Page 46 – WMUK

Wikimedia UK receives an unusual donation…

A photo of some plastic cows with a large soft toy platypus — Wikimedia UK’s herd of cattle grazing under the watchful eye of Peter the Platypus

Towards the end of 2013 there was an interesting discussion on a Wikimedia-related email list regarding whether the movement should accept donations in alternative currencies, such as Bitcoin.

During this discussion, Wikimedia UK Trustee Chris Keating remarked that: “other forms of money that we do not currently accept include gold coins, Yap money, Tesco Clubcard Points, cowrie shells and cattle… though if anyone wants to donate a herd of cattle to Wikimedia UK, please could they let the office know in advance.”

Well, we certainly didn’t get any advance notice, but today saw the delivery of this herd of cattle. As you can see, Peter the Platypus is already making them feel welcome – and no doubt making sure they know not to put ginger nut biscuits in with any other biscuit.

This does raise some questions: Does anyone have any tips on how to care for plastic cattle? Who is the kind-hearted yet anonymous donor that sent us this generous gift and how can we say thank you? What should the cattle be called? And did they sign a gift aid declaration?

Royal Society appoints Wikimedian in Residence

Wikimedia UK is pleased to announce that John Byrne (User:Johnbod) has been appointed Wikimedian in Residence at The Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science.

The residency will begin in January 2014 and run for six months, on the basis of working one day per week. Wikimedia UK is providing the core funding for the project.

It is a pilot exercise, aiming to learn the best way for Wikimedia and the Royal Society to collaborate in future. The main intended outcomes are: improving access to information about scientists from underrepresented groups, opening up the Society’s historical collections, and improving the quality of scientific articles on the Wikimedia projects.

John is an experienced Wikipedian who was named as Wikimedia UK’s first UK Wikimedian of the Year in 2012, and previously served as a trustee of the charity. He has extensive content experience, including many Featured Articles. John said:

“I’ve already been planning an exciting programme with Royal Society staff, including plenty of events. Some of these will be aimed at Royal Society staff while others are intended to meet the needs of scientists and the general public.

“Following our very successful training and editathon on women scientists in, held at the Royal Society in October in conjunction with the Medical Research Council, we plan a similar event in early March, around International Women’s Day.

“The Royal Society Library and archives have wonderful resources, with a good deal already online, and I’ll also be looking at what we can achieve with these.”

John is also hoping to make the beginnings of a deeper involvement between the scientific community generally and the Wikimedia projects, providing feedback from the scientific community on our content.

John says: “I will be using the alternative account User:Wiki at Royal Society John for edits in this role. I am keen to hear other ideas from anyone on what might be done in this role. Please leave your thoughts on my talk page”.

More information from the Royal Society

Wikipedia supporters share their love of free knowledge

As we blogged last week, the annual Wikipedia fundraising campaign is in progress. One of the best things about the campaign is that many people who generously donate often share their reasons why. Reading through these donor stories is genuinely inspiring and everyone connected to the encyclopaedia can be very proud of what we’ve created.

If you love Wikipedia and want to help then you can make a donation here. If you’re a UK taxpayer your donations are eligible for Gift Aid, too. We are grateful for all your support.

“The story I like to tell is that whilst I had heard of Wikipedia but only looked at it a few times thereafter, when the 2004 Tsunami occurred the day after Christmas, mainstream news organisations (TV, newspapers) were all away from their offices. That day I turned to Wikipedia to try to understand the scale of the event. It was Wiki editors ‘on the ground’ that created the sort of information and coverage usually considered the province of rolling news organisations only. This I now dub my ‘Wiki Epiphany’.”

“Web sites like Wikipedia are invaluable and I felt it my duty to try help even if only a tad.”

“My world has been opened up time and time again by Wikipedia. From studying Detroit and computer programming to finding unbiased information on America’s history, Wikipedia has been a beacon of free speech and information for over ten years. Sometimes, I just sit in awe of the fact that the greatest accomplishment of man was assembled mostly by volunteers, people who just wanted to make the world a better place.”

“It’s made life easier for me and expanded my knowledge by allowing me to more easily find trusted and verified information on the internet. It organizes all the noise out there on the web and gives a great concise to the point fact summary of what I want to know. Thank you and thank you to the millions of volunteer editors. Wikipedia is a necessity in my life and not just a luxury.”

“Wikipedia is a source of unbiased information. The caveats and notes from the editors alert to questionable information. The links within the articles are amazingly helpful and have led me on wonderful information
expeditions.”

“I’d like to thank the entire staff of wikipedia and its editors for my high school graduation.”

“It’s impossible to put in words. I cannot imagine Planet Earth without it [Wikipedia]. It has changed my life forever.”

“My 17 year old son uses you constantly. You have made him a smarter human being.”

