Event talk:146

Raw transcript:

Cindy Cicalese: awesome thanks for the reminder.

Bryan Hilderbrand: share my screen.

Bryan Hilderbrand: Okay, can everybody see my slide deck.

Mehrdad Pourzaki: shortcut.

Bryan Hilderbrand: Sorry, I hopefully i'll kind of get through this kind of quick and then we can.

Bryan Hilderbrand: jump into some.

Bryan Hilderbrand: interesting discussion, but we are recording So if you don't want your video to be seen go ahead and turn off and.

Bryan Hilderbrand: You know, change your name for anonymity, if you want, and there are also is a safe space policy we're going to be abiding by so Cindy or someone else can put that in the chat.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And then you know the discussion.

Bryan Hilderbrand: Should you know continue at any time if anybody wants to pause or ask a question, and during this little presentation as well, please feel free it's intended to just spur a conversation and give a little background.

Bryan Hilderbrand: But you know what is the media key stakeholders group and otherwise known as MW steak to be a little bit brief but we're passionate advocates for the use of media wiki.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And, as a group, we are, and we support and users so that's anybody that edits Wikipedia or consumed as a content for me wiki based websites.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And system admin so people on the more technical side of running the wikis and developers that both contribute to the media wiki core.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And third party extensions that kind of increase the usability for a specifically and consultants that can help create or enable others to use media wiki and then hosting providers that provide me ricky as a platform for others.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And what is me the wiki and why is it important to us well, one of the things we think is it's because it's familiar.

Bryan Hilderbrand: You know most everybody if you ask you know who's been to Wikipedia or read an article on it, you know almost everybody will raise their hand.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And because of that REACH and familiarity along with Wikipedia sister projects, many people are very comfortable consuming content from the wiki sites so it's really easy to get knowledge out.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And and actually some are even familiar with anyone Wikipedia so you know right away, people can feel free to edit you know our internal knowledge bases, or whatever they are.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And that actually has a kind of knock on effect, I think that a lot of new editors to these third party wikis end up moving on and editing Wikipedia as well.

Bryan Hilderbrand: But we believe it's an opinionated software and we think that that means that there's a behavioral approach to knowledge right that's built into the thread or the DNA of me wiki software code.

Bryan Hilderbrand: and part of that is just based on continuous improvement and the content is easy to improve while meeting accountability.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And then you know what is consensus or consensus is pretty hard, these days, especially when humans are involved, but as a whole.

Bryan Hilderbrand: me with you can be the default source of organizational knowledge.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And consensus algorithm kind of related to opinionated software is built into the software so behind every page there's talk pages and a history that tells us about the provenance of the knowledge and who is generator or created it.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And then there's a volunteer aspect where.

Bryan Hilderbrand: Like I mentioned before you know there's volunteer developers, who have created or helped create and me ricky Code as well, and continue to do that, but within organizations and agencies and these third party sites.

Bryan Hilderbrand: Sometimes it can provide you know, a voice to the voiceless so there's oftentimes people that are too quiet or shine meetings to kind of let their knowledge out and share it with with the rest of the Community.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And this provides a really easy platform for for people that that might not otherwise be vocal to show up and demonstrate their expertise and share their knowledge.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And, but ultimately that's what it's about knowledge sharing, so we we really strongly believe that meeting weekly music is extremely elegant and eXtensible software.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And that it's used outside of the wikimedia movement does promote we can immediately vision in promoting the sharing and the sum of all knowledge, so you know of course Wikipedia and it sister sites are the obvious reason for me wiki and its creation and upkeep and use.

Bryan Hilderbrand: But.

Bryan Hilderbrand: You know there's a whole there's a whole scope or slice of knowledge that may not, and probably shouldn't be added to Wikipedia sites that.

Bryan Hilderbrand: That really benefit from the use of media wiki and so that's what I wanted to show next is a couple just examples of sites that that might highlight this.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And so there's both of these really quick s amp P and S amp P stands for single nucleotide polymorphous and that's a mouthful I had to practice that last night, and this morning.

Bryan Hilderbrand: But.

Bryan Hilderbrand: it's a it's a site that promotes open science, by sharing information about DNA.

Bryan Hilderbrand: and doing it in an open science kind of way by citing peer reviewed scientific publications.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And so you know it's becoming more popular these days to do a home DNA tests like ancestry or 23 and me, and a lot of these sites now use the information from sm pedia that's open sourced and source from scientific output to allow users to generate their own.

Bryan Hilderbrand: DNA kind of report.

Bryan Hilderbrand: Another one that you may have known about is the NASA wiki or ETA wiki and it's a it's famously known as the first wiki that's been edited from space.

Bryan Hilderbrand: The first edit was actually made to in November 2019 by Christina coach.

Bryan Hilderbrand: Wendy Koch not sure now.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And it was made directly to their private NASA wiki but following up just five days later Christina made the first contribution to Wikipedia from space.

Bryan Hilderbrand: But another thing to highlight here is just in 2013 there is an Italian astronaut Lupo Parlamento that almost drowned in his spacey due to a malfunction.

