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.

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 post Looking back at the 2024 Celtic Knot Conference appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

Wiki Loves Folklore is an international Wiki competition celebrating Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) across the world – like Wiki Loves Monuments, or Wiki Loves Earth, but for folk culture: festivals, music, food, dances, customs, storytelling, mythology, and seasonal events.  

As someone with a keen interest in all things folklore and intangible cultural heritage, I’m really keen to participate this year. And, as the start of the competition (1st February) coincided with Imbolc, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to capture some images…

In my non-Wiki life I spend a fair bit of time volunteering with other charities, one of which is the Beltane Fire Society in Edinburgh. Most of our year is taken up with working towards the celebration of two of the Celtic quarter days (Beltane and Samhuinn) with large fire festivals, but we sometimes put on smaller, community-focussed events at other points on the wheel of the year, like Yule / winter solstice. This year, the woman currently embodying the role of May Queen led on the organisation of a community storytelling event at the Scottish Storytelling Centre for Imbolc / Imbolg / Brigid’s day, and as part of that, I helped to run a couple of workshops on how to make Brigid’s crosses (in this context, used as protection symbols for house and home) – capturing a few images for Wiki Loves Folklore as I went.

The UK Government is currently consulting on “some of the decisions regarding the first stage of implementing” the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, the ratification of which is supported by the Intangible Cultural Heritage Scotland Partnership (which includes long-term Wikimedia UK partners Museums Galleries Scotland).  

Usually, when we talk about digital preservation of (cultural) heritage we’re discussing buildings, or physical artefacts like paintings. ICH can present some interesting challenges – how does an archivist approach a community tradition, or a way of life? One of the key points for me is reflected in the language of the UNESCO convention – the “safeguarding” of ICH, rather than the “preservation” – reflecting the fact that folk practices necessarily change over time, or location, for example. From a Wikimedia point of view, Wiki Loves Folklore is a wonderful opportunity to capture and share the culture of our communities.  

How to take part in Wiki Loves Folklore

You can find the landing page for the competition as a whole on Wikimedia Commons, as well as the individual upload pages for different countries. The competition runs 1st Feb – 31st March.

It’s a really simple process – just click on the “upload” button to upload images through the upload wizard, adding captions, descriptions, categories, and structured data. Remember also to enable email through your account, as this is how the international organisers would contact you if you win a prize!  

Scotland, Wales, and England pages for the international competition.

Ireland page for the competition run by Wikimedia Community Ireland.

To enable us to continue to preserve cultural heritage, you can support our Wikimedia UK’s work with a donation.

The post Celebrating Imbolc with Wiki Loves Folklore appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

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

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

Lightning Talks

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

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

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

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

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

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

In memoriam

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

UK Wikimedian of the Year Awards

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

UK Wikimedian of the Year: Nick Sheppard

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

Up and Coming Wikimedian: Heidi Berg 

Opportunity Fair

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join us

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

The post WMUK 2023 Community Meeting – videos and opportunities appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

This year marks the 10^th Anniversary of the merger of New College Lanarkshire and as part of this the college offered a large number of free evening courses. One of these courses was the Become a Wikimedian Course which was an 11 week course that was conducted online. Throughout this course 10 students learned how to make positive contributions to multiple Wiki platforms, such as Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

For many years Wikipedia has been viewed in a negative light by educators, however, this course has highlighted what a positive tool Wikipedia can be for learners.  Knowing how to use the platform properly to bolster research is key to its success.  The students quickly understand how Wikipedia can be used as a springboard to delve deep into research on a specific topic. This course used the 12 week syllabus available on Wikimedia Commons to provide a basic structure to the course. We spent the first week exploring the ‘5 Pillars of Wikipedia’ and subsequent weeks looked at creative writing techniques, critical evaluation of Wikipedia articles and research materials. The course also focussed on research skills and allowed the students ample opportunity to work in small groups and peer reviewed each other’s research and edits. 

