Hi all,
We will be holding our second Skillshare event at the WMUK office on
Tusesday May 7th from 18:00 to 21:00 or thereabouts. You can find event
pages on Meta
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_UK/Events/AutoWikiBrowser_skillsh…>
and on Eventbrite
<https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/wikimedia-uk-skillshare-using-autowikibrowse…>(please
sign up on Eventbrite to let us know if you're coming). I've also published
a short blog
<https://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2019/04/autowikibrowser-find-out-how-to-autom…>
to give background on AWB for those of you who aren't sure what it is.
Prolific UK Wikimedian Rich Farmbrough, who's an AWB afficionado, will be
running the session.
One thing I'm slightly concerned about with doing this Skillshare on AWB is
that users who want to use it have to apply for permission to do so on
the Permissions
page for AWB
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_permissions/AutoWikiBr…>.
I've applied for permission 2 days ago but nobody has responded yet to my
request. If we are going to get people to come to the Skillshare who want
to learn about AWB, they obviously need to have permission to use it
granted first. I hope that we can fast track any requests for permission
for people who want to come to this event so that we don't have a situation
where people want to attend but can't use AWB because they don't have
permission. Could I request for someone to keep an eye on permissions for
this so that those people who want to come to our event can get their
requests granted before the event? Thanks!
There are lots of other events taking place in the next couple of months,
so please take a look at our Events list
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Events> to see if there's anything that
interests you.
All the best,
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
+44 (0) 203 372 0767
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open knowledge
movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our work to make
knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting Wikimedia UK? Donate
here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.
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.*
Hi all, two things to tell you about. Firstly, this weekend, a few of us
will be going to Conway Hall at 11am before the London meetup to look at
their collection of 19th century pamphlets. They will be doing an editathon
on May 18
<https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/victorian-blogging-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-tic…>
to add content based on these newly digitised pamphlets so we are going to
assess the collection and see what can be improved on Wikipedia/Wikidata by
using these sources. If anybody wants to come with us to Conway Hall before
going to the meetup, please let me know.
Secondly, we have the second Wikidata meetup in London on May 2. The
Eventbrite signup is here
<https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/london-wikidata-meetup-2-tickets-59955106337>
and the Meta page is here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/London_Wikidata/02>. Events list is
up to date I think so please check it out for other events here
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Events>
I'm also just preparing the Spring newsletter, so if anybody would like to
write about something Wikimedia related for it, please get in touch.
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
+44 (0) 203 372 0767
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open knowledge
movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our work to make
knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting Wikimedia UK? Donate
here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.
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.*
Dear all
As many of you will be aware, in 2017 the Wikimedia movement set out a new
strategic direction, which is that *By 2030, Wikimedia will become the
essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge, and anyone who
shares our vision will be able to join us**.*
Since July 2018, working groups made up of staff and volunteers from across
the global Wikimedia movement have been working together to identify key
guiding questions within nine thematic areas relevant to the movement.
These were published last week in the form of *Scoping Documents
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Partici…>.*
There are three main ways of participating in the next phase of the
movement strategy process, and responding to the questions posed by the
working groups. These are as follows:
1. Contribute to on-wiki discussions through the talk pages on each of the
nine thematic areas (by following the link to the scoping documents above)
2. Respond to the survey, which will be circulated in April (on here, and
no doubt in other places/mailing lists)
3. Participate in a UK discussion, either in person or online
As the Strategy Liaison Co-ordinator for the UK, I would like to gauge
interest in holding an in-person community conversation about this phase of
the movement strategy. Please could you let me know if you would like to
attend an event of this kind, and if so what would make it easier for you
to do so - for example in terms of the location, time of day, time of week
etc. I'd also like to hear from people who would be unlikely to attend an
in-person meeting but could join some kind of conference call or hangout.
Please feel free to email me directly rather than responding to the whole
group, just for the sake of people's inboxes.
With many thanks and best wishes
Lucy
--
Lucy Crompton-Reid
Chief Executive
Wikimedia UK
+44 (0) 203 372 0762
*Wikimedia UK* is the national chapter for the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement, and a registered charity. We rely on donations from
individuals to support our work to make knowledge open for all. Have you
considered supporting Wikimedia? https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk
Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered
No. 6741827
Registered Charity No.1144513
Registered Office Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London
SE1 0NZ
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.
