WikimediaZA April 2014

wikimediaza@lists.wikimedia.org

9 participants
10 discussions

5th Cape Town meetup this Sunday
by Douglas Scott 30 Apr '14

30 Apr '14

Hello everyone, This is just a quick reminder that the 5th Cape Town meetup <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Cape_Town#5th_Cape_Town_Meet…>will be happening from 11am this Sunday (4th May) at Truth Coffee on 36 Buitenkant Street. We have got lots to talk about and there is free coffee! Hope to see you there. Best, Douglas (user:Discott). -- Douglas Ian Scott 司道格 Skype: douglas0scott South African mobile number: +27 (0)79 515 8727

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Fwd: Train the Trainers workshop before Wikimania
by Wikimedia South Africa 25 Apr '14

25 Apr '14

Hello everyone, Below is an email from Wikimedia UK that I want to share with you all. --- Hello fellow Wikimedians, As you may be aware, Wikimedia UK is hosting a Train the Trainers workshop just before Wikimania for international Wikimedia affiliates representatives. The targeted attendees are someone that's coming to London for this year Wikimania, from a chapter or thematic organisation that is either already offering or planning to offer Wikimedia training in their respective countries. It will be a chance to see our course in action and experience what our volunteers go for. The aim is to filter down the messages and to take any lessons back home especially if you may offer your own Training the Trainers for your own volunteers. More information and registration is at < https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk/civicrm/event/info?id=68&reset=1>. Wikimedia UK will pay for the training, the venue, and lunch and refreshments during the two day. Wikimedia UK will unfortunately be unlikely to be able to support accommodation. The course will be held in English. There are 12 places available on the course. The deadline to apply for a place is Sunday 15 June 23:59 BST, after which confirmation of places will be given. Hope to see many of you in London in August, Katie -- Katie Chan Volunteer Support Organiser Wikimedia UK +44 (0) 20 7065 0990 +44 (0) 7885 980 534 Wikimedia UK is a Charitable Company registered in England and Wales. Registered Company No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office: 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.

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Re: [Wikimedia ZA] WikimediaZA Digest, Vol 44, Issue 10
by Sabelo London Thuthani 24 Apr '14

24 Apr '14

I would love to be part of the movement. Because we a free country, and I should justify the free knowledge for all. A knowledge with no use is meaningless! On 4/24/14, wikimediaza-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org <wikimediaza-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote: > Send WikimediaZA mailing list submissions to > wikimediaza(a)lists.wikimedia.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaza > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > wikimediaza-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > wikimediaza-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of WikimediaZA digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Position Available for Wikipedian in Residence (Theresa Hume) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2014 16:03:08 +0200 > From: "Theresa Hume" <humetheresa(a)gmail.com> > To: <wikimediaza(a)lists.wikimedia.org> > Subject: [Wikimedia ZA] Position Available for Wikipedian in Residence > Message-ID: <03d201cf5fc5$edbd83d0$c9388b70$(a)gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Dear Member, > > > > Want to become part of the global movement to bring about a world in which > every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge? > > > > Then apply for the first South African Wikipedian in Residence. > > > > Closing date for applications is Friday, 25 April 2014. > > > > Wiki Regards > > > > > > email signature > > > > > > > > > >

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Position Available for Wikipedian in Residence
by Theresa Hume 24 Apr '14

24 Apr '14

Dear Member, Want to become part of the global movement to bring about a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge? Then apply for the first South African Wikipedian in Residence. Closing date for applications is Friday, 25 April 2014. Wiki Regards email signature

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Wikimania 2015: the bid goes to Mexico City
by Douglas Scott 22 Apr '14

22 Apr '14

Hello everyone, I just wanted to let you all know that the bid to host Wikimania in 2015 has gone to Mexico City<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015_bids/Mexico_City>. Although I am very sorry to hear that we were unsuccessful in our bid for Cape Town to host the event we can seek comfort in knowing that we put together a bid that has received a great deal of praise from everyone for its high quality and high level of preparation. We had a great team working on the bid and have done a good job of both building off of previous Cape Town bids for the event and enhancing our potential for hosting a great event for the day when we do get it. I want to thank each and everyone of you for all the support you have given us. I have no doubt that Mexico City will host a fantastic and truly memorable event and wish them all the very best for the event. They have a good team and the award could not have happened to a nicer group of people. I would like to extend my most sincere congratulations to the winning team. I look forward to attending the event in Mexico City, a part of the world I have heard so much about and always wanted to visit. Thanks and best regards, -- Douglas Ian Scott 司道格 Skype: douglas0scott South African mobile number: +27 (0)79 515 8727

