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What happens when a WikiWoman meets a WikiLibrarian? An editathon on women’s biographies, of course! Or at least this is what happened on May 4th at Biblioteca Salaborsa, one of the most well-known libraries in Bologna, Italy.

Wikimedia Italia organized its first event at Biblioteca Salaborsa on April 20th, an introductory workshop led by wikipedian Piero Grandesso. Thanks to the work of the librarian and wikimedian Virginia Gentilini, it was possible to renew the collaboration and organize a second event.

We had thirteen participants, some of whom came after attending the first workshop. We created five new articles and improved two existing pages, paying homage in this way to seven amazing Italian women (and also a French one!) who didn’t have the space they deserved on Wikipedia.

It is always a little shocking to discover how many relevant women are missing from Wikipedia. Amongst the pages we created was one about Hortensia, a late Roman Republic orator and one of the very few women who at that time challenged men’s authority by giving a speech in the Forum. She lived during the civil war that took place after Julius Caesar’s assasination, a period when the Roman Republic was struggling with many war expenses. Hortensia debated in the Roman Forum against a tax imposed on wealthy Roman women, arguing that it was not legitimate to demand that women’s properties finance a war in which they had no active role. Eventually the number of women affected by the tax was reduced.

As one can imagine, we study a lot of Ancient Roman history in Italy. Latin literature and language are also compulsory teachings in some secondary schools. But Hortensia’s page, already in other language versions, was not yet on Italian Wikipedia.

Beside the creation of content on Wikipedia, the editathon was also an occasion to put together and share the different skills and competencies of the organizers. The team was composed of Virginia Gentilini, Wikimedia Italia member Ginevra Sanvitale and Commons and Italian Wikipedia sysop Elitre, who worked together, each one according to her area of expertise. We also had a chance to learn and confront a number of related Wikimedia topics.

Finally, the role played by Salaborsa as a center of cultural creation and knowledge circulation was very important.

In 2012, Wikimedia Italia reached out to Italian librarians and libraries for the first time, discovering many possible ways of collaboration. Wikipedia workshops for patrons of libraries are one of these, and they are particularly interesting because of their cultural and social implications. Working on Wikipedia in libraries can bridge the gap between print, traditional resources of information and the lively and active community of Wikipedians. But it can contribute to bridge the Wikipedia Gender Gap too: public libraries in Italy are traditionally used by women more than men, and they can therefore be a perfect place to find women interested in connecting their love of reading to a more participative and empowering way to enrich their cultural life. More women attended the editathon indeed, showing enthusiam and asking for further opportunities to work in this direction.

Librarians in Italy are traditionally mostly women too. It will be interesting to see how many successful ways of collaboration we’ll manage to find, both working directly with patrons inside the libraries, and at a more general level of interaction between bibliographic data held by National Libraries and Wiki Projects. There is such a large amount of useful work to do!

Ginevra Sanvitale, Wikimedia Italia. With the collaboration of Virginia Gentilini
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Over the next couple of years, the Wikimedia Foundation will be building capacity among program leaders around evaluation and program design. A better understanding of how to increase impact through better planning, execution and evaluation of programs and activities will help us to move a step closer to achieving our mission of offering a free, high quality encyclopedia to our readers around the world.

With this in mind, we are pleased to announce the first Program Evaluation and Design Workshop, on 22-23 June 2013 in Budapest, Hungary.

We have only 20 slots available for this workshop and the application deadline ends on May 17th. This two-day event will be followed by a pre-conference workshop at Wikimania 2013. Ideally, applicants would commit to attending both events.

The first Program Evaluation & Design workshop will be held in the shadows of the Buda Castle, Budapest, Hungary

Our long-term goals for the workshop are:

• Participants will gain a basic shared understanding of program evaluation
• Participants will work collaboratively to map and prioritize measurable outcomes, beginning with a focus on the most common programs and activities
• Participants will gain increased fluency in common language of evaluation (i.e. goals versus objectives, inputs and outputs versus outcomes and impact)
• Participants will learn and practice how to extract and report data using the UserMetrics API
• Participants will commit to working as a community of evaluation leaders who will implement evaluation strategies in their programs and activities and report back at the pre-conference workshop at Wikimania 2013
• …and participants will have a lot of fun and enjoy networking with other program leaders!

We will publish a detailed agenda for the event in Budapest soon on Meta-Wiki.

