On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 10:21 AM, Aryeh Gregor
<Simetrical+wikilist(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> You have a copy of wikipedia on your hard disk. You can access it.
>> But your computer lifetime is finite. And you also don't know for how
>> much time you'll still have electric current.
>> What do you do?
>
> Screw Wikipedia. If I want to preserve useful knowledge, I'll make
> sure to safeguard my textbooks. In terms of utility for rebuilding
> society, the value of Wikipedia is zero compared to even a tiny
> university library. And there are many thousands of university
> libraries already conveniently scattered around the world, not a few
> of them in subbasements where they'll be resistant to nasty things
> happening on the surface.
Certainly not zero. Perhaps 10%? Neither textbooks nor wikipedia are
normally designed to give a total soup-to-nuts explanation of how to
do something.
But you're right that textbook-style knowledge is still relatively
cloistered, ununified / siloed by author, and poorly covered by
wikipedia/wikibooks. If there are 10,000 essential textbooks, thats
only ~10x as much information as is in Wikipedia already. How do we
effectively include that in Wikimedia's work?
I think that the "cheatsheet / overview / bootstrapping" version of
information about a topic is quite valuable and useful, and that few
people create such materials today [we don't have a good noun for that
kind of work, for instance].
SJ
Hello,
the results Parul and the team shared with us touched some frustrating
memories of mine. I often found it difficult to explain to Wikipedians
how hard it is to edit, and that we should consider to modify some of
the MediaWiki.
A couple of years ago I had a usability test of my own, when the
Antwerp Esperanto group invited to its 100 years anniversary. In the
programme there was also a Wikipedia lesson organized by Chuck and
Yves from Esperanto Wikipedia. We instructed people, often elderly
people, on a personal basis how to edit - or at least, we tried to.
I was working in fact with one person only; her name sound familiar to
me and it turned out that she was the daughter of a higly respected
Belgian Esperantist, deceased maybe ten years before. He was a teacher
and founder of a school in Africa, and she told me that he certainly
would have been enthusiast about Wikipedia. Friends suggested to her
to write a Wikipedia article about him, which she as a relative found
a bad idea (a healthy point of view not every newbie has).
Actually I did not teach very much to her. She was very interested in
everyting, but found it difficult to understand how to edit and what
this wiki syntax means. (She had a very nice laptop, but only since a
couple of weeks.) In more than an hour I concentrated on showing her
what Wikipedia is and how she can use it more efficiently, rather than
editing by herself.
At the end, I instigated her to try the functions again, like the
search. I asked her to enter the name of her father, maybe one of his
books is cited or he is mentioned in an article about Belgian
Esperanto movement. She did so, and with surprise the search engine
led us to a well written article about him, even with photograh.
When I tell this story to male persons, and ask them what the lady did
then spontaneously, they say: she saves the page, she corrects it by
making an edit, she looks at the version history... Only women know
instinctively what she actually did: she cried. Someone had found her
father so important that he had written an article, and this now is in
an encyclopedia online.
Don't call me sly, but I wished there was a Belgian chapter so I could
have used the moment to make her a member. :-)
So this is what can happen to you when you teach Wikipedia or make
usability tests.
Ziko
2009/5/8 geni <geniice(a)gmail.com>:
> 2009/5/8 Brian <Brian.Mingus(a)colorado.edu>:
>> I will have no part in your efforts to redefine the scientific method on its
>> talk page.
>
> Fortunately you don't need to. People who have put far more effort
> into the subject than you are ever likely to do so have pretty much
> shot apart the idea of a single hard scientific method that scientists
> actually use.
>
> --
> geni
>
> _______________________________________________
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> foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
--
Ziko van Dijk
NL-Silvolde
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Here's a hoax that persisted for weeks and was picked up by MSM articles.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0506/1224245992919.html?vi…
One question is how to catch / force-verify new facts. A totally
separate one is how to make corrections stick / how to improve the
rate of awareness about updates in important information by people who
are relying on it. What do people think about maintaining a list of
external groups / works that rely on part of an article, or providing
an explicit 'update' service that makes it easy to get low-traffic
push updates to data about articles you care about?
