In grateful honour of Mr Christopher Price Hinton

Wikimedia UK is grateful for the support and contributions of individuals who believe in our mission to enable people in the UK to engage with open knowledge and access reliable information in order to develop their understanding of the world, and make informed decisions about issues that affect them.

Celebrating a legacy of generosity and impact

We are proud to celebrate and honour the legacy of Mr Christopher Price Hinton who left Wikimedia UK a substantial gift in his will. His generous donation will ensure that our important work continues and that we are able to expand our impact.

On behalf of Wikimedia UK, we are thankful for Mr Hinton’s incredible act of kindness and for believing in our work. We also extend our deepest gratitude to his estate for ensuring that his gift reached us. His legacy will live on in the hearts of those who benefit from our programmes and in the continuous efforts of our staff and volunteers who work very hard everyday to advance our mission.

Inspired by Mr Hinton’s generosity? You too can help make a difference! Here’s more information on how you can support Wikimedia UK through a gift in your will.

Croeso i Gemma Coleman, Cydgysylltydd Rhaglen Cymru (ac Ieithoedd)

(See below for English)

Gan Gemma Coleman (hi/nhw) Cydgysylltydd Rhaglen Cymru (ac Ieithoedd)

Rwy’n hwylusydd a hyfforddwr gyda ffocws seiliedig yn y gymuned ar greu newidiadau cymdeithasol. Fy mhrofiad yn gynnwys gwaith i roi diwedd i drais yn erbyn menywod ac ymatebai i’r argyfwng hinsawdd. 

Rwy wedi gweithio mewn amrywiaeth o elusennau a sefydliadau sector cyhoeddus Cymreig dros y 13 blwyddyn ddiwethaf. Rwy wedi gweithio gyda nifer o grwpiau gwahanol yn gynnwys pobl hyn, menywod digartref a gweithredwyr cymunedol. Roedd fy rôl ddiweddaraf oedd rheoli gwirfoddolwyr i ddarparu amrywiaeth o weithgareddau llesiant yn y gymuned i osgoi unigrwydd a salwch yn ardaloedd difreintiedig.

Rwy’n gyffrous iawn i daclo’r rôl Cydgysylltydd Rhaglen Cymru i sicrhau gall pawb ffeindio a rhannu gwybodaeth drwy Gymraeg, Saesneg neu’r unrhyw un o’r ieithoedd eraill sy’n cael ei defnyddio yng Nghymru a’r DU.

Os chi’n cytuno mae hwn yn bwysig, mae croeso mawr i chi i gysylltwch fi i drafod sut allwn weithio gyda’i gilydd: cymru@wikimedia.org.uk.

(gweler uchod ar gyfer y Gymraeg)

By Gemma Coleman (she/they) Wales (and languages) Programme Coordinator

I’m a facilitator and trainer with a focus on community based approaches to creating the changes we want to see. My experience includes work around ending violence against women and girls and responding to the climate crisis. 

I’ve worked in a range of Welsh statutory and charity settings for the last 13 years working with a variety of groups including older people, women experiencing homelessness and community activists. My most recent role was coordinating volunteers to provide a range of community based wellbeing activities to tackle social isolation and poor health outcomes in some of the most deprived areas of Cardiff.

I’m excited to take on the role of Wales (and languages) Programme Coordinator to help ensure people can access and share their knowledge in Welsh, English or any of the multitude of languages spoken in Wales and the UK today. 

If you think that’s important too, let’s connect! Contact me at wales@wikimedia.org.uk.

Digital Heritage in Action: The Heritage Lab, Wikimedia UK, and the future of GLAM Collaboration

By Dr. Lucy Hinnie

The Heritage Lab and Wikimedia UK are pleased to announce a new collaboration in 2025, involving research fellows from across the UK GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) sector. The Heritage Lab is a digital platform focused on ‘sharing stories and resources from museums around the world, with a focus on South Asian art, history and culture’.

Funded by Wikimedia UK, The Heritage Lab and Wikimedia UK will bring together UK GLAMs with India-based collections together with emerging South Asian scholars.

We invite researchers and curators from the UK and India to apply for short fellowships to develop multimedia stories with fresh perspectives on collections, with a focus on under-represented histories. Expected outputs include short essays, digital storytelling workshops and facilitating Wikimedia contributions. Please note that any GLAMs involved should be based in the UK, while 50% of the fellows cohort will also be UK-based.

What are we looking for?

  • Early stage researchers or curators based at GLAM institutions with an interest in digital storytelling, underrepresented histories and South Asian culture.
  • A time commitment of around 2-4 hours a week for six months
  • A willingness to undertake a maximum of three short essay output
  • No prior Wiki experience is required or expected

What are we offering?

  • A series of digital storytelling workshops and Wiki editing events over the course of the fellowship
  • Full support and training from digital experts such as Wikimedia UK
  • A payment of £300 per essay, up to three essays (minimum 1200 word after edits*) per scholar
  • Fortnightly research support sessions
  • Connection to a wide network of like-minded GLAM professionals throughout the UK

Selection

Applications will be reviewed by The Heritage Lab and Wikimedia UK.

Timeframe

The project is expected to run from late March to the end of August 2025

Get involved

Please complete this form to express your interest in becoming a fellow.

Requirements:

  • Interested in Wikimedia UK’s mission, The Heritage Lab & its projects 
  • Passionate about India’s voice in the world & believe in a transparent work ethic
  • Have demonstrated experience in research and creative skills such as writing / illustration / audio-video production or other multimedia skills. 
  • Comfortable working digitally (attending online meet-ups, shared documents etc).
  • Proactive and comfortable working individually or within a group.

