Planeta Wikimedia

Annual Fundraiser: our best day ever

2009-12-18T01:42:54+00:00

Hey All–

First and foremost, a big thank you to all our donors, community, and supporters for all the time & money given to this Annual Fundraiser. The Wikimedia Foundation would not exist without the support and goodwill of our community.

We have some more statistics and information to share with everyone about the great success of this year’s fundraiser.

As you all can see, our progress this year has been pretty darn good. Our “Jimmy Appeal” is working quite well, making $430,000 on its first full day up, and another $345,000 on the second. This picture (from WMF techie Trevor Parscal) probably shows it best: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:FundraiserStatistics-Blog.jpg. I hope to discuss that in a future blog post.

Secondly, a long awaited link: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:ContributionTrackingStatistics. This is part of the data that we use to evaluate site notice performance. You will see the number of donations, total donations, and largest gifts for our different site notices for each day. Eventually, we would like to put out all the data for all fundraising dates; however, due to processing limitations, we can only have one week of data available.

Landing pages names Support, Support2, and Appeal2 are different types of pre-payment pages. Sometimes we test different versions to compare results. For the current Jimmy Appeal, most donors are randomly shunted to either (Appeal ==> Support2) or (Appeal2). We are comparing those results for future campaigns. In the past, we also tested 5Facts and Change the World landing pages. PP = donations made via Paypal and CC = credit card payment through our new credit card gateway. You can also sort by column by clicking on the sort arrows.

Thirdly, I think I need to admit that I’ll never have a perfect understanding of how well any particular site notice will do. I can suspect that certain ones will do well, or certain ones will fail, but I’m constantly reminded that the donation data from our users never quite aligns with what I expect.

For instance, we developed a banner based on this donor quote:

“I couldn’t ignore that banner at the top of the site anymore… I use Wikipedia far too often to ignore the need!”

To me, it’s too long and a bit awkwardly phrased. I did not think it would hold up well to sweet, simple, short phrases we’ve tried in the past. I do acknowledge that it has some humor and poignancy behind it.

The results?

2009_Notice42 did incredibly well. “Crushing all in it’s path” (this is before the onset of the Jimmy Appeal) would be more accurate, but the message is drawing in a number of donors. Running at 20% of English page views with 5 other banners in rotation, the results are glaring:

Date	% of Total	Site Notice	Payment	#Donations	Total	Average	Highest
	WP views		Type	Pay Type	Amount	Gift	Donation
12/9/09	20%	2009_Notice18	pp	625	$9,971.38	$15.95	$250.00
12/9/09			cc	443	$10,585.42	$23.89	$1,000.00

12/9/09	20%	2009_Notice22	cc	254	$9,247.23	$36.41	$250.00
12/9/09			pp	251	$4,871.59	$19.41	$114.72

12/9/09	10%	2009_Notice30_bold	cc	162	$4,607.08	$28.44	$250.00
12/9/09			pp	161	$3,224.05	$20.03	$100.00

12/9/09	20%	2009_Notice40	pp	276	$6,164.59	$22.34	$250.00
12/9/09			cc	196	$6,061.62	$30.93	$365.25

12/9/09	10%	2009_Notice41	pp	153	$2,787.11	$18.22	$100.00
12/9/09			cc	83	$3,054.72	$36.80	$250.00

12/9/09	20%	2009_Notice42	pp	992	$20,897.33	$21.07	$470.93
12/9/09			cc	875	$24,067.96	$27.51	$2,000.00

Now, why do you think it’s working so well? Is it a combination of previous messages? What other messages do you think would work well?

-Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Annual Fundraiser: Checking Banner Results

2009-12-11T23:00:19+00:00

Hey All–

We’ve been tracking a huge amount of data during this year’s fundraiser so we can better understand which messages work well and which don’t. We have two sets of banners that we set each day to run on all Wikipedia languages. Set one is the English version; set two is all non-English versions.

We have two sets because we want our banners to run globally only if they are translated…which can take some time and volunteer effort. This is why our non-English banners rotate slowly. However, with English banners, we can build a banner quickly and put it up to see how it does.

Let’s go into some detail on selecting a rotation. On December 3rd, our rotation and results (pp = Paypal, cc = credit card):

	% of Total	Site Notice	Payment	Number of	Total	Average	Highest
	WP views		Type	Donations	Amount	Gift	Donation
12/3/09	20%	2009_Notice17	pp	210	$4,933.75	$23.49	$100.00
12/3/09			cc	156	$5,894.76	$37.79	$500.00
12/3/09	20%	2009_Notice18	pp	725	$11,807.41	$16.29	$1,000.00
12/3/09			cc	454	$10,145.52	$22.35	$250.00
12/3/09	40%	2009_Notice30_bold	pp	504	$11,023.15	$21.87	$250.00
12/3/09			cc	389	$14,468.07	$37.19	$1,000.00
12/3/09	20%	2009_Notice36	pp	207	$4,650.90	$22.47	$120.00
12/3/09			cc	147	$5,890.83	$40.07	$250.00

As you can see, we had three different notices running at 20% and one banner, taken from one of the better notices from 2008’s fundraiser, 2009_Notice30_bold running at 40%. It did well throughout last week.

As you can see, 2009_Notice18 pulled in a huge number of gifts despite only showing 20% of the time. Also, it had a significantly lower average gift…probably as a result of the message itself. Despite the low average gift, people seemed to really respond to the message…and donated lots.

We are wary of banner-fatigue and saturation, where users might be tired of seeing the same message, so we changed banners around for the next day.

Looking at December 4th, 2009:

	% of Total	Site Notice	Payment	Number of	Total	Average	Highest
	WP views		Type	Donations	Amount	Gift	Donation
12/4/09	20%	2009_Notice17	pp	192	$4,280.08	$22.29	$250.00
12/4/09			cc	144	$4,778.83	$33.19	$250.00
12/4/09	20%	2009_Notice18	pp	611	$9,511.88	$15.57	$250.00
12/4/09			cc	390	$9,390.74	$24.08	$500.00
12/4/09	20%	2009_Notice30_bold	pp	266	$6,573.39	$24.71	$1,024.00
12/4/09			cc	228	$6,696.20	$29.37	$238.75
12/4/09	20%	2009_Notice36	pp	205	$4,399.75	$21.46	$166.53
12/4/09			cc	162	$5,018.47	$30.98	$250.00
12/4/09	20%	2009_Notice40	pp	320	$7,795.45	$24.36	$1,000.00
12/4/09			cc	187	$6,113.04	$32.69	$500.00

We introduced 2009_Notice40 (”Thanks, Wikipedia.”) to the mix and cut back on another. All five banners in rotation are at 20%. Two of the banners are greatly outperforming the others. We like what #40 is doing…but #18 is still rocking…1001 donations while the next closest is 507 donations (#40).

Again, we switched things up, removing #17, and adding 2009_Notice22, a similar, but opposite message to #18, which has been successful.

December 5th, 2009:

	% of Total	Site Notice	Payment	Number of	Total	Average	Highest
	WP views		Type	Donations	Amount	Gift	Donation
12/5/09	20%	2009_Notice18	pp	518	$8,207.09	$15.84	$250.00
12/5/09			cc	314	$6,866.38	$21.87	$250.00
12/5/09	20%	2009_Notice22	pp	166	$4,634.09	$27.92	$250.00
12/5/09			cc	135	$4,938.74	$36.58	$250.00
12/5/09	20%	2009_Notice30_bold	pp	272	$6,989.63	$25.70	$250.00
12/5/09			cc	197	$8,005.98	$40.64	$1,000.00
12/5/09	20%	2009_Notice36	pp	195	$4,440.20	$22.77	$191.00
12/5/09			cc	157	$7,092.57	$45.18	$1,000.00
12/5/09	20%	2009_Notice40	pp	279	$5,881.04	$21.08	$250.00
12/5/09			cc	168	$6,259.51	$37.26	$1,000.00

This day is a fascinating look at our banners and our user population. Notice the results of #18 and #22…they are similar yet contrasting messages. #18 is an quote from a small dollar donation (USD 1.95), acknowledging the sincerity of the gift. #22 is a quote from a high dollar donation (USD 200), emphasizing that a big gift is a small matter.

