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Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand/Annual Community Activity Report 2023/24

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Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand Community Activity Report July 2023 to June 2024 IN DRAFT edit

Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand Incorporated Society (WANZ) edit

 
The Committee of Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand

Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand Incorporated Society (WANZ) continues to recruit members. The Membership Policy stated that only natural persons can become members of WANZ and that organisations cannot. Annual membership fees were set a $NZ 5 GST inclusive.

The committee consists of:

WMF Funding edit

The User Group received its second General support grant from ESEAP / Wikimedia Foundation. This funding supported activities during the period of this report.

Some individual editors have received in kind support such as fee waivers for conference attendance by conference organisers.

Organisational development edit

During 2023/24 the committee:

  • approved the grant making policy and application form in July 2023
  • completed the recruitment of an Executive Advisor to assist the committee on 29 August 2023
  • advertised for requests for proposals for the Wikimedian at Large opportunity in July 2023
  • reviewed and updated the financial management policy in July 2023
  • selected and implemented Xero as the accounting software for WANZ with the support of an accounting firm in August 2023
  • published a regularly updated register of grants allocated from WANZ in the WANZ meta page.
  • approved the Committee workstream lead role description. This role description will permit clear communication with committee delegations to those taking up certain workstreams for the Committee. example Grant Making Workstream Lead October 2023
  • completed the review of the agreement on how the committee will work together in October 2023
  • reviewed the WANZ long term strategy in October, circulated for community feedback in November and December, due for approval at the committee in February 2024.
  • opened a Meetup.com account to assist with communicating upcoming events to the public October 2023
  • revisited the WANZ logo design with a design firm and updated the logo.
  • designed and purchased 3 pull up banners for events advertising.
  • launched the WANZ website on 22 December 2023
  • recruited two new committee members in December 2023
Kowhaiarewhana
Kowhaiarewhana is a multidisciplinary artist, Pasifika advocate and independent researcher of Niuean (Alofi, Hikutavake), Tahitian, Māori (Ngāti Porou, Ngāpuhi), Italian and Hungarian descent. She began editing Wikipedia when she was involved in the Creative New Zealand Wikipedian in Residence project led by Pakoire in 2022. Kowhaiarewhana administers the talawiki website, presented at the World of Wikipedia event in Sydney in 2023, and was a performer and attendee at Wikimania 2023 Singapore.
Avocadobabygirl
Avocadobabygirl is the Digital Outreach Manager for the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. She has developed tools and workflows to share Te Papa’s collections, data, and research on Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons. She works with Te Papa’s curators and content creators to encourage them to engage with Wikimedia projects as outreach channels for specialist subject knowledge. With Stitchbird2, she runs a regular staff lunchtime Wikipedia meetup. Avocadobabygirl was a presenter at Wikimania Singapore and is a regular attendee to the Wellington meet-up.
  • recruited communications adviser on retainer to assist with events communication plans in January 2024
  • organised supply of swag for events in 2024
  • began work on establishing Google Workspace Not for Profit for Committee business
  • held a successful WikCon Aotearoa in Auckland in March 2024.
  • submitted an Application for Chapter Status for our affiliate
  • began drafting the WANZ Communication Policy and Communication Strategy and Action Plan
  • began drafting an events manual for New Zealand organisers
  • completed a business planning day in Mohua | Golden Bay to plan the budget and activities for the 2024/25 financial year.

Funding Grants edit

The WANZ committee granted funding to:

  • June 2023 DrThneed a travel grant to present at the Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa Conference 2023 a paper titled The nation’s dissertations: Academic libraries engaging in Wikidata (October 2023)
  • July 2023 a group of Pasifika editors to attend Wikimania 2023 and provide a performance on the main stage (August 2023)
  • July 2023 two staff from the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa to attend Wikimania 2023 and present on The Whole GLAM Package project manual A manual for GLAMs releasing packages of collection images, data, and research to Wiki projects. (August 2023)
  • July 2023 Ambrosia10 to attend the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) conference in Hobart, Australia (October 2023).
  • October 2023 provided funding for a Wikimedian at Large 6 month project to be delivered by Giantflightlessbirds (15 January 2024 - August 2024).
  • December 2023 Wellington Photography Events. Two edit-a-thons focussed on training photographers about Wikimedia Commons and adding high quality photography (March 2024)

Relationships edit

The WANZ committee and members:

Conferences edit

WikiCon edit

WikiCon Aotearoa 2024 was held in Auckland on 23–24 March. There were twenty attendees.

