Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2016-2017/draft

Re: Develop program and events dashboard and central Wikimedia resource center

The point "Develop a Wikimedia resource center" is devoid of any meaningful content: please link the user requests for such a thing, so that we can understand what it actually is. When you say «Programs and Events Dashboard across at least 10 projects or languages», I assume you mean wikis whose community already actually asked for such a thing? Nemo 12:24, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Hello, Nemo, Thanks for asking these clarifying questions. The central hub page is something that we do not have specific user request data for, rather, many of our teams experience the regular feedback and observation that community members do not know who to talk to at the foundation or where to go to find various Wikimedia resources, often we each need to sort of escort different people to other people or portals, on a one-on-one basis.This is the first time we are attempting to create a holistic portal, as a single entry point for all WMF teams that have community facing projects.. As more and more teams are seeking to develop exchange spaces and resources, the complexity continues to grow. This year, we want to change that by creating a central landing space that will connect community members to all Wikimedia resource "portals" or "hubs" so that people can find what and who they are looking for more easily. The PC&L team will lead this collaborative project with other teams across the foundation to help connect people to people and resources. This is connected to the work our team is doing to both improve our own portals and knowledge management systems to better support learning exchange, and to ease navigation of those program and learning resources such as the learning pattern library, evaluation tools, and other learning resources.

As for the dashboard. Yes, your assumption is correct that our team will work to coordinate with those communities who are wanting to adopt the dashboard. The program and events dashboard will be the solution to replace the unsupported education extension which has been adopted for use on 5 different projects and 18 languages. The dashboard approach offers an upgrade: it allows better outcome data tracking, and it is also expanded to support all program and event types.

Note: You can find a bit more about our specific activities and objectives for these infrastructure supports on our team's more detailed plan. JAnstee (WMF) (talk) 18:23, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I agree with the FDC remark that «hosting on new platforms (if this is what is intended for the training platform) can result in fragmentation of knowledge and narrowing of the participating community, and may not be as effective as hosting on wikis». In this regard, I'd rather see the WMF work on integration of our resources, e.g. by 1) merging wikis, especially in order to have only one private wiki; 2) merging the expanding galaxy of micro-sites and non-MediaWiki sites into the public wikis; 3) improving the connection between WMF-curated and general sections of the wikis (e.g. by improving wikilinks, categorisation and titles of pages in the Grants namespace here on Meta-Wiki, to make a concrete example). Nemo 21:21, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Global metrics

If you mean that you're not going to provide any data or estimate for the metrics supposedly required by this section, please state so clearly. Nemo 12:26, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Nemo bis:. As I understand it, global metrics were developed primarily to measure participation and contribution in contributor support grants for individuals and affiliates, and are thus designed for those programs goals and needs. Although the Foundation's programs support contribution and participation, assessing the causal link between certain Foundation programs and the selected global metrics remains a challenge. (For example, there are multiple variables involved between the development of a product feature and the number of media additions to the article mainspace.) Given the short timeframe for the development of the annual plan, we were not able to resolve this issue. As such, we elected not to provide global metrics this year. We recognize this raises the question of how to best measure the efficacy our work, and have begun discussions internally on the subject. We anticipate being able to provide clearer metrics in future annual planning. Katherine (WMF) (talk) 22:13, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Re: Wikimedia projects integrate their technical decision processes with the community engagement guideline

Goal 2: Create a systematic approach to community engagement for product development teams seems to suggest that you will propose some sort of constitutional reform on the "top 20 most active" Wikimedia projects, e.g. by proposing changes of the policies behind the respective decision-making processes. Did I read this correctly? Nemo 12:32, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

The Wikimedia communities define their own decision-making processes and we have no intention in changing that. What we want to propose is a common approach for these communities to participate in the WMF product development process and communicate their decisions. To put extreme examples, we cannot expect WMF Product to follow discussions in dozens of Village Pumps in dozens of languages, as we cannot require volunteers of these communities to invest the time that requires to follow dozens of WMF projects in Phabricator. We need to agree on a guideline that will allow communities and development teams to exchange proposals and decisions, and this can only happen if the communities agree connect their local decision processes with this common guideline for technical collaboration.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 13:05, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Nemo -- backing up what Qgil-WMF said, an important part of this approach is building an understanding of how the various communities make decisions so the WMF can ask for ideas and feedback effectively. From the perspective of a product team, having this understanding will be incredibly valuable in fostering positive collaboration with these communities. TNegrin (WMF) (talk) 14:01, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Re: Channel volunteer focus

Channel volunteer focus into addressing community priorities is a totally backwards idea and should definitely be rejected. Volunteers are not at the WMF's disposal and work on their own priorities. Volunteer developers are also much, much better than WMF at identifying what matters to the community of their interest and don't need WMF to be condescending towards them. Discouraging the volunteers from working on what matters to them can only result into a decreased participation. Nemo 12:37, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

This goal is about proposing Community Wishlist tasks to volunteer developers asking for ideas to work on, not about discouraging those with their own plans. New volunteers ask us frequently in developer events and outreach programs. Also experienced developers sometimes don't have a strong opinion about where to help, and in our experience they welcome a reference like the Community Wishlist that they can follow or ignore. We are putting this idea in practice for the first time at the current Google Summer of Code and Outreachy rounds, and also at the Wikimedia Hackathon 2016. In both cases the response is being very positive, and I don't think you will find anyone saying that we discouraged them to work on whatever they wanted to focus.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 12:53, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Qgil-WMF Would the phrase "connect with" that you used in other objectives rather than "channel" reflect the sentiments behind this goal more effectively? TNegrin (WMF) (talk) 14:05, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

you might want to say "align" or "focus" or "coordinate", channel implies you are a civil engineer. 98.163.68.171 23:00, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

TNegrin (WMF) and others, thank you for the suggestions to improve the wording of this proposal. If "channel" is not an appropriate verb, then what do you think about these changes?

• "Objective 1 – Channel Encourage volunteer focus into addressing community priorities: By the end of FY16-17, work to have with volunteer developers to complete 10 technical community requests that have strong demand."
• "Objective 2 – Channel Encourage hackathon and outreach work Into community requests: By the end of FY16-17, help Foundation hackathons and outreach programs, such as Google Summer of Code, to increase their impact by channeling focusing their work toward popular community requests.

--Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:01, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Qgil-WMF I think this is fine -- you might also consider something like "build awareness of the wishlist with developers". Community Tech has, perhaps unsurprisingly, found that there's already a lot of community interest around the wishlist simply because the projects have a lot of impact, so this might be all you need to do :) TNegrin (WMF) (talk) 13:57, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

This is all fine, but should not be viewed as a replacement for "Channel Foundation focus into addressing community priorities", so that the Foundation considers itself free to run off and work on things that the community considers relatively unimportant or too far removed from the mission of the encyclopedia. In other words, if volunteer developers don't show up, these balls should not be dropped; the Foundation developers should pick them up. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:07, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

I find this discussion very interesting, but it is not clear to me if the distinction between channeling and encouragement will be mirrored by real-life choices. Thus, my question in relation to this is a bit more fundamental: are the people who drafted this the same ones who will also implement what I am reading? If that was the case, the problem is not the choice of wording but rather averting the conflict of interest. My fear is that even if semantic and cosmetic changes are accepted, things will go as planned (i.e. regardless of the suggested changes). My doubt is this: even if we use the word "encouragement", who guarantees it will not be just another "channeling" but by means of soft power? Of course, soft power is still better than full power, but I do not like the generic aspect of some rulings. I think an Annual Plan stands in between Constitutional documents and Applicative Policies. So, in constitutional documents general intentions are expressed (e.g. we want to achieve the goal of fishing); in applicative policies you find specific instructions (a boat shall be procured, a net shall be used, etc.). Now, this plan looks like neither this nor that: it is not constitutional in the purest sense, but neither it is a policy document. As such, I am afraid it is vulnerable to interpretive manipulation. I apologize for casting this local problem (the one expressed in this section) as a mirror of more general an issue with how plans are drafted, but my main concern is that vagueness of language in mid-term (yearly) plans will translate into excessive management freedom on behalf of those who first commit to vague terminology and then end up doing what they want anyway. Please accept my apologies if my comment sounds reactionary to the terms of the proposed plan, but I feel like raising the issue now will be better than later. Of course I might be wrong in fearing this and, in that case, your reassurance will be paramount. --MarcelloPapirio (talk) 15:17, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: of course this is no replacement of responsibilities of the Wikimedia Foundation. Fully agreed. The Community Tech team is driving the implementation of the top 10 requests of the Community Wishlist. What is more important in relation to your comment, the Product teams' propose their goals on a quarterly basis, and there are ways to give them feedback about the projects they should focus next.

@MarcelloPapirio: how can we make you happy? :) If I read your comment correctly, the underlying question is about trust. Can we Technical Collaboration team be trusted to act tomorrow as we propose today? We don't need to have constitutional or semantic discussions here. If you suspect that we can trick this plan in some way, please provide the details and let's discuss.

We have a practical example of our intent in the Wikimedia Hackathon, hosted a few weeks back in Jerusalem. From the 36 projects showcased at the end of the event, eight were related to the Community Wishlist (details). The developers who worked on them were a mix of Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Germany, and volunteer developers. We also had WMF, WMDE, and volunteers working in non-CW projects, and everyone got to choose based on their personal motivations. To make affiliation data more interesting, the WMF developers worked on these projects basically as volunteers, based on their personal interests more than their WMF roles. If you are concerned about our plans, you can check the example of the Hackathon and tell us what you would have done differently, or what can we learn for the next occasions.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 15:33, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Just for your information, now we have another precedent to illustrate the direction of this plan. For the first time, we promoted some Community Wishlist tasks in a Google Summer of Code and Outreachy round. The result is that from eight projects approved, one is related to the CW. We made some push, we didn't stop any mentors or students betting on other tasks, and the org admins supported equally all ongoing proposals.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 06:17, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Re: Raise Wikimedia awareness among new readers

To me, "surpass more awareness benchmarks [...] by more than 5,000 individuals" does not seem grammatical. Please clarify the meaning of this sentence and, while you're at it, what these 5,000 individuals per country are. Nemo 12:59, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Nemo bis:. Great note. We will remove “the 5,000 individuals” section and rephase objective 3 to “[...] surpass awareness benchmarks.” We will not know the specific awareness benchmark until we have completed the previous work phases. Our intent here is to prove that our messaging efforts have effectively reached an underserved audience. This audience will be defined in detail during our “New Readers” research phase. At that time, we’ll estimate total size of that audience and benchmark an effective goal based on our existing community + social media + reasonable press reach, etc. ZMcCune (WMF) (talk) 23:42, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Re: to be relevant in the world of shared online content

The logic in Goal 2: Explore new ways to share our content and mission is obscure to me. The first assumption is that we need to «show how Wikipedia/Wikimedia continues to be relevant in the world of shared online content», perhaps because someone thinks it stopped; I don't like this language (I'd prefer something like «show how important free knowledge is and how Wikimedia projects contribute to it») but let's grant this. The second assumption is that «emerging communications platforms and services» are needed to reach this goal, but it's not clear why. Nemo 13:13, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Nemo bis:. On the Communications team, we always work to «show how Wikipedia/Wikimedia continues to be relevant in the world of shared online content», because we believe in the work of the movement and the volunteer community and want to continuously showcase this work. We do not believe that the work has ever stopped being relevant, but we do understand that Wikimedia content is ever-changing and digital-content distribution is changing too. To serve these changes, we believe «emerging communications platforms and services» are needed, and valuable. These types of services give us access to new audiences (e.g. more international, users who prefer visual vs. text-based content, chat users) and put Wikimedia content to use in new ways. Social media surveys show only half of our Facebook and Twitter followers have ever edited Wikipedia. Nearly 2 million are in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Our ability to bridge that chasm between people who love Wikipedia but are not yet fully taking part is crucial to growing the ranks of editors and reaching a world that needs our information. On Pinterest, our community is 55% female, addressing a gender gap prevalent across the movement. In the past month, nearly 11 million women have engaged on Pinterest with pinned content from Wikimedia Commons. Sharing Commons media and reaching women users are high priorities for the movement. We are doing so in a community that is booming. Reaching people who love Wikipedia but who have never edited and creating a community of mostly women users are two direct applications of emerging communications platforms. ZMcCune (WMF) (talk) 23:57, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi ZMcCune (WMF), I have read with interest the information about Pinterest. I had the impression reading your annual plan draft that continuing the efforts to address the gender gap issue was not a priority anymore. The French Wikimooc on the other hand has experienced 36% of registered women, which is more than the average of female contributors on Wikipedia, while not being directly ment to tackle the issue of gender gap. How can we address the gender gap if it disappears from annual objectives? We desperately need WMF to set the standards and best practices for us to argue towards achieving an adequate level of commitment in the local chapters. Thanks to Nemo for his precise remarks and bringing awareness on this page.--Nattes à chat (talk) 23:36, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

@Nattes à chat: For what it is worth, I am generally interested in running another gender gap-themed Inspire campaign through IdeaLab (for reference, here was the first one, and some immediate outcomes). Our initial campaign was successful at gathering & developing ideas from different communities and, for ideas that could use funding to help implement them, channeling those ideas into WMF grant programs. With that said, we are not done with the gender gap simply because we ran one campaign. I agree that outreach to chapters in preparation for these campaigns is necessary as well, and I will make efforts to do such outreach for that campaign. Thanks for your comments here. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 17:59, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Re: Grow Wikimedia Foundation blog readership

Program 5: Grow and improve audience and engagement on the Wikimedia Foundation’s digital channels duplicates "blog readership" into 2 sub-goals. Please explain what you mean exactly by "blog readership": increasing visits, or even unique visitors, is not a goal in itself. The goal is to (be able to) expand support for Wikimedia projects' mission, i.e. free knowledge. The WMF blog contains many unrelated posts (such as generic news) which don't in themselves contribute to the goal: such content may be legit but should not distort the statistics on the actual goals (e.g. if someone visits a blog post on the latest death of a pop star this is totally neutral for Wikimedia's mission; if they proceed to visit another post on Wikimedia values then that's something worth measuring). Nemo 13:22, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Nemo bis, although I would dispute your characterization of "generic news," I'd like to take on your specific example, which I believe is referring to our story on the death of David Bowie. If you re-read that post, you'll see that it's not just about the "latest death of a pop star," it's educating non-community readers about how Wikipedia works from both an editorial and a traffic standpoint. For other examples, we looked at how editors reacted to the death of Antonin Scalia, or educated people about Pokemon's influence on the English Wikipedia. I would say that these all sync well with your stated goal of expanding support for the Wikimedia projects. :-) Best, Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 19:21, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

No, I'm not talking of specific examples. There are entire sections of the blog and social media outlets which are about reposting Wikimedia content, apparently for clickbaiting purposes, and there is no assessment of how the activity helps the Wikimedia mission. See also Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2016-2017/revised#Goal 2: Showcase Wikimedia’s relevant content and share our mission through emerging digital communications platforms and services.

