Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-10-29/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-10-29/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-10-29/In the media
The TimedMediaHandler extension (TMH), which brings dramatic improvements to MediaWiki's video handling capabilities, will go live to the English Wikipedia this week following a long and turbulent development, WMF Director of Platform Engineering Rob Lanphier announced on Monday (and later clarified).
The extension, which has been under development for the best part of two years, will introduce a new interface with subtitle support and a simple "|start=2.3|end=5" syntax for extracting video segments. Other features listed include "multi-format multi-bitrate transcoding with auto source selection, ... gallery and search pop-up players, viral iframe sharing / embedding, etc." although it is unclear how many of these will be available at launch. Deployments to other wikis and Commons have been pencilled in for the coming fortnight.
Readers with longer memories will note that some of these features have already surfaced in the 2009-released mwEmbed gadget, the development of which preceded work on TimedMediaHandler. The two have in common a number of features, most notably their choice of default interface – "Kaltura" video player, which was developed starting in January 2008 with assistance from the for-profit company of the same name and demoed at Wikimania 2009 (see contemporary Signpost coverage). The development path since mwEmbed has focussed on performance, security and code review concerns. Accompanying work has focussed on serving video more efficiently and it is likely that any TMH deployment will also make the possibility of accepting a larger number of video input formats a more attractive option to Wikimedia decision makers.
The deployment, should it go according to plan, is likely to be warmly welcomed by developers and readers alike. Among more seasoned developers, however, the smiles will surely be borne less from joy and more from relief that a project spanning four-and-a-half years of legal concerns, technical debates over code quality, endless technical delays and an uncertain payment structure has finally come to fruition.
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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.
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The first round of the Wikimedia Foundation's new financial arrangements has proceeded as planned, with the publication of scores and feedback by Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) staff on applications for funding by 11 entities—10 chapters, independent membership organisations supporting the WMF's mission in different countries, and the foundation itself. The results are preliminary assessments that will soon be put to the FDC's seven voting members and two non-voting board representatives. The FDC in turn will send its recommendations to the board of trustees on 15 November, which will announce its decision by 15 December. Funding applications have been on-wiki since 1 October, and the talk pages of applications were open for community comment and discussion from 2 to 22 October, though apart from queries by FDC staff, there was little activity.
A total of US$10.4M was requested in round 1—almost the entire FDC budget for the first two six-monthly rounds. Figure 1 shows the requests. Wikimedia Deutschland, by far the largest chapter, topped the nation-based requests with $1.8M, followed by Wikimedia France at $1.0M, and Wikimedia UK at $0.9M.
A key part of the foundation's new financial arrangements involves the encouragement of good governance and transparency in the chapters, which are authorised to use the WMF's trademarks and to an increasing extent share responsibility for upholding the foundation's international reputation. The scores and accompanying feedback for round 1 are the first taste of just how this might play out as the FDC process evolves. The three staff members—Meera, a consultant at the Bridgespan Group, which is assisting in the setting up of the FDC; Anasuya Sengupta, director of global learning and grantmaking for the WMF; and Winifred Olliff, grants administrator for the WMF—provided this information for 13 criteria (labelled A–M). Their scores were based on a 1–5 Likert-scale: the minimum score of 1 indicated "weak or no alignment with the criterion"; 3 indicated "moderate alignment"; and the maximum of 5 indicated "strong alignment". Figure 2 below shows the average score given for each of the 13 criteria. The graph spans the minimum to maximum scores, and the bars are colour-coded for the five dimensions:
Not surprisingly, criterion A gained a relatively high average score of 4.0, since it primarily measures the lip-service paid to the movement's global targets in the application form. A good case for B is more challenging to make, at it involves the potential to fulfil the targets; predictably, this scored a lower average of 3.6. Criterion C is a judgement of likely impact on the ground, which is harder to convincingly argue. C had an average of 3.4, approaching the "moderate" threshold. Germany and the WMF itself each received the best scores for the three impact criteria: 5, 5, and 4 respectively. Also highly rated on likely impact were Argentina, the Netherlands, and Austria.
