[Wikimedia Chapters Reports] Chapter Report WMDE May 2010

[Pavel Richter]

Dear friends of free knowledge,

== General Meeting ==

The annual general meeting of Wikimedia Germany took place in Berlin on May
8, 2010. Because we are organized as an association, the general meeting is
the highest committee of ruling. The current board gives an account for the
past year and is released, the executive reports about the main activities
of the past year, a new board is elected, and important petitions are
discussed and decided. The preparation and the work after the meeting was
our main focus in April and May. You can already find some information here
[1] and here [2], applications as well as the minutes of the meeting are on
our homepage [3].

== Berlin School of Economics and Law ==

Our fundraiser Till Mletzko and I were invited by Professor Bettina Hohn
from the Berlin School of Economics and Law. She occupies the Chair of
Public Management specialized on Business Management in the field of Public
and Non-profit Management. We had the opportunity to introduce and discuss
the work of Wikimedia Germany, the concept of fundraising and the focus on
our work to the students in two hours. Maybe we motivated a few students to
apply for an internship or as a working student, or even for a job at
Wikimedia Germany.

== School Project ==

We made a lot of progress on the school project. The opportunity to organize
two events in Brandenburg and one in Rhineland-Palatinate made it possible
again to inform teachers as well as students about Wikipedia and the use of
it for school purposes. With this in mind, we supported another training in
Brandenburg with the help of a spin doctor. The experiences we made are
particularly important for the forthcoming realization of the school
project. Furthermore, we established contacts with all federal states for
future purposes.

As we experienced the content of the school events being strongly requested,
we are convinced to predict a seminal development for the project. At the
moment, we are looking for potential referees from the Community (as it
could be read here [4]) to meet at a summer camp in order to organize and
expand the school project on a higher and wider level. More referees and
more events – that means we draw more attention to our concern within the
scope of secondary education. In the meantime, the respective description of
the project [5] was updated.

== Literature Scholarship ==

It was time to celebrate the literature scholarship this month: the genesis
of the thousandth article of the literature scholarship. Consistent with the
first article on literature scholarship, the last article was written by the
user Griensteidl, who - as a scholarship holder himself - was also
responsible for writing the very first article on the topic of literature
scholarship. The article on serenoa is one part of his project on palm
trees, which was made possible by his second literature scholarship.
Wikimedia Germany and all its authors who contributed to this great success
want to say thank you. We are looking forward to the next projects (“The Art
of the Ancient World” and “British Nobility”), and there are present
applications on the topics “Großpilze (German for fungi with a macroscopic
fruiting body) and “Bavarian Monuments of Art”. To the next thousand
articles, may they be written even faster!

== Renewable Resources ==

After a successful three years, the project “Renewable Resources in
Wikipedia” has come to an end at due date on April 30, 2010. This is the one
and only project financially supported by the public to establish a new
content-related subject on Wikipedia. The goal was to systematically prepare
and fix the current knowledge on the subject of renewable resources in the
German Wikipedia. The result of the cooperation of Wikimedia Germany, the
nova-Institute and the FNR (Agency for Renewable Resources) is satisfactory:
the aim was achieved, 557 tags were edited by either creating 434 new
articles or fundamentally updating them. 

However, there was a bitter pill to swallow: there was no chance to involve
external experts. Then again we are glad for the participation and
commitment of the Wkipedia-Community. The project team is confident that
active community members on this topic will push the further construction
and development in the field of “Renewable Resources”. In our opinion the
results of this projects will lay a great foundation.

== “Mitteldeutsche Medientage” ==

Matthias Schindler participated in the panel discussion of copyright issues
in the “Mitteldeutsche Medientage” (Event of Media Discussion in
Mid-Germany) in Leipzig on May 4, 2010. The event was well attended and
triggered a lively discussion.

=== Lex Wikipedia ===

You should memorize P/2273/18. In terms of this printed matter, the Israeli
Knesset is discussing the changes on national copyright issues, which should
make governmental and administrative documents available and appropriable to
the general public. Unfortunately the original concept has some unuseful
restrictions for Wikimedia - however, the Israeli press calls it “Lex
Wikipedia”.  If they are successful, Israel will be a role model for other
countries including Germany.

=== Standard Data ===

There is not that much progress at the German National Library after the
great release of bibliographical data by the hbz (the center for academic
libraries). After all, the German National Library has published a copy of
the standard data here [6], but it is not really clear what you are allowed
to do with this data. Further queries brought some clarity: you are not
allowed to do anything. However, there is some movement outside of the old
library scene, Open Knowledge Foundation has a new project called
“Bibliographica”[7].

