Page 25 – WMUK

Wiki Loves Africa competition focuses on Music and Dance

London African Street Style Festival – Image by Jwslubbock CC BY-SA 4.0

Cape Town, 28th November 2016 – Music and dance are the very beat of this vibrant continent. It is therefore fitting that for the third Wiki Loves Africa media competition, the focus will be on Music and Dance.

Wiki Loves Africa encourages participants to contribute media – photographs, video or sound files – to illustrate a theme chosen by Wikipedia volunteers across Africa. The theme changes each year to cover a universal, visually rich and culturally specific topic (for example, markets, rites of passage, festivals, public art, cuisine, natural history, urbanity, daily life, notable persons, etc). For 2016, the Wikipedia community chose Music and Dance. In a further celebration of music from across Africa, the project is asking musicians to donate a track to the Wiki Loves Africa Playlist.

Over the last two years, the contest has been very photographically biased. Dance and music are not only very visual, but also perfect for video and sound. This year we are expecting more videos and sound files to be submitted. Since 2014, the contest has seen the contribution of 13,624 photographs to Wikimedia Commons for potential use on Wikipedia. In the first year, under the theme Cuisine, 873 people contributed 6,116 photographs. Cultural fashion and adornment was the theme for the next year, 2015, which saw 722 people contribute over 7,500 photographs.

The competition runs from the 1st December 2016 to the 31st January 2017 and entries are welcome from anywhere on the continent and beyond. Specific actions, including training, photowalks and upload events, are held in focus countries by national organisers. This year, the ten focus countries are Algeria, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

All entries to Wiki Loves Africa will be directly uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (the digital repository of the Wikimedia projects) with the intention of being used to illustrate relevant existing articles or as a basis to begin new articles on Wikipedia and other project websites of the Wikimedia Foundation. The teams will also be working with existing photographic groups to encourage their members to use their photographic skills, learn about licensing and contributing media to Wikipedia, and win prizes.

The main prizes for the competition are:

1st Prize: US$600
2nd Prize: US$400
3rd Prize: US$200
Community Prize: US$200
The Awesome Prize: US$400

In addition, each winner will also receive a year’s subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan, and a portable power pack. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes will be selected by a jury of international Wikipedians and professional photographers. The Community Prize is chosen by the Wikipedia Community from the Jury’s short list. The Awesome Prize will be awarded for outstanding media contribution to the project, and will be chosen by the two organisers.

For the Wiki Loves Africa Playlist, the teams will partner with music and cultural organisations like Music in Africa and Goethe-Instituts in each focus country to encourage the contribution of photographs, sound files and videos to Wikipedia during the competition. Musicians will be encouraged to release an example of their work under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence to be part of the Wiki Loves Africa Playlist.

Wiki Loves Africa is activated by the Wikimedia community that created Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia, and built the free media archive Wikimedia Commons. The competition was conceptualised by Florence Devouard and Isla Haddow-Flood as a fun and engaging way to rebalance the lack of visual representations and relevant content that exists about Africa on Wikipedia. The competition is supported by Ynternet.org. It is funded by the Wikimedia Foundation and local partners in individual countries.

The images donated are available for use on the internet and beyond, under the Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 4.0.

Useful links:

Open Archaeology and the Digital Cultural Commons

A dig at Teotihuacan, Mexico in 2016 - Image by Daniel Case CC BY-SA 3.0 — A dig at Teotihuacan, Mexico in 2016 – Image by Daniel Case CC BY-SA 3.0

By Lorna M. Campbell, Wikimedia UK Board Member and OER Liaison – Open Scotland at the University of Edinburgh.

Although I’ve worked in open education technology for almost twenty years now, my original background is actually in archaeology. I studied archaeology at the University of Glasgow in the late 1980s and later worked there as material sciences technician for a number of years. Along the way I worked on some amazing fieldwork projects including excavating Iron Age brochs in Orkney and the Outer Hebrides, Bronze Age wetland sites at Flag Fen, a rare Neolithic settlement at Loch Olabhat in North Uist, the Roman fort of Trimontium at Newstead in the Scottish Borders and prehistoric, Nabatean and Roman sites in the South Hauran desert in Jordan. I still have a strong interest in both history and archaeology and, perhaps unsurprisingly, I’m a passionate advocate of opening access to our shared cultural heritage.