Then there could be a standard way to cite / use an article externally
which involves a step of being added to this push process.
SJ
I would announce you that until the 15th of May Wikimedia Italia is
collecting some nominations to select the winners of the Wikimedia
Italia Award 2009 which will take place the 23th May in Vicenza (near
Venice) in collaboration with local administrations and associations
during the "festival of digital freedom"
(http://www.libertadigitali.org/).
The award is divided in different categories and some categories are
strictly related with Italy and with Italian language for example:
* Best project of content's liberation in Italy under free license in the 2009
* Best promotional material in Italian language in the 2009 concerning
Wikimedia's projects
* Best article or study concerning the open content in the 2009
written in Italian language
* Best Italian Wikipedia article written from 15th April and 15th May 2009
* Best image or media published from 15th April and 15th May 2009 in
Commons about the "Palladian Architecture"
(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Palladian_architecture)
* Best contribution in other projects (Wikibook, Wikinews, Wikisource,
etc.) in Italian language in the 2009
* Best contribution in any other version of Wikipedia written in other
language spoken in Italy different from Italian (i.e. Arpitan,
Sicilian, Slovenščina, etc.)
This award will have an important diffusion in the media and in the
local government.
What could be of your interest?
Also if the categories are connected with Italy and Italian language,
there is an award connected with Commons
(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wikimedia_Italia_Award_2009)
which could be of your interest. The subject is "Palladio and the
palladian architecture"
(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Palladian_architecture).
In Commons there is a page where any contributor can put the
nominations for the best media (photo or multimedia) concerning the
architecture influenced by Palladio.
We know that this architect has had a wide influence in some
architecture in England, Ireland and USA... please go to take a photo
of your local ancient building influenced by Palladio and upload it in
Commons and put the announcement of your contribution in the related
page (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wikimedia_Italia_Award_2009#Nomin…).
You have time until the 15th May.
Please contribute.
I am sending this email also to the chapters to ask your help to
widespread this initiative in your local communities.
Ilario
Wikimedia Italia
Wikimedia Ch
Dear Wikimedia,
The Wikimania venue selection committee is pleased to announce that we
have selected Gdańsk, Poland as the location for Wikimania 2010.
The three bids this year each had strong and weak points. The jury
had a very difficult time deciding among them, a testament to the
quality of the bids. Any of the three would have hosted a fine
conference, and we thank the bid teams for their detailed
presentations. The jury narrowed the field to Gdańsk and Amsterdam
before making the final decision.
The most debated criteria were:
* Conference venue details
* Location accessibility, cost, and budget
* Accommodation options and simplicity
* Opportunities for outreach
* Local teamwork and planning
We were impressed by Gdańsk's organized team, roomy venue options, low
cost for attendees, creative outing plans, and outreach potential to
Eastern Europe.
A summary of our bid review is included below. Putting together a
great Wikimania bid is a major undertaking, and we are grateful to all
the bid teams for doing so with style.
With respect and thanks,
Phoebe Ayers
On behalf of the Wikimania 2010 venue selection committee
Voting members:
Ting Chen
Austin Hair
Mohamed Ibrahim
Samuel Klein
Teemu Leinonen
Delphine Ménard
Frank Schulenburg
Non-voting advisors:
Sue Gardner
Michael Snow
==Feedback points==
* Conference venue
The Oxford Town Hall seemed suited to Wikimania, with no major
drawbacks. Gdańsk's venue options were flexible and varied. We also
appreciated Gdańsk's plans for social space, inside and out, on the
island and at the venue. We were intrigued by the Tuschinski theater
venue in Amsterdam, and appreciate that the theater's staff has
experience organizing conferences, but we were concerned that there
were few small rooms and flexible spaces, and no social spaces on site
with after-hours access.
* Overall accessibility and cost
Amsterdam was the most physically accessible bidding city for
international attendees, due to being a major travel hub for many
airlines. Gdańsk and Oxford were a bit less accessible, Oxford because
of the transfer from Heathrow. Amsterdam's budget was high, even with
its confirmed sponsorship. Oxford's was lowest, thanks to venue
sponsorship, but lacked detail. It also had the highest cost of living
and lodging for attendees. Gdańsk's budget was in between but included
various services. The extra cost for travel for an attendee to Gdańsk
was partly offset by the low cost of living and lodging.
