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Hi all,
After confirming with the board, I am pleased to congratulate the
following contributors on passing their recent steward elections:
Meno25
Erwin
Kylu
Laaknor
Mike.lifeguard
Leinad
Dorgan
Alexanderps
Mardetanha
Thanks to all who participated, including those that did not meet the
80% community standard. I encourage all candidates, both those who
passed and those who failed, constructively take a look at any helpful
comments left at their steward elections, and continue doing the
wonderful jobs that you all have been doing helping us and the projects.
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation
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hi,
currently the dump process is a bit broken. what is the Foundation's position
on this? why are developer resources allocated to put the server admin log on
twitter, but no one has touched dumps in months? is there not enough money to
fund this? how much more is needed?
(for an example of a problem, there is *no* successful enwiki dump at all on
download.wikimedia.org--the last 5 dumps, going back to 2008-03-12, all
failed.)
- river.
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Our "national lexicon" here in Norway, Store Norske Leksikon, went
online with its new free edition today. The new edition has user
contributed articles. The chief editor says some of the reason for the
new edition is the harsh competition from Wikipedia, especially
no.wikipedia.org which outnumbered their previous article count last
year, now counting 209,079 articles. Also the alternate version
nn.wikipedia.org (a variation in Nynorsk) is growing steadilly, now
counting 46,466 articles. Store Norske Leksikon now claims they has
300,000 articles after inclusion of two other encyclopedias, a medical
encyclopedia Store medisinske leksikon and a biographical encyclopedia
Biografisk leksikon. Previously they had 155,000 articles.
Wikipedia in bokmål should have 300K articles around February or March
next year, it depends on how we will be influenced by the changes in SNL.
John Erling Blad
jeblad
Making publicly available a dump without full information required by
the GNU FDL is - at least according German law - a copyright
violation. I am due a confidentiality obligation unable to give
details on a conflict case in which my German lawyer got financial
compensation for me.
Klaus Graf
http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2009/02/25/25readwriteweb-amaz…
According to this, a new project by Amazon that makes a terabyte of public
data available includes a full dump of Wikipedia. It also includes the
complete dbpedia - so it seems like there are likely to be lots of
duplicates. Given the other information it says it includes (the whole human
genome, all other publicly available DNA sequences, census data, etc.) I'm
not sure how it all fits in a single terabyte. Interesting concept, though.
I wonder how old the dump is, since they've been unavailable for some time?
Nathan
--
Your donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia Foundation
today: http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hoi,
There is a short period of time left before the switch over from the GFDL
license is to happen. What I observe is that it will be likely at the last
moment when the decision will be taken. The problem is that this is too
late.
It is too late because there are many websites who have selected the GFDL
because Wikipedia has this license as well. Where the people in the know are
aware that this magical deadline is approaching many of the people involved
are not.
It is for this reason that I urge us, the board to make a decision and
publish it widely because the GFDL is a viral license and it will make
cooperation with these people legally impossible. That would be the same
tragedy as it is a tragedy that we currently cannot legaly cooperate with
the websites that do use the CC-by-sa.
Thanks,
GerardM
Apologies in advanced for the cross-posting. :-)
Please circulate this call among Wikimedia communities, researchers
and other people that may be interested! This call is also online at
http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_Participation
== Call for Participation ==
Wikimania is an annual global event devoted to Wikimedia projects
around the globe (including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource,
Wikinews, Wiktionary, Wikiversity, Wikiquote, Wikispecies, and
Wikimedia Commons). The conference is a community gathering, giving
the editors and users of Wikimedia projects an opportunity to meet
each other, exchange ideas, report on research and projects, and
collaborate on the future of the projects. The conference is open to
the public, and is a chance for educators, researchers, programmers
and free culture activists who are interested in the Wikimedia
projects to learn more and share ideas about the Wikimedia projects.
This year's conference will be held from '''August 26-28''' in Buenos
Aires, Argentina at '''San Martín Cultural Center'''.
For more information, please visit the official Wikimania 2009 site at
http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org.
We are accepting submissions for presentations, workshops, panels,
posters, open space discussions, and artistic works related to the
Wikimedia projects or free content topics in general. Please carefully
follow the submission guidelines below.
=== Important dates ===
* '''Submissions will open on:''' March 1
* '''Deadline for submitting workshop, panel, and presentation
submissions:''' April 15
* '''Deadline for submitting posters, open space discussions, and
artistic works:''' April 30
* '''Notification of acceptance of workshops, panels, presentations:''' May 15
* '''Notification of acceptance of posters, discussions, and artistic
works:''' May 31
* '''Conference dates:''' August 26-28
=== Themes and tracks ===
There are two tracks for submission: the '''Casual Track''', for
members of wiki communities and interested observers to share their
own experiences and thoughts and to present new ideas; and the
'''Academic Track''', for research based on the methods of scientific
studies exploring the social, content or technical aspects of
Wikipedia, the other Wikimedia projects, or other massively
collaborative works, as well as open and free content creation and
community dynamics more generally.
Submissions to either track should address one or more of the following themes:
* '''"Wikimedia Communities,"''' including the topics of conflict
resolution and community dynamics; reputation and identity;
multi-lingualism and languages and cultures.
