Six days of the Merry Wives of Windsor

The Merry Wives of Windsor is one of Shakespeare’s less well-known, and less well-regarded, plays. Some believe this to be because Queen Elizabeth instructed Shakespeare to write a play featuring Falstaff (the lecherous main character, who also appears in the two King Henry IVs) and complete it in fourteen days, in which case it’s a… Continue reading Six days of the Merry Wives of Windsor

Cape Town Wikimania, and some Wikidata observations

The 2018 Wikimania was held in Cape Town from July 18 to July 22. Wikimania is the annual conference of the Wikimedia Foundation, the foundation supporting Wikipedia and other hosted projects, such as Wikimedia Commons, WikiVoyage, Wikidata and Wiktionary. I’ve never been to a Wikimania before – the closest I came was almost going to… Continue reading Cape Town Wikimania, and some Wikidata observations

Zulu Wikipedia reaches 1000 articles

Just in time for Wikimania, the Zulu Wikipedia has reached the 1000 article milestone. Congratulations to user Njabulo19 who created the 1000th article. Njabulo19 started editing actively in 2017 and has continued into 2018, and has paid particular attention to article categories. Well done Zulu Wikipedia community for having reached 4 figures – wishing you… Continue reading Zulu Wikipedia reaches 1000 articles

Better than the Beatles

I’m not sure I’m going to sleep tonight. I’ve discovered a classic album, one of those new discoveries that sears itself into your consciousness, leaving you forever changed. Kurt Cobain listed this as his fifth favorite album of all time. Frank Zappa apparently called them better than the Beatles. I can’t believe I haven’t heard… Continue reading Better than the Beatles

June 2018 African language Wikipedia update, 50 000 articles for Afrikaans

There are only 19 days to go until Wikimania in Cape Town, so it’s a good time to look at the state of the African language Wikipedias again, as always based on the imperfect metric of number of articles. The following tables show the number of articles for each language on a particular date, as… Continue reading June 2018 African language Wikipedia update, 50 000 articles for Afrikaans

Birthday parties

Rumour has it I turned 57 today. Last night, I had a combined birthday party with someone turning 44, and according to their calculations during the cake speech, our combined age was 101. Since most of the people at the party didn’t know me, and no one pointed out the mistake at the time, I… Continue reading Birthday parties

Cape Town wiki meetup with Wikimedia Foundation’s Asaf Bartov

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

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