Friends' Newsletter/2016/Issue 03
The last newsletter of the year!
We've been busy in the past few months developing new programmes and partnerships, and we'd love to tell you about the latest developments in our work and what we have in the pipeline!
We have renewed our Bodleian Wikimedian in Residence as Dr Martin Poulter has been rehired to continue his valuable work in Oxford, and we have partnered with the Hypatia Trust in Cornwall to support their Wikimedian working to improve content on Cornish women.
In December, the regular London meetup on Sunday 11th will also be the volunteer Christmas party, so please come along to discuss an eventful year and our plans for the next one with staff and volunteers.
Mozfest 2016 in London
We attended Mozilla's open source festival in London's Docklands on October 29-30.
Parliament partnership and editathon
Wikimedia UK is developing a partnership with the House of Commons to encourage an understanding of Wikipedia within the organisation and the sharing of data.
We will be holding our first editathon in Parliament on November 19 to introduce parliamentary staff to our work and teach them how to use Wikimedia projects. The event will also be open to the whole community, so if you’re interested to visit Parliament and see inside the buildings, why not join us? The event will be held in Portcullis House, the modern office building next to the Palace of Westminster, but there will also be a tour of the older buildings such as Westminster Hall, which will be 920 years old next year.
In a slight contrast to the centuries old surroundings, we will be talking to parliamentary staff about the data they produce and looking at what data they have which would be suitable to upload to WikiData. We are exploring the possibility of creating data items for parliamentary legislation, but there may be other kinds of content held by Parliament which would be suitable for upload onto Wikimedia sites.
We hope the event will provide a useful case study in using Parliament’s resources to create content which can be built on as Parliamentary staff learn to use Wikimedia projects as part of their workflow. The UK Government has a good reputation for sharing its data, but by working with Wikimedia UK, we hope to put that data to work in innovative and useful ways. If you want to find out more, why not come along and take part?
Parliament editathon November 19
Dr Martin Poulter reappointed Bodleian Library Wikimedian-in-Residence
The University of Oxford has decided to renew its Wikimedian In Residence (WIR) programme. Martin Poulter is working part-time on a one-year project to embed Wikipedia, Wikidata and related sites in the university’s teaching, research and public engagement.
Dr Poulter served as the WIR at the Bodleian Libraries for one year ending in March 2016. He led wiki training at nine public events, and gave sixteen other workshops and presentations. The images bulk-uploaded during this placement now get more than 3 million views per month from being used to illustrate Wikipedia articles in 49 languages.
Thanks to funding from the IT Innovation Challenge, administered by the university’s Academic IT Services, he is returning to the Bodleian with a cross-university remit. The new project is about embedding innovative use of Wikimedia sites across the university. This will involve:
- training staff in the university to run Wikimedia-related events such as editathons;
- helping research projects to enhance their impact by sharing outputs on Wikidata and Wikipedia;
- creating customised training workshops for academics, librarians and other staff in the university; and
- sharing training materials.
The aim is to collaborate with a different large research or educational project each month. The first two partners are the Hillforts Atlas Project and the Voltaire Foundation. The former is a collaboration between the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh, producing a definitive database of hillforts in the British Isles. The latter publishes definitive critical volumes of the works and correspondence of Voltaire. Both projects can reach a larger audience by helping to improve Wikidata and Wikipedia. Other research projects and cultural institutions will be supported on a first-come, first-served basis.
Wikimedians In Residence are already employed by the National Library of Wales, the Wellcome Library, and the University of Edinburgh, as well as cultural and scholarly organisations around the globe. Martin Poulter can be contacted at martin.poulter@bodleian.ox.ac.uk .
Wiki Loves Monuments 2016 UK Winners Announced
More than 250 people took part in the UK competition, uploading 6,200 photos of cultural heritage which anyone can reuse. Thank you to everyone who took part. The winners of the overall competition will be announced in December.
Wiki Loves Monuments is a global photographic competition run by the Wikimedia Foundation and its local chapters like Wikimedia UK. We encourage photographers to upload photos of places that have Wikipedia articles so that those photos can be used to illustrate Wikipedia.
