Hi all,
The 49th London Wikimeet will take place on Sunday 11th September:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/London/49
We're hoping that the finalist candidates for the position of Wikimedia UK's chief exec will be able to attend this wikimeet, although this is still to be confirmed. This will follow from the first stage of interviews on 1-2 September and the second (and final) set of interviews on 9th September. We'll be making the final decision on who to appoint to the position a few days after the wikimeet - and your views of the candidates at the wikimeet will be particularly important in making this decision.
In order to enable non-London wikimedians to attend this wikimeet and meet the candidates, WMUK is offering to cover travel costs to get to the wikimeet for up to 6 non-London wikimedians. To apply to have your travel costs covered, please send me an email by the 9th September, giving a brief rationale for why we should support your attendance (focusing on the presence of the future chief exec and questions you would like to ask them, the development of future wikimeets, or similar), and an estimation of your travel costs. Please note that we can't support attendance without prior approval by email.
Thanks,
Mike
Hi all
Right, I'm not going to bore you with the long back story of this, but I
was reading about the recently announced New Orleans hackathon, and as I
normally do when I can't get to an event because its abroad or whatever,
I go onto IRC and do my normal whiney thing (which I really hate myself
for). But anyway, I got talking with 'sumanah, who is the Volunteer
Development Coordinator at the Wikimedia Foundation (I guess that makes
hackathons and stuff part of her job), but she suggested that if I can't
get to these, why don't I organise my own...
So anyway, then we got talking about some stuff, and we decided that it
would be best, especially for my first event not necessarily worry about
international developers and participants as much, and that I should
focus the event locally.
A few of the main hurdles with me not being able to get to the other
hackathons are that my age, I'm 14 (15 in early September), so it makes
finding a simple flight or whatever harder to find (because my parents
don't have passports, and would not be able to afford coming with me, or
finding something else to do), and cash to pay for hotel room and travel
is also a problem. These problems also kind of apply to me running a
hackathon, and a few solutions that came up were that 1, I hold it
somewhere in Brighton, or somewhere rather close, and 2, that I contact
my local chapter (if memberships a problem for no chapter support, I'll
get the application in for the next meeting).
And basicly I need to know,
* How many of you would be interested in coming to a MediaWiki
Hackathon, will be before Christmas this year, which would last a
day or two, depending on the level of support and interest we get.
There may be an opportunity for a chapter/GLAM/board meetup
depending on time/venue/interest, but I still need to find out the
relevant information before that can be arranged fully. I plan to
cross post an announcement to
* What support I can get from the chapter, I don't have a lot of
money, and I don't get a lot either, if anything, how much would
the chapter be willing to put into this event.
* Would anyone interested be willing to pay a small fee to attend,
like £5/10 a day? This has yet to be decided but it would help
especially if the chapter doesn't have much money it can spare...
* How many MediaWiki developers, toolserver users (not toolserver
tools users, but people that have their own tools/bots on
toolserver) do we have here, because I personally don't know of
that many, but it'd be nice if we could have some kind of workshop
thing or mentoring program, because if we don't have a few, we're
going to have a lot of bored people sitting in a room for a couple
of days. I've spoken to a few of the other developers in
#mediawiki, and I know one or two people that have said they would
be happy to travel into the UK if I can get one organised and run
by Christmas...
* Deputy Event manager like person. As I've said, I'll be 15 when
this happens, and I'm not comfortable running this by myself, or
booking stuff in my name... or being the emergency contact on the
time of the event, mainly because I'm a stupidly heavy sleeper. I
am happy, however to go to the event, do some speaking, go
shopping or order shopping for snacks, work out transport routes
and stuff, and I'll go along with someone to visit the venue if
need be...
Oh yeah, and if anyone doesn't know what a hackathon is, I've probably
left it a bit late to explain, but its a meetup with a few talks and a
lot of coding and bug fixing (and for this one, specifically MediaWiki
related tools (so toolserver, pybot etc as well)).
Hope I haven't forgotten anything,
-- Lewis Cawte
Hi all,
I'm pleased to announce to you the first Backstage Pass at the Herbert Art
Gallery and Museum, Coventry. It will be held on October 1 and will offer
tours exploring many normally-unseen parts of the museum including the
Coventry History Centre and archives, off-site stores and the medieval
undercroft. (See the link below, for more information.) If you're an editor
of any Wikimedia projects, want to become one or are interested in the idea
of sharing knowledge, this is for you.
