In the tradition of originality that belongs to Wikipedians,
here for your enjoyment there is a video of a XVII century version of
"Happy Birthday, Wikimedia":
The song was recorded during Wiki Loves Monuments Italia ceremony on 11th
December,
which was also the ceremony for the 10th birthday of Wikimedia Italia.
It's also nice because it was the week we understood "Happy Birthday" is in
the public domain :-)
Have a nice 15th, y'all.
Aubrey
On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 3:00 PM, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Here’s my piece talking about Wikipedia @15 that ran
on The Washington Post
this morning.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/01/15/wikipedia-j…
I’ll post some personal reflections later. Happy 15th all!
On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 8:31 AM, Amir Ladsgroup <ladsgroup(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
About the celebration in Tehran, I think this
video
<https://twitter.com/ablomof/status/687618946699231233> is worth
watching
:)
P.S. The hashtag we used for the celebration #wikipedia15fa is now being
used widely by everyone \o/
Best
On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 2:03 PM Yusuke Matsubara <whym(a)whym.org> wrote:
On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 5:42 PM, Yaroslav M.
Blanter <putevod(a)mccme.ru
> wrote:
> > You may think by now we are in the free information world, and the
> players of the 1980 Japanese ice hockey team are on Wikipedia.
> (snip)
> > Japanese Wikipedia, as far as I can tell, is not better. A team of
> mystery persons.
>
> Try then the freely editable knowledge base. :) Two of them [1] are
> now on Wikidata:
>
http://tinyurl.com/zganwzg
>
http://tinyurl.com/jgdnxwu
> (click "Execute" to see the list)
>
> Happy birthday and thanks for sharing your stories - an excellent way
> to celebrate.
>
> -Yusuke
>
> [1] Herb Wakabayashi - apparently, a Canadian who was naturalized to
> Japan later - is not in the query results. That piece of information
> is missing on Wikidata and I couldn't find a credible source to cite
> immediately.
>
On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 5:42 PM, Yaroslav M.
Blanter <putevod(a)mccme.ru
> wrote:
> > On 2016-01-15 00:30, Mardetanha wrote:
> >>
> >> Dear Fellow Wikimedians
> >> I would like to congratulate you on Wikipedia's 15th birthday, it
was
> >> historic moment for all of us, I am
glad to let you know we had a
> >> celebration in Tehran and we were the first country to celebrate it.
> >> you can find images here
> >>
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_15_in_Iran
> >> Mardetanha
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
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?subject=unsubscribe>
>
>
> I feel like today is time for stories, and I guess this thread is
exactly
> > the place we can share some stories today. I wish everybody does,
since
> this
> > is a nice way to celebrate 15y.
> >
> > It could be in principle anything remotely Wikimedia related. For
> example,
> > the highest real-life rank of a person I ever blocked on Wikipedia
was
a
member of
the European parliament (or someone impersonating him). But
these
> stories mainly reveal human stupidity, and today we want to talk more
on
the
human knowledge. Therefore I am going to spend my
daily quota of
wikimedia-l
post for smth else.
I was born in 1967 in the Soviet Union and I am coming from a
pre-internet
generation. I first used internet in 1995 or so,
past my PhD degree.
However, I was always interested in learning things, this is probably
why I
later joined the Wikimedia movement. And I was a
pretty
advanced-knowledge
> teenager, knowing things my peers would normally not know anything
about,
and I was
interested in all kinds of stuff: from exact sciences to
history
> and languages and to geographical names. It was really painful to get
any
> > non-mainstream information. Let me give you a couple of example of
the
> > problems I encountered.
> >
> > One was languages. Well, for mainstream foreign languages like
English
or
> > German it was relatively easy to find textbooks and dictionaries.
They
> were
> > nothing like modern means of language learning, for example the Teach
> > Yourself series, not even speaking of online courses. Other languages
> were
> > more difficult. Some languages were impossible. Well, I grew up in
> Moscow,
> > which had a 10M population, and there were couple of libraries where
I
>
presumably could find dictionaries of even uncommon languages, but
these
> were difficult to get in (normally one had
to be 18 yo), they did not
let
> the books out of the building, and for a
number of practical reasons
they
were not
really an option. On the other hand, I was hiking a lot in
Central
Asia, and I was suffering from inability to
understand what the local
Turkic
names (in Kazakh and Kyrghyz mainly) mean. Well,
you learn soon that
Ak-Suu
means "White river", meaning
"aq" is white and "suu" is a river, but
this is
> about it). So what I did I searched all available literature at home
and
> around including the school library, and
came up with a list of about
100
> > words. This was my own, personal, self-made Kyrghyz-Russian
dictionary.
> It
> > was weird, since, for example, did not include verbs, and it did not
> help me
> > to speak Kyrghyz in any sense - and I still do not - but it was fine
to
> > understand the names and to feel kind
of like at home. Now we have of
> course
> > professional dictionaries available online. (Kyrghyz is still not in
a
>
Google translate though).
>
> The second story. For whatever reason, when I was about twelve, I
needed
> to
> > have Japanese names. I do not remember why I needed them, but
Japanese
> names
> > were notoriously difficult to find. The books I had available only
> mentioned
> > a few individuals. The newspapers rarely wrote about Japan, and again
> only
> > mentioned a few individuals. Then there happened the 1980 Winter
> Olympics in
> > Lake Placid, and Japanese team entered the ice hockey tournament.
(They
>
ended up last). There was a sports newspaper which I had access to,
which
> > published the results of the games, and of course ice hockey was at
the
time
> a great deal in Russia (on that Olympics, the Soviet team lost to the
US
> team in the finals, which is still
considered to be a major fuckup),
but
> > apparently they did not publish all the names of the players, only
last
> > names of those who scored a goal.
Japanese rarely scored, and there
was
my
tough luck. But them the same newspaper opened a
hotline - one could
phone a
certain number, and they would answer any
question related to the
results of
the Olympics. I thought this is my chance. I was
dead afraid calling
people
> I do not know, but I still collected a piece of paper, a pen and
phoned.
A
> nice female voice answered, and I said I would like to have names of
the
> > Japanese ice hockey team players. The nice voice answered that the
team
> is
> > too big, and their policy is not to give long answers. That was the
end
of
it.
You may think by now we are in the free information world, and the
players
> of the 1980 Japanese ice hockey team are on Wikipedia. Well, check
them.
The
names are there (it takes a while to find the
list of names on the
English
> Wikipedia - I believe the only article they are listed is [[Japan at
the
> 1980 Winter Olympics]]), but only one of
them - [[Herb Wakabayashi]],
who
> > died last year - has an article. Japanese Wikipedia, as far as I can
> tell,
> > is not better. A team of mystery persons.
> >
> > Happy 15y celebrations.
> >
> > Cheers
> > Yaroslav
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
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