[Foundation-l] EN Wikizine - Year: 2011 Week: 4 Number: 123
** ____ _ __ _ / / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___ \ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ /| | | |/ /| | | | | __/ \/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___| .org Year: 2011 Week: 4 Number: 123 ** When you thought you were relieved of it... // === 2010 === [News of the Wiki: year 2010] - Wikizine totally failed at informing you about Wikimedia news last year. This was regrettable but unavoidable due the lack of active staff. Fortunately, The Signpost looks better than ever and provides an excellent overview about the main topics of the past year in the Wikimedia world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-01-03/2010_in_review === Technical news === [Virginia Data Center] - the WMF has rented space in a data center in Virginia, USA. Installation of the hardware has been scheduled for February 2011. This location will soon become the main WMF data center. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WMF_Projects/Data_Center_Virginia [Article feedback] - a function to give readers the option of rating the quality of an article has been activated on a few pages of the English Wikipedia. The test showed that anonymous users give a much higher score than registered users. It started in September 2010 and is ongoing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion -- an article with the feedback function enabled http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Public_Policy_Pilot_Phase_2 [WMF Engineering Update] - an extensive overview of technical news, events and more. http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2011/01/wmf-engineering-update/#more-1268 === Request for help === [Keep your news clippings] - Do you see an article about Wikipedia in a newspaper or other printed media? Keep it. Contact your local chapter (if it exists) to ask if they can keep it safe for your local community. When there is no chapter, just keep it yourself -- especially if you are from a small language Wikipedia. Every article that appears in print is something to collect. === Foundation === [Founder] - A video message from Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, to the world http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WalesCalltoAction.ogv === Agenda === [StrataConf 2011] - February 1-3, 2011, Santa Clara, California ? Many Wikimedians will be attending the O'Reilly conference, and there will be a an informal meetup with foundation staff member Erik Zachte on Wikimedia Data. http://strataconf.com/strata2011 [FOSDEM] - February 5-6, Brussels, Belgium ? Tomasz Finc, Arthur Richards, and Roan Kattouw will be at FOSDEM 2011 this year. They will be speaking about data collection at Wikimedia. http://www.fosdem.org/2011/ === Community === [Celebrations] - A collection of photos from many Wikipedia 10 community events are available on the Ten Wikipedia. All of these photos, especially the international birthday cakes, are very nice and worth a look. Online you could see that there was something special at the English Wikipedia which used the special Wiki10 logo, and at the Dutch Wikipedia which used the old Wikipedia logo for one day. http://ten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_gallery#Wikipedia_10_Cakes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-01-17/News_and_notes -- report about Wiki10 by the Signpost === Media === [10 years] - There has been a huge amount of media coverage. A very long - and totaly incomplete - list of links to articles can be found at the Ten Wikipedia. There has been also radio and television interviews, not only with WMF key figures but also with regular users. http://ten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage [A few links] - A very small selection of recent articles about the 10th anniversary of Wikipedia. For more, see above. http://www.wired.co.uk/topics/wikipedia-week http://chronicle.com/article/Wikipedia-Comes-of-Age/125899/ http://www.slate.com/id/2281294/ === Other news === [Translating EN WP] - A common misconception is that the many language editions of Wikipedia are actually translations of the English Wikipedia. In the case of Thai, however, this is correct. Asia Online created a complete translation of EN Wikipedia to the Thai language. This was done through advanced machine translation and a staff of 10 proofreaders. http://www.globalwatchtower.com/2011/01/13/asia-online-thai-wikipedia/ === Did you know ... === ... there are two Spanish language Wikipedias? The ES Wikipedia forked to an independent project in the early days of Wikipedia: Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español. At first the new project was very successful, but ES Wikipedia overtook the fork in 2004. A couple of days ago the Spanish language Wikipedia passed the 700,000 article mark and remains the 7th largest Wikipedia. The fork is still bravely
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
