User talk:Stewart Little
Add topic- I prefer to keep discussions unfragmented. If you leave a comment for me here, I will most likely respond to it on this same page—my talk page—as an effort to keep the entire conversation in one place.
- I'll never delete discussions.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes this week
- You will be able to show references from
<references />
tags in more than one column on your wiki. This is the list of footnotes for the sources in the article. How many columns you see will depend on how big your screen is. On some wikis, some templates already do this. Templates that use<references />
tags will need to be updated, and then later the change can happen for all reference lists. [1][2] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 March. It will be on all wikis from 16 March (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 14 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Some old web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis in the future. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version. [3]
- CSS in templates will be stored in a separate page in the future. [4][5]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:25, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #251
[edit]- Events/Press/Blogs
- Ladies that FOSS, March 15th, 18:00, Berlin. Meetup dedicated to women who want to start coding for Wikidata, Mediawiki or other open source software
- Wikidata workshop in Manchester, March 17th, 10:00, at the Manchester Central Library (information)
- Wikidata workshop in Paris, March 17th, 20:30. More questions about SPARQL and the Query Service (information and registration)
- Would you like to attend to a Wikidata meetup in Berlin? You can choose the next date!
- Wizards, Muggles and Wikidata: The Room of Requirements for structured knowledge by Jens Ohlig, John Cummings and Navino Evans
- Wikidata for winners (in Economics) by Martin Poulter
- Des Successions à Wikidata : vers un réseau social des philosophes antiques ? (fr) by Pierre-Carl Langlais
- Other Noteworthy Stuff
- Do you want to help watching the recent changes? Have a look at this useful collection of links by YMS
- Watch the gender gap on Wikipedia and Wikidata with this tool by Envlh
- Play Stadt, Fluss, Land with Wikidata! (by Knut)
- Deadline for submitting a presentation for Wikimania 2017 is March 30th: discuss about ideas or ask for help
- WMF is hiring a program manager, a product manager and a community liaison to work on the structured data project on Commons
- Did you know?
- Newest properties: pole position, MIMO instrument ID, openMLOL author ID, IPv4 range, Iditarod musher ID, SAHRA heritage site ID, DOCOMOMO Ibérico ID, average space complexity, best-case space complexity, worst-case space complexity, average performance, best-case performance, worst-case performance, Shoftim BeIsrael judge ID, KMDb documentary ID, Google Maps CID, Israel Football Association player ID, SSRN author ID, Wildflowers of Israel ID, World Rugby Sevens Series ID, number of subscribers, ITU/ISO/IEC object identifier
- Query examples:
- List of female bioinformaticians/computational biologists (source)
- Most gender-imbalanced occupations in US citizens (source)
- Awards received by more women than men (source)
- Transgender characters played by trangender actors/actresses (source)
- The most famous astronomical objects in Solar System according to Wikipedia sitelinks (source)
- Natural arches around the globe (source)
- Newest WikiProjects: Board Games
- Newest external tools: official first release of WikidataIntegrator
- Development
- Converted undo/restore interface to use OOUI. You can test it here (phab:T134643).
- Fixed an other rounding issue on geo coordinates (phab:T158772).
- Added thumbnail images to the Wikimedia Commons suggester (phab:T160319).
- Continued working on introducing Lexeme entity type.
- Finishing federation prototype.
- We are going to change all snak, reference, and qualifier hashes with the planned DataModel 7.0 release. If you are a tool developer, make sure you do not persist hashes, and never use them to request edits to entities. Statement IDs are safe (phab:T157965).
- Removed unnecessary CSS on ooui special pages (phabricator:T159702)
- Allowed example queries to be searched for SPARQL commands (phabricator:T154768)
- Converted Wikibase interface for undoing/restoring a revision to OOUI (phabricator:T134643)
- Converted image header user script to gadget (phabricator:T159929)
- Started writing spec for technical data model for Wiktionary support (phabricator:T150785)
- Worked on providing API for constraint check (phabricator:T102757)
You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here.
- Monthly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Comment on property proposals: all open proposals - proposals needing attention
- Suggested and open tasks!
- Contribute to a Showcase item.
- Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
- Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
- Help write the next summary!
Weekly Summary #252
[edit]- Events/Press/Blogs
- Upcoming: Wikidata meetup in Berlin on March 31st
- Upcoming: Datensummit in Berlin, April 29th. We're looking for Wikidata editors to help :)
- Upcoming: Wikidata Workshop in Rennes, March 22nd
- A successful Wikidatathon about women's history in Puri, India
- Wikidata as information source to support the Dutch elections
- Quora: Adding Locations via Wikidata
- Quora: Identifying Topics about People
- How to quickly generate word analogy datasets with Wikidata by Finn Arup Nielsen
- Other Noteworthy Stuff
- Deadline for submitting a presentation for Wikimania 2017 is March 30th: discuss about ideas or ask for help
- SWAT4LS 2016 poster Linking Wikidata to the Semantic Web
- Mix’n’match interface update
- Did you know?
- Newest properties: FFA ID, European Athletics ID, All-Athletics.com ID
- Query examples:
- Development
- Fixing a bug on the save button (phab:T159244)
- Fixing a bug with the link to the Query Service on an ember query (phab:T156013)
- More work on Federation (phab:T157442, phab:T158169)
- Fixing a bug on geoformats (phab:T158772)
- Fixing a bug on the treemap view (phab:T160320) Thanks EdouardHue for the patch!
- More groundwork on Lexemes (phab:T157791)
- Show thumbnails in commons suggester (phab:T160319)
- Fixing a bug on coordinate (phab:T153429)
- Applying WikimediaUI color palette to Wikibase (phab:T151194)
- Writing spec for technical data model for Wiktionary support (phab:T150785)
- Working on providing API for constraint check (phab:T102757)
You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here.
- Monthly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Comment on property proposals: all open proposals - proposals needing attention
- Suggested and open tasks!
- Contribute to a Showcase item.
- Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
- Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
- Help write the next summary!
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The
Save page
button now saysPublish page
orPublish changes
on the Wikimedia wikis except for Wikipedias and Wikinewses. This change will come to Wikipedias later. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately.Publish page
is when you save a new page andPublish changes
when you edit an existing page. [6] - DMOZ no longer works. Templates that use DMOZ can be redirected to archive.org or another mirror. DMOZ has been removed from the RelatedSites extension on Wikivoyage. [7]
- You can see monthly page views when you click on
Page information
in the sidebar. Developers can also get monthly page views through the API. [8] - The Linter extension is now on smaller Wikimedia wikis. It helps editors find some wikitext errors so they can be fixed. It will come to other Wikimedia wikis later. The extension will be able to find more errors later. [9]
- The MediaWiki-Vagrant portable development environment has been updated to use Debian Jessie. This means local development and testing will be more like on the majority of Wikimedia production servers. [10]
Problems
- On 15 March some interwiki links to other languages were not correctly sorted. This has been fixed. If you still see pages where the interwiki links are not sorted as they should be, they should be fixed automatically with time or you can edit the page and save it without changing anything. If this doesn't work, please report it. [11]
Changes this week
- When you edit with the visual editor, you will be able to switch the direction you write in from right-to-left to left-to-right as you are editing. This is especially important for editors who edit in languages that write from right to left. You can do this with a tool in the editing menu. You can also use the keyboard shortcut
Ctrl
+Shift
+X
on PCs orCmd
+Shift
+X
on Macs. [12] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 March. It will be on all wikis from 23 March (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 21 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:03, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #253
[edit]This is the Wikidata summary of the week before 2017-03-27.
- Events/Press/Blogs
- Upcoming: Wikidata meetup in Berlin, Friday, March 31st at 19:30 in Neukölln
- Upcoming: Wikidata IRC office hour, April 5th, 16:00 UTC, on #wikimedia-officeconnect
- A tool to estimate gender gap on Wikidata and Wikipedia (source)
- (fr) Odonymie rennaise : que nous apprend Wikidata sur les noms des voies de Rennes ? (source)
- Wikidata's excellent sample SPARQL queries by Bob DuCharme
- 10 steps to integrate CIViCdb with other public data in Wikidata
- Other Noteworthy Stuff
- RFC: Wikidata → OSM lookup table
- Participate to the definition of the Wikimedia movement's strategy
- The deadline for Wikimania talks submission has been extended to April 10th (check what we're planning around Wikidata)
- Conceptual documentation for the Lexemes and examples (feel free to help translating)
- Did you know?
