Wikimedia Foundation executive director Sue Gardner has been profiled and interviewed by Karen Valby in an article for the April edition of Fast Company. The article describes Gardner's family background and the reasons she got involved in Wikipedia as well as listing a few of the challenges that lay ahead for the Foundation including opening the office in India, recruiting more women editors (see m:Gender gap), reversing the dropping number of regular editors overall and trying to resolve "a growing sense of insularity among seasoned editors who can set a punitive, unwelcoming tone for newcomers".
Gardner praises what she sees as idealistic younger editors meeting at Wikimania: "Everybody would stay up all night and then they would go and stand on this bridge in Gdansk and watch the sun come up. When I was that young, I would not have had the scope to think about a place halfway around the world. I would not be contributing to a global endeavor. If I stayed up all night, I would've been getting drunk. These are not ordinary kids; these are extraordinary people who are doing something awesome." ( On his personal blog, User:Steven Walling remarked: "I remember that bridge.")
While lauding Gardner's success at helping to raise $16 million in the 2010–2011 funding drive, the article raises the age-old question about whether Wikipedia should take advertising or sponsorship. Erik Möller responded: "It would be ridiculous for us to say to the community, 'Hey, thanks for all your free labor. Now we're going to just change the business model under your feet. Sorry.' Our nonprofit would have clearly broken its covenant with its contributors. And Sue has never questioned that."
The magazine asked "Whatever Happened to Jimmy Wales?". The answer? He spends his days on the road, "spreading the gospel of the openly editable encyclopedia–sometimes charging top dollar". Sometimes–not always, as it goes on to make clear: many of the lectures and talks are done for free or at cost. Sue Gardner is then quoted: "I consider myself and the foundation really lucky that he’s willing to evangelize on behalf of the organization".
The BBC News website published an article this week profiling the launch of Wikipedians at Imperial College, a new student society at one of London's scientific research universities. The founder of the group, Vinesh Patel ( User:Vinnypatel) was interviewed and rebutted a number of the criticisms of Wikipedia frequently raised by the academic community, including concerns over plagiarism. The article also covers an upcoming conference – the London Wikipedia Academy – organised by the society which hopes to raise awareness of the issues around academic involvement in Wikipedia.
The formation of the Imperial College society ( Signpost mention) was recently formally approved. It has been supported by Wikimedia UK chapter members and two on-campus recruitment drives were held in February at Imperial's central London campus ( Signpost coverage). These were supported by the Contribution Team. In addition to getting sign-ups for the society, leaflets about how to edit Wikipedia were handed out as well as badges and T-shirts.
The story was also covered on Sify.com, an Indian news website, and the popular weblog Boing Boing.
The Hindu profiled " Malayalam's Wiki warrior" – User:Santhosh.thottingal, a developer of free software in Indian languages, in particular for the 2010 release of the Malayalam Wikipedia CD. Last month, he became "the only Indian" in the Wikimedia Foundation's newly expanded 16-member m:language committee". In another article, the paper covered the launch of the Sanskrit Wikisource.
The Indian magazine OPEN noted Wikipedia's commitment to Indian languages: "It’s not just Hindi and Tamil. The online encyclopaedia is serious about Wiki versions in Sanskrit, Pali and forgotten languages like Angika too". It quotes numerous Wikimedians who contribute to the Tamil, Telugu, and Marathi versions of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikibooks and Wikisource, and describes how new projects are started under the auspices of the Foundation's language committee.
Wikimedia Foundation executive director Sue Gardner has been profiled and interviewed by Karen Valby in an article for the April edition of Fast Company. The article describes Gardner's family background and the reasons she got involved in Wikipedia as well as listing a few of the challenges that lay ahead for the Foundation including opening the office in India, recruiting more women editors (see m:Gender gap), reversing the dropping number of regular editors overall and trying to resolve "a growing sense of insularity among seasoned editors who can set a punitive, unwelcoming tone for newcomers".
Gardner praises what she sees as idealistic younger editors meeting at Wikimania: "Everybody would stay up all night and then they would go and stand on this bridge in Gdansk and watch the sun come up. When I was that young, I would not have had the scope to think about a place halfway around the world. I would not be contributing to a global endeavor. If I stayed up all night, I would've been getting drunk. These are not ordinary kids; these are extraordinary people who are doing something awesome." ( On his personal blog, User:Steven Walling remarked: "I remember that bridge.")
While lauding Gardner's success at helping to raise $16 million in the 2010–2011 funding drive, the article raises the age-old question about whether Wikipedia should take advertising or sponsorship. Erik Möller responded: "It would be ridiculous for us to say to the community, 'Hey, thanks for all your free labor. Now we're going to just change the business model under your feet. Sorry.' Our nonprofit would have clearly broken its covenant with its contributors. And Sue has never questioned that."
The magazine asked "Whatever Happened to Jimmy Wales?". The answer? He spends his days on the road, "spreading the gospel of the openly editable encyclopedia–sometimes charging top dollar". Sometimes–not always, as it goes on to make clear: many of the lectures and talks are done for free or at cost. Sue Gardner is then quoted: "I consider myself and the foundation really lucky that he’s willing to evangelize on behalf of the organization".
The BBC News website published an article this week profiling the launch of Wikipedians at Imperial College, a new student society at one of London's scientific research universities. The founder of the group, Vinesh Patel ( User:Vinnypatel) was interviewed and rebutted a number of the criticisms of Wikipedia frequently raised by the academic community, including concerns over plagiarism. The article also covers an upcoming conference – the London Wikipedia Academy – organised by the society which hopes to raise awareness of the issues around academic involvement in Wikipedia.
The formation of the Imperial College society ( Signpost mention) was recently formally approved. It has been supported by Wikimedia UK chapter members and two on-campus recruitment drives were held in February at Imperial's central London campus ( Signpost coverage). These were supported by the Contribution Team. In addition to getting sign-ups for the society, leaflets about how to edit Wikipedia were handed out as well as badges and T-shirts.
The story was also covered on Sify.com, an Indian news website, and the popular weblog Boing Boing.
The Hindu profiled " Malayalam's Wiki warrior" – User:Santhosh.thottingal, a developer of free software in Indian languages, in particular for the 2010 release of the Malayalam Wikipedia CD. Last month, he became "the only Indian" in the Wikimedia Foundation's newly expanded 16-member m:language committee". In another article, the paper covered the launch of the Sanskrit Wikisource.
The Indian magazine OPEN noted Wikipedia's commitment to Indian languages: "It’s not just Hindi and Tamil. The online encyclopaedia is serious about Wiki versions in Sanskrit, Pali and forgotten languages like Angika too". It quotes numerous Wikimedians who contribute to the Tamil, Telugu, and Marathi versions of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikibooks and Wikisource, and describes how new projects are started under the auspices of the Foundation's language committee.
Discuss this story
About Wikipedia being the first draft of history, I discussed this with a classmate of mine at Riverside HS's Class of 1990 20th reunion in South Carolina and told her that I was an editor. Jennifer "Jac" Chebatoris, a former entertainment writer for Newsweek and a classmate of mine, was impressed. Chris ( talk) 01:26, 29 March 2011 (UTC) reply
It would be very useful if the New York Times created an exception for incoming links from Wikimedia Foundation projects, like they exception they have for social media websites. It would be even better if they offered free accounts to regular Wikipedia editors, similar to the recent Credo donation. Anyone have good contacts at the Times?-- Chaser ( talk) 04:53, 29 March 2011 (UTC) reply