Re: [Wikitech-l] [Wikimedia-l] DEADLINE EXTENDED: Wikimania 2017 call for submissions

[phoebe ayers]

Thanks Joseph! Just a followup reminder that submissions are due TOMORROW.

If you have submitted a proposal already but it's marked as a "draft",
please finalize it and mark it as "completed" by tomorrow as well. (If you
are a submitter you may already have email from me about this).

thanks everyone! We are going to have a great program this year!

Phoebe
(for the program committee)



On Sat, Apr 8, 2017 at 10:38 AM, Joseph Seddon 
wrote:

> REMINDER: Deadline for submitting presentations, panels,
> roundtables and workshops to Wikimania is *April 10*.
>
> You have TWO days remaining.
>
> The deadline for posters and birds-of-a-feather sessions remains *May 15*.
>
> Please see below for the call for submissions for Wikimania, and submit
> your ideas! Please also note, for those who have already submitted, there
> is now a field in the registration form for "completed" or "in-progress"
> submission. When you are ready to have your submission reviewed, please
> note that it is "completed". Thank you!
>
> Please contact us with any questions: wikimania-prog...@wikimedia.org
>
> Seddon
>
> Phoebe
> >
> > On Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 10:10 AM, phoebe ayers 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > All,
> > > I'm very pleased to send out the Wikimania Montréal Call for
> Submissions,
> > > which can be found in French here:
> > > https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/fr
> > > and in English here:
> > > https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/en
> > >
> > > On behalf of the Wikimania programme committee,
> > > Phoebe Ayers
> > > -
> > >
> > > Que vous soyez un membre de la communauté de l’un des projets Wikimédia
> > > (tels que Wikipédia, Wikibooks, Wikidata, Wikisource, Wikinews,
> Wikimedia
> > > Commons, Wiktionnaire, MediaWiki ou autres), un créateur de contenu
> libre
> > > ou un consommateur, nous recevrons avec plaisir votre proposition pour
> > une
> > > session lors de Wikimania 2017.
> > >
> > > *dates importantes*
> > >
> > > Appel aux propositions ouvert : 2 février 2017
> > > Date limite de soumission des présentations (conférence, panneau, table
> > > ronde et atelier) : *15 avril 2017*
> > > Date limite de soumission des brefs exposés, affiches et réunions
> > > d’oiseaux de la même plume : 15 mai 2017.
> > > Notification d’acceptation des présentations : 20 avril 2017
> > > Notification d’acceptation des brefs exposés, affiches et réunions
> > > d’oiseaux de la même plume : 10 juin 2017
> > >
> > > *Types de soumissions & Comment soumettre: *https://wikimania2017.
> > > wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/fr
> > >
> > > *Des questions ?* Merci de contacter le Comité du programme par
> > > wikimania-program(à)wikimedia.org.
> > >
> > > 
> > >
> > > Whether you are a community member of one of the Wikimedia projects
> (such
> > > as Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikidata, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikimedia
> > Commons,
> > > Wiktionary, MediaWiki or others), or a fellow open content creator or
> > > consumer, we welcome your proposal for a session at Wikimania 2017.
> > >
> > > *Important dates*
> > >
> > > Call for proposals opens: February 2, 2017
> > > Deadline for submitting presentation (lecture, panel, roundtable and
> > > workshop) submissions: *April 10, 2017*
> > > Deadline for submitting lightning talks, poster, and birds of a feather
> > > submissions: May 15, 2017
> > > Notification of acceptance for presentations: April 20, 2017
> > > Notification of acceptance for lightning talks, poster and birds of a
> > > feather submissions: June 10, 2017
> > >
> > > *Submission types & how to submit:* https://wikimania2017.
> > > wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/en
> > >
> > > *Any questions?* Please contact the Programme Committee at
> > > wikimania-program at wikimedia.org
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
> 
> > gmail.com *
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
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> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>

[Wikitech-l] Fwd: DEADLINE EXTENDED: Wikimania 2017 call for submissions

[phoebe ayers]

FYI all: deadline for presentations has been extended to April 10.

-- Forwarded message --
From: phoebe ayers 
Date: Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 9:53 PM
Subject: DEADLINE EXTENDED: Wikimania 2017 call for submissions
To: Wikimedia Mailing List , "Wikimania
general list (open subscription)" 


Dear all,

We have extended the deadline for submitting presentations, panels,
roundtables and workshops to Wikimania until *April 10*. The deadline for
posters and birds-of-a-feather sessions remains *May 15*.

Please see below for the call for submissions for Wikimania, and submit
your ideas! Please also note, for those who have already submitted, there
is now a field in the registration form for "completed" or "in-progress"
submission. When you are ready to have your submission reviewed, please
note that it is "completed". Thank you!

Please contact us with any questions: wikimania-prog...@wikimedia.org

best,
Phoebe

On Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 10:10 AM, phoebe ayers 
wrote:

> All,
> I'm very pleased to send out the Wikimania Montréal Call for Submissions,
> which can be found in French here:
> https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/fr
> and in English here:
> https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/en
>
> On behalf of the Wikimania programme committee,
> Phoebe Ayers
> -
>
> Que vous soyez un membre de la communauté de l’un des projets Wikimédia
> (tels que Wikipédia, Wikibooks, Wikidata, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikimedia
> Commons, Wiktionnaire, MediaWiki ou autres), un créateur de contenu libre
> ou un consommateur, nous recevrons avec plaisir votre proposition pour une
> session lors de Wikimania 2017.
>
> *dates importantes*
>
> Appel aux propositions ouvert : 2 février 2017
> Date limite de soumission des présentations (conférence, panneau, table
> ronde et atelier) : *15 avril 2017*
> Date limite de soumission des brefs exposés, affiches et réunions
> d’oiseaux de la même plume : 15 mai 2017.
> Notification d’acceptation des présentations : 20 avril 2017
> Notification d’acceptation des brefs exposés, affiches et réunions
> d’oiseaux de la même plume : 10 juin 2017
>
> *Types de soumissions & Comment soumettre: *https://wikimania2017.wikimedi
> a.org/wiki/Submissions/fr
>
> *Des questions ?* Merci de contacter le Comité du programme par
> wikimania-program(à)wikimedia.org.
>
> 
>
> Whether you are a community member of one of the Wikimedia projects (such
> as Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikidata, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikimedia Commons,
> Wiktionary, MediaWiki or others), or a fellow open content creator or
> consumer, we welcome your proposal for a session at Wikimania 2017.
>
> *Important dates*
>
> Call for proposals opens: February 2, 2017
> Deadline for submitting presentation (lecture, panel, roundtable and
> workshop) submissions: *April 10, 2017*
> Deadline for submitting lightning talks, poster, and birds of a feather
> submissions: May 15, 2017
> Notification of acceptance for presentations: April 20, 2017
> Notification of acceptance for lightning talks, poster and birds of a
> feather submissions: June 10, 2017
>
> *Submission types & how to submit:* 
> https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/en
>
>
> *Any questions?* Please contact the Programme Committee at
> wikimania-program at wikimedia.org
>



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Re: [Wikitech-l] E-mail login to wiki - needs feedback

[phoebe ayers]

On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 3:33 PM, Platonides  wrote:
> On 20/02/15 00:58, phoebe ayers wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm the one who started that bug-now-task a while back, and for
>> context, it was based directly on user feedback. What MzM says above
>> is right. I was working with a casual (but quite good) editor who said
>> to me "well, I'd edit that Wikipedia page, but I don't edit very often
>> and I can never remember what my login is, since my usual login was
>> taken. But if I could enter my email address, it would be a lot easier
>> and I'd be more likely to just do it."
>
>
> It looks like it would be enough to provide a "send forgotten username to
> this email" feature.
> Which is bug 13015 [1], fixed in 2011 [2] and afaik never enabled.
>
> As it provides a list of usernames, there's no issue with
> "too-many-usernames, which to use for login"?

Hmm. I just tried asking for a password reset with my email [on
English Wikipedia] and what I got was a list of temporary passwords
for all the accounts associated with that email (a bunch, in my case,
since I registered variations on my full name). The email lists the
username and the temp password for each account.

But yes, it's not clear that link can be used for retrieving login as
well as password. Changing the text to 'Forgot your password or
login?' could help. (Of course, checking your email and resetting the
password is still an extra step for the infrequent editor).

-- phoebe

p.s. this is an old issue; that was still likely an unfixed bug when I
first filed it!

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Global user pages deployed to all wikis

[phoebe ayers]

Hooray! This is so cool.

/goes to edit her meta userpage...

-- phoebe

p.s. re: babel, my absolute favorite use is on Wikidata, where you can
add babel templates to your userpage and then get the appropriate
fields to add stuff in that language :) I love showing that to people
who are getting started on Wikidata.


On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 5:06 PM, Legoktm  wrote:
> Hello!
>
> Global user pages have now been deployed to all public wikis for users with
> CentralAuth accounts. Documentation on the feature is available at
> mediawiki.org[1], and if you notice any bugs please file them in
> Phabricator[2].
>
> Thanks to all the people who helped with the creation and deployment
> (incomplete, and in no particular order): Jack Phoenix & ShoutWiki, Isarra,
> MZMcBride, Nemo, Quiddity, Aaron S, Matt F, James F, and everyone who helped
> with testing it while it was in beta.
>
> [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:GlobalUserPage
> [2]
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/create/?projects=PHID-PROJ-j536clyie42uptgjkft7
>
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] E-mail login to wiki - needs feedback

[phoebe ayers]

Hi all,

I'm the one who started that bug-now-task a while back, and for
context, it was based directly on user feedback. What MzM says above
is right. I was working with a casual (but quite good) editor who said
to me "well, I'd edit that Wikipedia page, but I don't edit very often
and I can never remember what my login is, since my usual login was
taken. But if I could enter my email address, it would be a lot easier
and I'd be more likely to just do it."

Struck by the idea that this was a barrier to editing, I asked around
and got similar feedback from other people, for both public and
private mediawikis. So I submitted the bug for consideration. I know
it's difficult and there's been a lot of discussion on how to
technically do it, but I think the underlying need definitely still
exists.

thanks,
Phoebe


On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 4:54 AM, Tony Thomas <01tonytho...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Before someone starts with a proposal for the proposed-tech-project 'Allow
> user login with e-mail address'[1], is there still community consensus for
> the same ? I personally think its a must-have for MediaWiki, as e-mail
> address is easy to remember than a complex username. Currently multiple
> users can sign-up with the same e-mail id - which would possibly be a
> blocker, and can be fixed. Thanks to MzMcbride, we have an RFC[2] too on
> the same.
>
> [1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T30085
> [2]
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Login_via_e-mail_address
>
> Thanks,
> Tony Thomas 
> FOSS@Amrita 
>
> *"where there is a wifi, there is a way"*
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Re: [Wikitech-l] [Wikitech-ambassadors] Deprecating print-on-demand functionality

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 8:48 AM, Erik Moeller  wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 8:45 AM, Luca Martinelli
>  wrote:
> > so the Book Creator will still be active, maybe under another name,
> > maybe with another engine, but still active?
>
> Same name and functionality, just the "Order a printed book" feature
> will disappear.
>
> Erik
>

That is great -- the book creator and PDF tools are both good tools, and
are very handy for projects big and small, especially projects like
Wikibooks and Wikivoyage that need to make offline reading easy. (I have
actually used both tools the most on internal wikis; when I need to catch
up on big discussions, I've made many pdfs from meta that I can read
offline.)

It was a worthwhile experiment with Pediapress, and I'm glad they stuck
with it as long as they did!

best,
-- Phoebe
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Top Level Design, LLC greedy registrar!