Compare the numbers of gifts for the two banners:

#18: 832 gifts, $15073.47 total
#22: 301 gifts, $9572.83 total

Not close right? But look at the average gift sizes:

#18: $15.84 for Paypal, $21.87 for credit card
#22: $27.92 for Paypal, $36.58 for credit card

That’s quite a difference. What was it about the message that would account for that? Is it possible that our more affluent donors were more interested in #22, while other donors were affected by #18?

Post your thoughts below.

Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving
Wikimedia Foundation

How is the usability beta doing?

2009-12-07T22:58:45+00:00

Thank you for your feedback and comments about the usability beta through the survey and via the usability project wiki. The usability beta initially started off with the new skin called Vector and the toolbar (release nickname: Acai) in early July and it was enhanced with the navigable table of contents within the editing box and dialogues for links, tables, and search & replace (release nickname: Babaco) at the end of September.

The Babaco features have to be activated through the user preferences. The most recent enhancement was to move the tool for watching and unwatching pages into the top navigation (star icon). This feature was implemented based on a high volume of related user feedback. Navigation tabs now collapse in case tabs start overlapping when the screen resolution is reduced, or where tab widths are wider because of language specific characters.

The usability beta was visited and tested by close to 380,000 users by the end of November 2009. The beta has been drawing roughly 100,000 users every month, and close to 300,000 users have kept the beta enabled as of December 1, 2009. As I briefly summarized in my blog post in September, the beta program was adopted relatively well by the beta users of English Wikipedia (83% retention rate), and in other English language projects such as the English Wikinews (95% retention rate). Spanish and Portuguese Wikipedia beta users have the second highest retention rate at 81%. German, Russian, Chinese, French and Italian Wikipedia beta users are retained in the range between 70% and 79%. Retention rate for Polish and Japanese was relatively low, with 65% and 60% respectively.

The list of the beta retention rates for the top ten most visited Wikipedia languages is summarized in this table and the list of all projects in all languages can be found here. The opt-out survey and feedback forms were available to beta users and the survey responses provided rich quantitative and qualitative data to understand how the beta is received and understand the reasons for what people like about the beta and leaving the beta.

One of the questions we sought to answer via the opt-out surveys was the impact of different browser types. The usability tech team has been pounding on Internet Explorer related problems and we thought the browser type will have significant impact on the beta adoption pattern. According to our own browser statistics, about 56% of users access Wikipedia through a version of Microsoft Internet Explorer, and about 30% of users use a version of Mozilla Firefox. The browser distribution pattern for the beta users for the ten mostly visited Wikipedia language family indicates stronger favor towards Firefox over Internet Explorer except for Japanese and Chinese Wikipedia whose browser distribution is dominated by Internet Explorer instead of Firefox. If we slice the beta retention rate by browser distribution, we see the the repeated low retention rate for Internet Explorer users. However the variance of retention rates by browser types is not significant enough to conclude that browser distribution has a substantial impact on the beta adoption.

The qualitative survey responses brought up language-specific issues. Japanese Wikipedia beta users found the font used in the new interface is too small. Chinese beta users also expressed the difficulty adjusting to the smaller font in addition to the perceived slowness of the new interface. Switching between Traditional and Simplified Chinese was not well supported. We hope issues with overlapping tabs expressed by German users have been addressed by the recently released collapsible tabs. Finally, we are aware that we often break popular user gadgets, and we appreciate that developer communities gradually embrace the usability updates so that the gadgets are compatible with the usability beta. The survey comments are available in ten languages so far, and we will continue making the surveys available for more languages.

The usability beta continues to evolve and the usability team is actively working on the next release, Citron. This release will have the new features such as collapsed templates, form interface for editing templates, and side-by-side preview. Citron is currently scheduled to be available in January. Beta feedback will be incorporated in this release to address language specific issues which were surfaced from the survey.

As the general acceptance of the usability beta is supported by a majority of beta users, we would like to start discussing the timing of making the new editing interface and the toolbar the default interface after resolving any remaining language specific issues.

This survey data was analyzed and put together by the team effort. I would like to thank Howie Fung, Product Consultant, for organizing and analyzing the survey data, Nimish Gautam, for integrating machine translation into the qualitative survey, and Roan Kattouw for tracking and normalizing the data.

Naoko Komura
Program Manager
Usability Initiative

Huffington Post readers select WMF ED as media game changer of the year

2009-12-03T06:53:10+00:00

Over the last few weeks Huffington Post readers have been asked to select a variety of ‘game changers of the year’ in categories ranging from entertainment, philanthropy, eco, and media. We were very pleased to see our own Executive Director Sue Gardner nominated as one of the Post’s ‘game changers’ of the year – and as of today we’ve learned that Sue came out on top – she is the chosen game changer of the year in media! Way to go, Sue!

How Sue is changing the game, according to the Huffington Post:

Taking the people’s online encyclopedia to the next level. Drawing on the Wikimedia Foundation’s mission of bringing free knowledge to everybody, executive director Gardner is overseeing a strategic plan to broaden access to Wikipedia’s vast storehouse of information. Her battle plan: making Wikipedia easier to use and available to more people worldwide. Expansion takes money, but it helps to be one of the Web’s five most-trafficked sites. In the depths of the recession, the foundation raised $3 million in ten days, completely covering its 2009 operating budget.

We couldn’t agree more! Thanks to the poll voters and Huffington Post readers for putting our Foundation’s leader at the top of the game. And voters, take your love for Wikipedia and make a donation to Wikipedia and the Foundation during our annual campaign!

Jay Walsh, Communications

The Annual Fundraiser: How did we do in November?

2009-12-03T06:52:37+00:00

Hey All–

This is my first post regarding 2009 Annual Fundraiser. It’s been an interesting first three weeks — we’ve had some real success, and we’ve learned what was less successful. With a huge goal this year, we were very ambitious with our plans:

1) Host our own credit card payment processing. We felt that many of our donors preferred to use credit cards directly, rather than being shuttled off-site, to donate.
2) Create a new look and feel that more closely resembled the Wiki user experience. We wanted our donors to feel comfortable giving in a familiar environment.
3) Work with outside marketing/communications support from Fenton Communications and SeaChange Strategies on our messaging, design, and strategy.
4) Allow our chapters to fundraise more successfully in their countries. For that we introduced a GEO IP location system allowing some donors to see chapter specific donation pages.
5) An aggressive matching gift program to encourage higher value gifts. Omidyar Network offered to match gifts from $100 to $10,000 this year, up to $500,000.
6) Numerous smaller improvements, like mobile giving, social media outreach, and various cool stuff to come.

Thankfully, all those systems are working well (but not perfectly). As I write this, we have had a successful run (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics) over the last two weeks. The blue lines are the 2007 totals, the green are the 2008 totals, and the orange are 2009 totals by day of the fundraiser. Hold your mouse over any bar to see the exact dates, number of donors, and donation totals for each day.

Much like last year, we continue to test many different elements to find ways to appeal to our donors. During the fundraiser, we will be (and have been) testing the following elements:

Site Notice messaging (Personal Appeal vs. Slogans vs. Emotional vs. Statistical etc.)
Site Notice text, bolding, font size, placement.
Thermometer vs. No Thermometer
Donate Button vs. No Donate Button
Landing Pages
Ask Strings
Personal Appeals
And much more.

Each test takes time and technical effort to implement and track and we will attempt to provide detail into those tests as we can.

We largely finished our testing of ask strings on our landing pages.

This landing page has an ask string starting with $35 and going up to $100.
This one has an ask string starting with $250 and going down to $35.

We tested these compared these significantly during the first few weeks. We noticed that the page with the larger ask string had about a $1 higher average donation with about the same number of transactions.

I hope to be able to share more of our findings about our other landing pages (Change the World and 5 Facts) and site notices (Wikipedia Needs You, Wikipedia Forever, & others) later in the month.

Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving
Wikimedia Foundation

Beyond Text: Report from the Multimedia Usability Meeting in Paris

2009-12-01T07:26:45+00:00

What’s Wikimedia Commons?

Expanding our collective knowledge requires not just text, but contemporary and historical photographs, paintings, maps, figures, video footage, spoken text, animations — in short, multimedia. With more than 5.5 million freely usable media files, Wikimedia Commons is a vast repository of such content. It was founded in 2004 to be the central clearinghouse and library of multimedia for all of Wikimedia’s projects, and also serves the free content and education community as a whole.

