Hi everyone,
I'm pleased to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
Wikimedia Ghana User Group [1] as a Wikimedia User Group [2]. The group
plans to support the Ghanaian Wikimedia contributing community, to promote
Wikimedia projects and free content in Ghana, and to encourage the use of
Wikimedia resources in education.
Let's welcome them to the family of Wikimedia affiliates!
Regards,
Kirill Lokshin
Affiliations Committee
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Ghana
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Wikimedi…
Dear all,
Wikimania has been over for a month now and it is already time to discuss
the next Wikimedia event, the Wikimedia Conference.
A year ago, for the very first time, the movement set up a selection
process to choose the host of the conference, 4 chapters applied and WMDE
was chosen to host the 2014 edition. Setting up this process has improved
the planning of the Wikimedia Conference and it would be ideal to follow
the same organization for next year’s event.
Wikimedia CH did not participate last year, but expressed its willingness
to host for the 2015 edition.
As we are already in September and that the next Wikimedia conference
should be held in May 2015, we believe that the selection process to choose
the next hosting team should begin as soon as possible to obtain the best
deals location wise and also to have the time to prepare the program.
As a representative of a candidate who wishes to apply for the hosting of
the 2015 edition, we would like to open this discussion and put upfront the
suggestion to form:
*a location committee, in charge of setting up the bidding process and to
evaluate them
**a program committee, in charge of setting up the conference program
By keeping the smooth process established last year, we can address two
important issues, having a cost efficient conference if planned well in
advance, and having a content efficient conference with well defined SMART
objectives ;-)
I took the liberty to set-up a Wikimedia Conference 2015 page, as well as a
bidding page in order to kick off those discussions.
In the hopes of setting up a constructive and collaborative process, I wish
you all a very good day.
_________________________________________________________
Anh CHUNG, Chief Administrative Officer
"Wikimedia CH" – Association for the advancement of free knowledge –
www.wikimedia.ch
Office +41 21 340 66 20
Mobile +41 78 888 76 38
Hi everyone,
I'm pleased to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group [1] as a Wikimedia User Group [2]. The group is
focused on developing the community of LGBT Wikimedians and LGBT content
within Wikimedia projects, and plans to be active around the world.
Let's welcome them to the family of Wikimedia affiliates!
Regards,
Kirill Lokshin
Affiliations Committee
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_LGBT/Portal
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Wikimedi…
On Sun, Aug 31, 2014 at 8:59 AM, Yann Forget <yannfo(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> the most urgent and important thing is to fix the
> UploadWizard.
This is indeed underway, and has been for some time, with focus on bug
fixes and code quality improvements.
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/q/UploadWizard,n,z
Recent work on Media Viewer has been primarily UX prototyping and
validation of the prototype. Based on user research and feedback,
we'll implement only very tightly scoped improvements that have been
validated in the prototype or that require no UX validation (e.g.
attribution and performance improvements).
The best place to follow all the work the team is doing is the
multimedia mailing list:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/multimedia
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Hi everyone,
I'm pleased to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
Cascadia Wikimedians [1] as a Wikimedia User Group [2]. The group is based
in the Northwestern United States, and plans to focus on organizational
outreach and supporting the education program in their region.
Let's welcome them to the family of Wikimedia affiliates!
Regards,
Kirill Lokshin
Affiliations Committee
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_Wikimedians
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Cascadia…
Rupert, LGBT is an acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender. Hope that helps.
Sent from my HTC One™ S on T-Mobile. America’s First Nationwide 4G Network.
----- Reply message -----
From: "rupert THURNER" <rupert.thurner(a)gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group
Date: Sun, Sep 14, 2014 2:53 AM
hi kirill, what does lgbt stand for? i tried to look it up on the portal
link, but no luck. btw the portal page does not work very good in mobile
view, as half of the tabs are hidden.
rupert
Am 14.09.2014 03:51 schrieb "Kirill Lokshin" <kirill.lokshin(a)gmail.com>:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm pleased to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
> Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group [1] as a Wikimedia User Group [2]. The group is
> focused on developing the community of LGBT Wikimedians and LGBT content
> within Wikimedia projects, and plans to be active around the world.
>
> Let's welcome them to the family of Wikimedia affiliates!
>
> Regards,
> Kirill Lokshin
> Affiliations Committee
>
> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_LGBT/Portal
>
> [2]
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Wikimedi…
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
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> Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
>> First, let's make one thing clear: the reader doesn't exist; it's just a
>> rhetorical trick, and a very dangerous one. For more:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stupidity_of_the_reader
=========
While I think we may have broadly similar views of the WikiWorld, I sharply
disagree with Mr. Leva's analysis of various Wikipedia participant
categories.
