Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Deutschland/September 2012

Draft of Wikimedia Deutschland's Annual Plan 2013

WMDE's draft version of our Annual Plan 2013 was published on September 21. Executive Director Pavel Richter, members of the Supervisory Board and WMDE staff subsequently toured five German cities in order to garner feedback and offer public discussion of the draft version. At the same time, we have been inviting online discussion on the Meta talk page of the draft. Feedback is most welcome and will help shape discussion of the plan up until it is to be voted on by WMDE's members at the general assemby in November. Be bold, an English translation of the draft is available and open for your comments!

Politics and Society

Open Data and German public transport

In recent weeks a project called openPlanB began publishing timetable data of Germany's federal public transportation company Deutsche Bahn. OpenPlanB's slogan is innovation without permission and apparently they stuck to it tightly when putting the data online. In light of this, German blogger Jens Best and Wikimedia Deutschland's Mathias Schindler wrote an open letter to Deutsche Bahn, asking the company to release timetable data under a free license. The company's initial answer was negative. Shortly afterwards, a subsidiary company of Deutsche Bahn published an open letter to openPlanB themselves, pointing out that the project's release violated copyright and would result in legal action, if openPlanB decided to release more data. The open letter concludes with the company proposing to meet with other open data supporters. Jens Best and Mathias Schindler both received an invitation from Deutsche Bahn and will meet with them.

Towards a transparency law in Berlin

The German state of Hamburg will pass a transparency law in the coming days. Wikimedia Deutschland welcomes this law as the most encompassing piece of legislation regarding the freedom of information in Germany yet. In order to find out about the chances of introducing a similar law for the state of Berlin a first networking meet-up was hosted at Wikimedia Deutschland's office in September. The meet-up was organized by Mehr Demokratie e.V., a German non-profit organization. Meanwhile, two factions of the Berlin state parliament proposed drafts of a transparency law, one of which was brought to parliament. Wikimedia Deutschland plans on joining upcoming meet-ups.

Forum on Copyright Issues

On September 19 the German Federal Department of Justice hosted an event on the development of copyright legislation. Secretary Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger was fairly unspecific about details, apart from commenting on a new handling of capped written warnings and the implementation of EU legislation regarding orphan works. Wikimedia Deutschland test-ran live protocolling via Google Docs, in order to enable people to follow the event from a distance. The necessary link for reading and commenting was passed along via Twitter. Addtionally, our colleagues from influential German blog netzpolitik.org mirrored the text on one of Germany's most-read weblogs.

Education and Knowledge

The department concentrated on restructuring and targeting goals. Julia Kloppenburg joined the Education and Knowledge department, while Nils Weichert continued his work as new head of the department. At the end of the month WMDE's speakers' network met for the second time.

EduWiki

Our department introduced its work at the first EduWiki conference in Leicester. Particular attention was paid to the concept of our speakers' network and the variety of target groups that we focus on.

Senior Citizens Program (Silberwissen)

We are pleased to announce our Senior Citizens Program Silberwissen's partnership with the museum village in Düppel, which was kicked off with an invitation to Wikipedians for an exclusive tour of the village.

Museum staff and Wikipedians will conduct a workshop once the museum season is over, in order to determine the next steps of the cooperation. Our goal is to derive quality articles about ancient crafts, images and maybe even short movies for Wikipedia from the partnership. Of course, motivating people from the museum's staff to edit Wikipedia is another goal.

Silberwissen workshops took place at several cities in September. We celebrated a first by cooperating with an initiative in Hanover, which is officially supported by the city. This kind of a three-way cooperation may be a role model for future workshops.

Wikipedia School Program

There were only few Wikipedia workshops at schools in September, due to the summer holidays. At the start of the upcoming school year the so-called Wikipedia AG (AG is short for study group in German) will make it to classrooms in Lower-Saxony.

Wikipedia and Diversity

September saw a second successful Wikipedia workshop for female editors. We partnered wie Frau und Beruf e.V. (association for women in business) to inform about communication in Wikipedia and, of course, editing.

In late August Wikimedia Deutschland published a statement against the discrimation of female Wikipedia editors, which drew much attention to our blog and resulted in almost 200 comments. Shortly afterwards, the feminist IT bloggers from femgeeks guest-posted an analysis of the overall situation female editors find themselves in. In September we followed up the discussions by holding a public IRC office hour. The chat's main subject was the Teahouse project as a role model for welcome portals in Wikipedia. Please find the chat log here.

In addition, Wikimedia Deutschland participated in events at the Berlin chapter of webgrrls.de e.V. and the Social Media Week Berlin, where we discussed editor diversity in Wikipedia.

Volunteer Support

Tools

The community of the German Wikipedia is currently discussing the Article Feedback Tool and whether or not to test implementation. Wikimedia Deutschland joined the discussion by sketching a scenario that would integrate and expand on recent ideas and suggestions.

