Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Community Affairs Committee/Archive 1

Office Hours

A couple of things:

1. Can the upcoming, and all future, Office Hours be added to the main page. These things often go heavily missed, and the main page is the bare minimum. Given its purpose, the more local community boards it can be cross-posted to, the better.
2. Timings and details, along with whatever access methods are relevant (I think it's a youtube one) should have their own section here
3. As with the other office hours, if we could get transcribed answers to questions (plus any questions that don't get covered in the Q&A, or arise during and can't be got to) posted here - it's much more efficient than needing people to watch a long video!

Cheers Nosebagbear (talk) 21:04, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

@Nosebagbear Hi, thank you for your timely feedback.  :) The distribution of the announcement hasn't been completed yet, and we will make sure that the main page is included in it. About the details, they are being posted at Wikimedia Foundation Community Affairs Committee/2021-05-13 Office Hour. Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:59, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

English Community, right?

Es geht nur um die englische Community, richtig? ...Sicherlich ^Post 12:59, 7 May 2021 (UTC) (translation: this is just for the English-speaking community, right?)

Ja, korrekt, das ist hier nun mal ein komplett monolingualer, anglozentrischer Mistladen. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) Hold the election 13:18, 7 May 2021 (UTC) (translation: Yes, correct, this is a completely monoligual, anglocentric dungaree.)

Danke für die Bestätigung. Ich habe es umseitig präzisiert ...Sicherlich ^Post 13:20, 7 May 2021 (UTC) (translation: Thank you for the confirmation. I've summarized it on the page ...)

Nah, irgendeine User:Shani (WMF) sagt das stimmt nicht und hat es revertiert. Also es soll für alle sein, denn natürlich sprechen ja alle englisch. Was ist das; Unwissenheit, Arroganz oder Überforderung? ...Sicherlich ^Post 13:35, 7 May 2021 (UTC) (translation: Ah, Shani said that's not so, and reverted me. So it should be for everyone, because of course everyone speaks English. What's this - ignorance, arrogance or being overwhelmed?)

Da User:Shani (WMF) ja per Mail behauptet meine Bearbeitungen wären destructive und sie wären "happy to engage if we see such solutions or requests offered. " auch nochmal hier. Die total innovative und nicht schon xmal wiederholte Lösung wären ... trommelwirbel - Dolmetscher. ... natürlich wird WMF das auch weiterhin nicht machen, klar. Aber ich wollte den von Shani vorgeworfenen non-good faith zurückzuweisen und zurückgeben. ...Sicherlich ^Post 13:52, 7 May 2021 (UTC) (translation: Since Shani claimed by email that my edits were destructive, and she was "happy to engage..." The innovative solution would be [drumroll] and interpreter.)

Hallo @Sicherlich and Sänger:. Ich versuche die Situation zu erklären:

