Hi everyone,
Just wanted to share the preliminary details for the 2nd annual New England
Women-in-STEM edit-a-thon that will be held in conjunction with Ada
Lovelace Day. This year's event will take place on *Tuesday, October
15th*from 3pm to 8:30pm in
*Providence, RI* and is being co-organized by myself and several people at
Brown University. Providence may be a bit of a hike for many of you, but
I'm hoping to reach out to the Rhode Island/SE Mass./SE Conn. community as
a way to recruit and train a new cohort of Wikimedians! If you cannot make
it in person, we would still love to have you participate remotely...
For more information, and to RSVP, check out our event page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Ada_Lovelace_Edit-a-thon_2013…
We should have a room figured out by next week, at which time I will also
be creating event pages on Meetup and Facebook. Please feel free to forward
this to anyone in the New England area who may not be on this list!
many thanks,
Maia
maiaw.com | 917-553-6158 | @20tauri | WP:Girona7
>From wikim'aus.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Pharos <pharosofalexandria(a)gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 1:41 AM
Subject: [Wikimediaus-l] Your city's events for WP Takes America and
WP Loves Libraries?
To: "Wikimedia U.S. Chapter" <wikimediaus-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hi Wiki-Americans,
You are invited to add your city's events for Wikipedia Takes America
in September and Wikipedia Loves Libraries in October/November (or for
libraries, really anytime in the Fall is good).
With the current publicity period, now is the time to get some
attention and gather communities together!
Please don't hesitate to add preliminary event planning, it's always
better to share a local sense of what is brewing :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Americahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Loves_Libraries
Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)
_______________________________________________
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https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaus-l
--
Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266
Dear Wikiholics,
I just returned from Wikimania Hong Kong, which was organized
particularly well this year. Kudos to the local team; they wrote up
their experiences quite well for the benefit of future bids. You can
find slides from many of the talks and sessions online:
http://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Schedule
Some reflections on how it went are being shared now on the
wikimania-l list as well, if you want to browse it.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimania-l/2013-August/thread.html
Back in Boston this week, there are discussions of legal annotation
tomorrow and Wednesday: details in a separate message.
Warmly,
Sam.
--
Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266
Dear Boston Wikipedians,
For the purpose of tweaking a wiki, I would be grateful for one hour of
help from one of your members.
Having met SJ Klein and others at an open house at the Berkman Center a
couple of years back, and more recently at Clover in Harvard Square, I feel
as though one or more of you may be interested in contributing an easy hour
of your busy time to this particular project.
I have basic skills and experience with MediaWiki, but I need some brief
how-to assistance with some intermediate tasks. I have already gleaned what
I can from documentation, help lines, and fiddling around.
Using Mediawiki, I have begun setting up a wiki to support collaboration
among the founders of a proposed grade 6-12 school. The group comprises
oceanographers and marine biologists, maritime historians, geographers,
geologist/geophysicists, linguists, authors, and practitioners from other
disciplines who want to share the excitement of their marine and maritime
perspectives with students of the rising generation.
The school, to be called the "New Bedford Cheironeum," after Cheiron, the
first teacher (and teacher of Jason and the Argonauts), will:
- locate in the historic port of New Bedford,
- function as a tuition-free, publicly supported, independently
governed, "charter" school
- serve a disadvantaged population of 756 students
- emphasize "Ocean Education" through experiential learning
- train students to operate a soon-to-be restored 120-yr-old, 100-ft
long historic schooner as an ocean-going research vessel (see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xhIHFKVDzU)
- apply for membership in the International Baccalaureate "Middle Years
Programme" and "Diploma Programme."
- create a model for the creation of similar schools throughout the
Atlantic basin
The wiki I set up is currently password-protected. The url is
www.NewBedfordCheironeum.org/wiki, and it is hosted by www.FatCow.com.
I have a basic wiki. I need limited help with:
- upgrading the current versions of MediaWiki, PHP, and MySQL
- setting up one or two examples of templates, categories, portals, etc.
- adding some basic extensions (parser,etc.)
I am familiar with what needs to be done, but not practiced at it.
This wiki needs to be robust enough to support and encourage communication
among seriously committed founders, while stimulating the interest of
potential supporters. We have plenty of content; we need a more engaging
structure. We are trying to create a main page that resembles, in a more
modest way, the main page of Wikipedia.
We are also open to whatever suggestions you care to make.
Thank you for considering this request. Your help at this juncture would be
an invaluable contribution.