During the workshop in Budapest, we will only have a limited amount of time. Therefore, we will be focusing on the some of the more common programs and activities:

• Wikipedia editing workshops where participants learn how to or actively edit (i.e. edit-a-thon, wikiparty, hands-on Wikipedia workshop)
• Content donations through partnerships with galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs) and related organizations
• Wiki Takes/Expeditions where volunteers participate in day-long or weekend events to photograph site specific content
• Wiki Loves Monuments, which takes place in September
• Education program and classroom editing where volunteers support educators who have students editing Wikipedia in the classroom
• Writing competitions, which generally take place online in the form of contests, the WikiCup  and other challenges – often engaging experienced editors to improve content.

Contributors who play an active role in planning and executing programs and activities as described above in the Wikimedia community are highly encouraged to apply. Your experience and knowledge will make this workshop a success!

Hotels, flights and other transportation costs will be the responsibility of your chapter; the Wikimedia Foundation will provide the venue, handouts, breakfasts, light lunches, and a dinner for all participants on Saturday. If you’re not affiliated with a chapter and cannot afford to attend the event, please email me after you apply – we have a small amount of money set aside for those cases.

Remember, applications are open until May 17. You can apply via this Google Form.

Thanks for your interest, and I look forward to a great group of participants!

Sarah Stierch, Program Evaluation and Design Community Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation

Symbols serve as some of the best tools to overcome language and cultural communication barriers. The aim of the first Wikipedia Iconathon was to create a set of graphic symbols that convey vital concepts to editors and readers of the world’s largest free, collaborative encyclopedia. The Wikimedia Foundation design team organized the event with The Noun Project, with support from Muji in the form of sketch materials. This is a brief update from the design team, as we work on digitalizing the first iteration of icons from the event.

On a rainy Saturday morning, 6 April 2013, the mood among visitors at the Wikimedia Foundation office was upbeat and determined. Educators, volunteers, civic leaders, typographers, designers and Wikipedia editors joined us and Noun Project staff, coming together to collaborate on a set of 20 icons that represent key Wikipedia terms and concepts.

We began by discussing the core challenges of creating this visual language. First, it needed to work across 330 languages. Second, we had to avoid local concepts or metaphors — such as hand gestures, animals, and local humor — that people from other regions may not be familiar with. If icons conveyed directionality, they would have to be adapted for different writing directions, such as right-to-left languages like Hebrew or Arabic. To preserve cross-cultural understanding, it was critical that we come up with a universal representation, regardless of whether the reader is from Germany, India, or Botswana.

After the general discussion of our objectives, we formed groups and looked closely at our assignment. The concepts we needed to visualize ranged from being self contained, such as “rapidly changing article,” to systems like “anonymous” and “registered” users, “administrator,” and “bots.” Participants unanimously considered abstract concepts like “encyclopedia-worthy” and “no original research” to be the most challenging icons.

As the groups discussed each icon and got to sketching, Wikipedians provided context for the symbols as, answering questions like the following (among many others). :

• Is there more than one context of use for the icon?

• Does it convey status or trigger action?

• Should it invite inquiry or is it an entry point when a user scans a list?

We were committed to getting it right, even if it meant pulling out laptops to look at all the sample interface elements. We didn’t expect to get into the thick of interaction and behavior, but it helped align the team on tone, detail and playfulness

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More than 40 people from 25 countries gathered together in person in Milan, Italy, last week to discuss Wikimedia projects’ use in education. Representatives from Wikimedia chapters, the Wikimedia Foundation, and universities worldwide discussed ways to further develop the relationships between educational institutions and Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

Participants in the Education Program Leaders Workshop in Milan.

The Education Program Leaders Workshop was held in conjunction with the Wikimedia chapters conference in Milan, an annual opportunity for representatives from around the world to meet in person to discuss the future of the movement. The enthusiasm worldwide for the program bodes well for the future of Wikimedia projects like Wikipedia and education.

