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 »
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 »
Wikimedia UK has started running events to encourage long-time Wikipedia editors and those interested in becoming technically proficient at more complex tasks to gain skills that will allow them to improve Wikimedia projects. In November we ran our first event on how to write a Featured Article. On May 7th, we will be running our… read more »
By Jason Evans, National Wikimedian for Wales. In April 2019 the Basque Wikimedians User Group hosted the first Wikimedia + Education conference in Donostia. Using Wikipedia, and other Wikimedia projects in education is nothing new. There is a vibrant and well established community already engaged in a diverse range of projects from Wiki Clubs in… read more »
By Martin Poulter, Wikimedian in Residence at the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford The speed at which Wikidata is acquiring descriptions of paintings, sculptures and other museum holdings is impressive, but there is much further to go. It’s ironic that at the same time, we already have an enormous art database hiding in plain sight. The Commons… read more »