• Zunächst für den 13. Mai: Ich mache das umseitig noch mal deutlicher, aber Fragen können in jeder beliebigen Sprache schon vorab eingesandt werden und können auch in (fast, ne) jeder beliebigen Sprache im Youtube-Chat/Zoom-Chat gestellt werden. Wir haben genug Leute mit unterschiedlichen Sprachkenntnissen dabei, die in der Situation aushelfen werden können. Des Weiteren planen wir das Protokoll ebenfalls mehrsprachig zu veröffentlichen. Das sind Behelfe, aber die trotzdem euren Bedürfnissen entgegenkommen, oder?
• Allgemein: Das ist die erste Office Hour dieses neugegründeten Community-Ausschusses und wir könne noch nicht ganz abschätzen wie sehr das besucht wird, wie viele Fragen und Teilnehmenden/Zuschauenden dabei sein werden. Man könnte sagen, es ist ein Test. Basierend auf den Erfahrungen dieses ersten Tests werden die folgenden Office Hours angepasst. Eure Kommentare hier habe ich wahrgenommen und werden dabei beachtet.
• Technisch: Dolmetscher-Kanäle können nur innerhalb von Zoom gehört werden, sie können nicht gelivestreamt werden (Nachtrag: Also ist es wohl doch technisch möglich, aber ich bin mir gerade nicht sicher, ob wir über die technischen Möglichkeiten verfügen. Ich erruiere es gerade.). Nur der Hauptkanal wird auf Youtube übertragen. Die Möglichkeit wäre, dass alle Teilnehmenden im Zoom-Raum sind, bedeutet aber erheblich mehr Aufwand in Punkte Anmeldung, um gleichermaßen dem Sicherheitsbedürfnis (Stichwort Zoombombing) entgegen zu kommen. Des Weiteren funktioniert das Dolmetschen vor allem gut in eine Richtung (Englisch --> Fremdsprache). Das Switchen auf Fremdsprache --> Englisch bedeutet jedes Mal gehörigen Aufwand, auch wenn es nur für eine Frage ist. Das ist machbar steht aber vielleicht nicht notwendigerweise im Verhältnis zu den 60 Minuten Office Hour (im Gegensatz zum Beispiel zu einem 4-stündigen-Movement Strategy-Event).
• Sprachen: Ich würde es gerne vermeiden, dass Dolmetscher engagiert werden, dann aber gar nicht genutzt werden. Das kann man in der Form vermeiden, dass viel früher in verschiedenen Sprach-Communitys bereits damit gezielt geworben wird, dass es Dolmetscher gibt. Das ist für den 13. Mai zu spät.
• Für die Zukunft: Wie gesagt, das ist ein Test. Statt Dolmetschen gibt es natürlich auch die Möglichkeit separate Office Hours in jeweils einer Sprache zu organisieren. Das müssen wir schauen, ob das leistbar ist, auch angesichts der ehrenamtlichen Tätigkeit der Board-Mitglieder.

Viele Grüße, --Cornelius Kibelka (WMF) (talk to me) 18:36, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

I'm pasting an English translation of my German-speaking comment, so others know what we're talking about here:

Hi. I'll try to explain the situation:

• First for May 13: I'll make this clearer on the main page, but questions can be sent in in advance in any language and can also be asked in (almost, duh) any language in the Youtube chat/zoom chat. We have enough people with different language skills with us who will be able to help out in that situation. Furthermore, we plan to publish the minutes in multiple languages as well. These are "aids", but they still meet your needs at least partially, don't they?
• In general: This is the first Office Hour of this newly established Community Affairs Committee and we can't yet fully estimate how much it will be attended, how many questions and participants/watchers there will be. You could say it's a test. Based on the experience of this first test, subsequent Office Hours will be adjusted. I have noticed your comments here and they will be taken into account.
• Technical: Interpreter channels can only be heard within Zoom, they cannot be livestreamed (Addendum: So I guess it is technically possible after all, but I'm not sure right now if we have the technical capabilities. I'm exploring it right now.).. Only the main channel will be streamed on Youtube. The possibility would be that all participants are in the Zoom room, which means significantly more effort in points registration, to equally meet the need for security (--> Zoombombing). Furthermore, interpreting works well in one direction (English --> foreign language). Switching to foreign language --> English means a lot of effort every time, even if it is only for one question. This is doable but may not necessarily be proportionate to the 60 minute Office Hour (as opposed to, say, a 4 hour Movement Strategy event).
• Languages: I would like to avoid interpreters being hired but then not used at all. This can be avoided in the form of promoting the office hour much earlier in various language communities specifically that interpreters are available. This is too late for May 13.
• For the future: As I said, this is a test. Instead of interpreting, there is of course the possibility of organizing separate Office Hours in one language at a time. We will have to see if that is feasible, also given the volunteer nature of the Board members.

