Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Deutschland/June 2013

Politics and Society

Orphan Works

On June 27, the German parliament decided on a law concerning the usage of orphan works and works that are out of stock. In addition, it introduced strongly regulated secondary publication rights for certain scientific publications from publicly funded research. For now, this is the end of a legislative procedure which has accompanied us for the last four years already and to which we have published several position papers. It is not possible to use orphan works and secondarily published works for Wikipedia, Wikisource and their sister projects.

GLAM on Tour at the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum

From June 21-23, the project GLAM on Tour, which supports cooperations between local cultural institutions and Wikipedia groups, stopped at the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum (State Museum of Brunswick). For three days, twenty Wikipedians, GLAM activists and staff of Wikimedia Deutschland got a special insight into the upcoming state exhibition "Die Römer kommen!" (The Romans are coming), which will deal with the archeological findings at the Roman battleground near Kalefeld. Detailed information about the event has been postet at the Kurier (contribution by Wikipedia user Brunswyk) and WMDE's blog. The collaboration with the state museum included an excursion and scientific guided tour to the archeological digging site, expert lectures about the historical context as well as photo excursions to the depots and workshops of the museum. The state museum provided the location and scientific literature for the editathon. Articles and pictures about the battle at the Harzhorn are uploaded to Wikipedia at the moment. Wikipedia user southpark and Stepro gave a talk about Wikipedia for the staff of the museum, people of Brunswick as well as representatives of the press. A meeting of the Wikipedia musketeers was especially welcomed by the interested audience. It was especially interesting for the staff and scientists of the museum to meet the people behind the website they visit almost daily.

All in all, the event had been conceived as a successful and constructive meeting by all participants. An overview of the event evaluation can be found here. It is now deliberated at the state museum how free content can be better integrated into the work routine and how a digital opening can be reinforced. More collaborative events are in talks between WMDE and the state museum.

Numbers and Facts about the ZDFCheck

The project ZDFCheck, which has been mentioned in the monthly report from May, continues. Until the end of June, twelve statements by politicians have been checked and more than 250 hints have been received (this number is comparable to the number of feedback to the Faktomat initiated by the ZEIT magazine). Approximately 20 percent of the feedback comes from Wikipedians. Part of the project is the release of CC-licenced photo and video material which can be reused by anyone. 16 files can already be downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, e.g. information graphics about net neutrality, average income, or employment rates.

Education and Knowledge

Tour of Free Knowledge

The preparations and planning of the conference "Freie Bildungsmaterialien in Deutschland" (free educational material in Germany) are progessing and the venue, partners and schedule are now set. The partners Medienanstalt Berlin-Brandenburg, Internet & Gesellschaft Co:llaboratory, Creative Commons and Werkstatt.bpb are working on their respective form of participation and are actively participating in the organization and conceptualizing of the event. Many supporters are also helping actively with the preparations. The call for participation for the curated part of the conference ended and we have more than forty submissions, which are now being reviewed. The schedule for the conference will consecutively develop and will be finished at the end of July. We are happy that all submissions come from schools and universities. Registration is open here.

Diversity for Wikipedia

At the moment, our cooperation partner Ilona Buchem from the Beuth School for Applied Sciences is working on a first draft of the recommendations for action. The focus is the current situation in Wikipedia regarding the diversity of its authors. Moreover, the potential of diversity in general and regarding Wikipedia will be explained in detail.

We are continuously planning the international conference in Berlin which will deal with gender diversity on November 9 and 10. In July, we focused on the search for partners from the Wikimedia movement. More on Meta Wiki.

Be a Part of Wikimedia

With our partner Klicksafe and Wikipedia editors we worked on a first concept for material about Wikipedia in educational contexts. In addition, the team had a Skype conference call with players who are involved with the topic "Wikipedia in class."

Eight project teams from the Beuth Schol for Applied Sciences have developed ideas for media didactic concepts concerning Wikipedia and diversity and presented their first draft. The focus of these concepts were e-learning innovations about the following topics: giving and receiving feedback as well as conflict solution in Wikipedia and gender diversity.

The students of the Institute for Media and Education Technology of the University of Augsburg collaboratively worked on a brochure which will raise awareness for the inclusion of free teaching and learning material and free knowledge in a university environment.

Shared Knowledge Initiative

On June 19, an evening with the Digital Media Women about Wikipedia took place in Hamburg. Elly Köpf, Juliane Leupold, User:Emma7Stern and User:Siesta were invited to talk about the activities concerning "Diversity and Wikipedia". After the meeting, a concept for "Women Edit Berlin" was developed. It is supposed to be transferred to three different cities during the second half of the year. In the course of "Women Edit" it is also planned to host an editathon which will be implemented during the project.

