Dear Wiki-Friends,
September 6th marks the end of my time at the Wikimedia Foundation.
At my center has been the belief that I serve the movement above all else.
This was what motivated the creation of a research service for editors in
the first place. Today, it leaves me to look outside the Foundation to how
I can best influence and impact change for the open knowledge community,
and our broadly fractured society.
When I founded The Wikipedia Library in 2011, the course of my life
changed. I became a grantee with an Individual Engagement Grant, guided by
Siko Bouterse and Anasuya Sengupta, to expand TWL. It was a dream fulfilled
to be asked to join the Wikimedia Foundation full-time in 2014 to establish
the program worldwide.
With much mentorship and help, we grew TWL from a one-man, English-only
publisher signup project into an international, multilingual outreach
effort with a global campaign, national convenings, and a functioning
digital library stocked with 100,000 free-to-read scholarly journals. Those
sources can be used to verify information, write new articles, close
content gaps, and remedy systemic bias.
Now, librarians are as likely to be supporters and contributors as they
used to be critics. The movement is full of 'wikibrarians', from the
200-member Wikimedia and Libraries User Group to the 2000 person Wikimedia
+ Libraries Facebook Group. Conferences around the world have strong
advocates for the intersection and alliance of Wikipedia and Libraries.
Along the way I had the true privilege of building a team that gave me
confidence and extremely good company. It's my conviction that good work is
calm, full of humor, and has care for people at its core. I found that
generous spirit heartily alive in my team at The Wikipedia Library. I
cannot thank them enough.
The work is not yet finished and yet it is in good hands. With Sam Walton
in charge of managing The Wikipedia Library, Felix Nartey and Aaron Vasanth
running global outreach, Jason Sherman developing the Library Card
Platform, and a whole crew of coordinated volunteers handling reference
services…much more is still to come.
You can reach out to TWL any time at wikipedialibrary(a)wikimedia.org.
As I look ahead to new vistas, I leave with questions and hope to hear your
thoughts. What needs to be done next? Who could use the most support? Which
organizations are ripe for change? What capacity still needs to be created?
Where can I best advocate and help grow? How can we collaborate?
Email me at jorlowitz(a)gmail.com and share what's on your mind, or just say
hello.
It's been a true pleasure to serve our beautiful, messy movement: I
couldn't be more excited to join its ranks again.
Thanks and cheers,
~~~~
Jake Orlowitz
User:Ocaasi
Hello,
For those interested, WikiConference North America 2019 will be taking
place in Boston, Massachusetts on Friday, November 8 through Monday,
November 11!
https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2019/Main_Page
Plans are under way for our annual Culture Crawl, hackathon and programming
days. We're also teaming up with and are thrilled to have the support of
the Credibility Coalition to put on a great event with reliability as a
central theme.
Session proposals are open: We are pleased to announce that we are
accepting submissions for WCNA lectures, panels, workshops, etc. Visit our
submissions page on the conference wiki to learn more and start your
submission. Submissions are due by September 20th (or September 27th for
academic proposals).
https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2019/Submissions
Scholarship applications are also open: You can apply for a scholarship
through September 20th. Everything you need to know about the scholarship
-the criteria, application timeline, evaluation process, a FAQ section, as
well as a link to the application form- are available on our scholarship
page.
https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2019/Scholarships
If you'd like to stay tuned on social media, you can follow us on Facebook
or Twitter.
https://www.facebook.com/wikiconferencena/https://twitter.com/WikiConNA
On behalf of WikiConference North America,
Kevin Payravi
SuperHamster on-wiki
Most of the Wikis in the Wikimedia family are organised by language, not
just script. If you load something that is in the wrong language for a
particular wiki it is liable to be deleted as out of scope. That's before
people get into discussions as to whether this is oral history or something
someone has just made up.
I would suggest Wikibooks is your best bet, it already exists in 120
languages, and unlike Wikisource it allows for original publications.
If we don't yet have that language supported and you have a small team that
wants to work in that language you can request a new language be added.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages If the request
is approved, the WMF has an internationalization team who can do things
like create new scripts, though I suspect one of your first tasks will be
to translate the various user messages etc for mediawiki.
Alternatively you could look at the incubator
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Incubator
More broadly, the 2019 Strategy recommendations are still being consulted
with the community, there is an assumption by some and a fear by others
that the whole lot, or at least the ideas that have previously been
rejected by the community, will be adopted by acclamation /imposed on the
community. At the least, I would suggest not jumping the gun, particularly
on something that is liable to be deleted under current policy.