Nice to have: 

  • Multilingual skills : English, Hindi and other Indian languages
  • Experience in creating arts/ culture / history based learning material 
  • Experience with community organising or facilitating collaborations
  • Experience in hosting workshops or learning sessions for larger groups

Team

The project team is led by Medhavi Gandhi, founder of the Heritage Lab, and supported by Dr Lucy Hinnie, from Wikimedia UK. Medhavi is the founder of The Heritage Lab, working at the intersection of public engagement with cultural heritage, social development and education since 2009. She has worked with a wide range of Indian organisations as well as global partners. Lucy has experience as the Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Leeds and the British Library, a Digital Research Fellow at the GLAM-E Lab, and a Digital Skills Wikimedian for the highly successful Connected Heritage Project (2021-23).

Get in touch

If you have any questions regarding availability or requirements for this fellowship, please email programmes@wikimedia.org.uk.

Medhavi can be contacted at medhavi@theheritagelab.in while Lucy is reachable via: lucy.hinnie@wikimedia.org.uk

Mini Wiki: Quick and easy ways to get involved with the Wiki world

By Rupal Karia, Outreach and Community Coordinator for Wikimedia UK

Wikimedia UK is launching a new campaign in February, Mini Wiki, to help you get involved in the Wiki world. It’s for when you don’t have much time on your hands, but still want to keep contributing to open knowledge. 

Every month, on this blog, we will be showcasing different mini wiki tasks you can get involved with, so you can dip in whenever you have a little bit of time on your hands. Use the hashtag #wmuk in your edit summary so we can see your contributions!

August Mini Wiki

As it’s the holiday season, for August’s Mini Wiki we are showcasing The Distributed Game, devised and developed by a UK community member, Mike Peel. The game matches new Wikipedia articles against Wikidata items. Once linked, anything related to that topic which is updated in Wikidata, will cascade across all language versions of Wikipedia, helping to make data consistency better across Wikipedias, and it also makes updating all Wikipedias as easy as one edit in Wikidata. 

You can access the game here with your Wikimedia account. 

Below is a step-by-step guide on how to play the game!

  1. Log in! Click the login button, you’ll be taken to a Wikimedia website where you should log in with your Wikimedia account, and then grant the Distributed game OAuth permissions to post edits using your account.
  2. Select your preferred language under ‘Entry type’, or leave it on ‘Any’ to have random languages shown. 
  3. Compare the Wikidata item (top) against the new Wikipedia article (bottom), to see if they match. 
  4. If you are not sure, click on the links to look at the Wikidata item and Wikipedia article in more detail. You can also click on the language button below the Wikidata QID to see previews of other Wikipedia articles already linked to the Wikidata item.
  5. If you’re still not sure of the match, click ‘Skip’, and you’ll move on to the next possible match.
  6. If it is definitely not a match, click ‘No’, and the game will no longer show it (and if this was the last possible match for the article, Pi bot will shortly create a new item for the article)
  7. If it is definitely a match, click ‘Match’ – and the game will edit Wikidata using your account to add the new sitelink. 

Simple and easy, and you’ll probably learn some interesting facts along the way!

Our second mini task for August is also a suggestion from UK community member, Dr Martin Poulter, Wikimedian in Residence at the Khalili Foundation. They are collaborating with UNESCO to improve the visibility of the Memory of the World International Register, which describes 570 pieces of important cultural heritage from around the world. 

Links on English Wikipedia articles which point to the Memory of the World register are broken and need to be fixed. A few minutes of your time can help to make this knowledge more accurate and accessible. 

Below is a step-by-step guide on how to fix the links! 

  1. Here is a table of all the English Wikipedia articles, with a corresponding link which includes the name of the cultural heritage piece on the register. Find a link you would like to fix in the table. 
  2. Open up the Memory of the World International Register and search for the item using the name at the end of the old link. When searching, it is important to click the Search button and not press return in the search box. Copy the link.
  3. Open the English Wikipedia article and scroll down to the References section and replace the old link with the new link. 
  4. Remember to update the access-date of the link if one is included in the Wikipedia citation.
  5. Once you’ve fixed a link, put a “x” in the final column of the table to mark it as done.

Thank you! To help us keep track of how Mini Wiki is being used, please use the #wmuk in your edit summary, where possible. We’d love to hear from you on your experience of using Mini Wiki. If you have an idea for a task that you would like the UK community’s help with that is quick and simple, then email rupal.karia@wikimedia.org.uk.

July Mini Wiki

Wiki Pages Wanting Photos is a campaign running from 1st July to 31st August to encourage the use of digital media files collected from various Wikimedia photography contests on Wikipedia articles. 

Photos help to grasp the reader’s attention, illustrate content, and make the article more instructive and engaging for readers. Every year thousands of images are shared by participants of international photography competitions such as Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Earth (currently taking place) and Wiki Loves Folklore and many of these images just stay on Wikimedia Commons.

Below are Petscans of images collected from each nation in the UK last year during Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments. 

Under the column “File Usage Data” you can see where on Wikimedia projects the media file has been used. If they have been used to illustrate an article then it will tell you which language Wikipedia and give you a link to the article. All other media files haven’t been used.  

Tips on how to add media files to articles

  • Look at the location – Is there a Wikipedia article on the location or on the region where the image can be used?
  • If the image is of wildlife is there an article on the wildlife? Is the image good quality? It is generally ok to replace an image for a higher quality image.
  • Maybe you can add the image to another language Wikipedia article if a relevant article exists. 

