Howdy all,
One thing I've noticed in my short time as an active part of our
community is that the more welcoming and likable aspects of our
individual personalities aren't reflect in our most public
conversations. For example, if a new editor went by this forum alone,
we might come off as taking ourselves too seriously to leave room for
the fun and satisfaction that usually comes along with volunteering.
Moreover, we might be missing out on some of that fun and satisfaction
ourselves. ;)
I'm wondering if there is place where the lighter side of individual
Wikimedians and our movement can be shown front and center. What I'm
talking about would leave the controversial issues for wikimedia-l and
other fora, instead presenting stuff like funny stats about our
wikiprojects surfaced through clever metrics, the weirdest of the
weird factoids that we uncover in the process of documenting our
universe, interviews of Wikipedians on stuff they do beyond editing
wikis, and humorous essays that might venture in to good natured
lampooning of the movement. I'm already writing an article about the
next software feature to be enabled: Project Fish Bicycle. It will add
such features as full vertical reflections pioneered by Apple 10 years
ago under all articles, taking up only half the final rendered page
while compromising on a few minor existing article features, like
vowels. Think The Onion or your alma mater's humor publication:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_humor_magazines. With a lot of
poor attempts at humor, and the occasional viral grand slam.
So. . . is there something like this already? If so, could someone
please point me in the direction of the nearest editor, so I can start
contributing myself? If not, would anyone be interested in helping me
line up a first issue?
Feel free to contact me directly or reply to the list. Whatever floats boats.
Toodles.
,Wil
Hello all,
We have a central storage location for files like photos, videos and
sounds: Commons. But it seems there is no central storage space for KML
script files. Those files are used for templates on various Wikipedias to
show a route of a subject on Google Maps, Bing Maps, etc.
The files are used in this template on en-wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Attached_KML
Coding:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Attached_KML/New_Jersey_Route_34
But also in templates in other Wikipedias. The same as with photos, a
central location for these files is needed to prevent every Wikipedia have
the same KML file. It seems logic to me to have a central location for this.
Can we use Commons for this?
Romaine
Dear wikimedians,
The Free and Open Source Souftware Outreach Program for Women offers paid
internships to developers and other technical profiles working on projects
together with free software organizations. Wikimedia is participating
again, and we welcome candidates.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/FOSS_Outreach_Program_for_Women/Round_9
This call is open to Wikimedia volunteers (editors, developers...) and also
to people that would contribute for the first time in our projects. In the
past editions we have seen that candidates coming through a direct
recommendation have good chances of success. It is also known that many
good potential candidates will be reluctant to step in, but they will if
someone (like you) encourages them to apply, or to contact us with any
questions.
You can make a difference. If you know women with software development or
open source background / interest and full time availability between
December and March, please forward them this invitation. Thank you!
--
Quim Gil
Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
Will, there are several areas within Wikipedia or at least the English language version where humour exists and is tolerated by most.
Most obviously humour, especially of the self deprecating variety, is welcome on user pages and in usernames.
April fools day accounts for two more of them. The collaborative and premeditated one is that on that special day the main page of Wikipedia will be full of stories that look like spoofs but are as real as the museum of bad art. At this time of the year people are probably already discussing the possible featured article for that day. My hope is that some year it will be Heavy metal umlaut. One of the beauties of that process is it is the day you are most likely to have a featured article that is actually crowd sourced rather than largely the work of one individual.
Also on April fools day there are usually an assortment of humorous AFDs MFDs, RFAs and on one occasion even a request for signatureship. As long as people keep their antics out of article space there is a long tradition of this, and of criticising it for lack of originality. There are of course only so many ways in which one can argue for the article on the Earth to be deleted.
But while it is tolerated by most, there are people who don't like to see humour in the project. I suspect that some see it as a slippery slope to vandalism. Certainly there is the common excuse among vandals that they were only having a joke. Latitude is obviously cut for people who are primarily here to further the project, but editors who are solely or primarily involved in "humour" will soon find their humour at MFD.
