Hello,
My reply is in line.
Being on the board doesn't denote that whichever communications commencing
from me is the position or stance of the chapter whatsoever, unless
otherwise unambiguously stated in the start section of my E-mail. Clear?
My dear Steve,
Waswahili wasema subira huvuta heri.
Yeah I concur but the same Waswahili said, Ngoja ngoja huumiza matumbo :)
and how comes nowadays they don't 'sema' :)
I am going to speak about the Kenya National Archives, because it's the
partnership that I'm focused on. Yes, we have been moving at a sluggish
rate. Sometimes it's my fault, sometimes it's theirs. But, IMO, most
partnerships don't take overnight to seal. They take months, or even years.
And that has nothing to do with Kenya or the government. It's the business
norm. The British Museum -- the first cultural institution to host a
Residency program -- took months to accept it. The Museum of Islamic Art in
Qatar is still in talks with Wikimedia -- these talks started (I think) 10
months ago. This agreement is not just a piece of paper saying that we will
edit Wikipedia and take photos. It involves Museum personnel/staff --
meaning that they'll agree to devote their time to contribute to Wikipedia.
So all in all, it involves the Museum agreeing to dedicate (some of) its
resources to us -- whether its time or money. It also has a binding
agreement, explicitly stating that they have to stick to the terms and
conditions of the partnership. (e.g. what will you do if a senior staff
member forbids you to take photos of their gallery?)
Hey! You got me wide off the mark from my Email. Am not saying we storm the
museum and shockingly start having our own secluded tours or edit camps
devoid of their accord.I cannot take staff members and the management and
offer them a dose Wikimedicine minus the thought of the influence to their
jobs and the welfare of the KNA. I personally cannot do that and I cannot
tolerate such kind of behaviour.
There are undeniably some levels of access to the facility. I saw an
opportunity to use their library as a source for references since it is
open to public in exchange of a very small fee of $2.50 per year per head.
This way we would even have a metric from this unofficial pilot of the kind
and quantity of work and input that we expect at such a time when the
partnership deal ripens. Personally I do not edit exclusively edit local
articles for the reason that most of this info is still offline. At times
you cannot take care of all the ‘ifs’ in advance even before the journey
starts – we will cross the bridge when we get there. It is now five months
and counting - just a caveat and probably a wake up call.
If you want to go ahead and carry out this project unofficially, then go
ahead. I just hope that you (and everyone else who is in an official
capacity to represent Wikimedia Kenya) knows that if we want to form
partnerships, these things will take time. And there may be a shortcut this
time round (which has its limitations), there may not be a shortcut next
time.
There are without doubt no shortcuts not unless we execute an Italian job
and take the material with us home and digitize bila presha na hustle.Does
existence in the board mean that all I do or Email for that matter is the
opinion of the chapter or a representation of the chapter’s deportment?
(Asking for a friend.)
This was my personal opinion and it is in no way tagged to the other
officials of the Wikimedia Kenya chapter. FYI, there are winning shortcuts
like: Shift+alt+S which saves the changes in a Wiki edit interface.
You talked about calling an AGM with the stakeholders. What stakeholders
specifically? You also talked about most government
institutions being
ignorant about Wikipedia. While this statement may be true, I assure you
that after more than 5 meetings with the Kenya National Archives Management
team, they at least know the basics :-)
I was reporting of what materialized at our meeting while on quest for the
list of monuments. I still wonder how the hell someone would ask if
Wikipedia is on Google yet his office door label is a term far-fetched from
the corporate IT lingo.
At the railways meseum, we were informed that there was suppossed to be a
meeting from the head of KR to the toe as they discuss the partnership deal
with us. Those are the kind of stakeholders I was talking about.
You also talked about carrying out editathons and taking photos at the
Murumbi Gallery (the gallery found at the entrance of the Archives). Do you
know that this gallery is barely 1% of what the Kenya National Archives
has? Yes, 1%. The Kenya National Archives is not a place which is supposed
to host artifacts per se, but most importantly, it houses millions of
records, transcripts, maps, agreements, videos, audio files related to
Kenyan history. These records -- not the gallery -- are the essence of the
Archives. It is these records, about Mau Mau, about East African Railways,
about Tom Mboya -- that can be found nowhere else, that they have.
Yeah I know there like a million and 1 of those at the premises to the
extent that we might need to import volunteers to help us out or even hire
Wikipedians in residence:) For the uploads and the Wikisource thing we will
definitely have to wait till a GLAM partnership becomes of age since the
license issues of these works come in plus some other legal aspects
regarding the documents and so many other ‘ifs’ that we do not know as yet!
So, if this deal really happens, the bulk of the work will be to
digitize/scan these records and upload them to
Wikisource. Although I think
that we should also do what you said with the Murumbi Gallery, the bulk of
the work still is the mass upload as well as putting up the descriptions
(metadata) of each upload.
+1
I am not supposed to talk about this, since it's still not yet official.
But many of you probably didn't know what will really be happening, if this
partnership actually takes place with the Archives.
No you should, we are being open. In fact you are late:)... Abbas is open
now.
regards,
Stephen.