Archaeological field work and post excavation analysis generates an enormous volume of data including photographs, plans, notebooks and journals, topographic data, terrain maps, archaeometric data, artefact collections, soil samples, osteoarchaeology data, archaeobotanical data, zooarchaeological data, radio carbon data, etc, etc, etc. The majority of this data ends up in university, museum and county archives around the country or in specialist archives such as Historic Environment Scotland’s Canmore archive and the Archaeology Data Service (ADS) at the University of York. And while there is no question that the majority of this data is being carefully curated and archived for posterity, much of it remains largely inaccessible as it is either un-digitised, or released under restrictive or ambiguous licenses.

How individuals can engage with global open heritage data. Image by Arbeck CC 3.0

This is hardly surprising for older archives which are composed primarily of analogue data. I worked on the reanalysis of the Cadbury Castle archive in the early 1990’s and can still remember trawling through hundreds of dusty boxes and files of plans, context sheets, finds records, correspondence, notebooks, etc. That reanalysis did result in the publication of an English Heritage monograph which is now freely available from the ADS but, as far as I’m aware, little if any, of the archive has been digitised.

Digitising the archives of historic excavations may be prohibitively expensive and of debatable value, however much of the data generated by fieldwork now is born digital. Archives such as Canmore and the ADS do an invaluable job of curating this data and making it freely available online for research and educational purposes. Which is great, but it’s not really open. Both archives use custom licenses rather than the more widely used Creative Commons licences. It feels a bit uncharitable to be overly critical of these services because they are at least providing free access to curated archaeological data online. Other services restrict access to public cultural heritage archives with subscriptions and paywalls.

Several key thinkers in the field of digital humanities have warned of the dangers of enclosing our cultural heritage commons and have stressed the need for digital archives to be open, accessible and reusable.

The Journal of Open Archaeology Data is one admirable example of an Open Access scholarly journal that makes all its papers and data sets freely and openly available under Creative Commons licenses, while endorsing the Panton Principles and using open, non-proprietary standards for all of its content. Internet Archaeology is another Open Access journal that publishes all its content under Creative Commons Attribution licences. However it’s still just a drop in the ocean when one considers the vast quantity of archaeological data generated each year. Archaeological data is an important component of our cultural commons and if even a small portion of this material was deposited into Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, Wikipedia etc., it would help to significantly increase the sum of open knowledge.

Wikimedia UK is already taking positive steps to engage with the Culture sector through a wide range of projects and initiatives such as residencies, editathons, and the Wiki Loves Monuments competition, an annual event that encourages both amateur and professional photographers to capture images of the world’s historic monuments. By engaging with archaeologists and cultural heritage agencies directly, and encouraging them to contribute to our cultural commons, Wikimedia UK can play a key role in helping to ensure that our digital cultural heritage is freely and openly available to all.

Wiki Loves Monuments UK 2016 Winners Announced!

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More than 250 people took part in the UK competition, uploading 6,200 photos of cultural heritage which anyone can reuse. Thank you to everyone who took part. The winners of the overall competition will be announced in December.

