I'm currently drafting an article on William Francis Gordon of Lichfield. He gave the east window to Porthill church, and an interior view would be good.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:St_Andrew%27s_Church,_Porthill
is as much as Commons has about the church, near Newcastle-under-Lyme.
Can anyone help out?
Charles
Dear all
As I know many of you will be aware, the long heralded Online Safety Bill
<https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137> is now making its way through
Parliament and is currently at the Committee stage in the House of Lords.
The Bill will establish a new regulatory framework for online services,
with Ofcom becoming the regulator. As it currently stands, the requirements
of the Bill in terms of content moderation, age gating and user
verification are incompatible with Wikipedia’s model, and the Wikimedia
Foundation has stated that they will not be age gating the platform.
Wikimedia UK has been highlighting concerns about the proposed new
legislation since the Online Harms White Paper, published four years ago.
We have responded to various consultations, run by Ofcom as well as the
government, and met with staff from both. One of the key issues highlighted
by Wikimedia UK and the Wikimedia Foundation - as well as many
organisations in the civil society sector - was the requirement to remove
content that was “legal but harmful”. This was fortunately dropped from the
Bill as it moved through the House of Commons at the end of last year.
However, there remains much cause for concern.
Working closely with the Wikimedia Foundation, I have been in touch with a
number of peers (members of the House of Lords) over the past few months to
highlight the unintended consequences of the proposed legislation on
Wikimedia, and to advocate for changes to the Bill to protect our movement
and safeguard open knowledge. The Lord Moylan has tabled a series of
amendments on our behalf which address some of these issues, including a
proposed exemption for small, community moderated and/or public benefit
websites that are currently within the scope of the Bill. It’s likely that
these amendments will be debated in the House of Lords on Tuesday or
Thursday next week. Today, I will be sending a written briefing (attached
for your information) urging support for these amendments to a target list
of peers, and Jimmy will be giving an in person briefing at Parliament on
Monday.
We are envisaging further advocacy activities before and during the Report
Stage in the House of Lords, which is when amendments that have made it to
that point will be voted on. If you are interested in supporting these
advocacy efforts, please let me know.
All best
Lucy
--
Lucy Crompton-Reid (she/her)
Chief Executive
Dear all
As some of you will have heard by now, Jo Pugh sadly died of cancer last
week. For those of you who never came across Jo, he was Digital Development
Manager at the National Archives and a passionate historian who really
understood the value of Wikimedia in enabling people to access knowledge
and information. Even during his illness Jo continued to organise Wikimedia
related events, such as last summer's Medieval Wikidata Hackathon.
If you knew Jo, I'm sure his family would appreciate your comments and
condolences on Twitter <https://twitter.com/mentionthewar>.
Best wishes
Lucy
--
Lucy Crompton-Reid (she/her)
Chief Executive
A reminder that the *deadline* for applying for a Scholarship to attend
Wikimania 2023 in Singapore on August 16-19 is this Sunday 5th February. A
full scholarship covers travel, accommodation, and registration. There are
also partial scholarships. To learn more:
https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2023:Scholarships
To apply for a scholarship, fill out the application form on:
https://wikimediafoundation.limesurvey.net/799477
** Special call for technical contributors **
If you are a tool creator, maintainer, user, or otherwise contribute to our
movement’s technical ecosystem and are willing to teach and mentor others,
collaborate on technical projects, and help onboard tech folks new to our
technical communities – please do apply and make sure you elaborate on what
technical mentorship you could contribute in your application. This will
greatly increase your chances to be selected.
If you have any questions, please contact:
wikimania-scholarships(a)wikimedia.org or leave a message at: 2023
talk:Scholarships
<https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2023_talk:Scholarships>
--
Lucy Crompton-Reid (she/her)
Chief Executive
Dear all
I'm sharing the text of an email I've received this evening from the
Wikimedia Foundation, who have asked me (and other Affiliate leaders) to
spread the word amongst our communities about a new skin for the English
Wikipedia, which will be deployed next week.
Wishing you all a great weekend.
Lucy
After many years of work, community conversations, and completing the
changes specified by the consensus of the Request for Comment
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Deployment_of_…>,
the *Vector 2022 skin* is finally ready for deployment as the default
desktop skin on English Wikipedia. The deployment is scheduled for January
18th, at 15:00 UTC.
Vector 2022 is a skin <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Skins>
developed between 2019 and 2023 by the Wikimedia Foundation Web team
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web> with the goal of making the
interface more welcoming and usable for readers and maintaining utility for
existing editors. It introduces changes
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Deployment_of_…>
to the navigation and layout of the site, adds persistent elements (such as
a sticky header and Table of Contents), and makes changes to the overall
styling of the page. Currently, the skin is the default on more than 300
projects of various sizes, accounting for about 1.5 billion page views per
month. On English Wikipedia, it is the most popular non-default skin, with
more active editors using it than any other non-default skin (Monobook,
Timeless, etc).
While these changes will provide a much better experience for Wikipedia
readers and contributors (and a cleaner interface will make work easier for
community developers and staff working on the website in the future),
they’ll also help to remove barriers to the Wikimedia movement. The new
Wikipedia desktop marks the start of an ongoing process of user empowerment
and improvements across the entire Wikimedia ecosystem, as well as an
exciting and meaningful step in furthering Wikimedia’s knowledge as a
service and knowledge equity
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017#Our_strate…>
efforts. An easier-to-navigate Wikipedia will help more users, regardless
of their tech literacy or familiarity with the platform, to access and
contribute to free knowledge.
You will find more information about the project on the landing page on
English Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vector_2022>.
There are instructions on how to turn the skin off as well as information
about what will happen on the day of deployment. You can also read more
about the Desktop Improvements Project on the project page
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements> and our
FAQ
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements/Frequently_…>.
--
Lucy Crompton-Reid (she/her)
Chief Executive
