WikiConference UK 2012/Elections/Questions/Ashley Van Haeften

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Answers

After taking up the Chair, I have some quite big new things to worry about in my diary, from the Wikimedia Chapters Association funding proposal, through to chats with the Science Museum. A delay here in my replying to questions is not intended as a snub or a lack of interest. :-) --Fæ (talk) 16:01, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

1. What different groups and communities are you part of?

On Wikipedia I'm a specialist generalist (or less flatteringly a butterfly) article editor and tend to avoid particular labels of wikiprojects apart from GLAM related topics. Taking up responsibility for the UK GLAM budget and programmes means that I have the opportunity to mix with related communities such as the Open Knowledge Foundation Network through to the research community within the Wellcome Trust. Apart from GLAM and the wikiprojects I do a lot of vandal management, new user welcoming and spend time in the unseen and un-thanked volunteer "back-office" helping folks with problems they email in to Wikimedia. There are small determined communities that support this gnomic work and I sometimes hang out on IRC (as Fae) as well as using the related email lists. I have become more involved in the past year or so with Wikimedia Commons and gradually find myself challenging policy and better understanding the role of the small but complex, international and often fractious community there. Since 2010 my cross-project editcount is over 90,500 with another 21,000 by bot.

In that other place that most folks call "real life", I have a social network mainly in the spheres of IT management, gay culture and the strange world of academics. I have been a long term supporter of the Hall-Carpenter archive, the largest British archive of LGBT activism from records to artefacts, and helped during a series of transitions (including lugging endless archive boxes out of the garages of gay activists) so it is now part of the Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive housed by Middlesex University and Bishopsgate Library, and another section is maintained at the London School of Economics, who hold a delightful wealth of fascinating archives relating to political history. Previously I was on the committee of the British Computer Society Quality Specialist Group and retain a long term interest in the development of standards and how third party bodies negotiate and promote professional standards; one of those areas where it was hard to define the boundaries of my hobby and my profession. Due to my husband being an ancient historian, most of our holidays stay within the Roman Empire, fortunately it was extraordinarily large and most of the modern countries within it no longer imprison or execute people for being gay. We are life members of Cadw, and free access to Welsh, English and Scottish Heritage sites is a boon to getting a feel for the British landscape, even though I readily confess to being a complete duffer on history and am quite likely to believe what I read on Wikipedia until my husband tells me how badly written and out of date it is :-) I remain a proud Friend of Nunhead Cemetery (hilariously the annual open day is heaving with retro Goths in their best make-up and outfits) and a Friend of the small but world class Dulwich Picture Gallery (this first British public gallery happens to be a short walk away from my home) and I would like to do more to bring local history enthusiasts (and even local Councils) into our GLAM programme as part of our mission to preserve exactly the sort of arcane knowledge that those of us that enjoy finding out more about the worthy, the masses and the notorious who used to live in the same streets as we do now.