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;Emergence of a Wikidata community
;Reviewing a residency - National Library of Scotland
[[File:Wikidata-logo-en.svg|thumb|right|200px|The Wikidata logo]]
[[File:Ship_salvaging_the_wreckage_of_the_Tay_Bridge_02.jpg|thumb|right|230px|A ship salvaging part of the Tay Bridge, 1879-80. This image was released by the NLS and is used on Wikipedia]]


''This post was written by Fabian Tompsett, Volunteer Support Organiser''
''This post was written by Daria Cybulska, Programme Manager''


“Emergence (…) refers to the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns, and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems.” ([http://www.anecdote.com.au/papers/EmergenceAsAConsutructIssue1_1_3.pdf Emergence as a Construct: History and Issues], Goldstein 1999)
It's time to take a look back at the longest standing UK Wikimedian in Residence project.


Technological innovation can appear as the determining factor of how are habits are reshaped as new facilities come online, each with their new bundles of characteristics, which in turn release new capabilities and create new potentialities in the hands of their early adopters. However where the constraints of the commodity form – as in the free software movement – are in abeyance, the ability of how these early adopters form themselves into a community can play a more determining role.
When we were setting up a Wikimedian in Residence (WIR) in Scotland, in 2013, we planned it for a pilot lasting several months, designed to see if such a project is viable. Now, running at 18 months, it’s the longest standing Wikimedia UK’s WIR, and a project that we can draw on for inspiring case studies!


The 21st century saw the emergence of Wikipedia as a beautiful example of this: Wikipedia could only take off thanks to a self-organising community which incorporated user-feedback not only in its own self-regulation, but also in the regulation of how the wiki software underlying the encyclopedia would be improved. By adopting the encyclopedic form, the appeal was always to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everyman everyman], i.e. any “[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_having_ordinary_skill_in_the_art person having ordinary skill in the art]” of accessing the internet. The combination of the personal computer and the internet means that there is a continual flux in the capacities innovation unlocks in such a distributed environment.
To celebrate the first 12 months in the post, Ally Crockford, the resident, wrote a summary case study report. I encourage you to read the report, as it gives a brilliant introduction into the project, but, more importantly, critical views on what was achieved. You can also read about what the Library itself thought about the first year of the project - do have a look inside the report. [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/NLS_Wikimedian_in_Residence_12_month_report.pdf%20 You can download a version here].


[https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page Wikidata] was launched in October 2012 as an application of the “[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wiki_Way Wiki Way]” in a new environment: that of an on-line [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_base knowledge base]. Wikidata was originally conceived as a way of providing a data spine through which related articles on various wikipedias could be linked. This was achieved in early 2013. However Wikidata soon moved forward from simply reconciling internal issues, to dealing with external sources. Wikidata is one of several projects to reconcile identifiers and authority files from different sources, but with the integration of data from Google’s Freebase, it is becoming an increasingly important resource outside of the Wikipedia context. Alongside the development of the database as such various tools are continually being developed to access the knowledge base and make increasingly complex searches.
The first ever residency in Scotland started in July 2013 and was extended thanks to strong delivery. This project, geographically removed from other areas of chapter activity, had a tall order of building a community that can support its activities - and we would like to think that it contributed to the developments in the area!


<span class="plainlinks">[https://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2015/02/emergence-of-a-wikidata-community/<nowiki>[</nowiki>Read the full post, which continues here...<nowiki>]</nowiki>]</span>
<span class="plainlinks">[https://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2015/02/reviewing-a-residency-national-library-of-scotland/<nowiki>[</nowiki>Read the full post, which continues here...<nowiki>]</nowiki>]</span>


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|events=<!--Aim to have between 8 and 10 events listed to avoid this section taking up too much or to little space-->

Revision as of 13:17, 3 February 2015

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