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
Hi all,
tl;dr summary: I'm planning to run a survey about wikimeets in the near future. Do you have any comments/suggestions on the draft? See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mike_Peel/Wikimeet_survey
At a recent meetup, a Wikipedian who was new to wikimeets pointed out that the event had the air of a gentleman's club about it. Looking around at the high-back comfy chairs, the Victorian-era interior decorations, the pints of real ale, and the mostly-male (and regular) attendees, I couldn't really disagree with their assessment. This started me thinking: are there better venues and times to hold meetups, or better ways of advertising/inviting people to planned meetups? What would make them more open and inviting to new editors, or the many long-term editors that have never attended a meetup?
As an experiment to try to improve the attendance and advertising of wikimeets in the North of England, a few months ago I posted messages on the talk pages of previous wikimeet attendees about the last Leeds and Manchester wikimeets, and the Liverpool wikimeet coming up this weekend. There was, unexpectedly, a pretty good response, with a number of people signing up to attend the wikimeets. I'm not sure whether it was a direct consequence or not, but we had a long-term editor attend the last Manchester wikimeet who hadn't previously attended a wikimeet. I couldn't attend the last Leeds wikimeet: was anyone there and able to say whether it made a difference or not? I'm hoping that the irregular wikimeet attendees who have signed up for the Liverpool meetup will be there!
It also started a longer conversation with Iridescent [1], which led to the idea of having some sort of a UK-wide notifications list. During that conversation, I started drafting a survey of past and potential wikimeet attendees with the aim of getting some quantified and actionable answers about how to improve wikimeets, and also improve communication about wikimeets. The latest draft of the survey is at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mike_Peel/Wikimeet_survey
Amongst other things, the survey draft asks about how people get to wikimeets; when and where wikimeets should be held; what activities should take place at wikimeets; and how notifications about an upcoming meetup would ideally be circulated.
I'm hoping to run this survey soon, so if you are interested in improving the survey questions then please send me an email or post on the talk page before the end of the month! In particular, if you currently organise (or regularly attend) wikimeets, then I'd greatly appreciate your input/feedback about the survey questions before it goes live. Ideally the survey would be run in association with WMUK, but given the recent turmoil I'm not sure if this will be possible, so I'll run it myself unless WMUK expresses an interest in helping out with it!
Thanks,
Mike
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Iridescent/Archive_17#Next_meetups_…
If anyone is still running outreach editathons to try and recruit new editors, you might want to consider using visual editor. I spoke to some of the WMF people at Wikimania and apparently the issue of it running very very slowly on old kit has recently been largely addressed. I've pointed out in the past that as long as that bug was a "won't fix" you couldn't promote Visual Editor at outreach editathons because even if all the laptops look pretty new, there could well be someone present using a borrowed laptop and intending to use an old PC at home. Since we really can't start an editathon asking the attendees if they all use new computers at home, and then reverting to the classic editor if someone says their machine was bought in 2010 I and several others have been ignoring the Visual Editor for the last couple of years.
I have just run a quick test on this myself using a friend's old PC and V/E does now work, though it is still a little slower than the classic editor.
Regards
Jonathan / WereSpielChequers
It is a little while ago now that I was asked, by Roberta Wedge, about the
"missing women" on the English Wikipedia, who are identified in the Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB). I'm glad to say that, with a
recent technical development I now have a list.
(Recent means "since this morning", by the way - thanks as ever to Magnus
Manske for his assiduous pushing of the tech support envelope for Wikidata.
The new tool PagePile tool at https://tools.wmflabs.org/pagepile/ filled
the final gap.)
So I can reveal a list of 2,345 women with their Wikidata IDs at
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Charles_Matthews/PagePile
This comes out as pile 188 for PagePile. If you look at the wikitext on my
page, the data is actually in two columns, Wikidata ID followed by name.
(This is tabbed data, though the first four or so tabs seemed not to come
out straight. Doubtless a teething problem.) It was a question of combining
two Wikidata queries with the new tool, which generally speaking handles
and combine lists in a clean way that wasn't previously available.
So much for the technical advance. A few comments on the content. These are
females with an OBIN (Oxford biographical identifier), rather than those
with an article to themselves. They are not automatically notable,
therefore. "Missing" is relative: Myra Hindley is on the list, but that is
because the name is a redirect on enWP.
Also, this list is not warranted complete, since we are aware of a couple
of percent of OBINs that do not yet have a Wikidata entry. Around 150 or
200 more names may have to be added, in the end.
All said, this is the first sight of realistic list, however, of the ODNB
missing women. Translation lists, such as those with existing articles on
the German or French Wikipedias, can easily be added.
Charles
Some of you may wish to comment on this draft, with regard to licensing,
copytheft, access for photography, etc.
A formal WikimediaUK response may also be advisable.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Rebecca Atkinson" <rebecca.atkinson(a)museumsassociation.org>
Date: Jul 28, 2015 10:10 AM
Subject: [MCG] The MA is seeking comments on draft Code of Ethics
To: <MCG(a)jiscmail.ac.uk>
Sent on behalf of Alistair Brown (with apologies for cross-posting):
The Museums Association has been working for over a year with museums
professionals, sector bodies, volunteers and other interested parties to
produce an updated Code of Ethics for the sector.