Representation at other conferences edit

  • Wikimania 2023 - a large contingent of New Zealanders received scholarships from Wikimedia Foundation or support from WANZ to attend this conference in Singapore in mid August. In the past New Zealanders haven't had much representation on a global level and this is an excellent outcome of the hard work of our community over the past few years. The highlight was our own WANZ member, Ambrosia10 receiving the award as Wikimedia Laureate for 2023.
Reports Back
  • TDWG2023 - Ambrosia10 attended this conference in Hobart, Australia on 9 - 13 October 2023 where a paper she had co-authored was presented by a colleague. The paper covered a collaborative project creating a Wikidata schema for scientific expeditions and then reusing the same to assist natural history folk to add and connect scientific expeditions and their contributions in and via Wikidata. See this link for slides. Further information on the WikiProject relating to this collaboration can be found here. She also co-organised an "unconference" session on how to propose a Wikidata property to the Wikidata community which was well attended by the participants at that conference. She reported back to the Wiki community on the conference and her engagement with participants in a report that can be seen at en:User:Ambrosia10/TDWG2023.
  • LIANZA 2023 - DrThneed presented to the Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa Conference 2023 in Christchurch, New Zealand on the New Zealand Thesis project. 31 October - 1 November 2023.
  • Australian Citizen Science Conference #CitSciOz23 - Ambrosia10 delivered a keynote at this conference at the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia on 21 - 23 November 2023. This keynote included information on her work in Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikicommons. See this link for the presentation and slides.
  • GLAM Wiki 2023 – Giantflightlessbirds attended this conference in Montevideo, Uruguay on 16–18 November 2023, helping run two workshops introducing attendees to Wikisource editing. He afterwards met with staff at the Natural History Museum in Montevideo and the Museo de La Plata, Buenos Aires and discussed possible Wikimedia GLAM collaborations.

Wikimedia community support edit

Community meetups edit

Regular meetups were held during the year, both online and in person, around New Zealand. These included:

  • Aotearoa New Zealand Online Meetup: monthly online meetings open to everyone across the country, including regular attendees from Australia. The first 15 minutes is allocated to Aotearoa New Zealand User Group business. X meetings held, X total attendances
  • Wellington Meetup: monthly meetings in person (or online if required by New Zealand COVID-19 Alert Levels). X meetings held, X total attendances
  • Auckland Meetup: x meetings held, x total attendances
  • Christchurch Meetup: Christchurch meetings are once again occurring monthly, beginning in February 2024, as one of the acitivities of the Aotearoa Wikipedian at Large. x meetings held, x total attendances

Note that total number attending include multiple counts of individuals, as they are counted for each meeting they attended.

WANZ social media activity edit

  • Facebook private User group: group is used to assist editors and promote Wikipedia events and meet-ups. X members as at 30 June 2024.
  • Facebook public page: this was created with the goals of raising awareness of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in New Zealand, showcasing New Zealand content and highlighting opportunities for people to get involved. X likes and X Followers at 30 June 2024.
  • Twitter. The Wikimedia Aotearoa twitter handle has X (+X) followers and continues to actively post and share information.
  • LinkedIn. A LinkedIn page has been set up for Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand in early 2024.

Training edit

Events and major projects edit

WANZ has changing its reporting cycle to 1 July – 30 June. Campaign Dashboard Campaign Dashboard for 1 July 2023 - 30 June 2024

#1Lib1Ref campaign, 15 May – 5 June 2024 with Wikimedia Australia edit

Sign up to the #1Lib1Ref Programme Dashboard to have your contributions counted

Events for the campaign to be advised

New Zealand Wikidata Thesis Project: Connecting New Zealand dissertations to the world edit

 

Background on this project and an update were published in the March 2022 GLAMwiki newsletter. In short, the project involves taking metadata for approximately 66,000 theses from 13 New Zealand educational institutions and uploading it to Wikidata, and citing the theses on Wikipedia where relevant (e.g. when the author has a Wikipedia page). It is the first project to upload dissertations data for a nation, and also possibly the first multi-institutional collaboration for thesis data. During this period of this report DrThneed:

  • Presented with Zeborah at the Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa Conference 2023. A Nation's dissertations: Academic Libraries engaging in Wikidata.[1]
  • Presented at Wikimania 2023 - A Nation's Dissertations, The New Zealand Thesis Project
  • Published a letter on doctoral theses in Wikidata, in the Journal of Academic Librarianship ([1])
  • Presented to the Auckland Museum Wikipedia summer interns about the project, as an example of what Wikidata can do

Edit-a-Thons edit

This had some great coverage in the local Golden Bay paper see page 16

Encouraging GLAM contributions: Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum edit

Engagement edit

WANZ considers the relationship with Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum to be a high strategic priority as Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum is investing significantly in engaging and contributing to Wikimedia Foundation projects and is lead exemplar for this type of GLAM Wiki engagement in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Meetings continued between committee members led by Einebillion and James Taylor, Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum to discuss the museum's project grant from ESEAP and support for the Understanding Our Past Project including contributions and support needed from members of Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand. WikiCon Aotearoa 2024 was located in Auckland to help build the editing community.

