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
Robin Owain (left) with a fellow Wikipedian: David Chan at the Wicimedia tent, Eisteddfod 2012 at Llantwit Major

The National Eisteddfod is Wales’s primary cultural event of the year (c. 800 years old). This year, Wikimedia UK had a presence. Take a look at the 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 most of the universities in the UK, targeting in particular leading individuals in innovative and open education.

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.

Final preparations for the EduWiki Conference 2012 (5-6 September) have taken place.

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. This is a meeting/workshop for Wikimedians active in outreach to cultural institutions. Rather than an open community conference, this is a workshop targeting a small group of community-focused and technology-focused Wikimedians to discuss the key elements of the glamwiki.org project. Attendees can also include key representatives of GLAM (and related) institutions who already have a strong relationship with Wikimedia.

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
Britannica
Communications Bill

Upcoming activities in September

For events in October 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

Much of this month's press coverage is already recorded above. Below is a summary of some top line communications activity this month:

  • Taken delivery of lots of printed materials, including updated education booklets, document folders for events, notebooks, welcome to Wikipedia booklets and guides to wiki mark-up. These were either designed or updated in-house, part of a developing trend to move as much design work as possible internally to reduce costs.
  • Met with Wikinews volunteers to discuss their coverage of the Paralympics. Got to know some volunteers.
  • Lots of preparation for Wikipedia Takes Coventry and the EduWiki conference. More details of these two activities will appear in the September report.
  • Work continued with Digital Disruption and Demos on developing a project around digital literacy. The related workshop will take place on 24 October.
  • The ongoing relationship with the CIPR remains strong with more work taking place around the next stage of developing the guidelines for the PR industry in interacting with Wikipedia. A session on this will take place in September at Social Media Week, London with David Gerard appearing on the panel on behalf of WMUK.
  • Quotes have been obtained for media training for volunteers, trustees and staff. This is dependent on the training being approved.

Fundraising and Membership

Fundraising

This month, we received £2,835 in one-off donations, with 135 individual donations. The average donation amount was £21. 94 (69%) 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 katherine.bavageatwikimedia.org.uk and let her know your requirements.

As for direct debit donations, there were 5,852 successful direct debits this month, bringing in a total of £23,459.49.

Membership

Up to 31st August 2012:

  • 212 new (membership commenced in preceding three months) and current members
  • 42 'grace' members (membership within six months after date membership should be renewed)
  • This adds up to 254 current members who are eligible to vote
  • 146 Expired members

It is an identified priority that Katherine will work with Mike Peel as Secretary to chase all expired members who may wish to renew, and finalise and automate reminders for those whose membership is approaching expiration.

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