Thanks for the update, Vinesh. Agreed that Wikimedia UK needs to make educational projects one of the central planks of what we do. That's in hand- I'm at the Wikipedia in HE summit right now. Most importantly, we can't impose a change of practice from outside academia. Wikipedia needs a network of friends, or at least open-minded practitioners, in as many different institutions and roles as possible, so your work reaching out to academics and getting Wikipedia onto the agenda of teaching meetings is a great step forward.
On the Wikiality point, I'm not sure which pithy criticism you're getting at. The paragraph you link to mentions a number of traditional criticisms of Wikipedia. I'm confident that all of them can be answered by articulating WP's existing policies and processes. Tell us what objections you're encountering, and I can help you tackle them head-on either in individual email, WMUK's publicity channels, or specialist publicity channels for academics and librarians. Cheers, On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 1:21 PM, Patel, Vinesh <[email protected] > wrote: > Dear all, > > After just having completed my exams and an academic year lasting 366 days, > I am back to being active at Imperial College Wikisoc as their president for > the coming year! However, I will also be studying for the final year of my > course beginning in two weeks and so need to finish most of my personal > activity by around Jan/Feb 2012, and will be incredibly busy. Therefore it > is imperative that we in the society work hard for new recruits, but also > that the board and the chapter generally invest appropriate amounts of the > various resources we have in the near future. Otherwise the society will > falter, because to be honest I have carried it thus far without much support > from busy colleagues currently part of the society. > > We have great leads in the society and need to grow them slowly enough to > mature well. But in order to attract people and make our projects a success, > we need to be imaginative to ENSURE our success. Wikipedia should start > creating a brand in the UK that it provides higher education resources and > opportunities of the very highest quality (while recognising our place), and > we need to figure out how that can be made with both top down and bottom up > insights - so I urge all UK Wikipedians to join in with relevant thoughts. > and then we will have to make some decisions about how we go about this. > > We will be focussing on our Campus Ambassadors program (two of us having > been trained), for which we have two interested professors already, but also > doing work on creating a network of editors and furthering the discussion of > the relationship between Wikipedia and higher education. > > Concerning this debate, Stephen Colbert of all people came up with one of > the most pithy objections that I have read: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_in_culture#Wikiality. I think more > of this kind of talk needs to be done. What may be needed is a meeting of > interested parties - librarians, universities etc. to really nail this issue > (or suggest what kind of research needs to be done), in a bigger meeting > than simply the London Wikipedia Academy that we previously organised > http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/London_Wikipedia_Academy. > > That's much information not perfectly organised, but I hope it gets out > where the society is at - the purpose being that we and new student > societies need to plan our structure and place in universities. > > Vinesh Patel > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia UK mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l > WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org > -- Dr Martin L Poulter ICT Manager, The Economics Network Based at the ILRT, University of Bristol: http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/ The full experience: http://infobomb.org/ Wikipedia contributor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MartinPoulter Board member of Wikimedia UK: http://uk.wikimedia.org/ "Creating a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge"
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