May I give you some news on the wiki encyclopedias for children:
I have let you know nearly one year ago about the launching of Vikidia
in English[1]:
Vikidia in English now has 1,445 articles and 32 active users. the
advantage in English is that we can pick up, choose, adapt and select
some existing material, especially from Simple English Wikipedia, and
from Wikijunior. Some of the first users on en.vikidia.org also come
from other Vikidia language and it even gather some Dutch teenager from
Wikikids.nl.
Vikidia was first launched in French and there is a similarly developed
counterpart in Dutch : http://wikikids.nl/ . these wikis are 8 and 9
years old now.
Vikidia in French has now more than one million unique visitors a month,
with a yearly growth of audience of nearly 40 %.
It's not a Wikimedia project, yet it is supported by Wikimédia France
that now funds our hosting costs.
Another wiki encyclopedia for children was recently launched in German,
and is supported by Wikimedia Germany. See some English explanation on
it here: [2].
There is some quite significant differences between the way each wiki's
aims, rules and functioning are designed, which we had the opportunity
to discuss between one and another teams/founders.
The guestbook on fr.vikidia show that this resource is really
appreciated by children (and even older peoples), and that there is a
need for such a wiki beside Wikipedia ([3] [4]).
Yet nothing can be done but with a significant community, that's why
your support (as individual people so as an organisation) really matter !
klexikon.de, which claim to be a content - rather than an educational -
wiki for children, directs a great part of its efforts (this is most of
the Wikimedia Germany support) on organizing meeting and workshop for
wannabe editors (teachers or other - mainly - adults). What about
Wikimedia UK supporting something similar? Yet it would demand some
peoples to undertake it... One can also begin with one (or some) blog
post about this project ?
[1]
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/vikidia-in-english-opens-today-lets-build-a-childr…
[2]
https://zikoblog.wordpress.com/2014/12/23/a-new-wiki-klexikon-the-free-ency…
[3] https://fr.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Livre_d%27or
[4] see also
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=wikibooks%2C%20wikiversity%2C%20viki…
--
Mathias Damour
49 rue Carnot
F-74000 Annecy
00 (33) 4 57 09 10 56
00 (33) 6 27 13 65 51
https://fr.vikidia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Astirmays
mathias.damour(a)laposte.net
Hi all,
tl;dr summary: I'm planning to run a survey about wikimeets in the near future. Do you have any comments/suggestions on the draft? See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mike_Peel/Wikimeet_survey
At a recent meetup, a Wikipedian who was new to wikimeets pointed out that the event had the air of a gentleman's club about it. Looking around at the high-back comfy chairs, the Victorian-era interior decorations, the pints of real ale, and the mostly-male (and regular) attendees, I couldn't really disagree with their assessment. This started me thinking: are there better venues and times to hold meetups, or better ways of advertising/inviting people to planned meetups? What would make them more open and inviting to new editors, or the many long-term editors that have never attended a meetup?
As an experiment to try to improve the attendance and advertising of wikimeets in the North of England, a few months ago I posted messages on the talk pages of previous wikimeet attendees about the last Leeds and Manchester wikimeets, and the Liverpool wikimeet coming up this weekend. There was, unexpectedly, a pretty good response, with a number of people signing up to attend the wikimeets. I'm not sure whether it was a direct consequence or not, but we had a long-term editor attend the last Manchester wikimeet who hadn't previously attended a wikimeet. I couldn't attend the last Leeds wikimeet: was anyone there and able to say whether it made a difference or not? I'm hoping that the irregular wikimeet attendees who have signed up for the Liverpool meetup will be there!
It also started a longer conversation with Iridescent [1], which led to the idea of having some sort of a UK-wide notifications list. During that conversation, I started drafting a survey of past and potential wikimeet attendees with the aim of getting some quantified and actionable answers about how to improve wikimeets, and also improve communication about wikimeets. The latest draft of the survey is at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mike_Peel/Wikimeet_survey
Amongst other things, the survey draft asks about how people get to wikimeets; when and where wikimeets should be held; what activities should take place at wikimeets; and how notifications about an upcoming meetup would ideally be circulated.
I'm hoping to run this survey soon, so if you are interested in improving the survey questions then please send me an email or post on the talk page before the end of the month! In particular, if you currently organise (or regularly attend) wikimeets, then I'd greatly appreciate your input/feedback about the survey questions before it goes live. Ideally the survey would be run in association with WMUK, but given the recent turmoil I'm not sure if this will be possible, so I'll run it myself unless WMUK expresses an interest in helping out with it!
Thanks,
Mike
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Iridescent/Archive_17#Next_meetups_…
I am hosting some editathons:
Thurs 28 May, Birmingham:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/Royal_Society_of_Chemistry/BH-…
at Birmingham Museums Collection centre (only rarely open to the
public!). We'll enjoy a 'backstage tour and the opportunity to
photograph objects, as well,of course, writing articles.
Weds 29 July, London
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/Royal_Society_of_Chemistry/BH-…
in the library of the Royal Society of Chemistry. The focus will be
on chemistry-related topics; including both scientific and
non-scientific content (the latter including biographies, for
example).
Sat 8 August, North Cheshire
Watch this space (and keep the date free)!
In each case, lunch and refreshments will be provided; there will be
support for new editors (maybe you can help?) and we'll work on sister
projects such as Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and Wikisource, as well
as Wikipedia.
--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
> Of course, it’s not mandatory to drink while in a pub. ;)
>
> Joe
>
> --
> *Joe Sutherland*
> http://jossu.co.uk
Yes, but I had a birthday party in a pub and a Muslim friend refused to
join us.
