Dariusz Jemielniak (Pundit), chair of the FDC, Wikimedia steward, and an editor on the Polish Wikipedia.The Wikimedia Foundation's Funds Dissemination Committee has published its recommendations for the inaugural round 1 of funding. Requests totaled US$10.4M, nearly all of the FDC's budget for both first and second rounds. The seven-member committee of community volunteers appointed in September advises the WMF board on the distribution of grant funds among applying Wikimedia organizations. The FDC is a key component of the WMF's financial reforms to improve transparency and accountability among the chapters—national entities that handle considerable flows of donors' money through the annual Wikipedia fundraiser and from other sources. The committee, which has a separate operating budget of $276k for salaries and expenses, considered 12 applications for funds, from 11 chapters and from the WMF itself for its non-core activities. The decision-making process included community and FDC staff input after October 1, the closing date for submissions.
In a four-day in-person session in San Francisco on October 28–31, the committee analyzed the proposals, considered the staff assessments, and finalized how much funding it would recommend the Board of Trustees allocate to each applicant (see graph below). The volunteers decided to endorse an average of 81% of the funding sought—a total of $8.43M, which went to 11 of the 12 applicants. This leaves $2.71M to be distributed in round 2, for which applications are due in little more than three months' time.
How the numbers play out
The committee recommended that five chapters and the WMF should be granted the full funding for which they had applied: Wikimedia Germany—which had requested the highest amount among the chapters of $1.79M—and the chapters in Sweden ($341k), Argentina ($146k), Israel ($141k), Hungary ($67k), and the WMF itself ($4.46M). The exception was that fees for the planned Wikimedia Chapters Association were removed from grants where they had been included in application budgets.
The axe came out for at least three chapters' applications, which were severely cut back. WMUK's proposals, amounting to $919k, were met with FDC recommendations of $536k (58% of the requested funds). The committee expressed "significant concerns" over the chapter's current governance challenges and recommended that it focus on resolving that issue before returning to a higher growth rate.
Wikimedia France requested $961k, but this was slashed by more than 90%—close to $900k—due to the FDC's lack of confidence in the organization's current capabilities to execute its proposed annual plan. The committee recommended that WMFR re-evaluate its plan and seek essential bridge funding to carry it over until the second-round recommendations by April 15 and the Board of Trustees' decision by May 15 (both proposed deadlines).
The committee rejected the application for $291k by Wikimedia Australia—currently in the throes of a fractious election campaign. Concerns were expressed over alignment, metrics, and some compliance issues, although the chapter was praised for its "pioneering" GLAM work. The FDC will recommend that the WMF board make an exception to the rules so that both Australia and France may re-apply in round 2 if they wish.
While Switzerland's programs were acknowledged as "laudable", the FDC said the organization might overreach itself on its growth path and recommended only $362K of the $560K requested (64%). Requested budgets by Austria (91%—"costing issues") and the Netherlands (74%—"staffing issues") were also reduced.
The removal of requested contributions by participating chapters to the Wikimedia Chapters Association was justified by the committee by pointing out that the entity is not yet legally in existence, and is still just in a planning stage. The FDC commented that the WCA, once established, might be considered as eligible to apply for FDC funds and that chapters are free to allocate WCA funds as they see fit from their given budgets.
The WMF board is looking at the recommendations, appeals, and comments made on the discussion page. The final decision by the trustees is set to be published on December 15. The second round for this financial year starts on March 1. Wikimedia communities will elect two additional voting FDC members in June.
Discussion of related issues
The FDC's role in trying to raise standards of governance and accountability in the Wikimedia movement are already becoming evident. The committee has conveyed the gist of its discussions surrounding such issues as:
the need "to explore in greater depth the kind of growth trajectories that are suitable" for entities of vastly different size and growth stages—in particular, "what kinds of models of staff/volunteer organisations are most appropriate for high-impact work in our movement";
the fact that some entities during the round were in "situations of transition or crisis, mainly for internal leadership or governance reasons";
the need "to learn from the different models of leadership and governance, and share both successes and challenges";
the need "for a movement-wide discussion on 'impact' and 'innovation', and what [the] appropriate metrics, benchmarks and learning systems for these might be", with criticism of the lack of depth and detail in outcome and impact indicators;
the possible need for more discussion in the movement on chapters' roles in "editor recruitment and membership development";
how best to support entities that experience challenging situations in executing annual plans; and
the committee's favourable reaction to proposals that explicitly engaged with "increasing the diversity of the communities they serve, including programs to recruit more women editors".
