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== Welcome to the winter 2023 newsletter ==
== Welcome to the winter 2023 newsletter ==
I’m delighted to welcome you to the winter edition of our newsletter. This contains lots of news and information about Wikimedia UK’s activities and partnerships over the past few months, including our recent Community Meeting and Train the Trainer course for volunteers; the conclusion of our two and a half year Connected Heritage programme, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund; and our ongoing climate-focused residency at the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute.


As the year draws to a close, many of us will be reflecting on events in the wider world, and deeply concerned about the ongoing conflict in Gaza and Israel. In this [https://wikimedia.org.uk/2023/12/wikimedia-and-the-war-on-information/ blog post] I talk about the work of Wikimedia staff and volunteers to address the increasing threat of disinformation, in relation to the war and other crises.  
== Celtic Knot Language Conference ==
The [[m:Celtic_Knot_Conference_2024|Celtic Knot Language Conference]] is a gathering that acknowledges the diversity of Celtic language communities and their presence within the global Wikimedia ecosystem. Rooted in the spirit of collaboration and community empowerment, it serves as a nexus for language enthusiasts, Wikimedia contributors, cultural advocates, academics and researchers to come together and explore innovative approaches to language preservation, promotion, and recognition of Celtic and minority languages in the digital space.


The end of the year is also a time to reflect on the events, achievements and challenges of our own lives and work. I’m very proud of what the Wikimedia UK staff team, trustees, community leaders, partners, volunteer contributors and participants have delivered together during 2023, and the difference we have made to the online information environment.
The conference will take place on '''25-27th September 2024, onsite in Waterford City, Ireland'''. Keep an eye on the [[m:Celtic_Knot_Conference_2024|event]] page for more updates including details about the venue, programme and registration soon! Details about the venue, program, registration and other updates will be added to the event page in due time.


Thank you to everyone who supported our Giving Tuesday campaign. Our work to empower people to learn, share, and create knowledge relies on the generosity of donors like you. Thank you for helping to ensure that we can continue our programmes in 2024 and beyond.
As we are currently building the program for the conference, we would love to invite community members to contribute to the event by giving a presentation, a lightning talk, running a workshop or submitting a poster. '''The call for programme proposals is now open until Sunday 14th July'''. You can make a proposal directly on Wiki or using a form. You will find all the details and instructions on the [[m:Celtic_Knot_Conference_2024/Call_for_submissions|Call for submissions]] page.


Lucy Crompton-Reid
To support participants coming from Ireland or Europe to attend the event, we are offering scholarships to cover event tickets, travel and accommodation. For people located in other areas of the world or people who cannot join onsite, we are offering e-scholarships covering data packages to watch the conference from home. '''The scholarship application process is now open until Sunday, June 30th'''. You can find the form and the instructions on the [[m:Celtic_Knot_Conference_2024/Attend|Attend]] page.


Chief Executive
We are looking forward to receiving your contributions to the program and scholarship requests!
[[File:Community meeting 2023 videos and opportunities.png|alt=Banner for the community meeting, featuring a photo of last year's meeting by Tammy Gede and a collage created with images from Wikimedia Commons.|thumb|Banner for the community meeting, featuring a photo of last year's meeting by Tammy Gede and a collage created with images from Wikimedia Commons. File:WMUK Get Involved Header.png]]


== 2023 UK Community Meeting - videos and opportunities ==
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to the [[m:Celtic_Knot_Conference_2024#Organising_team|organising team]]: Richard Nevell (WMUK), Amy O'Riordan and Sophie Fitzpatrick (Wikimedia Community Ireland), or Léa Lacroix.
On Sunday 26th November we hosted a thoroughly enjoyable Community Meeting. It was a chance for our community to gather online, share the work that’s taken place over the last year, recognise that work through the UK Wikimedian of the Year awards, and find out more ways to get involved. The meeting was only two hours long, but managed to show a truly impressive portfolio of wiki work from our volunteers and partners. Thank you to everyone who contributed and came along!


For anyone who missed it, you can find recordings of the talks, the opportunities fair, and awards over on this [https://wikimedia.org.uk/2023/12/wmuk-2023-community-meeting-videos-and-opportunities/ blog.]
== Wikimania 2024 ==
Every year, hundreds of Wikimedians come together to celebrate free knowledge at the annual Wikimania global conference. The 19th edition of '''Wikimania will happen in Katowice, Poland from 7th–10 August''' as a partnership between Wikimedians of the Central and Eastern Europe region and the Wikimedia Foundation. It will host free knowledge leaders from around the world to discuss issues, report on new projects and approaches, build networks, and exchange ideas.


== The 2023 Wikimedian of the Year Awards ==
Wikimedia UK staff have had a number of proposals for talks accepted, including our Director of Programmes and Evaluation, Daria Cybulska, on The Changemakers’ Toolkit; CEO Lucy Crompton-Reid who is contributing to a session on public policy advocacy; and Dr Sara Thomas, Programme Manager, who has CHECK WITH SARA 🙂  …


==== Partnership of the Year ====
== Wiki Loves Earth ==
This prize was won by the Royal College of Nursing’s History of Nursing Forum (HONF) “Nurses in Red”. The forum established an editing group to improve and create content relating to the history of nursing on Wikipedia. So far they have improved more than 200 articles which have been viewed nearly 4.5 million times. The group’s focus is explicitly diversity focused too: nurses have often been from under-represented groups and making their lives and careers more visible on Wikipedia is so important.
Wiki Loves Earth is an annual international photography competition aimed at capturing the beauty and diversity of our natural world. The hope is that if we can illustrate Wikipedia with images of nature it will map the effects of climate change as well as drive home the importance of these areas of natural beauty and the animals and plants that inhabit them.


Our Honourable Mention was awarded to the Khalili Collections and Glaire Anderson of the University of Edinburgh. Glaire has supported two classroom projects in which her History of Art students evaluated articles about Islamic Art and Science on Wikipedia, and then improved them. Many of the pages are now illustrated with beautiful 10th/11th century Caliphate images from the Khalilli Collections, which were released on Wikimedia Commons. Prior to this project, the Khalili images were not viewed by as many people, but are now reaching a wider audience on pages with high engagement.
This year, Wales, Ireland and, for the first time, Scotland are taking part in the competition. Each nation will have a round of national judging before the winners of that round are submitted to the international judging panel.


