Alongside its new Education Lead Sally Latham, Wikimedia UK has also appointed its first Topics for Impact Coordinator. This blog discusses what Topics for Impact means for the Wikimedia movement in both a global and UK context.

Introduction

‘If we fail to move beyond speeches into real action, our societies will lose faith’ – Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

In November, over 56,000 individual delegates made their way to Belém, Brazil, to participate in the COP30 climate summit. Each day the issue of climate change becomes more and more pertinent to lives across the globe. The impact of our ‘real action’, or indeed lack of action, when it comes to questions of climate, will be felt for generations to come. 

This urgency is crystallised in the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals which cover a number of crucial elements of human life: from energy to the economy, oceans to land, health to hunger. In these aims, the UN lays out ‘a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future’. A commitment to these sustainable goals is integral to the Wikimedia UK 2025–30 Strategy. Under our Strategic Aim 3, we will: Increase free, verified and open access to knowledge and information about the climate crisis and other important topics, by delivering impactful projects with relevant partners, and advocating for the release of content.

With the proliferation of Large Language Models often referred to as “AI” and mis- and disinformation, keeping information on Wikipedia accessible, free and moreover, verifiable, has never been more important. In shifting focus and time to topics for impact, we will effect change that has positive and powerful repercussions for society.

What are topics for impact?

The question of what ‘topics for impact’ are, and how they relate to both our work and global society, is an important one. Looking at the Wikimedia movement’s work to ‘identify topics for impact’, we can see a real and tangible focus on ‘the different ways in which Wikimedia content can make an impact on improving people’s lives’. In looking at the social issues underpinning the UN SDGs, a picture starts to emerge of Topics for Impact as those which directly concern human wellbeing: in this context, health, human rights and climate.

Wikimedia UK and Topics for impact

Precisely defining what these topics for impact are is a curious process: on the one hand, the answers are crystallised in the UN SDGs. On the other, there is an element of reactiveness to defining a topic for impact, as the world is ever-changing, with new, pressing issues and questions emerging in unpredictable ways and at pace. At Wikimedia UK we are committed to making informed decisions about where to put our resources and expertise in open knowledge practices.

Wikimedia UK has a strong history of work which intersects with what we now term topics for impact. Since 2022, we have supported our first climate-focussed residency at the Global Systems Institute, with Wikimedian-in-Residence Tatjana Baleta. The articles edited as part of this project have gained over 190 million views. 

From 2021 to 2025, Adam Harangozó was Wikimedian-in-Residence at the National Institute for Health Research, improving access to health information on Wiki. Ongoing work at partner organisations like the IDEA Network (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity & Accessibility in Open Knowledge Network) at the University of St Andrews reflects our commitment to engaging with partners doing crucial work in areas like medical knowledge equity. 

In establishing a permanent role on the Programmes team for Topics for Impact, Wikimedia UK is further emphasising our commitment to these vital areas of research and development, enriching existing partnerships and seeking new areas of work.

Where are we looking first?

Applying large global issues to a local context can be daunting: how climate change presents itself, for example, varies hugely from country to country. For the four nations of the UK, we will be looking closely at community needs, as well as strengthening our relationship with the Wikimedia Foundation’s Wiki For Human Rights campaign. Even closer to home, our latest Mini Wiki challenge focuses on images of climate impact and the elements on day-to-day life in the UK.

Our commitment to ongoing annual drives like Wiki Loves Earth and 1lib1ref will be reinforced with topics for impact in mind, and newer initiatives such as 2025’s Mini Wiki will be utilised as tools for change in the key areas of impact: health, human rights, and climate change. Through promoting editing, upskilling volunteers and interested members of the public, and close attention to metrics of change, we will develop and deliver an impactful programme of work.

This programme will be sustained by the creation of new partnerships with like-minded organisations working in these areas. There is a reciprocity to how we work in our medium and long-term projects: in helping to transform content in a topic area, we uplift the voices of partner organisations, and in turn, they may find the way they work shifting in new and helpful directions, thanks to an increased understanding of the value of open knowledge.

A little about me

I’ve worked in the Wikimedia movement for nearly five years now, beginning my career as Wikimedian in Residence at the British Library (2021–23) and going on to work with the Connected Heritage project (2021–23), the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (2022–24) and the GLAM-E Lab (2023–24).

I currently work part-time at the University of Leeds as their Wikimedia and Open Knowledge Adviser alongside my work as Topics for Impact Coordinator at Wikimedia UK.

Get involved

If you have any questions, thoughts or ideas around topics for impact, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with programmes@wikimedia.org.uk. We are always interested to hear from potential partners, contributors and interested parties.

