The British Library, one of the largest libraries in the world, whose collection grows by around 10 kilometers (6 miles) of shelf space each year, is soliciting applications from experienced Wikipedians with a good understanding of Wikimedia and GLAM projects for the six-month position of a Wikimedian in Residence. The post has funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The programme of activities will be run as part of an ongoing partnership with Wikimedia UK, where the institution has already hosted events such as an editathon, where its curators met with Wikipedians to improve content on Wikipedia using the library’s resources.

As the chapter’s Ashley Van Haeften told Wired UK, “the main purpose of the position is to ensure a successful programme of collaboration with British Library staff and curators supporting volunteers with a passion for sharing open knowledge about the library’s collections and projects. I have met many curators that are astonishingly passionate about openly sharing the knowledge that the library preserves.”

The concept of Wikipedian/Wikimedian in Residence was pioneered in 2010 by Liam Wyatt at the nearby British Museum. Since then, it has spread to other venerable cultural institutions around the world. Recently, Dominic McDevitt-Parks, Wikipedian in Residence at the US National Archives, proudly announced that it was releasing a newly discovered audio recording from the John F. Kennedy assassination to Wikimedia Commons.

The deadline to apply at the British Library is February 23.

Tilman Bayer
Movement Communications

Wikimedia UK, the Wikimedia chapter covering the United Kingdom, has announced that it has been recognized as a charity by the Charity Commission, the government body that regulates registered charities in England and Wales.

This decision was described as “a milestone in the development of charity law in England and Wales” by charity law specialists Stone King LLP, who advised Wikimedia UK on its successful application. They explained: “Wikimedia UK’s registration as a charity is a significant step toward the updating of charity law to reflect developments in modern communications and the evolution of user-generated content. The promotion of open access to content and user-generated and -enriched content has not, until now, been recognised as a charitable purpose. Stone King and Wikimedia UK are therefore delighted that the Charity Commission has made the bold and wholly justified step that acknowledges the profound contribution that properly managed and regulated open content makes to society.”

The news came right before the launch of this year’s global Wikimedia fundraiser, where Wikimedia UK is participating. The Charity Commission’s decision means that for the first time, British donors will be able to declare donations as Gift Aid under UK tax law.

Roger Bamkin, Chair of Wikimedia UK said, “Achieving charitable status is the culmination of hard work by the Board and by Wikipedian John Byrne and board member Steve Virgin. John, in particular, has worked tirelessly with the volunteer community to create the most persuasive case and to recruit the best legal team to present it.” The decision about the application follows a recent resolution where Wikimedia UK’s members affirmed (with 49 votes for, none against and one abstention) that “the Objects of the Charity are, for the benefit of the public, to promote and support the widest possible public access to, use of and contribution to Open Content of an encyclopaedic or educational nature or of similar utility to the general public, in particular the Open Content supported and provided by Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., based in San Francisco, California, USA.”

Over the past year, Wikimedia UK’s activities have included partnerships with cultural sector organisations (GLAMs) such as the British Library, the British Museum, Derby Museum, the UK National Archives, Coventry’s Herbert Art Gallery and Museum and the National Maritime Museum, as well as collaborations with academic institutions. The chapter has hired its first Chief Executive, Jon Davies, and will open its office in central London on November 14th. Its 2012 Activity Plan outlines the chapter’s key projects for the next year.

Tilman Bayer, Movement Communications

Wikipedia is powered by the dedication and generosity of volunteers.  They share their knowledge, language skills, photography, artwork, even their own voices and music, with the rest of the world, for free.  This all happens online.  But Wikipedians can often make additional progress toward our vision of free knowledge freely available for everyone in the world, by participating in physical meetings, events, or conferences.  Such participation often entails travel costs, and sometimes accommodation, visa, and other costs too.  These costs are often prohibitively expensive for a volunteer’s personal budget, who is already donating valuable time and effort.

Therefore, in the interest of enabling this potential impact by members of our editing communities around the world, the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland are announcing the new Wikimedia Participation Grants program (see also the German chapter’s blog post).  Participation Grants are funds made available to Wikimedia community members to cover travel, accommodation, registration, and other costs associated with participating in an event or activity, in furtherance of the Wikimedia Mission.

