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Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand Community Activity Report July 2024 to June 2025 IN DRAFT

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Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand Incorporated Society (WANZ)

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Seven people seated in a conference room with laptops in front of them displaying various Wikiverse stickers
The Committee of Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand

Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand Incorporated Society (WANZ) continues to recruit members. The Membership Policy states that only natural persons can become members of WANZ and that organisations cannot. Annual membership fees were set at $NZ5 (GST inclusive).

The committee consists of:

We have continued to contract an Executive Advisor, Dianne Skelton and this year recruited a Marketing and Communications Coordinator, Sophie Sparrow, who assist the committee on a part-time basis.

WMF Funding

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The User Group received a General support grant from ESEAP / Wikimedia Foundation. This funding supported activities during the period of this report.

Some individual editors have received in–kind support such as fee waivers for conference attendance by conference organisers.

Organisational development

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During 2024/25 the committee:

  • celebrated the 5th birthday of the User Group in December 2024
  • completed the recruitment of a part-time contractor for the role of Marketing and Communications Advisor in October 2024.
  • awarded the annual Wikimedian in Residence grant for 2025 to Auckland Museum.
  • advertised for requests for proposals for the annual Wikimedian at Large opportunity for 2025 in July 2024 and awarded the grant in November 2024.
  • maintained the WANZ website
  • began a monthly newsletter to help inform members and interested organisations and people about upcoming events and activities
  • accepted the resignation of two committee members MurielMary and Kowhaiarewhana
  • organised the restock of supply of swag for events
  • wrote and submitted a written submission opposing the Treaty Principles Bill
  • began drafting a submission to prepare for a Copyright Act Review bill anticipated to be prepared by the New Zealand Government sometime in the next three years
  • transferred the Society business records and communication workflow to Google Workspace Not for Profit
  • followed up on our Application for Chapter Status for our affiliate
  • completed an onboarding manual for committee members and contractors
  • completed a Privacy Policy
  • reviewed in August 2024 and approved the WANZ long term strategy, including circulating it for community feedback.
  • completed an in-person business planning day in Wellington in February 2025 to plan the budget and activities for the 2025/26 financial year. These will be submitted to Wikimedia Foundation and made available in Wikimedia Meta as part of our Year 3 grant application due for submission on 14 March 2025.
  • is planning a WikiCon Aotearoa in Christchurch for May 2025.
  • started preparing for the Annual General Meeting of the Society for 2025, to receive the annual report for 2024 and elect new officers.

Grants made

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A list of grants made by WANZ is published on the WANZ meta page. During the 2024/25 period, the WANZ committee made the following grants:

Relationships

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In addition to the relationships detailed in this report the WANZ committee and members also connected with:

  • The Fletcher Archive
  • Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research

Conferences

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WikiCon 2025

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WikiCon 2025 will be held in Christchurch on the weekend of 16-18 May 2025. The conference theme is Welcome to Ōtautahi, the heart of the Mainland.

ESEAP Conference 2024

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ESEAP Conference 2024 was held in Kota Kinabalu, Malasia on 10-12 May 2024. The conference theme was Collaboration beyond the horizon

There were a number of attendees from New Zealand including:

Pakoire presented on Lisa's Bookclub and other initiatives from Aoteaora New Zealand

The Auckland Museum Summer Scholars Worldsgreatestmum, Winnieswikiworld, Summ23 and Hs17127 presented on Editing Wikipedia to understand our past: Enriching Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland’s local history on Wikipedia

Wikimania 2024

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Wikimania 2024, the 19th Wikimedia conference was held in Katowice, Poland on 7-10 August 2024.

There were a number of attendees from Aotearoa New Zealand including:

Ambrosia10 gave three presentations at Wikimania 2024 on the Wikidata WikiProject IBC 2024, the Women Genera collaboration and the Hidden Figures collaboration.

Representation at other conferences

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  • July 2024 XX International Botanical Congress in Madrid, Spain - Ambrosia10 and Stitchbird2 both presented at the conference as well as submitted at poster on Wikidata. Ambrosia10 received funding to attend from the Wikimedia Foundation with WANZ providing funds for bookmarks. The conference report is available. For more information on this international collaboration, it formed around the outreach effort Wikidata WikiProject IBC 2024.
  • 13-15 November 2024 Open Education Global 2024 in Brisbane, Australia - Ambrosia10 presented a keynote titled From passive absorption to empowered co-creation on the second day of the conference
  • September 2024 SPNHC/TDWG 2024 in Okinawa, Japan - Ambrosia10 was funded by WANZ to attend and present on the Wikidata WikiProject Te Papa research expeditions on behalf of her and Avocadobabygirl. Her presentation can be found here. Her conference report can be found here.
  • May 2025 National Digital Forum - Avocadobabygirl (talk · contribs) will present her paper GLAM people make great Wiki editors and will run a workshop titled Get your people on Wiki! How to get leadership support and give staff the skills to make impactful contributions. Representatives from Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand will be peopling a poster and table to promote the aimes of the affiliate and to encourage GLAM representatives to make connections and consider setting up GLAM Wiki projects.

