Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-01-09/In the news
Wikipedia ends annual fundraising drive; Monmouthpedia launches
Wikipedia ends annual fundraising drive
Wikipedia raised $20 million thanks to Wikipedia donators during a fundraising campaign that ended on January 1, 2012. According to Sue Gardner, Wikimedia's executive director, it is the most successful campaign ever. MSNBC reports that Wikimedia told them that the money will be used for "servers and other hardware, to develop new site functionality, expand mobile services, provide legal defense for the projects, and support the large global community of Wikimedia volunteers."
According to Business Review USA, Wikimedia plans to spend $28.3 million with the remaining amount coming from grants, institutions, and other year-round donations.
Monmouthpedia - the first local Wikipedia project launches
Wales Online reports that Monmouthpedia is the first Wikipedia project to cover a single town. Monmouthpedia documents the "notable places, people, artifacts, flora and fauna" of the Welsh town of Monmouth. Monmouthpedia aims to use QRpedia (QR Code barcodes linking to Wikipedia articles, that can be read by smart phones). It is planned to have articles in 25 languages and 1,150 QR codes placed around Monmouth by May. The project was started by John Cummings who was inspired by the Derby Museum - GLAM/Wiki collaboration during a Wikipedia talk.
According to Digital Spy, Cummings said that "the project is already working with a variety of local groups", but he also advised that anyone with an interest in Monmouth local history can contribute.
Monmouth was chosen because of its "rich industry", first appearing in the Domesday Book.
In brief
- Editor interview: Wikipedia editor and owner of TheWikipedian.net, William Beutler, was interviewed in C-SPAN's Q&A session.
- Jimmy Wales: The Suit Magazine wrote a story about Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia.
- Sackville student assignments: Canada East did a story on a Sackville class of anthropology students who wrote articles for Wikipedia. The articles received many views, one of the articles was featured on DYK, and one of the students received a barnstar.
- Rachel Crow's hometown: An article from Times-Call said that Rachel Crow's article's had her hometown wrong. The article said Boulder, Colorado until it was changed to Mead, Colorado by an IP editor on January 3.
- Thief Justice: GMA News reported on vandalism which had Renato Corona's profession changed from Chief Justice to Thief Justice.
Discuss this story
I think we should remove the line about the spelling test. After criticising the flawed methodology of the paper it's discussing, the article actually says that the report comes to no firm conclusion. --Dweller (talk) 10:11, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
WikiPekela.nl is another example of a wiki dedicated to a single town, Pekela in the Netherlands, though not a WMF project. It is not updated any longer because the person who did most work to maintain the site died (he was also a Dutch Wikipedian BTW). SpeakFree (talk)(contribs) 15:28, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
There are a number of towns and cities which have wikis about them (sometimes more than one). Jackiespeel (talk) 16:00, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The Vatican and WP
There was a brief mention in the news of the Vatican updating some of its entries on Cardinals and putting in material copied from WP, which was subsequently replaced: is there anything more on this? Jackiespeel (talk) 16:00, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It is mentioned in the current (13 January) issue of The Week. Jackiespeel (talk) 23:22, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Jimbo plans to black out wikipedia over sopa