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| == Welcome to the 2018's Summer Newsletter! == | | == Welcome to the 2018's Summer Newslett == |
| | <span id="C1"></span><span id="C2"></span><span id="C3"></span><span id="C5"></span><span id="C6"></span><span id="C7"></span><span id="C8"></span><span id="C9"></span><span id="C10"></span><span id="C11"></span><span id="C12"></span> |
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| | == Celtic Knot 2018 == |
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| == A Message from Interim Chief Executive Sandy Balfour == | | == EU Copyright Directive voted down will be reconsidered in September == |
| '''By Sandy Balfour, Interim Chief Executive'''
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| Since I started standing in for Lucy as CEO of Wikimedia UK, I have been doing some highly unscientific sampling of attitudes to the Wikimedia projects, and specifically of attitudes to Wikipedia. My sampling draws on the various groups with whom I interact in other parts of my life, which is to say people of a certain age who play tennis or bridge or who do crosswords or who have an abiding interest in Russia. [[File:Sandy-Balfour.jpg|thumb|Sandy Balfour on Bering Island]]Two things were immediately obvious. The first is the usage. Everyone – a total of twenty-three people – has at some point in the past month had occasion to refer to Wikipedia. All had found the experience satisfactory. All found what they were looking for, and none read more than a few lines. Most liked the slightly old-fashioned look of the pages. All found it easy to use. They wanted a date, a definition, a potted biography. They wanted it – and they got it – quickly, and then they moved on. The second is participation. Not one of those to whom I spoke had ever created or edited a Wikipedia page. None, in fact, had even thought to – not even those who have pages of their own. “It never occurred to me,” they would say. And when pressed: “It’s not that important to me.”
| | == Scotland Update == |
| | Ewan McAndrew continues to beaver away at the University of Edinburgh, helping run events at the Portobello Library and presenting at other events like the UoE’s Informatics Forum,'''<br> |
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| “But you use it?” I replied.
| | Ewan attended events like the Amnesty International Still Marching event in Glasgow on May 19, a meetup of open educators at the University of Coventry on April 17, and delivered 3 presentations at the annual Open Educational Resources conference in Bristol on 18-19 April, and delivered Wikipedia training to Teesside University students, staff and members of the public on 27-28 April. Scotland Manager Sara Thomas and Ewan did a joint presentation on Wikimedia collaborations at the Edinburgh Local Showcase event at St Cecilia's Museum. |
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| Well, yes, they did. But, they argued, if it wasn’t there they would use something else. And anyway, it seems like a lot of hard work. “What’s in it for me?”
| | Ewan also delivered a webinar presentation to Queen's University Belfast on 3rd May, describing the work of the Wikimedia residency at the University of Edinburgh, and some of the ways that Wikipedia and its sister projects are used to help students develop information literacy, data literacy and digital research skills. See a video [https://qub.adobeconnect.com/pjpu2x5f4p2y/ here].'''<br> |
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| Curiously only one the answer to the ‘what’s in it for me?’ question had traction. It was not that they could doctor their own entries or burnish their own reputations. It was the sheer fun and excitement of participating in something as extraordinary, and big, and immediate as Wikipedia. I doubt any are recruits to the cause – but then again… one evening last week I sat on the platform at King’s Cross with a very eminent scholar as he waited for his train to Cambridge. He looked in wonder as the minor edit we made to a page on which he is an expert went live. Ten days later the edit remains. “Extraordinary,” he said on the phone. “Quite extraordinary.”
| | A [https://media.ed.ac.uk/media/OER18+Session+-+Anne-Marie+ScottA+%22A+piece+of+illumination+enlarged+%E2%80%93+using+OER+for+access+and+activism+in+cultural+heritage%22/1_14n6ozln video presentation] about Wikimedia work in Scotland by [[:en:User:Ammienoot|Ammienoot]] from the 2018 Open Educational Resources conference in Bristol on 19 April was also added to the Edinburgh media hopper. Lots of other videos of [https://media.ed.ac.uk/playlist/dedicated/51020161/1_5ikxjzq6/ staff and student feedback] about the work of the residency and its assessment by participating students can be found on the UoE media hopper too.'''<br> |
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| It’s the right word. The Wikimedia project is something quite out of the ordinary, and I am delighted to play a part in it. It’s about time. I have been a heavy ‘user’ for years, but it occurred to me only recently that I should do more than use it. I should help create it. There is, after all, so much in it for me.
