Seeing linked data in action

16:08, Monday, 04 2021 October UTC
Kiley Jolicoeur head shot
Kiley Jolicoeur.
Image courtesy Kiley Jolicoeur, all rights reserved.

Kiley Jolicoeur is a graduate student at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies currently doing an internship with the Syracuse University Libraries’ (SUL) Digital Library Program (DLP), where she evaluates possible linked data solutions to implement for the digital collections metadata. A major highlight in her everyday life with the DLP is the application of Wikidata to clean and disambiguate names that appear in the digital collections metadata, especially those that may not appear in other authority files. She recently participated in our Wikidata Institute, a course where we help participants further explore and establish a foundation with Wikidata as a linked data solution.

Much of Jolicoeur’s work during the Wikidata course was in relation to her library’s digital collections metadata. With every item she encounters, she aggregates information from multiple sources and adds a few statements with references. Before diving into the course, Jolicoeur struggled which avenues to take within Wikidata. However, Wiki Education course instructor Will Kent’s guidance throughout the course immensely helped her make edits with ease.

“Having Will introduce concepts and walk us through different methods, operations, and tools really made the learning curve much less steep. I was able to start making edits after the first week and, as we progressed, really developed a feel for the Wikidata community and how the project is evolving, as well as ideas for how SUL might be able to employ Wikidata,” Jolicoeur says.

Jolicoeur attests to Wikidata’s service in catalyzing the impact of the collection with linked data. She urges librarians, students, and her colleagues to learn the benefits of linked data.

“Wikidata really has so much to offer. It’s a great way for librarians and other information professionals to learn about linked data in a live environment, it helps to disseminate information, including by exposing information that might otherwise be siloed in local collections, and it can be a very useful tool to teach students and colleagues about data,” Jolicoeur says.

Another major factor that helped Jolicoeur navigate through Wikidata smoothly was the active community who were in similar situations.

“I’ve discovered that there are great features in place that allow the community to help each other out in situations like this. The talk feature, history logs, and pages that allow for communal evaluation of requests, like notability deletions, are so helpful,” Jolicoeur says.

In Jolicoeur’s future, because of the handful of skills the Wikidata course provided her, she is able to open many doors of opportunity to apply her knowledge. 

“Wikidata is relevant to me in a lot of ways. It’s a great way to see and use linked data in action, and it’s really given me an opportunity to take classroom understanding and develop skills that build upon that. Linked data is such an important undertaking for GLAM institutions and I’m excited to be able to take the knowledge that I’ve gained here to benefit SUL as part of my internship, as well as contribute it to my future employers after I graduate,” Jolicoeur says.

To take a course similar to the one Kiley took, please visit wikiedu.org/wikidata.

Image credit: rachaelvoorhees, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

How we deploy code

08:23, Monday, 04 2021 October UTC
I broke Wikipedia and then I fixed it badge

Last week I spoke to a few of my Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) colleagues about how we deploy code—I completely botched it. I got too complex too fast. It only hit me later—to explain deployments, I need to start with a lie.

M. Jagadesh Kumar explains:

Every day, I am faced with the dilemma of explaining some complex phenomena [...] To realize my goal, I tell "lies to students."

This idea comes from Terry Pratchett's "lies-to-children" — a false statement that leads to a more accurate explanation. Asymptotically approaching truth via approximation.

Every section of this post is a subtle lie, but approximately correct.

Release Train

The first lie I need to tell is that we deploy code once a week.

Every Thursday, Release-Engineering-Team deploys a MediaWiki release to all 978 wikis. The "release branch" is 198 different branches—one branch each for mediawiki/core, mediawiki/vendor, 188 MediaWiki extensions, and eight skins—that get bundled up via git submodule.

Progressive rollout

The next lie gets a bit closer to the truth: we don't deploy on Thursday; we deploy Tuesday through Thursday.

The cleverly named TrainBranchBot creates a weekly train branch at 2 am UTC every Tuesday.

Release train process

Progressive rollouts give users time to spot bugs. We have an experienced user-base—as Risker attested on the Wikitech-l mailing list:

It's not always possible for even the best developer and the best testing systems to catch an issue that will be spotted by a hands-on user, several of whom are much more familiar with the purpose, expected outcomes and change impact on extensions than the people who have written them or QA'd them.

Bugs

Now I'm nearing the complete truth: we deploy every day except for Fridays.

Brace yourself: we don't write perfect software. When we find serious bugs, they block the release train — we will not progress from Group1 to Group2 (for example) until we fix the blocking issue. We fix the blocking issue by backporting a patch to the release branch. If there's a bug in this release, we patch that bug in our mainline branch, then git cherry-pick that patch onto our release branch and deploy that code.

We deploy backports three times a day during backport deployment windows.  In addition to backports, developers may opt to deploy new configuration or enable/disable features in the backport deployment windows.

Release engineers train others to deploy backports twice a week.

Emergencies

We deploy on Fridays when there are major issues. Examples of major issues are:

  • Security issues
  • Data loss or corruption
  • Availability of service
  • Preventing abuse
  • Major loss of functionality/visible breakage

We avoid deploying on Fridays because we have a small team of people to respond to incidents. We want those people to be away from computers on the weekends (if they want to be), not responding to emergencies.

Non-MediaWiki code

There are 42 microservices on Kubernetes deployed via helm. And there are 64 microservices running on bare metal. The service owners deploy those microservices outside of the train process.

We coordinate deployments on our deployment calendar wiki page.

The whole truth

We progressively deploy a large bundle of MediaWiki patches (between 150 and 950) every week. There are 12 backport windows a week where developers can add new features, fix bugs, or deploy new configurations. There are microservices deployed by developers at their own pace.

Important Resources:

More resources:

Thanks to @brennen, @greg, @KSiebert, @Risker, and @VPuffetMichel for reading early drafts of this post. The feedback was very helpful. Stay tuned for "How we deploy code: Part II."

Shocking tales from ornithology

08:20, Monday, 04 2021 October UTC
Manipulative people have always made use of the dynamics of ingroups and outgroups to create diversions from bigger issues. The situation is made worse when misguided philosophies are peddled by governments that put economics ahead of ecology. The pursuit of easily gamed targets such as GDP is preferrable to ecological amelioration since money is a man-made and controllable entity. Nationalism, pride, other forms of chauvinism, the creation of enemies and the magnification of war threats are all effective tools in the arsenal of Machiavelli for use in misdirecting the masses when things go wrong. One might imagine that the educated, especially scientists, would be smart enough not to fall into these traps, but cases from history dampen hopes for such optimism.

There is a very interesting book in German by Eugeniusz Nowak called "Wissenschaftler in turbulenten Zeiten" (or scientists in turbulent times) that deals with the lives of ornithologists, conservationists and other naturalists during the Second World War. Preceded by a series of recollections published in various journals, the book was published in 2010 but I became aware of it only recently while translating some biographies into the English Wikipedia. I have not yet actually seen the book (it has about five pages on Salim Ali as well) and have had to go by secondary quotations in other content. Nowak was a student of Erwin Stresemann (with whom the first chapter deals with) and he writes about several European (but mostly German, Polish and Russian) ornithologists and their lives during the turbulent 1930s and 40s. Although Europe is pretty far from India, there are ripples that reached afar. Incidentally, Nowak's ornithological research includes studies on the expansion in range of the collared dove (Streptopelia decaocto) which the Germans called the Türkentaube, literally the "Turkish dove", a name with a baggage of cultural prejudices.

Nowak's first paper of "recollections" notes that: [he] presents the facts not as accusations or indictments, but rather as a stimulus to the younger generation of scientists to consider the issues, in particular to think “What would I have done if I had lived there or at that time?” - a thought to keep as you read on.

A shocker from this period is a paper by Dr Günther Niethammer on the birds of Auschwitz (Birkenau). This paper (read it online here) was published when Niethammer was posted to the security at the main gate of the concentration camp. You might be forgiven if you thought he was just a victim of the war. Niethammer was a proud nationalist and volunteered to join the Nazi forces in 1937 leaving his position as a curator at the Museum Koenig at Bonn.
The contrast provided by Niethammer who looked at the birds on one side
while ignoring inhumanity on the other provided
novelist Arno Surminski with a title for his 2008 novel -
Die Vogelwelt von Auschwitz - ie. the birdlife of Auschwitz.

G. Niethammer
Niethammer studied birds around Auschwitz and also shot ducks in numbers for himself and to supply the commandant of the camp Rudolf Höss (if the name does not mean anything please do go to the linked article / or search for the name online).  Upon the death of Niethammer, an obituary (open access PDF here) was published in the Ibis of 1975 - a tribute with little mention of the war years or the fact that he rose to the rank of Obersturmführer. The Bonn museum journal had a special tribute issue noting the works and influence of Niethammer. Among the many tributes is one by Hans Kumerloeve (starts here online). A subspecies of the common jay was named as Garrulus glandarius hansguentheri by Hungarian ornithologist Andreas Keve in 1967 after the first names of Kumerloeve and Niethammer. Fortunately for the poor jay, this name is a junior synonym of  G. g. anatoliae described by Seebohm in 1883.

Meanwhile inside Auschwitz, the Polish artist Wladyslaw Siwek was making sketches of everyday life  in the camp. After the war he became a zoological artist of repute. Unfortunately there is very little that is readily accessible to English readers on the internet (beyond the Wikipedia entry).
Siwek, artist who documented life at Auschwitz
before working as a wildlife artist.
 
Hans Kumerloeve
Now for Niethammer's friend Dr Kumerloeve who also worked in the Museum Koenig at Bonn. His name was originally spelt Kummerlöwe and was, like Niethammer, a doctoral student of Johannes Meisenheimer. Kummerloeve and Niethammer made journeys on a small motorcyle to study the birds of Turkey. Kummerlöwe's political activities started earlier than Niethammer, joining the NSDAP (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei = The National Socialist German Workers' Party)  in 1925 and starting the first student union of the party in 1933. Kummerlöwe soon became a member of the Ahnenerbe, a think tank meant to provide "scientific" support to the party-ideas on race and history. In 1939 he wrote an anthropological study on "Polish prisoners of war". At the museum in Dresden that he headed, he thought up ideas to promote politics and he published his ideas in 1939 and 1940. After the war, it is thought that he went to all the European libraries that held copies of this journal (Anyone interested in hunting it should look for copies of Abhandlungen und Berichte aus den Staatlichen Museen für Tierkunde und Völkerkunde in Dresden 20:1-15.) and purged them of the article which would incriminate him. According to Nowak, he even managed to get his hands (and scissors) on copies of the journal held in Moscow and Leningrad!  

The Dresden museum was also home to the German ornithologist Adolf Bernhard Meyer (1840–1911). In 1858, he translated the works of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace into German and introduced evolutionary theory to a whole generation of German scientists. Among Meyer's amazing works is a series of avian osteological works which uses photography and depicts birds in nearly-life-like positions (wonder how it was done!) - a less artistic precursor to Katrina van Grouw's 2012 book The Unfeathered Bird. Meyer's skeleton images can be found here. In 1904 Meyer was eased out of the Dresden museum because of rising anti-semitism. Meyer does not find a place in Nowak's book.
 
Niethammer stands behind Salim Ali, 1967.
International Ornithological Congress, 1967


Nowak's book includes entries on the following scientists: (I keep this here partly for my reference as I intend to improve Wikipedia entries on several of them as and when time and resources permit. Would be amazing if others could pitch in!).
In the first of his "recollection papers" (his 1998 article) Nowak writes about the reason for writing them - noticing that the obituary for Prof. Ernst Schäfer  was a whitewash that carefully avoided any mention of his wartime activities. And this brings us to India. In a recent article in Indian Birds, Sylke Frahnert and coauthors have written about the bird collections from Sikkim in the Berlin natural history museum. In their article there is a brief statement that "The  collection  in  Berlin  has  remained  almost  unknown due  to  the  political  circumstances  of  the  expedition". This might be a bit cryptic for many but the best read on the topic is Himmler's Crusade: The true story of the 1939 Nazi expedition into Tibet (2009) by Christopher Hale. Hale writes: 
He [Himmler] revered the ancient cultures of India and the East, or at least his own weird vision of them.
These were not private enthusiasms, and they were certainly not harmless. Cranky pseudoscience nourished Himmler’s own murderous convictions about race and inspired ways of convincing others...
Himmler regarded himself not as the fantasist he was but as a patron of science. He believed that most conventional wisdom was bogus and that his power gave him a unique opportunity to promulgate new thinking. He founded the Ahnenerbe specifically to advance the study of the Aryan (or Nordic or Indo-German) race and its origins
From there, Hale goes on to examine the motivations of Schäfer and his team. He looks at how much of the science was politically driven. Swastika signs dominate some of the photos from the expedition - as if it provided for a natural tie with Buddhism in Tibet. It seems that Himmler gave Schäfer the opportunity to rise within the political hierarchy. The team that went to Sikkim included Bruno Beger. Beger was a physical anthropologist but with less than innocent motivations although that would be much harder to ascribe to the team's other pursuits like botany and ornithology. One of the results from the expedition was a film made by the entomologist of the group, Ernst Krause - Geheimnis Tibet - or secret Tibet - a copy of this 1 hour and 40 minute film is on YouTube. At around 26 minutes, you can see Bruno Beger creating face casts - first as a negative in Plaster of Paris from which a positive copy was made using resin. Hale talks about how one of the Tibetans put into a cast with just straws to breathe from went into an epileptic seizure from the claustrophobia and fear induced. The real horror however is revealed when Hale quotes a May 1943 letter from an SS officer to Beger - ‘What exactly is happening with the Jewish heads? They are lying around and taking up valuable space . . . In my opinion, the most reasonable course of action is to send them to Strasbourg . . .’ Apparently Beger had to select some prisoners from Auschwitz who appeared to have Asiatic features. Hale shows that Beger knew the fate of his selection - they were gassed for research conducted by Beger and August Hirt.
SS-Sturmbannführer Schäfer at the head of the table in Lhasa

In all, Hale makes a clear case that the Schäfer mission had quite a bit of political activity underneath. We find that Sven Hedin (Schäfer was a big fan of him in his youth. Hedin was a Nazi sympathizer who funded and supported the mission) was in contact with fellow Nazi supporter Erica Schneider-Filchner and her father Wilhelm Filchner in India, both of whom were interned later at Satara, while Bruno Beger made contact with Subhash Chandra Bose more than once. [Two of the pictures from the Bundesarchiv show a certain Bhattacharya - who appears to be a chemist working on snake venom at the Calcutta snake park - one wonders if he is Abhinash Bhattacharya.]

My review of Nowak's book must be uniquely flawed as  I have never managed to access it beyond some online snippets and English reviews.  The war had impacts on the entire region and Nowak's coverage is limited and there were many other interesting characters including the Russian ornithologist Malchevsky  who survived German bullets thanks to a fat bird observation notebook in his pocket! In the 1950's Trofim Lysenko, the crank scientist who controlled science in the USSR sought Malchevsky's help in proving his own pet theories - one of which was the ideas that cuckoos were the result of feeding hairy caterpillars to young warblers!

Issues arising from race and perceptions are of course not restricted to this period or region, one of the less glorious stories of the Smithsonian Institution concerns the honorary curator Robert Wilson Shufeldt (1850 – 1934), who, in the infamous Audubon affair, made his personal troubles with his second wife, a grand-daughter of Audubon, into one of race. He also wrote such books as America's Greatest Problem: The Negro (1915) in which we learn of the ideas of other scientists of the period like Edward Drinker Cope! Like many other obituaries, Shufeldt's is a classic whitewash.  

Even as recently as 2015, the University of Salzburg withdrew an honorary doctorate that they had given to the Nobel prize winning Konrad Lorenz for his support of the political setup and racial beliefs. It should not be that hard for scientists to figure out whether they are on the wrong side of history even if they are funded by the state. Perhaps salaried scientists in India would do well to look at the legal contracts they sign with their employers, especially the state, more carefully. The current rules make government employees less free than ordinary citizens but will the educated speak out or do they prefer shackling themselves. 

Postscripts:
  • Mixing natural history with war sometimes led to tragedy for the participants as well. In the case of Dr Manfred Oberdörffer who used his cover as an expert on leprosy to visit the borders of Afghanistan with entomologist Fred Hermann Brandt (1908–1994), an exchange of gunfire with British forces killed him although Brandt lived on to tell the tale.
  • Apparently Himmler's entanglement with ornithology also led him to dream up "Storchbein Propaganda" - a plan to send pamphlets to the Boers in South Africa via migrating storks! The German ornithologist Ernst Schüz quietly (and safely) pointed out the inefficiency of it purely on the statistics of recoveries!

Outreachy report #25: September 2021

00:00, Monday, 04 2021 October UTC

Highlights We processed final feedback for all interns We onboarded new communities We started discussions on hiring one more organizer We held a post-mortem about internship exntensions Our applicant reviewers reviewed the whole queue just in time! 🎉 It’s official: I’ve been working with Outreachy for three whole years! 🎈 I can’t stress enough how fun it’s been to work on the program that welcomed me as an intern (and kickstarted my career in tech) four years ago.

Tech News issue #40, 2021 (October 4, 2021)

00:00, Monday, 04 2021 October UTC
Tech Forum
Tech News
Tech Ambassadors
Wikimedia Technology
Wikimedia Product
MediaWiki
The Tech News weekly summaries help you monitor recent software changes likely to impact you and your fellow Wikimedians. Subscribe, contribute and give feedback.

Translate frequently used templates

previous 2021, week 40 (Monday 04 October 2021) next
Other languages:

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them has been enabled for the following 10 wikis: mediawiki.org, the Italian, Catalan, Hebrew and Vietnamese Wikipedias, French Wikisource, and English Wikivoygage, Wikibooks, Wiktionary and Wikinews. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist on those wikis you can let the developers know.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 October. It will be on all wikis from 7 October (calendar).
  • Advanced item Some gadgets and bots that use the API to read the AbuseFilter log might break. The hidden property will no longer say an entry is implicit for unsuppressed log entries about suppressed edits. If your bot needs to know this, do a separate revision query. Additionally, the property will have the value false for visible entries; previously, it wasn't included in the response. [1]
  • A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them will be enabled for all production wikis. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist you can let the developers know.

