Technology | the Wikimedia UK blog!

Structured Data on Commons is the most important development in Wikimedia’s usability

28 February 2018

By John Lubbock, Communications Coordinator Wikimedia Commons is one of the most important sources of Creative Commons licensed media online. But it has a huge problem: it’s a total mess. One of the biggest complaints about Commons which discourages people from using it is that it’s incredibly hard to find what you’re looking for. People… read more »

Talking to Creative Commons’ Ryan Merkley about CC Search and Structured Data on Commons

9 December 2017

CC Search beta was launched in February. This new tool incorporates ‘list-making features, and simple, one-click attribution to make it easier to credit the source of any image you discover.’ Its developer, Liza Daly, describes it as ‘a front door to the universe of openly licensed content.’ As a small organisation, Creative Commons did not… read more »

Wikipedia over Tor? Alec Muffett experiments with an Onion Wikipedia site

27 November 2017

Alec Muffett, a director of the Open Rights Group and an ex-Facebook, now Deliveroo software engineer, has created a Wikipedia Onion site which can only be accessed through the Tor browser. 1/ As an experiment, I’ve set up a Wikipedia Onion Site at: https://t.co/NhGD8w3nSU – I’ll keep it running for a few days. pic.twitter.com/KMlF8k3snS —… read more »

Wiki Project Med Foundation launches Wikipedia hosting mini WiFi computer to distribute medical information

25 October 2017

In 2017, the world passed the 50% mark in the number of people in the world who have access to the internet. It’s easy to take for granted the fact that within the Wikimedia movement, most people have easy access to the internet, but this is still not the case for many people. To address… read more »

Wikipedia Vs Fake News

9 March 2017

This article based on the text of Wikimedia UK’s submission to the government’s inquiry into fake news, which was launched in January. A changing media landscape The media landscape has changed beyond all recognition over the past 25 years. Before the internet, there were just a handful of media providers with large, guaranteed audiences and plenty… read more »

No article? No problem.

26 October 2016

Generating Article Placeholders on the Welsh Wikipedia The Welsh Language Wicipedia already punches above its weight with seventy thousand articles. That’s roughly one article for every eight Welsh speakers. But now a student in Germany has developed a new tool which can fill in the gaps on Wikipedia by borrowing data from another of Wikimedia’s… read more »

OER16: Open Culture

11 August 2016

By Lorna M. Campbell In April 2016 the University of Edinburgh will host the international Open Educational Resources Conference, OER16, which is coming to Scotland for the first time in its seven-year history. OER16 is being co-chaired by Melissa Highton, Director of Learning, Teaching and Webservices at the University of Edinburgh, and Lorna M. Campbell,… read more »

Wikimedia and UNESCO team up to share the world’s culture

23 January 2015

By John Cummings, Wikimedia volunteer I have been working with the Sector for External Relations and Public Information unit at The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to make images from their archive available on Wikimedia Commons, the media site for all Wikimedia projects including Wikipedia. Wikipedia is the most used educational resource in the… read more »

Emmanuel Engelhart, Inventor of Kiwix: the Offline Wikipedia Browser

13 August 2015

This user profile by Joe Sutherland is part of a series about Offline Wikipedia on the Wikimedia blog where it was first published. As well as having created Kiwix, Emmanuel is a developer for Wikimedia UK. Wikipedia’s goal is to be the sum of human knowledge, available to anyone at any time, but when billions… read more »

IPv6 enabled on Wikimedia UK’s websites

15 November 2016

This post was written by Tom Morton, Wikimedia UK developer Wikimedia UK’s main websites are now available over IPv6. For most of our visitors this won’t have any effect, as this is still new technology. However, it is a big step toward future proofing our infrastructure for the years to come. The internet relies on… read more »