Contents

Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon

Upcoming[edit]

2024:

• Monthly Wikipedians Meetup Thursday, June 13, 6.30 PM - 8.30 PM, San Francisco

Past[edit]

2024:

• May 16, 6.30-8.30pm, Sequoia Fabrica (1736 18th street)
• April 18, 6.30-8.30pm, Sequoia Fabrica (1736 18th street)

2023:

• Wiki Weekend Workout @ Noisebridge - Oct 19, 2023
• Wiki Weekend Workout @ Noisebridge - Sept 16, 2023
• Wiki Weekend Workout @ Noisebridge - Aug 19, 2023
• Wiki Weekend Workout @ Noisebridge - July 15, 2023
• Wiki Weekend Workout @ Noisebridge - June 17, 2023
• Wiki Weekend Workout @ Noisebridge - May 20, 2023
• Wiki Weekend Workout @ Noisebridge - April 15, 2023
• Wiki Weekend Workout @ Noisebridge - Feb 18, 2023
• Wiki Weekend Workout @ Noisebridge - Jan 21, 2023

2022:

• Wiki Weekend Workout @ Noisebridge - Dec 17, 2022
• Wiki Weekend Workout @ Noisebridge - Nov 19, 2022
• Wiki Weekend Workout @ Noisebridge - Oct 22, 2022

2021:

• Wikipedia:Meetup/Oakland/Oakland Public Library May 2021 - May 26, 2021, online
• Art+Feminism @ SFMOMA 2021 - March 9, 2021; 4 - 8 PM @ online

2020:

• February 9: Black History Month Wiki-a-thon at Prelinger Library with Bay Area WikiSalon - Sunday February 9, 2020; 12 - 5 PM @ Prelinger Library, 301 8th Street, San Francisco

2019:

• August 25: Preliner Library Wiki-a-thon No.2 - 18 Wikimedians gathered and improved many articles using the Prelinger Library's unique holdings.
• May 1 - around 20 showed up to discuss Talk pages and communication at the WMF HQ.
• Feb. 17: Prelinger Library Wiki-a-thon - a Sunday afternoon of editing, uploading, and exploring the unique collections of the Prelinger Library
• Feb 7 - we focused on Good Articles with a presentation by Lane and a lightning talk on the Prelinger library by Niki; around 25 people showed up. One person made their first edittoSpelt.
• Jan. 15, 2019: Wikipedia day was celebrated at Stanford University, with a large turnout.

2018:

• December – ~25 of us met for tonight's WikiSalon, held at the Wikimedia Foundation's office in San Francisco's Financial District. Niki shared the evening's agenda and facilitated throughout. Stephen followed with an announcement about January's upcoming Wikipedia Day and Public Domain Day. Britta added a mention of the Internet Archive's January Public Domain Day celebration. We then moved to lightning talks where Ben focused on WikiDragon-like edits, Devin sought the group's feedback on his new wiki project: wikiclaim.org, and Stephen shared about the Foundation's effort to better integrate WikiCite and Wikipedia. More details on the December page.
• November - canceled
• September – 33 people attended tonight's WikiSalon at the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) 120 Kearney St., Suite 1600 office in downtown San Francisco. Wayne presented on Did you know ...? and in the process, introduced user scripts, which many in attendance were learning about for the first time. Stephen and Britta followed with a mention of the ongoing Wiki Loves Monuments competition. The group then broke out into small group conversations. More details on the September page.
• July - topic was reliable sources. We met at the new Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) offices in the financial district of San Francisco - near Montgomery BART. 26+ people attended of 39+ RSVPs. Wayne and Niki were the main presenters. See the July page for more details.
• June - 34+ people attended of 51 RSVPs. Luis Villa presented on a personal project to improve gender balance through images on Wikipedia, followed by a panel discussion. The theme was multimedia (focusing on images) and related projects such as Wikicommons, and Nikikana demonstrated uploading an image to WikiCommons. At least six people did their first edit, with one family performing eight uploads to Commons.

Stephen LaPorte interjected an important announcement about #NOW which will attempt to add more articles about newspapers to Wikipedia so that it is easier to distinguish reliable newspapers from crank ones.

