Board report for May-June 2011

Posted on August 4, 2011 by stu

Our new Board Secretary, Phoebe Ayers, is jumping right into her new role and both emailed and posted the first of a new series of regular board updates.  Text is pasted below:

Wikimedia Board of Trustees — activity report May-June 2011

Resolutions and votes

Controversial content

  • Controversial content resolution — this resolution was passed in May after a year-long process of discussion and research. It reaffirms the Board’s position on censorship, calls for continued community involvement in image review and asks for the creation of a personal image filter feature which would allow readers to not choose whether to view certain classes of images. Continue reading →
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Fundraising, chapters, and movement priorities

Posted on July 27, 2011 by stu

I’ve been getting ready for the board meeting and Wikimania and have been struggling with a particularly thorny issue and thought I would use a blog post to start a conversation I hope to continue in Haifa.

Many groups have discussed this issue over the past few years, including the Audit Committee (which I chair), our independent auditors KPMG, the Movement Roles group, the Chapters who have been working closely on the fundraising agreement with the Foundation and Barry Newstead’s development team, and the Board (e.g. see our resolution on the importance of transparency in use of donor funds). But progress has been difficult because this is a hard issue. Continue reading →

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Call for volunteers: 2011-2012 Audit Committee

Posted on July 7, 2011 by stu

As many of you know, the Wikimedia Foundation has an Audit Committee which represents the Board in oversight of financial and accounting issues, including planning, reporting, audits, and internal controls (see foundation wiki Audit Committee page for details).  The Committee serves for one year, from July through the late Spring when the Foundation files its annual tax return in the U.S.  This past year the committee included members from the broad community, from chapters, and from the Foundation’s Board (including me as Committee Chair). Continue reading →

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Wikipedia’s global edits

Posted on May 10, 2011 by stu

Erik Zachte is at it again, with a blog post announcing his fascinating new visualization of all the global edits to Wikipedia in a single day (Valentine’s Day, a romantic choice).  It’s an incredible tool and worth a look — I just spent 30 minutes wandering around its different views, zooming in on different regions, and drinking it in.  See below for my favorite screenshot so far, which shows the locations from which all the edits to Wikipedia were made that day.

This reminds me of one of my favorite visualizations, a video with OpenStreetMap edits over a single year.

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Call for volunteers — 2010-2011 Audit Committee

Posted on July 16, 2010 by stu

As many of you know, the Wikimedia Foundation has an Audit Committee which represents the Board in oversight of financial and accounting issues, including planning, reporting, audits, and internal controls.  The Committee typically serves for one year, roughly from July through the late Spring when the Foundation files its annual tax return in the U.S.  This past year the committee included members from the broad community, from chapters, and from the Foundation’s Board (including me as Committee Chair).

Continue reading →

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