The British Library, one of the largest libraries in the world, whose collection grows by around 10 kilometers (6 miles) of shelf space each year, is soliciting applications from experienced Wikipedians with a good understanding of Wikimedia and GLAM projects for the six-month position of a Wikimedian in Residence. The post has funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The programme of activities will be run as part of an ongoing partnership with Wikimedia UK, where the institution has already hosted events such as an editathon, where its curators met with Wikipedians to improve content on Wikipedia using the library’s resources.

As the chapter’s Ashley Van Haeften told Wired UK, “the main purpose of the position is to ensure a successful programme of collaboration with British Library staff and curators supporting volunteers with a passion for sharing open knowledge about the library’s collections and projects. I have met many curators that are astonishingly passionate about openly sharing the knowledge that the library preserves.”

The concept of Wikipedian/Wikimedian in Residence was pioneered in 2010 by Liam Wyatt at the nearby British Museum. Since then, it has spread to other venerable cultural institutions around the world. Recently, Dominic McDevitt-Parks, Wikipedian in Residence at the US National Archives, proudly announced that it was releasing a newly discovered audio recording from the John F. Kennedy assassination to Wikimedia Commons.

The deadline to apply at the British Library is February 23.

Tilman Bayer
Movement Communications

Over a three day session at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington DC, 25 Wikimedians and cultural professionals worked within yards of America’s most precious documents to galvanize the US GLAM-Wiki community around new tools and resources.

GLAMcamp DC was the third in a series of GLAMcamps designed to focus outreach efforts, documentation, and tools to connect cultural organizations (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) with the Wikimedia movement.

While previous GLAMcamps brought together Wikimedians from around the world, GLAMcamp DC specifically focused on coordination within the US. This event served to kick start the GLAM-Wiki US community, which will be supported through my position as US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator this year.

Over the past two years, more and more cultural organizations have expressed interest in establishing Wikimedia partnerships. However, in the US we have lacked the organizational capacity to fully support these projects. With this in mind, GLAMcamp DC was focused on achieving outcomes that would make it far easier for cultural professionals to connect and engage with Wikimedians. The event was organized as a combination of facilitated breakout sessions, orientation presentations (such as GLAM Outreach Basics), and task-focused groups on everything from technical tool development and documentation creation to Wiki Loves Monuments coordination. I was so impressed with how quickly the participants came together to learn from each other and work together to achieve our shared goals.

Outcomes of the weekend included:

• Bulk Upload Documentation: The Walters Art Museum has stepped up as the first cultural organization to directly work with Wikimedians to develop a documented process for uploading images to Commons. What has been called the “bulk upload tool” has been re-envisioned as a set of easy to understand tools and best practices that can be replicated by cultural organizations. The Walters’ collection is being used as a case study for this process, which will continue to be developed over the coming months.
• Wikipedia Citation Tool: A second significant technical development was the creation of a Wikipedia citation engine for MARC library records. Inspired by Trove, this web browser extension will allow users to obtain a citation for the use on a specific language version of Wikipedia from any online library catalog, rather than depending on the database to provide this option to users.
• GLAM US Portal: A team worked to improve the layout and flow of the new GLAM US portal, which will serve as the hub for connecting cultural organizations with Wikimedia volunteers based on location or project type. Emphasis was placed on making the landing page easily digestible for GLAM decision makers, with links to more details for Wikimedia volunteers and cultural professionals looking for deeper resources and case studies.
• GLAM Connect: Ideas were further developed for the GLAM Connect page, which will serve as the space for Wikimedian volunteer sign-up and for cultural professionals to seek out individuals to assist with both online and on-location projects. A state-based system for localized contacts and resources is being piloted, as well as a master list of professional organization contacts. Additionally, the GLAM-Wiki US Facebook page was created in an effort to better share information with specific audiences.
• GLAM Bookshelf: Cultural professionals in attendance assisted with listing documentation needs and reviewing existing resources, while Wikimedians with experience in GLAM projects worked to create and upload high-need documentation. The GLAM Bookshelf will serve as a space to compile these handouts, powerpoints, videos, and on-wiki guides that can assist Wikimedians and cultural professionals with GLAM partnerships.
• GLAM-Wiki One-Pager: In preparation for upcoming presentations at GLAM conferences, a group worked to complete a two-sided handout directed at GLAM professionals. The one-pager provides an overview of GLAM-Wiki information, including case stories on current partnerships, pull quotes from GLAM professionals, and contact information. A side effect of this one-pager was the creation of a GLAM style guide, which will serve to establish clear terminology and branding of GLAM concepts such as “Wikipedian in Residence” and “Backstage Pass.”

