LGBT Archive:Community portal
Learn what tasks need to be done, and share news about recent events or current activities taking place on this project.
Please start entering any articles you feel able you can write or start, or go to WantedPages where there are links to articles that need writing. Please report any problems to jonathan@lgbthistoryuk.org or ross@foxearth.net.
This wiki was created in June 2011. It was upgraded to Mediawiki-1.17.0 on 5 November 2011, to Mediawiki-1.21.2 on 30 October 2013, and to Mediawiki 1.26.2 on 13 January 2016.
The project is being renamed from LGBT History Project to LGBT Archive. This process may take some time; until it is complete you may notice some inconsistency in headings.
Contents
Press
To see the media coverage about this site, see the page: This Project in the press.
Statistics
We added our thousandth article on 25 September 2012, our 1500th article on 3 April 2013, our 2000th article on 7 August 2013 and our 3000th article on 18 April 2014. For the current number of articles see Special:Statistics.
In October 2012 we joined WikiIndex - see our page there at http://wikiindex.org/LGBT_History_UK. You'll see we've got a wikiFactor of 22, in other words there are at least 22 articles (as shown on Special:PopularPages) that have been viewed at least 22,000 times, and our status has been independently upgraded to "vibrant" (the top category). We also now have a WikiNode - a way of linking to other "neighbour" Wikis. We've also joined the LGBT Free Media Collective, and have started contributing photographs and other images to Wikimedia Commons as part of that project - see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Files_from_the_UK_LGBT_Archive. We're also now recorded on the WikiApiary - see https://wikiapiary.com/wiki/UK_LGBT_Archive.
We passed a million page views in July 2013, two million in March 2014, three million in October 2014, four million in March 2015, five million in August 2015, six million in December 2015, seven million in March 2016 and eight million in May 2016. For the current total see Special:Statistics.
Geographical coverage
We now have articles for:
- all 71 cities in the UK (including 2 former cities)
- all large towns (population over 100,000) and all towns over 70,000[1] except Rayleigh (Rochford, Essex).
- every town that had a CHE group
- England:
- all 9 English Regions, each with a map showing counties and districts
- all 48 ceremonial counties, plus some former counties; every ceremonial county containing more than one local government district or unitary authority now has a map.
- all 32 London Boroughs plus the City of London
- all 36 metropolitan boroughs (and all 28 former metropolitan boroughs in the old County of London)
- all 55 unitary authorities plus the Isles of Scilly
- all 201 Non-unitary districts
- all 87 former county boroughs
- a selection of localities, towns, villages, etc
- Scotland:
- all 33 historic counties (some of the articles are currently redirects)
- all 12 former regions
- all 32 current council areas
- Wales:
- all 8 preserved counties
- all 22 current local government areas
- Northern Ireland:
- every historic county (the "six counties")
- all 26 pre-2015 local government districts (some of the articles are currently redirects)
- all 11 current local government districts.
- the Isle of Man
- the Bailiwick of Jersey
- the Bailiwick of Guernsey (including Alderney and Sark)
Wherever possible, the article about each place includes at least some information about LGBT connections. However there are a small number of Districts with no LGBT history. Assistance with finding information about these would be very welcome.
Archiving
This project has been selected for archiving by the UK Web Archive - see http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/target/66158869 - there are now three snapshots on the UKWA site, dated 22 October 2012, 30 October 2014 and 22 October 2015 respectively; it is expected that further snapshots will appear from time to time. We're also getting picked up by the Internet Archive which has captured snapshots at odd times since November 2011.
Current projects
- Create articles for all UK members of ILGA, and add Category:ILGA members to all the members. Complete as of 28 June 2016.
- Create articles for all Consortium members where they don't exist, and add Category:Consortium members to all the members. Believed complete as of 7 October 2016.
- Create articles for all Consortium members as at July 2012, and add Category:Former Consortium members as appropriate. Complete from A to G as of 9 October 2016.
- Create articles for people listed in previous Pink etc lists (and ensure that the appropriate category (with number) is added to the article:
- 1995 list of 40: complete.
- 50 most powerful 2007: complete.
- 50 most powerful 2009: complete.
- Category:Pink List 2000: complete.
- Category:Pink List 2010: complete.
- Category:Pink List 2011: complete.
- Category:Pink List 2012: complete.
- Talk:Pink List 2013: articles for everyone, some still to be added to the category.
- Talk:Rainbow List 2014
- Talk:Rainbow List 2015
- Pride Power List 2011: complete.
- Category:World Pride Power List 2012 (UK people only): complete.
- Category:World Pride Power List 2013 (UK people only): complete.
- Category:World Pride Power List 2014 (UK people only)
- Category:Pride Power List 2015
- Category:Pride Power List 2016
- Category:Stonewall Awards subcategories
- Create articles for all notable speakers in the List of speakers at SLG meetings. Ongoing; note that there are questions about the notability of a number of the speakers.
- Mark all images without images as Category:Articles with no pictures (thought to be complete) and include images for as many of them as possible.
- Categorise all people by date of birth and death (or Category:People with missing dates / Category:Living people). Thought to be complete.
- Create articles for the subjects listed in LGBT Archive:Articles needed.
Ongoing tasks
The following things need to be checked on a regular basis:
- Uncategorised pages: every article should belong to at least one category; in turn, each category (except Category:Main categories) should belong to at least one other category.
- Dead-end pages and Orphaned pages: these can never be eliminated altogether, but should be kept to a minimum – for instance to under 50 pages each so they can all be viewed on the first page of the listing
- language expressing a particular point of view: "we", "us", "sadly", "fortunately", ... Articles containing such expressions are likely to need more thorough reviewing, not just removing the words in question.
- language that will date: "this year", "last year", "recently", "currently", ...
- articles lacking illustrations (there are lots of these) – see Category:Articles with no pictures (this category is thought to be complete).
- articles lacking references – see Category:Articles lacking references (many more articles need to be added to this category).
Timeline
The Timeline of UK LGBT History was added in October 2011. The aim is to have entries for all the most significant events in UK LGBT History from the earliest times. Each entry should include a link to the article which deals with the event or person in more detail. For earlier centuries, each article should ideally have an entry in the Timeline, but we may have to be a bit more selective from say 1960 onwards.
Redirection and disambiguation pages
Some of the pages in this Wiki are redirection pages or disambiguation pages, used where there are two or more versions the name of an article, or two or more articles with similar names.
Publicity
The Wiki had its official launch at the LGBT History Month pre-launch at The Oval, 21 November 2011, and a stall at the London Metropolitan Archives Conference, 16 February 2013.
Our own article about the project, listing references in external sources, is at LGBT Archive. Our Wiki now has an article on Wikipedia,[2] and is included in Wikipedia's List of Wikis.[3]
Backups
The MySQL database is being backed up regularly.