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Tuesday, December 9, 2025 - monthly meeting

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Attending: James, Jennifer, Gaurav

  • Jennifer attended webinar, When Experts Edit: Improving Wikipedia's coverage of U.S. history (https://connect.oeglobal.org/t/wiki-education-speaker-series-when-experts-edit-improving-wikipedias-coverage-of-u-s-history/8356). Danielle Shirilla from the State Archives of N.C. in Raleigh also attended, could be a contact.
    • Much more structured than what we do, and runs for a couple of weeks -- so works as an accountability thing as well (but they have huge attrition).
    • Promote Upcoming WikiScholars Courses focused on history and cultural heritage practitioners https://wikiedu.org/250-by-2026-wiki-scholars-courses/ Deadline is December 15, courses run January through March.
  • Email from Emily:
    • When she first started organizing events at the UNC library (ca 2013), they were poorly attended but productive, but they ended up requiring too many planning resources relative to the attendance numbers. Conclusion: need to partner with other organizations or tag on to other pre-existing events, couldn't rely solely on UNC Library channels or Wiki channels.
    • Organized two events at the Chapel Hill Public Library:
      • 1. Local history editathon: seemed like most of the attendees had heard about it through the CHPL marketing channels rather than the UNC marketing channels. 10-15 attendees.
        • Could also be intimidating?
      • 2. Wikipedia Day (?): not so much an editathon as a drop-in: learn about Wikipedia, meet Wikipedians, etc. VERY well-attended. We used Geonotice (?) rather than CentralNotice, and it was very successful.
        • Could be that casual events are just better attended?
        • If you've been using Geonotice and not seeing good numbers, then she would suggest: (1) partnering with somebody and (2) using the marketing tools available within the platform.
      • Used the UNC Library social media account -- could get in touch with Aaron (https://library.unc.edu/staff/aaron-smithers/)
        • WXYC (UNC student radio station): anybody can submit public service announcements. Has tried, don't know of anyone who came because of that.
        • Had an idea for a potential in-person event and editathon: Aaron is the music editor for "Southern Cultures" (https://www.southerncultures.org), published by the https://centerforthestudyoftheamericansouth.org/. Every year they put out a musical-themed issue with a Spotify playlist that goes with it. This year's theme: "country music". That issue is going to come out soon. The playlist connects with the theme of all the articles in it. Lots of relatively unknown country music and stuff like the black banjo renaissance of the last 10-20 years, etc. Mentions "Color Me Country" podcast published in Durham (https://colormecountry.com/). Some of these artists in Wikipedia need some work. Could be a fun/interesting event in conjuction with Southern Cultures and/or Color Me Country podcast, and could come up with an event to go with the launch of the issue (probably early January). Mentions on the podcast could be fantastic. Aaron could get the library on board as a cohost/sponsor. Four different entities!
    • Could also reframe this as a WikiCurious(-like) event, i.e. rather than targeting editors we could target people interested in music.
    • Emily can start emailing people if we're interested, but she can't do instructing or presenting, but would like to attend if schedule allows.
  • wikiPixNC 22: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NiBmuf5auQCjhPwAsG1kLbywLhumAUWqsrs3_5cGzSE/edit?gid=344958437#gid=344958437

Notes:

Tuesday, November 11, 2025 - monthly meeting

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Attending: James, Gaurav, Jennifer, Richard

Tuesday, October 14, 2025 - monthly meeting

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Attending: James, Jennifer, Gaurav

Agenda:

Notes:

  • James might be a few minutes late for this Saturday's editathon.
  • Jennifer and Lane's session on GovDirectory this Friday morning (11:30am ET) -- virtual registration no longer available :(.
  • Try to get as many people for the final Editathon this Sunday as possible.
    • Have some good questions prepared for the state librarian visiting us.
    • Can also discuss future events (e.g. a behind-the-scenes tour).
    • Jennifer got some great resources from the Dorothea Dix Conservancy
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JMMaok/Dix_Park
    • Has also ordered a book about the Dorothea Dix Hospital -- should be here by Friday
    • Will probably include information about legal difficulties at the Hospital
    • Jennifer is interested in exploring the hospital's legal difficulties -- should have a lot of publicly accessible sources
    • GOAL: get https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JMMaok/Dix_Park
    • GOAL: try to get it to Stub level before the event so it's easier to work on it
    • Might need to move sources etc. into the Talk page
    • James: interested in goats and other animals (dog park, sunflowers)
      • Take lots of photos!
  • Future events:
    • State library tour
    • Reaching out to the wikiPix contributors -- can you help us with cleaning up the metadata?
      • Discuss at the November meeting
    • Maybe set an end-year goal to finish wikiPix once and for all by the end of the year
    • Wake County libraries has regular virtual events -- maybe do that?

Sunday, October 5, 2025

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Tuesday, September 9, 2025 - monthly meeting

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Attendees: James (facilitator), Jennifer (note taker), Gaurav

Agenda:

  • Discuss what to do with the many LONG term inactive users on our Global Message list (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery/Targets/North_Carolina_Wikipedians)
    • We should probably organize an effort to move long term inactive users (e.g. no commits in the last two years?) into a separate list.
    • That makes sense to make 2 separate lists.
      • We could send messages to that list at a less frequent rate (maybe once every few years?)
      • How does this relate to the ability to contact (some) users by email?
      • What is the life cycle of Wikipedia editors?
      • Gaurav to investigate whether we can automate pulling date of last edit.
    • Planning for Dorothea Dix / Wiki Loves Monuments
    • SLNC Librarian Taylor Wolford got back to me, will probably have a call next week. They are enthusiastic about partnership.
    • Original Proposal
      • Sunday, September 28th, time TBD: Online kickoff event. Explore, discuss, and evaluate the material already available on Wikipedia about Dorothea Dix Hospital, North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services, Dix Park itself, and related pages. This session may include training on Wikipedia's quality assessment. (Does that interest you? Do you have experience rating pages? Could you provide the training?)
      • Friday, October 3, 5:30 - 7:00 PM Dix Hill Asylum Dark History Tour. The incredibly informative walking tour is free, although you are encouraged to support this nonprofit effort with a donation after the tour. Maybe a bit of a picnic beforehand. Share your thoughts - is that a good idea?
      • Tuesday, October 7th evening online Edit-a-thon. Apply what we've learned and improve Wikimedia content related to Dorothea Dix Park. (This is the main event where we're interested in having a librarian attend).
    • New Proposal
      • Sunday, October 5th, time TBD: Online kickoff event (1 hour). Explore, discuss, and evaluate the material already available on Wikipedia about Dorothea Dix Hospital, North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services, Dix Park itself, and related pages. This session may include training on Wikipedia's quality assessment. (Does that interest you? Do you have experience rating pages? Could you provide the training?)
      • Friday, October 10, 5:30 - 7:00 PM Dix Hill Asylum Dark History Tour. The incredibly informative walking tour is free, although you are encouraged to support this nonprofit effort with a donation after the tour. Maybe a bit of a picnic beforehand. Share your thoughts - is that a good idea?
      • Tuesday, October 14th evening online Edit-a-thon 7-8:30 (90 minutes). Apply what we've learned and improve Wikimedia content related to Dorothea Dix Park. (This is the main event where we're interested in having a librarian attend).
    • Jennifer will reach out to tour folks to see if they will cross-promote
    • Making an event page - Gaurav set up basic page b 9/10
      • DTR Community - https://community.dtraleigh.com/
      • Triangle channel of All Tech is Human
      • Connect to Wiki Loves Monuments banner
      • Create our own banner, 14 days in advance (by September 25th) - Maybe
    • WikiConference NA in mid-October
      • FYI - Jennifer is presenting (online) as part of a session with bluerasberry on GovDirectory
      • Jennifer will try to get North Carolina basics published on GovDirectory in time for WCNA
      • James is staying in touch with WikiCurious team
      • WikiQuote event #SheSaid https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:SheSaid

Tuesday, August 12, 2025

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Monday, July 28, 2025 - shortlisted candidates

