Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Deutschland/October 2011

POLITICS AND SOCIETY

Net politics hangover breakfast

On October 1st, at the invitation of Wikimedia Germany, five representatives of the Berlin political parties discussed the outcome of the elections for the Berlin House of Representative and the consequences of this for net politics. At this time, a majority of the representatives assumed that the exploratory and coalition talks between the Social Democrats and the Greens would continue.

Technical discussion of copyright issues

Representing Wikimedia Germany, Mathias participated in a technical discussion on copyright issues in the German Parliament, which was organized by the Left party. In individual presentations and panel discussions, the entire spectrum of what is going on in terms of copyright issues was discussed. Inalienable secondary publishing rights (for the indirect promotion of open access), orphan works, ancillary copyright law for media publishers and commercial use. The organizers made the right choice in selecting Matthias Spielkamp to give the keynote speech. The corresponding text is available online and worth reading.

Workshop on open government/open innovation in the permanent representation of North-Rhine Westphalia

The federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia is quite ambitious compared with other federal states when it comes to researching and promoting cultural and creative industries. A specially equipped cluster regularly brings together stakeholders from industry, science and civil society in order to promote knowledge transfer between the government, politics and market participants. A workshop in Berlin, which Jan attended for Wikimedia Germany, dealt with the opening and collaboration strategies, which are indeed applied in many web projects such as Wikipedia but partly still represent a challenge to the public sector. Besides the biggest obstacles to the use of public data (access, usability, dependency), specific recommendations for new cooperation channels (e.g. residence models in the administration) were discussed.

Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) – a.k.a. the “Google-Institute”

In Berlin, there was a celebration with about 400 invited guests on the occasion of the solemn establishment of the “Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society,” which will be financed by Google and which will be devoted to trans-disciplinary research on legal, technological and sociological aspects of digitization. Wikimedia Germany is a member of the board and will have an advisory role to play. Following the inauguration, there was a multi-day conference dedicated to the topics of internet and society, in which Daniel Kinzler also reported on WikiData . Among the most interesting contributions, there was a longer post by Leonhard Dobusch on "The Digital Public Domain: Relevance and Regulation."

Metadata enrichment Wikipedia/PND/dpa

In October, on the tool server there began a little experiment with one of the news agencies involving the excerpt of messages provided by dpa (the entire month of May 2010, the 12 federal state services). Here, in the messages (which are not available under a free license) the contained names can be tagged. In a next step, these names will be compared with the personal data from the German version of Wikipedia and the Name Authority File (PND) from the German National Library. Many thanks to Apper, Magnus and all the other helpers in the tagging experiment. Additional information can be found here.

Internet conference of the Friedrich Naumann foundation and the Konrad Adenauer foundation

In an all-day event organized by the party-affiliated foundations FNS and KAS on the topic of the Internet Study Commission (EIDG), in which Jan and Mathias and participated, for the first time the liberal-conservative side commented in greater detail on net-political issues. It was found that the present politicians from the CDU and FDP interested in this area of policy sought to approach the activist community by emphasizing common concerns, although lately – for instance through the advances made by the Union politician Hans-Peter Uhl and Siegfried Kauder, the affair of the government’s Trojan viruses and the hostile stance towards regulatory issues such as net neutrality - the trenches have been rather deepened.

PUBLIC RELATIONS & PUBLICITY

Wikimedium

The fourth and final edition of our association’s journal will appear at the time of the General Assembly in Hanover on November 19th. Thus it will be published one month earlier than usual. In October, the topics were collected for Wikimedium, external authors were contacted for papers and texts were created. On the occasion of the General Assembly, we have designed four additional pages where the tasks, support opportunities and especially the staff of the office are presented in detail. The number of subscribed copies is 2,500. Furthermore, libraries, museums and other institutions with which we have regular contact purchase additional copies. For further ideas and suggestions for distribution, please send an email to redaktion@wikimedium.de.

In this context, there is still an innovation. Starting with our next issue, Wikimedium will have an ISSN . This "standard number for serial works" is the counterpart to the ISBN for books and is used for unique identification.