Cheers, --Cornelius Kibelka (WMF) (talk to me) 18:36, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Danke Cornelius für die Ausführungen. Ich habe Shani ja auch schon per Mail geantwortet, siehe Teile daher auch dort (translation: Thanks Cornelius for the comments. I have already replied to Shani by email, so see the parts there as well)

Ganz selbstverständlich übersetzt Du Deinen Kommentar ins Englische: so others know what we're talking about here - in die andere Richtung ist doch google-translate auch immer gut genug? Lässt das nicht grübeln? (translation: You naturally translate your comment into English 'so others know what we're talking about here' - in the other direction, is google-translate always good enough? Doesn't that make you wonder?)

Ich glaube es werden ganz wenige nicht-englisch-sprechende kommen. Aus einem ganz banalen Grund; wer kein Englisch kann und jemals mit meta in Kontakt war weiß; nix für mich. Wenn also WMF möchte, dass ein möglichst breiter (divers ist die modischere Bezeichnung) Input kommt, dann muss WMF auch die beachten die eben kein oder nicht ausreichend gutes Englisch können. Und zwar nicht fallweise, weil mal wieder jemand genervt hat sondern standardmäßig. Punktuelle Übersetzungen sind nett; aber weitgehend nutzlos denn wie gesagt es kommt keiner wenn er weiß hier ist eh alles meist englisch. Und ein erster Schritt wäre meta-Seiten standardmäßig in 3, 4 wichtige Sprachen zu übersetzen. Nicht auf Nachfrage, nicht wochen später sondern direkt nach/bei der Erstellung der Seite.

(translation: I believe there will be very few non-English speakers. For a mundane reason; as anyone who doesn't speak English and has been in contact with meta knows, there's nothing for them. If WMF wants input to be as broad (diverse) as possible, WMF must take into account those who don't speak English well enough or at all. And not on a case-by-case basis, 'because someone was annoying again', but by default. Punctual translations are nice, but useless if as I said, no one comes if it is known everything here is mostly English anyway. A first step would be to translate meta pages into 3, 4 major languages by default. Not on request, not weeks later, but when the page is created (or just after).)

Das es für Live-Diskussionen schwierig ist; keine Frage. Aber es ist ja nichtmal in der hiesigen Nicht-live Variante vorhanden. Inzwischen, vielen Dank dafür, gibt es das in Deutsch. Aber es fehlen natürlich ganz wichtige Sprachen wie es Sicherlich Französisch und Spanisch sind aber ggf. auch noch andere. Es fehlt ein systematisches Vorgehen. Ja, das kostet Zeit und evtl. Geld. Aber wenn man das nicht investiert kann man sich das Getue um die globale Community gleich ganz schenken (ich nehms WMF auch so nicht ab, aber das ist ein anderer Punkt).

(translation: That it's difficult for live discussions – no question. But it's not even available in the non-live version. In the meantime, thank you very much, it is available in German. But of course there are very important languages missing, such as French and Spanish, possibly others as well. A systematic approach is missing. Yes, that costs time and possibly money. But if you don't invest that, you can forget all the talk about the global community (I don't believe WMF['s commitment to that] anyway, but that's another issue).)

Wie gesagt danke für die Reaktionen. Wenns aber nicht systematisch passiert bleibts leider nutzlos ...Sicherlich ^Post 19:46, 7 May 2021 (UTC) (translation: As I said, thank you for the response. But if it doesn't happen systematically, it's unfortunately useless)

Long but less comprehensible. Taylor 49 (talk) 20:08, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Dann gewöhne ich mir mal wieder das Deutschschreiben an ;) Habe ich zwischenzeitlich eh schon mal gemacht, weil die (WMF)er dazu neigen, Leuten, die ihnen nicht nach dem Schnabel reden zu versuchen rauszuwerfen, gerne mit vorgeschobenen Gründen betreffs der nicht kindergartengerechten Sprache. Der König ist nackt wird hier ungern gehört, sei es von den Umbenennenwollern, die vermutlich ihr absurdes Vorhaben noch mimer nicht aufgegeben haben, sei es von den Superputschisten, von denen einer jetzt gar Chef von Trust and Safety ist, also der buchstäbliche Bock zum Gärtner (eventuell auch Saulus zu Paulus, er hat sich allerdings afaik noch nie für sein antiwikimedianische Vorgehen bei seinen Opfern entschuldigt).

