 2018 Wikimedian of the Year) with some proposals about how to leverage a fleeting opportunity I got. Please read the text below this letter ASAP & think how you can help seize the moment. I'm looking forward to first ideas within 24 hours from now. >>> >>> Any support of yours would be greatly appreciated. >>> Thanks a million. >>> regards, >>> farhad >>> >>> P.S. More on where I'm coming from can later be discovered @ http://frhd.narod.ru/resume-en.htm (dated, stopped my retainer contract with the Office of Tatarstan President in September 2013) & more up-to-date but in Russian @ http://sikzn.narod.ru/index/0-4 . I have previously translated & provided digital media with the link to Russian text of Wikimedia Blog post about Jess Wade https://ru.wikinews.org/wiki/?curid=176108 , & now contacted Asian colleagues to get similar content about Nahid Sultan & Wikimedia Bangladesh. Also on my agenda is to record a video-interview in Turkish for Wikimedia Turkey's communication campaign - I speak the language & we are in touch with Turkish community. I also need to get back to interpreting into Russian videos of Wikimania-2018 available on YouTube - maybe later this week, before I join my family for a few days off & then a week-long interpretation assignment in Singapore. >>> >>> -- >>> Farkhad Fatkullin - Фархад Фаткуллин http://sikzn.ru/ Тел.+79274158066 / skype:frhdkazan / Wikipedia:frhdkazan >>> >>> TRIGGER >>> Following Jimmy's unexpected pass during Wikimania-2018 Closing Ceremony, I became an instant celebrity of sort - myself alone I've seen over 40 articles with positive PR about Wikipedia & wider body of Wikimedia projects, >>> * one by RT in Russian collecting over 1.1 million Facebook likes in under 8 hours from publication >>> * short positive ones from Russian Federation government's Official gazette & Russkiy Mir Foundation >>> * first ever mention that people can donate to Wikimedia Russia volunteers organization for us to be able to fund local Wiki-seminars, conferences & contests (WMF is not funding Wikimedia Russia & can't allow us to use donate link from Russian Wikipedia or place a link to "Thank you, but we don't accept donations from Russia" page where users from Russia are being routed >>> * about to get one with links published to various WMF & Wikimedia Russia projects, including promoting free licenses, Education & GLAM programs, etc. >>> I'm periodically collecting these @ https://tt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Википедия:Безнең_турында_матбугатта#Ел_викиме… when time permits, but there's more in my Facebook Messenger. >>> >>> CONTEXT >>> This is also generating very positive attention on behalf of the Republic of Tatarstan government, as well as our regional NGO partner, Selet Youth Education Foundation, with whom yet unrecognized Tatar Wikimedians are jointly running Selet WikiSchool project. https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/News/May_2018/Selet_WikiSchool The latter want to introduce this joint initiative, as well as Wikimedia Russia executive director Stanislav Kozlovsky (Ph.D. in Psychology, Researcher & a Senior lecturer at Moscow State University) and myself to the President of Tatarstan during his visit to their Annual International Forum of Tatar-speaking High-School Age Youth on August 6th. Unrelated to that I was yesterday called up by a good acquaintance of mine (Tatarstan Vice Prime-Minister, Minister for IT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Shaykhutdinov ), who invited me to have a talk with him tomorrow about how promoting Wikimedia projects in wider Tatar-speaking world (only about 25% of Tatars live in Tatarstan) can help him get whatever current President wants him to do to develop Tatar language use online. There are some other Tatarstan Prime-Minister Office level things in the pipeline, & I am also waiting for a call from Russian Federation ex-IT Minister https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolay_Nikiforov , whom I know from his years in Tatarstan government as well (until 2012). FYI: Wikimedia movement is still unknown in Russia, with local mass media outlets are predominantly speaking about Wikipedia in Russian when there is some lapse that can be exploited to show one's Russian patriotism & thus score some points (basically same political circus, as what we are seeing in U.S. with Russia-collusion story in the overdrive, just opposite direction), and here we get something to reverse the situation big time, explaining to the wide public that it's not only Ok, but even desirable they engage with Wikimedia projects. >>> >>> IDEA >>> Keeping in mind that Tatarstan President is the head of both Russia-Islamic World Strategic Vision Group & Association of Innovative Regions of Russia, Jimmy gave me a-hell-of-an-opportunity for an elevator pitch for Wikimedia movement in Russia and some adjacent counties (think Turkey & Central Asia), and I would really hate seeing it go unused. I will do my part here (about CC-BY for regional government controlled websites, Wikipedia Education Program as an extracurricular activity in all secondary school & universities, GLAM, as well as some locally funded carrots for participants), but I also want your help in driving this to a home-run. Every fall Tatarstan President & the delegation is visiting Silicon Valley & other places of interest in U.S. & it would be great if we could set-up a physical visit to Wikimedia Foundation, with a first hand presentation of best international practices the movement if proud of & have some MoU on cooperation signed (as a bureaucratic basis for continuing the conversation) with either some department in Tatarstan government, just like the one you signed with the Mexican Ministry of Culture www.eluniversal.com.mx/cultura/secretaria-de-cultura-y-wikimedia-firman-con…. To set the context, Tatarstan has such formal documents with a number of American companies & institutions, with our private English-speaking IT Univesity @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innopolis having been developed jointly with Carnegie Mellon University (with consultancy fees paid by Tatastan), we have Russia's first publicly funded hospital certified to be meeting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Commission requirements & plenty of U.S. investors @ our https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabuga_Special_Economic_Zone . On top of this, we could benefit from having Selet Youth Educational movement http://selet.biz/en/ to embrace Wiki even further, so maybe a similar MoU on collaboration between them and Wikiedu.org signed simultaneously would be great (I met LiAnna and Jami in Montreal last year & was really impressed with what these guys are doing). >>> >>> REQUEST >>> Please shoot something my way before the same time tomorrow, for me to handle the meeting with Tatarstan Deputy Prime Minister more effectively to progressively open other opportunities I've touched on. On top of what I described above & my last year's ideas @ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Frhdkazan/Wiki4RegionalDevt (in Russian), I'll be bringing to the table topics of: >>> * Wikidata >>> * OSM, as well as a >>> * WOK-like project for all things in Tatar (I was contacted by a local 9th grader who, on his own initiative with a help of a teacher, did something similar for students who want to train for Russian-language SAT/ACT type exam www.kakprav.com & now offered to develop such or bigger thing for Tatar). For more on WOK, see https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/01/wikipedia-wok-seek-nigerian-content-onl… >>> * whatever else you or anybody else can help me think of until then & or later opportunities >> >> -- >> Nichole Saad >> Wikimedia Foundation | Senior Program Manager, Education >> nsaad(a)wikimedia.org >> user: NSaad (WMF) -------- Конец пересылаемого сообщения -------- -- Farkhad Fatkullin - Фархад Фаткуллин http://sikzn.ru/ Тел.+79274158066 / skype:frhdkazan / Wikipedia:frhdkazan