==== Up and Coming Wikimedian ====
'''The competition runs throughout June to July''', enter now to stand a chance to win and help us document the important natural wonders of our world.
This prize was won by Heidi Berg, a prolific editor who has updated or created over 300 articles, vastly improving coverage of the Norwegian women’s football team. She also undertook Train the Trainer courses and helped other newbie editors on a regular basis. At monthly Women in Red editathons, she helps others and even lent her own laptop to one forgetful participant!


Our Honourable Mention was awarded to Sophie Whitfield, one of Wikimedia UK’s trainers who has shown incredible dedication over the last year in attending, designing, and delivering open knowledge workshops and projects. Sophie has supported projects at Durham University and Newcastle University, helping Wikimedia UK’s collaborations with higher education.
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 [[commons:Commons:Wiki_Loves_Earth_2024_in_Wales|Wales info/uploads]].


==== UK Wikimedian of the Year ====
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 [[commons:Commons:Wiki_Loves_Earth_2024_in_Scotland|Scotland info/uploads]].
This prize was won by Nick Sheppard, a Wikimedia volunteer and Open Research Advisor at the University of Leeds. Nick has advocated for Wikimedia projects within Leeds and in the university sector like few people ever have, and he’s really taken on the values of the Wikimedia movement, not just in his professional life. Nick has also been pushing for the UK Reproducibility Network to include guidance on Wikimedia in its advice to researchers. The Wikimedia Champions project they ran at Leeds has been an unusually successful student project, getting PhD students to contribute to Wikimedia in a variety of ways.


Our Honourable Mention was awarded to Ian Pigott. Ian has been the engine that keeps Women in Red going. He has organised an astonishing 270 editathons over the last eight years. His efforts have inspired others and he has been tireless in helping the Women in Red project, addressing Wikipedia’s gender gap.
🇮🇪 [[commons:Commons:Wiki_Loves_Earth_2024_in_Ireland|Ireland info/uploads]].
[[File:The Crazy Fighting Goats of the Ogwen Valley.jpg|alt=Two billy goats locking horns on a grassy hill|thumb|Winning photograph for Wiki Loves Earth in the Welsh category, taken by Rufus Davies]]


== Wiki Loves Earth winners in Wales and Northern Ireland ==
== Food and Agriculture Organisation ==
In an effort to document the beauty of our natural world on the Wikimedia projects, photographers took part in the international Wiki Loves Earth competition. For the second year running, Wales had the second highest number of photos submitted to the Wiki Loves Earth competition, with over 5000 images. Northern Ireland took part in the competition for the fourth year running, submitting an impressive 363 photos. Ultimately, the aim of adding photographs to Wikimedia Commons is so they are used and seen. Be it on Wikipedia articles or in another medium entirely, openly licensing images helps the Internet be more informative and useful for all of us. Images from WLE in Wales are among the most frequently added to Wikipedia articles, with 51% of this year’s photos added to relevant pages. All of the photographs from this year’s competition can be found [[commons:Category:Images_from_Wiki_Loves_Earth_2023|here.]]
WMUK have been working with the [[wikipedia:WikiProject United Nations/FAO|Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations]] since 2019, helping them share text and images from reports and developing them into content that can be used on Wikipedia. By releasing this content under an open licence, we have helped the FAO reach an audience of 3 million people a month through the English Wikipedia alone, covering topics such as food safety, biodiversity, and forest restoration. Sharing research about climate change has become increasingly important for WMUK and working with the FAO helps to make high-quality research more accessible.
[[File:Anglia Atlas.jpg|alt=Atlas created by cartographer Christopher Saxton in 1579 as part of his ‘Atlas of the Counties of England and Wales’.|thumb|Atlas created by cartographer Christopher Saxton in 1579 as part of his ‘Atlas of the Counties of England and Wales’. University of Exeter Special Collections]]


== Connected Heritage ==
We are also collaborating on a submission to Expo 2025 to have working with the Wikimedia projects recognised as an example of best practice. If that is successful, it will incentivise more collaboration with Wikimedia to share high-quality information.
The [https://wikimedia.org.uk/connected-heritage/ Connected Heritage] project has come to an end, with so many brilliant outcomes including residencies at cultural institutions and a whole toolkit to learn from. From 2021 to 2023 we worked with partner organisations across the four nations to deliver digital skills training for volunteers, staff and local communities. The project aimed to raise digital skills and confidence across the heritage sector through Wiki training.


One of the most transformative ways in which we worked with partner organisations was through mini Wikimedian residencies. From 2022 to 2023 we worked with both the [https://rammuseum.org.uk/ Royal Albert Memorial Museum] (RAMM), and [https://mixedmuseum.org.uk/ The Mixed Museum,] enriching collections data on Wiki platforms. In this work we highlighted the ways in which a step-by-step approach to this kind of change can open up knowledge to the wider community, and bring audiences back to the source institution.
== Coasts in Mind ==
Back in September, our Director of Programmes and Evaluation, Daria Cybulska, and our Fundraising and Relationship Lead, George Colbourn, collaborated with the Museum of London Archaeology to apply for some funding internal to their organisation to run a couple of editathons themed around climate for youth groups. We secured the funding, but the project itself was paused while MOLA went through a restructure. They are through the other side and we have resumed activities such as this. We are at the stage of seeing what youth organisations would be interested with MOLA taking the lead on this step.