Wiki Loves Monuments is a global photographic competition run by the Wikimedia Foundation and its local chapters like Wikimedia UK. We encourage photographers to upload photos of places that have Wikipedia articles so that those photos can be used to illustrate Wikipedia.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Winchester_Cathedral,_south_aisle_of_retro-choir.jpg, “Winchester Cathedral, south aisle of retro-choir” by Michael Coppins
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Perch_Rock_Lighthouse.jpg, Perch Rock Lighthouse by Richard J Smith
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_William_Yard,_Plymouth,_Devon.jpg, “Royal William Yard, Plymouth, Devon” by Michael Chapman
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eilean_Donan_at_Dusk.jpg, “Eilean Donan at Dusk” by Syxaxis Photography (George Johnson)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hazell_Brook_Bridge.jpg, “Hazell Brook Bridge” by Hamburg103a
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Queens%27_College_-_Mathematical_Bridge.jpg, “Queens’ College – Mathematical Bridge” by Rafa Esteve
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RibbleheadViaduct.jpg, “RibbleheadViaduct” by Sterim64
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Albert_Hall_-_Central_View_169.jpg, “Royal Albert Hall – Central View 169” by Colin
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tone_Mills_Dyehouse.jpg, “Tone Mills Dyehouse” by Msemmett
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Transporter_Bridge_Winter_Sunrise.jpg, “Transporter Bridge Winter Sunrise” by WelshDave

Wikimedia projects aren’t built in a day – Roman coinage on Commons

This article is based on a paper given at this year’s Museum Computer Group held at the Wellcome Trust on October 19^th.

solidus_of_honorius_yorym_2001_12465_2_obverse — A solidus of Emperor Honorious, one of the images uploaded by Joan and released under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Legacy and sustainability were two of the biggest issues York Museums Trust (YMT) grappled with when running two Wikimedian in Residence programmes with Wikimedia UK.

During these residencies we made real progress and learnt a lot about what success can actually mean when attempting to share knowledge freely and openly.

And I have begun to realise – rather belatedly – two very important things:

That the enrichment of individuals’ lives is as important as reaching new audiences and racking up page views for collections objects.
Free and open knowledge is a platform from which these truly meaningful connections with individuals can be made and then shared.

Now don’t get me wrong. When Andrew Woods, YMT’s curator of numismatics, came up with the idea of populating the biography pages of Roman emperors – and later medieval kings – with coinage depicting them; a project that would put a nationally-recognised collection in front of 600,000+ people a month; I was impressed. In fact it got me the gig at the Wellcome Trust this October.

But there was something bigger happening here.

What sounds like a very straightforward Commons upload project was actually the culmination of a couple of years work. But the time spent getting to this point doesn’t diminish the impact of the outcome – especially if you look beyond the numbers and museum catalogue improvements.

This was the first legacy project at YMT since our highly-skilled Wikimedian in Residence Pat Hadley had left for pastures new. A legacy project based around a model that could be sustained for other collections.

It was the first time a Wikipedia project at YMT had been run without any real direct input from the Digital Team.

Joan Pritchard – Andy’s amazing volunteer – was taught to handle and photograph museum collections, how to edit Wikipedia and use Commons, how to use a collections management system and how to map data to templates for uploading.

What amazed me most, however, was the inspiring, self-led learning that comes with working directly with a collection. Handling museum objects affords you time to think, ask questions and develop knowledge. By the end of the project Joan could identify badly-corroded coins with ease and had developed a real connection with the things she was digitising for Commons.

She also became aware of the power good imagery can have when exploring and interpreting a ‘difficult’ collection. The photography was the ‘most valued part’ of the project for Joan and provided a good counterbalance to upload template creation. Couple this intimacy with collections with the fact that your work ends up in front of hundreds of thousands of people with either a direct or indirect interest in the subject matter and you have a heady cocktail. This shows the power of digital engagement when it is based on sharing and openness through and through – not just the open licensing of the end product.

Announcing a new Wikimedian In Residence at the University of Oxford

1024px-clarendon_building_oxford_england_-_may_2010 — The Clarendon Building where the WIR is based. Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0

The University of Oxford now employs a Wikimedian In Residence (WIR). Martin Poulter is working half-time on a one-year project to embed Wikipedia, Wikidata and related sites in the university’s teaching, research and public engagement.

Dr Poulter served as the WIR at the Bodleian Libraries for one year ending in March 2016. He led wiki training at nine public events, and gave sixteen other workshops and presentations. The images bulk-uploaded during this placement now get more than 3 million views per month from being used to illustrate Wikipedia articles in 49 languages.

