Amical Wikimedia/August-September 2010

Courses and conferences

• We organized a workshop on bots for Wikipedia. It combined distance learning with a conference, which was on 18 September at the Centre Cultural Can Fabra in Barcelona as part of Software Freedom Day. This initiative is the result of the creation of the Coordinator for the knowledge and free software. Joancreus, Puigalder.
• On 22 September began the period of registration for Viquibalear.

Release of contents

• We have started to use released contents from Termcat. Our colleague Simonjoan has imported a Drug List.
• The Torrents Ibern Foundation agrees to release the thematic dictionaries that has already released. The next ones will be made under the condition that the license be free. It is scheduled to go next year and they are dictionaries of physics and chemistry. As for the dictionaries that have already been released, we will talk to the authors and publishers asking them to be released. We will keep you informed. User:Gomà.
• On September 13 we met Salvador Giner, president of the Institute of Catalan Studies. Amongst other things we asked for the release of thematic dictionaries and if possible the Dictionary of the Catalan language of the ISC. We need to study the details but the president is in favor of releasing all whenever possible. We will continue reporting. User:Barcelona.

Media

• We issued a press release announcing the awards given by the British Museum, two of which were to articles from Catalan Wikipedia. This was published by Racó Català, Directe, La tafanera, Tribuna, L'observador. User:Ssola.
• After having overcome the Norwegian Wikipedia in number of articles, on August 21 we had an email interview for TV3 from which they made an entry in the news. They were echoed by the media. Crònica, Racó Català.
• After coming back from holidays, we have resumed the project with TV3 "Internet Space" (Espai Internet). The articles we have worked on are 'The Seven Wonders of the World' and the biography of Rafael Casanova, which has received 1,400 visits just in one day (September 11), twice last year on the same date.

Relationship with entities

• On September 21 we attended the assembly of the Coordinator for the knowledge and free software. We agreed to share among all entities: Value provider merchandasing products, contacts for local activities to do, Relationship of contacts with the media. The data will be kept private at the site but if you need something please just ask Wikipedia access. User:Toniher
• On September 27 we met Francesc Vallverdú from the Institute of Catalan Studies. We asked the experts from the subsidiaries if they could make a periodic review of the quality of Wikipedia articles concerning both language and content. We also discussed how we can encourage members from the Institute to contribute to Wikipedia. They have over 5,000 active members and he will talk to the presidents of the various subsidiaries to promote these initiatives.

Miscellaneous

• On August 13 we were touched by the news of the death of our colleague Jordi Coll Costa. Master of many wikipedians, we always showed our respect and gratefulness for his support and care to everyone. With more than 130,000 editions on Catalan Wikipedia, he was the one who had done more editions. The association awarded him with a silver plate from Wikipedia in April 2010. A delegation attended the funeral in Figueres.
• On October 23 we will celebrate the Wikipedians annual meeting. Following the tradition, we do it in the Capital of Catalan Culture this year, which corresponds to Badalona. (Next year the capital of Catalan culture will be Escaldes-Engordany in Andorra, the city where the first article of the Catalan Wikipedia was written about 10 years ago). The association has prepared all the documentation to book the place for the meeting. It has also contributed with € 300 to funds in order to help reduce travel costs of Wikipedians who come from far away.
• A student of Telecommunication Engineering and Humanities has begun, with the support of the association, a Degree-final project to study the motivations of editing on Wikipedia. We expect to have very interesting results in a few months.
• The association has decided to award a scholarship to User:Kippelboy to travel and attend GLAM Wiki 2010, organized by Wikimedia UK and the British Museum. Kippelboy is already in contact with a number of museums here in order to adapt the experience of the British Museum, he has also started with a project to try to collaborate with the CCCB.
• We have contributed to the preparation of the Free Culture Forum to be held in Barcelona from 28 to 31 October. This year it will focus on economic sustainability of free knowledge. Saturday evening we will prepare a post for reflection on the experience of Wikipedia. Lilaroja.
• The Mozilla Drumbeat Festival organization to be held in November is progressing well and it is expected to be a success. There will be plenty of activities related to Wikipedia and its sister projects. Esenabre, Toniher, Barcelona, Sj.
• Throughout August two requests for aid and support were presented at the PuntCAT Foundation. One of them was presented for 3 activities: Financing participation in the 'Viquiescoles' project (enlargement of the Viquibalear project) outside schools from Balearic Islands, creating a network of contact points in different counties and developing bots and software to allow maintenance and editing. The other one was presented by the Center for Regional Studies of Baix Llobregat; the aim is to develop a local wiki that is not a fork of Wikipedia; the encyclopedic articles will remain on Wikipedia while local articles that do not have enough relevance to be on Wikipedia will be placed in a complementary database. Within the project, the content creation will be favored and we will also provide material for the Center. We expect a resolution in late October. User:Gomà
• In late August we reached a consensus in the community to activate the 'Amical-bot' for the creation of articles on U.S. towns. The bot has collected the experiences from the projects in English, Portuguese and Dutch and has added some improvements. The results can easily be seen in articles such as Hill 'n Dale.
• Our colleague Lilaroja was one of the participants on a video about usernames.