Wikisource:News/2014-08

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Background
Excerpted from "Wikimania" on Meta-Wiki



Wikimania is an annual conference centered on the Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia and [//www.wikimedia.org similar projects]). It features presentations on Wikimedia projects, other wikis, free/open source software, free knowledge and free content, and the social and technical aspects which relate to these topics. The most recent Wikimania was in in Hong Kong in August 2013; next Wikimania will be in London in August 2014.

Wikimania attracts Wikimedia project participants from around the world, including writers, editors, programmers, and photographers; Wikimedia Foundation staff; and members of the 30+ country-based Wikimedia chapters. Many independent researchers also attend and present. Attendance has ranged from 380 to 1'400 people, with representation from more than 50 countries. The conference is typically held on a different continent each year, and has taken place in nine countries on five continents to date.

Wikimania is organized by local volunteer teams, with support from international volunteers, and the Wikimedia Foundation and other sponsors. Conference location is determined by an international jury of community members, who review location bids submitted by teams from different locations. Guidelines for interested communities who wish to host Wikimania, and information about past bids, can be found below.

The conference program consists of presentations and workshops from community members, speakers from related projects, and wiki researchers, as well as social activities and informal discussions. Some formal research is presented, in addition to "best practice" knowledge sharing and presentations of ongoing work. Wikimania also features formal reports from Wikimedia Foundation board members and staff, renowned keynote speakers, and opportunities to interact with dedicated Wikimedia contributors from all around the world.

Place and time


Wikimania 2014 will be held at the Barbican Centre in London from August 6 to August 10. There are also fringe events before and after the conference.

Tracks
There are usually several tracks of presentations at Wikimania, to help organize submissions and allow audiences to find different things to enjoy at Wikimania in parallel. This year they are:


 * Social Machines
 * The Future of Education
 * Democratic Media
 * Open Scholarship
 * Open Data

There will be a presentation concerning Wikisource entitled "Panel: Wikisource, from digitization to data" on August 8 at 15:00.

Featured text for August 2014
The featured text for August 2014 is Tyrannosaurus and Other Cretaceous Carnivorous Dinosaurs, a 1863 paper by Henry Fairfield Osborn. (Main page template)

As the research paper which first described the dinosaur species Tyrannosaurus rex, this paper is of great scientific and historic significance. Tyrannosaurus rex, or T. rex as it is often known as, is one of the most well-known species of dinosaur, and was a large carnivorous dinosaur which lived during the Cretaceous Period. It was one of the last non-avian dinosaur species to become extinct during the Cretaceous-Palaeogene mass extinction event, which took place around 65 million years ago.

In 1902, the American Museum expedition in Montana, led by Mr. Barnum Brown, and accompanied by Professor R. S. Lull, secured considerable portions of the skeleton of one of the great Carnivorous Dinosaurs of Upper Cretaceous or Laramie age. Additional portions of this skeleton (Amer. Mus. No. 973) are now (1905) being taken out. I propose to make this animal the type of the new genus Tyrannosaurus, in reference to its size, which greatly exceeds that of any carnivorous land animal hitherto described.

I also briefly characterize as Dynamosaurus another carnivorous dinosaur, with dermal plates, found by Mr. Brown in 1900. The carnivorous group has hitherto been considered as belonging to the single genus Dryptosaurus, but it is probably little less diversified than its herbivorous contemporaries among the Iguanodontia and Ceratopsia. The generic distinctions which are herein indicated by partially studied remains will probably be intensified by future research. Geological, geographical, and morphological considerations render it a priori probable not only that the above genera as well as Deinodon are distinct from Dryptosaurus but that a fifth Cretaceous genus of somewhat more primitive character, which may be called Albertosaurus, is represented in the British Columbia skulls hitherto described as Dryptosaurus.
 * (Read on...)

Collaborations for August 2014
The Proofread of the Month for August 2014 is on works by women authors. The first work is A Lady's Cruise in a French Man-of-War (1882) by Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming.

The Maintenance of the Month for August 2014 is about Orphans, that is, pages that are not linked from or transcluded into other pages.

Request for comment about the annotation policy
A request for comment was opened in July to define the details about how the community wishes to host works annotated by Wikisource users. A previous request for comment about derivative works did not have a satisfactory outcome in regard to annotations due to its broader scope.

Administrator confirmations
Four administrators were confirmed in July 2014:


 * Beeswaxcandle (talk | contributions)
 * BirgitteSB (talk | contributions)
 * Hesperian (talk | contributions)
 * Theornamentalist (talk | contributions)

Three administrators are having their confirmation discussion in August 2014:


 * GrafZahl (talk | contributions)
 * Inductiveload (talk | contributions)
 * ResidentScholar (talk | contributions)

Thumbnail style update


The way file thumbnails display in the default skin (Vector) will change. The border and the gray background will be removed, and white space, text size, and text color will be used instead to distinguish the caption from the surrounding text. The "Enlarge" icon will also be removed as MediaViewer now enlarges images by default.

The thumbnail style update will be deployed on August 12 on non-Wikipedia projects, including the English Wikisource, and on August 14 on Wikipedias.