- "Winchester Cathedral, south aisle of retro-choir" by Michael Coppins
- "Perch Rock Lighthouse" by Richard J Smith
- "Royal William Yard, Plymouth, Devon" by Michael Chapman
- "Eilean Donan at Dusk" by Syxaxis Photography (George Johnson)
- "Hazell Brook Bridge" by Hamburg103a
- "Queens' College - Mathematical Bridge" by Rafa Esteve
- "RibbleheadViaduct" by Sterim64
- "Royal Albert Hall - Central View 169" by Colin
- "Tone Mills Dyehouse" by Msemmett
- "Transporter Bridge Winter Sunrise" by WelshDave
Kurdish Wikipedia Project
We've started a project based at the Kurdish Cultural Centre in Kennington to improve content on Kurdish subjects as well as to improve the two Kurdish Wikipedias (Kurmanji and Sorani dialects) which collectively have around 40,000 articles. They currently rank at number 104 and 111 on this list of language Wikipedias by size. We have started to organise events to train Kurdish speakers to edit the English Wikipedia to improve coverage of Kurdish subjects, and hope to create a group of editors who can teach other Kurdish speakers to improve the Kurdish language Wikipedias.
For developing economies such as the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, creating better open educational resources could have significant positive effects on the development of a growing educational sector which doesn't have access to much government investment. If you would like to get involved in this project, please join our Facebook project page for updates, and please feel free to contact us by email or social media to ask any questions about how you can get involved.
Welsh Wikipedia and a British Library editathon
A small wiki can move quickly, and does not become bogged down in a quagmire of fossilized tripe. Some dinosaurs morphed into birds, and lived.
We have just over 81,000 articles on the Welsh Wikipedia. It is a small wiki, but therein lies it's greatness: the smaller it is the faster it morphs. Take Wikidata as an example. We received, from the Llen Natur Welsh language society their latest database - all living birds, each with a Welsh name, Latin and English. It took over 10 years to create by a team of ornithologists, some professionals working on this alone.
Wikimedia UK requested the use of this database on an open licence, which was freely given, and I then made a request to User:Succo to bot them up on Wikidata, and around 8,000 matched the WD Latin name. The rest were done by hand. To date, this is what we've done in partnership with Llen Natur:
- 1. We added 9,500 bird images in a 3rd party website
The community with the help of Bangor University then created a code for the preferred image on each species to appear in Llen Natur's Species Dictionary, thus turning a text only online dictionary into a beautiful Illustrated Dictionary.
- 2. We created 9,000 new articles on cywiki
With the database, we were now able to create 9,000 new articles on cywiki, with most of the taxobox automatically calling information from Wikidata.
- 3. Creating 15,000 links from Llen Natur's Illustrated Dictionary to cywiki
This was easily done by Bangor University for Llen Natur, directing readers to the Welsh Wikipedia. All bird articles, and a further 6,000 other species.
- 4. Wikidata Lists! Morph or fossilize!
Having added a few WD Lists on other languages, including Indonesian, Vietnamese, Basque, Irish Gaelic and Spanish, I then added a list of notable Welsh people on English Wikipedia - which was taken down within two flutters of a wing. "Wikidata is NOT referenced!" they shouted, and argued and stomped about like Giraffatitan. "Good bye!" I said, and off I went in search of more inspiring wikis. To this day, en-wiki is one of the only Wikipedias which still hasn't hugged and caressed Wikidata within articles. Not one.
Every single bird species on the Welsh WP, however, has a Wikidata table, automatically called up and updated daily. When species change taxon, it's automatically added on cywiki. The total number of WD Lists on every language Wikipedias at October 2016 is just under 3,000; we have 9355 on cywiki (as of 7 November 2016).
What loud calls I make, what blowing of trumpets! No, just a fact. We liked Wikidata, and discussed as a community how could we utilise it within cywiki to save finger clicking, to update info daily, to be up to date.
- 5. Tweeting and other bird sounds
We had a great day at the British Library a few weeks ago, chirping away at clips of birdsounds on Commons, connecting soundclips to more than 55 language wikis. As soon as we have enough, then they too will be automatically feed these into all bird articles on the Welsh Wikipedia, as well as into 3rd party websites, such as Llen Natur. And the Illustrated Dictionary quickly becomes a noisy, vivid, live space. And all different sounds and all different colours will entice the reader into that rich, diverse planet called multipedia. And let's sing in harmony: Viva la difference!
- 6. Birds also morph...
And with "the sum of all human data" appearing on that matrics, that all-connecting interweaving thread called Wikidata, we can now start creating apps and games based on birds (or any other subject) as a front for information on the Wikimedia projects. Can't Wikipedia, then, not be an AR game? Why not! Even dinosaurs had dreams!
- PS For your information (which I really would like to share) the multilingual word 'dinosaur' was coined by a Welshman, Sir Richard Owen. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 18:06, 13 October 2016 (UTC)