Hi guys,
This is an update that since this morning (local time), Chinese Wikipedia is no longer accessible in mainland China from all major ISPs in all regions (that I've received reports from).
zh.wikipedia.org is now a censored URL keywords on HTTP. Meaning any foreign domain that contains these strings will be blocked, such asgoogle.com/?q=zh.wikipedia.org, or even microsoft.com/zh.wikipedia.org.
Also, any users who attempts to connect to Chinese Wikipedia will get their connection to *.wikipedia.org reset for several minutes.
HTTPS connection is still working. All other language versions, such as English Wikipedia are also accessible for now (but there is still keyword censoring).
As a bit of history, Chinese Wikipedia was blocked from 2005 to 2008. Shortly before the 2008 Beijing Olympics in July 2008, the block was lifted. Jimbo paid Cai Mingzhao, Vice Director of China's State Council Information Office a visit in September that year [1] and Cai visited the WMF office some time in 2009 (not sure of the date). Despite some keyword-specific blocks on sensitive articles, Chinese Wikipedia had been generally accessible until yesterday.
As for the other projects, Chinese Wikisource has been blocked since late 2010, and Chinese Wikinews since early 2012.
Hope that the block this time may as well be temporary.
[1] http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2008/10/jimmy-wales-mee.html
Regards,
Benjamin Chen / [[User:Bencmq]]
I see some of the issues with long term retention of editors being that we
have not figured out a method to effectively deal with sockpuppets. We ban
people but they just simply come back under a new user name and continue
more or less where the left off. Would it be possible to flag new user
names from well known sock puppet IPs for further investigation? In other
words dealing with the problem up front rather than waiting for another
editor to notice that a sockpuppet has returned (which might take a year or
two and lots of disruption to the community).
Another issue I see is the blocking of long term content contributors in
good standing without warning. If someone losses their cool (in other words
insults another editor) and the first action is to block them this is bad
for the long term stability of the community. If someone has donated
thousands of hours of time they deserve a warning and at least a chance to
change their behavior before the "ban hammer" is dropped. I have proposed
this sort of change here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_policy#RfC:_Warning_be…
More oligarchy is not the solution. We have some oligarchy (arbcom) and it
is of questionable effectiveness ( often unable to pick up sock puppets and
therefore unable to enforce bans, does not take content issues into
consideration and thus IMO comes to often to questionable conclusions ).
What we need to do is reach out to those who write content to see what they
need. While some of them are involved in these sorts of discussion may of
them are too busy, will writing content.
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
Hello:
The annual audit of the Wikimedia Foundation, for the fiscal year ending
June 30, 2012 and the corresponding FAQ have been posted on the financial
reports <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports> page of the
Wikimedia Foundation web site.
Please contact me with any questions.
Garfield
--
Garfield Byrd
Chief of Finance and Administration
Wikimedia Foundation
415.839.6885 ext 6787
415.882.0495 (fax)
www.wikimediafoundation.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!
*https://donate.wikimedia.org*
For those here interested that are not part of the education list.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: LiAnna Davis <ldavis(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 3:42 PM
Subject: [Wikimedia Education] Add your resources
To: education(a)lists.wikimedia.org
I've been working on revamping the Resources page in the education
portal of the outreach wiki, with the goal of making it a better place
for all of us to share help resources across the different programs:
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education_Portal/Tips_and_Resources
As more and more education programs start around the world, it's even
more important to share resources across our countries and languages
so that new programs are not reinventing the wheel and are instead
building off of what others have already created. With that in mind,
I'm encouraging anyone who has created good reference materials for
instructors or students participating in an education program to add
those resources to the page. All types of references are welcome —
brochures, handouts, videos, online trainings, slide decks, etc.
I welcome any additions to the page, as well as any feedback or ideas
on how to make the page even more useful for all of us!
LiAnna
--
LiAnna Davis
Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
http://education.wikimedia.org
(415) 839-6885 x6649
ldavis(a)wikimedia.org
_______________________________________________
Education mailing list
Education(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
--
Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom)
"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more
useful than a life spent doing nothing."
How about for the April fundraiser, instead of setting a dollar value
goal, we agree to use multivariate analysis instead of A/B testing to
optimize the messaging from volunteer submissions in advance, then run
the whole thing for a fixed time frame, say three weeks, and then use
the actual amount raised to decide whether salaries should be
competitive with area tech firms, whether Fellowships should be
jettisoned, how much personell to put into the Education Program and
engineering, and how much of a reserve to invest, preferably with low
risk instruments which pay above the rate of inflation?
Hi everyone,
I have a used point-and-shoot Canon Powershot SD1000 - 7.1 megapixel camera
with a case and an American power supply charger.
I would like it to go to a good home - preferably to a Wikipedian in a
remote place who would be interested in supplying photos of things in an
underrepresented region.
Please let me know if this could be of use to anyone. Thanks!
--
*Victor Grigas*
Storyteller <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Knv6D6Thi0>
Wikimedia Foundation
vgrigas(a)wikimedia.org
+1 (415) 839-6885 x 6773
149 New Montgomery Street 6th floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
https://donate.wikimedia.org/
I'm sending this to Wikimedia-l, Wikitech-l, and Research-l in case other people in the Wikimedia movement or staff are interested in "big data" as it relates to Wikimedia. I hope that those who are interested in discussions about WMF editor engagement efforts, WMF fundraising, or WMF HR practices will also find that this email interests them. Feel free to skip straight to the links in the latter portion of this email if you're already familiar with "big data" and its analysis and if you just want to see what other people are writing about the subject.
* Introductory comments / my personal opinion
"Big data" refers to large quantities of information that are so large that they are difficult to analyze and may not be related internally in an obvious way. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data
I think that most of us would agree that moving much of an organization's information into "the Cloud", and/or directing people to analyze massive quantities of information, will not automatically result in better, or even good, decisions based on that information. Also, I think that most of us would agree that bigger and/or more accessible quantities of data does not necessarily imply that the data are more accurate or more relevant for a particular purpose. Another concern is the possibility of unwelcome intrusions into sensitive information, including the possibility of data breaches; imagine the possible consequences if a hacker broke into supposedly secure databases held by Facebook or the Securities and Exchange Commission.
We have an enormous quantity of data on Wikimedia projects, and many ways that we can examine those data. As this Dilbert strip points out, context is important, and looking at statistics devoid of their larger contexts can be problematic. http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1993-02-07/
Since data analysis is also something that Wikipedia does in the areas I mentioned previously, I'm passing along a few links for those who may be interested about the benefits and limitations of big data.
* Links:
>From the Harvard Business Review
http://hbr.org/2012/04/good-data-wont-guarantee-good-decisions/ar/1
>From the New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/technology/big-data-is-great-but-dont-fo…
and
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/sunday-review/big-datas-impact-in-the-wo…
>From the Wall Street Journal. This may be especially interesting to those who are participating in the discussions on Wikimedia-l regarding how Wikimedia selects, pays, and manages its staff.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443890304578006252019616768.h…
And from English Wikipedia (:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_mining
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_intelligence
Cheers,
Pine
Hello,
The 2012 Picture of the Year committee on the Wikimedia Commons is looking
for help translating the Picture of the Year contest into additional
languages. We need to translate the text *in all three tables* at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2012/Translat…
Your help is really appreciated and we'd like to take this moment to remind
you that Round 1 of the contest is scheduled to begin on January 16, 2012.
We will announce more details around that time.
Thank you,
User:Mono & the entire POTY 2012 committee