[Wikimedia Chapters Reports] WM-IT chapter report January-June 2010
Federico Leva (Nemo)
nemowiki at gmail.com
Mon Jul 19 14:38:51 UTC 2010
Excuse me if I use HTML, I hope it won't bother you too much but there
are lots of links. You can find the issue online, as always:
http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Wikimedia_news/numero_29/en
_________________________________________
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/File:Wikimedia_news1.png>
*W i K i M e D i A N e W s* no. 29 - July 19, 2010
Official bulletin from Wikimedia Italia Association.
TOC
* 1 Editorial <#Editorial>
* 2 What happened during last months <#What_happened_during_last_months>
* 3 Special on Digital Freedoms Festival
<#Special_on_Digital_Freedoms_Festival>
o 3.1 Events <#Events>
* 4 What will happen next months <#What_will_happen_next_months>
* 5 News from our groups <#News_from_our_groups>
o 5.1 Wikimedia Roma <#Wikimedia_Roma>
+ 5.1.1 New premises for Wikimedia Italia!
<#New_premises_for_Wikimedia_Italia.21>
o 5.2 GLAM <#GLAM>
* 6 News from our projects <#News_from_our_projects>
o 6.1 News from Biblioteca <#News_from_Biblioteca>
o 6.2 News from Wiki at Home <#News_from_Wiki.40Home>
+ 6.2.1 We need volunteers <#We_need_volunteers>
* 7 News from WMF projects <#News_from_WMF_projects>
* 8 News from the Board <#News_from_the_Board>
* 9 Monthly strip <#Monthly_strip>
* 10 Featured Wikimedian/Picture of the month
<#Featured_Wikimedian.2FPicture_of_the_month>
Editorial
After a heated internal debate about the reasons and motives that we
have and led to the creation of Wikimedia Italia, we decided - better:
on Frieda's suggestion I decided - to ask directly to our members, and
generally to those who would care to respond, what role WMI should have
in their opinion.
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/File:Conosci_wmi.png>
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/File:Conosci_wmi.png>
Do you know WMI?
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/File:Wikimediaitalia_e.png>
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/File:Wikimediaitalia_e.png>
What is Wikimedia Italia?
From the questionnaire it seems evident that Wikimedia Italy has a
problem of identity. Most respondents, while claiming to know us, have
in fact a wrong idea of the role of WMI: many of them confuse us with
WMF or the alleged "maintainers of Wikipedia". Few really know who we
are and cite our aim correctly, /to spread free culture/- even if they
often think we simply promote wiki projects, and even among these people
our role is not always clear and understood.
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/File:Sei_iscritto_ad_un_progetto.png>
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/File:Sei_iscritto_ad_un_progetto.png>
Do you participate to a wiki project?
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/File:Wmf_e.png>
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/File:Wmf_e.png>
WMF is?
On the one hand we act as WMF, collecting donations through the
sitenotice - by the way someone thinks it is an abuse of power, on the
other hand we are not doing the things that the foundation should do but
did not always, first of all protection from all legal issues related to
Wikipedia, and their clarification.
Proposed changes to our action could be divided into two categories:
* changes not acceptable, because we don't want or cannot put them
into practice. We should make an effort to explain why we cannot
nor want to have direct responsibility in Wikipedia, and why we
want to emphasize that we are something different and distinct
from Wikipedia.
* changes potentially acceptable, or proposals we already take care
of and that maybe nobody knows.
I will present a more detailed version of the result of the survey in
September: for the time being, here there is a brief annotated list of
some of the proposals that I believe fall under the second category.
1. Keep media relations. We are already moving in this area, but we
could obviously do more to improve our image.
2. Lobbying. Having more visibility, see above, would allow us to
exert some political pressure.
3. Relations with the "civil society". Establish relationships with
cultural institutions, authors, publishers and so on. We are
already doing it, or at least we try, but it does not seem this is
well known.
4. Distributed presence. Our new base in Rome seems a step in this
direction.
5. Use resources to free content (digitizing). We are talking about
this at this very time: as soon as we'll have something concrete
we will publicize it.
6. Create a DVD of Wikipedia. Apart from the traditional problem of
finding a publisher, now we have a further problem: the use of the
logo, and the associated economic agreements, must be agreed
directly with Wikimedia Foundation.
DracoRoboter <http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Utente:DracoRoboter>
What happened during last months
Note: all links are in Italian
* January
o Aubrey and Laurentius teached Tuscany librarians about
Wikipedia and Progetto Comuni. See #GLAM.
o Massimiliano Navacchia took part in Accessibility e CMS Camp
2010 in Bologna.
