Over the last few weeks, the Wikipedia community has been discussing proposed actions that the community might take with relation to proposed legislation in the United States called Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House of Representatives, and the PROTECTIP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate. If passed, these would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia. With more than 2,000 Wikipedians commenting on this legislation from all over the world, and a clear majority in favour of taking action, this was the first time the English Wikipedia has ever staged a public protest of this nature, and it’s a decision that wasn’t lightly made.

It was felt that both SOPA and PIPA are pieces of clumsily drafted legislation that are dangerous for the internet and freedom of speech. It provides powers to regulatory authorities to force internet companies to block foreign sites offering ‘pirated’ material that violates U.S. copyright laws. If implemented, ad networks could be required to stop online ads and search engines would be barred from directly linking to websites ‘found’ to be in breach of copyright.

However, leaving to one side the fact that there are more than enough adequate remedies for policing copyright violations under existing laws, in most jurisdictions, these draft bills go too far and in the framing SOPA and PIPA totally undermine the notion of due process in law and place the burden of proof on the distributor of content in the case of any dispute over copyright ownership.

Therefore, any legitimate issues that copyright holders may have get drowned out by poorly-framed draconian powers to block, bar, or shut down sites as requested by industry bodies or their legal representatives. Copyright holders have legitimate issues, but there are ways of approaching the issue that don’t involve censorship.

Wikipedia depends on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. This needs other sites to be able to host user-contributed material; all Wikipedia then does is to frame the information in context and make sense of it for its millions of users.

Knowledge freely shared has to be published somewhere for anyone to find and use it.  Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the speaker, the public, and Wikipedia. Where you can only speak if you have sufficient resources to fight legal challenges, or, if your views are pre-approved by someone who does, will mean that the same narrow set of ideas already popular will continue to be all anyone has meaningful access to

All around the world, we’re seeing the development of legislation intended to fight online piracy, and regulate the Internet in other ways, that hurt online freedoms. Our concern extends beyond SOPA and PIPA: they are just part of the problem. We want the Internet to remain free and open, everywhere, for everyone.

As I am sure you know, the English version of Wikipedia will be taken down for 24 hours from 0500 UTC tomorrow in protest at the US SOPA and PIPA bills.

Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of the Wikimedia movement. We regard the SOPA and PIPA legislation in the United States as a threat to the current operation of Wikipedia. This could also affect Wikimedia’s other projects, which operate under U.S. law.

The members of the Wikipedia community have been balloted to determine whether they wish to blackout Wikipedia on Wednesday and agreed that this should happen. Wikimedia UK is an independent British charity that defends the decision of our community.

For more information contact our office on 0207 065 0990, or read the press release from the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco.

The training is part of Wikimedia UK’s wider programme of engaging with scholarly bodies and funding councils, bringing in experts to review and improve Wikipedia and its sister projects. The collaboration with IoP also includes an article by Martin Poulter and Mike Peel in the current issue of Physics World.

The attendees were very enthusiastic about the Wikimedia mission to make physics (and other areas of knowledge) accessible to as wide an audience as possible, not just through a free, multilingual encyclopaedia but also through projects such as Wiktionary and Wikibooks.

Reviewing articles in their area of expertise, the physicists observed that articles are often roughly correct but assume a high level of existing knowledge, so are unhelpful to newcomers. They were interested to see that there are sometimes separate articles for different audiences, such as Special relativity and Introduction to special relativity. One suggestion was that this approach could go further, with multiple articles for different readerships. This is particularly relevant to physics, where a researcher’s understanding of, say, an electron is different from an undergraduate student’s, which in turn differs radically from what is taught in secondary school.

Another criticism of the content was that articles such as Voltage and Quantum tunnelling were not technically correct but reflected common misconceptions. These errors are widespread beyond Wikipedia, even occurring in textbooks, so it is not just a matter of bringing Wikipedia in line with reliable sources. Wikipedia cannot publish original research and cannot give undue weight to minority opinions, so it would be hard to fix this problem without first fixing the published literature.

