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PowerGirls Go Wikipedia: Würzburg soccer players research forgotten female national players

As part of the "PowerGirls go Wikipedia" project, ex-national player and European champion Petra Landers visits the Würzburg Dragons, the junior football club of the Würzburg sports club. As part of the "PowerGirls go Wikipedia" project, the players of SC Würzburg wrote articles on forgotten female national players for the world's largest online encyclopedia. They were supported by the city library, experienced Wikipedia authors and the European champion Petra Landers. Seven new contributions on hitherto unknown female national players have emerged. Petra Landers sits together with the U17 (under 17 years old) players of SC Würzburg in the public library and tells the young soccer players about the early days of women's soccer, which was again permitted by the DFB. She tells about the prejudices of the men and the low recognition for the European Championship. The differences in the availability of information between men's and women's football are striking: 13 female national players have no entry in Wikipedia, which is tantamount to digitally forgetting the achievements of these players. "With men, there are Wikipedia contributions even if they have only sat on the bench of the national team", Gudrun Reinders explains the difference to the national players. Together with her husband, the city library and Wikimedia Deutschland, she launched the "PowerGirls go Wikipedia" project. The goal: to talk to contemporary witnesses on two weekends, research information about the early national female players and write Wikipedia articles about those pioneers of the first hour. Seven articles were created in this way during the two project weekends and, thanks to the support of experienced Wikipedia authors, have already been published in the world's largest online encyclopedia. "More than 90 percent of the writers at Wikipedia are men," says the Wikipedian known as Iva Berlin, who has long since set herself the task of inspiring girls and women to write articles. That's why she travelled to Würzburg with two other authors and explained to the players of SC Würzburg how Wikipedia works. The young soccer players get to know the technical side of the encyclopedia, learn the rules for publishing information and practice correcting existing articles. "In this way, the girls lose their fear of technology and the new media and become safer when using the Internet," says Reinders. Media competence and the examination of one's own role as a young girl in a male domain are the most important educational goals of the project for the educational researcher. Reinders is certain that both goals were achieved by the "PowerGirls go Wikipedia" project. And, of course, the goal of hoisting the forgotten national players into the collective, digital memory. Monika Boll, Petra Landers, Andrea Limper, Rosemarie Neuser, Judith Roth, Daniela Stumpf and Ingrid Zimmermann were previously unknown. This has now changed due to the new Wikipedia contributions of the young Würzburg soccer players. "We have already conducted many workshops", says Iva Berlin, "but hardly anyone has been as productive as the girls".

Raising awareness about Tunisian history and heritage

The positive energies of it, the wanting to make the world better, that’s Wikipedia for me. That’s what I want to share with people. In 1991, Tunisia became the first nation in Africa to connect to the internet. Today, it is one of the most connected countries in the Middle East and North Africa, with a thriving community of digital activists and free culture advocates. One of these is Wikimedian Emna Mizouni. Emna works for Carthagina, a non-governmental organization in Tunis that raises awareness about Tunisian history and heritage. She helps make images of Tunisia available to the public through community projects like Wiki Loves Monuments on Wikimedia Commons, the world’s largest freely-licensed image repository. “I’m very concerned about the heritage and history, so this is an important thing for me,” she says. “To promote Tunisian heritage through [this] photo contest…[our] monuments, historical sites, cuisine, tradition, customs, everything.” Wiki Loves Monuments is a volunteer-led international photo contest that encourages people to contribute freely-licensed images of local historical monuments and heritage sites in their region. According to the Guinness Book of Records, it holds the world record for largest photography competition. Each year, more than 300,000 photos are added through the contest. Emna, along with other community members from Northern Africa, have organised three editions of the annual contest in Tunisia since 2013. The contest has attracted thousands of images from volunteers, ten of which are selected as winners every year. “I fell in love with Wikimedia projects, and I tried to spread the word,” she says. “I joined now, so I can contribute and I see the importance of contributing. It’s aligned with the objective of my NGO, I have to do it. It’s a must-do thing.” Emna says the Wikimedia projects can even be used as a form of advocacy, for example to express opposition to terrorism that has taken place in the area. When the Bardo National Museum was attacked in 2015, volunteers contributed images of the museum, and expanded related Wikipedia articles. “We’re resisting by doing this,” she explains. “It’s not only Tunisia who is concerned with the terrorism. Tunisia is joining the league of other countries, occidental countries.” It’s been a challenging few years for the country, which played a key role in 2011’s Arab Spring – also documented on Wikipedia. Emna sees free knowledge as a positive way to move forward. “Everyone is aware about the importance of having this information on Wikipedia, so we are trying to contribute as much as we can,” she says. “We are delivering a new image [of] Tunisia. We are showing the world the real Tunisia.” [Story by Vicor Grigas]

How does that word sound? The Wikibase installation Lingua Libre structures and preserves spoken language

Lingua Libre preserves endangered languages. Wikimedia's free and collaboratively maintained knowledge database Wikidata structures the knowledge of the world in language-independent data objects that can be enriched with various types of information. Both humans and machines can access this treasure trove of data and generate new knowledge. Wikibase, the software behind Wikidata, is also available as free and open software for all. In 2018, we continued to work on making Wikibase even easier to use for others. Additionally, we offered workshops to interested organizations to explain the use of Wikibase for open knowledge projects. One of the many examples of an open data project created with Wikibase is Lingua Libre. The directory of free audio voice recordings aims to preserve the sound of the world's languages and the pronunciation of their words in the form of structured data and to make them freely available to everyone. The project originated in France, where the initiators were keen to promote endangered regional languages. The great thing about Lingua Libre is that everyone can add to the spoken vocabulary – be it with a few words, proverbs or whole sentences. Thus, even people who are not familiar with phonetic transcription can hear how individual words are pronounced at the push of a button. Up to 1,200 recordings per hour can now be recorded via the online application and uploaded directly to the free media archive Wikimedia Commons. Via the connection to Wikidata, the recorded sounds enrich Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia or the free dictionary Wiktionary in particular – but they also support linguistics specialists in their research. Blog: Many Faces of Wikibase Lingua Libre audio files on Wikimedia Commons