Wikimedia Foundation Affiliates Strategy/Implementation/Affiliate health criteria/Reports/2024/Wikimedians of Indiana User Group
| Affiliate basic information | ||
|---|---|---|
| What is the affiliate name? | Wikimedians of Indiana User Group | |
| Please list the languages supported by this affiliate | English | |
| Please list countries where this affiliate operates | United States | |
| Reporting timeline (e.g. January-December) | March 19, 2024 - March 18, 2025 | |
| Reporting year (e.g. 2024 or 2024-2025) | 2025 | |
| Primary contact (user name) | JamieF | |
| Secondary contact (user name) | Dominic | |
| Goal delivery | ||
| What is the affiliate mission? | Support and develop the Wikimedia movement and community in Indiana and Indianapolis. | |
| What are the affiliate goals? Link to the strategic plan, if there is one. | To promote Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects within Indiana
Help build and sustain the community of Wikimedia editors and allies in Indiana, with events and other programs Serve as a single point of contact for individuals and organizations interested in getting involved with Wikimedia projects Foster a support network of individuals and institutions with a professional interest in Wikipedia (e.g., cultural institutions, academia, etc.) Build capacity within the Wikimedia movement in Indiana through outreach, workshops, and similar activities Establish a sense of community for Indiana/Midwest Wikimedians To collaboratively improve the quality of Wikimedia project content through edit-a-thons, workshops, educational programs, and more. With a specific focus on content related to Indiana and the Midwest | |
| Organizational development | ||
| How does the affiliate make decisions? How are decisions communicated? | We are a small number of individuals that meet regularly, some of which are affiliated with Indiana University Indianapolis. | |
| What is the current state of the affiliate finances? Link to the latest financial report, if there is one. | This User Group is not an entity that receives money. The User Group members receive funding for some of the programs through external grants (including one from Indianapolis Foundation Library Fund) or doing work as part of their job/employment. | |
Affiliate health and resilience
| ||
| How many people participate in the decision-making process in the affiliate? | All decisions and events are decided by everyone, together. | |
| Has there been any significant changes in the level of the affiliate membership body (e.g. increase/decrease of number of dues-paying members)? | Membership has steadily increased over the past year - there is some turnover because we do a lot of outreach with university students and they graduate/leave/move home. | |
| Are there any affiliate activities in the past year that were led by affiliate members? Please share the highlights. | Women in Medicine editathon, March 18, 2024
In collaboration with Ruth Lilly Medical Library, the Wikimedians of Indiana User Group helped organize an editathon for Indiana Women in Medicine. During this event participants went through training and edited and wrote articles about notable faculty and alumni of the IU School of Medicine and other Hoosier practitioners. There were 12 participants during the event, 10 whom edited; 18 articles were edited and 16 references were added to Wikipedia. The dashboard for this event is available here. Wikipedia for Librarians, May 3, 2024 INhistoryMaker and Thedailyclark of the Indiana State Library and Historical Bureau helped organize a Wikipedia for Librarians training that earned LEU credits for Indiana-based Librarians. During the event, participants learned how to add media to Wikimedia Commons, how to add images/videos and references to Wikipedia, and had an overview of Wikidata. During the event, 13 librarians from around the state joined us to The event dashboard is available here. Wiki Loves Pride 2024 editathon, June 17th and 26th, 2024 We celebrated en:Wiki Loves Pride this year with TWO edit-a-thons! One at the Indianapolis Public Library Central Branch, utilizing the materials from the Chris Gonzalez Collection, and one with Loudmouth Books, an independent, queer owned bookstore. Across the events we had about 21 editors, creating 3 articles, editing 20 other articles, and adding 33 references. The event dashboard is available here We love BUTTER meetup, August 31, 2024 GANGGANG, Black Lunch Table (BLT), and the Wikimedians of Indiana joined forces to document Underrepresented Artists during the BUTTER Fine Art Fair in Indianapolis with a photo booth featuring local photographer, Azia Ellis-Singleton. The groups came together to take photos, upload them to Wikimedia Commons, and worked together to add data and information to the photos, and write Wikipedia articles about notable artists. Azia worked with BLT to upload images for preservation in BLT's archive. During the event, 13 articles were edited, 14 references were added to Wikipedia, and over 60 images were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Since the event, an additional 10 articles have been written. The event dashboard is available here. WikiConference North America, 2024 The Wikimedians of Indiana User Group hosted WikiConference North America, 2024 October 4th - 6th at Indiana University Indianapolis in Hine Hall. We kicked off the conference with a Culture Crawl on October 3rd, with 19 partners from across the city. The Culture Crawl included tours of en:Indianapolis Public Library's Central Library, Lucas Oil Stadium (home of the Colts), The Ray Bradbury Center at IUI, an independent bookstore crawl that included 5 bookstores, and a presentation and tour of Indiana Historical Society that focused on Latine culture and history in Indianapolis and Indiana. An opening reception was hosted that evening at Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library featuring a panel, "Banned Books and Representation at the Crossroads" with Leah Johnson, Stephen Lane, Ann Matsuuchi, and Jason Auckerman as moderator. WCNA kicked off with the announcement that mayor Joseph Hogsett had declared Friday, October 4th, 2024 Wikipedia Day in Indianapolis in honor of the city hosting the conference, the importance of access to information, and the work of local organizations to contribute to Wikipedia and improve coverage about the history of Indiana and Indianapolis. That Friday, the Conference featured a United By Heritage edit-a-thon titled "Indiana's Crossroads: Celebrating BIPOC