After over a month of deliberations, the Wikimania jury announced on Friday that Buenos Aires, Argentina would serve as the site of Wikimania 2009, to be held in August 2009, defeating finalist Toronto in the final round of voting.
In an announcement on Friday, jury moderators Phoebe Ayers, Cary Bass and James Forrester noted the strengths of both Buenos Aires and Toronto, and explained why Buenos Aires received the nod over Toronto:
The jury was particularly excited by a few parts of the Buenos Aires bid:
- A strong, organized team, with division of labor already underway and support from Wikimedia Argentina. Many people contributed to the bid, with obvious enthusiasm for organizing the conference and quick responses to inquiries.
- A detailed budget proposal and planning schedule. Many major expenses are being covered by the provider. The total budget is similar to Wikimania 2007's, including a larger travel scholarship fund, and they have provided detailed charts ahead of time.
- A significant number of sponsors already lined up, with some already confirmed. They hope to cover half the accommodation and $60k in travel scholarships, which will help to ease travel costs for participants from far away.
- A solid venue : as with Toronto, this was situated within a well-maintained cultural center in a major international city, near an airline hub; culturally open, and an international melting pot.
- Relaxed visa rules, and easy entry from South American countries.
- Good Spanish-language media contacts, with the promise of outreach to and the opportunity to work with the Spanish-language Wikimedia communities.
Toronto, the runner up, also provided a great bid. The jury was especially excited by:
- Strong English-language press in the area, and media experience among the bid team
- A very accessible venue, especially for US/European attendees.
- An excellent venue : a university campus, with dorms directly at the venue. As with Buenos Aires, it was situated within a well-maintained cultural center in a major international city, near an airline hub; culturally open, and an international melting pot.
- Extensive budget accommodation in the dorms; with many options for casual social space.
- A dedicated bid team, with the hope of Wikimedia Canada being formed in time to help coordinate.
However, the jury felt that Buenos Aires' bid showed stronger organization overall. Additionally, much of the information in the Toronto bid was carried over from previous bids, and it was unclear how much of a commitment for the University of Toronto facilities there was specifically for 2009.
Argentina will become the first South American country and the first Spanish-language country to host Wikimania. Wikimania 2009 will be the fifth annual conference, and each conference has been held on a different continent:
The choice was not without criticism, although the decision raised much less controversy than the choice of Alexandria for Wikimania 2008. Some users, including David Gerard and Dan Rosenthal, noted that an assertion made by Ayers, that "strong bids from [Europe and North America] would be welcome for 2010's Wikimania," could be read to mean that Toronto's bid may have been unwelcome due to a wish to keep Wikimania out of Europe and North America until 2010. Ayers explained her wording:
This jury isn't/wasn't in the business of deciding anything whatsoever about 2010. The statement that strong bids from North America and Europe are welcome should be taken with good faith at face value and not as an Oracle of Things To Come or a Veiled Comment on Things Past. If you have to read anything into it, read into it an acknowledgment that we can't win when it comes to picking locations! Apparently everywhere makes *someone* unhappy, and if we don't have a conference in Europe/North America soon there will be much complaining.
Jury member Michael Snow started a discussion on Monday, on what Wikimania should be. He noted that "Wikimania is being pulled in too many directions, and it cannot be all things to all people", and noted that such a discussion may be necessary in order to weigh where Wikimania should be located:
Wikimania could be bigger or smaller, reach the developing world or only the already-developed, more expensive or less so, rotated widely or narrowly. Leaving aside the security concerns specific to Alexandria, the choice of options would have the following undesirable consequences, depending on which course is taken:
- Complaints that the event is impersonal, lacks a sense of community, or is merely a stage-managed public relations show
- After a cycle or two, it seems to be pretty much just the same group of people getting together every few years
- Objections that the amount being spent is a poor use of foundation funds (depending on how it works out, this would be about either the size of the event or the travel costs incurred by the foundation itself, making distance from San Francisco a factor)
- Inability to accommodate anyone beyond the local audience, thus being hardly different from a random meetup and failing to reflect the diverse character of Wikimedia participants
- Rumors and misperceptions of unfairness in timing of when registration is opened or how tickets are allocated
- Outrage over high admission charges, resembling more closely a "professional" conference
... I fear an end result of the fights over this would be to either abandon the idea of Wikimania, or simply to hold it in the Moscone Center every year like Macworld. Before we get there, let's hear some better alternatives.
