Kpjas here and now

Wikipedia is great and it is huge. Schools especially in the developing world need good, free sources of knowledge. And Wikipedia’s main aims is to provide such a source of knowledge. Not necessarily is it ideally suited for for use in schools and by schoolchildren.

Therefore a project has been created within the Wikipedia community and in conjunction with SOS Children that main goal was to create a selection of Wikipedia articles for schools. The project’s website is:
http://schools-wikipedia.org/.

Best articles from the English Wikipedia were “handpicked”, fact checked, proofread and reviewed for accuracy and suitability. Extra material was added that is specifically selected to be of interest to children who follow the UK National Curriculum and similar curricula elsewhere in the world. Of course, all material that might be regarded as of adult nature was meticulously excluded. This is the 2007 edition of the material and it is also available as a CD-ROM/DVD or can be downloaded for free zip file (792 MB) or torrent (2.5 GB).

The selection is roughly equivalent to a 15 volume encyclopaedia with 24 000 pictures, 14 million words and articles on 4 625 topics.

Aside from being accessible on the site, it is also possible to download the entire selection via BitTorrent (2.5GB compressed with full size images, 792MB compressed with only thumbnail images).

Dr Andrew Cates, of SOS Children and himself a Wikipedia administrator, said:

“Wikipedia offers a fantastic learning resource. We are delighted to have been able to play a part in increasing the number of children who will be able to benefit from it. We are indebted to the volunteers in our offices and on Wikipedia who helped check articles and to the Wikipedia community for their help with this project.”

Further future updates of the Wikipedia School Selection are planned.

To request a DVD copy, email info@tuxlabs.co.za and put “Wikipedia for Schools” in the subject field.

… online collaboration Wikipedia-style 

In spite of widespread criticisms of problematic credibility of Wikipedia content,  the online encyclopedia is sometimes praised for coverage of dramatic events of global interest like:

• The Indian Ocean earthquake in 2004
• The terrorist bombings in 2005 in London
• The Virginia Tech massacre

The editing process happening practically simultaneously (in real time) and at a frantic pace managed to create well-researched, reliable articles in a relatively short time, short enough not to lose its topical relevance of a good news source.  When an event or a disaster of massive global interest strikes Wikipedia seems to be suprisingly a dependable  (sometimes the best) news source on the net.

This remarkable success of online collaborative journalism (?) was noted by both by blogosphere and the mainstream media (NYT for example). It seems that this is a unique and unparalleled phenomenon.

It might be interesting, I think, to study these examples of the Wikipedia Explosive Editing Phenomenon (WEEP, what an acronym, heh) and compare with a representative sample of other Wikipedia articles.

 Maybe some insightful conclusions might be drawn from this study with implications for Wiki(pedia) and other online grassroots journalism projects.
 

 See also:  Assessing the value of cooperation in Wikipedia by HP Labs researchers Dennis M. Wilkinson and Bernardo A. Huberman

References:

•  Latest on Virginia Tech, from Wikipedia from NYT
• Short note on on  Wikipedia coverage Sun-sentinel.com
  
• The crowd reports on Virginia Tech
• Wikipedia proved reliable in tragedy News Observer
• Old media grounded Va. Tech story The Denver Post

The 2007 Annual Wikimedia Poland Conference is currently under way in Białowieza in northern Poland.

The conference is scheduled for 3 days  (May 1-3, 2007) and is going to gather large crowds of Wikipedians/Wikimedians as well as several prominent authors, scientists and other lecturers who will host a wide range of interesting and thought-provoking presentations.

I hope the proceedings of the Conference is going to be published some time in future because I could not attend the event. 

It may seem a little odd that only yesterday I discovered this interview called Wikipedia in Poland with Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia (see more about him in his Wikipedia entry and personal userpage.

Wikimania 2006 - The Annual International Wikimedia Conference - was held from August 4th through August 6th in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the Harvard Law School campus.

Discussions, panels and presentations covered mainly subjects related to the Wikimedia Foundation projects but also subjects of free content, free knowledge and free culture.

Proceedings of the Conference will be published later but at the moment numerous recordings of some of the presentations are available online.
See also:

• a collection of pictures from the conference
  
• another set of pictures from Wikimania 2006
• Wikimania 2006 blog

Additional information on the event is available through:

• The Wikipedia Signpost
• Wikizine 

On July 11th, 2006 the Polish version of the famous Wikipedia reached the number of 250,000 entries.
The  Polish Wikipedia is the fourth largest language version of the project following English, German and French versions.

Quite recently I have been nominated as an advisor to the Special Projects Committee (SPCom wiki) of the Wikimedia Foundation. It’s nice and I’ll try to be productive and helpful because Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects are very close to my heart.

Special Project Committee goals and aims are:

• Distribution of Wikimedia projects’ content
• Coordination of Wikimedia projects with partner projects to share and connect content
• Coordination of projects between outside agents and the Foundation for technical or financial benefits of parties
• Coordination with other committees and with researchers to promote analysis of the projects and their communities
• Assistance in improving/financing/starting a project proposal
• Evaluation and incubation of other projects, new concepts, new events, and ideas
• Pursuing grants and other funds to develop specific projects within the scope of this committee
• Assisting the Foundation in fulfilling its philanthropic mission of providing free knowledge to people everywhere.