Pioneers of the Americas". The edit-a-thon was organized by Equis and Wiki-Cientificas Mexicanas and featured silkscreen printing workshop with local Chicana artist, Alejandra Carrillo. During the event, there was editing in both English and Spanish, resulting in 25 articles created, 97 articles edited, 99 Commons Uploads, and 226 references added from 26 editors. The evening, a reception was hosted at the Indiana State Library featuring a presentation from Depths of Wikipedia. During WCNA, all of the tracks were virtually available, and each track had machine translation in Spanish and French, and the Main Auditorium featured live translation in Spanish (or English) depending on the language of the presentation. Saturday, October 5th, included presentations throughout the day in Spanish in the Main Auditorium. The conference featured keynotes from Maryana Pinchuk of WMF, a GLAM keynote in honor of Effie Kapsalis with Andrew Lih and Sara Snyder, both of the Smithsonian, and Wikimedian of the Year User:Clovermoss. In total, there were approximately 72 content sessions across three days of programming. There were 218 registered attendees to WCNA, 132 participants in the Culture Crawl, and 80 speakers. For conference attendance, 107 scholarships were awarded, including 10 travelers from Mexico and 17 from Canada. Additionally, User:JamieF has supported editing events at University of Illinois - one in-class event that spanned the semester working with 12 students on Infectious Disease topics, and one Diversifying STEM project with U of I library that ran throughout the Fall semester and had around 50 participants. Additionally, she has supported editing efforts at Montana State University in Bozeman. In 2024 they hosted an event on Health Equity that had about 58 participants, and one in 2025 on Women in Montana History. | |
| Leadership and inclusion | ||
Diverse, skilled, and accountable leadership
| ||
| What kind of skills does the affiliate leadership possess? | We have two experienced GLAM Wiki Wikipedians, and buy-in from several GLAM related institutions in the area. We excel at advocating for open knowledge and editing on Wikipedia, while having impactful training sessions and programming. | |
| Is there any kind of succession plan for the affiliate leadership? | Yes - we do have other members willing to step in if things change and we are encouraging student members to learn about Wikipedia, while taking leadership roles with planning events and reaching out to institutions. | |
| Are there any trainings that affiliate leadership undergo before they assume their leadership position? | Yes, from other job experiences our leaders have training in DEIA topics, non-violent communication techniques, and extensive work and collaboration with other Wikipedia leaders and the WMF. | |
| Are there any requirements for affiliate leadership to disclose their conflict(s) of interests? | Yes, absolutely. All leadership members have COI disclosed on their Wikipedia User Pages | |
Diversity balance (especially gender)
| ||
| What is the diversity level of the affiliate leadership and membership body? | Our leadership team is currently 50% male and 50% female. Our membership is about 3% nonbinary, 48% male, and 49% female. | |
| How is the affiliate leadership encouraging gender diversity in the decision-making process(es) of the affiliate? | We prioritize diversity in programming and events and currently our leadership is balanced in regards to gender. We regularly let female members lead the discussions for planning. | |
Universal Code of Conduct compliance
| ||
| How does the affiliate leadership ensure, enforce, and evaluate compliance with the Universal Code of Conduct obligations? | New members are given a 45 minute presentation/discussion around expected conduct and UCoC in general, as well as discussion of safe space and other conduct rules on Wikipedia. | |
| Engagement and Collaboration | ||
| Please share the publicly available records of regular meetings, activities, events, or conference in the past year where the affiliate has participated. | https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Indiana_User_Group#Annual_reports | |
| Community connection | ||
| How many affiliate members are active contributors to the Wikimedia projects? | Around 74% of user group members are considered active editors. | |
| How many affiliate members are not active contributors to the Wikimedia projects? | We do not have any fully inactive editors at this time (just some editors who only do a few edits a month, or quarterly. | |
| How many affiliate members are active organizers (of projects, events, conferences, initiatives, etc) within the Wikimedia movement? | The four leaders all contribute to organizing activities, with 1-2 members working on logistics/training/planning for events/activities. | |
| How many people have participated in affiliate projects, events, conferences, and/or initiatives in the past year? | Over the past year our events have had between 10 and 50 participants. (With WCNA having around 250). | |
| Partnerships and collaboration | ||
| Please list all activities/initiatives that the affiliate has organized or co-organized in past 12 months. | https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Indiana_User_Group/Reports/2024-2025 | |
| What would affiliate leadership list as the top 3 (three) capacities of the affiliate? (e.g. evaluation, community governance, programs and events, organizational governance and resource policies, conflict management, partnerships, fundraising, communication and media relations, contributor development, on-wiki technical skills, policy advocacy, etc) | Programs and events | |
| Local partnerships - we have a partnership with Indianapolis Foundation Library Fund. | ||
| Open-access advocacy and education | ||
| What are the 3 (three) capacities that the affiliate would like to strengthen in the next 12 months? | Improved communication with a broader audience | |
| Increase the number of institutional partners | ||
| Increase the number of members/participants at events - and hold more themed/repeating events (monthly, annually) | ||
| What are the organizations, community projects, or groups that the affiliate had been working or seeking to work with to develop and support the 3 capacities? | Indiana Historical Society, Indiana State Library, and small cultural heritage institutions. Expand at IU - more students, working with more faculty and classes. Indianapolis Foundation Library Fund. | |