Newsletter/October2009

Wikimedia UK Newsletter

October 2009 Issue

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Summary: (to be written)

In this month's newsletter:

1. Fundraising Drive
2. Museum discussions
3. Wiki Wednesdays
4. New meeting style
5. Press Coverage

Fundraising Drive

On 29th October the Board of Trustees appointed Thomas Dalton (aka Tango) as Head of Fundraising. His role will be to coordinate Wikimedia UK's part in the big Wikimedia fundraising drive starting at the beginning of November. We will be working with the Wikimedia Foundation and expect to raise at least £10,000 and hope to raise far more. We are still looking for volunteers to help write the text for our fundraising website, write press releases, talk to the press and many other things. If you would like to help, please e-mail Tango.

Museum discussions

[MP/JS to complete]

Wiki Wednesdays

[MP? to complete]

New meeting style

[SV to complete]

Press Coverage

• Observer, 18 October: "House of Commons computer used to hide past of Tory ally Kaminski"
• Guardian, 17 October: "Q&A: Jimmy Wales"
• Guardian, 17 October: "Democracy in the decade of Google" - "How do I know that the first recorded use of the verb "to google" was 8 July 1998, and that Google itself initially used lawyers to discourage the use of the word-as-verb? From Wikipedia – the half-baked, crazy idea of Jimmy Wales (and others) launched in January 2001."
• Telegraph, 14 October: "The Rush Limbaugh media lynch mob" - False quotes inserted into Wikipedia first made it into a book, then into the media.
• Mirror, 13 October: "WikiReader: ex-Apple designer puts Wikipedia in your pocket"
• Telegraph, 8 October: "Wikipedia-flavoured beef on Chinese restaurant menu" - "Fans of Chinese food are accustomed to seeing unlikely combinations of flavours on menus. But beef that tastes of Wikipedia?"
• Scotsman, 7 October: "NHS staff cast the net wide when they go surfing online" - "The Evening News has obtained the website traffic of NHS Lothian's computers, which also show the ESPC site and Wikipedia to be popular resources among doctors, nurses and other health staff."
• Times, 30 September: "The gospel truth that you can write yourself" - "If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia written by readers, has one very conservative admirer. [...] Conservapedia"
• Telegraph, 28 September: "Roman Polanski's Wikipedia page frozen after 'edit war' over child sex charges" — "Roman Polanski's Wikipedia page has been frozen, after the film maker's arrest for having sex with an underage girl."
• ZDNet UK, 28 September: "Debt to Wikipedia Society" by Jake Rayson — "I use Wikipedia incessantly, for workshops, blog entries and generally finding out about things."
• The Scotsman, 24 September: "Young people need to be encouraged to use Holyrood's petitions process, MSPs told" — "Mr Crawford welcomed recommendations in a report published by Holyrood's public petitions committee in June. The report said blogs, Wikipedia and YouTube could make parliament more accessible to the public."