Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Österreich/August 2016

August 2016
Report

Community Support

Wikipedia for Peace 2016

Messages by Wikipedia for Peace 2016 participants in different languages

"Wikipedia for Peace" was a two-week project organized as a "workcamp" in cooperation of Service Civil International (SCI) Austria and Wikimedia Austria. In the course of the project 12 people from different countries (Spain, Portugal, Poland, Turkey, Israel, Syria, Germany, Bulgaria, Italy, Vietnam, Austria) and language backgrounds came together in order to edit Wikipedia articles about peace and a particular focus on environmental justice. This year's peace camp took place in from August 10-21 in Jenbach, Tyrol. We made some changes to the concept as a result of our experiences from last year and we were happy to see that it had the intended positive effects: Most noticeably the group dynamic and productivity improved a lot - mainly due to the venue in a more secluded area with less distractions than in a big city like Vienna.

20 individuals were directly involved in Wikipedia for Peace 2016. The 15 camp participants added or removed a total of 1,010,931 bytes, they edited 1,903 times and created 181 new pages from 10 Aug to 21 Aug 2016 (namespaces: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 106, 107).

The fact that we chose a more circumscribed topic this year (environmental justice) also helped the newbies chose new topics to write about. And for the photo hunt and work on Commons, Tyrol's nature also proved to be the perfect location for the topic. As a result, the participants created 47 new articles and improved 20 more. During the photo hunt several files were created and uploaded. As last year we also had a majority of female participants in the project. At the end of the camp, the attendees decided to put their experiences as newbies on the Wikimedia projects into powerful messages to the existing volunteers in their respective language communities (see pictures above).

The participants created or improved 67 Wikipedia articles in 12 languages during Wikipedia for Peace 2016. 140 media files were uploaded to the respective category on Wikimedia Commons. 61 media files are used in the main namespace of the Wikimedia projects (last check: 28 Oct 2016).

For WMAT another indicator of our successful work in the past year was, that although the camp took place on the other side of the country, far away from the office and the big Viennese community, our community building efforts in Tyrol made it possible to find local volunteers for the various presentations and workshops (i.e. Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons), so the need to import supporters from Vienna could be kept at a minimum. In addition, the project was nominated as a "Ort des Respekts" (Place of Respect) by an Austrian competition which fosters sustainable social projects. Quite a few newspapers also reported about the camp (see links below).

Beyond Austria the idea of the peace camp also gets more and more positive attention: A German Wikimedian attended this year because she wants to run a peace camp in Berlin, Germany next year. And after being nominated as one of the top 3 "coolest projects" during this year's Wikimania, the project manager Thomas was also approached by interested volunteers from Armenia and Italy. Hence, we plan to run a training for future peace camp hosts in spring 2017, hoping to get external funds for this by the Erasmus+ program of the European Commission.

Individuals involved: 20 (new editors: 13 (3 that edit a Wikimedia project after four weeks after their registration), active editors: 5 (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: Accomodation, catering, coordination and communication.

Results

→ Project pages on Meta

→ Images, videos and audio files on Wikimedia Commons

Media reports

→ Tiroler Tageszeitung: In Jenbach wächst der Frieden, August 18th 2016

→ RMagazin (Bezirksblatt Schwaz): Wikipedia for Peace: Schreiben für den Weltfrieden, September 7th 2016 (also with an English version of the article)

→ Gemeinde Jenbach: Friedensaktivisten zu Besuch in Jenbach

→ Interview with Podcast WikiStammtisch

CEE Meeting 2016 in Armenia

This year's edition of the Wikimedia CEE meeting was held during the last week of August in Dilijan, Armenia. It was attended by three WMAT representatives, who contributed to the programm with five sessions and the facilitation of three further sessions. Our aim was to share our experiences and expertise (project management, Wikidata/Sparql), start new cooperations (e.g. around the upcoming Hackathon in Vienna or bilateral writing weeks with other CEE communities), and to collaboratively evaluate common projects and start the planning of the next steps for others (mainly CEE spring). We were also able to use the opportunity to get the CEE volunteers in touch with interested newbies from the region (e.g. Poland and Bulgaria), who attended our Peace Camp Tyrol (see above), which ended just as the conference started. In addition, the conference was a great opportunity to discuss current topics and challenges with two FDC members who attended the conference and WMF Executive Director Katherine Maher, who attended the conference in preparation of the upcoming WMF strategy process.

