Re: [Wikimediauk-l] List participation
Mailing lists tend to be a social anti-pattern. I prefer wikis. http://microformats.org/wiki/wiki-better-than-email Less mailing list activity should be something we welcome rather than worry about. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Your views on the candidates for Chapter affiliated board seats
HJ Mitchell wrote: To be honest, I tend to think that life's too short for movement politics. Too true. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] WMUK slide scanner
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Michael Peel wrote: Really, the important questions here are: who has collections that would benefit Wikimedia and need scanning, and who has the time to scan and upload them? It shouldn’t really be a question about equipment cost beyond the cost-effectiveness of scanning and sharing them. I have access (both physical and legal) to a large collection of both colour and BW slides of various parts of Britain taken by my grandfather, Josiah Sturgeon. He was a civil service architect who designed quite a number of prisons and lifeboat stations and advised the government on other big construction projects. He also was a maritime painter and a member of the Royal Society of Marine Artists, and one of his paintings is in the Guildhall Art Gallery collection. The photographs he took over the years are mostly of Scotland, especially the Hebrides, but also cover coastal and rivers in England and Wales. There's also quite a lot of (what was then) Yugoslavia. They are taken with the eye of an artist and often show places that have now disappeared. I think there's definitely some educational and illustrative value in the images. Scanning them and putting them on Commons might be a more fitting and useful thing to do with them than keep them in an attic for a few more decades. So I might take up the offer of using the slide scanner at some point. One question: if one scanned a whole set of images using WMUK resources—say, a few hundred slides—and one or two of them were personal (in the case of my grandfather's photos, there might be a few showing my grandmother and/or my mother), can those be exempted from being uploaded or licensed for Commons? - -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.15 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJTBKzoAAoJEJwR297kLQ2wvcEP/2UM31jnp32BRSBgD0m5UXTF 5vOEdhBiDnimAx7psK9paPp/Yvv1+r5hnbvlMCVm8RouexRZVpNXNWEqcHEbIwJq JDVCppMqNeTMZoJU9UCSh25TigfZHZ2egeKhxVnLM4jVcVZeyowTpt38WwXzijxJ U+aqXxMIpsd1zFtq2UbkHat6pTkJ2glKnaL2Lnl8evsD4gSp4j2+XH8Qqo/3dgXj nltZW6UGlqZDZz+OgJlvopCGE8WcMTZzSNvkxtSHAOiRzzQjuaNelwMTLctwyKbR KHbZXp2mVfUgAmDyl31KhdYSgSkO1tizUy3kijMkrFEf/n5yUUhEb9TUJ5bXlIWp 3JV/J2p4z3me2NF/2wNXVFdNJNqes1QuqQYBsBu+hiBcMl6VXbqRS4LcznJSJkuB xaGpzpHc3kcQ124Ef1bd4x0tXlC2CErONpjVhemdyZ+Fg9WusacUwB4UnwLYxIHB TWQz2rstUDMU5eA6Yc+McswGvo/pkl6dp7I/6V5H5F9tyT9Ui+izJ2drrYuDvENc G3ohpdVt/J7x07AWdSUlC2Pwls54lInjUWfxR9YreSn9CpgImXO765l5nmFmd07O o/ToP5f77ObH04QcJuTzSc9LP+giujy7lLdZdv5jEecjK2a5dmM1eQ8G8S5kpnXC VX4AKct9CVIzL/SqPGcO =ED64 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Open Gov + CC = a marriage of convenience?
The Open Government License is itself just a license. It is basically CC BY with a few modifications: it deals with EU database rights (which previous versions of CC didn't) and includes pre-baked conditions on what it doesn't apply to just in case the government accidentally release a whole load of stuff and fail to do due diligence on what it contains. The important bit of the OGL isn't the license itself but the Public Sector Information (PSI) licensing framework which requires works that are eligible for Crown Copyright produced by or on behalf of central government to licensed under the OGL. This applies regardless of whether the work is actually licensed as such. I don't know whether the Welsh and Scottish governments have done similarly to HM Government. That's a matter that should really be raised with the local equivalents of the Cabinet Office. I've dealt with a lot of OGL-related issues on Commons, and in the process of one DR consulted with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. You can see the DRs here (and the first one has an OTRS ticket for my contact with the government lawyers): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Olympic_mascots.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Canoe_Slalom_-_Kynan_Maley.jpg There's a page on Meta that I created a while back to track use of OGL material and document the issues around it (as well as point to templates/categories on sites like Commons and Wikisource). https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Open_Government_Licence The other thing to consider is that OGL licensing applies on top of other license. If the government have released an image on Flickr as something like CC BY-ND, you can use the image under that license (although not on Wikimedia, obviously). But it's also Crown Copyright, and if it is a work of central government, OGL applies AS WELL AS CC BY-ND. In the above deletion requests, we've had issues where people have said Yeah, but it's CC-BY-ND because that's what it says on Flickr. Another caveat is that the proceedings of Parliament are not covered by the OGL. They are instead covered by the Open Parliamentary Licence. And the proceedings of the Scottish Parliament are covered by the Open Scottish Parliamentary Licence. The OPL is basically the same as the OGL but with the word Parliament instead of Government. The Scottish one is the same except it contains references to the appropriate Scottish legislation and institutions. I know a fair bit about this stuff because back in 2011, I worked for a government-sponsored technology non-profit that existed precisely because of OGL/PSI. The government could do a much better job of making this stuff clear. (It'd help also if Flickr let accredited UK Gov agencies apply OGL on images.) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] QRpedia stats broken?
I had a look over the code a while back. It looked to me like it wasn't then compliant with the privacy policy (because it keeps complete logs of every click-through). Since the WMUK transfer, has anyone ensured compliance with the privacy policy? With my volunteer hat on, I'm happy to give it a look over, possibly at the weekend. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ - Original message - From: Thomas Morton [1]morton.tho...@googlemail.com To: UK Wikimedia mailing list [2]wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] QRpedia stats broken? Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2014 19:06:52 + I think we're moving the stats to a new service. But not sure. I'll look into this later. What's likely happened is that when we moved the site that got forgotten. I certainly didn't migrate any data :) Tom On 2 Jan 2014 18:34, Erik Moeller [3]e...@wikimedia.org wrote: [4]http://qrpedia.org/stats.php seems broken right now, could someone take a look? Cheers, Erik -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list [5]wikimediau...@wikimedia.org [6]http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: [7]http://uk.wikimedia.org ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list [8]wikimediau...@wikimedia.org [9]http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: [10]http://uk.wikimedia.org References 1. mailto:morton.tho...@googlemail.com 2. mailto:wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org 3. mailto:e...@wikimedia.org 4. http://qrpedia.org/stats.php 5. mailto:wikimediau...@wikimedia.org 6. http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l 7. http://uk.wikimedia.org/ 8. mailto:wikimediau...@wikimedia.org 9. http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l 10. http://uk.wikimedia.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] QRpedia stats broken?
If it's been privacy policy audited internally, the I'll put that a bit further down my to-do list. It's probably worth an extra pair of eyes to sanity check it. Last time I looked at the code, it looked pretty sane with the exception of the statistics code which wasn't really in keeping with the privacy policy. Is the code of the current version up (either on a WMF server or somewhere like Github)? -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ - Original message - From: Thomas Morton [1]morton.tho...@googlemail.com To: UK Wikimedia mailing list [2]wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] QRpedia stats broken? Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2014 21:11:33 + Yes; that link was broken because of an issue that someone just raised with me :) now fixed!! When we took over QRpedia hosting the privacy issue was addressed and one of the pre-requisites for launching QRpedia on our servers was making it compliant with WMUK existing privacy policy. Emmanuel knows the details for definite; so he will be able to update the links to the various stats pages (which are much more detailed, I promise!). However, I think he’s on holiday at the moment so it might be over the weekend. Regards, Tom On 2 January 2014 at 19:50:47, Erik Moeller ([3]e...@wikimedia.org) wrote: On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 11:22 AM, Tom Morris t...@tommorris.org wrote: Since the WMUK transfer, has anyone ensured compliance with the privacy policy? It links to https://wiki.wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Website_Privacy_Policy - an audit seems indeed called for, or perhaps a separate policy if there are significant discrepancies. Collecting basic data seems essential to demonstrate the impact of the project going forward. The stats I've seen in the past weren't too inspiring, but perhaps iOS recent inclusion of QR code software by default will help adoption. -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list [4]wikimediau...@wikimedia.org [5]http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: [6]http://uk.wikimedia.org References 1. mailto:morton.tho...@googlemail.com 2. mailto:wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org 3. mailto://e...@wikimedia.org/ 4. mailto:wikimediau...@wikimedia.org 5. http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l 6. http://uk.wikimedia.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] 26th October Python session in London
I'm currently doing Python all day long at work. It'd be a bit of a busman's holiday. So, maybe. ;) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ On 25 September 2013 at 14:07:01, Fæ (fae...@gmail.com) wrote: Ping Re: https://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Python_and_Wikimedia_bots_workshop_Oct_2013 Pinging bot interested folks on this session. We are happy to juggle the date to suit work and school diaries, so please do give feedback on the page if October is no good for you. This session applies to any Wikimedia project, so if you want to create an interesting weekly analysis of Wikipedia articles in multiple languages, fancy creating a super house-keeping bot for the Welsh Wiktionary or want to reliably upload and categorize 100,000 images to Commons without protests from the regulars, these are all good cases to discuss. Python gives you the (free) tools to pull in data from any internet source, so in the field of open knowledge these techniques are not limited to Wikimedia projects (I used the same methods to pull metadata from the Ministry of Defense API and the XenoCanto birdsong API). I know from past pub discussions that Roger always wanted to do some bot scripting, Andy could do with smarter ways of batch processing audio files and that Rich has and endless wealth of experience to share. Chip in on the registration page with your thoughts and suggestions. Thanks, Fae -- fae...@gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
[Wikimediauk-l] OSM Funding Drive success, extension
Yesterday, the OpenStreetMap Foundation completed a funding drive of £40,000 ($60,000) to buy two new servers. Because of the success of the fundraising, they have decided to extend the campaign to raise another £32,500 ($50,000). See http://blog.openstreetmap.org/2013/06/26/extending-funding-drive/ for details. If you've got some spare cash and want to support the technical development of the map anyone can edit, go to http://donate.openstreetmap.org/server2013/ You can also donate via Bitcoin. OSM is growing at a phenomenal rate. The success and ramping up of OSM Foundation fundraising shows that OpenStreetMap is perhaps experiencing the same kind of organisational growing up process as Wikimedia has... -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Today on the Guardian Blog Should university students use Wikipedia?
