**** Hoi,
I think this is relevant and of interest to us all...
Thanks,
GerardM
Report and related press release of interest...
The Minority Rights Group International (MRG) in collaboration with UNICEF
has recently released their "State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous
Peoples 2009," which includes a full chapter on Multilingual Education.
Links to the report:
http://www.minorityrights.org/7948/state-of-the-worlds-minorities/state-of-…
A press release focusing on Language:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47693
EDUCATION: Mother Tongue Absent in Thousands of Classrooms by Haider Rizvi
Article: Indigenous Languages: A View from UNICEF
http://www.minorityrights.org/download.php?id=664
******************************************
__ __ _ _ _ _
/ / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___
\ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \
\ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/
\/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___|
.org
Year: 2009 Week: 32 Number: 114
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[Full downtime] - All of Wikimedia's services (sites, mailing lists,
etc.) were down on July 31 at 12:00 (UTC) to allow the primary router
at the Tampa hosting facility to be rebooted.
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/pmtpa-router-reboot-scheduled-downtim…http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-July/044406.htmlhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Downtime
[SysAdminDay] - System Administrator Appreciation Day was held on July
31st; it's the day where you appreciate and thank all the system
administrators who make your lives easier!
http://www.sysadminday.com/
[Override this function] - on August 6, users were temporarily getting
the message 'Override this function' when visiting pages on Wikipedia,
due to a server only partially getting an update. The issue was
supposedly fixed but the sysadmins are still getting reports, it needs
further investigation of the problem.
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20081
=== Request for help ===
[WikimediaMobile] - Wikimedia Mobile, the mobile interface for
Wikipedia, has started accepting translations on betawiki. Help is
greatly appreciated in localizing it for your local Wikipedia.
http://m.wikipedia.org/http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Wikimedia_mobile
[Flickr tool maintainers] - Bryan Tong Minh posted a request for
co-maintainers for his flickr tools on the toolserver. The bots are
written in Python and use the mwclient library to edit and upload.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2009-August/004976.html
[Best practices team] - "Best practice in public outreach" is a
collection of articles describing experiences in winning new
volunteers, partners, content and audiences. The group will help
coordinate the creation and enhancement of the best practices
documentation pages on Meta-Wiki, which will help share the knowledge
about engaging new target groups or deepening relationships to new
Wikimedians. Volunteers are needed!
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Best_practices_documentation_team
[BLP task force] - Cary Bass is in the process of launching a new task
force on Biographies of Living People (as a result of the board
resolution on the subject). The task force will be focusing on the
English Wikipedia, but its recommendations and guidelines will
probably be useful on other projects too. Volunteers are needed, see
the blog post for more information.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2009-August/102667.html
-- call for volunteers
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Biographies_of_living_people --
resolution
=== Proposals ===
[Strategic Proposals (Call)] - the Strategic Planning team has sent
out a call for proposals. They'd like to encourage people to put their
ideas into proposals for what the Wikimedia movement should be doing
over the next five years. What's more is that you can write it in the
language of your choice.
=== Foundation ===
[Guidestar] - the Wikimedia Foundation has finally received a profile
on GuideStar, one of the largest American databases for non-profits.
Be sure to visit the profile and write a review!
http://tinyurl.com/wmfGuidestarhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GuideStar -- article on the site
[Usability: Babaco] - the Usability team is preparing for its next
release and has some new designs and ideas that need feedback from
users, community members, and interested parties.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/29/the-abcs-of-usability/ -- blog post
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Babaco_Designs -- designs
[Transcom newsletter] - the Translation committee (the people whose
job it is to coordinate translations of Wikimedia Foundation-related
items) has released its newsletter, which is a summary of open
requests. If you speak another language, please look and see if
there's anywhere that you can help out!
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/translators-l/2009-July/000982.html
[LSS: foundation-l] - a new list summary of foundation-l posts between
July 16-31 has been published. Phoebe has also posted a request for
help, reminding others that she's not the only one who can do it and
there are other lists that could be summarized too!