Contributions edit

Encouraging GLAM contributions: New Zealand Parliamentary Library edit

The relationship with the New Zealand Parliamentary Library is building. They have received approval from management and are proceeding with their project.

Encouraging GLAM contributions: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa edit

Engagement edit

 
WANZ editors with Te Papa editors during the #1Lib1Ref event

WANZ considers the relationship with Te Papa to be a high strategic priority as Te Papa is New Zealand's national museum and national art gallery and engagement with Wikimedia Foundation projects by that institution will strongly influence other GLAM institutions within New Zealand. For the sake of transparency: Einebillion, President of Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand is an employee of Te Papa and is Head of Collection Access. She has been advocating for more engagement with Wikimedia Foundation projects. Avocardobabygirl, Committee member of Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand, is also an employee of Te Papa and is Te Papa's Digital Channels Outreach Manager. Avocardobabygirl continues to develop Te Papa's Wikimedia strategy and workplan and encourage new editors from Te Papa's staff.

Contributions edit

Wikipedia / Radio New Zealand Critter of the Week Project edit

 

Giantflightlessbirds continued to coordinate and expand the Critter of the Week Project. Critter of the Week is a long-running and popular Radio New Zealand show in which Nicola Toki (originally of the Department of Conservation, now head of Forest & Bird) and the host Jesse Mulligan talk about New Zealand species both endangered and neglected. It has been running since 2015 on Friday afternoon programming. Giantflightlessbirds and other volunteers have been creating or improving the corresponding Wikipedia article for each species to coincide with the Friday broadcast. This was initialy coordinated through Twitter. A project page was created in 2017 and now contains a more accurate episode list than Radio New Zealand's own website). Work has continued through 2023/24 on this project by a core group of committed editors.

West Coast Wikisource Project edit

With Giantflightlessbirds taking up the Wikimedian at Large opportunity based in Christchurch, the West Coast Task Force is on hiatus. Those works that have been loaded into Wikisource continue through the proofreading and validation process. There remain a significant number of books that have been scanned and are awaiting loading into Wikisource, the restricted editor base has meant that this work is being paced to ensure that editors focus on finishing the books already loaded. Giantflightlessbirds is applying for more funding to extend this project to other New Zealand libraries in the second half of 2024.

West Coast Wikipedian at Large edit

Development West Coast once again sponsored Giantflightlessbirds as a West Coast Wikipedian at Large over September–October 2023, with a follow-up trip in January 2024, focussed on the areas they would most like to see improved— attractions in the Karamea area, tourism on the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers, and the Waitangiroto Nature Reserve, breeding ground of kōtuku. The project we created eight new articles, and 113 articles were edited by 11 editors, who added 27,000 words and 217 references. Those articles had 42,000 views since the project began up to early November 2023. Over 400 photos were uploaded to Commons.

Aoteaora Wikipedian at Large 2024 edit

Wikimedia Aoteaora New Zealand provided a grant for a 6 month project aimed at assisting Canterbury institutions to engage with the Wikimedia Movement and to build the editor base of volunteer Wikimedians in Christhchurch, New Zealand. [The project ran from January to July 2024.

