AdminCon is the yearly meeting of sysops of the German-language Wikipedia. It is also open for non-sysops interested in admin work. After four AdminCons in Germany, the 2017 edition took place in Austria for the first time. It lasted from February 17th to February 19th. The venue was a conference hotel in the city of Salzburg which is close to the Austrian-German border. The main program consisted of 18 different tracks (discussions, lectures, lightning talks...) dealing with administrating German-language Wikipedia.
AdminCon 2017 was organized by the Wikimedians Man77, Itti and Alraunenstern. Among the 52 organizers and participants there were 35 male foreigners, 6 female foreigners, 10 male Austrians and 1 female Austrian.
During their stay in Salzburg, the participants contributed 130 images to Wikimedia Commons, 42 of them are used in the main namespace of Wikimedia projects and 54 different pages in the main namespace of Wikimedia projects use them. During AdminCon, the participants also created 22 new pages in the main namespace of Wikimedia projects.
Public authorities and government agencies possess countless data and information that may be relevant for Wikipedia and its sister projects. In Austria and Germany, every person can request information from these authorities without giving any reasons. Simple inquiries to authorities are usually free. However, fees may be required for high processing times or printing. A new support program by WMAT and WMDE allows Wikimedians from Austria and Germany to have these fees reimbursed. The only requirement is that the information obtained will benefit the Wikimedia projects. WMAT cooperates with fragdenstaat.at, a website which supports information requests towards the authorities. One individual from fragdenstaat.at was our contact person while setting up the support program.
Wkimedia Austria and the team around the Open Data Portal received a grant by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) for promoting the use of open data in innovative use cases. The highlight of the project was the Create Camp in early February - a hackathon during which the partner organisations worked with the data sets from the open data portal to come up with new use cases. The results are quite impressive for a one day event with seven projects showcased at the end of the day - many of them will be further refinded and realized after the event. When selecting the participants, we put additional effort to recruit female/non-binary participants resulting in 46% female/non-binary attendees. Among the 26 participants and/or organizers were 11 female/non-binary and two female organizers (WMAT contractors).
After the strategy meeting WMAT invited the Wikimedia communities and partners to a housewarming in the new office in Vienna's 8th district. For WMAT's community it was also a first opportunity to get to know the new future board members, who are all from outside the Wikimedia movement and hence not very well known to all the volunteers.
Over the course of the evening 55 guests from all over Austria joined to celebrate this next milestone in the chapter's history and showing how WMAT became a valued part of the Austrian Wikimedia communities as well as the wider open culture scene in Austria.
A result of the last strategy meeting in 2016 was a change in leadership until the general assembly in June 2017. It was also decided to make use of this restructuring of the board and to expand the number of possible board members from eight to ten in the process, in order to be able to bring more diverse people and a broader set of skills to the board for the challenges ahead. After a call for applications, the WMAT board invited three of the most suitable candidates to the first strategy meeting, in order to get to know them better, introduce them to the movement strategy process, and WMAT's strategic plan and to listen to their ideas for the future. Among the future board members there are two women: Ulrike Zeller, a lawyer specialized in copyright law, and Magdalena Reiter, manager of the open commons region Linz who also bring expertise in open design and open tech communities. The third prospect board member is Prof. Friedrich Schipper, who has been collaborating with WMAT for three years around the education and university projects.
The organizers were the board members Kulac and Philip Kopetzky as well as WMAT staff. In addition, the meeting was attended by another 9 current and potential board members. 4 of the organizers and participants were women.
WMAT's support guidelines are rules for Wikimedia volunteers whose projects are supported by us. The guidelines regulate things as travel grants or reporting requirements. In case third parties re-use WMAT-supported media files inaccurately, the authors of these files were obligated to contact WMAT first before contacting the third party. Our aim was to find amicable solutions and providing the re-users with all the relevant information concerning free licenses. Our chairman who is a lawyer has so far dealt with these issues, which led to the current conflict of interest (CoI) debate in our chapter and the wider German-speaking community: For a couple of months there have been heated discussions regarding the inaccurate re-use of Wikimedia Commons files in the German-language Wikipedia, especially concerning monetary claims by Wikimedia Commons photographers. Against this background it became necessary to review not only the respective processes and the level of involvement of the chapter in these issues but also the support guidelines in order to find a middle ground that works for the various factions in community and prevents future CoIs. We decided to discuss the necessary changes in a community workshop with an external facilitator. Different parties in the Wikipedia conflict were present. The workshop's outcome was a continuation of the principle "information before monetary claims", leaving the communication with third parties to the authors of the media files, but providing them with email templates. The workshop was organized by two staff members and an external facilitator. An additional 6 participants took part in the workshop.
In February a WMAT representative, our ED, participated in the 2017 European GLAMwiki Coordinators meeting, a "two-day meeting is to share skills and best practices, coordinate projects, and consolidate connections between parts of our movement". The aim was to expand our GLAM network and know-how, in order to strengthen the GLAM work in Austria, which is part of our mid-term strategy. Especially the resources around Wikipedian in Residencies shared by Wikimedia UK, John and the UNESCO team and others was very helpful, as this concept seems to attract interest in Austria. The groundwork and expertise by those other affiliates and individuals will be incorporated in the modelling of our own concepts for Austria. The organizers were the Wikimedians John Cummings and Liam Wyatt. Among the 30 participants were 10 women.
The WikiAlpenforum is a forum of Wikipedians interested in topics around the Alps and coming from Alpine countries such as Austria, Germany, Italy, Slovenia and Switzerland. It was created at a Wikipedia meet-up in Salzburg, Austria in January 2016. From 24 February to 26 February 2017, twelve WikiAlpenforum volunteers from Germany, Austria and Italy met in Munich, Germany in order to discuss and advance their project. The meeting was organized by the Wikimedian Pimpinellus. WMAT contributed travel grants for two Austrian participants. The program was packed with different sessions.
Organisational sessions:
Round of introductions and individual ideas and approaches
Status quo of WikiAlpenforum
Future prospects: excursions, next meetings
WikiAlpenforum as a project supported by 4 Wikimedia chapters; coordination with other meet-ups and similar wiki projects
198 media files (e. g. from the excursions) were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. They are used on 22 different pages in the main namespace of Wikimedia projects. 2 images were recognized as "Valued images" by the Wikimedia Commons community.
The "Wartungsbausteinwettbewerb" is a contest for removing cleanup templates in the German-language Wikipedia. It is held four times a year. WMAT supports the contest by donating prizes, e. g. Wikipedia chocolate bars. The Winter 2017 edition had 27 participants who edited in teams or by themselves. The competition resulted in 1258 improved Wikipedia articles.
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.
Topic: Wiki Loves Krapfen: photography project; resulting in 51 new images on Wikimedia Commons, 10 pages in the main namespace of Wikimedia projects use files from this project
We support Wikimedia Commons contributors with equipment from our tech pool, accreditations for events, travel grants, post-processing software and skill transfer activities.