Grants talk:Project/Giantflightlessbirds/New Zealand Wikipedian at Large

Important: Change your proposal status from "draft" to "proposed" to submit by deadline

User:Giantflightlessbirds,

Please note that you must change your proposal status from "draft" to "proposed" to submit by your proposal for review in the current round. You have until end of day today to make the deadline.

Warm regards,

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 21:33, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

All sorted; thanks for the reminder. —Giantflightlessbirds (talk) 10:44, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, round 1 2018

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 1 2018 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during the community comments period, through March 12, 2018.

The committee's formal review for round 1 2018 will occur March 13-March 26, 2018. New grants will be announced April 27, 2018. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 02:11, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Note on late addition of MCH support

The Ministry of Culture and Heritage finally confirmed that they would be interested in hosting a Wikipedian, and suggested some potential topics for the residency. I've added their information, although it came through a few days after the deadline for community review had passed, because it's useful for the review committee to know – but feel free to disregard it, of course. —Giantflightlessbirds (talk) 03:29, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Interesting. Given they use a CC-BY-NC license on https://teara.govt.nz/, are they ready to convert to CC-BY-SA? Did you find out whether they have a real reason to use -NC (for instance, do they really plan selling that content?)? You can use Free knowledge based on Creative Commons licenses to show why certain licenses are different from what they might think. --Nemo 07:06, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes indeed. Part of the discussion I had with MCH was on whether a NC license is useful; they agreed it wasn't clear how it was serving the goals of Te Ara. There are some reasons for restriction of Māori-related content, but otherwise there's a good case to be made for more openness, or as they phrased it "Updating our creative commons policy to support re-use of our text and images". So part of any residency with them would be working through a change of license for much if not most of Te Ara's content, which is pretty exciting, and another reason perhaps for this project to go ahead (endorse the grant if you agree!). —Giantflightlessbirds (talk) 09:11, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

I fully expect MCH to follow the lead from https://www.temanararaunga.maori.nz/ with respect to Māori-related content, but I'm aware that they've been uncomfortable with their current licensing position for a while. Stuartyeates (talk) 09:32, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Really interesting project, but a few questions!

@Giantflightlessbirds: This looks like a great project, and I am really excited to see the New Zealand community wanting to do a more systematic approach to the GLAM community -- there is a ton of interesting in #openGLAM there and we have great allies at institutions throughout the country. The Grant team staff asked me to take a look at the project, and I have a few high level questions:

• First, why are you arranging these kinds of positions independently instead of trying to facilitate them through a meta-organization within the GLAM community? For example, in Scotland the Scottish Library Council acted as the host or in the Netherlands Erfgoed Gelderland facilitated connection and placement with the network. Typically this kind of network placement helps give access to an organization behind your work and would give you an organization who feels responsible for continuing the activity.
• Though each residency sounds interesting, one of the principles roles of a Wikipedian in Residence is lasting institutional capacity to run and implement projects semi-independently of the local volunteer community. How do you plan to identify and train these partners within each org? What will help those allies reengage with the community once your presence is done? Do you have a project idea for that (i.e. an Art + Feminism, Wiki Loves, or #1lib1ref type campaign)?
• In part, I am assuming, there will be a cohort of folks who you will identify as necessary core allies and advocates-- that would want to be further engaged in Wikimedia projects, and help you advocate for GLAM-Wiki work going forward. Though mailing lists and Facebook groups are good ways to help folks answer questions, they don't do a very good job at building the relationships and cohesion needed to form a working group within New Zealand. How do you plan to make sure that that network is not just dependent on you as a central, high bus factor node in the network?
• Though I think I understand why you might want to present at GLAM conferences, for other folks reading the grant: Can you explain a bit more why presenting at these conferences is an important for the desired impact of this grant?
• Per WittyLlama's comment, could you explain a bit more the long term impact you expect this work to have on a health of the New Zealand community? The outcomes you plan to measure are short term, but the vision that is implicit in much of your documentation (and explicit in your goals) seems to be what you really desire as a result.

