Wikimedia UK Blog

Announcing the Wikimedia in Education UK Summit

23 January 2020

With around 20 billion page-views every month, Wikipedia is an integral part in how people discover information. It is used by students and lecturers alike, and it is one of the most important open educational resources currently available. Recognising the importance of engaging with Wikipedia and understanding its role in knowledge creation and dissemination, some… read more »

Wikimedia UK publishes ‘Closing the Gender Gap’ video

30 December 2019

By John Lubbock, Wikimedia UK Communications Coordinator I’ve worked at Wikimedia UK since 2016, managing their social media, press, content and general communications. During that time, the gender gap issue has become increasingly salient, especially with the media attention generated by Dr Jess Wade, a British research scientist who has written hundreds of biographical Wikipedia… read more »

Leveraging open data at the National Library of Wales

16 December 2019

By Jason Evans, National Wikimedian at the National Library of Wales Over 7 years ago the National Library of Wales made the decision not to claim any rights to digital reproductions of public domain works. I was then employed as a Wikimedian, in partnership with Wikimedia UK, to actively begin sharing this content openly on… read more »

Supporting the Turkish Wikimedia community from the UK

15 December 2019

By John Lubbock, Communications Coordinator As many of you know, Wikipedia has been blocked in Turkey since 2017. While it’s still possible to access the site from Turkey via proxy sites and VPNs, it’s much harder to edit Wikipedia from Turkey, which means that the content is not being updated and the Turkish language version… read more »

Copyright for Wikimedia photographers in the UK

7 November 2019

By UK Wikimedian and copyright enthusiast Geni Spoiler:Its a terrible broken system which is part of the reason Wikipedia went copyleft in the first place. Please note that this is not legal advice. If you want that, ask a lawyer or, given the mess some bits of the law are in, 5 supreme court judges…. read more »

Wiki Loves Monuments UK 2019 winners announced

4 November 2019

Wiki Loves Monuments UK, part of the world’s biggest photographic contest, has announced the winners of this year’s competition. The UK competition is organised and voted on by members of the Wikimedia community in the UK, and seeks to encourage photographers to upload their images to Wikimedia Commons, the media-sharing sister site of Wikipedia, where… read more »

Samhuinn Wikipedia editathon at University of Edinburgh - Mihaela Bodlovic

Samhuinn at the University of Edinburgh

25 October 2019

So, the University of Edinburgh have been awfully busy when it comes to all things Witchcraft recently. Wikimedian in Residence Ewan McAndrew has been working with Wikidata and the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft for a while now, with the University’s Wikidata / Data Visualisation internship and “Witchfinder General” Emma Carroll taking it to another level;… read more »

Arabic Wikipedia is growing fast – here’s why

22 October 2019

By John Lubbock, Wikimedia UK Communications Coordinator I met recently with Faisal Saeed al-Mutar, an Iraqi refugee in the US, who set up the organisation Ideas Beyond Borders, whose goal is to make more content accessible online for people living in parts of the world where access to reliable information is problematic. His work with… read more »

“Masterpieces of the World” – A Landmark Partnership between Wikimedia UK and the Khalili Collections

11 September 2019

Wikimedia UK is launching a landmark partnership with the UK-based Khalili Collections – one of the greatest and most comprehensive private collections in the world. Over the course of five decades, UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador Professor Nasser D. Khalili has assembled eight of the world’s finest art collections – each being the largest and most comprehensive… read more »

Does Wikipedia have enough administrators?

25 July 2019

By John Lubbock, Wikimedia UK Communications Coordinator There are currently 1144 admins on the English language Wikipedia, of whom 501 are active as editors, though not all of those do a lot of admin-specific tasks. When you talk to people who have worked as admins on Wikipedia, they usually tell you that back in the… read more »