I just tried to watch some presentation videos from Wikimania.
Some had very weak sound, some had no sound in the first minutes,
some only played the first minute and then stopped. I don't think
the Wikimania videos are unique in having such problems. Video is
new to Commons, and the expert contributors are more familiar with
still images.
How can we learn to make better videos? Are there some good
instructions? Perhaps a free instruction video (Wikibooks, but a
video instead of a book) on how to produce good videos is what we
need. In fact, the English Wikibooks has a title on "Video
Production", http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Video_Production but it
doesn't have a clear focus (pun not intended). It starts out with
discussing satellite TV and has long sections on file formats in
different operating systems.
There is a help page on Commons for converting video to the Ogg
Theora format, but that is only the last step in a long chain.
Given that video is new, how can we find and rate videos, nominate
"good/featured videos", and give advice on how to improve quality?
Is the Commons village pump enough for this? Commons has a
separate graphics village pump. Do we also need a separate video
village pump?
Current digital video cameras use hard disks or memory cards,
instead of tape cassettes. Many new models cost less than 300
euro (or dollars), some as little as 120 euro (memory card perhaps
not included). Some have a special "Youtube mode", and I guess
that kind of usage is what drives the price down. What models are
good, and what should one watch out for?
We can find free still photos on Flickr and copy them to Commons.
Is there somewhere we can find free videos and copy them? Yes, at
the Internet Archive. Somewhere else?
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
Wikimania is an annual global event devoted to Wikimedia projects
around the globe (including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikinews,
Wiktionary, Wikispecies, Wikimedia Commons, and MediaWiki). The
conference is a community gathering, giving the editors, users
and developers of Wikimedia projects an opportunity to meet each
other, exchange ideas, report on research and projects, and
collaborate on the future of the projects. The conference is open
to the public, and is a chance for educators, researchers,
programmers and free culture activists who are interested in the
Wikimedia projects to learn more and share ideas about the
Wikimedia projects.
This year's conference will be held JULY 9-11, 2010 in Gdansk,
Poland at Polish Baltic Philharmonic. For more information, please
visit the official Wikimania 2010 site:
http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/
Wikimania 2010 will be a mix of submitted talks, open space
meetings, birds of a feather groups, and lightning talks.
Submissions will be discussed and selected in an informal process
on the wiki. If your submission is not added to the schedule, you
will still have many opportunities to bring topics forward
on-site.
IMPORTANT DATES
* Deadline for submitting workshop, tutorial, panel and
presentation proposals: May 20
* Notification of acceptance: May 25 (workshops), May 31
(panels, tutorials, presentations)
* All proposals and presentations will be welcome in the
Open Space track of the conference, whether or not they
are accepted in this initial process.
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Submissions will be reviewed informally by a team of volunteers.
TRACKS
This year Wikimania will offer three tracks for submissions for
members of wiki communities and interested observers to share
their own experiences and thoughts and to present new ideas:
People and Community
The People and Community track provides a unique forum for
discussing topics related to people using/building wikis.
Relevant topics include, but are not restricted to, the
following:
* Wiki Community: Conflict resolution and community dynamics;
reputation and identity;
* Wiki Outreach: Promotion of wikis and Wikimedia projects among
the general public;
* North meets south, east meets west: How can people of a
different cultural background create an encyclopedia according
to common rules? Same subject in the eye of different cultures.
* Special: Wikipedia in Central/Eastern Europe: this theme will
provide a forum to present and discuss the latest progress of
Wikis in the central/eastern European community.
Knowledge and Collaboration
The Knowledge and Collaboration track aims to promote research
and find exciting ideas related to knowledge...
* Wiki Content: New ways to improve content quality, credibility;
legal issues and copyrights (is free knowledge free?); use of
the content in education, journalism, research;
* Semantic Wikis: The use of semantic web technologies, linked
data; semantic annotation and metadata (in particular manual
vs. automated approaches).
Infrastructure Track
The Infrastructure track at Wikimania will provide a forum where
both researchers and practitioners can share new approaches,
applications, and explore how to make Wiki access ever more
ubiquitous:
* MediaWiki development: issues related to MediaWiki development
and extensions;
* Moving beyond MediaWiki: what other Wiki-like platforms exist;
what tools and features do we need for collaboration on
different types of knowledge?
* Mobile Wikis: The Web is moving off the desktop and into mobile
phones, how we use wikis on mobile devices?; wiki-based
Augmented Reality (AR) applications, location based services
* User Interface Design: Usability and user experience;
accessibility, adaptive interfaces and personalization; novel
UI designs.
WIKISYM 2010
Please note that Wikimania 2010 is co-located with WikiSym, The
International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration. More
information about WikiSym can be found on the conference website:
http://www.wikisym.org/
SUBMIT A PROPOSAL
To submit a proposal for a presentation, workshop, panel or
tutorial, please visit:
http://bit.ly/Submit2010
Thank you for helping make Wikimania 2010 a successful event. :-)
See you in Gdansk, July 9-11!