Other tasks you can do with the media file 

  • See if there is a caption associated with the image. If not then you can add a caption.  Say what’s in the image and if you know the date and time that can be really useful information.
  • If you speak another language then you can translate the caption into another language. 

To help us keep track of how Mini Wiki is being used, please use the #wmuk in your edit summary. We’d love to hear from you on your experience of using Mini Wiki. If you have an idea for a task that you would like the UK community’s help with that is quick and simple, then email rupal.karia@wikimedia.org.uk.

June Mini Wiki

June sees the start of the international photography competition Wiki Loves Earth and for the first time England will be participating along with Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. 

For this month’s Mini Wiki why not go outside to take images and videos of the natural heritage in your area? You can take photos of the landscapes or close ups of wildlife and add them through the competition pages of your respective nation above to be in with a chance of winning prizes and having your work recognised. You can find out more about the competition here.

Once you have added your image to Wikimedia Commons, why not see if it can be added to illustrate a Wikipedia article? Here are some pointers to help you add your image to an article: 

  • Is there a Wikipedia article on the location / region you have photographed? 
  • If you have photographed wildlife does Wikipedia have good quality images? It’s fine to replace an image if you are replacing it with a higher quality image. 
  • Include a caption to show what’s in the image; it is useful to include the date, season and year.

If you have a little bit more time you can add the image to a relevant Wikidata item. For example if it’s a picture of a place or animal, you can see if that place / animal already has a Wikidata item and attach the image to that item using the “Image” property (P18). Or, if it doesn’t have an item you can create a new item.

It’s Volunteer’s Week from the 2nd – 8th June. Wikimedia Projects would not exist without the support of people like you who contribute to the projects. Why not take a few minutes to thank someone and recognise their contribution to the Wikimedia projects on their user page. Maybe you’ve been impressed by someone’s contribution or used someone’s image in an article, why not send them a note to let them know? Or give them a Wiki Barnstar?

There are many other ways you can spread kindness on Wikipedia, see here for more ideas to show your appreciation on Wikipedia. 

To help us keep track of how Mini Wiki is being used, please use the #wmuk in your edit summary. We’re also keen to hear from you on how Mini Wiki on your experience with Mini Wiki.

May Mini Wiki

More references make Wikipedia a better reference tool. May sees the running of the 1lib1ref campaign; a campaign to engage librarians to make Wikipedia factually correct. And you don’t have to be a librarian to participate! There are nearly 600,000 articles that contain unsourced statements on the English Wikipedia alone. 

So for May, we will be focusing on quick and easy ways you can take part in keeping Wikipedia factually correct. If you are a trainer and run events, this can be a great way of introducing the topic of verifiability and how to add citations with people you work with, to support them to understand and practice. If you are new to Wikipedia editing, this can really support your understanding of verifiability on Wikipedia. 

Citation Hunt is a great tool that helps you to find a random article that is missing a citation. You can also filter it by topic, if you want to focus on a subject of interest or expertise.

Here are all the articles on English Wikipedia needing factual verification and these articles do not reference any sources.

To help you in your research to make Wikipedia factually correct, did you know that The Wikipedia Library is available to anyone who has been editing for 6+ months, with more than 500 edits, and 10 edits in the last 30 days, with no active blocks? You can log in via your Wikipedia account to access online journals, which may help with your research.

We’d love to keep track of how Mini Wiki is being used, so please help us by using #wmuk in your edit summary. We’d also love to hear how you’re getting on and how Mini Wiki is supporting you to keep editing. 

April Mini Wiki

Wikimedia UK supports many of the Wikimedia wide international photography competitions like Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Monuments and more recently, Wiki Loves Folklore. 

During these competitions people submit some truly amazing photos and share them through Wikimedia Commons on an open license to be freely used and distributed. We have literally 1000s of images waiting to be used!

Some of these images are used in articles, however there are many which aren’t – yet.Why not have a look through these images (a real visual feast!) collected over the last year and see if they can be placed within an article? 

The links below link to images from international competitions in 2024 and 2025:

If you are multilingual you could also translate the image descriptions into another language. Or maybe you can illustrate articles in another language Wikipedia? 

You may also wish to practice your Wikidata skills by adding these images to the relevant Wikidata item. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to do that. 

This is a really cool tool which helps you find images which are not used in the named Wikipedia page and could potentially be added. Currently this tool is available in 19 language Wikipedias, including English and Welsh. You can do a search in the language of your choice and then add the image to the article referenced. 

Thank you for using the #wmuk in your edit summary (when you can) so we can keep track of all the incredible ways you are participating in supporting Wikimedia projects. 

We would love to hear how you are getting on with Mini Wiki. Please do get in touch with us. programmes@wikimediauk.org.uk 

March – Women’s History Month

8th March is International Women’s Day so we have devoted March’s Mini Wiki tasks on ways to address the on-wiki gender gap! Below is a list of ideas on how you can help make women more visible.

De-orphaning Wikipedia Articles 

Incoming wikilinks are central to boosting visibility of women in the knowledge network. Women’s biographies have a higher rate of being orphaned which makes them less visible. Here are some suggestions to help get you started. 

The Ed Betts Find Link Tool is designed to help de-orphan articles. Enter the title of an article, hit search, and up comes a list of articles which contain the phrase you entered. Some of them may be good candidates for adding links with.

Categories

Adding categories can be a good way to make articles more visible on the knowledge network. It is useful to add the  “Authority control” template to an article and to add categories such as Category:19xx births, Category:20xx deaths, and categories defining the person’s occupation(s) or any other topics which are related. This PetScan query will help you find articles in the category “women” and “articles needing additional categories” 

Images are also another way of increasing the visibility of women on Wikipedia. 