On Tuesday, 14 May 2013 at 12:08, geni wrote: On 13 May 2013 14:39, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com (mailto:charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com) wrote: The point about not citing encyclopedias is really old hat. Once you're in tertiary education you shouldn't cite tertiary sources? May not be addressed depending on the field. Back when I was doing my degree they just insisted that you cite journals so the issue of primary secondary and tertiary (and to be fair significant chunks of wikipedia are secondary rather than tertiary) didn't arise. Part of the problem is that information literacy is really poorly taught IMHO. It's often shuffled around universities: between academic staff, librarians and learning support people, and nobody actually takes the time to tell students what is and isn't acceptable. (And then those students start editing Wikipedia…) I saw a first year student a while back who was citing a crystal healing website to define key terms in moral philosophy for the essay they had to do on computer ethics as part of a computer science degree at a top 10 UK department for computing. Nobody had actually taught them at school or upon getting to university that some sources were better than others, and that you might actually have to go to the library and open a book rather than just go to Google and find a source that says what you want it to say. I know that when I got to university, they offered those kinds of skills as optional study skills modules, which lots of people just didn't bother going to - because they naturally assumed from having passed their A-levels with grades good enough to let them go to university that they didn't need to learn any new study skills. Making basic information literacy and study skills non-optional both at school and university would be good. It's not Wikipedia's job to make society actually teach information literacy (although Wikimedians and WMUK might want to publicly advocate it). That's the job of schools and universities. It'd be nice to know in a non-anecdotal way whether they are actually trying to do this and how well they are doing. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Another voting reminder
Richard, I plan to attend tomorrow. But just in case, oh, I happen to be eaten by a giant bear or something on the way (although that may disqualify me from voting), I hereby would like to register my proxy vote in advance. For all three motions, I would like to vote to support. Yours, -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ On Thursday, 11 April 2013 at 17:21, Richard Symonds wrote: All, Just another quick email to remind you that email proxies for the 2013 EGM must be received by 15:30 British Summer Time (UTC+1) tomorrow, Friday 12th April 2013. You can also vote in person on the day. Don't forget! Richard Symonds ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Another voting reminder
My previous email was meant to go to Richard, not to the whole list. Whoops. The secrecy of my ballot destroyed by my incompetence. #fail as the kids say. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Anyone interested in Lua and PIzza one day?
On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 11:00 AM, Jon Davies jon.dav...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote: A good response here so I think it is worth doing - if only for the pizzas. There are two people keen on it who will be trapped in the board meeting on the 11th of May so that is probably not ideal. I am going to ask Tom for a date he can make and we will build it around him (no pressure). Is that OK? Well, just discussed with Katie Chan about this and pretty much any weekend is fine, although I'd rather avoid April 6/7 weekend. Katie suggested 27 April or 4 May, which are both fine. It'd be good to get some people along from London Lua: now we actually have a language that doesn't suck too much to do template stuff with, we might be able to get programmers to join the community to help do template stuff. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] QRpedia
On Tuesday, 12 February 2013 at 15:56, rexx wrote: For example, Monmouthpedia generated many new articles in multiple languages as well as new photographs; the volunteers' efforts have helped vitalise the Welsh Wikipedia; the contacts made are leading to a shift in attitude of the Welsh Government and academia towards free and open licensing of work that they create or are custodians of. Gibraltarpedia has the potential to involve the whole area from Gibraltar into North Africa and create links between British, Spanish and North African wikimedians - perhaps even help to establish new communities of wikimedians where they do not yet exist. Andreas' concerns are clearly genuinely held, and we should never fear honest scrutiny and criticism. I'm looking forward to seeing new initiatives in the future and I'd welcome everyone's input on how best to ensure that they meet the vision of our wiki-movement. Contributions from our sternest critics are potentially the most valuable. Let's be fair here, it's not just Andreas' concerns. It's not just a concern for self-styled Wikipedia critics. Lots and lots of people thought that Gibraltarpedia was problematic, myself included.* I think it's a clear case of WMUK collectively not having a good intuitive grasp of what the community on-wiki will and won't tolerate from chapters or chapter board members. It's not even about the rights and wrongs of what went on, it's about being able to make sane judgement calls about about whether one can get the community to buy-in to grand plans for outreach (whether clearly good things like working with GLAMs to more problematic things which skirt close to the edge of paid editing like the Gibraltar stuff). It's about realising that one has to think through the politics of these things and to have the cleanest possible hands in dealing with COI. Despite negative press coverage, negative reaction on-wiki and a governance review, based on Rexx's email, I'm starting to think that nobody at WMUK has actually learned anything useful from the Gibraltarpedia affair. Which is a shame. * See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:GLAM/GibraltarpediA -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] QRpedia
On Saturday, 9 February 2013 at 20:08, Andy Mabbett wrote: On 9 February 2013 18:39, Tom Morris t...@tommorris.org (mailto:t...@tommorris.org) wrote: Now this has been transferred to Wikimedia UK, would it be possible to remove the access logging on QRpedia to ensure it complies with both the letter and spirit of the WMF privacy policy. Is it possible to do that and retain the aggregated, anonymised statistics which GLAM institutions and others deploying QRpedia find useful? These may be analogous to Wikipedias page view stats. That seems highly reasonable. The current issue is that the QRpedia database has a complete log of which IPs looked up which pages and when. (Which is fine, I'm not blaming Roger or Terence. That's a perfectly reasonable thing to do with something you are starting. This isn't a security hole or a privacy intrusion, it's a standard thing anyone would do when building a project like this. But now it has reached a point of maturity and is being taken under the wing of WMUK, we need to ensure that it is compliant with the expectations of Wikimedia users.) We need to anonymise the access data, aggregate it and then delete the non-anonymised, non-aggregated data. I'm happy to fling code around and figure out a way to do this. I've had a look at the existing code and it's easy enough to understand. We could probably do with refactoring some of the code too. I'd suggest that it would be best for WMUK to adhere completely with the Foundation's privacy policy (mentally substitute chapter and WMUK in the relevant places) even if the chapter is not formally bound by the Foundation policy (I'm not a movement policy wonk, I don't know). In addition, not holding on to access logs but only aggregate, anonymised data means that we minimise the potential for problems under the Data Protection Act or wider European data privacy law. I'd suggest that we resolve these issues as soon as possible. The QRpedia transfer was rather a slow process, it'd be nice if now that the transfer has been agreed, we can make sure that we resolve these kinds of issues in the next week or so (I rather prefer fixing issues when they exist only in my head rather than when people are shouting like maniacs). As I said, I'm happy to provide patches and code review in the next few days. WMUK staff/trustees: are there any plans for transferring the source code over to Wikimedia infrastructure (Gerrit etc.)? -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] FYI: BBC Your paintings artist list
On Wednesday, 2 January 2013 at 11:32, Dan Brickley wrote: Anyway this is really just a quick mail to ask: is there any prospect that this enriched metadata linking Your Painting author IDs to Wikipedia could find it's way back into the original BBC pages too? Ideally marked up in RDFa with schema.org (http://schema.org) vocabulary? I'd love to see all this structured information accessible via the likes of wikidata/dbpedia/freebase. Much as I'd like it to be the case that Wikipedia embraced RDFa and the web of linked data, it seems unlikely at the moment. I'm hoping that Wikidata might ease the Wikimedia community in to trying the very tasty Semantic Web Kool-Aid®. VIAF was a first, initial stab towards richly linking Wikipedia together with other linked data on the web. Hopefully it won't be the last. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
[Wikimediauk-l] AdBlock Plus wants to protect you from a malicious website, namely Wikimedia UK
AdBlock Plus has a facility to protect users from typosquatting (as in, typing poopal.com rather than paypal.com) http://cl.ly/image/0M1l1D0K1x0g Does someone want to work out how to complain to the relevant parties? If it's happening for Wikimedia UK, it's probably also happening for other *.wikimedia.org sites. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Wikipedian in Residence: Imperial War Museum
A military history-based Wikipedian in Residence position? I'm sure Wikipedia's most highly-organised WikiProject will dispatch a whole platoon. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Operation Cowboy: OpenStreetMap editathon in London
Just as an update, there are still plans for this to go ahead, it's just going to be a one day rather than two day event, on the Saturday rather than both days. It'd be really good if we could get lots of participation from Wikimedians. Newbies definitely welcome. If you are interested, please sign up on Lanyrd: http://lanyrd.com/2012/cowboy-london/ Or sign up on the OpenStreetMap wiki: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/London_OPC2012 Hopefully in a day or so, there'll be a full announcement with venue details and so on. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
[Wikimediauk-l] Operation Cowboy: OpenStreetMap editathon in London