Notes from the workshop highlight the incredible depth and breadth of activities happening worldwide in the education sphere. Some programs, like in Serbia, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Brazil, and Egypt, have been in operation for several terms and have been achieving incredible results on their language Wikipedias. Others, including programs in Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, have dedicated staff people working on furthering their goals. Programs in Mexico, Switzerland, and Saudi Arabia are small but effective thanks to the dedicated work of individual volunteer educators whose drive to use Wikipedia in their own classrooms has furthered their language Wikipedias. Still others are just getting started, and many are exploring opportunities to collaborate with governmental bodies who work on creating curriculum and education policy to include Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

“Education” is a broad field, and participants represented programs working with everyone from school-aged children to seniors. Workshop participants discussed the different activities relevant to education programs, and talked about the best way of setting goals for programs as a whole. The Wikimedia Foundation remains committed to supporting education programs worldwide through such support resources as brochures, a MediaWiki extension, and online trainings. Workshop participants agreed that developing a better system to share experiences across countries — perhaps a searchable database of learnings — would help programs learn from each others’ mistakes and determine the best path forward for their own programs. With more than 30 programs in operation worldwide, the future is bright for Wikimedia projects and education.

LiAnna Davis, Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager

(This is a guest post by Ms. Netha Hussein, a Wikipedia contributor from India who regularly contributes to Malayalam Wikipedia, among other projects.)

March 2013 was a busy month for women Wikimedians in India, as we conducted various events, such as edit-a-thons and workshops to celebrate the presence of women in Wikimedia projects. The women Wikimedians, members of the Wikimedia India Chapter and the Access to Knowledge Team, brainstormed about the possible events, which we wanted to conduct to encourage women to participate and to increase the quality of articles related to Indian women in Wikipedias in English and the Indian languages. We decided to conduct the workshops and meetups in various Indian cities, in addition to online edit-a-thons.

Women participants of the Wikipedia Workshop, Bangalore

We created a co-ordination page on English Wikipedia and added suggestions for articles to edit. We invited participants to join the edit-a-thon by spreading the word on mailing lists, social media networks and blogs. The Times of India published a feature about the event, which attracted many newbies to participate in it. We also created separate pages for offline events taking place in parallel, and we added a summary of the events to the main page. The participants of the edit-a-thon signed up on the co-ordination page, where we also added the details and status of Women’s History Month events happening in various Indian language Wikipedias.

The inaugural event took place on International Women’s Day (March 8) at Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa. Out of 100 participants who attended the event, 90 were female. Veteran Wikimedians Rohini and Nitika conducted a basic Wikipedia editing workshop. The event also set off the two-day long online edit-a-thon in which fourteen editors participated. Among those who participated in the program were homemakers, students and professionals. Rohini took charge as the Chairperson of the special interest group (SIG) for Gendergap at the Wikimedia Chapter India on the day of the workshop (March 8). She plans to conduct more workshops for women in the future.

Organizers subsequently held a series of events at two venues in Bengaluru and one in Ernakulam. Experienced Wikimedians Pavithra and Nikita Belavate led the workshops in Bengaluru. The workshop also served as an occasion for editors living in and around Bengaluru to meet. The Ernakulam event was aimed at increasing the participation of women in Malayalam Wikipedia and was led by Wikimedian Ditty Mathew. Around 40 women participated in the three edit-a-thons. A Wikipedia Academy with 9 participants was conducted in Hyderabad. Led by Anupama Srinivas, the last of all events took place on 30 March, 2012, in Chennai.

Nikita, who led the Bangalore event, said she was filled with happiness watching the exuberance in the eyes of women participants who edited and saved their edits live on Wikipedia. “This year’s Women’s History month makes me once again believe in the power of women and honing it by empowering them, Wikiwomenising them,” said Nikita.

Participants of the Bangalore workshop organized by FSMK

Vishnu Vardhan, the Program Director of the Access to Knowledge team, was with the WikiWomen throughout the editathon, connecting people, planning events and urging them to contribute. He encouraged his mother, wife and female cousins to contribute to Wikipedia.

“I wish more of us took the initiative of involving the women in our life to share their knowledge on Wikipedia and truly make the Wikipedias the sum of all human knowledge,” he said. Harriet, one of the key organizers of the women’s day events, believes that the Indian Wikimedia community has gained momentum in favor of bridging the gender gap because of this event. She urged the Indian community to follow this success and to increase the participation of women in the Wikimedia movement. Though she could not attend the events in person, she ensured her participation in the edit-a-thon by arranging the logistics, monitoring the coordination page and suggesting changes.

The events had good participation from men as well. Among the 14 participants who signed up on English Wikipedia, 5 were men. In Malayalam Wikipedia, 18 out of the 26 participants who signed up for the online edit-a-thon were men. Dileep Unnikrishan, a male participant of the edit-a-thon, and a fan of Wikipedia, participated in the Ernakulam event because he was curious to find out how Wikipedia works. With women participants, he edited three articles and found it exciting to “be a part of the movement that has brought about a knowledge revolution in the world. The best thing I noticed about Wiki is that it has a peer-to-peer way of organization, which makes it warm and welcoming to newbies like me,” said Dileep.