Press releases

In October, we published two press releases. The release for the milestone of 20 million Wikipedia articles worldwide led to this being covered in 144 print/online journals in Germany. The dpa report on October 25th brought about the lion's share of exactly 100 portrayals in local and national media. A section of the news coverage, as always, can be read in the press review of our association. For better clarity, there are similar reports or reprints of agency reports which are only linked once. We are not striving here for completeness, unlike for example Wikipedia press review.

The press release for the second round of the competition of ideas WissensWert appeared on October 26th and so far this has led to three publications. The focus of the press work with the renewed messaging will certainly at first be the time period around the announcement of the results of the competition. On account of various requests, we incidentally slightly revised the logo of the competition at the start of the second round and tried to somewhat mitigate the rendering of the genders of the icons.

As a subsequent addition to the news coverage of Wiki Loves Monuments, here is s a brief overview: The chart below describes mentions in the German-language press for the months July to October 2011. In September, 33 reports were documented and 11 for October. The latter were all published in the 43rd week of the calendar in connection with the mention of the German winning photos in the press release concerning 20 million articles. Concerning the distribution of colors: in each month, the columns are colored from left to right for the media according to their scope (rising). Only the deep blue at the right edge stands for "undefined." This is a nice tool for evaluating the press work that we can still test out until the end of the year.

A summarized selection can be found in the aforementioned press review of our association. At this point, once again congratulations to the successful team of volunteers who completed this project!

Press conference / media cooperation

As part of the planned readings and book publication, there were numerous requests (please see press review) Triggered by our job postings, some media firms became interested in our planned Wikidata project (including heise.de, taz, dapd). These reports can be found in our press review.

A meeting with Wikipedians and the Berliner Morgenpost / Welt is being prepared. There will be an exchange between editors and Wikipedians which could go in two directions: on the Berlin article in Wikipedia (a documentary about it is being planned) and on the use of Wikipedia by editorial departments.

Already mentioned was the planned cooperation with the German Museum of Technology. Here there were many discussions and in regard to the event Knowledge and Power Wikimedia Germany is a partner. The keynote speaker on November 11th is Pavel Richter. Another topic we are discussing with the museum is having a "Wikipedian in Residence.” These talks are currently still going on.

Informational material

After the first edition of our weekly newsletter Wikimedia: Woche on September 29th, we sent out in October four additional editions. You can communicate with us via the two mailing lists vereinde-l@lists.wikimedia.org and wikide-l@lists.wikimedia.org . The Wikimedia: Woche appears every Thursday. The goal is to have a summary of official announcements, reports and commentary of the Wikimedia Foundation and the international Wikimedia agencies. From our community page the newsletter will be linked on Wikipedia:Kurier. All back issues are also archived on the corresponding Wikipedia page. Everyone interested is incidentally welcome to get involved with the collection of topics for each respective next issue. For this, simply place the official news with links into this etherpad for Wikimedia:Woche.Ist dieser Satz ok? „Dafür einfach offizielle Neuigkeiten mit Links in dieses Etherpad zur Wikimedia:Woche legen.“

Existing information was reprinted. The brochure about Wikisource is currently in the final editing stage. The scheduled completion date is in November.

Wikipedia book

The work dealing with the Wikipedia book focused last month on the Frankfurt Book Fair, where we were present on October 12th and 15th. On opening day, Jimmy Wales presented the Wikipedia book at a press conference and we organized numerous press conferences (including ORF, BR, Zeit online). Some results of his engagement for the book can be seen in the press review . On October 15th, the first day open to the public, Catrin und David Ludwig held an interview on the blue sofa to answer questions. The controversial discussion attracted many interested people and ended with a reading recommendation. Afterwards, several Wikipedians were present at the stand of our publishing partner Hoffmann and Campe, giving interviews, answering questions and briefing visitors about the Wikipedia project and the book itself. How very important their efforts were is reflected in the corresponding news coverage and, moreover, photos were taken of them. On October 27th, there was also the first reading in Kassel. In front of more than 30 visitors, Lutzi Tobias, Kersti Nebelsiek, Ralf Roletschek and Boris read and discussed the book and many exciting facets of Wikipedia. There were numerous questions from the audience and, at the end, donations were even made to Wikipedia. We are currently preparing for the next reading in the SLUB library in Dresden on November 11th. The readings are accompanied by press releases and invitations to local media and Catrin will coordinate individual interviews with local Wikipedians on site. To advertise the readings, one poster was designed. Support for local events is welcome!

