Dear Wikimedia community,
The deadline set for new editor-in-chief applications is fast approaching.
As I said two weeks ago:[1]
"Why should you apply? First, you will have established contributors who
are currently producing consistently stellar work, thus making your initial
learning curve far smaller. Second, it is an area far different than
Wikipedia itself; writers at the Signpost frequently use and develop a
different range of skills such as editorial judgment and journalistic
tenacity.
"Third, the personal reporting you want to do is wide open. With "News and
notes" having been on an extended hiatus, you are free to take it in the
direction you want, but you will not have to fight to get readers—you will
have thousands from the very beginning. Do you want to bring valuable
content contributions to light? Do you want to examine arcane financial
details of the Wikimedia Foundation and its affiliates? Do you want to
investigate sockpuppet armies and their effects? Do you want to be the hub
for fostering innovative ideas that will keep Wikipedia relevant for
decades to come? The limit, quite literally, is your imagination."
Please send an email to this address (wikipediasignpost(a)gmail.com) to
indicate your interest. I would like to find two individuals so that the
overall time commitment is smaller.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
--The ed17, Signpost editor-in-chief
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost
[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-12-24/From_t…
My suggestion to Sucheta would be to start a website dedicated to the
mission, to "first publish" there with appropriate free licensing, and to
gradually port over material from there to WP on an topic-by-topic basis,
assuming there is also scholarly literature on the topics being covered.
It would also help to submit this documentary and historical website to
scholarly review to better establish the work done there as academically
reliable. Many of the academic journals include a "website reviews" section
in the book reviews section these days.
In short: first go off-wiki to systematize and write. Then document your
work as reliable. Then integrate your work with the scholarly work of
others and port over piece-by-piece to WP.
My two cents...
Tim Davenport
"Carrite" on WP
Corvallis, OR
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2015 19:00:03 +0530
From: Sucheta Ghoshal <sucheta.ghoshal(a)gmail.com>
To: wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Is there some Wikimedia project to host
contents based on original research?
Message-ID:
<CAF5rHFfSORaOBed=zVi+DocGkn4irP4faeoMZYgXLqTG6YFgMA(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Hi all,
A few of my friends and I have been planning to document the history of
counterculture in Bengali art and literature. These friends are also
working in that domain professionally, and have access to a huge repository
of texts, images, and other relevant details that they are willing to make
available digitally in the form of free contents. We wish to have the
contents as wikis, and, pictures and video snippets that might be involved
- as properly licensed free materials. Now, the concern is if there is some
Wikimedia Project that would host contents that are based on such an
enormous amount of original research. Wikipedia is certainly not the
appropriate place. And, as there exist no earlier works on this particular
domain on the internet, references would be negligible. I was thinking
about Wikibooks, instead. I am not entirely sure if that fits either, but I
assume it fits better than Wikipedia, at least. The last option is to host
it ourselves with the MediaWiki setup, and I am considering it very much.
But, the idea essentially is to make people edit and enrich it with as much
inputs as possible. It would be really helpful, in that case, if it could
be placed in one of the Wikimedia projects. Suggestions, of every kind,
would be deeply appreciated.
Best,
Sucheta
Dear Wikimedians,
I am glad to inform you that WMDE will be hosting the next Wikimedia
Conferences (2015, 2016, 2017) in Berlin. In December, WMCH has pulled
back from hosting the conference in Zurich. Together with the WMF –
the funders of the event – we now have determined the location for the
next couple of years, in order to put an end to the exhausting
discussions around the logistics. The next conference will be held in
Berlin on 15-17 May 2015 [1]. Criteria for invitation will be
announced in the next couple of weeks.
In the previous years, WMCON has always been kind of a monolith, a
one-shot instead of being an episode of a series. From now on, an
essential effort will go into the time between the episodes. WMDE’s
goal is to secure sustainable involvement of all participants before,
during and after the event as well as to build bridges to future
events (Wikimania, regional conferences, next WMCONs). Of course, we
will be liaising closely with the programme committee, WMF and the
facilitators.
We will update the meta pages and provide you with more information soon.
Best regards,
Nicole
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2015
--
Nicole Ebber
Referentin Internationale Beziehungen
Advisor International Relations
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Tel. +49 30 219158 26-0
http://wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg
unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das
Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
Happy new year: http://i.imgur.com/faPsI9J.jpg
Source: http://frdata.wikimedia.org/yeardata-day-vs-ytdsum.csv
I don't mind the banners, although I am still saddened that several
hundred editor-submitted banners which remain untested from six years
ago, when the observed variance in the performance of those that were
tested indicates that there are likely at least 15 which would do
better than any of those which were tested. Why the heck is the
fundraising team still ignoring all those untested submissions?
But as to the intrusiveness of the banners, I would rather have
fade-in popups with fuschia <blink><marquee> text on a epileptic
seizure-inducing background and auto-play audio than have the
fundraising director claim that donations are decreasing to help
justify "narrowing scope."
Best regards,
James Salsman
This sounds to me as something for a blog post!
On January 1 we celebrate Public Domain Day [1] as many works of authors
who died 70+ years ago now enter the public domain and can be used freely.
Let us be aware: copyright is temporary. It only lasts during the authors
lifetime and 70 years afterwards (in most countries). During those years it
is limiting Wikipedia and her sister projects in showing works of art,
literature, public art and buildings in countries without freedom of
panorama [2], and more in the articles. But now a new batch is freed from
copyrights!
An overview of images and texts that are restored or added to the Wikimedia
Commons, are collected on:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Romaine/Public_Domain_Day/2015
Many of these files still need a place in articles. You can help!
You can also help by uploading new files of subjects that are freed of
copyrights.
You can also help by tagging all requests for deletion pages with the
category when the file can be restored, which is/was deleted. [3]
As I follow the log of restored files this week, more images and texts will
follow. If still files or texts are missing in the list, let me know or add
them yourselves.
A very happy Public Domain Day!
Romaine
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Domain_Day
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_panorama
[3] - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Undeletion_requests