The Indian WikiWomen are planning to conduct similar events in the future to increase the participation of women in Wikipedia and its sister projects. We are hopeful we will bridge the gender gap in the Indian Wikimedia community by conducting outreach programs, increasing awareness about free knowledge programs among women and conducting action-oriented events targeting women.

Netha Hussain

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català  • English

English

The GLAM movement in Catalonia has been very active the past few years. Edit-a-thons and workshops have taken place in all kinds of institutions, but the one that was held this April in Fundació Miró in Barcelona (Catalonia), co-organized by Amical Viquipèdia, was really special: the edit-a-thon lasted for 35 consecutive hours, split in three session. Moreover, during the first hours of the edit-a-thon, Catalan Wikipedia reached 400.000 articles – a magical coincidence that made the event even more special.

35 consecutive hours editing Wikipedia? It IS possible!

Fundació Miró’s Espai 13 is celebrating the 35th anniversary since its creation. Fundació Miró had already collaborated with Wikipedia back in 2011, when they hosted an edit-a-thon about the Catalan artist Joan Miró. But this time Amical Viquipèdia and Fundació Miró agreed to make a huge celebration to commemorate the event: 35 consecutive hours editing Wikipedia.

First session of the Miró Editathon

During that time, around fifty Art and Philosophy university students from all over the country, and around fifteen volunteer Wikipedians, gathered in the workplace to start or expand articles on 300 artists who have exhibited at Espai 13, Fundació Miró’s space dedicated to promoting young artists’ work.

To start the event, we held a press conference at 12am on Friday, April 12th, 2013. The first shift of participants was already prepared to start working on the 300 proposed articles about the Espai 13 artists – and some of those artists were present at the event too, so the students were able to take freely licensed pictures of them and post them to Wikimedia Commons. The 26 Art and Philosphy students who participated in the first turn, plus the 5 volunteer Wikipedians who were there to help them, stayed until 10pm – that is, 10 hours. The second turn comprised a similar number of participants. They worked admirably during the whole night without rest until 10am next day, when the third shift took over and stayed until the end of the edit-a-thon eleven hours later, finishing at 9pm on April 13th, 2013.

The students and the volunteer Wikipedians didn’t just write on Wikipedia – there were parallel activities scheduled in order to get out, relax the mind and get ready for more work on articles. In addition to lunch and dinner at the magnificient gardens of the museum, those activities included a guided visit to the museum at midnight, conferences by Wikipedians, a couple of performances from two of the artists that were being written about, and two yoga sessions –one of them being held at 6am in the morning at Fundació Miró’s balcony, when Barcelona was waking up and the sight was breathtaking.

Catalan Wikipedia reaches 400.000 articles

Nonetheless, the edit-a-thon at Fundació Miró was not the only celebration of the day. As luck would have it, the 400,000th article in Catalan Wikipedia was written during the event. Catalan language is the 75th most spoken language in the world with 11,5 millions speakers, yet Catalan Wikipedia occupies the 15th place by number of articles. Catalan-speaking territories are situated in Spain, France, and Italy, whose languages make a strong influence to its speakers, specially Spanish – most of Catalan speakers are bilingual, knowing Spanish as well.

At 5.23pm, in the middle of a conference about “Open knowledge and the cultural institutions,” a participant announced the good news and we opened champagne bottles in the presence of Barcelona TV, who covered the news live. Catalan National TV also joined the event at midnight and the next day broadcasted a two-minute video about the the event being the longest edit-a-thon ever and the 400.000 articles milestone.

Arnau Duran (User:Arnaugir), member of Amical Viquipèdia
Note: for more information about the edit-a-thon see this page (in Catalan).

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Friday, the 22^nd of March, was a different and exciting day at work as Wikimedia Sverige had its biggest edit-a-thon to date – with 47 participants! Also the participants and the topic of the event were something that we unfortunately don’t always connect to Wikipedia: that is, women and fashion.

Participants in the Wikimedia Sverige fashion editathon.

Wikipedia, as you might know, is very male dominated (only 9 percent of all editors are female!) and the topic of fashion is very poorly represented when compared, for example, to World War II. With this in mind this fashion edit-a-thon was the first in a series of fashion events that will take place around Europe in the following two years, coordinated by Europeana Fashion.