By the way, I appreciate that the 10 % increase in Twitter followers is probably equivalent to "do nothing"/maintain inertia, as there was such an increase already in the last 12 months.[1] [2] I'd however appreciate if there were other, more mission-related goals. Nemo 06:38, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Re: cultivate communities of everyday people who love Wikipedia

Please explain why this is a goal. Nemo 13:23, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm not convinced this entire program is high enough priority to warrant the emphasis it has been given on this plan either. MER-C (talk) 08:27, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Nemo and MER-C, thank you for your comments. On Facebook we have about 2 million fans in nations we have identified as strategic for our global growth. They like Wikipedia, but many have never edited, our feedback shows. (Just 10% of 2,000 of our Twitter followers who answered a survey said they were frequent editors.) These are potential editors, people who are reaching out, and we need to reach back. On Pinterest, 55% of our followers are women – another opportunity for a demographic the movement badly needs. At the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin our social media sessions were packed, and a new Facebook group for people interested in social media has members from more than 50 countries comparing notes on how to use these platforms to help the movement. At a time when we must grow in key areas, social media is a great opportunity, but it must be managed in ways harmonious with the Five Pillars. Neutral Point of View and Free Content licenses are not values we can maintain lazily. We have to set, keep, model and maintain best practices. In doing so we show the world how to share Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement. --JElder (WMF) (talk) 23:03, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Re: Protect project trademarks

Please explain how your goals align with the Wikimedia communities' goals, e.g. community requests for trademark protection. Nemo 13:26, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Nemo,

In our trademark policy, developed with community consultation, we lay out Wikimedia’s trademark-related goals. At a high level, those are: (1) ensuring that when people see the Wikimedia marks they know they refer to the Wikimedia projects, and (2) retaining the public’s goodwill toward the Wikimedia projects and community. Our trademark objectives in the annual plan are designed and intended to work toward those goals. The marks represent the communities’ work, and we try to allow community members to use the marks as broadly possible, as explained in the trademark policy. For requests to use the marks from outside the movement, we grant permission when doing so will promote the projects and increase the goodwill attached to them. When improper use of the marks comes to our attention, often because a community member has reported it, we send cease-and-desist letters.

Cheers GeoffBrigham (WMF) (talk) 23:47, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

This does not answer my question hence I must conclude that the expenditure on trademarks does not align with the Wikimedia communities' goals, especially as regards community requests for trademark protection. Too bad. Maybe some day the WMF will start doing its job. Nemo 21:12, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Changes to the document

Please request substantive changes to the document on the talk page, for several reasons. First, the report has been printed out for review by some people, and it's important that we sync changes. Second, it's important that we agree that changes are appropriate to the document.

I've just restored the original from a change that listed "Change over projection" in the staffing costs table. While I think, personally, change over last year's plan might make sense, change over projection does not seem to me a widely useful detail. That Community Engagement is coming in under budget at the moment for lack of a Senior Director, for instance, seems less relevant than the difference in staffing costs when all positions are filled versus the staffing costs with all filled positions requested last year. But if others think these percentages are important, it's a good idea to come to consensus. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:56, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Rereading, I should add for clarity that change from projection is not all due to lack of Senior Director. :) There are other unfilled positions which impact staffing projections, in CE and elsewhere. For just one further example, Support and Safety has been in hiring mode since November and hope to bring in a new advocate in May. Those months of salary were budgeted, but remain unused, contributing to the underspend. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:08, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

money distribution to volunteers

User:Katherine (WMF), you feel the distribution of money to volunteers is appropriate in this plan? i can only guess, it must be something between 1 and 2 mio? --ThurnerRupert (talk) 14:28, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi, User:ThurnerRupert. :) Are you talking about including grantmaking totals here? If so, the amount is detailed at Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2016-2017/draft#Expenses: upcoming year's annual plan. If that's not what you mean, can you please clarify? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:35, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

yes, this numbers are not fully clear to me, how much ends up at volunteers? --ThurnerRupert (talk) 11:58, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

an interesting strategy, to answer a question with a question, User:Katherine (WMF), and Maggie Dennis (WMF). the question was: do you feel that out of 70 million a share of 1-2 million, which is 2%, for the volunteers, is appropriate? --ThurnerRupert (talk) 03:41, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

I admit I'm confused about the reference to $1-2 million, ThurnerRupert. From where are you citing the $2m number? The proposed budget for next year is $63m, not $70m. Maggie Dennis (WMF) has linked to the section with the proposed grants amount for next year, totaling $5,460,000. That's roughly 8.7% of the total budget, which is roughly consistent with last year's allocated disbursement. Katherine (WMF) (talk) 05:06, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi ThurnerRupert, Thanks for asking this question. It's an interesting one! What I understand you to be asking is: "of all the money raised and held by WMF, how much of it goes directly to volunteers?" If that's right, here's my answer: As Maggie said, we expect to have $63m in our budget next year, and based on the current draft plan and budget, US$7,110,000 of the WMF budget next year will go to the grants program. This figure is roughly 11.3% of the WMF organizational budget. [Note that the discrepancy between the figure Katherine used (5.46m) and the one I'm using (7.11m) is that the 5.46m number doesn't include the funds from the payment processing chapters, which will add an additional 1.65m to the grants budget.]

We don't actually track how much of the funds from the Community Resources grants go directly to volunteers. Community Resources funds individual volunteers and affiliate organizations (some of them have paid staff running those organizations) to do mission-aligned work. Those affiliates, in turn, support volunteers directly and indirectly themselves through trainings, scholarships, activities, microgrants, and much more. I am sorry I can't tell you more precisely what the number is going directly to volunteers, since we don't track that. We do track a number of other things, like the # and % of our funds supporting the global south and work related to the gender gap, grants supporting emerging communities, and the number and dollar figure going to individuals directly. KLove (WMF) (talk) 16:22, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

many thanks [User:KLove (WMF)|KLove (WMF)]], User:Katherine (WMF)! be basic question is probably: if i give 1$ into the system "wikimedia" to whomever, how much will end up at a volunteer? this would mean that every organization getting funds because wikipedia&al exists would be able to tell this. for WMF also. is the best approximation how much cash is spent on conferences / meetups (i.e. not salaries and travel cost of somebody working at WMF) plus individual engagement grants? is there anything else the volunteers get? how high will IEG + travel&participation support in 2017? i think that every affiliate can do (and maybe should do) the same calcualtion. my guess was 1-2%. and to be clear: i do not find it a shame if the number is low. there was no target set. --ThurnerRupert (talk) 19:26, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi ThurnerRupert, I like your question, and I raised similar ones when I was on the FDC and thinking about the overall focus of money in the budget. In addition to direct funding, I also think it is important to think of the amount of funding that is going to projects and tools that are essential for the volunteers who are assisting with administering the websites.

One type of volunteers who are getting more attention and fundings in recent years is the online volunteers doing checkuser, suppression, and working as OTRS agents. The Support and Safety (SuSa) team moved from the Legal Department and is now in the Community Engagement department. This move is giving better focus on the important work that functionaries are doing on wiki. There is more expansion to be done, especially with international relationships, but progress has been made over the last few years. In addition to the projects proposed by SuSa staff, I'm hopeful that functionaries themselves will seek more funding for Individual Engagement Grants or Project Grants for better workflows, training materials, and tools. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 20:25, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi ThurnerRupert and Sydney Poore/FloNight, thanks for this conversation and your interest. I missed your ping because a bracket was missing, but I've seen your responses now. As I've said, I can't say exactly what portion of funds are going directly to the volunteers, because we don't track our grant funds in that way.

As background: because of significant confusion members of our communities had in navigating differences between IEG and PEG grant programs, we are restructuring our grants programs to combine PEG and IEG. This restructure is being implemented now and will be moving forward in the coming months. You can read our team's annual plan which gives a bit more detail.

As you can see there, next year, we are budgeting US$900,000 for project grants next year, most of which will go to volunteers to lead projects. We are also budgeting US$475,000 for conference support grants -- much of which will bring volunteers together and includes the budget for scholarships to Wikimania (for volunteers) -- and US$50,000 for travel support for volunteers to attend conferences and events. Of course, as you noted, the large budget for affiliates through the annual plan grants is US$5,656,000, some of which goes to paid staff, but some of which goes to microgrants and scholarships.

One more thing that may be interesting to look at: you may have seen the report released by WMF's Finance Fellows last year called the "Chapter-wide global financial trends." These fellows reviewed financial data from 36 chapters (including most--but not all--of the APG/FDC funded affiliates) for the year of 2013. I don't believe this report will give you what you are looking for, ThurnerRupert, but you can get a sense of trends from those organizations in that year, and it may provide some useful information. Warm regards, KLove (WMF) (talk) 23:42, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Wikimedia-NL has a president (directeur) now, since a few years. Celebration of 15 years NL-Wikipedia will cost 15.000 euro. Donations must be for Wikpedia and Wikimedia projects, not for people that get payed or for a party that only a 'group that knows eachother good' goes to or people who don't live far away. Since I spend thousand and thousands of hour of spare time for free, I 3 times get blocked in a period in my life that things were not going so well. But that's 2 years ago and now I'm totally almost 9 years on Wikipedia-NL and 7-8 years on Wikimedia Commons. I gave one donation this year and i donated monthy years ago, but I never give a dime, I never asked for a director (directeur) or party's and want donation money to be spend for software and things like that. - Richardkiwi (talk) 20:02, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Only 3 times Richard? Fucked by arbcom, crazy bloks, imposseble to edit, i can expect every moment a block, you know that Richard. Why. Because I disagree with this kind of wasting money! By the way, I am blocked on two projects at the moment for my critical voice. I am a troll you know? That's ok for abcom. Arcom gave me this shit as an solution for caling me a troll by them. Put it in Google translate and have fun! By people who never wrote one article, but who like a wikimedia party! O yeh. Graaf Statler (talk) 10:11, 2 May 2016 (UTC) PS (Google translate)

More times, but officialy 3 times :) Let's make our own party Statler, but I think you live to far away, just like the people from Belgium. :-) Richardkiwi (talk) 17:57, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

A lot of praise

I was active in FDC in November 2012 reviewing the WMFplan for 2012-2013, also in April 2014 re WMF plan 2014-2015 and this plan is for me a quantum leap in professionalism, thanks a lot.

The first praise goes to your dedicated effeort to make your plan understandable and in accordance with the FDC requirements. The second praise goes to a more diligent creation of the plan starting with strategy, following with targats and focus for each program area. The third praise goes to you keeping the same budget level for coming year as you have for this year. To work smarter instead of with more people is not only econimical sound, it also, in my experience, leads to personell getting more positivly motivated as it gives a clearer drive for personal professional development

Feedback per section:

• Output: Very good
• Financials: FY 2015-16: Clear and just the level that makes it a good base for working through the rest of the review
• Programs: upcoming year's annual plan: OK for now but should be more substantial in coming years
• Community Engagement: The text is well set up making it possible to grasp the aim and plans. I dearly miss a more integrated approach of this work with what is being done in affiliates. I am also not fully in agreement of goals and ambitions, and in some area think it is to reinvent what has been learnt during the years, not least in the chapters. I would like to see a more dedicated and structured way to redevelop this plan, like with a review bodies made up from people from affiliates and communities
• Product: I am not an expert in this area but like it in general. Some parts seems to me being very elementary, like "Better understand our users", other part looks for me being excelent new approaces like "Foster a community of readers".
• Technology: I like the general ideas, but wonder if "Expand research capabilities" has too much internal focus (evolve enabler, and not a goal)
• Strategic Partnerships: OK
• Communications: very good
• Legal: Very good, keep up your excellent work!
• Non-programs: OK (and easy to read and understand)
• Staffing: Clear and easy to take in while I have som problem understanding the increase in cost when no increase in staff
• Financials: FY 2016-17: OK

Thanks again for presenting this and making it possible to give feedback!Anders Wennersten (talk) 17:33, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

+1 , This is definitely a step in the right direction towards transparency. Ofcause more information is needed on line items, but all in all it is good to finally see WMF heeding to this call and subjecting itself to the process. --Thuvack (talk) 07:18, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

+1. Stephane (talk) 08:43, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Anders that this year Annual Plan document is much better than in previous years. It is easier to understand and also more complete. I pretty agree with Anders grading of the different section. I'll more later on a few areas. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk)

+1 Great to see this Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:13, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

+1 great job --アンタナナ 23:18, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Agree with what was said, I think this represents great progress! However, along with the praise, it should be said: Some program areas metrics still lack well defined and in others program is a bit obscure in wording (myself and others commented about specifics). The only important matter missing IMHO is a drill-down on the budget - it really is an integral part of the plan. Moreover, the details we (WMF and community grant committees) ask of grantees with much smaller budgets is in A LOT of detail. It is only logical that a 60M$ budget should be more detailed than what is presented here. I think the budget specifically warrants a separate discussion, or at least separate scrutiny by the FDC and BoT. I would expect nothing less from them and the WMF Alleycat80 (talk) 12:49, 2 May 2016 (UTC).

Harassment training

Regarding Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2016-2017/draft#Program 2: Introduce training modules for functionaries and event organizers regarding issues management:

Have the outcomes of the harassment workshop been taken into account? I don't see this happening without bringing in outside expertise -- it's something we need to get absolutely correct. We need a definition that does not miss real harassment while telling users who complain about "harassment" because they have sanctioned correctly to take a hike. MER-C (talk) 08:17, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

@MER-C:, absolutely. We will be working with harassment professionals from other platforms, academic experts, and experienced Wikimedia admins and functionaries to design this. I've done some outreach through a working group on online harassment set up by the Berkman Center, as well as through contacts in other online communities, and will be accelerating this as we start working on this project in July. We will be doing deep consultation with users on our projects who have experience working with difficult harassment cases. Patrick Earley (WMF) (talk) 14:19, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying. I suggest adding a phrase to the tune of "liaising with outside experts" -- as written, the current text suggests the WMF is doing everything in-house. MER-C (talk) 02:34, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

MER-C, I've amended to the description to commit explicitly to working with outside experts: [3]. Thanks for calling that out. Patrick Earley (WMF) (talk) 16:39, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Parallel content streams

Regarding Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2016-2017/draft#Program 4: Maintain and improve content creation and editing tools:

"Add support in MediaWiki for pages made of multiple parallel content streams". Please provide more detail -- as written, this is fairly meaningless and the examples aren't really helping. Aren't file histories already on the description page? Would this be phab:T107595? MER-C (talk) 08:22, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

@MER-C: Yes, this is phab:T107595 and a whole suite of related follow-on changes. Sorry for this not being clear enough. I was trying to write this for a general audience, as it's going to be a lot of effort to make happen and will have some big changes down the road, but at heart it's pretty fundamentally a techie change. Possibly I've simplified too much?

