I've just spoken to Rory by phone, and managed to touch on a number of different topics with him - including the Usability Initiative, the bookshelf project, Britain Loves Wikipedia and other local events, etc. There were lots of issues that I didn't cover (different language versions, strategy, different viewpoints on the numbers, ...), so I would encourage others to also get in touch with him.
I'm generally uneasy about talking about these particular numbers, as it isn't yet clear to me either how accurate they are or what exactly they mean. As a scientist, I'm very hesitant to talk about results as if they're black and white, as they rarely are - unfortunately that's how the media like doing things, hence the stories that are coming out about how wikipedia is dying - again. Odd how it never actually seems to die...
For information, I spoke briefly to the author of the article from the Times on Monday, but referred him to Jay at the WMF as I didn't real comfortable talking about the numbers. Unfortunately, Jay's in Tokyo for the japanese wikiconference this week, hence wasn't able to respond to the Times before they ran their story.
I've had no other calls/emails from any other media organizations about this story.
Mike
On 25 Nov 2009, at 11:33, Steve Bowbrick wrote:
Guys,
Rory (copied) sent out a request for Wikipedians on Twitter. Thought I'd forward it to you.
Rory, Wikimediauk-l is the discussion list for Wikimedia UK, the UK chapter of the Wikipedia mothership.
Steve
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