Hi all,
I have gotten my old youtube introspector::reader script now running
on the wikimedia strategy, and am reading all the english articles
as youtube videos. All the code is checked in.
Here is an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsuoRQDsWCo
The idea is to use latex to format the pages, where the paper size is
the size of a youtube screen.
the pages are converted to pdf and then I use standard tools to create
page images and espeak to read the text of each page.
http://filebin.ca/vabkzw/wikipedia-strategy.tgz posted a tarball of my
reader script, (there are only some minor tweaks that are only in
bzr)
cause launchpad is having issues.
Here is where I checked the code in:
https://code.launchpad.net/~jamesmikedupont/introspectorreader/wikipedia-st…
you run it like this :
bash ./wikipedia-strategy/alltogether.sh page6/6.xml
the only think left to do is make the splitter script output the page
directories like that, it currently emits pages/$x.xml.
Thanks,
mike
Greetings.
The Charity Navigator site has evaluated and rated the Wikimedia Foundation:
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=11212
Despite an overall three-star rating (out of four), WMF was only rated two
stars for Organization Efficency. This is described by Charity Navigator as
"Meets or nearly meets industry standards but underperforms most charities
in its Cause". The Charity Navigator site further states:
"Our data shows that 7 out of 10 charities we've evaluated spend at least
75% of their budget on the programs and services they exist to provide. And
9 out of 10 spend at least 65%. We believe that those spending less than a
third of their budget on program expenses are simply not living up to their
missions. Charities demonstrating such gross inefficiency receive zero
points for their overall organizational efficiency score."
While the WMF seemed to be narrowly meeting these guidelines (according to
the site's "Revenue/Expenses Trend" histogram) in perhaps 2007, it appears
that in 2008, the trend got decidedly worse. Perhaps I am misinterpreting
the criteria and/or the graphic. But, the 2-out-of-4 stars rating is
decidedly clear.
For comparison, witness an organization cited by Charity Navigator as
"similar" to the WMF -- the Reason Foundation -- and see how their Expenses
are a much larger portion of revenue for them, and thus obtain a 3-star
rating:
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=7481
I am wondering (and I suppose others may be, too) whether the staff and
board feel that Charity Navigator is a reputable and credible measurement
service, and if so, are you satisfied with receiving two out of four stars
in this area, and if not what do you plan to change to improve the rating
next year?
Gregory Kohs
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> 2009/9/28 Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia-inc.com>:
>>
>>> If the Foundation is bottlenecked at the moment (understandable) then
>>> how can I help, how can we the community help, to take some of the
>>> burden off of them to get done what we need to get done for the sake of
>>> our mission? :-)
>>>
>>
>> The process going forward is pretty clear -
>>
>> a) make sure prototype setup reflects desired behavior as per the
>> en.wp proposal and invite broader testing;
>>
Perfectly reasonable.
>> b) make revisions to extension based on public and internal review
>> with a particular eye to usability;
>>
Absolutely commendable.
>> c) ensure that the extension is fully scalable to en.wp traffic volume;
>>
Why on earth would we like to ensure that, particularly
*before* point d) ?
I can fully understand that there is a contingent
who devoutly hopes that after the current strictly limited
use of FR is tried out and people gain more familiarity
with the interface and the practical way the extension
works, much of the mystique of it will vanish in a puff
of smoke and people will be more amenable to extending
its use.
Nevertheless in reality the current compromise proposal
owes much to people who were able to only accept it with
the proviso that quite the opposite of wanting to see it be
possible to scale up, they required a reasonable assurance
that its use would *not* be escalated without an overwhelming
community consensus.
>> d) deploy on en.wp as per proposal (potentially, per c, initially in
>> some scale-limited fashion).
>>
Not doing d) before being sure of c) seems very much like
putting the cart before the horse to me. Whether c) will be
relevant at all would necessarily be contingent on the
success of d), and the logical order thus should be to just
do d) and see later if there is any relevance to c) at all.