Wikimedia volunteers act as photographers, illustrators, discoverers, reviewers, catalogers, researchers and engineers. Sometimes, in order to make more material available, they serve as liaisons with cultural institutions. Most recently, for example, the Tropenmuseum in the Netherlands made 35,000 historical photographs of Indonesia available (more about this partnership).

From November 6 to 8, a group of about thirty people met in Paris to discuss how to improve the processes and technologies for contributing multimedia to Wikimedia projects. It was the first meeting of its kind, sponsored and organized by one of Wikimedia’s chapter organizations, Wikimedia France, in partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation.

In July, the Wikimedia Foundation received a $300,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to make it easier to add multimedia to our projects (see previous blog post). The purpose of our meeting in Paris was to support the kick-off of this initiative, and to bring volunteers doing multimedia-focused work together with software developers. Beyond the scope of activities within the Ford grant, we hope to see a large number of volunteer projects flourish that will enrich the Wikimedia experience beyond text.

We used the three-day meeting to both plan specific projects and activities, and to actually develop working code. Among the outcomes:

Increased awareness of our shared activities through demonstrations and discussions (list of projects we reviewed).
Experimental roll-out of functionality to track usage of media from Wikimedia Commons across other Wikimedia projects; a first implementation of wiki-editable subtitles for videos, and smaller hacks and improvements.
Draft ideas and concepts for improving the user experience on Wikimedia Commons as a whole: upload, site experience, metadata, search, third party use of Commons content, education about the project mission.
A clearer articulation of the needs that are specific to working with cultural institutions (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums – “GLAM”): case studies and success stories (a first case study was developed at the meeting), metrics, mass uploading tools, support processes, etc.

Developers developing

Summaries and notes from the respective work groups are available. If you’re interested in participating in any of these efforts, feel free to add yourself to the relevant “movers” section.

Unlike Wikimania and other larger Wikimedia gatherings, this meeting was a rare opportunity to focus on one specific problem area, and the first international gathering of this type. This approach turned out to be highly productive, and we hope to be able to use it in other problem areas in the future.

Because it’s rare for such an international and diverse group to meet, some participants met prior to the multimedia meeting to support the Wikimedia-wide strategic planning process; notes from this pre-meeting can be found on the StrategyWiki.

We want to thank all the participants of the Multimedia Usability Meeting for attending, and hope to organize similar meetings focused on other challenges and opportunities in the future. The Wikimedia Foundation wishes to thank Wikimédia France for sponsoring and organizing the meeting. Furthermore, we are grateful to Wikimedia Nederlands, Wikimedia Deutschland, and Wikimedia Polska for additional travel sponsorships. Your donations to the Wikimedia Foundation and to Wikimedia chapters help us to support future meetings like this one.

Erik Moeller, Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Delphine Ménard, Treasurer, Wikimédia France

Wikipedia’s Volunteer Story

2009-11-26T06:34:48+00:00

What’s happening to Wikipedia’s volunteer community? Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that “Volunteers Log Off as Wikipedia Ages”. The article is a comprehensive description of the challenges and opportunities facing the Wikipedia community. Among other things, it describes recent research findings regarding the number of Wikipedia editors. A quote from the article: “In the first three months of 2009, the English-language Wikipedia suffered a net loss of more than 49,000 editors, compared to a net loss of 4,900 during the same period a year earlier, according to Spanish researcher Felipe Ortega.”

Other news stories have further focused on this particular number, some going so far to predict Wikipedia’s imminent demise, others highlighting its strengths and resilience. It’s understandable that media will look for a compelling narrative. Our job is to arrive at a nuanced understanding of what’s going on. This blog post is therefore an attempt to dig deeper into the numbers and into what’s happening with Wikipedia’s volunteer community, and to describe our big picture strategy.

In a nutshell, here’s what we know:

The number of people reading Wikipedia continues to grow. In October, we had 344 million unique visitors from around the world, according to comScore Media Metrix, up 6% from September. Wikipedia is the fifth most popular web property in the world.
The number of articles in Wikipedia keeps growing. There are about 14.4 million articles in Wikipedia, with thousands of new ones added every day.
The number of people writing Wikipedia peaked about two and a half years ago, declined slightly for a brief period, and has remained stable since then. Every month, some people stop writing, and every month, they are replaced by new people.

The numbers quoted in the Wall Street Journal are the result of analysis by Spanish researcher Dr. Felipe Ortega. Dr. Ortega has conducted valuable research on a wide range of aspects of the projects hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is, however, important to understand the meaning of the cited numbers. Dr. Ortega’s findings are described in his doctoral thesis “Wikipedia: A quantitative analysis.”

First, it’s important to note that Dr. Ortega’s study of editing patterns defines as an editor anyone who has made a single edit, however experimental. This results in a total count of three million editors across all languages. In our own analytics, we choose to define editors as people who have made at least 5 edits. By our narrower definition, just under a million people can be counted as editors across all languages combined. Both numbers include both active and inactive editors. It’s not yet clear how the patterns observed in Dr. Ortega’s analysis could change if focused only on editors who have moved past initial experimentation.

Even more importantly, the findings reported by the Wall Street Journal are not a measure of the number of people participating in a given month. Rather, they come from the part of Dr. Ortega’s research that attempts to measure when individual Wikipedia volunteers start editing, and when they stop. Because it’s impossible to make a determination that a person has left and will never edit again, there are methodological challenges with determining the long term trend of joining and leaving: Dr. Ortega qualifies as the editor’s “log-off date” the last time they contributed. This is a snapshot in time and doesn’t predict whether the same person will make an edit in the future, nor does it reflect the actual number of active editors in that month.

Dr. Ortega supplements this research with data about the actual participation (number of changes, number of editors) in the different language editions of our projects. His findings regarding actual participation are generally consistent with our own, as well as those of other researchers such as Xerox PARC’s Augmented Social Cognition research group.

What do those numbers show? Studying the number of actual participants in a given month shows that Wikipedia participation as a whole has declined slightly from its peak 2.5 years ago, and has remained stable since then. (See WikiStats data for all Wikipedia languages combined.) On the English Wikipedia, the peak number of active editors (5 edits per month) was 54,510 in March 2007. After a more significant decline by about 25%, it has been stable over the last year at a level of approximately 40,000. (See WikiStats data for the English Wikipedia.) Many other Wikipedia language editions saw a rise in the number of editors in the same time period. As a result the overall number of editors on all projects combined has been stable at a high level over recent years. We’re continuing to work with Dr. Ortega to specifically better understand the long-term trend in editor retention, and whether this trend may result in a decrease of the number of editors in the future.

Let’s move on to the bigger picture.

The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization, is to ensure that every single human being can share in the sum of all knowledge. Both the health and growth of our volunteer community are key to succeeding in that endeavor. This is why the Wikimedia Foundation works with researchers from around the world to understand what is happening in its projects, supports comprehensive analytics work, and is pursuing long term initiatives to recruit new editors and support the development of its communities:

Our usability initiative is making it easier to contribute to Wikipedia and its sister projects by improving the underlying open source technology. Removing barriers is key to recruiting new editors.
Our outreach initiative is developing a comprehensive set of training and outreach materials that will help us to recruit new volunteer editors.
Our strategic planning initiative is a unique community-driven process to identify how we can maximize our impact. One of its task forces is specifically studying community health.

Wikimedia chapter organizations around the world are supporting our technology work, our outreach initiatives, and strategic partnerships; their activities are documented in the archive of chapter reports.

The Wikimedia volunteer community is also engaged in important discussions and experiments. A community-initiated project in the English Wikipedia, for example, tried to assess the typical experience of new Wikipedia editors when trying to contribute useful content. This newbie treatment study is directly informing community discussions about community processes. Similar experiments and large strategic discussions are happening in other languages.

These discussions and projects are important. Wikimedia is a unique global volunteer movement to share what we know, to make and keep it available. We need your help and your participation in these initiatives – please follow the above links and get involved.

We want more people to join us, to edit Wikipedia to make it richer and better and more comprehensive. We don’t know what the “perfect” number of Wikipedia volunteers is, but we do know that we want to significantly increase it from where it is today.

In addition to direct volunteer participation, Wikimedia depends on public support. If you share our goal of bringing free knowledge to every person on the planet, please make a donation today.