* Accommodation
Amsterdam's proposal for accommodation was superior in its combination
of reasonable price and close location for a single hostel that most
attendees could stay in. Gdańsk's hostel options were cheap but
scattered. Oxford's dorm options were potentially close but expensive.
* Outreach
Oxford and Amsterdam were considered to have good inherent options for
global press and publicity, but neither proposal offered related
details. Gdańsk offered good outreach to and from Eastern Europe,
where Wikimedia projects are well known but the communities not as
well to all of us, and engaged in the most press work over the course
of the bid.
* Teamwork and planning
The Gdańsk bid excelled in team planning, with a clear breakdown of
team member roles and responsibilities in the bid and a separate
public planning wiki. Oxford added something similar at the end of the
bid period, but the overall bid was a bit less detailed than the
others. The Amsterdam team was particularly responsive to questions,
with a strong background in planning similar events, but lacked a
detailed team organization plan. All teams had fine party plans, and
Gdańsk had creative plans for conference activities and environmental
issues.
To follow up on the board's resolution, here is some more information
about the strategy development process we are starting. This is not
necessarily the complete picture, that hasn't been fully laid out yet
and you will hear more about it in coming weeks and months. We will
share progress as we go, and discussion is welcome. I expect the other
members of the Board of Trustees, along with Sue, will be happy to join
in. We spoke briefly about the project at our meeting with the chapter
representatives in Berlin a few weeks ago. They may be able to help
answer basic questions, and I also anticipate that the chapters will be
a good way to relay ideas from the wider community.
This is a rather unusual endeavor, as it is intended to be the world's
first completely open and collaborative strategy development project. We
aim to draw upon the experiences and knowledge of a wide range of
contributors: Wikimedia volunteers, experts in various fields, the
board, the foundation's staff, and other appropriate advisors that may
be suggested to us. I'm excited about the possibilities in this project.
Anybody who wants to help the Wikimedia projects is invited to
participate. I expect that the primary activity will involve working
groups developing pieces of the strategy on-wiki. That's both because
it's the key tool for open collaboration we're all familiar with, and
because it would be prohibitive in time or expense to coordinate
strategic planning through a set of meetings, as might happen in a
normal organization. All relevant planning outputs will be publicly
available for review, as well as reuse, so hopefully we can produce some
thinking that other groups will also find useful.
We expect the strategic planning project to officially launch in July,
although this is a preliminary kickoff of sorts as well. In the
meantime, Sue is planning to hire a project manager, a research analyst,
and a facilitator to support it. Those jobs will be posted on the
Wikimedia Foundation site sometime during the next week. Between now and
the launch, Sue will be hiring the project team. These positions will
bring skills we already need, and while we want all the staff to have
input, this will be the group designated to work particularly on this
project.
Sue and I will also be working through the structure and framework of
the project: essentially, which strategic questions require the most
focus. You will hear more about this, and I will be asking for your
views, as we begin to make progress.
--Michael Snow
This is the statement on trademarks mentioned earlier. It both states
the approach we want the Wikimedia Foundation to take and directs the
staff to carry it out. It basically sums up what our understanding has
been for a long time, but hadn't really been formally stated anywhere.
The board also voted unanimously to approve this. The statement follows:
The Wikimedia Foundation is committed to enabling our mission through a
wide network of chapters, community members, and organizational partners
who are all able to better achieve their goals by identifying themselves
with the Wikimedia community. Because of these efforts, there is a large
amount of value and goodwill associated with the name and marks.
Trademark law in the United States and internationally requires that the
holder of a mark take affirmative steps to protect the integrity of the
mark. However, because of our commitment to openness and community
empowerment, we wish to do this in a way that allows chapters and
community members to be able to continue to identify themselves with
Wikimedia marks without being unnecessarily restrictive.
Because of this, we ask the Wikimedia staff to take appropriate steps to
register and protect the Wikimedia marks, develop a set of policies and
practices, and develop a strategy to allow uses by the chapters and
community for activities in line with the Wikimedia mission.