Ich möchte auch noch in diesem Zusammenhang auf diesen Fred in der Kurierdisk verweisen, insbesondere auch auf Gestumblndis Beitrag von gestern um 20:26. Die WMF muss endlich begreifen, dass sie keinerlei Existenzberechtigung aus sich heraus hat, und nur als Serviceorganisation der diversen Communities bestehen kann und darf. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) Hold the election 21:00, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Improving Relationship

From my point of view there is a not good relationship between parts of the community and the Wikimedia Foundation and their employees and so I hope that the committe can help improve it. For me it is important to get a answer to a question soon with the requested content. This did not happen with a few of my questions I asked in the past and it is something that happened also to other people. I think it were good to have a up to date page with all employees of the Wikimedia Foundation and a description at a page with a contact possibilty at a wiki page for every department of the Wikimedia Foundation. The moderation of the Wikimedia Enterprise API is from my point of view a good example of how it is possible to do moderation of a page. I wish that there is also for other pages a good moderation. Something what I think what is also important is that the employees remember at their daily work that they have their job because people created content in their free time and so they should have a focus on supporting the volunteers. Communication is probably the part where improving it can help making the relationship better. --Hogü-456 (talk) 19:42, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for initiating this OFFICE HOUR 'test' and hopefully advance

Firstly and primarilly to Shani (WMF) who pushed for this from within but also all people who helped I wanna thank for initiating this OFFICE HOUR 'test' from last night! Hopefully this will advance in the future, so that it can become more of a requierement, than an exception for WMF to do online 'office hours' and 'clinics' to interact with community. As recently joined I was a bit disapointed with lack of this.

Anyway this was a good effort and there is still much to improve with the format, methods and tech. As I stated in YouTube live comments I would hope that WMF can at least now (1,5 year after start of global epidemic of Covid-19) put more resources to advance both audio-multimedia literacy and strategy for online content and live event making. I know it is not the most natural thing to do to environment of encyclopedic open and free text focused (sucessive editing) communities, but... this simultanious, collaborative, interactive and media-rich events and content need to become adopted with urgency. Sure Wikimedians are new in this field and we do not have our own 'solutions' like MediaWiki is for many things, but Clicking the button to stream live is not enough on many levels.

Best wishes and keep up the good (and get better in) work in this direction! (meanwhile also keep safe and sane in these hard times) --Zblace (talk) 06:17, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to have worked

Dear @CKibelka (WMF), Shani (WMF), and JHeilman (WMF):, I was initially encouraged by the CAC, and asked during the Office Hours whether they could assist the poor comms with Legal over IP Masking (at that stage, they had failed to reply to a variety of questions posed 11 weeks prior). I was, somewhat dubiously, asked to be patient given the inherent slowness of Legal issues coupled with the effects of Covid-19 etc. That was around 6 weeks ago, and the reply to those questions and "meta"-questions, has yet to be provided. Could I therefore ask several questions:

1. What exact steps did the CAC members take to exercise their function post the office hours?
2. When did they do so?
3. With regard to this specific instance, did Legal assure the CAC members they'd respond, or not?
4. Could I receive either an exact timeframe, or confirmation that the CAC is not able to provide the assistance, and what an alternate logical step by me would be?