On your question about "file histories already [being shown] on the description page", yes, they're shown when you read the page, but they're absent on the page's history and edit views (and elsewhere). This is inconsistent, and so bad for user accessibility, system and design scalability, and the approachability / understanding for readers and new and casual editors. Other examples of existing tasks and multi-part content which MediaWiki is not able to properly deal without this change are things like:

• videos and their subtitles (particularly a pain for editors working on translating subtitles or using the video in different ways);
• templates, their descriptions, and their 'template data' (messy for editors, complicated for software, and hard to improve for performance reasons); and
• pages and their meta-data (e.g. protection and title changes are currently shown in the history in a confusing and slightly hacky way, but aren't shown in any useful diff; other meta-data changes are in the wikitext but you can't see them unless you look for the particular diff in the wikitext; etc.).

There's also a huge amount of possible future work we are interested in working on (in longer timescales than just up to June 2017) which this would unlock. For example, right now adding structured meta-data to Wikimedia Commons would make things worse, not better, without this change. The structured meta-data proposal for Commons would allow filtered search ('show me paintings of dogs from French painters'), consistency of results with much less manual work for editors, especially Commons sysops, and potentially dynamic and multi-lingual categories (better for readers and other users of Commons who want to find media better, uploaders who want to make their media as available as possible, editors of wikis in smaller languages who want to find the best media even if they don't speak English, and the community members who maintain Commons and wish to continue to make it the most useful free media repository on the Internet).

The current wording is:

Expand the core of MediaWiki to support new kinds of content: By the end of FY16-17, add support in MediaWiki for pages made of multiple parallel content streams. This will help improve existing contributor workflows, such as the display of file histories and description pages alongside one another, or templates, description pages, and descriptive data. This will also help us provide powerful new kinds of content (structured data and properly supported images and video), bringing the collaborative contributor experience to other formats.

I'd be hugely grateful if you can suggest some possible changes to the wording to make this clearer.

Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 16:31, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Ahh, now I understand; thank you for the thorough explanation. The average editor will have some difficulty picturing what's going to happen, how this will affect them and whether this is Yet Another WMF Top Down Imposed Change We Don't Want(TM). (Now that you've explained it, I support the idea.) For wording, something like "...add support in MediaWiki for pages and revisions capable of storing multiple types of content simultaneously. For example, each revision of a video description page will encapsulate the state of the video, its subtitles, its metadata, the text of the description page and the associated wiki metadata such as protection levels at that particular time. This will help existing contributor workflows and allow us to provide powerful new kinds of content ..." would be a lot more concrete, if it accurately describes what you are going to do. MER-C (talk) 07:00, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, MER-C and Jdforrester (WMF). Since it's a fairly substantive wording change, I'm going to hold off on making the change in this current draft, and instead flag it for review by the C-suite and planning consultant, for possible inclusion in the next draft of the AP (which will be the next step after this consultation closes at the end of the week). Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 15:01, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Privacy roadmap

Regarding Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2016-2017/draft#Program 3: Improve site reliability:

Could you please give more details regarding the planned privacy roadmap? MER-C (talk) 08:30, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

@MER-C:, I've added some details on the technical aspects of the privacy roadmap at mw:Wikimedia_Security_Team/Privacy_roadmap. I'm happy to answer any specific questions you have, but that should give you a high-level description of what's planned. CSteipp (WMF) (talk) 17:32, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

A high level description was what I was looking for, thank you. Should this page be linked in the plan? MER-C (talk) 02:40, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, CSteipp (WMF) and MER-C, I've gone ahead and added a link to the roadmap into the Annual Plan document. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 20:48, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Community Tech

Regarding Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2016-2017/draft#Program 5: Maintain and build contributor tools:

• "Conduct a modified community wishlist" This is premature unless you are vastly increasing the resources available -- there are still ten years and hundreds of Phabricator tickets of improvements to be made that affect all projects. At this stage, allocating paid developer time to smaller projects reduces the total impact and efficiency. On the other hand, this kind of stuff is perfect for hackathons and the like.
  • @MER-C: The biggest complaint that we got about the 2015 Wishlist Survey is that, because it relied exclusively on voting, it excluded smaller communities and important, but lesser known technical issues. Personally, I thought that straight voting worked fairly well as we ended up with a good list of tasks that benefit a large cross-section of the projects. However, we want to take the critical feedback that we got and try to address those concerns if possible. We are hoping to increase our resourcing slightly (with 1 or 2 additional developers), so hopefully it won't be a significant drain on addressing the wishes of the larger projects. Providing technical support for 800+ different projects definitely isn't easy, so we're going to experiment with different approaches and see what works and what doesn't. A lot of the smaller communities feel like they have been completely neglected by the WMF, so maybe we can find a better balance. Kaldari (talk) 00:18, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
• Speaking of which, how much more resources will be allocated to the Community Tech team for the next iteration of the wishlist?
  • See above. We're asking to expand the team, but the WMF's budget this year is flat, so we'll see how it goes. Kaldari (talk) 00:18, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
    • To be specific, we've recently added another developer to the team to focus on labs and while the budget has not been approved, the plan is for another developer to be hired in the next fiscal. TNegrin (WMF) (talk) 14:06, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
• Moderation tools seem to have been underemphasized in this plan, given they touch multiple themes -- not just this one, but also harassment. MER-C (talk) 08:35, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Right now, we just don't have a clear picture of what types of moderation tools would actually be helpful. I have a couple ideas myself, but the big challenge is scalability, i.e. creating moderation tools that don't significantly expand the workload of admins, oversighters, etc. The Support and Safety team is planning on researching and addressing harassment issues during the coming fiscal year. If they decide that they need software support for this, it is likely that they will ask us to help with it. If you have any specific ideas, I would encourage you to propose them at the next Wishlist Survey (or via an RfC on MediaWiki.org). Kaldari (talk) 00:18, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Mer-C. The Community Tech team is charged with providing technical support and helping active contributors across the Mediawiki projects. Some of the wishes are going to be specific to a particular project. For example, in the last survey, wishes #1 and 2 - Migrate dead external links to archives, and Improve diff compare screen - are primarily of benefit to the Wikipedias, rather than Commons or Wikisource. Wish #6 - Allow categories in Commons in all languages - is obviously Commons-specific, as are wishes #11 and 13. Probably the only wishes at the top of the list that truly affect all projects are the explicitly cross-wiki ones -- Cross-wiki watchlist and Cross-wiki user talk.

It's okay for some of our tasks to specifically focus on helping out a particular project or set of projects, as long as we don't end up only serving one group at the exclusion of everyone else. So carving out a little space for smaller projects means that we can be responsive to the contributors on those projects. Wishes for smaller projects can't just be handled at Hackathons -- just because it's a smaller wiki doesn't mean it's a smaller task. :) For example, wish #25 - Tool to use Google OCRs in Indic language Wikisource -- is a good-sized task for the Community Tech team, and would be a tremendous help to a project and a set of languages that haven't received much attention from WMF in the past. (I'm just using that as an example; I don't want to get into the pros and cons of addressing that specific wish.)

I think it's natural for people to assume that a wish that addresses a need on the project I contribute to is universal, and a wish that addresses another project's needs is local, and therefore too small to care about. Our team really wants to serve the entire global Wikimedia community, and sometimes that means helping the smaller ones.

We're hoping to add more resources to the Community Tech team as we go along, dependent on the budget process. If this year's annual plan and budget allow, we're planning to add more resources to the team at the start of the next fiscal year. In general, the Foundation has been very enthusiastic about our team's work, and I know we'll be top of mind when funds open up.

About moderation tools -- one of the "smaller groups" that we're thinking about for next year's survey is admins and stewards. One moderation wish, Wish #15 - Improve date range searches on Special:Contributions - just got worked on at the Hackathon last weekend, and I think that may get released soon. :) Let me know if you have other thoughts. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 22:29, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

The Special:Contributions proposal is exactly the type of development work I want to see more of -- I feel the boring, simple, low-risk and small (unless technical debt gets in the way) enhancements to core software will cumulatively have a much greater impact. The ones that affect workflows that are common to all projects should be especially high priority -- regardless of whether one edits Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wikivoyage, Meta or $BLAH Wikia editors look at diff screens, remediate and/or exclude problematic users, deal with spam, check logs, page histories and contribution lists, have discussions and so forth. I don't have any objection to targeting smaller groups like admins, but I do object to resources being spent on specific projects until the pool of easy fixes is mostly depleted.

Regarding admin tools, I generally refer to measures that target specifically block evasion and sockpuppetry. These should result in reduced community workload because socks are caught sooner or prevented. I made a proposal to last year's wishlist relating to moderation tools which I'll recycle, with some of the tickets (e.g. phab:T5233) being straightforward enhancements to existing tool sets. Safety and Support is aware of these -- technical measures were one of the four themes in the recent harassment workshop, but conspicuously absent in this plan (hence me asking).

Suggesting wishlist ideas for Hackathon/GSOC/Outreachy is a great idea and one that I commend you for, but one wonders about the follow-up necessary to get code into a mergeable state. Thank you for your in-depth responses. MER-C (talk) 07:37, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Well, for this team specifically, we're using the survey to see what a broad range of people think are the most important things to take care of. If your moderation tools proposal only got to #29, then the group of people who voted weren't excited enough about it to give a support vote. People had as many votes as they wanted, so it wasn't a matter of "this proposal is more important than that one" -- you could support vote for both. I think it's fairer to say that that specific proposal wasn't as compelling as some of the others, for whatever reason. You should definitely resubmit it for the next survey, but maybe you could rewrite it, and see if there's another wording that would attract more support votes. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 20:56, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia Zero

Regarding Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2016-2017/draft#Program 2: Carefully grow Wikipedia Zero:

• Have the lessons from the Angola/Wikipedia Zero piracy problem been learnt?

  @MER-C:,We are still in the process of learning from the piracy case in Angola. As I have publicly stated on this Wikimedia-l thread, we were and still are working with the relevant teams - Community Engagement, Editing and Legal - to figure out the best approach here. It is our understanding that our editors need to be able to handle an influx of new users, who may contribute either in good faith or not. The teams mentioned above are working to develop better tools which will help our editors to quickly detect these issues. We hope to achieve a balance between bringing new users to our projects while also addressing abuses in a way that is not restrictive on those who want to make a useful contribution.

  The reason I'm asking is because I'm seeing echoes of the India Education Program several years ago -- the WMF ran a large outreach program in the Third World without proper situational awareness, thus resulting in a large crap influx, the WMF was too slow in stopping the program and volunteers were left holding the bag in terms of cleanup. I am concerned that even "carefully" expanding Wikipedia Zero in these circumstances brings about substantial risk to our projects and the quality of our content. MER-C (talk) 06:55, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

  I understand your concern, MER-C and I appreciate you bringing it up. I am familiar with the India Education Program and I can say that both programs are fundamentally different. The Wikipedia Zero program has been designed to increase Wikipedia’s readership and awareness in countries where affordability is a barrier to access knowledge and information. We believe everyone has the right to access and contribute to Wikimedia projects. Zero simply provides users with the ability to access the projects and contribute to them if they so choose. When issues related to a large influx of edits happened recently, community members along with Wikimedia Foundation staff have worked together to understand and address it. For example, we created a tool for editors to quickly identify content that may violate copyright policy from Wikipedia Zero networks. This tool, in combination with other existing on wiki practices, has reduced the number of copyright violations from users accessing the sites through Wikipedia Zero. Additionally, local chapters are also focusing on educating users about relevant copyright policies to help ensure that contributions added to the Wikimedia sites are in line with our policies and mission as a movement. To me, that’s an example of what we can accomplish when we work together to further our mission, without risking the quality of content on Wikimedia sites. Finally, the Wikipedia Zero program is almost 4 years old. During this time, we have proudly launched the service in more than 60 countries, providing Wikimedia project access to a possible 750 million people. Additionally to our operating principles, a “careful” expansion of Wikipedia Zero means that we will launch new Zero partnerships keeping these guidelines in mind:

• affordability as a barrier to access the internet being an issue in that country
• the local community support to the program
• there is no policy regulations preventing the program’s implementation
• When an unintended problem caused by zero-rating arises, our team will take responsibility and work with the communities affected to find the best way to address it

We are committed to maintaining Wikipedia Zero as a program that is always contextually aware. In the rare case that we have exceptional content moderation challenges, we work to solve them alongside community members. We believe that free access to free knowledge is a powerful tool for our movement, and we’re committed to supporting our mission through Wikipedia Zero. Adele Vrana (WMF) talk 06:09, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

• Given there are places that Wikipedia Zero can't reach, effort needs to be expended on reducing the overhead per page load in terms of raw bytes, thus reducing page load times. MER-C (talk) 08:39, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

  @MER-C:,That is a valuable direction for the areas we work in which have slow (3g or lower) or expensive bandwidth and we agree that reducing page size and increasing performance is critical. To that end, the Performance and Reading teams have been focusing on performance enhancements for the last few quarters. This is the ticket that the Reading team has been using to track this program. In addition, the Technical Operations goal of standing up a caching center in Asia will also reduce page load time considerably in many locations. Adele Vrana (WMF) talk 03:37, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

  Absolutely. I completely forgot about this having it's own program, but even there minimizing bandwidth use seems to be underemphasized -- I was looking for an explicit target of X% less data transferred per page, which page paint time is an imperfect measure of. MER-C (talk) 06:55, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

  Hi MER-C -- Reading and Performance have been really focused on bandwidth and performance issues but we've not done a good job publicizing the results. We're putting together some more data for our quarterly review next week which we'll share more broadly. A specific goal is loading the Barack Obama page (generally one of the largest pages in enwiki) under 15 seconds on 2G. TNegrin (WMF) (talk) 13:58, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

