Wikimedia news/numero 81/en

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W i K i M e D i A N e W s no. 25 - June 04, 2009

Official bulletin from Wikimedia Italia Association.

Editorial

After a heated internal debate about the reasons and motives that we have and led to the creation of Wikimedia Italia, we decided - better: on Frieda's suggestion I decided - to ask directly to our members, and generally to those who would care to respond, what role WMI should have in their opinion.

Do you know WMI?

What is Wikimedia Italia?

From the questionnaire it seems evident that Wikimedia Italy has a problem of identity. Most respondents, while claiming to know us, have in fact a wrong idea of the role of WMI: many of them confuse us with WMF or the alleged "maintainers of Wikipedia". Few really know who we are and cite our aim correctly, to spread free culture- even if they often think we simply promote wiki projects, and even among these people our role is not always clear and understood.

Do you participate to a wiki project?

WMF is?

On the one hand we act as WMF, collecting donations through the sitenotice - by the way someone thinks it is an abuse of power, on the other hand we are not doing the things that the foundation should do but did not always, first of all protection from all legal issues related to Wikipedia, and their clarification.

Proposed changes to our action could be divided into two categories:

• changes not acceptable, because we don't want or cannot put them into practice. We should make an effort to explain why we cannot nor want to have direct responsibility in Wikipedia, and why we want to emphasize that we are something different and distinct from Wikipedia.
• changes potentially acceptable, or proposals we already take care of and that maybe nobody knows.

I will present a more detailed version of the result of the survey in September: for the time being, here there is a brief annotated list of some of the proposals that I believe fall under the second category.

1. Keep media relations. We are already moving in this area, but we could obviously do more to improve our image.
2. Lobbying. Having more visibility, see above, would allow us to exert some political pressure.
3. Relations with the "civil society". Establish relationships with cultural institutions, authors, publishers and so on. We are already doing it, or at least we try, but it does not seem this is well known.
4. Distributed presence. Our new base in Rome seems a step in this direction.
5. Use resources to free content (digitizing). We are talking about this at this very time: as soon as we'll have something concrete we will publicize it.
6. Create a DVD of Wikipedia. Apart from the traditional problem of finding a publisher, now we have a further problem: the use of the logo, and the associated economic agreements, must be agreed directly with Wikimedia Foundation.

DracoRoboter

What happened during last months

Note: all links are in Italian

• January
  • Aubrey and Laurentius teached Tuscany librarians about Wikipedia and Progetto Comuni: here the report
  • Massimiliano Navacchia took part in Accessibility e CMS Camp 2010 in Bologna.

• February
  • VirtualSkiz made a report during the event Sentieri Digitali.
  • Laurentius took part in Caffè-Scienza From Free Software to Wikipedia: collaborating in a network: here the report
  • Roman members organized a WikiTrip to Anzio and Landing Museum.

• March
  • LaPizia, supported by Marcok, Cotton and Jaakko, teached two lessons to present Wikipedia at the Faculty of Economics, University Ca 'Foscari, at the kind invitation of Professor Micelli: report of the day.
  • Frieda teached in Bocconi University in the course Strategy and governance of cultural organizzations, about Wikipedia business model. Here the slides (in English).
  • Laurentius and IgnLig took part to a meeting organized by Firenze Linux User Group Here le slides.
  • Meeting of the members of Wikimedia Italia in Pistoia.
  • March 26th, Torino: international meeting Extracting Value From Public Sector Information: Legal Framework and Regional Policies at Aula Magna and Aula Allara of the Rectorate of the University, in the framework of EVPSI prokect. .mau. took part to the afternoon session (Focus on Italy) with a speech "Obstacles to Accessing and Re-using (Italian) Cultural PSI on Wikipedia", listing the problems Wikipedia faces in trying to reuse public data, in coping with Italian copyright laws and in pushing for free licenses. English abstract and slide here.
  • Marcok took part in meeting Didattica aperta - Libero accesso a software e saperi nella Scuola e nell'Università (Open education - free access to software and knowledge at school and university) with a poster.

• May
  • May 7th: CristianCantoro took part in Internet Ergo Sum, here in depth, talking about Wikipedia in a high school in Leno (Brescia): themes are Wikipedia and freedom in the Net, which most students found interesting. With him Guido Nardo, former Facebook's developer and social network specialist, presenting social networks e talking about the problem with the use of Facebook and privacy on the Internet. In the afternoon the workshop on Wikipedia had a good success among students, even if it was optional; it was structured as a tutorial for the prospective editors.
  • Wikimedia Italia organized Festival delle Libertà Digitali (see next section)
  • Schio (VI): Cotton presented Wikipedia, WMI and the projects of Wikimedia Foundation in a meeting organized by I Mercoledì della Piazza Telematica: Report

• June
  • musicamp (Laurentius) (report)
  • CristianCantoro took part to the first IULM BarCamp; unfortunately its speech could not be delivered. He was however conctacted for an interview broadcasted on Radio24 and made by the students of the Master in Radio Communication at IULM.
  • Cotton and La Pizia took part with a small Wikimedia booth to No Skei Day ay San Vito di Leguzzano (VI): Report.