[phoebe ayers]

> On 4 April 2014 09:37, VP Singh  wrote:
>
> > I want to ask wikimedia , about the .wiki tld. I am AN IT expert and I
> > was going to register science.wiiki (example) in epa ( early phase
> > access) which will be in may for my firm.
> >
> > I was surprised to find that it was already registered by Top Level
> Design.
> > Visit: http://whois.domaintools.com/science.wiki.
>


It is true that wiki is a generic term but it is slightly more complex than
that. Top Level Design are the ones who initially applied to ICANN for
.wiki to be created.
see http://icannwiki.com/index.php/Top_Level_Design
and
http://dotwiki.org/

I don't know exactly how it will work, but it seems that .wiki is not yet
available for individual application  -- that starts in May:
http://nic.wiki/sunrise-opens-corporate-wiki-strategies/

Incidentally, Top Level Design is run by Ray King, who has been a long-time
part of the wiki scene in Portland. In addition to running domain-related
businesses, he genuinely loves wikis :) He is, however, totally
unaffiliated with Wikimedia.

-- Phoebe


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Re: [Wikitech-l] Officially supported MediaWiki hosting service?

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 11:11 AM, Brion Vibber  wrote:

> Question for the group:
>
> Would an officially supported general-purpose MediaWiki hosting service be
> useful to people who would like to run wikis, but don't have the time,
> expertise, or resources to maintain their own installation?
>

I have needed such a thing for wikis for small non-profits/library
associations that I've been involved with, where I didn't want to host it
myself (because I didn't want to take personal responsibility for the site
of an organization that I might not stay involved with, and because I don't
really have the chops to deal with security and spam issues); but also did
not have a good hosting option with a larger organization or library, which
I find are often not very familiar with mediawiki (e.g. I've been trying to
get our library systems dept. to install some basic extensions for our
internal mediawiki for a couple years now).

There's not a lot of money in that particular use case, unfortunately, but
I imagine I'm not alone in that need either.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Announcement: C. Scott Ananian joins Wikimedia as Senior Features Engineer

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 3:24 PM, Terry Chay  wrote:

>
> Scott lives and works in Cambridge, MA[5]. He is a square dancer[6] and
> theatrical lighting designer. I have it on good word that he’s a demon on
> MIT Mystery Hunt [7]—not sure if he’s on the same team as our Board Members
> or not [8], but if not…


Welcome, Scott! And yes, Team Codex features WMF board members (2.5*) and
advisory board members (2)... innumerable editors... and now features
engineers... things are looking up for hunt/world domination!

-- phoebe

* I'm the .5. I am not very good at the mystery hunt.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Not much usage of the Visual Editor?

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 1:01 PM, Steven Walling wrote:

> On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 12:29 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
>
> > Well, that's disconcerting - is this actually all the edits with the
> > Visual Editor?
> >
> >
> >
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&tagfilter=visualeditor
> >
> > I'll have to make a point of hammering on it more ;-)
> >
>
> Yes the RecentChanges tag should be comprehensive.
>
> I think part of this is due to the "opt in" nature of the tool, and the
> rest is due to some well-known limitations. It doesn't yet handle
> templates, images, or references very well, and it's pretty slow on English
> Wikipedia still. I think the VisualEditor and Parsoid team are aware of all
> these, and have work in progress or on the near-term roadmap.
>

Yeah, I expect the overlap between "people who follow wikimedia news enough
to know they can opt-in" and "people who do fairly complex formatting work"
is pretty high. E.G. I have it installed, but rarely use it because most of
my on-wiki work is fixing references, which the VE can't cope with yet (or,
it's simply faster for me to do it by hand, as I can write markup in my
sleep).

Would it be helpful for the dev team to have more people using it on a
regular basis?
-- phoebe

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Deployment highlights - week of April 8th

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 12:03 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:

>
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 10:59 AM, Risker  wrote:
>
>> On 8 April 2013 12:51, Brad Jorsch  wrote:
>>
>> > On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 12:16 PM, Risker  wrote:
>> > >
>> > > I do not think it is particularly obvious outside of our project the
>> way
>> > > that Wikidata is being "weaponized" as the reason for attempting to
>> force
>> > > changes in local consensus about infoboxes (their existence and
>> content)
>> > > with respect to specific article categories or even individual
>> articles.
>> >
>> > It's not obvious within the project either, at least for someone like
>> > me who hasn't been following the endless arguments over whether some
>> > WikiProject should be able to decide not to use infoboxes on "their"
>> > articles and whether they're ganging up to prevent any local consensus
>> > to use infoboxes on "their" articles, etc, etc, etc.
>> >
>> > Personally, I don't consider that people making spurious arguments
>> > based on the existence of wikidata is a problem with the planned
>> > wikidata phase 2 deployment.
>> >
>>
>>
>> Why do you think those arguments are spurious?  Just because you don't
>> agree with them doesn't make them spurious.  Those articles belong a lot
>> more to the editors of each of the Wikipedias than they do to Wikidata, or
>> Wikimedia, that's for certain.
>>
>
> Not agreeing with the arguments of some editors *also* doesn't mean the
> entire engineering and operators department is "doing it wrong", or that
> the Wikidata project (which is not developed by WMF, incidentally, and is
> having its own interesting discussions *among its own community* as we
> speak) somehow is not capable of also debating these questions.
>
> I do not agree with your arguments, Risker. I think Wikidata is great and
> I am happy it has been deployed (or will be soon). I think it will enable
> lots and lots of super cool things in the years to come, and having over
> the years lived through the deployments of commons, categories, new skins
> and who knows what else I am also confident, along with Denny, that we will
> figure it out in the wild as we go.
>
> That viewpoint doesn't make me a bad Wikipedian, and it doesn't mean I'm
> not willing to hear you and others who disagree out (and I'm perfectly
> willing to learn about the infobox debates, which are actually new to me --
> somehow in 10 years of editing I've managed to avoid this hotbed of
> disagreement). But do please bear in mind that in your messages you are
> telling *the entire* technical list, including all the paid development
> staff and the longtime technical volunteers, which includes pretty much
> everyone who has written MediaWiki over the years, that they don't know how
> wiki development works. In my opinion that's pretty patronizing, and is not
> helping your argument -- which, as far as I can tell, is that Wikidata
> phase II shouldn't be enabled on en:wp except after a community-wide RFC,
> correct? As far as that goes, since you are so strongly arguing for the
> autonomy of en:wp, I think the ball's in the en:wp court; an en:wp editor
> should be the one to organize an RFC. If the results skew strongly to one
> side or another, the WMF has listened to such things in the past.
> Personally I don't see the need for an RFC at this point in time, but I
> certainly don't begrudge anyone else the right to organize one, and I will
> happily vote accordingly.
>
> -- phoebe
>
> And just to add to this, it looks like the best place to propose such an
RFC, or to discuss Wikidata on the English Wikipedia, is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Wikidata