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  • Three voters
  • Shortlist:
    • WereSpielChequers
    • Wojciech Pędzich
    • Jamesofur
    • ShahenWasHere
    • Bluerasberry
    • Ravan
  • Not on shortlist:
    • Aegis Maelstrom
    • Alhaj Darajaati
    • Baidax
    • EmpAhmadK
    • Dnshitobu
    • Bobbyshabangu

Friday, July 25, 2025 - prelim vote for WMF Board 2025 elections

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Tuesday, July 8, 2025 - Monthly meeting

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Notetaker: James Facilitator: Jennifer

Agenda:

  • Debrief of WikiCurious Charlotte
    • Report on MassMessage list: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery/Targets/North_Carolina_Wikipedians
    • James delivered the report from the WikiCurious event in Charlotte.
    • Got there around 3:30pm and browsed around the museum
    • Around 50 participants
    • Served dinner and got started around 5:30pm
    • Pacita introduced Wikipedia methodology for editing
    • Amy Carleton (Prof of MIT) gave a general introduction to how she became interested in Wikipedia and how people could get interested -- said they might do a similar event in September
    • 6:30pm: participants were given freedom to edit or wander around or do whatever they wanted -- had sofas, lobby set up for people to edit
    • 7:30pm: called the remaining participants back and had people showcased what
    • 7:45pm: ended -- great success!
  • From the organizer:
    • Cited 82 references
    • Edited 42 existing articles
    • Created 6 NEW articles
    • Uploaded 6 images to Wikimedia Commons
    • Made more than 270 edits
    • Wrote more than 11,000 words
  • There was also some discussion of good management of the mailing list.
  • Planning of Core Team: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina_Wikipedians/Core
  • Planning of WikiPix East North Carolina virtual editathon
    • Holding a meeting at ECU Library was discussed.
  • Planning of in-person meetup
  • Meeting at Dorothea Dix Park was discussed. Three-event series? Picnic before tour. Target September / October.
  • Planning of ongoing work (e.g. Wikidata)

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 - Monthly meeting for June 2025

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Tuesday, May 13, 2025 - Monthly meeting

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Attending: James, Jennifer, Gaurav, Emily, Steve Notetaker: Jennifer

Agenda:

  • Brief review of structure, decision-making, membership
    • Current structure: Up until about 2022, had annually elected leaders. Responsibilities included required annual report. Group became smaller and moved to less formal leadership rotation focused on agenda and notes. Picked event dates collectively, divided up tasks.
    • Context - rotation has relied very heavily on a couple people, and we need to expand pool due to availability.
    • WikiCurious event may be good opportunity to attract folks.
    • Idea: To be a voting member, commit to doing an even share of notetaking and facilitating.
    • Might be worth talking about this with NA Hub and other small groups.
    • Executive Committee, Decision making team, Core Team
    • Previously - trips to Berlin were a great incentive to step up and participate. This was discontinued in 2024.
    • Are there other incentives that could be offered? NA Hub?
    • Barnstar might be a good idea, or other template on Wikipedia.
    • Making an easy on-ramp and a specific ask if you want to be a part of a leadership group (e.g. "four meetings a year as a minimum").
    • Members who are not local
    • Run this idea past mailing list and NARWHAL / NA Hub and put decision on agenda for next meeting.
  • Next virtual editathon
  • WikiCurious debrief
    • Host an event at Bechtler Art Museum https://www.bechtler.org/ in Charlotte in early July.
    • Guest from MIT to give an introduction, attract volunteers.
    • What our group could contribute, host a similar event locally e.g. NC Museum of Art
    • Present at the meeting: Pacita Rudder is the Executive Director of Wikimedia NYC. The other person who was there was Crystal Boceta, who runs WikiCurious.
    • Gaurav has additional notes from the meeting further down on this page.
    • WikiCurious events are like Edit-a-thon with more entertainment focus, more beginner friendly
    • Check in on progress before our June meeting.
    • Will this July event count as our in-person meeting?
  • September - opening of new library in Aberdeen, potential event?
  • Next in-person meeting
  • Our annual report was due end of April
    • Gaurav will write and submit

