Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2011-06-06

The Signpost
Single-page Edition
WP:POST/1
6 June 2011

 

2011-06-06

Time to vote

Phoebe Ayers has been a Wikipedian since 2003 and is a science and engineering librarian at UC Davis; she was appointed to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees in 2010.

It’s time again for the Board of Trustees elections for the Wikimedia Foundation. This year, 19 candidates are running for three open seats. If you are an active editor (with more than 300 edits before April 15, and 20 recent edits – a threshold determined by the independent elections committee) you are eligible to vote, and can do so from whichever wiki you edit most; directions are here. You can vote up until the end of June 12 (UTC), so do so soon.

But wait, let’s back up. Elections for what now? And why should you vote? What’s going on?

The Board of Trustees is the governing body for the Wikimedia Foundation. Here’s what that means: the Board is entrusted with the ultimate legal responsibility for and authority over the Foundation's $20 million annual budget, and with setting the direction for the Foundation along with the Executive Director, Sue Gardner. The Foundation provides the hosting and technical infrastructure to run almost 300 Wikipedias, plus Wiktionary, Commons, Wikiquote, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, and MediaWiki projects; the Foundation also provides press, legal, financial, and outreach support for these projects.

The Board of Trustees annual Q&A panel at last year's Wikimania. I am standing and introducing myself to the attendees, shortly after being appointed and announced.

Does the Board intervene in Wikipedia editorial decisions? No. Do we have much to do with daily decisions on the projects? Not really. It’s much more high-level than that. If you’ve seen the fundraising banners on the projects – well, the Board doesn’t design or approve the banners. We don’t specify in what manner the banners are rolled out. We don’t even hire the fundraising staff, or say that the fundraiser should start in November. All of that comes under the authority of the Executive Director. What the Board does do is give the Executive Director the authority to raise and spend this money in the first place.

The Board is also the body ultimately responsible for taking the long view of all the projects: where are we going to be in ten, twenty, a hundred years? What’s our mission, and will it stay the same? What kind of a body do we want the Wikimedia Foundation to be, and what direction do we want the Wikimedia movement to go in?

There are ten Board members, all with two year terms. Three members are directly elected by the editing community, two are appointed by the chapters, one is the “founder” seat occupied by Jimmy Wales, and the remainder are appointed by the Board itself to ensure we have a good mix of expertise. Having half of the seats community-selected (community-elected and chapter-appointed) helps to ensure that the Board always has a community perspective and orientation.

It’s important to note, however, that Board members aren’t direct representatives. I was put on the Board last summer through the chapter-appointment process, but I don’t specifically represent the chapters in Board discussions; although I'm a long-time Wikipedian, I’ve never even belonged to a chapter myself. The point of the Board is to keep all of the interests of the Wikimedia Foundation – including our mission, our projects, and our global community – central to what we do. So the people elected to the Board should possess general qualities (some of which are laid out in the Board manual), as well as an understanding of Wikimedia and the challenges we face, and relevant skills and experience that can be brought to the table. And Board members should be dedicated: this is a demanding position that requires a serious commitment of time and energy, an occasional thick skin, and belief in Wikimedia's mission.

That commitment isn't necessarily visible. For one thing, the Board is international, and the position requires a fair amount of travel: three to four in-person meetings a year, held in San Francisco and in other countries with the Chapters meeting and Wikimania. Added to that is a time commitment for online meetings, reading emails (there's a lot of reading – and writing!) and generally staying abreast of the movement. But the commitment of energy is substantial as well: the questions the Board faces aren't easy and don't have pre-determined outcomes, and figuring out the future of the most important online project of our time is not something that has been done before. Thankfully, it's a collaborative position: the Board is supported by the hard work of the staff, the Executive Director, and the many Wikimedians who hash out difficult questions of projects, languages, chapters, outreach, and development. And we rely on each other, as colleagues, to approach our task with good faith and good judgment.

