The state of the Wiki in India (part II)

India, great food, the British Raj, Gandhi, Indian trains, the many cultures, religions and languages. To be honest when thinking of India it is often the subcontinent I think of first.

It is not that strange when you consider the millions who left India for Africa, South America, Europe. Many of these expatriates retain a strong link with their mother country, its culture, language and traditions. Many still speak their mother tongue exclusively at home. In Great Britain alone there are 2.6 million people from what used to be India.

With the diaspora of Indian people, the cultural heritage of India is very much a global one. It is a great reason why the subject of India needs to be covered well in the many languages of the countries where you find people of Indian descent. When you add the fact that many people in India prefer English, it is obvious that subjects related to India and Indians are particularly important in the English language Wikipedia.

There has not only been a diaspora of people from India, there has been trade in all kinds of commodities for centuries. Many Indian objects were treasured and some ended up in museums all over the world.  These treasures that you can find in many GLAM's are the cultural heritage that is not only part of the local cultural heritage but also part of the Indian cultural heritage. Sharing these in Commons is a great way of giving historically important objects a new lease of live. Not only that, they are an invitation to the general public to come and visit the originals wherever they are.

Aiyanar-horses at the Tropenmuseum

The development of India as a powerhouse of free knowledge is one of the strategic goals for the Wikimedia Foundation. They are advertising the job of Chapter Development Director. Reading the job description clearly shows ambition for a country where Internet traffic doubled since 2009. There are so many opportunities for a country like India, it boggles the mind. We could sponsor a Geograph type of project, the pictures we get in this way can illustrate articles of Indian places. Plenty of great pictures will be created in this way; they can be celebrated as "India/Selected pictures" and even as "Featured picture".

Of the 452 languages, India has many languages with an official status. Hindi and English are the official languages of the Indian Union. The Hindi Wikipedia is currently the 41th Wikipedia in traffic size, it is the biggest Wikipedia in an Indian language but it is still smaller then for instance the Wikipedia in Esperanto. There are two reasons why the Indian languages are not doing that well: English is one and support for the many scripts used for Indian languages is the other.

Given the many languages and cultures, it is a quite an achievement that India is one country. While Hindi is the biggest language of India in traffic, it is native to northern India. As there is considerable opposition to making this the primary official language, it is effectively English that is the language that binds all the people of India. The preference for English is strengthened because many Indians consider it the language that will bring their children prosperity.

When the Indian language Wikipedias are to do better, it is within the power of the Wikimedia Foundation to make a difference. They can fund the creation of freely licensed fonts that conform to the latest Unicode definitions. The benefits go beyond serving our communities; it will have an impact on all freely licensed software that is localised in the languages of India. The advertisement value of such an investment are much more then the cost of such a development.

Indian movies are a great export product

As there are many existing "Indian" Wikipedias, it will likely create resentment when only one or two Wikipedias are selected for extra attention. The nice thing of scripts is that they are often used by many languages. The key thing is to do a great job for each script. Once a level playing field is created for a language, it is for the Indian communities anyway to make the most of their Wikimedia projects.
Thanks,
      GerardM

The #Tropenmuseum object of the month revisited

The August object of the month is a lekarapa, the text did not really go well with the picture shown at the time. Today I had another look and now there is this equally magnificent lekarapa that does.

Thanks,
      GerardM

Knight in the order of Oranje Nassau

I am happy to congratulate Leo Schenk, the director of the #Tropenmuseum, because it was her majesty's pleasure to elevate him to the knighthood in the order of Oranje Nassau.

Mr Schenk is also part of the management team of the Royal Institute for the Tropics, he is the primus inter pares of the directors of anthropological museums in the Netherlands.

We have reasons to be grateful to the Tropenmuseum and Mr Schenk; they were happy to share much of their Surinam and Indonesian collection. For us they were the first collections that were the shared cultural heritage of very distinct cultures. We were happy to have involvement in the Maroon exhibition, several images have been digitally restored and were featured.

All this fits with nicely with a Tropenmuseum that under the direction of Mr Schenk is a leading example of a GLAM that is and remains a vital and vibrant custodian of the worlds cultural heritage.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#wikiconfnyc has its video on line

What is in effect the USA chapter, organised in their home town New York for the second time a Wiki conference.