- Newest properties: FI WarSampo army unit ID, KMRB film rating, FI WarSampo person ID, film script, volcano observatory, BoF person ID, Bivouac.com pass ID, Elle.fr person ID, Evidence & Conclusion Ontology ID, Parks.it ID, YerelNET district ID, The Numbers movie ID, S2A3 Biographical Database ID, Mapa place ID, Tax-exempt heritage asset ID, TV Guide show ID, original film format, Launchpad.net project ID, INEGI municipality ID, Safsal coach ID, Safsal player ID, Star Wars Databank ID, autonomous system number, Bureau of Meteorology station ID, Flora of Israel plant ID, Dictionary of Sydney ID, IPv6 routing prefix, rate of fire, Art Renewal Center ID, AnimeCons.com ID, Telegram username, BNA author ID, danskefilm silent film ID, danskefilm person ID, danskefilm film ID, CiteSeerX ID, Christie's work ID, Artnet artist ID, has active ingredient, active ingredient in, negative allosteric modulator of, positive allosteric modulator of, antisense inhibitor of, inhibitor of, disrupting agent for, blocker of, antagonist of, agonist of, activator of, PeakFinder ID, It's Rugby ID, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain Book ID
- Query examples:
- Newest database reports: film scripts
- Showcase items: Wressle Castle (Q8037764)
- Development
- Fixing a bug that prevented users to edit descriptions in some non-latin alphabets (phab:T161263)
- Worked on Special:NewLexeme which will be used to create new Lexemes for supporting lexicographical data (phabricator:T157973)
- Aligned some more colors with Wikimedia color palete (phabricator:T151194)
- Added more autocompletion for the Wikidata Query Service (phabricator:T150950)
- Started working on support for Forms of words in the UI for supporting lexicographical data (phabricator:T160520)
You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here.
- Monthly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Comment on property proposals: all open proposals - proposals needing attention
- Suggested and open tasks!
- Contribute to a Showcase item.
- Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
- Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
- Help write the next summary!
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- When you edit with the visual editor, you can see a visual diff as well as a wikitext diff when you review your changes. [13]
Problems
- Special:AllPages was disabled for two days due to some performance issues. It is back, but the filter for redirects is gone as the cause of the performance problem. It still needs to be fixed. [14][15]
Changes this week
- New filters for Recent changes will be released on Portuguese and Polish Wikipedias and MediaWikiwiki on March 28. Other wikis will get it progressively. The new filters include filtering, highlighting and, on certain wikis, user intent prediction.
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from March 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from March 29. It will be on all wikis from March 30 (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:46, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
This Month in Education: [March 2017]
[edit]Volume 6 | Issue 2 |March 2017
This monthly newsletter showcases the Wikipedia Education Program. It focuses on sharing: your ideas, stories, success and challenges. Be sure to check out the full version, and past editions. You can also volunteer to help publish the newsletter. Join the team!
In This Issue
The new issue of the newsletter is out! Thanks to everyone who submitted stories and helped with the publication. We hope you enjoy this issue of the Education Newsletter.-- Sailesh Patnaik using Saileshpat (talk) 19:07, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #254
[edit]- Events/Press/Blogs
- Upcoming: Wikidata workshop in Grenoble (France), April 4th (more info)
- Upcoming: Wikidata IRC office hour, April 5th, 16:00 UTC, on #wikimedia-officeconnect
- Upcoming: Wikidata workshop in London (UK), April 8th (more info)
- Bunhill Fields: Wikimedia, gamification and richer media content
- Biocuration 2017
- Talk: Repurpos.us: A fully open and expandable drug repurposing portal by Sebastian Burgstaller-Muehlbacher, PhD
- Poster: Best practices for data provenance in Wikidata by Gregory S. Stupp et al.
- Poster: Using Shape Expressions (ShEx) to model, validate and curate Wikidata by Andra Waagmeester et al.
- Five years ago, the development of Wikidata started
- Other Noteworthy Stuff
- Attention: Editing will be disabled during parts of April 19 and May 3, to allow a server switch
- New filters for the Recent Changes will be deployed on April 11. (more info)
- Data donation: Songkick have donated a datafile with 155K of their Songkick artist ID (P3478). ~45K are already matched, and the rest are in Mix'n'Match, awaiting your kind attention.
- Query Service: you can now create a template to explain what your query is doing
- new data type for geographical shapes will be enabled on April 24th
- Several CC0 databases are now federated with the Query Service endpoint
- Did you know?
