Reports/2012/March

Below is the Wikimedia UK monthly report for March 2012. 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. To see what we have planned in coming months, please visit our events page. If you have any questions or comments, please drop us a line on this report's talk page.

Program activities

Community

The Liverpool meetup

London Meetup

On 11th at Pendrel's Oak.

Liverpool meetup

On 24th at The Richard John Blackler

Copyright Consultation

The UK's Intellectual Property Office held a consultation process for proposals to change the UK's copyright system, which closed this month. Tom Morris worked with other volunteers and WMUK staff to respond to this consultation. The final version that was submitted to the consultation process is at Intellectual Property Office Consultation.

Wikimania 2013 bids

• Bristol bids to host Wikimania 2013, This Is Bristol, 31 March

Education

Wikimedia UK Workshop hosted at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, 30 March 2012 by the Geological Society.

Bright Club

On the 1st, Mike Peel spoke at Bright Club Manchester on Wikipedia and 'Histories'. Bright Club is a "thinking person's comedy club", combining comedy with scientific public outreach. Mike focused on how Wikipedia articles all have 'View History' pages that show every change made to that article, as well as mentioning the article on Toilet paper orientation, guidelines such as WP:BEANS and WP:DICK, recent Fox News coverage of Wikipedia, and vandalism to biographies of living people.

Monmouth schools

On the 20th and 21st, John Cummings, RexxS, and Harry Mitchell visited two schools in Monmouth as part of the Monmouthpedia project. They ran drop-in workshops for students and staff, during which revision histories and the reversion of vandalism were explained to staff. Staff and students were given guidance on making the best use of Wikipedia for research (including a discussion of guidelines on reliability of sources), and several were walked through getting started on editing. On the 21st, Rexx and Harry led a group each of year 8 pupils in a session focusing on uploading images to Commons. Promises were made to return to the schools to deliver training in greater depth later in the year.

Geological Society workshop

Charles Matthews, Gordon Joly, Joseph Seddon, RexxS, Carcharoth, and Harry Mitchell spoke to fellows of the Geological Society along with invited guests from the GeolSoc and other learned societies on 30th March at Burlington House, London. The morning focused on an introduction to Wikipedia's core content policies (verifiability, neutrality, and no original research), followed by an editing session (with trainers circulating to provide assistance) in the afternoon, while the day ended with discussions of copyright, and broader issues such as intellectual property and the reliability and usefulness of Wikipedia. (More pictures)

Coventry History Editathon

31 March, Herbert Art gallery and Museum, Coventry. This was primarily a GLAM event, but with Wikipedia training for interested local people. See the GLAM section for report.

Majority of UK academics prohibit students from using Wikipedia, but use it just as frequently themselves

See the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.

Expert outreach

• Alex Bateman: Why scientists should be publishing on Wikipedia, Wired, 29 March

In the last month, Andy Mabbett has delivered Wikipedia editor training to volunteers and curators from a number of Warwickshire museums, including Chedham's Yard and Southam's Cardall Collection; and, as mentioned above, the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. Several articles have been created, or significantly improved, as a result. He also spoke about Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap in a lecture to students on the MA Social Media course at Birmingham City University.

GLAM

Wikimedians editing pages during the edit-a-thon

See also the This Month in GLAM UK report for this month.

Hack on the Record

‘Hack on the Record’ at the National Archives (24th-25th)

Coventry History Editathon

On the 31st, the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry hosted the third event in its ongoing partnership with Wikimedia UK. The event was organised by Rock drum and Harry Mitchell from Wikimedia UK and Erin Hollis from the Herbert. They were assisted on the day by Tom Morris and RexxS. The event combined GLAM with community outreach, as local people with an interest in Wikipedia joined experienced Wikipedians and museum staff for tours of the History Centre and the Wonderful Watercolours exhibition, and then sat down to write articles about subjects connected to the watercolours, with the help of resources provided by the Herbert and the History Centre. At least five new articles were created—David Gee, John Dowling (pilot) John Bailey Shelton Ford's Hospital, Coventry, and Sydney Bunney. Existing articles were also improved, and several images were donated by the Herbert (see Coventry History Editathon#Results of the day).

