en.planet.wikimedia

Joe Slovo Park (Cape Town, South Africa) as seen from the entrance to Sinenjongo High School.

Joe Slovo Park is a slum.

Mass unemployment. Drunkenness and drug addiction. Gangs. Teenage pregnancy. Tuberculosis. HIV/AIDS. Single room shacks that house five people. Illegal power connections. Lots of children without shoes. It’s a shantytown made up of whatever materials people can scrape together. It’s overcrowded and dirty. You have to know people to be safe.

In the middle of this place there is a high school made of used shipping containers and prefab buildings where students from the area come to study and learn. A class of students at the school has a simple request: they want free access to Wikipedia from their mobile phones so that they can do their homework. They started a campaign on Facebook for “Free Access to Wikipedia from Cellphones” and wrote an open letter to all the telecoms in the country:

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Kul Wadhwa speaking at 0:55:05 about a news article about the class at Sinenjongo High School.

The Grade 11A Class who penned the open letter for free access to Wikipedia on their cellphones, (photographed in February 2013 as the 12A class).

A cellphone repair shop built from a shipping container in Joe Slovo Park. The store is across the street from the school.

Children in Joe Slovo Park, photographed next to computer and cellphone repair stores.

A small internet services store in Joe Slovo Park.

Pam Robertson, Grade 12A maths and science teacher at Sinenjongo High School.

Here I am on a photo walk through Joe Slovo Park with the 12A class.

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I had given out Wikipedia stickers to the learners earlier in the week and when I came to Ntsika’s house, I saw that he had put the sticker on his refrigerator. I asked him why he did that.

Myself, Charlene Music and Oarabile Mudongo setting up cameras in one of the two computer labs at Sinenjongo High School.

Charlene Music explaining to Sinako (one of the learners) how to shoot a documentary.

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A sample from a Cape Town radio interview between Kieno Kammies and Pam Robertson, Maths and Science teacher at Sinenjongo High School about her class and their campaign for free access to Wikipedia on their cellphones.

Open letter to Cell C, MTN, Vodacom and 8ta

We are learners in a Grade 11 class at Sinenjongo High School, Joe Slovo Park, Milnerton, Cape Town. We recently heard that in some other African countries like Kenya and Uganda certain cell phone providers are offering their customers free access to Wikipedia.

We think this is a wonderful idea and would really like to encourage you also to make the same offer here in South Africa. It would be totally amazing to be able to access information on our cell phones which would be affordable to us.

Our school does not have a library at all so when we need to do research we have to walk a long way to the local library. When we get there we have to wait in a queue to use the one or two computers which have the internet. At school we do have 25 computers but we struggle to get to use them because they are mainly for the learners who do CAT (Computer Application Technology) as a subject. Going to an internet cafe is also not an easy option because you have to pay per half hour.

90% of us have cell phones but it is expensive for us to buy airtime so if we could get free access to Wikipedia it would make a huge difference to us.

Normally when we do research Wikipedia is one of the best sites for us to use and so we go straight to it. The information there is clear, updated and there is information on just about every topic.

Our education system needs help and having access to Wikipedia would make a very positive difference. Just think of the boost that it will give us as students and to the whole education system of South Africa.

— From Sinombongo, Sinako, Busisiwe, Ntswaki, Bomkazi, Lindokuhle, Ntsika, Patrick, Ndumiso, Sinazo, Bathandwa, Nokuthembela, Lutho, Mandlilakhe, Zingisile, Aviwe, Nezisa, Ncumisa, Nokubonga, Pheliwe, Zama, Unathi, Malixole and Ntombozuko.

The letter made headlines in the South African press, and my colleague Kul Wadhwa, who manages the Wikipedia Zero program at the Wikimedia Foundation, shared the news with me. I’m always looking for stories to tell about Wikipedia and this was the first grassroots effort (that I know of) that anyone made to get this kind of access to Wikipedia.

Three months ago, I didn’t know anything about this school and had never been to Africa. Being a Wikipedian at heart, I started a page for the school thinking that maybe the page might grow and help me with my research. I then got ahold of Pam Robertson (one of the teachers) at the school via the Facebook campaign page. I asked if I could ask her pupils a few questions (I later learned that the ‘learners,’ as they call themselves, were excited that someone in America even read their letter). I asked her pupils three things: Who are you? Where are you from? What does Wikipedia mean to you?

Here are a few quotes from emails they sent me:

…I attend school at Sinenjongo high school one of the public school in Cape Town. If I can draw you a picture of school, it can look as follows; my school is made of prefabs, it is surrounded by many shacks, there rubbish dump in front of our school, About 15 classes,1 science lab, 2 computer labs, very tiny garden, no playing fields. Nonetheless our school is one the schools that is obtaining good matric results, this shows that we have potentials. After school I want to have a job that i will earn good money so that I can provide for family and live my life to the fullest-not forgetting about giving back to my community. I want to be a role model. Wikipedia means the world. Wikipedia is up dated, it has valid information and it can link you to other websites. We also use it for our projects. If we can get wikipedia free our lives can be easy.

— Nezisa Mdludlu

I am a 17 year old boy staying with a single mother, sister and a brother not forgetting my cousin and her child. We stay in a small shack having no one working surviving with only R1100 supporting grant in each and every month…When I pass my grade 12 I want to do Bsc Degree in Geology and work here at South Africa. Wikipedia can be very useful to me in such a way that when I am doing my assignments and projects I just go to wikipedia and it provide every information I need. Every term my marks are improving because of the information that I get on Wikipedia.

— Lutho

…I would love studying something like Actuarial Science, Astronomy or Medicine. Big complicated numbers and the amazing theories of the birth and the current state of universe fascinate me a lot.

— Sinombongo

…my brother was shot in 2005… Wikipedia is one of the most sites I use to search for information for my career it help of use for project because the isn’t facilities at school and the local library is to far that’s why it’s much easier to use our phones for the internet. But it costs us a lot because we have to stay on the internet for hours and most of the airtime is used and sometimes we save our pocket money to buy airtime. So by having free internet on our phones is easy and saves time.

— Ndumiso

…In my community we don’t have places where we can express our careers…

— Patrick

…As much as we do not have adequate facilities at my school we are determined, proud pupils in the way we perform. The current matric results were rating 94% and we are one of the most improving schools in the Western Cape…

— Sinazo

…I live with my mother and my three brothers; we stay in a one roomed house…

— Lindokuhle

…Learning conditions are poor because we lack sources for over time studies like research, internet for finding new things that are being established now. I would like to be a surgeon, study medicine at university and help my family, provide the love for my mother that she is giving me right now…

— Unathi

…The minute i heard about Wikipedia zero by Mr Piet Strieker I became very interested and would be very happy to access it from my cellphone. Without Wikipedia my schoolwork and my assignments are worth no marks.

— Zamatshatshu

After about the second paragraph, I had tears running down my face. I read pages and pages of quotes like these, describing similar circumstances, each from a different point of view.

I did some more research and found that the principal of the school had made a TED presentation about how she had turned Sinenjongo High School around from a joke of a school that was going to be closed and made it one that gets a 98 percent graduation rate. She did this in 2 years. In the video she talked about how she made the school work:

True transparency and trust…I was open in every decision, every advice from anyone…it was easy for me to gain their trust… People believe in transparency and also people believe in honesty and openness….Everyone is going to be owning this school, it belongs to all of us, not only me.

— Malinga Nopote

After I saw the TED talk, I was inspired to make a documentary film about the class and their efforts. I sent a letter to the students, their teacher and the administration of the school, explaining what I hoped to do. Happily, they agreed to let me come to film.

I got in touch with Wikimedia South Africa about organizing a Q&A sesson about Wikipedia for the learners and found another filmmaker named Charlene Music (yes, her last name is Music) to help me to make the film. Oarabile Mudongo (an editor from Botswana who I had interviewed at Wikimania 2012 in Washington D.C.) heard of my effort and thought his story was similar to the students I was going to film and he asked if he could help. I enthusiastically agreed. We booked flights and bus trips to go to Cape Town and Johannesburg to shoot for two weeks. My basic plan was to let Sinenjongo High School and Joe Slovo Park tell us what they wanted to tell us. I wanted to see who the learners were, where they come from and what Wikipedia means to them. My greatest fear was that I wouldn’t be trusted and that no one would feel comfortable opening up to me on camera.

My fears were ungrounded.

The class was great. We talked to the learners, teachers, volunteer teachers, administrators, staff, parents, siblings and locals around Sinenjongo High and Joe Slovo Park. We also spoke with a few corporate heads and some graduates from the school, some of whom had gone on to university. The class showed us their township, their school and their homes. We also lent the class some cameras so that they could capture their own images and narrate their own story, without our interference.

We followed a few of the students over the weekend as they went to a university to study in special university-level classes designed for poor high schoolers who want to study and earn a bursary for a university-level education. One of the things you realize by walking around Joe Slovo Park is that cellphone stores and repair shops are everywhere. It’s obvious why the learners want to study using their phones — they all have one!

Wikimedia South Africa, Oarabile Mudongo and I taught the learners how to write Wikipedia articles (during their 1 hour of time per week at the computer lab at their school) and one of the learners corrected the article about Nelson Mandela on the (very small) IsiXhosa Wikipedia. (I forgot to mention that English is a second or third language for these learners – at home and in class they speak IsiXhosa.)

Charlene Music and I will be editing the documentary for the next few weeks and plan to release it into the Creative Commons with as much attention as we can.

Outside of this being used for fundraising at the Wikimedia Foundation, my purpose in making this movie is that if you are under 30 years old today, you probably know what Wikipedia means for education. But if you are over 30, you might not realize how important it is, because Wikipedia wasn’t around when you were in school. Wikipedia is a great place to start any research that you set out to do, whether you are in school or not.

The campaign from the class has received a bit of attention in South Africa, and I think it would be awesome if other schools in other parts of the world read this and decide to start their own campaign. I can’t think of a better example of what the Wikimedia Movement stands for than to share knowledge with determined people like class 12A at Sinenjongo High School.

Before the film comes out, if you want to help this class in their effort, there are a few things you can do:

• You can get in touch with them on their Facebook campaign page: https://www.facebook.com/FreeAccessToWikipedia
• If you work in telecommunications in South Africa or elsewhere in the world, let your colleages know about this campaign and if you are a decision maker at your telecom, please consider waiving data charges for for access to Wikipedia. The Wikipedia Zero team at the Wikimedia Foundation is available to help you roll out this program. Please contact Kul Wadhwa, Amit Kapoor or Dan Foy here.
• If you are a Wikipedian, you can help wikify the pages about Sinenjongo High School and Joe Slovo Park, and translate them to other language Wikipedias. I’m sure there are alot of other things you can do too that I’m not thinking about. Feel free to message me on my volunteer talk page about it.
• You can help spread the word about their campaign by translating this blog post into your language or sharing this post with others. Feel free to add the translation to the Wikimedia blog page on Meta wiki here.
• If you are a teacher, student, or school administrator, you can write your own letter of support for Sinenjongo High School, or if you think your school or community could use free access to Wikipedia on your cellphone, you could start a campaign of your own. I’d be happy to talk to you about it (you can reach me by email: vgrigas@wikimedia.org). Who knows — you might even make it into the movie.

Victor Grigas, Storyteller, Wikimedia Foundation

The Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London

As Wembley is to football and CERN is to particle physics, so the Royal Opera House in London is to ballet. Home to both The Royal Opera and The Royal Ballet, the opera house is located in London’s Covent Garden. So it’s with great excitement that Wikimedia UK is supporting a ballet-themed editathon at this world-famous venue on Saturday 22 June.

The focus of the event is Sir Frederick Ashton, The Royal Ballet’s founding choreographer and one of the most prominent figures in 20th century ballet. The Wikipedia article about him exists in 14 languages but is somewhat neglected, while only around 15% of his ballets have articles at all.

The Royal Opera House will be sharing lots of books and other materials to use as sources and there are still some places available at the event.

The editathon is being organised by Rose Vickridge of the Royal Opera House and Andrew Gray, an experienced Wikimedian.

You can learn more, and sign up for the event, here.

This post is available in 2 languages:

Español  • English

English

Since the launch of Wikipedia in 2001, the community has grown from a few inspired individuals to tens of thousands of volunteers, working on twelve official Wikimedia Projects, in hundreds of languages, with the support of chapters and user groups around the world. Whether you have been a member of the movement for five years or five minutes, there is one common thread that connects all of us, and that is our dedication to the mission of spreading free knowledge throughout the world.

Where we are now.

As stewards of this deeply-connected community, the Wikimedia Foundation takes seriously our role in protecting and encouraging the work of Wikimedians everywhere. You are the reason the Wikimedia Projects continue to educate and inform the world, and we value your opinion on the issues that matter to you.

We know that privacy is important to you, especially in light of recent events. We will continue to stand by the commitment to collect far less data than other major websites, to limit use of your data for research and analytics and to improve your Wikimedia experience, and to never sell your data or use it for commercial purposes.

We also recognize that our policies need to adapt to the changing legal and technological landscape. Our current privacy policy has not changed since 2008, and we believe it is time to update our terms to stay true to what the community and Projects are today. Thus, we are in the process of creating a new privacy policy to better serve you and to better explain how your data is collected, used and shared.

You deserve a privacy policy that is clear and straightforward in its terms, one that details exactly what information we collect and what we do with that information, and one that reflects community values and feedback.

To do this, we want and need your input.

One of our goals for this undertaking is transparency, both in the policy-drafting process and in the terms of the policy itself. For the next month, we would like to open a dialogue with community members to discuss key privacy issues, including cookies (no raisins), data security (hooray!) and third-party advertisements (no, thank you).

This initial consultation period will last until July 18, 2013. Once we have completed a draft of the new privacy policy, we will then open a lengthier community consultation period so that you have the opportunity to review the draft and provide more detailed feedback.

As members of the community, your input is invaluable. This is why we are kicking off an open discussion period now, so your voices can be heard, and so we can incorporate your feedback as we draft a new privacy policy.

Send us your questions, comments, and concerns.

What do you like and what do you not like about the current policy? What do you think should or should not be in the new policy? What community values should the new policy embody? Do you have any concerns about past or current Wikimedia Foundation privacy practices? Are there recent U.S. or international privacy trends that you want us to consider?

Please contribute your comments, questions, and suggestions here.

The Wikimedia Foundation values the community members, and it is our hope that through collaboration and consultation, we can create a privacy policy that gives all of us the freedom to continue experimenting, learning and bettering the Wikimedia Projects, while maintaining our dedication to the privacy.

Thank you.

Michelle Paulson ^[1]
Legal Counsel, Wikimedia Foundation

[With our appreciation, we ask the international Wikimedia community to help in translating this blog post into other languages, as well as people’s feedback given throughout the course of this consultation period.]

Notes

1. ↑ [1] Special thanks to the Tech and LCA teams for their help on this initiative, with a special call out to Tiffany Li, Legal Intern, for her assistance on this blog post.
   

Español

Convocatoria para aportar en la nueva política de privacidad de la Fundación Wikimedia

Desde el lanzamiento de Wikipedia en 2001, nuestra comunidad ha crecido de unos pocos individuos inspirados a decenas de miles de voluntarios, que trabajan en los doce proyectos oficiales de Wikimedia en cientos de idiomas con el apoyo de los capítulos y grupos de usuarios de todo el mundo. Si has sido parte del movimiento durante cinco años o cinco minutos, hay un hilo común que nos une a todos, y es nuestra dedicación a la misión de difundir el conocimiento libre en el mundo.

¿Dónde estamos ahora?

Como administradores de esta comunidad estrechamente conectada, la Fundación Wikimedia toma en serio la tarea de proteger y alentar el trabajo de wikimedistas en todas partes. Ustedes son la razón por la que los proyectos de Wikimedia siguen educando e informando al mundo, y valoramos su opinión sobre los temas que les interesan.

Sabemos que la privacidad es importante para usted, especialmente a la luz de los acontecimientos recientes. Seguiremos fieles a nuestro compromiso de recabar muchos menos datos que otros sitios web importantes, a limitar el uso de su información a la investigación y el análisis para mejorar su experiencia en Wikimedia, y nunca venderemos o utilizaremos sus datos con fines comerciales.

También estamos conscientes que nuestras políticas necesitan adaptarse al cambiante panorama legal y tecnológico. Nuestra política de privacidad actual no ha cambiado desde 2008, y creemos que es el momento de actualizar nuestros términos para permanecer fieles a lo que nuestra comunidad y nuestros proyectos son hoy. Por ello, estamos en proceso de creación de una nueva política de privacidad para mejorar nuestro servicio y explicar mejor cómo se recaban, utilizan y comparten sus datos.

Usted merece una política de privacidad que sea clara y directa en sus términos, que detalle exactamente qué información recabamos y qué hacemos con esa información; y que refleje los valores de la comunidad, sus comentarios y opiniones.

Para lograrlo, queremos y necesitamos su opinión

Una de nuestras metas en este emprendimiento es la transparencia, tanto en el proceso de elaboración como en los términos mismos de la política de privacidad. Durante el próximo mes, nos gustaría iniciar el diálogo con los miembros de la comunidad para discutir los aspectos claves relacionados a la privacidad, incluyendo cookies (sin pasas), seguridad de datos (hurra!), y anuncios de terceros (no gracias).

Este período de inicial de consulta se extenderá hasta el 18 de julio de 2013. Una vez que hayamos completado una versión preliminar de la nueva política de privacidad, abriremos un período más largo de consulta a la comunidad para que pueda revisar el proyecto y proporcionar retroalimentación más detallada.

Como miembros de nuestra comunidad, su opinión y comentarios son invaluables. Es por eso que estamos iniciando un período de discusión abierto ahora, para que sus voces puedan ser escuchadas y podamos incorporar sus comentarios mientras elaboramos la nueva política de privacidad.

Envíenos sus dudas, comentarios e inquietudes

¿Qué le gusta y qué no le gusta de la política actual? ¿Qué cree que debería o no debería incluirse en la nueva política? ¿Qué valores de la comunidad debería incorporar la nueva política? ¿Tiene alguna preocupación respecto a las prácticas de privacidad actuales o pasadas de la Fundación Wikimedia? ¿Existe alguna tendencia reciente sobre privacidad en Estados Unidos o a nivel internacional que quisiera que consideremos?

Por favor contribuya con sus comentarios, preguntas y sugerencias aquí

La Fundación Wikimedia valora a los miembros de la comunidad y esperamos que a través de la colaboración y la consulta podamos crear una política de privacidad que nos dé a todos la libertad para continuar experimentando, aprendiendo y mejorando los proyectos de Wikimedia, manteniendo al mismo tiempo nuestro compromiso con la privacidad.

Gracias.

Michelle Paulson^[1]

Asesora Legal de la Fundación Wikimedia

[Con nuestro agradecimiento, pedimos a la comunidad internacional de Wikimedia ayudar en la traducción de esta entrada del blog a otros idiomas, así como de los comentarios de las personas que se den a lo largo de este periodo de consulta.]

Notas

1. ↑ Agradecimiento especial a Tiffany Li, Asistente Legal, por su ayuda en la investigación y la elaboración del proyecto de esta entrada del blog

Queen Victoria

This post was written by Liz McCarthy, Communications and Social Media Officer for the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford

‘This book, Mamma gave me, that I might write the journal of my journey to Wales in it.’ So began the young Victoria in 1832, beginning a lifelong habit – and providing fodder for researchers around the world.

As Communications and Social Media Officer for the Bodleian Libraries , it was my job to find ways to get the word out and help our audiences engage with the Queen Victoria’s Journals project. The project, a collaborative effort between the Bodleian Libraries, the Royal Archives and information  company ProQuest, has made Queen Victoria’s diaries available online.

The Bodleian Libraries communications team had already begun to consider how we might create stronger links with the Wikipedia community – we’ve been chatting to Wikipedians in Residence and working with local editors to improve collection-related content. Engaging with the Wikipedia community seemed like a great way to put the Journals material to use as well as to help us develop relationships with Wikipedians in the area, and we decided to run a Queen Victoria’s Journals editathon to coincide with the anniversary of Queen Victoria’s birthday on 24 May.

The project’s timing meant that we had a very short window in which to organise an event, but we went ahead. We quickly pulled together some promotional material and got curators lined up for the day, then spent about two and half weeks promoting the event. The help of Wikimedia UK was crucial in getting the word out and making sure everything was set up correctly, but we also advertised within the University and to various Victorian research groups.

We ended up with 14 participants (5 virtual, using IRC to ask questions) as well as curators and staff who came by to answer questions and facilitate. We were lucky enough to have Wikimedia trainers Charles Matthews and Doug Taylor join us, and they provided one-to-one support to the new editors – including the Director of Records for the Royal Household, who was roped into making his first ever edit! Our curators began with a quick intro to Queen Victoria’s journals and the Journals website, and then we dived right in.

The day was a success in terms of articles edited (38, including 3 new ones); Wikipedia is now the 2nd-highest referring site to the Journals website. It was also a relaxed opportunity to engage with the Wikipedia community and to introduce new ways of exploring our collections to those who know most about them. We look forward to hosting another event in the autumn – next time, with kids!

On June 15, 2013, Swedish Wikipedia hit one million articles, joining the club of English, Dutch, German, French, Italian, Russian and Spanish Wikipedias. The article that broke the barrier was the butterfly species Erysichton elaborata. There is, however, one fact that separates this million article milestone from almost all others.

The one milionth article was not manually created by a human, but written by a piece of software (a “bot”). The bot, in this case, Lsjbot, collects data from different sources, and then compiles the information into a format that fits Wikipedia. Lsjbot has to date created about 454,000 articles, almost half of the articles on Swedish Wikipedia.

Lsj, Sverker Johansson, who runs Lsjbot

Bot-created articles have led to some debate, both before Lsjbot started its run, and currently. First, there was a lengthy discussion on Swedish Wikipedia after the initial proposal by Lsjbot’s operator, science teacher Sverker Johansson. The Swedish Wikipedia community was wary, having learned the lessons from previous conflicts about article-creating bots, including rambot in 2002. But there was also curiosity, so a series of test runs was made to make sure that the articles were acceptable.

After review, the Swedish Wikipedia editor community said okay. Lsjbot started by creating articles about different species of animals and plants – articles that are largely uncontroversial and that can have a similar format without feeling mechanical.

Subsequent criticism has come from prolific article writer Achim Raschka on German Wikipedia’s Kurier. Here the main complaint was that article is short: only 4 sentences long. This is a valid complaint. Even if longer articles are not always better, they tend to contain more information.

Therein lies the rub. The bots use as many datasets as their operators can find, but many sources are behind paywalls or are incomplete across entire taxon (covering only selected species). The upside of this criticism is that each statement in articles created by bots is supported by references, something that doesn’t happen in many other articles. This means that more references are added to Wikipedia by bots than by humans. This is of course not in itself a sign of quality, but it is a start for human contributors to search for more information. As with any article in Wikipedia, the readers can also help make bot-created articles better.

Is this the future for Wikipedia, to let software create articles? With Wikidata, it is certainly becoming easier to use software to create articles, something that can benefit the smaller Wikipedias. But we still need more humans to help make the determination of which sources are high quality, what information is presented correctly and what qualifies as clear writing.

So far, bots have shown that they are much quicker to create articles. In that respect, I, for one, bow to our robot overlords.

Lennart Guldbransson, Swedish Wikipedia editor

Please see further down the page for this notice in English

Mae Wici Cymru a Wikimedia UK yn chwilio am Reolwr i Gymru i ddatblygu’r Wicipedia Cymraeg a Saesneg yng Nghymru drwy ysbrydoli a hyfforddi golygyddion newydd drwy gynllun y prosiect Llwybrau Byw!

Dylai’r Rheolwr fod yn brofiadol mewn: golygu prosiectau Wicimedia (Cymraeg a Saesneg), cefnogi ein gwirfoddolwyr, rheoli personél, gweithio o fewn cyllideb a chyflawni targedau mewn pryd. Bydd y gwaith yn cynnwys penodi a chefnogi hyfforddwyr a threfnu a chynnal sesiynau hyfforddi ledled Cymru.

Mae medru siarad Gymraeg a Saesneg yn rhugl yn hanfodol.

Mae’r swydd am 12 mis a bydd yr ymgeisydd llwyddiannus yn cael ei secondio i Wici Cymru a fydd yn goruchwylio’r gwaith (ar y cyd gyda WMUK, y cyflogwr) a Llywodraeth Cymru fel cyd-noddwr.

Mae’r swydd hefyd yn amodol ar ganllawiau a chytundebau WMUK ac am 4.5 diwrnod yr wythnos. Ffurflen Gais a chwaneg o wybodaeth oddi wrth:

Jon Davies: jon.davies@wikimedia.org.uk  ac ar wefan http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Llwybrau_Byw_-_Living_Paths_Project_Recruitment

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Wici Cymru and Wikimedia UK are looking for a Wales Manager to develop the Wicipedia Cymraeg and English Wikipedia in Wales through encouraging and training new editors via our Llwybrau Byw – Living Paths Project.

The Manager must have experience of:

• Editing Wikimedia projects (both English and Welsh), supporting volunteers, managing personnel, working within a budget, and delivering outcomes in time.
• The work will involve appointing and supporting trainers, and organising and delivering training sessions throughout Wales.

Fluency in both the Welsh and English language is essential.

The post is for 12 months and the successful applicant will be seconded to Wici Cymru who will oversee the work, jointly with WMUK, the employer, and the Welsh Government as financial partner.

The post is subject to Wikimedia UK’s guidelines and contracts and is for 4.5 days per week. Further information / application forms are available from Jon Davies at jon.davies@wikimedia.org.uk and at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Llwybrau_Byw_-_Living_Paths_Project_Recruitment

• Wikidata is to be opened to any and all languages that are recognised as a language. This includes artificial languages and dead languages. Some people may find it controversial that we consider Wikidata to be a project in its own right and, the connection to Wikipedia incidental.
• Wikisource should be one project like Commons and Wikidata. It would be best when all the instances of Wikisource are merged. Wikisource as we know it, is very much a workbench. Important is that people know how to use the tools. It makes no difference what language your user interface has, what matters is the language of the text. This can be any language
• When the work is "done" on Wikisource, it should be advertised, it should be marketed, it should find a public. That is very much something best done OUTSIDE of Wikisource. 

• I want a complete list
• I want to know if there is an article in a language on a Wikipedia for the items on the list

WikiSym, the 9th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration
OpenSym, the 2013 International Symposium on Open Collaboration

August 5-7, 2013 | Hong Kong, China

Registration >> Program Overview | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Industry Tutorials

Conference Program

The conference program is led by three renowned keynote speakers: Phil Bourne, founding editor of PLOS, will talk about the era of open, Pockey Lam, of the Digital Freedom Foundation, will talk about open education, and Dario Taraborelli, of the Wikimedia Foundation, will talk about current and future Wikipedia research.

The keynotes are enhanced by a strong research track on the different aspects of open collaboration, namely wikis, Wikipedia, open source, and open access.

Open space, community events and socializing during coffee breaks and dedicated social events like the welcome reception and the conference dinner complement and enhance the WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 experience. An industry tutorial track ensures a healthy mixture of participants.

Come join us in Hong Kong, one of the most vibrant cities on this planet, and learn how and why open collaboration is shaping the future!

Learn more at the conference website.

About the Conference

The 2013 Joint International Symposium on Open Collaboration (WikiSym + OpenSym 2013) is the premier conference on open collaboration research, including wikis and social media, Wikipedia, free, libre, and open source software, open access, open data and open government research. WikiSym is in its 9th year and will be complemented by OpenSym, a new conference on open collaboration research and an adjunct to the successful WikiSym conference series.

WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 is the first conference to bring together the different strands of open collaboration research, seeking to create synergies and inspire new research between computer scientists, social scientists, legal scholars, and everyone interested in understanding open collaboration and how it is changing the world.

WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 will be held in Hong Kong, China, on August 5-7, 2013.

ACM In-cooperation with SIGWEB and SIGSOFT.

Sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation, Google, Cyberport, and TJEF.

WikiSym, the 9th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration
OpenSym, the 2013 International Symposium on Open Collaboration

August 5-7, 2013 | Hong Kong, China

Registration >> Program Overview | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Industry Tutorials

Conference Program

The conference program is led by three renowned keynote speakers: Phil Bourne, founding editor of PLOS, will talk about the era of open, Pockey Lam, of the Digital Freedom Foundation, will talk about open education, and Dario Taraborelli, of the Wikimedia Foundation, will talk about current and future Wikipedia research.

The keynotes are enhanced by a strong research track on the different aspects of open collaboration, namely wikis, Wikipedia, open source, and open access.

Open space, community events and socializing during coffee breaks and dedicated social events like the welcome reception and the conference dinner complement and enhance the WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 experience. An industry tutorial track ensures a healthy mixture of participants.

Come join us in Hong Kong, one of the most vibrant cities on this planet, and learn how and why open collaboration is shaping the future!

Learn more at the conference website.

About the Conference

The 2013 Joint International Symposium on Open Collaboration (WikiSym + OpenSym 2013) is the premier conference on open collaboration research, including wikis and social media, Wikipedia, free, libre, and open source software, open access, open data and open government research. WikiSym is in its 9th year and will be complemented by OpenSym, a new conference on open collaboration research and an adjunct to the successful WikiSym conference series.

WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 is the first conference to bring together the different strands of open collaboration research, seeking to create synergies and inspire new research between computer scientists, social scientists, legal scholars, and everyone interested in understanding open collaboration and how it is changing the world.

WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 will be held in Hong Kong, China, on August 5-7, 2013.

ACM In-cooperation with SIGWEB and SIGSOFT.

Sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation, Google, Cyberport, and TJEF.

Article in Finnish

Brages Pressarkiv is a newspaper archive that has been collecting clippings from the Swedish press in Finland since 1910. Brages has collected and arranged the clipping based on time, location, theme or person – since 1990 in digital form. Older clippings are neatly organized in folders or brown envelopes within brown cardboard boxes. Real sense of an archive!

The archive classifies and geolocates all Swedish news material daily: the media houses don’t provide that information. Since cuts in financing the archive has been forced to argue and align the activities to the national preservation tasks for the press.

Image Peik Henrichson CC BY-SA 3.0

Wikipediaklinik brought a full house of interested attendants. Mikael Böök, a father figure of open knowledge and Wikipedia in Finland, presented the basic guidelines for Wikipedia editing. Fear not, grab the topics!

Jessica Parland-von Essen, the leading lady of the archive, edited the Swedish article about J. G. Granö, a Finnish geographer. The article is significantly shorter than the same article in Finnish.

This topic was raised in the post event discussion: The need to be informed, if an article does not exist in your own language. This applies especially to minority languages with local topics. One of the participants brought up Manypedia! On the other hand we discussed the possibilities of using Wikidata information for bringing up especially missing articles.

Read more about the event Serendipitet bland arkivhyllorna arranged by Brages Pressarkiv, in Swedish

This post is available in 2 languages:

Español  • English

English

Last week, news outlets published information about a U.S. government internet surveillance program called PRISM^[1] that reportedly enables the U.S. government to directly collect personal information from the servers of certain U.S.-based service providers.^[2] Most of the service providers that were allegedly involved have denied participating in PRISM,^[3] but President Obama appears to have acknowledged and defended the existence of the program.

Uncertainty and open questions persist about the nature and scope of PRISM. These public reports, and the conflicts among them, have raised concerns in the Wikimedia community, including at the Wikimedia Foundation.

Where we stand

The Wikimedia Foundation has not received requests or legal orders to participate in PRISM, to comply with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), or to participate in or facilitate any secret intelligence surveillance program. We also have not “changed” our systems to make government surveillance easier, as the New York Times has claimed is the case for some service providers.^[4]

Why we care

Freedom of speech and access to information are core Wikimedia values. These values can be compromised by surveillance: editors and readers understandably are less willing to write and inform themselves as honestly and freely. Put simply, “rights of privacy are necessary for intellectual freedom.”

In addition, while PRISM is a United States government program, the global nature of internet traffic, and the alleged sharing of surveillance information between governments, means that Internet users around the world are potentially affected. Because of this, we feel an obligation to our entire global community of contributors and readers to further understand (and possibly respond to) this issue.

Consultation and action

Because of the many open questions about PRISM, and the potential importance of this issue to our core values, we feel it is appropriate to consult with the Wikimedia community about what next steps we might take.^[5] In our opinion, governments must be transparent to their publics. This transparency is essential to our ability (and that of other like-minded organizations) to determine whether a legal or constitutional challenge is appropriate in a case like this.

Mozilla, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Free Software Foundation, and the Center for Democracy and Technology, among many others, have begun to work together on this issue. They have started by preparing an open letter to the U.S. Congress, calling for transparency, investigation, reform, and accountability, and have asked individuals and other interested organizations—like the Wikimedia Foundation—to join them.

As we see it, we have an important role to play in helping ensure protections for free expression and access to information as it relates to our mission.  We accordingly feel that the Wikimedia Foundation should collaborate with these organizations, and possibly others, and join in their effort to demand that the government account for and explain its internet surveillance programs.

That said, we want to hear from you on these topics before we take any action. Should we join with these organizations in their public statements and efforts as they relate to the Wikimedia community’s values and mission? Please leave your thoughts at https://meta.wi<wbr></wbr>kimedia.org/wik<wbr></wbr>i/PRISM. We will consider all feedback, but, because events are moving quickly, we feel we need to make a decision on this by June 21, 2013.^[6]

With our thanks,
Geoff Brigham
General Counsel, Wikimedia Foundation^[7]

[We are professionally translating this blog post and feedback page into German, French, Spanish and Japanese and hope to post by Tuesday.  With our appreciation, we ask the international Wikimedia community to help in translating this blog post and the feedback page (which are almost the same) into other languages, as well as people’s feedback given throughout the course of this consultation period.]

Notes

1. ↑ The Washington Post and The Guardian broke the story on June 6.
2. ↑An early report alleged remarkable breadth of data accessible under the program. CNET has since reported, however, that the program at least involves some formalized and particularized process.
   
3. ↑ TechCrunch has published denials from eight allegedly-involved organizations.
   
4. ↑ Surveillance is possible without our cooperation. As a result, snooping on general internet traffic by governments or others may affect our contributors and readers. To help block this, Wikimedia sites are already reachable under HTTPS, and installing HTTPS Everywhere makes this the default. We are working toward increasingly making HTTPS the default both for readers and logged-in users without the need to install an extension. Updates will be posted to our engineering blog.
   
5. ↑ As you may know, the Wikimedia community worked with the Wikimedia Foundation to put together a policy on the Foundation’s association with certain political or policy issues. It applies when, among other things, the Wikimedia Foundation seeks to collaborate with other organizations to take action on a particular policy or political question.  Under this policy, community consultation is highly valued.
   
6. ↑This proposal is intended only to address the participation of the Wikimedia Foundation and is not intended to restrict other Wikimedians from acting in their personal capacity.
   
7. ↑Special thanks to the entire LCA team for their hard work in helping research and draft this blog post, with my special appreciation to Luis Villa, Deputy General Counsel; Matthew Collins, Legal Intern; and Stephen LaPorte, Legal Counsel.
   

Español

PRISM, vigilancia del gobierno y Wikimedia: Petición de retroalimentación de la comunidad

La semana pasada, los medios de comunicación publicaron información sobre un programa de vigilancia de internet del gobierno de los Estados Unidos llamado PRISM^[1], que al parecer permite al gobierno de EE.UU. recabar información personal directamente desde los servidores de ciertos proveedores de servicios con sede en ese país.^[2] La mayoría de los proveedores de servicios presuntamente implicados han negado la participación en PRISM,^[3] pero el presidente Obama parece haber reconocido y defendido la existencia del programa.

Persisten incertidumbre y pregruntas sin responder acerca de la naturaleza y el alcance de PRISM. Estos informes públicos, contradictorios entre sí, han preocupado a la comunidad de Wikimedia, incluyendo a la Fundación Wikimedia.

¿Dónde estamos ahora? La Fundación Wikimedia no ha recibido solicitudes u órdenes legales para participar en PRISM, para cumplir la ley Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), o para participar o ayudar en ningún programa secreto de vigilancia de inteligencia. Tampoco hemos “cambiado” nuestros sistemas para hacer más fácil la vigilancia del gobierno, como según el New York Times es el caso de algunos proveedores de servicios. ^[4]

¿Por qué nos importa La Libertad de expresión y acceso a la información son valores fundamentales de Wikimedia. Estos valores pueden verse comprometidos por la vigilancia: editores y lectores comprensiblemente están menos dispuestos a escribir e informarse tan honesta y libremente. En pocas palabras, “los derechos de privacidad son necesarios para la libertad intelectual“.

Además, mientras PRISM es un programa del gobierno de Estados Unidos, la naturaleza global del tráfico de Internet, y el alegado intercambio de información de vigilancia entre gobiernos, significa que los usuarios de Internet de todo el mundo están potencialmente afectados. Debido a esto, sentimos la obligación de que toda nuestra comunidad global de colaboradores y lectores entienda mejor (y posiblemente responda) este problema.

La consulta y la acción Debido a las muchas preguntas abiertas sobre PRISM y la importancia potencial de este tema para nuestros valores fundamentales, creemos que es apropiado consultar a la comunidad de Wikimedia acerca de los próximos pasos que podríamos tomar.^[5] En nuestra opinión, los gobiernos deben ser transparentes con el público. Esta transparencia es esencial para nuestra capacidad (y la de otras organizaciones afines) de determinar si una demanda legal o constitucional es apropiada en un caso como éste.

