[WikiX-l] transcript of the Jimmy video

[Itzik Edri]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni at mail.huji.ac.il>
Date: Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 11:12 PM
Subject: transcription of the text
To: Itzik Edri <itzik at infra.co.il>


Hi Itzik,

Here's the transcribed text of Jimmy's anniversary address. You can
pass it along to the people who translate it to other languages.

It would be nice if someone prepared a standard subtitles file out of it.

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
"We're living in pieces,
 I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
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Transcribed by Amir E. Aharoni (Amire80). Please double check this text. If anyone can prepare a standard subtitles file with times and all that, it would help us a lot.

Hi everybody and welcome to the tenth anniversary of Wikipedia. It's a really exciting day for everybody in the community and all around the world. I've been spending a lot of time lately thinking about the history of Wikipedia and where we came from and all the things we've been through to get where we are today. I remember the first time I ever edited Wikipedia, which was the first day Wikipedia existed, and I clicked on "edit", and I typed "Hello, world!", and hit "Save" and that was the first words in Wikipedia. And I thought about what was to come and of course I really didn't know what was to come, but over the years I've had a lot of wonderful experiences, I had the opportunity to come around the world and meet with many of you in person, I remember... several things stand out on my mind. I remember the first board meeting for the Wikimedia Foundation, when I met in Paris with Florence from French Wikipedia and Angela from English Wikipedia, the first board members, and we had a meeting to start to discuss building the Foundation, how we're gonna get the money to keep this project going, how can we grow, and what does the future look like. I remember sitting on the banks of the river in Berlin with German wikipedians, and we were waiting, expecting for the one hundredth thousandth article to be written, so we sat outside and we kept hitting "Reload" on our computers to see – "Oh, it's ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety seven", I guess every Wikipedia has gone through this milestone process, when you're excited, when you're getting close and then of course as we hit the one hundred thousand, we had the big argument about which article was really the one hundred thousandth, another great hobby of Wikipedians. And over the years I had many opportunities to come all around the world, I met with wikipedians in India, in China, in South America, really all around the world, and as I travel around and I talk to people, one of the most frequent questions I get from Wikipedia groups is "How do you see us compared to other wikipedians around the world, what's different about the Brazilian Wikipedians, for example?" and what I have to say is "Not much difference". It turns out that we tend to be very much the same all around the world, even though we come from very different cultures, many different kinds of people, but we also share the same experiences, we've all been through the same things. I think everybody has reverted the same kinds of vandalism. It doesn't matter what language you're working in, it doesn't matter if your wiki has five hundred articles or five hundred thousands, or three million, you still get somebody who comes along and replaces a whole wonderful article with two words of cursing or something like this. And of course you just revert it and block the vandal, and all that. That's part of being a wikipedian, we've all had really interesting conversations about the naming conventions of things, what do we call a river in Poland, how are we gonna name this, how are we gonna name that, what are the controversies that we need to figure out, and what is the thoughtful way forward. So all around the world I find the same kinds of people doing the same kinds of work, because we had the same shared experience. And we also share the same values, the same ideals, the things we are working for – free encyclopedia for every person of the planet, written really by thoughtful people, that try to be neutral, try to be honest, trying to bring free information. It's still as exciting for me today as it was in the very early days when I started. We've still got a lot of work left to do. Today is a great moment to reflect on where we've been, to think about where we're going, and wow, I don't know, you can see how excited I'm getting. I just want to say: Thank you so much for all the work that you've done, thank you so much  for coming here today to meet with other people. Do me a favor and find somebody in the crowd, who you have never met before in person, and introduce yourself and say: "Hey, what would you like to edit?" Let's build this community, it's all about a bunch of friends doing something useful. So, thank you again and happy birthday to Wikipedia.