Welcome Tomasz, looking forward to work with you.
I'm sure you will feel at home soon with your new colleagues.
I visited the WMF office a few weeks ago during my holidays.
Great ambience, a large space filled with positive energy, friendliness and
inspiration!
Erik Zachte
For the people who were at Wikimania, there was a lengthy thank-you
session at the end where we got to applaud the volunteers and staff
who worked hard on the conference. But I would just like to reiterate
that, and give my personal thanks to:
* Mido, for leading the bid and planning (with all of the stress for
months on end that entails -- just ask any of the former organizers),
thereby giving many of us the chance to meet our Egyptian colleagues
and have a great conference
* Moushira -- I recognized and sympathized with the way you were
frantically running around during the conference :)
* Nada, Abdel, Ahmed, and lots and lots of other people I didn't meet
(and people I did meet but can't remember the names of); you guys
pulled it off!
* The BA staff generally, but especially Drs. Ismail Serageldin and
Noha Adly for being supportive of the conference, for putting the
considerable organizational weight of the BA behind it, and for
offering up your resources and space to us; I hope that we are able to
work together in the future, as two organizations with truly shared
goals.
* Delphine, as always, for tying up a thousand loose ends,
coordinating Foundation-side work, making reconnaissance trips to
Alexandria, and on and on :)
* The Foundation staff, especially Jay and Cary for getting little
things done like press and scholarships
* Lodewijk and Jakob for doing nearly all the organizational work on
the program, off-site and on; and all the program reviewers
But thanks especially to everyone who showed up, especially those who
took the risk of flying in from far away, and those who came from
nearby who didn't know much about Wikipedia and wanted to find out
more. It was great to see old friends and make new ones. I did not
work on the organization of this year's conference as much as in past
years, so I got the somewhat novel experience of going as an attendee
-- you get to attend sessions that way, it turns out :)
Here were some of my favorite parts of this year's conference:
* Learning more about the Arabic Wikipedia and the challenges it
faces; listening to a heated debate in the lightning talks about
whether educated Egyptians should contribute in Arabic or English
* Learning about the Bibliotheca Alexandrina's efforts to digitize
their Arabic-language collection, using OCR software they developed
in-house
* Meeting some of the librarians of the Bibliotheca Alexandria,
especially the children's librarians and my compatriots the reference
librarians; giving an ad-hoc talk to them about how Wikipedia works
* teaching a dozen Egyptian children how to make sockpuppets
* 75 piastre (15 US cents) falafel (especially hearing Mako wax
enthusiastic about the falafel all weekend)
* eating (delicious!) fish in a restaurant overlooking the
Mediterranean while talking about academic impressions of Wikipedia
* getting to applaud the third! Board Chair of the Foundation; it
really does feel like the organization is finally mature
* being in Egypt itself (despite being hot and sick): things like
getting in a taxi then waiting for the driver to fix his engine before
we could go; sitting out on the corniche in the evening along with
everyone else; finally realizing how small the Sphinx actually is
compared to the pyramids
* Singing "I Will Revise" at the final party
In my personal view, Wikimania shouldn't be thought of as just a
holiday, a chance to meet friends, a way to introduce the projects to
people in the local community, or a way to have organizational
business meetings, though of course it is all of those things.
Wikimania is above all a chance to start projects -- to take the
relationships that we've all built by meeting people we knew online
(and those we didn't) and make them stronger, and take the things
we've collectively learned -- about the Foundation, the place where
the conference was, and the various projects that the attendees
represented -- and then make those projects stronger. For me, the
success of this year's Wikimania will be measured for in large part
not just by the last couple of weeks but by what happens next --
whether the Foundation collaborates with the BA to host public-domain
Arabic texts, whether the Arabic-language media takes a stronger
interest in writing about Wikipedia, whether the many new people who
showed up start editing Wikipedia, and whether the rest of us who
attended have renewed inspiration to work on Wikimedia projects and
stay in touch with one another, to follow up on all those
conversations.
Finally, do keep the comments coming about Wikimania, good and bad; as
Patricio said, we do have another conference to work on and input is
great. Beyond that, we have the future of Wikimania to plan -- 2010
and beyond. There is going to be an effort to formally collect
feedback soon as well, and I hope all of you will participate. This
conference is ultimately a community effort, for the community; and
it's something that everyone interested should help shape.
