Talk:Science festival

Creating this article

In doing some work for the science festival to be held in New York, I looked for a "Science festival" entry on Wikipedia - not finding one, I decided to create one. It's just meant to briefly state what a science festival is, and to link to a variety of different festival websites. Markus Poessel 09:19, 8 April 2007

Which is the largest science festival?

Can someone confirm the rather dubious claim that Edinburgh is "Europe's largest science festival", as the BA Festival of Science attracts more than double the 70,000 attendees quoted. Darcysarto 13:21, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

That claim could indeed do with more systematic checking. Which source do you have for the BA Festival of Science attendance? Markus Poessel 07:36, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I work there! Plus there is an evaluation report available on the BA Website. Darcysarto 10:06, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

OK - do you have any idea what the attendance is for other science festivals? If you don't, we could just drop the "Edinburgh biggest" claim and replace it by some more general statement mentioning the number of events and attendance for the BA festival as an example of a big festival, without explicitly claiming it is *the* biggest. Markus Poessel 16:02, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Can't help with specific numbers of other festivals, but checking the websites of Cheltenham, Cambridge etc indicates they are all smaller than the BA Festival of Science. Best to go with the non-contorversial claim that the BA's is "one of the biggest" I think Darcysarto 13:34, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. How about something along the lines of "The oldest science festival in the modern sense appears to be the Edinburgh International Science Festival, which was first held in 1988.[2] The attendance for major science festivals can be of the order of a hundred thousand - for instance the 2006 BA Festival of Science held over ... in Norwich, England, had more than 174,000 visitors. [3]" where [3] links to the report you cited (please fill in the blanks for the duration - I gather from the report that the main festival lasted for 5 days, but the 174,000 number counts attendance of fringe events as well - how long did these last?) Markus Poessel 11:19, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

That edit sounds great - go right ahead. Bit hesitant to edit the article myself as I have little wikipedia experience and also don't want to create a conflict of interest issue (given my job). The Festival in Norwich (including the "fringe" events) was from 2-9 September. Darcysarto 11:36, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, I've done it - a bit differently, though; the BA Festival as an example for a large festival now has a paragraph of its own at the end of the section. As for editing the article yourself: be bold! As long as you write about science festivals in general, your job with the BA festival is not a problem, it's an asset. If you write about the BA festival itself, the cautious way to go would be to propose the additions here on the talk page first (which is what I will do if there's reason to write more about the NY festival). As for having little Wikipedia experience, no matter - the editor is simple, and friendly other Wikipedians will help you to fix any errors that might occur. Example: Just now, I made an error in adding the reference to the attendance claim. Literally a minute later, somebody else had already fixed it.

There is actually one issue right now where I would welcome your input. I'm looking for a snappy lead picture (at the very beginning, right-aligned - recommended for all Wikipedia articles) that somehow captures the spirit of science festivals - a child at an interactive experiment, an image from a typical event, something like that. If you can think of any candidate images (with the additional requirement that the picture should be in the public domain), please tell. Markus Poessel 13:20, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Article on World Science Festival, New York City

I've put in a request at WikiProject Science that somebody create an article for the upcoming World Science Festival in New York City. I'd do so myself, but since I work for the Festival, it would be a potential conflict of interest; however, I've put my proposal for that article on a subpage of my user page; I'd appreciate if somebody could use it to create the World Science Festival article. Markus Poessel (talk) 20:07, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

User:NYCscience has kindly put the article in. Thanks! Markus Poessel (talk) 00:57, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Individual Festival descriptions?

Given that an anonymous user has added a more detailed description of the Atlanta Physics Festival, should we expand the descriptions of all Festivals? Are they important enough to warrant their own subsection? Markus Poessel (talk) 20:22, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

TED

Would you consider the TED talks/conferences a kind of science festival? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.176.174.243 (talk) 03:39, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Article on USA Science and Engineering Festival, Washington, D.C.

I am new to Wikipedia and have a similar situation to Markus Poessel (above) in that I would like to create an article for the USA Science and Engineering Festival but since I am affiliated with the Festival it is a potential COI. Mirroring Markus's actions, I've written a proposal for that article in my sandbox on my user page. If someone would be willing to post this article, I would appreciate it.Outreachscientist (talk) 05:23, 9 March 2010 (UTC)