Furthermore, the course allowed plenty of time for students to make their contributions to Wikipedia. They all felt a great sense of achievement once their edits went live and enjoyed watching the dashboard and seeing the impact their edits were having. 

Lesley-Anne, a student on the course, stated “throughout the course, my eyes have been opened to the world of Wikipedia, and my previous negative perception of how useful a tool it can be has been blown out of the water. From a further education point of view, I can’t emphasise enough how useful this would have been when I was studying for my social sciences HND. It would have been incredible to have been able to enhance my research, writing, referencing and critical analysis skills by putting them into practice at the same time as making meaningful contributions to Wikipedia. I also feel it would be a really useful module for students to take alongside various Access/NC/HNC/HND courses, and I think that the group work and peer review element would undoubtedly help so many students build up their confidence in going forward in their studies. There is genuinely so much that can be gained from participating in the course.” While Ben said he “really enjoyed the course, going through college and university you are taught that using Wikipedia is wrong… however, it is clear that we need to be taught how to use it correctly instead of being shunned away from it. This course offered me the opportunity to be taught a new skill… Fundamentally, I believe that this course… would offer an accessible and easy to use stepping stone to more academic websites for research.”

Hopefully, this course will be offered again at New College Lanarkshire and we can build on the success of this one! Personally, I felt that the student engagement on this course was brilliant. They thoroughly enjoyed the whole research process and having a tangible outcome kept them motived to continue with their edits. 

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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!

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.

The post Women’s suffrage and the Hunger Strike Medal appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

Volunteer A: The chance to ‘Wiki edit’ has been a revelation to me! Although, (like everyone I know), I have used Wikipedia extensively I never thought it possible to actually contribute. The tuition sessions were really informative and I would recommend it to anyone to give it a try.

Following a conversation with a colleague in curatorial, Rebecca Pierce from the National Galleries of Scotland got in contact with me towards the end of 2020 to ask about running a mini editathon with some of their volunteers, to focus on female artists and sitters of works held in the Scottish Collection.  We ran that event in December 2020, followed by another on 17th February 2021, and then 29th March 2021.  The first two focussed on an introduction to editing Wikipedia, with the third looking in more depth at how to build a good biography, and integrate biographical information into the encyclopedia.  

Volunteer B: Thank you also to Dr Sara for being so cheery and helpful and patient!  I came away with a big smile, feeling very proud of myself and genuinely upskilled in something that I didn’t know a lot about before.

Rebecca was looking for ways to keep volunteers engaged over lockdown, when access to the Galleries, and thus the usual volunteering tasks, wasn’t possible.  And indeed, it’s proven to be very popular amongst the volunteer pool, who so far, have contributed over 50 hours to the project. 

Rebecca Pierce, NGS: Virtual volunteering is quite far removed from the usual way that the National Galleries of Scotland’s Volunteer Programme operates; so, adapting to create meaningful volunteer opportunities presented quite the challenge. Running new Wiki-editing initiatives has allowed us to create collaborative, supported, and flexible opportunities that can meet the interests of numerous volunteers. It has quickly become one of the most popular aspects of our online programme. Better yet, Wikipedia editing has allowed volunteers to further engage with the Collection and to raise the profiles of lesser known and underrepresented artists. During March, we hosted a month-long edit in celebration of International Women’s Day and volunteers contributed a phenomenal 50 hours towards creating and editing the pages of female Scottish artists. A truly fantastic result that could not have been achieved without the support of Dr Thomas and Wikimedia. 

This is the kind of work that doesn’t have to stop when lockdown eases, and we’re already planning on how to continue with the Galleries.  This type of volunteering can be done remotely, in-person, or in a hybrid fashion.  Volunteers can carry out research at home and at their leisure, at hours that suit them, or could (once restrictions allow), go on-site to carry out research at one of the Gallery sites.  Editing can be done in group settings or at the volunteer’s leisure, again in-person or remotely. This opens up digital volunteering opportunities to those for whom in-person events would present a challenge due to access requirements.

