[Wikimedia Chapters Reports] Chapter Report WMDE June 2010

[Pavel Richter]

Dear Chapters,

please find below the chapter report of Wikimedia Germany for June 2010.

Dear friends of free knowledge,

=== School project ===

At the end of June the deadline for application for consultants for the
Wikipedia-school project closed. Among many interesting and dedicated
applications we also received offers for support from teachers, scientists
and mediaculturecentres. To prepare selected candidates for their tasks we
have invited them from the 23th-25th of July to Essen (at the Linuxhotel).
During this summer-camp [1] we are going to develop standardized schooling
and the necessary material for the coming workshops. In order to be able to
start the first workshops with the new consultants directly after the summer
holidays, we started and intensified contact with the media centers and
media consultants.

Additionally we prepared a workshop at the Berlin Lessing-Grammar School.
There we will communication about the correct and critical handling of text
with 30 pupils on the 5th of July using Wikipedia as an example. The
workshop will be accompanied by a camera team of the RBB.

=== Zedler-Medal 2010 ===

In July the first meetings and talks with partners and potential supporters
occurred. In cooperation with publishing company Spektrum der Wissenschaft
("Spectrum of Science") and the Academy of Science and the Literature Mainz,
Wikimedia Germany is going to increase the dedication to the Zedler-Medal
[2] this year. Concept, targets and target-group were partly modified and
the competition expanded by a few aspects: Due to the Year of Science 2010
Wikimedia will offer a special prize for the topic "Future of Energy" [3]
additional to the awards for natural-science and humanities. In addition to
articles another special prize will be offered for outstanding photos or
graphics, which illustrate an insufficient article in the German Wikipedia.

The competition is about to begin on the 15th of July and will end on the
30th of September. The Award-ceremony will occur in November in Frankfurt in
context of the Wikipedia Academy.

This year we want to increase including members and community in planning
and organization and have asked for concrete help [4] in a few points. We
are especially happy to present David Ludwig, a member of many years and
winner of the Medal 2009, as a member of the jury.

At the moment we are looking for cooperation with partners, which will help
us with the event, for example sponsoring the award-money, donation of
material prizes or helping us with covering the costs of the event.

=== Wikipedia Academy 2010 ===

Also the preparations for the Wikipedia academy, which will occur in
November 2010, is taking more and more shape. The key context of this year's
event is the Year of Science 2010 "Future of Energy". Central purpose of
this conference will be an exchange of concepts about knowledge-use and
communication as well as a discussion about the question of broad effect
versus scientific accuracy in online-projects such as Wikipedia. Among
others the main aim of the academy is the increase of public awareness for
the societal relevant topic-complex "Future of Energy" as well as the
retrieval of further qualified Wikipedia authors, lecturers and editors for
the topic of energy.

For the sake of further development the dialogue between Science and
Wikipedia, we will include experiences from projects such as "Renewable
resources in Wikipedia" and intensify contact to external experts. In
context of the Academy the starting signal for the network "Trust lecturers
for free knowledge" in German grammar schools.

We chose Frankfurt as venue for this event, the search for adequate
conference rooms and cooperation-partners will be continued in July.

=== Skillshare ===

During the first weekend in June the Community-event "Skillshare" [5]
occurred in Lüneburg, which was also supported by Wikimedia Germany, during
which multiple members offered workshops. The atmosphere was as good as the
organizations, the workshops were excellently prepared and the feedback from
the community was very good.

=== Board of directors-meeting ===

Mid-June the Board of directors-meeting occurred in Lage, about which were
reported in detail here [6]. The agency prepared this meeting, i.e. we
organized the accommodation and catering, ensured that the equipment works
and much, much more. Yet again the CEO accepted the invitation by the board
of directors and took part.

=== Lobbying ===

It is more and more noticeable: the new Enquete-commission "Internet and
digital society" [7] led to an clear increase in interest of the political
parties in regards to net politic topics. Also Wikimedia Germany is sought
of as contact person, as a result I was invited in June to a talk with
members of the Bundestag (Lars Klingbeil [8] (SPD), Sylvia Canel [9] (FDP)
and me were invited to a "net politics dialogue" with the Green party.
During such meetings I mention the school-project as well as questions about
copyrights. In order to be better able to show our position in future,
Mathias is currently working, in context of the Compass 2020, on a series of
position-papers about for us important political questions, which then can
be communicated to the responsible decision makers.

=== Third Basket ===

End of June the Federal Ministry of Justice started the hearing of the Third
Basked about copyrights, among other things it is concerned with the
ancillary copyright for publishers. The coming hearings will be concerned
about Open Access and Orphan Works. Wikimedia Germany is invited to these
hearings and will take part. This is the beginning of a very long process.

=== Open Government Data ===

On the 17th of June occurred in the Ministry of Economics of Niedersachsen a
conference of task group about "Open Government Data", in which Mathias took
part. The Ministry is at the beginning of a process if, how and which data
of the Ministry can be published and which benefits it would bring for the
land.

=== Free Catalogue-data ===

The library of the RWTH Aachen is now also a member of the growing circle of
libraries which offer free access to their catalogue (License CCO) [10].

=== Wikisource ===

As mentioned in last month's report, we are very happy, that the
digitization of the book "Funny natural history or zoologia Comica, which is
an accurate description of all in this book occurring animals of the world
with 86 accurate illustrations" [11] by Franz Bonn from 1877 has now
arrived: Natural science; with pretty but not too serious illustrations.

With this, five books of this authors are now available by Wikisource in
fully corrected versions: "The funny natural history" from 18772 of which
the image/text site about "Vampyr" [12] should be mentioned and the sequel
second book "Funny Botany and Geology" [13] in second edition of 1880.
Additionally writings "To modern education" [14] of 1836, "Laypeople-
scientific Lecture by Dr. Sulphurius about School and education" [16] from
1880 and "laypeople-scientific lecture about Chemistry by Dr. Sulphurius" of
1882 [16].

It took long until the delivery of the in two volumes coming book
"Fantasypiece in Callot's manner" [17], which E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote between
1814-15: Ordered in January, the CD finally arrived in June. By now the PDFs
of this 2nd edition of the work from 1819 to regeneration and editing has
started. Who wants to help and has time to, is invited to help editing.

The best for the end! Until a few days ago there was a gap in by Wikisource
published editions of "Children and Home fairy tales" of the Brothers Grimm;
in each case the first and second volume of the 1. (1812/15), 2. (1819) and
the 4. to 6. edition (1840,-43, -50 and -57) and the first volume of the 3.
edition of 1837 were available (List of all volumes: [18]) but the 2. volume
of the 3. edition were still missing. Paulis found this volume by chance in
the catalogue of the national library of Berlin and the Wikisource employees
did not hesitate long with the Digitalsat-request: This PDF will no slowly
suspended and is also waiting for keen helpers for the editing [19].

=== Themes in the Media ===

The press release [20] about the new user interface evoked little interest
by the press and almost solely caused news coverage by Online-media.

Another source for interest from the media was the deletion of pornographic
images from the Commons and the announcement of Wikimedia Foundation, or
rather the Board of Trustees to employ an external consultant, to develop a
suggestion about the handling of potential offensive materials. Questions of
the German press were mainly concerned with background information.

=== Press contacts ===

Catrin established in June contact to the Polish Embassy in Berlin, in order
to reach, in context of the Wikimania 2010 in Gdansk, the local German press
as well as Polish journalists. The embassy is willing to send out
invitations and press releases via their press-distributors and to provide
contacts to the media. Unfortunately the organisation of the Wikimania is
going slowly.

Contacts to the media such as "Brandeins" [21] and the "Neon-Magazin" [22]
led in June to intensive preparations and research for in-depth
Wikipedia-Portraits. Catrin is currently creating a distributor for
Wikipedia-authors, to have faster access to potential interview partners in
the future. Precondition is especially, the willingness to speak with
journalists, the publishing of photographs of the authors and naming of the
full name.

In context of the school-project Catrin started contact to the rbb [23] (a
public TV-channel) and is currently preparing a coverage for the evening
show. Denis Bartel will give a workshop in July at a Grammar-school in
Berlin, which will be accompanied by a camera team of the rbb. More
information and air-time will follow.

=== Wikimedium ===

In June preparations for the 3rd editions started, which will be published
in August. Currently Catrin is collecting ideas for editorial topics. Due to
a cooperation with the host of the Science Berlin 2010 [24] the contents
will be expanded and for the next edition are, for the first, external
articles planned. Additionally Catrin is in negotiations with the print
office, to increase the length of the wikimedium by 2-4 sites and to double
circulation from 5.000 to 10.000. Since the print office is offering the
newspaper for free, we hope to extent this engagement.

