It is my great pleasure to announce a new program being launched in
the Wikimedia Foundation’s Global Development department and a new
member of the team: Haitham Shamma has been engaged as program
consultant for the Editor Growth and Contribution Program. Pending
approval of the U.S. immigration visa process, we intend to bring
Haitham to San Francisco, full-time, as Contribution Research Manager
in the coming months.
Haitham is joining the Wikimedia Foundation in order to support new
editor growth on small-to-medium sized Wikimedia projects, and the
Editor Growth and Contribution Program is a new program being launched
at WMF to focus on the on-wiki needs of these projects. Haitham will
be partnering with the community to design, test, and implement online
programs to attract and retain more editors in these language
communities. The program aims to increase the number of active editors
on Wikimedia projects by working with the community to understand the
online needs of each project, and taking a data-driven approach to
implement solutions based on these needs. The pilots and programs
on-wiki that the Editor Growth and Contribution Program will use in
order to encourage new editors are intended to serve as a complement
to off-wiki outreach activities already underway in other teams.
WMF is really excited to be working with Haitham because he has been a
very active Wikipedia editor for several years and has an extensive
technical background in research and experimentation. Soon after he
began editing Arabic Wikipedia, Haitham began implementing systems and
tools to support editors and improve the quality of the Arabic
encyclopedia. He has a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering
and a master’s and PhD in Precision Engineering. As a volunteer in
the Arabic community, he has recently been helping with WMF’s Arabic
Language Initiative. Haitham speaks English, Arabic, and Japanese, as
well as some German, French, and Chinese. He’s also no stranger to
MediaWiki, C++, Java, Python, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Haitham will be beginning his work with the Arabic Wikipedia
community, and based on what is learned there, he’ll be moving into
other languages and geographies soon. The Editor Growth and
Contribution Program will be connecting with the Fundraising team to
build contribution campaigns that encourage readers to become editors,
taking lessons learned from fellowship projects and the new Editor
Engagement Experiment team’s work, and partnering with each target
language community to figure out what approaches work best to support
editor growth in a given language, culture, and size.
Some initial documentation and FAQs about the program are being
developed on meta wiki:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editor_Growth_and_Contribution_Program
We’re looking forward to everyone’s input and feedback there.
Meanwhile, please join me in welcoming Haitham!
--
Siko Bouterse
Head of Community Fellowships
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org
Dear all,
please find Wikimedia Deutschland's monthly report for March 2012 on
Meta[1]. If you don't check it out, you may never get to know why political
parties in one of Germany's federal states just can't avoid to answer
WMDE's questions these days or which kinds of German newspapers covered
Wikipedia workshops lately. And well, there's Wikidata and much more
interesting things you wouldn't want to miss!
[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Deutsch…
By the way, I linked this month's report both here
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports
and here
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports
Supposedly, all chapter reports should be found in both places, but they're
not. Do we need both chapter subpages?
Best
Michael
--
Michael Jahn
Öffentlichkeitsarbeit / PR
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstraße 72 | 10963 Berlin
Tel. (030) 219 158 260
http://wikimedia.de <http://www.wikimedia.de>
Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der jeder Mensch freien Zugang zu der
Gesamtheit des Wissens der Menschheit hat. Helfen Sie uns dabei!
*Helfen Sie mit, dass WIKIPEDIA von der UNESCO als erstes digitales
Weltkulturerbe anerkannt wird. Unterzeichnen Sie die Online-Petition:*
http://wikipedia.de/wke/Main_Page?setlang=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.
The following translation are now available for the March 2012
"Wikimedia Highlights", which combine some of the most relevant
information from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia
engineering report for March 2012 with a selection of other important
events from the Wikimedia movement. Help is welcome in spreading the
translated versions among the project communities for these languages,
where this has not already been done. Many thanks to all translators!
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_March_2012/ar
مقتطفات من تقرير مؤسسة ويكيميديا و اتقرير لقسم التقني في ويكيميديا
لشهر مارس 2012، ومختارات من أحداث هامة من حركة ويكيميديا
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_March_2012/fr
Éclairages sur le rapport de la Fondation Wikimédia et le rapport
d’ingénierie Wikimédia pour mars 2012, avec une sélection d’autres
événements importants du mouvement Wikimédia
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_March_2012/it
Punti salienti dal rapporto della Wikimedia Foundation e dal rapporto
tecnico Wikimedia di marzo 2012, con una selezione di altre importanti
iniziative dagli eventi di Wikimedia
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_March_2012/mk
Позначајни новости од Извештајот на Фондацијата Викимедија и
Техничкиот извештај за март 2012, со избор од други важни настани од
движењето Викимедија
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_March_2012/nl
Dit zijn de hoogtepunten uit de Wikimedia Foundationrapportage en de
Wikimedia technische rapportage voor maart 2012, aangevuld met een
selectie van andere belangrijke gebeurtenissen binnen de
Wikimediabeweging
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_March_2012/ru
Важные новости из отчёта Фонда Викимедиа за март 2012 и технического
отчёта за март 2012 года, с подборкой важнейших событий движения
Викимедиа
See for https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Highlights,_March_2012
for partial translations into other languages. Of course further
translations continue to be welcome.