Volunteer C: I’m afraid that I got rather hooked and have spent a bit of time on some of my chosen subjects. Part of the fun is to find proper sources to back up the article or edit. This can take you on wonderful tangents and nooks and crannies of the internet and books and articles!

Even after the sessions had finished [Sara] was available and was able to help by email. I am now weeks into my research and keep finding more information…but I have to stop soon and publish!

A most enjoyable experience and a pleasure to be a Wikipedia editor and part of a worldwide family.

The availability of this activity during lockdown provided an interesting and worthwhile activity in which volunteers could engage, teaching them new skills and allowing a global audience for their work. For Wikimedia UK, it allows us to expand our pool of volunteer editors, the Scottish Wiki community, and to help contribute quality information on underrepresented content on the encyclopedia.  

Volunteer D: The Wikipedia editing programme at the National Galleries of Scotland with Dr Sara Thomas has been a brilliant initiative to start being part of a collaborative worldwide team of editors! Thanks to these encouraging sessions of collective learning I began to learn the instruments and policies for sharing knowledge on Wikipedia and so to contribute to make it free, reliable, accurate and accessible to everyone.

Articles created or improved so far with the Virtual Volunteering group include Harriet Carr, Elizabeth Price, and Flora Macdonald Reid.

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In Summer 2020, I organised my first Wikipedia Editathon as part of the Women in STEM Connect series. With an eye-opening talk, physicist and Wikipedia diversity advocate, Dr Jess Wade introduced me to the issue of underrepresentation on Wikipedia and left me, and seemingly all our attendees, feeling inspired to start editing Wikipedia. With training from University of Edinburgh Wikimedian in Residence, Ewan McAndrew, and a total of 15 editors, we were able to contribute fourteen thousand words, edit forty-two articles and add five new articles to Wikipedia by the end of the event. I created my first Wikipedia article on Dr Jessica Borger, an Australian T-Cell immunologist, and caught the editing bug!

To celebrate International Womens’ Day 2021, Edinburgh University Women in STEM (EUWiSTEM) has joined forces with 5 other female and gender minority lead societies: Edinburgh University Women in Business, Women in Law, Women in Politics and International Relations, EconWomen, and Hoppers, the society of women and gender minorities in Informatics. Together we are hosting Women EmpowerED, a week-long celebration aiming to showcase the achievements of women in different fields and discuss the issues women currently face, with a focus on cross-disciplinary inclusion. 

The theme of International Womens’ Day 2021 is #ChooseToChallenge. Fitting with that theme, it is important we acknowledge the achievements of diversity and inclusion initiatives but it is equally crucial that we continue to challenge the norms and push for further improvements. Women EmpowerED has chosen to kick-off our celebrations on March 6th with an event that fits these aims perfectly – a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon. At this event, we aim to improve the representation of women and gender minorities on Wikipedia, focusing on those who have chosen to challenge societal norms, and inspirational women in the host societies’ fields. Ewan McAndrew will be providing editing training during the event, helping us to make Wikipedia editing accessible to all. 

We are pleased to be welcoming Bruce and John Usher Professor of Public Health in the Usher Institute, Dr Linda Bauld, to give a talk on the importance of representation online at the Edit-a-thon. Online platforms now have a massive influence on society, and most of these platforms are rife with internet ‘trolls’, and political agendas. As the fifth most visited website worldwide, and what is designed to be a source of reliable information for users, it is crucial that Wikipedia is free from bias and abuse. As Jess Wade explains in a 2018 TEDXLondon talk, “the majority of history has been written by men, about men, for other men.” 

But we can start to change that through Wikipedia. 

In our event, not only will we add and improve articles for women and gender minorities, but we also hope to increase the diversity of its editors, making a lasting impact on Wikipedia. 

If you would like to learn how to edit articles or assist in our mission to improve diversity on Wikipedia, you can get tickets to our editathon on eventbrite.

For more information on Women EmpowerED visit our website.