Peer-Reviewed Papers

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Wikimedia community support

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Community meetups

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Regular meetups were held during the year, both online and in person, around New Zealand. These included:

  • Aotearoa New Zealand Online Meetup: monthly online meetings open to everyone across the country, including regular attendees from Australia. The first 15 minutes is allocated to Aotearoa New Zealand User Group business. x meetings held, X total attendances
  • Wellington Meetup: monthly meetings in person. X meetings held, X total attendances
  • Auckland Meetup: monthly meetings in person x meetings held, x total attendances
  • Christchurch Meetup: monthly meetings in person 11 meetings held, 50 total attendances approximately

Note that total number attending include multiple counts of individuals, as they are counted for each meeting they attended.

Edit-a-thons

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WANZ social media activity

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  • Facebook private User group: group is used to assist editors and promote Wikipedia events and meet-ups. x members as at 1 July 2025.
  • Facebook public page: this was created with the goals of raising awareness of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in New Zealand, showcasing New Zealand content and highlighting opportunities for people to get involved. x likes and x Followers at 1 July 2025.
  • Bluesky. Our Bluesky account has x followers and continues to actively post and share information.
  • LinkedIn. The LinkedIn page has x followers at 1 July 2025.
  • Twitter. The Wikimedia Aotearoa twitter handle remains but will not longer be contributed to by WANZ. Bluesky is now our preferred channel.

WANZ Newsletters

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A regular monthly newsletter from WANZ was established in August 2024.

Events and major projects

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Campaign Dashboard for 1 July 2024 - 30 June 2025

#1Lib1Ref campaign, 15 May – 5 June with Wikimedia Australia

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The #1Lib1Ref campaign in May / June continues to be a focus for the Aotearoa New Zealand committee and community. There remains more work to do to raise awareness among librarians and other knowledge professionals as well as refining training provided to new users who are attracted by the ease of updating citations.


Aotearoa Wikipedian at Large 2025

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WANZ provided a grant for a 12 month project aimed at assisting Banks Peninsula institutions to engage with the Wikimedia movement and to build the editor base of volunteer Wikimedians in Christchurch, New Zealand. Giantflightlessbirds was the successful applicant and the project will run from January to Decemeber 2025 on a part time basis. Additional funding was provided to support Giantflightlessbirds's Ashburton Project work.

Wikimedian in Residence 2025

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WANZ provided a grant to Auckland Museum for a 12 month Wikipedian in Residence to support their ongoing and large investment of time and energy into the wiki projects.

Wikidata New Zealand Project: Connecting New Zealand dissertations to the world

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The Wikidata New Zealand Thesis Project involves taking metadata for approximately 66,000 theses from 13 New Zealand educational institutions and uploading it to Wikidata, and citing the theses on Wikipedia where relevant (e.g. when the author has a Wikipedia page). It is the first project to upload dissertations data for a nation, and also the first multi-institutional collaboration for thesis data. The project started in 2021 with community outreach and has been continuing since then. During 2022 the dataset was prepared and uploaded to Wikidata. Further work continued in 2023 with outreach and promotion of the success of the project by DrThneed the focus in 2024 and 2025. A paper on the project has been accepted by the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, and is expected to be published in the first half of 2025.

Wikipedia / Radio New Zealand Critter of the Week Project

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Critter of the Week is a long-running and popular Radio New Zealand show in which Nicola Toki (originally of the Department of Conservation, now head of Forest & Bird) and the host Jesse Mulligan talk about New Zealand species both endangered and neglected. It has been running since 2015 on Friday afternoon programming. Giantflightlessbirds and other volunteers have been creating or improving the corresponding Wikipedia article for each species to coincide with the Friday broadcast. A project page was created in 2017 and now contains a more accurate episode list than Radio New Zealand's own website).

Wikipedia New Zealand Project: New Zealand National Parks

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The New Zealand National Parks Project has the goal of bringing the articles of the 14 national parks up to Good Article status. Progress for the year included:

Wikidata New Zealand Project: New Zealand Women Photographers

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A woman, Jessie Buckland, standing at the winder of her photography studio looking into a garden

New Zealand Women Photographers Wikidata Project launched in July 2024 with the aim of improving information about New Zealand women photographers in Wikidata, based on a dataset provided by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. The data set is New Zealand Women Photographers (Q127513013) and is available at https://catalogue.data.govt.nz/dataset/new-zealand-women-photographers.

