Wikimedia Canada/localProjects

Launch a program to encourage local history, geography additions/Lancer un programme pour encourager des ajouts sur l'histoire locale, la géographie edit

  • en: Many chapters contact municipal governments and chambers of commerce, and encourage them to add in about their region. Wikimedia Canada could partner with local newspapers, to have them also encourage adding information.
  • fr: Plusieurs chapters contactent les gouvernements municipaux et les chambres de commerce et les encouragent à ajouter des infos sur leur région. Wikimédia Canada pourrait travailler avec les journaux locaux pour les encourager à ajouter de tels renseignements.
  • en: Copied from Talk:Wikimedia Canada#a couple of comments from me: A program to encourage local history, geography additions. If I might add to this, some sort of a partnership program with local libraries would be nice as well. These are excellent sources for this sort of data; I know I certainly found them helpful when doing write-ups for Niagara-related topics on enwiki. One thing we might want to look into is an official letter from Wikimedia Canada asking for permission to use library's archive of photos on enwiki or (better yet) commons. I was rephrasing and sourcing the text, but the photos (often very good photos of past events that cannot be duplicated) had copyright notices. Fair use is a possibility on enwiki, but not on commons and some other wikis (ie. plwiki that I contribute to as well). I considered asking my local library for permission personally, but an official letter from Wikimedia Canada should be given more consideration than a single person's request. --Qviri (talk) 17:44, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • fr: Si je puis y ajouter une couche : un programme de partenariat avec les bibliothèques locales serait bien, aussi. Ils sont d'excellentes sources pour ce genre de données. Je les ai trouvés très utiles lorsque j'écrivais sur le Niagara pour enwiki. On peut envisager une lettre officielle de Wikimédia Canada leur demandant permission d'utiliser les archives photographiques des bibliothèques sur enwiki ou (mieux encore) Commons. Je reformulais et sourçais le texte, mais les photos (souvent de très bonnes photos d'évènements qui ne pourront pas être dupliqués) avaient des avertissements de copyright. Le fair use est une possibilité pour enwiki, mais pas Commons et d'autres wikis (dont plwiki, auquel je contribue également). J'ai pensé à contacter ma bibliothèque locale directement, mais une lettre de Wikimédia Canada aurait plus d'impact et serait plus pris en compte qu'une demande d'une personne.
  • en: The website http://www.ourroots.ca/ already does a lot of work making local history material (often rare one) available online. Collaboratin with it could lead to fruitful results.
  • fr: Le site web http://www.nosracines.ca/ fait déjà beaucoup pour l'accessibilité des documents (souvent rare) d'histoire locale. La collaboration pourrait s'avérer très fructueuse. Circeus 01:21, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • en: Re Qviri's suggestions about local museums and other comments about local newspapers and chambers of commerce etc. Since this project was first announced and actually prior to its formation, I've wondered about an outreach program to "all of the above", including FN governments/websites, that would include "lessons" in WP:MOS, WP:RS, explaining WP:NPOV/WP:Own/WP:OR/WP:Synth and WP:What Wikipedia is not etc.....without being intimidating about it, of course (something I'm not great at). I've also wondered about ways to loosen the ropes of WP:COI and WP:AUTO for contributors from tiny places whose contributions can be either very subjective or very difficult to cite, in normal wiki-ways; they might know things no one else does. This applies to any small reserve community or tiny, tiny places (see, e.g. w:Gang Ranch. The idea is to avoid having to "clean up after them" and also keep them in the fold once their contributions do get "cleaned up". Many such contributors, esp. Chambers of Commerce and muni/RD sites and not in the least environmental and FN politics sites often treat Wikipedia as a promotional environment or also boilerplate-over stuff from brochures and/or copyrighted material or use Wikipedia as a directory for their town/place/organization (in the case of politically-oriented contributors with a lot of POV etc), or at least those who are somewhat SPA in nature, i.e. one topic-area type contributors who aren't destructive/cooptive but need their contributions more Wiki-organized/vetted (see w:Ahousaht First Nation), partly re traditional-knowledge contributions and see its history for the directory materials I took out...). The museums are less problematic (I know of several "present" in Wikipedia); other types of contributors - we should start a page, maybe, or known institutional contributors of this kind, subsectioned by type (museum/CoC/FN/Enviro etc). What I've wondered about is an on-line tutorial available that's pretty much a summary of links like those above, and maybe a WP:CAN/WM:Canada working group who are the "helper gnomes"/"teachers" where such sites/authors as a resource to help them improve and encourage their contributions. Maybe this could include information sessions bringing together museum/CoC/academic/organization etc contributors for workshops at places like the VPL and its equivalents elsewhere, even the National Library or the Museum of Civilization etc or this could be done by IRC group of other on-line method, i.e. other than the proposed working/resource group. Maybe I'm not being too focussed here, and I feel like citing lots of examples of articles/places where RS, COI, AUTO, OWN, SOAP etc need some "handling". Anyway, outreaching, encouraging and shepherding such contributors is definitely a good thing, as is teaching them how to contribute within Wikipedia guidelines and otherwise understand the parameters of Wiki-dom; some museums etc could also organize local-level sessions e.g. for students, hobby website writers/historians, even a touring presentation for museums and schools etc. Community-history wikis for given places might be a good thing to promote as ways to bring ideas and sources forward; quite often someone in one of these places might have a publication or archival material that otherwise is not available for citation; ditto of course with photos; explaining of image licensing and public domain/creative commons and so on...."minimizing the kinks"Skookum1 15:20, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • en: re Circeus' note about nosracines.ca and similar sites, for a while now I've been asked to compile a directory of sites like that I know about, and of particular content within them, and also of mapping/image resources and such, mostly to do with BC; I guess I've got a sort-of-sandbox version of this already, just needs cleaning up; if someone would care to proposed a wiki-space title/location for it, it would give me somewhere to start placing them...."Historical and geographical resources" etc...similarly someone please suggest a place for "known institutional contributors" - museums etc. - and I'll start adding those I know of....Skookum1 15:43, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]