This post was written by D’Arcy Myers, Wikimedia UK interim Chief Executive
As the interim CEO for Wikimedia UK I would like to take this opportunity to thank the volunteers and staff of the FDC for their work in assessing the annual grant applications. I understand that a huge amount of work is required, and we are most grateful for the care and detailed consideration that has gone into the FDC’s recommendations.
While we are of course disappointed that our requested grant has not been fully funded, we do not underestimate the challenges that face us in the UK as we move towards a new executive leadership, and we recognise the need for WMF funds to be seen to be used as effectively as possible. We are actively working to improve the efficiency of the programmes that we support, and fully understand that only by engaging more actively with our large potential volunteer base can we hope to realise our ambition of moving to a significantly higher level of charitable impact to the benefit of the Wikimedia movement. In addition to sharing our own experiences and helping other movement organisations where we can, we remain actively open to learning from the experiences and suggestions of others including the suggestions of the FDC. Thank you again.
Have you seen the UK winners of the 2014 Wiki Loves Monuments competition?
Wiki Loves Monuments is the global photography contest and the objective is to collect high quality photographs of some of the world’s most important historic sites. In the UK, this means listed buildings and scheduled monuments so there are possible subjects all over the country.
More than 500 people took part in the UK competition, contributing over 7,000 photos to Wikimedia Commons, one of the world’s largest repositories of freely licensed media files. From there the images can be used across various Wikimedia sites, and volunteers have started the process of using these images to illustrate and improve Wikipedia.
Organised by Wikimedia UK volunteers and supported by English Heritage and the Royal Photographic Society who were represented on the judging panel, this year marked the second time the UK took part in the competition.
As well as the top ten we have two special prizes for the best images of a building on an ‘At Risk’ register. These are structures considered in need of repair and maintenance, and the photographs are one step in preserving these structures for future generations. The two special awards are UK-specific, and the top ten go forward to the international judges.
Thumbnails of the winning entries are below but you can see them in all of their glory here on Wikimedia Commons.
If you have photographs taken by yourself of historic sites in the United Kingdom, please consider uploading them to Wikimedia Commons. The competition is closed, but your efforts can help improve a value resource filled with images which can be freely reused.
This post was written by Roberta Wedge, Gender Gap Project Worker
Ada Camp is a weekend-long event bringing together women in open technology and culture for mutual support. It was created by the Ada Initiative, which exists to support women in these fields.
I attended Ada Camp Berlin (of which Wikimedia UK was a sponsor) on October 10-12, along with Daria Cybulska (and Rebecca Kahn, who works alongside WMUK and in our office, on behalf of the Open Coalition). It was held in the offices of Wikimedia Deutschland, which seemed to create a positive impression on all the participants I spoke to. This was the first Ada Camp held outside the United States (aside from the very first one, in Melbourne), and the 57 participants were a very international group, many based in Germany or elsewhere in Europe, and many with ties of upbringing, education, and experience around the globe. Roughly half were “technical” (software designers, coders, analysts, etc.) but the rest were not, having found their ways to careers in open tech through other ways.
WMUK sponsored a welcome reception on Friday evening, which allowed the participants to begin to get to know each other. Some of them were already friends and colleagues; some others had met via the email exchanges and Twitter lists set up in the weeks before the event.
Ada Camp itself is structured as an unconference, which means that the content is partially decided by the participants themselves on Saturday morning. The sessions proposed were a mix of “I have experience with X and want to share” to “I know that X exists and want to learn more”, where X could range from a type of software to an instance of harassment or exclusion.
The whole-group activity on Saturday morning, about Imposter Syndrome (self-doubt in one’s professional role), allowed the organisers time to collate these disparate proposals into a programme.
The power of Ada Camp lies in the conversations it fosters. I attended sessions on the open source economy, being a non-techie in a technical field, Creative Commons, building safe spaces, and activism. I also found myself being asked to lead a Wikimedia session that was part editathon and part discussion of the gender gap. Ten women came to this; some had created accounts and edited years ago, but dropped it, for reasons in some cases eloquent and in others forgotten by the women themselves. Zara Rahman wrote later of why editing Hedy Lamarr’s biography earlier that year had turned her off Wikipedia; Ednah Kiome spoke about returning to editing after years away. One woman, a computational linguist, said that her job would not be possible, in a very literal sense, without Wikipedia. Some expressed surprise at how large the encyclopedia had grown since they last really looked at it, and at the number and scope of the other Wikimedia projects. Others were taken aback at how little had been written about the places they came from or the subjects they are interested in. We discussed systemic bias.