- Newest properties: located in present-day administrative territorial entity, Human Phenotype Ontology ID, slope rating, Tab4u artist ID, Tab4u song ID, United States Public Law, Pinterest username, Mendeley person ID, RTC film rating, diaspora, Europeana Fashion Vocabulary ID, object has role, CueTracker player ID, Publons author ID, wears, JSTOR topic ID, Welsh Rugby Union player ID, United States Statutes at Large citation, VTJ-PRT building ID, Ethnologue language status, rules for classification, Bangla Movie Database ID, Flanders Arts Institute venue ID
- Query examples:
- External Tools News
- wikidata-cli
- new command: wd summary
- improved support for custom Wikibase instances
- wikidata-edit:
- new function: remove claim
- improved support for custom Wikibase instances
- wikidata-sdk:
- new function: simplify.entity
- major documentation restructuration
- wikidata-filter:
- new filter criteria: sitelinks. Example of a query that times out on the SPARQL endpoint but that is now possible with wikidata-filter: Get all entities with a Chinese and a French Wikipedia article, keeping only id, labels, and sitelinks matching those languages
- Monumental: brand new app for displaying heritage data
- wikidata-cli
- Development
- A warm welcome to our new intern, Lucas Werkmeister! You may now him for his work on queries as WikidataFacts. He will work in the team for the next months.
- Attending to Wikimedia Conference, talking with Wikidata and Wiktionary users
- Improving performance on Special:Entities pages (phab:T161631)
- Tracking the number of identifier properties on an item in page_props (phab:T114617)
- More work on Senses (phab:T161523) and Forms (phab:T160524)
- Improving the autocompletions of Query Service (phab:T150950)
You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here.
- Monthly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Comment on property proposals: all open proposals - proposals needing attention
- Suggested and open tasks!
- Contribute to a Showcase item.
- Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
- Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
- Help write the next summary!
Final Call for Candidates for AffCom - June 2021
[edit]This is an update from the Wikimedia Affiliations Committee. Translations are available.
This is a final Call for Candidates for the June 2021 Affiliations Committee election.
If you are interested in running, please post your application and follow all four steps on the nomination page by 30 June 2021 23:59 hours UTC.
If you know somebody you think may be interested, please share this with them and encourage them to consider it. If you have any questions about this process or the requirements, please email affcom@wikimedia.org before the application deadline or reach out to any of the current members.
On behalf of the AffCom elections committee,
--- FULBERT (talk) 14:37, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
[[Category:AffCom Elections June 2021|]]
Affiliations Committee (AffCom) Call for candidates - January 2022
[edit]Translations are available.
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 AffCom 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 update the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees as well as advise them on issues connected to chapters, thematic organizations and Wikimedia user groups.
The committee consists of five to fifteen members, selected at least once every year, to serve two-year terms.
Being a part of the AffCom requires communication with volunteers all over the world, negotiating skills, cultural sensitivity, and the ability to understand legal texts. We look for a mix of different skill sets in our members.
- Responsibilities
- Availability of up to 5-8 hours per month
- Participate in monthly one and two-hour voice/video meetings
- Commitment to carry out assigned tasks in a given time.
- Facilitate and support communications
- Affiliate Support and growth
- Required and Recommended Abilities, Skills, Knowledge for Affiliations Committee Members
Strong interpersonal relationship among members of the committee and also with the Wikimedia community members. Across all committee members, there are additional relevant skills as well as requirements which help to support the committee and its sustainability which include both required and relevant general skills
- Required
- Fluency in English
- Availability of up to 5 hours per week, and the time to participate in a monthly one and two-hour voice/video meetings.
- Willingness to use one's real name in committee activities (including contacts with current and potential affiliates) when appropriate.
- Strong track record of effective collaboration
- International orientation
- Relevant for all members
- Public Communications (English writing and speaking skills)
- Skills in other languages are a major plus.
- Understanding of the structure and work of affiliates and the Wikimedia Foundation.
- Documentation practices
- Interviewing experience
- Experience with, or in, an active affiliate is a major plus.
- Teamwork: Project and people management skills to coordinate and collaborate with different parties on a shared plan and see it through to completion.
- Problem-Solving: Ability to evaluate various solutions, consider multiple interests and points of view, revisit unresolved issues, seek compromise and work and communicate across languages and cultures.
Given the expectations for maintaining the course in 2022 and preparing for potential 2022 transitions as part of the Movement Strategy implementation process, it is important that we are also clear about two different skill sets critical to committee support at this time. The first skillset is oriented to understanding affiliate dynamics and organizational development patterns to successfully process affiliate applications for recognition; the other is oriented to conflict prevention and intervention support for affiliates in conflict.
