About us

Hello and welcome to the wiki for Wikimedia UK (WMUK), the local Wikimedia chapter covering the United Kingdom. Please note that Wikimedia UK is an organisation separate from the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), but exists to support and extend that WMF's reach in the UK. This page is not for those seeking help in contacting WMUK (instead, see here), and more details about the exact structure of WMUK are on the main page. Instead, this page gives advice for editors of the wiki.

The setup here

Anyone can edit the wiki - membership of WMUK is strongly encouraged, however, particularly for frequent contributors. Membership costs only £5 per year. Membership does not equal having an account - you can register before or after becoming a member. Note that because uk.wikimedia.org subscribes to the single user login (SUL) system, once you've made your account global, there is no reason to re-register here. Permissions are not carried over, however: rollback, sysop and so forth must be left at the door.

Editing this wiki is just like editing, say, Wikipedia. If you are unfamiliar with wiki-editing in general, you'll want to consult the thorough help files there. Obviously, this wiki is much more focused, and also much newer (handy redirects may not always be available, for example). Virtually all editing is conducted in the main namespace; there are no editing policies here, but conforming to certain accepted standards - such as civility - is imperative. Though the wiki does not have a vandalism problem (or any tools to deal with it), board members and some trusted users are given admin ("sysop") status, and are responsible for maintaining pages which denote policies of the organisation and other important pages - largely analogous to the pages residing on "meta", the superwiki for the WMF, rather than on its constituent parts. The Board are also responsible for managing the blog and tweets; when something's going down relating to Wikimedia, they act as the first line of defence from the baying public and journalists.

Areas in which it is easy to contribute include our initiatives (particularly if you are able to donate your time to make a difference) and fleshing out the cultural partnerships section. The water cooler is the main place of discussion on-wiki at the moment, performing the same role as the village pumps of Wikipedia and Commons. It is strongly advisable to subscribe to the mailing list, as you will receive news on which areas are most in flux and requiring your help. Attending board meetings is optional; they involve mostly working through internal business, but also get members together in one place so that ideas can be shared. For those wishing to take a casual role, the monthly newsletter is great for keeping up with developments.

This wiki can (and does) hook into Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, so there is no need to copy files from there to here: just using the normal image syntax.

Glossary

Board

The Board are a statuary body, required under UK law, to ultimately decide the various expenditures and correspondence of Wikimedia UK. They voluntarily devote time (and often their own money) to make sure that Wikimedia UK moves in the right direction.

Chapter

Wiktionary defines a chapter as "an administrative division of an organisation, usually local to a specific area" - in this case, the organisation is the WMF and the area is the United Kingdom. In Wikimedia terms, chapters are "independent organisations founded to support and promote the Wikimedia projects... Like the Wikimedia Foundation, they aim to 'empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally'."

Initiative

An initiative is a project run by the WMUK. Discussion, suggestions and proposals are welcomed.

Meetup

An informal occasion, when Wikimedians get together to discuss the latest developments. Though attended and promoted by WMUK's members, they are not within WMUK's control. See also Meta's "meetup" page.