Hi folks,
Just a heads up that Thursday at 22:00 UTC (15:00 Pacific), we'll be
running some very light banner testing to make sure that the tools we
use for the fundraiser are fully optimized before we launch. We'll
also take the opportunity to do a little bit of message testing. The
banners will serve to a very low set of editors, but I didn't want you
to be surprised if you got one.
The test is anticipated to run for one hour.
Thanks!
pb
____________________
Philippe Beaudette
Head of Reader Relations
Wikimedia Foundation
philippe(a)wikimedia.org
ofc: +1 415 839 6885 (x 643)
mobile: 918 200 WIKI (9454)
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
WM NYC and WM Serbia are organizing teleconference at Saturday, August
28th between 16:20 and 17:00 UTC (12:20-13:00 EDT and 18:20-19:00
CEST).
This is a kind of experiment and anyone who is willing to join is
welcome. You can participate by giving ideas at the event page [1] or,
if you are in NYC or Belgrade, you can join us.
We want to explore possibilities for making such events in the future
between chapters and other groups of Wikimedians. All inputs are
welcome.
[1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWormhole_Belgrade_-_New_York_City_2010#P…
Hi all,
I wanted to very quickly bring you up to speed on the work we're doing
for Wikipedia in higher education through the Public Policy Initiative [1].
Today, we've announced the eight professors who will be participating in
the Initiative this upcoming term. You can see the announcement in a
Wikimedia Foundation blog post [2].
If you haven't already, please check out the WikiProject:United States
Public Policy [3] to see what we're doing and track the progress of the
students in these courses throughout the term.
LiAnna
[1] http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Public_Policy_Initiative
[2]
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/08/19/wikimedia-registers-for-classes/
[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Pol…
--
LiAnna Davis
Communications Associate - Public Policy
Wikimedia Foundation
ldavis(a)wikimedia.org
Hi all,
Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, will
be having office hours this Thursday at 17:00 UTC (10:00 PT, 13:00 ET)
on IRC in #wikimedia-office.
If you do not have an IRC client, there are two ways you can come chat
using a web browser: First is using the Wikizine chat gateway at
<http://chatwikizine.memebot.com/cgi-bin/cgiirc/irc.cgi>. Type a
nickname, select irc.freenode.net from the top menu and
#wikimedia-office from the following menu, then login to join.
Also, you can access Freenode by going to http://webchat.freenode.net/,
typing in the nickname of your choice and choosing wikimedia-office as
the channel. You may be prompted to click through a security warning,
which you can click to accept.
Please feel free to forward (and translate!) this email to any other
relevant email lists you happen to be on.
____________________
Philippe Beaudette
Head of Reader Relations
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
The Wikimedia Announcements list appears not to be forwarding to
Foundation-L anymore -- apologies for the delay in getting this message
to you.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Wikimedia Announcements] New Wikimedia blog: First U.S.
Wikipedia student club starts at the University of Michigan
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:14:13 -0700
From: Frank Schulenburg <fschulenburg(a)wikimedia.org>
Reply-To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To: wikimediaannounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
<wikimediaannounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hi all,
I've posted a new article on the Wikimedia blog about our first U.S.
student club, started by Wikipedian Cheryl Moy at the University of
Michigan. We're very excited to see what Cheryl and her fellow club
members do this year, and we hope to hear about other student clubs
springing up on campuses across the world.
Please check out the post and leave a comment if you know of other clubs:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/08/17/first-u-s-wikipedia-student-club-…
Thanks,
Frank
Hoi,
Blogger is the platform I use now for many years to blog about the subjects
that are important in my appreciation of a Wiki world. At first I did not
illustrate my blogposts but thanks to Pfctdayelise I started to pepper my
blog posts with illustrations.
At this moment it is no longer possible for me to upload pictures to
blogger. The message that I get is that I have to ensure that I have a
license for the pictures that I upload. This is true for pictures that I
have downloaded from Commons and cropped, it is for screen shots of the
interaction with the Blogger user interface..
