Hello,
One of Wikimedia Sverige's biggest commitments every year is the
Gothenburg book fair
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothenburg_Book_Fair), where roughly 100
000 authors, librarians, publishers and the public come together for
four days. This year the theme was African literature, with lots of
African authors and publishers, organized by the Nordic Africa Institute
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Africa_Institute), a part of
Uppsala university.
Lars Aronsson, from Wikimedia Sverige, talked to NAI about their book
fair catalogue "Afrika har ordet"/"Africa speaks", where they presented
65 African authors. He asked them if they would consider releasing the
catalogue under a free license. The director Carin Norberg agreed to put
the text as CC-BY-SA, which makes it compatible with Wikipedia. The
images, unfortunally, could not be released, but Wikimedia Sverige took
more than 300 images during the book fair
(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:G%C3%B6teborg_Book_Fair_2010
), so some of the authors have been covered by us. For instance the
South African artist Zapiro,
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Shapiro
A list of the 65 authors can be found here:
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mall:Afrika_har_ordet_2010
Hopefully these biographies will serve as an inspiration for other
language versions to write about these authors as well.
And on a even more positive note: The NAI have talked about taking
photos of their own and releasing them under a free license. Let's hope
that they do.
Best wishes,
Lennart
Lennart Guldbrandsson, ordförande för Wikimedia Sverige
http://wikimedia.se Tfn: 031 - 12 50 48 Mobil: 070 - 207 80 05 Epost:
l_guldbrandsson(a)hotmail.com Användarsida:
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal Blogg:
http://mrchapel.wordpress.com/
----
Forwarded by Jan Ainali
Wikimedia Sverige
with apologies for the delay.
Wiki Loves Monuments
In August, much work was done on Wiki loves Monuments. The project website
was expanded, explanations and instructions were added etc. Lessons were
taken from past similar events. A simplified Commons upload form, with many
fields having a fixed value due to the nature of the contest, so that also
non-Wikimedians can use it. Also a Flickr group has been created to lower
the participation threashold for Flickr users. Effort has been put into
getting the word out (approaching local newspapers, sending out a press
release etc), and it seems that the cultural heritage organizations are
picking it up with enthusiasm. Read more on the contest in this WMF blog
post:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/08/29/a-monument-month-for-wikimedia-ne…
Geograph
Geograph Britain and Ireland is a web-based project, initiated in March
2005, to create a freely accessible archive of geographically located
photographs of Great Britain and Ireland. With the help of a mini-grant
through the mini grant project, Wikimedia Nederland was able to help in the
uploading process of the 1.8 million free images to Wikimedia Commons by
Multichill. For more info, see the Commons page:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Geograph_Britain_and_Ireland .
Nationaal Archief
Nationaal Archief and Spaarnestad will be donating more than 1000 relevant
press photos from the ANEFO collection for use on Wikipedia. These photos
are from politicians and historically relevant events after World War II
which currently lack an image. The donation will occur at September 13 in
major Dutch political press center, Nieuwspoort. See
http://wikipedia.eventbrite.com/ for more information (in Dutch).
Wikimeets
A tradition has been started in August, the first Stamtafel was held in
Utrecht. In Germany they are already familiar with this concept, under the
name "Stammtisch" and it seems the concept gets popular here too. In a few
months we will know more about how popular exactly. But for now, every first
Wednesday of an evenly numbered month there will be a Stamtafel in Utrecht.
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ontmoeten
Meetings, conferences etc.
Lodewijk participated the Round Table discussion on e-culture at Kennisland,
which was a preparatory meeting for their conference in October, and had a
meeting in Amsterdam with Philippe Beaudette on the 2010/2011 fundraiser and
how Wikimedia Nederland can participate in that.
