Reports/2011/July
Below is the Wikimedia UK monthly report for the period 1 to 31 July 2011. If you want to keep up with the chapter's activities as they happen, please subscribe to our blog, join our mailing list, and/or follow us on Twitter. If you have any queries, please ask them to us on this report's talk page.
Board activities
The executive board (chair, secretary and treasurer) met in-person on 9 July, followed up by a meeting by telephone on 19 July. The agenda is on the WMUK wiki, as are the minutes. The main part of the meeting was to clear the backlog of expense claims and postal letters sent to the chapter, which was successful.
On 25 July the full board met by telephone - again, the agenda is on the WMUK wiki, as are reports from individual board members and the meeting minutes. Most of the discussion was about individual board member activities (including GLAM, education and other activities), with specific discussions about our application for charity status, recruitment of our Chief Executive, our education activities, conflict of interest policies and plans for the 2012 financial year.
The next full board meeting will be on 27-28 August, and will be in person in Derby; the next executive board meeting will be by telephone on 9 August.
Education projects
On 4 July, Sam Knight (wikipedia:User:Wikisamia) started a joint WMUK-University of Bristol summer student placement, aiming to build on Wikimedia UK's existing relationships with the city to create partnerships that benefit both Wikipedia and the community.
On 7-9 July, Wikimedia UK director Martin Poulter, and wikipedia:User:Chzz attended the Wikipedia in Higher Education Summit. This was a three-day conference held at Simmons College in Boston, Masachusetts.
Fundraising
Monthly fundraising reports are publicly available on our Finances webpage. Here are summaries of each month thus far this year:
- January, £49,900 received, primarily at the start of the month due to the annual fundraiser (detailed report)
- February, £2,354.95 received from 109 donors (see Fundraising Report - Monthly Totals 2011)
- March, £2,044.60 received from 90 donors (see Fundraising Report - Monthly Totals 2011)
- April, £1,064.43 received from 54 donors (see Fundraising Report - Monthly Totals 2011)
- May, £1,557.73 received from 70 donors (see Fundraising Report - Monthly Totals 2011)
- June, £1,052.37 received from 65 donors (see Fundraising Report - Monthly Totals 2011)
- July, £1,371.01 received from 78 donors (see Fundraising Report - Monthly Totals 2011)
Our accounts from incorporation until 31 January 2010 have been completed, and were approved by our members at our AGM in April (you can read them online). Our accounts for 1 February 2010 to 31 January 2011 been audited, and are in the process of being reviewed and signed; we will make them available online shortly.
In May 2011 we gave the Wikimedia Foundation a grant of £293,000 (GBP; approx. $475,000 USD) towards their general operating costs.
In July we renewed our Fundraising Agreement with the Wikimedia Foundation; the agreement can be found on the WMUK wiki at 2011 Fundraiser/Agreement. We also began participating in the pre-testing for the Wikipedia Annual Fundraiser, as documented here. We are also close to signing an arrangement with a Direct Debit bureau to enable us to take Direct Debit payments in this Autumn's fundraiser.
Charitable status
A revised submission has now been sent to the Charities Commission; we expect their reply by mid-August.
GLAM activities
Between 6 and 8 July, wikipedia:User:Johnbod joined the Wikilounge team at the "Communicating the Museum" conference in Düsseldorf, Germany. Several contacts were made, and a meeting with Historic Royal Palaces is now arranged.
On 11-12 July, Oliver Keyes and Tom Morris ran a Wikipedia/Wikimedia UK stand at the CILIP conference, Hatfield. A public report is available.
The 16th July saw a Wikilounge at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, which focused on the article on Tipu's Tiger as a multilingual case study and improvement effort. The V&A released its official photographs of the automaton under a free license so that they could be used on Wikipedia, and the English article was dramatically improved as a result of the event, and is now available in over a dozen different languages.
On the 11th July, Andy Mabbett (wikipedia:User:Pigsonthewing) started a ten-week 'Wikipedian-in-Residence' style project as Wikipedia Outreach Ambassador to wikipedia:ARKive. ARKive have donated the text of 200 of their articles on endangered species, under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 licence. These texts are now being incorporated into the corresponding Wikipedia articles and further developed on-wiki. Full information is available at ARKive project and wikipedia:Wikipedia:GLAM/ARKive.
The 28th July saw the start of a project with the National Maritime Museum to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Royal Navy warship histories - the NMM released information about around 20,000 warships under a free license, and this information is now being integrated into the corresponding Wikipedia articles.
Finally, the report from last month's National Railway Museum Wikipedia Workshop is now available.
For additional information on our recent GLAM activities, see the UK report in the global 'This Month in GLAM' report.
Recruitment
This month, we put out job adverts for our first Chief Executive, as well as a temporary Office Administrator. Both positions received a large number of applications, with interviews due to take place in August.
UK press coverage
We forgot to mention last month that Andy Mabbett, aka User:pigsonthewing, was interviewed on BBC Radio West Midlands on 12 June, talking about Wikipedia editing. While he was on-air, he took a picture of his interviewer, which was uploaded to Wikipedia before the show ended - see Andy's blog post for more information and a link to the audio recording.
Press coverage of Wikipedia in UK publications this month included:
- 4 July, Kaggle contest aims to boost Wikipedia editors, One Per Cent, New Scientist
- 5 July - Fæ in BBC Radio Scotland interview for Culture Cafe
- 6 July, NOTW phone hacking protests turn to Wikipedia, The Inquirer
- 6 July, Edit and update Wikipedia articles, ComputerActive (tutorial)
- 10 July, The Only Way Is Essex + Wikipedia = philosophy, Guardian - article on how clicking on the first link in Wikipedia articles inevitably leads to the Philosophy article
- 11 July, I fell out with Johann Hari – then 'David Rose' started tampering viciously with my Wikipedia entry, Telegraph blog
- 11 July, The scandal that will not go away, Telegraph - related to the above blog post.
- 11 July, Is That Wikipedia in Your Pocket or Are You Just Happy to See Me?, Wired blog - about a paid-for app that contains a complete copy of Wikipedia on a phone
- 11 July, Introducing Cameronism, BBC News - notable as an example of the BBC linking directly to Wikipedia and Wiktionary articles
- 14 July, Official BBC Twitter rules tell staff: ‘Don't do anything stupid’, Telegraph - mentioning "a ban on BBC staff doctoring entries on Wikipedia to sanitize critical comments."
- 17 July, In The Know - Imperica interview with Fæ about recent GLAM activities
Wikipedia Workshops
Several Wikipedia Workshops took place at the start of this month, with the Medical Research Council Workshop taking place on 1 July, and the second Bristol Wiki Academy taking place on 4 July. The latter event was blogged about on the WMUK blog, and was also reported on by the Bristol Wireless and Media Quest Mood blog.
Miscellaneous
- As a result of the Derby GLAM project, a Catalan editor flew to Derby to see in person what he and others have written ~1000 articles and translations about (see picture, right).
- UK Wikimeets this month: London (Sun 10 July)
- There were no UK Community IRC meetings this month.
- On 21 and 26 July, Steve Virgin talked about 'What is your Wikipedia Business Strategy' at Business West events at Cheltenham Racecourse & Gloucestershire Cricket Club
Upcoming activities in August
August is a fairly quiet month, with just four events taking place:
- 4-7 August - Wikimania 2011, Haifa (inc. Developer's meetings, 2-3 Aug)
- 9 August - Executive board meeting
- 14 August - London meetup
- 27 August - In-person board meeting at Derby Museum
For events in September and onwards, please see Events.