Tim Moritz Hector and Cornelia Trefflich hosted the workshop "Diversity of Knowledge - Learning by Sharing" at the summer academy of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). The summer academy was all about the motto "Diversity in Action - the Finest Hour for Learning". It was the goal of the event for the participants to experience the manifold aspects of learning, which are especially important in the context of GIZ. Cornelia Trefflich covered that in her blog post.

The target group older citizens was adressed by means of the following activities this month: six workshops at the Seniorenuni Cottbus (Seniors' university) with good response with regards to an exemplary method of structuring and organization as well as the conclusion of the Wikipedia course at the Katholischer Frauenbund in Bayern (Catholic Women's Association of Bavaria). The results will be incorporated into the evaluation of the past activities for the TAO final report and the final symposium in Bern (September 2013).

In Görlitz, new possibilities for gaining new editors for Wikipedia were tried out at the Oberlausitzische Bibliothek der Wissenschaften (Science Library of Upper Lusatia). It is the goal of this joint project between WMDE's department Education and Knowledge and GLAM to win new editors through their interest in the historical library. The GLAM event in Brunswick showed that this type of approach can be successful.

In Hanover, cross-generational possibilities for joint learning between senior citizens and youngsters are prepared by Wikipedians on-site in the course of the initiative "Erfahrung teilen" (share knowledge). The next steps will be an arrangement of dates in both cities in order to conduct the event. Moreover, first steps have been taken with Seniorbook, which will be a potential cooperation about online activities in order to win seniors for the Wikimedia projects.

Wikipedia Consultants Network

The consultants' network will be a volunteer project from now on. The consultants can be contacted directly via WMDE's website. An independent meeting of the group about goals and future activities is in the works for July.

Team Communities

Insurance

From July 1, 2013 Wikimedia Deutschland is able to offer insurance for events that are organized by the community. This insurance includes liability and accident insurance. For all volunteering organizers of an event, it has always been a problem that they might be held responsible for accidents or damages in or by participants of the respective event. This is now ensured and the fact that WMDE offers insurance now was received with much appeal by many community members. All those damage events, which are directly related to the voluntary activity for free knowledge during an event or initiative registered with WMDE, are now insured (Details of the insurance). Wikimedia Austria inquired about the possibility of joining this insurance. The insurance company Assekuranz did not see any problem with that. The liability insurance for Wikipedia, however, does only apply within national claim settlements. In order for the insurance to apply, the respective event needs to be registerd with WMDE via e-mail in advance. Contact person is Lydia Pintscher.

Community Communication Concerning VisualEditor

In Mid-July, the VisualEditor will be another way for all Wikipedia editors to edit articles. In June, a test version was offered to experiences Wikipedia authors in order for them to try it out and to give the development team at the Wikimedia Foundation feedback. We processed this feedback and forwarded it to the Foundation in order to be sure that it reaches the developers. The feedback was about concrete software bugs but also about their general opinion of the new and additional software. Contact person is Lydia Pintscher.

Scholarships

Shortly before the new month, a Wikipedian was able to document the 77th international Pentecoast tournament in show jumping in Wiesbaden. Supported by WMDE, he took many quality pictures for Wikimedia Commons.

A booth of the international photo competition Wiki Loves Monuments for free pictures from monuments could be supported with financial means and the provision of material in Wuppertal.

The volunteer Wikipedia mentors met in Frankfurt and were supported by Wikimedia Deutschland. Topics were e.g. an individual mentor page that could be able to support groups like school classes and the implementation of the entrance platform Teestube (the German equivalent to the Teahouse on English Wikipedia).

The election hearing of the German Olympic Sports Confederation with representatives from the parties represented at the German parliament was documented by a volunteer, organisationally and financially supported by Wikimedia Deutschland.

Thanks to the initiative of Wikipedia user Brunswyck Wikimedia Deutschland was able to support many Wikipedians' participation at the documentation of the antique battle at the Harzhorn and the extensive creation of free knowledge.

The project Festival Summer, supported by the Community Projects Budget, was able to celebrate a special milestone in June: Pictures of more than 100 bands have been taken during the last months and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons under a free license. Another project supported by the CBP, the Landtagsprojekt (state parliament project), took place in Schwerin in June, and in the course of the project "Grenzen der Bezahlung" (limits of payment) first dates for a tour with Wikipedians "on site" was prepared.