Erik Moeller, Deputy Director
Erik Zachte, Data Analyst
Wikimedia Foundation

Wikipedie nemá problémy s odchodem editorů, dále však usiluje o nové

2009-11-25T18:58:03+00:00

„Encyklopedie Wikipedie ztrácí přispěvatele!“ Tuto informaci založenou na výzkumu statistik projektu přinesla významná světová média, poprvé snad Wall Street Journal, a s velkým zájmem ji převzala i česká média. Někteří žurnalisti byli překvapeni reakcí vedení nadace Wikimedia Foundation, která přijala výsledky bez rozčilení a s komentářem, že cílem hnutí Wikimedia není vytvářet co největší sociální síť, ale vytvářet co nejrozsáhlejší informační zdroj.

Jak je to možné? Stojí Wikipedie na kraji propasti a nikoho to netrápí? Přispěvatelé odešli v tak masovém počtu, to přece musí na Wikipedii zanechat stopy! Už se nebude rozšiřovat? Blíží se její konec? A kdo nebo co za to může?

Wikipedisté ani nadace Wikimedia Foundation ale opravdu nejsou nijak významně znepokojeni těmito zjištěními. A to ne proto, že by zpráva byla smyšlená nebo výsledky výzkumu zmanipulované. Ve skutečnosti je autor studie Felipe Ortega sám jedním z wikipedistů a o jeho poznatky je mezi zainteresovanými wikipedisty i ve vedení nadace poměrně velký zájem. Právě proto ví, že jde pouze o jeden z mnoha statistických aspektů, které popisují vývoj Wikipedie.

Počet tzv. aktivních editorů, kteří přispívají na Wikipedii delší dobu a větším počtem editací, v posledních měsících a letech nijak neklesá. Počet uložených editací a vytvořených článků neustále roste. Většina statistik naznačuje, že počet dlouhodobých editorů Wikipedie je stabilní a zaručuje s dobrou jistotou další pokračování růstu Wikipedie, a to zejména u desítek menších jazykových mutací, které ještě zdaleka nevyčerpaly ani všechna populární témata.

Ortegova studie ale určitě není vhodná jen do odpadu. Zachycuje trendy ohledně jednoho aspektu a vyvolává množství otázek; přispěla tím už k intenzivní diskusi mezi wikipedisty. Zdá se například, že její čísla jsou vypovídající spíš o uživatelích, kteří udělali třeba jen jedinou editaci. Může tak být dobrým signálem o chování nových nebo krátkou dobu přispívajících uživatelů. Zájemců o přispívání přibývá, ale hodně jich také z projektů jen po několika editacích mizí. Nezdá se ale, že by to prokazovalo ztrátu dynamiky Wikipedie nebo že už není co a o čem psát.

Navzdory odchodu tisíců editorů totiž zůstává u Wikipedie stále mnoho tisíc jiných přispěvatelů, kteří si rozhodně nemyslí, že by Wikipedie „byla hotová“. I na největší, anglické Wikipedii, je naprostá většina článků v uspokojivém, ale ne dokonalém stavu. Wikipedisté vědí, že další zlepšování těchto článků není možné bez čerstvých sil nových přispěvatelů.

Právě snaha o další zpřístupnění Wikipedie zejména novým editorům je jedním z hlavních bodů úsilí hnutí Wikimedia v současnosti. Například anglická Wikipedie přišla s komunitním projektem „Adoptuj uživatele“, v němž zkušení wikipedisté pomáhají konkrétním nováčkům. Snahou o přitáhnutí nových uživatelů a přispěvatelů jde i sdružení Wikimedia Česká republika, které od začátku roku vyvíjí mnohé aktivity, při kterých propaguje Wikipedii a zejména to, že do ní může přispívat každý. I díky těmto nově získaným přispěvatelům česká Wikipedie pokračuje ve svém růstu a právě se blíží k další symbolické metě 150 tisíc článků.

First Wikimedians’ Conference in Japan

2009-11-24T01:49:01+00:00

The first ever Wikimedians’ conference is taking place in Tokyo this weekend. A group of Wikimedians, who were inspired by Wikimania 2008 in Alexandria, Egypt, gathered in Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan in the late summer of 2008. Those who traveled to Alexandria shared their excitement and inspiration gathered from Wikimania, and others listened. The excitement in the room turned into collective will power, determined to form a Wikimedians’ conference in Japan within a year from the meeting.

Wikimedia Conference Japan (WCJ) is happening this Sunday, November 22nd, at the University Tokyo’s Hongo Campus. The Center for Knowledge Structuring of the University Tokyo offered the space for this conference. Japanese National Institute of Informatics also supports this conference and invited Jay Walsh, Head of Communications, to give the keynote speech. WCJ will cover a number of topics including academic research, wiki workshops, introduction of Wikimedia projects, language support and education.

The goal was to draw 150 participants, however due to overwhelming interest, 180 have already registered with more expected on the day of the conference. As a volunteer organizer, I am sending my cheers to WCJ organizers from San Francisco. I hope this conference will create synergy among Japanese Wikimedians and who knows, Wikimania 2011 could take place in Tokyo.

Naoko Komura

UX + Usability Study Take Two!

2009-11-19T22:40:15+00:00

The Wikipedia Usability Initiative partnered with Bolt Peters and Davis Research to evaluate the changes we’ve implemented so far and inform our work moving forward. If you don’t know what changes we are talking about, check out our Beta (including a new skin, new toolbar, improved search, and more) by following these instructions.

Overall, the study confirmed that we are on the right track with our beta features – showing us room for improvements, maybe a bug or two along the way, and work yet to be done! You can view the full report (and soon the full videos) on our project wiki, but we thought we’d share with you some highlights:

Success

“It was easy, and I wouldn’t have thought it would be that easy.”

“Before there were a lot of tools, and I liked that they were all spread out in front of you, but this actually makes a lot of sense. I had to muddle my way through the older system, but this one seemed fine.”

“Websites don’t have common sense, but programmers do.”

The majority of our 8 interview subjects found and used our features and tools without instruction and with success. Special victories go to our more spacious and grouped tabbed navigation, improved search and new searchbox location, and built-in toolbar. In using these features, users were not only less intimidated, but also showed a greater ease of use and increased performance. All of the 8 users successfully found the “edit” tab with a minimum of hunting; no one resorted to Google to get to the Wikipedia article they were seeking; two of our users even expressed pleasure and delight in the process! Perhaps small victories, but a major change from our first study if you remember!

Needs Improvement

“Uh-oh, I think I may have made the wrong kind of link before. I’ll go to the preview window to see if this is a link. It would have been nice to just edit it in the preview.”

“This is different, it’s got these hot-links [the table of contents]. That’s nice.”

“Links are so easy to screw up. I’m not sure if we’ve correctly typed the link markup. Ah, there are these buttons…”

Some of our tools are definitely still rough around the edges – their flaws and failures were seen in technicolor when observing people using them. Our link dialog caused the most confusion. 6 of our 8 users initially made some errors in using it, and some received a false positive assurance when they had not actually accomplished the link behavior they were attempting. Oops! Our features need to err on the side of a user’s expectation rather than giving users access to the technical structure or wiki syntax, which they did not in this case. For example, to create a new link in our prototype, users were asked to specify whether they wanted to create an “external link” (to a website) or “internal” link (to a different article) – a differentiation that exists in wiki code, but not in the eyes of a novice user. Additionally, our toolbar buttons need to behave consistently and be grouped accordingly. Having dialogs for links and tables, and not having one for a reference was not acceptable and led to some quite confused and persistent button pushing by our subjects.

Speaking of buttons, our “Bold” and “Italics” toolbar buttons use the roman character “a” – the result of our struggled effort to be accessible to an international community while attempting to take advantage of software standards. In our effort to generalize, we became too general – even those users who correctly guessed the purpose of these buttons had to hover over or use them to confirm their assumptions. We’re going all in – look out for our efforts to make our toolbar icons language specific soon!

As if we didn’t already know it – adding media or “embedding a file” was the least understood toolbar action of our study. Most users avoided it, but when they did the sample text that it inserted provided no additional insight.

Moving Forward

“I’m completely intimidated by that [template].”

“I’m not sure what that is. I’m going to save it and then see, because this preview is too confusing.”

