As things stand, there are large gaps in information about climate change on Wikipedia, and the content we do have is heavily weighted in US and European data. What’s more, it’s clear with only a quick search that information about policy and technology is often out of date. These factors convey a greater sense of uncertainty around climate data than is warranted by recent developments.
At Wikimedia UK, we believe that addressing Wikipedia’s gaps will better inform people about climate action. Wikipedia is the ideal platform for unbiased, cited climate information, as it already has a global audience of billions. It exists in over 300 languages and has an established, dedicated volunteer editing community of nearly 300,000 editors and contributors. The 59 million articles these editors create and maintain are accessed by over 1.5 billion unique devices every single month. We bought Climate and Environment into our 2022-25 Strategic themes to ensure a core focus on addressing the gaps. Consequently, we’re delighted to announce we have launched our first-ever climate residency in partnership with the University of Exeter.
Tatjana Baleta has been recruited as Wikimedia Visiting Fellow at the University of Exeter, within the Global Systems Institute (GSI) academic community. Embedded within this centre of excellence for climate research, Tatjana will work alongside several world-leading climate scientists, including those at the UK Met Office with whom the GSI has a strategic partnership. She will also be amongst researchers from other disciplines who are looking into climate impacts, climate justice, biodiversity and energy.
Tatjana is a conservationist and science communicator with an interest in the power of knowledge to drive change. She has a BSc in Ecology & Evolution and Genetics and a BMedSc(Hons) in Cell Biology. With a growing understanding of the global environmental crisis, she also completed an MPhil in Conservation Leadership, which she then applied to her conservation career. Tatjana is passionate about sharing her love for the natural world, and particularly about using that communication to instigate positive change.
Dr Andy Richards, Manager at GSI said of the partnership “We are very excited to be working with Wikimedia UK and the Wikimedia community, and hosting Tatjana as the first ever Wikimedia Visiting Fellow focused on climate change. We are passionate about providing unbiased and open information and making it as widely accessible as possible. Wikipedia is a powerful resource to do this.”
Well-known Wikipedian and climate change researcher Dr Femke Nijsse outlined how important Tatjana’s work is: “Wikipedia plays a key role in overcoming polarisation, but this is only possible when its content is of high quality. Involving academics means that errors and biases can be spotted and resolved more rapidly.”
If you’d like to get in touch with Tatjana, you can reach her at t.baleta@exeter.ac.uk.
We are designing our next Train the Trainer (TtT) course, and looking forward to hearing from interested volunteers.
TtT trains volunteers who are keen to deliver Wikipedia editing events. Volunteer trainers play a key role in the delivery of Wikimedia UK programmes. They extend our work to underrepresented communities and help them be part of Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. They train new and existing editors across the country. Demand for training often outstrips staff capacity to fulfil, and we’re conscious that our existing networks do not always allow us to reach all the communities with whom we’d like to work.
This training will equip candidate trainers with the skills, experience and resources to deliver a standard ‘Introduction to Wikipedia’ editathon. We will look to discuss both online and in-person events during the training.
We will have another session on ‘Developing Community Partnerships’ focusing on establishing partnerships with new communities. This session is open to applications from accredited trainers as well. It will also be an opportunity for candidate and accredited trainers to get to know each other.
Expressions of interest are welcomed from all. However, given the current demographic mix of our training network, we are particularly interested in hearing from Black, Asian and minority groups; women; and members of LGBT+ community.
The in-person training will take place in London. We will cover travel and accommodation costs, and will provide lunch and refreshments.
3.12.2022 Saturday/10:00-16:00/in-person: Debrief – mockup editathon & Theory of online and in-person training
4.12.2022 Sunday/10:00-16:00/in-person: Developing Community Partnerships
What you could expect from us
Full training and support to deliver a standard ‘Introduction to Wikipedia’ editathon and similar events
Access to event materials
Ongoing support
Volunteer expenses where appropriate
Job references upon request
What we would expect from you
Familiarity with, or desire to increase your knowledge of the Wikimedia Projects, particularly Wikipedia. Pre-course support can be provided if you feel that you would benefit from this in order to fully participate in the training
Full attendance at the training course
To lead training for a minimum of 2 events per year. This would be a mixture of third party events which we would field to you, and those you would organise yourself. Please note that we do receive requests for training to be delivered within office hours
To be responsive to communication from Wikimedia UK staff and fellow volunteers
To complete basic reporting, including returning sign up information
To represent Wikimedia UK well during the time in which you are volunteering
To adhere to our Safe Spaces policy, and the Code of Conduct
How to apply
Places are limited to make sure that each participant gets individual attention and feedback, so please apply via the following forms to express your interest. Call for interest will close on the 28th of October. You will hear from us by the 4th of November to confirm your place.
