This post was written by Richard Scriven, a geography researcher who attended the event below, and is re-used with kind permission. It was first published here.
A recent Wiki workshop for geographers organised by Wikimedia UK and the RGS-IBG, demonstrated the positive role that people can play in both disseminating knowledge and contributing to the online resources. The workshop outlined the ideas central to Wikipedia, the operating principles and ways of creating and editing content. Beyond the particulars, I took three main points away from the day, which I think worth sharing.
1. Wikipedia is an important tool. It is much maligned in the academy, but this approach puts the emphasis on the wrong aspect: the tool is not the issue, how you use it is. It should be appreciated for what it can do and not dismissed for what it can’t. Wikipedia is a gateway or a starting point for general information, summaries and signposting. If someone misuses it in an academic context, this is not Wikipedia’s fault, it is more likely a case of poor online literacy and/or bad judgement. The session helped me form a renewed appreciation for Wikipedia.
2. We have a role and even a duty to participate. We all have knowledge, skills and access that are not available to the others and these can be used to benefit discussions, debates and understandings. This is especially true for those in university settings. My own interest saw me gravitating towards areas such as social and cultural geography or research methods where I found articles I could contribute to. Anyone with an area of expertise can contribute to these sections. The content is decided by those who write it, but in the case of Wikipedia that editor/author can, and should be, you.
3. It is easy. The editing and creating of content is very accessible. With a little knowledge, you can do a lot. The singular common observation from the workshop participants was the ease with which we could use the site. There are also numerous supports available through Wikipedia from simple guides to opportunities to seek assistance, such as The Teahouse, ‘a friendly space where new editors can ask questions about contributing to Wikipedia and get help from peers and experienced editors’. Just get started, dip your toe into the Wikipedian waters and contribute.
Over the last year, I’ve been working with Jisc, the national charity providing expertise on digital technology for education and research, to explore how academia and Wikimedia can work more closely together. From an office in the University of Bristol, I’ve reached out to lecturers, librarians and other staff across the country, running events and creating guidance documentation. It has also been a chance to explore these experts’ perceptions of Wikipedia and its sister sites.
Although the Wikimedia sites aim for universal accessibility, their complexity and patchy documentation can be off-putting for newcomers. Then again, there are extremely helpful resources that just need to be better-known, such as the educator portal and case study booklet, expert outreach portal, or guidance for new users.
The project supported three ’editathon’ events, delivering free training in using scholarly resources to improve Wikipedia. These included the first-ever editathons on veterinary science (hosted by WikiVet) and medical humanities (hosted by the Wellcome Library). The Women in Science editathon hosted at Oxford University was one of the most successful ever in terms of content created and improved, including five articles that were linked from the front page of Wikipedia. Since the relative lack of female Wikipedians has been in the news recently, I’m pleased to say that the great majority of contributors at these Jisc-supported events have been female.
One of the main outputs of the project is an infoKit, Crowdsourcing: the wiki way of working. It looks at cultural reasons for Wikipedia’s success and shows how professionals and volunteers can work together to create or improve scholarly and educational materials.
Another output is the collaboration flowchart, which shows how Wikimedia sites including Wikidata, Wikisource, and Wikimedia Commons can benefit projects in scholarly and educational sectors. In each case, the flowchart suggests next steps and key links.
This press release was issued on 1 July by Wikimedia UK, the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimania 2014 team
– *Featured speakers include Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and new Wikimedia Foundation Chief Executive Lila Tretikov; Thousands of Wikimedia volunteers; Leaders in Technology, Culture and Society. From August 8th to 10th at the Barbican Centre; Tickets go on sale today.*
– *Wikimania programme to focus on Social Machines, The Future of Education, Democratic Media, Open Scholarship & Open Data*
Wikimania’s 2014 team today announce the programme for this year’s historic event. Wikimania 2014 will be held at the Barbican Centre in London from 8th to 10th August, with a two day pre-conference held August 6th and 7th. Over 4,000 attendees are expected; more than twice the number at any previous Wikimania.