Thanks to funding from the IT Innovation Challenge he is returning to the Bodleian with a cross-university remit. The new project is about working with Wikimedia UK to embed innovative use of Wikimedia sites across the university. This will involve:

training staff in the university to run Wikimedia-related events such as editathons;
helping research projects to enhance their impact by sharing outputs on Wikidata and Wikipedia;
creating customised training workshops for academics, librarians and other staff in the university; and
sharing training materials.

The aim is to collaborate with a different large research or educational project each month. The first two partners are the Hillforts Atlas Project and the Voltaire Foundation. The former is a collaboration between the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh, producing a definitive database of hillforts in the British Isles and Ireland. The latter publishes definitive critical volumes of the works and correspondence of Voltaire. Both projects can reach a larger audience by helping to improve Wikidata and Wikipedia. Other research projects and cultural institutions will be supported on a first-come, first-served basis.

Wikimedians In Residence are already employed by the National Library of Wales, the Wellcome Library, and the University of Edinburgh, as well as cultural and scholarly organisations around the globe. Martin Poulter can be contacted at martin.poulter@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

Changing the way stories are told – Ada Lovelace Day outcomes

By Ewan McAndrew (reposted from Ewan’s blog with permission)

Wikipedia has a problem with representation. Its mission is to be “the sum of all human knowledge” yet it only covers, by very rough estimates, only 5% of the number of articles that it needs to. Clearly there is a lot of work to be done. However, that it has amassed over 40 million articles in 300 languages in its short existence is quite incredible and is a testament to the dedication of its community of volunteers.

Yet the fact Wikipedia is human-curated means that it reflects the editors that engages with it. The late Adrianne Wadewitz, wrote an article on why teachers should engage with Wikipedia:

“Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit but not everyone does. You and your students can dramatically affect the most popular and important reference work in the world.

90% of Wikipedia’s editors are male.
There are only 3,000 very active Wikipedians on the English Wikipedia. 3,000 people are controlling the world’s knowledge. That’s the size of a small town.
Wikipedia is the most popular reference work in the world.

If you want your students to learn about how a small community is influenced by demographics and how they can change that community by participating in it, Wikipedia is the place to go.

Google takes information from Wikipedia, as do many other sites, because it is licensed through a Creative Commons Share-Alike license. Those little boxes on the left-hand side of your screen when you do a Google search? From Wikipedia. The information that is on Wikipedia spreads across the internet. What is right or wrong or missing on Wikipedia affects the entire internet.” (Teaching with Wikipedia: the why, what and how” HASTAC Blog February 21, 2014)

Since I began my residency in January 2016, the figure we have cited in terms of female editorship of Wikipedia is 15%. Better than the 10% of 2014 but still shamefully low. This lack of female representation also skews the content in much the same way; resulting in only 15% of biographies on Wikipedia being about notable females.

According to figures from Equate Scotland, Women in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths) represent similarly low percentages (only 14-18%) of the STEM workforce. If Scottish education & industry is serious about becoming a realistic competitor in STEM sectors and Wikipedia is serious about attaining the sum of all human knowledge then both need to take action to become more inclusive spaces; and both have an important role in highlighting success stories in providing role models for young & old women alike so they can see a career in STEM as viable.

With this in mind, the university held an Ada Lovelace Day event on Tuesday 11^th October 2016 which incorporated guest talks, fun technology activities and a Wikipedia editathon which created 9 brand new articles on Women in STEM and improved 9 others. The event was enthusiastically received by its attendees and attracted the attention of STV News.

ada-lovelace-day-768x576 — Ada Lovelace Day 2016 attendees (Ewan McAndrew, CC-BY-SA)

