Wikimedia news/numero 81/en

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W i K i M e D i A N e W s no. 32 - January 13, 2011

Official monthly bulletin from Wikimedia Italia Association.

Editorial

On 6 January, we closed the best fundraising campaign ever for Wikimedia Italy: we raised over € 300,000 (including the portion that will be transfered to WMF) and more than 200 people have applied to join the Association.
The result was beyond our most optimistic hope: the 2009 campaign brought us about € 60,000 net worth and our conservative estimate in the budget for this year was € 85,000; by the end of the year this amount will probably be doubled.

The confidence the supporters gave us load us with a great responsibility: to make good use of this fortune. On the mailing list of the association we had a couple of threads with some ideas and in September we picked others within the project Ideas from Wiki*, but I urge you to continue the discussion and share it with us, especially in view of drafting the 2011 budget, to be approved by the Assembly in March.

Last fundraising campaign took the Board by surprise (it was the first time that we formally participated as a partner at a Wikimedia Foundation fundraising campaign) and the work of the treasurer and secretary was paralyzed for two months. This year we tried to plan it a bit more in advance: the treasurer asked to have a support person and the secretarial staff expanded to three people. Nevertheless, the workload was very high: in this issue we welcome an intervention by Cotton, our treasurer, who gives us all the details of the campaign, I will just anticipate that the donation page only has been visited over 100,000 times between November and December.

For the first time we committed ourselves to a communication campaign - offline! - to reach a target more diversified and a bit more distant from us: our invitation to support Wikimedia was published in the Italian magazine Internazionale (twice, in December and January), was carried about the city by the tramways in Milan (for a month, from 15 December to 11 January) and will be out for the last time in February in the monthly magazine Valori (who has generously donated us some of its space to support Wikipedia). During the campaign we acquired the domain sostienilacultura.it, in order to disclose an address that was easy to remember and evocative; that address redirects to the Donations page of the site of the association.

The campaign was possible thanks to: Stefano Tartarotti (the cartoonist who created the graphics - the Wikipedia bulb - which we used and that he generously donated us), Cristian Consonni (who invented the slogan Keep Wikipedia lit) and Federico Cantoni who has been busy writing texts and making layouts. Thanks, guys!

Finally, I remind you that our next efforts are the celebrations for the ten years of Wikipedia, which will be held Jan. 15 in Milan, Rome and Vicenza and again Jan. 21 in Rome.

Frieda

What happened during last months

Fundraising for WMF projects

For the second year Wikimedia Italia took part in the annual fundraiser organized by Wikimedia Foundation, which closed a few days ago.

This year the Foundation decided to focus more on local chapters and, unlike previous collections, the donor was not given the choice of either to choose to donate to the Foundation or to the chapter; everybody, according to the country from which they connected, were addressed directly to the relevant chapter. This choice, combined with the fact that the collection as a whole has been a great success and has achieved the goal of 16 millions of dollars ahead of its scheduled deadline, meant that the collection for Wikimedia Italia has fared quite well, and frankly beyond any prevision.

The Board decided to advertise the fundraising, and the association and the Wikimedia projects, non only on the web but also through alternative channels. We had so an ad in the journal "Internazionale", and for several weeks posters were placed posters on the sides of public transport in the city of Milan.

In order to achieve the final result we would like to thank all those who have given their help to make banners, translate texts, create page layouts, design drawings and posters.

Overall, the association has received over 15,000 individual donations for a total of about € 310,000. Supporters are not only Italian citizens: donations have come from all parts of the world (Europe, United States, but also Argentina, Australia and the Philippines) and many foreign people resident in our country decided to help us, witnessing that our projects and WMF know no borders or language barriers. Furthermore, although the collection officially ended on January 6, other donations continue to flow, almost as if, in fact, was not closed at all.

Half the money raised, according to the agreements drawn up between WMI and the Foundation, will be turned to it to support its projects. The budget of the association for next year will be obviously quite different from that of years past, and allow us to better develop new projects that will be discussed with all members who will attend the next members' meeting, scheduled for March.

