Wikimedia UK Blog

Job opportunity: support us so we can support Wikipedia

AndrewRT — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:35:51 +0000

Wikimedia UK is growing. Since we were founded nearly two years ago we have raised nearly £100,000 to support Wikipedia and similar open content work; we have hosted an international conference and arranged a museum backstage pass event and run an event with twenty museums across the country generating free images for Wikipedia; over 80 people have become members; and we have made significant progress towards getting charity status.

All this we have managed so far with just volunteers. But now we want to employ a Part Time Office Manager to provide administrative support to our activities. We hope this will improve our capacity to run events and engage our volunteers in the things that interest and inspire them.

The post will pay £10 per hour for 8-12 hours per week and will be for an initial term of six months, starting as soon as possible. Standard holidays are paid in addition along with the necessary expenses for the role, including internet costs, telephone calls and stationery. The ideal candidate will be IT literate with a number of years of administrative and bookkeeping experience, ideally in a non-profit context.

Full details of the position are on the Wikimedia UK wiki. If you are interested in applying or would like further details you can email the chair of Wikimedia UK, Andrew Turvey or call him on 07754 881 562.

The deadline for applications has been extended to Saturday 4th September. To apply please email your CV and covering letter detailing your skills and experience in this area.

Please share these details with anyone else you think may be interested. No agencies please.

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Wikimedia microgrants – now available in the UK

Mike Peel — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 17:00:01 +0000

Need a book for your Wikipedia research?

Is there a rare book you need for your Wikipedia article research? A location that you need to get to for a vital piece of information, or to do some outreach? An essential piece of equipment that will help your Wikimedia activites? Wikimedia UK might be able to help.

Microgrants are grants of between £5 and £100 that help improve or facilitate your editing or outreach activities on any Wikimedia project. Microgrants schemes have been successfully run by several other Wikimedia chapters; we’re delighted to be able to bring them to the UK, starting immediately!

We aim to fund at least a dozen microgrants in the 2010-2011 financial year. You need to be a member of Wikimedia UK to apply for a microgrant – but if you’re not one already, then it’s easy to join. Once you’ve applied, then the Microgrants Committee—currently Thomas Dalton and Mike Peel—will give you feedback on your application and will let you know whether it’s successful or not. Once approved, you’ll be able to either spend the money and claim it back, or ask us to spend it directly for you. After the completion of the grant, you’ll need to report back to let us know how it went.

The microgrants process is designed to be very easy to use. While we do require you to write a grant application before getting the grant and a report after you’ve finished the activity the grant is for, there is no need for those to take a long time. A couple of paragraphs for each should be absolutely fine.

We’ve made some microgrant examples available to give you some ideas. Please, check out the rules and then send in your application!

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Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year 2009

Mike Peel — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:26:25 +0000

Picture of the Year 2009 – Sikh pilgrim at the Golden Temple (Harmandir Sahib) in India

Each year the Wikimedia Commons community picks out the best “Picture of the Year“, based on the images that have passed through its Featured Picture process during the course of the year. 890 pictures became Featured Pictures in 2009; of these, 38 made it into the final round. On 19 June 2010, the 2009 winner was announced — “Sikh pilgrim at the Golden Temple (Harmandir Sahib) in India“, taken by Wikimedian Paul Rudd.

The Featured Pictures considered in this competition can be from anywhere – entries are eligible regardless of whether they were taken by a Wikimedian or released by the creator under a free license elsewhere and then uploaded by someone else to Wikimedia Commons. Of the top 10 positions (held by 13 images), eight were created by Wikimedians, two were from Flickr, two from the US military (all US government works are in the public domain) and one was from the European Southern Observatory.

If you want to enter your photographs into the 2010 competition, all you need to do is upload it under a free license to Wikimedia Commons — and then get it past the grueling Featured picture candidacy process.

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Pending Changes trial on the English Wikipedia

Mike Peel — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 07:32:44 +0000

For the next two months, starting at midnight last night, the English Wikipedia will be testing a new tool, called Pending Changes, that re-enables the editing of articles that have previously been protected from editing. The Wikimedia Foundation, who have developed this tool, have posted the following announcement via their blog:

Over the next few days, English language Wikipedia users may notice a small change on some articles: a little magnifying glass where a lock once was. The icon, on the upper right corner of the article, represents an important step that Wikipedia volunteers have taken to open up articles that were previously protected from editing. Starting Tuesday at 11pm UTC, the English Wikipedia community will begin a two-month trial of a new tool called “Pending Changes” (formerly known as Flagged Protection).

Articles that are frequently subjected to malicious edits have long been locked, sometimes for years, and protected from editing by new and anonymous users. Over the last year, the Wikimedia Foundation and volunteers from the community have been working to develop Pending Changes, a softer alternative to these editing restrictions. At present, only about 0.1 percent of the 3.3 million articles on the English Wikipedia are under edit protection. This tool should help reduce disruptive edits or errors to articles while maintaining open, collaborative editing from anyone who wants to contribute.

