Activities/Proposals/Wikipedia Portal

Create a Wikipedia portal at wikipedia.co.uk/wikipedia.org.uk that represents the languages from and Wikimedia activities within the United Kingdom.

Outline

A number of Wikimedia chapters operate a Wikipedia portal - see meta:Country portals. These portals provide an easy entry point into Wikipedia (via a simple search box), as well as demonstrating the wide variety of languages supported by Wikipedia.

Benefits

Having a UK portal would:

• Demonstrate the wide variety of language Wikipedias relevant to the UK (including English, Cornish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, ...)
• Provide an opportunity to highlight events happening within the UK, including the annual fundraiser
• Highlight the various locations that Wikimedia UK uses to highlight UK events/activities/stories - e.g. the WMUK blog, the WMUK newsletter, @wikimediauk on Twitter, the facebook page, etc.
• Provide easy access to Wikipedia by those that accidentally type 'wikipedia.org.uk' rather than 'wikipedia.org'

Requirements

• The wikipedia.co.uk/.org.uk domain names are currently held by a friend of Wikipedia - they would need to be transferred to Wikimedia UK's ownership. This would include the cost of renewing these domains in the future. Other domains in other national top-level domains would also have to be investigated.
• The legal implications of owning the Wikipedia domain names would need to be investigated, in particular any liability for Wikipedia's content that could be put on Wikimedia UK. This would require requesting legal opinions on this subject, and possibly also insurance against being sued based on the portal.
• Server space that would be used to host the portal, and manpower to set it up and maintain it (could reuse the code that runs existing Wikipedia portals, which would minimize the manpower required). The cost of this is minimal.

Volunteering

• Minimal volunteers are involved, aside from setting up the portal to start with. User:Mike Peel can help with setting up the domain name, hosting, and portal.