~~~~
>
My 2 agorot in the Flow or not Flow discussion:
A prominent Hebrew Wikipedia user started a discussion about his impression
that too few people participate in the discussions about nominating
featured articles.[1] This Wikipedia has about 700 active and 150 very
active editors[2]; the number of participants in these discussions is
usually much less than twenty, often less than ten.
Now I don't know what are other people's reasons not to participate in
them; maybe a lot of them are just not interested in discussing featured
articles.
I know what my reasons are, though. I am quite interested in such
discussions, and I would participate in them, but I don't, because in the
few times I tried, it filled my watchlist with unnecessary notifications
about other people's opinions. These opinions are relevant, but the way
they are presented in the watchlist is unhelpful and I feel that it wastes
my time.
More structure in such discussions would encourage me to participate.
The current version of Flow doesn't solve this problem: Its notifications
are far from being well-adapted even for simple talk pages, and it doesn't
even attempt to be adapted to a more structured decision-making discussion
like Featured Article nomination. But I do believe that Flow is in the
direction of resolving these problems. Flow will have to be carefully
tweaked for each discussion scenario, but the general idea of having
adaptable structured discussion is a good start.
The frequent argument for remaining with the current talk pages and not
moving to Flow is that the current talk pages work. Well, at least in this
case they don't, and Flow could be a solution to that.
[1] Roughly corresponding to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TFAR
[2] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaHE.htm
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
Wil Sinclair wrote:
>...
> I'm wondering if there is a place where the lighter side of
> individual Wikimedians ... stuff like funny stats about our
> wikiprojects surfaced through clever metrics, the weirdest
> of the weird factoids that we uncover in the process of
> documenting our universe, interviews of Wikipedians on
> stuff they do beyond editing wikis, and humorous essays
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Humor
The Society for the Proper Summarizarion of Biased Sources meets
Saturday afternoons at http://tawk.com/notcabal except in case of rain.
The report on Wikimedia Nederland activities over the summer is now
available:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederl…
.
It is also included as plain text (no links) below.
*Wikimedia Nederland report over July and August*
*COMMUNITY: supporting and mobilising volunteers and editors*
*Wiki-Saturdays*
Even during the summer holidays there were four Wiki-Saturdays. On July 19,
two visiting Wikipedians from the USA and UK respectively found their way
to the office to join Dutch Wikipedians.
*WIKNIC*
On July 7, members of the community organised a Wiknic in Eindhoven. 16
Wikipedians/Wikimedians attended the event that was supported by WMNL
*WikiSunday: International Wikipedians meetup at Bonnefantenmuseum*
15 Wikipedians from The Netherlands and Germany gathered at the Bonnefanten
Museum in Maastricht This WikiSunday was organized by Wikimedia Netherlands
to get users from Wikipedia become acquainted with the museum as the museum
wants to start a collaboration with Wikipedia.
*Wikimedia Conference Nederland*
A group of volunteers, board-members and staff are working hard to prepare
the annual Wikimedia Nederland Conference. It will take place on November
1, in Utrecht.
*WORK: content, collaboration and activity development*
*World War II*
Our partner NIOD (the Netherlands institute for war research) is going to
release material. They hold the wartime archives of many organisations and
groups. These archives come with a description of the history of these
organisations in the war years, which are of encyclopedic value and could
improve the quality of Wikipedia content on the history of World War II. In
addition, they are planning to release some of their publications under
CC-BY-SA, starting with a monograph on the history of the underground
press. On November 29, NIOD will open its offices on a Saturday to give
Wikipedians access to its library and experts for a writing event.
*Project Nature*
We are preparing for a writing event in cooperation with the natural
history museum Naturalis on October 5, around the theme of nature in the
Netherlands. This event is also the awards ceremony for Wiki Loves Earth NL
2014, where prize-winning pictures will be announced and prizes will be
handed out to the winners of the Dutch competition. We are now also
discussing cooperation with the KNNV (the Netherlands society for natural
history). They have a very active and knowledgeable membership who we would
like to interest in contributing to Wikipedia. Naturalis is also
considering a content donation. Sebastiaan ter Burg gave a presentation at
Naturalis about the possibilities, such as content donation strategies and
promotional events after a donation in July.
