Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Deutschland/December 2012

Politics and Society

Election Questionnaire

December 2012 is the new January 2013 because we already sent out the election questionnaire for the state elction in Lower Saxony in mid-December. The questionnaire is part of our project concerning works of the government which we stated in our annual plan 2013. The 5 pairs of questions focus on dealing with official works, e.g. Open Government Data, geodata or questions concerning licenses regarding a prospective Freedom of Information Act.

State Parliament Schleswig-Holstein

Wikimedia Deutschland was asked by the department of home affairs and the legal committee of Schleswig-Holstein's state parliament to take a stance on a proposition by collecting societies. Our response to the state parliament was backed by the organization Digitale Gesellschaft e.V. (digial society).

Education and Knowledge

Wikimedia Deutschland's department Education and Knowledge dealt intensively with next year's foci in December already. The main focus of the team's work will be the diversity of Wikipedia und the question of how people can be motivated to contribute to the Wikimedia projects. In addition, it will be important to join the conversation about Open Educational Ressources in the coming year. An overview of our goals can be found in the annual plan 2013 of Wikimedia Deutschland. Also, the department started the long-desired workshops about Wikipedia for staff members of WMDE. We are looking forward to an exciting 2013 and thank everyone who helped us shape the changes we achieved in 2012.

Local Workshops and Conferences

Networking meetings for women took place in Munich and Berlin. In Combinat56, nine new Wikipedia authors met at the beginning of the month and talked with each other about Wikipedia and possible areas of work for female authors. In a blog post, the organizer of this meeting writes about her experiences and that the cooperation with Munich Wikipedians is to be expanded next year.

Already for the second time, on December 12 female Wikipedia authors met at FrauenComputerZentrumBerlin (FCZB) for a networking meeting. The focus of their meeting was the collaborative work on Wikipedia articles. The next meeting will take place on January 9, 2013 at the FCZB. Starters and old hands are welcome.

Another date was influenced by the Wikipedia-AG in Hanover. Those teachers who work intensively with and on Wikipedia for a whole school year talked about the current state of the project and were able to ask one of WMDE's consultants their questions. Their experiences were very different. One focus was the question "Why are my contributions being deleted and what can I do about it?" A clear communication concerning this topic proved to be very helpful for all participants.

Team Communities

Scholarships

In December, Wikimedia Deutschland offered high-quality literature about ceramics and Myasthenia gravis, a neurological illness, to Wikipedia volunteers.

On the first weekend in December, Wikimedia Deutschland invited the OTRS team of Wikipedia to its biannual workshop at the office of WMDE. The team consists of volunteers who answer many different e-mails from members of the Wikimedia community and the public, including complaints about articles, general questions about the Wikimedia projects and free licenses. The workshop is an important part of the function since 2008. On Saturday, Jan Engelmann, head of the department Politics and Society at Wikimedia Deutschland, presented on the "right to forget," which is currently debated in the EU. Dr. Ansgar Koreng of JBB attorneys, who work closely with WMDE, answered questions about personality rights and copyright. Alice Wiegand, board member at the Wikimedia Foundation, talked about her work as a volunteer at this committee. The rest of the Sunday was spent with optimizing internal processes. Wikimedia Deutschland is happy with its role as a host and will gladly offer their rooms to the OTRS team and other workgroups of Wikipedia and its sister projects.

A group of Wikipedians travelled to the general assembly of the Deutscher Olympischer Sportbund (German Olympic Sports Confederation) in order to take photos of members, including officials and well-known athletes, and to make contact with them. They were financially, technically and organizationally supported by WMDE.

Research and Development

RENDER

The RENDER team concentrated on planning and preparing the evaluation of the supporting tools. Questions and comments can be sent to the RENDER team or uploaded to the discussion page on Wikipedia.

Wikidata

The software on wikidata.org has been updated and test2.wikipedia.org now draws its language links from Wikidata. Changes on Wikidata will be visible in the recent changes on test2.wikipedia.org for those articles that have an equivalent on this page. In case there won't be any problems, the Hungarian Wikipedia will use language links from Wikidata starting January 14, 2013. Other Wikipedias will follow.

In December, we participated in different events again, e.g. foss.in in Bangalore and 29C3 in Hamburg. Denny Vrandečić and Lydia Pintscher hosted two IRC office hours (logs in English and German).

For the second phase of Wikidata the representation of values will be of importance. Therefore, the team published drafts and started discussions. Input is very welcome and would be highly appreciated.

International Affairs

Portal to the International Wikimedia World

After discussions during the Open Sunday at WMDE's office in November, Nicole Ebber encouraged to create a page in the German Wikipedia (Wikipedia:Wikimedia) which serves as a form of information portal, work platform or "door to the international Wikimedia world." This portal is supposed to be an entry point or guide to the different international Wikimedia topics and to focus on the different possibilities for participation offered by the Wikiverse.

Public Relations

Press Work

In December, the communications department at Wikimedia Deutschland received a number of press inquiries. A selection can, as usual, be found in our press review. A special focus during the last month of the year was the annual fundraiser, which ended successfully on December 31.

Fundraiser

Both teams fundraising and communication worked on additional personal appeals for the annual fundraiser. Interviews with donors, Wikipedia editors and members of the organization were transcribed, rewritten into appeals, coordinated and tested. More about that can also be found in the next section - fundraising.

In addition to the usual appeals in the form of texts and banners on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Deutschland produced a video appeal which could be integrated into the campaign as a successful element. The preparations ended during the last week of November, production, cutting and technical implementation into the concept of the banners started in December.

Information Material

A new flyer for new members of Wikimedia Deutschland has been developed and created together with team fundraising. This flyer will now be sent out to all those members who opted for a membership during the fundraiser. It shortly and concisely informs about the possibilites and contact persons at WMDE.

Fundraising

At the end of December it was certain: We did it! For the first time in the history of Wikimedia Deutschland we reached the fundraising goal in less than seven weeks. We were able to convince more than 230,000 donors since the beginning of the campaign on November 13. This means that we reached our fundraising goal of 5.2 million Euros in December already.

We are very excited that for the first time we were able to use personal appeals from Wikipedia editors, donors and Wikimedia staff. All of them were pretty successful. Among others, we showed a 86-year-old Wikipedia author, one of the first authors of the German Wikipedia, even a mayor from the Deister. All in all, we showed 15 different faces by those people who make Wikipedia possible: authors and donors. Only one story was missing in December: that of Jimmy Wales.

On December 31, the fundraiser ended with a Thank You banner. As usual, there will be a final report at the end of the campaign which will include all numbers and facts of the fundraiser. One thing can be revealed already: Not only did the number of donors rise fortunately, but also the number of new members. More in the blog post.