Besides this, we want to point out a perhaps even betterresult, namely the significant increase of members of our association. In fact, about 230 people decided to join us by joining Wikimedia Italia. A heartily welcome from us to the new members!

GLAMWIKI in Paris - 3 and 4 December 2010

by Aubrey

On 3 and 4 December in Paris there was the (second) GLAM-WIKI conference, organized by Wikimedia France in the gorgeous halls of the Assembleè National. The theme of the event, like in the first GLAM-WIKI organized a week before at the British Museum in London by Wikimedia UK, was the relationship between Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia, Commons, Wikisource) and GLAM institutions (i.e. museums, libraries and archives).
The French people have pulled together various members both of the wikiverse and of cultural world and institutions, organizing together with the Britons an event that certainly opens the door to conversations between these two seemingly opposing worlds. Some of the speakers had already presented their projects at Wikimania, but it was nice and helpful to listen them again.
Liam Wyatt, omnipresent, and just returned from two months of conferences (he also opened Europeana conference in Amsterdam) told again the experience of five weeks as "Wikimedia Foundation volunteer" at the British Museum. It was very useful to listen to him again to better understand the subprojects carried out by Liam as mediator between the museum and the community of Wikipedians. Each of them is actually a small stroke of genius, and technically very simple. Osmar Valdebenito, which brought Enciclopedía Cilena to Wikisource, now is involved in a huge new project with the Library of Congress for the transcript on Wikisource of all 70 volumes of Chilean law.

Beatrix updated us on the status of cooperation with the Argentinian television and radio archives, by which they managed to carry on Wikipedia several videos of historical and political importance, even very recent ones, contextualized in a broader discussion. These videos become historical documents and valuable sources, giving to a Wikipedia article a strength and an authority which are not possible on any other medium. The economic speeches of ministers before the Argentine collapse, with transcription and explanation by side, offer a near unquestionable mirror of facts (and a not so hidden political condemnation, among other things).
The Frenchmen have then told us about their collaboration with the museum pf the city of Toulouse and the Bibliothèque nationale de France and about the project between the BnF and Wikisource (a project of which I had already reported, but that can be discussed further with the slides of the interventions). It was very interesting to see how BnF has approached the subject, bringing into play its skills. In particular I understood that in this sense, it considers Wikisource a decidedly amateur project without professional skills - for example about the metadata. On the other hand, it could be very comfortable to BnF, aside from the transcript itself, to judge the quality of its OCR, comparing the readings with the "human" ones made by the guys at Wikisource.
In addition, BnF has plans to publish the details of their authority file in Wikipedia, and links to their books on Gallica to the Wikisource copies to allow transcription and proofreading.
I talked to my little, like a good neo-library, metadata, specifically the metadata on Wikisource. We then talked about copyright, Semantic Web, open access and metadata again. A good study can be found on Wikipedia Signpost (and from there a plethora of links, including slides).

Below you can find my slides (they laughed at the first one and applauded with the last one):

• Aubrey's slides.

Meeting with the teachers of the schools in Lombardy

by CristianCantoro

On 13 December 2010 the territorial nucleus fot Lombardy of the National Agency for the Development of Education (ex IRRE Lombardia) hosted a meeting (as part of a series of seminars with the theme "Media languages and digital citizenship") a meeting with title "Education for citizenship and the development of writing skills: the case of Wikipedia". Purpose of the meeting was to offer teachers experiences and examples of use of Wikipedia in the classroom, in particular as regards the school programs about writing. Wikimedia Italia was represented by CristianCantoro, who tells us his experience: «The basic problem of the network is to find significant cognitive content, that is, it's not enough to say "Web 2.0" to be catapulted into the future (as if it were a magic formula). The task of the teacher is to extract from the network opportunities for growth and training for students.
Then I gave my presentation that focused on a rather philosophical introduction about free licenses; then I highlighted the potential to reach educational goals through the use of Wikipedia.