Tuesday, April 29, 2025 - WikiCurious

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Attending: James, Gaurav, Crystal, Pacita, Emily
Notetaker: Gaurav

Agenda:

  • Introductions:
    • Pacita: Director of Wikimedia NYC
    • Crystal: Organizes WikiCurious
    • Emily
    • Gaurav
    • James
  • Introduction to WikiCurious
    • Focuses on folks who have never used Wikipedia before
    • 150 people in person for first event last year!
    • New event every couple of months
    • Centered on different things:
      • Latin music and culture (partnered with Equis, International Salsa Museum, Afro-Latino Forum)
      • Brings in new people
      • People are very interested in creating new articles
      • Brought in a salsa band, shared information about the history of salsa in NYC
      • Mostly Wikipedia events, but some Wikimedia Commons as well (partnership with WikiPortraits)
      • Photo walk through NY, taught people how to upload photos to Commons
    • Why did they come?
      • Curious about how Wikipedia works
      • Focused on something they are really interested in
    • Funder is interested in talking to different user groups and seeing what they can do together
      • Affiliates have paid staff, so have more resources and capacity to organize these sorts of events
      • Expansion: start with states in the South this year, then expand from there
    • One event so far: Austin TX as part of SxSW, lead by WikiPortraits, Wikimedia Foundation had a pop-up event as well
      • 125 people showed up to that event
        • Brought together people interested in starting a Wikimedia Austin group
        • Had some initial conversations with: Amy Carlton (part-time in Charlotte, part-time in Boston)
        • Bechtler Museum of Modern Art is really interested
    • What is a WikiCurious event? And how is it different from a editathon?
      • Same format as an editathon, but some twist: museum tour, salsa band
      • Start with a networking/mingling hour with the curators talking about the exhibits/background
      • Next: Wiki 101 training and actual editathon piece of it
      • Some people like presentations, some people like live demos
      • Finally: 3-4 hours of editing
      • Prepare work lists beforehand
      • Last half hour: celebration
      • Share-outs
      • Prizes: Wikipedia editor hats
      • Usually when experienced editors show up, they’re there to help the newbies
      • Food and drinks provided!
    • WikiCurious is a good hook:
      • “No experience needed!”
      • “Come edit Wikipedia!”
    • Marketing:
      • Starting to use CentralNotice
      • Need to make it easier to figure out how to “get in” on these activities – people contact details, e-mail lists, advertising events

      • Will create a Wikipedia event page and an Eventbrite page, and will market both of them
      • If we can’t make this work before fall, we’d have to push it to November (because of WCUSA in NYC) – but next year is totally open!
      • WikiCurious can be as involved as we want during planning
      • Can we do more rural/out-of-the-usual-places events? Can we measure the impact that it might have?

Tuesday, April 8, 2025 - Monthly meeting

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Attending: Held Asynchronously
Notetaker: Jennifer
Regrets: Gaurav

Agenda:

  • North America Hub
    • Jennifer and James attended March 31 meeting, agenda here: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/narwhal-2025-3. Seems to be potential for fundraising, cooperation on promotion. Jennifer took a to-do to look into Wikidata and recent US federal government reorganization, potential collaboration on proposal for Wiki Conference North America event in October. These topics connect to some themes explored further in the agenda, too.

Tuesday, March 11, 2025 - Monthly meeting

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Attending: Jennifer, Gaurav, Steve, James
Notetaker: James
Facilitator: Gaurav

Agenda:

This is where we ended the discussion.

