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Wikimédia France Report
June 2012


Association's current projects

Signing the Afripedia agreement with, from left to right, Bernard Cerquiglini, superintendent of the Association of Universities of the Francophonie, Xavier Darcos, president of the Institut français, and Rémi Mathis, president of Wikimédia France.
− Serein, CC-BY-SA 3.0.

The Afripedia project has been officially launched (after months of preparation) as Rémi Mathis, president of Wikimédia France, signed the partnership agreement with the Institut Français and the Association of Universities of the Francophonie on June 15.

The purpose is to disseminate Wikipedia off-line through WiFi networks in places where Internet access is whether very slow or irregular or does not exist, particularly in French-speaking Africa. Thanks to the off-line technologies developped by Kiwix we can install a tiny computer with no screen or keyboard that disseminates the content of the plugged-in flash drive through WiFi, for example in universities. Connecting their computers to the corresponding WiFi network, students, teachers and so on can consult the off-line version of the Wikimedia projects. You need to update regularly no more than one device — contrary to the distribution of individual CDs for instance.

Under this project, we also plan to train African people to use Wikipedia and contribute to it, in order to have new contributors and Wikimedian communities in Africa.

Read the presentation of the project (in French) on the association's website.

Association's actions for the past few weeks

As in 2011, a "photo safari" was organized in Nanterre (suburban Paris) on June 9 at the end of a photography course organized at the Agora of Nanterre.

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On June 15, Sylvain Boissel made a presentation called "Fighting vandalism on Wikipedia" at the hacker festival "Pas Sage en Seine".

See the lecture video on YouTube.
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On Saturday, June 23, our association attended "Puces aux Pixels" bric-à-brac sale in Rosny-sous-Bois (suburban Paris) to run an information desk.

Working groups' actions

Education

On June 6 and 9, a member and an employee took part in brainstorming workshops with education professionals and junior high school students in order to test pedagogic sessions.

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On June 7, an employee run a training session towards school librarians in Limoges (center of France).

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On June 12, an employee trained people from the "Ligue de l'enseignement" (associations committed in popular education) to contribution. These people undertook to create a project and portal dedicated to popular education.

GLAM

For its 850th anniversary, the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral staff consider signing a partnership with Wikimédia France. They want to encourage people to take pictures and to improve Wikipedia content about the cathedral, and update their own "museography". We contemplate showing a group of Wikimedian photographers around inaccessible places of the cathedral, releasing existing contents under free licenses and working on a QRCodes system (with QRpedia) to make visiting the cathedral a richer experience.

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On June 19, Rémi Mathis spoke in the IRI seminar. This meeting concluded a seminar co-organized by the Research and Innovation Institute (Institut de Recherche et Innovation, IRI) and Wikimédia France during which several Wikimedians spoke in.

Research and universities

The organization of a Wikimédia France prize went on. From now on, anyone can suggest articles to compete. The judges will start selecting the most interesting articles in late August.

See the coordination and submission page on Meta.

Contributors

  • Contributors to the 47th monthly newsletter in French (from which this report is derived) : Bapti et CarolAnnO, avec la participation d'Ash Crow, Aude, Crochet.david, Jean-Frédéric, Léna, Lionel Allorge et Wikinade.
  • Contributors to this newsletter: Matou91 and Bapti