The future of Wikipedia, and other Wikimedia projects, forms the central theme. As technological advances promise big changes on the platform, Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales will delve into what the future has in store
for the world’s fifth most popular website.
“Wikipedia is the largest knowledge base in the world, consulted by over half a billion people each month,” says Wales. “However, we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of what can be done with it. Through international expansion, a new focus on open data, and a big investment in technology development, our movement is charting exciting new territory.”
Attendees will also welcome Wikimedia’s new executive director, Lila Tretikov. Her keynote will focus on the impact of Wikipedia in our changing world and its potential for our future. Tretikov sees Wikipedia, a top five website, as an opportunity to for unlocking and democratizing knowledge globally: “I’d like us to think beyond what we know today. Think beyond our accomplishments, towards opportunities. Opportunities for all our collective minds to build the future of knowledge, collaboration and trust.” Recent developments have included plans focused on overhauling Wikipedia’s user experience for readers and editors, a programmatic approach to grant-making and community, and establishing a development platform for knowledge building.
Open to the public, Wikimania is a five-day, community-organised event focusing on new projects in the world of MediaWiki, transparency, and open knowledge. Themes include collaborative working, natural language
processing, crowdsourcing, education, journalism, scientific and medical research, open data, and multimedia.
Wikimedia UK education organiser Dr Toni Sant delivering his keynote presentation at the 6th International Integrity and Plagiarism Conference at the Sage, Gateshead on 17 June 2014.
This post was written by Hannah Jones, Wikimedia UK education volunteer
Some readers of this blog may remember me from EduWiki 2013 in Cardiff or the more recent Future of Education Workshop ahead of Wikimania, but most others will probably not know me as a volunteer on other Wikimedia UK activities. I have worked mostly with Dr Toni Sant and Darren Stephens on Wikipedia classroom assignments at the University of Hull’s Scarborough Campus. I am also a postgraduate student in education at York College.
From the 16th to the 18th of June 2014 I attended the 6th International Conference on Integrity and Plagiarism at the Sage Gateshead, just across the Tyne River from Newcastle. It was an excellent opportunity to meet other educators and discuss Wikipedia in the context of this conference. It was also an excellent opportunity to catch Dr Sant’s keynote address on the second day of this event.
He took the stage in Hall 2’s impressive theatre in the round, in front of an audience of about 200 delegates. After an introduction by Turnitin’s Senior Vice President Will Murray, Toni started off by introducing the efforts of the Wikimedia movement to support the use of Wikipedia and sister projects in education.
Taking a leaf out of a recent report by Turnitin entitled What’s Wrong With Wikipedia?, Toni proceeded to outline the perceived problems with Wikipedia in higher education. On the one hand, students in Higher Education are largely consumers/readers, are unaware of what Wikipedia really is, and use it freely as a source for their (research) papers. On the other hand, academics continue to discourage the use of encyclopedias in general, and while fully aware that students use Wikipedia widely, they are mostly against the use of Wikipedia at University.
Paraphrasing a CC-by-SA slide from Jake Orlowitz, who gave a similar presentation earlier this year, Toni pointed out that Wikimedia and academia are natural allies. Wikipedia is often the starting point for research, but it can lead students back to sources, so they can critically think about subjects, understanding knowledge production, contributing to Wikipedia, and in the process deepening their learning.
I believe that Wikimedia UK’s presence at such conferences, especially when represented by professional experts from within its staff and volunteer members is just the right approach to ensure that Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects find a comfortable home in higher education settings. Our chapter has some very valuable resources to offer the UK higher education sector, and getting the word out to educators who are seeking solutions to the perceived problems in Education that involve Wikipedia is essential. I was simply amazed by the number of people who approached me during the conference saying that they never saw Wikipedia in a positive light as an academic resource before listening to Toni’s keynote presentation.
This post was written by Jon Davies, Wikimedia UK’s Chief Executive
I thought I’d share this with you:
‘Dear Jon
Thank you for the opportunity to attend the xxxxxx. It was a privilege to meet such an interesting group of people and hear about the laudable ambitions and achievements of the Wikimedia organisation.