Nosebagbear (talk) 01:05, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Dear @Nosebagbear:, Thank you for your message and I am sorry to hear that you did not receive answers yet. I am sure there is a reason for it, but would like to assist and try to find out more, or at least give you an approximation of when you will receive answers and from whom. You mentioned that you have posed questions some weeks ago. Would you be so kind as to direct me to where exactly the questions were posted if that is online, and if it was sent via email, could you please forward it to askcacwikimedia.org? It would be very helpful to have an email that we can then easily track. Best Shani (WMF) (talk) 18:56, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

@Shani (WMF): just a note that I have seen this, but as IP Masking have said that they will give a response this or next week, I plan on passing aspects where they fail to respond clearly (which can include stating they won't answer a specific question, with acceptable justification) after that point Nosebagbear (talk) 20:03, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Glad to hear they are working on it. And please do follow up via the askcac email if things are unclear or missing. Unrelatedly, thanks for taking the time to attend today. Much appreciated. Shani (WMF) (talk) 23:24, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Communicating "the proof of the pudding".

The CAC is a channel that can be used admirably to discuss issues that prevent us from sharing the "knowledge that is available to us". There is a hierarchy in the sum of all knowledge; the Wikimedia org has a task to disseminate our available knowledge and it is the communities that add to, and enhance this available knowledge. Our shared goal: "sharing in the sum of all knowledge".

Given that the WMorg has a responsibility in the dissemination of the knowledge that we have, it is important to have a scenario to go for and metrics that show how we do. In addition there are professional standards that serve well to show where we are in the provision of our service. For me Commons is the biggest low hanging fruit that will improve our global reach.

Commons

Commons is intended to be a multilingual project. The "user story" for Commons could be:

A nine year old is able to find pictures to illustrate his schoolwork. The nine year old uses his native language and we expect him to find pictures that are a best fit given his language / location.

The metrics

• How many people search Commons in what language
• How many downloads happen from Commons based on search results
• How many false positives are found in the search results
• What are the accumulated search strings that provide no result / provide a result
  • How are these numbers evolving over time

The issues

• currently the "false positives" when you search for beaver in a language are more than 50%
• the text used in the search is NOT language specific.
• we do not measure the use of Commons in other languages nor the downloads worldwide
• how do we target material that is of specific interest given a language or location

The objectives

• we know the extend Commons is used in what languages
• we have a platform where media may be searched in any language that may operate independently and/or from within a Wikipedia
  • as we provide a better service from a Wikipedia, we lower the threshold to contribute to a Wikipedia
  • Commons is explicitly functional in any language and its multilingual service is measured and reported GerardM (talk) 07:20, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Wikisource

There are Wikisource projects in many languages. They provide a platform where books are digitised. These projects are currently optimised towards its editing community. The user story could be:

People find finished works available from the Wikisources in the languages they are interested in and read them.

The Metrics

• we know the number of finished projects of the Wikisources, we know the language they are in.
• we know how often a book is read in any language
  • we know how these number evolve over time

The issues

• there are websites where finished Wikisource projects find a public (external to the WMF)
• we do not seek a public for publications that are available for reading ie the work put in by volunteers is not valued
• it is not Wikipedia and it has no global use

The objectives

• We know the extend there is a public for the work done at Wikisource
• We can collaborate with other organisations like "Internet Archive" to bring an even bigger public to these works
• We realise a similar public as exists in purpose build functions for all our languages
• People can search for what is of interest to them in their "Babel" languages

Lists based on Wikidata

Every Wikipedia has more lists and categories for it to maintain than it can handle. There has been enough bickering on the "why and why not" to appreciate that it is "complicated". It does not matter where you stand in the argument, it makes sense to have one place where you can experience lists based on available data in Wikidata in any language. When a project opts in to have these lists, it follows that we have no red links in these lists. These links are not blue either, they are green or whatever colour to indicate that they are known in Wikidata and associated information is available for these items.

