Wikimediauk-l February 2011

wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org

28 participants
20 discussions

Picture This, a hack project about image metadata
by Tom Morris 17 Feb '11

17 Feb '11

I'm at the Dev8D conference today: it has programmers, hackers and others from the academic sector working together on all sorts of projects. On Tuesday, they had an event as part of it called Picture This: http://wiki.2011.dev8d.org/w/Picture_This (Yes, it's a MediaWiki.) It's a project to help universities improve and manage collections of image metadata. This may be of interest for developers and outreach people. Wikimedia *does* have that collection of 8 million freely licensed images and experience of managing large quantities of user-created metadata after all. ;-) When universities talk of having CDs full of images, that sounds like a potential outreach opportunity. Universities should be able to learn procedures for posting on Commons, avoiding copyvios and so on. Plus reuse on WP is an obvious educational benefit for such images. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> Please don't print this e-mail out unless you want a hard copy of it. If you do, go ahead. I won't stop you.

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Re: [Wikimediauk-l] OTRS
by Deryck Chan 16 Feb '11

16 Feb '11

Wow so the article got deleted, then recreated? She seems to have a huge fan base. I don't think re-listing is a good idea at this point as it will almost certainly get deleted due to lack of sourcing rather than notability concerns, a result I don't want to see. I'll try to correct and source the article when I get more information... On Feb 8, 2011 3:03 AM, "michael west" <michawest(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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Cambridge meetup, 27 February
by Charles Matthews 14 Feb '11

14 Feb '11

The tenth Cambridge meetup will take place on 27 February, usual time and place except that on this occasion it is on a Sunday: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Cambridge_10 . We always welcome those travelling, so I hope the trains will not prove too bad. As ever, a site notice for the meetup would be most useful. Charles

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OTRS
by Deryck Chan 07 Feb '11

07 Feb '11

Hi everyone, Is there anyone on this list who works with en.wp OTRS? A college-mate of mine, who is a part-time professional actress and has an article, [[Lulu Popplewell]], talked to me today about big factual inaccuracies in her article. I told her to send all the amendments to me by e-mail because that's as far as I know how the process goes. Whom should I then forward the e-mail to, while I make the actual edits? Deryck [[User:Deryck Chan]]

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Could you lead Wikimedia UK to success?
by Andrew Turvey 07 Feb '11

07 Feb '11

>From our blog, http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/: Could you lead Wikimedia UK to success? Next year is set to be another big year of growth for Wikimedia UK: we have just raised over £500,000 in the Wikimedia Annual Fundraiser. Most of this money will support the technical side of Wikimedia through donations to the Foundation and the Toolserver. However, we also plan to use the funds to recruit four more members of staff. These staff will mean we can scale up our activities, enable more activity by volunteers and professionalise the chapter. Our own developer, events organiser, a full time office manager and a chapter manager pulling everything together will no doubt transform Wikimedia UK. However, a key factor in our success will still be the board, which will continue to lead the chapter and be made up of unpaid volunteers. It will continue to be elected by our members, ordinary Wikimedians who support our mission and want to make Wikipedia and free knowledge even more successful. Can you help lead the chapter to success in 2011 by standing for election as a board member? If so, you’re warmly invited to join us on Saturday 5th February from 5pm where you can find out more about what is involved in being a board member and have an opportunity to ask any questions and meet other interested people. This “board interest day” will take place in central London (venue to be confirmed). If you are interested please drop me a line to chair @ wikimedia.org.uk to reserve your place. You can also give me a ring on 07403 216 991 if you would like to discuss further. Look forward to hearing from you! Andrew Turvey Chair, Wikimedia UK

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Imperial College Recruitment Drive
by David Gerard 07 Feb '11

07 Feb '11

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CONTRIB/Imperial Date and time: Wednesday 9th February 2011 - 12:30pm Location: Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ Just saw the page. Win! Who will be there? - d.

