Last December, I invited you to share your views on the value of Wikimedia conferences and the planning process of Wikimania. We have completed analysis of these results and have prepared this report summarizing your feedback and important changes for Wikimania starting in 2018 as an experiment. Feedback and comments are welcome at the discussion page. Thank you so much for your participation. I JethroBT (WMF), Community Resources, 22:47, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

		The Space Barnstar
		For your quick involvement in the development of the article Gravitational-wave observation which is noted on Wikipedia's main page In the news section! --Pine✉ 20:30, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks @Pine! Mike Peel (talk) 20:34, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

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I see you upload lots of interesting photos on Commons, but you don't include common people in them (except speakers at conferences etc). If you want to preserve history, houldn't you also take pictures of the audience of a conference rather than the speakers only? Why do we see you uploading so many pictures of cars and landmarks or landscapes but no pictures of commoners walking in the streets? Aren't everyday people in everyday situations worthy of inclusion in a historical photography archive? Street photography is a photography genre devoted to the common folk together with social documentary photography, with some famous practitioners of the art being Henri Cartier-Bresson and Bruce Gilden. But in Germany and other European Union countries there are many cultural and legal problems photographers face: people often don't want to be photographed and some countries have privacy laws that make the taking and/or the publication of photos of identifiable people illegal unless the person in the photo has given his consent. Such laws often take the face of personal data protection laws or personality laws. Street photographers often continue producing and exhibiting or selling their artwork despite the privacy laws and social documentary photographers also do the same with their documentary photographs. In Europe there is really a battle for the right to take pictures of people without their consent, with many cases ending up in court, like street photographer Thomas Leuthard's legal case in Germany. What is your position in this political debate? Do you believe people have a right to not be photographed in public? Do you think laws making it risky for photographers to take pictures of people in public without their consent should be repealed? Should everyone have the right to take pictures of people in the street without their knowledge or consent, or should this right be a privilege of only the members of the press and who should be called member of the press? Do you believe that philosophically and ethically it is the photographer's free expression to take and publich a photo of a person who doesn't want to be photographed? If every person in the street is allowed to have a copyright-like legal right of privacy over his face, how will art and documentary photography be practised in the streets? Essentially this is privatization of the public space and is thus inherently anti-democratic. In a democracy everyone can take pictures of everyone in the street even without their consent or even against the photo subject's will, and this is what free expression is. Photographers should unite and persuade European politicians to repeal those privacy and personal data protection laws and any law which make it impossible to record the history of everyday life in the street (but also similar laws exist in Quebec, Canada). Sardeis (talk) 01:40, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

@Sardeis: Thanks for the message! I do occasionally take street photos, a couple of recent ones being File:Manchester Central Library 2015 001.jpg, File:Manchester Christmas Markets 2015 001.jpg and File:At San Francisco 2015 071.jpg. At some conferences (e.g. Wikimania) I do also take pictures of the audience, not just the speakers. However, it's not really one of my favourite types of photos to take, and I'm not particularly good at it either - I much prefer taking pictures of things that mostly stay still. ;-) I am also fairly conscious of people's privacy - one example is that a few years ago I took a picture of an armed policeman in the UK, who came over to me and requested I delete it, which I did not for legal reasons but because it ethically felt like the best thing to do.

I suspect that the political debate about taking photos is becoming somewhat arbitrary over time, given how many cameras are regularly used on streets, including mobile phones and CCTV - it's often impossible not to end up at least in the background of a photo when walking down a busy (tourist) street! Publishing it is a bit different, though - at the very least, if someone asks to take down a photo of them, then due consideration should be given to following their wishes (I have taken down several of my photos after being asked to do so by the subject); or, if it's likely to be controversial in the first place, then checking first makes more sense.

I know this doesn't answer all of your questions (you have a lot of them!), but hopefully it gives you a feel for where I stand here, and why. :-) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:53, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #186

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This Month in GLAM – Volume VI, Issue II, February 2016 Headlines Australia and New Zealand report: Wikidata Tour Down Under Austria report: GLAM activities for libraries and archives in the DACH region Belgium report: Gender Redirect Wikipedia workshop addressing the Gender Bias; Open Belgium 2016 France report: Getting technical...! Germany report: 30 GLAM volunteers in museums and libraries Italy report: Four new Wikipedians in Residence, and Food! Macedonia report: Theatre actors of Macedonia Mexico report: Towards to our first Art and Feminism 2016 Netherlands report: Naturalis' Wikipedia project; Open Culture Data Spain report: Free pictures, classical music & libraries Sweden report: Maps, planes and metadata on artists UK report: Wales Report; Wikidata Tour Down Under; Museums Galleries Scotland report; Oxford USA report: One month, dozens of events: Black History Month, Art+Feminism and more Special story: Lightning talk overview of upcoming video series Open Access report: Gravitational wave detection; viral biomechanics, anglerfish, smart dining table Wikipedia Library report: Books & Bytes: A Wikipedia Library Newsletter Wikidata report: Wikidata Tour Down Under Calendar: March's GLAM events Read this edition in full • Single-page To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

Wikidata weekly summary #186

Combining history and an obsolete constellation with modern astrometry, we can do some cool stuff with Telescopium Herschelii - a bit of a pity it isn't a legit constellation really....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 01:28, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

@Casliber: That's a fun one. :-) (check the photo attribution for the second photo. ;-) ) I'll leave some comments on the talk page later today, if they'll be helpful. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 09:21, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Heh, cool. Look forward to it. Have also buffed Antlia and Lynx (constellation) on a more serious note.....NB: Globe is on the DYK hook. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 09:44, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Croome Court, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Sun Alliance. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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