When Pending Changes is applied to an article, the article will be open for editing by anyone, including anonymous and new users. When edits are made by new or anonymous users, changes will be reviewed before they appear on the main version of the article. Anyone can view these proposed edits by clicking on the “Pending Changes” tab alongside the “Edit” and the “History” tabs. In addition, by scrolling over the magnifying glass icon, you can quickly see exactly how many changes are pending review.

During this trial, the community will select which articles will use Pending Changes, with an initial 2,000 page maximum. If you’re interested in learning more about how Pending Changes works, or to test it out yourself, you can read our Q&A and the community-written help pages or check it out in Wikimedia Labs.

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:

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Britain Loves Wikipedia pictures on Commons

Mike Peel — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:36:37 +0000

In February 2010 we ran Britain Loves Wikipedia – encouraging people to visit 20 museums across the UK to take photographs for Wikipedia, and win prizes in the process. Our thanks go to all of you that submitted over 500 high quality photographs into the competition!

You can now find all of these photographs on Wikimedia Commons – take a look at Category:Britain Loves Wikipedia! We now need your help to categorize all of these images, and make use of them on Wikipedia. Can you spare a few minutes to look through them and help out?

We have three judges that are currently in the process of identifying the prize-winning photos, which we hope to announce soon.

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Featured Article prizes from the British Museum

Mike Peel — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 20:23:31 +0000

Back stage at the British Museum. More photos from the day.

Following from the successful Backstage Pass event held at the British Museum on 4 June, attended by around 40 Wikipedians and resulting in the creation of a number of new articles, the British Museum have announced a competition for the creation of Featured Articles related to the British Museum’s collections!

The competition page gives the following summary:

The British Museum is offering five prizes of £100 (≈$140USD/€120) at their shop/bookshop for new Featured Articles on topics related to the British Museum in any Wikipedia language edition. Ideally, the topics will be articles about collection items.

This is the first time an organisation in the UK has put out a prize that recognises the value of fine articles on Wikipedia. This is a recognition that Wikipedia work is not only good quality but is consistent with the outreach aspect of the Museum’s mission to engage the public. It is likely to have a positive effect for the Museum in terms of usage of the deeper resources and links back to their research material. It is a win–win situation for free cultural products, and more broadly for the cultural sector.

The museum has curators dedicated to answering phone and email questions about their specialist areas and they recognise that editing Wikipedia articles, especially about items in the BM’s collections, counts for those purposes. If you require assistance in approaching the British Museum curators, please contact Liam Wyatt (User:Witty lama).

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Backstage pass @ British Museum

Seddon — Mon, 17 May 2010 15:32:46 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Wikimedia UK and the British Museum would like to invite all Wikipedians to a very special event taking place from 11am on Friday 4 June – a “Backstage Pass” to the British Museum!

“You may have heard of the British Museum’s exciting initiative, a Wikipedian-in-Residence, with Liam Wyatt joining us in June to work with museum staff and Wikipedia editors to encourage mutual understanding and improve the encyclopaedia in areas relevant to the Museum’s collection. In order to kick off the residency, I’d like to invite you to join us at the British Museum Wikipedia Backstage Pass Day, on Friday 4 June.”

“In the morning we have arranged a number of behind-the-scenes and gallery tours for Wikipedians. Then, after lunch together in the staff canteen, we will get together in the Clore Education Centre to talk about collaboration, have a question and answer sessions, hear pitches for adding notable objects and developing featured articles, and hopefully also forming some relationships for future working, during and beyond Liam’s residency. I hope you can come; there’s a lot of interest here at the Museum about it.”

“I look forward to welcoming you to the Museum. Matthew Cock, Head of Web at the British Museum.”

This will be an exciting, incredibly important, and – most of all – fun event, so we encourage you to attend if you are able to. You can find out more information about what will be happening, and sign up to say that you are coming, at:
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Backstage_Pass

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Wikimedia Foundation board member candidates wanted

Mike Peel — Sat, 15 May 2010 09:00:17 +0000

The Wikimedia chapters, including Wikimedia UK, have issued the following open letter. Wikimedia UK thinks it is extremely important that the chapters make good choices for board members so ask you to read the letter and see if you can help.

To whom it may concern,

Can you, or someone you know, help guide Wikimedia Foundation through the next exciting steps of its strategic development and growth?

The Wikimedia Chapters are looking for two candidates to sit on the Wikimedia Foundation’s Board of Trustees for 2 years commencing in July 2010. The new board members will be faced with the challenge of helping decide the future direction of the only top-10 internet property that is run by a non-profit organisation. The Wikimedia websites are constructed by hundreds of thousands of volunteers world-wide, supported by a small but growing number of staff and an international network of chapters.
The successful candidates will most importantly be committed to the Wikimedia mission and willing to work with the various stakeholders of the Wikimedia movement, including the volunteers and the chapters that provide essential support for the movement. They will have the time to do this, with the appropriate communication skills (including a good standard of English) and ability to work as a team. They will also be able and willing to travel, and have an international attitude.

