Wiki Loves Living Heritage/Contributing to Wikimedia as a cultural heritage organization
Contributing to Wikimedia as a cultural heritage organization edit
This article walks you through some of the fundamental issues in starting to contribute to Wikimedia projects. The article can grow over time to include other topics and viewpoints, just like a Wikipedia article.
Cultural heritage institutions are invited to contribute edit
Cultural heritage institutions share a similar mission with Wikimedia projects – to safeguard and make available cultural heritage information and media for the public good. Wikimedia projects invite cultural heritage institutions to contribute to the open projects with their knowledge. The Wikimedia ecosystem consists of many interconnected projects: Wikipedia for writing articles, Wikimedia Commons for sharing media files, Wikidata for saving structured data and Wikisource for saving and transcribing full text publications are the ones used in Wiki Loves Living Heritage. Following some basic principles, you will avoid some of the common challenges with contributions.
- Wikimedia projects are primarily educational content on topics like cultural heritage, but exclude promotional content or previously unpublished personal materials, for example. Neutral point of view is required in the presentation of materials.
- All information must be backed with references to reliable sources of information where the information can be verified. Original research is not permitted. This requirement makes writing about cultural heritage with little written sources more challenging, but not impossible.[1]
- Materials made available in Wikimedia Commons need to be in public domain or licensed freely. They are available for anyone to use and modify, also for commercial purposes. → Read more about the licensing policy on Wikimedia Commons.
- The uploader is responsible for the consideration of other rights such as privacy or cultural sensitivity. Wiki Loves Living Heritage is exploring the practices in this area. → See the page for Ethical sharing.
- In Wikidata, the data is released as public domain using the Creative Commons Zero waiver.
Choose a good account name edit
Wikipedia requires the user accounts to represent an individual person, an account should not be shared within an organization. This is one of the precautions to prevent using Wikimedia projects for marketing. → Read more about the Username policy of the English Wikipedia.
Wikimedia Commons accepts shared institutional accounts for media uploads made by a cultural heritage institution. The same accounts are used throughout the Wikimedia projects including Wikipedia, so following one of the scenarios below would be recommended.
- Use only accounts of individual persons. This is by far the safest option, and you can use it on all Wikimedia projects.
- If you wish to have a personal account that indicates your affiliation to the institution, you can state that in the account name, for example Firstname Lastname (Organization name). It is good practice to write an introductory passage about yourself and the organization in your user page.
- Use of the names of organizations is allowed on Wikimedia Commons only if you verify your account, proving that you are or represent the respective organization. It is highly recommended to introduce the organization and its activities on your user page and name the person who uses the account on behalf of the institution. You must not use this account on Wikipedia (especially not to directly contribute to content of articles). → Read more at Commons:Username policy.
Account verification edit
To verify your institutional account, do one or both of the following
- Use an official e-mail account to send an e-mail to info-commons
wikimedia
org, stating that the account in question belongs to you or the organization. Please be aware that the VRTS system that handles e-mail is operated entirely by volunteers. - Link a page on your website or a verified social media account from your user page at Commons and link back to your Commons user page from that page/account.
Organizations contributing to Wikimedia projects are monitored for not using the opportunity for self-promotion. Cultural heritage organizations are treated with more tolerance, but the same principles apply.
- The easiest is to refrain from writing about your own organization. However, if you write about your organization, make sure you reference independent and reliable sources. Using your own publications for this purpose may be contested. You can also invite others to write about your organization.
- On your user page, you can tell what information you or your institution can provide for Wikimedia.
- You can learn to contribute to the different projects yourself, collaborate with the local Wikimedia affiliates and volunteers, and invite your staff and stakeholders to the learning process with you.
Related materials edit
Benefits of opening content on Wikimedia projects
FAQ for safeguarding organizations
References edit
- ↑ Kaffee, Lucie-Aimée (2019-09-17). "The sum of all knowledge? Oral citations on Wikipedia". Medium. Retrieved 2023-07-13.