Below is the Wikimedia UK monthly report for the period 1 to 31 July 2011. If you want to
keep up with the chapter's activities as they happen, please subscribe to our blog,
join our mailing list, and/or follow us on Twitter. If you have any queries, please ask
them to us on this report's talk page.
This report is also available, complete with pictures, on our website at
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports/2011/July .
Contents
1 Board activities
2 Education projects
3 Fundraising
4 GLAM activities
5 Recruitment
6 UK press coverage
7 Wikipedia Workshops
8 Miscellaneous
9 Upcoming activities in August
Board activities
The executive board (chair, secretary and treasurer) met in-person on 9 July, followed up
by a meeting by telephone on 19 July. The agenda is on the WMUK wiki, as are the minutes.
The main part of the meeting was to clear the backlog of expense claims and postal letters
sent to the chapter, which was successful.
On 25 July the full board met by telephone - again, the agenda is on the WMUK wiki, as are
reports from individual board members and the meeting minutes. Most of the discussion was
about individual board member activities (including GLAM, education and other activities),
with specific discussions about our application for charity status, recruitment of our
Chief Executive, our education activities, conflict of interest policies and plans for the
2012 financial year.
The next full board meeting will be on 27-28 August, and will be in person in Derby; the
next executive board meeting will be by telephone on 9 August.
Education projects
On 4 July, Sam Knight (wikipedia:User:Wikisamia) started a joint WMUK-University of
Bristol summer student placement, aiming to build on Wikimedia UK's existing
relationships with the city to create partnerships that benefit both Wikipedia and the
community.
On 7-9 July, Wikimedia UK director Martin Poulter, and Chris Hopkin (wikipedia:User:Chzz)
attended the Wikipedia in Higher Education Summit. This was a three-day conference held at
Simmons College in Boston, Masachusetts.
Fundraising
Monthly fundraising reports are publicly available on our Finances webpage. Here are
summaries of each month thus far this year:
January, £49,900 received, primarily at the start of the month due to the annual
fundraiser (detailed report)
February, £2,354.95 received from 109 donors (see Fundraising Report - Monthly Totals
2011)
March, £2,044.60 received from 90 donors (see Fundraising Report - Monthly Totals 2011)
April, £1,064.43 received from 54 donors (see Fundraising Report - Monthly Totals 2011)
May, £1,557.73 received from 70 donors (see Fundraising Report - Monthly Totals 2011)
June, £1,052.37 received from 65 donors (see Fundraising Report - Monthly Totals 2011)
July, £1,371.01 received from 78 donors (see Fundraising Report - Monthly Totals 2011)
Our accounts from incorporation until 31 January 2010 have been completed, and were
approved by our members at our AGM in April (you can read them online). Our accounts for 1
February 2010 to 31 January 2011 been audited, and are in the process of being reviewed
and signed; we will make them available online shortly.
In May 2011 we gave the Wikimedia Foundation a grant of £293,000 (GBP; approx. $475,000
USD) towards their general operating costs.
In July we renewed our Fundraising Agreement with the Wikimedia Foundation; the agreement
can be found on the WMUK wiki at 2011 Fundraiser/Agreement. We also began participating in
the pre-testing for the Wikipedia Annual Fundraiser, as documented here. We are also close
to signing an arrangement with a Direct Debit bureau to enable us to take Direct Debit
payments in this Autumn's fundraiser.
GLAM activities
Between 6 and 8 July, wikipedia:User:Johnbod joined the Wikilounge team at the
"Communicating the Museum" conference in Düsseldorf, Germany.
On 11-12 July, Oliver Keyes and Tom Morris ran a Wikipedia/Wikimedia UK stand at the CILIP
conference, Hatfield. A public report is available.
The 16th July saw a Wikilounge at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, which focused on
the article on Tipu's Tiger as a multilingual case study and improvement effort. The
V&A released its official photographs of the automaton under a free license so that
they could be used on Wikipedia, and the English article was dramatically improved as a
result of the event, and is now available in over a dozen different languages.
