MediaWiki – Chris Koerner

The Oasis by Shiro Miyake

Post-Dispatch Magazine article on the garden

There’s this historic house in my home city. Not the most culturally or historically significant, but old by US standards and a handsome specimen of its time. It sat catty-corner to the warehouse/mailroom my dad use to work from before he retired. In 2016 it was purchased and renovations began. My dad would watch the folks work and was curious about the house. We were able to find the completed National Register of Historic Places Registration Form online for the home and learned a lot about the house from the research work within.

About two years ago I started a draft article about the house for Wikipedia ¹ and used that document as a foundation. At the urging of a fellow Wikimedian I attended an editing party last week and got the article in a good enough state to move to article namespace on English Wikipedia. It now lives at Dr. George Ashe Bronson House.

At the same time I applied for a library card through the Wikipedia Library to get access to newspapers.com. I wanted to see if I could find out more about the owner of the home, Dr. George A. Bronson, a predominate local dentist. I did, and added a few additional citations to the article.

Along the way I found out about the history of the Japanese garden the doctor built on the premises. Called, “The Oasis”, it was designed by Shiro Miyake from Nio, Sanuki, Japan. ²

Miyake came to St. Louis as part of the Japanese exhibit for the 1904 World’s Fair. He was a dentistry student at Washington University and graduated in 1909. He worked with Dr. Bronson to build the garden as his “houseman”.

According to old records from Washington University he was the Sergeant at Arms during his time at the school and his favorite occupation was “grinning”. His favorite song? “Just Fill Them Up Again”.³ And his ideal [person] was “Battling Nelson“.

It appears he later lived in Denver at one point and, if this is him, died in California in 1952.

While Miyake himself is not notable enough for his own Wikipedia article, I like that I was able to find out a little more about him through online resources and include his contributions to this well-respected garden in the article.

Five Years Later…

I’ve been at the Wikimedia Foundation for five years now. I don’t often speak publicly¹ about what it’s like to work at the non-profit behind one of the biggest social movements, website, and community on the planet. Also one of the few that aren’t backed by squicky dude-bros who care more about money than humans. AAAAANNNYYYHOW, there’s something special about the number five and so here are my thoughts.

Where is the Foundation now?

I think the Foundation is in a better position than in the past five years – both internally in how the organization is structured and work is managed, but also in what we work on and where our focus is. We’ve learned a lot from the lumps garnered in the past (deservedly or not) and with Movement Strategy and strong focus on Objectives and Key Results (ORKs) it’s more transparent (and apparent) that our work is tied to the needs of the movement.

Better, not perfect.

For example, the recent strategy and board work are both well-staffed – with regional support. The teams (from my perspective) are taking it slow and giving folks a chance to talk and listen. Doesn’t mean we’re going to do everything (we can’t) or hear everyone (we can’t) but that we are trying to acknowledge gaps and biases.

Product has been kicking butt in building tools that help. In particular the Growth team, mobile web, and the desktop refresh. I still love Community Tech after five years. I think I will after another five. If I were a billionaire they’d get 100 million a year just to do more of this.

I still feel like new teams/initiatives/people still sometimes get burned. Unclear expectations, combative community, crossed wires. We’re working on that. I am seeing less of it. Still a few spots of things we should be doing IMHO, but aren’t. Like Maps and visualizations. Like search and the portal. We need to make a decision about the weird stuff kinda floating out there.

Have you seen the multimedia search for Commons? It’s a media search that’s useful! No more “site:commons.wikimedia.org dog” searches on Google.

Onboarding staff new to this wacky world is a challenge. It’s inconsistent and it takes six months to even get up to speed – if not longer! I know smart people are working on this, so I have optimism for the future. It’s still going to be a struggle. We are a multifaceted organization² and an even more multifaceted movement. And we’re continuing to grow. Obtaining knowledge about the river in which the ship is moving in, while the ship is moving, is tricky. Making this more systemic and process-driven will help, but we still have so much information about our volunteers and the relationship, in well, individual relationships with people. I mean, it should be that way. Humans connecting to humans, but hoo boy does that not scale easily.

