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[[File:Friend's Newsletter winter 2023.png|alt=Text reading: Wikimedia UK, winter 2023 newsletter, thank you for your support this year on a green, red, and orange background featuring flora and fauna illustrations from Wikimedia Commons|center|frame|Collage of images from Wikimedia Commons, filenames in the description of this page - [[:File:Giving Tuesday 2023.png]]]]
<nowiki>[[ Category:Friends' Newsletter ]]</nowiki>


== Welcome to Friends' Newsletter, 2023/Issue 01 ==
== Welcome to the winter 2024 newsletter ==
Welcome to Wikimedia UK’s Spring newsletter. This always feels to me like a time for hope and optimism - particularly living in a rural area, where I think the changing seasons are felt more keenly than in a city. However, there is still much to be concerned about within our society, with the UK recently downgraded to ‘obstructed’ in the Civic Freedoms Index, and the Online Safety Bill representing a real threat to freedom of expression. Now more than ever, we must work to protect the concept of open knowledge for all. You can find out how Wikimedia UK and our partners - including individual contributors, community leaders and organisations - have acted on this commitment in our most recent Strategic Report. Within this newsletter, you can read about some of the many different projects and partnerships that Wikimedia UK is currently involved with. These activities are focused on our three strategic themes of knowledge equity, information literacy and climate and underpinned by a commitment to inclusion, community and accessibility.
Season's Greetings and welcome to the last newsletter of 2024! As I'm wrapped up in the festivities of the season I'm once again impressed by the incredible portfolio of work from our volunteers and staff this year.


== Staff Changes at Wikimedia UK ==
In September we moved into our new office at the British Library. The vibrant environment of the Library has already fostered our staff's creativity and innovation, while being a strategic location to enable better connection with partners, volunteers, and the public.
There have been a number of changes to the staff team at Wikimedia UK in the last few months. Dr Richard Nevell and Dr Sara Thomas have both been promoted to two newly created Programme Manager roles. Richard now has particular responsibility for England and major projects, while Sara is leading on the other UK nations and volunteer development. Meanwhile our Director of Programmes and Evaluation, Daria Cybulska, has been seconded to the Sheila McKechnie Foundation on a part time basis.


Our longstanding Director of Finance and Operations, Davina Johnson, retired at the start of the year. We wish her all the best in this next chapter of her life. To replace Davina, we have recruited a new Head of Finance and Operations, Sharon Mitcheson, who joined the team in January.  
Earlier in the autumn we were delighted to welcome two new trustees to our board, following the election at our 2024 AGM. Andrew Russell brings substantial experience in public affairs while Monica Westin is a keen Wikimedian with a professional background in knowledge information.  


== Online Safety Bill ==
Congratulations to Fran Allfrey, Wikimedia UK’s Wikimedian of the Year for 2024, along with GLAM-E Lab who received the Partnership of the Year award, and Perigrinate Avellana, our Up and Coming Wikimedian of the Year. You can read more about the awards and the nominees [[UK Wikimedian of the Year 2024|here]].  
As readers may be aware, the long heralded Online Safety Bill - which started life as the White Paper on Online Harms, published in April 2019 - is now making its way through Parliament. The Bill will establish a new regulatory framework for online services, with Ofcom becoming the new regulator - with the power to levy fines and even criminal sanctions against non-compliant providers. Both Wikimedia UK and the Wikimedia Foundation have highlighted concerns about the Bill for the past four years, urging the government and Ofcom to consider the implications for small, user moderated and/or public benefit websites. However as it currently stands, the requirements of the Bill in terms of content moderation, age gating and user verification are incompatible with Wikipedia’s model. We are therefore proposing a series of amendments to the Bill to be debated in the House of Lords after Easter, in the hope that changes can be made to protect our movement and safeguard open knowledge. If you are interested in supporting our advocacy efforts regarding the Online Safety Bill, please email [[Mailto:lucy.crompton-reid@wikimedia.org.uk|lucy.crompton-reid@wikimedia.org.uk]].  


== Minority and minoritized languages ==
Finally, you may have seen our ''[https://wikimedia.org.uk/home/education/ Education through Wikimedia]'' campaign to boost our work in secondary schools. Education is at the heart of our work as the national charity for open knowledge, and we believe that equipping the next generation with essential information literacy and digital skills is crucial for their success in an increasingly complex digital world. This is why we are launching a dedicated campaign aimed at secondary school students, focusing on developing these fundamental abilities.
[[File:Community Celebration 2024.png|thumb|Wikimedia UK community celebration]]


=== Doubling the number of articles on Welsh Wici ===
== Community Celebration 2024 ==
Wikimedia UK recently helped the editors on the Welsh language Wikipedia to more than double the number of articles! This project was led by our Wales Manager Robin Owain. In November, 136,061 articles suddenly became a massive 277,367 - not bad for a language with only 700,000 speakers. In the list of languages per number of speakers, Wales is now 18th out of around 334. Cornish, by the way, is 6th.
In November we hosted our 2024 Community Celebration. It was a chance for our community to gather online, share and celebrate the work that’s taken place over the last year and recognise that work through the UK Wikimedian of the Year awards and celebrate the winners of the Wiki Loves Earth competition.


All the new articles are about films - films from all over the world. To do this, a very large database was created by downloading information from Wikidata and open film databases. This was then passed through the Auto Wiki Browser, a semi-automated tool which helped publish the new articles on cy-wiki. The publishing was done by volunteers, and the creation of around 5,000 new categories in the last few months crowned the project.
It was heartening seeing so many of our community at the celebration. There were around 40 community members, attending from all over the UK. With the event being online in the midst of Storm Bert raging, it meant that people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend were able to do so.


If no information existed on Wikidata, then a special code was left in the body of the article, which, as soon as the info is added on WD then full sentences will appear in the article. This is disallowed on the English WP, but is enabled on all six Celtic languages. Small is beautiful! For example, the population of Cardiff is a short, simple code eg <nowiki>{{pop}}</nowiki> which automatically will bring into the article the most recent population of all communities, parishes, towns etc. With films, if you add a recently given award to the director, filmstar or the film itself onto Wikidata, then it will automatically appear within the Welsh article. Perhaps one day, all wikis will follow suit!
We had a series of short talks which can be watched in this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hf31R8QPKQ&list=PL66MRMNlLyR694Vod7X2MWHCZhb-WSG-m&index=1 playlist].


=== Cornish place-names ===
Jason Evans, Open Data Manager and National Wikimedian at the National Library of Wales told us about AI, Placenames and Time Machine experiments at the National Library of Wales.  
Cornish language charity Akademi Kernewek and Cornwall Council asked Robin Owain (our Wales Manager) to bring their database of standardised place-names onto the Wikimedia projects. The process began with adding the place-names on Wikidata, and a new property was created for that purpose. More here.


