Page 58 – Upcoming Events

Wikipedia’s Visual Editor comes one step nearer

The VisualEditor logo

James Forrester of the Wikimedia Foundation made the below announcement about the first stage implementation of a visual editor for the English language Wikipedia. We’re happy to share this announcement with you.

Today we are launching an alpha, opt-in version of the VisualEditor to the English Wikipedia. This will let editors create and modify real articles visually, using a new system where the articles they edit will look the same as when you read them, and their changes show up as they type enter them — like writing a document in a word processor. Please let us know what you think.

Why launch now?

We want our community of existing editors to get an idea of what the VisualEditor will look like in the “real world” and start to give us feedback about how well it integrates with how they edit right now, and their thoughts on what aspects are the priorities in the coming months.

The editor is at an early stage and is still missing significant functions, which we will address in the coming months. Because of this, we are mostly looking for feedback from experienced editors at this point, because the editor is insufficient to really give them a proper experience of editing. We don’t want to promise an easier editing experience to new editors before it is ready.

As we develop improvements, they will be pushed every fortnight to the wikis, allowing you to give us feedback as we go and tell us what next you want us to work on.

How can I try it out?

The VisualEditor is now available to all logged-in accounts on the English Wikipedia as a new preference, switched off by default. If you go to your “Preferences” screen and click into the “Editing” section, it will have as an option labelled “Enable VisualEditor”). Once enabled, for each article you can edit, you will get a second editor tab labelled “VisualEditor” next to the “Edit” tab. If you click this, after a little pause you will enter the VisualEditor. From here, you can play around, edit and save real articles and get an idea of what it will be like when complete.

At this early stage in our development, we recommend that after saving any edits, you check whether they broke anything. All edits made with the VisualEditor will show up in articles’ history tabs with a “VisualEditor” tag next to them, so you can track what is happening.

Things to note

Slow to load – It will take some time for long complex pages to load into the VisualEditor, and particularly big ones may timeout after 60 seconds. This is because pages have to be loaded through Parsoid which is also in its early stages, and is not yet optimised for deployment and is currently uncached. In the future (a) Parsoid itself will be much faster, (b) Parsoid will not depend on as many slow API calls, and (c) it will be cached.

Odd-looking – we currently struggle with making the HTML we produce look like you are used to seeing, so styling and so on may look a little (or even very) odd. This hasn’t been our priority to date, as our focus has been on making sure we don’t disrupt articles with the VisualEditor by altering the wikitext (correct “round-tripping”).

No editing references or templates – Blocks of content that we cannot yet handle are uneditable; this is mostly references and templates like infoboxes. Instead, when you mouse over them, they will be hatched out and a tooltip will inform you that they have to be edited via wikitext for now. You can select these items and delete them entirely, however there is not yet a way to add ones in or edit them currently (this will be a core piece of work post-December).

Incomplete editing – Some elements of “complex” formatting will display and let you edit their contents, but not let users edit their structure or add new entries – such as tables or definition lists. This area of work will also be one of our priorities post-December.

No categories – Articles’ “meta” items will not appear at all – categories, langlinks, magic words etc.; these are preserved (so editing won’t disrupt them), but they not yet editable. Another area for work post-December – our current plan is that they will be edited through a “metadata flyout”, with auto-suggestions and so on.

Poor browser support – Right now, we have only got VisualEditor to work in the most modern versions of Firefox, Chrome and Safari. We will find a way to support (at least) Internet Explorer post-December, but it’s going to be a significant piece of work and we have failed to get it ready for now.

Articles and User pages only – The VisualEditor will only be enabled for the article and user namespaces (so you can make changes in a personal sandbox), and will not work with talk pages, templates, categories, etc.. In time, we will build out the kinds of specialised editing tools needed for non-articles, but our focus has been on articles.

