Chapters update report Wikimedia Nederland November 2008
==Wikimedia Conferentie Nederland==
Wikimedia Nederland organized the annual Wikimedia Conferentie Nederland on
November 1. Please see our previous report for more details.
==Green Paper reaction==
Wikimedia Nederland submitted a reaction to the ''Green Paper on Copyright
in the Knowledge Economy''[1] to the European Committee. This reaction was
written within the working group Groenboek, and translated into English[2].
The translated version was sent to the other chapters, with the suggestion
to submit a reaction as well. Wikimedia Deutschland[3], Wikimedia Italia[4]
and Wikimédia Magyarország (Hungary)[5] have submitted a reaction based on
this. Wikimedia Polska submitted a reaction seperately earlier on. The
working group consisted of Elly, Wutsje, Esther, Marco and Fruggo.
==Speeches&Conferences==
Wikimedia Nederland was present at FIFI2008 and Hay gave a speech at PLUG in
Hilversum.
==Press attention==
In November there was a lot of attention for Wikimedia and Wikipedia in The
Netherlands. A full overview can be found as always on [6] (Dutch). Press
attention focused on the Wikimedia Conferentie Nederland, the blocking of
the German Wikipedia, the fundraiser, the decision by Winkler Prins (the
Dutch traditional encyclopedia) to stop publishing paper encyclopediae, the
legal issue described below and the 500.000 articles on the Dutch language
Wikipedia.
==Legal==
Wikimedia Nederland has been sued by a Dutch business man to a) remove his
article from Wikipedia and b) give the personal details of the author of the
article. Wikimedia Nederland is of the opinion that it is not able to comply
to either of the demands, and above that, that the demands are not
justifiable. The judge will rule on December 10.
==Fundraising==
Wikimedia Nederland signed the fundraising agreement with the Wikimedia
Foundation.
==Links==
*[1]:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:52008DC0466:EN:…
*[2]:
http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bestand:20081123_Brief_Groenboek_aan_EU.pdf
*[3]: http://blog.wikimedia.de/2008/12/13/stellungnahme-grunbuch/
*[4]: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Alcuni_Wikipediani/Libro_verde
*[5]:
http://wiki.media.hu/w/images/6/65/Response_to_Green_Paper_on_Copyright_in_…
*[6]: http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Persaandacht
The November newsletter of Wiki UK Limited has been published at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_UK_v2.0/Newsletter/
November2008 and is copied below for your convenience:
Summary:
Wikimedians in the United Kingdom are working to set up a chapter of
the Wikimedia Foundation, which will aid and encourage people to
collect, develop and effectively disseminate knowledge. A board of
five members has been elected, and a company has now been set up.
Membership applications are now invited, and will be processed as
soon as we have a bank account. The organisation needs the support
and involvement of people like you.
Creating a chapter
Wikimedians in the United Kingdom have been working since 2006 to
create a chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation. A company - Wiki
Educational Resources Ltd - was incorporated on 14 February 2006.
This company had several problems with recognition from the
Foundation and opening bank accounts which meant the decision was
made in August 2008 to wind the company up. The community decided to
start the process to create a new company, firstly electing an
initial Board.
Elections
From 20 - 27 September, the community voted for an initial board of
five members to incorporate the new organisation, set up a bank
account, request charitable status and arrange the first Annual
General Meeting (AGM). Nine people put their names forward to stand
and eight were accepted as candidates - the ninth being rejected as
they were under 18. These five candidates received the support of
more than the required 50% of voters:
* Kwan Ting Chan (88.5%; Chair);
* Michael Conn (57.7%; Communication Officer) ;
* Tom Holden (92.3%; Treasurer);
* Mike Peel (53.2%; Membership Secretary);
* Andrew Turvey (73.1%; Secretary).
Of the 37 people who registered in time to vote, 26 (70%) cast their
ballots. The board members took up the positions listed alongside
their names. New board elections will be held at the first AGM.
Status of Company Formation
The board has agreed a timeline of objectives. Good progress is
being made. Following extensive discussions, a company named '''Wiki
UK Ltd''' has been set up and was incorporated on 5 November. The
company's Memorandum of Association and Articles of Association have
been agreed, and these include the organisation's objectives:
The charity's Object is to aid and encourage people to collect,
develop and effectively disseminate knowledge and other educational,
cultural and historic content in the public domain or under a license
that allows everyone to freely use, distribute and modify said
content, by means including (but not limited to):
1 promoting freely accessible online information repositories whose
content is freely and collaboratively editable;
2 acting as a voice and representative for the community of UK
residents and citizens who use and edit such repositories;
3 preserving world heritage, and particularly that of the UK, through
such repositories;
4 supporting the charitable work of the Wikimedia Foundation;
5 enabling, assisting, promoting and promulgating wider participation
in the creation, dissemination and expansion of information and
educational resources covering the world's knowledge and languages to
all persons, everywhere;
6 furthering the development of electronic, printed, and other
resources required to support such participation;
7 producing, publishing and developing, or cause to be produced,
published and developed, information resources, whether in printed,
electronic, or other forms;
8 making use of or encouraging the use of information resources for
the advancement of education; and
9 encouraging the adoption of practices and policies to widen
education, participation and dissemination of information worldwide;
The chapters committee has passed a resolution to support us becoming
a chapter of Wikimedia. This does not yet give us chapter status, as
the board of the Wikimedia Foundation must decide on this, and their
next meeting is from 9th-11th January.
Membership
We have decided to have one membership level to start with. Members
will have the right to elect the Board, submit motions and vote at
AGMs, thereby playing a central role in determining the activities of
the organisation. The membership fee will be £12/year, reduced to £6/
year for concessions. These fees may be revised, and additional
levels of membership created, at an AGM or by future Boards.