Mozilla, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Software Foundation y Center for Democracy and Technology, entre muchos otros, han comenzado a trabajar juntos en este tema. Preparando en inicio una carta abierta al Congreso de Estados Unidos, exigiendo transparencia, investigación, reforma y la rendición de cuentas; y han pedido a las personas y a otras organizaciones -como la Fundación Wikimedia- unirse a ellos.

Tal como nosotros lo vemos, tenemos un papel importante que desempeñar para ayudar a garantizar la protección de la libertad de expresión y acceso a la información que se relacionan con nuestra misión. En consecuencia, creemos que la Fundación Wikimedia debe colaborar con estas organizaciones, y posiblemente otras, y sumarse a sus esfuerzos para exigir cuentas al gobierno para que explique sus programas de vigilancia de Internet.

Dicho esto, queremos conocer la opinión de ustedes sobre estos temas antes de tomar cualquier acción. ¿Deberíamos unirnos a estas organizaciones en sus declaraciones públicas y en los esfuerzos que se relacionan con los valores y la misión de la comunidad de Wikimedia?. Por favor, dé su opinión en https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PRISM. Tendremos en cuenta todos los comentarios, pero, debido a que los acontecimientos suceden rápidamente, sentimos que necesitamos tomar una decisión al respecto hasta el 21 de junio de 2013.^[6]

Con nuestro agradecimiento,
Geoff Brigham Asesor General de la Fundación Wikimedia^[7]

1. ↑ The Washington Post y The Guardian publicaron la historia el 6 de junio.
2. ↑ Un informe temprano alegó notable amplitud de datos accesibles bajo el programa. CNET, desde entonces ha reportado, que el programa al menos incluye algunos procesos particulares y formalizados.
3. ↑ TechCrunch emitió una publicación negando la participación ocho organizaciones presuntamente implicadas.
4. ↑ La vigilancia es posible sin nuestra cooperación. Como resultado, el fisgoneo del tráfico general de internet por gobiernos u otros, puede afectar a nuestros colaboradores y lectores. Para prevenir esto, los sitios de Wikimedia ya son accesibles bajo el protocolo HTTPS, e instalar HTTPS Everywhere hace que esta sea la configuración por defecto. Estamos trabajando para incrementar el uso del protocolo HTTPS de manera predeterminada tanto para los lectores y usuarios registrados, sin la necesidad de instalar ninguna extensión. Las actualizaciones se publicarán en nuestro blog de ingeniería.
5. ↑ Como ustedes probalemente sepan, la comunidad Wikimedia ha trabajado junto a la Fundación Wikimedia una política sobre la asociación de la Fundación respecto a ciertos temas políticos o relacionados a la política en general. Ésta se aplica cuando, entre otras cosas, la Fundación Wikimedia busca colaborar con otras organizaciones para tomar una decisión sobre una cuestión relacionada a la política o a una política en particular. En este marco, la consulta a la comunidad es altamente valorada.
6. ↑ Esta propuesta está destinada a orientar la participación de la Fundación Wikimedia y no pretende restringir a otros Wikimedistas de actuar a título personal.
7. ↑ Un agradecimiento especial a todo el Equipo de Defensa Legal de la Comunidad por su ardua labor en ayudar a la investigación y la elaboración del proyecto de esta entrada del blog, con mi especial agradecimiento a Luis Villa, Asesor General Adjunto; Mateo Collins, Asistente Legal, y Stephen LaPorte, Asesor Legal.

Wikimedia Commons has more than 17 million freely licensed media files available for anyone’s use in practically any way, so long as the terms of the license are upheld. The ever growing database speaks to the passion that Wikimedians have for sharing free media to the benefit of anyone around the world.

Making sense of this massive amount of uploaded images, video and audio files, however, hasn’t always been so easy or straightforward. One of the challenges, as Commons contributor Brian Wolff can attest, is that metadata isn’t well integrated into the database, which is the standard with most image databases. On-wiki descriptions generally aren’t included in the file’s internal metadata, which can result in loss of important information when the file is reused outside of Wikimedia sites. Additionally the data that is in the file’s internal metadata is ignored by search, and cannot be programmatically used inside the wiki.

Screenshot of the new tiled gallery view that Wolff is testing

When a media file is uploaded to Commons today, a table is added to the file page with some information like EXIF values for aperture and shutter speed, for example, but Wolff believes a lot more can be done with the metadata. In the long term, he expects people will use Wikimedia Commons search to find files only with a certain license, taken with a certain camera, or on a certain date, etc.

“Editing file metadata in our current setup is a not happening as well as it should at the moment, which is sad,” Wolff said. Currently people need to download the file, edit the metadata, and re-upload the file, if they want the metadata to be included in the file. “But one approach that’s been suggested is just to use one of the existing program like ExifTool and put an interface on top of it in MediaWiki.”

Wolff thinks this shouldn’t be hard to accomplish, as he doesn’t see any major technical challenges that couldn’t be surmounted. This would let the updated metadata stick with the file, instead of just being on a wiki page. Since files rarely stay within the wiki, if the metadata is not included inside the file, it gets lost as soon as the file leaves the website.

Wolff first became interested in Commons during a Google’s Summer of Code internship with the Wikimedia Foundation in 2010. He had been a regular Wikinewsie since 2004, but he said he it had been difficult to make the jump from Wikinews contributor to MediaWiki developer.

“Google’s Summer of Code 2010 seemed like a good opportunity to actually become a member of the MediaWiki community, so to speak.” he said. “Before that, I was kind of a bit on, well not the outskirts, but I was very much a newbie and I was kind of stumbling around. It served as an opportunity to become integrated in the community.”

Wolff’s computer skills have grown from the days of his first Winnie-the-Pooh computer game his parents gave him to learn to read. In May, he completed an undergraduate degree in computer science, with a math minor, at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This summer, he’s going to be back at the Wikimedia Foundation working on Commons. Wolff will explore a number of issues that should make the database more useful and user friendly.

This summer, he will be working on image patrolling features for Commons, among other capacities. This will allow admins to check new uploads as they come in, in an organized fashion. Normal pages can be patrolled using new page patrol or the more recent page curation tools, but no equivalent tools exist for patrolling images. This is important, as many of the pictures received by commons aren’t appropriate for a database of educational material that can be freely used by everyone. Many people just upload pictures of themselves, which is acceptable if that person happens to be famous, or even if that person is an editor and plans to use the photo on their own user page, but for the average internet user, that’s not the type of content  accepted on Commons. Additionally, many people try to upload files directly copied from commercial websites, which is generally not allowed, since these files are usually owned by somebody else.

Beyond this, Wolff said he will explore a number of other areas that, taken separately, might seem trivial. “Personally, I think there’s a lot of kind of little things that each individually don’t matter much but, combined, would be really useful,” he said.

According to Wolff, this can include things like making upload log entries include a hash of the image so that tool makers can more easily associate log entries with actual images, or allowing people to specify what page number is displayed when putting a pdf file in an image gallery. Some other projects he’s working on:

• Experimenting with a different image gallery layout that is used on category listings as well as by users with the gallery tag, a project he notes is still very experimental and may change significantly.
• Another thing he may consider trialling: an optional gallery mode on category listings for the subcategory section, where each subcategory gets a representative image from that category, instead of just showing a textual link.

If you have any questions or comments for Brian, you can reach him on irc.freenode.net at #mediawiki and #wikimedia-commons or at his talk page.

Profile by Donna Peterson, Communications Volunteer
Interview by Matthew Roth, Global Communications Manager

This posting is part of a series on small and sometimes not-so-easy-to-discover functionality in Bugzilla that makes developers’ and users’ lifes more comfortable. It’s based on conversations with users and developers in the last months.

People can be impatient, so not everybody is aware that Bugzilla provides autocompletion for those fields that are about people (like the CC, assignee, and QA contact fields).
The autocompletion kicks in only after waiting a short moment but is extremely helpful in order to set the correct person in a Bugzilla field, or to even check if the person has an account in Bugzilla.

If you want to add somebody to the CC field for example, you first click on “edit”:

If you now start typing three letters of a name or an email address, Bugzilla will show a list of proposals that match the letters you have entered:

After you have selected the person that you have in mind, the person is added to the CC field of the report.

Anno-notes.  (thanks, piratepad)

For versions in other languages, please check the wiki version of this report, or add your own translation there!

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for May 2013, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

Wikimedia Foundation highlights

From the Fundraising report: The “facts” banner (listing some basic facts about Wikipedia) was tested in many different versions and eventually performed better than all previous fundraising banners

Fundraising report released

The Wikimedia Foundation’s fundraising team published a report from the 2012-2013 fundraiser. The report reviews the evolution of banner design and includes data about the 2012 year-end English campaign and the 2013 multilingual campaign, which raised a total $35 million USD from over 2 million donors.

Community invited to discuss trademark practices

The Legal and Community Advocacy (LCA) team published a statement on trademark practices, which requests community feedback on the Wikimedia trademark policy, procedure, and other questions. The objective is to balance the interest in licensing the brand for mission-aligned activities, with the necessity of preventing misuse and “naked licensing” (licensing without quality control). This is the opportunity to provide ideas as the team considers updating the trademark policy and practices.

Wikipedia Zero launches in Pakistan

Wikipedia Zero, the program to give people around the world mobile access to Wikipedia free of data charges, is now available in Pakistan, in partnership with Mobilink (Vimpelcom). The company’s user base of over 32 million people makes this the second largest Wikipedia Zero launch to date.

The “Nearby” feature in Vatican City. The camera icon (bottom) indicates an article which misses images, inviting users to contribute one.

“Nearby” feature shows Wikipedia articles in the reader’s vicinity

On location-aware devices (such as smartphones with GPS), a new “Nearby” page lists articles close to the reader’s current location. The feature is designed for mobile devices, but also works on the desktop version of Wikipedia.

Presentation slides with the Tool Labs logo

New hosting environment for community-developed tools

The Tool Labs, an environment for community developers to provide external software tools supporting work on Wikimedia projects, is now operating. With the support of the German Wikimedia chapter, many existing tools have already migrated from the Wikimedia Toolserver to Tools Labs.

Search for new Executive Director begins

The job opening for the Wikimedia Foundation’s new Executive Director has been posted. This starts the search for a successor for Sue Gardner, who will step down later this year. Board of Trustees chair Kat Walsh asked Wikimedians for help in finding the best possible candidate, by spreading the news in their networks.

Data and Trends

Global unique visitors for April:

517 million (-0.17% compared with March; +9.16% compared with the previous year)

(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release May data later in June)

Page requests for May:

21.0 billion (+0.8% compared with April; 16.5% compared with the previous year)

(Server log data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects including mobile access)

Active Registered Editors for April 2013 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month, excluding bots):

82,553 (+0.86% compared with March / +4.38% compared with the previous year)

(Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects.)

Report Card (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects):

http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/

(Definitions)

Financials

Wikimedia Foundation YTD Revenue and Expenses vs Plan as of April 30, 2013

Wikimedia Foundation YTD Expenses by Functions as of April 30, 2013

(Financial information is only available through April 2013 at the time of this report.)

All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and Year-To-Date April 30, 2013.

• Revenue for the month of April is $8.87MM versus plan of $9.78MM, approximately $908K or 9% under plan.

• Year-to-date revenue is $50.44MM versus plan of $45.52MM, approximately $4.92MM or 11% over plan.

• Expenses for the month of April is $5.78MM versus plan of $4.10MM, approximately $1.68MM or 41% over plan, primarily due to higher grant expenses (timing of FDC grants), legal fees, and personal property tax expenses partially offset by lower personnel expenses, internet hosting, and bank fees.

• Year-to-date expenses is $30.84MM versus plan of $34.07MM, approximately $3.24MM or 9% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, and travel expenses partially offset by higher legal expenses, bank fees, outside contract services, and personal property tax expenses.

• Cash position is $45.6MM as of April 30, 2013.

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Video of the monthly Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting covering the month of May (June 6, 2013)

Other movement highlights

One of the “Wiki Loves Earth” winner photos: The White Elephant, a former Polish astronomical and meteorological observatory, on the peak of Pop Ivan in the Carpathian Mountains

More than 11,000 nature photos in Ukrainian “Wiki loves Earth” contest

Wiki Loves Earth is a new contest about taking photos of national nature heritage sites in the Ukraine, organized by the country’s Wikimedia chapter. During one month, 365 participants uploaded more than 11 000 images to Wikimedia Commons, depicting more than 1000 of these sites (from a list of 7000). A jury selected the 12 best photos, receiving awards in a ceremony in Kiev on World Environment Day (June 5).

Group photo at the Amsterdam hackathon

Hackathons in Amsterdam and Tel Aviv

149 participants from 31 countries attended the Amsterdam hackathon in late May, the annual largest meet-up of the Wikimedia development community (which had been held in Berlin in previous years). Also in May, Wikimedia Israel held its first hackathon in Tel Aviv, attended by about 30 people. Several of them made their first steps as Wikimedia developers at this event.

Railway photo expedition in Poland

In collaboration with the Polish State Railways, the Polish Wikimedia chapter is organizing photo expeditions to document railway sites this summer. The activity is open to international Wikimedians, who will form small teams with Polish-speaking leaders to explore the train infrastructure in different parts of Poland. Participants will be equipped with free train tickets and special passes that allow them to enter and photograph objects which are normally not accessible to the public.

Online course about editing Wikipedia articles

The Peer to Peer University (P2PU) is a nonprofit online learning community which recently launched its “School of Open”, in coordination with Creative Commons. As part of the School of Open, a six-week course titled “Writing Wikipedia articles” is offered. Its second run began in May, with more than 60 students enrolling.

You are more than welcome to edit the wiki version of this report for the purposes of usefulness, presentation, etc., and to add translations of the “Highlights” excerpts.

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Video of the monthly Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting covering the month of May (June 6, 2013)

Data and Trends

Global unique visitors for April:

517 million (-0.17% compared with March; +9.16% compared with the previous year)

(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release May data later in June)

Page requests for May:

21.0 billion (+0.8% compared with April; 16.5% compared with the previous year)

(Server log data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects including mobile access)

Active Registered Editors for April 2013 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month, excluding bots):

82,553 (+0.86% compared with March / +4.38% compared with the previous year)

(Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects.)

Report Card (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects):

http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/

(Definitions)

Financials

Wikimedia Foundation YTD Revenue and Expenses vs Plan as of April 30, 2013

Wikimedia Foundation YTD Expenses by Functions as of April 30, 2013

(Financial information is only available through April 2013 at the time of this report.)

All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and Year-To-Date April 30, 2013.

• Revenue for the month of April is $8.87MM versus plan of $9.78MM, approximately $908K or 9% under plan.

• Year-to-date revenue is $50.44MM versus plan of $45.52MM, approximately $4.92MM or 11% over plan.

• Expenses for the month of April is $5.78MM versus plan of $4.10MM, approximately $1.68MM or 41% over plan, primarily due to higher grant expenses (timing of FDC grants), legal fees, and personal property tax expenses partially offset by lower personnel expenses, internet hosting, and bank fees.

• Year-to-date expenses is $30.84MM versus plan of $34.07MM, approximately $3.24MM or 9% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, and travel expenses partially offset by higher legal expenses, bank fees, outside contract services, and personal property tax expenses.

• Cash position is $45.6MM as of April 30, 2013.

Highlights

From the Fundraising report: The “facts” banner (listing some basic facts about Wikipedia) was tested in many different versions and eventually performed better than all previous fundraising banners

Fundraising report released

The Wikimedia Foundation’s fundraising team published a report from the 2012-2013 fundraiser. The report reviews the evolution of banner design and includes data about the 2012 year-end English campaign and the 2013 multilingual campaign, which raised a total $35 million USD from over 2 million donors.

Community invited to discuss trademark practices

The Legal and Community Advocacy (LCA) team published a statement on trademark practices, which requests community feedback on the Wikimedia trademark policy, procedure, and other questions. The objective is to balance the interest in licensing the brand for mission-aligned activities, with the necessity of preventing misuse and “naked licensing” (licensing without quality control). This is the opportunity to provide ideas as the team considers updating the trademark policy and practices.

Wikipedia Zero launches in Pakistan

Wikipedia Zero, the program to give people around the world mobile access to Wikipedia free of data charges, is now available in Pakistan, in partnership with Mobilink (Vimpelcom). The company’s user base of over 32 million people makes this the second largest Wikipedia Zero launch to date.

The “Nearby” feature in Vatican City. The camera icon (bottom) indicates an article which misses images, inviting users to contribute one.

“Nearby” feature shows Wikipedia articles in the reader’s vicinity

On location-aware devices (such as smartphones with GPS), a new “Nearby” page lists articles close to the reader’s current location. The feature is designed for mobile devices, but also works on the desktop version of Wikipedia.

Presentation slides with the Tool Labs logo

New hosting environment for community-developed tools

The Tool Labs, an environment for community developers to provide external software tools supporting work on Wikimedia projects, is now operating. With the support of the German Wikimedia chapter, many existing tools have already migrated from the Wikimedia Toolserver to Tools Labs.

Search for new Executive Director begins

The job opening for the Wikimedia Foundation’s new Executive Director has been posted. This starts the search for a successor for Sue Gardner, who will step down later this year. Board of Trustees chair Kat Walsh asked Wikimedians for help in finding the best possible candidate, by spreading the news in their networks.

Engineering

A detailed report of the Tech Department’s activities for May 2013 can be found at:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2013/May

Department Highlights

Major news in May include:

• An invitation from the Language engineering team to collaborate on language-related projects;
• A new Notifications system enabled on the English Wikipedia;
• Recent developments in language engineering, and the upcoming deployment of the Universal language selector on all wikis;
• The start of a discussion around Flow, a proposed discussion system for Wikimedia sites;
• A call for proposals to manage the MediaWiki release cycle;
• An experience-sharing exercise by the Mobile engineering team about distributed collaboration;
• “Nearby“, a feature showing Wikipedia articles about nearby places on location-aware devices;
• Tool Labs, which is now operational and ready to host tools migrated from the Toolserver;
• A test wiki to try out new features in right-to-left languages
• Tech news, a weekly tech newsletter to help users stay informed of technical changes going to impact them.

VisualEditor

In May, the VisualEditor team worked to complete major new features. The objective is for VisualEditor to be the default editor for all Wikipedia users, capable of letting them edit the majority of content without needing to use the wikitext editor, in July 2013. The team has focused on four areas of new functionality: references, templates, categories and media items. Editing of references and templates has been implemented in experimental code; category editing is nearly complete and should be made available very soon. The deployed alpha version of VisualEditor was updated twice (1.22-wmf4 and 1.22-wmf5), adding a number of user interface improvements, including further work behind the scenes to better support the new features, and fixing a number of bugs.

VisualEditor relies on Parsoid, the program that serves as translator between wikitext code and annotated HTML. The Parsoid team implemented several new features, particularly around the handling the inclusion of images (and their parameters). Improvements were also made to support editing of templates within extensions. This lets editors modify and add templated citations in VisualEditor, an important feature to improve the quality of articles in Wikipedia. In addition to new features, the team implemented important performance optimizations as well, in preparation for the July VisualEditor milestone. For example, the processing of expensive templates, extensions and images is now reused in order to avoid reprocessing identical code. This is necessary to avoid overwhelming the servers when tracking all edits on Wikimedia projects. A cache infrastructure with appropriate purging was set up and will be tested at full load through June. Last, at the Amsterdam hackathon, the team helped other developers use Parsoid’s annotated HTML for other projects, such as a Wikipedia-to-SMS service or the Kiwix offline Wikipedia reader.

Indicator for new user talk page messages in the Notifications tool

A thanks notification

Editor engagement

In May, the Editor engagement team (E2) activated new features and bug fixes for Notifications on the English Wikipedia and mediawiki.org. In collaboration with community members, a ‘new message indicator’ was developed to inform users when someone posts on their talk page. The team also released a new ‘Thanks notification‘ that lets editors show their appreciation to users who make helpful edits, and offers a quick way to give positive feedback on Wikipedia. Messages are now marked as read when you visit your talk page, and talk page notifications link directly to their sections. Work continued on the metrics dashboard and HTML email notifications.

A few final features and bug fixes were added to Article feedback, a quality assessment feature. As requested by community members, a new opt-in feature now makes it easier to enable or disable feedback on a page; UI improvements were also developed to simplify the feedback page. The team activated new feedback links and tested the auto-archive feature on prototype. Feature development has now ended for this project, and next steps will be determined based on the upcoming community vote on the German Wikipedia in coming weeks.

Discussion portals about Flow, a feed-like interface to enable users to better interact with their projects, were announced and opened on three wikis: the English Wikipedia, Meta-Wiki, and mediawiki.org. An interactive prototype was released to the public for discussion, now ongoing.

Update on the Mobile team’s work (presentation slides)

As for the Editor engagement experiments team (E3), they launched their new account creation and login forms, after numerous bug fixes and working with local communities to customize the interface. Complete deployment as the default for all Wikimedia projects was enabled by early June. The team also launched and tested a new version of the “Getting Started” interface for onboarding new Wikipedians. The results of A/B testing of this new version showed the largest increase in click-through rates for the landing page. Last but not least, the PostEdit extension was moved to MediaWiki core, making it available to all wikis.

Mobile

This month, the Mobile team launched Wikipedia Zero with Mobilink in Pakistan. They improved code quality and configuration of Zero programs, and fixed bugs.

A major focus in May was the activation of ‘Nearby’ view on the stable version of the mobile site (see also general “Highlights” section above). Now, with a location-aware device, users can easily identify articles close to their current location. Improvements were also made to photo uploads and the photo upload experience, including improved messaging around image quality and copyright requirements for new uploaders in the beta version of the mobile site. The upload features in general have been a great success, with over 1000 unique uploaders over the last two months. Experiments continue in the beta version of the site with improvements to article editing, an improved reorganization of site navigation, Echo notifications, talk pages, and simplifying discovery of article actions (like editing and watching). These beta features are expected to be released in June.

Students from Sinenjongo High School with Victor Grigas

Fundraising

Major Gifts and Foundations

• Completed our transition to a new caging service, i.e. mail and check processing service
• Began planning for a New York event

Annual Fundraiser

• Posted the 2012-2013 fundraiser report (see general “Highlights” section)
• Tested a new banner design with the donation form in the banner. Updates with results are posted on Meta-wiki.
• Held a week-long communication workshop with the entire fundraising team.
• Victor Grigas and filmmaker Charlene Music filmed a short documentary about Sinenjongo High School, South Africa and their grassroots efforts to get Wikipedia free on their cellphones.

Grantmaking

Department highlights

• Grantmaking quarterly review (notes and slides)
• The FDC’s recommendation for 2012-2013 Round 2 is published and was approved by the WMF Board of Trustees on 31 May, recommending funds allocations for Wikimedia Norge and Wikimédia France.
• FDC staff prepares for the deadline for submitting a Letter of Intent (LOI), which is a mandatory step in the FDC process, by hosting two IRC discussions. LOIs for 2013-2014 Round 1 are due by 8 June.
• Elections for the two remaining seats on the FDC are taking place now.
• In total, 12 grant requests to individuals, groups, and organizations were approved in May (2 FDC proposals, 4 WMF Grants Program submissions, 6 Participation Support requests)
• The WMF Grants Program is experiencing record numbers of open requests this month, with 11 requests currently being considered.
• The eight approved Individual Engagement Grants are now all underway.
• The Participation Support Program has published new criteria for eligibility and selection on the Participation Support page.
• Wikipedia Education Program presents its Mid-Year Review. Minutes and slides from the meeting are available on Meta.

Strategic Goals Metrics

Metric	Value	MoM	MoM%	Chart
Global South Active Editors (5+ edits in main namespace)	15.7k	-235	-1.4%	[1]

Funds Dissemination Committee

• On May 31, the WMF Board of Trustees published their decision on the FDC’s Round 2 funding recommendations with no changes. Wikimedia Norge will receive a funds allocation of US$140,000 and Wikimédia France will receive a funds allocation of US$525,000.
• The FDC now has two seats up for community elections. The two successful candidates will join the now seven-person committee in July 2013, making a total of nine people. Seven candidates have put themselves forward. The ombudsperson position is also up for election, and two candidates have presented themselves for the election.
• FDC staff held two IRC office hours logged here and here focusing on the first step of the FDC application process: the letter of intent. The letter of intent is the first, mandatory step in applying to funds and must be submitted by end of day UTC June 8, 2013 to apply for 2013-2014 Round 1 in the fall. To create a letter of intent, please visit the FDC portal. As always, any questions or comments should be directed to FDCsupportwikimedia.org .
• Following the publication of the FDC’s Round 2 recommendations, Wikimedia Hong Kong submitted an official complaint to the Board of Trustees. After reviewing the complaint, the Board responded, highlighting the factors that went into the FDC’s decision, primarily: “the effectiveness of the programs proposed in terms of both potential impact and budgetary implications, and the internal governance and organizational capacity of the WMHK chapter to administer such a large grant.”
• Wikimedia Hong Kong also submitted an appeal on the eligibility status of WMHK and WMCZ to the ombudsperson. In her capacity, the ombudsperson provided a detailed report with facts on the matter, as well as learning for future rounds.

WMF Grants

• The WMF Grants Program is experiencing record numbers of open requests this May, and the GAC is working hard to encourage discussions around these many open requests. There are currently 11 open requests.
• In numbers: 4 grants approved and 9 reports accepted

Grants awarded in May 2013

• Funds to support the Third Ibero-American Summit in México City: Grants:WM_MX/Iberoconf_2013
• Funds to support a concert featuring freely licensed vocal music in the Ukraine: Grants:WM_UA/Free_Vocal_Music_concert
• Funds to support a photo contest in the Ukraine featuring Ukraine’s Natural Heritage sites: Grants:WM_UA/Wiki_Loves_Earth
• Funds to support a gathering of a national Brazilian working group on free knowledge and science: Grants:Alexandre_Hannud_Abdo_-_Grupo_de_Trabalho_em_Ciência_Aberta/Encontro_de_Acadêmicos_pelo_Conhecimento_Livre

Reports accepted in May 2013

• Grants:Michel_Castelo_Branco_-_Wikimedians_in_Brazil/WikiBrasil_2012/Report
• Grants:WM_AT/Annual_Program_Plan_2012/Report_Q4
• Grants:WM_AT/Annual_Program_Plan_2012/Report
• Grants:WM_CZ/Presentation_&_Outreach/Report2013-1
• Grants:Dominic/GLAM_NARA_Events_fund/Report
• Grants:WM_IL/Legal_Opinions/Report
• Grants:WM_CA/In_person_meeting
• Grants:WM_EE/2012/Report
• Grants:WM_CZ/Mediagrant/Report/2013/05

Participation Support

• In numbers: 8 participants funded (6 requests) and 3 reports accepted
• Participation Support selection criteria and eligibility requirements have been updated on the Participation Support landing page. We encourage anyone interested in receiving travel support for a non-Wikimedia event to review the new criteria.
• Please note that the PSP will only consider requests for WikiSym-OpenSym submitted before 10 June.
• If you are planning an event and will need funding for scholarship participants, the event organizers should apply through the Wikimedia Foundation Grants Program for a scholarship grant or for a portion of an event grant that may be used for scholarships rather than sending individual participants to the PSP. Please contact grants at wikimedia dot or with questions.

Requests awarded in May 2013

• Funding for three volunteers to attend a spring at the Open Help conference: Participation:Ocaasi,_Valeriej,_The_wub/Open_Help_Conference

Funding for 5 volunteers to attend Open Source Bridge 2013:

• Participation:Paulproteus/Open_Source_Bridge_2013
• Participation:Harsh4101991/Open_Source_Bridge_2013
• Participation:Sucheta_Ghoshal/Open_Source_Bridge_2013
• Participation:Sky_Harbor/OpenSourceBridge13
• Participation:Noopur28/OpenSourceBridge13

Reports accepted in May 2013

• Thelmadatter’s report on participation in the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials: Participation:Thelmadatter/Seminar_on_the_Acquisition_of_Latin_American_Library_Materials/Report
• Nicola’s report on participation in the International Cycling History Conference: Participation:Nicola/International_Cycling_History_Conference/Report
• Lpagola’s report on participation in LibreGraphicsMeeting: Participation:Lpagola/LibreGraphicsMeeting/Report

Individual Engagement Grants

Program

• We’ve been iterating on program pages and the proposal review process and timeline in preparation for round 2, in response to round 1 feedback.
• A work sprint is underway in the IdeaLab. Enhanced functionality is intended to boost dynamic activity in the space in preparation for the next IEG open call.

Grantees

• 7 IEGrantees projects continue and an 8th is beginnning after clearing dependencies from its original provisional approval. Some grantees are contributing to the WMF blog, and all grantees’ progress is chronicled each month at:
  • Grants:IEG/Build an effective method of publicity in PRChina/Timeline
  • Grants:IEG/Consolidate wikiArS to involve art schools/Timeline
  • Grants:IEG/Elaborate_Wikisource strategic vision/Timeline
  • Grants:IEG/MediaWiki data browser/Timeline
  • Grants:IEG/Replay Edits/Timeline
  • Grants:IEG/The Wikipedia Adventure/Timeline
  • Grants:IEG/The Wikipedia Library/Timeline
  • Grants:IEG/MediaWiki_and_Javanese_script
• Grantees Ocaasi and Micru attended the Hackathon in Amsterdam to connect with technical contributors across the movement.

Learning & Evaluation

Internal Performance Monitoring

• Grantmaking quarterly report
• Updated grantmaking dashboard

Grantmaking Programs Feedback

• Created feedback surveys for IEG and the Grants Program (draft); refined feedback surveys for FDC, to be distributed in June.
• Executed first feedback surveys for IEG and filtered feedback (people liked the program!)
• Administered survey for feedback from FDC for the deliberation process

Grantee tools

• Working with the Analytics team to rescope and refine the UserMetrics API to allow it to be usable publicly. See draft of Grantmaking needs from the tool
• Developed overview of surveying for grantees; working on finding good survey solutions for them to use

Brazil Catalyst Project

Institutional

Our potential institutional partner in Brazil, Ação Educativa, has been finalizing a project’s proposal to be submitted to WMF.

Data & Experiments

• Partial translation of the Meta Page Research:Data into Portuguese has been released.
• Prototype of ptwiki timeline created with events data structured.
• Ongoing evalution on the design of the Data Center

• Research released:
  • Vandalism profile, impact and occurance (preliminary results released, still collecting more data)

• Research in the planning phase:
  • Medicin Wikiproject: The activity of users that were invited to the project by the Wikiprojetosbot will be tracked to measure the effectiveness of the invitations.

Staff & Community work

• IRC meeting with community: agenda covered vandalism research, consensus on Wikipedia, mismatching disambiguations, education program job positions, ptwiki research center history and future, medicin wikiproject and ptwiki timeline.

Education

Oona Castro speaking at the UFGRS outreach event in Porto Alegre

• Education program job positions:
  • Interview with candidates (we had 100+ applicants!) for the education program positions
  • Online task with final candidates for the coordination position
  • Two new independent contractors to substitute the Education Program Consultant, Everton Alvarenga, were chosen
• Ongoing support for professors on our network and others willing to join
• Outreach materials: Finalising outreach and guide materials
• Outreach events: successful outreach event organized by the community at UFRGS (Porto Alegre city)
• In the media: “Wikipédia aposta no professor para se tornar mais confiável no Brasil” (terra.com.br) and “Wikipédia quer universidades” (Baguete)

Medicine Wikiproject

• Wikiprojetosbot started dispatching invitations for users to join the wikiproject.
• Despite its preliminary stage, this strategy is already showing some results such as community engagement on the Wikiproject talk page and an increasing number of new editors.

Program Development

Department highlights

• The Mobile team launched Wikipedia Zero in Pakistan. With over 32 million mobile customers, this is the second largest launch for Wikipedia Zero to date.
• Program Evaluation and Design staff is getting ready for the first evaluation workshop in Budapest (June 22–23). Participants from more than 15 countries will meet in Hungary to gain a basic shared understanding of program evaluation, work collaboratively to map and prioritize measurable outcomes, and gain increased fluency in a common language of evaluation. Wikimédia Magyarország kindly supports this workshop, which will afterwards also be available online through videos and slides on Commons. More information is available on Meta.
• The Education Team presented strong numbers in its mid-year review. For the current fiscal year, the team expects to be on track for a total goal of 25 million bytes of new content contributed to Wikipedia’s article namespace by students. Classes participating in Egypt showed a particularly high percentage of female editors (~ 85%); one of the Arabic Wikipedia’s current administrators and now top-editors coming out of the Egypt Education Program.

Program Evaluation and Design

• In May, the team worked on organizing the upcoming Budapest workshop (June 21–23). Adele Vrana provided support with the logistics of the meeting, Sarah Stierch communicated with participants and the Hungarian Chapter, and Jaime Anstee started her work on presentation slides and the agenda of the meeting. Interest in the workshop exceeded our expectations by far – more than 50 chapters representatives and unaffiliated volunteers applied to be part of the event. The team is working on preparing all materials in a way that they can be published online; it is also planning on documenting parts of the meeting on video so people who won’t be able to attend the workshop in person will have the opportunity to follow the discussion.

• Also in May, Jaime worked on a glossary of terms around evaluation and program design. Having a shared language in these two areas will help people from different countries understand each other better – which we consider a key advantage given that our movement is so diverse and most people come from countries where English is not a native language. The team is planning to publish a first draft of the glossary on Meta prior to the June event in Budapest.

• In early May, the team had a one-day offsite team retreat. This event served to build a better team cohesion and to work on shared team vision and goals. The event was facilitated by Liz Williams, an outside contractor that also provides coaching services to the Wikimedia Foundation.

• Frank Schulenburg and Anasuya Sengupta worked on a detailed plan that outlines how the Grantmaking and the Program Evaluation and Design teams will work with each other in the future. Part of this plan is a roles and responsibilities grid that got shared with members of each team in late May. The work on this document was an important step for getting better clarity about the scope of each team’s work and also for setting the stage for future collaboration.

Wikipedia Zero

• Launched Wikipedia Zero with Mobilink (Vimpelcom) in Pakistan. This is our second largest launch to date (in terms of userbase, which is over 32 milion people)
• Refactored legacy codebase to move configuration to an improved format which will act as the foundation of a web portal system.
• Updated code to handle recent changes to the mobile site correctly for Wikipedia Zero

Slides from the Mid-Year Review of the Wikipedia Education Program

Wikipedia Education Program

• The team prepared for and participated in a Mid-Year Review with Sue and Erik. Minutes and slides from the meeting are available on Meta.
• Reviewed resumes and interviewed candidates for Global Education Program Manager position.
• Documented Education Program training infrastructure for easier porting and translation.

US/Canada

• Followed up with professors from Spring 2013 to reflect on learnings, brainstorm potential blog posts to feature those learnings or great experiences from student contributions, and get feedback for needed support for Fall 2013.
• Began creating official list of classes that will participate in Fall 2013 and connecting those classes to Ambassador support and assignment design advice
• Developed priorities for Education Extension redesign to improve the user interface for Fall 2013 semester
• Volunteers creating the new non-profit (to run the US/CA program) requested start-up funding from GAC and Thematic Organization affiliation via the Affiliations Committee
• Implemented “Did You Know box” content for the Special:MyCourses feed on English Wikipedia.

Arab World

• Classes have started editing the Arabic Wikipedia in Jordan, Algeria, and Egypt.
• Faris planned travel to visit Dr. Yahia Fares University of Médéa in Algeria in hopes of expanding the program beyond one class there.
• Reviewed resumes for Arab World Education Program Manager.

Communications

• LiAnna and Sage worked closely with David Peters on a design of a new brochure about Wikimedia Commons, a companion piece to the “Welcome to Wikipedia” brochure. A preliminary design will be available in June, and the brochure will be available after the launch of the VisualEditor.
• Facilitated six blog posts on the WMF blog:
  • Arabic Wikipedia grows thanks to Wikipedia Education Program students
  • Rice University students take multiple classes with a Wikipedia-editing assignment
  • Physics professor assigns students to edit Portuguese Wikipedia
  • School of Open offers free Wikipedia course
  • What’s going on in Sweden?
  • Busy Wikimedia semester at ITESM Campus Ciudad de México
• Two newsletters posted:
  • 7 May 2013
  • 21 May 2013

Human Resources

In May, HR completed extensive preparatory work to kick off the June annual review cycle for the participation of all employees, including some light redesign of last year’s templates, a redesign of the format and timing to work in a sprint-like approach, and training for new managers. HR also contracted with Radford to conduct a thorough analysis of the utility and application of existing salary bands, and in comparison with market data, and working to update our compensation philosophy. We have also transitioned 401k retirement funding advisors, and did research with the 401k committee to select new index funds to make available for staff. Time was also spent streamlining data with two of our providers and process in coordination with F&A, namely around ADP and oDesk. HR also kicked off a group, self-named the “aliens” club, to support our expat employees and contractors with settling into life in the United States. We also completed the first year of the WikiLead pilot, a program for Directors and other WMF management on leadership skills training, and ran a pilot negotiations training to help people engage constructively in expectations setting and coming to shared agreeements. Overall, it has been a month of heavy hiring and other activity for HR, which also continues to support the search for the new Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation (with a newly redesigned jobs page at jobs.wikimedia.org).

