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| == Welcome to Friends' Newsletter, 2022/Issue 02 == | | == Welcome to Friends' Newsletter, 2023/Issue 01 == |
| As 2022 comes to a close I am looking back on the year with mixed feelings. The impact of Covid on people’s health and livelihoods across the globe continues to be a cause for concern; while people in the UK and elsewhere have been hit by the worst cost of living crisis in decades. 2022 has also been characterised by increasing political instability – both at home and abroad – and of course, the devastating invasion of Ukraine.
| | 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. |
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| There is also much to be proud of, and thankful for. Thank you so much to all our volunteers, community leaders and partners for your contribution to open knowledge this year. Thanks also to those Wikimedia UK members who opened their doors to Ukrainian families fleeing the conflict in Ukraine. It’s a reminder of how interconnected we all are, and how important it is for everyone to have free access to reliable information. | | == Staff Changes at Wikimedia UK == |
| | 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. |
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| I’m particularly grateful to everyone who has donated to Wikimedia UK this year, including those of you who supported our recent Giving Tuesday campaign. The cost of living crisis has hit charities hard, but with the support and contributions of both donors and volunteers we can reflect on a very productive year, and look forward to some exciting projects and programmes in 2023.
| | 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. |
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| With very best wishes for the festive season!
| | == Online Safety Bill == |
| | 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]]. |
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| Lucy Crompton-Reid
| | == Minority and minoritized languages == |
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| Chief Executive, Wikimedia UK
| | === Doubling the number of articles on Welsh Wici === |
| | 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. |
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| == Train the Trainer ==
| | 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. |
| [[File:WMUK Train the Trainer Dec2022 2.jpg|alt=Photo of Train the Trainer group, December 2022|thumb|Train the Trainer group, December 2022]]
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| We organised our second round of Train the Trainer for 2022, with the first events taking place at the start of December over three sessions. Trainees first attended an online editathon as participant observers. Their task was to take part in the event, and develop an awareness of how it has been put together, what is being communicated, and why it's being done in that way. The next session was a hybrid one bringing virtual and in-person trainees together to debrief the online editathon section by section. The final session was open to both new and established volunteers where we explored the importance and methods of developing partnerships with organisations and communities. This session was also a networking opportunity for our volunteers. This year we welcomed 8 new trainers to our volunteer community. We will continue to support their work and are looking forward to hearing their brilliant ideas.
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| If you’re interested in becoming a Trainer, follow us on social media for announcements about future iterations of Train the Trainer. | | 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! |
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| == Online Safety Bill - update on advocacy activities == | | === Cornish place-names === |
| Wikimedia UK has had concerns about certain aspects of the Online Safety Bill from the beginning, and has responded to various calls for evidence as the Bill has made its way through Parliament. Over the past few months, we have been working with the Wikimedia Foundation on the creation and delivery of an advocacy strategy to try to mitigate the Bill's potential impact on Wikipedia and the wider information ecosystem (outlined in this blog post). Thankfully in November, one of the more troubling aspects of the Bill from Wikimedia’s perspective was dropped. This was the requirement for big platforms to take down “legal but harmful” content, which would have been difficult to implement and inimical to free speech. The Bill is currently at the Report stage, and is scheduled to be debated in the House of Commons on 16th January 2023.
| | 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. |
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| In other public policy news, the UK government has halted its plans to introduce a new copyright exception for text and data mining for commercial purposes. Giving evidence to the Lords Communications and Digital Committee’s inquiry on the future of the UK’s creative industries, Julia Lopez MP, Minister of State for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, said she was confident that the Intellectual Property Office's proposals would not proceed in their current form, but would be reviewed and revised. This follows concerns expressed by publishers and rights holders that the proposed exception would undermine the UK’s “world-leading” copyright framework.
| | 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. |
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| == Our first ever climate residency == | | === Scots wiki writing drive === |
| At Wikimedia UK, we believe that addressing Wikipedia’s gaps will better inform people about climate action. But as things stand, there are large gaps in information about climate change on Wikipedia, and the content we do have is heavily weighted in US and European data. What’s more, it’s clear with only a quick search that information about policy and technology is often out of date. These factors convey a greater sense of uncertainty around climate data than is warranted by recent developments.