One of the insights I gained is that activism does not have to be about fighting and protesting, but it can also be about championing and evangelising. The developers have to do their behind-the-scenes work, but a project goes nowhere without the enthusiasts to go out and explain its potential and uses. This is as true of Wiki*edia as it is of Ada Camp.
This post was written by Lorna Campbell and was originally published here. Re-used under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
Last Friday I went along to the EduWiki Conference in the distractingly beautiful St Leonard’s Hall at the University of Edinburgh. I have to confess to being a bit of a Wikimedia fangirl; I’m not a Wikimedian myself, but I’m a huge fan of Wikimedia’s work in the education domain and I believe Wikimedia has an important role to play, not just in disseminating open educational resources, but also in developing open education practice. This was highlighted by the recent Wikimedia Deutschland OERde14 Conference I went to in Berlin, which brought together over 300* participants from all sectors of German education. This is the first time I’ve managed to get to the EduWiki Conference in the UK and it certainly lived up to expectations. I’m not going to attempt to summarise the entire conference, but I do want to pick out a few highlights
The Conference was opened by Peter McColl, Rector of the University of Edinburgh and editor of the progressive blog Bright Green. McColl highlighted the venerable tradition of the Commons, describing Wikipedia as a perfect example of the Commons, a resource that we come together to create and which we can all share and use.
The morning keynote was presented by Floor Koudijs, Senior Manager of the Wikipedia Education Program who introduced just a few of the 70 education projects Wikimedia funds world wide. These include Wikipedia School (Athens), which teaches Wikipedia writing to adults as part of the Greek Ministry of Education’s Education for Lifetime programme. Several countries also include Wikipedia editing skills as part of their initial teacher training programmes.
Floor’s presentation provoked an interesting discussion about the potential importance of Wikipedia in engaging the public with research and demonstrating academic impact. Melissa Highton, Director of Learning, Teaching and Web Services at the University of Edinburgh suggested that citing open access articles in Wikipedia should result in increased evidence of impact while at the same time helping to change attitudes to Wikipedia in in academia. Toni Sant, Wikimedia UK Education Organiser, added that Research Councils UK are starting to show an interest in Wikipedia and that EduWiki was mentioned positively at the 6th international Conference on Integrity and Plagiarism earlier this year.
This allows individuals and institutions wishing to use a work of intellectual property where the rights holder cannot be identified to apply for a licence from the IPO. Licences are awarded where the IPO is satisfied that the applicant conducted a “diligent” search for the rights holder, and they have paid a licensing and administration fee.
This scheme brings forward little that is new. The rule allowing re-use after diligent search has been part of copyright law in the UK for many years. The primary purpose of the new licences seems to be to provide greater certainty to re-users that the searches they have undertaken are sufficiently extensive to guarantee legal protection should the copyright owner come forward.
Searches have to be exceptionally comprehensive before the Intellectual Property Office will certify them as ‘diligent’ and although there are new guidelines which will provide greater clarity for cultural institutions, the imposition of an official fee is concerning.
Even with this new scheme in place orphan works can still not be easily used by the Wikimedia projects and the volunteers who write and curate them.
A real solution to the orphan works problem must await a more radical approach that goes beyond both this and the existing EU Orphan Works Directive.
We believe that this should be addressed as part of a more far-reaching review of copyright as a whole, at a national and European level. For example, a simple reduction in copyright terms would instantly make many works which are currently orphaned available for reuse.
You can see the recent Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU position paper on copyright reform – of which we are a signatory – here.
This post was written by Stuart Prior, Fundraising Assistant
I recently spent the weekend at Mozfest, the annual Mozilla conference, held in Greenwich.