Bryan Hilderbrand: This got a lot of attention, and it was televised at the time, but the results of the incident recorded and added to their wiki to prevent any further incident and so you know, even though some of this knowledge and information can be shared globally can still benefit humanity.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And then, so you know wiki editors have proved that these living documents they continue to change over time and are crucial for the processes for NASA etc.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And then belt P, is one that I personally love and use and I educate myself before voting every time, but it covers federal state local artists and elections and public policy information with the goal of providing everybody with accurate nonpartisan.

Bryan Hilderbrand: Information for all levels of government so it'd be really nice if this was expanded to you know other countries of the world, I think, right now, it's only us but it's a phenomenal resource.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And then there's a docket and it supports the kind of make maker or tinker community with open source user guides and instructions.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And now increasingly companies have started using it, because they found it helps their internal processes with documenting knowledge and information.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And then i'll just skip through a lot of the next ones, but there's energy PDF it's you know, a store of information about you know green energy projects for developing countries.

Bryan Hilderbrand: I related leaders power pedia run by the Department of Energy and there's simple gov it's a wiki for improving people's access to public policy.

Bryan Hilderbrand: The Embassy of good science there's lots of ones out there and the science world has really latched on to the Wikipedia way so there's lots of open science like websites that that.

Bryan Hilderbrand: improve science in general and then there's lots of ones for arts and history so there's the vignette Vienna history wiki.

Bryan Hilderbrand: folder a PDF for libraries arts and literature there's one, for you know art and landscape, for the American.

Bryan Hilderbrand: history of history of early American landscape design and once for cybersecurity.

Bryan Hilderbrand: free software.

Bryan Hilderbrand: nonprofits is when the one laptop per child and then the last wiki is one that's actually run by MW steak.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And, but it shows you know a little glimpse of how Wikipedia or media wiki is used in the third party realm and so right now, if you went to the site, you see that there's 26,000 plus sites.

Bryan Hilderbrand: That have voluntarily decided that they're going to you know he allowed to be shown on this this website and so it's aggregating information about.

Bryan Hilderbrand: The extensions are used in the software that's used but importantly, you know there's a huge unknown amount of media ricky's that media wiki sites.

Bryan Hilderbrand: That aren't known and, as I just act a little fact that's kind of how I got my start.

Bryan Hilderbrand: In 2007 for just capturing your tribal knowledge at my company.

Bryan Hilderbrand: continues to be used by thousands of people, allowing for easier onboarding knowledge sharing and expertise identification.

Bryan Hilderbrand: But it's not going to show up as well, the numbers on this because it's kind of behind the firewall.

Bryan Hilderbrand: But.

Bryan Hilderbrand: That that just moving on to you know a little bit more information about the media wiki ethical there's group.

Bryan Hilderbrand: We support the larger Community through chat rooms and monthly meetings, conferences and surveys and we try to be a liaison between.

Bryan Hilderbrand: The wikimedia foundation developers and our own third party developers and we have a future goal of helping the release process for me wiki releases and and taking on other sponsored projects.

Bryan Hilderbrand: Are our general goal is to be an advocate for the use of media wiki and give back to the Community.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And just a couple little highlights one is wiki voyage, is an example of a third party with you that was ultimately pulled in under the wikimedia foundation umbrella.

Bryan Hilderbrand: And, and the butcher his last name but Danny ran check was involved with third party use of media wiki you know it was one of the co founders of semantic me wiki wiki based before now, starting with your Lambda or wiki functions.

Bryan Hilderbrand: So sorry that was a long winded little intro into who we are, but.

Bryan Hilderbrand: Hopefully it's a little background that gives us.

Bryan Hilderbrand: A platform to jump off from so that's all I got I probably talk to you next to my house, I want to pass it off to.

Bryan Hilderbrand: Anybody have any questions.

Bryan Hilderbrand: For Mariana or.

Antoine Musso: Mariana had.

Bryan Hilderbrand: A question about it.

Bryan Hilderbrand: yeah presentation.

Maryana Iskander: Well, first of all that was very impressive for seven o'clock in the morning, so.

Maryana Iskander: Thank you for.

Maryana Iskander: Sharing well i'll just briefly introduce myself and.

Maryana Iskander: Talk about a few things that maybe we can unpack in the conversation and then happy to hand off to mark or Cindy whoever's kind of facilitating us, so I think first thank you to all of you for pulling this together in a matter of days i'm really delighted we could.

Maryana Iskander: Just make it happen, because I think the email from from the group came like Friday last week so really amazing that took just a few days to get us together.

Maryana Iskander: So i'll start just by introducing myself, my name is Mariana is standard, I am the incoming CEO of the wikimedia foundation i'll be formally starting in January.

Maryana Iskander: So, have been really taking the time now to listen and try to learn about this quite complex wiki verse that i'm entering we have hosted this will be the 15th event with various communities.

Maryana Iskander: of interest, I mean again in this kind of a format have interacted with about 600 700 volunteers and so to be able, I think, to spend some time with you understanding this piece of the.