Special on Digital Freedoms Festival

From 10 to 16 May 2010, the association organized the second Digital Freedoms Festival (FDLD, for "Festival delle libertà digitali") in Milan entitled "Milan frees all". Events were numerous and ranged from comics to photo via OpenAccess and free games.

The festival was born as a container for different events with a common goal: bringing people and an entire city to the issues of digital freedom, free licenses and sharing of knowledge.

Certainly the festival was an opportunity for growth for the association, which was able to test his strength on a difficult location like Milan: results, despite a relatively low public participation in general, have been useful to increase our contacts with other associations with whom we share goals and philosophy.

The most successful events will be replicated in the future.

Events

May 10

• Sharing, science, common good: a meeting where experts from Open Access, academy and teachers debated.
• SGRUNT! Paper and bits for open culture: a panel discussion on comics, authors and the comparison between "paper" and "network" media.

May 11

Open&Crowd, supplementary gears

May 12

fotoMIgira: look at Milan from behind a lens, communicating with other passionate photographers, to discover that encyclopedias have a photographic soul.

May 13

Open Web - Una serata al collegio di Milano: Wikipedia, la libertà e la rete: quanto è libera la rete? Siamo diventati più responsabili nel nostro approccio alla rete dalla nascita del web 2.0 ad oggi? Wikimedia Italia e Google incontrano i ragazzi del Collegio di Milano.

May 14

GGDMilano#12 - Ignite: How to: GGDs (Geek Girls Dinners) are dinners or meetings aimed at women who are passionate about technology, Internet and new media. Twelfth Milan dinner was an "Ignite", where speakers presented their "How to", that is how to do something particularly "geek".

May 15

GNUfun - Milano frees music: Saturday with free music, in collaboration with GNUFunk: openday @ "Kubi studio" (Via Carlo Botta, 13) from 15:00 and concert +dj-set with fre music @ "Le trottoir alla Darsena" (Piazza XXIV Maggio, 1)

May 16

OpenGamingCamp - Milano frees games: the fun side of freedom: a BarCamp, that is a non-conference where anyone can "get in the chair", propose a topic and talk to others, accompanied by free games tournaments.

Throughout the event, WikiWall - a Wikipedia page at Triennale: an installation at the Triennale similar to a Wikipedia page: people can write, edit or attack photos to tell what the digital freedom is.

What will happen next months

• in September (tentative location: Bologna) we'll have our annual meeting.

News from our groups

Wikimedia Roma

New premises for Wikimedia Italia!

Wikimedia Italy will soon have a physical location. Offices, large enough to host some workshops and a dozen workstations, are in Rome, via Grotta di Gregna 27 (Google map). The premises are the result of an agreement between the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Rome, the Libraries of the City of Rome and the association Liber Liber. The planned activities consist in setting up three laboratories: video editing, e-book digitizing/layout and audio editing for the creation of audiobooks. We also expect to participate in European calls, for example to promote the [Open http://www.openalexandria.org/ Alexandria], and others that may be proposed by the most active volunteers of Wikimedia Italy and Liber Liber.

Premises will also be used to host civil service volunteers and interns, to organize courses and cultural events, in collaboration with the adjacent library Vaccheria Nardi, who has large rooms with multimedia stations, area conferences, and of course reading rooms (the structure as a whole has three buildings).

Ancora incerta la data di inaugurazione. Restano infatti da definire alcuni dettagli (ritiro dei certificati di conformità degli impianti, collaudo ascensori, ecc.), e siamo alla ricerca di sponsor per l'allestimento dei laboratori. L'auspicio è di riuscire ad inaugurare entro questo mese di agosto, anche se magari per allora saranno disponibili solo alcune postazioni di lavoro e non ancora i laboratori. Chi fosse interessato a collaborare, è invitato a contattare Marco Calvo.

Opening date is still uncertain. Some details remain to be defined (collection of certificates of conformity of equipment, testing elevators, etc.), and we are looking for sponsors for the setting up of laboratories. We hope to start before the end of August, even with few workstations and without the laboratories. Anyone interested in collaborating is invited to contact Marco Calvo.

News from our projects

News from Biblioteca

We started System Reference Document 3.5 Project, together with 5° clone, group whose purpose is to promote intelligent games (in particular, role games).

The project intends to translate into Italia the correspondent document of Wizards of the Coast, which will be released under a Open Gaming License.

News from Wiki@Home

Many news from Wiki@Home: many interviews were completed, among them the one with Umberto Eco (English version) made by Aubrey and taken up by some bloggers and the famous online magazine Punto Informatico. We also repory the completion of the interview with Patrizio Roversi by Capsicum. Finally, Monday, June 28, 2010 the referent of the project, CristianCantoro, attended a meeting at the School of Journalism "Walter Tobagi" at University of Milan to present Wikimedia Italy, the world of Creative Commons licenses and of course Wiki@Home project.