At present it isn't even clear that the Foundation is committed to upping
language support from the current 300 or so languages to potentially
several thousand, and if they do adopt that as an aspiration, it may take
some time for the staff to make that a reality.
Regards
WSC
>
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2019 11:58:26 +0100
> From: Jeff Hawke <geoffey.hawke(a)gmail.com>
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Which script oral language will use anyway?
> Message-ID:
> <
> CAAVg7aKphtTkbR85BDWefKyyLNB6FAJssBGVgh4qtkB62XAbkA(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>
> Suhashih
>
> You are right that this could be a controversial choice -- indeed it is
> inherently political and there is no way of avoiding that fact. So where
> will the decision be taken, on what grounds and by what athority?
>
> Jeff
>
> On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 8:26 PM Subhashish Panigrahi <
> psubhashish(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Dear Wikimedians,
> >
> > Some of you might be recovering from the Wikimania fatigue. Those of you
> > who have already recovered, I wanted to pick your brain about something
> > that came up multiple times during discussions but none really seem to
> have
> > a clear answer.
> >
> > Which script (writing system) an oral language speaker would use for
> > creating an entry on (gateway [1]) projects like Wiktionary or Wikibooks
> or
> > even uploading a list of words on Commons using a tool like Lingua Libre?
> > Will it be the script used for the official language of the region where
> > the former language is from?[2] This is a bit controversial as native
> > speakers of many indigenous languages would see this as a form of
> > colonization. Will it be the w:International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)?
> This
> > is probably the least controversial but a common and average user might
> not
> > be able to read IPA as the latter was created by linguists and was
> created
> > for linguistic and scholarly studies rather than for everyday use.
> >
> > Wikimedians who are native speakers of languages with less
> written/recorded
> > documentation and individuals who work on such languages are more
> > encouraged to share their inputs based on past experience.
> >
> > 1. Gateway project: This is a made-up term to define the Wikimedia
> projects
> > that are more welcoming to newbies and do not require stringent citation
> as
> > almost all oral languages would lack that. It was fascinating to see Amir
> > challenging that it only takes about 30 seconds to add an entry to
> > Wiktionary (
> >
> >
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amir_Aharoni_demonstrating_how_to_a…
> > )
> >
> > Subhashish
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/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>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2019 13:42:02 +0200
> From: "Peter Southwood" <peter.southwood(a)telkomsa.net>
> To: "'Wikimedia Mailing List'" <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Which script oral language will use anyway?
> Message-ID: <005301d56315$c7c0c4e0$57424ea0$(a)telkomsa.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Perhaps this is something that should be left as the choice of the
> volunteers who contribute the content? Whatever they feel comfortable with
> and are competent in. It may vary between contributors for the same
> language.
> Once content is published, anyone with the skills and desire can
> transliterate to any other script system of their choice. Others can
> translate to any other language of their choice. This is the wiki way of
> doing things. If we have support for a script system it can be used, if not
> that becomes a technical problem.
> Cheers,
> Peter
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> Behalf Of Jeff Hawke
> Sent: Tuesday, September 3, 2019 12:58 PM
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Which script oral language will use anyway?
>
> Suhashih
>
> You are right that this could be a controversial choice -- indeed it is
> inherently political and there is no way of avoiding that fact. So where
> will the decision be taken, on what grounds and by what athority?
>
> Jeff
>
> On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 8:26 PM Subhashish Panigrahi <
> psubhashish(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Dear Wikimedians,
> >
> > Some of you might be recovering from the Wikimania fatigue. Those of you
> > who have already recovered, I wanted to pick your brain about something
> > that came up multiple times during discussions but none really seem to
> have
> > a clear answer.
> >
> > Which script (writing system) an oral language speaker would use for
> > creating an entry on (gateway [1]) projects like Wiktionary or Wikibooks
> or
> > even uploading a list of words on Commons using a tool like Lingua Libre?
> > Will it be the script used for the official language of the region where
> > the former language is from?[2] This is a bit controversial as native
> > speakers of many indigenous languages would see this as a form of
> > colonization. Will it be the w:International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)?
> This
> > is probably the least controversial but a common and average user might
> not
> > be able to read IPA as the latter was created by linguists and was
> created
> > for linguistic and scholarly studies rather than for everyday use.