The post Topics for impact appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

The Heritage Lab and Wikimedia UK are pleased to announce a new collaboration in 2025, involving research fellows from across the UK GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) sector. The Heritage Lab is a digital platform focused on ‘sharing stories and resources from museums around the world, with a focus on South Asian art, history and culture’.

Funded by Wikimedia UK, The Heritage Lab and Wikimedia UK will bring together UK GLAMs with India-based collections together with emerging South Asian scholars.

We invite researchers and curators from the UK and India to apply for short fellowships to develop multimedia stories with fresh perspectives on collections, with a focus on under-represented histories. Expected outputs include short essays, digital storytelling workshops and facilitating Wikimedia contributions. Please note that any GLAMs involved should be based in the UK, while 50% of the fellows cohort will also be UK-based.

What are we looking for?

• Early stage researchers or curators based at GLAM institutions with an interest in digital storytelling, underrepresented histories and South Asian culture.
• A time commitment of around 2-4 hours a week for six months
• A willingness to undertake a maximum of three short essay output
• No prior Wiki experience is required or expected

What are we offering?

• A series of digital storytelling workshops and Wiki editing events over the course of the fellowship
• Full support and training from digital experts such as Wikimedia UK
• A payment of £300 per essay, up to three essays (minimum 1200 word after edits*) per scholar
• Fortnightly research support sessions
• Connection to a wide network of like-minded GLAM professionals throughout the UK

Selection

Applications will be reviewed by The Heritage Lab and Wikimedia UK.

Timeframe

The project is expected to run from late March to the end of August 2025

Get involved

Please complete this form to express your interest in becoming a fellow.

Requirements:

• Interested in Wikimedia UK’s mission, The Heritage Lab & its projects 
• Passionate about India’s voice in the world & believe in a transparent work ethic
• Have demonstrated experience in research and creative skills such as writing / illustration / audio-video production or other multimedia skills. 
• Comfortable working digitally (attending online meet-ups, shared documents etc).
• Proactive and comfortable working individually or within a group.

Nice to have: 

• Multilingual skills : English, Hindi and other Indian languages
• Experience in creating arts/ culture / history based learning material 
• Experience with community organising or facilitating collaborations
• Experience in hosting workshops or learning sessions for larger groups

Team

The project team is led by Medhavi Gandhi, founder of the Heritage Lab, and supported by Dr Lucy Hinnie, from Wikimedia UK. Medhavi is the founder of The Heritage Lab, working at the intersection of public engagement with cultural heritage, social development and education since 2009. She has worked with a wide range of Indian organisations as well as global partners. Lucy has experience as the Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Leeds and the British Library, a Digital Research Fellow at the GLAM-E Lab, and a Digital Skills Wikimedian for the highly successful Connected Heritage Project (2021-23).

Get in touch

If you have any questions regarding availability or requirements for this fellowship, please email programmes@wikimedia.org.uk.

Medhavi can be contacted at medhavi@theheritagelab.in while Lucy is reachable via: lucy.hinnie@wikimedia.org.uk

The post Digital Heritage in Action: The Heritage Lab, Wikimedia UK, and the future of GLAM Collaboration appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

The policy document proposes that cultural heritage organisations and funding bodies come together to pursue a critical goal: the development of an inclusive, unified, accessible, interoperable and sustainable UK digital collection. It has been developed through extensive consultation across sector organisations, funders, large collection institutions and the programme’s research teams. In total 50 organisations contributed their knowledge and expertise, of which Wikimedia UK was one.

The researchers are part of the Towards a National Collection (TaNC) programme, which is a five-year, £18.9 million UK-wide research and development programme. It’s funded through the UK Research and Innovation’s Strategic Priorities Fund and delivered by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The programme was set up to explore ways of connecting separate collections, dissolving barriers and unifying data in a digital network across the UK’s museums, galleries, libraries and archives. A key objective of the programme has been to inform the future of UK digital collection development through a series of policy recommendations aimed at decision-makers and funders.

Daria Cybulska, Director of Programmes and Evaluation at Wikimedia UK says:

“Wikimedia UK collaborates with the heritage sector in the UK to facilitate their engagement with linked open data (Wikidata especially), and so we were pleased to be able to contribute to the TaNC programme over its lifecycle. It is encouraging to see the emphasis on open data standards in the policy recommendations. It is indeed through open knowledge that we can realise the programme’s ambition of dissolving barriers between separate collections. An open approach also means that agency is given to potential users of the linked collection, fostering a democratic model of knowledge consumption and creation. We look forward to supporting the implementation of the recommendations.”

Towards a National Collection Policy Recommendations

The call to action consists of ten recommendations to build a UK digital collection. They are supported by case studies and sample training materials, plus an appendix with information on all of the research that has been grant-funded or commissioned by the Towards a National Collection programme.