You inspired me to try editing a Wikipedia page; so today I have joined the rank of wiki-editors and updated the page about my village. And yes it was just as easy as you described.
I’ll certainly be spreading the word and encouraging other people to do likewise.
Kind regards
xxxxxx’
All I did was explain to this well educated middle aged woman a) how everyone had something to contribute; b) how women were not properly represented and; c) how to press the ‘edit’ button. I have asked her which page she edited and hope her edit has been welcomed.
This post was written by Stevie Benton, Wikimedia UK’s head of external relations
This weekend saw the latest in the series of Wikimania fringe events. This time, the focus was on the future of education – what role do the Wikimedia projects play in the education world?
The two-day event was attended by around 30 people from a variety of backgrounds, including teachers, academics and Wikimedians. The group explored several topics, including the Wikipedia Education Program and visions of the where the group would like the relationship between Wikipedia and education in one year, five years and ten years.
We were fortunate to be joined by Floor Koudijs from the Wikimedia Foundation and by LiAnna Davis and Jami Mathewson from the Wiki Education Foundation who all shared with us some excellent insight into how the Wikipedia Education Program works and its reach.
One thing that struck me as particularly interesting is the potential that the WEP has to address the gender gap on Wikipedia. Current estimates are that around 9-12% of Wikipedia editors are female. However, that percentages soars to 61% (and higher in some cases) when examining the WEP.
Digital literacy was a recurring theme throughout the two days of the event. If some way can be researched and implemented to encourage the development of these skills through the use and editing of Wikimedia projects, there’s the potential to deliver great impact.
The second day of the conference was spent with short presentations on various topics before breaking into groups to plan sessions for a pre-Wikimania education event to take place alongside the Hackathon at the Barbican on 6-7 August. Plans for those sessions were developing well and more information will be available soon.
More more details of the event, you can see the etherpad notes here. For more information about other upcoming fringe events, and the conference itself (including details of how to book your tickets) visit the main Wikimania website.
The opportunity came about as the result of the work that Wikimedia UK is doing with Demos in attempting to crowdsource a submission to the Commission on the theme of digital scrutiny. (If you haven’t participated yet, please get involved here, it’s open to everyone. Simply click the edit button and get stuck in.)
The session brought together people from the Commission with technology experts and activists to examine how digital technologies can encourage participation in the democratic process.
Something that was reinforced very quickly was the important distinction between between government – the collection of elected representatives that write and enact legislation – and Parliament, in this case the body as a whole, including the infrastructure and systems, and which was our main focus.
A number of themes emerged from the workshop but there were two that left the deepest impression upon me.
Firstly, that for digital democracy to work there needs to be a level of trust on the part of parliament – citizens must be trusted to make meaningful contributions to the debate and this means opening things up and encouraging participation.
Secondly, that when we break down the phrase “digital democracy” we realise that the digital part is actually pretty easy. There are plenty of tools that exist that could be successfully utilised to support democratic engagement, and building new ones if they were required wouldn’t be too difficult (relatively speaking, of course). It’s the democracy bit that’s difficult.
My own take on this is that we need to move away from the widespread feeling that democracy comes down to making a mark on a ballot paper every few years. For democracy to be effective, participation needs to shift away from the ballot box and into the every day processes that form a functioning and mature democracy. But those taking part need to be assured that their contribution is are meaningful and valued, even if their views don’t always win out.
There is a long way to go here before we get close to realising the potential that digital technologies offer to democracy. But the Commission is very serious about pushing forward change and opening up the democratic process to wider engagement through the use of digital. They should be applauded for this and, as citizens, we should be prepared to contribute our efforts towards making this successful.
For further reading, I recommend this excellent blog post by James Smith of the Open Data Institute. James was in the same working group as myself and his contributions to the debate were particularly insightful.
This blog post was written by John Cummings, Wikimania support at Wikimedia UK
Last weekend the Wikimania Fringe Free Culture event took place at the Barbican Centre with 20 people attending from a range of cultural organisations, Wikimedia chapters, open knowledge projects and members of the public.