The last full update of the Code took place in 2002, while a partial update
on financially motivated disposal took place in 2007.
Following a year of consultation activities and events, the MA has recently
published a draft Code of Ethics for a further period of consultation with
the sector.
We welcome any comments on this by Friday 7th August via the MA website:
http://www.museumsassociation.org/forms/draft-code-of-ethics-consultation
Please do take the time to read the new code and offer constructive
feedback.
Many thanks,
Rebecca Atkinson
****************************************************************
website: http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ukmcg
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/museumscomputergroup
[un]subscribe: http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/email-list/
****************************************************************
The deadline for members' resolutions for this year's AGM is just a week
away on 26 June.
See https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/2015_Annual_General_Meeting/planning
It's generally a healthy sign when our AGM contains debate on issues of
interest and concern to members - and who better to raise those issues than
members themselves?
Proposing or seconding an ordinary resolution is not a difficult process
and I'd expect that the office will be helpful if anyone needs help with
the formalities.
AGMs can sometimes find themselves devoting sessions to merely fulfilling
formalities, and the session reserved for debating members' resolutions has
the potential to make the AGM more interesting for many.
Looking forward to seeing lots of you on 25 July.
--
Rexx
I am very pleased to announce that at our annual general meeting on
Saturday 25 July the members of Wikimedia UK elected three new trustees
to the board from a very strong slate of candidates.
Please join me in offering a very warm welcome to Doug Taylor, Nick
Poole and Josie Fraser.
Doug Taylor will be well known to many readers as a long-standing active
Wikimedia volunteer and Lead Trainer for WMUK. He previously served on
the board during 2012-13. Doug is a retired teacher and IT professional.
Nick Poole is the Chief Executive Officer of the Chartered Institute of
Library and Information Professionals. His previous roles include
serving as CEO of the Collections Trust and Chair of the Europeana
Network. He brings extensive knowledge of and influence in the
international GLAM community, and has strong connections to policymakers
and funders in the UK and Europe.
Josie Fraser has for the past five years worked in local government as
the strategic technology lead of one of the country's largest and most
accelerated school building programmes. She is an expert in the
relationship between education and technology and a vocal advocate for
free and open knowledge.
Existing trustees Greyham Dawes (treasurer) and myself (chair) were
re-elected.
Three trustees have stepped down from the board: Alastair McCapra, Saad
Choudri and Joseph Seddon. We thank them for their exceptional
expertise, commitment and diligence, and we wish them well for the future.
With these changes, the new board is as follows:
Michael Maggs (board chair, and chair of governance committee)
Simon Knight (vice chair)
Greyham Dawes (treasurer, governance committee, audit and risk committee)
Chris Keating (audit and risk committee)
Carol Campbell (chair of audit and risk committee)
Kate West (governance committee, audit and risk committee)
Gill Hamilton
Doug Taylor
Nick Poole
Josie Fraser
The new board will formally meet for the first time on Saturday 12
Septemberat the Bodleian Library, Oxford, where officer roles will be
reviewed.
Please join me in welcoming the new board.
Michael Maggs
Chair, Wikimedia UK
I won't be able to make the volunteer strategy meeting tomorrow, sadly. In
case anyone's interested, I've written another of my reflective essays,
this time about evaluation and metrics.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MartinPoulter/Tales_of_Evaluation
The questions I would have been taking to the event are:
1) When I want Wikimedia UK to support events like the Wikipedia Science
Conference in future, how much advance notice, planning etc. will be needed?
2) We've had situations where a charitable partner has come forward with a
hundred pounds, or a thousand pounds, and volunteer support, to make an
event happen at quite short notice, but we need a bit of staff time to
follow through. Will the project-based way of working present any barriers
to taking those opportunities?
Hopefully some written guides will come out of the day?
--
Dr Martin L Poulter
Wikipedia contributor http://enwp.org/User:MartinPoulter
Volunteer, Wikimedia UK http://wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MartinPoulter
<http://uk.wikimedia.org/>
Musician http://soundcloud.com/martin-poulterhttp://myspace.com/comapilot
Person http://infobomb.org/
I am hosting some editathons:
Thurs 28 May, Birmingham:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/Royal_Society_of_Chemistry/BH-…
at Birmingham Museums Collection centre (only rarely open to the
public!). We'll enjoy a 'backstage tour and the opportunity to
photograph objects, as well,of course, writing articles.
Weds 29 July, London
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/Royal_Society_of_Chemistry/BH-…
in the library of the Royal Society of Chemistry. The focus will be
on chemistry-related topics; including both scientific and
non-scientific content (the latter including biographies, for
example).
Sat 8 August, North Cheshire
Watch this space (and keep the date free)!
In each case, lunch and refreshments will be provided; there will be
support for new editors (maybe you can help?) and we'll work on sister
projects such as Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and Wikisource, as well
as Wikipedia.
--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk