Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Community Affairs Committee/Sister Projects Task Force

The following discussion is closed.

finally

This was long due and hopefully it will help speed up allocation of different type of resources to smaller and future projects. --Zblace (talk) 15:46, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Nomination of Galahad

• Top 3 reasons: I like this new initiative in which Wikipedia's sister projects will finally be represented. My group supports small projects, so this aligns with our mission.
• Your experience with sister projects: 10 years as administrator of Wikivoyage in Spanish, Wikipedia's sister project.
• Language: Spanish (native language), English (level 1)
• Experience working on new sister project: Since 2018 I have been working on initiatives together with my group to revitalize small projects. Since 2022, after the change in the grant process, this process has continued without the support of the community resource team or regional committee, which has made it difficult, but positive progress has been made to transition to a greater understanding of staff and affiliates to other projects.

Galahad (sasageyo!)^(esvoy) 07:24, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

@Galahad you have my support! --Zblace (talk) 08:12, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

@Galahad: my experience says those Committees need committed members, and no doubt Galahad will be a very commited one in this role, so full support.--TaronjaSatsuma (talk) 19:07, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Nomination of Billinghurst

Top 3

• The participation at the non-WPs is where I do the majority of my editing, and my passions, and there is still so much to achieve in the sisters
• I work cooperatively across multiple communities and look to find and work with people's strengths; worked with staff, worked with board members, worked with communities, worked with newbies
• Not afraid to speak up and advocate; nor afraid to shut up and listen to alternate points of view; still sought for opinions, so still current and offer a different perspective

Experience

• Admin for 15+ years at multiple wikis, incl. numbers of non-WPs (per matrix); former steward, former checkuser, former oversight, former ombuds commission
• global rights for many years, and very much involved in xwiki anti-spam measures
• Lots of edits, at lots of places special:centralauth; bots and tools and phabricator
• Policy, yep done lots of that here and in my vocation; still doing so at enWS; issue resolution; have been somewhat of a sabbatical from some wikipolitics

Language

• Only English, though I have managed fine in that essence as a a steward

Projects and evaluation

• my vocation involves projects and programs, and their evaluation. My work here has involved aspects of these, though I still wander back to editing and contributing

new sister projects

• have worked on new and old wikis, introduced new aspects to wikis, eg. wikimaniawiki, global abuse rules; footprints in lots of places

identified to Wikimedia, on numerous occasions

• reside within "East, Southeast Asia, & Pacific" region

 — billinghurst sDrewth 15:42, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Nomination of Noé

Hello,

I am very happy to see a step made in the general direction of the diversity of wikimedia projects. Thanks for those who suggest and manage this committee!

I feel compelled to offer some of my time to this group, after years of effort put on building interwikimedian efforts. So, my top 3 reasons: I consider each of the twelve projects should have a product manager to help the communities to express their needs and visions on various layers (technical needs but also organizational support, external communication (like dedicated campaigns for Wiktionary, posters for Wikisource, etc.), legal support (what's exactly is covered by CC BY-SA?), readers experience (with specific UX tests for each community), trademark identification and support, and a couple more aspects). I think Wikipedia is not the center of the network but one star in our constellation, and each relation between projects is an improvement for the audience and for the general knowledge. I think most contributors have multiprojects/transprojects experience and could be happier with a smoother workflow, with identified paths. For this last thought, I wrote few years ago an essay on skills and I think it could be an interesting way of presenting the global map of contribution with a list for each projects.

I am one of the administrator in French Wiktionary for some years, where I promoted a dozen of important policy changes on linguistics level (phonetic, semantic, lexicography - my academic background) and community processes. I made several talk in French Wikiconventions, public venues and once in English at a Wikimania. I built and supported for five years the Tremendous Wiktionary User Group, and wrote a critical essay on its flaws.

I am fluent in French (native tongue), English and Spanish. I am translation administrator on Meta, I just made the French version of the page for this call. I am from and live in France, I am a white cisgender man. I made efforts to be aware of dominations, privileges, minorities histories and social justice. Still, I am from a quite generic background and I will not be offended if someone else is prioritize over me.

