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
>
On 27/07/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly(a)pobox.com> wrote:
> Who is Murdo MacLeod?
> >>Nowadays he writes for the Daily Record
> >>as well as commentating football for BBC Scotland.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murdo_MacLeod
I'm not sure it's the same one - this one is a general journalist, not
just sports, and I'd be amazed if a journalist could work for both the
Daily Record and the Scotsman ...
- d.
I just got a call from Murdo Macleod from Scotland On Sunday. He
wanted to ask about semiprotection, and specifically if there was
anything Scottish protected or semiprotected on en:.
I pointed him to [[Category:Semi-protected]]. There was nothing
Scottish in semi-protected, but it gave him a good overview of what's
contentious - i.e., really famous people with the power to upset lots
of people at once (e.g. [[George W. Bush]], [[Tony Blair]]) or obscure
areas with overactive partisans (e.g. [[Neuro-linguistic
programming]]).
He said he was impressed at how quickly the [[Fred Trueman]] article
updated when Trueman died recently; I referred him to the [[Kenneth
Lay]] piece from Reuters (how the article changed right after Ken Lay
died) as a good overview of how Wikipedia actually works in these
cases.
He also asked about libelous material and how we deal with it. I
explained how the living bio policy is supposed to work (that someone
might be minorly notable enough to get an article, but contentious
stuff should only be mentioned if it's directly relevant) and that in
extreme cases (e.g. privacy invasion) we could remove stuff entirely
from view, but it had to be pretty extreme.
I also showed him [[Portal:Scotland]], he seemed quite impressed by
it. (It's a very nice portal page.) I mentioned how we were setting up
Wikimedia UK to help further coverage of British-related content in
Wikipedia.
I said people looking at contentious stuff should check the history
and discussion tabs. I stressed my current soundbite: "We're far from
perfect, but we're good enough to be useful."
All this may or may not lead to a story, he needs a Scottish hook to
do a story, and there's not really a Scottish semiprotection story to
tell. But perhaps he'll see something nice on the portal!
- d.
Just sent.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
Date: 25-Jul-2006 18:35
Subject: Wikipedia, Scotland and semi-protected articles
To: Murdo Macleod
I just remembered the article on Jordanhill Railway Station in Glasgow
- an utterly unremarkable train platform in suburban Glasgow, but
someone wrote an article about it that just happened to be the one
millionth article in the English Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordanhill_railway_station
If you look at the original version -
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jordanhill_railway_station&oldid=…
- you can see just how much detail can be written about something when
it comes to everyone's attention ;-)
That article was semi-protected for a while, around March 2-3, because
of the incredible numbers of people coming to see article 1,000,000
and of course it got some vandalism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Jordanhill_railw…
It was semiprotected for the usual reason, i.e. lots of attention
leading to people putting rubbish in. It was unprotected as soon as
was feasible.
I don't know if that's contentious enough, but it is a recent example
of local interest :-)
- thanks, David.
> All this may or may not lead to a story, he needs a Scottish hook to
> do a story, and there's not really a Scottish semiprotection story to
> tell.
Resist the temptation to start an edit war on [[Jack McConnell]] ;-)
Before I was an admin, I did request semi-protection on [[Nil by Mouth
(charity)]], about a Glasgow-based organisation. The vandalism eased off
a bit so it wasn't semi-protected in the end, but it still gets
vandalised several times a month. It's probably not something to draw
attention to, though, as it was publicity for the charity that I think
brought in the first big rush of vandalism.
Will
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On 7/10/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly(a)pobox.com> wrote:
>
>
> When is the next UK wikimeet?
>
> Gordo
>
Thanks Gordon,
It occurs to me that we need to have an AGM at some stage, in which we
will have to elect a (non-temporary) board of directors (same-as-now
if desired). When will this be? Is there a need for anything in place
before this happens?
This reminds me of another question I had: what's the current update
on our bid for charity status? Has this happened? What can a volunteer
do, if it hasn't?
Another occurrence: Wikimania is coming up next month. Some of us will
be there (myself included) and I know that some committees/chapters
will be using that opportunity to hold non-online meetings about their
business. It would definitely be an idea to mull over such things
informally, possibly even start organising things like projects.. So,
who amongst us will be at Wikimania?
And on projects: are there any initiatives that anyone wants to get
going, or would like to see going? Meta pages have hit a stagnancy,
sadly - this one could do with one of its regular revivals:
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Possible_projects_of_Wikimedia_UK>.
Any other ideas floating around? Want to bring them down to earth?
Looking forward to replies..
Cormac
This is slightly off topic, but is still relevant to what we're trying
to do so I thought I'd bring it to your attention.
A free, open, MediaWiki-based, ad-free, GFDL-licensed wiki called
Yellowikis is being sued (or something similar) by Yell Group because
they claim copyright over the colour yellow
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5169674.stm). Despite "yellow
pages" being a fairly common word throughout the world outside Yell's
Yellow Pages, they feel they have a case. The site is run by a
not-for-profit organisation based in the UK (a father/daughter joint
project). The site, on its Community Portal, states that "Wikipedia is
our inspiration and our spiritual parent." The similarities between
what they're trying to achieve and what we're trying to achieve seem
fairly obvious.
Anyway, I just thought I'd better raise your awareness to this.
--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)