Talk:Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network/Archive 1

Presentation in Montreal

Hello, everyone!

Presentation given at the Wikipedian-in-Residence Birds of a Feather session during Wikimania Montréal 2017.

I would like to extend my gratitude on-wiki to everyone that attended and everyone that supported the Wikimedian-in-residence Birds of a Feather Session and the WiR work in general. It was a great session, and I hope to see this proposed user group develop in great lenghts!

ALso would like to post here the slides of the presentation, as well as the Etherpad link, with all the notes. I'll save them, in case any problems with it arises.

Horadrim~usurped (talk) 16:39, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Meeting with AffCom 12pm at Wikimania today

We are meeting with the Affiliations Committee about recognition as a user group today (Sunday) at 12pm, on the 7th floor of the Sheraton in room 720. All are invited!--Pharos (talk) 13:06, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Facebook group

@Horadrim~usurped, Pharos, and Mtmlan84: How are we coming on the Facebook group (or other mode of communication)? If it's not in progress now, I'll create it myself this weekend. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 02:00, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

@John P. Sadowski (NIOSH): I guess go ahead and set it up, if you haven't already.--Pharos (talk) 17:01, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

By all means—I got busy myself and didn't get around to it... John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 18:05, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Facebook group made: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1625703517453016/ John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 17:39, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Discussion about regulation on English Wikipedia

There is a discussion at English Wikipedia's Conflict of Interest board about developing standards and regulations for Wikimedians in Residence.

• The mess that is COI tagging

I thought that this is relevant because this user group has been imagined as a peer support and standards organization which recommends what paid staff Wikipedians should and should not do. There are cultural norms in place but some staff Wikipedian projects have pushed the norms. Likewise, staff Wikipedians could use the support of a professional organization to help them guide their employers on where staff Wikipedians can have the most impact and what paths for engagement are unlikely to be useful. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:01, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Autoconfirmed article creation trial, and getting news out to staff Wikimedians in general

At English Wikipedia the en:Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed article creation trial was a research study from September 2017 to March 2018 examining the effects of preventing new users from creating Wikipedia articles. This study is significant to Wikimedians in Residence who present wiki trainings and events where they might recruit new users to engage with Wikimedia projects, including by creating new articles on Wikipedias.

I am writing here to signal some of the people commenting on that trial to alert them to the existence of this new and forming wiki community group. There were some people at the ACTrial page saying that they did not know about this research, and that people who do wiki outreach have a special need to know. I cannot say that this Wikimedian in Residence community group presents news effectively, but this is the only dedicated organization for Wikimedians in Residences to communicate among themselves. I regret developing yet another Wikimedia community group with its own communication and discussion but for now, this group is just this one message board on meta and there is a great affinity for staff Wikimedians to be aligned with each other in how we all present ourselves. Currently the group has almost 0 labor, 0 budget, and 0 planning, but many members agree that when so many of us are employed as Wikimedians and are managing valuable partnerships which bring media donations, publicity, increased user engagement, and other priority participation in Wikimedia projects, then those employees ought to be in touch with each other to advocate for these kinds of partnerships.

Right now this group has no miracles or solutions to offer but in the future if anyone sees research, discussions, or issues which might interest professional wiki people, then please post those issues here for higher visibility. I will ping the people who messaged at en:Wikipedia_talk:Autoconfirmed_article_creation_trial#ACTRIAL_and_Outreach_work saying that Wikimedians doing outreach did not hear about this trial. In the United States many people did discuss this. Somehow it seems like in the UK communication channels people did not hear. @Stinglehammer, TonyBallioni, Joe Roe, Legacypac, RexxS, Kudpung, Richard Nevell, Ammienoot, Jytdog, Power~enwiki, and Jason.nlw:

If anyone hears anything similar then consider posting here on this talk page.

Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:09, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Lane. For anyone interested, I've created a draft proposal at en:User:TonyBallioni/Event coordinator to address some of the concerns people who are involved in outreach have. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:07, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes, thank you. I'll put this page on my watchlist and try to check meta every so often, though it might be useful to be proactive in sending notifications when new items are posted to this message board. Richard Nevell (talk) 19:25, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

BoF at the 2018 GLAMWiki Conference

Hi, everyone!

