Wikipedia:Meetup/Manila 2


 * For comments and suggestions regarding this meet-up, post it on the discussion page or discuss at the PhilWiki mailing list.

The second Filipino Wikipedians meet-up in Metro Manila was held at Marina Restaurant, CCP Complex on September 2, 2007 12:00 pm up to 5:00pm (originally up to 3:00 pm only) in conjunction with the WikiPilipinas' activities during the 28th Manila International Book Fair at the World Trade Center, Pasay City. The venue was made possible through an invitation by Mr. Gus Vibal, founder of Filipiniana.net and WikiPilipinas.

One of the meet-up's discussion was the establishment of Wikimedia Philippines, a proposed chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation aiming to serve the Philippines and Filipino communities abroad. Currently, Wikimedia Philippines is in the middle stages of development. The Articles of Incorporation have been approved by the community, and By-laws are still open for public scrutiny.

Confirmed

 * 1) Tito Pao
 * 2) Nino Gonzales
 * 3) Alternativity
 * 4) seav
 * 5) Lenticel
 * 6) Exec8
 * 7) Jojit

Expressed interest but not coming

 * 1) Sky Harbor
 * 2) Bloodpack
 * 3) Princereyn
 * 4) Adkranz

Those who came

 * Lenticel NEW!
 * Nino Gonzales NEW!
 * Alternativity (all the way from La Union!) NEW!
 * Tito Pao
 * Jojit fb
 * seav
 * Exec8
 * Scorpion prinz

Agenda

 * WikiMedia Foundation Philippines
 * Foundation setup requirements
 * Interim Set of Officers
 * Timetable
 * Support from existing foundations or CICT.
 * Development of Philippines-related articles
 * Copyright and Fair-Use Disputes
 * Tagalog Wikipedia development
 * Wikipiniana
 * DepEd Errata guide and Wikipedia

On WikiPilipinas
WikiPilipinas views itself as an aggregator of user-contributed knowledege. The user-contributed knowledge need not be anything that can be researched in an encyclopedia or verified by academic sources. The basic idea is that every user has their own set of knowledge that they can contribute, and by writing these down on WikiPilipinas they can formalize their knowledge in writing. In addition, because the site is a wiki other users will be able to refine the contents by supporting or contradicting a particular article. Bias is a given on the premise that the mere act of writing something indicates a point of view.

Because of these premises, WikiPilipinas does not intend to become a clone of the Wikipedia by providing additional content. (To use an example, it includes contents that might be construed as original research or deletable on the Wikipedia). In other words, it does not intend to become an encyclopedia; WikiPilipinas's policies are very, very basic unlike WP policies in its present forms. They admit that at one point in time, its policies will evolve (much like Wikipedia in its seminal stages), although they are clear on a few things (for example, content that would be construed illegal will automatically be deleted.) Whatever new policies it requires remain to be seen in the near future.

With regard to contents that are derived from the core Wikipedia site (i.e. English Wikipedia site), WikiPilipinas acknowledges that some articles were derived from Wikipedia. To this end, they are making efforts to include links to the original article/s on the Wikipedia, in conformance to the terms of the GFDL. Efforts will also be made to incorporate links to the original histories of each articles. They will also create their own images and will not use Wikipedia's maps (in particular, they're going to use maps that were produced in many Vibal-produced textbooks).

On Wikipedia
During the meeting we have identified three objectives that the Pinoy English Wikipedia community should spearhead:


 * 1) Have a legal front for contact Philippine media for copyright assertions and Philippine knowledge institutions for data gathering.
 * 2) Have a more concerted effort in improving Philippine-related articles in the English Wikipedia.
 * 3) Have publicity drives to promote Wikimedia content among educational institutions in the Philippines

Objectives #1 and #3 require that we have Wikimedia Philippines Foundation, Inc. and should involve the other Pinoy Wikipedia communities in other Wikimedia projects. Objective #2 does not need a foundation and concerns only the Pinoy English Wikipedia community. The Meetup participants agreed that we should concentrate on #2 primarily while there is no Foundation yet. As for the Foundation, we decided that the first step is to get 20 committed members (from across the Wikimedia community) and that we need a rough timetable or road-map so that we have a direction or goal to look up to. Unfortunately, we haven't hashed out any plans yet.

On Objective #2
Right now, the Tambayan is just that: a tambayan. We all have our own pet projects and we basically just go to the Tambayan to check what others are doing, to get a bit of Wikinews, and to occasionally get some support for some cause.

There is currently no concerted effort within the Pinoy English Wikipedia community to improve Philippine-related articles in the English Wikipedia. There was a drive before to promote three articles to Featured status by the end of 2005 but after the vote that selected Manila, José Rizal, and Boracay for the process, things sort of petered out. (Next time, people who voiced their support should have committed to help with those articles.) Let's plan to revive such community efforts as a complement to our pet projects.

What are some activities as a community that we can do? Here are some examples (all of which are micro-WikiProjects):


 * Create stub/start-level articles for 50% of all Philippine-related requested articles that have been requested as of a cut-off date.
 * Assess and categorize all geographical and biographical articles that are existing as of a cut-off date.
 * Promote to B-level status all articles about National Artists.
 * Translate all existing FA Philippine-related articles to the Tagalog Wikipedia.

We can have 1,2,3 or more of these activities every 1,2,3 or more months or in any manner that the community decides. Which community activities to be done for each time period can be decided by an elected council or by consensus of the community. And individual people can nominate activities to be done for future time periods.

Aside from these temporal community activities, let's activate others that should be done all-year-round. Some examples:


 * Maintain a (bi-)weekly e-mail newsletter talking about Tambayan activities and micro-WikiProject statuses and choice snippets from the Wikipedia Signpost and other official Wikipedia pages. This newsletter should be given to all Wikipedians in the Tambayan roster.
 * Welcome drive for new Pinoy Wikipedians encouraging them to join the Tambayan.
 * Main Tambayan page maintenance
 * Portal:Philippines maintenance

Suggestions:

 * Since our interests and skills are too varied and Philippine subjects are too broad, we could emulate Wikipilinas in having its users assigned in groups. Let's say I'll belong to a Science group, my focus would be fixing/creating Science-based Philippine articles. Although other users can help me the task would still be my responsibility. The tambayan can assign this particular group to create/expand a set number of articles for a particular month.


 * Let us cooperate with Wikipilipinas about the legal front and media contacts as they have the time and the money to actually work this out.


 * We need to recruit more active members of the fairer sex. It seems that it is mostly males that hang-out in the tambayan and those who participate in offline events.


 * We could also add a to-do lists on the Main page similar to the one found in the India regional noticeboard.


 * It is easy to start all objectives. Maintenace is the problem.