A new Wikimedia Residency is starting this month, in mini format. One of our Connected Heritage Digital Skills Wikimedians, Leah Emary, will work with The Mixed Museum for one day a week between September and December 2022. The residency has a few goals:
To work with Director Chamion Caballero and others affiliated with the museum to incorporate material from their collections into the Wikimedia Projects.
To understand existing practices at the museum and incorporate Wikipedia editing, Wikimedia Commons uploads, and Wikidata where possible.
To identify gaps on Wikipedia around the history of racial mixing in Britain and use the museum’s scholarship, research and expertise to fill them.
To train and upskill museum staff, volunteers, interns and freelancers in how to edit Wikimedia projects.
This partnership is especially exciting for Wikimedia UK, because it addresses an important and under-represented topic on the Wikimedia projects.
The Mixed Museum, with only one full-time staff member, relies heavily on partnerships to conduct its exciting and innovative work. In addition to co-curating exhibitions with academics and artists, the museum currently hosts a folk musician as the organisation’s first Artist in Residence. Director Chamion Caballero says that partnership work is critical to small organisations like The Mixed Museum, not only for producing new and creative content, but also for building robust support networks that help increase the capacity to connect, learn, share and grow. She notes that for the museum, ‘our partnerships have helped all involved to reach wider audiences, as well as access ideas, skills and funding that would be much more difficult to achieve alone.’
The residency builds upon the work of two interns earlier this year, who improved Wikipedia articles based on research for the Mixed Race Irish Families in Britain, 1700-2000 exhibition. You can find out more about that project here.
Host a resident
Are you interested in hosting a mini-residency at your heritage or cultural organisation? Come see what Connected Heritage is all about at our free, hour long webinar on Thursday 13th October at 12:30pm.
Book a 121
If you know you’re a good fit and would like to talk about hosting an editathon or undertaking a Wiki project at your organisation, book a half hour online meeting with the team.
By Robin Owain, Programme Manager for Wales at Wikimedia UK
This year, in Wiki Loves Earth, editors from all over Wales went out into protected areas such as Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty etc with cameras clicking in all directions! At the end of the day, for the number of images, Wales received the Silver Medal on the international podium for photographers, out of 36 nations. The judging at the international level now begins.
Last year’s 1,892 photos now look meagre compared to this year’s massive 5,041 images! The 10 best images will now go through to the final, but as far as numbers are concerned, Wales came second out of 36 nations, with Germany first, Kazakhstan third, Brazil fourth, and Russia fifth. Small is beautiful!
To many photographers, taking an aesthetically pleasing image, technically correct, and visually stunning are important. To me, as one of the editors (in my own time, of course), it’s equally important that we have lots of images which illustrate Wikipedia articles and which document all aspects of our natural environment. Quality and quantity!
For the second year running, the National Library of Wales, Menter Mon and Wikimedia UK organised the competition. Within weeks, we had new partners, including the Welsh Government, all three National Parks: Eryri (Snowdonia), Pembrokeshire and the Brecon Beacons as well as the Ramblers. Other existing partners included Natural Resources Wales and Llên Natur, the largest Welsh language nature society.
The National Library’s Open Data Manager, Jason Evans said, “The National Library of Wales is thrilled to be able to work with Wikimedia UK to support this fantastic competition for the second year in a row. Once again the standard of photography and the number of entries has been exceptional. It is so important to capture and record the ever-changing beauty of our natural environment and to make that content freely available to all.”