This edit-a-thon in Stockholm was organized in collaboration with Wikimedia Sverige, Europeana, the Nordiska museet, Europeana Fashion and the Centre for Fashion Studies at Stockholm University. It was especially fun that the Nordiska museet and the MoMu Fashion Museum in Antwerp, as part of the preparations for the edit-a-thon, released hundreds of fashion images to Wikimedia Commons! For MoMu this upload was their first time working with Wikimedia and using Wikimedia Commons.

In preparation for the event, we had organized a workshop about editing in Wikipedia with the fashion students so that the actual edit-a-thon could, after some short presentations, get right down to the business of writing fashion-related articles. To keep up interest, and blood sugar, we served snacks during the day, as well as a lunch. We also took breaks and got inspired with a guided tour of the Nordiska museets’s fashion exhibitions, such as one on the power of fashion Modemakt. In the end, the productive day came together with a mingle with wine and canapés.

Almost all the participants stayed until the mingle, and several didn’t leave until 8 p.m., when the guards wanted to close the museum. At that point the event had lasted for almost 10 hours. Many of the participants also came up to us and thanked us for a nice event, telling us how proud they felt when pressing save and publishing their first edits on Wikipedia. These are the things that make me most happy and proud about this event. The goal with an edit-a-thon is, after all, not just to get more articles, but to get more active editors to Wikipedia and to raise awareness of how Wikipedia works in society.

Of course it’s also interesting to know what the direct outcomes of the event were:

• We had 47 participants that registered their attendance at the Nordiska museet. Of these participants, a total of 30 were women (or 64 percent!)
• 23 new users created accounts, either at the edit-a-thon, or at the preparatory workshop. Some of the editors sat together and used only one account.
• Of the eight uploaded photos from MoMu Fashion Museum in Antwerp, four of these are used in Wikipedia. They are used a total of 12 times on various language versions.
• Of the 362 images uploaded from the Nordiska museet, 57(!) of the images are now used on Wikipedia. They are used a total of 72 times on various language versions.
• Ten new articles were created, from biographies to fashion photography and Sami costumes. In total, 67 different articles were edited during the day. Several participants also published their articles some days after the edit-a-thon.
• Articles were edited in eight different languages (Polish, German, English, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Russian and Italian). Most of the contributions were made to the English and the Swedish Wikipedia.
• 73 photos were taken during the edit-a-thon and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons! Could this be a new record from a single edit-a-thon?
• Also five images from the Nordiska museet’s library were scanned and uploaded and are now used in various articles.

We are very happy with the outcome and hope to arrange more fashion edit-a-thons in the future! Perhaps this could be one way of changing the enormous gender gap? We hope so.

John Andersson (WMSE) (talk), Project leader for the Europeana Awareness project at Wikimedia Sverige

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This post was originally published in German on Wikimedia Deutschland’s blog by Nicole Ebber; it was translated by Denise Jansen.

Wikimedia Nederland is going to be host to Wikimedia Hackathon Amsterdam, the international Wikimedia developers conference, on May 24–26, 2013. The Netherlands Chapter invites MediaWiki developers, coders, hackers and other technically-inclined Wikimedians to spend a week-end in Amsterdam.* The event is open to everyone who is involved in areas such as tools, gadgets, bots, bugs, extensions or templates — regardless of how long they have been active.

Proposals for workshops, presentations and sessions are currently being gathered on the event page.

Focal points will be, among others:

• VisualEditor and Parsoid
• Lua
• Design
• Wikidata
• RENDER and Cosyne
• GLAM and Wiki Loves Monuments
• OpenStreetMap
• Outreach and Promotion
• Migration from Toolserver to Labs/Tool Labs
• Cooperation between skilled developers and the project communities

With more than 40 staff members of the Wikimedia Foundation taking part, as well Wikimedia Deutschland staff involved in Wikidata, RENDER and the Toolserver, the Amsterdam Hackathon will provide a great opportunity for exchange and cooperation among organisations and communities.

If you are interested in the Toolserver, or its future alternative Tool Labs, you will get the chance in Amsterdam to meet the entire team that is currently involved in the development of Tool Labs and the imminent migration.

This team will offer a Tool Labs introduction workshop and will be ‘approachable’ in the Hacking area. If you want to try out Tool Labs in Amsterdam, it’ll help if you set up an account beforehand.