Staff Changes

New Requisitions Filled

• Nik Everett, Senior Software Engineer (Engineering)
• MunMay Galloway, Visual Designer (Engineering)
• Alexandros Kosiaris, Operations Engineer (Engineering)
• Meron Kristos, Staff Accountant (Finance)
• Heather Walls, Communications Design Manager (Communications)
• Yana Welinder, Legal Counsel (Legal)
• Jared Zimmerman, Director of UX (Engineering)

New Legal Interns

• Jennifer Bloom
• Matthew Collins
• Tiffany Li

New Contractors

• Anna Lantz (Human Resources)
• Robert Smith (Engineering)

Departures

• Ram Ramanath
• David Schoonover

Contracts Ended

• Ashok Misra
• Kraig Parkinson
• Vanessa Sanchez
• Joseph Seddon
• Peter Gehres

New Postings

• A/P Clerk
• Arab World Education Program Manager
• Fundraising Donor Services Associate
• Global Education Program Manager
• Product Manager | Platform
• Recruitment Team Intern (Undergrad/Student)
• Research Analyst
• Wikimedia Foundation: Executive Director

Statistics

Total Requisitions Filled

May Actual: 143

May Total Plan: 174

May Filled: 7, Month Attrition: 2,

YTD Filled: 58, YTD Attrition: 27

4 Canceled Requisitions for FY, as of May 31

Remaining Open Requisitions to fiscal year end

27 (reflects 4 canceled requisitions for FY)

Department Updates

Real-time feed for HR updates

http://identi.ca/wikimediaatwork or http://twitter.com/wikimediaatwork

Finance and Administration

• Continued work on the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan with a final draft version presented to Stu West (Chair of the Audit Committee).
• Have begun to rebalance the reserves of the Wikimedia Foundation so that more of the reserve is being held in bonds instead of certificates of deposit. This is being done to improve the real rate of return of the portfolio.
• The Wikimedia Foundation – IRS Form 990 for FY 2011-12 was posted on the Wikimedia Foundation web site.
• In addition to holding and paying in a group of currencies, we have begun work on reducing the cost of converting USD to other curriences when sending funds for payments or grants.

Legal, Community Advocacy, and Communications Department

LCA Report, May 2013

Contract Metrics

• Submitted : 20
• Completed : 19

Trademark Metrics

• Submitted : 13
• Approved : 2
• Pending : 9
• Denied : 2

Yana Welinder explaining “naked licensing” in a presentation about trademarks (slides)

Coming & Going

• Yana Welinder joined the LCA team as legal counsel.
• Four legal interns joined for the summer: Jennifer Bloom (Harvard), Matthew Collins (Columbia), and Tiffany Li (Georgetown).

Other Activities

• LCA launched a community discussion about the process for choosing a new Wikivoyage logo in the face of legal challenge to the former one. This also followed a new proposed logo selection procedure. We encourage people to participate!
• LCA published a statement on trademark practices, which requests community feedback on the Wikimedia trademark policy, procedures, and other questions. This is your opportunity to give us ideas as we consider updating our trademark policy and practices.
• The minutes and resolutions from the WMF Board of Trustees April meeting were published.
• Luis Villa attended the Open Source Initiative board meeting in Washington D.C.
• LCA began interviewing candidates for a new legal counsel position.
• Updated Legal and Community Advocacy page on Meta.
• Two presentations from LCA were accepted at Wikimania 2013: Discussing Our Legal Strategy Going Forward: A Talk with the WMF General Counsel (Geoff), Open Culture, Open Data, Open Source (Luis and Stephen)

Communications Report, May 2013

May’s major news focused on the announcement of the ED search process for WMF, and some considerable residual attention paid to the issue of the women American novelists category on EN Wikipedia. In May we also welcomed Heather Walls as the communications team’s first Communications Design Manager.

Major announcements

‘’The Wikimedia Foundation announces search for new Executive Director to lead the Wikimedia movement ’’(22 May 2013)

The Wikimedia Foundation has begun a global search for a new Executive Director to lead the organization through its next phase of innovation and growth. The new Executive Director will lead a thriving international organization that operates the number five most-popular web property in the world.

Major Storylines through March

Quite a bit of coverage through the month, largely focussing on local/regional Wikipedia articles and topics of interest to niche audiences.

‘’Can Wikipedia predict the stock market?’’ (May 8)

Many outlets covered a May 8 Scientific Reports study that suggests Wikipedia can be used to predict the behavior of the stock market, specifically openly available page view stats for articles can predict decreases in relevant stock prices. Coverage was predominantly positive or neutral in tone.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-05/8/wikipedia-views-stock-market

http://www.yourmoney.com/your-money/news/2268887/can-wikipedia-predict-the-stock-market-computer-says-yes

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-2326268/Visits-Wikipedia-predict-stock-market-movements.html

Mapping of live, anon edits on WP makes headlines (May 13)

A popular visualization tool (http://rcmap.hatnote.com/#en) by WMF’s own Stephen LaPorte of current anonymous edits on Wikipedia received substantial coverage through mid-May:

http://mashable.com/2013/05/13/wikipedia-edits-live-map/

http://boingboing.net/2013/05/13/realtime-map-of-anonymous-edit.html

http://phys.org/news/2013-05-realtime-wikipedia-worldwide.html

http://www.fastcocreate.com/1682965/view-all-unregistered-wikipedia-edits-in-real-time

WMF launches its ED search (May 22)

We publicly launched our search for the next Executive Director of the WMF in late May. Coverage was not extensive as the original announcement of Sue’s departure, although social media sharing was substantial.

http://allthingsd.com/20130522/wikimedia-starts-hunt-for-new-executive-director/

WMF Blog post

Economist Job posting

Other worthwhile reads

Wikipedia’s ‘Nearby’ Feature Pulls Up Articles Related to Your Location | Mashable | May 30

Wikipedia’s anti-Pagan crusade | Salon | May 24

Wargaming supports open source | develop | May 24

Wikipedia to Appear in Shughni | Global Voices | May 12

WMF Blog posts

Thirty-nine blog posts in May, with bilingual posts in Arabic, Catalan, French, German, Russian, Japanese, Serbian, Spanish and Swedish. The Wikimedia blog is moving rapidly towards more than 50% content available in a language other than English. Some highlights from the month:

• A librarian uses her expertise to improve Wikipedia

• Spanish Wikipedia surpasses the 1 million article milestone

• Russian Wikipedia celebrates 12th anniversary and millionth article

• Documenting the Eurovision Song Contest 2013 for Wikimedia

Media Contact

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#May_2013

Wikipedia Signpost

For lots of detailed coverage and news summaries, see the community-edited newsletter “Wikipedia Signpost” for May 2013:

• Volume 9, Issue 17, 6 May 2013
• Volume 9, Issue 18, 13 May 2013
• Volume 9, Issue 19, 20 May 2013
• Volume 9, Issue 20, 27 May 2013

Visitors and Guests

Visitors and guests to the WMF office in May 2013:

1. Sarah Pearson (Creative Commons)
2. Sara Crouse (Creative Commons)
3. Eric Steuer (Creative Commons)
4. Elliot Harmon (Creative Commons)
5. Kellie Brownell (The Ada Initiative)
6. Peter Coopr (Paul Hastings)
7. Rishi Sharma (Paul Hastings)
8. Virginia Sutton (J&D)
9. Deb Wolter (Red Bamboo Consulting)
10. Rudy Rucker (Monkey Brains)
11. Michael Stella (McCladrey)
12. R. Schmidt (McCladrey)
13. Lisa Grossman (m|Oppenheim)
14. Mike Schwartz (Senior VP Engineering, Wikia)
15. Jennifer Garvey Berger (Cultivating Leadership)
16. Jim Nelson (executive director, Yorba)
17. Chaz, Eric, Lucas, Clinton (Engineers, Yorba)
18. Leif Johanssen (SUNET)
19. Valter Nordh (SUNET)
20. Simon Phipps (MariaDB Foundation)
21. Somnath Ray (Timescape)
22. Kathy Reich (Packard Foundation)
23. Anna Stillwell (Human Project)
24. Alex Gladstein (Oslo Freedom Forum)
25. R.P. (Open Knowledge Foundation)
26. Nash Hurley (Vital)
27. Taylor Keep (Vital)
28. Kathy Ramsey (TAI)
29. Aloka Archige (Forte)
30. Sarah Nagel (IIE)
31. Audrey Milo (C & RE)
32. Brian Lee (Forte)
33. Jan Ainali (WMSE)
34. Valerie Aurora (TAI)
35. Mary Gardiner (TAI)

2013-06-13: Edited to add missing entry under “Contracts Ended” and to remove redundant entries under “Visitors and Guests”
2013-06-14: Edited to add missing entry under “Visitors and Guests”, and remove one that belongs to June

If you read Wikipedia in a more than one language you’ll have noticed the sidebar sometimes ready to link you to the topic of the current article in one or more other languages. If you’ve been following the trends you’ll know that Wikidata is now in charge of keeping these language links in order. (To understand more about how Wikidata works watch my youtube tutorial starting at 5:15) One upshot of that is that we can easily count these links and understand more about the Wikipedia projects – like how “unique” different Wikipedias are. I define a unique Wikidata Item of a language X to be a Wikidata Item that has only one language link, and the language link is in language X. I also find the total number of items that have occurrences of language X in their language links. Below I graph then total items against unique items for every Wikipedia language, first on a linear scale and then on logarithmic scale.

Wikidata languages comparing unique versus total items. Linear scale. [Click to expand]

Wikidata languages comparing unique versus total items. Logarithmic scale. [Click to expand]

Uniqueness percentage of Wikipedias ordered by total size. [Click to expand]

UPDATE: By request I replotted the above uniqunesses. but with the X axis ordered by usage defined by hourly page views. It seems like there is a higher correlation this way too. (Credit for this intuition goes to Italian Wikipedian “User:Nemo_bis”)

Uniqueness percentage of Wikipedias ordered by hourly page views. [Click to expand]

Now let’s go back to our definition of uniqueness – an item with just one language link. We can ask the question, how much of Wikidata only has 1 language link? And how much has 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 language links, …. all the way to 286, the maximum since there are 286 Wikipedia languages. In fact there is only one page in all the 286 items, the “Main Page”.

Here’s the composition of Wikidata by the number of language links of each item. I’ve broken it up into 4 plots of increasing zoom, and coloured it to show its fractal nature.

Composition of Wikidata by the number of language links of each item. [Click to enlarge]

All of this goes to show that if you picked a random article on a random Wikipedia, statistically it probably doesn’t have an equivalent article in another language. However from empirical evidence, it seems otherwise, normally there is an interlanguage link. One hypothesis to explain this is that the articles we tend to read are usually more general interest. That suggests another more difficult question to answer, comparing n-clusters to page views. (Maybe a good topic for my next research.)

For now lets turn our attention to another part of the composition graph. Since we’ve already looked at unique items, let’s inspect the 2- and 3-clusters: “pairs” and “triples”.

There are 1,578,043 items in the 2-cluster, and 735,573 in the 3-cluster. Each of those items are are cross of two or three languages. For now we’ll focus on the the top 20 pairs and triples. Here they are, coloured to show whether English is in the cluster.

Comparison of 20 highest occurring pairs and triples in Wikidata. [Click to expand]

Some are more perplexing, especially the high prominence of Vietnamese, Cebuano, and Waray permuted with Swedish and Dutch. Were there some prolific translators? Machine translation bots? Is Wikidata not reflecting Wikipedia fully? Perhaps you can explain those correlations? In fact here is the data accurate as of 1 June 2013, and code available on github.

UPDATE: User Zolo on Wikidata wrote to me “I’ll point out here that the Vietnamese-Dutch (and perhaps Cebuano-Waray-Swedish) cluster is most probably due to the high number of items about taxons. That also explains why they have relatively few “unique items”.”

Subscribe to Tech News to stay informed of upcoming technical changes

If you’ve ever wanted to be kept informed of technical changes likely to impact your Wikimedia experience, you’ll want to subscribe to Tech News, a weekly newsletter than can be delivered directly to your talk page.

— published on the Wikimedia Tech blog.

Tech News is a weekly tech newsletter delivered on your talk page and translated into many languages.

If you’ve ever wanted to be kept informed of technical changes likely to impact your Wikimedia experience, you’ll want to subscribe to Tech News, a weekly newsletter than can be delivered directly to your talk page.

The amount of technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement as well as the number of different discussion venues make it increasingly more difficult and time–consuming to monitor changes relevant to one’s involvement in Wikimedia projects. Understanding technical issues and discussions is especially hard since they contain a lot of jargon terms and are mostly conducted only in English.

Tech News is intended to make it easier to keep track of such noteworthy changes and understand them better. By using jargon–free language, we aim to reach regular Wikimedia contributors who are most likely to be affected by upcoming software and configuration changes.

The newsletter is assembled by Tech ambassadors, a group of technically-minded volunteers who help other Wikimedians with technical issues, and act as bridges between developers and local wikis. They’re the ones who monitor technical changes across numerous (and scattered) channels and put together the high-level, plain English summary.

Volunteer translators are the other unsung heroes of Tech News. They’ve been doing an amazing job, which we are very thankful for: not only have they translated every issue so far into around 10 languages on Meta-Wiki (making the newsletter available for users speaking languages other than English), but their responsiveness has even allowed us to distribute translated versions of the newsletter to subscribers on their wikis.

Four issues of the newsletter have been published so far, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Heartwarming comments have for instance described the newsletter as “clear, concise and useful info all in one.” Readers have generally welcomed the initiative, and have provided feedback that helped us further improve the format of the newsletter.

The Wikipedia Signpost has already started making use of Tech News, and we’re hoping that, along with their counterparts in other languages, the Signpost writers will join forces with us to monitor technical changes.

There are a few ways in which you can contribute to Tech News: by translating the latest issue into your language, adding relevant information or links to the next issue, or just by sharing the news with your community.

If you’d like to subscribe to Tech News, add your username to our global delivery list or sign up for the wikitech-ambassadors mailing list to get more frequent updates. If there is local consensus, it’s also possible to receive the newsletter directly on your local community discussion page.

Tomasz W. Kozlowski and Guillaume Paumier

The below was originally published by Simon Knight. You can read the original here.

On Saturday I spoke in Lincoln at the WikimediaUK Conference on Mediawiki for OER and Learning Analytics – slides (with audio) here, video (I think) available on the conference link some time later this week.

I’d met a group of the people last year at EduWiki 2012 (and my thoughts at: EduWiki 2012), and my talk built a lot on the work I did at Cambridge on the ORBIT project – creating a platform for OER on interactive teaching particularly in STEM subject, as well as more recent work related to my PhD.  In particular I was talking about some stuff I’ve covered in blogs on:

• The extent of ‘openess’ in OGL licence material released solely as PDF
• Mediawiki for Learning Analytics
• Paradata, linked data and creating personalised learning pathways
• Collaborative information seeking on talk pages  (I didn’t really mention this in the talk, but it was something I chatted to people about over the weekend)

I was particularly happy to hear talks from education organiser Toni Sant, WMUK Associate (and a big contributor to education outreach) Martin Poulter, and communications organiser (and someone I’ve talked to a bit about Digital Disruption‘s work) Stevie Benton.

I’ve put some thoughts below on particular aspects of the event, in the long run I think there are some interesting questions around how wikimedia meets its targets (and what those are), one thing I was thinking about yesterday was whether we need to start thinking about the mediawiki platform as a classroom tool in the same way as google has pushed google docs – it’s a good way to encourage brand affiliation, and familiarise people with your tools (and get them off microsoft’s – who of course do exactly the same thing).  It may be that tools like mediawiki – particularly given that they are open source, very flexible, and allow a lot of interesting pedagogic and analytic things to happen, might be particularly amenable to the sort of ‘technology for pedagogy‘ things I talked about not so long ago.

Lincoln Cathedral

Learning Analytics for Learning Wikipedia

There are interesting times ahead with the development of a wikimedia VLE for training, and the wikipedia adventure (also for training).  One thing I was keen to suggest was that if VLE training modules had learning outcomes that could be operationalised into activities within a wiki (either a training environment on the VLE or linked to wikipedia contributions themselves) then we could engage in some learning analytics on that data, and perhaps even develop a badging system.  That’d be cool because, for example, we might see what sorts of pages a user interacts with – perhaps primarily ‘commons’, or maybe ‘articles’ in the main wikipedia, etc. – and what sorts of activities they’re doing (minor edits, updating references, adding media, etc.) and build on that resource knowledge and user knowledge to make suggestions for further training, areas of strength, areas of weakness.  The primary target for this sort of thing is noobs, but if we want genuinely user contributed stuff I think engaging more experienced wikipedians as users is crucial too.  But if they come in and think “oh, well I can do this and that” or try modules and find they’re bored, the fatigue dropout will be high.  So much the better if people could be “pre-accredited” not from completing the modules on the VLE, but by checking the learning outcomes for particular modules (granularity will matter) against their user contributions.  This might also encourage more experienced users to learn new skills (for example, I’m a competent contributor, but I know nothing about templates – perhaps I should learn), and could flag some things where people think they have the skill, but their editing suggests they might actually be missing something.

Learning Analytics for Learning in Wikipedia

Of course, I’m also interested in how we can develop learning analytics for learning in wikipedia (or, at least, mediawiki environments) and I’m starting to think about how we could set up some experimental environments to teach some critical evaluation skills, and explore people’s epistemic commitments in both mediawiki and more structured (e.g. EvidenceHub) environments.  More  on that another time though! Exciting times ahead.

The Proofread of the Month for June 2013 is about biography. The first selected book is Balthasar Hübmaier (1905) by Henry Clay Vedder.

Balthasar Hübmaier (c. 1480-1528) was an influential German Anabaptist leader, one of the most well-known Anabaptist theologians of the Protestant Reformation.

Henry Clay Vedder (1853-1935) was a Baptist church historian from New York.  He was editor of the Examinar for many years before becoming Professor of Church History in Crozer Theological Seminary, Pennsylvania.  Currently, his other works on Wikisource are two encyclopaedic articles on Baptists, in The New International Encyclopædia (1905) and The Encyclopedia Americana (1920).

This post is available in 3 languages:

Català  •  Italiano  • English

(This is a post by Wikisource volunteers Andrea Zanni and David Cuenca)

English

Working prototype to represent a Wikidata concept as a way to unify information from different Wikimedia projects. Try it out here

Spring has come for the Wikisource Vision development project. Sun is shining, birds are singing, and wikisourcerors are, as always, relentlessly proofreading. During the month of May, users from all around the world have proofread almost 1,000 pages per day. The Wikisource Vision development project has not been idle either.

Our tech wizard Tpt has developed a little gadget that in the future will allow us to make sister project content–like public domain books from Wikisource–more visible in Wikipedia. The content card is based on a mockup designed during the discussion about a new interface for interproject links. If you want to try it out, follow these instructions. The Wikimedia Foundation’s Pau Giner has kindly designed some less intrusive icons that could be used in a definitive version. Leave your feedback here.

On Wikidata, the work of the “book community” is proceeding steadily. Books properties have been thoroughly debated and most of them created. On another front, the Request for Comments related to references and sources is aiming to have the first working version of the Guidelines for sourcing statements in Wikidata ready for June 15th. These guidelines have sparked a controversy about what to do with unsourced statements, normally imported by bots, and if automatic imports should be required to add reliable sources. This is currently being debated by the community, weighing which is more important for the project at this early stage: data quantity or data quality.

Another topic that has been getting attention this last month is the proposal for a Wikisource User Group. As you might know, Wikimedia User Groups are a new form of association for Wikimedians and free knowledge enthusiasts all around the world. We would like to form a Wikisource user group and we are gathering interested participants and feedback; your opinion on this will be appreciated. The group would be informal, but still a recognized community of Wikisource users and lovers. With the creation of such group, we aim and hope to boost communication, coordination and collaboration among different language Wikisource communities. Common issues are better tackled together, wiki-style.

User:Micru (right) during the Amsterdam Hackathon 2013

Two weeks ago, I attended the Wikimedia Hackathon in Amsterdam, which accomplished the following:

• After reaching out to some Commons-related participants, the ongoing Google Summer of Code project related to improving the UploadWizard for books will be slightly modified to benefit the community at large. This will be presented soon.
• Collaboration with the Wikidata team allowed us to characterize the improvements needed in the interface for a better user experience when creating and navigating book data.
• New insights about how to create an opt-in template and module centralization for Wikisource or other projects. (If you would like to apply for an Outreach Program for Women internship to work on this, contact me or add it to
  https://www.mediawiki.org/<wbr></wbr>wiki/Mentorship_programs/<wbr></wbr>Possible_projects)

David Cuenca, User:Micru on Wikisource

Notes

• This blog post is part of the Elaborate Wikisource strategic vision, an IEG project to improve Wikisource.

Italiano

Working prototype to represent a Wikidata concept as a way to unify information from different Wikimedia projects. Try it out here

È giunta la primavera per il progetto “Wikisource Vision development”. Il sole splende, gli uccellini cantano, e i wikisourciani, come sempre, stanno instancabilmente trascrivendo libri. Durante il mese di maggio, utenti da tutto il mondo hanno corretto e formattato quasi 1,000 pagine al giorno. Ma neanche il progetto “Wikisource vision development” è stato con le mani in mano.

Il nostro mago dei computer Tpt ha sviluppato un piccolo gadget che in futuro permetterà a tutti i progetti fratelli di rendere visibile i loro contenuti su Wikipedia. Il gadget è costruito su un prototipo ideato durante la discussione sulla nuova interfaccia per i link fra progetti fratelli (altrimenti detti link interprogetto). Se lo volete provare, seguite le istruzioni (e immaginate che bello sarebbe avere dei link automatici ai libri di Wikisource per autori come Dante o Shakespeare). Pau Giner della Wikimedia Foundation ha gentilmente disegnato alcune icone che potrebbero essere integrate in una versione definitiva. Se hai voglia, dì la tua qui.

Su Wikidata, il lavoro della comunità “bibliotecaria” sta procedendo alla grande. Le proprietà dei libri sono state ampiamente discusse, e la maggior parte di loro create. Su un altro fronte, la richiesta di pareri dedicata a fonti e bibliografie sta cercando di ottenere la prima versione ufficiale delle Linee guida per l’aggiunta di fonti alle dichiarazioni su Wikidata. Queste linee guida hanno generato una accesa discussione su cosa fare con le dichiarazioni senza fonte, solitamente importate via bot, e sul fatto che gli import automatici possano o meno essere autorizzati ad aggiungere fonti autorevoli. Tutto questo è al momento discusso dalla comunità, che sta cercando di capire cosa sia prioritario per il progetto in questa fase iniziale: quantità o qualità dei dati? Ai posteri l’ardua sentenza.

Un’altro argomento che ha ricevuto particolare attenzione questo mese è la proposta di un Wikisource User Group. Come (probabilmente) sapete, i Wikimedia User Groups sono una nuova forma di associazione per wikimediani e entusiasti della conoscenza libera in tutto il mondo. Noi vorremmo formare un gruppo di utenti, lettori e sostenitori di Wikisource e stiamo cercando partecipanti e opinioni (ovviamente, anche la vostra). Il gruppo sarà informale, ma allo stesso tempo una realtà riconosciuta di utenti attivi e lettori di Wikisource. Con la creazione di questo gruppo, puntiamo e speriamo di migliorare la comunicazione, il coordinamento e la collaborazione fra le diverse comunità linguistiche di Wikisource. Come wiki ci insegna, l’unione fa la forza.

User:Micru (right) during the Amsterdam Hackathon 2013

Due settimane fa, ho avuto la fortuna di partecipare alla maratona hacker dei wikimediani ad Amsterdam, che ha portato ad alcuni importanti risultati:

• dopo aver incontrato alcuni utenti e contributori di Commons, il progetto “Google Summer of Code” dedicato al miglioramento dell’ UploadWizard per i libri sarà leggermente modificato per beneficiare lqa comunità in senso più ampio. I dettagli saranno presentati a breve
• la collaborazione con il team di Wikidata team ci ha permesso di definire meglio i miglioramenti da apportare all’intefaccia per una mibgliore user experience ndurante la creazione e la navigazione dei dati bibliografici
• nuove idee e sviluppi sul come creare ottenere una centralizzazione di template e Moduli per Wikisource (o altri progetti). (Sea qualcuno interessa partecipare ad un “Outreach Program for Women grant” dedicato a questo importante problema, mi contatti.).

David Cuenca, User:Micru su Wikisource
Traduzione di Andrea Zanni, User:Aubrey su it.Wikisource.

Català

Desenvolupament de la Visió de Viquitexts – Maig

Prototip funcional per representar un concepte de Wikidata com una forma d’unificar la informació de diferents projectes de Wikimedia. Prova’l aquí.

La primavera ha arribat per al projecte de desenvolupament de la visió de Viquitexts. El sol brilla, els ocells canten, i els viquitextistes estan, com sempre, transcribint sense descans. Durant el mes de maig, els usuaris de tot el món han corregir gairebé 1.000 pàgines per dia. El projecte de desenvolupament de la visió de Viquitexts tampoc ha estat aturat.

El nostre mag de la tecnologia Tpt ha desenvolupat un petit giny que en el futur ens permetrà fer que el contingut dels projecte germans – com els llibres de domini públic de Viquitexts – siguen més visibles a la Viquipèdia. La targeta de continguts es basa en una maqueta dissenyada durant la discussió sobre una nova interfície per als enllaços multiprojecte. Si vols provar-ho, segueix aquestes instruccions. Pau Giner, de la Fundació Wikimedia, ha dissenyat amablement unes quantes icones menys intrusives que podrien ser utilitzades en una versió definitiva. Deixeu els vostres comentaris aquí.

En Wikidata, el treball de la “comunitat llibrera” està avançant de manera constant. S’han debatut a fons propietats necessàries per a crear llibres i la majoria d’aquestes han sigut creades. D’altra banda, la sol·licitud de comentaris relacionada amb la referències i fonts té com a objectiu enllestir la primera versió de treball de les Recomanacions per a afegir fonts a les declaracions en Wikidata per al 15 de juny. Aquesta guía ha desencadenat una polèmica sobre què fer amb declaracions sense fonts, normalment importades per bots, i si les importacions automàtiques haurien d’estar obligades a afegir fonts fiables. Això està debatent-se en la comunitat, considerant què és més important per al projecte en aquesta primera etapa: la quantitat de dades o la qualitat d’aquestes.

Un altre tema que ha estat rebent atenció aquest últim mes, és la proposta d’un Grup d’Usuaris de Viquitexts. Els Grups d’Usuaris Wikimedia són una nova forma d’associació de Wikimedia i entusiastes del coneixement lliure a tot el món. Ens agradaria formar un grup d’usuaris de Viquitexts i estem reunint als participants i els comentaris de tot aquells que hi estiguen interessats; la teva opinió serà apreciada. El grup seria informal, però segueix sent una comunitat reconeguda dels usuaris Viquitexts. Amb la creació d’aquest grup, el nostre objectiu té l’esperança d’impulsar la comunicació, coordinació i col·laboració entre les diferents comunitats lingüístiques de Viquitexts. Problemes comuns són millor abordats en conjunt, a l’estil wiki.

Usuari:Micru (a la dreta) durant l’Amsterdam Hackathon 2013

Fa dues setmanes, vaig assistir la Wikimedia Hackathon a Amsterdam], que aconseguí el següent:

1. Després d’apropar-me a alguns dels participants relacionats amb Commons, el Google Summer of Code projecte relacionat amb la millora del UploadWizard per a llibres serà lleugerament modificat per a beneficiar a la comunitat en general. Aquestos canvis seran presentat aviat.
2. La col·laboració amb l’equip de Wikidata ens va permetre caracteritzar les millores necessàries en la interfície per a una millor experiència d’usuari en crear i navegar les dades relacionades amb llibres.
3. Nous coneixements sobre com crear plantilles i mòduls Lua centralitzats per a Viquitexts o altres projectes. (Si vols participar en el programa per a afavorir la incorporació de dones programadores al projecte Wikimedia, Outreach Program for Women, posa’t en contacte)

David Cuenca, Usuari:Micru en Viquitexts

Notes

• Aquesta entrada de blog forma part de Elaborate Wikisource strategic vision, un projecte de beca IEG per a millorar Viquitexts.

Students at Schreiner University enrolled in their Spring 2013 New Media Technology and Communication course to find that Professor Mary Grace Antony wanted them to expand Wikipedia articles. Antony found out about the Wikipedia Education Program through the National Communication Association Wikipedia Initiative.

“It seemed like the perfect fit for a course that examined technology and its impact on communication, while providing my students with a firsthand immersive experience with an online collaborative and research-oriented organization,” she says. Her colleagues have been enthusiastic about the project, and one reference librarian, Connor Baldwin, is now training as a Wikipedia Ambassador after supervising this assignment so he can best support others at Schreiner.

In the beginning of the semester, all students completed the training for students as an introduction to editing basics and norms, article selection, and referencing guidelines.

“Dan Simanek, our Campus Ambassador, provided an initial orientation, and even presented a Skype guest lecture where he reviewed the stub extension process and took questions from the class,” Mary Grace says. “User:Theopolisme, our Online Ambassador, provided invaluable feedback and real-time assistance whenever the students hit a roadbump. His patience was truly commendable.”

Students enjoyed the assignment, according to feedback they provided at the end of the term.

“I like how this project is virtually a group effort, and how others can jump in with their ideas,” said one of her students, User:Marshall90. “It challenged me to do something I would have never considered doing, yet it gave me the opportunity to share my work with others.”

The great thing about programs and projects like the Education Program is that new editors, who may not edit in the long-term, can still add great content and learn along the way. But it’s not just Wikipedia who benefits: students do, too.

“It is far more practical and immediately beneficial than a traditional class assignment,” Mary Grace says. “Developing a stub into a full-fledged article required focus, attention to detail, and good research and writing skills. The results were instantaneous and tangible, and this gave the students a more fulfilling and satisfying learning experience. Several of them appreciated writing for a global audience, rather than just the course professor.”

Even with all of these learning benefits, Antony’s favorite part of the assignment was her “students’ evolving and burgeoning pride in their work.”

“This has been one of my favorite assignments while at Schreiner,” said User:Saviands, one of her students. “I intend to keep up with the page and see what changes and edits are made.” Antony says she “can’t wait to do it again.”

Jami Mathewson, Wikipedia Education Program, United States and Canada

Major news in May include:

• An invitation from the Language engineering team to collaborate on language-related projects;
• A new Notifications system enabled on the English Wikipedia;
• Recent developments in language engineering, and the upcoming deployment of the Universal language selector on all wikis;
• The start of a discussion around Flow, a proposed discussion system for Wikimedia sites;
• A call for proposals to manage the MediaWiki release cycle;
• An experience-sharing exercise by the Mobile engineering team about distributed collaboration;
• “Nearby“, a feature showing Wikipedia articles about nearby places on location-aware devices;
• Tool Labs, which is now operational and ready to host tools migrated from the Toolserver;
• A test wiki to try out new features in right-to-left languages
• Tech news, a weekly tech newsletter to help users stay informed of technical changes going to impact them.

Note: We’re also providing a shorter, simpler and translatable version of this report that does not assume specialized technical knowledge.

Wikimedia UK is pleased to report the election of four trustees to the Board of the charity by its membership. The election took place at yesterday’s Annual General Meeting in Lincoln.

Saad Choudri was previously co-opted to the Board of Wikimedia UK in September 2012. He has taken a very active role and and has been involved in projects such as Wikimania 2014 and continues to work on the transfer of QRpedia to the charity. Saad works as a lawyer in the video games industry.

Greyham Dawes was co-opted to the Board of Wikimedia UK in February 2013, replacing John Byrne as Honorary Treasurer. He has worked hard to make sure the charity’s accounts are ready for submission to the Charity Commission and Companies House. Greyham is a chartered accountant and has extensive experience of charitable governance.

Michael Maggs will be serving on the Board for the first time. He is a bureaucrat on Wikimedia Commons and is currently a key member of the Wiki Loves Monuments steering group. Michael worked as a patent attorney for many years until his recent retirement.

Alastair McCapra will also be serving on the Board for the first time. He has previous experience of governance, having served as a trustee of Birkbeck College. He also sits on the Finance Committee of the Construction Industry Council. Alastair is currently the Chief Executive of the Landscape Institute.

All successful candidates have been elected by our members to serve terms of two years. You can read the candidates’ election statements here and their answers to pre-election questions here

Wikimedia UK congratulates the successful candidates and looks forward to their contributions to our charity. The charity also wishes to place on record its thanks to those candidates who were unsuccessful and hopes they will continue to be active in our movement.

Finally, and importantly, the trustees and staff of Wikimedia UK wish to say a heartfelt thank you to Doug Taylor, who decided not to stand for re-election. Doug has made an outstanding contribution to our charity as a trustee over the last year. We are sure he will continue to make excellent contributions as a volunteer.

Working my way through some of the Canadian Collection on Commons this morning, I discovered a rather eye-catching picture:

“Porcupine’s Lady Prospector”, photographed at the Porcupine Gold Rush in the summer of 1911. Two things immediately strike the viewer: one is that the woman in the photograph is dressed decorously by the standards of Edwardian Canada, with a white blouse and a long dark skirt, despite the searing heat of that summer – Porcupine would later be devastated by wildfire – and the second is that she has a revolver slung casually on one hip.

There has to be a story here.

It turns out to be quite quick to put a name to her; the Timmins Daily Press captions a copy of the picture as Carolyn Mayben Flowers, and the Timmins Museum gives us “a little more detail:

A photo of the sweet-faced Carolyn Mayben Flowers hangs nearby. She came to Porcupine from New York City in search of gold. She never found anything valuable but stayed in Porcupine, rarely seen without her six shooter. Sundays were the only time she wouldn’t wear the gun, seen slung from her hip in the photo, when she would play organ during a local church service.

I wonder what became of her? She was still around in 1915, giving piano lessons. I haven’t been able to trace her after that, or indeed before. There is a “Cathaline Flowers” in Gowganda (aged 26, married, with a six-year-old daughter), but Gowganda is a long way from Timmins, and she doesn’t list herself as American…

• Australia and New Zealand report: Australian participation – east and west; urban and outback; at home and away
• Belgium report: Belgian cultural institutions interested in Open Data
• Czech Republic report: QRpedia codes in Silesian Museum Opava
• Finland report: Maps; WLPA; Workshop material
• France report: Edit-a-thon in Quai Branly
• Germany report: Being online on air – TV cooperation
• Mexico report: Edit-a-thons in Puebla and Mexico City; Möebius radio program
• Netherlands report: Europeana Fashion edit-a-thon; First Dutch Wikipedian in Residence; Wikimedia Hackathon; Wiki loves libraries
• Spain report: Wiki Loves Catalan Public libraries
• Sweden report: A month full of art
• Switzerland report: QRpedia Pilot at the Natural History Museum in Bern
• UK report: Monmouth; Museums; More
• USA report: Wikipedian in Residence in the Smithsonian; News in brief
• Special story: GLAM and Early Telescopes
• Open Access report: Bugfixes; over 10,000 files from PLOS; conferences
• Calendar: June’s GLAM events

This month’s featured text is Laura Secord: A Study in Canadian Patriotism (1907) by George Bryce, a record of his address to the Canadian Club in Winnipeg.

It is a short text on Laura Secord, Canadian heroine of the War of 1812. After the Americans invaded the Niagara Peninsula in 1813, they planned further invasions into Upper Canada.  Secord overheard their plans and, on 23 June 1813, walked for twenty miles out of American-occupied territory to the British-controlled territories to warn them. The British won against the invading Americans at the Battle of Beaver Dams the next day. This month includes the 200th anniversary of Secord’s historic walk.

The Wikipedia article for Laura Secord has also been upgraded to Featured Article status and it is expected to be on Wikipedia’s main page on the date of the anniversary. The selection of this text on Wikisource was controversial as the war was fought between two English-speaking nations and Secord is only a heroine to one of them. This led to a brief discussion about whether the merit of a work should be a consideration when it comes to featured text status.

Rev. Dr. Bryce was the guest of the Canadian Club at their luncheon yesterday afternoon, and delivered an address on the gallant deed of Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. A personal touch, as Professor Osborne, the chairman, remarked, was lent to the occasion by the presence at the luncheon of Mrs. Cockburn, a grand-daughter of Laura Secord.

Like the Rhenish frontier of Alsace and Lorraine, the banks of the Niagara river have for several centuries been the debatable land—the scene of conflict in North America. Long before the coming of the White man, Iroquois and Hurons; Sioux and Ojibways; Eries and Caughnawagas regarded the Niagara peninsula as the march-land between east and west. Its backbone of Burlington heights, the great gorge of Niagara, and its contiguous lakes Erie and Ontario gave scope for strategic movements in war far exceeding the plains of Flanders.

This post is available in 2 languages:

Español  • English

English

The Legal and Community Advocacy team is seeking community feedback on the Wikimedia trademark policy and practices, and ways in which they can be improved. In the trademark practices discussion, we point out some concerns with the current policy, what we think works well today, and raise some practical improvements that we feel would benefit everyone interested in our marks. Now, please tell us what you think.

We appreciate and welcome all points of view. The LCA team’s history of community involvement on Wikimedia policies shows innumerable member contributions that have steered our policies and practices.^[1]

This time, we’re asking for comments as we consider drafting a new policy. The community’s early involvement will guide our course of action in this process from its first stages. We are looking forward to a collaborative, interactive, and international conversation.