Future changes

  • You can soon get cross-wiki notifications in the iOS Wikipedia app. You can also get notifications as push notifications. More notification updates will follow in later versions. [2]
  • Advanced item The JavaScript variables wgExtraSignatureNamespaces, wgLegalTitleChars, and wgIllegalFileChars will soon be removed from mw.config. These are not part of the "stable" variables available for use in wiki JavaScript. [3]
  • Advanced item The JavaScript variables wgCookiePrefix, wgCookieDomain, wgCookiePath, and wgCookieExpiration will soon be removed from mw.config. Scripts should instead use mw.cookie from the "mediawiki.cookie" module. [4]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

weeklyOSM 584

09:42, Sunday, 03 2021 October UTC

21/09/2021-27/09/2021

lead picture

Korea presents own website, own tile server, and a taginfo instance [1] map data © OpenStreetMap contributors

Mapping

  • jgruca shared details on the design choices underpinning the new way rendering of golf courses in the latest Carto release.
  • qeef wants to inspire us by mapping highway radars and mirrors using the Damn-Project.
  • The German OSM chapter FOSSGIS received (de) > en a complaint from the local authorities about the mapping of Mandichosee, a popular reservoir near Augsburg. A large increase in people intruding into an area dedicated for the protection of breeding birds has occurred. This is partly due to features on OSM, and the way they are displayed in the Komoot application.
  • Requests have been made for comments on the following proposals:
    • boundary=border_zone for tagging areas near borders that have special restrictions on movement.
    • man_made=borehole to map a narrow shaft bored in the ground for purposes not covered by the existing tags man_made=petroleum_well or man_made=water_well, or the proposed man_made=injection_well.
    • man_made=injection_well to tag a narrow shaft bored in the ground for the purposes of forcing in a fluid.
  • Voting is underway for the following proposals:
    • currency:crypto:*=yes,no, to extend the currency key to support cryptocurrencies (till Friday 22 October).
    • foraging=* to indicate whether or not foraging for plants/fruit/fungi etc. is permissible for a given location or plant (till Wednesday 20 October).
    • natural=fumarole to map an opening in our planet’s crust, which emits steam and gases (till Tuesday 12 October).
    • landuse:secondary=* for mapping multiple land uses in a single area (till Tuesday 12 October).

Community

  • The new Korean OpenStreetMap Community presented their website, their own tile server, and a Taginfo instance, summarising the Korean regional OpenStreetMap database, running on the osm.kr (ko) > en server (including publicity for weeklyOSM).
  • ztzthu defended himself, in his diary, against what he considers to be unobjective and insulting accusations against China and Chinese mappers, and refuses to accept that an accusation of vandalism is not directed sweepingly against China as a country and sweepingly against ‘the Chinese mappers’.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

  • The OSM Tech team announced that new server infrastructure has been installed in Dublin, Ireland.

Events

Education

  • Gregory Marler has created a video tutorial in which he explains how to add churches, mosques, synagogues, temples and other places of worship to OpenStreetMap. He is using Field Papers and the iD Editor.

Maps

  • Several professional geologists and vulcanologists have commented on Twitter about the speed of mapping during the current volcanic eruption on La Palma.

Software

  • Trufi has developed and launched a ‘one click, all modes’ journey planner app — car, carpool, taxi, bus, train, bike share, cargo bike, personal bike, and more — for Herrenberg, Germany. Based on Trufi Core system, new features developed for Herrenberg will be ported to apps used in developing countries.

Programming

  • OSMF Board Member Mikel Maron proposed, via a GitHub pull request, that long-time iD maintainer Bryan Housel be removed from the list of interim maintainers.

Did you know …

  • … how many people currently produce the corresponding language version of weeklyOSM week after week? The languages in alphabetical order:
    Language CZ DE EN ES FR IT JA KO PL PT-BR PT-PT TR ZH
    Editors 1 6 7 3 4 5 2 1 3 1 2 10 2
  • … that colonial cartographers hid the profile of an elephant in contour lines of a map created during a 1923 survey of Ghana (known then as the Gold Coast)?
  • … StreetComplete, the Android app for your craftmapper activities? The list of all possible tasks can be found in the OSM wiki.
  • … about osm.wikidata.link, a website that allows users to easily add Wikidata tags to elements in OpenStreetMap?

Other “geo” things

  • The Mapbox Workers Union Twitter account has complained about apparent retaliation by Mapbox of the union organisers, following the loss of the union recognition vote (as we reported earlier).
  • A troll has mapped (pl) > en a trollface by posting spam reports of bad smells emanating from a landfill in Kasubia (the area around Gdansk). The ‘Smell Map’ has been online for 8 years as a community initiative.
  • xkcd came up with another geographical cartoon. The OSM reddit had a small discussion about it.

Upcoming Events

Where What Online When Country
OSM Africa Monthly Mapathon: Map Malawi osmcalpic 2021-09-04 – 2021-10-04
FOSS4G 2021 Buenos Aires – Online Edition osmcalpic 2021-09-27 – 2021-10-02
HOTOSM Training Webinar Series: Advanced iD osmcalpic 2021-10-02
京田辺市 京都！街歩き！マッピングパーティ：第26回 Re:一休寺 osmcalpic 2021-10-02 flag
OSM Africa Monthly Mapathon: Map Uganda osmcalpic 2021-10-02
OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting osmcalpic 2021-10-04
臺北市 OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #33 osmcalpic 2021-10-04 flag
Greater London Missing Maps London Mapathon osmcalpic 2021-10-05 flag
Landau an der Isar Virtuelles Niederbayern-Treffen osmcalpic ✓ 2021-10-05 flag
Stuttgart Stuttgarter Stammtisch (Online) osmcalpic 2021-10-05 flag
Greater London London pub meet-up osmcalpic 2021-10-06 – 2021-10-07 flag
Hlavní město Praha Online validation mapathon osmcalpic ✓ 2021-10-07 flag
Nordrhein-Westfalen OSM-Treffen Bochum (Oktober) osmcalpic 2021-10-07 flag
UN Mappers: MaPathon – le Università a servizio della cooperazione internazionale osmcalpic 2021-10-08
Berlin 160. Berlin-Brandenburg OpenStreetMap Stammtisch osmcalpic ✓ 2021-10-08 flag
Henrietta Township Journey to the Centers of Michigan osmcalpic 2021-10-09 flag
Zürich OSM-Treffen Zürich osmcalpic 2021-10-11 flag
DRK Missing Maps Online Mapathon osmcalpic 2021-10-12
Hamburg Hamburger Mappertreffen osmcalpic 2021-10-12 flag
San Jose South Bay Map Night osmcalpic ✓ 2021-10-13 flag
Mannheim Einführung in der humanitären Kartographie osmcalpic 2021-10-13 flag
OpenStreetMap Michigan Meetup osmcalpic 2021-10-15
Bonn 144. Treffen des OSM-Stammtisches Bonn osmcalpic 2021-10-19 flag
Lüneburg Lüneburger Mappertreffen (online) osmcalpic 2021-10-19 flag

Note:
If you like to see your event here, please put it into the OSM calendar. Only data which is there, will appear in weeklyOSM.

This weeklyOSM was produced by Nordpfeil, PierZen, SK53, Sammyhawkrad, TheSwavu, YoViajo, conradoos, derFred.

SMWCon Fall 2021 announced

06:01, Thursday, 30 2021 September UTC

SMWCon Fall 2021 announced

September 30, 2021

SMWCon Fall 2021 will be held online

Save the date! SMWCon Fall 2021 will take place from December 8 to 10, 2021 as an online event. The conference is for everybody interested in wikis and open knowledge, especially in Semantic MediaWiki. You are welcome to propose a related talk, tutorial, workshop and more via the conference page.

SMWCon Fall 2021 announced

06:00, Thursday, 30 2021 September UTC

SMWCon Fall 2021 announced

September 30, 2021

SMWCon Fall 2021 will be held online

Save the date! SMWCon Fall 2021 will take place from December 8 to 10, 2021 as an online event. The conference is for everybody interested in wikis and open knowledge, especially in Semantic MediaWiki. You are welcome to propose a related talk, tutorial, workshop and more via the conference page.

Merging traditional and nontraditional research in a capstone course

15:35, Wednesday, 29 2021 September UTC

George Heard is a professor in the department of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of North Carolina Asheville.

George Heard
George Heard

Here is an excerpt from an email a student sent me at the end of my course this semester.

“Wikipedia is way cooler than I thought, and to have been able to contribute to a chemical article and publish it this semester was definitely a game-changer (just googled my article wondering if it was all real and yes, our work is definitely on the web!)”.

This struck a chord with me – I have taught this student in several classes over their academic career, and they have submitted a number of assignments to me – homework assignments, exams, lab reports, and while they all have a meaning, ultimately they have been private and transient. Do the work, hand it in, receive a grade, hopefully learn something, move on to the next assignment.  In this final semester before they graduated and set out to make their mark on the world, they have had an opportunity to contribute to global information in a meaningful way, and it has stuck.

Incorporating a Wiki Education assignment into my class gave all my students an opportunity to produce a piece of work that is not only permanent, but accessible.  Not only that, but the better the quality of the edits, the longer they are likely to persist – I have just completed the fourth year in which I have incorporated Wiki Education assignments in my class, and one student from my first class is still in touch with me and points out that their Wikipedia edits are still there from changes made in 2018.

There have been challenges, and sharing these challenges with students in an open fashion has deepened the experience.  An experienced Wikipedia editor leaving messages on my talk page and on the pages of my students’ work sparked conversation about the concept of Wikipedia as a community and a global resource, and the passion that some users had for Wikipedia.

I first became familiar with Wiki Education from a booth at the American Chemical Society National Conference in 2017. At the time, I had been charged with creating a research capstone course for Chemistry majors who were pursuing a B.A. degree and so were not engaged in laboratory-based research.  My colleagues were interested in students having a literature intensive course with a measurable outcome, along the lines of a literature-based thesis.  After some discussion with Wiki Education staff, I added a Wikipedia assignment to the first iteration of CHEM 409, Chemistry Literature Research Seminar.  The 12-week Wiki Education timeline aligned well with the learning objectives of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UNC Asheville.

  • Describe and analyze the chemical and physical structure and reactivity of matter, the mathematical models describing matter, and the methods of characterizing and measuring properties of matter
  • Demonstrate problem-solving and self-directed learning skills by evaluating a research topic in chemistry, completing an extensive search of related, published literature, and completing a high-quality multi-semester research project that results in a written and an oral report summarizing the project

The Wiki Education assignment provided a structure and opportunities for multiple levels of reflection along the way to creating content for Wikipedia pages relating to the chemical and physical structure and reactivity of matter, and each student could learn self-directed learning skills in selecting appropriate sources, drafting content, responding to peer review and ultimately publishing and reacting to public feedback in a global forum.

The majority of student feedback on Wiki Education has been positive. Students complete my course with a new understanding and appreciation of Wikipedia and most importantly, a feeling that their time in class has not been wasted. The level of support I get from the Wiki Education staff and other Wikipedians, as well as the comprehensive website and documentation prepared by Wiki Education, makes it easy to get started and importantly to monitor my students progress in the assignment.

Image credit: Michael Tracey, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons; George Heard, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

How we deploy code

18:49, Tuesday, 28 2021 September UTC

By Tyler Cipriani, Engineering Manager, Release Engineering, The Wikimedia Foundation

File:I-bork-the-wikis-merit-badge.png, Tyler Cipriani, CC BY-SA 3.0

Last week I spoke to a few of my Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) colleagues about how we deploy code—I completely botched it. I got too complex too fast. It only hit me later—to explain deployments, I need to start with a lie.

M. Jagadesh Kumar explains:

“Every day, I am faced with the dilemma of explaining some complex phenomena […] To realize my goal, I tell ‘lies to students.'”

This idea comes from Terry Pratchett’s “lies-to-children” — a false statement that leads to a more accurate explanation. Asymptotically approaching truth via approximation.

Every section of this post is a subtle lie but approximately correct.

Release Train

The first lie I need to tell is that we deploy code once a week.

Every Thursday, Wikimedia Release Engineering Team deploys a MediaWiki release to all 978 wikis. The “release branch” is 198 different branches—one branch each for mediawiki/core, mediawiki/vendor, 188 MediaWiki extensions, and eight skins—that get bundled up via git submodule.

Progressive rollout

The next lie gets a bit closer to the truth: we don’t deploy on Thursday; we deploy Tuesday through Thursday.

The cleverly named TrainBranchBot creates a weekly train branch at 2 am UTC every Tuesday.

File:Deployment train diagram.png, Tyler Cipriani, CC BY-SA 4.0

Progressive rollouts give users time to spot bugs. We have an experienced user-base—as Risker attested on the Wikitech-l mailing list:

“It’s not always possible for even the best developer and the best testing systems to catch an issue that will be spotted by a hands-on user, several of whom are much more familiar with the purpose, expected outcomes and change impact on extensions than the people who have written them or QA’d them.”

Bugs

Now I’m nearing the complete truth: we deploy every day except for Fridays.

Brace yourself: we don’t write perfect software. When we find serious bugs, they block the release train — we will not progress from Group1 to Group2 (for example) until we fix the blocking issue. We fix the blocking issue by backporting a patch to the release branch. If there’s a bug in this release, we patch that bug in our mainline branch, then git cherry-pick that patch onto our release branch and deploy that code.

We deploy backports three times a day during backport deployment windows.  In addition to backports, developers may opt to deploy new configurations or enable/disable features in the backport deployment windows

Release engineers train others to deploy backports twice a week.

Emergencies

We deploy on Fridays when there are major issues. Examples of major issues are:

  • Security issues
  • Data loss or corruption
  • Availability of service
  • Preventing abuse
  • Major loss of functionality/visible breakage

We avoid deploying on Fridays because we have a small team of people to respond to incidents. We want those people to be away from computers on the weekends (if they want to be), not responding to emergencies.

Non-MediaWiki code

There are 42 microservices on Kubernetes deployed via helm. And there are 64 microservices running on bare metal. The service owners deploy those microservices outside of the train process.

We coordinate deployments on our deployment calendar wiki page.

The whole truth

We progressively deploy a large bundle of MediaWiki patches (between 150 and 950) every week. There are 12 backport windows a week where developers can add new features, fix bugs, or deploy new configurations. There are microservices deployed by developers at their own pace.

Important Resources:

More resources:

Thanks to @brennen, @greg, @KSiebert, @Risker, and @VPuffetMichel for reading early drafts of this post. The feedback was very helpful. Stay tuned for “How we deploy code: Part II.”

About this post

This post originally appeared in the Phame blog, “Doing the Needful,” on 27 Sept 2021

Featured image credit: File:Union Pacific 844, Painted Rocks, NV, 2009 (crop).jpg, 04_15_09_162xp_-_Flickr_-_drewj1946.jpg: Drew Jacksich, derivative work: Bruce1ee, CC BY-SA 2.0

Wikimedia Foundation launches campaign with South African creative community to promote access to and sharing of free knowledge

10:48, Tuesday, 28 2021 September UTC

September 28 2021, Johannesburg, South Africa – Today, on the International Day for Universal Access to Information, the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia, is launching a campaign in collaboration with the South African creative community to showcase the power of knowledge and everyone’s right to access, create and share it. Over the next four weeks, the Foundation will release online multimedia content built by South African writers, filmmakers, fashion designers, artists and thought leaders, highlighting a variety of topics from popular culture to social politics to the evolution of African cinema. The public can follow the campaign online using #WikipediaByUs.

The campaign will invite these content creators to explore Wikipedia, the world’s largest online encyclopedia, as a place to freely share knowledge, and introduce them to its model of open collaboration, which allows anyone, anywhere to add well-sourced, neutral content to the site. Content creators will use their creativity to contribute to the knowledge ecosystem, emphasizing that information can be conveyed in many ways, from writing and pictures to sound and music. Aligned with Wikimedia’s  goal to break down the social, political and technical barriers preventing people from accessing and contributing to free knowledge, the campaign also aims to draw attention to the South African stories, contexts, history and experiences missing from Wikipedia.

Khanyi Mpumlwana, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Creative Director said, “Access to knowledge and information in South Africa has too often been limited by class barriers and divided along racial lines. Wikipedia opens an opportunity for anyone, anywhere to share and access knowledge. Through this campaign, we want to show all content creators across the country that knowledge can take various forms and that we can all play a part in its creation.”

The Foundation is collaborating with the Bubblegum Club, a cultural intelligence agency to showcase writers, filmmakers, thought leaders and other influencers in South Africa as experts and knowledge producers in a variety of subject areas. Two directors, Zandi Tisani and Monde Gumede, will create captivating short films, with Zandi telling a story of African film history   and Monde drawing attention to current challenges in knowledge dissemination, including the spread of misinformation. Other key influencers include Ridhwaan Suliman, a mathematician and Twitter influencer, who will illustrate the importance of storytelling through data, and Khensani Mohlatlole, a writer and video essayist focused on fashion and design and its historical impact, who will share a vlog underlying the importance of uncovering unique, untold stories.

As one of the world’s top ten most visited websites, Wikipedia is a source of knowledge for billions of people across the world. Wikipedia is written by more than 280,000 global volunteer contributors, but currently only 1.5% of these editors are based in Africa, and an even smaller percentage are South African. As a result, Wikipedia articles are missing perspectives from Africa; history written about South Africa and other countries is being documented by people in other regions of the world, making them less representative and leaving large content gaps. 

Anusha Alikhan, Senior Director of Communications at the Wikimedia Foundation said: “When more people from diverse backgrounds collaborate on Wikipedia, they move us closer to achieving our vision of ensuring our projects reflect the diversity of knowledge from people, cultures and languages around the world. South Africans have a role to play in shaping this global resource, telling their own histories, and creating content about South Africa by South Africans.” 

South Africa has a history of societal inequality, which has created barriers to accessing knowledge. Initial data from research conducted by the Wikimedia Foundation illustrated that 91% of South Africans believe that knowledge is synonymous with freedom, whilst 94.5% of them believe that knowledge is truly power. 

Currently, 9 of South Africa’s 11 official languages are represented on Wikipedia, largely due to the efforts of non-profit organization Wikimedia South Africa, a recognized chapter of the Wikimedia movement.  The top four most visited language Wikipedias monthly in the country are English (81 million pageviews), Afrikaans (3 million pageviews), IsiZulu (95,000 pageviews), and IsiXhosa (49,000 pageviews), as of last month. The Wikimedia South Africa chapter has built a movement of knowledge champions who support the building of free knowledge by contributing and editing content on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. 