| | Ewan helped create lots of data and upload images to improve coverage of Women Human Rights Defenders, Suffragettes and Middlesborough, [[commons:Category:Mansfield_Traquair_Centre|27 new images]] of the murals by noted artist [[:en:Phoebe_Anna_Traquair|Phoebe Anna Traquair]] were added to Wikimedia Commons. Part-time Wikimedian in Residence and MA student at the University of Sterling, Lucy Rodgers ([[:en:User:LMRodger|User:LMRodger]]) has also helped create a new article on [[:en:Stirling_District_Lunatic_Asylum|Stirling District Lunatic Asylum]] and linked it to 23 other psychiatric hospitals in Scotland through the creation of a new [[:en:Template:Psychiatric_hospitals_in_Scotland|Psychiatric hospital navbox]] by Ewan.'''<br> |
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| = Welsh Wikipedia reaches 100,000 articles =
| | Ewan also Met with Law undergraduate Jemima John and course leaders, Rachael Craufurd-Smith and Hector MacQueen, on 7 June 2018 to discuss how a Wikipedia in the Classroom assignment could be implemented in the School of Law curriculum for postgraduate students, undergraduate students or both.'''<br> |
| [[File:Wikipedia Session Cardiff Univ 10.jpg|thumb|400x400px]]
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| [[:cy:Hafan|Wicipedia Cymraeg]], the Welsh Wikipedia has reached 100,000 articles. Welsh Wikipedians have been working hard over the past year to reach this target, which is a big achievement for a minority language Wikipedia. Wikimedia UK is committed to diversifying Wikimedia’s content and contributors and supporting the Celtic British languages, and reaching this milestone demonstrates the impact this work has had.
| | Ewan has discussed the Wikimedia residency at the University of Edinburgh and offered guidance to those exploring collaborations with Wikimedia at the American University in Cairo, Teesside University, Coventry University, Queen's University Belfast and other institutions. He also supported Academic Support Librarians Marshall Dozier, Ruth Jenkins and Donna Watson to help prepare for their first editathon at the EAHIL Conference in July. Support was also given to Anne-Marie Scott to co-lead the EdTech editathon at the OER18 Conference making use of a resource to demonstrate how anyone can run an editathon quite simply; see the [https://thinking.is.ed.ac.uk/edtech-editathon/ OER18 EdTech editathon SPLOT resource]. |
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| Wikimedia UK’s Programme Co-ordinator in Wales, Robin Owain, has been a driving force behind the growing strength of the Welsh Wikipedia, along with National Wikimedian at the National Library of Wales, Jason Evans, and the many tireless contributors to Wicipedia. It’s been a long journey since the birth of Wicipedia in 2003, and you can see the most important milestones in this journey in our Welsh Wikipedia timeline video:
| | You can find links to more of Ewan’s work on his two recent quarterly reports for 2018, [[:en:Wikipedia:University_of_Edinburgh/28th_Month_Report|Quarter 1]] and [[:en:Wikipedia:University_of_Edinburgh/29th_Month_Report|Quarter 2]].'''<br> |
| [[File:A timeline of Welsh Wikipedia 2003-2018.webm|left|thumb|700x700px]] | | ''' |
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| Welsh Wikimedians have also recently established a Community User Group in Wales, Grŵp Defnyddwyr Cymuned Wicimedia Cymru. This will be a separate entity to Wikimedia UK, but will work in close partnership with us. Robin Owain will continue to develop and manage Wikimedia UK’s programme in Wales, working with external partners and the community to help deliver our strategy with a focus on Wales and the Welsh language. As part of this role he will work closely with the User Group as to support and develop the Wikimedia community in Wales, facilitating and delivering partnership events and activities and acting as the key contact point between the User Group and the Wikimedia UK Chapter.
| | Meanwhile, Sara Thomas, our Scotland Manager has been meeting with Stirling University and Library about developing a partnership and Inverclyde Libraries to talk about changing their licensing policy. Sara attended meetings and gave talks at the newly launched [http://www.lifeindata.org/ Life in Data] project, spearheaded by University of Stirling, around data literacy, Scottish Higher Education Libraries’ AGM, CILIPS Summer Conference and the Edinburgh Local Showcase and Forum,'''<br> |
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| === Where next for Welsh Wikipedia? ===
| | Scottish Libraries and Information Council Wikimedian in Residence Delphine Dallison has talked to GSA Library about moving books held on Internet Archive to Wikisource/Commons. The National Library of Scotland has also agreed to move a large number of images from CC-BY to CC0/PD.'''<br> |
| Welsh Wikipedia is already the most visited site in Welsh online, it is close to gender parity in its biographical articles, and it is highly integrated with Wikidata, so what is the next goal for the Wicipedia community? Jason Evans, National Wikimedian at the National Library of Wales, says that the focus will be on growing the Welsh-language editor community, securing partnerships with the education sector and existing producers of relevant Welsh language content.