Requests (red) and recommendations (green) in millions of US dollars (percentages of the original request are in parentheses). The foundation's $4.5M request, recommended in full, is excluded for easier scaling.
In brief
JSTOR-accounts for Wikipedians: On November 19, the WMF confirmed in its blog that the long sought after 100 JSTOR-accounts as a pilot program are being made available. More than 200 editors already have applied for access at the initiative's portal.
Option #37, the winner of the first round of voting for Wikivoyage's new logo. Variations on #37 are now requested as the second round of voting begins.Travel sister-project legal dispute, new logo: On November 19, one of the two legal disputes concerning the launch preparations of the foundation's new Wikivoyage travel guide ended as the court dismissed Internet Brands' case against two Wikimedia volunteers. It saw no basis for federal jurisdiction over the case after the plaintiff retreated on its claims under the US Lanham act. The other case, in the State of California, is ongoing. In related news, the results of the vote to choose Wikivoyage's logo have been published on Meta. A second vote will decide on the actual design and colors.
Annual fundraiser launched: On November 13, the annual Wikimedia fundraiser across WMF-hosted projects started with the launch in Germany, where the local chapter processes received donations. The global campaign is due to start shortly; test results of the preparations, and additional information, are at the Meta portal.
English Wikipedia ArbCom elections: At the time of publication, nominations for this year's English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) elections have closed. Twenty-one candidates have stepped forward for the eight vacancies, which will all be for two-year terms (current or previous arbitrators are in italics): Beeblebrox, Carcharoth, Coren, Count Iblis, David Fuchs, Elen of the Roads, Guerillero, Jc37, Jclemens, Keilana, Ks0stm, Kww, Newyorkbrad, NuclearWarfare, Pgallert, RegentsPark, Richwales, Salvio giuliano, Timotheus Canens, Worm That Turned, and YOLO Swag. Each candidate statement contains links to pages for questions and discussion. The committee will comprise 15 members after the election as decided in a community RfC last month.
Two Wikipedians in residence for Africa sought: WikiAfrica, the collaborative project between the Africa Centre and the Italian NPO Lettera27, has published a call for applications to fill two Wikipedian in residence positions.
New English Wikipedia Administrator: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's first new administrator this month, User:TommyBoy, who has made 22,000 edits over eight years.
What motivated you to join WikiProject Turtles? Do you have any experience studying or caring for turtles? Have you contributed to any of the project's Featured Articles, Lists, or Media?
Faendalimas: As a professional turtle taxonomist I felt I could not only contribute to these pages but also lend a hand a ensuring good and accurate information and assist it sourcing the literature for other editors.
NYMFan69-86: A group of editors and I created this project a few years ago because we saw a desperate need for the expansion of turtle articles on Wikipedia. I have no experience caring for turtles, however I have read books on mostly the distribution and physical attributes of North American turtles. I've contributed to Bog turtle, Painted turtle, Wood turtle, Loggerhead sea turtle, U.S. state reptiles, and have helped upload several images and distribution maps.
Started in 2011, WikiProject Turtles is a fairly young project. How difficult was it to build the project's pages, resources, and membership to its current state? What are the greatest challenges facing new projects?
Faendalimas: The major difficulty has been getting numbers, turtles are a speciaised area. Second is getting consistent and good information being used. With a small number of editors and a fairly large number of pages to deal with the workload is high and diverse. This coupled with otherwise busy lives makes keeping pace and maintaining the pages difficult.