Over the last day or so, I've been working on putting together a new event in London, Operation Cowboy. The plan is for it to be the weekend after next, which is very soon, I know. http://lanyrd.com/2012/cowboy-london/ https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/London_OPC2012 Operation Cowboy is a plan for an all-night OpenStreetMap editathon (mapathon!) focussed around improving OpenStreetMap for the United States, an area OpenStreetMap is known to be not quite so good (compare San Francisco with London: on OpenStreetMap, damn near every pub, bar and shop in central London is on the map, in San Francisco, it's not nearly as good). Though the best mapping we can do generally involves getting a GPS out and walking or cycling the streets yourself, there's plenty of work that can be done to improve OSM from your armchair. You can read more about Operation Cowboy at: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Operation_Cowboy Part of the point of the Operation Cowboy event is to be a place where Wikimedians and others who haven't played around with OpenStreetMap and want to learn can come along, learn how to set up an account and start editing. Though we'll use the US as the focus of the event, the skills people learn improving the US map will be applicable to improving the map for their local area in the UK. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] [Consultation] Members strategy and members survey - 1st deadline 26th October (Friday)
I'm very lazy and managed to not fill in the survey or give feedback. But I just had to note that the questions How do you identify your gender? and How do you identify your sexual orientation? are most amusing to me. The answers it's on my birth certificate, after a lot of soul searching and teenage anxiety and well, duh, have you seen my browsing history? do not seem to be on there. Nor indeed is with a recent gas bill and a passport. ;-) (Seriously though: what you identify as is different from how you identify it.) It might also be useful next time to include a question about how exactly members participate. I'd love to know whether, say, the rough breakdown of the membership who edit different projects. It might be useful so we can support projects that aren't either English Wikipedia or Commons. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] [Consultation] Members strategy and members survey - 1st deadline 26th October (Friday)
Don't worry about it. It was more an opportunity to make a joke about gay gas bills. Given that I found some other problems with the Wikipedia Editors Survey that the Foundation has been conducted, I've decided to pull together the best bits of various demographic survey guidance (from governments etc.) on Meta. That way the Foundation and Chapters and so on can just steal those rather than make up their own. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Survey_best_practices -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] [Consultation] Members strategy and members survey - 1st deadline 26th October (Friday)
On Friday, 9 November 2012 at 19:22, Katie Chan wrote: On 09/11/2012 17:38, Thomas Dalton wrote: What you're really doing there, though, is asking How do you answer the question What is your gender?? which is logically equivalent to just asking What is your gender?. Including enough options that everyone will fall into one of the boxes (or at least Other) is a good idea, but torturing the English language in an attempt to appear politically correct doesn't actually achieve anything! With respect, it's simply not a case of merely appearing as politically correct. Yep, I've been reading ONS reports (aren't my Friday evenings fun?). Good survey questions can be written that are understandable and aren't politically correct. All we have to do is steal what is already being done by people who have thought about it properly. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] A message from the Wikimedia UK Board
On Sunday, 14 October 2012 at 09:47, fab...@unpopular.org.uk wrote: Tom, Please re-read the statement. The board: a) acknowledges mistakes have been made https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistakes_were_made https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology Just sayin'. ;-) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Openstreetmap Mapping Party, at The Wenlock Arms, Thursday 11th October, early evening.
On Wednesday, 10 October 2012 at 08:15, Gordon Joly wrote: Another OpenStreetMap mapping party and pub meet. These guys seem to have the ability to choose a different pub each time, and most of them seem to be able to find the pub too! It'd be rather embarrassing if members of the OpenStreetMap community couldn't find their way to the nominated pub each month. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Urgent: Drinks with Sue Gardener, Garfield, Asaf WMUK
On Monday, 8 October 2012 at 17:15, rexx wrote: I think it's fairly symptomatic of the London-centricity of many people. What is relatively easy for those living in the City to do is probably a three-hour journey or more each way for those of us who live further afield and needs planning. I simply find it discourteous (sorry) to exclude us provincials, not deliberately, I'm sure, but through lack of forethought. And if it was not expected even a few days ago, why do you expect me to be asking about it last week? I don't mind being criticised for many things, but a lack of psychic powers is not one of them. Oh, stop moaning. There's a reason things happen in London: people live and work there. Things happening in London is not always a grand conspiracy to slight non-Londoners. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Wikimedia UK needs to give itself time to stop and think
On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 11:08 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: Please see my new blog post here: http://thomas-dalton.com/blog/2012/09/22/success-and-its-curse/ TL;DR: Wikimedia UK has had many successes throughout the last four years, but it has moved too fast and this has caused problems. We need to stop and think. To give ourselves time to do that, we need to rewrite the 2013 Activity Plan so we’re not doing too much. I have to agree with some of this. I think that there is definitely a risk with Wikimedia UK that because of the relatively large budget the chapter has, the board may rush headlong into things which there isn't volunteer backing for. We need to focus more on ensuring that we have enough volunteers that we can actually pursue the goals we want. The important thing is that all of the projects Wikimedia UK really ought to be pursuing are the sorts of things that you can't just throw money at to solve. The money should be there to support the activities of volunteers rather than having the strange situation of having the money and the staff and the ideas ready to go and having to scrape around to find volunteers. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Request from Open Rights Group
On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 1:43 PM, Jon Davies jon.dav...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote: I sent this around a while back. The ORG would like our support. Joscelyn Upendram is preparing a simple reponse on our behalf, if anyone wants to offer her ideas contact her directly Jon Davies. From ORG: 'Peter, is preparing a CDB briefing for companies and holders of user comms data. This is pretty much where you are as an organisation, although you may wish to make broader points if you put evidence to the consultation.' The deadline is August 23, and details are here: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/joint-select/draft-communications-bill/news/call-for-evidence/ I did put together a list of Wikimedia-specific concerns with the draft bill a while back on the list. But everyone pooh-poohed it and told me I'm crazy and paranoid. Oh well. Also, despite what Andreas says, it's not about partisanship, the bill is drafted atrociously and extremely vaguely. Even if you agree with what the government is trying to do, the bill is terribly written and could lead to absolute absurd and ridiculous conclusions. Seriously, read the draft bill. If you've used the Internet for more than half an hour, you'll see why it's insane. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] [WMUK Board] Statement regarding Ashley Van Haeften, Chair of Wikimedia UK
On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 5:16 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: On 1 August 2012 16:29, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: (also: now on FOX - http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/08/01/50-shades-wikipedia-uk-head-banned-after-bondage-porn-ties/) Ah, now we find out the real advantage to having Stevie on board - he has to go through that article pointing out all the mistakes in it, not us! The link to Encyclopedia Dramatica is particularly good... Yes, always good to show maturity and dedication to the cause of protecting children from harmful material by linking to a website that routinely uses racist, sexist and homophobic descriptions... It's the old Daily Mail trick: this is awful and terrible and wrong, and here are 14 high-resolution closeups of it! -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Possible WIkinews workshop
On Thursday, 19 July 2012 at 13:35, Brian McNeil wrote: Since Wikimedia Australia have managed to secure press access and credentials for the Paralympic Games, I've been asked if I could run a Wikinews workshop in London shortly before the Paralympics. I'm happy to attend and help. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
[Wikimediauk-l] Potential partners list
It's become apparent that it would be useful to have a place on-wiki to list all the potential partners that Wikimedia UK could end up working with, whether it's on outreach, or inviting to participate in conferences or funding or developing as part of its mission. I've put up a page on the chapter wiki: https://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Potential_partners If you know of organisations, groups and others who broadly support the free culture/open source kind of principles that Wikimedia UK supports, or could be vaguely interested in working with Wikimedia UK or individual volunteers associated with WMUK, please add them. Having such a list will be quite useful in trying to work out groups we can talk to who might want to participate in, sponsor, or attend events like Wikimania if the London bid for 2014 is successful. I've been rather bold, and done this without any chapter approval or anything. If there's a problem with the semi-legalish warning at the beginning, I'm sure the office or the board can work out what to do. ;-) Yours, -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Potential partners list
On Wednesday, 4 July 2012 at 19:25, Fae wrote: Thanks Tom. Could we think of a better name? These are organizations of interest and that we would seek to work with in some form or other, however Partner will be read by some parties as having special meaning and this page might be seen as a strategic intention. I did think about that, and allies, fellow travellers and many other things came up, but none quite worked out. If anyone can think of anything better, there's a move button on-wiki, and I promise I won't object. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Draft Communications Bill