“Huh,” you might be thinking to yourself. “So who’s running then, exactly?”

Of the 19 people running for those three community-elected seats, three are incumbents (Ting, SJ and Kat), who were voted in two years ago. Some candidates have held or currently hold community-elected positions in chapters; a few have helped found chapters. Several of the candidates have had long-standing involvement in Wikimedia committees and governance activities, and some long-term editors are running. In other words, this year there’s a great field of devoted Wikimedians.

“Ok, that’s all fine and good,” you might say, “but I don’t know any of them. Who should I vote for? How do I decide?”

Each candidate has a statement up here, and each has answered questions (you can still ask further questions). Here’s my advice: look for traits of outstanding leadership, good judgment, and collaboration. Has the person shown evidence of being able to thoughtfully consider issues, to listen to diverse views, and to build consensus in a small (and a large) group? Have they done cool projects? Do they have outside skills or an important perspective they can bring to the board? Do they understand the job of a Board member, and the Wikimedia Foundation? And finally, do you agree with where they think Wikimedia should go, and with what issues they consider important?

Once you decide who you want on the board, you can vote by ranking candidates; make sure you rank all of the candidates you want to see elected higher than those you don't want (1 is highest). Only around 1,500 people or so have voted so far, compared with around 3,000 to 4,000 in years past. But there’s still time to vote! You have the chance to help shape Wikimedia governance, and I encourage you to take advantage of it.

Reader comments

2011-06-06

Board resolution on controversial content; WMF Summer of Research; indigenous workshop; brief news



Reader comments

2011-06-06

60% of doctors use Wikipedia; growing in India; brief news



Reader comments

2011-06-06

Various metrics of quality and trust; leadership; nerd stereotypes



Reader comments

2011-06-06

Make your own book with Wikiproject Wikipedia-Books


WikiProject news
News in brief
Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk.
A variety of Wikipedia books printed by PediaPress
Tables and figures

This week, we turn our attention to WikiProject Wikipedia-Books. Started in March 2009 by Cerejota, the project is a collaboration to improve Wikipedia's coverage and documentation of Wikipedia-Books (from now on, simply 'books'), as well as to improve and maintain the organization of books, books-related categories, and books-related templates. [A Wikipedia Book is a collection of Wikipedia articles that can be easily saved, rendered electronically in PDF, ZIM or OpenDocument format, or ordered as a printed book.] The project has 20 participants, who currently look after over 1,700 books.

The Signpost interviews project members Headbomb, Discographer, and Sven Manguard. Headbomb is a Canadian Wikipedian who has had a Wikipedia account since 2006, but only became active from March 2008. Discographer, a European living in Canada with his wife, has been a Wikipedian since August 2009, and is a huge fan of The Supremes. Sven Manguard is an American Wikipedian who works primarily in files and back end areas of the project.

What are Wikipedia-Books and what are the most important functions of the project?

  • Headbomb: Basically, it's the rallying ground for anyone with an interest in Wikipedia books. So it serves as a notice board for issues that affect large numbers of books, or a place to ask questions when things are unclear, or guidance is wanted. We've also got watchlists that monitor everything that goes on with books, so it's very easy to track what goes on with books every day.
  • Discographer: Wikipedia-Books are a collective of books we have here on Wikipedia ranging from many different types of subjects. My personal favourite subject of course is on music. An important part of this is to include all the articles on the subject for each book, as their is a "recent changes" function key that allows one to review a grand comprehensive list of changes that may have occured affecting the subject editing matter. This is, of course why, I try and do my very best to include all the articles which are somehow connected to that subject matter.
  • Sven Manguard: I see Wikipedia-Books as a great little fundraiser for Wikipedia. A portion of the sale goes to the WMF. Mind you there are nowhere near enough sales right now to put a dent in obnoxious Jimbo banner season, but one can dream for the future. As for what the books are, they're corporeal manifestations of the millions of hours that the community has put into creating Wikipedia. They are Wikipedia content in paper form. As such they are as flawless or as flawed as the articles that go into the books. Our collection of South Park material, in book form, would beat anything that the local library has on the subject. Our collection of material, on say, "Great Women Scientists of the 20th Century", would not.