Trademark rights function to protect the goodwill of our community’s efforts against harmful uses by third parties. Such uses at best confuse users as to Wikimedia’s involvement in a website, app, or other product. At worst, they willfully deceive users and undermine our values of openness and independence. We are tasked with simultaneously maintaining our marks’ effectiveness for the movement’s myriad uses and furthering these values.

The current trademark policy seeks to balance these interests. It welcomes trademark use by many members of our community, who can make use of the Wikimedia marks in a variety of ways without the need for permission. Further, we are eager to approve uses that require permission, provided they are consistent with our mission. Uses that conflict with the Wikimedia values – say, the use of our marks to sell counterfeit prescription drugs – are not permitted and, if necessary, are fought by our legal team. And our legal team works to protect our community’s rights abroad, where the territorial nature of trademark law could allow a third party to preclude local use by the movement if we do not remain vigilant.

However, our current policy is under stress from several directions. We must be sure to avoid “naked licensing,” where trademarks are found invalid because of a lack of quality control. At the same time, the community’s efforts continue to expand in size and scope.  We must ensure licensing is a frictionless process. All throughout, we must uphold our community values and protect the goodwill of those very values that are expressed through our marks.

The discussion touches on these, and many more specific, issues around our trademark policy and practices. So far, we have seen discussions on community logos, use of the marks by bloggers and news organizations, and the practicalities of trademark licensing for our diverse and decentralized community.  These issues and any others around the use of our marks are a part of this early-stage conversation. We hope that community involvement at this point in time will ensure that the final policy reflects the issues most important to the Wikimedia community.

Feel free to leave your comments on the discussion page, which we hope will serve as a sounding board for sentiment regarding our trademark policy and practices. The legal team is grateful for the opportunity to hear your thoughts and benefit from your knowledge and perspective. We will review your comments and take them into consideration as we contemplate drafting a new policy for further community comment.

We anticipate closing the comment period in a few months. However, we value international participation and, if more time is needed to allow for translations (and please, help in these efforts) or comments, we will take that into consideration.

We appreciate and look forward to your thoughts.

Matthew Collins, Legal Intern, Wikimedia Foundation
Yana Welinder, Legal Counsel, Wikimedia Foundation

1. ↑ Our discussions on the proposed terms of use, conflict of interest guidelines, political and policy affiliation guidelines, and legal fees assistance program all featured robust community participation.

Español

El Equipo Legal y de Defensa de la Comunidad (LCA) está buscando retroalimentación de la comunidad respecto a las prácticas y políticas sobre marca registrada de Wikimedia y la forma en cómo pueden mejorarse. En la página de discusión sobre las prácticas de marca registrada, hemos anotado algunas preocupaciones respecto a la política actual, lo que pensamos que funciona bien en la actualidad, y proponemos algunas mejoras que nos parece podrían beneficiar a todos quienes están interesados en nuestras marcas. Por favor háganos saber lo qué usted piensa.

Apreciamos y agradeceremos todos los puntos de vista. La historia del LCA respecto a la participaciáon de la comunidad en las políticas de Wikimedia muestra innumerables contribuciones de sus miembros que han dirigido nuestras prácticas y políticas.^[1] En ésta ocación, solictamos comentarios ya que consideramos diseñar redactar una nueva política. La participación temprana de la comunidad guiará nuestro curso de accción en éste proceso desde las primeras etapas. Estamos mirando hacia adelante por una conversación colaborativa, interactiva e internacional.

Los derechos sobre marcas registradas Trademark tienen la función de proteger la buena fe de los esfuerzos de nuestra comunidad contra prácticas nocivas de terceros. Estos usos a lo menos confunden a los usuarios en cuanto a la participación de Wikimedia en un sitio web, una aplicación, u otros productos. En el peor de los casos, de manera deliberada engañan a los usuarios y socavan nuestros valores de transparencia e independencia. Al mismo tiempo estamos a cargo de mantener la efectividad de nuestras marcas para multiples usos por parte del movimiento y promover éstos valores.

La política actual sobre marca registrada busca un equilibrio entre estos intereses. Acoge con beneplácito el uso de nuestras marcas por diferentes miembros de nuestra comunidad, quienes pueden utilizar las marcas de Wikimedia en una variedad de maneras sin requerir permiso alguno. Además, estamos ansiosos de aprobar los usos que necesiten autorización, siempre que sean consistentes con nuestra misión. Los usos que están en conflicto con los valores de Wikimedia -por ejemplo, el uso de nuestras marcas para vender medicamentos falsificados- no son permitidos y, en caso de ser necesario, son combatidos por nuestro equipo legal. Nuestro equipo legal trabaja para proteger los derechos de nuestra comunidad en otros paises, donde la naturaleza territorial de la legislación sobre marcas registradas permite a un tercero impedir el uso local por el movimiento si no nos mantenemos vigilantes.

Sin embargo, nuestra política actual se encuentra bajo presión desde diferentes direcciones. Debemos estar seguros de evitar “licencias desnudas,” donde las marcas se encuentren invalidadas debido a la falta de control de calidad. Al mismo tiempo, los esfuerzos de la comunidad continuan expandiéndose en tamaño y objetivos. Debemos asegurar que el licenciamiento sea un proceso sin friccioines. En todo ello, debemos mantener los valores de nuestra comunidad y proteger la buena fe de los valores que se expresan a través de nuestras marcas.

La discusión toca estos aspectos, y muchos temas más específicos acerca de nuestra politica y prácticas de marca registrada. Hasta ahora hemos visto discusionessobre logotipos de la comunidad ,uso de marcas por bloggeros y nuevas organizaciones, y los aspectos prácticos del licenciamiento para nuestra comunidad diversa y descentralizada. estos temas y otros respecto al uso de nuestras marcas son parte de esta etapa temprana de conversación. Esperamos que la participación de la comunidad en este punto con el tiempo asegurará que la política final refleje los temas más importantes para la comunidad de Wikimedia.

Nu dude en dejar sus comentarios en la página de discusión, que esperamos sirva como caja de resonancia respecto al sentimiento respecto a nuestra política y prácticas de marca registrada. El equipo legal está agradecido por la oportunidadde escuchar sus ideas y beneficiarse con sus conocimientos y perspectivas. Nosotros revisaremos sus comentarios y los tendremos en cuenta al contemplar la redacción de la nueva política para mayores comentarios de la comunidad.

Esperamos cerrar la etapa de comentarios en unos pocos meses. Sin embargo, apreciamos la participación internacional y, en caso de que sea necesario más tiempo para realizar traducciones (por favor, ayúdanos en este esfuerzo) o comentarios, tendremos esto en consideración.

Agradecemos y esperamos sus comentarios.

Matthew Collins, Asistente Legal
Yana Welinder, Asesor Legal Counsel

Notas

1. ↑ Nuestras discusiones respecto a las propuestas de términos y condiciones de uso, directrices en conflictos de interés potenciales, guía de políticas de afiliación, y programa de asistencia de honorarios legales se realizaron y fortalecieron con una destacada participación de la comunidad.

This post is available in 4 languages:

English  • українська • Español • На русском языке

English

Wiki-Concert on 15 May 2013. O. Dondyk and A. Bondarenko on a stage. Photo by Jbuket

There is a lengthy tradition of translating the lyrics of renowned classical music to Ukrainian. Its early beginnings may be traced to the late 19th century, and subsequently throughout the 20th century: Rylsky, Lukash, Starytska-Cherniakhivska, and Borys Ten. However, because they haven’t been published, these translations continue to remain relatively unknown. It is exactly for this reason that Wikimedia Ukraine aims to popularize their Ukrainian translations through the publication of scores, through the performance of the works themselves and through the release of the audio recordings of these. A first step in this direction was the publication of Bortniansky’s opera Le Faucon (1786) within the World Classics in Ukrainian Project, with its Ukrainian translation by Strikha (1990).

The concert on May 15th encompassed a wide range of styles and genres. Most of the works (songs of Schubert, Schumann, Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, Puccini and Rachmaninoff) were performed in the poetic translation by Yuri Otroshenko. The concert featured several contemporary works by Oksana Yevsiukova, based on poems by Tetiana Cherep and Marina Popova, and a work by Andriy Bondarenko, based on lyrics by L. Carroll (translated by V. Korniyenko).

The soloists were “People’s Artists of Ukraine” Mykola Koval and Stepan Fitsych, “Honored Artists of Ukraine” Natalia Krechko, Oksana Dondyk and Oksana Yevsiukova. Andriy Bondarenko (piano), Andriy Diomin (clarinet) and Vasyl Babych (cello) were accompanists. There was much applause from the audience, and after the final “Drinking Song” from Verdi’s opera “La Traviata,” audience enthusiasm prompted the performers to repeat the song as an encore.

One of the concert’s organizers, Andriy Bondarenko, a member of Wikimedia Ukraine and the Ukrainian Composer’s Union, said that the concert was unique. “After the Kiev Opera House rejected the Ukrainian translations in the early years of independence, there was virtually no performance of classical music in our native language. Exceptions have been rare: the only opera you could hear in Ukrainian in the National Opera theatre is Rossini’s “Barber of Seville.”

In 1994, Ukrainian singer Anna Kolesnyk performed songs in the Ivan Franco theater, Kiev. Meanwhile, the results of the concert were fascinating – not only because the singers performed well, but because the audience was able to understand what they were singing about!”

Maxim Strikha, the academic and Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, wrote: “Now almost everybody accepts ‘by faith’ the assertion that opera and any vocal music ought to be performed only in the original language because it is only in this way that the unity of music and lyrics can be achieved, and no one has bothered to ponder whether this is actually true. But while reading renowned composers of the past on this subject suggests that, for example, Verdi, Wagner, Shostakovich and many other respected authors considered that vocal music should be performed in the language that is understandable to the audience. It is known how much Verdi worked on French translations of his major operas. Wagner was very concerned that the public in Australia receive an adequate idea of “Lohengrin” in English. It was not just some kind of philanthropy, but an awareness of the importance of the textual component of opera arias and romances, songs. So when someone tries to talk about the unity of music and obscures the text, then obviously these words sound deeply false.”

Another feature of the concert was its complete record for the purpose of distributing video and audio with a “free license.” In particular, the photographs and recordings we made will be released on Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported, which includes the right to copy, distribute and create derivative works, provided attribution is given and derivative works are released under the same license.

“Ukrainian World Classics” will be the first in Ukraine vocal heritage, which now can be used freely by anyone. All the audio, video and photos recorded in this concert are stored in WikiConcert 2013 Kyiv category on Commons.

User:A1

Notes

This text is based on Jbuket`s publication У Києві відбувся перший Вікі-концерт.

українська

Концерт вокальної музики в Києві

Великий зал Будинку вчених НАН України наповнений слухачами вікі-концерту, 15 травня 2013 Фото – Ilya

Українські вокальні переклади мають давню традицію, закладену в кінці XIX – на початку XX століття М. Рильським, М. Лукашем, Л. Старицькою-Черняхівською, Борисом Теном. Проте їхні переклади майже не видавалися і тому лишаються маловідомі. Це спонукало “Вікімедіа Україна” зайнятися популяризацією українських перекладів через публікацію нот, публічні концерти та публікацію аудіозаписів. Першим кроком проекту “Світова класика українською” було видання клавіру опери “Сокіл” Д. Бортнянського (1786) в українському перекладі М. Стріхи (1990).

Концерт 15 травня охопив якнайширший стильовий і жанровий спектр. Більша частина творів, що прозвучали під час концерту, — це романси Ф. Шуберта, р. Шумана, М. Глінки, М. Римського-Корсакова, Дж. Пуччіні та С. Рахманінова в поетичному перекладі Юрія Отрошенка. У концерті прозвучали кілька сучасних творів Оксани Євсюкової на вірші Тетяни Череп і Марини Попової, а також Андрія Бондаренка на слова Л. Керрола (в перекладі В. Корнієнка). Солісти — народні артисти України Микола Коваль та Степан Фіцич, заслужені артистки України Наталія Кречко та Оксана Дондик, Оксана Євсюкова. Інструментальний супровід – Андрій Бондаренко (фортепіано), Андрій Дьомін (кларнет), Василь Бабич (віолончель). Зал аплодував виконавцям стоячи, а після заключної “Застільної пісні” з опери “Травіата” Дж. Верді взагалі вибухнув палкими оваціями і змусив виконати цей твір “на біс”.

Один із організаторів концерту, член правління ГО “Вікімедіа Україна”, член Національної спілки композиторів України Андрій Бондаренко зазначив, що концерт був унікальним: “Після того, як Київська опера відмовилась від українських перекладів у перші роки Незалежності, рідне слово у світовій музичній класиці ви вже не почуєте майже ніде. Винятки поодинокі — єдина опера, яку ще можна почути українською в Національній опері – це “Севільський цирульник” Дж. Россіні. 1994 року один раз у театрі Франка низка камерних творів прозвучали українською у виконанні Ганни Колесник-Ратушної. Між тим результат захоплюючий — мало того, що вокалісти добре співають, так ще ви й розумієте, про що!”

“Зараз майже всі “на віру” сприймають твердження, що оперу і будь-яку вокальну музику можна виконувати лише мовою оригіналу, бо начебто так досягається єдність музики і слова. І ніхто навіть не намагається замислитися, а чи насправді це так. А якщо почитати, що писали на цю тему славетні композитори минулого, то читачі неабияк здивуються, коли довідаються, що, приміром, і Джузеппе Верді, і Ріхард Вагнер, і Дмитро Шостакович і чимало інших шанованих авторів саме тієї музики, яку слід співати, вважали, що вокальну музику слід виконувати тією мовою, яка зрозуміла для публіки. Відомо, як Верді тяжко працював над французькими перекладами своїх найголовніших опер. Вагнер дуже переймався, щоб публіка в Австралії отримала адекватне уявлення про “Лоенгріна” англійською. І, очевидно, за тим стояла не просто якась філантропія, а глибоке усвідомлення того, що і в оперній арії, і в романсі, і в пісні музика і текст однаково важливі чинники. Тому, коли хтось намагається говорити про єдність музики і незрозумілого тексту, то, очевидно, глибоко фальшивить”, — зазначив академік АН Вищої школи України, доктор фізико-математичних наук Максим Стріха.

Ще одна особливість концерту — його повний запис із метою поширення відео- та аудіоматеріалів на умовах так званих “вільних ліцензій”. Зокрема фотографії та записи, зроблені на цьому концерті, будуть доступні на Вікісховищі на умовах ліцензії Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported, що передбачає право на копіювання, розповсюдження і створення похідних робіт за умови зазначення авторства та випуску похідних творів на умовах тієї самої ліцензії.

“Світова класика українською” стане першим в Україні вокальним надбанням, яке відтепер зможе вільно використовувати будь-хто. Аудіо-, фото- і відеоматеріали у категорії Вікісховища: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:WikiConcert_2013_Kyiv

Español

Concierto libre de música volcal en Kiev

Las traducciones vocales ucranianas datan de una larga tradición, establecida a finales del siglo XIX y durante el siglo XX por Rylsky, Lukash, Starytska-Cherniakhivska, y Borys Ten. Sin embargo, sus traducciones no habían sido publicadas nunca, por lo que permanecían desconocidas. Por ésta razón Wikimedia Ucrania decidió popularizar las traducciones vocales ucranianas, publicando partituras, interpretaciones y grabaciones de audio. El primer paso del proyecto “Clásicos Mundiales en Ucraniano” fue la publicación de la opera de Bortniansky “Le Faucon” (1786), en la versión traducida al ucraniano por Strikha (1990).

El concierto, realizado el 15 de mayo, abarcó varios estilos y géneros. La mayor parte de las obras (composiciones de Schubert, Schumann, Glinka, Rimski-Korsakov, Puccini y Rachmaninoff) se interpretaron en una traducción poética de Yuri Otroshenko. El concierto contó con varias obras contemporáneas de Oksana Yevsiukova, basadas en poemas de Tetiana Cherep y Marina Popova, y una obra de Andriy Bondarenko basada en letra de L. Carroll.

Participaron los solistas Mykola Koval y Stepan Fitsych de “Artistas del Pueblo de Ucrania”, y [:wikipedia:uk:Наталія Кречко|Natalia Krechko]], Oksana Dondyk, y Oksana Yevsiukova de “Artistas de Honor de Ucrania”. Andriy Bondarenko (piano), Andriy Diomin (clarinete), y Vasyl Babych (chelo) fueron los músicos acompañantes. Hubieron muchos aplausos de la audiencia, y luego de la canción final de la ópera de Verdi La Traviata“, la audiencia se entusiasmó pidiendo a los intérpretes que la repitieran.

Uno de los organizadores del concierto, Andriy Bondarenko, miembro de Wikimedia Ucrania y de la Unión de Compositores de Ucrania, dijo que el concierto fue único: “Después de que la Ópera de Kiev rechazó las traducciones ucranianas durante los primeros años de la independencia, no había prácticamente ninguna presentación de música clásica en nuestra lengua materna. Las excepciones han sido escasas: la única ópera que se podía oír en ucraniano en la Ópera Nacional era el “El barbero de Sevilla” de Rossini. En 1994, la cantante ucraniana Anna Kolesnyk interpretó canciones en el Teatro Ivan Franco en Kiev. El resultado del concierto fue fascinante, no sólo porque los cantantes realizaron buenas interpretaciones, sino porque el público podía entender lo que estaban cantando!”

Maxim Strikha, académico y Doctor en Ciencias Físicas y Matemáticas, escribió: “Ahora casi todo el mundo acepta ‘por fe’ la afirmación de que la ópera y la música vocal deben interpretarse únicamente en el idioma original, ya que sólo de esta manera se puede lograr la unidad de la música y las letras. Y nadie se ha molestado en preguntarse si esto es realmente cierto. Pero leer a los compositores reconocidos del pasado sobre este tema sugiere que, por ejemplo, Verdi, Wagner, Shostakovich, y muchos otros autores respetados consideraban que la música vocal se debe interpretar en el idioma que sea comprensible para el público. Se sabe cuánto Verdi trabajó en traducciones de sus grandes óperas al francés. Wagner estaba muy preocupado de que el público en Australia tuviera una idea adecuada de “Lohengrin” en Inglés. No era sólo una especie de filantropía, sino una conciencia de la importancia del componente textual de canciones de la ópera y los romances. Así que cuando alguien trata de hablar de la unidad de música y oscurecer el texto, entonces, evidentemente, estas palabras suenan profundamente falsas”.

Otra de las características del concierto fue que se realizó el registro completo a fin de distribuir audio y video bajo una “licencia libre”. Las fotografías y grabaciones que se realizaron se publicarán en Wikimedia Commons bajo la licencia Creative Commons Atribución-Compartir Igual 3.0 Unported, que permite copiar, distribuir y crear trabajos derivados, siempre que se reconozca al autor de la obra y que las obras derivadas se distribuyan bajo la misma licencia.

“Clásicos Mundiales en Ucraniano” es el primero del patrimonio vocal de Ucrania, que ahora puede ser utilizado libremente por cualquier persona. Todo el audio, el vídeo y las fotografías de este concierto se almacenan en la Categoría WikiConcert 2013 Kyiv en Commons.

Traducción por Justin Duranboger

На русском языке

Концерт вокальной музыки в Киеве

Большой зал Дома ученых НАН Украины заполнен слушателями вики-концерта, 15 мая 2013 года. Фото — Ilya

Украинские вокальные переводы имеют давнюю традицию, заложенную в конце XIX — начале XX века М. Рыльским, Н. Лукашем, Л. Старицкой-Черняховской, Борисом Теном. Однако их переводы почти не издавались, и поэтому остаются малоизвестны. Это побудило «Викимедиа Украина» заняться популяризацией украинских переводов путём публикации нот, проведения публичных концертов и публикации аудиозаписей. Первым шагом проекта «Мировая классика на украинском» было издание клавира оперы «Сокол» Д. Бортнянского (1786) в украинском переводе М. Стрихи (1990).

Концерт 15 мая охватил широкий стилевой и жанровый спектр. Большая часть произведений, которые были включены в репертуар концерта — это романсы Ф. Шуберта, Р. Шумана, Глинки, Н. Римского-Корсакова, Дж. Пуччини и Рахманинова в поэтическом переводе Юрия Отрошенко. В концерте прозвучало несколько современных произведений Оксаны Евсюковой на стихи Татьяны Череп и Марины Поповой и Андрея Бондаренко на слова Л. Кэрролла (в переводе В. Корниенко). Солисты — народные артисты Украины Николай Коваль и Степан Фицич, заслуженные артистки Украины Наталья Кречко и Оксана Дондик, а также Оксана Евсюкова. Инструментальное сопровождение — Андрей Бондаренко (фортепиано), Андрей Демин (кларнет), Василий Бабич (виолончель). Зал аплодировал исполнителям стоя, а после заключительной «Застольной» из оперы «Травиата» Дж. Верди и вовсе взорвался горячими овациями — исполнителям пришлось исполнить это произведение «на бис».

Один из организаторов концерта, член правления ОО «Викимедиа Украина», член Национального союза композиторов Украины Андрей Бондаренко отметил, что концерт был уникальным: «После того, как Киевская опера отказалась от украинских переводов в первые годы независимости, родное слово в мировой музыкальной классике вы уже не услышите почти нигде. Исключения редки — единственное оперное произведение, которое можно услышать в Киевской опере на украинском языке — это „Севильский цирюльник“. В 1994 году в театре Франко прозвучали камерные произведения в украинском переводе в исполнении Анны Колесник-Ратушной. Между тем результат захватывающий — мало того, что вокалисты хорошо поют, да ещё вы и понимаете, о чём!»

«Сейчас почти все на веру воспринимают утверждение, что оперу и любую вокальную музыку можно выполнять только на языке оригинала, потому что так будто бы достигается единство музыки и слова. И никто даже не пытается задуматься, а так ли это. А если почитать, что писали на эту тему славные композиторы прошлого, то читатели изрядно удивятся, когда узнают, что, например, и Джузеппе Верди, и Рихард Вагнер, и Дмитрий Шостакович и многие другие уважаемые авторы именно той музыки, которую следует петь, считали, что вокальную музыку следует исполнять на том языке, который понятен публике. Известно, как Верди интенсивно работал над французскими переводами своих главных опер. Вагнер очень хотел, чтобы публика в Австралии получила адекватное представление о „Лоэнгрине“ на английском. И, очевидно, за этим стояла не просто некая филантропия, а глубокое осознание того, что и в оперной арии, и в романсе, и в песне музыка и текст — одинаково важные факторы. Поэтому, когда кто-то пытается говорить о единстве музыки и непонятного текста, то он, очевидно, глубоко фальшивит», — отметил академик АН Высшей школы Украины, доктор физико-математических наук Максим Стриха.

Ещё одна особенность концерта — его полная запись с целью распространения видео-и аудиоматериалов на условиях так называемых «свободных лицензий». В частности фотографии и записи, сделанные на этом концерте, будут доступны на Викискладе на условиях лицензии Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported, предусматривающей право на копирование, распространение и создание производных работ при условии указания авторства и выпуска производных произведений на условиях той же лицензии.

«Мировая классика на украинском» станет первым в Украине вокальным достоянием, отныне сможет свободно использовать любой. Аудио-, фото-и видеоматериалы в категории Викисклада: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:WikiConcert_2013_Kyiv

Wikimedia Deutschland, the official Wikimedia Chapter in Germany, is the largest chapter fundraiser in the Wikimedia movement. This report of the 2012 fundraiser in Germany expands on the Wikimedia Foundation fundraiser report published this week on the Wikimedia Blog. The original blog post in German can be found here

In this video appeal a number of Wikipedia readers speak up. Pavel Richter, CEO of Wikimedia Deutschland, also explains why donations are important for spreading free knowledge.

In his thank you message to donors, readers, authors and staff, Pavel Richter gives a summary of the fundraising campaign and stresses what is important for Wikipedia and the future work of Wikimedia Deutschland.

The Numbers

Wikimedia Deutschland has experienced continued support from Wikipedia readers and the 2012 fundraising efforts again demonstrated how much people value the free encyclopedia. Even though this campaign was three days shorter than the previous year, we were able to increase the total result by 32 percent: 5,273,374 Euros were donated for Wikipedia and free knowledge during the last weeks via our fundraiser.

The online encyclopedia rests on many shoulders. It not only relies on the contributions of thousands of volunteer editors and supporters of free knowledge, but also on the 233,813 people who were inspired to donate. To look at this strong current of continuing support another way: We received a donation every 20 seconds over 49 days, between November 13 and December 31, 2012 (compared to 160,000 donors in the previous year). The average donation was 22,50 Euros. With many people giving to Wikipedia by means of small contributions, we’re not overly reliant on large donors and we can maintain our independence.

Wikimedia Deutschland is particularly happy about the many German Wikipedia readers who were willing to make recurring donations. Once again, we were able to increase the number of recurring donors by almost 50 percent compared to the previous year. During the fundraiser, more than 7,300 people opted for supporting Wikipedia on a regular basis.

Apart from asking for support in the form of donations, during this campaign we specifically asked Wikipedia readers to become members of Wikimedia Deutschland as well. Right after after they finished their payment, donors were able to fill out an online form in order to become a member. This simplified process was a sweeping success. We activated 2,376 new members, which means that, over the course of a few weeks, we almost doubled the number of Wikimedia Deutschland’s members.

The Campaign

Even though we were thoroughly prepared for the fundraiser, its start always marks the beginning of great activity for us. From the moment we switched on the fundraising banners on Wikipedia, we began to receive high volumes of e-mails and phone calls. That is why we now have some back up in our team. We know now that this was a wise decision. We were able to answer more than 100 e-mails during every day of the campaign (4,267 in total) and we answered all inquiries by the end of the campaign for the first time.

The growth of our team also enabled us to concentrate on optimizing the campaign by means of intensively designing and testing appeals. We conducted almost 70 tests before and during the fundraiser. It’s an important factor of a time-sensitive campaign to run the right banners and the appeals at the right time. By means of A/B-testing, we were able to repeatedly adjust the agenda of the campaign. This was important because we tested many different banner layouts during this fundraiser. Pictures, colors, text, position: Most of the time, small factors determined a banner’s success. Due to the fact that we focused more on those elements, many different banner layouts were used. Whoever is interested in the results of those tests can find more information here.

The success of the campaign was, however, linked to a certain banner: the facts banner. Even though the personal appeals dominated the last days of the fundraiser, the facts banner enabled us to use a different kind of communication. In contrast to the personal appeals, which catch the interest of Wikipedia readers and later lead to donations on the donation page, the facts banner picks up the reader directly on Wikipedia. The banner has relevant facts about Wikipedia and why it should be supported with a donation. Not only were Wikipedia readers convinced to donate directly on its landing page, but they were also able to donate right then and there by means of a donation form. This was possible because all banners could be expanded right on Wikipedia’s home page.

The new facts bannes, together with an abbreviated donation process, were two of the most important factors for the campaign’s success. But facts also need stories. Therefore, it was important to present personal appeals right inside the expanded banners. Before the campaign, we set one goal for ourselves: We wanted to write an appeal that would be able to take on the most successful appeal so far – the one by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

The Faces

The past fundraising campaigns were especially shaped by the appeal of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. This time, however, we imagined a campaign that would show different perspectives on Wikipedia. One thing was very clear to us: Without the terrific work of thousands of volunteers, Wikipedia would not be where it is today. We wanted to give the stories of those people more room during the 2012 fundraiser. That’s why we started very early to do a number of interviews with Wikipedia editors, donors, and Wikimedia Deutschland staff. From these, we wrote 15 very different personal appeals for the campaign – almost twice the amount as the year before. Last year, we showed six appeals, most of them translated from the appeals the Wikimedia Foundation ran during their fundraiser.

It was obviously our goal to create an appeal that could compete with Jimmy Wales’ successful appeal. We succeeded with Wikipedia editor Dr. Peter Cueppers, an 86-year-old and committed author who started editing only a couple of years earlier.

One of the goals we set for ourselves with this campaign was to convince readers to donate by showing Wikipedia from very different perspectives. That’s why we wanted to give a voice to Wikipedia’s readers. It was also our goal to break the mold when it comes to donor communication. We tried to link both goals by producing a special campaign video. In this two minute clip, a mixture of very different Wikipedia readers describe their experience with the free encyclopedia and why they love it. At the end, Wikimedia Deutschland CEO Pavel Richter calls for donations.

We would like to say thank you again to all our supporters and to introduce the appeals and the video. Without the terrific support of those Wikipedians, we would never have been able to conduct the campaign the way we imagined beforehand: a successful campaign that shows Wikipedia from many different perspectives and that informs about free knowledge and convinces people to donate.

The translations of all personal appeals can be found here. Many thanks to all volunteers and Wikimedia staff who participated with their stories.

Till Mletzko, Head Fundraiser, Wikimedia Deutschland

• 

  At the age of 86, Dr. Peter Cueppers has already made 19,000 edits on Wikipedia. In his appeal he explains how he became a Wikipedia author at his age.

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  Dirk Franke has known Wikipedia since its start. He was one of the first editors in the German language version and witnessed the first great boom of the number of editors.

• 

  Elly Köpf, project manager at Wikimedia Deutschland, introduces the workshops in media education offered by the association and explains the importance of Wikipedia for everyday school life.

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  In his appeal, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales explains that he is also a volunteer and that advertisement has no place in Wikipedia.

• 

  Robin Müller, a 20-year-old student of pharmacy, is engaged in the scientific areas of Wikipedia. He didn’t just want to do his homework for himself, so he started writing for the encyclopedia.

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  Wikimedia Deutschland staff Jens Ohlig started programming when he was 12 years old. He explains what links him to the Wikidata team 27 years later and why he is fascinated by it.

• 

  Christoph Meineke is mayor of the small town Wennigsen and a Wikipedia author. He describes why his town was enamorated with Wikipedia and the meaning it has on a local level.

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  Wikipedia donor Gunther Tutein describes why Wikipedia is important to him and why he decided to support it last year.

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  For a a family man like Gereon Kalkuhl, who has a solid work week, it is hard to write about his favorite topic, chess. In his appeal he especially stresses the importance of free access to knowledge for people of all backgrounds.

• 

  Cornelia Dietz works as a medical editor and talks about her impression that Wikipedia’s quality has increased in the area of medicine during the past years.

• 

  In his appeal, the Wikipedia developer Denny Vrandečić refers to the ad-free information platform and its importance for gathering information and spreading free knowledge.

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  Gerd Seidel talks about his photographic contributions to Wikipedia and the exceptional status of voluntary work.

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  Wikipedia author Harald Krichel asks about money in combination with access to knowledge.

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  Wikimedia Deutschland staff Till Mletzko compares Wikipedia to a standard library in order to stress its unique character.

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  Tobias Klenze started writing for Wikipedia when he was 16 years old. His great motivation for doing so was helping other people. In his appeal, he stresses the exceptionality of the volunteers.

Tomorrow the English Wikipedia biography of  Norman Selfe will be featured on the main page. Not only is Norman a fascinatingly interesting fellow, but the very fact of his biography getting to this point is the culmination of a free-culture policy I helped create five years ago.

Norman was the president of both the Australian mechanical engineers’ and naval architects’ institutes as well as a member of both the British equivalent organisations. He was elected a full member of the English Institution of Civil Engineers and an honourary member of an American engineering association. He invented all sorts of things, including the first bicycle and refrigeration system in Australia. He founded the Royal Australian Historical Society, the Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts as well as what has now become TAFE (Australia’s public vocational and technical training organisation – currently fighting to preserve its perpetually eroded funding) – Selfe even won the competition to design the Sydney harbour bridge. The Sydney suburb of Normanhurst was named after him during his lifetime. As the article says, “He was acknowledged upon his death as one of the best-known people in, and greatest individual influences upon, the city of Sydney.”

Selfe’s winning design for the proposed Harbour Bridge c. 1903

As a staunch advocate for the provision of practical and technical education to the masses, and the preservation of history, I suspect that Norman would have been very pleased with Wikipedia, open-access, and “maker” culture. I reckon he was a Wikipedian before his time and this Feature Article is a fitting tribute to his legacy.

However, that’s only half the story.
The original article on which the Wikipedia biography is based was written by ABC Radio National producer Catherine Freyne for the Dictionary of Sydney in 2009. Here is the original publication. At the time I was also working at The Dictionary and was the person who wrote their copyright policy which includes the option for authors to license their work under Creative Commons (CC-By-SA). Crucially, this makes the article content able to be both cited in, and imported into, Wikipedia (as I blogged about at the time).

Selfe’s 1891 scheme for remodelling transport in Sydney’s Rocks district

Since then I’ve gone on to import several Dictionary of Sydney articles to Wikipedia including, in chronological order: Glebe Island; John Mather (artist); Sydney artists’ camps; Hugo Alpen; Florence Violet McKenzie (a “Good Article” about Australia’s first female electrical engineer); AWA Tower; Henri L’Estrange (also a “Good Article” about this accident prone tightrope walker); Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts; and of course Norman Selfe.

Tourists ride in a coal skip on the Selfe-designed rail incline – now the popular Sydney tourist destination “the Katoomba scenic railway”, 1915

Aafter all these years, this is the first article that I have taken to Feature status – so it’s particularly special to me. Also, because I nurtured Norman through “new”, “Did you know?”, “Good Article” and “Feature Article” processes I was given the “Four Award”, of which I am especially proud. I’ve made several hundred edits since importing Norman, added copious footnotes and taken it through four peer reviews (1, 2, 3, 4), but underneath it is still Catherine’s work – and as such she gets attribution at the very bottom of the article too.

The “Four award“. There are currently only 423 other such articles.

The final reason I’m particularly happy about this article appearing on the main page on Saturday is because, serendipitously, that is also the day that voting opens on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees community elections – for which I am a candidate. I didn’t nominate Norman to be “Today’s Featured Article” so I’m hoping this is a positive omen for the elections! Active Wikimedians – don’t forget to vote!!

This post is available in 2 languages:

Greek  • English

In English

For three years, more than 200 students at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki have analyzed or enriched Wikipedia. Both the students and Wikipedia gain a lot from this relationship.

The first contact of the university’s educational program with Wikipedia was through the postgraduate program in Web Science, through which the Greek version of DBpedia was developed and was further enriched and improved. After presentations to postgraduate students on the workings of templates in MediaWiki, they were able to create new infoboxes, improve old ones, and create the ontology for entering information from Wikipedia to DBpedia. The same was done for another two years. In parallel, the students also created some important articles on mathematics.

At the campus of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, a few metres away from the School of Mathematics, there is the Medical School. In the undergraduate course in Medical Education for two years, students were given the assignment to translate articles from English to Greek Wikipedia. Targeting the quality rather than the quantity of translated articles, students formed groups of two or three to work on the same article. This provided the advantage of having multiple editors, which helped in problem solving and copywriting by the students themselves. From a list of suggested topics, many have chosen to translate featured articles from the English Wikipedia, and in several cases the translation is in no way inferior to the original entry. It seems that they have not been recognized as featured articles in Greek Wikipedia simply because no one thought to suggest them!

Editing workshop at the School of Mathematics.

Following the previous experience, the same working model was also applied this year to the undergraduate section of the School of Mathematics. But this time it was ehnanced not only with the possibility of editing each article by many students, but in addition to on-campus training on Wikipedia, we have Online Ambassadors whose purpose is to guide and advise students and help them with whatever problem they have. For the suggested topics for translation, priority was given to articles assessed as being of higher quality classes and Top to Mid importance. It seems that this will be yet another a successful project that will enrich Greek Wikipedia with a number of valuable articles.

The translation of Wikipedia articles is something that aids the students by putting them in contact with the terminology of their science, for example with medical terminology which is particularly difficult. Especially in this area, the general consensus is that no one can easily translate texts with medical terms without having a direct affiliation with medical science, at minimum be a medical student. So this case has benefit for both sides: students learned the medical terminology better in both languages ​​and Wikipedia gained quite nice articles that otherwise would have been difficult to create. Also, in both medicine and mathematics, students had the opportunity to work on popular texts aimed at the general public rather than at some academics such as their professor, and therefore use a different way of writing.

These programs were made possible through cooperation with OKFN-Greece and the professors at AUTH that showed interest in the program. Certainly there have been other efforts at other universities in Greece, but with less impact, at least for the Greek Wikipedia. These programs are important milestones for future expansion and operation of similar programs at other universities in Greece. Besides that, with every step we move towards something even better, following the guidelines of the Wikipedia Education Program. Already one of the professors has expressed interest in the inclusion of a comprehensive program of more weeks for the next year. We may see something good!

Konstantinos Stampoulis – User:Geraki

In Greek

Εκπαιδευτικά προγράμματα Wikipedia στη Θεσσαλονίκη

Εδώ και τρία χρόνια, περισσότεροι από 200 φοιτητές στο Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης, ήρθαν σε επαφή με την Wikipedia, είτε για να την αναλύσουν είτε για να την εμπλουτίσουν. Τόσο οι ίδιοι, όσο και η Wikipedia, κερδίζουμε από αυτή τη σχέση.

