Water cooler

Welcome to the Water cooler This is a place to let you know what is happening and to discuss our external projects and activities. Feel free to suggest ideas that could help our charitable mission or ask questions about how you can help. To discuss organizational or operational matters you should head over to the Engine room.

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

WMUK Grants programme - a piece of cake?

Applying for a grant is easy.

If Wikimedia UK can help you improve Wikimedia projects, check out our grants page.

Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU - statement of intent

Hello everyone. As you may have seen the board discussed the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU at their meeting the weekend past. The Group is a collection of Wikimedia chapters which is looking at ways to improve the regulations regarding copyright in the EU. They have provisionally agreed to sign a collective statement of intent which sets out how the group will work. This is subject to a community discussion period. Please do take a look at the statement here and get involved in the discussion here. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:14, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

The statement has been signed

I am pleased to announce that the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU's statement of intent is fully supported and has been signed by the board of WMUK. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:49, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Potential MOU and collaboration with the BBC

Hello everyone. I'm currently exploring how we may be able to develop a working relationship with the BBC. We are discussing various possibilities for collaboration and a memorandum of understanding. Before we go too far I'd like to get an idea of how people feel about working with the BBC. I'd also welcome suggestions for projects we may work on together. There's a page with some notes here so please use the associated talk page for the discussion. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:28, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

QRpedia what next?

We are now dotting the 'i's and crossing the 't's on QRpedia. The next question is how do we make sure the community benefits from it? Do we need training, events etc. We have already started a FAQ page to help those who want to use it but is there more we can do?

Can we get some ideas going?

Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 15:30, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

As Jon implies, this is a good place for us to discuss possible external activities and projects using QRpedia codes that could benefit from WMUK support. Now that WMUK owns the rights in QRpedia, how do we make sure that we get maximum community and public engagement? Following creation of the new Engine room, I have moved the technical and organizational discussion of QRPedia there.--MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:35, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

I've been very reliably informed that York City Council are interested in running a city-wide QRpedia project. To my knowledge, there has been no official discussions with WMUK as yet, however, there may be more going on that I'm personally aware of. Given my geographic proximity to York (I'm based in Scarborough) I'd gladly be willing to become involved in such a project were WMUK to support such a project officially. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 14:42, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Jon Robson's world of Wikipedia

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_of_Wikipedia_by_Jon_Robson.png

Philafrenzy (talk) 22:44, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

The bit about the secret cabal is remarkably inaccurate. It doesn't reference Phillippe Beaudette's cardigans at all. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 01:33, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

And the scale is all wrong. The City of in Popular Culture is far larger than that in reality. Philafrenzy (talk) 00:40, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Book of Aneirin put online by National Library of Wales

This popped up on my Facebook news feed earlier:

"The Book of Aneirin, one of the most important literary works from medieval Wales, can now be freely viewed online.

The 13th century text is now kept at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. Written around 1265, the Book of Aneirin contains a long poem called ‘Y Gododdin’. The poem is attributed to Aneirin, who was in his prime during the second half of the sixth century and commemorates the heroic deeds of part of the Gododdin tribe who fell in an assault upon the strategic site of Catraeth (Catterick, Yorkshire), about the year 600. After a fierce battle, only 3 Brythonic warriors escaped with their lives, among them the poet Aneirin. He then composed a series of stanzas in a form of early Welsh, commemorating the slain young warriors."

• Full news release: http://www.medievalists.net/2013/12/12/book-of-aneirin-put-online-by-national-library-of-wales/
• Landing/intro page for the manuscript: http://www.llgc.org.uk/index.php?id=6336

The bottom of the page however notes: "The National Library of Wales has digitised and published the Book of Aneirin by kind permission of Cardiff Council. Rights relating to the use of these images are retained by Cardiff Council: permission for copies for commercial research, or for publication in any form, must be obtained from Cardiff Central Library, The Hayes, Cardiff CF10 1FL, localstudieslibrarycardiff.gov.uk"

I think that means that we couldn't do anything with this on WikiSource for example? Is this something we should be talking to Cardiff Council about to try and get the rights freed up? Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 00:42, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

It might be worth reminding our friends at Cardiff Council that copyright in the original work is not indefinite. While it's possible that local laws allow a "sweat of the brow" claim over new images (reasonably so for pictures of three dimensional objects), that doesn't seem to apply in the USA to images of two-dimensional pages, so one of our overseas colleagues might upload them to WMF servers (suitably cropped, to remove the modern accessories). we could also point to the recent mass release of scanned images by the British Library (not to mention US national archives and the Rijksmuseum) as more enlightened examples of best practice. As for Wikisource, attempts to claim copyright over the text content are laughable and can (IANAL) be ignored with impunity. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 12:14, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

I've mentioned this discussion, on Commons:Village pump. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 12:52, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Another user has created File:The Book of Aneirin.pdf. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 20:37, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, "sweat of the brow" remains a myth rather than a legal reality in the UK too. This is one of those situations where Wikimedia should be calling the bluff on these sorts of claims rather than letting fear of prosecution where there is no legal basis suppress legitimate open knowledge, especially in the many cases where public domain documents are being locked away on thin rationales of revenue creation, which do not survive basic scrutiny of the financial record. If anyone has some useful UK case studies of anyone being successfully taken to court and ordered to pay damages after a "sweat of the brow" case, I would love to review the case notes.