--
Tilman Bayer
Movement Communications
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
The Escola de la Llotja
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escola_de_la_Llotja>is an art and design
school located in Barcelona, where several important
painters as Picasso <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso> studied.
Llotja and Amical
Viquipèdia<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Associaci%C3%B3_Amical_Viquip%C3%A8dia>started
a pioneering partnership in which 6
illustration <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illustration> students are doing
their final degree internship at Amical, creating images that are being
incorporated under free licenses to Wikimedia
Commons<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A0gina_principal>to
illustrate some Wikipedia articles.
It is an opportunity for them to work in a real context, public and very
visible, while contributing to a public good that is being built
collaboratively and is useful for many people.
The project aims to be a global precedent for involving other art and
design schools with Wikimedia related projects · More than thirty articles
are already illustrated in several languages thanks to this agreement of
collaboration.
At the beginning, we identified and listed some entries with missing
images, and the emerging illustrators of La Llotja are helping us with the
task of creating professional and informative images according to the
encyclopedic context which they are be published. Among which there are,
for example, outstanding
figures<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Josep_Maria_Folch_i_Torres.jpg>of
the twentieth century and fictional characters. Also noteworthy
illustrations teaching on the drying of the
Mediterranean<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Etapa4muda.jpg>during
the Messinian made with scientific advice.
Wikipedia has a strict criteria for the inclusion of images and media
files, in order to keep open its contents: works might be public domain or
free licensed (CC-BY-SA), which may be freely reproduced for any purpose
(also commercial) and which they can freely create derivative works to
improve them or adapt them. That's why many Wikipedia entries have no
image, because many topics do not have a related free image. One purpose of
this collaboration is to begin to fill this gap. Members of Amical
Viquipèdia with the participation of Catalan Wikipedians identified
articles with missing images difficult to achieve if not creating them
again.
*Goals*
During the academic year of 2011-12, there are 6 students doing their
internship at Amical Wikipedia.
Three of them have drawn portraits of the twentieth century which have had
to fend for graphic work to create an own designed to accompany the
biographical entries of the encyclopedia. In one case we have worked with
fictional characters, also creating their own works, which were faithful to
the literary source and they also have the requests for information and
descriptive encyclopedic context. In three cases have been drawn
illustration or didactic information about geological phenomena and
artistic practices:
- Luis Segovia: portraits of illustrators of the twentieth century
(Ricard Giralt Miracle, Lola Anglada, Pauline Baynes, Fernando Krahn,
Robert Monk Segura).
- Gerard Plan: portraits of Spanish politicians of the early twentieth
century and democratic transtition governments after the Franco
dictatorship (Adolfo Suarez, Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, Villa Martin, Manuel
Gutierrez Mellado, Landelino Lavilla).
- Albert Pons: portraits of Catalan writers of the twentieth century
(Josep Maria Folch i Torres, Montserrat Roig, Terence Moix, Joan Perucho,
Josep Palau i Fabre).
- Jessica Leon: fictional characters from books by JRR Tolkien.
- Paul Bahia: didactic illustrations on the drying of the Mediterranean
Sea during the Messinian period. Scientific advice was done by Daniel
Garcia-Castellanos, a researcher at the Jaume Almera Institute of Earth
Sciences, in addition to Wikipedian and member of Wikimedia Spain.
- Oriol Tuca: recreating scenes and portraits related to the Fluxus art
movement.
*Exhibit*
All works arising as a result of this project will be exhibited on May 10
in Barcelona. We wait for you at Llotja Sant Andreu at 19:30 pm in a
ceremony attended by all participants and organizers.
*Future: WikiArS (Art & Design Scools) movement*
Next year we will repeat the experience with Llotja and other art and
design schools of Catalonia. In addition, the project is open to other
interested schools and wikipedians around the world.
You can see some of the illustrations already uploaded
here<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Contributions_from_Llotja>.
See the project page <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Llotja>.
*David Parreño Mont (User:Davidpar)
*
(As a member of Amical Viquipèdia)
david.parreno(a)gmail.com
PS: Soon the March Amical report!
