I invited Dr Ross (who, along with Dr Ardati, also of the IDEA network, and Dr Bhatti, a co-author of the below blog, have all attended Wikimedia UK Train the Trainer courses) to tell us more about one of this year’s Summer programmes. 
/ (Dr Sara Thomas, Programme Manager, Wikimedia UK)

Authors: Kirsty Ross (School of Computer Science, University of St Andrews), Saeeda Bhatti (Medical School, University of Glasgow), Pauline Souleau (School of Modern Languages, University of St Andrews)

Corresponding author: ksrh1@st-andrews.ac.uk

During COVID there was a lack of summer internship opportunities for undergraduates due to pandemic lockdowns and restrictions on travel. The Summer Team Enterprise Programme (STEP) at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, was designed to fill this gap and has run every summer since 2020. STEP is an opportunity for undergraduate students to invest 6 weeks in participating in a fully-online skills development programme, where they work on a real-life project designed and supported by University staff, gain virtual team-work experience in a group of diverse students, contribute to the University’s learning and teaching through working on impactful outputs, and get this experience listed on their academic transcript.

My name is Dr Kirsty Ross and I’ve been involved in STEP since its inception. As a project sponsor, my role is to propose a suitable project and provide direction to the student teams. I’m also the co-founder of the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility in Open Knowledge Network (IDEA Network for short) at the University of St Andrews which aims to address knowledge gaps in the Wiki projects by training others and building capacity. STEP has been a fantastic mechanism for introducing undergraduates to the wonders of Wiki and providing evidence of real-world impact, even resulting in a peer reviewed public engagement paper!¹

Research has shown that Wikipedia is the most common source for obtaining medical information online. Amongst medical professionals, more than 90% of medical students and 50% of doctors have turned to Wikipedia at some point². However, there is substantial variation in the length and quality of medical content in different languages. For example, pneumonia is a topic that is currently available in 134 language versions. However, the English Wikipedia article for pneumonia contains approximately 7,600 words and has 172 references, whereas the equivalent article in Urdu is just 125 words long with 1 reference. We drew inspiration from the excellent work of WikiProjectMed, which inspired the name of the project!

Over WhatsApp, Dr Saeeda Bhatti (Medical School, University of Glasgow) and I discussed how we might plug some of these medical knowledge gaps. Dr Bhatti’s background is in medical education and genetics, so we discussed targeting articles about rare genetic diseases. Using the Medics 4 Rare Diseases website, we narrowed down over 7000 rare diseases to a shortlist of 12 conditions. This shortlist formed the basis for the Healthcare Translation Task Force STEP project. 

As part of the STEP application process, students choose which projects they would like to take part in over the summer. We ended up with two teams and 11 students in total. These students could speak, read, and write in 15 languages! We then explored Wikidata to find out whether or not those languages had articles about the chosen rare genetic diseases. Some languages (Arabic, French, German, Spanish) had almost complete article coverage (92-100%). Others (Simple English, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Russian) had approximately 50% article coverage. Cantonese, Croatian, Kiswahili, Kurdish, Serbian, and Somali had either no articles or just one or two (8-12%)! As the project was just 6 weeks in duration and was often balanced alongside paid work or internships, we weren’t going to be able to plug every single gap, so it was over to the students to decide how to proceed. 

Dr Pauline Souleau (School of Modern Languages, University of St Andrews) also provided training on how to adapt their translations to suit the cultural context; we wanted to avoid overly relying on the existing versions in English. When asked to reflect upon her experience of STEP, she said:

“The cross-disciplinarity of the STEP programme means that participating students are not necessarily trained linguists. Part of the Healthcare Translation Task Force STEP training was therefore to introduce students to the importance of localisation and cultural awareness when translating a wiki article.” 

“When an article did exist in English, the aim was never to translate it word for word but to a) make it clear in the target language and b) adapt it to the target culture if needed. During the training session, we therefore discussed questions of language variants, as well as specialised terms, article titles, and disease names. Students took it on board and showed nuanced translation skills throughout the project.“

The students worked together to describe and name the conditions in their languages in Wikidata. They then picked a couple of articles to research, draft, and upload. Many roped in friends, family, and medical professionals to provide feedback on their drafts. The students also hunted down references in their own languages. Wikipedia depends on reliable, secondary sources³, and readers of a specific language should be able to verify the statements in the article⁴, without having to know English as well.