By now, 3,624 place-names have been matched, which is around a half of the whole database. Two of our volunteers, Simon Cobb and Davyth Fear have been part of the work. Davyth, by the way, recently wrote his 1,000th wikipedia article in Kernewek; he is also Chair of the Celtic Editors Group. Wikimedia UK has been supporting the Cornish language, for some time now: indeed, some of you will remember our Celtic Knot Conference in Penryn (or maybe we should use the Cornish standardised spelling: ‘Pennrynn’), Cornwall, back in 2019. If you would like to help with unmatched place-names, please contact Robin Owain.
Dr Kirsty Ross from the University of St Andrews, who is also one of the co-founders of the IDEA network told us about how Scottish Brick History (SBH), Wikimedia UK, and researchers from the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews collaborated to get a unique dataset about Scotland’s brickworks onto Wikidata, and built web visualisations to showcase the work.


=== Scots wiki writing drive ===
Lucy Moore, a Wikimedian based in Leeds, and who won UK Wikimedian of the year 2022 told us about her Wiki Year!
2023 has seen two Writing Drives take place over at Scots wiki (in January and March), both focusing on stub articles which require language improvement. Using PetScan, we shared a list of these articles with the community, and editing took place throughout the week. Other tasks involved fixing [citation needed] tags, inputting citations generally, and other such tasks which could be taken on by those less confident in their written Scots.


== Community support ==
Nick Sheppard, Open Research Adviser based at the University of Leeds Libraries told us about his journey from his first tentative edit in 2017 (flagged as spam) to becoming a committed advocate for Wikimedia in Universities.


=== Train the Trainer ===
Jonathan Deamer from Liverpool, who describes himself as a Wikimedia hobbyist, told us about attending his first Wikimania in Katowice in Poland this year. He shared with us his highlights from the event and how these have had a tangible impact on his daily editing.
We organised an online trainer catch-up in February. 14 trainers attended the call out of 53 active trainers. We talked about trainer activities in 2022, plans for 2023, and ideas and challenges ahead. We conducted a poll to find out about the training needs of our volunteer trainers. Half of the participants declared interest in training on how to run hybrid events. The second most popular training theme was anti-oppression. We are currently researching and planning how to deliver these two trainings within this year. Our next trainer catch-up will take place in May.


=== Volunteer Supporters Network ===
Joanne Forster-Martin, a student at the University of Oxford, and who we met at our recent Train the Trainer weekend told us about the Wiki Women in Red project to uncover the hidden female figures of Jesus College, Oxford.  
Wikimedia UK has partnered with Wikimedia Argentina in a funding application to take on the running of the Wikimedia Volunteer Supporters Network for the next year. The programme of work plans to build on a successful track record of skillshare workshops, networking, peer learning, and annual meeting, bringing together those in the movement who are particularly focused on supporting volunteers.


== Northern Ireland ==
Adam Harangzo, Wikipedian in Residence at the National Institute for Health and Care Research talked to us about his experience of working with researchers in an impactful way where they contribute to Wikipedia without directly editing it.
[[File:View of the Kings Library, British Library.jpg|thumb|View of the Kings Library, British Library, by Mike Peel]]


=== Women’s History Month at Queen’s University Belfast ===
== Wikimedia UK moves into new offices at the British Library ==
On International Women's Day, Wikimedia UK partnered with Wikimedia Ireland to support an editathon with Queen's University Belfast, under the Women in Red banner. Focusing on women in science, we're hopeful that this was the first of more events run by QUB, and also that with the appointment of a Programme Manager at Wikimedia UK whose remit includes Northern Ireland, that we will have additional capacity to be able to support such events.
Wikimedia UK is excited to announce our relocation to new offices at the prestigious British Library. The new office space will provide a vibrant environment that fosters creativity and innovation, allowing our team to work flexibly and collaboratively with a wealth of resources and opportunities available at one of the world’s largest libraries. This strategic location will enable us to better connect with partners, volunteers, and the public. Staff will continue to work remotely and occasionally come into the office, ensuring we adapt to the evolving needs of our team and the communities we serve.


== Scotland ==
Wikimedia UK Chief Executive Lucy Crompton-Reid, says: ''“We are looking forward to our new office space within the British Library after a year of being fully remote.”'' As the national charity for the global Wikimedia open knowledge movement, there are lots of areas of shared interest with the Library. Director of Science and Innovation, Maja Maricevic, adds ''“We are delighted to welcome Wikimedia UK. Over years we have regularly collaborated with Wikimedia UK and hosted Wikimedians-in-Residence, so are delighted with an opportunity with an even closer proximity to an organisation that we have the existing close links with and share the common vision to open access to knowledge.”''


=== Inverclyde Community Development Trust ===
== New trustees at the Wikimedia UK AGM ==
Programme Manager Dr Sara Thomas (formerly Scotland Programme Coordinator) has been working with the Inverclyde Community Development Trust on a programme of Wikipedia training with volunteer groups in the Inverclyde area of the West of Scotland.  Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, this digital heritage skills project empowers local people to research the history and heritage of their area, and improve its coverage on-wiki.
Following a successful AGM we’re very pleased to share that '''Andrew Russell''' and '''Monica Westin''' have joined Wikimedia UK's board of trustees. We’re also delighted that '''Caroline Ball''' was re-elected for a second three year term. You can read their candidate statements [https://eu-west-1.protection.sophos.com/?d=wikimedia.org.uk&u=aHR0cHM6Ly93aWtpbWVkaWEub3JnLnVrL3dpa2kvMjAyNF9Bbm51YWxfR2VuZXJhbF9NZWV0aW5nL0NhbmRpZGF0ZV9TdGF0ZW1lbnRz&i=NjVhZmE0ZjY3MDExZmY1Y2Q3NDE3Yjc3&t=elRCdDZpbjBKZERlRXJtcmdSNEdYais5SDVWTWluOE9HV0pXV3lyYndMTT0=&h=2661eaa127054042af9ffe8ba157c4b0&s=AVNPUEhUT0NFTkNSWVBUSVZaFAaacHBa1XXlgRscq_crzoGlUi68xQtfbYwMm-_cdbNaheb163x6NaWPPdLeY2s here] if you’d like to find out more about them.


=== University of Edinburgh ===
On Saturday we also said thank you, but hopefully not goodbye, to outgoing trustees '''Julian Manieson''' and '''Rod Ward'''.
The Women in Red editathons continue with the February event including a participant from the Society of Experimental Biologists creating an article about Beatrice Grant n. Campbell (1761-1845) who was a Scottish author and teacher from Kilmartin in the early nineteenth century.