WLE 2022 was a quick snapshot of the rich diversity of one small corner of our global biosphere: a record of flora, fauna and fungi, as they were in the summer of 2022. Future snapshots could be used to show the differences in the biosphere, and the impact of climate change. If Wikipedia could better illustrate this change, we could help negate the effect. So let’s get these images on Wikipedia articles, and make a difference!
The winning image in Wales is by User:Mjw999, featured above. It shows Three Cliffs Bay within the Gower Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in South Wales. Judges Iestyn Hughes and Simon Evans, both prominent local photographers, felt that the image captured the diversity of this beautiful landscape, which includes fresh water streams, a salt marsh and towering limestone cliffs.
In second place this year is User:Naff14 with a well executed shot of a Puffin on Skomer Island, collecting flowers for his nest building.
And in third place, the judges agreed on a more abstract image of a rock on Rhossili Beach on the Gower by User:Suntooth. The judges felt that the image invoked the power of the wind and sea whilst the patterns in the sand echoed the branches of trees.
Also highly commended was the following image of footprints in the sand dunes at Gronant by User:ClwydRuth. The judges were keen to include this image as a way of raising the profile of the important but little known habitats of Gronant Dunes.
By Daria Cybulska, Director of Programmes and Evaluation at Wikimedia UK
My adventure with the Wikimedia movement started in 2012, 10 years ago. Ten years is a long time, and when I joined as a staff member at Wikimedia UK, freshly established as a charity, there were already plenty of established community members around me. I remember coming to the global Wikimania conference in 2012, where in the opening session the audience of over a thousand people were asked to stand up, and then sit down in sequence depending on how long they’ve been in the movement – starting from the newcomers. As I sat through the countdown, embarrassed by my short tenure, I got the message that what’s valued in the movement is your length of service, and a direct connection to the key moments in its history.
With English Wikipedia being established in 2001, I now have roughly the same tenure in the movement as the longest standing stalwarts at that point of Wikimania 2012. Somehow I don’t feel like one of the movement’s wise old women, despite living through some of its rather interesting moments. I also note, gladly, the movement’s tentative shift towards celebrating its newcomers.
At a recent Wikimania the countdown went from the longest standing to the newest participants, with the newbies getting an ovation when they are the last people standing.
When I joined Wikimedia, not long after completing a philosophy degree, I thought of Wikipedia as an experiment in epistemology of testimony, in how you decide to believe the information shared by someone else. Turns out things are much more complicated than that single angle, especially because the Wikipedia project doesn’t happen by itself – it’s made by people and their interactions, and that’s complicated.
Since my early days I’ve been exposed to a number of beliefs about Wikipedia and its movement which I approached with suspicion. As a way of reflecting on my ten years with Wikimedia, I’m sharing five of my enduring hesitations, meaning approaches I came across that I’m suspicious of and try to mitigate (I could go for a commemorative ten hesitations but even I would find that a bit demotivating!).
Daria at Wikimania in 2014
Build it and they’ll come
This is a common adage in the techno-social projects and movements, where you believe that when you set up a tool, a space (in terms of tech and logistics), people will appear and engage with it. I’ve had conversations with potential partner institutions believing that if they set up their own wiki, it will work just as wonderfully as Wikipedia itself, with volunteer contributors appearing out of nowhere. This might work sometimes but usually doesn’t, and it’s true even within Wikipedia across its many internal projects – the magic of Wikipedia isn’t uniformly distributed. Providing community support and facilitation is non negotiable, so is designing inviting ways of getting into the project, especially if we want to ensure inclusion. I captured some of these thoughts within a collaborative book project I supported, Collective Wisdom.
Move fast and break things
Another common tech phrase speaks to the spirit of fast iteration, putting out minimum viable products and getting them critiqued in order to improve quickly. I have fully embraced sharing my thinking and documents early and can’t quite imagine working on something without colleagues’ eyeballs on it. But moving fast and breaking things feels quite individualistic and doesn’t give justice to the communities that may be using or relying on whatever is being broken (even if to improve it).
I’m also forever astounded by how many things in the movement have been quick temporary decisions that somehow solidified into permanent solutions (not dissimilar to when you move to a new house and a temporary DIY solution you did in week 1 is somehow still there 10 years down the line). The added complication is that people come and go, and at one point nobody remembers why something is done the way it is, and who to ask about changing it.