There are thousands of images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons: photographs of women, their signatures, and their works, for example. In turn, these images can be added to Wikipedia articles, thereby improving women’s representation on Wikipedia. Here are some ideas of tasks that can be done on Commons (some of which can be done whilst you are on the move using the Wikimedia Commons App.)

  • Add images of women to Wikidata profession and occupation items which lack images: (WD)
  • Replace profession and occupation images with more appropriate / higher quality images of women: (WD)
  • Adding images of issues related to women’s health (including Sanitary bins to Wikimedia Commons)

It’s still Wiki Loves Folklore, so you can add pictures of women and intangible cultural heritage, making sure women are represented in the competition. 

Infoboxes

Try picking an article from this PetScan query of British women whose articles do not have an infobox and adding one?

Wikidata tasks

You can add statements to Wikidata items about women. Here is a Wikidata query of British women with the least number of statements where further statements can be added. It’s a great way to practise your WikiData skills.

And if you want something meatier, there are some excellent up to date resources on the IWD website, under Mission, that can be woven into articles. As an example, the latest 2024 Gender Gap Report released by the World Economic Forum isn’t represented on this page.

Remember to use #wmuk in your edit summary or tag us on social media and let us know what you have been doing to increase gender equality on Wikimedia projects!

February – Translation and folklore

For February, we are kicking off with translation and folklore. The 21st February is International Mother Tongue Day. Why not record bite size audio recordings on Lingua Libre to help build an open-license audiovisual resource in over 250 languages? It’s simple to start using. It will present you with a word to read aloud, before moving on to the next. The recordings are automatically uploaded onto Wikimedia Commons, and can then be used on Wiktionary, or to illustrate proper nouns on Wikipedia articles. They can also be used as pronunciation guides for language students. You can use your Wikimedia Commons login to get started. 

Or, if you have a little bit more time on your hands and are multilingual, how about translating an article from English into another language or vice versa. Or you can improve an existing translated article. These can be done over a course of a few sessions, when you have some spare time.

Articles needing translation into English and Articles needing translation from English.

If you are an Arabic or Persian speaker you can help with translating the image descriptions from any of these collections on Wikimedia Commons. Some of the image descriptions are short and don’t describe all the elements of the image, maybe you might be able to add more detail? If there is Arabic or Persian text visible, like an inscription on an object, can you say what it is and add it to the file description? 

February also sees the start of Wiki Loves Folklore (WLF); an international photographic contest where you can contribute media (photographs, video, and audio) about your local folk culture to Wikimedia Commons under free licenses. These media help to illustrate and increase coverage of intangible cultural heritage. You can explore here for inspiration and ideas wherever you are. To upload your images please use your country page below.

When saving any of your edits, please use the hashtag #wmuk in your edit summary to help us track contributions. Stay tuned for next month’s Mini Wiki task, and feel free to tag us on social media if you’d like to share your progress @wikimediauk! 

A decade of collaboration between Wikimedia UK and the National Library of Wales: Building a sustainable future for Welsh culture online

By Jason Evans, Open Data Manager at the National Library of Wales

10 years ago I turned up for my first day at work as a Wikipedian in Residence at the National Library of Wales. I had a 12 month contract and instructions to hold 3 Wikipedia Edit-a-thons, share some images openly to Wikimedia Commons and monitor the impact. 

A decade later and I’m still here! I’ve transitioned from Wikipedian in Residence to National Wikimedian, to Open Data Manager, with Wikimedia projects still firmly at the heart of what I do at the Library. We have shared over 150,000 images to the Commons with 1.5 Billion views. I’ve held 97 workshops and edit-a-thons, delivered 10 grant funded projects and overseen the creation of thousands of new Wikipedia articles, mostly in Welsh. In this time the role has evolved dramatically but the core principles of openness, engagement and innovation have remained unchanged. 

Reaching this milestone is an opportunity to reflect on the achievements and challenges of the last 10 years, and to think about what the next decade might look like in a rapidly changing digital landscape.

On a personal level the role has certainly helped shape me professionally and as a person. I’ve become a passionate advocate for open access, for the Welsh language and for open knowledge. When I took up the role, my skills lay mainly in research but I’ve learned a huge amount about community building, about impact and evaluation and my technical skills have increased dramatically. I’ve taught myself how to bulk upload to Commons and Wikidata, how to write a SPARQL query and even how to run python scripts and bots, which is incredibly empowering. But the area I love most is strategy. It’s taken a while, but I’ve learned to think strategically about my work; how tasks and projects help build towards broader goals and how to maximize impact, or public benefit, through my activities.

Photo of Jason stood in front of a screen with a presentation on it
Jason Evans speaking at WikiCite 2018 in Berkeley, California, by DarTar. CC0.

I think it’s important to acknowledge that none of this would have been possible without the continued support of management at the National Library. In my time here I’ve seen many brilliant residencies come and go and the Library’s commitment to this work, long term, is something not often seen in the GLAM sector. I’ve also been given the freedom to try things out, to explore leads that sometimes go nowhere and to implement new ideas. About 6 months into the residency I remember being introduced to Wikidata for the first time at Wikimedia UK’s old London Office. I immediately saw huge potential for describing and linking cultural heritage data and was given the time to explore this further. As a result we became an early adopter of Wikidata in the GLAM sector, hired the world’s first, and only (to my knowledge) Wikidata Visiting Scholar. The library has contributed millions of edits to Wikidata, expanding linked open data about Wales and its people. Time and time again I’ve been given the freedom to design my own projects and to travel to share skills and learn from the global community. I’m certain that a more rigid, micro managed approach would have seen the work and the funding dwindle away early on.

