Wikimedia News no. 28 - January 14, 2010

Editorial

This year Italy joined for the first time the annual fundraising campaign launched and organized by Wikimedia Foundation. We made this choice because now we are listed in the register of Associations for Social Promotion, and so the donations we receive are tax deductible; this could attract and encourage further the potential donors. Wikimedia Italy joined the campaign a few weeks later it started because we wanted to be sure to become an APS.

The worldwide result of this year's fundraising has been quite good: the Foundation reached its target of 7.5 million dollars well ahead of schedule. As for WMI, despite the late start and some unexpected obstacle on the way (PayPal blocked our account on Christmas Eve because of the high traffic), the fundraising can overall be judged satisfactory; the final result, with more than 3,300 individual donations, exceeded the forecasts that the hopeful Board members made at its start.

Donation amounted to more than 58,000 euro. After taking the expenses away, approximately 26,000 euro will be sent to Wikimedia Foundation, while approximately 32,000 euro remain available to the Association for promotion and development of our projects.

We take this opportunity to thank especially all the members who wanted and were able to become donors.

It is important to note that the fundraising also created the opportunity for many people to approach to our Association as well as to the projects of the Foundation; between mid-December and early January we enrolled 31 new members. A hearty welcome among us to all of these people!

Cotton
WMI Treasurer

2010 subscriptions campaign

Social year 2010 started. Everyone who became member of the Association before October 1st, 2009 can renew their membership by sending their share in the usual ways:

• money transfer on the bank account of the Association (IBAN: IT73K0200861804000100330777)
• Moneybookers - use account iscrizioniwikimedia.it
• PayPal - use account iscrizioniwikimedia.it (If you pay with PayPal, please add 2€ for commission fees.)

In all cases you should always send an email to iscrizioniwikimedia.it with the references and the receipt of the transaction, and any other communications.

Further information is available at: Associazione:Rinnovi 2010.

What will happen

• January 14, Florence: Laurentius and Aubrey will hold a lecture to Tuscan librarians about Wikipedia and the Municipalities project.
• January 22, Bologna: Barcamp Accessibility and CMS 2010 ( http://www.barcamp.org/Accessibilit%C3%A0-e-CMS-2010 ), organized by Emilia-Romagna region; some some members will attend it.
• February 18, Florence: caffescienza ( http://www.caffescienza.it )  about Wikipedia and Free Software.
• Date yet to be determined: meeting for a fondue among Wikipedians for knowing each other, chatting, pulling out some ideas and discussing possible activities to be held in Italian-speaking Switzerland (not just Ticino).

News from our groups

Wikimedia Roma

After the Christmas break we are back with the group. At the end of the month we'll have a meeting to draw up a calendar of upcoming activities.

GLAM

• Thanks to a contact with Wikipedia OTRS service, All About Apple Museum of Valleggia (SV) ( http://www.allaboutapple.com/ ) released all the pictures on its website (unless otherwise specified) with a Creative Commons license cc-by-sa 2.5. Moreover, the museum staff is willing to make pictures of the items in the museum upon request.
  Bravo! and thanks! to the All About Apple Museum!

• On 14 January a workshop will be held, with support by WMI, with librarians in Tuscany. The meeting aims to train participants on the culture and methods of the Wikimedia projects, among which are emphasizing Wikipedia, Commons, Wikisource. More information, including the agenda and materials used, may be found here.

News from our projects

News from Biblioteca

Publication of Il sapere liberato, a book released under Creative Commons license by LASER Group, is going on.

News from Wiki@Home

The second season of W@H ends with the shift between IlCorda (aka DracoRoboter) and CristianCantoro as project manager. The second season ended with a fall of the number of interviews compared to the previous year; the project should therefore be relaunched in the new season (2009/2010). Note the new format of the project Wiki@Home-Video, with its first reports; the new formula (though still to be defined in detail) must certainly be supported for the upcoming interviews.

We'll try and broaden participation in the project even among users of Wikipedia or Wikinotizie, opening it also to contributions external to the association. We really hope that this will also bring new members to WMI itself; premium Wiki@Home (not awarded in 2008/2009) should be exploited in this regard. Of course, we also seek volunteers within the association, since there is much to be done (maintenance of the pages, proofreading, etc.) To make a new proposal, what about a business card for the wiki-reporters (a related proposal is discussed in depth in Proposal:Wikinews Accredited Reporter Identity Cards)?

News from WMF projects

• Wikipedia: Wikipedia in Italian language won the 2009 Golden Shield Award 2009 issued by Heraldic Studies Center, for the category "generic heraldic sites" (here the discussion at it.wiki Village Pump).
• Wikiquote: Community keeps working on an automatic filtering extension-based AbuseFilter to spot at least some insertion of new quotations without source, and warn users of the inconveniences of this practice, as per our guidelines, before they even save the page. here the technical details).
• Wikisource:
  • Wikisource start a brand new homepage, with a compete reorganization of content and graphics. Among the innovations, there is a page Help Wikisource, to invite new users to contribute to the project. Help Wikisource you too!
  • After a software update, it is now possible to load texts in .pdf format as images in parallel texts (the feature was requested in 2007 and implemented only in August 2009, see technical details).
• Wikiversity: Community started Progetto aiuto, designed to facilitate the growth of the project community.
• Wiktionary:
  • The process of choosing the logo for Wiktionary is finally winding up: after the first vote in December, a ballot between the two most voted logos will be going throughout January. Participants from any WMF project in any language may vote. The purpose of the selection, initiated by Cary Bass, WMF Volunteer Coordinator, is to determine the final overall logo for Wiktionary (Wiktionary) in all languages, because different editions (especially the English one) have resisted the adoption of the logo chosen by vote in 2006, and have maintained that the provisional one created earlier. It seems that the Italian community prefers to keep the logo chosen in 2006.
  • After Wikiquote did in November, also Wiktionary has reached 10,000 registered users. Wikiquote remains the italian project with more registered users, after Wikipedia.
  • Community has started to consider seriously and to work on some projects to improve the content of Wiktionary, and in particular the inclusion of tens of thousands of terms contained in some dictionary now into the public domain after the expiry of their copyright, and construction within Wiktionary of a Italian-Italian Sign Language (LIS) dictionary.

Monthly strip

See it at http://www.wikimedia.it/images/Singloids201_eng.jpg (yes, it's in English, don't worry :-) )

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Reports from WM-IT may also be found at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Italia.

ciao, .mau.