We achieved these outcomes only through the inspiring collaborative efforts of the dedicated participants. In organizing this event we aimed to bring together a very specific group that included museum, library, and archives professionals, outreach-focused GLAM-Wiki volunteers, tech-focused GLAM-Wiki volunteers, and Wikimedians from broad backgrounds who were interested in becoming more involved in GLAM.

When they weren’t hard at work, participants had the opportunity to enjoy tours at the National Archives and the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum and Lunder Conservation Center.  The tour of the National Archives took Wikimedians through the rotunda housing the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, to the head archivists’ offices in “Mahogany Row,” to the highly-secured stacks where unfathomable amounts of documentation are housed. In addition to these tours, participants attended a GLAM-Wiki meet up, sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation and Creative Commons, which brought together local cultural professionals and interested students to learn more about GLAM-Wiki.

The projects and networking that came out of GLAMcamp DC have contributed greatly to addressing the needs of US GLAM-Wiki collaborations, but this is only the beginning. Over the coming months, we’re looking to further refine this new collaborative framework and to significantly expand the list of volunteers interested in US partnerships.

Ultimately, in addition to these impressive outcomes, the most important result of GLAMcamp DC was the renewed solidarity and energy of US GLAM-Wiki volunteers, who are now looking to better connect cultural institutions in every state with the resources of GLAM-Wiki US and the broader GLAM-Wiki community.

Lori Byrd Phillips
US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation

GLAMcamp DC was funded by a grant from the Wikimedia Grants program, with event sponsorship from Creative Commons. GLAMcamp DC was co-organized by Lori Phillips, Sarah Stierch, and Pete Forsyth.

When good people get together in a friendly, well organised setting like this weekend in Pune, many great things happen. Several MediaWiki developers had come to provide the many people new to MediaWiki with their expertise and guide people into its inner workings.

Many people worked on Wikimedia mobile and the SmartPhone software, others worked on MediaWiki and its extensions. Bugs got fixed and functionality got extended.

One of the surprises was two people working on the localisation for the Mongolian language. The inclusion of a web font that will support the Dzonka language is another.

Dzongkha is the official language of Bhutan and according to Ethnologue, the script used is either Tibetan script, Uchen style or the Tibetan script, Umed style. These scripts and styles are also used for the Tibetan language, it is not only Dzongkha that stands to benefit.

One of the highlights of the work on the SmartPhone app is support for scripts that are written from right to left, this is now “beta” functionality. The result of more people looking at the code was that several bugs received the attention needed to make them go away. Scrolling was one area that got attention; this results in a smoother user experience.

New input methods have been created for Punjabi transliteration and for an Gujarati input method to be included in Narayam. The continued collaboration with RedHat engineers ensures that our work benefits both MediaWiki and RedHat/Fedora. We do realise that there is still a lot to do and it is not only documentation. Additional work was done on the “visual on-screen keyboard” that was started at the previous hackathon in Pune, it still needs more testing and design work.

Thanks,
Gerard Meijssen
Internationalization / Localization outreach consultant

This article is available in other languages on mediawiki.org.

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Wikimedia engineers are putting the final touches to the latest version of MediaWiki, the software that powers Wikipedia and its sister sites. This version, labeled “1.19wmf1″, will be deployed to Wikimedia sites in stages, starting next week.

We’ve recently set up a Beta cluster, replicating a selection of Wikimedia wikis, where Wikimedians have tested the new version and checked that it worked reasonably well with their local wiki’s specific customizations.

