-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Foundation-l] Grant Advisory Committee: Call for Volunteers
Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 13:15:58 +0300
From: Asaf Bartov <asaf.bartov(a)gmail.com>
Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hello, everyone.
As announced in the Wikimedia Conference 2011 in Berlin, the Wikimedia
Foundation would like to set up a Grant Advisory Committee, to help evaluate
grant requests and to benefit from a wider movement perspective.
We are now looking to populate the committee with volunteers. Please take a
look at the description in the committee page on Meta[1], and if you have
relevant background and are so inclined, apply at the bottom of the page.
Cheers,
Asaf Bartov
Wikimedia Foundation
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grant_Advisory_Committee
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Asaf Bartov<asaf.bartov(a)gmail.com>
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Dear all,
Based on the input you have given through the brainstorming page[1] I have
put the first draft of the schedule of this year's Chapters Meeting online
at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2011/Schedule,
Note that this is not the final schedule. I would like to incorporate your
feedback on the draft and to assign specific content to the broader or
vaguer topics – if you have any suggestions on this, please get in touch
with me.
As you will notice, there are about three major topic areas that come up in
a number of sessions. The main themes build on the discussions we had in the
previous years on chapter projects (outreach and otherwise) and development.
New this year is the emphasis given to the discussion about various aspects
of movement roles that will hopefully clarify and improve on the
relationships among actors in the movement and inform the development of a
movement charter due by this year's Wikimania.
Time will be set aside also for discussion in smaller groups about some
specific issue that you would like to tackle. Some suggestions so far have
been: creating a framework to handle justified legal complaints; to continue
the discussion about the developing world and concrete steps Wikimedia can
do to spread its mission, or to continue the toolserver governance
discussion.
I would very much appreciate your input either here or in private about your
thoughts on the schedule, possible working groups, or the content of
particular sessions.
Thank you,
Bence
--
Bence Damokos
Programme Coordinator,
Wikimedia Conference 2011
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_meeting_2011/Brainstorming
Dear Kieran,
I'm on digest mode for WikimediaZA (just switched it off), so I'm sorry
I can't reply within the thread.
I'm not hugely fond of the word 'Eurocentric' myself, mainly because it
tends to be overused. In the realm of printed knowledge, particularly,
the printed word is a 500-year-old tradition in Europe and most
countries elsewhere neither have that history of engagement with
printing, nor the kind of publishing momentum that the Anglo-European
world acquired in the last two centuries.
What I do find interesting, however, is that:
a) the printed word has such authority; that it dominates other forms of
knowledge
b) the authority of the printed word is a central tenet of Wikipedia
c) given the authority of the printed word, in and outside Wikipedia,
the history of the world according to Wikipedia is - largely - the
history of Europe, with North America tagged on at the end.
I think this is a pertinent and relevant conversation to have. For
instance, while I can't personally reverse 500 years of unequal
distribution of printing and publishing :) I do think that there are
incredible opportunities for equal participation in writing the
*present* of the world through the internet, audio-visual media, and
particularly, Wikipedia. So, I don't see the first 10 years of Wikipedia
as 'Eurocentric' - I see it as an incredible exercise of responsibility
on the part of the volunteers who made it. There is nothing stopping
others - from other parts of the world - to exercise this responsibility
further, and I think that as people everywhere take advantage of the
opportunities Wikipedia (and Wikimedia) present, we will have a more
interesting world to read.
So while I'm not sure that we can do anything to change history of the
world according to Wikipedia from 500 BC to 2011 AD, I think it's
entirely possible that we will see bright lights flashing everywhere
when telling the history of the present according to Wikipedia from
2011-2021. (Or, at least, that's a goal worth fighting for!)
Cheers,
Achal
This visualization - 'A History of the World in 100 Seconds' - is
fascinating. And instructive. (The missing byline is that it's a history
of the world according to Wikipedia). Apologies for cross-posting and/or
if you've seen it before - it seems to have been made about 2 months ago.
From the makers: "Many wikipedia articles have coordinates. Many have
references to historic events. Me (@godawful) and Tom Martin
(@heychinaski) cross referenced the two to create a dynamic
visualization of Wikipedia's view of world history. Watch as empires
fall, wars break out and continents are discovered.
This won "Best Visualization" at Matt Patterson's History Hackday in
January, 2011. To make it, we parsed an xml dump of all wikipedia
articles (30Gb) and pulled out 424,000 articles with coordinates and
35,000 references to events. Cross referencing these produced 15,500
events with locations. Then we mapped them over time."
On the video's vimeo page, there are a whole lot of interesting comments
- like this one: "so cool! really incredible how euro-centric it is. i
wonder what it would look like if events were weighted by their
appearance in the non-english wikipedias?"
More here: http://africasacountry.com/2011/04/06/a-history-of-the-world/
And here: http://vimeo.com/19088241
Cheers,
Achal