Hey,
it is indeed a fantastic idea, which I was also thinking about in the last two years during my time at SOAS in London. Even though every student uses Wikipedia, actually contributing to it regularly and taking part in events or administrator work has a geeky sound to it according to most and this is one of the reasons, from my personal experience, that Wikimedia Societies don't work well at most universities. Sad.
Still, it would be worthwhile looking into making active involvement with Wikipedia more popular at universities, among students as well as academics. We certainly don't have a lack of contributors, but we do to some extent lack content in some areas where specific knowledge or research work (non-original obviously) is required.
One of the ideas I had in this area was to hold a WikiAcademy in London (at the time at SOAS) at the time, but due to personal reasons I have left SOAS and the UK for at least a couple of years and therefor will most likely not be following up on this personally. I had contacted a few people, including Jimmy and the organizer of the last one in Germany - who were both very interested.
Ian [[User:Poeloq]]
On Fri, Aug 1, 2008 at 1:34 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
A great idea from the WMAU list. University students could have a spectacular time taking photos and writing stuff. Particularly as they tend to have *rather nice* libraries to hand.
The main thing they would need is a few individuals at the university in question willing to form the club, etc. Not sure what a Wikimedia chapter could do in the first instance, but I'm sure someone will think of something.
- d.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com Date: 2008/8/1 Subject: Re: [Wikimediaau-l] Chapter activity ideas To: Wikimedia-au wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org
On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 4:53 PM, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
Hi, ... *? I thought of this last night, maybe encourage "Wikimedia Editors Clubs" in schools/universities? like enable local groups that are extremely light-weight on the admin side.
This is a brilliant idea, even more so because I separately thought of in another post to this list just an hour ago!
University students are a group that are pour hours into Wikipedia and other projects, both in reading, creating and maintaining. There are also many existing clubs which we could work with. e.g. the photography club at UoM would likely be interested in working closely with Wikimedia Commons, and also to provide good quality photos for Wikipedia articles about Melbourne and Australian flora and fauna.
http://union.unimelb.edu.au/clubs/special-interest#foto
There will also be Uni clubs existing or forming around "free content" themes.
-- John
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