This is the first of a series of interviews about Wikimedia Foundation sister projects. The aim is to help Wikipedia editors understand these projects, with the hopes that more will be interested in participating. (We are still looking for interviewees for Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikispecies, and Wikinews. You can find more details on this page.)
This week, we're very fortunate to have BirgitteSB, who is a bureaucrat at Wikisource, to discuss that project.
Can you describe what Wikisource is? What is its history? Any aims and objectives?
Wikisource is a library of free-content artistic and intellectual writings. Wikisource began more like Commons, with all languages together, but eventually split off into separate subdomains as Wikipedia did. However, Wikisource subdomains are often broader than Wikipedias. The English subdomain hosts texts in languages that would be inappropriate on the English Wikipedia, such as Old and Middle English as well as Scots dialect. Since Wikisource presents texts as they were published, there is no need to make some of the finer distinctions that the Wikipedias do. Wikisource aims to stand out from other similar collections online by the use of wikilinks to give context and background information. Wikilinks allow information to link to Wikipedia articles or Wikitionary entries without being as obtrusive as margin notes, nor as difficult to follow as footnotes. And those who just want the straight text can more easily ignore wikilinks.
An example of how wikilinks can be used on Wikisource is Fuzzy-Wuzzy, which was one my first projects when joining Wikisource. My intention with the wikilinks was to offer the background information that a reader of the Scots Observer in 1890 would have likely known. Of course a good portion readers today will instantly understand what is meant by the "Khyber Hills" and the reference to "Tommy", but there will also be people who do not understand the significance of either, and I doubt a significant number of modern readers would realize "Martinis" refer to a type of rifle rather than a drink from the wordplay in the poem. The beauty of wikilinks is that I can provide adequate information for the completely uninformed reader without annoying the military history buff with footnotes full of information he would find simplistic but can't avoid reading. However, Wikisource is generally far from the most sophisticated work of collaborating with the authors of Wikipedia articles to make this all more subtle. Currently, work is mostly focused on getting the texts themselves set-up on the wiki and proofread.
I felt that Wikisource is a mix of both Wikibooks and Wikiquote. So how is Wikisource different from these 2 projects?
Wikibooks is about creating new texts while Wikisource is only interested in previously existing texts. Contributors to Wikibooks are true authors while at Wikisource contributors are more like traditional editors. Wikisource does not create new content. Wikiquote on the other doesn't have complete texts at all, but short excerpts. Wikisource requires texts to be presented as they were published and doesn't allow excerpting or heavy editing by contributors.
Follow-up question: So if I want to read the manuscripts of Beethoven during his last few years when he had gone completely deaf, that would be in the scope of Wikisource?
It would definitely be within the scope of Wikisource. However sheet music is currently a technological issue. Brion is not implementing the lilypond extension for any Wikimedia wiki due to security problems and there is no real alternative for editing sheet music on a wiki. Hopefully this will be resolved in the future. If anyone has creative ideas on how transcribe such a manuscript they would certainly be welcome to work on this, but I don't think someone coming to Wikisource and asking how to add sheet music would find many answers.
Ok, I'm a newcomer to Wikisource. What can I write?
Well, we don't write things like Wikipedia does. There is not much of a place for writing new material at Wikisource.
However a new contributor would be welcome to transcribe texts onto Wikisource. You could add works entirely new to the wiki; this week's collaboration is on the works of Karl Marx. Or you could help with continuing the transcription of works in progress, like The New Student's Reference Work. Some of the more recent texts are set up with the ProofreadPage extension which turns the transcription task into more of a proofreading task from OCR. While many of us are excited to be using this to work off djvu files from Commons, it is a big transition for the project with more logistical issues than you might imagine. Other texts needing proofreading can be found at Wikisource:Proofreading. Besides these options there is always a place for the creation of new translations.
Also some of the texts need image extractions done from the files of scanned pages. For the more expert contributor there is also the wikilinking that gives Wikisource texts that added value not found in similar projects across the Internet. So there are lots of tasks that go into producing Wikisource texts even without original writing!
What are some of the tasks done by administrators?
Besides the obvious tasks like deleting pages and blocking vandals, I think administrators tend to take on the task of looking for potential problems and finding answers to questions such as "Is this newcomer formatting things properly and choosing the correct names?", "Do these new texts have any copyright concerns?", or "Do we have the information of who translated this edition?". Researching copyright seems to be a good part of the role at times. But I think everyone has a slightly different experience in what they focus on.