• FYI: For the "Angola Facebook Case" see also the international press coverage via c:User:Teles/Angola Facebook Case (only a few examples). See also ongoing c:User:NahidSultan/Bangladesh Facebook Case. --Gunnex (talk) 07:54, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
• Could someone perhaps explain to me what the legal status of Wikipedia Zero might be under jurisdiction of countries with net neutrality statutes in place (like the United States, maybe EU)? Are there any plans to deal with legal threats or controversies that might arise from these sorts of things, even if the market countries don't have specific statutes? For example, Facebook's Internet.org initiative has run into some friction in India because of this sort of thing Isaac rowe1 (talk)

  Hi @Isaac rowe1: Net neutrality laws don't necessarily ban zero-rating (e.g., in the United States). However, Wikipedia Zero is a program focused on alleviating one of the barriers to access to knowledge - affordability. That's why we focus on entering regions where affordability is a real issue for people not getting online rather than offering the program in countries like the United States. When setting up new Wikipedia Zero relationships, we are careful to respect the local laws and views of the region. Accordingly, we respect the position of countries that understand how Wikipedia Zero works and decide it isn't right for them, as they are obviously more aware of the needs of their people. We then refocus our resources on countries that welcome the program as a much needed way to effectively bring access to knowledge to their people. MBrar (WMF) (talk) 17:18, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Lack of serious consideration of the problem of plagiarism

This pervasive issue, in its overt and hidden forms, is not sufficiently addressed—in scope of issue, its impact, or the mechanisms needed for correction—by its limited appearance in Program 5, a contributor tools-focused category. The content appearing in the link "Improve the plagiarism detection bot" presents this as an issue of expanding technical capability, when this is but a very small part of the remedy that is needed—the address of which spans the areas of policy, editor training, administrative oversight, and article quality reporting (in addition to the narrow area of technical tools). Take any statistically relevant sampling of articles, without selection bias, and examine them using standard academic tools for the use of content (spanning the range from direct quotes to ideas) that is unattributed to source—the basis of definitions of academic dishonesty—and one finds a very significant fraction of articles where practice violates basic expectations of attribution. (Run a tool to show any paragraph or section without a single citation, for a start.) Hence, the encyclopedia continues to fail:

• to make clear what it means to honestly use the work of others in composing the encyclopedia,
• to detect when dishonest practices have contributed to an article,
• to identify the dishonesty clearly, and broadly, such that it is rectified—the word plagiarism does not even appear in a tag of regular, wide use to mark articles as containing plagiarism, until specific issues can be researched and addressed,
• to ensure it is rectified, and quickly, and
• to address editors who have acted in such ways.

Even in the narrow area of tools, the lack of Foundation (broad, high-level) commitment is evident, insofar as the approach is one of "reinventing the wheel," as quality tools for detection are already available externally—and where, instead of their use, we opt for a long process of new tool development, rather than partnering with organisations with well-developed tools that we can adapt, to facilitate unequivocal discovery (partnering which must take place via initiative and leadership at the Foundation level). For the ridiculous constraint of current efforts to new additions, see User_talk:ערן#Copyvio_-_textbook_not_online — no critique of Eran or Doc, et al., intended. The sad fact is that most articles are not covered by this tool, and will never be, and those articles that are, if they have portions of unsourced text, or blocks of cut-and-paste text, made before eranbot began its application, then these are outside of its scope. (And medical articles are near to the least of concern, for their strong, committed, and expert-rich editing team.)

The consistent burying of this issue, as a sidebar technical matter, or as a non-issue, must end. Any committed academic editor applying Ch. Lipson's Doing Honest Work to Wikipedia articles finds case after case of unacceptable behaviour. If Wikipedia does not take seriously the matter of detecting, tagging, and remediating plagiarised content, and changing responsible editor behaviour, then a third party will begin doing so, with further and broader detriment to the reputation of the encyclopedia. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 05:48, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Hello, Leprof 7272. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I'd be interested in hearing more on how you think the Wikimedia Foundation can and should assist.

I'll note that as a volunteer I care very much about intellectual property issues, and as a member of staff this is an area of interest to me as well. The Wikimedia Foundation offers some support, including funding the bill for en:User:Corensearchbot, which evaluates new articles against existing sources - which can catch both plagiarism and copyright concerns for user review. However, while the Foundation is involved at the global policy level and at application (obviously) where legal compliance is an issue, traditionally it has been up to individual projects and especially their recent change patrollers (under whatever name) to keep an eye out for plagiarism in the same way users watch for vandalism and unconstructive edits of other types. Running existing articles against the web is challenging because of false positives from mirrors, and it would likely be prohibitively expensive at least under the partnership we have with Yahoo!. Complicating this, as I know you are aware, some projects (including English Wikipedia) do not have well defined policies against plagiarism. As a volunteer who helped work on the en:WP:Plagiarism before it was adopted as a guideline, I know there were some who felt that even this was too much. (You can read en:WT:Plagiarism for specifics - the guideline was even once nominated for deletion.) There have been strong volunteer-led initiatives towards helping address plagiarism, both with in-house bots and out-of-house partnerships (such as Wikipedia:Turnitin, which contributed to the medical partnership).

Looking forward to hearing your further thoughts, however, about how we might assist. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:19, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Advice prior to CCI

Contents without source do not qualify to be published on WP, copy-pest is also prohibited. In presence of these parameters Plagiarism reporting is also a tool of harassment to restrict the “Plus editing”. In order to curb this intellectual crime on the part of experts and experienced users they should first modify the text (maintaining atleast 50:50 if deletion is necessary) instead of opting CCI. Contents provided with Citation of Reference “A” comparing these contents by tracing Reference “B” (which has not been cited) in no way constitutes plagiarism, in fact it is theft if reference “A” is not the publisher of contents under observations. However, none can stop the similarity of line or phrase which matches above 60% of the reference which has not been cited as source of contents. A number of URLs publishes contents on a topic with minor difference of wording. Therefore “Fair USE” of Reference “A” does not merit logically to be investigated by tracing Reference “B”. As we know fact cannot be claimed as intellectual property. Therefore factual events are published by various URLs, especially the news items, in their own words and presentation. Here intellectual dishonesty is applied and one is placed for CCI. Thus a “copy vio & plagiarism detection” tool for all users should be available. They may be advised to use the tool before a CCI case is proposed by honest expert. Nannadeem (talk) 11:37, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Nannadeem. CCI is a community-driven process of the English Wikipedia, not a Wikimedia Foundation initiative, and the WMF does not play a role in that particular process or its policies/guidelines of use. That means that this isn't something that could be worked into the WMF's annual plan, or really be placed within the purview of the WMF at all. If you want to change the way CCI is run, you would need to go through the English Wikipedia's policy processes. That would probably start with you opening a discussion on the "Policy" Village Pump, laying out what the current process is, what you find to be the problem with it, and what changes you want the community to make. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 19:04, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Detailed Budget

Section 12.1 is the section entitled Detailed budget. In the APG form instructions for this section it states:

"Please link to your organization's detailed budget showing planned revenues and expenses for the upcoming funding period (e.g. 1 July 2016 to 30 June 2017). This may be a document included on this Wiki (Meta) or a publicly available spreadsheet."

You have provided a summary table of the budget in this section, consisting of 14 line-items totalling $63M, but not a budget. Could you please provide a budget document? For comparison, here are the budget documents of the applicants from Round 1 in the 2015-16 process (column 4, "public budget") and here are the budget documents from round 2 (the current round). Wittylama (talk) 08:49, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

@Wittylama: Thanks for pointing this out. A more detailed budget breakdown for non-staffing costs is now available under Appendix 2. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 20:01, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the rapid reply!

These tables are good to have, but to be honest are hard to parse (could you perhaps link the line-items in Table 8 to their respective tables in this Appendix [and vice versa] to make it clearer to which thing they refer?) and don't really provide much new information... For example

• The "Legal" (table 12) has only ONE line-item (that is: it has precisely the same $ as the summary table 8), so it doesn't provide any breakdown.
• The "outside contract services" (table 11) has a line-item for $900k for for Communications "3rd party resources to support increased global awareness of, positive sentiment regarding, and engagement with Wikimedia movement, Wikipedia and sister projects...". That's a broad statement with a lot of potential activities falling underneath it. Grouping it to one line item of almost a million dollars is still very high level.
• In the same table (table 11) "Strategic Partnerships" is requesting $40k for "N/A". Granted, this is the smallest line-item, but I can't imagine the WMF approving a grant to an affiliate of $40 Thousand for the activity of "not applicable"...

Basically, what I'm saying is that, while this added Appendix 2 is a helpful contribution - and I thank the authors of it - it does not really answer my question of "can you please provide a 'detailed budget' in compliance with the APG form's standards?" Wittylama (talk) 07:55, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Wittylama that some aspects of the proposal are difficult to understand because it is not clear about the resources that will be directed towards that aspect of the plan. So, it is impossible to draw a connection between the funding and programmatic activity. And see my new comment about the lack of detail about the expansion of types of Strategic Partners without any specifics. If I was still on the FDC I would not recommend funding any expansion of Strategic Partnerships without a much more detailed proposal. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk)

I also agree with @Wittylama here. We need a much more detailed budget in order to properly review it, at the same level of depth as other Wikimedia entities provide in their applications to the FDC. Please can one be provided, @Kbrown (WMF)? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:06, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Mike Peel (and everyone else!). I will be talking to financial folks about this to try to get you more detail, but since I myself am...let's just say pretty far from being an accountant, it would help me to flesh out the request to them if any of you can be a little more specific about what information you feel this report is lacking in its budget - looking at the budget documents of the applicants from Round 1 Wittylama linked to above as examples, I see a wide range of formats and levels of detail, ranging from significantly more detailed (Wikimedia Serbia) to about the same level of detail (Amical) to significantly less detailed (Sverige). Keeping in mind that I am not an expert here (so please feel free to put it in "explain like I'm 5" terms), can you put your finger on what is in some or all of those budgets that is not in the WMF's this year, and that you'd like us to add in/drill down into? Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 19:25, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Kbrown (WMF): The example budget that was called out in the FDC recommendations last round was Wikimedia Sverige. Something at that level would be preferable, but perhaps not achievable yet. But pretty much everything that's mentioned in the 'References/Notes' section of Appendix 2 should really have its own row in the table, and if there's any line that's over about $50k then it probably needs to be broken down further. Things like "Other Project Expenses" at $600k definitely don't count as 'detailed information'! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:50, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Legal Budget. Hi all - I generally do not provide public breakdowns of the legal budget to avoid disclosures that could possibly help adversaries, such as potential litigants. I did however discuss this a bit with Liam and Katy today at the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, and I will figure out a way to provide this information to the FDC confidentially since the FDC is a committee of the WMF Board. Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to review the plan and to give us your feedback. GeoffBrigham (WMF) (talk) 11:31, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

@Wittylama, Mike Peel, and FloNight: Some general follow-up: I've spoken to our Chief Financial Officer about this. If there are specific questions about budget items, he's happy to try to work them out, but the current budget documentation is not broken down by line item as you request for multiple reasons. Some of the budgets are not specific to individual activities, but they are spending estimates to support multiple recurring activities. For example, there are organizational wide commitments to training, grant making and travel to movement events. That said, we are continuing to listen to comments like yours and think about what we can break down further. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 14:23, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

@Wittylama, Mike Peel, and FloNight: And a bit more detail for you, regarding Communications' "outside contract services" budget (Table 11 under Appendix 2 in the Plan):

• REACH - External/awareness/perception
  • $435K - Strategic communications support for proactive public messaging for Wikimedia projects, and expertise in media coverage.
  • $80K - Research and campaign production for reach to new audiences.
• COMMUNITIES - Movement/community support
  • $256k - Video production for Wikimedia community stories and movement support, hosting and blog support. Contractors for digital media and design support.
• Internal/maintenance
  • $126k - Metrics tools, organization reports, and renovation/upkeep of Foundation sites.

...all for a total of $897,000. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 13:05, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

@Wittylama, Mike Peel, and FloNight: Yet more detail, just for good measure: I've added a bit more detail on Strategic Partnerships' outside contract services. I've also fixed those broken links Global Reach and Strategic Partnership links in the AP document that Syndney pointed out in another section on this page (thank you so much, copyediting like that is invaluable, particularly in documents so long they make people's eyes cross!) - GR now goes to the right place; SP doesn't seem to have its own landing page so I sent that one to the team's staff listing for the moment. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 14:18, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Wikimedia Store

Recently I was horrified by the state of the official Wikimedia Store. Not only did they only have about half of the t-shirt types and sizes in stock, there is also just a single logistic center in US and thus the overseas shipping costs are extremely high. And what is worse - the t-shirt designs are not available on Wikimedia Commons for anyone to print them. Why? I think it's wonderful that so many people want to carry our brand on their t-shirt and publicly display their love for Wikipedia. But WMF is making it as difficult as possible for us. WMF should incorporate the improvement of the Wikimedia Store into the annual plan. --Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 20:37, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Due to budget decrease and re-priorization, the store will not have a full time employee this year. However, we are always working on improvements- the store has 8 new shirt designs since last year, got it's layout revamped and a few of the favorite merchandise back (like water bottles!). We are working hard to keep all merchandise stocked, but due to the big variety of options sometimes we may run out of your favorite style. Regarding fulfillment, unfortunately having a second fulfillment center outside the USA would be too expensive and demanding for our operating budget. In order to print merchandise locally, please contract trademarks@wikimedia.org to get an agreement in place.

Also, you are correct that the designs should be available on Commons- we will work to get all designs there. Ppena (WMF) (talk) 23:08, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Strategic Partnerships needs more details

Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2016-2017/draft#Strategic Partnerships

I'm unclear of the advantage of new types of strategic partnerships by WMF with institutions instead of affiliates seeking the partnerships. The current proposal and budget doesn't provide enough detail to understand the potential positive impact from adopting the new type of partnerships.

For example, I have a much clearer understanding of the international work that Wikimedia France plans to do to support emerging communities. Contributing to the international_movement. The Wikimedia France proposal pulls all the pieces together to have a good understanding of who is doing that part of the plan. Additionally, the plan explains their connections with other partner organizations on joint projects. So, I have a much better idea of the feasibility of the projects.

The Strategic Partnership aspect of the proposal as now written does not make it clear whether WMF is planning to manage the project internal or drawn on the experience of Wikipedians and WMF affiliated organizations in the region.