Maryana Iskander: The world is actually really quite helpful, I tried to do a little bit of homework before the call so certainly spoke to some of our engineers who.

Maryana Iskander: are involved in this work, I got a briefing that was actually incredibly useful on the different components of our tech stack and understand.

Maryana Iskander: The different layers of well, let me say I understand as a starting point the various components.

Maryana Iskander: Of the the core and the extensions and the skins, I think I understand, but would love to understand more from you what the opportunities around the wiki based are, as you see them, and you know.

Maryana Iskander: I think you can assume i'm not a subject matter expert, but very curious and we'll try to learn fast about things that maybe I don't understand completely at the moment.

Maryana Iskander: But maybe as a first question and I don't know Cindy maybe i'm going to point to you for the question is just i'm interested how the Foundation and this group interact, you seem to be an.

Maryana Iskander: Important point of intersection and just.

Maryana Iskander: interested in ways of working i've seen the history, but as it is now.

Cindy Cicalese: or.

Cindy Cicalese: So yeah I I am.

Cindy Cicalese: I tried it should be a bit of a liaison between the two, and I guess i'll start by stepping back a little bit and saying how I got involved in this, so I have been a foundation employee now for a little over four years.

Cindy Cicalese: But for 10 years prior I worked for a nonprofit that gave systems engineering advice to the US Government and one of the things that I was focusing on was.

Cindy Cicalese: knowledge management for government customers and how they manage their knowledge, so we I built, I maintain the infrastructure, I built Special Purpose media wiki extensions.

Cindy Cicalese: And then also did the front end servers soup to NUTS of developing not at knowledge management solutions.

Cindy Cicalese: For for them using media wiki and became involved in the open source community I open sourced about a dozen extensions.

Cindy Cicalese: That in became participating in this Community, so I got to know mark first.

Cindy Cicalese: You know attending there are annually enterprise media wiki and semantic media wiki conferences, in fact, the semantic media wiki conferences coming up, week after next it's online and free I hope lots of y'all hope to join us there.

Cindy Cicalese: And so mark and Marcus started this media wiki stakeholders group and I became involved in it at that point before joining the Foundation.

Cindy Cicalese: I then had an opportunity to join the Foundation and was super excited have to have that opportunity to take everything that i've done in this 10 years prior with the media wiki platform and to be able to move on the inside and actually have.

Cindy Cicalese: Even more impact and since then have kept active in these communications between the commedia Foundation and the media, with key stakeholders group I am on the board of the media wiki stakeholders group, and so we have monthly membership meetings and then.

Cindy Cicalese: weekly or bi weekly board meetings, and so I try, especially in my position on the platform engineering team at the foundation to make sure that I am a conduit of information between the two.

Cindy Cicalese: But there are a lot of opportunities, there are other folks at the foundation.

Cindy Cicalese: See Gary goes on the call virago participates also actively in the.

Cindy Cicalese: Media with the stakeholder group meetings and there's these online chat rooms and provide support to the Community so and there are other.

Cindy Cicalese: foundation employees that show up there as well, and so there's an ongoing collaboration there, I think there are definitely opportunities to increase that collaboration in the future and.

Cindy Cicalese: And there i'm sure that others that are here will raise questions about the future of supportive, the foundation for.

Cindy Cicalese: For the media wiki software as per use by third party community, I hope I think brand did a great job of you know motivating and presenting the fact.

Cindy Cicalese: That this media wiki software is the I found it transformational it was personally like I am passionate about the software and what it can do in its capability to share knowledge in a way, where this the whole the provenance the whole context is captured and.

Cindy Cicalese: And so I I see plenty of opportunities to help enrich this and and there's also.

Cindy Cicalese: flow of information, you know I think i've seen in the past that third parties using media wiki and environments different from Wikipedia exercise the code in different code paths and are able to.

Cindy Cicalese: Be detect other types of anomalous behavior and contribute back, and so there, there are plenty of different dimensions in which this.

Cindy Cicalese: can be a very fruitful collaboration.

Mark Hershberger: um.

Cindy Cicalese: I. guess that's.

Mark Hershberger: Thank you Cindy um.

Mark Hershberger: I did meet Cindy and where was it.

Mark Hershberger: It was satriani a few. Montreal.

Mark Hershberger: Montreal, and she had had some frustration, I think, with contributing some patches back to media wiki and I helped her out there it's always good when you have technical problems to meet people in person, and then you can.

Mark Hershberger: You know, I was gonna say some you know be violent to them, but you know cindy's not a violent person so that would be more me than her um anyway.

Mark Hershberger: That was enough of a digression there that.

Mark Hershberger: So the quite there's a couple of questions other people, I would, I think um.

Mark Hershberger: Other people have questions that they put in chat if you could put the questions on the ether pad that would help um.

Mark Hershberger: Mariana you mentioned something about wiki based you want to hear about wiki base dirt.

Mark Hershberger: Who was it Daniel kinzler said he could say something about that so Daniel why don't you talk about wiki base.

