Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand/Annual Community Activity Report 2024/25

Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand Community Activity Report July 2024 to June 2025 IN DRAFT

Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand Incorporated Society (WANZ)

The Committee of Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand

Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand Incorporated Society (WANZ) continues to recruit members. The Membership Policy states that only natural persons can become members of WANZ and that organisations cannot. Annual membership fees were set at $NZ5 (GST inclusive).

The committee consists of:

• Einebillion (talk · contribs) (President)
• David_Nind (talk · contribs) (Secretary)
• Marshelec (talk · contribs) (Treasurer)
• Pakoire (talk · contribs) (Committee member)
• Schwede66 (talk · contribs) (Committee member)
• MurielMary (talk · contribs) (Committee member)
• Kowhaiarewhana (talk · contribs) (Committee member)
• Avocadobabygirl (talk · contribs) (Committee member)

We have an Executive Advisor, Dianne Skelton who assists the committee.

WMF Funding

The User Group received a General support grant from ESEAP / Wikimedia Foundation. This funding supported activities during the period of this report.

Some individual editors have received in–kind support such as fee waivers for conference attendance by conference organisers.

Organisational development

During 2024/25 the committee:

Grants made

A list of grants made by WANZ is published on the WANZ meta page. During the 2024/25 period, the WANZ committee made the following grants:

Relationships

The WANZ committee and members:

Wikimedia community support

Community meetups

Regular meetups were held during the year, both online and in person, around New Zealand. These included:

• Aotearoa New Zealand Online Meetup: monthly online meetings open to everyone across the country, including regular attendees from Australia. The first 15 minutes is allocated to Aotearoa New Zealand User Group business. x meetings held, X total attendances
• Wellington Meetup: monthly meetings in person. X meetings held, X total attendances
• Auckland Meetup: monthly meetings in person x meetings held, x total attendances
• Christchurch Meetup: monthly meetings in person x meetings held, x total attendances

Note that total number attending include multiple counts of individuals, as they are counted for each meeting they attended.

WANZ social media activity

• Facebook private User group: group is used to assist editors and promote Wikipedia events and meet-ups. x members as at 1 July 2025.
• Facebook public page: this was created with the goals of raising awareness of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in New Zealand, showcasing New Zealand content and highlighting opportunities for people to get involved. x likes and x Followers at 1 July 2025.
• Twitter. The Wikimedia Aotearoa twitter handle has x followers and continues to actively post and share information.
• LinkedIn. The LinkedIn page has x followers at 1 July 2025.

Events and major projects

Campaign Dashboard Campaign Dashboard for 1 July 2024 - 30 June 2025

#1Lib1Ref campaign, 15 May – 5 June with Wikimedia Australia

The #1Lib1Ref campaign in May / June continues to be a focus for the Aotearoa New Zealand committee and community. There remains more work to do to raise awareness among librarians and other knowledge professionals as well as refining training provided to new users who are attracted by the ease of updating citations.

Wikidata New Zealand Project: Connecting New Zealand dissertations to the world

The Wikidata New Zealand Thesis Project involves taking metadata for approximately 66,000 theses from 13 New Zealand educational institutions and uploading it to Wikidata, and citing the theses on Wikipedia where relevant (e.g. when the author has a Wikipedia page). It is the first project to upload dissertations data for a nation, and also possibly the first multi-institutional collaboration for thesis data. The project started in 2021 with community outreach and has been continuing since then. During 2022 the dataset was prepared and uploaded to Wikidata. Further work continued in 2023 with outreach and promotion of the success of the project the focus in 2024.

The work on this project by DrThneed continues with outreach including:

Wikipedia New Zealand Project: New Zealand National Parks

The New Zealand National Parks Project has the goal of bringing the articles of the 14 national parks up to Good Article status. Progress for the year included:

Wikidata New Zealand Project: New Zealand Women Photographers

Jessie Buckland in her commercial photography studio

New Zealand Women Photographers Wikidata Project launched in July 2024 with the aim of improving information about New Zealand women photographers in Wikidata, based on a dataset provided by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. The data set is New Zealand Women Photographers (Q127513013) and is available at https://catalogue.data.govt.nz/dataset/new-zealand-women-photographers.

Edit-a-thons

• Te Maori Edit a thon. https://www.thepost.co.nz/culture/350444135/join-fun-te-papa-wikipedia-editathon

Encouraging GLAM contributions: Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum

Engagement

WANZ considers the relationship with Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum to be a high strategic priority as Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum is investing significantly in engaging and contributing to Wikimedia Foundation projects and is lead exemplar for this type of GLAM Wiki engagement in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Meetings continued between committee members led by Einebillion and James Taylor, Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Encouraging GLAM contributions: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Engagement

WANZ editors with Te Papa editors during the #1Lib1Ref event

WANZ considers the relationship with Te Papa to be a high strategic priority as Te Papa is New Zealand's national museum and national art gallery and engagement with Wikimedia Foundation projects by that institution will strongly influence other GLAM institutions within New Zealand. For the sake of transparency: Einebillion, President of Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand is an employee of Te Papa and is Head of Collection Access. She has been advocating for more engagement with Wikimedia Foundation projects. Avocardobabygirl, Committee member of Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand, is also an employee of Te Papa and is Te Papa's Digital Channels Outreach Manager. Avocardobabygirl continues to develop Te Papa's Wikimedia strategy and workplan and encourage new editors from Te Papa's staff.

Contributions

During 2024/25

Encouraging GLAM contributions: New Zealand Parliamentary Library

The relationship with the New Zealand Parliamentary Library is building. They have received approval from management and are proceeding with their project.

Wikipedia / Radio New Zealand Critter of the Week Project

Giantflightlessbirds continued to coordinate the Critter of the Week Project. Critter of the Week is a long-running and popular Radio New Zealand show in which Nicola Toki (originally of the Department of Conservation, now head of Forest & Bird) and the host Jesse Mulligan talk about New Zealand species both endangered and neglected. It has been running since 2015 on Friday afternoon programming. Giantflightlessbirds and other volunteers have been creating or improving the corresponding Wikipedia article for each species to coincide with the Friday broadcast. A project page was created in 2017 and now contains a more accurate episode list than Radio New Zealand's own website).

Aotearoa Wikipedian at Large 2024

WANZ provided a grant for a 6 month project aimed at assisting Canterbury institutions to engage with the Wikimedia movement and to build the editor base of volunteer Wikimedians in Christchurch, New Zealand. Giantflightlessbirds was the successful applicant and the project ran from January to July 2024.