Torre de Belém, Portugal. Photo: Joaomartinho63

Wiki Loves Monuments was a crazy idea: ask people to get out of their houses and take a picture of the cultural heritage around them, of monuments and buildings!
In September 2010, however, the idea proved far from crazy – 250 people participated in the Netherlands and submitted 12,500 photos. Last month, during the pan-European 2011 contest, we crushed that number.

In the past few months, volunteers throughout Europe have worked hard to organize this public photo contest in 18 countries throughout Europe – from Portugal to Estonia – and with great success. More than 5,000 people participated, submitting an amazing 165,000 photos– all available under a free license, and usable on Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia and other places on the internet. As a comparison, the current record for the largest photography competition according to the Guinness Book of World Records stands at 126,501 images.

This project has been a success in so many different ways already. Not only 5,000 people participated, but an estimated 4,000 of these are ‘new users’ to the Wikimedia projects and through this contest they made their very first contribution to Wikimedia as a registered user. Now it is up to the community to cherish and welcome these people and help them find their way on the projects, supporting them and encouraging them to further contributions.

In 14 cities, related ‘Wiki takes the City’ events have been organized, and two of those are most interesting. Thanks to Wiki takes Andorra (a very small country between Spain and France) and the work of Amical Viquipèdia, we have now over 1,000 images of Andorra’s cultural heritage – covering 100% of the listed buildings! And in Wiki takes Cologne the organizational skills of the German chapter and volunteers were once again proven; the event was highly successful with more than 70 participants.

A young participant of Wiki takes Cologne. Photo: Elke Wetzig

Wiki Loves Monuments is not finished yet – it’s a continuous project, but the contest that ran through the month of September is now over. The national juries will deliberate in the coming month over the best photos from their countries, and submit 10 winners to an international jury by the end of October. By the beginning of December, the winners of the European contest will be announced, and the 2011 edition will come to an end. But the volunteers who have been working so hard on this will keep working to check, categorize and use the images in Wikipedia, write the articles, improve the monument lists and do all the other work that still lies ahead.

I would like for all of us to take a minute and thank all the people who have worked so hard to make Wiki Loves Monuments 2011 a success. Our partners on both the national and European level – cultural heritage organizations, chapters, sponsors and others – have worked hard to enable us to pull this off. But even more importantly, all the volunteers who have worked so hard to connect with the partners, create the monument lists, write background materials, write manuals, prepare contest rules, find jury members, find sponsors, prepare press releases, answer press enquiries, help with technical challenges, set up the wizards and banners, help the uploaders where necessary, check the incoming files and make sure that everything keeps on going – they deserve a big cheer and hug.

I really  hope this has not worn you out, and that you consider helping to organize and support this crazy idea again next year.

Lodewijk Gelauff – international coordinator of Wiki Loves Monuments

When news breaks, Wikipedians all over the world–in scores of languages– help news followers understand and filter the news by curating and summarizing it as quickly and as accurately as possible. Editors essentially distill the universe of news down so that readers can quickly understand the bigger picture without having to navigate through a cyclone of articles and headlines. Due to the quick and careful work of Wikipedia’s volunteer editors, readers have an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of breaking news, informed by aggregated information from various trustworthy, international scholarly and media organizations. The end result is dynamic, contextual information in the form of an encyclopedic article. But researchers at the Wikimedia Foundation and Ushahidi wonder: How does an editor decide which sources to include or reject? How do they keep track of rapidly-changing topics happening in other parts of the world, reported in foreign languages? How do editors verify information in crisis scenarios like earthquakes and political unrest situated outside their frame of reference?

As Wikipedia volunteers maintain the integrity of article information during high-pressure situations like breaking news cycles, they do so manually using their personal spheres of reference and Ushahidi has kicked off a new research project to study how this happens. They’re looking at how Wikipedia editors track, evaluate and verify sources on rapidly evolving pages of Wikipedia, the results of which will inform the development of Ushahidi’s Sweeper tool. It’s Ushahidi’s hope that Sweeper could potentially be used by Wikipedia editors to collaboratively make sense of sources rather using separate tracking and verification strategies.

