Content Partnerships Hub/Needs assessment/Research results/Wikimedia South Africa

Notes from meeting with Wikimedia South Africa

Date: 2021-10-01

Participants:
Douglas Ian Scott, WMZA
Bobby Shabangu, WMZA
Tore Danielsson, WMSE
Axel Pettersson, WMSE

How do you work with content partnerships today?
Some partnerships with the contemporary art gallery, constitutional court. Some partnerships run by Bobby, some by other board members. LIASA (Library and Information Association of South Africa). Strong network with the academic libraries. Working with copyright reform together. Doing events and also #1lib1ref. Building partnerships for expanding the editor base rather than content creation. Building for the long term, To expand and get more content about South Africa the community need to grow. Working with librarians to edit Wikipedia through #1lib1ref, both adding sources and editing articles. Iziko: ran an edit workshop about LGBTQI and looking to expand the partnership into artworks and museum works where qr codes are placed on artworks Some digitizing material, but copyright issues makes it hard to get it running smoothly. Nelson Mandela foundation, all content related to Nelson Mandela. They also donated diaries, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Travel_diary_from_the_Rivonia_Trial, that are digitized and added to Wikisource. Also introduction to law faculty to write about apartaid. ? FoP question has been worked with. The alliance for copyright ?, advocacy partnership. Some partnerships build on having a strong champion who run the partnership. Botanical garden, photo contest coming up in december. Design Africa, design conference for designers. Working on editing articles in the topic area during the conference. City of Johannesburg, Johannesburg heritage organization. Putting historical buildings on Wikipedia, JopediA. Historical content about the buildings, putting placques with QR-codes on buildings.

What is your normal work process in collaborations with partners?
More thematic partners than long term partners. More volunteer driven chapter, only one paid staff member. Projects have to be “fun” for volunteers to work with them rather than running projects for the goals. Passion driven, and might look random, but based on what areas volunteers are interested in. Some projects have agreements, but running by passion tends to make things happen without written agreements. Some projects gets funding by the partners, but most not. Usually not running projects where a room is “filled by people”.

Are you having a work plan for new partnerships and collaborations?
Yes, but loose. Year by year flexibility based on what volunteers wnat to work with. Five year strategy based on community support and outreach, and everything should fall in those areas. Main focus is outreach, and to turn new friends into community members. Support in getting books/resources to volunteers, celebrating WP20 for languages.

What are your desired content partnerships in the future?
Wiki Loves Sience, to get in touch with sience organizations. Wiki Loves botanical, get photos of botanical gardens and nature. Museum of cape town, LGBTQ partnership, might lead to adding artwork to Commons or QR-codes to artwork. Connecting artwork to artists in articles. Run editing workshops to build community and content.

What are your needs for a successful partnership?
Best: Clear outcome for all involved parts. A list of monuments or an uploaded collection is a clear outcome. Money that does not have a decided use is not a clear outcome. Second best: Indirect outcome can be a dataset and resources to hire someone to build a list to be used for a photo contest. Third: Not really clear what should be done or who should do it, trying to avoid these partnerships.

What does the best support look like for a successful partnership?
Resources to build capacity, but not really keen on building up a chapter with staff as it’s hard to motivate. Partnership champion who can run projects and partnerships. Tech support in building templates, data clean up and such. Community liaison working cross language community as there are many languages in SA. Some communities have some members, and other languages don’t have that many editors and need more support. Also interesting to look for similarities with other languages who might have the same problems. Work with knowledge sharing to solve problems.