Other Wikimedia chapters with individual revenue sources (i.e. those not themselves funded by grants from the Wikimedia Foundation) are welcome to commit some funds to the Participation Grants pool.  We already consider this participation to be “made possible by the Wikimedia movement” rather than by any of the participating bodies, and this will become more obvious as other chapters chip in.

To receive a Participation Grant, community members are encouraged to apply, following the instructions, citing the event they wish to participate in, a little background about themselves, and the expected impact for our movement’s mission. We deliberately do not inquire into the applicant’s financial situation.  By accepting a participation grant, the applicant commits to writing up a public report about the participation the grant enabled.

A committee composed of representatives of the funding organizations meets weekly to discuss open requests.  The goal is to resolve all open requests each week, so often decisions would be made within days of making the request.  However, some requests require additional information, or consultation with other organizations (e.g. the event organizers, or a local Wikimedia chapter), which may increase the turnaround time of the committee.

In the past month, we have been discussing, reviewing, and setting up the program, and have already awarded some participation grants.  Like the general Wikimedia Grants program, all participation grants are requested and resolved in public, and may be perused, along with reports about past grants (as those come in), at the requests page.

We look forward to seeing all the inspiring work this program can now make possible!

Asaf Bartov, Head of Global South Relationships

Wikipedia in Norway, through the Norwegian Wikimedia chapter, has received the prestigious Folkeopplysningsprisen (prize for public education/information) for the work it has carried out during the last ten years in producing encyclopedic content that reaches a large part of the Norwegian society.

The prize was awarded by the Voksenopplæringsforbundet (VOFO, or Norwegian Association for Adult Learning) on October 27 during a ceremony in Oslo. VOFO is a state supported umbrella organisation representing the various organisations that work with adult education in Norway. It was founded in 1932, and in 2010 its member organizations held 40 000 courses with 500 000 participants. Previous winners of the prize, which has been awarded since 1998, include the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s radio station NRK P2, Jørn H. Hurum (a Norwegian paleontologist and popularizer of science) and the popular science TV show Schrødingers katt.

It was awarded on the grounds that the online encyclopedia Wikipedia is doing perhaps more than any other entity to promote public education in Norway, and because Wikimedia Norway works to make knowledge free and accessible to all people. The organization is a non-profit, and the contributions are written by volunteers.

Jarle Vines, chairman of the Norwegian Wikimedia chapter, said: “At Wikimedia Norway, we are very happy on behalf of all contributors who year after year, brick by brick built the encyclopedia which is now the most popular in Norway.” It is the first such recognition that Wikipedia in Norway has received and it is hoped that it in several ways will help pave the way for the work being done by Wikimedia Norway and others to promote the growth of Wikipedia in Norway.

Tilman Bayer, Movement Communications

Today the volunteers of the Italian Wikipedia community made the decision to replace all of Italian Wikipedia with a message to readers about a law (PDF in Italian) being discussed before the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian parliament. The message outlines the viewpoints of the Italian Wikipedia community, and provides details about the proposed bill, and how it threatens the ability to openly collaborate in the sharing of knowledge. This is certainly a decision the Italian Wikipedia community did not take lightly.

The Wikimedia Foundation stands with our volunteers in Italy who are challenging the recently drafted “DDL intercettazioni” (or Wiretapping Bill) bill in Italy.  This bill would hinder the work of projects like Wikipedia: open, volunteer-driven, and collaborative spaces dedicated to sharing high-quality knowledge, not to mention the ability for all users of the internet to engage in democratic, free speech opportunities.

Wikipedians the world over pride themselves on their ability to rapidly remove false information from their project.  Wikipedia has established methods to receive complaints or concerns from individuals or organizations and a strong system exists to remove incorrect or false information, and if necessary to remove complete articles in an effort to prevent vandalism. For Wikipedians, there is no value nor need for this proposed legislation.

The Wikimedia Foundation supports the rights of all people to access our free knowledge content everywhere in the world, and we equally support the work of our editors to collaborate in the production of this free knowledge without the spectre of sanctioned punishment or attacks towards their work.

Jay Walsh, Communications

 

 

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.

