Wikimedia Australia’s March 2023 update
This month’s news and happenings include new videos and papers. Details below.
News
Know My Name at NGA
On 11 March, Wikimedia Australia and the National Gallery of Australia partnered to run our annual Know My Name edit-a-thon event, improving representation of Australian women artists on Wikipedia. This year we focused on improving existing Wikipedia articles, and 101 references were added, along with over 4,000 words. Thank you to NGA, Belinda Spry, and Linda Pascal for all of their work making this another successful event. Read more about 2023’s Know My Name event here.
Sustainable Open Data Using Wikidata
Peter Neish and Alex Lum spoke at the Everything Open conference last week. Their presentation Sustainable Open Data Using Wikidata is now available to watch on YouTube. They showed how Wikidata is used by Wikipedia and other communities, and demonstrated how Wikidata can be queried and visualised using SPARQL and other tools. Watch it now on YouTube.
More Than A Day - New Wikipedia Video Tutorials
On International Women’s Day, Franklin Women, The Leadership Film, and Wikimedia Australia released a new series of Wikipedia video tutorials called More Than A Day. Centred around improving content about women on Wikipedia, the videos are easy to follow tutorials to get people started with editing and creating articles on Wikipedia. A special thank you to Caddie Brain who hosts the videos! Read more about More Than A Day here.
Reference Quality on Wikipedia
In this new paper, Longitudinal Assessment of Reference Quality on Wikipedia, researchers found the percentage of Wikipedia sentences missing a citation has dropped by 20% in the last decade. Read the full paper here.
Photographs of Australian biota needed
A new paper published in New Phytologist found 18% of around 21,000 native species didn't have a field photo, when researchers looked at 33 online resources. They call for more open access contributions, as some plants have been photographed but are behind a paywall or are shared on social media only. Following the publication, more photos are already being shared openly. Read the full paper, Photographs as an essential biodiversity resource: drivers of gaps in the vascular plant photographic record, here.
Events
Editing Wikipedia - 30 March & 1 April 2:30pm AEST
Join one of our upcoming sessions to learn about the basics of editing Wikipedia. These free events will be held online and run one hour. You'll learn how to edit a Wikipedia page, add references, add an image, and create your User Page. No experience is necessary, just sign up for a Wikipedia account ahead of time so you can follow along. Sessions will be held at 2:30pm AEST on 30 March and 1 April.
The GLAM Wiki Road Map - 6 April 10:15am AEST A presentation for galleries, libraries, archives, museums, and other knowledge institutions who want to engage with the global Wikimedia movement. We will go through practical steps your organisation can take right away to work with the hundreds of thousands of volunteers creating content on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata. If you are attending this session as part of professional development, please contact Wikimedia Australia following the event to be provided with a certificate of participation. Book now for this free event.
Next Community Meeting - Wednesday 12 April 7pm AEST
Our monthly community meetings are open to everyone. Next month will have a short presentation updating you on what Wikimedia Australia has been up to, followed by an open discussion to hear from the community. Please join us online Wednesday 12 February at 7pm AEST. Details here.
More events will be announced soon. Keep up to date on our website.
#Wikimedia
Other things from around the web:
- The humble Glasgow building that was named as Wikipedia's one millionth article, Glasgow Live
- Majority of Wikipedia editors are still men - so how is the online encyclopaedia addressing the issue?, Standard
- The edit-a-thon highlighting the work of women artists, ABC Radio Canberra
- The Depths of Wikipedia creator on finding the goofy corners of the web, Mozilla
- DuckDuckGo's AI assist feature summarizes Wikipedia pages to answer search queries, Engadget
WMAU on Social Media
You can also keep up to date by following us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. 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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