Support Wikimedia UK – Donate now!

The Wikimedia Projects
The Wikimedia Projects

Wikimedia UK, in conjunction with the Wikimedia Foundation, recently started its first fundraiser. So far we have raised over £9,000 and hope to raise several times that much before the fundraiser ends in January. That money will enable us to run various initiatives to improve Wikipedia and its sister projects and increase access to them. One of the initiatives we have planned is to go into British schools to teach pupils and teachers how to make the most of Wikipedia and to encourage them to contribute to the project. Wikipedia needs constant work to keep it up-to-date and growing and introducing a new generation to the project will enable it to keep going for years to come.

Another initiative the money we are now raising will enable us to run is “Britain Loves Wikipedia“. We will be working with museums all over the country to help and encourage volunteers to photograph exhibits and make those photographs available for use via Wikimedia Commons in Wikipedia articles and elsewhere. We will also be co-hosting a conference with the Open Knowledge Foundation where people interested in making knowledge available to everyone will come from all over the country and the world to discuss and spread the word about free and open knowledge projects like Wikipedia.

If you would like to support these initiatives and help us make Wikipedia as great as we know it can be, please donate by going to http://donate.wikimedia.org.uk. Thank you!

Wikipedia Loves Art at the V&A – Photos on Commons

Facade
Image via Wikipedia (PD)

Earlier this year, a Wikipedia Loves Art event – a free content photography contest – was held at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Over 30 people attended the event at the Victoria and Albert, which generated 326 photographs.

These photographs are now available on Wikimedia Commons, ready for use in Wikipedia articles. Please help categorize them on Commons so that they can easily be found, and also add them to appropriate Wikipedia articles!

We’re currently organizing next February’s event. Britain Loves Wikipedia will be a nation-wide event held in a number of museums, again in the popular photography contest style. Please help develop the event online, and spread the word!

Open Knowledge Conference & WMUK AGM

okconpng

Wikimedia UK and the Open Knowledge Foundation are partnering to run the 2010 Open Knowledge Conference, planned to be held next April. The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) is a not-for-profit organization aiming to promote open content and open data, founded in 2004. In conjunction with this event, Wikimedia UK will also be holding our AGM.

As part of this partnership, we are looking for volunteers who would be interested in the organisation of the conference. The two committees that have been formed to organise the conference so far are as follows:
  • Organising commitee – This committee will be responsible for organising the venue, materials, call for participation, seeking sponsors etc. No prior experience is need in conference organising, just the ability to have some good ideas and to work in a team.
  • Research track committee – This committee will be responsible for selecting research papers about “open knowledge” for the conference research track. Reasearch experience is recommended, although not required and it does not have to be in open knowledge.
You can be a member of more than one committee so if you are interested in helping out, please email conferences@wikimedia.org.uk. If your not a member of Wikimedia UK but would like to help out, please read http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Membership with regards to joining the chapter.

Joseph Seddon
Conference Director
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Milestone: 5 Years, 5 Million Media Files on Wikimedia Commons

A mosaic of 1,200 of the 5 million media files, forming the Wikimedia logo

2 September 2009, The Internet: Wikimedia Commons, one of the largest free media repositories on the Internet, reached the 5 million media files milestone today. Created just five years ago as a common repository of images for the different language versions of Wikipedia, it has grown to include video, animation, sound, and graphics files. Today, it is used by Wikipedias in over 270 languages as well as Wiktionaries (dictionaries), Wikibooks (textbooks), and other projects in multiple languages. With all content freely licensed, media from Commons are used by other individuals and groups including bloggers and news, education, and commercial organisations. The repository is the product of an international collaboration of over 800,000 volunteers, 20,000 of whom are currently active.

The media files come from a wide range of sources, from personal photography by Wikimedia Commons users to images from public archives. Everyone from every path of life can contribute to the repository, increasing the amount of public domain and freely-licensed educational media content available to the world.

One of over 1,700 featured pictures, and the winner of the “Commons Picture of the Year” competition in 2008

Wikimedia Commons started 5 years ago this month. It reached 4 million media files a mere 6 months ago, on 4 March 2009, after taking 8 months to go from 3 to 4 million files. Amongst the 5 million files are 1,700 “featured” pictures — the very finest on Wikimedia Commons.

In the last year, Wikimedia Commons has seen several substantial donations of media files. In December 2008, Bundesarchiv (the German Federal Archive) donated nearly 100,000 images. In March 2009, the State and University Library Dresden announced that they will donate nearly 250,000 images, which are in the process of being uploaded. These donations have been mutually beneficial: the archives have benefited from the work of Wikimedia volunteers in categorising these images, checking their descriptions, linking them with appropriate metadata and adding the images to Wikipedia articles. This has led to increased visibility of their works, and a substantial increase in visitors to their websites and the archives’ sales of prints.