In March 2023, Chamion Caballero, director of The Mixed Museum, Jane Secker and Victoria Araj participated in a roundtable discussion moderated by the Connected Heritage team, as part of the [https://heritagedot.org/ Heritage Dot 2.0] conference hosted by the University of Lincoln. You can view the video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wei750SrHyY&ab_channel=HeritageDot here.]
== National Library of Wales ==
Wide-ranging content work took place at the National Library of Wales, where Jason Evans champions Wikipedia as the National Wikimedian for Wales. Welsh Wicipedia were the first language wiki to achieve gender parity, and that’s still an important aspect of the work in Wales, with 525 new articles about women were added to Welsh Wicipedia through the Library. Preservation of the Welsh language is also an important area, with 600 new Wikidata items for missing Welsh electoral districts with EN and CY labels and descriptions added. 150 CY labels added to Welsh churches, 213 new Wikidata items created for Welsh historic buildings, 4200 edits (adding coordinates, admin district, etc.) to improve data for Welsh historic monument items in February, 3000 in March, 7598 in April.


The discussion touched on how engagement with Wiki-based projects enabled cultural heritage organisations to improve the accessibility of their collections, while simultaneously empowering volunteers and members through embedded digital upskilling. The Mixed Museum’s Wikipedia edits were discussed as an example of ways that open knowledge can place overlooked cultural histories into the dominant narrative.
== University of St Andrews ==
The University of St Andrews has several strands of student activity. We support Junior and Senior Honours students there to design and deliver Wikimedia projects of their interest. A Senior Honours student scraped, formatted and uploaded data from the Scottish Brick History website (which we’ve done small pieces of work on for a couple of years now) to Wikidata, and created this [https://scottishbricks.github.io/ site]. This is a significant data visualisation of an important part of Scottish industrial history, which up until now has only existed on a manually-updated Wordpress site, and something we had wanted to set up for a number of years now.  


To see more of the project’s achievements, you can see Lucy Hinnie’s [https://collectionstrust.org.uk/blog/connecting-heritage-through-wikimedia/ blog.]
Other senior honours students worked with the Mapping Memorials to Women in Scotland dataset (a project of Women’s History Scotland and the Glasgow Women’s Library, again with which we’ve done some work in the past), again uploading that information to Wikidata.  In both cases we were able to partner the student with a real-life dataset and a real-life partner organisation.  


== Celtic Knot Wikimedia Language Conference 2024 ==
Another student worked with Wiki Loves Monuments data, visualising the data of images uploaded over the last few years of the contest in the UK. Key reflections from that include areas of the UK in which we have not had significant coverage – Northern Ireland in particular.  
We are very happy to announce that the conference dedicated to minoritized languages on the Wikimedia projects will be back for its 7th edition, to be held in Waterford City, Ireland, in September 2024. The exact date will be announced as soon as possible.


Getting back to its roots in the Celtic languages and nations, the event gathers people from communities and languages that are underrepresented on the Wikimedia projects. It is a place where people working on growing and maintaining their communities can meet, learn from each other, and support each other on topics like community growth, technical tools, or collaboration with partners.
Overall, Senior Honours projects involved around 2k new items added to Wikidata.


[[m:Celtic_Knot_Conference_2024|Celtic Knot 2024,]] will be an in-person event, held in Waterford, Ireland's oldest city which has an abundance of cultural heritage and history. We are exploring options to make conference resources (talks, panels, etc.) available to those who are unable to attend in person.
Junior Honours students chose topic areas and pulled data from Wikidata to visualise.  This was an interesting data re-use project, which saw the entire year of Computing Science students working in groups to create websites based on real-life data, and also partnering with Skyscanner to add a “twist” to the challenge around designing for accessibility. The challenge has received positive feedback from tutors and course leaders, and we hope to return to Wikidata as a course challenge on a regular basis, every 2-3 years.  The students spent over 24k hours on this project.  


We are currently gathering input from the community to build a conference tailored to your needs: whether you attended a previous edition of the Celtic Knot or not, if you are involved in underrepresented languages on the Wikimedia Projects, please take a few minutes to fill in the [https://wikimedia.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_erCHFhEJyzrO46i community survey] (available in English, Irish and Welsh), and make sure to share the information with your local group. The survey is open until January 21st.
Following on from data gaps identified by the Junior Honours students, Dr Kirsty Ross has set up another STEP (Summer work experience student work programme) project to look at filling some of the gaps identified.  


As we are starting to build the concept and the program, we will regularly improve the existing event pages on Meta and post updates on the [[m:Talk:Celtic_Knot_Conference_2024|talk page]] of the event.
== Repatriations and museums event ==
Programme Manager Sara Thomas attended a University of Glasgow [https://www.create.ac.uk/ CREATe] event in April entitled From Scotland to the World: Repatriation and Museums. The event focussed on the repatriation/rematriation of objects from various international museums to communities of origin, including the rematriation of the [[:en:Ni'isjoohl_totem_pole|Ni'isjoohl totem pole]] from the National Museum of Scotland to the Nisga’a people of British Columbia. There were some interesting insights and reflections on the ability of Scottish museums to return objects, and the process of the development of organisational policy around these matters. In relation to Wikimedia UK work, there were also interesting reflections on the ethics and respectful approach to working with intangible and other cultural heritage artefacts within the Wikimedia projects.  


The core organising team is composed of Amy O’Riordan (WCI), Sophie Fitzpatrick (WCI), Daria Cybulska (WMUK), Richard Nevell (WMUK), supported by Léa Lacroix (community engagement consultant).
== Heritage Guard Network ==
[[File:WikiProject Flyer.jpg|alt=Edit for Climate Change flyer|thumb|Edit for Climate Change flyer]]
The [[m:Heritage_Guard_Network|Heritage Guard Network]] Risk Working Group is a wiki network launched recently to promote the crowdsourcing of information about cultural and natural heritage in danger. Wikimedia UK were invited to join the network due to our work with the [https://sxnch.wordpress.com/ SXNCH] project, documenting the intersection between cultural and natural heritage. Our Programme Manager, Richard Nevell, represents WMUK on the Risk Working Group, sharing experience of working with projects such as SXNCH and the [https://slsgazetteer.org/about-projects/about/ Gazetteer of Libyan Heritage].


