Saturday, June 8, 2013, we're having a Legislative Data Meetup, following up on the Cato Institute's Legislative Data Workshop in March. On the agenda: progress we have made so far and what work we will have ahead of us. 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM.

Interested in the bills making their way through Congress?

Think they should be covered well in Wikipedia?

Well, let’s do something about it!

On Thursday and Friday, March 14th and 15th, the Cato Institute will host a conference to explore ways of using legislative data to enhance Wikipedia.

Cato is working on a system to produce enhanced XML markup of federal legislation, and hopes to use this data to make more information available to the public about how bills affect existing law, federal agencies, and spending, for example.

What better way to spread knowledge about federal public policy than by supporting the growth of Wikipedia content?

Thursday’s session is for all comers. Starting at 2:30 p.m., we will familiarize ourselves with Wikipedia editing and policy, and at 5:30 p.m. we’ll have a Sunshine Week reception. (You don’t need to attend in the afternoon to come to the reception. Register now!)

On Friday, we’ll convene experts in government transparency, in Wikipedia editorial processes and decisions, and in MediaWiki technology to think things through and plot a course.

We hope to foster productive interaction between Washington, D.C.’s transparency community and Wikipedians–and to properly celebrate Sunshine Week!

Perspectives[edit]

• Announcement on Cato's blog
• Background from Cato sponsor Jim Harper's perspective
• Background from Wikipedian Pete Forsyth's perspective

2:30 to 5:30pm

Add your name here if you like; but please register as well so we can get in touch with you!

• Pete (talk)
• mijotoba (talk)
• Cryptic C62 (talk · contribs)
• JimHarperDC (talk · contribs)
• J.H. Snider, iSolon.org @sniderjh
• Ocaasi
• HistoricMN44 (talk · contribs)
• Harej (talk · contribs)
• Econterms (talk · contribs)
• Mr. Chad Robinson, @MrChadRobinson
• Geraldshields11 (talk) 16:10, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• tedder (talk · contribs) event burner phone 202-803-8449
• Carolmooredc (talk · contribs) (if it sounds like I can help with editorial processes, and just part of day, I can show Friday too)
• WWB (talk · contribs)
• GovTransparency (talk) 19:07, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• (Friend of Smokey the Bear ... aka chandler)

5:30 to 6:30pm

Add your name here if you like; but please register as well so we can get in touch with you!

• Pete (talk)
• mijotoba (talk)
• Cryptic C62 (talk · contribs)
• JimHarperDC (talk · contribs)
• J.H. Snider, iSolon.org @sniderjh
• Ocaasi
• HistoricMN44 (talk · contribs)
• Harej (talk · contribs)
• Econterms (talk · contribs)
• Mr. Chad Robinson, @MrChadRobinson
• tedder (talk · contribs) event burner phone 202-803-8449
• Carolmooredc (talk · contribs)
• WWB (talk · contribs)
• (your name here…)

9:30am-4:00pm

Please be sure to bring a laptop if you have one! See you tomorrow.

Invited participants:

• mijotoba (talk)
• Cryptic C62 (talk · contribs)
• J.H. Snider, iSolon.org @sniderjh
• Ocaasi
• Geraldshields11 (talk) 20:37, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Harej (talk · contribs)
• Wehwalt (talk · contribs)
• tedder (talk · contribs) event burner phone 202-803-8449
• WWB (talk · contribs)

• MAIN OUTCOME: Started WikiProject United States Federal Government Legislative Data (shortcut: WP:LEGDATA)
• Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013
• Events DC (currently up for deletion)
• As part of the program, editors edited the articles about Soraya Tarzi, Queen Consort of Afghanistan, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Jim Harper's 3/21 email to participants:

Before too much time passes, I want to send a hearty thanks to all the people who attended --- or thought of attending --- our sessions on Wikipedia and legislative data last week.

Even if you only came to the happy hour: Thanks!  ;-)

I learned quite a lot and really appreciated the welcoming community of Wikipedians who came and gamely worked with us, hoping to give more coverage on Wikipedia to what goes on in Congress.

You can see documentation of our work here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Federal_Government_Legislative_Data

Our article template will ease the way for people to write articles, and we’ll improve it with experience, which we plan to start gaining soon: Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Federal_Government_Legislative_Data/Proposed_layout

I was very pleased that our technical sophisticates put their heads together around the idea of using legislative data to enhance and --- dare I say it --- automatically update infoboxes.

And our outreach group communicated with Wikipedians we failed to reach ahead of time, successfully bringing friendly attention to the work of all.

Good times! Thanks again for your interest and involvement. And thanks again to Pete Forsyth for helping organize and moderate the event.

Jim

Jim Harper

Director of Information Policy Studies

The Cato Institute