Cross-posting to Wikien-l...
On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 9:01 PM, Erik Moeller<erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Unfortunately,
> community-created help pages tend to accumulate vast amounts of
> instruction cruft that distracts from simple high-level information.
Maybe it's time English Wikipedia (at least) created a set of
standards for help pages and a process for identifying good ones.
"Manual of Style (help pages)", "Helpful help page candidates" and
"What is a helpful help page?", anyone? (The latter two are only half
facetious; the first is probably a good idea, although I would have no
idea where to start.)
-Sage (User:Ragesoss)
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.org
Year: 2009 Week: 28 Number: 111
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Proposals ===
[Logo Wiktionary] - End of 2006 a winner of a new logo selection
process was declared for Wiktionary. Some Wiktionary accepted and
used the new logo, others did not. (like the English Wiktionary). In
any case once more a new logo selection process is in motion on Meta
for Wiktionary.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary/logo -- "we have a winner (2006)"
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary/logo/refresh -- new logo
Wiktionary 2009
=== Foundation ===
[Board elections] - the Wikimedia Foundation Board is holding its
community elections again, this time for 3 board seats (the next
regular election will be in two years). Candidates are being accepted
until July 20. Help is needed with translating many pages for the
election. (including the CentralNotice displayed all over Wikimedia's
sites)!
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Candidates/en --
candidates
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Translation -- translation
[Annual Plan] - the Foundation has published its 2009-2010 Annual Plan
and a set of Questions & Answers to go along with it.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/a/a3/2009-10_Wikimedia_Fou… -- annual plan
(pdf)
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2009-2010_Annual_Plan_Questions_and_Ans… --
Q&A
[wm2009: Registration] - registration for Wikimania 2009 in Buenos
Aires is now open! If you register before July 30, it's US$15
cheaper. (= US$45)
http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Registration
[Orange] - In April the Wikimedia Foundation announced a partnership
with the telecommunications company "Orange". The Spanish Wikipedia is
now being showcased on the Spanish Orange site.
http://wikipedia.orange.eshttp://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Orange_and_Wikimedia_ann… -- original press
release
[New chapters] - the Board recently approved three new Wikimedia
chapters: Wikimedia Danmark (Denmark), Wikimedia Portugal, and
Wikimedia Ukraine. This brings the total number of chapters to 24.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-July/052936.htmlhttp://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions#July_2009
=== Agenda ===
[fossevents] - a new site (run by the same people who run IRC network
Wikimedia uses, Freenode) just opened up that showcases FOSS (Free and
Open Source Software) Events around the world, big and small. Be sure
to add your upcoming Wikimedia events and look for others that
interest you!
http://fossevents.org
=== Community ===
[New Wikipedia] - The founding of "Wikipedia", the large Western
language Wikipedias, may seem to lay in the distant past, new
Wikipedia's are still founded. The Mari Wikipedia is the newest family
member.
http://mhr.wikipedia.orghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mari_language
[GLAM] - in the lead up to GLAM-WIKI (August 6-7), Wikimedia Australia
is holding an editors' challenge (like a friendly competition) with
the overall theme of "Australian GLAM" (GLAM stands for "Galleries,
Libraries, Archives & Museums"). The idea is to pick your own editing
theme and submit it, along with the edits you make related to it.
Prizes will be awarded for the most extensive, creative, impressive,
novel, broad, deep, etc. edits.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Australia/GLAM_challenge --
GLAM challenge
http://glam.wikimedia.org.au/ -- GLAM wiki
[WMDE: ED/Vision] - we previously noted that Wikimedia Deutschland was
looking for a new Executive Director; they've finally found one after
a year! The new director is Pavel Richter (w:de:User:Schreibvieh) and
he was the unanimous choice of both the search committee and the
board. Sebastian, chair of WMDE's board and the current director, also
published a blog post describing the newly defined vision for
Wikimedia's first and largest chapter.