In terms of why the library has continued to fund this work, there are a number of reasons. Firstly impacts such as massive image views on Wikipedia, public engagement and support for the Welsh language align with the institution’s core values. Around 5 years ago we started counting views of Wikipedia pages containing our images as a key performance indicator, reporting quarterly to the Welsh Government. I’ve built relationships with many other institutions through our Wiki work, from universities and GLAMs to governing bodies. In year two we also formed a close relationship with the Welsh Government around their work to support Welsh language technology and education. And all this has led to a number of grant funded projects and collaborations in the digital scholarship space – effectively subsidising the cost of my role, whilst building partnerships, communities and improving Welsh knowledge online.

To some extent the longevity of my residency is probably also down to the ever evolving scope of my work. I’ve always tried to observe how people want and expect to be able to access knowledge and adapt my work to ensure the library is supporting the creation and maintenance of knowledge in that space. 

Early in the residency the focus was very much on Wikipedia. That is where people go for information, so that is where we should be; training new editors, sharing our collections and our knowledge. Many of our early projects focused on these goals. We ran a project on Welsh Pop Music, creating Welsh language articles about Welsh singers and bands. We even convinced a Welsh record label to share short clips of songs, and album artworks to Wikimedia Commons. Another project which I’m particularly proud of focused on creating health related content in Welsh. Welsh Wikipedia lacked key articles about diseases, treatments and mental health topics. I remember a conversation with a first language Welsh speaker who had suffered with depression and anxiety telling me that she was volunteering to write relevant content so that others didn’t have to read about their diagnosis in their second language. For me that was a powerful reminder of why supporting Wikipedia in smaller languages is so important.

In 2018, we hosted the second Celtic Knot Conference at the Library. Supported by Wikimedia UK and originally aimed at engaging small Celtic languages on Wikipedia, the conference has grown in scope to a global Wiki conference for small and minority languages, with participants from all over the world.

Photograph of Eluned Morgan, the then culture minister for Wales in 2018, behind a podium at the NLW opening the 2018 Celtic Knot.
Eluned Morgan, Culture Minister, opening the 2018 Celtic Knot Conference by Jason.nlw. CC BY-SA

Education has also been a focus over the years. Young people in particular rely on the internet to learn. Early in the project educators were often wary of having anything to do with Wikipedia, but we’ve seen a real transformation, with most now embracing Wikipedia, accepting that students are going to use it anyway, and engaging with it to help them understand how it works and how to use it responsibly. In 2019, with funding from the Education Department we developed the “WikiAddysg” (Wiki Education) project, aimed at improving Welsh Wikipedia content related to the secondary school History syllabus in Wales. We consulted with teachers, secured open access to Welsh learning resources from a number of organisations and hired a former history teacher to help us adapt the content for Wikipedia. We even commissioned short educational videos to compliment the articles. For many years we’ve also supported Menter Iaith Môn’s Wikipedian, who has been running Wiki events in schools in Anglesey, North Wales. Wikimedia UK has been super supportive in securing a foothold for Wikipedia in Welsh education and I’m full of hope that this area of work will continue to grow.

We continue to support Wikipedia with regular edit-a-thons, tailored volunteer training and research into automated methods of creating Welsh language articles. However, over time our focus has shifted to encompass data. Over the last decade, the value of open data for research, learning and commerce has been increasingly acknowledged. It allows for siloed datasets to be interlinked, it allows communities to collaborate to improve and enrich knowledge as data and helps power new and innovative tools for knowledge exchange. And this was before the AI boom, where we are increasingly aware that computer models are only as good as the data which powers them.

I think it’s fair to say that Wikidata has become the largest collection of open cultural heritage data the world has ever seen. You can look up an artist, a poet or scribe and see links to their archives in institutions all over the world, or see an artist’s life work in one place. Linked Open Data is now seen as the gold data standard by many – a modern data infrastructure for cultural heritage data with common standards and structure. Like many public sector institutions we have faced constant cuts to our budget, and platforms like Wikidata and Wikibase have been a way for us to begin the process of modernising our data, of linking it to other datasets in Wales and beyond with minimal investment and in an inclusive, open and collaborative way.

Last year, we launched our Welsh Name Authority Wikibase, which already links over 100,000 Welsh people and places across collections and institutions. We’ve also worked closely with the Welsh Language Commissioner since 2023, aligning their data to Wikidata and other Welsh heritage data. Wikidata lets us do this bilingually, so we can make our datasets available in Welsh for the first time. We’ve already seen the value in investing in this Open Data. The Welsh Government, the BBC, The Welsh Biography Online and Mapio Cymru (Welsh OpenStreetMap) have all used our data. We helped improve a popular daily Welsh language quiz app that uses Wikidata to create a huge bank of questions, and what3words launched a Welsh language edition thanks in part to Welsh language Wikidata labels. 

Photograph of students on laptops
Students at an English to Welsh Wikipedia translation event hosted by the NLW in 2019 by Jason.nlw

Just last year, the Welsh Language Commissioner launched a new website for their database of standardized Welsh place names, and thanks to the alignment with Wikidata they’ve been able to include images and sound clips from Commons and links to Wikipedia articles, creating a rich user experience. I’m particularly fond of this collaboration as an example of community and institution working together. The idea of combining authoritative data with crowdsourced data not only leads to better tools and services but fosters an inclusive space where everyone can be empowered to contribute their voice, their knowledge and their passions.