== Climate residency at the Global Systems Institute ==
Richard’s shared a number of lessons with the group, such as how we’ve found that Researchers see value in sharing stuff on Wikipedia, but are time poor which limits availability to edit. We’ve also found that because Wikipedia is ubiquitous it provides an opportunity to shape people's understanding of the environment. Cultural and environmental heritage are inextricable – from conservation challenges in museums as they respond to extreme weather to the impact of climate change on historic sites (drought, flooding, erosion, etc). As Wikimedia organisations we can play an important role in making engaging with Wikimedia easier for experts and find ways to remove the friction.
With over 324 million annual page views across more than 25,000 climate change-related articles, Wikipedia is one of the largest information sources on climate change in the world. Our resident at the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute (GSI), Tatjana Baleta, has spent significant time facilitating researchers and students to improve climate change content on Wikipedia.


To date, the project has trained more than 90 editors in 10 editathons, and articles from Effects of climate change on human health to Tipping Points in the climate system have also undergone review by subject matter experts.
== Climate residency at GSI ==
Our main project in the Climate strand of our programmes is the residency with the Global Systems Institute at Exeter University. Earlier this year Wikipedia was used at the University as a teaching tool in an editathon for the MSc Global Sustainability Solutions students. Working in pairs, students updated Wikipedia articles on the environmental policy they had been assigned to work on for other aspects of their coursework. The Resident, Tatjana Baleta, also gave a presentation to bioscience lecturers about using Wikimedia in teaching at their “New Ways of Learning” seminar in April.


Tatjana has also been engaging lecturers about using Wikimedia platforms as a teaching tool. One MSc Sustainable Solutions student, two undergraduate Biosciences students and one PhD student in Environmental Intelligence are undertaking projects involving Wikipedia.
Permission was secured for the graphics created for the Global Systems Institute’s Tipping Points report to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in April. The Resident wrote a few paragraphs of content from the GSI’s Tipping Points reports, the content was reviewed by experts before editing it into Wikipedia.


After a successful first year, the project has secured funding to continue for a second. Find out more about the project [[:en:Wikipedia:WiR/Global_Systems_Institute|here.]]
Tatjana collaborated with a fellow Resident Adam Harangozo at the National Institute for Health Research to devise a collaborative event with experts from NIHR and the European Centre for Environment & Human Health, focussed on reviewing and improving articles under the sub-theme climate change and human health. The group worked on the article Indoor air quality.


== Coda article on the impact of OSB on Welsh Wikipedia ==
Tatjana spent two days at the Met Office in March to engage the researchers there. She gave two seminars about Wikipedia, and had meetings with the Met Office’s Knowledge Integration team about how they could include Wikipedia outputs in their communication activities.  
The Online Safety Bill passed into law in October, marking the end of our efforts to ensure public interest projects are not damaged by the legislation, and the start of a long process of understanding what compliance will mean in practice for Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects. Robin Owain, our Programme Manager for Wales, and Jason Evans, the Open Data Manager for the National Library of Wales, were interviewed by [https://www.codastory.com/newsletters/better-internet-wikipedia/ Coda] about how the bill could affect their volunteer Wiki work in Wales.


== Palestinian history and culture ==
April marked a half year point of the second year of the residency. Cumulative project achievements for the project to date (October 2022 - April 2024) are:  
We spoke to Lucy Moore, winner of the 2022 UK Wikimedian of Year Award, about the editing she’s been doing on the cultural heritage of Palestine. Lucy kept seeing calls from Palestinians on social media for their culture to be shared online as a way for it to be preserved. As a museum professional, Lucy thought the best approach would be to start with Palestinian museums. She started an article for the [[:en:Palestine_Museum_of_Natural_History|Palestine Museum of Natural History,]] which was nominated for the Did You Know section of Wikipedia and received 7889 views on the 1st December. From what Lucy could find online, [[:en:Al_Qarara_Cultural_Museum|The Al Qarara Museum]] has been destroyed. She started an article for it, and in researching for that page she found UNESCO’s listing for Palestine’s intangible heritage. From there Lucy’s created a number of pages on Palestinian culture, but is aware that there are people based abroad who are experts in the field and can advise on Arab names/places. For this reason, Lucy joined an editathon in early December with a group of [https://www.instagram.com/freeknowledgepal Wikimedians based in Jordan.] The event itself was not only trained editors, but provided important historical and political context to ensure that the edits attendees might contribute took this context into account. It also brought editors together from a range of countries who worked across Wikipedias in different languages. Lucy commented that ''“digital content can be so fragile, so aggregating sources for others to use on Wikipedia almost feels like a form of digital salvage. For the Al Qarara Cultural Museum, to my knowledge it's not there anymore, with collections largely destroyed, so in some ways it feels like you're writing an epitaph.”''


The organisers of the Palestine editathon have created a [https://docs.google.com/document/d/17301-ugUCIoupvcJBDLKneh-Dgfngp_-Ai9NUIsLANg/edit landing page] for those who missed the launch but still want to participate.
* More than 120 editors have been trained over 13 editathon events.
* More than 450 articles have been edited to varying degrees (as a cumulative effort from both trainers (4) and trainees).  
* These articles have been viewed 53.2 million times since they were first edited.  
* Of these, 20 articles have undergone completed expert review.  


== Queer Britain ==
From October to April, as a result of editathon events, more than 40 editors have been trained to edit Wikipedia’s climate change articles, and 64 climate change-related articles have been improved. These articles have been viewed over 3.74 million times since they were edited.
This autumn, Queer Britain collaborated with Wikimedia UK to host a Wikimedian in Residence project. From August to November, Evie Moore worked on improving content on Wikipedia and related websites, with a focus on topics relevant to Queer Britain.