Battle of Arras

The plan to live-tweet the Battle of Arras between the 9th April and 16th May 2012 includes a requirement to make content available under a Creative Commons license, and encouragement to upload photos and documents from private collections onto Wikimedia Commons under a free license.

St Paul's Church

QRpedia codes were deployed in St Paul's Church in Birmingham this month, by User:Pigsonthewing.

GLAM-WIKI 2012

Wikimedia UK is planning to run the GLAM-WIKI Conference on Friday 14 - Saturday 15 September at the British Library in London. This is a global GLAM conference hosted by the UK chapter. We are linking with the British Library with the support of other chapters and the WMF in terms of volunteer support and scholarships. The intention is to attract Wikimedians to share their GLAM related experience and professionals to address the GLAM community. The idea of the day will be similar to the 2010 event (GLAM-WIKI 2010).

Please join the discussions on how to shape the event by taking a look at the page at GLAM-WIKI 2012 - and feel free to add your ideas! It's early stages of the planning and we are open to creative solutions.

National Archives partnership

The first few images of of an initial test set of 300 original scans of never before published World War II artworks from the National Archives collections have been uploaded (example on the right). We hope to encourage Wikipedia biography articles to be created about these war time artists (as commissioned by the Ministry of Information). Over the summer the idea is to publish to Wikimedia Commons something in the order of (a multiple of) 10,000 images from the digital collections, for the first time uploaded to the internet for the public benefit. Experimenting with the initial test set will establish our best practice for metadata requirements and layout. For more information, see Wikipedia:GLAM/TNA/Participants.

ABC content partnership, Australia

• Oz national broadcaster goes open with archives, The Register, 26 March

Technology

QRpedia

• QRpedia was mentioned many times in articles about Datawind winning the SmartUK award. QRpedia was joint 2nd with three others.
• Part 1: Introducing Lori Byrd Phillips, Wikipedian in Residence., Technology in the Arts, March 7th
• QRpedia:Best of Both Worlds, Part II of above

Monmouthpedia

• Monmouthpedia was in the local paper (the Monmouthshire Beacon) every two weeks
• Monmouthpedia, a project of Wikipedia, which lists a whole city, Nanopress, In Italian
• Monmouthpedia, Wikipedia will catalog an entire city, Tuutogratis, In Italian

Miscellaneous

Interviews with Jimmy Wales

On 7 March, Jimmy attended the Financial Times Digital Media conference 2012, and gave a number of interviews to the media. Resulting press coverage included:

• #ftmedia12: Jimmy Wales on the power of Wikipedia’s free access ethos, Journalism.co.uk, 7 March
• Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales dislikes Facebook buttons, Financial Times, 7 March
• Wikipedia avoids politics after copyright victory, Reuters, 7 March

MP and House of Commons edits to Wikipedia articles

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism investigated the edits that had been UK Members of Parliament, and the House of Commons, had been making to Wikipedia. WMUK was kept in the loop during this investigation. The resulting news articles included:

• Wikipedia: ‘Bob Crow, The Lord of the Rings and Notable DJs’, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 9 March
• Who are the Commons moles changing Wikipedia entries?, Independent, 9 March
• MPs Wikipedia pages 'changed from inside Parliament', Telegraph, 9 March
• How MPs are tweaking their Wikipedia pages in bid to hide embarrassing information, Daily Mail, 9 March
• Former Enfield MP Joan Ryan changed Wikipedia page to remove expenses scandal, This Is Local London, 11 March (also Enfield Independent)

