As the title indicates, when working on articles, do you prefer making a
bunch of small edits or one or a couple of big edits?
Personally, I started out making lots of small edits, but lately I've
been the opposite of that.
-MuZemike
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/18/wikipedia-editing-zionist-groups
> Yesha Council, representing the Jewish settler movement, and the rightwing Israel Sheli (My I srael) movement, ran their first workshop this week in Jerusalem, teaching participants how to rewrite and revise some of the most hotly disputed pages of the online reference site.
> "We don't want to change Wikipedia or turn it into a propaganda arm," says Naftali Bennett, director of the Yesha Council. "We just want to show the other side. People think that Israelis are mean, evil people who only want to hurt Arabs all day."
> And on Wikipedia, they believe that there is much work to do.
> Take the page on Israel, for a start: "The map of Israel is portrayed without the Golan heights or Judea and Samaria," said Bennett, referring to the annexed Syrian territory and the West Bank area occupied by Israel in 1967.
> Another point of contention is the reference to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel – a status that is constantly altered on Wikipedia.
> In 2008, members of the hawkish pro-Israel watchdog Camera who secretly planned to edit Wikipedia were banned from the site by administrators.
> Meanwhile, Yesha is building an information taskforce to engage with new media, by posting to sites such as Facebook and YouTube, and claims to have 12,000 active members, with up to 100 more signing up each month. "It turns out there is quite a thirst for this activity," says Bennett. "The Israeli public is frustrated with the way it is portrayed abroad."
> The organisiers of the Wikipedia courses, are already planning a competition to find the "Best Zionist editor", with a prize of a hot-air balloon trip over Israel.
--
gwern
Hi all,
Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, will
be having office hours this Thursday (September 16) at 17:00 UTC
(10:00 PT, 13:00 ET, 19:00 CEST) on IRC in #wikimedia-office.
If you do not have an IRC client, there are two ways you can come chat
using a web browser: First, using the Wikizine chat gateway at
<http://chatwikizine.memebot.com/cgi-bin/cgiirc/irc.cgi>. Type a
nickname, select irc.freenode.net from the top menu and
#wikimedia-office from the following menu, then login to join.
Or, you can access Freenode by going to http://webchat.freenode.net/,
typing in the nickname of your choice and choosing wikimedia-office as
the channel. You may be prompted to click through a security warning,
which you can click to accept.
Please feel free to forward (and translate!) this email to any other
relevant email lists you happen to be on.
____________________
Philippe Beaudette
Head of Reader Relations
Wikimedia Foundation
philippe(a)wikimedia.org
Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hey Everyone,
My name is James Alexander, I'm an Associate Community Officer working
with the Wikimedia Foundation on this years fundraiser. Depending on
what other mailing lists you're on or how active you've been on Meta you
may have seen my colleagues and I getting more active as preparations
ramp up. This year we want to focus explicitly on getting as much
community involvement as possible. A big part of that is trying to
engage the community in discussion both on the individual projects and
on Meta to both propose their own banner ideas and comment on others.
With some huge improvements to the Central Notice system recently we
have a lot of new flexibility to target banners and messages to certain
projects, languages or geographical areas (ala geonotice) and are hoping
to have as many localized messages as we can. To do this we need help
from everyone identifying messages that may be problematic and proposing
ones that they think would be good. To help decide what banners to run
we are currently running hour long tests to get real data on how
messages, banners and landing pages work when out in the wild as well as
trying to work out the technical and administrative kinks before we
start the full fundraiser. Right now we are doing these every Thursday
around 22:00 UTC (we are coming up on our 5th week of tests so you may
have seen some of them already). Essentially all the banners we are
testing come from Meta with a lot of weight being put on the comments
made for each banner. Those messages that don't test well just plain
won't make it into the fundraiser.
You can see some of the current suggestions (and propose your own) on
the Meta messaging page
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Messages> but we also
want to encourage people to discuss on their own wiki. I've started a
thread on the village pump (currently under miscellaneous
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28miscellaneous%29#Fun…>
) and if there is a lot of conversation it may be necessary/helpful to
create a separate page. I want to encourage anyone who has any interest
in this to speak up. We can't address concerns if we don't hear them and
if you say it someone else probably thought it too. Obviously its good
to do as much as possible in the open so that others can see the answers
to their own questions but I'm always happy to respond to questions
privately as well.
I look forward to seeing everyone who joins the discussions and if you
really want to get involved think about joining us on IRC or the
Committee <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Committee>!
--
James Alexander
Associate Community Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
Jalexander(a)wikimedia.org
http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/09/07/wikipedia-entry-on-iraq-war-turned-into…
Technology writer James Bridle (website: http://shorttermmemoryloss.com/)
took the [[Iraq war]] entry....and turned it into a 12-volume
historiography, publishing every edit over five years. It's an interesting
exercise that isn't just a snapshot of how our project works, but of how
information becomes part of the cultural lexicon. Which battles to include?
How is that word spelled? How does one properly describe the impact of
various religious sects on the outcome? And can the entire war really be
reduced to "Saddam Hussein was a dickhead"?
Bridle raises many good points in his discussion, differentiating history
from historiography. Our "History" button is not just a means of
attributing contributions to meet license requirements: it is a window into
the manner in which our society collates, discusses, and accretes
information about historical events, shaping the way in which current and
future generations will view the world in our time.
This article is well worth the read.
Risker/Anne
Hello,
In an annual effort to welcome new Board members with an informal
chat, the newest Wikimedia Trustees (Phoebe and Bishakha) are taking
part in an open meeting on IRC this Saturday. This is a forum to
discuss Wikimedia issues and anything else that's on your mind.
Where : #wikimedia on irc.freenode.net
When : Saturday September 11, 1600-1700 UTC
(That's 0900 PST / 1200 EST / 1800 CEST / 2130 IST)
All are welcome - please join the meeting with ideas or questions
about Wikimedia and the Projects, or simply with good cheer! If you
have a topic to add to the agenda, please add it on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_meetings#September_2010
We will keep the meeting to an hour, and will cover the agenda before
moving to an open discussion. Summary minutes will be published.
I hope to see many of you there,
Sam
Don''t know if Curriki.org (Curriculum + Wiki) has been mentioned on
this list before?
Here's a blog post with a good half hour interview (mp3) with the head.
http://blog.curriki.org/2010/08/24/what%E2%80%99s-the-future-of-curriki-an-…
I'm almost moved to suggest that the WMF could offer them some money,
but I feel an opposing sense of vicarious greed. I'll be keeping an
eye on the project, perhaps you will too.
I've often wondered if there was a way to have more of a virtual
classroom experience as if you had lessons in a subject over a year.
I've done a little (a very little) research into the UK curriculum. I
think that schools differ to an extent that one will never find a
model curriculum; there are certain things that *must* be covered but
the manner of doing so seems rather open, particularly as the UK
government has made the stupid and retrograde step of allowing faith
schools.
I know we have topic outlines on Wikipedia which you could equate to
some degree with a course. And there's Wikibooks. I won't mention
Wikiversity as Curriki is for K12 and they don't yet plan to cover
further education. Some of our templates, too, give a kind of course
vibe. Am I missing anything?