We are now inviting applications for membership of Wiki UK Limited;
you can get the application form from http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/
Image:Wiki_UK_Ltd_membership_application_form.pdf. We will process
these as soon as we have a bank account. We are currently applying
for a bank account and hope that this will be up and running by late
December.
More information on membership can be found at http://
meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_UK_v2.0/Membership.
Getting involved
In order to aid and encourage people to collect, develop and
effectively disseminate knowledge, the chapter needs the support and
involvement of people like you. Now is a great time to get
involved. If you haven't already done so, you can subscribe to this
newsletter. You may also like to subscribe to the WikimediaUK
mailing list, where discussion on the chapter is taking place. You
can additionally pose questions or make suggestions on Meta Wiki,
where you can also respond to the items raised for consultation by
the Board. Our Board Meetings held on irc are generally open to the
public to listen and contribute and the agenda, reports, minutes and
IRC log are posted on the wiki
Wiki UK Limited is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in
England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. The Registered Office is at
23 Cartwright Way, Nottingham, NG9 1RL
This is *the first report of Wikimedia Hungary* (or as we call it Wikimédia
Magyarország, or just WMM). During the reporting period we were dealing with
the official business of the incorporation. This report focuses on our
activities during this time, and more.
*You can find this report on Meta-Wiki: [[Wikimedia
chapters/Reports/Wikimédia Magyarország/August–October 2008]].*
*== Activities ==
=== August 2008 ===*
The plans and discussions about a Hungarian chapter were brewing for over a
year by August (c.f. our short summary on the subject on [[Wikimédia
Magyarország]]). At a meeting held on 1 August we decided on finally
establishing the chapter. This is what happened after the meeting in August:
* We contacted the Chapters Committee with our plans, and than adapted those
to the requirement of the WMF.
* Opened a temporary, closed wiki for discussions about founding the chapter
(http://sunfire.mokk.bme.hu/wikimedia).
* We gathered information regarding WMF policies and guidelines, the local
legal environment, our fiscal needs and capabilities.
* Contacted as many chapters as we could to have a clearer idea of what to
expect, and asked for advice. We received valuable input from all the
chapters we contacted, and also a welcoming attitude in forming a new
organisation in the family of chapters.
* During this month we discussed the operation, activities and goals of the
planned chapter, and drafted our bylaws.
* Through the help of our president we secured the domains ''wiki.media.hu''
and ''wikimédia.hu <http://xn--wikimdia-f1a.hu>'' (unfortunately we found
that ''wikimedia.hu'' is "squatted").
* We prepared the introduction of the Flagged Revisions extension on the
Hungarian Wikipedia. After a period of testing on a copy of Wikipedia, the
community has approved and asked for the introduction of this extension on 1
September. A Bugzilla request (
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15568) has been filed to this
effect, now we are waiting for the developers to implement the decision.
*=== September 2008 ===*
* On 3 September we had a meeting and decided on a schedule of the founding.
The local tax laws put pressure on us to incorporate before the end of the
year, which at the time didn't seem entirely possible.
* Meanwhile, the admins of the Hungarian Wikipedia have started removing
images that cannot be legally used according to Hungarian copyright law.
Hungarian law doesn't recognise the concept of fair use and there are only
limited cases when a copyrighted work can be used without permission.
Finding proper legal expertise over the years to advise on crucial issues
has been extremely difficult, though we can acknowledge the help of the
Hungarian Creative Commons community. Many questions remain open that in the
future we hope will be answered by legal counsel made available through the
facilities of WM Hungary.
* Concurrently we applied and received [[OTRS]] access, established a
Hungarian information and permissions queue, and adopted a way of handling
permissions similar to the one used on Commons.
* We have redoubled our involvement in the translation effort, translating
some of the Foundation web pages that would be useful for our chapter's
website as well. Note, that MediaWiki localisation of the Wikipedia UI has
been constantly close to 100% for a longer period of time.
* We introduced ourselves on Meta-Wiki ([[Wikimédia Magyarország]] and
[[Wikimedia Chapters]]), and started a community wide discussion in the
Hungarian projects about the chapter.
* Concurrently, in the first half of the month we have sent the draft of the
bylaws to the Chapters Committee.
* The end of September has been significant in the life of our chapter, we
organised the founding meeting on 27 September in Budapest. At the meeting
20 founding members showed up from different parts of Hungary and one member
even travelled from Transylvania, Romania just to be a member. Apart from
the founding members there were present some spectators that couldn't join
(for being too young, we hope that we can clarify the legal situation and
offer some form of involvement for the members of the younger generations as
well).
* After a successful founding meeting the elected board and the certifiers
of the minutes handed in the necessary paperwork at the Metropolitan Court
in Budapest (housed in a very impressive, old building, still bearing signs
of once being a court in the Austria-Hungary of the 19th century).
*=== October 2008 ===*
* The Court has ordered some smaller changes in the bylaws and additional
papers, and to affect them a repeated founding meeting had to be held with
the same members present as before.
* We organised this new meeting, gathered the necessary documents and
changed our bylaws. The repeated meeting was held on 19 October where we
accepted the necessary changes. The request for incorporation with the new
bylaws and the additionally requested documents was handed in at the
Metropolitan Court the next day.
* During October we started collecting ideas about our future homepage and a
possible strategy regarding buying the necessary domains for the different
projects that have a Hungarian name (all except Commons, at this time).
*
== Chapter administration ==*
* We have voted on our Board at both founding meetings we have held, with
the same results. The composition of the Board is as follows, their term
starting at the moment of legal registration (incorporation):
** [[hu:User:Grin|Péter Gervai]], President;
** [[hu:User:Samat|Tamás Mészöly]], Executive Vice-president;
** Dániel Zrínyi, Financial Vice-president;
** [[User:Bdamokos|Bence Damokos]], Board member (for international
relations);
** [[hu:User:Cassandro|Gábor Hanák]], Board member.
*
== Lobbying/Political ==*
* Some of our members were present at the founding of the Hungarian Creative
Commons Association (Creative Commons Magyarország Egyesület).
