I see from the 2012 activity plan that
there's a budget for a
World
Wars project [1]. Is there a leader for this? An online
presence?
Hello! :-)
The short answer is Yes, sort of, me. And no, not yet. And I would
love to speak to you about it (and to anyone else interested in what
we can do with the World War I centenary).
The longer answer is;
There is a really big opportunity both for Wikimedia UK and indeed
the whole movement connected to the World War I centenary. For a
period of about 4 years there's going to be increased public interest
in this area. Around some key dates the number of people researching
World War I topics on Wikipedia (everyone from primary-school children
to journalists) will be massive. What's more, pretty much every museum
and archive in the country which has any relevant collections is going
to be doing *something* related to World War I in 2014.
Further - it's not just us - this is a massive global event; 2014 is a
major centenary for almost every European nation and lots of
non-European ones.
This is something I've long had in mind - a couple of years ago I
started the Great War Centennial project on-wiki, which was then
incorporated into the Military History Wikiproject. However, it didn't
get very far (particularly not compared to the Battleships
wikiproject).
Since I've been on the Board, I have been very gradually making
contacts both within Wikimedia (including the military history
wikiproject) and with potential partner institutions about what
Wikimedia UK could do in this regard. I know Milhist is up for doing
more outreach, indeed one of the Milhist coordinators is is UK-based
and has been contacting the Ministry of Defence about releasing more
of their material under the Open Government License, which is great.
The budget we've put in for 2012 could yet be spent in a number of
different ways. And I hope this won't just be a 2012 activity - I
would like to see us make this an ongoing area of activity, certainly
to 2014, quite possibly beyond.
I am keen to move this further, though I don't have much time spare
until the New Year as I'm mainly occupied on the Fundraiser. So at the
moment I'm mainly collating interested parties, with a view to getting
a core group of Wikimedians together who want to shape what we do with
this, and a core group of partner institutions, and putting the two
groups together in a room in January or February and seeing what they
come up with in terms of inspiration for the period 2012-2014. Some
(but not all) of the decisions about how the WW1/WW2 allocation in
2012 budget is spent will already have been taken by then, but not all
of them, and as I say I think the 2012 budget figure is a beginning
not an end.
If anyone's interested in this, please wave :-)
I can be
persuaded to invest in and read some books, although if the
books were
to come out of the budget and then be placed in Wikimedia UKs
hands
afterwards that would be preferable.
We can already handle support investment in books, via the Microgrant
scheme:
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Microgrants
Thanks,
Chris
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