Final point

This is not the final form of the VisualEditor in lots of different ways. We know of a number of bugs, and we expect you to find more. We do not recommend people trying to use the VisualEditor for their regular editing yet. We would love your feedback on what we have done so far – whether it’s a problem you discovered, an aspect that you find confusing, what area you think we should work on next, or anything else, please do let us know.

Communications Data Bill under threat

Wikimedia UK notes that Nick Clegg MP, Deputy Prime Minister, has today spoken out against the draft Communications Data Bill. Mr Clegg has said that the plans need a “fundamental rethink” and that he would block the Bill and pursue plans that ensure “the balance between security and liberty”.

Wikimedia UK, as part of a coalition of groups interested in open access and open source, and backed by Jimmy Wales, called for a review of the Bill. You can read our submission to the public consultation on the Bill here.

It seems that parliament has listened. The committee investigating the Bill has stated that it showed “insufficient attention to the duty to respect the right to privacy” and went “much further than it need or should for the purpose of providing necessary and justifiable official access to communications data”.

But the Home office remains unconvinced of these arguments. We’ll be watching for further developments on the Bill with interest.

Manchester Girl Geeks help to share the world’s knowledge

This post was written by Daria Cybulska, Wikimedia UK’s Events Organiser

“It’s easier than you think!” “We can do it!” It’s self regulating and doesn’t need interventions from a site owner.”

Those are just a few comments from a Manchester Girl Geeks Wikipedia training event held on Sunday 25 November, very kindly hosted by MadLabs. The event brought together experienced Wikipedia editors and 12 Girl Geeks with two aims: to learn how to edit Wikipedia and to improve articles about female scientists, building on the progress made during our Ada Lovelace Day event.

Over the course of the afternoon, many articles were improved and lots of tea enjoyed. There was a really exciting feeling that everyone in the room was learning something new, trainers included. We’re confident that many of the people who attended will continue editing Wikipedia and make valuable contributions to the encyclopaedia. A lot of the participants were also keen to look at future opportunities to work with us, so I am sure we will be taking some exciting co-operations further.

If you’re interested in hosting a Wikipedia training and editing session, or want to help at any future events, please email Daria Cybulska – daria.cybulska-at-wikimedia.org.uk

Thank you to our supporters – an an exclusive event for donors

This post was written by Katherine Bavage, Wikimedia UK’s Fundraising Organiser

As the Fundraising Organiser for Wikimedia UK there is nothing nicer than opening an envelope like I did last week that contained not only a donation, but a brief note. It simply read “Thank you for exisiting!’ The donation was without address, which was a shame, as it would have been nice to write a quick reply along the lines of ‘Same to you too!’

As the Wikimedia Foundation’s 2012 fundraiser kicks off for readers in the UK, it seems a good moment to highlight the vast and generous donor community that has supported Wikimedia UK’s work. 2012 has been a year of highlights for the Wikimedia mission, reaching over 4 million articles in English Language wikipedia, and the launching of Wikidata – the bare bones of stats and structured data that will underpin and strengthen encyclopaedic articles.

Much of this is down to the dedication of the volunteer community, who work so hard to edit, create and safeguard the content of the world’s 6th most read website. However, it is timely to recall the donors, who have helped grow the staff teams that coordinate and support this work, the servers and tech teams that develop site improvements, and who have have funded projects like Wikidata from ‘acorn-to-flourishing-oaks’ stage.

Believe me, as donor and new editor, the feel good factor from seeing your pictures used in a Signpost article or your creating your first article (how ever tiny!) is easily as powerful as donating to support a project you care about. For any Wikimedia UK donors who’ve wanted to take their first steps into the wiki-world, I’d recommend signing up for our donor exclusive editing workshop next week; failing that, keeping your eyes peeled for upcoming events for donors. One of the ways Wikimedia UK will be thanking our donors for existing more in 2013, is by offering them more personal and direct access to involvement in the encyclopaedia and sister projects.

If you have any useful suggestions for how we might do this please do get in touch.

Wikimedia Foundation begins its annual Wikipedia banner fundraiser

UK-based users of Wikipedia will notice fundraising banners across the site for the next few weeks as the Wikimedia Foundation begins its annual fundraising appeal.

