Wikipedia:WikiProject Bristol/Local outreach

This page is for collecting thoughts, arising from a meeting in Bristol on 13th January 2011, on having meetings with potential partners. "Potential partners" is meant here in the widest possible sense. We recognise that in some cases it may take months to set up a meeting: hence the need to make an approach now and plan our offer.

Ideally, each meeting would involve two of us; one to talk about the big picture of what the Wikimedia projects are trying to achieve and one to focus specifically on the area that this potential partner can help us with. Double-acts would also be better in terms of moral support. It could be done by just one person, though.

User:MartinPoulter has a private Google spreadsheet tracking involvement with local bodies, in case anyone wants to know if we have approached a particular group or have a contact person there.

Plan of the meeting

• Are they aware of the Wikimedia vision "A world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge"?
  • What principles are they working towards? Why does that organisation or group exist?
  • We are not competitors: we are trying to complement what they do, not take away their work. In fact Wikimedia projects depend on the GLAM sector, on academics, on individual citizens etc.
  • Our aims are charitable and humanitarian: we're not going to charge users. We don't have shareholders.
• Together, we could make something new and very valuable, and separately we have already done 99% of the work.
  • We have built up a volunteer community, and one of the world's most popular web sites.
    • Give examples of WP statistics, not just for the site as a whole, but for articles relevant to their area of interest (use article traffic statistics). Give figures as hits per month or per year, rather than per day.
  • They have preserved some documents or objects / They have built up a community of interested people.
  • An encyclopedia article and a relevant media file are each good, but put them together and they make something better.
  • A student society and the existing Wikipedia community are each good, but have them collaborate and they will create things that neither would have done. They'll both learn.
  • This is for the world: as well as whatever measurable value is created, there will be benefits from this that can't be captured in a balance sheet.
• We are not asking them to relinquish ownership of any content
  • Do they understand Creative Commons, and how it differs from public domain?
  • We want them to assert ownership of their content with an explicit rights statement that also guarantees access to the content for end users.
• The bottom line: Wikipedia can help their content (or their people) have impact, and because of CC licensing they will get a credit for it.
  • Relate this to their mission statement.
  • Use examples from past content partnerships.
• Give them a specific, small action they could do quickly.
  • Share some digital files? Arrange a workshop at which we present? Give a wikipedian access to books or artefacts?
  • How will the content benefit? What will WP volunteers do? How will the partner benefit?
• Are they aware of the whole family of Wikimedia projects?
  • We are not just creating an encyclopedia, but an archive of media / archive of source documents / multi-language dictionary / citizen news site etc.
  • There are many different ways to contribute.
• They should shout about what they are doing: depending on the scale of the collaboration, this might mean anything from a society newsletter to a press release for global media.
  • Working with us will give them an opportunity for kudos / public profile for their organisation. They're entitled to milk that.
• Possible objections/ barriers:
  • "But we want people to come to our own web site, not someone else's."
    • ...and the way to achieve that is to share with us. When Grove Music online articles were summarised in WP, Grove's web hits went up tenfold. (Other examples)
      • ...British library success - see Wikipedia:GLAM/BM "Webcitation reports 741% increase in traffic for A History of the World in 100 Objects ... oh and 1,500,000 % traffic increase for another BM article" etc
  • "Helping a charity is "worthy", but these are tough times / this is a competitive industry."
    • Getting involved with us early on will give you a competitive edge / public recognition.
  • "But I'm just a lowly archivist/ librarian: I don't make the decisions."
    • Get involved with us and you'll be able to argue that by bringing your content to a new audience you are involved in marketing, making a better business case for your own job.
  • "But I'm the boss: I don't handle individual items of content."
    • Give us some sort of strategic statement that we can take to your employees, showing that working with us is a good thing.
  • "But my organisation or society is like herding cats: they aren't all going to get on board."
    • That's fine: we're a herd of cats too. We just need to be put in touch with the people most likely to be enthusiastic.

Potential

Would be nice to turn this into a table where users could sign up and report dates and outcomes.

• Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery
• Reference library
• University of Bristol (Public Relations, Subject Librarians, Student Societies)
• University of the West of England (Public Relations, Subject Librarians, Student Societies)
• British Empire and Commonwealth Museum (closed to public but still archiving work going on)

Why is this page here?

While other forums might be suitable, including Meta-wiki, Outreach and Wikimedia UK, it's essential that we have the involvement of local active editors who happen to be concentrated in the Bristol Wikiproject. Since we don't have a global watchlist, putting an outreach page here enables those editors to be regularly informed if they wish. Feel free to copy to other regional Wikiprojects or to other sites.

On-going discussion (vis Local Outreach)

Bristol Cathedral Choir School - where Jimmy Wales spoke on the morning of 13/01 at a packed assembly - are keen to build a closer relationship with the local/national UK Wikipedians. There is excited chatter (nothing concrete) between SV & the school about developing an educational based programme around the 'learning experience' that creating Wikipedia pages can offer.

ARKIVE/Wildscreen http://www.arkive.org/about/wildscreen.html They met Jimmy Wales on 13/01. They have pictures/videos on around 9,000 of the world's most endangered species & are building a list of all 20,000 that matches then IUCN Global Endangered Species List. Their remit is education & information collection. They are seeking to raise the profile of these endangered creatures to as high a level as possible to promote biodiversity/understanding to as many people as possible. The realise we can help them through content sharing and are keen to do so. Their problem is almost all of the Videos/pictures are tied up in copyright deals so they have to untie them first. However, they have created in-house descriptions of these videos/pictures/animals which look a little like a Wikipedia page in text form only. They are interested in sharing them with us. They have also heard about Wikimedia UK's British Museum Wikipedian in Residence & think that having an ARKIVE Wikipedian in Residence would be a cool idea. SV is meeting them for an exploratory discussion 24/01. What does the group/community think?

Bristol Festival of Ideas Has spoken to SV about an idea for 2012 called nominally Bristol & The Word. This is an attempt to involve and include every organisation, person, representative body around town in a project to write up/photo/document Bristol in all its forms. Some of this material is obviously useful for Wikimedia/Wikipedia Projects so he has asked the Board if it would be happy to explore the outlines of such a project further - which is what SV will begin to do in 2011

There is ongoing collaboration, discussions between several other institutions - SV will report back later. Vis Museums & galleries - the Council owns all five in the city & the leadership of the museums/galleries team has to date rejected our suggestion of discussions outright. They are more interested in managing downsizing staff and services than expanding them. In the light of the successful talk on 13/01 by Jimmy Wales in the city, SV will attempt to reopen a dialogue with the galleries leadership team. Steve Virgin (talk) 16:39, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Advice for the cultural sector

Is WP:GLAM of any relevance? (Apologies if this has already been mentioned elsewhere.)--trevj (talk) 08:43, 15 March 2011 (UTC)