Daniel Kinzler: Thank you hello, yes um for those who don't know me i'm Daniel I work on the core platform team as a principal engineers these days before that I was working for wikimedia Germany for quite a while I was part of the original wiki data team that road wiki base in I think 2012 we started.

Daniel Kinzler: I haven't given this pitch in a while so bear with me.

Daniel Kinzler: wiki base as an extension for media wiki that.

Daniel Kinzler: allows the wiki to be used for collective ontological modeling so basically for describing the world in a machine readable way.

Daniel Kinzler: By making.

Daniel Kinzler: By by structuring knowledge as statements about things every page would be a subject and the page would be a collection of machine readable.

Daniel Kinzler: statements about that thing.

Daniel Kinzler: This is somewhat different from other knowledge bases, because the idea is to not directly state what is true or what's the fact, but just state.

Daniel Kinzler: Who said, what about what, so there is room for uncertainty and contradiction here while still allowing for formal reasoning over the knowledge base.

Daniel Kinzler: Okay that's my free minute pitch i'm happy to dig in more if I if you have additional questions or you let me know what specifically you're interested in.

Maryana Iskander: I asked what is probably a new person's question, since I haven't even arrived yet so bear with some of my so as at NAB that noted we've just finished a really energetic event.

Maryana Iskander: With wiki source, which is obviously built on in high school reliant on media wiki I don't I don't quite.

Maryana Iskander: know that I understand the relationship to some of the other large projects and so wiki data, maybe i'll ask that question, so I can just understand the basics of.

Maryana Iskander: How some of these building blocks are related to each other or what's built on what i'm not sure who best to answer that if the question is clear enough.

Daniel Kinzler: I can try to explain the relationship between wiki data and.

Daniel Kinzler: Wikipedia at least as it was originally intended.

Daniel Kinzler: So very generally.

Daniel Kinzler: The idea, if you look at the Wikipedia page, you often have an info box that has like basic information about the thing right, if you look at the information about the city, you may know, you may have information about the size and location current mayor and whatever and.

Daniel Kinzler: We didn't use to have, but you would have to go to if you wanted to know, for instance, how many.

Daniel Kinzler: cities in the US have a female mayor right, you would have to just look at all the pages about all the cities in the US that's not a good way to get that information right, so we wanted to have this information in a structured way that you can query and the idea was to build a.

Daniel Kinzler: Collectively maintained knowledge base that would have this information and allow you to query it and then present this information on Wikipedia rather than maintain it as text.

Maryana Iskander: In multiple languages.

Daniel Kinzler: And this has been I mean building that knowledge base has been quite successful reusing it in Wikipedia has been slow going.

Daniel Kinzler: For various reasons, partially local culture and disagreements about how how sourcing should should work in general smaller projects that don't have the.

Daniel Kinzler: enough people to do all the manual maintaining of this information as text or tend to benefit more and the larger projects.

Daniel Kinzler: Like English Wikipedia Wikipedia tend to use it less because they don't really trust it or not invented here, or they already have a system in place and didn't want to change it.

Daniel Kinzler: So that's that's the dynamic there.

Maryana Iskander: So maybe sorry done it was a follow up, I mean it's always useful to hear the explanations, again, I think I had a basic understanding of Wikipedia to wiki data, I guess, my question was wiki dated to media.

Daniel Kinzler: Well, the relationship is.

Daniel Kinzler: Similar to Wikipedia to media wiki right as.

Daniel Kinzler: A PDF is a website that uses media wiki for a certain purpose of building a nice encyclopedia wiki data.

Daniel Kinzler: Users media wiki to maintain l knowledge base or a model of the world that is machine readable and to do that, there is an additional software layer on top of media wiki which is called wiki base that allows you to write you know structured knowledge, rather than text.

Cindy Cicalese: And i'll just add that.

Cindy Cicalese: There are other extensions also that are used outside of the Wikipedia community that, how do you allow you to add this semantic knowledge data on top of the textual information on wiki pages.

Cindy Cicalese: One of the big ones that's used quite often is called semantic media wiki there's another one cargo that has some adoption.

Cindy Cicalese: semantic video key is the one that the conference in two weeks, the semantic media wiki conferences around.

Cindy Cicalese: So these are all extensions to media wiki uses software layer on top of the media wiki software that allow you to embed data in wiki pages that turn.

Cindy Cicalese: what's a resource of text into a more query double database something where you've got some structure, and you can ask questions about the information that's stored there.

Mark Hershberger: um there, there is some interesting discussion if you're missing it there's some interesting discussion in chat.

Cindy Cicalese: About.

Mark Hershberger: wiki base and wiki data.

Mark Hershberger: That it is also relevant here um.

Mark Hershberger: I.

Cindy Cicalese: guess i'll highlight one of those things that Brian did mention also that the wiki base extension that powers, the wiki data site.

Cindy Cicalese: is also increasingly being used by non wikimedia sites to to add that data component to them and, in fact, just like we have our media wiki stakeholders group.

Cindy Cicalese: Within the last year they formed a wiki based stakeholders group that meets monthly that supports the third party third party users of the wiki base extension. Good Daniel.