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2009_July_16-31http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS -- main LSS page
=== Legal ===
[EFF&NPG update] - Another update on the National Portrait Gallery
legal issue, the Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer, Fred von
Lohmann, has posted a legal analysis of the situation.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/07/eff-defends-wikipedi
=== Agenda ===
[PL: pl.wp meeting] - the Polish Wikipedia is having its annual
working meeting in Sopot, Poland from September 11-13.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GDJ_2009 (pl)
[SE: Book Fair] - Wikimedia Sweden will have a booth at the largest
book fair in Scandinavia with 100,000+ attendees. The fair will be
September 24-27, 2009.
http://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Projekt:Bok_och_Biblioteksmässan_2009 --
WMSE's page about the booth (sv)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothenburg_Book_Fair -- enwp article
about the fair
[JP: Conference] - Wikimedia Conference Japan has opened up its
official website and has finalized its details: November 22 at Tokyo
University!
http://www.wcj2009.info/ (ja)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_Japan/en --
summary on Meta (en)
[BE: Fosdem] - FOSDEM, the FOSS conference, has announced the dates
for its 2010 conference: February 6-7, 2010
http://www.fosdem.org/2010/
=== Community ===
[GLAM-WIKI] - GLAM-Wiki, Wikimedia Australia's conference for
galleries, libraries, archives, museums, and how they can collaborate
with Wikimedia, is being held this week (August 6-7) and a live
"play-by-play" can be found via twitter.
https://twitter.com/#search?q=%23GLAM-WIKI -- twitter posts
http://brianna.modernthings.org/article/230/glam-wiki-day-one -- blog
post summarizing day 1
[Simple Wikipedia] - this little known Wikipedia works since 2004 on a
encyclopedia that is using fewer words and easier grammar then the
English Wikipedia. The small community has managed to get again at the
54,000 articles mark, after falling down 2000 articles due to a
quality cleanup. For those who find other Wikipedias has become to
large to be happy there a small project like Simple could be attractive.
http://simple.wikipedia.org
[WMNL: Partnership] - just in time for GLAM-WIKI, Wikimedia Nederland
officially announced a partnership with the Tropenmuseum (one of the
largest museums in the Netherlands). This new partnership will bring
over 2100 high quality images to the Wikimedia Commons!
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/08/05/wikimedia-netherlands-and-the-tropenmu… -- blog post and press
release
[Wiki-Conference NY] - Archive.org is hosting a few videos of the
proceedings at Wiki-Conference New York, so far Jimmy Wales's keynote
and Cary Bass's OTRS presentation have been published but more will
come soon.
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Wiki?Conference%20New%20York
[IRC Meeting] - a general IRC meeting was hosted by the Group
Contacts. There was a high number of participants (~80 people) and a
wide array of topics, from contacting the GCs and new cloak options to
public logging and alternate channel management techniques.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Group_Contacts/Meetings/August_2009
[WMDE: Report from the Office] - the new Executive Director of
Wikimedia Deutschland, Pavel Richter, has published his first "Report
from the Office" on the WMDE blog. He shares his new priorities and
introduces himself.
http://blog.wikimedia.de/2009/07/31/1-bericht-aus-der-geschaftsstelle-juli-…
(de)
=== Media ===
[GLAM-Wiki] - As described above in the "Community" section, GLAM-WIKI
is being held this week and it has been covered by a few media outlets.
http://wikimedia.org.au/w/images/b/ba/GLAM_WIKI_-_Media_Release.pdf --
WMAU press release
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/313846/wikimedia_event_seeks_open_u…http://www.itwire.com/content/view/26683/1231/
[Judges & Strippers] - Wiktionary was quoted when defining a lap dance
in a legal case!
http://www.dbs.id.au/blog/law/lap-dance-wikipedia.htmlhttps://twitter.com/Wittylama/status/3102455466
[Anecdote] - there's a nice, thoughtful blog post from a
paleontologist/geoscientist and his experiences with contributing to
Wikipedia.
http://triassiccritters.blogspot.com/2009/08/contributing-to-wikipedia-as.h…
[Experts obliged?] - experts and people who find errors in Wikipedia
are obliged to correct them, a blog post says. "Whether you like it
or not, Wikipedia is the source that people go to for information."
http://blog.k1v1n.com/2009/08/if-tree-falls-in-forest-part-1.html
[We're NC-17] - Apple has rated us NC-17! Wikipanion, an iPhone/Pod
application giving access to Wikipedia (nicely formatted with extra
features), featured a warning when downloading: "Rated 17+ for the
following: Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes".