-- phoebe
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Deployment highlights - week of April 8th

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 10:59 AM, Risker  wrote:

> On 8 April 2013 12:51, Brad Jorsch  wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 12:16 PM, Risker  wrote:
> > >
> > > I do not think it is particularly obvious outside of our project the
> way
> > > that Wikidata is being "weaponized" as the reason for attempting to
> force
> > > changes in local consensus about infoboxes (their existence and
> content)
> > > with respect to specific article categories or even individual
> articles.
> >
> > It's not obvious within the project either, at least for someone like
> > me who hasn't been following the endless arguments over whether some
> > WikiProject should be able to decide not to use infoboxes on "their"
> > articles and whether they're ganging up to prevent any local consensus
> > to use infoboxes on "their" articles, etc, etc, etc.
> >
> > Personally, I don't consider that people making spurious arguments
> > based on the existence of wikidata is a problem with the planned
> > wikidata phase 2 deployment.
> >
>
>
> Why do you think those arguments are spurious?  Just because you don't
> agree with them doesn't make them spurious.  Those articles belong a lot
> more to the editors of each of the Wikipedias than they do to Wikidata, or
> Wikimedia, that's for certain.
>

Not agreeing with the arguments of some editors *also* doesn't mean the
entire engineering and operators department is "doing it wrong", or that
the Wikidata project (which is not developed by WMF, incidentally, and is
having its own interesting discussions *among its own community* as we
speak) somehow is not capable of also debating these questions.

I do not agree with your arguments, Risker. I think Wikidata is great and I
am happy it has been deployed (or will be soon). I think it will enable
lots and lots of super cool things in the years to come, and having over
the years lived through the deployments of commons, categories, new skins
and who knows what else I am also confident, along with Denny, that we will
figure it out in the wild as we go.

That viewpoint doesn't make me a bad Wikipedian, and it doesn't mean I'm
not willing to hear you and others who disagree out (and I'm perfectly
willing to learn about the infobox debates, which are actually new to me --
somehow in 10 years of editing I've managed to avoid this hotbed of
disagreement). But do please bear in mind that in your messages you are
telling *the entire* technical list, including all the paid development
staff and the longtime technical volunteers, which includes pretty much
everyone who has written MediaWiki over the years, that they don't know how
wiki development works. In my opinion that's pretty patronizing, and is not
helping your argument -- which, as far as I can tell, is that Wikidata
phase II shouldn't be enabled on en:wp except after a community-wide RFC,
correct? As far as that goes, since you are so strongly arguing for the
autonomy of en:wp, I think the ball's in the en:wp court; an en:wp editor
should be the one to organize an RFC. If the results skew strongly to one
side or another, the WMF has listened to such things in the past.
Personally I don't see the need for an RFC at this point in time, but I
certainly don't begrudge anyone else the right to organize one, and I will
happily vote accordingly.

-- phoebe


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On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 10:59 AM, Risker  wrote:

> On 8 April 2013 12:51, Brad Jorsch  wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 12:16 PM, Risker  wrote:
> > >
> > > I do not think it is particularly obvious outside of our project the
> way
> > > that Wikidata is being "weaponized" as the reason for attempting to
> force
> > > changes in local consensus about infoboxes (their existence and
> content)
> > > with respect to specific article categories or even individual
> articles.
> >
> > It's not obvious within the project either, at least for someone like
> > me who hasn't been following the endless arguments over whether some
> > WikiProject should be able to decide not to use infoboxes on "their"
> > articles and whether they're ganging up to prevent any local consensus
> > to use infoboxes on "their" articles, etc, etc, etc.
> >
> > Personally, I don't consider that people making spurious arguments
> > based on the existence of wikidata is a problem with the planned
> > wikidata phase 2 deployment.
> >
>
>
> Why do you think those arguments are spurious?  Just because you don't
> agree with them doesn't make them spurious.  Those articles belong a lot
> more to the editors of each of the Wikipedias than they do to Wikidata, or
> Wikimedia, that's for certain.
>
> It's disturbing that even at the same time as the engineering and
> operations departments are working so hard to professionalize their work,
> to bring themselves up to industry standards, to properly staff themselves
> with people who understand not just the technical side, but also the
> content side - tha

Re: [Wikitech-l] Deployment highlights - week of April 8th

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 6:33 PM, Risker  wrote:

> On 5 April 2013 19:07, Lydia Pintscher 
> wrote:
>
> > On Sat, Apr 6, 2013 at 1:00 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:
> > > Sorry, I don't know what this means. I thought Wikidata was already
> > > deployed to the English Wikipedia (and possibly other projects as
> well).
> >
> > I've posted an announcement with more details on the technical village
> > pump at
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Wikidata_phase_2_is_coming_soon
> > Let me know if anything is still unclear so I can clarify.
> >
> >
> > Cheers
> > Lydia
> >
> >
>
> Lydia, could you please point me to the discussion on *English Wikipedia*
> where the community indicated an interest in deploying this software?
> Infoboxes and sourcing to another website completely outside the control of
> English Wikipedia is a rather big issue, and I would expect to see a
> Request for Comment with at least 200-300 participants.
>
> Risker/Anne
>

In my opinion, as a casual Wikidata editor and not-so-casual Wikipedia
editor, I think the Commons analogy continues to hold up pretty well.
Commons exists. We can use it, as a project. We don't *have* to (and indeed
don't always, on en:wp, where fair use images are accepted). As I
understand it, the same is true with Wikidata -- it will be around, if and
when it seems appropriate to use. Of course Commons and Wikidata will both
be more useful and more awesome the more projects do use them. But my very
non-technical understanding of this deployment is that basically we made
the projects able to see that Wikidata exists (correct me if I'm wrong!)