* We conducted successful negotiations with the Budapest University of
Technology and Economics and the Media Education and Research Center
thereof, they have agreed [possibly outside the current reporting period] to
provide us with an official seat at the University.
* Some of our members were invited to a meeting in the Hungarian Department
of Health with the representatives of ESKI (Health Strategic Research
Institute) about the Hungarian version of the [[w:ICD|ICD]] classification
(they were concerned about the copyrights and the importance of providing
accurate information about this fixed system on a freely editable interface
that is Wikipedia).
*== Media and news ==*
* After our founding meeting we were mentioned in national and regional
newspapers, and their online editions:
**
http://www.origo.hu/techbazis/20080929-egyesuletet-alapitanak-a-magyar-wiki…
an online newspaper article about us and the Creative Commons
community
forming an association;
** http://www.bmhirlap.hu/index.php?apps=cikk&d=2008-09-30&r=236&c=699850 –
regional newspaper, a short mention in of their columns;
** http://nol.hu/archivum/archiv-508639 – article about us founding an
association in one of the biggest dailies in Hungary;
**
http://hu.wikinews.org/wiki/Még_idén_létrejöhet_a_Wikimédia_Magyarország_Eg…<http://hu.wikinews.org/wiki/M%C3%A9g_id%C3%A9n_l%C3%A9trej%C3%B6het_a_Wikim…>–
Hungarian Wikinews article about our founding.
== News from the Hungarian Wikimedia projects ==
* The Hungarian Wikipedia has overtaken the Esperanto edition, regarding
number of articles, becoming the 21st biggest edition (8 August).
* The number of edits on Wikipedia has reached 4 million in total (14
August).
* The Hungarian Wikipedia reached an article milestone of 105,000 articles
(11 September).
*== Coming up ==*
This concludes our report on activities in the period of August–October, you
can find out more on our website and Meta pages: http://wiki.media.hu and
[[Wikimédia Magyarország]] (currently both point to the same page, this will
change however).
Coming up in the next issue of our report and in the next chapter of our
chapter:
* The race between the Board and the Court results in a tie: they approve us
on the same date;
* Starting up an open wiki for our chapter, moving the members only wiki to
its final hosting place;
* Further media appearances.
*Wiki-links in this report:*
[[Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimédia Magyarország/August–October 2008]]:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikim%C3%A9dia_Ma…
[[Wikimédia Magyarország]]:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikim%C3%A9dia_Magyarorsz%C3%A1g
[[Wikimedia Chapters]]: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chapters
[[OTRS]]: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS
[[w:ICD|ICD]]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICD
[[hu:User:Grin|Péter Gervai]]:
http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szerkeszt%C5%91:Grin
[[hu:User:Samat|Tamás Mészöly]]:
http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szerkeszt%C5%91:Samat
[[User:Bdamokos|Bence Damokos]]:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Bdamokos
[[hu:User:Cassandro|Gábor Hanák]]:
http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szerkeszt%C5%91:Cassandro
Best regards,
Tamás Mészöly
WM Hungary, Executive Vice-president
Wikimedia Australia chapter report
Edition 1, August--October 2008
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Austral…>
By Brianna Laugher, interim Secretary (blaugher at wikimedia dot org dot au)
* 1 Introduction
* 2 On the lists
* 3 Meetups
o 3.1 Past
o 3.2 Upcoming
* 4 Other events
o 4.1 Past
o 4.2 Upcoming
* 5 WMAU & WMF
* 6 Committee meeting minutes
* 7 Other activities and news
* 8 Coming soon
==Introduction==
Welcome to the first Wikimedia Australia chapter report, one that will
hopefully become a monthly fixture. As this is the first edition I
will briefly recap our activities in the earlier part of this year.
Our draft Rules were approved by the Wikimedia Chapters Committee and
the Wikimedia Foundation Board in March, and we held our incorporation
meeting on April 20th, with around 20 Wikimedians from multiple
locations across Australia taking part. We were able to use a
conference call to link up Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney and
Hobart. At this meeting we agreed to adopt our draft Rules, and
approved Brianna Laugher, Charles Gregory, Daniel Bryant, John
Vandenberg, Nathan Carter, Sarah Ewart and Stephen Bain as the interim
committee. After this meeting we were able to submit them to Consumer
Affairs Victoria (CAV), the relevant government body, for approval to
incorporate as a not-for-profit assocation.
Unfortunately at our first attempt CAV refused to accept our Rules
because our Statement of Purpose was too brief. This led the committee
to reformulate the statement of aims in a more verbose and explicative
manner. (This can be found at
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Australia/SoP>.) By the end
of July we had had our new Statement of Purpose accepted by the
Chapters Committee, and we re-submitted our Rules to CAV. This time
they were accepted and we officially began our incorporated life on
August 6th.
Since August we have been working on acquiring a bank account and
setting up membership sign-up processes that will minimise bureaucracy
for both members and the committee. We also set up web hosting, wikis,
email addresses and mailing lists, and documented processes to make
the first "real" committee's life easier. We anticipate opening
registrations very soon.
==On the lists==
The wikimediaau-l list
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l> has been
very active, with discussion on a range of topics. In August
discussion about a possible Wikimania 2010 bid dominated. This idea is
not much discussed now; as we are yet to organise any of our own
events larger than a meetup perhaps discussion about hosting Wikimania
is a bit premature.
There has been a great deal of discussion about what kind of
activities Wikimedia Australia might do. Most are recorded on meta:
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Australia/Activities>. It is
encouraging to see the breadth of ideas and imagination in our
community. Our next challenge is to figure out which ones we can
actually achieve, and set about doing that.
There was also (as always) meetup reports, discussion about local
events that people might attend to take photographs at, and
locally-relevant Wikipedia articles being hit by vandalism spates.