http://dougpete.wordpress.com/2009/08/01/covering-your-click/ -- blog
post about this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NC-17 -- in case you have no idea what
we're talking about
=== Stats ===
[comScore: down to #5] - Facebook is now the 4th largest site in the
world and has pushed the Wikimedia Foundation down to the 5th largest
web property. Wikipedia is still far above an beyond the most popular
non commercial website. By the way; the ranking of Wikizine is 50% up
to become the 2,983,528th most popular site :) (Source:Alexa)
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/04/facebook-is-now-the-fourth-largest-sit…
[African Wikipedias] - Swahili Wikipedia "has raced ahead with great
momentum" and surpassed Afrikaans as the largest African Wikipedia by
number of articles. There's also stats about the other African
Wikipedias and sister projects.
http://www.greenman.co.za/blog/?p=614 -- blog post
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Africa -- African languages
[Wikipedias] - the Spanish Wikipedia has reached 500,000 articles, the
Lithuanian Wikipedia has reached 90,000, and the Latin Wikipedia
reached 30,000 articles with the addition of "Magninovilla".
[EN Wikinews] - Not really a direct goal of Wikinews to have many
"articles" but nevertheless the English language Wikinews has
surpassed 15,000 news stories.
http://en.wikinews.org
=== Other news ===
[wikiHow&MediaWiki] - wikiHow showcased an interesting article (on its
twitter feed) about how to make a MediaWiki skin, worth a read if
you're ever in the need for a new skin. :-)
https://twitter.com/wikiHow/status/3111069632
[Mobile Feedback] - the Mobile Wikipedia site requested feedback from
its users and got a few interesting results, you might get a laugh out
of them!
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/08/amusing-mobile-feedback/
[Correction: WMUK&Schools] - we previously reported that the new WMUK
schools project was about revisiting its "Wikipedia Version for
Schools" project. This is actually a new initiative, one focused on
going into schools and teaching the staff and students how to
effectively use and contribute to Wikipedia.
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Initiatives/Schools_project
[Wiktionary users] - Dvortygirl posted an interesting blog post about
the type of users who are attracted to writing a dictionary. She
found that most of the people in the #wiktionary IRC channel all
shared similar characteristics to her (and a Dutch Wiktionary
visitor), more information in the blog post.
http://dvortygirl.blogspot.com/2009/08/wiktionary-type.html
=== Quote ===
"About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love
you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some
won't like you at all." - Rita Mae Brown
//////////////////////////////////////////
Editor(s): Casey, Alex, Walter
Thanks to: Cary, David, Brianna, Phoebe, Bryan, Steve, Brion, Sage,
Hampton, Signpost, Naoko, Bark, ErikZ, Jay, wikihow, Mecredis, Liam,
Jessica, Pavel, Leinad, Mile K., Dvortygirl, St-Lemur
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]].
Wikizine is a nearly weekly publication as long as there is noteworthy
news (and time)
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
and also the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/
_______________________________________________
To unsubscribe;
mailto:request@wikizine.org?subject=unsubscribe
******************************************
__ __ _ _ _ _
/ / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___
\ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \
\ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/
\/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___|
.org
Year: 2009 Week: 32 Number: 114
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[Full downtime] - All of Wikimedia's services (sites, mailing lists,
etc.) were down on July 31 at 12:00 (UTC) to allow the primary router
at the Tampa hosting facility to be rebooted.
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/pmtpa-router-reboot-scheduled-downtim…http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-July/044406.htmlhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Downtime
[SysAdminDay] - System Administrator Appreciation Day was held on July
31st; it's the day where you appreciate and thank all the system
administrators who make your lives easier!
http://www.sysadminday.com/
[Override this function] - on August 6, users were temporarily getting
the message 'Override this function' when visiting pages on Wikipedia,
due to a server only partially getting an update. The issue was
supposedly fixed but the sysadmins are still getting reports, it needs
further investigation of the problem.