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I have steered my students away from Wikipedia for years, envisioning my role as a teacher to show students how to carry out ‘real’ research. But this year convinced me it was time to change my attitude, and so for 2020’s Fall term I put editing Wikipedia at the heart of Stars, Robots and Talismans: Science, Magic and Medieval Islamic Visual Culture, my fourth-year Honours module. I normally approach my undergraduate classes as workshops, encouraging collaborative experiments with digital tools, so experimenting with Wikipedia was a natural step. But unlike previous class experiments, I didn’t know the first thing about editing Wikipedia and neither did the students. And while a few of the students had studied Islamic art with me before, none  came with any background in history of Islamic science and technology. Moreover, all of us were facing the uncertainties of our first online semester necessitated by Covid-19 restrictions. It was completely unfamiliar terrain that we would have to navigate together, in some cases while in different countries and time zones.

What better time for a new experiment?

Luckily for me, Edinburgh has its own Wikimedian-in-Residence, Ewan McAndrew, whose Wikimedia in Education guide (created by Wikimedia UK and the University of Edinburgh) provided a helpful overview of case studies that illustrate how other academics were using Wikipedia in the classroom. Ewan and I met and discussed my initial inspiration, which came from my colleague Stephennie Mulder’s experience with scrapping a traditional research paper in favour of Wikipedia editing in her Islamic art course at the University of Texas.

To work out the project logistics Ewan connected me with two other academics, Alex Chow, in Edinburgh’s School of Divinity and Sasha Litvintseva, in Film Studies, Queen Mary University of London, who generously shared their advice and experience. Thanks to them I was able to get the idea off and running quickly without having to reinvent the wheel. Following Mulder’s example, I asked my students to imagine they had been hired as consultants for a major museum. Their mission for my course was to use their art history research and writing skills to improve the public’s knowledge of Islamic science and the occult in advance of an exhibition. They were to research and improve an article by editing and adding new text to existing articles, adding bibliography. In addition to revising text and adding citations to existing articles I asked the students to illustrate them with images of scientific instruments and illustrated manuscripts. Thanks to Ewan, the students and I learned about a new landmark partnership between Wikimedia UK and the UK-based Khalili Collections, to release research content and high resolution images of world art masterpieces on Creative Commons licenses. The Khalili Collections encompass one of the world’s great assemblages of Islamic visual culture, including scientific instruments and manuscripts. This image component of the editing project gave the students experience with Wikimedia and introduced them to issues around image copyright, which is key for art historians.

I provided the students with a pre-selected list of Wikipedia articles keyed to our weekly course topics. Based on the topics they chose I divided them into small groups of 2 or 3 students and asked them to work collaboratively on the Wikipedia article (the groups also functioned as their autonomous learning groups, or ALGs for the term). At mid-term the groups would present briefly on what they had accomplished.  Ewan set up a Wikipedia project page on Islamic Visual Culture with the list of target pages the students would be editing, and which provided helpful links to training and other resources. He also created a Dashboard page so that we could monitor and quantify the edits being made as part of the assignment. In the first week of the course he led the class through an optional live two-hour online Wikipedia training session to get the students started with Wikipedia accounts and basic skills. We recorded the session for those who couldn’t attend the live session.

With Ewan’s help, the students rose to the challenges. They organised digital meet-ups in small groups, brainstormed, discussed, and coordinated drafts. They researched and wrote new content on medieval Islamic contributions to history of science, technology and the occult, diversifying articles that had previously represented these topics mainly from an Anglo-European perspective. And since most of the students in my course were female, simply by participating in the assignment they contributed to a more diverse Wikipedia (editors have tended to be a homogenous group: white, male, 30s, from tech disciplines). Regardless of gender, all the students contributed strong research and writing skills to a more interdisciplinary Wikipedia. They brought perspectives from art and architectural history and Fine Arts to the work of editing History of Science articles, creating their own  intersections between science and art. They contributed images to articles that previously had privileged text and intellectual content exclusively. Collectively the students contributed some eight thousand words and eighty-five references to nine articles, which have received some 772,000 views to date.