| | 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. |
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| Wikipedia is the ideal platform for unbiased, cited climate information, as it already has a global audience of billions. Which is why we bought climate and environment into our 2022-25 Strategic Themes to ensure a core focus on addressing the gaps. Consequently, we’re delighted to announce we have launched our first-ever climate residency in partnership with the University of Exeter.
| | == Community support == |
| [[File:Tatjana Baleta profile pic.png|alt=Photo of Tatjana Baleta|thumb|Photo of Tatjana Baleta]]
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| Tatjana Baleta has been recruited as Wikimedia Visiting Fellow at the University of Exeter, within the Global Systems Institute (GSI) academic community. Embedded within this centre of excellence for climate research, Tatjana will work alongside several world-leading climate scientists, including those at the UK Met Office with whom the GSI has a strategic partnership. She will also be amongst researchers from other disciplines who are looking into climate impacts, climate justice, biodiversity and energy.
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| Tatjana is a conservationist and science communicator with an interest in the power of knowledge to drive change. She has a BSc in Ecology & Evolution and Genetics and a BMedSc(Hons) in Cell Biology. With a growing understanding of the global environmental crisis, she also completed an MPhil in Conservation Leadership, which she then applied to her conservation career. Tatjana is passionate about sharing her love for the natural world, and particularly about using that communication to instigate positive change.
| | === Train the Trainer === |
| | 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. |
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| The first editathon will be held on the 26th of January, 3:30-6pm. All are welcome! Find out more and register [https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/edit-for-climate-wikipedia-editathon-registration-483090545827 here]. Reach out to Tatjana at t.baleta@exeter.ac.uk with questions or ideas, or read the blog Tatjana wrote for us [https://wikimedia.org.uk/2022/10/welcome-tatjana-baleta-wikimedia-visiting-fellow-for-climate/ here].
| | === Volunteer Supporters Network === |
| | 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. |
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| == Climate and environment == | | == Northern Ireland == |
| Continuing on the theme of climate and environment, we’re delighted to report that our programmes in this newest strategic pillar continue to grow.[[File:IIC and Wikimedia UK COP27 Egypt editathon.jpg|alt=Poster for COP27 Egypt editathon|thumb|COP27 Egypt editathon poster]]
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| === COP27 === | | === Women’s History Month at Queen’s University Belfast === |
| After the success of 2021’s COP26 editathon, we repeated the event in partnership with the IIC – The International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works – for COP27 in November. Climate change impacts our cultural heritage, with archeological sites destroyed before they can be studied [[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62995598 1],[https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/11/02/climate-change-is-eroding-ancient-sites-before-scientists-can-study-them-experts-warn 2],[https://www.wired.co.uk/article/drought-destroying-ancient-ruins 3],[https://news.artnet.com/art-world/the-rooftop-of-a-chinese-museum-has-melted-off-the-top-of-a-historic-building-amid-a-blistering-heatwave-2147514#:~:text=Art%20World-,The%20Rooftop%20of%20a%20Chinese%20Museum%20Has%20Melted%20Off%20the,closed%20for%20the%20foreseeable%20future. 4],[https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.710 5]]. And with our extensive experience of working with cultural institutions, the IIC seemed an excellent choice of partner for an editathon focusing on cultural heritage conservation sustainability, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Climate Action themes. 82 editors joined us for the 24 hour editathon, helping us add 32 citations from valuable sources and over 4290 words to Wikipedia articles.
| | 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. |
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| === SXNCH-2 === | | == Scotland == |
| The impact of climate change on cultural heritage sites was also part of a Wikipedia editing session we held at the SXNCH-2 conference in August. SXNCH is a globally engaged research group and growing network, based at the University of Oxford. A group of five editors improved articles on cultural heritage, including adding information about Rock-Hewn Churches in Ethiopia and Risco Caído in Spain (both UNESCO World Heritage Sites). 8 articles were improved, seven of them in English and one in Portuguese. The improved pages are read 3,100 times a day.
