Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Deutschland/February 2013

Politics and Society

Reformation of Copyright I + II

February saw two important events when it comes to the reformation of the German copyright law. On the one hand, the German parliament approved a revised version of the ancillary right for press publishers on March 1, earlier than expected. Paradoxically now, the scope of this law cannot be applied to snippets and aggregating service providers anymore because there will explicitly be no need to license "individual words or smallest text segments". Why is this highly controversial law necessary? Mathias Schindler evaluates it on our blog. Already on February 20, the Federal Ministry of Justice published a draft bill for dealing with orphan works and works that are out of print in the future. In addition, an indispensable right for the secondary publication of scientific authors is included in the draft. As a reaction, Wikimedia Deutschland will prepare and publish an official statement by March 6, 2013.

Writing Workshop with Museum Village Düppel / Workshop for Senior Citizens

On February 9, 2013 the first writing workshop with volunteers took place as part of a collaboration between museum village Düppel and Wikimedia Deutschland. By the end of the day, they were able to add to and extend the Wikipedia article about the museum village themselves. Further collaborative projects are planned for the future. This was an exciting process not only because of the work that had been done in Düppel referring to the research of medieval craftsmanship but also because it was a collaboration mainly with older people (65+), who are equipped with a highly specialized expert knowledge.

Kick-off the Research Association Science 2.0 of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Society

26 research projects about the Science 2.0 presented themselves in Hamburg between February 14 and 15. Wikimedia Deutschland will not only be the object of research in this research association, but it will also become the subject of research by means of a cooperation agreement. Details on our blog.

Education and Knowledge

The department of Education and Knowledge was much about planning the activities of this year. In addition, the evaluation of the past year was of importance. The initiative Klicksafe took up work for the teaching material about "Wikipedia in the classroom" which is expected to be finished by October 2013. The previous experiences with the Wikipedia school project will be of use here and will be didactically reworked as teaching material. More material will follow this year. We wrote about the importance of these materials in a blog posting. In addition, different meetings have taken place that dealt with Open Educational Resources (free teaching and learning material) where Wikimedia especially focused on bringing together different actors from different fields of research. More information in the project's profile. At the beginning of the month, the department Education and Knowledge visited the Leibniz Society (as the colleagues from Politics and Society wrote above) where they talked about possible cooperation and research ideas. In the context of the "Shared Knowledge Initiative" the department Education and Knowledge addresses longterm projects this year and is looking for partners and interested parties for that. Ideas and hints are welcome in the project's profile.

Local Workshops and Conferences

Once again this month, "Women edit - ein offenes Netzwerktreffen" (an open network meeting) took place at the FrauenComputerZentrumBerlin, Wikimedia Deutschland's cooperation partner. Who missed it in February, is welcome to dive into the Wikipedia world in March again. More information can be found on the webpages of the FCZB. And whoever wants to get in touch before the meeting, just visit the Wikipedia project page. Have fun!

Team Communities

In February, the Wikimedia forums were continued with the first part of a tour through Germany. The RENDER project and Team Communities went to Nuremberg, Stuttgart and Munich.

Scholarships

The Wikipedia arbitration committee met in Limburg and talked about current cases, internal organization and recent community developments. This meeting was fully funded by Wikimedia Deutschland.

The helicopter expedition to take pictures of Cuxhaven not only generated many photos in 2013, but most of all helped the voluntary photographers to gain knowledge and expertise about taking pictures from the air, which can later be used and passed on in smaller projects. This helicopter flight was fully funded by Wikimedia Deutschland.

In February, Wikipedians who are active as Wikipedia:Musketiere (musketeers) met at the office of Wikimedia Deutschland. Wikimedia Deutschland covered the costs for rooms and catering for a second meeting in Dortmund. Just like at other edit-a-thons Wikipedia articles were extended and written as team effort. This time it was a stipulation not to edit own articles.

Two Wikipedians were present at a very important event and were able to take pictures of the constitutive meeting of the state parliament in Lower Saxony. Wikimedia Deutschland covered travel expenses. The result will be available on Wikimedia Commons.