An image of the excavation at Uriconium, Shropshire, taken by Francis Bedford, donated by Regionarkivet and digitally restored by a Wikimedia volunteer

In August 2009, Regionarkivet (Sweden) donated high-resolutions scans of 27 images by important 19th century photographers to Wikimedia Sverige and Wikimedia Commons. These included works by the British photographers Francis Bedford and Roger Fenton.

Wikimedia Commons is also currently receiving influxes of nearly 10,000 media files from two recent free photography competitions of public domain works held by museums: Wikipedia Loves Art was held in museums world-wide, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and Wiki Loves Art was held in museums across the Netherlands. Wikimedia UK is currently planning Britain Loves Wikipedia, a similar event to take place in museums across the UK, aimed at making Britain’s cultural heritage more visible, available freely across the world via the internet.

EDITORS’ NOTES

About Wikimedia Commons:

Wikimedia Commons is a free image and media file repository, and is a sister project to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It was started on 7 September 2004, and is operated by the Wikimedia Foundation.

About Wikimedia UK:

Wikimedia UK is the local Wikimedia chapter covering the United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is an independent organisation that supports free and open knowledge throughout the United Kingdom, including promoting and supporting the projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation.

About the Wikimedia Foundation:

The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is the US-based non-profit organisation that operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world. These include Wikipedia, one of the world’s 10 most-visited websites, and Wikimedia Commons.

Further information:

Contact details:

Andrew Turvey, Secretary, Wikimedia UK

  • Email: secretary@wikimedia.org.uk
  • Phone: +44 (0)7988 013 646

Paul Williams, Volunteers Director, Wikimedia UK

  • Phone: +44 (0)7979 804 715

Regionarkivet makes images by Francis Bedford and Roger Fenton available on Wikimedia Commons

Excavation at Uriconium by Francis Bedford. Public domain.
Excavation at Uriconium by Francis Bedford. Public domain.

On 19 August 2009, Regionarkivet (a municipal archive institution based in Gothenburg, Sweden) and Wikimedia Sverige announced the release of 28 high-quality and high-resolution images onto Wikimedia Commons.

These photographs, all of which are in the public domain due to their age, were taken by some of the most influential photographers of the 19th century.

Amongst the pictures are some taken within the UK by the British architect and photographer Francis Bedford:

Another photograph is of the River Braan in Dunkeld, Scotland, by the pioneering British photographer Roger Fenton.

The Wikimedia Commons page describing the partnership gives the history of the images. “The images were brought to Sweden by architect Victor von Gegerfelt, probably during his visit to France during the 1850s. Among the photographers were Gustave Le Gray, Francis Bedford and Roger Fenton. The originals then hung on the walls of the Gegerfelt villa, where they were largely forgotten, until they were donated to Regionarkivet with other documents and pictures. The photographs were later rediscovered by an employee at the archive, put on display at the Hasselblad centre in Gothenburg.”

Having these images freely available on the internet means that they can be easily viewed by anyone in the UK for the first time. They were previously stored in special, climate-controlled storage vaults in Sweden.

This is a great example of the kind of partnerships that Wikimedia  chapters can have with cultural institutions benefitting both sides. Wikimedia UK are keen to engage with institutions in Britain in projects like this – please get in touch if you would like  to discuss this further.

British media storm over Wikipedia changes

In the past week we have seen considerable interest from British newspapers, radio and television in the forthcoming trial of Flagged Protection on the English Wikipedia.

Wikipedia logo (Copyright Wikimedia Foundation - Fair use)
Wikipedia logo (Copyright Wikimedia Foundation - Fair use)

Wikimedia UK have fielded more than half  dozen enquiries, been quoted in four newspapers, had three radio interviews and two television interviews. The media response has been coordinated by Mike Peel, Chair of Wikimedia UK, helped by David Gerard, volunteer press contact for the Wikimedia Foundation and Andrew Turvey, Wikimedia UK’s secretary. The interest all started from an article in the New York Times on Monday headlined “Wikipedia to Limit Changes to Articles on People“. When the story crossed the Atlantic, British media companies started contacting Wikimedia UK rather than the Foundation, so they could have someone local to talk to and in the same time zone.

Much of the news reporting has been exaggerated and misleading, typified by “Newsnight”‘s headline “Is the philosophy of Wikipedia dead?“. Throughout our media work we have tried to give a more accurate and balanced view, explaining the background to the trial and the impact this will have on Wikipedia. We have not proactively contacted the media and have only responded to enquiries as they have come in.

Wikimedia UK takes no position on the ongoing discussions within the community about this trial, and are only concerned to make sure that the media represent the changes fairly and accurately and that potential contributors, users and partners leave with a good impression of the project.