Rely on hive mind
Because of this distributed knowledge in a distributed system, we often don’t know who has the information we require. It can be useful to crowdsource answers to a problem at hand; however, it relies on people having the time to engage. Wikimedia movement hasn’t really cracked knowledge management (has anybody?) but more effort put into documentation and making knowledge accessible would be a good thing.
Revere open knowledge
Of course I think open knowledge is a good thing and a force for good. Wikipedia has been called the last best place on the internet, and as much as I’m not into exceptionalism, perhaps there’s something to it. Often the partnerships I set up with external organisations are motivated by the inherent belief that working on open knowledge simply contributes to some greater good. However, I believe that it’s useful to be self critical about openness. This thinking has developed somewhat in recent years, with examination of ‘ethics of open’, or reflections on how the nature of the open movement is excluding some people.
Together with these tensions and criticisms there is no shortage of ideas within the movement of how to change things. Hopefully I’m wrong, but sometimes I do think that master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house – or at least that it’s pretty hard.It does seem difficult to change the Wikimedia movement, which I’ve experienced acutely while working on the implementation of the global 2030 Wikimedia vision of knowledge equity. Generalising, it’s hard for newcomers and their fresh ideas to get heard and accepted, while the thinking of the longstanding members is constrained by operating within existing movement structures and approaches (even if they’ve been DIYed!). On top of that, the movement is so beautifully amorphous that even if there are good ideas of what to change, it’s hard to know how to implement – and we’ve even tried complexity theory which is supposed to be good for such settings.
Taking the long view, however, things have changed somewhat. During that first Wikimania I attended in 2012, the organisers ran out of conference t-shirts for women – they didn’t expect quite so many of them to turn up. These days we speak of barriers to participation, ensuring friendly spaces, and try to think about how participating in Wikimedia may benefit people, rather than the project itself. I hope that with ten years of experience on my back I can continue to support and amplify these good ideas.
Dr Sara Thomas, Scotland Programme Coordinator for Wikimedia UK
On International Women’s Day, I ran training for long-term Wikimedia UK partners Protests & Suffragettes and Women’s History Scotland. The editathon focused on Scottish Suffrage(ttes), and is just one of a series of events that they’ll be running over the next few months.
A few days after the event, I was tagged in a brilliant Twitter thread from one participant and new Wikipedia editor Becky Male. Becky had been working on the Hunger Strike Medal article. I was really struck not only by her new-found enthusiasm for Wikipedia editing, but also by this quote: “Knowledge activism matters because, for most people, Wikipedia is their first port of call for new info. I did the Cat and Mouse Act in GCSE History. Don’t remember learning about the medal or the names of the women..”
We often talk about Knowledge Activism in the context of fixing content gaps that pertain to voices and communities left out by structures of power and privilege, and how the gender gap manifests in different ways on-wiki. I thought that this was a great example of how the Wikimedia community’s work is helping to address those gaps, so I reached out to Becky to ask if she’d like to write a blog for us which you can read below. Thanks Becky!
Picture of the English suffragette Emily Davison, date unknown, but c.1910-12. CC0.
By Becky Male, @beccamale
Joining Wikipedia was one of those things I’d thought about doing from time to time – I’d come across an article that was woefully short and think to myself “someone should probably do something about that”. But fear of accidentally breaking something stopped me.
But then it’s International Women’s Day, and Women’s History Scotland, Protests & Suffragettes and Wikimedia UK are organising an Editathon to get some of the information P&S has found – they’ve created fantastic educational resources on the Scottish suffrage movement – added to Wikipedia. This is the Knowledge Gap: even when things are known about women, that knowledge hasn’t made it on to Wikipedia. It’s most people’s first port of call for new information, which makes this a big problem.
So I signed up and did the intro tutorial. A misspent adolescence on LiveJournal meant the leap from basic HTML to editing in source was fairly small. And there’s something about sitting in a Zoom call of two dozen women, all a bit nervous about this process too and being told “It’s okay, you really can’t screw this up that badly” that’s genuinely reassuring – failure’s a lot less scary when you’ve got backup.