The Wikidata Map of Accused Witches has a new intern to quality assure the data. Developer Richard Lawson has been asked to make improvements in line with suggestions but the student intern, Claire Panella, will work part-time to support the team in terms of quality assuring the data and making sure the data and visualisations are consistent and working as expected. Claire has been inducted and started with comparing the gender and names of 3,217 accused witches in the Survey database with the gender and names for the accused witches in Wikidata using RStudio to compare the information in the two databases.
Many thanks to all those who attended the AGM, or who submitted a proxy vote.
[[File:Brixton Library Black History Month editathon presentation.jpg|alt=A photograph of Stuart Prior delivering a presentation to a room of volunteer editors at Brixton Library|thumb|Programme Coordinator, Stuart Prior, delivering Wiki editing training at the Brixton Library Black History Month meetup]]


== University engagement with Wiki projects ==
== Brixton Library Black History Month editathon ==
'''University of Kent MA History''' module is running two training workshops for MA students, with volunteers supporting activities in november. We organised volunteer support, focused on in-person training with some advice over email, especially around one student’s editing on the Arabic-language Wikipedia.  
Brixton Library’s monthly Wikipedia meetups show participants how to contribute to the encyclopaedia. For the October meetup, the event focused on learning about and contributing to the recording of Black history. We wrote about and enhanced articles about Black people, history and society. Participants used the session to explore Brixton Library’s Black Interest book collections, the library service’s online subscriptions to packages like the British Newspaper Archive and Who’s Who and much more. We also looked at Wikimedia Commons and how you can use photographs and images.


At '''SOAS''', we offered course support for the course leader for a module on the Politics of Resistance.
== 100 Days 100 Edits for climate (GSI) ==
The University of Exeter’s resident for climate and the environment, Tatjana Baleta, recruited 31 researchers from 11 different institutions to cumulatively propose 100 edits to 35 articles over 100 days. As of the 10th of November 2024, these articles have been viewed over ~662,000 times.


'''Anglia Ruskin University journalism course''' - We’re supporting a course leader with a group of second year journalism students. The editing element took place in March, with two lots of two sessions: introductory sessions on 7th and 9th March and feedback sessions on 2st1 and 23rd March. The students will be split into four groups, so there are four sessions to deliver for the cohort.
''"Through this 100-day campaign, I upped my normal Wikipedia editing, highlighted how unprecedented CO₂ levels are over millions of years, and dispelled two common myths about global warming: that humans are only "mainly" responsible, and that further warming stops when emissions stabilize, rather than when they reach net zero.”''


'''Canterbury Christ Church University digital humanities module''' - Supporting a course leader with a group of second year history students. This year Dr. Catriona Cooper took over a module, ‘Humanities in a Digital World’, which involves an editathon. There are two classes, totalling 30 students. Two how-to-edit sessions were delivered on 13th February to a group of students in digital humanities.
– Dr Femke Njisse, University of Exeter (edited Grid storage and Climate change)


At the '''University of East Anglia''' we’re supporting a course leader with a group of archaeology students: we will run an introduction to Wikipedia editing in April.  
''“Promoting widespread scientific literacy is a key issue in addressing anthropogenic climate change, environmental degradation and injustice. Platforms like Wikipedia provide an excellent opportunity to disseminate scientific information to an extended audience, where this information is otherwise often only accessible by academics in the global north. I hope that my contribution to the campaign can help bring greater clarity to a topic (i.e. biochar) that is often discussed in the context of climate change mitigation.”''


== Connected Heritage ==
– Dr Oscar Kennedy-Blundell, University of Exeter (edited Biochar)
We’re pleased to share that we have been awarded further funding by the National Lottery Heritage Fund to extend our Connected Heritage project, enabling us to reach new organisations and offer further residencies at cultural heritage organisations.
[[File:The Devils Pulpit.tif|thumb|The Devils Pulpit in Scotland, by Gaverlaa, This image won the 2<sup>nd</sup> prize in the national contest of '''Scotland''' in '''[[commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2024|Wiki Loves Earth 2024]]''']]


As part of Connected Heritage recently started a mini Wikimedian in Residence project with the '''Royal Albert Memorial Museum'''. Lucy Hinnie is the resident, working with Francesca Farmer (based at RAMM) and Andrea Wallace (based at Exeter University The intention is to help RAMM share content and use the experience to advocate for other GLAMs in South West England to engage with Wikimedia projects, tying into the GLAM-E Lab initiative led by Professor Wallace.
== Wiki Loves Earth winners ==
Wiki Loves Earth is an annual photography competition themed around the natural world. This year Ireland, Scotland and Wales took part in the competition. Over 5000 photos were submitted of nature from across these three countries, helping to illustrate Wikimedia with the flora and fauna that is so at risk from climate change and human development. The winners have now been announced, see them for [[commons:Commons:Wiki_Loves_Earth_2024_in_Scotland/Winners|Scotland]], [[commons:Commons:Wiki_Loves_Earth_2024/Winners#Wales|Wales]], and [https://wikimedia.ie/2024/09/13/announcing-the-winners-of-wiki-loves-earth-2024/ Ireland.] The natural world changes from season to season, but climate change poses a threat to our environment and its durability. Extreme temperatures, drought, or rainfall all disturb the balance that has cultivated these environments and biodiversity. The photos submitted to the competition capture the state of our natural world at a point in time, and remind us what we stand to lose.


'''The Mixed Museum''' residency continues, led by Leah Emary. The project is expected to reach a conclusion in March after the museum hosts a pair of student interns over a four-week period. Leah has produced excellent volunteer resources, guiding people through editing Wikipedia and helping them direct their efforts in a way useful to the Mixed Museum. This is a model which could usefully be reproduced elsewhere.
== Climate Change & Health Wikipedia Workshop ==
In November two of our Wikimedians in Residence held joint workshops between the University of Exeter and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). Tatjana Baleta is the resident for climate at the GSI hub at Exeter University, and the health effects of climate change overlap significantly with Adam Harangozo’s residency on medical research at the NIHR.


During March we also supported microinterns at the '''Manar Al-Athar Archive''', building on a similar micro internship last summer.
Wikipedia is often the first and only place where most people go for health information. What readers find there matters. Contributing to Wikipedia offers a great opportunity to use an effective platform to mobilise evidence-based information, research and expert knowledge in an accessible way for a wider audience all around the world.