Wikidata Project: Aotearoa Asian Artists

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The Aotearoa Asian Artists Wikidata project aims to improve the data available about artists from the Asian diaspora living in or connected with Aotearoa New Zealand. It is focussed primarily on the source of the Satellites archive.


Encouraging GLAM contributions: Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum

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Engagement

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WANZ considers the relationship with Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum to be a high strategic priority as Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum is investing significantly in engaging and contributing to Wikimedia Foundation projects and is lead exemplar for this type of GLAM Wiki engagement in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Meetings continued between committee members led by Einebillion and James Taylor, Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Contributions

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Workplan & WiR

  • Auckland Museum will continue expanding previous year’s workplans and developing our core aims to engage with the community, enhance content on Wikipedia and enrich content available on Wikimedia Commons and other Wiki projects.
  • With the appointment of a full-time Auckland Museum Wikimedian in Residence, Winnieswikiworld, the goal for this year is to focus on community engagement. In doing this the museum has aims to foster connections with Wikimedia communities to facilitate sustainable and responsive relationships.
  • In order to reach a more diverse community and create inclusive spaces to share stories and knowledge, the WiR has developed three content projects to focus on. The Wikiproject Migrants of Colour Stories Aotearoa, addresses the gap in knowledge of diverse histories in Aotearoa, aiming to present a more comprehensive understanding of migrant of colour stories and histories in Aotearoa New Zealand. The second project, Wikiproject x Online Cenotaph aims to utilise museum resources to increase visibility and diversify Aotearoa New Zealand war related content on Wikimedia. As part of a collaboartion with Te Papa staff, the WikiProject Aotearoa Asian Artists, aims to improve the data available about Aotearoa Asian Artists - Asian diaspora artists from, living in, and connected to Aotearoa New Zealand. These projects all highlight the importance of diversity and inclusivity in knowledge sharing.
  • These projects will also provide opportunities for community engagement through edit-a-thons and Wiki training sessions. A total of eight events are planned for 2025, two internal 1 lib 1 ref events and two supported by external groups (Women in Architecture Edit-a-thons). The other events are a Newbie Edit-a-thon, Online Cenotaph Edit-a-thon, Migrants of Colour Stories Aotearoa Edit-a-thon and Aotearoa Asian Artists Edit-a-thon.
  • The WiR has been working with interested Auckland Museum staff, training on what content can (and should/should not) be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.
  • Auckland Museum project page
2024 Wikipedia Summer Students outside Auckland Museum

Student programme

  • Auckland Museum is hosting the second year of Wikipedia summer students in a 10 week programme to produce content on Wikipedia and provide resources for the new Aotearoa New Zealand History Curriculum, which has a focus on local histories.
  • Auckland Museum summer student project page 2024-2025

Events

Encouraging GLAM contributions: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

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Engagement

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a group of people sitting around a table in front of laptops with text books around them
WANZ editors with Te Papa editors during the #1Lib1Ref event

WANZ considers the relationship with Te Papa to be a high strategic priority as Te Papa is New Zealand's national museum and national art gallery and engagement with Wikimedia Foundation projects by that institution will strongly influence other GLAM institutions within New Zealand. For the sake of transparency: Einebillion, President of Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand is an employee of Te Papa and is Head of Collection Access. She has been advocating for more engagement with Wikimedia Foundation projects. Avocardobabygirl, Committee member of Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand, is also an employee of Te Papa and is Te Papa's Digital Channels Outreach Manager. Avocardobabygirl continues to develop Te Papa's Wikimedia strategy and workplan and encourage new editors from Te Papa's staff.

Contributions

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During 2024/25

Encouraging GLAM contributions: New Zealand Parliamentary Library

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The relationship with the New Zealand Parliamentary Library is not progressing as quickly as others. They have received approval from management and have set up their project but no further progress has been made.

Waitangi Day at Ōnuku

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Dignatories on the ateā at Ōnuku during the speech by Dame Cindy Kiro, Governor-general of New Zealand

A small team of Wikipedians led by Mike Dickson visited en:Ōnuku marae on Waitangi Day, as part of the Banks Peninusla Wikipedian-at-large project. We got photos of some of the major dignatories including the Prime Minister and Governor-general. The trip led to the creation of a dedicated article for the marae and settlement, and has spawned more work on other marae in the Christchurch area.

Invited Presentations, Media Interviews and other Outreach

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