Wikimedia-l December 2008

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[Foundation-l] Lecture of prof. Miran Hladnik at conference in Belgrade
by Milos Rancic 27 Dec '08

27 Dec '08

You may find it at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Slovene_student_projects_in_Wikipedia_and_Wi…

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[Foundation-l] Britannica became free
by Milos Rancic 27 Dec '08

27 Dec '08

If I understood well, the content of the online edition of Britannica became free (as in "free beer", of course). They are putting some irritating screen with recommendation to buy access to their edition every 10 seconds (or so), but, in fact, it is possible to copy-paste the content somewhere else and read it. Hm. Wikipedia doesn't have that irritating screen. (OK, banner is irritating, but it is not of that kind ;) ) Does anyone have some more informations about it? Also, may someone (who owns some newer edition of Britannica: paper or electronic) check, let's say, this link [1] and confirm that this is the complete article. [1] - http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/268173/Hittite-language

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[Foundation-l] Data center move in Amsterdam: expect some downtime
by Mark Bergsma 27 Dec '08

27 Dec '08

In the upcoming days until new years we will be moving our servers and other equipment in the Amsterdam data center location to a new data center. Unfortunately this might result in some down time and hiccups of certain web sites & services, although we will try to keep this to a minimum. On Sunday the 28th, between 09:00 and 11:00 UTC we will migrate our network in Amsterdam to new equipment. All services located there will be unreachable for a brief period. Traffic for the main wikis will be rerouted to the Florida cluster however, and should remain unaffected. In the days after we will be moving the servers themselves. Some services, such as the mailing lists server, the subversion server and the toolserver cluster, will be down for a number of hours while the equipment is being moved. Traffic for the wikis should again remain largely unaffected. We hope to have the entire migration finished before we enter the last few hours of 2008... and start 2009 with a clean sheet. Happy Holidays everyone! -- Mark Bergsma <mark(a)wikimedia.org> System & Network Administrator, Wikimedia Foundation

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[Foundation-l] Wikipedia video tutorials: the making-of
by Frank Schulenburg 26 Dec '08

26 Dec '08

Hi all, As most of you know we've been working on Wikipedia video tutorials during the last few months. The general idea behind producing video tutorials is the belief that videos make learning much easier than text based online help pages, at least for some audiences. We are therefore producing a number of videos demonstrating the basics of Wikipedia editing and increasing the public understanding of Wikipedia and Wikimedia. For this purpose we would like to distinguish between two sorts of video tutorials: * Guided tours: designed to raise the public understanding of Wikipedia and Wikimedia as well as to encourage people to view Wikipedia as friendly. All guided tours will be presented by moderators in order to appear more trustworthy, friendly and encouraging. They will be produced as high quality videos by a production company commissioned by the Wikimedia Foundation. * How-to videos: aimed at explaining basic features of the Wikipedia user interface. How-to videos shall be produced as screencasts with a speaker explaining every single step. In a nutshell think of (a) guided tours as videos aimed at giving the audience a look behind the scenes and to encourage them to join us as editors and (b) how-to videos as tutorials to enable newbies to make a successful start on Wikipedia. (a) Examples for guided tours may be: * Editing Wikipedia is easy! * Why does Wikipedia work even though anyone can edit it? * What motivates the volunteers behind Wikipedia / Wikimedia? * What you should know about Wikimedia - the organization behind Wikipedia (b) Examples for how-to videos may be: * How to create a user account * The basics of Wiki markup * How do I upload images? * How to find information about a certain topic on Wikipedia? On 19 November 2008, the shooting of the very first Wikipedia guided tours video tutorials took place. We are very happy that we found in Hendrik John of Living Colour film production an experienced filmmaker who managed not only the shooting but also everything related to the development (including the casting of Theresa, our moderator in the first two videos) and the pre-production (like hiring the crew and building the set). A big thanks goes to Lennart Guldbrandsson, the president of Wikimedia Sverige, who helped us a lot with his experience in filmmaking and scriptwriting. Thank you Lennart - I always enjoy our collaboration! To give you a look behind the scenes I produced a short 3 minute making-of video that provides some insights on how complex the production of guided tours may be. You can watch it online: * http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_video_tutorials_making-of_… (11.7 MB, better quality) * http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_video_tutorials_making-of_… (6.2 MB, lower quality) and also on * http://vimeo.com/2554962 * http://fschulenburg.blip.tv/file/1493287/ * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgJTndVjSYc Currently, the two video tutorials are in the process of post-production (assembling the film, adding visual effects etc.) and we hope that they will be online soon. All this would have not been possible without the funding of Wikimedia Deutschland. The German chapter not only paid all costs for the video production but also my travel expenses. So, please join me in thanking Wikimedia Germany for the financial support and ... enjoy the making-of video :-) Frank Schulenburg Head of Public Outreach NB. This mail address is used for public mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will get lost.