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| “Not only is the Welsh Wici growing but the community of editors is growing. The National library of Wales will continue to support and encourage editors through events and training sessions and by sharing its own data openly for use on Wicipedia and beyond”, Evans said.
| | The handover between Sara and Delphine of the role of SLIC Wikimedian in Residence is now complete and Delphine has started to organise editathons with library workers across Scotland, such as [https://twitter.com/delph_dallison/status/1019501461762342912 this one] at Dunfermline Carnegie Library. |
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| Elsewhere in the growth of language Wikipedias, the Chinese (Mandarin) and Portugese Wikipedias are both about to pass 1 million articles, while English Wikipedia is over 5.6 million articles. Many people who speak English as a second language work on the English Wikipedia, meaning that it has far more regular editors than other languages. Wikimedia UK strongly encourages people who speak another language than English to help translate and improve articles into the other languages they speak so that people who do not speak English can access the same quality of encyclopaedic content that is available in English.
| | == Wales Update == |
| | Robin Owain, our Wales manager has been working with Welsh-language broadcaster S4C, who have started to change their licensing policy on some videos on their YouTube channel. Preparations have also begun for Wiki Loves Monuments 2018 in Wales, and discussions have started with a number of possible grant funding bodies, including the Welsh Government. Robin has also secured the release of [[:en:Eisteddfod|Eisteddfod]]’s archive of biographiess for at least the last 10 years (at least 240 biographies) |
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| Wikimedia UK is now looking forward to the [https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Celtic_Knot_Conference_2018 Celtic Knot conference], taking place at the National Library of Wales in July. This conference aims to bring together people working on smaller language Wikipedias, especially the Celtic languages of the UK, but also indigenous languages from other parts of Europe, to discuss how to improve and promote Wikipedia as an educational tool for minority language communities. If you’re interested in taking part, why not get in touch?
| | A new Wikiediting group, ‘Wici Pontardawe’ has been organised for 11 July 2018. This in conjunction with Tŷ'r Gwrhyd Welsh Centre at Swansea University. Robin gave a talk at Maynooth University’s Academia and Wikipedia Conference in Dublin, and of course did a lot of work to prepare for the Celtic Knot conference in Aberystwyth.'''<br> |
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| = Why Non-Commercial licenses aren't useful =
| | Meanwhile, Jason Evans, the National Wikimedian at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth has uploaded 4891 portrait images uploaded to Commons. These are pre 1880 portraits, mainly of British interest. The collection contains prints, engravings, paintings, photographs and more. You can explore the collection [[commons:Category:National_Library_of_Wales_Portrait_Archive|here]]. Following on from this, 5200 Wikidata items were created; one for each portrait on Commons plus a number of items for sitters and artists in the collection. |
| [[File:BY-NC-SA-Andere Wikis.png|thumb|License image of the BY-NC-SA Non-Commercial license.]] | |
| '''By John Lubbock, Owen Blacker, Stuart Prior'''
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| The other day, a friend of Wikimedia UK contacted us, asking if there was a simple explanation anywhere of why Non-Commercial (NC) licenses aren’t useful. He was trying to persuade a group who had released photos of their members on an NC license that they should make them fully Open Licensed. They were worried, he said, that someone could reprint, sell and profit from their photographs.
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| This fear of content being used in a way that the holder doesn’t agree with is a very common one, but largely illusory. It was something I encountered when asking the City of London Corporation for permission to go inside Bunhill Fields cemetery to take photos. I was refused because they could be used for ‘controversial articles about death’. It’s a conversation which often takes some time for the rights holder to understand why fully Open Licenses are better.
| | 40,000 statements were also added to Wikidata for Welsh Portraits and 350,000 Welsh bibliographical records (The sum of all Welsh literature) have been passed to Wikidata visiting Scholar Aaron Morris and are being prepared for upload to Wikidata. The Wikidata Visiting Scholar Has created Wikidata for many Welsh newspapers and Journals using data provided by NLW. He will now begin to explore creating Wikidata for ALL Welsh books with associated printers, publishers and authors. You can find out more about Aaron’s work [[:en:User:Jason.nlw/Wikidata_Visiting_Scholar|here]]. |
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| Unfortunately, some big funding bodies still advise their grantees to make the product of their work available on NC licenses, so here is a general guide for why NC licenses aren’t very useful, [https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/NonCommercial_interpretation#Choosing_NC_for_your_content expanding on some of the points Creative Commons make on their wiki].
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| The debate on NC licenses on Wikipedia goes back almost to the beginning of the site; you can see [[:en:Wikipedia_talk:Image_use_policy/Noncommercial-use|one thread discussing the issue in 2004]]. Wikimedia passed a [[:en:Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright#Non-commercial_licenses|resolution]] prohibiting the use of NC licenses in 2007 as being non-compatible with the [https://freedomdefined.org/Definition definition of a Free License], which allows content to be used for any purpose.
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| The first problem to note is the ambiguity of the term ‘Commercial’. If you run a website that has advertising on it, you could not use an NC image on it, because it would be part of a commercial site. When people think that they want to prevent someone else making money out of their work, they probably imagine that person simply reprinting and distributing the work without attribution to the creator, but this would already be breaking the attribution clause of a completely Free License like [[creativecommons:by-sa/4.0/|CC BY-SA 4.0]] or [[creativecommons:by/4.0/|CC BY 4.0]].
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| In reality, if someone is making a piece of content Freely Licensed, it’s unlikely that others will be able to commercialise it. If it’s on a ShareAlike license, the resulting content should also be on that license, and so would be hard to profit from. The other thing license holders should consider is whether it would matter to them if someone tried to monetise their content. Say you took a photo of a bridge in Wales that ended up on a calendar being made in China. Would it matter to you?
