Archive:Wikimedia Quarto/1/En-4
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Out of the Projects
The Tree of Life wikiproject, focusing on all organisms on the planet, continues to be the largest of all Wikipedia projects. It has contributors and content in many languages, and many thousands of articles to its name. The board met online in September to discuss Wikispecies [1], a proposed biological project, related to the Tree of Life, that aims to provide data on every species. This resource will feed into Wikipedias of all languages. The project, which was created later that month, will work closely with the Tree of Life Wikiproject, and similar projects across the Wikipedias. Two single-topic reference texts, called 'WikiReaders,' were produced in German from Wikipedia content, on the topics of Sweden and the Internet [2]. These were developed by a group of contributors led by Thomas Karcher, converted to PDF, and printed in a small print run for 6USD a copy, following a few simple guidelines [3]. They were distributed at meetups in Germany and Austria, and via an online store [4]. Similar reader projects have been started on the English Wikipedia centered around the topics of cryptography and World War II [5]. |
Wikimedia Commons was launched in September 2004, with the goal of providing a central repository for free images, music and, possibly, texts and spoken texts, to be used by all Wikimedia projects. Still in the planning stage, the project will, in future, allow images to be reused across projects.
Wikipeople: This will be both a memorial wiki, incorporating the 911wiki as a portal along with other less specific memorial pages, and a family tree wiki, including genealogical details about people of every era. It hopes to find a way to incorporate the 9/11 memorial wiki. Wikiversity: This is currently a wikibooks portal to material specifically for (self-)instruction. Interest in Wikiversity is growing rapidly, including outreach to university and highschool teachers, who regularly come to Wikipedia with their classes. There is an effort afoot to convert existing wikibooks to be used in courses, and another to attract support for a more elaborate wikiversity initiative. |
de : Qualitätsoffensive: every 2 weeks a topic is chosen, and related articles are improved. Started in April; 11 topics covered so far. Banner image See also nl. en : Featured images : in parallel with the featured articles review process, high-quality images are categorized as featured images; a parallel 'Image of the Day' project features one image each day via a fixed template. fr : A general drive for improving the quality of the project took place this summer: controversial articles were greatly reduced, all images were tagged with license information, and numerous stubs were expanded. ja : Web Creation Award On September 9, the Japanese Wikipedia won the Special Prize of the Web Creation Award from the Japanese Advertisers Association, for its excellence among Japanese-language websites. nl : An article-writing contest proved so popular that de: started their own in September. Original contest: Schrijfwedstrijd. zh : 条目质量提升计划 every 2 weeks a high-level article is chosen, and related articles are reviewed and updated. |
Chapter Reports
Efforts to found the first two Wikimedia chapters, based in Germany and France, began this year. Draft bylaws were drawn up, and interested parties were selected to help organize and promote each chapter, particularly among the regulars on the de: and fr: Wikipedias. Both chapter initiatives have produced extensive documentation, much of it stored on the Wikimedia Meta-wiki, and have started to hold regular meetings.
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As planned, the German Wikipedia reached two milestones on June 12, 2004: That evening, Wikipedians had a party during the Wizards of OS conference to celebrate the 100,000th article, and on the following day, 34 Wikipedians and friends met to found the German chapter of Wikimedia, Wikimedia Deutschland. The German chapter began work immediately. On July 1, five members met with the Brockhaus Corporation, the most renowned German encyclopedia publisher, and exchanged experiences. A collaboration was begun with the Digital Library in Berlin to produce a Wikipedia CD-summary, which should conclude at the end of September with the production of 40,000 CDs. In a well-attended member meeting on IRC, people discussed further strategies and projects. The Berlin Media and Computation Professor, Deborah Weber-Wulff, undertook the coordination of academic efforts on Wikipedia. Presentations on Wikipedia at festivals and conferences are already planned, particularly, at the Linuxday fairs in Lörrach and the Berlinux conference in Berlin.
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The French chapter-to-be is still in its formative stages. A pilot committee (comité de pilotage) has been set up, and draft chapter bylaws and structures have been proposed. The current status of the association (found on [6]) seems to be acceptable to members of the pilot committee; no one currently objects much to any specific point in the proposed structure. The organisation's name, which was finally settled on, is Wikimedia France. Due to the summer holidays, everything was at a standstill in August. This has been changing with the end of the holidays. However, there are not yet many volunteers for the board. According to the planning timeline (found on ([7]), the next milestone is in October, when a meeting is planned to validate status, after which November will see the official birth of the association. Some of the issues for the new chapter to deal with are: setting up potential Wikimedia mirrors and squids in France, and acquiring wikimedia-related domain names (as the budget allows). |
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