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Fwd: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Indonesia and Humanitarian Open Street Map receive ALL VOICES GRANT
by rupert THURNER 22 Apr '14

22 Apr '14

fyi ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Mark Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com> Date: Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 5:51 AM Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Indonesia and Humanitarian Open Street Map receive ALL VOICES GRANT To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 5:48 AM, Anna Torres <anna(a)wikimedia.org.ar> wrote: > Hi Isabella, > > Great news! Congratulations to all of you :) > In Argentina we are planning to build up a fundraising strategy this year. > Is there somewhere we can take a look to the project? While the WMID team puts online their project documentation, I can provide a bit of background which will be useful to other chapters. The very short version, without buzzwords, is we will be creating OSM mapping data and Wikipedia articles of Kalimantan, training local groups and producing a training kit so they can continue to do it after the project funding finishes. Their will be project evaluation reports so that other regions and countries can assess whether they will be able to reproduce the outcomes of the project. The Making All Voices Count website isnt very informative about the program at the moment, as they have replaced most of the information about the program with details about the projects being funded. More information might be buried in their blog entries from last year. The first call for proposals for the innovations grant program needed to have impact in one of eight countries: Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. http://www.makingallvoicescount.org/news/first-call-proposals/ Based on the history of the funding body, and entities backing the funding body, it was obvious that any innovation in the area of citizen participation in open government was the broad theme. It is always difficult knowing precisely what is going to succeed in a first round for a new grant program. Now that they have selected a group of proposals to fund, it is easier to see what types of projects will be successful in the next rounds. http://www.makingallvoicescount.org/news/28-cutting-edge-projects-to-boost-… The next round (it should be opening soon) will be for Bangladesh, Mozambique, Pakistan, and the Philippines. One of the requirements is that there is a local organisation as part of the grant proposal. The local organisation doesnt need to be a well established organisation with lots of capacity. The bulk of the work can be done by a foreign partner, but they want to see a formal partnership exists between the two (i.e. a signed agreement as an appendix). It is a great opportunity for a bigger chapter to help a smaller chapter attract external funding and complete a project which will have real impact in their country. Or for a chapter to partner with another organisation in their country. Wikimedia is known to be good at crowd sourcing and citizen engagement. Those skillsets needs to be wrapped into a project concept that will have measurable impact in the real world (i.e. outside of the wikiverse), and then sold so that funders can see that using wikis is an innovative component *with* a key strength being that using wikis ensure that others can continue to build the project after the funding runs out. Some of the other requirements for the application: * focus providing a voice to minorities (esp. people with disabilities) * 500 word executive summary * A detailed budget * complete resumes of four key people in the project * biographies of the participating organisations The three Asian countries for round two (Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the Philippines) are the 'easiest', all having very active local wikimedia groups that are well connected to the International community. Mozambique is a challenge. ;-) Portuguese Wikipedia has a few contributors living in Mozambique. As well as the 'Wikipedians in <country>' category (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8645200), more wikimedia people can be found using searches like https://www.google.com/search?q=site:wikipedia.org+intitle:user+Mozambique https://www.google.com/search?q=site:wikipedia.org+intitle:Usu%C3%A1rio+Mo%… As example, one of the Portuguese speaking chapters could partner with an advocacy group in Mozambique to write Wikinews stories on Portuguese Wikinews about a topic which usually isnt covered well in traditional media. e.g. Interviews with people with disabilities, from people in villages through to their first two Paralympians? (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1442458) Or Wikimedia South Africa may be able to partner with a group in Mozambique to help build Tsonga/Xitsonga Wikipedia, which currently has less than 300 articles after many years, and was even proposed for closure. There are other languages of Mozambique that do not have a Wikipedia yet. Would a $40,000 funded project be sufficient to build/regenerate a new Wikipedia language community? Or work with a relevant peak body/Quango/NGO to put one of their existing books on Wikibook, translate it to minority languages and distribute it. e.g. Marie Stopes International Distributing Wikipedia via Kiwix may also meet open government development goals, if the content is of sufficient quality, (or $40,000 can make it high quality content), but that depends a lot on what are effective distribution methods for a target audience. -- John Vandenberg _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

