*W i K i M e D i A N e W s* no. 22 - December 3rd, 2008
Official monthly bulletin from Wikimedia Italia Association.
Editorial
This number of Wikimedia News, just before Christmas, is being published
in a characteristic period for our association and all of WMF; we are in
the middle of fundraising
(
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate/it). I believe that
everybody, and especially our members, know that it's necessary to
support, also financially, both Wikimedia Italia and Wikimedia
Foundation. Together with the usual reports for activities and events,
so, the Board wants to urge all readers to take part, both physically
and financially, in the needs of the the association.
Senpai
What happened last month
* November 2, Pavia: we attended /Sapere libera tutti!/, a day
dedicated to the new ways for creating a collective culture. The
report from EdoM:
I don't know what kind of promotion the event had, but at
least in the morning there were just we speakers among the
members of WMI. I don't know if in the afternoon some other
people came.
Cristina Moretto made a short introduction, then Simone talked
about history and logic of the licenses. His talk was quite
interesting, and the public from a lot of questions. I talked
more or less for 20 minutes about wiki philosophy and the
various projects.
The other speakers were Simone Cortesi (OSM) and Christian
Biasco (about his work).
* November 28-30, Faenza: we attended Meeting delle Etichette
Indipendenti. The report from Senpai:
This year, Meeting delle Etichette Indipendenti was below par.
Maybe there were less visitors, but it's certain that they
were much less willing to support our projects. Takins were
much lower than last year: many visitors looked at our stand,
said "Oh, Wikipedia", and then went away. I had the impression
that the casual user takes our projects for grant. Maybe we
should try and explain that the fact that Wikipedia and the
other WMF project are free (as in beer) does not mean that we
don't need money to run them.
Maybe we could think at some effective slogan to let people
know that the lack of donations will lead to the closing of
the projects.
Leaving aside the financial issues, we took advantage from
MEI. We managed to get in touch with some music companies
interested in copyleft; in the near future we will be
therefore able to insert a lot of new content, especially for
classical music, but also for some rock and electronic music,
in the pages of our project Musica <http://musica.wikimedia.it>.
Future events
* March WMI Meeting: The meeting which should let us change our
Charter and eventually become a Non Profit association might not
be held. After the proposal of a few location for the meeting, no
official bid has been made yet: we need to have a final bid by the
end of December, or the meeting shall not be held.
* Wikimangia: Since March and April 2009 will be full of events (WMI
Meeting, Chapter Meeting, Easter), Senpai thought that it would be
nice to anticipate the usual "eat-and-drink-alot" gathering in
February. The program will consist in a day of skiing (Saturday),
while laziers will appreciate the typical pubs near the ski
tracks, and quaff hot chocolate or alcoholic beverages. As usual,
we need quickly to know how many people think to attend the event,
so please gave us some feedback!
News from our projects
News from Italian WMF projects
* *Wikibooks*: New logo
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikibooks_simple_book_blue_beige.svg>
was approved. We need just the last details.
* *Wikinotizie*: Reached 6,500 articles.
* *Wikipedia*: Fundraiser started. Here there are the statistics
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/11/25/wikimedias-fundraiser-which-banners-click/>
about efficacy of the various requests to donate.
* *Wikiquote*: A proposal
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:it:Bar#Burocrazia> was
made to promote all sysop to bureaucrat, like in es.wiki. Two new
pages featured: /Matrix <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/it:Matrix>/
and /Fight Club
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/it:Fight_Club_%28film%29>/.
/Catechismo della Chiesa cattolica
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/it:Catechismo_della_Chiesa_cattolica>/
was voice #8,000.
* *Wikisource*: Still discussions
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/s:it:Wikisource:Bar#Sempre_sempre_copyright_.28manifesti.2C_volantini_ecc..29>
about copyright: text of posters, leaflets, flysheets, may be
defined /public domain/ like public speeches?
* *Wikiversità*: Danielg
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/v:it:Utente:Danielg> quit from sysop.
* *Wikizionario*: Approved
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/it:Wikizionario:Discussione_policy#transfen_e_ricontrollare>
a rule which will lead to deletion of thousands
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/it:Categoria:Da_ricontrollare> of
lemmata
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/it:Categoria:Voci_trasferite_dal_wikizionario_inglese>
automatically imported from en.wikt in 2005 and 2007.
News from association
* Wikimedia Italia, together with Wikimedia Nederland
<http://nl.wikimedia.org>, sent a statement about the Green Paper
on copyright
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Libro_verde_su_%C2%ABIl_diritto_d%27autore_nell%27economia_della_conoscenza%C2%BB>
which European Union prepared (the link refers to the statement by
Wikimedia Italia).
* For the holiday season, our Association promotes *"Regala
Wikimedia"* (Wikimedia as present). Through our online shop, at
this page <http://shop.wikimedia.it/index.php?main_page=gv_faq>,
people may buy a gift token that can be spent in Xmas gadgets by
WMI; we suggest to every member to pamper her/himself with a
wikigift! By the way, we added new pins and some stickers; we are
also purchasing a new model of t-shirt and a new sweatshirt.
* Wikimedia Hungary <http://wiki.media.hu>, one of the latest
Wikimedia Chapters, partially modeled its homepage after ours.
News from Biblioteca
* Mizardellorsa has nearly completed the upload of the latest book
by Simone Aliprandi about copyleft. Whoever wants to lend a hand
will find our guidelines here
<http://biblioteca.wikimedia.it/wiki/Guida_all%27uso_delle_licenze_e_degli_altri_strumenti_CC>.
News from Musica
* At MEI we approached some recording label interested in copyleft.
During the next days we will fatten our site.