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Helping with museum signs
by geni 05 Feb '11

05 Feb '11

I was recently in the Portsmouth natural history museum (or as the natives call it Cumberland House). When I was there I saw this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/58992329@N03/5406060116/ If you look at the text in the right column (may need to view image at full size) you will find that it is not only dated (it's treating 1982 as recent) but is treating the [[Almas (cryptozoology)]] thing seriously. The museum doesn't really have any money so this isn't something that is likely to be fixed by them any time soon. I think offering to replace it with wikipedia based text along the lines of say [[User:Geni/museum_sign]] would fall within 7-8 of: http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Business_Plan#Mission_and_Objectives I don't know how much doing such a replacement would cost but I would be surprised if it passed the limit of our micro grant program. Wikimedia-UK would need to be involved to cover use of the logo and the like. ==Advantages== *Museum gets a better sign *New way to spread wikipedia content *Gives us the chance to produce a real world example of the type of signs we would like to see (QR code and the like) *Helps draw attention to gaps in Wikipedia (in this case it failed to mention how much Neanderthals weigh) *It may get us some good will with the Portsmouth museum service which since they hold one of the larger collections of ship paintings could be kinda handy *May get us some new editors who are interested in working on such signs. *It's a concrete real world activity that we can point to as an example of what we are doing. ==Disadvantages== *Might be more expensive than expected *Images are an issue in this case (need to check copyright status of http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Homo_neanderthalensis_models ) *Scale we can do this on is limited both financially and finding people to write such signs ==Neutral== *They might say no -- geni

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Fwd: [Internal-l] Wiki Loves Monuments 2011 - Europe?
by Michael Peel 04 Feb '11

04 Feb '11

Forwarding with permission of the sender. I'm very eager to see the UK and Ireland participate in this if possible, but from my experience of running Britain Loves Wikipedia I'm very aware that this needs a team of people running it rather than just one person. So: is anyone interested in leading/helping with this project? Thanks, Mike Begin forwarded message: > From: Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org> > Date: 14 December 2010 20:20:15 GMT > To: "Local Chapters, board and officers coordination (closed subscription)" <internal-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> > Subject: [Internal-l] Wiki Loves Monuments 2011 - Europe? > Reply-To: "Local Chapters, board and officers coordination \(closed subscription\)" <internal-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> > > Summary of this email (sorry for long text): We did Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) 2010 in the Netherlands, we would like to do Wiki Loves Monuments again in 2011, but now in Europe. This is only possible when many chapters participate, therefore this e-mail. To be clear: this event will only happen on a European level if there is sufficient chapter participation to combine efforts. Please feel free to forward to whomever you find appropriate. > > You might have heard before about Wiki Loves Monuments 2010 in the Netherlands. It was a highly successful photo scavenger hunt with 12.500 submissions and over 250 participants[0]. We recently completed a post mortem of this event with a more extensive description and analysis [1]. However, there are still many monuments in the Netherlands which can be photographed, so we are considering another run for next year - but then in a European context. Below we will explain a bit how we got where we are, what we have in mind, and what you could expect. > > So how did this all start? At the Dutch Wikipedia we have the windmill project. One of the main goals was to get an article with an image for every windmill in the Netherlands. Lists were created of windmills per province and statistics were made on a regular basis to track progress. This approach worked very well and made it possible to tackle a big problem; All the windmills have an article now. > > Some volunteers, in cooperation with the chapter, managed to get a dataset of all "Rijksmonumenten" (Dutch national monuments - 60.000 buildings/objects with some historical or cultural relevance) from the "Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed" (Dutch national heritage organisation, RCE). This marked the birth of the "Rijksmonumenten" project. The project uses the lessons learned in the windmill project. The data from the RCE was converted into lists by location and put on the Dutch Wikipedia. The community started improving the lists by adding missing information or adding photo's. > > In June 2009 Wikimedia Nederland ran Wiki Loves Art /NL [2] : A photo scavenger hunt in more than 40 museums. Also quite successful (5.400 photos), but much more work intensive because you need to keep contacts with all the museums and usually museums are further away from people's homes than the nearest monuments. > > For 2010 we were looking for a nice topic for a photo competition. The "Rijksmonumenten" project was running very well so we decided to organize Wiki Loves Monuments to give this Wikipedia project a boost. > > So, what would a European WLM most likely look like? Let me give you an idea of what we are thinking of, changes are open for debate of course. Trying to incorporate the main lessons from last year in the Netherlands into a European model, we think it might work best if Wiki Loves Monuments is organized on a national level primarily, but with cooperations, shared resources and international prizes on a European level. The national contests do not have to be identical, but some consistency would be practical. We are not sure yet what countries would be most successful, but our initial hope would be EU chapter countries and Switzerland. > > Basically, Wiki Loves Monuments would run 1-30 September 2011, and participants would be allowed to submit photos of monuments which are part of the object list. This object list includes the address and ideally geo-coordinates of all monuments which are allowed to participate. In each participating country there would be some prizes available, to be awarded by a jury for that country. The top-X of each could be competing for European prizes. > > You can find more information on how WLM 2010 was organized on the post-mortem [1]. That also lines out in more detail how much work it would be, and what the positive impact could be. > > Most of the local work would be to get a database with the objects, create object lists from that (possibly Dutch volunteers could support you with that, they have the experience [3]) and get the community involved on that. You would need to get communications going, both external to the press (press releases etc) as to participants (have a clear website in your language(s) with explanation, rules etc), find a jury and prizes for them to award. We can help each other with example press releases, best practices, template and list examples and community motivation. > > So, what to do when you like this idea? Well, it would be good to first of all check with your collegues (at the board, other members, community) what they think of it. You probably need several people to run such a competition over time to some extent. Next step would be to do some analysis on your local situation: who would be good partners (who keeps the lists of monuments?) for you, how many monuments are there in your country, are they well spread? What information/photos are already available of it roughly? Are there community members involved in that kind of topic? Definitely read the post-mortem and some relevant links from there [1]. > > For the time being, we registered www.wikilovesmonuments.eu and are in touch with CARARE and Europeana (European cultural heritage organizations) - who seem to be interested in laying contacts with local cultural heritage organizations. Hopefully that helps them to realize the European context and impact this could have. The most important partner in each country would be the one that governs the database with all monuments, and could release that to you. This database/list is crucial for the success of such an event. > > Please inform us (ideally through internal-l) when you would be interested in joining in such European event, if there is enough enthusiasm, we will create a special (easy to join) mailing list to coordinate efforts to allow more volunteers to join in the discussions. We already took the liberty of discussing this with some other chapters, and are hopeful that it will actually get to a first grand chapter cooperation program. Of course this does not mean you are bound, but that you think you would like to participate. You can also join #wikilovesmonuments on freenode irc of course if you like. > > With kind regards, > > Maarten Dammers > Lodewijk Gelauff > > [0]: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments > [1]: > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments/post_mortem > [2]:http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Art_Netherlands > [3]: > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments/template_sys… > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Internal-l mailing list > Internal-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/internal-l

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Advice on approaching schools and churches about photography for Commons
by Tom Morris 04 Feb '11

04 Feb '11

Hi all, Sort of related to GLAM outreach, but I'm thinking schools, churches and other historical institutions. I'm thinking about approaching a local school about getting photographs of an ancient hall on the site of the school. There may be an out-of-copyright drawing or image of it, or they may have photographs they wouldn't mind publishing on Commons, or I'd be happy to go and photograph the hall myself. I don't want to be intrusive or waste people's time including my own. Has anyone done this kind of thing successfully? Should one mention that it is for Wikipedia, and should one mention being a signed-up Wikimedia UK member? Is there any suggestion of including contact details for Wikimedia UK so they can contact someone 'official' to confirm I'm not just some random nutter. Anyone interested in sharing their advice (perhaps it could go on a project page on either WP or Commons or just on a page on the UK chapter wiki). As with GLAM, I think people in education and in rural churches (etc.) could potentially be motivated to contribute to Wikipedia -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> Please don't print this e-mail out unless you want a hard copy of it. If you do, go ahead. I won't stop you.