The candidates will ideally be open-minded with experience of international affairs and governance techniques. They will have good communication skills, as well the ability to think strategically and to work independently as well as part of a team.

The process that will be followed for this selection can be viewed here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapter-selected_Board_seats/Process

All nominations must be sent to the moderator (Thomas Dalton from Wikimedia UK) and deputy moderator (José Spierts from Wikimedia Nederlands) by 23:59 UTC 17th May. If you would like to nominate yourself or someone else, please see the instructions here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapter-selected_Board_seats/Nominate

The chapters wish to locate truly excellent board members and believe that can best be done if there are a large number of varied and quality candidates to consider. Therefore, the chapters ask that everyone that thinks they, or someone they know, would be a good board member submit a nomination. They also ask that this call for candidates be distributed as widely as possible on mailing lists, village pumps, blogs, etc..

Best regards,

Thomas Dalton,
Moderator

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Wikimedia Fundraising Summit, Bristol, May 14

Mike Peel — Sun, 09 May 2010 10:26:08 +0000

Wikimedia UK host the global Wikimedia Fundraising Summit in Bristol May 14-16 – HP Labs Bristol & The Watershed offer generous support

From Friday 14th to Sunday 16th May 2010, Wikimedia UK will host Wikimedia delegates from across the world as they meet in Bristol.

This meeting is a three-day summit to discuss technical and strategic issues that cover the work the global Wikimedia Foundation and its national chapters do in relation to the worldwide fundraising effort for the Wikimedia Foundation’s projects, including the online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia. The summit will be attended by delegates from the Wikimedia Foundation’s office in San Francisco and various chapters from around the world, including the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia and Australia.

It is the first time that Wikimedia UK, the chapter responsible for supporting the work and goals of the Wikimedia projects in the UK, has hosted an event of this importance to the global movement. It recognises the growing importance of this Chapter, now entering its second full year since its creation.

Wikimedia UK would like to recognise that the event has been made possible by the generosity of both HP, which is donating the costs of room hire, entertainment and lunches, and the Watershed, where some of the meetings will be held.

Although delegates are here mainly on business, there will be an opportunity on both Friday and Saturday evenings for Wikimedia delegates to mix with and learn more about Bristol and its plans to build on its growing reputation as a thriving regional hub for media and digital expertise.

Editor’s notes and contact details for this announcement

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Call for Proposals – Wikimedia track at the Open Knowledge Conference 2010

Mike Peel — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:16:53 +0000

This year Wikimedia UK is partnering with the Open Knowledge Foundation in the organisation of the 2010 Open Knowledge Conference (“OKCon”), an interdisciplinary conference that brings together individuals from across the open knowledge spectrum for a day of presentations and workshops.

At this year’s conference, Wikimedia UK will be supporting and organising a track dedicated to the projects and communities central to Wikimedia.

We need your help to create an exciting and interesting track that will inspire and challenge Wikimedians and others alike. Could you give a presentation or host a discussion on a Wikimedia theme? Any subject relevant to the Wikimedia communities, free content or Wikimedia UK are welcome.

Timeline

February 25 (Thursday): Submissions will open
March 28 (Sunday) 23:59 UTC: Closure of submission dates
April 7 (Wednesday): Notification of acceptance of submission
April 24 (Saturday): Open Knowledge Conference 2010

If you wish to participate but with good reason cannot meet one of the above deadlines please email conferenceswikimedia.org.uk before the deadline as it may be possible to accomodate late submissions

Themes

Submissions should address one or more of the following themes:

Wikimedia Communities – Interesting projects and characteristics within the communities; policy creation; conflict resolution and community dynamics; reputation and identity; multilingualism, languages and cultures; the development of Wikimedia UK.

Free Content – Open access to information; ways to gather and distribute free knowledge, usage of the Wikimedia projects in education, journalism, research; ways to improve content quality and usability; copyright laws and their interaction with Wikimedia projects.

Culture and Heritage – Ideas for potential partnerships, building on previous partnerships and the legal, technical and resource issues that are barriers to such partnerships.

Technical infrastructure – Issues related to MediaWiki development and extensions; Wikimedia hardware layout; the Toolserver; the Usability Project; new ideas for development (including Usability case studies from other wikis or similar projects).

Submission Guidelines

Please email submissions to conferenceswikimedia.org.uk.

Please email the following details, all in English:

Title:
Theme: Closest category from above for your submission.
Abstract: 50-100 words summarising the topic
Summary: Detailed description of the topic – 300 words or more. May contain a link to a more details.
Contact information: Email/Telephone and whether we may publish these details
Additional Information:

1-3 sentence biography of the author(s).
any special requirements (e.g. flipchart; OHP. A digital presentation will be assumed as standard)
whether you will attend the 2010 Open Knowledge Conference (a) definitely, (b) probably, (c) only if your submission is accepted.

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