We’re excited to support this research with Ushahidi and look forward to defining new tools and resources to help Wikipedians incorporate the best information possible into the encyclopedias. If you’re interested in learning more, see the WikiSweeper project page for more information or sign up for project updates.

Moka Pantages
Global Communications

Growing at a steady pace of about 100 articles a day, the Hungarian Wikipedia was recently propelled into warp-speed by a shower of 350 articles about asteroids, helping the encyclopedia hit a 200K article milestone this weekend. On Saturday, September 10 at 02:08 UTC the 200,000th article was added to the encyclopedia. Interestingly, the record-breaking article was *not* about asteroids, but about Crankshafts. Contributed by User: Pakos, real-name Ákos Pásztor, the Crankshaft article has been edited more than 40 times by 14 editors. Pakos, also the volunteer editor responsible for the asteroid articles, has a keen interest in astrology, motor sports and topics covering his hometown of Dorog, Hungary.

The eight-year-old encyclopedia is a top-20 encyclopedia among the more than 270 Wikipedia language encyclopedias. Initially founded by user: Grin (Péter Gervai) who, when surfing the internet back in 2003 for information about Hungarian kings, came across English Wikipedia. He started by translating Wikipedia policies and guidelines and later created the first mainspace article on the Hungarian band, Omega.

Today, Hungarian Wikipedia is the largest, most comprehensive encyclopedia in the history of the language. The Big Pallas Encyclopedia, completed in 1897, included 150,000 entries, Révai Encyclopedia, completed in 1935, included 230,000 entries and the Hungarian Great Encyclopedia, completed in 2004, contained about 150,000 entries. Although the work of the editors is impressive, according to volunteer editor and WMHU Executive Vice President, Bence Damokos, there’s still a lot missing. Bence, username bdamokos, mentioned that articles covering basic topics like Oscar-winning movies are still yet to be written. And even Hungarian films like Pál Adrienn, which won the 2011 Hungarian Filmweek Award and was screened at Cannes, strangely has an article in the English Wikipedia but not Hungarian Wikipedia.

Volunteers have planned a celebration and new editor outreach event set for October 1 in the town of Győr. If you’re in that part of the world, plan to join them! We wish the Hungarian Wikipedia well in their quest to invite more people to edit and help drive the enyclopeida to the next milestone.

Gratulálunk!

Moka Pantages

Global Communications

Congratulations to the 13 European chapters and three independent Wikimedia volunteer groups on their successful launch of the first-ever pan-European Wiki Loves Monuments photography contest. Since its September 1st launch, more than 15,000 images from 1,000 participants have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Participant Basvb from the Netherlands is in the lead with more than 600 images, with Switzerland’s Odrade123 following close behind with 534 images contributed. A special image upload wizard was also created to help optimize the contribution process and organize donated images by country.

Although it seems like the world is imbued with European culture and heritage, images of most of the monuments and important buildings found throughout Europe aren’t freely available on the Internet. This means access to these cultural riches are limited to the few who live within reach. RTVE recently reported that in Spain alone, many of the 13,500 official cultural sites, monuments, buildings, gardens, parks, archaeological sites, etc… have dedicated Wikipedia articles, but only one in five include images. Additional global coverage can be followed here.

Last year, Wiki Loves Monuments was piloted in the Netherlands, culminating in 12,500 freely-licenced images contributed to the Commons. This is an admirable number of donated images, however there’s still a dearth of monuments in the Netherlands still in need of capturing– about 30,000 of the 60,000 designated cultural sites are still waiting to be shared.

Wiki Loves Monuments runs throughout the entire month of September and is organized in independent national contests. Winning images from regional contests will then be submitted to the pan-European jury. Participating partner countries include: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

The contest is supported by international organizations including the Council of Europe, the European Commission, Europeana and Europa Nostra. Prizes, including a full scholarship to Wikimania in Washington, DC, will be awarded to winners mid-December. More information about the contest and how to enter can be found at: www.wikilovesmonuments.eu or follow the participant leader-board or follow the Twitter hashtag #wikilovesmonuments

Good luck to all of the participants!

