Wikipedia:GLAM/YMT/Luminaries-report

On 16 March 2014 we hosted the Luminaries edit-a-thon. The event was a great success, attended by 16 members of the public and 8 members of staff. Three biographic articles were created on the day and two were extensively prepared in user sandboxes. Further edits were made to a wide range of articles, many of which were very substantial.

On the day
The day began with a basic introduction to Wikipedia from PatHadley and very quickly moved into an open edit-a-thon. Groups of editors worked together to develop their skills, research and work on their chosen articles. An old-fashioned flip chart kept track of people's work and helped prevent edit clashes.

Curator's talks
After lunch five YMT curator's gave talks or show-and-tell sessions on their specialist topics.


 * Andrew Woods - Numismatics - The Middleham Hoard
 * Stuart Ogilvy - Natural History - Tempest Anderson
 * Laura Turner - Fine Art - Highlights from York's Public Domain art
 * M Faye Prior - Social History - John Kirk, J.B. Morrell, Rachel Rostas: A whistlestop tour
 * Adam Parker - Archaeology - Flint Jack



Twitter activity
The event generated a decent buzz on twitter and several high-follower accounts (eg, @historyworkstv and @UofYArchaeology) were retweeting to amplify the message. Most significant tweets from the day have been archived as a Storify page. This was great to see as there were actually only a small number of people at the event live tweeting.

Feedback
The feedback on the day was generally excellent. 12 participants filled out a feedback form and 11 of these gave the session 5/5 overall with a single 4/5. The most used words to summarise the day were: 'fun', 'interesting' and 'engaging'. Some critical comments were made; these requested more research materials or guidance accessing them, more time to edit and a small number made technical/practical critiques. Several participants asked about follow-up events and the curators and staff were all very pleased with what they had learned about Wikipedia and the content that had been created. The day went very smoothly, with no significant technical glitches, participants making difficult requests or friction between participants.

Results of the day
Given the range of skills and backgrounds, a huge amount of content was created across a number of biographical articles and a few associated topic articles.

New articles

 * 1) Mary Ellen Best
 * 2) Walter Harvey-Brook
 * 3) Henry Robinson (scientist)

Draft new articles in sandboxes

 * 1) Snowden Slights
 * 2) George Yeld

Substantial improvements

 * 1) John Bowes Morrell
 * 2) Charles Wellbeloved
 * 3) Edward Simpson (forger)
 * 4) Anne Lister
 * 5) Joseph Halfpenny
 * 6) Tempest Anderson
 * 7) William Etty
 * 8) Thomas Cooke (machinist)
 * 9) Henry Baines (botanist)
 * 10) Edward Charlesworth
 * 11) Medieval parish churches of York
 * 12) Calcaria
 * 13) Eboracum

Improvements uploaded later with research conducted at the edit-a-thon:
 * 1) York Art Gallery

Links, images and tidying

 * 1) Best (surname)
 * 2) List of people from York
 * 3) Yorkshire Museum
 * 4) York City Walls
 * 5) Yorkshire Philosophical Society

Did you know? Nominations
Appeared on 22 March 2014
 * 1) Mary Ellen Best

Follow-up plans
Nothing concrete has yet been set up but there is definitely scope for further YMT-hosted events (edit-a-thons, back-stage passes and so on). In addition, it is hoped that the small group of enthusiastic editors may meet up less formally; leading to the first York-based Meetup.