Technology | the Wikimedia UK blog!

Using bots to change the landscape of Wikipedia

14 January 2019

This post has been written by User:TheSandDoctor, an admin on English Wikipedia. An original version of this article appeared on Medium. A Request for Comment (RfC) is a process for requesting outside input concerning disputes, policies, guidelines or article content. As an admin on the English Wikipedia, I deal with these kind of bureaucratic issues… read more »

WikiCite conference 2018

11 January 2019

By Jason Evans, National Wikimedian at the National Library of Wales Imagine a world in which anyone could use an open citation database to support free knowledge, with rich information about every citable source. Any Wikipedian or Wikipedia advocate will tell you that one of the great strengths of Wikipedia is its citations. In fact,… read more »

Mozfest 2018 roundup: how Wikimedia UK has been engaging with other Open organisations

15 November 2018

Wikimedia UK has been attending Mozilla’s conference in London for a few years now, as we attempt to build deeper connections to other organisations working to promote open knowledge. This year, we presented a discussion entitled ‘Under the hood: how understanding Wikipedia’s internal structure and community can teach media literacy’. This was a relaxed hour… read more »

From Spreadsheet to Wikidata with QuickStatements

11 January 2019

By Charles Matthews, Wikimedian in Residence at ContentMine With the end of October, Wikidata’s birthday comes round once more, and on the 29th it will be six years old. With the passing of time Wikimedia’s structured data site grows, is supported by an increasingly mature set of key tools, and is applied in new directions…. read more »

Science Source seeks to improve reliable referencing on Wikipedia’s medical articles

30 August 2018

Science Source is a new project by ContentMine which builds on their previous work on WikiFactMine, which wanted to ‘make Wikidata the primary resource for identifying objects in bioscience’. This time, they want to automate the process of looking at biomedical research to identify statements that would be useful for improving Wikipedia’s medical articles. They… read more »

A multilingual infobox for Wikimedia Commons categories | By Mike Peel

7 August 2018

Mike Peel is a UK Wikimedian who is running a session on the development of multilingual infoboxes on Wikimedia Commons at Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town. You can see the session information here. _____________________________________________________ Wikimedia Commons is a multilingual repository holding multimedia related to all possible topics. All language Wikipedias, as well as other projects,… read more »

Tech dive – Alex Monk on implementing secure certificates across Wikimedia domains

15 June 2018

Background This report assumes that you know basically what HTTPS is, among other things. ‘We’ is used liberally in this post, and refers to the Wikimedia technical community in general – I am a volunteer and I don’t work for the foundation or any national chapters. Wikimedia has several canonical domain names, the ones everyone… read more »

A look back at the 2018 hackathon in Barcelona

11 June 2018

Wikimedia UK staff couldn’t be in Barcelona at the end of May for the annual Wikimedia hackathon – we had our own events to organise with Amnesty International in London and Glasgow – but some of our friends did attend the event, and we are happy to have their help to tell you what happened,… read more »

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 »