Hey all,
As many of you know, the Timeless skin was deployed for testing across
all Wikimedia projects in late November last year. I submitted a Project
Grant proposal at the time seeking funding to more actively support for
this deployment as well as enable further development based on user
feedback and the bugs that have been coming up in practice, but the
proposal was ultimately vetoed in the late stages due to objections from
WMF staff.
It is my understanding that these objections have since been withdrawn,
and based on what happened, I have been recommended by relevant WMF
staff to resubmit the proposal in the subsequent, now current, round of
Project Grants. I have done this, and would like to invite anyone
interested in this project to comment (again, even) on the current
proposal, or ask any questions you might have on the talkpage. The
current proposal can be found here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Isarra/Timeless:_Post-deploy…
As for some general background:
If you don't know me, I'm Isarra, a volunteer MediaWiki developer and
designer, and a previous WMF grantee on another project, WikiProject X.
I originally created the Timeless skin itself as a volunteer project for
a Wikimedia Tech Talk in 2015; after that the skin just sort of sat
there being ignored for the better part of 2016, and then Paladox found
it, filed a bug saying it should be deployed to Wikimedia, and it turned
out a lot of people agreed with him and we spent most of 2017 pushing it
through various processes, reviews, and fixes to be deployed
(https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T154371).
If you haven't and would like to try out Timeless, you can enable it in
your preferences under Appearance > Skin, or just add ?useskin=timeless
to the end of most page URLs to see what that page looks like in Timeless.
Thanks,
Isarra
Those of you running Windows 10 will be familiar with the
regularly-changing "lockscreen" images showing things like beautiful
scenery and scenes from nature:
https://www.tekrevue.com/tip/find-windows-spotlight-lock-screen-images-wind…
The last one I just saw was labelled "copyright [photographer name]
and Shutterstock"
Is there someone at WMF, with contacts at Microsoft, who could
persuade them to use some featured images from Commons, with a small
piece of text explaining that people may upload their own images?
That would seem to be a simple way to do a massive piece of outreach,
to a new audience.
--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
Kaya
I like to announce the development of a new QR code creator. The original
idea for the upgrade came from Wikimedia Australia and its work with
Toodyay WikiTown project.
Wikimedia Australia has setup out to create two new independent resources
for the Qrpedia project with the support of Wikimedia UK who first
developed the QRpedia concept back 2011 and presented it to the community
in 2012.
The two concepts are;
- a new qr code creator that uses the stable Wikidata item url.
- the reason for for this was to firstly avoid what turned out to be a
costly exercise for Toodyay when some articles were renamed in a
couple of
instances just breaking the qr link to wikipedia, in another instance
sending the reader to an unrelated article
- this also gives us the opportunity to link directly to the other
projects
- and connect all of that in a two way exchange of knowledge with the
numerous 3rd GLAM's through their unique identifiers
- the concept is now to create a qr reader thats based within the
Wikimedia Foundation family
- this first and foremost will ensure that our readers aren't being
directed to third party services that capture user data, and use
it to spam
them with usual set internet advertising, scams, and phishing
- a feature that is significant to GLAMs, Education institutions,
and ourselves
- this reader will enable user to connect with all of our information
whether be Wikipedia articles, Quotes, diaries & journals(Wikisource), or
Wikivoyage and its itineraries.
- I think there is also the potential for Education/Wikiversity to
develop learning programs connecting real life observations to
WMF content.
- For GLAMs it'll be able to provide a safe reliable way for links to
and from their collections
- all of this within a multi lingual environment free from
advertising
I'd like to thank Dave for his efforts in turning a discussion at a Perth
meetup into reality. I also acknowledge the WMF & WMAU for supporting me
on a detour post WMCONF 2017 to discuss the concept with the WMUK and the
some of the people involved in the development of the original project,
those discussion were invaluable getting to this point.
I looked forward to the next part of the project and hope that people will
come forward with suggestions, requests, and help so that as a community we
take an even bigger step in sharing the sum of all knowledge
Regards
Gideon Digby(Gnangarra)
Vice President Wikimedia Australia
Noongarpedia: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/nys/Main_Page
WMAU: http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/User:Gnangarra
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Meta <wiki(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: 10 February 2018 at 17:43
Subject: Meta email from user "Evad37" - Free Knowledge Portal
To: Gnangarra <gnangarra(a)gmail.com>
Hi, can you please forward the following to Wikimedia-l and other places of
interest, per our discussion this afternoon.
Thanks, David (User:Evad37)
---------------
New tool "The Free Knowledge Portal"
Hi all,
I've created a new tool, The Free Knowledge Portal,[0] that is a solution to
the Community Wishlist Survey proposal "Qr codes for all items".[1]
The basic idea is to provide stable urls that showcase a Wikidata item's
sitelinks, and related items.
