May I give you some news on the wiki encyclopedias for children:
I have let you know nearly one year ago about the launching of Vikidia
in English[1]:
Vikidia in English now has 1,445 articles and 32 active users. the
advantage in English is that we can pick up, choose, adapt and select
some existing material, especially from Simple English Wikipedia, and
from Wikijunior. Some of the first users on en.vikidia.org also come
from other Vikidia language and it even gather some Dutch teenager from
Wikikids.nl.
Vikidia was first launched in French and there is a similarly developed
counterpart in Dutch : http://wikikids.nl/ . these wikis are 8 and 9
years old now.
Vikidia in French has now more than one million unique visitors a month,
with a yearly growth of audience of nearly 40 %.
It's not a Wikimedia project, yet it is supported by Wikimédia France
that now funds our hosting costs.
Another wiki encyclopedia for children was recently launched in German,
and is supported by Wikimedia Germany. See some English explanation on
it here: [2].
There is some quite significant differences between the way each wiki's
aims, rules and functioning are designed, which we had the opportunity
to discuss between one and another teams/founders.
The guestbook on fr.vikidia show that this resource is really
appreciated by children (and even older peoples), and that there is a
need for such a wiki beside Wikipedia ([3] [4]).
Yet nothing can be done but with a significant community, that's why
your support (as individual people so as an organisation) really matter !
klexikon.de, which claim to be a content - rather than an educational -
wiki for children, directs a great part of its efforts (this is most of
the Wikimedia Germany support) on organizing meeting and workshop for
wannabe editors (teachers or other - mainly - adults). What about
Wikimedia UK supporting something similar? Yet it would demand some
peoples to undertake it... One can also begin with one (or some) blog
post about this project ?
[1]
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/vikidia-in-english-opens-today-lets-build-a-childr…
[2]
https://zikoblog.wordpress.com/2014/12/23/a-new-wiki-klexikon-the-free-ency…
[3] https://fr.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Livre_d%27or
[4] see also
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=wikibooks%2C%20wikiversity%2C%20viki…
--
Mathias Damour
49 rue Carnot
F-74000 Annecy
00 (33) 4 57 09 10 56
00 (33) 6 27 13 65 51
https://fr.vikidia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Astirmays
mathias.damour(a)laposte.net
Hello everyone,
Waterloo 200 <http://www.nam.ac.uk/waterloo200/> are keen to have an
editathon about the battle of Waterloo. I'm looking for a volunteer who
would like to take the lead on arranging the editathon and talking to
Waterloo 200 about what they have in mind. Email me if you're interested.
Regards,
Richard Nevell
--
Richard Nevell
Project Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
+44 (0) 20 7065 0937
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered
Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT.
United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia
movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who
operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
*Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control
over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.*
I witnessed a fascinating presentation, this morning, on a project
which has digitised the first map of London at building level, and
overlays it with data from other sources:
http://www.romanticlondon.org/
The data sets are freely available, but the British Library claims
copyright over the map images - I'm sure some of you will have your
own views about this.
I shall notify the project's creator, Dr Matthew Sangster, about this
post. He would be a good speaker for a future GLAM conference.
--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
Hi all,
I've just discovered that this week is 'Get Online Week', see:
http://getonlineweek.com/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Online_Week
It's too late for this week, but for next year perhaps we should think about offering some sort of 'intro to Wikipedia' courses? Probably more 'how to read' rather than 'how to edit', given the target group here.
Thanks,
Mike
I'm still getting server security certificate errors from the WMUK
website (most recently on donate.wikimedia.org.uk); I'm using Firefox
under Windows 8.1.
How else can I renew my membership?
--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
Hi Wiki-Britons,
I'd like to let you know about the global campaign of 'Women in
Architecture' editathons that we are planning with the Guggenheim for
October:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Women_in_Architecture
We've had interest in hosting from someone at the Architectural Association
School of Architecture (AA) in London:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architectural_Association_School_of_Architect…
Would some London volunteers here be able to attend/help at such an event,
if the AA people would take the lead in physically organizing it?
Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)
Hi all,
I think there is what we do and what we imagine we do. Although the propaganda
is that editathons are there to develop new editors, in fact they are very poor
at this with somewhere around a 5% success level. This is something Wikimedia UK
has known for several years, yet we have continued to run these even though they
fail at their stated aim.
However, I do believe that a few hours involved with volunteer trainers does
help people understand better what goes on when people edit, what kind of people
are Wikimedians and what Wikimedians see as key issues. This I feel this does
encourage the sort of critical thinking Tom is talking about. And yes, a handful
of people do actually end up as editors.
It is quite clear that if we want to train up editors then what is needed is
regular (probably weekly) training events at which people can build their
skills, carry out "homework" between sessions and perhaps be given an assessment
if they are up for it.
We have evolved as a community of enthusiasts (OK, nerds) who are used to
acquiring skills on the fly, and through interacting with other we have been
able to convince ourselves that this is easy for everyone. As a consequence we
have undervalued the skillsets we have developed and undersold them. WP editing
is a form of coding with a strong socially interactive element.