It is possible for me to get pictures displayed when I refer to the upload
page of a Commons picture but that does me no good when it is a svg picture.
Obviously I can download the picture and save it as an png ... but that does
me no good.
There are several "solutions" to this problem. I can upload the png, I can
use Wordpress instead. The obvious solution is for Google to get its act
together.
The solution that I like best is for Commons to become a true repository of
images that is not only intended for the illustration of Wikipedia and its
sister projects but also for the illustration of blogs like mine. Commons is
my first choice for illustrations for my blog but for some topics it just
does not provide me with the illustration that I am looking for.
I think that Commons has already many images that are usable, what would be
needed is just a different kind of pictures or more pictures that are
grouped by subject and easier to find.
Thanks,
GerardM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Farsi.svg The svg I would like to use as a
png
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2010/08/big-boost-for-mediawiki-localis…
blog post that needs an illustration
Hi all,
Thanks for bringing this up - although I think this belongs on wikimania-l
and not necessarily here.
I believe we'll be posting a FAQ dedicated to these issues quite soon on our
website, http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org, as this matter has been brought
up a number of times already.
I'll try to sum it up quickly for now:
* We will be delighted to have as high a participation as possible from the
entire Middle East. This is really, really important to us, more than
everything else. You can visit our website and see that most of it has
already been translated into Arabic.
* Unfortunately, ME politics is often plagued by tactics such as banning and
boycotting. No matter how good our intentions, I'm sorry to say there will
be people there who will still abstain from coming to the conference for
their own reasons, and there's not too much we can do about it. If someone
doesn't want to come to Israel, well, then, we can only express our regret
at his choice (which we think is misinformed). I wish they could all come
here and change their minds about Israeli reality.
* Wikimedia is not about politics, Wikimedia Israel doesn't represent the
Israeli government (or any other political entity), and we're trying to
focus this on free knowledge and a way for people to meet and interact, not
on politics.
* Wikimania 2011 will be held in Haifa, a city which is home to both Jews
and Arabs. We'll be promoting it (also) using bilingual posters and
brochures, and will try to reach the very large population of Israeli-Arab
students in Haifa's academic institutions.
* Israeli Arabs can (of course!!) reach the conference like any other
Israeli - they just need to get to the venue, on foot, by car, by train or
by bus.
* Palestinians living in the West Bank enter Israel by the thousands every
day. Yes, they need a permit for that. Obtaining that permit is a routine
operation. Yes, some difficulties might come up there, we'll use our
contacts within Israeli authorities to try to facilitate this as much as
possible, including issuing letters of invitation and contacting the
authorities well in advance. In fact, Israel might be one of the easier
destination for Palestinians to reach.
* Palestinians living in Gaza will have a harder time entering Israel. We're
looking at various possibilities to make this possible, should there be any
real demand for this. One possibility is for them to enter Egypt via the
border crossing in Rafah (which Egypt usually closes) and to reach Israel
via Egypt.
* Having said that, we know of *no* Palestinian (or Israeli-Arab)
Wikimedians, despite repeated attempts over the years to locate some. If
someone knows any, please let us know!
* Citizens of other countries can fly into Israel or enter Israel through
the open border crossings with Jordan and Egypt. Israel of course recognizes
the passports of countries with which it has diplomatic relations, even only
partial relations, such as Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Algiers and
others. Please refer to http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Visas.
* For some countries which do not recognize Israel like Syria, Iraq, Iran
and Saudi Arabia, entry will be more difficult, but there have been sporadic
entries from these countries in the past, and should any participant from
these countries wish to attend Wikimania, we will do our utmost to assist.
We have a letter of support from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
and exceptions can always be made at border crossings if approved from
on-high.
I'd be happy to keep this discussion constructive and not let it deteriorate
into a flame war.
Of course if anyone has further questions, we'll be happy to answer them.
Harel Cain
Wikimania 2011 team
