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You can find here the Wikimedia Belgium activity report 2022.

Wikimedia Belgium (WMBE) is collaborating with a lot of diverse GLAM, heritage, and education institutes where we can explain and promote the Wikimedia platforms to make knowledge sharing possible. WMBE also collaborates with federal and regional government institutions.

COVID-19

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Physical meetings again allowed

Starting from March 2022, physical meetings took place again. This was a great relief for Wikimedia Belgium, and the GLAM, heritage and education institutes. Although virtual conferences allow to attend without requiring travel and hotel accommodation it is much less effective in team building and exchange of experiences. Therefore we prefer physical gatherings.

Long-running projects

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Wikimedia Belgium has an online chat platform where you can ask questions or simply have a multi-party video conversation. You can share your screen, which allows you to solve problems very efficiently. The first Wiki Helpdesk meeting on 11 January 2022 got 10 participants. We hold a weekly virtual session every Tuesday from 19:00 to 21:00, or at other times when several volunteers connect.... Everyone is welcome with their contributions, questions and ideas. The platform allows for simultaneous conversations in different languages and on different topics. Someone might also give a short presentation in the virtual conference room...

  • Writing session at the Industriemuseum Gent, every first Thursday of the month

Every first Thursday of the month from 17:00 to 19:30 we normally hold a writing session at the Industry Museum.

Wikimedia Belgium developed an interesting project management methodology, based on Wikidata techniques. Wikidata, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata Query (SPARQL), ListeriaBot, and the Programs and Events dashboard are interconnected to plan, execute, report, and visualise the results of edit-a-thon sessions. A presentation was given at Let's connect.

Pywikibot scripts are used to update Wikidata.

We support volunteers to let them attend (international) conferences, or execute small projects. When we present edit-a-thons courses, we provide the participants a book "Writing for Wikipedia".

Wikimedian in Residence

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KOERS museum in Roeselare

We have started 2 Wikimedian in Residence projects in 2022:

The KOERS museum project in Roeselare was selected as the first project by the committee of the Friends of Wikimedia Belgium Fund. From October to March 2023 it runs a project about cycling races.

The museum wants to provide Wikidata with results of race editions, and wants to upload and document pictures to Wikimedia Commons. Together with the Wikimedia community, it also wants to write Wikipedia pages.

The project will start on 1 October in order to document the Flemish cycle races on Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and Wikipedia. It runs until 31 March 2023. The KOERS. Museum of Cycling has recruited a Wikimedian in Residence. More information about this offer.

This federal non-profit institution wants to document all Women associations in Belgium.

Newsletters

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We publish monthly newsletters:

Activities

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Februari 2022

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Standbeeld van Pierre De Geyter
  • February 3 - Meeting with the STAM Museum, Gent to discover how we could work together to describe museum collections on Wikimedia platforms.
  • February 10 - Public Domain day (video conference)

On Thursday 10 February, we held the annual Public Domain day, via video conference. There were speakers from Creative Commons, the Royal Library of Belgium, MoMu Fashion Museum of Antwerp, KOERS Museum, Design Museum Gent, Collection of the Gentenaar and meemoo. YouTube session recording.

The University of Liege holds a campaign during the months of February-March to write about women and sciences. The aim is to get secondary schools interested in science studies.

On 23 and 24 February, two writing sessions on playwrights took place as part of the "Shakespeare is dead" festival, on contemporary playwrights, at the OPEK in Leuven. A list of 21 authors was compiled. We were also able to photograph 4 playwrights present at the festival and write 4 new articles.

Palmyre Buyst

March 2022

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A first virtual session took place on Friday 11 February and a second session on Saturday 5 March in the framework of the Journées du Matrimoine. Two more sessions were held for schools at the Atheneum Royal De Hannut on Tuesday 22 March and the Atheneum Royal De Huy on Monday 28 March.

On Thursday 24 March, the Flemish Architecture Institute held an experts' meeting to determine the VAi's strategy for the coming years. A number of representatives from the cultural world were invited.