Now as far as I can tell there's a whole lot of work yet to do in order to
figure out how exactly one might link to data or produce an infobox and
what that might look like -- deployment does not seem to mean ready for
prime-time, yet -- and of course the data-building itself is just barely
getting started. Best practices for infoboxes does seem like a project-wide
RFC to me. But hopefully, when we get to that point, wikidata will be a
useful option.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Missing project ideas for GSOC

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 5:36 AM, Guillaume Paumier
 wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 12:43 AM, Quim Gil  wrote:
>>
>> Many of the ideas listed there are too generic ("Write an extension"),
>> improvements of existing features ("Improve Extension:CSS")
>
> This may sound naive, but why are "improvements of existing features"
> discarded? My thinking was that, if the student didn't have to start
> from scratch, they would have more time to polish their work and make
> it fit with our strict standards, hence making it more likely for
> their work to be merged and deployed.

I have some ideas for existing features and extensions that could use
a good summer's work, and I just added one of them to the page,
despite not having any ability to personally mentor -- I assumed if
there was interest it could get picked up by someone. I hope this is
ok!

-- phoebe

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Announcement: Adam Wight joins Wikimedia as Fundraising Engineer

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 10:02 AM, Terry Chay  wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
>        It’s with great pleasure that I’m announcing that Adam Wight has 
> joined the Wikimedia Foundation as a Fundraising Engineer.
>
>        Before joining us, Adam was customizing open-source web services for 
> non-profits at Giant Rabbit. This makes him the first Fundraising engineer to 
> be familiar with CiviCRM **before** joining the team — in fact, he has 
> contributed event registration workflow and other minor changes back to the 
> project. :-) He also did work on the Atako Project (the first open-source 
> Google Gadget directory), “Halfway Library” to share and review books, and 
> “Prokaryote” a evolution/behavior patterns simulator used in university and 
> high school classrooms. If you ever snuck into the Unix lab to get their 
> workstations running SETI@home, you probably used his code (he wrote the 
> X-windows implementation). He has recently contributed an "Offline" extension 
> for Mediawiki, and he is helping with a distributed wiki project "OneCommons".

Welcome Adam! All very cool projects :)


>        On the side, he’s involved with a number of education and agricultural 
> projects, including being the programmer at the Multinational Exchange for 
> Sustainable Agriculture and is a cofounder and worker at The Local food coop 
> at UC Berkeley. He also is obsessed with blacksmithing (no, this is not a new 
> coding process — I mean that he’s a blacksmith and has been a carpenter and 
> housepainter).

We should start having local foodie/Wikipedian dinners! Edit this eggplant?

-- phoebe


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Re: [Wikitech-l] The bugtracker problem, again

[phoebe ayers]

On Sun, May 13, 2012 at 9:26 AM, Platonides  wrote:
> On 12/05/12 18:17, David Gerard wrote:
>> Discussion on Oliver Keyes' blog:
>>
>>     http://quominus.org/archives/714
>>
>> He's coming from the perspective of liaison with newbies. Read the comments.
>
> I have to say it's the first time I met him.
>
> I'll try to summarise his points below with my comments:
>
> 1a) The steps are not clear.
>
> Solution: Make the "Enter a new bug report" link of
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ much bigger.
>
> The intermediate page asking you to login is not "cool", but I think
> that's a clear enough path.
>
>
> 1b) There's no indication that your login is your email.
>
> Granted. This can be confusing. Specially for the perspective of a
> mediawiki user.
> The only positive point might be that, if you have recently registered,
> you probably remember that your email is your login.
>
> The email sent by bugzilla does help, although it isn't explicit, either:
>> To use the wonders of Bugzilla, you can use the following:
>>
>>  E-mail address: platoni...@gmail.com
>>        Password: HPqd4NwIu
>
> Proposal: Add a message at the front page noting that you need a
> different login for bugzilla, that it is our email, and it'll be
> publicly visible.

+1. This is probably the biggest problem I have using bugzilla as an
occasional, non-technical user :)

If there's any way to tie the login to SUL that would be cool, but
just providing more explanatory messages would be helpful!

-- phoebe

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Patch submitted: authentication on Wikipedia via user_name OR user_email

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 4:24 AM, Nicolas Brouard  wrote:
>

>
> Thank you for your support. I just submitted a complete patch entitled "Can't 
> authenticate using my mother language username (UNICODE) when I only have (a 
> public) access to Wikipedia with an ASCII (english) keyboard" in about 20 
> languages on
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34590
>
> People supporting this idea, please for it.

Cool!

See also: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28085, a bug
I submitted ages ago based on feedback I've gotten talking to users
who only occasionally edited. The idea is that that remembering a
username can be a barrier to casual editing (a few tries to remember a
username that you don't use much and you might just give up) -- and
being able to log in with an email address might help make things
smoother.