Particularly noteworthy was the co-ordination of a number of editors
at different Olympic parades. Editors arranged to attend the parades
to take photographs of Australian sportspeople. High quality freely
licensed photographs make a great improvement to Wikipedia articles as
well as a free culture gift to the whole world. Special thanks to:
YellowMonkey, Craig Franklin, Sarah Ewart, Gnangarra, In total 96
photographs were added.
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/2008_Summer_Olympics_Australian_athletes>
Also of note is the efforts by Chris 'Confusing Manifestation' in
contacting the NSW Board of Studies to see how we can offer our
assistance, since they have put some Wikipedia pages in a HSC English
elective called "The Global Village" for 2009--2012. This is believed
to be the first time in the world that Wikipedia has appeared on a
high school syllabus. (See
<http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_hsc/english/prescriptions-sup…>
for the actual syllabus, and
<http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/hsc-to-run-wikipedia-course/2008/05/26/12116…>
for a news report.)
==Meetups==
===Past===
* Melbourne, August (the incorporation meeting)
* Sydney, August
** Celebrating WMAU's birth(day) -
<http://files.nickj.org/images/wikimeetup/Sydney%20Wikimeetup%20Aug%202008%2…>
** Report by Peter 'PM'
<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaau-l/2008-August/001561.html>
* Sydney, October
** Report by Peter 'PM'
<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaau-l/2008-October/001746.html>
Thanks to the Sydney Wikimedians, especially Peter and Liam, for being
so organised and putting the rest of us to shame!
===Upcoming===
* (Melbourne, 5 November -- actually past now, report next month!)
* Sydney, 12 November "Wiki Wednesday":
<http://www.customware.net/repository/display/WikiWednesday/Wiki+Wednesday>
* Perth, 29 November: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Perth/5>
==Other events==
===Past===
* Melbourne, 20 September, Software Freedom Day: Brianna attended and
distributed some fliers and stickers, and gave a talk called "How Free
Software Makes Wikipedia Possible".
** Slides on Slideshare:
<http://www.slideshare.net/pfctdayelise/how-free-software-makes-wikipedia-po…>
** Slides on Commons:
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:How_Free_Software_makes_Wikipedia_p…>
* Canberra, 30 September, Australian Computers in Education
Conference: Brianna attended and gave a talk called '"Safe wiki":
Teaching responsible use of Wikipedia'.
** Slides+audio on Slideshare:
<http://www.slideshare.net/pfctdayelise/safe-wiki-teaching-responsible-use-o…>
** Other links and information:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise/Safe_wiki>
Multi-report on these two events:
<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaau-l/2008-October/001692.html>
* Melbourne, 25 October, LinuxChix microconf: Brianna attended and
gave a brief talk called "Wikipedia & the education system". Although
this was a small event it provided to a number of leads to educators
who are keen to learn more about wikis and Wiki(m|p)edia.
** Notes and video:
<http://brianna.modernthings.org/article/155/video-from-aussiechix-microconf…>
===Upcoming===
* (Melbourne, 5 November, LUV meeting: "Hacking MediaWiki (For Users)"
talk, by Brianna, report next month!)
* Melbourne, 21 November, VCAL conference: "Wikis in the classroom"
talk, by Brianna. (VCAL is a practical-skills-focused VCE/HSC
alternative.)
* Melbourne, 24 November, Victoria IT Teachers Association (VITTA)
conference: "Wikipedia in schools: An unexplored potential" workshop
by Brianna. <http://archive.vitta.org.au/conference/2008/programme.php?day=1>
* Online, 2nd week in December: education.au online workshop for
teachers, by Brianna. (Exact details to be determined.)
* Hobart, 20 January 2009: "Free as in Freedom" miniconf as part of
linux.conf.au, organised by Brianna.
<http://linux.conf.au/schedule/121/view_miniconf> Also, Angela is one
of the keynotes at this conference!
==WMAU & WMF==
In late July the 2008 Wikimania conference was held in Alexandria,
Egypt. At least two Australian Wikimedians attended, Liam and Brianna.
Brianna took part in a hastily-arranged chapters lunch. (There was a
chapters meeting in May in the Netherlands; no Australian
representative attended.) It was a good opportunity to meet
face-to-face and swap ideas with our brothers and sisters from around
the world.
Another chapters meeting is planned for 3-5 April 2009 in Germany. We
should be able to work out some financial assistance with other
chapters and WMF so that some representatives can attend.
There are a couple of chapters-related topics currently in the air.
The first is the chapter-selected Board seats.
<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Restructure_Announcem…>
Although this announcement was made in late April discussion between
chapters has not been hugely productive. Thanks to a thread by
Florence 'Anthere' on foundation-l
<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-November/046850.html>
this discussion may be kick-started again soon.
The second topic is fundraising agreements between WMF and chapters.
Because we are still getting our own house in order we are not really
in a position to look at this yet. It will be a topic for the first
elected committee to tackle.
==Committee meeting minutes==
* 2008-10-25 <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaau-l/2008-October/001766.html>
* 2008-11-02 <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaau-l/2008-November/001780.html>
==Other activities and news==
* The Victorian government recently (August-September) held an
'Inquiry into Improving Access to Victorian Public Sector Information
and Data'. The background and an excellent discussion paper is
available at <http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/edic/inquiries/access_to_PSI/call_for_subm…>.
74 submissions were made, of which Wikimedia Australia's was one. It
is available on that website, along with all the other submissions, or
also at <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Inquiry_into_Improving_Access_to_Vi…>.
(Because its creation was a rather last-minute effort, it is not as
complete as we would have liked, but at least it is better than
nothing!) We await the conclusions.
* A local issue that may be of interested to Wikimedians is the
government's proposed mandatory internet filtering scheme, also known
as "clean feed". For more information about opposition to this scheme,
check out <http://nocleanfeed.com/>.