-- Phoebe, who is already looking forward to next year
p.s. there's a whole lot of people that I didn't get the chance to say
goodbye to in person. By the last night, I had entirely lost my voice
and was basically unable to talk -- just at the moment when I most
wanted to talk to many of you. So I guess I'm making up for it by
writing this very long email :)
Just a heads up that there is a discussion to see if disabling all
"hotlinking" of images and media from external sites is a good idea, here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Babel#Proposal_to_disable_hotlinking
Tim Starling posted some statistics that indicate 1% to 2.5% of all requests
are from outside sites leaching WMF bandwidth resources. In theory this
could save the WMF 1% to 2.5% or more of it's bandwidth costs.
- Joe
Of interest to some folks on this list, I imagine, is the new search engine
www.cuil.com (pronounced Cool, why do people come up with such strange
names? Like "wiki"...)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/28/technology/28cool.html
Pretty nifty interface, and they say they have the largest index of web
pages (120 billion) in the search industry.
~Nathan
Hello all,
I'm writing to update you on some exciting changes in Wikimedia's IRC situation.
Firstly, Ryan Postlethwaite organised a meeting on IRC this evening to
discuss the problems we've been having of late. It went very well: I
had a chance to explain the situation and clear up any potential
misconceptions, and users pointed out that James and I are not
fantastic at *appearing* active as lots of stuff happens in the dark.
You can read a log of the meeting at
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_Group_Contacts/Surgeries/July
2008/Log>, but I'll summarise my explanation of the situation.
Basically, freenode realised in January that our paperwork for our
group contact status is badly out of date and in some cases simply
missing. So I was told that I could only set wikimedia/ cloaks (which
I have been doing in the usual batches since I learnt I could set
these), and just this week we learnt that James can set wikipedia/
cloaks. While we continue to wait for freenode to redo our paperwork
(no idea of an ETA, we poke the right person every few weeks as a
reminder though), we are now setting wikimedia/ and wikipedia/ cloaks.
Other cloaks will remain in the system and will get set as soon as we
are able to.
There was much other discussion about the role of the contacts but it
would be better to read the log if you want to know about it: I
wouldn't do the discussion justice by summarising it here.
Secondly, the huge backlog of wikipedia/ cloaks have now been set
where possible (some users seem to have dropped their nick
registration while the requests have been waiting). Woohoo! This was
because we finally learnt this week that James can still set cloaks in
this namespace.
Thirdly, it was decided we should hold such meetings more often. And
as noted above, people asked for more transparency with contact
actions. So I present a raft of new pages on meta:
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_Group_Contacts/Log> -- log of
cloaks and access changes
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_Group_Contacts/Surgeries> --
surgery planning and logs
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_Group_Contacts/Noticeboard> --
status updates rather like this e-mail.
I hope you'll join in with my excitement at all this.
Sean Whitton
for the IRC Group Contacts
Hi everyone,
I have not been to Wikimania but I do am interested in what was going on
there. And probably many people who did go also because you can not go
to everything.
120 years ago some clever guy found a solution for exactly this type of
problem.
About how this invention was used for the Wikimanias before 2008 have I
voiced in my newsletter my opinion last year;
http://en.wikizine.org/2007/08/year-2007-week-33-number-79.html
For Wikimania 2008;
There are archived videos online of the sessions.
http://webcast.bibalex.org/Home/List.aspx?Conference=6u0LkBzgNlZm+RzGhC/6Ag…
This is the first Wikimania that this has happened. So far the good news.
The location, Biblotheca Alexandrina, was presented as a very new, very
upscale world class and technological advanced location for a
conference. Having some expectations that the are able to provide video
recordings is not unreasonable.
When I try to watch the video online it just does not work. I use Ubuntu
8.04 / FF3.0
On this blog can be find information about how you can watch the streams;
http://linuxawy.org/node/28
... and it works. At least for a while. Then the video stops in the
middle of a presentation.
This is a deep url
mms://webcast.bibalex.org/WebCast/wiki-17-7.wmv
to the board panel session. I was not able to find out how to download
it directly. I was able to open it with VLC and dump the file locally
and so make a local copy.
This way it was possible to get behind the point where when streaming
the video breaks down. It seems that the video contains several points
where it is broken. The video stops but the audio keeps running. By
running the video forward a bit and back again you can get over the
break points.
But even so I was not able to view the whole session because the file at
a certain point was empty. The videofile seems to be so bad that even
VLC can not swallow it.
That is my user experience of "trying to view the Wikimanina 2008
recordings" for so far.
Why is the WMF again still not able to do what any 12 year old with a
mobile phone seems to be able to do these days; make a movie and put it
on the internet in way that just works?
What is wrong with putting files on an ftp-server and posting the urls?