They have great speakers, Clay Shirky and Sue Gardner, they have a "View the live-stream here!" and to top it off, Clay Shirky's speech is already available online.

I wish I was there ..
Thanks,
     GerardM

Plotting numbers on a map

One recent improvement in #Blogger are its new statistics. The visitor numbers are accumulated per country and this is projected on a world map.

Looking at this map, I need to concentrate on the USA because this is where my audience is.

Feedjit uses the same data and in stead of accumulating the numbers per country it shows my traffic as dots on a map.

Having traffic projected in this way, I find my audience in Europe. There is nothing for me in Alaska but there are some people interested in what I write in Africa.

The Wikimedia Foundation is experimenting with geo-location. It would be interesting to see if Wikipedia's traffic shows a similar distribution.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Sharing pictures

You go on a holiday, you take a camera and some you upload to #Commons. Well actually, the numbers say you share them on Flickr or Facebook. In a blog Facebook boasts "more than 3 billion photos are being uploaded every month". To appreciate those numbers, Commons has at this moment 7,256,633 freely usable media files or the number of pictures uploaded in its entire existence.

This is a crop from the only picture of the "la Tomatina" festival in Buñol, Spain. There are not that many pictures of Buñol either .. I am sure that many Wikimedians have been to all kinds of weird and wonderful places, festivals, occasions and went their with their camera. We need them more then Facebook because we actually use them, for instance as illustrations.

A bee sharing its meal

The good news is that the Commons usability improvements are something like a month away. This will make it easy to upload. But Facebook is correct when they separate the uploading from the sharing; "5 billion web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc are shared each week as of earlier this month".

Geograph picture of the day; Glandford Ford

We made our GLAM's happy when we shared with them how many of the material they shared with us are used and where. I would be happy to know how many of my Commons contributions are shared and where. I am sure that Geograph would be happy to see the material that we have included in their repository.

We could even start projecting points on a map for the pictures we have in that location. We could show that we "like" pictures. When we start to celebrate what we have, we have a party and I am sure that many more people will join the fun.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Collation in the #CLDR 1.9

The "Public Review Issue #175" is particularly focussing on Unicode locale-sensitive collation. As a consequence the correct sorting for languages like French and Mandarin will be properly defined in the CLDR.

This has major implications and for this reason, Unicode is looking for feedback on the planned changes. The existing tickets can be found here and, more tickets may be added to this list over time.
Thanks,
      GerardM

A solution for now for my #Blogger problem

The "draft" interface for Blogger is typically great. For some time now, it prevents me from uploading images to my blog. This is hugely frustrating and as a result I did not blog as much as I used to do.

The old interface is however still available and, it apparently allows me to upload images. This image is from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek and is one of a series of Dutch proverbs.

It is quite interesting because the proverb seems to be the two last lines of a rhyme. A rhyme that few people still know. Having such resources on line is great; it makes a cultural heritage available.

To some extend, if you cannot find it with Google, it does not exist.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikimedia Research committee launched

Committees are one established way of progressing from a free for all to something a bit more organised in the Wikimedia Foundation. The Research committee will help organise policies, practices and priorities around Wikimedia related research.

It already has its mailing list where anyone may read in the archive what has been discussed. On their info pages at meta the initial members are presented with a short bio and relevant info.

I hope the new committee will be a fun group willing and able to do a lot of good.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Commons as a source for "stock photography"

#Commons is not only #Wikipedia 's repository of illustrations, it is also a rich resource of freely licensed images that can be used for all kinds of other purposes. Commons does a great job for Wikipedia, but how do you measure its success for other purposes and how do you make it more successful.

I blog for instance and while I was in the Ardennes, I saw horses grazing above me, there is no picture that gives the same sense of nearby horses grazing above. In a previous blog I asked for pictures of the yak a running yak, a yak being milked, yaks in a caravan.

The question is, how do we compile the kind of pictures that are particularly illustrative, the kind of pictures that would make Commons a source for what you can also find in the collections of companies that sell pictures.

The difference with featured pictures is very much in the subject matter. There is only so much use for just another bug, bird or mammal. How do you illustrate back pain, love, madness, hard work, a person of a particular caste?
Thanks,
      GerardM

Angika, a language from #India supported at #translatewiki.net

At the #incubator, there is a start for a #Wikipedia in the Angika language. Angika is a language not only spoken in India but also in Nepal. A request has been made at translatewiki.net for translator rights by Angpradesh so a portal for the Angika language was created and translatewiki was enabled for localisation in this language.

