User:Katie Crampton (WMUK)
Welcome to the winter 2024 newsletter
Season's Greetings and welcome to the last newsletter of 2024! As I'm wrapped up in the festivities of the season I'm once again impressed by the incredible portfolio of work from our volunteers and staff this year.
In September we moved into our new office at the British Library. The vibrant environment of the Library has already fostered our staff's creativity and innovation, while being a strategic location to enable better connection with partners, volunteers, and the public.
Earlier in the autumn we were delighted to welcome two new trustees to our board, following the election at our 2024 AGM. Andrew Russell brings substantial experience in public affairs while Monica Westin is a keen Wikimedian with a professional background in knowledge information.
Congratulations to Fran Allfrey, Wikimedia UK’s Wikimedian of the Year for 2024, along with GLAM-E Lab who received the Partnership of the Year award, and Perigrinate Avellana, our Up and Coming Wikimedian of the Year. You can read more about the awards and the nominees here.
Finally, you may have seen our Education through Wikimedia campaign to boost our work in secondary schools. Education is at the heart of our work as the national charity for open knowledge, and we believe that equipping the next generation with essential information literacy and digital skills is crucial for their success in an increasingly complex digital world. This is why we are launching a dedicated campaign aimed at secondary school students, focusing on developing these fundamental abilities.
Community Celebration 2024
In November we hosted our 2024 Community Celebration. It was a chance for our community to gather online, share and celebrate the work that’s taken place over the last year and recognise that work through the UK Wikimedian of the Year awards and celebrate the winners of the Wiki Loves Earth competition.
It was heartening seeing so many of our community at the celebration. There were around 40 community members, attending from all over the UK. With the event being online in the midst of Storm Bert raging, it meant that people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend were able to do so.
We had a series of short talks which can be watched in this playlist.
Jason Evans, Open Data Manager and National Wikimedian at the National Library of Wales told us about AI, Placenames and Time Machine experiments at the National Library of Wales.
Dr Kirsty Ross from the University of St Andrews, who is also one of the co-founders of the IDEA network told us about how Scottish Brick History (SBH), Wikimedia UK, and researchers from the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews collaborated to get a unique dataset about Scotland’s brickworks onto Wikidata, and built web visualisations to showcase the work.
Lucy Moore, a Wikimedian based in Leeds, and who won UK Wikimedian of the year 2022 told us about her Wiki Year!
Nick Sheppard, Open Research Adviser based at the University of Leeds Libraries told us about his journey from his first tentative edit in 2017 (flagged as spam) to becoming a committed advocate for Wikimedia in Universities.
Jonathan Deamer from Liverpool, who describes himself as a Wikimedia hobbyist, told us about attending his first Wikimania in Katowice in Poland this year. He shared with us his highlights from the event and how these have had a tangible impact on his daily editing.
Joanne Forster-Martin, a student at the University of Oxford, and who we met at our recent Train the Trainer weekend told us about the Wiki Women in Red project to uncover the hidden female figures of Jesus College, Oxford.
Adam Harangzo, Wikipedian in Residence at the National Institute for Health and Care Research talked to us about his experience of working with researchers in an impactful way where they contribute to Wikipedia without directly editing it.
Wikimedia UK moves into new offices at the British Library
Wikimedia UK is excited to announce our relocation to new offices at the prestigious British Library. The new office space will provide a vibrant environment that fosters creativity and innovation, allowing our team to work flexibly and collaboratively with a wealth of resources and opportunities available at one of the world’s largest libraries. This strategic location will enable us to better connect with partners, volunteers, and the public. Staff will continue to work remotely and occasionally come into the office, ensuring we adapt to the evolving needs of our team and the communities we serve.
Wikimedia UK Chief Executive Lucy Crompton-Reid, says: “We are looking forward to our new office space within the British Library after a year of being fully remote.” As the national charity for the global Wikimedia open knowledge movement, there are lots of areas of shared interest with the Library. Director of Science and Innovation, Maja Maricevic, adds “We are delighted to welcome Wikimedia UK. Over years we have regularly collaborated with Wikimedia UK and hosted Wikimedians-in-Residence, so are delighted with an opportunity with an even closer proximity to an organisation that we have the existing close links with and share the common vision to open access to knowledge.”
New trustees at the Wikimedia UK AGM
Following a successful AGM we’re very pleased to share that Andrew Russell and Monica Westin have joined Wikimedia UK's board of trustees. We’re also delighted that Caroline Ball was re-elected for a second three year term. You can read their candidate statements here if you’d like to find out more about them.
On Saturday we also said thank you, but hopefully not goodbye, to outgoing trustees Julian Manieson and Rod Ward.
Many thanks to all those who attended the AGM, or who submitted a proxy vote.
Brixton Library Black History Month editathon
Brixton Library’s monthly Wikipedia meetups show participants how to contribute to the encyclopaedia. For the October meetup, the event focused on learning about and contributing to the recording of Black history. We wrote about and enhanced articles about Black people, history and society. Participants used the session to explore Brixton Library’s Black Interest book collections, the library service’s online subscriptions to packages like the British Newspaper Archive and Who’s Who and much more. We also looked at Wikimedia Commons and how you can use photographs and images.