Foundation is investing into listening. I mean, I’m on a team literally charged with improving Movement Communications. With Diff, and our needs assessment work, I’m feeling jazzed about moving the needle on the relationship with communities. The Foundation has been inconsistent in talking to folks and connecting our work to theirs. We need to be better storytellers, listeners, and force multipliers. Especially in emerging communities and places of the world where we have communities but know little about them (and therefore can not support them).

I feel like my work is contributing in a more strategic, positive way with Diff. Working with and amplifying the work of people where we can treat each other like teammates and not combatants. It’s encouraging and impactful. Fun Fact: Diff saw 86,865 views from 65,935 visitors in January. Higher than any expectations I had.

As I was drafting this blog post our ED announced she was stepping down. I’ve reflected on all that has happened under her leadership and I think it make sense to mention it here. Katherine has put the org – and by extension the movement – on a solid course.

Gained the role in the midst of a terrible era of trust (both internal to the Foundation and with community).
Lead with grace and dignity in every interaction I had that was reassuring and respectable.
Got a movement strategy rolling for the future and in solid shape to get us to 2030 and beyond.
Leadership at the C-level and below shored up (Hiring new folks for gaps, new needed roles, sorting out HR, etc.).
Clarifying governance (Board make up, sort out the board/Foundation responsibilities, bylaws, election).
Movement-wide Code of Conduct.
Endowment is nearly at it’s 100 million goal.
Organizational growth and capacity.

I mean, the next CEO can step in and goof off all day for ~4 years and still leave successful – assuming they don’t muck with stuff too much. 😉

Where is the movement now?

2020 sucked. I’m inspired by the folks who keep on trucking. And reminded by those that took a step back that you can’t keep others warm by setting yourself on fire. It’s amazing that folks have continued the amazing work, supporting one another, and moving the needle of trust and free knowledge. I was on the committee for Wikimedian of the Year and in all honesty I would have nominated everyone. They were all inspirational and all so human.

There are still folks who like to be edgy jerks and stoke the fire on the whole WMF/Community divide. I think it’s unconstructive. It’s also super demoralizing. It’s also something you can’t do anything about. But I have noticed less petty picking-of-fights over a lack of clarity and supposition with fear and doubt that The Foundation is evil. So that’s nice. I also am caring less about the loud minority of folks as I give more of my attention to those who want to work with me within the system. You know, like you would anywhere else in life.

Where am I now?

Five years is the longest I’ve been at any prior organizations. It’s also easily the longest I’ve been in the same position. Or roughly the same position. Community-facing communications.³ Five is also half a decade. A lot can change in five years. When I joined the Foundation my youngest daughter was less than two years old. She’s now kicking my butt (and the world’s) as a smart six-year-old.

I still care and am still invested in my work and the movement. A little less than in the past. I don’t know if that’s me trying to learn how not to give a fuck or if that’s burnout over all the changes the last few years have brung. Ya’ll, the work is hard, the work is plentiful, and working remotely can feel isolating. Not gonna lie.

I worry more about my co-workers than myself. They’re the smart ones I rely on to appear intelligent. 🙂

Working remotely is challenging because getting an attaboy or acknowledgment of your work is really hard when you don’t see your boss in the hallway. This sort of encouragement, I know, is very American, but I like to have a sense of knowing where I stand in organization and how I’m doing with my work. So far, I think I’m doing pretty good. Still a struggle to be OK with ambiguity and chaos.

Remote work productivity tips

So yeah, let’s end this on an up-beat note. I’ve been working from home for five years now. Full-time. I’m super privileged to be able to afford the time/money/space to have built my studio. If you cannot do the same, I still want you to take your self-care seriously. Here’s some advice. Don’t feel bad if it doesn’t work for you. It sometimes doesn’t work for me.

