Selected images from the Monuments Day Photo Competition
Interiors
Interiors
Cellar alleys
Pilgrim trails
Train infrastructure
Austria didn't participate in this year's international Wiki Loves Monuments competition. The reason for this is a pleasant one: over the past years the Austrian community managed to upload images of almost all of the 37,000 cultural heritage monuments in Austria. The loss of an immediate need for images of most monuments had resulted in a decline of new editors attracted by WLM. That's why we decided to replace WLM with a smaller and less expensive photography contest centered around the Austrian Monuments Day. The Monuments Day is a yearly event by our long-time WLM partner, the Federal Monuments Office. 255 monuments opened their doors for interest visitors. This focus allowed us to maintain and develop our partnership with the Federal Monuments Office.
We added some special prizes to the Monuments Day Photo Competition which were relevant for the Austrian Wikimedia community in particular, because of special photography projects by Wikimedians already in action during the year:
66 uploaders participated in the contest: 20 new editors and 46 existing editors. The jury consisted of five photography and monument protection experts. The awards ceremony is scheduled for January 2017.
Individuals involved: 74 (active editors: 46, new editors: 20 (2 that edit a Wikimedia project after four weeks after their registration), WMAT staff: 2, jury members: 5, WMAT contractor: 1). - WMAT support: prizes, organizational support including costs for external contractor.
This year's Volunteer Fair in Vienna (October 1-2) attracted about 5.000 visitors, looking for suitable organizations and projects to volunteer in. WMAT volunteers and staff talked to 394 people during the two days, handing out volunteer profiles on how to edit Wikipedia. Additionally we offered guided first steps on editing Wikipedia, by finding a minor mistake (typos, link fixes, missing pictures) and fixing them by using the Visual Editor on a large TV-screen. At least 35 Wikipedia articles were improved (cf. de:Spezial:Beiträge/178.114.108.247, de:Spezial:Beiträge/141.203.192.26). Based on the positive response of the brave new editors and the conversations we had, we expect that some intersted person will also get directly involved on Commons and Wikipedia and hence can't be directly tracked down for evaluation. The major strength of our presentation concept was that volunteers reached out to volunteers, which is the best way to spread the energy and passion. Staff was mainly involved in the preparation and kept to a minimum during the event itself (only 1 per day to ensure that everything runs smoothly etc.).
Individuals involved: 401 (active editors: 5, WMAT staff: 2). - WMAT support: organisation, give-aways (chocolate for edits, pens and stickers, information materials, costs of fair-booth.)
The WikiDienstag (“WikiTuesday“) is a weekly meet-up in the WMAT office. Volunteers share their knowledge and work together on improving the content of Wikimedia projects.
Topics in October 2016:
October 4th: New portal of the support programs of WMAT/WMDE/WMCH in the German-language Wikipedia (de:Wikipedia:Förderung)
October 11th: Lists for the Monuments Day photo competition
October 18th: Writing session: necrologies in the German-language Wikipedia
October 25th: Introduction into the Legal Information System of the Republic of Austria (platform and database providing information on Austrian law)
Individuals involved: 32 (active editors: 30 [engaging 2 editors who have formerly not been or very rarely been active WMAT volunteers into the planning and/or executing], WMAT staff: 2). - WMAT support: infrastructure, co-organisation, promotion.
The Writing Competition ("Schreibwettbewerb") is a traditional contest for high-end articles in the German-language Wikipedia. WMAT supported the 25th jubilee edition by donating a travel scholarship for Wikimania 2017 in Montreal as a prize. 22 editors participated in the 25th Writing Competition. 23 articles were nominated, 14 of them were new and 9 improved articles. A young Austrian Wikipedian served as one of eight jury members. WMAT paid his travel costs for the jury meeting in Berlin.
After the competition, many of these articles were nominated as featured or good articles. Here is a list of articles which were recognized as featured or good articles (until 2016-12-21):
Cellar alleys (Kellergasse in Austrian German) are sunken lanes with wine cellars and wine press houses on one or both sides. They are typical for the rural areas of Eastern Austria. The idea to document this part of the national cultural heritage came up at our Community IdeaLab in April 2016.
