Grants:TPS/MikePeel/Wikimania/2016/Report

Wikidata in Wikipedia presentation video

Participant

Outcome

I'm more a fan of a long narrative than I am of a single valuable result (the main outcomes of Wikimania are the longer conversations and reflections rather than a single bullet point), but if you want one of those then I'll go for option 3 / new creation: I'm now working on enabling Wikidata in en:Template:Infobox World Heritage Site with User:John Cummings, and en:Template:Infobox sportsperson with User:Hawkeye7, as direct results of conversations and the presentation I gave at Wikimania. This was part of one of my two goals for attending Wikimania: to talk to community members about the use of Wikidata on Wikipedia.

The second goal I had was to talk to community members and Wikimedia organisation representatives about the FDC/APG process. I didn't manage to achieve this as much as I wanted to, however we held the first inter-committee discussion between the Funds Dissemination Committee and the Affiliations Committee, which will hopefully lead to the two committees working closer together in the future.

Connections

I gave a Critical Issue presentation on Wikidata in Wikipedia. I don't know how many people attended the talk, but the audience in the theatre looked fairly full to me, and there were lots of interesting questions afterwards (see the video of the presentation).

I helped with documentation with a number of the Discussion Rooms, and also participated in the Wikidata and Creative Commons meetups.

I was also able to catch up with many existing Wikimedian contacts, as well as meeting new people.

Anything else

My photos from Wikimania and the few days afterwards that I spent in the area are/will be on Commons at commons:Category:Wikimania 2016 photographs by Mike Peel.

Also: for anyone curious as to what I included in my application for a partial scholarship this year, I've put a copy of my responses to the key questions below.

Tell us about your involvement in your home wiki or the broader Wikimedia movement. What have you built or contributed to in order to improve your wiki or community? Have you lead or organized any of these activities?:

I first edited the English Wikipedia in 2005, where I have now made over 20,000 edits. I have made many different types of edits over the years, including article writing, copyediting, template work, deploying Wikiproject banners (back when they were still fairly scarce), and administrative activities (since 2007). Most recently, I have been working on using Wikidata to automatically populate infoboxes (the best example of which is at enwp.org/South_Pole_Telescope ).

I started editing Wikimedia Commons a bit later, in 2006. It is now probably my main project: I have uploaded over 12,000 of my own photographs, and I've now made over 32,000 edits. I'm mostly active in uploading new photographs, and improving the categorisation of existing images.

Offline, I co-founded/rebooted Wikimedia UK in 2008, and I served as a trustee for 5 years. During that time, I organised the first Wikimedia Editathon, at the British Library in 2011, and I helped with the creation of the first Wikipedian in Residence at the British Museum, along with various other GLAM, governance, and capacity-building work.

Finally, I was one of the inaugural appointed members of the Wikimedia Funds Dissemination Committee in 2012-14. I was community-elected for a second term from 2015 until 2017, and I currently serve as the FDC's Secretary.

What’s something great that happened as a result of these activities? This could be described either quantitatively or qualitatively, and could impact either online or offline. Here are some examples that might help.

Since I ran the first editathon, they have spread across the globe, and it's rare that a month goes by without an editathon happening somewhere in the world. Wikipedian in Residences have also spread world-wide, and have become one of the main ways for Wikimedia to interact with cultural organisations.

Probably the most fun result of my contributions to the projects is that my photographs have been reused in a wide variety of places, including magazines, websites, and even as a book cover. My most-viewed photograph is probably of the Lindow Man, which was shown on the English Wikipedia main page when the article about him was featured. I love seeing how widely my photographs spread and are reused.

I am hoping that my current work with Wikidata-driven infoboxes will help pave the way for the technique to be spread across all Wikipedia articles.

What collaborations with other Wikimedians or Wikimedia organizations are you most proud of?

My work with the Funds Dissemination Committee has probably been the most fulfilling work I've done, and also the most impactful. The diversity of that committee, and the variety of different viewpoints that contribute positively to the discussions, makes the committee work really fun and enjoyable. The committee also makes a real difference with the level of impact that the applying Wikimedia organisations achieve.

After that, my work with Wikimedia UK (particularly over the first few years as a trustee) led to fantastic outcomes that have gone on to make a global impact.

How do you usually share your experiences (or things you’ve learned) with your community? Examples of on-wiki summaries/reports, blog posts, meetup talks, etc. are welcome here.

I mostly use photographs to share my experiences: every Wikimania I've been to before, I've shared my photos on Commons as soon afterwards as I could. After that, I mostly talk about my experiences informally at wikimeets.

What are your goals for attending Wikimania? If you have previously attended Wikimania, please also tell us about something great that happened as a result of attending Wikimania. (Previous scholarship recipients may link to their 2015 or 2014 scholarship report, if relevant).

My two key goals are to talk to community members and Wikimedia organisation representatives about the FDC/APG process; and to talk to community members about the use of Wikidata on Wikipedia (both English and other languages).

From past Wikimanias, the main benefit has been talking to other attendees, which has led and sustained my long-term involvement with the organisational side of the Wikimedia movement.

Note that I have previously been supported by the WMF to attend Wikimania through the FDC's budget, not through a WMF scholarship (and also, similarly through WMUK when I was a WMUK trustee). This year, the FDC won't be meeting at Wikimania.