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Applying for micro-grants from Wikimedia UK
by Douglas Scott 16 Apr '14

16 Apr '14

Hello everyone, I just want to let you all know that our chapter affiliates in the United Kingdom, Wikimedia UK <https://wikimedia.org.uk>, is willing and fully open to editors in South Africa applying for project grants to assist in editing Wikipedia or contributing to other Wikimedia projects. Although, to the best of my knowledge, no-one from South Africa has applied for a project grant from them yet there is always a first time. So if you need a small grant to assist in your Wiki related editing then please feel free to apply. You can find out more on Wikimedia UK's website here<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Grants> . Best regards, -- Douglas Ian Scott 司道格 Skype: douglas0scott South African mobile number: +27 (0)79 515 8727

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Fwd: [Chapters] New Commons RFC on changing the Precautionary principle to tackle the URAA problem
by David Richfield 13 Apr '14

13 Apr '14

Some interesting discussion here for those of you who are interested in copyrights and Wikimedia. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Michael Maggs <Michael(a)maggs.name> Date: Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 7:44 PM Subject: [Chapters] New Commons RFC on changing the Precautionary principle to tackle the URAA problem To: UK Wikimedia mailing list <wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, chapters(a)wikimedia.ch I have made a proposal to relax the scope of the Commons so-called Precautionary principle to allow the site to host more of the locally public domain files that are being deleted because of the US URAA law, and also to keep more photos that have freedom of panorama in their home country but which might (or might not) be copyright-protected in the US. This proposal comes out of an extremely long and complicated argument about copyright, which you don't necessarily need to get into, but it is an attempt to allow Commons to host more media files while at the same time ensuring that the site remains fully legal under US law. We can legally take a much more nuanced position than 'Definitely Free' or 'Definitely Unfree', which is pretty much what we do at present. Some editors have suggested ignoring US law, which the WMF simply cannot allow to happen, and this is an attempt to allow us to keep more non-US Public Domain material while still remaining on the right side of US law. Put simply, do you agree that Commons should aim to host more files that are public domain in their home country even if they *might* still be copyright-protected in the US? Please contribute here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Review_of_Precautionary_principle Michael _______________________________________________ Chapters mailing list Chapters(a)wikimedia.ch https://intern.wikimedia.ch/lists/listinfo/chapters -- David Richfield [[:en:User:Slashme]] +49 176 72663368

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Fwd: [Wikimedia-l] OpenSSL vulnerability
by David Richfield 09 Apr '14

09 Apr '14

Hi all, I'm forwarding this for those of you who are concerned about online security. Kind regards, David ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: ENWP Pine <deyntestiss(a)hotmail.com> Date: Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 6:21 AM Subject: [Wikimedia-l] OpenSSL vulnerability To: "mediawiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org" <mediawiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, "wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org" <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> I'm cross-posting this email from Wikitech-l from Greg Grossmeier. I think wide distribution is appropriate especially for contributors who may use vulnerable off-wiki communication tools with their Wikimedia password or for Wikimedia activity. -- Yesterday a widespread issue in OpenSSL was disclosed that would allow attackers to gain access to privileged information on any site running a vulnerable version of that software. Unfortunately, all Wikimedia Foundation hosted wikis are potentially affected. We have no evidence of any actual compromise to our systems or our users information, but as a precautionary measure we are resetting all user session tokens. In other words, we will be forcing all logged in users to re-login (ie: we are logging everyone out). All logged in users send a secret session token with each request to the site and if a nefarious person were able to intercept that token they could impersonate other users. Resetting the tokens for all users will have the benefit of making all users reconnect to our servers using the updated and fixed version of the OpenSSL software, thus removing this potential attack. As an extra precaution, we recommend all users change their passwords as well. Again, there has been no evidence that Wikimedia Foundation users were targeted by this attack, but we want all of our users to be as safe as possible. Thank you for your understanding and patience, Greg Grossmeier _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> -- David Richfield [[:en:User:Slashme]] +49 176 72663368

