Wikipedia talk:WikiProject London

BP head office photo request

Hi! Has anyone yet photographed the BP head office at St. James's Square?

If one does not know which building it is, BP posted a copyrighted photograph here: http://www.bp.com/popuppreviewthreecol.do?categoryId=121&contentId=7003057

We need a Wikipedian to have a freely licensed photo of the building. BTW I checked Geograph and Flickr and couldn't find anything there. WhisperToMe (talk) 03:44, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

That photo looked as if it had been taken with an proper architectural camera. Even then, the horizontal convergence is extreme, so I looked on Google street view and sure enough the building is taller than the street is wide. Standing far enough back to get it all in will be impossible with and ordinary SLR. Even stitching several shots will be a bit of a challenge. I point this out, so that who ever goes, can plan the shot out before leaving home.--Aspro (talk) 12:04, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I visited London, and so I took a photo of it (see File:BPheadoffice.JPG). If someone wants to take a higher quality photo or a better photo, he or she is welcome to get a better photo. WhisperToMe (talk) 21:47, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Backstage Pass tour of the British Museum - invitation.

Dear all,
Following the above thread about the British Museum, I'm pleased to announce the first real activity of the project - the BM is offering a "backstage pass" tour to any Wikimedians who wish to come along on Friday the 4th of June. Details below, copied from the Announcement by Mike Peel from Wikimedia UK. All London-based (or those who can make it there) Wikipedians are very welcome to come along. The crucial info and signup page is all here http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Backstage_Pass.
Sincerely, Witty Lama 23:35, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

From Mike:

Wikimedia UK and the British Museum would like to invite you to a very special event taking place from 11am on Friday 4 June - a "Backstage Pass" to the British Museum!

"You may have heard of the British Museum’s exciting initiative, a Wikipedian-in-Residence, with Liam Wyatt joining us in June to work with museum staff and Wikipedia editors to encourage mutual understanding and improve the encyclopaedia in areas relevant to the Museum’s collection. In order to kick off the residency, I’d like to invite you to join us at the British Museum Wikipedia Backstage Pass Day, on Friday 4 June.

In the morning we have arranged a number of behind-the-scenes and gallery tours for Wikipedians. Then, after lunch together in the staff canteen, we will get together in the Clore Education Centre to talk about collaboration, have a question and answer sessions, hear pitches for adding notable objects and developing featured articles, and hopefully also forming some relationships for future working, during and beyond Liam’s residency.

I hope you can come; there’s a lot of interest here at the Museum about it. I look forward to welcoming you to the Museum. Matthew Cock, Head of Web, the British Museum

This will be an exciting, incredibly important, and - most of all - fun event, so I would encourage you to attend if you are able to. You can find out more information about what will be happening, and sign up to say that you are coming, at: http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Backstage_Pass

Thanks, Mike Peel, on behalf of Wikimedia UK

The British Museum wants to give you money and help you write articles!

Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend the aforementioned Backstage Pass event at the British Museum. It was part of a wider project of engagement with Wikipedia (see WP:GLAM/BM) that has seen them take on a temporary Wikipedian In Residence, User:Witty lama. They see Wikipedia as sharing many of their aims, and they want to encourage involvement by Wikipedians with the museum, and vice versa. They have even offered 5 prizes of £100 at the BM shop for featured articles on BM topics - in any language.
Most Wikipedians probably don't know that the BM has curators dedicated to answering phone/email questions about their specialist areas, and most of their department libraries welcome visitors doing bona fide research - and they now seem to recognise that editing Wikipedia articles, especially about items in the BM's collections, counts for those purposes. I know that the first question most people will have is "Can we have images of all their stuff?" and I'd just ask people to be patient on that front. Let's just say that the museum are well aware of our hopes there, there are staff who see advantages to the museum in doing something, and it's being discussed at the highest level. On the other hand it's a very complex area that needs to be handled diplomatically. Literally in some cases - foreign governments can get very touchy about the dissemination of images of artifacts relating to their cultural history, and the museum needs to respect those concerns.
So for the moment the focus is on using the BM's huge resources of books, expertise etc to improve article content, and Londoners should be well-placed to visit the museum to do this. Hopefully we will also see articles being peer-reviewed by BM staff. Some of them are quite nervous about doing stuff on Wikipedia, a mixture of fear of professional ridicule, nervousness about the technical aspects, stories of rapid reverts of good-faith edits and just general culture shock - it's a very different world to the one they come from. So I'd ask everyone to look after any BM people that you see around the place, Wikipedia can gain a lot from their involvement and it would be a shame if they're discouraged for any reason. As I mentioned above, WP:GLAM/BM is the clearing house for the BM's involvement with Wikipedia, and I suggest that further questions/comments are directed there. Le Deluge (talk) 14:24, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

