And finally, a plug

You may have noticed the “Support Wikipedia” button on the right side of this blog’s pages. The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit org which hosts Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikisource, Wikiquote, and the Wikimedia Commons, is having its annual fundraiser to support its operations. If you can, please give a few bucks to support [...]

Suggestions for linking to heavily-edited Wikipedia articles

There is a lot of editing traffic right now on Sarah Palin’s Wikipedia article, thanks to both the unrelenting glare of the national spotlight, the relative lack of alternate sources, and the rumors that somebody from the McCain/Palin campaign was involved in whitewashing that article just before she was announced as the VP pick.
Some online [...]

What I generally look for in a Wikimedia Foundation OTRS volunteer

As an administrator on the Wikimedia Foundation’s OTRS system, I’ve been asked a couple times what the admins look for in potential volunteers. I can’t speak for the other admins, but here is what I personally like to see in OTRS volunteers. [Of course, volunteers get bonus points if they can work in [...]

The nature of contributions on smaller wikis

The Times of India has a brief article about the major contributor to the Gujarati Wikipedia and Gujarati Wiktionary. (Gujarati is the language of Gujarat, an Indian state in the northwest of the country.) As the article notes, the primary contributor (Yann Forget, who recently ran for the WMF board ) is not [...]

Looking not for the mouse, but for the edit button

Clay Shirky made a long blog post that’s now catching the usual attention from Boing Boing and Smart Mobs et al. In Gin, Television, and Social Surplus – Here Comes Everybody, he discusses the role that sitcoms have played in American leisure time, and how that role is gradually being replaced by more participatory [...]