On Sun, Jul 1, 2012 at 8:19 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 1 July 2012 19:44, Gordon Joly gordon.j...@pobox.com wrote: So, USA and Europe. But not the UK. Yes. Rest assured the WMF is not so foolish as to base anything in the UK. None of which will matter if the law is so broadly drawn that Wikimedia UK or even an individual Wikimedian could be held to be an operator of a telecommunications system. Which is exactly why it would be nice if someone at Wikimedia UK were to look into this as an issue. I wouldn't bring it up if it didn't seem like there was an issue. Feel free to all continue to pat me on the head while saying no UK servers, no problem... even though the point of the bill is that the servers needn't be in the UK for the government to make it a problem. Again, read the draft bill. It's insane. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Draft Communications Bill
On Sunday, 1 July 2012 at 21:22, Michael Peel wrote: Are you volunteering? I don't believe that we have WMUK staff or trustee time that can be put towards leading a discussion of the details and implications that the bill could have for Wikimedia (globally or locally), or to coordinate writing a response to the bill - but if a volunteer is interested and willing to do that then that could be good. I'm not a lawyer. I may email the Foundation legal people and see if they care. Also, I hastily wrote the response to the last government consultation (on copyright and Hargreaves). ;-) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Draft Communications Bill
On Sunday, 1 July 2012 at 22:41, Thomas Dalton wrote: How about we avoid spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt? When it comes to FUD-spreaders, James F. isn't high on my list. As for doubt, I'm okay with a bit more doubt. A rather effective little method of finding things out we call science rather relies on doubt. People ought to doubt government assurances that all will be fine and see whether what the law actually says as currently written will go too far. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
[Wikimediauk-l] Draft Communications Bill
Does Wikimedia UK have any intention of participating in the discussions around the Draft Communications Bill? The bill, if passed, would make it such that the Secretary of State may make an order to ensure that communications data is available to be obtained from telecommunications providers by relevant public authorities (§1 (1)(a)). The bill sets out a system for how such a system would operate, which we'll get to in a second, but let's just see whether or not Wikipedia, Wikimedia or anyone related to our projects/movement/etc. is affected. Telecommunications providers are, according to §28 of the draft bill, those who operate a telecommunications system, which they define as a system (including the apparatus comprised in it) that exists (whether wholly or partly in the United Kingdom or elsewhere)—so, that means anywhere since it either wholly or partly exists either in the United Kingdom or it doesn't–for the purpose of facilitating the transmission of communications by any means involving the use of electrical or electro-magnetic energy. Unless we plan to request the Foundation switch over to servers that run on clockwork and carrier pigeons rather than electricity (if we did, they'd probably still count as a 'postal system' and still be regulated by the act), I think we're pretty much covered. Does Wikimedia UK operate a telecommunications system in this manner? I'm not sure. It might do. I'm not a lawyer. What would happen if the Secretary of State were to send a letter to Wikimedia UK demanding that WMUK, as a provider of a telecommunications system, install a device in the office of the Secretary of State's choosing? Richard has higher permissions on English Wikipedia, meaning that the Secretary of State could have access to CheckUser data, which would most probably count as traffic data under the terms of the draft bill: that is, data which identifies, or purports to identify, any person, apparatus or location to or from which the communications is or may be transmitted. How about if someone who operates a number of, uh, telecommunications services - i.e. scripts running on Toolserver - were served with a similar notice and asked to install a backdoor to Toolserver which the Secretary of State were to use to gain access to material on the Toolserver? (Okay, there's nothing *that* juicy on there.) Same for OTRS, same for the third-party services which Brian McNeil operates for the Wikinews community (wikinewsie.org), same for any Wikimedian with a computer (hey, it's an electrical/electro-magnetic device that facilitates communication: that can mean anything from a telephone exchange to an individual smartphone or a stereo speaker). This seems like an extremely broad and non-specific bill: do we have any idea how it might affect Wikimedia and Wikimedians? -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Draft Communications Bill
On Saturday, 30 June 2012 at 20:22, WereSpielChequers wrote: As for the arguments as to whether this applies to permissions Richard has in his capacity as a volunteer; We need to keep a clear distinction between what people do as volunteers and what they do on behalf of the UK chapter. That wasn't the argument I made. ;-) I am perfectly capable of making the distinction between volunteer community roles and chapter work and how that all works. My problem is that the Draft Communications Bill may not be able to do likewise given how vaguely it is worded. The Foundation and the projects are kept at arms length because of s.230 of the Communications Decency Act in the U.S. so that the Foundation isn't held legally responsible as the publisher of content on Wikipedia, but instead delegates that publication to the community, and instead seeing themselves as the hosting company. Fine. I expect the Foundation lawyers know how to do just that, and where the line is. But, the problem is under the Draft Communications Bill, if the Secretary of State wished to serve Wikipedia or Wikimedia generally with a s.1 notice, how would that play out? Could WMUK be held responsible under this Bill? How about individual volunteers? (I picked Richard not just to pick on him, but because the law won't necessarily make the fine distinction between him being an employee and him being a volunteer who happens to have CheckUser access. We can make that distinction, the law possibly won't.) Okay, we could go one further: if Wikimedia UK were to hire as a developer someone who has sysadmin access to the Wikimedia servers (there are a few who are UK-based), how would that play out with this law? The reason I think we should think about it is precisely because it's so very badly worded. Without some informed legal thinking about what exactly the bill is likely to mean in practice, we probably can't know for sure. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] 50 short videos about Open Education
On Wednesday, 27 June 2012 at 13:01, Martin Poulter wrote: Hi all, some of you might be interested in this Why Open Education matters video competition. Voting is open to decide which of these 3-minute videos best conveys the advantages of open education. I haven't had a chance to see any yet, so don't know if any explicitly mention Wikimedia. http://whyopenedmatters.org/videos/ These videos make a compelling case for some kind of wiki to develop open educational materials. If only Wikiversity were fit for its intended purpose of developing open educational materials rather than being a debating society for trolls and other assorted nutters... -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] What should WMUK do at Wikimania 2013?
We could send Boris Johnson to go along and talk about ping-pong and how the wiki is coming home (except, you know, it isn't). Alternatively, we could find a pub near the Hong Kong venue and do what we do best: sit in the pub, drink and moan. It'll be a cultural experience all can enjoy. We could call it Wikimedians Love Boozers. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
[Wikimediauk-l] Oxford Internet Institute blog post about WMUK award
Just passing this on... http://www.zerogeography.net/2012/06/we-won-educational-institution-of-year.html -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
[Wikimediauk-l] donate.wikimedia.org.uk has an SSL error
If you go to http://donate.wikimedia.org.uk/ you can donate… insecurely. If you go to https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk/ you can donate… but you get an SSL certificate error. This seems like a problem. (Whoops, sent this to Wikimedia-L rather than Wikimediauk-L.) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] What is in a name?
On 13 June 2012 09:44, Gordon Joly gordon.j...@pobox.com wrote: Why choose the name wikimedia when the public are in general much more familiar with the term wikipedia? Are we guilty of being to close the issue and not seeing the wider picture (but that was was given as the reason for the formal name change at the AGM???)? Is there now time to reflect? 'Cos Wikinews and Wiktionary and Wikiquote and Wikibooks and so on exist too! And, of course, Commons. Provider of high quality educational materials and/or nude works including Muppets. ;-) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Wikimedia UK's coolest projects
At risk of sounding trollish, unappreciative or rude, can I suggest that in talking about the successes of Wikimedia UK, less focus should be given on the meta-charity stuff, important though it is, but on the thing which the charity's existence has enabled. There's plenty of it: GLAM outreach, other forms of outreach (Monmouth!), the Wikimania bids and so on. Internal governance is important, but think about other charities. The reason anyone gets excited about any charity is the actual work they do rather than the governance stuff they do in order to let them do the actual work. And I say that with the greatest of respect to the people who have put enormous amounts of work into making Wikimedia UK work and doing all that very important and necessary meta-work! ;-) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Main page seen by library users - where is Wikipedia?
On Thursday, 7 June 2012 at 20:08, Andy Mabbett wrote: The screenshot at: http://twitpic.com/9trfss shows the first page seen by anyone using a computer in a library in my home city, Birmingham. There are a lot of popular websites listed - but Wikipedia isn't there! Maybe we could all check out our local libraries, for similar pages, and ask the staff to include Wikipedia, if they don't already? Those sites look like things which the library have paid for (Oxford Reference, Credo). It's actually quite a useful page for experienced library users: I know how to get to Wikipedia, but knowing what particular subset of paid reference works my library has access to isn't actually as easy to work out. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Main page seen by library users - where is Wikipedia?