Things are looking good, and the current plan is to run the deployment in five stages between February 15th and March 1st, 2012. The schedule may change based on unexpected issues, so you should refer to the MediaWiki 1.19 roadmap for an up-to-date schedule of when your wiki will be affected. (more…)

Wikimedia Foundation Highlights

Foundation supports historic anti-SOPA Wikipedia blackout

On January 18, the community of the English Wikipedia made history with its decision to black out its entire project for 24 hours in protest of two proposed US laws — SOPA and PIPA — that would have seriously damaged the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia. The communities of over 30 other Wikimedia projects supported the protest. Many Foundation staff assisted in the effort, handling the technical side of the blackout as requested by the community, providing code and design, facilitating discussions, contributing legal analysis and handling an unprecedented amount of press coverage.

During the blackout, more than eight million US-based readers used the CongressLookup tool to find their political representatives. A blog post by Sue Gardner received more than 13,000 comments, with the overwhelming majority supporting the blackout. Google News listed over 11,000 media stories about the Wikipedia blackout and the other Internet protests of January 18, and #wikipediablackout was tweeted almost 1 million times. Support for both SOPA and PIPA has since dwindled. Observers expect that they will not become law in their proposed form.

San Francisco Hackathon

The first San Francisco Hackathon was attended by 92 participants, many of them complete newcomers. They attended training sessions about Wikimedia technology, followed by team work on demo projects which were then presented in a showcase session and judged by a jury. The first prize went to “SMSpedia”, which allows the user to text a page title to a phone number; the user is then called back by the service and can listen to the Wikipedia entry read aloud.

Mobile announcements: Official Android app, and Orange partnership for free Wikipedia access in Africa/Middle East

In the first partnership of its kind, mobile operator Orange and the Wikimedia Foundation will provide more than 70 million Orange customers from 20 countries in Africa and the Middle East (AMEA) with mobile access to Wikipedia — without incurring data usage charges. Also in January, the official Wikipedia Android app was announced. It was installed more than half a million times within the first two weeks.

(more…)

Data and Trends

Global unique visitors for December:

457 million (-3.7 percent compared with November; +15.6 percent compared with the previous year)

(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release January data later in February)

Page requests for January:

18.0 billion (+10.4 percent compared with December; 16.4 percent compared with the previous year)

(Server log data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects including mobile access)

Active Registered Editors for December 2011 (>= 5 edits/month):

83,293 (+0.1 percent compared with November; +1.6 percent compared with the previous year)

(Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects except for Wikimedia Commons) Report Card for December 2011: http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2011_12_detailed.html

The report card is currently undergoing a redesign as a more fully-featured dashboard (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects).

Financials

(Financial information is only available for December 2011 at the time of this report.)

All financial information presented is for the period of July 1, 2011 – December 31, 2011

Revenue: $25.6 million

Expenses:

• Technology Group: $4,801,082
• Community/Fundraiser Group: $2,501,444
• Global Development Group: $2,154,912
• Governance Group: $464,533
• Finance/Legal/HR/Admin Group: $2,916,686

Total Expenses: $12,838,657

Total surplus/(loss): $12,784,247

Revenue was ahead of plan due to grants of $2.8 million and additional donations ahead of plan of $2 million.

Expenses for the month is $2.9MM vs plan of $2.6MM, approximately 11% higher than plan. Year-to-date is $12.8MM vs plan of $14.2MM, approximately 10% lower than plan.

Underspending YTD is due to timing of capital expenditures ($989K – budget was spread evenly over 12 months), internet hosting ($64K), volunteer development ($142K), travel and conference expenses ($233K), personnel expenses ($584K), recruiting expenses ($124K), and IT desk equipment ($77K) offset by higher awards and grants ($261K) budget was spread evenly over 12 months), legal and accounting fees ($81K), professional services ($293K), and bank fees ($248K).

Cash of $30.6 million, which is thirteen months of cash reserves at current spending levels and fourteen months of cash per the annual plan.

Highlights

Foundation supports historic anti-SOPA Wikipedia blackout

(more…)

In January, 92 participants gathered in San Francisco to learn about Wikimedia technology and to build things in our first Bay Area hackathon.

After a kickoff speech by Foundation VP of Engineering Erik Möller (video), we led tutorials on the MediaWiki web API, customizing wikis with JavaScript user scripts and Gadgets, and building the Wikipedia Android app.  (We recorded each training; click those links for how-to guides and videos.)  We asked the participants to self-organize into teams and work on projects.  After their demonstration showcase, judges awarded a few prizes to the best demos.