> >
> > Wikimedians who are native speakers of languages with less
> written/recorded
> > documentation and individuals who work on such languages are more
> > encouraged to share their inputs based on past experience.
> >
> > 1. Gateway project: This is a made-up term to define the Wikimedia
> projects
> > that are more welcoming to newbies and do not require stringent citation
> as
> > almost all oral languages would lack that. It was fascinating to see Amir
> > challenging that it only takes about 30 seconds to add an entry to
> > Wiktionary (
> >
> >
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amir_Aharoni_demonstrating_how_to_a…
> > )
> >
> > Subhashish
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/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>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/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>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Subject: Digest Footer
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/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>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 186, Issue 3
> *******************************************
>
Dear Wikimedians,
Some of you might be recovering from the Wikimania fatigue. Those of you
who have already recovered, I wanted to pick your brain about something
that came up multiple times during discussions but none really seem to have
a clear answer.
Which script (writing system) an oral language speaker would use for
creating an entry on (gateway [1]) projects like Wiktionary or Wikibooks or
even uploading a list of words on Commons using a tool like Lingua Libre?
Will it be the script used for the official language of the region where
the former language is from?[2] This is a bit controversial as native
speakers of many indigenous languages would see this as a form of
colonization. Will it be the w:International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)? This
is probably the least controversial but a common and average user might not
be able to read IPA as the latter was created by linguists and was created
for linguistic and scholarly studies rather than for everyday use.
Wikimedians who are native speakers of languages with less written/recorded
documentation and individuals who work on such languages are more
encouraged to share their inputs based on past experience.
1. Gateway project: This is a made-up term to define the Wikimedia projects
that are more welcoming to newbies and do not require stringent citation as
almost all oral languages would lack that. It was fascinating to see Amir
challenging that it only takes about 30 seconds to add an entry to
Wiktionary (
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amir_Aharoni_demonstrating_how_to_a…
)
Subhashish
Seems like an election is looming in the UK - if any of you are working on
election related projects (wikimedia or otherwise) that you want to
encourage people to reuse or generally raise awareness of, I have created
electiontechhandbook.uk which I will be publicising widely amongst
technical communities in the next few days. Please take a look and
contribute!
*Edward Saperia*
Dean of Newspeak House <http://www.nwspk.com>
newsletter <http://www.tinyletter.com/edsaperia> • facebook
<http://www.facebook.com/edsaperia> • twitter
<http://www.twitter.com/edsaperia> • 07796955572
133-135 Bethnal Green Road, E2 7DG
Hi all,
On Sunday 25 August 2019, Wikimedia Australia held its Annual General
Meeting (AGM).
Two long term Committee members, Gideon Digby and Tom Hograth, have taken a
step back from WMAU as Committee members but will be still involved within
the movement.
Current WMAU Committee as of 25 August 2019
Office-bearers
- Pru Mitchell - President
- Alex Lum - Vice-President
- Robert Myers - Secretary
- Steven Crossin - Treasurer
Ordinary Committee Members
- Caddie Brain
- Matthew Moore
- Jacinta Sutton
- Sam Wilson
Regards,
Robert
--
Robert Myers
Secretary - Wikimedia Australia
M: +61 400 670 288
robert.myers(a)wikimedia.org.au
http://www.wikimedia.org.au
Wikimedia Australia Inc. is an independent charitable organisation which
supports the efforts of the Wikimedia Foundation in Australia. We welcome
your support by membership or donations to keep the Wikimedia mission alive.
*Wikidata and medical data*
Presentation at Wikimania by User:Csisc from Tunisia and User:Saintfevrier
from Greece:
https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimania_2019_-_Wikidata_and_Hea…
*Visual content*
-
Commons media of the day: butterfly takeoff in slow motion, uploaded by
Japanese Wikipedia contributor User:Phonon.b
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Phonon.b>:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graphium_sarpedon_flapping_HighSpee…
-
Commons picture of the day: "Columns in Turkish baths, Salamis, Northern
Cyprus",
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Columns_in_Turkish_baths,_Salamis,_…,
by User:Podzemnik <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Podzemnik>,
who is a native speaker of Czech and identifies as "Librarian,
photographer, nomad, hiker".
