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The GLAM movement in Catalonia has been very active the past few years. Edit-a-thons and workshops have taken place in all kinds of institutions, but the one that was held this April in Fundació Miró in Barcelona (Catalonia), co-organized by Amical Viquipèdia, was really special: the edit-a-thon lasted for 35 consecutive hours, split in three session. Moreover, during the first hours of the edit-a-thon, Catalan Wikipedia reached 400.000 articles – a magical coincidence that made the event even more special.

35 consecutive hours editing Wikipedia? It IS possible!

Fundació Miró’s Espai 13 is celebrating the 35th anniversary since its creation. Fundació Miró had already collaborated with Wikipedia back in 2011, when they hosted an edit-a-thon about the Catalan artist Joan Miró. But this time Amical Viquipèdia and Fundació Miró agreed to make a huge celebration to commemorate the event: 35 consecutive hours editing Wikipedia.

First session of the Miró Editathon

During that time, around fifty Art and Philosophy university students from all over the country, and around fifteen volunteer Wikipedians, gathered in the workplace to start or expand articles on 300 artists who have exhibited at Espai 13, Fundació Miró’s space dedicated to promoting young artists’ work.

To start the event, we held a press conference at 12am on Friday, April 12th, 2013. The first shift of participants was already prepared to start working on the 300 proposed articles about the Espai 13 artists – and some of those artists were present at the event too, so the students were able to take freely licensed pictures of them and post them to Wikimedia Commons. The 26 Art and Philosphy students who participated in the first turn, plus the 5 volunteer Wikipedians who were there to help them, stayed until 10pm – that is, 10 hours. The second turn comprised a similar number of participants. They worked admirably during the whole night without rest until 10am next day, when the third shift took over and stayed until the end of the edit-a-thon eleven hours later, finishing at 9pm on April 13th, 2013.

The students and the volunteer Wikipedians didn’t just write on Wikipedia – there were parallel activities scheduled in order to get out, relax the mind and get ready for more work on articles. In addition to lunch and dinner at the magnificient gardens of the museum, those activities included a guided visit to the museum at midnight, conferences by Wikipedians, a couple of performances from two of the artists that were being written about, and two yoga sessions –one of them being held at 6am in the morning at Fundació Miró’s balcony, when Barcelona was waking up and the sight was breathtaking.

Catalan Wikipedia reaches 400.000 articles

Nonetheless, the edit-a-thon at Fundació Miró was not the only celebration of the day. As luck would have it, the 400,000th article in Catalan Wikipedia was written during the event. Catalan language is the 75th most spoken language in the world with 11,5 millions speakers, yet Catalan Wikipedia occupies the 15th place by number of articles. Catalan-speaking territories are situated in Spain, France, and Italy, whose languages make a strong influence to its speakers, specially Spanish – most of Catalan speakers are bilingual, knowing Spanish as well.

At 5.23pm, in the middle of a conference about “Open knowledge and the cultural institutions,” a participant announced the good news and we opened champagne bottles in the presence of Barcelona TV, who covered the news live. Catalan National TV also joined the event at midnight and the next day broadcasted a two-minute video about the the event being the longest edit-a-thon ever and the 400.000 articles milestone.

Arnau Duran (User:Arnaugir), member of Amical Viquipèdia
Note: for more information about the edit-a-thon see this page (in Catalan).

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Wikipedian Dr. Adrianne Wadewitz will participate in the first ever Ask a WikiWoman event on January 17

“What’s it like to be a Wikipedian?”

“How did you get started editing?”

“How do you make an account on Wikipedia?”

“How do you upload a photo on Commons?”

…those are just some of the many questions that people often ask those of us who edit Wikipedia and contribute to its sister projects. Do you have questions similar to these that you’ve always wanted to ask a Wikipedian?

Well now your chance. WikiWoman Dr. Adrianne Wadewitz will be answering your questions by participating in the first Ask a WikiWoman online event.

On Thursday, January 17, the WikiWomen’s Collaborative will host Ask a WikiWoman via their Twitter! Participants from around the world will have a chance to ask Adrianne, a Wikipedian since 2004, anything about Wikipedia. The event will take place from 10 AM PST (18:00) until 5:00 PM PST (01:00) via the @WikiWomen Twitter.

How do I ask a question?

To participate, you have to have a Twitter account. Twitter is free to join if you aren’t a member yet. After logging in to your Twitter account, ask your question and include hashtag #askawikiwoman in your question. Adrianne will then answer your question!