Beside my long-term career as a Wiktionarian, my daily job is product manager of the Dictionnaire des francophones, an institutional project led by the University of Lyon (France) do build a monolingual dictionary in RDF format (like Wikidata) that include French Wiktionary and a dozen of other open resources. It could be considered as a conflict of interests as I reuse content from Wiktionary, but I am not just en enthusiastic thief, I managed to have a one-year Wiktionarian in Residence in 2020, and he stayed in my team as a data curator since then (without stopping to contribute to the Wikimedia projects!).

I never helped the emergence of a new project but my past career was in language documentation and I tried to organize a pilot project in 2015 to add an endangered language in Spanish Wiktionary, quite too early for the jury. Since then, I became the head publisher of the monthly newsletter for French Wiktionary (up to 97 issues and going!). Well, to be exhaustive, I am also president of a collective non-profit publishing house without any connection to wikis ; and secretary of an association that manage a place where we have monthly meet-up for Wiktionarians in Lyon since 2015.

Well, it's quite long, so I want to thanks every people that spent time on this text. You are welcome to fix my mistakes as English is not my mother tongue. I will keep an eye on this process to answer any questions you may have. Cheers 🙂 Noé (talk) 16:07, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

@Noé you have my support! --Zblace (talk) 12:20, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Sj

Hello! It's great to see this underway, I would be glad to help in some way.

I have been contributing to new project proposals since 2004 and refactored the current new project process page in 2012. I've contributed to Wikispore and a few sister projects early in their evolution (b, d, m, n, s, v, c), and worked with a few parallel projects outside the WM verses (omegawiki, eol, we) that would have benefitted from a clearer sister-process.

1. We have a backlog of tremendous proposal-ideas that need collaborative wiki solutions, even if they don't become WM sister projects. We need to speed up giving them feedback, matching ideas & implementers & support & paths to a sustainable community, and ideally making the process of proposing a sister project here the best way in the world to launch a free knowledge project. That would truly speak to realizing our current vision beyond the constraints of existing projects.
2. We have a number of projects that are duplicative with similar free-knowledge communities with slight differences, which we should help to integrate, synchronize, or merge (whether the result is hosted within WM or elsewhere).
3. There are a number of successful free-knowledge-wiki projects out in the world that have a sustaining community but lack a modicum of maintenance support (on the order of $10k/y), which periodically ask about becoming a WM project, and we should articulate a simpler process for responding positively to this interest [including but not limited to: migration, support, matchmaking, practical advice]

I can work in English, German, and Spanish; and can read French and Hebrew. I've helped found or run content programs at small non-profits and evaluate an ongoing microgrants program. The closest things to a sister project I've helped found: the OLPC wiki and the wikimania wiki ;)

–SJ talk  17:47, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

@Sj you have my support! -- Zblace (talk) 12:19, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Nomination of Uncle Bash007

I am a Wikimedian from the MEA region. I started editing Wikimedia in 2019 and I am always proud of being part of this amazing movement

• Top 3 reasons:

1. I believe Wikimedia is about diversity, having different set of people working together as one. I believe I'm a team worker and can work closely in achieving a required goal.
2. I am young, dedicating and can work for longer hours. Evidence can be seen from my contributions on Hausa Wikipedia (having over 20,000 edits from my start)
3. I am interested in working for the development of Wikimedia movement and I have being revising the 2030 strategy and implementing some of it's goals through my project activities.

• Experience:

1. I am an administrator on Hausa Wikipedia from 2022 up to today (auto-patroller on English Wikipedia and a New Page Patrol School Student (curently) among others).
2. I have applied for a new sister project Hausa Wikiquote which was approved, currently developing it on Incubator. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikiquote_Hausa https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wq/ha/Babban_shafi
3. I participate in Education Wiki, Wiki in Africa, Wiki Loves Africa 2022 (as a juror), Let's connect, etc.

Uncle Bash007 (talk) 09:34, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Nomination of User:Abhinav619

I am a Wikimedian from India (South Asian) region. More than 30 languages are present in the region and some more are in process. Sister Projects have been the key driving source of inspiration for most of the volunteers in this region.

• Top 3 reasons:

1. I have been part of the Movement Strategy Drafting Process under the Partnership Working Group and later in the Core Writer's Group. Promoting sustainable development for Sister Projects has remained a key priority for me and it will be a good opportunity to represent the views and observations from the South Asian region.

1. I have undergone several Partnerships for content enrichment etc. Sister Projects are a key pillar in maturing partnerships for GLAM etc. Through this Task Force, I wish to share my experience on Sister Projects and maturing partnerships.

