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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.

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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In September, Ghana participated in the Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 photo contest for the first time. Prior to the event, Planning Wikimedia Ghana (PWMGH) — which is working to organize a local Wikimedia chapter in the country — took to its  social networking platforms and created a meta-wiki page to call for Ghanaian participation.

In all, 16 Ghanaian photographers uploaded 114 photos during the event. Participation could have been higher, but the contest succeeded in drawing attention to many abandoned national monuments, which are not as popular as Elmina Castle and others. A monument which is rarely photographed and often ignored in Ghana – Ussher Fort– was put in the spotlight when it was photographed for the competition.

Ten finalists have been selected by a jury comprised of three Wikimedians: Rexford Nkansah (PWMGH), Limoke Oscar (Wikimedia Kenya), and Sophie Österberg (Wikimedia Sweden). The top uploaded picture was by Sathyan Velumani, a designer and ethnographic researcher in New Delhi, India, who had visited Ghana and had taken pictures of monuments while he was in the country.

PWMGH hopes for higher participation next year and it is also aiming to use the period to also bring awareness of monuments wasting away due to lack of maintenance across Ghana.

For further information about Wiki Loves Monuments 2012, visit http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org, and be sure to view the top 10 finalists from Ghana.

Sandister Tei, Planning Wikimedia Ghana

Students regularly use Wikipedia, and so do teachers. Whether we’re looking for information related to a class project, seeking an illustration for a paper, or reading background material so we can better understand an assigned text, free knowledge shared digitally is now a major component of education. Because Wikipedia is such a ubiquitous and influential source of information for my students, I feel quite annoyed when I find gaps in coverage and participation.

Missing information is what initially motivated me to become an editor. I wanted my students to be able to find information easily about public art, about the monuments and sculptures they walk past everyday on campus, in city parks and in their home towns. After writing a few short articles about sculptures I knew well, I realized that trying to fill the gaps myself would be a long, lonely process. Then I realized that my students could help.

Since 2008, I have used Wikipedia regularly in my courses. Working in collaboration with editors involved with WikiProject Public Art and WikiProject Lights Camera Wiki, my students and I have developed hundreds of Wikipedia articles about public artworks, and we’ve created and contributed more than 50 short videos through Wikimedia Commons to illustrate article content.

My deepening involvement with Wikipedia as a movement put me in touch with another gap: gender. Fortunately, my students also help with that. I’ve now introduced close to 100 students to editing Wikipedia, and all of them are women. (One of my students was even previously featured on this blog!)

My students are not typical Wikipedia editors–and not just because of their gender. Many are working women who have returned to school after starting families and careers. Many are graduates of under-funded public school districts that lag in access to digital technology. Many do not have their own computers and rely instead on smartphones and campus labs. While all are familiar with what Wikipedia is, none of them has prior experience editing it, and few have participated in online communities beyond Facebook.

Getting students started editing Wikipedia is easy, but keeping those students connected to the open knowledge movement as active contributors is more challenging. To participate consistently, students need motivation, opportunity and encouragement. For an initial editing experience, a class project provides the motivation of a focus and deadline, a computer lab offers the opportunity of access and the close-knit community of a classroom provides the structure and encouragement.

Alverno College, where I teach now, contributes a unique support in the form of its innovative ability-based curriculum. At Alverno, students work to develop eight core abilities, including the problem solving skills they need to navigate new technologies and the habits of effective citizenship they need to engage in the “good faith collaboration” that Wikipedia’s norms require. Beyond my classroom at Alverno, students receive support through initiatives like the Wikipedia Education Program, Campus Ambassadors, and the Wikipedia Teahouse.

A few of the women who learned to edit in my classes are barnstar rock stars and I like to think that many more are getting ready to shine. Today, I’m motivated to teach with Wikipedia because I want to learn how to better support women to share their expertise and build community around their intellectual interests. I’m grateful to the organizers of the WikiWomen’s Collaborative for bringing needed attention and resources to the vexing problem of gender inequity among editors. I’m optimistic that this effort will bring me in contact with models to inspire my students to continue editing and fill the gaps. Keeping women active as editors is one important way to create a more welcoming environment within the movement.

Jennifer Geigel Mikulay, Alverno College, Milwaukee

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.

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.

