Wikipedia:WikiProject Sharing

Welcome to WikiProject Sharing! A WikiProject is a forum for people to talk about some aspect of Wikipedia. This WikiProject is a place for managing requests by Wikipedians to organizations to ask them to share their media with the world through Wikipedia. It works as follows:

  1. A Wikipedian believes that some organization has public information to share, but is not currently sharing it
  2. Using the open-letter format described at this WikiProject, the Wikipedian makes an offer to help the organization share their information
  3. Hopefully the organization replies on Wikipedia so that their response can be read openly by everyone in the world, forever
  4. If the organization has public information to share, hopefully also they share it on Wikipedia or anywhere online so that it can be copied and distributed through Wikipedia

Complete instructions follow. Thanks for visiting this WikiProject! If you have questions or comments, post them at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sharing.

Guide to making sharing requests edit

Wikipedia users who wish to make a sharing request to an organization should do as follows:

  1. Review the open letter templates and choose an appropriate one
  2. Draft a sharing request letter and post it to this project's talk page as a template
  3. Collect reviews about the project, and consider accepting additional signatories to the sharing request. Reviews should ensure that the sharing request contains the following:
    1. The media requested for sharing is actually intended for the public, as it should be
    2. An explanation of where the media will be first re-published on Wikipedia
    3. Links to Wikipedia policies are maintained
    4. Links to both WikiProject Sharing and, if applicable, the sharing target's own Wikipedia article where the request is cross-posted
  4. Archive the template here at WikiProject Sharing, post a copy on the talk page, then email a copy to the organization. All versions of the sharing request should be the same and reference all paths of communication.
  5. Wait for a reply! Organizations will either say yes to sharing, no to sharing, or not reply. In any case, a timestamped public request for public information has been made! Congratulations!
  6. If the organization replies only by email, and they have neglected to apply a Wikimedia-compatible license to complement the natural copyright they have on their response, then the recipient of the email should summarize their reply wherever the letter was posted in a way that does not violate the rights of the author of the reply.
  7. Keep all conversation open! Have fun and keep sharing.