Get a white noise machine. I even have a portable one for when I travel. Helps focus from distracting house-noises.
Don’t work in spaces that distract you. Find yourself feeling unproductive after a day at Starbucks? Don’t work there.
Setup your space to be organized and keep it separate from where you do your personal computering.
Use a quick launcher. I have saved billions of trackpad taps (and seconds) by using a nice launcher. My go-to is Alfred. I was a Quicksliver user for over a decade. Alfred is just so nice. Keep your hands on the keyboard as much as you can. Learn the shortcuts for your commonly used apps. Yell at the ancient gods when you can’t use command-K to add a link in Slack.
Everything is a draft, that’s ok. Perfect is the enemy of good – and feeling like you’re not getting anything done isn’t productive. Even organizing your bookmarks or deleting old email is production. Don’t beat yourself up on slow days.
Work from libraries – in my suburban area we have public libraries with quiet study rooms you can borrow for an hour or two. Lots of comfy seating. People around you, and most are trying to be quiet – unlike a Starbucks.
Write it down.
Listen to music? I can’t listen to anything new to me or anything with lyrics. The best for me is a chill playlist, music in another language, or the creme de la creme – video game soundtracks.

So, five years down. Maybe I’ll do this again in another five?

As Those Who Make

It’s not, of course, that there’s anything wrong with making (although it’s not all that clear that the world needs more stuff). The problem is the idea that the alternative to making is usually not doing nothing—it’s almost always doing things for and with other people, from the barista to the Facebook community moderator to the social worker to the surgeon. Describing oneself as a maker—regardless of what one actually or mostly does—is a way of accruing to oneself the gendered, capitalist benefits of being a person who makes products.

– Why I am Not a Maker – Debbie Chachra

I make communities. I do it with other people. It is just as valuable as those who make the architecture, content, documentation, and software that these communities use and support.

Notes from the first Enterprise MediaWiki Conference

On May 22 – 25 I attended the first Enterprise MediaWiki Conference (EMWCon) in New York City. It’s a continuation of the similarly named SMWCon, but with a strong emphasis on all flavors of MediaWiki and how it is used in organizations large and small. I was able attend in my capacity as a staff member of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), but have had a personal interest in the MediaWiki community for a few years now. I thought it would be helpful to write down a few notes on my experiences and share those with folks within the Wikimedia movement.

At the conference I learned how folks are using MediaWiki, what difficulties they face in their use, and their concerns for the future of the platform. ¹

Quick Take Aways

A few large points that struck me as worth mentioning.

There are many people using MediaWiki in interesting and unique ways. This is the 4th MediaWiki-focused event I’ve attended in the last two years and at each one I’ve discovered new uses in new industries. This time around? Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, a large banking company, and a large oil company all use MediaWiki in some capacity to help document and share knowledge within their organizations. This is on top of groups like Circ du Soleil, MITRE, NATO, and NASA that I was already aware of. I was also impressed by the half a dozen independent developers who support organizations in using MediaWiki. Some folks have smaller organizations with smaller wikis – which is impressive. It’s even crazier to think that this bit of open-source software can be used inside so many large, well-known, organizations – often to great success.
Users of MediaWiki – specifically those that write their own code – want acknowledgment. They want to know that the folks who are pointing MediaWiki toward its future are aware of these diverse use cases and keep that in mind when making decisions that would impact non-WMF-supported use.
They also want to know what the WMF’s plans are. They want to be reassured – and to be able to reassure others within their organizations, that MediaWiki will be around. A simple, high-level roadmap would do wonders here. There is a large ask of the foundation to make a decision on what sort of support will be offered – even if the answer is an uncomfortable “nothing” it would be better than the current strain of “Eh, we really don’t know.” At one point during the conference I made the joke that the WMF had ‘cookie licked’ MediaWiki. :p
I had one attendee, a long-time MediaWiki admin and community member, ask me, “Am I a volunteer? A contributor?” This is from someone whose organization has no less than 14 extensions on MediaWiki.org and who has contributed code to the core development of MediaWiki. They were not certain if their contributions were as valued given that what they work on has a much larger impact on third-party users than Wikimedia projects. People within the MediaWiki community want equal treatment and respect as developer contributors.
Lastly, the WMF should consider the impact this community has had in the development of MediaWiki as a popular and healthy open-source software. There is an incredible financial worth in the patches and extensions contributed by third parties. I mean, to be frank, we have people working at NASA and MITRE (among others) sharing their work with the MediaWiki community. The time and talent alone is something that should be considered a strength within our community.