The tool also lets you generate QR codes that link to those urls, and so is
like a successor to QRpedia: proving easy access our projects' pages via QR
codes, but for all Wikimedia projects, not just Wikipedia.
And it is multi-lingual - it will detect the device language and serve
sitelinks for that language (i.e. enwiki if the langauge is English, frwiki
if
the language is French, etc).
Also, it designed to be backwards-compatible with existing QRpedia codes, by
using a page title and site to determine the relevant Wikidata item id. (But
of course its up to the QRpedia people to redirect the codes to these urls)
Examples:
*Boston (Q100), using your devices language:
** https://tools.wmflabs.org/portal/Q100
*Boston (Q100), using French:
** https://tools.wmflabs.org/portal/Q100/fr
*Boston (Q100), using Spanish:
** https://tools.wmflabs.org/portal/Q100/es
*Backwards-compatible url for Boston on English Wikipedia
** https://tools.wmflabs.org/portal/?title=Boston&site=enwiki
The following features already work:
*QR code generator
*Portal page with
**Item label
**Item description
**Wikimedia sitelinks
**Related items (from 'What links here')
**Neary items (if the item has coordinates)
I'm also planning to show links to external identifiers, if the item has
any.
Another feature that would be nice would be to keep a record page visits,
which could then be visualised into graphs and the like. I'm not entirely
sure how this should be done, so any advice or help people could offer would
be appreciated.
(I'm thinking of making a mysql table with just a couple of
columns for item id and date-timestamp of visit, where each visit would be
recorded in a row. Then you could get page visits by doing a query that
counts the number of rows with a matching item and a date-timestamp within
a given range.)
I could also use some help with i18n/translations (what I've got at the
moment
has come from Wikidata labels and Google translate, which is far from ideal)
Anyway, suggestion, other feedback, and code patches would be appreciated:
either directly on Github[2], or on the Meta page which I've just recently
created.[3]
Cheers, David (User:Evad37)
-- Links --
[0] https://tools.wmflabs.org/portal
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2017_Community_Wishlist_
Survey/Wikidata/Qr_codes_for_all_items
[2] https://github.com/evad37/wm-portal
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Free_Knowledge_Portal
--
This email was sent by Evad37 to Gnangarra by the "Email this user"
function at Meta. If you reply to this email, your email will be sent
directly to the original sender, revealing your email address to them.
*All,On behalf of the Wikimania Steering Committee and the Wikimedia
Foundation, I am pleased to announce that we have decided to have Wikimania
located in Sweden in 2019. The proposal
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2019_bids/Sweden> from the
Wikimedia Sweden chapter was accepted. The committee appreciates and values
the long standing interest of Wikimania Sweden to host an event, and we
believe that hosting Wikimania will be an opportunity to boost Wikimedia
projects there with a specific focus on public art, a field in which the
Swedish Sverige team has been particularly active. The exact location of
the conference will be confirmed at a later date.The Wikimania Committee
reviewed and discussed four very strong proposals
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2019> to host Wikimania in 2019.
We would also like to thank the proposers from Sweden, Armenia, Perth, and
Prague for all their efforts in putting together materials for our
consideration and their time spent discussing the possibilities. It is very
encouraging to have so much interest from our community from individuals
who wish to lead and contribute to Wikimania.Please join us in
congratulating the Wikimedia Wikimedia Sverige!
<https://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Huvudsida>Sincerely,Ellie YoungWMF Events
ManagerOn behalf of the Wikimania Steering Committee and Wikimedia
Foundation*
Apologies for the broken formatting in my original message! I forgot how
Mailman handles HTML in messages. Please see below for (hopefully) a more
legible version of the announcement:
-----------
Hello all,
I am happy to announce the new and returning members of the 2018 Ombudsman
Commission (OC), the small group of volunteers who investigate complaints
about violations of the privacy policy, and in particular concerning the
use of CheckUser and Oversight[1] tools, on any Wikimedia project for the
Board of Trustees.
[1]
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Amending_the_Scope_of_the_O…
I apologize for the length of the announcement. :)
The application period for new commissioners for 2018 recently closed. The
Wikimedia Foundation is extremely grateful to the many experienced and
insightful volunteers who offered to assist with this work. This year we
received applications representing the widest variety of languages,
projects, and regions I’ve seen since I started working with the committee
three years ago.
Given the increasing caseload OC has been handing year over year, we have
decided to take advantage of the opportunity the diverse candidate pool
afforded us and expand the committee by one seat; this year’s OC will
consist of eight, rather than seven, members, with a two-member advisory
team who will guide the new commission.
