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| Students translating Wikipedia at Software Freedom Day 2010 in Pretoria, South Africa. By Slashme (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons |
2011-03-30
South African Wikilove
We approved the 31st Wikimedia chapter and first (!) African chapter this past weekend: Wikimedia South Africa. Huzzah! They have an amazing list of potential activities, ideas and reasons for being on their meta page.
2011-03-27
WikiWeek è lanciato
Elitre recently started publishing WikiWeek, a regular summary of news across Wikimedia. Here is number 4, out last week. (Bonus points for starting at n.0 and sharing the love!)
- Fradeve affronta in un post la questione Wiki Loves Monuments, un'iniziativa wikimediana cui gli italiani non potranno partecipare perché praticamente tutto quello che si trova alle nostre latitudini è coperto da qualche tutela e quindi irriproducibile liberamente in foto. fradeve.org
- Una serie di figate scoperte questa settimana: si comincia dalla funzione di Commons che visualizza i nostri upload come gallerie utente personali. gpaumier
- WP offline, è ora possibile scaricare le voci o le raccolte in formato ZIM, e la selezione in inglese Wikipedia 0.8. Notare la prontezza di reazione di WMF. WMF blog
- Per tutti gli incompresi che hanno la ricetta per migliorare Wikipedia, qualcuno vuole ascoltarvi. briswiki
- Ci saranno una ventina di posizioni aperte presso WMF mentre sto scrivendo questo post. wmf
- Non sono mai stata abbastanza femminista da potermi interessare ai dibattiti di genere, e finora il risultato più evidente di quello sul mondo wikimediano sembra essere stato l'aver esacerbato le discussion (update di Sue: wikisignpost), e l'interesse dei media verso un paio di wikidonne magari non è nemmeno correlato (via Twitter, su pcworld e themarysue).
- I video dell'assemblea di WMI sono al momento disponibili sul canale della Redazione Turismo Emilia Romagna. livestream
- Update: le slide sono su SlideShare.
- Durante il pomeriggio è stata annunciata la creazione dell'account Twitter @wikiquoteit, gestito da Gac, che propone quotidianamente la citazione del giorno presa da Wikiquote in italiano; si ipotizza di fare lo stesso in futuro in altre lingue. E' già attivo, per seguirlo http://twitter.com/wikiquoteit .
- SJ, board WMF, ha creato il blog Wikilove. Obiettivo: "to chronicle the joyful aspects of Wiki nature". Ad esempio, il post odierno racconta di quanto siano stati bravi i tedeschi a pubblicare i loro wikireader quando ancora PediaPress non c'era. wikisignpost
- Magnus, citato nel blog di cui sopra, ha creato un widget per siti/blog per mostrare in un riquadro link, prima riga e immagine da una voce di Wikipedia a ns scelta. Ok, la mia descrizione fa schifo, però valutate anche che c'è voluto il 2011 prima di concepire un tool così... wikisignpost
- Vocabolario gratis. E' disponibile in più formati, compreso il PDF, il già citato Vocabolario della lingua italiana Zingarelli 1922 (credo grazie ad un progetto WMI, ma non lo sapremo mai). archive.org
- Quelli che Wikipedia non l'hanno mai potuta soffrire, anche se ancora non possono cancellarla dalla faccia della terra, possono almeno dire a Google di non mostrare mai più risultati dal sito dopo una ricerca. wikisignpost
- Anche chi non conosce il caso National Portrait Gallery vs Wikipedia per violazione di copyright può sorridere all'idea che i primi abbiano fatto altrettando plagiando un po' di voci. wikisignpost
- Stefan Kühn ha appena lanciato un progetto sul Toolserver che permette di visualizzare Wikipedia un po' più come fosse un "dizionario" visualizzando solo l'incipit di ogni voce, anche se forse nello screenshot sarà qualcos'altro a colpirvi. Imperdibile anche l'indice che vi farà riflettere sull'utilità di certi redirect. wikisignpost
- Report di febbraio da WMF. meta
- Il Signpost del 14/03
- Cosa ho dimenticato...?