What is left for Angpradesh and his friends is to request a Wikipedia at Meta. This is likely to be given the eligible status quickly. Once the localisations of the most used messages are completed and there are sufficient articles in the incubator, we will be happy to welcome another Wikipedia.
Thanks,
       GerardM

The image that I wanted to include ..

Korean #Wikinews has been created :)

A joyous occasion; the Korean Wikinews has been created. RobH has been so gracious to create it, the first data has been transferred to the project itself. It is now to its community to make it a success!
Thanks,
     GerardM

A new #Wikipedia

A joyous occasion; the North Frisian Wikipedia has been created. RobH has been so gracious to create it, the first data has been transferred to the project itself. It is now to its community to make it a success!
Thanks,
     GerardM

The #Wikipedia Ambassador program

This program is open for experienced Wikipedians from everywhere particularly if you want to reach out to professors and students in universities.

Currently it is very much wedded to the Wikipedia Public Policy Initiative. At this moment it is very much a US based project but the intention is that it will spread to other countries, other languages.

Once you are an ambassador, you can even add a userbox to that effect on your user page :)
Thanks,
       GerardM

DYK #heroin is a registered #medicine in the #Netherlands?

The #Volkskrant had an article that mentioned that heroin has been a registered medicine for over 10 years. It started as an experiment in Utrecht where many junks had found there home in a prestigious shopping centre. There are now 17 clinics in 15 cities where heroin junks get their daily fix under medical supervision. As a consequence the number of heroin junks decreased significantly and the

Almere, my city, is the seventh city in size in the Netherlands and as can be expected, it has its own heroin junks. There are enough junks who have an psychiatric issue for Almere to feel the need to provide a shelter for these people.

This shelter will be in my street. As it is in my back yard, I elected to become a member of a group who provide oversight over the agreements under which this hostel will operate. I am in this representing the "neighbourhood".

The neighbourhood fears an increase in criminality, pushers selling drugs to the junks in the shelter. Other opiates like methadone will be made available in the hostel and, that is great as it will diminish the need to "score". I will ask for the distribution of heroin (only) to the inhabitants of the hostel because this will make it unprofitable to dealers. It will prevent the need to steal in order to buy heroin. This will make my neighbourhood much safer.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Software sucks .. sometimes nicely

Uploading pictures to #Blogger and #Commons is broken for me. I uploaded a poster about our collaboration with the Dutch National Archive and Spaarnestad photo and it looks awful on the Dutch Wikipedia.

Blogger is still broken and it does not allow me to link to images either. I feel very frustrated BUT I now have the impression that they are trying to fix things.

It is quite obvious that people at Google and at the Wikimedia Foundation are frustrated as well. They can do well without such hassles. However, problems with software that is used by many people is bound to break every now and again.

I will happily post a picture of a Buddha when the techies have stopped suffering.
Thanks,
      GerardM

The relevance of the #Amharic #Wikipedia

The Amharic Wikipedia is a living and breathing Wikipedia. It is with 4.3K articles big for an African Wikipedia. Its localisation is doing OK; 70% of the MediaWiki core messages have been translated.

According to the English Wikipedia however, it "fails WP.WEB" this is to mean that "there are no reliable sources" that indicate the relevance of this website. The question I have is, is this reliable external to the Amharic Wikipedia or reliable external to the Wikimedia Foundation.

We keep statistics on the development of all Wikipedias. We have policies that ensure that every new Wikipedia conforms to minimum standards. We want to gain traction in Africa and honestly, if we consider our Wikipedias as not relevant then we are shooting ourselves in the foot.

The problem with this search for external sources in English is that it inherently brings a bias to the notability required. Wikipedia is for most languages the biggest MediaWiki website. When we promote the use of MediaWiki in "other languages" it is important to recognise the importance of our Wikipedias. Some may not consider this encyclopedic but Wikipedia has its relevance not only as an encyclopedia.
Thanks,
       GerardM

DYK there is more to know about #India ?