I am pleased to announce the composition of the 2018 OC. First, the *new
members* are:
*Billinghurst*
Billinghurst (<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Billinghurst>) is a
long-term Metapedian/Wikimedian who served as a steward from 2012 to 2016
and still serves as a global sysop. He considers his home wiki to be the
English Wikisource where he's performed over 260,000 edits and focuses on
transcribing biographical reference data from the 19th and early 20thC. In
addition, however, to serving as a local administrator on Wikisource he
also holds the sysop hat on Commons, Meta and the English Wikipedia racking
up almost 700,000 edits across the projects with almost a million edits
when you count his bot. He claims to still have a bit of wisdom and
knowledge to give.
*Jamie Tubers*
Sam, who edits as Jamie Tubers (<
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jamie_Tubers>), joined the English
language Wikipedia community in 2011 and has over the years expanded his
activities into a wide range of movement activities including co-founding
the Wikimedia user group Nigeria and helping to organize events like Wiki
Loves Africa and Wiki Loves Women. He is dedicated to correcting our
content gaps and biases related to Africa and raising awareness of the
projects on the continent.
*Dyolf77*
Habib (<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dyolf77>) started editing in
2010 and has been heavily engaged in community affairs, both onwiki and as
part of user groups, for years. A native of Tunisia, he has been a
free-culture advocate on a wide range of issues in and beyond the movement.
Onwiki, you can mainly find him helping out on Commons, where he is a
sysop, as well as the Arabic and French language editions of Wikipedia.
*Saileshpat*
Saileshpat (<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Saileshpat>) started
editing Wikipedia in 2012 and soon became deeply involved in the Odia
community. He has helped organize outreach events and worked to spread
awareness in his region. In addition he was one of the co-organizers of
WikiConference India 2016. Saileshpat has helped in a content relicensing
process, where the Government of Odisha decided to release content under
Creative Commons licenses. Online he is mainly active on the Odia Wikipedia
and Commons.
*Elmacenderesi*
Elmacenderesi (<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Elmacenderesi>) has
been working on Wikimedia projects since 2007, primarily on the Turkish
Wikipedia. There, he has been a CheckUser and a Bureaucrat since 2008 and
an Oversighter since 2011. He is also a member of Wikimedia OTRS and serves
as a global outreach coordinator, working with academic institutions and
GLAMs, for The Wikipedia Library.
*Teles*
Lucas (<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Teles>) became a Wikipedian in
2007 and started to engage with CheckUser rights in 2009, when he became a
local CU on the Portuguese Wikipedia. He held both Oversight and Checkuser
rights on Ptwiki between 2015 and 2017, when his term with the rights
expired. He is currently an administrator on Commons. His traditional main
focus has been on anti-vandalism work. In 2012, the global community
elected him as a steward, a position he has held since.
In addition, experienced OC members Lankiveil and Góngora will be *returning
as members of the Ombuds Commission*:
*Lankiveil*
Lankiveil (<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lankiveil>) is a long-term
user, admin, and oversighter on the English Wikipedia, having made his
first edits in 2004. He served on the Ombuds Commission in 2017, and is
also an OTRS volunteer. He also sometimes edits at Irish Wikipedia, and
Wikidata. He is a native speaker of Australian English and is a member of
Wikimedia Australia.
*Góngora*
Góngora, J. Gustavo Góngora-Goloubintseff, (<
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:G%C3%B3ngora>) primarily edits Spanish
Wikipedia, Catalan Wikipedia and Norwegian bokmål Wikipedia. He has been an
administrator and bureaucrat on the Spanish Wikipedia since 2007, and an
administrator on the Catalan Wikipedia from 2010 until 2017, where he is
also a CheckUser. He was a member of the Spanish Arbitration Committee in
2008, before it was dismantled. He was a board member of Wikimedia España
in 2011. He is currently a member of both Wikimedia España and Wikimedia
Norge.
And the following experienced OC members will be returning as *advisors to
the commission* (this advisory role provides expertise when needed, but
does not participate in all discussions):
*Pajz*
Pajz (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pajz>) has edited the Wikimedia
projects since 2005. He was a Wikipedia administrator between 2007 to 2016
and is a member of the Volunteer Response Team. He served as one of the
OTRS administrators from 2013 to 2015, before being first appointed to the
Ombudsman Commission in 2016.
*Krd*
Krd (<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Krd>), who is primarily active
on German Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, and also serves at the Volunteer
Response Team as an agent and OTRS admin, and was a prior member of German
Wikipedia Arbitration Committee for more than three years. He joined the OC
in 2017.