1. Selection – how to select materials from which to build digital collections
2. Production – how to make the data for a UK digital collection
3. Skills – the skills we have and the skills we need for a UK digital collection
4. Reuse and rights management – how to create sharable collections data
5. Access and engagement – how to make data accessible to everyone
6. Security – how to protect our collections from harm
7. Preservation – how to ensure digital collections survive change
8. Impact – how to understand the usage of digital collections
9. Models and frameworks – how to help digital collections evolve
10. Experimentation – research, development and innovation for digital collections

English and Welsh language versions of the Unlocking the potential of digital collections – a call to action are published under an open Creative Commons licence. If you would like to order free print copies for yourself and your organisation, please contact: sophie.dietrich@hes.scot.

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The new document is one of many Open Research primers published by the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) – a consortium that promotes best practice in research. The UKRN site hosts advice on open and reproducible research across all subjects; all freely available and openly licensed. The primer was reviewed by Daniel Mietchen (Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure, FIZ Karlsruhe) who is a contributor to multiple Wikimedia projects as well as a scientific researcher.

It may surprise people how much content on Wikipedia and its sister projects is drawn directly from scholarly publications. If you read about peat in any of eight languages, you see a global map of peat distribution from a research database at the University of Leeds. It’s one of many images that have come from open-access research. If you read about ant species, some of the text has been repurposed from research papers.

Concentrating mainly on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata, the new document describes how sharing open-access research helps to open up the process of research while reaching a public audience much larger than the typical readers of a research paper. Individual charts and diagrams can be shared on Wikimedia Commons, along with the code and data tables used to create them. Text from suitable research papers can be reused in Wikipedia articles. Large databases can build mutual links with Wikidata, using it as a hub to connect with other sources of information about a topic.

There are many reasons to make the process of research as open and transparent as possible, including rigour, reproducibility, and public trust. As part of the UKRN’s work promoting transparency, its readers now have concrete suggestions of how the Wikimedia projects help this goal.

“I think this will prompt researchers in many fields to consider how their work can be visible on the most popular reference websites,” says Poulter. “And maybe give helpful next steps to those who have thought about it but are still apprehensive.” Neil Jacobs from UKRN said “We hope that this primer will encourage more researchers to work with Wikimedia in conducting research that is rigorous and transparent. It sits alongside others on data sharing, open software / code, community engagement in research, open hardware and many more.”

Wikimedia projects are community-driven and mainly work “bottom-up” with individual scholars and experts. There is also a place for working “top-down”: shaping the advice that respected organisations give to their communities. This work with UKRN is one example of work that Wikimedia UK and its community are doing with organisations in the scientific, scholarly, cultural, and volunteering sectors.

Find the primer on UKRN.

The post New guidance for researchers on Wikimedia and open research appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

Since 2022, the NIHR has been piloting the use of Wikipedia as an innovative platform to share research results. In just over a year, working with researchers, patient and public contributors and NIHR staff, we have updated and expanded 400 Wikipedia articles with findings from NIHR-funded research.

The updated Wikipedia content now includes up to 300 citations to NIHR Evidence, and 200 citations to NIHR journals, plus other references to NIHR-funded studies. Following our edits, these articles have garnered an impressive 75 million views.

The Wikipedia project is now gaining momentum across the NIHR. What started as a pilot will turn into a permanent strand of our dissemination strategy. We expect this to lead to increased evidence uptake in policy and practice, and help to make knowledge more open.

Table: Some of the articles we have edited on Wikipedia and the number of times they have been viewed since our additions

Why should researchers use Wikipedia?

Wikipedia is an online encyclopaedia that is free to use and simple to edit. Contrary to popular belief, its editing policies and army of editors ensure that it is a reliable source of health information. It is also one of the most visited health resources on the internet. In 2019, Wikipedia’s medical content had more than 2 billion page views.

Referencing NIHR research on Wikipedia makes our research more accessible. It reaches a wide audience that includes laypeople and healthcare professionals alike. Studies have suggested that 50 – 70% of doctors consult Wikipedia for healthcare information. It was also found to be one of the most used resources by medical students.

Concerns and preconceptions about the reliability of Wikipedia need to be acknowledged. Yet, in my time at the NIHR, I’ve seen these worries fade away when I explain how Wikipedia works, and its checks and balances for accuracy. Most people are pleasantly surprised at how important Wikipedia is for health information, and how user-friendly it is.

Collaborative Wikipedia editing workshops

There is an appetite for harnessing Wikipedia’s potential. Several NIHR research teams and centres are now interested in integrating Wikipedia editing into their dissemination strategy. Some include it as part of their funding application.

Our thematic editing workshops for researchers, patients and members of the public have been impactful.

Other than access to the internet, there are no technical requirements. Prior knowledge of Wikipedia editing is unnecessary. Technical aspects are taken care of by the Wikipedian so participants can focus on enriching content.