With the English language #Wikipedia being very popular in India, it is no surprise that there are an increasing number of articles on the Indian subcontinent. Many of these articles contain facts that are not generally known and for this reason there is now a DYKIndia account.

As the software used to populate this channel can be found on github, it is possible to have a DYK feed for other purposes, other countries, other languages as well. There have been discussions on how to improve the existing software and, quoting is much nicer then paraphrasing:

1. This can be on any subject and can be used by many projects like History, Medicine, Countries, etc if there are people to manage the tweet queue.
2. It would make more successful if the "manual tweet queue" maintenance process is done away with and ask WP:DYK to provide short version of hooks as well going forward. -- Need to go through a proposal i guess. Will be working on this in sometime after gauging the success of this. But counter arguments also came for this and sometimes its better if its manual.
3. Similar app can also used to tweet daily DYKs on a hourly basis and can be face of "Whats new on Wikipedia" in social media.
4. Possibility of exploring usage of this into Indian languages,challanges like char limit, availability. Need to work on this as well.
5. Possibility of tie-up with mobile operator and making it as a VAS, where in operator gets money, we get outreach / publicity -- Can be taken as a chapter outreach activity once that is formed.

The one thing that is explicitly missing is the use of this software for DYK for other languages. I learned from Srikanth Lakshman that he intends to start with DYK in Tamil; there are already 100+ DYK available :)

The one that that this DYK activity implicitly does is help realise the aim of the Wikimedia Foundation to double our reach in five years. This kind of outreach by the community itself making use of modern social media is going to make a big difference.
Thanks,
      GerardM

A big boost for the #MediaWiki localisation in #Farsi

There was a big boost at #translatewiki.net of the localisations of the extensions used by the Wikimedia projects. Several new people started localising and within a day it grew from 66% to 87%. This is quite impressive. Farsi will be the 20th language in the top 50 languages of the world to have virtually complete localisation in a Wikimedia context.

The reason; possibly the message came through that the language committee does not consider any request as long as the localisation is not complete. Whenever a request is considered, the first step is always the current state of the localisations.

With a bit of luck, the fa.wikinews.org will be created at the same time as the ko.wikinews.org. That is, luck for our Iranian friends.
Thanks,
      GerardM

PS no pictures initially because Blogger is broken
PS on IRC  I learned about the png version that is used internally

More #Geograph pictures will be uploaded to #Commons

Every part of the United Kingdom and Ireland is being photographed by the Geograph project. The first 250,000 pictures have been uploaded to Commons at the end of 2009.

Multichil announced that he has received a hard drive with 1,8 million images. He is preparing the upload and welcomes feedback on the batch uploading page. As you may know, a Geograph project has started for Germany and it would be really cool when such a project is set up for other countries as well.

Personally I would really like such a project set up to run in a country like India, Indonesia, Tanzania and have the best of them as featured pictures.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Google blocks use of #Wikimedia #Commons pictures

I want to write about a domain provider. In order to illustrate this I selected this picture from Wikimedia Commons. I get the message:

Uploading

-

Stop upload

Only select images for which you have confirmed that you have a licence for use.

I make a screen print in order to illustrate my blog post. I try to upload it and I get the message:

Uploading

-

Stop upload

Only select images for which you have confirmed that you have a licence for use.

The page on Commons about the picture is quite clear:

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

I am equally sure that I am allowed to feature a screen shot using either the Chrome or the Firefox browser, if only because it is fair use.

Google, what are you thinking, are you intent on killing your blogger service ?
Thanks,
     GerardM

Wiki loves monuments

the website

The national monuments of the Netherlands represent the places where history was made, the buildings that represent an era that has gone by. They often define the character of a place an area.

Such monuments are rich in details, they are there to be discovered by the people who are willing to look at them and give them their attention. The Dutch Wikimedia chapter is organising a challenge to discover all the 60,000 monuments with a camera. We are looking for great illustrations that will help us bring these monuments to our Wikipedias.

To make it attractive, there is a competition with prizes to be won. This competition will run in the month of September and on the "Open monumentendag" (Saturday 11 and Sunday 12) many monuments will open their doors to the public.