- Relevant to Affiliate Recognitions
- Administration & Attention to detail
- Readiness to participate in political discussions on the role and future of affiliates, models of affiliation, and similar topics.
- Awareness of the affiliates ecosystem and models and understanding of community building, organizational development, and group dynamics
- Relevant to Conflict Prevention & Intervention
- Communication skills for active listening, clear instruction and turn-taking.
- Stress Management skills for maintaining patience and positivity
- Emotional intelligence to maintain awareness of emotions of oneself and others to practice empathy, impartiality, and mutual respect.
- Facilitation, negotiation, and mediation skills to guide diverse individuals and groups toward cooperation.
- Ability to work within a team
Do you have relevant skills and interest to support movement affiliates?
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 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 2022 member selection process will include a public review and comment period and a self-assessment survey for candidates to share their skills and their experience. This self-assessment information will help the committee to identify the skill sets relevant and supportive to our affiliate support processes. We invite you to apply for membership to the committee and join us in supporting the affiliates. The data shared in the self-assessment will only be made available to the committee and the relevant staff support. The nomination, candidate Q&A, and endorsements will still take place posted on Meta for public review at January 2022 page. Here the global community is welcome to provide comments and feedback about each candidate.
Once the nomination window closes 31 January 2022, the sitting members who are not candidates for re-election in this cycle will deliberate and then vote, taking into account all inputs from the meta page, self-assessment, advisors, Wikimedia Foundation staff and board liaisons, and committee member discussion.
A final decision will be made in late-February 2022, with new members to be notified for onboarding in February.
- How to apply
If you are interested in joining the committee, please:
Step 1. Post your application on the nomination page by 31 January 2022. Your application must include the following information:
- Your full name and Wikimedia username
- A statement describing your relevant education, experience, abilities, skills, knowledge, availability, and motivation for joining the committee.
Step 2. Complete the self-assessment survey between January 1, 2021 and January 31, 2021.
- The privacy statement that applies to the survey can be found here.
- NOTE: The survey will take 15 mins. Please do not close your browser. If you need a break, you are advised to keep the browser open. In case of losing the link, please reach out to mkaur-ctrwikimedia.org
- This survey must be completed before Steps 3 & 4, as it will provide more background as to the type of work and expectations of members of AffCom.
Step 3. Answers the following questions:
- NOTE: Questions 1-3 are required for all candidates.
- Question 4 & 5 should be answered by those interested in joining the Recognitions subcommittee.
- Question 6 & 7 should be answered by those interested in joining the Conflicts Intervention subcommittee.
- If you are willing to nominate yourself for both subcommittees, answer all questions.
- What roles have you served across any Wikimedia projects and affiliates that you think have prepared you for this role?
- AffCom members need to manage time, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, and diverse situations across the global movement. How do you envision managing these?
- Members of AffCom serve on one of two subcommittees: Recognitions OR Conflicts Intervention. Which one of these are you most interested in serving on?
- If you are interested in serving on the Recognitions subcommittee, what do you think makes a group of Wikimedians ready to function together as an affiliate?
- If you are interested in serving on the Recognitions subcommittee, what do you think are the benefits and responsibilities of functioning as formal affiliates?
- If you are interested in serving on the Conflicts Intervention subcommittee, please describe your experience working with conflicts resolution.
- If you are interested in serving on the Conflicts Intervention subcommittee, please describe how you have helped build consensus and support diversity.
Step 4. Once you have completed the above, send an email announcing your application to affcomwikimedia.org before the application deadline.
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 webinar 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!
On behalf of the committee,
--FULBERT (talk) 13:18, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
Affiliations Committee (AffCom) Call for advisors - January 2022
[edit]Translations are available.
The Affiliations Committee – the committee responsible for guiding volunteers in establishing Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups – is looking for new members!
The Affiliations Committee – the committee responsible for guiding volunteers in establishing Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and User Groups – is looking for advisors!
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.
We are looking for advisors 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 advisors 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.
AffCom advisors can engage with the committee in a variety of capacities:
- Consultant
Individuals with extensive movement experience can be engaged as Consultants for specific cases or initiatives by AffCom.
- Trainer
Individuals with specific expertise may be engaged for short-term projects for training AffCom or Affiliates. They might also lead the Capacity Building initiatives for AffCom or affiliates.