Who is Adrianne Wadewitz?

Dr. Adrianne Wadewitz, aka User:Wadewitz, has been a Wikipedian since 2004. She’s a “feminist, scholar, educator, and digital humanist,” and has a deep passion for empowering women to contribute to Wikipedia and for helping to provide women around the world with access to free knowledge. As an educator, she has participated in the Wikipedia Education Program, where she has used Wikipedia in the class room as a learning tool since 2011. With a PhD in English Literature from Indiana University, Adrianne has channeled her passion for literature into her Wikipedia contributions. She was a leading force in bringing articles about Mary Wollstonecraft and the life of Jane Austen to Featured Article status, making them some of the finest articles on English Wikipedia.

“I’m thrilled to be part of the first “Ask a WikiWoman” event,” she said. “Nothing quite demystifies Wikipedia and encourages people to participate as a real person who can answer questions about this strange and wonderful website. I’m a Wikipedian. Ask me anything.”

And we hope you will do just that – ask a WikiWoman anything. We’ll see you on Twitter on Thursday, January 17!

Sarah Stierch, Wikimedia Community Fellow

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Español

El pasado sábado 15 de diciembre, en la BiblioGAM del Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistal (GAM), Wikimedia Chile celebró la premiación del concurso Wiki Loves Monuments Chile 2012, oportunidad en que se premió a las 10 imágenes ganadoras que representaron a Chile en la etapa internacional del concurso, junto a las 5 menciones honrosas destacadas por el jurado nacional, además de un premio especial al participante que contribuyó con la mayor cantidad de imágenes de monumentos distintos.

The awards ceremony for Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 Chile

“Esta iniciativa es una oportunidad que permite rescatar el patrimonio nacional y preservarlo para que futuras generaciones puedan conocerlo”, destacó Eduardo Testart, presidente de Wikimedia Chile. “Estamos muy orgullosos del resultado obtenido y esperamos seguir desarrollando actividades para difundir los proyectos de Wikimedia en Chile”, señaló Testart.

El concurso fue organizado por Wikimedia Chile y patrocinado por la Fundación Imagen de Chile y el Consejo de Monumentos Nacionales, quienes aportaron con difusión y premios del concurso, el cual contó con 4.083 fotografías de 330 participantes.

Tras la ceremonia de entrega de premios y guiados por voluntarios de Wikimedia Chile, los asistentes participaron de la primera editatón organizada en Chile. La introducción guiada permitió a los participantes esbozar y editar los artículos de los monumentos fotografiados y que cuyo contenido no estaba disponible aún en la Wikipedia en español, consiguiendo la creación de 3 nuevos artículos y el mantenimiento y ampliación de artículos ya existentes. La actividad dio un cierre simbólico al concurso y permitió acercar a los chilenos a la experiencia de participar de Wikipedia, algo que todos podemos hacer, solamente se deben tener ganas de compartir el conocimiento a través de contenidos con licencias libres.

Dennis Tobar Calderón, Wikimedia Chile

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“Instructor Basics: How to use Wikipedia as a teaching tool” is a new brochure. Click on the image to download the brochure from Wikimedia Commons.

University instructors around the world who are interested in incorporating Wikipedia assignments into their course curriculum are now able to access three printed brochures filled with best practices. Drawing from the experiences of hundreds of professors worldwide who have participated in the Wikipedia Education Program, the brochures provide a blueprint for how to incorporate Wikipedia assignments into university curricula.

A new brochure, titled “Instructor Basics: How to use Wikipedia as a teaching tool“, is now available from the Wikimedia Foundation and on Wikimedia Commons. This brochure covers key Wikipedia policies and structures that are important for educators wanting to incorporate a Wikipedia assignment to understand. The brochure also shows best practices on article selection and working with the community, and sample grading rubrics.

The second brochure in the series is a sample syllabus provided for instructors interested in having their students write Wikipedia articles as part of the course curriculum. This brochure has been updated based on recommendations from more instructors who have participated in the Wikipedia Education Program and feedback from the Wikipedia community. The new version provides a week-by-week breakdown of how you can incorporate a “write a Wikipedia article” assignment into your classes. It includes some key milestones that have proven effective at ensuring that students derive the greatest educational benefits from editing Wikipedia.

“The Syllabus: A 12-week assignment to write a Wikipedia article” can be downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.

