In 2019 we hired Dr Sara Thomas as our Scotland Programme Coordinator. As Sara’s expanded our reach across Scotland, the demand for volunteers and trainers has increased hugely. Though it’s odd to think about in-person meetings while working from home, the Train the Trainer course in Glasgow has set up a network that’s prepared us… read more »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
At Wikimedia UK’s 2019 Annual General Meeting on Saturday we awarded our prizes for Wikimedian and Partnership of the Year. These awards recognise people and projects which have made a significant impact on the Wikimedia projects and community over the last year. Wikimedian of the Year Honorable mention: Andrew Gray Andrew’s work on the project… read more »
Earlier this month I took some time out from my Edinburgh work to travel to Vienna to take part in the Wikipedia for Peace editathon organized by Wikimedia Austria to coincide with Europride 2019. The event brought together twelve editors from all over the world to create and edit LBGT+ articles in a range of European languages over the… read more »
By John Lubbock, Communications Coordinator at Wikimedia UK Why should the music industry engage with Wikipedia? Firstly, they already do, but often they don’t do it very well, and get content deleted which they add to artists’ pages because they don’t follow the site’s guidelines. Second, a Wikipedia page is important in that it gives… read more »
By Robin Owain, Wikimedia UK Wales Manager Wales has always had more than its fair share of ministers of religion, farmers… and educators! During the Medieval period, the training of a ‘Prifardd’ (a registered Chief Poet), took ten years, but educating ordinary folk was by word of mouth. Around 1402, the last Welsh Prince of… read more »