On Friday 25 March, we write about Belgian composers at the HOGENT Conservatorium. A photo about Palmyre was uploaded during the writing session on March 25, 2022. The picture was linked to Wikidata and automatically appeared on the Russian Wikipedia, thanks to reusing Wikidata statements from an infobox.

The FARO heritage course Basiscursus immaterieel erfgoed ended on Tuesday 29 March with a final physical session in Brussels.

April 2022

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Madame Chapeau in Brussel

In Leuven and Ternat, humanities pupils write about heritage. They are guided by the local heritage team and by Wikimedia Belgium.

The Ghent Industry Museum has been organising a Wiki Café with writing sessions for the past few months as part of the Cathedrals of Industry project. This project concluded on 7 April.

May 2022

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In May and June, a new project Pagne Africain will be launched with writing sessions the first Thursday of the month from 17:00 to 19:30 in the museum.

On the occasion of the international Wind Day on 15 June 2022, the Flemish Wind Energy Association (VWEA) is organising a major photo competition. The assignment is: Visualise wind energy in a beautiful way. Participating is very simple. Upload a picture, or add the Category:VWEAfotowedstrijd to your pictures on Wikimedia Commons.

The competition is open to amateurs and professionals who submit an image of a wind turbine. The prizes are grand and windy, in addition to a wide distribution of the nominated works. More information. Participation is possible until 6 June 2022, 12.00 hrs.

WikiCheese Brussels

The Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU organised a WikiCheese evening to give our volunteers an opportunity to meet each other near the Central Station in Brussels, in the Plein Publiek (Kunstberg 5) from 17:00 to 19:00. The chair of WMBE shared a few words with the participants about collaboration and energy.

Wikipedia has always been international and multilingual. The same is true for other important and large projects like Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. The worldwide Wikimedia Strategy 2030 aims to establish regional hubs; continents are becoming more important and visible; building a distributed and decentralised worldwide organisation becomes increasingly important.

So we do want more international collaboration between Wikimedia entities: the EU Policy Group, Wikimedia Belgium, Wikimedia France, and other chapters. Wikimedia Europe, WikiFranca, including all French speaking countries, are recent examples of new international organisations.

We also want more collaboration amongst national cultural and humanity organisations. Local chapters can fund micro-grants to allow volunteers to develop better content.

International travel by air plane is discouraged, due to climate change preventive actions. On the other hand, video is estimated to consume up to 40% of all internet related electricity capacity. 40% of the internet traffic growth in 2020 is due to video streaming and video conferencing. ICT causes 2% of all carbon emissions.

Remember that the data centers also consume electricity when inactive. Also user devices, including routers, consume power when not actively used. Mobile networks currently consume considerably more kWh/GB than fixed networks. And more mobile data is consumed… room for drastic improvement…

So, let us network, also amongst humans and organisations; maybe this would consume less energy?

Prijsuitreiking Wiki Loves Pajottenland Zennevallei 2021

On 21 May, the (postponed) award ceremony of the Wiki Loves PZ photo contest took place at Castle Ter Rijst in Pepingen. Six winners were allowed to be photographed with the winning photos in the background.

June 2022

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  • June 2 - Meeting Castelhof to plan development of a widget to show extracts of Wikipedia pages on third party web sites like e.g. libraries, or heritage websites.
  • June 10 - Celebration of the Molens Van Orshoven project.

In Leuven, the Sint-Pieterscollege completed a multimedia group assignment on the history of the Molens Van Orshoven.

The project was done in cooperation with the maakleerplek, the municipal archive, the heritage cell, the city council of Leuven, Studio De Beer, the production house De Chinezen, b00t, Wikimedia Belgium and of course the teachers and the students themselves.

The result was a number of collodion photographs on aluminium, a podcast about the history of the mills, an educational igloo and a Wikipedia page. The results were solemnly presented in the mills on 10 June.

  • June 17 - Lionel Scheepmans, co-founder and advisor of Wikimedia Belgium, received on 17 June his PhD in political and social sciences from the University of Louvain-la-Neuve on the global Wikimedia organisation, entitled Imagine un monde - Quand le mouvement Wikimédia nous aide à penser de manière prospective la société globale et numérique de demain. Lionel has published his thesis on Wikiversity, where you can read it. We congratulate him on obtaining his doctorate.