Finally, a Case Studies brochure offers examples of assignment types that professors around the world have used, as well as suggestions on how to grade assignments.

All three brochures are available under free licenses from Wikimedia Commons, and source files are available via email so you can translate the brochures into other languages. The Case Studies brochure, which was released earlier this year, has already been translated into several languages.

The brochures are produced as part of the Wikipedia Education Program, where volunteers support professors who are interested in assigning their students to contribute to Wikipedia. Education programs are in operation in 25 countries around the world.

LiAnna Davis
Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager

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English

Day of the Dead (Día de Muertos) is a major celebration in Mexico. It has roots in both Catholicism and pre Hispanic beliefs, and unlike death rituals in some parts of the world, is not a somber occasion. Quite the opposite: it is when family and friends welcome the return of deceased relatives and friends with offerings of traditional foods and other special items. Celebrants go to cemeteries to clean and decorate graves, and sometimes picnic in the cemetery or spend the night there. The actual Day of the Dead is November 2 but many communities celebrate for three days, with each day dedicated to different classes of dead, such as deceased children, adults, saints, etc. As traditions vary in the country and preparations occur during the month of October, there are many aspects of this important holiday which lack photographs on Wikimedia Commons, especially local traditions and cultural events.

Winning photograph, Día de Muertos Estilo Wiki contest

As part of Wiki Loves Libraries, and ongoing efforts to incorporate authentic learning activities, the campus library of ITESM-Campus Ciudad de México sponsored a photography contest called Day of the Dead Wiki Style (Día de Muertos estilo Wiki). This event also coincided with the ITESM campus system’s “cultural month” activities held in October (Octubre Cultural).

Similar to Wiki Loves Monuments, there was an open period for the uploading of photos from 5 October to 5 November 2012, with photos going to a special category Día de Muertos estilo Wiki. A panel of judges in art, photography and cultural fields, including David Hernandez, scholastic director for the National Museum of Popular Cultures, were invited to participate as judges. On 15 November 2012, the winners of the Día de Muertos estilo Wiki photographic contest ([1]) were announced. The winners are Thetambourinekid with the best photograph (pictured [2]), Copetevic with the most original photograph ([3]) and Guilleminargp, who uploaded the most photographs. In total just over 400 photographs were uploaded and they can be seen here ([4]).

In addition to prizes, students were also encouraged to participate through a number of classes on campus that offered extra credit. One Chinese language class, taught by Lili Sun, had students take and upload photographs as an assignment, writing the descriptions in Spanish and Chinese (example), with a few adding other languages, such as French and German.

Due to the success of this project, plans are being made for a larger contest for the spring semester, this time focusing on traditions related to Holy Week and Easter in Mexico.

Leigh Thelmadatter, Regional Ambassador-Wikipedia Education Program
Spanish translation by Anmuratalla

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Lakshmi Valsalakumari is an IT professional who wants to expand her horizons. She attended the recent Wikimedia Developers Camp in Bangalore and had this story to tell:

Lakshmi with Santhosh Thottingal, the lead developer of Wikimedia’s font and keyboard tools

I have been an Information Technology professional working with well-known software organizations over the last 15 years. While IT has been keeping me busy, productive and happy, I have also all along harbored an interest in history and the humanities. I have recently decided to pursue these interests full-time, joining a research program at the Centre of Exact Humanities, International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, India.

With my recent shift into academics and research, I have been referencing Wikipedia quite a bit in the last two to three months, and I have been amazed at the sheer magnitude of information found on it. While I have been reading the Wikipedia pages extensively, I had never yet considered editing it, not even in English, the language I reference Wikipedia most in, and the one I use most on computers.

Editing and contributing content in Malayalam, my mother tongue, had not really occurred to me either—Malayalam being a language I hardly used on my computers—until I attended the Bangalore Wikimedia Dev Camp.

I have tried typing Malayalam using my regular browser, but I have not been very happy with the effect. This was not the way I liked to see Malayalam written and rendered, so I had not made any further efforts to write Malayalam online. At the camp, I met Santhosh and Manoj—avid Malayalam Wikipedia contributors—and they persuaded me to give it another shot.

The first step was to download the Meera Unicode font for Malayalam, then to change my default browser to one of those that can render Meera well (I tried out Google Chrome; Firefox was even better, I was told), and then to try out typing Malayalam using the regular English keyboard.