=== Knowledge in Clip format ===

The realization and cooperation with the Berlin Fenster GmbH (a journey TV
in trains) had to be delayed, because license- and tax related issues about
the use of Wikipedia contents, the compliance of licensing and the
integration of Donation-appeals took more time than anticipated. From the
beginning of July the Knowledge-clips should be shown in Berlin's
underground-trains. With careful preparation and development of written
contracts with potential (media-) partners Catrin will (hopefully) be able
to achieve future cooperation faster.

Further talks with media partners are followed up annually and are searched
among other things project related. For example is Catrin currently
searching for another media partner in addition to the Spectrum Publisher of
Science. For this there will be talks in July with the Hessisch Radio and
The Frankfurter Rundschau.

=== Festschrift ===

Due to encouragement by Marcus Cyron [25] (Wikipedia-author and member) an
anniversary writing was created. Ideas, concepts and writing was supplied by
Marcus Cyron and Catrin printed in cooperation with PediaPress 25 copies. In
July we will report who received them- we don't want to spoil the surprise
:) In context of Compass 2010 are the following arrangements in the area PR
still to be taken care of:

The information leaflets for Wikimedia Commons, Wikisource and Wikiversity
are in the final stages: Texts are almost finished and the layouts are
integrated or rather adjusted, shortened and supplied with graphs and
images. Individual Community-members helped Catrin with the development of
texts and layouts. In the third quartile the production of the information
leaflets is meant to be finished for all 10 Wikimedia-projects.

Due to the 10. anniversary of Wikipedia next Year the Club plans to publish
a Wikipedia book. In context of the book project first preparations,
research and talks with wikipedians have started. The first contents were
collected, contact to potential publishers was picked up and further working
steps were defined. Further details can be found in the next report.

=== Members ===

In the course of June we recruited 20 new members, of which applied for
active- and 17 for sponsoring membership. Unfortunately we also received a
note of termination.

On the 2. of June all member were contacted by mail who pay their fees via
bill or transfer: if you did not receive a mail from us, look maybe in your
spam file or give us your new email address (office at wikimedia.de).

Also contacted (25th of June) were all members who pay via direct debit: we
will collect all member fees on the 5th of July for the year 2010. Also this
time the appeal: If your bank connection has change since last year please
let us now via email (also office at wikimedia.de).

=== Community Budget ===

We enabled Martin Zeise to travel to Belgrade: There he took part in the 4th
regional Wikimedia conference Western Balkan, which was held on the 5th and
6th of June by Wikimedia Serbia. He was one of 25 Wikipedians which took
part, who mostly arrived from Serbia. About the contents and topics of the
conference are a few citations from Martins report (obviously with his
consent):

There was a quickly developed German-Polish-Hungarian presentation about
sighted versions, which are not yet integrated in the Serbian Wikipedia. The
lecturers however, were not able to convince the locals about the usefulness
of this activity, rather it was perceived as a "scheme aimed to create
work".

Further key points were lectures and discussions about the critical handling
of sources using the "Prophecy of Kremna" [26] as an example, the meaning of
the work of stewards for the smaller Wikipedias, censorship within Wikipedia
(on the basis of image deletion from Jimbo Wales) as well as the future of
Wikipedia in general. Here the German Wikipedia was used as an example for a
"saturated Wikipedia" with a constant number of active, alternatively very
active users, or rather new articles, but with reducing number of new users.

The presentation and discussion about guidelines about allocation of money
from the Community-Budget was topic of a workshop, which Henriette held on
the 4th of June at the "Skillshare" conference: 18, mainly Wikipedians, were
not only interested in the topic, but also had lively discussions, good
suggestions & ideas and criticized when they thought it to be necessary. We
want to thank every participants for their valuable input, which will be
integrated in the new versions of the guidelines.

=== Literature scholarship ===

Last month we were able to celebrate a nice anniversary with the thousands
article, meanwhile the "daily trade" continued processing new applications
but in parallel also works on the announce relaunch are done. To not get
ahead of ourselves, there won't be further details on this now, but more
information will be given during the next month.

=== From the engine room ===

Since the beginning of June an external IT-provider is handling the
IT-infrastructure in our office. To begin with this is handling simple
things such as a standardized Backup-solution or a better telephone-system,
etc.

The area development we had some advances: the extension to display
TIFF-images is now in the review stage by members of foundation, it seems
that the extension might soon be available to Wikimedia Wikis. Further
Daniel Kinzler implemented a first prototype of the extension to integrate
bibliographic data ("DataTransclusion"). Different solutions to service the
data are still discussed.