Like last year we were impressed how tirelessly and passionate the CEE community works during their yearly meeting - often until late at night. We were also happy to receive positive feedback concerning our own input to the conference and CEE projects from WMF staff and CEE volunteers. All this made every minute spent on this event worthwhile.

Individuals involved: 3 (active editors: 2, WMAT staff: 1). - WMAT support: Travel support, presentations and knowledge transfer.

→ Presentation on project management

→ Presentation on SPARQL

→ Lightning talk about explainer videos

→ Workshop about cooperation around the Vienna hackathon 2017 (Etherpad documentation)

→ CEE spring evaluation session - Lessons Learned document on Meta (ToDo)

→ Report in members wiki (in German)

WikiDienstag

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 August 2016:

August 16th: Introduction bwAPI tool
August 23rd (100th WikiDienstag edition): Lists for Wiki Loves Monuments 2016
August 30th: WikiDienstag planning for the next months

Individuals involved: 31 (active editors: 30 [engaging 1 editor who has formerly not been or very rarely been an active WMAT volunteer into the planning and/or executing], WMAT staff: 1). - WMAT support: infrastructure, co-organisation, promotion.

→ WikiDienstag in the German-language Wikipedia

Free Content

Gallery: Equipment/accreditation support

We support Wikimedia Commons photographers with equipment from our tech pool and with accreditations for events. This gallery highlights some of the activities in August 2016.

Highway A23 in Vienna
Der Nino aus Wien concert
Monuments in Vienna
Busts in the University of Vienna
Akustik Woodstock Festival 2016
Park of Laxenburg Castle
Champions League Playoff FC Salzburg vs GNK Dinamo Zagreb
Hohe Tauern national park
Champions Hockey League - Vienna Capitals vs. Skelleftea AIK
SC Ritzing – squad 2016–17
Bassgeigensee
ÖBV four-nations-cup
Train infrastructure in Tyrol
Melk Abbey
Haydn Church in Eisenstadt

Individuals involved: 18 (active editors: 16, WMAT staff: 2). - WMAT support: equipment and/or accreditation.

Reach / Free Knowledge Awareness

GLAM: Museum Niederösterreich

Museum Niederösterreich is the regional museum of the state of Lower Austria. The museum runs the website gedächtnisdeslandes.at ("Gedächtnis des Landes" means "the state's memory") with more than 9000 entries about historical events, people, locations and works of art connected to Lower Austria. This database has been used widely as a reference in the German-language Wikipedia which resulted in a long-time informal collaboration between an Austrian Wikimedian and the museum's project manager.

Now the cooperation was lifted to another level and, with the direct involvement of WMAT, got "official". From now on gedächtnisdeslandes.at includes prominently placed links to the respective Wikipedia articles. A direct access to the website was granted, so that the Wikimedia volunteer can keep the links working and growing.

Individuals involved: 3 (active editors: 1, WMAT staff: 1, museum staff: 1). - WMAT support: coordination, travel costs for WMAT staff.

→ gedächntnisdeslandes.at (in German)

→ Report in members wiki (in German)

Learning Pattern

During our session on project management at the 2016 CEE meeting in Armenia, we collaboratively compiled a handbook on how to run bad projects with the participants. After the conference, the results of this session together with even more good input from social media was turned into a learning pattern in cooperation with Kaarel vom WMEE.

2015

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2017