I liked what I saw. When I typed the suggested key combinations, even complicated Malayalam letter combinations were being rendered the way I would have written them using pen and paper. I tried more and more combinations—ta, tha, tta, Ta, tma, thra, tya, zha—and was pleased with the effect. This was fun!

Demos of how transliteration keyboards for Malayalam work

Soon, I was creating my first article. I noticed that on the main Wikipedia page, an article on Barcelona mentioned Catalonia as a red link, meaning that no further information was available in the Malayalam Wikipedia on it, whereas there was plenty of information on the same subject in the English Wikipedia. Manoj guided me through the steps as I created my first page in the Malayalam Wikipedia, copied the template information over from the English article and saved the heading, trying to get it right in Malayalam. I viewed my saved efforts, and with a sense of achievement, I went to grab a coffee.

Back online with my coffee, I was surprised to find a message on the article Talk page—someone had already posted a comment on the page I had just saved, chiding me for the lack of content and references. “This will drive away people from Wikipedia,” the post read. “Please ensure I get enough content on the page!”

Man, that was fast! I had no idea people were watching and following Wikipedia edits this closely. Manoj encouraged me to type more, so I returned to my effort. While I was getting comfortable with the typing, I was still grappling for suitable words in Malayalam for the content I was reading in English. Manoj suggested Olam, an online dictionary, and sure enough, I was able to find several of the Malayalam equivalents I was searching for.

And so, I typed on. Again, to my surprise, I found people editing the content and giving helpful suggestions even as I was still typing—one person told me to leave native names as such and not translate those, and another formatted some of the changes. By the end of the day, I had posted a decent amount of info, although there remained much more to be added.

I was happy with my day’s work. I had never imagined that using Malayalam on my computer and editing the Malyalam Wikipedia content would be such a pleasant and enjoyable experience, one that I was actually looking forward to!

Another point I must mention here is the sheer volume of Malayalam content that I have started seeing online, on Wikipedia pages and elsewhere. This must be due to the attention paid to this field of languages, literature and culture online by movements like Wikimedia. In 2005, I remember searching online for a well-known Malayalam lullaby Omanathingalkkidavo by Irayimman Thampi, but could not find anything. I had then resorted to the memories of my immediate relatives to try and pen the forgotten lyrics. Now, when I search for the same, the amount of material that comes up on that lullaby is amazing!

My heart-felt appreciation to Wikipedia and all its online community members who have made all of this possible. I hope to be part of this movement myself and do my bit toward furthering easy availability of multi-lingual content online

Lakshmi Valsalakumari

The Wikimedia Language Engineering team is developing technologies that make it possible to speakers of all languages to contribute to Wikipedia in their language as easily and naturally as possible. Lakshmi’s story is an example of how these technologies enable people to develop reference and educational content that makes Wikipedia useful to people in the whole world. These technologies are deployed in Wikipedias in most languages of India, and more languages and projects are being added all the time.

Amir E. Aharoni, Software Engineer (Internationalization)

Merrilee wants YOU to work with your local libraries to improve Wikipedia!

Last year marked the start of Wikipedia Loves Libraries (WLL), and in 2012, WLL activities are in full swing, with many events planned in the coming month. WLL was originally conceived as a way of celebrating Open Access Week, but we now have WLL events throughout the year. As a librarian who is interested in seeing more coordination between libraries and other cultural heritage organizations (i.e. GLAM), I’d like to offer some perspectives on why libraries and Wikipedia are so well aligned with one another.

The bottom line is that we share a common mission. We are dedicated to providing free access to information and knowledge. Wikipedians want to strengthen their articles by citing credible sources. If those sources are in print, or hidden behind paywalls, it undermines the important tenant of free access.

Libraries collect those same credible sources and make them freely available to patrons. Partnering with libraries helps keep sources free. Librarians value “information literacy,” which means teaching the general public to recognize, appreciate and rely on credible sources. Sound familiar? Teaching basic Wikipedia editing skills can be a great, practical way to re-enforce information literacy skills.

Encouraging more librarians to become Wikipedians will also help address the gender gap. Librarians are an almost mirror image of Wikipedians in terms of gender – a March 2012 survey of members of the American Library Association found that 80.7 percent of those in the profession are female (versus about 10 percent of Wikipedians).