The aim of going was to find out how Mozilla’s community worked, to make project and fundraising contacts in the open sector and, after my role in organising our own community conference, Wikimania 2014, to see how they did it.
Also, to see and support in any way I could, the Open Coalition work that Bekka Kahn was doing there in the form of running the Community Building track of the conference.
It was both very similar and very different. There were more workshops and discussions than talks, which was refreshing, if a little intimidating. The content was often very technical and platform based, and not being a Mozillan, unfamiliar to me.
But, what felt exactly the same was the sense of community and optimism. The fact that people were friendly and open to talking to you, and I spent a lot of time explaining Wikimedia projects and how the movement worked, and met some interesting people with some interesting projects.
Moreover, Mozilla’s focus on creating an open web, and on encouraging digital literacy and engaging young people with the Open Source movement is invaluable to a free and open society. With serious concerns about online monopolies and a restricted, highly commodified and profoundly un-free internet, this is increasingly important and something we in the Wikimedia movement should all be supporting.
On 23rd October Wikimedia UK board member Alastair McCapra took part in a debate at the Cambridge Union about the right to be forgotten.
The panel debated a motion that supported the right to be forgotten (RTBF). Alastair spoke against the motion, which was narrowly defeated.
The RTBF is a complicated issue and arguments both in favour and in opposition are numerous. The panel reflected a range of interests and included academics, campaigners and an MP.
Given his position on the Wikimedia UK board, and his role as chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, Alastair is in a unique position to offer an informed view of the RTBF. He has written a comprehensive report on the debate which clearly summarises both sides of the argument which can be read here.
Alastair said: “The Google judgement has taken the existing principle of a right to be forgotten and turned it, in the European Union at least, into a general right to hide behind broken links (RTHBBL). There are problems with the right to hide, and there are even worse problems if we move on from that to a real right to be forgotten.”
This post was written by Rachel Beaumont of the Royal Opera House and published here. Used with kind permission. You can also contact Rachel via her Wikipedia user page here.
Our recent event brought together ballet fans with Wikipedia experts to improve the online encyclopedia’s articles on choreographer Kenneth MacMillan.
When was the last time you used Wikipedia? With the online encyclopedia receiving more than 6 billion page views a month in more than 250 languages, ‘very recently’ is likely to be your response. Wikipedia provides a unique way for almost anyone anywhere to find out more about the world. And it is almost entirely the work of volunteers, dubbed ‘Wikipedians’.
But because the content is determined by volunteers’ interests, Wikipedia’s coverage of certain subjects is better than others. Dance is one of those areas that needs improving, which is why the Royal Opera House teamed up with Wikimedia UK to host our second ‘editathon‘ – an event bringing together ballet fans with experienced Wikipedia editors to work together on improving the resource, and so share our passion with a wider audience.
Last year our focus was Frederick Ashton, Founder Choreographer of The Royal Ballet – so this year it only made sense to look at the life and works of Kenneth MacMillan. MacMillan was one of the greatest choreographers of the 20th century, and a key figure in the history of The Royal Ballet.
We were hugely lucky to have with us two key MacMillan experts: Jann Parry, dance critic and author of Different Drummer, the definitive MacMillan biography; and Dame Monica Mason, former Director of The Royal Ballet, who created the first of her many roles for MacMillan aged just 20. With them were ROH archivists Laura Brown and Catriona Cannon, who presented historical items from the ROH Collections.
For Cheryl Agyei, ROH Student Ambassador at UWE, the event was an ideal way to find out more about her favourite choreographer and the workings of Wikipedia: ‘Before I knew it the day was over and I had not only edited my first article on the dancer Tetsuya Kumakawa but had also created one on Michael Coleman, who created a role inElite Syncopations – the first ballet I ever watched, and which had me hooked from the start.’
The highlights for dance writer Laura Dodge were: ‘Monica Mason and Jann Parry’s personal tales of MacMillan, including about his early rehearsals with Darcey Bussell, the content of his personal diaries and his attitude to creating ballets. It was fascinating to hear from two real MacMillan experts and get an insight into the choreographer’s personality behind the scenes.’