Research and Development

RENDER

In June, work on the RENDER supporting tools (article monitor and article list generator) could be finished and the final version was published. The original plan to publish the tools in May needed to be delayed because we had to wait for pending adjustments from other project partners. We also decided to move the tools from the Wikimedia Toolserver to the Wikimedia Tool Labs environment. Since the necessary databases for our tools are now available, further adjustments are needed. Johannes Kroll can be asked questions about the move. In the coming weeks we will test the tools and adjust them accordingly. Further questions about the project can be directed at Angelika Mühlbauer.

Wikidata

At Wikidata, June was all about the sister projects. We made suggestions how Wikidata could support Wikimedia Commons and Wiktionary. In addition, the team worked on enabling language links to Wikivoyage so that Wikivoyage will be able to manage its language links via Wikidata as well in the coming weeks. Another important step in June was the implementation of geo coordinates in Wikidata. It is now possible to enter, e.g., where a city is located. The geo coordinates already in Wikidata can be seen on this map (bigger version - updated daily).

Denny Vrandečić, project head of Wikidata, explains how he understands Wikidata handling "the truth" in a new blog post.

Another piece of news is the great donation by the search enginge enterprise Yandex which will support the further development of Wikidata.

International Affairs

WMF Elections: Board of Trustees and FDC

In June, the community was activated to vote new members into the board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation and the Funds Dissemination Committee (blog post at the start of the election and about the results). It was our intention to get as many interested people as possible to vote and to cover the election: We translated the candidates' profiles (partly with the help of a translation agency) and a part of the questions from the community together with their answers. In addition, we regularly called for attention via blog, mailing lists, Twitter, Kurier etc. (thanks to Aschmidt for his extensive piece on the Kurier). For us, it was a first to translate texts in this dimension in order to offer them to the community. We are now interested in knowing how our coverage of the election was received. Was it useful? Was it too little? Would other formats be more suitable? Should be repeat this approach at other occassions? Everyone is invited to leave a comment on the special page on Wikipedia.

Wikimania in Hong Kong

Wikimania in Hong Kong is approaching fast - only six weeks are left until the biggest annual event in the Wikiverse starts. Wikimedia Deutschland will also be present there: Together with other chapters we will build a so called "Chapters Village" where the different chapters will be able to introduce themselves and their activities to interested parties. In June, the program and ideas for WMDE's appearance in the Chapters Village were prepared, plans with other chapters were coordinated and some surprises were prepared.

In addition, we are in contact with the 25 scholars who will be embassadors for the communities at home. They will report before, during, and after the Wikimania in a special edition of the Kurier, the Wikimedia blog or other online media in the form of text and pictures. All information can be found on the coordination page on Wikipedia. Contact person for the scholars is Denis Barthel, Nicole Ebber is responsible for the coordination on an international level.

New Trademark and Privacy Policy Guidelines

It is one of the tasks of the International department to bring important international topics to the attention of the German speaking communities. At the moment, the Wikimedia Foundation is preparing an update of the trademark and privacy policy guidelines and is asking the communities for feedback. In her blog post, Nicole Ebber summarizes the important information. A special thanks goes to Jan Eissfeldt, Community Advocate at the Wikimedia Foundation, for the constructive and friendly exchange about the topics that are important for the German community.

Public Relations

Press Work

The end of the Brockhaus encyclopedia was also noticeable at Wikimedia Deutschland. Many press inquiries about this topic were answered in June, e.g. for Spiegel or FAZ. These and many other press reports can be found on WMDE's website.

In June, we also coordinated and sent out an international press release about the big donation to Wikidata. The Russian search engine provider donated 150,000 US-$. Another press release was sent to a local press mailing list in order to garner attention about a cooperation with the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum and to promote the event "The Wikipedians are coming!".

Information Material

In June, die brochure "Free Knowledge Thanks to Creative Commons Licenses - Why a Non-Commercial Clause Often Won't Serve Your Needs" was overhauled and printed in a second edition. For Wikimania in Hong Kong in August, an English version of it was also produced and published.

For Wikimania, different other brochures, flyers and a video are in the works, which will all inform about the work of Wikimedia Deutschland.

Fundraising

How should the next fundraising campaign on Wikipedia look like? What do we want, what should we improve? In June, team Fundraising dealt with analyzing the past fundraising campaign. Therefore it was convenient that Megan Hernandez (Head of Annual Fundraiser) and Peter Coombe (Fundraising Product Coordinator International) visited WMDE at the end of June. During this two-day visit we talked intensively about the last and next campaign and were able to exchange many ideas. After July we will start with implementing concrete test ideas and concepts. If you have ideas or comments, please write till-mletzko@wikimedia.de.

Job Postings

You can find all job postings at Wikimedia Deutschland on the website. Just recently, we posted a job in team Fundraising.