Drawing from the South African context, the Wikimedia campaign aims to show South Africans an avenue to address inequities in accessing and sharing knowledge. It invites them to join the free knowledge movement and contribute to building the cultural and linguistic representation of South Africa on Wikipedia. 

Some of the creative collaborators participating in the campaign include: 

  • Monde Gumede – filmmaker who will create a short film about how misinformation fuels panic and social divide in a South African social and digital context
  • Zayaan Khan – multidisciplinary ecological thought leader who will provide a socio political perspective on how we navigate natural environments    
  • Kabelo Kungwane – storyteller behind The Sartists who will develop a knowledge sharing series around culture and fashion in the country 
  • Amogelang Maledu – art practitioner, interested in popular culture, who will share a video essay reflecting her work on sound cultures in Southern Africa and their influences
  • Khensani Mohlatlole – writer and video essayist who will unpack themes in South African popular culture
  • Ridhwaan Suliman – mathematician and Twitter influencer who will illustrate the importance of accurate information, and how information is distributed in a pandemic
  • Zandi Tisani – filmmaker who will create a short film about the history of African film, and how we have come to consume or create content 

To learn more about Wikimedia Foundation’s efforts to increase knowledge equity in its projects, explore our Open the Knowledge initiative.

To learn how to get involved in the Wikimedia South Africa chapter, visit here.

Follow the campaign online using #WikipediaByUs. 

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. Our vision is a world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. We believe that everyone has the potential to contribute something to our shared knowledge, and that everyone should be able to access that knowledge freely. We host Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects, build software experiences for reading, contributing, and sharing Wikimedia content, support the volunteer communities and partners who make Wikimedia possible, and advocate for policies that enable Wikimedia and free knowledge to thrive. 

The Wikimedia Foundation is a charitable, not-for-profit organization that relies on donations. We receive donations from millions of individuals around the world, with an average donation of about $15. We also receive donations through institutional grants and gifts. The Wikimedia Foundation is a United States 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization with offices in San Francisco, California, USA.

Wikimedia Foundation Announces New Vice President for Global Advocacy Rebecca MacKinnon

18:17, Monday, 27 2021 September UTC

27 September 2021, San Francisco, California — The Wikimedia Foundation today announced that Rebecca MacKinnon has joined the Foundation as its first Vice President for Global Advocacy. Rebecca is an experienced advocate for privacy rights and media freedom who has had a long-career in journalism, academia and public policy.

“Rebecca joins our team at a time when it is increasingly urgent to establish and defend access to open knowledge,” said Amanda Keton, General Counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation. “She brings a breadth of experience across digital advocacy issues that will enable the Wikimedia Foundation to influence key regulatory initiatives in support of our mission. Her work will allow us to grow public awareness and engagement on policy issues to protect the future of the open internet.”

As the VP for Global Advocacy, Rebecca will provide strategic leadership and direction to the Wikimedia Foundation’s growing public policy team, and continue Wikimedia’s efforts to establish and defend a legal and regulatory landscape essential to the future of free knowledge globally. She is extremely familiar with the work of the Wikimedia movement, having previously been an active member of the Advisory Board to the Wikimedia Foundation’s Board of Trustees between 2007-2012. Now, as part of the Foundation she will guide the public policy team on efforts to support the global movement of Wikimedia volunteers by promoting free expression and addressing national and regulatory threats that prevent access to knowledge.

“I share this movement’s steadfast commitment to knowledge as a human right,” said Rebecca MacKinnon. “I have built my career around advocating for people’s digital rights and defending against legal and technological threats that undermine democracy. Wikimedia plays a unique role in the international information landscape, and I am excited for the opportunity to serve the global movement by strengthening our advocacy efforts to enable all people to participate in the sum of all knowledge.”

Rebecca was most recently the founding director of Ranking Digital Rights (RDR), a program at New America that works to promote freedom of expression and privacy on the internet through the creation of global standards and incentives for technology companies to respect and protect users’ rights. Prior to launching RDR, in 2012 Rebecca published Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom, one of the first books to publicly discuss the contemporary rise of “networked authoritarianism” and its threat to human rights and democracy.  Her book was the product of nearly a decade working as a researcher, educator, and advocate raising awareness about freedom of expression and privacy online. 

In 2004 as a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center she co-founded, with Ethan Zuckerman, the international citizen media network Global Voices, which like Wikipedia is shaped by a global community of volunteer contributors.  She has held board member roles at organizations including the Global Network Initiative and the Committee to Protect Journalists, and serves on the Advisory Network for the Freedom Online Coalition.

Rebecca began her career as a journalist in East Asia, culminating as CNN’s bureau chief in Tokyo as well as Beijing, where she was directly exposed to many of the realities of internet censorship and surveillance, as well as threats to a free press. She is a fluent Mandarin speaker, and a former Fulbright scholar in Taiwan. Rebecca received her Bachelor’s degree with honors in Government at Harvard University, where she was also the Editor-in-Chief of Harvard International Review. She joins the Wikimedia Foundation today.

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. Our vision is a world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. We believe that everyone has the potential to contribute something to our shared knowledge, and that everyone should be able to access that knowledge freely. We host Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects, build software experiences for reading, contributing, and sharing Wikimedia content, support the volunteer communities and partners who make Wikimedia possible, and advocate for policies that enable Wikimedia and free knowledge to thrive. 

The Wikimedia Foundation is a charitable, not-for-profit organization that relies on donations. We receive donations from millions of individuals around the world, with an average donation of about $15. We also receive donations through institutional grants and gifts. The Wikimedia Foundation is a United States 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization with offices in San Francisco, California, USA.

What can querying Wikidata do for me?

15:58, Monday, 27 2021 September UTC
seven overlapping circles
Think of queries as asking for sets of things from Wikidata. The more you ask for, the more the sets overlap.

There’s a lot to Wikidata. The Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) is one of the most effective and efficient ways to help you make sense of all that data on Wikidata. This post will explore how you can use different kinds queries to get the most out of your Wikidata experience. Each different kind of query will include example queries that demonstrate everything you can get out of Wikidata. You’ll also be able to modify and save them yourself to better understand how they work.

Let’s start with the most important takeaway right now: querying is how a lot of people read and use Wikidata. Although it’s important to comprehend what’s happening on the item-level on Wikidata, most community members are concerned with the relationship among all of these items (nearly 100 million as of September 2021). If you’re new to querying, that’s great! You can think of querying as defining a set of things you’re interested in on Wikidata and learning more about those things. You don’t have to worry about concerning yourself with everything that’s on Wikidata — just the things and relationships you’re interested in.

Queries can serve many purposes and express many, detailed aspects of Wikidata. The following list will provide you with some different “styles” of queries written for specific, applied purposes.

Queries can tell you…

  • Facts: Queries can answer questions. For example which cities have mayors who identify as female? This is another way of showing the relationship between items. You can think of this query as a group of city items relate to human items (who are female). What links these two sets together is the “head of government” property. City, Head of Government, Mayor. The query zips through Wikidata and serves up an answer for you. This is a common kind of query.
  • Visualization: Queries can visualize a lot of data for you. The Wikidata Query Service has several visualization options built into it — maps, images, graphs — to help readers process and interpret big sets of data. This query builds off the previous query, but this time it pulls in images and geographic coordinates to enable a map visualization option. This is another compelling use of a Wikidata query.
  • Existence: Queries can tell you if Wikidata has an item you’re interested in — or not. New items are created every day on Wikidata, but there are plenty of gaps. Queries can tell us what’s there vs what isn’t. You can also think of it as a detail about something, for example: does Wikidata have the date that architect Jeanne Gang was a MacArthur fellow?
  • Maintenance: Queries can help define metrics, track progress, and evaluate item completeness. If you’re working on a project you can have a query that focuses on a set of statements. The WikiProject Sum of All Paintings gathers paintings and data about them on Wikidata. To track progress, this project use a query (coupled with a tool called Listeria) to see which paintings are missing creator statements. Follow this link to see that list. If you scroll down a little, you’ll be able to see the link back to the query. Or you can click here to view it. Revisiting this query over time will reveal changes the community makes to items. Sets of queries can support projects to illustrate progress, gaps, and connectedness over time.
  • Wikipedia article data: Queries can tell you all about Wikipedia articles. Every Wikipedia article has a corresponding Wikidata item that describes the article as linked data. So queries can answer questions like what percentage of biographies on Wikipedia are about women? Or more specific, how many female geneticist have Wikipedia articles? Wikidata can help us understand crucial metrics from other Wikimedia projects. These data points can help better develop Wikipedia in an equitable way, as well as keep track of systemic biases that exist in all of the projects — including Wikidata itself.
  • Enrichment: Queries can grab that little slice of Wikidata that may improve your local collection. Is your collection missing specific pieces of data? Maybe birthdates and birth places for some artists? Don’t forget that you can download any set of query results! Build a query, scope it to a set of artists, ask for birthdates and birth places, and take whatever you want. After you run the query, just click the “Download” button on the right side of the screen and select from the file format options that best suit you. (Don’t forget that you can download *all* of Wikidata too…queries are probably the better way to do this since all of Wikidata is BIG).
  • Language analysis: Queries can render results in many different languages. Similar to above — what if you want to translate names and descriptions of things in your collection to another language. That could make your collection more accessible to whole new communities. You can query Wikidata for language labels and descriptions in over 300 languages. These queries can reveal where there’s more translation work to do. Any way you look at it, the more translation that happens on Wikidata, the more accessible its knowledge becomes.
  • Wikidata data model use: Queries will allow you to see how the community describes specific things on Wikidata. These standard descriptions of things on Wikidata are called data models. They emerge organically and the community defines them. Queries can help reveal where there are consistencies (or inconsistencies). For example, cities are a diverse set of things, but there are some common ways of describing them. This query shows the most commonly used properties for describing cities from 100,000 different examples. This kind of data will tell us how the community is most commonly describing something vague, like cities. Better data models = more accurate descriptions = more consistent data.
  • Research: Queries can answer (and inspire) research questions. One benefit of Wikidata’s immense size is the ability to query across all of Wikipedia — and beyond! Some of these questions may not have been answerable previously. Relationships between things may be known already or they could be a new discovery for most of the population. There is a tool called Scholia that acts as a platform for revealing these research insights. You can search for authors, articles, or topics and it will produce a series of associated queries to tell you more about whatever you have searched for. Take a look at the queries about Wikidata itself.
  • Hierarchies: Queries can reveal hierarchies and taxonomy on Wikidata. Wikidata is chaotic, it’s true, but there is a hierarchy to it. Using the P279 (Subclass of) property, paired with an item in question, like cities again, you can learn where that thing “lives” in this hierarchy and make better edits.
  • Keeping count: Queries can count. Counting items in Wikidata is simple enough, but this act can reveal some very important things about Wikidata and everything it represents. There is a feature of properties on Wikidata called “property constraints” — these constraints guide and recommend Wikidata community members to add the appropriate kind of data. This query shows which properties have the most constraints, which may indicate complexity and specificity when adding data. From there, more community members can add more data more accurately. Who knew querying could reveal so much!?
  • Reveal the inner workings of the universe*: Okay, I exaggerated…but you can turn queries on Wikidata itself to learn about its inner workings. Wikidata describes properties the same way it describes items. This means you can write queries that can tell you all about how properties relate to each other. This can reveal not only the internal structure of Wikidata itself, but also how we describe relationships in a linked data environment. You can also search for inverse properties, usage examples, related properties, as well as a set of property constraints we can see — all thanks to queries.

I think you’ll agree, queries can tell us a lot more than just facts. Yes, they can answer questions, but queries can make Wikidata a much more useful, urgent, and accessible resource for everyone.

Interested in learning more about querying Wikidata? Take one of our Wikidata Institute courses: wikiedu.org/wikidata.

Tech News issue #39, 2021 (September 27, 2021)

00:00, Monday, 27 2021 September UTC
Tech Forum
Tech News
Tech Ambassadors
Wikimedia Technology
Wikimedia Product
MediaWiki
The Tech News weekly summaries help you monitor recent software changes likely to impact you and your fellow Wikimedians. Subscribe, contribute and give feedback.

Translate frequently used templates

previous 2021, week 39 (Monday 27 September 2021) next
Other languages:

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • iOS 15 has a new function called Private Relay (Apple website). This can hide the user's IP when they use Safari browser. This is like using a VPN in that we see another IP address instead. It is opt-in and only for those who pay extra for iCloud. It will come to Safari users on OSX later. There is a technical discussion about what this means for the Wikimedia wikis.

Problems

  • Advanced item Some gadgets and user-scripts add items to the portlets (article tools) part of the skin. A recent change to the HTML may have made those links a different font-size. This can be fixed by adding the CSS class .vector-menu-dropdown-noicon. [1]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 September. It will be on all wikis from 30 September (calendar).
  • The GettingStarted extension was built in 2013, and provides an onboarding process for new account holders in a few versions of Wikipedia. However, the recently developed Growth features provide a better onboarding experience. Since the vast majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features, GettingStarted will be deactivated starting on 4 October. [2]
  • A small number of users will not be able to connect to the Wikimedia wikis after 30 September. This is because an old root certificate will no longer work. They will also have problems with many other websites. Users who have updated their software in the last five years are unlikely to have problems. Users in Europe, Africa and Asia are less likely to have immediate problems even if their software is too old. You can read more.
  • You can receive notifications when someone leaves a comment on user talk page or mentions you in a talk page comment. Clicking the notification link will now bring you to the comment and highlight it. Previously, doing so brought you to the top of the section that contained the comment. You can find more information in T282029.

Future changes

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

weeklyOSM 583

09:56, Sunday, 26 2021 September UTC

14/09/2021-20/09/2021

lead picture

b-unicycling: Survey → StreetComplete → Notes → Editor → OSM Data [1] © b-unicycling | map data © OpenStreetMap contributors

Mapping

  • Requests have been made for comments on the following proposals:
    • natural=fumarole to map an opening in a planet’s crust, which emits steam and gases.
    • outlet=* to map culvert or pipeline outlets with more details.
    • historic=creamery for tagging an industrial building where butter, cheese or ice cream was made from milk.
  • The proposal club=cadet, intended to be used to map the locations where various Youth Cadet groups meet, together with details of each group, has been approved with 15 votes for, 0 votes against and 1 abstention.
  • [1] Anne-Karoline Distel aka b-unicycling, an Irish craftmapper, showed in a video how to capture details of vacant properties in OSM. When walking on site, she uses StreetComplete to leave notes in OSM, which she then edits in iD.
  • Carl Myhill complained to Komoot that it was routing cyclists in Richmond Park (London) on paths where cycling is forbidden, and subject to a £60 fine. Komoot requires formal notification of such issues and this was provided by the Royal Parks. In the UK ways mapped as track, service, or path cannot be assumed to allow any access mode other than private without other explicit tagging. Komoot, however, does not follow these defaults.
  • Over a period of five days, participants of University Battle Mapping 2021 mapped over 93,000 buildings in Indonesia.
  • Barry McGuire suggested a large scale revision of how the highway=trunk and highway=primary tags are used in the UK, including an associated proposal on the wiki. Unfortunately, instead of assessing feedback on the mailing list, and the wiki, he made a number of edits following his new scheme. Judging by changeset comments these were not popular and have now been reverted.
  • On the forum NicoHood asked about using the class:bicycle key for the left and right sides of highways. Most responses suggest using alternative, more objective, tags.
  • LysSioS reported (fr) > en
    that they have finished mapping addresses in the commune of Alès. Mapping rural addresses proved to be much more time consuming than urban ones.
  • mariotomo described in detail how to capture missing road sections using Strava’s low-res heatmap. However, he notes slightly ironically: ‘The mapping practice described here is completely manual, and its speed is obviously inversely proportional to the desired precision’.
  • mdroad has come up with a decision matrix for classifying roads. For beginners, the wiki pages Highways and Highway_tagging_samples/out_of_town with their pictures are also very helpful.
  • Reddit user sporesofdoubt has now completed micro-mapping the 183 city parks in Phoenix, Arizona over the summer (we reported them reaching the 100 park milestone earlier).

Community

  • The recordings of HOT’s webinar Local OSM Community Building: Tips, Tricks and Challenges are now available.
  • cmoffroad outlined their experience of being a new OSM mapper in Thailand. AlaskaDave, nitinatsangsit and Bernhard Hiller tried to ease the frustrations of the beginner with their local knowledge.
  • Free Local Mappers from Guinea, in its drive to promote GIS and openness of spatial data, recently conducted ​(fr) > en a series of GIS and remote sensing training sessions for employees of an international firm based in Conakry.
  • The State of the Map conference has begun uploading videos from July to YouTube and media.ccc.de. The talks that had audio translations into other languages will be uploaded when they have been finalised by the volunteer translators.
  • Trufi Association has hired a staff of five professionals, graduating from the public transport mapping organisation’s two-year run as an all-volunteer NGO.
  • User Tirkon complained (de) > en , on the German forum, about OSM tiles not refreshing. The ensuing discussion covers a lot of ground regarding how map updates get to users’ screens.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

  • The Engineering Working Group of OSMF is looking for people with knowledge of the technologies used in OSM’s key systems: Rails port, Ruby on Rails in general, and the cgimap implementation of the OSM API. Knowledge of user interface design would be also welcome.

Humanitarian OSM

  • OSGeo and HOT signed a memorandum of understanding with the goal of fostering the use of open-source geospatial software, to enable participatory community-driven development.

Maps

  • The French air quality observatory ATMO’s Atmo Data released (fr) a map showing measured data nationwide which uses OpenStreetMap as a baselayer.
  • Tracestrack is inviting people to trial its tile service. Users can do this for free until March 2022. The map is based on the OSM-Carto style, with some unique characteristics: support for several extra tags, such as highway=busway,embankment=yes, and landuse=aquaculture, semi-transparent highway areas, separated language labels and 3D buildings. Unfortunately the appropriate attribution is hidden.

switch2OSM

  • SomeoneElse has provided additional documentation for building a tile server on Ubuntu 21.04. This is not a long-term support release so Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is still the preferred platform for production. He also notes a couple of issues which may occur whilst following these instructions.

