Wikimedia-l January 2010

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

87 participants
58 discussions

Re: [Foundation-l] sell wikipedia
by sterten＠aol.com 21 Jan '10

21 Jan '10

wikireader doesn't say whether the data is just plain text or somehow encrypted in their format. (I couldn't find it) I don't need pictures, just plain wikipedia-text. Best with the discussion-pages and all that. Suitable for keyword-searches, maybe even from program or batch-file

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[Foundation-l] OSTP Request for Comment on Open Access to Federally Funded Research
by phoebe ayers 21 Jan '10

21 Jan '10

Possibly of interest to Wikimedians: the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy is requesting public comment on making federally funded scientific research open access. The deadline is Jan. 7. ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: "Charles W. Bailey, Jr." <cwbailey(a)digital-scholarship.com> To: sts-l(a)ala.org Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 10:50:30 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific Subject: [STS-L] OSTP Request for Comment on Open Access to Federally Funded Research The Office of Science and Technology Policy is requesting input regarding enhanced access to federally funded science and technology research results, including the possibility of open access to them. Comments can be e-mailed to publicaccess(a)ostp.gov. The deadline for comments is January 7, 2010. Here's an excerpt from the announcement (http://bit.ly/5J1ZAp): Input is welcome on any aspect of expanding public access to peer reviewed publications arising from federal research. Questions that individuals may wish to address include, but are not limited to, the following (please respond to questions individually): 1. How do authors, primary and secondary publishers, libraries, universities, and the federal government contribute to the development and dissemination of peer reviewed papers arising from federal funds now, and how might this change under a public access policy? 2. What characteristics of a public access policy would best accommodate the needs and interests of authors, primary and secondary publishers, libraries, universities, the federal government, users of scientific literature, and the public? 3. Who are the users of peer-reviewed publications arising from federal research? How do they access and use these papers now, and how might they if these papers were more accessible? Would others use these papers if they were more accessible, and for what purpose? 4. How best could federal agencies enhance public access to the peer-reviewed papers that arise from their research funds? What measures could agencies use to gauge whether there is increased return on federal investment gained by expanded access? 5. What features does a public access policy need to have to ensure compliance? 6. What version of the paper should be made public under a public access policy (e.g., the author's peer reviewed manuscript or the final published version)? What are the relative advantages and disadvantages to different versions of a scientific paper? 7. At what point in time should peer-reviewed papers be made public via a public access policy relative to the date a publisher releases the final version? Are there empirical data to support an optimal length of time? Should the delay period be the same or vary for levels of access (e.g., final peer reviewed manuscript or final published article, access under fair use versus alternative license), for federal agencies and scientific disciplines? 8. How should peer-reviewed papers arising from federal investment be made publicly available? In what format should the data be submitted in order to make it easy to search, find, and retrieve and to make it easy for others to link to it? Are there existing digital standards for archiving and interoperability to maximize public benefit? How are these anticipated to change? 9. Access demands not only availability, but also meaningful usability. How can the federal government make its collections of peer- reviewed papers more useful to the American public? By what metrics (e.g., number of articles or visitors) should the Federal government measure success of its public access collections? What are the best examples of usability in the private sector (both domestic and international)? And, what makes them exceptional? Should those who access papers be given the opportunity to comment or provide feedback? In "The Obama Administration Wants OA for Federally-Funded Research" (http://bit.ly/8fZ6Yh), Peter Suber says: "This is big. We already have important momentum in Congress for FRPAA. The question here is about separate action from the White House. What OA policies should President Obama direct funding agencies to adopt? This is the first major opening to supplement legislative action with executive action to advance public access to publicly-funded research. It's also the first explicit sign that President Obama supports the OA policy at the NIH and wants something similar at other federal agencies." In "Please Comment on Mandate Proposal by President Obama's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)" (http://bit.ly/8OQUEF), Stevan Harnad provides his answers to the OSTP's questions. -- Best Regards, Charles Charles W. Bailey, Jr. Publisher, Digital Scholarship http://bit.ly/Z6HFx

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[Foundation-l] wikiresearch
by sterten＠aol.com 21 Jan '10

21 Jan '10

can I have my reseach-paper as a wiki-page and wiki-editors help to complete it, write introduction,include references,improve graphics etc. - while I just provide the data and results. This way it can also be updated later and easily searched. No publishing journal needed.