How did you get involved in the Wikipedia-Books project?

  • Headbomb: "A while ago, Heiko Hees, head of PediaPress, the developers of the collection extension and the book tool, made a post on one of the various Signpost pages saying he was looking for someone who was involved with the English Wikipedia and was able to create a link between the developers and the community. As I was heavily involved with WikiProjects, proficient with templates, and generally knowledgeable about the behind the scenes stuff, I felt this was right up my alley, so I talked to them, and now I'm part of the team. [The project] existed before I got involved, but it was rather disorganized, and lots of the technical stuff needed for WikiProjects to run smoothly were either nonexistent (like the WikiProject banner) or disorganized (categories). Books were also very new and not many people knew about them, so many were neglected, or of very poor quality. There was no standard way to link to them from mainspace articles (now, this is mostly handled through {{Wikipedia-Books}} or at the bottom of banners like {{Megadeth}}). I spent lots of time just cleaning up things, writing documentation, and setting up the backbone to make things both user-friendly and bot-friendly."
  • Discographer: "... though not "officially" a member, I like to say I really am (I'm non-commital, that's why I've not "officially" joined). Headbomb and I are the biggest contributers to this project, which I just adore, as I love things like this". "... books are what lets one generate knowledge, for it's what's in them that can be educational and useful".
  • Sven Manguard:: "To be honest, I really don't remember how I wound up working in books. If I had to guess, I'd say that Headbomb brought it to my attention over the IRC, so I looked around a bit and decided to take up PediaPress on their make a book, get a book free offer. I'll admit that I'm not as active as I could be, but I stayed around and made a half dozen books after the initial one. There are still about 90 of those free books left, by the way".


What are the biggest challenges for the project?

  • Headbomb: Cleanup. That's a very tough cookie to crack, much more than on articles. First you inherit all the cleanup of the articles in your book, then have additional cleanup to do like removing certain navigational templates from articles. Then you have additional considerations. In articles, redirects are not very important; but they can greatly affect a book. A redirect from Endgame (album) to Endgame (Megadeth album) is no big deal since you end up where you intended, but if you have a redirect like Barney Calhoun to Characters of Half-Life in Book:Half-Life series, then the book will suffer from it. Likewise, links to disambiguation pages (such as Chell instead of Chell (Portal)) are another thing to watch for. This is very hard to catch manually, but luckily we have book reports from NoomBot to help us with that.

    Incidentally, books and book reports are wonderful tools for people who are interested in a particular topic, even for people who couldn't care less about books themselves. Every book comes with a watchlist of all their articles (see Recent Changes, on the bottom-right of the banner in Book:Canada), and with a book report of what goes one with the articles of the book themselves. I picked a book about my country, but this obviously applies to all kinds of books, such as one on someone's city, their favourite band or videogame series, or on serious and not-so-serious topics.

  • Discographer: For me, it's the length of what a book is going to turn out to be. If I find an article on an individual with relatively few and light articles, and am interested in turning this into a book, then I'll go ahead and automatically do this. Easy peasy. Now, say for example, I wanted to create a book on Elvis Presley (which I really want to by the way), then that's really going to take a lot of studying, a lot of work, and a lot of time. This is the very matter that dis-interests me in creating such articles like that, as knowing they're going to be of enormous size. Doing these without getting any money for and on our own is a complete different matter.
  • Sven Manguard: Book quality. Making books is easy. Sure it takes time, and as Discographer mentions, it takes research, but making books is a heck of a lot easier than making articles. Trust me, I've done both. However, as I alluded to in the question on what Wikipedia-Books are, books are only as good as the articles that go into them, and there are a whole lot of articles that are in need of improvement. Wikipedia-Books is a worthwhile endeavor, but I think it has yet to really take off because the amount of books that contain material of a high enough quality that people would spend money for them is relatively small. What I recommend is that people find something that they are interested in. If it dosen't have a book on it, they should make that book themselves. Then they should spend some time improving the articles that go into that book. There's something special about being able to hold the fruits of your own work in your hands, to be able to look at it and be proud of it, and the ability to show it to others and say, "This is what I did". Wikipedia books affords people the opportunity turn their passions into real, printed books. It's an opportunity that should not be passed up.

