Wikimedia User Group of Aotearoa New Zealand Annual Report 2021

User group

Wiki Conference Weekends in 2021

A subgroup planned three weekend Wiki-Con events, each held in different areas of New Zealand: Hokitika, Wellington, and Auckland. Hokitika was selected to support the new editors recruited as a result of the West Coast Wikipedian at Large project. Auckland was selected because Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira is interested in supporting the event and the staff of the museum are interested in developing an ongoing relationship with Auckland Wikipedians. Wellington was selected as there is a committed user group meeting regularly and the University of Victoria, Wellington expressed an interest in supporting the event.

West Coast WikiCon

Auckland WikiCon

Auckland WikiCon 2021 - includes links to presentations
Twitter hash tag #WikiConAKL
Wikimedia Commons Auckland WikiCon 2021

Wellington WikiCon

This event was cancelled due to gathering restrictions in response to an outbreak of the COVID-19 Delta variant in Auckland on 17 August 2021. The organising committee are hopeful that they will be able to run this in-person gathering in 2022.

Wellington WikiCon 2021 - organising page

Wikimedia Community support

Wiki Meetups

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

Aotearoa New Zealand Online Meetup: monthly online meetings open to everyone across the country, including attendees from Australia. The first 15 minutes is allocated to Aotearoa New Zealand User Group business.
Wellington Meetup: monthly meetings in person or online as New Zealand COVID-19 Alert Levels permit.
Wellington editor Noracrentiss arranged with the Wadestown Library to use the library space for informal monthly meetups but these were halted by the August COVID lockdown.
After a successful editathon for the Performing Arts Aotearoa project on 10 July, an existing editor DrThneed has continued to support two new editors through online support and in-person meet ups. The group has met eight times, and intends to continue to meet weekly or fortnightly.
Other locations: semi-regular and ad-hoc meetings were held on the West Coast. In Christchurch, two groups met regularly during the year: a general group and a group of staff at Ara Institute of Canterbury.

Aotearoa New Zealand user group social media activity

In March, a public Facebook page 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. As of 16 December, the Facebook page had 173 likes. This public Facebook page is an additional channel to the pre-existing private User Group on Facebook that has 187 members. The User group has expanded the number of administrators for both the group and page to diversify the posts and provide regular communications to the group.

The Wikimedia Aotearoa twitter handle now has 150 followers and continues to actively post and share information.

Outreach and Major Projects

Māori Women Weavers editathon 7 January 2021

A very successful New Zealand wide edit-a-thon was organised by User:Ambrosia10 and focused on improving English Wikipedia and Wikidata content about Māori women weavers. The edit-a-thon was held in three "in-person" locations around New Zealand, with another editor contributing virtually. A report on the event can be found here and the dashboard outlining the results can be found here.

Wikisource:WikiProject_West_Coast from February 2021

User:Giantflightlessbirds requested assistance from User:Beeswaxcandle to get some books about the West Coast into Wikisource. Beeswaxcandle visited the West Coast in February 2021 and gave a talk to a group of West Coast GLAM people. As a result, the WikiProject was created and nine books have been proofread and validated. The books have been made available to borrow through the West Coast library system and have been popular with readers.

Dunedin Writers & Readers Festival 6-9 May 2021

DrThneed met with the director of the Dunedin Writers & Readers Festival to discuss opportunities to collaborate on improving coverage of New Zealand writers. Unfortunately the festival board have decided to let the director go in between festivals, so another approach will be needed ahead of the next festival.

Joint #1Lib1Ref campaign with Wikimedia Australia 15 May - 16 June 2021

Experienced New Zealand user group editors collaborated with editors from Wikimedia Australia, helping organise and support sessions assisting new editors to contribute to the #1Lib1Ref campaign. The report for the joint campaign can be found here.

Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa #1Lib1Ref 22 May 2021

A Wellington Wikipedia editor Ambrosia10 (talk) presented on #1Lib1Ref to a small selection of Te Papa Staff on the 22 May 2021.

Performing Arts Aotearoa Wikiproject 17 May - 10 September 2021

Funded by the Wikimedia Foundation, this four month project ran three official edit-a-thons and one unofficial Wellington Meetup edit-a-thon takeover. Initially intended to utilise existing editors to expand content and address gaps in performing arts content on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata, the project pivoted to also attract new editors. The coordinator was User:Pakoire.

Summary (from report: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Performing_Arts_Aotearoa_-_Wiki_Project/Final)
The Performing Arts Aotearoa Wikiproject created 107 new articles greatly expanding content on Wikipedia which was the main goal, and the targets for Wikidata were greatly exceeded with 100s of items added. Initially utilising existing editors the project pivoted part way through to attract new editors once the lack of information was more fully scoped especially in dance. Four edit-a-thons were run and many conversations about Wikipedia were had with potential partners, organisations, and individuals within the industry.