=== Zedler Medal and Wikipedia Academy ===

After the Wikimedia Conference there are two big events coming up: the award
of the Zedler Medal [8] which is followed by the Wikipedia Academy [9]. We
discussed goals, target groups, and actions at the general meeting in teams,
and talked about proposals how to optimize both events. Participants of the
Academy should tackle the problem of theory and practice with Wikipedia; it
is themed by the Scientific Year “Future of Energy” [10]. The goal of the
Academy is to feature energy-related subjects in the encyclopedia Wikipedia
to reach a wide audience and to acquire a way to optimize the quality of
this area. Most likely the award of the Zedler Medal will take place at the
Academy, we are convinced that both events complete each other which will
fuse synergy effects.

Meetings with potential supporters and partners were already held,
additional meetings will follow the next weeks. In June there will be more
tangible results: concepts and drafts of the project, a schedule, and budget
projections will be developed and there will be the call for a proposal for
the Zedler Medal.

=== Topics in the Media ===

In early May, Jimmy Wales deleted pornographic pictures on Commons which
triggered a great interest by the press asking for background information
and queries. Interviews were mainly requested for the Foundation, they were
forwarded and coordinated.

=== Wikimedium ===

Wikimedium [11] was finished and produced at due date in early May and was
released at the general meeting in time. We gained a lot more subscribers by
the announcement and application on wikipedia.de. 

=== Knowledge in Form of a Clip ===

Further meetings with media partners and TV productions took place to
develop ideas and to find more partners for integrating Wikipedia contents
into newspaper, radio, and television. The executives planned an agreement,
a foundation for the cooperation, which is now checked for legal and tax
issues.

=== Grimme Online-Award ===

This year we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Grimme Online-Award. In
2004, the award went to Wikipedia and because of this we published an
article in the anniversary publication of the Alfred-Grimme-Institute
(Gesellschaft für Medien, Bildung und Kultur mbH) with a statement and a
picture of the first chairman Sebastian Moleski. It will be published at the
next presentation of awards on June 30, 2010.

=== Members ===

In May we gained four new members as well as we received four cancellations,
latter ones unfortunately without any reason. As the data base should be
reliable and up to date, we wrote to 17 members who had no valid e-mail
address or none at all. We want to use this as an informal call to all
members: in case your contact details change (mail or e-mail address, phone
number, banking details), please e-mail us to office at wikimedia.de. Thank
you!

=== Wikisource ===

We ordered a digitalized version at the Berlin State Library of the book:
„Lustige Naturgeschichte oder zoologia Comica: das ist eine genaue
Beschreibung aller in diesem Buche vorkommenden lebendigen Tiere der Welt
mit 86 naturgetreuen Abbildungen” (English: Funny Nature Stories or the
Zoologica Comica: A Detailed Description of Every Living Animal on Earth
Mentioned in this Book Including 86 Lifelike Images) by Franz Bonn written
in 1877. This book will be an excellent supplement to two other books by
Franz Bonn, which were already corrected and put on Wikisource [12].

=== Community ===

In terms of Community events, the last month was rather quiet: We were able
to make it possible for a participant to travel to a meeting of the
editorial office of Biology (you can find the impressive enumeration of all
detected, observed and specified species here [13]) and we granted a sum of
money for the editorial office of Chemistry for their annual meeting [14].

=== Fundraising ===

Fundraising achieved some tangible results in May. Four areas are to
mention. The first one involves the text message donation, which was
eventually established with the help of a stronger communication in the
fundraising mix of the WMDE. WMDE is financed by small donations and the
text message idea is the perfect way for this, we decided to use it
intensively in the weeks to come.

The connection of the donors is mentioned as the second area. At the end of
May, e-mails were sent out to about 800 first-time donors with information
about Wikimedium and additional material. WMDE hopes, after strengthening
the information policy, for a closer connection and identification with our
work and projects.

The third sector covers the instrument of monetary conditions. We produced
information material for judges and county attorneys. Provincial high courts
and courts of appeal were contacted for including us to the “Bußgeldliste”
(catalog listing monetary fines). As soon as Wikimedia Germany is
registered, we will contact judges and attorneys. This is planned for June.

Finally we like to mention the Fundraising-Summit in Bristol which took
place from May 14 to 16. WMF and many representatives from different
chapters came together to talk about fundraising in general and the upcoming
campaign in fall. Pavel Richter and Till Mletzko attended the meeting
representing WMDE. After having constructive dialogs we decided to intensify
the support of the campaign.

=== IT ===

In the field of technics we focus on the preparation of new projects. We
started to plan the design and use of a central data base of bibliography
with the Open Knowledge Foundation. In the future, data from
bibliographica.org should make it easier for the indicating quotations in
Wikimedia projects. More work was also done on data processing from the
info-boxes of Wikipedia – that is the place where we and the teams from
Semantic MediaWiki and DBpedia exchange information about which software to
use to manage the data. 

=== Monthly Report ===