Best regards,
Rick Porteus
Lead Founder
New Bedford Cheironeum
rporteus(a)NewBedfordCheironeum.org
Mobile: 508-292-0476
I am in the process of designing a secondary school, grades 6-12, to focus
on "Ocean-based Education"
open as a charter school in
--
Rick Porteus
Hi,
I'll be able to come down to the hack day on either Tues or Wed of that
week. I'll probably be there from about 9am to 5pm I will be mainly
hacking on my QA scripts, but am also interested in the other
activities/project work that will be going on there, and learning more
about the other parts of Wikimedia I don't know about. I can give an
informal demonstration of how to write our QA tests, if people are
interested. What day is better for me to come into Bocoup?
Thanks.
--Rachel
*Gnome FOSS Outreach Program for Women Intern
Browser Test Automation, Wikimedia Foundation*
Notes from the Bleeding Edge <http://www.bleededge.blogspot.com/>
On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 8:00 AM, <
wikimedia-boston-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Send Wikimedia-boston mailing list submissions to
> wikimedia-boston(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2013 11:38:16 -0400
> From: "C. Scott Ananian" <cananian(a)wikimedia.org>
> To: wikimedia-boston(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Cc: Mark Holmquist <mholmquist(a)wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-boston] WMF hack/hang-out?
> Message-ID:
> <CAK5kH3z8KqCxDuDg0NNzceUM-2+L5pONtwEEWqaKu=
> bz_bqFkQ(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Looks like we're set to do some coworking at http://loft.bocoup.com ("355
> Congress Street, a 5 minute walk from South Station") on Monday Aug 19
> through Wed Aug 21.
>
> Let me know if:
> a) you have a particular project and particular time you'd like to work
> with others on that project
> b) you'd like to hang out with WMF folks and have a particular time you'd
> like to do so ;)
> c) you'd like to organize something on Saturday Aug 17 at the bocoup
> space.
>
> Otherwise I expect I'll be @ bocoup roughly 10:30am - 5:30pm on those three
> days. Come and be social, and maybe something serendipitous will happen!
> --scott
>
> --
> (http://cscott.net)
>
Yes, I'd be interested in meeting up for a meetup/hackday. I'm currently
an Outreach Program for Women intern for the QA automation team at
Wikmedia, so I could hack on one of our QA tests, and I can show others how
we are automating our tests these days. It's a pretty cool setup using
Cucumber/Ruby/Selenium, and volunteers might be interested in learning the
tools and helping out with one of the tests.
--Rachel
*Gnome FOSS Outreach Program for Women Intern
Browser Test Automation, Wikimedia Foundation*
Notes from the Bleeding Edge <http://www.bleededge.blogspot.com/>
On Sun, Jul 28, 2013 at 8:00 AM, <
wikimedia-boston-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Send Wikimedia-boston mailing list submissions to
> wikimedia-boston(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-boston
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> wikimedia-boston-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> wikimedia-boston-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Wikimedia-boston digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: WMF hack/hang-out? (Samuel Klein)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 27 Jul 2013 15:05:05 -0400
> From: Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com>
> To: "C. Scott Ananian" <cananian(a)wikimedia.org>
> Cc: Boston Wikipedians <wikimedia-boston(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-boston] WMF hack/hang-out?
> Message-ID:
> <
> CAAtU9WLJ5oMuBVu2XspcVDNpE7GNck8K0U8CNs8eV9-1tOPNaQ(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> I've asked Adam Hyland, a Boston wikipedian who works at the swank
> software-house Bocoup, if they might have space we could use in their
> demesne that week.
>
> You would also all be welcome at the Berkman Center - I could find a
> room for us all in the new Wasserstein building at Harvard -- more
> academic, less startup-culture. (more people hacking on annotation
> :-)
>
> Either way, I'd be glad to spend those weekdays in a shared space. And
> other Wikimedians would be welcome to come by and spend time with us.
>
> Warmly,
> SJ
>
> On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 12:36 PM, C. Scott Ananian
> <cananian(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > I hack on mediawiki for WMF. Mark Holmquist, another WMF hacker, is
> going
> > to be visiting Boston roughly Aug. 16 - Aug 21. There are other WMF folk
> > scattered around here, along with lots of volunteers. Is anyone up for a
> > meetup/hackday? Mark and I would like to play with hooking up Mozilla's
> Tow
> > Truck (https://towtruck.mozillalabs.com/) in order to allow real-time
> > collaboration in a wiki context. (Editing? TeaHouse? Talk pages?