I've created a submission to the Birds of a feather section at the 2018 GLAMwiki Conference with the intention of bringing together Wikimedians-in-Residence (WiRs) and Student Workers to talk about their experiences.

GLAM Wikimedian-in-Residence and Student Workers Birds of a Feather

I hope you guys can participate and spread the word.

Thank you!

--GiFontenelle (talk) 20:07, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Curating a recommended reading list

During the recent online call, we discussed taking steps toward our group becoming a hub of documentation that is relevant to our community of practice. To start that off, we'd like to curate a reading list of some of the resources that members have found particularly useful, including those we like by other members. I'd like to nominate Wikidata in Wikimedia projects by User:John Cummings to start off such a section on the front side of this page.--Pharos (talk) 23:48, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Pharos (talk · contribs), can I suggest that we make sure that all reading list materials available in the Wikimedia Resource Center or perhaps even build the reading list in the center in some way? I would like to try and avoid this. John Cummings (talk) 09:08, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

@John Cummings: Do you think we should start a Wikimedia Resource Center/Wikimedian in Residence page, similar to the other thematic pages in Category:Wikimedia Resource Center, and also include our links on other thematic pages as appropriate?--Pharos (talk) 17:03, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

@Pharos:, I don't know, the main issue the WRC tries to avoid is the creation of new pages, its trying to collate resources in a central database and adding tags to help people explore, let me do a bit of research to find a good option, we can start creating somewhere as a draft and then move somewhere more permanent. John Cummings (talk) 22:00, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Third party media

• From Encyclopedic Collector to ‘Wikipedian-at-Large’ November 2018
• Wikidata white paper from ARL November 2018

Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:45, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Request for support - 2019 Community Wishlist Survey

The Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech Team hosts an annual survey where any Wikimedia community member may make a small request for technical development of the Wikimedia projects. This year community members made 212 proposals. From November 16-30 there is voting at Community Wishlist Survey 2019. The Community Tech Team will develop the top 10 proposals in 2019 to present them by the end of the year. Vote now! Also plan your wishes for the next year.

For context, see last year's top 10 proposals or the general documentation page for wishlist surveys since 2015.

If anyone wants to highlight a wish for WREN consideration then please post it below. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 00:39, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Requests

This survey encourages community advertising and canvassing. I made a proposal and I would appreciate any votes of support which anyone would give.

• Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Editing/Easy talk page posts by email

For anyone who does not know, when organizations come to Wikipedia they tend to seek contact by email. Probably half of all the big organizations a person can name has edit requests in the archives of OTRS. I would like to surface these to get more communication of all sorts happening, including communication between every organization and the Wikimedia community. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 00:39, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Job posting - medicine - Washington D.C.

PCORI, well known in health research distribution in the United States, is hiring a Wikimedian.

Please see the notice that I posted to English Wikipedia's WikiProject Medicine at en:Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#PCORI_hiring_a_Wikipedian_in_Residence_for_a_one-year_term. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:19, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Applied for Wikimedia Foundation grant - seeking comment and support

See

• Grants:Project/Public Domain Day event toolkit

Since March 2018 I have been Wikimedian in Residence (Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network) at the University of Virginia. Among other things I organize collaborations with the library. Some notes on my projects are at University of Virginia.

In the above proposal I am assisting some librarians, researchers, and our copyright lawyer in requesting US$15,000 from the Wikimedia Foundation in the November 2018 call for projects as described at Grants:Project. With this money the library would, in summer 2019, develop a tool kit and event package for more libraries to celebrate Public Domain Day and to incorporate Wikimedia engagement into their program. We will be hosting a Public Domain Day event of our own with Wikimedia engagement in January 2019 to get experience before starting the grant funded project.

I am posting this to the WREN group because I want Public Domain Day to this to be an annual holiday for Wikimedians and librarians, and many Wikimedians in Residence are at and will be at libraries.

If anyone can sign to support then I appreciate that. If anyone has comments of any kind please post to the talk page. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 23:32, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: If you want to revisit this in the future, I am interested as my close friends do this as a mini festival in Brussels for several years now. Would love to do something in my region and elsewhere also. --Zblace (talk) 07:34, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

@Zblace: This next year is the 20th anniversary of Wikipedia and of course another of the bigger public Domain Days since the opening of public domain in the United States and Wikimedia servers. This is a great time for someone to apply for this. I could do this same thing alone at my university again, however, the money means less to me and us and we more care that someone do something. We already have lots of wiki activities at my school.