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20081
=== Request for help ===
[WikimediaMobile] - Wikimedia Mobile, the mobile interface for
Wikipedia, has started accepting translations on betawiki. Help is
greatly appreciated in localizing it for your local Wikipedia.
http://m.wikipedia.org/http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Wikimedia_mobile
[Flickr tool maintainers] - Bryan Tong Minh posted a request for
co-maintainers for his flickr tools on the toolserver. The bots are
written in Python and use the mwclient library to edit and upload.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2009-August/004976.html
[Best practices team] - "Best practice in public outreach" is a
collection of articles describing experiences in winning new
volunteers, partners, content and audiences. The group will help
coordinate the creation and enhancement of the best practices
documentation pages on Meta-Wiki, which will help share the knowledge
about engaging new target groups or deepening relationships to new
Wikimedians. Volunteers are needed!
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Best_practices_documentation_team
[BLP task force] - Cary Bass is in the process of launching a new task
force on Biographies of Living People (as a result of the board
resolution on the subject). The task force will be focusing on the
English Wikipedia, but its recommendations and guidelines will
probably be useful on other projects too. Volunteers are needed, see
the blog post for more information.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2009-August/102667.html
-- call for volunteers
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Biographies_of_living_people --
resolution
=== Proposals ===
[Strategic Proposals (Call)] - the Strategic Planning team has sent
out a call for proposals. They'd like to encourage people to put their
ideas into proposals for what the Wikimedia movement should be doing
over the next five years. What's more is that you can write it in the
language of your choice.
=== Foundation ===
[Guidestar] - the Wikimedia Foundation has finally received a profile
on GuideStar, one of the largest American databases for non-profits.
Be sure to visit the profile and write a review!
http://tinyurl.com/wmfGuidestarhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GuideStar -- article on the site
[Usability: Babaco] - the Usability team is preparing for its next
release and has some new designs and ideas that need feedback from
users, community members, and interested parties.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/29/the-abcs-of-usability/ -- blog post
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Babaco_Designs -- designs
[Transcom newsletter] - the Translation committee (the people whose
job it is to coordinate translations of Wikimedia Foundation-related
items) has released its newsletter, which is a summary of open
requests. If you speak another language, please look and see if
there's anywhere that you can help out!
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/translators-l/2009-July/000982.html
[LSS: foundation-l] - a new list summary of foundation-l posts between
July 16-31 has been published. Phoebe has also posted a request for
help, reminding others that she's not the only one who can do it and
there are other lists that could be summarized too!
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2009_July_16-31http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS -- main LSS page
=== Legal ===
[EFF&NPG update] - Another update on the National Portrait Gallery
legal issue, the Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer, Fred von
Lohmann, has posted a legal analysis of the situation.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/07/eff-defends-wikipedi
=== Agenda ===
[PL: pl.wp meeting] - the Polish Wikipedia is having its annual
working meeting in Sopot, Poland from September 11-13.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GDJ_2009 (pl)
[SE: Book Fair] - Wikimedia Sweden will have a booth at the largest
book fair in Scandinavia with 100,000+ attendees. The fair will be
September 24-27, 2009.
http://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Projekt:Bok_och_Biblioteksmässan_2009 --
WMSE's page about the booth (sv)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothenburg_Book_Fair -- enwp article
about the fair
[JP: Conference] - Wikimedia Conference Japan has opened up its
official website and has finalized its details: November 22 at Tokyo
University!
http://www.wcj2009.info/ (ja)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_Japan/en --
summary on Meta (en)
[BE: Fosdem] - FOSDEM, the FOSS conference, has announced the dates
for its 2010 conference: February 6-7, 2010
http://www.fosdem.org/2010/
=== Community ===
[GLAM-WIKI] - GLAM-Wiki, Wikimedia Australia's conference for
galleries, libraries, archives, museums, and how they can collaborate
with Wikimedia, is being held this week (August 6-7) and a live
"play-by-play" can be found via twitter.
https://twitter.com/#search?q=%23GLAM-WIKI -- twitter posts
http://brianna.modernthings.org/article/230/glam-wiki-day-one -- blog
post summarizing day 1
[Simple Wikipedia] - this little known Wikipedia works since 2004 on a
encyclopedia that is using fewer words and easier grammar then the
English Wikipedia. The small community has managed to get again at the
54,000 articles mark, after falling down 2000 articles due to a
quality cleanup. For those who find other Wikipedias has become to
large to be happy there a small project like Simple could be attractive.
http://simple.wikipedia.org
[WMNL: Partnership] - just in time for GLAM-WIKI, Wikimedia Nederland
officially announced a partnership with the Tropenmuseum (one of the
largest museums in the Netherlands). This new partnership will bring
over 2100 high quality images to the Wikimedia Commons!