Offline, I volunteer at Glasgow Women’s Library digitising artefacts. Creating the article on the Suffragette Penny sounded like a perfect extension of that. But it was wisely suggested that I should pick an existing article for my first. The Hunger Strike Medal needed work and was similar enough to get me started.
I studied the Cat and Mouse Act for GSCE History so I already had some background knowledge of the suffragette tactic of hunger striking. I cleaned up the lead, separated the information into sections and added a few other interesting titbits – as I learned at the Editathon, Wikipedia users love trivia. But the biggest change I made was to the list of medal recipients.
The medal was the WSPU’s highest honour – not only had a woman been gaoled for her beliefs, she’d risked her life and health for the cause. The hunger strikes and subsequent force-feeding by prison authorities contributed to early deaths, caused serious illnesses, and destroyed women’s mental health. They suffered horrifically and their sacrifices deserve to be remembered.
The list is now over 90 names, each one sourced, each medal confirmed. Some I found in books, maybe just one line about them. Others I found with a Google search, the suggested images showing me new medals the deeper I went, leading me to the sites of auction houses and local museums. My favourites, though, are in newsreels from 1955, women well into their 60s still proudly wearing their medals.
There’s another 60+ hunger strikers whose medals haven’t been found yet. Some names I moved to the Talk page if the evidence doesn’t support them on the list. I can’t say for sure that this is the most comprehensive list of WSPU hunger strikers but I think it’s likely – I certainly haven’t found one anywhere else.
And I’ve still got that Suffragette Penny article to write.
Militant suffragette Janie Terrero (1858-1944) wearing her Hunger Strike Medal and Holloway brooch c1912. CC0.
Upload your photographs during June to be in with a chance of winning country and national prizes.
This year, for the second time, Wales is taking part in the international photography competition ‘Wiki Loves Earth’ organised by the Wikimedia movement. Founded 9 years ago as a focus for nature heritage, the competition aims to raise awareness of protected sites. The Welsh campaign is also organised by Wikimedia UK, the National Library of Wales and WiciMon.
Robin Owain who leads the Wikimedia UK projects across Wales said “This year, our key supporters include the Welsh Government, the Ramblers Association and all three National Parks! We are calling on people across Wales to share their photographs of nature: flora, fauna and fungi!”
This is one of the largest photography competitions in the world focusing on National Parks, Sites of Special Scientific Interest and all protected areas. Robin explained “The biodiversity and geology of Wales is unique, and this competition allows Welsh photographers to share our protected areas on a world stage.
Other organisations who will be supporting this exciting competition include Natural Resources Wales, all three National Parks: Eryri (Snowdonia), Pembrokeshire and the Brecon Beacons, Ramblers (Cymru), and both Edward Llwyd and Llên Natur nature societies.
Any photographs you have taken in the past can be uploaded during June, with prizes at both country and national level to the winners. Robin added “The competition is open to everyone. We play rugby and football on the world stage, therefore we ask our friends, volunteers and staff to take photographs on that international stage, and at the same time exhibit their photographs of our diverse countryside.”
Read more about Wiki Loves Earth 2022 in Wales here on Wikimedia Commons.
By Esma Gjertsen, Volunteer Coordinator at Wikimedia UK
I am very excited to join the Wikimedia community as a Volunteer Coordinator and look forward to contributing to volunteer engagement and diversity across the community.
I moved to the UK from Turkey where I worked as a freelance translator and civil servant for more than a decade. I studied translation for my undergraduate degree and continued my formal education with masters degrees in human rights and social policy.
I am driven by social justice and equal opportunities. I have been volunteering in the education, environment and family non-profits for almost twenty years, most recently in a UK based charity as a volunteer coordinator. I’m very happy about the career change I’m going through and joining the third sector as a professional to make a meaningful impact with my experience and skills. I am hoping to advance Wikimedia UK’s efforts to reach out and bring in more people from underrepresented communities and support them to share their knowledge and expertise through open and free platforms.
I am currently familiarising myself with our work (reading lots of articles and documents and talking to colleagues) – and am very eager to join in the mission.
I’m very open to new ideas and brainstorming – just reach out and say hello at esma.gjertsen@wikimedia.org.uk.
The Connected Heritage team is offering more public, free events and webinars in 2022 as the project progresses. If you work or volunteer for a heritage or cultural organisation, please do come along.