-- phoebe

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[Wikitech-l] book about wikitude

[phoebe ayers]

Incidental: a book about developing for Wikitude was recently
published: "Professional Augmented Reality Browsers for Smartphones:
Programming for junaio, Layar and Wikitude"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1119992818/

I know nothing about it other than the title :)
phoebe

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Re: [Wikitech-l] sep11.wikipedia.org

[phoebe ayers]

2011/9/11 Kirill Krasnov :
> Hi, John.
>
> You wrote Sunday, September 11, 2011, 8:38:07 PM:
>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks
>
>> 2011/9/11 Краснов Кирилл 
>
>>> Sorry, what is sep11.wikipedia.org? Is it project Wikipedia Org?
>>> Why not domain jan01.wikipedia.org, mar08.wikipedia.org, etc?
>
> Why not http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_hostage_crisis ?
>
> Sorry for my badly english. I translate with google next text:
>
> I honor the memory of all victims of this tragic day. I express my
> condolences to all relatives and friends who lost loved ones. But
> Wikipedia is an international project, which should equally take into
> account all the rights and freedoms of people around the world.
> What a tragedy of September 11 terrorist attack other notable terrorist
> attacks? Why for that date, there is a subdomain Wikipedia, and for
> other important dates, no? Why not make a date on every terrorist
> attack? For example, in Norway 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks ?
>
>
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Kirill
> http://www.kraeg.ru/
>

Kirill,

The Sept. 11 wiki is closed now. But it was set up very early in
Wikipedia's history, before we had really figured out how huge and
international Wikipedia would be (and before we started using the
"Wikimedia" name). First, as Finne says, there were lots of entries
created on the English Wikipedia that weren't strictly "encyclopedic",
so a separate subdomain was created for them. Then, a few years later
after discussion about whether such a project was really appropriate
for Wikimedia, the wiki was closed, and later the content was moved
over to the Internet Archive and elsewhere. We kept the link as a
redirect simply for historical preservation purposes :) You can read
more on meta: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Sep11wiki

As a historical note, I believe the 9/11 attacks were one of the first
times that the Wikipedia community really responded by writing
articles in real-time, a phenomena that has become one of our
extraordinary hallmarks as a project in the last ten years.

best,
-- phoebe

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Re: [Wikitech-l] [Foundation-l] Tragedy: videos and slides from presentations Wikimanias (lately 2011 in Haifa)

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 5:30 AM, Andrea Zanni  wrote:
> Well, it seems that every year we choose locations that for one reason or
> the other are likely not to be accessible to some groups or nationality (I
> hear complaints every year about these issues)(no judgements, just a fact).
> So I agree that this uploading issue should be faced once for all,
> setting up a workflow with WMF technicians that would allow videos and
> slides to be online in reasonable time.
>
> Aubrey
>

Yes!  if we can set up a system for media upload *before* the next
conference to try and address this issue, which does come up every
year, that would be fantastic.

Copying wikitech :) The problem: how and where should we annually
upload video and slides from ~100 conference presentations, keeping
them freely & easily accessible and the metadata (such as links to
papers, submission pages, wikipages of notes, etc) intact?

-- phoebe

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Wikimedia projects + Open Library books?

[phoebe ayers]

Funny you should ask :) I follow a list called CODE4LIB (library
hackers, includes many open library people) and this very subject just
came up: (see "adding VIAF links to Wikipedia"):
https://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind1106&L=CODE4LIB
https://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind1105&L=CODE4LIB

There is also an open library bot on en:wp:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/OpenlibraryBot

That's all I know about specifically, but there is a big overlap
between our communities, and collaboration could definitely be
fruitful.
-- phoebe

On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 2:28 PM, Steven Walling  wrote:
> So the Open Library, a project by the Internet Archive that has a structured
> wiki page for every book and which also lends books online, has announced
> they just got new "Read" API.[1, 2] The announcement describes its as:
>
> "The idea is, you can hit the Read API with an identifier or a series of
> identifiers or an array of identifiers, and it will tell whether there is a
> readable or borrowable version available through Open Library. As you render
> a page in your own bookish website, you can paint links into Open Library
> based on the response."
>
> I wonder if there is some use case for this in Wikipedia or other projects?
> Perhaps linking references or book articles to Open Library copies? Letting
> Wikimedians know when they can borrow reference works for free online? I
> figure that identifiers like ISBNs are all over the place in Wikimedia
> content.
>
> Not sure, but it's interesting to think about. Their open source online book
> reader is also pretty awesome and isn't Flash based.
>
> Steven
>
> 1. http://blog.openlibrary.org/2011/06/03/announcing-a-new-read-api/
> 2. http://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/api/read
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Wikimedia engineering May 2011 report

[phoebe ayers]

I'm always impressed by this report, and by the volume of activity
going on -- nice work, all. You're setting a really nice standard with
the engineering reports for readable,
detailed-but-layperson-accessible, interesting monthly documentation
:)

cheers,
phoebe


On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 7:48 AM, Guillaume Paumier
 wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The report of Wikimedia engineering activities for May 2011 is out:
> http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/06/03/wikimedia-engineering-may-2011-report/
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2011/May
>
> --
> Guillaume Paumier
>
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[Wikitech-l] supporting small languages (was WMF 2015 strategic plan and multilingualism)

[phoebe ayers]

(changing the thread title)

On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 2:06 PM, Gerard Meijssen
 wrote:

> I have proposed to spend 100,000,- Euro and this will make major
> improvements for the scripts, the fonts and the standards for the languages
> we have a Wikipedia for. This is given the current budget chicken feed.
> Thanks,
>      GerardM

This is not a comment on the amount of money but on the idea of
improvements to scripts/fonts/standards etc.

I understand there's been discussion about creating a list of problems
for representing various languages on the internet. For example, some
languages have problems being written online because they are not well
supported in Unicode, or some don't have free fonts, etc. etc.

These are problems for *any* website that wants to support that
particular language. There are also bugs related to how *we* support
particular languages in MediaWiki -- as far as I know these have
mainly been collected in Bugzilla.

So my questions are: 1) have there ever been any comprehensive lists
made of these language-related bugs (either within MediaWiki or in
general); and, 2) what needs to be done (technically) to support
small(er) languages?