The project had a focus to address bias against women and people of colour within Wikipedia, these goals were all met. The first edit-a-thon was a takeover of an existing Wellington Wikipedia meetup and 'wikified' the Kia Mau Festival, a festival in Wellington of Māori, Pasifika and indigenous performing arts, including comedy, music, dance and theatre. The second edit-a-thon was in Dunedin, a smaller city in the South Island of New Zealand that often gets overlooked in national media, and celebrated existing theatre companies and the legacy of the University of Otago theatre Allen Hall. There was a good turn out of new editors some who now meet regularly to expand Wikipedia. Auckland Women in performing arts was the focus of the next edit-a-thon held at the Auckland Theatre Company studio's. It had the smallest turn out (in the biggest city) but created several new articles including one on a costume designer which doubled New Zealand costumes designers in Wikipedia. The final edit-a-thon was to be at the Nola Millar Library hosted by Toi Whakaari:The New Zealand Drama School and the New Zealand School of Dance, but Covid restrictions moved it on-line. This proved to be a really great thing for the project, and a successful on-line edit-a-thon was run attracting participants from throughout New Zealand as well as Australia and the US. At this event an editor based in the South Island was able to share recent image uploads from a New Zealand Opera residency and get subjects identified straight away that could then be used to illustrate new articles. It was a lovely example of the power of connection an edit-a-thon creates. The attention online edit-a-than caused created a Women-in-Red collaboration between the UK, Australia and New Zealand to run a 24 hour global edit-a-thon on women in STEM on Ada Lovelace Day.

There were curated lists of suggested content available right from the start of the project which included lots of women and people of colour, and many existing editors used these as a trigger for their work. It was thought in the project proposal to focus content to directors, arts managers and designers but this dissipated quickly to enable editors to choose subjects more freely, and more easily researched. Directors, arts managers and designers with references available were included in the curated lists.

Overall the conversations face-to-face, online and in social media raised the profile of Wikipedia within the industry, and people are very supportive of the project. A lot of energy went into educating people about copyright of images, and a few new uploads to Wikimedia Commons occurred. More work is required in this area if more images are to be made available for Wikipedia. There were new editors creating content, although not really in the dance area - this is a work in progress. Opportunities for more advocacy, workshops and training have come out of the project including a residency programme with Pacific Arts at the national arts funding body Creative New Zealand.

Christchurch Art Gallery Art+Feminism edit-a-thon 19 June 2021

A productive edit-a-thon was held at the Christchurch Art Gallery focusing on New Zealand women artists with work in the gallery's collection. 5 editors attended in person and another 5 contributed remotely.

Presentation to academic staff at Ara Institute of Canterbury August 2021

User:MurielMary gave a presentation to a group of knowledge advisors and learning resource developers on the value, role and place of Wikipedia in tertiary education. The presentation was well-received, with several participants commenting that their perspective on the value of WP had been positively changed. A productive next step at this institution is for the User Group to offer training on how WP writing could be embedded into curriculum design.

Wikimania Presentation - State of GLAM Wiki in New Zealand 21 August 2021

Ambrosia10 gave a presentation on the state of GLAM Wiki in New Zealand including a quick overview of the recent history of GLAM engagement by the New Zealand Wiki community. She outlined some of the more influential projects that have taken place, how the COVID pandemic has affected the GLAM Wiki movement in New Zealand and the main challenges faced by the New Zealand editing community when engaging with GLAMs.

Ada Lovelace Day edit-a-thon 12 October 2021

Four editors organised New Zealand participation in the international Women in Red Ada Lovelace Day edit-a-thon. Editing began at midday in New Zealand with two online editing sessions before handing on to Australia at 5pm. There were a number of new editors and breakout rooms were used to provide tailored training for novices and for more experienced editors to work together. Some New Zealand editors also participated in the sessions in Australia, the UK and the US.

Wikidata Presentation to the Managers of Australasian Herbarium Collections (MAHC) 21 October 2021

On the 21 October Ambrosia10 gave a presentation to the Managers of Australasian Herbarium Collections (MAHC), a sub-committee of the Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria (CHAH). She presented on Wikidata giving a live demonstration to the attendees on how to create a Wikidata item for botanists, botanical collectors and scientific journal articles. The aim was to show how by adding collectors and publications to Wikidata these linked open data can be used by all herbaria to improve the metadata relating to their herbarium collections. This presentation subsequently led to a further invitation to present on Wikidata to the staff of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Victoria in the new year of 2022.

Wellington talks 2021

A talk on 'What is Wikipedia?' was given to the Friendship Club of Johnsonville on 18 March 2021 by Gertrude206. This received press coverage on page 13 of the Independent Herald. The same talk was given on 26 March to the Otari Probus Club, on 29 April to Seniornet Wellington, on 20 October to Seniornet Wellington North, and on 22 October to U3A Wellington; the latter talk was interrupted for a few minutes by an earthquake which was centred in the middle of the North Island. Gertrude206 also gave an online presentation to the Seniornet Federation Hangouts (for Seniornet members throughout New Zealand) on 16 September entitled 'How to read a Wikipedia article'.

Podcasts and blog outreach

In the later half of 2021 New Zealand user group editor User:Ambrosia10 was interviewed for the podcast The World According to Wikipedia Podcast, the Specimens Podcast and was also interviewed for the Internet Archive blog.

Wikipedia Weekly Biodiversity Edition broadcasts during 2021

Two usergroup editors Ambrosia10 and Giant Flightless Birds have been active contributors to the WikiProject Biodiversity and either or both have appeared on the following Wikipedia Weekly Biodiversity broadcasts:

New Zealand Thesis Project

Three user group members, User:DrThneed, User:Ambrosia10 and User:Giantflightlessbirds, are currently working with academic librarians from most of New Zealand's universities to upload all of NZ's open access dissertations to Wikidata. see GLAM Newsletter December 2021 and Project documentation

Financial support

This User Group received two rapid grants from Wikimedia Foundation - one for each of the WikiCon weekends that occurred. InternetNZ also supported the WikiCons with a $NZD500 sponsorship per WikiCon to aid digital inclusion. Auckland Museum transferred the remainder of a Wikimedia Foundation Grant to this user group for use in the Auckland WikiCon.

Wikimedia User Group of Aotearoa New Zealand/Annual Report 2021