At the developer meetup, I announced that Wikimedia Deutschland is offering contracts for a couple of projects we feel are important. We again invite you to apply for any project that interests you.

The DEADLINE for applying is SUNDAY, APRIL 19!

We did not receive any offer for the most urgent project: Evaluate the impact of using flagged revisions on the German Wikipedia. We feel that it would be very helpful to run a full analysis on this before the English language Wikipedia decides on how to implement flagged revisions. It’s a powerful tool, and we should make sure we use it to it’s full potential.

Below, the other projects are listed again:

• Rewrite CatScan, a tool for finding pages in a set of categories recursively, based on various criteria.
• Store interwiki-links in the database, just like we already store interlanguage-links.
• Improve the Gadgets extension to allow for gadgets to be enabled per default, be restricted to specific user groups, etc.
• Implement full support for TIFF files, including multi-page TIFFs, similar to how DjVu is handled.

If you would like to help with any of the above, please contact me at <daniel.kinzler AT wikimedia.de> and provide the information specified at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WMDE_contract_offers

Thank you all for your interest!

Wikimedia Deutschland is offering contracts for a couple of projects we feel are important. If you are interested in earning some money by helping Wikimedia to improve our Wikis, have a look at these projects:

• Evaluate the impact of using flagged revisions on the German Wikipedia
• Rewrite CatScan, a tool for finding pages in a set of categories recursively, based on various criteria
• Store interwiki-links in the database, just like we already store interlanguage-links
• Improve the Gadgets extension to allow for gadgets to be enabled per default, be restricted to specific user groups, etc
• Implement full support for TIFF files, including multi-page TIFFs, similar to how DjVu is handled.

If you would like to help with any of the above, please contact User:Duesentrieb aka daniel.kinzler AT wikimedia.de and provide the following information:

• Your real name and country of residence
• How you plan to go about implementing the desired function
• Any experience working with MediaWiki
• How many working hours you would spend on it, and how much you ask for it
• In what time frame you would be able to do the job

Thanks for helping us make the web a better place!

Yesterday, Wikimedia Germany announced an extraordinary collaboration with one of the largest libraries in Germany, the Land Library of Saxony – State and University Library Dresden (SLUB). The collaboration will see roughly 250,000 images from the library made available to Wikimedia Commons under a creative commons license.

A translation of the German chapter press release (with huge thanks to user:Weasel for the translation) can be found below.  The info can also be found posted in German and English on the Wikimedia Commons:

Berlin, March 31, 2009
Meeting Point Wikipedia

Cooperation deal with one of the largest libraries sealed.

As the first German library, the Land Library of Saxony – State and
University Library Dresden (SLUB) has concluded a cooperation agreement
with Wikimedia Germany e.V. In a first step, the German Photo Collection
of the SLUB makes available ca. 250,000 image files from its repository
for free use to Wikimedia Commons, a sister project of Wikipedia.

The photos, the correspondent captions and further meta data will be
uploaded to Commons during the common months by voluntary helpers of
Wikimedia, then connected step-by-step with personal identification data
(? literally “personal norm data”, some kind of formalized assignment of
identification) and the relevant Wikipedia articles. Apart from that,
the metadata supplied by the German Photo Collection can be enriched,
commented on and supplied with geographical detail by Wikipedia users.
All results of this work are flowing back to the database of the German
Photo Collection. In this way, the SLUB too directly profits from the
new collaboration.

No rights of third parties concerning the image material supplied are
standing in the way of using it under the free license “Creative Commons
BY-SA 3.0″. The cooperation will, in the words of Dr Jens Bove, the
director of the German Photo Collection, “enhance the publicity and
reach of the photographic treasures of the German Photo Collection”. At
the same time, the SLUB is a clear testament to the support of the
international Open Access Initiative, which seeks open access to
scientific information. “The collaboration with one of the largest
scientific libraries in Germany with Wikimedia and the free media
repository Commons is another important step towards the free
availability of knowledge.”, explains Sebastian Moleski, director of
Wikimedia Deutschland.

“This cooperation is therefore exemplary for the strategy of Wikimedia
to make the knowledge of humanity accessible to anyone worldwide,” Free
Access to information, is the motto that is on top, too, of the
political agenda of the International Federation of Library Associations
and Institutions (IFLA). President of the IFLA, Prof Dr Claudia Lux, who
at the same time serves as general director of the Central and State
Library of Berlin, is therefore very pleased about the cooperation
between SLUB and Wikimedia: “This cooperation enables many people
worldwide to use library resources and thereby expand their knowledge.
That is a benefit for everyone!”