The annual 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 to maintain server infrastructure, support global projects to increase the number of editors, improve and simplify the software that supports our projects, and make Wikipedia accessible globally to billions of people who are just beginning to access the internet.

Please do note that Gift Aid in the United Kingdom is not applicable to donations processed by the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit with tax exempt status in the United States, but can be reclaimed on gifts made directly to Wikimedia UK as a registered charity in the UK. If you wish to do so please visit our donation page.

To find out more about the fundraising appeal please visit the Wikimedia Foundation website

Lincoln to host Wikimedia UK AGM and WikiConference 2013

After much review it has been decided that Wikimedia UK’s Annual General Meeting and our WikiConference will take place at Lincoln College Deans Sport and Leisure Centre in Lincoln on Saturday 8 June 2013.

WikiConference UK is Wikimedia UK’s annual conference for volunteers and members. It incorporates talks of interest to the community and the Annual General Meeting of the charity. In 2013 it is being organised by the conference committee, a volunteer committee tasked with working on both WikiConference UK and the Wikimania 2014 bid.

This year we want to build on the success of last year’s conference, to provide a fun and interesting event for UK Wikimedians. The current, draft, programme includes:

A one day conference, including the AGM
Potentially a second day of activities such as a photography contest, editathon, tours etc
Building links with cultural institutions & similar entities
A social event on the Saturday evening for Wikimedians to get to know each other and learn about each other’s projects.

As a host city, Lincoln has plenty to offer, such as its historic cathedral and castle. It also has good transport links, with around half of our members being within two hours’ travel time.

The event is free to attend. A registration page will be created soon but in the meantime if you’d like to express your interest in attending please email Daria Cybulska, Events Organiser, at daria.cybulska-at-wikimedia.org.uk

We’re looking forward to seeing you in Lincoln!

Introducing Richard Nevell, our latest Wikimedia UK staff member!

We’re really happy to be able to welcome Richard Nevell to our team. Richard has joined us to provide valuable admin support. Below, he introduces himself in his own words.

“Hi, I’m Richard Nevell, the new guy at Wikimedia UK. I’ve been involved with the English language Wikipedia since 2006 and was made an admin in 2008. My main focus has been on Wikipedia, but I’ve also edited Wikimedia Commons. On rare occasion I may be seen on other language Wikipedias, but as I’m hopeless with other languages it is usually a case of adding or replacing images on the counterparts of articles I’m working on.

“Outside Wikipedia, I have a BA in Ancient History and Archaeology and an MA in History. In my free time I’m also doing a PhD in Archaeology. I say “outside Wikipedia”, but I often edit in areas related to archaeology and history as I’ve found that putting together an article on a particular subject helps me to wrap my head around it.

“When I saw that Wikimedia UK was looking for help at the office I was eager to help. I’m excited to be involved with the organisation and helping out how I can. So far a power struggle is emerging between myself and Richard Symonds over who gets to be called Richard, and I think I’m losing that battle.”

Community Consultation on Wikimedia UK Governance

This post was written by Keith Smith from Compass Partnership

As indicated in a previous Wikimedia UK blog post we as Compass Partnership have been invited by the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia UK to review Wikimedia UK governance, and in particular the management by the board of any potential conflicts of interest. We have been asked to make recommendations setting out any practical steps which we think should be taken to strengthen the governance of Wikimedia UK to ensure it conforms with good practice. As part of this review we would be pleased to have community views. If you wish to respond, please would you email your response to the five questions below to us at Compass Partnership at wiki@compassnet.co.uk by Wednesday 28th November 2012.

Wikimedia UK is a charity and company. It is governed by a board of trustee/directors. There are currently six trustees. They are not paid for their work as trustees. The organisation is subject to English charity law and the trustees have established governance codes of conduct. The role of the trustees has been described as planning, setting high level policy, and monitoring performance. The Wikimedia UK Chief Executive reports to them.