I left the floor to Roberto Didoni, ANSAS researcher and lecturer in Italian, who told his experience as a user of Wikiquote and Wikipedia, explaining how the projects work (e.g. what is a template, and a stub) and what training activities may be conducted in class using Wikipedia. He made numerous examples.
The intervention of Ms. Pozzi, who teaches Italian in a secondary school in Voghera, followed. She gave a presentation on how the network can be used to structure a curriculum writing (that is how to teach writing skills) going from simple texts (notes, lists) to more complex texts (biographies). Wikipedia, in particular, is an excellent source of complex texts.
Last talk was from Annelise Madia, school librarian who also teaches kids how to find information in a book or on the network. She submitted a proposal for a possible school project that involves the use of Wikipedia. The project would consist of several stages: from brainstorming to the writing of a possible new article. For each phase learning objectives were identified, practical examples were made, ideas have been launched. Finally, I have been asked questions about some technical aspects (encyclopedicity, cancellation procedures) from teachers who would like to personally start projects in their classes using Wikipedia.
The teachers' participation was very good both in terms of public (30/40 persons) and in terms of involvement.

What will happen next months

WikiX : ten years of Wikipedia

On January 15 Wikipedia becomes ten years old: the whole Wikipedia and Wikimedia community with all sister projects celebrate! Wikimedia Foundation has opened a wiki dedicated to collect all the events around the wayL ten.wikimedia.org Wikimedia Italy has organized three events:

• A party in Milan with a toast, cake and lots of gadgets.
• A banquet in Vicenza with dissemination, entertainment for children, and of course the cake: more information here.
• In Rome we try to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Wikipedia with a visit to the Roman Forum. We discuss Wikipedia and Roman architectural decoration. Because we would like to know and let people know, and let us know. Details here and here.

We are also setting up a blog to collect the testimonies of the Net on these 10 years of knowledge: a corner where Italian bloggers and variously encyclopedic people will tell about their Wikipedia: http://dieciannidisapere.it/

Events in Wikiverse

Wikimedia UK has decided to celebrate the tenth birthday of Wikipedia with a _British_Library Edithaton ("Marathon of contributions") at the British Library, London. On January 14 and 15 20 Wikipedians will enter the Library, visit the exhibitions and participate in a guided tour of the backstage, accompanied by curators and librarians.
In addition to the opportunity to ask directly the experts, the positive experiment of Hoxne challenge, made at the British Museum, will probably be replicated: a room full of Wikipedians and experts, a video projector, a few laptops, internet and much coffee, with the goal of writing an article together about a topic.

TheEditathon is yet another meeting between Wikipedia and GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) as proposed by the British, who had held both the "Wikipedians in Residence" with Liam Wyatt and the GLAM conference at the British Museum, just a month ago. Wikimedia UK chapter is therefore confirmed as one of the most attentive to the dialogue with the cultural institutions; in turn, the British cultural institutions appear the more interested in exploring the new world of wikis and cultural production from the bottom. When in Italy too?

Wikimania 2011

Wikimania is an annual conference organized by Wikimedia Foundation and dedicated to the whole Wikimedia world. Registration are open for Wikimania 2011, which will be held this year in Haifa, Israel: Wikimania 2011. Until January 31, 2011 you can apply to the Wikimedia Foundation for a scholarship or a loan to participate. More information is available here: Wikimania scholarships.

Monthly strip

Talk with us

If you want to participate actively in Wikimedia Italia, what about joining the mailing list? http://mailman.wikimedia.it/mailman/listinfo/associazione
Beware! The list may be quite lively, with up to twenty messages a day.

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Editorial staff:

• Luca Sileni (editor-in-chief)
• Frieda Brioschi;
• Marco Chemello;
• Nemo (section "News from WMF 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:

• Luca Sileni - wikisenpaigmail.com
• 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