Jimmy Wales appointed as adviser to UK government

• Jimmy Wales: Wikipedia chief to advise Whitehall on policy, Telegraph, 12 March
• Wikipedia co-founder asked to advise Whitehall on how to make policy decisions more open, Daily Mail, 12 March
• Wikipedia's Wales to help government engage public in policy, Public Service, 12 March
• Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales becoming adviser to British government, The Verge, 12 March
• Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia Founder: First Sopa Protest, Now Advising Whitehall On Innovation, IBTimes, 12 March
• Jimmy Wales turns Jimmy Whitehall, TechEye, 12 March
• Wikipedia Cofounder Jimmy Wales Now to Advise UK , WebProNews, 12 March
• Wikipedia co-founder to advise No 10, Financial Times, 12 March (Paywall)
• Jimmy Wales To Become UK Government Adviser, SlashDot, 13 March
• Wikipedia founder to advise govt on public participation, Information Age, 12 March
• Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales Appointed UK Government Adviser, Tom's Hardware, 13 March
• Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales to advise UK government on technology policy, TechWorld, 13 March
• Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales to advise govt on technology policy, MacWorld, 13 March
• Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Becomes U.K. Tech Advisor, PC Mag, 13 March
• Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to become Whitehall adviser, Guardian, 13 March
• Wikipedia co-founder to advise UK Government , IT Pro, 13 March
• IT industry news: Wikipedia founder to become Whitehall adviser, CompuTeach, 14 March

Britannica stops publishing

• Encyclopedia Britannica in the age of Wikipedia, Guardian, 14 March
• Rule Britannica...the original wacky-pedia, Daily Mail, 15 March
• Wikipedia Didn’t Kill Britannica. Windows Did, Wired, 14 March

Citizen Scientists and Collaboration

• The internet: citizen scientists demonstrate the power of collaboration, Guardian, 18 March

Wikimedia UK Charity Status

• 什么样的机构才算公益慈善/What institution to be considered a public charity, news.sina.com.cn, 20 March
• "Wikimedia UK has recently received charitable status", in "Home truths", Charity Finance, March 2012.
• "Daria Cybulska has joined Wikimedia UK as head of events. She was volunteer development support officer at Diabetes UK.", Third Sector, 20 March

SOPA

• Will proposed US piracy laws endanger freedom of speech?, ComputerActive, 19 March

Administrative activities

Board meetings

The Executive Committee meeting at the John Rylands Library in Manchester on 3rd March.

Exec meeting

An in-person executive board meeting took place at the John Rylands Library in Manchester on 3rd March. The meeting covered the Chief Exec report, hiring plans for development and fundraising work, and a whole host of other topics. At 2 pm we opened up the exec meeting into a full board meeting in order that our position of fundraising could be established and agreed. For more details, please see the meeting minutes. We thank John Rylands and Simon Bains for donating the venue for the meeting.

Board meeting

On 27th, by telephone - Agenda, Minutes 27Mar12

Fundraising and Budgeting

Fundraising

This month, we received £1310.44 in one-off donations, with 74 individual donations. The average donation amount was £17.71. 24 of these donors have had Gift Aid Declarations made and matched with their records. If anyone would like a full (but anonymised) csv file with more information, please get in touch with richard.symondswikimedia.org.uk and let him know your requirements.

As for direct debit donations, there were 6,627 successful direct debits this month, bringing in a total of £27,231.37.

Global movement

Chapters meeting

The Chapters' Conference took place at the annual German Wikimedia Conference in Berlin from 30th March to 1st April. Jon Davies, Roger Bamkin and Fæ attended.

Office and Staff

The WMUK office on 9 Mar 2012

The single complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority about our fundraising banners, made last month, has been dealt with amicably. The ASA did not believe that we had breached any rules, but they did suggest informally that we update our fundraising pages to reflect that money does go towards Wikimedia UK's outreach activities, as previously our banners only mentioned staff and technology costs. We agreed completely with their suggestion, have already updated our donation pages, and have now established a good relationship with the ASA. The complaint will be listed on the ASA's website at http://www.asa.org.uk/ASA-action/Adjudications.aspx#2 from Wednesday, under the 'Informally Resolved Cases' section.

Daria was mentioned in the Third Sector article entitled "Paul Evans joins football charity Street League" on 20 March.

Stevie Benton began work on 19 March as Communications Organiser. You can learn more about Stevie and his role here.