Water cooler/2016

This is an archive of past discussions for the period 2016. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Wikimedia for schools

I was thinking recently about Wikimedia-related outreach and wondered how much we do for schools, specifically for educating teachers on how best to use Wikimedia sites in their teaching, whether as a resource for themselves or the students. I noticed there are old pages for Schools and Wikimedia for schools workshop, created by ErrantX and MartinPoulter, but I'm struggling to find if anything has been happening more recently; both these pages are marked historical. Is anyone organising or running any teacher workshops/talks/events? I'd be interested in continuing the ideas set out in the previously linked pages if not. Samwalton9 (talk) 13:07, 19 April 2016 (BST)

Hi Samwalton9 and thanks for raising this. I think this is a good time to build on the past work and get something going: feel free to add your own ideas to this wiki or to propose events. Some background: Higher Education, Adult & Continuing Education, and Secondary Education are each huge sectors with lots of institutions, themselves with lots of different departments and courses, and different potential ways of working with Wikimedia projects. So even if we want to work with them all eventually, we have to make strategic decisions about where to apply our main efforts. In the case of Higher Education, we have a number of advantages: universities are quite receptive to us, there is a strong existing Open Education community that is a natural ally, there are already successful models of Wikimedia projects in Higher Education in this and other countries, and working with universities gives us access to prestigious libraries and research centres.

There are differences of opinion about how great a priority the schools sector is, but there are likely good things that Wikimedians can do and enough Wikimedia contributors with experience in schools. I think volunteers wanting to put together an event or a network should be encouraged. I hope some of the materials I've created on this wiki or here or here are useful (but if not that's also fine!). There will be discussions about this issue at the forthcoming Wikimedia UK Education 2016 event- I hope you can get to it? MartinPoulter (talk) 01:34, 22 April 2016 (BST)

City of London image archives

I've just become aware of the "Collage" website of the City of London - http://collage.cityoflondon.gov.uk/collage/app?service=page/Introduction - which is being relaunched on the 21st of July. The archive contains many old image, e.g. this one from 1748. However the City of London is claiming full copyright over all the images, descriptions and metadata, so there would seem to be an opportunity for anyone with contacts to try and get them to release the content under a free license. Not all the images are public domain though - it notes the collection continues to the present day. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 21:42, 6 July 2016 (BST)

I remember speaking to the City of London at Wikimania 2014 in London. They had a stand, I recall. LoopZilla (talk) 14:06, 23 August 2016 (BST)

I am afraid the links are now dead. Leutha (talk) 18:54, 23 August 2016 (BST)

Find My Past & British Newspaper Archive

Both of these databases were available through the Wikipedia Library until recently but have been permanently discontinued as the companies no longer wish to support free accounts. FMP provide data drawn from census returns, electoral records, births marriages and deaths etc. The BNA is self-explanatory. I have used these extensively in article creation on Wikipedia (particularly FMP) and I suspect other members of WMUK were using them too. Is a subscription to such a service within the scope of the micro-grants facility? FMP costs £119.95 PA for British records and BNA is £79.95.

• https://www.findmypast.co.uk/pay?isfreetrialrequest=false
• https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/account/subscribe

Philafrenzy (talk) 01:02, 31 August 2016 (BST)

Certificates

Trying to open Wikipedia (and several pages round Wikimedia) get the following message:

• There is a problem connecting securely to this website.

• This organization's certificate has been revoked.

• Security certificate problems may indicate an attempt to fool you or intercept any data you send to the server.

Is the problem this end or your end? 193.132.104.10 16:04, 13 October 2016 (BST)

Thank you for bringing this up. We had some issues with the certificate recently, but they seemed to be fixed as of 11th October. What browser are you using (and did the warning give any other information)? Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 11:35, 14 October 2016 (BST)

Our developer hasn't been able to replicate the issue. Are you still getting the error message? Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 12:14, 19 October 2016 (BST)