The metrics

• we know the interest for a given list.
  • we know the interest for a given item in a list, this may be an incentive to write missing articles
• we can approximate the extend lists are up to date
  • we know the extend lists needs maintenance on a project

The issues

• Some Wikipedias refuse the use of Wikidata based lists for all kinds of reasons, having these lists provide metrics that bolster the argument either way
• There are many subjects that are not well known at all. Examples are found in Islamic history, the geography, the governance of Africa to name a few..
• many lists are only available in a limited number of languages

The objectives

• The quality of data at Wikidata improves and it provides actual usages for the improved data
• dogmatic arguments are either validated or invalidated providing a way back to being a Wiki movement
• when items in lists provide easy access to the knowledge we have on an item, we become better at sharing in the knowledge that we have.

ElectCom Query

Hi there.

As the CAC was formed by the BGC, I believe, I'm hoping you can help with this topic.

To avoid re-pinging every member mentioned, could you please take a look at the topic I have raised Topic I have raised on the BGC talk page.

Many Thanks,

Nosebagbear (talk) 13:37, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Dear @Nosebagbear:, the CAC was formed by the Board of Trustees, not the BGC, but I have seen your query and am working on an initial answer. It is very late now in Israel, so will probably be posted tomorrow. Will ping you. Shani (WMF) (talk) 20:21, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Request in updating Wikipedia to Creative Commons 4.0

TLDR: There are millions of sources of text licensed under a CC 4.0 license which we can't reuse on Wikipedia because it still uses a 3.0 license. The Wikimedia Foundation board agreed in 2016 to change the license to CC BY-SA 4.0 and there was a WMF consultation in which over ¾ of the  the 400+ participants supported the change. but it hasn’t happened.

As a practical example I work in the UN system, the UN produces a huge amount of content useful for Wikipedia, I am very close to helping several UN agencies change their licenses so they are able to share their vast amount of content on Wikipedia. UN agencies want to change their licenses to 4.0 but this lack of support for 4.0 text on Wikipedia means they are less motivated to do it. Please could the committee help?

Context

The amount of specialist knowledge the UN produces and collates from across the world is absolutely huge, thousands and thousands of expert written overviews of topics (probably millions of pages), 100,000s of photos and graphics, a huge amount of data which is collated from around the world. Text is the bulk of the content the UN produces, it is generally written in an accessible way with more than adequate referencing to be reused on Wikipedia.

I've been working with the UN for maybe 6 years now and they are starting to move to CC licenses which are compatible with Wikipedia. I've been able to convince FAO, WHO and a few others to start to release content under a Wikipedia compatible license. There are several others who are very very interested in changing their licenses to be Wikipedia compatible. A big driver for their change to CC licenses is so they can use the content on Wikipedia.

I've done a lot of work on sharing the existing UN open license content on Wikipedia and we have created hundreds of new Wikipedia articles from the limited amount of expert written text we have available. Its a huge opportunity which I think I can help make happen, I'm friendly with most of the UN agency heads of copyright and attend most of their meetings.

The issue

All the UN agencies who are likely to change their content licenses will move to 4.0 licenses. Whilst Wikipedia accepts 4.0 images, data etc, Wikipedia doesn't accept 4.0 text because CC-BY-SA 4.0's terms state that the Share Alike part must be at version 4 or any later version. In addition this also means we can't use text from any of the 4.0 licensed journals and other sources, which is a huge amount, e.g PLOS is 4.0. CC 4.0 licenses were released in 2013 so there is an extremely large amount of content available under it.

The board agreed to change the license of Wikipedia to 4.0 in 2016 but WMF hasn't done it yet. https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Minutes/2016-11-13

There was a WMF consultation in which over ¾ of the  the 400+ participants supported the change.  https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use/Creative_Commons_4.0

Request

Please could the committee help in some way? There is a huge amount of content available which Wikipedia cannot use which it could do when it changes this license. It is also one of the biggest barriers to the UN adopting open licenses I'm aware of, despite it being such a seemingly small technical change. I think this fits with the WMF Community Affairs Committee work since the board agreed to this change 5 years ago and it is really impacting community outreach work and open license content available to reuse. Anything the committee could do would be really greatly appreciated, I feel like I'm running out of ideas to get this to happen. I’ve created a summary of the current progress here https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T261200

Questions

• What is the process to make this happen?
• Who at WMF is responsible for this change?
• Is there a way to get a timeframe for this happening?
• Is there anything we can do to help?
• Where should I put this collection of info?

