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Brianna Laugher | 1 Nov 06:10
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Wikimedia Commons has over 1,000 Featured Pictures

Hello,

I am happy to relay that Wikimedia Commons has now had over 1,000
successful Featured Picture nominations. The 1000th one is here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Neuschwanstein_Castle_LOC_print_rotated.jpg

It is a photocrom print of the famous German castle, dating to
1890-1905. It comes from the Library of Congress which reflects how
Wikimedians apply the concept of "relentless improvement" to all kinds
of material from all kinds of sources.

This one was accepted on the 15th October (it took us a couple of
weeks to realised it had passed). This is just under 3 years since the
FP process began in November 2004.

The vast majority of FPs are photographs - over 92% are JPGs. At least
half of all our FPs are created by Wikimedians, with US government
agencies such as NASA, and Flickr, being the major sources of
non-Wikimedian works. Around 30 FPs are accepted each month.

There are a few more notes on
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Press_releases/1000FP and I
strongly recommend checking out the links at the bottom to have a
browse - find a lovely new computer background if nothing else :)

cheers,
Brianna
commons:user:pfctdayelise

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Aphaia | 1 Nov 06:54
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Re: Wikimedia Commons has over 1, 000 Featured Pictures

Great :)
I'd appreciate those folks who cropped the vast database of PD
resources and have brought them into more visibility, and thus more
usability.

On 11/1/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher@...> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am happy to relay that Wikimedia Commons has now had over 1,000
> successful Featured Picture nominations. The 1000th one is here:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Neuschwanstein_Castle_LOC_print_rotated.jpg
>
> It is a photocrom print of the famous German castle, dating to
> 1890-1905. It comes from the Library of Congress which reflects how
> Wikimedians apply the concept of "relentless improvement" to all kinds
> of material from all kinds of sources.
>
> This one was accepted on the 15th October (it took us a couple of
> weeks to realised it had passed). This is just under 3 years since the
> FP process began in November 2004.
>
> The vast majority of FPs are photographs - over 92% are JPGs. At least
> half of all our FPs are created by Wikimedians, with US government
> agencies such as NASA, and Flickr, being the major sources of
> non-Wikimedian works. Around 30 FPs are accepted each month.
>
> There are a few more notes on
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Press_releases/1000FP and I
> strongly recommend checking out the links at the bottom to have a
> browse - find a lovely new computer background if nothing else :)
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Stephen Bain | 1 Nov 08:55
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Re: Wikimedia Commons has over 1, 000 Featured Pictures

On 11/1/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher@...> wrote:
>
> I am happy to relay that Wikimedia Commons has now had over 1,000
> successful Featured Picture nominations. The 1000th one is here:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Neuschwanstein_Castle_LOC_print_rotated.jpg

Here's looking forward to the next POTY competition.

--

-- 
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain@...

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Andre Engels | 1 Nov 10:56
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Re: Supporting languages is supporting people

2007/10/31, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk@...>:

> As a mathematician, I believe you will appreciate the metaphor of quantum
> tunelling. The same way a particle can "tunnel" through an energy barrier it
> would otherwise not be able to go through, a project could pass a "knowledge
> barrier", if helped.

It can, but I don't see how that means that one way of helping them
(giving them a localized interface) would be superior to another way
of helping them (giving them a wiki to start with)

> Localisation is an excellent example of this. We can all agree that people are
> less likely to contribute to a Wikipedia if there is no localisation.
> Localisation, however, requires a technically competent person to do it. If a
> given community has no such person, or all such persons are too preocupied
> with other matters to do it in their free time, the localisation will not be
> done. It might not be done for years, decades, or - ever.
>
> And these years and decades are years and decades during which the project
> won't be developed, or will be developed at a much slower rate.

So instead we don't allow it  to develop at all? We just sit and wait,
don't work on other blockades until this one is resolved? That will
help a language grow!

I don't disagree that localization is a good thing, although I do
think its effect is smaller than you seem to think. In my view, the
first and foremost need is people - have 1 contributor, and the
project will probably die, have 3 and it's in serious danger, have 5
and it's likely to live, have 10 and it's ready thrive.
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Yann Forget | 1 Nov 12:22

Re: Term papers on Wikipedia

Hello,

Ray Saintonge a écrit :
> David Gerard wrote:
>> On 30/10/2007, Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia@...> wrote:
>>   
>>> From what I've seen surveying the various classroom projects people
>>> have tried, the most successful are ones where some effort is made to
>>> screen topics for encyclopedicity and gaps in Wikipedia's coverage,
>>> and/or the assignments are focused on interacting with the Wikipedia
>>> community (i.e., content is posted early and students follow the fate
>>> of their work over the semester).
>>>     
>> Yes. Rather than just telling the students "go write something", send
>> them to a wikiproject's list of redlinks, or to the missing articles
>> project:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles
>>
>> With university research facilities onhand, writing some decent
>> articles with good references shouldn't be much work at all. We'll get
>> more good content and they'll get a good introductory experience to
>> Wikipedia.
> Indeed, and this sort of thing should be encouraged, and we need to 
> accept that some contributions will be dogs.  Nevertheless, the social 
> graces of some of the people who review these contributions leave much 
> to be desired.  They do little to help these people to improve their 
> contributions. 
> 
> There was a time when the primary outside criticism of Wikipedia had to
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GerardM | 1 Nov 12:58
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Re: Supporting languages is supporting people

Hoi,
The localisation is of particular importance for the readers and for the
editors that do not know the language that is chosen as the secondary
language. With the start of the Incubator there is a good place to start a
project and build up enough steam to stand on its own.