Moka Pantages, Global Communications

It’s that time again: Wikimedians from all over the world have descended upon Haifa, Israel for Wikimania 2011. From the conference, the Wikimedia Board of Trustees have announced the 2011-2012 Board members and elected officers which include:

Ting Chen, Board Chair
Jan-Bart de Vreede, Vice-Chair
Stuart West, Treasurer
Phoebe Ayers, Secretary
Samuel Klein
Bishakha Datta
Matt Halprin
Arne Klempert
Kat Walsh
Jimmy Wales

The decisions were made following a series of Board meetings coinciding with the seventh annual Wikimania conference, held in Haifa, Israel. The Board meets every year during Wikimania, the annual international conference, run by the Wikimedia community, and organized by a different local team each year.

This year, 650 Wikipedia editors, Wikimedians, researchers and educators from 56 countries plan to attend the conference. Keynote speakers this year include Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director, Sue Gardner, Deans from the University of Haifa and Bar-Ilan University are planned speakers along with Prof. Yochai Benkler, professor of law at Harvard University, and Joseph Reagle, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard and author of Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia.

Congratulations to the 115 participants who received full scholarships and the 60 attendees with partial scholarships to attend the conference. Scholarships were awarded by the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia Italia, Wikimedia France, Wikimedia Poland, and Wikimedia Austria. Wikimania is celebrating its seventh year in Haifa, Israel, previously held in Egypt, Argentina, Germany, Poland and Taiwan. In 2012, Wikimania will take place in the United States in Washington, DC.

Shalom from Haifa!

Moka Pantages
Global Communications

Hi, I’m Anthony, known as User:AGK on the many volunteer-written Wikimedia projects. Last week marked my fifth year as an administrator on the English Wikipedia, and my sixth year as a contributor. I was asked to write this post to give my thoughts on what it means to me to be a long-term contributor to projects like Wikipedia, and what I hope to see happen in the coming years.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for our project today is how to convert more readers into contributors. To me, the most important group to reach, and the one I will discuss a little in my short post here, are the internet users who have not yet discovered the fascinating concept of the “free encyclopedia that anybody can edit”. This concept is embodied in precisely those terms at the top of every Wikipedia article, beneath the article’s title. But there are only 25 Wikipedia editors for every *million* speakers of the English language, and Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites in the world. Evidently, we need to do more to get more of our readers to give a little back, too.

The basic premise of Wikipedia is fantastic: it is a website that any person can improve upon or add to. This collaborative model had me fascinated from the start, and, I am sure, has done the same for thousands of others. (If you are new to the Wikimedia Foundation’s projects, or never thought about where those millions of articles came from, then the briefest summary of the Wikimedia family would be that it is a volunteer-written and not-for-profit group of projects that aims to codify the world’s knowledge.)

I joined Wikipedia many years ago, when it was a different project, as many early contributors found it: by stumbling across an article entry through a Google search. I managed to add some information (all of which had to be ‘translated’ into the proper format by an experienced contributor, of course) and hit “save”. When I saw that my change was immediately visible on a page searchable by over half of the world, I was hooked. I registered an account, which I use to this day, and made a number of other alleged “improvements” (which more experienced editors also had to correct!).

I eventually found our help pages, and learned how to properly use the site. And whilst things are much easier now for new editors because of our better editing interface and help pages, Wikipedia is still a complex place; this is something that we must work on if we are to turn more readers into contributors. Moreover, many readers who do manage to edit a few pages or correct a few mistakes simply get bored and leave. We do not place enough emphasis on WikiProjects, Portals, and categories – all of which help to co-ordinate efforts at improving articles within related topics.

If you want to give your time to anything, then Wikipedia surely is a good choice. I continue to contribute for these reasons: Wikipedia is a fantastic project with a mission I genuinely believe is of value to humanity. Much of my work, as someone who is now an experienced editor, is in the field of resolving disputes about article content, which is an essential component of Wikipedia because as all decisions on the project are made by consensus—that is, by majority agreement of whichever editors have chosen to work on the article in question. I am part of the Wikipedia Mediation Committee, which provides formal mediation for disputes about article content that have not been resolved by simple discussion (as most disputes are on Wikipedia) or by earlier steps in the dispute-resolution process.