The students’ enthusiasm and commitment exceeded our expectations! 11 students, speaking 15 different languages, spent the summer creating 12 brand new articles, editing an additional 38 articles, adding 61,000 words and 555 references. Table 1 links to the articles in various languages; we’d love to see the wider Wiki community get stuck in and expand them even further!

As of mid-August 2025, the newly created and edited articles have been viewed nearly 58,000 times (see Figure 1 below), a testament to the real-world impact of student contributions. We hope this project inspires further translation efforts and continues to grow through community contributions.

None of the above would have been possible without the dedication of the students and their PGR coaches. They were: Dasha Andreeva, Alistair Grant, Lila Darmon, Mingxiao Yang, Lucie Siu, Aro Aziz, Summer Kwon, Jacqueline Park, Anne Foote, Anna Mokhovik, Aleksandra Lucic, Zamzam Issack, Axel Van Den Ancker, Lareina Yang (STEP students) and Ziying Ye and Maya Fenyk (STEP PGR coaches).

References

1. Cornwell RM, Ross K, Gibeily C, et al. Unearthing new learning opportunities: adapting and innovating through the ‘Antibiotics under our feet’ citizen science project in Scotland during COVID-19. Access Microbiol. 2024;6(6). doi:10.1099/acmi.0.000710.v3

2. Heilman JM, West AG. Wikipedia and Medicine: Quantifying Readership, Editors, and the Significance of Natural Language. J Med Internet Res. 2015;17(3):e62. doi:10.2196/jmir.4069

3. Wikipedia:Reliable sources. In: Wikipedia. ; 2025. Accessed August 18, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reliable_sources&oldid=1305930263

4. Wikipedia:Verifiability. In: Wikipedia. ; 2025. Accessed August 18, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Verifiability&oldid=1305104342 

The post The 6-week Wikipedia translation sprint: A case study in fast medical knowledge equity appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

On Monday 20 October, Wikimedia UK joins forces with the British Library and the Wikimedia Foundation to explore the impact of AI on open knowledge and the wider information landscape. Fundamental to this landscape are contributions from humans, including professionals from media, research and cultural heritage, as well as the volunteers who contribute to the Wikimedia projects and other open platforms.

This day-long summit brings together experts and practitioners in the British Library’s Knowledge Centre to discuss the threats and opportunities at the intersection of AI, open knowledge and human rights. As we look to the future of information, how do we ensure that machine learning supports human learning, and build sustainability and information integrity into new models of content creation? 

At the heart of the event is the idea that the creation and curation of knowledge is fundamentally a human endeavour.

The post Knowledge is Human: The Information Ecosystem in the age of AI appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

I’m delighted to be joining Wikimedia UK as the new Education Lead. It’s an honour to work with a charity that champions free and open knowledge for all, equality in online representation, digital democracy, and critical thinking. I look forward to working with schools to develop a programme of information literacy that reflects these values.

My background is in Further Education, where I taught philosophy in Birmingham for more than 22 years. I recently completed a PhD exploring philosophy and mental health, building on my long-standing interest in how ideas shape the way we live and learn.

Alongside my teaching, I serve on the Executive Committee of the Children’s Media Foundation. I am especially interested in how media can be used to promote critical thinking in an age of increasing misinformation and fake news.

Having worked with young people for many years, I’ve seen first-hand how rapidly the ways they consume information are changing and how urgent it is to make information literacy an integral part of education.I would love to connect with others who share these interests. Please feel free to get in touch at sally.latham@wikimedia.org.uk .

The post Sally Latham joins Wikimedia UK as Education Lead appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

Wikipedia is the fifth most popular website, but it’s the only one of the top 70 that has a charitable purpose. All the rest have a profit motive. Wikipedia is an exception, driven by a vision that giving people open knowledge that they can access anywhere, immediately, for free, with no adverts is a good thing. The motive is to provide educational material, not to tell people what to think or what to do, but to give them something reliable and factual they can base decisions on.

It’s the biggest and most popular reference work ever created. Everybody uses it, and it’s so popular that even the people who don’t use it are using it. You might think, “I don’t go to Wikipedia. I type my question into Google, and a bit of text comes up answering my question.” Well, that text is normally harvested from Wikipedia or a similar source. Or you might think, “I’ve got a chat assistant. I talk to Siri or Alexa and ask it a question.” That’s often text read out from a Wikipedia article.