Webinars
If you want to learn more about the Connected Heritage project, or find out why editing Wikimedia projects is a great way to enhance digital skills while at the same time improving the long term preservation and findability of your collections – come along to a webinar.
In the one-hour webinar Leah Emary and Dr. Lucy Hinnie will introduce the Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia, and outline the benefits of engaging with these sites. The talk will last for about 45 minutes, with 15 minutes for questions and discussion with the audience.
Wikipedia is read 22 billion times a month, making it one of the most visited websites in the world. It is a crucial way to share knowledge. Wikimedia UK is a registered charity and has received funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to help heritage and cultural organisations develop skills, tools and communities of practice for the sustainable digital preservation of heritage.
If you work or volunteer for a heritage or cultural organisation, please do come along.
After this webinar, participants will understand more about open knowledge; know how to follow up if they would like to continue with the project; and have resources and materials to make a case for participation to organisation leaders.
To sign up for a Zoom webinar, please select from the following dates, and register via Eventbrite. You need only attend one webinar. Sessions are free, open and no prior Wiki experience is required.
Wikithons
If you’re already convinced and are ready to start editing, come to an Edit-a-thon.
Our Potluck Wikithons are designed to offer a taster of what a Wikithon would offer for a partner organisation. Participants are encouraged to bring along material that they would like to work with, and we will train them in how to edit Wikipedia and add material to Wikimedia Commons. They are a lot of fun, and a great way to see what it is that we offer.
In this post, Anastasia reflects on the process of editing a Wikipedia article, and the challenges it presented. You can read more about the Mixed Museum internships in our blog, and over at The Mixed Museum website.
The Mixed Museum
March was an extremely beneficial and eventful month. Working alongside such ambitious experts was extremely helpful in furthering my existing knowledge about editing and writing and learning new skills such as using Wikipedia. I am grateful to the Mixed Museum for giving me an exciting opportunity to work with and learn from the Wikimedia team members.
After starting my internship, I became acquainted with the Wikimedia UK team through an insightful Potluck Wikithon. It was fascinating to get to know the inside-outs of Wikipedia, as I could have never imagined that so much work needed to be done to create a single credible article. It was a challenge to adapt to the writing style of Wikipedia at first, as it seemed so different from that of university essays. Wikipedia requires a factual, detached description of events, whereas personal opinion and thorough, logical analysis are the basis of the papers I am so used to. However, the support I was getting from both the Mixed Museum and Wikimedia was highly useful in overcoming the challenges I faced.
When I first began editing my assigned page, Black people in Ireland, I felt that it was far from what we were hoping to end up with. I noticed that some information was shallow, and many sections lacked credible sources. Unfortunately, I was forced to delete some of the claims as I could not prove their reliability, since there were no available sources to back them. I improved the article to show that Black people’s history in Ireland is more profound and complex than considered before.
I believe that education is crucial for the formation of independent-minded and tolerant people, and Wikipedia can help that cause by working on articles concerning minorities’ histories. Being the most accessible resource for young people all over the world, Wikipedia needs to uphold a high standard in showcasing not only the history of oppression but also the lifestyles of those minorities.
Another challenge was one of the main tasks of the internship: searching for and adding pictures to the page I was editing. I found it complicated to understand the copyright and laws concerning the usage of photographs, despite detailed explanations from the team during the introduction section. I was able to retrieve several pictures from the Wikipedia domain after researching the process. However, finding relevant photos with appropriate copyrights was hard, as most are reserved for exclusive use, and the rights to publish these can only be purchased.
Although the work I was doing throughout the internship was mainly independent, I never felt like I was left alone to deal with all the aspects of the job. The team was highly supportive via Slack and email most days. Slack was especially useful, as it felt like a social media website, where one could chat with colleagues via instant messages and get responses quicker. It was also less formal than traditional means of business communication, which helped me feel more comfortable asking questions.
This experience was precious, as I have acquired essential skills, worked with Wikimedia software, and communicated with two professional teams to spread awareness about such a crucial topic. I hope that my contribution made an impact on the Wikipedia audience and helped someone out there learn more about Black Irish history.