On Saturday 18 June at 2pm Wikimedia Belgium held its annual general assembly by videoconference. The annual accounts were approved, and a new board of directors elected.

Only full members have voting rights. Affiliated members may attend the meeting but will not be entitled to vote.

We bid farewell to Anne Jeanneret as board member and thank her for her many years of commitment. Geert Van Pamel was re-elected president. Dominique Labar became a new board member. Mike Nicolaije and Sam Donvil complete their second year as board members.

July 2022

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Heilig-Hartcollege (Mechelen-aan-de-Maas)
Paul Hermans

From 1 July till 31 October the yearly photo campaign Wiki Loves Heritage will again take place. Participants are invited to take photos of all kinds of Belgian heritage and monuments.

Make use of the holiday to upload missing photos and stand a chance of winning a prize. Experience has shown that even a single photo is a chance to win...

The photo contest Wiki Loves Heritage Belgium ran at full speed this summer. You can take pictures of Belgian heritage, monuments, famous buildings or customs. Pictures could be uploaded until 31 October. Digital metadata can be added, via Structured Data on Commons (SDC). Volunteers can also use photos on Wikidata or Wikipedia. At the end of this year, 10 winners were selected.

  • Upload and describe your images on Wikimedia Commons. Please mention a category.
  • You can use the images to illustrate Wikipedia articles (#WPWPBE)
  • You can add an image to Wikidata items
  • You can amend the image metadata via Structured data on Commons using the ISA Tool, or AC/DC

August 2022

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  • August 1-October 21 - The Dutch-language Wikipedia is organising its annual writing contest until 31 October. The aim is to encourage volunteers to write good articles.
  • August 11-14 - Wikimania 2022

September 2022

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Photography of stuffed animals (dog crane)

The Wikimedia Summit 2022 is the yearly Wikimedia management conference that took place on September 9-11, 2022. Until 3 years ago, board members of all chapters were physically present in Berlin. This year the smaller chapters are not physically invited, because of the limited floor space of the venue.

We offered 2 places to Belgian volunteers who would like to know more about, and contribute to, the Wikimedia Strategy 2030. They could virtually meet other board members of national Wikimedia organisations and user groups.

The European GLAM coordination meeting took place in Prague. Here, 30 GLAM coordinators were able to exchange ideas on successful collaborations with museums and cultural institutions. We could get acquainted with a beta version of the upcoming release of OpenRefine that also has a Wikimedia Commons interface. Geert presented a lightning talk on how Wikimedia Belgium manages Wiki-projects using Wikidata. To conclude, we were able to enjoy a talk by the National Library of the Czech Republic and visit the Clementinum Observatory which offers a unique view of the city of Prague. It is here that Kepler described the orbits of the planets in the early 17th century.

October 2022

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African Archeology

Library staff is invited to the OCLC contact day on 4 October in Rotterdam.

On Friday 21 October 2022 from 14:00-18:00, there will be a WikiMatrimoine Wikithon on women related to ULB and/or ULB's art collections in the Simone Veil Library (3 SEM) of the ULB campus, Paul Hégerlaan, 1050 Ixelles.

November 2022

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Vrouwentongen, Antwerpen
  • November 3 - The Industriemuseum will hold a writing session on the Ghent construction company Serck, the buildings it realised, and the architects who worked for the company. This is part of a new digitisation project of industrial heritage at the Industriemuseum in Ghent.
  • November 9 - Vrouwentongen, Vlaams Architectuurinstituut, Antwerpen

A writing session on interior and architecture took place as part of Wiki Women Design at deSingel in Antwerp in collaboration with Vrouwentongen and the Flemish Architecture Institute.

The French-speaking Wikiconvention took place on 19 and 20 November 2022 in Paris, and finally in person!

