2019:Community Growth/New Zealand Wikipedian at Large

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This submission has been accepted as a lightning talk.

Community Growth/New Zealand Wikipedian at Large

Description

Aotearoa New Zealand is underrepresented in Wikimedia projects because of our isolation, small population, and small editing community; in many ways coverage of NZ in Wikipedia is 5–10 years behind corresponding articles on Northern Hemisphere countries. It is a classic emerging community, with an educated population and good infrastructure, but with no Wikimedia user group, Wikipedians in Residence, or regular meetups.

For 12 months I was on a WMF project grant as the New Zealand "Wikipedian at Large", spending 2–6 weeks in organisations ranging from museums to nature reserves, over the entire length of New Zealand, training staff and helping them use their expertise to improve Wikipedia and make images, text, and video freely usable by the public. I also worked with the volunteer Wikipedia community, organising meetups and running public workshops and edit-a-thons.

Over the course of the year I've been involved in activities relevant to the equity and community growth goals that participants may be interested in:

• A series of Edit for Equity workshops to improve representation of women, attracting a cohort of overwhelmingly-female new editors
• Recording place names and common words in Te Reo Māori (Māori language) with Te Hiku Media, a Māori language radio station, for release into Commons
• A call for Commons donations of images of community support and solidarity with the Muslim community following the March 15 mosque attacks in Christchurch
• Creating the Wikiblitz event, where subject experts and Wikipedians partner to improve a single article

Relationship to the theme

The organisers of the community growth space believe that the space will address the following Sustainable Development Goals:

• 9 Industry, innovation and infrastructure
• 10 Reduced inequalities
• 11 Sustainable cities and communities
• 16 Peace, justice and strong institutions
• 17 Partnerships for the goals.

This session will address the conference theme — Wikimedia, Free Knowledge and the Sustainable Development Goals — in the following manner:

• 5: reduction of gender inequality through targeted recruitment and events
• 10: empowering people regardless of their background by beginning to work with Māori on Wikimedia projects
• 16: peace, by seeking to add images of support and sympathy to the historical record after the violent attacks in March

Relationship to the space

The organisers of the space and the community have identified a number of topics they wish to address in this space. Please explain how your proposal its into these topic areas.

As a reminder, the proposed topics are listed at 2019:Community Growth

This session will address the topics of the Growth space in the following manner:

The experiences of the Wikipedian at Large project are largely about different techniques for recruiting, supporting, and growing the editing community, building par tnerships with institutions, and making Wikipedia part of the public discourse.

Session outcomes

At the end of the session, the following will have been achieved:

• Discussion with participants about the applicability of the different initiatives presented to their own communities

Session leader(s)

(Giantflightlessbirds); giantflightlessbirds@gmail.com; see also the NZ Wikipedian at Large project

Session type

Each Space at Wikimania 2019 will have specific format requests. The program design prioritises submissions which are future-oriented and directly engage the audience. The format of this submission is a:

• Teaching session
• Conference presentation

Requirements

The session will work best with these conditions:

• Room:

Presentation, screen and chairs set up for group discussion

• Audience:

Better for a medium-sized group rather than a lecture format, so discussion can flow

• Recording:

The initial presentation of activities would be fine recorded, but there would need to be transcription or note-taking to capture the subsequent discussion.

• Time requested:

15 minutes for presentation, and the same for discussion

Relationship with the organisers of the space

The organisers of the community growth space wish to provide any necessary support to presenters and participants that they may need and also wish to have an active role in shaping the content of the space to maximise the benefit of all attendees. Please let us know if you would appreciate any help, and if you consent to constructive suggestions from the organiser team that would allow the largest amount of people to share and benefit from each other's contributions.

• I would be interested in receiving help in shaping my submission: YES / NO (if the organisers really think there's something I've missed)
• I consent to the organisers of the space contacting me to discuss alternative ways to present my knowledge (for example, merging two proposals into a common presentation, a panel debate instead of a lightning talk, etc.), or ways to modify and improve my proposal (for example by ensuring a gender diversity on panels) : YES
• If my proposal is not selected for a presentation, I would be interested in presenting my proposal in the form of a poster in the Community Growth space: YES
• I consent to my proposal being proposed to organisers of other spaces if it would be a good cross-over topic or if it fits better into the other space's scope: YES