"They have even offered 5 prizes of £100 at the BM shop for featured articles on BM topics - in any language" – in what way does this differ from what got MyWikiBiz globally sitebanned? – iridescent 16:13, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

This is quite disheartening as this is the second time you've accused me of being the same as our troll-in-chief. MyWikiBiz was an attempt to use Wikipedia as an paid advertising platform for commercial organisations. The nascent relationship with the British Museum is an attempt to find ways that we can work together for mutual-benifit because we have, at base, the same ideals. I have taken pains to make sure that, whilst there is always a potential for CoI/Advertising/SPAM/Corruption (whatever you want to call it) that this risk is minimised by the nature of the way the project is run. In this instance, with the 100pound vouchers, there are some quite important points:

• They are prizes/rewards for writing content on Wikipedia with no demand or expectation editorial control from the British Museum - they will accept Wikipedian's own definition of "Featured Quality".
• There is no restriction on the subject matter or Wikipedia language edition other than it be an article of strong relationship to the museum, ideally an article about one of the "notable" collection objects. This is quite different to requiring that we write about the institution itself.
• They are a knowledge-institution who have staff members who are world-experts in the specialist subjects who are willing to receive inquiries from Wikipedians to help improve free-culture content about those subject.

I hope this allays your concerns. Witty Lama 15:16, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Leaving aside the likelihood that you wrote this to be deliberately provocative, I think that the distinction in both intent and outcome is blindingly obvious to anyone bothering to expend more than a modicum of intelligence. One case involves paying an advertising agency to write about your company, with the intention of improving that company's business (with concessions made to editorial standards in order to skirt deletion or sanction). The other case involves a non-profit with whom we share a mission (to share knowledge), who generously offers incentives for contributing to our collection of knowledge. The result is high-quality, informative articles about objects contained in the British Museum which have real providence. It is my polite recommendation that you continue to contribute in areas in which you can make constructive contributions (like RfA) instead of making provocative comments in lieu of contributing to others. — Andrew Garrett • talk 12:53, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Rewrite of Tower of London

I’ve rewritten the article, complete with references. I’ve got rid of a lot of trivial fluff and imbalance (especially towards recent events). There may be further additions – a paragraph here or there, perhaps some different images – but I expect this is the main body of the article. I’m going to let the dust settle for a couple of weeks before taking it to FAC; I’d like to see this get onto the front page eventually. If anyone has any comments, now would be the time to make them. Nev1 (talk) 09:16, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Station naming conventions

From what I can see there are five naming conventions used for stations in London. x underground station, x railway station, x station (where the station is both underground and national rail), x DLR station and then the tram stop one. What I don't understand is that we have underground and DLR, but no distinction between national rail, overground and future crossrail stations. Should we not add these (Dalston Junction railway station to Dalston Junction overground station and Canary Wharf railway station to Canary Wharf crossrail station) or just use the catch all "station" for these?- _J.Logan`^t: 15:22, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK stations) is the standard used. London Overground is just a railway franchise like any other, and thus its stations are "Foo railway station" when they stand alone, and "Bar station" when they interchange with the Underground or DLR. – iridescent 20:00, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

File:King's Cross Fire.jpg

FYI, File:King's Cross Fire.jpg has been nominated for deletion. 70.29.212.131 (talk) 04:11, 20 June 2010 (UTC)