Our study illustrated how large an effect a small change can have and brought to our attention tweaks and enhancements that need to be made to our current features. It also showed us that we are just a slice of what is a very, very large pie. We had many deja vu moments seeing users flounder around previewing and saving, many times adopting strange techniques and multiple windows to add a simple sentence. The terms “code,” “computer lingo,” “html” often came up and highlighted the separation users feel from their content while editing. The expectation for editing a wiki to be similar to editing a blog or word processing document was still prevalent. And though our Table of Contents and built-in cheat sheet put out some small fires, when navigating an lengthy article or searching for help, we again heard “there sure is a lot of stuff to read” and “this is where I’d give up.”

As we’ve mentioned before, we cannot tackle the full scope of issues that our study participants surface. But I think I can speak for our team when I say we all felt a certain amount of satisfaction in the results of those problems we did address and it has only made us more eager to attack new problems and iterate on solutions we’ve proposed. As always, we look forward to your comments, insights, and feedback! We also appreciate your contributions during our fundraiser – it’s in part community support like this that makes the Foundation’s work possible.

Parul Vora + the Wikimedia Usability Initiative

Wikipedia: 1/10 of Webby’s most influential projects of the decade

2009-11-19T01:42:14+00:00

We’re excited to learn today that the Webby Awards have chosen Wikipedia as one of the ten most influential “Internet moments of the decade.” The timing is excellent as we’re now well-underway with our 6th annual fundraising drive. It’s a great time to think about the extraordinary efforts of thousands of volunteers to make Wikipedia and its sister projects, and to make a donation to help ensure Wikipedia forever.

Alongside the other major hallmarks of a decade of the web, including protests in Iran, the 2008 presidential election, the expansion of craigslist, and the debut of the iPhone, Wikipedia is profiled – highlighting early beginnings in 2001 with 20,000 articles and 18 languages to its status today as a top-five web property used by hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Thanks to the Webby’s for such esteemed recognition, and congrats to the other big projects and story-makers of the year. Here’s to another big decade of influencing the web and promoting free knowledge!

Jay Walsh, Head of communications

Wikimedia launches Bookshelf Project

2009-11-04T19:29:57+00:00

Maybe you’ve been editing Wikipedia for years. Or maybe you made your first edit a few days ago. Whatever your experience, you likely know at least one central fact about editing – that it can be difficult for newcomers to master the skills necessary for contributing to Wikipedia.

We want to change that, and we need your help. That’s why Wikimedia is kicking off a new project, the Bookshelf Project, developed to extend the reach and improve the quality of Wikipedia articles by increasing participation. We’re designing the Bookshelf Project to create a core set of public outreach materials designed to recruit new, high-value Wikipedia contributors. The idea is that by increasing potential contributor awareness, fostering excitement, and providing the training tools new editors need to get started, we’ll draw many more new editors than we do today. And we believe recruiting new high-value contributors to Wikipedia will necessarily increase the usefulness and quality of our encyclopedia.

Now we already know that many Wikipedia readers have never thought about editing the encyclopedia – even though there’s lots of information available about how to do so. Our goal is to reach out to those editors more actively – both to make them feel welcome and give them a great set of starting tools. We hope to seed the knowledge and enthusiasm about contributing to Wikipedia in such a way that it propagates itself.

We have lots of good reasons to believe this dream is achievable. Here’s one reason: we know anecdotally how easy it can be to inspire someone to edit and to share knowledge about editing. For example, during recent user testing for the Usability project, we interviewed a woman who uses Wikipedia daily, mainly to help her daughter with homework. She is an avid fan but had never edited. During the testing, she edited for the first time and immediately became excited about the possibilities of sharing what she knows and loves with others. She understood and was eager to implement Wikipedia’s core tenets of neutrality and verifiability. And she was eager to go home, share her excitement and recruit others to the effort.

Now, we can’t do one-on-one interviews with every possible new editor. But stories like this one suggest that we can leverage our experience with a few editors in ways that will benefit many more potential contributors. And that is the essence of the Bookshelf materials we plan to develop with your help.

We also plan to tap educational resources, since we know Wikipedia is a fact of life in many educational situations, usually as a reference tool. The Bookshelf Project will support additional educational applications by providing model lesson plans to show secondary school teachers and university professors how they can use writing, editing and collaboration in Wikipedia as core curriculum activities. In developing the Bookshelf Educational materials, we will work with subject matter experts to ensure the materials are relevant and applicable.

The Bookshelf Project will include materials to help journalists and other communications professionals do their jobs more easily, including techniques and information to help them be sure the information they use and the copy they write is accurate and up to date.

The Bookshelf materials will be developed in English and will be designed for translation, adaptation and use by volunteers, chapters and educational institutions such as schools and universities. We will use our new Outreach Wiki for the Bookshelf Project. This will be our place to give updates on the project and to get community feedback. There are lots of opportunities to help out, from acting as subject matter experts, to reviewing, and translation and localization.

We look forward to working together with our community on this initiative. If you’ve been in any way successful as a Wikipedia editor, we would value your input and feedback. There’s more than one way to contribute to Wikipedia’s success, but one major way to contribute has to be in the recruiting and training of new editors. The more we do to bring new, talented editors on board, the more comprehensive, reliable, and useful Wikipedia will be.

Marlita Kahn
Project Manager, Bookshelf Project

Because We Can builds a 3D sign globe for Wikimedia

2009-11-02T23:18:10+00:00

Our build/design friends from Because We Can over in Oakland have done some great work for us over the past two years – including some nice entry-way desks, tables, and advice on how to make our humble space look nice. They’re also an open company that blazes a trail in using open-source software and providing open-source designs. But recently they finished a particularly special, signature production job for us, our brand new Wikipedia globe sign, now hanging in our offices at 149 New Montgomery in San Francisco.

Jeffrey and Jillian have put together a nice blog post that provides a detailed run-through on how they lovingly crafted the sign using their in-shop CNC robot and meticulous hand-painting. It brings our new space together in an exciting way, and yes – if you walk right up, not only does it glow, but you can help piece together that magnificent globe.

We’ll have more news to share about the Wikipedia puzzle globe in the coming weeks, but for now we’re happy to be able to share the inside scoop on how this lovely sign came together.

Jay Walsh, Communications

English Wikinews adopted the usability beta as default

2009-10-31T00:00:22+00:00

Earlier today, English Wikinews adopted the usability beta as a default interface. The usability team is thrilled that en.wikinews community has reached the consensus to be the first adopter of the usability beta as default. We will continue enhancing the interface to simplify and make it easy to navigate and edit. Our sincere appreciation goes to the entire en.wikinews community for embracing our work. It is a great day for the usability team. We feel blessed.

Naoko Komura on behalf of the entire usability team
Program Manager, Usability Initiative

Wikimedia finds a new home!

2009-10-27T02:23:36+00:00

It’s not far from the old home, but it’s almost three times as big and can very comfortably hold the 28 (and growing!) local Wikimedia Foundation staff. Our new offices at 149 New Montgomery, just south of Market street in San Francisco have very quickly become the new home base for the small group that keeps the Wikimedia Foundation alive and kicking.

Our new offices span the entire third floor of this grand old office building on the little New Montgomery street, immediately across from the impressive (though currently completely abandoned) Pacific Bell headquarters. With exposed brick, funky (and practical!) earthquake reinforcement bracing, exposed duct work and miles of ethernet cables, and the biggest, brightest windows you could possible ask for – it now feels like Wikimedia has found a true home – and there’s still some room to expand!

We’ll spend the first few months feeling out the space, moving furniture around and figuring out the best way to arrange work groups. For now our tech and usability team sits on the west side of the space while fundraising, strategy, legal, communications, and administration rest on the east side. We also have an unusually large rack-space room in the back of the office, which for the time being will host our email and file-servers… but who knows what the future will bring.

The show-stopper in our new space is a custom-built Wikipedia globe sign by our friends at Because We Can, a custom build shop in Oakland, CA. They’re also building us some economical and high quality rolling white boards that we’ll roll around the space to dry-erase collaborate ourselves into oblivion. We’ll have more to say about this stunning sign latter on this week, including some secret features.

Right now almost all Wikimedia staff have converged on this location, including our previously displaced usability team. Several staff still work remotely, but everyone was in town last week for our recent all-staff meeting.

We hope to have some guests come by the office soon, and we’ll look forward to Wikipedians passing through who can sign our guest list and see how things work from the inside out. For more photos check out the category on the Wikimedia Commons. If you pass through, be sure to tag and add your own shots.