* February
o VirtualSkiz made a report during the event Sentieri Digitali
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Sentieri_Digitali>.
o Laurentius took part in Caffè-Scienza /From Free Software to
Wikipedia: collaborating in a network
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Dal_software_libero_a_Wikipedia:_collaborare_in_rete>/.
o Roman members organized a WikiTrip
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/it:Wikipedia:Raduni/Roma_WikiGita_febbraio_2010>
to Anzio and Landing Museum.
* March
o LaPizia, supported by Marcok, Cotton and Jaakko, teached two
lessons to present Wikipedia at the Faculty of Economics,
University Ca 'Foscari, at the kind invitation of Professor
Micelli: report of the day
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Associazione:Venezia_2010>.
MarcoK <http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Utente:Marcok>
reports:
+ On Tuesday, March 2, 2010, we were invited - through
"LaPizia
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/it:Utente:LaPizia>"
a.k.a. Annalety - to cooperate with the Faculty of
Economics Ca' Foscari in Venice for two lectures held
by professor Stefano Micelli (Dept. of Economics and
Management) and Alessandro De Rossi (researcher).
Alessandro follows us since long ago, and he made one
of the first studies on the most active Wikipedians
(some of us have even met him in person at our
events). In addition to the LaPizia there were Marcok,
Cotton and Jaakko. After a general introduction about
the tools of Web 2.0 by Alessandro, Anna overviewed
Wikipedia, then gave way to many students' questions
to which everyone of us responded in turn. 60 students
participated overall (40 in the first class and 20 in
the second), I think all from the M.Sc. courses in
Economics. Apart from the interest in the subject (by
teacher and students) we however noticed that while
everyone knew and used Wikipedia, only one in 60
college students had changed (once and as an
anonymous) a Wikipedia article, while at least 30% of
them did not even know that the contents could be
altered, also without being registered. This
unexpected result can be attributed at least in part -
according to Professor Micelli - to our "assuming"
Wikipedia rules for granted by everyone. Only a small
proportion of students reported that they found errors
on Wikipedia, mostly spelling-related (and we know
that large or small errors there are in all entries of
Wikipedia and all other encyclopedias). A student made
the interesting observation, interesting that the main
page does not give much importance to the fact that
the contents of the Encyclopedia are changeable, so
that he did not realize it. Overall the day was
interesting and useful.
o Frieda teached in Bocconi University in the course Strategy
and governance of cultural organizzations, about Wikipedia
business model. Here
<http://www.slideshare.net/ubifrieda/the-wikipedia-model-3376984>
the slides (in English).
o Laurentius and IgnLig took part to a meeting organized by
Firenze Linux User Group Here
<http://www.slideshare.net/ignazio71/wikipmediaefirenze-090714053012-phpapp02-3363042>
the slides.
o General assembly of Wikimedia Italia in Pistoia (public page
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/it:Wikipedia:Raduni/Pistoia_2010_Assemblea_WMI>):
2009 financial report
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Bilancio_consuntivo_2009>
and 2010 budget
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Bilancio_preventivo_2010>
were approved.
o March 26th, Torino: international meeting Extracting Value
From Public Sector Information: Legal Framework and
Regional Policies at Aula Magna and Aula Allara of the
Rectorate of the University, in the framework of EVPSI
project
<http://www.epsiplatform.eu/news/news/evpsi_public_launch>.
.mau. took part to the afternoon session (Focus on Italy)
with a speech "Obstacles to Accessing and Re-using (Italian)
Cultural PSI on Wikipedia", listing the problems Wikipedia
faces in trying to reuse public data, in coping with Italian
copyright laws and in pushing for free licenses. English
abstract
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/File:EVSPI-abstract-eng.odt>
and slide
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/File:EVPSI-slide-eng.odp>
here.
o Marcok took part in meeting Didattica aperta - Libero
accesso a software e saperi nella Scuola e nell'Università
(Open education - free access to software and knowledge at
school and university) with a poster.
* May
o May 7th: CristianCantoro took part in Internet Ergo Sum,
here in depth <http://blog.popolis.it/7maggio2010/>, talking
about Wikipedia in a high school in Leno (Brescia): themes
are Wikipedia and freedom in the Net, which most students
found interesting. With him Guido Nardo, former Facebook's
developer and social network specialist, presenting social
networks e talking about the problem with the use of
Facebook and privacy on the Internet. In the afternoon the
workshop on Wikipedia had a good success among students,
even if it was optional; it was structured as a tutorial for
the prospective editors.
o Wikimedia Italia organized Festival delle Libertà Digitali
(see next section)
o Schio (VI): Cotton presented Wikipedia, WMI and the
Wikimedia projects in a meeting organized by /I Mercoledì
della Piazza Telematica/, a department of Informagiovani at
the communality of Schio. The meeting, attended by an
audience of elderly, confirmed that in that demographics
there is a lot of room to increase knowledge and
participation to Wikimedia projects.