Daniel Kinzler: I just wanted to briefly chip in one aspect of wiki data that some some sometimes overlooked, which is.

Daniel Kinzler: That one thing that it provides to the world is a set of unique and stable identifiers, for many, many things read hundreds of millions of identifiers are.

Daniel Kinzler: On on wiki data and they can act as a glue between different data sets academic data sets data sets of.

Daniel Kinzler: Libraries and so on, right there's classification systems.

Daniel Kinzler: maintained by hands that have been used by libraries and so on, but there's nothing remotely as comprehensive as what we have with wiki data so it's like a universal knowledge glue just a set of identifiers.

Mark Hershberger: um.

Mark Hershberger: I i'd like to get the discussion on.

Mark Hershberger: On some other.

Mark Hershberger: side here so before I go to another question here um could I Eric Eric Sean you I believe wiki basis developed simple gov um can you talk a little about that, and how media wiki has helped you there.

Eric-Jan van Kakerken: yeah thanks mark.

Eric-Jan van Kakerken: Yes, so simple golf was briefly mentioned by Brian is presentation.

Eric-Jan van Kakerken: Simple gov is a website based on media wiki and somatic media wiki that that fosters that that boost communication between.

Eric-Jan van Kakerken: Groups of civilians or grew any any group at all or issues and officials within the government so there's a there's a good match between issues being raised from civilians and the.

Eric-Jan van Kakerken: Officials that work at agencies that have to deal with them, so, and this is a US project right it's a simple golf isn't isn't simply he was a government.

Eric-Jan van Kakerken: And what's especially very nice on this website on this application is that Americans love.

Eric-Jan van Kakerken: love to rank things right love to rank officials love to rank issues and all these kinds of stuff So if you would take a look at symbol golf.com.

Eric-Jan van Kakerken: This wouldn't even come close to what you know from Wikipedia So there we you know we're really taking next next level in usability and user interface, I would say.

Eric-Jan van Kakerken: So, so this isn't, this is an important project from our company called wiki based solutions.

Eric-Jan van Kakerken: And what we now are working on with it with quite a large teams to develop what we call CSP a open CSP and CSP stands for content services platform.

Eric-Jan van Kakerken: So, if you look at the landscape of of knowledge platforms.

Eric-Jan van Kakerken: Some.

Eric-Jan van Kakerken: Some companies some organizations like gartner at a point in the direction that CSP or open CSP becomes more important than the landscape of.

Eric-Jan van Kakerken: Knowledge hubs or knowledge systems and knowledge based management systems or these kinds of systems and that's why we are working hard on together with of course, a lot of other contributors in the Community to make this work.

Eric-Jan van Kakerken: But will will always try to find customers that pay us for this so.

Eric-Jan van Kakerken: We don't we did not only the Center for the Community, but we also we also try to we.

Eric-Jan van Kakerken: we succeed in finding nice customers nonprofit customers profit customers throughout the world to to buy these open CSP systems.

Eric-Jan van Kakerken: Is that necessarily your question mark.

Mark Hershberger: Yes, yes um I think that gives us a little idea from you know someone who actually uses wiki media wiki to develop outside of Wikipedia and wiki base um I wonder is Is there anyone.

Mark Hershberger: i'm looking at the first question here, it says what can wikimedia foundation due to encourage the use of media wiki in corporate education of government environments as a default knowledge management application it's talking about versus sharepoint conflict and others.

Mark Hershberger: I have an answer to that I will briefly give and I wonder if anyone else wants to say something that the wikimedia found I.

Mark Hershberger: i'm not gonna I can't speak for the wikimedia foundation if anyone wants to speak for the wikimedia foundation and say what they can do you know that that might be helpful, but what I would say is that.

Mark Hershberger: There, there is a lot that could be done to make it more visible, make it available on aws is a one click install our is your whatever stuff like that um.

Mark Hershberger: I think the answer already went to that in the in on the ether path so there's a lot that can be done to make it easier to approach.

Mark Hershberger: And i'm not sure that's that's not necessarily something that the Foundation wants to work on, although, although if the Foundation did want to commit resources to death, that would that would be a great help to making the software easier to use, and the easier to deploy um.

Mark Hershberger: So yeah I understand why they haven't done that, but I think that would be a great thing for the.

Mark Hershberger: foundation to do Is there anyone else who.

Mark Hershberger: wants to say anything about this, what they think the Foundation should do.

Mark Hershberger: No good.

Daniel Kinzler: well.

Mark Hershberger: i'm there.

Daniel Kinzler: If I can squeeze in I think clarity on that point would be very helpful both externally and internally right.

Daniel Kinzler: i've been trying to get clarity on what's a priority is for the foundation of supporting third parties of media wiki and the result, and there has never as far as I know, been an official response to that question, and I think it would be very useful to have such an official response. and

Daniel Kinzler: The practice seems to be all over the place right sometimes it's like we don't care at all, sometimes it's like hey this is really important.

Daniel Kinzler: But it's very inconsistent.

