The on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2023-05-12Welcome
Carrie!
We are welcoming Carrie Coxwell to the team! Carrie is joining us as a full
stack software engineer, and her first task will be to support the
development of the frontend to get us ready for launch. Here is Carrie’s
introduction in her own words:
Hi, all!
I'm writing to you from Memphis, Tennessee, where I have been living for
the last nine years. I'm a senior software engineer with a focus on
front-end technologies. My professional background is an eclectic one: in
addition to being a software engineer, I've worked as a parking garage
attendant (a bucket list item of mine; go figure), copy editor, classroom
teacher, professional musician, and as a (truly terrible) waitress.
My interests are many and varied. I am passionate about animals, language,
teaching, open source hardware, canceling plans, music, Japanese and
Taiwanese stationery, Bob's Burgers, and rainbows — just to name a few. I
dream of high-quality, free, and equitable public K-12 education for all
kids.
When I'm not working, these days you can catch me engaged in my current
hyperfixations: knitting and trying to reverse engineer NYT's Wordlebot
(though not at the same time). I'm thrilled to be joining the Abstract
Wikipedia team.
Join me in welcoming Carrie to the team and the Wikimedia movement! We are
looking forward to working with her.
History of Wikidata
Last week, Denny presented the "History of Wikidata" at The Web Conference
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Web_Conference> WWW2023 in Austin,
Texas. The Web Conference is the leading academic conference on all topics
Web. The presentation was part of the History of the Web special track,
which was inaugurated last year, and I can recommend the track for its
talks and papers.
The paper “Wikidata: The Making Of” has been written with Markus Krötzsch
and Lydia Pintscher. It is available as Open Access. It was written on the
occasion of celebrating ten years of Wikidata last fall. Abstract Wikipedia
is mentioned in the outlook.
A fifteen minute video presentation of the paper (but not a recording of
the presentation) is available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3-nklyrDx4
The paper is available as PDF here:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3543873.3585579
As HTML here:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3543873.3585579
Volunteer’s corner
The Volunteer’s corner this Monday was well attended, but unfortunately
pretty botched by technical difficulties with Jitsi. Next time, we hope
that the situation will have improved, and we will try Jitsi again. But we
will have a Google Meet link handy in case we run into issues. See you in
June!