--
Marcin Cieslak
Wikimania 2010 Gdansk
Hi everybody.
First of all, for those of you who haven't been here, or didn't get
the complete picture, here is a short summary of some recent events:
* Last March, I started the Counter Vandalism Unit on Commons <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Counter_Vandalism_Unit
>
* Later that month, the edit-patrol function was enabled on Commons <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2010Mar#Mark…
>
* After a Sitenotice, a few users have signed up to be "patrollers";
and with a small team of 3 to 4 regular patrollers, we keep a
checklist of anonymous edits. <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/COM:ANO#Anonymous_edits
>
The Problem
Vandalism on Commons is a big problem, which generates a large
backlog. Commons is the primary media depository for most media used
throughout Wikimedia. Vandalism on Commons therefore has a greater
likelihood of affecting local projects.
And, this also brings along the source of vandalism: Vandals.
Local vandals are only a click away from Commons. Some don't even
realise they are no longer on the local wiki.
Some, whether or not knowing they've been blocked on a local project,
continue vandalising on Commons.
So, having that said, we are looking for help !
The most important areas, for now, are live watches on IRC or recent
changes, and the Checklists mentioned above.
Live watch
For a long time Commons has it's own cvn-channel on Freenode: #cvn-
commons <irc://irc.freenode.net/#cvn-commons>.
Although there are about a dozen idling users and a bot at any one
time, use of the channel for vandal-fighting is not as frequent as
desired.
Watching live is probably the easiest and most effective way to fight
vandalism.
Also, for those who don't have the time to patrol an entire daypart-
checklist, this is a great way to contribute when they only have a
spare few minutes. One can leave and join at any time, and click/
patrol for all edits that are reported in the channel.
In comparison to the checklists, the CVN-channel has a couple of
advantages. JelteBot (the recent-changes bot in #cvn-commons)
emphasises edits based on blacklists and watchlists, making it easier
to detect potential vandalism. (If you monitor other channels too, you
could add /Warning!/ to your IRC-stalklist.)
So I recommend the "patroller" right for anybody who wishes to
participate, which you can ask for here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_rights
. Please feel free to join #cvn-commons, or Commons' main channel
#wikimedia-commons, for more information about other ways to get
involved.
Every user in the counter-vandalism channel, watching and reacting to
the stream, reduces the backlog even more.
Watching live means the user can be reverted and warned directly; s/he
will either get blocked if they continue disruption, or (not unlikely)
the vandal will stop when s/he reads the warning.
Doing this live, instead of afterwards, prevents more vandalism, and
thus generate less edits in the backlog.
Checklists
Since it's unlikely (though the impossible goal of Live watch) to
click and patrol each and every link in the IRC channel, lots of links
are missed.
Either because no-one was on watch, or it got lost in the fast stream
of links.
For that, we have the checklists. These contain all unpatrolled
anonymous edits from a certain time frame.
These are, until we have a much bigger team, the primary and most time-
consuming ways of fighting vandalism.
Also, when you can't access IRC, or don't like it for some reason, the
RecentChanges-page is a good alternative:
- <http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&hidepa…
>
If you don't know how this works, check the following links to get you
up to speed:
- http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Patrol
- http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Counter_Vandalism_Unit
(last few headings on File and Tools)
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJXvZ65ttQ4 (short video tutorial on
the CVU)
Then visit the CVU and check out a portion/day-part:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/COM:ANO#Anonymous_edits
Thank you for reading,
Yours,
Krinkle
--
Greetings,
Krinkle
A Wikipedia Volunteer
krinkle(a)wikipedia.be
- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hello.
The usability beta has been tried out by over 570,000 users across all
Wikimedia projects and roughly 80% of those beta users continue using it
[1]. As for Commons, about 7,500 users tried out the beta as of end of
February and 86% of users are still using it. The usability team is planning
to roll out the current beta interface including the new toolbar as the
default interface in April and May; please refer to these blogs for more
details.[2][3]
As the acceptance rate of the beta by Commons users is relatively high, we
would like to make the switch for Commons at first in the second week of
April. In order to facilitate the transition and to avoid critical issues,
we would like to ask as many of you as possible to try Beta before that
date, so that most issues are discovered and fixed before we go default. You
can opt-in via the 'Try Beta' link at the top of your interface.
We appreciate that Commons heavily relies on custom user scripts and
site-specific JavaScript; Our changes are not especially related to
multimedia usability, but we need your help to make sure the most used tools
are compatible with the new interface. If you encounter issues using the
beta, please share your feedback on the dedicated page [4].
Many thanks in advance.
Naoko Komura and the User Experience Programs Team
Wikimedia Foundation
[1] http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Beta_Feedback_Survey
[2]
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/25/wikimedia-gets-ready-for-some-big-chan…
[3] http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/the-change-in-interface-is-coming/
[4] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Usability_issues_and_ideas
--
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate