Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Österreich/March 2016

March 2016
Report

Community Support

German-language Wikipedia's 15th Birthday in Vienna

Birthday present

We had celebrated (English-language) Wikipedia's 15th birthday in January with Wikipedia 15 events in five cities in Austria and nearly 100 Wikimedians attending. German-language Wikipedia's 15th birthday on March 16th was conceived as a smaller event for the Viennese core community. It was integrated into the regular Vienna Wikipedia meet-up (“Stammtisch“) at a restaurant near Schönbrunn palace. We provided small gifts for the attendees: a package of Wikipedia chocolates and Wikipedia 15 beer coasters.

Individuals involved: 17 (active editors: 17). - WMAT support: birthday presents (Wikipedia chocolates, Wikipedia 15 beer coasters) for all participants.

→ Wikipedia's 15th Birthday in Vienna in the German-language Wikipedia

AdminCon in Cuxhaven

The AdminCon is a regular meeting of the German-language Wikipedia's sysops and interested Wikipedians. This year's AdminCon was the fourth edition, after previous events in 2012, 2014 and 2015. It took place in the city of Cuxhaven in the far north of Germany. Austria and Switzerland are located south of Germany which might have contributed to the low attendance rate of Austrian and Swiss German-language Wikipedians: two attendees traveled to the event from Austria, two from Switzerland and 53 from Germany.

However, the two Austrians contributed a lot to the program and were involved as presenters and/or hosts in five of the 16 program slots. These five slots dealt with:

experiences with newly elected sysops,
initiatives around newbies and welcoming culture,
sysop elections without frustrations and traumatic experiences,
“deadmin“ and “temp-deadmin“ as undead wiki-law,
banning users or banning accounts.

Individuals involved: 57 (active editors: 57). - WMAT support: 2 travel grants for participants from Austria.

→ Report in members wiki (in German)

→ AdminCon 2016 in the German-language Wikipedia

→ Images on Wikimedia Commons

Art+Feminism in Linz

The first ever Austrian Art+Feminism edit-a-thon took place in Linz this year. It was initiated by a local art student who learned about the New York event, liked the idea, and wanted to bring it her hometown. She had a cooperation with a local art gallery which hosted the event. As she was mainly in touch with the international project coordinators in the beginning, there was no link to WMAT so that we learned about this event only by accident and had some trouble getting in touch with her. All this happened pretty late in the process, so that there was not much time left to mobilize our community or implement a communication strategy to reach out to interested newbies. WMAT provided all the available last minute support possible and two staff female members also attended the hackathon in their spare time in order to help welcoming potential newcomers. Unfortunately, only the organizer and one local Wikipedian showed up, but together with the the two WMAT team members they made the best of it: Apart from editing Art+Feminism related topics on German and English Wikipedia, they introduced the organizer to the wiki world and made plans on how to set up a more successful event next year.

We would strongly suggest, that the international project team works together more closely with local groups and chapters in future, as we heard about similar problems in other countries. On the plus side, WMAT established contact to volunteers who would like to push gender-related projects in Austria, which might be an advantage for future projects and initiatives.

Written content created during Art+Feminism in Linz
Metric start date	Metric end date	Metric namespaces	Bytes absolute sum	Bytes positive only sum	Bytes negative only sum	Bytes net sum	Edits	Pages created
2016-03-05 09:00:00	2016-03-05 16:00:00	0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 106, 107	16997	16346	-651	15695	52	5 (1 new article)

Individuals involved: 4 (active editors: 1, new editors: 1 [engaging 2 editors who have formerly not been or very rarely been active WMAT volunteers into the planning and/or executing], WMAT staff: 2). - WMAT support: Wikipedia goodies.

→ Images on Wikimedia Commons

WikiDienstag

The WikiDienstag (“WikiTuesday“) is a weekly meet-up in the WMAT office. Volunteers share their knowledge and work together on improving the content of Wikimedia projects.

Topics in March 2016:

March 2nd: Preparation Wikimedia CEE Spring 2016
March 8th: Preparation WikiCon 2016
March 15th: Newbies at WLE & Co
March 22nd: Articles around the Kaisersteinbruch quarry
March 29th: Photography postprocessing

Individuals involved: 26 (active editors: 25, WMAT staff: 1). - WMAT support: infrastructure, co-organisation, promotion.

→ WikiDienstag in the German-language Wikipedia

Free Content

Gallery: Equipment/accreditation support

We support Wikimedia Commons photographers with equipment from our tech pool and with accreditations for events. This gallery highlights some of the activities in March 2016.

Individuals involved: 10 (active editors: 8, WMAT staff: 2). - WMAT support: equipment and/or accreditation.

Reach / Free Knowledge Awareness

Edit-a-thon: New Media in History and History Education II

Students are writing their first Wikipedia article ...

... collaboratively on an etherpad

Four experienced Wikimedians introduced 19 students of the University of Vienna to Wikipedia editing with our tried and tested edit-a-thon concept. This event was part of a university course by Prof. Andrea Brait and Prof. Christian Wagner on new media in history and history education. The students are future teachers. Last semester we had already supported a course on the same topic by professors Brait and Wagner.

During the edit-a-thon, all of the students had to write one Wikipedia article about a pre-selected subject together, the Palais Larisch-Mönnich (+ 5086 bytes). The Palais Larisch-Mönnich is a palace in Vienna which serves as the Iraqi embassy in Austria and was allegedly the European headquarters of the secret service of Iraq. The article was even presented at the German-language Wikipedia mainpage and got nearly 13,000 views within two days – a truly motivating experience for the students.

For the students, this edit-a-thon was the start of a semester-long focus on Wikimedia projects. For the results of the university course as a whole, see Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Österreich/June 2016#Wikiversity: New Media in History and History Education II.

Individuals involved: 25 (active editors: 3, WMAT staff: 1). - WMAT support: workshop, information material.

→ Images on Wikimedia Commons

Edit-a-thon: HistoCat

The Papal College of Philosophy and Theology Benedict XVI. in the Lower-Austrian village of Heiligenkreuz is a small Roman-Catholic university. One of their professors, the church historian Alkuin Volker Schachenmayr, is a Wikipedian. He wanted his 10 students of the “HistoCat“ university course on the history of Christianity to use Wikiversity during his course. That is why he invited two other Wikimedians to conduct one of WMAT's edit-a-thons as a first introduction to wiki editing. The edit-a-thon resulted in the Wikipedia article Gabriel Fazeny (+ 4060 bytes) about an abbot of Wilhering Abbey.

For the results of the university course as a whole, especially concerning Wikiversity, see Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Österreich/June 2016#Wikiversity: HistoCat.

Individuals involved: 13 (active editors: 2, WMAT staff: 1). - WMAT support: workshops, information material.

→ Report in members wiki (in German)

→ Images on Wikimedia Commons

Learning Pattern

In March we traditionally create our FDC impact report for the previous grant period. As we got a lot of praise for our reporting style, we thought we put some tricks of the trade into a learning pattern.

2015

Mar

2017