I tend to agree with Jonathan, having been involved with delivering training to
entry level computing/web literacy both with youngsters and silver surfers.
There are various ways that wikimedians can get involved with "introducing
people to the internet" through volunteering with local community organisations
including the local library. I do not see the advantages of a national
organisation like Wikimedia UK getting involved in this. We havesuccessfully
attracted a readership without this sort of intervention.
I feel that teaching people how to use Wikipedia is a bit like teaching people
how to use a hammer at a handyperson training session: people want to learn how
to fix things and can more easily develop skills using particular tools in that
context, than learning about individual tools as descrete items.
I would dearly love to see the sort of critical thinking Tom discusses being
delivered at pre-university school level. Having seen how Wikipedia is used in
universities to teach internet research skills, I feel we only really started to
explore this potentially very interesting area before we went through the
restructuring, and I am interested to see how this might be further developed
inn the context of the new structure.
No doubt the minutes from the Board Meeting of 12 September
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Agenda_2015-09-12> will be published soon, and
we shall learn about the "Election of officers and appointments to board
committees"
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Agenda_2015-09-12#Board_matters_.2811.15.29> ,
and also whether the staff recommendation for "a single
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Reports_2015-09-12#Volunteers_strategy_day_fo…>
'partnership' advisory board"
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Reports_2015-09-12#Volunteers_strategy_day_fo…>
has been accepted and consequently the GLAM and Education committees scrapped.
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Reports_2015-09-12#Volunteers_strategy_day_fo…>
Personally as a long term volunteer on the Education Committee this would strike
me as a somewhat odd way of making the organisation more responsive to volunteer
in put, and would remove the opportunity to have the sort of detailed discussion
in a more suitable environment than on this list.
all the best
Fabian
aka Leutha
> On 13 October 2015 at 14:01 Thomas Morton <morton.thomas(a)googlemail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Getting people to understand how to interact with Wikipedia *properly* as a
> reader has always struck me as the most important thing. Because people
> sometimes don't apply the sort of critical thinking needed. An encyclopaedia
> is nothing if it's content is not *useful*.
>
> For this reason (and I feel it is often overlooked in favour of encouraging
> interest groups to engage and edit, a worthy goal) I've always thought that we
> should spend a lot more time engaging with readers. Because that's an easier
> step. And from a large pool of great, critical thinking, readers will come the
> casual and committed editors needed to grow the corpus.
>
> Tom
>
> On Tue, 13 Oct 2015 at 13:55 Nick Poole < Nick.Poole(a)cilip.org.uk
> <mailto:Nick.Poole@cilip.org.uk> > wrote:
> > >
> > Hi all,
> >
> >
> >
> > I am following this thread with interest. A lot of libraries are doing
> > interesting things around Get Online week, and I think it’s worth thinking
> > less in terms of people editing Wikipedia and more in terms of using it.
> >
> >
> >
> > Obviously, edits is a metric, but I note in Martha Lane Fox’s
> > dot.everyone initiative that they talk as much about giving people reasons
> > to go online as they do giving them the skills to create web content.
> >
> >
> >
> > I think that it would be worth thinking about partnering up with the
> > library network on ‘Introduction to Wikipedia’ sessions telling people about
> > the scope, how to search etc. Ideally this would serve as an on-ramp for
> > people wanting to become editors further down the line!
> >
> >
> >
> > All best, and happy to discuss further.
> >
> >
> >
> > Nick Poole
> >
> > Chief Executive
> >
> > Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP)
> >
> >
> >
> > From: Wikimediauk-l [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org
> > <mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org> ] On Behalf Of
> > WereSpielChequers
> > Sent: 13 October 2015 13:49
> > To: UK Wikimedia mailing list
> > Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Get Online Week
> >
> >
> >
> > Dear Mike,
> >
> > I think the target group is significant here. My suspicion is that
> > editing Wikipedia is not an entry level computer task. I have twice trained
> > non computer users at editathons I was helping at, on one occasion I spent
> > an inordinate amount of time teaching someone how to use a mouse. My
> > preference is that we leave "introducing people to the internet" to people
> > who are experienced at that sort of training, and we focus more on cross
> > training existing wikimedians and on those who are willing to help Wikipedia
> > or at least want to fill one of our gaps.
> >
> > Jonathan
> >
> >
> >
> > On 12 October 2015 at 18:39, Michael Peel <email(a)mikepeel.net
> > <mailto:email@mikepeel.net> > wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I've just discovered that this week is 'Get Online Week', see:
> > http://getonlineweek.com/
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Online_Week
> >
> > It's too late for this week, but for next year perhaps we should think
> > about offering some sort of 'intro to Wikipedia' courses? Probably more 'how
> > to read' rather than 'how to edit', given the target group here.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Mike
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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>
>
> THOMAS MORTON
>
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>
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