Once a year around 2000 Wikipedians – the dedicated writers, researchers, photographers, data scientists, developers, and more who improve Wikipedia and its related sites day by day – get together for Wikimania, the annual conference covering anything and everything Wikipedia. Over several days they get deep into what’s new, share exciting projects, and work out how to turn normal people into new Wikipedia editors. From the kiwi contingent, Te Papa’s Heidi Meudt, Lucy Schrader, and Victoria Leachman report back on Wikimania 2023.
Wikimania 2023 was held in Singapore in August, combining presentations, workshops, a hackathon, performances, and more. Te Papa was there to share what we’d done on our Myosotis project and learn from these dedicated enthusiasts.
A flight of kiwi
Wikimania in 2023 was closer to home than usual, past host cities have included Stockholm, Montreal, and Gdansk and anticipation was high after a Covid cancellation and 2 years online. Combined, this made it the year for a whole squad of New Zealanders to participate.
And we participated pretty hard. Over a dozen kiwis were there, both museum staff and volunteer Wikimedians, and everyone presented, performed, joined panels, or otherwise put themselves out there.
For a lot of people, we may have been their first New Zealander (and then second, and third…), and we left them with a good impression.
With her name in lights volunteer Siobhan Leachman made a big splash being named Wikimedian Laureate for the year. The award recognises and celebrates someone with a long-term body of contributions to the movement, which Siobhan has done in spades, including training up many Te Papa staff to become editors.
Also on the main stage, Tala Wiki gave a phenomenal performance combining music, dance, video, and biting satire. A group of Te Whanaganui-a-Tara-based Pasifika editors, Tala Wiki started up last year and are making contributions and connections, doing research, and filling in major gaps in Wikipedia’s coverage of the Pacific.
GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) were a big focus at the conference. Wikimedians know how much good material we hold and how important it is for that stuff to be shared openly – both for making high quality articles and so people can create new knowledge.
Te Papa’s Heidi Meudt (Stitchbird2) and Lucy Schrader (Avocadobabygirl) presented a how-to guide to help museums share collections and knowledge (without getting overwhelmed), and Auckland Museum’s James Taylor showed the work they’re doing to support the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum.
Aotearoa’s other volunteer editors covered all kinds of ground. Dunedin’s DrThneed talked about the New Zealand Thesis Project, which is making academic research easier to find and connect to the researchers who did it. Giantflightlessbirds provided perspective on being a Wikipedian in Residence, supporting institutions around the country.
Chocmilk03 shared insights about working on the Women in Red project, a global effort to improve the representation of women across Wikipedia. Pakiore provided organisational and on-the-ground support for the Tala Wiki crew. Einebillion talked with organisers from other nations about how the New Zealand group (Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand) can best to ignite interest in editing, organising and contributing to the Wiki movement.
As well as impressing people around the globe, our cluster got the chance to talk more, sharing knowledge and ideas that are now filtering through the community.
Find out more
- All the presentation recordings are available in Wikimedia Commons
- Posts from other attendees on Wikimedia’s Diff blog
- Want a taste of Singapore? Conference attendees threw themselves into an iNaturalist bioblitz, taking photos of over 400 species, like this Camacinia gigantea
Editors + GLAMs
Wikimania really reinforced the relationships and crossover between Wiki volunteers and the GLAM sector – especially how much we can help each other in big and small ways.
At Te Papa we’ve benefited from volunteers providing training and tips, ideas for projects, and endless reserves of enthusiasm. More broadly, volunteers are so often the ones who take our collections and research from ‘open’ to ‘useful’, loading them up, citing them, and adding them to articles.
We’re trying to pay that back by making more material more sharable, improving our data to enable more connections, and building up knowledge, enthusiasm and wiki skills of staff within GLAMs. That makes us more able to get our rich heritage into the community’s hands.
Want to get involved?
If you’re feeling curious, there’s a lot of ways to get started. The Wikipedia Adventure takes you through how to edit articles, and Wikimedia Commons has a guide to adding images if photography is your thing. Mix n match lets you improve Wikidata with a bit of detective work, or you can make Wikipedia more reliable by adding references as part of 1Lib1Ref.
Around Aotearoa there are groups who would to love to lend a hand, answer questions, and share ideas.
- Come to a monthly in-person meetup with editors in Wellington
- Call into the monthly Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand chat
- Email Sophia from Tala Wiki through their website
- Or Dianne from WANZ (admin@wikimedia.nz), who can help you find an experienced editor near you!