By the way, I should declare that I have done a couple of batch uploads from UK institutions this year which ignored false claims of copyright or non-commercial use restrictions. I do correspond with the institutions and try to move them on in their thinking, but as an open knowledge advocate I do not think it right that I should be expected to sit by indefinitely when polite negotiation has got us nowhere. I take care with checking there is completely unambiguous legal evidence on record of the works I upload being public domain; which means that no judge could ever assess damages being more than zero pence, which would make for a useful case study should that ever happen. --Fæ (talk) 12:08, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Guidance on COI

Hi, Can I have some guidance on what I've done here. I bumped into a conversation in a Google Group that a prominent organisation were actively planning to edit two Wikipedia articles directly associated with their 'products'. I posted into the Google group a bit of advice on COI and provided a link to the relevant page. The two articles fall into a project and so I also advised them to contact the group, and I provided a link for this too. I decided not to create a topic for discussion on the COI noticeboard because, as yet, they haven't actually done anything. Is that okay, or should I have done anything differently? (Sorry if I've been a bit vague but I don't want to out them unnecessarily) Thanks in advance.--Graeme Arnott (talk) 23:39, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

I would not expect any more than off-wiki advice, I would be cautious about raising the equivalent of warning flags on-wiki before anything has actually been done. In my past OTRS work, I have suggested by discrete email that those with plans to edit when they have an obvious COI, share their thoughts on WP:COIN where someone might even offer to help more directly and this sounds pretty much what you have done. --Fæ (talk) 11:43, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi Graeme. You've done just the right thing. If you're concerned that they're going to go ahead with dishonestly, then let an admin know (or the COI noticeboard, but it can get a bit hectic on there with so many people who feel strongly about the issue). Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 19:02, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that folks; much appreciated. :-) --Graeme Arnott (talk) 21:51, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Training the Trainers February 2014 event

Wikimedia UK is committed to supporting our volunteers and to encourage them to teach others how to edit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, we are running a weekend training workshop. This will take place on the weekend of 1—2 February 2014 in Cardiff. This session is targeted at volunteers in Wales and the immediate surrounding areas. We are especially interested in editors of Wicipedia Cymraeg who work through the Welsh language. However, both English and Welsh language editors on all Wikimedia projects will be welcomed. The workshop itself will be delivered in English.

The workshop will be delivered by a professional training company and aims to improve delegates’ abilities to deliver any training workshop. It’s especially relevant to anybody who already runs Wikimedia-related training, or is very interested in doing so in near future.

The workshop is a chance to:

• Get accredited and receive detailed feedback about your presenting and training skills
• Get general trainer skills which you can then apply when delivering specific Wikipedia workshops
• Share your skills with others
• Help design a training programme that serves Wikimedia UK in the long term.

The course will run from 9:30 am—6:30pm on Saturday and 9am—5pm on Sunday. A light breakfast and lunch will be provided. We should also be able to cover travel and accommodation if you let us know in advance.

If you are interested in attending, please indicate your commitment by signing up on Training the Trainers/February 2014 event. Spaces are limited to 12 places.

If you are not able to attend this time but would like to take part in the future, please add it to the event page or let me know by email to katie.chanwikimedia.org.uk — we will be offering more sessions in the future.

Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions. I can also put you in touch with past participants who will be able to share their experiences with you.

Regards,

Katie

Wikipedia Takes UCL

UCL front quad.

We are in the process of planning the provision of support for a week-long cluster of events at UCL, which are scheduled to take place during the week commencing Monday 17 February 2014. Wikipedia Takes UCL is the name that has been picked for this series of activities and a number of WMUK trainers are needed to provide the sort of support we normally give at workshops for new editors, editathons, and other similar events. If you are an accredited WMUK trainer, please consider joining the team of trainers I will be coordinating, even if you're only available for just one session. You can sign-up here and make sure you include dates/times you're available. Thank you. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 15:05, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

The Water Cooler has been split

I've now gone through the process of moving threads regarding WMUK operational matters to the newly created Engine room, while keeping threads around our activities and getting involved on this page. This will be our first attempt at creating different spaces for different types of discussion, and we're still working on the headers for these pages (the divs now inserted at the top of the page). If you watch the Water cooler you may also want to add the Engine room to your watch list. I've also moved the Water cooler up to the "get involved" section on the sidebar. The new Engine room can be found under 'organisation' on the sidebar. If you think I've incorrectly moved something, or have a suggestion for how we should define and describe these places do let us know (ideally here in the Engine room). Finally, I look forward to seeing people engage on both pages. Cheers Sjgknight (talk) 21:27, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