http://blog.wikimedia.de/2009/07/02/neuer-geschaftsfuhrer/ -- blog
announcing ED (German)
http://blog.wikimedia.de/2009/07/06/eine-vision-fur-wikimedia-deutschland/ --
blog discussing vision (German)
[ENWP: 3 million?] - What will the 3 millionth article on the English
Wikipedia be? A few community members are making guesses on what
article that will be, be sure to add your guess too!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Three-millionth_topic_pool
[India: Meetup] - everyone seems to be linking to a report on the
third Bangalore, India meetup. The meetup seems like it was pretty
successful and the agenda included a large number of topics, these are
discussed in the meetup report.
http://tinucherian.blogspot.com/2009/07/indian-wikipedians-meet-in-bangalor…
[Wikinews] - the English Wikinews is doing good. It has an active
community, does exclusive interviews, is indexed by Google News and
now the have almost 15000 news story's written. But not all Wikinews
editions are so. On Meta is there now a proposal to close down the
dutch language Wikinews due to a structural lack of activity.
http://en.wikinews.org/http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Du…
=== Media ===
[WP: Accurate enough] - everyone always has something to say about us,
at least this time it's a favorable article from the Kansas City
Examiner.
http://www.examiner.com/x-13637-Kansas-City-Social-Media-Examiner~y2009m7d7…
[Wiki Goes to War] - the U.S. Army is creating MediaWiki-based sites
for seven of their 550 manuals. There will be a 90 day experiment,
where troops can edit manuals, and leave comments.
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htcbtsp/articles/20090702.aspx
[Egocentric introverts] - a study by Israeli psychology researchers
say that their study shows Wikipedians are egocentric, disagreeable,
socially awkward and closed to new ideas. Australian Wikipedia have
"hit out" at this report.
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/wikipedians-are-a-bunch-of…
[Sued Over Wikipedia] - a county commissioner and political consultant
have filed a defamation lawsuit in Ingham County Circuit Court against
three men for allegedly editing false and defamatory information into
a biographical entry on Wikipedia.
http://michiganmessenger.com/22336/grebner-files-libel-suit-over-wikipedia-…
=== Stats ===
[MJ] - another analysis of the Michael Jackson+Wikipedia problems was
made by Erik Zachte, Wikimedia's statistics analyst, with graphs and
comparisons between different Wikipedia language versions.
http://infodisiac.com/blog/2009/07/michael-jackson/
[Commons Uploads] - Ilmari Karonen has been collecting image
statistics for a while now (how many bytes we have per file type) and
now he has graphs illustrating the changes too.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:MIME_type_statistics -- raw stats
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Commons_MIME_statistics_bytes_2008-1… --
graph
[Going for he 8th place] - the Spanish and Portugees Wikipedia are
very, very close in the number of articles and are so competing for
the honour of being the 8th largest Wikipedia..
http://pt.wikipedia.org -- 491 671 artigos
http://es.wikipedia.org -- 491.663 artículos
=== Other news ===
[Image Search] - this should make searching for images to upload to
Commons a lot easier: Google adds Creative Commons Selection to
Advanced Options.
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2009-07-09-n80.htmlhttp://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/15691
[Serious reading] - a doctoral thesis, by Jos ? Felipe Ortega Soto,
that analize quantitatively the evolution of the top ten Wikipedias.
An their problems (in English, 228 pages).
http://libresoft.es/Members/jfelipe/thesis-wkp-quantanalysis -- pdf download
=== Did you know ... ===
... what a "sock puppet" is?
No??? - Strange, are you sure that you are a Wikimedian? - In any
case, you can look it up now. No, not (only) in "the dictionary the
anyone can edit", but also in the more traditional "Merriam Webster's
2009 dictionary of English". It says it is "a word to describe a false
account used for deceptive purposes".
http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/newwords09.htmhttp://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sock_puppet
=== Quote ===
There is a world market for maybe five computers ? Thomas Watson, IBM, 1943
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Editor(s): Casey, Walter
Corrector(s): Alex
Thanks to: Veronique, Sebastian, Kul, DarkoNeko, Ziko, Mathias, David,
Gnangarra, the Wikipedia Signpost (Erik Zachte), Steve Bennett, Brion,
Peter, Cary, Crazy Lover
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
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Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]].
Wikizine is a irregular publication as long as there is noteworthy
news (and time)
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
and also the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/
Aside from the new chapters, right now the Board of Trustees is looking
at what kinds of related groups we want to have relationships with.