One of Evie’s primary tasks during the residency was enhancing the [[:en:LGBT_rights_in_the_United_Kingdom#Advocacy_organisations|'LGBT rights in the UK']] Wikipedia page, expanding sections on Advocacy Organisations, LGBT representation in politics, Pride Parades, and Rights for Asylum. The comprehensive 1500+ words added aim to provide a well-rounded view of the current landscape of LGBTQ+ rights in the UK. The page is read on average [https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&start=2022-11&end=2023-10&pages=LGBT_rights_in_the_United_Kingdom 12,000 times a month] so is an important source of information.
Cloud seeding case study: The United Arab Emirates recently faced its worst floods in 75 years, causing four fatalities and hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to buildings and restructure. In the wake, rumours on social media have been circulating that the UAE’s cloud seeding program is to blame for the severe deluge. As people scramble to make sense of what they hear online, they head to Wikipedia for more information. The Wikipedia article Cloud seeding in the United Arab Emirates has racked up over 200,000 views in the past 30 days – an increase of over 90% compared to the previous month. But there was a problem: Expert consensus published in the news is that anthropogenic climate change, and not cloud seeding, is the real cause of the high rainfall in the UAE and across the Persian Gulf. However, the Wikipedia article heavily implied a link between flooding and cloud seeding activities, citing sources that did not state such a link. Tatjana spotted this and was able to remove the misinformation and add a paragraph about climate change’s reported role in the floods. When possible bad faith editors attempted to delete the new information, she engaged the Wikipedia editor community to build consensus on the most factual information and prevent its removal. The Cloud seeding in the United Arab Emirates article now correctly attributes the April 2024 floods to climate change, providing correct information to hundreds of thousands of people.


You can read Evie’s full blog on the residency [https://wikimedia.org.uk/2023/12/queer-britains-wikimedian-in-residence/ here.]
== The Khalili Foundation ==
[[File:"Islamic miniature painting in medical manuscripts" Wellcome L0016718.jpg|alt=Arabic manuscript describing and illustrating the treatment of tarantula bite with pomegranate.|thumb|Arabic manuscript describing and illustrating the treatment of tarantula bite with pomegranate.]]
An article on a [[:en:Empire_of_the_Sultans|touring exhibition]] incorporating items from the Khalili Collections was promoted to Featured Article status. This is the culmination of a lot of work, and the article will eventually appear on Wikipedia’s front page (the queue is quite long, but it will happen). Resident at the Khalili Foundation, Martin Poulter, is responsible for some of Wikipedia’s best content on Islamic art.


== Khalili Collections residency ==
== Wiki Loves Monuments ==
Openly sharing content to the Wikimedia projects is our bread and butter, but it's important to involve native language speakers where possible. With the help of the [[m:Wikimedians_of_the_Islamic_Civilization_User_Group|Islamic Civilization User Group,]] our resident at the Khalili Collections, Martin Poulter, discovered that an Arabic manuscript had been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons backwards. The manuscript detailed how to treat a tarantula bite with a pomegranate, but the Arabic was impossible to read. The [[commons:File:"Islamic_miniature_painting_in_medical_manuscripts"_Wellcome_L0016718.jpg|Commons]] file was quickly reversed and the Wellcome Collection – from where the image was sourced – has updated its own database with the fix.
[http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org Wiki Loves Monuments] is back for 2024! The annual international photography contest and crowdsourcing event will run throughout September, with participants photographing and uploading images of historic monuments to Wikimedia Commons. These images are then available for free use on Wikipedia and beyond. Everyone is welcome to get involved, whether as a participant (photographer), organisational volunteer, or both. There is no requirement for participants or volunteers to be from the UK.


Volunteers are adding data and links from [https://artuk.org/about/about ArtUK] to Wikidata. [https://query.wikidata.org/embed.html#%23title%3AObjects%20in%20the%20Khalili%20Collections%20with%20an%20ArtUK%20ID%0ASELECT%20%3Fitem%20%3FitemLabel%20%3FcollectionLabel%20(URI(CONCAT(%22https%3A%2F%2Fartuk.org%2Fdiscover%2Fartworks%2F%22%2C%3Fid))%20as%20%3Fartuk)%20%3Fkhalili%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%3Fitem%20wdt%3AP195%20%3Fcollection.%20%3Fcollection%20wdt%3AP361%20wd%3AQ63160499.%0A%20%20OPTIONAL%20%7B%3Fitem%20wdt%3AP973%20%3Fkhalili%7D%0A%20%20%3Fitem%20wdt%3AP1679%20%3Fid%0A%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22%5BAUTO_LANGUAGE%5D%2Cen%22%20%7D%0A%7D This query] brings up Khalili Collections objects whose ArtUK link has been added to Wikidata. Martin wrote a short briefing for ArtUK on how they can use Wikidata to populate their tags database, and how they can use a bulk data dump to add a lot of their links to Wikidata.
== RAMM residency ==
 
A series of [[commons:Category:Magic_Lantern_Slides_at_RAMM_(Images_from_Royal_Albert_Memorial_Museum_and_Art_Gallery)|magic slides]] were uploaded by RAMM as part of the ongoing Wikimedia partnership. In honour of World Environment Day a selection of slides showing different types of fungus were uploaded to Commons. These fascinating images were bought in 1933 by the Royal Albert Memorial College as a teaching aid for local classes: each files is a photographic print, hand-coloured by CT Green who was an amateur botanist and medical practitioner in Cheshire.  
In another example of extended reach, a [https://medium.com/@infobomb/manuscripts-on-wikidata-the-state-of-the-art-7aeab63e0d56 blog post] written by Martin a few years ago has seen a resurgence of interest thanks to the Digital Scriptorium. The Digital Scriptorium is a consortium of researchers from institutions including the University of Oxford and University of Pennsylvania, and they recommended the blog as a starting point for their own work describing pre-modern manuscripts on Wikidata. Further, Toby Burrows of the Bodleian Library wrote an [https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/ijhac.2022.0277 academic paper] citing the blog post and arguing that Wikidata could be used to create links between many different catalogues of manuscripts. Wikidata has a new [[d:Wikidata_talk:WikiProject_Manuscripts|Wikiproject]] to organise data on manuscripts. As part of this, Martin created a [[d:Wikidata:WikiProject_Manuscripts/Dashboard|dashboard]] which shows the number of manuscripts from each collection that Wikidata knows about, with indicators of the data completeness for each collection. The Khalili Collection of Islamic Art presently has 132 manuscripts in this database, putting it ahead of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
 
== ‘Doing History in Public’ with Cambridge University Library ==
In November, Doing History in Public hosted their second editathon in collaboration with Wikimedia UK, Cambridge University Library and Cambridge Department of Digital Humanities. After the successful May editathon, they were excited to build on their skills and introduce new students and staff to Wikipedia editing.
 
