Water cooler

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Template needed

It works. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 10:08, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Katie. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 22:56, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Instant bot to reverse editor decline

The best ideas sometimes come in strange ways and I thought I'd share this one just in case someone thought it was possible. At our staff training day yesterday a few of us pointed out that we started editing when we saw terrible spelling mistakes but that this is not a big feature of Wikipedia nowadays. So how about a bot that inserts annoying and prominent spelling mistakes to help encourage new editors? ;) Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 07:33, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

What? Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 10:47, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Probably a suggestion to hold on to until the morning of April 1, 2014. :-) 86.181.47.13 10:51, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

WP:BEANS! —Tom Morris (talk) 14:56, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Typos

I've found two typos in Membership/Newsletter/2013/July#Review: Sphingonet Wikipedia workshop. There's an "of" that should be an "or" in the second-to-last paragraph and a "not" that should be a "now" in the last paragraph. Yaris678 (talk) 11:30, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, fixed. -- KTC (talk) 16:12, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Katie. Yaris678 (talk) 15:50, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually Katie. I've just read your piece Membership/Newsletter/2013/July#Opinion: Where are the women in Wikipedia?. Great piece. But there are a few typos in there too:

• Paragraph 3 - "Wikiboks", should be "Wikibooks".
• Paragraph 5 - "compare", should be "compared" or "in comparison"
• Paragraph 5 - "reason" should be "reasons"
• Paragraph 10 - "bias that exist" should be "biases that exist" or "bias that exists"
• Paragraph 10 - With "an underrepresented topics", drop the "an" or make "topic" singular.

Yaris678 (talk) 16:32, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 13:38, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for doing the fixes Katie. I have to say, it feels kind of rude to point them out. Any chance that I could be made an admin on this wiki? (Or some other way to give me the edit-protected right.) That way I can just quietly make such changes myself. Yaris678 (talk) 15:44, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Making you an admin sounds sensible to me (I'll vouch for you, for whatever it's worth). Somebody (Katie?) could also give you access to the internal wiki where the newsletter is drafted. Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:09, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Harry. Do I need to apply somewhere or should I just wait for the cogs to turn? Yaris678 (talk) 08:10, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

There's no formal application process, just asking one of the staff works fine as we all have 'crat tools and we can sort out accounts on the internal wiki. In this case, asking on the water cooler works too as it's a high profile page. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 09:21, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually, there is an agreed process for this - as per Wikimedia:Administrators, "certain trusted users are also be made Administrators if they apply to the Board and are approved." That policy's been there since before 2009... Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 10:40, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

I stand corrected. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 10:48, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

I promise I won't be offended if someone takes the admin bit back off me until the board have had a chance to consider my case. Yaris678 (talk) 12:21, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

(unindent) To be fair, there are several people (myself included) that have been given admin rights by staff, so you're not the only one following the policy. I have updated Administrators to give both the policy, and the current actual practice. Given the volunteer-driven nature of the charity, it seems a bit backwards to make you have to seek board approval for adminship rights, especially since there's more pertinent matters for them to be focussing on. But I'm not a board member, so what do I know? ;-) --Deskana (talk) (email) 13:56, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

This is basically a hangover from 2009 when the board did all the work - so the admin rights on the wiki was an important thing. I'll raise it for discussion at the next board meeting, but we can probably just delegate this to the Chief Executive if the board agree. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 14:05, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Why not just delegate it to anybody who has the 'crat bit and five minutes? It's not as if there's much damage that can be done with admin tools on a wiki like this. But then I'm not nearly important enough to make that sort of decision! ;) Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:19, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikimania 2014 & Wikivoyage

I know that Wikimania 2014 isn't technically a WMUK project but this seemed a good place to bring it up: With the event happening in London, it would make sense for the London Wikivoyage pages to be improved for the benefit of all the visiting Wikimedians. We have a Wikimedia travel guide; it would be good to use it. While adding a listing to voy:en:London/City of London, home of the Barbican, I noticed that the page status of many London districts can be quite low. The City is at guide status but most are just at usable status and only voy:en:London/Hampstead is star status (the scale goes stub-->outline-->usable-->guide-->star). This is within the chapter's sphere of responsibility but I don't know if this is something the chapter could/would be involved with, or just UK Wikimedians doing bits (I'm going to continue editing but I don't really know enough about the city to cover everything). - AdamBMorgan (talk) 14:37, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Adam, thanks for your suggestion, which I think is a good one. You're correct that Wikimania itself isn't a Wikimedia UK project but it would make sense for us to try and encourage improvement of WikiVoyage content related to London - and in as many languages as we can, too. Do you have any suggestions on how to do this? If you;d like to deliver / promote a project around this then I'd be more than happy to lend my support and get involved in helping out on this - both as a staff member and as a volunteer :-) Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 14:56, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm wondering whether this would be a good way to introduce (secondary/high) school children to wiki editing. We have been discussing possible ways to involve school children over the coming year and this may indeed be a relatively useful and certainly interesting way of doing it. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 08:51, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