On 8 June 2012 12:38, Andrew West andrewcw...@gmail.com wrote: After my experience on Saturday, when my daughter went to the featured article of the day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_II) and was greeted by large pornographic images injected into the article through unprotected templates, if I were were in charge of a library or a school I would be very hesitant about linking to Wikipedia from my institute's main page. I know that episodes like this are an unavoidable consequence of the Wikipedia editing model, and that you can never entirely eliminate the possibility of offensive vandalism reaching high profile pages, but it always makes me feel a little uneasy that we are so keen to promote Wikipedia that we sometimes forget that Wikipedia is a potentially risky site. A while back, I proposed semi-protection of low-use redirects. Redirect and template vandalism is one of those things where (if we don't have pending changes/flagged revs), there's a real potential for someone to change it and nobody to notice for months. I fixed a redirect that someone had vandalised and which had been left for months. The argument against either semi-pp or pending changes on those kinds of pages is but, anyone can edit, anyone should be able to edit! Which is fine, but when we're talking about obscure templates and redirects, I can't quite see any great loss when they aren't available for editing by IPs. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] WikiConference UK 2012 feedback - let us know your thoughts
On 28 May 2012 12:03, Daria Cybulska daria.cybul...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote: Dear all, On 12 May 2012 Wikimedia UK held its Annual General Meeting and a conference. Many thanks for everybody who attended and helped make it a success! Wikimedia UK office team had a meeting to brainstorm the event - we had ideas of what went well on the day and what could be improved. Below we are sharing our observations with you: http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_UK_2012/Community_reflections#Office_Comments What did you think of the event? Please give us feedback by completing the following survey: https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org.uk/spreadsheet/embeddedform?formkey=dFU5dWdJRXJ2SmxVaWV4LUstY3E3SlE6MQ If you have not attended, it would be very useful if you filled the feedback form too - that will help us improve future events. The Google Docs link is saying I need to request permission to respond. See: https://skitch.com/tommorris/8h9xp/google-docs-error -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Toolserver questions
On Monday, 21 May 2012 at 17:28, Richard Symonds wrote: Is there anyone in the London area who is particularly au fait with Toolserver who would be available for a meeting around late may/early June? We can pay reasonable travel expenses. We're got an organisation interested in getting involved in a partnership of sorts, but we need to work out if it's technically feasible - and for that I need someone who uses toolserver often, and understand the community there well. Well, I'm also http://toolserver.org/~tom/ ;-) And I'm in London tomorrow and Wednesday, and for the next few Wednesdays. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] A V Denham
On 19 May 2012 20:50, Andy Mabbett a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote: The first (only?) article created in Monmouth during today's festivities was a biography of the author A V Denham. I've just removed a proposed PROD deletion template from it, but it dos need more references, to establish notability. I've searched on Google and HighBeam, and found nothing suitable, Can anyone provide suitable references, please? I checked JSTOR and my Google Custom Search Engine for reliable sources*. Couldn't find anything. * https://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=005788806424018205534:endvnnqf9ku - remember, it not being in here doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but it being in here means it's probably notable at least IMHO. ;-) That said, I did purely by chance find an article on the history of Chinese migrants in Butte, Montana. So I expanded the article... https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Butte,_Montanadiff=493405693oldid=493234674 -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] So who knows about their local wifi?
On 1 May 2012 11:04, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 1 May 2012 10:35, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: More than anything it depends on the context; if you are talking about a small endeavour at, say, a meeting venue you're probably alright using an ad-hoc setup. But if you are talking an entirely public network then things are more complex. To be honest; once you are at that level you should be talking to a professional company anyway, as supplying Wifi of that sort is a non-trivial technical exercise. And they will know exactly what is required. I note also the Hack Day Manifesto (really a how-to), which goes into quite some detail on the technical side (though not the legal one): http://hackdaymanifesto.com/ As one of the Hack Day Manifesto drafting cabal, I'll note why we didn't... Firstly, because we aren't lawyers. If you are a lawyer, the Hack Day Manifesto is on Github, and, as we say on Wikipedia, anyone can edit. Secondly, because what we do know about the law on wifi, it's actually very difficult to know what is required. When the Digital Economy Act was up for debate, one of the provisions, if I recall correctly, would require closing of open wifi following repeated copyright infringement complaints, but whether that is going to be required is something I believe we are still waiting upon from the official Ofcom guidance (not to go political, but having a law where you basically pass it without reading it, then have someone else work out exactly what it means is a hermeneutic strategy that should make postmodernists very happy and anyone who values transparency and deliberation not so happy). There are still some very strange questions about whether or not using a weak protection system for wifi would count - WEP is now trivially crackable, and WPA rather than WPA2 is also trivial to crack... requiring WPA2 means certain older devices can't connect to wifi. It'd certainly be useful for everybody involved if we could have some lawyers work out exactly what the current civil and criminal penalties and issues of concern are around open wifi usage. I say that as someone who lives right out in the countryside and, partly on principle, keeps his wifi completely open. Why? Because I believe that if you should be unfortunate enough to find yourself standing outside my house, the least you should be able to do is check Google Maps to find your way to where you are going. Given that we have really bad GPS reception, almost no mobile reception, certainly no 3G reception, I see almost no benefit in preventing people from leeching a little bandwidth from me... on the basis that if I were momentarily outside their house, I'd really like to be able to do likewise. Share and share alike, be the change you want to see and all that. Security expert Bruce Schneier does similarly: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wireles.html Of course, if some bastard tracks me down, camps outside my house and uses my wifi to upload his kiddy porn stash, nuclear bomb construction instructions or the contents of their 'Lady Gaga' CD-RW to Wikileaks, and I end up in jail, that would suck quite considerably. Hence why having some guidance from actual lawyers would be quite useful. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Olympic mascots on Commons
On Tuesday, 1 May 2012 at 16:45, Richard Symonds wrote: Perhaps I should rephrase my previous nonsensical reply: Is this really OGL? I suppose it is, but the Flickr account seems to think it's non-commercial... Yes. It's published by the DCMS, and according to their website, it's Crown Copyright, and thus under the terms of the PSI Framework, is OGL. http://www.dcms.gov.uk/copyright.aspx http://www.dcms.gov.uk/7085.aspx#Flickr_policy There's no indication on the Flickr page that it is owned by anyone other than the DCMS, and thus we have good reason to believe it's covered by the OGL. There is an existing license on the Flickr images, and reusers are free to reuse it under CC BY-NC-ND if they feel so inclined. But we've had other OGL images from other government departments that are also licensed on Flickr as some variant of CC that's not Commons compatible. The DCMS are aware though, through Twitter and email. As are James Forrester and various other people who grok OGL. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Role accounts
On Sunday, 29 April 2012 at 13:08, Harry Burt wrote: On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 12:50 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com (mailto:charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com) wrote: snip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_contact_role_accounts does say it is a copyright matter; but the page linked to doesn't seem to spell that out. Perhaps it should. Charles As I understand it, there used to be a general concern that the only way the GFDL could be held to be compatible with pseudonymity was if there was a 1-to-1 mapping between pseudonyms and human beings. I'm not sure that was ever actually looked into, since it seems to me that many-to-many would be just as good, as long as you realised and confirmed you were asking to be attributed with a vague identifier (like 99% of humanity does when it picks a name someone else already has or had). Given trademark law, I'd say a corporate name like Disney Inc. is significantly more rigid than a personal name like John Smith. People don't tend to sue you if you call yourself John Smith quite so much as they do over using the names of multinational conglomerates... -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Adobe Creative Suite software license
This thread seems to have become about open source vs. closed source, and what exactly counts as industry standard or best of breed. I think there is a much more sensible policy we could pursue here: 1. If there is a reasonably well-developed open source alternative, use it. 2. If not, use whatever the best priced solution is. 3. Use the community to help decide what the best solution is. Given Wikipedia's inherent systemic bias towards young geeky men with computing experience, I'm sure some reasonably pragmatic advisers can be sought on a voluntary basis from within Wikimedia UK's membership. Can I suggest to the board and to WMUK staffers to consider this very reasonable (I hope) proposal: find 3-5 computer folk from the community to give feedback on technical choices using the above guidelines. I'd be happy to help on that. But do it quietly and informally in the background, so every debate like this doesn't become some kind of ideological slanging match on the merits or otherwise of open source. Often, if one isn't committed dogmatically to free software at any cost, there are good compromises one can make. For instance, there are increasingly good non-open-source alternatives to Photoshop available (on the Mac, there's Pixelmator, for instance) that cost significantly less. Even if you are a free software fundamentalist, consider: less money spent on closed source software produces less evil overall, and leaves more money over to spend on the charitable aims of the Wikimedia movement. Having some technical oversight from the community in the form of a lightweight 'geek cabal'* seems like it might be quite important given other discussions about things like mailing lists, having to run a locally-hosted OTRS-type system for fundraising email, and funding of tool development (stuff like Wikidata, Commons upload tools for projects like GLAM). I think the point is to find a straightforward, drama-minimising way of making technical decisions in a pragmatic way but that's still informed by our values and preference for openness. * The first rule of the cabal: you do not talk about how there is no cabal. Obviously. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Nice link
On 14 April 2012 14:31, Martin Poulter infob...@gmail.com wrote: We had a criticism last year at one of our events that by making text freely available we are undermining the employability of the journalists and authors who would otherwise have written those paragraphs about composers, musicians or species. We should (and generally do) confront this head-on and make it a central part of our messaging about our public benefit: Wikimedia UK's activities are not just improving Wikimedia sites, but other big-name sites such as the BBC's. We're saving licence-fee money by making it relatively cheap for the BBC to have comprehensive web sites about music and about nature. And so on. I would suggest that the critique rests on a highly questionable assumption, namely that if Wikipedia were not there people would pay journalists to write the stuff that Wikipedia provides. Given that when I'm creating new articles about topics, there's often a real shortage of sources by the paid writers and journalists and I often have to delve far into obscure archives to locate such sources, the whole critique is ridiculous: Wikipedia is providing articles on topics journalists and other paid writers never talk about because there is no commercial market for material on that topic. The criticism cuts both ways: there being a well-sourced Wikipedia article on a topic means that traffic goes to the newspapers and other places that are used as sources. For commercial sites, that means page views, which means money, which means they can continue commissioning new work. With the BBC pages, tying into DBpedia and other linked data sources makes perfect sense: it means they don't have to maintain a complex database of topics but just link up to existing ones on the web. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