Jay Walsh
Communications

Google experiments with new ways to search Wikipedia

2009-10-26T23:04:51+00:00

The good folks at Google Custom Search, in cooperation with experienced Wikipedian Mathias Schindler, have developed a “Google Custom Search skin” for Wikipedia that can be activated by following these instructions. In addition to using Google to search for Wikipedia articles, it makes it possible to search linked Wikipedia articles, as well as the content of linked external websites, using a simple tabbed interface. See the post at the Google Blog for more information.

This is a community initiative, not an official new feature developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, so we make no guarantees of any kind for its operation. It does show how much bottom-up innovation is possible thanks to Wikimedia’s open APIs and scripting interfaces. We’re very happy that Google has built this alternative new way to search Wikipedia. Please provide feedback below, or to the Google Custom Search team here.

Erik Moeller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

OpenMoko Launches WikiReader

2009-10-13T21:36:23+00:00

OpenMoko (Om), a company that previously created an open source smartphone, has just launched The WikiReader, a dedicated reader device with an offline copy of the entire English Wikipedia (without images) stored on a small chip. With two AAA batteries, the WikiReader will run for several months, as it’s been optimized for low power consumption. The device has a simple LCD touchscreen and three buttons for searching, viewing random pages, and looking up previously viewed pages.

Building such a device is possible because, unlike most information on the web, Wikipedia content is freely licensed, allowing anyone to copy, modify, and re-use it for any purpose, including commercial uses. We’ve played with the device and given feedback during the development phase, but it’s not a Wikimedia Foundation product, and we make no guarantees of any kind for its operation.

The device showcases a great opportunity that free educational content creates: information from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects can be packed into self-contained devices, including purpose-built ones like the WikiReader, without requiring any kind of Internet connectivity. In other words, it is very much possible to get a copy of the most comprehensive encyclopedia in human history to every person on the planet who would benefit from it.

While this device is targeted at least initially at users in the developed world, the software running on the WikiReader is open source, so that other projects can re-use it in whole or in part. (Information about that will go up on their website soon.) We welcome it as a creative new distribution method for Wikipedia content. Congratulations to Om for launching this product; we wish them the best of luck in the marketplace.

Erik Moeller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Dva dny s Wikipedií v Havlíčkově Brodě

2009-10-10T22:53:14+00:00

Kulturní dům Ostrov v Havlíčkově Brodě a tam pořádaný 19. Podzimní knižní veletrh se staly cílem výpravy čtyř wikipedistů a členů sdružení Wikimedia Česká republika. Po jarních prezentacích na LinuxExpu a na Světu knihy to byla třetí podobná účast na velké otevřené výstavě a vůbec první mimo Prahu. Potěšitelnou zprávou bylo, že i na Vysočině je o Wikipedii a její představení velký zájem.

Bylo to opět i zásluhou pestré nabídky u prezentačního stánku. Ze společnosti Microsoft znovu dorazil i prezentační stůl Microsoft Surface, na němž společnost prezentovala nejen jeho unikátní vlastnosti, ale také unikátní obsah Wikipedie a Wikimedia Commons.

Kromě nalákaných čtenářů a možná i nových přispěvatelů získá Wikipedie i řadu nových obrázků: Přítomných osobností i města, ze země i z ptačí perspektivy. Celý tým se usilovně věnoval tomu, aby setřásl z návštěvníků obavy z editování projektů – a pevně věří, že se mu to podařilo.

Podrobnější reportáž připravíme do podzimního vydání časopisu Wikimedium.

První český oficiální časopis o Wikipedii

2009-10-04T20:34:26+00:00

Dalším plodem činnosti sdružení Wikimedia Česká republika je časopis Wikimedium, jehož první číslo vyšlo s označením Léto 2009. Na čtrnácti stránkách se dočtete o Wikipedii, dalších projektech Wikimedia, o novinkách z činnosti tzv. poboček nadace Wikimedia Foundation včetně České republiky. V prvním čísle najdete obsáhlý rozhovor s naším polským kolegou Wojciechem Pedzichem, materiály o Wikimedia Commons včetně ukázek ze soutěže Obrázek roku 2008 a také množství čerstvých zpráviček, které vás přesvědčí o tom, že celosvětové hnutí Wikimedia je stále aktivnější. Časopis si ve formátu PDF můžete zdarma stáhnout z webu sdružení na stránce www.wikimedia.cz/web/Wikimedium.

Pobočky nadace Wikimedia Foundation často vydávají podobné časopisy, většinou v podobě html, některé i v podobě připravené pro tisk. Příkladem pro naše sdružení byl stejnojmenný časopis německé Wikimedia Deutscshland, který už má za sebou tři čísla.

Pokud je nám známo, je Wikimedium prvním českým oficiálně vydávaným časopisem o Wikipedii a dalších projektech. (Není ale první úplně – můžete se podívat třeba i na časopis Wiki-Wiki, který vydávají uživatelé české Wikiverzity.)

Letní Wikimedium bylo vydáno již před několika týdny, veřejnost o něm informujeme až poté, co se členové pobočky shodli, že si už toto číslo časopisu zaslouží širší publikum. Také další čísla budou vydávána nejprve pro uzavřený okruh čtenářů a až poté se dostanou před veřejnost. Členy zmíněného uzavřeného okruhu se ale může stát každý – může vstoupit do sdružení Wikimedia Česká republika, nebo ani to není třeba a stačí přihlásit se zasláním e-mailu na adresu wikimedium(v)wikimedia.cz.

Přejeme vám příjemné počtení!

Wikimedia and OneWebDay!

2009-09-22T17:14:19+00:00

Today is One Web Day!

Founded by Susan Crawford in 2006, One Web Day aims to highlight the critical importance of protecting the values and principles of an open, participatory web. From the official site:

OneWebDay was founded by Susan Crawford, cyberlaw scholar, former Board Member of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and current technology policy advisor to President Obama. According to Ms. Crawford, “Earth Day was the model when I founded OneWebDay in 2006. In 1969, one man asked the people to do what their elected representatives would not: take the future of the environment into their own hands.” Today, a worldwide citizens’ movement has put the environment front and center politically. According to Crawford, “peoples’ lives now are as dependent on the Internet as they are on the basics like roads, energy supplies and running water. We can no longer take that for granted, and we must advocate for the Internet politically and support its vitality personally.”

This is a cause any Wikimedian can appreciate and understand – they live it every day. Millions of people access Wikipedia and the Foundation’s sister projects daily, and hundreds of thousands of small (or large) edits pile up thanks to the tireless work of editors and volunteers from all over the world. By increasing the overall amount of high quality information, in hundreds of languages, Wikimedians are working to reduce the digital divide and provide high quality, free information.

Although editing Wikipedia or its sister projects can be easy, the act itself is nothing short of brave. Millions around the world still cannot edit or access our projects. Thousands of volunteers are building language projects for their peers who are otherwise unable to author or contribute due to internet access barriers or due to political censorship. And Wikipedians are never shy to tackle the toughest and most challenging topics in human history, not to mention the task of writing neutral, high quality information about emerging news.

On this One Web Day we are especially excited to recognize our enormous volunteer force, and the millions of other brave contributors to free knowledge around the world. We thank them, and we’re looking forward to an infinite number of One Web Days in the future.

Jay Walsh
Communications

Help Shape the Future of Wikimedia

2009-09-22T06:20:58+00:00

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That’s our commitment.

Five years ago, Wikipedia celebrated its third anniversary by reaching one million total articles across 105 different languages. The Wikimedia Foundation was barely a year old and had a grand total of two employees.

Can you remember what it was like five years ago?

Would you have imagined that, five years later, English Wikipedia would have over three million articles?

Would you have imagined that Wikimedia sites would be the fifth most visited on the Internet?

Would you have imagined that there would be 10 different Wikimedia projects (including Wikipedia) in over 270 languages?

Would you have imagined that about 30 employees would be working at the Wikimedia Foundation, with 24 independent chapters all over the world?

Think about all of the amazing things we’ve accomplished in the last five years alone. Now imagine where we might be five years from now. Where should we go? How much closer can we get to our vision of the sum of all knowledge freely shareable by all people? And how can we get there?

These aren’t just interesting questions. They’re critical. If everyone who cares about Wikimedia — from the casual reader to active volunteers — could come to a shared understanding of where we want to go, we would have a much better chance of actually getting there.

Over the next year, we’ll be exploring these questions, and in true Wikimedia spirit, we are going to Be Bold in how we do it. Simply put, we are embarking on the biggest, most inclusive open strategic planning process ever.