- Observer
AffCom can request specific or all advisors to act as an observer in different cases to ensure neutrality & compliance with guidelines.
- AffCom Support
Development of Policies: While advisors cannot create legally binding policies for the committee, they can help create policies that provide direction and support for the committee.
Planning and Implementing Community Relations: The advisors are long-term wikimedians & also include influential community leaders who can be effective at spreading the word about initiatives and services.
Supporting Subcommittees: The advisors can support subcommittees that have assigned tasks in specific areas.
Other Tasks: Advisors can be engaged to address a specific need. Such engagements are usually short-lived and are disbanded as soon as their specific goals are met.
- Key skills
We look for a healthy mix of different skill sets in our advisors, including the following key skills and experience:
- Strong understanding of the structure and work of Wikimedia affiliates and the Wikimedia Foundation.
- Readiness to participate in political discussions on the role and future of affiliates, models of affiliation, and similar topics.
- Availability of up to 2 hours per week, and the time to participate in a monthly two-hour voice/video meeting
- International orientation and ability to work and communicate with other languages and cultures.
- Knowledge of different legal systems and experience in community building and organizing are a plus.
- Fluency in English is required; skills in other languages are a major plus.
- Experience with or in an active Wikimedia affiliate is a major plus.
- Strong track record of effective collaboration (such as evidenced skills at facilitation, mediation, negotiation, and so forth) is a major plus.
- Willingness to use one's real name in committee activities (including contacts with current and potential affiliates) when appropriate.
- Selection process
As a reflection of our commitment to openness, transparency, and bilateral engagement with the Wikimedia community, the 2022 advisors selection process will include a public review and comment period. All applications must be posted on Meta between January 01 and January 31, 2022 at Affiliations Committee/Advisors/2022, and the community will be invited to provide comments and feedback about each candidate. At the end of the nomination period, the applications will be voted on by the members of the committee, 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 in February 2022, with new advisors expected to begin later that month.
- How to apply
If you are interested in advising the committee, please submit your candidacy on Affiliations Committee/Advisors/2022 between January 01 to January 31, 2022. 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 as an advisor.
- The advisor role you would like to serve
- Answers to the following three questions:
- How do you think affiliates work best together to partner on effective projects and initiatives?
- What do you see as the role of affiliates in the Wikimedia movement in the next three years?
- What do you feel you will bring as an advisor to the committee that makes you a uniquely qualified candidate?
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact the committee. 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!
On behalf of the committee,
--FULBERT (talk) 13:17, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
Affiliations Committee (AffCom) Member & Advisor Elections - Final Reminder for January 2022
[edit]Translations are available.
This is a friendly reminder that the Affiliations Committee – which is responsible for guiding volunteers in establishing and sustaining Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups – is seeking new members and advisors! The deadline to post your application on the Member nomination page and Advisor nomination is 31 January 2022.
If you know somebody you think may be interested, please share and encourage them to consider applying. If you have any questions please email affcom@wikimedia.org before the application deadline or reach out to any of the current members. Good luck to all the candidates!
On behalf of the committee,
FULBERT (talk) 17:32, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
Affiliations Committee News (January-March 2024)
[edit]You can find this newsletter translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language
Quarterly newsletter sharing news and events about the work of Wikimedia's Affiliations Committee.
Affiliate Recognition and Derecognition: Recognition of Cyprus, Botswana, Niger, and Telugu user groups
Affiliate Activities Report: Reports from Belgium, South African, and Ukrainian chapters
AffCom Movement Contribution: AffCom engagement with the new Affiliates Strategy and Movement Charter drafts
AffCom Administration: New AffCom members and advisors
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:55, 18 April 2024 (UTC)
Affiliations Committee News (April-June 2024)
[edit]You can find this newsletter translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language
Quarterly newsletter sharing news and events about the work of Wikimedia's Affiliations Committee.
Affiliate Recognition and Derecognition: Recognition of Madagascar, Senegal, Republic of Congo, and Namibia user groups
Affiliate Activities and Compliance Report: Activities reports around the world
AffCom Conflict Intervention: Six active conflicts, no new reports for Q4
AffCom Movement Contribution: AffCom engagement at Wikimedia Summit and ESEAP Conference
AffCom Administration: Officers elections and departing members
Upcoming AffCom Events: AffCom at Wikimania 2024