[Wikimediauk-l] Mozilla Spaces comes to London
Mozilla have just launched a new co-working space called Mozilla Spaces. See: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/mozilla-spaces/ http://thenextweb.com/uk/2012/03/23/a-look-inside-mozillas-new-london-co-working-space/ The point of it is that it's supposed to be a place for people who work on the open web. And, of course, Wikipedians definitely qualify. I asked Dees, who is running the London Mozilla Space, if Wikipedians are welcome, and the answer is Yes. Yes. And Yes. End of! So if you happen to find yourself with a spare hour or two, and you are near St. Martin's Lane, London, hit up @cyberdees and go hang out with some Mozilla folk. Editing with Firefox is not compulsory, but highly recommended. ;-) (Obligatory security warning: if editing from public wifi, especially if you are an admin or have other elevated user privileges, be sure to use HTTPS - if you are using Firefox, install HTTPS Everywhere.) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] 12 o clock deadline
On Mar 21, 2012 10:00 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 21 March 2012 09:37, Jon Davies jon.dav...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote: http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Property_Office_Consultation Comments please on this - seems like Tom was spot on. Looks right to me. Has Tom got time this morning to write up something from it? Sadly not. apologies for lack of communication. Yesterday, I decided to have an afternoon off from email and go read a book in the park to destress, today I'm busy. Was hoping between the board, the employees and the list, something could be cobbled together. ;-) ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] 12 o clock deadline
On Wednesday, 21 March 2012 at 10:41, Jon Davies wrote: There are 114 very detailed questions (reminds me of a nightmare before finals)- we will be offering a broad brush answer. Quoting Gordon Joly gordon.j...@pobox.com (mailto:gordon.j...@pobox.com): Does a response need to reference the question numbers in the consultation document? Well, there's no need to answer all questions: I've participated in government consultations before and only answered questions that are appropriate to answer. On an purely logical basis, if you take a position on some matter, that makes some of the questions asked irrelevant. N/A or I/We take no position on this matter. or leaving it blank is just fine. Indeed, we shouldn't be answering sections of the consultation unless they have direct bearing on the mission and running of the Wikimedia projects. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] 12 o clock deadline
I'm just doing some tweaking too. ;-) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] 12 o clock deadline
On Wednesday, 21 March 2012 at 11:52, Thomas Morton wrote: Also; does it need a brief introduction to explain who we are and what our general stance is? Yep, most probably. I've attempted to make so many edits to fix up the grammar and so on, but have gone into a mad house of edit conflicts. Hope someone else can fix it up. ;-) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
[Wikimediauk-l] Intellectual Property Office consultation
Today, I briefly flicked through the Intellectual Property Office consultation. http://www.ipo.gov.uk/consult-2011-copyright I didn't know it was running until today. I'm thinking of sending in a few answers to a few of the questions asked, but I'm wondering if there is any interested in rapidly producing a WMUK response. The closing date is tomorrow, so if there is any interest, we'd need to act super fast. I'd suggest broadly the issues that are probably of direct interest to Wikimedia are as follows: 1. On orphan works, making the case for much older orphan works to go out of copyright rather than entering orphan limbo. The proposed commercially-reusable orphan limbo is fine for commercial reusers like broadcasters or newspapers: it just means they have to do some due diligence and they can then use orphan works, safe in the knowledge that if the owner actually does turn up, they can pay market rate for it. 2. Also on orphan works, pointing out that non-commercial exceptions aren't actually that useful, as the moral intuition they are trying to tap into doesn't actually fall along the non-commercial vs. commercial line but along the acting for the common good vs. private profiteering line, and there are commercial uses that are for the common good (for instance, the Internet Archive might send out a book van charging 50p a copy for on-demand printed books. Commercial use, it could potentially turn a profit, although hardly one that's going to make Brewster Kahle into Bill Gates.) 3. On extended collective licensing and collecting societies, we should probably make clear what position, say, photographers or musicians who produce CC works for use in Wikimedia projects are in. And how Wikimedia works would fit in with a collective licensing situation: if someone were to take a photo of mine from Commons that's under CC BY SA, and uses it outside of the terms of the license, should they be able to pay for it through a collective licensing arrangement or through a collecting society? Part of the point of CC BY SA and free culture is to encourage people to use the works under the terms of the license. 4. On the exceptions to copyright, it seems there's a pretty uncontroversial Wikimedian take on most of them. Specifically of interest I'd say would be the Use of works for quotation and reporting current events, which is something that Wikinewsies (and people who write Wikipedia articles about current affairs) would find useful. And I'd say the public administration thing we should probably support too: it seems reasonable to think that Wikimedia might want to host rights-cleared work from the UK government that are under discussion in there. Any thoughts on responding? -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Indie story on HoC editing
On 9 March 2012 13:48, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/who-are-the-commons-moles-changing-wikipedia-entries-7545991.html Headline: Who are the Commons moles changing Wikipedia entries? My initial thought was Commons people aren't allowed to edit Wikipedia? (and also something along the lines of well, we know Commons people like their 'nude or semi-nude women with Muppets', but even so, calling them 'moles' seems a bit harsh!). Then I grokked that it was the House of Commons, not Wikimedia Commons. Too much time at the coal face, methinks. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Indie story on HoC editing
On 9 March 2012 13:48, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/who-are-the-commons-moles-changing-wikipedia-entries-7545991.html So, the best thing about this story is that it's about two years out of date. An acquaintance of mine did a funny article back in 2010 on Parliamentarians editing Wikipedia. http://www.tomscott.com/wikiparliament/ It's like the Indie story but with better jokes. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Indie story on HoC editing
On 9 March 2012 15:52, Deryck Chan deryckc...@gmail.com wrote: What I read: There's a Wikimedia Commons picture on page 3! Anyone takers on Commons for the challenge? ;) Commons *is* Page 3 for the 'Nude Girls With Muppets' generation. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Participation policy
On 19 February 2012 11:10, Gordon Joly gordon.j...@pobox.com wrote: http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Diversity_and_Equalities_Policy The word Equalities sticks out as particularly ugly. Equality, sure, great. But equalities? There are inequalities, when things are not equal. But when they are equal, there is equality, not equalities. (Don't mind me, I'm working on the Grumpiness and Pedantics Policy.) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Categorization project? (was: Making Wikipedia loves monuments work in the UK.)
On 3 February 2012 16:40, WereSpielChequers werespielchequ...@gmail.com wrote: I think we could speed that up by a wiki skills event somewhat as Tom Morris detailed, but maybe more one to one sessions. I've taught people hotcat and catalot using my netbook in various meetups in pubs and pizza parlours. One of my suggestions for wikimania was a skill sharing lounge where people could teach each other various tools, and I suspect that such a session would be a useful and popular event for the office. The difference between categorising on commons with and without catalot is quite staggering and if we can encourage more editors to use such tools the categorisation backlog will be seriously dented. I'm wondering if anyone wants to join in with a proposal to have one Wikimania session in DC as a skills sharing thing? Or how we would convince the Wikimania organisers that we need less pontificating and more training? ;-) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
[Wikimediauk-l] Wikimedia skill swap
This has been nagging away at the back of my mind for a few months now. On IRC earlier, I was talking to Rock Drum, and it finally seemed sensible to propose it. Since the OTRS workshop, a few different groups have said wouldn't it be good if we had a _ workshop at the WMUK offices? Only, why not bundle them all together and have an intensive one-day event of skill sharing. I had initially thought of proposing a sister projects day, but the idea of this would be to have sister projects and other stuff all bundled together with the idea of enabling existing Wikimedia volunteers to try new things, and to increase cross-project coordination (really, despite what you may have heard, Wikinewsies and Wikisourcers and Wiktionarians etc. don't bite). I've put a page up on the wiki with the broad idea and some ideas for sessions. Feel free to throw more ideas on the wiki, even if they are a bit half-baked or not well thought out. If the event actually happens, we'd obviously have to determine a schedule. https://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_skill_swap Is anyone interested in this? What steps would we have to go through to make this a reality? -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Monmouthpedia in the Guardian
On 26 January 2012 17:30, Andy Mabbett a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote: There's a great article about MonmoutpediA in the Guardian today; congratulations to all involved, it's a great advert for our work, despite some (baseless) naysaying. However (there's always a catch!), the article says: By April the aim is to dot 1,000 QR codes – a barcode that smartphones can read – around the border town. Visitors will be able to use their phones to scan the QR codes and view the Wikipedia page (in the language their phone is set up for) relevant to where they are standing. which is good, but doesn't use the word QRpedia. can we try to include/. emphasise that name on our marketing; or if we did, encourage journalists to use it? The link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/26/wikipedia-monmouth-residents-local-website I like that The Guardian are scaring people about deletionists. They (we?) are very scary. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
[Wikimediauk-l] Sue Gardner Wikinews interview goes multilingual
People may or may not have seen, I did an interview with Sue Gardner about the blackout for Wikinews: https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews_interviews_Sue_Gardner_on_Wikipedia_blackout But here's the cool bit. I checked today and it's now been translated into Spanish and Farsi: https://es.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinoticias_entrevista_a_la_Directora_Ejecutiva_de_la_Fundaci%C3%B3n_Wikimedia_acerca_del_cierre_de_Wikipedia https://fa.wikinews.org/wiki/%D9%85%D8%B5%D8%A7%D8%AD%D8%A8%D9%87_%D8%A8%D8%A7_%D8%B3%D9%88_%DA%AF%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%AF%D9%86%D8%B1_%D8%AF%D8%B1_%D9%85%D9%88%D8%B1%D8%AF_%D8%AE%D8%A7%D9%85%D9%88%D8%B4%DB%8C_%D9%88%DB%8C%DA%A9%DB%8C%E2%80%8C%D9%BE%D8%AF%DB%8C%D8%A7_%D8%A7%D9%86%DA%AF%D9%84%DB%8C%D8%B3%DB%8C How cool is that? ;-) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] SOPA/PROTECT Blackout
On 17 January 2012 11:09, Harry Burt harryab...@gmail.com wrote: What is the official UK call to action here? Emailing the embassy? Or could you create a Number10-esque petition? 1. Find an American friend. 2. Shout at them until they write to their congressman/senator. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] SOPA/PROTECT Blackout
And those of you who are entering panic mode about not being able to edit the wiki for 24 hours, why not take it as an opportunity to try editing one of the sister projects? It's looking like the sister projects are going to remain online. Come write something for Wikinews! ;-) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Laptop recommendations?