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[Foundation-l] Where do our readers come from? Q&A
by Erik Zachte 21 Jan '10

21 Jan '10

Here is a Q&A on all issues raised: Q=question/R=Remark, A=answer I put the more general questions on top. Cheers, Erik Zachte ------------------------------------------ Q: Nikola Smolenski Is it first time these reports are published? A: Yes, expect trend report to grow by accretion over time. Other reports will be built from data for recent (6) months only ------------------------------------------ R: Andrew Gray Andrew explains why distribution of page requests over countries favors Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries: 'Some Wikipedias - the ones which insist on only-free-images - do not use local uploads at all.' A: Thanks for explaining this unexpected distribution of page views on Commons, I had no idea. Spain 30.0% USA 29.2% Brazil 8.5% Argentina 4.8% Mexico 3.9% Germany 3.3% France 2.1% Venezuela 1.9% Chile 1.4% Costa Rica 1.4% Italy 1.4% Uruguay 1.2% Colombia 1.2% Portugal 1.1% ------------------------------------------ R: Mark Williamson Two main factors influencing choice of Wikipedia language: # Fluency of the Internet-using population of a country in English. # Quality of the native Wikipedia. A: Like you say. Many Scandinavians (and Dutch people I might add) probably switch between English and local content all the time. Personally I tend to look at English Wp first I many instances, because of obviously richer content and larger depth. ------------------------------------------ Q: Ziko van Dijk Why are 40 % of the visitors of ksh.WP (the dialect of Cologne) from Japan. Why are 25 % of the visitors of eu.WP (Basque) from Poland? Q: Andre Engels I think bots are a likely explanation in the eu case (unless Erik is using an algorithm that filters out bots) A: KSH used to be code for Kashmir. Still not Japan, but much closer than Cologne. Maybe Japanese mountaineers caused this spike ? (only half kidding) As for eu.wp: Would Polish presume there also is a European Wikipedia? Just a guess. I do filter bots ------------------------------------------ R: Teun Spaans For trends, I would expect a bar indicating upward or downward trend, not a percentage bar. A: We can have both, a notion of importance and of change: I might color code cells as I do already in e.g. [1] This way large fluctuations really stand out. Let's first collect more history. [1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthly.htm ------------------------------------------ Q: Nikola Smolenski Could we get this for other projects? A: This question is of course not unexpected. One consideration is we need a certain sample size to make numbers significant. For other projects, with far less traffic, few country/language pairs would be backed by sufficient data. See also below on extending the current reports with more table rows. ------------------------------------------ Q: Nikola Smolenski: Please include at Wikipedia Page Views Per Country - Overview [1] number of Internet users from [2], and number of views per Internet user? [1] http://tinyurl.com/yk43aq6 [2] http://tinyurl.com/yfv5bwn A: Done ------------------------------------------ R: Nikola Smolenski It is obvious why Slovene Wikipedia is highly visited in Sierra Leone, and Serbian in Suriname; URLs do matter :) Although, I don't understand why so much. I would expect this distribution by visitors, perhaps, but not by visits. A: Very interesting observation! So people from Sierra Leone try 'sl.wikipedia.org'. Why people from Surinam go to 'sr.wikimedia.org' is only slightly less obvious to me, but apparently is happens For countries with just a few hits in the sampled log the distinction between visitors and visits gets blurred. ------------------------------------------ R: Andre Engels Ukrainian is not a small language by any means, yet Wikipedia visitors tend to be drawn to the Russian Wikipedia instead. A: Yes but article growth in Ukrainian Wikipedia has been speeding up in recent months. [1] [1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaUK.htm ------------------------------------------ R: Andre Engels The Q3-Q4 comparison for most countries shows a shift from English to the 'vernacular'. A: Interesting analysis. Let's see if this is a consistent trend. However the monthly page views per Wikipedia language for which we have 2 year history do not show very significant shift from large to smaller wikipedia's. See table 'Distribution of page views' at bottom of page of [1]: smaller languages gain in share of page views, but very slowly. [1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthly.htm ------------------------------------------ Q: Nikola Smolenski / Milos Rancic At Wikipedia Page Views By Country - Breakdown [1] and Wikipedia Page Views By Country - Trends [2] could you include more languages (ideally all languages)? Some of the numbers are going below 0.1% of population, but some of them are not mentioned even they are larger than 0.5% of population. [1] http://tinyurl.com/yhp3an7 [2] http://tinyurl.com/yzga2hm A: Yes on some reports I do include smaller percentages for the largest Wikipedia's as those represent significant numbers of page views. I used different (and arbitrary) thresholds per report. The arbitrariness could change, but I want to plead for a notoriety threshold: Here is a much more extended version of the breakdown report [1] (for this discussion only) It shows per country up to 50 Wikipedia's An extra column shows the total number of records for this country/language (for the 6 month period) on which the percentage is based. As you can see for the smallest countries that number is so low that it is no longer significant. Let us say we cut off not at 1%, but at an (arbitrary) absolute threshold of x logged records per country/language pair (per row). Let us say we cut off at average 5 records per month. Everything below that threshold in the test report is in dark red. Personally I think this is still way too much detail for a general report. Not because of Kb's but information overload. [1] http://tinyurl.com/yjwoyre