1. I have been documenting different stories on Wikimedians from the South Asian region such as Wiktionary, Wikisource etc. It has helped me record a lot of feedback and observations for the challenges faced and steps needed to overcome them. Signpost, Diff.

• Experience:

1. Successful - Facilitating and also contributing as an editor on Hindi Wikisource, the project previously under incubation now approved by the Language committee and running live.

--Abhinav619 (talk) 11:51, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Nomination of User:Kasyap

My name is Krupal Kasyap, As a passionate learner and advocate for free knowledge I am active member in Telugu Wikipedia, managed a number of outreach programs and training, design curriculums to suit community capacity building.Trainer Certification in Wikimedia Education Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom Program.working as Program Manager for IndicWiki project.

• Top 3 reasons:

1. I belive the sister projects allow people to collaborate on a variety of topics beyond what is covered on Wikipedia
2. The sister projects help to break down barriers to education and empower people to learn and grow,we have great contributers case studies in Telugu Wiki sister project
3. It is very easy to integrate technology with wiki sister project can help to creatre Knowledge from AI,NLP with Structured data Sources

• Experience:

1. I have good experience in new-age technologies in open source and wiki ecosystems.
2. I do have skills in project management,capacity building, organization strategy and community management
3. Extensive experience leading projects, events and Outreach efforts (Education, GLAM etc)

I have been an editor in the Telugu and English Wikipedias since 2006 with contributions in a variety of different fields & I organize and host wiki events as Volunteer. I would like to see the and make more use of such multilingual opportunities, particularly through the Wikimedia sister projects. I also have a strong attention to detail and proven ability to work collaboratively , There is a lot to be done in Wiki Sister Projects and I am ready !  : Kasyap (talk) 08:49, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Further steps

The nominations are now closed. Thank you to everybody who nominated themselves or took part in the discussion. The candidates will be contacted shortly to arrange an interview.--Victoria (talk) 08:21, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Status Aug 2023

• SiPTaF will select the candidates by 15 June, 2023.
• Selected candidates to join the Task Force by June 30, 2023 and attend the next Task Force meeting.

Did this happen? Do you plan to publish the list of task force members and the roadmap of the task force? Tgr (talk) 22:37, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Tgr: Kasyap and I participated in an initial meeting this week; and there was a session for public discussion at Wikimania. I don't know how large the full group will be, I'll help summarize and share notes from the session once available. –SJ talk  05:25, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi. Yes, after the interviews, the Taskforce was expanded by five members - SJ, Kasyap, Noe, Billinghurst, and Galahad. We didn't talk about the roadmap yet.--Victoria (talk) 08:41, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Update, @Tgr: and all: currently we met a second time, drafted a proposal for a S.P. committee that would review specific proposals + make recommendations about them to the board (via the CAC); including the scope of what sorts of proposals would be reviewed (starting, adopting, merging, closing), and potential test cases to illustrate what sorts of evaluation are needed.

Top on my list of proposals I'd like to see reviewed: Current open proposals (most-developed: WikiJournal, Wikispore; most-requested: Genealogy project) and long-standing requests (Wiktionary ideas, WV <-> Wikieducator synch). I'd love to hear your + others' most pressing issues; maybe we can do so expressly from the NPP page. –SJ talk  02:57, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I'd also like to see a list of active knowledge projects outside the wikiverse, for comparison -- we can periodically check in with them to see what infrastructure choices they are making, what their running costs are, &c for comparison. E.g. today I found WikiPathways, a collection of a few thousand biological pathways with a custom viz tool that renders from a github director per pathway, and tracks revisions via git history. Lovely, focused, reasonably consistent in activity over the years. –SJ talk  03:00, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

@Sj thanks, I appreciate the update! (Did you know WikiPathways' git history tool was built with a WMF grant?) Tgr (talk) 23:52, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

No, that's delightful, as is Mark. Thanks for sharing! –SJ talk  02:31, 9 December 2023 (UTC) Just noting here that we don't have a term for projects like this whose outputs we embed in articles (and whose tools we may sporadically help develop) but that are hosted and maintained elsewhere; nor a list that I've fojnd. And we generally don't share account logins with them... –SJ talk  09:46, 9 December 2023 (UTC)