> > something like that.) Maybe other people have their own hacking projects
> > where it would be useful to be nearby and pick our brains?
> > --scott
> >
> > --
> > (http://cscott.net)
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikimedia-boston mailing list
> > Wikimedia-boston(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-boston
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-boston mailing list
> Wikimedia-boston(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-boston
>
>
> End of Wikimedia-boston Digest, Vol 35, Issue 17
> ************************************************
>
Hello everyone,
Firstly, I hope that you all have been having a great day, as it has been beautiful all this week! As you all know, the fall semester is fast approaching, and the Wikipedia Education Program is searching for Campus Volunteers to help facilitate the teaching of Wikipedia to students at local Boston-area college campuses. A few people receiving this e-mail already are already involved in the program and know what I’m talking about, but for those of you are are interested in finding out more information, you can go here: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program. Mainly all of the classes will be occurring within the 128 belt, but there is one class that will be occurring at Merrimack College, so if anyone would be able to easily go there, that would be great! In terms of involvement, if anyone wants to become involved, please let me know, and I will be happy to do a very brief interview and guide you along on the process.
Finally, some updates on the user group front. Due to the developments at the last meeting, we have moved from the “In discussion” phase to the “Planned” phase. Our next group step is to be approved, now that Maia and I have agreed to sign and submit the User Group Agreement (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_User_Group_Agreement), and hopefully we will be at this stage during our next meeting, when we can plan on electing an interim steering committee to help lead until our next annual meeting, where we will pursue the idea of possible chapter status.
If you have any questions about the Education Program, e-mail me (but not the entire list), and if you have any questions about the User Group, e-mail the list (but not me directly). Have a great weekend!
Kevin Rutherford
I hack on mediawiki for WMF. Mark Holmquist, another WMF hacker, is going
to be visiting Boston roughly Aug. 16 - Aug 21. There are other WMF folk
scattered around here, along with lots of volunteers. Is anyone up for a
meetup/hackday? Mark and I would like to play with hooking up Mozilla's
Tow Truck (https://towtruck.mozillalabs.com/) in order to allow real-time
collaboration in a wiki context. (Editing? TeaHouse? Talk pages?
something like that.) Maybe other people have their own hacking projects
where it would be useful to be nearby and pick our brains?
--scott
--
(http://cscott.net)
This is a great foot in the door for working with museums - a lovely
high-visibility piece. Worth pursuing with both campus and regional
museums.
SJ
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Nothing novel for anyone who's followed GLAM activities in general,
but it did get notice elsewhere:
http://artmarketmonitor.com/2013/07/29/the-smithsonian-courts-wikipedia/http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/arts/design/museum-welcomes-wikipedia-edi…
Museum Welcomes Wikipedia Editors
By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: July 26, 2013
WASHINGTON — No one knows the components of dark matter, the mystery
of Mona Lisa’s smile or precisely how long it will take Kim Kardashian
to lose the 50 pounds she gained during her pregnancy.
Amid this vast ocean of bewilderment, however, a small group of
volunteers managed to expand the well of shared human knowledge last
week by joining a daylong group editing session sponsored by Wikipedia
and the Smithsonian Institution’s American Art Museum in Washington.
The gathering — called an edit-athon — was the latest collaboration
between the online encyclopedia and cathedrals of culture like the
Smithsonian to expand and improve Wikipedia entries, which are subject
to the vagaries of volunteer contributions. At the same time, the
Smithsonian is able to better publicize what’s in its extensive
collections.
“Wikipedia is driven by this desire to share knowledge freely with the
world, and that is in sync with our mission,” said Sara Snyder,
webmaster at the Archives of American Art, a Smithsonian research
center that held an editing session in March to beef up the digital
encyclopedia’s entries on female artists.
These amateur-professional collaborations began in 2010 as the
brainchild of Liam Wyatt, a former bartender, fire twirler, podcaster
and vice president of Wikimedia Australia, during an unpaid five-week
stint as Wikipedian in residence at the British Museum. The following
year, the Archives of American Art appointed its own Wikipedian in
residence and organized an edit-athon, enlisting local volunteers to
create new articles using the archives’ resources. Other institutions,
including the New York Public Library, the Children’s Museum of
Indianapolis and the Picasso Museum in Barcelona have joined what has
been called the GLAM-Wiki initiative. (GLAM stands for galleries,
libraries, archives and museums.)