MWF?

Another topic that has been gaining steam recently in the MediaWiki community is the idea of a “MediaWiki Foundation”. A non-profit organization that focuses on the core development of MediaWiki as an open-source software project – influenced by all parties equally. I think it’s going to happen in some capacity.

Generally speaking the MediaWiki community agrees it won’t be the big, giant, dramatic change like moving all of MediaWiki ownership out of the WMF.

Instead the focus will be on small deliverables. Right now the MediaWiki Stakeholder’s user group is looking for a small task on the wishlist, funding (passing a hat around!) and working to show that something was accomplished. Then, after being able to show their work, approach the WMF with a request for some of their time to discuss how they could work together. If you’re interested in following along, check out the MediaWiki Stakeholders’ wiki and the #mwstake room in the Wikimedia Phabricator.

A Real Community

While some wikis are internal and not public, the folks at the conference freely shared their experiences and knowledge for others to benefit from. One attendee described the community and our relationship with one another in an interesting way. We’re not competing with each other to ‘build the best wiki’ but we are competing together against closed, propriatrty systems of knowledge management that permeate organizations across industries. These systems have an antiquated model of documenting and sharing knowledge that is antithesis to truly sharing information to empower members of the org. For example, SharePoint sets permissions to be closed by default. You have to know the information exists, somewhere in the laybranith of SharePoint sites, before you can request access to it!

I think that this event acknowledges that we come together freely to share across industries and uses. It is endemic of having a natural community – not one forced out of branding, marketing, or sales departments within a for-profit organization.

Wikipedians in our midst

While the conference was focused on MediaWiki use outside of Wikimedia projects, attendees did have an opportunity to get to know more about the Wikimedia world and meet folks who are involved in related projects. One of our hosts, Pharos, is a long-time editor on English Wikipedia, president of the NYC chapter, and was a Wikipedian-in-residence at the Guggenheim Museum.

At the end of the first day the NYC chapter brought pizza and people together to talk about what they had been working on. I met no less than 3 individuals involved in Afrocrowd.org, a Wikipedia project I had never heard of until this event!

I also met a long-time MediaWikian, Frank Taylor, who was interested in the work the WMF was doing around emerging communities. He even offered to put the folks at the foundation working on this outreach in contact with folks he has worked with in Central and South America. Which is a kind and unexpected example of the communities sharing interests!

Conclusion

I encourage folks to attend future EMWCons (and SMWCons). They are a great opportunity to learn and share with one another, to create relationships beyond Talk pages, and to grow an already impressive community. In particular I would like to invite the following groups.

WMF staff who work on MediaWiki core development, planning, and developer relations.
People who use MediaWiki – or are interested in using a wiki!
People who want to encourage open-source software and free knowledge – even when the knowledge is shared not among the entirety of humanity. There is a very real halo effect in people using MediaWiki. The philosophy of the wiki changes organizations approach to sharing and working together. It breeds familiarity with many aspects of the wider Wikimedia movement. I know I’m only a factor of one, but my Wikimedia contributions are born out of the use of MediaWiki within a ‘closed’ organization. ²

SMWCon Spring 2015 in Review

In early May I helped to organize the Spring Semantic MediaWiki Conference or SMWCon. We had 25 people from around the world come together for three days to learn and share about Semantic MediaWiki and it’s use in various industries. It was an honor to host such an event here in my hometown of St. Louis. I wanted to take a few minutes to share my experiences as an amateur event organizer and reflect on one of my personal accomplishments for 2015.

—-

When planning an event my mind always goes to the worst possible scenarios. What if people don’t come? What if they can’t find the event location? What if the food is terrible? What if the presentations are off-target?