*Wiktionary: Hebrew en Yiddish words in use in Dutch*
WMNL is cooperating with the Sofeer Foundation to integrate their
dictionary of Hebrew en Yiddish words in use in the Dutch language into
WikiWoordenboek (Nl Wiktionary). Nearly 3000 words have been uploaded by
volunteer Romaine. The task is not yet finished: a list of names will also
be uploaded, probably to Wikipedia. More information can be found on the
projectpage.
Expedition Wikipedia: two content donations and one university course
Spinster, Wikipedian in Residence (WiR) for almost 10 Dutch universities'
heritage collections, completed tee content donations for the Expedition
Wikipedia project:
-More than 200 illustrations of historical travel books were donated to
Wikimedia Commons by Maastricht University Library.
-More than 400 photographs of the 1899-1900 Siboga Expedition were donated
to Wikimedia Commons by the Special Collections of the University of
Amsterdam.
>From May to early July, a group of 9 students from Maastricht University
have written and improved almost 20 articles about historical travel books
and their authors, on English Wikipedia and in other languages. More
information is available on the course page on English-language Wikipedia.
A similar course is in preparation for September-October at Utrecht
University.
*GLAMwiki Toolset Workshop*
5 GLAMs were trained in using the GLAMwiki Toolset during a workshop on the
28th of July. The workshop started with an introduction by Liam Wyatt, the
GLAMwiki Toolset Coordinator at Europeana. The Amsterdam Museum,
Rijksmuseum, University Museum Utrecht, Netherlands Institute for Sound and
Vision and National Library worked with the toolset. The manual of the GWT
has been improved with the feedback and notes of the participating GLAMs.
*Education*
This year and in 2015 we are going to run three pilot projects to test out
different ways of cooperating with higher education to improve content of
Wikipedia. In the autumn we want to start cooperating with ITV, a college
training translators and interpreters. ITV wants offer their final year
students the option a Wikipedia internship: they will translate Wikipedia
articles. Many ITV students are 'mature students' who have already
completed a bachelor or master degree in a different field. This means that
they have specialised knowledge which would stand them in good use when
translating for Wikipedia.
*Content donation Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision*
The collection of Polygoonjournaals (Dutch newsreels from the 20th century)
on Wikimedia Commons is being expanded using the recently launched GLAMwiki
toolset. Over 1500 new videos were added to the category Media from Open
Beelden. For a list of unused videos in this category see this list (an
always up-to-date list showing those items in a category that haven't been
used yet in articles on Wikipedia, courtesy of Magnus Masnke).
*Virtual Museum Network*
Sebastiaan ter Burg spoke about cooperating with Wikimedia at a meeting of
the Virtual Museum Network in Amsterdam.
*Wiki loves libraries*
The monthly local trainings in the public library of Amersfoort were
continued in July and August by volunteers of WMNL.
*WMNL*
*Newsletter*
The August newsletter was published.
*GLOBAL*
*Wikimania*
Wikimedia Nederland sent a delegation of 17 persons to Wikimania in London
(and 2000 stroopwafels). We have sent a survey to all participants to get
insight into their experiences. Also, reports can be found on the WMNL-wiki.
*GOVERNANCE*
*Development Annual Plan and Budget*
We have started drafting our annual plan and budget, in preparation for the
AGM in September. The Wikimedia community can contribute to the development
of these documents by suggesting activities and discussing proposals on the
WMNL- wiki.
*Q2 report submitted*
Our report to the Wikimedia Foundation on progress in Q2 was submitted on
time.
*Upcoming events*
Writing event on nature at Naturalis, museum of Natural History , Leiden -
October 5
GLAMout Global
GLAMout, the monthly GLAM hangout that started in the US, is expanding to a
global hangout where GLAM projects are presented and discussed. WMNL will
organise/host the first global GLAMout in October.
Wikimedia Nederland Conference, Utrecht, November 1.