Articles created

Sheila May Edmonds – British mathematician, a Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, and Vice-Principal of Newnham College from 1960 to 1981.
Ann Katharine Mitchell – Decrypted messages encoded in the German Enigma cypher at Bletchley Park. Wrote several academic books about the psychological effects of divorce on children. Won a place to study maths at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford (1940–1943). At the time relatively few women went to Oxford and even fewer studied maths. There were only 5 women in Ann Williamson’s year at Oxford and she remarked that the men coming to university had been taught maths much better at school than the girls. Indeed, it was suggested to her by the headmistress of her school that studying maths was “unladylike” and her parents had to overrule her school to allow her to take up her place at Oxford. Returned to university in 1970s to study social policy and in 1980 she graduated with a Master of Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh.
Margaret Marrs – Senior Operator of the original Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Computer (EDSAC). EDSAC was an early British computer constructed at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in England, and the second electronic digital stored-program computer to go into regular service.
Code First: Girls – Not for Profit Social Enterprise that works exclusively with women in Britain to develop coding skills. The organisation promotes gender diversity and female participation in the technology sector by offering free and paid training and courses for students and professional women. It also supports businesses to train staff and develop talent management policies. As of June 2016, Code First: Girls is reported to have provided in excess of £1.5 million worth of free coding courses to more than 1,500 women since 2013.
PLUS another 5 Wikipedia articles were translated from English Wikipedia to Portuguese Wikipedia using Wikipedia’s new Content Translation tool.

Tamar Ziegler translated to Tamar Ziegler here. Ziegler is an Israeli mathematician known for her work in ergodic theory and arithmetic combinatorics. Much of her work has focused on arithmetic progressions, in particular extensions of the Green–Tao theorem.
Vyjayanthi Chari translated to Vyjayanthi Chari here. Chari is an Indian–American professor of mathematics at the University of California, Riverside, known for her research in representation theory and quantum algebra. In 2015 she was elected as a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
Stefanie Petermichl translated to Stefanie Petermichl here. German mathematical analyst who works as a professor at the University of Toulouse, in France. Topics of her research include harmonic analysis, several complex variables, stochastic control, and elliptic partial differential equations. She became a member of the Institut Universitaire de France in 2013.
Cornelia Druțu translated to Cornelia Druțu here. Romanian mathematician working in the areas of geometric group theory, topology, and ergodic theory and its applications to number theory. She is a fellow and a tutor in pure mathematics at Exeter College, and lecturer in the Oxford University’s mathematical institute.
Mildred Sanderson translated to Mildred Sanderson here. American mathematician, best known for her mathematical theorem concerning modular invariants. She is mentioned in the book Pioneering women in American mathematics. A Mildred L. Sanderson prize for excellence in mathematics was established in her honor in 1939 at Mount Holyoke College.

ada-lovelace-day-2-768x576 — Ada Lovelace Day 2016 attendees (Ewan McAndrew, CC-BY-SA)

Articles improved

Place of education data (University of Edinburgh) was added to Mary Fergusson (Q37215) and a new improved Histropedia timeline of female graduates of University of Edinburgh working in mathematics and engineering was created.
A summary infobox and additional information was added to the early life and academic career sections of Nora Calderwood‘s page.
Links, references & formatting were all fixed in Margaret Rock‘s page – Rock was an English cryptoanalyst who worked as a code-breaker at Bletchley Park during World War II.
The size of the Athena SWAN page was doubled.
Links were improved from Joan Robinson (British economist well known for her work on monetary economics) linked to John Eatwell (British economist and the current President of Queens’ College, Cambridge) and then Nicholas Kaldor(Cambridge economist in the post-war period) linked to Joan Robinson. Text has been drafted in sandbox to improve the Cathie Marsh page. Marsh was a sociologist and statistician who lectured at the University of Cambridge and University of Manchester. The Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research (CMIST) at the University of Manchester was named following her early death from breast cancer, aged 41.
Spelling mistake fixed on the Sue Black (computer scientist) page.
Hut 6 linked to Ann Katharine Mitchell‘s page.
Our editors learnt ab
Ada Lovelace Day 2016 attendees (Ewan McAndrew, CC-BY-SA)

out Wikidata and improved the Wikidata list on female mathematicians. They also identified sources to create the Katherine Clerk Maxwell page.
The ‘Sweden‘ section in the Elizabeth Blackwell (illustrator) page which covers the fact that Blackwell has a genus of plants named after her.
Entrepreneur First page was improved by making a link to Code First: Girls

Highlighting female success stories like these is massively important soWikiProject Women in Red (the second most active WikiProject out of 2000 or so WikiProjects) hold 5 editathons every month on and gets editors from all over the world to turn those red-linked articles on Wikipedia (i.e. ones that don’t yet exist) into blue clickable links that do; whether it be Women in Art, Women Writers, Women in Nursing, Women in Religion or Women in STEM.