Invited Presentations, Media Interviews and other Outreach edit

  • Marshelec was invited to give a presentation to the Annual General Meeting of the Friends of Waiwhetū Stream on 6 November 2023. The presentation focussed on the article Waiwhetū Stream, and briefly introduced the audience to editing of Wikipedia articles.
  • Chocmilk03 was interviewed by Re: News about her editing experience (interview due to be published in Feb 2024).
  • Giantflightlessbirds appeared in the print newspaper The Greymouth Star on 30 September 2023 on page 2 talking about his West Coast Wikipedian at Large project.
  • Einebillion acting in their role as President of WANZ, wrote a supporting letter for Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research for a Lottery funding application to digitise and conserve photographic slides in the New Zealand Arthropod Collection and openly license for reuse these images via their website. They have an estimated 30,000 photographic slides that contain images of:
  • Sampling trips to offshore islands around New Zealand to discover insect biodiversity and for conservation purposes on these remote islands.
  • People conducting surveys of insect pest damage in the Pacific region (mostly Samoa, Tonga) and interactions with local communities.
  • insect pests and damage to crops and native plants in NZ (some images have been used in pamphlets and factsheets to industry growers)
  • invertebrate biodiversity from around New Zealand
Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research have been successful in their grant application and the project will begin digitisation in January 2024.
  • Ambrosia10 has undertaken multiple outreach efforts during this year including the following:
  • 16 - 19 August 2023 she attended Wikimania 2023 where she was named Wikimedia Laureate 2023. As a result of this award she undertook multiple interviews with Singaporian based outlets as well as this Radio New Zealand interview.
  • 31 August 2023 she gave an in person presentation to staff at the Auckland Museum, generally discussing several of her projects and how the Auckland Museum might be able to benefit or become involved in this work. This meeting also involved discussions with the Director of the Museum concerning the state of tools in the Wikiverse giving information and feedback on impact of sharing GLAM collections.
  • 21 September 2023 She gave a presentation at the Women and gender minorities in STEM club at Victoria University of Wellington. See here for slides.
  • 5 October 2023 (NZ time) She gave a keynote to the Wikimedia Foundation staff meeting Wikimedia Connect explaining about some of her Wiki contributions. See here for slides.
  • 4 - 5 November she presented on Connecting Entomological Collectors through the Wikiverse at the Entomological Collections Network annual meeting. See this link for the presentation and slides.
  • 6 December 2023 she presented at the Bionomia Workshop: People Identifiers Roundtrip to Collection Management Systems. Recordings of this workshop and her presentation can be found here. Slides for her presentation can be found here
  • 6 December 2023 a scientific paper she co-authored entitled Creating a multi-linked dynamic dataset: a case study of plant genera named for women was published. See this link to obtain access to this publication. This project used Wikidata to help create this dynamic dataset.
  • 6 December 2023 she co-authored a Pensoft blog entitled Entangled “her”stories – How to create an open multi-linked dynamic dataset of plant genera named for women publicising the above scientific publication.
  • December 2023 She was the lead author of the Introduction and ORCID modules of a Hidden Figures Natural History Collectors CURE. This Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience will also include a module on Wikidata and Bionomia. These latter two modules are currently in draft form and are intended to be published later in 2024.
  • 17 January 2024 She gave a seminar at the Wikipedia Guest Seminars for Summer Studentships - Auckland Museum. The slides for this presentation can be found here.
  • 23 January 2024 She accepted the nomination to be chairperson for the Wiki-Biodiversity Heritage Library Task Group. This task group meets once a month and collaborates to progress the work of the Wikidata WikiProject BHL. She also attends the regular monthly meetings of the Biodiversity Heritage Library cataloguing task group to assist them with any of their Wikidata questions.
  • Schwede66 was interviewed by the Golden Bay Weekly about the Mohua | Golden Bay editathon. Schwede66 was also interviewed on the FreshFM Fresh Start Friday with Grant, Carl and Hahna programme on Friday 2 Februrary 2023 to publicise the event.

Improving coverage of New Zealand topics edit

  • Improved content on academics in New Zealand (DrThneed and other editors) by:
  • Adding links to digitised theses on around 1600 English Wikipedia pages, and more than 100 pages in other languages (we cited the thesis on every page for the author at each university with the most pages)
  • Disambiguating more than 18,000 people on Wikidata, and connecting them to a New Zealand thesis, either as author or advisor
  • Adding main subject statements to theses on Wikidata, so that more than 80% of our theses now have at least one subject
  • Keeping statements about awards, honours and professorial promotions up to date on Wikidata to ensure tracking of notability.
  • Ensuring all women Fellows of the Royal Society Te Apārangi have Wikipedia pages in English
  • Creating biographies for more than 80 women professors. DrThneed is aiming to have all known full professors covered by the end of 2024 (currently there are 568 NZ women professors on Wikipedia, with 115 known professors yet to be covered).
  • Adding more than 280 images of Royal Society events to Wikimedia Commons, including many academics (Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch).
  • A collaborative initiative between multiple editors improved content on NZ politics by:
  • Wellington Harbour collaboration
An on-going collaboration between editors from the Wellington Wikipedia meetup group has produced a wide range of improvements to articles associated with Wellington harbour. Early in 2023, the Evans Bay Patent Slip article was assessed as GA. The most significant achievement for the 2023-24 period was getting a large article about Matiu / Somes Island to GA status. New articles were also created in 2023 for CentrePort Wellington, Wharves in Wellington Harbour and Waiwhetu Aquifer. Extensive improvements were also made to Wellington Harbour, and a group of articles associated with the Wellington Harbour Board and the heritage buildings they established on the Wellington waterfront.
Some related work included development of a new article Waiwhetū Stream, and this led to engagement and a presentation about Wikipedia at a public meeting of the community group Friends of Waiwhetu Stream.
  • Dark Sky Places
New articles were created for Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve, and Wairarapa Dark Sky Reserve
  1. ↑ https://www.lianza.org.nz/lianza-conference/lianza-2023-conference/lianza-2023-programme/
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