In your response, could you indicate to which numbered questions your replies relate.

1. What key things do you think have gone well with the organisational governance of the charity Wikimedia UK?

2. What has not gone so well with its governance?

3. The Charity Commission for England and Wales acknowledge that potential conflicts of interest or loyalty may well arise on a charity trustee board. When they do it is required that they be declared to the board and then appropriately managed by the board. Do you have any comments on how the Wikimedia UK board of trustees appears to have managed any such potential conflicts of interest or loyalty to date?

4. Over the year changes have been made to the Wikimedia UK board and its practices in part to develop the management of any potential conflicts of interest or loyalty on the board and between Wikimedia UK and the Wikimedia Foundation. In your view are any further changes in this regard to Wikimedia UK governance required, and if so what?

5. Do you have any other comments to offer to aid the future development of the organisational governance of Wikimedia UK as a charity?

If you wish to respond please email your response to wiki@compassnet.co.uk. Your response will be used by Compass Partnership to carry out its independent review of Wikimedia UK’s governance on behalf of Wikimedia UK and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Parts of your response may be quoted by Compass Partnership in its report to the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia UK but would not be attributed to you as an individual. The details you provide will not be used by Compass Partnership for marketing purposes or be shared with any other third party.

Announcing the appointment of two technology contractors

Wikimedia UK is pleased to announce that we have appointed two contractors to take over the running of our technical resources: Emmanuel Engelhart (User:Kelson) and Tom Morton (User:ErrantX).

Tom and Emmanuel bring a well-balanced mix of technical experience and expertise to Wikimedia UK, including software development, project management and system administrator experience. They are already familiar with developing and maintaining the open-source tools that Wikimedia UK uses on a daily basis, and they also both bring valuable experience of the global Wikimedia movement.

Following the first discussion meeting on Friday, Tom and Emmanuel will first be focusing on transferring the Wikimedia UK websites from the space we currently use on a donated Virtual Private Server to a cloud-based system. They will then be working to improve our systems, including a new email ticketing system and migrating our fundraising systems to Drupal/CiviCRM. You can see their to-do list here.

Their work will be line managed by Jon Davies, with Katherine Bavage acting as their first point of contact on a day-to-day basis. A Wikimedia UK Technology Committee is being established to provide Jon and Katherine with guidance on Tom and Emmanuel’s contract work, as well as to help define the long-term strategy for increasing our technology infrastructure and development work. If you are interested in being on this committee, please get in touch via the committee’s talk page.

We’re all looking forward to seeing their work at first hand.

In response to today’s news articles in The Times and The Daily Telegraph about PR editing of Wikipedia

This morning The Times ran a story about how staff at the public relations firm RLM Finsbury edited the Wikipedia article on Alisher Usmanov, including removing negative material. The Daily Telegraph also ran with the story online.

Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and as such its articles should be written with a neutral point of view. To maintain this neutrality we recommend that anyone with a conflict of interest, such as PR professionals, follows the guidelines we created with the CIPR. When PR professionals engage with the volunteer community via talk pages, we almost always see good results. If you need to seek an urgent correction, you can email info-at-wikimedia.org for assistance – there is a volunteer team on hand 24/7 to help.

We are pleased The Times notes that, while it took more than a month for the Wikipedia community to initially spot the changes and undo them, once they were changed again it only took seconds for this to be picked up on and undone once more. This shows that the Wikipedia community is active and that protecting articles from this kind of editing is taken seriously. This is important for Wikipedia’s credibility and for its readers and editors.

We also welcome the CIPR response to these reports. It is clear that the majority of PR professionals are willing to work with the Wikipedia community and to follow the community’s guidelines. Problems arise when PR professionals try to “fix” articles by directly editing them, as this story shows.

Wikimedia UK is always happy to engage with anyone, including PR professionals, about how Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects work. You can contact us by emailing info-at-wikimedia.org.uk or by calling our office on 020 7065 0993.