We hope that the amount of high quality pictures will give us a hard time to decide what will be the winner of the competition. We love our monuments and the pictures that will become illustrations in Wikipedia will be true winners as well.
Thanks,
      GerardM

A new #Wikipedia requested

It is always a happy moment when a new Wikipedia is requested. It is the end of a process for the language committee and it always feels like a relief. This request for a frr.wikipedia or a Wikipedia in the North Frisian language was held up for quite some time because we had a tough time finding an external expert willing to acknowledge that the language used in the incubator is indeed North Frisian.

With this detail out of the way and without an objection from the WMF board, we are happy to await a new project.
Thanks,
       GerardM

The limits of #Google #Translate and other translator tools

One of my #Wikipedia friends is Bellayet. He has represented the Bengali Wikipedia at Wikimania several times, I have corresponded with him on several occasions; he is one of the good guys.

Bellayet blogs and uses the Wordpress software. I am happy to notice that its interface looks Bengali to me. I asked Bellayet if he could add something like Google translate to his blog and learned that he could not because Bangla is not (yet) supported.

There is a lot of talk about pushing translations using tools like Google translate. The reality is that Bangla, a language spoken by some 250,000,000 people is not supported to the extend that something can be pushed out. Something that is enough to help me understand what the subject is, maybe even understand somewhat what is being said.

Google also supports a translation tool that includes the use of translation memories and machine translation. It is vital to understand the tool, what it does and what is expected of you the translator.



This toolkit gives you the kind of tools that are also used by professional translators. It makes sense to appreciate what it is a translator does and does not do because once you do you have realistic expectations.

Typically a translator only translates into his or her mother tongue. They use tools to be as efficient as possible. Many translators translate the same kind of text really often, think travel documents, health documents etc. They have a fixed vocabulary and are in a standardised format. For such activities translation memories are a godsend.

Another group of documents, for instance Wikipedia articles, are hard on translation memories. The subject is singular and therefore there is often not that much to base a proposed translation on. This is where machine translation is of use. It has a dictionary component and it has a morphology component. Together with some grammar rules they provide the best they can.

When you as a translator provide a properly written literal translation, the translation can be used to enrich a translation memory. However, many translators have to provide a text that fits well with an audience, a different culture. In essence a text is substantially re-written to fit its target.

Another task often required of a translator is formatting. In a wiki environment, this would include wiki-links, templates and pictures. All of this is what is part of providing an end product that is acceptable to its public. When professional translators are hired to translate, it makes sense to hire Wikipedians to finish the translation by providing the formatting.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Where have all the #Wikimania videos gone?

I really wanted to see the #Wikia presentation on their internationalisation and localisation at this year's Wikimania. As we were assured that not only would all the presentations be streamed but they would become available on line, I was willing to give it a miss. I was elsewhere talking, meeting, doing what makes Wikimania so wonderful.

Pushing MediaWiki Internationalization

View more presentations from Tim Bartel.

Tim "Avatar" Bartel pointed me to slideshare where I could at least get a great impression of his talk.

I am looking forward to the video's but here at least are the slides of one of the presentations I was sad to miss.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Tropenmuseum is into football

This months object of the month is a funny one. It is a picture of a lekarapa; the picture used by the Tropenmuseum is the same picture as used on the Wikipedia article and shows Alfred "Lux" Baloyi who created the first lekarapa. The picture was originally published on the Voice of America website.

According to the VoA the lekarapa shows the image of South African football legend, Lucas Radebe, while the TM says the two football players on the helmet are keeper Rowen Fernández and striker Kabamba Musasa.

The lekarapa can be seen at the Tropenmuseum as part of its "Africa scores" exhibition. This exhibtion that was running during the World Cup championships in South Africa and will run until August 22.

During the World Cup championships Football the South African lekarapa (plural makarapa) became a gadget used by worldwide fans.

The lekarapa, an adorned hard hat, was at first only used by the fans of the Kaizer Chiefs, one of the great football clubs of Soweto. Many fans of the Kaizer Chiefs were contract labourors working in the mines or in the building industry and had to wear hard hats. Lekarapa means contract labouror. The name was later adopted for the hard hat itself.

On this exuberantly adorned hard hat from 2001 there are the logos of the Kaizer Chiefs: stylised indian headdresses Amakhosi meaning chief in the Zulu language. The two football players on the helmet are keeper Rowen Fernández and striker Kabamba Musasa.

The English band the Kaiser Chiefs (with a "s") named themselves this way because a former player of the Kaizer Chiefs became the captain of the favourite club of the band: Leeds United.