(more…)

Last Saturday, Maryana Pinchuk and I had the pleasure of hosting the first San Francisco meetup of Wikimedians in 2012. The Wikimedia community hosts meetups for Wikipedians and editors of our other projects all around the world. Thankfully these self-organized meetups are usually regular enough that they don’t require a blog post to herald their occurrence. But considering the rarity of a bonafide San Francisco meetup that includes community members, the Board of Trustees, and staff, we’d like to share a short recap of the event:

• We had a fantastic turnout! With about 40 attendees, Saturday was one of the largest San Francisco meetups ever, other than the 10th Anniversary’s “West Coast WikiCon” and our recent San Francisco Hackathon. (We’d particularly like to thank Wikimedia Foundation Community Department colleagues Karyn Gladstone, Siko Bouterse, and Bryony Jones for their organizational help!)
• Many of the attendees were community members (about 20 folks), but we also included the Board of Trustees and several staff from the Tech and Community Departments.
• We were thrilled to have not just English Wikipedians, but editors of Wiktionary, Wikisource, as well as Portuguese and German Wikipedia. The San Francisco Bay Area is known for having a diverse community with a huge range of interests, so we hope future meetups can continue to include people from many Wikimedia projects.

Though the Northern California community, including the Wikimedia Foundation, has periodically held great large-scale events, such as conferences and hackathons, the success of Saturday’s meetup encourages us to hold more regular, open-format meetups in the near future. Let us know if you’d like to get involved!

Steven Walling
Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation

(Photos from Wikimedia Commons)

The Open Advice book, a collection of essays, stories and lessons learned by members of the Free Software community, is out!

The book was just announced at FOSDEM, the Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting, in Brussels over the week-end.

About 50 authors from many different projects of the free software community were brought together by Lydia Pintscher, the book’s editor, who started the project in early 2011.

A year and 380 pages later, the book is now available, and tries to provide an answer to the question: What’s the key thing you would have liked to know when you started contributing?

Authors answer that question for many topics, ranging from “Writing patches” to “Documentation for Novices”, to business models, conferences, translation, design, and more.

I contributed “Learn from your users”, a chapter on user experience and usability testing. You’ll also recognize other names from the Wikimedia community, like Evan Prodromou, Markus Krötzsch and Felipe Ortega.

You can learn more about the book and the authors on the book’s website.

All the content of the book is released under the same license as Wikipedia, the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license.

Check it out! You can download the book for free as a PDF file, order a print from lulu.com if you prefer paper books, or fork the text on GitHub.

I hope you’ll like the book, and it’ll prove useful, whether you’re new to the world of software, or you’re a seasoned contributor already.

Guillaume Paumier
Technical Communications Manager

This March, the Community Department will be heading to Brazil to talk with supporters of Wikimedia’s mission. Our aim is to better understand how Portuguese-speaking editors and donors, many of whom are located in Brazil, view Wikipedia and the projects, in order to better tailor the fundraiser and all our programs to them.

First up, Maryana Pinchuk and I will be holding four meetups with active editors, in order to talk with them about what makes Portuguese Wikipedia unique. They are in…

• Rio de Janeiro
• São Paulo
• Curitiba
• Natal

Our colleagues in Global Development and at Wikimedia Brasil are working hard on several initiatives to reach out to new editors in the country. The Wikimedia Engineering team also has a number of large scale projects, such as the Visual Editor, that will deeply impact Portuguese Wikipedia.

The purpose of our visit is to gain a deeper understanding of the Brazilian Wikipedian community and to start a dialog with them about improvements they would like to see in Portuguese Wikipedia – something that we hope can be of assistance to everyone here at the Foundation. (To that end, Wikimedia Storyteller Victor Grigas will also be at the meetups, in order to interview interested Wikimedians one-on-one about the project and their perspective on it.)

In addition to editor meetups, Megan Hernandez will also be holding several donor focus groups in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Last year’s fundraising vastly improved on our ability to support donations from around the globe, but we still have work to do to optimize the localization and donor experience for readers in different countries.

If you’re an editor interested in joining, there’s still plenty of time to sign up for the meetup near you. We’ll be reporting back on our visit and discussions with the community, so look for a follow-up post come mid-March.

Obrigado!

Steven Walling
Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation