Wikimedia-l April 2010

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81 participants
59 discussions

[Foundation-l] Hello world. Update from Berlin.
by Philippe Beaudette 23 Apr '10

23 Apr '10

Dear world: Help wanted. Plz send a rowboat and a few paddles. It’s no secret by now that a volcano in Iceland with an unpronounceable name decided to get cranky this week and stranded hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. With that out of the way, Did you know… that half the Wikimedia Foundation staff and a lot of volunteers who were in Berlin for the Wikimedia Developers and Chapters conferences (since renamed, collectively, “Ashcon”), were among those who were stuck? We’re making the best of it… we’ve got it better than a lot of people. We’re in a very nice hotel in downtown Berlin, and we’ve got food and drink. We’re missing our families and really want to be home, but the whole trip has a very “summer camp” feeling to it now. We’ve done laundry, and “the boys” (as Danese affectionately calls them) are whacking some Mediawiki bugs from our makeshift office in the lobby. The kind people at Wikimedia-Germany have been wonderful hosts, arranging outings, giving tours of their office, and connecting us with local Wikimedians for sight-seeing tours. We’re getting pretty good at ordering curry-wurst, and we’ve found the local Ka-De-We department store (which Danese affectionately labeled “heaven”). On the whole, we’re doing okay. Some of us are even optimistic about making it home someday soon. Others are practicing their German. But Iceland, you’re on notice: we’re holding a grudge. ____________________ Philippe Beaudette Facilitator, Strategy Project Wikimedia Foundation philippe(a)wikimedia.org Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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[Foundation-l] clicking on links
by Amir E. Aharoni 23 Apr '10

23 Apr '10

There was lately a lot of research about making Wikipedia's usability better for editing. Is there any research about the way in which Wikipedia's Actual Readers use hyperlinks in Wikipedia, both internal and external? I am wondering about it, because you know, we have Manual of Style for internal and external links, essays about the pros and cons of red links, bots that remove over-linking etc. - yet time after time i meet Actual Readers that tell me that they didn't understand a word in an article, even though this word was linked to a good article that explained its meaning. But they didn't click it and because of that they gave up on understanding the whole article. If One Stupid Reader would tell me such a thing, i wouldn't mind, but Many Clever Readers told me that. Did anyone try to think about it deeply? -- אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי Amir Elisha Aharoni http://aharoni.wordpress.com "We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

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[Foundation-l] Flagged Protection update for April 22
by William Pietri 23 Apr '10

23 Apr '10

As requested, here's the weekly Flagged Protection update. Now recovered from the developer meeting, we have made further progress, and have only a few known issues between us and release. If you'd like to verify that for yourself, start here: http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page To see what we've changed this week, there's a list here: http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Flagged_Protection_upd… To see the upcoming work, it's listed in our tracker, under Current and Backlog: http://www.pivotaltracker.com/projects/46157 We are very close now; only a few UI issues remain between us and final testing, after which will hopefully come a launch on the English Wikipedia. We expect to release to labs again next week, and each week thereafter until this goes live on the English Wikipedia. William

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[Foundation-l] IPA issues
by stevertigo 22 Apr '10

22 Apr '10

(Crossposted to wikien and foundation:) Some points about IPA on all language wikis. 1) As a rule, all language wikis should use International Phonetic Alphabet as their standard pronunciation scheme. Very few appear to actually do. 2) All language wikis should attempt to use IPA to pronounce the endonym of a foreign word, not the exonymic re-pronunciation (ie. Iraq = /iːˈrɑːk/ not /ɪˈræk/). 3) With rare exceptions, IPA should be the default phonemic transcription scheme, and alternate schemes such as [[Wikipedia:Pronunciation respelling key]] should be avoided or deprecated. 4) Feedback from languages about IPA should be useful. IPA is actually quite flexible about exactness, while still being phonetically precise. If there are flaws in IPA itself, the Wikipedia community can help raise them for the Internation Phonetic Association. 5) Ambiguity about how it is supposed to be used is a cross-project issue should be dealt with at the Foundation level (ie. global not just inter-wiki policy). -Stevertigo

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[Foundation-l] [Announcement] Philippe Beaudette becomes Head of Reader Relations
by Sue Gardner 20 Apr '10

