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.
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.
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.