If you want to react or have something to add..

Thanks,
      GerardM

Cary Bass leaving the #Wikimedia Foundation

Cary is one of the longest serving people working at the Wikimedia Foundation. He has been really important to many people in helping them find their way and be part of our community. It is with sadness that I learn that Cary is going to take his life in a different direction; he is in the process of enrolling in post-graduate studies to pursue a theological path that he has been considering for many years. He will be leaving us at the end of December.

I am happy for him and I am happy to learn that he will continue to make his mark in the WMF as a volunteer. He indicates that he will be particularly involved in the organisation of Wikimanias and as an editor.

Cary, be well and I love to meet you in Haifa for Wikimania 2011.
Thanks.
       GerardM

#iHRIS the next prospect for #translatewiki

Translatewiki.net advertises the fact that we are interested in adding new projects to our list or projects. Every now and then a new application is added and iHRIS is quite special.

iHRIS is special because it brings medical human resources where they are needed. In many countries in Africa there is a lack of doctors, nurses and other medical specialists. Managing these resources optimally is what iHRIS is about.

As you can imagine software that manages human resources at a scale of a country is quite complex. This becomes even more clear when you learn that there are modules specific for countries like Uganda, Botswana, Kenya and Zanzibar.

iHRIS is deployed in many countries and the lack of internationalisation and localisation is increasingly felt as a reason that prevents iHRIS from progressing further. In order for the community of localisers at translatewiki.net to do its thing, we need developers to help us improving the iHRIS internationalisation.

Adding Internationalisation to existing software is not easy, but this is the kind of Open Source software that truly makes a difference. The software is used and makes a difference, at translatewiki.net we have a community that is known to make a difference. We are now wondering if you are the kind of person who can make this happen on a greater scale.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Flagged Revisions on the Indonesian #Wikipedia

When I hear about quality and smaller Wikipedias, I often wonder how to reconcile a need for growth and a need for quality. The Indonesian language Wikipedia is doing really well; its traffic has grown 100%, it added 23K articles in the last year.

Adding flagged revisions to a wiki is an administrative burden. It will require dedication from the people who may currently be more involved in writing articles. Activities like a possible follow up on the Bebaskan Pengetahuan competition will have to be modified.

It will be interesting to learn what the effects will be on the development of the Indonesian Wikipedia. I hope it will not stunt its growth.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Igbo doing well at #translatewiki.net

The advantage of having all kinds of #statistics is that you may spot the occasional white raven. The languages of Africa typically are not that active. When we find that Ukabia is doing really well for Igbo, it is not only seen, it is commented upon in IRC and now on this blog.

With 633 articles the Igbo Wikipedia is still very small. We hope that the current interest in localisation will help finding people interested in bringing encyclopaedic information to the 18 million people who speak the language.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#FUD around #WikiLeaks

When Ward Cunningham was looking for a name for his new way or working, he thought of the Hawaiian word "wiki" meaning fast. When he originally described a wiki it was "the simplest online database that could possibly work."

WikiLeaks is a wiki in that it provides a fast and easy way to do what WikiLeaks is meant for; the submitting of confidential or secret material. When you consider the might of those opposing WikiLeaks, it is obvious that allowing everyone to edit will be extremely counter productive. This is not where Wikipedia's NPOV rules the roost. It is much more like WikiSource where it is also extremely relevant to keep the original source pristine.

WikiLeaks is not a Wikimedia project and, it does not suffer from a lack of credibility. The credibility of its material is such that new material published makes for new scandals. The one thing WikiLeaks is good at is proofing the veracity of what it publishes.

The notion that it somehow infringes on the Wikimedia by using the "wiki" moniker is silly. There are so many websites that have "wiki" in their name; wikiHow, OmegaWiki, Wikia to name a few that it is far more interesting to learn about exceptions like Citizendium that does not have wiki in its name.

Julian Assange the "Jimbo" of WikiLeaks

All in all, it is to be expected that negative editorials are written about WikiLeaks. When you profess to write about "Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia in the News", writing about WikiLeaks is seriously off topic. Calling WikiLeaks "contraband" demonstrates a bias. It is easy to forget that laws differ from country to country and that someone's hero is another man's villain.
Thanks,
      GerardM