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

Wikimedia Commons is an important resource for photos and media used on Wikipedia and various sister projects. But it is also an amazing store of images that can be freely used in so many other applications, personal or professional, provided you adhere to the prescriptions in the free licenses used on the media.

We thought it would be a useful exercise to pick a theme and see how many interesting images we could find that fit the theme. We chose to center this photo essay on “greetings.” We were delighted to find with the initial search queries of “welcome” and “greeting,” that the subject yielded such a diverse range of images. We sought to expand the search by thinking more broadly about the myriad types of greetings around the world. After reading the article on Wikipedia, a greeting is an act of communication in which human beings (as well as members of the animal kingdom) intentionally make their presence known to each other.

After searching for “greeting” we tried “waving,” “hug,” “kiss,” “haka,” peace sign” and several other search terms. Photos on Commons are sorted into many different categories. So if you already found an image related to the theme you are interested in, it can be useful to click on the categories which appear at the bottom of the image page, below the metadata, to find other images on the same topic. As an example for our search, here is the category for hand waving. If you know a useful category that is missing in the image, you can help Commons by adding it yourself – click “edit” and follow these instructions.

The following gallery shows some of our favorite results, which we’ve selected for the array of greetings they illustrate.

Jordon Hu, Communications Intern
With assistance from Matthew Roth, Global Communications Manager, and Commons contributor InverseHypercube

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In May 2011, we announced a new way to share pictures, sounds, and video: the Upload Wizard. A year later, Upload Wizard has been used to upload more than 1 million freely licensed media files and has contributed to an acceleration of growth of the Wikimedia Commons community.

Countering the decline in retention of new contributors to Wikipedia, the number of contributors to Wikimedia Commons (individuals who make at least one upload) grew by about 25% from March 2011 to March 2012, compared with ~12% in the prior year. We attribute this growth primarily to two factors: the introduction of the Upload Wizard, and the successful “Wiki Loves Monuments” competition in September 2011, highlighted on the graph below.

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The Tamil Wikimedia community recently conducted the Tamil Wiki Media Contest (TWMC), generating 15,000 files from a total of 307 contributors. 

This hugely successful effort was organized by user Sodabottle along with Logicwiki, Natkeeran, Kalaiarasy, Sanjeevi Sivakumar and a dozen other community members. The story of TWMC began when Sodabottle attended the Wikimania 2011 conference, having been requested by a long-standing Tamil Wikipedian, Natkeeran, to scout for ideas and resources to support Tamil projects. Sodabottle suggested a media contest supported through a Wikimedia Foundation grant, as an article writing contest had already been done in the previous year. He recollects, with a wry smile, that he initially thought a photo/media contest would take less time and effort!

Sodabottle discussed the idea with Natkeeran and after brainstorming with two other community members, Logicwiki and Kalaiarasy, they initiated an RfC (request for comment) on the Tamil Wikipedia village pump.  There was unanimous backing from the community. In these two weeks, what started out as a simple proposal – “Shall we have a Media contest this year?” – was fleshed out with the suggestions of over a dozen contributors. Subsequent discussions focused on prize money, type of prizes, outreach strategy and a host of other operational details, after which the grant application was made.
Volunteers were going to be required and this presented both a unique challenge and a great opportunity for Tamil Wikimedians.  The Tamil Wiki community is spread across continents and timezones, and to reach out to everyone, coordinators with specific skill sets were chosen across diverse geographical locations. Although the number of coordinators was limited to 5 to keep the project manageable, more volunteers pitched in at every stage. Logicwiki provided extensive technical support throughout the event.

Indeed, Tamil Wikipedians from countries as far off as Malaysia and Australia spread the word in their respective countries!
TWMC has been an avenue for many MediaWiki software enthusiasts to chip in as well. T. Shrinivasan, an open source enthusiast and convener of the Chennai Linux Users Group, developed a brand new open source tool for easier uploading of images.

What was TWMC’s biggest feat then? Sure, it generated a lot of participation, new content and some new tools. But it was also important for community mobilization – the brilliant way in which a community took every step, small and big together, overcame hurdles through team solutions and managed to connect with people across the planet. Incredibly, this was done over 3 long months!
Further, two long time editors returned from their wikibreaks to help, and four new regular editors are now contributing to Tamil Wikipedia.  TWMC is also an excellent example of sustained outreach, since newbies were given an opportunity to contribute easily and from there explore other facets of Wikimedia projects. It was also a wonderful opportunity to get professional photographers to use Commons and upload their work to it. The community (Tamil and others) now uses almost 8000 of the contest images on different projects.  A Norwegian user has used images from this contest in Norsk Wikipedia.

