Wikimedia-l August 2009

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

160 participants
115 discussions

[Foundation-l] UNICEF: State of World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2009

by Gerard Meijssen

**** Hoi, I think this is relevant and of interest to us all... Thanks, GerardM Report and related press release of interest... The Minority Rights Group International (MRG) in collaboration with UNICEF has recently released their "State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2009," which includes a full chapter on Multilingual Education. Links to the report: http://www.minorityrights.org/7948/state-of-the-worlds-minorities/state-of-… A press release focusing on Language: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47693 EDUCATION: Mother Tongue Absent in Thousands of Classrooms by Haider Rizvi Article: Indigenous Languages: A View from UNICEF http://www.minorityrights.org/download.php?id=664

14 years, 9 months

[Foundation-l] EN Wikizine - Year: 2009 Week: 32 Number: 114

by EN Wikizine

****************************************** __ __ _ _ _ _ / / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___ \ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/ \/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___| .org Year: 2009 Week: 32 Number: 114 ****************************************** An independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community ////////////////////////////////////////// === Technical news === [Full downtime] - All of Wikimedia's services (sites, mailing lists, etc.) were down on July 31 at 12:00 (UTC) to allow the primary router at the Tampa hosting facility to be rebooted. http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/pmtpa-router-reboot-scheduled-downtim… http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-July/044406.html http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Downtime [SysAdminDay] - System Administrator Appreciation Day was held on July 31st; it's the day where you appreciate and thank all the system administrators who make your lives easier! http://www.sysadminday.com/ [Override this function] - on August 6, users were temporarily getting the message 'Override this function' when visiting pages on Wikipedia, due to a server only partially getting an update. The issue was supposedly fixed but the sysadmins are still getting reports, it needs further investigation of the problem. https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20081 === Request for help === [WikimediaMobile] - Wikimedia Mobile, the mobile interface for Wikipedia, has started accepting translations on betawiki. Help is greatly appreciated in localizing it for your local Wikipedia. http://m.wikipedia.org/ http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Wikimedia_mobile [Flickr tool maintainers] - Bryan Tong Minh posted a request for co-maintainers for his flickr tools on the toolserver. The bots are written in Python and use the mwclient library to edit and upload. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2009-August/004976.html [Best practices team] - "Best practice in public outreach" is a collection of articles describing experiences in winning new volunteers, partners, content and audiences. The group will help coordinate the creation and enhancement of the best practices documentation pages on Meta-Wiki, which will help share the knowledge about engaging new target groups or deepening relationships to new Wikimedians. Volunteers are needed! http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Best_practices_documentation_team [BLP task force] - Cary Bass is in the process of launching a new task force on Biographies of Living People (as a result of the board resolution on the subject). The task force will be focusing on the English Wikipedia, but its recommendations and guidelines will probably be useful on other projects too. Volunteers are needed, see the blog post for more information. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2009-August/102667.html -- call for volunteers http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Biographies_of_living_people -- resolution === Proposals === [Strategic Proposals (Call)] - the Strategic Planning team has sent out a call for proposals. They'd like to encourage people to put their ideas into proposals for what the Wikimedia movement should be doing over the next five years. What's more is that you can write it in the language of your choice. === Foundation === [Guidestar] - the Wikimedia Foundation has finally received a profile on GuideStar, one of the largest American databases for non-profits. Be sure to visit the profile and write a review! http://tinyurl.com/wmfGuidestar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GuideStar -- article on the site [Usability: Babaco] - the Usability team is preparing for its next release and has some new designs and ideas that need feedback from users, community members, and interested parties. http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/29/the-abcs-of-usability/ -- blog post http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Babaco_Designs -- designs [Transcom newsletter] - the Translation committee (the people whose job it is to coordinate translations of Wikimedia Foundation-related items) has released its newsletter, which is a summary of open requests. If you speak another language, please look and see if there's anywhere that you can help out! http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/translators-l/2009-July/000982.html [LSS: foundation-l] - a new list summary of foundation-l posts between July 16-31 has been published. Phoebe has also posted a request for help, reminding others that she's not the only one who can do it and there are other lists that could be summarized too! http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2009_July_16-31 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS -- main LSS page === Legal === [EFF&NPG update] - Another update on the National Portrait Gallery legal issue, the Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer, Fred von Lohmann, has posted a legal analysis of the situation. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/07/eff-defends-wikipedi === Agenda === [PL: pl.wp meeting] - the Polish Wikipedia is having its annual working meeting in Sopot, Poland from September 11-13. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GDJ_2009 (pl) [SE: Book Fair] - Wikimedia Sweden will have a booth at the largest book fair in Scandinavia with 100,000+ attendees. The fair will be September 24-27, 2009. http://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Projekt:Bok_och_Biblioteksmässan_2009 -- WMSE's page about the booth (sv) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothenburg_Book_Fair -- enwp article about the fair [JP: Conference] - Wikimedia Conference Japan has opened up its official website and has finalized its details: November 22 at Tokyo University! http://www.wcj2009.info/ (ja) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_Japan/en -- summary on Meta (en) [BE: Fosdem] - FOSDEM, the FOSS conference, has announced the dates for its 2010 conference: February 6-7, 2010 http://www.fosdem.org/2010/ === Community === [GLAM-WIKI] - GLAM-Wiki, Wikimedia Australia's conference for galleries, libraries, archives, museums, and how they can collaborate with Wikimedia, is being held this week (August 6-7) and a live "play-by-play" can be found via twitter. https://twitter.com/#search?q=%23GLAM-WIKI -- twitter posts http://brianna.modernthings.org/article/230/glam-wiki-day-one -- blog post summarizing day 1 [Simple Wikipedia] - this little known Wikipedia works since 2004 on a encyclopedia that is using fewer words and easier grammar then the English Wikipedia. The small community has managed to get again at the 54,000 articles mark, after falling down 2000 articles due to a quality cleanup. For those who find other Wikipedias has become to large to be happy there a small project like Simple could be attractive. http://simple.wikipedia.org [WMNL: Partnership] - just in time for GLAM-WIKI, Wikimedia Nederland officially announced a partnership with the Tropenmuseum (one of the largest museums in the Netherlands). This new partnership will bring over 2100 high quality images to the Wikimedia Commons! http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/08/05/wikimedia-netherlands-and-the-tropenmu… -- blog post and press release [Wiki-Conference NY] - Archive.org is hosting a few videos of the proceedings at Wiki-Conference New York, so far Jimmy Wales's keynote and Cary Bass's OTRS presentation have been published but more will come soon. http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Wiki?Conference%20New%20York [IRC Meeting] - a general IRC meeting was hosted by the Group Contacts. There was a high number of participants (~80 people) and a wide array of topics, from contacting the GCs and new cloak options to public logging and alternate channel management techniques. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Group_Contacts/Meetings/August_2009 [WMDE: Report from the Office] - the new Executive Director of Wikimedia Deutschland, Pavel Richter, has published his first "Report from the Office" on the WMDE blog. He shares his new priorities and introduces himself. http://blog.wikimedia.de/2009/07/31/1-bericht-aus-der-geschaftsstelle-juli-… (de) === Media === [GLAM-Wiki] - As described above in the "Community" section, GLAM-WIKI is being held this week and it has been covered by a few media outlets. http://wikimedia.org.au/w/images/b/ba/GLAM_WIKI_-_Media_Release.pdf -- WMAU press release http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/313846/wikimedia_event_seeks_open_u… http://www.itwire.com/content/view/26683/1231/ [Judges & Strippers] - Wiktionary was quoted when defining a lap dance in a legal case! http://www.dbs.id.au/blog/law/lap-dance-wikipedia.html https://twitter.com/Wittylama/status/3102455466 [Anecdote] - there's a nice, thoughtful blog post from a paleontologist/geoscientist and his experiences with contributing to Wikipedia. http://triassiccritters.blogspot.com/2009/08/contributing-to-wikipedia-as.h… [Experts obliged?] - experts and people who find errors in Wikipedia are obliged to correct them, a blog post says. "Whether you like it or not, Wikipedia is the source that people go to for information." http://blog.k1v1n.com/2009/08/if-tree-falls-in-forest-part-1.html [We're NC-17] - Apple has rated us NC-17! Wikipanion, an iPhone/Pod application giving access to Wikipedia (nicely formatted with extra features), featured a warning when downloading: "Rated 17+ for the following: Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes". http://dougpete.wordpress.com/2009/08/01/covering-your-click/ -- blog post about this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NC-17 -- in case you have no idea what we're talking about === Stats === [comScore: down to #5] - Facebook is now the 4th largest site in the world and has pushed the Wikimedia Foundation down to the 5th largest web property. Wikipedia is still far above an beyond the most popular non commercial website. By the way; the ranking of Wikizine is 50% up to become the 2,983,528th most popular site :) (Source:Alexa) http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/04/facebook-is-now-the-fourth-largest-sit… [African Wikipedias] - Swahili Wikipedia "has raced ahead with great momentum" and surpassed Afrikaans as the largest African Wikipedia by number of articles. There's also stats about the other African Wikipedias and sister projects. http://www.greenman.co.za/blog/?p=614 -- blog post http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Africa -- African languages [Wikipedias] - the Spanish Wikipedia has reached 500,000 articles, the Lithuanian Wikipedia has reached 90,000, and the Latin Wikipedia reached 30,000 articles with the addition of "Magninovilla". [EN Wikinews] - Not really a direct goal of Wikinews to have many "articles" but nevertheless the English language Wikinews has surpassed 15,000 news stories. http://en.wikinews.org === Other news === [wikiHow&MediaWiki] - wikiHow showcased an interesting article (on its twitter feed) about how to make a MediaWiki skin, worth a read if you're ever in the need for a new skin. :-) https://twitter.com/wikiHow/status/3111069632 [Mobile Feedback] - the Mobile Wikipedia site requested feedback from its users and got a few interesting results, you might get a laugh out of them! http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/08/amusing-mobile-feedback/ [Correction: WMUK&Schools] - we previously reported that the new WMUK schools project was about revisiting its "Wikipedia Version for Schools" project. This is actually a new initiative, one focused on going into schools and teaching the staff and students how to effectively use and contribute to Wikipedia. http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Initiatives/Schools_project [Wiktionary users] - Dvortygirl posted an interesting blog post about the type of users who are attracted to writing a dictionary. She found that most of the people in the #wiktionary IRC channel all shared similar characteristics to her (and a Dutch Wiktionary visitor), more information in the blog post. http://dvortygirl.blogspot.com/2009/08/wiktionary-type.html === Quote === "About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won't like you at all." - Rita Mae Brown ////////////////////////////////////////// Editor(s): Casey, Alex, Walter Thanks to: Cary, David, Brianna, Phoebe, Bryan, Steve, Brion, Sage, Hampton, Signpost, Naoko, Bark, ErikZ, Jay, wikihow, Mecredis, Liam, Jessica, Pavel, Leinad, Mile K., Dvortygirl, St-Lemur Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org Website: http://www.wikizine.org ////////////////////////////////////////// Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy, validity and especially but not limited to, correct grammar and spelling. Satisfaction is not guaranteed. Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]]. Wikizine is a nearly weekly publication as long as there is noteworthy news (and time) Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html and also the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe; mailto:request@wikizine.org?subject=unsubscribe