Maybe you don’t even use search engines anymore. There are the new chat bots, like ChatGPT. You can ask any question and it will give you an answer in any style. Those chat bots, those technologies were created by harvesting text from Wikipedia. They wouldn’t be able to talk about such diverse topics if that weren’t the case. So the quality of cultural information on Wikipedia is something that concerns all of us.

Wikipedia sets itself this very high standard of giving everyone in the world access to all knowledge and the ability to share knowledge and culture in their own language. But we know it’s way, way short of that ambitious standard. We know that English Wikipedia is much bigger than the others. We know that there’s a gender gap as well as geographical imbalances. A lot of these biases come from wider society: where is scholarship done? What’s considered worthy of celebration? Whose achievements are recorded?

The research Waqas Ahmed (Executive Director of the Khalili Foundation) and I have done is about cultural bias. We looked at coverage of the visual arts. The type of bias we’re looking at is not the kind that affects a single article. Particular articles might have problems, but that’s relatively easy to fix. There’s a more pernicious bias, which is systemic bias across the whole coverage of a subject. If there are thousands of articles and they’re all basically correct, but they’re all from within a particular cultural perspective, then Wikipedia is saying that by default art is associated with that culture.

We found that when you look up sculptors on Wikipedia, it’s overwhelmingly European sculptors and yet sculpture is found in all human cultures. Another example is a gallery of religious art that features the most high-quality images available to Wikimedia. There are about seven from Hinduism, about five from Judaism, six from Buddhism, one from Islam (when we first looked at it), and 70 plus from Christianity. It was not saying anything explicit, yet conveying that religious art is a Christian thing. Then you think of the rich history of Islam, which we’ll come back to; or Hinduism, with so many different traditions, so many kinds of colourful art; or Vajrayana Buddhism, where creating beautiful art is part of the exercise of the religion. It’s not that having a lot of information about Christianity is bad: it’s great that that’s freely available to people! But it needs to be balanced to give a truly global perspective.

The good news is that we can do something about it, you can all do something about it, and we are making progress, week by week and month by month. Because our patron is the great cultural philanthropist Sir David Khalili. His eight art collections, assembled over five decades, are all from outside the Western mainstream and each is considered the biggest or most complete of its kind. And so, working on Wikipedia, we’ve been able to share one and a half thousand images. A thousand of those relate to Islamic civilisation and Islamic history, broadly considered. These are now used in ninety languages and are hugely appreciated. They are used to illustrate hundreds of Wikipedia articles; that’s how we are reaching millions of image views every month.

I’ve been creating articles about aspects of Islamic history and culture. The sitaras: I’d never heard of these, these are the huge textile artworks that cover the door of the Kaaba or other sacred sites of Islam. We’ve been able to share pictures of them, explain how they’re made and their purpose. I write in English and I’m monolingual, but I’m seeing these articles translated into Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Indonesian, Malay, and — as of last week — Uzbek. It’s not me doing that; that’s the volunteer community appreciating the value of what has been given and seeing an opportunity to document an aspect of their own culture.

This is all descriptive. There’s no agenda of converting or de-converting anyone. It leaves the subjective response up to the reader, and I know people in the Arabic community whose reaction is a feeling of pride in their culture. Then there are people like me; I’m encountering a culture completely different from what I grew up with. I was not familiar with a sitara, the Musa va ‘Uj, or the Anis al-Hujjaj. For each of those, there is now a Wikipedia article that tells you what it is and why it’s important to that culture.

We’re also doing editathons. These are training events; we do them mainly with students in universities but they are public events. We’ve trained people to edit Wikipedia, to put in aspects of their culture or the culture they are learning about. That’s a lesson to everyone; you see something missing online, you don’t have to accept that. You can contribute!

You don’t have to be one of the world’s great art collectors to be a cultural philanthropist. We can all be cultural philanthropists, as individuals or institutions. If you’ve got a phone with a camera, you can take photographs. Obviously, you’re going to respect people’s privacy, respect sacred spaces; you’re going to make sure it’s okay to share your photo. But when you see that costume, that ceremony, or that music performance, take the photo, go to Wikipedia and click “Upload file”. Write one line telling us what you photographed and make it available for people to use. Show something that we have never seen, because we didn’t grow up in your part of the world, in your culture.

You can do this as an individual. Some people here are the bosses of organisations; you can do what Sir David has done and direct your organisation to work consensually with Wikipedia. No one’s entitled to your culture, but you can share it to reach millions of people. There’s no better way to reach a public audience.

A motto of the Wikimedia movement is “be bold”. We can actually diversify the online representation of faith and culture if we are bold, as people and as organisations. Thanks very much.

The post Let’s culturally diversify the Internet appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

Across the UK people are working to change things for the better. Campaigners, activists, and changemakers of all types are stepping up to address injustices, improve conditions in their communities, and draw attention to neglected issues. From the Post Office Horizon scandal, housing issues such as mouldy homes, and fighting the closure of local libraries, changemakers are grafting away on many vital issues, and are often at the forefront of holding those in power to account. 

Change is possible, but it is not easy work. It requires extraordinary courage, resilience and persistence. Changemaking is made tougher still because of the lack of good quality, freely available knowledge on how to go about it. From our many years of working with changemakers we know that it can be a struggle to know where to start. Today, we launch a toolkit to address these challenges and support those at the forefront of making change happen.

Through this unique collaboration, SMK and Wikimedia UK are committed to making knowledge open and freely available so it can help people campaign effectively. That’s why we’ve launched the Changemaker’s Toolkit, a free online training resource for campaigners, activists, and changemakers.  

The three introductory modules; Introduction to changemaking, Analysing the problem and planning for Change, and Communicating for Change, will enable you to develop your understanding of campaigning and changemaking, providing the  tools to allow you to reflect and plan. Our aim is to support you to campaign more confidently straight away, and to provide a framework to build your knowledge in the future. 

The Toolkit is based on SMK’s Campaign Carousel which draws on nearly two decades of experience training hundreds of campaigners and activists. 

‘SMK’s Campaign Carousel is a cutting-edge training programme shaped by expert campaigners. We provide practical tools and approaches that allow new campaigners to hit the ground running. Our training supports these new campaigners to make powerful, impactful change by giving them the guidance they need across all of the different aspects of campaigning. From social media, to understanding social change, to working with the legal system, and much more- our Campaign Carousel supports campaigners to become powerful forces for change.’ – Kathleen Christie, Head of Programmes, SMK

At Wikimedia UK we pride ourselves on being experts on knowledge equity, committed to the ideal of a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. With thousands of contributors to open knowledge through Wikipedia and its sister projects, we have a network of supporters who will benefit from a better understanding on how to campaign on the wide variety of issues that are important to them.

‘Within the Wikimedia movement sits a great potential for making change in the world, across a huge range of societal issues: misinformation, shrinking civic space, decolonisation and knowledge equity. Members of the Wikimedia movement are, or have the capacity and aptitude to become changemakers  if supported with the right tools and knowledge. This project brings together two communities – Wikimedians and changemakers – so they can benefit from each other’s expertise. Wikimedians get access to social change knowledge to increase their effectiveness, SMK is able to support changemakers with the tools, knowledge, and confidence to work effectively and create change.’ Daria Cybulska, Director of Programmes and Evaluation

The overlapping interests between our organisations are clear, and we’re grateful for Wikimedia Foundation’s grant to help make  a long-standing ambition a reality. It’s a modest start, but an important one and a foundation we intend to build on.

‘Working with Wikimedia UK on these new resources has been a fantastic experience and fascinating to combine our different perspectives on social change and develop this Toolkit. It’s never been more important to find new ways to support those who are working to create change in our communities, and we are thrilled to share our tools and approaches with a wider audience. It’s the first step towards a long-held ambition for SMK.’ Shaan Sangha, Knowledge and Insight Manager, SMK

The ambition is to add to the Toolkit over time, providing changemakers with a comprehensive library of free campaigning resources. We’d love your feedback on how the Toolkit works for you and what else you would like to see added. You can email us at volunteering@wikimedia.org.uk

Further information

The Changemakers Toolkit includes:

Introduction to Changemaking – Provides an introduction to how change happens and the many routes through which campaigning and activism can have an impact. Covers foundational tools including the Social Change Grid, 12 habits, and introduces the topic of social power.

Analysing the Problem and Planning for change – Digs further into how to understand the problem you want to address and your solution, using the Problem Tree tool. Introduces approaches to planning campaigns, and identifying your allies and people you need to influence.

