[Wikimediaau-l] More random ideas

[Liam Wyatt]

Dear all,
Just because I can, and because ideas are free, I thought I'd write  
down some other things that I thought WM-au might be able to do  
eventually which we could add to the [[m:Wikimedia_Australia/ 
Activities#Possible_activities]] list.

- Briefings for media organisations on how to use Wikimedia projects  
for their journalism. Not just the anatomy of a media-wiki page but  
also how to use Virgil's Wiki-Scanner, WikiRage, WikiBlame etc. This  
would also get us in their minds as the people to talk to when  
they're running a Wikipedia story and would give us a chance to  
dispel the common errors that appear in print (e.g. flagged-revs = we  
are no longer a wiki, or that we think that knowledge is completely  
relativistic.

- Equivalent briefings for university faculties on how to use  
wikipedia in the classroom in order to discuss "how to be skeptical  
of sources" and learning how to write neutrally and collaboratively -  
all skills necessary in tertiary education. Also, we could teach them  
how to use our statistics to put into their own research (I'm  
thinking about Erik Zachte's discussions here).

- Visit high-schools who are using Wikipedia as one of the texts in  
their English Syllabus. I don't know about the other states but in  
NSW wikipedia can be studied for the HSC. You can bet your eye-teeth  
that the high school english teachers don't know how to deal with  
that subject as well as we'd like. This could be an interesting  
excursion for a team of us, driving around the countryside for a week  
to different schools - road-trip anyone!?

- mini-Wikireaders of australian content published in collaboration  
with different cultural organisations. I'm thinking especially of the  
wonderful set of Banksia articles that are Featured on Wikipedia  
(thankyou Casliber!) I imagine that the National Parks or the Botanic  
Gardens might be interested in covering the printing costs for making  
a leaflet out of it if we supply the content formatted nicely for the  
purpose. These leaflets could be given out at the relevant cultural  
institutions to patrons and would therefore get our content (and  
logo) in front of some different areas of the public.

- "BedWiki" where we can keep a list of people willing to offer their  
spare bed/sofa to other visiting wikimedians. There are some privacy  
issues to work through (such as not publishing an address but only a  
general location), but I for one would like to be able to visit other  
wikimedians when I go travelling and the best way to get charity from  
others is to start at home. This would be useful not only for  
Australians travelling interstate but potentially useful as a  
worldwide network if it scaled well. It could be good not only by  
saving money for the traveller but also to increase the community  
spirit of wikimedians.

- Cultural tours for WM-au members. That is, we organise a free  
backstage tour of some facility such as a gallery, theatre, sports  
stadium, company in exchange for sitting down afterwards with some  
people from that organisation and spending a couple of hours  
improving the article on that subject. Organisations like the  
National Trust have many properties around the country and already  
run tours for members. They would be very valuable contributors to  
our projects if we spent the time teaching them how. The benefit for  
us would be seeing things that normally are either hidden or cost a  
lot of money to do. We would have to work through issues about  
Conflict of Interest (i.e. we're not promising to write whatever they  
want) but I don't see that being a huge problem once we explain NPOV,  
NOR and V. The main trick here would be to get enough wikimedians to  
come along to justify their time.



Waddayarekon?
Remember, ideas are free - we are not required to do any of this so  
please don't flame me for being too optimistic etc.

Best,
-Liam


wikipediaweekly.org
Skype - Wittylama
Wikipedia - [[User:Witty lama]]


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