Wikimedia news/numero 76/en
Wikimedia News n. 76, May 15th, 2014
Opening the past so to tell it
How can archaeologists and cultural heritage operators 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 new media, virtual reality and open data, and to their ability to let us build an effective and involving story. For this reason, our Emma Tracanella has been invited to talk about Wiki Loves Monuments, a project co-ordinated and directed by her, and Archeowiki. Registration is free and may be made on the website, until May 18th.
MapGive: mapping the world for emergencies
The Italian OpenStreetMap community never sleeps: thanks to their effort, the website MapGive is now speaking our language too. Simone Cortesi (Vice president of Wikimedia Italia) explains the project: he, together with Cristian Consonni (treasurer of Wikimedia Italia and researcher at Fondazione Bruno Kessler), worked on the translation: "In practice, it is like a Wikipedia for geography. The idea is to promote the formation of volunteers able to map areas prone to natural calamities, intervening in the earliest hours following the disaster, when standard maps 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 signing up as volunteers, please visit their official website.
Wikiconcessions
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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 discounted (or free) entry to members of no profit or social promotion associations, such as Wikimedia Italia is.
We are currently working on a deal with the museum network of the City of Milan, which comprises the Museum of Science and Technology.
Do you know or want to suggest other museums? Email us at segreteria[at]wikimedia.it and we'll try to contact them!
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.
Speaking of 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
Wikipedia has its own Oscar Awards too! Every year, after a week-long poll, the most active Wikipedians 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 are 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.
News from the wikiworld
- The website Wikimedia Commons, the multimedia database of Wikimedia, has passed the 21 millions images and videos milestone. The media are all available on the platform and available under a free license.
- Wikimedia Foundation has appointed its new Executive Director. After searching for one year, the name of the person that will take over the duties of Sue Gardner, who has been in charge for the last 6 years, has been announced. The chosen person is another woman, called Lila Tretikov. Lila is a 36 years old engineer, originally from Soviet Union, who moved to the US for studies during her teenage years.
- Wikizionario doubles up its entries, reaching the 250.000 milestone. This has been obtained thanks also to semi-automatic editing.