Navino Evans demonstrating Histropedia
Saturday
A series of talks on topics related to open knowledge took place, presented by a wide range of speakers:
Further notes on talks are available on the event Etherpad here.
Sunday
Sunday was used as a space for discussion of open projects, sharing knowledge and planning future work. The day included a tour of Conservatory at the Barbican Centre by the events Manager. Further photos of the event are available here.
Tour of the Barbican Centre Conservatory
Future Wikimania events
There are a number of future Wikimania events, culminating in Wikimania on the 8–10 August at the Barbican Centre.
Tickets for Wikimania are available here, early bird tickets are available until July 1st, all fringe events are free to attend.
£55: Three-day ticket to Wikimania and hackathon
£45: Three-day ticket to Wikimania
£30: One-day ticket to Wikimania
Volunteering
There are many opportunities to get involved in Wikimania; we will need volunteers in the run-up to the conference and to help with the smooth running of Wikimania itself. For most tasks you don’t need to be a Wikipedia editor and you don’t need any experience – just a willingness to help! For more information see Your Wikimania Needs You!To register to volunteer at Wikimania please sign up here, for questions contact hera@wikimanialondon.org.
Some of the participants and trainers at the editathon
This post was written by Doug Taylor, Wikimedia UK volunteer
It all started in January when Dave Robertson, who works at Barclays Technology, emailed Jimmy Wales with an idea to get his colleagues at Barclays editing Wikipedia. Not just that, but he wanted to get more women involved in editing – and it would be a global event involving Barclays sites word-wide.
Jimbo was encouraging, even as he was warning of the dangers of editing on topics where a conflict of interest could occur. He introduced Dave to Jon Davies, CEO of Wikimedia UK, who asked me if I’d be interested in helping them out. I have no connection with Barclays and the ideas ticked all the boxes for me: finding new editors; engaging more women; a global reach; and plenty of scope for training.
So a few phone calls later I paid a visit the technology centre at Knutsford to meet Dave, Sarah Firth, Carol Morris, and the rest of the folks who were putting their efforts into the project. I soon grasped that Barclays has a staff development programme that encourages their staff to broaden their perspective, take on new skills and develop abilities like collaboration and research. The concept of global Wikipedia editathon ticked all those boxes for them as well, so we set to work in creating a structure for a large event that would span the globe on Thursday12 June.
I was very pleasantly surprised by the rapid response to my enquiry to WMF legal for permission to use Wikimedia trademarks for the internal publicity. Kudos to Andrei Voinigescu for giving me a positive reply within 10 hours!
I was keen to get editors registered and it turns out that’s a good idea from Barclays side as well. They were concerned with the possibility of somebody anonymously editing from the Barclays site and causing problems on Wikipedia with a consequent bad press for them. Having everyone who would take part register an account gave us some assurance that we could correlate edits with any problems that might occur.
I was also determined to make sure that editors would not go into the day “cold” so I proposed a series of sessions leading up to the editathon where we could spread the message about Wikipedia, teach the basics of editing and try to mitigate the steep learning curve of polices, conventions and conflicts that acts as such a huge barrier to becoming a Wikipedia editor. The first result was a launch day where I gave a presentation to interested staff at Knutsford and a video was made to advertise the event. This was followed by an in-person training session where I took about a dozen staff through a training session on basic editing.
It soon became apparent that the idea had taken off and a lot of interest was growing in Singapore, India, Lithuania and the USA and I wanted to encourage as many sites as possible to become self-sufficient, so finding active Wikimedians locally was sensible. Jon Davies knew a contact in India, Pranav Curumsey, and I put Arun and the Barclays team in India in contact with him. It took a little bit longer for the States, but Asaf Bartov at WMF suggested the NYC Chapter, and Newyorkbrad put me in contact with Richard Knipfel, who was able to liaise with Miles Dolphin at Barclays in NY.