John Cummings is not one to shy away from large-scale projects. Fresh from helping build one of the largest Wikipedia endeavours ever – converting the Welsh town of Monmouth into the world’s first “Wikipedia town” – John moved on to become the Wikimedian in Residence at the Natural History Museum and Science Museum (NHM).
His upbringing has played a key role in developing his interests, shooing him onto a path towards the role. “I’ve always had an interest in natural history,” he says. “I didn’t study science at university, but my mum’s a garden designer, I grew up in the countryside… This is one of those roles that probably doesn’t happen that often.”
He held the role at the museums in South Kensington between 2013 and 2014, and helped to promote a culture of openness there as well as exploring what the institutions could do with Wikipedia.
One major aspect of this was looking into content donations, and how they could be beneficial for the museums in promoting their content.
“One of the main ways I encouraged content release under an open licence was just to tell people how Wikimedia projects are made and how many people see the information. It’s amazing – it’s such a wide audience and not just in Britain.
“You can reach people in lots of languages, and amazing projects like Wikipedia Zero [a project to allow free access to Wikipedia in developing countries] give people access to information they can’t get in another way.”
John says that working with the museums provided an avenue to improving Wikipedia by simply tapping into the tremendous resources there.
“It was a wonderful opportunity not only to engage with the public,” he says, “but also with research scientists who have a specialist contribution to make to Wikipedia, built over a whole lifetime of knowledge.
John Cummings at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington Photo: User:Rock drum, CC-BY-SA 4.0
“The thing about the Natural History Museum is you work there because you care about the natural environment, and people are very willing to spend their time educating the public,” John adds. “Wikipedia is just one more avenue for that, but the great thing about Wikipedia is that it has such a large audience, so that contribution can have a wide impact.”
One major event John helped to organise was with the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the non-ministerial department tasked with collecting and collating statistics on various aspects of politics and life in England and Wales.
“Working at the museums gives you a lot of opportunity to connect with other organisations,” John explains. “One of those was the ONS. They produce all their content under the Open Government Licence which is compatible with Wikimedia projects.
“They produce wonderful infographics about all sorts of subjects that help people easily understand complicated statistics, and we’ve been able to put them straight onto Wikipedia with no change of license, it’s completely compatible.”
He is also keen to take ONS data and feed it into Wikidata, a relatively new Wikimedia project focused on open data collection. “This would allow the ONS to reach a wide audience in many languages very easily,” he says.
This attitude of helping to promote the museums’ work to as many people as possible has been the driving factor behind John’s time in the role. He argues the interaction has given them a chance to reach millions by learning to tap into the global reach of Wikipedia.
“Having a Wikimedian in Residence is a great way to engage with a wider audience that is potentially quite hard to engage with without this kind of bridge into the movement,” he says. “Wikipedia is not the easiest thing to edit in a lot of ways. It’s great to have the understanding of licensing, the rules around conflicts of interest, and other guidelines that the Wikimedia movement has.
“It’s really helpful to have someone internally within the organisation, who’s easily accessible, who’s able to get people started with engagement,” he continues.
“It’s like learning to ride a bike or play an instrument – it’s hard to start off with, but once you get going you kind of feel your way through… it takes practice.”
The position paper has already been shared with key members of the European Commission. The main recommendations from the paper are that:
The Commission should clarify the European copyright framework by harmonising legislation and creating a single EU Copyright Title
The Commission should ensure everyone has the liberty to freely use and share images taken in public spaces by introducing Freedom of Panorama universally (currently optional under Directive 2001/29/EC Article 5 Point 3.H)
The Commission should ensure that all works created by officials within the EU administration and institutions are open for use and re-use by everyone. Such works should hence not be subject to copyright protection.
The Commission should re-balance the current culturally and economically harmful mismatch between public commons and private property and close the “20th century gap” by shortening copyright terms to the minimum term possible under existing international treaties and conventions.
The FKAGEU is a grouping of European Wikimedia chapters and other open knowledge organisations from throughout the EU. The work has largely been co-ordinated by Dimitar Dimitrov, the movement’s Wikimedian in Brussels.
This landmark paper has been signed by 33 parties from 17 European countries, of which 16 are Wikimedia chapters, thematic organisations or user groups. You can see a full list of signing partners here.
