Hello everyone,
I don't know how many of you are subscribed to the gender gap list, but for
those of you who are not: I found this message interesting and somehow
relevant to our work. As many of you leading great work to narrow the
gender gap on Wikipedia, I mean.
Please let me know if you have any questions or need my help with anything!
Cheers,
Samir
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rob <gamaliel8(a)gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 8:57 PM
Subject: [Gendergap] The Signpost
To: Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects <
Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hello,
I'm one of the new editor-in-chiefs of The Signpost, the community-written
newspaper covering the English Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.
While it is hosted on the English Wikipedia it is independent of the WMF.
In March, we would like to include some content focusing on women's
contributions to Wikipedia and the gender gap. Some of this may be in
conjunction with the WMF blog, but the details have yet to be worked out.
We need ideas, but mostly we need people willing to create such content.
We have a very small staff and most of them are dedicated to producing our
regular features.
March aside, new content and suggestions are of course always welcome at
any time and on any issue. In particular, I've used this list to find
media stories that I've missed in the usual places I look when composing
the "In the media" section of the Signpost, and I wanted to say thanks for
that and if there's any media story or anything else that you think should
be featured in the Signpost, please let me know.
Thank you,
Gamaliel
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Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To manage your subscription preferences, including unsubscribing, please
visit:
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--
Samir Elsharbaty,
Communications Intern, Wikipedia Education Program
Wikimedia Foundation
+2.011.200.696.77
selsharbaty(a)wikimedia.org
education.wikimedia.org
Hello everyone,
It is really worth sharing the new blog post Sara Mortsell from Wikimedia
Sverige has written about open badges they use to acknowledge student and
educator work. This shows us how moral support would help encourage our
valuable volunteers. I hope you all will have a chance to read this post.
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/01/29/badges-for-swedish-students-and-teach…
Cheers,
--
Samir Elsharbaty,
Communications Intern, Wikipedia Education Program
Wikimedia Foundation
+2.011.200.696.77
selsharbaty(a)wikimedia.org
education.wikimedia.org
Hello everyone,
You may know that Wikimania 2015 <http://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org> will
be held in Mexico City between July 15 to 19 and that applications to get a
scholarship <https://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships> to
attend Wikimania are now open till February 16. Submissions
<https://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions> for presentations
and other group work are also being accepted now until February 28.
Wikimania scholarships aim to help bring to Wikimania a good reflection of
the diversity of initiatives, views and voicees that make Wikipedia and the
sister projects so unique. We, therefore, encourage submissions from Global
South participants, volunteers focusing on gender diversity initiatives,
and other different perspectives.
You are playing a crucial role in raising the level of quality on
Wikipedia, increasing gender diversity by the high female participation you
helped the program have, and helping raise the awareness of the importance
of Wikipedia in educational institutions. Education will be a main focus at
Wikimania, therefore, we encourage all education-related initiatives to
join and present their initiative there.
I will be happy to work with you on any education-related session proposals
or scholarship applications that you may wish to submit. Please feel free
to reach out to me with any questions you may have.
Best regards,
--
Samir Elsharbaty,
Communications Intern, Wikipedia Education Program
Wikimedia Foundation
+2.011.200.696.77
selsharbaty(a)wikimedia.org
education.wikimedia.org
Two questions:
1. What is the gender balance of long term editors who started editing
in a WEP class? I have second-hand information that it is over 40%
female.
2. What is the WEP guidance on lengthy quotations? Do we encourage
students who, say, don't have the time or confidence in their ability
to summarize a passage they think would be a substantial improvement,
to insert it as a properly cited and quoted excerpt, or just not make
the edit?
I talked to a college professor who has never heard of the WEP but has
interesting guidance on plagiarism which doesn't really assume that
improvements are preferred even when they are lengthy quotations. How
can we get teachers to understand that as long as they are clearly
quoted and cited, other editors will come along and summarize the
salient points of important source passages later?
Hello,
Happy New Year everyone! :)
We are planning Indic Language Wikipedia workshops in U.S.
Please go through Project Link :
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Indic_Language_Wikipedia_Out…
Project idea What is the problem you're trying to solve?
Indic languages represent a large portion of languages used worldwide. The
number of contributors for Indic languages has been lagging other language
families for a variety of reasons. Internet connectivity in India being
limited/expensive is a major reason among them. Indic wikiprojects have
beens working to encourage more contributors for Indic Languages.