The Connected Heritage team led a successful pair of workshops for the '''Scottish Jewish Heritage Centre''', with a good turnout for the introductory and follow up sessions. They were an enthusiastic audience of volunteers and staff and prepared several pages which are being shepherded through Wikipedia’s notability policies by the Connected Heritage team.
Researchers with expertise in climate change and health were invited to attend one of the three workshops in November. The workshops drafted an article – titled Climate change and health in the UK – on this important topic at the intersection of the climate crisis and health research.


As well as an '''LGBTQIA+ wikithon''' in February, in March we had a workshop with '''Queer Britain''' and the '''Heritage Trust Network''' in March, at which the teams were able to start queering the National Trust wiki pages by referencing NT books and putting ‘Prejudice and Pride’ research into the public domain.
== Wiki Loves Monuments 2024 ==
Over 5000 photos of monuments, architecture and protected buildings were submitted to the 2024 Wiki Loves Monuments from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Wiki Loves Monuments is best known for being the world’s largest photo contest. It highlights humanity’s cultural heritage through the buildings, structures, and other assets that have gained importance due to their artistic, historic, political, technical, or architectural significance. You can see the entries for [[commons:Category:Images_from_Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2024_in_Scotland|Scotland]], [[commons:Category:Images_from_Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2024_in_Wales|Wales]] and [[commons:Category:Images_from_Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2024_in_Northern_Ireland|Northern Ireland]].
[[File:The discovery of witches, Matthew Hopkins.jpg|thumb|Matthew Hopkins’ Discovery of Witches (1647), Held by The British Library]]


== Global Systems Institute Residency for climate ==
== The history of witch trials in Newcastle and Scotland ==
We’ve been delighted by the progress of our first climate residency, with Tatjana throwing herself into work at the University of Exeter’s research hub. She has been collaborating with subject matter experts and has received her first expert review as a result, on the topic of social cost of carbon (counting as a high-impact article).
In 2023, one of our volunteers, Sophie Whitfield, led a Wikipedia workshop for students on  the Digital Cultures and Media course at Newcastle University. This year, WMUK again collaborated with the course leaders to give the students an opportunity to learn about Wikipedia.


The first editathon was held at the end of January. It was a hybrid event that saw 13 editors learn how to edit Wikipedia and then work to improve climate change articles on the platform. Over just one hour we worked on 8 articles including topics from energy security to soil carbon, adding 1.04k words and 6 citations. Editors were working on English, Spanish and Chinese Wikipedias. One of the editors also spotted some misinformation about coral and climate change, which can now be corrected.
The plan was to have the class of twenty students collaboratively write a Wikipedia page about an overlooked part of Newcastle’s history: the 1650 witch trials. Overlooked for Wikipedia at least, [https://twmuseumsandarchives.medium.com/the-newcastle-witch-trials-62fc652cdef Tyne and Wear Archives & Museums] have excellent resources on the trials and the events were the subject of a [https://candleandbell.com/newcastle-witches-podcast podcast.] But there are no local memorials to the accused, and Wikipedia hardly mentions events in Newcastle.


The February editathon was held on the 23rd of February. The event was online only due to the ongoing university strikes. Tatjana led the training and was joined by Stuart Prior as co-trainer. Su-Laine Brodsky was also in attendance to provide additional insights.
The trials took place in 1649 and 1650, and resulted in the execution of sixteen people. As with many other similar persecutions, the majority were women.


Two organisations have been engaged to release media onto Commons – Climate Visuals and Carbon Brief. 4000 graphs have also been released from Our World in Data. Currently sorting the climate change related graphs from the others and will need to cross-reference with existing files on Commons from Our World in Data.
The Digital Cultures and Media course introduces students to a range of different platforms and media: social sites, mapping, video creation, and of course Wikipedia. They are taught to be adaptive and explore. With a class of this size, we organised them into groups so that they could work on different elements of the article. Some worked on the imagery, others on the list of the accused and what happened to them, while another group detailed the context within which the trials took place.


See also Wikipedia:WiR/Global Systems Institute, and the Edit for Climate Change Dashboard.
Two hours raced by, and in the final thirty minutes there was an avalanche of writing. As students saved their edits the skeletal page suddenly took shape - populated by the names of people who had lived and died in Newcastle more than 370 years ago.


== British Library Residency ==
The history of witch trials has also been a project at the University of Edinburgh, with version 2 of the ''[https://witches.is.ed.ac.uk/ Map of Accused Witches in Scotland]'' – created using Wikidata – launching at the Edinburgh Futures Institute on 23rd October 2024. E. Whitehead has completed an expanded Glossary of terms to help explain and contextualise the Scottish witch trials. R. Imrie has completed the Nuxt.js upgrade and added filters for the accusations (demonic pacts, property damage, ritual objects used, meeting places etc.) the accused were subjected to along with all the temporal data so the Scottish witch hunts can now be explored in place and time through Wikidata.
The Residency at the British Library has concluded after a thorough staff handover, though Lucy Hinnie will be staying on with us in her capacity as a Connected Heritage Project Lead.


Back in 2021, as part of our work with residency at the British Library the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group to the '''Two Centuries of Indian Print'''. Since then and collaboration with curators at the British Library and with better access to metadata and images, Bengali Wikimedians have transcribed 39 books from the collection including translations of Shakespeare.
== IDEA network ==
The University of St Andrew’s [https://theideanetwork.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/ IDEA network] (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility in Open Knowledge Network) was launched during lockdown. We’ve been working with them for years to make the Wikimedia projects more inclusive, diverse, equitable and accessible locations for open knowledge.


You can see the Library’s project page and Lucy’s blog on Lord Chamberlain’s Plays to see how the residency concluded.
Some recent highlights include:


== State of Open Con ==
* [https://eu-west-1.protection.sophos.com/?d=st-andrews.ac.uk&u=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVpZGVhbmV0d29yay53cC5zdC1hbmRyZXdzLmFjLnVrLzIwMjQvMTAvMTIvZGlnaXRhbC1pbmNsdXNpb24td2lraWNvbm5lY3QtMm5kLWludGFrZS1hbm5vdW5jZW1lbnQtJWYwJTlmJTkzJWEyLw==&i=NjVhZmE0ZjY3MDExZmY1Y2Q3NDE3YmE2&t=WkVQNTQxL0lkRXBVbi9CZFhFbTVLUGtoakxNd3g5QTdXOU1zMGZzb2JMaz0=&h=d7f9b3811681459ca66d519430646d0a&s=AVNPUEhUT0NFTkNSWVBUSVbHWJeG47eUEa4cyL61CbXm66L8ziY8ITXWL9dY4Kpf7Q Digital Inclusion WikiConnect] – staff and students are working on content relating to digital literacy and digital poverty.
The State Of Open Conference brings together organisations, communities and advocates of open data, technology and knowledge. This year, Wikimedia UK was excited to attend SOOC23, where we spoke with attendees from across the sector about our particular role in the open knowledge movement. It provided us with a great opportunity to network with like-minded individuals, learn about emerging trends and technologies, and gain new insights and perspectives.
* [https://eu-west-1.protection.sophos.com/?d=st-andrews.ac.uk&u=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVpZGVhbmV0d29yay53cC5zdC1hbmRyZXdzLmFjLnVrLzIwMjQvMDkvMTYvaWRlYS1uZXR3b3JrLWxhdW5jaGVzLXRoZS1yb2xlLW9mLXVuaXZlcnNpdGllcy1pbi10aGUtZXRoaWNhbC1kaWdpdGFsLW5hdGlvbi1wcm9qZWN0Lw==&i=NjVhZmE0ZjY3MDExZmY1Y2Q3NDE3YmE2&t=bncweEg5dUFSUFcyTEZGQ25ISW11T1NpYU9MbXY1V0k5UHZUL1N4Q0tURT0=&h=d7f9b3811681459ca66d519430646d0a&s=AVNPUEhUT0NFTkNSWVBUSVbHWJeG47eUEa4cyL61CbXm66L8ziY8ITXWL9dY4Kpf7Q Ethical Digital Nation event series] – exploring how universities can play a pivotal role in addressing digital challenges through collaborative research, training programs, and the development of socio-technical solutions.


Keynote speakers included the Labour MP and shadow science minister Chi Onwurah, Google’s vice-president of Infrastructure Eric Brewer, and Open UK CEO Amanda Brock. Representing the Wikimedia Foundation was Movement Advocacy Manager Franziska Putz, who took part in a panel discussion on the relationship between open data and diplomacy. We were also delighted to hear from Jimmy Wales, who gave a fascinating keynote lecture on Wikimedia’s role in open-knowledge sharing and the challenges that both the Wikimedia projects and open knowledge sector faces today.
== Wikimedia in Interfaith Education ==
Interfaith Explorers is a set of resources to support primary and secondary education about religions. As well as classroom resources, it has guidance for teachers on encouraging respectful discussions about faiths and cultures. It is listed by the UK Government's "Educate Against Hate" portal.
 
The site recently completed a major update in which Wikimedia content played a crucial part. Short text extracts adapted from Simple English Wikipedia and English Wikipedia were combined with colourful, diverse images from Wikimedia Commons to add nearly 200 pages of new content about religions and how they are practised. The result is an [https://www.interfaithexplorers.com/resources/ interconnected web] of child-safe educational material, with automated translation into a dozen other languages.
 
Dr Martin Poulter is Wikimedian In Residence at the Khalili Foundation, which maintains Interfaith Explorers. He adapted the wiki content with the help of expert reviewers. Interfaith Explorers are looking for teachers, religious institutions, and educational charities to join the community that will further develop the resource further, including covering non-Abrahamic religions. [https://www.interfaithexplorers.com/contact-us/ Get in touch.]
 
== Memory of the World ==
Dr Martin Poulter is now focusing increasingly on the [https://www.unesco.org/en/memory-world Memory of the World] project. The Khalili Foundation is supporting and fully funding work to improve the visibility of UNESCO Memory of the World inscriptions on the Wikimedia platforms, in parallel with UNESCO's database which is being re-developed. This will bring some of the world's most precious documentary heritage to the widest possible audience. We will be coordinating with the team at UNESCO to improve Wikimedia as they improve the official online database.
 
Within the project, Indonesian Wikipedia has given a Featured Article award to [[:en:id:Hajj:_Journey_to_the_Heart_of_Islam|their translation]] of the Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam article. This resulted from a long review process involving four users, and is a rare honour; Indonesian Wikipedia only has 394 Featured Articles out of 700,000 total articles. This is the fourth Featured Article award achieved by this project: two in English, one in Urdu and now one in Indonesian.
[[File:Celtic Knot 2024 Reginold Tower.png|thumb]]
 
== Celtic Knot 2024 ==
In late September, Wikimedians from as far away as Malaysia gathered in Waterford in Ireland to share stories of success, challenges, and to learn from others, all with a focus on minoritised languages. WMUK collaborated with Wikimedia Community Ireland (WCI) to organise and run the event. The Celtic Knot Conference is a space for different communities to connect and support each other in their efforts to improve their languages’ representation online, and WMUK have been involved in the conference since its inception in 2017. 2024 was the first in-person Celtic Knot since 2019, and across the three-day conference, 150 people attended in-person or online, with 35 different language communities represented. Each of the three days had a different theme in the programme: the past, the present, and the future of language communities. The programme was topical, with the launch of WCI’s WikiWomen Erasmus+ Project and talks on translation tools and the impact of large language models. Large language models present challenges and opportunities to Wikipedia, especially smaller language communities, so it was an important topic to discuss. The conference enthused those present, sharing stories of success that inspired others, from editing campaigns such as #wici365 on the Welsh Wicipedia and using digital TV channels to recruit editors.
 
== University of Edinburgh ==
[[File:Carpenter portrait of Ada Lovelace - detail.png|thumb|Detail of Margaret Sarah Carpenter's portrait of Ada Lovelace]]
 
==== Women in Red workshops ====
A number of  'Women in Red' workshops took place at the University - in September, to coincide with WIki Loves Monuments, the event was themed as [[:en:Wikipedia:University_of_Edinburgh/Events_and_Workshops/Scottish_Castles_and_Witchcraft|Scottish Castles and Witch Lore.]] New wiki pages were created about Scottish castles and heritage locations were created. These include [[:en:Bass_Castle|Bass Castle]], [[:en:Logie_House_Garden|Logie House Garden]], and [[:en:Poldrate_Mill|Poldrate Mill.]] As part of this event, the University also hosted an exhibition of material about Scottish castles and witchcraft that the university's special collections hold. Read the [https://thinking.is.ed.ac.uk/wir/witch-lore-and-scottish-castles-september-editathon/ blog article] by Ellie Whitehead. In October the workshop was tied with [[:en:Wikipedia:University_of_Edinburgh/Events_and_Workshops/Ada_Lovelace_Day_2024|Ada Lovelace Day event]] celebrating Women in STEM (with a Robotics/AI theme).
 
==== History of Witchcraft in Edinburgh walking tour ====
E. McAndrew and E. Whitehead made use of Wikipedia and Wikidata to develop an [http://curiousedinburgh.org/history-of-witchcraft-in-edinburgh/ 18 Stop walking tour] of locations in central Edinburgh related to the Scottish witch hunts and recorded 18 short Youtube clips presented by Prof. Julian Goodare and BBC broadcaster Louise Yeoman to accompany each stop.
 
