I asked Dan Phiffer back in April if he would fix Wikipedia Animate. He
finally did!
http://phiffer.org/projects/wikipedia-animate/
My favorite is to animate the entire history of the front page, skipping
minor edits and a relatively fast change speed. That can't be good for the
servers, but it sure is awesome.
Cheers,
Brian
Get your press cards out now, it is time to report on the Wikimedia
Netherlands conference.
The Wikinews article I have started on the topic can be found at the
following url:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Netherlands%2C_2007_conference
Board and ex-board people can contribute (please do!) I'm looking for the
people who attended the talks I didn't to flesh the article out.
Any feedback on what I've written so far would also be appreciated.
Brian.
Hey all,
The fundraising notice, after some tweaks and fixes, is now enabled on
Meta, Commons, and all English-language projects. We're gearing up to
enable it on other languages, but don't want to be throwing too much
English text at people.
Translations for the notice are more centralized this year for a couple
reasons:
* All projects will get the localized texts (including multilingual
projects like Commons)
* Changes will update more quickly -- we had caching problems before
where some people saw old text or no text days after it was changed. The
new system updates within a few minutes.
Currently a meta admin is required to take the updates live, and a
developer has to enable the notice for a particular site or language.
I'm hoping to clean up that process over the coming days, though.
The headline text on the site notice is available for translation at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007/Text_for_sitenotice
There are a lot of translations for the text that we'll switch in
_later_ to go with the landing page under development:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007/Landing_page/Translations
but we need updates for the *current* text in a lot of languages.
Please test out the site notice as it appears on your wikis like this:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/?sitenotice=yeshttp://zh.wikibooks.org/wiki/?sitenotice=yes
etc
Let me know if your community's ready to turn it on as is.
We're also going to want to see updates for the donation forms. The old
ones on http://wikimediafoundation.org still work, though we're trying
to transition to new ones on http://donate.wikimedia.org/
There's a translation system for that new site which we can set up
accounts for, but I'm not 100% sure how to go about all that yet. :)
It's a learning experience.
We're also trying to get subtitled versions of the video with Jimmy up
within the next few days. Subtitle files in .srt format are preferred; I
can recode the videos from them and upload the new versions as they
become available.
-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)
>I think that this "content approach" miss another aspect of the wikis.
>The main point I think of, while telling about the wiki potential for education, is for>pupils themselves to be able to edit them, which is absent here.
The way to attract more children is to attract the adults who deal with children (parents, teachers, etc). The way to attract the parents is to provide a safe environment for children. If the wikijunior website is open to the possibility of vandalism, even if that possibility is remote, then parents wont allow their children to visit the site. Wikijunior.org should become read-only for just this reason, and the wikibooks.org site should be open to edit like it is now. I think that's a decent compromise that will help to bring up readership.
--Andrew Whitworth
_________________________________________________________________
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We've received a recent report from one of our editors that edits to Wikijunior have been in general decline for some months now. This is in contrast to what I would identify as a trend of increasing edits to english Wikibooks as a whole. We have the wikicharts page counter running on our site, and although we've only been counting page hits for less then a month now, there is still an identifiable trend of decreased readership in wikijunior books as well.
We're trying to do more advertising for wikijunior, but there is a limited amount that we can do locally. We've included large links to wikijunior on our main page, a link in the side bar, and we post featured wikijunior books on the main page as well. None of these changes appear to be having the dramatic effect that we are hoping for.
I would like to propose a number of things that we can do to try and draw more attention to Wikijunior, both for contributors and editors.
1) I've started a new logo selection process for Wikijunior at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikijunior/Logo. Wikijunior has never had an official logo, although there have been some efforts to select one in the past.
2) The idea has been discussed before (although I cannot remember where) of turning www.wikijunior.org (which currently redirects to en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior) into a read-only host for completed wikijunior books. Books which pass muster could be uploaded to that website for read-only access. The site would likely need to have a highly-simplified interface designed for use by children. What kind of effort would this take? Would we need a regular MediaWiki installation for this, or could we get away with something smaller and simpler?
3) Start considering the idea of physical publication and distribution. This had been brought up before, but was delayed and never brought up again. Barring physical publication, we could try to get completed wikijunior books included into projects like OLPC which are targeted at children.
4) We need to find people who are interested in writing books for children, or people who are willing to donate books to Wikijunior. English Wikibooks (I cannot speak for other language projects) is very lenient when it comes to Wikijunior books, and we would allow many "cutesy" types of books for children that might otherwise be considered policy violations. We understand that a child's book can still be instructional even if it doesnt look like a regular textbook.
I would be very interested in any comments or suggestions from people about this. The people at wikibooks are very serious about promoting the Wikijunior project.