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Update on Wikimedia site and system outages
by Heather Walls 29 Feb '20

29 Feb '20

Hello everyone, By now you are likely aware that the Wikimedia sites suffered from a relatively significant botnet driven DDOS attack on September 6th, taking them offline in several countries throughout the day. This primarily affected Wikipedia access in Europe and the Middle East. We posted a short update of the event on our website.[1] I would like to thank everyone who stepped up to support the restoration of our projects, including the fast reporting of community members throughout the world and our security and engineering teams who worked long hours to address many complex issues surrounding the attack and our response—the Site Reliability Engineering team in particular. The Wikimedia Foundation leadership team is proud to work with such talented and dedicated staff and supporters. Yours, Heather 1. https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2019/09/07/malicious-attack-on-wikiped… "Today, Wikipedia was hit with a malicious attack that has taken it offline in several countries for intermittent periods. The attack is ongoing and our Site Reliability Engineering team is working hard to stop it and restore access to the site. As one of the world’s most popular sites, Wikipedia sometimes attracts “bad faith” actors. Along with the rest of the web, we operate in an increasingly sophisticated and complex environment where threats are continuously evolving. Because of this, the Wikimedia communities and Wikimedia Foundation have created dedicated systems and staff to regularly monitor and address risks. If a problem occurs, we learn, we improve, and we prepare to be better for next time. We condemn these sorts of attacks. They’re not just about taking Wikipedia offline. Takedown attacks threaten everyone’s fundamental rights to freely access and share information. We in the Wikimedia movement and Foundation are committed to protecting these rights for everyone. Right now, we’re continuing to work to restore access wherever you might be reading Wikipedia in the world. We’ll keep you posted." -- Heather Walls (she/her) Chief Creative Officer Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org

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FY1819 Fundraising Report
by Patricia Pena 26 Feb '20

