Hi,
Personally I think there should be a bid. Going for the Queen Mary
solution may make a lot of sense as much of the preparation has
already been done and we could concentrate on improvements on the
previous attempt. However, before we settle on the location we should
probably consider why East London was not attractive last time around
and decide if these problems (whatever they were) could be overcome.
I also think we should be careful not to let a wikimania bid get in
the way of the charity registration and setting up the UK chapter.
While the chapter could lend support to the bid, I think it would be
good to have it lead from outside the board. I would be very happy for
Gordon to take the lead on this.
Cheers,
Andrew
On 4/4/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly(a)pobox.com> wrote:
>
> Shall we consider a bid?
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2007
>
> I am happy to take the East London bid based on "Queen Mary,
> University of London" and carry the ideas forward.
>
> Gordon
>
>
> --
> gordon.joly(a)pobox.com
>
> Gordon Joly
> 116, Hind Grove
> London E14 6HP
> UK
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia UK mailing list
> wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_UK
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
>
> http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article1096343.ece
I'll write back a nice "thank you" note with a few minor factual
corrections between thank-you paragraphs. (Asking a journalist "what
are you on" rarely has the desired effect, much as one might feel like
it on occasion.)
[cc to wmuk list]
- d.
Lorna Martin from the Observer would like to speak to one or people in
the UK as soon as possible about why the Tony Blair article is
semi-protected for a possible story in that paper tomorrow. Please
contact her by email to lorna.martin(a)observer.co.uk or phone to
+441412042225.
Since the only phone numbers I could find for people in the UK were on
the internal wiki, I didn't give those out to her. I though there was
a public list somewhere, but I can't find that now? Are those numbers
supposed to be given out to journalists? Perhaps people could state on
the wiki whether or not their number can be given out and under what
circumstances?
Thanks.
Angela.
A friend of mine, Peter Hicks ("poggs"), went on a walk along the
planned route for the Northern Heights extensions to the Northern
Line:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Line#New_works_programme_1935.E2.80.9…
He got a pile of pictures. I asked if we could use them for Wikipedia,
and he's happy for them to be used as such:
http://poggs.livejournal.com/1081736.html <-- request
http://poggs.fotopic.net/c994317.html <-- pics
So if there are any of these that would be particularly nice as
article illustration - or if someone wants to write a fuller article
on the Northern Heights plan - do please pick out suitable pics from
the Fotopic page and ask Peter for camera originals to upload.
(Poggs, do you have a Wikimedia Commons account yourself? Also, what
license would you prefer the pics be under - GFDL, CC-by-sa, both,
PD?)
- d.
[to WM UK and comcom]
Just woken by a call from a Telegraph journalist, who got my number
off the front page of wikimedia.org.uk (so that's probably my first
direct call from that).
His main question was "were the Jimmy Wales quotes from the Chronicle
of Higher Education about not using Wikipedia as a reference true?" I
said I hadn't seen the quotes, but chatted for a while about how we do
strongly recommend against using Wikipedia - or any encyclopedia - as
a primary source at university/college level, so if Jimmy said that
then yes, that's our position. All encyclopedias are secondary
sources, ideally - we have a rule of "no original research", so we
certainly *shouldn't* be the primary source, even if an article is one
of the best available on the subject.
The other subject was explaining semi-protection. I said how the NYT
article was good, but got the semiprotection thing more or less
backwards - that it wasn't a lockdown, but it allowed us to open to
editing articles that had previously spent a lot of time locked, and
gave [[George W. Bush]] as the usual example. "It's always a balancing
act, but we try to keep things open because that's been the secret of
our success." I stressed that semi-protection means you have to have
been an editor for about four days, and that saved us from a lot of
drive-by idiocy.
I wasn't particularly coherent and didn't drop loads of quotable
quotes as I usually try to, but I hope I did OK at getting things
across :-)
Two factual questions:
* Is [[George W. Bush]] still the most edited article on en:wp, by a
factor of about five? What articles are second and third?
* Is it still about four days before a new user can edit a
semiprotected article on en:wp?
- d.
According to the MetaWiki website, I am the putative Company
Secretary for Wiki Educational Resources.
It is also states that I could be a Director/Trustee. On reflection,
I would prefer to be Company Secretary only, subject to approval, and
neither a Director nor a Member.
Regards,
Gordon Joly