--Andrew Whitworth
_________________________________________________________________
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>And there is good material from other projects that is suitable for kids,
>just not packaged in the wikijunior format; some of the better-edited
>series on simple-en, some of the media collections on commons and flickr,
>some of the early work on wikiversity and wikieducator.
This is a good point. A dedicated wikijunior.org site could be used to host all sorts of child-related materials from all projects that produce them.
>Better yet, you could make it read-and-tunnelled-write : a 'static' site,
>but with edit links that take you to the page on the feeder site that lets
>you edit the latest non-static version.
This idea wasn't explicitly stated, but I think it's been in the back of everybody's mind. I do worry about giving children a direct link back the the working version, because the working version could still contain vandalism which children shouldnt be exposed to. A link to a "Toolbox" or something which in turn contained links to the working version would likely be a better solution. We can probably deal with these kinds of specifics later.
>There are some ideas for a pared-down mediawiki interface that could
>probably be implemented as a skin...
I've heard many of these ideas, but finding people to implement them is always the problem. Our devs are busy so I dare not bother them with this. I would be willing to work on the project from a software standpoint, but i'm no interface artist.
>For physical publication, I hear Bob Young @ Lulu is a fan of wikipedia;
>perhaps Lulu could host a section for print-on-demand wikijunior books and
>help draw a bit more attention to them.
A wikijunior book was posted to Lulu a while back, and was pulled down by the foundation. Some heated discussion from both sides resulted in the subject being dropped entirely. I would like to hear something from the foundation about how such a thing would be possible before we go through that kind of hassle again. This might be the perfect occasion for the board to make such a statement...
>On the OLPC side of things, I am working on collections to ship with the
>machines; we can include a 'wikijunior' section, say a selection of html +
>edit/contribute links as above, once that exists. English and Spanish
>and Portuguese collections would get immediate use; and feedback, if the
>mechanism for that is simple enough.
Getting PDF versions would be a simple matter, we have lots of experience with that. We could prepare some easy HTML versions too, by calling &printable=yes. It would take more effort to get better quality files. Can the OLPC handle PDF files? If so, I think that would be an ideal method.
--Andrew Whitworth
_________________________________________________________________
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I am staying in Mumbai since last more than 50 years and
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I can act as your Virtual Agent/Resident Rep., on 24x7 basis.
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Arcor, a major German ISP, is being forced to censor access to
YouPorn.com because it doesn't comply with German requirements for
restricting access to adult-only websites:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/97676
The Landgericht Frankfurt has confirmed a preliminary injunction. This
will still go through the courts for a while, but Arcor has already
censored the website from its customers (and, in the first attempt to
do so, also censored 3.5 million other random sites that were
redirected from the same IP address!).
This could become a pretty terrible precedent turning the German
Internet into even more of a legal minefield than it already is. :-(
At some point we may be faced with the choice to either apply a number
of Germany-specific restrictions on our content, or have all Wikimedia
projects be censored in Germany. I'd be inclined towards the latter.
--
Toward Peace, Love & Progress:
Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
Hello all
I've just posted a proposal for a new Wikimedia project, Chains of Reason,
at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chains_of_Reason
Any feedback, and perhaps even support, would be greatly appreciated -
please either reply to this message, or post on the above proposal's talk
page.
There is a demo site at http://www.chainsofreason.org
The following text is from the proposal page:
==What is this wiki for?==
In a nutshell, Chains of Reason aims to be for reasoning what Wikipedia is
for knowledge. Of course, Wikimedia projects are about spreading and
promoting knowledge, but Chains of Reason is compatible with this goal
because the site aims to be an encyclopedia of reasoning. That is, it aims
to be a reference for people who simply want to learn about the reasoning
behind particular beliefs - moral, political, scientific, religious, or
whatever. As explained below, Chains of Reason is *not* a forum for debating
particular beliefs.
I'm aware that a wiki for presenting reasoning has already been proposed
here (Wikireason, in 2005). However, most of what I want to say in this
proposal is different from what is on that original, and long inactive,
proposal page, and I didn't think it would be appropriate to just replace
everything there with what I want to say, so I've created this separate
proposal (which also has a different demo site). Perhaps it would be a good
idea to close that original proposal? Also, I explain below why I think the
concept of a wiki for reasoning is worth a second chance despite the failure
of the original proposal.
==Why should Wikimedia host this wiki?==
Jimmy Wales once famously said about Wikipedia: 'Imagine a world in which
every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all
human knowledge. That's what we're doing.' In an interview earlier this year
he was pressed on why this was desirable, and he replied that a major cause
of most war and poverty was ignorance. Of course, another major cause is
another 'i': irrationality. It will ultimately only be through a combination
of knowledge and the application of sound reasoning that we will be able to
significantly reduce, if not cure, the world's ills, including poverty,
disease, illiteracy, injustice, violence, and environmental damage. While
Wikipedia aims to spread knowledge, Chains of Reason aims to spread sound
reasoning. I therefore believe that Chains of Reason would make a natural
sister project to Wikipedia.
