User:Katie Crampton (WMUK)

A puffin gathering material for its nest on Skomer Island by Naff14 File:Skomer island nest building.jpg

Friends newsletter/2022/Issue 2

We’re feeling the festival theme of Wikimania this month, as we’ve got lots of fantastic people and projects we’re working with. See the stunning results of the Wiki Loves Earth photography competition, which ran across Ireland and Wales. Watch the Celtic Knot videos on building communities around indigenous languages. Meet our new trustees, who were elected to the board in July. And find out what upcoming projects and events you can sign up for.

Summer events round up

Annual General Meeting

At our virtual AGM on Saturday 9th July, all three candidates who stood for election received support from the majority of voting members, and will be joining the Board of Trustees for Wikimedia UK. These are:

• Adrian Beidas (currently member of the Audit and Risk Committee)
• Sangeet Bhullar (Trustee since 2019, standing for re-election as per our Articles)
• Vivian Wineman

All the ordinary resolutions proposed by the board were supported. There were no special resolutions.

Four new Honorary Memberships were awarded to the following recipients, for their significant contribution to the work of the charity:

• Josie Fraser
• Melissa Highton
• Magnus Manske
• Nick Poole

Celtic Knot

The Celtic Knot Wikimedia Language Conference aims to bring people together to share their experiences of working on sharing information in minority and minoritized languages on the Wikimedia projects. Our aim is to help people learn how to direct the flow of information across language barriers and support their communities. As in previous years we had a strong focus on Wikidata and its potential to support languages.

The people working on growing and maintaining their communities (on Wikipedia, but also Wikisource or Wikidata) met to learn from and support each other on topics like community growth, technical tools, or collaboration with partners.

Driven by the vision of Wikimedia UK, together with local partners and fellow Wikimedia chapters, the Celtic Knot conference carries the experience of five annual editions, including two online events. In each of the first five years, the conference has spotlighted a language or language family, and the participants can learn more about the cultural context as well as the state of the Wikimedia projects in these languages. See also the previous editions: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, Arctic Knot 2021.

For the 2022 edition, Wikimedia UK, with the support of Wikimedia Deutschland, proposed a broader approach, with an emphasis on skills development for a diverse group of participants. You can watch the video pool on Meta.

Climate and environment

Wiki Loves Earth

Wales and Ireland took part in the Wiki Loves Earth photography competition. The aim of the event is to highlight the conservation areas of the participating countries, with the goal to encourage people to photograph these sights, and to put them under a free licence which can then be re-used not only on Wikipedia but everywhere by everyone.

• Partners: The Welsh Government, all three National Parks: Eryri (Snowdonia), Pembrokeshire and the Brecon Beacons, Ramblers (Cymru), Natural Resource Wales, Cymdeithas Edward Llwyd and Llên Natur.
• 5,040 photos taken of Welsh nature
• 528 photos of Irish nature

COP27

As we did at COP26, we are planning an editathon for COP27 in November. We will be collaborating with The International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC). We worked with the IIC last year to run an editathon for COP26, led by Richard Nevell and Ian Watt. At this stage we have agreed in principle to run an online event (since COP27 takes place in Egypt) with more planning to come.

DecarboN8

The challenge of reaching net zero carbon by 2050 requires decarbonising transport with systems-level solutions. DecarboN8 brings together researchers, policymakers, innovators and communities to collaborate on rapidly implementing these solutions. They work across four themes to produce high-quality evidence in the form of case studies, policy briefs and academic publications. We are providing support to a network of universities, local authorities, and companies to get this information on the Wikimedia projects. So far 1.47K words have been added to Wikipedia articles.

Climatepolicyradar

A not-for-profit holding the largest database of climate policies, Climatepolicyradar act as a resource for policy makers who are looking for information on a wide range of environmental policies. We are in discussions with them to contribute their data to expand Wikidata with detailed climate policy information, and also find ways Wikidata can feed back into their own work of influencing policy.

Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum’s Data Portal has 5,181,555 photographs of their collection of 80 million specimens. The photos are openly licensed, and we’ve been working with the museum to upload the collection to Wikimedia Commons. Almost every plant and animal type is represented, showing the history of 4.5 billion years of life on earth, and our solar system.

Knowledge equity

Decolonising Wikipedia Network

Project coming to an end in July - get the report and include some achievements of the project. Arising from the project, a staff member at London College of Fashion asked for a staff training workshop to be delivered in July, explaining the role of the DWN.

Vocal Eyes

A member of our Programmes Team has joined a crowdsourcing project to collect information on how accessible heritage sites are for the blind and partially sighted. The group is collecting data at present, and when they have completed their research it will be shared on Wikidata.

Manar al-Athar photo archive internship

The Manar al-Athar photo archive contains images from archaeological sites in the Middle East and North Africa. For a one week period at the end of June, two student interns added links to the archive to Wikipedia. This had the benefit of directing readers to a valuable online resource. The archive is interested in repeating the activity in the future.

Science Museum Group (SMG) Wikimedian in Residence

With the project winding up we are looking at final reporting and a sense of what’s been achieved, changed and the challenges we’ve faced. This report will produce a set of recommendations for the Science Museum Group for changes after the project. In this quarter we’ve succeeded in having more image collections released on open licences compatible with Wikimedia projects.

We’ve been working with Dr Alice White of the Wellcome Trust on uploading images from the Medicine Galleries which are the property of the Wellcome but on long term loan to SMG. This represents the difficult challenge of expressing ownership and copyright status clearly. But also, ensuring the metadata and descriptions are appropriate, considering the religious or sacred nature of some of the objects photographed.

Connected Heritage

The Connected Heritage team continues to deliver an outstanding series of webinars and editathons.