On Wikipedia we have "Featured Article" to show its best selection of articles. Is there similar scheme for Wikisource?
We have a featured text that appears on the Main Page monthly instead of daily. The most difficult requirement for featured texts is a high level of proofreading. Although they can be opposed for style issues as well.
Being one of the smaller sister projects (comparing to others such as commons or meta), does the project have any plans to encourage more people registering and contributing?
Of course I have only been talking about the English subdomain of Wikisource. Meta and Commons are not divided among languages and Meta is actually smaller by some measurements.
I would welcome anyone wishing to contribute to Wikisource, but there is no sort of organized effort to round up people. Anyone who is interested, but is not sure where to start, can leave a note at Wikisource:Scriptorium or join the #wikisource IRC channel.
This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from "Magic satchel". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
On Thursday, the 10,000,000th article was created. A press release circulated by the Foundation on Friday declared the 10,000,000th article to be the Hungarian article on painter Nicholas Hilliard, created by user Pataki Márta.
Of the 10,000,000 articles, 23% are in English, 7.2% are in German, and 6.4% are in French. The top 10 Wikipedias (English, German, French, Polish, Japanese, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish) compose about 64.9% of all articles, while about 240 other Wikipedias combine for the remaining 35.1%.
On the heels of receiving a three-year grant worth US$3 million from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (see archived story), the Wikimedia Foundation announced last week an additional $500,000 donation from philanthropists Vinod and Neeru Khosla. Vinod Khosla is a venture capitalist, best known for co-founding Sun Microsystems. The donation was announced in a press release on Thursday.
One of the holy grails of contributing to Wikipedia is writing a featured article. Featured articles are considered to be our best work, being well-written, comprehensive, factually accurate, neutral and stable. They can be de-featured if they no longer meet standards. However, if you are not a great article writer, don't panic! There are other ways you can contribute featured content to the encyclopedia.
Featured pictures represent the most encyclopedic images Wikipedia has to offer. This is not the same as featured pictures on Commons, which aims to select what is best described as the prettiest pictures. Wikipedia featured pictures should also be of the highest technical quality possible.
Any freely licensed picture is eligible for featured status, however minimum size requirements are enforced for static media. Video files can be nominated for featured picture status, because they are considered to be moving pictures (hence the word movie). To become a featured picture, an image must meet the featured picture criteria and obtain consensus for promotion at Featured picture candidates in roughly seven days. There are currently 1163 featured pictures, approximately 0.04% of the eligible pictures that are here and on Commons. In comparison, there are 6623 featured articles.
Featured pictures are displayed on the Main Page as picture of the day (POTD) under the section "Today's featured picture". Commons also runs a POTD.
Pictures also have a good article equivalent on Commons, called Quality images. However, eligibility is restricted to photos taken by Wikimedians. Additionally, Valued images (not yet stable) aims to find the most encyclopedic images without putting too much emphasis on pretty pictures.
Pictures have their own peer review process at Picture peer review. In addition, the Graphic Lab can help you to improve your images. They also have a chapter on Commons, as well as the French, German, Spanish and Luxembourgish Wikipedias.
We intuitively know what a list is. A featured list is one that enumerates articles whose subjects satisfy a certain encyclopedic criterion in a useful, comprehensive, factually accurate and well-constructed manner. To become featured, a list must undergo a ten-day featured list candidacy and emerge with a consensus to promote. There are currently 636 featured lists.
Lists are not eligible for good article status.
Various proposals relating to a "today's featured list" item on the Main Page have been made, some of which would require the appointment of a featured list director (for example Today's featured list proposal, another featured list proposal and List of the day), but discussion appears stalled.
Lists go through the same peer review process as articles.
A portal serves as a miniature version of the Main Page for a broad subject area. Featured portals showcase Wikipedia's best content in that subject, although such content need not be featured. They should also be aesthetically pleasing, ergonomic, well-maintained and encourage contributions in the subject area per the featured portal criteria. Portals must also obtain consensus for promotion at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates in order to be featured. There are currently {{Featured portals number}} featured portals, comprising approximately 20% of the total portal population.
Besides featured articles, whose director is Raul654, featured portals are the only other featured content process to have formal directors, who are Dihydrogen Monoxide, OhanaUnited and Rudget.
Portals have their own peer review process.
