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Wikibase Community User Group/Meetings/2024-06-27

< Wikibase Community User Group‎ | Meetings

Regular meeting of the Wikibase Community User Group.

Participants (Who is here?)

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  • Valerie WMDE
  • Laurence "GreenReaper" Parry (WBUG / WikiFur.com)
  • Clair "Superraptor" Kronk (lgbtDB)
  • Anton (WMDE)
  • Deniz (WMDE)
  • Jon (WMDE)
  • Jeroen
  • TuukkaH
  • Eva (WMDE)

Agenda

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  • "Super cool surprise demo" from Deniz - InstantCommons on Wikibase.Cloud
  • Selecting to ratify (or not, or abstain) the Wikimedia Movement Charter by July 9, with optional comment:
    • As part of a strategy process since 2017, way decisions are being made is not participative, communities not being consulted, engaged with foundation for movement strategy in 2020, one recommendation equity in decision-making.
    • Not just English and German etc, led to MCDC, pandemic, it was complicated, stakeholders had trouble with process, many drafts and feedback. Interested affiliates worked on it for a while:
      • WMF board liaisons dislike it (GR: uncertain costs and unclear how Global Council will achieve better-decision-making objectives; lack of support for technical work; focuses on organised bodies; not clear that the editing community shares values and their priority -- what was agreed has changed, funding is less)
        • For technical decisions, PTAC proposed as a more focused solution - says applications open July 1? (Seemingly this is still just a proposal.)
      • WMDE by contrast urges the board not to stand in the way of community ratification (calls it "not perfect" but "a good first step" to equitable decisions on strategy/affiliation/funding - issue with how the foundation is set up and their mission has to be first and equity can't come first, and 12 can't represent, so Global Council - 25 people "by the movement" (contributors or affiliates?) - strategy should come from the movement, have a say on money, technology advancements, there would be a committee for tech advancements to advise on priority)
      • Joined for subsequent discussion by Eva who attended the summit for WMDE.
      • 25 seats initially, 12 from communities? some from affiliates, some appointed by global council - no group should be over-represented but then how should that be determined? Trying to avoid Global North bias.
        • How will it be avoided that big groups dominate? Could not have another mandate, for example. Also, a relatively large board means smaller groups should get more representation.
      • Why not increase the board? Legal duty of the board: since it is a US charity foundation, they need to do things to follow US law, one of those is to make sure the board isn't coerced into things by another group, so the board needs to keep the final say. This means it cannot represent the interests of the movement directly, only the interests of the foundation
      • Intentionally does not say that a legal entity exist but maybe sign a memorandum of association, there is still a legal review going on of the requirements and e.g. disentangling funding.
      • Lot of value in the strategy process, lots of expertise, Movement Strategy had ten principles so why do we now have values? Many didn't understand the need, never an official vote on Strategy, value of Charter is that it will have been agreed on by everyone (or at least 55% of everyone). MSDC looked at the principles and other values coming from bodies and integrated into the next round.
      • More discussion on Movement Charter talk page.
      • What matters for our vote is whether we as a group feel it is right to adopt this charter; other affiliates such as WMDE get their own vote; WMF board will be voting on it separately
      • Affiliate votes may be combined with a "constructive and actionable" public comment, up to 1000 words
      • Resolution: GreenReaper will create a meta page similar to the 2021 contact election to gather thoughts before casting the group's vote
  • Wikibase Suite let's chat: Update/Migration
    • Jon: we noticed a lot of folx aren't on the latest version of MediaWiki
    • Just about to release new WBS deploy; substantial changes on how to configure at first setup, and new versioning scheme to make it clearer what to expect in case of breaking changes and to allow people to do automatic updates, also huge overhaul in documentation
    • But many people are self install and/or self hosting users using significantly older versions of the software, mostly v 1.35 and 1.39, LTS (long term support) versions
    • WMDE wants to get people updated to use the new features; what support do you need from us? Office hours, workshop, documentation?
    • Challenges:
      • People may not know how to update the software themselves, and doing so may require them to pay an external consultant with funds they don't have - GR suggested actually getting someone from WMDE to help out directly might be ideal, if a long shot.
      • Issue adding in extensions: need to find the right branch for the version of mediawiki ... "hey when you're checking out, check out from the branch w the right version"
      • Discussion about Cloud being helpful outside of grant funding cycles, which aren't great for updating, only creating and publishing about it once
        • Moving to a different institution can mean everything gets torn down
        • Also, Blazegraph isn't considered secure by Yale(?) so was removed
      • "Only $10k/year for hosting" from a commercial provider
      • Use case 1: start with a self-hosted wikibase during a funded project, then move to Cloud when the project ends.
      • Use case 2: make a copy of your Cloud wikibase for the duration of a project where you develop things.

Chat notes

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Anon: Hey Mennolt 😃 
Anon: we're currently talking about a ratification process 
Anon: hello 
16:21
Anon: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/WBUG_2024_06_27 
Anon: you'll get more context here in the notes! 
Anon: Good to have you here 😃 
16:22
Anon: I'm sorry, I have to run now, was nice seeing you all briefly! 😃 
16:26
Anon: Bye! 
16:26
Anon: Bye Anton 😃 
16:27
Anon: I was literally typing something about this rn 
16:27
Anon: I'll have to drop out. see you! 
16:35
Anon: bye deniz 😃 
16:35
GreenReaper: Like we had with https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibase_Community_User_Group/2021_contact_election and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibase_Community_User_Group/2021_contact_election/Voting 
GreenReaper: Like https://daap.bannerrepeater.org/wiki/Special:Version for example which I have helped out with in the past is on 1.38. They got someone to do it but I think that cost them money, which is a perennial issue for smaller groups.
16:57
Anon: I'm going to have to dip now too 
17:03
Anon: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T368164 
Anon: ^ this is the phabricator ticket 
Anon: https://git.ai.wu.ac.at/dobriy/o2wb 
Anon: https://lgbtdb.wikibase.cloud/ 
17:13
Anon: And getting grant funding to create something is easier than getting it to maintain it.
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