Additionally, I can't see where that the learnings about key challenges referred to in the proposal have been shared with the wider wikimedia movement. Could these challenges be documented for discussion so we have some idea of the scope of issues to be addressed and feasibility of success? Also, there needs to be more specific measures of success beyond forming the partnerships. How will you/we know if the new partnerships are working? As written now, I would not fund any expansion of WMF partnerships. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 02:21, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Sydney Poore/FloNight, thank you for your questions/comments. Let me start by clarifying that the goal of expanding the partnerships scope is part of the Global Reach team’s work. Our team has been building partnerships in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East for 4 years now. Our primary program has been Wikipedia Zero. However, over 3 years of leading the program, we have learned that affordability is just one challenge to the mission of increasing reach in the geographies mentioned above. High data cost is a challenge but if we want to accomplish our mission to increase Wikipedia’s reach, we would need to go beyond Wikipedia Zero and our mobile partners.

• Learnings about key challenges: The key challenges we were referring to are: lack of Wikipedia awareness, infrastructure limitations, digital literacy and gender inequality. We mostly have learned from them after living or visiting the countries we cover and we are now conducting phone surveys to collect data related to these anecdotal experiences. We have done these surveys in Ghana and Mexico so far.
• Measuring success: The measure of success of these new types of partnerships won’t be solely the number of partnerships established. The number of new readers and unique devices we are reaching through these partnerships will be vital as a metric. On top of that, we will have to do a case by case analysis to establish specific metrics to these partnerships. For example, the metrics of success of an app preload will be quite different from a government based partnership. I want to be clear that some of these partnerships will be experimental as we haven’t done them before and that increases the need for a higher rigor in measuring and reassessing success.
• Internal experience or drawing from the existing experience of Wikipedians and Affiliates organizations: Both. We need to reach new readers in countries where Wikipedia’s traffic/usage is disproportionately lower in comparison to the percentage of world population. This needs to done urgently and at scale, and hence we have a dedicated team to work on partnerships that will create Wikipedia awareness among new users. Each of our regional managers live or frequently travel to the countries we serve and in doing so, we have encountered diverse partnerships opportunities over the past years. The focus on Wikipedia Zero didn’t allow us to officially explore and embrace new types of partnerships in the past but rethinking our focus and expanding our work scope will allow us to do that now.

In addition to exploring the opportunities we already have, we also intend to support and build on the experience of Wikipedians and Affiliates organizations. We communicate often with community groups and plan to increase the dialogue and existing communications with the community at large. We want to learn from past experiences and also share what we have learned so far. Working closely with the emerging communities we serve is a high priority for us. Besides expanding our Meta presence (which needs some additional wiki love :)), our team is also increasing our participation in community facing events and will be hosting quarterly office hours. In this month alone, the Global Reach team has attended WikiArabia, Wikicon, and communicated with community groups in India and Nigeria ahead of new project initiatives.

Thanks again for your feedback. I completely agree that we should provide more information related to this goal and I will make sure we do that in our Meta page. Writing this reply to you has definitely proved the point and helped to identify the areas we need to further elaborate on our page. Best regards, Adele Vrana (WMF) talk 22:24, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Adele Vrana (WMF), thank you for your reply. Also, I appreciate Jorge reaching out to me about meeting here in Berlin at Wikimedia Conference.

By the way, currently, the link on the Annual Plan page to Team Global Reach and Team Strategic Partnerships are to links on the WMF wiki that don't work. It could be helpful to change links to the meta page which gives more information. Thanks, Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 18:44, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Adele Vrana (WMF), since I'm in 100% agreement with all Sydney Poore/FloNight just said (and intended to write a similar comment), I'm just remarking that I do hope that the plan should be extended to include more details (not just for people reading the talk pages ;-) ). Appreciate it! Alleycat80 (talk) 20:10, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Necesitamos mas dinero

Wikipedia esta un organización grande. Necesitamos mas. $100,000,000. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mstuart23 (talk) 18:25, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

¡Gracias por sus pensamientos, Mstuart23! Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 15:59, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Consider expanding training modules to OTRS agents

The proposed program 2 Introduce training modules for functionaries and event organizers regarding issues management lists the following audiences:

• stewards,
• admins,
• global admins,
• Arbitration Committees

while it would be an expansion of scope and might require rethinking of the funding, I suggest you include OTRS agents in this program. Unlike the actions of the other four groups, which are significantly (although not totally) in public view, the actions taken by OTRS agents are not viewable by anyone outside the group. While I support the need for training modules for the other groups, actions taken within public view already invite community responses which help guide the conduct of those functionaries. If this community review is not deemed sufficient in the case of those four groups, it is even less so in the case of OTRS agents who have very little community feedback on their function. In addition, while existing resources such as the admin school may be viewed as not sufficient (as this proposal would suggest) the formal training of OTRS agents is even less well-developed than the admin school.

Almost every interaction taken by an OTRS agent involves an interaction with a member of the public; in most cases not an existing editor. For this reason, the public’s perception of Wikimedia may be shaped more by OTRS agents than many people realize, and therefore the need for appropriate guidance is critical.--Sphilbrick (talk) 00:20, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Hello, User:Sphilbrick. I think that's a good idea. The two modules that are our top priority are informed by specific strategic goals of increasing the safety of our projects, but OTRS training is something we've explored in various forms over the year, and it would certainly make a good focus after those. The Support and Safety team working on this project is pretty small, especially as our main focus needs to remain on core workflows, so we are hesitant to overcommit the number of modules we can produce alongside our other mandatory activities, but these modules are meant to be an ongoing project, and improving OTRS training has long been a goal we share with the OTRS admins. :) OTRS agents are not, precisely, functionaries (as I understand it), but they certainly do have specialized roles! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:27, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

I totally understand the concern about overcommitment. However, the very nature of our work means we have only occasional interaction with editors, and certainly those other roles have much more interaction. Because of this, the function isn’t very visible, so may escape the notice of many. I see some overlap between the training needed for those groups in OTRS agents, so while I won’t push for inclusion at this time, it would be very logical to follow on this project with an extension to OTRS agents.--Sphilbrick (talk) 13:34, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Bit late to the party, but as a Commons oversighter of nearly 4 years (my 4-year anniversary is actually tomorrow :-), I would very much appreciate oversighters being included as a potential audience for a formal training. @Maggie, @James, what do you think? odder (talk) 15:55, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Congratulations, odder. :) Oversighters are definitely functionaries and so certainly within scope. :D We do want to be sure we don't overcommit (we're still a pretty small team in SuSa), but I'd love to work with oversighters to improve training. James and Patrick will be talking to people at this at Wikimania, so we can figure out what makes sense and on what priority. As an update to you, Sphilbrick, Karen has reached out to the OTRS admins about potential there as well. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:01, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Maggie, thanks for the speedy answer. Is there a public submission that I can have a look at? Will notes be taken from this discussion/meeting (preferably in real-life) so that people who cannot attend Wikimania can stay informed about the progress in this particular subject? odder (talk) 16:16, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Hi, odder. There's no submission. This isn't a formal outreach yet - very preliminary conversations as we plan out our first steps - but sharing notes is a good idea. It's a project for next FY, so they will just basically be laying the groundwork for what we will be doing then. Only last week did we discuss taking the opportunity to start asking people for feedback and thoughts. (Planning ahead is a good thing, but it also means that you don't get to start working on things when you think of them. We're still shooting for Q4 goals.) We will most definitely be working on this on Meta where people who aren't at Wikimania (like me) can stay involved. :) No decisions will be made without broader consultation. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:21, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Protecting Commons photographers from harassment by police or security forces

As a contributor of photography on Wikimedia Commons, I have encountered some 'low level' forms of harassment by the police force. The city I do much of my work in, is one of the main UN cities, with many international courts and -institutions. (The Hague, the Netherlands) It's intimidating when special police forces contain you for twenty minutes whenever you photograph buildings of international institutions (even though they are located in public areas, and there is no law forbidding it), just so they can 'check your papers' and interrogate you. Explaining the intentions for making the photo's doesn't do any good, since they can't verify any of it by ways they are comfortable with. And I provide the with an honest representation of how Wikimedia works. Usually I get the request to show a press-pass to prove I am a photographer for Commons. Of course no such thing exists, and I can not provide any press-pass. I think it exposes a real problem. In this age, with responses to terrorism increasingly threatening individual freedom, can Wikimedia assist it's contributing photographers in any way ? Is there a way to become an accredited photographer for Wikimedia/Commons ? I firmly believe that contributing to the Wikimedia projects should be fun to do, so obviously being harassed by police or security agents is counter productive, and could lead to abandonment. I am sure this might be an issue for Commons photographers in many countries. Again, can Wikimedia help find a solution to this problem ? Can this be included in the plans for this year ? --OSeveno (talk) 10:31, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Hello, OSeveno. I'm sorry to hear that you have these difficulties.

There is a long history around accreditation in the movement, and I am only familiar with it at a high level. Accreditation is generally handled at the project and chapter level. This seems to be the recommendation communicated by the Board in 2011 at en:wn:Talk:Wikinews_accreditation_policy#Updating_this_process. I don't know why - although I speculate that it may have something to do with the fact that the Wikimedia Foundation is an online service provider and not a publisher - but I'll see if I can find out.

Wikinews has been offering accreditation to its reporters for many years; you can see their process at en:wn:Wikinews:Accreditation policy. The policy was created (or at least first written down) by User:IlyaHaykinson and is still in practice. I am not deeply familiar with how that came to be; it predates my involvement in Wikimedia as a volunteer by a couple of years.

Last year, User:Claudia.Garad began the Grants:Learning patterns/Developing contacts for press / photo accreditations. This was later built out by User:Pplc. Both noted the role that their individual chapters play in issuing accreditation to photographers at official events.

I note that there were questions about the usability of the accreditation as far back as 2005 (here), and User:Sj noted then that the usability of the accreditation may depend on the individual venue. It seems to me that this is still true - I note that the UN, for instance, has very specific ideas about what constitutes "press". I do not know how we fit within that.

In terms of fitting it into our annual plans, we have not received many requests of which I'm aware to take this on, and I'm not sure what resources it would require beyond potential outreach to grow that learnings page so that various chapters can assist in explaining their own approaches to the issue. I've asked Karen Brown to reach out to our communications team, who may have more insight into the history and any potential issues around this, and perhaps one of the people I've mentioned above might have more information to share. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:19, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

@OSeveno, Mdennis (WMF), and Kbrown (WMF): Wikimedia New York City is in a trial period of issuing press credentials. For an overview of the concept in Wikimedia projects, please see

• en:Wikipedia:Press pass

For documentation on what Wikimedia NYC is doing, please see this. This would also be the place to start if you want Wikimedia NYC press credentials.

• Wikimedia New York City/Press credentials

I think that the New York City chapter is an appropriate place to host this concept because so many people here work in the international media industry so ideas from that industry go deep into routine chapter event planning. Also, I think that many places in the world have respect for media credentials coming from New York City.

Maggie, you said "I'm not sure what resources it would require". As you develop the WMF annual plan, please consider creating some kind of social insurance process for catastrophic failure in outreach projects so that if something goes wrong, there is a plan in advance for damage control. Although the chapter is trying issuing press credentials, and a good has come of it, I feel like the WMF should worry about liability. This is a great project so long as everything is going right but if something ever goes wrong the blame will be international and on the WMF more than on NYC locally. Right now the volunteers here mostly are keeping this project going slowly but still, when liability accepted at the chapter level brings risk to the international movement I wish there could be a communication channel between the chapter and some greater power so that if in the unlikely circumstance that something goes wrong, the WMF or a movement-appointed body is there to mitigate harm. It is unfair and a moral hazard when Wikipedians take big risks for benefits but also have no plan to manage the risk if something goes wrong. That is what is happening in this case, and actually, the WMF having no support for volunteers with big problems has been the status quo in the movement. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:58, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Hello, User:Bluerasberry. Thanks for the information on the New York chapter's work! The Wikimedia Foundation has several programs in place for liability, including Legal/Legal Policies#Defense of Contributors. Additional evaluation of risk management would need to come out of legal. I'll make sure they're advised of your concern! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:34, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

I think the support available is excellent, but not necessarily visible at the pressure points. Some blanket statement about "if you encounter any troubles with local police or media regarding your writing or photos or videography, contact us (& appropriate link to the DoC policy)" would help. Maggie, the best possible support would be something like global coordination of local efforts; imagine a 'media committee' similar to ComCom (with a low-traffic mailing list and ticket queue) that helps people coordinate their various local photography, event coverage, and accreditation efforts; including collaborations around major international events where many groups have a representative.

It makes sense for accred to be reviewed and approved as close to the community of use as possible, since the biggest risk to an accreditation system is being abused by people not using it for its intended purpose. BR, I don't know of any risk of social catastrophe specific to credentialling. –SJ talk  13:26, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Sj The social catastrophe would be as you say - "not using it for its intended purpose". There is no reason to expect that accreditation would drift from community review and approval, so I think this is a non-issue and I should not worry. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:56, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for taking my concerns serious and for your replies. I will go to the NYC chapter to discuss my individual case and the possibility of them helping me. Ofcourse, as said above this being just part of the solution. For the long range, WMF should have it's own policy, not solely depend on a local/regional initiative. I have some ideas on how to go about formulating policies for administering credentials, since WMF should not just facilitate credentials to anyone. There should be some restrictions applied to each accreditation. An accreditation should be for a geographically confined area, for instance. A photographer should have a known work space. E.g. a photographer with accreditation for working in New Delhi, India should not be waving a pass in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Unless it is determined so by the WMF party that does the administering of credentials. Also, accreditation's need to be verifiable for local authorities, which requires something like a database with information on the individuals, including private addresses. This on it's own would require safeguarding for protection against abuse or theft by third parties. But perhaps these are issues already being investigated by the NYC chapter. I am willing to contact the Netherlands Society of Journalists for advice on behalf of WMF, if requested to do so. Both my parents used to be members, since they are retired journalists, so I am sure that I will get sufficient access. --OSeveno (talk) 11:02, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Technical: visual editor

I'm still unable to use this. Though I'm not using state-of-the-art software that may not have some newer technology support (FF 28), with Wikimedia's resources, it shouldn't be prohibitive to emulate the support or something. Ivan Pozdeev (talk) 09:36, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Ivan Pozdeev. The visual editor in Firefox should work just fine since version 15. At the moment I'm unable to verify on which wiki you may have encountered issues. I'd be glad to hear details about them: you can leave a message at my talk page describing the problem a bit (is the editor not loading? not saving? on which page? which operating system are you using?). Looking forward to hearing from you soon, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:48, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

The editor's loading progressbar consistently freezes at ~80% at ruwiki with FF28 on win32. Ivan Pozdeev (talk) 18:02, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

It should not be difficult to find visual editor not loading, not saving or breaking the markup. I'm not using it but I do a lot of wikitrainings where many newcomers try it and see such outcomes on a regular basis. --Ilya (talk) 09:31, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

To be fair - ability to switch to wikitext editor is very helpful. It's often the case when visual editor cannot save the changes, but can switch to wikitext editor, which in turn can save and gives the ability to see broken markup right away. --Ilya (talk) 09:34, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Communication: reasonable means to track discussions I'm participating in

No means of current notification facilities (e-mail,rss) provides a solution for what they ultimately exist for:

• keep me updated on the discussions I'm interested in, and only them
• be self-sufficient i.e. contain enough information that I don't need to open a browser each time
• require a negligible time investment to be able to do that - e.g. not require to keep the site open in a browser all the time

Possible features to add:

• contain real info instead of useless placeholder text
• subscribe/unsubscribe to specific topic only
• quickly ignore topics and subthreads right from a notification (e.g. a URL/hyperlink that is "light" to load)
• ability to select, for each watched page, whether to be notified of new topics
• provide the means to insert advanced logic with user scripts/gadgets

And yes, I'm primarity speaking about e-mail notifications - because RSS requires to set up a pull agent at user's site (while IMAP is push), to open a browser each time to do anything and only provides one hyperlink per item.

