Table of Contents
Foundation
- [Terms Of Use] – On websites the “Terms of Use” are what most of us frequently indicate to agree with but never reed. Also Wikipedia has a “Terms of Use”. A “Terms of use” for Wikipedia came only to existence years after its founding and remained very basic. Until now. In original Wikimedia style a new Terms Of use have been written by the community at Meta. It is more extensive then the current but it remains, for a “Terms of Use”, relative short and very readable. The WMF board still needs to approve it before it can replaces the current “Terms of Use”.
- http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/31/terms-of-use/
- http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use — New “Terms of Use” (final community draft)
- [The Annual Fundraiser] – Despite the economic problems of the world – the Wikimedia Foundation did it again. The goal is every year higher but the donations follow. The WMF has raised the new record amount of 20 million US dollar in the fundraiser that just now ended. The miracle of the WMF business model to just ask for money keeps working. But even a miracle needs some help. Last year the WMF spend 1,8 USD $ on fundraising. The operating budget of the WMF will increase in spending in 2011-12 compared with 2010-11 with $9.8 million. 28.3 million USD will be the current budget. The gap between the raised amount and the budget is closed by several grants and continuous donations. 44% of the budget will go to running the actual web-infrastructure. 24% will go to management, finance and administration. A tiny fraction smaller, 23% of the budget, is under the label “Other programs”. The Community department and the Global Development department falls under that slice. The rest are fundraising costs. Best read the annual plan if you wish to know more.
- [Grant of $3.6 Million] – The Stanton Foundation -, a long term funder of the WMF, donated $3.6 million USD (2,61 Million EUR) to the Wikimedia Foundation. This is the largest grant ever received by the WMF.
Technical news
- [https] – It was already possible to login to the projects by means of a secure connection but that was by means of a “https://secure.wikimedia.org” -type of link. Now the usable links work. Just add the “s” to the protocol. This works on all Wikimedia wikis. Using https is not yet the default option when you login. If you wish to use it you need to enter it manually.
- [Article Feedback] – A new article feedback system is in testing at EN Wikipedia. A previous version used a star-system the the reader could give to articles. The new one uses a different approach. It does not asks to give points but the give real textual reader feedback. More like a very easy comment function like on blogs and news sites. Only are the comments not posted. Currently the collected data is only for testing and not public. The idea is that editors will be able to assess the feedback in the future. The test runs on limited number of articles on EN Wikipedia.
- http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/20/a-new-way-to-contribute-to-wikipedia/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_%28operating_system%29 — example article with the new feedback function
Movement
- [Al Jazeera] – The media company Al Jazeera, mostly know for its television stations, is releasing a large part of the pictures and video’s the make under a Creative Commons license (CC BY 3.0). This is very, very great news. Wikinews and Wikipedia now have access to recent quality material for there articles about topics that would be nearly impossible otherwise.
Media
- [Wikipedia Vs. Britannica] – It is not original but always interesting to read; compare the articles of Wikipedia with those of Britannica and other classic sources by academics. The reaserch is published in the peer-reviewed medical journal “Psychological Medicine”. To read the actual article you can “buy” the article for $45 or “rent” it for $5,99. Luckily the Singpost is not so silly.
- http://tinyurl.com/6mzosac — free read
Events and meetups
- [Wikipedia Day] – next week, Sunday, it will be once more Wikipedia Day; the founding day of Wikipedia. The 15th of January Wikipedia will be become 11-years old. Several community’s will hold a wiki-meetup in honour or Wikipedia Day in India, Mexico, United Kingdom, United States …. see link and check your local community.
Other news
- [Illustrators] – An art and design school in Barcelona and the Catalan foundation “Friends of Wikipedia” have made a partnership in which 6 illustration students are doing their final degree creating images that will be incorporated under free licenses to Wikimedia Commons to illustrate some Wikipedia articles.
- [Wikiriffs] – “Every week or so I go to Wikipedia, click Random Article, and write a song about whatever comes up.”
Wikizine
- [?] – between mid August and the end of September there was a short but strong burst of Wikizines in different new editions, new emerging concepts for Wikizine. This was under the direction of the new lead editor of Wikizine User Milos. Unfortunately it was a short candle that burned out very fast. This Wikizine is once more a “Classic edition”. No more “News”, “Talk” of “Opinion” editions. It is constructed once more by User:Walter. Realistically speaking Wikizine is dead since long. This edition and possible future editions are the product just of plain stubbornness to continue more or less despite any objective reason to do so. In that spirit I also wish to point out that Wikizine is still also online at Gopher-space. The wikizine.org domain is just renewed for two years so in any case that will remain online for the near future. Happy new year! — User:Walter
Request for help
- [WikiLovesMonuments] – The photo contest. Edition 2010 was only in the Netherlands. Edition 2011 was in many European country’s and very successful. Will the edition of 2012 be a truly global event? Would you be interested in organizing a Wiki Loves Monuments in 2012 in your country? Would you like to know more? See the links below and join the mailing list.
- http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012 — first steps for the 2012 edition
- http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2011_winners – see the winners of 2011
- http://www.wikilovesmonuments.eu/ — main website of WLM
- https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments — join the mailing list
- [Babel] – The Babel extension is a system to indicate what languages you speak and at what level. Your invited to check of in your language everything is (correctly) translated.
Did you know …
- … that it very easy to get a QRcode for any Wikipedia article?
- A QR code a square barcode that is used to point to online resources that people can lookup with there mobile device. The website QRpedia.org makes it very easy make a code for any Wikipedia article. The code is language independent. When used it will return to the user the Wikipedia article about that topic in the language of the user based on the language settings of the mobile device. This system is used in several museums to provide multi-language extra information.
Quote
- “jimmy_wales; I am proud to announce that the Wikipedia domain names will move away from GoDaddy. Their position on #sopa is unacceptable to us. 23 Dec Twitter.”
- Our Chairman Emeritus takes a political standpoint against a new US law that could threat online freedom of speech.