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[Foundation-l] Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2010: Call for Proposals
by Jonathan Gray 20 Jan '10

20 Jan '10

~~ Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2010: Call for Proposals ~~ * where: London, UK * when: Saturday 24th April, 2010 * www: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/ * last year: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/2009/ * cfp: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/cfp/ (deadline: Jan 31st 2010) * hashtag: #okcon2010 ## Introduction OKCon, now in its fifth year, is the interdisciplinary conference that brings together individuals from across the open knowledge spectrum for a day of presentations and workshops. Open knowledge promises significant social and economic benefits in a wide range of areas from governance to science, culture to technology. Opening up access to content and data can radically increase access and reuse, improving transparency, fostering innovation and increasing societal welfare. This is a time of great change. In addition to high profile initiatives such as Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap and the Human Genome Project, there is enormous growth among open knowledge projects and communities at all levels. Moreover, in the last year, many governments across the world have begun opening up their data. And it doesn't stop there. In academia, open access to both publications and data has been gathering momentum, and similar calls to open up learning materials have been heard in education. Furthermore this gathering flood of open data and content is the creator and driver of massive technological change. How can we make this data available, how can we connect it together, how can we use it collaborate and share our work? Join us to discuss all of this and more! ## Topics We welcome proposals on any aspect of creating, publishing or reusing content or data that is open in accordance with http://opendefinition.org. Topics include but are not limited to: ### Technology * Semantic Web and Linked Data in relation to open knowledge * Platforms, methods and tools for creating, sharing and curating open knowledge * Light-weight, adaptive interaction models * Open, decentralized social network applications * Open geospatial data ### Law, Society and Democracy * Open Licensing, Legal Tools and the Public Domain * Open government data and content (public sector information) * Open knowledge and international development * Opening up access to the law ### Culture and Education * Open educational tools and resources * Business models for open content * Incentive and rewards open-knowledge contributors * Open textbooks * Public domain digitisation initiatives ### Science and Research * Opening up scientific data * Supporting scientific workflows with open knowledge models * Open models for scientific innovation, funding and publication ('open-access') * Tools for analysing and visualizing open data * Open knowledge in the humanities ## Submission Details * Submission deadline: January 31st 2010 * Notification of acceptance: March 1st * Camera-ready papers due: March 31st We are accepting three types of submissions: 1. Full papers of 5-10 pages describing novel strategies, tools, services or best-practices related to open knowledge. 2. Extended talk abstracts of 2-4 pages focusing on novel ideas, ongoing work and upcoming research challenges. 3. Proposals for short talks and demonstrations OKCon will implement an open submission and reviewing process. To make a submission visit: * http://www.okfn.org/okcon/submit/ Depending on the assessment of the submissions by the programme committee and external reviewers, submissions will be accepted either as full, short or lightning/poster presentations. Proceedings of OKCON will be published at http://ceur-ws.org. If you want your submission to be included in the conference proceedings you have to prepare a manuscript of your submission according to the LNCS Style. ### Programme Committee * Sören Auer, AKSW/Universität Leipzig * Christopher Corbin, UK Advisory Board on Public Sector Information * Adnan Hadzi and Andrea Rota, Goldsmiths College, University of London * Claudia Müller-Birn, Carnegie Mellon University * Peter Murray-Rust, University of Cambridge * Rufus Pollock, Open Knowledge Foundation and Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge * Joseph Seddon, Wikimedia UK * John Wilbanks, Science Commons -- Jonathan Gray Community Coordinator The Open Knowledge Foundation http://www.okfn.org Twitter/Identica: jwyg

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[Foundation-l] Britain Loves Wikipedia - Logo
by joseph seddon 20 Jan '10