It is true that a wiki for presenting reasoning has been tried before (see
the proposal for Wikireason), and failed to take off. However, from
discussions I've had with the creator of that wiki, I think this was simply
due to him not having enough free time available to establish a community. I
suspect that, because of the unfamiliarity of the concept of a wiki for
presenting reasoning, compared with that of a wiki for presenting knowledge
(which has as a reference the familiar concept of the traditional
encyclopedia), such a wiki will require a much larger community of dedicated
users than Wikipedia did in order to reach the critical mass required for
the site to take off. And I think being a Wikimedia project would quickly
provide Chains of Reason with that critical mass of users.
==How does it work?==
Users present the reasoning behind particular beliefs as a chain of very
simple arguments, with the conclusion of each such link in the chain
becoming a premise of the next, and with the conclusion of the final link
being the belief which the whole chain attempts to justify. Users then work
together to ensure that the chain of reasoning is as clear as possible, with
people left to decide for themselves whether they think the chain is sound.
See the demo at http://www.chainsofreason.org.
==Why this format?==
The Chains of Reason format was chosen over the current, traditional format
of writing in paragraphs for two main reasons:
- Clarity
A founding belief of Chains of Reason is that anyone is capable of
understanding any reasoning - however 'advanced', 'sophisticated',
'difficult', etc. - as long as that reasoning is presented with sufficient
clarity. One of the main aims of Chains of Reason is to provide a place for
people to present reasoning on any topic in a format which helps maximise
clarity. The format used on Chains of Reason does this by requiring users to
break-down reasoning into a sequence of baby steps, with each argument in
the chain always consisting of only two single-sentence premises followed by
a single-sentence conclusion.
Universal understandability of reasoning is perhaps most obviously important
with respect to the reasoning used to justify beliefs expressed in current
political and moral debates. But it is ultimately just as important with
respect to scientific, philosophical and religious reasoning in general,
given that such reasoning underlies various beliefs about the world and how
to live one's life in it. However, the current main arena for reasoning on
such subjects is of course academia, and the often inaccessible nature of
academic writings on these areas, from the point of view of the general
public, often creates the false impression amongst the general public that
the reasoning set-out in such writings must itself be inaccessible to them,
that it must simply be beyond their intellectual reach. And because such
reasoning is therefore not part of their everyday lives, this in turn
creates the false impression that it is not relevant to their everyday
lives.
Of course, universal understandability of reasoning is desirable not just
because it enables people to enter into debates which they currently feel
are inaccessible to them, but also because that wider participation can only
lead to an increase in the quality of reasoning itself.
- Brevity
Another advantage of the format used on Chains of Reason is that it forces
the authors of chains to 'cut to the chase'. The format ensures that only
the bare bones of the reasoning is presented, which means that people can
learn about the reasoning behind particular beliefs in as efficient a way as
possible.
- Further, unexpected, advantages of this format?
Given that the format used on Chains of Reason is so different from the
current, traditional format of writing in paragraphs, and has not been
widely used before, it is possible that there may be other, unexpected
advantages to presenting reasoning in this way.
==Chains of Reason is *not* a forum for debating particular beliefs==
Chains of Reason is *not* a wiki version of the web forums, and electronic
mailing lists, where people debate particular beliefs - moral, political,
scientific, religious, etc. Contributing to Chains of Reason is not about
defending one's beliefs and challenging contrary beliefs of other users. It
is not even about working with other users to objectively try to determine
whether the reasoning behind particular beliefs is sound or unsound, and
therefore whether those beliefs are right or wrong.
==Chains of Reason is a new form of intellectual discourse==
In addition to being a reference, Chains of Reason is a place where people
work together to objectively try to determine *how best to present* the
reasoning behind particular beliefs, with the aim of enabling anyone who
studies the reasoning presented here to make *for themselves* as informed an
assessment as possible of the soundness of that reasoning. This is in
contrast to the current, traditional form of intellectual discourse, where
different individuals or camps compete, rather than collaborate, and do so
in order to try to convince others that their beliefs are right, and that
contrary beliefs are wrong.
==How you can help==
- Contribute to the discussion on this proposal's talk page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chains_of_Reason
- Add your username to the proposal summary if you are interested in being
involved:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Chains_of_Reason
- Direct others who you think might be interested in this project to the
proposal page.
- Subscribe to the Chains of Reason mailing list to receive updates on the
progress of this proposal. The list is located at the Chains of Reason group
at Google Groups:
http://groups.google.com/group/chainsofreason/topicsChains of Reason
group at Google Groups
- Contribute to Chains of Reason!
With best wishes
Derrick