And finally, please join me in *thanking the following outgoing volunteers*,
who have given substantially of their time to serve the commission:
*Vogone*
Vogone (<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Vogone>) has contributed to
Wikimedia projects since early 2012. While they began their involvement on
the German Wikipedia, they quickly branched out to Wikibooks, Wikisource,
Wikivoyage, and Wikiversity. They were the first bureaucrat on the Wikidata
project. Vogone has worked heavily assisting our smaller projects as a
global rollbacker, global sysop, and member of the Small Wiki Monitoring
Team. They have experience in translation administration, both on Meta and
translatewiki.net. Vogone has shown a keen interest in the technical side
of user privacy, including contributing to MediaWiki software around edit
suppression. Vogone joined OC in 2017.
*Richwales*
Richwales (<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Richwales>) has been an
active Wikimedian since 2005. He is an administrator, oversighter, and
sockpuppet investigation clerk on the English Wikipedia. Richwales also
served on the now-defunct Audit subcommittee, which served a similar role
to the Ombudsman Commission. Rich joined the OC in 2017.
*Alan*
Alan (<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Alan>) has been a registered
Wikimedian for more than three years, but an anonymous editor since 2006,
working primarily across Spanish language projects. He is a global sysop
and global rollbacker, an administrator on Commons, as well as having been
an OTRS volunteer for ~4 years. In the past he has served as an
administrator and bureaucrat on Spanish Wikivoyage. He joined the OC in
2016.
*Rubin16*
Rubin16 (<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Rubin16>) primarily edits
the Russian Wikipedia, where he is a bureaucrat and administrator. He is
formerly a member of their Arbitration Committee. He is an administrator on
Wikimedia Commons and is a Central Notice and translation admin on Meta.
(He is also a translation admin on Commons.) He is a member of Wikimedia
Russia. He joined the OC in 2015.
*Polimerek*
Polimerek (<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek>) primarily
edits Polish Wikipedia (where he is an admin and former arbitrator), Polish
Wikibooks and Wikimedia Commons. He also serves the Wikimedia movement as
the president of Wikimedia Poland and on the Grant Advisory Committee. He
is a former CheckUser. Polimerek joined the OC in 2014.
---
I'd also like to offer a huge “thank you” to those returning and those
coming aboard for the first time, as well as to all those applied. The
applications we received this year showed us an extremely able group of
volunteers across a diverse array of languages and projects, and while this
appointed mix of users may best serve the need for this year, I hope that
those who applied and were not appointed will consider applying again in
future years.
Yours,
Karen Brown
On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 6:29 PM, Karen Brown <kbrown(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> *Hello all,*
>
[...]
Hi everyone!
I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
the Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova User Group [1] as a Wikimedia User
Group. The group aims to promote the use of Romanian Wikipedia and its
sister projects by the residents of Romania and Moldova, with the goal of
improving the relevance and perception of Wikimedia projects among readers
and users, as well as within the cultural and scientific communities.
Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!
Regards,
Kirill Lokshin
Chair, Affiliations Committee
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Romania_and_Moldova_User_Gro…
kaya woolah wanjoo nyungarang
On 6 February 2018 at 16:24, Kangah Donatien KOFFI <donatien.kanga(a)gmail.com
> wrote:
> Welcome!
>
> 2018-02-06 2:29 GMT+00:00 Asaf Bartov <abartov(a)wikimedia.org>:
>
>> Congratulations! :)
>>
>> A.
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 5, 2018 at 5:51 PM Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin(a)gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi everyone!
>>>
>>> I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
>>> the Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova User Group [1] as a Wikimedia User
>>> Group. The group aims to promote the use of Romanian Wikipedia and its
>>> sister projects by the residents of Romania and Moldova, with the goal of
>>> improving the relevance and perception of Wikimedia projects among
>>> readers
>>> and users, as well as within the cultural and scientific communities.
>>>
>>> Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Kirill Lokshin
>>> Chair, Affiliations Committee
>>>
>>> [1]
>>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Romania_and_
>>> Moldova_User_Group
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wik
>>> i/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wik
>>> i/Wikimedia-l
>>> New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>>> <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Affiliates mailing list
>> Affiliates(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/affiliates
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> *Donatien Kangah*
> Formateur Numérique| Chef de Projets| Wikimédien
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Affiliates mailing list
> Affiliates(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/affiliates
>
>
--
Gideon Digby
Vice President - Wikimedia Australia
M: 0434 986 852
gnangarra(a)wikimedia.org.au
http://wikimedia.org.au
Wikimedia Australia Inc. is an independent charitable organisation which
supports the efforts of the Wikimedia Foundation in Australia. Your
donations keep the Wikimedia mission alive.
*http://wikimedia.org.au/Donate <https://wikimedia.org.au/Donate>*