2011-03-25
Wikipedia's Librarian to the World
Sue Gardner, iconoclast, librarian to the world. Care of Fast Company. It's wikilovely.
2011-03-22
A Wiki History of World Events in 100 seconds
In January, Gareth Lloyd and Tom Martin produced the Best Visualization at Matt Patterson's History Hackday by visualizing the History of the World using 14,000 events from the English Wikipedia. These were all events that their parser could match to both a date and a geocoordinate. The result is this gorgeous (CC-SA) animation, in which continents slowly emerge over time :
A History of the World in 100 Seconds from Gareth Lloyd on Vimeo.
summarizes the results:
A History of the World in 100 Seconds from Gareth Lloyd on Vimeo.
summarizes the results:
Podemos ver como la mayoría de documentos entre ese año y 1492 corresponde a Europa, con algunos pocos emergiendo en Asia. Hacia 1492, con la llegada de Colón a América, comienza a aparecer gran actividad en el continente americano.
2011-03-21
La WikiGuida di Wikimedia Commons
Last year, Wikimedia Italia developed a delightful video tutorial for using Commons.
is planning UPDATE: has now published one for Wikisource. Below is a repost of a review from Brianna Laugher's All the Modern Things, dating from it's original release.
Se conosci Wikipedia, magari ti sei chiesto dove staranno tutte quelle foto e animazioni che illustrano le voci... La risposta è Wikimedia Commons, un unico archivio multilingue di file multimediali che fornisce immagini a tutte le Wikipedie del mondo e non solo! Speriamo che questa "WikiGuida" sia apprezzata [e] migliori la percezione e l'uso di Commons...The same team has made a Wikipedia guide, and
If you are familiar with Wikipedia, you may have wondered where all the pictures and animations are found... the answer is Wikimedia Commons, a unique multilingual repository of media providing images to all the Wikipedias of the world and more! We hope that this"WikiGuide" is appreciated and helps improve the use of Commons...
Lest anyone miss this, I thought I must post it – it’s a video explaining and showing Wikimedia Commons (Italian with English subtitles):
This is so well done! Ben fatto, Wikimedia Italia! I can’t imagine how long it must have taken to plan the text and choose the images. The text is nicely concise, doesn’t belabour any points, and is quite comprehensive – from OTRS to Meet our photographers … I thought it was quite funny at first, seeing the narrator in the menu on the left, but it is a nice way to see him and also see lots of colourful images. :)
Elegant visual snapshots of expanses of knowledge
The ideal of beautiful print editions of article collections has inspired generations of Wikipedians, like centuries of encyclopedists before them.
German Wikipedia enthusiasts first took single topics and made WikiReaders out of them, finding a national publishing house willing to bind and distribute the results under the "WikiPress" label. They even considered printing a keywords and short descriptions for the entire encyclopedia, though that did not come to fruition.
Then in 2008, Håkon Lie (the original proposer of CSS, and a font and layout geek) spent time making his Prince XML tool generate beautiful PDFs out of Wikipedia pages. He has also dreamed of printing summaries of all Wikipedia articles in the style and layout of a traditional encyclopedia, and has joined our offline-wp mailing list.
And today Stefan Kuhn shared his latest script, called simply "The Book", which generates a multi-column view of a set of articles, with thumbnails and a bit of text. Like the short well-attributed summaries produced by Magnus's tool that I reviewed earlier, these efforts all try to convey the beauty and detail of a large work in a simple package.
What are your favorite print layouts for dense knowledge? What variations on the "Wikipedia 1.0" and printed Wikipedia theme would you like to see come to pass?