Initiative “Wikipedia has to become World Heritage”

Thanks to the pro bono support from Leo Burnett among others, there hang in Berlin posters at Hackescher Markt, which draw attention to the initiative. The current issue of Wired has picked up the topic “Wikipedia as world heritage site” as well. With the BTU Cottbus, we have started a student project in the new semester, which deals with the topic of precisely this interplay of Wikipedia and world heritage among other things.

EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS

Wikimedia Germany is looking forward to supporting this year's EduCamp, from November 18th to 20th "Promoting and Networking New Learning Cultures" in Bielefeld. Collaborative work and the promotion of an exchange among new approaches to learning are important steps for Wikimedia Germany towards participatory approaches to education. We are thus looking forward to the camp and, of course, to the final results which will appear under a free license.

School project

This month the Wikipedia-school project was very much present in the public eye thanks to the efforts of local newsrooms. Our speaker Kilian Kluge was accompanied and interviewed in connection with his work as Wikipedia speaker. This was made mention of in the Berliner Morgenpost, the Handelsblatt as well as in other papers. For news about this project, please see the media coverage on the school project homepage.

The school project also had the opportunity to present itself at an event at the Landesmedienzentrums Stuttgart and at the Pedagogical Institute of Rheinland-Pfalz. In total, there were 18 events this month. This included a training of media educators, 12 workshops for pupils and five teacher training workshops. This year the project can now look back on more than 60 workshops. At the education conference "Learning Moves" at the Frankfurt Book Fair further contacts were made.

Working material for teachers

Wikipedia is a topic for both pupils and teachers. This is why Wikimedia Germany has now tasked itself with developing a workbook for teachers. Of course, under a free license and in a collaborative way of working. After intensive discussions in advance with respect to the structure, on October 11th work began on wikibooks in regards to the community-driven development of practical working materials for teaching Wikipedia under the title of "Wikipedia in the School.”

Anyone who has ideas and experience with the use of Wikipedia in the classroom is cordially invited to participate in the next few weeks in the development of the content. This phase on wikibooks will run until the end of November and will then transition over to an editorial phase for the production of printed material. If you are still unsure about how you can participate, then read through the help page. The best thing to do is simply to directly write part of the content!

“Wikipedia Ambassador”

Against the backdrop of the internationally successful Campus Ambassador Program of the Wikimedia Foundation, Denis Barthel and Elly Koepf are beginning to implement a German language version.

The writing of Wikipedia articles is here being established as a new method for increasing academic performance: based on the material learned in the seminar, encyclopedia articles are being written instead of normal homework. The students are highly motivated since they are moving in a modern context full of positivity. This also has a positive effect on academic performance and the learning climate. The method is increasingly establishing itself internationally in Canada, Brazil and India. In Germany, the use of Wikipedia in university teaching has not yet found its way into the curriculum but numerous solo projects here illustrate how it could be used.

After a conception phase, universities that had already expressed interest have begun contacting us. A kick-off meeting is now in the planning. It is not quite sure what the title of the program will be. "Wikipedia Ambassador" is only a working title. Do you have a good idea for the title? Then please send us an email to campus@wikimedia.de If we use your idea, we will give you a free copy of the Wikipedia book! We would also be grateful for any of your contributions, thoughts and suggestions concerning the program. Please send them to the same email address.

Silver Knowledge / TAO

DGPT goes Wikipedia - that was the title of a joint weekend seminar of the German Society for Postal and Telecommunications History and Wikimedia Germany. 14 interested postal historians not only listened to us, spoke with us and asked questions but they also undertook with the support of the speakers during these two days their first steps into Wikipedia. A big thank you goes out to Dr. Wolfgang potter (DGPT Board) for the excellent preparation and to the speakers Jürgen, Leonard and Mario for their efforts.

In a meeting between Catrin, Elvira and Frank Leyhausen (German Senior League), the next steps of cooperation were jointly determined. The German Senior League will use its extensive network in order to publicize the project Silver Knowledge, targeting the group of people we are interested in. In addition, contact was made with the Adult Education Association in North-Rhine Westphalia. Our offer to have an introductory session and two Wikimedia workshops was met with interest. The first inquiries for the new semester in 2012 have already reached us.