This is fairly self-explanatory – a featured topic is a set of exemplary articles that are somehow related. However, there is no glossing over the puny little stub on a subject that is a major part of the topic – all articles should be good articles with at least two, or 1 in 5 (whichever is greater) being featured articles or lists per the featured topic criteria (exceptions can be made for articles of limited scope). To become featured, the topic must also obtain consensus to promote at Featured topic candidates and be listed there for more than 10 days. Changes to featured topics (e.g. adding an article) should also be made through FTC. There are currently 36 featured topics encompassing 323 unique articles.
There is no such thing as "topic peer review"; individual articles can be reviewed at peer review.
The newest of the featured content processes, featured sounds, aims to highlight the most encyclopedic audio recordings. Any freely licensed audio file that is not a spoken article is eligible for nomination at Featured sound candidates, where it is checked against the featured sound criteria. Unfortunately, the featured sound process currently suffers from a lack of participation and nomination periods are lengthy. There are currently 14 featured sounds.
A media file, usually a sound (but usually not a featured sound), appears on the Commons Main Page as Media of the day. However, there is no featured sound designation on Commons – MOTDs are simply repeated each year unless someone changes them.
There is currently no specialized peer review venue for sounds.
This week we interviewed a number of members from the renowned Australia WikiProject (Matilda, Dihydrogen Monoxide, Blnguyen, Orderinchaos, Gnangarra, Lankiveil, SatuSuro and Moondyne). A project (with its own 'cabal' and portal) that has been going since 5 June 2006, it is one of the foremost groups on Wikipedia. An umbrella–project for all the sub-groups which attend to all aspects of Australia, it is a group with numerous editors and many departments. The Australians (Ozzies or Aussies) have covered all bases with the project with nearly 56,000 articles tagged with project–notices. The scale of the WikiProject can be seen by considering that although it has 98 featured articles and lists, they only make up around 0.2% of all articles within the project's scope. The project has (in addition to 98 featured articles or featured lists) nine A-class articles and one hundred and forty five good articles.
Three users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Jonny-mt (nom), Stwalkerster (nom), and Cobaltbluetony (nom).
Six bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: SoxBot (task request), EjsBot (task request), Werdnabot (task request), RoboMaxCyberSem (task request), AkhtaBot (task request), and LatitudeBot (task request).
Twenty three articles were promoted to featured status last week: Tropical Storm Vamei (nom), Clem Hill (nom), Giants: Citizen Kabuto (nom), Genetics (nom), USS Bridgeport (AD-10) (nom), University of California, Riverside (nom), Choe Bu (nom), Timor Leste Defence Force (nom), Grim Fandango (nom), Flag of Germany (nom), Ernie Toshack (nom), Silverchair (nom), SS Christopher Columbus (nom), Double Seven Day scuffle (nom), Ancient Egypt (nom), Ima Hogg (nom), Spyro: Year of the Dragon (nom), Komodo dragon (nom), Cannon (nom), Anarky (nom), Irreplaceable (nom), Jacques Plante (nom), Diocletian (nom).
Seventeen lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of WCW Hardcore Champions (nom), Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office (nom), List of Scripps National Spelling Bee champions (nom), List of Birmingham City F.C. managers (nom), List of UEFA Super Cup winning managers (nom), Green Wing (series 1) (nom), List of tallest buildings in New Orleans (nom), List of UEFA club tournament winning managers (nom), Liverpool F.C. seasons (nom), List of awards and nominations for Lost (nom), 2007 Cricket World Cup warm-up matches (nom), Tenacious D discography (nom), List of 30 Rock episodes (nom), Regions of Peru (nom), List of Victoria Cross recipients of the Royal Navy (nom), List of Super Bowl champions (nom), and List of Green Bay Packers head coaches (nom). The 65 featured lists in March is a record, far outstripping the 46 lists featured in January 2008.
No topic was promoted to featured status last week.
No portal was promoted to featured status last week.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Sea otter, Technology of the Song Dynasty, Flag of Armenia, 1933 Atlantic hurricane season, E. Urner Goodman, Free Association of German Trade Unions and December to Dismember (2006).
Two articles were delisted recently: Voynich manuscript (nom) and Reginald Maudling (nom).
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Tugboat, Emperor Tamarin, Chris Young, The School of Athens, Louvre, Olympic Stadium (Montreal) and Cessna 182.
No sounds were featured last week.
Six pictures were promoted to featured status last week and are shown below.
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are necessarily live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.4 (a8dd895), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.
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!important is no longer broken by automatic conversion of spaces to non-breaking spaces. (r32377, bug 11874)
The Arbitration Committee opened one new case this week.