Institutions like the British Museum and the Smithsonian recognize
that they cannot compete with Wikipedia’s popularity. Many more people
searching for information online about the Smithsonian go to Wikipedia
rather than the Smithsonian’s own Web site.
Several members of the Smithsonian’s social media staff joined the
dozen or so Wikipedia editors and novices who were lured to the
American Art Museum last Friday by the prospect of disseminating
knowledge, a behind-the-scenes tour and a free lunch.
While somebody could just as easily add Wikipedia entries while home
alone in skivvies, sitting around a conference table with a laptop and
fellow Wikipedians can be a great way to socialize “for people who
don’t like to meet,” said Gerald Shields, a Treasury Department tax
attorney who lives in Prince George’s County, Md., and is a member of
the local Wikipedia chapter.
Mr. Shields said he generally edited articles on North Korea and on
feminism, primarily because few other people do. He combs through the
English-language version of The Pyongyang Times for citations, and
last year, even spent part of a trip to China trying to track down a
photograph of Ri Sol-ju, the wife of the North Korean leader Kim
Jong-un. At the museum, Mr. Shields, camera in hand, took on the role
of the day’s official chronicler.
This was the first group editing session for Robert Greenwood, a
retired police dispatcher from Catlett, Va., who has been editing
Wikipedia entries, mostly on citizen science and ornithology, for more
than two years. What got him hooked on the Wiki world, he said, was
the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teenager who
was killed by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in
Sanford, Fla.
“I was a dispatcher myself, and I had listened to all of the
recordings of 911 calls,” he said. Rather than having access only to
snippets of conversations provided by the news media, Mr. Greenwood
said, citizens should be able to listen to the entire conversation and
come to their own conclusions. He formatted the recordings and
uploaded them to Wikipedia.
For the American Art Museum, Mr. Greenwood created an article on art
conservation, one of two dozen subjects — digital conservation and the
artists Paul Cadmus, Leo Friedlander and Margaret Boozer among them —
that the museum had listed as needing more information or new entries.
Making the museum’s list did not necessarily pass Wikipedia’s muster,
however. The online encyclopedia relies on citations to determine
whether someone is sufficiently notable to merit an entry.
Fran Rogers, who is on Wikipedia’s technical committee, decided to
write about Betty Spindler, a ceramist, after seeing one of her
creations — a clay hot dog with relish and mustard — in the museum’s
collection. Ms. Rogers said she hoped the inclusion of Ms. Spindler’s
work in a couple of other collections and a mention in a few newspaper
articles would get her past the notability hurdle. It seems to have
worked. No other Wikipedians have challenged the entry.
Ms. Rogers had come to the editing session primarily to help neophytes
with technical problems. Like most of the other participants not on
the Smithsonian’s staff, she had no particular interest in art.
Madilynn Garcia, a student at the University of Texas at Austin, and
her cousin, Chance Paglia, a student at Georgetown University, were
interested in learning how to use Wikipedia to disseminate information
— but not necessarily about art. “I know a lot about pre-Shamanistic
native cultures,” Mr. Paglia said, explaining why he was working on
entries for metallurgy in Japan and the pre-Roman Empire instead of
those related to art. Ms. Garcia, a summer intern at the American
Alliance for Theater and Education, was looking at the page for
Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatists.
When Wayne Clough, the secretary of the Smithsonian, stopped by for a
brief visit, he peeked over Ms. Garcia and Mr. Paglia’s shoulders and
asked “What are you working on?”
Before they could answer, another Smithsonian employee distracted Mr.
Clough. Ms. Garcia and Mr. Paglia flashed each other a quick smile.
Mr. Clough thanked the volunteers. As he spoke, Mr. Shields and
another veteran contributor, Jim Hayes, checked out Mr. Clough’s
Wikipedia page and decided that the accompanying picture could be
improved. So Mr. Shields snapped some photos and soon substituted a
shot of Mr. Clough with a couple of the volunteers at 2:21 p.m.
Fourteen minutes later, however, another editor somewhere in
cyberspace named Duckduckgo restored the original photograph and moved
the new image farther down because the Wikipedia community has agreed
that biographical pictures are generally portraits only of the
individual.
“This is part of the way Wikipedia works,” Mr. Shields said. “Everyone
can edit any article.”
A version of this article appeared in print on July 27, 2013, on page
C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Museum Welcomes
Wikipedia Editors.
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--
Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266