Wikipedia:Meetup/West Coast/Wikipedia for Heritage Organisations

Wikipedia for Heritage Organisations:
a workshop for galleries, libraries, archives, and museums

This is a series of free workshops run in September 2020 by Dr Mike Dickison as part of the West Coast Wikipedian at Large project. If you have archival collections or information resources, and a mission statement that includes serving the community, you might be tempted set up a website to share them. But Wikipedia already exists, and dominates search results; rather than try to beat it, why not join it and leverage its reach to better engage with your community? Anyone can edit Wikipedia, and over 20 years it has become remarkably accurate thanks to thousands of volunteer fact-checkers and referencers. You can host high-resolution photos for free on Wikimedia Commons, add tourism information to Wikivoyage, and use the open database Wikidata to link it all together. Dr Mike Dickison is currently the West Coast Wikipedian at Large, and can walk you through how all these Wikimedia Foundation projects work, and help you decide on a strategy to engage with them.

The event is hosted by Development West Coast.

When and where

• Thu 10 Sept, 3:30–4:30 pm, Council Chambers, 105 Tainui Street, Greymouth • Contact: Liz.Burke@greydc.govt.nz, 03 768 5597
• Wed 16 Sept, 10:30–11:30 am, Council Chambers, 105 Tainui Street, Greymouth • Contact: Liz.Burke@greydc.govt.nz, 03 768 5597
• Fri 25 Sept, 2:00–3:00 pm, Westland District Library, Sewell Street, Hokitika

To attend

• These workshops are free, thanks to the support of Development West Coast.
• The workshops are primarily for GLAM sector professionals and volunteers; if you just want to learn how Wikipedia works and how to edit it, come along to the all-day public workshops being run in Greymouth, Westport, and Hokitika (listed here).

Background

Wikipedia is a window to the world, and every place’s public face. Wikipedia is the 5th-most-visited website in the world, and the only non-profit in the top 10. Wikipedia articles are in the first few search results of any topic, if not the first result. English Wikipedia has 6 million articles, and is one of 300 different language Wikipedias, some of which also have millions of articles. Combined with other Wikimedia Foundation projects, like the free image library WikiCommons and the open database Wikidata, Wikipedia is part of the information infrastructure of the world.

Anyone can edit Wikipedia, and the articles are written by volunteers; currently, about 250,000 dedicated editors (Wikipedians) around the the world. Despite the lack of an editorial board, the coverage is usually very accurate, sometimes amazingly so, and there are teams of volunteers and software “bots” that check the articles for accuracy and swiftly remove vandalism. Since it was launched in 2001, Wikipedia has been a great example of the power of collaboration and crowdsourcing. But New Zealand has a Wikipedia problem. Our editor community is quite small, so in almost every area – towns, national parks, artists, endangered species – the coverage in Wikipedia is much poorer than an equivalent place, person, or thing in the UK or the USA.

Heritage organisations seem to love setting up websites, but these often run out of funds or enthusiasm and become zombies – sites that look alive and seem to be accurate and up to date, but aren't – or disappear completely. Rather than adding basic factual information to a custom website, why not improve Wikipedia coverage instead, and add historical photos and collection images via Wikimedia Commons? Any work done here is a far better time investment, and will reach vastly more people; a good Wikipedia article can be read by 1000 or more people a day, far more than might visit the museum in person or read its publications.

Wikipedia can shape public perception and counter stereotypes. It is viewed as a trusted, neutral source, often preferred to “official” government or tourism sites which are perceived as having an agenda. So anyone with an interest in how the West Coast is portrayed, and what attention is paid to its history, its economy, and its flora and fauna, should be interested in Wikipedia.

Links

• Wikipedia's Conflict of Interest rules
• Dickison, Mike. (20 May 2019) "A digital strategy for a small museum." Rove.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Westland District Library, Grey District Library, Buller District Library, and Development West Coast for supporting the West Coast Wikipedian at Large project.