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Wikipedia wins Princess of Asturias Prize; printing out Wikipedia; HTTPS switch

Wikipedia wins prestigious Princess of Asturias Prize

Emblem of the Princess of Asturias Foundation

The Princess of Asturias Foundation announced that Wikipedia would be the recipient of the 2015 Princess of Asturias award in the category of International Cooperation. The International Cooperation award is presented annually "on the individual, institution, group of individuals or institutions whose work with another or others in areas such as public health, universal education, environmental protection and social and economic development, among others, constitutes an outstanding contribution at the international level." Wikipedia was one of 24 nominees in the category, a group that also included UNESCO, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, former Chilean president Ricardo Lagos, and the European Space Agency. Previous winners include the Fulbright Program, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, and the World Health Organization. In a statement responding to the news, Wikimedia Foundation executive director Lila Tretikov said "Wikipedia is an incredible project that has been created by millions of people from around the world. We are honored to be recognized in the category of international cooperation, which is at the heart of our mission. This award honors those volunteers - the editors, photographers, writers, and developers - who make Wikipedia possible”. The awards will be presented in a ceremony this fall in Oviedo, Asturias, Spain.

The title of Prince or Princess of Asturias is held by the heir to the Spanish throne. The awards were first presented in 1981 as the Prince of Asturias Awards. Last year, upon on the elevation of the prince, now King Felipe VI of Spain, the awards were renamed for his daughter, Princess Leonor. The awards are currently presented in seven other categories: Arts, Communications and Humanities, Concord, Literature, Social Sciences, Sports, Technical and Scientific Research. Winners are presented with a sculpture designed by renowned Spanish artist Joan Miró.

Printing out Wikipedia

One of the volumes of Print Wikipedia

New York City's Denny Gallery will feature an unusual exhibition by Michael Mandiberg (Theredproject), Wikipedia editor and Professor at the College of Staten Island, from June 18 to July 20. The exhibition, From Aaaaa! to ZZZap!, is part of Mandiberg's larger project, Print Wikipedia. As the gallery describes it:

Mandiberg is using the print-on-demand company Lulu.com. During the exhibition, his Mac Mini will upload 11 gigabytes of compressed data from Wikipedia to Lulu.com, whose upload page will be projected onto the gallery wall. The upload process is expected to take two weeks. While the entirety of Wikipedia would fill some 7600 volumes, only 106 will be printed and available for sale. Spines for all the volumes will appear on the walls of the gallery, as if it were lined with bookshelves filled with volumes of Wikipedia. Mandiberg told the New York Times “We don’t need to see the whole thing in order to understand how big it is. Even if we just have one bookshelf, our human brains can finish the rest." He said to the Washington Post "They’re really great as a kind of marker of volume. Like...you understand what a novel is or, 'There’s this many volumes of books;' you understand what that is."

He explained to the Post, "One of threads in my work has been appropriation and authorship and exploring what kind of meanings change as things are copied and transformed. One of the things I’m interested in, in this appropriation process, is trying to find the move, the smallest move that I can make that transforms work into something different and adds new meaning."

Wikimedia's HTTPS switch

Tech media was abuzz after the Wikimedia Foundation's June 12 announcement that HTTPS will be used to encrypt traffic on all Wikimedia projects (see Signpost coverage). Forbes wrote "Wikipedia’s half billion users can now browse the online crowd-sourced encyclopedia with fewer concerns about government censorship and surveillance." TechCrunch wrote: "The decision, [the Foundation] says, will make it harder for governments and other third parties to monitor users' traffic, and will make it more difficult for [ISPs] to censor access to specific Wikipedia articles or other information hosted on its network of sites." The Electronic Frontier Foundation congratulated Wikipedia and noted it was joining others, including Bing, Reddit, and the FBI, with similar policies. The headline in The Verge joked that "Soon, your embarrassing Wikipedia searches will be encrypted".

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