Fast Company is a US magazine that emphasizes change in business, and focuses on leadership, technology and social dimensions of business.  Fast Company has a strong readership and is regarded as the voice of innovation in business in the US.

We are very proud of her listing. It will certainly help to to get more attention to OpenCourseWare, the Consortium and hopefully also TU Delft's OpenCourseWare website.

Interesting to see is that we get a lot more international attention for Anka as president of the consortium than in the Dutch media.
The last couple of months there are 2 articles in New York Times/International Herald Tribune (#1, #2), article in Times Higher Education, and an article in the Guardian.

Wikimedia Community Fellow Tanvir Rahman

Tanvir Rahman is a Wikimedian who serves the movement locally and globally, both on- and off-wiki. Tanvir has been an active editor of Bengali Wikipedia since 2009, he holds administrator rights on multiple projects and he was elected a steward in 2011. He also volunteers on the Small Wiki Monitoring Team, the Countervandalism Network, as an OTRS agent, and is a translator for translatewiki. Tanvir helped found Wikimedia Bangladesh and is a tireless organizer of local outreach activities to raise awareness for Wikimedia and bring new editors to the projects.

In his fellowship project, Tanvir will be experimenting with on-wiki strategies to encourage and grow the editing community on small language versions of Wikipedia, with specific focus on the Bengali Wikipedia. Smaller projects have different needs and challenges than the large language communities and may require different approaches to engage with editors. By focusing on a community like Bengali Wikipedia, which has about 50 active editors per month and sees 10 new editors per month, Tanvir hopes to learn more about the basic editing infrastructure needed to encourage new editors in new or small-scale projects. We look forward to the new insights that Tanvir’s project will bring to the Wikimedia movement. Because he understands the outreach and on-wiki needs of the editing community, cares as deeply about local community as he does about the global needs of the movement, and can’t wait to share his knowledge about smaller wiki communities, we believe those insights will be great.

Wikimedia Community Fellow Steven Zhang

Steven Zhang is a Wikipedian with a passion for resolving on-wiki disputes and helping others do the same. He has been contributing to the English Wikipedia since 2008 and has been particularly active in dispute resolution forums, including the Wikipedia Mediation Cabal. Steven is studying a Certificate IV in Mediation at Open Colleges, and over the past year he has made it his mission as a volunteer to recruit more editors to join dispute resolution efforts. In 2011, he helped create the dispute resolution notice board, an entry point for mediating disputes on the English Wikipedia. Steven has noted that there aren’t enough active participants to resolve all of the disputes that arise on Wikipedian each day, and he believes that dispute resolution processes could be streamlined to make them more accessible and efficient to all editors who need them.

We admire Steven’s enthusiasm for resolving conflict and his commitment to raising awareness in the community about the issue, and we look forward to partnering with him as he embarks on his fellowship project.  He will be analyzing community feedback and dispute resolution activity in order to build a deeper understanding of what is effective and what needs improvement in the current systems. He will also be developing a guide for new editors who want to get involved in resolving on-wiki disputes.

Steven and Tanvir will be documenting their work on-wiki and here on the Foundation blog. You can learn more about their projects by visiting the Fellows page. All of the Wikimedia Foundation Fellows look forward to meeting you at Wikimania, too!

Siko Bouterse, Head of Community Fellowships

Fast Company has just featured her as one of the 100 most creative people in business – well, the business of higher education in this case. You can read the article and its accompanying interview here.

The OpenCourseWare Consortium, comprised of 250 universities around the world, has a special importance here at UCI. The OCW Consortium is both a mechanism for multi-university, global projects, like its recent Open Education Week, and it shines a light on people and institutions who play important roles in open education. The Chair of UCI’s Public Health Department, Oladele Ogunseitan, received the ACE Leadership Award for his early commitment to OpenCourseWare and open education.

Gary Matkin and I have collaborated with Anka for five years already. Fast Company couldn’t have found a better individual to feature for her contributions and the favorable light she casts on all of our activity.

cc by-sa 3.0 Dilly Boase

You’ve probably heard the saying, “In theory, Wikipedia shouldn’t work, but in practice it does.” Three of the things that contribute to make Wikipedia work are topic-specific WikiProjects (“let’s write about a town), Wikimedia chapters (“let’s organize throughout the United Kingdom”), and unique ideas (“let’s use QR codes to share content”). This week these three things successfully came together to create Monmouthpedia, “The World’s First Wikipedia Town” in Monmouth, Wales.

The idea for Monmouthpedia began at a TEDx talk in Bristol when John Cummings, an occasional Wikipedia editor, suggested from the audience that the UK Chapter use QR codes to “do a whole town.” That challenge was handed to Cummings when the Wikimedia UK chapter backed the idea. He then moved to his home town of Monmouth where he assembled an ad hoc group of supporters who wanted to participate, including the local County Council.

Click image for Monmouthpedia video

The project has taken six months of preparation, including a commitment by the town to install a free, town-wide wi-fi network (the first of its kind in Wales). On 19 May the entire town will be bedecked with banners declaring Monmouth as the first Wikipedia Town in the world.

The Monmouthpedia project uses QRpedia to allow visitors to scan QR codes that link directly to the Wikipedia article in their own language. Because of Monmouth’s efforts to provide free wi-fi and implement QRpedia, the town is likely the only place where a visitor can tour in Hungarian, Hindi, Indonesian, Welsh, or numerous other Wikipedia languages using QR codes.

A plaque on Monmouth Shire Hall

Much of the success of Monmouthpedia comes from its ability to capture the imagination of the Wikipedia community, which has embraced the town virtually. Wikipedia volunteers have contributed nearly 500 new articles in over 25 languages, as well as videos on topics such as the historic Chartists movement.

The project also has a long list of partners, including 200 businesses, several universities and nearly every school and community group in the area. Wikipedia has partnered with museums and other institutions before, as in Derby, but in Monmouth you will see over 1,000 QR codes on every school, every important building, and hundreds of shops. The County Council itself has a QRpedia code in its reception that takes you to their Wikipedia article.

Lest you think this is a passing interest, the town of Monmouth is in it for the long haul. Many of the QRpedia codes are printed on ceramic plaques that should last for decades. The information in articles is backed by the Wikipedia community and will be continually improved and expanded. Physical guides and maps will become outdated, but the Wikipedia articles will always be able to be updated. This potential for on-site access to up-to-date information in any language is what makes the Monmouthpedia model so exciting.

How long can Wikipedia defy the theory and continue to deliver free information to the planet in over 280 languages? We think the Monmouthpedia story provides a very optimistic outlook.

If you want to find out more, visit the Monmouthpedia website and take a look at the associated articles on Wikipedia.

- Roger Bamkin, Director of Wikimedia UK (Victuallers)

This Saturday is Culture Freedom Day, a worldwide celebration of free and open culture through education efforts, on- and offline events, and promoting artists who work in free culture. Culture Freedom Day is organized by Digital Freedom International, a nonprofit that also promotes software freedom.

As stewards of the open licenses and tools that enable creators to contribute to a free and open culture, Creative Commons encourages you to celebrate this day by learning more about it and the open licenses that make up the infrastructure for free cultural works. You can also CC license one or more of your own works, remix or build upon an existing CC-licensed work, or help bring awareness to one of your favorite CC artists.

From 2007 to 2011, COMMUNIA was a project funded by the European Commission to explore the role of the public domain in the digital age. Over four years, COMMUNIA, or The European Thematic Network on the Digital Public Domain, gathered over 50 members from academia and the CC community to research, promote, and preserve the digital public domain. In 2011, COMMUNIA’s members decided to continue the network as an international nonprofit association.

We would like to highlight two recent publications by COMMUNIA that shed light on COMMUNIA’s progress:

In April, COMMUNIA released, “The Digital Public Domain: Foundations for an Open Culture” under CC BY:

“This book brings together essays by academics, librarians, entrepreneurs, activists and policy makers, who were all part of the EU-funded Communia project [from 2007-2011]. Together the authors argue that the Public Domain — that is, the informational works owned by all of us, be that literature, music, the output of scientific research, educational material or public sector information — is fundamental to a healthy society.”

More recently, COMMUNIA published its Final Report, also under CC BY:

“This Public Report is the outcome of the work of the COMMUNIA Network on the Digital Public Domain (hereinafter “COMMUNIA”). This Report was undertaken to (i) review the activities of COMMUNIA; (ii) investigate the state of the digital public domain in Europe; and (iii) recommend policy strategies for enhancing a healthy public domain and making digital content in Europe more accessible and usable. Each of the subjects indicated above will be further developed and detailed in Annex I, Annex II, and Annex III of this Report, respectively.”

The Final Report, along with the collection of essays above, highlights much of the good work completed by COMMUNIA over the years, including The Public Domain Manifesto, of which many CC affiliates, staff, and community members were a part of drafting.

Giving a preview of the work of the OCW Consortium over the coming year, Mulder said, “At OpenCourseWare, we’ve talked about how it’s very hard for a learner to define how he wants to gain competency in a subject. But that subject becomes more interesting if we design an organized learning path to follow. Finding their own snippets on the Internet is difficult… The next step is going to be to focus on how to make online education more than just about self-discipline and finding information. What can the learner do with the information he or she finds online?”

The article can be found here:  http://www.fastcompany.com/most-creative-people/2012/anka-mulder.

Congratulations, Anka!

Malware installed on your computer may inject advertising into a page on popular websites, such as this Wikipedia article. This is an example that we've seen in the wild. Note the tiny text "ads not by this site" immediately below the ad, which may or may not appear next to these types of injected advertisements.

One example that we have seen installs itself as a browser extension. The extension is called “I want this” and installs itself in Google Chrome. To remove it:

• Open the options menu via the “pipe-wrench” icon on the top right, and choose Settings.
• Open the Extensions panel and there is the list of extensions installed.
• Remove an Extension by clicking the Remove button next to an item.

There is likely other similar malware that injects ads into Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and other popular browsers. If you see examples that you can document, please point them out in the comments.

Ads injected in this manner may be confined to some sites, even just to Wikipedia, or they may show up on all sites you visit. Browsing through a secure (HTTPS) connection (which you can automate using the HTTPS everywhere extension) may cause the ads to disappear, but will not fix the underlying problem.

Disabling browser add-ins is a good starting point to determine the source of these types of ads. This does not necessarily fix the source of the problem either, as malware may make deep changes to your operating system. If you’re comfortable attempting a malware scan and removal yourself, there are various spyware/malware removal tools. Popular and well-reviewed solutions include Ad-Aware and Malwarebytes. But be aware that these types of tools may also bundle software, or leave your computer in an unusable state.

If in doubt, have your computer evaluated for malware by a competent and qualified computer repair center.

There is one other reason you might be seeing advertisements: Your Internet provider may be injecting them into web pages. This is most likely the case with Internet cafes or “free” wireless connections. This New York Times blog post by Brian Chen gives an example.

But rest assured: you won’t be seeing legitimate advertisements on Wikipedia.

We’re here to distribute the sum of human knowledge to everyone on the planet — ad-free, forever.

Philippe Beaudette, Director of Community Advocacy
Erik Moeller, Vice President of Engineering and Product Development

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Campus of Médéa University

As part of the Arabic Language Initiative, I had the chance to visit Algeria in the last week of April, where I had the privilege to speak to students at Médéa University (Médéa Province) about Wikipedia and invite them to contribute to it.

With a size of almost 2,400,000 square kilometers, Algeria is the largest country in Africa and the Arab World, and the tenth-largest country in the world. Algeria has about 4.1 million internet users (12% of the total population of 35 million), however they contribute only 0.08% of the total global edits on Wikimedia projects. While the official language of Algeria is Modern Standard Arabic, French as the ”de-facto” co-official language is still widely used in government, culture, media, and education due to the country’s colonial history. This fact can be clearly noticed in the readership numbers of Wikimedia projects in Algeria: While 52.2% of Wikimedia traffic from Algeria went to French language pages in the first quarter of 2012, Arabic language traffic shared only 30.7%. Having said this, the share of Arabic language traffic has almost doubled in the past three years, from only 17.0% back in mid 2009.

In particular, I could feel the passion for reading and adding content to Arabic language Wikimedia projects during my visit to Médéa University, where I delivered a lecture about contributing to Arabic Wikimedia projects, followed by an editing workshop over two days organized by Dr. Fareh Abdelhak. The introductory lecture laid out the current situation of Wikipedia contributions from Algeria, and a few thoughts on how Wikipedia works, and why is it important to contribute new content to Wikimedia projects. The lecture ended by giving the attendants (about 130, most of them students) a homework exercise: To think of one person they respect and one of their famous quotes, in addition to translating a topic from the English or French Wikipedia or writing an article based other sources that does not exist on the Arabic Wikipedia. Later on, I was informed that the students posted a report in Arabic about the lecture, and shared the homework on Facebook, so more interested people would be able to join the workshop on the next day.

Students attending the editing workshop at Médéa University

Although Friday was a day off at the university, about 30 students managed to come in the morning to attend the editing workshop. Unfortunately, since most of the university facilities were closed, we couldn’t use the PC rooms and provide every student with a PC. However, this situation did not preclude students from joining the workshop using their private portable PCs, where each group of 3 to 4 students had to share one PC with their colleagues.

The session started by registering a user account on the Arabic Wikiquote. Wikiquote was chosen as a start for two reasons, first to raise awareness about Wikipedia’s sister projects, and secondly in order to enable students adding content directly in their first edits without much interference from the larger Wikimedia community. Most students managed to register an account smoothly, and we started adding pages with the texts that most of the students had prepared as their homework. After students had learned the wiki basics on Wikiquote, we moved to the Arabic Wikipedia to start adding new articles there.

The workshop session resulted in creating 8 new articles on Wikipedia and 10 new pages on Wikiquote. At the end of the workshop, most of the students answered positively to a question on whether they will continue to add content to the Arabic Wikipedia. Indeed, in the evening I noticed that some of the students who attended the workshop went back to the Arabic Wikipedia and Wikiquote and continued improving their previously added articles, and also added new content. Later on, I received a message on my discussion page saying “When we meet next year, I will have already created a number of pages that exceeds yours!”… I really wish you will!

Haitham Shammaa, Editor Growth and Contribution Program consultant