[Wikimediaau-l] More random ideas

Sat Oct 4 04:58:07 UTC 2008

All really good ideas, Liam. 
BedWiki struck a chord as I thought of the wonderful Brianna who made her
way to Canberra this week to present at the Australian Computers in
Education Conference. It is great to meet face to face, and providing
accommodation assistance is something non-editing members could contribute.
(Anyone looking for a bed in Adelaide in early January? Or got a house near
Somerville House, Brisbane they want to swap for a week?)

Developing some presentation and handout materials for use in schools and
universities, plus education conferences is a good first step.
Cheers, Pru

-----Original Message-----
From: wikimediaau-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikimediaau-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Liam Wyatt
Sent: Friday, 3 October 2008 1:12 PM
To: Wikimedia-au
Subject: [Wikimediaau-l] More random ideas

Dear all, 
Just because I can, and because ideas are free, I thought I'd write down
some other things that I thought WM-au might be able to do eventually which
we could add to the [[m:Wikimedia_Australia/Activities#Possible_activities]]
list. 

- Briefings for media organisations on how to use Wikimedia projects for
their journalism. Not just the anatomy of a media-wiki page but also how to
use Virgil's Wiki-Scanner, WikiRage, WikiBlame etc. This would also get us
in their minds as the people to talk to when they're running a Wikipedia
story and would give us a chance to dispel the common errors that appear in
print (e.g. flagged-revs = we are no longer a wiki, or that we think that
knowledge is completely relativistic. 

- Equivalent briefings for university faculties on how to use wikipedia in
the classroom in order to discuss "how to be skeptical of sources" and
learning how to write neutrally and collaboratively - all skills necessary
in tertiary education. Also, we could teach them how to use our statistics
to put into their own research (I'm thinking about Erik Zachte's discussions
here). 

- Visit high-schools who are using Wikipedia as one of the texts in their
English Syllabus. I don't know about the other states but in NSW wikipedia
can be studied for the HSC. You can bet your eye-teeth that the high school
english teachers don't know how to deal with that subject as well as we'd
like. This could be an interesting excursion for a team of us, driving
around the countryside for a week to different schools - road-trip anyone!?

- mini-Wikireaders of australian content published in collaboration with
different cultural organisations. I'm thinking especially of the wonderful
set of Banksia articles that are Featured on Wikipedia (thankyou Casliber!)
I imagine that the National Parks or the Botanic Gardens might be interested
in covering the printing costs for making a leaflet out of it if we supply
the content formatted nicely for the purpose. These leaflets could be given
out at the relevant cultural institutions to patrons and would therefore get
our content (and logo) in front of some different areas of the public. 

- "BedWiki" where we can keep a list of people willing to offer their spare
bed/sofa to other visiting wikimedians. There are some privacy issues to
work through (such as not publishing an address but only a general
location), but I for one would like to be able to visit other wikimedians
when I go travelling and the best way to get charity from others is to start
at home. This would be useful not only for Australians travelling interstate
but potentially useful as a worldwide network if it scaled well. It could be
good not only by saving money for the traveller but also to increase the
community spirit of wikimedians. 

- Cultural tours for WM-au members. That is, we organise a free backstage
tour of some facility such as a gallery, theatre, sports stadium, company in
exchange for sitting down afterwards with some people from that organisation
and spending a couple of hours improving the article on that subject.
Organisations like the National Trust have many properties around the
country and already run tours for members. They would be very valuable
contributors to our projects if we spent the time teaching them how. The
benefit for us would be seeing things that normally are either hidden or
cost a lot of money to do. We would have to work through issues about
Conflict of Interest (i.e. we're not promising to write whatever they want)
but I don't see that being a huge problem once we explain NPOV, NOR and V.
The main trick here would be to get enough wikimedians to come along to
justify their time. 

Waddayarekon?
Remember, ideas are free - we are not required to do any of this so please
don't flame me for being too optimistic etc. 

Best, 
-Liam

wikipediaweekly.org
Skype - Wittylama
Wikipedia - [[User:Witty lama]]

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