“This is one of the best things on the internet. It goes back to the original development of the internet and has remained ethical and true to its origins. There appears to be no discrimination and it is available to everyone at no cost.”

“I am 60 years old and I am still so curious and interested in so many things. Wikipedia gives me reasonable information whenever I may want it.”

“It’s nice to see humanity get together without any external forces for a common good!”

“I am inspired by the high quality of Wikipedia and the high ideals of its founder and its myriad contributors and editors. What a magnificent collaborative human achievement you are building!”

“It has simultaneously answered and given me more questions than I can comprehend. This represents to me what college should be like. Free and collective knowledge by and for all.”

“It is like a gift from the gods of knowledge.”

“I am a teacher and a writer, and I am amazed how often Wikipedia is useful to me. I consider Wikipedia to be one of the great democratic projects maybe ever, and it is one of the reasons why I try to stay optimistic about
the world. Thank you.”

“I extend my heartfelt thanks to the men and women who tirelessly work on keeping Wikipedia the wonderful website it is.”

“My 72 year old life is easier and more fun. I read a lot and look things up all the time, and that is now easy. That itself is fun.”

“My Dad’s addicted to Wikipedia. Seriously. I can’t think of a single day I’ve seen him not go on here at least once. The man craves knowledge, and one blue link leads to another. Soon enough, he has dozens of tabs open leading to a million different things. As I hear quite often, I am my father’s daughter. I was in third period US History today reading the page on Dmitri Kabalevsky during our homework time. I came on here right now to make sure it would be okay to refer to France as Gallia in the book I’m attempting to write. I come on here so many times a day, you wouldn’t even believe. I absolutely love the system you all work so hard to run, and I
hope Wikipedia stays online and banner free for dozens of years to come! You have my full support. 🙂 ”

“100 years ago they said we would have flying cars, instead we got smart phones with access to almost every book ever written, fair trade.”

“When I was a kid, I used to watch ‘Star Trek”. When Captain Kirk had a question asked Mr. Spock and the computer with female voice. Wikipedia is a combination of Mr. Spock and Computer.”

“I have lived in the world without Wikipedia but it was darkish all the time and I never want to live in our world without it again.”

“Wikipedia is like a playground for me. I love you for what you do.”

“‘Look it up'” is what our dad always told us when we asked a question, even if he knew the answer. Back then we ran to the encyclopedia or dictionary; now it’s Wikipedia. Different but the same. And beyond Wikipedia’s being a tool to learn something, it makes me happy to know there are smarties out there, collaborating in this vital, fluid, living system, spreading knowledge. Thank you!”

“I passed my university degree, settled numerous arguments, checked sports stats, researched my great grandfather and just today found out the probable origin of sheep farming! The list goes on… and on…”

“I use Wikipedia to live my life.”

“I, as an ordinary citizen, am able to learn and access information in a way that would make pre-eminent scholars of 3000-odd years fall to their knees and weep with joy and shock.”

“Wikipedia is what the internet can be.”

Michael Maggs takes over as Chair of Wikimedia UK

Wikimedia UK today announces that Michael Maggs has been elected as the new Chair of the charity, succeeding Chris Keating. Chris remains a trustee and will continue to serve on the board.

Chris stepped down at the charity’s board meeting in Edinburgh this weekend, having served as Chair since August 2012. The board then unanimously elected Michael as replacement Chair.

Chris Keating said: “It has been a privilege to serve as Chair of Wikimedia UK for the last sixteen months and seeing the charity develop over that time has been very satisfying. I look forward to continuing to act as a trustee until my current term concludes at the charity’s next AGM in August 2014.”

Michael Maggs said: “On behalf of the board I would like to place on record our thanks to Chris for his excellent leadership of the charity over the last sixteen months. I am happy that he will remain a trustee and will continue to provide the board with his expert advice. I look forward to continuing his good work.”

Wikimedia Foundation launches tenth-annual online fundraising campaign to support Wikipedia

Wikipedia users in the UK will have noticed the appearance of fundraising banners across the site. This is because the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia and its sister projects, has just launched our tenth-annual year-end fundraising campaign.

The online fundraising campaign aims to raise $20 million globally, while the remainder of the Wikimedia Foundation’s funding will come from individual gifts given outside the year-end campaign, and from foundation grants. The overwhelming majority of the Wikimedia Foundation’s funding comes from individual readers giving an average of £10.

Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, said: “People donate to Wikipedia because they find it useful, and they trust it because even though it’s not perfect, they know it’s written for them. We aim to tell the truth, and we can do that because of the millions of people who donate what they can each year, The average donor is paying for his or her own use of Wikipedia, plus the costs of hundreds of other people. The support of so many people keeps us independent and able to deliver the world’s knowledge for free. Exactly as it should be.”

