For the last two weeks Wikimedia UK has been running a competition in partnership with the Derby Museum. So far, over 150 new or improved Wikipedia articles have been created, in dozens of languages.
This is the biggest multilingual collaboration between Wikimedians and the cultural sector to date, and it’s particularly interesting because it’s a regional museum taking part!
25 Wikimedians and curators attended a Backstage Pass event on April 9th. (Written up in a great blog post by curator Nick Moyes)
The “Wright Challenge” competition (named after artist Joseph Wright of Derby ) was launched on May 1st, offering prizes for improvements to articles on subjects linked to the Derby Museum – in any language, not just English. At the time we were a bit concerned we’d left it too late to take advantage of the momentum from the event on the 9th. However, the response has been simply immense, with hundreds of pieces of Derby-related content being added, updated and translated in just two weeks.
The multilingual nature of the material we’re adding is particularly interesting because of the work we’re doing with QR codes which will link the actual objects in the Museum to their Wikipedia articles (watch on Youtube). Someone scanning the QR code next to “A Philosopher lecturing on the Orrery” with a smartphone will be taken to that article on the English Wikipedia, while a visitor with a Russian smartphone will go direct to the article “Философ, объясняющий модель Солнечной системы” on the Russian Wikipedia.
The Wright Challenge remains open until Joseph Wright’s birthday on September 3rd. Come and join in!