NYMFan69-86: Most of the difficult work was done by User:SunCreator. The biggest challenge in the beginning was tagging all the talk pages with our banner and getting a census of how many c-classs,b-class, etc. turtle articles were out there. As mentioned above, the big problem now is consistent contributions to the articles (from myself included).
Are turtles from some geographic areas better covered by Wikipedia than others? What can be done to fill holes in coverage?
Faendalimas: Definitely, the USA and Australia are relatively well covered but Asia and South America are poorly done, Africa and Europe are not well covered either and the fossil record is very patchy.
How difficult is it to acquire images for articles about turtles? Which are more valuable for turtle articles: illustrations or photographs?
Faendalimas: Getting good images that are free of issues for publication on wiki can be difficult. We are looking at some 270 species across the majority of the world (tropics down to temperate) some editors just don't have access to original photo's of some of these species. I think photo's are very important but some images also, there are details for identification that are easier to highlight in a drawing than in a photo.
NYMFan69-86: A huge boost would be the ability to get distribution maps fairly quickly. These have been a problem in the past for me and have a history of taking a long time to get right. I also imagine images of rare turtles would be hard to come by.
Who maintains the project's range maps? Where is this information typically derived from? Does it require a lot of skill in mapping or image manipulation?
Faendalimas: For species I work on I use my own maps from my own research hence I have access to detailed cartographic software that as its based on my research from my published work I can authorise their use, however for other species this is not so easy and for many species such maps may not even exist. This is a very difficult area across the whole project.
Is there much overlap in the membership and goals of WikiProject Turtles and its parent WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles? Does WikiProject Turtles collaborate with any other projects?
Faendalimas: Yes there is, obviously all turtles are reptiles and most workers in this area are herpetologists, meaning they work on reptiles, just choose to specialise in turtles. Also much of the basic biology is true of other reptiles as it is for turtles. Many of the members of this project, myself included, are also members of the Reptile project.
NYMFan69-86: This was brought up several times as the project was being created. I definitely feel like there is overlap, but there are so many turtle species to cover I feel like this project could even be branched further if need be.
What are the project's most urgent needs? How can a new contributor help today?
Faendalimas: Members, but including members from areas where we lack coverage, ie Africa, South America, Asia. This would be the biggest improvement in our potential we could make right now.
NYMFan69-86: Another need beside members (which is probably the biggest need due to the sheer volume of turtle articles) is, as mentioned, images, specifically distribution maps.
Anything else you'd like to add?
Faendalimas: I think this is an important project for numerous reasons, turtles are often the "forgotten" reptile and many people interested in reptiles are interested in snakes and crocodiles as an example. By making this a unique project we can ensure the adequate coverage of these very unusual animals.
NYMFan69-86: Wikiproject Turtles would do well to acquire more members, however in the past year or so there has been substantial work done on these articles.
Next week will be dedicated to the Wikipedians who labor away sorting our trash. Until then, find an old discussion in the archive.
It's not all roses -- we might see more conflict between the two functions, more us vs. them thinking, and more communications breakdowns or forum shopping. But net I think the positives would outweigh the negatives, and there are ways to mitigate against the negatives.
”
—WMF Vice President of Engineering and Product Development Erik Möller
WMF Executive Director Sue Gardner was forced to clarify this week that proposed structural changes to the Foundation's Engineering and Product Development Department were not a "done deal" and that it was "important that you [particularly affected staff] realise that ... your input is wanted". The reorganisation, announced on November 5 and planned for the middle of next year, will see its two components split off into their own departments.
Gardner's remarks come in the context of a great deal of confusion about the effect of the change, particularly (but not exclusively) from contributors with little industry (or specifically WMF) experience. Similar follow-up posts have seen "Product" defined, a clarification that day-to-day work would still be co-ordinated on a "team" basis, rather than in functional groupings, and several exchanges about the optimal management strategy.