The theme was ‘Out of the Shadows’, bringing underrepresented historical knowledge into the light of Wikipedia. This month’s event had a particularly French and feminist flavour, but also spanned to seventeenth century travel in Peru and Romanian films. For more info and links to the pages created/added to, have a read of Zara Kesterton’s [https://doinghistoryinpublic.org/2023/11/30/november-2023-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-here-we-go-again/ blog.]
[[File:WMUK Train the Trainer 2023 cohort.jpg|alt=Photograph of the trainees who attended the on-line and in-person training|thumb|The 2023 cohort of trainers]]
 
== Train the Trainer ==
Train the Trainer is a course for volunteers who are keen to deliver Wikipedia editing events. Our recent London weekend with our newest cohort of trainee trainers was a great closing to 2023’s iteration of Train the Trainer. This year we used WikiLearn for the first time as part of the training programme, with a four week course in the run up to the weekend, covering subjects such as off-wiki tools, event management and supporting new editors. On the Saturday we bought a hybrid cohort together to cement that learning, and we'll be taking the next steps with the cohort in the new year. On Sunday we held a session for both the new trainers and our existing trainers on how to lead hybrid sessions, led by our training partner Bhav Patel.
 
We had the following feedback from some of our trainers:
 
''“At first, I supported other trainers until I was eventually confident enough to lead my own sessions on how to contribute to Wikipedia. They were for professional astronomers and science educators in South Africa - and I was helped online by a couple of other trainers - part of a great community of trained volunteers that Wikimedia UK has built up. It's given me a new way to enjoy sharing knowledge with people and communities in the UK and around the world. And they, in turn, can then use their new skills to share knowledge with others.”'' – Nick Moyes, Train the Trainer participant
 
''"The best part of volunteering with WMUK is definitely the community. In 2022, I founded the Wikimedia volunteering project at Durham University with the goal of promoting high quality open knowledge about North East England. We succeeded with that goal but what I didn’t expect was the strong sense of community that emerged as students engaged with local history. They really came together to make significant contributions to open knowledge, creating connections with each other and the local community!"'' – Sophie Whitfield, Train the Trainer participant
 
''“I've been giving Wikipedia trainings in Finland for over a decade now. Last year I joined Wikimedia UK's new team for Wikipedia trainers. I still deliver training in Finland, and I’ve also helped editors from across the world get their start on Wikipedia, such as a university class who were creating and editing articles for local female artists. We’ve worked on inserting citations, and ensuring that the article was easy to read for foreign language speakers who could potentially translate the article for a broader audience.”'' – Johanna Janhonen, Train the Trainer participant
 
== VocalEyes ==
We’ve been working with VocalEyes since 2022. They play a vital role in making arts and heritage accessible for blind and visually impaired, D/deaf, hard of hearing, and neurodivergent visitors. They do this in a range of ways, including training and collaborating directly with arts and heritage organisations. They also conduct research on how various sectors are making their venues accessible.
 
In November, our Programme Manager, Richard Nevell, spoke at their virtual Digital Volunteering Forum. There were also speakers from the Smithsonian Transcription Centre (USA), York Archaeology, Wild Museum, DLNET (Digital Learning Network for the cultural heritage sector), and The British Library. Together we explored impact evaluation, student volunteering and the seamless integration of digital projects into existing volunteer programs.
[[File:National Trust chairs - geograph.org.uk - 4616507.jpg|alt=Photograph of blue chairs with the national trust logo in white, in front of a brick wall with plants growing up it.|thumb|National Trust chairs in Oxborough.]]
 
== Exploring Wikimedia and the National Trust ==
The National Trust is the largest conservation charity in Europe. They care for hundreds of historic sites, including buildings and their collections, gardens, and landscapes. Last year, they began a pilot project exploring how the National Trust’s knowledge can be shared through Wikipedia. There are now almost 800 pages relating to the National Trust, which received nearly [https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/massviews/?platform=all-access&agent=user&source=category&range=this-year&subjectpage=0&subcategories=1&sort=views&direction=1&view=list&target=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:National%20Trust 13 million views in 2023.] Evidently, a lot of people learn about the Trust and the histories they curate via Wikipedia.
 
Lucy Moore worked for the Trust as a Wikimedian in Residence, and we’re excited to announce that Lucy is reprising the role in a new project in collaboration with Wikimedia UK. Starting in September and running until the end of February, the second project will explore the potential of sharing a selection of images on Wikimedia Commons and will create resources for staff who want to learn to edit Wikipedia. The Trust has a wealth of [https://nt.iro.bl.uk/ research] and knowledge to tap into, and we are looking forward to learning more about their work.
 
You can follow the project’s work on [[:en:Wikipedia:GLAM/National_Trust/Pilot_2|Wikipedia.]]
 
== Sankofa London Schools project ==
We have been supporting the Sankofa London Schools project since early 2022. Nadege Forde-Vidal is a historian and archeologist. Nadege launched the project and got in touch with us to help the year 9 cohort of students share their work with the unlimited global audience of Wikimedia projects. It’s essentially a local history project with a London focus to explore the lives of men, women and children who escaped enslavement over 300 years ago. The adverts listing rewards for the return of these freedom seekers – available in a database created by the University of Glasgow – allow students to piece together life stories with the help of Nadege and a team of historians, curators and archivists. The Wikimedia projects allow the students to share their work with a global audience, learn to edit, and produce text appropriate for a public platform. The project was featured in a stall at Hounslow council’s celebration for Black History Month in October.
 
While A-level history students currently volunteer their time to assist the year 9s’ work, the project is expanding in the new year with classes exclusively for A-level students.
 
Nadege delivered a talk on the project at our Community Meeting, which you can watch [https://wikimedia.org.uk/2023/12/wmuk-2023-community-meeting-videos-and-opportunities/ here.]