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/08/05/wikimedia-netherlands-and-the-tropenmu… -- blog post and press
release
[Wiki-Conference NY] - Archive.org is hosting a few videos of the
proceedings at Wiki-Conference New York, so far Jimmy Wales's keynote
and Cary Bass's OTRS presentation have been published but more will
come soon.
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Wiki?Conference%20New%20York
[IRC Meeting] - a general IRC meeting was hosted by the Group
Contacts. There was a high number of participants (~80 people) and a
wide array of topics, from contacting the GCs and new cloak options to
public logging and alternate channel management techniques.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Group_Contacts/Meetings/August_2009
[WMDE: Report from the Office] - the new Executive Director of
Wikimedia Deutschland, Pavel Richter, has published his first "Report
from the Office" on the WMDE blog. He shares his new priorities and
introduces himself.
http://blog.wikimedia.de/2009/07/31/1-bericht-aus-der-geschaftsstelle-juli-…
(de)
=== Media ===
[GLAM-Wiki] - As described above in the "Community" section, GLAM-WIKI
is being held this week and it has been covered by a few media outlets.
http://wikimedia.org.au/w/images/b/ba/GLAM_WIKI_-_Media_Release.pdf --
WMAU press release
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/313846/wikimedia_event_seeks_open_u…http://www.itwire.com/content/view/26683/1231/
[Judges & Strippers] - Wiktionary was quoted when defining a lap dance
in a legal case!
http://www.dbs.id.au/blog/law/lap-dance-wikipedia.htmlhttps://twitter.com/Wittylama/status/3102455466
[Anecdote] - there's a nice, thoughtful blog post from a
paleontologist/geoscientist and his experiences with contributing to
Wikipedia.
http://triassiccritters.blogspot.com/2009/08/contributing-to-wikipedia-as.h…
[Experts obliged?] - experts and people who find errors in Wikipedia
are obliged to correct them, a blog post says. "Whether you like it
or not, Wikipedia is the source that people go to for information."
http://blog.k1v1n.com/2009/08/if-tree-falls-in-forest-part-1.html
[We're NC-17] - Apple has rated us NC-17! Wikipanion, an iPhone/Pod
application giving access to Wikipedia (nicely formatted with extra
features), featured a warning when downloading: "Rated 17+ for the
following: Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes".
http://dougpete.wordpress.com/2009/08/01/covering-your-click/ -- blog
post about this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NC-17 -- in case you have no idea what
we're talking about
=== Stats ===
[comScore: down to #5] - Facebook is now the 4th largest site in the
world and has pushed the Wikimedia Foundation down to the 5th largest
web property. Wikipedia is still far above an beyond the most popular
non commercial website. By the way; the ranking of Wikizine is 50% up
to become the 2,983,528th most popular site :) (Source:Alexa)
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/04/facebook-is-now-the-fourth-largest-sit…
[African Wikipedias] - Swahili Wikipedia "has raced ahead with great
momentum" and surpassed Afrikaans as the largest African Wikipedia by
number of articles. There's also stats about the other African
Wikipedias and sister projects.
http://www.greenman.co.za/blog/?p=614 -- blog post
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Africa -- African languages
[Wikipedias] - the Spanish Wikipedia has reached 500,000 articles, the
Lithuanian Wikipedia has reached 90,000, and the Latin Wikipedia
reached 30,000 articles with the addition of "Magninovilla".
[EN Wikinews] - Not really a direct goal of Wikinews to have many
"articles" but nevertheless the English language Wikinews has
surpassed 15,000 news stories.
http://en.wikinews.org
=== Other news ===
[wikiHow&MediaWiki] - wikiHow showcased an interesting article (on its
twitter feed) about how to make a MediaWiki skin, worth a read if
you're ever in the need for a new skin. :-)
https://twitter.com/wikiHow/status/3111069632
[Mobile Feedback] - the Mobile Wikipedia site requested feedback from
its users and got a few interesting results, you might get a laugh out
of them!
