WikiEN-l July 2010

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

46 participants
27 discussions

"Wikipedia’s Foundation Plans Expansion"
by Gwern Branwen 14 Jul '10

14 Jul '10

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/wikipedia-foundation-plans-expansi… > The foundation that runs the Wikipedia Web site plans to add 44 employees in the next year — roughly doubling the size of its current professional staff — and to raise $20 million to support a much-enhanced vision for the volunteer-created encyclopedia that nearly anyone can edit. > The announcement of the expansion was made by the Wikimedia Foundation’s executive director, Sue Gardner, at the start of the sixth annual Wikimania conference, held this year in Poland. The conference brings together editors, administrators and the professional staff to discuss trends and ideas for Wikipedia and other collaborative Internet projects. > By hiring more employees and raising more money, the foundation hopes to nearly double the number of unique visitors to the site by 2015, to 680 million a month, Ms. Gardner told an audience of a few hundred who had assembled in the Polish Baltic Philharmonic hall, on an island across from Gdansk’s historic old city. The foundation plans to focus on expanding generally in Africa, Central and Latin America, and Asia, and specifically setting up offices in Brazil and India, she said. Well, I suppose as long as the technical side doesn't suffer starvation and they actually can raise that much... -- gwern

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I Need Some Help
by Marc Riddell 11 Jul '10

11 Jul '10

I'm having trouble with the appearance of and, in some instances, gaining access to various links on the WP site. The same thing is happening on the Wiktionary site. This just started happening this morning. Every page I go to has very large type. And the WP globe, as well as the boxes underneath it, are superimposed over the entire page. I don't know where else to go with this problem. I tried getting to the various "Help" pages but the same thing happens. Not only is the appearance of the page a mess, but clicking on the various Links doesn't work. Any suggestions? This situation, in addition to making it very difficult to read a page, makes it impossible for me to edit any. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Marc Riddell

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Telegraph (UK) - MPs editing their articles
by David Gerard 11 Jul '10

11 Jul '10

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7883064/MPs-scandals-co… Nothing unusual and nothing saying we've erred in any way, surprisingly and pleasingly - they put blame strictly on those making the changes. Last two paras: "There are no rules preventing staff at the Houses of Parliament from changing Wikipedia entries. The parliamentary IT policy warns users not to create material which could be "threatening, slanderous, abusive, indecent, obscene, racist, illegal or offensive". "Wikipedia's own rules of conduct discourage editing by individuals with a "conflict of interest" – which would include the MPs themselves, their staff and family members." I could ask for little ways it could be better, but I can't see anything wrong with this article. - d.

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Jpg versus jpeg file extensions
by Carcharoth 09 Jul '10

09 Jul '10

I noticed that a picture in an article was no longer displaying when it had been displaying before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menin_Gate The file is: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Menin_Gate.jpg But in the article it had been entered as "File:Menin_Gate.jpeg". Presumably the software treated jpg and jpeg the same, and this changed recently. Does anyone know where and why? I tried searching in help pages and on Commons, but was getting too many hits. I did notice that the upload process at Commons seemed to change recently to be .JPG (capitals) and not .jpg (lowercase) so maybe it is all part of the same thing? Anyone know anything about all this, or know where there is a page detailing what changed? Carcharoth

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"Wikipedia’s Labor Squeeze and Its Consequences"
by Ryan Delaney 09 Jul '10

09 Jul '10

Here's another outside view of the goings-on in Wikipedia, especially with respect to the current trend toward backing away from the former pure interpretation of the "anyone can edit" part of your slogan. http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1606233&seqNum=4

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Interesting exchange on copyright
by Nathan 09 Jul '10

09 Jul '10

This blog post[1], from the music composer Jason Robert Brown, discusses the morality and legality of copyright in the context of sheet music. It's based around an exchange with a teenager that evolves into a pretty interesting debate. It mentions Wikipedia, and links to other discussions that popped up in response. The ignorance of the basics of copyright law, and the ramifications in the Internet age, echo whats been written about (and on) Wikipedia over the years. Also on the same subject, David Pogue and Michael Hawley (formerly of MIT Medialab): http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/08/technology/personaltech/08pogue-web.html [1] http://www.jasonrobertbrown.com/weblog/2010/06/fighting_with_teenagers_a_co… --

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Update on the Public Policy Initiative
by LiAnna Davis 07 Jul '10

07 Jul '10

Hi all, First off, I want to introduce myself: I'm LiAnna Davis, the communications associate for the Wikimedia Foundation's new Public Policy Initiative. The Initiative is a new project where we will work with professors at public policy schools in the United States to incorporate improving Wikipedia articles into the curriculum for their courses. We will experiment with different methods of using Wikipedia as a teaching and learning tool in universities and ways to provide incentives and support participation by students, teachers, and Wikipedians. The goal of the project is both to improve public policy content during the duration of the project and also to produce information and infrastructure that could inform the design and development of a long-term sustainable model. We're finalizing our list of professors who will be participating in the Initiative for the fall, so stay tuned for more information about that -- but at the moment, we're in the middle of an article assessment drive, and we encourage everyone to join us. Our on-Wikipedia home is the WikiProject United States Public Policy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Pol…), and we've started a challenge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Pol…) to tag and assess as many articles relevant to our project as you can. We're using a more detailed assessment model (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Pol…) to meet the quantitative analysis needs of our project. Over the last few weeks, we've had great collaboration with several editors who have already joined our project on the first few drafts of our metric. Please join us help work out the bugs as we put it into action. We're also looking for Campus Ambassadors and Online Ambassadors, experienced Wikipedians who can help students in the courses navigate editing Wikipedia. Campus Ambassadors (more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Pol…) are people who can physically be at the schools; Online Ambassadors (more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Pol…) can participate from anywhere. I encourage any editors interested in U.S. public policy or using Wikipedia in the classroom to join our WikiProject and help out. LiAnna -- LiAnna Davis Communications Associate - Public Policy Wikimedia Foundation

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WikiEN-l July 2010