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[Foundation-l] Fwd: Happy 2009 from ibiblio
by David Gerard 26 Dec '08

26 Dec '08

>From another provider of data, information and even knowledge. "Thank you for ibiblio" notes to UNC are in order. - d. -------------------- Subject: Happy 2009 from ibiblio I'm jumping in between Christmas and New Year's to thank you for your contributions to ibiblio and for your support in the past year. We've had a period a great growth over the past few years especially as seen here: 2002 2006 2008 800 Collections 1600+ Collections 2500+ Collections 3 million ftp+www/day 15+ million 16+ million ftp+www/day 1 terabyte of data 8 terabytes of data 13 terabytes of data 1 large server 22 www/vhost servers 25 www/vhost servers 2 database servers 5 database servers 7 database servers 4 radio stations 6 radio stations 6 radio stations In fact, the 2008 figures were taken at mid-year and we've grown since then! ibiblio is lways eclectic as our newest contributors, The African Elephant Experts Group http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.african-elephant.net%2F and Pachyderm - the Journal of the African Elephant, African Rhino and Asia Rhino Specialist Groups http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.pachydermjournal.org%2Findex.php… show. We, you and ibiblio, offer granular bits of everything to everybody in the world; that is our strength and your gifts, a combined independently managed set of miscellanies for a loosely connected world. At the same time, we face new challenges. Some are obvious; the economy and budgets everywhere have taken a nosedive since September of this year. Some are less so; we will have a new Dean (the search is just opened at the School of Information and Library Science) and a new Chancellor at UNC (Holden Thorp who does understand what ibiblio is about, but will be feeling budget pressures immediately). Much of our ability to support you comes from your support of ibiblio. That need not be in for form of money, which is of course always welcomed and encouraged; it could be in the form of thanking UNC and NC officials for ibiblio services and for the university's support of ibiblio. Thanks for your part of making ibiblio wonderful for over 16 years and happy 2009. Paul

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Re: [Foundation-l] New project proposal: Soviet Repressions Memorial
by Geoffrey Plourde 25 Dec '08

25 Dec '08

Well where will it stop? If we have a project, we should have a memorial project for all disasters. I echo Mr. Bimmler in his concerns about the motives behind this proposal. ________________________________ From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 2:12:25 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] New project proposal: Soviet Repressions Memorial > 2008/12/24 Michael Bimmler <mbimmler(a)gmail.com>: > >> A project which is motivated in such a way cannot possibly be anything >> else than biased...and indeed, the very concept of memorials is >> biased: Why should we have a memorial of the victims of Soviet >> Repression, when we don't have a memorial of Nazi victims, victims of >> the Armenian Genocide, victim of the Rwandan Genocide, victims of >> various repression regimes in South-East Asia and China, victims in >> Darfur, Chad, the Central African Republic etc. etc. >> No one can sensibly suggest that we can have memorial sites for every >> "repression" (in lack of a better word) in history and thus, we had >> better none, in my opinion. (Yes, in other cases I argued and would >> argue that it is better to have "something" than "nothing", but in >> this case, I'm afraid I am not convinced of the merits of the proposal >> at all and of the propriety of the motives behind it) > > > Yes. However, it could be a valuable wiki to create privately. Generic > hosting is (a) really cheap (b) often includes MediaWiki out the box. > The wiki is unlikely to be vastly overloaded, so cheap hosting would > do for a start. > > See http://www.sep11memories.org/wiki/In_Memoriam for a memorial > project for victims of the World Trade Center attack, for example. > > Although started with a strong POV, such a project could nevertheless > accumulate material of high quality historical and scholarly interest. > > > - d. I support this project, and don't think it should get pushed off into some obscure corner of the internet. We should host it. We should host it because we stand against totalitarian repression; and reject the position that some knowledge, knowledge of the consequences of totalitarian repression, is to be repressed and not readily available. Fred Bauder _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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[Foundation-l] New project proposal: Soviet Repressions Memorial
by Kurt Maxwell Weber 25 Dec '08