The notion that today's Wikipedia writing process in any way resembles the
idealized massively expanding 2 sentence [[Alan Alda]] article cited by the
late Aaron Swartz in his 2006 essay "Who Writes Wikipedia" has very little
to do with reality. Articles today do NOT start with two unsourced lines
before being crowdsourced into finished pieces by a cast of hundreds.
Instead, Wikipedia articles today start the same way that the "Stupidity of
the Reader" essay itself started: through the mass contribution of a single
person (Federico Leva), tweaked and polished by several others leads to the
dangerous idea that everyone who touches Wikipedia in any capacity is an
equal "User," with those participating frequently a "Power User."
This is the conception of the paid bureaucracy, who would like nothing
better than to declare the universal set to be hundreds of millions of
equal "Users" who can thus be deferred as a "silent majority." In this way
any and all decisions made by the 10,000 or so person volunteer community
can be cast aside as statistically insignificant — thereby assuring that
what the 200-or-so person professional bureaucracy says, goes.
In reality there are various levels of contributors, ranging from the IP
who casually corrects one random spelling error, to the dedicated and
devoted people who guard the gates at Recent Changes or who systemically
put the work of others to style or who write new esoteric content.
Certainly, turning casual contributors of a short article about something
local or personal to them into regular contributors of editing work of
various kinds is vitally important.
Mr. Leva's argument that "The user can (and should) turn from a reader to
an editor, and vice versa, at any time." might sound good on paper, put it
is actually provides the ideological basis for unfettered site rule by a
professional caste.
We are not "power users." We are the volunteer community.
Tim Davenport
"Carrite" on En-WP /// "Randy from Boise" at WPO
Corvallis, OR (USA)
See:
Aaron Swartz article: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia
Frederico Leva essay:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stupidity_of_the_reader
-----
A Dissident View of Crowdsourcing
"It must be said that Wikipedia does not make it easy to play nicely. Its
basic set-up is a bit like having people try to draw a copy of the Mona
Lisa in the sand, while herds of children and strangers walk through the
emerging picture, leave their footprints, or try to blank or improve bits.
And you're required to assume they are all doing so in good faith. It would
drive anyone mad.
"Received wisdom is, too many cooks spoil the broth. Crowdsourcing wisdom
is, the more cooks, the better. But in practice, every featured article in
Wikipedia is the work of one writer...or a small team. Crowdsourcing does
not result in excellent articles." —JN466, on Wikipediocracy, July 2012.
Having listened for the last week or two, here's what I'm getting as the
WMF perspective as the three primary things attempting to be remedied with
Flow:
1) Newcomers and casual contributors have a very hard time using wiki
markup language and find it difficult to participate in talk pages. Flow
will be more intuitive for them.
2) The rendition of talk page discussion threads on mobile devices is bad.
With more people using mobile devices and fewer using laptops, this problem
is only going to become worse over time. Flow will alleviate this problem.
3) Wikitext becomes a sprawling mess on large talk pages, leading to vast
walls of tl;dr text a morass of unsearchable archives. Flow will better
organize discussions.
Is this a fair representation of the rationale behind Flow? Am I missing
some main (as opposed to utopian and theoretical) rationale for the change?
=====
Now here is a list of the things which talk pages currently do:
1) Mark articles as significant to various work projects and track the
content "grade" for each.
2) Provides details and links for BLP and other policies related to the
subject.
3) Records the history of each page with respect to Articles For Deletion
challenges, Good Article peer review histories, etc.
4) Maintains a record of actual and potential Conflict of Interest
declarations.
5) Registers reader comments about the content.
6) Provides a forum for editor debates over content, sometimes including
large blocks of proposed or removed text and including at times binding
RFCs over content and detailed merger discussions.
7) Accumulates requested edits for protected articles.
In addition, User-talk pages:
8) Gather warning templates and notification messages about editing
problems.
9) Serves as a de facto email system for communication between editors.
====
My outside the box suggestion is this: it seems likely that at least some
of the vital functions of talk pages are going to be crushed by Flow and
the mass archiving that its adoption will entail. Perhaps it would be
better for a new third page to be generated for each article:
MAINSPACE PAGE (the article itself)
ABOUT THIS PAGE (templates and permanent records including 1, 2, 3, 4 above)
DISCUSS THIS PAGE (the actual talk page for discussion of content and
requested edits)
Bear in mind that I still have no confidence that Flow will be superior to
wikitext in any but the most superficial ways. I do suggest, however, that
some future permutation of this or some other new discussion format has a
better chance of acceptance by the core volunteer community if it preserves
many essential functions of talk pages unaltered.
Tim Davenport
"Carrite" on En-WP /// "Randy from Boise" on WPO
Corvallis, OR (USA)