Hackathon
Wikimedia Nederland is supporting a group of volunteers who are taking the
lead in organising a Hackathon on November 14 - 16 focussed on GLAMs and
Wikidata. Participants from Europe and the US have been personally invited;
it is expected that 30 people will participate.
Wikidata for GLAMs workshop
A workshop Wikidata for GLAMs will take place on the 14 November, before
the Hackathon kicks off. The goal of the workshop is to improve
understanding of the possibilities of Wikidata and to practice with
different kind of data mutations, queries, etc.
Writing event on World War II at NIOD, Amsterdam, November 29.
GLAMwiki Conference 2015
During a GLAM meetup at Wikimania it was decided that Wikimedia Nederland
will organise the GLAMwiki Conference in 2015. The last time this
conference was organised was in 2013 by WMUK. The preliminary dates of the
conference are April 10-12 2015.
Upcoming content donations: RCE
The Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency (RCE) did one of the largest content
donations to date (over 460.000 objects) in 2012. RCE is currently planning
new content donations, they'll start using the GLAMwiki Toolset to do the
uploads
*OTHER EVENTS*
*These events are relevant to the Netherlands and/or Dutch language
Wikimedia-projects but were not organised by WMNL:*
Thanks to the efforts of a group of active volunteers, some 63.000 Dutch
national monuments are now on Wikidata. As yet, only 3800 of these have an
article on Nl Wikipedia.
Sandra Rientjes
Directeur/Executive Director Wikimedia Nederland
tel. (+31) (0)30 3200238
mob. (+31) (0)6 31786379
www.wikimedia.nl
*Postadres*: * Bezoekadres:*
Postbus 167 Mariaplaats 3
3500 AD Utrecht Utrecht
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WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
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Dear all,
I just wanted to draw your attention to some really interesting information
about how boards in the Wikimedia movement work.
Jessie Wild in the WMF Grantmaking team conducted a survey of movement
organisation board members (Chapters, Thorgs and the Foundation) and the
results are here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikimedia_Board_Governance_Survey/…
This is particularly important because it highlights the needs different
organisations have in terms of what they want to learn more about, and how
they want to learn it.
Some key points are;
* Movement organisations' boards want to learn more about programme
monitoring, fundraising from outside WMF sources, visioning and strategy
* Shared learning and mentoring within the movement is wanted more than
training sessions or consultant support.
*Boards of organisations with big budgets behave very differently to those
with small budgets (this won't be a surprise to anyone who's seen the
Compass Partnership model of how boards develop).
Some discussion has already started on the page. I'd encourage everyone
who's interested in these topics to get involved and think about how we can
use the assets we have to increase the training and support on offer to
Wikimedia movement organisations. It would be good to centralise discussion
of this here;
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Organisational_development#Boards_surv…
Thanks,
Chris Keating
(trustee of Wikimedia UK, but writing in a personal capacity)
Dear Wikimedia Colleagues:
As you may know, Annual Plan Grants are funds allocated to support an
organization’s annual plan to achieve mission objectives, and the Funds
Dissemination Committee (FDC) is a group of Wikimedians who make
recommendations to the WMF Board about Annual Plan Grant (APG) proposals.
Proposals to the APG program are accepted twice each year, in April and
October. You may read more about the APG process and upcoming milestones
here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Information.
Today, we are pleased to confirm that* twelve of the fifteen organizations
that submitted letters of intent for 2014-2015 Round 1 of the APG process
are eligible to submit proposal forms for 2014-2015 Round 1 *by the
upcoming 1 October 2014 proposal form due date. Only eligible organizations
that have already submitted letters of intent will be able to submit
proposal forms using their proposal hub pages that were created at the time
the letters were submitted.