What are the most pressing needs for WikiProject Wikipedia-Books? How can a new contributor help today?

  • Headbomb: Well, like all WikiProjects we can always use more people. More people equals better books, more books. But in terms of specifics, nearly all topics are under-represented in books. Start up the book creator (or create them manually), if you have ideas for 100 books, there's probably 98 of them that don't already exist, and the other 2 can always use extra attention. For those who don't feel like creating new stuff, pick random books, and check the talk page for the book reports.
  • Discographer: Getting people involved is the most pressing need for Wikipedia-Books. We definitely could use all the help we can get, because with more people, that alone will give us more ideas, and with more ideas that will help turn this into something quite possibly amazing. The more the better!
  • Sven Manguard: Think about your city, your country, your favorite band, your favorite show, your favorite genre of art, literature, or music, your favorite academic discipline, your favorite (insert your passion here), chances are that that topic is missing a book. Not many people remember Wikipedia in its infancy, when even the most basic of topics lacked coverage. Heck, most of the users here today weren't even around when most articles lacked coverage. Wikipedia-Books is one of the few spaces, possibly the only space, where coverage of even the most basic content is missing.


You can download book versions of The Signpost at Book:Wikipedia Signpost. Next week, we'll take to the skies. Until then, glide over to the archive.

Reader comments

2011-06-06

The best of the week



Reader comments

2011-06-06

Two cases pending resolution; temporary desysop; dashes/hyphens update

The Arbitration Committee opened no new cases. Two cases are currently open.

Open cases

Racepacket (Week 6)

See earlier Signpost coverage for background about this case. Drafter PhilKnight submitted a proposed decision on the target date, 21 May 2011, and 6 of the 12 active arbitrators voted on the proposals. At least 3 of these 6 arbitrators voted on the additional proposals which were submitted since then, several of which were drafted by arbitrator Risker. With the exception of a single vote, no further votes were submitted on-wiki in this case for at least 5 days of the week.

Tree shaping (Week 6)

See earlier Signpost coverage for background about this case. Since submitting proposals in the workshop last week, drafter Elen of the Roads has not yet submitted a proposed decision on-wiki for arbitrators to vote on. The target date for the proposed decision was 19 May 2011. No progress was made on-wiki in this case for at least 5 days of the week.

Motions

Hyphens and dashes update

An update has been provided, following last month's Signpost coverage of the hyphens/dashes motions: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/dash drafting is open for Community voting until 14 July 2011.

Barong

The restriction on using multiple/alternate accounts on User:Barong, formerly known as User:Jack Merridew was modified by motion. Now, User:Barong is directed to edit solely from that account. Should Barong edit from another account or log out to edit in a deliberate attempt to violate this restriction, any uninvolved administrator may block Barong for a reasonable amount of time at their discretion.

Update

The account Barong was globally locked as it was compromised, the person who edited with that account is directed to contact the Arbitration Committee with the name of the new account they wish to use in place of Barong.

Temporary desysop

In accordance with the process for expedient removal of permissions, Spencer195 (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)'s administrator permissions were removed due to concerns that the account may have been compromised and was used to abuse multiple accounts. The motion noted that the desysop is temporary until the entire Committee has had the opportunity to examine the matter and Spencer195 is given an opportunity to explain his actions.

Reader comments