Charity status application/help wanted

Call for help!

For the application to become a Registered Charity, we think we still need more evidence as follows. Ideally please send a link plus a quote or brief summary/abstract of the material (example at bottom), the sooner the better, but by Wednesday September 21st at latest.

PUBLIC BENEFIT evidence of public benefit in some areas. The best sort of evidence are: academic studies, reports in top-quality press, quotes from top figures in their fields. The emphasis is on evidence of specific and actual public benefit that does not amount just to "the increase of knowledge". More evidence that lots of people use Wikimedia is not needed; we need specific beneficial results of that usage, other than increasing knowledge .

I think we have higher education covered, but primary secondary education, public health, and other areas could use more. Also academic studies from 2010/11 - I think we have the earlier ones covered.

WMF: the record of the Wikimedia Foundation intervening in or controlling policy and content areas.

WE ALREADY HAVE covered the following sources, among others: 2005 Nature WP/Encyc Brit study; PC Pro stories; Hansard quotes, WMF fundraiser testimonials, the big stories from the NYT, Economist, New Yorker, Guardian; Casper Grathwohl of Oxford University Press, How today’s college students use Wikipedia for course–related research”, by Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg. First Monday, Volume 15, Number 3 - 1 March 2010., Are chemicals killing us? By S. Robert Lichter, Ph.D, May 21, 2009 - Society of Toxicologists; “Early response to false claims in Wikipedia”, by P.D. Magnus, First Monday, Volume 13 Number 9 - 1 September 2008, http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2115/2027; “How quickly are errors corrected?” by Stuart Andrews, PC Pro, 12 Jul 2007 http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/119641/how-quickly-are-errors-corrected ; The paradox of expertise: is the Wikipedia Reference Desk as good as your library?

IDEALLY post in this sort of format: "Through user-generated efforts, Wikipedia is comprehensive, current, and far and away the most trustworthy Web resource of its kind. It is not the bottom layer of authority, nor the top, but in fact the highest layer without formal vetting. In this unique role, it therefore serves as an ideal bridge between the validated and unvalidated Web." Casper Grathwohl, vice president of Oxford University Press http://chronicle.com/article/Wikipedia-Comes-of-Age/125899/

Responses

Copyright

The independent advice the WMF attorney provides to the projects gives direct control over policy. A rather technical example is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_highest-grossing_Bollywood_films#Initial_attorney_feedback which meant that we had to purge what most people thought was intuitively non-copyrightable financial figures from a number of articles in order to protect the interests of the BoxOfficeIndia analysis website. This was a key change to the understanding of what could be though of as copyrighted on Wikipedia, in this case ranked lists of estimated financial figures (where the individual estimates from the list were not copyright but the ranking was). Fæ 06:07, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Health

"Given its unique global reach, we believe its possibilities for use as a tool for worldwide health promotion are underestimated." Multiple authors in high impact factor (4.7) J Med Internet Res (see Wikipedia: A Key Tool for Global Public Health Promotion).Rodw 11:13, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

"The quality of the evidence taken obtained from the 2500 plus references from over 50 Wikipedia pages was of sufficiently sound quality to suggest that, for health related entries, Wikipedia is appropriate for use by nursing students." Nurse Education Today. Carol A. Haigh, School of Nursing, Faculty of Health, Psychology and Social Care, Manchester Metropolitan University ( see Wikipedia as an evidence source for nursing and healthcare students).Rodw 11:13, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

"As of May 2010, Wikipedia ranked sixth out of the top 500 most visited Web sites on the Internet. Moreover, in about 75% of cases, the English Wikipedia ranks among the first 10 results of Google searches for medical keywords obtained from various indexes. This prominence translates to high levels of use among all demographics, and, in one study, junior physicians seeking medical information online employed user-generated or Web 2.0 content in 53% of Internet visits, with Wikipedia being used by 70% of physicians surveyed. Considering its open editorial process, the accuracy of Wikipedia is surprisingly high. Wikipedia also contains an extensive amount of medical knowledge" Multiple authors (see Development of Dermatology Resources in Wikipedia).Rodw 11:13, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't know if anything from w:en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-08-29/Recent_research#In swine flu outbreak, Wikipedia reading preceded blogging and newspaper writing has been included (and I'm late anyway), but I'll leave the link here in case it might be useful. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:24, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Education

"The findings suggest Wikipedia is used in combination with other information resources. Wikipedia meets the needs of college students because it offers a mixture of coverage, currency, convenience, and comprehensibility in a world where credibility is less of a given or an expectation from today’s students." Alison J. Head, Michael B. Eisenberg. (see How today’s college students use Wikipedia for course-related research.).Rodw 11:13, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Society/Civics

"Wikipedia relates to the world of electronic democracy in the sense that it gives us the successful organisational mechanisms of decision making processes, and involves millions of people. As such, it could be taken as an example for future projects." Sylvain Firer-Blaess (Wikipedia Example for a Future Electronic Democracy? Decision, Discipline and Discourse in the Collaborative Encyclopaedia(p131))Rodw 11:13, 20 September 2011 (UTC)