For those of you who do not know much about mediation on Wikipedia, I will briefly explain. Dispute-resolution works on a “carrot and stick” model: whereas the Arbitration Committee is the ‘stick’ (in that it hears evidence, then drafts a binding decision that adjudicates the dispute with a degree of finality), the Mediation Committee is the ‘carrot’ (in that it assigns a mediator to a dispute, who then hears the arguments of all the parties and then helps them draft a mutually acceptable compromise).

The Mediation Committee complements the work of the other mediation body on Wikipedia. Both are vital components of Wikipedia, and perpetually need more editors to work as neutral mediators. If you are a Wikipedia editor with a neutral, balanced temperament, please consider volunteering for the MedCab; anybody can! If you are experienced in dispute-resolution and have a few hours a week free, then consider submitting a nomination to the Mediation Committee. In either case, you’d be making a substantial contribution to the writing of the encyclopedia.

Wikipedia attracts contributors of almost every country in the world, and of every age. The project is a great way to work alongside others and do something genuinely good—for two minutes, or two hours, and for one night a week, or seven. If you’re reading this and you aren’t already part of the project, then please join. I’m glad I did, and I’m sure you will be too.

Anthony

User: AGK

Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year 2008

The first round of voting has begun for the annual Wikimedia Commmons Picture of the Year Contest, and Wikimedians of all kinds are invited to help select the winner for 2010. If you created an account before January 1, 2011 and have made at least 200 edits to any Wikimedia project, then you’re eligible to vote for your favorite pictures. All 784 images that reached Featured Picture status in 2010 are in the running.

A volunteer-led contest, Picture of the Year is run by an organizing committee of Wikimedians. Since its inception in 2006, thousands of photos from people all over the world have been selected as Featured Pictures, and all of them are free for anyone in the world to reuse, remix and share.

The first round of votes will conclude Wednesday, May 4 at 11:59PM UTC  and the top photo in each category in addition to the top ten photos across the board will advance to Round 2 during the third week of May.

In 2008, a record of 994 voters participated and last year, 742 Wikimedians showed up to vote. This year, the committee is hoping to beat that record and recruit at least 1,500 Wikimedians to participate.

The Picture of the Year Contest is just as much about celebrating talented photographers and beautiful images as it is about celebrating those who have contributed to the cultural commons and inspiring more people to do the same. If you missed the deadline this year, please consider contributing your work today.

Moka Pantages, Global Development

About a month ago Wikimedia Sweden started Projekt Internet in Sverige (Project Internet in Sweden) on the Swedish Wikipedia, aiming to improve articles concerning the Internet in Sweden.

Funded by Stiftelsen för Internetinfrastruktur (The Foundation for Internet Infrastructure) best known for handling the .se top-level domain, Wikimedia Sweden hired me to conduct meta work related to the project from March to July 2011. As far as we know, this is the first time someone has been employed to work specifically on the Swedish-language version of Wikipedia.

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Jan Ainali (left), who has leads the project, and me (right).

So, what do I do? I try to find articles dedicated to topics covering the Internet in Sweden. I put them on an importance scale and assess for quality — the point being to find articles that are central to the Internet, but need more work. I analyze the work to see if what we’re doing is actually helping. We hope the project will inspire more people to get involved in Wikipedia and make contacts between experts in the field and Wikipedia editors. Even better, we hope these experts will begin editing articles themselves. In a nutshell, my job is to bring attention to the relevant Swedish-language articles (the good, as well as the bad ones), be of as much help as possible to make them better, and hopefully educate people about Wikipedia in the process.

So far, working on the project has been great fun. A little bit too much so, perhaps. I spend my day doing Wikipedia-related things and afterwards, in the evenings, I continue editing articles as a volunteer. I’ve been an editor for almost seven years now, so it’s been great to have the opportunity to think about Wikipedia during the day as my “real job” and then continue editing as part of the community.