There have, of course, been challenges and frustrations along the way. Many fixed term residents finish their posting without having affected fundamental changes within their host organisation, and that’s not to say that these residencies were a failure, just a reminder that the wheels of change move very slowly in many GLAM organisations, and ours is no different. Before I was appointed the library had made a bold policy move (bold at the time) by relinquishing any claim to digital reproductions out of copyright works, and it was this decision which allowed me to get right to uploading content to Commons. But shifting the organisational culture to an “open by default” mentality is an ongoing and occasionally circular conversation. Much of the reluctance to be more Open, in the library and other organisations I’ve worked with boils down to budgetary pressures, a lack of confidence in making big changes to long established systems and sometimes just a difference in interpretation of licensing and copyright law. I’m confident though that things are moving in the right direction, highlighted by our recent release of over 120,000 photographs to Commons, documenting Welsh life in the 1950s and 60s.

The Wikiverse can also be a tricky place to navigate at times. Tools for uploading images and monitoring impact tend to break from time to time, and when they are replaced with new ones the learning process starts all over again. Most of these tools only exist at all thanks to dedicated volunteers, and it would be great to see more support from the Wikimedia Foundation in creating a stable toolset for partner organisations. Once again though it feels like things are now moving in the right direction.

Of course, the biggest challenge facing Wikimedia UK and the wider Wiki movement is how to respond to the rise of Generative AI. It’s also a topic taking up more and more of my time. How good will it get? And how soon? How can we correct mistakes and tackle inherent bias? How do we ensure smaller languages are not left behind? These are just a few of the questions I’ve been asking myself. So as I look to the future I’m left thinking that perhaps the golden age of Wikipedia as a destination has passed. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less important, especially in smaller languages. If, as a society, we continue to value the vision of free knowledge for all, the Wiki projects will continue to be the most effective way of achieving this, and the most effective way of feeding new knowledge into the digital space.

I don’t think anyone really knows how the next ten years will play out but I hope we can continue to build on the momentum towards an Open society and to use new technologies for good; for sharing knowledge more widely in all languages, for reducing bias and for linking our knowledge together across institutions, sectors and cultures. For as long as Wikimedia and its volunteers represent these values I’m confident that Wikimedians in Residence will continue to further the cause, driving digital transformation in their host institutions which benefit society as a whole.

Revisiting cyberfeminism

By Athina Petsou, volunteer and student

The “Revisiting Cyberfeminism” event took place in Berlin from December 7th to 8th, 2024, with a follow-up session on 14th December. Organised by Wiki Riot Squad, Who writes his_tory?, and Athina Petsou, in cooperation with bildwechsel/GuterGrund GmbH and Khoj Studios, the event was financially supported by Wikimedia Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The primary goal was to revisit and update Wikipedia articles related to cyberfeminism, ensuring that the content reflects diverse experiences.

The concept of cyberfeminism, which emerged in the early 1990s, has been a critical framework for understanding and challenging the power structures embedded in technology and online platforms through a feminist perspective. This movement focuses on how biased technology can challenge or reinforce gender norms, questioning who controls information, who gets to participate, and how gender influences and is influenced by these dynamics. The December events were in Berlin and online, aiming to refresh and expand the discourse around cyberfeminism through collaborative efforts on Wikipedia. Among others we created and translated articles in English, German, French and Spanish Wikipedia, about Frauen+technik, Old Boys Network, etc.

Photograph of the in-person editathon in Berlin showing a group of people sat around a table with laptops
Meeting avec l’équipe en présentiel et online 1 by Yasminkaa CCO

I loved the fact that the event brought together different participants: artists, historical figures who were part of the Cyberfeminist movement in the 90s, wikipedians, students, researchers and theoretics. The Berlin event took place in an artist atelier and included a series of workshops, readings, and collaborative editing sessions. It was lovely to hear stories and have a look in the archival material of the different groups (-Innen, frauen·und·technik, Old Boys Network).

More importantly for me, the event was structured as a hybrid gathering, with participants joining both on-site in Berlin and online from various locations, including a parallel workshop hosted by Khoj Studios in New Delhi, following the tradition of the cyberfeminism movement itself.  

Cyberfeminism has historically been underrepresented in online spaces, and this event aimed to address that gap by bringing together diverse voices and perspectives. We also read poems from the archives and from contemporary poets working on cyberfeminist topics. The collaborative nature of the event allowed participants to learn from each other, share their expertise, stories and new ideas and create a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of cyberfeminism. Also, the intergenerational nature of the event is a good heritage on the online and in flesh feminist discourses.  The “Revisiting Cyberfeminism” event was more than just an edit-a-thon; it was a collaborative effort to engage in knowledge production that challenges the systemic biases inherent in online platforms and technological products. By updating and expanding articles on cyberfeminism, participants contributed to a more inclusive and accurate representation of feminist work in the technological landscape. Also, it was a chance to reflect on our own lives and work, discuss and connect. Hopefully, meeting you all again soon and on our new projects.

Wiki Resolutions 2025

New Year New Edit! 

As we close the door on 2024, what are your Wiki New Year’s Resolutions for 2025?

make a resolution

Wikimedians across the UK have achieved so much over the last year – at our recent Community Celebration we heard about the national press coverage about Lucy Moore writing articles about a woman from every country in the world, Jonathan Deamer attending his first Wikimania, and lots of people who participated in Wiki Loves Earth in Scotland for the very first time.