Then in 2008, Håkon Lie (the original proposer of CSS, and a font and layout geek) spent time making his Prince XML tool generate beautiful PDFs out of Wikipedia pages. He has also dreamed of printing summaries of all Wikipedia articles in the style and layout of a traditional encyclopedia, and has joined our offline-wp mailing list.
 |
| PrinceXML's layout of the Norway article |
And today Stefan Kuhn shared his latest script, called simply "The Book", which generates a multi-column view of a set of articles, with thumbnails and a bit of text. Like the short well-attributed summaries produced by Magnus's tool that I reviewed earlier, these efforts all try to convey the beauty and detail of a large work in a simple package.
 |
| The Book: Kinosch – Kirk Hammett from the Luxembourgish Wikipedia |
What are your favorite print layouts for dense knowledge? What variations on the "Wikipedia 1.0" and printed Wikipedia theme would you like to see come to pass?
2011-03-20
Creating beautiful references to Wikipedia articles
Magnus just finished a draft of a widget that generates beautiful references to Wikipedia articles. These can include a thumbnail of one of its images, a canonical link to it, and a line of text from the lede -- all with appropriate attribution.
We need more tools like this -- to help reusers summarize, attribute, and embed text, images and other media outside of the Projects on- and off-line. A recent Commons discussion asked for ways to make proper attribution easier, honoring the original creators of a work rather than the Commons uploader. This relates to another great tool released this year -- the OpenAttribute widget for generating one-click attributions.
Wikipedia article CC-BY-SA-3.0. Image has an unknown license.
We need more tools like this -- to help reusers summarize, attribute, and embed text, images and other media outside of the Projects on- and off-line. A recent Commons discussion asked for ways to make proper attribution easier, honoring the original creators of a work rather than the Commons uploader. This relates to another great tool released this year -- the OpenAttribute widget for generating one-click attributions.
2011-03-19
(Why I love) Wikipedians
Here's the thing that I love about Wikipedians. No matter where we live, or our backgrounds, we share a few things in common.
Being smart:
Being smart, and being willing to learn new things, is respected. Whether you're an isolated nerdy kid or a public intellectual, it's hard to underestimate the power of a group people being willing and eager to seriously talk about -- not just ideas, but new things they've learned. I have never met another group of people anywhere (though librarians have this tendency too, which makes us kindred souls) who can get so excited about talking about what they were reading lately, or what they've learned, or some cool new thing that was discovered. Personal failings are trumped by having something good to bring to the discussion.
It's pretty fun.
Recognizing kindred souls in any circumstance:
I have been to hundreds of Wikipedia meetups over the years, on four continents. Here's what often happens:
Everyone's a Wikipedian:
"Wikipedia syndrome" is what I call that sort of obsessiveness and un-ironical pedantic seriousness (about whatever) that many conflate with being nerdy. But here's the thing -- everyone's a Wikipedian. Some just express it more strongly than others :)
Think about it: you've encountered that kind of happy obsession before. Your uncle who collects stamps, your aunt who is a serious crafter, your second cousin who does community volunteer work, your other cousin who plays video games or listens to music -- whatever it is, everyone has something they're passionate about, and could certainly bring to the project with the right incentive. And that passion translates to long-term interest, to hanging out with others of like mind, to making things.
Making things:
And this is meaningful: Wikipedians want to make things. They want to make an encyclopedia, a perfect article, a beautiful photo, even just a good process for doing these things. Making something great is our highest value, the end goal. Some people are interested in meta-making: a better world, a strong Foundation, a great meet-up. But all that energy harnessed in the service of getting something done? That's pretty powerful. Which leads me to...
It's never finished (but you can help):
There is a great collective sense that things aren't done, there's still more to do, and the energy that brings. Of course there's more to do -- have you looked at this crappy article, this broken process?! Let me get out my laptop....And yes, of course you can do this too. What are you interested in?
Being smart:
Being smart, and being willing to learn new things, is respected. Whether you're an isolated nerdy kid or a public intellectual, it's hard to underestimate the power of a group people being willing and eager to seriously talk about -- not just ideas, but new things they've learned. I have never met another group of people anywhere (though librarians have this tendency too, which makes us kindred souls) who can get so excited about talking about what they were reading lately, or what they've learned, or some cool new thing that was discovered. Personal failings are trumped by having something good to bring to the discussion.