(I know we, & in particular GerardM, have been discussing this for a
long time. But I'm curious what the current state of affairs is, and
if issues for small languages are collected together in one place).

best,
Phoebe

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Re: [Wikitech-l] How users without programming skills can help

[phoebe ayers]

On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 5:28 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:
> Mark A. Hershberger wrote:
>> Perhaps we could recruit some people from the he.wikipedia.org community
> to
>> take problems reported (via the localized interface?) and reproduce
> them or
>> act as a "translator" between developers and bug reporters?
>
> There is already some infrastructure for this kind of idea:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors
>
> I didn't know about this mailing list until a few days ago, but it's a start
> in building the bridge between MediaWiki development and (power-)users.
>
> MZMcBride

Fascinating! I didn't know this existed either. To answer Mark's
question, I'm interested in facilitating more user participation in
bug-collecting. Using Bugzilla confuses the heck out of me, but mostly
because I don't do it very often!

There are many good ideas in this list. I have one small idea re:
bugzilla -- is it possible to make browsing bugs more transparent
(like a link on the sidebar)? I only just discovered that it's
possible to look at bugs by category, component or keyword rather than
search, and for the hapless newbie who is nonetheless sometimes
interested in looking (at) bugs to see what's going on (like me) it
would help. First rule of taxonomies: everyone describes stuff
differently, so browse is useful :)

-- phoebe


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Re: [Wikitech-l] Roadmaps and getting and keeping devs

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 1:11 PM, Ryan Lane  wrote:
>> Have a bugathon where we label a lot of bugs as appropriate bugathon bugs
>> that need either:
>> a) test patch / update patch to recent svn version
>> a) confirmation / replication of new / unconfirmed bugs
>>
>> We can provide a simple ready to go Wiki installation for people to use for
>> bug triaging and that way we can re-energize developers and clean up some of
>> the backlog of bugs.
>>
>> Is this something that we should be doing?
>>
>
> This is something we do at hack-a-tons. I don't remember the number of
> bugs smashed at the last one, but it was a decent number.
>
> I believe the next hack-a-ton is in Berlin, soon. I'm not sure if they
> have this planned. It's apparently GLAM focused (which excludes devs
> like me), so I'd imagine not, unless the bugs targeted are GLAM
> related.
>
> - Ryan Lane

I'm curious: is there a way that non-technical people can help with
sprints like this? Documentation-building, maybe? Something else? I'm
interested in development sprints, bugathons etc that involve both
technical & non-technical people; I've been involved in a few and it's
pretty fun. But I don't know how many useful ways non-programmers &
non-developers can help.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Wikitech-l] [Foundation-l] Data Summit Streaming

[phoebe ayers]

Sweet! Thank you Jon.

-- phoebe

On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 9:36 AM, Jon Davis  wrote:
> Once again, I get the joys of bringing you all fun video streams!  Today's
> stream(s) comes from the Data Summit [1] at O'Reilly HQ.  Unlike my last set
> of feeds (WCWC11/WikiX), this one should be basically all presentations and
> hopefully a little more interesting (though we don't have a good pull for
> the projections, sorry). As usual, the stream only need VLC [2].
>
> The URL for the stream is:  http://transcode1.wikimedia.org:8080 - All you
> need to do is launch VLC > Media > Open Network Stream.
>
> I give you the standard "there is no warranty".  I'm going to (hopefully)
> add a second stream later in the day and I'll send out an update when that
> happens.  If you've got questions/comments - email me directly or message me
> on irc.freenode.net/#wikimedia (Username is in my signature)
>
> Thanks-
> -Jon
> [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_summit_2011
> [2] http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
>
> --
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> [[User:ShakataGaNai]] / KJ6FNQ
> http://snowulf.com/
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[Wikitech-l] IRC general meetings

[phoebe ayers]

Reminder that an open community meeting is proposed for this Saturday,
Feb. 5. on IRC: freednode#wikimedia

Please add your agenda items!
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetings

based on feedback I'd like to move the time down to 1800-1900 UTC
(that's 10 am PST).

Let me know if you can help moderate.
Looking forward to it,
Phoebe



On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 10:54 AM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Back in September we had an open community IRC meeting, where we
> introduced the new Trustees and talked about various issues. It was
> pretty successful and we discussed afterwards making such "community
> meetings" a regular event.
>
> I'd like to revive this idea :) I've made a proposal for having
> community meetings on the first Saturday of the month:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetings
>
> Which would make the first upcoming meeting on February 5.
>
> I proposed 17:00UTC as a time, but please discuss good days/times on
> the talk page if you are interested in attending; we'll need to rotate
> times.
>
> I envision this as not really a Q&A session like the staff office
> hours, but rather as a chance for community members to get together
> and talk about important issues in a structured way. To that end,
> please add your proposed agenda items to the wiki. It would also be
> great to have some volunteers to take notes/moderate.
>
> Of course this is just an experiment -- but there seemed to be a lot
> of interest in having such meetings, so I'd like to try it out. Let me
> know what you think and if you'd be interested.
>
> best,
> Phoebe
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] OT: Sunday in San Francisco

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 10:49 AM, Chad  wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 1:41 PM, Roan Kattouw  wrote:
>>>
>> Have you seen http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Visiting_San_Francisco ?
>>
>
> I think that might have been copied from elsewhere for a specific
> event. The part
> near the end about having breakfast and lunch provided? Awesome, but I don't
> think they're giving everyone who comes to SF free food ;-)
>
> -Chad

If only!

Would it be worth giving this page a quick hack to make it a general
visitors guide / pointer to good visitors guides? Considering how many
visitors the WMF office gets, it would probably be a good idea :)

-- phoebe

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Re: [Wikitech-l] MATH markup question

[phoebe ayers]

On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 7:44 AM, Platonides  wrote:
> Aryeh Gregor wrote:
>> When I load their homepage, the formulas don't appear for about two
>> seconds of 100% CPU usage, on Firefox 4b9.  And that's for two small
>> formulas.  I'm not impressed.  IMO, the correct way forward is to work
>> on native MathML support -- Gecko and WebKit both support it these
>> days, and Opera somewhat does too.  I'm sure the support is a bit
>> spotty, but if Wikipedia used it (even as an off-by-default option)
>> that would surely drive a lot of progress.  These days (with the
>> deployment of HTML5 parsers) it can be embedded directly into HTML,
>> it's not limited to XML.
>
> Looking at http://www.mathjax.org/demos/tex-samples/ it may indeed take
> a couple of seconds to convert from TeX to the graphical view, but
> without 100% CPU usage or looking "blocked". I'm not using 49b but
> 3.6.12, though. I see a similar result in chromium.
> A disadvantage is that the showing the formula needs to reposition the
> content, instead of reserving the space in advance.

