1. Collective stewardship
of knowledge
Wikipedia and beyond
John Vandenberg
President, Wikimedia Australia
Research Data Analyst, University of New England (Armidale)

2. Terminology
• Wikimedia –community and broader ‘movement’
• Wikipedia – the first project of many
Other projects:
• Commons – media repository - images
• Wiktionary - dictionary
• Wikisource – library of public domain works, with
volunteers transcribing scans, like Project Gutenberg
• Wikinews – citizen journalism
• Wikibooks – text books
• Wikiversity – academic work space
• Wikimedia Foundation – U.S. non-profit maintains the servers
• Wikimedia Australia & 38 other counties
national non-profit user groups - volunteers

3. Duty calls
What do you want me to do? LEAVE? Then they’ll keep being wrong!
http://xkcd.com/386/

4. 450 million visitors/month
Source: Wikimedia Monthly Report Card – Feb 2012
http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/

5. 12.4 million edits/month
Source: Wikimedia Monthly Report Card – Feb 2012

6. 10,900 Very Active Editors
Source: Wikimedia Monthly Report Card – Feb 2012

7. 4 millions English articles
Source: Wikimedia Monthly Report Card – Feb 2012

8. Wikimedia in a nutshell
• Free – libre – Creative Commons Share-alike
http://freedomdefined.org/
• Free – no cost to editors or readers
• Free – anyone can contribute, no barrier to entry
• Free – citizen run – democratic processes
• Free – freeform – no imposed structure
• Scope – the sum of all knowledge, in all
languages
• 11 years old
• Ranked 5th Web ‘property’

9. The community
• Open source enthusiasts
• Open content/Free culture enthusiasts
• Anti-X – copyright, censorship, capitalism
• Pro-Y – Cold fusion, Transcendental
Meditation, Scientology
• Real world disputes – Azerbaijan-Armenia, Israel-
Palestine, Climate change, US presidential
elections, grudges online
• University lecturers, students, retirees
• Librarians and knowledge workers
• Trolls, vandals, school kids, etc.
• Public relations

10. Wikimedia Australia
non-profit member organisation
• Support the volunteers
• Research National Library of Australia
• Conferences Powerhouse Museum
• Training and workshops State Library of Queensland
Australian Paralympic Committee
• Partnerships
University of Queensland
– Community engagement
Historical societies, shire libraries
– Content generation

11. Training regional librarians
• Workshops in
Brisbane, Miles, Quilpie, Tambo, Tow
nsville, Ingham, Hervey
Bay, Gympie, Hughenden and
Charters Towers
• Attended by librarians, local studies
historians, museum
volunteers, tourism staff, chamber
of commerce, writers groups, etc.
• Each attendee creates a public draft
article, and the Wikimedia
community attempts to polish and
publish them.
http://enwp.org/Wikipedia:GLAM/SLQ

12. Jack Venman

13. Jack Venman
(traffic stats)

14. Troy Sachs
Did you know ... that Australian men's wheelchair basketballer Troy Sachs (pictured)
has won seven championships in four different club leagues and gold medals at two
Paralympic Games?"

15. Troy Sachs
(traffic stats)

16. Qantas passenger plane Apollo,
G-AUJB, 1929
• Image uploaded
by Wikimedia
Australia – 20
December 2010 –
described as ‘G-
AUJD’
• Corrected 8
January 2011 by
‘Mdupont’
• Library metadata
updated

17. How to participate..
• Content focused
• Write for the enemy
• Ignore all rules
• Article feedback on Wikipedia
• Twitter (#wikipedia), Blogs, Facebook, etc.
• Email: contact@wikimedia.org.au

18. The future: Pending changes
• Revisions are reviewed prior to general
consumption
• Used on German and Russian Wikipedia
• Trialed on English Wikipedia in 2010; rejected
• Used on problematic subjects only, including
living people
• Ongoing poll in 2012: 121 oppose vs 260 support
– http://enwp.org/WP:PC/RFC2012
– Closes 22nd May

19. The future: Wikidata
A new wiki for bare facts – no prose

20. Berlin edit
From Wikidata
Capital of Germany edit
Main page
Also known as: City of Berlin edit | x
Contents
Access the API
Random page Continent Europe [3 sources]
Donate to Wikidata
Country Germany [2 sources]
Interaction
Help Population 3,490,445 [1 source]
About Wikidata
Community portal
3,500,000 [2 sources]
Recent changes
[other values]
Languages
Catalá
Cesky Calling code 030 [2 sources]
Dansk
Deutsch Mayor Klaus W| [0 sources]
Eesti Klaus Wowereit
Español Vehicle registration BGerman politician [1 source]
Esperanto Klaus Wunderlich
Français German musician
Area 891.85 km” [2 sources]
Hrvatski Klaus Waldeck
Italiano Austrian musician and former lawyer
O’zbek Twin city Los Angeles [3 sources]
Klaus Wagner
Complete list German mathematician
[new fact] Klaus Wagner
Stalker of the British Royal Family

21. The future: Wikidata
• A fact is an distinct record, with an authority
• A fact can be requested using APIs returning
data in various formats: JSON, XML, etc.
• Wikipedias will include these identified facts
within the prose
• Google can answer questions using these facts

22. Questions