Wikipedia:Meetup/Seattle2

The 2nd Seattle meetup occurred Saturday, January 15, 2005 Seattle Central Library. It was not as large as the November meetup, but that was anticipated: we had trouble finding a day this month that was open for even this many, and we didn't really have an out-of-town contingent this time.

In attendance were:
 * Jmabel
 * Michael Snow
 * Lion Kimbro
 * DanKeshet
 * Matiasp
 * Trent
 * and a few non-Wikipedian friends and relations



Topics of conversation included:
 * Wikipedia Signpost, Wikipedia's new internal newspaper, started by Michael Snow.
 * SeattleWiki, started by Matiasp; check out http://www.seattlewiki.org.
 * Possible contact with small, local history museums; Dan Keshet and Jmabel have followed up to the point of drafting Museum projects, but as of mid-February 2005 there has been no active outreach.
 * Whether some (maybe 1%?) of articles are either sufficiently controversial or sufficient "vandal magnets" that our normal, open way of free-for-all editing may just not work for these; suggestion of starting dialogue on alternatives. Jmabel will probably try to start discussion on this.
 * Larry Sanger's recent criticisms of Wikipedia, and the issues of elitism/anti-elitism
 * Michael Snow pointed out that there is very little in Wikipedia on performers of previous generations, unless their work was in a medium where it would be preserved. For example, our coverage of classical composers is at least semi-decent, but performers of classical music from before the present generation, and especially from before recording, are very under-covered. Even more so for dancers, stage actors, etc.
 * ... and we pretty much all seemed to think Seattle, Washington is ready to be a featured article (which it soon was).