Content Partnerships Hub/Needs assessment/Research results/Wikimedia User Group of Aotearoa New Zealand

Notes from Wikimedia User Group of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Date: 2021-09-30 and 2021-10-07

Participants:
Dr Mike Dickison (User:Giantflightlessbirds), currently Digital Discovery Librarian, Westland District Library, New Zealand, and working as a consulting Wikipedian as Rove. One of the organisers of Wikimedia User Group of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Axel Pettersson (WMSE)
Tore Danielsson (WMSE)

How do you work with content partnerships today?
Sign Memorandum of Understanding with an organisation making it clear I am not there just to improve their Wikipedia article, and they do not have final editorial sign-off on what I do. Ascertain size of photograph collection and determine who holds the copyrights. Get organisation to clear copyrights with photographers where possible. Ask organisation for media files, especially media coverage not available online, and other publications they hold the copyright to. Negotiate a list of people/places/things most in need of improvement. Then I begin to create Wikidata, upload photo sets to Commons, and improve Wikipedia, logging all progress transparently on a project page in Wikipedia:GLAM space. When done create a final report with image galleries, do a GLAMorgan report to show views of Commons content, and recommend a Wikimedia strategy for the organisation.

Are you having a work plan for new partnerships and collaborations?
Currently approaching NZ performing arts groups, scientific research organisations, universities, art galleries, museums, and Centres of Research Excellence (Dodd-Walls was one of those CREs), archives, and conservation organisations. I submit a proposal outlining the value of having a clear Wikimedia strategy, the increased impact this would create, and some possible areas that would most benefit from having a Wikipedian in Residence. (I use this term, as Wikimedia and Wikimedian are meaningless to most organisations.) Then we discuss a budget, possible grant funding, and scheduling. I have different rates for on-site full-time Wikipedian in Residence contracts and for spending 1–2 days a month consulting.

What are your desired content partnerships in the future?
Working with New Zealand Opera on a full-time residency where I enter all their productions into Wikidata and photo archives into Commons, creating interesting possibilities for database searches and visualisations. Working with the Left Bank Art Gallery on a project to highlight artists on the West Coast of New Zealand, negotiating copyright release with them of a gallery of typical work to use on Wikipedia articles about them.

What are your needs for a successful partnership?
An organisation that trusts me as a Wikipedian in Residence and will have an “arms length” approach to any content I create, not pressuring me to only make edits that make them look good. Also they need to have a clear understanding of copyright, so don’t try to claim CC-BY licenses for material in the public domain.

What does the best support look like for a successful partnership?
An enthusiastic marketing person who will act as an intermediary to unlock photo collections and convince professional photographers to sign over copyright – they will already have a relationship with people in the area being covered. Plus general support from the very top of an institution for initiatives in this area, as I’ve found people at lower levels can be enthusiastic, but no progress will happen unless those with control over budgets and priorities agree. From the WMF, obviously project funding at least for pilot projects with organisations. A couple of weeks of funding can get a lot done (see Lincoln University, NZ Opera) and be enough to convince an organisation to seek external grant funding or reallocate some budget for a bigger project. I think there has been resistance in the past from the WMF to “yet another WiR” and suggestions organisations should be funding this themselves, but most orgs have no idea of the value of a WiR and are reluctant to gamble money on one. Also support with tools: robust, well-engineered tools with paid developers supporting them, not volunteers, and paid technical writers creating documentation and training materials. Case in point: Pattypan. A wonderful tool, and invaluable, but riddled with bugs and not supporting structured data. Needs a full-time developer to make it polished but I’ve heard it will no longer be supported. Instead OpenRefine will have SDC components added. Most GLAM orgs can’t use OpenRefine but could just about handle Pattypan, especially with good documentation and training videos. This is common in the Wikimedia world, where half-finished undocumented tools are created at every Hackathon.

Other questions or suggestions for persons who would be interested in discussing these issues?
New young UG, quiet separated from the rest of the movement. Hard to find a place in both global and regional groups. More global movement partnerships would help to find new affiliates to work with. Wiki Science competition is a new collaboration. 24h WikiWomeninRed is a new approach to get work going over a longer time and with more affiliates. Working more remotely has helped in making the world smaller and to open up for new projects across affiliates and organizations.

Relying on Pattypan for uploads, but it leaves a lot to wish for. Missing technical features, templates and such. When trying to get GLAMs to use Pattypan it’s a hard sell as there are bugs and problems. Moving to Open Refine is not perfect as the learning curve is steeper and makes it harder for small GLAMs to use. Further support for Pattypan would help in making sure to maintain and smooth out the wrinkles left. Pattypan is still missing documentation and tutorials aimed for non-technical users. The direction for the movement should be fewer tools that are better developed and better documented. New tools should not be developed all the time without making sure earlier used tools are documented and fixed.

Working with WMAU for training GLAM modules. Intro to Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons. Training and doing some small tasks. Pre packaged for users to use when they need to run a workshop. Tools/tutorials like that would be great in both other areas and regions.

Compile a structured list of common tasks and what common tools would be suitable for solving the task. Making sure workflows are set up to lead users to the tools that would help in the situation.

Make sure tools work in online environments to help users. Some tools require downloading to work, others can run online.

Very little outside financial support for projects. Hard to run through the WMF Grant process as it’s not very easy to work with. When setting up a project it’s both good and bad having the open process as some criticism comes for “not another …”, “too much pay…” but also nice to have others come with constructive feedback. Document the grant process and allow for more meetings to highlight the value of working with a new organization. Open up for small pilot projects where organizations can allocate resources from other departments to put a WiR in place to do small work over a period of time and to write up a report.

Work on stats tools to be able to show partners not only image views on the wikimedia projects but also downloads and use outside. Better stats not multiplying views when several images are used in the same article. Make it easier to see when users click through to large images to get user stories and end user usage. Being better at showing usage might lead to new collaborations.

Open up Rapid grant funding for matching funds to make projects bigger or longer when a user group has found small funding from outside organizations. Add a “new grants model” person at WMF to not get stuck in only existing grant models, and to allow for more flexible grants and workflows. For affiliates without full time staff having more ways to do half way funding would help in the professionalization process.

Auckland museum has material uploaded (Jan 2018), but the metadata is not in perfect order as the collaboration was not discussed before the upload started. Make sure uploads are not done as drive-by without getting everything in order first. Some problematic material was uploaded as folders were not cleaned up before upload. Data clean up could be done as a way of both improving the upload but also building trust from a broken process. Could be a great case study.