The upshot, Associate Product Manager Steven Walling said, was that what is now "one department [that] includes engineers, designers, product managers, community liaisons, data analysts, and more ... will be two departments, Engineering and Product Development. Each will have their own leaders that report to Sue, instead of everyone reporting to Erik [Möller]. Engineering will contain software engineers and their managers, for the most part. Product Development will contain designers, product managers, and data analysts, for the most part. There will also probably be new Director-level positions under the new departments, such as to manage the design team. "
The move, Möller (currently Vice President of Engineering and Product Development) argues, will allow the WMF to scale as it seeks to refocus on a smaller number of competencies, mostly notably technology. He also wants to see Operations specialists involved earlier in the development procedure and UI/UX developers' time spread more equally among projects.
Other staffing news this week included the WMF's hiring of Juliusz Gonera (whose previous work includes software for aiding the study of macromolecular structure of proteins) as a software developer in its Mobile team and Catalan-contributor Quim Gil as "Technical Contributor Coordinator (IT Communications Manager)". Wikimedia UK also managed to hire two technical contributors to fill the gap after a previous failure to find a suitable candidate for a full-time position earlier this year.
In brief
Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for several weeks.
WMF Localisation Team member Santhosh Thottingal addressing the OpenSource Language Summit, held in Pune, India earlier this month. The conference featured on the Wikimedia blog this week.
Signpost polling retired: (from the editor) In response to apt criticism of last week's poll title, I have decided to retire the polling feature until I can devote sufficient time to administering it properly. Apologies for the inconvenience; in the meantime, readers can look back over six months' worth of polling data.
Cache corruption causes problems: Cache corruption caused problems this week, with Wikimedia's "gadgets" facility being the main victim (wikitech-l mailing list). Normal service was restored after the offending cache was cleared, leaving developers to work on a number of other niggles that also appeared to arise this week: an occasional lack of diff colours; a CSS problem preventing readers accessing articles on the Marathi Wikipedia; and a JavaScript error when using the Monobook skin. Of the three, two seem to have a caching component; the number of bugs with such a component has grown steadily since the introduction of increasingly aggressive JavaScript and CSS caching from 2010 onwards.
OpenSource Language Summit writeup: The Wikimedia blog this week featured a writeup of the OpenSource Language Summit, a conference co-hosted by Wikimedia and Red Hat (Wikimedia blog). The summit "focused on language tools and technology development to support languages on Wikipedia, the Web, Linux and other Open Source platforms" and "in total, 45 core language technology developers, open source contributors, typographers and technology evangelists from the Wikimedia Language Engineering and Mobile teams, Red Hat, Mozilla Foundation, KDE, GNOME, translatewiki.net and other open source projects participated in sessions and work sprints on internationalization and localization features".
Foundation appeals for women interns: Having announced its possible participation in the scheme a fortnight ago, the Foundation has now officially appealed for female developers to apply for three WMF-mentored internships. The full-time internships, part of the GNOME-led "FOSS Outreach Program for Women", last for three months (January to March 2013) and include a $5000 stipend.
This edition covers content promoted between 11 and 17 November 2012.
A new featured picture showing the home of American singer Barbra Streisand; the attempts to suppress photographs like this only to make them more widespread later became known as the Streisand effect.
Anne Hutchinson (nom) by Sarnold17. Hutchinson (1591–1643) was a Puritan woman and spiritual adviser. Her convictions, at odds with the established Puritan clergy in her area, helped create the Antinomian Controversy in the colony and led to Hutchinson's banishment with several of her followers. She is considered a key figure in the study of the development of religious freedom in the American colonies and the history of women in ministry.
Sinistar: Unleashed (nom) by Hahc21. Sinistar: Unleashed is a 1999 action space shooter video game developed for Microsoft Windows by GameFX. Players attempt to destroy Sinistars, large bio-mechanical machines, by using a variety of starships. The game received mixed reception, with critics praising its graphics but criticising the repetitive gameplay and bosses.
Dudley Clarke (nom) by ErrantX. Clarke (1899–1974) was an officer in the British Army, known as a pioneer of military deception operations during the Second World War. He was instrumental in establishing the British Commandos, the Special Air Service and the US Rangers and known for combining fictional orders of battle, visual deception and double agents.