Many thanks

. John Cummings (talk) 13:52, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

@John Cummings:, thanks for raising this issue with the CAC. We have addressed it in the Board's Open Conversation that we just had, and as promised, the CAC will keep track of it and make sure we are following up on it and update when we have more details. Shani Evenstein. 18:19, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

acronym: what is GC? (translation)

GC appears to be an acronym. Would you care to add it to Termbase, as well as spell out each time and support internationalization please? Cheers, — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 7 February 2022 (talk) --Omotecho (talk) 16:49, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

@Omotecho: I believe that it refer to the Global Council. RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

@RamzyM (WMF), hi, thank you so much for the link, and that is good to know the page is yet to be put into ja. Dōmo arigatō, -- Omotecho (talk) 16:59, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Comment Addendum: for Termbase, please see m:Movement_Strategy_and_Governance/Termbase. Jawiki is now building its own Glossary for WMF terms as well. --Omotecho (talk) 16:49, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Community-focused technical funding

@Shani (WMF): Just wanted to note the proposal at Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Larger suggestions/1% which currently has a lot of community support for the general principle of meaningfully better funding for resolving technical issues, and implementing technical features, for issues that the community feels concerns them. Not sure if you folks follow that page but just wanted to alert you to it if not, as I assume budget allocation would be a board-level issue. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:24, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

And just to stress that some calculations come up with that the CW (as just one example team) may already be at around 1%, so Proc is right to highlight the general principle. There's also a stress on the fact that "technical debt spending" shouldn't be needing to come out of the wishlist team for new features. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:52, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader: Thank you for flagging this. This question will be addressed during the Open Meeting we have this coming Thursday. If you are there, please let us know and you'll be able to ask it in your own words. If not, the question would be read and answered. Shani (WMF) (talk) 18:32, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Afraid I will not be able to make 18:30-20:00 UTC, but will tune into the recording to check the answer. Thanks in advance for being willing to address it! ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:57, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

From last week's chat: what are current decisions about the use of funds and fundraising?

A question from the chat:

"Throughout the years, the Board and WMF have made and published different decisions about the use of funds. Some of these decisions seem to be out of date and/or contradictory to decisions made later. Could the board address what is current and what is not?

Ex: implementing criteria for affiliates to be able to raise their own funds

Ex: freezing of APG budgets

Ex: increased importance of the FDC"

The answer given was that the Board could go back and update old decisions to indicate those that are no longer current.

I believe that the examples mentioned each have uncertainties that have not been resolved, so I would encourage the Board to also point to where the latest current discussion about each decision lives, calling out any remaining uncertainty [such as those that were explicitly flagged in recent strategy discussions, and how they are meant to be resolved in the coming year]. Cheers, –SJ talk  01:42, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

@Sj: I think this question may have come from this post on the Board noticeboard. --Yair rand (talk) 17:34, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Looks like it, thanks (and thanks Nemo). –SJ talk  15:14, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Chiming in to clarify and respond to the suggestion. The Board is looking at ways to better track information relevant to their work. While it is of course important to understand enough historical context to make current and future decisions, the focus will be on better organizing going forward. Staff and the Board are looking at possibilities for labeling historical decisions, but unite in feeling that an exhaustive, nearly ten year review is not the best use of Board or staff time.