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| If the object is to disseminate the content more widely, it may not matter if someone did try to use it for a commercial purpose. In one example, we encouraged the [http://ukblacktech.com/ UK Black Tech group] to release [http://ukblacktech.com/stockphotos/ their stock images of black people in tech] on open licenses — the object was to get more images of black people in the tech sector online, so using open licenses even serves their purpose better.
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| If a record label wanted to release a photo of an artist that others could use for promotion or in news articles, it’s unlikely that someone would take that photo and try to sell it, when it already exists for free online. In the case of music labels, they already send the press photos of their artists to use in commercial publications — so why not release a photo of that artist on an Open License? One good quality image on an Open License would likely be widely used, and therefore give the music label some control over the photo many people would see of their artist.
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| We are not suggesting that a company should release the best quality or most commercialisable image of a particular person or thing, but music labels especially would be well advised to release a sample photo of each of their artists on an Open License so it can be used on their Wikipedia article. One way that the rights holder could prevent inappropriate reuse would be to release only a low-resolution version of the image, which would be good enough for a web page but not to be printed on a canvas. For Creative Commons’ [http://thepowerofopen.org/assets/pdfs/tpoo_eng.pdf The Power of Open], film-maker Nicolás Alcalá described using precisely that model for [http://www.riotcinema.com/ Riot Cinema]:
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| We assume that if you are a movie theater, an on-demand platform, a newspaper, or TV, you will need the high-quality version and reach an agreement with us. But if you’re a small amateur cineclub or a theater in a third world country and you don’t have the money to showcase the film, you can do it with the low-quality version for commercial purposes.
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| One of the problems with the protectionist thinking of some rights-holders is the ‘lost sale fallacy’, that using free content equates to a loss of sales. However, it has been demonstrated that [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2005/jul/27/media.business filesharers spend more money on purchasing music and film] — because they are exposed to things they would not have otherwise discovered. Likewise, more information about artists being available on Wikipedia leads to people visiting galleries to see their works or buying books to find out more about information about artists.
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| Mike Masnick has written at length about [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070503/012939.shtml the economics of abundance], with Cory Doctorow probably the most prominent of authors who [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/may/23/cory-doctorow-my-bright-idea release their work under Creative Commons licenses] — as Tim O’Reilly put it, “the problem for artists isn't piracy – it's obscurity”. Similarly Melinda Lee talked about using Creative Commons dual-licensing to that end with ''[http://www.uncensoredinterview.com/ Uncensored Interview]'' after having realised, when working at MTV, that opportunities had been missed due to lack of content rights. Their stock of interviews with bands and celebrities are available under conventional TV licenses but also under CC-BY, allowing reuse and remixing by anyone and the Share-Alike provisions have allowed Uncensored Interview to benefit from those resulting remixes.
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| And, of course, even if a rights-holder forbids commercial reuse, that cannot prohibit fair use or fair dealing exemptions from allowing someone to quote, satirise, parody or report on their works — in a commercial context or otherwise — with monopoly “intellectual property” rights having no ability to prevent that.
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| There are always going to be occasions where some works don't make sense to allow for commercial reuse. Hollywood is not going to release the next blockbuster film on CC BY anytime soon. But that doesn't mean you should pick a non-commercial license off the bat either. Like any decision involving technology, consider your threat analysis before defending against those threats — think about what you're trying to achieve.
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| If you want to publicise your art, for example, perhaps a lower-resolution screen-worthy version can be spread far and wide without impacting your ability to make a living from selling hardcopies. If you're writing an essay for a collection, will it harm your income to loosen those restrictions a little — or might it mean that you get volunteer translations, for example, as Doctorow has seen.
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| Think about what you are trying to achieve and how different licensing models can best help you achieve that while still leaving open the options for other people to build upon your work — just as we've all built upon the work of those who came before us.
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| = Wikimedia UK Chief Executive Lucy Crompton-Reid has been published in a new book on Feminism and Museums by ''Museums Etc''. =
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| Lucy’s chapter is on Wikimedia and the Gender Gap and is is featured in Volume 2 of ''Feminism and Museums: Intervention, Disruption and Change''. Under an agreement with the publisher, we are allowed to share the chapter with you [[blog:2018/03/lucy-crompton-reid-on-feminism-and-museums/|<u>on our blog</u>]]
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| = How the music industry should engage with Wikipedia =
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| '''By John Lubbock'''
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| If I was a music industry promoter, I would make sure the artists I worked with had accurate Wikipedia pages, because those pages will come at the top of the Google rankings when you search for the artist’s name. In practice, this doesn’t happen, largely because they don’t understand how Wikipedia works or what its rules are.
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| A lot of people do not understand Wikipedia’s notability guidelines. These guidelines specify different notability standards for different professions. Here are the [[:en:Wikipedia:Notability_(music)#Criteria_for_musicians_and_ensembles|notability guidelines for musicians]] to have a Wikipedia page:
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| Musicians or ensembles (this category includes ''bands'', ''singers'', ''rappers'', ''orchestras'', ''DJs'', ''musical theatre groups'', ''instrumentalists'', etc.) may be notable if they meet at least one of the following criteria.