The integration of external data can be tested in our new prototype-Wiki:
 here [27] a short text, this site [28] offers an insight about how this is
meant to be used when it is finished. The TIFF-extension is also active in
this Wiki, as demonstration this example [29] is used.

At the end of the months we were hosts of the third Wiki4Enterprise-meeting.
These MediaWiki-user meetings are concerned with the exchange of experience
and Know-How between companies and institutions, which use Wikis.

=== Fundraising ===

June was shaped by numerous small but important activities and meetings.

On the 11th of June there has been a meeting between representatives of
Wikimedia Germany and the German central institution of the Blind in
Leipzig. During this meeting the possible cooperation to improve the access
of blind and visually impaired to Wikipedia was discussed. Among others the
topic was the creation of the article of the day as podcast as well as the
related technical issues. Further there have been talks about the campaign
"Wikipedia to listen", which is meant to be the beginning of a long-term
collaboration as a fundraising campaign. However, this campaign is not to
start until next year.

Further multiple meeting with fundraising agencies and providers of donated
software was held. The decision about cooperation as well as selection of
donated software will take place in July.

Finally three fund-raising activities are to be mentioned. Firstly, soon an
information campaign for German donors of the Wikimedia Foundation will
start. Aim of this is inform about activities of Wikimedia Germany and in a
second step the gaining and binding of these donors. For this Till Mletzko
is in contact with Rand Montoya, the responsible fundraiser for Wikimedia
Foundation. Secondly the selected donors for Wikimedium were contacted. With
this activity "Faces behind Wikipedia" we want to enable donors to tell
their story. This possibility will be expanded in the future. Last but not
least the we have to mention the successfully running funding
membership-campaign. Through this 16 new funding members could be gained
until the end of June.

The next report will be published on the 2nd of August 2010.

Links:

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia-Schulprojekt/Sommercamp
[2]
http://blog.wikimedia.de/2010/06/14/erste-informationen-zur-verleihung-der-z
edler-medaille-2010/
[3] http://www.zukunft-der-energie.de/
[4]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Zedler-Medaille_2010#Einbindung_von_Community
_und_Vereinsmitgliedern
[5] http://www.skillshare.eu/
[6]
http://blog.wikimedia.de/2010/06/21/die-posaunen-von-lage-oder-die-klausur-i
m-teutoburger-wald/
[7] http://www.bundestag.de/internetenquete/
[8] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Klingbeil
[9] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Canel
[10] http://www.bth.rwth-aachen.de/offbibdat.html
[11]
http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Lustige_Naturgeschichte_oder_Zoologia_comica
[12]
http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Seite:Lustige_Naturgeschichte_oder_Zoologia_co
mica.djvu/20
[13] http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Lustige_Botanik_und_Mineralogie
[14] http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Zur_modernen_P%C3%A4dagogik
[15]
http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Popul%C3%A4r-wissenschaftlicher_Vortrag_des_Dr
._Sulphurius_%C3%BCber_Schule_und_Erziehung
[16]
http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Popul%C3%A4r-wissenschaftlicher_Vortrag_%C3%BC
ber_Chemie_von_Dr._Sulphurius
[17]
http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Fantasiest%C3%BCcke_in_Callot%E2%80%99s_Manier
[18] http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Kinder-_und_Hausm%C3%A4rchen
[19]
http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Kinder-_und_Hausm%C3%A4rchen_Band_2_(1837)
[20]
http://wikimedia.de/fileadmin/wiki/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/PM-Vector.pdf
[21] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_eins
[22] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neon_%28Zeitschrift%29
[23] http://www.rbb-online.de/abendschau/index.html
[24] http://www.wissenschaftberlin2010.de/
[25] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Marcus_Cyron
[26] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophecy_from_Kremna
[27]
http://prototype.wikimedia.org/wmde-sandbox-1/Wikipedia:DataTransclusion
[28] http://prototype.wikimedia.org/wmde-sandbox-1/Ameisenigel#Literatur
[29] http://prototype.wikimedia.org/wmde-sandbox-1/Datei:Multipage.tiff


Kind regards, / Mit freundlichen Grüßen,

Pavel Richter
Executive Director
-------------------------------------
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Eisenacher Straße 2
10777 Berlin

Telefon 030 - 219 158 26-0
www.wikimedia.de

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