14 years, 9 months

[Foundation-l] EN Wikizine - Year: 2009 Week: 32 Number: 114

by EN Wikizine

14 years, 9 months

[Foundation-l] Is Apple censoring Wiktionary?

by Techman224

http://www.macworld.com/article/142148/2009/08/ninjawords_schiller.html?lsr… I found this news article on Macworld that Phil Schiller contacted the developer of the Ninjawords dictionary app for the iPhone/iPod Touch. He said that the application was blocked because the app pulled the information from Wiktionary, which he says it contains offensive "urban slang" terns that traditional dictionaries (like paper) don't have. He said that putting a 17+ rating would be all that he needed to do. So I starting to wonder if Apple is starting to censor apps that can access "offensive" words, not just Wiktionary, but all of the Wikimedia Foundation projects. Techman224

14 years, 9 months

[Foundation-l] Two questions about the licensing update of media files

by mizusumashi

Hello everyone. I have two questions. Q1) All media files that have been licensed under the GFDL and allowed to relicense under CC-BY-SA were relicensed by [[wmf:Resolution:Licensing update approval]]? Q2) Now, I know, we can't import text licensed under not CC-BY-SA but only GFDL. How about media files? Can I upload a media file licensed under not CC-BY-SA but only GFDL? Sorry for my poor English. Thank you. ---- [[w:ja:User:mizusumashi]]

14 years, 9 months

[Foundation-l] Wikipedia Policy Interlingual Coordinationn - WP:NOT

by wp99 -----

Hi, currently, I participate a process to translate Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and import that to JaWp. Since WP:NOT is a Global Principle according to the right box of the page, I naturally insist to import this document as it is without modifications, at least without major modifications for basic key concepts such as Wikipedia:Consensus. In a final phase to fix the final translated version, a user appeared and claimed that he cannot agree to apply WP:NOTDEMOCRACY and WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY to JaWp, since it's not properly to reflect the current JaWp manner, etc.(dunno what exactly he intends to mean, but the bottom line is he doesn't agree to import these 2 sections of WP:NOT). Obviously, WP:NOTDEMOCRACY and WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY includes a significant Wp Global Principe - Wikipedia:Consensus, so I explained him that WP:NOT is not a mere policies but a Global Princile including singificant Wp concpet. Basically, he won't listen claiming JaWp is somewhat independent of EnWp, and this discussion is still open in JaWp. Another user suggested me to ask an official statement from Wikimedia Foundation, and I also think it would be better to clear how internlingual cordination of Wikipedia Policy works. So, is there anyone here who knows well about this topic, and could you advise where to start to make this clear. Thank you.