Or to put it more plainly; it is a very remote possibility
indeed that extending the Flagged Revision experiment
in a form that ordinary articles would only display an
approved revision (without very strict restrictions on
which articles to apply this requirement to) for many
people will be something they will accept. So making
it a prerequisite that such an application has to be
functionally available in the extension for uses as large
as the English wikipedia before *any* use of the extension,
is rather silly as a concept.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
Erik Zachte, Data Analyst for the Wikimedia Foundation, has just
released the first official public version of the Wikimedia
Foundation's monthly report card on key program metrics. If you
haven't seen it, his blog post about it is here:
http://infodisiac.com/blog/2009/10/the-wikimedia-report-card/
And the public page is here:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/
What's being tracked right now is the following:
* number of unique visitors to WMF projects according to comScore,
with breakdown by region, and the percentage reach this represents
among all Internet users;
* number of page requests according to our server log data, with
breakdown by language;
* comScore rank relative to other web properties (we can't release all
the data we have access to from comScore here);
* number of content objects (pages, binaries), with breakdown by
project for pages, and breakdown by filetype for binaries;
* participation rates: new pages per day, edits per month, new editors
per month, active editors making 5+ edits, very active editors making
100+ edits
We've used indexes as a tool to make trends easily understandable over
time -- see the "indexed" tabs in the different sections. The top left
of each section makes some key numbers easily accessible, e.g.
month-to-month comparisons and year-to-year comparisons.
The report card will continue to evolve in response primarily to the
Wikimedia Foundation's organizational priorities and needs - if we
have a specific project designed to achieve impact in one category,
we'll break out a section to look at it. And we're also hoping to have
higher level summary information. Feedback is very much welcome -
probably the best place to post it is in response to Erik's blog post
above so we have it all in one place. :-) Aside from feedback,
however, I also want to take this opportunity to praise Erik for all
his work over many months in putting this together, as well has his
ongoing work to release it on a regular basis.
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hi all,
I am delighted to announce that Wikimedia's Bookshelf Project will be
led by Marlita Kahn.
Marlita is a Senior Project Manager/Program Manager with over 15 years
experience managing educational, technical, media-rich and
multilingual projects. Her employment contract with us started on
September 28, 2009, and will end on September 24, 2010. She will
report to me.
Marlita comes to Wikimedia from Design Media, where, as Senior Project
Manager, she created and guided the product design and content
development for a large number of customers. Among her projects were a
product set targeted to educators and general public for California
State Capitol Museum that won the International Web Page Award (2002),
"Concepts of Biology", a high school biology full year multimedia
curriculum product and a 3D stereoscopic film commemorating the 1906
San Francisco Earthquake and Fire using historic imagery and original
3D animation, script and surround sound that won the Silver and Bronze
Telly Awards (2007).
Prior to her work at Design Media, Marlita worked as a Managing
Director for the Internet Archive. She managed the Archive from
start-up and led the development of the 5 year strategic plan.
Marlita is fluent in Spanish and holds a Master's Degree in English
Literature from the University of California at Berkeley.
The Bookshelf Project is one of the Wikimedia Foundation's priorities
for 2009-10 and I'm thrilled that Marlita has agreed to lead this
important initiative. She'll take the first few weeks to catch up on
the thinking that's been done so far, and you'll start hearing from
her soon.
Please join me in warmly welcoming Marlita to the Wikimedia Foundation.
Thanks,
Frank
-----
ABOUT THE BOOKSHELF PROJECT
The Bookshelf Project aims at creating a core set of
awareness/engagement/training public outreach materials, in English,
to later be translated, adapted and used for multiple purposes by
volunteers, chapters and educational institutions such as schools and
universities.
The materials created as part of the Bookshelf Project include basic
"first step" documents, compelling invitations to participate, but
most importantly, in-depth series of resources targeting potential
editors, trainers, and evangelists. The materials also provide models,
such as lessen plans, for how teachers, professors, and journalists
can use Wikipedia in their professional capacity.
-----
NB. This mail address is used for public mailing lists. Personal
emails sent to this address will get lost.