On prizes, Sodabottle adds, “A contest and prizes are just the right attraction to stop people from leaving after a [quick] look over [a project], and goad them into doing something concrete.” He cites his own example: He started contributing to Tamil Wikipedia only because of an article writing contest. Although he didn’t win a prize there, it lured him in and he has been a regular editor since then. Sodabottle also has a few tips specifically about Commons: “Commons, like any of our projects”, says he, “is undermanned.” So, it is crucial to have your own maintenance workforce for any media contest. Massive effort is require to copyvio check, tag, template, move and categorize  in such volumes. He also suggests a MediaWiki extension to help similar initiatives.

(You can view the the other prize winners or read the detailed Tamil Wikimedians Grant report)

Noopur Raval, Consultant (Communications), India Program

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the national public broadcaster, turns 80 this year. To celebrate it has launched a new website called “80 Days That Changed Our Lives“, giving 80 pieces of audio visual content from the ABC archives a new lease on life. Today, the ABC has also announced that it has gone a step further by releasing some of these historical news reports to Wikimedia under a Creative Commons free license. This release of highly encyclopedic audiovisual history is not only a first for Australia, it is a first for Wikimedia.

While this is the first collection of broadcast “packaged” footage released to Wikimedia Commons under a free license, the leader in the field for several years has been Al Jazeera, which has been sharing some of its contemporary footage on its own Creative Commons portal. With the Open Beelden project, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision has also shared online many historical newsreels. Both of these collections have since been copied into Wikimedia Commons. The ABC is also following in the footsteps of Radio y Televisión Argentina, which has previously released some of its archival recordings and parliamentary speeches.

You can view the collection of files on Wikimedia Commons – all are available to be used, remixed and shared — at Category: Files from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Some of the important pieces of Australian history that now have freely licensed multimedia for the first time include:

• The “Tampa affair” (2001)
• The “Waterfront dispute” (1998)
• The release of Lindy Chaimberlain from prison (1986)
• The floating of the currency (1983)
• The introduction of World Series Cricket (1977)
• Intriguingly, an interview with Arthur C. Clarke predicting the Internet in 1974.
• and, the first ever broadcast from ABC Television (1956).

You can check where these files are already being used within Wikipedia articles on the toolserver project. You can also read the press release by the ABC about this project and the blog post by Creative Commons Australia (which is hosted by CCi).

As a non-profit operated collection of educational and freely-licensed media,  and as the repository that serves the 283 language editions of Wikipedia, we believe that Wikimedia Commons is a perfect place for broadcasters and other GLAMs to share their archival content. Hopefully this release from the Australian public broadcaster will be the beginning of an ongoing relationship with the Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia community,  and will encourage other broadcasters – especially those that are publicly funded – to join us.

Sincerely,
Liam Wyatt / Wittylama – Project officer, ARC Centre of Excellence in Creative Industries and Innovation (CCi)

Wikipedians around the world are looking for ways to convert readers into new editors and encourage new people to join our common effort to produce a freely accessible encyclopedia for everybody to use. Wikimedia Chapters and the Wikimedia Foundation continually search for ways to increase the base of active editors, which is now consistently around 80,000-90,000.

As part of our programs, Wikimedia Czech Republic has recently created a memory game showcasing free images from Wikimedia Commons as a simple and enjoyable way to reach out to families, educational institutions and photographers. After all, we asked ourselves, is there a better way to make people excited to join than seeing the happy faces of both children and their parents?

Many Wikipedians who have similar hobbies or fields of interest have organized around their area of focus, which gave birth to WikiProjects. The Czech Wikipedia’s WikiProject Protected Areas tries to coordinate editors who are interested in protected areas, nature habitats, traveling and photography.

For the creation of the WikiProject Protected Areas game, we chose colorful and wonderful images, which were taken by dozens of authors and are freely available on Wikimedia Commons. We sorted them and included information about our WikiProject. That gave us an opportunity to tell the story to recipients and made a small advertisement, which hopefully will attract their interest to Wikipedia, too. Our idea was that adults will read the story while cutting out the game pieces for their children. At a minimum, we can share knowledge in an entertaining way!

