West Bengal Wikimedians/Reports/Wikimedia Summit/2019

Roles and Responsibilities working group

As the Wikimedia Summit 2019 was focused on taking forward the Movement Strategy Process further into the future, the primary activity of mine was centered around the Roles and Responsibilities working group activities in the summit. As it was made clear in the summit that the first recommendation from the working group needs to be submitted within the month of June, the working group started working on receiving feedback from affiliate representatives on scoping questions as well as working on the design for the next steps of the process towards the recommendations. A short report of the Roles and Responsibilities Working Group can be found here.

Group photo of Roles and Responsibilities Working Group
Wikidata and Wikibase meetup

I attended the Wikidata and Wikibase meetup in the Wikimedia Deutschland office. At the first phase of the meetup, the following recent and upcoming developments were discussed

  • Shape Expression (ShEx) support by which how a data type in RDF will look like can be defined.
  • Citoid integration by which it would be easier to add reference in Wikidata statements.
  • Signed statements by which it would be possible to track if a data is tampered in a bad way keeping the reference intact. By this feature, institutions providing big data can cryptographically sign statements related to them.
  • Better mobile viewing and editing on Wikidata
  • Client editing which will enable editing Wikidata from sister projects.

It was also discussed to enable third party users to install Wikibase in their websites, so that data which are out of scope for Wikidata can be modelled in their own Wikibase and effectively linked them to Wikidata.

During the second phase, the participants were split into 4 groups. I joined the small group which were discussing about Wikidata training materials. LiAnna, the chief programs officer and deputy director for the Wiki Education Foundation shared her ideas to include Wikidata as a curriculum. Jens Ohlig shared his experience to conduct Wikidata workshop in different parts of Europe, how he did it, what went well and what didn't went well. I shared my experience about the recent surge of activities happening in India around Wikidata.

User Groups Affiliates Meeting

I also joined the User Groups Affiliates Meeting where the main topic of discussion was recently declared eligibility of user groups to select 2 Affiliate-selected Board seats of the Board of Trustees of the WMF.

Connections
Group photo of Wikimedia Summit participants
  • BVershbow (WMF) - Director, Community Programs (libraries, education, cultural heritage), Wikimedia Foundation: Lots of conversation related to strategy, success and failure stories of GLAM in India and Bengali Wikisource took place between us for hours even with sleepy eyes and no coffee. He mentioned that his colleague has started working on case studies related to Wikisource and hoping that Wikisource is becoming priority gradually, which is a good news, yay!! Discussions also took place about possible partnerships with like-minded organizations, building GLAM logistics, recent developments with National Digital Library of India, plans regarding an upcoming event in December where Wikisource can be promoted, etc. Thanks Ben for your kind help to
  • Tarunno - current president of Wikimedia Bangladesh: Plans of West Bengal Wikimedians User Group and CIS-A2K to conduct series of outreach program and bring new editors in Bengali Wikisource from Bangladesh were discussed. I assured him to not worry about spending the expenditure to conduct the workshops considering the legal constraint of the chapter regarding receiving grants from WMF. Possible collaborations and more interactions between the two Bengali communities across the border were also discussed. Initatives such as Wikibarta, an online magazine run by Wikimedia Bangladesh featuring Wikimedia related activities including interviews from West Bengal community members, were highly appreciated.
  • JEissfeldt (WMF), Lead Manager, Trust and Safety, Wikimedia Foundation: A critical situation concerning the safety of Indian Wikimedia community members was discussed and help of JEissfeldt was sought and primary steps have been taken according to his guidance as well as of WMF legal. Thanks Jan!
  • TSebro (WMF), Interim General Counsel, Wikimedia Foundation: Same as above. Thanks Tony!
  • Kalliope (WMF) and CSteigenberger (WMF)- Trust and Safety, Wikimedia Foundation: I had few questions regarding the procedure of work of Trust and Safety team, which were answered by Kalliope and CSteigenberger. Thanks a lot!
  • Bryandamon from MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group was my room-mate. He shared his hobby of developing a website about wineries. I introduced basics of Wikidata and SPARQL query to him and showcased some projects and how external websites uses those data to to serve their purpose. I will be not surprised at all if he fetches winery data from Wikidata and uses it in his website in future. ;-)
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