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| [[File:Morning Sun at Three Cliffs Bay, Gower.jpg|alt=The winning photo in Wales for Wiki Loves Earth, showing Three Cliffs Bay in Gower at sunrise|thumb|Morning Sun at Three Cliffs Bay, Gower, by by Mjw999. Winning photograph in the Welsh category. CC BY-SA 4.0]]
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| === Wiki Loves Earth 2022 === | | === Inverclyde Community Development Trust === |
| The [[commons:Commons:Wiki_Loves_Earth_2022/Winners|Wiki Loves Earth 2022 winners]] have been announced, with stunning photographs of the natural world from 40 countries. Locally, Wales and Ireland took part in the competition with 5041 images from Wales and 528 from Ireland. WLE was a quick snapshot of the rich diversity of our global biosphere: a record of flora, fauna and fungi, as they were in the summer of 2022. Future snapshots could be used to show the differences in the biosphere, and the impact of climate change. If Wikipedia could better illustrate this change, we could perhaps help negate the effect.
| | 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. |
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| === ClimatePolicyRadar === | | === University of Edinburgh === |
| Our partnership with ClimatePolicyRadar is in the scoping stage. ClimatePolicyRadar has developed a proof of concept for an effective machine learning model which identifies targets in the law and policy documents they hold, identifying phrases such as ''‘we aim to reduce our carbon emissions by 90% by 2040’''. The next step will be to work on getting this information onto Wikidata in a format that works.
| | 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. |
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| == Connected Heritage ==
| | 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. |
| The Connected Heritage team continues to deliver an outstanding array of programmes tailored to the partners made through their webinar series, which were aimed at the cultural heritage sector and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The team have moved away from the large volume of the webinars to engage new organisational partners, to launching projects with those who we've already engaged. Here's a sample of some of the programmes the team have been running.[[File:Mixed Museum residency announcement.jpg|alt=The Mixed Museum and Wikimedia UK logos, surrounded by images from Commons of a peach plant and Haeckel Discomedusae|thumb|The Mixed Museum and Wikimedia UK logos, surrounded by A peach plant (Prunus persica); flowering and fruiting stems, and Haeckel Discomedusae 8 cleanup, both from the Wellcome Collection. CC BY-SA 4.0]] | |
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| === The Mixed Museum === | | == University engagement with Wiki projects == |
| The GSI residency isn’t the only first of its kind this quarter. We’ve partnered with The Mixed Museum to launch a mini Wikimedian in Residence, which came about through the Connected Heritage webinars. The mini-residency tests a new format of seconding a staff member, Leah Emery, to the museum for just one day a week. This partnership is especially exciting for Wikimedia UK, because it addresses an important and under-represented topic on the Wikimedia projects. The Mixed Museum, with only one full-time staff member, relies heavily on partnerships to conduct its exciting and innovative work. In addition to co-curating exhibitions with academics and artists, the museum currently hosts a folk musician as the organisation’s first [https://mixedmuseum.org.uk/news/introducing-saskia-tomkins-our-first-artist-in-residence/ Artist in Residence]. Director Chamion Caballero says that partnership work is critical to small organisations like The Mixed Museum, not only for producing new and creative content, but also for building robust support networks that help increase the capacity to connect, learn, share and grow. She notes that for the museum, ''‘our partnerships have helped all involved to reach wider audiences, as well as access ideas, skills and funding that would be much more difficult to achieve alone.’'' The residency builds upon the work of two interns earlier this year, who improved Wikipedia articles based on research for the Mixed Race Irish Families in Britain, 1700-2000 exhibition. You can find out more about that project [https://wikimedia.org.uk/2022/05/first-months-as-the-mixed-museums-intern/ here].
| | '''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. |
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| === The Scottish Jewish Heritage Centre ===
| | At '''SOAS''', we offered course support for the course leader for a module on the Politics of Resistance. |
| The Scottish Jewish Heritage Centre in Glasgow is hosting their first editathon on the 16th February. This week-long event is about improving the representation of Scottish Jewish heritage, history, and culture on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. This event is for everyone involved with the Scottish Jewish Heritage Centre, the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre, and anyone interested in Scotland’s Jewish heritage. Participants will learn Wikipedia basics and make their first edits. The session is free and no prior Wiki experience is required. Reserve a spot [https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/connected-heritage-scottish-jewish-heritage-wiki-workshop-launch-event-tickets-484283744717 here].
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| [[File:Connected Heritage & Reimagining Lincolnshire- Black History Month Wikithon.png|alt=Poster for Connected Heritage & Reimagining Lincolnshire: Black History Month Wikithon|thumb|Connected Heritage & Reimagining Lincolnshire: Black History Month Wikithon]]
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| === Reimagining Lincolnshire ===
| | '''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. |
| Some of our partners through Connected Heritage held thematic editing events for Black History Month in October with the support of the team. We were pleased with the results of the editathon with Reimagining Lincolnshire, which focused on Black history in Lincolnshire and was supported by the University of Lincoln librarians, who helped participants find sources.