The current status quo on the English Wikipedia, which has been in place for many years, is that when an article receives an above-average amount of vandalism, the article would be “protected”. For vandalism conducted by unregistered users, semi protection would result in all unregistered and new users (New being nothing more than a few days old) being unable to edit an article.

The configuration that is currently planned for a trial of 2 months has two parts. The first is “Flagged Protection”, which will be used in place of protection on some articles on living people. This allows everyone to continue editing, but changes by new users have to be checked by users that have been around for longer. The second is passive “patrolling”, which just serves to make identification of vandalism easier. The first part has been the subject of a great deal of confusion amongst the media (and indeed, amongst Wikipedians); it is easy to confuse applying this tool to a few pages with applying it to all Wikipedia pages.

A list of media within the UK that have covered this story is given below, along with the link between the stories and Wikimedia UK. Please note that some of the links are only valid for seven days.

Television

Radio

  • 25th: Radio Five Live, 6:40pm – live interview with David Gerard
  • 26th: Radio 2, Chris Evans, 5:30pm – live interview with David Gerard
  • 26th: 4fm (Ireland), Lunchtime on Four (link only live for 7 days),  2:41pm – live interview with Andrew Turvey

Newspapers / Online

  • 25th: BBC – Wikipedia to launch page controls – with quotes from Mike Peel
  • 25th: The Times – Wikipedia to end editing free-for-all – with quotes from Mike Peel
  • 25th: UKPA – Trial editing of Wikipedia entries – with quotes from Mike Peel
  • 26th: Daily Mail – The Wikipedia police: Encyclopedia site recruits 20,000 editors to stop malicious tampering with entries – no contact with WMUK
  • 26th: The Telegraph – Wikipedia ends unrestricted editing of articles – no contact with WMUK
  • 27th: The Independent – The Big Question: Why has Wikipedia changed editorial policy, and will it improve the website? – quote from Mike Peel

Wikipedia Loves Art – Prizes

Earlier this year, the Victoria & Albert Museum and Wikimedia UK took part in “Wikipedia Loves Art”, a free content photography contest.

Facade
V&A Museum – Image via Wikipedia (PD)

We had over 30 people attend the Victoria and Albert event, and over 460 photographs submitted to Flickr. Globally, more than 50 teams from fourteen museums submitted over 5,000 photographs, with London submitting the second highest number of photographs from any location.

All of these photographs have now been assessed and processed and are now being prepared for upload to Wikimedia Commons and use on Wikipedia. We can now announce the winners from the V&A, as follows:

  • First place: vavaval (Val_McG and dj_photo0 with 142 points
  • Second place: opalartseekers4 (Forever Wiser) with 88 points
  • Third place: ukfgr (the wee pixie and mrsraggle) with 82 points
  • Forth place: veronikab with 75 points
An image from the winning team (CC-BY-SA)Image source: Val_McG
image from the winning team (CC-BY-SA)

Vavaval win a large print of one of their photos on soft textured fine art paper, courtesy of Robbies Photographics, plus two tickets to a V&A exhibition of their choice.

The four winners also win a pack from moo.com comprising 50 Business Cards and 20 Postcards featuring photographs of their choice.

We are contacting the winners individually with details of how to claim their prizes.

The Digital Team at the V&A and Wikimedia UK really appreciate the effort that all the teams made to photograph so many objects as well as the time they spent uploading their work.

Thank you for your patience with us whilst we have processed these photographs, and we hope you enjoyed participating in this event. If you have any comments about this event or how it could be improved in the future, please let us know.

Our thanks to the Brooklyn Museum, the Digital Team at the V&A, Wikimedia New York, our sponsors, moo.com and Robbies Photographics and all the people who participated in the event.

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Welcome to the Wikimedia UK blog!

Wikimedia Logo family
Image via Wikipedia

Welcome to the blog of Wikimedia UK, the chapter of the Wikimedia projects covering the United Kingdom. We’ll be using this blog to bring you news and information both about Wikimedia UK and Wikimedia projects within the UK in general.

Location map: United Kingdom (dark green) / Eu...
Location of UK in Europe (Image via Wikipedia)

Wikimedia UK aims to be as transparent as possible – our board meetings are held publicly on IRC, all important decisions are discussed first on our mailing list, and we have a monthly newsletter. All of our initiatives are volunteer-driven (get involved!) and are funded by your donations. We are kept running by our membership, which is open to all (join now!).

We hope that this blog will let us be even more transparent, and communicate more efficiently with you (either as a member,  as a user of Wikimedia or simply some who uses or takes interest in our projects or open knowledge as a whole). Please, subscribe to the RSS feed, leave comments, and get in touch if there’s something you want to post here.

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