Communication for Change – How to achieve an impact with your communications by understanding who you’re speaking to, what you need to say to connect with them, and how you can reach them.

There is a version tailored for Wikimedians available on metawiki. Modules are Introduction to changemaking, Analysing the Problem and Planning for Change, and Communicating for Change. 

Rob Abercrombie, Deputy Chief Executive, SMK

Daria Cybulska, Director of Programmes and Evaluation, Wikimedia UK

The post Announcing the Changemakers’ Toolkit: your go-to, free training resource for campaigners, activists, and changemakers of all kinds appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

Over the last eight years, Wikimedia UK has been actively tackling inequality and bias across the Wikimedia projects. One of our primary strategic goals is to enhance the involvement and portrayal of marginalised individuals and topics on Wikipedia. Women’s representation has been a vital aspect of this.

Many editors have risen to the challenge of closing the wiki gender gap, so we’re by no means alone in our efforts. Projects like Women in Red and Art+Feminism are well known across the global wiki-movement, and have inspired thousands to start editing for women.

If you’d like to join an event during Women’s History month, here’s a some to get you going:

For anyone who’d like a trip to Glasgow, there’s a trilingual editathon on contemporary women writers from Germany, France, and Scotland. Join us at the Goethe-Institut Glasgow on Wednesday 6th March, from 4-8pm. No previous editing experience is needed, as our Scotland Programme Manager, Dr Sara Thomas will be on hand for the technical introduction to Wikipedia. Guests are invited to work on authors of their choice in either English, French and/or German. Please bring your own laptops and dinner snacks to make the most of the friendly atmosphere. Book your ticket on eventbrite.

The Women in Red editathons at the University of Edinburgh are long running and much loved by those who have attended. The next session – which is open to everyone, not just students – will be on Friday 8th March, from 1-4:30pm in the Digital Scholorship Centre. It’s both in person and online if you can’t make it to the library. No prior editing experience is required, with Ewan McAndrew and Ellie Whitehead on hand to get you started. It’s a great opportunity to celebrate the lives of inspiring women on International Women’s Day. Please bring your own laptop. Book your ticket on eventbrite.

As part of UCL’s pledge to confront its history of eugenics and ongoing legacies, they’re running two events on The Women Scientists of UCL’s Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics. You are invited to join students from UCL’s Public History MA programme and UCL Special Collections, in conjunction with the Eugenics Legacy Education Project (ELEP), for an interactive workshop about the women scientists who worked on eugenics research in the early twentieth century at in the Galton Laboratory. The events will examine how can we critically understand the historical work of women that developed and advanced oppressive ideologies against the backdrop of today’s women in STEM movement. Participants will be using Wikipedia to increase visibility of the archival evidence of eugenics at UCL and women in science. There’s two dates available, which you can book on eventbrite:

Tuesday 12th March, 12:30-1:30pm, UCL East in Marshgate

Tuesday 19th March, 1:30-2:30pm, Bloomsbury on Gower Street

We celebrate Women’s History Month in March, yet the work to close the gender gap is a year round activity. Take a look at just some of the examples of the fantastic efforts we’ve seen across the UK:

Protests and Suffragettes

Protests and Suffragettes is a creative initiative and social enterprise. They’re made up of artists, activists, and local historians dedicated to uncovering and honouring the stories of female activists throughout Scotland’s history. They have hosted a number of editathons committed to enriching the information of Scottish women’s activism on the Wikimedia projects. Protests and Suffragettes spoke at our Community Meeting in November (watch here) at which some of the other guest speakers commended their workshops as part of their own editing journeys.

Nurses in Red

At the same meeting we awarded the Royal College of Nursing’s History of Nursing Forum as our Partnership of the Year for their Nurses in Red project. The forum is open to anyone who has an interest in history, and in 2022 they set up lunchtime Wikithons to add notable women nurses to the Wikimedia projects. Women make up 90% of the nursing profession, but their important achievements are severely underrepresented in historic accounts both on Wikimedia and beyond. You can find out more about the project and its brilliant achievements in this video.

The Hunger Strike Medal

Becky Male has been a volunteer at Glasgow Women’s Library since 2019. Becky digitises the archive at the library, photographing their collection of objects. She started editing Wikipedia on the Hunger Strike Medal’s article, overhauling much of the page and adding over 100 references so the historic significance of the medal was reflected by its article. You can see Becky talking about her wiki-journey and the medal in this video.