* The National Library of Australia uses Wikipedia data in its
"author" pages. Find out more at
<http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Help/Work>. Thanks to Rebecca for sharing
this news.
* Congratulations to Liam 'Witty lama' on the recent completion of his
Honours thesis, discussing Wikipedia & history. It's not an easy
journey, and that he has completed it and can still stand to even use
Wikipedia is quite a feat!
* We have launched a mailing list for discussion relating to
education. Hopefully educators will also join this list to learn more
about Wikimedia. It's a public list. To join, please see
<http://lists.wikimedia.org.au/mailman/listinfo/education_lists.wikimedia.or…>.
==Coming soon==
* A real website!
* Membership!!
* An AGM!!! :)
Here is the report for Wikimedia Sverige, October 2008.
==October 2 Seminar==
Wikimedia Sverige was asked to give a seminar of the basics of Wikimedia
and Wikipedia at the University of Karlstad. It was co-arranged with
Karlstad University Library.
==October 6 Kunskapsdagarna (The Knowledge days)==
This day was arranged by Nationalencyklopedin (think Swedish Encyclopedia
Britannica) to give out the Knowledge prize. We were not nominated but at
least we were invited to participate which in a way is a big recognition.
Read more (Swedish):
http://www.kunskapspriset.se/
==October 21-22 Internetdagarna (The Internet days)==
For the second year we attended the Internet days. Our attending fee was
sponsored by IIS (again), the organization controlling the .se domain.
They are also the main sponsor for Wikipedia Academy (see below). We got 5
new members and made some very good connections. Also it was a good event
to get more of our members involved with the daily work.
Read more (Swedish):
http://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Projekt:Internetdagarna_2008
==October 24-26 FSCONS==
We were one of the organisers of Free Society Conference and Nordic Summit
this year, responsible for the track Open Content. Other tracks were Open
Source and Open Culture and our co-organisers were FSFE and Creative
Commons. This was a very good place for us to make important connections
within the movement. Frank Schulenberg and Lars Aronsson both gave great
talks. Besides all that we got 5 new members this conference too.
Lars paper is available here (English):
http://aronsson.se/greatchanges.pdf
Read more (English):
http://fscons.org/
==COMING UP:Wikipedia Academy==
November 12-13 is the first Wikipedia Academy in Sweden, held in Lund at
Lund University Libraries.
Read more (Swedish):
http://www.lub.lu.se/wikipediaacademy/
----
Jan Ainali
Secretary of the board
Bli medlem i Wikimedia Sverige: 100 kr till bankgiro 5822-9915 (skriv
"Medlemsavgift, namn, adress och epost")
http://se.wikimedia.org
Dear all,
please find below the chapters summary for Wikimedia Nederland on October
2008. Please note especially the green paper subject, which will be relevant
soon for more chapters. I look forward on further input on that!
Best regards,
Lodewijk Gelauff
Board member Wikimedia Nederland
** Wikimedia Conference Netherlands **
Wikimedia Nederland organized its annual conference on October 2008 in the
city center of Utrecht. There were 100 visitors, including one journalist
working on an article on Wikipedia. There were 19 speakers, amongst whom
Jan-Bart de Vreede, Philipp Birken, Erik Zachte, Esther Hoorn (she helps
with the green paper reaction for WMNL) and Arnoud Engelfriet (internet
specialized lawyer). Kennisnet and Minds.com (main sponsor) sponsored the
event. Full program: http://wikimediaconferentie.nl/schema/
** Green Paper reaction **
WMNL was invited to join a consultation at the Dutch ministry of Justice to
prepare a national reaction to the Greenpaper on Copyright in the Knowledge
Society. Marco and Esther represented WMNL and went there, and gave a lot of
input on many questions. and did not get locked up in question 24. The input
was highly valued by the attending parties, which included copyright
organisations, Wikimedia NL, ministries, employers organisations etc.
The Dutch chapter has prepared an initial reply to the European Commission,
which will have to be submitted before November 30. A translation will be
produced for other chapters, so that they can join in. A short summary
emphasizing the main points will be submitted to the chapters within a few
days, so that they can prepare already.
(see http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Groep_Groenboek/en for more information)
** Leaflets**
The leaflets on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Nederland have been updated and a
small batch has been printed with the help of Kennisnet for the conference.
*W i K i M e D i A N e W s* - n. 21, 4th November 2008
Official monthly information bulletin of Wikimedia Italia.
*Editorial*
This issue of Wikimedia News opens with a few important events for our
association, such as the launch of a new WMI project (the *Music* project)
and the decision to call for an extraordinary AGM in March 2009. Indeed,
that AGM will mark a crucial step for the future of the association, since
it will allow, hopefully, to change our Bylaws; this is an essential
condition to engage the long route to obtain ONLUS (charity) status. I
sincerely hope all our members will do their best to be present to this
important time for our association's life.
Senpai
* *
*Last month's events
*
· 10 October, Milan: we participated to the conference *Forme e
paradossi della democrazia digitale: protesi cognitive, social networking,
blogosfera e wikiscenza* (Forms and paradoxes of e-democracy: cognitive
protheses, social networking, blogosphere and wikiscience) organized by
Università di Milano Bicocca with a talk titled "Wikipedia is not
democratic!". The conference was interesting for its format (the public was
involved via blogs, Facebook and live online stereaming) and for the
contributions (very philosophical in the first part, very concrete in the
second). Our talk has been particularly and can be viewed online on
YouTube<http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=3u72-0uPfSs>
· 16 October, Perugia: because of our invited speaker's health
problems we took part to the conference *Ma che vuoi sapere tu.. Verso la
rete dei servizi culturali, bibliotecari e informativi per i giovani* (What
do you think you know... Towards the network of cultural, library and
information services for young people) organized by AIB-Umbria in digital
form, by sending a video talk. the contribution is available
here<http://www.frieda.it/def.avi>
· 18 October, Milano: we took part to Forum Umanista Europeo
2008<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Associazione:Forum_Umanista_Europeo_2008>,
which was a good success, since around 1,000 people were present to the
event at Bicocca, thanks to the huge organisation machine and to the ample
range of proposals such as workshops, round tables, conferences and
associations' tables. For us it was a "contamination" experience we
initially had some doubt on, but that turned out fruitful; indeed, beyond
explaining Wikimedia projects to a few tens of people (either chatting or
giving away information leaflets) we contacted people we may collaborate
with in the near future. (See also the full
report<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Associazione:Forum_Umanista_Europeo_2008#…>.)