To date they have been very successful, averaging 1-3000 articles a month and shifting the balance from 15% of biographies on female to 16.52%. Still a long way to go but it is important for projects like these to write women back into history.

WMUK and National Library of Scotland are hiring a Gaelic Wikipedian

Wikimedia UK and the National Library of Scotland are advertising for a Gaelic Wikipedian to help promote the Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia, Uicipeid.

Following a successful funding application to Bòrd na Gàidhlig, the department of the Scottish government which promotes Gaelic, we will be appointing a Gaelic Wikimedian who will work throughout Scotland to promote the Gaelic language by training people to improve or create resources on Uicipeid, the Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia.

This will require the Wikipedian to deliver training and events in the Western Isles, Highlands and central Scotland. The role will allow the Wikipedian flexibility in where they are based, though they will be able to work from the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh if they choose to.

Wikimedia UK launched the first Wikimedian-in-Residence programme in Scotland with the National Library of Scotland in 2013. The programme aimed to build links between the Wikimedia community and the National Library of Scotland and was followed by residencies at Museums Galleries Scotland and the University of Edinburgh. These projects are enabling us to mainstream the idea of open knowledge and open licenses within the cultural heritage and education sector, and we now want to create open educational resources to support people learning Gaelic.

If you search for ‘Scots Gaelic’ or ‘Scottish Gaelic’ on Google, the Wikipedia page for Scottish Gaelic is the top link. The 2011 national census showed that 87,056 people had some ability with Gaelic compared to 93,282 people in 2001, a decline of 6,226. However, the number of speakers of the language under age 20 has increased, and this is why Wikipedia can be such an important tool to make sure that young people continue to develop their proficiency in speaking Gaelic.

The Gaelic Wikipedian will be responsible for designing and delivering a range of activities which will encourage young Gaels to improve their language skills through editing Uicipedia. They will deliver events and workshops and work with Gaelic organisations and communities to increase knowledge about Uicipedia and increase its size and usage. They will support the development of open knowledge and open licenses and prepare progress reports to assess the impact of their work on the development of Uicipedia.

Wikimedia UK is committed to improving digital access to knowledge, culture and educational resources throughout the UK and we understand how important it is that people outside of London and other big cities can benefit from the opportunities Wikimedia projects provide. The UK is a diverse place with many cultures and languages which we are committed to supporting and representing online, so if you have a good knowledge of Gaelic and a passion for improving access to Gaelic resources, please consider applying.

To apply:

Please complete the online application form at the NLS’ website and include your current CV, a statement on why you think you are suited to the role of Gaelic Wikipedian including your level of spoken and written Scottish Gaelic, experience in designing and leading workshops or events and experience as a Wikipedia editor and your Wikipedia username if you have one.

Help shape Wikimedia UK’s delivery plans for 2017 – 18

Wikimedia UK evaluation panel, June 2016. Photo by Wolliff (WMUK) CC BY-SA 4.0

Wikimedia UK will soon be applying to the Wikimedia Foundation for an Annual Plan Grant (APG) in 2017 – 18. Longstanding volunteers, members and other stakeholders will be familiar with this process but for those of you who aren’t, an APG enables affiliated organisations around the world – including country ‘chapters’ of the global Wikimedia movement, like Wikimedia UK – to access funds raised by the Foundation through the Wikipedia banner campaign.

