Wikimedia Australia’s August 2022 update
Welcome to the new Wikimedia Australia newsletter. This will be sent monthly, detailing the latest news and upcoming events.
This month’s news and happenings include a Wikipedia event in Sydney, Wiki Loves Earth winners, and our Wikidata Fellowships. Plus, we’re hiring! Details below.
News
Wiki Loves Earth 2022 Winners
15 photographs have been crowned winners of the 2022 Wiki Loves Earth nature photo competition in Australia for 2022. Thank you to volunteers Margaret Donald and Annie Reynolds for their hard work, along with the judges who helped cull all the submissions down into our 15 winners. Each of the submissions will now go into the international competition, and I’m sure they’ll appear on a relevant Wikipedia page soon. Read more and see the beautiful photographs here.
Wikidata Fellowships wrap up
Earlier this year, Wikimedia Australia offered three Wikidata Fellowships to curate a data set, develop a prototype or undertake an investigation using Wikidata supported by an experienced mentor. With all projects completed, read about how Brett Tweedie explored the great football divide in Australia, Dr Margaret Donald populated Wikidata with Australian animals, and Kerrie Burn grew the representation of Australian Women in Religion on Wikidata.
Populating Wikipedia: New tool integrating Australian Census data
Each census, there are approximately 15,000 Australian place articles whose population figures are instantly out of date. Contributors are diligent and quick in updating these, but manual updates are a stupendous task. Coordinated by Maia Williams, a Wikimedia Australia working group has developed a new module automating the updating of population data from Wikidata. Read the full story here.
Wikimania presentations released on YouTube
Wikimania, the Wikimedia movement’s annual conference celebrating all the free and open knowledge projects has wrapped up for 2022. If you weren’t able to attend, the full program has now been released online for viewing on the Wikimedia Foundation YouTube page here.
Events
Hands on History: An Introduction to Wikipedia session in Sydney - Saturday 3 September
As part of History Week, discover Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Join Toby Hudson and Annie Reynolds in partnership with the City of Sydney at this Wikipedia workshop at Darling Square Library on Saturday 3 September at 11am. Register now.
Wikipedia and Education in the Time of the “Crisis of Information” Symposium - Friday 16 September
A free all day symposium brings together academics who use Wikipedia as part of their teaching practice or analyse wiki data, and key actors bridging the academia-Wikipedia divide. Located at Ann Harding Conference Centre in Canberra. Bookings and further information available here.
More events will be announced soon. Keep up to date on our website.
Apply now to be our Executive Officer
An exciting opportunity to lead the Australian chapter of the international Wikimedia Foundation at a time of organisational growth and major new initiatives! As our new Executive Officer, you can help shape future directions and empower and engage people to share content under a free licence or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. Read more and apply now. Applications close Sunday 4 September 2022 at 5pm AEST.
#Wikimedia
Other things from around the web:
- Weaving Books into the Web—Starting with Wikipedia, The Internet Archive
- Wikipedia articles 20% more likely to influence legal reasoning of Irish judges, scientists find, The Irish Times
- What is a recession? Wikipedia can't decide, NPR
WMAU on Social Media
You can also keep up to date by following us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Don’t forget to tag us if you’ve got something interesting to share, as we love to retweet our volunteers' amazing work.
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