26 Feb '20

Hi all, I’m excited to share with you our FY1819 Fundraising Report <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2018-19_Report>. This report is an opportunity to provide insight into our revenue model and the strategy that goes into creating an impactful fundraising campaign. A sincere thank you to the millions of donors in nearly 30 countries who support our mission. I'd also like to thank everyone who contributed and collaborated on this document: Online Fundraising, Major Gifts & Endowment, Fundraising Operations, Donor Services, Fundraising Tech, Legal, Communications, Finance and more! Special thanks to Thea Skaff for once again project managing this entire effort. We welcome your feedback and questions on the talk page. Thank you, Pats -- *Pats Pena (she/her) * Director, Online Fundraising I Wikimedia Foundation 1 Montgomery Street I San Francisco, CA 94104 ppena(a)wikimedia.org I +1 (415) 816 3349 *Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. Donate. <https://donate.wikimedia.org/>* Please Note: If I am emailing after hours or on the weekend, it's because Wikimedia allows me an awesome flexible schedule. Please do not respond until reasonable business hours in your timezone, unless of course I am shouting for help ;-)

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Fresh data on the gender gap in content
by Asaf Bartov 11 Feb '20

11 Feb '20

Hullo everyone. I was asked by a volunteer for help getting stats on the gender gap in content on a certain Wikipedia, and came up with simple Wikidata Query Service[1] queries that pulled the total number of articles on a given Wikipedia about men and about women, to calculate *the proportion of articles about women out of all articles about humans*. Then I was curious about how that wiki compared to other wikis, so I ran the queries on a bunch of languages, and gathered the results into a table, here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ijon/Content_gap (please see the *caveat* there.) I don't have time to fully write-up everything I find interesting in those results, but I will quickly point out the following: 1. The Nepali statistic is simply astonishing! There must be a story there. I'm keen on learning more about this, if anyone can shed light. 2. Evidently, ~13%-17% seems like a robust average of the proportion of articles about women among all biographies. 3. among the top 10 largest wikis, Japanese is the least imbalanced. Good job, Japanese Wikipedians! I wonder if you have a good sense of what drives this relatively better balance. (my instinctive guess is pop culture coverage.) 4. among the top 10 largest wikis, Russian is the most imbalanced. 5. I intend to re-generate these stats every two months or so, to eventually have some sense of trends and changes. 6. Your efforts, particularly on small-to-medium wikis, can really make a dent in these numbers! For example, it seems I am personally responsible[2] for almost 1% of the coverage of women on Hebrew Wikipedia! :) 7. I encourage you to share these numbers with your communities. Perhaps you'd like to overtake the wiki just above yours? :) 8. I'm happy to add additional languages to the table, by request. Or you can do it yourself, too. :) A. [1] https://query.wikidata.org/ [2] Yay #100wikidays :) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/100wikidays -- Asaf Bartov Wikimedia Foundation <http://www.wikimediafoundation.org> Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! https://donate.wikimedia.org

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New Office hours for WMF/Research&Analytics starting in January 2020
by Martin Gerlach 18 Jan '20

18 Jan '20

Hi all, We, the Research team at Wikimedia Foundation, have received some requests over the past months for making ourselves more available to answer some of the research questions that you as Wikimedia volunteers, affiliates' staff, and researchers face in your projects and initiatives. Starting January 2020, we will experiment with monthly office hours organized jointly by our team and the Analytics team where you can join us and direct your questions to us. We will revisit this experiment in June 2020 to assess whether to continue it or not. The scope We encourage you to attend the office hour if you have research related questions. These can be questions about our teams, our projects, or more importantly questions about your projects or ideas that we can support you with during the office hours. You can also ask us questions about how to use a specific dataset available to you, to answer a question you have, or some other question. Note that the purpose of the office hours is to answer your questions during the dedicated time of the office hour. Questions that may require many hours of back-and-forth between our team and you are not suited for this forum. For these bigger questions, however, we are happy to brainstorm with you in the office hour and point you to some good directions to explore further on your own (and maybe come back in the next office hour and ask more questions). Time and Location We meet on the 4th Wednesday of every month 17.00-18.00 (UTC) in #wikimedia-research IRC channel on freenode [1]. The first meeting will be on January 22. Up-to-date information on mediawiki [2] Archiving If you miss the office hour, you can read the logs of it at [3]. The future announcements about these office hours will only go to the following lists so please make sure you're subscribed to them if you like to receive a ping: * wiki-research-l mailing list [4] * analytics mailing list [5] * wikidata mailing list [6] * the Research category in Space [7] on behalf of Research and Analytics at WMF, Martin [1] irc://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-research [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Office_hours [3] https://wm-bot.wmflabs.org/logs/%23wikimedia-research/ [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l [5] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics [6] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata [7] https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/tags/research -- Martin Gerlach Research Scientist Wikimedia Foundation

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.org TLD for sale?
by Andy Mabbett 12 Jan '20

12 Jan '20

I have just seen this: https://savedotorg.org/ "The .org domain is about to be sold to a private equity firm. "Join the coalition of nonprofits opposed to this blatant disregard of the public interest." WMF are among the signatories. -- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk

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Wikimedia-l December 2019