Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network/minutes 2018 06 27

Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network

2pm EST June 27, 2018

online meetup

Attendees

• John Cummings
• Richard Knipel
• Lane Rasberry
• John Sadowski

Agenda

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_in_Residence_Exchange_Network

• Monthly calls
• Wikimania
  • https://wikimania2018.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetups#Meetups_Schedule
  • Thursday night preconference?
• Usergroup
• Knowledge sharing

Discussion

Criteria for joining the Wikipedian in Residence program? John Sadowski says nonprofit or goverment to exclude commercial organization. John Cummings raises the example of ContentMine which is a commercial organization but heavily engaged in Wikimedia development with the community.

Could someone who manages Wikipedians in Residence joins? Various schools might have a point person who keeps a long term relationship with Wikimedia projects while not editing themselves, and who hires temporary Wikimedian in Residence contractors. Lane mentioned the example of OCLC which has Merrilee as a regular Wiki coordinator who hires Wikipedians who come and go. John mentioned that UNESCO might similarly have a manager who hires Wikimedians.

John Sadowski talked about reviving the Wikimedian in Residence Facebook group.

John Cummings asked which voices the Wikimedian in Residence projects miss by doing outreach to GLAM. John Sadowski said that he was at a science research institute and that universities get excluded too.

The group discussed the "GLAM" label. People like the GLAM label but sometimes it has excluded STEM, university groups, and perhaps other Wikimedians in Residence. There are GLAM communication channels in Facebook and elsewhere. Should we use these, make new ones, or have multiple branches?

John Cummings asked why we need the usergroup. He said that as a Wikimedian in Residence he frequently encounters the same problems. One set of problems is the challenge of bringing new users into Wikimedia projects and exposing them to things like newcomer biting, challenges to train them, and orienting them to the Wikimedia community.

Someone asked who should come to user group meetings. One person said that for early planning a small group is better to make early decisions which later anyone could change with discussion. Setting some norms to establish the group would be helpful.

John Sadowski said that things at NIOSH are going well. He has been there for 1.5 years and institutional support for wiki seems to be growing. Although he is based in DC the NIOSH offices are in Ohio. It is a fortunate coincidence that WikiConference North America will be in Ohio in October 2018 and that he expects that NIOSH staff will be able to join locally.

Lane asked John Cummings what he documented. John replied that he tries to document processes for navigating the Wikimedia community. When he needs something to explain an aspect of Wikimedia engagement then sometimes he will write the process in a Wikimedia project then share the documentation which he produced. Currently John is collaborating with SPARC to publish some documentation on how UN publishing agencies can share their content with open copyright licenses.

John Sadowski talked about how NIOSH is sharing information. While everything made by the US Federal Government is in the public domain there can be challenges making this content accessible or communicating about its existence so that people can discover the content. More commonly the administration at NIOSH has opinions on publishing and thoughtful ideas on how to make it more open and accessible. Scientists doing research at NIOSH, however, may not invest as much thought into publishing and distribution practices, and instead their expertise is in their field of domain knowledge. Scientists routinely prefer to publish in academic journals than in free and open communication channels.

Lane talks about the work he did at Consumer Reports and the models used when working with an organisation who want to keep their content closed. How his new role is with an organisation who are much more interested in sharing content openly.

Everyone exchanged travel plans. All four in this call are going to Wikimania in South Africa. John in DC is going to Paris for a conference and will meet John at UNESCO in Paris. Later John from DC will visit Lane in Virginia near DC.

Suggestion that part of the usergroup could be workshops on different subjects, to upskill the groups and improve documentation. Perhaps the Wikipedian in Residence usergroup could coordinate classes which are useful to Wikimedians in Residence.