It's pretty fun.
Recognizing kindred souls in any circumstance:
I have been to hundreds of Wikipedia meetups over the years, on four continents. Here's what often happens:
- the participants meet each other, order beers or coffee or whatever, and then sit around somewhat awkwardly. Perhaps there are introductions. Everyone wonders why they didn't just stay home.
- Some common ground is found. "You worked on that wikiproject, too?"
- After the ice is broken, after an hour or two, you couldn't shut people up if you tried. Laptops have been broken out, to the bemusement of the other patrons of the cafe/bar/whatever. Someone has shown off some ridiculous page or discussion to much amusement. There has been (at least one) argument about an unfair banning/AfD/etc.
- Assuming the meetup goes on long enough, the probability of the discussion turning to copyright is pretty much 100%.
Everyone's a Wikipedian:
"Wikipedia syndrome" is what I call that sort of obsessiveness and un-ironical pedantic seriousness (about whatever) that many conflate with being nerdy. But here's the thing -- everyone's a Wikipedian. Some just express it more strongly than others :)
Think about it: you've encountered that kind of happy obsession before. Your uncle who collects stamps, your aunt who is a serious crafter, your second cousin who does community volunteer work, your other cousin who plays video games or listens to music -- whatever it is, everyone has something they're passionate about, and could certainly bring to the project with the right incentive. And that passion translates to long-term interest, to hanging out with others of like mind, to making things.
Making things:
And this is meaningful: Wikipedians want to make things. They want to make an encyclopedia, a perfect article, a beautiful photo, even just a good process for doing these things. Making something great is our highest value, the end goal. Some people are interested in meta-making: a better world, a strong Foundation, a great meet-up. But all that energy harnessed in the service of getting something done? That's pretty powerful. Which leads me to...
It's never finished (but you can help):
There is a great collective sense that things aren't done, there's still more to do, and the energy that brings. Of course there's more to do -- have you looked at this crappy article, this broken process?! Let me get out my laptop....And yes, of course you can do this too. What are you interested in?
Azulejos: Sharing artistic beauty
Tudor Mihăescu writes (on his Romanian blog) about the joy of discovering and sharing the beauty of azulejo, an art form that Portugal has produced for over five centuries. Beauty often inspires a longing to share it.
Le-am văzut în Portugalia pe clădiri, palate şi biserici. M-au surprins prin răcoroasele nuanţe de albastru, mi-au plăcut în mod special. Când m-am întors în România, cu ocazia unui concurs de scriere pe Wikipedia, am redactat un articol pe acest subiect. Ulterior, în cadrul acestui concurs, am obţinut locul întâi la secţiunea Arte...
I saw them in Portugal on buildings, palaces and churches. I was surprised by their variegated shades of blue, which I particularly liked. On returning to Romania, I wrote an article about this for a Wikipedia writing contest, which won first place in the Arts category. Remembering these azulejos, I recently searched through Google to see them again. Many reproduce scenes of heroism in the history of the old Portuguese empire. Beyond the historical stories documented on them, these painted tiles are known for their astonishing artistic value.
Wikipedia: Making the Internet not suck since 2001
For a decade, Wikipedia and its sister projects has brought joyful order to knowledge out of what was once a constellation of fansites, narrowly-focused (and soon abandoned) project sites, opposing cliques of academic and religious doctrine, gossip, and online 'zines. Other large-scale efforts at knowledge organization existed before and continue today, but Wikipedia truly managed to help the Internet not suck -- making it comprehensively useful at least in the narrow realm of reference knowledge.
Since then, as a global society we've found other ways to share in the glories of interlinked distributed effort, from Flickr and YouTube to Facebook. But no effort has been as intentionally permanent, universal, and collaborative as Wikipedia, where the number of pages of policy, process, and standards rival the number of major topics and categories.
