Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Deutschland/April 2013

Politics and Society

Federal Elections in Germany: Fact Checking with TV stations ZDF and Phoenix

In the weeks leading to the federal election, Wikimedia Deutschland will support the upcoming online fact checking which will be conducted by ZDF and Phoenix, both under public law. Wikipedians will be addressed and asked by WMDE to actively participate in this collaboration. For this reason, Wikimedia Deutschland will hire a Wikipedian in Residence as an embassador between the station and the community. This project will be a first step towards free content produced by a TV station under public law. However, many initiatives will still be necessary until the first news program will be broadcast with a CC-BY-SA license. Reason enough to start with a small step. The principle behind this fact checking format is based on the well-tried editing instructions from a well-known encyclopedia: Anybody can join, statements have to be neutral and documented and the history is always traceable. The content provided for the ZDF will be published under a Creative Commons license so that anyone can reuse it later.

We are very thankful for any kind of feedback, criticism, suggestions and participated in the discussions which started after the publication of the project on the Wikipedia:Kurier and other places as best as we could. Also, the results of the opinion poll are important to us and we hope for great participation, not only within the project but also in a critical reception thereof.

Contact person is Barbara Fischer. The proposal is part of the annual project "Excellent Partnerships."

DNA Exhibition at the Berlin Museum für Naturkunde (Natural History Museum)

On Monday, April 22nd, the new special exhibition "Entwicklungen - 60 Jahre Entdeckung der DNA-Struktur" (developments - 60 years after the discovery of the DNA structure) of our partner, the natural history museum, opened at Invalidenstraße in Berlin. Parallel to the exhibition, work at the portal DNA on Wikipedia has already started. It will be a big challenge to further reconcile the workflow of the museum with that of the Wikipedia editors.

This project is also part of the annual project "Excellent Partnerships."

The Romans are Coming to Brunswick

As the first stop on the "GLAM on Tour," the cooperation with the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum/3 Landesmuseum (Brunswick State Museum) got started. Thematically and locally interested Wikipedians, members and staff of Wikimedia Deutschland as well as volunteers and supporters of the museum will spend a weekend together. Their motto will be "The Romans are coming!" A Wikipedia project page has already been started for this purpose. "The Romans are coming!" is also the title of the state exhibition planned for September which will deal with one of the most important current archeological digging sites of Roman history. In this context, an excursion to the excavation area of the northernmost Roman battle, a writing workshop and a meeting of the musketeers will also take place in Brunswick.

For more information, please contact Lilli Iliev. This cooperation is part of the annual project "GLAM on Tour."

EU and Free Knowledge: Network Meeting in Brussels

In order to create the organizational preconditions for a better monitoring of EU legislation a first network meeting took place on April 6 and 7 in Brussels. Wikimedians from many countries participated in that meeting. Jan Engelmann already reported on WMDE's blog on the basic challenges for this project and the first results of the meeting. During the chapters conference in Milan, Niko Becker presented the current state of affairs.

More about the annual project "Roadmap to Brussels" can be found on Meta Wiki.

Education and Knowledge

Tour of Free Knowledge

This month, the foundation for the OER conference in the fall has been laid. A big part of this was the acquisition of partners, public relations and concept development. In addition, many meetings took place at the office of WMDE in order to determine common ground and forms of collaboration with related projects. The call for papers started on April 30, 2013 and anyone is invited to submit ideas and projects.

Diversity for Wikipedia

In the context of the course "Mediendidaktik und Konzeption" (media didactics and conception) of the Beuth Hochschule für Technik (University of Applied Sciences), our cooperation partner, the students focus on the development of digital, web-based learning material for Wikipedia this semester. Their declared focus is gender diversity. The topics range from how to give and take feedback to conflict management and mobilization for an active participation on Wikipedia. Questions can be directed at Julia Kloppenburg.

Shared Knowledge Initiative

Within the department, we worked on the development and finalization of the report about the recent activities. Due to this and to changes within our network of volunteering Wikipedians alterations for the annual project emerged. For the initiative this means that we will soon enter a brainstorming phase where all interested parties can become active. We will gather ideas about how to motivate women to join the Wikimedia projects in the future. There are already many ideas, more are being gathered. A good opportunity for that will also be the Open Sunday at the office of WMDE after the general assembly on May 26, 2013 in Berlin. Questions and suggestions can be sent to Elly Köpf.

Wikipedia Consultants Network

The changes in the network of volunteering Wikipedians have also been crucial to the changes within the department "Education and Knowledge." The meeting in Papenburg has not only been important for an evaluation of the previous activities but also for the development of new collaboration forms. The many different viewpoints become clear in a report by the camp's participants and WMDE's report both published in the Wikipedia:Kurier. There are currently talks with all involved parties about future collaborations.