Delurking to say that while I don't know if it's useful for us at all,
Mathjax is getting lots of buzz in other settings (like publishing and
the science library world); and also I just today came across this
http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html

It's not directly applicable but it is a fun usability idea for
turning symbols into LaTeX (and by extension I can imagine symbols to
markup, letters to unicode, etc.)

-- phoebe

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Re: [Wikitech-l] [Foundation-l] Geonotice improvements that could make Wikinews great (among other benefits)

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 9:56 AM, Sage Ross wrote:
> One of the great frustrations of Wikinews for me is that it doesn't
> have a system for identifying and pointing users toward opportunities
> to get out into the offline world and do original reporting.  A
> fine-grained cross-project opt-in geonotice system could be a
> solution.
>
> Here's how I imagine it working: there is a new opt-in geonotice (in
> addition to the current one that reaches everyone in the specified
> geography).  For the opt-in geonotice (which would hopefully be able
> to reach across projects, since many causal Wikinewsies visit that
> site only rarely) any trusted user could add new items to let nearby
> people know about reporting or photography opportunities.  For these
> opt-in notices, we would not need to lock down the ability to add
> items like we do for the current geonotice system (it's a fully
> protected page), since people who opt-in will expect a bit a noise.

I think this would be awesome to try out! Geonotices have proved to be
wonderful for helping out with local meetups; I can even imagine
having two filters, opt-into notifications for local events and
opt-into notifications for wikinews stuff. Both pages to set the
notifications could be unprotected, and we could just see how it went.

That is all :)
phoebe

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Re: [Wikitech-l] research-oriented toolserver?

[phoebe ayers]

Thanks for the responses, all.

Daniel and Bilal: the notes about the possible servers at Syracuse and
Concordia are very interesting; it sounds like the researchers
interested in such things should team up.

Daniel: I am not sure what type of data is needed -- this is not my
project (I'm only the messenger!) but I'll pass along your message and
send you private details (and encourage the researcher to reply
himself).

River: Well, you say that part of the issue with the toolserver is
money and time... and this person that I've been talking to is
offering to throw money and time at the problem. So, what can they
constructively do?

All: Like I said, I am unclear on the technical issues involved, but
as for why a separate "research toolserver" might be useful... :
I see a difference in the type of information a researcher might want
to pull (public data, large sets of related page information,
full-text mining, ??) and the types of tools that the current
toolserver mainly supports (editcount tools, catscan, etc). I also see
a difference in how the two groups might be authenticated -- there's a
difference between being a trusted Wikipedian or trusted Wikimedia
developer and being a trusted technically-competent researcher (for
instance, I recognized the affiliation of the person who was trying to
apply, because I've read their research papers; but if you were going
on wikimedia status alone, they don't have any).

-- Phoebe

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[Wikitech-l] research-oriented toolserver?

[phoebe ayers]

Hi all,
I'm not sure exactly where to raise this, so am asking here.

A researcher I have been in touch with has proposed starting a 2nd,
research-oriented Wikimedia toolserver. He thinks his lab can pay for
the hardware and would be willing to maintain it, if they could get
help setting it up. He got this idea after a member of his research
group tried (unsuccessfully so far -- no response) to get an account
on the current toolserver; their Wikipedia-related research has been
put on hold for a few months because of the delay. (It seems like
there is a big backlog of account requests right now and only one
person working on them?)  This research group has done some
interesting Wikipedia research to date and I expect they could do more
with access to the right data.

Personally, I think a dedicated toolserver is a great idea for the
research community, but I know very little about the technical issues
involved and/or whether this has been proposed before. Please comment,
and I can pass on replies and put the researcher in touch with the
tech team if it seems like a good idea.

-- user: "first post on wikitech" phoebe

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[Wikitech-l] WikiSym 2009 in Orlando: Call for Papers - deadline March 27

[phoebe ayers]

Hello all,

A reminder that WikiSym 2009 will be in Orlando, Florida, from October
25-27. The deadline for submitting papers, workshops and panel
proposals is March 27; April 24th is the deadline for posters,
demonstrations and WikiFest (practical experience) proposals.
Topics of interest include:
*  social software for collaboration and work group processes
* wiki user experiences, usability, and discourse analysis
* reputation systems, quality assurance processes
* scalability---social and technical
* wiki technologies and implementations
* translation and multilingual wiki content
* educational applications
* wiki for non-textual media (images, video, audio)
* content dynamics and wiki evolution
* wiki journalism
* wiki archiving and versioning
* wiki administration: dealing with abuse and resolving conflict
* wiki and the semantic web, knowledge management, tacit knowledge
* wiki for small audiences (departmental and family wikis)
* legal issues (copyright, licensing)
* visualization of wiki structure
* wiki fiction

For more information, see the Call for Papers:
http://www.wikisym.org/ws2009/tiki-index.php?page=Call+for+Papers

WikiSym is an annual conference devoted to research into all aspects
of wikis, including wiki communities, wiki software and technology,
and using wikis in education and organizations. Research papers about
the Wikimedia projects are welcome! Papers are peer reviewed and
archived in the ACM digital library (see past proceedings:
http://portal.acm.org/toc.cfm?id=SERIES11299&coll=ACM&dl=ACM&type=series&idx=SERIES11299&part=series&WantType=Proceedings&title=ISW

The conference is colocated with OOPSLA 2009. For more, see:
http://www.wikisym.org/ws2009/

-- Phoebe Ayers (2009 Wikimedia Liason)

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