100 Days 100 Edits for climate (GSI)
The University of Exeter’s resident for climate and the environment, Tatjana Baleta, recruited 31 researchers from 11 different institutions to cumulatively propose 100 edits to 35 articles over 100 days. As of the 10th of November 2024, these articles have been viewed over ~662,000 times.
"Through this 100-day campaign, I upped my normal Wikipedia editing, highlighted how unprecedented CO₂ levels are over millions of years, and dispelled two common myths about global warming: that humans are only "mainly" responsible, and that further warming stops when emissions stabilize, rather than when they reach net zero.”
– Dr Femke Njisse, University of Exeter (edited Grid storage and Climate change)
“Promoting widespread scientific literacy is a key issue in addressing anthropogenic climate change, environmental degradation and injustice. Platforms like Wikipedia provide an excellent opportunity to disseminate scientific information to an extended audience, where this information is otherwise often only accessible by academics in the global north. I hope that my contribution to the campaign can help bring greater clarity to a topic (i.e. biochar) that is often discussed in the context of climate change mitigation.”
– Dr Oscar Kennedy-Blundell, University of Exeter (edited Biochar)
Wiki Loves Earth winners
Wiki Loves Earth is an annual photography competition themed around the natural world. This year Ireland, Scotland and Wales took part in the competition. Over 5000 photos were submitted of nature from across these three countries, helping to illustrate Wikimedia with the flora and fauna that is so at risk from climate change and human development. The winners have now been announced, see them for Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. The natural world changes from season to season, but climate change poses a threat to our environment and its durability. Extreme temperatures, drought, or rainfall all disturb the balance that has cultivated these environments and biodiversity. The photos submitted to the competition capture the state of our natural world at a point in time, and remind us what we stand to lose.
Climate Change & Health Wikipedia Workshop
In November two of our Wikimedians in Residence held joint workshops between the University of Exeter and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). Tatjana Baleta is the resident for climate at the GSI hub at Exeter University, and the health effects of climate change overlap significantly with Adam Harangozo’s residency on medical research at the NIHR.
Wikipedia is often the first and only place where most people go for health information. What readers find there matters. Contributing to Wikipedia offers a great opportunity to use an effective platform to mobilise evidence-based information, research and expert knowledge in an accessible way for a wider audience all around the world.
Researchers with expertise in climate change and health were invited to attend one of the three workshops in November. The workshops drafted an article – titled Climate change and health in the UK – on this important topic at the intersection of the climate crisis and health research.
Wiki Loves Monuments 2024
Over 5000 photos of monuments, architecture and protected buildings were submitted to the 2024 Wiki Loves Monuments from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Wiki Loves Monuments is best known for being the world’s largest photo contest. It highlights humanity’s cultural heritage through the buildings, structures, and other assets that have gained importance due to their artistic, historic, political, technical, or architectural significance. You can see the entries for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The history of witch trials in Newcastle and Scotland
In 2023, one of our volunteers, Sophie Whitfield, led a Wikipedia workshop for students on the Digital Cultures and Media course at Newcastle University. This year, WMUK again collaborated with the course leaders to give the students an opportunity to learn about Wikipedia.
The plan was to have the class of twenty students collaboratively write a Wikipedia page about an overlooked part of Newcastle’s history: the 1650 witch trials. Overlooked for Wikipedia at least, Tyne and Wear Archives & Museums have excellent resources on the trials and the events were the subject of a podcast. But there are no local memorials to the accused, and Wikipedia hardly mentions events in Newcastle.
The trials took place in 1649 and 1650, and resulted in the execution of sixteen people. As with many other similar persecutions, the majority were women.
The Digital Cultures and Media course introduces students to a range of different platforms and media: social sites, mapping, video creation, and of course Wikipedia. They are taught to be adaptive and explore. With a class of this size, we organised them into groups so that they could work on different elements of the article. Some worked on the imagery, others on the list of the accused and what happened to them, while another group detailed the context within which the trials took place.
Two hours raced by, and in the final thirty minutes there was an avalanche of writing. As students saved their edits the skeletal page suddenly took shape - populated by the names of people who had lived and died in Newcastle more than 370 years ago.
The history of witch trials has also been a project at the University of Edinburgh, with version 2 of the Map of Accused Witches in Scotland – created using Wikidata – launching at the Edinburgh Futures Institute on 23rd October 2024. E. Whitehead has completed an expanded Glossary of terms to help explain and contextualise the Scottish witch trials. R. Imrie has completed the Nuxt.js upgrade and added filters for the accusations (demonic pacts, property damage, ritual objects used, meeting places etc.) the accused were subjected to along with all the temporal data so the Scottish witch hunts can now be explored in place and time through Wikidata.
IDEA network
The University of St Andrew’s IDEA network (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility in Open Knowledge Network) was launched during lockdown. We’ve been working with them for years to make the Wikimedia projects more inclusive, diverse, equitable and accessible locations for open knowledge.
Some recent highlights include:
- Digital Inclusion WikiConnect – staff and students are working on content relating to digital literacy and digital poverty.