I hope these questions help, and let me know if you would like any help finding examples, models or ideas from elsewhere in the GLAM-Wiki community. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 01:16, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the positive feedback, and I'll address these questions in stages. I don't have all the answers, so will be looking for advice, especially Wikipedians in Residence who've been working on building communities.

Individual organisations vs meta-organisations

1. Unfortunately in NZ we're not blessed with GLAM-sector organisations like the Scottish Library and Information Council or Museums Galleries Scotland, tasked with providing "funding, research, advice and skills development". The closest in theory is National Services Te Paerangi, part of the national museum Te Papa, which delivers workshops and resources to smaller institutions around the country. Their budget has been cut recently, however, and I've twice approached them about collaborating on Wikipedia projects to no avail. Otherwise there are professional organisations supporting libraries (LIANZA and CONZUL), archives (ARANZ) and museums/galleries (Museums Aotearoa), but these mostly just organise an annual conference – they're not in a position to support a Wikipedia initiative long-term.
2. The organisations who've offered to host don't fall under a single meta-organisation; only half of them are in the GLAM sector. This is deliberate: I cast the net outside the usual group of library/museum/archives, so potential hosts include a magazine, a wildlife sanctuary, a conservation society, a drama school, and a national insect collection. The goal was to recruit a wide variety of organisations that could act as exemplars for their peers. There's been so little Wikimedia activity in New Zealand that most museums, let alone research institutions or universities, are puzzled or dubious when I talk to them about developing a Wikipedia strategy. Even the Royal Society Te Apārangi, whose mission statement is to promote public understanding of NZ science, was unwilling to support a Wikipedian, despite having hosted a successful edit-a-thon just last year. Before we have support from sector-wide organisations in NZ, I think we'll need varied case studies of successful Wikipedian residencies to show people what's possible, which is one of this project's goals (and should have been stated more explicity).

More to come. Giantflightlessbirds (talk) 19:31, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Ah, that helps alot! Thank you for explaining the background work you have done. I haven't seen any of this outreach reported in This Month in GLAM-- the Newsletter is definitely a great place to report both successful programs and other activities in the program space :D. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 15:35, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Building GLAM sector capability

One sector organisation we do have in New Zealand is the National Digital Forum, an annual conference in Wellington for heritage and GLAM organisations interested in digital projects. I've been part of Wikipedia workshops, panel discussions, and presentations there in 2014, 2015, and 2016. Based on discussions at NDF over the years, this is the strategy I'd follow.

1. Staff education and training within each organisation, in the form of the usual staff presentations and brown-bag lunches, working out who the most Wikimedia-curious staff are and inviting them to help with the organised Wikipedia events at each residency.
2. In larger organisations, helping staff set up informal "wiki teams" in-house to tackle a series of articles relevant to the institution but with no COI issues, like Sara Thomas did in Glasgow. My job during the year will be to check in regularly and make sure these groups don't get stuck and have access to any information and support they need, as well as connecting them to local meetups (more on this to follow). Any Wikiproject involvement (or any new projects) are likely to be thrashed out at this level, based on suggestions of staff "wiki-teams".
3. Encouraging each organisation to add Wikimedia output KPIs to their annual plans – in the grant proposal, this is what I mean by a "Wikipedia strategy". This will require buy-in from management, but the goal is for the institution to declare that engaging with Wikipedia and Commons is part of its mission. I will be making the argument that this strategy should partially replace some other form of outreach so staff don't see it as yet another task to perform.
4. Running a Wikipedia stream at National Digital Forum in November 2018, and making sure all staff taking part in Wikimedia projects so far have a chance to get together and share ideas and experiences. NDF tends to energise people and give them new ideas to take back to their own institutions, so my goal would be to report back on several case studies and answer questions. Also, I'll be needing to recruit several people to convene a similar Wikipedia presentation in 2019 to report on the rest of the residencies.
5. Creating a GLAM-Wiki organisation within New Zealand. I'll be raising this at NDF 2018; I think there's finally enough GLAM sector support and interested people to start a national working group and information network on engaging with Wikimedia and open knowledge, and NDF is the perfect place to launch it. What would be useful would be some examples of the structure and activities of GLAM-Wiki organisations in small countries like New Zealand; I'm keen to learn what I can about what might work for us.