Would any of your friends and colleagues be interested in adapting this grant proposal for yourselves? If you did, me and my university library would support as a second. I think that a very powerful component of this should be promoting the import to commons of content made public domain in the United States every year, since that has been the bottleneck. I think many Wikimedians in Residence would support this. What do you think? Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:00, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: Sounds good. Is there a good way to prepare well in advance? Maybe go through listing of what is actually being released? I am personally interested in visual media, but curious of other also. Zblace (talk) 19:05, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

2018 Affiliations Committee call for candidates

This is an update from the Wikimedia Affiliations Committee.

The Affiliations Committee – the committee responsible for guiding volunteers in establishing Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups – is looking for new members!

The main role of the Affiliations Committee is to guide groups of volunteers that are interested in forming Wikimedia affiliates. We review applications from new groups, answer questions and provide advice about the different Wikimedia affiliation models and processes, review affiliate bylaws for compliance with requirements and best practices, and advise the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees on issues connected to chapters, thematic organizations and Wikimedia user groups.

The committee can include up to fifteen members, roughly half of whom are selected every twelve months for staggered two-year terms. Those joining the committee during the current process will serve a two-year term ending in December 2020.

Key skills

Being a part of the Affiliations Committee requires communication with volunteers all over the world, negotiating skills, cultural sensitivity, and the ability to understand legal texts. We look for a healthy mix of different skill sets in our members, including the following key skills and experience:

- Willingness to process applications through a set, perhaps bureaucratic process.
- Readiness to participate in political discussions on the role and future of affiliates, models of affiliation, and similar topics.
- Availability of up to 5 hours per week, and the time to participate in a monthly two-hour voice/video meeting.
- International orientation.
- Fluency in English.
- Ability to work and communicate with other languages and cultures.
- Strong understanding of the structure and work of affiliates and the Wikimedia Foundation.
- Knowledge of different legal systems and experience in community building and organizing are a plus.
- Skills in other languages are a major plus.
- Experience with or in an active affiliate is a major plus.
- Strong track record of effective collaboration (such as evidenced skills at facilitation, mediation, negotiation, and so forth) are a major plus.
- Willingness to use one's real name in committee activities (including contacts with current and potential affiliates) when appropriate.

We are looking for people who are excited by the challenge of empowering volunteers to get organized and form communities that further our mission around the world. In exchange, committee members selected will gain the experience of supporting their world-wide colleagues to develop their communities as well as personal development in guiding organizational development, facilitating affiliate partnerships, and professional communications.

Selection process

As a reflection of our commitment to openness, transparency, and bilateral engagement with the Wikimedia community, the 2018 member selection process will include a public review and comment period. All applications received by the committee will be posted on Meta at Affiliations Committee/Candidates/December 2018, and the community will be invited to provide comments and feedback about each candidate.

At the end of the public comment period, the applications will be voted on by the members of the committee who are not seeking re-election, taking into account comments put forward by the committee's members, advisors, Wikimedia Foundation staff and board liaisons, and the community. A final decision will be made by mid-January 2019, with new members expected to join later that month.

How to apply

If you are interested in joining the committee, please post your application on the nomination page and send an email announcing your application to affcom@lists.wikimedia.org by 31 December 2018. Your application must include the following information:

- Your full name and Wikimedia username
- A statement describing your relevant experience, skills, and motivation for joining the committee.
- Answers to the following three questions:

1. How do you think affiliates work best together to partner on effective projects and initiatives?
   
2. What do you see as the role of affiliates in the Wikimedia movement in the next three years?
   
3. What do you feel you will bring to the committee that makes you a uniquely qualified candidate?
   

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me and/or the committee as a whole. We are happy to chat or have a phone call with anyone about our work if this helps them decide to apply. Please distribute this call among your networks, and do apply if you are interested!

Best regards,
Kirill Lokshin
Chair, Affiliations Committee

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Affiliations Committee, 06:25, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Redesign

At the monthly meeting there has been discussion about reorganizing this page for a while. Today I posted {{WREN}}, a navigational box which divides the content we have to share among some subpages. Hopefully this makes the environment more welcoming for people to post contributions and also makes it easier to keep our documentation sorted.