Ivan Pozdeev (talk) 10:00, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

@Ivan Pozdeev: Thanks for contributing; I'm the product manager for the Collaboration Team and am happy to respond. Regarding your request that notifications:

> be self-sufficient i.e. contain enough information that I don't need to open a browser each time

Happily, we've recently re-written most of the notifications so that they include more information — usually in the form of short excerpts from posts or edits—to help the user understand the notification's purpose and context. This information currently appears in on-wiki notifications; the versions delivered by email will be upgraded in the next few months. While on-wiki notifications are designed to be brief, providing only the minimum information necessary to inform users and facilitate follow-up, the idea of adding a little more information to emails is a good one. I can't promise we can provide everything you might want, but I've added this ticket to our workboard for the current period: "phab:T90067 Email notifications sent both by Echo for core edits and by Flow for replies/mentions/etc should include as much context as is feasible so i can just read my email and not visit the website".

Another of your requests is to be able to:

> quickly ignore topics and subthreads right from a notification (e.g. a URL/hyperlink that is "light" to load)

The ability to unsubscribe from watched topics and pages directly from on-wiki notifications is also something the Collaboration Team is working to provide this period. Extending this capability to emails should not be a problem (though whether the method used will require loading the wiki or not I can’t say). Also, note that this will work only for Flow discussions, which may not be used on your preferred wikis.

Flow would also be the solution for another of your requests:

> keep me updated on the discussions I'm interested in, and only them

The ability to follow individual topics on a discussion page is an important feature of the Flow structured-discussion system. While Flow continues to be adopted by an increasing number of wiki communities, it's currently in beta, and at present encouraging universal Flow deployment is not a WMF priority. The Collaboration Team, however, continues to believe that Flow's structured-discussion capabilities can benefit all users significantly—in the ways that you request and in others—and we will be researching what else we can do to help people using Flow in the coming year.

JMatazzoni (WMF) (talk) 22:33, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

@JMatazzoni (WMF): thank you for your comments about a few of the features I suggested. I, however, insist that you stay focused on the goals. The root problem is, there's no usable solution to facilitate routine collaboration other than manually checking the site or programming some custom logic into an RSS aggregator, at the client side (as the raw feed quickly becomes unusable as the number of watched pages grows or if watching a forum). I have always wondered how high-profile users cope with this (and I see that they do). They must each have some sort of a server set up, complete with custom software that each one of them have written for themselves. For me (and I suspect, any user that spends less that a few hours a day on Wikipedia), this is not an option.

E.g. how do you solve this problem? You don't, like, manually check your watchlist page every 15 minutes or so, do you? Ivan Pozdeev (talk) 17:22, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Side comment: we are trying to solve this exact problem (how volunteers with limited time can follow what matters to them in product development) via Goal 2: Create a systematic approach to community engagement for product development teams -- see mw:Technical Collaboration Guideline. Feedback about this is welcome in that wiki page and related Phabricator tasks.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:09, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Does multiplying and diversifying yield knowledge for readers who are not contributors, when they lack a supportive educational experience? No. We need more educational tools within the articles.

TL:DR;

All that "knowledge" in the Product section, but does multiplication always yield quality? Answer: no, unless you transform passive readers into active users (and this should not be only by means of contribution, which is the most obvious interactive way) but also by means of participating to little "sandbox" educational experiences that will allow them to grasp content that is well researched but cannot be explained to them without being watered down. The reader should enjoy an interactive experience even if she is not a contributor. And interaction does not necessarily mean multi-media in the sense of multiplying passive interfaces, access from other devices, streamlining some processes. All these things are useful but are not sufficient to share knowledge. They just multiply the sharing of facts. If you want a qualitative knowledge experience, you have to put readers in an active position, not just consider them to be passive receivers.'

Detailed explanation

I find it intriguing how the term "knowledge" is used in the "Product" section of the Plan. So I did a simple Ctrl+F research and tried to see how you used the term -- i.e. in relation to what and which context. A first bloc of assertions claim Wikipedia contains knowledge:

• Knowledge is contained within Wikipedia
• Knowledge is contained in the Wikimedia projects

Wikimedia contains knowledge

• Knowledge can be found on our sites

My claim: so far, Wikipedia does not contain knowledge. It contains data organized in a way that has the disposition of being informative. For knowledge to take place, you need also the subjects (e.g. readers, users) to fulfill their duty of aiming for the truth and engaging with the content. Technically, such duties are called epistemic duties. For example, the right to be sure is not enjoyed per se, but requires an action on behalf of the subject. This is pretty straightforward for users who are content creators, which we regard to be bona fide truth-seekers. However, it is not clear how the readership might be put in a situation to fulfill their epistemic duties. Now, keep this in mind because it is relevant for the following uses I am loosely analyzing. A second bloc calls for knowledge to be diversified.

• Knowledge shall be diversified

::By means of maps service ::By means of connection with other products ::By means of modernizing Wikitext These three aims about diversification are actually aims about the diversification of sources and their perceptual content (visual, for example). This might trigger knowledge in the readers, but only contingently. So of course you are diversifying something, but how do you ensure that this does not result in mere noise but is actually a meaningful diversification? Here I am claiming that diversification is not a good in itself, but only when allowed for by a meaningful framework that allows value to emerge rather than mere multiplication of connections.

A third bloc apparently deals with increasing the quality of knowledge:

• Contribution of quality knowledge shall be enhanced and increased
• By means of streamline editing
• By improving curation tools
• By strengthening interfaces
• By expanding and supporting new kinds of content
• By bringing visual editing to mobile
• By maintaining tools
• By organizing groups who work on infrastructure and documentation
• By diversifying the wishlist

However, many of the above points in this specific bloc are not about increasing the quality of knowledge; they are all about increasing the quality of the contributing experience. The underlying assumptions seems that, by merely opening new doors for people, something qualitative will occur. Again we see the leit-motive of "diversity is good"... as if there was a compulsion to "bring diversity at all costs". Diversity of data, diversity of access, diversity of contribution, etc. Most of the above just stresses on multiplication, as if presupposing an inflationary scenario in which everything has value only if it increases in number. Of course, the aim of the Plan is Wikipedia as a User Product; but Wikipedia has its own aim too: sharing knowledge. I argue sharing knowledge requires the multiplication of contribution tool, access tools, the betterment of user experience, etc. But all of these requirements alone are not sufficient: remember what I said about epistemic duties? Knowledge is not like staring at fishes in pond; rather, it is like fishing fishes out of it. Here I see a lot of projects about increasing the number of fishes (contribution), making the tools better (new boats), enlarging the pool (new ponds to sail on), etc. The only thing I do not see here is a package that actually makes someone sit on a boat and teach them a way to fish. The core example on how you persuade readers to fulfill their epistemic duties and actually do something to gain knowledge, is interaction with the content. By interaction, I mean things like these:

• Rather than just putting a theorem or an animated video that shows the planet or the function, you actually host a box in which the user can enter her values and see what the resulting function is;
• Rather than listing facts about computer programs, you include a box in which the user, by following simple instructions, can come up with some correct lines of codes.

Unless we start introducing little educational tools in each article and unless we stop sticking to the archivistic frenzy of recording everything just for the sake of recording, we will not be sharing knowledge and the reader will remain just a reader -- i.e. somebody who grows only if he already possesses the skills to make good use of text and images.

I maintain educational tools shall not be limited to contests and events (try to Ctrl+F the word "Educational" in the whole plan -- you will not find much): rather, they should constitute one of the core elements of the reader's ( = learner ) experience. They do not need to be Original Research -- just stick to the old principles -- but for Heaven's sake let us make them interactive. Otherwise most readers will just stick to Wikipedia as a source of facts and not as a source of knowledge. One thing is reading the news (old and new) and another thing is actually understanding the causes of what you are being told about. Naturally, some gifted writers are able to do so just by means of writing: their style and sharpness and simplicity are so good that the average cannot possibly read without understanding; same goes for some video-makers. But we cannot rely on a gifted minority with the hope that all articles will, one day, match the excellent Wikipedia articles of these gifted contributors.

The problem does not subsist for simple topics. However, as far as expert topics are concerned (in my case: statistics), when trying to cross the gap between complex but succinct articles vs. lengthy and boring explanations for the laymen, the best bridge to do so is the introduction of educational tools. Otherwise the unlearned reader (as I am in the case of statistics) will keep limiting himself to take all that's written for granted: he is not expert enough to contribute, but he is not even allowed to engage with the content in a way that will make it easier for him to grasp. Finally, all these "exoteric articles", which are well researched, provide him with facts to copy but not knowledge to gain. Watering down is not helpful, so the reading experience should become transformative.--MarcelloPapirio (talk) 16:38, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi MarcelloPapirio, Thank your response to our annual narrative and the ideas you describe in this short essay! I cannot speak to some of your comments around how the editing team is thinking about volume versus content type, but I want to address your larger point about learning. As the product lead for WMF's Reading Team, I can attest that we think a lot about how Wikipedia is accessed (speed, compatibility), displayed, explored, comprehended and digested. In our conversations, the notion of static reference v. interactive learning has come up quite a bit. I agree that making wikipedia more interactive for readers will enhance learning, and I appreciate your distinction between interactive media (like the ones listed here: I Dream of Content) and inviting the reader to learn by trying: inputing information and getting feedback of some sort. Though the bulk of our effort is on improving the core reference use case: access (speed, language), readability, and navigability (rough list), we are also spending some time exploring ways to enhance learning on our projects. Making Wikipedia more interactive is part of our first, early stage explorations. It is part of goal 4 on the strategic plan under Product's Program 3: Increase our global reach by increasing readership and in slightly more detail on the reading team's 2015 strategy plan. To be honest, the theme outlined centers more on interactivity as a way to help readers understand Wikipedia and create their own deeper relationship to the content. However, we have another thought area we have not yet focused on that deals only on enhancing learning, whether interactive or not.

The immediately important part: Combining these themes and goals, in late March, we kicked off an experimental community consultation (only in English for now) that is soliciting ideas for how we can make Wikipedia more interactive as a learning tool. The consultation is here and some background is here. I think the wikidialog idea that Pi zero made is probably the one that most closely aligns with the examples you gave. The last date to make a suggestion was Friday, but if you were to add any new ideas this week, they would be more than welcome! At the very least, can we reach out to you if we have ideas in this vein that we are looking for feedback on? Jkatz (WMF) (talk) 02:45, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Timely reporting

Tilman brought to my attention that Wikimedia Foundation got less timely compared to 2014. I think this is something to address, as it impacts the likelihood of success of the annual plan. Nemo 11:50, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Nemo. As Greg Varnum notes, the reporting process is actively being worked. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:19, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Since I am being mentioned in a misleading fashion here: My comment was about highlighting the fact that (contrary to your claims in that thread) these reports are still being published, not to criticize my successors for the delay on the last one, which Greg had already addressed and explained in the report's announcement. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 18:05, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Staffing expenses

This is a somewhat sensitive question, but I think it's one that needs to be asked and discussed. The staffing plan (Table 5) shows an increase in 5 staff from this year's projection, while the staff expenses projection (Table 6) shows an increase of around $4 million. That is a very large amount, and it is out of proportion to the number of new staff being hired (compare to a chapter that might have 5 staff and a budget closer to $400,000). Could the reasons behind such a large increase be elucidated? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:04, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

@Mike Peel: The latest from the financial folks is as follows:

The FY 15-16 Projection includes the projected actual time positions will be filled during the budget year. During FY 15-16, certain positions were only filled for a partial year whereas the FY 16-17 includes the entire year of expenditures-

• $1.8 million represents the annualized staffing expenses for positions that were filled during the year or planned to be filled by the end of the FY 15-16.
• $1.6 million represents the annual adjustment for cost of living, merits and promotions, and
• $600 thousand represents the 5 additional positions.

Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 20:25, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

@Kbrown (WMF): Thanks for the reply. I have a few further questions. Can you say how many positions were filled during the year, and how many are planned for the rest of the year, ideally by department? Can you clarify what you mean by "merits"? Also, more generally, does the WMF have a standard set of salary levels/grades for employees (and promotions process), or do salary levels depend on individual circumstances/negotiations or by department? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 12:58, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
@Mike Peel: Ok, took me a bit to gather answers to everything, but here's the latest from the money people:

Can you say how many positions were filled during the year, and how many are planned for the rest of the year, ideally by department?

Positions filled for FY 15-16 by Depts:

• Community Engagement - 5
• Product & Technology - 16
• Communications - 3
• Advancement - 4
• Legal, HR, Finance & Admin - 10
  

Total - 38

Plan to fill by Depts:

• Community Engagement - 2
• Product & Technology - 9
• Communications - 1
• Advancement - 2
• Legal, HR, Finance & Admin - 1
  

Total - 15

Can you clarify what you mean by "merits"?

Merits are part of our annual process that is used, in part, to adjust for progression in a role and planned increased responsibility.

[D]oes the WMF have a standard set of salary levels/grades for employees (and promotions process), or do salary levels depend on individual circumstances/negotiations or by department?

