Newsletter/September2009
Summary: (to be written)
In this month's newsletter:
Initiatives
Schools Project: The Wikimedia UK Schools Project is planed to introduce Wikimedia projects into the classroom, as technical tools and studying tools. It aims to establish a series workshops and presentations in schools, to demonstrate how to use resource from Wikimedia projects appropriately.
So far, it is completed the draft of plan and budget. The board aggreed to purchase Labtop and associate facilities to support this project.
Britain Loves Wikipedia:
Since broadened London Loves Wikipedia to Britain Loves Wikipedia, we started to do some initial contact with museums. Currently, we have some positive feedbacks from them, but not set up yet. It aims to include the whole of the UK, so our plan is to run the event each museum per day--most of them should be set in weekend.
This project also completed the draft of plan. Are there particular cities that you'd like to see the event run in, or particular museums you think would be interested in joining this event? Then please get in touch.
Workplace Learning Lunches
This initiative finished the recruitement of presenters. The potential BBC part also presented the positive attitute to push the process. It expects to receive more information in the next board meeting. If you have more information on any potential busenesses who will be intereted in this collaboration, please contact us.
Membership
After the 2009 AGM, we agreed to set a target of increasing our membership to 100 by the 2010 AGM, establishing the chapter as one of the top-ten chapters in the world. Since then we have welcomed five new members, and are hoping that the initiatives planned later this year, the annual Wikimedia fundraiser and the 2010 conference will boost our numbers towards the target. We have also now received permission to sell Wikimedia branded mugs, mousemats or other merchandise as a perk for our members and would like to hear what kind of things you would like us to have available.
Charity status update
We passed an important milestone this month as we submitted our charity status application to the Charity Commission. This quicker, direct approach has been possible thanks to the grant we received from the Foundation, which took us over the £5,000 income threshold. The Charity Commission say they aim to decide applications within 40 days on average, meaning we could have an answer by the end of October. However, we found with our indirect application that some people do not think our activities are sufficiently educational to qualify, so the result should not be considered a foregone conclusion. We are talking to a top charity barrister about assisting us to put our best possible case forward and will keep all our supporters informed of progress.
Other Chapters' Activities
Press Coverage
- Flagged Protection
The big story on Wikipedia this month was flagged protection. Following from a New York Times article, the UK press caught on to the story. Our Chair, Mike Peel, talked to BBC News, The Times, The UK Press Association and The Independent.
Andrew Turvey was interviewed on Dublin's Radio 4 (26 August). Also, David Gerard was interviewed by BBC Radio 2 (Chris Evans Drivetime; 26 August)) and Radio 5 (25 August), and also gave interviews on BBC Newsnight (25 August) and Sky News (26 August).
In addition, the Times also ran an article entitled "The 10 biggest Wikipedia hoaxes". The story was also covered by the Daily Mail, the Guardian Blog and The Telegraph (which also had a blog post on the story). The Guardian also ran an editorial covering it.
Resulting from the press coverage, the WMF posted a blog entry, which was covered by TechRadar and PC Pro.
- Other press coverage this month included
- 3 million articles on the English Wikipedia: Coverage continued of the 3 million article milestone on the English Wikipedia, with articles from The Telegraph. Wired repeated The Telegraph's coverage of the most popular 50 articles on the English Wikipedia so far.
- iPhone app: The Telegraph covered the launch of the official iPhone application for Wikipedia.
- Best Wikipedia articles: The Times Online's Comment Central gave a list of "The 10 best wikipedia entries" - chosen more for their oddity than their encyclopaedic quality.
- Most popular articles: The Telegraph reported lists of the most popular 20 articles in 4 categories: "People", "Films and TV", "Places" and "Technology"