Coming Up:
- 1 - 30 September: Wiki Loves Monuments
- 4 September: Annual Summer Barbecue
- 13 September: Release Nationaal Archief
- 6 October: Stamtafel Utrecht
- 9 October: General Assemblee
FYI
First Wikimedia community letter from India
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_India_Community_Newsletter…
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_India_Community_Newsletter…>
Thanks
Tinu Cherian
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Achal Prabhala <aprabhala(a)gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 6:15 PM
Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Announcing the Wikimedia India Community
Newsletter - Edition 1
To: wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Greetings,
On behalf of Shiju Alex, here is... the first ever edition of the
Wikimedia India Community Newsletter. It's an incredible effort, and
we're really glad to have something like this - congrats to all who
helped with it.
Going forward, Shiju (and all of us) would appreciate help and
participation. If you are a member of a Wikimedia language, or
geography, or project that you feel isn't adequately represented, or if
you'd like to help with design, proofreading and turning it into
something that works like the Signpost - we'd appreciate hearing from
you at:
wminewsletter(a)gmail.com or Shiju Alex <shijualexonline(a)gmail.com>
At the moment, we're circulating the file in two pdf versions (one for
viewing, one for printing) and this is the link to the file on Commons:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_India_Community_Newsletter…
Shiju will shortly find a way to design it in html, making it easier for
everyone.
Cheers,
Achal
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Releasing first edition of Wikimedia India Community
Newsletter - 2010 September
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:56:06 +0530
From: Shiju Alex <shijualexonline(a)gmail.com>
To: <>
Dear All,
Our hard work for the past 2 months to release the first version of
Wikimedia India newsletter is coming to an end today.
Please find attached the Print Quality PDF of the finalized version of
Wikimedia India Newsletter for your reference. We are officially
releasing the newsletter at 7:00 PM in the Bangalore Wikimeetup.
This newsletter is the result of the ideas, suggestions, and feedback
that you had been provided by you during the last 2 months. Finally
Indian wikipedia community has come together for a common purpose. This
is just a starting. We have a long way to go.
Each language community (8 communities as of now) has helped by
providing content about the respective language community. Some
communities could not join as their communities are not strong enough to
provide news to the newsletter. Hope they will join soon.
Let me introduce again the Indian Language Wikipedians involved in this
effort (All are included in this mail thread). Here are they:
Bengali:
* Belayet Hossain
* Jayantanth
* Ragib Hasan
*English*
* Naveen PF
* Srikanth Lakshmanan
* Tinu Cherian
*Hindi:*
* Mayur Kumar
*Kannada:*
* Hari Prasad Nadig
Malayalam:
* * Praveen P .
* * Raziman T.V .
* * Simy Nazareth
* * Shiju Alex
* * Junaid P.V .
* * Thachan makan
* * Jacob Jose
* * Rajesh V arma
*Marathi:*
* * Mahitgar
* * Abhay Natu
* * Sankalp Dravid
*Tamil:*
* * Mayoora Nathan
* * C.R. Selva Kumar
* * Ravi Dreams
* * Sundar
*Telugu:*
* * Arjuna Rao C .
* * Ravi Vyzasatya
* * Veeven
* * Sujatha Thummapud i
* * Bhaskara Rao Chimakurthy
* * Ravi Chandra Enagant
*Technical team*
* * Typesetting, template design, other tecnical support: Junaid
P.V.
* * Front and back cover page design: Rajesh Odayanchal
I know that not everybody knows each other. But you will be excited to
be introduced to wikimedians working for other language wiki communities
of India. Let this be a new begining. Sharing experience from different
language wiki communities will surely help us (it is already helping us)
to replicate the success stories and best practices in other wikis.
So we are done with the first release. So what next?
Eventhough we cannot think of a monthly newsletter now, we need to aim
atleast for a quaterly newsletter. Taking this point in into account, we
are proposing a list for regular content collation and newsletter
coordination. This list will contain the core editorial team and two
volunteers from each wikipedia. The volunteer nominations can be
suggested by the respective wikipedia community.
The role of the volunteers from the language wikipedias would be to
conduit for collating content on events, happenings and plans of those
respective wikipedias. The community could choose to rotate these
nomiees as they deem appropriate. Please send your queries regarding the
mailing list to Arun Ram (arunram25(a)gmail.com
<mailto:arunram25@gmail.com>).