The deadline for proposals is 1st October and we will need to submit our draft delivery plan for next year as well as the proposal itself. On Saturday 24th September we will be holding a day of meetings to discuss and develop our proposal and our delivery plans for next year alongside the wider Wikimedia UK community. These include a meeting of the Evaluation Panel in the morning followed by a discussion focused on education from 12 – 3pm and a Planning Lab from 3 to 5pm.

The education meeting will give participants the opportunity to feed into our emerging plans for education and help us to shape an education conference in early 2017. At the Planning Lab we will share our plans for partnerships and programmes in 2017, with a view to incorporating feedback and ideas into our proposal to the Wikimedia Foundation, and enabling volunteers to identify how they might get involved with Wikimedia UK over the next year.

All meetings will take place at Development House near Old Street, London and are open to all, but signing up in advance is essential (see below for links). Refreshments including lunch during the education meeting will be provided, and support for travel is available if Wikimedia UK is notified in advance by email to karla.marte@wikimedia.org.uk.

Education eventbrite registration page.

Planning Lab eventbrite registration page.

No article? No problem.

Generating Article Placeholders on the Welsh Wikipedia

The Welsh Language Wicipedia already punches above its weight with seventy thousand articles. That’s roughly one article for every eight Welsh speakers. But now a student in Germany has developed a new tool which can fill in the gaps on Wikipedia by borrowing data from another of Wikimedia’s projects – Wikidata.

The aim of this new feature is to increase the access to open and free knowledge in Wikipedia. The Article Placeholder will gather data, images and sources from Wikidata and display it Wikipedia style, making it easily readable and accessible.

Currently the Article Placeholder is being trialled on a few smaller Wikipedia’s and after a consultation with the Welsh Wicipedia community it was agreed that we would activate the new extension here in Wales.

An Article Placeholder for Hobbits on the Welsh Wikipedia

The most obvious advantage of this functionality is the easy access to information which has not yet been included on Wicipedia, and with 20 million items in Wikidata, it’s not short on information. This in turn should encourage editors to create new articles using the information presented in the Article Placeholder.

But perhaps the most exciting aspect of using Wikidata to generate Wikipedia content, is that Wikidata speaks hundreds of languages, including Welsh! This means that many pages it generates on the Welsh Wikipedia appear entirely in Welsh.

If the Wikidata entry being used hasn’t yet been translated into Welsh, the Placeholder will display the information in English, however it is now easier than ever to link from the Placeholder to the Wikidata item and add a Welsh translation. And plans are underway to hold Translate-a-thons with Welsh speakers in order to translate more Wikidata items into Welsh.

Welsh can easily be added to any Wikidata label

It is hoped that embedding this feature into the Welsh language Wicipedia will provide Welsh speakers with a richer Wiki experience and will encourage more editors to create content and add Welsh translations to Wikidata, cementing the place of the Welsh language in the digital realm.

Jason Evans

Wikimedian in Residence

National Library of wales

Wiki Loves Monuments 2016 kicks off the world’s biggest photography competition

Wiki Loves Monuments returns to the United Kingdom in September. The competition has a heritage focus and we want your help to photograph every monument in the country. The prizes are funded by Wikimedia UK and the Open Data Institute, with £250 for best photograph and a £100 special prize for the best photo of a tax exempt heritage item.

Anyone can take part, all you need is a camera. Our interactive map lets you explore the environment around you, helping you find hidden heritage just around the corner. There are hundreds of thousands of sites which need photos!

By sharing images through Wikipedia we are creating a resource which anyone can benefit from. The photos from the competition are available under a free licence.

You can submit as many images as you want, and as long as you are the photographer and the photos are uploaded in September it doesn’t matter when they were taken.

350 people took part from the UK in 2014, submitting more than 7,000 photos. In August these images were seen by 4.3 million people on Wikipedia.

If you’re looking for inspiration use the map to see what monuments are around you. Or you can look at some of the photos from previous years.

Once you’re ready, get uploading!

You can follow Wiki Loves Monuments UK on Facebook and Twitter. To learn more about Wikimedia UK’s activities subscribe to our newsletter.