Gordo
Recently I lost my Wikisource virginity, becoming not a passive cheerleader
for the project but an active contributor. I have to say it's been a more
rewarding experience than expected.
I'd heard in a few places that imports from the Internet Archive, or
imports of .djvu files, weren't reliable, but my little experience has been
fine. Maybe I've been lucky in my choice of files. The whole process of
loading in a book and starting transcription went quite smoothly, though it
required attention to a lot of little steps and I wouldn't recommend it to
non-geeky people.
One surprise was that having entered data about the book into Commons, I
had to enter the same data again into Wikisource. Later when I went through
Preferences on Wikisource, I saw an option to automatically copy book data
from Commons to Wikisource, but for reasons I don't understand it's off by
default.
The editing interface is last-century primitive but usable. An advanced
toolbar with more buttons would enable me to work more quickly, but this
might be possible with custom Javascript.
In my new role as Wikimedian In Residence at the Bodleian Libraries, I'm
doing a lot of advocacy for Wikisource to my audience of librarians because
it's a great example of how sharing content improves content. It's also a
great example of something lay people with computers can do to support
research and free knowledge.
There are two projects I'm working on (in volunteer time now and again, not
paid work), in case anyone's interested.
Firstly, there's a collection on Wikisource related to Mary Wollstonecraft,
a very important philosopher and author of fiction and non-fiction, not to
mention the mother of Mary Shelley.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Mary_Wollstonecraft
There are gaps, but with some additional transcription work it's in hailing
distance of being an impressive research resource, hopefully enabling more
interesting projects such as the Mary Wollstonecraft Twitter:
https://twitter.com/1759marywol1797
Her short book about raising daughters had been scanned but not
transcribed, so I've been working on that, a quarter of an hour now and
again.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Thoughts_on_the_Education_of_Daughters…
The other project arises from a talk by a historian working with British
Library Labs. He is studying the humour of the Victorian era, marking up a
joke book to identify individual jokes and lines of dialogue. A fun
spin-off from this work is the Mechanical Comedian project
http://victorianhumour.tumblr.com/
An ideal starting point for this work would be a checked, validated
transcription of the out-of-copyright source book, which the team are
gradually working on. So I'm urging them to use Wikisource as a platform,
and to demonstrate I'm transcribing a similar book from the same era.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Everybody%27s_Book_of_English_wit_and_…
Disclaimer: a lot of Victorian jokes are *not funny*, but there are rare
gems.
If, like I was, you're a Wiki*edian who's interested in Wikisource but
hasn't taken the plunge. I recommend having a go.
--
Dr Martin L Poulter
Wikipedia contributor http://enwp.org/User:MartinPoulter
Volunteer, Wikimedia UK http://wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MartinPoulter
<http://uk.wikimedia.org/>
Musician http://soundcloud.com/martin-poulterhttp://myspace.com/comapilot
Person http://infobomb.org/
It has now been over a year that my email address was put on
moderation (perhaps someone would like to provide a date, I have not
trawled the archives). In the absence of any appeal process, I ask
that this is lifted.
My most recent email to this list has yet to be posted, it has been
waiting for 9 days. Waiting for several days or over a week is now the
norm for my rare posts to list. Though not one of my emails has ever
been rejected from publication, this effectively makes communication
impossible and amounts to an effective ban after being black-balled.
Based on timing, I was put on moderation apparently due to Russavia's
incivil posts to Wikimedia-l, not because of any email I have ever
posted to this list that anyone can provide a link to, nor for any
reason of incivility on my part. If I am to remain forever on
moderation I ask that a clear rationale be given so that I can change
the wording I use in emails to met whatever the list moderators
believe is needed. At the current time I am completely in the dark as
nobody will discuss this with me or provide examples.
Thanks,
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
Apparently, there was a feature on Wikipedia, on BBC Radio 4 Woman's
Hour, today.
It''s included in their daily podcast.
--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
I remember someone once talking about a project to have a format for 3D
objects (I guess in commons), which could then be rendered on pages as
interactive widgets. Does anyone know what this was called or how I can
find it?
*Edward Saperia*
Founder Newspeak House <http://www.nwspk.com>
email <edsaperia(a)gmail.com> • facebook <http://www.facebook.com/edsaperia> •
twitter <http://www.twitter.com/edsaperia> • 07796955572
133-135 Bethnal Green Road, E2 7DG
(Forwarding from wikimedia-l: Fæ intended to send it to this list. His resent email is in the moderation queue...)
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Moderation of Fae
> Date: 24 May 2015 13:59:34 BST
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
> It has now been over a year that my email address was put on
> moderation (perhaps someone would like to provide a date, I have not
> trawled the archives). In the absence of any appeal process, I ask
> that this is lifted.
>
> My most recent email to this list has yet to be posted, it has been
> waiting for 9 days. Waiting for several days or over a week is now the
> norm for my rare posts to list. Though not one of my emails has ever
> been rejected from publication, this effectively makes communication
> impossible and amounts to an effective ban after being black-balled.
>
> Based on timing, I was put on moderation apparently due to Russavia's
> incivil posts to Wikimedia-l, not because of any email I have ever
> posted to this list that anyone can provide a link to, nor for any
> reason of incivility on my part. If I am to remain forever on
> moderation I ask that a clear rationale be given so that I can change
> the wording I use in emails to met whatever the list moderators
> believe is needed. At the current time I am completely in the dark as
> nobody will discuss this with me or provide examples.
>
> Thanks,
> Fae
> --
> faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
>
> _______________________________________________
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