Once again I would like to thank each one of you from various language
communities for providing the community news.( from various language
communities.)
Junaid P.V has done the type setting and the template design of this
newsletter. Without his support and hardwork this newsletter would not
have seen as it is today. Many days he was woking over night to fix
various issues. Once again I thank him for being kind with me while I
was sending repeated changes that I got from various language communities.
Rajesh Odayanchal has designed front and back cover pages.He specially
created an Indian language map for this newsletter. Thanks to him.
Arun Ram has done the peer review of most of the language community
news. Special Thanks to him.
Last but not the least, I specillay thank Achal Prabhala for the review,
timely advice, and support. His advice has helped us to move forward
when there were many roadblocks in between.
Thanks once again.
Thank you.
Shiju Alex
Hello all,
over the last few days, we've been releasing the videos mentioned in a
previous announcement through various social media. All four videos
are now published, and you can find a blog post with links here:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/09/24/four-videos-of-wikipedias-volunte…
I'm personally very excited to have these videos: I think they'll be a
great outreach tool to help us grow the very special community of
volunteers who contribute to our projects. We can use them at
conferences, training events, in online tutorials, etc. I hope they'll
also help us break out of the perception of Wikipedia as simply a
useful product, and contribute to it being understood as a community
of shared passion and purpose quite unlike any other online community
of comparable scale.
We think these videos do speak for themselves beyond any specific use
that we'll have for them. If you agree, we appreciate your help in
sharing them through various channels available to you :-)
Subtitle transcriptions and translations are underway and will be made
available soon.
All best,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Link to the original article:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/09/22/article-feedback-pilot-goes-live/
As recently announced on the tech blog and in the Signpost, we're
launching an experimental new tool today to capture article feedback
from readers as part of the Public Policy Initiative. We're also
inviting the user community to help determine its future by joining a
workgroup tasked with evaluating it.
The "Article Feedback Tool" allows any reader to quickly and easily
assess the sourcing, completeness, neutrality, and readability of a
Wikipedia article on a five-point scale. It will be one of several tools
used by the Public Policy Initiative to assess the quality of articles.
We also hope it will be a way to increase reader engagement by seeking
feedback from them on how they view the article, and where it needs
improvement.
The tool is currently enabled on about 400 articles related to US public
policy. You can see it in action at the bottom of articles such
as /United States Constitution/, /Don't ask, don't tell/ or /Brown v.
Board of Education/.
Another goal of this pilot is to try and find a way to collaborate with
the community to build tools and features. As main users of the
software, Wikimedians are in a unique position to evaluate how a feature
performs, and what its strengths and limitations are. The Article
Feedback Tool is still very much in a prototype state; we're hoping the
user community can help us determine whether resources should be
allocated to improve it (and if so, how), or if it doesn't meet the
users' needs and should be shelved or completely rethought.
More information about the tool is available on our Questions & Answers
page [1].
If you want to try the tool to assess an article, pick a subject you're
familiar with from the full list [2] and rate it! If you'd like to
participate in the evaluation of the tool itself and what becomes of it,
please join the workgroup [3]. If you're interested in article
assessment in general, please also join the Public Policy Initiative's
Assessment Team [4].
Thank you,
Guillaume Paumier,
on behalf of the Features Engineering team
[1]
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Public_Policy_Pilot/FAQs
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Article_Feedback_Pilot
[3]
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Public_Policy_Pilot/Workgroup
[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Pol…
--
Guillaume Paumier
Product Manager, Multimedia Usability
Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Fifteen Global Chapter Grants Supported by Wikimedia Foundation
https://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/09/21/fifteen-global-chapter-grants-su…
Each year, the Wikimedia Foundation conducts a grant making process to
support the work of chapters around the world. We are happy to announce
that fifteen grants for ten different chapters have been awarded for the
2010-2011 fiscal year thus far. The Wikimedia Foundation is excited to
help launch all of these great projects and we encourage other chapters
(and organized groups of volunteers) to consider grant request as we
have additional funds available.