On 14 January 2012 23:39, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Really - Windows requires expert administration not to turn into a toxic waste dump. That's why, if you are sensible, you have a version controlled VM. That way, when it goes tits-up, you just rollback to a working version. Also, we *so* need to get Huggle and AWB ported to Mac/Linux. ;-) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Laptop recommendations?
On 15 January 2012 01:27, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 15 January 2012 01:20, Tom Morris t...@tommorris.org wrote: Also, we *so* need to get Huggle and AWB ported to Mac/Linux. ;-) Unlikely, unless you have something that autoconverts .NET to Java or something for graphical applications. More likely is getting the requisite bugs in Wine's .NET handling fixed. Mono + a rewritten front-end for Mac and Linux. Or a native rewrite. I know Huggle 3 is gonna be cross-platform. And I've looked at the source code for AWB, and it's pretty neatly separated out if one wanted to write a Mono-based Mac/Linux front-end. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
[Wikimediauk-l] CultureGeek Initiative
http://www.culturegeeks.org/ A series of free events will be taking place between February and March 2012 designed to create an opportunity for North East cultural and digital communities to work closely together, increasing their understanding of each other’s work and the mutual benefits of collaboration. Anybody interested in getting involved in this, preferably someone based in the north east. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
[Wikimediauk-l] January London Wikimeet on the 15th rather than 8th?
Any thoughts on running the London Wikimeet on January the 15th rather than January the 8th. The first Sunday in January is New Year's Day. But more importantly, the third Sunday in January is Wikipedia Day! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Day There are plans afoot to have something in the U.S., so if we were to have the London Wikimeet on the 15th, we could make Wikipedia Day international. And without any extra effort: just turning up in the pub and eating, drinking and being merry. And we'll see how long everyone's new year's resolutions (new page patrolling!) have gotten on. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] [GLAM] Soldiers' letters
On 27 Oct 2011, at 10:59, Chris Keating chriskeatingw...@gmail.com wrote: I might upset a few people here, but,... Why does this even have to in any way link to Wikipedia? Just because we've a pet 800lb gorilla is no reason to point people at it repeatedly. Because Wikipedia has the biggest audience. Most partners care about getting audience and exposure for their material. Our best offering there is Wikipedia. It's the only Wikimedia project which is completely, unequivocally better than its competitors. Not that this means everything has to have a Wikipedia angle, but it is an important point. :-) I dunno. Wikiquote is pretty cool: it's like other quote sites but with some actual rudimentary accuracy checking. ;-) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] [GLAM] Soldiers' letters
On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 22:55, Brian McNeil brian.mcn...@wikinewsie.org wrote: A QR code could be placed at a relevant war memorial, Is that such a good idea? I like QR codes as much as the next person, but sticking them on war memorials may probing the limits of taste in Wikimedia outreach. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Should WMUK respond to the Public Data Corporation consultation?
On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 15:31, Richard Symonds chasemew...@gmail.com wrote: Small point of order though: I was of the understanding that OGL is not quite compatible with CC-BY - AFAIK, it's something to do with database rights. I'm not an expert on this, though, and am happy to be corrected. I'm not sure of the details, given that the things we have been using on Wikimedia Commons have been photographs and there aren't really database rights issues to consider... -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] A little wiki hacking
On Monday, October 3, 2011, Michael Peel wrote: I have to admit (from a completely personal viewpoint) that this sounds like a reason _not_ to support minority language Wikipedias. I personally much prefer the trend towards more people speaking a single language, or set of main languages, rather than encouraging more small niches of people speaking their own language. The former makes it a lot easier to communicate with more people on a global basis and hence gain more knowledge, whereas the latter does the complete opposite. For me, the key points are increasing the availability of knowledge for those that only understand that language; increasing the body of knowledge that's shared between multiple languages to make it easier to learn a more common language; and to preserve information culture specific to that language (which, of course, would ideally also be translated to other languages). The issue becomes slightly more philosophical: languages *are* a form of knowledge though. A simple argument: if I know how to express the statement Snow is white in English, I know one thing. If I know how to say it in German, I know two things. In either state though, when I use it, I'm still expressing only one fact about the world. Expressing the facts is a matter of primary importance: it is important to the misson of sharing the sum of all human knowledge that we tell people whether snow is white, but we should also be sharing the more implicit, linguistic knowledge. Basically: language is a component part of the sum of all human knowledge, not just a means of expressing that knowledge. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Volunteer translators: how to coordinate?
On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 12:20, Andy Mabbett a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote: Do we need a Wikipedia page where such requests can be gathered? Meta provides what you want: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Question: UK versus regional branding
On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 09:22, Fae fae...@gmail.com wrote: Are there any views for or against using an image of Wikimedia in Scotland rather than just the WM-UK logo? My concern is that some will resist joining in a UK branded programme but would rush to support a country specific initiative. If it gets better results, we could follow a similar pattern for Wales and avoid appearing to push UK in every document (or teeshirt). Reductio ad absurdum: Unless it says Wikimedia East Sussex, I'm not interested! ;-) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Fwd: [Wikimania-l] Some statistics about Wikimania 2011
On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 14:19, Gordon Joly gordon.j...@pobox.com wrote: On 24/07/2011 14:42, Chris Keating wrote: [...] Well of course we could decide that WMUK would pay the full costs of anyone from the UK who wanted to go to Wikimania. I'm not sure why that would be a good use of WMUK's funds, though. Why not offer a limited travel bursary (but without accommodation costs for example) and expect the person who goes to write up some sort of report? That is sort of what I'm planning on doing. Anyone who is attending and wants to help with writing some sort of report: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost#Wikimania_co-ordination -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Fwd: [Wikimania-l] Some statistics about Wikimania 2011
On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 21:23, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: It doesn't look like there is much of a UK contingent going to Wikimania - we didn't even make the top 5 countries list. There's also no mention of WMUK sponsoring anyone despite there being £10k in the budget for Wikimania sponsorship. Could someone on the board let us know what that money is being spent on? I've been given sponsorship by the chapter and am really looking forward to it! Will be covering it for Signpost and there'll be tweets, blog posts and lots more. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
[Wikimediauk-l] Science Online (SOLO) writeathon/event?
I've just been talking to Daniel Mietchen who is a Wikimedian in Residence for Open Science. This position has just been profiled on the Wikimedia blog, [1] and will be discussed in next week's Signpost. He has suggested that Wikimedia UK could perhaps have an editathon or event around the Science Online conference in September in London. In addition people may want to attend the event to represent Wikimedia UK. [2] [1] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/07/20/joining-forces-with-open-science/ [2] http://solo11.eventbrite.com/ -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Wikimeets - best place to organise them online?
