Cape Town was very lucky to host Wikimedia Foundation’s Senior Program Officer Asaf Bartov at the end of his Africa tour. We held a meetup, and it proved particularly inspiring to those attending. Asaf spoke about Wikidata, discussed projects using the data, and demonstrated a number of tools that were new to most of us,… Continue reading Cape Town wiki meetup with Wikimedia Foundation’s Asaf Bartov
Category: Earth (Arts and Literature)
Black Panther
Tonight was the opening night of Black Panther. It’s been getting heavy publicity for being the first of eighteen Marvel superhero films to feature a black lead, and features a predominantly black cast. For some this is just tokenism, an attempt to find a new angle to sell yet more movie tickets. So was there… Continue reading Black Panther
Patreon meltdown
Patreon just made one of those decisions that look good when explained to investors in the boardroom, but are utterly suicidal when rolled out. They changed their fee structure, so that instead of the finance fees being charged to creators, they are now charged to patrons. The motivation is sound. Previously, the actual amount paid… Continue reading Patreon meltdown
September 2017 African language Wikipedia update
It’s time to look at the state of the African language Wikipedias again, as always based on the imperfect metric of number of articles. African Language Wikipedias Language 11/2/2011 9/5/2013 26/6/2015 24/11/2016 5/9/2017 Malagasy 3,806 45,361 79,329 82,799 84,634 Afrikaans 17,002 26,752 35,856 42,732 46,824 Swahili 21,244 25,265 29,127 34,613 37,443 Yoruba 12,174 30,585 31,068… Continue reading September 2017 African language Wikipedia update
November 2016 African language Wikipedia update
The March update was positive, so let’s see how the various African-language Wikipedias have progressed since then. As always, this measures the number of articles, which is an imperfect metric, but it’s interesting to follow the trends. African Language Wikipedias Language 11/2/2011 9/5/2013 26/6/2015 5/3/2016 24/11/2016 Malagasy 3,806 45,361 79,329 81,240 82,799 Afrikaans 17,002 26,752… Continue reading November 2016 African language Wikipedia update
Bumbling round Bergen
Norway is not a welcoming country. Not when the bottled water is on sale for R60, or the quotes for the taxi from Oslo airport to the city centre start at R2400. I can also splurge on a fancy limo for R14000. Maybe choosing the cheap flight and arriving in Oslo after midnight wasn’t such… Continue reading Bumbling round Bergen
Revisiting Patreon
In March 2015 I started a series, 30 Artists in 30 Days, where the plan was to find 30 artists to support on Patreon. The 30-days part ended up being a little loose. Read that post first if you haven’t already. It’s been about 18 month since then, and I thought I’d go back and… Continue reading Revisiting Patreon
Wikipedia and systemic bias
A while ago, I noticed a comment on the talk page of one of the Wikipedia editors that I follow. An article he had created was nominated for speedy deletion. Speedy deletion is the kind of thing reserved for articles about my pet cat, my high school teacher, the rock band I’ve started in my… Continue reading Wikipedia and systemic bias
March 2016 African language Wikipedia update
My feeds have been full with Dumi editing up a storm on the Xitstonga Wikipedia recently, as well as helping the Ndebele Wikipedia into the incubator. Ndebele is the only South African official language without a Wikipedia, and it’s great to see this hole being plugged. So, it’s time for another African language Wikipedia update.… Continue reading March 2016 African language Wikipedia update
Swiss Precision
I have an old analog scale, inherited from my parents. It sits in Dorje’s room, mostly gathering dust. I’ve never worried much about weighing myself, but in my own mind, I’ve been 80kg most of my adult life, and, more recently, since becoming “fat”, moved up to 85kg. The analog scale is not particularly accurate… Continue reading Swiss Precision