20 Apr '10

As I'm sending this, I'm wondering: have we actually started an announce-only list? If so, and if someone reminds me, I will post this there too :-) Hi folks, I'm delighted to tell you that Philippe Beaudette will be staying with the Wikimedia Foundation following the completion of the strategy project this summer. This makes me really happy: Philippe has been doing terrific work, and I'm delighted he's agreed to stay on with us. In his new role, Philippe will become the Wikimedia Foundation's first-ever Head of Reader Relations. As such, he will act as an advocate for readers inside the projects and within the staff. His first focus will be to work with Wikimedia volunteers to establish and maintain systems enabling them to provide good service to readers who have inquiries, complaints and comments. A lot of this will involve taking existing FAQ material, cleaning it up, and making it publicly available to readers. That'll involve some writing and synthesizing work, and also coordinating with volunteers to have material translated and localized. Philippe's background makes him ideal for this role. He has been a long-time member of the Wikimedia volunteer community, both as an administrator on several sites, and as a volunteer for OTRS, where he successfully resolved some particularly difficult complaints regarding biographies of living people. He's very familiar with Wikimedia project policies and practices. Outside Wikimedia, Philippe has significant customer service experience, including running a large customer contact centre for Convergys Corporation, a global firm specializing in relationship management. He also helped many organizations, including two of the world's largest insurance providers, develop customer service environments, while working for Siebel. He also has a background in American electoral politics, including working as Deputy Campaign Manager, Operations Manager and Technology Director on a number of state and federal campaigns, as well as for the non-profit Progressive Alliance Foundation. He has worked in the United States, Italy, and the United Kingdom. All of this, in my view, makes Philippe ideal to handle reader relations for us: he's got lots of experience managing complex stakeholder relationships with tact and sensitivity, and creating systems that scale. Both Philippe and I expect his role will evolve once the Chief Global Program Officer (CGPO) arrives. I thank Philippe for his flexibility and trust in taking this on and relocating to San Francisco, despite that lack of certainty :-) Philippe will report to me until the CGPO arrives, whereupon he'll report to that person. He's in the midst of beginning his move to San Francisco now (with a side trip to Berlin for the chapters meeting). You might wonder why this job wasn't posted and boarded. Generally, I do aim to post and board all jobs; I think it helps the Wikimedia Foundation to surface the best-possible candidates, to be fair in our hiring, and to be seen to be fair. In this instance though, I decided it was better not to. Philippe has done a great job over the past nine months, we are undoubtedly going to need the kinds of skills and experiences he brings to us, and I didn't want him to start job-hunting as his work on the strategy project came to a close. Given that, and given that the job may evolve when the CGPO arrives, posting and boarding -in this particular context- seemed inappropriate. Philippe has been a great addition to our team in the time he's been with us, and I look forward to his continued contributions. Please join me in welcoming and congratulating him. Thanks, Sue -- Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation 415 839 6885 office 415 816 9967 cell 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

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[Foundation-l] Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) in London on 24th April 2010
by Jonathan Gray 20 Apr '10

20 Apr '10

Hi, A quick reminder that this year's Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) is taking place in London on 24th April 2010 - in 10 days time! There are still tickets left - and you can register at the following link: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/register/ Speakers and sessions include: * 'State of the Nation' Keynotes: - Matthias Schindler, Wikimedia (Germany) on 'Bibliographic Data and the Public Domain' - Glyn Moody, on the 'Post-Analogue World' - Peter Murray-Rust, on 'Recent Developments in Open Science' - Chris Taggart, on 'Open Local Government Data' - Sören Auer, on 'Linked Open Data' - Jordan Hatcher, on 'Open Licensing for Data' * Ideas and Culture with talks on analyzing 'Dickens Letters' and 'Making the Physical from the Digital' * Open Bibliographic Information with talks on 'The Itinerant Poetry Library' and the 'Journal Commons' * Community Driven Research with talks on 'Climate data' and 'Open Archaeology' * Civic Information with talks on 'Using Open Government Data to Profile Politicians' and the 'Straight Choice' * Open Government Data and PSI in the EU which looks at the current state of play in France, Norway, Germany, the UK and elsewhere * Tools with talks on 'Large-scale data handling and revisioning' with the Genome, Ontowiki, CKAN and more * Open Data and the Semantic Web with talks about South Korean DBPedia and Thesaurus Management Tool ‘Pool Party’ * Open Data in International Development including talks from PublishWhatYouFund and on OpenStreetMap in Haiti Further details are available at: http://blog.okfn.org/2010/04/14/okcon-2010-nearly-here-24th-april-2010-in-l… http://www.okfn.org/okcon/programme More information: * Main conference page: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/ * FAQ: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/faq If you have any questions please email Sara Wingate-Gray at sara.gray(a)okfn.org. We look forward to seeing people there! All the best, -- Jonathan Gray Community Coordinator The Open Knowledge Foundation http://blog.okfn.org http://twitter.com/jwyg http://identi.ca/jwyg

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[Foundation-l] Chris Clayton
by Alex "Mr.Z-man" 19 Apr '10

19 Apr '10

http://www.roulette-casino-en-ligne.com/home.php

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[Foundation-l] Strategic Planning Office Hours
by Philippe Beaudette 19 Apr '10

19 Apr '10

Hi everyone, The next strategic planning office hours are: Tuesday, 6 April, from 20:00-21:00 UTC, which is: -Tuesday (1-2pm PDT) -Tuesday (4-5pm EDT) Office hours will be a great opportunity to discuss the work that's happened as well as the work to come. As always, you can access the chat by going to https://webchat.freenode.net and filling in a username and the channel name (#wikimedia-strategy). You may be prompted to click through a security warning. It's fine. More details at: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours Thanks! Hope to see many of you there. ____________________ Philippe Beaudette Facilitator, Strategy Project Wikimedia Foundation philippe(a)wikimedia.org Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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[Foundation-l] Comments on New Reports from November 2008 Survey Released
by Noein 18 Apr '10