Leah delivered a workshop for the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) as part of their Routes of Social Change project, which highlights the social history of North East England. The WEA were one of the earliest organisations to become involved with Connected Heritage, and the aim of the workshop was to repurpose some of the research conducted through the project. The team is also planning a workshop for Wheal Martyn Clay Works. During this month we had conversations with the Mixed Museum about building on our successful collaborations. We will be proceeding with a mini-Wikimedian in Residence project with the Mixed Museum, picking up in the second half of 2022.

There were interesting conversations with librarians at King’s College London and University College London. King’s College is especially interested in sharing images on Wikimedia Commons, and we will provide support including instructional information we have prepared for partners, and tools to measure impact. If a strong under-represented heritage angle emerges, especially with a focus on gender, we may provide further active support. The UCL librarians are interested in wide-ranging work including Wikidata activities.

Leah and Lucy represented the Connected Heritage project at the Museum Tech conference hosted at the Museum of London on 30th June. With support from the comms team, Leah and Lucy developed a leaflet to use at the event and had useful conversations about the project. Two project partners - the Mixed Museum and Queer Britain - were represented amongst speakers at the conference. The CH team also delivered a workshop as part of DCDC 2022 in July building on the template used at previous events, with a new focus on Wikimedia Commons information.

Event summary:

• 15 June webinar https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/306283952547
• 23 June Routes of Social Change, Workers’ Educational Association editathon https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/WMUK/Routes_of_Social_Change,_WEA_Editathon_(Thursday_23_June,_2022)

Planned events:

• 15 July DCDC 2022 workshop https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/WMUK/DCDC_Wikimedia_Workshop_(15_July_2022)

British Library Wikimedian in Residence

Leeds Playhouse

We visited Leeds Playhouse on 20th June to get a sense of the scale and scope of an event at this building. We hope to host a Wikithon there in autumn and the venue did not disappoint: the staff are welcoming, very open to Wiki work, and keen to invite people into the space. It could also be a useful venue for WMUK in future! Dr Rio Matchett, Producer, was a great help and very interested in the work we are doing with the plays and wiki generally.

Lotus Sutras

I caught up with Laura for what is probably the last meeting of this Lotus Sutras cycle – we have one more pdf to upload, and she was appreciative of Xiaoyan’s efforts and relabelling in Chinese. Laura is now based in Heritage Made Digital and I hope that her advocacy there will let us work a little with some of their collections and so on.

Bookbindings

Philippa Marks is pursuing copyright permissions from the Library to get more images up onto Commons. I have also suggested that, like with the Lotus Sutras, we could use their spreadsheets to get the bindings represented on Wikidata. Both are ongoing.

Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI)

I participated in the Race and Social Justice course at DHSI which was incredible. I hope to write up some notes on this and to condense the reading list for interested parties at WMUK and the Library. Of particular note was the keynote lecture by the Atikamekw project, which was represented in the Wiki Wednesdays programme for June also. There was also an excellent talk by Deanna Reader on how to represent Indigenous knowledge in digital projects, which has ramifications for Wiki work. This experience of the course tied in well with our June reading group meeting in which we discussed ‘Blood at the Root’, a very powerful academic essay about the ownership of digital images. Both this and the DHSI discourse gave me much to think about in terms of the Commons Canadian Copyright images and how we frame them.

Scotland

Scots Wikipedia

Writing Drives for the Scots Wikipedia took place in May and July. In collaboration with the Scots Language Centre, we focused on Scottish inventions and notable buildings, and the Scots articles related to them. Since August 2020 we've run 11 editathons, engaging 115 editors, and editing over 3200 articles.  

Virtual volunteering with the National Galleries of Scotland

In collaboration with the National Galleries of Scotland, we have launched a new virtual volunteering project. The five volunteers we’ve recruited will create and improve articles about women connected to the Scottish Collection at the galleries.

#ChangeTheStory

We partnered with Change International and Women In Red to highlight the gender gap on Wikipedia. As the Lionesses won the UEFA cup, we were spreading the word that only 6% of Wikipedia’s biographies on footballers were about women. As the Edinburgh Fringe Festival looms, we are focusing our effort on female stand up comedians and performers.

Images uploaded by a student from Edinburgh College - project responding to an artwork on Wikimedia Commons:

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fox_man.png
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boy_looks_down_from_window.png
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Book_looks_down_from_window,_close_up.png
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Man_buying_sausages_at_the_counter.png
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Feeling_on_the_Bridge.png
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Strangers_in_the_supermarket.jpg

Highlight the Protests & Suffragettes event - Editathon 7th June with x2 new trainers to support.

Global movement

UK government to protect internet access in Russia

On the 30th May, the UK government made a major decision to protect access to the free and open internet within Russia. The government exempted transactions that enable civilian telecommunications and news media services from sanctions against Russia. The decision comes off the heels of an open letter that we signed alongside allies like AccessNow, Article 19, Open Rights Group, among others, urging the UK government to protect access to the global, open internet for the Russian people.

United Nations Economic and Social Council access

The Wikimedia Foundation gained accreditation to UN ECOSOC (United Nations Economic and Social Council), which will allow the Wikimedia movement to more closely contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

UK Online Safety Bill

UK Online Safety Bill "Deep Dive"  blog post is scheduled to be shared with WMUK later this week. This is part of our series on online safety bills, and will include a more detailed analysis than our 'first impressions' piece.

Events and edits you can volunteer to

The Wiki Loves Monuments photography competition will run in the UK in September

Connected Heritage - potlucks

COP27

There is a new volunteer form on our website, for anyone who would like to volunteer to edit.

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 member, donate to us online, or volunteer on some of the projects above.

We’re also on social media if you prefer to chat there, we always appreciate new followers and sharers of our news; Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. You can also follow our blog, which has more details on some of the activities mentioned in the newsletter.