The key is finding the best angle: Czech Wikipedians during a trip organized by WikiProject Protected Areas (as a part of Mediagrant activities)

Mediagrant, conceived in 2010, is an all-embracing program of the Czech Wikimedia chapter (WM Czech Republic), which aims to support photographing or acquisition of other freely usable multimedia content. Basically, it provides Czech volunteers with technical equipment, organizes photographic workshops and reimburses the volunteers‘ travelling expenses. The project’s second anniversary is closing in: what have we already achieved?

The program has been designed so that it can actively respond to the needs of volunteers. As such, it enables people to ask for their own “collection topic.” Over the two years, 8 collection topics have crystallized: documentation of Czech municipalities, vernacular architecture, Czech vernacular clothes and customs, documentation of protected natural areas and memorable trees in the Czech Republic, scientific photography, documentation of important events in the Czech Republic, water bodies of the Czech Republic and documentation of Jewish monuments in the Czech Republic.

Castle of Žichovice, one of the hundreds of castles scattered throughout the Czech Republic

As of June 2012, as many as 10,736 pictures were taken by volunteers, who made exactly 130 journeys to the sites of their interest. In recent months, there has been an explosion of documentation of Czech protected areas: already 55 percent of about 2,500 protected areas have been photographed (a majority of them by grant participants). Similarly, 4,356 new photographs of Czech towns and villages helped assure that 2,653 out of 6,241 Czech municipalities have a picture in their infobox. The pictures were often taken with one of our two chapter cameras and, what is more, many of the participants were trained at one of five photo-workshops that took place in different parts of the Czech Republic.

To get a better perspective, the statistics must be considered in terms of size of our photographing community. Although we make efforts to popularize the project among our fellow Wikipedians, there are still only about a dozen long-term participants. It is a serious challenge to persuade regular Wikipedians to join the Mediagrant and go take pictures in their free time.

A folk costume from the "Moravian Slovakia" region, worn traditionally by single girls

From the technical point of view, a so-called Tracker has been adapted as a software tool that enables you to log every journey you have made, including your destination, travel costs and a link to the pictures. This way, no one has to ask for permission to make a journey; one just goes, takes pictures and then asks for the reimbursement.

We hope that encouraging outreach and making it so easy to participate will help the program grow, and will enhance Wikipedia with quality images.

(Note: Mediagrant is one of two current Czech grant programs (both supported by the Wikimedia Foundation), the second being Presentation&Outreach. This sister program takes care of some other missions that Wikimedia Chapters have. Each grant is maintained by a committee, a so-called “eye.” You can contact the Mediagrant eye at mggranty.wikimedia.cz, or see the (Czech-only) project page.)

Vojtěch Dostál, Wikimedia CzechRepublic

Logo of Czech Ambassador Program

Wikipedia has always been dependent on its contributors: highly motivated people with a specific sort of knowledge that they want to share with the readers. Wikipedia never has enough contributors; the more there are, the better Wikipedia gets. We, together with all the people from the Wikipedia Education Program, think that students are one particularly interesting group of potential Wikipedians. The Czech Ambassador Program is just one of many efforts worldwide that aim to grow Wikipedia’s use as a university teaching tool.

All started for the Czech Republic in spring of 2011 when an ambitious program was establishing itself on universities across the United States. We decided we wanted to try a similar thing in the Czech environment. The crucial steps in organizing it were: summoning as many team members as possible (still less then 10, rather about 5 active people), distributing work among them, and creating a communication channel both among them (i.e., an email list) and with the wider community and general public (a Wikipedia homepage, Facebook, Google+ and Twitter fan page).

The first success story came in the winter term 2011–12 with Ambassador activities at the Institute of Environmental Studies, Charles University, in Prague. This has been coordinated by the WikiProject Protected Areas and readers of this blog probably remember how elaborate the cooperation was, putting stress on personal contact with students and high quality of articles.

Jana Lánová giving a lecture on Wikipedia to students at Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University in Brno

Sadly, we do not have enough “human resources” to expand this way of working with students, so we decided to go for a different approach in most of our projects. We usually meet the students just once or twice, giving them a short lecture about what Wikipedia is and how one can create an article. Then, we provide the students with links to help pages both on Wikipedia and also on social sites. Also, they can always e-mail to their Ambassador and ask about the things they do not understand. In the future, we would like to put stress on an interactive e-learning program that is being developed by Derek Coetzee.

In the winter term, our students created a total sum of about 100 articles, a majority (57) of them written from the field of baroque sculpture art and baroque architecture, thanks to a project at Faculty of Arts, Palacky University in Olomouc. Ten more were concentrating on highly specific topics in immunology (a project at Faculty of Science, Charles University) and the last ~30 are the above-mentioned Institute of Environmental Studies.

Right now, a summer term is on the way, bearing a promise of 150–200 articles in total. Crucially, we work in three major cities of the Czech Republic (Prague, Olomouc, Brno) and as we try to involve the local community, ambassadorship has proven to be a promising way of outreach from the capital and engaging people from the other parts of the country. Our projects now range from Physical Chemistry and basic Algebra to Scandinavian Literature, Iconography, Histology/Cytology and Botany. See the recent changes from all our current projects.

Chmee2 talking about how Wikipedia works to students in Prague. The unique atmosphere of Brmlab proved to be a great place to interact with "Wikipedians-to-be"

A great example of our projects is “Histology/Cytology”, carried out at the Faculty of Science, Charles University, and taught by doc. RNDr. Jan Černý, Ph.D. This subject attracts more than 100 students every year. We did not want to make it a tedious duty for students, so we told them: write on Wikipedia only if you like, and if you do your job well, we will give you 5 points extra to the final exam. What followed was an explosion: a lot of students starting asking us about the project, so we were really motivated to prepare the guidelines for the students. We also made two public lectures in Brmlab (a local do-it-yourself scientific club) on how Wikipedia works. The best thing was that some students really began writing article after article, becoming real experienced and well-oriented Wikipedians. The thing that I like the most is that six out of seven students who have filled in a questionnaire so far wrote that they wanted to continue editing Wikipedia after the assignment ends for them. All in all, the Czech Wikipedia is richer by more than seventy articles on Histology and Cell Biology — and this number keeps growing.

Vojtěch Dostál, Wikimedia Czech Republic