Criterion D mainly concerns the human resources, skills, and capacity, and E the entity's record of achievement. These both scored an average of 3.3, with two entities marked down for their past records by comparison with their current capacities: Sweden ("a track record of success in many initiatives ... , but new initiatives are on the table which are more uncertain"), and the foundation more obviously, with a 5 for current capacity, and only 3 for past record ("WMF and the programs in question are well staffed with diverse capabilities", but "These initiatives have had mixed results."). Poor scorers were Australia (2 for both criteria, with concerns about challenges in hiring staff and a lack of clear indicators of past project performance) and Switzerland ("Significant concerns about entity's ability to execute on a plan of this magnitude, given staff and volunteer capacity").
On the whole, the leadership of the entities was rated slightly better, at 3.5—midway between moderate and strong. But there were two outliers: there was a complaint that the board of Wikimedia France "has communicated challenges around leadership and governance which may affect the entity's ability to execute successfully on the plan in the short term." And for Australia, stability of leadership "over the past few years" was an issue, as was the response "through the beginning of the FDC process". Leadership in Austria and the UK was rated in "moderate" alignment (3), and for the rest, moderate to high (4).
In terms of whether the funding request was reasonable given the proposed initiatives (G), "some initiatives are likely to be over- or under-budgeted" for seven entities (including the foundation and Germany), and for France, with a 2, the judgement was: "significant over- or under-budgeting, and/or has not thoroughly accounted for costs". On track-records of using funds efficiently, Australia was hammered for "underspending and financial conservatism", and Hungary for underspending "because of lack of execution and because of overestimation of costs."
This drew the lowest average scores, with moderate or less than moderate alignment. France, Israel, Hungary, and Australia scored poorly. The benchmarking assessments may be a wake-up message for chapters to examine their procedures for benchmarking, with complaints about lack of detail common in the assessments. Curiously, one chapter scored higher on having a "feasible" plan to track the proposed metrics (K) than in having "a plan to track the proposed metrics" (J).
The entities were ranked a disappointing average of 3.3 for criterion L (ability to replicate the plan elsewhere in the movement), suggesting that this aspect needs more attention when plans are conceived. In a criterion rather subtly distinct from this, criterion M, the potential of plans to bring benefits to the movement, gained an average of almost 4; the foundation scored a 5, and 4s were handed out for all but two of the remaining 10 entities.
The queries by the three FDC-related staff members on application talk pages, and the scores and feedback provided to the FDC, suggest that insufficient detail was provided by some of the entities for some criteria. The staff have flagged the ability to execute plans, the efficiency of spending, and measures of success as areas that need the greatest improvement by applicants. The FDC will consider the staff input when it meets to decide on what to recommend to the board of trustees on 15 November.
Between 24 and 27 October, the WMF board of trustees met in San Francisco for a retreat and several meetings to discuss the foundation's programmatic scope and to decide on a number of governance issues.
The board approved the legal fees assistance program, which the community supported in a RfC process in September. The program is designed to safeguard editors threatened legally by third parties due to fulfilling their Wikimedia community governance roles such as adminship or ArbCom membership.
The trustees approved resolutions concerning the conduct of two board committees. The audit committee was reformed to reflect the reforms of WIkimedia's financial structure, and the human resources committee charter was approved, after the board voted through the language committee's framework pre-meeting on 16 October. The changes to the institutional frameworks have been accompanied by new office appointments across board committees.
Matt Halprin, who has served since 2009 as one of the four board-appointed trustees, will not stand for re-appointment at the end of his current term in December 2012. He has driven governance reforms such as the board governance committee, organizing the annual evaluation of trustee performance and the board's working procedures, and making the voting of trustees on board resolutions publicly transparent.
The board also looked at the proposals by Sue Gardner, the foundation's executive director, to strengthen the focus of the WMF and put more resources into core projects such as the visual editor, tackling the switch from desktop to mobile devices among readers and editors, and editor retention.
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