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/08/amusing-mobile-feedback/
[Correction: WMUK&Schools] - we previously reported that the new WMUK
schools project was about revisiting its "Wikipedia Version for
Schools" project. This is actually a new initiative, one focused on
going into schools and teaching the staff and students how to
effectively use and contribute to Wikipedia.
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Initiatives/Schools_project
[Wiktionary users] - Dvortygirl posted an interesting blog post about
the type of users who are attracted to writing a dictionary. She
found that most of the people in the #wiktionary IRC channel all
shared similar characteristics to her (and a Dutch Wiktionary
visitor), more information in the blog post.
http://dvortygirl.blogspot.com/2009/08/wiktionary-type.html
=== Quote ===
"About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love
you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some
won't like you at all." - Rita Mae Brown
//////////////////////////////////////////
Editor(s): Casey, Alex, Walter
Thanks to: Cary, David, Brianna, Phoebe, Bryan, Steve, Brion, Sage,
Hampton, Signpost, Naoko, Bark, ErikZ, Jay, wikihow, Mecredis, Liam,
Jessica, Pavel, Leinad, Mile K., Dvortygirl, St-Lemur
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]].
Wikizine is a nearly weekly publication as long as there is noteworthy
news (and time)
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
and also the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/
http://www.macworld.com/article/142148/2009/08/ninjawords_schiller.html?lsr…
I found this news article on Macworld that Phil Schiller contacted the
developer of the Ninjawords dictionary app for the iPhone/iPod Touch.
He said that the application was blocked because the app pulled the
information from Wiktionary, which he says it contains offensive
"urban slang" terns that traditional dictionaries (like paper) don't
have. He said that putting a 17+ rating would be all that he needed to
do. So I starting to wonder if Apple is starting to censor apps that
can access "offensive" words, not just Wiktionary, but all of the
Wikimedia Foundation projects.
Techman224
Hello everyone.
I have two questions.
Q1) All media files that have been licensed under the GFDL and allowed
to relicense under CC-BY-SA were relicensed by
[[wmf:Resolution:Licensing update approval]]?
Q2) Now, I know, we can't import text licensed under not CC-BY-SA but
only GFDL. How about media files? Can I upload a media file licensed
under not CC-BY-SA but only GFDL?
Sorry for my poor English. Thank you.
----
[[w:ja:User:mizusumashi]]
Hi, currently, I participate a process to translate Wikipedia:What
Wikipedia is not and import that to JaWp. Since WP:NOT is a Global
Principle according to the right box of the page, I naturally insist
to import this document as it is without modifications, at least
without major modifications for basic key concepts such as
Wikipedia:Consensus.
In a final phase to fix the final translated version, a user appeared
and claimed that he cannot agree to apply WP:NOTDEMOCRACY and
WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY to JaWp, since it's not properly to reflect the
current JaWp manner, etc.(dunno what exactly he intends to mean, but
the bottom line is he doesn't agree to import these 2 sections of
WP:NOT).
Obviously, WP:NOTDEMOCRACY and WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY includes a
significant Wp Global Principe - Wikipedia:Consensus, so I explained
him that WP:NOT is not a mere policies but a Global Princile including
singificant Wp concpet. Basically, he won't listen claiming JaWp is
somewhat independent of EnWp, and this discussion is still open in
JaWp.
Another user suggested me to ask an official statement from Wikimedia
Foundation, and I also think it would be better to clear how
internlingual cordination of Wikipedia Policy works.
So, is there anyone here who knows well about this topic, and could
you advise where to start to make this clear. Thank you.
I'm taking Stevertigo off moderation. He has agreed by private email
not to continue the dispute resolution mailing list thread. Stevertigo
is a long-serving and trusted (if passionate) member of the community.
-- Tim Starling
Bad news is that I was right almost a year ago about trends of new
Wikimedians. Relatively good news is that the statistics may be
interpreted as not so bad ones. Good news is that WMF started to act
in relation to those problems around half a year ago.
I went to en.wp stats [1] and I've seen that:
* Number of new Wikipedians is lowering since March 2007. May 2009 is
the worst month since March 2006.
* Fortunately, numbers of active and very active Wikipedians are
stable since the second half of 2007.
* The problem is that curves for active and very active Wikipedians
look like just prolonged curve of the number of new Wikipedians.