We discuss at the next meeting! I am pausing before copy/pasting signatures to the "join" page because I think that would re-ping everyone, and I thought it would be best to get feedback from the regulars before drawing too much general attention. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:16, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Mission statement December 2018

Since November 2018 various people in this organization have become more serious about drafting a mission statement. Collectively people decided to have discussions off-wiki with off-wiki notes. While the ideas are not completely formed, I have a draft of the content posted at

• Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network/mission

Everyone who has attended the online monthly meetings in the past 6 months has seen this and was a contributor. Luca Martinelli, Rachel Helps, Richard Knipel, Dominic Byrd-McDevitt signed their names to comments on the draft. The intent was to get a draft on wiki and develop it more from here. I expect there will be revisions but here is where things are for now. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:13, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

New Affiliations Committee appointments

AffCom is excited to share with you the news that the Wikimedia Foundation Board has unanimously approved the changes to the Bylaws during the last Board meeting on January 30, 2019.

This change allows the participation of User Groups in the Affiliate-selected Board seats (ASBS) 2019 process.

To read the Board's announcement, please click here

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:45, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Help us make Wikipedia talk pages more accessible to more participants

Hello!

Our team at the Wikimedia Foundation is working on a project to improve the ease-of-use and productivity of wiki talk pages. As an affiliate, I can imagine you’ve run into challenges explaining talk pages to first-time participants, or it is an consultation that would interest your members.

We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis – to ask questions, to resolve differences, to organize projects and to make decisions. Communication is essential for the depth and quality of our content, and the health of our communities.

We're currently leading a global consultation on how to improve talk pages, and we're looking for groups that can discuss and report on their experiences using (or helping other people to use) wiki talk pages. We'd like to invite you to participate, with the user groups that you belong to. You can learn more about the consultation at Mediawiki.org and if you're interested in hosting a group discussion (on-wiki or off-wiki), you can sign up at the participant sign-up group.

If you’d like to participate or if you have any questions, please contact us and let us know. The more people participate from many horizons, the better the outcome will be.

Thank you! Trizek (WMF) 15:29, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Call for complementary facilitators and more to get the ASBS 2019 process started!

Hi everyone, hope all is fine with you!

The next weeks will be intense, as affiliates figure out their participation in the process that will soon select 2 people for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Since new Bylaws established that the user groups are for the first time going to be involved in such process, a lot more support than before is certainly going to be necessary, among other things, for big and healthy conversations on the topic. Hence, please encourage members of your group to become a complementary facilitator, or sign up yourself! You can add yourself to the list on Meta or reply to me to flag availability. One person from the facilitators group should soon be selected to liaise with the Foundation Board’s Chair, María Sefidari, on behalf of all affiliates, and it may be wise to also find a deputy for them.

Finally, if you can think of any huge obstacles that would prevent your group from participating to the process (for instance, a language barrier, or lack of good decision-making mechanisms, etc.), please reach out to me directly: it is really important that we hear about them as early as possible. Thank you! Elitre (WMF) 15:23, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Update on the Affiliate-selected Board seats 2019 process

Hi all,

The Election Facilitators met on Friday, April 5. We finalized the resolution, which is now frozen. The Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation will be asked to approve the resolution.

We have made two small changes to be more inclusive. We extended the date for compliance with AffCom reporting and being in good standing to May 7 to allow time for as many Affiliates as possible to be current with these requirements. The Election Facilitators adjusted the language in case a quorum is not met during the election.

On the talk page of the resolution one issue was raised. The issue looks like to be about a possible candidate. Affiliates will have ample time to discuss the merits of candidates during nomination time, screening time, and they can cast their votes on candidates. The Election Facilitators didn't see the necessity for this change, and left the resolution on this point unchanged.

The Election Facilitators will be Abhinav Srivastava, Lane Rasberry, Jeffrey Keefer, Ad Huikeshoven, Neal McBurnett and Alessandro Marchetti. We will welcome more volunteers to assist us in this process, to reach out to the diversity in language and gender in our communities, and do so in an advisory role.

The nomination period opens on April 15. We are going to prepare nomination pages on Meta. You can expect a call for nominations. There is a draft call, including a candidates' profile section with non-binding guidelines about experience and characteristics for nominees. You are welcome to add your insights, or discuss on the talk page.

