Reports/2012/August

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Below is the Wikimedia UK monthly report for the period 1 to 31 August 2012. If you want to keep up with the chapter's activities as they happen, please subscribe to our blog, join our mailing list, and/or follow us on Twitter. If you have any questions or comments, please drop us a line on this report's talk page.

Program activities

Community

Jimmy Wales
Eisteddfod

(Summary to be imported here from Visit report - National Eisteddfod 8 Aug 2012.)

Olympics
US presidential candidates
Gender bias
Guido Fawkes
Downtime
Brandon Harris
Printed Wikipedia
Suggs and Wikipedia

Education and Expert Outreach

The UK version of the case studies brochure

The office staff and Martin Poulter adapted the Foundation's education case studies brochure to make a British version. This was sent out, with EduWiki conference flyers, to leading individuals in innovative and open education in universities around the country.

Wikimedia UK has had a spate of inquiries from university academics wanting to start educational assignments that improve Wikipedia. Martin Poulter is following up with phone and Skype meetings and seeking to arrange training sessions.

Wikimedia UK supported a Wikiproject Medicine outreach event at University Hospital, Coventry on the 31st. Doug Taylor and Martin Poulter attended, joining an audience of more than fifty, including many health professionals, university librarians and some experienced Wikipedia contributors.

The day's presentations were divided between medicine on Wikipedia and finding and using reliable sources for evidence-based medicine. User:Jfdwolff spoke about the origins of Wikiproject Medicine explaining he was motivated to become a Wikipedian by the same interests that drove him to become a doctor. James Heilman (User:Jmh649), visiting from Canada, talked about plans to improve and translate a range of centrally-important medicine articles, including Cancer, Pregnancy and Schizophrenia, bringing reliable medical information to billions of people. Workshop organiser Helga Perry (User:Sharkli) gave an amusing presentation contrasting evidence-based medicine with its alternatives including "vehemence-based medicine" and "nervousness-based medicine". Jon Brassey showed off the TRIP database, a search engine for medical research that prioritises results according to their relevance to Wikipedia's Identifying Reliable Sources (Medicine) guideline. Brassey defended his decision to include quality medical articles from Wikipedia in the database: a move that has drawn criticism from some colleagues but been welcomed by others. Librarian Petra Meeson talked about critically appraising sources for inclusion in Wikipedia. She described a survey that asked 66 doctors which sources they consult first for clinically information. Twenty-four of them answered Google and 22 went straight to Wikipedia, far more than went straight to official databases. The day also included a training session, showing attendees how to add reliable sources to a medical article. Some Twitter commentary on the day has been captured with Storify. Wikimedia UK is seeking to support similar events in other parts of the country.

GLAM activities

See also the This Month in GLAM UK report for this month.
QRpedia
Monmouthpedia
GLAMcamp London/September 2012
  • Planning for this event has continued throughout the month. (Expand on what to expect from the conference...)

Technology

  • Recruitment for our first developer position continued throughout this month. Unfortunately, we were unable to hire for the position, and we are currently investigating alternative options.
  • Richard attended and met with several small startups who are creating apps which could be used to ease the 'reader' to 'editor' transition.
  • WMUK also purchased a 500GB portable hard drive - mostly for off-site, non-personal data backup (such as copies of the fundraiser agreement and videos of board meetings), but also to be used for photography events where there is no fast internet connection to upload images directly to Commons.

Miscellaneous

2013 activity planning

(Summary of 2013 Activity Plan/Ideas)

Microgrants

Upcoming activities in September

  • (To be copied here from Events at the end of this month)

For events in August and onwards, please see Events.

Administrative activities

Name change

Wiki UK Ltd is now known legally as Wikimedia U.K. as of 14 August, following from the change of name resolution passed at our AGM earlier this year. There is still a small issue regarding the difference between 'Wikimedia UK' and 'Wikimedia U.K.', which should be sorted out next month.

Board activities

On 2 August, Chris Keating succeeded Fae as Chair of Wikimedia UK, and Doug Taylor was appointed Vice-Chair. Our blog post.


News from the Chief Exec

For information on Jon's activities this month, see News from the Office.

Communications

Fundraising and Budgeting

This month, we received £X in one-off donations, with X individual donations. The average donation amount was £X. X of these donors have had Gift Aid Declarations made and matched with their records. If anyone would like a full (but anonymised) csv file with more information, please get in touch with richard.symondsatwikimedia.org.uk and let him know your requirements.

As for direct debit donations, there were N successful direct debits this month, bringing in a total of £X.

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