(What prompts this directly is the case of Wikimedia Brazil, which was
approved to become a chapter last year, but whose organizers have since
decided they did not want to proceed as a formal entity at this time.
However, I want to ask about the general principle, not the specific
case.) The basic question is, what can or should we do to encourage
grassroots groups that want to support our mission, but may not fit into
the chapters framework?
There are various possibilities here. One example is interest groups
that aren't tied to geography, the way the chapters are. I always cite
the idea of an Association of Blind Wikipedians, who might wish to
organize to promote work on accessibility issues. As with the Brazilian
situation, informal groups could also fit local conditions better
sometimes, or serve as a proto-chapter stage of development. Maybe
there's a benefit in having an association with some durability and
continuation, but without going to the effort of incorporation and
formal agreements on trademarks and such. It could also make sense to
have an organization form for a specific project and then disband after
it is completed, such as with Wikimania (somebody can correct me if I'm
wrong, but I understand the Gdansk team is planning something like this
as distinct from Wikimedia Polska).
Anyway, I would like to invite ideas and discussion on this. Is this
something we should do? What kinds of models are people interested in?
How should we appropriately recognize and work with volunteer-organized
groups? And in all of this, how would we make it both distinct from and
compatible with the current structure of chapter organizations?
--Michael Snow
Hey All--
We are about to gather and refine input on some ideas about enhancing
visibility of our donation button. We've had tons of responses so far
but still would appreciate any feedback that you might have. Also,
some of the comments are quite thoughtful...others have added their own
buttons.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2009/Donation_buttons_upgrade
Take a look and add to the discussion.
-Rand Montoya
--
Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving
Wikimedia Foundation
www.wikimedia.org
Email: rand(a)wikimedia.org
Phone: 415.839.6885 x615
Fax: 415.882.0495
Cell: 510.685.7030
“At some future time, I hope to have something witty,
intelligent, or funny in this space.”
Rand Montoya wrote:
> (As this email may enact changes that affect the total Wikimedia
> community, please feel free to forward or post this email on any and all
> applicable lists. I would like as much feedback as possible.)
>
> Wikimedians--
>
> We have begun exploring ideas for enhancing the visibility of the donate
> button not only within the Wikimedia main skin but also on every page of
> every Wikimedia project. We hope that enhancement will enable us to
> better informing our public that we are dependent on their donations as
> we promote the free and open knowledge movement.
>
> We expect that a small change to the Wikimedia main skin will result in
> big returns in donations--donations we use to keep the Wikimedia
> movement alive and growing. I expect that in return for a bit of
> enhanced visibility, we will see a daily increase of up to 20% in
> donations.
>
> Working with the same professional designer that worked on last year's
> donation page (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate/Now/en), we
> have culled his 30+ button ideas into 6 that represent some of the
> better designs.
>
> We have posted several design options for your comments and input here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2009/Donation_buttons_upgrade
>
> I would like your input and advice in figuring out both how to make this
> buttons look better and how to make the language around the buttons
> better. In addition, we are exploring adding different language
> underneath the Title Bar of an article.
>
> Design is only half of this change...words are important. What are the
> simplest words we can use (we are aware that these changes may get
> translated to numerous other languages) that will convey what we want to
> convey? You, collectively, have proven to be amazing at using words and
> communicating with our users. How can we reach them?
>
> One of these designs borrows from our look and feel from our previous
> campaign and another resembles the look and feel of Paypal. What do you
> think of those? We are curious about how look and feel associated with
> online payments will increase the need or opportunity to make a donation.
>
> The objective here is to take the average Wikimedia user and get them to
> recognize we are a non-profit and that our future depends on their
> donations. How can we better show our users that we are a charity?
>
> Again, your time and input is appreciated. To see the designs, go here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2009/Donation_buttons_upgrade
>
> -Rand
>
>
Dear All,
I don't know whether this has been discussed before, apologies if it has.
I'm interested in people's thoughts on a new Wikimedia project-maybe
WikiWeather, which basically would do what it says on the tin. Along
with importing national weather from other sources(especially to begin
with), contributors could then put their weather where they are. This
could evolve into many contributors giving very localised weather
forecasts worldwide, which could be used by many of the other projects
and anybody else.