"Terms of Endearment" (The X-Files) (nom) by Bruce Campbell. "Terms of Endearment" is a 1999 episode of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. In a plot inspired by Rosemary's Baby, the episode follows Agents Mulder and Scully as they investigate a report of a demon stealing an unborn baby from its mother's womb. It received mixed critical reception, although the performance by Bruce Campbell was widely praised.
Frank's Cock (nom) by Crisco 1492. Frank's Cock is a 1993 short film by Canadian director Mike Hoolboom. It stars Callum Keith Rennie as an unnamed narrator who discusses his relationship with his partner, Frank, who is dying of AIDS. Featuring a split-screen effect meant to visualise the fragmentation caused by the virus, Frank's Cock won several awards, including the NFB–John Spotton Award for Best Canadian Short Film.
HMS Argus (I49) (nom) by Sturmvogel 66. Argus, constructed from an ocean liner, was a British aircraft carrier that served from 1918 to 1944. Initially top heavy, she was used to test innovations before serving on the China Station. During World War II she spent two years ferrying aircraft before being pressed into service and seeing combat near Malta and French North Africa. She was scrapped in 1947.
Stanley Savige (nom) by Hawkeye7. Savige (1890–1954) was an Australian Army soldier and officer. He was commissioned after seeing action during the Gallipoli Campaign of the First World War, later receiving recognition for his acts of bravery. In the Second World War he saw action on four continents, eventually rising to the rank of lieutenant general. Savige, popular with his men, was controversial among officers.
List of film directors of the Dutch East Indies (nom) by Crisco 1492. Twenty-nine people are recorded as having directed featured films in the Dutch East Indies. The majority were ethnic Chinese, although Dutch and native Indonesian directors are also recorded.
List of Rajasthan Royals cricketers (nom) by Vibhijain. A total of 63 persons have played for the Indian cricket franchise Rajasthan Royals since it was established in 2008. Siddharth Trivedi has played the most matches.
Catopsilia pyranthe male (nom; related article), created by JDP90 and nominated by Tomer T. The Mottled Emigrant (Catopsilia pyranthe) is a medium-sized butterfly found in South Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of Australia.
Philaethria dido (nom; related article), created by Böhringer and nominated by Tomer T. The Scarce Bamboo Page (Philaethria dido) is a New-World butterfly with a wingspan of about 110 millimetres (4.3 in).
Streisand effect (nom; related article), created by Kenneth and Gabrielle Adelman and nominated by Peter Weis. The Streisand effect is a phenomenon in which attempts to hide or remove information unintentionally publicise it further. It is named after Barbara Streisand's attempt to suppress photographs of her residence.
Calliptamus italicus (nom; related article), created by Kulac and nominated by Tomer T. Calliptamus italicus is a medium-sized species of "short-horned grasshoppers" found in parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Frigiliana (nom; related article), created by Aqwis and nominated by Tomer T. Frigiliana is a town in Spain which was historically occupied by Muslims, Christians, and Jews.
Calopteryx Virgo (nom; related article), created by Sanchezn and nominated by Tomer T. The Beautiful Demoiselle (Calopteryx virgo) is a European damselfly that is often found among fast-flowing waters.
The Ardabil Carpet (nom; related article), created by vam.ac.uk and nominated by Alborzagros. The Ardabil Carpet is either of a pair of two famous Iranian carpets which include a couplet by the poet Hafiz Shirazi and a signature.
The naming convention for U.S. cities is under discussion due to some reliable sources including commas while others identify cities by just their name.
This proposal aims to address conflicts of interest by adding an "intractable" section to the guideline. It specifies that by having an external relationship that could impair with the core missions of unbiased coverage, one shouldn't directly edit content or initiate deletion processes related to such a relationship.
The purpose of ticker symbols in the lead of the article are under review. This discussion could lead the movement of the ticker symbols to the article's infobox.
Discussion regarding specific eligibility criteria for pending changes, protection requests, and other guidelines regarding the upcoming use of pending changes.
Some infoboxes use {{#if:{{{website|}}}|<hr />{{URL|1={{{website|}}}}}}} while others allow for the use of {{URL}}. Should all infoboxes use one or another or a different combination?
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