* June
o musicamp (Laurentius) (report
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/MusiCamp>)
o CristianCantoro took part to the first IULM BarCamp;
unfortunately its speech could not be delivered. He was
however conctacted for an interview broadcasted on Radio24
and made by the students of the Master in Radio
Communication at IULM.
o Cotton and La Pizia took part with a small Wikimedia booth
to /No Skei Day/ at San Vito di Leguzzano (VI), a yearly
meeting based on free exchanges of goods and knowledge. Even
if the town is very small, we had some success in giving out
information and distributing brochures and Wikimedia cards.
Special on Digital Freedoms Festival
From 10 to 16 May 2010, the association organized the second Digital
Freedoms Festival <http://libertadigitali.org> (FDLD, for "Festival
delle libertà digitali") in Milan entitled "Milan frees all". Events
were numerous and ranged from comics to photo via OpenAccess and free
games.
The festival was born as a container for different events with a common
goal: bringing people and an entire city to the issues of digital
freedom, free licenses and sharing of knowledge.
Certainly the festival was an opportunity for growth for the
association, which was able to test his strength on a difficult location
like Milan: results, despite a relatively low public participation in
general, have been useful to increase our contacts with other
associations with whom we share goals and philosophy.
The most successful events will be replicated in the future.
Events
May 10
* Sharing, science, common good
<http://libertadigitali.org/eventi/condivisione-scienza-bene-comune>:
a meeting where experts from Open Access, academy and teachers
debated.
* SGRUNT! Paper and bits for open culture
<http://libertadigitali.org/eventi/sgrunt-carta-e-bit-al-servizio-dellopen-culture>:
a panel discussion on comics, authors and the comparison between
"paper" and "network" media.
May 11
Open&Crowd, supplementary gears
<http://libertadigitali.org/eventi/open-crowd-le-marce-in-piu>
May 12
fotoMIgira <http://libertadigitali.org/eventi/fotomigira>: look at Milan
from behind a lens, communicating with other passionate photographers,
to discover that encyclopedias have a photographic soul.
May 13
Open Web - Una serata al collegio di Milano
<http://libertadigitali.org/eventi/open-web-una-sera-al-collegio-di-milano>:
Wikipedia, la libertà e la rete: quanto è libera la rete? Siamo
diventati più responsabili nel nostro approccio alla rete dalla nascita
del web 2.0 ad oggi? Wikimedia Italia e Google incontrano i ragazzi del
Collegio di Milano.
May 14
GGDMilano#12 - Ignite: How to
<http://libertadigitali.org/eventi/girl-geek-dinner-milano-12-howto>:
GGDs (Geek Girls Dinners) are dinners or meetings aimed at women who are
passionate about technology, Internet and new media. Twelfth Milan
dinner was an "Ignite", where speakers presented their "How to", that is
how to do something particularly "geek".
May 15
GNUfun - Milano frees music
<http://libertadigitali.org/eventi/gnufun-milano-libera-la-musica>:
Saturday with free music, in collaboration with GNUFunk: openday @ "Kubi
studio" (Via Carlo Botta, 13) from 15:00 and concert +dj-set with fre
music @ "Le trottoir alla Darsena" (Piazza XXIV Maggio, 1)
May 16
OpenGamingCamp - Milano frees games
<http://libertadigitali.org/eventi/opengamingcamp-milano-libera-i-giochi>:
the fun side of freedom: a BarCamp, that is a non-conference where
anyone can "get in the chair", propose a topic and talk to others,
accompanied by free games tournaments.
Throughout the event, WikiWall - a Wikipedia page at Triennale
<http://libertadigitali.org/eventi/wikiwall-una-pagina-di-wikipedia-in-triennale>:
an installation at the Triennale similar to a Wikipedia page: people can
write, edit or attack photos to tell what the digital freedom is.
What will happen next months
* in September (tentative location: Bologna) we'll have our annual
meeting.
News from our groups
Wikimedia Roma
New premises for Wikimedia Italia!