The day-long workshop also highlighted some ways that Wikipedia could be made easier for new contributors. We visited Wikiproject Physics, a page behind the scenes of Wikipedia where users focus on improving physics articles. This has lots of useful information and pointers. However, one of the researchers was specifically interested in minerals. Wikiproject Rocks and Minerals has similar information and support, but is laid out differently. For example, there is no standard way to find articles that urgently need attention.

These difficulties showed why it is an advantage for beginners to have help from experienced Wikipedians. That help is available in a variety of ways through Wikipedia itself, but in-person training is particularly useful if you can get it. These workplace events are possible because of Wikimedia contributors who have volunteered to share their skills, with travel expenses paid by Wikimedia UK. Any Wikimedian wanting to take part in future events is invited to email martin.poulter@wikimedia.org.uk .

On Monday 4th July Wikimedia UK held its second Bristol Wikipedia Training Day attended by friends from organisations such as the Knowle West Media Centre, Bristol Girl Geek Dinners, Bristol University, UWE, BBC Bristol and other groups from across the city. With the appointment of Bristol University’s Wikimedia Outreach Ambassador, Sam Knight, the aim of the day was to help participants get started as Editors on Wikipedia, get to know Sam and to discuss the ways in which Wikimedia UK is building outreach across the city and throughout the UK.  The day was run in the style of collaborative event and we covered the topics of:

• Starting up on Wikipedia as an editor
• Working with Wikipedia data in a collaborative setting
• Building the highest possible quality standards
• Growing the e-volunteer network
• Creating outreach programmes

Our kind BBC Hosts made the day a success that everyone enjoyed. Newly skilled Wikipedians left the event motivated and enthused and ready to help Wikimedia UK develop its outreach program across what promises to be a busy summer. Many thanks to Martin, Jez and Steve Woods for leading the team across the day.

For additional information or comment contact Martin Poulter or Steve Virgin.

"An encyclopedia in the form of printed books? What kind of crazy idea is that?" Image by Jann Glasmacher for PediaPress (Own work) GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0, via Wikimedia Commons

We all know how to use Wikipedia, right? Just do a search in your favourite search engine, and the relevant article is usually among the top results. Alternatively, bookmark the front page in your preferred language, and see what’s current. Then again, some of us want to go deeper. Maybe we want to “mainline” the best  content; maybe we want to explore not a site but an abstract world of information. Below are six ways to use Wikipedia that not everybody knows about.

1) Listen to it. How do you make an encyclopedia accessible to illiterate or blind people? You read it out loud and share the sound recordings. More than a thousand articles in English, and many more in Wikipedia’s other languages, are available in spoken form, downloadable as audio files that you can listen to on a computer or portable audio player. Thus, not only disabled users but anyone on the move can learn about topics including The Order of the Garter, Norwich City FC or the Hindi language. Anyone with a good speaking voice, and access to a microphone, can contribute at the Spoken Wikipedia project.

2) Go straight to the good stuff. The English Wikipedia has its own Newsletter, The Signpost, which is updated every Monday. The Featured content section takes you straight to the very best of Wikipedia: the content that has recently passed the project’s most demanding quality review. This includes recently reviewed Featured Articles, Lists and Topics as well as freely-reusable pictures and sounds with outstanding educational and aesthetic value.

3) On paper. Yes, you can read selections from Wikipedia as a book. The paper version will not be updated like the online version, but it needs no electricity and it’s an ideal format to take on a long journey. The Wikipedia community have already created more than a thousand English language books from sequences of related articles, from Art to Zinc via Exploding Animals. You can create and edit your own using the Book tool (explained in this video). Each book can be freely downloaded as an attractively print-formatted file for an eBook reader or a printer. With a few more clicks and an online payment to a commercial printer, you can have it printed, bound (in hardback or paperback), and sent in the post.