Η πρώτη επαφή της εκπαιδευτικής διαδικασίας με την Wikipedia, έγινε μέσα από το μεταπτυχιακό πρόγραμμα στην Επιστήμη του Web, όπου μέσα από αυτό αναπτύχθηκε η ελληνική έκδοση της DBpedia και σταδιακά εμπλουτίστηκε και βελτιώθηκε. Μετά από παρουσιάσεις στους μεταπτυχιακούς φοιτητές σχετικά με την λειτουργία των προτύπων του MediaWiki, αυτοί μπόρεσαν να δημιουργήσουν νέα infoboxes, να διορθώσουν παλιότερα και να δημιουργήσουν την οντολογία για εισαγωγή των πληροφοριών από την Wikipedia στην DBpedia. Το ίδιο έκαναν για άλλες δύο χρονιές, ενώ παράλληλα δημιούργησαν και σημαντικά λήμματα σχετικά με τα μαθηματικά.

Στην πανεπιστημιούπολη του ΑΠΘ, λίγα μέτρα μακρύτερα από την Μαθηματική Σχολή, βρίσκεται η Ιατρική Σχολή. Στο προπτυχιακό μάθημα της Ιατρικής Εκπαίδευσης, για δύο χρονιές ζητήθηκε ως εργασία η μετάφραση ιατρικών λημμάτων. Στοχεύοντας στην ποιότητα αντί την ποσότητα μεταφρασμένων λημμάτων, οι φοιτητές σχημάτισαν ομάδες δυο-τριών ατόμων για να δουλέψουν στο ίδιο λήμμα. Αυτό έδωσε το πλεονέκτημα της πολυπεξεργασίας, που βοήθησε στην διόρθωση σφαλμάτων και επίλυση προβλημάτων από τους ίδιους τους φοιτητές. Από μια λίστα προτεινόμενων θεμάτων, αρκετοί είχαν επιλέξει να μεταφράσουν featured articles από την αγγλική Wikipedia, και σε αρκετές περιπτώσεις η μετάφραση δεν υπολείπεται σε τίποτε το πρωτότυπο λήμμα. Φαίνεται ότι μέχρι σήμερα δεν έχουν αναγνωριστεί ως αξιόλογα και στην ελληνική Βικιπαίδεια, απλά επειδή κανείς δεν σκέφτηκε να τα προτείνει!

Εργαστήριο εκμάθησης επεξεργασίας στη Μαθηματική Σχολή του ΑΠΘ.

Ακολουθώντας την προηγούμενη εμπειρία, το ίδιο μοντέλο εργασίας μεταφέρθηκε αυτή τη χρονιά και στο προπτυχιακό τμήμα της Μαθηματικής Σχολής. Αυτή την φορά όμως εμπλουτίστηκε όχι μόνο με την δυνατότητα επεξεργασίας κάθε λήμματος από πολλούς φοιτητές αλλά και εκτός από την επιτόπου εκπαίδευση πάνω στη Wikipedia, τους ενισχύσαμε με την ύπαρξη Online Ambassadors που έχουν ως σκοπό να καθοδηγήσουν και να συμβουλέψουν τους φοιτητές και να τους βοηθήσουν σε όποιο πρόβλημα τους προκύψει. Για τα προτεινόμενα θέματα μετάφρασης, μια προτιμούμενη προτεραιότητα δόθηκε για λήμματα σε κλάσεις ανώτερης ποιότητας και ύψιστης ως μέσης σπουδαιότητας. Από ότι φαίνεται θα είναι επίσης μια πετυχημένη εργασία που θα ενισχύσει την ελληνική Wikipedia με μια σειρά καλών λημμάτων.

Η μετάφραση λημμάτων της Wikipedia είναι κάτι που ενισχύει τους φοιτητές με την τριβή τους στην ορολογία της επιστήμης τους, όπως π.χ. στην ιδιαίτερα δύσκολη ιατρική ορολογία. Ιδιαίτερα εκεί, η γενική ομολογία είναι ότι δεν θα μπορούσε κανείς εύκολα να μεταφράσει κείμενα με ιατρικούς όρους, χωρίς να έχει άμεση σχέση με το αντικείμενο: κατ’ελάχιστο να είναι φοιτητής ιατρικής. Άρα αυτή η περίπτωση είχε κέρδος και για τις δυο πλευρές: οι φοιτητές μάθαιναν καλύτερα την ιατρική ορολογία σε δύο γλώσσες και η Wikipedia κέρδισε αρκετά πολύ καλά λήμματα που αλλιώς θα δημιουργούνταν δύσκολα. Επίσης, τόσο στην ιατρική όσο και στα μαθηματικά, οι φοιτητές είχαν την ευκαιρία να ασχοληθούν με εκλαϊκευτικά κείμενα που θα είχαν ως αποδέκτη το ευρύ κοινό και όχι κάποιον ακαδημαϊκό όπως ο καθηγητής τους, και άρα να χρησιμοποιήσουν ένα διαφορετικό τρόπο γραφής.

Τα παραπάνω προγράμματα έγιναν δυνατά μέσα από την συνεργασία με OKFN-Greece και τους διδάσκοντες του ΑΠΘ που δείχνουν ενδιαφέρον για το αντικείμενο. Βεβαίως, έχουν υπάρξει και άλλες προσπάθειες σε άλλες σχολές και πανεπιστήμια της Ελλάδας, αλλά με μικρότερο αντίκτυπο, τουλάχιστον για την ελληνική Βικιπαίδεια. Αποτελούν σημαντικούς σταθμούς για την μελλοντική επέκταση και λειτουργία παρόμοιων προγραμμάτων και σε άλλες σχολές και πανεπιστήμια της Ελλάδας. Άλλωστε, σε κάθε βήμα προχωράμε σε κάτι ακόμη καλύτερο, ακολουθώντας τις κατευθυντήριες γραμμές του Wikipedia Education Program. Ήδη, ένας από τους παραπάνω καθηγητές έχει εκδηλώσει ενδιαφέρον για την ένταξη ενός εκτεταμένου προγράμματος περισσότερων εβδομάδων για το επόμενο έτος. Μπορεί να δούμε κάτι καλό!

Κωνσταντίνος Σταμπουλής – User:Geraki

The Universal Language Selector (ULS) provides a flexible way to configure and deliver language settings like interface language, fonts, and input methods (keyboard mappings). It combines the features of two earlier Mediawiki extensions Narayam and WebFonts. From June 11, 2013 on, ULS will be made available to all Wikimedia wikis in 5 phases.

In the first phase, ULS will replace the Narayam and WebFonts extensions on 84 wikis. User preferences from the replaced extensions will not be preserved. Affected communities will be notified by the Wikimedia Language Engineering team of the upcoming change.

In the 5 weeks that follow, ULS will be deployed on Wikipedias in size 11-20 (phase 2), all projects without language versions (phase 3), English language Wikipedia (phase 4) and all other wikis (phase 5).

The Universal Language Selector can be visible in two ways: In the sidebar for wikis with language versions, like Wikipedia, or in the personal toolbar at the top of wiki pages for wikis without language versions, like Wikimedia Commons and Meta-Wiki. Based on the geographic location of users, the initial set of language preferences is presented. Users can set the input methods and fonts to that they want to use. Logged-in users can also change the language for the MediaWiki menu items.

Universal Language Selector is already available on several Wikimedia wikis like Wikimedia Commons and Meta-Wiki. The appearance on wikis like Wikipedia is available in the beta installation of the English language Wikipedia on Wikimedia Labs. A cog icon is present in the “Languages” section of the sidebar menu. Clicking the icon opens the Language settings panel that can be used to set the display and input settings.

Please have a look at the Universal Language Selector feature description or the Frequently Asked Questions for more detailed information.

Runa Bhattacharjee, Outreach and QA coordinator, Language Engineering

 
After several years of development and testing, VisualEditor, the new visual interface to edit Wikipedia pages, will soon be available in “beta” form for all users. This lets Wikipedia editors create and modify articles visually, using a new system where the articles they edit will look the same as they show for reading, and their changes show up as they enter them — like writing a document in a word processor.

VisualEditor removes the need to learn complex wiki markup, and so simplifies editing for both new and experienced editors. We hope that this will open up editing to more people, and along with other efforts will encourage more editors to start and continue to contribute.

We plan to enable it for all logged-in users of the English Wikipedia in early July, later that month extending it to logged-out users, and then the other Wikipedias. Ahead of rolling out VisualEditor in July, we will be carrying out a test of VisualEditor for some randomly-selected new accounts on the English Wikipedia beginning on 17 June. During this testing period, we will be monitoring the impact on users, listening to feedback, and solving problems.

The “alpha” prototype was previously available only to users with a registered account who opted in to test out VisualEditor. First made available on the English Wikipedia in December 2012, it was extended to 16 more language editions in April, and will be made available on all remaining Wikipedias later this week. A lot of valuable feedback has been provided by the early testers of this alpha, and we would like to thank them for their help.

Visual HTML editors are now common on the Web, but building one for Wikipedia (and its sister sites) has been a challenge in itself, due to our specialized requirements and the need to integrate with our existing software, MediaWiki. Behind the scenes, VisualEditor heavily relies on Parsoid, a new complex software component for MediaWiki that translates between wiki markup and annotated HTML+RDFa.

We need your help!

What you can do to help: over the past few months, we have asked you to try out the alpha version of the VisualEditor, and many of you did. Since then, it has changed significantly, and so we’re asking that you try it again. It’s very important that we fix as many critical issues as possible prior to the deploying for everyone in a few weeks’ time — of course, we’d love to fix them all, but that may not be possible. So please, enable the VisualEditor (it’s in your preferences, under the editing tab — check the box labeled “Enable VisualEditor”) and submit any bugs that you find. Your early testing means that we can ensure a better VisualEditor and a smoother deployment for everyone.

Philippe Beaudette, Director, Community Advocacy
James Forrester, Product Manager, VisualEditor and Parsoid

সকল উইকিপিডিয়ার জন্য ভিজুয়াল এডিটর বাস্তবায়নের প্রস্তুতি

Translation contributed by User:Wikitanvir

গত কয়েক বছর যাবত পর্যায়ক্রমে বিভিন্ন উন্নয়ন ও পরীক্ষা-নিরীক্ষার পর ভিজুয়ালএডিটর খুব শীঘ্রই প্রাথমিকভাবে সকল উইকিপিডিয়া ব্যবহারকারীর জন্য উন্মুক্ত করে দেওয়া হবে। ভিজুয়ালএডিটর হচ্ছে উইকিপিডিয়ায় সম্পাদনা করার জন্য একটি নতুন সম্পাদনা ইন্টারফেস যেখানে উইকিপিডিয়ায় সম্পাদনা করার জন্য সম্পাদকগণ ঠিক তেমন ভাবেই লেখাগুলো দেখবেন যেভাবে তাঁরা মূল নিবন্ধে লেখাগুলো দেখে থাকেন। সম্পূর্ণ নতুন প্রক্রিয়া ব্যবহার করে তৈরি এই সম্পাদনা ইন্টারফেসে সম্পাদনার সময় লেখার পরিবর্তনগুলো তাঁরা যেভাবে করবেন সঙ্গে সঙ্গেই সেভাবেই দেখা যাবে, যা অনেকটা ওপেনঅফিস রাইটার বা মাইক্রোসফট ওয়ার্ডের মতো ওয়ার্ড প্রসেসরে কাজ করার মতো।

ভিজুয়ালএডিটর জটিল উইকিমার্কআপ সম্পর্কে জানার প্রয়োজনীয়তা থাকে না, সুতরাং এর ফলে নতুন ও অভিজ্ঞ উভয়প্রকার ব্যবহারকারীর জন্যই উইকিপিডিয়ায় সম্পাদনা করাটি খুব সহজ হয়ে যায়। আমরা আশা করছি এর ফলে আরও অনেক নতুন ব্যবহারকারীর জন্য সম্পাদনার কাজটি উন্মুক্ত হবে এবং এই প্রচেষ্টা আরও অনেক ব্যবহারকারীকে নতুন করে শুরু করতে এবং তাঁদের সম্পাদনা চালিয়ে যেতে উৎসাহিত করবে।

জুলাই মাসের শুরুর দিকে আমরা ইংরেজি উইকিপিডিয়ার নিবন্ধিত ব্যবহারকারীদের জন্য এটি উন্মুক্ত করি, পরে ঐ মাসেই আমরা এটি অনিবন্ধিত ব্যবহারকারীদের জন্যও উন্মুক্ত করে দিই, এবং কালক্রমে আরও কিছু উইকিপিডিয়ার জন্যও এটি উন্মুক্ত করা হয়। জুলাইয়ে ভিজুয়ালএডিটর উন্মুক্ত করার পর, আমরা ইংরেজি উইকিপিডিয়ার কিছু স্বয়ংক্রিয়ভাবে বাছাই করা করা নতুন ব্যবহারকারীর ওপর ভিজুয়ালএডিটরের ওপর একটি পরীক্ষা পরিচালনা করবো। পরীক্ষাটি শুরু হবে ১৭ জুন এবং এই পরীক্ষাকালীন সময়ে আমরা এই নতুন এডিটরটির ওপর ব্যবহারকারীদের প্রভাব পর্যবেক্ষণ করবো, তাঁদের মতামত শুনবো, এবং সমস্যাগুলো সমাধান করবো।

পূর্বে ‘আলফা’ প্রোটোটাইপ শুধু তাঁরাই ব্যবহার করতে পারতেন যাঁরা নিবন্ধিত ছিলেন এবং ভিজুয়ালএডিটর সুবিধাটি ব্যবহারের অপশনটি চালু করেছিলেন। ২০১২ সালের ডিসেম্বর মাসে এটি প্রথম চালু হয়। তার পর থেকে এ বছরের এপ্রিল মাসের মধ্যে আরও ১৬ ভাষার উইকিপিডিয়ায় এই পরীক্ষা কার্যক্রম বিস্তৃত হয়। আমরা আশা করছি এই সপ্তাহের শেষভাগ নাগাদ এটি বাকি উইকিপিডিয়াগুলোতেও চালু করে দেওয়া সম্ভব হবে। আলফা সংস্করণের সময় আমরা এই এডিটরটি সম্পর্কে অনেক মতামত পেয়েছি এবং আমরা তাঁদের সাহায্যের জন্য তাঁদেরকে আন্তরিক ধন্যবাদ জানাই।

ইন্টারনেটে ভিজুয়াল এইচটিএমএল এডিটর আজকাল খুবই সহজলভ্য একটি বিষয় হলেও উইকিপিডিয়া ও এর সহযোগী প্রকল্পগুলোর জন্য এধরনের একটি সুবিধা চালু করার কতোগুলো চ্যালেঞ্জ ছিলো, কারণ আমাদের কিছু বিশেষ চাহিদা ছিলো যেগুলো মেটাতে হয়েছিলো এবং সেই সাথে সুবিধাটি আমাদের বর্তমান সফটওয়্যার মিডিয়াউইকির সাথে সামঞ্জস্যপূর্ণ হওয়া বাঞ্ছনীয় ছিলো। পেছনের কাজ হিসেবে চিন্তা করলে ভিজুয়ালএডিটর বিশেষভাবে নির্ভর করে প্যারসয়েড-এর ওপর, যা মিডিয়াউইকির একটি জটিল সহযোগী সফটওয়্যার যার কাজ মূলত উইকিমার্কআপ ও এইচটিএমএল+আরডিএফএর মধ্যে একটি থেকে অন্যটায় অনুবাদ করা।

আপনার সাহায্য আমাদের প্রয়োজন!

সাহায্য করার জন্য আপনি যা করতে পারেন: গত কয়েক মাসে আমরা আপনাকে ভিজুয়ালএডিটরের আলফা সংস্করণ পরীক্ষা করার আহবান জানিয়েছিলাম, এবং অনেকেই সেটা করেছেন। তারপর থেকে এটি তাৎপর্যপূর্ণভাবে পরিবর্তিত হয়েছে এবং সেজন্য আমরা আপনাকে এটি আবার পরীক্ষা করে দেখার অনুরোধ করছি। এটি খুবই জরুরী যে সামনে আর কয়েক সপ্তাহ সময়ের মধ্যে সবার জন্য এটি উন্মুক্ত করে দেওয়ার আগে আমরা যতোটা সম্ভব সমস্যা সমাধান করতে পারি ততো ভালো হয়। এটা ঠিক যে আমরা চেষ্টা করলেও হয়তো সব সমস্যা আগামী কয়েক সপ্তাহের মধ্যে সমাধান করা সম্ভব হবে না। তাই অনুগ্রহ করে ভিজুয়ালএডিটর চালু করুন (এটি আপনার পছন্দেই আছে, সম্পাদনা ট্যাবের মধ্যে। সেখানে গিয়ে ‘ভিজুয়ালএডিটর চালু করুন’ অপশনে ক্লিক করলেই হবে) এবং আপনার খুঁজে পাওয়া যে-কোনো প্রকার বাগ জমা দিন। আপনার আগে আগে পরীক্ষা করার অর্থ হচ্ছে আমরা আপনার জন্য আরও কার্যকর একটি ভিজুয়ালএডিটর এবং বাকি সবার জন্য একটি সুন্দর ও সাবলীল ডিপ্লয়মেন্ট নিশ্চিত করতে পারবো।

ফিলিপ ব্যুডেট, ডিরেক্টর, কমিউনিটি অ্যাডভোকেসি
জেমস ফরেস্টার, প্রোডাক্ট ম্যানেজার, ভিজ্যুয়ালএডটর ও প্যারসয়েড

Vorbereitungen für die Einführung des VisualEditors für alle Wikipedias

Nach jahrelanger Entwicklungsarbeit und Tests wird der VisualEditor, das neue Interface zur Bearbeitung von Wikipediaseiten, demnächst als “Beta” allen Benutzern zur Verfügung gestellt. Die erlaubt Wikipediaautoren Artikeln visuell zu schreiben und zu bearbeiten. Dabei wird der Bearbeitungsmodus dem Lesemodus gleichen und die Veränderungen direkt anzeigen – ähnlich dem Schreiben in einem Textverarbeitungsprogramm.

Der VisualEditor vereinfacht die Mitarbeit für neue und regelmäßige Autoren, denn das Erlernen komplexer Wiki-Syntax entfällt. Wir hoffen, dass dies mehr Leuten die Möglichkeit zur Mitarbeit eröffnet und zusammen mit anderen Maßnahmen zu hörerer und langfristiger Beteiligung an den Projekten führt.

Gegenwärtig planen wir das Interface für alle eingeloggten Benutzer der englischsprachigen Wikipedia Anfang Juli freizuschalten, dies später im selben Monat auch allen anderen Benutzern des Projekts zu ermöglichen und dann auf die anderen Wikipediaversionen zu übertragen. Bereits vorab werden wir vom 17. Juni an auf der englischsprachigen Wikipedia einen Test mit zufällig ausgewählten neuen Benutzern, denen der VisualEditor zur Verfügung gestellt wird, durchführen. Dieses frühe Feedback soll uns ermöglichen den Einfluss des Interface auf neue Autoren besser zu verstehen und Probleme zu beheben.

Der “Alpha”-Prototyp, der auf der englischsprachigen Wikipedia im Dezember 2012 und im April 2013 für 16 weitere Sprachversionen freigegeben wurde, stand nur eingeloggten Benutzern zur Verfügung und wird Ende dieser Woche auf allen Wikipedien verfügbar sein. Die bisheringen Tester der Alphaversion haben uns zahlreiche wertvolle Hinweise und Verbesserungsvorschläge geliefert und dafür sind wir sehr dankbar.

Visuelle HTML-Textverarbeitungsprogramme sind mittlerweile der Standard im Internet, aber ein solches Programm für Wikipedia (und die Schwesterprojekte) zu schreiben ist dank der speziellen Ansprüche unserer Projekte und der Notwendigkeit, das Interface in Mediawiki zu integrieren, eine besondere Herausforderung. Der VisualEditor hängt hierbei von Parsoid ab, einem neuen und komplexen Stück Software für Mediaiwki, das zwischen Wikisyntax und HTML+RDFa übersetzt.

Wir brauchen deine Hilfe!

Wie du mithelfen kannst: In den letzten Monaten haben wir darum gebeten die Alphaversion des VisualEditors auszuprobieren und viele sind dieser Bitte gefolgt. Seitdem hat sich die Software deutlich verändert und deshalb bitten wir darum diese Tests fortzuführen. Es ist sehr wichtig, dass wir möglichst viele kritische Probleme am besten noch vor der Freischaltung für alle Interessierten beheben. Natürlich würden wir gern alle Probleme vorher lösen aber das ist vermutlich nicht machbar. Daher die Bitte, den VisualEditor auszuprobieren (er kann in den Einstellungen aktiviert werden) und Probleme auf der Feedbackseite zu melden. Eure frühzeitige Mithilfe ermöglicht es uns einen besseren VisualEditor für alle Benutzer zu entwickeln und freizugeben.

Philippe Beaudette, Director, Community Advocacy
James Forrester, Product Manager, VisualEditor und Parsoid

Preparativos para la implementación de VisualEditor en todas las Wikipedias

Translation contributed by User:Jduranboger

Luego de varios años de desarrollo y pruebas, VisualEditor, la nueva interfaz visual para editar las páginas de Wikipedia, pronto estará disponible en su versión “beta” para todos los usuarios.

Esto permitirá a los editores de Wikipedia crear y modificar artículos visualmente, utilizando un nuevo sistema en el que los artículos que editan se verán igual que los artículos que se muestran para su lectura y los cambios aparecen al mismo tiempo que se los va realizando -como escribir un documento en un procesador de textos.

El editor visual elimina la necesidad de aprender la compleja sintaxis wiki, simplificando la edición tanto para editores nuevos y experimentados. Esperamos que esto abrirá la edición de artículos a más personas y junto a otros esfuerzos animará a más editores a empezar y continuar contribuyendo.

Planeamos habilitar VisualEditor para todos los usuarios registrados de Wikipedia en Inglés a principios de julio, para después extenderlo también a usuarios no registrados, así como a Wikipedias en otros idiomas. Antes del lanzamiento de VisualEditor en julio, a partir del 17 de junio, se realizarán pruebas en cuentas nuevas en Wikipedia en inglés seleccionadas aleatoriamente. Durante este periodo de pruebas, estaremos monitoreando el impacto en los usuarios, a través de retroalimentación y solucionado algunos problemas.

El prototipo “alfa” estuvo previamente disponible sólo para usuarios registrados que optaron por probar VisualEditor. Primero en Wikipedia en inglés en diciembre de 2012, extendiéndose a 16 lenguajes en abril de 2013, y estará disponible en todas las demás Wikipedias al final de ésta semana. Muchos comentarios valiosos fueron proporcionados por los usuarios que probaron la versión alfa, a quienes agradecemos por su ayuda.

Los editores visuales HTML son comunes actualmente en la Web, pero desarrollar uno para Wikipedia (y sus proyectos hermanos) ha sido todo un desafío en sí mismo, debido a nuestros requerimientos especializados y a la necesidad de integrarlo con nuestro software existente, MediaWiki. Detrás de escenas, VisualEditor depende en gran medida de Parsoid, un nuevo componente de software complejo para MediaWiki que realiza traducciones entre el formato wiki y HTML+RDFa.

Necesitamos ayuda!

Qué puedes hacer para ayudar: En los últimos meses, les hemos pedido probar la versión alfa de VisualEditor, y muchos lo hicieron. Desde entonces, se han realizado cambios importantes, por lo que les pedimos que lo prueben nuevamente. Es muy importante que corrijamos tantos aspectos críticos como sea posible antes de su implementación que estará disponible para todo el mundo en unas pocas semanas — desde luego nos gustaría poder solucionarlos todos, pero tal vez no sea posible. Por favor, habilita la opción VisualEditor (se encuentra en la página de preferencias, en la sección edición — selecciona la casilla “Activar el editor visual”) y reporta cualquier falla que encuentres. Las pruebas tempranas que se realicen nos permitirán asegurar un mejor VisualEditor y una implementación más suave para todos.

Philippe Beaudette, Director, Defensa de la Comunidad
James Forrester, Productor en Jefe, VisualEditor y Parsoid

Préparatifs pour l’arrivée d’ÉditeurVisuel sur toutes les Wikipédias

Après plusieurs années de développement et de test, ÉditeurVisuel (en anglais, VisualEditor), la nouvelle interface visuelle de modification des pages de Wikipedia, sera bientôt disponible en version “bêta” pour tous les utilisateurs. Cette interface permet aux contributeurs de créer et modifier les articles visuellement ; grâce à ce nouveau système, l’article a la même apparence lorsqu’il est en cours de modification que lorsqu’un lecteur le consulte. Les changements sont visibles immédiatement, comme si l’on écrivait un document dans un logiciel de traitement de texte.

Avec ÉditeurVisuel, il n’est plus nécessaire d’apprendre le code wiki, ce qui rend la modification de pages plus facile autant pour les nouveaux contributeurs que pour les plus expérimentés. Nous espérons que cela permettra à davantage de lecteurs de contribuer.

Nous prévoyons d’activer ÉditeurVisuel pour tous les utilisateurs enregistrés sur Wikipédia en anglais début juillet, et peu de temps après sur les autres Wikipédia. Wikipédia en français sera parmi les premiers wikis à bénéficier d’ÉditeurVisuel, vers la mi-juillet.

Le prototype (version “alpha”) est déjà disponible pour les utilisateurs enregistrés ayant choisi de tester ÉditeurVisuel (dans leurs préférences). Ce prototype est disponible depuis décembre 2012 sur Wikipédia en anglais, sur 16 autres Wikipédia (y compris Wikipédia en français) depuis avril 2013, et sur le reste d’entre elles depuis début juin. Les utilisateurs ayant testé le prototype ont fourni de nombreux retours qui nous ont permis de corriger les bugs et problèmes qu’ils ont découverts.

Il est désormais courant de rencontrer des éditeurs HTML visuels sur le Web, mais en construire un pour Wikipédia (et ses projets frères) a été un vrai défi, en raison de nos besoins spécifiques, tels que l’intégration au logiciel MediaWiki. En arrière-plan, ÉditeurVisuel repose en grande partie sur “Parsoid”, un nouveau logiciel complexe (faisant partie de MediaWiki) qui sert de traducteur entre le code wiki et le HTML annoté avec des métadonnées RDFa.

Nous avons besoin de votre aide

Vous pouvez encore nous aider à améliorer ÉditeurVisuel. Au cours des dernières semaines, nous vous avons demandé de nous aider à tester la version alpha d’ÉditeurVisuel, et vous avez été nombreux à répondre à notre appel. Nous avons effectué de nombreuses modifications entre temps, et nous avons besoin que vous le testiez à nouveau. Il est très important que nous puissions corriger un maximum de problèmes avant l’activation d’ÉditeurVisuel pour tous les utilisateurs dans quelques semaines.

Si vous voulez nous aider, activez ÉditeurVisuel dans vos préférences, sous « Fonctionnalités bêta » : « Activer VisualEditor », et indiquez-nous tous les problèmes que vous rencontrez sur la page Wikipédia:ÉditeurVisuel/Avis. Si vous voyez que des messages sont laissés sur le Bistro (ou d’autres pages) à propos d’ÉditeurVisuel, encouragez les contributeurs à déplacer la discussion vers la page Wikipédia:ÉditeurVisuel/Avis, ou ajoutez-y un lien vers la discussion du bistro, afin que nous ne passions pas à côté.

Philippe Beaudette et James Forrester

This article was edited on June 17 to include translations into Bengali, German, Spanish, and French.

The Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) on the English Wikipedia is a group of editors that rules on disputes between editors related to user conduct as a matter of last resort, and when those disagreements cannot be resolved otherwise. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales created the ArbCom in December 2003, when the number of disputes that he was asked to handle grew too cumbersome. Various researchers and academics have analyzed the committee as a conflict resolution body, and it has been covered in mainstream news outlets, most notably the New York Times and The Colbert Report. In total, the English Wikipedia ArbCom has decided 371 cases since it was founded, serving to provide action and guidance on some of the more intractable issues within the Wikimedia community.

We wanted to give members of the committee the opportunity to reflect on their experiences since joining and to share their perspective about the future of Wikipedia. Four Arbitrators participated in an email interview. Their service terms run the gamut on experience with the Committee.

Newyorkbrad has edited English Wikipedia regularly since 2006 and is one of the longest serving members of the ArbCom, starting in January 2008 (and clerking with the committee in 2007). Outside of Wikipedia, he is a practicing attorney and has contributed content on the English Wikipedia, primarily on subjects related to law.

Worm That Turned (WTT) is among the newest members of ArbCom, elected at the end of 2012 and seated in January 2013. He created his account on English Wikipedia in 2008 and has been one of the most active contributors to the English Wikipedia’s “adoption” program, whereby experienced editors mentor newcomers and help them acclimate. Outside of Wikipedia, he works in the Information Technology field.

Risker has edited English Wikipedia since 2005 and first ran for ArbCom in 2008. She was later appointed to the committee in January 2009 and is now serving through her second two-year term. Risker is a list administrator for all ArbCom-related lists, is usually involved in appointment processes for committees and has managed orientation of new arbitrators for several years. Outside of arbitration work, Risker enjoys copy-editing and has worked on a wide variety of articles.

Carcharoth has edited English Wikipedia since January 2005 (over eight years) and was appointed to the ArbCom for the first time following the December 2008 ArbCom elections. He was an arbitrator for two years (2009 and 2010), but didn’t stand for re-election at the end of that two-year term. After spending two years focused more on editing, he again stood in the December 2012 election and was elected to another two-year term.

Read the edited interview below, or read the complete interview transcripts on Metawiki here.

Philippe Beaudette
Director, Community Advocacy, Wikimedia Foundation

Q&A Interview

Why did you want to be on ArbCom? What were you hoping to accomplish?

• Risker – I believed I could bring a different perspective to the Committee in its dispute resolution functions, and wanted to redesign much of the “behind the scenes” infrastructure so that the community could be an active participant in more of the Committee’s responsibilities. I know I still bring a “different perspective” based on the number of times I am outvoted on a position, or disagree with my colleagues on various points. I’ve been a key participant in the development of the Audit Subcommittee (AUSC), in seeking out community members to act as Checkusers and Oversighters, and in ensuring community participation in the appointment of Checkusers, Oversighters and AUSC members.

• WTT – I felt I could make a difference on the committee; one of my strongest skill sets is the ability to talk to people and explain opposite points of view. I play a great devil’s advocate. I was hoping to change the committee from something that was at odds with the community to something the community felt was there for their benefit.

• Carcharoth – The aim was to put myself forward to do a role that traditionally is seen as thankless, but that needs to be done. One of the things that is seldom realised is how difficult it is to act as a deliberative committee, rather than individuals. It can slow things down immensely to the point of seeming paralysis at times.

• NYB – I sought to contribute to the fair and effective resolution of disputes on the English Wikipedia, which are the types of disputes that come before the Arbitration Committee to resolve. Although like most editors I came to Wikipedia to work on article drafting and editing, soon after I started editing regularly, I became aware of the backstage governance and dispute-resolution apparatus of which ArbCom is a part.

What are your responsibilities as an ArbCom member? Do different members have different responsibilities?

• NYB – The primary responsibility of the arbitrators is to address arbitration cases. These include deciding whether or not to accept given cases for arbitration (the Committee votes on whether to accept or decline each case request; in general, we will only accept a case if other community-based methods of dispute resolution have not succeeded in resolving the dispute, and if we believe that an arbitration decision could help resolve it); analyzing the evidence and voting on the proposed decision in each accepted case; and after cases are resolved, commenting on requests for clarifications, amendments, or termination of sanctions. In addition, the Arbitration Committee is the forum of last resort for users who have been banned or blocked indefinitely by the community, or who have been blocked based in part on non-public information that other administrators aren’t able to review. By Wikimedia Foundation policy, the Arbitration Committee is responsible for appointing checkusers and oversighters on our project and, as a follow-on to that responsibility, it also has the authority to decide that such userrights should be withdrawn. Finally, over the years the Arbitration Committee has taken on a small handful of miscellaneous responsibilities that no one else on the project is in a position to perform.

Each arbitrator has identical rights and responsibilities for analyzing and voting on cases. However, in each case, one or two arbitrators will be designated as the drafting arbitrator(s) who will take the lead on doing the initial analysis and preparing a proposed decision for consideration. A few arbitrators have also taken on special responsibilities within the Committee, either by agreement with their colleagues or simply by stepping up and doing the work. For example, at present, Roger Davies serves as Coordinating Arbitrator; I serve as Liaison to the Wikimedia Foundation Office (a position that the Office suggested we create); Risker serves as de facto coordinator of checkuser and oversighter selection; and so on. We also have two subcommittees, the Ban Appeals Subcommittee, which is composed of three arbitrators and which takes the lead in evaluating many of the appeals from banned or indefblocked users; and the Audit Subcommittee, which is composed of three arbitrators and three non-arbitrator community members (and hence isn’t really a subcommittee of ArbCom at all), which reviews complaints concerning alleged misuse of checkuser and oversighter rights on English Wikipedia. Arbitrators serve on these two subcommittees on a rotating basis.

How much email do you get and how much can you actually process? What are the various kinds of email that come in?

• NYB - There are probably a hundred or so e-mails a week. The e-mails relate to every aspect of the Committee’s work that I’ve mentioned above, as well as some that are simply informational, or which are misdirected and which we try to re-route to the right place (e.g. we get some inquiries from BLP subjects, which we forward to the OTRS team). I try to read every e-mail, but in practice, some get more of my attention than others, depending on my time availability that day or week, and whether other arbitrators have gotten to a particular e-mail first.

• Risker – Because I am a mailing list administrator, I get probably 3-5 times the volume of emails as the average arbitrator; all those lists generate a lot of moderation request emails, which I sort out using filters so my inbox isn’t completely unmanageable. A typical day will see anywhere from 60-125 emails, not counting “public” mailing lists like Wikimedia-l, Wikitech-l, WikiEN-l and Gendergap. If it’s a heavy day, I’ll focus my attention on Arbcom mailing list threads (which are usually the bulk of incoming messages) and emails directed to me personally, with the next level of attention being email threads from the Functionaries mailing lists, the AUSC, arbcom clerks list, the global Checkuser mailing list.

What’s the most interesting case you’ve been a part of?

• Carcharoth – The one I remember most is one I drafted on a dispute between two editors in the topic area of socionics, though I wouldn’t call it interesting. Much arbitration work is not really that interesting. It often involves poring through reams of evidence that others can’t be bothered to look at, or where things have been assessed perfunctorily and incorrectly by others, and you need to ensure that the crux of a matter is looked at and discussed and voted on.

• Risker – Probably the ones that I remember most vividly are two from early 2011, Longevity and Shakespeare authorship question – an interesting way to start a new term. The latter, as I recall, became the subject of one or more academic studies.

What’s the most interesting issue you’ve never worked on, or you wish you had worked on?

• NYB – I think we’ve seen a good cross-section of wiki-disputes in the five-plus years I’ve been on the Committee; I can’t think of a type of dispute that I haven’t had a chance to weigh in on on some level or other. Sometimes I’ll be reading through a day’s worth of noticeboard postings and I’ll think to myself ‘I’d better not comment on that because I’d like to write on that issue as an arbitrator if the dispute comes to us,’ and then sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t.

• Risker – There have been several times when I have urged editors to bring a case to the Committee, rather than expressing concern on my talk page or by email. In many of those cases, the situation they were discussing was quite clearly a problem that was affecting the project; however, I can understand that it’s a significant challenge for editors to bring something forward because of the time commitment and the occasional possibility of a boomerang effect. Several of these situations were ultimately dealt with by the community, but only after several more months of problematic behavior.

In the cases that you’ve seen, knowing what you know now, are there any where you think you should have voted differently, or acted in a different manner?

• Carcharoth – At times yes, but unless those cases come up on appeal, there is little point rehashing old cases. In my case, some of those cases are many years old now, and the committee simply doesn’t have the time or resources to re-examine old cases. In general, though, I think the main thrust of decisions have been correct. The key is not to get hung up on detail, but to try and see the larger picture.

• Risker – There are few situations where I would have changed my votes, although there are times when I think the committee (or one or more of its members) has acted precipitously.

You’re in one of the more high profile positions on Wikipedia. How does that influence your perception of the project? How are you handling your celebrity?

• Carcharoth – It feels more like notoriety than celebrity! But having been an arbitrator before, it feels pretty much like last time. Which probably isn’t that good in some ways, as a small part of me had hoped that some of the more debilitating aspects of being an arbitrator had been improved, but it seems at times that not much has changed in two years.

• Rister – I do my best not to let this supposed celebrity go to my head; my “ordinary” admin actions are no less vulnerable than any other administrator’s, and my editorial actions are not irreversible. I always keep in mind that the names that keep showing up in relation to the Arbitration Committee (whether in cases or as commenters) constitute less than 5 percent of the active editorship, and that the vast majority of the editorial community wouldn’t know me from Adam.

• ‘WTT – Celebrity? Ha. There’s been a few things I’ve found a little odd, at a recent Wikimedia meetup I did feel attitudes were different. Also, I’m not keen on the veneration of arbitrators – I often see comments that an arbitrator commenting on a discussion somehow adds validation to it. Arbs are just normal members of the project, with just a little more trust. We’re nothing special really.

There are those who say that the Arbcom is misnamed, and doesn’t arbitrate anything, truly. Do you agree with this? Is the Arbcom an arbiter of disputes or does ArbCom serve another function?