During these workshops, 10-20 participants collaborate and aim to improve the quality of a single Wikipedia page corresponding to their research area.

For example, multiple long-term conditions are an area of strategic focus for the NIHR. But the Wikipedia page on multiple long-term conditions was short and outdated. It lacked evidence from the past 10 years. Following a workshop, the article now includes detailed evidence from NIHR-funded studies. It describes how terminology has changed, the impact of multiple long-term conditions on quality of life, and other updates.

In another workshop, we collaborated with the NIHR’s Mental Health Policy Research Unit. Together, we updated the article on the remote delivery of psychiatric care, known also as telepsychiatry. This expanded article now reflects their research on the practice and impact of telepsychiatry during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Graph: Improved content draws in more readers: Increased monthly traffic of the Multiple Long Term Conditions article following our workshop

Exploring new horizons

We have built a strong foundation for Wikipedia editing at the NIHR, with new opportunities for researchers to share and refine information on vital research. Many more topics could be covered in editing workshops, and previously edited articles can be updated as new evidence is published.

Social care, patient and public involvement, health equity, and global health are areas with untapped potential for Wikipedia editing.

We have started to deliver global health Wikipedia workshops, which will help share global health research with a lay audience, reaching additional people, potentially local audiences too as articles could be translated into other languages as well.

We are exploring how to nurture the next generation of health and care professionals and researchers. We are talking to health librarians and university departments, and suggesting that Wikipedia editing could be an assignment for medical students.

Discover more about the Wikipedia project

Wikipedia offers plenty of opportunities to share research widely. We can bring together a diverse community of researchers and patients to work on sharing health and care knowledge effectively. This will help ensure that more people can access the NIHR’s research, and perhaps also transcend language barriers.

As Wikipedian-in-residence, I’m looking forward to new developments in knowledge sharing, and continued growth in access to information.

To learn more about the NIHR Wikipedia project, contact Adam Harangozo.

The post How Wikipedia can help to disseminate research: an innovative NIHR project appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

Democracies rely on informed citizens to function effectively. Over recent years, new digital technologies have fundamentally altered the creation and consumption of media content, and introduced new challenges to democratic participation. The increased volume of news, the politicisation of social media, misinformation, disinformation, and the distracting of the public through fake news, along with the rise of polarised and radicalised groups whose own ideology is reinforced by ‘filter bubbles’, all combine to create untrustworthiness, bias and misrepresentation. These issues undermine democracy and its reliance on well-informed citizens. 

Information literacy has the power to counter this. At its heart, information literacy empowers citizens to access, create, consume and critically evaluate information. It builds understanding of the ethical and political issues associated with the use of information, including privacy, data protection, freedom of information, open access/open data and intellectual property. 

In my role as the Director of Programmes at Wikimedia UK, I’ve long believed that our workshops and training sessions make a difference in empowering people – by building their information literacy skills, providing an opportunity to collaborate, and capturing their heritage. In 2021, together with Agnes Bruszik, a research colleague, we delivered a project to critically investigate how engaging with Wikimedia projects contributes to the strengthening of civil society and democratic processes in the UK.

Our main inquiry was to understand how improving information literacy skills contributes to Wikimedia UK’s vision of a more tolerant, informed and democratic society. Does our work increase participants’ information literacy, and does this in turn lead to a more engaged civil society? We reviewed the current understanding and frameworks in the intersection of literacies, civic engagement and democratic participation, to see how information literacy has been found to support civic engagement. We then explored how Wikimedia UK’s work contributes to civic disposition skills. 

Our research concludes that Wikimedia’s activities can increase citizen engagement in democratic processes through our work in information literacy by 1) Providing open and free access to accurate information, 2) Improving information literacy skills of individuals, 3) Encouraging volunteering, and 4) Providing accessible collaborative infrastructure. 

“Information literacy is one of the most important skills of the future. Without understanding how, by who and in which ways knowledge and information is created and distributed, one cannot potentially evaluate the value and credibility of that information. The formulation of opinions, values, principles, or academic and historical referencing must be based upon reliable sources and credible interpretation and presentation of facts and data. Without citizens’ awareness of information manipulation, democratic participation is thus flawed. The Wikimedia movement is in a unique position to educate and encourage individuals to become more information literate, while also promoting democratic practices such as participatory decision-making, provisioning open access to platforms and information for even the most marginalised minority groups. These practices, in turn, create the know-how for more civic engagement in general.” – Agnes Bruszik

Crucially, freedom of expression and access to reliable information through Wikimedia projects increase intercultural dialogue and decrease the social isolation of minority groups. Wikipedia serves as a platform that can assist displaced or minoritised communities to express and maintain cultural identity. Our experience shows that groups organised around a shared interest, value or cause, and equipped with digital, information and collaboration skills, are more likely to engage in civic participation in public matters relevant for them. Moreover, learning about the culture of democratic participation and processes of engagement empowers individuals, equipping them with transferable skills.