So, if you haven’t already, reach out to your local librarian. Suggest a WLL event, or find out if you can use library space to hold an editathon on a topic of local interest. Ask for help from your library in promoting events, not only to library patrons, but also to staff. Be patient, and recognize that librarians may move at a slower pace than Wikipedians (and that they have a range of other events and activities on top of their day-to-day duties). Be complementary to see if you can find a way for Wikipedia activities to harmonize with areas where the library is already investing. If you make the effort, I think you’ll have a good shot at creating a beautiful partnership, and creating some new Wikipedians in the process.

-Merrilee Proffitt, Senior Program Officer, OCLC Research (User:Mlet)

WikiWomen Day participants

Sunday, 28th October 2012, was “WikiWomen Day” in Pune, India. The day brought together women from a variety of educational backgrounds, castes, creeds, religions, and age groups. The purpose of the gathering was to both educate women about the huge gender gap that exists within Wikipedia and to encourage women to contribute.

The workshop was held by “Wikipedia Club Pune” in PAI International Learning Solutions, Azam Campus, Pune, India. The workshop began at 10:00am with approximately 25 attendees. The first session explained the issues surrounding the lack of women editors. This session was an eye-opener for attendees about the huge gender gap within Wikipedia. Next, we offered a “How to get Hands-on on Wikipedia” program. The majority of attendees didn’t know how to edit Wikipedia, therefore, they had to start from scratch with tasks such as creating a username, and learning about Wikipedia policies and guidelines, and its principles, such as the Five Pillars. After a thorough review, we presented the basics of editing.

Later in the afternoon, there was a breakout session where everyone got an opportunity to interact with one another while enjoying a lunch of burgers and soft drinks. Following that, there was Indic language session where attendees were introduced to the multi-lingual aspects of Wikipedia. After that was the “Collaborative Contribution” session where we put our newly acquired skills to work. In this session, we expanded the “Helen Keller” article in Marathi. This page was originally started by an anonymous editor with a single line of text. Within a half hour, the entire page was developed, telling a comprehensive story of her life. This collaborative experience was marvelous and my favorite session of the day. After this session, we distributed participation certificates to everyone and encouraged our motivated attendees to continue editing Wikipedia.

Last but not the least, the workshop ended with the cake-cutting ceremony, which was also the launch for “Wikipedia Summit India 2013,” to be held in January. The Summit will focus on Wikipedia’s gender gap and provide action-oriented workshops focused on closing the gap.

-Ketaki Pole (User:Ketaki Pole)

The Assamese Wikipedia community is still relatively small, but they have seen a significant increase of new editors recently. Over the past six months, the community of active editors has grown by 45 percent, and although Assamese Wikipedia has just 1,600 articles, the numbers are sure to increase following the start of the Assamese Wikipedia Education Program.

The program was launched on on 14 October, 2012, with 15 master’s students—90 percent are women—under the tutelage of the Head of the Department of Education at Guwahati University, Professor Dulumoni Goswami. The students will first learn how to type in Assamese using Rudali. After that, students will learn how to edit Wikipedia, including more advanced editing techniques, such as adding references, headers, and various other intricacies in Wiki markup.

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a grantee of the Wikimedia Foundation, is supporting the project and guiding the growth of Wikimedia-related activities in India. Nitika Tandon at CIS has written a more detailed report, which you can read here.

We’re  happy to see the progress, and we hope the Assamese Wikipedia continues to flourish!

Matthew Roth, Global Communications Manager

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

Ada Lovelace Day celebrates the legacy and life of Ada Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), who is considered to be the first computer programmer in the world. This day also celebrates women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields (STEM).

Amazing events and activities are happening around the world, including among Wikipedia contributors. Today two editing events took place that aimed to increase content about women in science on Wikipedia, one at Solidaritetshuset in Stockholm, Sweden, and another at Harvard University. Tonight, in San Francisco, we’ll celebrate with a party hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation, and the Ada Initiative, a non-profit named after the Countless of Lovelace that supports women in open technology and cultural fields

Friday, there are two more important international events. Wikimedia UK is coordinating an edit-a-thon focused on women in science, which will be hosted at The Royal Society of London. In India, Wikipedia editors are organizing an online event where participants will focus their editing on Indian women scientists. We’ll be sure to share successes and stories from these events in the upcoming weeks.

Is there a woman in the tech world that you find inspiring? How are you celebrating the legacy of Ada Lovelace this week? Let us know in the comments.

Sarah Stierch, Community Fellow