This is a great victory for SLUB, Wikimedia Germany, the Commons, and perhaps most importantly for all the users of the web, for now and, well . . . forever.

We know Wikimedia German has been very active in this space, and we can only expect more incredible partnerships like this to unfold in the coming months.  A special thanks to Mathias Schindler who has been particularly active and vocal in pushing these kinds of partnerships forward.  Prost!

Jay Walsh, Communications<

We have been completely overrun by registrations for the developer meet-up in Berlin. That’s exhilarating, but forces on me the sad duty to tell you: we are out of room, we are closing registration early.

So: if you have not yet send a registration mail, you will not be able to attend! Sorry. We may even have to reject some registrations we have already received.

There’s some good news too, though: anyone interested my join us at the c-base for the party on saturday April 4., starting 8pm. The developers will be there and people from the chapter and board meeting will also come. This will be a good opportunity for getting to know Wikimedians from all over the world.

Sebastian Moleski, Interim Executive Director of Wikimedia Deutschland offers up the following post on the German chapter’s blog.  He’s kindly provided a translation below.  This is fantastic news and major recognition for Wikimedia in Germany and abroad.  The German chapter and German Wikimedia volunteers around the world deserve a huge thank you for this achievement.

The Quadriga Award (CCBYSA from the Wikimedia Commons)

Here’s some excellent news: Wikipedia is one of this year’s recipients of the Quadriga, a German award handed out every year to recognize four people or organizations that “try to create a better world through courage, dedication, and responsible action.” The award comes with a 25,000 euro cash prize for each recipient. Werkstatt Deutschland, the non-profit organization sponsoring the award, had this to say about Wikipedia:

“We recognize Wikipedia this year for its ‘mission of enlightenment’. Wikipedia makes true an ancient dream of humankind: to collect all the knowledge of the world in one place. Collaboration, participation, and voluntary contribution lie at the root of Wikipedia’s effectiveness. The vision of founder Jimmy Wales: every woman and every man can become an author anywhere, anytime simply by clicking the “edit” button. No gatekeepers and free access make up the secret of success for this network of now 262 languages and more than 10 million articles.”

Besides Wikipedia, this year’s recipients also include British singer and activist Peter Gabriel, Franciscan Eckart Höfling, and Serbian president Boris Tadić (a Wikipedia article details previous recipients).

The award ceremony will take place in Berlin on October 3, the German national holiday celebrating the country’s reunification in 1990. The award for Wikipedia will be presented by David Weinberger and accepted by Jimmy Wales.

Sebastian Moleski
Interim Executive Director
Wikimedia Deutschland<

Wikipedia in a book? That’s right! I know it may not be the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of Wikipedia but our mission at the Wikimedia Foundation is make all human knowledge accessible to everyone, and that includes bringing that knowledge to the offline world.

Wikimedia Germany (the German Wikimedia chapter) spent a lot of time and energy pulling this project together and was able to get the weight of publishing powerhouse Bertelsmann behind the project. Furthermore, they helped Bertelsmann to understand and support our mission because the GFDL would require Bertelsmann to contribute the changes back to Wikipedia. This makes this a unique endeavor in the publishing world and could be considered a success just for getting this off the ground.

Here is a quick summary and the main stats of the book project:

Title: The Wikipedia Encyclopaedia in one volume (“Das Wikipedia
Lexikon in einem Band”)
Size: 993 pages
Illustrations: approx. 1,000
Keywords and definitions: approx. 50,000
Index: WIKIPEDIA’s most frequently accessed keywords
Content: Abstracts/first paragraph of the online-edition; countries
given with basic key facts
Format: 17 x 24 cm
Get-up: Hardcover, four-colour
Target retail price (VAT included): EUR 19.95
Publication date: Autumn 2008

The book is only in German for the German market but we will be watching this innovative project closely because…who knows? You can’t change the world unless you push the limits and try to break existing paradigms. Much of the credit for this arrangement belongs to Mathias, Arne and everyone involved with the German chapter – they did all the hard work. Danke!

Time to celebrate with some schnitzel and a large Dunkel (or an Apelsaft, if you prefer)!

Kul Wadhwa, Head of Business Development