Do let us know if you too are celebrating Women’s History Month with related wiki activities by getting in touch at info@wikimedia.org.uk, or tagging us on social media.

You can support this work with a donation. We’re so grateful to our supporters, who enable us to continue diversifying the Wikimedia projects so they better represent us all.

The post Women’s History Month 2024 – exciting events and projects appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

Dr Lucy Hinnie, who has been the Wikimedian in Residence at RAMM, will take on the role of Digital Research Fellow, expanding her support to organisations in the South West to develop local open access activities, networks and programming. Together with the GLAM-E Lab, Wikimedia UK will support smaller organisations to publish their out-of-copyright collections to Wikimedia Commons. Data aggregators using Wikimedia’s open API will identify and ingest these newly openly-licensed collections.

In 2023, Lucy worked with the GLAM-E Lab and RAMM in the development of digital volunteer training and in-person Wiki events. You can read more about this residency and the GLAM-E Lab in this post, and see some of the images that were made available through the residency on Wikimedia Commons. This follow-on work at GLAM-E has two clear objectives. First, working with smaller organisations to get their CC0 publications on Wikimedia Commons which will improve their online visibility and contribute to the growing public domain materials made available for reuse. And second, the project will produce toolkits and guidance on: copyright clearance, rights and metadata management, and Wikimedia uploads, so as to empower other small organisations in their own open access practice. Wikimedia provides a great platform for this kind of knowledge activism, and working together with GLAM-E will allow impactful and distinctive change in the GLAM sector, particularly by improving the representation of smaller organisations in open GLAM. 

Prior to her work on the Connected Heritage project, Lucy worked as Wikimedian in Residence at the British Library (2021–23) and Leverhulme Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Saskatchewan (2019–21). She is also a current fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. Lucy is delighted to be part of the GLAM-E Lab team, and to support the work of Dr Andrea Wallace and Dr Francesca Farmer. Lucy holds a PhD in Medieval Literature alongside a developed expertise in digital editing, open scholarship and decolonisation praxis. 

Dr Wallace said of the partnership “We are so excited for this next phase of our partnership which will improve access to the rich cultural heritage and knowledge held by smaller organisations in the Devon South West area.” 

If you’d like to get in touch with Lucy, you can reach her at lucy.hinnie@wikimedia.org.uk. You can also check out the GLAM-E tools via the GLAM-E website.

The post GLAM-E Lab x Wikimedia UK: follow-on partnership appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

In 2022, Martin and Waqās Ahmed researched the extent to which the western art canon was represented on the wiki projects in comparison to the art of other cultures. Unsurprisingly, western art has much higher representation. But with the help of the Khalili Foundation’s images and expertise, as well as native language speakers from the wider Wikimedia community, this residency is filling the gap.

The residency has previously shared over 1500 from all eight Khalili Collections. These are used in 90 different Wikimedia platforms (up from 81 last year). Articles referencing these items and information from the Collection saw a rush of translations from English into other languages, enriching other language Wikipedias with this wealth of cultural heritage. This made it a record year for image views at 78.5 million views of Khalili images across all Wikimedia platforms.

In 2023 the emphasis of the residency shifted from sharing images and creating articles, to running events. Two editathons were hosted by Wellcome Collection and Khalili Research Centre, University of Oxford. The Wikimedians of Islamic Civilization User Group hosted two online sessions about using Khalili Collections’ Islamic art in Arabic Wikipedia. Waqās made a presentation to Art UK using this project as a case study of successful sharing of cultural heritage on Wikimedia.

Milestones

• Fifteen new articles in English, Indonesian, Urdu, Malay and Spanish, bringing the total of new Wikipedia articles created to fifty.
• The Musa va ‘Uj article passed Good Article* review, becoming the eighth Good Article from this project.
• The project received an honourable mention in Wikimedia UK’s Partnership of the Year awards, both to the Khalili Collections for sharing images and Dr Glaire Anderson of the University of Edinburgh for using them in her teaching.
• Two images won Featured Picture* awards: one on English Wikipedia and another on Arabic Wikipedia.

