Dear world: Help wanted. Plz send a rowboat and a few paddles.
It’s no secret by now that a volcano in Iceland with an
unpronounceable name decided to get cranky this week and stranded
hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.
With that out of the way, Did you know… that half the Wikimedia
Foundation staff and a lot of volunteers who were in Berlin for the
Wikimedia Developers and Chapters conferences (since renamed,
collectively, “Ashcon”), were among those who were stuck?
We’re making the best of it… we’ve got it better than a lot of
people. We’re in a very nice hotel in downtown Berlin, and we’ve got
food and drink. We’re missing our families and really want to be
home, but the whole trip has a very “summer camp” feeling to it now.
We’ve done laundry, and “the boys” (as Danese affectionately calls
them) are whacking some Mediawiki bugs from our makeshift office in
the lobby. The kind people at Wikimedia-Germany have been wonderful
hosts, arranging outings, giving tours of their office, and connecting
us with local Wikimedians for sight-seeing tours.
We’re getting pretty good at ordering curry-wurst, and we’ve found the
local Ka-De-We department store (which Danese affectionately labeled
“heaven”). On the whole, we’re doing okay. Some of us are even
optimistic about making it home someday soon. Others are practicing
their German. But Iceland, you’re on notice: we’re holding a grudge.
____________________
Philippe Beaudette
Facilitator, Strategy Project
Wikimedia Foundation
philippe(a)wikimedia.org
Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
There was lately a lot of research about making Wikipedia's usability better
for editing.
Is there any research about the way in which Wikipedia's Actual Readers use
hyperlinks in Wikipedia, both internal and external?
I am wondering about it, because you know, we have Manual of Style for
internal and external links, essays about the pros and cons of red links,
bots that remove over-linking etc. - yet time after time i meet Actual
Readers that tell me that they didn't understand a word in an article, even
though this word was linked to a good article that explained its meaning.
But they didn't click it and because of that they gave up on understanding
the whole article.
If One Stupid Reader would tell me such a thing, i wouldn't mind, but Many
Clever Readers told me that. Did anyone try to think about it deeply?
--
אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
Amir Elisha Aharoni
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
"We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
As requested, here's the weekly Flagged Protection update.
Now recovered from the developer meeting, we have made further progress,
and have only a few known issues between us and release.
If you'd like to verify that for yourself, start here:
http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
To see what we've changed this week, there's a list here:
http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Flagged_Protection_upd…
To see the upcoming work, it's listed in our tracker, under Current and
Backlog:
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/projects/46157
We are very close now; only a few UI issues remain between us and final
testing, after which will hopefully come a launch on the English Wikipedia.
We expect to release to labs again next week, and each week thereafter
until this goes live on the English Wikipedia.
William
(Crossposted to wikien and foundation:)
Some points about IPA on all language wikis.
1) As a rule, all language wikis should use International Phonetic
Alphabet as their standard pronunciation scheme. Very few appear to
actually do.
2) All language wikis should attempt to use IPA to pronounce the
endonym of a foreign word, not the exonymic re-pronunciation (ie. Iraq
= /iːˈrɑːk/ not /ɪˈræk/).
3) With rare exceptions, IPA should be the default phonemic
transcription scheme, and
alternate schemes such as [[Wikipedia:Pronunciation respelling key]]
should be avoided or deprecated.
4) Feedback from languages about IPA should be useful. IPA is actually
quite flexible about exactness, while still being phonetically
precise. If there are flaws in IPA itself, the Wikipedia community can
help raise them for the Internation Phonetic Association.
5) Ambiguity about how it is supposed to be used is a cross-project
issue should be dealt with at the Foundation level (ie. global not
just inter-wiki policy).
-Stevertigo
As I'm sending this, I'm wondering: have we actually started an
announce-only list? If so, and if someone reminds me, I will post this
there too :-)
Hi folks,
I'm delighted to tell you that Philippe Beaudette will be staying with
the Wikimedia Foundation following the completion of the strategy
project this summer. This makes me really happy: Philippe has been
doing terrific work, and I'm delighted he's agreed to stay on with us.
In his new role, Philippe will become the Wikimedia Foundation's
first-ever Head of Reader Relations. As such, he will act as an
advocate for readers inside the projects and within the staff. His
first focus will be to work with Wikimedia volunteers to establish and
maintain systems enabling them to provide good service to readers who
have inquiries, complaints and comments. A lot of this will involve
taking existing FAQ material, cleaning it up, and making it publicly
available to readers. That'll involve some writing and synthesizing
work, and also coordinating with volunteers to have material
translated and localized.