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| # <span id="C1"></span>Has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial, published works appearing in sources that are [[:en:Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources|reliable]], not [[:en:Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-published_sources|self-published]], and are [[Wikipedia:independent sources|independent of]] the musician or ensemble itself.
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| #* This criterion includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, books, magazine articles, online versions of print media, and television documentaries ''except'' for the following:
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| #* Any reprints of press releases, other publications where the musician or ensemble talks about themselves, and all advertising that mentions the musician or ensemble, including manufacturers' advertising.
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| #* Works consisting merely of trivial coverage, such as articles that simply report performance dates, release information or track listings, or the publications of contact and booking details in directories.
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| #* Articles in a school or university newspaper (or similar), in most cases.
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| # <span id="C2"></span>Has had a single or album on any country's [[Wikipedia:Record charts|national music chart]].
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| # <span id="C3"></span>Has had a record [[:en:Music_recording_sales_certification|certified gold]] or higher in at least one country.
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| # <span id="C4">Has received non-trivial coverage in independent reliable sources of an international concert tour, or a national concert tour in at least one sovereign country.
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| # <span id="C5"></span>Has released two or more albums on a [[:en:Record_label#Major_labels|major record label]] or on one of the more important indie labels (i.e., an independent label with a history of more than a few years, and with a roster of performers, many of whom are independently notable).
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| # <span id="C6"></span>Is an ensemble that contains two or more independently notable musicians, or is a musician who has been a reasonably prominent member of two or more independently notable ensembles. This should be adapted appropriately for musical genre; for example, having performed two lead roles at major opera houses. Note that this criterion needs to be interpreted with caution, as there have been instances where this criterion was cited in a [[:en:Wikipedia:Verifiability#Wikipedia_and_sources_that_mirror_or_use_it|WP:CIRCULAR]] manner to create a self-fulfilling notability loop (e.g. musicians who were "notable" only for having been in two bands, of which one or both were "notable" only because those musicians had been in them.)
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| # <span id="C7"></span>Has become one of the most prominent representatives of a notable style or the most prominent of the local scene of a city; note that the subject must still meet all ordinary Wikipedia standards, including [[Wikipedia:Verifiability|verifiability]].
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| # <span id="C8"></span>Has won or been nominated for a major music award, such as a [[:en:Grammy_Award|Grammy]], [[:en:Juno_Award|Juno]], [[:en:Mercury_Prize|Mercury]], [[:en:Choice_Music_Prize|Choice]] or [[:en:Grammis|Grammis]] award.
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| # <span id="C9"></span>Has won first, second or third place in a major music competition.
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| # <span id="C10"></span>Has performed music for a work of media that is notable, e.g., a theme for a network television show, performance in a television show or notable film, inclusion on a notable compilation album, etc. (But if this is the only claim, it is probably more appropriate to have a mention in the main article and [[Wikipedia:Redirects|redirect]] to that article. Read [[:en:Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Subjects_notable_only_for_one_event|WP:BLP1E]] and [[:en:Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#People_notable_for_only_one_event|WP:BIO1E]] for further clarifications)
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| # <span id="C11"></span>Has been placed in [[Spin (radio)|rotation]] nationally by a major radio or music television network.
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| # <span id="C12"></span>Has been a featured subject of a substantial broadcast segment across a national radio or TV network.
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| An artist who may not have met the criteria for inclusion years ago may have since passed the threshold. The rapper [[:en:Frisco_(rapper)|Frisco]], a member of the important UK Grime label BBK, had his article repeatedly deleted between 2008-2010 because editors did not feel that he met the above criteria. His page was then locked from being re-created. Since then, UK Grime and the label he is on have become much more culturally important, and he has also released a number of albums, meaning he now meets the notability criteria. Because the page is locked for re-creation, an administrator will need to unlock it so it can now be made.
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| Fiona Apps, a longtime admin I asked for help, told me she previously advised music labels who didn’t understand how to engage with Wikipedia.
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| “They don't understand what makes a musician 'notable' under Wikipedia's standards but more importantly there's a complete misunderstanding of both what neutrality is on Wikipedia and WHY neutrality is on Wikipedia”, she said.
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| “Things that are very much important in a musician's career simply aren't appropriate for Wikipedia and success is measured in reports from reliable secondary sources that are chosen by precise criteria that are separate from the music business. Wikipedia is written in language that is just foreign to the industry.”
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| Apps also said that she would like artists not to send their fans to their Wikipedia page to ‘fix it’, as that would likely make the problem worse, and result in the page being locked. Instead, she advised music companies to ask Wikimedia UK for training.
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| One example I saw recently of an artist making all these mistakes provides a useful case study. Complaining on Twitter that @Wikipedia should allow his edits to his own page, the artist clearly did not understand how Wikipedia works. Sure enough, his page was a total mess of terrible PR speak. I have attempted to anonymise it as far as possible because this type of thing is not uncommon and he does not deserve to be singled out for ridicule.