==== Edinburgh Award 2024/2025 – Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia ====
29 students have registered for the 4th iteration of the extracurricular Edinburgh Award for academic year 2024/2025. Each student is to choose 3 graduate attributes to develop over the 55-80 hours from mid October 2024 to end of March 2025 and a topic area of Wikipedia to significantly improve topic coverage in.
 
==== Global Health Challenges Programme Online ====
Masters students working online from geographically remote locations all over the world have been trained how to edit Wikipedia. The students are working in groups to significantly improve topic coverage of natural and manmade disasters in short stub articles as part of a 5-6 week assignment. So far they’ve added almost 40k words to Wikipedia.
 
== Finding sources through Wikipedia’s citations ==
We had an online Wikipedia workshop focused on adding Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to Wikipedia. Those DOIs point towards publications in the Archaeology Data Service. It helps Wikipedia's readers and editors as it makes the sources used in articles easier to find, and it helps the ADS because more people are visiting their site.
 
As it was a very specific kind of editing, the how-to element of the event was short, but because it involved changing references which aren't standardised there were a few tricky cases (especially if incorrect dates were used).
 
At the start there was something like 2,000 articles on the English Wikipedia. In three hours, we made a good dent in the [https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Archaeology_Data_Service/Help_the_ADS_improve_DOIs_on_Wikipedia/home worklist] with more than 140 articles edited.


== Join us ==
== Join us ==
We’re very grateful to and proud of the network we’ve built around our chapter. You can support the governance of the charity by becoming a [[Membership|member]], or support our projects through a [[Donate|donation]], or [[volunteer]] on some of the projects above.
Come give us a follow on social media, we just launched our [https://bsky.app/profile/wikimediauk.bsky.social Bluesky] account, and we're also on [https://wikis.world/@wikimediauk Mastodon,] [https://twitter.com/wikimediauk Twitter,] [https://www.facebook.com/WikimediaUK Facebook,] [https://www.instagram.com/wikimediauk/ Instagram] and [https://www.linkedin.com/company/496119/admin/feed/posts/ LinkedIn.] We’re very grateful to and proud of the network we’ve built around our chapter. You can support the governance of the charity by becoming a [[Membership|member]], which will allow you to vote on our board elections at the 2024 AGM on the 21st September. You can also support our projects through a [https://wikimedia.access.charity/donate/donate donation,] or [https://wikimedia.org.uk/get-involved/ volunteer] on some of the projects above. Our blog has more details on some of the activities mentioned in the newsletter.
 
We’re on social media if you’d like to connect with us there, we always appreciate new followers and sharers of our news; [https://twitter.com/wikimediauk Twitter], [https://www.facebook.com/WikimediaUK Facebook], [https://www.instagram.com/wikimediauk/ Instagram] and [https://www.linkedin.com/company/wikimedia-uk/mycompany/?viewAsMember=true LinkedIn]. You can also follow our [https://wikimedia.org.uk/news/ blog], which has more details on some of the activities mentioned in the newsletter.


<nowiki>[[ Category:Friends' Newsletter ]]</nowiki>
<nowiki>[[ Category:Friends' Newsletter ]]</nowiki>

Latest revision as of 14:08, 19 December 2024

Text reading: Wikimedia UK, winter 2023 newsletter, thank you for your support this year on a green, red, and orange background featuring flora and fauna illustrations from Wikimedia Commons
Collage of images from Wikimedia Commons, filenames in the description of this page - File:Giving Tuesday 2023.png

Welcome to the winter 2024 newsletter

Season's Greetings and welcome to the last newsletter of 2024! As I'm wrapped up in the festivities of the season I'm once again impressed by the incredible portfolio of work from our volunteers and staff this year.

In September we moved into our new office at the British Library. The vibrant environment of the Library has already fostered our staff's creativity and innovation, while being a strategic location to enable better connection with partners, volunteers, and the public.

Earlier in the autumn we were delighted to welcome two new trustees to our board, following the election at our 2024 AGM. Andrew Russell brings substantial experience in public affairs while Monica Westin is a keen Wikimedian with a professional background in knowledge information.

Congratulations to Fran Allfrey, Wikimedia UK’s Wikimedian of the Year for 2024, along with GLAM-E Lab who received the Partnership of the Year award, and Perigrinate Avellana, our Up and Coming Wikimedian of the Year. You can read more about the awards and the nominees here.

Finally, you may have seen our Education through Wikimedia campaign to boost our work in secondary schools. Education is at the heart of our work as the national charity for open knowledge, and we believe that equipping the next generation with essential information literacy and digital skills is crucial for their success in an increasingly complex digital world. This is why we are launching a dedicated campaign aimed at secondary school students, focusing on developing these fundamental abilities.

Wikimedia UK community celebration

Community Celebration 2024

In November we hosted our 2024 Community Celebration. It was a chance for our community to gather online, share and celebrate the work that’s taken place over the last year and recognise that work through the UK Wikimedian of the Year awards and celebrate the winners of the Wiki Loves Earth competition.

It was heartening seeing so many of our community at the celebration. There were around 40 community members, attending from all over the UK. With the event being online in the midst of Storm Bert raging, it meant that people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend were able to do so.

We had a series of short talks which can be watched in this playlist.

Jason Evans, Open Data Manager and National Wikimedian at the National Library of Wales told us about AI, Placenames and Time Machine experiments at the National Library of Wales.

Dr Kirsty Ross from the University of St Andrews, who is also one of the co-founders of the IDEA network told us about how Scottish Brick History (SBH), Wikimedia UK, and researchers from the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews collaborated to get a unique dataset about Scotland’s brickworks onto Wikidata, and built web visualisations to showcase the work.

Lucy Moore, a Wikimedian based in Leeds, and who won UK Wikimedian of the year 2022 told us about her Wiki Year!

Nick Sheppard, Open Research Adviser based at the University of Leeds Libraries told us about his journey from his first tentative edit in 2017 (flagged as spam) to becoming a committed advocate for Wikimedia in Universities.

Jonathan Deamer from Liverpool, who describes himself as a Wikimedia hobbyist, told us about attending his first Wikimania in Katowice in Poland this year. He shared with us his highlights from the event and how these have had a tangible impact on his daily editing.

Joanne Forster-Martin, a student at the University of Oxford, and who we met at our recent Train the Trainer weekend told us about the Wiki Women in Red project to uncover the hidden female figures of Jesus College, Oxford.