- Ethical Digital Nation event series – exploring how universities can play a pivotal role in addressing digital challenges through collaborative research, training programs, and the development of socio-technical solutions.
Wikimedia in Interfaith Education
Interfaith Explorers is a set of resources to support primary and secondary education about religions. As well as classroom resources, it has guidance for teachers on encouraging respectful discussions about faiths and cultures. It is listed by the UK Government's "Educate Against Hate" portal.
The site recently completed a major update in which Wikimedia content played a crucial part. Short text extracts adapted from Simple English Wikipedia and English Wikipedia were combined with colourful, diverse images from Wikimedia Commons to add nearly 200 pages of new content about religions and how they are practised. The result is an interconnected web of child-safe educational material, with automated translation into a dozen other languages.
Dr Martin Poulter is Wikimedian In Residence at the Khalili Foundation, which maintains Interfaith Explorers. He adapted the wiki content with the help of expert reviewers. Interfaith Explorers are looking for teachers, religious institutions, and educational charities to join the community that will further develop the resource further, including covering non-Abrahamic religions. Get in touch.
Memory of the World
Dr Martin Poulter is now focusing increasingly on the Memory of the World project. The Khalili Foundation is supporting and fully funding work to improve the visibility of UNESCO Memory of the World inscriptions on the Wikimedia platforms, in parallel with UNESCO's database which is being re-developed. This will bring some of the world's most precious documentary heritage to the widest possible audience. We will be coordinating with the team at UNESCO to improve Wikimedia as they improve the official online database.
Within the project, Indonesian Wikipedia has given a Featured Article award to their translation of the Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam article. This resulted from a long review process involving four users, and is a rare honour; Indonesian Wikipedia only has 394 Featured Articles out of 700,000 total articles. This is the fourth Featured Article award achieved by this project: two in English, one in Urdu and now one in Indonesian.
Celtic Knot 2024
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. WMUK collaborated with Wikimedia Community Ireland (WCI) to organise and run the event. 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, and WMUK have been involved in the conference since its inception in 2017. 2024 was the first in-person Celtic Knot since 2019, and across the three-day conference, 150 people attended in-person or online, with 35 different language communities represented. Each of the three days had a different theme in the programme: the past, the present, and the future of language communities. The programme was topical, with the launch of WCI’s WikiWomen Erasmus+ Project and talks on translation tools and the impact of large language models. Large language models present challenges and opportunities to Wikipedia, especially smaller language communities, so it was an important topic to discuss. The conference enthused those present, sharing stories of success that inspired others, from editing campaigns such as #wici365 on the Welsh Wicipedia and using digital TV channels to recruit editors.
University of Edinburgh
Women in Red workshops
A number of 'Women in Red' workshops took place at the University - in September, to coincide with WIki Loves Monuments, the event was themed as Scottish Castles and Witch Lore. New wiki pages were created about Scottish castles and heritage locations were created. These include Bass Castle, Logie House Garden, and Poldrate Mill. As part of this event, the University also hosted an exhibition of material about Scottish castles and witchcraft that the university's special collections hold. Read the blog article by Ellie Whitehead. In October the workshop was tied with Ada Lovelace Day event celebrating Women in STEM (with a Robotics/AI theme).
History of Witchcraft in Edinburgh walking tour
E. McAndrew and E. Whitehead made use of Wikipedia and Wikidata to develop an 18 Stop walking tour of locations in central Edinburgh related to the Scottish witch hunts and recorded 18 short Youtube clips presented by Prof. Julian Goodare and BBC broadcaster Louise Yeoman to accompany each stop.
Edinburgh Award 2024/2025 – Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia
29 students have registered for the 4th iteration of the extracurricular Edinburgh Award for academic year 2024/2025. Each student is to choose 3 graduate attributes to develop over the 55-80 hours from mid October 2024 to end of March 2025 and a topic area of Wikipedia to significantly improve topic coverage in.
Global Health Challenges Programme Online
Masters students working online from geographically remote locations all over the world have been trained how to edit Wikipedia. The students are working in groups to significantly improve topic coverage of natural and manmade disasters in short stub articles as part of a 5-6 week assignment. So far they’ve added almost 40k words to Wikipedia.
Finding sources through Wikipedia’s citations
We had an online Wikipedia workshop focused on adding Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to Wikipedia. Those DOIs point towards publications in the Archaeology Data Service. It helps Wikipedia's readers and editors as it makes the sources used in articles easier to find, and it helps the ADS because more people are visiting their site.
As it was a very specific kind of editing, the how-to element of the event was short, but because it involved changing references which aren't standardised there were a few tricky cases (especially if incorrect dates were used).
At the start there was something like 2,000 articles on the English Wikipedia. In three hours, we made a good dent in the worklist with more than 140 articles edited.
Join us
Come give us a follow on social media, we just launched our Bluesky account, and we're also on Mastodon, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. We’re very grateful to and proud of the network we’ve built around our chapter. You can support the governance of the charity by becoming a member, which will allow you to vote on our board elections at the 2024 AGM on the 21st September. You can also support our projects through a donation, or volunteer on some of the projects above. Our blog has more details on some of the activities mentioned in the newsletter.
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