The title of the section "Archiving this page" suggests it should have stayed here. I've added a note in that section, querying whether it applies there also. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 15:10, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the move notices Andy, very helpful. I think the thread you refer to above does still apply to the Engine room, and there would probably be the place to raise such issues in the future too. I guess in this transition period there will be some such posts which are slightly out of context where they would not be had they originated on the Engine room. If there are any threads you think really don't work moved across let me know (and I'll keep an eye out too) but I don't think that's the case at the moment (copying this note (edited) to both pages) Sjgknight (talk) 15:52, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Invitation to Chapters and Photographers for the European Parliament Project 2014

Photographers needed

Hello everyone, please see the below information regarding a new project on Commons that's looking to help photograph and record members of the European Parliament. The group working on the project are looking for volunteers to help out with this piece of work and Wikimedia UK will consider providing funding for someone to go and help out. I've copied the below directly from the message originally circulated about the project so that those interested can get full details and context. Wikimedia UK also has equipment that we can loan for use on the project, including camera, lights, lenses and a sound recorder. Please comment below if you're interested, or feel free to email me directly. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:56, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Preamble

Some might have heard about the State Parliament Projects done in Germany and Austria since 2009: A bunch of Wikipedians and photographers meet politicians in the parliament, shoot professional photos, discuss their Wikipedia articles etc. This way hundreds of free licensed, high quality images have been made, Wikipedia articles have been improved. In the latest project at Schwerin (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) we added videos, politicians give a short introduction about themselves, their position and political focus in German and in their mother tongue if different from German. About 20 photographers were able to participate and processes how to work with the parliament's administration, how to interact with the politicians, how to efficiently take a lot of photos in a short time and with good quality have been established.

Next Level: European Parliament

Now we would like to take this to next level: After contacting the European Parliament I was able to get their approval, the support by the parties and a date! Unfortunately the date is already in February, 3rd to 7th, as we have to use the short time gap between budget deliberations and elections. MEPs only travel to the EP when deliberations are ongoing but then they are also busy with meetings, as soon as the election preperation starts there won't be any time for our project within the next 6 months. Anyway I am sure we can do that - the elections are also a great opportunity to raise awareness on our material we have in Wikipedia and on Commons. It is also an excellent opportunity to bring together volunteers in doing our core work together, maybe we can transfer the idea of Parliament Projects to other countries. Volunteers get the opportunity to learn from each other - the EP is a very challenging project, having more than 700 MEPs to be handled within a few days. And Wikipedia may improve its articles, also by bringing together volunteers from different EU countries. Many MEPs have their articles only in a few of the European languages, some not even in their native language!

Your Chapter Involved

We are looking forward to get volunteers from as many countries as possible involved in this project. In order to be handle it we need approx. 35 people to help. Obviously the german and austrian photographers are already waiting for it, from past projects they already know what will go on. But there is much more to it: We want your volunteers! Imagine a project where we could bring together volunteers from all 24 language communities in the EU - that is what we are trying!

Therefore we ask you for a favour:

• please forward this invitation to your local community - you can point them to our project page on Wikimedia Commons:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wikipedians_in_European_Parliament

• does your chapter provide travel support for those volunteers in your country who want to participate? Please do so. Your chapter pays for the transportation to / from Strasbourg and the accommodation (around 300 EUR per person for all 6 nights), we take care of the rest (transportation hotel - EP, catering etc.)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wikipedians_in_European_Parliament/Participation

• does your chapter have photographic equipment we might need? We could use DSLRs, flash units, background systems, lenses...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wikipedians_in_European_Parliament/Equipment

• we would like to supply the volunteers with t-shirts or hoodies with Wikipedia logo or similar - for a unified appearance and to make them visible as volunteers and Wikimedians. Is your chapter (or the WMF?)

interested in providing 90 shirts / hoodies? (We planned 2 pc. per person as they will be worn almost one week.)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wikipedians_in_European_Parliament/Marketing

• everyone who likes this project: state your support on the talk page of our grant request to the WMF which should cover the general costs of the project. By this grant request we make sure that each chapter only has to handle local support and can stay within it's budgeted limits and area of operation.
  • https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Olaf_Kosinsky/Wikipedians_in_European_Parliament

Existing online resources

Could we encourage volunteers to first think of uploading public domain/copyright free available media published by institutions such as the European Parliament Information Office in the United Kingdom, and to check if there are other media packs available to release on request from their off-line archives, before making plans to create amateur new media? My experience with uploading over 5,000 photographs relating to politicians from the Nordic Region was that this provided a plentiful supply of top quality photographs to illustrate Wikipedias in several languages. These photographs cost nothing in travel or equipment and so initial projects of this type are likely to be of incredibly high "bang for the buck" in terms of using the charity's funds.