RE: "Do you have any suggestions" -- to be honest, no, not at the moment. At least, I'm not sure how best to do it. I should probably have waited to bring it up at the meet up in August, so I could discuss it a bit first. On the bright side, Wikivoyage is probably the easiest Wikimedia project on which to make micro-contributions. The majority of a standard guide article is made up of template-formatted bullet points, under standard verb-based headings (ie. "See", "Buy", "Eat", etc) which use templates of the same name (ie. {{buy}}, {{eat}}, etc). On top of which, a contribution could be just adding a good local restaurant. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 16:41, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Also, be careful about wanting to introduce secondary/high school students to Wikipedia editing. There have already been a lot of rumblings on English Wikipedia about the need for better child protection policies. WMUK may need to look into the logistics of that with DBS (formerly CRB) checking for volunteers and so on. DBS checking is apparently now free for volunteers. I'm happy to have a DBS check done, as I've been happy to disclose my identity documents to the WMF. —Tom Morris (talk) 10:51, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

It'd also be great if people could help improve London on OpenStreetMap. I do my part in making sure that certain drinking establishments are kept up-to-date, but there's a lot of other things in London that need improving! —Tom Morris (talk) 10:43, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Open Government Partnership annual summit call for proposals

Hello everyone. The Open Government Partnership is hosting its annual summit on 31 October and 1 November. This could be a good opportunity to build networks in this area and find ways that we can demonstrate the value of Wikimedia projects. We may be able to find ways to influence thinking around open knowledge and how this can fit in with public policy. They have issued a call for proposals which has a deadline of 1 September. I wonder if this is of interest to anybody and, if so, this is a good place to discuss some ideas. Many thanks. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:10, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Student societies 2013 campaign

Wikimedia UK is keen to support student societies towards a better understanding and improvement of Wikipedia and its sister projects. We are currently looking for a volunteer to help me develop a strategic plan we've drafted for reaching out to university student unions across the UK. This work relates to WMUK's developing efforts to support Student Societies focused on editing Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects; it essentially involves an intensive period of concentrated effort to reach out to potential new student societies. Details available here. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 16:53, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

'Illustrating Wikipedia brochure' - your thoughts?

Hi All, a new brochure about Wikimedia Commons has been produced. Designed to be a companion brochure to the Welcome to Wikipedia brochure, it covers what Commons is, how to upload files, how to use files, and the basics of free licenses - File:Illustrating Wikipedia brochure.pdf. We would like to have a version printed in the UK as well. What are your thoughts on the content? Do you think we already have a brochure that does the job better?

Do let Stevie know (stevie.bentonwikimedia.org.uk or comment here) - we may even manage to get it ready for Wiki Loves Monuments in September!

Thanks, Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 14:34, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Supporting the UK's first Wiki Loves Monuments competition

Hi all,

For those who haven't been following organizational progress of the WLM competition to date, we have a small group of dedicated volunteers and staff who are working hard to ensure that the UK's first contribution to the world's largest photographic competition goes without a hitch. We have a nice competition website to attract competitors (many of whom will not be Wiki savvy, and will be new contributors & editors). We are expecting this to be quite a big deal, and the staff at Wikimedia UK have been busy making arrangement for publicity as well as helping out with the lists. We hope to get press notices and image spreads in the Metro, which publishes in Bath, Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Derby, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Nottingham, Newcastle and Sheffield, as well as in The Times (thanks Stevie). The high-profile nature of the competition has been strengthened by the agreement of Steve Cole ABIPP, Head of Photography at English Heritage, to join the national judging panel (jury) (thanks Richard N.)

The WLM volunteers will do everything they can to make sure the English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland lists are in a good state before the start of the national and international competitions - September 1st is just three weeks away now. We are all very aware that the deadline is looming, and that a quite a lot of work still remains to be done. Everyone is working as fast as they can and due to the rapidly approaching deadline it appears that unfortunately a few errors have slipped through. Really, we need more people to help out. There is a particular need for editors who are experienced with bots or scripts to pitch in now, not only to help fix some of the errors, but also to help put up the remainder of the listed building data using the standard WLM templates. If you can help in any way, please make yourself known to the WLM team, either via my talk page, or by adding your name to the helpers' page on Commons. If you can actively help now, you should also, please, sign up to the Wiki Loves Monuments UK mailing list, where you can obtain detailed information. You can see the current status of the data uploads by going to the Progress lists for Wikipedians; you can see there, for example, that we still need someone to deal with the uploading of almost all of the Scottish data. We can provide structured lists of data for those who can help with this.

If you can't help with bot work, but are able to contribute by tidying up or correcting the WP lists for your area, that would still be very much appreciated. You can get to the lists by going via one of the following links:

• Listed buildings in Scotland
• Listed buildings in Wales
• Listed buildings in England
• Listed buildings in Northern Ireland

The best place to report systematic list errors, to ensure that the WLM volunteers see them, is not on this thread, but rather at the main WLM-UK help desk.

