San Diego Wikimedians User Group/2023 Annual Report

2023 Annual Report for San Diego Wikimedians User Group

The page is a report of all the activities (and efforts) in which our User Group engaged, from 4 August 2022 through 3 August 2023.

Membership

While there are numerous individuals who have been active on various Wikimedia projects who live within the user group's geographic scope, the number of those individuals who have been active within the user group has grown slightly, with increased activity of a student from University of California San Diego.

Meetups

We held events during every month of the year-long reporting period, (except in Sep 2022 (see below)) ;

• Aug 2022: We held two (2) events:
  • A mixer during Wikimania 2022 and..
  • A wiknic ;

• Sep 2022: Our event was canceled, when the facility where our regular meetups were all being held closed temporarily, due to an unforeseen event ;

• Oct 2022: At the San Diego Central Library we co-organized an Edit-a-thon (Oct 2022) ;

• Nov 2022: We met up for a casual trivia event (Nov 2022), in Midtown San Diego ;

• Dec 2022: At the San Diego Central Library we co-organized an Edit-a-thon, to close out the last quarter of 2022 ;

For calendar year 2023, we have worked closely with the San Diego Central Library, holding live, project-based Edit-a-thons nearly every month, specifically in:

• Jan 2023 ;

• Feb 2023 ;

• Mar 2023 ;

• Apr 2023 ;

• May 2023: See below re Balboa Park outreach booth event.. ;

• Jun 2023.. ;

• ..and July 2023, i.e. during the remainder of this report's reporting period. ;

Lastly, following on to last Summer's park booth meetups, we held (plus attempted at times) spirited, largely successful, public-outreach booth events at Balboa Park in May 2023, and June 2023. (During the June 2023 event, a City of San Diego Parks and Recreation Ranger sternly instructed us to stop or at the least alter our public outreach, claiming that Wikipedia is a commercial interest.). We removed our signage (due to the City rep's assertion that our use of a logo implied donations-collecting, and/or was framing our presence as an invitation for monetary contributions, and/or put us as a commercial venture). We read the laws at a later date and deduced as a Group that the aforementioned assertions were all incorrect. We continued to have a positive experience despite the confusion that day, and we enjoyed having many touchpoints, several interested folks stopping by, and we were able to encourage many visitors to check out our wikimedia Contact Page or list of external links page online at SDWiki(link).

Community outreach

We have increased our coordination with the San Diego Central Library, who have allowed us the usage of the computer lab, to host the majority of our events during the reporting period. During these events we have been able to engage with members of the public and guide them in their attempts to improve content on English Wikipedia. During one of those events we were graced by the presence of a Wikimedia Foundation staff member. We continue our efforts to gain more participation from existing users/editors of the various Wikimedia Foundation projects who live within the user groups geographic scope, and hope to gain new users/editors for the various Wikimedia Foundation projects. We continue to utilize Meetup and Facebook to notify the public of upcoming events, as well as posting events on the appropriate Wikipedia Meetup page.

Grants

The user group had no active grants during this reporting period.