For the next meeting of the TAO partners in Berne in November, Elvira is preparing together with our partners at the University of Ulm the results of the first project year.

FUNDRAISING

The autumn campaign is imminent and the fundraising has dealt almost exclusively with the preparations. In October, the new donations page went live. With the new version, we can significantly improve our testing capabilities by creating, for instance, different types of donations pages. This we have done in recent weeks four different times. You can find the results here. Before the campaign begins in the second week of November, two tests will still be performed. During the campaign we will increasingly be testing personal appeals. As always, you are cordially invited to participate. Here you can learn more.

To this end, there will be work done on the conceptual implementation of the campaign. When will we send out our mailings, how do we address our target group and what do we want to communicate? The third important point concerns familiarizing ourselves with our new donation software VEWA by Grün, which will be fully operational by the time our campaign starts. In addition, Daniel Kinzler, technically and organizationally supported respectively by Kai Nissen and Sebastian Sooth, set up the server for this year's fundraising campaign.

In addition, we completed the analysis of the results of the donor survey. The results have been published here and here and they have been generating interesting responses. Currently, the results are being translated into English, so that we can also present them internationally. Do you have any questions regarding the incipient campaign? Would you like to help? We can use all the help we can get: till.mletzko@wikimedia.de

PROMOTING VOLUNTEERISM/ COMMUNITY-RELATIONS

Community project budget

Applications could be submitted for the second round of the community project budget up till October 28th. Of the 62 ideas that had been registered by October 14th, 33 had been submitted as an application. Sebastian Sooth has supported the CPB committee, among other things, by providing advice to the applicants and disseminating information about the application opportunities. Even if the application deadline for the current round is over, ideas for additional community projects can be presented at any time in the application workshop and discussed there as well.

In regards to the four ongoing projects from the first round of funding, the applicants were assisted by Sebastian with the preparations of additional photo flights and preparatory work for scheduled workshops and film lectures.

Treasure of images

The treasure of images has begun, a new Wikipedia-support program. It will help to support short-term achievable and manageable projects concerning the obtaining of images, videos and sounds for Wikimedia projects. You can find more detailed information at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SCHATZ - we look forward to seeing your ideas!

Literature stipend

In regards to theliterature stipend , Gerrit was able to process 10 additional applications on October 10th, two of which in eLitstip. Overall, nearly 2500 articles have been written for the traditional program, and well over 250 in eLitstip that were created with the help of the acquired books. These numbers tell us that we can expect a lot in the future.

WissensWert (Worth Knowing)

After presenting and discussing the updated competition concept with the community, on October 17th we proclaimed the second round of applications of our ideas competition WissensWert. As part of WissensWert, Wikimedia Germany is making available up to 5,000 Euro for initiatives and people that promote free knowledge with their ideas so that they can be implemented. What is unique about this is the fact that we are not only addressing Wikimedia and Wikipedia projects but rather all those who are committed to free knowledge, free licenses, free software, open data or things of a similar nature. The prerequisite is always that all the results and contents are to be published under a free license and that the projects are compatible with the goals of Wikimedia Germany.

The Jury is well cast like last year. This time we will have seven jurors on board: Daniel Dietrich (Open Knowledge Foundation), user: Eschenmoser (Wikipedia), Paula Marie Hildebrandt (curator of the project SURVIVAL ART), Linus Neumann (Digital society, netzpolitik.org), Delphine Ménard (Wikimedia Germany), Philipp Otto (irights.info) and Katrin Rönicke (Mädchenmannschaft, netzfeminismus.org).

The competition is open until November 17, 2011. Nicole Ebber will be happy to assist you with any questions and suggestions.

Wiki Loves Monuments

The photo competition Wiki Loves Monuments successfully came to an end on September 30th with 165,000 pictures total in Europe and almost 30,000 in Germany. On the last weekend of October, the German jury met in Berlin – whom Wikimedia Germany supported logistically and financially – in order to select the best 100 photos from the variety of images sent in. The results can be seen. There are beautiful photographs of monuments here - and best of all, they are all under a free license. Here are the winners.