Adam Harangzo, Wikipedian in Residence at the National Institute for Health and Care Research talked to us about his experience of working with researchers in an impactful way where they contribute to Wikipedia without directly editing it.

View of the Kings Library, British Library, by Mike Peel

Wikimedia UK moves into new offices at the British Library

Wikimedia UK is excited to announce our relocation to new offices at the prestigious British Library. The new office space will provide a vibrant environment that fosters creativity and innovation, allowing our team to work flexibly and collaboratively with a wealth of resources and opportunities available at one of the world’s largest libraries. This strategic location will enable us to better connect with partners, volunteers, and the public. Staff will continue to work remotely and occasionally come into the office, ensuring we adapt to the evolving needs of our team and the communities we serve.

Wikimedia UK Chief Executive Lucy Crompton-Reid, says: “We are looking forward to our new office space within the British Library after a year of being fully remote.” As the national charity for the global Wikimedia open knowledge movement, there are lots of areas of shared interest with the Library. Director of Science and Innovation, Maja Maricevic, adds “We are delighted to welcome Wikimedia UK. Over years we have regularly collaborated with Wikimedia UK and hosted Wikimedians-in-Residence, so are delighted with an opportunity with an even closer proximity to an organisation that we have the existing close links with and share the common vision to open access to knowledge.”

New trustees at the Wikimedia UK AGM

Following a successful AGM we’re very pleased to share that Andrew Russell and Monica Westin have joined Wikimedia UK's board of trustees. We’re also delighted that Caroline Ball was re-elected for a second three year term. You can read their candidate statements here if you’d like to find out more about them.

On Saturday we also said thank you, but hopefully not goodbye, to outgoing trustees Julian Manieson and Rod Ward.

Many thanks to all those who attended the AGM, or who submitted a proxy vote.

A photograph of Stuart Prior delivering a presentation to a room of volunteer editors at Brixton Library
Programme Coordinator, Stuart Prior, delivering Wiki editing training at the Brixton Library Black History Month meetup

Brixton Library Black History Month editathon

Brixton Library’s monthly Wikipedia meetups show participants how to contribute to the encyclopaedia. For the October meetup, the event focused on learning about and contributing to the recording of Black history. We wrote about and enhanced articles about Black people, history and society. Participants used the session to explore Brixton Library’s Black Interest book collections, the library service’s online subscriptions to packages like the British Newspaper Archive and Who’s Who and much more. We also looked at Wikimedia Commons and how you can use photographs and images.

100 Days 100 Edits for climate (GSI)

The University of Exeter’s resident for climate and the environment, Tatjana Baleta, recruited 31 researchers from 11 different institutions to cumulatively propose 100 edits to 35 articles over 100 days. As of the 10th of November 2024, these articles have been viewed over ~662,000 times.

"Through this 100-day campaign, I upped my normal Wikipedia editing, highlighted how unprecedented CO₂ levels are over millions of years, and dispelled two common myths about global warming: that humans are only "mainly" responsible, and that further warming stops when emissions stabilize, rather than when they reach net zero.”

– Dr Femke Njisse, University of Exeter (edited Grid storage and Climate change)

“Promoting widespread scientific literacy is a key issue in addressing anthropogenic climate change, environmental degradation and injustice. Platforms like Wikipedia provide an excellent opportunity to disseminate scientific information to an extended audience, where this information is otherwise often only accessible by academics in the global north. I hope that my contribution to the campaign can help bring greater clarity to a topic (i.e. biochar) that is often discussed in the context of climate change mitigation.”

– Dr Oscar Kennedy-Blundell, University of Exeter (edited Biochar)

The Devils Pulpit in Scotland, by Gaverlaa, This image won the 2nd prize in the national contest of Scotland in Wiki Loves Earth 2024

Wiki Loves Earth winners

Wiki Loves Earth is an annual photography competition themed around the natural world. This year Ireland, Scotland and Wales took part in the competition. Over 5000 photos were submitted of nature from across these three countries, helping to illustrate Wikimedia with the flora and fauna that is so at risk from climate change and human development. The winners have now been announced, see them for Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. The natural world changes from season to season, but climate change poses a threat to our environment and its durability. Extreme temperatures, drought, or rainfall all disturb the balance that has cultivated these environments and biodiversity. The photos submitted to the competition capture the state of our natural world at a point in time, and remind us what we stand to lose.

Climate Change & Health Wikipedia Workshop

In November two of our Wikimedians in Residence held joint workshops between the University of Exeter and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). Tatjana Baleta is the resident for climate at the GSI hub at Exeter University, and the health effects of climate change overlap significantly with Adam Harangozo’s residency on medical research at the NIHR.

Wikipedia is often the first and only place where most people go for health information. What readers find there matters. Contributing to Wikipedia offers a great opportunity to use an effective platform to mobilise evidence-based information, research and expert knowledge in an accessible way for a wider audience all around the world.

Researchers with expertise in climate change and health were invited to attend one of the three workshops in November. The workshops drafted an article – titled Climate change and health in the UK – on this important topic at the intersection of the climate crisis and health research.

Wiki Loves Monuments 2024

Over 5000 photos of monuments, architecture and protected buildings were submitted to the 2024 Wiki Loves Monuments from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Wiki Loves Monuments is best known for being the world’s largest photo contest. It highlights humanity’s cultural heritage through the buildings, structures, and other assets that have gained importance due to their artistic, historic, political, technical, or architectural significance. You can see the entries for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Matthew Hopkins’ Discovery of Witches (1647), Held by The British Library

The history of witch trials in Newcastle and Scotland

In 2023, one of our volunteers, Sophie Whitfield, led a Wikipedia workshop for students on  the Digital Cultures and Media course at Newcastle University. This year, WMUK again collaborated with the course leaders to give the students an opportunity to learn about Wikipedia.

The plan was to have the class of twenty students collaboratively write a Wikipedia page about an overlooked part of Newcastle’s history: the 1650 witch trials. Overlooked for Wikipedia at least, Tyne and Wear Archives & Museums have excellent resources on the trials and the events were the subject of a podcast. But there are no local memorials to the accused, and Wikipedia hardly mentions events in Newcastle.

The trials took place in 1649 and 1650, and resulted in the execution of sixteen people. As with many other similar persecutions, the majority were women.

The Digital Cultures and Media course introduces students to a range of different platforms and media: social sites, mapping, video creation, and of course Wikipedia. They are taught to be adaptive and explore. With a class of this size, we organised them into groups so that they could work on different elements of the article. Some worked on the imagery, others on the list of the accused and what happened to them, while another group detailed the context within which the trials took place.