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| [[File:Example of non NPoV editing of a Wikipedia music page.png|left|thumb|1200x1200px]]
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| Obviously, the copy in this article is a huge violation of rules against non-Neutral Point of View (NPoV). This is why Wikipedia’s rules discourage people from editing articles about themselves or their employer. Editing pages of artists you promote and getting caught doing it is likely to get the page deleted or the edits simply removed. Instead, what Wikimedia UK would recommend is working with our editor community and collaborating to achieve consensus based on concrete facts with good references. You can also work with Wikimedia UK to organise training sessions that fans could come to, to learn how to make sure the pages of artists they like are as good as possible. We are here to support Wikipedia andwork with the community of volunteers, so please work with us!
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| For the past two years, I’ve tried to engage the MOBO awards on Twitter to encourage them to take an interest in the fact that many of the artists they nominate for awards have no Wikipedia articles, and when they do, they are often quite bad, many without photos of the artists. I talked to a couple of smaller music labels last year about the problem of artist photos, and the problem seems to be that labels have photographers who allow them to use their photos, but the label itself doesn’t own the photos, and a photographer is unlikely to want to publish a photo they can sell on an Open License.
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| We desperately need more content by and about non-white people on Wikipedia. If you’re not of European descent, you’re much less likely to be adequately represented on Wikipedia. This is partly because the editors themselves are not particularly diverse. So the issue we have is how to engage new audiences to become Wikipedia editors?
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| One way to do this could be through music. Wikimedia UK can ask for press passes to musical events so that photographers can go to events for free in exchange for Open Licensed photos of artists who are performing there. As Fiona Apps mentioned above, we can also engage with the music industry to provide training for them to understand how to use Wikipedia.
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| It’s important that artists who meet the notability criteria are adequately represented on Wikipedia, and if they are from a minority ethnic background, they’re much less likely to be. So we call on our community members to generate more content on artists whose pages lack photos, and on the music industry itself to engage with our community. Please check out the [[:en:Wikipedia:WikiProject_Black_British_Music|WikiProject Black British Music]] for suggestions on pages that need to be created. There are mutual benefits to be achieved which can help all of us, and expand the amount of free, open knowledge about notable artists.
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| = Sara Thomas appointed Scotland Programme Coordinator =
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| '''By Sara Thomas, Scotland Programme Coordinator'''
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| [[File:Hiding wikimedian.jpg|thumbnail|On the way to Inverclyde to deliver training...]]
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| The Scotland Programme Coordinator is a new role at Wikimedia UK, one which I was very happy to see advertised, and am absolutely delighted to be taking on. It's a significant investment by WMUK in Scotland, and I’m excited to get started!
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| Since becoming Wikimedian in Residence at [[:en:w:Wikipedia:GLAM/Museums Galleries Scotland|Museums Galleries Scotland]] in 2015, and then going on to hold the same role at the Scottish Library and Information Council last year, I’ve had both the pleasure and privilege to watch Scotland’s Wikimedia community grow and develop. Ewan’s residency at the University of Edinburgh is now full-time, and Susan has just recently completed her residency with the National Library of Scotland as Gaelic Wikimedian. My residency with SLIC is now at a point where we have the first public library services across Scotland starting to run editathons, and I’ve had recent meetings with both further and higher education institutions who want to know more about using Wikipedia in the classroom. It’s been obvious to me for a while that there’s a good deal of demand in Scotland for this kind of work, as well as significant scope for increasing volunteer engagement.
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| The role of the Scotland Programme Coordinator will be to support and encourage volunteer involvement in Scotland, as well as to support existing Wikimedians in Residence and partnerships, and pursue new relationships with partner organisations. I’m hoping to grow our network – particularly outwith the central belt – and encourage not only further participation in Wikimedia projects in Scotland, but to help to further the representation of Scotland in Wikimedia projects. I know that there are Scottish women who aren’t on Wikipedia who should be, and having worked in events and heritage – and travelled all over Scotland to do so – I’m keenly aware of the incredible store of knowledge that's held in Scotland's cultural and heritage institutions. I want to see more of it openly available, and I’m going to do everything I can to encourage its release.
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| On a sad note, taking up this role has meant that I’ve had to resign my position at SLIC. I’ve loved working on this project and I’m very proud of where we’ve gotten to so far. But I’m really very happy to be handing over the residency to my replacement, who’ll be starting in just a couple of weeks!
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| ===More===
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| * Read more about the SLIC residency [[:en:Wikipedia:GLAM/SLIC|here]]
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| * The University of Edinburgh residency [[:en:Wikipedia:University_of_Edinburgh|here]]
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| * Sign up to the Scot-wiki mailing list [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSctpnDjO_PHZeOTrA0yjtVLqE4oDfjLtYhWzQVTwk712BSJJQ here].
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| * Read more about volunteering with Wikimedia UK [[Volunteering Portal|here.]]