Barclays uses WebEx for conferencing, and it was suggested I might like to use it to do training sessions for the far-flung new editors. I miss the feedback I would get from face-to-face training, but it seemed an interesting challenge. So sitting at home at 9 am in the morning. I connected via video and audio links to about sixty potential editors from Singapore and India and shared my browser with them. An hour later, I was reasonably confident that I’d managed to get across the main points of basic editing. Later that same day I repeated the exercise for around 40 participants from Lithuania and the East coast of the USA. By the time of the editathon, I’d done eight of those sessions covering ‘basic editing’, ‘more advanced topics’, and ‘what to write on Wikipedia’.
On the day, the preparation paid off. Harry Mitchell and Dan Haigh joined us for the event at the Barclays Technology Centre Radbooke, near Knutsford, and worked all day giving advice and encouragement to the new editors there. Around the world we had had 460 registrations of interest; around half of them showed up and edited on the day. There were 472 “saves” and 378 articles edited or created across 18 different language Wikipedias from 12 different Barclays sites. The topics edited ranged from ABBA to Zeng Jenlian.
I’d like to express my thanks to everyone who made the day a success. I’m convinced that the format works and that Wikimedia can forge links with commercial entities with the right sort of benefits for each. I’m now looking forward to a follow-up event at Barclays sometime soon.
Wikimedia UK and the Office for National Statistics have been working together to improve the public’s understanding of statistics through the improvement of and in some cases creation of Wikipedia articles which cover UK statistics. Wikipedia is a free, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia, editable by everyone, it is the largest encyclopedia ever written, available in 285 languages. It receives around 500 million unique visitors each month totalling 21 billion page views. The goal of the Wikimedia movement is for every single human being to be able freely share in the sum of all knowledge.
The Office for National Statistics Digital Publishing Division have been working with John Cummings, a Wikimedia community volunteer on a range of projects to help make statistics more accessible to a wider audience. John has been training ONS staff to improve and create Wikipedia articles that include UK statistics and educating staff about Wikimedia projects through presentations to ONS staff and statisticians from across government departments.
“Statistics are an essential part of understanding the world and the Office for National Statistics provides much of this vital information about the United Kingdom. We are very happy to work with them to make this information more available. Wikipedia is a resource everyone can contribute to and Office for National Statistics has a unique and valuable contribution to make to open knowledge through it’s statistics and the wonderful infographics that help people understand this information in different way.“
Jon Davies Chief Executive, Wikimedia UK
Andrew Clark, Head of Social Media at ONS and John have been making a number of infographics, produced by the ONS design team, available on Wikipedia through Wikimedia Commons which is made easy by the ONS’s Open Government License. The infographics are used on Wikipedia articles covering a range of subjects including Preterm birth, Lung Cancer, the Economy of the United Kingdom and Languages of the United Kingdom which receive over 400,000 views per month on Wikipedia.
“Working with Wikipedia has already helped us to extend the reach of our data and analysis beyond that of our expert users, through channelling accessible and innovative digital products. We hope that by continuing this relationship and involving our statistical community in the validation of ONS content on Wikipedia pages, we can ensure that statistics become trusted and accessible by all”
Matt Jukes Head of Digital Content, Office for National Statistics
How much did the UK spend on healthcare in 2012?
Avoidable mortality in England and Wales, 2001-2011
The number of civil servants employed in the UK in 2013 is 448,840
Contributions to the UK economy in 2011 by region
Prevalence of Limiting Long-Standing Illness or Disability, Great Britain, 2012
Sexual Identity in the UK, 2012
What barriers do people face when accessing work, transport, education and training?
Lung cancer, incidence, mortality and survival, England 1971 – 2011
About the Office for National Statistics
The Office for National Statistics is responsible for collecting and publishing statistics related to the economy, population and society at national, regional and local levels. It also conducts the census in England and Wales every ten years.
About Wikimedia UK
Wikimedia UK is the local Wikimedia chapter covering the United Kingdom and supports volunteer editors of, and contributors to, Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects such as Wikimedia Commons.