== Join us ==
== Join us ==

Revision as of 16:28, 27 June 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 2023 newsletter

Celtic Knot Language Conference

The Celtic Knot Language Conference is a gathering that acknowledges the diversity of Celtic language communities and their presence within the global Wikimedia ecosystem. Rooted in the spirit of collaboration and community empowerment, it serves as a nexus for language enthusiasts, Wikimedia contributors, cultural advocates, academics and researchers to come together and explore innovative approaches to language preservation, promotion, and recognition of Celtic and minority languages in the digital space.

The conference will take place on 25-27th September 2024, onsite in Waterford City, Ireland. Keep an eye on the event page for more updates including details about the venue, programme and registration soon! Details about the venue, program, registration and other updates will be added to the event page in due time.

As we are currently building the program for the conference, we would love to invite community members to contribute to the event by giving a presentation, a lightning talk, running a workshop or submitting a poster. The call for programme proposals is now open until Sunday 14th July. You can make a proposal directly on Wiki or using a form. You will find all the details and instructions on the Call for submissions page.

To support participants coming from Ireland or Europe to attend the event, we are offering scholarships to cover event tickets, travel and accommodation. For people located in other areas of the world or people who cannot join onsite, we are offering e-scholarships covering data packages to watch the conference from home. The scholarship application process is now open until Sunday, June 30th. You can find the form and the instructions on the Attend page.

We are looking forward to receiving your contributions to the program and scholarship requests!

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to the organising team: Richard Nevell (WMUK), Amy O'Riordan and Sophie Fitzpatrick (Wikimedia Community Ireland), or Léa Lacroix.

Wikimania 2024

Every year, hundreds of Wikimedians come together to celebrate free knowledge at the annual Wikimania global conference. The 19th edition of Wikimania will happen in Katowice, Poland from 7th–10 August as a partnership between Wikimedians of the Central and Eastern Europe region and the Wikimedia Foundation. It will host free knowledge leaders from around the world to discuss issues, report on new projects and approaches, build networks, and exchange ideas.

Wikimedia UK staff have had a number of proposals for talks accepted, including our Director of Programmes and Evaluation, Daria Cybulska, on The Changemakers’ Toolkit; CEO Lucy Crompton-Reid who is contributing to a session on public policy advocacy; and Dr Sara Thomas, Programme Manager, who has CHECK WITH SARA 🙂  …

Wiki Loves Earth

Wiki Loves Earth is an annual international photography competition aimed at capturing the beauty and diversity of our natural world. The hope is that if we can illustrate Wikipedia with images of nature it will map the effects of climate change as well as drive home the importance of these areas of natural beauty and the animals and plants that inhabit them.

This year, Wales, Ireland and, for the first time, Scotland are taking part in the competition. Each nation will have a round of national judging before the winners of that round are submitted to the international judging panel.

The competition runs throughout June to July, enter now to stand a chance to win and help us document the important natural wonders of our world.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Wales info/uploads.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Scotland info/uploads.

🇮🇪 Ireland info/uploads.

Food and Agriculture Organisation

WMUK have been working with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations since 2019, helping them share text and images from reports and developing them into content that can be used on Wikipedia. By releasing this content under an open licence, we have helped the FAO reach an audience of 3 million people a month through the English Wikipedia alone, covering topics such as food safety, biodiversity, and forest restoration. Sharing research about climate change has become increasingly important for WMUK and working with the FAO helps to make high-quality research more accessible.

We are also collaborating on a submission to Expo 2025 to have working with the Wikimedia projects recognised as an example of best practice. If that is successful, it will incentivise more collaboration with Wikimedia to share high-quality information.

Coasts in Mind

Back in September, our Director of Programmes and Evaluation, Daria Cybulska, and our Fundraising and Relationship Lead, George Colbourn, collaborated with the Museum of London Archaeology to apply for some funding internal to their organisation to run a couple of editathons themed around climate for youth groups. We secured the funding, but the project itself was paused while MOLA went through a restructure. They are through the other side and we have resumed activities such as this. We are at the stage of seeing what youth organisations would be interested with MOLA taking the lead on this step.

National Library of Wales

Wide-ranging content work took place at the National Library of Wales, where Jason Evans champions Wikipedia as the National Wikimedian for Wales. Welsh Wicipedia were the first language wiki to achieve gender parity, and that’s still an important aspect of the work in Wales, with 525 new articles about women were added to Welsh Wicipedia through the Library. Preservation of the Welsh language is also an important area, with 600 new Wikidata items for missing Welsh electoral districts with EN and CY labels and descriptions added. 150 CY labels added to Welsh churches, 213 new Wikidata items created for Welsh historic buildings, 4200 edits (adding coordinates, admin district, etc.) to improve data for Welsh historic monument items in February, 3000 in March, 7598 in April.

University of St Andrews

The University of St Andrews has several strands of student activity. We support Junior and Senior Honours students there to design and deliver Wikimedia projects of their interest. A Senior Honours student scraped, formatted and uploaded data from the Scottish Brick History website (which we’ve done small pieces of work on for a couple of years now) to Wikidata, and created this site. This is a significant data visualisation of an important part of Scottish industrial history, which up until now has only existed on a manually-updated Wordpress site, and something we had wanted to set up for a number of years now.

Other senior honours students worked with the Mapping Memorials to Women in Scotland dataset (a project of Women’s History Scotland and the Glasgow Women’s Library, again with which we’ve done some work in the past), again uploading that information to Wikidata.  In both cases we were able to partner the student with a real-life dataset and a real-life partner organisation.

Another student worked with Wiki Loves Monuments data, visualising the data of images uploaded over the last few years of the contest in the UK. Key reflections from that include areas of the UK in which we have not had significant coverage – Northern Ireland in particular.  

Overall, Senior Honours projects involved around 2k new items added to Wikidata.

Junior Honours students chose topic areas and pulled data from Wikidata to visualise.  This was an interesting data re-use project, which saw the entire year of Computing Science students working in groups to create websites based on real-life data, and also partnering with Skyscanner to add a “twist” to the challenge around designing for accessibility. The challenge has received positive feedback from tutors and course leaders, and we hope to return to Wikidata as a course challenge on a regular basis, every 2-3 years.  The students spent over 24k hours on this project.  