Something I didn't note in the grant, but which seems increasingly like a good idea, is working with the National Digital Forum by offering professional development: NDF runs a series of small regional un-conferences before the main Wellington event, and organises industry professionals to give "skill-share" sessions. I can add myself to that list of presenters, so could reach a much wider group of GLAM professionals than just the NDF attendees. —Giantflightlessbirds (talk) 08:04, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

@Giantflightlessbirds: This is an excellent plan: using the NDF forum to congregate folks, and a national working group through the NDF definitely follows in what we see as a successful model across the movement -- when the professional community puts voice to the importance of this work beyond the voice of Wikimedians, it creates a positive feedback loop that definitely should pay of in the long run! Putting Wikimedia metrics into institutional KPIs is a bit more complicated than it appears at first, because many of the tools we have (BaGLAMa and GLAMorgan included) require knowing a fair amount about the Wikimedia community -- so you may be called on to continuously support developing/running those metrics. I am also a bit worried about you doing both the local activities at so many institutions, and trying to keep an eye the national activities: remember there is only one of you, and a whole network to activate here, and the work will build up on its own. As long as you are conscientious about this, it shouldn't be too much of a problem however. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 15:42, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Creating editor support

The goal of this grant is to start – just start – building a sustainable NZ editing community independent of me and what I’ve organised so far, one that’s not just restricted to the GLAM sector. The KPIs listed in the grant are measurable achievements I’m sure I can make happen in a year, but the larger goal of building that community is more than a one-person and one-year job. A mailing list doesn’t create a community, but it’s a good place to start (I’m now not as keen as I was when writing this grant proposal about Facebook as an organising tool, for obvious reasons). A mailing list will help address the big problem of non-conversion from the current type of Wikipedia event run in NZ, an awkward mixture of beginner training and edit-a-thon. Building a mailing list as a follow-up from workshops and editing events will help stop people from falling through the cracks, and will keep us in contact people who are not yet checking their Talk page.

Building face-to-face support for local editors is something I’d appreciate some feedback from other Wikipedians in Residence: how to we nurture an editing community? I can see two strategies, both seperate from and more low-key than the edit-a-thons that have been organised in NZ so far:

1. Informal social meetups. From what I’ve read about supportive editor communities, Wikipedia editing is framed as a social activity, where people meet regularly to chat, have a drink, and also do some editing, rather like the way a knitting circle works. Some editors I’ve met find this idea anathema; they prefer to interact online. Which is fine, but we should be trying to reach outside our traditional user base. The informal meetups I’ve run have been "Wikibrunches" and "Wikidrinks": letting local editors know there’s a get-together in a cost pub or cafe with good wifi to chat and make plans. Creating regular social get-togethers means I can back off from a role as organiser, and just encourage people who are obviously social nodes to step up and keep them happening.
2. Reviving meetup groups. The model here is more like a meeting of a usergroup, like the Apple User Group I fondly remember being part of in the ’90s. People come together particularly to discuss the technology they share an interest in. Meetup groups seem to work quite well in large cities like London, and are potentially useful in Auckland and Wellington which seem to have the strongest mix of new and experienced editors. They were tried a few years ago and fizzled out, but I’m keen to see them revived, as meetups can be organised by anyone and don’t rely on me as a bottleneck. One big advantage I can see is a venue with a blank wall suitable for using a portable USB projector on from a laptop. Data projectors are shirt-pocket-sized these days, and being able to share a screen with a small group turns a social drink into discussion or trouble-shooting, which to me is the goal of a meetup or user group.