The annual online fundraiser brings in the resources needed to keep the Wikimedia projects freely available to everyone around the world in their own language, and guarantees that Wikipedia will never have to rely on advertising. Donations help the Wikimedia Foundation maintain server infrastructure, improve and simplify the software that runs our projects, support initiatives around the globe to increase the number of project contributors, and make Wikipedia accessible to billions of people who are just beginning to access the internet.

Your donations also help to support the local chapters of the Wikimedia movement, such as Wikimedia UK, on the ground. This allows the chapters to train new editors, to support the improvement of content, to support cultural institutions in making their resources freely available and promote the use of Wikipedia in formal education settings.

The entire Wikimedia movement is very grateful to all donors for their support and the volunteers who help make the campaign a widely localised and internationalised endeavour. The 2013 year-end fundraising campaign builds on the success of previous years and will run through the end of this year. To make a donation, click the banners at the top of Wikipedia, or go directly to donate.wikimedia.org

Reaching into the past: Working with Wikipedia and students

Matthew Neely, Bodleian archivist in charge of the Rycote website, shows original manuscripts to sixth formers

This post was written by Liz McCarthy, Communications and Social Media Officer for the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford

After organising two ‘regular’ editathons, I feel fairly comfortable with the processes involved in getting a group of adults together to learn about and use Wikipedia and our resources at the same time. But with the recent launch of Rediscovering Rycote, an online archival resource exploring a Tudor mansion, we wanted to try something different.

Wikipedia provides the ideal platform for getting students to think about sources of information and why they matter. We decided to invite a group of 30 Year 12 students to join us for a morning session on Wikipedia; working with Merton College’s Schools Liaison & Access Officer meant that students could round off the day at Merton College, taking a look at University life.

The students, who came from seven schools around southern England, started their morning session learning about the Rycote resource from the project archivist. Once they knew what they were dealing with, Doug Taylor, our Wikimedia trainer, began to introduce them to the basics of Wikipedia.

Doug walked the students through their accounts as well as the various components of a Wikipedia article and some of the basic editing formats, especially those for citations. Once they felt comfortable, the students moved on to adding images related to the Rycote project to Wikimedia Commons, using the online resource to ensure they added the correct metadata. We talked them through adding the images to the articles themselves; although there wasn’t time for a great deal of article editing, some students were able to update articles with images. As we finished up, the students had the opportunity to look at some of the original documents featured on the website – including a letter signed by Elizabeth I, which elicited some ‘oooohs’.

The session’s goals were partially different than a typical editathon. Rather than facilitating lots of editing, we hoped to show students how editing worked and give them the tools to approach it on their own. It may be too early to know whether the students will return to Wikipedia, but comments during the day along the lines of ‘I hadn’t realised how easy this was!’ and ‘I could definitely do this at home’ were encouraging.

EduWiki: The Video

During our successful EduWiki Conference, held in Cardiff this month, Wikimedia UK volunteer User:Rock drum recorded some interviews with participants and organisers to create a video.

The short video below tells the story of the conference. We hope you all agree that Rock drum has done a great job, and that you enjoy the video.

Scottish Women on Wikipedia

This post was originally published by Anabel Marsh, a new Wikipedian. You can see the original post here

I’ve often dipped into Wikipedia, but I didn’t start to take it seriously until a couple of years ago when I attended a Teachmeet at which one of the presenters changed my mind. He convinced me that Wikipedia was more accurate than I had thought – and where it isn’t accurate, it says so. It tracks and discusses revisions so, rather than banning students from using it, they should be taught to use it responsibly. However, it never occurred to me to become an editor until Glasgow Women’s Library, where I volunteer, was approached by Graeme Arnott with a proposal for an “Editathon” on Scottish Women on Wikipedia. The title had two implications – to get more Scottish women editing Wikipedia, and to increase the content about Scottish women. Graeme, myself and Laura Dolan of GWL made some plans and the event took place at Bridgeton Library on Saturday, assisted by Ally Crockford, Wikimedian in Residence at the National Library of Scotland. We ended up with eight potential new editors, two complete articles (so far) and several in preparation.

Although advertised as a drop-in, most people were there all day. We spent the morning learning the basics from Graeme (a very patient teacher) and were then let loose in the afternoon. I’ve been blogging for a long time and use several social media platforms, but I found Wikipedia harder than all of them because you have to do more of the formatting yourself. However, once you’ve mastered a few rules and realised you can basically copy the code from other articles it becomes easier – but still very fiddly. It’s not something I can see myself wanting to do everyday, although I am keen to do more. We had all brought along some information that we wanted to make available, and I just managed to get my pre-drafted article on Isabella Elder published before we closed at 4pm. I was very proud to be the first! Jennifer Higgins finished her article on Jude Burkhauser the following day. Check out the articles to find out why these women are important.