· 25 October: as usual we took
part<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/it:Wikipedia:Raduni/Linux_Day_2008>to
Linux
Day <http://www.linuxday.it/> in 10 Italian cities and a few other events.
The Milan event was the occcasion to get to know key people, particularly to
improve the administrative management of the association and to produce
videoguides about Wikipedia; Crotone's LD was staged in a school and a lot
of teachers were interested (full reports can be found
here<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Associazione:Linux_Day_2008>).
· 23-26 October: we participated to Festival della
Creatività<http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Raduni/Firenze_-_Festival_della_crea…>.
Here's Senpai's report:
For the second year in a row our association took part to the Festival of
Creativity in Florence, and this year as well, as was the case last year,
the festival has probably represented the most important event (definitely
for attendance) WMI participated in 2008.
Together with the classical sale of gadgets and Q&A activity we do at every
fair, we managed to initiate a new way of participating to important events,
integrating in our traditional activities a project of reportage and
interviews. Thanks to the guys of Wiki@Home and some of our members (in
particular Kaspo), we managed to collect some exclusive interviews to
publish in wikinews.
An activity of this kind highlights more than ever the importance W@H has
towards Wikinews exactly because, at the moment, it is one of the few
projects that manges to realize interview specific to WMF's news website and
that, as a consequence, allows the latter to have contents other news media
cannot have.
Monday morning we also participated to a round table (*Verso il web 3.0:
l'evoluzione di
internet*<http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/Verso_il_web_3.0:_l%27evoluzione_di_internet>-
Towards Web 3.0: the evolution of internet) organized by Firenze
Tecnologia.
To sum up, this festival as well concludes on a more than positive balance,
both as a mediatic and promotion event, and on the merely economic side.
* *
*Next month's events
*
· 5 November: Marcok will intervene to a meeting about *Wikipedia,
Palladio e i contenuti liberi della
rete*<http://www.piazzatech.it/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=143&Item…>(Wikipedia,
Palladio and the free contents of the net) in the framework of
*I mercoledì della **Piazza Telematica*
<http://www.piazzatech.it/>(Telematic Square Wednesdays) in Schio,
Vicenza, following what started on
September 20 at the Software Freedom Day in Schio as well.
· 28 - 30 November - MEI 2008: For the second year in a row we'll
participate to MEI (Meeting of Independent Labels). This year we'll
officially present our new project dedicated to
music<http://musica.wikimedia.it/wiki/Pagina_principale>;
furthermore, we'll greatly appreciate the presence of the guys from W@H and
of the users of wikinews, above all because of the many important people
that will be there. To confirm your attendance, please refer to the
coordination
page on the association
wiki<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Associazione:MEI_2008>and to
the page on
wikipedia <http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Raduni/M.E.I._2008>.
* *
*News from WMF projects in Italian
*
· *Wikibooks*: The page
Speciale:Raccolta<http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/it:Speciale:Raccolta>was
activated; it allows to download as a PDF Wikibooks' modules and to
join
them in collections <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/it:Aiuto:Raccolte> for the
press.
· *Wikinews*: 2000 registered users milestone.
· *Wikipedia*: Conclusion of RevertBot cleanup
festival<http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Festival_della_qualit%C3%A0/Settembr…>,
during which about 1300 possible copyright violations out of
3500<http://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=19875428&oldid=18401321>were
dealt with.
· *Wikiquote*: 7700 entries milestone.
· *Wikisource*: 2400 registered users milestone.
· *Wikiversità*: 600 pages milestone.
· *Wikizionario*: 4000 registered users milestone.
*News from the association
*
We decided to call for an extraordinary AGM in March 2009. In that occasion
we'll have to modify our Statutes; since we need as many people as possible,
we opened this page<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Discussioni_associazione:Assemblea_WMI_ma…>for
proposals about location and dates.
*News from WikiAfrica*
In a quick meeting in Milan at Lettera27's office, a few ideas for future
activities of WikiAfrica were generated: a WikiAfrica Academy, the next
Literature Festival in Mantova, the Festival of African Film in Verona,
Capetown Book Fair, Milano Film Festival, an event about to be organised by
the Griot Bookshop in Rome (provisional title *Afrilinks*).
*News from W@H*
· We're about to publish a few videointerviews realised at the
Festival of Creativity we really participated to. We also started a debate
with the community of it.wikinews who expressed the wish to be more involved
in the project's activities, and with that aim two interviews are being
prepared on Wikinews (to
Odifreddi<http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinotizie:Storie_in_preparazione/Intervista_a…>and
Roversi<http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinotizie:Storie_in_preparazione/Intervista_a…>)
we hope to finalize soon.
*News from Musica (the new music project)
*
We officially started the "beta testing" of project *Wikimedia Musica*. All
the members are invited to participate to the activities necessary to
officially launch the website, by discussing, editing and positively
contributing to the birth of this new copyleft project. The project will be
officially presented at MEI 2008 (Faenza end of November).
Homepage<http://musica.wikimedia.it/wiki/Pagina_principale>.