However we face a great hurdle in the growth of this knowledge-focused community of editors, reviewers, philosophers, reusers, and other readers -- participating in Wikimedia projects is becoming thorny, complex, sometimes frustrating. The original meaning of "quick" editing and the early freedom to experiment is fading. And it is not being replaced with smooth next-generation tools, visualizations, or other interfaces that make standard atoms of paticipation easy.
Messaging, editing, uploading, commenting, and tagging are all becoming harder (with extra process and guidelines), not easier, with time. It's becoming easier to make a change that is deleted, or met with critical comment. And the community's self-image, which once revolved around ways to promote participation and consensus and wikilove, to hold barnraisings across Projects, and to encourage communication in many languages, is being fragmented.
At the same time, many things are getting easier -- there is a tremendous body of scripts and expertise in bulk uploading of images, collaboration with existing archives, posting a set of scans of a primary source into a neatly ordered set of numbered pages, checking and correcting typos, combating standard spam and vandalism, and maintaining interlanguage links between related articles; to mention just a few.
This blog aims to chronicle the joyful aspects of Wiki nature, identifying the most excellent memes from knowledge-focused wikis (from Wikispecies and Wikisource to Wookiepedia and WikiHow). Along the way we will touch on facets of these projects that should be improved to make them awesome... building on what we've learned from the last generation of web design.
Your input is welcome -- I am looking for writers who are fired up about things that they love.
Since then, as a global society we've found other ways to share in the glories of interlinked distributed effort, from Flickr and YouTube to Facebook. But no effort has been as intentionally permanent, universal, and collaborative as Wikipedia, where the number of pages of policy, process, and standards rival the number of major topics and categories.
However we face a great hurdle in the growth of this knowledge-focused community of editors, reviewers, philosophers, reusers, and other readers -- participating in Wikimedia projects is becoming thorny, complex, sometimes frustrating. The original meaning of "quick" editing and the early freedom to experiment is fading. And it is not being replaced with smooth next-generation tools, visualizations, or other interfaces that make standard atoms of paticipation easy.
Messaging, editing, uploading, commenting, and tagging are all becoming harder (with extra process and guidelines), not easier, with time. It's becoming easier to make a change that is deleted, or met with critical comment. And the community's self-image, which once revolved around ways to promote participation and consensus and wikilove, to hold barnraisings across Projects, and to encourage communication in many languages, is being fragmented.
At the same time, many things are getting easier -- there is a tremendous body of scripts and expertise in bulk uploading of images, collaboration with existing archives, posting a set of scans of a primary source into a neatly ordered set of numbered pages, checking and correcting typos, combating standard spam and vandalism, and maintaining interlanguage links between related articles; to mention just a few.
This blog aims to chronicle the joyful aspects of Wiki nature, identifying the most excellent memes from knowledge-focused wikis (from Wikispecies and Wikisource to Wookiepedia and WikiHow). Along the way we will touch on facets of these projects that should be improved to make them awesome... building on what we've learned from the last generation of web design.
Your input is welcome -- I am looking for writers who are fired up about things that they love.
2011-03-09
Wiki Loves Everything
Starting with "Wikipedia Loves Art", the meme of WikiLove has been associated with art in public places, and with a certain type of photo-contest/scavenger-hunt, for years. The "Wiki Loves Monuments" hunts (started in 2010) are somewhere between a contest and a travel plan. In both cases, participants try to capture photographs of monuments or works of public art, and upload them to Commons.
The spirit of "Wiki Loves FOO" as a way of saying to the world, "Wikimedia would love to have images of your FOO and share it with the world", is a fabulous message that we need more of. While we've largely done it for fun within our own community, we should also consider making this a more explicit love letter to the culture and artists that created this art in its original medium, usually intending it to be shared with the public for generations to come.
The spirit of "Wiki Loves FOO" as a way of saying to the world, "Wikimedia would love to have images of your FOO and share it with the world", is a fabulous message that we need more of. While we've largely done it for fun within our own community, we should also consider making this a more explicit love letter to the culture and artists that created this art in its original medium, usually intending it to be shared with the public for generations to come.
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