Open Data

  • The website datos.gob.es, a platform where the Spanish government promotes open data, has included (es) the Organic Maps (es) > en app in its catalogue, highlighting that it is an open source app and is based on OpenStreetMap data.

Licences

  • Owen Boswarva reported that open data on power infrastructure in the UK are scheduled for release in October. Jo Walsh (ultrazool) asked about which licence would be used, resulting in a short discussion about the suitability of various open licences for non-government open data.

Software

Programming

  • The Overpass API Python Wrapper project is looking for a new maintainer. Martijn van Exel started this project 7 years ago, but he has indicated that he does not have the time to maintain it any more. The project has been starred on GitHub more than 260 times.

Did you know …

  • … the English county of Devon has adopted special notation on road signs? The goal is to indicate that specific roads or routes are not suitable for various types of vehicles, including those towing caravans.
  • … the wiki page on homonymous keys? The page is largely maintained by Minh Nyugen, and it identifies keys that mean different things according to how they are used.
  • … the complete tools collection for OpenStreetMap built by Pascal Neis?

Other “geo” things

  • GeoHipster is planning to publish a calendar again for 2022 and is asking for submissions of your maps.
  • Ars Technica reported on new technical analyses of the Vinland Map (of the North American Atlantic coast), long suspected of being a fake. The new data remove any residue of doubt that it is, indeed, a fake. X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy was used to analyse the elemental composition of the entire map. This confirmed the presence of titanium dioxide, a pigment which only started being used in the 1920s, throughout the lines and text of the map. A true medieval gall ink would have had considerable quantities of iron instead.
  • Jdanni’s diary is less about whether smartphone track logs pollute the OSM map, but much more about GNSS position accuracy in various scenarios reported in the links.
  • The Thermal Energy Company of Gdynia has published (pl) > en
    a map showing thermal energy losses across the city and adjacent communities.
  • Yarik32 has written (ru) > de a tutorial on how to create OSM-based memes using Overpass Turbo and QGIS.

Upcoming Events

Where What Online When Country
OSM Africa Monthly Mapathon: Map Malawi osmcalpic 2021-09-04 – 2021-10-04
FOSS4G 2021 Buenos Aires – Online Edition osmcalpic 2021-09-27 – 2021-10-02
Bremen Bremer Mappertreffen (Online) osmcalpic ✓ 2021-09-27 flag
Grenoble Mapathon Missing Maps – Cartographier des cartes humanitaires sur un mode collaboratif et libre. osmcalpic 2021-09-28 flag
San Jose South Bay Map Night osmcalpic ✓ 2021-09-29 flag
Derby East Midlands OSM Pub Meet-up : Derby osmcalpic 2021-09-28 flag
Bruxelles – Brussel Virtual OpenStreetMap Belgium meeting osmcalpic ✓ 2021-09-28 flag
okres Žilina Missing Maps mapathon Slovakia online #4 osmcalpic 2021-09-30 flag
京田辺市 京都！街歩き！マッピングパーティ：第26回 Re:一休寺 osmcalpic 2021-10-02 flag
臺北市 OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #33 osmcalpic 2021-10-04 flag
Greater London Missing Maps London Mapathon osmcalpic 2021-10-05 flag
Landau an der Isar Virtuelles Niederbayern-Treffen osmcalpic ✓ 2021-10-05 flag
Stuttgart Stuttgarter Stammtisch (Online) osmcalpic 2021-10-05 flag
Greater London London pub meet-up osmcalpic 2021-10-06 – 2021-10-07 flag
Hlavní město Praha Online validation mapathon osmcalpic ✓ 2021-10-07 flag
Nordrhein-Westfalen OSM-Treffen Bochum (Oktober) osmcalpic 2021-10-07 flag
UN Mappers: MaPathon – le Università a servizio della cooperazione internazionale osmcalpic 2021-10-08
Berlin 160. Berlin-Brandenburg OpenStreetMap Stammtisch osmcalpic ✓ 2021-10-08 flag
Henrietta Township Journey to the Centers of Michigan osmcalpic 2021-10-09 flag
Zürich OSM-Treffen Zürich osmcalpic 2021-10-11 flag
Hamburg Hamburger Mappertreffen osmcalpic 2021-10-12 flag
OpenStreetMap Michigan Meetup osmcalpic 2021-10-15

Note:
If you like to see your event here, please put it into the OSM calendar. Only data which is there, will appear in weeklyOSM.

This weeklyOSM was produced by Nordpfeil, PierZen, SK53, Strubbl, TheSwavu, YoViajo, arnalielsewhere, derFred.

Improving open education information on Wikipedia

16:33, Friday, 24 2021 September UTC
Helen DeWaard
Helen DeWaard

Helen DeWaard is a teacher educator with Lakehead University and a learner designer with the faculty of education at the University of British Columbia. As a teacher educator, her courses focus on critical media and digital literacy in teaching and curriculum design. As a learning designer, DeWaard seeks out ways to support teacher educators with their efforts to integrate meaningful learning tasks into course designs. DeWaard recently participated in the Open Educational Resources (OER) Wiki Scholars course, in which Wiki Education partnered up with the Global OER Graduate Network to train OER researchers and scholars how to edit Wikipedia. During the 6-week course, Wiki Education facilitated as participants worked to improve Wikipedia’s articles about OER-related topics.

“The enticement was the chance to work more closely with other graduate level scholars in my network, while also learning how to edit and create Wikipedia articles relating to the topics around open education,” DeWaard says. “My underlying goal was to become more comfortable with the process of working within wiki-spaces in order to possibly add this into my teaching practice.”

DeWaard focused on the articles Open Educational Practices, Open Educational Resources in Canada, and Open Thesis because they were either missing chunks of information or the article had not been published yet. After her cohort published their work on Wikipedia, they already noticed its impact, as it reached 400,000 readers. By contributing to Wikipedia, DeWaard was able to see how much dedicated attention it takes to ensure Wikipedia articles are accurate and representative.

“What has changed as a result of this Wikipedia work is my understanding of how hard it is to ensure that the information posted in an article is valid, credible, containing citations to source information, and written without bias,” DeWaard says. “While my author’s voice is evident in my scholarly writing, when writing for a Wikipedia article, I needed to take a critical stance and apply a critical lens to focus on ‘just the facts’ from a balanced perspective. I had to keep asking myself, ‘what does someone who is reading this article really need to know and learn about this topic, and how should this topic be structured.’”

With the Wiki Scholars course, DeWaard was able to strengthen her connections with other GO-GN members that participated in the course. In addition, she was able to grow in her research and writing skills in a Wikipedia setting, thanks to instructor Will Kent’s guidance.

“This course was a way to become informed, gain some experience, build new connections in my personal learning network, and develop confidence to contribute to global public knowledge. I hope that my contributions to Wikipedia will help inform or clarify and provide current knowledge in key areas of information,” DeWaard says.

DeWaard notices that in teacher education, although they discourage students to utilize Wikipedia, it is often the first stop they use when researching a specific topic. With implementation of Wikipedia-editing assignments in teacher education programs, teacher educators can have a clear understanding of how information on Wikipedia is published and moderated.

“Shifting mindsets about the usability and credibility of Wikipedia as a starting place for research can occur when teacher education programs engage candidates and teacher educators in a critical examination of key topics relevant to education. By incorporating a Wiki-editing task within a course of study in teacher education, the impact and potential shift in understanding can extend beyond the faculty and into K-12 classrooms,” DeWaard says.

DeWaard is currently designing a Wiki Education workshop for her faculty so they can get an overview of how Wikipedia editing can be implemented in classrooms—an assignment they can do with Wiki Education’s support through the Wikipedia Student Program.

“I think that many would benefit from learning how to contribute to Wikipedia so this can become a valuable means of engaging higher education instructors into building wiki-work within course designs,” DeWaard says. “In this way students and instructors will come to understand the value of current, credible, and searchable information for many fields of study. In addition, students and instructors can become co-learners and collaborators on creating Wikipedia articles for topics of study within their fields of study, thus contributing to the global knowledge fund.”

In relation to the open educational resources movement, DeWaard believes that there will be a heightened awareness of the movement because of the outstanding coverage on Wikipedia thanks to participants in the Wiki Scholars course. To her, a movement does not gain momentum without people, so it is also important to give recognition and credit where it is due.

“With so many advancements and changes in the field, it will be necessary and important to not only contribute to article production, but to also encourage and celebrate the efforts of those in open education who are doing this work,” DeWaard says. “I’m hoping that one day, members of the GO-GN network can be recognized for contributions with their unique penguin logo on a barnstar and a penguin added to the wiki-love collection.”

To take a course similar to Helen’s, please visit learn.wikiedu.org. Image credits: GoToVan from Vancouver, Canada, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Richelieu5851, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Expert fact-checkers rely on Wikipedia. You and your students should too!

15:18, Wednesday, 22 2021 September UTC

Jessica E. Brodsky is a doctoral student in Educational Psychology at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her dissertation research evaluates the impact of lateral reading instruction on undergraduate fact-checking skills. Patricia J. Brooks is Professor of Psychology at the College of Staten Island and The Graduate Center, CUNY.  She is involved in WikiProject Women in Psychology and has engaged her students in editing Wikipedia since 2012.

Jessica Brodsky and Patty Brooks
Jessica Brodsky (left) and Patricia Brooks.
Image courtesy Jessica Brodsky, all rights reserved.

The past two years have been difficult for students and faculty alike, as we have had to grapple simultaneously with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and an information infodemic, defined by the World Health Organization as “an overabundance of information—some accurate and some not—that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.” As social media platforms and fact-checking organizations struggle to keep up with vetting COVID-19 related information, it has become urgent for all of us to learn effective strategies for deciding whether online information can be trusted.

Wikipedia can play an important role in helping students quickly determine if sources of information are trustworthy. For example, features of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) website suggest that it may be a trustworthy source of information about vaccines: the website has a professional appearance, a “.org” domain name, and uses references in its articles. However, a quick search in Wikipedia reveals that the NVIC is an anti-vaccination advocacy group. In fact, professional fact-checkers often turn to Wikipedia as a starting point to investigate the potential biases or agenda of a source; see here for more information.

Over the past several years, we have partnered with colleagues teaching civics to first-year college students at the College of Staten Island, CUNY. As one of 11 institutions participating in the Digital Polarization Initiative (DPI) sponsored by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, we have aimed to teach college students how to use lateral reading strategies to vet online information. Lateral reading involves leaving a website to investigate the people and organizations promoting the online content, finding out what other sources have to say about it, and tracing the content back to its original source. Lateral reading contrasts with vertical reading strategies often associated with checklists like the CRAAP test, where students are taught to scrutinize online content for specific features. Given the complexity of the internet today, vertical reading strategies have proven insufficient for accurate fact-checking. Initial findings from the DPI suggest that deliberate instruction in lateral reading improves college students’ fact-checking skills; for more details see here.

In Fall 2020, we shifted instruction to focus on information related to the COVID-19 pandemic and economic recovery efforts. As instruction was fully online, we built a series of asynchronous assignments to teach lateral reading skills. In our pretest assessments, we learned that using Wikipedia to investigate information sources went against what students had been taught before college or in other college courses. That is, 77.8% of students (N = 221) indicated that their teachers had discouraged them from using Wikipedia as an information source and 67.9% said they were unlikely or very unlikely to recommend Wikipedia as a source of information to one of their classmates.

Over the course of the semester, students completed three assignments where they practiced using Wikipedia to investigate the agenda of various information sources (people and/or organizations). All the assignments were tied to course themes and current events. For example, students used Wikipedia to learn more about the authors of tweets opposing mask mandates and to research an organization whose tweets expressed concerns about the United States’ economic recovery under President Biden.

At the end of the semester, not only were students more likely to read laterally when determining how much they trusted online information, they were also more likely to report using Wikipedia for academic and non-academic research and to recommend Wikipedia to others. Students were also more accurate in their knowledge about Wikipedia. When asked to select their first-choice strategy for evaluating the trustworthiness of a website, 42.9% indicated that they would use Wikipedia to learn more about it––a marked increase from 5.9% at pretest!

Adults today are clearly aware of the challenges of figuring out if they can trust COVID-19 information they see online. According to an April 2020 Pew Research Center survey, only 28% of adults felt very confident in their ability to determine the accuracy COVID-19-related news. Our students felt similarly unsure at the start of the semester, but made gains in their confidence in vetting COVID-19 related information. On the pretest, only 27.6% of students indicated confidence in their ability to fact-check online news about the COVID-19 pandemic; this proportion doubled (55.2%) at posttest. For more details about this project, and examples of assessments that you can tailor for their own courses, see here.

Image credit: Alex Irklievski, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Foundation reaches $100 million Endowment goal as Wikipedia celebrates 20 years of free knowledge

14:00, Wednesday, 22 2021 September UTC

22 September 2021, San Francisco, CA, USA — The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, today announced that the Wikimedia Endowment has reached its initial $100 million fundraising goal ahead of schedule. This early achievement is a testament to the generosity of Endowment donors around the world and provides enduring support for free knowledge. Launched in 2016 to support the future of Wikimedia projects, the Endowment is a permanent fund that helps protect Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in times of uncertainty and enables long-term investments to support their growth. 

“When Wikipedia first started 20 years ago, no one could predict the vital role it would play in our world,” said Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and Wikimedia Endowment Board member. “Wikipedia is our collective legacy, the sum of all human knowledge available to everyone. As we reach this historic milestone, the success of the Endowment ensures that Wikipedia will continue to be a gift from all of us to future generations of knowledge seekers.”

As Wikipedia celebrates its 20th birthday this year, it has cemented its role as one of the most reliable and trustworthy sources of information on the internet. However, the information on Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects still has significant gaps. Women, communities of color, and non-Western languages, among other critical topics, continue to be underrepresented on the site. With this significant achievement, the Wikimedia movement will be better positioned to take on these and other challenges over the long-term. 

Investment income from the Endowment can now be used to support Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. The Endowment Board will be sharing more about its strategy to support the projects in the coming year.  

“Wikipedia is founded on the belief that knowledge is a public good that belongs to all people,” said Lisa Gruwell, Chief Advancement Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation. “Through the Endowment, and the generosity of our donors, we have been able not just to protect this public good for years to come, but also to focus on growth, opening doors to fuel innovation and equitable representation so that Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects reflect the world.”  

The Wikimedia Endowment is governed independently from the Wikimedia Foundation as a long-term, permanent fund to support the future of the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity.  Reader donations and institutional grants are used to support the Wikimedia Foundation’s  annual operations, separate from the Endowment. 

New members of the Wikimedia Endowment Board 

As part of this milestone, three new members to the Wikimedia Endowment Board were also announced; they add critical expertise in Wikimedia’s volunteer communities, the Wikimedia mission and values, and nonprofit management. New members include Phoebe Ayers, who currently serves as Librarian for Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, IDSS, and Mathematics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustee, and Patricio Lorente, General Secretary of Administration of the National University of La Plata and former Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. The Board also welcomed Doron Weber, an executive with more than two decades of experience in nonprofit management, currently serving as Vice President of Programs at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. 

Together, the eight members of the Endowment Board bring a diverse range of skills and experiences to steward the future of the Wikimedia Endowment.  

Creating an independent nonprofit 

The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Endowment Board have also announced plans to move the Wikimedia Endowment, currently managed by the Tides Foundation as a Collective Action Fund, into its own separate 501(c)3 organization governed by the Wikimedia Endowment Board. The move will help solidify the independence of the Wikimedia Endowment, allowing its management and investments to be aligned directly to the needs of the Wikimedia projects. The application to move the Endowment to a separate 501(c)3 is currently before the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

The Wikimedia Endowment’s $100 million milestone is a direct result of the generosity of its donors. The Endowment was first established thanks to a legacy gift by Jim Pacha, who generously donated much of his estate to seed its initial funding. Today, more than 1,400 members of the Wikipedia Legacy Society have committed to leave a portion of their estate to the Wikimedia Endowment. Other Endowment donors who choose to be publicly recognized are listed on our Benefactors page. 

About the Wikimedia Foundation 

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. Our vision is a world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. We believe that everyone has the potential to contribute something to our shared knowledge, and that everyone should be able to access that knowledge freely. We host Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects, build software experiences for reading, contributing, and sharing Wikimedia content, support the volunteer communities and partners who make Wikimedia possible, and advocate for policies that enable Wikimedia and free knowledge to thrive.

The Wikimedia Foundation is a charitable, not-for-profit organization that relies on donations. We receive donations from millions of individuals around the world, with an average donation of about $15. We also receive donations through institutional grants and gifts. The Wikimedia Foundation is a United States 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization with offices in San Francisco, California, USA.

Call for smaller language wikis to participate in the technical capacity-building program!

17:42, Tuesday, 21 2021 September UTC

By Srishti Sethi, Senior Developer Advocate

Small wiki toolkit participants, by Srishti Sethi, CC BY-SA 4.0

Small wiki toolkits is an initiative to build technical capacity in smaller language wikis by developing toolkits, conducting workshops, and providing technical support. This initiative was kicked off in 2019 at Wikimedia Stockholm to address the need for smaller wikis to draw technical contributors and equip them with the necessary skills to do important technical work to help support, grow and maintain their wikis. It aims to bridge the skill gap in smaller communities and to build a global network of individuals interested in training others, discussing and resolving the challenges of these wikis. 

In the initiative’s first year, there were over 200 people who participated in 16 informational sessions, technical workshops, and group discussions through 6 Wikimedia events (local, regional, and international) online and offline. Through these events, the initiative engaged people from many smaller wikis from all over the world.

It took some time to adapt to the virtual events and the new normal brought on by the Covid19 pandemic, but the initiative continued to advance during its second year.   

At WMF, there was ongoing research to identify emerging technical communities by looking at their content growth, number of editors, number of bots edits over time to find correlations between them. For example, if a community has reached a tipping point in its content and isn’t yet utilizing bots and tools, then the community likely falls in the category of emerging technical communities. 

A few wikis like Minangkabau in South East Asia, Quechua in South America, and Kurdish in the Middle East regions were highlighted as they had a significantly high number of native speakers. Then, user groups, chapters, initiatives that focus on these language wikis were approached to investigate if they could benefit from the technical capacity-building efforts. Based on the needs and priorities of the wiki communities, the following two initiatives were kicked off:

  • Small wiki toolkits <> South Asia – This initiative is for supporting Indic languages wikis in the South Asia region. In the first year, the workshops were run for the Indic language wikis only in India; after receiving an overwhelmingly positive response they were opened up to the broader community. This initiative is run in collaboration with Indic-TechCom.