“The rise of populism has been linked to a decline in interest in public affairs and we thought that, being less politically and socially active, people may be less capable of interpreting political phenomena and understanding the complexity of the management of public affairs.” – Science Direct

We are faced with a global trend towards a shrinking civil society space. There are fewer spaces where citizens can develop and practise key civic skills such as collaboration, self-representation, and working within a context of diversity and difference of opinion. This is much needed in any context, including the UK. Civic skills are broad in character and can be developed in a variety of contexts – including opportunities online. Wikipedia has the benefit of being a well known online space, meaning it has the recognition within a big audience that could then be engaged in civic activities. We can engage with people where they already are rather than needing to bring them to a new, unknown space. 

Many participants of Wikimedia UK activities (e.g. editing events) started out as individual editors, who then decided to bring wiki projects into their communities. In a recent survey of our community leaders, we asked if individuals’ participation in Wikimedia UK activities, such as running wiki events, encouraged them to take part in other non-wiki activities e.g. community organising, campaigning, other kinds of volunteering, etc. One volunteer reports:

“Yes. In speaking to a volunteer for our charity, I became aware of the [community heritage project centring on a particular 19th century industrial action]. I created the Wikipedia page for […], a leading figure in the strike whose mentions elsewhere assured her notability, and through this spoke to the originators of [community heritage project]. I am now actively involved with the group, including as part of their education and community engagement sub-group. It’s likely that Wikipedia work will feature in this at some stage, as they were overjoyed with the […] page and very much convinced of the usefulness of more (and more accurate) Wikipedia representation.” – Community Leader response in a 2021-22 Wikimedia UK volunteer survey.

Working on Wikimedia UK projects can facilitate this spirit of working towards a common good, aka free knowledge for all. It also enables cooperation with others and activism, which in the long run encourages an empowered civil society. This we believe can go a long way towards realising Wikimedia UK’s vision of a more informed, democratic and equitable society.

Explore the report

• Full report
• Summary of the report 
• Diagram – Mapping the role of Wikimedia in Civic Part
• Wikimania 2022 presentation of the findings
• Strengthening Civil Society: Wikimedia and Democracy – online session with an overview of the research and a curated Q&A into how engagement online can strengthen civic engagement offline.

The post From editing articles to civic power – Wikimedia and Democracy appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

If you were asked to name artworks or artists, how many would be non-Western? You might visit the free encyclopedia Wikipedia to support your search; after all 1.7 billion visitors per month do just this. However, new research highlights that even with Wikipedia’s approach –  ensuring anyone can edit and add content – there is still a bias towards Western artworks and artists. 

Artist and scholar Waqas Ahmed and veteran Wikipedian Dr. Martin Poulter were well-placed to investigate Wikipedia’s perspective on the visual arts. For example, they observed with the English language version of Wikipedia, “its ‘List of sculptors’ is 99% Western, ‘List of painters by nationality’ is around 75% European and its ‘List of contemporary visual artists’ is 80% European”. They probed whether this was just a problem with those articles, or just with the English language Wikipedia. “There appears to be a systemic cultural bias against non-Western visual art and artists across all Wikipedia platforms and in various languages”, Ahmed says. “We hope that this research will remind people that the Western artistic canon is but one of many worldwide – each deserving respect and appreciation on its own terms.” 

With a commitment to identifying and overcoming barriers to diversity online, Wikimedia UK, the national charity for the Wikimedia open knowledge movement, funded the research. Director of Programmes and Evaluation Daria Cybulska says “The vision of the Wikimedia movement has always been ‘a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.’ In recent years, we began more critically examining what that means, and what are the repercussions of existing biases and gaps in content on Wikipedia. Some biases on Wikipedia are better known than others – and this research shines a new light on cultural biases, and what can be done about them.”

The researchers measured the coverage of visual arts across the hundreds of different language versions of Wikipedia. They compared 100 artists from the Western canon to 100 significant artists from other cultures. Poulter pointed out that “Even equal coverage of the Western artists and the artists from all of the rest of the world would still be a pro-Western bias, because Europe is just one sixth of the world.” The research found that on average Wikipedia coverage was seven times greater for artists in the Western canon than for their non-Western counterparts.

One example compared the coverage of The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican and the Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Blue Mosque) in Istanbul. Both places of worship receive approximately 5 million visitors each per year, and have enormous cultural and artistic importance. Whilst both Michelangelo and Syed Kasim Gubari are considered geniuses within their respective cultures, Michelangelo’s Wikipedia articles total over 440 times greater length than Gubari and the Blue Mosque Ceiling does not have a single entry across the Wikimedia projects.

