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.

A QRpedia code for the Wikipedia article about the artist Joan Miró. 1 code, 40 languages. Try this one for yourself!

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.

Jimmy Wales scanning the QRpedia code at the working antique carousel in the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.

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/

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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.

Armenian Wikipedians and volunteers translating Wikipedia guidelines at the hackathon, April 2011

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.

Armenian Wiki community discussing the measures of Wikipedia promotion in Armenia

 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

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

Jorge Sierra ([[User:Lucien leGrey]]), Chapter President, Wikimedia España.

Wikimedia Indonesia co-founder, Wikipedia editor, and all-around high energy volunteer Siska Doviana recently paid a visit to the San Francisco headquarters of the Wikimedia Foundation.  She was able to reach out to many staff members and discuss collaborations and initiatives, including the chapter’s recent writing competition, Free Your Knowledge 2010.

While she was in California, Siska also took to the time write a recap of how she began her relationship with Wikimedia and the Indonesian Wikipedia (on fellow Wikimedian GerardM‘s blog), and what ultimately led to the formation of the country’s official Wikimedia chapter: Wikimedia Indonesia.

We’re looking forward to more visits from international chapter representatives and volunteers over the coming months and through 2011.

Thanks for coming the long way to visit, Siska.  Safe travels!

Jay Walsh, Communications

Each year, the Wikimedia Foundation conducts a grant making process to support the work of chapters around the world. We are happy to announce that 15 grants for ten different chapters have been awarded for the 2010-2011 fiscal year thus far. The Wikimedia Foundation is excited to help launch all of these great projects and we encourage other chapters (and organized groups of volunteers) to consider grant request as we have additional funds available.

We’d like to spotlight a grant from 2009/10 as an example of the work that chapters are doing. The Indonesian chapter ran a project Bebaskan Pengetahuan 2010 (Free Your Knowledge 2010) during 2009/10. The grant aimed to enrich the informational content of the Bahasa Indonesian language Wikipedia with the goal of increasing active contributions.

The highly anticipated competition included 10 universities on the island of Java, each appointing nine students to compete and one professor to evaluate the writing results for the largest quantity and highest quality of articles produced in the Bahasa Indonesian language. The top-five student winners received a laptop computer and free operating system. The grand-prize winner was awarded a trip to the 2010 Wikimania in Gdansk, Poland this past July.

While it is hard to directly attribute the impact of the project to the overall project growth, it is worth noting that the Bahasa Indonesia Wikipedia article count grew by over 20% to 130,000 articles between August 2009 and July 2010. In addition, page views on Indonesian Wikipedia grew by 100% in that time period – the fastest growing Wikipedia in the world.

The 2010/11 grants have been provided by the Wikimedia Foundation to further the growth of new chapters in the areas of Organizational Development, Digital Technology and Outreach Activities. This year will see chapter start-ups and kick-offs in Hong Kong, Estonia, Ukraine, the Philippines and in New York City. As a result of these grants, chapters will be able to register and host their own websites, secure government permits and non-profit status as well as pay necessary legal fees.

Organizational development is an important aspect in expanding individual chapters. Several Foundation grants have been given for materials such as laptop computers, projectors, and video equipment. This year, the Netherlands have been granted a forgiveness grant from their participation in 2009/10 fundraiser revenue sharing. These funds will be allocated towards sustainable organizational development and outreach activities.

Digital technology grants have been given to the Hungary chapter for a Free License Photo Competition, encouraging the photographer community to place their work under Free License for the Wikimedia Commons project. The Czech Republic followed up their successful photo project in 2009/10 and will continue their efforts to expand the site’s documentation of regional costumes and traditions and vernacular architectural landmarks project.

Outreach activities are an integral part of chapter work on behalf of the movement. Internship programs, Wikimedia conferences and academies, and educational programs in schools and universities are all a part of this program. New York City is setting a worldwide precedent by holding the first annual Wikipedia Day NYC 2011. In conjunction with several 10th Anniversary celebrations to commemorate a decade of Wikipedia, funds will go to logistics preparation and conference supplies for participants.

Sharing in Outreach Activities, Wikimedia Switzerland will be embarking on a three-year project to invite senior citizens into the world of Wikipedia editing. By fostering the life experience and collective knowledge of seniors, the Third Age Online (TAO) program will be used to bridge age and cultural gaps in the community. Likewise, our Hong Kong chapter will be working with a new mandatory liberal studies program in high schools, encouraging students to use and contribute to Wikipedia Hong Kong.

The grant process is open to all chapters and volunteer groups officially recognized by the Wikimedia Foundation. Proposals must be aligned with the Foundation’s shared mission statement and the core values that drive the Wikimedia project. Each of these project grants has been assessed by the Foundation for relevance based on the needs of individual chapters and the diffusion of Wikimedia language sites and Wikimedia projects worldwide. Once grants are approved, chapters are subject to reporting requirements that are then made available to the general public to enable knowledge sharing.

This year alone, the Wikimedia Foundation has awarded $82,000 in grants to international chapters and $115,000 in forgiveness funding for fundraiser revenue sharing. The Foundation is pleased to announce the availability of additional funds for the 2010/2011 fiscal year. We encourage all chapters to apply. For more information on our grant process please visit: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Index

Barry Newstead

Chief Global Development Officer