Newsletter/October2009

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Wikimedia UK Newsletter
October 2009 Issue
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Summary: (to be written)

In this month's newsletter:

  1. Fundraising Drive
  2. Museum discussions
  3. Wiki Wednesdays
  4. New meeting style
  5. Press Coverage

Fundraising Drive

On 29th October the Board of Trustees appointed Thomas Dalton (aka Tango) as Head of Fundraising. His role will be to coordinate Wikimedia UK's part in the big Wikimedia fundraising drive starting at the beginning of November. We will be working with the Wikimedia Foundation and expect to raise at least £10,000 and hope to raise far more. We are still looking for volunteers to help write the text for our fundraising website, write press releases, talk to the press and many other things. If you would like to help, please e-mail Tango.

Museum discussions

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Wiki Wednesdays

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New meeting style

With almost a complete turnout of the Board at the recent London Wikimedia Meet-up at Penderell's Oak in Holborn in early October, one conclusion was that the Board should try to use its time in Board meetings even more productively than it does at present. One suggestion that was agreed was that the Board should experiment on holding the first hour of the Board meetings on Skype, thereby, allowing business to flow faster and for more to be achieved at each meeting. The second hour of each Board meeting was to be an IRC meeting, as always, but this time it would work in a more flexible way, with Board decisions and explanation being listed and detailed with 'side-chat rooms' being open for members to ask additional questions and volunteer additional information that the Board may need. This new 'experimental' format is now running and will be reviewed by the Board in due course.

Press Coverage

Editor numbers

The big story in the last 2 months has been the research by Felipe Ortega showing a decrease in wikipedia editors of over 49,000, where a wikipedia editor is defined as anyone that has made an edit to Wikipedia. For more information on the numbers, see Dr Ortega's doctoral thesis and the Wikimedia Foundation's blog post.

The story was started by the Wall Street Journal, and it was covered by a range of British newspapers in late November. These included

Other coverage has included