As part of two initiatives, over this past year, 8 technical workshops were conducted, one per month for each community in which around 50 members participated from 12 countries and language wikis. 

Map of small wiki toolkit countries, created with mapchart.net by Srishti Sethi, CC BY-SA 4.0

Some of the sessions conducted as part of these efforts were around integrating growth features on wikis, writing Wikidata queries, running bots, debugging template errors, populating infoboxes using Wikidata, etc. 

Through a follow-up survey and virtual meeting, participants shared that they find these workshops useful, and they feel a strong need to continue to learn and grow their technical skills. They also reported to have increased familiarity with technical topics and used the skills gained to solve various problems on their wikis. 

Here is what one of our attendees had to say about the workshops:

I believe Small wiki toolkits project has a good impact on the Kurdish community in Wikimedia. First, it made it better and easier to understand some technical topics and introduced new tools which will help us to manage Kurdish Wikipedia. Second, the technical questions we had were able to get answers through the workshops as most of the workshops depend on our needs, including more understanding of Wikidata and linking Wikidata to Wikipedia articles. Meanwhile, the Small wiki toolkits project introduced us to a group of technicians who are able to solve our issues. So in the future, if we face obstacles and technical difficulties we can approach them or the project.

Muhammed Serdar, Kurdish Wikimedians User Group

SSmall wiki toolkit participants, by Srishti Sethi, CC BY-SA 4.0

Based on the learnings from the last year, some roles and responsibilities for organizers and mentors have been documented here. As a few next steps, the initiative plans to grow its pool of mentors, to provide trainings for topics in module format, and to offer watch-party style trainings for previously recorded sessions to save mentors some time. And, finally, Small Wiki Toolkits wants to work with many more communities in the next year! 

If you are a mentor, interested in helping run a technical workshop, add yourself to this wiki page here. 

If you are working with a small wiki and you are interested in kicking off a technical capacity building initiative for your community, contact us on the talk page.

Lastly, a huge thank you to our past mentors and organizers who helped us run the trainings last year – Andre Klapper, Benoît Evellin, Birgit Mueller, Doug Taylor, Jay Prakash, Joaquin Oltra Hernandez, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga, Mahir Morshed, Mike Peel, Mohammed Sardar Noori, Satdeep Gill!

About this post

Featured image credit: File:Hand tools.svg, SAİT71, CC BY-SA 4.0

Toward a National Collection

09:13, Tuesday, 21 2021 September UTC

TOWARDS A NATIONAL COLLECTION: WIKIMEDIA UK AND PARTNERS WORKING TOWARDS INCREASED AND DIVERSIFIED ENGAGEMENT

 

£14.5m awarded to transform online exploration of UK’s culture and heritage collections through harnessing innovative AI.

In order to connect the UK’s cultural artefacts and historical archives in new and transformative ways, The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has awarded £14.5m to the research and development of emerging technologies, including machine learning and citizen-led archiving.

Five major projects form the largest investment of Towards a National Collection, a five-year research programme. The announcement reveals the first insights into how thousands of disparate collections could be explored by public audiences and academic researchers in the future.

The five ‘Discovery Projects’ will harness the potential of new technology to dissolve barriers between collections. They will open up public access and facilitate research across a range of sources and stories held in different physical locations. One of the central aims is to empower and diversify audiences by involving them in the research and creating new ways for them to access and interact with collections. In addition to innovative online access, the projects will generate artist commissions, community fellowships, computer simulations, and travelling exhibitions.

Daria Cybulska, Director of Programmes and Evaluation at Wikimedia UK said “We were delighted that two Discovery Projects we are involved in were selected for this round of funding by the AHRC. Increasing and diversifying access to UK’s collections and supporting open research is of strategic importance for Wikimedia UK. Through our involvement we will aim to demonstrate the benefits of open knowledge, especially for public engagement, and its abilities to help dissolve barriers between separate collections. We see an exciting amount of overlap between the projects we are directly supporting and our priorities, for example amplifying underrepresented community heritage in the Our Heritage, Our Stories project, and linked open data, including Wikidata in the Congruence Engine project.”

The investigation is the largest of its kind to date. It extends across the UK, involving 15 universities and 63 heritage collections and institutions of different scales, with over 120 individual researchers and collaborators.

Together, the Discovery Projects represent a vital step in the UK’s ambition to maintain leadership in cross-disciplinary research, both between different humanities disciplines and in their work with other sectors. Towards a National Collection will set a global standard for other countries building their own collections, enhancing collaboration between the UK’s renowned heritage and national collections worldwide.

 

Read more about the two Discovery Projects Wikimedia UK are engaged in:

The Congruence Engine: Digital Tools for New Collections-Based Industrial Histories

Principal Investigator: Dr Timothy Boon, Science Museum Group

Project partners: British Film Institute, National Museums Scotland, Historic Buildings & Monuments Commission for England (Historic England/English Heritage), National Museum Wales, National Museums Northern Ireland, The National Archives, National Trust, The V&A, universities of Leeds, London, and Liverpool, BBC History, Birmingham Museums Trust, BT Heritage & Archives, Grace’s Guide to Industrial History, Isis Bibliography of the History of Science, Saltaire World Heritage Education Association, Society for the History of Technology, Whipple Museum of the History of Science (Tools of Knowledge Project), Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (Discovery Museum), Bradford Museums and Galleries, Wikimedia UK and Manchester Digital Laboratory (MadLab).

The Congruence Engine will create the prototype of a digital toolbox for everyone fascinated by our industrial past to connect an unprecedented range of items from the nation’s collection to tell the stories they want to tell. What was it like then? How does our past bear on our present and future? Until now, historians and curators have become acclimated to a world where it has only been possible to work with a small selection of the sources – museum objects, archive documents, pictures, films, maps, publications etc – potentially relevant to the history they want to explore.

The Congruence Engine will use the latest digital techniques to connect collections held in different locations to overcome this major constraint on the histories that can be created and shared with the wider public in museums, publications and online. Digital researchers will work alongside professional and community historians and curators.

Through iterative exploration of the textiles, energy and communications sectors, the project will tune collections-linking software to make it responsive to user needs. It will use computational and AI techniques – including machine learning and natural language processing – to create and refine datasets, provide routes between records and digital objects such as scans and photographs, and create the tools by which participants will be able to enjoy and use the sources that are opened to them.

 

Our Heritage, Our Stories: Linking and searching community-generated digital content to develop the people’s national collection

Principal Investigator: Professor Lorna Hughes, University of Glasgow

Project partners: The National Archives, Tate, British Museum, University of Manchester, Association for Learning Technology, Digital Preservation Coalition, Software Sustainability Institute, Archives+, Dictionaries of the Scots Language, National Lottery Heritage Fund, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland & Wikimedia UK

In the past two decades communities have gathered, recorded, and digitised their collections in a form of ‘citizen history’ that has created a truly democratic and vast reservoir of new knowledge about the past, known as community-generated digital content (CGDC). However, CGDC has proved extraordinarily resistant to traditional methods of linking and integration, for lack of infrastructure and the multilingual, multidialectal, and multicultural complexity of the content.

Our Heritage, Our Stories will dissolve existing barriers and develop scalable linking and discoverability for CGDC, through co-designing and building sophisticated automated AI-based tools to discover and assess CGDC ‘in the wild’, in order to link it and make it searchable. This new accessibility will be showcased through a major public-facing CGDC Observatory at The National Archives, where people can access, reuse, and remix these newly-integrated collections.

The project will make CGDC more discoverable and accessible whilst respecting and embracing its complexity and diversity. Through this, it will help tell the stories of communities through their rich collections of CGDC, which are at present hidden from wider view. By dissolving barriers between these and showcasing their content, the project will help centre diverse community-focused voices within our shared national collection.

Further information & images [email protected]

 

How Wikidata is helping the CU Boulder library

15:11, Monday, 20 2021 September UTC
Chris Long
Chris Long

Wikidata’s overlap with cataloging has increased in recent times, prompting many librarians to transition into using it more. Chris Long, who is the Director of the Resource Description Services Team at the University of Colorado Boulder’s library, has been an avid user of Wikidata since 2019, creating and editing a variety of items.

Though Long’s experience with Wikidata is extensive, he participated in our recent Wikidata Institute course to learn more about how its sources and tools can be implemented in his university’s library. His institution is participating in the Library of Congress’s Program for Cooperative Cataloguing (PCC) pilot using Wikidata, so Long spent time editing items related to that initiative.

“As a cataloger and cataloging manager, it is important to keep abreast of emerging cataloging trends. The Library of Congress and PCC are increasingly exploring the efficacy of Wikidata in cataloging work, so learning to use it is important to stay current,” Long says. “Being able to provide Wikidata training for my colleagues affords them the chance to do some hands-on linked data work.”

With Wikidata’s useful tools, Long learned the importance of constructing data models for effective querying. He believes the services Wikidata offer can immensely maximize the impact of any project or collection.

“While there are a number of library linked data projects in existence, many are either small-scale ‘proof of concept’ projects, or require a great deal of institutional support to participate,” Long says. “Conversely, Wikidata is a low-barrier way for librarians to actively create usable linked data that can have a large impact.”

Wikidata can enhance any library’s collection, he believes.

“It affords the opportunity to de-silo our library metadata and let it ‘play’ on the Semantic Web, allowing for the discovery of associations among persons and concepts that would otherwise not be possible,” Long says.

Long is currently preparing a Wikidata project for his team involving the University of Colorado Boulder faculty. The project consists of creating Wikidata items for faculty as well as doing revisions on existing ones to try and associate them with the university. Projects like this are common in universities as they allow faculty to be displayed on tools like Scholia.

To take a course like Chris took, please visit wikiedu.org/wikidata. Image credits: Gribeco, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Chris Evin Long, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

German influences in Indian ornithology

12:40, Monday, 20 2021 September UTC
I have noted before that many non-English works in science, even from Europe, are often given a quick pass-over in English works and cases range from the failure to cite junior synonyms in taxonomic monographs [ Ixos fisquetti Eydoux & Souleyet, 1842 from a French source has been ignored as a synonym of Pycnonotus priocephalus (Jerdon, 1839) by nearly all taxonomists] to glossing over major contributions like those of the German anatomist and cladist Max Fuerbringer. Some of this may be due to the wars but there is a sense that even much later works often do not give enough credit where it is due.

Some inkling of how German research was actively ignored during the war years can be found in T.B. Fletcher's address at a meeting of entomologists in 1919 where he called attention to Sir George Hampson's decision to not cite any German papers in a taxonomic revision.

T.B. Fletcher's call to boycott German literature and products.
Report of the proceedings of the third entomological meeting : held at Pusa on the 3rd to 15th February 1919 (1920)
 

In Tim Birkhead's preface to his history of ornithology, Ten Thousand Birds, he notes the ratings of his friends for the most influential ornithologists: 
"David Lack was the clear leader (30 votes), followed by Ernst Mayr (23), Niko Tinbergen (21), Robert MacArthur (11), Peter Grant (11), Nick Davies (11), Erwin Stresemann (11), Charles Sibley (11), Konrad Lorenz (9), and Donald Farner (8)."
Title page of Volume 7 part 2 of Handbuch der Zoologie (1934)
This is obviously a questionable sample size but the presence of three Germans in the list (with Stresemann at the root of the academic genealogy of the other two - Mayr and Lorenz) should be a useful indicator. A much richer view of influence and the genealogy of ornithology in Germany can be found in the writings of Jürgen Haffer. Haffer, who died a few years ago, was a student of Ernst Mayr who in turn was a student of Stresemann. Stresemann's influence was far-reaching, extending into India through Salim Ali who spent some time with Stresemann at the Zoological Museum, Berlin. An invitation to visit Berlin for a Wikipedia-related meeting allowed me to pursue my research on Stresemann's work and the Salim Ali connection. Ali notes in his biography that it was through the Germans and their Heligoland observatory that he picked up his studies of live birds in the hand and ringing.* In 1914, at the age of 25, while still a doctoral student in medicine, Stresemann was offered the task of writing an entry on the birds in the Handbuch der Zoologie series since the bigger names in German ornithology were too busy to take up the job. This offer from the series editor Willy Kükenthal was to be crucial in his later career. The draft version which followed a structure suggested by Kukenthal arrived in 1920, delayed by the First World War, and when it was published in 1934, it consisted of 900 pages. The book led Stresemann to his future career in the Berlin museum picked in preference to many other bigger and dominant names. In producing the book, Stresemann had clearly conducted a great deal of research into the literature, both new and old, before him which also led him to later reflect on the historical development of ornithology - leading to another magnificent work which was also translated into English as Ornithology from Aristotle to the Present - a (signed) copy of which apparently went to Salim Ali and was passed on to the late S.A. Hussain (who mentioned it over a coffee one evening not too long ago). Now Birkhead's ornithological history does not do a good job of telling us what went into Stresemann's Handbuch der Zoologie. This book had 2200 printed copies but only 536 were sold by 1934 and 156 in 1944 and the remaining copies were burnt at the end of World War II (see Bock, 2001). I  browsed through a copy of the book in the library of Zoological Museum at Berlin and have extracted the table of contents which gives a good overview of the topics covered (I have removed the page numbers and hopefully there are no major transcription errors, use translate.google.com to see what they mean but be prepared for mis-translations):

Stresemann (left) in Finland during the Ornithological Congress of 1958. Photo from the Alexander Wetmore album courtesy of Smithsonian Instituion / Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Einleitung [Introduction]
Definition
Erforschungsgeschichte [Research history]

Haut und Hautgebilde [Epidermis]
Haut: Cutis - Epidermis - Schnabel [beak] - Stirnplatten - Nagel [nails]: Zehennägel- Fingernägel - Sporen - Federn [feathers] - Konturfedern [contour feathers] - Augenwimpern [eyelash], Tastfedern - Pelzdunen - Puderfedern [powder down] - Pinselfedern - Fadenfedern - Afterschaft - Nestdunen - Stellung der Federn [position of feathers] - Anordnung der Federn [arrangement of feathers] - Schwingfedern [flight feathers] - Deckfedern [coverts] - Diastataxie [diastaxy] - Afterflügel - Oberarmdecken [upper wing coverts] - Steuerfedern [control feathers] - Mauser [moult] - Schnelligkeid des Federwachstums [rate of feather growth?] - Mauserperioden [moult period]- Umfang der Mauser - Doppelte und dreifache Mauser [double and triple moult] - Reihenfolge des Federwechsels [sequence and  - Abhängigkeit der Mauser von äusseren und inneren Einflüssen - Schuppen [scales]: Deck-, Lauf-schuppen - Fersenschuppen - Hautdruesen - Färbung von Haut und Hautgebilden [colours of skins and skin formation]: Melanine und Lipochrome - Bildungsort der Lipochrome - Periodischer Faerbungswechsel [periodic colour change] - Federzeichnung - Farbenindruck - Schillerfarben - Farbaberrationen [aberrant colours] - Komplizierte Mutationen

Skelett [Skeleton]
Schädel [skull] - Ersatzknochen - Deckknochen - Bewegungen im Schädel - Unterkiefer - Zweiter Schlundbogen - Driter Schlundbogen - Pneumatizität der Schädelknochen [pneumatization of the skull] - Wirbelsäule [spine] - Rippen - Brustbein [sternum] - Schultergürtel - Vordere Extremetität - Pneumatizität des Rumpf [pneumatization of the hull] - und Extremitätenskeletts - Ossifikation der Markknochen [Ossification of the medullary bone]

Muskelsystem [Muscular system]
Viszeralmuskulatur - Somatische Muskulatur - Augenmuskulatur [eye muscles] - Parietale Muskeln - Glatte Federnmuskeln [smooth feather muscle] - Hautmuskeln [skin muscles] - Rote und weisse Muskulatur - Muskelkerne

Nervensystem [Nervous system]
Rückenmark [spinal cord] - Spinalnerven [spinal nerves] - Gehirn [brain] - Gehirnnerven III-XII - Kleinhirn [cerebellum] - Mittelhirn [midbrain] - Zwischenhirn [Diencephalon] - Vorderhirn [forebrain] - Autonomes Nervensystem - Paraganglien - Parasympathisches System

Sinnesorgane [Sense organs]
Hautsinnesorgane [skin sensory organs] - Geschmacksorgan [taste organs] - Geruchsorgan [olfactory organs] - Hörorgan [hearing organ] - Labyrinth - Scheckenteil - Vestibularteil - Bogengangteil - Mittelohr - Paratympanisches Organ - Äußerer Gehörgang [external ear canal] - Auge [eyes] - Retina - körper - Akkomodation - Cornea - Sclera - Bulbus - Augenmuskeln - Lidapparat - Assoziation beider Augen - Augendrüsen [eye glands]

Verdauungssystem [Digestive system]
Mund-Rachenhöhle - Zunge - Histologie der Mund-Rachenhöhle - Drüsen - Faerung der Mundhöhle  Oesophagus - Magen - Druesenmagen - Muskelmagen - Innervierung des Magens - Darm - Duodenalschleife - Ileum - Diverticulum caecum vitelli - Blinddärme - Enddarm - Struktur der Darmwand - Kloake - Bursa Fabricii - Innervierung des Darmes - Verdauung - Leber - Pankreas

Klementaschenderivate und Thyreoidea [Endocrine? and Thyroid gland]

Atmungsorgane [Respiratory system]
Atemweg - Pharyngo-nasale Luftsäcke - Kehlspalt - Stutzgerüst des Kehlkopfes - Trachea - Freie Bronchien - Syrinx - Syrinxmuskeln - Innvervierung der Syrinx - Sexualdimorphismus im Syrinxbau - Lunge - Pulmonale Luftsäcke [pulmonary air sacs] - Histologie der Luftsäcke - Bronchialbaum - Physiologie der Atmung - Funktionen der Luftsäcke - Thoraxbewegungen - Kammerung der Leibeshöhle

Zirkulationsorgane [Blood circulation]
Herz  - Wärmeschutz -Schutz gegen Ueberhitzung  - Körpertemperatur - Arterien: Schicksal der Aortenbögen -Arterien der vorderen Extremität - Arterien der hinteren Extremität - Intersegmentale Arterien - Arterien des Darmkanales - Arterien der Nieren und Keimdrüsen - Venen: Embryonale Entwicklung  - Gebiet der Vena cardinalis posterior - Gebiet der Vena cava posterior - Gebiet der Vena hypogastrica - Nierenpfortaderkreislauf - Gebiet der Venae portae - Gebiet der Vena cardinalis anterior - Gebiet der Vena jugularis - Gebiet der Vena vertebralis communis und  Vena  subclavia  - Blutzellen:   Leukozyten  und  Erythrozyten  -Thrombozyten - Lymphgefäßsystem  — Milz

Urogenitalsystem [Urinogenital system]
Harnapparat — Harn  — Nebenniere — Geschlechtsapparat. Entwicklung: Urgeschlechtszellen - Entwicklung der Keimdrüsen  — Entwicklung des Müllerschen Ganges - Zustand beim Männchen: Hoden — Reste der Urniere beim Männchen - Nebenhoden - Samenleiter - Übertragung des Sperma - Phalloides Organ - Zustand beim Weibchen: Schwund des rechten Ovars und rechten Ovidukts - Geschlechtsumwandlung - Ovar  — Reste von Urniere und Wolffschem  Gang beim Weibchen — Ovidukt

Keimzellen [Germ cells]
Ei. Eierstockei — Dotterbildung - Große Wachstumsperiode des Eies - Bilateraler Bau der Oozyte und des Follikels - Follikelsprung - Hau des Reifeies - Sekundäre Eihüllen -   Kalkschalc - Färbung der Schale - Schalendicke - Eiform - Legeakt- Eiweiß - Verhältnis des Dottergewichts zum Eiweißgewicht - Zusammensetzung des Eiweißes - Eigröße - Spermium.

