Wikimedia news/numero 75/en
Official bulletin from Wikimedia Italia Association.
Wikimedia News n. 75, April 30th, 2014
Trento and Matera, the two cities which may host the next General Meeting of Wikimedia Italia
Welcome
Recently, the number of subscribers to the Wikimedia Italia newsletter has increased significantly: it's a pleasure for us to be your host and offer you our sincere welcome! Furthermore, in the next future we are planning to renew our news bulletin to make it more interesting, also from a graphical point of view; we're open to suggestions and comments from you. Meanwhile, have a nice read!
Vote for the general meeting!
Having closed April's General Meeting, we are already looking ahead and, for the first time, everyone's called to vote and choose the location of the next one. We have already two candidate cities for the traditional autumn meeting, one in the North and one in the South, Trento, and Matera, respectively. The most voted one will be chosen!
You can express your preference directly in the page dedicated to the poll.
Wikitrips, have you already signed up?
Between May and the beginning of June, Wikimedia Italia will promote a series of trips in the framework of the project Archeowiki. The volunteer archaeologists and wikipedians who, in the last few months, have guided the students and the elderly people from the AUSER groups, are now available to let you also visit some of the museums participating to the project. The participation and the admission are free, the guides are exceptional, so you shouldn't miss the occasion!
We ask all interested people to sign up for the event by completing the online forms (one per trip). The first trip is scheduled for the coming Sunday, May 4th, hurry up as places are limited. The trips will also be an occasion to know each other, spend some time together and share a meal with nice people.
In the following you will find the dates suggested for the four meetings in museums, with their respective link to sign up. The visits will take place in the afternoon, but for all details we ask you to be patient and wait until a few days before the trip:
- Sunday, May 4th, 2014: Rambotti Archaeological Museum in Desenzano del Garda. Sign up here.
- Sunday, May 11th, 2014: “Goffredo Bellini” Civic Museum in Asola. Sign up here.
- Sunday, May 18th, 2014: Civic Archaeological Museum in Castelleone. Sign up here.
- Sunday, June 8th, 2014: Civic Archaeological Museum in Varese. Sign up here.
Please answer as soon as possible so that we can best organize the Wikitrip! For any doubt do not hesitate to contact us at segreteria@wikimedia.it.
Bustopedia
Wikimedia Italia has decided to sponsor BustopediA, an initiative to spread and promote the knowledge of the cultural heritage of the city of Busto Arsizio, situated between Varese and Milan. Inspired by the experiences in Monmouthpedia, Wales, and, more recently by our own Sestopedia, in the city of Sesto San Giovanni, the projects aims to involve the City of Busto Arsizio and its citizens so that they collect information about its history and local culture, thus enriching the related contents in Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource. Bustopedia is promoted by La Famiglia Bustocca, a local no-profit group, whose goal is to promote and protect the city's traditions and dialect. Although the project has just started, it is already structured in three well-defined sections:
- Wiki Loves Busto Arsizio: local branch of the national contest Wiki Loves Monuments Italia.
- Biblioteca Bustocca: collection of texts (poems, songs, short stories) in Busto's dialecto on Wikisource (written version) and Wikimedia Commons (spoken recording).
- QRpedia Busto Arsizio: placing QRcodes near places of interest with an entry on Wikipedia, which will be written or expanded with the collaboration of the students of local schools.
The official website is under construction, but information is available from the project manager, Dario Crespi, member of Wikimedia Italia .
Wikimedia goes to Europe to talk about copyright
On April 24th and 25th, Laurentius from Wikimedia Italia travelled to Brussels to participate to the second meeting of the EU Policy Advocacy Group, a group of wikimedians from all over Europe, with the common goal of spreading free culture and free knowledge inside EU agencies. The idea of getting involved and contribute, which started about one year ago, has assumed from its beginning a concrete shape: from the coming summer on, the wikimedian Dimitar Dimitrov is working full-time in Brussels to talk about these themes with EU institutions (the monthly reports are available here). Specifically, these meetings aim to start a collaboration which can help drafting the text of the European reform of copyright law, which will probably be approved by the soon-to-be-elected Parliament. For this goal, the work group has decided to initially focus on only three themes, shared by the whole community, and about which the Wikimedia movement can demonstrate experience and competence:
- freedom of panorama;
- public domain for government works;
- orphan works.
At the moment the situation is partially on stand-by, because of the close-by general elections (May 25th, 2014) which will renew the European Parliament. However, the work group has already scheduled concrete actions to be activated as soon as the new MEP's will be elected: to cite but a few, directly addressing MEP's belonging to any party to lobby about the theme and circulation of information leaflets. Basing on the strength of its collaborative and international soul, the Wikimedia movement will work to spread free knowledge even within the European Community.