On the 11th July, Andy Mabbett (wikipedia:User:Pigsonthewing) started a ten-week
'Wikipedian-in-Residence' style project as Wikipedia Outreach Ambassador to
wikipedia:ARKive. ARKive have donated the text of 200 of their articles on endangered
species, under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 licence. These texts are now being incorporated into the
corresponding Wikipedia articles and further developed on-wiki. Full information is
available at ARKive project and wikipedia:Wikipedia:GLAM/ARKive.
The 28th July saw the start of a project with the National Maritime Museum to improve
Wikipedia's coverage of Royal Navy warship histories - the NMM released information
about around 20,000 warships under a free license, and this information is now being
integrated into the corresponding Wikipedia articles.
Finally, the report from last month's National Railway Museum Wikipedia Workshop is
now available.
For additional information on our recent GLAM activities, see the UK report in the global
'This Month in GLAM' report.
Recruitment
This month, we put out job adverts for our first Chief Executive, as well as a temporary
Office Administrator. Both positions received a large number of applications, with
interviews due to take place in August.
UK press coverage
We forgot to mention last month that Andy Mabbett, aka User:pigsonthewing, was interviewed
on BBC Radio West Midlands on 12 June, talking about Wikipedia editing. While he was
on-air, he took a picture of his interviewer, which was uploaded to Wikipedia before the
show ended - see Andy's blog post for more information and a link to the audio
recording.
Press coverage of Wikipedia in UK publications this month included:
4 July, Kaggle contest aims to boost Wikipedia editors, One Per Cent, New Scientist
5 July - Fæ in BBC Radio Scotland interview for Culture Cafe
6 July, NOTW phone hacking protests turn to Wikipedia, The Inquirer
6 July, Edit and update Wikipedia articles, ComputerActive (tutorial)
10 July, The Only Way Is Essex + Wikipedia = philosophy, Guardian - article on how
clicking on the first link in Wikipedia articles inevitably leads to the Philosophy
article
11 July, I fell out with Johann Hari – then 'David Rose' started tampering
viciously with my Wikipedia entry, Telegraph blog
11 July, The scandal that will not go away, Telegraph - related to the above blog post.
11 July, Is That Wikipedia in Your Pocket or Are You Just Happy to See Me?, Wired blog -
about a paid-for app that contains a complete copy of Wikipedia on a phone
11 July, Introducing Cameronism, BBC News - notable as a rare example of the BBC linking
directly to Wikipedia and Wiktionary articles
14 July, Official BBC Twitter rules tell staff: ‘Don't do anything stupid’, Telegraph
- mentioning "a ban on BBC staff doctoring entries on Wikipedia to sanitize critical
comments."
17 July, In The Know - Imperica interview with Fæ about recent GLAM activities
Wikipedia Workshops
Several Wikipedia Workshops took place at the start of this month, with the Medical
Research Council Workshop taking place on 1 July, and the second Bristol Wiki Academy
taking place on 4 July. The latter event was blogged about on the WMUK blog, and was also
reported on by the Bristol Wireless and Media Quest Mood blog.
Miscellaneous
As a result of the Derby GLAM project, a Catalan editor flew to Derby to see in person
what he and others have written ~1000 articles and translations about (see picture,
right).
UK Wikimeets this month: London (Sun 10 July)
There were no UK Community IRC meetings this month.
On 21 and 26 July, Steve Virgin talked about 'What is your Wikipedia Business
Strategy' at Business West events at Cheltenham Racecourse & Gloucestershire
Cricket Club
Upcoming activities in August
August is a fairly quiet month, with just four events taking place:
4-7 August - Wikimania 2011, Haifa (inc. Developer's meetings, 2-3 Aug)
9 August - Executive board meeting
14 August - London meetup
27 August - In-person board meeting
For events in September and onwards, please see Events.
Wikimedia UK is the operating name of Wiki UK Limited.
Wiki UK Ltd is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered
No. 6741827.
The Registered Office is at 23 Cartwright Way, Nottingham, NG9 1RL, United Kingdom.