• Risker – The Wikipedia community is rather notorious for using non-standard definitions for terms that, in some cases, defy anything that might be found in an English language dictionary. “Arbitration” is just one of them. We certainly don’t arbitrate in any classic sense of the word, because we do not accept either side’s positions, but instead place our own interpretation on the evidence we are provided or that we identify. Our remedies (or resolutions) are normally quite different from that requested by any parties, whereas most classical “arbitration” situations require the arbitrator to select from one position or the other. So yes, we’re misnamed.One point that I often make is that our “clients” are not the parties to the case. Our “client” is Wikipedia, the encyclopedia. Our decisions need to accommodate the best interests of the project, not the interests of any party.

• Carcharoth – ArbCom can arbitrate (and help resolve) disputes, usually when we accept a case at the right moment in the dispute resolution process. Too early and arbitration can make things unnecessarily complex. Too late and things will already be highly acrimonious and usually all we can do is try and separate the parties to some extent and adjudicate rather than arbitrate. We also have to hope to some extent that competent editors remain at the end of the process who are willing to repair or improve any content that may have been argued over. That is not always the case, and the lack of more involved ‘aftercare’ for a topic area after a case is one of the biggest failings of the process, in my view.ArbCom also ends up dealing with things that no one else can (including privacy-related matters), and this is not ideal as it increases our workload and distracts from our core function of dealing with cases.

Could you explain your impression of your role, as it pertains to determining governance policies on Wikipedia? What is the Arbcom’s role in governance?

• Carcharoth – It should be zero, but by default and in some cases by mandate, we have ended up dealing with matters like overseeing the oversight and checkuser teams, and sometimes people do look to ArbCom for leadership, when, in my opinion, such leadership should come from within the community.

• Risker – Arbcom’s role is to interpret the policies developed collaboratively by the community; it is not to create policies out of whole cloth. It is my firm belief that Arbcom is not a governance body, but instead handles the problems that the community hasn’t figured out how to (or doesn’t want to) handle on its own.

• NYB – The Arbitration Committee is not supposed to make policy, and despite allegations that we sometimes cross that line, we do our very best not to do so in almost all cases. That being said, arbitration decisions do outline principles that editors should bear in mind, and they also define policy in a bottom-line, operational sense (e.g. “if an administrator does X he or she is likely to be desysopped”). And the Committee sometimes has had to say something about a given policy issue because, for better or worse, the project does not have a Governance Committee.

Do you think ArbCom should get involved in resolving more content disputes (as opposed to user conduct disputes)? If so, how do you reconcile this with the historical precedent against it? If your answer is “no”, to whom do you believe those content disputes “belong”? Who is the party that should resolve them?

• WTT – No. The crowd-sourcing aspect of a wiki should encourage subject matter experts to a topic, whose understanding of the topic should allow them to put forward strong arguments that lead to consensus. In this way the community should own any content disputes, and arbcom should only step in when users are behaving in a manner that stops consensus being formed.

• Carcharoth – I firmly stand behind the principle that it is the community of editors in and around a topic area that should determine the content and how content disputes are handled. The role of administrators, and in severe cases ArbCom, should be to remove the editors causing disruption. The most ArbCom, and those trying to keep a contentious area calm, should do, is to set up structures and systems to help resolve disputes.

Will there still be an ArbCom in 5 years? Please explain why or why not. What does the future of the committee look like?

• NYB – I think the overall trend may continue under which the Arbitration Committee decides a smaller proportion of the project’s disputes today and in the foreseeable future than it did in past years. It may be that the community creates one or more other governance bodies to share some governance responsibilities, which would take away some of the Committee’s work at the margins, but the community has not looked kindly on a prior Committee effort to create even an advisory governance body, so I think whatever evolves in that area will do so independent of us.

• WTT – The community is getting much better at resolving its own disputes and needs the committee less and less for arbitration; however we’re still needed for the other jobs that we’ve taken on. Perhaps a new committee would be a good idea. Having said that, the chances of it happening on the encyclopedia are low – we don’t embrace change, let alone big change. So, in all probability, there will still be a committee, though there may not be a need for one.

What changes do you think will happen to ArbCom over the next 5 years or longer? What changes should happen?

• WTT – I’m hoping for a bit more transparency, and perhaps a bit of a break up of powers.

• Risker – I think the committee continuously looks at what it is supposed to be doing and whether or not it is sustainable. There will be a focus on narrowing the interpretation of what is and is not within the committee’s remit, and more moves toward delegation of matters that the committee has handled in the past.

What one message would you like to convey to Wikipedians about the Arbitration Committee? If you could sit them all down and make them believe one statement from you, what would that statement be?

• WTT – The committee are a group of independent individuals and generally they have different opinions. There’s no conspiracy, there’s no evil intentions, every one of us is doing our best for the encyclopedia.

• NYB – We are a committee of volunteers, drawn from the editing community of which all of you are a part, selected by yourselves after the most comprehensive vetting and selection process the community has been able to devise, and doing our best to address serious problems that the project has no other way to solve. Input from the community we serve is always helpful to us as we strive to fulfill our role on the project.

• Carcharoth – Stand up and take an active part in arbitration (or indeed any part of the dispute resolution process – it all helps). Take the time to see what we do and to participate in a few cases. [Don't] just add comments but be constructive with criticism and actively help out. Add support where you see things done well, and be clear on how you would do things differently if you disagree with something.

This post is available in 2 languages:

Español  • English

English

Statue of Gustav II Adolph in Stockholm. Photo by: Lars (Lon) Olsson.

When we first looked at organising Wiki Loves Public Art (WLPA) in Sweden, together with Europeana, we figured that it wouldn’t be much different from how we had organized Wiki Loves Monuments in previous years. We would just need to get lists of all the public artworks in Sweden. As there is a government agency called The National Public Art Council Sweden (Statens konstråd), we thought all we’d need to do was contact them and get the data from them.

We soon found out that the situation was quite different. Although Statens konstråd does have lists of public artwork, they are limited to fairly recent art and only that art which the agency itself has purchased. The vast majority of the works of art are the responsibility of the individual municipalities, along with the agencies and companies charged with the maintenance of public buildings, such as train stations. There also isn’t a standardized format for how to record the works of art, nor a requirement to record them at all. Fortunately, Public Sector Information (PSI) legislation in Sweden is such that we can request this data from each of the public bodies holding the information.

Sjöormsfontänen by Axel Ebbe. Photo by: Hedning.

After receiving a grant from Sweden’s Innovation Agency (Vinnova), we set out to build a database that could hold all of the information we were going to collect. We also added an API to allow developers easy access to the data and to enable them to build other applications with it. We are also working on connecting the database to Wikipedia and Wikidata. This is similar to how the lists work in Wiki Loves Monuments, which provide a natural place for viewing the information and putting it in a larger context. It also allows the information to be further improved: volunteers can add coordinates, create descriptions and fix typos.

The project has also had the added benefit of making any municipality we contact aware of open data and the PSI legislation. Many of them have said that they’ve had internal discussions regarding best practices for handling requests for open data, which has spread awareness of the importance of open data within the organisations. Several municipalities were also delighted to find out that there is an interest in the public art they maintain. They have sometimes used this as an opportunity to update their own records or have expressed an interest in sharing the user-generated information that will be added to the works of art. By the time the preparations for Wiki Loves Public Art 2014 get started we expect to have a decent proportion of all public art in Sweden in the database. The generated lists should be able to serve our needs as a basis for the competition.

If we were going to run Wiki Loves Public Art 2014 the way we had originally envisioned running it in 2013, we need a centralised source of standardised information. The need for, and usefulness of, such a database goes beyond the WLPA contest. Schools can use an open database to identify local art or art elsewhere in Sweden by a local artist. Researcher could use it to look at trends in public art. Reporters could use it as an investigative tool when looking at local government spending. Adjoining municipalities could pool their resources when negotiating services, such as restoration and maintenance of works of art.

And these are just a few of the use cases we quickly thought of. The true benefit of an open database is that it can be used by anyone for any idea they might have.

Municipalities of Sweden colored based on their status in the Database. See image page for key. Image by: Lokal_Profil.

So if your country is in a similar situation where the relevant information is fragmented between many parties, perhaps this is the solution also for you. All code developed for this project is open source, making your life much easier. So the main thing you would need are volunteers to request the information and to then pre-process it into a usable form (don’t underestimate the time needed for either of these two steps!). You might even be able to find external funding for a similar project in your country.

Of course we’d be happy to share the lessons we have learned, so if you are interested just get in touch!

André Costa
GLAM-technician / Developer, Wikimedia Sverige

For more information and updates see the project page on our wiki.

A quick glimpse of some of the database features

From an early point we knew that we needed a way of clearly marking which content came from an official source and which had been user-generated. The solution was to build the database in two layers, giving you three choices in how to view the information:

1. Strict view, with official information only;
2. Normal view, which makes no distinction between user-generated and official information;
3. Enhanced view, which is similar to the Strict view, but displays user-generated information for the fields where official data is missing.

In addition to this, we added a mechanism that exports all of the changes to the official information from a given source. This allows an interested municipality to import some, or all, of the corrections or enhanced information. If these are then incorporated by them, the changes are upgraded to official status.

The database is also designed to keep a record of the copyright status of the artwork as well as whether it is inside or outdoors. The result of this is that we can build lists that detect whether images of the artwork are allowed on Wikimedia Commons, and also whether these should be marked with a Freedom of Panorama template. Just what we need for running Wiki Loves Public Art in 2014!

Español

Base de Datos Abierta de Arte Público

Estatua de Gustav II Adolph en Estocolmo. Fotografía: Lars (Lon) Olsson. Licencia: CC BY-SA.

Cuando nos propusimos por primera vez la organización de Wiki Loves Public Art (WLPA) en Suecia, junto con Europeana, nos dimos cuenta que no sería muy diferente de la forma como habíamos organizado Wiki Loves Monuments en años anteriores. Nos hubiera gustado simplemente obtener las listas de todas las obras públicas de arte en Suecia. Como existe una agencia gubernamental llamada Consejo Nacional de Arte Público de Suecia (Statens konstråd), pensamos que lo único que tendríamos que hacer era ponerse en contacto con ellos y obtener la información.

Pronto nos dimos cuenta que la situación era muy diferente. A pesar de que la Statens konstråd si tenía la lista de las obras de arte públicas, se limitaba a obras bastante recientes y sólo a aquellas que la agencia había adquirido. La gran mayoría de obras de arte están bajo responsabilidad de distintos municipios, así como agencias y compañias encargadas del mantenimiento de los edificios públicos, como las estaciones de tren. Tampoco existe un formato estandarizado de cómo registrar las obras de arte, ni la obligación de que todas estén registradas. Afortunadamente, la legislación de Información del Sector Público (PSI) en Suecia nos permite requerir los datos a cada uno de las insituciones públicas que tienen esta información.

“Sjöormsfontänen” de Axel Ebbe. Fotografía: edning. Licencia: CC BY-SA.

Después de recibir una subvención de la Agencia de Innovación de Suecia (Vinnova), nos propusimos desarrollar una base de datos que pudiera alojar toda la información que íbamos a conseguir. También incorporamos una API para que los desarrolladores puedan acceder fácilmente a los datos y desarrollar otras aplicaciones con éstos. También nos ocupamos de conectar la base de datos con Wikipedia y Wikidata. Esto es similar a como las listas generadas en Wiki Loves Monuments, lo que permite contar con espacio natural para ver la información y ponerla en un contexto más grande. Además permite que la información pueda ser mejorada: los voluntarios pueden añadir coordenadas, crear descripciones y corregir los errores ortográficos.

El proyecto cuenta con el beneficio adicional de lograr que las municipalidades que contactamos estén concientes acerca de Datos Abiertos y la legislación PSI. Muchos de éstos municipios nos dijeron que habían tenido discusiones internas sobre mejores prácticas para atender las solicitudes de datos abiertos, genenrando una mayor conciencia de la importancia acerca de datos abiertos al interior de las organizaciones. Varias municipalidades estuvieron encantadas de saber que existe interés en las obras de arte públicas que se encuentran a su cargo. En algunos casos aprovecharon ésta oportunidad para actualizar sus propios registros o expresaron su interés en compartir la información generada por los usuarios que sea agregada respecto a las obras de arte. Para cuando los preparativos para Wiki Loves Public Art 2014 empiecen esperamos contar con un porcentaje decente de todas la obras de arte públicas de Suecia en la base de datos. Las listas generadas deben ser capaces de satisfacer nuestras necesidades como base para el concurso.

Minicipalidades de Suecia coloreadas de acuerdo a su estatus en la Base de Datos. Ver la página de la imágen para la coodificación. Imagen por: Lokal_Profil. Licencia: CC BY-SA.

Si vamos a llevar a cabo Wiki Loves Public Art 2014 de la manera en que originalmente habíamos previsto hacerlo el 2013, necesitamos una fuente centralizada de información estandarizada. A manera de ejemplo de la necesidad, y la utilidad de una base de datos que vaya más allá del concurso WLPA: las escuelas pueden utilizar la base de datos para identificar obras de arte locales o las obras de los artistas locales en cualquier lugar de Suecia; los investigadores podrían utilizarla para observar las tendencias en el arte público; los reporteros podrían usar la base de datos como herramienta de investigación cuando observen los gastos gubernamentales; los municipios colindantes podrían utilizar de manera conjunta sus recursos cuando negocian servicios como la restauración y el mantenimiento de obras de arte.

Y estos son los unos pocos de los casos en los que pensamos rápidamente. El verdadero beneficio de una base de datos abierta es que ésta puede ser utilizada por cualquier persona para cualquier idea que tenga.

Si tu país se encuentra en una situación similar en la que la información relevante se encuentra fragmentada en muchas partes, tal vez está es la solución para tí también. Todo el código desarrollado para éste proyecto es código abierto, lo que hará tu vida más fácil; asi que lo principal que se necesita son voluntarios que soliciten la información y la pre-procesen de manera que se pueda utilizar (no hay que subestimar el tiempo neceesario para cualquiera de estos dos pasos!). Incluso se podría buscar financiamiento externo para un proyecto similar en tu país.

Desde luego, estaremos encantados de compartir las lecciones que hemos aprendido, así que si estas interesado, sólo necesitas ponerte en contacto!

André Costa
Desarrollador técnico GLAM
Wikimedia Suecia

Para mayor información y actualizaciones revisa la página del proyecto en nuestra wiki.

Traducción por Justin Duranboger

We are very happy with the success of the 2012 Wikipedia fundraiser, which has demonstrated the amazing support Wikipedia readers feel for the free encyclopedia. From July 2012 to April 2013, more than 2 million people donated approximately $35 million USD to the Wikimedia Foundation to support the online encyclopedia and its sister projects.

Donations help the Wikimedia Foundation maintain server infrastructure, support global projects to increase the number of contributors, improve the software that supports our projects, and make Wikipedia accessible globally to millions of people who are just beginning to access the Internet.

 

2012 Editor Video

We divided the 2012 campaign into two parts. More than 1.2 million donors contributed to the 2012 year-end campaign, which ran on English Wikipedia in five countries (United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand). The campaign was the shortest and most successful in Wikipedia’s history. It ran for only 9 full days, down from 46 days in 2011. The most successful 24-hour period for donations in 2012 brought in $2.4 million from 145,585 donors.

In early 2013, the fundraising team worked with volunteer translators to translate the best messages from the 2012 year-end campaign, and ran banners in the rest of the world outside of the five English-language countries. We also limited the number of times people saw the messages. Readers worldwide outside of the five English-language countries saw a maximum of five banner impressions in March 2013. During the multilingual 2013 campaign, we raised approximately $7 million USD from nearly half a million donors.

Volunteer contributors are the heart of the world’s largest encyclopedia and they make it the amazing resource it is. To highlight the tens of millions of hours they put into the projects each year, the Wikimedia Foundation ran a thank you campaign with a short video that showcased some of the roughly 80,000 volunteer editors, photographers and free-knowledge advocates from around the world who regularly contribute to Wikimedia projects. The thank you campaign also included an invitation to all Wikipedia readers to get started editing.

Key Facts

Comparison between 2011 and 2012

Note: Currency shown in USD from a donation period of July 1, 2011 – January 5, 2012, including donations under $10,000. Currency shown in USD from a donation period of July 1, 2012 – April 1, 2013, including donations under $10,000.

Top 10 countries donating to WMF

Note: Currency shown in USD from a donation period of July 1, 2011 – April 1, 2013. Please also note: The amounts per country do not necessarily reflect the maximum fundraising capacity for each country. Once we were close to raising the goal, we ran less aggressive campaigns in many countries by showing fewer banner impressions.

Chapters

Wikimedia chapters processed payments in three countries during the 2012 fundraiser. Many other chapters and volunteers around the world also participated in the fundraiser by supporting international testing and translation.

Note: Some numbers are provisional and are self-reported from each chapter.

Fundraising Banners

2012 banners in English

Jimmy banner from 2011

The fundraiser had a very different look in 2012 compared to previous years. Prior to 2012, our highest earning (and most widely recognized) banner included a photo of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales asking people to click to read his personal appeal. Through pre-campaign testing in 2012, we experimented with a new approach by featuring key Wikipedia facts directly in the banner. This new “facts banner” performed much better than any banner we had run before – in some tests, bringing in about three times as many donations as the “personal appeal” banner.

This new facts banner was valuable for a number of reasons. By placing the key information directly in the banner at the top of Wikipedia articles, we eliminated the need to click on the banner to read our fundraising pitch, thus removing a major obstacle in our donation process. The facts banner was important to educate ALL Wikipedia readers (not just the select people who click on our messages) about who creates Wikipedia and how it operates. Banner design also changed significantly in 2012. The banner took up less screen space than our previous “personal appeal” banners and ran at the very top of the page – out of the way of the article space.

Iterations of 2012 facts banner

Prior to the fundraiser and throughout the campaign, we ran A/B tests of banner messages and designs to find the best-performing banners. During the fundraiser, we ran between 10 and 20 tests per day. The discovery of the facts banner and the improvements made through testing allowed us to significantly reduce the total number of fundraising days (from 46 in 2011 to just 9 full days in 2012) and to end the campaign two weeks ahead of schedule.

We’ve learned that even the most successful messages can lose their effectiveness over time. We must continually work to discover new methods of convincing our readers to donate, while educating all readers about Wikipedia and how it works. Testing of new banner messages, designs, and number of banner impressions will continue throughout 2013.

Here’s our best banner message that we used at the end of the 2012 fundraiser:

Dear Wikipedia readers: We are the small non-profit that runs the #5 website in the world. We have only 150 staff but serve 450 million users, and have costs like any other top site: servers, power, rent, programs, and staff. Wikipedia is something special. It is like a library or a public park. It is like a temple for the mind, a place we can all go to think and learn. To protect our independence, we’ll never run ads. We take no government funds. We run on donations averaging about $30. If everyone reading this gave $3, our fundraiser would be done within an hour. If Wikipedia is useful to you, take one minute to keep it online another year. Please help us forget fundraising and get back to Wikipedia. Thank you.

In 2012 we also experimented with showing banners only to users who hadn’t seen them before, and only for a limited number of views (usually 1 or 2). Based on user and social media feedback, users expressed that this lowered the impact and annoyance of banners, while still maintaining their effectiveness. This method of displaying banners will form a large part of our fundraising testing in the future.

2013 multilingual banners

The best banner message from the 2012 English campaign was translated into approximately 50 languages in January 2013. In February, approximately 5 percent of readers were shown just one banner impression in all countries (excluding the 5 English-language countries and payment processing chapter countries). We ramped up in March, showing all readers one to three impressions, until the last week of the month when we increased to five impressions. This was just the beginning of experimenting with showing readers limited banner impressions.

Thank you banners

Wikimedia Contributors

After we took down banners at the end of 2012, we ran a thank you campaign to introduce our readers to the volunteers behind the Wikimedia sites and to invite everyone to join in editing. The campaign featured a video with editors from around the globe along with other short videos and written messages from 50 Wikimedia volunteers.

The feedback from our readers was overwhelmingly positive. Here are just a few comments we received in reaction to the video:

• The video makes me feel good and confirms that my donation was worthwhile.
• amazing amazing. there is hope for this world
• A fantastic website and lots of wonderful people that make it happen! Thanks, Wikipedia, for the best site on the web!
• Yessss, this is so self empowering. Thank you all for this!!!
• I am always fearful about donating to causes due to unclear motives. This made me happy I did donate to wikipedia.
• So glad to meet a few who are making this world feel livable with the power of knowledge!
• An email that I was very happy to receive. Fantastic video, so enriching to hear from volunteers all over the world. You can be sure I will gladly donate again next year.
• Great video, you are welcome, it was a pleasure to contribute. Wikipedia is worth every penny and I will continue to use and support. Thanks to all who gave there time, and money. As a person with a very short education, I can’t thank you enough.
• The video was convincing and frankly, inspiring–people from around the world contributing to an invaluable information resource.
• great 5 stars
• The video was exhilarating. We are unbelievable when we cooperate!
• Thanks for doing this video. At age almost-75 I am grumpy about much in the world of electronic communication, but about Wikipedia I am nothing but happy. Thank you for helping me to find information that I no longer have time or energy to find in the outside world.
• Wonderful video! So nice to see the faces of some of the volunteers that make Wikipedia! It gives it a more personal view, knowing that those who write and those who search share in one common ground… the need to enrich our lives with understanding of our world, being it simple things or complicated issues. Thank you Wikipedia. Glad to contribute!
• Really glad that my donation was used for a great cause.
• That was just lovely. Money well spent. And I will do it again. In a heartbeat ;)
• I loved this video … makes me very glad I contributed.

Media Coverage

The Wikimedia Foundation fundraiser was the topic of many media stories and countless social media mentions. Here are just a few examples of the media attention the fundraiser received:

• http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/27/wikimedia-foundation-raises-25m-in-donations-over-9-days/
• http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/12/28/wikimedia-foundation-raises-25-million-for-its-2012-fundraiser/

Wikimedia Foundation Team

The fundraiser is supported by hundreds of volunteers who are supported by few staff members. For 2012, the Wikimedia Foundation staff team included:

• Peter Coombe, Fundraising Production Coordinator
• Zack Exley, Chief Revenue Officer
• Peter Gehres, Fundraiser Production Manager
• Jeff Green, Operations Engineer — Special Projects
• Victor Grigas, Storyteller, Video Producer
• Megan Hernandez, Head of Annual Fundraiser
• Katie Horn, Lead Software Engineer — Fundraising Tech
• Bryony Jones, Fundraiser Project Manager
• Patricia Peña, Community Department Operations Manager
• Joseph Seddon, Fundraiser Translation Coordinator
• Josh VanDavier, Fundraising QA Associate
• Matthew Walker, Software Engineer — Fundraising Tech
• Adam Wight, Software Engineer — Fundraising Tech

For information on past fundraisers, please see Reports on past fundraisers

Megan Hernandez
Head of Annual Fundraiser, Wikimedia Foundation

(Die deutsche Version dieses Artikels ist hier.)

This is the second in a short series of blog entries in which I explain some of the design decisions behind Wikidata. The first one was about restricting property values or properties. The essays represent my personal opinion, and are not to be understood as the official opinion of the Wikidata project.

Databases have an aura of correctness. When we query a database, we expect the result that comes back to basically be The Answer and The Truth. Ask Amazon’s database about the author of the Bible. Ask IMDB about the director of Adaptation. You are not expecting to get a possible answer, or different points of view – you expect one definitive answer.

Wikidata is collecting structured data about the world. It is basically a crowdsourced database. Unlike text, structured data necessarily and unfortunately lacks in nuance. Whereas it is possible to talk about the statehood of Kosovo in an NPOV way in natural language, a naive approach to represent that in structured data would fail: either we say Kosovo is a state, or we do not. There are no shades of grey.

Fortunately some of the roots of Wikidata lie in an EU research project called RENDER. The goal of this project is to explore and support the diversity of knowledge on the Web. RENDER discards the assumption of a simple, single truth – and this was inherited by the Wikidata data model. Instead of collecting facts, we collect statements. We define statements as claims that can have references. A reference supports the claim. A beautiful example is for example Ethanol, where the CAS number – a standard identifier for chemical compounds – is given with a reference to the actual standard, pointing out the page in the source.

Unlike many other databases, Wikidata can contain contradicting statements, supported by different references. Unlike the natural text in Wikipedia, Wikidata does not offer the possibility to reconcile and explain the differences in prose, providing due weight to the different points of view. The responsibility lies with the Wikidata reader and reuser to deal with deciding which sources to trust. I expect quite a bit of research and exploration to deal with this question in the following years. The first reusers to deal with these issues will be the Wikipedia communities that opt to choose data from Wikidata.

In the next few weeks and months we will add a few more features to support the diversity of statements in Wikidata.

Currently, the most obvious omission is a lack of datatypes to specify numbers, text and URLs. Only with these datatypes it will be possible to actually write down references in their full glory. Another opportunity – once URLs are available – would be to provide content locators for text in HTML pages through XPath, oxPath, CSS selectors, or something similar, thus enabling bots to check if the given references are still valid. I am very curious to see how the usage of references and sources will develop in and around Wikidata.

Another major feature that will be introduced in the course of this year is the possibility to rank statements: not all statements are to be regarded equally. We will introduce three ranks, and every statement will be in one of them: preferred, normal, and deprecated.

“Preferred” statements should be the most current and most widely accepted statements. There can be several preferred statements for the same item and property.

“Deprecated” statements are those that are considered to be not reliable for some reason. They are mentioned though because they might have a strong source supporting it, or they are widely spread for some reason, but actually not accepted anymore. Examples can include typos from influential textbooks – for example regarding the iron content of spinach, or the length of the Rhine – or numbers spread by some form of propaganda that are considered not correct today anymore.

“Normal” statements are thus the ones left, which are neither “preferred” nor “deprecated”. This will often apply for historic statements (the population of Rome in the time of Julius Caesar, former capitals of Russia, etc.).

Technically, we will start with using only preferred statements for answering queries (i.e. when you ask for all capitals with a population of less than 500,000, then you won’t get answers where the city had a population of 120,000 in the 16th century). Also only they will be returned by the property-parserfunction. The Lua interface will have access to all statements and thus provide full flexibility. It is planned to extend query answering later to support more complex queries, at which point we will have to think about integrating other ranks.

The ranks should allow for a more inclusive policy in Wikidata, allowing to reflect a wider diversity of knowledge.

To give an idea of the time scale: we will first implement the datatypes that are still missing, and then, as a prerequisite for ranks, the possibility to reorder statements. After that, ranks will be the next feature to land in Wikidata.

Ranks introduce a vector for debate, which has not been there in Wikidata yet. The question moves from “should this statement be included?” to “what should be the rank of this statement?” This seems like a necessary step: unlike natural text, Wikidata otherwise could not include statements that are agreed on to be bogus but that have historical or other value. This makes it even more important to remember that Wikidata is not about truth, but about collecting referenced statements in a secondary database. The criterion for inclusion should not be veracity, but verifiability – a policy that has served Wikipedia very well.

Wikidata will always – and that is both a necessity as well as acknowledged by design – run short of Wikipedia in many aspects. Wikipedia articles can explore causal and informal connections, they can inspire curiosity, and they can support one of the major modes of knowledge transfer between humans: storytelling. Wikidata has other, unique advantages: it can provide some ground data about a topic of interest in many languages more easily, and it provides the data in a way that is much more accessible for bots and apps. It could be a step towards relieving some Wikipedias from a lot of bot-created articles, never touched by a human editor, cluttering recent changes, and skewed statistics.

Without the ability to express a plurality of statements about an item – even if they are considered truths only by some and lies by others – Wikidata would fall short of one of the major pillars of Wikipedia, the Neutral Point of View and the possibility of integrating conflicting points of view.

I hope that the technical platform that we as developers are building, and the rules and processes of the communities in Wikidata, the Wikipedias, and other Wikimedia projects, are establishing a useful ecosystem, understanding the limitations of each project, and discovering how we can most effectively help each other. And this means understanding the peculiar relationship between Wikidata and the Truth.

Thank you!

This post was written by Jon Davies, Wikimedia UK Chief Executive

1-7 June is Volunteers’ Week in the UK  What better time to remind everyone that Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia, are written and edited entirely by volunteers?

For over 12 years a vast group of people of all backgrounds, ages, opinions and personal interests have come together to create these enormous repositories of freely available knowledge, sharing it for no other reason than that they feel it is a worthwhile thing to do. And they continue to do so.

Wikimedia UK takes this opportunity to offer a huge thank you to everyone who volunteers their time, energy and knowledge to furthering free knowledge for all. Whether you fix typos, edit content, write articles, share images, teach people to edit, work with GLAM and education institutions or make the occasional cup of tea – thank you for making Wikimedia projects possible. In this vein I asked some of my colleagues how they felt about working with Wikimedia volunteers.

Daria Cybulska, Programme Manager, is impressed by the way volunteers are so keen to share the skills needed to edit Wikipedia. “I have supported many Wikipedia training events over the past year,” she said. “During the training I usually find myself focusing on organisation, and being anxious to give people exactly the right information and understanding of the encyclopaedia. But the true heart of these events are Wikimedia volunteers, trainers who give people the joy of seeing their first edit going live, and the empowerment to share what they know with others.

“The volunteers are wonderfully motivated to teach others the art of editing Wikipedia, and we would not be able to run the events without them.”

Stevie Benton, Communications Organiser, pointed out the stories that Wikimedia projects generate. “My job is all about storytelling,” he said. “The biggest story of all is how an encyclopaedia that is available in around 300 languages, with over 26 million articles, can be the result of volunteer collaboration. And it’s still growing. There isn’t praise enough for the gift these volunteers have given to the world. To be able to help share what they do is a great privilege.”

Jonathan Cardy, GLAM organiser admires the diligence of Wikimedians. “I’ve been astonished at the attention to detail that you see when you crowdsource the creation of an encyclopaedia,” he said. “When I talk to Wikipedia editors, these are people who are incredibly committed to getting things right, whether it is photoshopping tilted photographs or eradicating particular ungrammatical phrases from Wikipedia.”

If YOU want to become a member of this wonderful community get in touch with us and we will help get you started. You will be very welcome.

149 participants from 31 countries came to Amsterdam in late May to teach each other and improve Wikimedia technology.

Developers work near sticky-notes representing topics and ideas at the Amsterdam hackathon in May 2013.

Technologists taught and attended sessions on how to write and run a bot, use the new Lua templating language, how to move from Toolserver to the new Wikimedia Labs, design, Wikidata, security, and the basics of Git and Gerrit. Check out the workshops page for slides, tutorials, and other reference material; videorecordings of sessions are due for uploading to Wikimedia Commons soon.

Wikimedia Netherlands, Wikimedia Germany, and the Wikimedia Foundation subsidized travel and accommodation for dozens of participants, enabling the highest participation in this event’s history. As one subsidized participant wrote, “One of the wonderful things about the Wikipedia world is the support given to the volunteers from the different chapters and the parent Wikimedia Foundation to promote community growth and building awesome stuff that the whole world can use….It’s such surprises that makes one love contributing to open source.” Organizers also put together a social events program that included a boat cruise of Amsterdam’s canals.

Participants are still listing what they accomplished or learned during the event, but here’s a sample:

• The Wikimaps project aims to present historical maps on Wikimedia sites, and to work together with OpenStreetMap Historic “to find a common way to model historical geodata” (more details). Maps aficionados discussed the project and made plans in Amsterdam. One volunteer, Arun Ganesh, wrote a prototype wiki atlas: an interactive SVG file that comes with automatic labelling (details).
• Moritz Schubotz, a volunteer, worked on improving search and math functionality in MediaWiki.
• The Foundation testing and quality assurance team improved test coverage and the test environment, and taught other participants how to do QA for Wikimedia.
• Pau Giner, a designer at the Foundation, wrote code to use an SVG for the collapsible section arrow in MediaWiki’s Vector skin. This will make the image less fuzzy-looking.
• 

  A WMF staffer holds a microphone to amplify a volunteer’s voice during the closing demo session at the Amsterdam hackathon.

  User:Ruud Koot wrote a Wikivoyage listing editor that will make it easier to improve the specific parts of a travel suggestion without having to load the whole page.

• Several volunteers worked on the account creation tool and process for English Wikipedia, to help the ACC team deal with prospective editors who have not been able to create an account via the web interface. The improved tool (code) streamlines the workflow, helping volunteers do their work faster.
• A group of staffers and volunteers interested in statistical data improved the User Metrics API‘s reliability and security. Another wrote a proof-of-concept MediaWiki extension enabling editors to embed Limn graphs in wiki pages via wikitext.

So far, 90 participants have submitted the post-event survey and results are largely positive, with (of course) several suggestions for improvements in the future. For instance, next year, organizers should help trainers prepare more, and help participants with common interests find and work with each other more easily.  We don’t yet know where or when next year’s developer meeting will be, but it’ll happen; subscribe to the low-traffic wikitech-announce mailing list to hear when it’s settled.

You may also wish to read the Wikipedia Signpost report on the event.

Thanks are due to staffers at the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Netherlands, and Wikimedia Germany who made the event possible, and to volunteers who ran the event, especially lead Maarten Dammers.  And thanks to all the participants who gave up their weekend to make our sites better.

Sumana Harihareswara
Engineering Community Manager, Wikimedia Foundation

Susanna Mkrtchyan

Susanna Mkrtchyan is a grandmother on a mission: She’s working to give Armenian students the same educational opportunities as students who live in Europe and the United States. And she’s using Wikipedia to do it.

Myrtchyan is a professor of Technical Sciences in the field of database and system research. Two years ago, she started using the English she learned as a student to translate English Wikipedia into Armenian and Russian. On Armenian Wikipedia, she focuses on Armenian history and education.

“I want that our young people to have high education because after the collapse of Soviet Union, our education collapsed, too, a little. That’s why I want to take wiki projects into universities and schools,” says Mkrtchyan.

Mkrtchyan was busy in her field of governance of science when she realized Wikipedia could create an environment for scientists inside Armenia and abroad to collaborate and resolve problems. She attended Wikimania 2011 in Haifa and talked with Wikimedia Foundation representatives about starting a chapter in Armenia.

Soon after, Mkrtchyan began organizing activities to meet with Armenian Wikipedia administrators and editors. Not only did she help found the Wikipedia Armenia chapter, she is its first president. “Now we have a more or less active group and we all help each other to make Armenian Wikipedia better.”

From the capital city Yerevan, Mkrtchyan incorporates editing Wikipedia in her life, finding time between her professional life and taking care of her family. “When I’m not stirring the soup, I’m working on Wikipedia.” Her twin grandsons used to bring her articles about basketball to edit on Wikipedia, so she told them, “create an account and edit yourself.” And grandma was the perfect teacher to show them the ropes of editing.

“Wikipedia, editing in Wikipedia helps you to better organize your speech,” says Mkrtchyan. She also believes it teaches tolerance for other people.

At a time in life when many people start to slow down, Mkrtchyan has moved into overdrive. She hopes more people will consider offering their talents to Armenian Wikipedia.

“If grandmothers, mothers edit in Wikipedia, they feel how important the work they do is and how important it is to make a heritage for future generations,” she said.

Profile by Donna Peterson, Communications Volunteer, Wikimedia Foundation
Interview by Victor Grigas, Visual Storyteller, Wikimedia Foundation

This blog post was guest written by Ed Saperia of the Wikimania 2014 organising team.

Those of us who are a part of the Wikimedia movement already understand, as if by instinct, the value of the Wikimedia projects. It is not the millions of articles, nor the billions of pageviews, but the magical combination of ethos and platform that has allowed a deeper perspective on knowledge.

Now that our bid has been accepted and we’re going cap in hand to sponsors, we’ve been forced to think hard about how to communicate this value to the outside world. Our chosen theme for Wikimania 2014 is outreach, and it is fitting that it is exactly the same struggle that the movement is also facing in its outreach efforts – how can we make strangers see the value in what we are doing, and have them join us?

Every sponsor we approach asks “Who will come to Wikimania?” It’s a question that we (as a community) have always struggled to answer in the past, offering the evasive “Wikimedians”, which is no answer at all. In a change from previous years, our Wikimania has a public promotional element, and so in a way we get to choose. What groups of people do we want to attract, who don’t already consider themselves Wikimedians? People already interested in what we do, people with something to offer us back, people who will be inspired to become full blooded members of our movement.

We believe that understanding and correctly articulating who these people are is the key to not only our public marketing effort, but also our fundraising strategy. Corporations don’t sponsor because they’re kind, they sponsor to access particular audiences. That “Wikimedians” is not a recognised audience goes some way to explaining the failure of previous years to meet their targets. In order to succeed, we need to truly understand who we are.

We’ll put forward our thoughts in our keynote presentation at the WikiConference UK 2013, being held in Lincoln next weekend, where we’ll be launching this discussion on the brand new Wikimania 2014 wiki.

In the recently concluded development sprint, the Wikimedia Language Engineering team fixed critical bugs for the Universal Language Selector, participated in several events around the world and also announced the release of the latest version of the MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle.

MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle and Updates to ULS

As the date for the first phase of deployment of Universal Language Selector (ULS) draws close, the team has been fixing critical bugs and testing the fixes. These included bugs related to the behavior of the ULS activation ‘cog’ icon. Significant design changes were also made on the input settings panel. Additionally, ULS has been hidden for users who do not use JavaScript on their browsers.