--Michael Snow
In a different thread, Sue Gardner wrote:
> * Thanks Milos for advocating on behalf of a permanent Research Analyst! I want this too.
An aside : many researchers in the community (of readers, if not
editors) are interested in research of almost any type associated with
WP/WMF data, and would love to do research of interest to the
projects. If we organize some sort of regular recognition for
excellent research done on/about WM projects, and improve access to
the sorts of data that research groups lust after, this will help tap
into the latent university interest [which comes with its own
sustained staff and funding, new pools of people to give talks at
different sorts of conferences and events, &c]. This does require
work - despite the theoretical transparency and accessibility of
project data, publish few good papers to date. [Rut, how many fellow
students of yours are getting wiki PhD's?]
> * I don't particularly want to routinely include "working with volunteer committees" in job descriptions though.
> Obviously working with volunteers is a huge part of nearly everybody's job (the CFOO and accountant
> probably do this the least, which is role-appropriate), but I don't want to proscribe committee work specifically
> as the best or only way to do that. I think each staff person needs to figure out for their area of responsibility
> how their work
+1.
It seems to me there's a deeper sense, having nothing to do with
conscious job descriptions, in which staff roles may be expected to
facilitate the work of the community/volunteers... but this is a
different discussion.
For comparison, it would be nice to see the community identify more
people who can help 'work with Foundation projects', bridging the gap
between the Foundation & Board, third party projects supporting
Wikipedia, and the community. The Foundation exists largely to enable
and support ongoing community work, yet many active community
members/groups who could benefit from this never learn how to. Every
discussion about how to find and engage already-active editors (active
/somewhere/) in a new topic that will impact them is a reminder of
this gap.
SJ
The purpose of my question was to examine the carbon impact on our global
environment by holding this meeting in Berlin, which (by my estimation) is
quite a ways off from the point of "least cumulative distance" that could
have been achieved for at least the mandatory attendees. All of that
additional jet fuel and hotel consumption (laundered sheets, poor recycling
standards, etc.) is something to consider if the polar ice melts and floods
San Francisco one day, thanks to CO2-accelerated warming. A shorter-haul
Boeing 737 flight burns about 200 pounds of fuel per passenger. I can only
imagine that a trans-continental flight, plus a trans-Atlantic leg to
Berlin, is likely burning at least 400 pounds of fuel per passenger. Return
trip makes that 800 pounds of fuel. I hope each of the San Francisco-based
attendees feel comfortable that their burning of 800 pounds of jet fuel
(about 114 gallons) in order to attend the conference in Berlin (a
conference that, as far as I can tell, had zero "dial-in" conferencing
options offered) was justified?
I get the impression that there is a corporate culture afoot at the
Wikimedia Foundation that stifles any attempts to optimize meetings and
conferences in ways that might be more economical and environmentally
friendly, with innovations such as Skype and video-teleconferencing. My
sense is that "interesting" and "exotic" places are chosen instead... San
Francisco, the Netherlands, Berlin, Taipei, Alexandria (Egypt, not
Virginia), Buenos Aires, etc. I suspect it's part of the corporate culture
to get the "backwater" taste of St. Petersburg (Florida, not Russia) out of
everyone's mouth, to select all of these far-flung, non-English-speaking
locales for a Board that consists mostly of North Americans who speak
English, and who are funded mostly by U.S. dollars.
I know that regarding a recent trade conference that was only 124 miles from
our headquarters, my Fortune 100 employer sent down an edict that only one
of the 3 people from our team of 14 personnel who were interested in going,
could actually attend. Certainly, this was more of an economic decision
than a "green" decision, but frankly, the two are often hand-in-hand
outcomes. Is the Wikimedia Foundation very "green" in its governance
practices? I know that Wikia, Inc. touts its dedication to "Green", but
what about the WMF?
Here's a 100-gallon aquarium:
*http://tinyurl.com/100-gallon-tank*
Imagine it full of jet fuel, then setting a match to it, sucking oxygen out
of the air, and replacing it with carbon-laden molecules. That's what each
of the North American board members did to enable travel to Berlin to hold
their meeting which seems to have exhausted most of the attendees.
--
Gregory Kohs