4) Discuss. Discussion on Wikipedia itself is very focused on improving the project. It does not invite general chat about each article’s subject. Elsewhere on the web, there are forums and blogs where you can discuss article topics and, if you’ve learned something interesting, enthuse about it. One of these is the Wikipedia Subreddit, part of the Reddit online community. Registration is quick and free, and allows you to recommend articles, comment on them, and up- or down-vote others’ suggestions. Roughly seventy thousand of Reddit’s accounts are subscribers. Popular recent topics include Tautology, the Imperial Library of Constantinople, and the myth that people only use 10% of their brains.

Finding location-tagged Wikipedia articles on a mobile phone. Photo by Mr3641 (Own work) CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL, via Wikimedia Commons

6) Machine-to-machine. Computer programmers have more options than the rest of us when it comes to using Wikipedia. The encyclopedia and all its sister projects can be read directly by computer programs, through what’s called an Application Programming Interface. To get the programmer’s documentation, just add “/w/api.php” to the end of the project address, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php for English Wikipedia. One very important service built in this way is DBpedia, a huge database of facts. Those who learn the language can ask complex queries, such as “list all endangered primates” or “which French scientists were born in the 19th Century?” For anyone hoping to create Deep Thought, DBpedia provides a huge bank of real-world information to build on.

Wikimedia UK together with the British Library’s English & Drama department is inviting people to attend a Wikipedia editathon on Saturday 4 June. The aim of the day is to combine the expertise of the public, Wikimedians and the Library’s curators to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of the literary individuals and collections related to the British Library.

Fiction, poetry and drama will all be represented. Subjects highlighted for improvement include the Library’s major collections of Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde material, the poets involved in the Between Two Worlds project, and the archives of Kenneth Tynan, Angela Carter and J.G. Ballard, to name but a few.

The event is open to people with varying degrees of Wikipedia experience. It will be a great opportunity for beginners to learn how to construct entries for the encyclopaedia and to share their subject knowledge with the wider world, while experienced Wikipedians will have the chance to contribute their know-how and expertise. People who want to contribute to other Wikimedia projects, for instance Commons or Wikisource, are also welcome!

During the day there will be unique opportunities to view, up close, interesting items from the English & Drama collections. What’s more, one of the curators responsible for the forthcoming science fiction exhibition, Out of this World, will be on hand to take participants on a tour of the exhibition.

Entry is free, but places are limited – so sign up now at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editathon,_British_Library.

For the last two weeks Wikimedia UK has been running a competition in partnership with the Derby Museum. So far, over 150 new or improved Wikipedia articles have been created, in dozens of languages.

This is the biggest multilingual collaboration between Wikimedians and the cultural sector to date, and it’s particularly interesting because it’s a regional museum taking part!

25 Wikimedians and curators attended a Backstage Pass event on April 9th. (Written up in a great blog post by curator Nick Moyes)

The “Wright Challenge” competition (named after artist Joseph Wright of Derby ) was launched on May 1st, offering prizes for improvements to articles on subjects linked to the Derby Museum – in any language, not just English. At the time we were a bit concerned we’d left it too late to take advantage of the momentum from the event on the 9th. However, the response has been simply immense, with hundreds of pieces of Derby-related content being added, updated and translated in just two weeks.

The multilingual nature of the material we’re adding is particularly interesting because of the work we’re doing with QR codes which will link the actual objects in the Museum to their Wikipedia articles (watch on Youtube). Someone scanning the QR code next to “A Philosopher lecturing on the Orrery” with a smartphone will be taken to that article on the English Wikipedia, while a visitor with a Russian smartphone will go direct to the article “Философ, объясняющий модель Солнечной системы” on the Russian Wikipedia.

The Wright Challenge remains open until Joseph Wright’s birthday on September 3rd. Come and join in!

This week Wikipedia is celebrating its tenth birthday. To mark this momentous occasion, people all over the world are gathering at events to celebrate Wikipedia, the fifth most popular website in the world with 410 million monthly readers (comScore, November 2010).

There are three key events in the UK this week:

• Thursday 13th January (12pm to 1pm): The man behind the project, Jimmy Wales, will be in Bristol speaking at an event hosted by Bristol University,  HP Labs, Bristol Festival of Ideas, BBC Anchor Project and Bristol City Council. Jimmy will be talking about the key milestones over the last decade and discussing ‘what next’ for Wikipedia. Watch Jimmy’s talk live here on our Wikimedia UK blog this coming Thursday.

