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Wikimedia Australia/Activities

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Activity Ideas

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These are possible activities which Wikimedia Australia (WMA) may participate in or facilitate.

General areas of activity

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  1. Events (social and educational)
  2. Promotion
  3. Fundraising
  4. Mediawiki software development
  5. General administration (i guess we can leave this out)
  6. funding research, surveys, scholarships, public forums

Ideas for discussion

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please feel free to wiki edit away in a useful fashion, or leave comments on the talk page :-)

Briefings for media organisations

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We could hold briefings for media organisations on how to use Wikimedia projects for their journalism. Not just the anatomy of a media-wiki page but also how to use Virgil's Wiki-Scanner, WikiRage, WikiBlame etc. This would also get us in their minds as the people to talk to when they're running a Wikipedia story and would give us a chance to dispel the common errors that appear in print (e.g. flagged-revs = we are no longer a wiki, or that we think that knowledge is completely relativistic.

Briefings for university faculties

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We could cover how to use wikipedia in the classroom in order to discuss "how to be skeptical of sources" and learning how to write neutrally and collaboratively - all skills necessary in tertiary education. Also, we could teach them how to use our statistics to put into their own research (I'm thinking about Erik Zachte's discussions here).

High School visits

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We could visit high schools who are using Wikipedia as one of the texts in their English Syllabus. I don't know about the other states but in NSW wikipedia can be studied for the HSC. You can bet your eye-teeth that the high school english teachers don't know how to deal with that subject as well as we'd like. This could be an interesting excursion for a team of us, driving around the countryside for a week to different schools - road-trip anyone!?

mini-Wikireaders of Australian content

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Published in collaboration with different cultural organisations, I'm thinking especially of the wonderful set of Banksia articles that are Featured on Wikipedia (thankyou Casliber!) I imagine that the National Parks or the Botanic Gardens might be interested in covering the printing costs for making a leaflet out of it if we supply the content formatted nicely for the purpose. These leaflets could be given out at the relevant cultural institutions to patrons and would therefore get our content (and logo) in front of some different areas of the public.

BedWiki

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We can keep a list of people willing to offer their spare bed/sofa to other visiting wikimedians. There are some privacy issues to work through (such as not publishing an address but only a general location), but I for one would like to be able to visit other wikimedians when I go travelling and the best way to get charity from others is to start at home. This would be useful not only for Australians travelling interstate but potentially useful as a worldwide network if it scaled well. It could be good not only by saving money for the traveller but also to increase the community spirit of wikimedians.

Cultural tours for WM-au members - "Backstage Pass"

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We organise a free backstage tour of some facility such as a gallery, theatre, sports stadium, company in exchange for sitting down afterwards with some people from that organisation and spending a couple of hours improving the article on that subject. Organisations like the National Trust have many properties around the country and already run tours for members. They would be very valuable contributors to our projects if we spent the time teaching them how. The benefit for us would be seeing things that normally are either hidden or cost a lot of money to do. We would have to work through issues about Conflict of Interest (i.e. we're not promising to write whatever they want) but I don't see that being a huge problem once we explain NPOV, NOR and V. The main trick here would be to get enough wikimedians to come along to justify their time.

Some ideas for places to visit?

List of possible activities

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Note: there is a lot of overlap in the references. So you might just want to read the whole thread from the start.

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See also

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