Yes, the WMF has had formal salary bands for the past 5+ years, as well as a promotion process. The promotion process includes reviews by department leadership, HR and WMF leadership. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 23:56, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Income sources from major gifts & foundations

There is a 6 Million US$ income from foundations & gifts. I think it's a good practice to also state if the funds are broadly unrestricted, or if the funding was provided to support a specific program or focus on a specific development. Also, if some of these funds are part of a multi-year grant, it is valuable information to be included in the plan. This is both for future documentation and for understanding how external funding is affecting programs (if it all). Alleycat80 (talk) 17:32, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Alleycat80. Thanks for your question. Each year, the Foundations and Major Gifts team receives contributions that are a mix of unrestricted general-support funding and funding for specific programs. The mix varies each year, but generally speaking, more than 50% has been unrestricted. In aggregate and based on past numbers, we anticipate that trend will remain consistent in the 2016-2017 fiscal year. At this time, and, again, speaking in aggregate, we project receiving about $1.85 million USD in multi-year gifts.

We list major donors and their contribution category ($1,000-$4,999, $5,000-$14,999, etc.) on [Benefactors page], and we tell the story of a selection of donations on the foundation's blog, as with the $50,000 unrestricted gift that novelist Antoine Bello [[4]] last year, and the unrestricted legacy gift that software engineer Jim Pacha [[5]] in 2014. CVirtue (WMF) (talk) 21:20, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for this CVirtue (WMF)! I just wish that there was better documentation of programs that are happening as a result of specific funding. Not necessarily in the form of a section in the Annual Plan, maybe elsewhere. Alleycat80 (talk) 21:45, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata

There has been talk of moving the Wikidata funding for WMDE from the grants/FDC budget into the WMF budget, through some sort of contract, in the very near future. What is the current situation with this, and how would that budget fit into this plan? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:18, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Mike Peel! Thanks for asking this question. Here is some background about the funding situation for Wikidata and what WMF is trying to change by transitioning funding from the grants program to engineering. Where we are: the WMF engineering team will indeed be overseeing this funding for the second half of the WMF annual plan. Since the FDC's grant will fund the WMDE software development team through the end of 2016 calendar year, and the WMF fiscal year runs until June 2017, the funding to Wikidata (not software development) in this WMF annual plan will be for the first six months of 2017. The exact details of the funding arrangement are currently being discussed and we should be sharing more in the next week. Based on a very lengthy discussion between WMF, the FDC, and WMDE, the funding will not be a grant, as it has been in previous years. Cheers, KLove (WMF) (talk) 05:26, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

@KLove (WMF): Thanks for the reply. A specific question: if it will be a contract rather than falling under grants, which row of Table 11 does this come under, is it 'Product' or one of the others? Also: grants seem to be missing from appendix 2. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 16:54, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Mike Peel, To answer your questions: first, the funding for Wikidata is included in Table 13. Grants has been excluded from Appendix 2 because it's included elsewhere, and would be redundant there. Cheers, KLove (WMF) (talk) 02:34, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Sustainability of used software

One important thing is missing in the annual plan, and is the sustainability of software that is used for supporting processes on Wikipedia, other wikis and in other projects. In the past years we have encountered multiple times the situation that critical software that is used in the movement, is suddenly no longer available or no longer maintained.

This we notice for example with Wiki Loves Monuments, recognised as the largest photo contest in the world, as well as many other projects. We have encountered for the past years the situation that critical software suddenly drops out, is insufficient maintained, etc. We value very much the work of the many volunteers, but forms a heavy drain on the organisation and maintenance. This is an issue we notice very strong as each year in Wiki Loves Monuments we rely on this software.

But this issue goes far beyond this only project, it is a Wikimedia wide issue that drains a lot of resources.

I think we need to determine as movement which infrastructure is vital and critical to the future of the movement, with all the projects that are done, so we get more done, becomes more cost efficiently, less resources needed, and awareness that not only the core MediaWiki software is important, but also other software we all heavily rely on.

At this stage I would recommend:

• to acknowledge the difficulty of the situation,
• to acknowledge the value of the software used outside the core of MediaWiki installation we use on the many projects, as well as their vital and critical role in the movement,
• to investigate the situation to see what options are possible and how we we can organise this second level software in a sustainable way.

Thank you. Romaine (talk) 13:23, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Governance procedures

In past years' rounds of recommendations from the FDC to applicants, the topic of a lack of "governance procedures" - especially as they relate to expensive and destabilising executive transitions - have been been identified as a primary reason for not recommending to fully fund the requested grant. This includes, but is not limited to: WM-Deutschland in 2014-15; WM-Israel in 2014-15; WM-UK in 2012-13, General comments in 2012-13 (and other years). Therefore, given the well-known difficulties of the WMF over the last few months which come under the broad heading of "governance", I believe it is only fair to ask about this topic here too.
Can someone please enumerate what specific governance processes/procedures/policies have been changed/added, or what reviews are currently underway, in order to ensure that the recent deliberate, and also unintentional, executive<–>board mis-communication is no longer possible. How is the WMF board going to ensure that "we didn't know", "that's not my understanding of what we're doing", or "we told you but you didn't listen" [this is paraphrasing not quotes] aren't things that board or WMF staff ever need to say again? Wittylama (talk) 14:26, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

[edit: I realise this question is primarily directed at the Board of Trustees rather than the WMF staff (since it's about governance), which is a little odd since the FDC is reporting on this plan TO the Board. Nevertheless, it would be exactly the kind of question that the FDC would be asking of any other APG applicant's Board, so I think it's fair that the issue is at least raised here. Wittylama (talk) 10:30, 28 April 2016 (UTC) ]

Hi Wittylama, I'm just remarking that I fully agree with you on this (I actually raised similar questions in an open letter to the BoT sometime late January). BUT, as you yourself remarked, asking it in the context of an annual plan does not seem exactly the right context - as the people writing the plan are WMF staff who report to the board. I do agree, however, that the Foundation - - and that includes staff AND BoT members - - allocate resources in the current plan (and in upcoming years) to ensuring better board governance, and that these resources and a plan should be transparent both to WMF employees and other stakeholders. Alleycat80 (talk) 22:05, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Wittylama and Alleycat80: I can't answer all of these questions, but I can share some of our plans to reduce the information bottleneck between the Board and the ED. One issue we identified was that staff members found it difficult to communicate vital staff and engagement issues to the Board in a clear, meaningful, and timely fashion. We want to reduce this blocker, by creating alternative channels that will empower staff to raise relevant issues to the Board as necessary. The Foundation's Talent & Culture (or HR) team is working on a proposal that would create something resembling a staff elected ombuds-committee. If an issue wasn't being addressed through normal staff channels, the committee could bring it to the appropriate Board counterpart. If this sounds a little vague, that's because it is - the goal is something that is lightweight enough to function well, appropriate for the culture, and sustainable long term. We expect to have a more concrete proposal by the end of this quarter, to get up and running in the next fiscal year.

Another step we're taking is bringing more C-team members into Board meetings: in addition to Geoff as Board Secretary, Jaime now attends Board meetings regularly as Board Treasurer. Moving forward, I'd like to see more executives in the room, participating as appropriate to the discussions. Having department-specific expertise in the room can help give our Trustees more nuanced understanding of our challenges and opportunities. It also creates broader accountability for decisions and implementation, allowing the executive team to work in greater partnership with the Board for better outcomes, and ideally will also help improve information sharing throughout the organization, as executive team members bring back Board perspectives and recommendations to their respective departments. Hope that helps, and let me know if I can provide more useful information. Katherine (WMF) (talk) 23:55, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Hello @Wittylama and Alleycat80: I want to share some of the things the Board has been considering since early March. We recognize the responsibility of the Board for some of the major challenges faced by the WMF over the past year, and the importance of addressing some of the resulting governance questions.

The Board supports the reforms Katherine described. In addition to those proposals, we have agreed to implement the following actions. We will do exit interviews with all c-level staff who leave the Foundation. If there are issues at the Foundation, exit interviews will be an important step to help identify issues before they spread. However most of the time we expect these to be normal conversations that are part of our duty of governance. We have also agreed that the Foundation will run staff engagement surveys every six months, until we feel we don't need them so frequently. Then the Foundation will go back to running them one time per year. We expect this will be some time into the permanent executive director's new term. All of these are procedures, so no formal policies have been adopted.

The other issues are important as well. The Board, through the governance committee, is considering proposals for how we can improve our overall composition and functioning. So far we are still in discussions, but if any idea becomes successful enough, we would expect to share it with the community for transparent discussion. In all cases, the WMF has a budget for governance that could be used to help improve governance. If there are other suggestions here, we would welcome them, of course. Patricio.lorente (talk) 11:33, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply Patricio.lorente. I agree with, and support, the introduction of exit interviews for senior staff (this is standard practice elsewhere after all) and the engagement [read: staff morale] survey. However, both of these focus on the staff. I do hear that you're reviewing the composition (and therefore the selection processes) of the board, and that could indeed have some positive effects. But, my interest of this topic is about governance and therefore I'd like, if possible, if you could elaborate on the "improve our overall...functioning" section of your response.

I know of the Wikimania 2016 training proposal, which is great to hear. But, considering that the board had to set up a "separate formal task force" which "involved outside legal counsel and conducted professional fact finding", this demonstrates that Governance and oversight procedures at the Board level were not working. Other than that the governance committee is "considering proposals", are there any concrete steps that are underway to ensure that the board never needs to hire outside legal council to investigate its own organisation's activities? [I realise this could be read as an aggressive message especially because I'm quoting pieces of your message, but believe me it is not meant that way. I would genuinely like to know!] Wittylama (talk)

One suggestion for improving governance would be to publish the Board meeting announcements and minutes within the timescales already prescribed by the Board own Handbook. For some reason this request, made by me to the Chair just a month ago, seemed unwelcome, despite the Chair's assurances here. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 08:53, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

@Katherine (WMF): Good to hear that the executive team and the board will engage more! The previous situation (where the ED discouraged communication between execs and board, and the board did not regularly seek out feedback from execs) was unhealthy for everyone, and heavily contributed to the board's inability to grasp the situation over the past year. Should be a very healthy change for everyone involved. —LuisVilla (talk) 21:13, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Relatedly: here is a list of suggestions for improved procedures (some of which have already been promised (e.g. exit interviews for senior staff), published today by User:LuisVilla. Wittylama (talk) 16:38, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Community Engagement Program 4: improve metrics

I think some of the metrics in the plan could use some clarification:

• Objective 1: what is "supporting 50,000 people directly or indirectly" every quarter? It seems to me that the goal is automatically achieved if counting supported editor communities or attendees in events created by grantee affiliates. Does that indicate something that could be used to improve the grantmaking process? I'm not sure.

"50,000 people supported directly or indirectly" is an aggregation of the "Individuals Involved" Global Metrics that all our grantees report. As one of the main goals of the Community Resources (CR) team is to empower, engage, and support community members though monetary and non-monetary resources, this aggregated metric gives a high-level sense of how many community members were engaged either through our grants or through the activities that grantees executed. It is not intended to be a metric that CR uses to improve our grantmaking processes; it is instead a metric that loosely reflects that collective outcome of our work as grantmakers. KLove (WMF) (talk) 21:14, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

• Moreover (still Objective 1) - "50% of total grants going to emerging communities" - what is the exact definition of emerging? It would make sense to me that non-emerging (=experienced in programming and management) communities would be eligible for more funding. So the metric seems illogical, or maybe I misunderstand the term "emerging".

Asaf responded below. :) KLove (WMF) (talk) 21:14, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

• Objective 3: I think it's great to measure satisfaction, but I would like to suggest that some "objective" measures, such as speed of process, number of grantees for each type of grant, etc.

We do also regularly track a number of other things at the quarterly level, like the number of grants (and amount of USD) awarded to each grant program, as well as the number of grants (and amount of USD) awarded to Individuals, emerging communities, and gender gap related issues. KLove (WMF) (talk) 21:14, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

• I would also add an objective (and a question in the survey) about grantees that have created more impact (as measured by global metrics) with regard to previous years, as a measure of success. This is the ultimate goal of the grants to WMF-affiliate organizations, isn't it? And yet it's missing here. Alleycat80 (talk) 23:19, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

As part of the Annual Plan Grant program, we do track the historical achievements of grantees, particularly through Global Metrics, other quantitative metrics reported, and qualitative outcomes reported in their progress and impact reports, as well as the targets proposed in their grant proposals. However, Global Metrics has only been a requirement for 1 year of APG, and so the historical data available for those metrics is only for the WMF fiscal year 2014-15. Before that, of course, the reporting of metrics was optional, and thus largely underreported. These year-over-year comparisons have been used very cautiously, as each organization may pursue a different mix of activities or priorities than the previous year.

This type of tracking for repeat grantees in the other programs (PEG, IEG) has not been done, and would be relatively difficult as the same grantee may apply for very different grants, which aren't comparable. KLove (WMF) (talk) 21:14, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

• One last thing - - I think in the future, this program should also help (and measure) APG and Simple-APG grantees diversify their resources by applying for external grants, and measuring the success of this specific endeavor. Alleycat80 (talk) 23:19, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

We don't currently have capacity to support resource diversification for our grantees, beyond a few small things we are doing now (e.g. serving as references for other interested donors). But it's something we've long considered. We will continue to engage with our colleagues at WMF in fundraising about ways we might be able to do this. KLove (WMF) (talk) 21:14, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Alleycat80, I'm so sorry to say I've just seen these questions. I'm not sure how I missed them earlier. Our team will respond next week. Thanks for engaging in this consultation with some questions and ideas. KLove (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi Alleycat80, I've just updated with some responses above. Cheers, KLove (WMF) (talk) 21:14, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Alleycat80! We have been working on a revised distinction that would be a better fit to our work than the external Global North vs. Global South definition. The main difference between the old and (proposed) new definition is the inclusion as a factor, with very high weight, of the actual current size and capacity of the Wikimedia editing community in each country, language, or project. This work had been deprioritized over the months of turmoil, but is now resumed and a draft definition will be shared publicly for comments by early June. Asaf (WMF) (talk) 22:58, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

MediaWiki development projects done by other Wikimedia organizations

Hi,

Thank you for presenting this Annual Plan! It is a great step in the right direction IMHO.

As a chapter employee I am very happy to see the increased focus on GLAM and Community Tech. However, I would strongly suggest that you add something specifically about supporting MediaWiki development projects done by other Wikimedia organizations in the Strategic Plan.

There are a few chapters that are initiating (or are thinking about) technical MediaWiki projects, and for these efforts to be worthwhile there is a need to get both code and security review.