I basically agree that the big communities are now too big to take major course changing community decisions. I do not follow so closely what is going on in en.wp, however, the never-ending-story of flagged revisions could be a good example. Another never-ending-story on Global arbcom / Wikicouncil / whatever level it got stuck now is another one. I remember still how in the middle of tough but slowly progressing discussion on global admins on Meta within a day several hundred en.wp users apparently unhappy with the fact that somebody may be rolling back their edits came, voted no, and the proposal was dead. Most of them never participated in the discussion and have never been seen on meta. Having said that, I must add that I am pessimistic. I believe that the Board / Foundation will not take any steps until it is obvious to everybody that there major problems (for instance, a major fork or smth). This is the reason I think Amir's proposal does not have a chance. It may be still implemented on smaller wikis (say below 500K articles) since the communities may decide to implement it, but currently not on the biggest projects. Cheers Yaroslav On Tue, 18 Jan 2011 19:02:54 -0500, Stephanie Daugherty sdaughe...@gmail.com wrote: I personally am not convinced here that we at at the point yet where we have this level of community brokenness, but we are getting very close if we aren't there already. The consensus process used at the individual project level oftentimes breaks down entirely on very contentious issues with as little as a dozen participants in a discussion. Governance by consensus is an important part of our heritage and future, but as currently implemented, it holds us a prisoner of our own inertia in some key areas. This is a major threat to the future of several large WMF projects, and one that has been getting some media attention, particularly by naysayers. I honestly don't think these issues alone can cause us to fail, but I do believe that if ignored long enough, they will create a set of conditions that will allow it to happen. Once conditions become intolerable to the most dedicated members of a community, the possibility of a mainstream fork - a fork that takes the bulk of the community with it - begins to become a viable prospect. The fallout, obviously, would be enormous. There are a few readily apparent ways that I see that we can reach such a point. - The projects become ungovernable, and the resulting chaos results in a political (in a wikipolitics sense) fork in order to establish a more viable structure. (Likely, and to some degree in motion already) - The foundation itself goes rogue, and tries to impose conditions unacceptable to it's member communities. (Unlikely, but not inconceivable.) - The foundation proves too unresponsive for the technical needs of the communities it serves. (Likely, already happening to some degree.) - The foundation becomes insolvent. (Possible at some point if fundraising efforts fail.) Our communities and the foundation itself need to look at these as serious threats from within to our mission, and decide accordingly how we will deal with them. If we ignore them, and keep our head in the sand, one or more of them may eventually happen, and the outcome won't be pretty. -Steph ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
On 19/01/2011 06:04, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote: I remember still how in the middle of tough but slowly progressing discussion on global admins on Meta within a day several hundred en.wp users apparently unhappy with the fact that somebody may be rolling back their edits came, voted no, and the proposal was dead. Most of them never participated in the discussion and have never been seen on meta. Have you a link? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
I do not have it ready, and I would need to search. May be somebody else has it ready. Some details may slightly differ from what I said, since it was smth like couple of years ago. Cheers Yaroslav On Wed, 19 Jan 2011 06:10:13 -0300, Noein prono...@gmail.com wrote: On 19/01/2011 06:04, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote: Have you a link? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
Now, I found it. Indeed, I exaggerated (not several hundreds, just a hundred, and not overnight, but over two or three days, but the idea is still the same) The poll: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum/Archives/2008-07#Global_sysops_.28poll.29_.28closed.29 The proposal: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_sysops/2008_proposal The proposal talk page (where the main discussion was taking place): http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Global_sysops/2008_proposal Cheers Yaroslav Have you a link? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] propuesta de proyectos
Hola: soy candidata al doctorado en Sociedad del Conocimiento y la informaciòn de la Universidad Oberta de Catalunya, mi tesis se llama wikis para la gestión del conocimiento en la universidad. Trabajo en la Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia como Directora Nacional de Planeación. La Universidad tiene 20 sedes en el país y 5 estudiantes por nuestra estructura organizativa desde hace varios años hemos recurrido a las comunidades virtuales para movilizar los temas estratégicos del plan de desarrollo, ahora con el desarrollo de la web 2.0 considero que existen enormes potenciales para seguir cualificando nuestra gestión con su uso, concretamente con los wikis construidos de manera colaborativa en las comunidades virtuales existentes. Avanzando en esa linea tenemos un proyecto piloto Wikis en las comunidades virtuales para la gestiòn del conocimiento en Economìa Social con el propósito de generar un modelo que integre a los casi cien investigadores que están trabajando sobre el tema. Cómo podría la fundación apoyar nuestros proyectos? Colombia Pérez Muñoz Dirección Nacional de Planeación Integración por el Desarrollo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] propuesta de proyectos