We'd like to spotlight a grant from 2009/10 as an example of the work
that chapters are doing. The Indonesian chapter ran a project Bebaskan
Pengetahuan 2010 (Free Your Knowledge 2010) during 2009/10. The grant
aimed to enrich the informational content of the Bahasa Indonesian
language Wikipedia with the goal of increasing active contributions.
The highly anticipated competition included 10 universities on the
island of Java, each appointing nine students and one professor to
compete for the largest quantity and highest quality of articles
produced in the Bahasa Indonesian language. The top-five student winners
received a laptop computer and free operating system. The grand-prize
winner was awarded a trip to the 2010 Wikimania in Gdansk, Poland this
past July.
While it is hard to directly attribute the impact of the project to the
overall project growth, it is worth noting that the Bahasa Indonesia
Wikipedia article count grew by over 20% to 130,000 articles between
August 2009 and July 2010. In addition, page views on Indonesian
Wikipedia grew by 100% in that time period – the fastest growing
Wikipedia in the world.
The 2010/11 grants have been provided by the Wikimedia Foundation to
further the growth of new chapters in the areas of Organizational
Development, Digital Technology and Outreach Activities. This year will
see chapter start-ups and kick-offs in Hong Kong, Estonia, Ukraine, the
Philippines and in New York City. As a result of these grants, chapters
will be able to register and host their own websites, secure government
permits and non-profit status as well as pay necessary legal fees.
Organizational development is an important aspect in expanding
individual chapters. Several Foundation grants have been given for
materials such as laptop computers, projectors, and video equipment.
This year, the Netherlands have been granted a forgiveness grant from
their participation in 2009/10 fundraiser revenue sharing. These funds
will be allocated towards sustainable organizational development and
outreach activities.
Digital technology grants have been given to the Hungary chapter for a
Free License Photo Competition, encouraging the photographer community
to place their work under Free License for the Wikimedia Commons
project. The Czech Republic followed up their successful photo project
in 2009/10 and will continue their efforts to expand the site’s
documentation of regional costumes and traditions and vernacular
architectural landmarks project.
Outreach activities are an integral part of chapter work on behalf of
the movement. Internship programs, Wikimedia conferences and academies,
and educational programs in schools and universities are all a part of
this program. New York City is setting a worldwide precedent by holding
the first annual Wikipedia Day NYC 2011. In conjunction with several
10th Anniversary celebrations to commemorate a decade of Wikipedia,
funds will go to logistics preparation and conference supplies for
participants.
Sharing in Outreach Activities, Wikimedia Switzerland will be embarking
on a three-year project to invite senior citizens into the world of
Wikipedia editing. By fostering the life experience and collective
knowledge of seniors, the Third Age Online (TAO) program will be used to
bridge age and cultural gaps in the community. Likewise, our Hong Kong
chapter will be working with a new mandatory liberal studies program in
high schools, encouraging students to use and contribute to Wikipedia
Hong Kong.
The grant process is open to all chapters and volunteer groups
officially recognized by the Wikimedia Foundation. Proposals must be
aligned with the Foundation’s shared mission statement and the core
values that drive the Wikimedia project. Each of these project grants
has been assessed by the Foundation for relevance based on the needs of
individual chapters and the diffusion of Wikimedia language sites and
Wikimedia projects worldwide. Once grants are approved, chapters are
subject to reporting requirements that are then made available to the
general public to enable knowledge sharing.