 

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

As an increasing number of people access the internet from their mobile phones Wikipedia needs to become increasingly mobile. Recently we wrote about the new mobile frontend but how do you get to a Wikipedia article in the first place, especially if you don’t know what you’re looking for or don’t speak the local language?

Introducing QRpedia.
QR codes – barcodes for the internet – have been around for decades and the technology is increasingly being used in everything from street advertising to museum object labels. QRpedia takes the concept one step further to allow a single QR code to send you seamlessly to the mobile-friendly version of any Wikipedia article in your own language. This system is unique to Wikipedia because no other website has manually created links between languages across such an incredible breadth of topics.

When you scan the code the language setting of your phone is also transmitted. QRpedia uses Wikipedia’s API to determine whether there is a version of the chosen Wikipedia article in the language your phone is using, and if so, displays the mobile-friendly version. If there is no article (yet!) in your preferred language it will show you the most relevant article instead.

Launched in April this year, the open source QRpedia was developed out of the partnership between the Derby Museum and Gallery, England and local Wikimedia contributors Roger Bamkin, chair of Wikimedia UK, and Terence Eden, a mobile web consultant. As “Wikipedian in Residence” at the Derby Museum, Roger capitalised on this system by hosting the hugely successful Multilingual Challenge (map of participants) to ensure that content of key importance to the museum was translated into as many languages as possible. Terence built the system and the museum was kind enough to install object labels incorporating the codes.

In an era when cultural funding is very constrained, the combination of QRpedia and the global Wikipedia community enabled the Derby museum to produce a multilingual visitor experience at virtually no cost. Easy mobile access to Wikipedia articles allows visitors to the museum to access unprecedented detail about the objects and their context – information that didn’t make it onto the exhibit label.

This system is now in use in other museums around the world. These include exhibitions at the on-site museum of the the National Archives of the UK, in the permanent signage of key objects at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis and in a major traveling exhibition of Miró’s work in association with the Fundació Joan Miró of Barcelona.

 

To generate your own QRpedia codes visit http://qrpedia.org/
and simply paste the URL of any Wikipedia article into the box.
The freely licensed sourcecode can be viewed at http://code.google.com/p/qrwp/

—-

Liam Wyatt
Cultural Partnerships Fellow

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

(This is the eighth installment in a series of updates from the WikiHistories summer research fellows, who will be studying the virtual community history of different Wikipedia editing communities.)

Almost 15.000 articles since 2003 and just a few dozen active contributors: how to change the situation?

Well, looks like 2011 can be a year of change for Վիքիփեդիա- the Armenian Wikipedia, as the community, supporting organizations and even the state have started taking Wikipedia seriously.

For the first time on April 3 of this year, a 1-day Wikipedia hackathon was organized for Wikipedians and their friends to come together in one place and translate Wikipedia policies and guidelines. About 50 people gathered and 17 guidelines were translated during the day. Even though many of those 50 people did not edit another article afterwards, it was an important step for the development of the Վիքիփեդիա: this in fact was the first event organized by a few interested parties such as educational – humanitarian foundations, software developing firms, IT NGOs and of course, the Wikimedia community.

It all started after Richard Stallman’s visit to Armenia. The Web2.0 activist shared his enthusiasm about open, interactive and collaborative online platforms and suggested, “Why not have another look at Wikipedia?”.

Armine, who works for the educational NGO “Instigate” says that Stallman’s enthusiasm was contagious and, soon after his visit, she and her colleagues registered on Wikipedia, tried and loved it. They thought this was something particularly useful for kids and students and they announced the start of the “Wikipedia: School and University- Armenia” project that now unifies 6 organizations and groups, including the Wikipedia community.

Apart from the hackathon, the initiators of the project visited a few schools: not all of the school headmasters greeted them with enthusiasm, but some were really open to innovations. However, it was Spring, the end of the school year, and both teachers and pupils were too busy to try something new.

15-year-old Mariam is the head of the student council at the Anania Shirakatsi National Lycee.  She is eager to take the first steps as soon as the schools open in September. She has asked some of the active Wikipedians to teach the students the basics of editing and the main principles of the Armenian Wiki community. She says that every student in the Lycee writes over 10 essays during the school year that can be suitable for the online encyclopedia. Besides, she thinks that Wiki platform can be a good place for developing and editing the articles in collaboration with classmates and teachers.

