Reports/2012/August

Below is the Wikimedia UK monthly report for the period 1 to 31 August 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. If you have any questions or comments, please drop us a line on this report's talk page.

Program activities

Community

Jimmy Wales

• Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales denies political muscle, BBC, 2 Aug
• Jimmy Wales keynoting at 'Technology: Disruption and Convergence', London, 4 August
• Jimbo Wales: Wikipedia servers in UK? No way, not with YOUR libel law, Register, 8 August
• Wikipedia founder says piracy verdict irrelevant to O'Dwyer case, ComputerActive, 15 August

Eisteddfod

(Summary to be imported here from Visit report - National Eisteddfod 8 Aug 2012.)

Olympics

• How Wikipedia Won Olympic Gold, Wired, 10 August.

US presidential candidates

• Will Kelly Ayotte be Romney's running mate? Her Wikipedia page was updated 153 times in one day, Daily Mail, 8 August
• US political pundits begin scouring Wikipedia pages for hints over the identity of Mitt Romney's pick for potential Vice President, Independent, 8 August
• Wikipedia LOCKS editing access after Stephen Colbert tells his followers to mess with Mitt Romney's VP hopefuls' pages, 9 August
• Mitt Romney Wikipedia entry locked down, BBC, 10 Aug
• Wikipedia locks down editing on Mitt Romney, other Republican entries, TechRadar, 10 Aug

Gender bias

• What has Wikipedia’s army of volunteer editors got against Kate Middleton’s wedding gown?, Independent, 16 Aug

Guido Fawkes

• Caught! Guido Fawkes puffs up Wikipedia entry, Liberal Conspiracy, 17 Aug

Downtime

• Wikipedia goes down thanks to cut cables, BBC, 6 August
• Wikipedia blackout after server cables accidentally cut, Telegraph, 6 August
• Wikipedia blames severed cable for global site outage, V3, 7 August
• Wikipedia blackout after cables cut, Telegraph, 7 August
• Wikipedia knocked offline by cut cable, PC Pro, 7 August
• Wikipedia Outage Caused By Cut Cable, TechWeekEurope, 7 August
• Wikipedia suffers outage after cable cut, ComputerWorld UK, 7 August
• Wikipedia goes down after data cables are accidentally cut in Florida, Metro UK, 7 August

Brandon Harris

• Why Wikipedia Needs a “Kick In the Head”, Gizmodo, 13 August

Printed Wikipedia

• Notes & Queries: Would a printed Wikipedia fit in the British Library?, Telegraph, 15 August

Suggs and Wikipedia

• Madness frontman Suggs: I found out my Scots dad was dead by looking at my Wikipedia entry, Daily Record, 23 August
• Suggs: I learnt of my father's death on Wikipedia, Telegraph, 23 August
• Singer Suggs discovers family history on Wikipedia, Independent, 24 August
• Suggs learns of dad's death of Wikipedia, Daily Star, 24 August
• Suggs: I searched for my father for years, but found out he had died decades ago by reading my Wikipedia page, Daily Mail, 24 August

GLAM activities

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

QRpedia

• Andy Mabbett convinced the historic Bartons Arms to make use of QRpedia codes, see commons:Category:QRpedia codes at The Bartons Arms.
• On 24-26 August, Andy will represent Wikimedia-UK at Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte/2, a workshop (editathon) at Hamburgmuseum in Germany, where he will assist in the deployment of QRpedia, about which he spoke in Hamburg last December.
  • The evening before, he will give a talk on Wikimedia QRpedia and more at Kultwerk West in that city (free entry, all welcome).
• Andy is also proposing to make Wolverhampton into a Wikipedia City.

Monmouthpedia

• Studying the world's first Wikipedia town, Monmouthshire Beacon, 8 August

Technology

Recruitment for our first developer position continued throughout this month. Richard attended and met with several small startups who are creating apps which could be used to ease the 'reader' to 'editor' transition. WMUK also purchased a 500GB portable hard drive - mostly for off-site, non-personal data backup (such as copies of the fundraiser agreement and videos of board meetings), but also to be used for photography events where there is no fast internet connection to upload images directly to Commons.

Miscellaneous

2013 activity planning

(Summary of 2013 Activity Plan/Ideas)

Microgrants

• Microgrants/Operation Barras and Operation Flavius was approved.

Upcoming activities in September

• (To be copied here from Events at the end of this month)

For events in August and onwards, please see Events.

Administrative activities

Name change

Wiki UK Ltd is now known legally as Wikimedia UK as of 14 August, following from the change of name resolution passed at our AGM earlier this year.

Board activities

On 2 August, Chris Keating succeeded Fae as Chair of Wikimedia UK, and Doug Taylor was appointed Vice-Chair. Our blog post.

News from the Chief Exec

For information on Jon's activities this month, see News from the Office.

Fundraising and Budgeting

This month, we received £X in one-off donations, with X individual donations. The average donation amount was £X. X 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 N successful direct debits this month, bringing in a total of £X.