So what’s that one thing that you’d like to achieve in the Wiki world this year?  Do you want to finally publish an article that you’ve been drafting for a while now, or learn how to query Wikidata? Maybe you’d like to attend a meetup, or learn how to use OpenRefine? Perhaps you want to take more photos, and submit them to Wiki Loves Folklore, Wiki Loves Earth, or Wiki Loves Monuments?  And if you’re brand new to the world of editing, maybe you’d like to learn to edit Wikipedia? Whatever it is, we’d love to hear about it – and we’ll send you some encouragement!

New Year’s Resolutions can be hard to keep – so if you let us know what it is that you’d like to do, then we can send you a reminder, and we’ll send you any relevant information on the challenge that you’ve chosen. So for example, if you’d really like to contribute to Wiki Loves Monuments this year, we’ll send you the information about the competition when it launches. Or if you’d like to learn how to edit Wikipedia, we can send you links to training materials.  

You’ll be able to sign up for a Wiki Resolution any time throughout January, and we’ll follow up with you from February.

Looking back at the 2024 Celtic Knot Conference

By Richard Nevell, Programme Manager for Wikimedia UK

In late September, Wikimedians from as far away as Malaysia gathered in Waterford in Ireland to share stories of success, challenges, and to learn from others, all with a focus on minoritised languages. The Celtic Knot Conference is a space for different communities to connect and support each other in their efforts to improve their languages’ representation online.

Back in the winter of 2023, WMUK and Wikimedia Community Ireland (WCI) began collaborating on the conference idea with a focus on the Irish language. We wanted to put together an ambitious programme of speakers with cultural events to tap into the local community. Linked to that was the planned launch of WCI’s WikiWomen Erasmus+ Project in 2024. The road to Waterford had started.

Photograph of a large group of people stood in front of the stone wall of Reginald's Tower in Waterford
Celtic Knot Conference 2024 – WikiWomen Erasmus+ Project Launch Group Picture by Benjicarter

2024 was the first in-person Celtic Knot since 2019 in Cornwall, with online editions in between necessitated by Covid, so it was a special moment. Every edition of the conference has a different focus, and the idea is that it is an opportunity to boost that particular community. The conference had a celebratory feel, partly because of the WikiWomen Erasmus+ launch, and conversations flowed between engaging sessions. Each of the three days had a different theme in the programme: the past, the present, and the future of language communities.

Across the three-day conference, 150 people attended in-person or online, with 35 different language communities represented. While the core of the Celtic Knot’s focus is the Celtic family of languages – Welsh, Breton, Irish, Gaelic, Manx, and Cornish – one of the conference’s strengths is the way it can connect communities. Close language groups may face similar challenges, but wider participation gives more opportunity for unexpected connections and inspiration.

The conference sessions were recorded and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. I won’t detail the whole programme as it is difficult to pick favourites from such an excellent programme – though ‘Count von Count teaches Basque’ was the most entertaining lightning talk I have ever been to! There were particular themes that were interesting. It struck me that the programme was very 2024 in its flavour, acknowledging the importance of the Wikimedia projects to translation tools and large language models. Large language models present challenges and opportunities to Wikipedia, especially smaller language communities, so it was an important topic to discuss.

WMUK is proud of the work of the Welsh Wicipedia, with numerous successes over the years – not least of which is the ongoing partnership with the National Library of Wales. Jason Evans and Siôn Jobbins represented the Welsh Wicipedia with stories of institutional collaboration and personal editing. The feedback after the conference showed that stories of success like these inspire others, showing what can be accomplished. Advocacy for languages can be a long journey, and knowing that others have travelled down that path and you might follow, or find a different route offers hope.

The Celtic Knot is one of the major events in WMUK’s calendar, and working with WCI has been a highlight of 2024. While this particular edition of the conference is done and dusted, we are starting to look to the future and what 2025 holds and how we can continue our support of language communities and make the most of the firmly established connection between WMUK and WCI. We look forward to gathering again to discuss languages, and share even more stories of success.

The 2024 UK Wikimedian of the Year Awards

By Dr Richard Nevell, Programme Manager for Wikimedia UK

Wikimedia UK organises the UK Wikimedian of the Year Awards to recognise the efforts of people and organisations who contribute to our work as a charity. This support is vital to our work, allowing us to improve the Wikimedia projects for everyone. The awards are a celebration of our community, and especially those who have been nominated.

This year’s winners were announced at the online Community Celebration in late November. Thank you to all of the shortlisted contributors, and to everyone who made a nomination. The awards will return next year, and nominating someone is a great way of making sure they get some recognition.

Partnership of the Year

This award was won by GLAM-E Lab, a joint initiative between the Centre for Science, Culture and the Law at the University of Exeter and the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy at NYU Law. GLAM-E Lab develops model policies and terms for cultural institutions that are creating open access programs. They began working with WMUK during the Connected Heritage project and continued this into 2024 as part of their project to develop a toolkit for organisations looking to go open for little to no budget. Andrea Wallace and Francesca Farmer have been tireless champions of Wiki and the potential it has for GLAM organisations globally.

Our Honourable Mention was awarded to the National Trust who hired their first ever Wikimedian this year, and they are recognised for trying new approaches. The fixed-term project was warmly received by the English Wikipedia’s editors, as well as WMUK’s volunteers.

As well as these two organisations, the full list of nominees included the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, the IDEA network, the Khalili Foundation, LEEDS 2023, Protests and Suffragettes, and the Sankofa London Schools project.

Up and Coming Wikimedian

This award was won by Perigrinate Avellana, who having only signed up in January has made over 5000 edits to Wikitionary, focussing on Japanese. The sheer quantity and consistency and dedication from a new Wikimedian is amazing!

We had two Honourable Mentions this year, recognising Jonathan Deamer and Joanne Forster-Martin. Jonathan is finding his place in the wiki world and it’s been lovely to see him putting his effort to community organising with a meet up in Leeds and organising a parkrun at Wikimania. Joanne has been enthusiastically involved with Women in Red, writing biographies and collaborating with others. It’s great to see skills learned on her Wikipedia placement in Oxford become part of wider volunteering.

The full list of nominations included Ruby Imrie and Ellie Whitehead.

UK Wikimedian of the Year

This award was won by Fran Allfrey, an enthusiastic Wikimedian who does much of her work in academic spaces, acting as a voice of encouragement to those who want to experiment. She is also a generous collaborator – recently co-writing an article on medievalism and Wikipedia. Community minded, she supports gender based Wikimedia initiatives, and advocates for sharing information with Wikidata and Wikipedia in her research career, notably the Avebury Papers project.

As with the Up and Coming Award we had two Honourable Mentions, going to Ruby Imrie and Sae Kitamura. Ruby has worked incredibly hard to help illuminate what happened in the Scottish witch hunts of 1563 to 1736 by focusing on opening up the rich historical data in the University’s landmark Survey of Scottish Witchcraft database. Sae is Wikimedian in Residence at Trinity College Dublin which is a post she organised and found funding for along with Sophie Whitfield of Wikimedia Community Ireland. Sae’s work with languages has been hugely beneficial and she contributed to the Celtic Knot Conference run jointly by WMUK and Wikimedia Community Ireland.

The full list of nominees included Perigrinate Avellana, John Cummings, Lucy Moore, Harry Mitchell, and Ellie Whitehead.

WMUK 2024 Community Celebration – videos and resources

On Saturday 23rd November we were thrilled to host our 2024 Community Celebration. It was a chance for our community to gather online, share and celebrate the work that’s taken place over the last year and recognise that work through the UK Wikimedian of the Year awards and celebrate the winners of the Wiki Loves Earth competition.

It was heartening seeing so many of our community at the celebration. There were around 40 community members, attending from all over the UK. With the event being online in the midst of Storm Bert raging, it meant that people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend were able to do so.

We were welcomed by our Chief Executive Lucy Crompton-Reid, who thanked the community for the incredible work they contribute to Wikimedia projects and Open Knowledge. To highlight their impact in 2024 there were 231 instances of a lead / organiser / speaker, of which 147 were non-Wikimedia UK staff, or 63.7%. An incredible contribution from the community.

We then launched into a series of lightning talks delivered by members of the Community about their work this year. These presentations were a (small!) selection to highlight the tremendous work  community members have been working on over the last year.

Jason Evans, Open Data Manager and National Wikimedian at the National Library of Wales told us about AI, Placenames and Time Machine experiments at the National Library of Wales.

Dr Kirsty Ross from the University of St Andrews, who is also one of the co-founders of the IDEA network told us about how Scottish Brick History (SBH) and Wikimedia UK. Researchers from the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews collaborated to get a unique dataset about Scotland’s brickworks onto Wikidata, and built web visualisations to showcase the work.

Lucy Moore, a Wikimedian based in Leeds, and who won UK Wikimedian of the year 2022 told us about her Wiki Year!

Nick Sheppard, Open Research Adviser based at the University of Leeds Libraries told us about his journey from his first tentative edit in 2017 (flagged as spam) to becoming a committed advocate for Wikimedia in Universities.

Jonathan Deamer from Liverpool, who describes himself as a Wikimedia hobbyist, told us about attending his first Wikimania in Katowice in Poland this year. He shared with us his highlights from the event and how these have had a tangible impact on his daily editing.

Joanne Forster-Martin, a student at the University of Oxford, and who we met at our recent Train the Trainer weekend told us about the Wiki Women in Red project to uncover the hidden female figures of Jesus College, Oxford.

Adam Harangzo, Wikipedian in Residence at the National Institute for Health and Care Research talked to us about his experience of working with researchers in an impactful way where they contribute to Wikipedia without directly editing it.

UK Wikimedian of the Year Awards

Next, last year’s Wikimedian of the Year, Nick Sheppard, announced the winners of this year’s UK Wikimedian of the Year Awards. Thank you to everyone who made nominations and a huge well done to all the nominees, honorable mentions and the winners highlighted below. 

UK Wikimedian of the Year: Fran Allfrey

Partnership of the Year: Glam E Lab (Andrea Walace and Francesca Farmer)

Up and Coming Wikimedian: User: Peregrinate Avellana (Hazel)

Wiki Loves Earth Winners

From one set of winners to another, we showcased the winners of this year’s Wiki Loves Earth. This was the first time we ran the competition in Scotland and the calibre of photos was incredibly high. There were 700 entries in total from Scotland.

Wales came 4th overall in the competition with over 3000 images entered. Judges were so impressed by the quality of the images and commented on how difficult it was to choose winners. Thank you to everyone who was involved in supporting the competition to run this year; from those who contributed images, the judges and everyone involved in all the behind the scenes work that goes into making it happen.  

You can see the full list of winners for Wales and Scotland.

Finally Dr Sara Thomas, Programme Manager at WMUK told us about a new opportunity for the community to share their learning through a peer learning programme of events.  Please contact her directly at sara.thomas@wikimedia.org.uk if you would like to be involved in sharing your Wiki knowledge, expertise and skills with other community members.

Volunteers can also apply for Project Grants to support their Wiki activities throughout the year. 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.