18 Apr '10

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello, I've been reading the survey. http://wikipediasurvey.org/docs/Wikipedia_NonContributors_15March2010-FINAL… Suggestions: a) In my opinion, one of the things that make the learning curb steep to start editing is the fact that most of the essential concepts of Wikipedia are discussed through accronyms: ie, NPOV. If a bot could automatically add an explicitation, visible when hovering the mouse on the acronym, then the discussions pages would be self contained. b) Currently, the edition mode shows a different page with a different syntax than the article page which immediately rebukes the would-be editor. A WYSIWYG edition mode coupled with an AJAX technology would leave the editor in familiar grounds. c) A synthesis and a link to the main rules for writing an article should be present when in edition mode. Currently, if you want to know how to respect the conventions, you have to search for them by yourself. d) The notices that state one or other way that an article doesn't meet the wikipedia standard (ie, "this article needs clean up") assume that the reader knows what the standard is. A link to an example of what is expected from the editor would clarify things: ie, an example of a "before clean up article/ after clean up article". e) I think there are two main psychological steps required for editing and sharing knowledge. I - You notice that something is wrong or incomplete. That is, you know something that is not in the article. II - You find a way to pour your knowledge. You must be confident and comfortable with this way. Currently, step II can be achieved through two options: you edit the article or you start a discussion. This requires time, confidence, experience and will. Sometimes you just want to point out an obscure passage or an external link, without editing the article or leaving comments. I think those procedures should be assisted so that the editor can contribute with a single click or a link, leaving the rest of the task to others. f) I think that some potential editors are afraid of their first contribution. Once they're engaged and lost their a priori and fears, they should be more proactive. So I think small and easy participations should be made available to them. For example, right-clicking a word and correcting it's spelling with an integrated dictionary instead of going through the editing interface could be a determining step. g) Youth. There is no data on youth in the survey. I think they have specific patterns of thoughts and behaviours. Wikipedia should be adapted to them too. They're the future. Cheers -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJLy2acAAoJEHCAuDvx9Z6LcgkIALEo8swfWcNoluB/bYTHyuJ1 WNB3g+NxLCvo5Uz9+zpwk5UJqyE9ja/B2fd9D3jcradgwGlX06wBfswvhoKBhq7T /jVlv2lLb3Yb9riRVK4PflSdIktzupvgpX6XERUjd28wOlz5SKJB5E/M/a8hAV6W nKVR8Hj+Dz15IBBHCLTlhJwQs9Ojp51jZMyqb6NnbGweo+0sTfavVgGr42rYGbE6 JQ90yAdExSGGGEf4fjfx9MW25L2r/ETbuyQBGmK6VotpRCaPB9+h5o7NF3U3xFZA mOI3aBf3iWkZW/DYEmBxpOJhy90tvOabalc1ESvH43g8hloYqssXPZ0WL4KcZDk= =lpmE -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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[Foundation-l] New Reports from November 2008 Survey Released
by emijrp 17 Apr '10

17 Apr '10

Hi all; I have been reading the recent report about the 2008 survey.[1] It is divided into some parts, but the most interesting (for me) is that about non-contributors. We know about the Wikimedia Usability Initiative, which wants to measurably increase the usability of Wikipedia for new contributors (new toolbar, new upload form, new skin, ...). But I want to share with you two paragraphs about the survey:[2] [...]The primary reason non-contributors would consider contributing is if they “knew there were specific topic areas that needed [their] help” (34-41%). Almost as important an incentive, (31-37%) for all groups, is a clear indication “that other people would benefit from [their] efforts”.[...] ...and... [...]We can expect contribution to increase if explanations of the technical aspects of contributing were made more readily accessible to readers; if it was made more explicitly clear that readers' contributions are welcome, and that people can contribute in many ways including those that don't require domain expertise, such as, for instance, correcting language or obvious errors. The single biggest incentive to increase contribution is probably making more clear what topics and what articles need editing. Wikipedia already has notices on pages which do not meet quality standards, need clean-up, etc. However, these notices are perhaps not explicit enough in addressing and engaging readers who are not yet part of the Wikipedia contributor community. Clearer, explicit identification of topics where readers might contribute, perhaps through notices and requests not limited to single articles, are likely to increase contribution: e.g., if a reader is looking at several articles on psychology, he or she could be presented with a request to contribute to other articles on psychology.[...] As you can read, non-contributors want to know where they can help, so, a new toolbar or a new upload form only would be used if they know what to write and what image is needed to upload. Also, non-contributors choice "I would be much likelier to contribute if... the technology was easier to use" with a very low percent (compared to the other answers). Perhaps, we need a Wikipedia Edit Campaign (similar to the famous annual Wikipedia Donation Campaign) with a sitenotice asking people to edit where they might contribute, using their navigation preferences or geolocalisation. Best wishes, emijrp [1] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/04/02/new-reports-from-november-2008-survey-… [2] http://wikipediasurvey.org/docs/Wikipedia_NonContributors_15March2010-FINAL…

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Wikimedia-l April 2010