originally sent by Dror Kamir
==Wikimedia Israel – June-October report==
===Bureaucratic issues===
1. The annual general assembly took place in Tel Aviv on 25 August.
Most of it was dedicated to technical issues required by the law:
signing the annual financial report and confirming minor changes to
the bylaws. Note: WM-IL's bylaws are basically the standard NPO bylaws
suggested by the Israeli statute of non-profit corporations, and we
decided to align with any changes to this statute as long as there is
no essential need to adopt our own rules.
2. The general assembly decided to keep the current board, with no
reshuffles, for another year.
3. We finally have our own domain:
www.wikimedia.org.il Manuel
Schneider generously offered us to host our site on his company's
servers, and we are grateful for that and for his help with some
technical issues. We still use the former wiki system as a closed wiki
for communication among board members and reports that cannot be made
public.
4. After submitting our first financial report to the local
registrar, our secretary expressed cautious optimism about getting the
"tax deductibility" status within the coming year. Let's hope he is
not too optimistic.
===Recruitment===
1. Assaf Bartov who manages the Ben Yehuda Project (the Israeli
Hebrew equivalent of the Gutenberg Project) joined WM-IL. We expect
him to lend us some of his experience.
2. Apart from Assaf, 2 Hebrew Wikipedians joined in too. We still
encounter difficulties in bringing new members. Many people find it
hard to distinct between WM-IL and the Hebrew Wikipedia, and think
that being a contributor to the latter is enough. Other people support
us in principle but don't understand why becoming a member is
necessary.
===Projects===
1. Free image collection project - This project will be called
Wiki-Piki (it was the idea of our partners in ISOC-IL, and we said: so
be it). This trilateral joint project is advancing slowly but surely.
We have a "gamma" version of the website through which images will be
uploaded and cataloged. Some technical issues still hinder the
beta-version, in particular moving the picture periodically as bulks
to the Commons. There are also some legal issues that still need to be
resolved, e.g. whether it is legal to accept copyright waiver from
minors.
2. Stable version - this project was originally part of our
cooperation with the Israeli government's "Computer to every Child"
project. This cooperation died out, mainly because we couldn't meet
all their demands. However, we would like to build a stable version of
selected articles from the Hebrew Wikipedia, which could be
distributed in schools or other educational institutions, recorded in
audio or video for disabled persons etc.
===Outreach===
1. The Marker - The Hebrew business paper The Marker dedicated one
of its weekend supplements to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects as
a whole. The reporter, Naomi Darom, was in close touch with our press
contact and interviewed most of our board members (as well as some
veteran local Wikipedians).
2. Yad Vashem - The Israeli national Holocaust research and
memorial center, Yad Vashem, asked to learn more about Wikipedia and
the way the Holocaust is depicted in its articles. Dror Kamir had a
long meeting at their office in Jerusalem, and tried to convince them
to release as much research and documentary material as they can under
free license.
3. The Israeli correctional authority - The officer in charge of
Internet related projects in the Israeli correctional authority (in
Israel it is still called "The Imprisonment Service") asked to learn
how Wikipedia is written and how the correctional authority and its
staff is described in the Hebrew Wikipedia. This was another
opportunity to thoroughly explain the concept of the Wikimedia project
to a state official.
===Conferences===
Makhshevim Ve Anashim - Our chair, Shay Yakir, was invited to talk at
the annual award ceremony held by the Makhshevim ve Anashim (Computers
and People) magazine. This magazine grants awards to the best Israeli
websites each year. Shay was invited to deliver one of the opening
speeches.
link to meta version:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Israel/…