Embryonale Entwickelung [Embryo development]
Befruchtung - Furchung - Gastrulation -  Primitivstrelfen -Kopffortsatz - Mesoderm -Orientierung der Embryonalanlage - Drehung auf die linke Seite -Eihäute-Dottersack- Resorption des Dotters -   Gefäße des Dottersackes - Amnion -Serosa -Allantois - Gefäße der Allantois - Eiweißsack - Bau der Eiweißsackwandung - Resorption des Eiweißes - Verbindungen der Allantois gefäße - Stellung des Embryo im letzten Drittel der Bebrütung - Schlüpfakt -Abbau lies Schalenkalkes - Aufnahme des Dottersackes in die Bauchhöhle-Stellung des Eies während der Bebrütung-Physiologie der Hmbryonalentwickeluug - Ent-Wickelungsdauer -Brutdauer.

Postembryonale Entwickelung [Post-embryonic development]
Nestflüchter und Nesthocker - Dottervorrat -  Gewichtszunahme -  Nahrungsmenge - Erste Befiederung - Nestlingsdunen - Färbung des Dunenkleides- Tragdauer des Jugendkleides -   Eigenschaften der ersten Plugfedern -  Färbungs entwickelung - Nestlingszeit -  Proportionsverschiebungen -   Nahrungsaufnahme der Jungen - Leitmale

Geschlechtsdimorphismus [sexual dimorphism]
Geschlechtschromosomen - Zahlenverhältnis der Geschlechter - Gynandromorphe - Sexualhormone -Geschlechtsunterschiede in der Färbung - Größenverschiedenheit der Geschlechter - Geschlechtsunterschlede im Skelettbau - Geschlechtsunterschiede und Werbung - Unterschiede im Stimmapparat - Periodischer Wechsel des Geschlechts-dimorphismus- Geschlechtsunterschiede im Mauserverlauf - Geschlechtsdimorphismus und Brutpflege - Übertragung männlicher Eigenschaften auf das Weibchen - Rassenunterschiede im geschlechtlichen Färbungsabstand - Mutative Vergrößerung des Geschlechtsdimorphismus

Fortpflanzung [Reproduction]
Werbung. Erreichung der Geschlechtsreife -  Fortpflantungsperiode - Zusammenhalt der Geschlechter-  Verlobung- Balz -  Psychische Selektion- Begattung -Nest. Ort der Eiablage - Nestbautrieb-    Nestform-    Standort des Nestes- Baukunst als ererbte Anlage - Baustoffe - Verarbeitung der Baustoffe - Dauer des Nestbaues - Aushöhlen von Holz und Erdreich - Benutzung von Ameisen- und Termitenbauten [use of termites and termite nests] -  Fehlen des Nestbautriebes - Wiederbenutzung des alten Nestes  — Bautätigkeit nach Brutbeginn - Organveranderungen zur Nestbau-Zelt — Ei: Eiabläge und Klima -    Eierzahl [number of eggs] — Beziehungen zwischen Eigewicht und Zahl der Eier [Relations between egg weight and number of eggs] — Nachlegen -  Nachgelege —  Brut [brood] — Polyandrie — Legeabstand - Bebrütung - Schutzfärbung der Eier -   Anteil der Geschlechter am Brutgeschäft  — Bebruting durch beide Gatten - Ablösung beim Brüten — Verständigungsmittel der Gatten  - Triebhandlungen im Dienste der Brutsicherung — Bebrütung durch nur einen Partner -      Brutflecke - Kompensation mangelnder Brutflecke — Bebrütung über die normale Brutdauer hinaus  -   Schlüpfakt  — Jungenpflege  — Verhalten der Nesthocker - Verhalten der Nestflüchter -   Zusammenhalt der Familien  — Geselliges Brüten -  Polygynie — Ehelosigkeit — Geselliges Leben der Pinguine  — Erbrütung der Eier durch Bodenwarme - Brutparasitismus — bei Cuculiden — Färbunganpassung der Kuckuckseier — Größenanpassung der Kuckuckseier — bei Icteriden - bei Ploceiden — bei Indicatoriden  — bei Heteronetta  — Rasche Embryonalentwickelung der Brutschmarotzer — Schädigung der Wirtsvögel.

Lebensdauer [life spans]

Tag- und Nachtvögel [day and night birds]

Ernährung [nutrition]
Nahrung — Nahrungswahl — Nahrungsaufnahme — Erweiterung von Spalträumen — Bogenförmige Schnäbel  — Zusammenspiel von Schnabel und Zunge — Mundwerkzeuge der Nektarsauger — Saugakt — Ornithophile Blüten — Zungen-apparat der Spechte — Nahrung der Spechte — Mundwerkzeuge der körnerfressenden Passeres — Mundwerkzeuge der Papageien — Jagd auf fliegende Beutetiere — Nahrungsaufnahme bei den Raubvögeln— Scharren — Nahrungsaufnahme aus dem Wasser — Vorrat-Sammeln — Zerkleinerung der Nahrung durch Zerrupfen oder Zerschlagen — Prüfung der Nahrung mit dem Geschmackssinn — Tastsinn im Bereich der Mundwerkzeuge — Bildung des Werkzeuges nach dem Bedürfnis — Ausnutzung der Nahrung. Zellulosereiche Nahrung  — Darmbakterien — Fleischnahrung — Gallen-farbstoffe - Resorption und Anbau pflanzlicher Farbstoffe — Endozoische Samen-verbreltung durch Vögel

Stoffwechsel und Energiewechsel [Metabolism and energy metabolism]
Chemie des Eies — Zusammensetzung des Dotters — Zusammensetzung des Eierklars — Zusammensetzung von Schalenhaut und Kalkschale — Stoffwechsel des Embryo— Stoffwechsel des Erwachsenen. Erhaltung des ernährungsphysiologischen Gleichgewichts — Mineralstoffwechsel — Eiweißabbau und Harn — Grundumsatz und Leistungszuwachs — Periodisches Schwanken des Fettansatzes — Stoffwechsel im Hunger — Hungerresistenz und Körpergröße — Wasserhaushalt.

Bewegung [Movement]
Bewegungen  der  Wirbelsäule —  Brustwirbelsäule —  Halswirbelsäule — Schwanzwirbelsfiule — Bewegungen der hinteren Extremität — Schlafstellung - Ortsbewegung: Laufen und Hüpfen — Gang  — Ortsbewegung der Schwimmvögel auf festem Boden — Klettern — Bewegungsform und Bauplan — Längenverhältnis der Zehenglieder — Längenverhältnis von Lauf und Unterschenkel — Bewegungen der vorderen Extremitat — Flügelskelett — Schultergürtel — Schultergelenk — Ellenbogengelenk — Handgelenk — Gelenke zwischen Mittelhand und Fingern — Flügelmuskeln — Muskeln zur Bewegung des — Muskeln zur Bewegung des Vorderarms — Muskeln zur Bewegung der Mittelhand und der Finger — a) Ursprung am Oberarm — b) Ursprung am Vorderarm — c) Ursprung am Metacarpus — Flügelfläche — Propatagium und Metapatagium — Schwungfedern — Bau der Schwungfedern — Spannung der Schwungfedern — Wirkung des Luftdruckes an den Federstrahlen — Erteilung des Vortriebes — Flug: Ruderflug — a) große Vögel — b) kleine Vögel — Flügeltypen — Hubflügel — Schnellflügel — Schwebeflügel — Zahl der Flügelschläge — Zusatzbelastung — Hüpfender Flug — Schwebeflug der Kleinvögel — Gleitflug — Schwirrflug — Rütteln — Flugleistung — Flugarbeit — Ausnutzung der Windkräfte  — Statischer Segelflug — Dynamischer Segelflug  — Änderung der Höhe — Änderung der Richtung — Abflug — Landüng — Aufgaben des Schwanzes — Verlust des Flugvermögens — Schwimmen — Tauchen — Fußtaucher — a) Kormorane — b) Podiceps, Colymbus, Tauchenten — Flügeltaucher — Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Tauch- und Flugvermögen — Tauchleistungen

Tonerzeugung [Sound generation]
Syrinx und Trachea als Zungenpfeife — Akustik der Zungenpfeifen — Akustik der immwerkzeuge der Vögel — Wirkung der Stimm-Muskeln — Paarige und unpaarige Stimmapparate — Veränderung des von den schwingenden Membranen erzeugten Tones — Resonanzapparate — Biologische Bedeutung der Stimmlaute — Instrumentalmusik

Geographische Verbreitung [Geographical distribution]
Alter des Vogelstammes, der Arten und Rassen — Arten-Zahl — Ausbreitungsschranken
— Verbreitungsmittel — Räumliche Sonderung der Populationen als Vorbedingung der
Artenvermehrung — Artvermehrung als Folge ökologischer Umstellung — Diskontinuierliche Verbreitung als Ergebnis erdgeschichtlichen Geschehens — Regionale Verbreitung der Vögel

Wanderungen [Migration]
Ökologische Ursachen der Wanderungen — Winteraufenthalt — Dauer des Aufenthaltes im Überwinterungsgebiet — Ökologische Ansprüche an das Winterquartier — Traditionelles Festhalten am Winterquartier — Beziehungen zwischen Urheimat und Winterquartier — Überwandern südlicher Populationen durch nördliche — Unbeständige Lage der Winterquartiere — Winteraufenthalt der Albatrosse — Räumliche Ausdehnung des Überwinterungsgebietes — Wanderwege — Ökologisch begründete Umwege — Schleifenförmiger Zugweg — Historisch begründete Umwege — Verlassen der traditionellen Zugbahnen — Breite der Zuggebiete — Leistungen: Beispiele für lange Wanderwege — Beispiele für lange Flugstrecken — Häufigkeit und Dauer der Rasten — Vergleich der täglichen Flugleistungen während der Brutzeit und der Zugzeit — Energiequellen — Orientierung — Optische Orientierung — Flug in großen Höhen — Richtungssinn — Richtungsgefühl und Richtungstrieb — Andressiertes Richtungsgefühl — Artgedächtnis — Steigerung der Orientierungsfähigkeit durch Selektion — Verdriftung — Aufsuchen neuer Brutgebiete — Veranlassung zum Aufbruch — terscheidung zwischen Wettervögeln und Instinktvögeln — Verkettung von Zugtrieb und r;pflanzungszyklus — Zusammenhänge zwischen Zugtrieb und endokrinem System — Beeinflussung des Zuges durch meteorologische Faktoren — Windrichtung — Beziehungen zwischen Zugzeiten und Dauer des Fortpflanzungszyklus — Beziehungen zwischen Zugzeiten und Länge des Wanderweges — Veranlassung zur Einstellung der Wanderung — Trennung nach Alter und Geschlecht — a) im Herbst — b) im Frühjahr —Geselliges Wandern —Zug und Mauser — Stammesgeschichtliches Alter der Zugvögel

Parasiten [Parasites]
Vermes: Trematoden — Cestoden — Nematoden — Acanthocephalen — Pentastomiden — Arthropoden: Acari — Flöhe — Wanzen — Fliegen — Mallophagen

Stammesgeschichte [Evolutionary history]


Stresemann's work is also well illustrated and it makes use of graphs to show how conclusions were arrived at. For instance there is a graph that shows the numbers of male and female larks collected at Danish lighthouses which points to protandry in Spring migration. It clearly was a truly illuminating and broad overview of ornithology in the 1930s and one that was widely appreciated. It is unclear if Salim Ali went through the contents of this work. The only major biography of Stresemann is by Jürgen Haffer, Erich Rutschke and Klaus Wunderlich - all three of whom are no more. Their biography includes several interesting sections but the ones that stand out are by Haffer and include scientometric approaches to examining the life and work of Stresemann. Unfortunately most of the book is in German and there is only a short summary in English. Haffer provides a chronological view of Stresemann's research focus over time using a graphical timeline.

A chronology of Stresemann's research focus from Haffer et al., 2000.
Haffer's phylogeny of avian taxonmy

Photo: Z thomas (Creative Commons)

Haffer notes that one of Stresemann's major activities was his review of literature and I think this kind reflective approach is especially important to the development of any field. It is clear that this showed the direction for further research for ornithology in Germany. The fact that Germany was at the forefront of ornithology can also be noted by the persistence of many technical terms from German that are still in use in ornithology like zugunruhe (or migratory restlessness). In fact it was Stresemann who coined the German word "einemsen" in 1935 for describing the then undocumented behaviour of birds anointing themselves with live ants. Salim Ali who was clearly in touch with Stresemann at that time found a suitable English verb for it as "anting" in a note published in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society - a word that has stayed ever since in the English ornithologist's dictionary.

The correspondence archive** at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin has only two letters from Ali to Stresemann [Reference: S IV Nachl. Stresemann/Akte Salim, A.; MfN d. Hub, HBSB]. One written (typed) on 24 July 1964 is in response to a letter of condolence to Salim Ali on the death of Loke Wan Tho. The other (29 April 1966) is a bit of an apology for not studying the moults of birds:

33 Pali Hill, Bandra
Bombay-50
29 April 1966

Dear Stresemann,

Many thanks for the prompt reply to my query about age, moult, and leg colour in Philomachus. This clarifies the position nicely.

I feel guilty and unhappy not to make fuller use of the exceptional opportunities one gets for studying moults etc. when handling such large numbers of birds for ringing. But unless we can have a much larger team of helpers in our migration study camps than circumstances permit - including some devoted entirely to moult study - this is very difficult. We have to collect arthropod parasites and blood samples from the birds for virus studies, and the various operations connecting with ringing - measuring, weighing, etc - use up all the time and facilities available. How, and for how long, to detain the birds during and after all these operations without harming them, when several hundred birds have to be dealt with under more or less alfresco conditions is another problem. All the same it seems a great pity that such wonderful opportunities cannot be more fully utilized!

With warmest regards, Yours ever
Salim
As can be seen from the graph of Haffer, Stresemann really moved into the study of moult towards the 1960s and until the end of his life. He was greatly aided in his research on moult by his (second) wife Vesta, an ornithologist in her own right about whom rather little has been written. Salim Ali notes in his autobiography that Stresemann was his guru and that he routinely wrote enquiries to which detailed replies would be sent without fail but in a difficult cursive handwriting. Perhaps someone can find the archives of Ali's letters and see what is to be learnt there. Ali notes that Stresemann was warm and welcoming in his letters even before he met him, a reason for Ali to choose Berlin over the British Museum. He also wondered how Stresemann managed to keep up with his correspondence given the number of people who wrote to him.

I suspect that a reflection on the state of knowledge of Indian birds with respect to their patterns of moult will not be particularly uplifting but reflect we must. The maintenance of a system of privileges (most often passively by not fighting against privilege) for a few ringers will ensure the poverty of local expertise that still continue.

The entrance to Waldfriedhof Dahlem (4 April 2017)
That afternoon, I went round to Waldfriedhof Dahlem (the Dahlem forest cemetery) to look for Stresemann's grave - which curiously is shared with that of his guru Ernst Hartert. It must be the only tombstone shared by two unrelated ornithologists. Actually Stresemann had wished to be beside his mentor after his death and was cremated with the ashes interred into the grave of Hartert. The grave is maintained by the Berlin district but despite weaving through the blocks, I failed to spot it!


* Ali's early ringing in India included field assistance from the Swiss ornithologist Alfred Schifferli (1912–2007, for a biography in German see - apparently Schifferli's namesake father essentially founded Swiss ornithology and a son Luc also continued in the same field) - there is a mention in Zafar Futehally's auto-biography of a field assistants who had grouped the the three bird-ringers as the three "Alis" that included "Schiffer-Ali" !
** Salim Ali evidently gifted about 200 bird specimens to the collection of the Berlin museum, the species list suggests that it was mostly from peninsular India.


Acknowledgements

Wikimedia Foundation invited me to attend the Wikimedia Conference at Berlin. I visited the archives of the Museum für Naturkunde on the 4th of April and the library on the 5th of April 2017. Thanks are due to Dr Sabine Hackethal and Sandra Miehlbradt, archivists at the Museum of Natural History Berlin for tracing the correspondence between Ali and Stresemann and for allowing their contents to be shared here. Thanks are also due to Martina Rißberger, librarian at Museum für Naturkunde Berlin for access to the Handbuch der Zoologie 7-2 and the biography of Erwin Stresemann. Thanks also to Kalpana Das for assistance.