Daniel Kinzler: And we struggled with that time and time again.

Daniel Kinzler: And yeah I hope that in the future, we can have more clarity on this. year ago you had something. know.

Gergő Tisza: As a.

Gergő Tisza: couple years ago, some of us tried to.

Gergő Tisza: pitch better metric so back to the foundation which didn't didn't stick the Foundation has a troubled history of of tech executives who don't usually stay under the long so.

Gergő Tisza: yeah I I.

Gergő Tisza: I did some research at that time.

Gergő Tisza: which was on the usage of media vicki outside the foundation, the data that we use is very unreliable and this is yourself, so it so take it with a grain of salt, but.

Gergő Tisza: Just just a scale a couple of years ago there were about 2 billion wiki pages in existence in total, but sort of that was becoming the sort of death was fandom, which is a.

Gergő Tisza: fund them as a provider of small victories for pop culture subjects mostly a huge amount of smaller kids and and the third of the set of it was addressing guys so like two thirds of content generation happens outside of the wikimedia foundation.

Gergő Tisza: And and recommendations, he came up with of the Foundation could.

Gergő Tisza: Get.

Gergő Tisza: Basically.

Gergő Tisza: Besides the obvious, which already happens developing media vicki core releasing stuff like that it.

Gergő Tisza: PR aspects are, I think the one of the big pain points like.

Gergő Tisza: Because of the Foundation uses it internally and because everyone else is pretty small.

Gergő Tisza: is especially.

Gergő Tisza: Sorry, my network is quite, but I think.

Gergő Tisza: I can try to reconnect with a different aspect if it doesn't work.

Gergő Tisza: I can say it so so just come in sync companies that that media vicki is a great thing.

Gergő Tisza: Because it doesn't have the kind of effort behind it, which say chef when does that that would be one is forcing so so the hope was that the Foundation can kick start the commercial usage of media ricky and then eventually the commercial side of the ecosystem can take over.

Gergő Tisza: that's also part of the movements that he, by the way, so.

Gergő Tisza: trying to figure out how we can get to have your ecosystem, but not everything is done by the medical foundation.

Gergő Tisza: So I think one thing towards that is figuring out the PR and marketing aspect and the other thing is that there are some areas of media rickey which are.

Gergő Tisza: very underdeveloped, because the Foundation doesn't need them.

Gergő Tisza: installed.

Gergő Tisza: So, improving those kinds of things would be the others or helping someone as like the medical stakeholder group improve.

Mark Hershberger: So I guess related to this there's is there the next question on on the ether pad is there any appetite for any large projects.

Mark Hershberger: Similar to wiki data wiki functions, I guess, I slammed a you have a dream about new fun, do you have a dream about some new knowledge facet that might be added to wikimedia site.

Mark Hershberger: wikimedia foundation sites.

Mark Hershberger: The person writing they said that they would like to see something with scientific publishing and I know, Brian has talked a lot about that, before that you know, he was like he thinks media wiki is perfect for scientific publishing um.

Mark Hershberger: Do you want to talk a little about that Brian before before we open it up a little bit more.

Bryan Hilderbrand: Now I mean that scientific publishing something that's near and dear to my heart, but but i'm just interested if there's you know some some bit of knowledge or some you know new functionality that Maria thinks that might might be added or.

Bryan Hilderbrand: might be fun to talk about coming to the the Foundation.

Maryana Iskander: Sorry, Brian I just want to make sure you were talking about me before I took it.

Bryan Hilderbrand: yeah now i'm just wondering yeah.

Maryana Iskander: Okay yeah.

Maryana Iskander: I mean, let me just maybe say a few things having.

Maryana Iskander: heard and agreed with some of the comments of my future colleagues, I think that some of you have been closer to the Foundation and its staff and others, not so much, you will know, we have.

Maryana Iskander: A history of significant transition in the chief technology officer role, and I mean we definitely need to find a new path there we're also at the moment.

Maryana Iskander: going to be looking for a chief product officer, I am eager to leverage the entire network of people who know and care about this organization for their ideas and recommendations as we think together.

Maryana Iskander: At what i'm viewing as opportunity and not crisis in terms of executive leadership for the Foundation.

Maryana Iskander: That can help us I think prioritize be very clear what our priorities are in or not, I think that that's a fair ask.

Maryana Iskander: And so that it's also a chance to think about the again what's the leverage on a broader community of people who are invested in.

Maryana Iskander: Maybe adjacent maybe similar projects and priorities, so I don't have specific things to put on the table in terms of projects or what we should be doing, but I think the call out for.

Maryana Iskander: stable and excellent leadership, I think the call out for clear priorities and a roadmap that the entire movement can again see even if they don't agree.

Maryana Iskander: is fair and you know I don't think that's something i'm going to be able to do by myself, but I think that if we.

Maryana Iskander: leverage the talent, we have, if we are able to bring in what I am hopeful will be the kind of executive leadership and product and technology.

Maryana Iskander: That, I think could genuinely again I think if we get this right now with the opportunity we have in both those positions could really chart a new course for the Foundation again i'd welcome your input suggestions, ideas.

