ComProj September 2008

comproj@lists.wikimedia.org

8 participants
5 discussions

Wikiquote Serageldin
by Ziko van Dijk 10 Sep '08

10 Sep '08

Hello, What does Foundation-l say, that Wikiquote will be closed? I just have added some quotes! I newly created http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ismail_Serageldin which I am going to use in PR, I think. There is just a problem, or two: - I cannot find where I originally have my 1103.mpg with the Wikimania 2008 press conference from (url) - I cannot understand one peticular sentence, I have now let it out (see brackets). If someone could fill it in... Notably the quote is not from a 16 year old computer freak who hates books more than he hates spinach, but from the director of a famous library! :-) Ziko Ismail Serageldin Director of Bibliotheca Alexandria. * I do believe that encyclopedias are dead as dodos in the old fashioned way. Let me just go back, because earlier around I was interviewed and I said: The book will always be with us. Books - we used to read in scrolls and then they got invented the codex which is basically the form of the book. It has not been improved on. It's like cissors, like a spoon, and like a hammer. It's technology that's perfect in itself and will remain very good. But: What about the content inside of it? Now, there are books that you read for information. And there what you want to do is how to get the information. And it is infinitely more efficient, of higher quality, to use digital sources rather than the published sources for references. So dictionaries and encyclopedias are not going to be done in this very ponderous way of having old books that by the time they come out the information in them is obsolute. Second, you have to search in all of these and open the pages and then you go to an index and come back whereas you can type to search in. [...] But if you want to hold in your hand a slim volume, nicely bound, of the love sonnetts of Shakespeare or historical romans, that's a different story. There is the book as artifact, there is the joy in holding the book. And there is an efficiency in the book that you can carry with you in different ways. But I think that the encyclopedias and the dictionaries really are providing a service. And that service can be provided so much more efficiently online that they are bound to change. And if they don't change themselves and go online themselves ... I mean, the old providers, like Britannica, will go online, will provide it, and will try to, in fact, compete with the model that Wikipedia pioneered. * Wikimania 2008, press conference 0'33 (August 2008) -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde

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Summary of action plan from meeting this evening
by Sean Whitton 05 Sep '08

05 Sep '08

Hello all, At the IRC meeting this evening we brainstormed a great deal about how we can better manage Wikimedia's PR material in the future, and we established an action plan for the first stage, which I'm summarising here. Please be bold and get involved in this. The idea is to tag all of our PR material, whatever the form or quality, with a hidden category on the wiki it is on. Then, this hidden category will be linked to on our meta page, [[m:PR material cleanup]]. From there we can then decide what to do with it all. We just need volunteers to find this stuff at present. So: 1) Find PR material - there are some starting locations on [[m:PR material cleanup]]. 2) Determine if the wiki you are working on has [[Category:WMF-COM]]. If it doesn't, create it from the template at [[m:Category:WMF-COM]] and put a link to this category on [[m:PR material cleanup]]. 3) Add the category to all PR material pages you can find. I hope this is reasonably clear. Thanks for your help in this. Sean -- —Sean Whitton / <sean(a)silentflame.com> OpenPGP KeyID: 0x25F4EAB7

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IRC meeting for PR cleanup project
by Sean Whitton 03 Sep '08

03 Sep '08

Hey all, We're going to hold an IRC meeting on Wednesday at 2030 UTC (standard ComProj meeting time) to discuss the PR materials cleanup project in order to get everything in order and to get going. It'll be in #wikimedia-cpg - do join us if you can. Thanks, Sean -- —Sean Whitton / <sean(a)silentflame.com> OpenPGP KeyID: 0x25F4EAB7

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PR material cleanup
by Sean Whitton 03 Sep '08

03 Sep '08

Hello all, A project to get involved in: <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PR_material_cleanup> "An effort has been started to bring together all the PR and communications material out there around various wikis and other locations in one organised space here on meta. It is being loosely co-ordinated by Sean Whitton and involves ComCom, ComProj and Jay Walsh. At the moment the project is being planned on this page, which you are invited to pitch in and edit (discussion should take place on the ComProj list). When this planning is complete, things will go ahead per the below plan (which of course can be changed). The idea is to have a plan and brutally work away at it in order to get this done in a reasonable timeframe. By focussing on just PR/communications stuff, we should be able to avoid drifting off and should be able to finish this project. So, once this page has been open for planning for a week or so, we'll just get going." Interested? Go and sign up and contribute to the skeleton and plan :) Thanks, Sean

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Examples of Wikipedians: short bios
by Ziko van Dijk 01 Sep '08

01 Sep '08

Hello, A useful element for a leaflet or booklet are short bios of Wikipedians, to show what kind of people actually contribute. For example, in my prototype German booklet I present Dr. Josef Winiger form Switzerland, a philosopher and translator of fictional literature. His PhD thesis was about the famous 19th century thinker Ludwig Feuerbach. He is also main author of the article "Ludwig Feuerbach", and for that he was awarded in 2007 with the Zedler-Medaille of Wikimedia Deutschland and the Akademie der Wissenschaften und Literatur (Mainz). Another one is 15 year old user "Suedwester93" from Münster who is interested in the history of German resistence, believes that India is the coming super power and that Loriot is the greatest comedian of all times. He wrote the articles "Deutsche Botschaft London" and "Salomon Blumenau". You see, such short bios include something interesting, something that makes people curious (a 15 year old encyclopedian? let's have a look at that articles!). They link the notion "Wikipedia" positively with real (even if anonymous) persons. Would it be a good idea to collect such bios at Meta-Wiki, in the original language and also in English? At the moment, I am looking for some bios about Wikipedians from other Wikipedias than the German one. Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde

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ComProj September 2008