Past research has identified geographical biases and a gender gap on Wikipedia, where a small (but growing) minority of biographies are about women. This new research demonstrates and measures a specifically cultural bias. Ahmed and Poulter suggest we can all play our part through extending the coverage of art and artists outside the Western canon. For individual wiki contributors, this can involve creating, translating, or extending articles. Cultural institutions can help by sharing their knowledge and images.

As the research states “societal biases have a long and well-documented history, rooted in systems of hegemony and oppression like imperialism.” These biases inevitably shape narratives online and are reinforced through echo chambers. The first step to creating an online world which truly reflects global cultures and histories is the awareness that we are far from there – yet.

The research paper is currently undergoing peer review but can be freely accessed as a pre-print through preprints.org.

The post Non-Western Art and Artists Heavily Under-Represented on Wikipedia appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

By Magnus Manske, MediaWiki developer and longtime Wikimedian

The new year is just over two weeks old, but the WikiVerse already celebrated a joyous event: Wikipedia’s 18th birthday! 50 million seems to be the number of the day – 50M articles across Wikipedia editions, 50M files on Commons, 50M items on Wikidata. But all this free content does not appear in a few big strokes, it comes from millions of uploads and edits. Your work, our work, build this vast repository of knowledge, one small action at a time. I would like to use this opportunity to share with you a few of those actions I have been involved with in these first few days of the year.

My hope is to inspire you to look at new areas of our project, to take a leap and follow an interesting tangent, but above all, to remember that every edit, every cited reference, every vandalism revert adds to the Sum Of All Knowledge, and that it will be valuable to someone, some day, some place.

Images

Sometimes, knowledge is already present in our project, it is just cleverly hidden, and begs to be released. For example, Wikidata has many items about people, some of them with an image. Wikidata also has items about paintings, and some of these have an image as well, but they might not have a “depicts” statement.

But if the image of the painting is the same used for a person, it is likely (though not guaranteed!) that the person depicted in the painting is that person. A simple SPARQL query shows us about a thousand of such item pairs. And even if the image is not of the person (for example, sometimes a painting by a painter sneaks into the item as a painting of the painter), it can be an opportunity to remove a wrong image from the item about the person.

Similarly, over 1700 Wikidata items use an image of a church, but another “church item” uses it as well, often revealing either a wrong image use, or a duplicate item.

User:Christoph_Braun has used my Flickr2Commons tool to upload over a thousand historical images released under a free license by the Linz am Rhein city archive to Commons. You can help put these pictures to good use, by finding Wikidata items (and by extension, often Wikipedia pages) without an image, by coordinates or by category. If you want to add free images to Wikidata items, but don’t want to go hunting for them, the FileCandidates tool has hundreds of thousands of prepared possible image-to-item matches waiting for you. And if you would like to add more “depicts” statements to items, topicMatcher is there for you (also offering “main subject” and “named after”).

Mix’n’Match

Mix’n’Match is one of my more popular tools, especially with the authority control data fans. It has passed 50 million entries recently, most of which are waiting to be matched to a Wikidata item. To cut down on the number of entries that need the “human touch” to be matched, I have various helper scripts running in the background to automatically match entries to items, when it is reasonable safe to do so.

One of these helper scripts uses the name, birth, and death year for biographical entries to find a match on Wikidata. Since entries are imported from many different sources, getting metadata (such as birth/death dates) for an entry is not standardized. I had already written bespoke code to extract such dates from the entry descriptions for several catalogs, but this year I sat down and systematically checked all ~2000 catalogs for date information in their entries, and to extract them where possible. The fact that one finds dates ranging from plain years, over ISO format, to free-text French, requires individual code for every single catalog with dates. This is now complete, as of a few days ago. Initial runs led to over ten thousand new matches with Wikidata. Of course, all those matches are turned into Wikidata statements as well, where the catalog has an associated property.

In a similar fashion, I have code to extract third-party identifiers (e.g. VIAF) from descriptions or web pages of entries. These can then be used to match entries to items, or to add those identifiers as statements to an already matched item. Matching on such identifiers requires them to be present in Wikidata, so adding such statements on Wikidata proper directly helps Mix’n’Match (and everyone, really). If you want to give it a try, this list has over 1000 items that likely have a GND (and probably VIAF) identifier, but are missing from Wikidata.

Some catalogs are more easy to match to Wikidata than others. Entries with ambiguous names and no description are hard. Biographical entries with a description, birth, and death date are much better. Taxonomic entries with Latin species names are easiest, as we have a Wikidata property for those, and plenty of species to match to. Usually, automated matching can get >90% for these. However, this new catalog about fossil plants has less than 3% matches. A new area to be imported and curated on Wikidata!