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| === UCL Liberating our collections scheme ===
| | '''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. |
| In September, the Connected Heritage project collaborated with library staff at University College London to run an event as part of the UCL Liberating our collections scheme. Instigated by Rozz Evans, Head of Collection Strategy, the event focused on providing editing skills for staff at the university library. The scheme aims to address a lack of representation of diverse voices in the library’s collection. The training session allowed staff to use the experience of under-represented topics built up over the last few years and to take this practice into Wikipedia.
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| == The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) ==
| | 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. |
| [[File:NIHR residency announcement graphic.png|alt=NIHR logo for residency announcement graphic|thumb|NIHR residency announcement graphic]]
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| Wikipedia is one of the first places where people look for accessible medical information. The medical articles in the English-language Wikipedia are consulted more than 100 million times each month. Therefore, from the perspectives of health and social care, it is key that the information they find there is reliable, easy-to-understand and reflects our current knowledge. From the point of view of a research funder, improving Wikipedia is a robust way to disseminate health information rapidly and globally to an audience who would otherwise be difficult to reach. Furthermore, it helps to let numerous medical students and health professionals who regularly consult the encyclopaedia know about the latest evidence.
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| It’s for these reasons that in December 2021 we partnered with the NIHR and the Centre for Engagement and Dissemination to employ a Wikimedian in Residence, Adam Harangozo, to explore the use of Wikipedia for disseminating NIHR-funded research evidence.
| | == Connected Heritage == |
| | | 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. |
| Throughout the first year of the residency, Adam has adopted a three tiered approach:
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| # We offer a webinar to interested groups where we introduce what Wikipedia is, why it is a powerful tool for dissemination and discuss any questions or concerns.
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| # Following up from the webinars, we hold Wikipedia editing workshops for interested participants. These events focus on a specific topic with the goal to improve and expand the corresponding Wikipedia article with NIHR-funded research. During the workshops participants work on writing text missing from Wikipedia and the editing is done by the Wikipedian.
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| # For those interested in learning how to edit Wikipedia and use it longer-term we offer individual or small group workshops.
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| We’re pleased to share that Adam has been able to inspire researchers and staff to use Wikipedia for dissemination of their knowledge. Beyond the initiatives in the first year, the residency will aim to involve new communities who are close to NIHR to start editing, such as medical research charities, patient groups, and university students. Adam would also like to expand the project to non-English speakers through working with global health researchers and CEI on writing and translating articles. Adam would also like to introduce Wikipedia’s sister project, Wikidata, to researchers. Wikidata is an collaborative open data knowledge base that offers a powerful, computer-readable and multilingual infrastructure for sharing data about clinical trials, research programmes and publications. It would allow NIHR to present its work through transparent and easily accessible data and connect it to other databases.
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| == Wrapping up the residency at the Science Museum == | |
| [[File:Medium 2015 0015 0001.jpg|alt=Photo of The Ishiguro Storm Surge Machine, on display at the Science Museum|thumb|The Ishiguro Storm Surge Machine, on display at the Science Museum]]
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| The Wikimedian in Residence at the Science Museum, Hope Miyoba, completed her term after an excellent partnership that saw the SMG evaluate its commitment to open knowledge, and resulted in collaborations with different organisations, many of which are volunteer-led. The programme adapted to challenges posed by the environment, and continually assessed and re-assessed the success of different approaches to focus on those that offered the best possible outcome. The residency successfully delivered the majority of its aims to facilitate new events, contribute knowledge from SMG’s collection to Wikipedia, and reach new audiences through collaboration. A particularly interesting page resulting from the residency is the article on [[:en:Ishiguro_Storm_Surge_Computer#:~:text=The%20Ishiguro%20Storm%20Surge%20Machine,the%20Science%20Museum%20in%20London.|The Ishiguro Storm Surge Machine]], an analogue computer built by Japanese oceanographer Shizuo Ishiguro. Between 1960 and 1983, it was used to model storm surges in the North Sea by the UK National Institute of Oceanography. It is now on display in the Mathematics Gallery of the Science Museum in London.
