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Melbourne Meetup
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< Wikipedia:Meetup/Melbourne

Meetup in March[edit]

EuropracBHIT has enthusiastically suggested that the members of WikiProject Melbourne need to organise a new meetup to discuss project issues and the proposal, discussed at a recent Meetup/Sydney, for an Australian Wikimedia chapter. I agree. There is so much going on in different areas of Wikipedia that you could spend most of you time on-line just reading rather than contributing. I think the occassional get together to discuss ideas and generally chat about a common subject has merit.

The last meetup was the last Tuesday of November at Centre for Ideas (CFI) postgrad lounge . I am going to suggest the last Tuesday of March (28th) 21st at 7pm at the same place (could someone check if it's available). Other suggestions and comments are welcome.

For those who are unfamiliar with the concept of a Local Chaptor (like myself), checking the following will at least give you some idea of what has been happening, and what is being proposed:

EuropracBHIT has said that we need to take the initiative. This has been my two cents worth of initiative. So dig in your pockets and make a donation. Cuddy Wifter 00:31, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]


I think so. My only other suggestion is that it is somewhere quiet. I hate meetings in restaurants. Adam 10:09, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think the Centre for Ideas is quiet. I hate noisy restaurants too. I have never been to the Centre of Ideas, though. We'll try not to address anything too important while we're eating. --EuropracBHIT 10:17, 4 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]
As I said before, what was good about the last meetup was that we had a meeting in a quiet venue (Centre for Ideas) and then a more social side at the restaurant afterwards. Best of both worlds. Cnwb 00:43, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Eating[edit]

Meetup Date confirmed[edit]

CFI postgrad lounge is booked for 21 March, 2006 from 7pm. From the previous meetup: The pgrad lounge is located downstairs (to the left of the red staircase) in building H on this map. Best parking is usually on Grant street and the CFI's location details are also listed on the map. Cuddy Wifter 06:23, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Collecting money[edit]

What sort of money are we meant to collect? Sarah Ewart wants to know. She enquired specifically about start-up costs. And what about a summer picnic at the end of the academic year, so that we can go to the Mornington Peninsula/or a barbecue? That way we can have fun for all the family. (What about a Wikihat in CafePress?) --EuropracBHIT 03:17, 4 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]

Startup costs is something we can put aside for now I think. And in any event, it won't just be the Melbourne people contributing! --bainer (talk) 11:21, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The Wikimedia Foundation can give a startup grant to new chapters if needed. Angela. 05:37, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Quiz[edit]

Several Wikimeetings have had a quiz. What about a quiz between now and the 21st? We could all cooperate in thinking up questions. They can be about Wikipedia or about us. --EuropracBHIT 07:19, 4 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]

Photography[edit]

Who will play the role of our official photo-taker? I intend to bring my digital camera, and I imagine several Wikipedians would do the same. Does anyone have a camera mobile phone? --EuropracBHIT 00:11, 5 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]

Every 12-year-old has one. Adam 04:53, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Festival[edit]

Festival Melbourne (timetable) is on this week. Perhaps the meetup could end there for people who want to go on somewhere after we eat.

That would be excellent. Unfortunately I should probably have to come straight home again after my excursion in the city. I would have to discuss this with some people. Have a great time experiencing Festival Melbourne, if that's what the preponderance of members decides to do! --EuropracBHIT 07:36, 20 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]

Videos and podcasting[edit]

I am aware that some Wikipedians have a blog, and others have the capacity to podcast. I think it would support the written report as well as pictures. Could someone let me know if they are able to do this soonest? It would be good to get everything which is happening. --EuropracBHIT 06:30, 21 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]

Agenda[edit]

With just over a week to the meetup on March 21 I thought it might be time to consider an agenda of items or proposals people want to discuss.

In particular, I would appreciate if someone who has been involved with the discussions on a local chapter of Wikimedia could post a brief summary of where this proposal stands at present.

Please add to the following lists any subjects, proposals, items or ideas which you would like to discuss. - Cuddy Wifter 00:20, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Wikimedia Australia[edit]