Matching Mix’n’Match entries to items helps Wikidata only if there is a property associated with the Mix’n’Match catalog. Likewise, it is helpful to link from a property to the associated Mix’n’Match catalog(s). I have created a new status page that shows missing links and inconsistencies. This complements my reports on individual catalogs. All of these reports are updated regularly.

This and that

Most Wikipedia articles have an associated Wikidata item. However, newly created articles are often not immediately linked to Wikidata, via a new or an existing item. These “Wikidata-orphaned” articles can be found “by wiki”, for example English Wikipedia. It is a constant battle to prune that list manually, even with a game for that purpose. The number of such orphaned articles shows a curious pattern of “mass-matching” and slow build-up. Some investigation shows that a Wikidata user regularly creates new items for all orphaned  articles, across many wikis. While this links the articles to Wikidata, it potentially creates a lot of duplicate items. Worse, since these items are blank (apart from the site link to the article, and a title), automated duplication detection is hard.

To get a handle of the issue, I found all blank items created by that user in that fashion.

That list amounts to over 745K (yes, 3/4 of a million) blank items. For convenience, I have created a PagePile for them. Please do note that this is a “snapshot”, so some of these items will receive statements, or be merged with other items, over time.

Structured Data is coming to Commons!

For starters, there are multi-lingual file descriptions, but statements should follow during the course of this year. Since this is using Wikibase (the same technology underlying Wikidata), it will use (more-or-less) the same API. I have now prepared QuickStatements to run on Commons, however, the API on Commons is not quite ready yet. Once the API is functional, you should be able to edit Commons MediaInfo data via QuickStatements, just as you can edit Wikidata items now.

I had a few reports on PetScan dying for certain queries. It turns out that using a huge category tree (say, >30K sub-categories) will cause the MySQL server to shrug, taking PetScan with it. I have re-written some of the PetScan code to run several smaller chunks of such a query instead. It seems to work well, but please report any strange results to me.

I hope this little tour has given you some ideas or motivation for work on our project. Happy new year everyone, and may your edits not be reverted!

Follow Magnus on Twitter.

The post New Year Wikimedia ideas from Magnus Manske appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

By Jason Evans, National Wikimedian at the National Library of Wales

Imagine a world in which anyone could use an open citation database to support free knowledge, with rich information about every citable source.

Any Wikipedian or Wikipedia advocate will tell you that one of the great strengths of Wikipedia is its citations. In fact, a Wikipedia article is only as strong as its citations. They provide evidence for the statements made in an article but they also provide a gateway to reliable secondary sources for deeper learning.

In recent years Wikipedia has been overtaken as the fastest growing Wikimedia project by Wikidata – a linked open database of facts – or the Wikipedia of data, if you like. Wikidata has grown at a tremendous rate, as people and institutions use it as a hub for their data, joining up the world’s open data in an interconnected web. Quite organically, it began to act as a platform for sharing bibliographic and citation data, to the point that 40% of Wikidata’s 60 million items now describe academic papers and articles.

Watch a video about Wikicite from the 2017 Wikidata convention in Berlin

The emergence of Wikidata has lead to the growth of the WikiCite movement which aims, broadly speaking, to harness the power of structured data to create open structured data for all citations used in Wikipedia.

This was my first WikiCite conference, and what became clear to me from day one was that this is very much a project still exploring its scope and trying to understand its place in the Wikimedia family of projects. But already there is a growing community of librarians, Wikimedians and data scientists keen to explore the potentials of the overarching concept.

Potential benefits of WikiCite are varied and wide reaching, and they serve separate communities in different ways. For example, since Wikidata items can be labelled and described in 100s of languages, any structured citations on Wikipedia become multilingual, which has clear benefits for smaller language communities. And structured citations would make it much easier for us to analyze the diversity and quality of citations being used in Wikipedia projects. It would allow us to map works which cite other works, or pick out retracted papers, making it easier to manage the relevance and quality of citations across multiple languages.

Approximately 1% of Wikipedia users click on a citation when they read a Wikipedia article, and this rises to 30% or more for more academic topics such as mathematics and engineering. And whilst these might seem like low numbers, 1% is still around 76 million clicks a month. So structured citations, in a standardised format that links to deeper data about a work (hopefully facilitating access to a digital copy of the work or providing details of physical holdings), will certainly add value to the current system for citations which are essentially comprised of strings of textual information.

Implementing this kind of fundamental change to Wikipedia, across multiple language editions presents huge technical and social challenges in itself, and as such it has been proposed that any conversion to structured citations should start small, on smaller Wikidata-friendly language versions of Wikipedia, before tackling English Wikipedia, with its nearly 6 million articles.