For the most part, if you worry about these things and do something to address them, you’ll be fine. Don’t be overly anxious. Writing things down and keeping “To-Do” lists really helped keep things organized. Remembering to follow-up with people (venue folks, caterers, etc.) will prevent miscommunication and last-minute dashes to fix things.

Another tip? Make sure you have coffee and snacks around. Nothing fancy is needed. We made a trip to Costco the day before the event and grabbed some mixed nuts, granola bars, chips and soda.

I’m glad to say that everyone appeared to have a good time and everything ¹ generally went off without a hitch.

I was an attendee at the last Spring SMWCon. Since that was also my only SMWCon experience, I based a lot of my work off of the great organizers that hosted us in Montreal. One thing I didn’t go a good enough job on was encouraging diversity in the audience and in speakers. What we had wasn’t bad, but man I would have like to have more unique voices present.

That said, we did have one of the most diverse group of industries represented. eSport statisticians, geneticists, geophysicists, independent developers, Tibetan Buddhist philosophers, MITRE, NASA, NATO, SNPedia, and more represented the diverse use of Semantic MediaWiki. We actually remarked during one of our sessions that this SMWCon had a much more ‘enterprise’ vibe than past conferences. It’s remarkable how many wikis exist behind firewalls that the public never know about and what amazing things people are doing with the software.

This lead into an interesting discussion around future of SMW and SMWCons. The discussion is ongoing, but the consensus is that there should be more events around enterprise ² MediaWiki usage.

All of the presentations were interesting and chatting with some of the attendees opened my eyes to new uses and interests I never knew existed.

Some of my favorite sessions are listed below. We recorded the presentations and they should be up online soon.

smartMediaWiki

Wolfgang Fahl presented on an idea he has called smartMediaWiki. His tutorial was in-depth and allowed for all attendees to participate. While some of his concepts are beyond my meager understanding, the amount of effort he put into his presentation is commendable upon itself.

Cargo and the future of SMW

Yaron talked about his new extension, Cargo. It’s an alternative to SMW, which is interesting as it’s a much smaller code base, but nearly just as powerful. His approach to semantic data is different (standard database schema instead of triples) and the history of his involvement with SMW made for an interesting talk. Where Cargo (and SMW) go in the future is still very much unknown, but Yaron brings forth the idea that both can live in harmony.

The Why and How of Wiki Farms

Cindy’s presentation on the interworking of MITRE’s Gestalt framework was eye-opening. I manage two independent wikis and have never though much about the complexities of running dozens – or hundreds – of wikis. Her talk covered how one might manage multiple wikis without going insane – and still leaving plenty of room for customization and uniqueness.

SMW Grammars & Variables

John McClure is not a man to shy away from big challenges. His presentation tackled the promise of a semantic web – multiple independent sites interconnected among one another with a common ontology. His passion was present and his goals noble. The conundrum is who is willing to do the work? So many wiki folk – yes even those within the Wikimedia movement – are rather ‘heads down’ on what they’re working on. John’s vision is of a standard grammar we can all leverage to systematically interconnect the various repositories of information we all maintain.

Quantifying Accountability

James and Daren gave a great ad-lib presentation ³ on how they use MediaWiki to help document information around the training of astronauts for their EVAs. Their presentation was a great example (among many) of folks who are not ‘wiki people’ leveraging the software as part of their jobs. Both are engineers and training astronauts is their primary career. Even with that full-time gig they find time to develop their own extensions and adapt the SMW platform to fit their needs – all while releasing their code to the public.

How to get your bug fixed in MediaWiki

Mark gave a great overview on how to take a PITA bug and get it fixed. His introduction to the MediaWiki bug ecosystem was really helpful. I now feel more confident in submitting bug reports and improving the software.

We had a panel on the third day around the topic of “The Future of the Semantic Web, SMW and MediaWiki”. The three panel members ⁴ did a great job discussing the changes yet to come that will impact us all.

I love the SMW and larger MediaWiki community. There are a lot of good people involved. Each working hard in their respective industries trying to not only accomplish the work before them, but giving back to the community as well. If you have an inkling of interest in attending (or organizing!) a SMWCon I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Category: MediaWiki