After uploading the WikiProject Protected Areas memory game [available as a pdf] on Commons, we printed 1000 editions of it with support from Wikimedia Czech Republic. We distributed the game for free to interested parties, including schools and other institutions. We also delivered copies to administration of Czech Krkonoše National Park (KRNAP), to the Czech Union for Nature Conservation, to several elementary and high schools and to the wide range of Wikimedia Czech Republic’s fans on Facebook.

In addition to printing the memory game, we have coordinated activities with Charles University, where students contributed articles for about 30 protected areas in the Czech Republic. Through our Facebook and Google+ pages, we’ve worked with photographers to photograph 40 protected area localities and upload their images to Commons. We are coordinating a photo walkabout with wiki-photographers to improve our photo skills and capture images of protected areas in the process. And finally, we have even made the national news, where we highlighted the coordination with Charles University and brought more attention to the project.

We are happy to say that, through this game, we have connected with groups of people who support the conservation of nature and who like to travel a lot. They represent potentially good editors for our WikiProject about protected areas because they have both a wide range of knowledge and photos from their trips. We deeply believe this small gift together with our other activities can bring new editors to Wikipedia projects. And, in the process we brought a lot of smiles to children’s faces and we strengthened the good name of Wikipedia in lots of families and public circles.

Thank you,

Petr Brož
Wikimedia Czech Republic

I am excited to announce that today the United States National Archives has released a new audio recording from the John F. Kennedy assassination to Wikimedia. You can find the files on Wikimedia Commons:

• Audio of Reel 1
• Audio of Reel 2

As a work of the American federal government, the recording is in the public domain. This two-hour tape recording of the communications of Air Force One personnel following the assassination is a new discovery which was recently donated to the National Archives. As part of NARA’s roll-out strategy for this high-profile item, the digitized recording was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons at the same time as it was revealed on archives.gov.  We hope that the upload of these files to Wikimedia Commons will help increase their exposure while encouraging Wikimedians to add value to them through transcribing them or using them as encyclopedic source material and subject matter.

In preparation for the release, NARA provided me an advance copy of the 1.4 GB raw WAV files from the digitization (you will only get MP3 from NARA’s site). I must also thank Wikimedia Poland, who kindly donated server space to store and convert the files to OGG before upload. According to the National Archives press release:

The Raab Collection recently discovered two ¼” open reel audio tapes containing identical excerpts from the Air Force One flight on Nov. 22, 1963… The tape also includes communication between the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) and a second aircraft of the Presidential fleet, known as 86972 (by its tail number), which was en route to Tokyo at the time of the assassination with members of the President’s cabinet.

 The recording includes references to new code names and incidents. Among them are a private conversation by head of the Secret Service Jerry Behn about the disposition of the President’s body; an expanded conversation about how to remove the body from the plane and where to take it; an urgent effort by an aide to Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay to reach General Clifton; and attempts to locate various Congressmen from Texas. (read more)

This development is part of the ongoing relationship between the US National Archives and the Wikimedia projects, which my service as Wikipedian in Residence represents. It is not NARA’s first upload to Wikimedia Commons—since I announced the first upload of over 200 high-resolution Ansel Adams photos last June, we have added tens of thousands of high-resolution historical documents to Wikimedia Commons. That press release is also not the first NARA web page to link prominently to Wikimedia projects. Some NARA educational pages reference Wikipedia articles written in response to an editing challenge, while documents that Wikisource has transcribed are linked from the online catalog.

We’re also running a multilingual featured article contest and are encouraging transcriptions on Wikisource. And when the National Archives’ new Citizen Archivist Dashboard was launched, garnering lots of buzz within the archival community, it included Wikipedia editing and Wikisource transcription missions for the public. In addition, NARA has hosted a series of on-site events for Wikipedians which included tours into the stacks, scanning parties, and even a trip on board the real Air Force One (albeit the one on display at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California). If you would like to get more involved, the NARA collaboration has WikiProjects on Wikipedia, Wikisource, and Commons.

Dominic McDevitt-Parks

Wikipedian in Residence, National Archives and Records Administration