Saturday, 1 October 2011
10:00am - 4:30am
Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry
Following a welcome from the museum staff and Wikipedian organisers,
Curators and staff will lead exclusive tours of the stores, galleries and
History Centre archives, including introductions to the medieval and
industrial history of Coventry. A free buffet lunch will be provided at the
museum, paid for by Wikimedia UK.
In the afternoon, there will be two more sets of parallel tours before we
settle down for editing. Curators will work with groups of Wikipedians to
create articles and improve content and new Wikipedians will be immersed in
the world of Wikipedia, working in small groups with experienced editors,
learning how to edit whilst making contributions.
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Backstage_Pass
Due to the size of the rooms available, places will have to be limited.
Booking will be on a first come, first served basis so book early to avoid
disappointment. ;-)
Hope to see you there,
Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry
Dear Sir or Madam:
Could someone take pictures of coal balls (http://enwp.org/coal_ball) and
upload it to Commons? The one I have uploaded on the article is {{OTRS
pending}} and I still haven't gotten a concise reply from the copyright
holder.
I think they can be found at a museum
Thanks in advance,
User:SigmaWP
Hi all,
Wikimedia UK is pleased to announce that we are offering two full scholarships to enable UK researchers to attend WikiSym this year. You can find the full information, and details of how to apply, at:
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiSym_Scholarships
Please let me know if you have any questions, and please feel free to pass this on to anyone you think might be interested.
Thanks,
Mike
Hi,
The Chapter has had recent grant requests of the following sorts:
* A request to scan and release papers from a notable person's estate
after their death, the papers have not previously been in the public
domain.
* A suggested volunteer project with Wikipedians to scan several
thousand major items of significant artwork and records that can be
released for the first time into the public domain.
* A suggested project to pay institution professionals to scan several
thousand major items of significant artwork and records that can be
released for the first time into the public domain.
* A proposal to jointly fund an institution to pay for digitization of
hundreds of thousands of previously unreleased historic papers where
there are no copyright implications.
In the light of the British Library's recent agreement with Google
Books to partner with them to scan and release a vast number of "old"
books on Google's well known system, I remain uncertain about whether
digitization for larger projects is the best use of WM-UK funds. These
are all good projects that push forward our mission of opening up
knowledge for maximum possible public access, however it can also be
argued that such projects may be far more effectively managed by a
specialist partner (such as Google or established academic
institutions and charities with specialist skills and equipment).
I welcome any feedback on how well these projects fulfil our mission
and how often our funds ought to be invested in these projects
compared to other projects which may have greater impact for new user
outreach or wider "e-volunteer" engagement.
Cheers,
Fae
--
http://enwp.org/user_talk:fae
Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/faetags
Hi all,
Can you help brainstorm about what WMUK's audiences are, and what the best ways of reaching them might be?
I've started a page at:
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Audiences
with some initial ideas, based on what we've done in the last few years - please edit this page in traditional Wikimedia fashion. :-)
The context for this is that the WMUK board will be putting together an outline 2012-13 budget in the next month or so, and having input into the sort of things we should be funding next year would be incredibly useful for that budget.
Thanks,
Mike
If people on-wiki are being snitty, I'd recommend going straight to
OTRS, Via them the charity can point out relevant links to counter any
undue weight as-opposed to trying to remove content.
It does carry a lot more weight if OTRS volunteers bring up legitimate
new sources on the talk and ask these incorporated to eliminate any
bias.
Brian McNeil
--
Wikinews, Accredited Reporter. Personal: brian.mcneil(a)o2.co.uk
"Facts don't cease to be facts, but news ceases to be news."
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Charity outreach favour
> From: Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, August 12, 2011 4:58 pm
> To: wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
>
> If you don't find any luck here, OTRS are good at this kind of thing.
>
> On 12 August 2011 17:39, Chris Keating <chriskeatingwiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> > A charity I know is trying to update its wikipedia entry to deal with what
> > they see as a case of WP:UNDUE, and finding they are getting snapped at
> > on-wiki.
> > I was wondering if someone might be prepared to help them find appropriate
> > ways of improving the article.
> > I would offer myself if the charity concerned wasn't my employer ;-)
> > If you can help, please drop me a line.
> > Chris
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikimedia UK mailing list
> > wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
> > WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia UK mailing list
> wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
> WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Hello,
A charity I know is trying to update its wikipedia entry to deal with what
they see as a case of WP:UNDUE, and finding they are getting snapped at
on-wiki.
I was wondering if someone might be prepared to help them find appropriate
ways of improving the article.
I would offer myself if the charity concerned wasn't my employer ;-)
If you can help, please drop me a line.
Chris