Philippe's background makes him ideal for this role.
He has been a long-time member of the Wikimedia volunteer community,
both as an administrator on several sites, and as a volunteer for
OTRS, where he successfully resolved some particularly difficult
complaints regarding biographies of living people. He's very familiar
with Wikimedia project policies and practices.
Outside Wikimedia, Philippe has significant customer service
experience, including running a large customer contact centre for
Convergys Corporation, a global firm specializing in relationship
management. He also helped many organizations, including two of the
world's largest insurance providers, develop customer service
environments, while working for Siebel. He also has a background in
American electoral politics, including working as Deputy Campaign
Manager, Operations Manager and Technology Director on a number of
state and federal campaigns, as well as for the non-profit Progressive
Alliance Foundation.
He has worked in the United States, Italy, and the United Kingdom.
All of this, in my view, makes Philippe ideal to handle reader
relations for us: he's got lots of experience managing complex
stakeholder relationships with tact and sensitivity, and creating
systems that scale.
Both Philippe and I expect his role will evolve once the Chief Global
Program Officer (CGPO) arrives. I thank Philippe for his flexibility
and trust in taking this on and relocating to San Francisco, despite
that lack of certainty :-)
Philippe will report to me until the CGPO arrives, whereupon he'll
report to that person. He's in the midst of beginning his move to San
Francisco now (with a side trip to Berlin for the chapters meeting).
You might wonder why this job wasn't posted and boarded. Generally, I
do aim to post and board all jobs; I think it helps the Wikimedia
Foundation to surface the best-possible candidates, to be fair in our
hiring, and to be seen to be fair. In this instance though, I decided
it was better not to. Philippe has done a great job over the past nine
months, we are undoubtedly going to need the kinds of skills and
experiences he brings to us, and I didn't want him to start
job-hunting as his work on the strategy project came to a close.
Given that, and given that the job may evolve when the CGPO arrives,
posting and boarding -in this particular context- seemed
inappropriate.
Philippe has been a great addition to our team in the time he's been
with us, and I look forward to his continued contributions. Please
join me in welcoming and congratulating him.
Thanks,
Sue
--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
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
Hi,
A quick reminder that this year's Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) is
taking place in London on 24th April 2010 - in 10 days time! There are
still tickets left - and you can register at the following link:
http://www.okfn.org/okcon/register/
Speakers and sessions include:
* 'State of the Nation' Keynotes:
- Matthias Schindler, Wikimedia (Germany) on 'Bibliographic Data
and the Public Domain'
- Glyn Moody, on the 'Post-Analogue World'
- Peter Murray-Rust, on 'Recent Developments in Open Science'
- Chris Taggart, on 'Open Local Government Data'
- Sören Auer, on 'Linked Open Data'
- Jordan Hatcher, on 'Open Licensing for Data'
* Ideas and Culture with talks on analyzing 'Dickens Letters' and
'Making the Physical from the Digital'
* Open Bibliographic Information with talks on 'The Itinerant Poetry
Library' and the 'Journal Commons'
* Community Driven Research with talks on 'Climate data' and 'Open
Archaeology'
* Civic Information with talks on 'Using Open Government Data to
Profile Politicians' and the 'Straight Choice'
* Open Government Data and PSI in the EU which looks at the current
state of play in France, Norway, Germany, the UK and elsewhere
* Tools with talks on 'Large-scale data handling and revisioning'
with the Genome, Ontowiki, CKAN and more
* Open Data and the Semantic Web with talks about South Korean
DBPedia and Thesaurus Management Tool ‘Pool Party’
* Open Data in International Development including talks from
PublishWhatYouFund and on OpenStreetMap in Haiti
Further details are available at:
http://blog.okfn.org/2010/04/14/okcon-2010-nearly-here-24th-april-2010-in-l…http://www.okfn.org/okcon/programme
More information:
* Main conference page: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/
* FAQ: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/faq
If you have any questions please email Sara Wingate-Gray at sara.gray(a)okfn.org.
We look forward to seeing people there!
All the best,
--
Jonathan Gray
Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://blog.okfn.orghttp://twitter.com/jwyghttp://identi.ca/jwyg
Hi everyone,
The next strategic planning office hours are:
Tuesday, 6 April, from 20:00-21:00 UTC, which is:
-Tuesday (1-2pm PDT)
-Tuesday (4-5pm EDT)
Office hours will be a great opportunity to discuss the work that's
happened as well as the work to come.