* *
*Board resolutions
*
· Buying the URL
www.commons.it<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Associazione:Delibere/Acquisto_dominio>
· The board followed up on the request of a former member to be
excluded from the
association<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Associazione:Delibere/Esclusione_socio>
· Buying stickers and business
cards<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Associazione:Delibere/Ordine_materiale_ot…>
Editorial committee:
· Luca Sileni;
· Frieda Brioschi;
· Marco Chemello;
· Nemo (section "News from our projects")
· Aubrey (section "News from Biblioteca")
· DracoRoboter and Elitre (section "News from W@H")
to contact the editorial committee please write to:
redazione@<redazione(a)wikimedia.it>
wikimedia.it or to its members:
· Luca Sileni - wikisenpai(a)gmail.com
· Frieda Brioschi - ubifrieda(a)gmail.com
*Caution, this bulletin should be considered as a product exclusively
dedicated to company information both for internal and public use and
therefore, following art 1 comma 2 Legge 7 marzo 2001 n. 62, it shouldn't be
considered as a published product*
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Associazione:Wikimedia_news/numero_21>
Wikimedia news/numero 20/en
W i K i M e D i A N e W s no. 20 - October 2nd, 2008
Original at: http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Wikimedia_news/numero_20/en
Official monthly bulletin from Wikimedia Italia Association.
Table of contents:
* 1 Editorial
* 2 What happened last month
* 3 What will happen next month
* 4 News from our projects
o 4.1 News from Italian WMF projects
o 4.2 News from W@H
* 5 News from Wikimedia Italia
o 5.1 New Project
o 5.2 News from Biblioteca
* 6 Featured Wikimedian/Picture of the month
== Editorial==
A new board, new members and new ideas... this seems to be the output
from the meeting in Caserta, which marks out the activity of our
association during last month. When you read this issue of wikimedia
news you'll notice how ideas, new proposals, and committments of our
association are today various more than ever, so that they need not
only care from the board but also and above that the whole WMI takes
active part in them.
I wish a happy social year to every member and to the board, and I
hope that it will bring growth and development to our Wikimedia
Italia.
Senpai
==What happened last month==
* September 6th, 2008 - at CEFORS, in Marcianise (CE), we held the
Annual Meeting of Wikimedia Italia Association. Its agenda:
1. Report from the Board about the State of the Association
2. Changes to the Regulations of the Association
3. Ratification of the Board Deliberations
4. Approval of the Final Balance for 1H2008
5. Renew of Social Offices
6. Discussion about policies and activities of the Association.
Wiki@Home staff made a WMI report (in Italian) for the event, and
an interview (in Italian) to the new appointed Board.
* September 13th and 14th: we attended the Arezzo Copyleft
Festival. Here there is a short report by Senpai:
The Copyleft Festival in Arezzo has been a really good place to
make contact with the world in favour of the free spread of knowledge.
We have a notable talk with the staff of Schiaffo Edizioni, who will
probably add some of their short stories in Biblioteca. Also notable
was a talk with the organization, which led to the possibility that
next year WMI will take part to Italia Wave (one of the most important
music festivals in Italy). Out presence wouold be important especially
since we are broadening our scope to include music.
We also met the authors of Don_Zauker, an Italian comic strip, who
agreed to look at the articles about them in it.wiki and who gave us
an illustration for the comic in cc-by-sa.
As for participation... well... we had continuing rain, with very
few glimpses of sun. It was however nice to talk with many users of
it.wiki, who asked us a lot of questions and bought some gadget.
From an economic point of view, taking into account the really bad
weather, the result was rather satisfactory.
* September 20th, Schio (VI): we attended "Software Freedom Day"
at the Piazza Telematica di Schio with two talks: "Wikipedia e i
contenuti liberi" (Wikipedia and free contents) and "Wikimedia Commons
e i 500 anni di Palladio" (Wikimedia Commons and Palladio's 500th
Anniversary).
== What will happen next month==
* October 18th, Milano: we will attend European Humanist Forum. We
will have a stall and we will join the panel Digital Technologies to
enslave us or at the service of humanity?. We should also be part of
the working group "Digital Technology".
* October 23th-26th, Firenze: We will attend Festival della
Creatività]. This year we will have a stand in a nice position, at the
entrance of the main pavillon. Moreover wikinews and the blog of the
festival will collaborate. All members of WMI, and especially those
involved in wikinews, are urged to give a hand, since this is a really
big event (last years there were 350.000 visitors in 4 days), so that
we will need a lot of help.
* October 25th: As usual, we will attend Linux Day in several
Italian cities; who would like to represent the Association at a Linux
Day near home should leave his/her name in the relevant page in
wikipedia, asking also for promotional material when possible.
== News from our projects ==
=== News from Italian WMF projects===
* Wikibooks: More than 60% of modules is classified according to
Development stages. More than 3,600 modules are present.
* Wikinotizie: Reached 6,200 articles.
* Wikipedia: Festival della qualità: after the Festival for
rewriting sentences using "purtroppo" ended, now we have Festival for
cleaning RevertBot.
* Wikiquote: Gacio quit from sysop. Verbal and direct sources are
now deprecated, as per the new guidelines.[1] [2] [3]
* Wikisource: OrbiliusMagister has been elected bureucrat.
* Wikiversità: Nick1915 quit from sysop. Reached 5,800 total pages.
* Wikizionario: After voting, Frieda, .mau., Snowdog, The Doc have
been revoked sysop status. Reached 95,000 headwords.
=== News from W@H===
During the meeting in Caserta, a report for the last season of
interviews has been shown. Torsolo won the Wiki@Home Prize 2007/08
(see article (in Italian) on Wikinotizie). An interview to the
mathematician Piergiorgio Odifreddi is in the works; who wants to
cooperate may access the relevant page.