We are asking everyone and anyone who cares about the future of Wikimedia to help collaboratively develop and write a five year strategic plan for the entire movement.

As you would expect, we have a wiki where this work will happen. But that won’t be the only way to participate. Blog your ideas. Share them on Identi.ca, Facebook, and Twitter. Host meetups, and share what happened. Or volunteer to get more deeply involved.

Because of the scope and ambition of this process, it will be a long, messy, thrilling journey. The process itself should be a fascinating story, and I and others will be telling that story regularly here on this blog.

One way or another, please participate! I’ll see many of you on the wiki!

Eugene Eric Kim,
Program Manager, Wikimedia Strategic Planning

Usability Beta Status

2009-09-14T21:07:31+00:00

Here’s a brief update on the status of our recently launched usability improvements.

Since the launch of the beta invitation to the first set of usability improvements on August 6th, about 173,000 people tried out the beta and about 134,000 people continue to use the beta as of September 12th.

Beta retention rate is interpreted roughly 77%. These numbers are aggregation of all Wikimedia projects in all available languages. If we look at the retention rate by project or by language, the number varies significantly. For example, the beta retention rate of English Wikipedia is 82% and Spanish Wikipedia is 80%, while the beta struggles to retain beta trial users of the language communities such as Japanese and Korean at the retention rate of 59% and 54% respectively.

We are reviewing the survey feedback and trying to isolate specific issues of languages whose retention rate is below average. If you are curious about how the beta opt-in and opt-out look like at daily or weekly basis, you can visit the preference statistics page. Here is the example link to English Wikpedia. Just change the language prefix or project name to get to the project of your preference.

Naoko Komura
Program Manager
Wikipedia Usability Initiative

strategy.wikimedia.org aneb Wikimedia Foundation hledá nápady

2009-09-03T11:10:04+00:00

Nadace Wikimedia Foundation spustila novou subdoménu strategy.wikimedia.org, kde se pokouší otevřít veřejnou debatu či brainstorming o tom, kde je hnutí Wikimedia dnes a kam by mělo postupovat. Veřejnost je hlavně pozvána k otevřené diskusi na téma: Co by měla Wikimedia udělat v následujících pěti letech.

Tato stránka je součástí Strategického plánování nadace pro následující fiskální rok 2009/2010. Web byl spuštěn začátkem srpna 2009 s cílem najít nové nápady. Projekt byl ohlášen na všech projektech, v září bude ještě následovat výzva od Rady WMF a spoluzakladatele Wikipedie Jimmyho Walese. Zároveň jsou informovány o průběhu jednotlivé pobočky. Výsledky pro činnost Nadace by měly být hotovy ke konci července příštího roku.

Svůj nápad, co by mohla Nadace dělat, může přidat opravdu každý. Je dokonce jedno, v jakém jazyce. Stránku pro shromaždování nápadů s informacemi v češtině najdete na tomto odkazu.

Anglická Wikipedie vyzkouší ochranný mechanismus pro články o žijících lidech

2009-08-29T20:06:13+00:00

Encyklopedie Wikipedie je otevřeným projektem, který nabízí možnost editovat obsah každému uživateli internetu, dokonce i anonymnímu a neregistrovanému. Navzdory této otevřenosti je Wikipedie stále významnějším zdrojem informací pro veřejnost, která si ale často není vědoma podstaty Wikipedie a informacím na ní bezvýhradně věří.

Přednost Wikipedie se tak může v některých případech snadno změnit v její slabinu, když se některý uživatel rozhodne nerespektovat pravidla Wikipedie a začne záměrně zkreslovat obraz o osobě nebo organizaci popsané v článku, nebo i v případě, že to dělá nevědomky, veden třeba jen svými omezenými znalostmi. Zvláště u žijících osob může případné nespravedlivě nebo dokonce nepravdivě negativní vykreslení způsobit značnou škodu.

Pravidla Wikipedie slouží obecně k tomu, aby byly takové případy minimalizovány, hlavně zásluhou pravidla Biographies of living persons, přesto pokračuje úsilí, aby se minimalizovaly i případné škody porušení tohoto pravidla. Proto se připravuje zavedení systému dohledu nad příslušnými články o žijících lidech. Zavedení editoři budou muset posoudit editaci takových článků dřív, než se objeví jako čitelné pro veřejnost. Případný pokus o záměrné očernění žijící osoby tak bude moci být zachycen dřív, než se rozšíří mezi veřejnost.

Některá česká média převzala informaci ze zahraničí poněkud zkresleně, některá dokonce ohlásila „začátek cenzury na Wikipedii“. Ve skutečnosti se základní pravidla Wikipedie nijak nemění, s pochybnými materiály bude zacházeno stejným způsobem jako dosud, editovat bude moci každý jako dosud, jen editace porušující již nyní platná pravidla zůstanou ukryty před veřejností a nebudou moci napáchat škodu. Zkušební provoz systému, který propagoval i zakladatel Wikipedie Jimbo Wales – dlouhodobý zastánce boje se škodami páchanými porušováním pravidel Wikipedie na žijících lidech – schválily v hlasování čtyři pětiny wikipedistů. Vyzkoušet bude třeba zejména to, jestli se zavedení editoři dokážou srovnat s tlakem značného provozu na anglické Wikipedii a zda jim tedy nebude trvat příliš dlouho, než bude bezvadná editace označená za prověřenou.

Prověřování a schvalování editací není na Wikipedii novinkou, z velkých Wikipedií k němu jako první přistoupila už před rokem německá Wikipedie a má s ním poměrně dobré zkušenosti. Necelý rok funguje systém na ruskojazyčné Wikipedii.

Na české Wikipedii systém zatím zaveden nebyl a v nejbližší době se ani nechystá, nicméně diskuse v zákulisí dokazují, že i komunita české Wikipedie je k ochraně žijících osob v poslední době stále citlivější. Česká verze doporučení o ochraně žijících osob byla vytvořena právě před 2,5 lety a v úvodu říká:

„Při psaní článků o žijících lidech anebo jiných článků, které obsahují materiály týkající se žijících osob, musejí editoři dbát zvýšené pozornosti k přísnému dodržování základních pravidel a doporučení české Wikipedie:
* ověřitelnost
* nezaujatý úhel pohledu
* žádný vlastní výzkum
Články musejí být co možná nejpřesnější. Dávejte maximální pozor na pečlivé uvádění zdrojů, zvláště o detailech o soukromém životě.“

Vyhlášeny výsledky voleb do správní rady nadace Wikimedia Foundation

2009-08-13T13:20:07+00:00

Aktivní komunita projektů Wikimedia je spokojená s vedením – i tak je možné číst výsledky voleb do správní rady nadace Wikimedia Foundation, které byly vyhlášeny včera. Na prvních dvou místech se totiž umístili kandidáti, kteří již členy rady byli – Němec čínského původu Ting Chen a Američanka Kat Walshová. Třetí místo obsazované v těchto volbách obsadí další Američan Samuel Klein.

Všichni tři zvolení kandidáti zdůrazňují, že je jejich zájmem reprezentování hlasu komunity a zprostředkování kontaktu mezi komunitou a nadací. Pokud se podaří kandidátům naplnit jejich plány, můžeme očekávat například další podporu především menších projektů, snahu o posílení komunikace mezi jednotlivými jazykovými komunitami stojícími za projekty a podobně.

Sdružení Wikimedia Česká republika samozřejmě vítá programový cíl Samuela Kleina, který chce delegovat větší pravomoci jednotlivým národním pobočkám.

Většina kandidátů vystupovala s cíli následovat dosavadní směřování správní rady, výraznou výjimkou je Gregory Kohs, který patří k dlouhodobým kritikům činnosti nadace a obecné úrovně projektů Wikimedia. V těchto volbách ale získal zhruba jen šestinovou podporu ve srovnání s vítězi a jeho názory tak opět nenašly významný ohlas.

Šestkrát grantové ano pro projekty Wikimedia Česká republika

2009-08-04T22:57:46+00:00

Wikimedia Česká republika úspěšně oslovila nadaci Wikimedia Foundation s některými náměty na svou další činnost. Díky tomu od nadace obdrží finanční prostředky z grantů na získávání obsahu pro Wikipedii a další projekty Wikimedia, stejně jako pro investice do zařízení, které se bude při takovém získávání využívat.