These updates are also part of the latest version of MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle (MLEB). Besides ULS, miscellaneous maintenance bugs were fixed for the Translate extension editor. This further improves the stability of the Translation Editor – TUX. CLDR has been updated to version 23.1.

Amsterdam and Tel-Aviv Hackathons and Community Programs

Members of the Language Engineering team participated and also helped in organizing hackathons at Amsterdam and Tel Aviv. At the hackathon in Amsterdam, organized by Wikimedia Nederland, team members interacted with their peers. Besides attending the workshops, they also submitted and merged patches for various internationalization extensions. A session for automated browser testing with the Wikimedia QA team was particularly well-received in view of the upcoming ULS deployment.

At the hackathon organized by Wikimedia Israel, Amir Aharoni led the event and brought together more than thirty local participants to explore various aspects of contributing to MediaWiki projects. The full report of the accomplishments from the event has been documented by him.

Alolita Sharma presented a talk about Internationalization in Wikimedia projects at IMUG. The entire video of the talk and presentation slides are available online.

Google Summer of Code

The Language Engineering team also welcomed the 4 students who will be participating in Wikimedia’s Internationalization projects for this year’s Google Summer of Code (GSoC). They will be contributing to the jQuery.ime project, Language Coverage dashboard, mobile app for Translate and right-to-left support on VisualEditor.

Coming up

Preparations for deployment of ULS and extending support to the GSoC candidates during the community bonding period are important focus areas during the next 2 weeks.

For information about the Language Engineering team and our projects, please write me at runa at wikimedia dot org or find team members on our IRC channel #mediawiki-i18n on Freenode.

Runa Bhattacharjee, Outreach and QA coordinator, Language Engineering

Participants at GLAM Boot Camp in Washington, D.C.

Recently, Wikimedia DC held GLAM Boot Camp, a new type of event which we hope will be repeated by others in the Wikimedia movement. The most basic aim of GLAM Boot Camp was to attempt to build the skills and capacity for the Wikimedia movement. It took place from April 26–28 in a conference room at the U.S. National Archives with 12 main attendees made up of experienced Wikimedia editors. The intensive, three-day workshop, hosted by myself and Lori Byrd Phillips, featured a mix of expert presentations, group discussions, breakout sessions, and hands-on tutorials. We were lucky enough that one of the Wikimedians in attendance wrote about the event in The Signpost, English Wikipedia’s newsletter, which gives a good recap of GLAM Boot Camp from a participant’s point of view.

The idea for a “boot camp”-type event was first proposed and developed at GLAMcamp London by members of the global Wikimedia community in September 2012. You can see our original notes from GLAMcamp here. We identified that, particularly in the United States, our main efforts had always been directed at reaching out to and winning over cultural institutions, but now we face a lack of online and real-world volunteers ready to meet the growing demand of institutions interested in contributing in some way to Wikimedia. Many potential projects have stalled not because of lack of cooperation, but because of lack of involvement by the Wikimedia community. Institutions do not yet have the expertise in Wikipedia to become Wikimedians on their own. Our largest bottleneck in GLAM-Wiki, therefore, is capacity. The stated, ambitious goal of the first GLAM Boot Camp was to broaden the participation of the general Wikimedia community in the GLAM-Wiki movement by inviting and training key Wikimedians. I think that we were successful in taking a big step towards that goal. Another goal was to establish a model for future similar events, and I hope that as we work on our documentation, others will be able to use our experiences to guide them in making another GLAM Boot Camp elsewhere.

All of us who have been to events like GLAMcamp or Wikimania know that oftentimes the most important part is not the structured sessions, but just being with a group people for a couple of days and sharing perspectives—even over coffee or back at the hostel. The main takeaways for me at these events were about the attendees. The fact that we fully funded all attendees from across the U.S. and Canada was integral to ensuring we were able to recruit new participants. Second, we specifically invited the people we thought would be key, rather than hoping people would sign up. This ended up making even more sense in retrospect, because we were so happy with who came, but if the idea was to reach people who were not normally part of GLAM-Wiki projects, we were trying to reach people who wouldn’t already be following our normal channels of communication and who would not inclined to sign up, even if they heard about it or were familiar with the goals of GLAM-Wiki. The geographic diversity of the participants we invited allowed us to hold an event with a variety of online experiences, and to provide Wikimedians who may not have been able to attend a meetup before to get to meet other Wikimedians face-to-face.

As co-organizer, I want to tease out a few more important points:

GLAM Boot Camp attendees enjoying dinner together after a day of hard work.

Attendees

We posted a list of attendees to the page; the names in green were those who we invited as full participants for the entire event. Of these, only about three had actually signed up or registered interest before we started sending out invitations. For the others, I spent hours looking for people; asking for opinions of others; and looking through user contributions of people who had participated in any GLAM WikiProjects online, in meetups, or in any of various other Wikimedia activities or subcommunities (such as administrators and featured content writers). Participants came from all over the United States (New York; Maryland; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Portland, Ore.; Philadelphia; Kansas; Michigan; and Chicago) and Canada (Halifax, Vancouver, and Winnipeg). No two people were from the same metropolitan area, and most came from areas without regular Wikipedia-related events. For many, this was their first time at a Wikipedia event of any kind. The size of the group, 12 invited attendees with no more than five organizers and guests, was the perfect amount to allow for productive discussions.

Program

We designed a program that was very unlike GLAMcamp and a lot more structured than most unconferences, but with more practical sessions than a traditional conference. It was something between a Wikipedia Academy, where newcomers are taught how to edit Wikipedia,  and a campus ambassador training. You can see our program here. We generally moved from presentation-heavy to discussion-heavy sessions. The first day was our high-level overview of, and introduction to, cultural institutions and the history and present circumstances of GLAM-Wiki. Michael Edson’s inspiring opening talk was to give participants an insider perspective of cultural institutions, and we talked a lot about institutional missions and how to connect the work of Wikimedia with that of cultural institutions. The second day we moved into more practical matters, going through the whole “lifecycle” of a Wikimedia project, and talking about specific events and projects. By the third day, we spent more time in discussion, getting the boot campers to articulate their own visions of GLAM-Wiki and how they personally could contribute to it. We ended up having unplanned breakout sessions a couple of times because attendees were excited with ideas as we showed them things like our one-page guide that needed improvement. If you would like to dig into the Etherpad notes from each day, they are listed at the top of the program, linked above.

Logistics

The event was possible for us in the U.S. because logistics and funding were largely handled by James Hare and Wikimedia DC, which budgeted $8,000 for the conference from its program budget. Most of the money went towards funding the travel and accommodations of the attendees. All attendees were fully funded, and this was crucial. Most of the travelers had their flights booked by Wikimedia DC and stayed in a hostel (same as the one used for Wikimania 2012 and GLAMcamp DC). Wikimedia DC also hosted two dinners and provided refreshments throughout the day.

Speakers

David Ferriero talking to attendees at GLAM Boot Camp.

The ambitious nature of the workshop, with three full days of programming, meant Lori and I spoke a lot. We broke things up a little by inviting special speakers in certain topic areas, often where they had as much or more expertise as either of us did. Some of these speakers were locals from the DC area that agreed to come in, and some were attendees we invited to present to the group on something they are skilled at. Examples include the Wikisource and Commons workshops, a session on event planning, and a session on grants and chapters. We also led off with special guests: Archivist of the United States David Ferriero gave a welcome address, and Michael Edson, who had just returned from keynoting GLAM-Wiki London, gave an epic talk for most of the first morning. At least half of the sessions were led by Lori or I, though, and future GLAM Boot Camps probably would want to find ways not to give so much work to two individuals, for their own sanity.

Venue

The venue was provided by the U.S. National Archives, though there were pros and cons for this. The main pro was that there was no cost associated with securing a venue! We might have been able to find a room elsewhere without a cost, but 3 days, all day for no cost is a big ask. The other main benefit was that we were in a good location and were able to take advantage of having David Ferriero make appearances. We did face typical problems with working with a bureaucratic venue, like catering and security all taking more time than we wanted.

Outcomes

For me, the most important outcome was seeing attendees who were all not the same old faces come in, eager to get involved. Gradually, they took more ownership and responsibility for GLAM-Wiki, as they began to feel more empowered and a part of the effort. There were practical outcomes, like specific documentation or project pages to improve. More than that, though, most attendees came away intent on contacting local institutions or organizing their local Wikipedia community. I am as excited by the overall community-building I think we did around GLAM-Wiki, which will help it be more successful as it is more accepted and integrated with the Wikipedia community, as I am by any specific skills attendees may have learned or GLAM projects they may go off and start.

The need to reach out more to the Wikimedia community, as much as to cultural institutions, is something I feel very strongly about, so I am so glad we were able to hold this event, and grateful to everyone who made it possible and attended.

I am once again running for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. This is a two year position, to serve on the currently-10 member body that provides oversight and governance for the Wikimedia Foundation, which in turn provides the infrastructure supporting Wikipedia and her sister projects.

You can ask questions of the candidates, or read the many questions and answers that have already been posted, here. Voting will start next week, and will be advertised via sitenotice; people with a certain number of edits on the Wikimedia projects are eligible to vote.

Elections for the Funds Dissemination Committee, a community committee that reviews budgets for the WMF and Wikimedia organizations, and the FDC omsbudsperson are also happening. This is the first time we’ve done elections for this committee; there are several great candidates, and you can also ask them questions (and I encourage you to, if you have interest in the process!) Find out more about all the elections here.

For the record, such as it is, here is my statement. I’m happy to answer informal questions as well.

—-

During the past ten years, I have edited, taught, spoken on and written about Wikipedia. I’ve helped run Wikimania for many years and have been involved with the research, education and GLAM communities. I have also reported for the Signpost, planned local events, and worked on strategy. I served on the Board of Trustees from 2010-12. During the day, I am a science and engineering librarian at the University of California, Davis.

The next Board will have much to do. The Board must hire and guide the next executive director; develop both annual and long-term strategic plans; decide whether to pursue an endowment; and evaluate the FDC. The Board must also assess the WMF’s overall direction, and, with the community and staff, decide whether WMF activities are effective in keeping the projects and their communities healthy and growing. I believe the Board’s most important role is ensuring the long-term future of Wikimedia’s projects and mission. We can achieve this through forward-looking financial and technical planning, and with open internal processes that aid in developing community leadership.

I can help keep the Board on track. I’m familiar with how the Board, WMF, and community work, and can organize and lead discussions, build consensus, and communicate decisions. I can help manage the limited time of the Board effectively, and if elected, will do so to get the Board to tackle the hardest issues well.

—–

You may also be interested in this statement from last year’s elections, where I went into depth about the qualities I bring to the board (and those I do not).

Some of the new texts added to Wikisource in May were:

• Agnes Grey (1st edition) (1847) by Anne Brontë
• A dream of Midlothian (1884) by Edward Robert Sullivan
• The future of democracy (1918) by Richard Burdon Haldane
• An address to the middle and working classes engaged in trade and manufactures throughout the empire on the necessity of union at the present crisis (1842) by Richard Gardner
• Have you heard the news?(1835) by a Freeman
• Logan Banner 125 Year Anniversary (2013) by Nick Joe Rahall
• Aphorisms (1887) by John Morley
• Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplify’d (1749) by Thomas Cannon
• On the Aberration of Light (1845) by George Gabriel Stokes
• The Strange Experiences of Tina Malone (1922) by Ethel C. M. Paige
• History of the Guillotine (1853) by John Wilson Croker
• Statement of facts relating to the trespass on the printing press in the possession of Mr. William Lyon Mackenzie, in June, 1826 (1828) by Samuel Peters Jarvis
• Honoring Brandon Elizares (2012) by Silvestre Reyes
• To Alaska for Gold (1899) by Edward Stratemeyer
• A father of women, and other poems (1917) by Alice Meynell
• Letter from Department of State to Defense Distributed (2013) by Glenn E. Smith
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended 1st edition) (1848) by Anne Brontë
• In Xanadu: a fantasy of the exposition (1916) by Ellen Coit Elliott
• Trial by Jury (1875) by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
• Preludes (1875) by Alice Meynell
• Studies of a Biographer (1898–1902, four vols) by Leslie Stephen
• The Yellow Wall Paper (1901) by Charlotte Perkins Stetson
• Thoth: A Romance (1888) by Joseph Shield Nicholson
• President Ford–Umar al-Saqqaf memcon (1974) by Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger & Omar al-Saqqaf

Vol: 3 • Issue: 5 • May 2013 [contribute] [archives]

Motivations on the Persian Wikipedia; is science eight times more popular on the Spanish Wikipedia than the English Wikipedia?

With contributions by: Piotr Konieczny, Aaron Halfaker, Taha Yasseri, Daniel Mietchen and Tilman Bayer.

Motivations to contribute to the Persian Wikipedia

A chart adapted for use in the Persian article on human evolution.

An article in Library Review titled “Motivating and Discouraging Factors for Wikipedians: the Case Study of Persian Wikipedia”^[1] offers a much needed comparison of data from a population of editors outside the English Wikipedia. Most findings related to reasons people start and continue contributing confirm previous studies – important reasons for contributing include the desire to share knowledge and gaining recognition, and are reinforced by friendly interactions.

The authors find that “content production and improvement of Wikipedia in local language” is a significant motivation too, something missing or seen as mostly irrelevant for contributors to the English Wikipedia. The authors also look at reasons for editors to become less active, an area that is not as well understood. Their findings confirm previous research – editors may leave because they find rules too confusing or other editors too unfriendly, or because they do not have enough time. They list some additional reasons not mentioned significantly in the existing literature, such as “issues with Persian script; sociocultural characteristics, e.g. lack of research-based teaching instruction and preference for ready-to-use information; strict rules against mass copying and copyright violation; small size of Persian Web content and a shortage of online Persian references.” The paper suffers from small sample size (interviews with 15 editors) and does not report statistics or rankings for some of the data, making it difficult, for example, to conclude or verify which motivations are more and less important. (Reviewer note: the reviewed pre-print copy did not include figures, which may contain the missing data.)

Science eight times more popular on the Spanish Wikipedia than on the English Wikipedia?

Processing of sound, Spanish version.

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A conversation in Spanish around an EEG experiment (with English subtitles).

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The boundaries between entertainment and science are not always clear-cut.

QRpedia codes are one way to bridge across languages.

This paper^[2] poses an interesting question: are there differences between what is popular in different language Wikipedias? This is measured through the comparing the highest-traffic articles in different Wikipedias. The authors chose four: the German, English, Spanish, and French, using open-source software for the analysis ([1]; from the paper and the software page it is unclear whether the software was developed specifically for this project). The researchers obtained 65 most popular articles from six random months of 2009. They then divided the pages into categories: entertainment (ENT), current issues (CUR), politics and war (POL), geography (GEO), information and communication technologies (ICT), science (SCI), arts and humanities (ART), and sexuality (SEX).

Two tables were compiled, the first showing some major differences between the popularity of articles on different Wikipedias. For example entertainment topics form 45% of popular articles on English Wikipedia, but only 16% on Spanish, where in turn the science articles form 24% (compared with only 3% on the English site). The second table compares the most contributed to content, again noting significant differences between different Wikipedias, as well as suggesting a lack of a major relation between a content’s area popularity and number of contributors.

The paper suffers from a number of issues. The authors noted that the division of articles into categories had to be done manually, but the paper does not describe how this was accomplished (this reviewer can’t but wonder: how did the researchers deal with classification of an article that would fit into more than one category, for example); nor is there any appendix that would list the articles in question. Given the rather surprising findings (“most remarkable”), this methodological omission raises issues about the reliability of the research. A number of similar issues plague the paper; for example the tables contain a “MAIN” category that is explained nowhere in the paper. The paper does not discuss any potential biases or issues, such as how the results may not be representative of cultural traits, but of short-term media news coverage; or why the data was limited only to few months in 2009 and how this could have affected our ability to generalize from it. There may be, for example, seasonal patterns of interests in certain topics; for example, one could hypothesize that science topics would receive more visits during the school year than holiday months; and if holiday months are different in sampled countries, this could be a factor in the popularity of science topics. (On a side note, this reviewer would also like to point out that his own paper is cited totally out of context by the authors.)

Overall, such exploratory research is certainly valuable, but the authors stop short of any significant analysis of data, in fact noting themselves that the presented data would benefit from a deeper sociological or sociocultural analysis. Unfortunately, there is no indication that their data set has been made publicly available. Nonetheless, despite lack of significant analysis, and methodological issues, the authors’ findings are quite intriguing, suggesting that there may be a much more significant difference in coverage of topics by different language Wikipedias than most have suspected so far.

Another paper by the same four authors, titled “Visitors and contributors in Wikipedia”^[3] examined a sampled pageview log of the top ten language versions of Wikipedia from 2009, discerning article views, views of history pages and edit requests (URLs with “action=edit” or “action=submit”). Among other things, they find that article views and edit requests “are highly correlated throughout the days of the week only for a group of Wikipedias: German, English, Spanish, French, Italian and Russian. This fact can be associated to a more participative attitude on behalf of the users of these editions as it seems that contributions come from the whole mass of visitors. On the contrary, editions where visits and edits are not correlated, or even negatively correlated [the Japanese and Dutch Wikipedias], can be considered as supported by a minority of contributors.” (An earlier paper by some of the same researchers, based on the same 2009 sample, was reviewed in this space in 2011: “Wikipedians’ weekends in international comparison“.)

In brief

• Winning and losing argument patterns in deletion debates: A paper subtitled “How Experience Improves the Acceptability of Arguments in Ad-hoc Online Task Groups”^[4] (presented at the CSCW’13 conference earlier this year) applied the argumentation theory of Doug Walton to classify comments in a corpus of deletion debates on 72 Wikipedia articles (all AfD that were initialized or relisted on January 29, 2011). The four Ireland-based authors emphasize that compared to previous related research which used simpler methods to classify deletion arguments, e.g. based on keywords or policy areas such as notability, their manual analysis is much more thorough and fine-grained, coding AfD comments into 17 categories based on Walton’s classification. Among these, the “Rules” and “Evidence” categories are the most popular, making up 36% of AfD arguments. The papers’s two other main results are that “familiarity with community norms correlates with [newbies'] ability to craft persuasive arguments” and that “acceptable arguments use community-appropriate rhetoric that demonstrate knowledge of policies and community values while problematic arguments are based on personal preference and inappropriate analogy to other cases” (drawing a direct comparison between Walton’s list of problematic arguments and Wikipedia’s list of deprecated AfD arguments, e.g. Walton’s “Argument from Analogy” corresponds to WP:OTHER – “Other stuff exists”).

Breakdown of articles rejected on the English Wikinews by kind of issue and type of contributor.

• Why English Wikinews rejects submissions: ^[5] This write-up describes a study performed by Wikimedian LauraHale on the English Wikinews exploring the acceptance and rejection of submission made by 4 types of contributors (Accredited journalists, new contributors, regular contributors and University of Wollongong students). 203 submissions that failed to pass review were assessed from between January 1, 2013 and April 12, 2013. The article, published on Meta, consists of a discussion this dataset.
  The study shows that the primary reason which new submissions fail review is due to a lack of “newsworthiness” and that, for the most part, University of Wollongong students struggle with a similar set of problems as new submitters do in general. However, the UoW students made slightly more submission attempts per article and were reject more often for lack of newsworthiness than new and regular Wikinews contributors. Overall, accredited contributors seem to be the most successful at passing through the review process. LauraHale concludes with a discussion of implications and recommendations for Wikinews, such as an “improved feedback system” for managing user’s unwillingness to read the style guidelines before submitting.

Wikiversity logo

• Wikipedia as a discussion forum for Malaysian students: ^[6] The study looks at a tiny sample of nine undergraduates from the Sunway University in Malaysia. The students in the ENGL1050: Thoughts and writing class were assigned to discuss a topic on Wikipedia. Although the paper does not cite any specific page or account name, based on the description provided the account User:ENGL1050 can be identified. Wikipedia was used as a discussion forum, with the instructor(s) and the student using a single account, and all of their edits consisting of editing the User:ENGL1050 page. The students had generally favorite view of the assignment, with majority agreeing that it is a useful tool of learning, collaboration and improving their English skills. Nonetheless it is clear that the instructor(s) is not familiar with the basics of Wikipedia:School and university projects, nor with the basic guidelines such as WP:NOTAFORUM. The described activity had nothing to do with Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, and treated Wikipedia simply as a popular wiki host. (The instructor(s) was likely not aware of the existence of Wikiversity, where such an activity would be within the project scope).

The stockbrokers‘ version of a watchlist.

• Using Wikipedia to predict the stock market: In an article^[7] published in Scientific Reports, the authors have studied the page views and edit numbers of Wikipedia articles to reveal correlations to stock market fluctuations. Although the idea of considering Wikipedia activity data as financial indicators has been previously introduced by other researchers (see for example the already reviewed paper on predicting movie revenues using the same source of data), applying the same idea to stock market data has led to interesting results. Moat et al. say “We present evidence in line with the intriguing suggestion that data on changes in how often financially related Wikipedia pages were viewed may have contained early signs of stock market moves”. And to show that, they investigate the activity data of 285 Wikipedia articles “on financial topics” from 2007–2012 and establish trade strategies for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. They report on a higher return for the Wikipedia-based strategy in comparison to a random strategy. The article is featured in news media like Wired.com and wallstreet-online.de.
• Main NPOV concerns in articles about corporations: Promotional language and inclusion of criticism: A conference paper titled “The Ideal of Neutrality on Wikipedia: Discursive Struggle over Promotion and Critique in Corporate Entries” analyzed the edit histories of “14 Finnish corporations … utilizing the concept of discursive struggle by Laclau and Mouffe”, according to the abstract.^[8] Looking for “the particular expressions (i.e. key signifiers) that caused NPOV-claims or discussions of neutrality”, the researchers identifed two main points of contention: Promotional language in the articles about the corporations, and “corporate critique”.

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U.S. President Barack Obama on Psy’s “Gangnam Style“

• “Gangnam Style” pageview trends: A paper^[9] presented at this month’s WWW 2013 conference describes “An Approach for Using Wikipedia to Measure the Flow of Trends Across Countries”. Concretely, the authors a compared pageview numbers for the articles about the 2012 YouTube hit Gangnam Style and its creator, rapper PSY, in both the Korean and English Wikipedia, finding among other things that “the initial spike in views occurred first on the South [sic] Korean article 2 days before the English article” in both cases, and that they reached their peak before the Google trends statistics for the corresponding search terms. A second part of the paper looks at the cumulative page views for the entire Category:Artist (i.e. a set of 7,752 articles retrieved using DBpedia). These showed peaks around the time of the annual Grammy Awards in February 2011 and 2012, and “time periods of dormant activity … during the months of December and March, which correspond to worldwide holidays of cultural and religious significance, including Christmas and Easter Vacation.” Comparing the Gangnam Style/PSY page views against this general backdrop, the three researchers from the University of Southampton speculate that “monitoring a subset of articles may provide an indication of articles ‘soon-to-be’ popular”, but appear to delegate the development of a more specific methodology to future research.

References

This post is available in 4 languages:

English  • Svenska • Deutsch • 中文

English

I got an idea in May, 2012, as the Eurovision Song Contest was ending and Loreen had just been named the 2012 winner, with her song Euphoria. Because Loreen represented Sweden, the 2013 contest would be held in my country. This would create an exciting opportunity for me and Wikipedia, because my home is in Gothenburg, and I could take really good photos for the Wikimedia Commons database.

Loreen after she won in 2012.

Photo: Vugarİbadov

Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported.

Eurovision Song Contest is well documented on Wikipedia. The contest was started in 1956, and currently has Wikipedia articles in 91 languages^[1], many including information on artists and their songs, statistics, voting history, the rules and points awarded. My idea started here because there are not many photos and the quality varies; occasionally someone sitting in the audience at the show manages to take a photo with their phone, but there were not many quality images. Using the CC-BY-SA-3.0 license, anyone would be free to copy, distribute and edit my photos, as long as I am attributed and new versions of the photos have the same license.

The most common use of photos on Wikimedia Commons is in Wikipedia articles, and photos enhance the articles. My goal was to make it possible to have really good, professional photos of every artist in the Eurovision Song Contest 2013. Newspapers, magazines, websites and other media outlets that did not send a photographer to Malmö could also use my photos from the database.

I applied for photo accreditation and, at first, my application was denied because the Head of Delegation saw me as a fan and not as a serious photographer. Then some members of Wikimedia Sverige managed to explain my intentions and the purpose of my application. When I was finally approved, it meant that I had the same rights as all the other 1700 photographers and journalists at the contest.

Emmelie de Forest after winning the Eurovision Song Contest 2013.

Photo: Albin Olsson

License: CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported

It has been an amazing week, and a very successful project. I took thousands of photos and right now over 500 are uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. They are categorized under: contestants, countries, rehearsals and/or press conferences. All of them are also under the category Photos taken by Albin Olsson during the Eurovision Song Contest 2013. There are close-ups of almost all of the artists, photos of the artists performing their songs on stage, and also videos I filmed.

The 2013 Eurovision Song contest winner was Emmelie de Forest, from Denmark, with her song “Only Teardrops.” My photograph of de Forest has already been used in 36 different languages on Wikipedia, including Japanese and Chinese.

Since non-freely licensed material is not permitted on Wikimedia Commons, I couldn’t upload the songs or videos containing the songs, but I filmed more than 32 clips where 12 of the artists present themselves. All in English, but 11 of them in at least one other language (you can find the videos in the commons category Videos from Eurovision Song Contest 2013 and I might add a few more). It feels really cool that the Wikipedia articles don’t just have a nice photo at the top of their infoboxes, but a short video too.

Getting artists to say their name and the title of their song in 30 seconds was actually really hard, but most of the time, it went pretty well. To get them to say their name and the title of their song was quite different from the questions they were asked by reporters. Robin Stjemberg introduced himself and his song in Swedish and English: “Hi everyone! My name is Robin Stjernberg, and I’m representing Sweden in Eurovision Song Contest 2013 with my own song called ‘You.’” Russian singer Dina Garipova introduced herself in English, Russian and also in Tatar. So now the article about her on the Tatar language Wikipedia also has a video of her. I think that is really cool.

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Robin Stjernberg presenting himself and his song.
Photo: Albin Olsson
License: CC-BY-SA-3.0

The Romanian opera singer Cezar holds the record for number of languages spoken among my videos. He presents himself in English, Romanian, Italian and French.

I felt it was important to record videos in both small and large languages, to be more inclusive. The contestants speak so many different languages, and I really wanted to take advantage of that, like Eyþór Ingi’s presentation in Icelandic, a language only spoken by about 340,000 people.

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Dina Garipova presenting herself and her song in Tatar.
Video: Albin Olsson
License: CC-BY-SA-3.0

<video class="kskin" controls="controls" data-durationhint="5.6468027210884" data-mwprovider="wikimediacommons" data-mwtitle="Eyþór_Ingi_-_Ég_á_líf_presentation_(Íslenska).ogv" data-startoffset="0" height="240" id="mwe_player_2" poster="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/88/Ey%C3%BE%C3%B3r_Ingi_-_%C3%89g_%C3%A1_l%C3%ADf_presentation_%28%C3%8Dslenska%29.ogv/400px--Ey%C3%BE%C3%B3r_Ingi_-_%C3%89g_%C3%A1_l%C3%ADf_presentation_%28%C3%8Dslenska%29.ogv.jpg" preload="none" style="width:400px;height:224px" width="320"><source src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/88/Ey%C3%BE%C3%B3r_Ingi_-_%C3%89g_%C3%A1_l%C3%ADf_presentation_%28%C3%8Dslenska%29.ogv/Ey%C3%BE%C3%B3r_Ingi_-_%C3%89g_%C3%A1_l%C3%ADf_presentation_%28%C3%8Dslenska%29.ogv.360p.webm" type="video/webm; codecs="vp8, vorbis""><source src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Ey%C3%BE%C3%B3r_Ingi_-_%C3%89g_%C3%A1_l%C3%ADf_presentation_%28%C3%8Dslenska%29.ogv" type="video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"">

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Eyþór Ingi presenting himself and his song in Icelandic.
Photo: Albin Olsson
License: CC-BY-SA-3.0

I would say my little project was a success. I really feel that my photographs and videos will improve many Wikipedia articles in many languages. In a few cases, I’ve added videos to some articles in different languages myself, but, in most cases, Wikipedians all over the world have found the photos and added them here and there on their own. That feels amazing! Some wikipedians have promoted my photos and my project on Twitter. Someone wrote that there’s a toolserver page where you can see detailed information and statistics about the usage of the photos I’ve taken during the Eurovision Song Contest. Discovering how my photos are used makes me really proud.

This photo of Emmelie de Forest is used on no less than 36 language versions of Wikipedia! Japanese and Chinese Wikipedia included.

Photo: Albin Olsson

License: CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported

I’ve gotten a lot of support from Wikimedia Sverige. Though they didn’t send me to Malmö–it was my own idea and initiative–I borrowed the camera, lenses, tripod and microphone from them. The result would not have been as good without their help. Photographers and journalists in Malmö were very impressed and helpful when they heard I was photographing for Wikipedia. “Just tell me if you need help with anything,” was something I heard many times from kind photographers and journalists from all over the world. If the freelance photographer Stefan Crämer hadn’t helped me to turn off the auto focus light on my camera during the first rehearsal, I might have been kicked out of the arena. Helsingborgs Dagblad’s Sven-Erik Svensson kindly let me use his little step ladder during one of the rehearsals for the final.

I also got some great help from my friends who kindly translated the template I put on all my photos from Eurovision Song Contest 2013. The template explains that my photos can be used for free, and I wrote it in Swedish and English. Thanks to Sara the template is also available in Italian; Mia translated it to German, Salla to Finnish, and Stefán to Icelandic. Thank you all!

Me filming Krista Siegfrids

Apart from Wikipedia, I hope my photos are used in other ways too. If so, I am happy to know about it, although informing me is not required in any way. I also hope this will inspire others to take photos for Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia, now that I’ve shown what can actually be done. If more people hear and learn about Wikimedia Commons, more people will upload photos, and more premieres, festivals, buildings, places and people will be documented with good images.

This project would have been a lot easier if people were informed about Wikimedia Commons and smaller newspapers and websites would know where to easily access free photos. Many of the Head of Press members were surprised I was there and quickly told their artists to talk to me because they know that many, many people use Wikipedia to search and find information about the artists. The German Head of Press, though, seemed really uninterested and said that “only the largest newspapers” would get the chance to interview Cascada. Wikipedia, the fifth largest website in the world^[2], didn’t seem to count.

Finally. I hope that other interested Wikipedians in other countries understand that they can do this too, and maybe that I’ve started something that will continue for years to come, and not only the contest travels on to the winning country, but also the project of documenting the show. The Eurovision Song Contest 2014 will be held in Denmark. We’ll see what happens. Denmark is just a bridge away from Malmö, and I’d do this all again.

Albin Olsson, user abbedabb

Svenska

Hur och varför jag hamnade på Eurovision Song Contest 2013 i Malmö

26 maj 2012 sändes finalen av Eurovision Song Contest från Baku i Azerbajdzjan, och i slutet av sändningen korades Sveriges bidrag Euphoria med Loreen till vinnare. Det tog inte lång tid innan jag fick en idé. Att Eurovision Song Contest 2013 skulle sändas i mitt hemland innebar många möjligheter. Jag återkommer till idén strax.

Loreen efter vinsten 2012.

Foto: Vugarİbadov

Licens: CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported.

Eurovision Song Contest är väldigt väldokumenterat på Wikipedia. På Svenskspråkiga Wikipedia finns det en artikel om varje års tävling sedan starten 1956, och eftersom tävlingen engagerar människor över hela välden finns det i skrivande stund artiklar om tävlingen på 91 språkversioner^[1]. Många språkversioner har också också artiklar om enskilda artister och bidrag, med listor, statistik, placeringar, röstningshistorik, regler och poäng. Det är dock lite si och så med bilder. Jag ser stor potential i databasen Wikimedia Commons, men även om jag nog aldrig träffat någon som inte hört talas om Wikipedia, så är det väldigt ovanligt att jag träffar någon som har hört talas om Wikimedia Commons.

Det finns bilder på tidigare års Eurovision Song Contest, men i mycket varierande kvalité och de är oftast inte speciellt många. Ibland har någon lyckats ta en bild med en mobiltelefon ifrån en publikläktare, men i vissa fall finns det några bra bilder tagna med en bra kamera.

Nu till min idé: Att tävlingen hålls i Sverige innebär att jag själv skulle kunna ta riktigt bra bilder till Wikimedia Commons. Bilder på Commons måste ha “fria licenser”, och jag använder mig av standardlicensen CC-BY-SA-3.0. Det där med licenser kan vara en djungel, och jag vet inte själv vilken benämning på den här licensen som är korrekt, men licensen innebär iallafall att vemsomhelst har rätt att kopiera, distribuera och bearbeta mina bilder helt gratis under vissa enkla villkor. Upphovsmannen (jag) måste anges, och om bilderna kopieras eller sprids vidare måste detta göras med samma (eller liknande) licens.

Detta innebär att om jag tar bilder under Eurovision Song Contest 2013, så kommer de att kunna användas av vemsomhelst. Tidningar, webbsidor och andra medier måste inte köpa bilder från någon bildbyrå eller skicka en egen fotograf till Malmö. De kan använda mina bilder helt gratis. Den vanligaste användningen av bilder på Commons är Wikipediaartiklar, och bilder gör väldigt mycket för artiklarna. Mitt mål var att på Wikipedia kunna ha riktigt bra, proffsiga bilder på varenda tävlande artist i Eurovision Song Contest 2013.

Jag gick igenom ansökningsprocessen för fotoackreditering och efter många om och men godkändes min ansökan, vilket innebar att jag hade samma förmåner som de andra 1700 fotografer och journalister som skulle bevaka tävlingen. Till en början fick jag avslag, eftersom de som beslutade om ackreditering såg mig som ett oseriöst fan, men efter att både jag och några i föreningen Wikimedia Sverige lyckats förklara mina avsikter godkändes min ansökan.

Emmelie de Forest efter vinsten 2013.

Foto: Albin Olsson

Licens: CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported

Nu har Danmarks Emmelie de Forest och låten Only Teardrops korats till vinnare och jag har kommit hem från Malmö. Om jag ska summera veckan så har det varit ett väldigt lyckat projekt. Jag har tagit tusentals foton, varav jag hittills har laddat upp över 500 till Wikimedia Commons. Bilderna har kategoriserats efter artist, land, repetition och/eller presskonferens, och alla bilderna hamnade också i kategorin med den mycket tydliga titeln Photos taken by Albin Olsson during the Eurovision Song Contest 2013.

Det har blivit riktigt bra bilder. Närbilder på nästan alla artister, bilder på artisterna på scen, framförandes sina bidrag, och även filmklipp. Man får inte ladda upp upphovsrättsskyddat material på Commons, så låtar, eller filmklipp med låtarna är helt uteslutet, men jag lyckades få en hel del filmklipp precis som jag ville. I min ursprungsidé om att åka till Malmö ingick, förutom fotograferingen, att få filmklipp där artisterna presenterar sig själva. Exempelvis “Hej allihopa! Robin Stjernberg heter jag, och jag representerar Sverige i Eurovision Song Contest 2013 med min låt som heter ‘You’”. Det gick faktiskt riktigt bra, även om det var svårt att få trettio sekunder att prata med artisterna, och att förklara vad det var jag ville att de skulle säga. Det var många, många andra reportrar som ville ha “bara fem minuter”, och ställa frågor om hur det känns och vad de tror om andra länders bidrag och vad de äter till frukost. Att då få dem att säga sitt namn och låtens titel var faktiskt ganska annorlunda mot att ställa frågor. Men det gick för det mesta väldigt bra.

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Robin Stjernberg presenterar sig själv och sin låt.
Photo: Albin Olsson
License: CC-BY-SA-3.0

Det känns riktigt lyxigt att i Wikipediaartiklarna inte bara ha en snygg bild i högerkantens infobox, utan ett litet klipp där artisten presenterar sig själv. Och, nu kommer en annan lyxig detalj: På så många språk som möjligt. Jag fick Robin Stjernberg att säga samma sak på engelska, vilket innebär att även engelskspråkiga Wikipedia kan ha ett filmklipp i artikeln om honom, vilket är användbart för några extra hundra miljoner människor. I Commons-kategorin Videos from Eurovision Song Contest 2013 finns just nu 32 videoklipp (det kan eventuellt tillkomma några fler) där tolv artister presenterar sig själva. Alla på engelska, men elva av dem på minst ett annat språk. Bland de jag är mest stolt över kan nämnas att jag fick den ryska sångerskan Dina Garipova att presenterar sig, inte bara på engelska och ryska, utan även på tatariska. Så nu har även artikeln om henne på Tatariska Wikipedia ett filmklipp, och det tycker jag är riktigt lyxigt. Den rumänske operasångaren Cezar innehar rekordet i antal språk bland mina klipp. Han presenterar sig på engelska, rumänska, italienska och franska. Varje extra språk som artisterna presenterar sig på gör att tusentals fler människor kan ha nytta av materialet. Jag tyckte att det var viktigt att spela in klipp på både små och stora språk. Klipp på stora språk gör nytta för fler, men mindre språk känns lite exklusiva. Att bara ha klipp på engelska kan göra att det känns som att andra språkversioner blir lite bortglömda. Men deltagarna i Eurovision Song Contest talar massor med olika språk, och jag ville utnyttja det. Så jag tycker att det känns extra kul med Garipovas tatariska klipp, och Eyþór Ingis presentation på isländska, ett språk som bara talas av drygt 340 000 människor.

