Wikipedia | the Wikimedia UK blog!

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 »

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 »

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 »

Wikimedia UK announces Wikimedian and Partnership of the Year

17 July 2019

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 »

Wikipedia for Peace at Europride Vienna

5 July 2019

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 »

How Wikimedia UK is working with the music industry to improve Wikipedia

26 June 2019

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 »

Education in Wales and Wikipedia

16 May 2019

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 »

New Wikimedian in Residence at the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland

25 April 2019

By Jeff Sanders, Project Manager for Dig It! based at The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. AN ANCIENT SOCIETY (WITH FRESH IDEAS) 1780: a time before the USA had gained its independence, before the first hot air balloon flights, and before Robert Burns had penned Auld Lang Syne. Also the year in which the Society… read more »