WikiWomenCamp was a very valuable experience for those of us that
attended. We all learned a great deal, had the opportunity to network with
other women and, by and large had our participation with the movement
validated as a positive thing. I also believe, having talked to several
participants and the granting bodies that helped make this conference
possible, that these outcomes validate the money spent bringing these women
together and the time we took out of our every day lives to attend.
Looking forward, there are several positive outcomes from this conference
and things participants plan to do going forward that can use community
support and that will support the community. These include:
*Conference specific outcomes:*
* Sue Gardner attending the conference means those of us who attended can
go back to our communities, especially those of us outside Europe and the
USA, and affirm that Sue Gardner supports women working on issues brought
up at the conference and working on a global local solution to the
gendergap, and that this is not just a problem for English Wikipedia in the
United States.
* We are planning to have this event again and believe we can get
additional support from inside the Chapters to help fund this important
event.
* Organisers have gained experience in organising international events that
they can use to host future events. A session on project management was
held and participants who were not key organisers gained insight into how
to run events that they could take back to their own communities to run
events like the one we did on a local level.
* Participants learned about different chapters, how they worked, some
general internal challenges and how this impacts how they function. This
knowledge means participants can more easily understand why some things
appear like they do on mailing lists and how this relates to them (or
doesn't). It will aid in the ability for chapters to work together.
* A list of reasons why women do not contribute to Wikipedia was created
and actively discussed. The list is valuable because it approaches the
issue from an international perspective that explains some local issues
about resolving the gender gap.
*Wikimedia specific outcomes:*
* A mailing list will be created for support in English and Spanish where
women can ask for help with harassment they are dealing with on Wikipedia
and offered solutions. A private mailing list where several people can be
on call was selected because the problems would not be made public and
aggravate problems.
* A discussion was launched about investigating the creation of an OTRS
women's specific help service.
* Learning/Training materials specific to women will be created and shared
with the community. These materials will make it easier to do outreach to
women's communities.
* The research on women in the movement will be continued to work on, with
a standardised format and a process for determining what gets included
resolved during a session. A committment was made that once this was
completed in English (a goal for the end of September of this year), it
would be translated into Spanish. This research may assist chapters in
recruiting female volunteers, provide benchmarks for researchers, and
giving chapters and the Foundation a very clear idea of where the movement
needs to improve.
* Methodologies were discussed and developed for measuring the impact of
women on Wikimedia related projects that can be used by participants to
conduct future research.
* Translation of materials between languages will be worked on. Materials
created in one place may be very useful to others but people do not know
about them and cannot use them because of the language issues.
* Some of the discussion will focus on why women should edit Wikipedia
instead of why they do not, as this question allows for pro-active
solutions that sound less demeaning to women and require less capital to
improve things like the technology back end if participants can be
motivated to contribute despite these issues.
* Participants will go back to their local communities and continue the
good work they have already been engaged in. Participants have a support
network they can now more effectively utilize in doing this work and there
is the potential for future projects as a result. Example: There was a
discussion about possibily trying to do something between Australia and
Russia for the 2014 Winter Paralympics.
* A line of reasoning was created to respond to questions of "Why women
only events inside the movement?" that make the need obvious: Most local
WMF events are men only, and when they are not, the one or two women who
registered to attend could easily be asked to leave to make the event men
only. This is almost never the case for women in the movement. Other
arguements and lines of reasoning were also developed.
*Broad community outcomes:*
* WikiChix wiki will be re-launched as a wikis in general organisational
space. The wiki will be hosted by Wikimedia Australia. Plans are under
way to work on this following the Ibercoop meeting in Santiago, Chile.
* Efforts will be made to increase work with female in technology groups to
help increase women's participation.
* In organising events in the future related to the gender gap and women in
technology in general, Open Space will be seriously considered as a
facilitation method given the general success of it at this event.
If you are interested in seeing the conference in action, some videos are
available at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Video_from_WikiWomenCamp_2012 .
Parts of Sue's presentation are available at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Audio_from_WikiWomenCamp_2012 .
A list of blog posts and media reports for the conference can be found at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWomenCamp/Agenda#Other_publication .
Thanks again to everyone who attended and others who assisted in making
this event possible.
Sincerely,
Laura Hale
VP of Wikimedia Australia and (one of the) conference organiser(s)
--
mobile: 0412183663
twitter: purplepopple
blog: ozziesport.com
Hi all,
The 21st Melbourne meetup is on this coming Sunday 27 May, at 11am. It will be located at Computerbank, 483 Victoria Street, West Melbourne. Food and drink is provided, and there is wi-fi access so editing is possible too. Directions to ComputerBank can be found at http://bit.ly/IcEr5V. Meetup details are at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Melbourne_21. Hope to see lots of you there.
Regards,
Steven Zhang
Hi,
Great turn out last night. It was fantastic to see so many people there.
:) There are some
If people could keep an eye out on
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Non-sponsors%27_logos_plastered_by_peeved_Paral…
make sure it gets through review submission, that would be fantastic.
Irena is working on
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Raw_Opals_spend_week_preparing_for_London_Games…
support for her would be great. This article needs to be submitted no
later than Sunday for it to remain timely.
Bidgee has two articles he needs support in writing, including one that
needs to be submitted for publishing today. It is a summary of what we saw
at the track yesterday.
http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=File:2012-05-18_13-04_Track_and_Fi…
the notes for that.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:AIS_Track_and_Field includes
some possible pictures.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sound_recording_for_Wikinews_on_the_…
from the sponsor article. An important fact that may not be in the
journalist notes because of time constraints in writing: The athletics guys
will be leaving for Queensland by Monday to train for about a month before
decamping to Wales in the final run for the Games.