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| == Education ==
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| Our work in the education sector remains a reliable source of getting valuable information from university staff and students onto the Wikimedia projects, and for equipping them with the skills necessary to continue advocating for open knowledge. The following examples are not an exhaustive list of all the schools we’re working with, which in this quarter included the Diversity and Inclusion group at the University of Oxford, the University of Kent’s MA History course, the University of Dundee, the University of St. Andrews, Exeter University and Queen Mary University.
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| === SOAS University of London ===
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| One of our Programme Coordinators, Dr Richard Nevell, trained students in the ‘2022 Politics of Resistance in the Middle East’ module at SOAS University of London to upload their knowledge to Wikipedia. The aim of this module is to inform and enthuse students about the politics of resistance in the Middle East, and their first assignment equipped them with the skills to share that information and enthusiasm with Wikipedia's vast audience. Students were encouraged to think critically about this very process of knowledge production, its political potentials, and their own role within it. Over 27.3K words and 290 references were added to Wikipedia articles as a result of this course.
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| === Menter Iaith Môn ===
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| Our partnership with Menter Iaith Môn – an organisation to promote the Welsh language across Wales – has always been a point of pride in fostering underrepresented languages on the Wikimedia projects. The team at Menter Môn has been busy in schools across Wales, and shared what they’ve been up to in 2022.
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| With Welsh place names at risk of being lost, changed or forgotten, this Wiki project aims to preserve Welsh names while also celebrating the language, culture, and heritage. At the start of the scheme, we asked via social media if areas on the Island were often referred to by the English name rather than the Welsh name. There were several responses, and through this we were able to map which areas would benefit from having a bench to highlight the Welsh name to the residents and visitors of the area.
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| Benches have been painted by local artists in the following locations:
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| * Rhosneigr (many use English names for the beaches in the area)
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| * Porth Swtan (Church Bay)
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| * Llangefni (Nant y Pandy - Dingle)
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| * Porthaethwy (Menai Bridge)
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| * Pentraeth (Red Wharf Bay)
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| * Caergybi / Holyhead (Wants to raise awareness with the pupils at the school)
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| When the benches were completed, we placed plaques on them with a link to the Welsh articles on the Welsh Wikipedia. After obtaining permission from the Community Councils of the different areas to have the benches painted, we organised art and Wikipedia sessions in the Secondary Schools. A session was held with Year 9 students at Ysgol Uwchradd Bodedern and Ysgol Gyfun Llangefni. The teaching was facilitated by a project coordinator and the classes were focused on topics such as digital licensing, collaborative working, evaluating data and editing. After collecting ideas in the schools, the artists Tomos Jones and Ffion Roberts-Drakley set about putting the ideas into action by painting the benches. The benches will simulate what was discussed in the sessions at school, and of course include the important Welsh place names.
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| We spent an afternoon with Year 12 students at Ysgol Syr Thomas Jones, Ysgol Llangefni and Ysgol Uwchradd Bodedern in November and December creating and enriching articles, adding the meaning and historical context of the island's Welsh place names on the Welsh Wiki. We focused on subjects such as digital licensing, collaborative working, data evaluation and editing. We created an article from scratch and worked on another two.
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| === University of Edinburgh ===
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| The resident at the University of Edinburgh, Ewan McAndrew, has been training four '''Korean Studies masters students''' in how information on Korean culture is created, curated and improved on both the English and Korean Wikipedias. One student contributed a 2000 word new article on [[:en:Comfort_women_in_the_arts|Comfort women in the arts]], highlighting an important feminist movement.
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| Ewan’s also been working on a new edition of the '''[[commons:File:Wikimedia_in_Education_-_Wikimedia_UK_in_partnership_with_the_University_of_Edinburgh.pdf|education case study booklet]]''', the last of which showed excellent examples of how the Wikimedia projects can be implemented in universities.
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| The '''Women in Red editathons''' at the university also continue, which have added new pages on accused Scottish witches and included a special event for Ada Lovelace Day in October, in which students added [https://thinking.is.ed.ac.uk/ada-lovelace-day/ new articles] on notable Scottish women chemists.