It was also a pleasure to work in the recently opened Bridgeton Library which has moved from its old, Carnegie premises (now occupied by GWL) to the refurbished Britannia Building, a former theatre. It’s bright and modern with good computer facilities and a café which, sadly for us, doesn’t open on Saturdays. Like many Glasgow Libraries, the children’s area is particularly colourful.

GWL still has a substantial list of women who feature, for example, on their Women’s Heritage Walks but who are not on Wikipedia (or only briefly) and I have started my own list of possible subjects. I’ll be looking out for more Editathons too – watch this space!

Some related material on Wikipedia and Editathons:

BioFluff – post about an Editathon in Manchester which also highlights the gender disparity

Femgineer – Calling all women: contribute to wikipedia

MIT Technology Review – The decline of Wikipedia. (Huh?)

JISC Webinar – Tales from the Wikimedian in Residence at the NLS

Storify – about this event

THE – report of an editathon on women scientists

Wikipedia gender – graphic showing the ratio of female to male editors (1:6.7)

Wikipedia:GLAM/National Library of Scotland

Youtube: Sarah Stierch – various presentations on Wikimedia, including the gender gap

In response to the Times Higher Education

Wikimedia UK notes with interest the article published by Times Higher Education today entitled: “PR staff strive for Wikipedia whitewashes”

Wikipedia guidelines state that editing articles about yourself, your institution or, in the case of PR, clients that you represent, is a clear conflict of interest and should be avoided.

As this report shows, attempts to remove negative, reliably sourced information from a Wikipedia article tend not only to be reverted but attract more attention to that material.

In terms of correcting factually inaccurate content the best course of action is to propose changes on the talk page of the article and be honest about who you represent. You can also note your question on your user talk page, ending with the tag {{help}} which will notify some experienced Wikipedians that you need some assistance. You can also email info@wikimedia.org.uk for some advice.

Mining information at the Mining Institute

This post was written by Robert Forsythe, former Wikimedian in Residence at Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums

For fans of the Victorian Gothic and Dr Who’s Tardis, a visit to Newcastle upon Tyne’s North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers (also known as “The Mining Institute”) is a must. The building is an outstanding creation in the Victorian Gothic style and, as with the Tardis, it is much more spacious than the outside might suggest.

Robert Forsythe began talking to the Mining Institute about a relationship with Wikimedians in the summer, a relationship cemented by a visit from Harry Mitchell – which itself was a direct result of the first Newcastle meetup in September. The outcome was a very successful editathon at the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers on 6th November. Harry Mitchell led the event and 12 people attended from the North East of England. Four Wikimedians (Peter Gans, Dan Garry, Chris McKenna, and Harry Mitchell) travelled to Newcastle to assist. One newcomer to Wikimedia travelled all the way from Plymouth and was so impressed by the day she requested an editathon for her institution. At least five new accounts were created on the day (several people had already created accounts in anticipation of the event) and the new editors, helped by the experienced Wikimedians, made edits to multiple articles relating to the Mining Institutes’s collection and uploaded a couple of images to Wikimedia Commons.

The exercise was designed to develop relations between the staff and volunteers of the institute and Wikimedians. It was a great success in this, partly because some of the Wikimedians who travelled in came the night before and attended a lecture by Bill Lancaster in the Mining Institutes’s lecture theatre. The lecture revealed that key contributors from the North East have not been well served by classic academia despite a wealth of information existing about them. Bill Lancaster expressed the hope that Wikimedia could be a tool to pay people like Christopher Blackett and Edmund Mills Hann their due.

A number of the institutes’s trustees and management team spoke directly about the opportunity they saw over the two days the Wikimedians were in town. As part of the learning curve, Jennifer Hillyard, the institutes’s librarian took everyone on a tour of the institute. This included seeing a very early painting of the coal industry whose uploading to Wikimedia Commons she suggested. The Institute has always had an excellent library. However in recent years some very significant collections threatened by the implosion of Britain’s coal mining industry have arrived. All of us were somewhat stunned by 16 roller racked rows of material which had arrived. One whole row contained 16,700 pamphlets from the Coal Research Establishment in Stoke Orchard (near Cheltenham). Another massive rack is full of German mining resources. The institute is therefore in pole position in terms of providing an authoritative view into the mining world of Britain and further afield. And it wishes to see Wikimedia Commons, Wikisource, Wikipedia contributions as routes whereby its increasingly very rare holdings are made available to the world wide audience.

Discussions are ongoing about the possibility of a follow-up event and about other projects which can be undertaken with the Mining Institute so watch this space.

Robert Forsythe was previously the first Wikimedian in Residence in the North East of England, serving with the Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums service. Since the summer he has been assisting the Mining Institute develop its Wikimedia relationship. Along with Harry Mitchell, Robert ran the event.