Registration for the Amsterdam Hackathon is open until April 20; participation is free. As in previous years, there is a scholarship programme for participants who need support to cover the costs of travel and stay. This scholarship programme is supported by the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland.

* In previous years the Hackathon was hosted by Wikimedia Deutschland. Wikimedia Nederland is thrilled to be able to host the event this year and is cooperating with Wikimedia Deutschland in the preparations.
 

Wikimedia Hackathon in Amsterdam 24-26 mei 2013

Wikimedia Nederland is in 2013 gastheer van ‘Wikimedia Hackathon Amsterdam’. Deze internationale conferentie voor ontwikkelaars vindt plaats van 24 t/m 26 mei 2013. Wikimedia Nederland nodigt MediaWiki ontwikkelaars, codeurs, hackers en overige technische Wikimedianen uit om samen een weekend in Amsterdam door te brengen.* Het evenement is toegankelijk voor iedereen die zich binnen MediaWiki bezig houdt met tools, gadgets, bots, bugs, extensions of templates. De uitnodiging geldt voor ervaren gebruikers én starters.

Op de eventpagina worden op dit moment voorstellen voor Workshops, presentaties en sessies verzameld. Hoofdonderwerpen zijn onder andere:

• Visual Editor en Parsoid
• Lua
• Design
• Wikidata
• RENDER en Cosyne
• GLAM en Wiki Loves Monuments
• Open Street Map
• Outreach en Promotion
• Migratie van Toolserver naar Labs/Tool Labs
• Samenwerking tussen WMF ontwikkelaars en de projectgroepen

Door deelname van ruim 40 medewerkers vanuit de Wikimedia Foundation en de aanwezigheid van medewerkers van Wikimedia Deutschland die zich bezig houden met Wikidata, Render en Toolserver biedt de Hackathon Amsterdam uitstekende mogelijkheden voor uitwisseling van kennis en voor samenwerking tussen organisaties en de gemeenschap.

Geïnteresseerden in Toolserver of het toekomstige alternatief Tool Labs hebben de kans om het team te ontmoeten dat zich momenteel bezig houdt met de bouw van Tool Labs en de op handen zijnde migratie. Het team biedt een Tool Labs introductie workshop aan en is benaderbaar in de Hacking ruimte. Het is ook mogelijk om Tool Labs uit te proberen, daarvoor is het wel noodzakelijk van te voren een account aan te maken.

Registreren voor deelname aan de Hackathon is mogelijk tot en met 20 april 2013, toegang is gratis. Zoals in voorgaande jaren is het mogelijk om een sponsoring aan te vragen voor deelnemers die financiële ondersteuning nodig hebben voor reiskosten en/of verblijf. De Wikimedia Foundation en Wikimedia Deutschland maken deze financiering mogelijk.

* In voorgaande jaren is de Hackathon gehost door Wikimedia Deutschland. Wikimedia Nederland heeft de eer om dit jaar de organisatie te mogen verzorgen. Wikimedia Deutschland ondersteunt Wikimedia Nederland bij de organisatie van deze Hackathon.

Wikimedia Hackathon in Amsterdam am 24.-26. Mai 2013

Wikimedia Nederland ist Gastgeber der internationalen Entwicklerkonferenz Wikimedia Hackathon Amsterdam, die vom 24. bis 26. Mai 2013 stattfindet. Das niederländische Chapter lädt MediaWiki-Entwickler, Coder, Hacker und andere technisch versierte Wikimedia-Interessierte für ein Wochenende nach Amsterdam ein.* Die Veranstaltung ist offen für alle, die sich — egal ob schon lange oder erst seit kurzem — mit Themen wie Tools, Gadgets, Bots, Bugs, Extensions oder Templates im MediaWikiversum beschäftigen.

Auf der Eventseite werden zur Zeit Vorschläge für Workshop, Vorträge und Sessions gesammelt; Schwerpunkte sind unter anderem:

• Visual Editor und Parsoid
• Lua
• Design
• Wikidata
• RENDER und Cosyne
• GLAM und Wiki Loves Monuments
• Open Street Map
• Outreach und Promotion
• Migration vom Toolserver zu Labs/Tool Labs
• Zusammenarbeit der WMF-Entwickler mit den Projektcommunitys.

Aus der WMDE-Geschäftsstelle werden unter anderem Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter aus den Projekten Wikidata (Lydia Pintscher, Katie Filbert, Daniel Kinzler, Jeroen De Dauw), Render (Johannes Kroll) und Toolserver/Tool Labs (Silke Meyer) sowie aus dem Team Communitys und außerdem ich selber vor Ort sein. Sehr erfreulich ist auch, dass mehr als 40 angestellte Entwickler der Wikimedia Foundation teilnehmen. Es bietet sich also eine tolle Gelegenheit für Austausch und Zusammenarbeit mit den Organisationen und den Communitys.

Wer sich für den Toolserver und die zukünftige Alternative Tool Labs interessiert (Kurierbeitrag), hat in Amsterdam die Gelegenheit, das ganze Team kennen zu lernen, das sich jetzt um den Aufbau von Tool Labs und den mittelfristig anstehenden Umzug kümmert.

Dieses Team bietet Tool Labs-Einführungsworkshop an und ist im Hacking-Bereich ansprechbar. Wer Tool Labs dort ausprobieren möchte, sollte sich vorher einen Account besorgen.

Die Registrierung ist bis zum 20. April 2013 geöffnet, der Eintritt ist frei. Wie in den Vorjahren gibt es für Teilnehmende, die ihre Reise nicht aus eigener Tasche oder mit Unterstützung ihres Chapters tragen können, Stipendien für Anreise und Unterkunft. Wikimedia Deutschland unterstützt dieses offizielle Stipendienprogramm, so dass Communitymitglieder aus Deutschland sich direkt dort bewerben können. Wir freuen uns über zahlreiche Teilnahme!

* Und um Spekulationen vorzubeugen (in den Vorjahren war Wikimedia Deutschland Gastgeber des Events): Wir sind hocherfreut, dass Wikimedia NL in diesem Jahr die Gastgeberrolle übernimmt und unterstützen sie bei den Vorbereitungen mit den Erfahrungen und den Materialien der Vorjahre. Für uns ist der Hackathon ein schönes Beispiel für gute Chapterzusammenarbeit und Wissenstransfer.

There are a considerable number of icons in the visual language of the Wikipedia interface. These symbols play a key role in helping create a familiar space where volunteer contributors can understand and participate in the corpus of free knowledge. Consistent with the DNA of Wikipedia, it is critical to employ imagery and symbols that are sensitive to many cultures, while conveying complex concepts, some of which might be uncommon to the rest of the web 2.0 world.

This challenge is incredibly exciting for the Wikimedia Foundation Design Team. Like everything else, the icons and the visual language used on the Wikimedia projects need to be open source and freely usable, and they should be co-designed with the community.

With this in mind, we are partnering with The Noun Project to help us facilitate an Iconathon, a collaborative design process for the creation of new icons that will work across devices, addressing areas of navigation, action and expression.

The Noun Project has organized workshops across the country to let the public participate in a co-design process and to further increase their understanding of the civic topics they engage with. Previous Iconathons have created public domain symbols for concepts like “human rights,” “food bank,” “electric car,” and “sustainable energy.”

We’re excited to be working with The Noun Project. They share many of the values that inspire our projects and they have an open process that puts the community of users first.

“The Visual Language of Wikipedia” Iconathon will take place on Saturday, April 6th, at our headquarters in San Francisco. We hope you will come out and participate.

Vibha Bamba, Interaction Designer, Wikimedia Foundation

Event Information:
Title: “The Visual Language of Wikipedia” Iconathon by The Noun Project
When: Saturday, April 6th from 10:30am to 4:00pm
Where: Wikimedia Foundation at 149 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA 94105
Tickets: Seating is limited. Free tickets are available at http://wikipediaiconathon.eventbrite.com

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Português

Voluntários do movimento Wikimedia e Wikimedia Foundation organizam primeiro mutirão no Brasil para e com as mulheres

Depois de conhecer a estrutura mínima necessária para criar um verbete em poucos passos, as (e os) participantes do encontro aprimoraram verbetes relativos ao feminismo, em comemoração ao Dia Internacional da Mulher

Conhecimento é poder: disso ninguém duvida. E embora a possibilidade de construir o conhecimento na maior enciclopédia do mundo – a Wikipédia – seja livre e aberta a qualquer pessoa, cerca de 91% dos editores são homens. Como fica, então, a perspectiva das mulheres nessa história?