Maryana Iskander: As that, as you can imagine, it will be probably my top priority coming in in January.

Mark Hershberger: i'm.

Mark Hershberger: Richard has his hand up so Richard you have something you wanted to say.

Richard Heigl Is it just one or two to agree with what Daniel said that it's very helpful to know what the strategy is, and that was the relation.

Richard Heigl Of the Foundation to media wiki but not only to media wiki but also do all the other sister projects which I have the same situation doesn't depends, if you talk about comments or talk about.

Richard Heigl Mickey voyage so it's it's the same thing, so there is a need of clarifying the city of the relationship.

Richard Heigl between all those different projects, and if you ask me, I would love to see if the Foundation will increase this not only for me the wiki but in.

Richard Heigl All other areas, but I think, because I think there's a lot to win and a lot to contribute to to the free free month and just let me say this because there was a question about the relationship and.

Richard Heigl The mission of the stakeholders, because there were some guys were saying this is an take over often Community I left a lot when I heard that, because there is no single company which can do this today it's it's funny and it's it's funny because the stakeholders.

Richard Heigl Have the intention to bring foundation interests, interests of third party users and Community together, this is what we are.

Richard Heigl aiming for, and this is what i'm interested in and just give you a number what can be the one with that.

Richard Heigl I talked to a city of in Europe here today, which are running about 200 media weakest today.

Richard Heigl So, and this is just one I have another one here there are thousands of media vicki's out there and what we can do is to contribute and re contribute to the ecosystem today.

Richard Heigl elevate our company is the third largest contributor for with when it comes to get up commits and that's Nice because hey we are.

Richard Heigl After the Foundation and after wikimedia Germany, the third one, but this is ridiculous, for, if you look at other Open Source project that a company with.

Richard Heigl 25 people is the third largest contributor, there is so much more, but what we need, yes, in fact, this doesn't clarification, what should be done and what is the status of media wiki and publishing media wiki.

Richard Heigl Today, and in the future, I think it's very important for a web for the Web technologies that we have an open source.

Richard Heigl Alternative out there, and which is free available and where profits and nonprofits can use it and can contribute.

Richard Heigl And can we contribute also, of course, to the Wikipedia and the sister projects, I think that is what we have to talk about in future and yeah and and if you get a plan for the next let's say at least five years that will be already very, very great, thank you very much.

Mark Hershberger: Erica.

Gergő Tisza: Plus took me down if i'm talking too much, but I think another thing that the Foundation could do is submit a wiki is supposedly a Community based Open Source project, and there are some expectations on how you run a Community based open source.

Gergő Tisza: And the Foundation has slowly been distancing from those expectations, because well following values means overhead in your processes, and if you don't really share those values and.

Gergő Tisza: You don't want the overhead so in terms of like how easy it is to get involved in decision making, if you are not a staff member of the wikimedia foundation how easy is to stay informed, I think that has been a slow progression and that's something that I would really love to see.

Mark Hershberger: yeah it sounds like there's a lot of agreement with what people have been saying here that they feel like the Foundation has been I guess regressing from its Community roots.

Mark Hershberger: In in any way um we have nine minutes left it looks like um.

Mark Hershberger: So I in in interest in ending are closing down and getting close to the close on a positive note here, I want to look at the last question, which was it looks like a Mariana it looks like you were.

Mark Hershberger: well briefed in preparation for these listening tours how easy has your onboarding been is the incoming CEO of the wikimedia foundation.

Maryana Iskander: i'll answer that briefly, I did see a hand if there's a last question or comment that was up and went down.

Maryana Iskander: I mean, as you appreciate more than even I do this is quite a complex universe of communities projects 10 years history.

Maryana Iskander: And I think it would be naive to assume one could just arrive and get going so i've been very fortunate that my transition i've spent the last 10 years.

Maryana Iskander: based in Johannesburg, South Africa and have managed a very orderly exit from the organization i've been a part of which has allowed me the flexibility in time to do a lot of this before I started in January.

Maryana Iskander: We have incredible staff with the Foundation, who have supported me and trying to learn.

Maryana Iskander: Make sure that at a minimum I do try to do my homework, as I entered each of the conversations to understand the basics, what I would say is that I have.

Maryana Iskander: really been listening so the idea hasn't between these calls and say a lot, but really ask questions understand where people are coming from.

Maryana Iskander: Maybe two quick observations in terms of, as I said, i'm nearing the end, so this is event number 1500s of people I think some initial views that might not have been there.

Maryana Iskander: At the beginning, I see exponential opportunity in this world of ours, I think that there are things that are in everybody's way and they probably can't get out of everybody display unless everybody figures out together how to move them out, I do think it's.

Maryana Iskander: I do think it's perhaps normal 20 years later, that there is a lot of the past, I would say, and people's stories and and ways of thinking about what's possible and i've worked hard to try to be a good student of the past, because I don't think that you can understand the present.