I was worried going into the term that the students would dislike the experiment, that they would be put off by the necessity of having to learn yet another new digital tool at an already difficult time. A few weeks into the course they had spoken frankly about the stress of knowing that what they created would be out there in the world as free and public knowledge, their sense of worry and responsibility to do this work ‘right’. I was therefore surprised at mid-course feedback that specifically mentioned the Wikipedia project as something that was going well in the course. They appreciated how the editing process had gotten them thinking about knowledge dissemination. Thanks to their efforts Wikipedia’s freely-available knowledge is now a bit more diverse and globally representative. In a year that brought pervasive systemic injustices into stark relief,  our experiment in applying our knowledge outside the classroom gave us a sense that we were creating something positive, something that mattered. As one student commented, “Really love the Wikipedia project. It feels like my knowledge is actually making a difference in the wider world, if in a small way.”

Find out more about Wikimedia UK’s education initiatives in the blog tag, and visit Glaire Anderson’s website here.

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Say you want to find out where all the paintings by Van Gogh are housed? A bit of googling and digging would be needed, and unless someone’s made a specific web page listing such information, it’d take you a while. What about something a little more complex, like a list of all the self-portraits by female artists? It’s questions like these that Wikidata’s working towards answering with one simple search query, and projects like Crotos, a Wikidata-driven tool for exploring the world’s artworks from hundreds of different collections, that have spawned from Wikidata.

A number of our programmes use Wikidata to create something truly brilliant. Take the award winning Scottish Witches Map. A pretty design with a sobering bit of history, the visuals of seeing where Scottish witches were accused, their story, and what happened to them is an excellent example of what can be achieved with Wikidata. Scottish Equate Scotland student intern, Emma Carroll, worked with Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Edinburgh, Ewan McAndrew, during the summer 2019 to geolocate the place names recorded in the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft Database (1563 to 1736), and find the place of residence of 3,141 accused Scottish witches.

Through Emma’s detective work c.500 place-names have been located using Ordnance Survey maps, place-name books, historical maps, and gazetteers. This data was uploaded into Wikidata, as linked open data and further enriched with the location of detentions, trials, place of death, and more. Richard Lawson, ISG web developer, provided the technical expertise for the new website and graphic design was contributed by Interactive Content Manager Stewart Lamb Cromar.

It builds on the university’s breakthrough work on the Scottish Witchcraft Survey which brought to life the persecution of women during the period, with many burned at the stake or drowned. Ewan McAndrew, Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Edinburgh, said: “The map is a really effective way to connect where we are now to these stories of the past.”

“The tragedy is that Scotland had five times the number of executions of women. The idea of being able to plot these on a map really brings it home. These places are near everyone.

“There does seem to be a growing movement that we need to be remembering these women, remembering what happened and understanding what happened”

Emma Carroll, Equate Scotland Careerwise Intern (or ‘Witchfinder General’) said, “not only does the project help highlight the power of data science but also shows the capability of Wikidata to aid in the making of all of the different visualisations.”

The surfacing of the witchcraft data as linked open data to Wikidata has motivated Design Informatics Masters students each year since 2017 and showed what is possible both for the teaching of data science and for furthering discovery and engagement with real world research datasets.

The Mapping the Scottish Reformation project has since been inspired by the Map of Accused Witches project and are collaborating with Ewan McAndrew and the university’s Interactive Content team to build a new map website, powered by Wikidata.

It’s a truly beautiful interactive map, with an important and harrowing bit of information that’s critical to our understanding of women and marginalised people’s history.

Dr Martin Poulter is a long time Wikimedian and resident of ours, first at the University of Oxford where he worked on a project using Wikidata to describe its library and museum collections. And he is currently using the platform to describe the private collections of Sir David Khalili.

“Wikidata links the world’s cultural and scientific archives together into a web of knowledge,” Martin says. “I’ve learned things through Wikidata that otherwise would have required hundreds of different websites and databases. Anyone writing software can tap into this vast free resource with billions of facts; it has transformed how we visualise our cultural heritage. Text isn’t always the best way to share knowledge: people want something interactive they can explore and see where their curiosity takes them. Wikidata’s many graphical interfaces let them do that, and in hundreds of different languages.” – Martin Poulter.