This year alone, the Wikimedia Foundation has awarded $82,000 in grants
to international chapters and $115,000 in forgiveness funding for
fundraiser revenue sharing. The Foundation is pleased to announce the
availability of additional funds for the 2010/2011 fiscal year. We
encourage all chapters to apply. For more information on our grant
process please visit: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Index
This week the Foundation is excited to be releasing four separate videos shot at the recent Wikimania Conference in Gdansk, Poland. The first video 'Username' is now posted on the WM Commons:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_User_Name_MEDIUM.ogv
Later today the Foundation will be releasing the videos on a few other platforms as well, specifically to increase public visibility:
http://www.facebook.com/wikipediahttp://identi.ca/wikipediahttp://www.youtube.com/wikimediafoundationhttp://vimeo.com/wmfoundation/
I'll be posting more about the links on the Wikimedia blog later this morning (San Francisco time) blog.wikimedia.org
And maybe some others.
What are these videos?
They were originally produced to complement the public outreach work going on now (and in the future) and to provide a short, energetic clip for folks to use in all sorts of presentations. A very good example of that would be in Sue's keynote presentation from Wikimania, which some of you may have seen. We hope everyone in the movement may find them useful, and we're particularly hopeful that they can be easily localized and shared even more widely. They shed a new light on the passionate people behind our projects.
Who made them?
The clips were created for the Wikimedia Foundation (led mostly by Communications and Public Outreach) by a team that's been working with the Foundation over the past year. They were directed by Jelly Helm, produced by Noah Stanik, shot by DP Reed Harkness, and edited by Sarah Marcus. The music is by Portland, Oregon based musician Matt Carey. The Germany-based film production crew Living Colour was an essential partner in bringing everything together at the shoot in Gdansk, Poland, and Fenton Communications, who have been supporting the Foundation over the past year, were our agency partners in pulling this project together. We also owe the organizers of 2010's Wikimania conference a great deal of thanks for helping us sort out the production on the ground and for letting us borrow participants for short interviews.
What's next?
The remaining clips will be posted on Commons and other video sharing sites through Friday. Once they're all announced we'll share another note with all of the links. You can follow the progress and hear what the public thinks on identi.ca and twitter. We hope to see the videos make an appearance in media and other blogs too.
Hope you enjoy!
--
Jay Walsh
Head of Communications
WikimediaFoundation.orgblog.wikimedia.org
+1 (415) 839 6885 x 609, @jansonw
*Wikipedia Goes To Africa -- Israeli Students to Leave for Humanitarian Work
in Africa, Equipped With Portable Static Wikipedia*
*Ben-Gurion University's "Africa Center", Wikimedia Israel, and Hamakor
cooperate in making free knowledge accessible in Africa*
The Africa Center at BGU, headed by Dr. Tamar Golan, annually sends a group
of students on a three-month humanitarian expedition to developing countries
in Africa. This year's group is going to the Repbulic of Benin and the
Republic of Cameroon.
Learning about this while approaching the Africa Center for help with
developing Africa-related entries on the Hebrew Wikipedia, Wikimedia Israel
decided to equip the students with computers running free software and
containing an offline (static) version of the French Wikipedia, so that the
students can bring free knowledge to Africans without access to the
Internet.
Wikimedia Israel reached out to Hamakor, the Israeli Free and Open Source
Software NGO, and Hamakor helped obtain computer donations, refurbished them
and installed the Linux operating system on them.
Wikimedia Israel collaborated with members of Wikimedia Switzerland and
Wikimedia France to produce an up-to-date static version of the French
Wikipedia (numbering about 1 million entries, and including images), French
being a major language of reading and writing in Cameroon and Benin.
"The students also have portable installations of the offline Wikipedia, so
that they may install it on any other computers they may run across in
Africa," explained Asaf Bartov, who coordinated the project in Wikimedia
Israel, "and they have received training on using Linux and Kiwix, the
offline Wikipedia reader (free) software, so they may train others to use
the computers".
Incidentally, the Linux version installed on those computers is called
Ubuntu Linux, 'Ubuntu' being an African word (in the Zulu language) roughly
translatable as "unity of mankind" or "mutual reliance".
Supporting and promoting the distribution of free knowledge in developing
countries is one of the five major goals identified by the Wikimedia
Foundation as central to its five-year strategy plan, developed by thousands
of members of the Wikimedia Movement.
Itzik Edri
Spokesman, Wikimedia Israel