Mike Godwin says:
+++++++++
You should publish the results of your statistical research of
high-school-teacher attitudes toward Wikipedia. It will be especially
useful if you have a large sample size and minimal selection bias.
+++++++++
Of course, I never said my anecdotal experience represented a statistically
sound research initiative. However, sample sizes and selection bias are
actually a bit of my professional expertise. I have already conducted two
quantitative studies of Wikipedia-related data -- one about 100 articles
about the U.S. senators, and another (not so rigorous) assessment of 10 new
articles selected with little to no bias whatsoever. The WikiEN-l mailing
list moderators refuse to publish a short post informing the community about
that second study. I'm not sure why not, as they refuse to say. Great
"open" and "democratic" community you work for here, Mike.
Both of these previous assessments I conducted for free. No more. I would
actually enjoy (as I've e-mailed you privately) expanding the scope of my
latter study to include perhaps 200 new articles. But, that work on my part
will cost the Foundation a $1,000 stipend. That's a bargain for such a
study. Or, you can try to find a volunteer who will do it for a barnstar,
but they might botch the sampling design.
If you prefer a statistically sound survey of 300 high school teachers
regarding opinions and usage of Wikipedia, that would be more expensive. I
could still get the job done for a mere $4,000, though -- about one-quarter
the rate you'd pay with a full-service marketing research firm. Or, again,
you could go the barnstar route with someone else.
Offers are on the table. Your move.
Greg
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Hi everyone,
This Friday's office hours will feature Mike Godwin, the Wikimedia
Foundation's Legal Counsel. If you don't know Mike Godwin, you can
read about him at <http://enwp.org/Mike_Godwin>.
Office hours this Friday are from 2230 to 2330 UTC (3:30PM to 4:30PM
PDT). Mike will also be taking the following Thursday from 1600 to
1700 UTC (9:00AM to 10:00AM PDT).
The IRC channel that will be hosting Mike's conversation will be
#wikimedia-office on the Freenode network. If you do not have an IRC
client, you can always 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. Go ahead.
- --
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
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Gregory Kohs writes:
> (1) That the Wikimedia Foundation's "impact" is a favorable one. (Many
> would disagree, at least according to Andrew Keen, the staff of
> Encyclopedia
> Britannica and World Book, and just about every high school teacher I've
> ever talked to about Wikipedia.)
>
My friends at Reason, however, think that Wikimedia Foundation's impact is
favorable. Which is why they wish they had as much impact as we do. In the
most recent issue of Reason magazine, as I recall, Wikipedia is even cited
as a source.
You should publish the results of your statistical research of
high-school-teacher attitudes toward Wikipedia. It will be especially
useful if you have a large sample size and minimal selection bias.
Anthony writes:
"And just look at how great of an impact Wikipedia has on the world
compared to Reason Magazine. Wikipedia viewers arrive in droves to
read about top topics like The Beatles, Michael Jackson, and YouTube,
while Reason Magazine subscribers get stories on such useless topics
as The Defeat of Communism, Rising Prices in Post-Crisis America, and
Why Washington Shouldn't Run Detroit."
Yes, and people consult Wikipedia for information about these topics too.
"You should tell your friends at
the Reason Foundation what they can do to make the same kind of impact
as Wikipedia on the world. They need to stop trying to spread their
esoteric beliefs and start catering to the whims of the mass public!"
Why on earth should I tell them to stop trying to spread their esoteric
beliefs? I am, after all, a free-speech lawyer.
If Wikimedia Foundation is "catering to the whims of the mass public,"
that's news to me. It seems more likely that the mass public is catering to
its own whims, and one of the ways this manifests itself is by contributions
to popular-culture articles.
I will add, by the way, that I'm not so disdainful of the mass public as you
seem to be. That's why I favor democratic governments, for example, and why
I don't disdain people's interest in popular culture.
But that's just me.
--Mike
The US Government is funding $5m for up to 5 organizations working on
"how to use new media and technology to increase participation and
education in the middle east and africa", to paraphrase badly...
http://mepi.state.gov/opportunities/129624.htm
(Spotted on BoingBoing)
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com