There are two groups of people in the WMF; there are those that are of the
opinion that more language support is a distraction and there are those that
are of the opinion that there are too many hoops that new projects have to
jump through. By defining minimum requirements we aim to prevent the failure
of projects and we aim to provide a good user experience for new languages
when the project goes life. In this way we reach out to both groups and both
groups are likely not to be happy anyway. Our argument is that in this way
we aim to optimise the effectiveness of new projects, not only is a language
supported for a WMF project and also MediaWiki supports a new language.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 11/1/07, Andre Engels <andreengels@...> wrote:
>
> 2007/10/31, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk@...>:
>
> > As a mathematician, I believe you will appreciate the metaphor of
> quantum
> > tunelling. The same way a particle can "tunnel" through an energy
> barrier it
> > would otherwise not be able to go through, a project could pass a
> "knowledge
> > barrier", if helped.
(Continue reading)

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Andrew Whitworth | 1 Nov 14:14
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Re: Wikijunior - State of the Project


I don't mean to sound accusative or argumenative with this post, so I apologize in advance if that's the way
it "sounds" over email. 

In 2005 the Beck Foundation contributed a substantial sum of money ($10,000) in the form of a grant for the
development and promotion of Wikijunior books. To the best of my knowledge, that money has never been
properly accounted for. At the very least, what happened to that money and how it was used to help
Wikijunior specifically has never been made public.  Somehow I feel like it wasnt intended for that money
to be rolled over into the "Wikipedia growth expenditures" portion of the budget, so I would hate to hear
that it silently was. We could perhaps raise the bigger issue that finances have never been made as
transparent or well-reported as they should be. That is a different topic for a different thread. I would
be hesitant to pursue any additional forms of grant money for Wikijunior until there is some assurance
that the money won't disappear into the abyss.

Also, like Randy mentioned, one of the books (Wikijunior Big Cats) was published on Lulu press, but Jimbo
personally had that book removed from the website citing a vague series of "concerns" and asked for more
discussion on the matter first. We asked for input from the board on several occasions, and received no
helpful replies. 

I'm not really going on any warpaths about this until the fundraiser is over (I know it's taking up a lot of our
collective attention right now), So long as the issue of Wikijunior has been raised I do feel that these are
a few points worth considering for future discussion. I would like to get Wikijunior in to a good place
early next year so that we can push for it to be used during the following school year. The things that randy
suggested, such as the read-only domain would be key to making this happen.

--Andrew Whitworth
_________________________________________________________________
Climb to the top of the charts!  Play Star Shuffle:  the word scramble challenge with star power.
http://club.live.com/star_shuffle.aspx?icid=starshuffle_wlmailtextlink_oct
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Mark Williamson | 1 Nov 15:42
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Re: Supporting languages is supporting people

That's all good, all of that stuff about preventing failure of
projects, blah blah blah. I'm pretty sure that incubator projects that
already have, say, over 200 articles are not going to be deemed
failures if they are created now, with or without an interface.
(examples include bcl, stq, ext...)

Mark

On 01/11/2007, GerardM <gerard.meijssen@...> wrote:
> Hoi,
> The localisation is of particular importance for the readers and for the
> editors that do not know the language that is chosen as the secondary
> language. With the start of the Incubator there is a good place to start a
> project and build up enough steam to stand on its own.
>
> There are two groups of people in the WMF; there are those that are of the
> opinion that more language support is a distraction and there are those that
> are of the opinion that there are too many hoops that new projects have to
> jump through. By defining minimum requirements we aim to prevent the failure
> of projects and we aim to provide a good user experience for new languages
> when the project goes life. In this way we reach out to both groups and both
> groups are likely not to be happy anyway. Our argument is that in this way
> we aim to optimise the effectiveness of new projects, not only is a language
> supported for a WMF project and also MediaWiki supports a new language.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
>
>
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Erik Moeller | 2 Nov 03:22
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OLPC Khairat Chronicle

The "One Laptop Per Child" project has put up an interesting report
about a pilot deployment in Khairat, India:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Khairat_Chronicle

--

-- 
Toward Peace, Love & Progress:
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

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Robert Rohde | 2 Nov 05:49
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Are the online donation reports comparable?

The Foundation has http://donate.wikimedia.org/en/fundcore_browse for the
current fundraiser, http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/en/fundcore/list  for
2006 and this year before the current drive, and the legacy system,
http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/legacy/ongoing/, for donations from early
2005 and overlapping part of 2006.

I would like to know if these are comparable in their comprehensiveness, or
are there variations in what was included over time?

Also, as of now, do all donations get included or are they strictly limited
to what gets processed online?  (In other words, if someone sends the
Foundation a physical check, does that get added in?)

Thanks.

-Robert Rohde
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