2011/1/19 Colombia Pérez Muñoz colombia.pe...@ucc.edu.co: Hola: soy candidata al doctorado en Sociedad del Conocimiento y la informaciòn de la Universidad Oberta de Catalunya, mi tesis se llama wikis para la gestión del conocimiento en la universidad. Trabajo en la Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia como Directora Nacional de Planeación. La Universidad tiene 20 sedes en el país y 5 estudiantes por nuestra estructura organizativa desde hace varios años hemos recurrido a las comunidades virtuales para movilizar los temas estratégicos del plan de desarrollo, ahora con el desarrollo de la web 2.0 considero que existen enormes potenciales para seguir cualificando nuestra gestión con su uso, concretamente con los wikis construidos de manera colaborativa en las comunidades virtuales existentes. Avanzando en esa linea tenemos un proyecto piloto Wikis en las comunidades virtuales para la gestiòn del conocimiento en Economìa Social con el propósito de generar un modelo que integre a los casi cien investigadores que están trabajando sobre el tema. Cómo podría la fundación apoyar nuestros proyectos? Don't ask how the foundation could help your projects, ask how your projects can help the foundation. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] propuesta de proyectos
Ok, teniendo en cuenta el mensaje anteriorcómo pueden nuestros proyectos de wikis para la gestión del conocimiento aportar a la funcación? Queremos articularnos a los desarrollos que sean pertinentes para seguir fortaleciendo el uso de estas herramientas estratégicas en la sociedad del conocimiento. Colombia Pérez Muñoz Dirección Nacional de Planeación Integración por el Desarrollo De: foundation-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [foundation-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] En nombre de Pedro Sanchez [pdsanc...@gmail.com] Enviado el: miércoles, 19 de enero de 2011 04:35 p.m. Para: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Asunto: Re: [Foundation-l] propuesta de proyectos 2011/1/19 Colombia Pérez Muñoz colombia.pe...@ucc.edu.co: Hola: soy candidata al doctorado en Sociedad del Conocimiento y la informaciòn de la Universidad Oberta de Catalunya, mi tesis se llama wikis para la gestión del conocimiento en la universidad. Trabajo en la Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia como Directora Nacional de Planeación. La Universidad tiene 20 sedes en el país y 5 estudiantes por nuestra estructura organizativa desde hace varios años hemos recurrido a las comunidades virtuales para movilizar los temas estratégicos del plan de desarrollo, ahora con el desarrollo de la web 2.0 considero que existen enormes potenciales para seguir cualificando nuestra gestión con su uso, concretamente con los wikis construidos de manera colaborativa en las comunidades virtuales existentes. Avanzando en esa linea tenemos un proyecto piloto Wikis en las comunidades virtuales para la gestiòn del conocimiento en Economìa Social con el propósito de generar un modelo que integre a los casi cien investigadores que están trabajando sobre el tema. Cómo podría la fundación apoyar nuestros proyectos? Don't ask how the foundation could help your projects, ask how your projects can help the foundation. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] propuesta de proyectos
On 1/19/2011 1:35 PM, Pedro Sanchez wrote: Don't ask how the foundation could help your projects, ask how your projects can help the foundation. Clever, but needs editing. In contrast with the original quotation, the foundation is not intended as an object of patriotism, or an entity to be built up for its own sake. Ask, rather, how your projects can help with sharing knowledge and free culture. (Since that aligns with the foundation's mission, I suppose it would help the foundation, but I don't think asking that way motivates quite the same.) --Michael Snow ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Announcing our GLAM fellow, Liam Wyatt
Hello All, Following in quick succession from the recent announcements of fellowships for both Achal Prabhala and Lennart Guldbransson I am pleased to announce our sixth fellow, Liam Wyatt, based in Sydney. During this one year project Liam will be working to build the capacity of the Wikimedia community to undertake partnerships with cultural institutions - known as GLAMs [Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums] a term he popularized. Liam has been a board member of the Australian Wikimedia chapter and was a longtime panelist on the Wikipedia Weekly podcast. He is a Wikipedia historian, having won the university medal for his 2008 thesis ‘the academic lineage of Wikipedia’. The focus of his Wikipedia work for the last two years has been the GLAM sector - he was the convener of the GLAM-WIKI conferences in Canberra and London and last July became the world’s first “Wikipedian in Residence” at the British Museum (previous blog entry). Several different types of collaboration with the cultural sector have been successfully run with institutions across the world over the last few years - including multimedia content donations, “backstage pass” tours, residencies, and editing and photography events. Not only do these increase the quality and reliability of Wikipedia but also meet the goals of the GLAM institutions to share their expertise with a wide audience - especially for those that do not have a web presences of their own. The priorities for Liam’s fellowship include: building communication channels so the existing community of Wikimedians working with GLAMs can better share their knowledge; applying what we have learned with the university “campus ambassador” system to create a global network of Wikimedia GLAM ambassadors; creating clear how-to documentation for common GLAM project with real-wolrd case studies to match; and improving the metrics tools available to measure the usage of GLAM content. Photo of Liam: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimania_2009_-_Liam_Wyatt.jpg If you would like to join in any aspect of the cultural partnerships initiative please visit the project pages at glamwiki.org/. If you represent a cultural institution and want to engage in a project please write to g...@wikimedia.org. Best, -Daniel Phelps Human Resources Manager, Wikimedia Foundation ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Announcing our GLAM fellow, Liam Wyatt
On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 7:36 PM, Daniel Phelps dphe...@wikimedia.orgwrote: Hello All, Following in quick succession from the recent announcements of fellowships for both Achal Prabhala and Lennart Guldbransson I am pleased to announce our sixth fellow, Liam Wyatt, based in Sydney. During this one year project Liam will be working to build the capacity of the Wikimedia community to undertake partnerships with cultural institutions - known as GLAMs [Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums] a term he popularized. Congratulations Liam!!! :) I'm sure your work will be crucial in helping us figure out how to scale GLAM outreach activities and such. Look forward to working with you in the next year as we undertake GLAM outreach efforts here in DC. Cheers, Katie (@aude) Liam has been a board member of the Australian Wikimedia chapter and was a longtime panelist on the Wikipedia Weekly podcast. He is a Wikipedia historian, having won the university medal for his 2008 thesis ‘the academic lineage of Wikipedia’. The focus of his Wikipedia work for the last two years has been the GLAM sector - he was the convener of the GLAM-WIKI conferences in Canberra and London and last July became the world’s first “Wikipedian in Residence” at the British Museum (previous blog entry). Several different types of collaboration with the cultural sector have been successfully run with institutions across the world over the last few years - including multimedia content donations, “backstage pass” tours, residencies, and editing and photography events. Not only do these increase the quality and reliability of Wikipedia but also meet the goals of the GLAM institutions to share their expertise with a wide audience - especially for those that do not have a web presences of their own. The priorities for Liam’s fellowship include: building communication channels so the existing community of Wikimedians working with GLAMs can better share their knowledge; applying what we have learned with the university “campus ambassador” system to create a global network of Wikimedia GLAM ambassadors; creating clear how-to documentation for common GLAM project with real-wolrd case studies to match; and improving the metrics tools available to measure the usage of GLAM content. Photo of Liam: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimania_2009_-_Liam_Wyatt.jpg If you would like to join in any aspect of the cultural partnerships initiative please visit the project pages at glamwiki.org/. If you represent a cultural institution and want to engage in a project please write to g...@wikimedia.org. Best, -Daniel Phelps Human Resources Manager, Wikimedia Foundation ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Questions about new Fellow
Hi. As Daniel noted in his earlier e-mail to the list, Achal Prabhala is now a Wikimedia Fellow.[1] I actually missed this announcement as it didn't hit wikimediaannounce-l or this list (foundation-l), it apparently only got posted to the blog, but that's not really here nor there. There have been rumblings about some of the surrounding circumstances that I think warrant consideration and discussion. Achal is a member of the Advisory Board[2] but isn't very active in wikis/open source. A few questions pop up in my head. Is there a concern about such an individual being a Wikimedia Fellow? That is, someone who's not particularly attached to wikis/open source? All of the other Wikimedia Fellows have fairly strong editing backgrounds. The edits by Achal seem to be rather sparse: http://toolserver.org/~vvv/sulutil.php?user=Aprabhala More importantly, is there a concern about an Advisory Board member being chosen as a Wikimedia Fellow? Is there a conflict of interest there? Is there a concern about the appearance of impropriety? Achal has a growing influence on Wikimedia, particularly its new operations in India. This has included being part of the hiring decisions, etc. This is more of a consultant role, making his selection as a Wikimedia Fellow even stranger. And his growing influence and power in such a big part of Wikimedia's five-year strategy is making people wary. I think conversation and engagement (on this list and elsewhere) would be very good in a number of ways. MZMcBride [1] http://blog.wikimedia.org/?p=2748 [2] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Advisory_Board ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