Wikimedia Italy will soon have a physical location. Offices, large
enough to host some workshops and a dozen workstations, are in Rome, via
Grotta di Gregna 27 (Google map
<http://maps.google.it/maps?q=41.913514,12.564609&num=1&sll=41.819915,12.440528&sspn=0.006295,0.006295&ie=UTF8&ll=41.913591,12.564669&spn=0.002331,0.002411&z=19&layer=c&cbll=41.913576,12.564601&panoid=9dlTb7_ntyOO7iEyPH9XbA&cbp=12,68.01,,0,-5.03>).
The premises are the result of an agreement between the Department of
Culture of the Municipality of Rome, the Libraries of the City of Rome
and the association Liber Liber <http://www.liberliber.it/>. The planned
activities consist in setting up three laboratories: video editing,
e-book digitizing/layout and audio editing for the creation of
audiobooks. We also expect to participate in European calls, for example
to promote the Open Alexandria <http://www.openalexandria.org/>, and
others that may be proposed by the most active volunteers of Wikimedia
Italy and Liber Liber.
Premises will also be used to host civil service volunteers and interns,
to organize courses and cultural events, in collaboration with the
adjacent library "Vaccheria Nardi", who has large rooms with multimedia
stations, area conferences, and of course reading rooms (the structure
as a whole has three buildings).
Opening date is still uncertain. Some details remain to be defined
(collection of certificates of conformity of equipment, testing
elevators, etc.), and we are looking for sponsors for the setting up of
laboratories. We hope to start before the end of August, even with few
workstations and without the laboratories. Anyone interested in
collaborating is invited to contact Marco Calvo
<http://www.marcocalvo.it/>.
GLAM
The WMI GLAM committee, through Aubrey and Laurentius, organized two
workshops in collaboration with Regione Toscana. The workshops (each one
during a day) were aimed to teach two different groups of librarians
from Tuscany regions how to edit and create article in Wikipedia. The
objective of the event s were to illustrate breifly how Wikipedia works
and how articles can be created: especially, librarians were interested
in municipality and cultural heritage articles, as well as articles
dedicated to libraries. The workshops partially touched also Commons and
Wikisource, as well as copyright issues.
The feedback from participants has been positive, though several issues
were raised by the low level of computer skills of many participants, as
well as inexperience from speakers in explaining clearly and linearly
Wikipedia basics. At the end of the day, the projects worked as a useful
pilot: it is hoped to have the possibility to organize other similar
events to build a stable and fruitful relationships with librarians and
other GLAM professionals.
News from our projects
News from Biblioteca
We started System Reference Document 3.5 Project
<http://biblioteca.wikimedia.it/wiki/Progetto:SRD>, together with 5°
clone <http://www.5clone.com/>, group whose purpose is to promote
intelligent games (in particular, role games).
The project intends to translate into Italia the correspondent document
<http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/srd35> of Wizards of
the Coast <http://www.wizards.com/>, which will be released under a Open
Gaming License <http://www.wizards.com/d20/files/v35/Legal.rtf>.
News from Wiki at Home <http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Wiki@Home>
Many news from Wiki at Home: many interviews were completed, among them the
one with Umberto Eco (English version
<http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/Intervista_a_Umberto_Eco/Traduzione>) made
by Aubrey <http://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Utente:Aubrey> and taken up by
some bloggers and the famous online magazine Punto Informatico
<http://punto-informatico.it/2892321/PI/Commenti/contrappunti-gogol-non-problema.aspx>.
We also repory the completion of the interview with Patrizio Roversi
<http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrizio_Roversi> by Capsicum
<http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Capsicum>. Finally, Monday, June
28, 2010 the referent of the project, CristianCantoro
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Utente:CristianCantoro>, attended a
meeting at the School of Journalism "Walter Tobagi"
<http://www.giornalismo.unimi.it> at University of Milan to present
Wikimedia Italy, the world of Creative Commons licenses and of course
Wiki at Home project.
We need volunteers
Wiki at Home staff needs willing young people of all ages to unwind
interviews, make transcripts, fix typos, create new interviews and
material for the presentation of the project. For more information
please write at the contact for the project, CristianCantoro
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Utente:CristianCantoro>, at the
address: kikkocristian(presso)
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/File:Presso.svg>gmail.com.
News from WMF projects
* *Wikibooks*: DynamicPageList extension
<http://mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:DynamicPageList_%28Wikimedia%29>
is now active: now automation of shelves
<http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Biblioteca> may start.
* *Wikinotizie*: Published an intervew to Umberto Eco
<http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/Intervista_a_Umberto_Eco>, see above
<#News_from_Wiki.40Home>.