25 Dec '08

I have submitted a new project proposal, at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Victims_of_Soviet_Repressions_Memorial -- Kurt Weber http://blog.kurtweber.us <kmw(a)kurtweber.us>

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[Foundation-l] Wikistats is back to May 2008 version
by Erik Zachte 25 Dec '08

25 Dec '08

There is something seriously wrong with the figures for some wikipedias in the new wikistats reports. The figures for some wikis are much too low. When comparing csv files (raw counts) produced in May 2008 and produced recently it is quite easy to tell the difference. For some wikis the data for months up to May 2008 are equal in the old and new files, for other wikis the counts are completely different for any month from the start of the wiki. I am truly sorry that I did not spot this earlier. The scripts that handle basic data gathering have not changed recently. Instead I have been completely focused on optimizing the reporting scripts and adding presentation logic. I have restored the May 2008 version of wikistats. I will start to investigate tomorrow. For now Happy Xmas :) Erik Zachte

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[Foundation-l] Wikistats is back
by Erik Zachte 25 Dec '08

25 Dec '08

Hi Brian, Brion once explained to me that the post processing of the dump is the main bottleneck. Compressing articles with tens of thousands of revisions is a major resource drain. Right now every dump is even compressed twice, into bzip2 (for wider platform compatibility) and 7zip format (for 20 times smaller downloads). This may no longer be needed as 7zip presumably gained better support on major platforms over the years. Apart from that the job could gain from parallelization and better error recovery. Erik Zachte ________________________________________ I am still quite shocked at the amount of time the english wikipedia takes to dump, especially since we seem to have close links to folks who work at mysql. To me it seems that one of two things must be the case: 1. Wikipedia has outgrown mysql, in the sense that, while we can put data in, we cannot get it all back out. 2. Despite aggressive hardware purchases over the years, the correct hardware has still not been purchased. I wonder which of these is the case. Presumably #2 ? Cheers, Brian

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Re: [Foundation-l] New project proposal: Soviet Repressions
by Durova 25 Dec '08

25 Dec '08

Well, yes. (Who thankfully are not gross incompetents at the actual management to the degree he was.) And it turns out that remaining politically neutral is one of the best things we can do as well as the cheapest and easiest, because we have the moral high ground and we're not going away. And as economics shifts to information, we have credibility to the skies. "Information wants to be free" means "it leaks like a gas" and "running a Great Firewall is like trying to carry air in a bucket". Abandoning neutrality as a general operating principle (manifested as NPOV on Wikipedia, variants on other projects where that doesn't make direct sense) would be a disaster. Possibly a greater one than putting ads on the site (and I wouldn't object to ads on the site, but I realise enough people despise them that it'd be utterly unworkable). Can you and Kurt come up with a proposal that doesn't abandon our fabulously useful and marketable air of neutrality? [We will leave for the moment post-modernist arguments about the impossibility of neutrality, or the quite accurate argument that running an Enlightenment-style encyclopedia project is itself pushing a huge and detailed point of view in all sorts of ways. You know what I mean by the question.] Oh, and Merry Christmas. That's CHRISTMAS, as detailed in the King James Version! [* may not be 100% verifiable or not original research] - d. Hey Kurt, I didn't bother putting that troll sockpuppet of you under copyleft license because of your retirement. As a present for the free world, maybe I'll do that for Christmas. "I'll get you my pretty, and your little sockpuppet too." - The Wiki Witch of the West. - Durova -- http://durova.blogspot.com/

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Wikimedia-l December 2008