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| ''When not involved with Wikimedia-related projects, Dr Sara Thomas has been/is a music venue manager, fundraiser, trainer, Event Coordinator for the Beltane Fire Society, Volunteer Coordinator for Mugstock Festival, Project Officer for Dig It! 2017, storyteller, writer, and Chair of a Community Arts charity.''
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| = Giving back to the Digital Commons =
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| '''By John Lubbock'''
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| [[File:Cambridge Analytica protest Parliament Square4.jpg|thumb|Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Chris Wylie at a protest in Parliament Square.]]
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| With the Cambridge Analytica scandal continuing to swirl in the background, both YouTube and Facebook have recently announced that they will start using Wikipedia content as background information about publishers and controversial videos on their platforms. [https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/24/are-corporations-that-use-wikipedia-giving-back/ TechCrunch] noted that,
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| ‘Of course, this isn’t the first time Google has utilized the work of Wikipedia’s army of devoted contributors and editors — and the company is hardly alone here. In recent years, the site’s vast wealth of peer-edited knowledge has, for better or worse, become the backbone of a number of wildly used services — including, notably, smart assistants. Ask Alexa, Assistant or Siri who the Queen of England is, and they’ll all pull that information from the same place.’
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| Breitbart News, the far-right website run by ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon, is [https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-breitbart-declares-war-on-wikipedia-in-facebook-s-fight-against-fake-news-1.5991915 especially unhappy] about this, because their Wikipedia page announces the fact that they have published material considered to be racist and misogynistic, and that ‘The site has published a number of falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and intentionally misleading stories.’ In response, Breitbart’s fans have been trying to remove content from the page that they disagree with, and the page has been semi-protected.
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| This seems to be an example of the fear expressed by some Wikimedians that big platforms like Facebook are abdicating responsibility for the problems with their systems and trying to make Wikipedia the arbiter of truth online.
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| Looking at the [https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/24/are-corporations-that-use-wikipedia-giving-back/ largest donors] in the 2017-18 financial year, Google is the biggest donor with a contribution of ‘more than $1m’, around double Craigslist founder Craig Newmark’s $500,000 donation but smaller than the previous year’s grant of $3m from the Alfred P. Sloan foundation. These are not huge sums of money for a website that has the 5th biggest amount of traffic online. Google itself [https://www.androidauthority.com/alphabet-q4-2017-earnings-834774/ posted a revenue] of £110.8bn in 2017 [https://www.recode.net/2017/7/24/16020840/alphabet-google-business-stock-earnings-growth-cloud-revenue-profits-q2-2017 despite being fined] $2.7bn for privileging its own content in searches.
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| [[File:Transparent google logo.png|thumb|Transparent Google logo]]
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| If these big companies are not going to give back financially for the use they make of the Open Licensed content Wikipedia provides, there are other ways that they could help grow the Digital Commons, provide more transparency, and create more trust with their users by allowing them some choice over the license that content on their platforms is published under. I no longer upload any of my own photos to Facebook, because this gives the company a license to do whatever they like with my content. If Facebook allowed me to publish photos on a Creative Commons license so that others could use them as well as Facebook, I would be much more tempted to use the platform to share photos again. Flickr does this already, and I know from talking to an ex-Facebook and Instagram developer that both companies have built the functionality to allow this, but have not implemented it.
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| What is the reason for this? Apparently they think it might confuse users who already struggle with the complexity of the privacy and security settings. I think a more likely reason is that telling users what rights they are giving away every time they want to publish something would likely reduce the total amount of content those users share on the platform. But this is happening anyway. Facebook has been [http://fortune.com/2016/04/07/facebook-sharing-decline/ aware for years] that organic engagement and on their site has been [https://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-business/new-study-finds-facebook-page-reach-has-declined-20-2017 in steady decline], reducing by 20% in 2017 alone.
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| As promoters of open knowledge, I think the Wikimedia community has something to teach Facebook and other commercial platforms about how they can win back the public's trust by being more Open and transparent with their users about what their rights are when sharing content. There is clearly a tension between making money and being trusted by users, but it feels like this is an issue that Facebook and other sites can no longer ignore, now that the conversation about how data is used (or abused) has become mainstream with the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
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| Data is derived from the Latin word 'datum', that which is given. Commercial platforms have a public duty to give their users information about how their data is used and what rights they have, otherwise the data they collect is not really being freely given. The consensual nature of this transaction, and the nature of the social (media) contract between the platform and users is something we all should think about more carefully.
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| | Jason was interviewed by Radio Cymru discussing Wikipedia and the Celtic Knot conference. |
| [[Category:Friends' Newsletter]] | | [[Category:Friends' Newsletter]] |
Welcome to the 2018's Summer Newslett
Celtic Knot 2018
EU Copyright Directive voted down will be reconsidered in September
Scotland Update
Ewan McAndrew continues to beaver away at the University of Edinburgh, helping run events at the Portobello Library and presenting at other events like the UoE’s Informatics Forum,
Ewan attended events like the Amnesty International Still Marching event in Glasgow on May 19, a meetup of open educators at the University of Coventry on April 17, and delivered 3 presentations at the annual Open Educational Resources conference in Bristol on 18-19 April, and delivered Wikipedia training to Teesside University students, staff and members of the public on 27-28 April. Scotland Manager Sara Thomas and Ewan did a joint presentation on Wikimedia collaborations at the Edinburgh Local Showcase event at St Cecilia's Museum.