• Thursday 13th January (7pm to 9pm): Jimmy will be hosting a party in West London where a mixture of community members, press, donors, and some. We’ll keep you posted of ‘behind the scene’ pictures and party gossip via Twiiter. Follow @wikimediauk for more information.

• Friday 14th January and Saturday 15th January (9.30am to 5pm both days): An Edit-athon will be held at the British Library. The aim of the gathering is to improve the content on Wikipedia that is relevant to the British Library’s collections.  Attendees will have access to the resources of the British Library and guided by the expertise of its curators. If you are interested, please  sign up before Wednesday 12th January. An update from the event will be posted on here on our Wikimedia UK blog next week.

Visit http://ten.wikipedia.org/ to find events in your areas or visit http://ten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organize to arrange a party.

Do keep us posted of your plans. You can email us on press@wikimedia.org.uk or tweet at us @wikimediauk. The hashtag for the celebrations is #wp10. We’d love to hear how you are celebrating Wikipedia’s 10th birthday…

It is therefore fitting that today Wikimedia UK is also announcing that registration is now open for GLAM-WIKI:UK to be held at the British Museum on the 26th and 27th of November.

Cory Doctorow

Sue Gardner

Kenneth Crews

At this event representatives from the UK and European GLAM sector [Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums] will come together with representatives from the Wikimedia community for a dialogue to determine how to use the two communities’ strengths to mutual advantage. The focus will be on:

• why and how cultural institutions could work with Wikimedia projects; and
• what Wikimedia needs to do to make collaboration easier and more effective.

The very next weekend Wikimedia France will be following up with their own edition of this conference in Paris.

Keynotes

• We are very pleased to announce that the opening speaker on Friday will be author, activist, blogger and London local Cory Doctorow.

• Opening the festivities on Saturday will be none other than Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation based in San Francisco.

• Visiting London to give an evening guest lecture will be the director of the Columbia University copyright advisory office Dr. Kenneth Crews.

Sessions

• Day One, Friday 26th, will focus on “Policy” – the legal and business aspects of collaboration.

• Day Two, Saturday 27th, will focus on “Practice” – the technical and educational side of things.

For current speaker and session details see glamwiki.org, and to see the latest announcements (of which there will be many) follow @WikimediaUK on Twitter.

On the evening of Day One there will also be a special event held in collaboration with the Museum Computer Group (MCG) conference that is taking place on the same day. This will be a guest lecture by Dr. Crews followed by discussion panel on the topic of “The free-conomy and the cultural sector”.

Panelists will include: Paula Le Dieu (Director of Digital at the British Film Institute); Gilane Tawadros (Director of the Design and Artists Copyright Society); Bill Thompson (host of BBC’s “Digital Planet”) and others.

Tickets

Full Registration (all tickets include attendance to the Friday evening event):
- professional tickets, £40;
- Wikimedians, students or volunteers, £20.
Partial Registration:
- attendees of the MCG conference can register for Day Two of GLAM-WIKI at the discount price of £20.
- For the Friday evening event only; at the door for £20.

For more information visit http://glamwiki.org and to register click here:

If you have any questions or would like to propose a session at GLAM-WIKI:UK please contact me on liam.wyattwikimedia.org.uk

See you then!
Liam Wyatt
GLAM-WIKI:UK Convener & Wikipedian in Residence, British Museum

Mike Peel, Company Secretary of Wikimedia UK, commented that “This is an important step forward for Wikipedia. Pending Changes heralds a time when all Wikipedia articles, even those on topics that attract high levels of vandalism, can be edited and improved by anyone. I encourage everyone to help improve the articles that will be opened up by Pending Changes in order to help share the sum of human knowledge with the world.”

You can find out more at these pages:

• Pending Changes announcement from the Wikimedia Foundation
• Pending Changes FAQ from the Wikimedia Foundation
• Pending Changes help page written by the Wikimedia community
• The English Wikipedia’s article protection policy