We need volunteers

Wiki@Home staff needs willing young people of all ages to unwind interviews, make transcripts, fix typos, create new interviews and material for the presentation of the project. For more information please write at the contact for the project, CristianCantoro, at the address: kikkocristiangmail.com.

News from WMF projects

• Wikibooks: Attivata l'estensione DynamicPageList anche in Wikibooks: comincia l'automatizzazione dei ripiani.
• Wikinotizie: Pubblicata l'intervista a Umberto Eco, vedi sopra.
• Wikiquote: Superate le 10 000 voci con Fazio degli Uberti, ma it.wikiquote non è piú la seconda versione linguistica per numero di voci, essendo stato superato (per la prima volta da novembre 2007) dalla versione in polacco, grazie a un'accelerazione della creazione di nuove voci a partire da fine 2009 (cause in corso di approfondimento).
• Wikisource:
  • Completata l'unificazione delle intestazioni nel template {{Template:Intestazione}}.
  • Superate le 45 000 pagine, grazie all'aggiunta automatica (fra febbraio e aprile, con {{Template:Conteggio pagine}}) di collegamenti invisibili direttamente nel wikitesto di circa 30.000 pagine che contenevano solo template e quindi non venivano conteggiate pur essendo "buone", alterando le statistiche (ispirato da wikt:en:Template:count page).
  • Alex Brollo was elected sysop.
• Wikiversità: Eletto un nuovo amministratore, WHacko: gli amministratori sono ora 3.
• Wikizionario: Eletto un nuovo amministratore, Limonadis: agli amministratori sono ora 9. Per la prima volta da molto tempo a questa parte, il Wikizionario ha superato Wikiquote nel numero di utenti registrati (rispettivamente 14 300 e 14 200 al 14 luglio) diventando primo fra i progetti fratelli, ma non per numero di utenti attivi nell'ultimo mese (rispettivamente 60 e 160 circa), dato in cui Wikiquote supera di gran lunga tutti gli altri progetti fratelli.
• Wikipedia:
  • Gennaio: è stato creato il progetto accoglienza per i nuovi utenti.
  • Aprile: grossa polemica sull'introduzione in Facebook delle "pagine sociali" con testo della relativa voce di Wikipedia se esistente (e collegamento alla pagina di modifica). Alcuni utenti hanno espresso la preoccupazione che l'invito «Conquista nuovi sostenitori della tua causa o del tuo ideale creando una Pagina sociale» sia interpretato come relativo al contributo a Wikipedia (contro il punto di vista neutrale), e in generale che da Facebook arrivino solo utenti non adatti a Wikipedia. Due amministratori si sono dimessi.
  • Maggio: scoppia un'ulteriore polemica (o per meglio dire dilaga una ForestFire) sui gruppi di Facebook che parlano male di Wikipedia e invitano gli utenti a modificarla in un certo modo, e in generale sul presunto aumento di gruppi organizzati di utenti dediti ad alterare il consenso per promuovere il proprio punto di vista nell'enciclopedia. Viene introdotta una nuova procedura per valutare e bloccare collettivamente tali gruppi di utenti (definiti "utenze programmatiche" cioè irrecuperabilmente alteratrici del consenso e quindi da bloccare); colla nuova procedura vengono bloccate per sbaglio alcune utenze, immediatamente sbloccate da un altro amministratore; un amministratore non viene riconfermato e abbandona il progetto; altri quattro amministratori si dimettono; la comunità elabora un saggio su come trattare le cosiddette utenze monoscopo, riorientando la questione.
  • Maggio-giugno: sono stati eletti 5 nuovi amministratori.
  • Giugno: è stato attivato anche in it.wiki il gruppo rollbacker, assegnato a discrezione dei burocrati con una richiesta non pubblicizzata e assolutamente senza votazione. Nel primo mese sono stati abilitati 12 utenti.

News from the Board

In June, Cristian Consonni succeeded to Nicola Izzo as Board member.

Monthly strip

Keep in touch!

If you want to take part actively to Wikimedia Italia, what about subscribing to our mailing list (in Italian)? http://mailman.wikimedia.it/mailman/listinfo/associazione
Be Warned! There are about twenty messages per day.

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Editorial staff:

• Frieda Brioschi;
• Marco Chemello;
• Nemo (section "News from our projects")
• Aubrey (section "News from Biblioteca" and GLAM)
• Christian Cantoro (section "News from W@H" )
• .mau. (English version)

To contact the staff, write at: redazione@wikimedia.it or directly to the editors:

• Frieda Brioschi - ubifriedagmail.com
• CristianCantoro - kikkocristiangmail.com

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Notice. This newsletter is exclusively intended for information about Wikimedia Italia, both to its members and to the general public; as per Art. 1, Comma 2, Legge 7 marzo 2001 no. 62, it is not an editorial product