Hello All,
It is my pleasure to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation's Mid Year
Financial Statements for the period July 1 through December 31, 2010 are now
posted to the WMF's website along with the answers to the anticipated
frequently asked questions at:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2010.E2.80.932011_fis…
Here is a snapshot of our financials highlight:
The Wikimedia Foundation's financial situation is strong. Revenue has
exceeded the mid-year plan. This is primarily due to another strong online
fundraiser campaign. Spending is below plan due primarily to slower hiring
and the timing of the capital expenditures for the data center build-out in
Virginia. By the fiscal year-end, the total planned capital expenditures
will be spent or maybe slightly over plan.
Please don't hesitate to email me with any questions or concerns.
Best,
--
Tony Le
Controller
Wikimedia Foundation
Ph: 415-839-6885 ext 6749
Fax: 415-882-0495
tle(a)wikimedia.org
The main functionality of an encyclopedia is help people find background
knowledge for their questions.
Wikipedia as an encyclopedia still keep this functionality as the main usage
pattern, if I am not wrong.
But we can still observed other usage patterns, for example in the Mainpage
and Portals,
the changes on them reflect the news outside or editing progress inside.
And gradually even rss file was generated by bot to broadcast these changes.
I call this pattern a pushing pattern.
Let's back to the mission of Wikimedia movement: making knowledge reach all
the people on the planet.
Why can we not push knowledge to the people?
I know, from the most latin-language-version point of view, this idea is not
very attractive,
because Wikipedia is already the 5 biggest website on the planet.
But as the case for Chinese Wikipedia, we still at the poor position of
50th~100th popular website.
That is why I start my work on wikiedge.org, a re-mix website for good
wikipedia content.
I don't want stop at this higher level but I will propose a low level idea:
the concept of knowledge block.
In one word: knowledge block is a data exchange format to
enable broadcasting of good wikimedia content.
For example, the data exchange format would be:
* title
* permalink of the article
* leading sentence
* abstract
* tags
* categories
* the main photos
* related photos
If the community process (in generating dyk, itn, otd, feature and
featurpic) and supporting technology could provide these meta date, we
could:
* twitter: leading sentence + permalink + photos
* an online magazine: abstract + photos + fulltext
* a blog: abstract + photos + fulltext + categories + tags
* ...
We could push our knowledge into many different channels.
It need the community and technology guys to wrok together to implement the
idea.
And I want to make this real in Chinese Wikipedia.
Thanks for comments, critics and advice.
Regards,
Mingli
All,
In the continuing experiment to revive regular IRC community meetings,
I have proposed that the next meeting be this Saturday, March 5:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetings#March_5.2C_2011
And in the interests of rotating times and making it available to all
parts of the world, I'd like to propose 11:00UTC -- that time should
work pretty well for everywhere except the Americas. (other suggested
times included 09:00UTC and 12:00UTC, so 11:00 kinda splits the
difference. Pls comment on talk.).
So: Please forward to your relevant communities, and add your agenda
items (and sign up if you can make it) here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetings
I'd like to note that I am personally not imagining these meetings as
a place to ask questions and get answers from the staff and/or the
Board (note that 11:00UTC excludes participation from San Francisco),
but rather as a way for different parts of our community to talk with
each other, present projects, discuss issues of concern, etc. Last
time we had a good and wide-ranging meeting covering many topics (log
is on meta).
(Also, I myself will be traveling next Saturday and may not be able to
attend. So if someone could volunteer to moderate, that'd be awesome).
Comments, complaints and other ideas welcome, as always.
-- phoebe
--
* I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
<at> gmail.com *
Shiju Alex from Malayalam Wikipedia did an analysis of the
Indic-language wikis & their active community sizes:
http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/indian-language-wikipedias-2010-s…
It's a really interesting study, and a good reminder of how far we
have to go with the smaller wikis.
-- phoebe
--
* I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
<at> gmail.com *
In a message dated 3/1/2011 12:08:25 PM Pacific Standard Time,
wikipedia(a)frontier.com writes:
> If
> people actually understood how collaboration on a wiki works, it would
> be much easier for them to accept the projects for what they are, rather
> than creating drama about things they aren't. Then we could focus more
> on dealing with the drama on the projects themselves.
>
I think you miss the ball.
It's not about understanding on a cerebral level. We all have collaborated
IRL on various things. Very few of us, previously, have collaborated in a
massively multi-player video game. Most of the time you fight each other,
or the orcs, you don't collaborate on building a house or something.
It's a new experience for most persons, and I don't think you can get the
full flavor with charts and graphs. You're going to need to document and
recount some of the drama itself, without downplaying what actually occurred
and why.
Some personality types are not suited for MMORG collaboration, and we
shouldn't make it seem like all are.
W
Hello all,
The Wikimedia Language committee members are going to meet in May.
I created a new page in Meta for the open discussion of this meeting:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/May_2011_meeting
Everyone is welcome to influence this meeting by proposing to discuss.
Please edit this page and propose your ideas.
Thanks,
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
"We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
I am glad to announce that Language committee is stronger for three
new members. By the time of getting their applications, the list is:
Ζαχαρίας Διακονικολάου (Zaharias Diakonikolau) (meta:User:ZaDiak)
* languages spoken: el, en-4, de-2, grc-2, pnt-1
* living in: Europe, Greece, Rhodes
* reason for inclusion: A couple of months ago Language committee
announced that it is searching for members from the [types of]
projects which don't have Wikipedia-like dynamics. Zaharias has passed
as an applicant from Wikiversity (he is admin at Beta Wikiversity and
bureaucrat at Greek Wikiversity). However, his qualifications go
further: he is actively working on creation, editing and promoting
projects in various Greek languages. Knowing that he is young, he will
be our long term investment, too.
Oliver Stegen]] (meta:User:Baba Tabita)
* languages spoken: de, en-4, sw-3 <small style="color:gray;">nl-1, fr-1</small>
* living in: Africa, Kenya, Nairobi (from Europe, Germany)
* reason for inclusion: Oliver is a linguist who is working for SIL on
East African languages. We'll have one ultra-relevant expert in
LangCom thanks to Jon Harald Søby, one of the LangCom members, who met
Oliver in Nairobi.
Santhosh Thottingal]] (meta:User:Santhosh.thottingal)
* languages spoken: ml, hi-3, en-3, ta-2,
* living in: Asia, India, Chennai (Madras)
* reason for inclusion: Santhosh is a free software guru interested in
languages. He will help us in articulating projects for covering
language-related needs of Wikimedia projects.
I want to add one more point related to Santhosh. He has passed as a
LangCom member not because he is from India, but because he has
relevant expertise and right attitude. Although he speaks three Indian
languages, he has become a member of LangCom because he is a free
software guru interested in languages. Before Santhosh's application,
we would have been happy to see anyone with this qualification and
this attitude, no matter of location of birth or residence.
However, Bishakha's question and subsequent conversation helped, as it
gave impulse to Santhosh to submit the application. And that brings to
my mind that it would be good to pass the whole world periodically and
raise the geographical equality issue. And it is not a joke. That's
obviously giving people courage, or at least the idea, that they have
the same right to become members of any Wikimedia body, as any
Westerner has. Sometimes the qualifications won't be relevant for
particular position, sometimes they will.