State of the Map Europe 2014
Cristian Consonni, treasurer of Wikimedia Italia and one of the promotors of the constitution of the Italian chapter of OpenStreetMap, will take part to the conference State of the Map Europe 2014, which will take place in Karlsruhe, Germany, from June 13th to June 15th, 2014. The International Committee, called to examine in detail the event programme is composed by nine members from different countries: Italy is well represented in that committee too, thanks to the presence and work of the new Vice-president of Wikimedia Italia, Simone Cortesi, one of the most active participants of the OpenStreetMap movement in our country. The event, fully dedicated to the European OpenStreetMap community, will stage, among others, a talk by Cristian titled "Creating a bridge between OpenSteetMap and Wikipedia: Wikipedia-tags-in-OSM" (scheduled for saturday 14th at 4:00 pm in Building B) besides others two talks from Italian participants: the full programme is available on the SotM-EU 2014 website, where it is also possible to register in advance and, until today April 30th, at a significant discount rate!
News from OpenStreetMap
- All the videos from SotM US 2014 are available online.
- DigitalGlobe has announced that it will provide updated and important images to OpenStreetMap, implemented in the editors iD e JOSM.
- Ilya Zverev has created a new editor based on a browser named Level0.
- Slide is an addon for iD to optimize the tracing of the lines basing on GPS tracks.
- The visualization of the addresses of OSM Inspector (which checks for mistyped or without corresponding way addresses) is now globally available.
- BBBike.org is now also offering the download of SRTM data in the OSM format pbf.
- The OSM Stack: A mind map visualization by Christophe Rodier.
- Jue Yang, Kate Chapman and Chris Henrik have worked on a newer version of the HOT OSM Export Tool, during SotM US.
- A second update of the reply by HOT to the ebola outbreak in West Africa. A summary is available here.
- SK53 has posted about Nick Whitlepp and his 10 years mapping trails on OpenStreetMap.
- Map of Budapest (Hungary) with transportation in real time.
- Article titled Elevation carving using OSM waterway data by Andrew Buck.
- The new tool OsmHydrant, by Robert Koch, makes it easy to add and edit hydrants on OSM.
- Chrill Hill has posted about how to overlap historical maps on OSM.
- Harry Wood has created a video titled Update of the Olympic Park on OpenStreetMap.
- ybon has added the support for GeoRSS on uMap. He's also working on a way to create Heatmaps. What's uMap?
- Quattroshapes offers downloads of OSM boundaries for different administrative levels.
Translation from the OSM blog.
News from the Wikiworld
- The Wikimedia Foundation has published guidelines to regulate third party diffusion of personal data of Wikimedia website users. As a basic rule, Wikimedia Foundation protects the privacy (and when possible, the anonimity) of its users, however when this principles clashes with higher needs, like for example maintaining public security, exceptions are made. The rules are estabilished to avoid misunderstandings and to be as transparent as possible, towards the rest of the world and towards the users.
- Between May 1st and 31st the competition Umepedia Challenge, organized by John Andersson from Wikimedia Sweden, will take place. It consists of an edit challenge meant to improve and translate the articles related to the main 40 places of the city of Umeå, on which the promoters intend, in the near futire, to put QRpedia signs. The prize list is available here.
- Wikipedia Visiting Scholars, the pilot project which allow the most prolific and expert users of Wikipedia to get free access to the online catalogue of the most prestigious university libraries, is growing. The goal is allowing authors to improve the articles of the encyclopaedia basing on authoritative scientific sources.
- On April 8th, the sudden death of Adrianne Wadewitz deprived Wikipedia of one of the most active female editors, and the whole Wikimedia movement of one of the most passionate women in the challenge to fill the gender gap present in the most famous free encyclopedia of the world. An article on the Italian main newspaper Corriere della Sera remembers by talking about her history.
Dates for your diary
- Wednesday May 14th, 2014, Laurentius will participate to the meeting Mercoledì di Nexa, at the centro Nexa su Internet & Società of Politecnico di Torino, to talk about Wikidata. These meetings are part of a cycle of monthly events dedicated to talk with experts, fans, and people, about the the themes related to the Net universe and can also be viewed in streaming.
- The series of meeting within the Sestopedia project continue: Sunday, May 4th, starting at 4:00 pm, the Gardens of Villa Mylius will host a didactic trip about the botanic species by means of the QR codes placed in the previous events. On Saturday, May 17th, instead, the association Sesto San Giovanni per l'UNESCO promotes a bicycle trip, from the archaeological park Ex Breda to the former Falck plants; during the trip the participants will be invited to take pictures to illustrates the articles on Sestopedia.
5 x 1000
If you have not yet decided whom to give your 5 x 1000, we remind you that you can donate it to Wikimedia Italia; you just need to write codice fiscale 94039910156 in your tax declaration. Your signature helps freeing culture!
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