Given the fact that the competition will be starting in just three weeks time (whether the UK team is ready or not!), I would ask that editors do not make any radical changes to the en Wikipedia lists at this stage which could inadvertently destroy the competition. In particular, please do not make mass reverts, unless you are able to put everything back correctly, and please do not remove or change the WLM template structure. This is essential for the automated upload tool to work properly, and also for the WLM international team to ensure that the data gets correctly harvested and copied into the worldwide Wiki Monuments Database.

After the competition has finished, at the end of September, would be a good time for the community to discuss - if desired - any possible template improvements to the way in which the UK data is standardized and displayed.

Thanks for bearing with us and for helping out if you can. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 12:12, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

And thanks to you Michael and everyone working on this - absolutely brilliant and I hope we can lead the way in supporting the newbies (especially) to remain active after the main event has happened. Ideas anyone? Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 08:26, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikimania Wikidata and a talk

Hello everyone! :) Today DanielK(WMDE) told me that WMUK (or someone from WMUK that was at Wikimania) was looking for someone to 'give a wikidata introduction' talk of some sort! If anyone knows who was talking to the Wikidata team in Hongkong about this (maybe you are that person) then give me a shout as I may be able to help :) Addshore (talk) 20:39, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Awesome! Katie is probably the person to contact for details. (I did one of these a few months back and it went well - will happily pass on my notes - but don't have much free time at the moment to do others.) Andrew Gray (talk) 10:49, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

I got a poke from Mrjohncummings here. :) Addshore (talk) 10:56, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Might have been me, I've had a few requests, I put a note on your talk page --Mrjohncummings (talk) 10:56, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Last chance for comments on Train the Trainers

http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Train_the_Trainers_consultation

All comments welcomed especially on the recommendations.

Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 08:24, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Virtual Learning Environment workshop day

Hello everyone, as you probably know Wikimedia UK has been developing a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to teach people about Wikipedia. Progress is going well and we'd like to invite you to a workshop day on Saturday 9 November. The workshop will highlight the features of the VLE, look at how we can make good use of the tool, seek community involvement in the content, maintenance and localisation of the tool. Lunch will be provided on the day and I'm hoping very much to see you there. Please do feel free to drop me a line with any questions. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:22, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

List of interested people:

• Stevie Benton (WMUK)
• Dhaval S Vyas
• John Byrne
• John Cummings
• Harry Mitchell
• MartinPoulter (talk)

Wikidata training

Hi all

There will be Wikidata training available in central London by Addshore on one of these weekends in September, please could you register your interest below by signing your name next to the dates you're available on. Venue to be confirmed depending on numbers and dates.

• Saturday 14th
  1. Edwardx (talk) 12:39, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
  2. MartinPoulter (talk) 12:06, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
  3. Mr impossible (talk) 11:36, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
• Sunday 15th
  1. Edwardx (talk) 12:39, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
  2. MartinPoulter (talk) 12:06, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
  3. Mr impossible (talk) 11:36, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
• Saturday 21st
  1. ...
• Saturday 22nd
  1. ...
• Saturday 28th
  1. Edwardx (talk) 12:39, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
  2. Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:27, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
• Sunday 29th
  1. Edwardx (talk) 12:39, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
  2. Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:27, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
  3. MartinPoulter (talk) 16:23, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks

--Mrjohncummings (talk) 12:10, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Hello! Are there any more details on what the training will cover? Thanks! The Land (talk) 09:05, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Whatever you want :) I am currently part of the Wikidata team and have a wide range of Wikidata knowledge. My plan is to cover the basic terms used on Wikidata, Basic use of Wikidata, the community and processes that are in place, current features, future planned features (as well as anything extra people want to know!). Naturally actually using wikidata on the day is key and if you let me know specific things you would like to be included I can prepare bits and prices in advance! Of course on the day I would also be happy to answer questions about anything I have missed! Addshore (talk) 12:35, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

• I can't make any guarantees about availability just yet, but I'd love to learn a bit about Wikidata, and I'd hope other people who regularly deliver training or talk to people on behalf of WMUK would be keen, if only so we can answer any questions we're asked about it. Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:27, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Just so you know I have just added the weekend dates back to the list above, depending on how things work out I may be able to do the training on two simultaneous weekends. I will choose which dates the training will take place on at the start of next week! Addshore (talk) 12:45, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

I think we could work something out for people who can't make it in person, maybe Google Hangouts would work? --Mrjohncummings (talk) 15:56, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Forthcoming page creation

Just a notice that I'm going to be making a lot of smallish sub-pages with custom CSS, in a pattern that may seem like a wikivous breakdown when looked at in Recent Changes, but the intention is to create a flowchart tool showing external partners how best to work with Wikimedia. I will do this for the Jisc collaboration project, but hopefully the way I implement it will mean there can be multiple entry points. MartinPoulter Jisc (talk) 16:29, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Sounds very posh! Richard Symonds (talk) 10:45, 21 August 2013 (UTC)