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Fwd: BBC "5 Live Investigates"
by David Gerard 01 Feb '11

01 Feb '11

Books, LLC. respond. They say they included Wikipedia URLs on their pages, but Amazon removed them. - d. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Andrew <andrew(a)booksllc.net> Date: 1 February 2011 23:29 Subject: BBC "5 Live Investigates" To: dgerard(a)gmail.com, slimvirgin(a)gmail.com, geniice(a)gmail.com, thewub.wiki(a)gmail.com Hi David Gerard, I totally understand your concern about Wikipedia getting proper credit on wiki books! And I understand how annoying it is when that doesn’t happen. What Charlotte was investigating, as I understand it, was why Amazon in the UK had dropped the wiki book descriptions we (Books LLC) provide them with. Those descriptions credit Wikipedia as the source, include an excerpt of one of the Wikipedia articles, a URL to read the full article at Wikipedia, and the titles of other Wikipedia articles in the book (space permitting). The book itself credits Wikipedia on the publisher’s page, the introduction and at the end of every article. I agree with you that readers have a right to that information. Hopefully, with our continued pleading Amazon UK will provide it. While Amazon didn’t explained why they dropped the Wikipedia credits, they did say that they don’t allow URLs in book descriptions. I guess they don’t want their customers leaving Amazon and going to Wikipedia. If you have any questions or suggestions, please do let me know. I will be happy to help in anyway I can. Kind Regards, Andrew Williams Public Relations Manager Books LLC BBC "5 Live Investigates" on Books LLC, Sunday night 9pm UTC Remove Highlighting ________________________________________ [.To WMUK-l for local interest, and foundation-l as the issue's been discussed there at length.] Just spoke to a researcher, Charlotte something, for BBC 5 Live Investigates, Sunday 9pm, this item likely to go out 9:45pm or so. This was just for her research, it wasn't a recorded piece. The piece is on Books LLC and similar operations, which sell reprints of Wikipedia articles as books on Amazon. She was after the Wikipedian viewpoint. I said that it's entirely legal - that you can use our stuff without permission, even commercially, and we like that - "Please, use our stuff!" - you just have to give credit and let other people reuse your version: "share and share alike." So the only issue is that it isn't clear enough these books are just Wikipedia reprints. For us, the annoyance - I said that "annoyance" is probably the word - is when a Wikipedian finds one of these books, goes "aha, a source!", buys it and ... discovers it's just reprints of stuff they have. "While trademark is an issue, we'd like them or Amazon to make it a *bit* clearer that these texts are Wikipedia reprints." She wasn't clear on the business model. I said these are print-on-demand books, where *no* copies exist until someone orders one, at which point a single copy is printed and sent. POD is *very good* these days - you can send a PDF to a machine, and the machine will produce an *absolutely beautiful* perfect-bound book for you, which previously would have been quite pricey. This is enough for them to have a tiny, tiny niche. I also pointed out that anyone can make their own PDFs of Wikipedia articles and some of the projects have partnerships with outside companies to do nice printed books of Wikipedia reprints. But in such cases, everyone is very clear on what they're getting: a nice printed physical copy of content they already have for free on the web. I tried to answer very descriptively, as I can't speak *for* 160,000 people, but there's been enough foundation-l and related discussion to get an idea of what people think. My apologies if I missed bits, this was off the top of my head without referring to nuances of discussion :-) - d. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l [at] lists Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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Wikimediauk-l February 2011