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| Building on the already internationally recognised '''[https://witches.is.ed.ac.uk/ Accused Witches of Scotland map]''', Ewan made two new visualisations using Flourish to pull the data from the map into an animated timeline. The first for the locations of the [https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/11042684/ residents who were accused of witchcraft between 1563 to 1736], and another for the locations of their [https://flourish-user-preview.com/11211885/Xeq4bSWO1LV3C3E2rs--37iEKW7TiRXSyO0Q6M-7IwvhxxvBY9Y_m_Qo9b5LFfru/ alleged sightings of the devil], produced from records of their ‘confessions’.
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| Overall, the partnership with the university continues to produce many valuable programmes thanks to Ewan’s excellent work, not least of which is '''[https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/help-consultancy/is-skills/edinburgh-award/digital-volunteering-wikipedia The Edinburgh Award for Digital Volunteering]''' with Wikipedia, which will run until March 2023 and rewards students for sharing their knowledge.
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| == Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 ==
| | 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. |
| [[File:Dungeness, Romney Marsh and Rye Bay - 20220820153730.jpg|alt=Winning photo for the UK section of Wiki Loves Earth, Saint Thomas Becket Church in Fairfield, Romney Marsh by Barbara Keller|thumb|Winning photo for the UK category of Wiki Loves Monuments, Saint Thomas Becket Church in Fairfield, Romney Marsh by Barbara Keller.]]
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| We’re pleased to announce the winners of the UK section of Wiki Loves Monuments. Thank you to all of the judges, who helped select a beautiful array of photos from across the nation. This year the first prize went to the photo of Saint Thomas Becket Church in Fairfield, Romney Marsh by Barbara Keller. Check out the [https://www.wikilovesmonuments.org.uk/the-winners-of-wiki-loves-monuments-uk-2022 blog] on the UK Wiki Loves Monuments website, where you can get more details on the winners and see high-resolution copies of their fantastic contributions to the competition.
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| == The British Library ==
| | '''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. |
| The resident at the British Library, Lucy Hinnie, has created a [[:en:Wikipedia:GLAM/British_Library/Case_Studies|case studies page]], which provides insight into some of the excellent programmes produced from the partnership. The residency also has a few events coming up, which are open to sign ups: | |
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| A Wikithon on '''Black British history''' will take place on Wednesday 25th January 2023, Black Creatives and the Archive: Surveillance and the State, co-hosted by TNA, the University of Leeds, and the British Library. The topics covered will include:
| | During March we also supported microinterns at the '''Manar Al-Athar Archive''', building on a similar micro internship last summer. |
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| * What does a timeline of twentieth century Black British history look like? Where does it start and who gets to decide?
| | 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. |
| * What traditions have shaped Black British culture and where can we find Black archives?
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| * How does our access to these histories shape our understanding of Black history in Britain?
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| * How has the surveillance state shaped and informed access to Black British history in the archive?
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| * How do genre, class and race contribute to absences in the archive, and how can we combat this?
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| The workshop aims to expand and amplify knowledge produced by and about Black creatives in the twentieth century. The event is an active editing workshop, with training on creating and editing wiki pages in order to communicate the hidden gaps of Black history in British culture of the twentieth century and the impact of surveillance. Participants will also be invited to explore resources that can enable better citation justice for BIPOC knowledge producers, and greater access to archive collections documenting Black British histories. Documents will be on display from The National Archives for participants to view. With expert support from Wikimedians and researchers alike, this is an unmissable opportunity to improve Wikipedia for the better. Sign up links for this event are yet to be confirmed, keep an eye on our social media for when they go live.
| | 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. |
| [[File:Image for the Living with Machines- Exploring the Margins event.jpg|alt=Image for the Living with Machines: Exploring the Margins event|thumb|Image for the Living with Machines: Exploring the Margins event]]
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| The '''[https://www.leedsinspired.co.uk/events/wikithon-living-machines-exploring-margins Living With Machines: Exploring the Margins editathon]''' will take place on the 7th January at 1PM. Research for the Living with Machines exhibition at Leeds City Museum showed that some significant figures from Leeds history are under-represented on Wikipedia. This Wiki workshop aims to expand and amplify knowledge about these areas, with a particular focus on women and working class figures. Participants require no previous Wiki experience but are expected to bring their own laptops for this event. We're particularly interested in improving content around:
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| * Women who owned workshops, mills and so on;
| | == Global Systems Institute Residency for climate == |
| * Working class people who pushed for better working conditions and the employers who worked with them;
| | 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). |
| * Significant companies and buildings around Leeds, especially the ecosystem of skilled workers and small companies that supported mechanisation in Leeds, from the 1700s to the present day;
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| * Historians who worked on working class lives and collective action
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| * Weavers, such as those who signed the weavers' petition and provided evidence for Parliamentary Select Committees.
