Wikimedia blog » Participation

The #MediaWiki #hackathon in Pune, #India

GerardM — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 22:14:00 +0000

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

Wikimedia in Tunisia

Moushira — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:42:28 +0000

Yesterday, we wrapped up our visit to Tunisia, which comes as part of our Arabic language initiative that WMF launched earlier in October 2011 with the Doha convening. Our initial outreach activities mainly rely on meetings with the small Wikipedia community scattered in Arabic speaking countries and exploring the possibilities of expansion of those communities, by connecting them to like-minded groups/communities that can help facilitate on ground activities and workshops in their geographies. Our first stop in this tour was Tunisia. Our first day included a lecture that was hosted by the national school of engineering. A Wikimedia staff and two Arabic Wikipedia volunteers (Ciphers and OsamaK) were part of the lecture organized by WMF on open licenses, free acess to knowledge and the use of Wikipedia in education. It was a good chance to answer questions and misconceptions related to the use of Wikipedia in education and the general status of the Arabic Wikipedia. It was also a great opportunity to meet with students of open source clubs who will form a starting point of Wikipedia clubs in their schools. Tunisia has an internet penetration of nearly 35%; with 3.5 million people having access to the internet, the country contributes 1.4% of Arabic Wikipedia content, which comes as the 3rd most viewed language after French and English. The current numbers aren’t high, however, with regard to support of open source policies (such as opengov) and the expansion of open source and open content activities that have grown recently (thanks to the revolution!), it looks like Tunisia has a good potential to increment Wikipedia contributors on Arabic and other languages, especially on mobile, which has 105.5% penetration rate.

Our visit was promising on many levels: In addition to kicking off the start of Wikipedia awareness activities in universities and other independent spaces (thanks to Nawat that agreed to host Wikipedia workshops), and helping connect current editors with new enthusiasts, we also met with the managers of the national library of Tunisia and agreed on a numbers of steps, including releasing the collection of digitized old books, periodicals, postcards and magazines to Wikisource and Wikimedia Commons, adopting a system on all their public computers that displays Wikipedia as the default search option, and on a longer term, release all their collection of digitized Arabic books (nearly 3000) to be used as sources for Wikipedia articles. In line with adding content to Commons, we also met with a consultant to the president for cultural affairs who is excited about releasing the presidential photography collection under a CC license, however, still pending digitization of the material themselves.

Wikimedia’s visit was recognized by Radio Maliss, which interviewed our WMF staff (interview is in Arabic)

Tunisia came first in our tour, and it was a good start with lots of promising steps that need our follow up, which we will keep you updated with. Coming up next will be Jordan then Algeria, please drop us a line if you will be there. :-)

Moushira Elamrawy
Global Development Team

American Sociological Association launches Wikipedia Initiative

Tilman — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 00:10:21 +0000

The American Sociological Association (ASA) has started a “Wikipedia Initiative”, inviting its members to enhance Wikipedia articles, and to incorporate Wikipedia editing into their classroom teaching, in collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation’s higher education program. In a feature article for the scholarly society’s monthly newsletter, ASA president Erik Olin Wright described the initative as a “call to duty”.

Follow this series of brief news on enhancing Wikipedia participation via RSS, on Tumblr, or on Wikipedia.

Watch how Wikipedia newbies feel about editing

Tilman — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 01:41:53 +0000

Since a few months, the “Moodbar” function has invited new users on the English Wikipedia to indicate how they feel about their first editing experiences, and why. Today, the Feedback Dashboard was launched, an experimental live stream displaying these comments. Take a look to find out what makes new editors Happy, Sad, or Confused!

Follow this series of brief news on enhancing Wikipedia participation via RSS, on Tumblr, or on Wikipedia.

Setswana Wikipedia Challenge kicks off

Tilman — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 04:15:17 +0000

The first article has been submitted in Google’s challenge to translate articles for the Setswana Wikipedia:

http://tn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nko (“Nose”)

Around 130 participants have been trained to attend the competition in Botswana. The grand prize, sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation, is an all-expenses paid trip to attend Wikimania 2012 in Washington D.C.!

Asaf Bartov, Head of Global South Relationships

Follow this series of brief news on enhancing Wikipedia participation via RSS, on Tumblr, or on Wikipedia.

Programmers worldwide participate in Wikipedia’s Coding Challenge

Tilman — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 09:04:21 +0000

The October 2011 Coding Challenge has begun! Programmers are invited to enhance MediaWiki, the software that powers Wikipedia, by one of the following features:

Mobile Photo Upload – upload images and video via smartphone
Making Wikipedia More Alive – surface change in real-time
Wikipedia Slideshow – showcase Wikipedia’s beautiful multimedia

After less than a day, 500 contestants from 80 countries had already signed up to participate, but submissions are still welcome until November 7.

Follow this series of brief news on enhancing Wikipedia participation via RSS, on Tumblr, or on Wikipedia.

Editing Wikipedia to help conserve fungi

Tilman — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 19:17:26 +0000

An article in the journal of the International Society for Fungal Conservation calls upon its members to become involved in Wikipedia (“Raising the profile of fungi on the Internet: editing Wikipedia” PDF, p. 54-60).

Yalla, Arabic Wikipedia!

Tilman — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:37:52 +0000

A young filmmaker from Saudi Arabia produced this video which explains how to participate in the Arabic Wikipedia. (click “CC” for English subtitles)

Queen Rania of Jordan highlights it: “154,000 Arabic Wikipedia entries. 374m Arabs! How can we learn when we don’t share what we know? Yalla, wikiArabic!” The Arabic Wikipedia can be found at ar.wikipedia.org.

Engaging Wikipedia participation – introducing the “participation progress log”

Tilman — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:35:20 +0000

Today we are starting the Wikimedia “participation progress log”, a series of very short postings highlighting news, progress and activities related to sustaining and increasing editor participation in Wikipedia. This is one of the two priorities of the Wikimedia Foundation’s 2011/12 annual plan.
Follow this channel on the Wikimedia blog, on Tumblr or on Wikipedia itself to stay updated on what is going on in the Wikimedia movement to address this challenge, and to find possibilities for getting involved.

Jay Walsh, Communications