Wikimedia news/numero 20/en

Editorial
A new board, new members and new ideas... this seems to be the output from the meeting in Caserta, which marks out the activity of our association during last month. When you read this issue of wikimedia news you'll notice how ideas, new proposals, and committments of our association are today various more than ever, so that they need not only care from the board but also and above that the whole WMI takes active part in them. I wish a happy social year to every member and to the board, and I hope that it will bring growth and development to our Wikimedia Italia.

Senpai

What happened last month

 * September 6th, 2008 - at CEFORS, in Marcianise (CE), we held the Annual Meeting of Wikimedia Italia Association. Its agenda:
 * 1) Report from the Board about the State of the Association
 * 2) Changes to the Regulations of the Association
 * 3) Ratification of the Board Deliberations
 * 4) Approval of the Final Balance for 1H2008
 * 5) Renew of Social Offices
 * 6) Discussion about policies and activities of the Association.
 * Wiki@Home staff made a WMI report (in Italian) for the event, and an interview (in Italian) to the new appointed Board.


 * September 13th and 14th: we attended the Arezzo Copyleft Festival. Here there is a short report by Senpai:
 * The Copyleft Festival in Arezzo has been a really good place to make contact with the world in favour of the free spread of knowledge. We have a notable talk with the staff of Schiaffo Edizioni, who will probably add some of their short stories in Biblioteca. Also notable was a talk with the organization, which led to the possibility that next year WMI will take part to Italia Wave (one of the most important music festivals in Italy). Out presence wouold be important especially since we are broadening our scope to include music.
 * We also met the authors of Don_Zauker, an Italian comic strip, who agreed to look at the articles about them in it.wiki and who gave us an illustration for the comic in cc-by-sa.
 * As for participation... well... we had continuing rain, with very few glimpses of sun. It was however nice to talk with many users of it.wiki, who asked us a lot of questions and bought some gadget.
 * From an economic point of view, taking into account the really bad weather, the result was rather satisfactory.


 * September 20th, Schio (VI): we attended "Software Freedom Day" at the Piazza Telematica di Schio with two talks: "Wikipedia e i contenuti liberi" (Wikipedia and free contents) and "Wikimedia Commons e i 500 anni di Palladio" (Wikimedia Commons and Palladio's 500th Anniversary).

What will happen next month

 * October 18th, Milano: we will attend European Humanist Forum. We will have a stall and we will join the panel Digital Technologies to enslave us or at the service of humanity?. We should also be part of the working group "Digital Technology".


 * October 23th-26th, Firenze: We will attend Festival della Creatività]. This year we will have a stand in a nice position, at the entrance of the main pavillon. Moreover wikinews and the blog of the festival will collaborate. All members of WMI, and especially those involved in wikinews, are urged to give a hand, since this is a really big event (last years there were 350.000 visitors in 4 days), so that we will need a lot of help.


 * October 25th: As usual, we will attend Linux Day in several Italian cities; who would like to represent the Association at a Linux Day near home should leave his/her name in the relevant page in wikipedia, asking also for promotional material when possible.

News from Italian WMF projects

 * Wikibooks: More than 60% of modules is classified according to Development stages. More than 3,600 modules are present.
 * Wikinotizie: Reached 6,200 articles.
 * Wikipedia: Festival della qualità: after the Festival for rewriting sentences using "purtroppo" ended, now we have Festival for cleaning RevertBot.
 * Wikiquote: Gacio quit from sysop. Verbal and direct sources are now deprecated, as per the new guidelines.
 * Wikisource: OrbiliusMagister has been elected bureucrat.
 * Wikiversità: Nick1915 quit from sysop. Reached 5,800 total pages.
 * Wikizionario: After voting, Frieda, .mau., Snowdog, The Doc have been revoked sysop status. Reached 95,000 headwords.

News from W@H
During the meeting in Caserta, a report for the last season of interviews has been shown. Torsolo won the Wiki@Home Prize 2007/08 (see article (in Italian) on Wikinotizie). An interview to the mathematician Piergiorgio Odifreddi is in the works; who wants to cooperate may access the relevant page.

News from Wikimedia Italia

 * Our Association has a new Board, which includes:
 * Frieda Brioschi, president
 * Luca Sileni, vice-president and secretary
 * Marco Chiesa, board member (and attached to international relationship)
 * Maurizio Codogno, board member
 * Federico Leva, board member and treasurer

New Project
We just started a new project under the umbrella of Wikimedia Italia: Musica. Its goal is to collect songs, lyrics and scores released under a free license. Musica will be officially launched at the end of October at Faenza, during M.E.I. 2008. Before that date, all members are invited to give their contribution to let this new idea start well.

News from Biblioteca
After a quick poll we decided to split Biblioteca in two sections, one for texts which cannot be put on wikisource because of differences in copyright laws between Italy and U.S., and another for recent texts released under a Creative Commons license. Now we are discussing al the project's Village Pump how to put in practice this split.

Featured Wikimedian/Picture of the month
The picture of the monty is of course from the meeting in Caserta

Editorial staff: To contact the staff, write at: redazione@wikimedia.it or directly to the editor:
 * Luca Sileni;
 * Frieda Brioschi;
 * Marco Chemello;
 * Nemo (section "News from our projects")
 * Aubrey (section "News from Biblioteca")
 * DracoRoboter and Elitre (section "News from W@H")
 * Luca Sileni - wikisenpai@gmail.com
 * Frieda Brioschi - ubifrieda@gmail.com

'''Notice. This newsletter is exclusively intended for information about Wikimedia Italia, both to the members and to the general public; as per Art. 1, Comma 2, Legge 7 marzo 2001 no. 62, it is not an editorial product'''