-
Commons picture of the day: "Window in Fira, Santorini, Greece"
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Santorin_(GR),_Fira_--_2017_--_2624…,
by German Wikipedia contributor User:XRay
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:XRay>
*Text content*
-
Selected anniversaries for English Wikipedia noted that 28 August was
the anniversary of the "I Have a Dream"
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream> speech by American civil
rights activist and religious minister the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.>
-
English Wikiquote of the Day for 28: “At any particular moment in a
man's life, he can say that everything he has done and not done, that has
been done and not been done to him, has brought him to that moment. If he's
being installed as Chieftain or receiving a Nobel Prize, that's a
fulfilling notion. But if he's in a sleeping bag at ten thousand feet in a
snowstorm, parked in the middle of a highway and waiting to freeze to
death, the idea can make him feel calamitously stupid." --William Least
Heat-Moon <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Least_Heat-Moon>
-
English Wikiquote of the day for 1 September: "People ask where writers
get ideas. Take my advice. Some cool, clear night, drive to a country place
where city lights don’t block your view. Turn off the car lights. Get out
and look up. And see our real neighborhood." --C. J. Cherryh
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/C._J._Cherryh>
About these individuals, according to English Wikipedia:
"Martin Luther King Jr.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.> (January 15, 1929 –
April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the
most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement from 1955
until his assassination in 1968. Born in Atlanta, King is best known for
advancing civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience, tactics
his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi helped
inspire. King led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott… He led an unsuccessful
1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize
the nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama. He helped organize the
1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream"
speech."
William Least Heat-Moon
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Least_Heat-Moon> “is an
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States>American travel writer and
historian of English, Irish, and Osage ancestry”. He earned a Ph.D. in
English from the University of Missouri and worked as a professor of
English. He wrote an autobiographical travel book, *Blue Highways*, that
was well received. Stories that arose from Least Heat-Moon's research as
well as historical facts are included about each area visited, as well as
conversations with characters such as a Seventh-day Adventist evangelist
hitchhiker, a teenage runaway, a boat builder, a monk, an Appalachian log
cabin restorer, a rural Nevada prostitute, fishermen, a Hopi Native
American medical student, owners of western saloons and remote country
stores, a maple syrup farmer, and Chesapeake Bay island dwellers.”
"Carolyn Janice Cherry (born September 1, 1942), better known by the pen
name C. J. Cherryh <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._J._Cherryh>, is an
American writer of speculative fiction. She has written more than 80 books
since the mid-1970s, including the Hugo Award-winning novels *Downbelow
Station* (1981) and *Cyteen* (1988), both set in her Alliance-Union
universe. She is known for "world building," depicting fictional realms
with great realism supported by vast research in history, language,
psychology, and archeology. Her series of fantasy novels set in the
Alliance-Union universe, the Morgaine Stories, have sold in excess of 3
million copies."
*Wikidata discussions*
Regarding the concept known as Federation:
-
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata/2019-September/013405.html
-
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata/2019-September/013406.html
Regarding multilingualism on Wikidata:
-
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata/2019-September/013407.html
*Grant report regarding the development of the Timeless skin*
-
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Timeless/Post-deployment_sup…
*Off wiki*
-
How data analytics has reduced the risk of opioid addiction in the City
of Philadelphia:
https://www.phillymag.com/healthcare-news/2019/07/17/data-analytics-opioid-…
*A request for contributions to this publication*
I enjoy writing WMYHTW, and I am grateful for the feedback that I
occasionally receive. However, there are a few things that are lacking. One
is participation from others. I am trying to avoid WMYHTW threads
effectively being "What's making Pine happy this week?" instead of "What's
making you happy this week?". I cannot know everything good that happens in
the Wikiverse, and I would love to see greater diversity of stories in
WMYHTW. Also, writing WMYHTW in this level of detail is surprisingly time
consuming for one person, which is another reason that I would be
appreciative if other people would add small pieces of good news to the
content of WMYHTW. Regrettably, I cannot continue to have this publication
require so much time from me that it effectively a part time unpaid job,
including adapting the content of these emails for *The Signpost*. Your
participation would be very much appreciated.
*Closing comments*
Translations of the subject line of this email would be appreciated on Meta
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine/WMYHTW_translations>.
Thanks to Alexandros
Kosiaris for the Greek translation
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2018-April/090130.html>.
What’s making you happy this week? You are welcome to write in any
language. You are also welcome to start a WMYHTW thread next week.
Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
,_Fira_--_2017_--_2624.jpg){kind=link}