• Two Featured Article* awards: Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam in English Wikipedia and Urdu Wikipedia, getting 52,771 page views over the course of the year
• Three articles featured in Wikipedia’s Did You Know? section: Musa va ‘Uj, Falnama, and Gulshan-i ‘Ishq.
• Substantial rewrites of the articles Cultural diversity, World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development, Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, and Falnama. Wikipedia’s articles about cultural diversity were a bit overloaded with legal detail and are now more accessible. These articles are collectively getting more than 10,000 views per month.
• 58,849 page views of English Wikipedia articles relating to the Khalili Collections.

Looking ahead

As the residency continues, Martin hopes to share more articles about art works and about topics that link multiple works (such as exhibitions). The residency also aims to promote cultural diversity more generally, by encouraging the community to improve Wikipedia articles about artists and masterpieces from all the world’s cultures.

For more information on our cultural partnerships, you can visit this page. We also have a Get Involved page which lists some of the ways you can explore exciting partnerships such as this one.

The post Khalili Foundation: Year in Review appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

In August 2023, Queer Britain collaborated with Wikimedia UK to host a Wikimedian in Residence project. From August to November, Evie Moore worked on improving content on Wikipedia and related websites, with a focus on topics relevant to Queer Britain. In this post, Evie reflects on the residency.

Project highlights

Over the past three months, I’ve had the opportunity of contributing to Wikimedia projects as part of my residency at Queer Britain. Despite encountering challenges throughout the residency, specifically limitations due to healing from a broken ankle and undergoing surgery within the residency period, the unwavering support and kindness from the wiki team transformed these obstacles into opportunities. Thanks to this collaborative effort, I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The residency has been both enriching and productive, allowing me to engage with various aspects of the Wikimedia community and make valuable contributions to LGBTQ+ representation on the platform.

Wikipedia article contributions

One of my primary tasks during the residency was enhancing the ‘LGBT rights in the UK’ Wikipedia article, expanding sections on Advocacy Organisations, LGBT representation in politics, Pride Parades, and Rights for Asylum. The comprehensive 1500+ words added aim to provide a well-rounded view of the current landscape of LGBTQ+ rights in the UK. The page is read on average 12,000 times a month so it’s an important source of information.

I also spent time improving the Wikipedia pages of LGBTQ+ figures such as Roberta Cowell. This involved fact-checking, correcting inaccuracies, and ensuring proper referencing. The goal was to provide accurate and comprehensive information about her life and contributions to the LGBTQ+ community.

Wikimedia Commons contributions

I contributed photographic content of the Queer Britain building to Wikimedia Commons. This not only serves as a visual representation but also adds a layer of accessibility for users seeking information about Queer Britain.

Increasing visibility

To enhance the visibility of Queer Britain, I strategically placed links to their page in the ‘see other’ section of related national Queer Museums and Archives. This cross-referencing helps users discover Queer Britain in the broader context of LGBTQ+ history and culture while constructing relationships between Queer museums and archives internationally. 

Collaboration

I engaged with Owen Blacker in discussions about the LGBTQ+ community on Wikipedia and explored the use of LGBTQ+ acronyms across the platform. These conversations were instrumental in gaining insights into the challenges and opportunities within the LGBTQ+ Wiki community.

I collaborated with Alice White on an upcoming edit-a-thon event at the Wellcome Collection, focusing on sourcing articles related to sexual health and education. This initiative aligns with Queer Britain’s commitment to diverse and inclusive representation within the LGBTQ+ spectrum.

I actively participated in the larger residency team, fostering collaboration and learning about diverse Wikimedia projects. Understanding the scope and shape of longer residencies proved beneficial in shaping the direction of my residency.

Research and data collection

Following on from my and Owens’s discussion, I conducted thorough research and collected data regarding the use of different acronyms such as LGBT, LGBT+, and LGBTQ+ This information can serve as a foundation for future initiatives focused on inclusivity and accurate representation, and can be utilised in future debates regarding which Acronym to use across Wikipedia.

Project pages and planning

I created a project page for Queer Britain, providing detailed information about the residency and Queer Britain itself. Additionally, internal planning for a future Wiki event at Queer Britain, titled ‘Queering Wikipedia,’ is underway. This edit-a-thon will emphasise the importance of accessible and open-source information in queer archiving.

Upon my return to the museum, I am looking forward to offering volunteers Wikipedia training, continuing to improve and expand on LGBTQ+ open source articles, collecting more photographic content to upload on Wikipedia Commons, and continuing to push for Wiki to use more inclusive and relevant acronyms for the LGBTQ+ community.

