Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Wikipedia day at Madlab

[MJ Ray]

Mark Reynolds wrote:
> As you may know it's Wikipedia's 10th birthday on Saturday.
> http://ten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
> There are now 4 events in the UK to celebrate this, one was yesterday
> in Bristol where Jimmy Wales is giving a talk and another 2 on
> Saturday, one in Glasgow and one at the British library in London
> where they're having an editathon. Unfortunately I found out about
> them too late. I also think it's a bit of a lack lustre response
> considering there are so many Wikipedia users in the UK, so I've
> arranged one at MadLab for this Sunday from 11am to 5pm.

Lacklustre, but is it suprising given recent events?  Wikipedia has
seemed to be too much about Jimmy Wales lately for my liking.  Yes,
he's important, but he has special powers in the Wikimedia Foundation
and his Big Smiling Face on every wikipedia page a few months ago,
which put me off and I doubt I'm alone.

Also, playing the devil a bit, is there much solidarity between
wikipedia and free software?  I know lots of free software supporters
also support wikipedia, but does wikipedia support free software or
only use some?  For example, the Bristol talk (on ustream.tv) wasn't
playable with free software, which is a bit sad - or was it just that
it didn't work for me?

Good luck with the editathon, anyway.

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op.
Webmaster, Debian Developer, Past Koha RM, statistician, former lecturer.
In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
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