Erica Litrenta (WMF staff) supports us in this process. She will reach out to all affiliates through mail and other channels to make sure we are up to date with (user)name and contact details of your primary contact.

On behalf of the Election Facilitators, Ad Huikeshoven 10:52, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

As one of the Election Facilitators in the ASBS process this year, I will recuse myself from discussing nominees or anything specific with our user group's voting in this election.

However, as a member of this user group, I do want to ensure that we have these discussions.

To this point, I request that those who are our user group representatives to AffComm begin the discussion about how this will happen and how our user group membership will discuss this. Our User Group representatives should have already received emails about this process and notice about an informal Telegram group where User Group representatives are gathering to discuss how this may be done, as this will be a new experience for all of us. Thank you. --- FULBERT (talk) 13:16, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Update about the Affiliate-selected Board seats process 2019

Hello everyone!

• The Resolution has been approved by the Board of Trustees;
• Nominations phase is now open, from April 15 00:00 UTC to April 30 23:59 UTC. See the Call for Candidates and Nominations pages;
  • Community members may ask questions of the candidates;
• Your main representative has just received an email to confirm that they are indeed the primary contact and will perform official actions on behalf of your group (such as endorsing candidates and then voting). Some groups also need to verify their eligibility status in due time, as explained in the email;
• New content is available to spread awareness around the process - the infographic on this page has clickable links and can be translated, and a primer is available, that we hope will be particularly helpful to those new to such a process;
• Finally, you are welcome to help with translations! Pick one page from the ASBS category and, in the next couple of weeks, please consider translating profiles of the candidates in particular.

Thanks for your attention! The Facilitators for ASBS 2019, 07:33, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Who is our AffCom Rep and Who is voting for us in the ASBS elections?

I am a bit confused over who our AffCom Rep is and who is our delegated voter in the ASBS elections, given our User Group has a vote both in nominations and in the election itself and our user group does not have anybody listed on the Affiliate-selected Board seats/2019/Eligible entities page. Pinging Pharos and User:Elitre_(WMF) for clarification. For full disclosure, I am asking as a member of this User Group, and as an Election Facilitator in the ASBS process I cannot vote in it. However, I want to make sure this is clear, our members are aware of it, and we will be represented in the process. --- FULBERT (talk) 20:51, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

I believe I am the designated voter for now, I was contacted as the AffCom rep. Like the other AffCom reps, I would expect to be listed when the central groups posts its update.--Pharos (talk) 21:13, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Pharos. --- FULBERT (talk) 21:17, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Affiliate-selected Board seats 2019 process: your representative

Hello. The name of the only person who will vote on behalf of this group to select the next two Board members is now at m:Affiliate-selected Board seats/2019/Eligible entities. Please contact me directly as soon as possible if you need any kind of corrections there. There's only a few hours left to endorse candidates, and only the official voter can do that. I would also like to take this opportunity to remind you that you can make a difference with the necessary translations.

Appreciate your attention and your support so far! Thank you! Elitre (WMF) and Facilitators of ASBS 2019, 12:15, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedian in Residence in the Fundação Oriente and the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal

Dear WREN members,

I proposed a rapid grant for a project as Wikimedian in Residence in the Fundação Oriente (FO) and the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (BNP). I forgot to share this with you, probably because I was centered in the task of announce it in the respective village pumps of the Wikimedia projects involved and another tasks related. But I will really appreciate your comments or suggestions about this proposal/pilot project. Of course, any advice is welcome and I will be very thankful to read it, because this is the first time I propose a rapid grant and a project as WiR.

• Rapid grant.
• Talk page.

Thank you for your attention! I know there are, in theory, a few days to the possible review by the WMF team, but any comments will be very appreciated. If this is not the place to share this with you, I can delete it and share it where you think would be more appropriated.

Regards, Ivanhercaz (talk) 16:26, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

@Ivanhercaz: I see the proposal was declined. I put this on the agenda for the October meeting. $2000 is not a lot of money especially when there is so little shared with the entire Portuguese speaking world. I would like to request WMF accounting by region and language and maybe now is a time for a report. Brazil is cut too. Blue Rasberry (talk) 10:24, 24 September 2019 (UTC)