* '''"Free Knowledge,"''' including open access to information; ways
to gather and distribute free knowledge, use of the Wikimedia projects
in education, journalism, research; ways to improve content quality
and usability.
* '''"Latin American challenges,"''' centering on efforts and
limitations for expanding the reach of Wikimedia projects in Latin
America; promotion of projects in Native American languages; specific
problems of the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Wikimedia communities.
* '''"Technical infrastructure,"''' including issues related to
MediaWiki development and extensions; Wikimedia's technical
infrastructure; and new ideas for development.
Papers should be of interest to members of the Wikimedia communities,
and fit within one of the themes above.
=== Types of Submissions ===
We are seeking submissions for:
* '''Presentations''' (10–30 minute talks with discussion afterwards)
:* This type of submission is appropriate for presenting substantial
research or community projects
* '''Workshops''' (60–120 minute session with a discussion leader and
more audience involvement)
:* This type of submission is appropriate for sessions designed to
teach a specific subject or explore it in depth
* '''Panels''' (group of 2-5 speakers to discuss aspects of a topic
with audience questions, 45-90 minute sessions)
:* This type of submission is appropriate for discussions on a topic
of wide interest among community members, with several participants
who may be presenting their work. For less formal discussions of
limited interest, consider an open space discussion instead.
* '''Open space discussions''' (informal discussion on a specific
topic; the discussion leader helps moderate the conversation but the
session is open to anyone interested to join in)
:* This type of submission is good for a topic that several
participants want to discuss or brainstorm about in an informal
setting
* '''Posters''' (printed visual displays that can stand on their own,
with no associated presentation)
:* This type of submission is good for presenting research in
progress, or smaller community projects
* '''Artistic works''' (plays, competitions, comedy, visualizations,
displays or other representations of some aspect of the projects)
:* This type of submission is good for showing creativity or
showcasing beautiful work about the projects.
In addition there will be the chance to give lightning talks, which
are 5-minute short presentations. Lightning talk sessions will be
organized on the Wikimania 2009 wiki shortly before the conference
begins, without any need to submit them via the submission system.
These talks are best for those who want to quickly present an idea or
project without giving a formal presentation. These are informal talks
that are open to everyone to participate in.
=== Submission Guidelines ===
Wikimania is organized by volunteers, so please help us minimize
wasted effort by submitting via the submission system and following
these guidelines. All submissions MUST include the following:
# '''Event title:''' an English or Spanish title.
# '''Abstract:''' a short English or Spanish abstract of your event in
50 to 100 words. The abstract will be used for the public schedule.
# '''Themes and track:''' list the track you wish to submit to (Casual
or Academic) and the single theme you think your submission fits in
best (Wikimedia Communities, Free Knowledge, Latin American
challenges, Technical infrastructure). Note that posters and artistic
works have their own track in the submission system.
# '''Information about the speaker:''' full name, email, and a short biography.
# '''Submission file:''' A plain text, PDF or OpenDocument file, in
English or Spanish, containing:
#* '''A long description of the submission''', in English or Spanish
that can be used for reviewing, not to exceed 1000 words. Please give
an overview of the areas to be covered or taught. State clearly the
relevance to the Wikimedia projects and whether submission concerns a
specific wiki project. You can also include links, Include graphics an
diagrams if they do not exceed one page.
#* '''Event type:''' please state if the event is a presentation,
workshop, panel, open space discussion, poster, or artistic work; if a
presentation or panel, whether the presentation is expected to be a
certain length.
#* '''For panel submissions only:''' name of a suggested moderator and
short biographies of each suggested panelist
#* '''Language:''' list the language you plan to present in. The
conference will be bilingual in English and Spanish.
#* '''Special requirements:''' list any special requirements,
including any equipment.
In the "Comments for conference director" field you should tell us
whether you will attend to Wikimania (a) surely, (b) probably, (c)
only if your submission is accepted, or (d) only if we provide travel
and/or accommodation. You can also add yourself to the public list of
attendees at the Wikimania 2009 wiki:
http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Attendees
Please note that all submissions must be dual licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License version 1.2 or later ''and'' the Creative
Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 3.0! By submitting for Wikimania
2009 you agree to this condition.
===Submissions===
Once you are sure you have included all of the required information,
please send your submission before the respective deadline through our
'''submission system''':
http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submission
If you have further questions, email wikimania-program(a)wikimedia.org
(in English or Spanish).
Hiho,
there have been some significant developments on de-WP, which I would
like to share with this list.
On February, 4th, all articles of the german WP had at least one
sighted revision. Since then, only pages newly created by noneditors
have to be looked at. On average, around 1.000 pages were marked for
the first time per day and these are now carried over to looking at
edits that have to be flagged. This means that since February 4th, the
number of pages with revisions awaiting review has dropped from almost
13.000 to 5.000 (see
http://toolserver.org/~aka/cgi-bin/reviewcnt.cgi?lang=german&action=images&…
last picture). More importantly, the maximal waiting time for edits to
be reviewed has dropped from 16 days to less than 7 now, which means
that finally, we are now in an acceptable regime. The goal is, to
reduce this time until tuesday to 5 days
(http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Gesichtete_Versionen/Nachsichtung).
The median waiting time for edits until review is still within hours.
Still on the list of things to do is making the criterias for a
sighted version more precise from "has been looked at by an
experienced editor and is without vandalism."
Best,
Philipp