Maryana Iskander: or move to the future without the past, but I also do think that our at least my approach is, what can we take from the past that informs the present in order to move to the future.

Maryana Iskander: And you know we'll see I guess together what that can be and what that can look like.

Maryana Iskander: But, again, I think some of the observations that have been raised about the Foundation are fair and certainly you're not the first ones to say a lot of these things to me in terms of the the kind of.

Maryana Iskander: reaching out to people in lots of different corners of the world i've just had the lucky fortune, it was a very happy accident, I think.

Maryana Iskander: That I kick this off at the same time that many of our regional and language communities have their conferences which this year were online and so that allowed me to actually.

Maryana Iskander: Do the whole world twice on these events on my screen and in my home that wouldn't have been possible had the timing, I think, not been exactly right so.

Maryana Iskander: A lucky lucky and happy accident that I definitely tried to take full advantage of.

Mark Hershberger: awesome um.

Mark Hershberger: Is there are there any questions that anyone else has left.

Mark Hershberger: That were not answered. Does.

Mark Hershberger: Anyone is there a raised hand that I don't see no see one.

Maryana Iskander: There, there was one, but I don't know Derek if you wanted to rephrase it yeah there's. Your head.

Derk-Jan Hartman: yeah I mean a lot of this has already been discussed so i'm not gonna go through it again, but I also one of the things that that Daniel at some point pointed out, like the Foundation needs to sort of decide to what level he wants to support for parties so that'd be get clear expectations.

Derk-Jan Hartman: And there's been like in the bus there's been say say like people have been saying, like we should not be supporting third parties, because.

Derk-Jan Hartman: The foundation works we're like it's websites and Nice to make sure that that stuff gets run and it's really.

Derk-Jan Hartman: The functionalities that some stakeholders are asking for are not important to us, for instance, they do not contribute to our mission.

Derk-Jan Hartman: But what I see a lot of the time is that party stakeholders do use many a wiki regardless, because people are familiar with, and it because it has such rich capabilities that are very hard to reproduce in anything else right.

Derk-Jan Hartman: And that inevitably creates a problem that there are users out there who are running into problems that other people within the Meta wiki development developer groups have to deal with in some way like there's there can be a lot of contributions from for parties that.

Derk-Jan Hartman: May may need some rework or might need some vision thrown in from core developers, to make sure that it goes into the right direction and so they're going to be bothered to some degree anyways or we're going to get into a situation where people get.

Derk-Jan Hartman: upset with each other, and I think that's important to recognize because that basically says that.

Derk-Jan Hartman: If we put the right amount of effort and definition into what we in what way we want to cooperate, that is better for everyone, I think, and that's something that I think we should keep in mind and.

Derk-Jan Hartman: yeah I think that would help everyone a lot.

Cindy Cicalese: So i'll just jump in and say you know agree completely.

Cindy Cicalese: I want to say when you look at what.

Cindy Cicalese: folks have been able to do with at wiki third parties, there are some amazing examples out there, you know, despite a you know, lack of concerted support this, despite the challenges of installing and maintaining a media wiki site and keeping up with software changes.

Cindy Cicalese: there's been really you know just a wealth of creative and helpful sites that have been created, based upon this software and for the betterment of humanity, and I feel that strongly and just think about how much more we could do if we did support that Community if we did.

Cindy Cicalese: You know, have a easier installation and maintenance.

Cindy Cicalese: rationale and and better support for an interaction between the communities so.

Cindy Cicalese: yeah I just think if you look at the evidence of what's been done today it's it's very powerful and we could do so much more, and this is like without any fancy marketing or you know so.

Cindy Cicalese: You know people out there, they want to share they want to become they want to participate in a community, they want to grow knowledge and.

Cindy Cicalese: We need to support them, you know I think it's a beautiful thing it really is, and I think that we have great power here and great promise for the future.

Cindy Cicalese: um.

Mark Hershberger: we're at time so i'm gonna i'm gonna just say.

Mark Hershberger: If we, the media wiki stakeholders group would love to have a lot of you show up at our week, our monthly meetings.

Mark Hershberger: and otherwise, thank you Mariana I have one more thing I just want to say Marshall McLuhan said the medium, is the message which basically says how you share information.

Mark Hershberger: Well okay i'll say what I wanted to say i'm media wiki was developed as part of the wicked pedia community and then Wikipedia community has put their.

Mark Hershberger: Their culture into the software, and that is one way that Wikipedia shares itself and its knowledge is it shares its culture, through its software and that's a really big important thing um anyway i'm gonna shut up because otherwise i'll go on and on.

Maryana Iskander: Well i'll just just say thank you, before we all jump off for organizing and bringing people together i've really enjoyed it i've learned some new things and i'm easy to get Ahold of so i'm sure we'll stay in touch and i'll start in January and see you, on the other side.

Mark Hershberger: Thanks a lot.

Bryan Hilderbrand: Thank you, thank you.

Greg Rundlett: Thank you so much.

Maryana Iskander: bye bye.

Eric-Jan van Kakerken: bye bye.

Maryana Iskander: Thank you bye bye. bye.