References
Postscript
One of the reasons for posting this is to point out that Indian scientists and amateurs alike have a rather narrow view of the field of ornithology. In fact at a meeting to consider founding an ornithologists association many big names were asked if poultry came under ornithology and those present decided that their field and organization should restrict themselves to the study of wild birds. Even today bibliographic compilations on India routinely skip references to parasitology, ethno-ornithology, paleontology, molecular biology, behaviour, biomechanics and a host of other areas while tending to focus on bird records and regional avifaunal lists - the last was one of the things that Stresemann explicitly banned from the Journal fur Ornithologie during his editorship! 

Tech News issue #38, 2021 (September 20, 2021)

00:00, Monday, 20 2021 September UTC
Tech Forum
Tech News
Tech Ambassadors
Wikimedia Technology
Wikimedia Product
MediaWiki
The Tech News weekly summaries help you monitor recent software changes likely to impact you and your fellow Wikimedians. Subscribe, contribute and give feedback.

Translate frequently used templates

previous 2021, week 38 (Monday 20 September 2021) next
Other languages:

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • Growth features are now deployed to almost all Wikipedias. For the majority of small Wikipedias, the features are only available for experienced users, to test the features and configure them. Features will be available for newcomers starting on 20 September 2021.
  • MediaWiki had a feature that would highlight local links to short articles in a different style. Each user could pick the size at which "stubs" would be highlighted. This feature was very bad for performance, and following a consultation, has been removed. [1]
  • A technical change was made to the MonoBook skin to allow for easier maintenance and upkeep. This has resulted in some minor changes to HTML that make MonoBook's HTML consistent with other skins. Efforts have been made to minimize the impact on editors, but please ping Jon (WMF) on wiki or in phabricator if any problems are reported.

Problems

  • There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of an accidental restart of the search servers. [2]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 September. It will be on all wikis from 23 September (calendar).
  • Advanced item The meta=proofreadpage API has changed. The piprop parameter has been renamed to prpiprop. API users should update their code to avoid unrecognized parameter warnings. Pywikibot users should upgrade to 6.6.0. [3]

Future changes

  • The Reply tool will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "Discussion tools" in Beta features at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in Editing Preferences. [4]
  • Advanced item The previously announced change to how you obtain tokens from the API has been delayed to September 21 because of an incompatibility with Pywikibot. Bot operators using Pywikibot can follow T291202 for progress on a fix, and should plan to upgrade to 6.6.1 when it is released.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

weeklyOSM 582

09:47, Sunday, 19 2021 September UTC

07/09/2021-13/09/2021

lead picture

Castle Dossier Map Switzerland [1] © IFS Geometa Lab | map data © OpenStreetMap contributors

Mapping campaigns

  • The Swiss OSM Project of the Month for September is the mapping of electrical vehicle charging stations (de) > en .

Mapping

  • A long thread on the Swiss mailing list, split over several months, discussed how to map the border between Switzerland and Italy around Monte Generoso, where the precise line is uncertain. Earlier discussions occurred in July and August.
  • John Stanworth wants to further improve his mapping of smoothness=* and mtb:scale=* and asked other cycling contributors for comments on his views.
  • Hiddenhausen asked (de) > en , on the German forum, what the use of the tag landuse=street_green might mean. It appears to be an ad hoc attempt to refine the use of landuse=grass for grassy highway verges and medians.
  • Voting is underway, until Saturday 25 September, for headlight=* to reflect the legal requirement on some roads to use your headlights.
  • SK53 clarified with examples that, in his opinion, there is widespread misuse of the sac_scale=* tag for real alpine climbing routes, which the Swiss Alpine Club grades with a completely different scale.
  • User Koreller asked for feedback on their contribution a guide to mapping North Korea available on the OSM wiki.

Community

  • Amanda McCann shared with us what she did in OpenStreetMap during August 2021.
  • Numerous OSM contributors have received ‘friend’ requests through the OSM website which appear to be phishing attacks. Not surprisingly this has received comments on the German forum (de) > en
    and OSM subreddit.

Imports

  • Marius David (marius851000) intends (fr) > en importing open data about restaurants in the Pays de la Loire (France), and he is seeking inputs on how to do it before starting.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

  • Simon Poole justified his insistence that the OSMF register trademarks, whilst he served on the LWG, by referring to a recent trademark debacle involving PostgreSQL. A Spanish not-for-profit registered ‘PostgreSQL’ as a mark in Spain, and has recently applied for broader coverage in the European Union and USA. The latter application was recently abandoned, but the ‘PostgreSQL Community’ is still live.

Education

  • The UN Mappers team has announced the launch of an internship programme. Several open positions relate to OSM in mapping and feature extraction, social media and communication, geospatial analysis, and map visualisation and design. The internships are fully remote or in-person at the UN duty stations in Brindisi (Italy) and Valencia (Spain), and are open to all nationalities. These internships are an opportunity to work in an international environment, gaining experience and developing high skills in the humanitarian field. The deadline to apply is Saturday 9 October.

Humanitarian OSM

  • The monthly HOT Tech Working Group meeting has been put on hold. The hot_tech team has convened a number of working groups specific to individual technologies or projects such as the OSM Galaxy Project. Anyone who wishes to participate in these is requested to fill out a form.
  • HOT announced the appointment of Dr Ibrahima Cisse as Director of the Western and Northern Africa Open Mapping Hub.
  • The Open Mapping Hub Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA), organised by HOT, announced a range of Open Mapping grants. Expressions of interest are invited immediately, with formal proposals expected during October.
  • The HOT Quality Control and Assurance Working Group have developed and released the ‘Problem User Escalation Document’, which outlines the steps in escalating data quality problems encountered with users (mappers/validators).

Maps

  • [1] The Institute for Software at the Technical University of East Switzerland (IFS OST) invites (Video (en)) us to check out their video regarding mapping technology for the Castle Dossier Map The video forms part of an entry for the Prix Carto of the Swiss Society of Cartographers.
  • Jaisen Nedumpala reported on how he used OSM to help map a 3 km buffer zone during the recent Nipah virus outbreak in Kerala (India), with the personal support of Heinz_V from Germany and OSM contributors from Kerala.

switch2OSM

  • Sustrans, the UK cycling infrastructure charity, asked for local input for improving a national cycle route in the city of Durham. Gregory Marler’s (user livingwithdragons) advice, given somewhat tongue-in-cheek, was to switch to OSM.

Programming

  • The momepy Python library for analysing urban form is now at version 0.5.0. Of particular interest is the addition of the COINS algorithm for classifiying street hierarchies.

Did you know …

  • … what the charging regime is for using the HOT Tasking Manager? Also known as the Tasking Manager Sustainability Model.
  • … there is a page on the OSM Wiki for noting sites that use OSM but don’t provide correct attribution?
  • … that OpenCage post geographical trivia via Twitter on the last Friday of each month (hashtag #fridaygeotrivia)?

Other “geo” things

  • The Colorado Department of Transport falsely changed the status of an open road to closed, not only on their own site (albeit briefly), but directly on Google, Waze, TomTom and AppleMaps. A major highway Interstate-70 was actually closed due to mudslides, causing an increase in traffic on a minor road. The fictitious road closure was meant to discourage further traffic build-up.
  • Using the example of the ‘Chinese Name of Lidl’ Yunus reflected on the challenge for western companies to select a Chinese name for their brand.

Upcoming Events

Where What Online When Country
OSM Africa Monthly Mapathon: Map Malawi osmcalpic 2021-09-04 – 2021-10-04
Karlsruhe Karlsruhe Hack Weekend osmcalpic 2021-09-17 – 2021-09-19 flag
Anderlecht Software Freedom Day osmcalpic 2021-09-18 flag
Nantes Journées européennes du patrimoine 2021, Nantes osmcalpic 2021-09-18 flag
Grenoble Atelier OpenStreetMap – retrouvailles et initiation ! osmcalpic 2021-09-20 flag
Lyon Rencontre mensuelle Lyon osmcalpic 2021-09-21 flag
Bonn 143. Treffen des OSM-Stammtisches Bonn osmcalpic 2021-09-21 flag
Berlin OSM-Verkehrswende #27 (Online) osmcalpic 2021-09-21 flag
Lüneburg Lüneburger Mappertreffen (online) osmcalpic 2021-09-21 flag
DRK Missing Maps Online Mapathon osmcalpic 2021-09-23
[Online] OpenStreetMap Foundation board of Directors – public meeting osmcalpic 2021-09-24
Düsseldorf Düsseldorfer OSM-Treffen (online) osmcalpic 2021-09-24 flag
Amsterdam OSM Nederland maandelijkse bijeenkomst (online) osmcalpic ✓ 2021-09-25 flag
FOSS4G 2021 Buenos Aires – Online Edition osmcalpic 2021-09-27 – 2021-10-02
Bremen Bremer Mappertreffen (Online) osmcalpic ✓ 2021-09-27 flag
Grenoble Mapathon Missing Maps – Cartographier des cartes humanitaires sur un mode collaboratif et libre. osmcalpic 2021-09-28 flag
San Jose South Bay Map Night osmcalpic ✓ 2021-09-29 flag
Bruxelles – Brussel Virtual OpenStreetMap Belgium meeting osmcalpic ✓ 2021-09-28 flag
okres Žilina Missing Maps mapathon Slovakia online #4 osmcalpic 2021-09-30 flag
京田辺市 京都！街歩き！マッピングパーティ：第26回 Re:一休寺 osmcalpic 2021-10-02 jp
Greater London Missing Maps London Mapathon osmcalpic 2021-10-05 flag
Landau an der Isar Virtuelles Niederbayern-Treffen osmcalpic ✓ 2021-10-05 flag
Stuttgart Stuttgarter Stammtisch (Online) osmcalpic 2021-10-05 flag
Hlavní město Praha Online validation mapathon osmcalpic ✓ 2021-10-07 cz
Nordrhein-Westfalen OSM-Treffen Bochum (Oktober) osmcalpic 2021-10-07 flag
UN Mappers: MaPathon – le Università a servizio della cooperazione internazionale osmcalpic 2021-10-08
Berlin 160. Berlin-Brandenburg OpenStreetMap Stammtisch osmcalpic ✓ 2021-10-08 flag

Note:
If you like to see your event here, please put it into the OSM calendar. Only data which is there, will appear in weeklyOSM.

This weeklyOSM was produced by Nordpfeil, PierZen, SK53, TheSwavu, arnalielsewhere, derFred.

Todd Siegel joins Wiki Education’s Advisory Board

15:46, Friday, 17 2021 September UTC
Todd Siegel
Todd Seigel
Image courtesy Todd Seigel, all rights reserved.

Todd Siegel, product designer, prototyper, and wordsmith, has been appointed to Wiki Education’s Advisory Board, which is focused on growing our network and generating new revenue.

“I’m excited to join Wiki Education’s Advisory Board to help expand its community, and further educate students about the full range of Wikipedia’s powers,” Todd says.

Todd has more than 15 years of experience serving startups as an independent contractor and advisor. He educates a wide range of audiences on rapidly expressing product ideas with prototypes that look and feel real — without needing to code. He gave live prototyping presentations at Xerox PARC, Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, and Product School, plus hackathons ranging from Cisco to Cedars Sinai Medical Center.

He played a pivotal role in designing and evangelizing Proto.io, the leading web based tool for prototyping apps without coding, used by more than 400,000 people.

As a wordsmith, Todd co-founded the literary series Word Performances, and performed his poetry in over 20 shows including the Litcrawl literary festival, and was called the ee cummings of San Francisco tech culture.

I’m thrilled to add Todd’s experience, skillset, and connections to the San Francisco community to Wiki Education’s Advisory Board.

Analyzing the Wikipedia clickstream just got easier with WikiNav

15:25, Friday, 17 2021 September UTC

By Muniza A, Isaac Johnson, and Martin Gerlach

What articles are most likely to lead readers to the Astrology article (Hint: the clicks are Fast and Furious.)? What topics are readers most interested in after reading about velociraptors, and how do those topics change across languages (For example, do readers only go to English Wikipedia to learn about the Fighting Dinosaurs fossil)? 

These are just some of the questions that can be answered by the Wikipedia clickstream, a publicly available dataset that shows how readers in Wikipedia get to an article and where they go from there. Wikipedia clickstream consists of weighted (source, destination) pairs extracted from the internal pageview logs of Wikipedia. This data is maintained in 11 languages and is updated every month, thanks to Wikimedia’s Data Engineering team. Analyzing this data is a multi-step process that involves downloading it, getting familiar with its structure, finding the right tools and methods to process it, and choosing appropriate visualizations for it.

In order to make answers to questions like those above accessible to everyone, and not just data scientists or folks with programming knowledge, we’ve created a visualization tool called WikiNav. This tool was developed as part of an Outreachy-internship from May to August 2021.

About WikiNav

WikiNav processes the Wikipedia clickstream to generate various visualizations, each of which focuses on a certain aspect of the data. This can help users get to insights faster, eliminating the need for them to crunch the numbers themselves.

  • What paths do readers take to or from a Wikipedia article?

WikiNav generates a Sankey chart that can visualize the top sources and destinations to and from an article and indicates the percentage of views sent or received by each source and destination.

Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikiNav_reader_navigation_visualization.gif, Muniza A, CC-BY-SA 4.0
  • How does the composition of traffic change from month to month?

WikiNav plots an article’s traffic for the current month alongside its traffic from the previous month which can help visualize the changes in the nature of traffic over time.

Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikinav_comparison_of_incoming_and_outgoing_traffic_composition_over_time.gif, Muniza A, CC-BY-SA 4.0
  • How does the composition of traffic differ across languages?

Users can also visualize how sources and destinations to and from an article change across different languages. This is done by looking up the top sources and destinations for the current article across clickstream data for selected languages.

Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikiNav_comparison_of_incoming_and_outgoing_traffic_composition_across_languages.gif, Muniza A CC-BY-SA 4.0

For these questions and others, explore your favorite articles at https://wikinav.toolforge.org.

Technical details

Our aim for WikiNav was to create an interface that was reasonably fast and responsive without requiring extensive computational resources and that could be used by people with varying levels of programming experience.

The project started out in the form of a Jupyter notebook on PAWS during the Outreachy initial contribution round. This posed two issues: 

  • Since all of the data could not be loaded into memory at once, it had to be processed in chunks or be looped over, which was slow. 
  • Published PAWS notebooks are static, so visualizing other articles would still require Python knowledge and a Mediawiki account.

This led to our current setup as described below:

API

Wikinav API resides on a Cloud VPS instance along with the clickstream SQLite files. We chose SQLite because of its small footprint, hassle-free configuration, portability, and low read latency. Converting a whole clickstream snapshot to SQLite takes a small Python script and a few minutes, and we’ve set up a cron job that does this every time a new snapshot becomes available. Since we’re only concerned with reads here, we did not have to worry about concurrent writes which are serialized in SQLite and might pose a problem if your application is write-heavy. As of now, the WikiNav API provides access to the latest two snapshots of the clickstream data due to limited storage on the VPS.

Requests to the WikiNav API are handled by Nginx which acts as a reverse proxy for Gunicorn. This ensures that requests from and responses to slow clients are buffered and provides added benefits such as production-grade load balancing, caching, and enhanced security. Gunicorn is a WSGI HTTP server that processes requests from a web server such as Nginx and then communicates those requests to Flask. Finally, depending on the URL of the request and the parameters supplied with it, Flask creates an SQL query for the clickstream SQLite files, sorts the results, extracts the requested subset from them, and returns them in the form of a JSON response.

Frontend

The frontend for WikiNav is hosted on Toolforge. It acts as a dashboard for the clickstream data by generating statistics and visualizations for it and provides features that allow users to interact with and manipulate those visualizations. We chose React for developing the frontend since there is a lot of data flowing between visualizations and this data needs to be updated frequently. React simplifies the management of this state and helps make the process of updating and rerendering the visualizations a lot more efficient. 

The WikiNav app lets users select a language and title of interest and then queries the WikiNav API to get the relevant data for generating visualizations for the user’s selection. It also makes additional calls to other APIs such as the MediaWiki API to obtain contextual information about the title (for example, the corresponding titles in other languages).

Challenges

Getting our data from multiple APIs meant that we had to make multiple asynchronous HTTP requests for every article. Streamlining those requests, managing the flow of responses across components, and handling errors associated with each source required some refactoring. We also made sure to cache API responses so that two components asking for the same data don’t result in repeated requests and, as a result, higher load times. 

Another challenge was making sure that our API could keep up with the interactivity of our frontend. This required experimentation with different database structures and settings so that we could perform fast lookups on the clickstream data.

Example: comparing languages

To see this setup in action, here’s an example featuring the language comparison charts. 

Each time you add a new language to compare, a handler fires queries to the WikiNav API to get the sources and destinations for the current title in the selected language. It also sends requests to the Wikipedia Langlinks API to get translations for the top sources and destinations in the selected language. Once done, it aligns the results from those API calls to get new datasets for the incoming and outgoing pageviews bar charts, respectively.

Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikiNav_language_comparison_chart_data_flow.png, Muniza A CC-BY-SA 4.0

Explore further

Ready to explore further? You can check out the WikiNav-tool yourself. In addition, you can see the clickstream data visualized in-situ on Wikipedia articles with this user script that uses WikNav’s API. If you have additional suggestions on how to improve the tool, you can leave feedback on the talk page on meta or comment directly on the GitHub repository containing the source code and documentation. 

Thanks to the Data Engineering and Cloud Services teams for their support around data and infrastructure and to the Outreachy program providing the opportunity for this project as part of an internship.

About this post

Featured image credit: File:Sextante, Acervo do Museu Paulista da USP (6).jpg, José Rosael/Hélio Nobre/Museu Paulista da USP, CC BY-SA 4.0

Improving Asian American journalists’ biographies

15:25, Thursday, 16 2021 September UTC

Wiki Education recently collaborated with the Wikimedia Foundation and the Asian American Journalism Association (AAJA) to host a 6-week training course in order to give AAJA members and others the time and space to learn how to add Asian American and Pacific Islander journalists’ biographies to Wikipedia.

One course participant was Pamela Ng, homepage editor for Fox News Digital and part of the executive leadership program at AAJA. Previously, she worked for the New York Daily News and PIX11 News. She says she joined to improve her research skills and learn more about Wikipedia.  She also wanted to improve the dearth of coverage on Wikipedia of Asian American journalists.

“I was shocked to learn that only 4 percent of English Wikipedia’s biographies of American journalists are of people of Asian descent. Representation is important and I hope my contributions will encourage others to help make Wikipedia content more diverse,” says Ng.