But, I wanted to be sure that this is the trend on other large projects.
* German Wikipedia [2]: worse than English in the sense of new
Wikipedians, however, very stable in the sense of active and very
active ones.
* French Wikipedia [3]: Somewhat better than German, but it just shows
the earlier phase of German Wikipedia.
* Chinese Wikipedia [4]: Almost the same as French.
* Russian Wikipedia [5]: Shows even earlier phase. Lowering number of
new Wikipedians just began.
Then, I wanted to see if there are some problems in general
demographics. So, I've found demographics pyramids of USA [6], Germany
[7] and France [8] (from 2005). If we assume that our target groups
are between 15 and 24, just number of German contributors may be ~10%
less (note that the population groups are now ~5 years older). In the
case of French contributors we should expect ~5% less contributors,
while in the case of USA we should expect ~2% more contributors.
But, this is not all. We should add another variable. A significant
number of the initial "new" Wikipedians (by "initial" I assume the
raising period, in the case of en.wp, it is up to March 2007) were
older. So, younger than them were also inside of the initial group.
But, is the number of older Wikipedians so big that we may expect just
16% (de.wp), 46% (fr.wp), 60% (en.wp), of the peak number of new
Wikipedians (statistics from de.wp: January 2006=1960 new, May
2009=320 new; see others from the charts)?
* If our dominant groups are 15-24 years old and if we say that they
consist 80% of Wikipedians, we should expect that the number of new
Wikipedians compared to the peak should be: de.wp ~30%, ~35% fr.wp,
~40% en.wp.
* If our dominant groups are 15-29 years old, then the numbers are
~25%, ~30%, ~35%.
* If our dominant groups are 15-35 years old, then the numbers are
~15%, ~20%, ~25%.
(Note that you may move up lower age level and you'll get
approximately the same results.)
In the best scenario, just de.wp is in the dangerous zone. In the
worst scenario de.wp is far inside of the unsustainable development,
while fr.wp and en.wp are still staying relatively well. (However,
again, note that fr.wp and en.wp look a lot like the earlier phases of
de.wp.)
In all cases we need to think seriously how to educate younger
generations about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.
[1] - http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm
[2] - http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaDE.htm
[3] - http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaFR.htm
[4] - http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaZH.htm
[5] - http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaRU.htm
[6] - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pyramide_Etats-Unis.PNG
[7] - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pyramide_Allemagne.PNG
[8] - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pyramide_France.PNG
Hi folks:
This is just a reminder: Eugene and I will be having our regular
weekly office hours to discuss strategic planning. The time for this
week is:
Tuesdays from 20:00-21:00 UTC, which is: Tuesday, 1-2pm PDT or
Tuesday, 4-5pm EDT.
The office hours will be held in #wikimedia on the IRC freenode network.
You can get more information at: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_Office_Hours
Hope to see you there!
____________________
Philippe Beaudette
Facilitator, Strategic Planning
Wikimedia Foundation
pbeaudette(a)wikimedia.org
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
The Wikimedia Foundation was originally envisaged as a membership
organization. Per my recollection, everyone who ever edited would become a
member. That didn't happen for legal reasons, however, I believe in the
spirit of it being a membership organization. Unfortunately we now subscribe
to the recentist perspective that only those that maintain a certain pace of
editing are eligible to vote. We ignore, not only new editors who do not yet
have 600 edits, but all editors who have 600 edits but have contributed to
the projects in other ways recently, or have lapsed into just using the
projects as a useful information resource.
I highly doubt that a statistical analysis was carried out which found that
editors that don't meet this requirement skew the results. I also highly
doubt that editors that don't meet this requirement are incapable of
comprehending the statements created by those seeking election, ranking them
and making a perfectly valid choice that increases the power of the result.
In my view, the only reason to limit voting to editors with a certain number
of edits is to limit the effects of ballot stuffing. However, technical
measures can easily counteract this effect. Additionally, the more people
you allow to vote the more effective your anti-ballot stuffing
countermeasures will be, as the larger number of votes mutes the effect of
those who vote for the same person from several ip addresses.
Thus, I must conclude that this rule was created arbitrarily. And if it was
voted on, I seriously consider the result of that vote suspect, given
present knowledge.
/Brian