At Wikimedia Sweden, we hope, of course, our work will help bring focus to articles about the Internet in Sweden and making them easier to find, clarifying where we need more help and inspiring editors to make them better. The public could certainly use it: Swedish Wikipedia might be the eleventh Wikipedia by article count, but compared to the really large language versions, such as German, English or French Wikipedia, our number of active users is fairly small, and many of the articles related to the Internet in Sweden seem to have gone on without the love and attention they need.

But not only that, this project might also help different sorts of organizations realize that this is a way for them to assist in sharing knowledge. Support us. Help us. Free up what Wikipedia demands most: time.

Johan Jönsson

User: Julle

Wikimedia Sweden

We’re excited to welcome our newest Wikimedia Chapter: Wikimedia South Africa (WMZA). This news is particularly exciting as WMZA is the first Wikimedia chapter on the African continent.

As the 31st global chapter, WMZA has been in the making since August 2010, initiated by a small meeting in Johannesburg of highly motivated international and local volunteers. The team was assisted by Dr Tobias Schonwetter, a legal academic who works at the University of Cape Town and is very involved in access to knowledge issues in Africa.  Critical input from Wikipedians across the globe also helped the team put together the bylaws for the local Chapter in what was a highly collaborative effort. As an officially recognized Wikipedia chapter, the organizing teams’ next step will be to become a legally recognized nonprofit in South Africa.

With 11 languages spoken in South Africa and 1500 spoken across the continent, the work of the chapters and volunteers will focus on promoting awareness of Wikimedia projects and extend free-knowledge contributions from the region in African languages as well as in English, Portuguese and French.

Although WMZA will be the first organized chapter representing the Wikimedia movement, a lot of good work in support of the mission has already been completed by highly dedicated volunteers living in other parts of Africa.  Currently, Wikimedians in Kenya are actively working alongside the Ministry of Education to combat the digital divide in Kenya by installing offline versions of Wikipedia (a subset of articles specifically targeted for schools) in schools without Internet access.  In addition to installation, they are providing training to teachers on how best to use the tool.  Going forward, the documentation and content created by this group of volunteers will be tremendously useful for others.

We look forward to supporting the work of all of our volunteers in Africa and wish them the best as they continue the ubuntu spirit of community and sharing across the continent.

Moka Pantages, Global Development

Wikimédia France recently announced a new partnership with the Palace of Versailles.

This partnership will be the third “Wikimedian residency” and the second time that a Wikimedian will work closely with a cultural institution of world-wide renown. French Wikipedian Benoît Evellin follows in the footsteps of Liam Wyatt who was the first Wikipedian in residence at the British Museum.  Benoît will spend six months at the Palace of Versailles to help produce and include cultural and scientific data on the Wikimedia projects.

The partnership originated at the GLAM-Wiki Paris event in early December 2010 where Adrienne Alix, president of Wikimédia France, met Laurent Gaveau, Deputy Director of Information and Communication of Versailles and started talking about possible ways to bring Versailles cultural riches to the Wikimedia Projects.

Benoît’s residency will focus on:

• Facilitating the exchange of best practice between the Wikimedia contributors and the teams of the Palace of Versailles, including researchers and scientists;
• Developing effective communication and distribution channels to broaden access to cultural and scientific content of the Palace of Versailles through Wikipédia in French, but also in all other languages, as well as through Wikimedia Commons with images and multimedia content;

Laurent Gaveau explains that, “Wikipedia is the second source of information in France on the Palace of Versailles, after the official website, it might even be the first abroad.”

This partnership follows other partnerships secured by Wikimédia France with similar institutions, including partnerships with the City of Toulouse, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, which have brought a wealth of high-quality material to Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource, but also a growing number of initiatives around the world with institutions working to make their information available to the general public through the Wikimedia Projects.

As Adrienne Alix puts it:

“This partnership with the Palace of Versailles confirms that something has changed between cultural institutions worldwide and Wikimedia: The World of Culture is starting to understand that criticizing by saying “Wikipedia is not complete” is not as constructive as working with Wikipedia to make it better. This is the result of tireless work from Wikimedians, and I am happy to see that the Wikimedia Projects are now seen by professionals as an essential conduit to the dissemination of culture.”

Delphine Ménard
Member, Wikimédia France