Serious talent at the #Wikimedia Foundation

For no particular reason I was googling for Alolita Sharma. Alolita is an Engineering Program Manager for the Wikimedia Foundation and she combines this by being on the board of the Open Source Initiative as its secretary.

All this makes Alolita a high powered and influential person; this is also reflected in the fact that there is a Wikipedia article about her. It refers to an empty Commons category.. There is not yet a reference to her on the WMF staff page.

Pictures on the Internet can be found including this one on the blog of Danese. Formally I should not use it, Danese can sue me but if I may not she can ask me to remove it. In the meantime, I would like a nice picture on Commons.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Fifteen minutes of fame

I was on national television, in the public. A weekly talk show where subjects that are in the news are discussed. The show picks its guests carefully, the discussion leader and presenter Ghislaine Plag is adept in leading discussions. This makes for an interesting, lively and informative program.

Looking back, there are two things I find of interest to my public. The Wikipedia article on Ghislaine does not have a picture of her. Please, if you or your agent reads this consider donating a quality picture on Wikiportret.

A program like "Rondom 10" is similar to Wikipedia in its attempt to bring a neutral point of view. The success of the program relies on its choice of subjects that are in the news. The success of Wikipedia is in its ability to provide background information to the news. The biggest Wikipedias cover almost everything and concentrating on providing background information to what is in the news is probably the best strategy to grow relevant and well read encyclopaedic content.
Thanks,
     GerardM

The new #Library

The new library of #Almere opened and it made me feel comfortable and at home. There are plenty power adapters, places to study or play, read or lounge. There were many festivities, and Ronald Giphart was invited to give a workshop on writing and publishing a book.

The one thing that surprised me was that an author does not decide the title of his book; the publisher does. The cover and the title is decided by the publisher and, this is also true for translations.

Ronald wearing a headscarf

By coming to Almere, one of the bastions of right wing local ineffective politics, Ronald runs the risk of being charged the 1000 EURO "kopvoddentax" or head cloth tax.. He demonstrated his willingness to wear the headscarf so he must be willing to take the consequences...

Ronald's Wikipedia article is found to be lacking. Sadly I did not bring my camera, the article misses a portrait that does do him justice. The article itself does not do Ronald justice either; on his website the biography part explicitly informs the reader all that is wrong with the Wikipedia article.

Ronald got blocked when he updated his Wikipedia article, I told him about OTRS and Wikiportret. We could consider it an experiment; will the facts as provided be read by the Dutch Wikipedians and will they do good or is it necessary for Ronald to go through to the motions...

PS I told Ronald that I would just use one of his pictures for my blog.. he told me that that was OK for the occasion,
Thanks,
        GerardM

Wikiportret is in SVN

Wikiportret.nl is a website where people who do not have a picture on their Wikipedia article find an easy way of getting their portrait uploaded to Commons.

Husky developed it for the Dutch chapter and, he entered the code to SVN at the Paris meeting. Today Siebrand had a stab at it. In his tweet, he indicated that he is trying to understand the code and, standardise it.

While a first effort at Internationalisation has been done by Husky, more work will be needed in order to get the software ready for localisation.

The aim is to have quality portraits of the people who have their Wikipedia article. Achieving this will make our articles more attractive.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Mark Harmon is picture of the day - a Wikiportrait

A picture of Mark Harmon is picture of the day on the English Wikipedia. It is a great picture and there is a funny story behind it. The photographer, Jerry Avenaim, had provided the picture in a lower resolution version. As it is a great picture, it was proposed for "Featured Picture". Because of the low resolution it did not qualify and a higher resolution picture was asked and given. Now it is the picture of the day.. :)

Many articles about living people do not have a picture. Having a quality picture with the article is typically in the interest of both Wikipedia and the person in question..

The Dutch chapter has a project called Wikiportet. This is a Dutch website where people are asked to contribute pictures to those articles that do not have one. It works really well, when you read Dutch. It does include all our hoops, free license, OTRS references the works.

Now as so many people in the world do not speak Dutch, there is the opportunity to localise this project in English, French or whatever. There are people everywhere that did merit an article but have no picture or a lousy picture. There is room for many more featured pictures :)
Thanks,
GerardM

Dutch chapter's annual meeting

Yesterday I went to the annual meeting of the Dutch chapter. In a way it was a celebration of the things that went well. There was a lot that went well. In another way it was the moment to reflect on the things that did not go as well as was hoped for. For me it is always great to have such a group of wonderful people in one place.

The ambitions for this and the next year are high. We hope that Wikimania 2010 will come to the Netherlands. The aim is to extend and intensify our contacts with organisations and government so that we can promote a more inclusive and open culture. Thanks to Wikiportret we have uploaded many portraits of famous Dutch people to Commons for instance this one of Carice van Houten.. At the meeting the first tentative arrangements were made to internationalise this project for other countries and other languages.

At an annual meeting, there are the obvious and boring things, the financial statements the discharge of the trearurer, the old board, the election of a new board. All these things happened. What I like most is having so many interesting people together, learning what they have been up to.
Thanks,
GerardM