The capabilities and visuals of Wikidata are truly a magnificent achievement, and that it’s run by volunteers when so many people’s mantra is ‘time is money’ only makes it more remarkable. We’re continually impressed by this fantastically clever little bit of software and the community that has built and keeps on building it. So Happy Birthday Wikidata, here’s to many more years.

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As Wikimedia UK, we work to support language communities living in, or connected to the UK. This translates to a range of projects, including Scots Wikipedia. 

Up until recently, there were only a relatively small number of regular, active editors of sco.wiki. However, as of the end of August, that has most definitely changed. And that’s the best thing that we could have hoped for. I really hope that these new editors will feel motivated to stick around, because their long-term support will would be transformational for the Scots Wiki, and hopefully will have benefits for the wider Scots language community too.

With all the press coverage, a certain amount of immediate interest was inevitable. And the community has worked hard to increase their capacity to help deal with this; nominating and onboarding new Scots-speaking admins, improving on-wiki tools, organising review of articles, discussing spelling and dialect, deflecting vandalism, writing a new notability policy, deleting spam.

We’ve been heartened by the energy and proactive attitude of the existing Scots wiki community in dealing with the increased attention and participation in their project. At the same time, it was disappointing to see some of that attention fail to assume good faith on the part of the editor upon whom attention fell, and to engage in personal criticism. That’s not a behaviour we would support, and what we want to focus on here is the positive impact of the story on Scots wiki. 

With any minority language Wikipedia, community building is incredibly important; one of the ways this happens is through events like the Celtic Knot conference which Wikimedia UK have organised since 2017. Calls for content to be parachuted into the Wiki are ultimately not the most helpful, not least because a Wiki relies on its community; it needs the ongoing support and oversight of that community to survive. It needs those volunteers who look out for vandalism, who fix spelling mistakes, who create new articles, who review articles, who work on tech infrastructure – all of those kinds of things which it’s easy to take for granted if you spend most of your time on en:wiki. If you want paid editing, and an encyclopedia which remains fixed in one point in time, there are options for that. But that is not Wikipedia. 

The relationship between a chapter and a language Wikipedia is one of support, not of dictatorship. So as Scotland Programme Coordinator for Wikimedia UK what I’ve been working on for the last few months is seeing how I can support, and help to grow that community. 

In practice, what that’s meant is a whole load of activity if not behind the scenes, then in the wings. User:Cobra3000 set up a two-day editathon at the end of August, for which I ran online training sessions (we’ve been doing a lot of that recently) using the Wikimedia UK Zoom and Eventbrite accounts; set up a Dashboard to track activity; helped to set up an on-wiki event page, and I created and uploaded some sco.wiki specific how-to videos to Commons, which went on the event page, was used for training, and in the off-wiki locations where activity was being organised – Cobra3000’s Scots Language Discord server, and the new Scots Wikipedia Editors Facebook group, which is now at over 100 members. I’ve been active in both of the latter, answering questions, promoting the training, and answering wiki-specific questions where possible. For the editathon, we also were sure to include a range of activities for non- or lower-proficiency Scots speakers, of whom there were many who were interested in helping out. Dr Michael Dempster of the Scots Language Centre has been very involved, including making an 8 hour introduction to Scots course available for free on YouTube. The editathon produced some quite incredible stats; they include high-volume AWB tasks, but even so, I was excited to see the enthusiasm and care that the community has for the Wiki. 

We’ve also been talking to the Scots Language Centre about how we might engage the wider Scots community with Wikimedia in the future, and this will hopefully build on some existing projects which had to be shelved due to COVID. 

The second editathon was held at the end of September, focussing on places, and we hope that these editathons can become a regular event. Now that we’ve done with the initial firefighting period, it’s time to dig in for the long term. 

If you’d like to find out more about community building through events, you can get involved here, or to see more about our Scottish activities, you can browse the blog tag.

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