Wikimedia news/numero 76/en

Wikimedia News n. 76, May 15th, 2014

Logo of the event Opening the past 2014, from the website http://mappaproject.arch.unipi.it/ released under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license

Opening the past to tell about it

As archaeologists and cultural heritage operators, can they tell the community about their work? Answering to this question is the aim of the meeting Opening the past 2014 - Immersive Archaeology which will be held Friday, May 23rd, in Pisa. The promoters hope to focus the attention on contemporary tools, such as the new media or virtual reality, spreading out to open data, and to their ability to allow the construction of an effective and involving story. For this reason, our very own Emma Tracanella has been invited to talk about Wiki Loves Monuments, a project co-ordinated and directed by her, and about Archeowiki. Free registration is open on the website, until May 18th.

Screenshot of the homepage of MapGive, a project belonging to the U.S. Department of State’s Humanitarian Information Unit

MapGive: mapping the world for emergencies

The Italian OpenStreetMap community never sleeps: thanks to their effort, indeed, the website MapGive is now speaking our language as well. The project is explained by Simone Cortesi (Vice president of Wikimedia Italia) who, together with Cristian Consonni (treasurer of Wikimedia Italia e researcher at Fondazione Bruno Kessler), has worked on the translation: "In practice, it is like a Wikipedia of geography. The idea is promoting the formation of volunteers able to map area affected by catastrophies intervening in the earliest hours following the disaster, when maps produced before are no longer useful, and what used to be a motorway is now a hard-to-transit-on bridleway". If you're interested in knowing the activities of the Italian OpenStreetMap community, and in signing up as volunteers, please visit the official website.

Wikiconcessions

WMI2014 membership card

Wikimedia Italia is working so that members can benefit from concessions by showing their membership card. The interest is particularly directed to those museums which already offer concession rate (or free) entry to members of no profit or social promotion associations, such as Wikimedia. We are currently working on a deal with the museum network of Milan, which comprises the Museum of Science and Technology. Do you know or want to suggest other museums? Write to us and we'll try to contact them!

OpenStreetMap

Public transport on OpenStreetMap

When companies decide to change drastically the solutions on which they're based, we always wonder what has motivated them and what their experience has been like; Doublemap, a company supplying real-time positioning systems to public transport companies in Indiana - USA, has told its story on its blog. With hundreds of thousands or visits every months, and with the necessity of accessing maps even off-line (e.g. at bus stops) the only available choice was getting away from commercial suppliers of cartography and adopting OpenStreetMap.

Remaining on public transport, Travic is a system to visualize feeds supplied by cities like Turin or Trento (not real-time). In Italy, there have been attempts to build these systems from the bottom in Pavia (with an app similar to Travic).

Further news is available on the website openstreetmap.it.

WikiOscar 2014

Special Prize - Author: Antonu - Derivative work: RanZag - [CC-BY-SA 2.5] via Wikimedia Commons

Even Wikipedia has its own Oscar Awards! Every year, indeed, after a week long poll, the most active Wikipediani are awarded prizes for merits gained on the field. The Wikioscars, created for the first time in 2004 inspired by the barnstars used in the English language Wikipedia, are a virtual event particularly loved by users, also since they do not follow precise rules: everyone can be nominated, and everyone can win the most diverse awards.
The 2014 edition has just concluded: a number of categories and prizes to be awarded, from the most serious such as the election of the sysop of the year, to the funniest ones, without forgetting the "classics": Miss Wikipedia and Mister Wikipedia.

Dates for your diary

• Wednesday, May 7th, Frieda Brioschi, former President of Wikimedia Italia, participated to the program of Radio3 Scienza to talk about women and technology.
• Friday, May 16th, Rome: Emma Tracanella (Coordinator of Wiki Loves Monuments) and Luca Martinelli (Secretary of Wikimedia Italia) will participate in the event Buone pratiche e progetti innovativi per la promozione dei beni culturali: EAGLE & Wiki Loves Monuments promoted by EAGLE (Europeana network of Ancient Greek and Latin Epigraphy) and Wikimedia Italia, with the support of Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma. In that occasion the winners of the special prize EAGLE for Wiki Loves Monuments Italia 2013 will be announced.
• Saturday, May 17th, Padua: Marcok and other community members will participate in #Maddalene-Restart, organized together with Tam Teatromusica, presenting the projects by Wikimedia and Open Street Map; if you want to take part, please indicate it in the meetup page in Wikipedia.
• May 16th-18th, 2014, Rome: Luca Martinelli, Cristian Consonni e Simone Cortesi, Secretary, Treasurer and Vicepresident of Wikimedia Italia, respectively, will participate in the event Hackathon Code4Italy@Montecitorio 2014. The marathon, with a duration of 30 hours, and destined to IT experts, will take place in the new Aula del Palazzo dei Gruppi parlamentari of the Camera dei deputati (Via di Campo Marzio, 78). The goal of the project is raising awareness about the open data produced by the works of the Camera, so that software and applications can be developed. Hashtag: #code4italy.
• May 19th, Asti: beginning of the courses about Wikipedia for the teachers who have signed up to the project Wikipedia va a scuola @ Asti promoted by the associations We-Land and Cre[AT]ive, with the collaboration of Wikimedia Italia. The goal of the initiative is introducing the free online encyclopedia as a teaching tool in the secondary schools of Asti and the nearby territory.

Novità dal mondo wiki

Lila Tretikov, by Lane Hartwell [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

• Il sito Wikimedia Commons, il database multimediale di Wikimedia, ha superato i 21 milioni di immagini e video caricati sulla sua piattaforma e rilasciati con licenza libera.
• La Wikimedia Foundation ha nominato un nuovo Direttore Esecutivo. Dopo un anno di ricerche, è stato annunciato il nome di chi dal primo giugno 2014 sostituirà Sue Gardner, direttore in carica negli ultimi 6 anni. La designata è un'altra donna, il suo nome è Lila Tretikov. Lila è un'ingegnere di 36 anni, originaria dell'Unione Sovietica, migrata negli Stati Uniti per studiare quando era ancora teenager.
• Il Wikizionario raddoppia i suoi lemmi e arriva a quota 250.000. Il traguardo è stato raggiunto anche grazie ad inserimenti semiautomatici.