“What can be more attractive for children than the feeling that their work will be available and useful for millions of people. This will also make them more responsible and motivated”,- says Armine. She believes that the sense of collaboration is ideal for classrooms and hopes that more schools will adopt the tool.

The idea has been proposed to the Ministry of Education as well. The reaction was positive, but so far it hasn’t gone any further.

Separate from the School and University project, another Wikipedian - SusikMkr (Susanna Mkrtchyan), has started a process for establishing a Wikimedia Chapter in Armenia. “The community will not grow without a proper organization”, she says.

Susanna works at the Science Management Department of the National Science Academy Computing Institute of Armenia. Discovering Armenian Wikipedia, she was astonished to find the right tool for promoting science and knowledge but disappointed with the current situation. She registered as a Wikipedia contributor last December. Since then she has been reading the policies and studying the experience of other countries trying to find ways for developing Wikipedia. In August she took part in the WikiMania 2011 conference in Haifa and gave a presentation about the situation in Armenia, with suggestions on how to change it. Now she says she is in touch with the Wikimedia Foundation and has their full support to realize  her plan, i. e. to  increase the number of contributors and articles, and establish a  chapter for coordinating the job.

 This Saturday she invited the active Wikipedians for a talk and discussion of her ideas. She says she already has the support of the Science Academy: they will provide a room and most likely some computers for the workshop and training. Also, the Academy is happy to help with the content.

“We have lots of great minds, scientists who are retired and do not know how to keep themselves busy. We also have high rates of unemployment in the country, so there are a lot of people who have the knowledge but don’t know how to share it. They do not know about Wikipedia. We need to inform and train people”, Susanna insists.

She is also up for more practical approaches: schools should incorporate Wikipedia in the curriculum, universities should take responsibility for enriching the encyclopedia with X number of articles per month, including policy translations. Also, there might be competitions for Wikipedia articles to encourage children to start contributing.

The veteran-Wikipedians, however, are a bit sceptical about these plans. Being guards of Wikipedia traditions and rules, they strongly believe in “good faith”, “openness”, voluntarism” of Wikipedia. If there is any chance that anyone will be paid or forced to contribute to Wikipedia, the community will resist.

Susanna promises not to break the rules and to discuss every step with the community and the Foundation, but one thing is clear for her: she needs to do something about the situation. For her Wikipedia is not just a tool but a philosophy that can be used in all spheres of cultural, social and academic life. 10 years after the creation of Wikipedia, Armenians want to give it another try and really make use of it.

Lusine Grigoryan

MSc Digital Anthropology (UCL), journalist

Wiki Loves Monuments is a photo contest centered around Monuments that will take place this September throughout Europe.  In 2010 a version of  the contest was already successfully held in the Netherlands – with more than 12,500 photos submitted by more than 250 participants (see earlier blog post).

Starting in September more than 15 countries, from Portugal to Estonia, will organize their national Wiki Loves Monuments contest. In most cases, the national contests will be organized by Wikimedia chapters, but  in some countries without chapters local Wikimedians have organized the contests. During this month-long contest, people are asked to submit photos of monuments, which will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons through a dedicated interface. The best photos will win a prize, and the top 10 photos from each country will be submitted to the European contest.

After the results of all of the national contests are known, a European jury will select the best photos from all nominations from the national juries. Several European partners are supporting this initiative with their help and networks.

Wiki Loves Monuments is all about making it easy for people to participate: make it easy to find objects to photograph, make the threshold for participation as low as possible, make it easy to upload and make it easy for the images to get added to the Wikipedia articles.

We hope that we will see lots of participation–by Wikimedians and also by others– who might stick around after they find out they can really edit Wikimedia projects, and start to enjoy helping to bring the sum of human knowledge to the world. Do you want to know more about Wiki Loves Monuments? Check out the project pages on Wikimedia Commons or join our session at Wikimania! You can also follow updates on the WikiLovesMonuments.eu blog.

Maarten Dammers and Lodewijk Gelauff,

International coordinators for Wiki Loves Monuments