  • WikiPix
    • Potentially re-run our WikiPix Edit-a-Thon with a focus on Eastern North Carolina, possibly in partnership with the ECU student group.
    • Consider putting our WikiPix into the ISA tool as a campaign https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:ISA_Tool . ISA is "a fun, multilingual, mobile-first microcontributions tool." The mobile-first aspect might appeal to people and be easy to introduce at an in-person event. The tool focuses on captions and depicts rather than descriptions and tags, not sure how that fits with our goal of enhancing the metadata?
  • Additional Options for Event Promotion
    • I noticed that we actually get quite a few attendees who are new to editing WikiPedia, so maybe it would make sense to try promoting our online and/or offline events elsewhere. Some ideas:
      • Wake County Libraries Virtual Events - These last for about an hour. It seems like we could pitch an Edit-a-Thon here and reach quite a few people, potentially new folks.
      • Other libraries for online Edit-a-Thons. Could we access a mailing list of public libraries throughout the state? This would be a good way to raise awareness outside the Triangle area.
      • For in-person or online events, consider the free tier of Luma https://lu.ma/pricing or EventBrite https://www.eventbrite.com/organizer/overview/
      • This raises the question for me, to what extent is our target audience the existing Wikimedia editors community and to what extent are we focused on a broader audience of readers / potential editors?
  • Sculpture Gardens / Events
    • We had previously discussed the NC Museum of Art as a possible event location. They have an amazing sculpture garden. There were some concerns about copyright as it relates to putting pictures of sculpture on Wikimedia. I did a little more research on this. There are photos of modern sculptures on Wikipedia; some examples are Cloud Gate (Chicago “bean”) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Gate and LOVE (Indianapolis) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_(Indianapolis). Some of the sculpture images do come with a Permissions note “Although the original Flickr image is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 style license, the image can only be used under the fair use provisions on Wikipedia, because it is a photograph of a copyrighted work (and could thus be considered derivative), where the original work is situated in a jurisdiction that does not recognise freedom of panorama for public works of art.” The way I read that, it limits how the Wikimedia image can be used. Under Fair Use, it can be used in ways like Wikipedia articles and classroom teaching. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be OK to combine a bunch of photos like this into a Modern Sculpture Calendar and sell the calendars. My take on this is that I wouldn’t let copyright rule out sculpture gardens as a meeting location. The one at the NCMA is great https://ncartmuseum.org/visit/museum-park/ Apparently the Botanical Garden has an annual sculpture event in the fall https://ncbg.unc.edu/visit/exhibits/sculpture-in-the-garden/ Beyond the Triangle, there is one in Seagrove https://cbsculpturegarden.com/ Western NC https://www.wncsculpture.org/team-1-1
    • [Gaurav] Here’s the relevant Commons policy page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Public_art_and_copyrights_in_the_US
    • Interesting! I think the North Carolina Museum of Art may have some older sculptures, and there is definitely nice nature / scenery there, too, but definitely something to look into!

Notes:

  • NC Zoo is Asheboro: might have lemurs!

February 11, 2025 - Monthly meeting

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Attending: Gaurav, Barbara, Frank, Jennifer, James, Julian
Notetaker: Gaurav

Agenda:

Notes:

  • Introductions
  • Debrief on the December Editathon
    • 14 completions before the editathon and 98 after, which is an increase of 84 files in 1.5 hours — that’s not bad! We still have 465 files remaining in the spreadsheet.
    • Also had a bunch of first-time editors and/or first-time file editors
    • Doing more of those?
    • Online editathons are definitely something of interest
    • Some attendees want to continue working with those images
    • Some attendees are interested in the data aspect of this (i.e. Commons WikiData)
  • WikiProject North Carolina Wikidata?
  • Rapid Grants
  • Next meetup/editathon?
    • It should be warn enough for in-person events by March?
    • Everything is more fun in person!
    • But online events would be more practical for people to join
    • 400+ images still need to be categorized!
    • Hybrid event?
    • Problem: one of the two groups is going to be ignored
    • Solution: assign one person to online and one person to in-person
    • Library? NC Museum of Art? (TODO: Gaurav to e-mail NC Museum of Art and the NC Arboretum)
    • HUGE outdoor sculpture garden
    • need more photographs
    • sculpture copyright lookups
    • NC is a big leader in support of art
    • Wikipedia editors tend to LOVE behind-the-scenes tours – so if we can get that, that would be great!
    • https://carolinatigerrescue.org/ (not the best places for photos)
    • https://lemur.duke.edu/ (has a podcast!)
    • James has a contact at the NC Zoo in Asheboro (TODO: James to ask)
    • Asheboro itself might not be well-documented – so good reason to have an editathon!
    • Also great for helping the group expand past the Triangle in NC
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