Following on from data gaps identified by the Junior Honours students, Dr Kirsty Ross has set up another STEP (Summer work experience student work programme) project to look at filling some of the gaps identified.  

Repatriations and museums event

Programme Manager Sara Thomas attended a University of Glasgow CREATe event in April entitled From Scotland to the World: Repatriation and Museums. The event focussed on the repatriation/rematriation of objects from various international museums to communities of origin, including the rematriation of the Ni'isjoohl totem pole from the National Museum of Scotland to the Nisga’a people of British Columbia. There were some interesting insights and reflections on the ability of Scottish museums to return objects, and the process of the development of organisational policy around these matters. In relation to Wikimedia UK work, there were also interesting reflections on the ethics and respectful approach to working with intangible and other cultural heritage artefacts within the Wikimedia projects.  

Heritage Guard Network

The Heritage Guard Network Risk Working Group is a wiki network launched recently to promote the crowdsourcing of information about cultural and natural heritage in danger. Wikimedia UK were invited to join the network due to our work with the SXNCH project, documenting the intersection between cultural and natural heritage. Our Programme Manager, Richard Nevell, represents WMUK on the Risk Working Group, sharing experience of working with projects such as SXNCH and the Gazetteer of Libyan Heritage.

Richard’s shared a number of lessons with the group, such as how we’ve found that Researchers see value in sharing stuff on Wikipedia, but are time poor which limits availability to edit. We’ve also found that because Wikipedia is ubiquitous it provides an opportunity to shape people's understanding of the environment. Cultural and environmental heritage are inextricable – from conservation challenges in museums as they respond to extreme weather to the impact of climate change on historic sites (drought, flooding, erosion, etc). As Wikimedia organisations we can play an important role in making engaging with Wikimedia easier for experts and find ways to remove the friction.

Climate residency at GSI

Our main project in the Climate strand of our programmes is the residency with the Global Systems Institute at Exeter University. Earlier this year Wikipedia was used at the University as a teaching tool in an editathon for the MSc Global Sustainability Solutions students. Working in pairs, students updated Wikipedia articles on the environmental policy they had been assigned to work on for other aspects of their coursework. The Resident, Tatjana Baleta, also gave a presentation to bioscience lecturers about using Wikimedia in teaching at their “New Ways of Learning” seminar in April.

Permission was secured for the graphics created for the Global Systems Institute’s Tipping Points report to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in April. The Resident wrote a few paragraphs of content from the GSI’s Tipping Points reports, the content was reviewed by experts before editing it into Wikipedia.

Tatjana collaborated with a fellow Resident Adam Harangozo at the National Institute for Health Research to devise a collaborative event with experts from NIHR and the European Centre for Environment & Human Health, focussed on reviewing and improving articles under the sub-theme climate change and human health. The group worked on the article Indoor air quality.

Tatjana spent two days at the Met Office in March to engage the researchers there. She gave two seminars about Wikipedia, and had meetings with the Met Office’s Knowledge Integration team about how they could include Wikipedia outputs in their communication activities.

April marked a half year point of the second year of the residency. Cumulative project achievements for the project to date (October 2022 - April 2024) are:  

  • More than 120 editors have been trained over 13 editathon events.
  • More than 450 articles have been edited to varying degrees (as a cumulative effort from both trainers (4) and trainees).
  • These articles have been viewed 53.2 million times since they were first edited.  
  • Of these, 20 articles have undergone completed expert review.

From October to April, as a result of editathon events, more than 40 editors have been trained to edit Wikipedia’s climate change articles, and 64 climate change-related articles have been improved. These articles have been viewed over 3.74 million times since they were edited.

Cloud seeding case study: The United Arab Emirates recently faced its worst floods in 75 years, causing four fatalities and hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to buildings and restructure. In the wake, rumours on social media have been circulating that the UAE’s cloud seeding program is to blame for the severe deluge. As people scramble to make sense of what they hear online, they head to Wikipedia for more information. The Wikipedia article Cloud seeding in the United Arab Emirates has racked up over 200,000 views in the past 30 days – an increase of over 90% compared to the previous month. But there was a problem: Expert consensus published in the news is that anthropogenic climate change, and not cloud seeding, is the real cause of the high rainfall in the UAE and across the Persian Gulf. However, the Wikipedia article heavily implied a link between flooding and cloud seeding activities, citing sources that did not state such a link. Tatjana spotted this and was able to remove the misinformation and add a paragraph about climate change’s reported role in the floods. When possible bad faith editors attempted to delete the new information, she engaged the Wikipedia editor community to build consensus on the most factual information and prevent its removal. The Cloud seeding in the United Arab Emirates article now correctly attributes the April 2024 floods to climate change, providing correct information to hundreds of thousands of people.

The Khalili Foundation

An article on a touring exhibition incorporating items from the Khalili Collections was promoted to Featured Article status. This is the culmination of a lot of work, and the article will eventually appear on Wikipedia’s front page (the queue is quite long, but it will happen). Resident at the Khalili Foundation, Martin Poulter, is responsible for some of Wikipedia’s best content on Islamic art.

Wiki Loves Monuments

Wiki Loves Monuments is back for 2024! The annual international photography contest and crowdsourcing event will run throughout September, with participants photographing and uploading images of historic monuments to Wikimedia Commons. These images are then available for free use on Wikipedia and beyond. Everyone is welcome to get involved, whether as a participant (photographer), organisational volunteer, or both. There is no requirement for participants or volunteers to be from the UK.

RAMM residency

A series of magic slides were uploaded by RAMM as part of the ongoing Wikimedia partnership. In honour of World Environment Day a selection of slides showing different types of fungus were uploaded to Commons. These fascinating images were bought in 1933 by the Royal Albert Memorial College as a teaching aid for local classes: each files is a photographic print, hand-coloured by CT Green who was an amateur botanist and medical practitioner in Cheshire.

Join us

We launched two new social media accounts in October, Tiktok and Mastodon, but you can still find us on 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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