Two hours raced by, and in the final thirty minutes there was an avalanche of writing. As students saved their edits the skeletal page suddenly took shape - populated by the names of people who had lived and died in Newcastle more than 370 years ago.

The history of witch trials has also been a project at the University of Edinburgh, with version 2 of the Map of Accused Witches in Scotland – created using Wikidata – launching at the Edinburgh Futures Institute on 23rd October 2024. E. Whitehead has completed an expanded Glossary of terms to help explain and contextualise the Scottish witch trials. R. Imrie has completed the Nuxt.js upgrade and added filters for the accusations (demonic pacts, property damage, ritual objects used, meeting places etc.) the accused were subjected to along with all the temporal data so the Scottish witch hunts can now be explored in place and time through Wikidata.

IDEA network

The University of St Andrew’s IDEA network (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility in Open Knowledge Network) was launched during lockdown. We’ve been working with them for years to make the Wikimedia projects more inclusive, diverse, equitable and accessible locations for open knowledge.

Some recent highlights include:

  • Digital Inclusion WikiConnect – staff and students are working on content relating to digital literacy and digital poverty.
  • Ethical Digital Nation event series – exploring how universities can play a pivotal role in addressing digital challenges through collaborative research, training programs, and the development of socio-technical solutions.

Wikimedia in Interfaith Education

Interfaith Explorers is a set of resources to support primary and secondary education about religions. As well as classroom resources, it has guidance for teachers on encouraging respectful discussions about faiths and cultures. It is listed by the UK Government's "Educate Against Hate" portal.

The site recently completed a major update in which Wikimedia content played a crucial part. Short text extracts adapted from Simple English Wikipedia and English Wikipedia were combined with colourful, diverse images from Wikimedia Commons to add nearly 200 pages of new content about religions and how they are practised. The result is an interconnected web of child-safe educational material, with automated translation into a dozen other languages.

Dr Martin Poulter is Wikimedian In Residence at the Khalili Foundation, which maintains Interfaith Explorers. He adapted the wiki content with the help of expert reviewers. Interfaith Explorers are looking for teachers, religious institutions, and educational charities to join the community that will further develop the resource further, including covering non-Abrahamic religions. Get in touch.

Memory of the World

Dr Martin Poulter is now focusing increasingly on the Memory of the World project. The Khalili Foundation is supporting and fully funding work to improve the visibility of UNESCO Memory of the World inscriptions on the Wikimedia platforms, in parallel with UNESCO's database which is being re-developed. This will bring some of the world's most precious documentary heritage to the widest possible audience. We will be coordinating with the team at UNESCO to improve Wikimedia as they improve the official online database.

Within the project, Indonesian Wikipedia has given a Featured Article award to their translation of the Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam article. This resulted from a long review process involving four users, and is a rare honour; Indonesian Wikipedia only has 394 Featured Articles out of 700,000 total articles. This is the fourth Featured Article award achieved by this project: two in English, one in Urdu and now one in Indonesian.

Celtic Knot 2024 Reginold Tower.png

Celtic Knot 2024

In late September, Wikimedians from as far away as Malaysia gathered in Waterford in Ireland to share stories of success, challenges, and to learn from others, all with a focus on minoritised languages. WMUK collaborated with Wikimedia Community Ireland (WCI) to organise and run the event. The Celtic Knot Conference is a space for different communities to connect and support each other in their efforts to improve their languages’ representation online, and WMUK have been involved in the conference since its inception in 2017. 2024 was the first in-person Celtic Knot since 2019, and across the three-day conference, 150 people attended in-person or online, with 35 different language communities represented. Each of the three days had a different theme in the programme: the past, the present, and the future of language communities. The programme was topical, with the launch of WCI’s WikiWomen Erasmus+ Project and talks on translation tools and the impact of large language models. Large language models present challenges and opportunities to Wikipedia, especially smaller language communities, so it was an important topic to discuss. The conference enthused those present, sharing stories of success that inspired others, from editing campaigns such as #wici365 on the Welsh Wicipedia and using digital TV channels to recruit editors.

University of Edinburgh

Detail of Margaret Sarah Carpenter's portrait of Ada Lovelace

Women in Red workshops

A number of  'Women in Red' workshops took place at the University - in September, to coincide with WIki Loves Monuments, the event was themed as Scottish Castles and Witch Lore. New wiki pages were created about Scottish castles and heritage locations were created. These include Bass Castle, Logie House Garden, and Poldrate Mill. As part of this event, the University also hosted an exhibition of material about Scottish castles and witchcraft that the university's special collections hold. Read the blog article by Ellie Whitehead. In October the workshop was tied with Ada Lovelace Day event celebrating Women in STEM (with a Robotics/AI theme).

History of Witchcraft in Edinburgh walking tour

E. McAndrew and E. Whitehead made use of Wikipedia and Wikidata to develop an 18 Stop walking tour of locations in central Edinburgh related to the Scottish witch hunts and recorded 18 short Youtube clips presented by Prof. Julian Goodare and BBC broadcaster Louise Yeoman to accompany each stop.

Edinburgh Award 2024/2025 – Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia

29 students have registered for the 4th iteration of the extracurricular Edinburgh Award for academic year 2024/2025. Each student is to choose 3 graduate attributes to develop over the 55-80 hours from mid October 2024 to end of March 2025 and a topic area of Wikipedia to significantly improve topic coverage in.

Global Health Challenges Programme Online

Masters students working online from geographically remote locations all over the world have been trained how to edit Wikipedia. The students are working in groups to significantly improve topic coverage of natural and manmade disasters in short stub articles as part of a 5-6 week assignment. So far they’ve added almost 40k words to Wikipedia.

Finding sources through Wikipedia’s citations

We had an online Wikipedia workshop focused on adding Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to Wikipedia. Those DOIs point towards publications in the Archaeology Data Service. It helps Wikipedia's readers and editors as it makes the sources used in articles easier to find, and it helps the ADS because more people are visiting their site.

As it was a very specific kind of editing, the how-to element of the event was short, but because it involved changing references which aren't standardised there were a few tricky cases (especially if incorrect dates were used).

At the start there was something like 2,000 articles on the English Wikipedia. In three hours, we made a good dent in the worklist with more than 140 articles edited.

Join us

Come give us a follow on social media, we just launched our Bluesky account, and we're also on Mastodon, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. We’re very grateful to and proud of the network we’ve built around our chapter. You can support the governance of the charity by becoming a member, which will allow you to vote on our board elections at the 2024 AGM on the 21st September. You can also support our projects through a donation, or volunteer on some of the projects above. Our blog has more details on some of the activities mentioned in the newsletter.

[[ Category:Friends' Newsletter ]]

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