20 Jan '10

Apologies for the cross posting. Wikimedia UK, the UK chapter, is organising an event called Britan Loves Wikipedia Britain Loves Wikipedia is a cultural event bring organised in partnership between Wikimedia UK, the Collections Trust and the MLA (Museums, Libraries, Archives Partnership) starting on January 31 which will encourage members of the public to visit certain participating museums around the UK and photograph certain exhibits and make those photos available for use on Wikipedia, and other projects, through Wikimedia Commons. There will then be various prizes given out based on the pictures people produce. For this event, we need a logo. While we are getting quotes to have a professionally produced logo made, we would much prefer one produced by a member of the community. The community has produced excellent logos in the past and we are sure it will be able to provide us with one that is just as professional looking as what we could get by paying an enormous amount for it. If you would like to have a go, the brief is as follows: * The logo must include the words ‘Britain Loves Wikipedia’ * The logo does not necessarily need to feature the Wikipedia globe * The logo must work in black and white and colour * The logo must not be year-specific Unfortunately we have very limited time so deadlines for this project are as follows: * Expression of Interest (and, ideally, a first draft of your idea or ideas) -- 12:00 midday UTC Thursday, January 21 2010 * Final Logo -- 23:59 UTC Sunday, January 24 2010 We understand that that doesn't give you much time, and we're sorry we didn't organise this sooner. Hopefully a few people can knock something up in that time! If you want to have a go, please let us know by following the link. http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Britain_Loves_Wikipedia/Logo_submissions Thanks! Joseph Seddon Wikimedia UK _________________________________________________________________ Do you have a story that started on Hotmail? Tell us now http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia in off line in Zambia with Okawix
by pmartin＠linterweb.com 20 Jan '10

20 Jan '10

What is the version of Kiwix are you install, does it the version with the downloader composant ? http://kiwix.org/index.php/Main_Page/archives/en "Linterweb has stopped his collaboration with Kiwix. As Linterweb did not publish the 0.7 [1] source code, this version will not be recognized as a standard Kiwix release and will neither be supported. If you want more information concerning 0.7 [2] and the _live corpus_, please contact Linterweb." It s just because it s probably our last version of Kiwix ( V 0.7 ) that you install. >I want to congratulate you on your work. >I share your emotion. In the state of Nueva Esparta Venezuela kiwix we have >installed in 53 schools only in 2009. I think the work should go beyond >wikimedia, wikimedia's work should bring knowledge to those most in need. It >is not enough to have the information online, we activists we dirtied with >mud to the knees, we do long walks with a goal that is immensely rewarding. I >invite everyone to do the same. >I believe and I'm sure would be nice to forget the business problem for a >moment, we join personal effort rather than money alone. >We must remember that poverty is a cultural issue, poverty is not an >economic problem. The economic problem is the result of a cultural problem. www.kiwix.org [3] Links: ------ [1] http://kiwix.org/index.php/0.7 [2] http://kiwix.org/index.php/0.7 [3] http://www.kiwix.org/

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[Foundation-l] Wikipedia in off line in Zambia with Okawix
by pmartin＠linterweb.com 20 Jan '10

20 Jan '10

Hello I don't know if i have got the time to blog it today but i will do it in nowaday, but it s a very good news : "Since my last email I went to Zambia and installed Okawix and all the english Wiki content on a number of computers at several schools. The teachers of the schools I visited were very grateful for the software and content you've provided. I attached some pictures of my journey." http://www.linterweb.fr/IMG1.jpg [1] http://www.linterweb.fr/IMG2.jpg [2] http://www.linterweb.fr/IMG3.jpg [3] Sincerely Pascal Links: ------ [1] http://www.linterweb.fr/IMG1.jpg [2] http://www.linterweb.fr/IMG2.jpg [3] http://www.linterweb.fr/IMG3.jpg

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[Foundation-l] Reminder: Wikimania bid deadline Feb. 8
by phoebe ayers 19 Jan '10

19 Jan '10

Hi all, This is a gentle reminder that the deadline for posting an initial Wikimania 2011 bid is *Monday, February 8*, just three short weeks away. Remember, you don't have to specify any details at this point; you just have to list the city your team plans to bid with (you can always withdraw later if it seems unpromising). Bid today if you plan to! Details: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2011/Bids regards, -- Phoebe -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers <at> gmail.com *

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[Foundation-l] Jimmy on CNN
by Domas Mituzas 19 Jan '10

19 Jan '10

Hello dear people, there's something very very very special about the video at http://cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2010/01/19/ctw.connector.jimmy.wales.cnn You can definitely see that organization just had a critical shift. :-) Domas P.S. You look great! :)

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Wikimedia-l January 2010