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Wikimedia South Africa Newsletter - April 2014
by Theresa Hume 09 Apr '14

09 Apr '14

A warm welcome to all our fellow Wikipedians, It's been 3 months since our last communication so we just want to touch base with you, and tell you what we have been up to. *What does 2014 have in store?* The first months of 2014 have been packed with mostly project focussed activities. As part of our ongoing commitment to increase awareness of the South African Chapter and Wikipedia as a whole, we have been busy putting together many projects that will do just that. Here is a quick glance of these upcoming projects: *Joburgpedia 2014* The first phase of Joburgpedia was received very well, and we are pleased to announce that we have received funding to implement the second phase of the project, which will kick off in April. This year will see the appointment of the first South African Wikipedians in Residence at Johannesburg Heritage Foundation and Museum Africa! *Collaboration with Constitutional Court* WMZA is very excited about a collaboration with the Constitutional Court. Training sessions will take place with various participants which will see contributions to Wikipedia in terms of documentation and information relevant to the Concourt. *Wiki Meetups* Wiki Meetups are an opportunity for Wikipedians and anyone else interested in getting more involved in Wikipedia and other Wikis, as well as open collaboration projects, to meet and talk about issues of shared interest. We will keep you posted of upcoming events. The 5th Cape Town Wiki Meetup will take place on Sunday, 4 May at 11:00 at Truth Coffee<http://www.truthcoffee.com/>, 36 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town. More information about the meet up can be found here<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Cape_Town#5th_Cape_Town_Meet…>. Everyone is welcome to attend. *Wikimania 2015* We are very excited about our bid for Wikimania 2015<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015_bids/Cape_Town>. We expect the bid committee to make its final decision in April! *Wiki Indaba* The first ever gathering of African Wikipedians for Africa<http://wikiindaba.net/index.php?title=Main_Page>will be held in Johannesburg in June. Scholarship applications <http://wikiindaba.net/index.php?title=Main_Page/Attendance>can be made online. This conference is the first step towards the establishment of African co-operative structures and organs made up of Wikimedia Chapters, Wikimedians and mission aligned thematic organisations. *Wiki Loves Monuments & Others* September is Heritage month and the kick-off of Wiki Loves Monuments 2014. We look forward to increased participation and number of submissions this year. WMZA is also investigating the feasibility of a Wiki Loves Wildlife competition and, in collaboration with other Chapters, a Wiki Loves Earth competition. We are also proud to announce our new partner, Western Cape Heritage, who have come on board to promote participation from the Western Cape. We look forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship with this new partner. *Chapters Conference - Germany, April 2014* Douglas Scott, Theresa Hume and David Richfield will be representing WMZA at the Chapters Conference in Germany during the first weekend of April. *GLAM* As a pilot project for the GLAM initiative, we have approached the National Archives in Pretoria to discuss a possible collaboration which will see the digitisation of their libraries onto Wikipedia. *WikiXhosa* Unfortunately despite numerous attempts, Wikimedia ZA has not had much success with activating Xhosa language Wikipedia. As such, activation activities have - for the foreseeable future - been put on hold to free up more time and resources to focus on other projects. If you, or anyone you know is interested in promoting Wikipedia Xhosa language, or any other African language Wikipedia, then please let us know. *WikiZero* Have you heard about the Sinenjongo High School success story? They launched a campaign to get cell phone providers to provide South Africa with free access to Wikipedia <http://wikimedia.org.za/wiki/Main_Page> for research purposes. MTN has heard their call and started providing free access to all its subscribers. We are very excited about what this means for the learners of Sinenjongo and will be meeting them at the end of April to discuss the way forward. So that's it from us for now. Remember to like our Facebook pages so that you can get up to date information! Happy Editing! *The Wikimedia ZA Team* *Dumisani Ndubane, Maarten Deneckere, David Richfield, Douglas Scott, Bobby Shabangu, Isla Haddow-Flood and Theresa Hume*

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WikimediaZA April 2014