For example, involvement from the WMF staff in our project Wikispeech is needed to make it reach as far as possible during the project time. If we reach far and can show some good results it is much more likely that we find external grants to continue the development in 2017-2018.

Clearly committing to invest resources (mainly developer time) in your Strategic Plan would send a strong signal that you want Wikimedia organizations to become more involved in technical projects.

Best,

John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 16:19, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Copyright / Plagiarism detection

I see that Table 11 says that there is funding for 3rd party resources required for the program activities described under Product. Including Bi-weekly regression testings, daily QA, bots/APIs for both copyright/plagiarism detection, and miscellaneous contracting cost to support the program objectives. Some here are probably aware that the Yahoo BOSS service that the CorenSearchBot on enwiki uses has shut down, and finding a replacement is proving to be difficult (for TOS reasons) and costly. Google, for example, would probably run $18,000 per year for the maximum amount of queries currently allowed. I just want to express the importance of the service that we have lost on enwiki as a result of the BOSS shutdown, and encourage the WMF to give serious consideration to the funding requirements that its replacement will likely require. An unexpected new expense to be sure, but absolutely crucial to protecting copyright owners' rights and ensuring the highest possible quality product. Thanks for your consideration, Crow (talk) 22:07, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

@Crow: Thanks for adding your voice of support for this. The WMF Community Tech team has already asked for $15K funding for next fiscal year (beginning in July) for a search API. We are still investigating cheaper alternatives (for example, we are in discussions with Microsoft about getting a TOS exemption), but we are considering Google as a possible option if nothing else works out. Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 01:33, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Just want to add my support for funding this expense and permanently writing it into future budgets. We need to take copyright very seriously and this is a good way to help do that. Note $18,000 might not be enough for both Earwig's tool and CorenSEarchBot, according to the Phabricator thread. Diannaa (talk) 12:24, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Community Engagement - suggestion for a (future?) new program to support troubled existing grantees

This might be too late for 2016-17's plan, but I think there's a gap between what the Affcom and the Community Resources teams are doing. Affcom helps bring in new organizations that become affiliates, and the CR team streamlines grants to help these grow and become effective. As I became involved in the CR (formerly Grants) Team's advisory committees, I noticed that EXISTING grantees that run into trouble (lacking good good practices/mechanisms to handle money, insufficient board<-->staff communication and collaboration, effective measurement of impact, and other issues) have no structured way of receiving support. I think that since there's a lot of knowledge in WMF and the Movement about this, and it should be used to help new or emerging grantees, and that WMF's CR team should help facilitate this. Alleycat80 (talk) 23:34, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

I agree that there needs to be more structured ways for capacity building mentoring and support for affiliates. Program Capacity and Learning staff in CR see the need but currently don't have the staff to do more. We need to elevate this as a priority for next year. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 21:14, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Alleycat80, Thanks for weighing in here! It's true that the CR team doesn't have a distinct, structured program to provide support to affiliates running into trouble. However, Program Officers and CR team members are routinely working closely with many affiliates, including when there are specific challenges. We often support affiliates on issues around board governance, transitions, fundraising, programs, COI, etc. Most of this happens behind the scenes with boards or staff or community members associates with those affiliates directly, and doesn't make it into our formal reports.

As Sydney Poore/FloNight mentions, this support is in addition to the other direct, programmatic support the Resources team provides, like the Community Capacity Development work. Other teams in the Community Engagement Department, for instance the Education program, facilitate the sharing of learning on programmatic work. Also, the Program Capacity & Learning team plans to develop community leadership in a number of areas, including through a peer leadership academy. You'll see that PC&L also supports AffCom (Program 6 in Community Engagement).

I agree that there's room for more support here to affiliates, and I'd love to talk to you and others about what might make sense and be helpful, and what could fit in our scope. As Sydney Poore/FloNight notes, CR is not growing nor anticipating getting any new staff in the next year, so we'd have to look at taking things off our work plans. KLove (WMF) (talk) 23:52, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for answering, Katy)! I'm aware that CR is not growing, so this can serve be a recommendation for the future planning. I agree that the peer leadership academy is a good venue for these things, but also think that ongoing support like the one you mentioned (which is mostly done informally) should be allocated appropriate resources so that the CR team (and its hoards of enthusiastic volunteers :D) are able to support affiliates, even in an informal way (I agree that formality is not necessary here, as long as results are good, BTW). With the number of affiliates on the rise, such support will be inevitable at some point. But yeah, let's start the discussion elsewhere and see where it leads. Alleycat80 (talk) 09:39, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Got it, Alleycat80. I hear that prioritizing support to affiliates, and allocating resources against that priority, is something we (the CR team) should be thinking about in the future. I would love to continue this conversation about what it might look like. Thanks for adding that perspective here. KLove (WMF) (talk) 04:42, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Product / Program 4 / goal 3 & 4: visual editing to other projects

Are there plans to extend visual editors to other projects? Mainly, Wiktionary and Wikisource and, well, Meta Wiki would benefit immensely from that IMHO. Alleycat80 (talk) 20:10, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

@Alleycat80: The visual editor is already available as opt-in on those wikis, and we're currently working with Wikivoyagers on bring the editor to their wikis by default in the next few months.

We've been working with the volunteer team who lead Wikisource development over the past few months; it's now live for <pages>, though the real value will be for Page: namespace pages, for which you can see T48580. Whilst the discussions about replacing Wiktionary's current editing model with a structured system are on-going I'm not sure it would be helpful to push those communities into massive projects to reform their templateing systems to work with a DOM-based model. Finally, the metawiki community is welcome to ask for the visual editor to be enabled by default if they wish, but we're focussing on helping people write content for the next few years.

Hope this helps. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 19:23, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Tremendously. Thanks! Alleycat80 (talk) 22:46, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Communications, Program 1, Goal 3: Better baseline and metrics

Hi, I'm just noting here that in contrast to many things in the program, here WMF can actually target concrete SMART goals - such as number of press mentions, existing and targeted visits on the blog and social posts reach. Also, I imagine there's an existing baseline that we can compare to (meaning what's actually happening today). So, if the goals can be concrete, why not state them? Alleycat80 (talk) 11:23, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Hey, Alleycat80, The answer is, in a nutshell, that communications is not just about quantity, but also quality. Would we like to increase press mentions, blog visits, and social reach? Of course. But organically and by communicating better, not by just pushing out more content that will get clicks. Example: We know our social reach is much higher for crowd-pleasing content than community news. A @wikipedia tweet about a Bollywood movie star has been retweeted more than 3,000 times, while a tweet about a GLAM editathon might get 30 if we are lucky. But which is more important to the movement? We can jack up our metrics by posting more on certain topics, but that will create vanity metrics rather than allowing organic metrics to tell a more complete story. And while the baseline might seem like an easy goal to measure against, it is quite in flux: Our Twitter engagement is currently up more than 1,071% year over year, but that includes Wikipedia’s 15th birthday engagement with celebrities. And or Facebook reach is up 556% Y/Y. But our biggest successes may be in reaching new editors in key nations, whatever the stats on those posts show. We post our metrics in our quarterly reports which you are welcome to review at any time. --JElder (WMF) (talk) 00:15, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Alright, [[User:JElder (WMF)|JElder (WMF)], I do get it - and appreciate the thorough explanation! I just wish, in more areas, goals and metrics could have a baseline and remain "more or less" constant for a few years, so progress can be measured. Maybe I chose a bad topic to "pick" on, but my general attitude towards WMF measurement is that it's very hard to assess WMF delivery on many of the goals, so wherever possible, SMARTness should be used. I do agree with you that clearly set goals (even some which can't be translated to exact numbers), and not metrics, are what really matter. Thanks! Alleycat80 (talk) 09:05, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Legal, Program 4, Goal 2: Better understanding on what can be achieved?

Quote: "We expect to focus on: promoting the freedom of panorama and free licensing, continuing to oppose government censorship in various venues, and defending intermediary protection laws on which the projects depend" - what can communities needing help in advocating for FoP and other things (e.g. tightening of copyright laws) can expect as WMF support? Legal advisory? Funding for specific campaigns or local experts? I would like this to be worded better in the plan, if possible. Alleycat80 (talk) 11:29, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

• • Hi Alleycat80. Thanks for your questions about our support for the community in policy issues. We will try to help with the drafting of comments and responses to consultations, leverage our network of experts, engage with academics in the corresponding fields to promote research to back up our arguments, etc. However, we will not be able to give legal advice to chapters. And funding for community initiatives will still go through the grant process. --JGerlach (WMF) (talk) 18:06, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Public Policy

I have read through the public policy parts or the draft and just wanted to say that I am happy with it. It mentions some clear issues and precise actions to tackle them without limiting our options in case we need to change tactics midway. Next year we should also work on a logic model for the WMF's long-term public policy work ;) --Dimi z (talk) 11:36, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Additional questions

I had a series of questions I wanted to post this evening (I haven't managed to earlier due to travelling, during which I was reading this plan in detail), but I see that the consultation has now 'closed'. :-/ I'm not sure how that links in with the FDC review of the plan (as an FDC member). So I'm posting the key ones briefly below:

• With the community engagement training platform and the Wikimedia Resource Centre, are these projects that will take place on meta / another wiki, or off-wiki? I'm hoping the former, since off-wiki resources like those tend to become silos of information that are difficult for people to find.
• There are a lot of consultations and surveys mentioned in the plan, which is good, but running too many of them can cause volunteer fatigue, or conflict with each other. Are there plans to make sure that the different surveys don't overlap, in content and in time?
• I'm surprised that there's no mention of the Language Committee in this plan, as opposed to the Affiliations Committee, which has a dedicated program. Is there a plan for WMF support of that committee?
• With the "New readers research", is there a plan to liaise with relevant chapters and community members here? What is a 'new experience' in this context, exactly?
• With the risk section: ideally this would use a Risk Matrix to assess the probability and impact of the different risks, perhaps this could be used for future such documents?
• In Table 10, there are no notes/descriptions of what is covered in the 'Product & Technology' budget line - which happens to be the largest budget line in that section... Please could more detail be added here?

Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:55, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Mike. Sorry about the timing issues. The consultation was actually supposed to close on Saturday, after 30 days, but we extended it through the weekend. :/ I can't personally answer all your questions, but I can speak to the first three.

• The location of the training platform depends on the need of the audience. "delivery choice" is part of the pre-consultation phase in the plan and may vary according to the module. For instance, if we do find we have scope to work with OTRS on training as discussed above, OTRS training modules might be better suited for the OTRS wiki. Personally, I think that we should strive for the greatest reach we can, so my own opinion would be that we should aim for maximum transparency for each given any privacy concerns or constraints which may also factor in. The Resource Center is envisioned for Meta.
• Yes, it's a key consideration of our survey specialist.
• I'm unaware of any specific programs to expand support of the Language Committee. While fostering growth of communities and reach is certainly part of our strategy, the current plans with which I'm familiar revolve around growing and supporting existing communities instead of putting additional staff resources into growth through new language versions.

--Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:48, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Mike. on the "New readers research" project question, YES, we are actively working to liaise with the relevant chapter and community members. This is happening in a few different ways. First, as we plan the research questions, we're asking community members what their top questions are about general internet users in their country and what hypothetical barriers to using Wikipedia they'd like us to explore. Second, we have been meeting with community members in person (both at events like Wikicon and in the country during research). Third, we will be sharing our findings as early/often as we can with community members. We're trying to figure out why general internet users do not (actively) use Wikimedia projects in some of the fastest growing parts of the world, and the findings should be helpful for chapters, community members, Foundation projects, other free culture/free software initiatives, and beyond. The "new experience" part of this is the people and their habits. We are focusing the "new readers" project on people who do not use or do not often use Wikimedia projects. So these users may have "new" needs or "new" perception challenges around the Wikimedia projects for us to resolve. ZMcCune (WMF) (talk) 22:40, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi Mike. On the risk section, we do carry out a more detailed probability analysis when looking at risks. However, we don't publicly disclose the detailed risk analysis in order to safeguard the projects, the communities, and the Foundation. This is similar to the reasoning for not publicly discussing legal strategy for a case. Our hope is that the information disclosed here, which we feel is the most we can do without creating new risks, is enough to help inform community decision-making.

--Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 23:53, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Hello Mike. For your question on table 10 it appears that information was just not entered. We will get the following added "Movement travel associated with Developer Summit, Hackathon, Development and Research Conferences, Peer Mentoring Events and Wikimedia Conference". Thanks. WMoran (WMF) (talk) 18:31, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

censorship

He WMF, is that your system? I am not blockt here, someone does't like a topic and he remove it? Is this normal on Meta? And who for the hell is User:Yger that he has the right to remove a critcal posting about the (big) spoiling of money by Wikimedia-NL? Graaf Statler (talk) 21:42, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

I am not related to WMF, so please do not blame then. I am a very experienced sysop on svwp, and I found your comments irrelevant to this page and also entered after deadline for comments I also noted this comment in the deleted part: Please note: I blocked Graaf Statler on the Dutch Wikipedia for a violation of a decision by the arbitration committee. This decision states that, amongst onthers, Graaf Statler is prohibited to discuss matters relating to Wikimedia/The Foundation. The arbcom-decision restricts itself to the Dutch Wikipedia, but I guess you could see this as importing problems from other projects to meta which I believe is blockable as well. CaAl (talk) 10:29, 4 May 2016 (UTC). Yger (talk) 04:20, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your explanation. After all I think a party of 15.000 euro for the Wikimedia-members is a very good idea. 1500 people are giving let's say 10 euro for that party. But I have a question for you, Do you know wat gender-bias is? Because this is the Dutch solution to close it. If we have more porn on the Dutch Wikipeia, we will have more female editers, Nice to talk to a very experienced sysop, mabye you can explane me what a genderbias is, bacause in my opinion it's complete nonsens, and nobody know what it is! That complet genderbias project!

And what to think of the enormus fight beween the famous Rijksmuzeum and it's GLAM-project? And did you know that most people who were on the party because wikipedia won the Erasmus price were not active for years on Wikipedia? O yeh, it is absolute a great idea to forbid me to discuss maters of Wikimedia. I an only a stupite writer, you know.

And do you know Dutch? Because last time I was block, it was not for the arbcom desision. No. It was because I was saying the work of a some writers was copyvio and a secret user check by email is very strange. And that was the posting you removed! But come one, let's party! Lets go Italy, wikimania. Paid by Wikimedia. For what? For nothing my frend! To have a free holiday! Graaf Statler (talk) 06:16, 5 May 2016 (UTC)