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Dina Garipova presenterar sig själv och sin låt på tatariska.
Video: Albin Olsson
License: CC-BY-SA-3.0

<video class="kskin" controls="controls" data-durationhint="5.6468027210884" data-mwprovider="wikimediacommons" data-mwtitle="Eyþór_Ingi_-_Ég_á_líf_presentation_(Íslenska).ogv" data-startoffset="0" height="240" id="mwe_player_2" poster="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/88/Ey%C3%BE%C3%B3r_Ingi_-_%C3%89g_%C3%A1_l%C3%ADf_presentation_%28%C3%8Dslenska%29.ogv/400px--Ey%C3%BE%C3%B3r_Ingi_-_%C3%89g_%C3%A1_l%C3%ADf_presentation_%28%C3%8Dslenska%29.ogv.jpg" preload="none" style="width:400px;height:224px" width="320"><source src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/88/Ey%C3%BE%C3%B3r_Ingi_-_%C3%89g_%C3%A1_l%C3%ADf_presentation_%28%C3%8Dslenska%29.ogv/Ey%C3%BE%C3%B3r_Ingi_-_%C3%89g_%C3%A1_l%C3%ADf_presentation_%28%C3%8Dslenska%29.ogv.360p.webm" type="video/webm; codecs="vp8, vorbis""><source src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Ey%C3%BE%C3%B3r_Ingi_-_%C3%89g_%C3%A1_l%C3%ADf_presentation_%28%C3%8Dslenska%29.ogv" type="video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"">

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Eyþór Ingi presenterar sig själv och sin låt på isländska.

Photo: Albin Olsson
Licens: CC-BY-SA-3.0

Mitt lilla projekt blev väldigt lyckat. Jag känner verkligen att jag har bidragit till att förbättra många Wikipediaartiklar på väldigt många språk. I några fall har jag själv lagt in filmklipp i artiklar på olika språk, men i de allra flesta fall har jag hittat mina bilder i artiklar på massor av olika språk. Wikipediaanvändare världen över har hittat mina bilder och lagt in dem här och var, helt utan min påverkan. Det känns jättekul! På Twitter har olika wikipedianer “gjort reklam” för mina bilder och mitt projekt och jag fick tips om att man på en sajt kan se detaljerad information och statistik om hur mina bilder används, och när jag på olika sätt upptäcker hur mina bilder används blir jag riktigt stolt. Som bilden nedan, till exempel.

Den här bilden används på hela 36 språkversioner av Wikipedia! Bland annat japanska och kinesiska.

Foto: Albin Olsson

Licens: CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported

Förutom användningen på Wikipedia hoppas jag att bilderna används på andra ställen också. Om de gör det blir jag glad om jag får veta det, även om inte det är ett krav på något sätt. Jag hoppas också att det här inspirerar andra att ta bra bilder till Wikimedia Commons och Wikipedia. Att jag har visat vad man kan göra. Om fler vet vad Wikimedia Commons är kommer fler att lägga upp bilder, och fler händelser kommer att dokumenteras med bra bilder. Invigningar, festivaler, byggnader, platser och människor.

Jag har tänkt på att det är väldigt, väldigt många fotografer på de här tävlingarna, och att man med fria bilder inte alls behöver så många. Om få fotografer tar många bra och fria bilder, så hade man löst många problem.

Jag har också tänkt på att det hade varit mycket lättare om man hade informerat om att Wikimedia Commons var på plats. Dels för att mindre tidningar och webbsidor då hade vetat om att de enkelt hade kunnat få tag på bilder, men också för att artisternas “Head of Press” hade vetat att här finns chansen att få bra bilder till artistens Wikipediaartiklar. Jag märkte på en del pressansvariga att de gärna prioriterade att jag skulle få mitt lilla filmklipp, eftersom de vet att väldigt, väldigt många söker och hittar information om artisterna på Wikipedia. Tysklands Head of Press verkade dock helt ointresserad och sa att “bara de största medierna” fick intervjua Cascada. Wikipedia, världens femte största webbsajt^[2], verkade inte räknas.

Jag filmar Krista Siegfrids.

Annars har jag fått mycket stöd från Wikimedia Sverige. Det var inte de som skickade iväg mig, utan det var min egen idé och mitt eget initiativ, men jag har fått otroligt bra stöd och hjälp från dem. Kamera, objektiv, stativ och mikrofon har jag fått låna av deras teknikpool. Resultatet hade omöjligt blivit lika bra utan den hjälpen. De journalister jag pratat med i Malmö har blivit väldigt imponerade och hjälpsamma när de förstått att jag fotograferar för Wikipedia. “Behöver du något så säg bara till” har jag fått höra många gånger av trevliga fotografer och journalister från många olika länder. Om frilansfotografen Stefan Crämer inte hade hjälpt mig stänga av autofokuslampan på min kamera under den första repetitionen hade jag mycket väl kunnat bli utslängd ur arenan, och jag hade aldrig fått så bra bilder från repetitionen av finalen om det inte var för att jag fick låna Helsingborgs Dagblads Sven-Erik Svenssons lilla pall att stå på. Sen måste jag tacka några av mina vänner, som så snällt översatt den informationsmall som ligger på alla mina bilder från Eurovision Song Contest. Mallen förklarar kortfattat hur bilderna får användas, och jag skrev mallen på svenska och engelska. Tack vare Sara finns samma information översatt till italienska, Mia har översatt till tyska, Salla till finska, och Stefán till isländska. Stort tack till er alla! Nu kan ännu fler läsa om hur enkelt bilderna kan användas.

Slutligen.

Nu har jag har visat vad som faktiskt är möjligt. Jag hoppas att andra intresserade i andra länder förstår att de kan göra samma sak, och att har jag dragit igång något som kommer att pågå i många, många år framöver. Att inte bara tävlingen vandrar vidare till vinnarlandet, utan även stafettpinnen för att fotografera för Wikimedia Commons. Eurovision Song Contest 2014 kommer alltså hållas i Danmark. Vi får se hur det blir. Danmark ligger inte speciellt långt bort, och det här gör jag gärna om.

Albin Olsson, abbedabb

Deutsch

Am 26. Mai 2012 wurde das Finale des Eurovision Song Contest in Baku, Azerbajdzjan, ausgestrahlt. Am Ende der Sendung wurde den Beitrag Schwedens, das Lied Euphoria von Loreen, zum Gewinner gewählt. Kurz danach hatte ich eine Idee: Die Tatsache, dass der Eurovision Song Contest 2013 in meiner Heimat stattfinden würde, ergab eine Fülle von Möglichkeiten für mich. Ich werde bald zu dieser Idee zurückkehren.

Loreen nach dem Finale 2012.

Photo: Vugarİbadov

Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported.

Der Eurovision Song Contest ist eigentlich sehr gut auf Wikipedia dokumentiert. Auf der schwedischsprachigen Version zum Beispiel gibt es einen Artikel über jedes Finale seit dem Anfang 1956, und weil der Wettbewerb so viele Menschen auf der ganzen Welt engagiert, gibt es Artikel über den Wettbewerb in nicht weniger als 91 verschiedenen Sprachen.^[1] Auf vielen Sprachen gibt es auch Artikel über einzelne Sänger und Beiträge, mit Listen, Statistik und Regeln. Wenn es um Bilder geht, sieht die Sache aber etwas anders aus. Ich sehe großes Potenzial in der Datenbank Wikimedia Commons, aber auch wenn mir bis jetzt niemand begegnet ist, der nicht von Wikipedia weiß, haben dieselben Leute sehr selten etwas von Wikimedia Commons gehört. Es gibt zwar Fotos der vergangenen Jahre, aber die Qualität unterscheidet sich sehr – manchmal sind die Fotos von jemandem im Publikum mit einer Mobilkamera aufgenommen worden, und in anderen Fällen sind es tatsächlich gute Fotos. Leider sind Fotos der letzteren Kategorie nur in kleinen Mengen vorhanden.

Bilder auf Commons müssen unter ”freien Lizenzen” gestellt sein, und ich benutze die Standardlizenz CC-BY-SA-3.0, was bedeutet, dass jeder das Recht hat, das Bild zu kopieren, zu verbreiten und zu verändern, wie er will. Einige Regeln gibt es aber: Der Urheber muss immer erwähnt werden, und wenn das Bild weiterverbreitet wird, muss das unter derselben Lizenz geschehen. Meine Bilder können also von jedem kostenlos verwendet werden. Zeitschriften, Websites und andere Medien müssen also nicht Bilder von einer Agentur kaufen oder selber einen Fotografen nach Malmö schicken. Die meist gebrauchte Verwendung von Bildern von Wikimedia Commons ist aber für Wikipediaartikel und, meiner Meinung nach, machen sie die Artikel viel interessanter.

Zurück zu meiner Idee: Dass der Wettbewerb in Schweden stattfinden würde, ermöglichte, dass ich selber gute Fotos für Wikimedia Commons machen könnte. Mein Ziel bestand darin, schöne Fotos von jedem Sänger des Eurovision Song Contest zu machen. Als erstes habe ich eine Presseakkreditierung beantragt. Zuerst wurde mein Antrag abgelehnt (sie haben mich für einen unseriösen Fan gehalten), aber nachdem ich und einige vom schwedischen Wikimedia-Chapter meinen Auftrag etwas genauer erklärt haben, wurde mein Antrag schließlich bewilligt. Das bedeutete, dass ich die gleichen Rechte hatte, wie die anderen 1700 Fotografen und Journalisten. Aufregend!

Emmelie de Forest nach dem Eurovision Song Contest 2013.

Photo: Albin Olsson

License: CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported

Jetzt hat Dänemarks Emmelie de Forest mit dem Lied “Only Teardrops” gewonnen und ich bin wieder nach Hause gefahren. Es ist eine unglaubliche Woche für mich gewesen, und ich halte mein Abenteuer für einen großen Erfolg. Ich habe Tausende von Fotos gemacht und bis jetzt sind über 500 von ihnen auf Wikimedia Commons hochgeladen. Die Fotos sind richtig gut geworden, Close-Ups von fast jedem Sänger und Fotos von den Auftritten. Die Fotos sind nach Sängern, Ländern, Generalproben und Pressekonferenzen geordnet. Die Fotos sind auch in der Kategorie Photos taken by Albin Olsson during the Eurovision Song Contest 2013 zu finden.

Ich habe auch einige Filme gemacht. Es ist ja verboten, urheberrechtlich geschütztes Material auf Commons hochzuladen, also sind Filme, in denen die Lieder vorgeführt werden, ausgeschlossen. Meine Idee bestand aber darin, kleine Filme zu machen, wo die Sänger sich vorstellen. Ungefähr so: “Hallo allerseits! Mein Name ist Robin Stjernberg und ich vertrete Schweden mit meinem Lied ‘You’”. Obwohl es schwierig war, 30 Sekunden zusammen mit den Sängern zu bekommen, und in dem Zeitraum ihnen auch erklären zu müssen, was sie sagen sollten, ist es mir tatsächlich gelungen, 32 von diesen Filmen zu machen!

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Robin Stjernberg präsentiert sich und sein Lied.
Video: Albin Olsson
Lizenz: CC-BY-SA-3.0

Ich finde es toll, dass diese Artikel jetzt nicht nur ein Foto haben, sondern auch einen kleinen Film mit dem Sänger. Was ich noch toller finde: Ich habe die Sänger aufgefordert, ihre Sätze auf so vielen Sprachen wie möglich zu sagen. Deswegen gibt es auch einen Film, in dem Robin sich auf Englisch vorstellt. Insgesamt gibt es, wie gesagt, 32 Filme, aber nur von zwölf Sängern. Jeder hat sich auf Englisch vorgestellt, aber elf davon haben auch mindestens eine andere Sprache verwendet. Unter anderem hat die russische Sängerin Dina Garipowa sich auf Englisch und Russisch präsentiert, aber auch auf Tatarisch. Jetzt hat also auch die tatarische Version von ihrem Artikel einen Film in einer angemessenen Sprache, was ich sehr toll finde. Der rumänische Sänger Cezar hat den Rekord in meiner Sammlung mit vier Sprachen, Englisch, Rumänisch, Italienisch, und Französisch.

Jede zusätzliche Sprache bedeutet, dass noch Tausende von Menschen davon Vergnügen haben können. Für mich war es wichtig, die Filme sowohl auf großen als auch auf kleineren Sprachen aufzunehmen. Die großen Sprachen freuen selbstverständlich mehr Menschen, aber die kleineren Sprachen sind irgendwie mehr exklusiv, finde ich. Filme nur auf Englisch anzubieten kann vielleicht den Eindruck machen, dass die anderen Sprachen auf Wikipedia etwas vernachlässigt werden. Es bereitet mir deswegen besondere Freude, Garipowas tatarischen Film und vielleicht noch mehr Eyþór Ingis Präsentation auf Isländisch zu hören, eine Sprache, die nur von etwa 340 000 Menschen gesprochen wird.

<video class="kskin" controls="controls" data-durationhint="11.586757369615" data-mwprovider="wikimediacommons" data-mwtitle="Dina_Garipova_-_What_if_presentation_(Tatar_language).ogv" data-startoffset="0" height="240" id="mwe_player_1" poster="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Dina_Garipova_-_What_if_presentation_%28Tatar_language%29.ogv/400px--Dina_Garipova_-_What_if_presentation_%28Tatar_language%29.ogv.jpg" preload="none" style="width:400px;height:224px" width="320"><source src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/49/Dina_Garipova_-_What_if_presentation_%28Tatar_language%29.ogv/Dina_Garipova_-_What_if_presentation_%28Tatar_language%29.ogv.360p.webm" type="video/webm; codecs="vp8, vorbis""><source src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Dina_Garipova_-_What_if_presentation_%28Tatar_language%29.ogv" type="video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"">Sorry, your browser either has JavaScript disabled or does not have any supported player.
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Dina Garipowa presentiert sich auf tatarisch.
Video: Albin Olsson
Lizenz: CC-BY-SA-3.0

<video class="kskin" controls="controls" data-durationhint="5.6468027210884" data-mwprovider="wikimediacommons" data-mwtitle="Eyþór_Ingi_-_Ég_á_líf_presentation_(Íslenska).ogv" data-startoffset="0" height="240" id="mwe_player_11" poster="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/88/Ey%C3%BE%C3%B3r_Ingi_-_%C3%89g_%C3%A1_l%C3%ADf_presentation_%28%C3%8Dslenska%29.ogv/400px--Ey%C3%BE%C3%B3r_Ingi_-_%C3%89g_%C3%A1_l%C3%ADf_presentation_%28%C3%8Dslenska%29.ogv.jpg" preload="none" style="width:400px;height:224px" width="320"><source src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/88/Ey%C3%BE%C3%B3r_Ingi_-_%C3%89g_%C3%A1_l%C3%ADf_presentation_%28%C3%8Dslenska%29.ogv/Ey%C3%BE%C3%B3r_Ingi_-_%C3%89g_%C3%A1_l%C3%ADf_presentation_%28%C3%8Dslenska%29.ogv.360p.webm" type="video/webm; codecs="vp8, vorbis""><source src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Ey%C3%BE%C3%B3r_Ingi_-_%C3%89g_%C3%A1_l%C3%ADf_presentation_%28%C3%8Dslenska%29.ogv" type="video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"">

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Eyþór Ingi presentiert sich und sein Lied auf isländisch.
Video: Albin Olsson
Lizenz: CC-BY-SA-3.0

Ich fühle, dass ich viele Wikipediaartikel auf vielen Sprachen verbessert habe. In einigen Fällen habe ich selber die Filme in den verschiedenen Artikeln eingebaut, aber meistens haben andere es gemacht. Wikipediabenutzer über der ganzen Welt haben meine Fotos gefunden und sie überall reingestopft, ohne meine Einmischung. Es freut mich so! Auf Twitter haben Wikipedianer für meine Fotos und mein Projekt geworben und ich habe eine Seite gefunden, wo ich der Benutzung von meinen Fotos folgen und andere Statistiken sehen kann. Wenn ich sehe, wie meine Fotos benutzt werden, werde ich richtig stolz! Zum Beispiel das Foto hier unten:

Dieses Bild wird auf 36 Sprachen auf Wikipedia verwendet! Unter anderem japanisch und chinesisch.

Foto: Albin Olsson

Licens: CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported

Ich hoffe, dass meine Fotos auch außerhalb Wikipedia verwendet werden. Wenn es geschieht, würde ich mich sehr freuen, wenn mich jemand benachrichtigt. Ich hoffe auch, dass mein Blogbeitrag andere inspiriert, gute Fotos für Wikimedia Commons zu machen. Wenn mehr Leute von Commons erfahren würden, würden auch mehr Leute Fotos hochladen. Es gibt so vieles da Draußen, das dokumentiert werden sollte!

Ich habe bemerkt, dass es sehr viele Fotografen auf diesen Wettbewerben gibt. Wenn mehrere Fotografen ihre Fotos unter der gleichen Standardlizenz wie ich gestellt hätten, wären so viele Fotografen gar nicht nötig. Mir ist auch der Gedanke eingefallen, dass es viel einfacher wäre, wenn ich mich vorher an die Leitung von Eurovision gewandt hätte, so dass sie gewusst hätten, dass Wikimedia Commons dabei sein würde. Kleinere Zeitungen und Websites hätten dann wissen können, dass gute Fotos durch Wikimedia Commons leicht erhaltbar sein würden. Auch für die ”Head of Press” der Sänger wäre die Kenntnis vielleicht nutzbar gewesen, dass sie gute Fotos für die Wikipediaartikel ihrer Sänger bekommen könnten. Bei einigen Pressezuständigen habe ich bemerkt, dass sie mich priorisiert haben, weil es ihnen bewusst war, dass viele auf Wikipedia nach Informationen über Sänger suchen. Bei anderen war es aber genau umgekehrt, zum Beispiel die deutsche ”Head of Press” hat kein Interesse an mir gezeigt, und hat nur die größten Medien zugelassen, ihre Sängerin Cascada zu interviewen. Offensichtlich gehörte Wikipedia, die fünfgrößte Website der Welt^[2], nicht dazu.

Filmen Krista Siegfrids.

Übrigens habe ich viel Hilf von Wikimedia Schweden erhalten. Die Idee war ganz und gar meine eigene, trotzdem haben sie mich mit Kamera, Objektiv, Stativ und Mikrofon ausgestattet. Alles durfte ich mir von ihrem Technikpool ausleihen. Ohne ihre Hilfe wäre das Endergebnis zweifellos nicht so gut geworden. Die Journalisten, die ich in Malmö getroffen habe, waren alle sehr hilfreich und nett zu mir. ”Brauchen Sie etwas, sag mir nur Bescheid” habe ich mehrmals während der Woche gehört. Wenn der Fotograf Stefan Crämer mir nicht geholfen hätte, die Autofokuslampe auszuschalten, wäre ich wahrscheinlich aus der Arena herausgeworfen worden. Und wenn Sven-Erik Svensson von Helsingborgs Dagblad mir nicht seine kleine Palette ausgeliehen hätte, wäre es mir nie gelungen, so gute Fotos zu nehmen. Danke an Sie beide! Dazu muss ich auch meinen Freunden danken, die so nett waren die Informationsvorlage zu übersetzen. Die Vorlage erklärt wie die Fotos gebraucht werden dürfen. Ich habe sie auf Schwedisch und Englisch geschrieben, aber dank Sara gibt es jetzt auch auf Italienisch, dank Mia auf Deutsch, dank Salla auf Finnisch und dank Stefán sogar auf Isländisch. Großen Dank an Sie alle!

Jetzt habe ich Ihnen gezeigt, was möglich ist. Auch wenn Sie nicht in Schweden wohnen, können Sie das gleiche tun wie ich. Ich hoffe, dass nicht nur der Wettbewerb ans nächste Land weitergeht, sondern auch diese von mir neu gestartete Tradition, den Wettbewerb für Wikimedia Commons mit Fotos zu dokumentieren!

Albin Olsson, abbedabb

中文

欧洲歌唱大赛决赛Eurovision Song Contest于2012年5月26日在阿塞拜疆首都巴库进行了现场直播。最后由来自瑞典的Loreen以她的歌曲Euphoria取得了冠军。没过多久我就意识到，2013年欧洲歌唱大赛将会在我的国家举行，瑞典， 它将会创造更多惊喜兴奋的机会。一会我回来阐述我的观点。

Loreen 于2012赢得比赛之后
Photo: Vugarİbadov
Licence: CC-BY-SA-3.0.

Eurovision Song Contest在维基百科上有非常详细的记载描述。自从欧洲歌唱大赛1956开始以来，维基百科上每年都会有瑞典语版和英语版的关于大赛的介绍。因为参赛者来自世界不同国家，目前有91种不同语言的文章对其介绍^[1]。在不同语言的版本中也有一些文章是关于演唱者和歌曲的。文章中有列表，数据统计，投票的历史记录，规则和得分。但是没有很多图片在文章中。我看到很大的潜力在Wikimedia Commons数据库里。尽管几乎我遇到的所有人都听说过维基百科Wikipedia，但是却很少有人听说过维基资源共享Wikimedia Commons。

目前有一些关于前几届的欧洲歌唱大赛的照片，但是质量参差不齐，数量也不多。偶尔有坐在下面的观众用手机照一张相，但是在某些情况下，用先进的相机才能照出好的相片。

回到我的观点：在瑞典举行大赛因为我可以为 Wikimedia Commons拍摄真正好的照片。在 Wikimedia Commons上的照片一定要有“免费许可”。 我所用的是CC-BY-SA-3.0许可。许可就像丛林一样多种多样，我也不确定各种许可的名字是什么。只要照片的创造者(我)愿意奉献并且所有新的照片有相同或是类似的许可，每个人都能对图片免费自由的复制，传播和编辑。

这就意味着如果我在2013年的 Eurovision Song Contest拍照，任何人都可以使用。报纸，杂志，网站和其他媒体不许要从图片社买图片或者派一个摄影师去马尔默Malmö。他们可以免费用我的照片。Wikimedia Commons 里的图片通常会用在Wikipedia的文章里，它也真的会使文章看起来更好。我的目标是在维基百科上能够有真正好的专业的Eurovision Song Contest 2013的照片。

我申请并且被许可了在大赛上我的拍照资格，这意味着我和其他的1700名摄像师和媒体有同样的权利。一开始我的申请被拒绝了因为大赛的主办方认为我只是一个粉丝而不是一个真正的摄影师。但是我和一些Wikimedia Sverige的同事努力解释我的意向和我申请的目的，最后申请状态从“拒绝”更新到了“批准”。

Emmelie de Forest 在赢得 Eurovision Song Contest 2013以后.
Photo: Albin Olsson
License: CC-BY-SA-3.0

今年来自丹麦的Emmelie de Forest，和她的歌曲Only Teardrops 赢得了比赛。而我也搭乘了公车从Malmö回家到歌德堡 Gothemburg。这是非常精彩的一周，而且项目也很成功的完成了。我拍了上千张照片，现在已有500多传到了 Wikimedia Commons上。我也将其按参赛者, 国家, 彩排和/或者 新闻发布会, 进行了分类。所有的照片也都存在了照片由Albin Olsson 拍摄于 Eurovision Song Contest 2013目录里。

有许多非常好的照片。几乎每个演唱者的特写镜头，演唱者在舞台上表演的照片和一些视频。但是不允许上传一些受版权保护的材料到Wikimedia Commons上，所以我不能上传歌曲以及带有歌曲的视频。但是我会以我的方式得到些视频。我去Malmö的最初想法，不仅仅是拍照，也要录一些演唱者介绍他们自己。例如“Hi everyone! 我的名字是 Robin Stjernberg, and 我代表瑞典参加 Eurovision Song Contest 2013 演唱我自己的歌名字是“你”。录像进行的非常顺利，尽管和演唱者只有30秒的交流时间并让他们解释我相让他们说的有点难。有很多很多记者想要“五分钟”去问他们的歌曲，觉得其他参赛者的歌曲如何以及他们早餐经常吃什么。想让他们说出自己的名字以及演唱的歌曲的提问是相当不同的，但是大部分都进行的很顺利。

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Robin Stjernberg 介绍自己和歌曲.
Photo: Albin Olsson
License: CC-BY-SA-3.0

这感觉真的很酷，维基百科的文章不仅有很漂亮的图片在资讯盒的顶部，也有艺术家们自我介绍的简短视频。 另一件非常酷的细节是有尽可能多的语言。首先我要 Robin Stjernberg用瑞典于介绍自己，但是我也要他用英文介绍了自己，所以英文版的维基百科也有关于他的视频。这对额外的几百万人是非常有用的。现在有32歌视频在Wikimedia Commons的类别里。视频来自 Eurovision Song Contest 2013 (我可能会再加一些), 其中有12个是歌手的自我介绍视频。所有人都用的是英文，但他们中的11人至少还用另一种语言做了介绍。其中最让我感到骄傲的是来自俄国的歌手Dina Garipova介绍自己不仅用了英语 和 俄语, 甚至用鞑靼语.所以现在我们甚至有 鞑靼语维基百科关于她的文章和一个影片剪辑。我认为这是真正奢华的。在我的剪辑里来自罗马尼亚的歌剧演唱者Cezar保持着语言多样化的记录。他分别用英语, 罗马尼亚语, 意大利语 和 法语介绍自己。 艺术家们每一种额外的语言都会使上千人有机会用到这些材料。我认为这是非常重要的去录下不管是小语种还是大语种的视频。大语种会使更多人受益，但小语种也感觉有些高档次。如果只用英语来做记录的话，似乎其他语种像被遗忘了一样。Eurovision Song Contest的参赛者讲很多不同的语言，我要好好利用它。所以Garipova的鞑靼语视频 和 Eyþór Ingi 的冰岛语的自己介绍 就变得非常有意思。世界上只有大概340 000人讲冰岛语。

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Dina Garipova 用鞑靼语介绍自己和她的音乐.
Foto: Albin Olsson
Licens: CC-BY-SA-3.0

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Eyþór Ingi 用冰岛语介绍自己和他的歌曲.
Foto: Albin Olsson
Licens: CC-BY-SA-3.0

我的这个小项目非常成功。我觉得我真的为更好的提高维基百科语言的多样化做了很多贡献。有一些情况下我在文章里加入了不同语言的视频剪辑，但是大多数情况下我在很多不同语言的文章里找到了我的图片。全世界的维基百科的用户找到我的图片然后不受任何我的影响可以把他们用在不同的地方。这是非常棒的。在Twitter上有不同的维基百科用户为我的图片和项目“做广告”。我得到一个提示，在[1]，每当在不同的地方看到我的照片被使用都会觉得特别骄傲，例如像下面的照片

这是一张被用在36种不同语言版本的Wikipedia文章上的照片! 包括日语 och 中文.
Foto: Albin Olsson
Licens: CC-BY-SA-3.0

除了用在Wikipedia上我也希望图片能够用在其他的地方。我会非常高兴如果大家这样做，当然这不是一个要求。我也希望这回激起其他人为Wikimedia Commons拍摄好照片的兴趣。我已经示范了人们该怎么做。如果更多人知道Wikimedia Commons，那么会有更多的人在Wikimedia Commons上传照片，更多的事件会配合好的照片被记录，例如就职典礼，节日，建筑，地方，和人民。

我也想过如果人们都知道Wikimedia Commons的话，事情会更简单。因为一些小的报纸和网站可以很简单从Wikimedia Commons上得到照片，很多演唱者的新闻主管非常惊讶我在那，而且迅速告诉他们的艺人，因为他们知道很多很多人用维基百科来搜索关于艺人的信息。但是也有德国的新闻主管似乎看起来不感兴趣并且说只有“大的媒体”才有机会采访他们的艺人Cascada。Wikipedia世界第五大网站^[2]，似乎没有被算在内。

我在拍摄Krista Siegfrids.

我也从瑞典的维基媒体Wikimedia Sverige得到很多帮助。尽管他们不行让我去哥德堡而是我自己的主意，但是我也从他们那得到了非常好支持和帮助。我从他们的技术库 借到了相机，镜头，三脚架和麦克风。没有他们的帮助不会有这么好的结果。那些在马尔默和我交谈的记者们也给我留下了深刻的印象，当他们知道我是为Wikipedia拍摄照片都给我了很多帮助。从那些来自不同国家非常友好的记者和摄像师中我听到很多次“如果你有什么需要帮忙直接告诉我”。如果不是自由摄像师Stefan Crämer在第一次彩排的时候帮我关上相机上的自动对焦闪光灯，我很可能被踢出活动现场。如果不是赫尔辛基日报的Sven-Erik Svenssons借我小凳子站在上面，我也不会在决赛的第一次彩排中照到这么好的照片。我也要感谢很多我的朋友好心的翻译了从 Eurovision Song Contest上所有照片的信息模版。它简单的解释了照片怎样被使用，我也用瑞典语和英语写了信息模版。也非常感谢Sara将信息翻译成了意大利文，Mia翻译成德语，Salla翻译成芬兰语还有Stefan翻译成冰岛语。非常感谢你们所有人！现在有更多的人能知道怎样能简单的使用照片。

结尾.
现在我已经展示了什么是实际可能的。我希望在其他国家有兴趣的人能明白他们可以做同样的事。而且我也开始了一些可以持续很多很多年的事情。不仅仅歌唱比赛可以轮换到胜利者的国家，为Wikimedia Commons拍摄照片的接力棒也可以这样传递。Eurovision Song Contest 2014将会在丹麦举行。我们将拭目以待。丹麦并不是很远，我也愿意再做一次这样的事情。

Albin Olsson, abbedabb

Notes

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Eurovision Song Contest on Wikidata
2. ↑ ^{a b c} All Things D.com – The Fifth-Biggest Site in the World Operated on a Budget of $27M Last Year

This post is available in 2 languages:

На русском языке  • English

In English:

Logo of the “Association of Honorary Citizens, Mentors and Gifted Young People”

The Gallery of Honour of Southern Russia and Eastern Ukraine is a public organization that holds the Gallery of Honour competition, an important event for supporting youth talent and for strengthening connections between generations. The competition is dedicated to the people and history of Southern Russia (Southern and North Caucasian Federal Districts) and Eastern Ukraine (Lugansk oblast and Donetsk oblast). In the first two tours, the participants were expected to use sites like YouTube; the third and final tour will feature cooperation with Russian Wikipedia, the best way to accumulate and distribute the knowledge.

The first two tours attracted more than 600 people from Rostov oblast, Volgograd oblast, Astrahkan oblast, Krasnodarskiy kray, Stavropolskiy kray, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Northern Ossetia-Alania, Chechnya, Kabardino-Balkaria, Kalmykia, Adygea, Moscow and Ukraine.

The Gallery of Honour of Southern Russia and Eastern Ukraine and Wikimedia Russia (the official Wikimedia chapter here) hope that the final tour will be attended by even more people, as editing Wikipedia is open to everyone. The competition is unusual for Wikipedia; article writing competitions don’t usually yield such big prizes (250,000 rubles, or roughly $8000 US).

The competition is taking place from May to October 2013; scientists, artists and some of the best-known Russian Wikipedia article authors will be invited to enter the jury.

On June 3rd, 2013, at 14:00, Interfax (Rostov-on-Don, Budennovskiy 60Б, 11th floor) will hold a press-conference about the competition’s start. Full rules will be available at Википедия:Галерея Славы Юга России и Востока Украины soon. Webinars will be organized to make participation easier for those who haven’t edited Wikipedia before.

There will be several categories for competition: best articles about biographies, human settlements, and historical and cultural events. Authors and uploaders of the best images will be encouraged. There are also special prizes for teachers and mentors of younger Wikipedians. An odd prize, “The smartest,” will be awarded to the city that has the highest participation rate (per 1000 inhabitants).

Anastasia Lvova, Wikimedia Russia

На русском языке

250 000 рублей за помощь в распространении знаний

Эмблема Ассоциации почетных граждан, наставников и талантливой молодежи

«Галерея Славы Юга России и Востока Украины» — общественная организация, одним из важнейших инструментов по достижению цели поддержки талантливой молодёжи и укрепления межпоколенных связей сделавшая конкурс «Галерея славы», посвящённый персоналиям и истории юга России (Южный федеральный округ и Северо-Кавказский федеральный округ) и востока Украины (Луганская и Донецкая области). В первых двух турах конкурса его участники должны были использовать такие средства, как YouTube; третий, финальный тур конкурса проводится совместно с Википедией, так как именно этот проект является лучшим способом хранения и распространения знаний.

В первом и втором турах конкурса «Галерея Славы Юга России и Востока Украины» приняли участие более 600 человек, проживающих в Ростовской, Волгоградской, Астраханской областях, Краснодарском, Ставропольском краях, Ингушетии, Дагестане, Северной Осетии-Алании, в Чечне, Кабардино-Балкарии, Калмыкии, Адыгее, а также — в Москве и в Украине. Ассоциация «Галерея Славы Юга России и Востока Украины» и НП «Викимедиа РУ» надеются, что в финальном туре окажется задействовано ещё больше людей, ведь редактирование в Википедии открыто для каждого. Для самой Википедии данный конкурс также необычен; никогда ранее в конкурсах, связанных с написанием статей, не было возможно получить настолько большое вознаграждение.

Конкурс проводится с мая по октябрь 2013 года; в состав конкурсной комиссии войдут представители научного сообщества, деятели культуры, а также наиболее авторитетные авторы статей Википедии на русском языке.

3 июня 2013 в 14:00 в Интерфаксе (г. Ростов-на-Дону, пр. Буденновский, 60, литер Б, 11 этаж, бизнес-центр «Гедон») состоится пресс-конференция, посвященная старту конкурса. На странице Википедия:Галерея Славы Юга России и Востока Украины вскоре будет опубликован полный текст правил; кроме того, для облегчения участия в конкурсе людям, ранее не участвовавших в Википедии, будет проведён ряд вебинаров.

Конкурсные работы будут оцениваться в нескольких номинациях: жюри определит авторов лучших биографических статей, статей о населенных пунктах, материалов о знаковых исторических и культурных событиях. Будут поощрены конкурсанты, создавшие и разместившие лучшие иллюстрации для статей Википедии. Отдельные призы предусмотрены учредителями конкурса для педагогов-наставников юных википедистов. Специальный приз — звание «Самый умный» — будет присвоено населенному пункту, наибольшее число жителей которого (из расчета на 1000 человек) примет участие в конкурсе.

Львова Анастасия, НП «Викимедиа РУ»

Last week-end, the Wikimedia Hackathon took place in Amsterdam, and we notably worked on the migration from the Wikimedia Toolserver to Tool Labs. According to the Roadmap, Tool Labs will have all the necessary features by the end of June 2013. As of then, tool maintainers will have one year to migrate their software. By the end of 2014, the Toolserver will be decommissioned.

What is working?

First of all: Tool maintainers do not have to care about virtual instances or other background stuff. You will develop on servers similar to the Toolserver, e.g. with the infrastructure for web services. The servers are running Ubuntu Precise. At the moment, there are replicas of six (out of seven) database clusters. The last one (with CentralAuth) is due in June. You can already work with all the big and many small Wikipedias, with Commons and Wikidata. You have access to all the data that is visible to registered users without special privileges in a wiki. You can create your own user databases. According to the first experiences, Tool Labs is fast.

In addition to home directories, you also have shared project storage. Tool Labs wants to make it as easy as possible to develop software together, which is why you can add others to your projects via the web interface. There is also a time travel feature! You can reset your files to the state of the last three hours, the last three days and the last two Sundays. The job system that is used in Tool Labs is OpenGridEngine. You can find an intro on the Tool Labs help page. Bugs can be reported in Wikimedia’s Bugzilla: Please use the product “Wikimedia Labs” and one of the components “Tools” or “Bots”. If you miss software in Tool Labs that could be of interest for others, too, please file a bug!

What about “Tools” versus “Bots”?

These are the names of the two projects Tool Labs consists of. The larger environment (Wikimedia Labs) is organized in projects, two of which form Tool Labs. They are an environment inside Labs that is customized for Toolserver users. The naming might be a bit misleading: The difference between “Tools” and “Bots” is not what you run in which project, but that you can run your tools in two different environments. The “Tools” project is a stable environment maintained by four admins (one of them a volunteer). There are no experiments with software versions here. In contrast to this, the “Bots” project is a more flexible environment in which you can play with changes in the environment itself, too. Here, it will be easier to get root access. (If you are interested, ask on the mailing list.)

Open tasks?

Apart from the open tasks on the roadmap, the documentation needs improvement. The pioneers among you can help others a lot by documenting experiences. Magnus Manske and Russell Blau have started to lead by example by adding a lot of documentation, and you can help as well! We are thinking about how to redirect deprecated links to migrated tools in the easiest way possible. The Tool Labs user interface also needs some love; feel free to come to us if you want to help here!

If you run into problems or have questions when migrating tools, be bold and ask! The best places are the labs-l mailing list or the IRC channel #wikimedia-labs ^connect. The admins’ nicks are Coren and petan. There is also a list of Frequently Asked Questions that you can expand. And finally: If you find that your tool needs more adaptation than you think you can manage on your own, talk to Johannes Kroll or myself at Wikimedia Deutschland for support!

Silke Meyer
Projektmanagerin für den Toolserver, Wikimedia Deutschland