Dva projekty jsou zaměřené na získávání obrazového materiálu. Projekt Fotografie českých obcí charakterizuje už jeho název a bude fungovat především zásluhou činnosti fotografů-dobrovolníků, projekt Vědecká a odborná fotografie bude usilovat o získání kvalitního ilustračního materiálu k odborným tématům. Fotografové, kteří pracují na tvorbě obrazového obsahu pro Wikipedii, se budou moci zdokonalit v této činnosti ve fotografickém workshopu, který bude moci sdružení také uspořádat s pomocí nadace Wikimedia Foundation.

Sdružení rovněž získá kvalitní fotovybavení k zapůjčování pro tyto projekty a také skener pro digitalizaci diapozitivů, negativů a podobných transparentních předloh, které bude sloužit rovněž k dodání nového obsahu pro Wikimedia Commons.

Další prostředky získá sdružení na doplnění svého výstavního a prezentačního materiálu, který již s úspěchem používalo na výstavách LinuxExpo a Svět knihy.

Tři nové pobočky přibyly do rodiny Wikimedia

2009-08-04T22:56:54+00:00

Ukrajina, Portugalsko a Dánsko – tyto tři další země mají nově organizace, které jsou Nadací uznané jako její oficiální partneři s právem zastupovat ji na jejich území (tzv. pobočky nadace). Celkem je tak těchto organizací na celém světě již 24.

Potenciálně největší může mít Wikimedia Ukrajina, ale zatím tomu tak není, do tvorby ukrajinské Wikipedie, která obsahuje 155 tisíc článků, zasáhlo jen 37 tisíc editorů (polovina ve srovnání s českou); v ukrajinštině fungují celkem čtyři projekty Wikimedia. Dánská Wikipedie má 115 tisíc hesel. Portugalská Wikipedie ale daleko vede se 490 tisíci hesly – přičemž ale podstatnou část tvoří i editoři mimo území Portugalska – projekty se přitom člení podle jazyků, zatímco pobočky podle zemí.

Dánská pobočka má před sebou speciální úkol – chce učinit z dánské Wikipedie největší otevřenou encyklopedii v dánštině. To, co v češtině a mnoha dalších jazycích platí s velkou převahou, v dánštině není pravdou proto, že dánská Wikipedie zaostává zhruba o padesát tisíc hesel za slovníkem Den Store Danske. Encyklopedie vydávaná kodaňskou společností Gyldendal je ale projekt oproti Wikipedii otevřený jen zpola – nabízí sice možnost tvořit články, ale není tak volně dostupný k přebírání.

Z dalších regionů, kde se připravuje místní pobočka, jsou nejdál pravděpodobně v Macau, kde již byla pobočka oficiálně založena. Wikimedia Canada už absolvuje závěrečnou fázi přípravy svých stanov. Různě daleko jsou i v jiných zemích, celkem se přinejmenším diskutuje o místních Wikimediích nejméně v 35 zemích všech kontinetů včetně Španělska, Jižní Koreje nebo Číny. Z větších evropských zemí není obsazeno jen Finsko, Irsko, Bělorusko, některé oblasti Balkánu a Slovensko.

Wikipedie jako zdroj doplňkových informací v katalogu Národní knihovny

2009-08-04T22:56:17+00:00

Národní knihovna v Praze doplňuje své autoritní záznamy o odkazy na Wikipedii, kde si může uživatel jejích elektronických katalogů najít další informace. Jak to vypadá ve skutečnosti? Na stránce autoritního záznamu v bázi autorit, na kterou se dostanete například při kliknutí na jméno autora na stránce záznamu nějaké knihy a na stránce autora (např. Karla Čapka) uvidíte velké odkazy na příslušný článek na Wikipedii.

Celá operace začala linkováním v opačném směru, a to už v roce 2006, kdy se do článků na Wikipedii začaly pomocí příslušné šablony NK ČR vkládat odkazy na katalog NKP. Na jednoho z tvůrců tehdejšího projektu, wikipedistu a člena sdružení Wikimedia Česká republika Mormegila se pak obrátil zástupce knihovny a po nalezení technického řešení se podařilo databázi odkazů použít i k propojení v opačném směru. Na webu Národní knihovny toto řešení funguje už téměř měsíc.

Podle dostupných informací by Národní knihovna neměla být poslední, kde se podaří podobné propojení nastavit. Wikipedie nabízí informace v článcích o několika stovkách českých spisovatelů a o mnohokrát větším množství dalších osobností, jejichž autoritní záznamy jsou v databázích autorů obvykle uchovávány.

Vložení šablony NK ČR do článku i vyhledání potřebných informací v katalogu Národní knihovny není obtížné a může to provádět každý mírně pokročilý přispěvatel Wikipedie. O hromadné vkládání těchto šablon se starají wikipedisté ve wikiprojektu Národní knihovna.

Wikipedie patří do páté nejnavštěvovanější rodiny na internetu

2009-08-04T22:53:15+00:00

Projekty Wikimedia jsou pátou nejnavštěvovanější skupinou serverů na celém světě. Jak uvedl web TechCrunch amerického deníku Washington Post, zjistila to společnost comScore, která se zabývá auditem návštěvnosti světového internetu.

Na prvních třech místech jsou projekty společnosti Google (kromě známého vyhledávače je to například mailová služba, knihovna Google Books, v relativně nedávné době spuštěný zpravodajský portál a mnohé další), dále projekty Microsoftu a Yahoo!. Na čtvrté místo se čerstvě dostala internetová sociální síť Facebook.

Projekty Wikimedia v čele s Wikipedií navštívilo v červenci 303 milionů návštěvníků. Podle údajů ze Spojených států se na stránkách Wikipedie nebo jejích sesterských projektů v červenci alespoň zastavil každý třetí americký uživatel internetu.

Epidemie špatného zdrojování

2009-02-13T18:14:14+00:00

Encyklopedie Wikipedie v poslední době stále důrazněji dbá na to, aby byly u článků a informací v nich uváděny správné zdroje. Je to jen dobře, protože pouze touto cestou se může zvyšovat a podporovat důvěryhodnost celého projektu.

Nicméně uvádění správných zdrojů by mělo být zásadou i pro jiné profese, zejména pro novináře. Občas ale i žurnalista sklouzne na šikmou plochu.

Humorný příklad přináší Lidové noviny ve svém článku "Pozor na chřipku. Je tu epidemie" z 3. února. Autorka Silvie Králová cituje řadu autorit a podle všeho ve většině případů seriózně. Jeden zdroj ale budí úsměvné pochybnosti. Jde o tuto doplňující pasáž:

„Chřipka začíná zpravidla vysokou horečkou, okolo 38 až 40 °C,“ popisuje praktický lékař Jan Malý. Vzestup teploty podle jeho slov obvykle provází zimnice a třesavka.

Přidávají se silné bolesti hlavy. Ty mohou být spojeny i se světloplachostí a ztuhlostí šíje. Časté jsou také bolesti kloubů, svalů, očí, zad a nohou. To vše je spojeno s výraznou únavou. „Dalším možným příznakem je nevolnost, někdy zvracení, průjem nebo zácpa či nechutenství,“ říká doktor.

Během jednoho až dvou dnů nastupují již klasické příznaky z postižení dýchacích cest. Je to rýma, bolest a pálení v hrdle, suchý dráždivý kašel. Ten se postupem času zvlhčuje a mění v hlenovitý kašel. Teploty, únava, bolest hlavy a svalů obvykle vymizí během tří nebo čtyř dnů. Rýma a kašel pak trvají zhruba týden až deset dnů.

Takže pan doktor Malý, no snad ne doc. MUDr. Malý CSc. z proslulého IKEMu. Snad to bude nějaký jiný.

On totiž tenhle podivný doktor Malý doslovně cituje materiál, který se objevil na webu Zdravotní pojišťovny Ministerstva vnitra už 7. ledna. A těžko říct, jestli pochází zrovna odtud, protože se nachází také na webu Chřipka.cz. Dokonce Králová doslovně cituje i ty pasáže, které se tváří už jen jako parafráze "doktorových" výpovědí...

Až budete psát svůj příspěvek do Wikipedie, nenechte se svést k podobnému fabulování o zdrojích. Byla by to pro vás stejná ostuda.

Obrázek: Virus chřipky. Autor: Cynthia Goldsmith, převzato z Wikimedia Commons, PD.