As is typical for decisions made by any governing body, previous decisions are generally either incorporated to an extent that future decisions often don’t refer back to those documents anymore, or superseded by subsequent decisions. In terms of these particular decisions, they are historical and precede all current trustees, except the Founder, as well as core Board support staff, so it is difficult to speak on how they were incorporated or superseded over the years. We are planning to focus on the questions on the table now rather than tracing the route of old decisions backward to conversations that were held in different times and contexts. Not because the information they contained does not matter, but because the conversations have been constant and evolving in intervening years. --ELappen (WMF) (talk) 21:41, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Question re lack of response at new forums website

I would like to ask why the WMF has been so non-responsive in the new forums which have been established for discussion of the movement strategy. There have been numerous ideas being offered by various people and groups at the new forum website, many of them from regions around the world. The WMF amount of response, at the new forum website, has been very low; on some new threads there has been little or no response at all. I do not understand why. I thought that was the whole point of having the forums in the first place. I would appreciate any input or assistance on this question. I appreciate your help. --Sm8900 (talk) 12:46, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Hello, Sm8900. Thank you for your question. A clarifying one -- are you talking about participation of WMF staff, or the participation of the Board of Trustees? Thanks for clarifying, Shani (WMF) (talk) 13:19, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

I am referring to WMF staff. thanks. Sm8900 (talk) 14:27, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

@Shani (WMF), do you happen to use Telegram for messaging? I would like to get a conversation going on this ASAP. I feel that we do not have unlimited time to address this issue. every day, time is passing. thanks. Sm8900 (talk) 14:48, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Per our private chat, updating here as well, that since you are asking of staff, rather than the Board, it would be helpful to see an example of two of threads / topics that you believe WMF staff should be weighing in on. We can ask a general question, but that would be less effective. Additionally, if you are not comfortable sharing here, for whatever reason, you can always write to askcacwikimedia.org. This way we still have a record of your question / request and can forward it to the right people internally. Best, Shani (WMF) (talk) 18:12, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

@Shani (WMF), I decided that it would be totally fine to proceed with this discussion, right here on this page. is that okay? thanks. Sm8900 (talk) 13:43, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

as far as the threads, it is not a question of any specific threads. it is the rate of participation overall. if you could please simply sign into the website for the new forums for movement strategy, and then click on the screen for "users" to view weekly data, then you would see what I mean, participation rates are at zero, by the majority of WMF stafff.

and no, there is no one specific thread where a response is or is not needed. the whole point is the overall collaboarative group atmosphere that we seek to create. I don't know if the WMF staff should be respopnding to all of the threads, or if there are some specific threads where we need their response.

the question is whether any response is occurring at all. if it is not, then we are failing to show even the most minimal effort to reach the forum's stated goals; namely, to reach out to less-enfranchised communities, to invite their participation, and to create an active dynamic resource, where ideas are heard and discussed.

come on @Shani (WMF), you can't actually tell me that you think that zero particpation, zero replies, and zero attention is in any way in line with our core goals. could you please just at least look at the data to which I am referring you to? this discussion will not get very far, unless you view the actual data. could you please do so? I would really appreciate it. all will become clear if you actually view the data there. let me know when you have done so, and then we can discuss further. thanks. Sm8900 (talk) 13:49, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

A request

Hi , We have posted an open letter to the Foundation and Board of Trustees. It concerns the development of MediaWiki extensions and needs the personal attention of all concerned developers and managers. Please see it at:

Open_letter_from_English_Wikipedia_New_Page_Reviewers

and

en:Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol/Coordination/2022_WMF_letter

Your comments are welcome. Many thanks.

Kind regards, On behalf of the English Wikipedia Community Kudpung (talk) 08:02, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

It's interesting to note that full two weeks have elapsed since the board members were sent the letter and still not even a brief acknowledgment of it has been posted either here or to its reply page on Wikipedia. Kudpung (talk) 11:41, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

@Kudpung, we have acknowledged receipt a while back via emails and on Wiki. We noted in our reply it'll take us time to gather information and internally discussed. We keep monitoring the topic and have now officially acknowledged it in the talk pages both on Meta and EnWiki. Best, Shani (WMF) (talk) 19:35, 13 October 2022 (UTC)