Wikimania is the largest conference of Wikipedians around the world each year is held at a different place in the world. This year is the seventh edition of Wikimania, and host of this event was extraordinary Wikimedia Israel, who huddled tech conference center in Israel, the city of Haifa. The conference, which lasted from 4 to 7 August, attended by about 650 editors on Wikipedia and supporters of free knowledge from 56 countries. It held 125 sessions, 5 thematic parallel "tracks" and because it is practically impossible for a text to cover them all, will keep only the most important moments.
After two days pretkonferenciski who were devoted to technical workshops and discussions of the roles in the movement Wikimedia, Wikimania grand opening was held on August 4 in the auditorium of Haifa, and often have the first presentation had Harvard Johanna Benkler. Benkler, which otherwise is the author of the book The Wealth of Networks, talked about Wikipedia as a model for a new view of social relations, arguing that Wikipedia and similar online projects caused the paradigm of "scientific selfishness" according to which the main motivator of human behavior is its economic egoism. Instead, the Internet has shown that cooperation and altruism among humans could be important alternative model of production values.
Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind Wikipedia and other wiki project, introduced the report on the major achievements of last year, including a record number of donated funds, over 20 million dollars, the introduction of quality reviews for the articles on the English Wikipedia project and WikiLove. The announcement is more pretstoechkata year projects, including the growing support for Vikipediite and wiki-projects of the "global south" (this term refers to developing countries), and caused great interest the announcement of a new, extremely simple editing interface in which users will require knowledge of vikiformatiranjeto. The rest of the day passed in the face of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation with the audience, which bombed with questions, comments and suggestions.
Harvard professor Joseph Rigl, we analyzed the history of encyclopedias and other projects for the collection of human knowledge and came to the conclusion that Wikipedia is now very close to achieving the ideals of enlightenment that encyclopaedists first appeared in France in the late 18th century. Probably the most interesting presentation of this day was the presentation of the work of local branches of the Wikimedia across different countries, with Wikimedia Macedonia was praised for innovative use of the Facebook page and Twitter account to promote Wikipedia in Macedonian. Shortly thereafter, Cyril Simeonovsko Wikimedia Macedonia held a workshop on the criteria by which different languages Vikipediite determine an encyclopedic article, and what not. Worth mentioning is the presentation of the Wikimedia Iberocoop - a regional organization that unites Wikipedians from all over Latin America.
The last day saw presentations about the organization of celebrations of 10th anniversary of Wikipedia, which, according to presenters from the Foundation received more media echo from the birthdays of Google, Amazon.com and other major websites. Then, the new model was presented for collecting donations this year and was indicative presentation titled "Remove the screen from my Jimmy!". Namely, at the end of this year, when the traditional fundraiser for the maintenance of servers and other needs of Wikipedia, rather than the appeal of Jimmy Wales, our screens will see people from the immediate community Wiki. You will also be provided in multiple currency payment (but will wait a little longer for payment in denars).
It was interesting presentation on the initiative "Wikipedia for world cultural heritage" that collected signatures to get the free encyclopedia status of cultural heritage under the auspices of UNESCO. Kanditatura official signatures and will be proposed next year and if successful, Wikipedia for several years may become the first world cultural heritage in digital form.
The final word, of course, had the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, largely reiterated the point that to prevent the trend of stagnation in the number of editors takes a considerable effort, as the Foundation and from the branches, but also the wider community . Also, surprise of all was his announcement for the selection of "Vikipedijanec of the Year", which this year went to the wiki editor kazashki language. Finally, as the closing of the Olympic games are announced next Wikimania, which in 2012 will be held in Washington, capital of the United States.
In conclusion, we can say that Wikipedia wait many challenges in this pretstoechka, but there is still a tremendous positive energy and creative potential to overcome obstacles in the noble mission to provide free knowledge to every man on this planet.
(This is referred to as guest of Slobodan Jakjoski Wikimedia Macedonia. The text is published under Creative Commons BY-SA license. The initial image is posted on Flickr Wikimedia Israel.)
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