Wikimedia Foundation and OTRS team both publish reports, indicate operating changes: The Wikimedia Foundation released their Quarterly Report last week covering the three months October to December of 2014.
The Wikimedia Foundation released its Quarterly Report last week covering the three months from October to December of 2014. The Foundation has been releasing and making publicly available internal operational reports—originally presented directly to the Board of Trustees—since January 2008. What makes the publication of this particular report notable from an organizational perspective is that it is the first report published since the Foundation's decision to move to a quarterly instead of monthly structure late last fall. A key reason for the decision was to better align reporting with the Foundation's generally quarterly planning and goal-setting processes. Due to the larger time spans, the new quarterly reports attempt to highlight key priorities more so than to present detailed quarterly activities documentation. Highlights from Foundation goings-on continue to be posted as blog-aggregated Wikimedia Highlights; more detailed information is presented in team-separated WMF quarterly reviews.
Making good on the new format, the Foundation has presented a much more visually oriented and succinct report than it has in the past this reporting round. Readers interested in the Foundation's initiatives may find it a good resource to review. Some highlights:
In related news, last week the Foundation kicked off strategic planning consultation with the Wikimedia community. This will be the second of the Foundation's five-year plans: the first such plan, begun in 2009 and published in 2011 (Signpost coverage here, here, and elsewhere), proved at best flat-footed. It contained wildly optimistic editor growth projections—a particularly notable projection failure, as editor numbers have actually decreased since the report's publication. The Foundation released a supplement, "Narrowing Focus", in 2012, and is now proceeding with a 2015 iteration of the report in changed organizational format:
| “ | Rather than trying to draft a five-year document for the entire movement, we are kicking-off what will become a discipline of ongoing strategic inquiry, assessment, and alignment. This more agile, adaptable process will directly inform and update our priorities and goals and help us maintain a strategic direction that is consistent with the Wikimedia vision, supports the Wikimedia projects, and is sensitive to the changing global environment.
The "Strategic Visioning" Community Consultation is the first step in our new strategic process. It is an opportunity for us to explore together what the future holds for the Wikimedia Movement and projects. We will learn from your ideas and use them to inform and refine our strategic thinking. From that, we will define the WMF Strategic Direction, which we will share with you in 2015. This Strategic Direction will guide us in our community support, engineering, grant-making, and fundraising and will be updated annually. |
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To participate in the consultation, follow the instructions; at the time of writing, the consultation had already drawn more than 200 responses.
The Wikimedia OTRS team has released its annual report for the year 2014. The OTRS team handles the Wikimedia movement's instance of the Open-source Ticket Request System, and is generally responsible for all queries, complaints, and comments from the public directed at the movement via email since September 2004. The report, both visually striking and very informative, presents a detailed report on the activities and actions of the OTRS team over the past year. Some highlights:
To better reflect the status of the project's backlogs, the OTRS team will be moving to a monthly instead of quarterly report structure this year. The OTRS team is currently exploring applying for grants from the Foundation to hire external developers to improve the movement's OTRS software, and efforts are underway to expand project documentation. Editors are invited to post their responses to the report on the report talk page.
This week saw the 2015 iteration of the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge program's train the trainer community workshop (in shorthand, the CIS-ATK TTT). The event, first held in 2013, is a four-day intensive training workshop and program for a select group of Indic-language editors. As the title of the workshop implies, the event attempts to expose its attendees to and give them experience with the tools and skills they need to communicate with and encourage participation from prospective Wikimedian editors in their respective languages. After the event, participants are expected to begin implementing the "plans of action" they develop at the workshop, with support from the CIS-A2K team. Travel expenses to and from the event are covered by organizational stipends. There were 30 attendees overall this year, up from 17 in 2013.
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a Bangalore-based Indian NGO concerned with technological advocacy and multidisciplinary research in Internet and society. It is integrally involved in the Wikimedia India movement via the Access to Knowledge (A2K) program, a long-standing project ongoing since 2011 organized and funded in collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation (coincidentally, the quarterly report this week). This event, one of the most visible results of these efforts, included seminars on public presentation, copyright law, Internet research techniques, digitization techniques, media strategies, and community-building, as well as multiple panel and group discussions, a GLAM activity session at Janapada Loka, and capstone individual outreach planning presentations.
An Indiegogo campaign to fund a macro lens and other equipment purchases for Wikipedian Jeevan Jose launched last week. Jee's wildlife photographs illustrate over 500 Wikipedia articles, including nearly 300 on English Wikipedia alone. The campaign, coordinated on Commons, launched on 22 February; the modest initial target—funding the purchase of a new macro lens—has already been exceeded. Fund-raising for additional small-wildlife photography equipment—such as a macro flash, camera bag, a travel tripod, and improved digital darkroom (computer & software)—continues. The campaign runs until 24 March.
| “ | He always attributed his renewed energy and life's aspirations to the Wikimedia mission, for having returned to a meaningful life after a 20-year long and frustrating solitude while constrained to an immobile chair. Ever since 2008, he stood up and started walking and moving around. His was an extreme example for us in Malayalam [Wikipedia] to showcase how Wikipedia can change lives. ... For us in [the] Malayalam Wikipedia, today is a black day, for having lost a great beacon on our voyage to ultimate openness and freedom in knowledge and wisdom. Yet we feel [that] BabuG has made his life stamped immortal for ever and has shown us the pathway we should follow in continuing our humble contributions to the ultimate cause of mankind. | ” |
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