Ewan also delivered a webinar presentation to Queen's University Belfast on 3rd May, describing the work of the Wikimedia residency at the University of Edinburgh, and some of the ways that Wikipedia and its sister projects are used to help students develop information literacy, data literacy and digital research skills. See a video here.
A video presentation about Wikimedia work in Scotland by Ammienoot from the 2018 Open Educational Resources conference in Bristol on 19 April was also added to the Edinburgh media hopper. Lots of other videos of staff and student feedback about the work of the residency and its assessment by participating students can be found on the UoE media hopper too.
Ewan helped create lots of data and upload images to improve coverage of Women Human Rights Defenders, Suffragettes and Middlesborough, 27 new images of the murals by noted artist Phoebe Anna Traquair were added to Wikimedia Commons. Part-time Wikimedian in Residence and MA student at the University of Sterling, Lucy Rodgers (User:LMRodger) has also helped create a new article on Stirling District Lunatic Asylum and linked it to 23 other psychiatric hospitals in Scotland through the creation of a new Psychiatric hospital navbox by Ewan.
Ewan also Met with Law undergraduate Jemima John and course leaders, Rachael Craufurd-Smith and Hector MacQueen, on 7 June 2018 to discuss how a Wikipedia in the Classroom assignment could be implemented in the School of Law curriculum for postgraduate students, undergraduate students or both.
Ewan has discussed the Wikimedia residency at the University of Edinburgh and offered guidance to those exploring collaborations with Wikimedia at the American University in Cairo, Teesside University, Coventry University, Queen's University Belfast and other institutions. He also supported Academic Support Librarians Marshall Dozier, Ruth Jenkins and Donna Watson to help prepare for their first editathon at the EAHIL Conference in July. Support was also given to Anne-Marie Scott to co-lead the EdTech editathon at the OER18 Conference making use of a resource to demonstrate how anyone can run an editathon quite simply; see the OER18 EdTech editathon SPLOT resource.
You can find links to more of Ewan’s work on his two recent quarterly reports for 2018, Quarter 1 and Quarter 2.
Meanwhile, Sara Thomas, our Scotland Manager has been meeting with Stirling University and Library about developing a partnership and Inverclyde Libraries to talk about changing their licensing policy. Sara attended meetings and gave talks at the newly launched Life in Data project, spearheaded by University of Stirling, around data literacy, Scottish Higher Education Libraries’ AGM, CILIPS Summer Conference and the Edinburgh Local Showcase and Forum,
Scottish Libraries and Information Council Wikimedian in Residence Delphine Dallison has talked to GSA Library about moving books held on Internet Archive to Wikisource/Commons. The National Library of Scotland has also agreed to move a large number of images from CC-BY to CC0/PD.
The handover between Sara and Delphine of the role of SLIC Wikimedian in Residence is now complete and Delphine has started to organise editathons with library workers across Scotland, such as this one at Dunfermline Carnegie Library.
Wales Update
Robin Owain, our Wales manager has been working with Welsh-language broadcaster S4C, who have started to change their licensing policy on some videos on their YouTube channel. Preparations have also begun for Wiki Loves Monuments 2018 in Wales, and discussions have started with a number of possible grant funding bodies, including the Welsh Government. Robin has also secured the release of Eisteddfod’s archive of biographiess for at least the last 10 years (at least 240 biographies)
A new Wikiediting group, ‘Wici Pontardawe’ has been organised for 11 July 2018. This in conjunction with Tŷ'r Gwrhyd Welsh Centre at Swansea University. Robin gave a talk at Maynooth University’s Academia and Wikipedia Conference in Dublin, and of course did a lot of work to prepare for the Celtic Knot conference in Aberystwyth.
Meanwhile, Jason Evans, the National Wikimedian at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth has uploaded 4891 portrait images uploaded to Commons. These are pre 1880 portraits, mainly of British interest. The collection contains prints, engravings, paintings, photographs and more. You can explore the collection here. Following on from this, 5200 Wikidata items were created; one for each portrait on Commons plus a number of items for sitters and artists in the collection.
40,000 statements were also added to Wikidata for Welsh Portraits and 350,000 Welsh bibliographical records (The sum of all Welsh literature) have been passed to Wikidata visiting Scholar Aaron Morris and are being prepared for upload to Wikidata. The Wikidata Visiting Scholar Has created Wikidata for many Welsh newspapers and Journals using data provided by NLW. He will now begin to explore creating Wikidata for ALL Welsh books with associated printers, publishers and authors. You can find out more about Aaron’s work here.
Jason was interviewed by Radio Cymru discussing Wikipedia and the Celtic Knot conference.
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