If anyone finds such an archive with several hundred or more media files, and would like my help in a month or two with a mass upload, I would be happy to help out by making this part of my 2014 Faebot batch upload projects as well as claiming this as a success under the European Parliament Project umbrella. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 17:58, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Scholarship to attend Learning Day and EduWiki Conference 2014 in Serbia

To keep the conversation together and make it easier to link to the call and discussion in the future, use the Talk:Wikimedia Serbia EduWiki Conference 2014 Scholarship page there. Call content transcluded:

Wikimedia Serbia EduWiki Conference 2014

Wikimedia Serbia is organising an event called EduWiki Conference 2014 on Monday 24 March at the Belgrade Youth Center (Belgrade Serbia); this will be mostly in Serbian. Learning Day, an internal meeting between members of the WMRS education project and Wikimedians from other chapters takes place on Sunday 23 March, the day before the conference; this will be in English. This meeting will take place in Wikimedia Serbia Office. For more information please check the web page for this event from WMRS (in English).

WMUK is offering one scholarship (i.e. covering travel and accommodation expenses) to an active volunteer from the Wikimedia UK community willing to give a 15-minute presentation at the Learning Day. This scholarship is to cover a proposal made directly by the chapter in relation to its main Education-related activities for the Learning Day. We therefore need a volunteer to present the main Education-related work of the chapter at this event. Ideally, the presentation should be about at least three of the following topics:

• WMUK's EduWiki conferences
• WMUK-supported activities in Higher Education
• WMUK's partnership with JISC
• The Future of Education theme at Wikimania 2014

The call for applications for this scholarship is now closed.

The successful scholarship applicant will be required to write reports about the Learning Day for the Wikimedia UK wiki and/or blog before and after traveling to Belgrade.

PLEASE NOTE: This scholarship offer does not exclude us from considering a separate request for support from any other individual interested in presenting their Education-related work, should their proposal be accepted for this conference in Serbia. Wikimedia Serbia is accepting individual proposals for presentations until Monday 6 January, as per the email circulated by WMRS on the Education mailing list.

The Water cooler needs to look prettier

We need a nice Water cooler picture to go on the top of this page. Can we get some suggestions going? We could post ideas here in a gallery. -MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:55, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

It's somewhat worrying that the WMUK Chief Exec has enough spare time to add pictures to nearly every section of this page! I'm sure there's much better things to be getting on with... :-( (Plus, they get in the way of leaving comments!) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 07:15, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I appreciate Mike's viewpoint. This is a discussion page, and unless the thread is directly connected to a particular image it is not normal on wikis to illustrate each thread as if they were a blog posts. MichaelMaggs' suggestion to put a photo at the top of the page is more in line with the way we see village pumps working on other projects. Although bandwidth is unlikely to me a massive problem for most readers or contributors, several photographs on a long page may discourage readers from accessing using mobile devices and could make the page unreadable or subject to time-outs if they are relying on a lower speed mobile connection. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think wiki thumb transclusions like this actually mean that most browsers will download the full size image file before rendering this page, so these images do add significantly to bandwidth and rendering times.

I am sure now Jon has been CE for 3 years, as per the lead item of the member's newsletter, he does not advice with regard to the norms of wikis. --Fæ (talk) 07:32, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

On the technical point, the images are automatically resized by MediaWiki - there's no downloading the full images. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 08:13, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I’m inclined to think that where there are obvious images it's no bad thing to include them just as we add images to Wikipedia articles (or indeed blog posts). It makes the page more attractive and is minimal work particularly given the images can be used on the pages/events/activities they refer to, if it was lots of extra work certainly that woudld be bad. Given the markup goes at the top of the sections I'm not convinced it gets in the way of leaving comments(?), useful to consider if there are other problems though? Incidentally this discussion should really be moved to the Engine room (i.e. I think the whole discussion around the water cooler image should be there). Sjgknight (talk) 08:30, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

My comment about it getting in the way was because the image here is after the first comment, so my comment was straight after it which was a bit confusing to me. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 08:46, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Mike don't worry it only took a few minutes of time in gaps doing other things. As to the images I am really happy to take tech advice - we don't want people to be put off by download times. On the other hand we need our watercooler to be a busy and buzzing place that is attractive to come to. The thumbnails draw attention to the different subjects and when new things come up help draw attention to them. Our website is sooooooooooooooo boring. If it is to be a way of encouraging new volunteers (and members) it has to be a lot better and this is one tiny step to drag it into the 21st century. Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 08:43, 8 January 2014 (UTC)