Summary stats

We used the Outreach Dashboard to summarise the impact of the residency on Wikipedia.

In conclusion, my Wikimedia residency at Queer Britain has been a fulfilling experience marked by collaboration, content creation, and community engagement. The impact of these contributions extends beyond the digital realm, promoting a more inclusive representation of LGBTQ+ history and culture on a global scale. I look forward to the continued growth of these initiatives and the positive impact they will have on Wikipedia’s LGBTQ+ content.

The post Queer Britain’s Wikimedian in Residence appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

On Sunday 26th November we were delighted to host our 2023 Community Meeting. It was a chance for our community to gather online, share the work that’s taken place over the last year, recognise that work through the UK Wikimedian of the Year awards, and find out more ways to get involved. 

We were welcomed by our Chief Executive Lucy Crompton-Reid, and then we launched into a series of Lightning Talks.

Lightning Talks

Dr Sarah Rogers, from the Royal College of Nursing’s History of Nursing Forum, told us about the Nurses in Red project.

Alexander – Patient Zero – told us about his journey with Wikipedia, from a young editor to one of the most active 10,000 editors on English Wikipedia.

Richard Davies told us about the work he’s been doing in the Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons coverage of the Welsh town of Wrecsam (Wrexham).

Becky Male told us about her work on the Hunger Strike Medal article, and how this led to a surprising discovery about the collection of Suffragette Pennies at the Glasgow Women’s Library.

Jonathan – WereSpielChequers – told us about the process of becoming an admin on English Wikipedia, and how the project needs more admins.

And Gill Ryan told us about the project that she ran in partnership with Perth Library this year on the Women of Perth.

In memoriam

In the last few years, we’ve sadly lost a few members of the UK Wikimedia community, and so we took some time to recognise the contributions that Lisa Lodwick, Jo Pugh, Richard Haslam, Les Barker and Richard Lawson made to the movement. They will be very much missed. 

UK Wikimedian of the Year Awards

Next we announced the winners of the UK Wikimedian of the Year Awards. For the full details of who won the awards, the fantastic work they’re doing, and who received an honourable mention, you can see this blog.

UK Wikimedian of the Year: Nick Sheppard

Partnership of the Year: Royal College of Nursing’s History of Nursing Forum – Nurses in Red

Up and Coming Wikimedian: Heidi Berg 

Opportunity Fair

And finally we closed with something new for us; the Opportunity Fair. Here we had a selection of projects with which we’d invite our community to get involved, as well as a range of ways that Wikimedia UK can support the community.

Protests & Suffragettes are looking for translators of articles they’ve been creating and improving about Scottish Suffrage/ttes, as well as help improving those articles – more information on their project page, or contact sara.thomas@wikimedia.org.uk.

Nadege Forde-Vidal, Historian & Community Project Developer at Sankofa London Schools is also looking for assistance, in the shape of after-school workshop leaders: www.sankofalondonschools.co.uk / nadege@sankofalondonschools.co.uk 

The National Library of Scotland uploaded a large number of Scottish Chapbooks to Wikimedia Commons / Wikisource during lockdown, with staff proofreading that work. There are still a number of these to be proofread and transcribed, and they can be found here. If you’d like to know more about how to become involved, or are interested in learning more about Wikisource, please contact sara.thomas@wikimedia.org.uk.

Dr Richard Nevell, Programme Manager, talked about Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Earth – we’re in need of assistance with Wikidata for Wiki Loves Earth, and a campaign organiser or organisers for Wiki Loves Monuments – if you’d like to know more please contact richard.nevell@wikimedia.org.uk.

Dr Lucy Hinnie told us about Let’s Connect, a peer learning group for any Wikimedian who is part of an organised group – there are regular events and a whole host of resources, and they can be found through their meta page. Lucy’s slides are here.

Karla Marte, our Programme Evaluation Coordinator, explained our Project and Volunteer Grants, and how they can support individual volunteers – there’s more information about this on our website where you can see examples of past grants, and there’s also an online application form.

Last but not least, our board member Rod Ward told us a little about the Community Development Committee, a new Board subcommittee, whose purpose is to advise the board on community and volunteer issues generally, and to consider any community-related matters that may be delegated to the Committee by the board.

Join us

If you’d like to hear about future UK community events and how you can get involved please sign up for our newsletter, or join our membership to help govern the charity.

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