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| * Working class writers of autobiographies and memoirs
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| * Women workers in the Preston Strikes (and others)
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| * Men's and women's football players on factory teams (e.g. munitionettes during WWI)
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| * Artworks and images that depict factories: who painted them and why?
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| == Khalili Collections ==
| | 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. |
| [[File:Graphic for Tackling Cultural Bias Online editathons.png|alt=Editathon poster for Khalili Foundation editathons for Tackling Cultural Bias Online|thumb|Editathon poster for Khalili Foundation editathons for Tackling Cultural Bias Online]]
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| === January editathons to diversify Wikipedia’s artistic content ===
| | 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. |
| As part of the [https://www.khalili.foundation/world-festival-of-cultural-diversity/ World Festival of Cultural Diversity], the [https://www.khalili.foundation/ Khalili Foundation] is supporting two in-person editathon events in January to diversify Wikipedia’s representation of visual art. Wikipedia includes an enormous amount of freely available knowledge about art, but to a large extent it describes visual art in terms of the Western canon, even in non-European languages. We can redress this balance by writing about art works and artists from other traditions and cultures. Participants are invited to bring artistic topics to work on or, if not, we have “target lists” of artists and their masterpieces from many different cultures. These events will include basic training in wiki-editing and an experienced Wikipedian will be on hand to help make lasting improvements to the topics.The London event is hosted by the Wellcome Collection on Euston Road and the Oxford event is in partnership with the Khalili Research Centre and hosted at Wolfson College. Spaces at these events are limited and can be booked free online through EventBrite:
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| [https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wikipedia-editathon-for-cultural-diversity-in-visual-art-tickets-469939500697 Wednesday January 11th], the Wellcome Collection, London
| | 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. |
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| [https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wikipedia-edit-a-thon-for-islamic-art-and-non-western-art-tickets-475237487117 Tuesday January 24th], Wolfson College, Oxford
| | See also Wikipedia:WiR/Global Systems Institute, and the Edit for Climate Change Dashboard. |
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| === Arabic Wikipedia === | | == British Library Residency == |
| Besides these events, resident at the Khalili Foundation, Dr Martin Poulter, has been strengthening the project’s presence on Arabic Wikipedia. There are seven Featured Images on Arabic Wikipedia, including an addition in September of a 13th century work that shows a scientific explanation of eclipses and of the phases of the Moon. It appeared on the front page of Arabic Wikipedia on 17th September, getting more than 76,000 views. Martin was invited to the WikiArabia conference in Dubai, where he distributed a handout about the Khalili Collections and their on-wiki representations. Alongside this, Martin is also building project pages for a global visual arts task force; a kind of Women In Red for art and artists outside the Western canon. Using the list compiled by the [https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202104.0770/v1 Ahmed & Poulter research], the resident identified 129 biographies of visual artists from outside Western culture which were not tagged with WikiProject Visual Arts, and added them to the WikiProject.
| | 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. |
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| === Research aimed at tackling cultural bias on Wikipedia ===
| | 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. |
| In November, Wikimedia UK was awarded funding from Culham St Gabriel’s Trust, to support the continuation of our research aimed at tackling cultural bias on Wikipedia. Building on our previous work with Waqās Ahmed and Dr Martin Poulter from the Khalili Collections, the focus of this research is to identify and highlight knowledge bias relating to underrepresented religions and religious culture. This is a very exciting opportunity for Wikimedia UK, as the findings of this work will be published and shared with the global editing community, to help close these knowledge gaps and improve both the quantity and quality of information on the world’s religious beliefs and traditions.
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| == National Galleries of Scotland and the Fruitmarket ==
| | You can see the Library’s project page and Lucy’s blog on Lord Chamberlain’s Plays to see how the residency concluded. |
| [[File:NGS-Wiki-Editathon by Tanatsei Gambura.jpg|alt=Mirrored image of the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh and Edinburgh Castle on the hill in the background from the archive of Swedish Cultural Commons. Overlayed by the image Beach in Light Beige Tone by Diana Akhmetianova, accessed via Base Image. Artwork by Tanatsei Gambura.|thumb|Mirrored image of the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh and Edinburgh Castle on the hill in the background from the archive of Swedish Cultural Commons. Overlayed by the image Beach in Light Beige Tone by Diana Akhmetianova, accessed via Base Image. Artwork by Tanatsei Gambura.]]