Ng appreciates the vast number of Asian American journalists she learned about while doing her own research to add content to Wikipedia. As part of the course, Ng created the biography of CeFaan Kim, an ABC News correspondent and reporter for WABC-TV in New York City.  With her contributions on a website viewed by millions of people every day, she feels it is especially important that these biographies gain recognition. Ng is currently writing more biographies on Asian American journalists as well as expanding on existing pages in effort to increase Wikipedia’s Asian American representation.

Ng’s hands-on experience in the AAJA Wiki Scholars course increased her confidence in consulting Wikipedia for information, as she’s now familiar with the extensive work that goes into ensuring Wikipedia’s content is high quality and based on reliable sources. She hopes other detractors will soon join the hundreds of millions of people who use Wikipedia, and realize how impactful Wikipedia can be.

“Wikipedia is often viewed as an unreliable source because anybody can contribute to it. If more people learned about what goes into Wikipedia, I think there’d be less hesitancy in using it as a jumping off point for research or other projects,” says Ng.

To take or sponsor a course similar to the one Pamela took, please visit learn.wikiedu.org

Federal Appeals Court Dismisses ACLU Challenge to NSA Internet Surveillance

20:40, Wednesday, 15 2021 September UTC

NEW YORK — In a divided opinion, the Fourth Circuit dismissed an appeal brought by the Wikimedia Foundation, which challenges the National Security Agency’s mass interception and searching of Americans’ international internet communications. The American Civil Liberties Union, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, and the law firm Cooley LLP represent the Wikimedia Foundation in the litigation, Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA.

Although the court held that Wikimedia had provided public evidence that its communications with Wikipedia users around the world are subject to NSA surveillance, the court went on to hold that further litigation would expose sensitive information about the government’s spying activities — and that the “state secrets privilege” required dismissal of the suit. The court rejected Wikimedia’s argument that the special procedures Congress enacted in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) preempt the state secrets privilege and allow the case to go forward. 

“We are extremely disappointed that the court wrongly credited the government’s sweeping secrecy claims and dismissed our client’s case,” said Patrick Toomey, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project. “Every day, the NSA is siphoning Americans’ communications off the internet backbone and into its spying machines, violating privacy and chilling free expression. Congress has made clear that the courts can and should decide whether this warrantless digital dragnet complies with the Constitution.”

At issue in this lawsuit is the NSA’s “Upstream” surveillance, through which the U.S. government systematically monitors Americans’ private emails, internet messages, and web communications with people overseas. With the help of companies like Verizon and AT&T, the NSA has installed surveillance devices on the high-capacity internet circuits that carry Americans’ communications in and out of the country. It searches that traffic for key terms, called “selectors,” that are associated with hundreds of thousands of targets. In the course of this surveillance, the NSA copies and combs through vast amounts of internet traffic. 

“We respectfully disagree with the Fourth Circuit’s ruling. Now more than ever, it is crucial that people are able to access accurate, well-sourced information, without concern about government surveillance,” said James Buatti, senior legal manager at the Wikimedia Foundation. “In the face of extensive public evidence about NSA surveillance, the court’s reasoning elevates extreme claims of secrecy over the rights of Internet users. We call upon the United States government to rein in these harmful practices, and we will continue to advocate for the privacy and free expression rights of Wikimedia readers, contributors, and staff.” 

Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, who dissented from the court’s state secrets ruling, warned that the majority’s opinion “stands for a sweeping proposition: A suit may be dismissed under the state secrets doctrine, after minimal judicial review, even when the Government premises its only defenses on far-fetched hypotheticals.” 

“For years, the NSA has vacuumed up Americans’ international communications under Upstream surveillance, and to date, not a single challenge to that surveillance has been allowed to go forward,” said Alex Abdo, litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “The Supreme Court should make clear that NSA surveillance is not beyond the reach of our public courts.”

Wikimedia and its counsel are considering their options for further review in the courts.

For more information about the case: https://www.aclu.org/cases/wikimedia-v-nsa-challenge-upstream-surveillance-under-fisa-amendments-act 

The opinion is available here: https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/wikimedia-v-nsa-opinion-0 

CONTACTS:
Allegra Harpootlian, 303-748-4051, [email protected]
Lorraine Kenny, 917-532-1623, [email protected]
Gwadamirai Majange, [email protected]

Celebrating Latinx stories, culture, and contributions on Wikimedia projects

17:14, Wednesday, 15 2021 September UTC

Today marks the start of a Heritage Month focused on celebrating the history, culture, and influence of Latinx communities in the United States. 

The official name of the month itself (National Hispanic Heritage Month) is a living example of the power of language — its history and inequities in who controls it, and its impact on the perceptions and identities of people and their communities.

At the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia and its companion free knowledge projects, we know words matter. We are committed to creating an inclusive, equitable living record of history, stories, and contexts. This often includes righting the historical record — and expanding it to include the perspectives of people left out by systems of power and privilege. 

This Latinx Heritage Month — what we have chosen to call this annual celebration — we are expanding this traditionally US-specific commemoration to celebrate the richness of our global Latinx Wikimedia community, while recognizing the work still needed to be done to achieve authentic representation online. 

We invite you to explore the origins of the term Hispanic; consider the legacies of colonization and the impact of language; and to hear firsthand from some of our Latinx Wikimedia contributors around the world on the importance of filling knowledge gaps about Latinx people and topics on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. 

Why “Latinx Heritage Month” 

The term Hispanic commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain. In other words, it applies to countries previously colonized by Spain. In the US, “Hispanic” has become a broad catchall, referring to persons with a historical and cultural relationship with Spain regardless of their race and ethnicity. For these reasons, many have contested the term and flagged its negative connotations and racist undertones. 

When it comes to describing their individual identities, recent research from Pew reveals that just over half of “Hispanic” and “Latino” people have no preference between the two terms. In some cases, the labels are used interchangeably. Another more recent identity label to emerge is “Latinx.” Although not widely adopted, it is considered a more gender- and LGBTQI-inclusive term — and what we have chosen to use during our celebration this month. 

Latinx content gaps on Wikimedia projects 

Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, sadly, do not currently reflect the world’s diversity. This results in a less rich, complex, and accurate picture of our world, its people, and its knowledge on our projects. 

Preliminary data from a recent Foundation survey of people in the US indicates that Latinx people, especially women, are dramatically underrepresented among Wikipedia contributors and readers in the United States. The data show that just 22% of Latinx women feel represented on Wikipedia, and only 31% of Latinx women in the US use Wikipedia. Data from our annual Community Insights Report also shows Latinx people in the US are severely underrepresented in our communities, representing only 5.2% of Wikimedia contributors. 

When it comes to the content represented on Wikipedia at large, we know from the Oxford Internet Institute that there are more Wikipedia articles written about Antarctica than many countries in Latin America.

Perspectives of Latinx Wikimedia contributors 

Nearly 20 years ago, the New York Times said that one day, the name of this month may change to “Colombian-Dominican-Cuban-Mexican-Puerto Rican-and-Other Heritage Month.” Why? Because the Latinx community is not monolithic. It is richly, beautifully complex, made up of an array of different identities, cultures, and experiences.

Our goal is for Wikimedia projects and contributors to reflect this rich diversity. Wikipedia is a mirror of the world’s biases — to deliver on our commitment to knowledge equity, we must address barriers that prevent people from both accessing and contributing to free knowledge.

To shed light on our efforts to do just that, we interviewed five Latinx Wikimedia contributors on their experiences in our movement, why they are committed to closing knowledge gaps, and what they want people to know about their heritage:

Carmen Alcázar

Carmen Alcázar (User:Wotancito) is a member of Wikimedia Mexico and a new Wikimedian of the Year 2021 Honourable Mention winner. She started the Editatona project to increase gender diversity on Spanish Wikipedia in 2015, which has since grown to host 60 events in Latin America. 

Mónica Bonilla

Mónica Bonilla-Parra (User:Mpbonillap) is on the board of Wikimedia Colombia. She is a linguist and researcher who uses Wikimedia projects to preserve and promote the culture and histories of Indigenous communities in Latin America. She coordinates the Wayuu Digital Project of ISUR and Fundacion Karisma, supporting media literacy processes in schools of the Wayuu community in the Colombo-Venezuelan Guajira. 

Carla Toro

Carla Toro Fernández (User:Soylacarli) works with Wikimedia Chile to host editing events on Wikimedia projects to improve content on gender, human rights, culture, science, heritage, and more. She also edits Wikipedia in a volunteer capacity, watching for vandalism and verifying information. On Wikidata, she does data quality control and uses queries to identify content gaps. 

Chola fashion in Gran Poder

User:carlillasa is a member of the Wikimedistas de Bolivia user group. She writes Wikipedia articles about Bolivia, uploads photos, and gives editing workshops in collaboration with fellow volunteers. One of the first articles she wrote was on her favorite Bolivian novel, Intimas, by author Adela Zamudio. 

Selene Yang, who works on the DEI team at the Wikimedia Foundation, is a co-founder of Geochicas, a group of women who work to close the gender gap in the OpenStreetMap community and also works towards bridging the mapping community with the Wikimedia community. She has also led edit-a-thons for the Art+Feminism initiative with TEDIC, a digital rights defender organization in Paraguay, to produce historiographic reviews on the roles of women in the construction of the modern Paraguayan state, and raise awareness of the importance of Wikipedia for the restoration of collective memory, respectively. 

Why should people care about filling knowledge gaps about Latinx people and topics on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects?

  • “As on Wikipedia, we need all versions of history. What we write, do, share is not complete without the vision of women, of the global south, of postcolonial realities, of dissent. We have to ensure that there are seats for women. We have to commit to them having a good experience in our space.” —Carmen Alcázar
  • “The history of Colombia and Colombians on Wikipedia has been told and narrated from places other than Colombia, a situation that generates many biases in the information, but that we can change by involving more Colombians in the projects, in the communities and in their construction. To the extent that we involve more people, more voices, more languages, we will truly fulfill the mission of the Wikimedia movement: to empower and encourage people around the world to gather and develop neutral educational content under a free content license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. Ultimately, closing the gaps in content, participation, and representation will strengthen and grow the community of volunteers, who make the community exist, continue, and advance.” —Mónica Bonilla-Parra
  • “I feel this is very important because people access the internet — and particularly Wiki projects — to find information and to know more about a subject. So, what happens when the information is simply not there, or when the information provided is shown from an outsider’s perspective? It’s crucial for content about Latin American issues and people to be written from a local point of view, to avoid stereotypes. Furthermore, in these times when the internet is the place where we preserve our history, the fact that there are information gaps on Latin American topics makes us invisible and keeps us out of history. That is basically what information gaps do these days, they leave you out of history, which is unacceptable.” —Carla Toro Fernández
  • “We are not represented on the Wikimedia projects, which are the window to knowledge on the internet. It’s difficult for the rest of the world to understand 1) how complex and diverse our reality is, and 2) we, ourselves, can understand the diversity of the region that we live in. I believe it’s fundamental to be able to go on Wikipedia and see a photo of your city, a photo of your favorite regional dish, an article about your favorite national author. We need to create content for and by us, to not have to feel like orphans of the internet anymore.” —User:Carlillasa
  • “History is always told by those who have the privilege of narrating it; however, the struggle for the living memory of people, collectives and communities is what becomes invisible through epistemic injustice. This has its foundations in the systems of oppression that emerge in the face of any form of disruption of the established order. Closing the gap in the production of knowledge about Latin America not only breaks down the material and symbolic barriers on access to information and the visibility of our memory, but also empowers, from the recognition of ourselves, those of us who historically have not been able to tell our own story.” —Selene Yang

What is one thing you wish people knew about your community, culture, or history?

  • “There are many annual festivals in my country, but the one that I like the most for its cultural importance and its high importance to the family is the Day of the Dead—imagining that on that day my grandma comes to my house for a coffee with milk and a pan de muerto makes me smile. It’s a bit difficult to understand outside of Mexico, but that’s what Wikipedia is for.” —Carmen Alcázar
  • “In Colombia, there are currently about 68 Indigenous languages that have been affiliated to 13 different linguistic families. Wikipeetia is the Wikipedia in Wayuunaiki, a project that has been built by the Wayuu people, who are located in La Guajira Colombo-Venezonala (the ancestral territory of the Wayuu people).” —Mónica Bonilla-Parra
  • “The truth is that I’d like for them to know about so much!  Our history is composed by our many native civilizations who have diverse cultures, traditions, and histories of their own. There is a Wikipedia category titled Culture of Chile, where articles on Chilean culture —from Chilean tea culture to the article about cantineras, female soldiers who fought in the War of the Pacific.” —Carla Toro Fernández
  • “I would like for the world to know that Bolivia is a very diverse country and that all of its social and cultural representations (from the most popular to the most academic) are worthy of attention and respect. In that sense, I consider the article about Bolivian gastronomy and all the articles that have been created lately about food in Bolivia to be a valuable testament of not just the culinary diversity of my country, but also the cultural processes linked to food from prehispanic times, through the colonial times up until our current globalized reality.” —User:Carlillasa
  • “El Güeguense is one of the first plays in America translated from Nahuatl into Spanish. It satirically represents through music, dances, and dramaturgy the convergence between Indigenous cultures and their relationship with the Spanish conquest. It is the force of comedy and wit in protest against the tragedy of the conquest. Currently the play comes to life during the patron saint festivities of my hometown city of Diriamba, Nicaragua.” —Selene Yang

What motivates you to contribute to Wikimedia projects?

  • “In addition to contributing to a greater common good, what motivates me most is that there is so much more to write. … At every opportunity, the story of an incredible woman whose trajectory has been overturned by the patriarchy jumps onto my edit list, so it renews my energy to keep doing this. I stay motivated even if not everything goes well and the attitudes of other male Wikipedians are not appropriate, although sometimes after organizing events and all that entails, there are still people in 2021 who, despite the explicit and clear rules of the projects, still think of Wikimedia projects that do not correspond to the world we live in.” —Carmen Alcázar
  • “The collective construction of humanity’s knowledge. I am passionate about understanding other ways of learning, teaching and building the world, and that is why I have worked and built projects with invisible communities, not only on the Internet but in society. I am also a fan of languages and technology and in Wikimedia I find a special place where my profession, my passion and my motivation connect.” —Mónica Bonilla-Parra
  • “I work in the field of science, where data is almost always kept behind paywalls that prevent people from accessing this information. The Wiki ecosystem changed this by making knowledge accessible to anyone with an internet connection, putting it at a click’s reach. Another thing that motivates me is the fight against fake news, and since everything in Wikipedia needs to have a reliable source, I feel it is the perfect place where trusted information can be found and used to counter the fake information that is generated around some issues, as was the case this last year with vaccines.” —Carla Toro Fernández
  • “It is important to me that my country, with all of its diversity, is well-represented in Wikimedia. Also, I like in general that articles are well written.”  —User:Carlillasa
  • “Currently I contribute more directly with the Openstreetmap community through the Geochicas collective; however, our projects are also intertwined with Wikipedia. For example, the Streets of Women initiative seeks to generate a visualization where you can count the nomenclature of city streets according to their gender and if the streets named after a woman have an article in Wikipedia. This initiative has led us to generate meetings, editatonas, and workshops to find those women that the public sphere has left out of history. The most motivating thing about these shared learning processes is to recognize the relevance of the relationships between communities and how we all somehow find ourselves fighting for the same goal, such as greater participation and representation of women both in the world’s largest encyclopedia (Wikipedia) as well as in today’s most important open and collaborative geographic database (OpenStreetMap).” —Selene Yang

Jorge Vargas is Senior Regional Partnerships Manager at the Wikimedia Foundation. You can follow him on Twitter at @jorgeavargas.

Improving Wikipedia’s coverage of OER

16:06, Wednesday, 15 2021 September UTC
Virginia Clinton-Lisell
Virginia Clinton-Lisell
Image courtesy Virginia Clinton-Lisell, all rights reserved.

For being the world’s largest open educational resource (OER), Wikipedia’s coverage of OER-related topics left something to be desired. That’s why Wiki Education collaborated with the GO-GN Global OER Graduate Network and the Hewlett Foundation to run two Wiki Scholars courses aimed at improving Wikipedia’s coverage of OER, broadly defined.

The call for participants snagged the attention of Virginia Clinton-Lisell, an associate professor of educational foundations and research at the University of North Dakota. Virginia’s one of the primary researchers at her institution’s Open Education Group, so she was a natural fit for the course.

“I think often Wikipedia is scoffed at because ‘anyone can edit and write,'” Virginia says. “But the process of learning how to edit and write is quite involved and there are very clear criteria. It was excellent to be taken step by step through everything and get feedback before making my changes live.”

During our Wiki Scholars courses, participants like Virginia work with the course instructor and training materials to learn about the steps involved in adding new content to Wikipedia. The aim is not only to teach participants how Wikipedia works, but also to give them the time and space to make a tangible impact to Wikipedia and the readers who come to learn about these topics.

Virginia improved the article on open textbooks because it’s the primary area of her research. Thanks to her additions, when someone comes to learn about open textbooks, they’ll see that while commercial textbooks produce no difference in learning performance compared to open textbooks, the costs continue to increase. Perhaps making this information more accessible to the public—like school administrators—will help increase further adoption of open textbooks.

During the course, Virginia also added information about North Dakota legislation to the policy section of the article on open educational resources.

“I liked getting to write about North Dakota’s legislation (even though it was a small addition) just because I’m excited about the initiatives the legislators have passed here,” she says. “I really hope that people who use Wikipedia to learn about OER realize that this movement is big and well researched.”

The course served another purpose for Virginia: It inspired her to incorporate Wikipedia editing into the courses she teaches, using Wiki Education’s Wikipedia Student Program. This fall, her introduction to the foundations of education students will further improve Wikipedia’s coverage.

“I realized that having my students edit Wikipedia would be a fantastic way to have them actively be involved as creators of Open Educational Resources,” she says. Having students create OERs — often called Open Educational Practice — is a hallmark of Wiki Education’s programmatic activities, and we’re thrilled when our Wiki Scholars alumni see the value in their own learning experience and choose to pass this on to their students.

Interview conducted by Reema Haque. Hero image credit: MatthewUND, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; image of Virginia courtesy Virginia Clinton-Lisell, all rights reserved.