Wikimedia Belgium offered two scholarships for the French-speaking Wikiconvention 2022. Rules for applying: apply to projects@wikimedia.be; present yourself briefly: your activities on Wikimedia projects, your interests for the event. If the application is accepted on a first-come, first-served basis, the person commits to:

  1. keep all invoices and receipts related to the event (transportation, hotel, breakfasts and dinners) to write an expense report
  2. be reasonable in ones expenses (the maximum limit is 500 €, but the actual cost may be much less as the organisation reserves low priced rooms for Wikiconvention participants)
  3. write a report about your experience and what you learned and took away from the event afterwards.

Wikimedia Netherlands held a physical conference on 19 November. WikiconNL is aimed at organisations and interested people who are part of the Wikimedia movement, or who are active in the field of open knowledge, open culture or open data. Concretely: Wikimedians, researchers, Wikimedia users, employees of archives, libraries, museums, heritage institutions and those interested in open source applications. Geertivp held a presentation about amending Wikidata with ISBN items.

December 2022

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Wikipédia Flémalle

International collaboration

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New international associations are being formed in the framework of the Wikimedia Movement's Strategic Objectives 2030. This should lead to increased participation and cooperation.

Wikimedia Europe will be a hub of national sections and thematic user groups with a link to Europe. By the end of 2022, 22 founding national associations and user groups will establish an international non-profit organisation with headquarters in Brussels. A board with 5 members has been appointed. The goal is to facilitate international cooperation between the (national) Wikimedia associations in Europe.

Wikimedia Belgium is one of the founding members and has a seat in the general assembly. The international association has only members who are legal entities. It is an extension of the current Wikimedia EU policy group, which works to ensure that European copyright law is properly implemented in relation to free knowledge.

WikiFranca is an international association headquartered in Switzerland that groups all French-speaking countries and user groups.

Wikmedia Belgium is closely working together with neighbouring countries, like:

Long term collaborations

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Photos

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About activities:

Wiki Loves Heritage Belgium

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The winning images for Wiki Loves Heritage 2022 in Belgium:

Meetings

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  • WMBE chat
    WMBE chat

Presentations

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ISBN data

Wikidata is well suited to register ISBN data. Based on an ISBN number, book and edition information can be retrieved and uploaded to Wikidata in a structured manner, so that the information can be used on the various Wikimedia platforms. In this way, editions and authors can be easily retrieved. There will be a brief explanation of which attributes are used, where the data comes from, and how the data model works. The session will end with a short demo, discussion of the results and Q&A.

Wikimedia platforms

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Wikipedia

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Did you know you can listen to Wikipedia? Every change made to an article produces an auditory sound. Depending on the language and the intensity of the changes, you get a different tonality. You can therefore track all changes as they are made.

Everyone knows Wikipedia, but few people know that there are also (technical) namespaces. The category namespace contains a thematic tree structure of topics. Each page has its own discussion page where you can check the history of the creation of the page or ask questions.

Each user has a personal namespace where they can create subpages as they see fit in preparation for an article. Through the consultation pages you can also communicate with other users.

There is also a project namespace where you can find more information about certain projects, such as writing sessions. Please note that, like all other pages on Wikipedia, anyone can edit anything with respect for privacy and copyright. Anyone can also read everything.

Wikidata

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A new Wikidata property raw material processed has been created, to document a factory, or an industrial or chemical process. The property describes the raw or intermediate material, or a natural resource converted or consumed by a factory or industrial process, to manufacture a product, or to deliver energy.

We have been using it to document the textile factories in Gent, and a number of other industries:

Wikimedia Commons

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We collaborated and signed an open letter to the Wikimedia Foundation board to urge them to make Wikimedia Commons better and more adapted for loading, editing, and using media files.

Television

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On the Flemish television channel Een, the programme Iedereen beroemd allows you to participate in a quiz called Klikipedia. Teams compete against each other to navigate fastest from one page to another.

Videos

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An introduction to Wikipedia in less than 10 minutes on YouTube. Small remark: the number of 1300 Dutch volunteers was a bit misleading; amongst the 1300 volunteers there are an estimated 300 Flemish volunteers....

Documents

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  • GLAM Wikidata project management
    GLAM Wikidata project management

Press

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Interesting applications

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See also

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