--
Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community
Two quick notes:
- Edit this Wiki: A reminder that the community is invited to help
write the last chapter of The Wikipedia Story, details below
- Final podcasts from Wikimania 2008 are now posted to
WikipediaWeekly.org, descriptions below
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
-----
"The Wikipedia Story" wiki invites Wikimedia community members to
help write the "next chapter" for Wikipedia. The result will appear
in the hardback book "The Wikipedia Story: How a bunch of nobodies
created the world's greatest encyclopedia" a nonfiction work which
will be released in January 2009 by Hyperion in the US.
Many already know I have been writing this book for over a year, after
being a community member for over five years, attending three
Wikimanias and conducting countless interviews with Wikipedians around
the world.
I'm inviting the community to collaboratively write the
last chapter as a demonstration of what the Wikipedians
can do. Details can be found here:
Link: http://wikipediastory.com/wiki/Main_Page
Recent changes: http://is.gd/16B2
-----
Wikipedia Weekly podcasts available:
Episode 58: Wikimania 2008, Jimbo and Reflections
http://wikipediaweekly.org/2008/07/28/episode-58-wikimania-2008-jimbo-refle…
A two part episode:
1. Interview with Jimmy Wales, from the Windsor Palace hotel
2. Final Day-after - Reflections from a van, from Alexandria to Cairo
- Memorable moments
- Wiki-research-L mailing list revival
- Next year in Argentina
- Wikipedia Academy, for newbies
Commentators:
* Phoebe Ayers
* James Forrester
* Austin Hair
* Andrew Lih
* Liam Wyatt
-----
Podcast episodes coming soon:
- Sue Gardner, WMF
- Egyptian organizers of Wikimania 2008
- Patricio Lorente on Wikimania 2009
- Diplopedia
- Kaltura
- Javanese Wikipedia
Hi folks,
I'm happy to tell you that the Wikimedia Foundation has received a
substantial donation from the Stanton Foundation, a private foundation
created to further philanthropic goals set by the late Dr. Frank
Stanton. Dr. Stanton, who died two years ago at the age of 98, was a
noted American broadcasting executive and longtime president of the CBS
television network.
The Stanton Foundation has given Wikimedia USD $262,000 to support the
purchase of database servers, application servers, network equipment and
other hardware. The tech team will spend the money throughout 2008, and
will begin to have the new hardware installed and operating in just a
few months.
This gift is a major vote of confidence in the work we are doing
together. I'm really happy that the Stanton Foundation has chosen to
support the Wikimedia projects, and our goal of bringing free knowledge
to people all over the world.
Congratulations to the tech team :-)
Sue
--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
hi everybody.
we can convert the files we have to multiple formats, and make links available
for download.
we'll get to it, I'll post when it's ready.
Shay David
CTO, Kaltura Inc.
http://www.kaltura.com
foundation-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote on 7/26/08 2:20 PM:
> Send foundation-l mailing list submissions to
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> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: Wikimania 2008; online video recordings (Walter Vermeir)
> 2. Re: Wikimania 2008; online video recordings (Gerard Meijssen)
> 3. Re: Wikimania 2008; online video recordings (Michael Dale)
> 4. Re: Wikimania 2008; online video recordings (Moushira Elamrawy)
> 5. Re: Wikimania 2008; online video recordings (Mohamed Magdy)
> 6. Direct url's posted (Re: Wikimania 2008; online video
> recordings) (Walter Vermeir)
> 7. Re: Direct url's posted (Re: Wikimania 2008; online video
> recordings) (Gregory Maxwell)
> 8. Re: Direct url's posted (Re: Wikimania 2008; online video
> recordings) (Walter Vermeir)
> 9. Re: Direct url's posted (Re: Wikimania 2008; online video
> recordings) (Chad)
> 10. Re: Direct url's posted (Re: Wikimania 2008; online video
> recordings) (Walter Vermeir)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 14:36:04 +0200
> From: Walter Vermeir <walter(a)wikipedia.be>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2008; online video recordings
> To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <g6f5nl$tv9$1(a)ger.gmane.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> Casey Brown schreef:
>> I am pretty sure that videos in .ogg (or another more easily playable
>> format) are going to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons soon. BA is
>> working on it, atm.
>
> That would be very nice if that would happen. After previous Wikimanias
> it was also anounced that the videos would come soon available.
>
> Let's see after Wikimania 2009 how the videos of Wikimania 2008 are doing.
>
>> In the interim, the videos on the stream can be played using Windows
>> Media Player.
>
> The problem is not the use of the Windows media format. I can play that.
> The problem is getting the files.
> And getting the files is a problem because the are not presented as file
> to download. Also that these specific Windows media files seems to be
> badly encoded so that playback is not working good.
>