Primeiro mutirão de edição da Wikipédia para e com mulheres

Para aproximá-las do universo “wiki,” os voluntários dos projetos Wikimedia, com o apoio da Wikimedia Foundation, organizaram uma oficina sobre a Wikipédia e os projetos Wikimedia e propuseram um mutirão de edição da enciclopédia em homenagem ao Dia Internacional da Mulher. Realizado em São Paulo, na tarde de 2 de março de 2013 no espaço The Hub, o encontro reuniu homens e mulheres que tinham algum interesse em colaborar com a edição de verbetes, mas ainda não haviam entrado em contato com a ferramenta.

Participaram do evento cerca de 15 pessoas, que discutiram os critérios para um artigo ser publicado na Wikipédia, as fontes que podem ser consideradas confiáveis e a dinâmica de edição colaborativa. Ao final da oficina, os grupos se dedicaram a aprimorar verbetes relacionados às mulheres e ao feminismo: “Direitos da Mulher” e “Grace Hopper” foram duas dessas contribuições.

“Os passos para a edição de um verbete são simples, e pelo que vi neste encontro qualquer pessoa pode aprendê-los rapidamente”, avalia Fernanda Campagnucci, da Ação Educativa, que editou o verbete sobre os direitos das mulheres – sua primeira colaboração ao projeto. “Mas vivemos em uma sociedade em que a distribuição de conhecimento é desigual e a tecnologia ainda é, muitas vezes, considerada um universo masculino. É com essa visão que precisamos romper”.

Para discutir e superar a ausência da colaboração feminina à Wikipédia, o movimento Wikimedia mantém uma página (Gender Gap) em que reúne informações, referências e ideias sobre o tema além de promover atividades como este mutirão. Com o objetivo de aumentar a participação de mulheres no projeto, novas editoras são encorajadas a participar das listas de discussão e comunidades online, como os portais sobre mulheres e feminismo.

O movimento Wikimedia no Brasil espera que a iniciativa em São Paulo sirva de inspiração para que voluntários de outras regiões do país ajudem o evento a tornar-se periódico em todo mês de março, ampliando o debate sobre a participação feminina na Wikipédia e diminuindo a barreira de gênero. Entre em contato com os voluntários da Wikimedia no Brasil, para saber mais informações. Todos são bem-vindos a participar e organizar os próximos eventos!

Fernanda Campagnucci (ONG Ação Educativa)
Traduzido por Tom e Cristiana Gonzalez

• Veja mais fotos do mutirão de edição com as mulheres

English

After learning the basics needed to create a Wikipedia article, the participants improved existing articles related to feminism, as part of a celebration of International Women’s Day

Knowledge is power: no one should doubt that. Although the possibility of contributing knowledge to the biggest encyclopedia of the world, Wikipedia, is free and open for anyone, about 91 percent of its editors are men. What, then, is the prospect for women in this story?

In order to engage women in the “wiki” universe, volunteers of the Wikimedia projects in Brazil, with the support of the Wikimedia Foundation, organized a workshop about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects and proposed a joint effort for editing the encyclopedia in homage to International Women’s Day. The meeting took place on March 2nd at The Hub and gathered men and women interested in learning and practicing the editing of Wikimedia projects.

About 15 people attended the event, where they discussed the criteria for writing and publishing a Wikipedia article, the sources that may be considered reliable and the collaborative dynamic of editing. At the end of the workshop, the group dedicated themselves to improving articles related to women and feminism: “Women’s Rights” and “Grace Hopper” (“Direitos da mulher” and “Grace Hopper” in Portuguese) were two examples of such contributions.

“The steps for editing an article are simple, and from what I have observed in the meetup, anyone can learn them quickly,” said Fernanda Campagnucci, from Ação Educativa, who edited the article about women’s rights, her first contribution to the project. “But we live in a society where the sharing of knowledge is unequal and the technology is still often considered part of the masculine universe. It is this vision that we need to break.”

To discuss and overcome the lack of women collaborating on Wikipedia, the Wikimedia movement maintains a page (Gender Gap) to gather information, references and ideas on the subject, in addition to promoting activities like this workshop. With the goal of increasing women’s participation in the project, new women editors are encouraged to join mailing lists and online communities.

The Wikimedia movement in Brazil expects that this initiative in Sao Paulo will inspire volunteers from other regions of the country to help the event become regular every March, extending the debate about women’s participation in Wikipedia and lowering the gender gap. You can contact the Wikimedia volunteers in Brazil to obtain more information. Everybody is welcome to participate and organize upcoming events!

Fernanda Campagnucci (NGO Ação Educativa)
Translation by Tom and Cristiana Gonzalez

• See more photos of the edithaton here