Team Communities

Scholarships

Wikimedia Deutschland continued its support for the illustration of the Wikipedia article Grimme-Preis 2013 (Grimme prize 2013) with organizational and financial means. In addition, exhibits from the Czech Skoda museum and the music fair Frankfurt could be photographed.

Zedler-Prize Finalists

The juries of the three categories of the Zedler-Prize have announced their final decisions. We look forward to a great award ceremony on May 25, 2013 after the general assembly of Wikimedia Deutschland.

Research and Development

Wikidata

The team reached another big milestone in the project. Phase 2 of Wikidata (infoboxes) was deployed in all remaining Wikipedias (it had already been deployed in eleven Wikipedias). All Wikipedias are now able to collect, maintain and use all data collaboratively. On Wikidata itself it is now possible to add qualifiers which in turn allows for the addition of more information to certain data. Also, problems that arose when using Wikidata with Internet Explorer 8 have been patched. The team also worked on the data type "time" which is necessary to enter dates and other time stamps into Wikidata. Together with bot operators, it has been worked on the timespan that passes until changes in Wikidata are also visible in watchlists and "recent changes" on Wikipedia.

International Affairs

Wikimedia Conference in Milan

From April 18-21, 2013, some staff were in Milan at the Wikimedia Conference. At this meeting, the chapters conference, a meeting of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees, a meeting of the Wikimedia Chapters Association (WCA), a workshop about education programs, a Wiki Loves Monuments meet-up and many small group meetings took place. Topics like evaluation, goals, success factors for programs, international collaboration within the Wikimedia universe, the Funds Dissemination Committee, the new Affiliations Committee, e.g. User Groups and Thematic Organizations, the upcoming Wikimanias 2013 and 2014, the Chapters Dialogue initiated by WMDE, the VisualEditor, the manifold GLAM activities by the Wikimedia organizations, and the kick-off of the EU policy group were on the agenda. A general report will follow on the blog.

Tim Moritz Hector has already published an extensive blog post about the education program meeting he attended with Cornelia Trefflich: "The 1000 Perspectives of the 'Education Program Leader.'" In addition, Markus Glaser, WMDE's council member of the Wikimedia Chapters Association and its head wrote about his days in Milan: "The WCA Found its Place." Alice Wiegand writes about the meeting of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees and the search for a new executive director: "Time for Change at the Wikimedia Foundation." A post by Nicole Ebber follows: "Community Elects Highest Committee of the Wikimedia Universe: the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation." Nicole Ebber is happy to answer questions concerning the event and international collaborations.

Public Relations

Press Work

In April, a number of press reports were published for which WMDE collaborated with a number of journalists. These reports mostly consist of interviews and coverage stories about and at the office of Wikimedia Deutschland. For other stories we brought journalists together with community members. Some examples: For a photo spread in the magazine GEO and a radio interview for the Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) we brought journalists and interested members of the community together. The BR has also been at the office of WMDE for a television piece. We offered background information to the Berliner Zeitung, to the Süddeutsche Zeitung about crowdsourcing, to the C't about Wikidata, and to the Tagesspiegel which will soon publish a portrait about Wikimedia Deutschland. The ZEIT will also report about WMDE's fundraising in a special supplement.

A current overview can, as always, be found on WMDE's website.

Annual Report 2012

By means of some innovation we have finished working on the annual report for the year 2012. The German version has been published and a Wiki version of it has also been uploaded to Meta Wiki for the first time. This makes it more accessible than a usual pdf version of the printed report. The printed one is available, of course. We would be happy to send the report to anyone who is interested, just write an e-mail to press-de@wikimedia.org.

The annual reports of the past years can also be accessed on our website.

Fundraising

After sending out donation receipts at the beginning of April, team fundraising now receives membership applications day after day. At the moment, this makes up for more than 800 new, mostly sustaining members. The administration of these data takes up much time. This is due to most applicants having used the printed application and not the online form. This confirms our assumption once again. The medium letter influences the type of answer strongly: In an e-mailing a digital way of responding would have been used more frequently. The attached money transfer slip has also been used: This way, more than €15,000 have been donated to us during the past weeks. Until now, the return of this mailing has not stopped so that a concluding evaluation is yet to follow.

Another highlight this month was the Deutscher Fundraising Kongress 2013 (German fundraising congress) where Till Mletzko and Johannes Schrader participated. Till was able to speak about Germany's most successful fundraising campaign in front of more than 150 attendees. Talks like this and the following discussions always remind us that Wikimedia's online campaign makes people very curious. Especially its transparency and the involvement of volunteers by means of personal appeals caught the eye of many participants.

Job Postings

You can find all job postings at Wikimedia Deutschland on the website.