Particularly pleasing is the fact that among the winners there can be found at so many new users, who before September 1st had not yet registered on Commons. It is also notable that eleventh place goes to a photographer from our partner community Wennigsen. Wennigsen works together with Wikimedia Germany in order to further activities related to "Wikipedia and communities." Twelfth place goes to a participant from WLM Central Hesse, a project sponsored by the community project budget of our association. Congratulations!

Now it is time to send out the prizes and then eagerly await the result of the European jury’s deliberations. Let's see how many of the German photos will be among the top ten!

In advance of the GLAMcamps in Amsterdam, on December 1st there will be an evaluation meeting involving all contact persons from all participating chapters. Nicole will participate in it. The meeting will be about going over what has been done, documentation and the outlook for next year.

Tool server

Marlen Caemmerer was hired as interim admin for the tool server to support Daniel Baur and Daniel Kinzler in maintaining the tool server. Currently, the hardware is being updated in order to have more space. Soon there will be a tender for an additional paid tool server admin position. Since October, Sebastian Sooth has been responsible for IT management and will gladly help you with specific inquiries.

CommunitySpace

Although the Berlin CommunitySpace does not yet exist, there has been an increasing amount of requests from other cities. Among other things, Sebastian Sooth had interesting conversations in Hanover with the Leibnitz library. In Berlin, we are still searching and negotiating.

Zedler prize 2012

The new concept for the Zedler prize was further elaborated upon but we are now, however, further behind schedule. Nicole will keep you up to date about all changes on our project page.

Support-Team

Despite being hardly perceived by the public, the support team is of fundamental importance to Wikipedia. It processes requests for permission to use images and to change things as well as complaints and also writes to lawyers. On October 21st to 23rd, this year's support team workshop took place at the Friedensdorf International in Oberhausen. The focus of the workshop was managing written complaints. In a half-day seminar unit, the team members had the opportunity to refine their skills in written communication and to learn how to avoid common pitfalls.

Participation grants

With the participation grants , a newly developed support program jointly created with the Wikimedia Foundation was introduced. With it, it is now possible for Wikipedians in whose home countries there are no resource-strong chapters, to participate in conferences and events that are relevant to their field of work. For Wikipedians from German-speaking countries, however, nothing has changed. If need be, they can request support directly from Wikimedia Germany (community budget), Wikimedia Austria or Wikimedia Switzerland.

SCIENCE

RENDER

In the research project RENDER, the documents for the work packages were created in October and an internal project review was conducted. These reports have been published on the project page and are currently in the review process of the EU. The first year of the project ended on September 30th September. For this reason, in October we intensively dealt with the preparatory work on the annual financial report, which we must complete by early November. In it we explain to the EU how and for what we spent our money during the project's initial year.

To check the content development, there is at the end of each project year a review meeting before the EU. This year's meeting will be held from November 29th to December 1st in Luxembourg. There all the partners will present the work of the past year to the appropriate EU representatives and two external experts. This commission will consider at that meeting whether the project’s planned work has been implemented adequately and in a goal-oriented manner. In order to ensure an adequate presentation, the preparations for this meeting began in late October.

In addition to these organizational tasks, there were also detailed consultations concerning the technical architecture of the overall project. There we defined which requirements must be met by the tools developed by the other project partners for the Wikimedia case study. In addition, we began to create the initial designs for a Wikipedia tool, which will represent the calculated quality criteria for Wikipedia articles in an appropriate manner.

Wikipedia Academy 2012

As announced in the last report, we conducted further talks this month on the realignment of the Wikipedia Academy 2012 and addressed the first candidates for the Program Committee. In preparation for the event next year, we are inviting the Committee to a workshop in Berlin at the end of this year. The Wikipedia project page is up to date and there we gladly accept proposals and suggestions concerning the new format. Nicole, Denis and Angelika are our contact persons.

OFFICE WORK

Employees

Since the beginning of October, the office interns John Schrader (fundraising) and Undine Plumper (public relations) have been supporting work of the office. In the field of technology, Kai Nissen has been helping us in his role as web developer.

Job vacancies

On the website of Wikimedia Germany can be found current and, among other things, exciting job vacancies for the Wikidata project.

Budget planning 2012

In September, Wikimedia Germany was on the road discussing its budget. The feedback was incorporated into the 2012 budget, which will be voted on by the Board at the next General Assembly on November 19th, 2011 in Hanover.