The eligible organizations are Amical Wikimedia, Wikimedia Argentina,
Wikimedia CH, Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia Eesti, Wikimedia Israel,
Wikimedia Nederland, Wikimedia Österreich, Wikimedia Serbia, Wikimedia
Sverige, Wikimedia Ukraine and Wikimedia UK. Three organizations that
submitted letters of intent for 2014-2015 Round 1 will not be eligible
since they did not fill the eligibility gaps by the 15 September deadline
or were deemed ineligible initially: Wikimedia India, Wikimedia
Magyarország, and Wikimedia Hong Kong. You may view a detailed summary of
how eligibility was determined here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Eligibility/2014-2015_round1.
*Proposal forms for Annual Plan Grants will be due by 1 October 2014.* Here
are some upcoming milestones: * Proposal forms due: by 1 October 2014 *
Public review: 2 October 2014, until 31 October 2014 * Staff proposal
assessments published: by 8 November 2014 * FDC deliberations: 15 November
2014 * FDC recommendation published: by 1 December 2014 * Board decision:
by 1 January 2015 * Start of new grant terms: 1 January 2015
All eligible organizations must continue to comply with any agreements with
WMF and meet all requirements listed in column (T) of the eligibility
checklist in order to maintain eligibility until and after a grant is
received, and the organization may not be able to receive a grant (or funds
may be withheld) if the organization stops being eligible at any point. Once
proposal forms are submitted, a 30-day public review period will begin on 2
October 2014, when comments on the proposal forms are strongly encouraged
as an important input into the FDC process.
We encourage you to contact FDCSupport(a)wikimedia.org with any questions
about the eligibility process or the proposal process. If you have general
questions or concerns, you may also post them here on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Comments.
Best regards from FDC staff!
Winifred Olliff
FDC Support Team
Wikimedia Foundation
On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 2:10 PM, Winifred Olliff <wolliff(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
> Dear Wikimedia Colleagues:
>
>
> We are pleased to announce initial eligibility of all applicants
> submitting a Letter of Intent for 2014-2015 Round 1 of the Annual Plan
> Grants / FDC process. Only applicants confirmed as eligible by 15 September
> 2014 may submit proposals to the Funds Dissemination Committee by the 1
> October 2014 proposal deadline. We have published the initial eligibility
> checklist here, so that applicants may review eligibility before it is
> confirmed on 15 September 2014:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Eligibility/2014-2015_round1.
>
>
> No major changes or exceptions have been made to the eligibility
> requirements or the process for determining eligibility in this round. Of
> the fifteen organizations submitting a Letter of Intent, three are already
> considered eligible provided they continue to meet eligibility requirements
> throughout the duration of the FDC process, one is not eligible to
> participate in this round, and eleven could be considered eligible if all
> eligibility gaps listed in this table are met by the 15 September 2014
> deadline. During the next two months, the FDC staff will work with all
> potential applicants to make sure eligibility requirements are clear and to
> form plans together to meet these requirements. Once applicants are
> confirmed by WMF staff as eligible, they must continue to meet these
> requirements throughout the duration of the Annual Plan Grants / FDC
> process.
>
>
> Please expect another update once eligibility is finally confirmed on 15
> September 2014, leading up to the 1 October 2014 proposal deadline.
> Proposal forms will be available by 1 September 2014.
>
>
> Here is a breakdown of upcoming milestones for 2014-2015 Round 1, which
> you may also find here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Calendar
> .
>
> * Eligibility confirmed: 15 September 2014
>
> * Proposals due: by 1 October 2014
>
> * Community review: 1 October 2014, until 31 October 2014
>
> * Staff assessments published: by 8 November 2014
>
> * FDC deliberations: middle of November 2014
>
> * FDC recommendation published: by 1 December 2014
>
> * Board decision: by 1 January 2015
>
> * Start of new grant terms: 1 January 2015
>
>
> We welcome your questions or comments about the Annual Plan Grants / FDC
> process at any time: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Comments.
> Feel free also to reach out to us over email at FDCstaff(a)wikimedia.org.
> We would be happy to speak with any organization about specific questions
> they may have about eligibility.
>
>
> Best regards from FDC staff!
>
> Winifred Olliff
> FDC Support Team
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
>
--
Winifred Olliff
FDC Support Team
Wikimedia Foundation