Would people be interested in this proposal/have any thoughts on it?
Thanks!
Wikinews User Page <http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/User:Tristan%20Thomas>
Hello,
Could someone explain to me why "Wikipedia" is without definite
article? In English you say "the Britannica", so why not "the
Wikipedia"? I am wondering that also in German Wikipedians and
non-Wikipedians tend to drop the article, although we say "der
Brockhaus".
Kind regards
Ziko
--
Ziko van Dijk
NL-Silvolde
I just want to quickly catch everyone up on some of the board's work in
June. In addition to the 2009-10 Annual Plan, which we approved after an
IRC meeting with Sue and Veronique, the board passed resolutions
recognizing three new local Wikimedia chapters. Our newest chapter
organizations are in Portugal, Ukraine, and Denmark. Welcome to all three!
--Michael Snow
On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 10:16 AM, Brion Vibber<brion(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> As many folks have noted, our current templating system works ok for
> simple things, but doesn't scale well -- even moderately complex
> conditionals or text-munging will quickly turn your template source into
> what appears to be line noise.
In addition to changing the programming language that is used in the
template namespace a lot of progress can be made on the readability of
articles (and thus how usable they are) by rethinking how we invoke
templates, or rather how we make data available to templates.
If you look at the George W. Bush article you see that the first 50
lines of the article are template code and that his birthday is
declared multiple times like so:
|birth_date={{birth date and age|mf=yes|1946|7|6}}
born July 6, 1946
|DATE OF BIRTH=July 6, 1946
Editors clearly need a better system for declaring facts about
articles and then using them in advanced template programming. One can
imagine an alternate system where his birthday is only declared once,
like so, in the article text: born on [[birthday::July 6, 1946]]. And
so on for all the other facts listed in his infobox. Rather than
declaring them explicitly in the infobox, you declare them explicitly
inline in the text in a highly readable format.
Then there is the issue of calling templates. Where do you place them
within the article? Much like MediaWiki itself I suggest we introduce
the notion of hooks. Beginning of article, end of article. Beginning
of section, end of section. Beginning of paragraph end of paragraph.
Template programmers can use these hooks to inject data that is
declared explicitly in the article into various points of the article.
This can be thought of as a separation of content and presentation.
Articles have the constraint that their source code must, under all
circumstances, be highly readable to our visitors. That way our
visitors might become encyclopedia writers! Associated with those
articles is another page where users can control higher level
organizations of the content in the body of text. They can format it
in infobox style, process it any way they like using our new
programming language, and place it in a variety of locations
throughout the article without sacrificing the readability of the
wikitext at all.
It will take a little bit more conceptual work to handle all cases,
such as inline references, etc.., etc... But the bottom line is that
the source code to articles on Wikipedia has become so complicated
that it is now too difficult for reasonable people to consider
editing. One user said that adding a new programming language to
MediaWiki is totally orthogonal to the method that we use to pass data
to those programs, or the context in which those programs are called.
I couldn't disagree more - one of the major reasons Wikipedia is so
unreadable today is because of the way we call templates from
articles. From the bottom of the design to the top, it needs to be
rethought. I believe that this conversation should be held far beyond
wikitech-l and should be made available to subscribers of almost all
of our lists and also the large pool of contributors. One of the
reasons that we ended up with ParserFunctions is that very few people
were involved in the conversation. Do we even understand the problem
that needs to be solved? I am not convinced that it has been
adequately characterized.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 16:09:00 +0100
> From: Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: How do you fully consult the
> community consensus?
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <a4359dff0907020809g4cb248h2095752d36c6d267(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> 2009/7/2 Brian <Brian.Mingus(a)colorado.edu>:
>> As the projects have grown and as they have become more centrally managed in
>> a top down fashion it has become increasingly difficult for ideas to
>> percolate from the bottom up.
I'm curious. In your perspective who is doing the central management
that makes it difficult for ideas to percolate up? WMF, Jimmy, Board,
select administrators/highly involved community members? In your
opinion, is there an infrastructure barrier or a personalities one?
jriggs