On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 10:31, James Forrester ja...@jdforrester.org wrote: I think meta is a good place (but then, I did move the London ones there after a complaint from a non-enwiki-er, so I'm biased ;-)). I also think the real value now we have SUL is not in the home but in the advertising for them. For most WMUK events I try and list them on Lanyrd which is used by the tech crowd. It'd be good if we could list them on Facebook as well. A multi-pronged strategy works best. It'd be good if we could try hard to work with local geek event communities as well: for the last Manchester meetup, I told my friend Ian Forrester (@cubicgarden on Twitter) and he promoted it to the geek community in Manchester and got it on the Twitter account of some kind of social media thing in Manchester. Let's do more of this. We should be getting more non-Wikipedia people involved and attending events: because in-breeding isn't healthy. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ Please don't print this e-mail out unless you want a hard copy of it. If you do, go ahead. I won't stop you. Nor will I waste your ink/toner with 300+ lines of completely pointless and legally unenforceable cargo cult blather about corporate confidentiality. ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Other Events - hackathon
On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 14:28, Chris Keating chriskeatingw...@gmail.com wrote: I don't suppose any of the people expressing interest in this thread would be interested in taking a lead in organising something? I can definitely see the Board agreeing to support something like this - financially and otherwise as required - but far easier to do if there is a volunteer who isn't on the Board who can scope it, find times, venues and so on. I'm doing some behind-the-scenes scurrying and poking with a view to perhaps running an event sometime later on in the year (Oct/Nov/Dec) in London. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ Please don't print this e-mail out unless you want a hard copy of it. If you do, go ahead. I won't stop you. ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Other Events - hackathon
On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 12:41, Mike Peel michael.p...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote: A hackathon in the uk would be great. My main worry with it would be having enough developers turn up at it, though. There are a lot of German mediawiki developers, which means that the events in Berlin are always successful, but there are a lot fewer devs in the uk. So I suspect the main focus of at least the first hackathon would be introducing people to the code - which then needs a cadre of current developers to lead, teach and assist as they make their first commits. I'd love to hear thoughts from others about this - particularly from any devs on this list. I'm not a MediaWiki developer, but I have helped to organise three BarCamp events. These are overnight events done for very little money in partnership with a variety of companies or universities. We run overnight events in central London with three hundred developers and other interested people for a fraction of the cost of a similar commercial event. How? Well, we organise them in kind of a wiki way. Early BarCamps used to simply be people putting up hey, we've got this space for the weekend, we need food, wifi etc., stick down on the wiki what you can provide. I'd be very interested in having some kind of Wikimedia/free culture hack day, perhaps at a university over a weekend. There are a variety of sponsors we could approach to do this. I wouldn't worry too much about the existing Wikimedia developers: they have events to go to. But getting more people involved from outside the Wiki[p|m]edia community is something we should do: there are plenty of developers I know who have great good will towards projects like Wikipedia and probably would be interested in getting involved, building hacks and so on. A hack day type event usually takes this form: Saturday 09:00 - 10:00 Breakfast 10:00 - 10:30 Welcome / Intro 10:30 - 12:30 Intro sessions: ideas, technical stuff etc. 12:30 - 13:30 Lunch and START HACKING Sunday 08:00 - 10:00 Breakfast CONTINUE HACKING 13:00 Lunch, stop hacking 14:00 present things people have built, then give out prizes. Who might be able to run such an event? At BarCamp, we've hosted them at The Guardian (near Kings Cross), IBM (South Bank) and City University (near Angel station). A number of hack days have been run at The Guardian, and I helped run WarbleCamp there (a Twitter hack day). We've also had events at eBay/PayPal (Richmond) and Google (near Victoria station). For Wikimedia UK/WMF, it could be seen as a form of developer evangelism - see http://developer-evangelism.com/ It might draw more people into working on stuff for toolserver, helping run bots, fixing long-standing issues (maybe some awesome image recognition person will turn up and write bots to go tag stuff on Commons), or maybe we'll just get cool ideas out of it. Either way, people will probably go home from it with a better feeling about Wikipedia, and next time they think I should build a mashup, it may be that they decide to hack on MediaWiki or Wikimedia API stuff rather than Twitter or Facebook. When I started writing this e-mail, I tweeted asking if anyone would be interested in having a Wikimedia hack day in London. I've already had two positive responses from BarCamp/hack day regulars and Kevin Prince, one of the co-organisers of BarCamp London and a number of hack days, has retweeted it. If there is interest in doing this kind of thing, we could do it in a very lightweight and cost-effective way by following the sort of model used by BarCamps, hack days and HackCamps. Yours, -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Food Standards Agency expressing interest in academy?
Okay, I've created a page to basically be collaborations/outreach for everything other than GLAM http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Institutional_outreach -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
[Wikimediauk-l] Picture This, a hack project about image metadata
I'm at the Dev8D conference today: it has programmers, hackers and others from the academic sector working together on all sorts of projects. On Tuesday, they had an event as part of it called Picture This: http://wiki.2011.dev8d.org/w/Picture_This (Yes, it's a MediaWiki.) It's a project to help universities improve and manage collections of image metadata. This may be of interest for developers and outreach people. Wikimedia *does* have that collection of 8 million freely licensed images and experience of managing large quantities of user-created metadata after all. ;-) When universities talk of having CDs full of images, that sounds like a potential outreach opportunity. Universities should be able to learn procedures for posting on Commons, avoiding copyvios and so on. Plus reuse on WP is an obvious educational benefit for such images. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ Please don't print this e-mail out unless you want a hard copy of it. If you do, go ahead. I won't stop you. ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Helping with museum signs
I told a mate of mine, Terence Eden, a mobile technologist who writes frequently on his blog about how to do QR codes properly, about this thread. He's put up a post on his blog with some advice that could help Wikimedia do QR codes properly. http://shkspr.mobi/blog/?p=3586 His previous entries on how companies do QR codes wrong are worth reading through: http://shkspr.mobi/blog/index.php/tag/qr-codes/ -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ Please don't print this e-mail out unless you want a hard copy of it. If you do, go ahead. I won't stop you. ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Helping with museum signs
On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 23:39, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: I think offering to replace it with wikipedia based text along the lines of say [[User:Geni/museum_sign]] would fall within 7-8 of: http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Business_Plan#Mission_and_Objectives I don't know how much doing such a replacement would cost but I would be surprised if it passed the limit of our micro grant program. Wikimedia-UK would need to be involved to cover use of the logo and the like. One thing we* could potentially do for the GLAM sector that could be quite helpful is to have a very simple service where they could log in to a website with a nice shortish URL (the sort of length that could be posted on Twitter or printed onto museum signs). They could basically then have some information on the page - a short description, a photo (which would get uploaded on to Commons) etc. They would be encouraged to put up a description that is the same as it is on the physical sign and optionally a photo. They would be strongly encouraged to make both the text CC-BY-SA and to get a photo up it would have to go on Commons. Imagine it as a sort of 'Open Museum Signs' site. Providing it as a free service would mean that smaller museums could document their stuff online, and it could do QR codes and maybe someone could build a smartphone app (so you could wander around the museum looking at objects and then sharing them with your friends or whatnot). I sketched something very crappily in Adobe Ideas: http://i.imgur.com/wo4d7.png Something like that is all there would be on the page. You scan the QR code, you see the object, and you can choose to read more on Wikipedia. The point about it is that it would be a nice simple thing the GLAM institutions could control, but the rights for the text would be assigned in such a way that it could be reused on Wikimedia projects and any photos they upload would be put onto Commons. And because there is a link from the object to the article(s) on WP, as they start doing more and more signs, they have a motivation to keep an eye on the articles. For smaller museums, it would be a way for them to start producing structured data (which publicly funded bodies are trying to do more and more) but also be a feeder for Wikipedia. Providing free tools for museums and other GLAMs might be a good way of getting initial buy-in to the whole collaborating-with-Wikimedia thing during a recession. * And by 'we', I mean 'hopefully not me'. Well, not yet anyway. I'm off to the Dev8D conference soon and some museum people go to that, so I may be able to find some people to get the ball rolling. I've also thought of a domain, which I won't share or register if there isn't any interest. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ Please don't print this e-mail out unless you want a hard copy of it. If you do, go ahead. I won't stop you. ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
[Wikimediauk-l] Advice on approaching schools and churches about photography for Commons
Hi all, Sort of related to GLAM outreach, but I'm thinking schools, churches and other historical institutions. I'm thinking about approaching a local school about getting photographs of an ancient hall on the site of the school. There may be an out-of-copyright drawing or image of it, or they may have photographs they wouldn't mind publishing on Commons, or I'd be happy to go and photograph the hall myself. I don't want to be intrusive or waste people's time including my own. Has anyone done this kind of thing successfully? Should one mention that it is for Wikipedia, and should one mention being a signed-up Wikimedia UK member? Is there any suggestion of including contact details for Wikimedia UK so they can contact someone 'official' to confirm I'm not just some random nutter. Anyone interested in sharing their advice (perhaps it could go on a project page on either WP or Commons or just on a page on the UK chapter wiki). As with GLAM, I think people in education and in rural churches (etc.) could potentially be motivated to contribute to Wikipedia -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ Please don't print this e-mail out unless you want a hard copy of it. If you do, go ahead. I won't stop you. ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Helping with museum signs
On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 21:00, Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net wrote: That's absolutely amazing. :-) Really nice work. Is there an open source QR code generator that could be used, rather than using Google or Kaywa? If there is, then that makes it a lot easier to persuade the community to adopt this as standard. Yes, there are plenty. I was going to suggest that instead of using Google we could have one put up on Toolserver.org, but it looks like you can't hotlink images from wikipedia to toolserver. We could still put it up on Toolserver so Wikimedia projects can use it. Programming libraries: C++ (LGPL) http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/index.en.html Has bindings for Python, Ruby, Haskell and PHP. Java (Apache License) http://code.google.com/p/zxing/ I've updated my user page to have a QR code: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tom_Morris If you want to test your QR code on your computer, there's an AIR app which uses the webcam on your laptop: http://www.dansl.net/blog/?p=256 (Beware Mac users: AIR == Flash, it completely eats your CPU.) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ Please don't print this e-mail out unless you want a hard copy of it. If you do, go ahead. I won't stop you. ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
