You may remember that last year, to close the Wikimedia annual fundraiser, Foundation staff and volunteers worked together to create the Wikipedia Contribution Campaign– a two-week long initiative to encourage people all over the world to become new editors.  Throughout the past few months, volunteers have continued to work together, creating the Wikipedia Contribution Team, to continue to drive the good work being done. Since January 2011, the Contribution Team has grown from 10 participants to 40, recently taking on projects such as the Backlog Drive – a project focused, six-week project to reduce the backlogs on Wikipedia, as well as in-person outreach to help encourage people to become new editors.

Supported by the Wikimedia UK chapter, the Wikipedia Contribution Team has planned a number of great events throughout the UK to support outreach and encourage people to join the Wikimedia movement. Throughout the next few months, the Team will support Wikipedia education and editor recruitment at several UK colleges and universities, including the Imperial College of London, University of Sheffield and University of Leeds.

No matter where you are in the world or how you like to work (online or IRL) there are a number of ways you can get involved to help educate people everywhere about the importance of working as a Wikimedia volunteer and how to encourage others to join!

If you’d like to join the Contribution Team, it’s as simple as signing up.

Good luck to everyone involved; we look forward to hearing more about
your successes!

Moka Pantages, Communications

Starting 31 January and during the entire month of February 2010, participating museums in Great Britain are joining with people from all ages, backgrounds and communities to celebrate Britain Loves Wikipedia.  The public is encouraged to photograph the multitude of national treasures contained in Britain’s collections, releasing them under a free license to be used to illustrate Wikipedia articles and much more.

The initiative is being spearheaded by the volunteer chapter based in the United Kingdom, Wikimedia UK.  Wikimedia’s volunteer chapters (which now number at 27 and continue to grow) support the movement by carrying out fundraising, public outreach, and relationship building in their respective territories.

You can read more about Britain Loves Wikipedia on the Wikimedia UK blog here. If you’re in the UK through the coming month, join up and help grow Wikimedia’s collection of freely reusable images and media!

Cary Bass, Volunteer Coordinator

This afternoon the Wikimedia Foundation announced that the Internet Watch Foundation has taken Wikipedia off of the United Kingdom internet ‘blacklist.’  We’re very pleased with this development, and happy that editing and viewing in the United Kingdom is returning to normal.

We’d like to thank the thousands of Wikipedia supporters who have spoken out about this situation or taken the time to contact us with their concerns.  We’re thankful as well to the IWF for acting quickly to resolve the block.

—

This weekend has seen quite a bit of coverage of an unfortunate situation for Wikipedia users in the United Kingdom.  The Internet Watch Foundation, a UK-based self-regulatory body, has taken action to block access to specific Wikipedia content in the UK, and in turn has caused a major issue for the UK Wikipedia community.  The censoring has dramatically affected the way UK traffic is handled by Wikipedia, and in short, about 95% of the UK is barred from editing Wikipedia.

This is particularly bad news for the entire Wikipedia project and the millions of users from around the world who visit Wikipedia every day.  On the English Wikipedia alone edits and contributions from the UK account for at least 25% of overall editing activity.

The Wikimedia Foundation has distributed this statement to the press and internally among its global community of volunteers to explain the situation and the reasons behind the blocks in the UK.  We’ve also prepared a series of Questions and Answers.

We are hopeful that discussions with the IWF will continue, and that all actions and measures against Wikipedia in the UK will be suspended.  Please share your support for Wikipedia and let others know how you feel about this situation.

Thanks,

Jay Walsh, Communications<