There are a number of areas on Indic wikipedias where content is either
lacking or is of poor quality. Health-related content is a prime example of
this.
Potential for solution
There is a strong and diverse Indian diaspora in the United States. Eastern
Seaboard has a large number of Indian expats that have either settled there
or live there for work/business. This was evidenced by the 20,000+ people
attending a speech in Hindi by the Prime Minister of India at Madison
Square Garden, New York.
In general, the Indian origin community in the United States has very high
literacy rates. They are also well-versed in English as well as at least
one of Indic languages. Access to Internet is not an issue for this
demographic. Enthusiasm for advancement of Indic languages is also evident
by the many initiatives being pursued by this group.
What is your solution?
1. Dedicated workshops for Indian Languages in United States of America.
2. Informal User Group to conduct periodic meetings/offline events.
3. Collaboration with local chapters and editors to improve Offline
Wikipedia in Indian Languages.
4. Special content (health related articles/essential medicines info
etc) on Indic Wikipedia can be improved by specialized dedicated group of
Indian medical students in U.S.
5. Collaboration with (U.S based) like minded individuals and
organizations dedicated to improve Open Knowledge movement in India.
Pilot Project
Outreach events in
- New York,
- Washington D.C,
- Boston
- Colorado Springs
- A session here will serve as an aide to developing and/or fine-tuning
presentations and sequence of activities.
- San Diego.
Goals
- Reach out to more Indians to increase their understanding of how Indic
Language Wikimedia projects work, and enable them to pass this knowledge on
to others.
- Improving and building upon contributions to Wikimedia projects in
English, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Commons etc.
- Increasing visibility, reach and access to Wikimedia projects amongst
Indian Americans, especially in students.
- Sign up students interested in our various activities & any other
training workshops planned.
- Conduct outreach sessions in universities, student fests, fairs etc.
Other benefits
- A strong, diverse and engaged students community.
- Growth in editorship and readership from U.S.
We look forward to hear from you. Kindly share your views here -
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Indic_Language_Wikipedia_Out…
Keep Supporting, Keep Inspiring :-)
--
Warm Regards,
Abhishek Suryawanshi
User:AbhiSuryawanshi
Hello everyone,
Last week's episode of euronews' show Learning World was about the open
sources of information and it's use in education. One of the episode's
segment was about Wikipedia Education Program in Egypt. They filmed the
footage in one of our editathons in Cairo last month.
Unfortunately, the segment has some mistakes. The most prominent of them
are: The number of articles on Wikipedia which is 34.5 million articles not
only 4 millions as they said. 'May be they meant the En Wiki'. Also the
number of active editors is ~80K and the titles of the speakers were all
written wrong!
We are very sorry for the mistakes. We have sent them many emails and files
to get the information from during the preparation time, so that we make
sure everything they share is accurate, but what is done is done!
Enjoy watching: http://youtu.be/43-LDglpvkc
Sorry for cross-posting if you have already seen the episode on any other
list or on one of our social media channels!
Best,
--
Samir Elsharbaty,
Communications Intern, Wikipedia Education Program
Wikimedia Foundation
+2.011.200.696.77
selsharbaty(a)wikimedia.org
education.wikimedia.org
Good evening, Professor Christie. My name is Lixxx235, and I'm a Wikipedia
editor and an Online Ambassador with the Wikipedia Education Program. (
userpage <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lixxx235>)
It's come to my attention (through a student's request for help via
Wikipedia's live chat) that you have given your students assignments
relating to editing Wikipedia. While the Wikipedia Education Program fully
supports such assignments, and endorses a number of courses at various
universities around the world, according to one of your students, an
assignment you've given seems to have students confused and is causing
submissions in violation of some Wikipedia policies and wasting volunteer
and student time. For example, this
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Fuel_controlled_fires_…>
is an entry one of your students tried to get help on from our live help
chat. This submission does not meet Wikipedia guidelines such as notability
policies, policies requiring verifiability of material, and policies
requiring a neutral point of view (NPOV) to be kept. In addition, it was
not in Wikipedia's standard format.
We'd love to get in touch with you. Please reply back to
lixxx235wikipedia(a)gmail.com and education(a)lists.wikimedia.org to see how we
can help you develop good assignments for editing Wikipedia and how we can
resolve some issues with your current assignment.
All the best,
Lixxx235
English Wikipedia