== News from Wikimedia Italia==
* Our Association has a new Board, which includes:
Frieda Brioschi, president
Luca Sileni, vice-president and secretary
Marco Chiesa, board member (and attached to international relationship)
Maurizio Codogno, board member
Federico Leva, board member and treasurer
=== New Project ===
We just started a new project under the umbrella of Wikimedia Italia:
Musica. Its goal is to collect songs, lyrics and scores released under
a free license. Musica will be officially launched at the end of
October at Faenza, during M.E.I. 2008. Before that date, all members
are invited to give their contribution to let this new idea start
well.
=== News from Biblioteca===
After a quick poll we decided to split Biblioteca in two sections, one
for texts which cannot be put on wikisource because of differences in
copyright laws between Italy and U.S., and another for recent texts
released under a Creative Commons license. Now we are discussing al
the project's Village Pump how to put in practice this split.
[modifica] Featured Wikimedian/Picture of the month
The picture of the monty is of course from the meeting in Caserta
....ok, maybe it's time to start working?
....ok, maybe it's time to start working?
==Editorial staff:==
* Luca Sileni;
* Frieda Brioschi;
* Marco Chemello;
* Nemo (section "News from our projects")
* Aubrey (section "News from Biblioteca")
* DracoRoboter and Elitre (section "News from W@H")
To contact the staff, write at: redazione(a)wikimedia.it or directly to
the editor:
* Luca Sileni - wikisenpai(a)gmail.com
* Frieda Brioschi - ubifrieda(a)gmail.com
Notice. This newsletter is exclusively intended for information about
Wikimedia Italia, both to the members and to the general public; as
per Art. 1, Comma 2, Legge 7 marzo 2001 no. 62, it is not an editorial
product
Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia France/May-Sept 2008
Ok, it's our turn to make a quick report of our past few month activities.
First a quick note about the past few months. Due to different reasons
(PhD, moving, illness etc.) most of the board members were unable to
really work for the association during the last few months. But
eventually we all came back around the same time, and we're now back
to activity. In fact, I think we've never been so active.
Contents
* 1 http://wikipedia.fr
* 2 Communication
* 3 Workgroup Video
* 4 Assises du Numériques
* 5 Online Payment
* 6 Wikiconcours
* 7 Photos
* 8 Wikipedia takes a city
* 9 WM-FR evolution
* 10 Conferences
* 11 Digitization and museum partnerships
==http://wikipedia.fr==
In April, on request of the board, one of our most active member
started to work on the creation of a portal like the german one (
http://wikipedia.de ). It was fully operational by mid-May. We have
some stats, and we have around 14 000 unique visitors per day.
==Communication==
In terms of promotion, several leaflets (about Wikimedia projects and
the chapter) and donation buttons were produced. Three members of the
board wrote a short beginner's guide to Wikipedia, which will be
published in january 09 under the GFDL. Four press releases were
issued since early January.
==Workgroup Video==
In May, some Wikimedians worked together to issued a video tutorial
"How to edit Wikipedia". The result can be found there
http://www.dailymotion.com/Wikimedia_France
==Assises du Numériques==
Eric Besson, State Secretary for Prospectives and Evaluation of Public
Policies and Internet, organised an online "debate" in order to create
a report about the "Digital world" in 2012. Wikimedia France submitted
a proposition about the authors and related rights.
Texts submitted are available there :
http://wiki.assisesdunumerique.fr/xwiki/bin/view/Assises/Diffusiondereprodu…http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Statut_des_œuvres_publiques_en_France
==Online Payment==
For few month we wanted to implement an online payment solution. Due
to some bank problems this has been postponed to late september.
However things seems to move on now, and we hope to have every thing
ready really soon.
==Wikiconcours==
For two years french wikipedia organise a writing contest twice a
year. For the one on-going, Wikimedia France decided to grant up to
600€ for this contest. The prize will be given to the team who will
have enhanced articles on Wikipedia but also helped to enhance two
other projects on the topic they've picked. We hope, doing this, to
attract more contributors to the other projects.
==Photos==
14th July is the french national day. We succeeded in having a press
accreditation to take photos of the military parade. Photos can be
found http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:July_14,_2008_military_parade_on…
We also covered the French local elections of spring 08, les Fêtes
maritimes de Brest and Douarnenez, as well as a Movie Festival. All
pictures were uploaded on Commons.
==Wikipedia takes a city==
Early July, Wikimedians from the western part of France gathered and
took Rennes... in photos. Photos can be found
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_takes_Rennes
==WM-FR evolution==
We worked on changing how the association works. The board
decisions/discussions used to be totally private. Now, all the
decisions are taken on the members-only wiki, members have to discuss
the matters with the board before voting. In fact, apart from the
confidential things, everything is now done with the member.
In september we also started to work on a survey for our members to
get a better idea of what they think WMFR is, should do and should be
in the future. This will eventually lead us to write a document about
the strategy and the future of the association.
==Conferences==
Wikimedia France was present at a dozen of local conferences thanks to
our members all around France. We also were present at most of the
national conferences important for the Free Culture or for our
outreach. Among all of them there was
* Participation aux Nouvelles Frontières de l'économie de la culture,
Paris, octobre 08 (organized by the French Government)
* Fête de l'Humanité/2008 (3rd year of presence). It is a huge event
organized by, don't laugh, the french communist party. There's
debates, conferences, music show and a zone dedicated to FLOSS. We
took the opportunity to take pictures of some politicians.
* Paris Capitale du libre, septembre 08
* Assises du numérique, juin 08
* Wikimedia France, was present at LSF 2008 (Libre Software Meeting).
This meeting is the biggest FLOSS event in France and took place early july.
==Digitization and museum partnerships==
* documents from the Ville de Gray
* ongoing discussions with Port Royal Library, RMN (national
museumsin France), and BNF (Great Libary in France)
Here is what we have done the past few month. But we currently are
preparing many different projects and have some almost over. We'll
inform you about all of this once it's done.
Cheers :)
-- Christophe Henner Membre du Conseil d'Administration de Wikimedia
France http://wikimedia.fr