As always, you can access the chat by going to
https://webchat.freenode.net and filling in a username and the channel
name (#wikimedia-strategy). You may be prompted to click through a
security warning. It's fine. More details at:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours
Thanks! Hope to see many of you there.
____________________
Philippe Beaudette
Facilitator, Strategy Project
Wikimedia Foundation
philippe(a)wikimedia.org
Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
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Hello,
I've been reading the survey.
http://wikipediasurvey.org/docs/Wikipedia_NonContributors_15March2010-FINAL…
Suggestions:
a) In my opinion, one of the things that make the learning curb steep to
start editing is the fact that most of the essential concepts of
Wikipedia are discussed through accronyms: ie, NPOV.
If a bot could automatically add an explicitation, visible when hovering
the mouse on the acronym, then the discussions pages would be self
contained.
b) Currently, the edition mode shows a different page with a different
syntax than the article page which immediately rebukes the would-be
editor. A WYSIWYG edition mode coupled with an AJAX technology would
leave the editor in familiar grounds.
c) A synthesis and a link to the main rules for writing an article
should be present when in edition mode. Currently, if you want to know
how to respect the conventions, you have to search for them by yourself.
d) The notices that state one or other way that an article doesn't meet
the wikipedia standard (ie, "this article needs clean up") assume that
the reader knows what the standard is. A link to an example of what is
expected from the editor would clarify things: ie, an example of a
"before clean up article/ after clean up article".
e) I think there are two main psychological steps required for editing
and sharing knowledge.
I - You notice that something is wrong or incomplete. That is, you know
something that is not in the article.
II - You find a way to pour your knowledge. You must be confident and
comfortable with this way.
Currently, step II can be achieved through two options: you edit the
article or you start a discussion. This requires time, confidence,
experience and will. Sometimes you just want to point out an obscure
passage or an external link, without editing the article or leaving
comments.
I think those procedures should be assisted so that the editor can
contribute with a single click or a link, leaving the rest of the task
to others.
f) I think that some potential editors are afraid of their first
contribution. Once they're engaged and lost their a priori and fears,
they should be more proactive. So I think small and easy participations
should be made available to them. For example, right-clicking a word and
correcting it's spelling with an integrated dictionary instead of going
through the editing interface could be a determining step.
g) Youth. There is no data on youth in the survey. I think they have
specific patterns of thoughts and behaviours. Wikipedia should be
adapted to them too. They're the future.
Cheers
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Hi all;
I have been reading the recent report about the 2008 survey.[1] It is
divided into some parts, but the most interesting (for me) is that about
non-contributors.
We know about the Wikimedia Usability Initiative, which wants to measurably
increase the usability of Wikipedia for new contributors (new toolbar, new
upload form, new skin, ...). But I want to share with you two paragraphs
about the survey:[2]
[...]The primary reason non-contributors would consider contributing is if
they “knew there were
specific topic areas that needed [their] help” (34-41%). Almost as important
an incentive, (31-37%)
for all groups, is a clear indication “that other people would benefit from
[their] efforts”.[...]
...and...
[...]We can expect contribution to increase if explanations of the technical
aspects of contributing were
made more readily accessible to readers; if it was made more explicitly
clear that readers'
contributions are welcome, and that people can contribute in many ways
including those that don't
require domain expertise, such as, for instance, correcting language or
obvious errors. The single
biggest incentive to increase contribution is probably making more clear
what topics and what
articles need editing. Wikipedia already has notices on pages which do not
meet quality standards,
need clean-up, etc. However, these notices are perhaps not explicit enough
in addressing and
engaging readers who are not yet part of the Wikipedia contributor
community. Clearer, explicit
identification of topics where readers might contribute, perhaps through
notices and requests not
limited to single articles, are likely to increase contribution: e.g., if a
reader is looking at several
articles on psychology, he or she could be presented with a request to
contribute to other articles on
psychology.[...]
As you can read, non-contributors want to know where they can help, so, a
new toolbar or a new upload form only would be used if they know what to
write and what image is needed to upload.
Also, non-contributors choice "I would be much likelier to contribute if...
the technology was easier to use" with a very low percent (compared to the
other answers).
Perhaps, we need a Wikipedia Edit Campaign (similar to the famous annual
Wikipedia Donation Campaign) with a sitenotice asking people to edit where
they might contribute, using their navigation preferences or
geolocalisation.
Best wishes,
emijrp
[1]
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/04/02/new-reports-from-november-2008-survey-…
[2]
http://wikipediasurvey.org/docs/Wikipedia_NonContributors_15March2010-FINAL…