* *Wikiquote*: Fazio degli Uberti
<http://it.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fazio_degli_Uberti> is our 10,000th
article, but it.wikiquote is no more the second local version with
respect to number of articles for the first time since November
2007. pl.wikiquote had an acceleration that lead them to overtake us.
* *Wikisource*:
o Finished the joining of headers
<http://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Bar/Archivio/2010.03#E.27_finita.21_Le_vecchie_intestazioni_sono_orfane.21>
in {{Heading Template
<http://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Template:Intestazione>}}.
o Reached 45,000 pages
<http://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Bar/Archivio/2010.04#45.000>,
after automatic addition (between February and April)
through {{Count pages Template
<http://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Template:Conteggio_pagine>}})
of invisible links in 30K pages containing just templates
and therefore were not counted
<http://mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Using_custom_namespaces#Content_namespaces>
even if they contained "good" stuff, falsifying statistics
<http://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Bar/Archivio/2010.02#Mistero_svelato:_Speciale:Statistiche>
(after wikt:en:Template:count page
<http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/en:Template:count_page>).
o Alex Brollo
<http://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Utente:Alex_brollo> was
elected sysop.
* *Wikiversity*: WHacko
<http://it.wikiversity.org/wiki/Utente:WHacko> was elected sysop:
now we have 3 sysops.
* *Wiktionary*: Limonadis
<http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Utente:Limonadis> was elected
sysop: now we have 9 sysops. For the first time in years,
Wiktionary has more registered users than Wikiquote (14,300 vs
14,200 on July 14), becoming thus the first Italian Wikimedia
project besides Wikipedia. Looking at active users in the last
month (roughly 60 and 160 respectively) Wikiquote remains the
first among the sister projects.
* *Wikipedia*:
o January: Welcome Project
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/it:Progetto:Coordinamento/Accoglienza>
for new users started.
o April: big controversy
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/it:Wikipedia:Bar/Discussioni/Enciclopedia_su_Facebook,_adesso_per_davvero>
about the "social pages" Facebook added, containg the text
of the relative voice of Wikipedia if it exists and a link
to the modification page. Some users were troubled that the
sentence «Conquer new fan of your cause or ideal by creating
a social page» could be seen regarding the contribution to
Wikipedia (against neutral point of view
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/it:Wikipedia:punto_di_vista_neutrale>),
and in general that only users not fit to Wikipedia could
come from Facebook. Two sysops resigned.
o May: another controversy
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/it:Wikipedia:Bar/Discussioni/Facebook,_lo_sapevo...>
(or better, a ForestFire
<http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/ForestFire>) starts about
Facebook groups which defame Wikipedia and urge users to
modify it towards a certain direction, and in general about
the perceived increase in organized groups of users that
alter consensus to impose their own point of view. A new
procedure has been adopted to value and if neceassary block
such group of users (called "programmatic users
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/it:Wikipedia:Bar/Discussioni/Blocchiamo_le_utenze_programmatiche%3F>",
that is irrecoverably altering consensus). The first
application of the new procedure blocked some users by
mistakes; the users were immediately unblocked by another
sysop, but a sysop was not confirmed and left the project,
while four other ones quit. The community put up an essay
about how to cope with so-called single-purpose users
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/it:Wikipedia:Utenza_monoscopo>,
re-orienting the issue.
o May-June: five new sysops were elected.
o June: The group rollbacker
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/it:Wikipedia:Rollbacker> was
created in it.wiki too. Bureaucrats assign people to this
group at their sole discretion, after a public but
non-advertised request and without voting. In the first
month 12 users were assigned to the group.
News from the Board
In June, Cristian Consonni succeeded to Nicola Izzo as Board member.
Monthly strip
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/File:Singloids-492eng.jpg>
Featured Wikimedian/Picture of the month
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/File:Wikimania_2010_portrait_22.jpg>
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/File:Wikimania_2010_portrait_22.jpg>
Aubrey <http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Utente:Aubrey> at Wikimania
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Editorial staff:
* Frieda Brioschi;
* Marco Chemello;
* Nemo (section "News from WMF projects")
* Aubrey (section "News from Biblioteca" and GLAM)
* Christian Cantoro (section "News from W at H" )
* .mau. (English version)
To contact the staff, write at: redazione at wikimedia.it or directly to
the editors:
* Frieda Brioschi - ubifrieda(presso)
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/File:Presso.svg>gmail.com
* CristianCantoro - kikkocristian(presso)
<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/File:Presso.svg>gmail.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Notice. This newsletter is exclusively intended for information about
Wikimedia Italia, both to its members and to the general public; as per
Art. 1, Comma 2, Legge 7 marzo 2001 no. 62, it is not an editorial product*
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