Whose Knowledge?/Reports/2018

This annual report outlines Whose Knowledge? activities supported by the group from September 2017 to September 2018. Whose Knowledge? is not funded as a Wikimedia user group, so no financial reporting is required.

Activities

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Whose Knowledge? team members at Wikimania
 
#VisibleWikiWomen postcards
 
Women like Marielle Franco need to be visible on Wikipedia
 
Decolonizing...with swag!
 
Decolonizing the Internet 2018 group photo
 
Centering Knowledge from the Margins Panel at Wikimania
 
South African artist Lunga Kama joined us with his art at Wikimania

Marginalized community knowledge pilots

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  • Okvir and the LGBTQIA community in Bosnia that we've been supporting launched their online oral history archive, Kvir Arhiv, in October 2017, and created a small set of Wikipedia articles on queer and feminist knowledge from their community. More about this project and the Dalit History Month 2017 wrapup is in our 2017 project grant report.
  • Through these pilots, we developed a framework for mapping knowledge, published in December 2017.
  • The Kumeyaay Wikipedia Initiative grew, with the allyship of University of San Diego tribal liaison. USD students used decolonizing methodologies to write Wikipedia articles about local Kumeyaay people and institutions in the first half of 2018, with input from Kumeyaay community members and advice from Whose Knowledge?.
  • The Center for Women's Global Leadership launched their Global Feminist Journeys Timeline in June 2018. We provided mapping facilitation and timeline advice starting in mid-2017.
  • Whose Knowledge? supported AfroCROWD, in partnership with WikiTongues, to bring on an AfroCROWD Oral History Summer Intern. He began in June 2018 to pilot methods for adding marginalized communities' oral knowledge to Wikimedia projects and other online archives.
  • Whose Knowledge? convened a Booksprint with Dalit, Kumeyaay, Shoshone, and queer Bosnian organizers and scholars in August 2018. The event was hosted by the University of San Diego's office of the tribal liaison. This group wrote a set of resources to share knowledge, learning and experiences adding marginalized community knowledge online. (links to published resources to follow soon!)
  • We visited Vanderbilt University in September 2018 to support feminist political scientists there in connecting with local Wikipedians and beginning to add their knowledge to Wikipedia.

#VisibleWikiWomen Campaign

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Decolonizing the Internet Conference and Wikimania 2018

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  • We supported Wikimedia South Africa to craft and execute on a theme for Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town called Bridging Knowledge Gaps: The Ubuntu Way Forward, which was fully incorporated into the structure and program of this year's Wikimania - huzzah!
  • Decolonizing the Internet was our biggest 2018 convening, co-located as a pre-conference to Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town this July.
  • 96 participants attended Decolonizing the Internet. The group included community organizers, archivists, artists, activists, Wikimedians, scholars, academics, librarians, funders, technologists and media workers from 28 countries, including very strong African representation. 67% of attendees were women/non-binary/transgender, 68% came from countries from the global south, and 77% were people of color. About half of the participants were funded by Whose Knowledge? to attend, and many of these folks stayed on for their first Wikimania as well :)
  • Our accompanying “What is Knowledge” art exhibition at Wikimania 2018 showcased artists from marginalized communities around the world to help expand the Wikimedia movement's understanding of knowledge in different contexts.
  • Other sessions we organized at Wikimania included:
  • Here is a full report from Decolonizing the Internet, while our blog post has a roundup from both Decolonizing the Internet and other Whose Knowledge? Wikimania 2018 events. Some publications like Deutsche Welle also wrote about our event too, though as usual the media is very confused about whether affiliates and the movement = the Wikimedia Foundation ;)

Communications and outreach

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Other Wikimedia movement stuff

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  • Adele Vrana joined the Whose Knowledge? co-director team in November 2017!
  • Our learning pattern on Centering Marginalised Knowledge was created in December 2017. At the Wikimedia Conference in April 2018 we led a session using these 7 questions that we suggest Wikimedians ask themselves when supporting marginalized communities to add their knowledge online. And we were happy to contribute that pattern as well as other ideas to the 2018 Wikimedia Gender Equity Report.
  • Whose Knowledge? participated in the 2017 strategic direction process, and is particularly pleased to see "we will focus our efforts on the knowledge and communities that have been left out by structures of power and privilege" as part of the movement's new strategic direction. That's what we're all about!

Multimedia

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