I'd appreciate pointers to strategies that seem to work for nurturing user networks. It looks like I'm going to the ASEAN meeting in Indonesia next month, so I'm looking forward to running a session with editors from a variety of countries to see what works for them. —Giantflightlessbirds (talk) 11:00, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

I don't have a good answer for you at the moment: most of the communities that I am aware of are dependent on central node personalities (i.e. a Wikimedian in Residence or a very enthusiastic coordinator) or a critical mass of organizers (thinking WMNYC or WMDC). Until you find that central node in an area, it's often hard to build that capacity in an area. There are a handful of successful groups in the Scandinavian context which focused on particular topics-- I believe there is an monthly OpenGLAM group supported by the SMK in Denmark, and I read about a Women writers editing group in (Norway?) -- and I believe that is the model of the WikiDonne group in Spain. At this point in time, the Movement doesn't really have internal infrastructure or practices for sustaining meetup groups, without someone wrangling them on on-wiki pages, mailing list, meetup.org page, or Facebook. @Jason.nlw and Lirazelf: might have ideas -- there residencies have been really good at building critical mass. The other tactic, might be incentivizing the GLAM orgs to be the organizing hubs, per a model like: outreach:GLAM/Case studies/Catalonia's Network of Public Libraries. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 15:54, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Long term

You asked about longer-term goals as well. Once we have a healthy editor community in New Zealand, to the point that we can manage a national usergroup or a Wikimedia chapter, I can think of four long-term projects that I'd like to see pursued, and that I hope this grant can at least get started with.

1. Helping build a consensus amongst GLAM institutions towards adopting open CC licensing by default for collections, ideally working with Te Papa's National Services (which does support copyright workshops around the country) and Creative Commons NZ. We need a model for small and medium-sized institutions, which tend to use All Rights Reserved or CC-BY-NC by default, and need to be persuaded that making images freely available will not affect their revenue stream. A good model for this sort of licensing can then be used to persuade research institutions, publishing houses, and citizen science projects like NatureWatch NZ to open up their image libraries too.
2. Working with Open Science proponents in NZ to encourage local researchers to publish in open-access journals, by showing the effect Wikipedia citation has on the visibility of research. There's a strong Open Data movement in government, supported by Creative Commons NZ, and it would be good to have Wikimedia examples to back it up.
3. Beginning the conversation with te reo Māori speakers about the future of Māori Wikipedia, which has been essentially stagnant for ten years. There is almost no Māori presence in the English-Wikipedia community in NZ as far as I can tell, and building that capability will be important, so we'll need to find ways for the editor community to support it. But ultimately the future of Māori Wikipedia has to be in the hands of te reo speakers.
4. There's a philosophical clash between Wikipedian and Māori conceptions of knowledge. Wikipedia wants all knowledge to be available to everyone for free. Māori culture views knowledge as too precious and powerful to be given out to just anyone. These are incompatible views, and they're going to clash at some point. Wikipedia is going to become the main source of information about things Māori, and Te Mana Rauranga, the Māori Data Sovereignty Network, may well object to that. We need to start a conversation between Māori and Wikipedia, facilitated ideally by Māori Wikipedians, to resolve these issues.

—Giantflightlessbirds (talk) 02:07, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Conferences

I mentioned that the National Digital Forum is the place where NZ GLAM people interested in digital projects network each year. Wikipedia has been on the agenda for almost all recent NDF meetings. It's the logical place to share information on this project and talk to institutions who might be interested in engaging with Wikimedia, so it's factored into the grant's budget.

I've also had some success presenting at conferences outside the GLAM sector, particularly professional groups who see science communication and outreach as part of their job, such as the Freshwater Sciences Society and the Science Commicators' Association of NZ. Next week I'm giving a talk on "Wikipedia as an outreach tool" to the Entomological Society of NZ conference, following up on the NZ insects edit-a-thon we ran last year. I'm especially interested in 2018/2019 in talking to education meetings, both high school and university-level, as Wiki Education has made hardly a dent in NZ so far. My plan, and I haven't heard of this being done overseas but correct me if I'm wrong, is to not just give a talk at a professional/academic conference but persuade them to tack on an edit-a-thon as an optional workshop as well, taking advantage of all these subject experts gathered in one place. So I do think presenting on Wikimedia projects outside of the traditional Wikimedia meetings has merit. —Giantflightlessbirds (talk) 08:12, 5 April 2018 (UTC)