2017:

• November - we met at the Wikimedia Foundations' new offices at 120 Kearny St., Suite 1600, SF. The focus topic was Talk Pages, which we boldly explored through an interactive performance activity dubbed "Talk Page Theatre", organized by artist and co-organizer Niki Korth. Approximately 15 people attended. 3 scripts from Talk Pages were performed, followed by a discussion about what it means to perform a talk page and what we can learn from it, how we interact on Wikipedia, and how Talk Page Theatre might benefit from being more theatrical or dealing with more heated issues/current events.
• September - Noisebridge, September 27 - small gathering of 4 people at Noisebridge, fruitful conversation and strategy planning for future Wiki Salons, experiments with group Wiki activities.
• August - canceled
• July - canceled
• June - canceled.
• May - small gathering of 5 people at Noisebridge; 1 person made their first edit. Roan showed off new features.
• April. One year anniversary of BAWS, with a medium-sized crowd. No presentation, but lightning talks and announcements from the floor. Wikimedia Foundation employees presented a couple of short overviews of upcoming features and improvements to the Wikis. We will allow time for mingling and munching. Cake was served.
• March. Taking Bay Area WikiSalon on the road and meeting at Noisebridge hackerspace/makerspace at 16th and Mission Streets in San Francisco. We had tours of Noisebridge, lightning talks, announcements from the floor, and the usual light snacks and beverages. There was no formal presentation, but lots of mingling.
• February. Introducing the March 2017 Art+Feminism edit-a-thon.
• January. The Bay Area WikiSalon was held on Sunday, January 15 (instead of the typical "last Wednesday"), as a half-day conference and party celebrating Wikipedia Day 16. Attendance was higher than usual - probably above 40 passed through.

2016:

• December. Wikipedia Teahouse host Jim Heaphy (User:Cullen328) presented on Welcoming and Helping New Editors: A Month at the Teahouse: an overview of the Teahouse and an analysis of over 300 Teahouse conversations during the month of August, 2016. This main presentation was followed by lightning talks about user page protection, Wiki Loves Monuments, and Wikidata.
• November. At the peak we had 25 in attendance. The executive director, Katherine Maher, had to call off her plans to attend and mingle with us. Co-organizer Ben Creasy presented briefly on his nine years of experience with a presentation entitled Wikipedia: Past, Present, and Future. The floor was opened for other attendees to share their experiences in lightning talks, and also make any brief announcements.
• October. We had about 15 attendees including a few WMF staff members. Ben, Pax, and Wayne briefly shared their takeaways from attending WikiConference North America 2016, and then the mic was passed for everybody else to introduce themselves, make brief announcements, share about random things and what they like or would like to see go on with Bay Area WikiSalon. Before and after was the usual mingling, editing, eating/drinking, etc.
• September. We planned to have a simple "salon" style meetup with no set agenda. Encyclopedia editing happened, particularly to articles relevant to the upcoming election. Snacks and beverages were provided via a WMF Rapid Grant. This was our kickback WikiSalon month, but we decided to have a Wiki Loves Monuments end of the month image uploading push for a bit of our allotted time. Niki Korth, one of the California coordinators for WLM led that effort. We had 16 attendees.
• August. Out of 43 formal RSVPs (plus a number of others signed up on third-party sites), around 30 showed up, with a strong showing from the WMF legal department. Marta Belcher spoke on how she used a wiki to crowdsource her Stanford Law School commencement speech.[1][2][3]
• July. We joined some friends from the Universal Income Project to help work on the basic income article. Around 20 people showed up at a different venue than usual, Noisebridge (see Noisebridge Basic Income Wikipedia Jam). Event co-coordinated by Wiki Strategies, Wayne Calhoon, and Ben Creasy.
• June. Out of an RSVP list of about 55, 20 showed up at the peak, including 1 WMF employee (in addition to a WMF A/V staffer). Included a presentation by Merrilee Proffitt of OCLC and two SF librarians on a recent editathon and a "WikiDojo" group creation of a new Wikipedia article on the Ghost Town Royals. Event co-coordinated by Wiki Strategies, Wayne Calhoon, and Ben Creasy.
• May. A simple WikiSalon with no special presentation. Event co-coordinated by Wiki Strategies, Wayne Calhoon, and Ben Creasy. About 14 people showed up, including three WMF staffers and several highly-experienced long-term editors. One new editor created his first edit. Discussion was pretty much all informal; we will be continuing to gather feedback on structure and formality.
• April. Speakers included Jan Patton, research librarian for the Nueva Upper School, on high school Wikipedia edit-a-thons; and Kris Schreier Lyseggen, photojournalist and author of several works about transgender people. Event coordinated and sponsored by Wiki Strategies, Wayne Calhoon, and Ben Creasy. 67 RSVP, and 7 sent regrets, so a net of 60. About 28 showed up for a 50:50 no-show ratio, plus a few WMF staff members. One new editor created her account and first edit.
• March: We held a planning session for the series. Eight Wikimedians attended.

We also announce these events on Meetup.com:

• Wikipedia Bay Area Meetup Group - small community meetup page, paid for by volunteers
• Wikimedia Tech - Wikimedia Foundation's meetup page, with a technical focus but used for advertising the WikiSalons
• Bay Area Wiki Public calendar - TODO use this for sharing related events as well as this event

And usually on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bay Area WikiSalon.

• Wikipedia:Meetup/San Francisco
• Meta: Bay Area WikiSalon