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| The National Galleries of Scotland teamed up with the Fruitmarket to run an editathon in the NGS’s Modern Two building, which was the Fruitmaket’s first in person event since we started running editathons with them in January 2021. The event focused on improving the pages on '''contemporary Scottish artists of colour'''. The event began with a behind the scenes tour of the Modern Two print rooms with librarian Kerry Watson, discussing the gallery’s drive to diversify its print collection and what is involved in the acquisition process. This led into Wikipedia training introduced by artist and cultural practitioner Tanatsei Gambura and run by Dr Sara Thomas, our Scotland Programme Coordinator, who have both been working with the Fruitmarket since 2021 on a project aimed at improving the representation of creative people of colour on Wikipedia. During past editathons, the Fruitmarket has been working on addressing the passive and active erasure of the creative work of people of colour – historical and current – in our community. This event sought to bring together this ongoing work with the acquisitions currently being undertaken by the National Galleries of Scotland.
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| Another of the National Galleries of Scotland projects to diversify Wikipedia, one that focused on the '''gender and racial diversity of artists represented on Wikipedia''', was picked up by the The Scotsman newspaper, which did an [https://www.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/scotlands-neglected-female-artists-set-for-greater-recognition-after-wikipedia-edit-a-thons-3872315 article] on the project. The editathons aim to improve the gender parity and racial diversity of artist biographies on Wikipedia by adding more articles about the women of colour that have artwork in the NGS’s collections. The editathons built upon work done by volunteers at the NGS in the summer.
| | == State of Open Con == |
| | 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. |
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| == Scots Wikipedia ==
| | 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. |
| The drive to increase the [https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/campaigns/scots_wiki/programs content of Scots Wikipedia] continues, with two events taking place in September and November, and another one scheduled in the new year to expand the 'stub' articles – articles that are short and need their Scots linguistics fixing. If you speak Scots and are interested in contributing to the Wikipedia, please consider getting in touch with us at scotland@wikimedia.org.uk. We partner with the Scots Language Centre for the editathons, so if you feel like you need help with your Scots there are experts on hand!
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| == VocalEyes ==
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| VocalEyes is a crowdsourcing project to collect information on how accessible heritage websites are for the blind and partially sighted. The project completed its audit to track the changes in the state of access on museum and heritage websites since 2018, when their last report was made. Unfortunately, the report found that there have been no major improvements in information for blind and visually impaired, D/deaf, hard of hearing, and neurodivergent visitors in those four years. We’re partnering with VocalEyes to get the information onto Wikidata to highlight the importance of online access information for the UK museum and heritage sector to a wider audience. Hopefully with more dissemination of the information in the report, we can start to implement real changes in the cultural sector’s online presence.
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| == Join us == | | == Join us == |
Useful categories (without spaces)
[[ Category:Friends' Newsletter ]]
Welcome to Friends' Newsletter, 2023/Issue 01
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.
Staff Changes at Wikimedia UK
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.
Online Safety Bill
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 [[1]].
Minority and minoritized languages
Doubling the number of articles on Welsh Wici
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.
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.
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 {{pop}} 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!
Cornish place-names
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.
Scots wiki writing drive
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.
Train the Trainer
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
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
Women’s History Month at Queen’s University Belfast
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.
Scotland
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.
University of Edinburgh
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.
University engagement with Wiki projects
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.
At SOAS, we offered course support for the course leader for a module on the Politics of Resistance.
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.
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.
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.
Connected Heritage
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.
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.
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.
During March we also supported microinterns at the Manar Al-Athar Archive, building on a similar micro internship last summer.
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.
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.
Global Systems Institute Residency for climate
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).
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 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.
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.
See also Wikipedia:WiR/Global Systems Institute, and the Edit for Climate Change Dashboard.
British Library Residency
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.
You can see the Library’s project page and Lucy’s blog on Lord Chamberlain’s Plays to see how the residency concluded.
State of Open Con
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.
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.
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, or support our projects through a donation, or volunteer on some of the projects above.
We’re on social media if you’d like to connect with us 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.
[[ Category:Friends' Newsletter ]]