[WikiX-l] Viva Italia!

[Catrin Schoneville]

Over the last weeks we generated a lot of media coverage - partly
international - in view of our initiative 'Wikipedia for World Heritage' and
the online petition already hit the milestone of 25.000!



In the meantime we prepared a draft with which we plan to contact people of
public interest and aks for their vocal support of "Wikipedia for World
Heritage!" Please find an English draft version attached! As always, please
feel free to modify it according to your needs. Furthermore, if anybody of
you need material or support of any kind just tell us. We'll be happy to
help!



The petition text has been translated into more than 30
languages<http://wikipedia.de/wke/Petition>by now. Wow! Thanks! It
would just be fantastic if we could also add
a few more subtitled
versions<http://www.universalsubtitles.org/de/videos/9ksMVEr831lm/>of
Jimmy's video message. Your contributions matter so much! By the way,
note that the number of people who have signed the petition has increased
significantly in the last days, especially with people from Italy signing
extensively. That's because Italian users put a side notice
<http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagina_principale>in the Italian Wikipedia.
Thanks for this one! Might be a good idea to have more translation of
the petition
form <http://wikipedia.de/wke/Special:Petition?setlang=en> itself. Just send
it to me or Sebastian.

Here's  the draft that I mentioned above:

Dear...,

when the free encyclopedia was founded in 2001 nobody could have dreamed of
the success story it would be ten years later. With more than those 18
million articles in 280 languages Wikipedia today accounts for the largest
collection of knowledge in the history of mankind. The concept of free
knowledge as a whole has grown with Wikipedia’s success.

It started with a simple idea: “Imagine a world in which every single human
being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.”

In the beginning this idea was considered utopian, but in just ten years we
all have made big steps towards reaching this goal. Ten years in which the
vision of free knowledge has evolved into a system of sharing knowledge
beyond national und cultural borders. The enthusiastic work of volunteers
has already changed the global dissemination of information profoundly.
Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary is a wonderful event to mark all this and show
that the free encyclopedia today is so much more than a website where people
find free information.

Wikimedia Deutschland has recently started an initiative to convince the
UNESCO of recognizing Wikipedia as the first digital World Cultural Heritage
site. With “Wikipedia for World Heritage!” we want to discuss and to
pinpoint what it means that there are tens of thousands of activists all
over the world who spend their free time collecting mankind's knowledge and
freely sharing it with everyone else. Their efforts change society,
education and ways of thinking.

Wikipedia meets many of the UNESCO criteria for World Heritage recognition,
e.g. that "the site represent a masterpiece of human creative genius".
However, this initiative does not aim at meeting single UNESCO criteria but
at emphasizing the project as collective work and the greatest collection of
human knowledge in history. Please help us to convince the UNESCO of
recognizing Wikipedia as the first ever digital World Heritage site.

Please join in and sign our online petition. It will be presented to the
UNESCO at the beginning of next year. More than 25000 people have already
expressed their appreciation for Wikipedia by signing the petition. We would
highly appreciate if you did the same. Every supporter is most welcome to
spread the word and the goals of the initiative. Feel free to send us a
video message, a letter of support or join us for an interview. Any kind of
support brought forward in your name will greatly increase the likehood of
this initiative reaching its goal.


-- 


Mit besten Grüßen
Catrin Schoneville
Pressesprecherin
-------------------------------------
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Eisenacher Straße 2
10777 Berlin

Telefon 030 - 219 158 26-0
www.wikimedia.de


*Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der jeder Mensch freien Zugang zu der
Gesamtheit des Wissens der Menschheit hat. *
*
Helfen Sie mit, dass WIKIPEDIA von der UNESCO als erstes gloabales und
digitales Weltkulturerbe anerkannt wird. Unterzeichnen Sie die
Online-Petition:
http://wikipedia.de/wke/Main_Page?setlang=de
*
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
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