Two local photographers teamed up as User:Kellergassen Niederösterreich 2016. They made and uploaded 1,264 new images of cellar alleys from June 11th to November 2nd. Many of them (369 as of November 15th) were recognized as “quality images” by the Wikimedia Commons community. The total number of images of Austrian cellar alleys on Wikimedia Commons rose from 357 before the project to 1,915 at the end of the project. Cellar alleys were also a special price category at the Monuments Day Photo Competition (see in section “Community Support” above).
Another three users specialized in providing a framework for the images in the German-language Wikipedia. 91 new Wikipedia articles were created for the project: lists of cellar alleys in Austria, divided by municipality and including images, descriptions and more.
We support Wikimedia Commons photographers with equipment from our tech pool and with accreditations for events. This gallery highlights some of the activities in October 2016.
Individuals involved: 12 (active editors: 10 [engaging 1 editor who has formerly not been or very rarely been an active WMAT volunteer into the planning and/or executing], WMAT staff: 2). - WMAT support: equipment and/or accreditation.
One again we conducted an edit-a-thon during one of the university courses on War and Propaganda until WWI by Prof. Friedrich Schipper at the University of Vienna (see October 2015 report on a previous edit-a-thon). In 2017, the 34 students (8 male, 26 female) are going to write one Wikipedia article each (with the help of Wikipedia tutors). The three-hours edit-a-thon introduced them to Wikipedia editing and was based upon our concept of Editing leads to media literacy. The edit-a-thon resulted in the creation of the Wikipedia article Ernst Zimmer (+ 11,437 bytes) about a German war painter of World War I.
Elevate is an annual festival held in Graz, Austria. With provides a unique combination of critical poltical discourse and contemporary music and art. The organizational body is a not-for-profit association. With an extensive programme of discussions, workshops, lectures, and film screenings, the Elevate Festival wishes to foster a better understanding of the most important issues of our time. This year, the program focused on the far-reaching transformations currently taking place in Europe and WMAT was invited to curate a panel on internet policies and activism in Europe. We did this together with our longstanding partners for EU advocacy in Europe, Open Knowledge Austria and the Working Group on Data Retention Austria. We also invited Dimitar Dimitrov, the Free Knowledge Ambassador of the European Wikimedia chapters in Brussels. The goal of the session was, to introduce netpolitical organizations in Austria to an interested public of potential activits and to demonstrate that EU politics is not rocket science and how people can get involved.
The EU Copyright reform was proposed this fall and in the near future the EU Member States will have to vote on this too. Hence, several governments were running national consultations in October and WMAT like many other European affiliates considered it to be important to answer this call. The deadlines were very short, but with the help of Dimitar - the Free Knowledge Ambassador of the European Wikimedia chapters in Brussels - we could prepare an executive briefing with the key demands for Wikimedia. In addition, WMAT contributed to a joint statement with 15 other Austrian netpolitical organizations - such as Creative Commons Austria, and the Internet Service Providers Austria (ISPA) - demonstrating a broad alliance for freedom of panorama and other common concerns regarding the legislation.
Thespis.Digital is project by five researchers of the Department of Theatre, Film and Media Studies of the University of Vienna led by Prof. Stefan Hulfeld. Within the next two years, an internet platform will be established which is a public digital archive of German-language theater troupes of the 17th and 18 century. It contains data about actors and actresses, locations, plays and performances. The data sets are linked to German-language Wikipedia articles with further information.
An important aspect of this project is to review and improve existing Wikipedia articles and to create the missing ones. This is done by the researchers themselves with continuous low-key counseling by WMAT. As a first step, we conducted a 6-hours workshop with the researchers (4 male, 1 female) which resulted in the first 5 new articles, e. g. about a once much-played 17th-century drama called Don Gaston oder Spiegel wahrer Freundschaft.
Individuals involved: 6 (new editors: 3 [engaging 1 editor who has formerly not been or very rarely been an active WMAT volunteer into the planning and/or executing], active editors: 2, WMAT staff: 1). - WMAT support: workshop.
Interiors
Interiors
Cellar alleys
Pilgrim trails
Train infrastructure
Max Brand Synthesizer
Monument photography in and around Vienna
Monument photography in Carinthia
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