Community Projects Budget

Information about the development of the individual projects that are funded under the Community Projects Budget can be found on the CPB project page. Amongst others, the photo project in the Hessian parliament could be realized in February. A team of the German broadcasting station RTL was also present. The politicians' pictures are now ready to be retrieved and reused under a free license on Wikimedia Commons. In the project "Festivalsommer" (festival summer) more photographers can sign up and be supported with equipment and accreditations.

Research and Development

RENDER

In the research project RENDER the first tour stops of our Wikimedia forums were realized together with the communities team. The first stations were Nurembrg, Stuttgart and Munich. On these occasions, the development team had the opportunity to introduce the supporting tools and talk about possible adaptations or extensions with the attendees. In addition, we started testing the tools with individual users. The results of the first evaluation round together with the hints and tips that we were able to collect during the tour will be used by Wikimedia Deutschland to improve the tools. Please contact render@wikimedia.de with more hints or questions.

Wikidata

The first phase of Wikidata (interlanguage links) has been deployed on the English Wikipedia. It is now used in the Hungarian, Hebrew, Italian and English Wikipedia. The other language versions will follow on March 6, 2013. In addition, new features and bugfixes were installed on wikidata.org. The community developed the first tools that use Wikidata, e.g. Geneawiki or Reasonator.

Wikimedia Deutschland decided to continue the project after the first year of development. If you have questions, please send an e-mail to wikidata@wikimedia.de.

International Affairs

First Preparations for Wikimania 2013

The application deadline for Wikimania scholarships is over. As soon as the application committee will have finished with their evaluation, Wikimedia Deutschland will award 20 scholarships at 1,500 € to applicants residing in Germany. In addition, it will also award international applicants with scholarships worth 10,000 €. Together with Wenke Storn and Kasia Odozek, Nicole Ebber is preparing own submissions and items on the agenda by the association, as well as the collaboration with the scholarship holders and other Wikimedia organizations.

WCA and Wikimedia Chapter

The letter by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees that asked the WCA to reasses their concept started much discussion all over the Wikimedia movement. In this letter the board expressed its concerns referring to the progress and bureaucratization of the chapters' umbrella organization. Markus Glaser and Nicole Ebber as well as Alice Wiegand and Jan-Baart de Vreede of the board were present at the following meeting of some WCA council members in London. It was decided to abstain from officially registering the WCA and from hiring a secretary general for now. Instead, the members want to concentrate on concrete projects and support among the chapters now.

Public Relations

Press Work

In February, Wikimedia Deutschland helped arrange interviews between media represenatives and Wikipedia editors again. Also, the association supplied background information for journalistic inquiries. A selection of press reports can be found in the press review of the organization. For the conference "Wikidata trifft Archäologie" (Wikidata meets Archeology) WMDE prepared and sent out an invitation for press representatives.

Project Prifiles

The short profiles for the projects planned in 2013 were translated into English and published on Meta-Wiki together with the German originals.

Fundraiser and Information Material

This month, the communications team supported the fundraising team with preparing the annual mailing of donation receipts. A postcard that enables members of WMDE to increase their membership fee was produced and new envelopes were designed.

Also, Wikipedia's cheat sheet ("Spickzettel") was revised in order to cater to the needs of Wikipedia beginners. Two roll-up displays were created for the upcoming "GLAM on tour". Those call for cooperations between cultural institutions and Wikipedia. In addition, WMDE produced T-Shirts for active GLAM volunteers. New give-aways that are supposed to increase the popularity of the Wikimedia projects are also in the making.

In February, extensive editorial work was put into the upcoming activities report for the year 2012.

Fundraising

Even though the fundraising campaign has been over for a couple of weeks now, it is still very present for the fundraising team: In February, it prepared the mailing of donation receipts as every year. Not only during the campaign we were able to report some records: We assume that we will send out approximately 88,000 receipts, which is more than twice as much as last year. As soon as the mailing will be finished at the beginning of March the fundraising campaign 2012 will be completed for team fundraising. For the mailing all payments had to be imported into the team's database and all adresses were edited during the last weeks. In addition, the mailing supplies, e.g. envelopes, have been revised. Just like last year we want to attract many new members by means of the donation receipts. Therefore, a membership application is enclosed in the mailing.

Job Postings

At the moment, a number of jobs have been posted at Wikimedia Deutschland, for example a position as head of team communication, reinforcement for team communities and assistance for event management. Your applications are welcome!