Bidgee probably could also use some help in writing up the interview with
the Reardon. The notes are the same, pictures are the same. Scott is the
runner with the prostetic. He lost his leg when he was 12 in a farming
accident. There are some additional details about him on the APC website.
The Opals article has sources including a media packet available if you
e-mail John or Toby. Some pictures are available at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Basketball_and_Netball_Centre to
help illustrate the article. The Canberra Times wrote about Lauren Jackson.
Tim could use some help with writing up the rowing. I don't know where his
notes are but please feel free to ask him for them and pictures. There
are a few pictures at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:AIS_Rowing_Shed
Any help getting these submitted would be fantastic. The sooner they get
published the better because Wikinews has a timeliness issue, and if we
delay too long, the hard work in getting the notes, doing the interviews,
taking the pictures won't be recognised with a news story. The work we've
done will result in very real news stories that other Australian news
organisations either cannot or will not run. Think the Get!Up controversy
with the sponsored logo issue.
Now I've got to go catch my plane. :) If you need any help, I've found
Pizero, Brian McNeil and B-R-S to be extremely willing to help new
contributors fix problems. They can often be found at #wikinews on IRC.
Sincerely,
Laura Hale
--
mobile: 0412183663
twitter: purplepopple
blog: ozziesport.com
Hi,
Laura, Bidgee and Tim Collins have been at the Opal training camp this
week in the lead up to Olympics, where there are also Paralympians
training for the Paralympics.
They have been writing Wikipedia & Wikinews articles about these topics.
Tonight at 8pm-10pm we will be holding a Wikinews workshop on IRC to
support Laura, Bidgee and Tim, and so other contributors can learn
about Wikinews.
It will be a two hour session, however please join in at any time, and
pop in even for 10 minutes and provide your thoughts on the wikinews
articles that they we'll be writing.
Some of us will be working on Wikinews articles about topics other
than sport. For example the Australian budget, and Toby's wonderful
work with the ABS data.
If you need help to access the freenode IRC channel #wikimedia-au,
please email this list or me, and we'll put you in touch with someone
who can help you get ready.
If anyone would like to try skype or google+ hangouts for the
workshop, sing out and we'll try to organise that as well.
The press conference audio can be found at
https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Talk:Australian_media_focuses_on_Olympic_prosp…
The photographs and other media can be found at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:ListFiles/Bidgeehttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:ListFiles/Tim_Collins
The wikinews articles being drafted are at
https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Bidgeehttps://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/LauraHale
--
John Vandenberg
Thanks to the commitment and logistical assistance of the Australian
Paralympic Committee, we have 17 people currently attending the
workshops and meetup.
Saturday afternoon: 1pm-5pm
The Saturday afternoon session will use a chapter of the written
history that UQ sports historian Murray Phillips is writing about the
"The History of the Paralympic Movement in Australia" (HOPAU) as the
basis for creating and expanding Wikipedia articles about the
Paralympic movement in Australia.
Murray’s outline of the chapter identifies the key topics that need to
be expanded on Wikipedia in order to complement the development of the
written history.
In this session Murray will share what he has in mind, and
participants will be collaborating with him to flesh it out.
Wikipedians and the Paralympic community will identify which topics
the wiki folk should focus on for the next few months in order to be
able to work together with his research assistants.
The afternoon session will incorporate whiteboards and discussion
about the topics, investigating any potential notability/verifiability
issues related to these topics, and allocating topics to people who
would like to work on them.
At the conclusion of the session, we'll have a list of topics on the
wiki so that the online community can join the discussion and
collaboration.
Sunday morning: 10am-12am
The Sunday morning session will be more focused on content, with
participants working individually or in small groups. Participants
will be in the stacks, finding resources, scanning, and writing
articles.
In both sessions APC staff, Murray Phillips and related UQ
staff/students will be working together with Wikipedians to learn how
to edit Wikipedia.
The Wikimedia Australia resolutions regarding this workshops can be found at
http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Resolution:HOPAU_Workshop_May_2012
On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 3:38 PM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> The HOPAU project is holding a workshop on Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 May.
>
> There will be about 10 people from interstate attending, including
> Graham (Perth) and Hawkeye (Canberra).
>
> If you are in South East Queensland and would like to help, please let
> us know via email or add your name here:
>
> https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/The_History_of_the_Paralympic_Movement_in_A…
>
> With the HOPAU team in town, a meetup is being organised for the
> Saturday evening. If you can only make it to the social event, feel
> free to add your name here:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Brisbane/5
>
> --
> John Vandenberg
--
John Vandenberg
Greetings Wikimedia Australia,
my name is Daniel, i am an ops engineer contractor at WMF and a guy
who does some statistics about Mediawiki installations.
(http://wikistats.wmflabs.org/)
While compiling statistics we noticed that there are quite a few
chapters wiki running on old mediawiki versions, so we decided
to start a little "upgrading campaign".
In the case of Wikimedia Australia it currently is: MediaWiki 1.18.1
http://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Special:Version
while WMF wikis are currently on 1.20wmf2.
Can we do anything to help you upgrading to a more recent Mediawiki
versions? Please feel free to tell us about any issues you might have
with upgrading or how
it could be made easier.
Best regards,
Daniel
P.S. wanna put "Wikimedia Australia" into the "description" field of
this mailing list? Would be easier to find on the listinfo page.
--
--
Daniel Zahn <dzahn(a)wikimedia.org>