Hi all, I'm organising our next skillshare, which Rich Farmbrough has
agreed to do on AWB, and have a prospective date of April 24th. I'm also
organising a Wikidata meetup which I'm pencilling in for April 25, but I am
happy to move this to the week after (say May 2nd) if the community feels
that it would be better to have these two events in different weeks.
Please feel free to give me feedback and let me know if these event dates
would work for you or not, as obviously I would like to maximise attendance
to make them as successful as possible.
All the best,
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
+44 (0) 203 372 0767
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open knowledge
movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our work to make
knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting Wikimedia UK? Donate
here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.
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.*
Another in the series of meetups in the Makespace community workshop in central Cambridge, this time on a Sunday:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Cambridge/40
The initial workshop will be on the software being developed for the ScienceSource project. From 3 pm it will be a normal meetup, if that's not an oxymoron. Hope to see you there.
Charles
Hello all,
Hope you're having a good Wednesday. I'm currently working with the
Dumfries Historic Buildings Trust on the Dumfries Stonecarving Project,
(there was a wee blog about this last year:
https://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2018/11/green-men-gargoyles-the-dumfries-ston…)
and we're now moving toward the next phase. This will include volunteer
groups carrying out research, writing articles about notable local
subjects, and integrating some of the pictures that have been taken into
the encyclopedia.
As well as articles which pertain to local history and places, my feeling
is that there may well be a range of other articles relating to
architecture, etc, which might be usefully incorporated into a worklist for
one of the editathons which will form a part of this next phase.
I wondered if there were any wikimedians on this list with an interest in
architecture/ stonecarving who might be interested in helping me to explore
this? I'd love to have a chat some time. (Please do email me direct rather
than on-list, just for the sake of everyone's inboxes)
All the best
Sara
Dr Sara Thomas
Scotland Programme Coordinator
Hello all,
We recently had a conversation with the library at Conway Hall
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_Hall_Ethical_Society>, who are
currently digitising some of their vast collection of pamphlets, and we are
steering them towards open licenses and how best to work with Wikimedia.
Given its location in Holborn, and the location of the regular London
meetup, it could be that these two things work together.
We suggested to them that they could open up on that Sunday and anyone who
usually attends the meetup would be welcome to head over, be show the
collection and building, and possibly help get them on the way to freeing
up their collection. Not confirmed as yet, but it would be good to get some
feedback from our side.
They have a great library, and as a building it's interesting in itself,
with the great and the good being present over the years. Muddy Waters, Ben
Gurion, a who's who of British politics, and a little known band called "Ugly
Rumours <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_Rumours_(band)>".
I'll be adding something to the meetup page about this too, as and when
things are set.
Best
Stuart
--
*Stuart Prior*
*Project Coordinator*
*Wikimedia UK*
+44 20 372 0769
+44 7879 015 385 (text me otherwise I might screen the call)
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter for the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our
work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting
Wikimedia? https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered
Office Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ
<https://maps.google.com/?q=5+-+11+Lavington+Street,+London+SE1+0NZ&entry=gm…>
.
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.*
Hi all
Thanks for your contributions and discussions on here this week. It's clear
that as an organisation we need to reflect on how we're engaging with the
volunteer community, and there has already been quite a lot of internal
discussion about this over the past few months. I would encourage you, if
you can, to attend the meeting on 30th January to help develop our next
three year strategy; however please be assured that in the draft version
I'm working on (based on the 2018 board away day, and to give us a starting
point for discussions) there is a greater focus on both volunteers and
technology, which of course underpin all of our activities.
I'm sorry that the issue about recent changes and watchlists on the main
Wiki has not yet been resolved. Our technical contractor has been working
to debug this however he has not yet been successful and needs more time to
try to ascertain and address the problem. Obviously if anyone has any
practical suggestions of what the issue might be and how it could be fixed
then please feel free to get in touch :)
As some of you know, Wikimedia UK has worked with the support of two
technical contractors - both from the Wikimedia community - for a number of
years, however one of them had to step away from the role in September and
it has taken a little time to find a replacement (although we have now done
so). This means that the remaining contractor (Tom Morton) has been working
on his own, and we have needed to try to prioritise his workload. In the
past few months we have undertaken quite a big, although not outwardly
visible, technical project, which has been to migrate all of our websites
to new host servers. In doing this, we needed to employ a specialist
consultancy to upgrade and migrate the Wikimedia CiviCRM installation such
that it could be moved onto the new hosting platform, which has been a high
priority for us as CiviCRM is so central to our work with volunteers,
members and donors on a day-to-day basis. Tom has worked with the
consultancy on this but has also been required to fix a number of other
issues including QRpedia (which still has some bugs), the Board Wiki, and
problems with MediaWiki and the visual editor. I'm not trying to excuse the
fact that there are still unresolved technical issues, just to put this
into context and explain what else has been going on in the past month or
so.
Chris, you asked what concrete actions we are putting into place to ensure
this doesn't happen again. These include the appointment of another
technical contractor who will support Tom in resolving outstanding and
urgent technical issues in the short term, but in the medium term will also
work with us and the community to identify our priorities going forward. In
the next few weeks, Davina and I are also meeting with several board
members to scope out the charity's technical ambitions (which I hope we
will also discuss on 30th), and in December I submitted a provisional
budget to the board for 2019/20, with a view to presenting an updated
budget at the March meeting that supports these plans. There is more to do,
of course, but hopefully these things will all make a positive difference.
Thanks and best wishes
Lucy
--
Lucy Crompton-Reid
Chief Executive
Wikimedia UK
+44 (0) 203 372 0762
*Wikimedia UK* is the national chapter for the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement, and a registered charity. We rely on donations from
individuals to support our work to make knowledge open for all. Have you
considered supporting Wikimedia? https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk
Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered
No. 6741827
Registered Charity No.1144513
Registered Office Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London
SE1 0NZ
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.
Dear all,
The University of Edinburgh's Information Services Group are celebrating International Women’s Day on 8th March by renaming the Boardroom in Argyle House after Brenda Moon, the first woman to head up a research university library when she was Librarian here at the University of Edinburgh in the 1980s and 90s. Brenda played a major role in bringing the University into the digital age, as Edinburgh became the first major university library in the UK to tackle and deliver a computer-based service.
Two events will coincide with the launch of the Brenda Moon Room: our Wikimedian in Residence will be hosting a Wikipedia-editing session for staff, students and friends of the University to create Wikipedia entries for notable women currently missing from the encyclopaedia site, and at the Main Library, LTW Equality and Diversity Images Intern Francesca Vavotici will be hosting a ‘Sketch-a-thon’ using images from the Centre for Research Collections’ Special Collections. All artistic abilities welcome!
Wikipedia Editathon – Women of Edinburgh:
This event is open to staff, students and friends of the University and is an opportunity to help add more notable women associated with Edinburgh to Wikipedia, where only 18% of the English Wikipedia's biographies are about women.
Time: 11:00am – 5pm
Venue: Argyle House, 3 Lady Lawson Street, Edinburgh EH3 9DR
More info and booking link here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:University_of_Edinburgh/Internation…
Wikipedia:University of Edinburgh/International Women's Day 2019<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:University_of_Edinburgh/Internation…>
en.wikipedia.org
Booking. Booking is not yet open but please save the date.; What do I need? Please bring a laptop as desktop computers will not be provided. You can also Create a Wikipedia account ahead of the event.. About the event. Join us to celebrate lives & contributions of the suffragettes and all the incredible women missing from Wikipedia!
Sketch-a-thon:
Learn about the lives of some of the incredible women in the archives of the Centre for Research Collections at the University of Edinburgh, while putting your creative side to use in a relaxed learning environment!
This event will enable you to portray the work of pioneering women through a series of fun, fast-paced challenges that will help you flex your sketching muscles and experiment with daring colour-combinations, silly caricatures and speedy doodles. No drawing experience is necessary to join us, and all students and staff are welcome. Materials will be provided, but please do feel free to bring your own coloured pencils or felt-tip pens if you wish.
More info and booking link here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/international-womens-day-sketchathon-tickets…
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.