Proposed Wikimedia Australia logo by User:Newhoggy. Looks like a pair of breasts, buttocks, or testicles.
Proposed Wikimedia Australia logo by Darren van Gogh. The artist has attempted to capture the essence of Australian respect for intellectual inquiry, with an acknowledgement of our traditional owners and as a slight homage to the efforts of the Australian government to engineer controversy to promote tourism to Australia. Can modify on request.
Second Proposed Wikimedia Australia logo by Darren van Gogh. The artist subscribes to the theory that if you enter the Coca-Cola Summer Surf contest often enough, you will in time win the surfboard. With this logo the artist has made a powerful statement about the pen being mightier than the sword, compounding the message with references to eye-charts and glasses. The presence of newsprint reinforces the theme and the subtle local element for the keen eye is the use of Australia's most popular newspaper's typeface on the headline. The headline itself is redolent with meaning, reflecting the keen passion for sci-fi among many Australian Wikipedians. At any ad agency, such concepts -- and daring execution -- would cost approximately $14.5 million. At the end of my pitch, the artist would look meaningfully at the logo and say "You know it's just all about knowledge." Can modify on request.
  • The present situation and next steps.
    • Could someone kindly tell me a nice open-source presentation programme? I do have something up in Microsoft PowerPoint which explains the issues nicely.
      • OpenOffice.org Impress, part of the OpenOffice.org suite. --bainer (talk) 11:30, 18 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Thank you, Stephen. Indeed I have used OpenOffice previously, with success. But it is taking ten years to download and this with a fast UK server. I thought to download it to Yahoo Briefcase while I was waiting, and you may open up the links with your own browsers. Do feel free to ask questions or raise issues I may have left out. Oh dear, everything is private. I'll have to set it differently.

This is a problem inherent in free Yahoo. The username is wikimedia_australia, and the password is wikimania. I'll have to change the password, so here we are: http://au.briefcase.yahoo.com/bc/wikimedia_australia/lst?.dir=/My+Documents&.src=bc&.view= --EuropracBHIT 12:04, 18 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]

  • Logo
    • It looks more like a pair of buttocks to me. I hate to say this and Lower the Tone. --EuropracBHIT 06:34, 18 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]
      • It's suitably irreverent (just like the token God Save the Queen to Betty at the opening ceremony) but perhaps just the regular Wikimedia logo with "Australia" underneath would do? --bainer (talk) 09:34, 18 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Allow me to leap to the defence of buttocks. Buttocks have had a bad rap over the years, and it's time this stopped. They are among the most beautiful body parts of all. Body parts have had a long and colourful history, and most of us seem to quite enjoy the parts we have. Having said that, all I saw in the logo was a stylised map of Australia in the form of a W. I didn't see any buttocks, breasts or testicles. If others see such things, good luck to them, I hope they enjoy it. JackofOz 13:06, 18 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • It's all terribly ... Freudian, isn't it? By the way I like Van Gogh's contribution to the logo. Does that mean we won't get business from British expatriates? That's what worries me.

Darren's is verry good, but the impact of that ad will wear off soon. Xtra 23:29, 18 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Champion buttocks! This should be our official unofficial logo. pfctdayelise (translate?) 01:14, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Buttocks are not permitted by the Wikimedia visual identity guidelines. :) Angela. 05:50, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Melbourne Project[edit]

  • Project review and discussion
  • Any areas of Melbourne which are not covered.

Ideas for recruiting new members[edit]

  • U3As
  • High schools

Bayswater Secondary College, an outer eastern Government secondary college, for their VELS interdiscplinary work in years 9 and 10, are doing Melbourne: Diverse and Delightful Communities for Semester 1 and Future Melbourne: the next 100 years for Semester 2. We could contact Terry Walsh, the person in charge of the Interdisciplinary teaching. Here is the relevant page: [1] --EuropracBHIT 05:37, 16 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]

  • Neighbourhood houses
  • TAFEs and universities

Future Meetups including social events[edit]

  • Where to eat after meetup?
  • Autumn BBQ?
  • Posting of a report and photographs of meetup.

Any other topics[edit]

  • Wikipedia as an authoritative source
    • Wikipedia:Stable versions
    • The only subject I am really interested in discussing is how Wikipedia can be saved from the folly of its own structure - endless circular rewriting of articles, open access to cranks and vandals, no protection against the inevitable ruinous defamation suit which will come sooner or later, the pointlessness of an encyclopaedia which is never finished, never stable, never of guaranteed accuracy in any particular... etc. The rest is just deckchairs@Titanic.org Adam 07:04, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think that's a bit unfair to Wikipedia, Wikipedians, and what we've achived. I know you've had cause to be seriously disillusioned with the Wikipedia in recent months, Adam. Speaking of cranks and vandals, what do you think about Mel Ettis and his literal interpretation of the no-link-spam rule? It is really affecting a project known as Librivox Librivox - free audio project! and lots of people are going there. Any Australian literature you would like recorded?
      • I would also like to talk about this issue; article decay really really drives me nuts. --Robert Merkel 06:33, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wikipedia:Category math feature
  • And any gaps in the spoken articles on Wikipedia? That Australians are uniquely qualified to fulfill? I notice that Peter McGinley is not coming, which is sad. --EuropracBHIT 08:44, 13 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]
  • Also we should discuss the other projects on which we are involved like Wikibooks and Wikiversity and Wikiquotes. The creation and expansion of Australian content. --EuropracBHIT 08:44, 13 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]
  • Can we talk about userboxes? They are some of the most controversial things on Wikipedia. --EuropracBHIT 08:47, 13 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]
    • I know nothing of any of the first three of those matters. I think userboxes are a harmless indulgence, although I do find them tiresome. But all this is trivial compared to the fundamental issue of what Wikipedia is supposed to be and how it is going to achieve whatever its objective is. After five years Wikipedia still does not have one single article which is of certifiable accuracy, completeness and reliability, and under its present structure it never will have. Adam 10:06, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • 2006 Commonwealth Games
    • Good suggestion. There's plenty of work to be done here. If anyone will be attending any events, please consider taking a camera along and getting some photos for the commons! --bainer (talk) 10:08, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • You're a legend, whoever suggested that. I have been to the badminton and have been to Southgate (lower level though!), so I took 25-30 photos. I don't know whether they're good enough for Wikipedia or the Commons. This was the 17th March, afternoon session - the pool games. --EuropracBHIT 10:44, 17 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]

Can I confirm that this meeting is happening tonight, Tuesday 21 March at 7pm, at the location at the VCA discussed above? Adam 02:01, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the venue is booked and awaiting our arrival at 7pm tonight as described above. I will be coming from across town, so if I'm a bit late, feel free to go in and make yourself comfortable on the couches. See ya tonight! Mark Elliott 02:34, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wrapup[edit]

The meetup was held as scheduled at the VCA Centre For Ideas Lounge: as finding things on a university goes, this one was relatively easy!

Those the meeting included *FIXME* (a couple of people missing off the list)...:

Angela, Tim Starling, Pde, Mark Elliott, Robert Merkel, Thebainer, Adam Carr, Canley, Bduke, Jitse Niesen, Cuddy Wifter, User:Pfctdayelise Roisterer

After people introduced themselves, a fairly free-ranging discussion was held on the listed agenda items.

Reliability/stability of Wikipedia[edit]

Adam Carr spoke about the perceived need for a reliable and stable encyclopedia source, sparking considerable amicable discussion. Key points included:

  • According to Tim, there's nothing in the pipeline from the developers in this area: if consensus formed around a proposal something could emerge fairly quickly though.
  • Getting consensus on any particular proposal is difficult now that the Wikipedia is so large. Bduke commented on this WRT Scientific peer review process. Mark Elliott brought in some interesting points from his academic research on decision making in collaborative projects.
  • Suggestion that Melbourne-related articles might be a suitable venue where an experiment in some kind of stable versioning system could be tried. Some interest, but will see what happens!
  • Good idea. I'm for it. We've got so much development first, though! And be more specific in the proposal... EG. something about trains or institutions or the suburbs.
  • Other points from this discussion
  • Regarding Stable versions/WP 1.0, Adam's point was that a lot of maintenance is required after getting an article into a decent state to actually keep it there. Angela commented on the huge discussions that went into the main page redesign, an apparently minor undertaking. So the point was made that it can be better to do first, gain consensus later. ;) Obviously due to the POV forking restriction we couldn't do that within WP. But perhaps we could set up an external wiki (OK, not a wiki in the true sense of the word, but stay with me) as a test case and take all FAs at the point at which they became featured and freeze them on this external wiki. As many FAs are substantially written by only one or a few people (this is my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong), those people could be appointed as guardians of those articles. Then either: 1) any changes made to the article on the external wiki are submitted to a kind of moderation queue, the article guardian deciding whether or not to incorporate them or 2) the article is periodically compared to the latest WP version and the article guardian again incorporates the best of the WP changes. Also you could just nominate people in certain areas of expertise, esp. for natural sciences. pfctdayelise (translate?)
  • We discussed a bit about what the general perception of WP is compared to how we know it to be. ie. we know you can't always trust it, but Adam made the point that by calling ourselves an encyclopedia, we are assuming that authority, so we have a responsibility to back it up and actually have accurate articles. pfctdayelise (translate?)
    • But when people first hear about Wikipedia and find out that anybody can edit it, they must have some suspicions on its credibility. So they have the same state of knowledge as we do when it comes to trusting it. Or are they just looking at the encyclopedia part? --EuropracBHIT 03:14, 22 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]

Local Wikimedia chapter[edit]

Another free-ranging discussion:

  • One of the big attractions about forming a local chapter is tax-deductability of donations. Unfortunately, it's not that easy; apparently we don't fit the categories for charitable organizations. Sending money to developing countries counts: the US is not a developing country...
    • I have three issues with this. 1. It isn't entirely true, as far as I am aware, we can send money overseas if we prove that it furthers our objects (which may be hard, we may need to consult a taxation lawyer on this one). 2. Not all chapters send money to the foundation (because of similar problems) 3. It isn't that big of an attraction, I feel that promoting the projects, bringing in more contributors is more important right now. - Cartman02au 10:16, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Spending money locally may be a possibility at some stage, on Wikimedia Foundation employees, for instance
  • However, a chapter might have other useful purposes; for one thing, it makes it easier to deal with organizations/companies.
  • One thought floated - organization doesn't really need to be incorporated until it starts handling money; maybe we could set up first, worry about paperwork later.
  • Discussion to continue online (IRC??) about this.
    • Yes, we will discuss it around April sometime. See here:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Australia/Meeting_2 --EuropracBHIT 01:45, 22 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]

  • Angela made the point that we don't necessarily need a hard and fast goal to form WMA, as things are likely to come up that we couldn't anticipate anyway (eg. the collaboration b/n WM Germany and Directmedia, who distributed de.wp on CD and also donated 100,000 images to the Commons, old artworks). Someone also said that the easiest way to get tax-deductability-donation status is to lobby some politician directly to insert a small amendment somewhere specifically for us. :) I dunno about that. My feeling now is that we should make a flexible organisation with a minimum of commitment required from members, until some definite directions start to form. Maximum flexibility incase it is in our advantage to incorporate etc in the future. Re: domain names, apparently .com.au is hard to get, but .asn.au (association) is quite easy. pfctdayelise (translate?) 03:08, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Agree about getting an .asn.au name, and also about lobbying the politician. What about Nick Minchin or someone? Or Barry Jones could help us. If every Wikipedian in Australia writes a letter to their local member it represents a 1000 or 10,000 people's interest in the matter concerned. I don't know what my local member thinks about Wikipedia or even if he knows about it. (For the record, my local member is Jason Wood in La Trobe electorate, and he was a police officer). As for the 'limited committment' thing, agree, agree, agree. You want to build a critical base, though... --EuropracBHIT 03:17, 22 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]
    • I think we need to get some form of direction. If other chapters are anything to go by, WMA will take off and we will need structure.
  • Thanks to my Melbournian friends who are keeping this on the radar. I believe that we are slowly getting there :) - Cartman02au 10:16, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • If we set up an incorporated association called the Melbourne Wikimeida Foundation (example only) I think it would be ridiculously easy apply (successfully!) for inclusion on the Register of Cultural Organisations which would allow tax deductible donations to be taken. If anyone's still seriously considering doing this, leave me a message and we can thrash something out. Sambo 13:19, 14 June 2006 (UTC) (not currently resident in Melbourne, but returning at year's end)[reply]

Melbourne coverage/Comm Games[edit]

  • Not many Wikipedians are mad keen Comm Games fans!
  • A few have attended events; it's damned hard to get good photos from the stands.
  • Can we get photographers into the press pool (obviously not this time round, but in future)? Zane (what's your username?) mentioned that photographers are their own breed, and they may not be entirely keen to have amateurs in their domain. Also issues with what terms press photographers get their access to events on; what restrictions on image use are there; some of the more law-oriented people rolled their eyes at this point :)
    • Do you mean the Melbourne Swimming Games in 2008, Robert? --EuropracBHIT 01:40, 22 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]
      • The press pits? :) Note: find out about how to gain official press accreditation for photographers to events like the Games, tennis, etc. Maybe we can bluff that someone is our official photographer (for wikinews?) if we have WMA to back us up. pfctdayelise (translate?)
  • Anything else on this topic

Food[edit]

  • Remarkable unanimity that food was a good idea, though some people had other committments (partners with morning sickness amongst them).
  • Blue Train provided a venue for further interesting discussions of Dirk Hartog Island, Herschel Grynszpan, and undoubtedly a bunch of other things up the other end of the table.
  • Tim pointed out that more m:developers are needed. That's right, fix your own bugs! Learn PHP, submit bug fixes, gain trust of existing devs, get dev status and chicks! What could be easier?! (...But seriously: if you can, please recruit devs. my personal plea.) pfctdayelise (translate?)
  • Also briefly discussed the technical problems of vandalism and blocking bored schoolkids vs blocking WoW-style vandals. "Collateral damage" of blocking IPs (/ranges), ringing up school sysadmins to inform them that "your students have hacked into Wikipedia"... ;) (and the likelihood that they would even care) pfctdayelise (translate?)
    • You would be surprised at the response you would get from schools with regards to vandalism. I know the school I work at one day a week would take action about it - Cartman02au 10:19, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Page move[edit]

Should we move this to Wikipedia:Meetup/Melbourne 2?

Oh, and I haven't got round to taking the photos off the camera yet, I'll do so this evening. --Robert Merkel 02:35, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, we should move it. And I hope the pictures are good too.
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