14 years, 9 months

[Foundation-l] Stevertigo

by Tim Starling

I'm taking Stevertigo off moderation. He has agreed by private email not to continue the dispute resolution mailing list thread. Stevertigo is a long-serving and trusted (if passionate) member of the community. -- Tim Starling

14 years, 9 months

[Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics

by Milos Rancic

Bad news is that I was right almost a year ago about trends of new Wikimedians. Relatively good news is that the statistics may be interpreted as not so bad ones. Good news is that WMF started to act in relation to those problems around half a year ago. I went to en.wp stats [1] and I've seen that: * Number of new Wikipedians is lowering since March 2007. May 2009 is the worst month since March 2006. * Fortunately, numbers of active and very active Wikipedians are stable since the second half of 2007. * The problem is that curves for active and very active Wikipedians look like just prolonged curve of the number of new Wikipedians. But, I wanted to be sure that this is the trend on other large projects. * German Wikipedia [2]: worse than English in the sense of new Wikipedians, however, very stable in the sense of active and very active ones. * French Wikipedia [3]: Somewhat better than German, but it just shows the earlier phase of German Wikipedia. * Chinese Wikipedia [4]: Almost the same as French. * Russian Wikipedia [5]: Shows even earlier phase. Lowering number of new Wikipedians just began. Then, I wanted to see if there are some problems in general demographics. So, I've found demographics pyramids of USA [6], Germany [7] and France [8] (from 2005). If we assume that our target groups are between 15 and 24, just number of German contributors may be ~10% less (note that the population groups are now ~5 years older). In the case of French contributors we should expect ~5% less contributors, while in the case of USA we should expect ~2% more contributors. But, this is not all. We should add another variable. A significant number of the initial "new" Wikipedians (by "initial" I assume the raising period, in the case of en.wp, it is up to March 2007) were older. So, younger than them were also inside of the initial group. But, is the number of older Wikipedians so big that we may expect just 16% (de.wp), 46% (fr.wp), 60% (en.wp), of the peak number of new Wikipedians (statistics from de.wp: January 2006=1960 new, May 2009=320 new; see others from the charts)? * If our dominant groups are 15-24 years old and if we say that they consist 80% of Wikipedians, we should expect that the number of new Wikipedians compared to the peak should be: de.wp ~30%, ~35% fr.wp, ~40% en.wp. * If our dominant groups are 15-29 years old, then the numbers are ~25%, ~30%, ~35%. * If our dominant groups are 15-35 years old, then the numbers are ~15%, ~20%, ~25%. (Note that you may move up lower age level and you'll get approximately the same results.) In the best scenario, just de.wp is in the dangerous zone. In the worst scenario de.wp is far inside of the unsustainable development, while fr.wp and en.wp are still staying relatively well. (However, again, note that fr.wp and en.wp look a lot like the earlier phases of de.wp.) In all cases we need to think seriously how to educate younger generations about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. [1] - http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm [2] - http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaDE.htm [3] - http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaFR.htm [4] - http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaZH.htm [5] - http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaRU.htm [6] - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pyramide_Etats-Unis.PNG [7] - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pyramide_Allemagne.PNG [8] - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pyramide_France.PNG

14 years, 9 months

[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Strategic Planning Office Hours

by Philippe Beaudette

Hi folks: This is just a reminder: Eugene and I will be having our regular weekly office hours to discuss strategic planning. The time for this week is: Tuesdays from 20:00-21:00 UTC, which is: Tuesday, 1-2pm PDT or Tuesday, 4-5pm EDT. The office hours will be held in #wikimedia on the IRC freenode network. You can get more information at: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_Office_Hours Hope to see you there! ____________________ Philippe Beaudette Facilitator, Strategic Planning Wikimedia Foundation pbeaudette(a)wikimedia.org Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

14 years, 9 months

[Foundation-l] How was the "only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote" rule decided?

by Brian

The Wikimedia Foundation was originally envisaged as a membership organization. Per my recollection, everyone who ever edited would become a member. That didn't happen for legal reasons, however, I believe in the spirit of it being a membership organization. Unfortunately we now subscribe to the recentist perspective that only those that maintain a certain pace of editing are eligible to vote. We ignore, not only new editors who do not yet have 600 edits, but all editors who have 600 edits but have contributed to the projects in other ways recently, or have lapsed into just using the projects as a useful information resource. I highly doubt that a statistical analysis was carried out which found that editors that don't meet this requirement skew the results. I also highly doubt that editors that don't meet this requirement are incapable of comprehending the statements created by those seeking election, ranking them and making a perfectly valid choice that increases the power of the result. In my view, the only reason to limit voting to editors with a certain number of edits is to limit the effects of ballot stuffing. However, technical measures can easily counteract this effect. Additionally, the more people you allow to vote the more effective your anti-ballot stuffing countermeasures will be, as the larger number of votes mutes the effect of those who vote for the same person from several ip addresses. Thus, I must conclude that this rule was created arbitrarily. And if it was voted on, I seriously consider the result of that vote suspect, given present knowledge. /Brian

14 years, 9 months

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Wikimedia-l August 2009