However the WikiCite vision is even bigger and more ambitious.

Imagine Wikidata items for every citation on Wikipedia, and then consider the added value of a massive centralised, or ‘federated’ bibliographic commons, where individuals, institutions and organisations can give access to bibliographic corpora, ranging from collections of niche scientific papers to a country’s entire publishing output – a library catalogue for the sum of all human knowledge. That may sound implausible, but Wikipedia didn’t become the 5th largest website in the world by dreaming small.

As you can imagine, this larger ambition has a few potential issues, which is why it is currently referred to as ‘the moonshot option’. There are questions around the technical ability to host, manage and maintain all this data in a standardised and centralised way. And if you decentralise the data to multiple instances of Wikibase (the platform which powers Wikidata), then how do you ensure that all these databases retain the semantic structure required for consistent and seamless communication between instances?

[pdf-embedder url=”https://dev.wikimedia.org.uk//wp-content/uploads/2018/12/WikiCite_2018_-_WikiCite__gender_diversity_visibility.pdf” title=”WikiCite_2018_-_WikiCite_&_gender_diversity_visibility”]

Wikicite presentation on gender diversity by Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight – Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0

Another important question which comes out of this conference is: how do we ensure that any development is inclusive of other languages and cultures? Done properly this initiative should make it possible to have a greater diversity in sources on our Wikipedia. For years, the use of Western sources to inform readers about non-western concepts, languages and societies has been bugbear for Wikipedia.

In Wales, we have already embarked on a project to share the ‘Sum of all Welsh Literature’ via Wikidata, in a bid to encourage the use of Welsh publications to cite articles about Wales, its people and culture. And we heard of similar projects getting under way in other parts of the world. In Sweden, for example, the local Wikimedia chapter are working with the National Library to openly share data for around 700,000 works from the Swedish Bibliography.

Many challenges lie ahead, but it’s clear from the diversity of people and projects at this conference, that Wikicite is very much already happening.

To find out more about the project, check out the Wikicite Wiki page

The post WikiCite conference 2018 appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

By Ruth Jenkins, Academic Support Librarian at the University of Edinburgh.

For some time, Wikipedia has been shown to be a resource to engage with, rather than avoid. Wikipedia is heavily used for medical information by students and health professionals – and the fact that it is openly available is crucial for people finding health information, particularly in developing countries or in health crises. Good quality Wikipedia articles are an important contribution to the body of openly available information – particularly relevant for improving health information literacy. In fact, some argue that updating Wikipedia should be part of every doctor’s work, contributing to the dissemination of scientific knowledge.

With that in mind, Academic Support Librarians for Medicine Marshall Dozier, Ruth Jenkins and Donna Watson recently co-presented a workshop on How to run a Wikipedia editathon, at the European Association for Health Information and Libraries (EAHIL) Conference in Cardiff in July. Ewan McAndrew, our Wikimedian in Residence here at the University of Edinburgh, was instrumental in the planning and structuring of the workshop, giving us lots of advice and help. On the day, we were joined by Jason Evans, Wikimedian in Residence at the National Library of Wales, who spoke about his role at NLW and the Wikimedia community and helped support participants during editing.

We wanted our workshop to give participants experience of editing Wikipedia and build their confidence using Wikipedia as part of the learning experience for students and others. Our workshop was a kind of train-the-trainer editathon. An editathon is an event to bring people together at a scheduled time to create entries or edit Wikipedia on a specific topic, and they are valuable opportunities for collaborating with subject experts, and to involve students and the public.

Where a typical editathon would be a half-day event, we only had 90 minutes. As such, our workshop was themed around a “micro-editathon” – micro in scale, timing and tasks. We focused on giving participants insights into running an editathon, offered hands-on experience, and small-scale edits such as adding images and missing citations to articles.

We also presented on the Wikipedia assignment in the Reproductive Biology Honours programme here at Edinburgh, including a clip from this video of a student’s reflections on the assignment, which sparked discussion from the attendees. Jason Evans’ talk about Wikimedia UK and Wikiproject Medicine, contextualised the participants’ edits within the wider Wikimedia community.

We are waiting on feedback from the event, but anecdotally, the main response was a wish for a longer workshop, with more time to get to know Wikipedia better! There was lots of discussion about take-home ideas, and we hope they are inspired to deliver editathon events in their own organisations and countries. We also spotted that some of our participants continued to make edits on Wikipedia in the following weeks, which is a great sign.

If you want to know more, you can visit the event website which roughly follows the structure of our workshop and includes plenty of further resources: https://thinking.is.ed.ac.uk/eahil-editathon/

Further information.

• Watch Wikipedia and Information Literacy (6 mins) – Ruth Jenkins discusses the Reproductive Biology Hons. Wikipedia assignment.

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