Portal Meetings

From an organizing point of view the so-called limes congress is one of the most challenging Wikipedia portal meetings in 2012. Wikimedia Deutschland was happy to support it. We also supported the world's largest photo contest Wiki Loves Monuments in the German regions of Wuppertal and Cologne.

Scholarships

Wikimedia Deutschland's supporting program Bilderschatz focuses on digitized image and audio files, photo projects and content donations. Our goal is to support free access und free use of media material, especially in Wikipedia. In September we helped volunteers who collected historical and new innovations about the IFA 2012 (major electronic industry fair in Berlin), digitized images or organized photo flights.

Community Projects Budget

Nine applicants committed a total of 13 project ideas to the third round of Wikimedia Deutschland's Community Projects Budget (CPB). CPB committee member Peter Wuttke stepped down in September. We would like to express our gratitude for Peter's volunteer commitment for the CPB! The Community is looking for a candidate to fill his position in the committee. Further information about current CPB projects can be found on the project page.

Toolserver

The public discussion of Wikimedia Deutschland's draft of the 2013 annual plan brought with it continued debate about the future of the Toolserver. There is considerable maintenance work ahead, while moving to Wikimedia Labs is set to begin in 2013. The latter will need substantial preparation.

International Affairs

At Wikimedia Deutschland we commit ourselves to more international cooperation and networking with communities, Wikimedia chapters and the Wikimedia Foundation. That's what our new International Affairs Unit sets out to do, starting January 1, 2013. In a detailed blog introduction Nicole Ebber gives an overview of her plans for the unit, asking for contributions and presenting possible means of support: Free Knowledge across borders (English!).

Research and Development

RENDER

In September the RENDER project focused on further developing and improving the RENDER supporting tools. Project lead Angelika Adam held a presentation of the tools in front of community members at the WikiConvention 2012. You can find the slides on Wikimedia Commons. Feedback on the RENDER Toolkit was great and the team received a lot of helpful input. Many thanks to all contributors! Please keep supporting us in making the tools better and more efficient.

The end of September also marked the end of RENDER's project year 2. The team is busy finishing several reports that review the work of the past months. Wikimedia Deutschland's most comprehensive report is about the analytical and supporting tools in our Wikipedia case study. The document (D5.1.2, English) will be published on the project website in the coming days.

For further information or questions please contact Angelika Adam or the RENDER team.

Wikidata

The Wikidata team worked on finalizing preparations for the first Wikidata deployment. The code is currently under review by Wikimedia Foundation developers. The team welcomed Anja Jentzsch, who is taking care of quality assurance and deployment. Code-wise much work was done regarding edit conflicts and permissions, plus a revamped version of the special page to create new Wikidata entries. Moreover, work on Wikidata phase 2 (infoboxes) began in September. The team also met with a group of data base experts to discuss phases 2 and 3 with them.

Please find more detailed weekly summaries here. And yes, Wikidata has joined Facebook and Google+. If you want to contribute to Wikidata, you might want to check this out.

Public Relations

Press releases

WMDE used a press release to promote the Wiki Loves Monuments contest. Additionally, we supported regional press coverage by working with the volunteer organizers of events in Wuppertal and Cologne. Some "on the road" coverage was provided for by photographers who shared their experiences and anecdotes on our blog. Thanks for sharing!

WikiConvention 2012

The WikiConvention in Dornbirn, Austria took place over the first September weekend. More than 200 participants attended the event that was entirely organized by volunteers. The WikiCon program schedule touched on many topics and highlighted a number of core themes for Wikipedia and the fellow Wikimedia projects, e.g. working climate and editor retention. Wikimedia Deutschland wrote a series of blog reports about the WikiCon and we did press work both before the event and at the venue itself. Please find an overview of WikiCon press coverage on WMDE's website.

Wikimedium

We published the third 2012 issue of our quarterly free newspaper Wikimedium in September. The issue focuses on diversity in the Wikimedia projects, especially in Wikipedia. The Wikimedium came along with a reader questionnaire, which we hope will yield information on how to further improve the reading experience for Wikipedians, WMDE members, donators and cultural partners.

Information material

Wikimedia Deutschland published new information material about our projects and programs last month: a flyer highlighting our volunteer support programs, an updated Wikidata mock-up, a flyer about our various education programs, as well as writing pads for Wikipedia workshops. Furthermore, we finished an updated Wikidata flyer in English.

Fundraising

This year's fundraising campaign will kick off in November. That might seem a long way to go for some, but WMDE's fundraising team is in the middle of preparing daily routines for the campaign. In September team members attended the WikiConvention 2012, interviewing ten Wikipedians for personal campaign appeals. Back in Berlin interview work continued at Wikimedia Deutschland's office. At this point it is safe to say that this year's community support will render the personal appeal angle for the upcoming fundraiser as multi-faceted as never before. We are really excited and more than happy about any kind of further support.

The team conducted two fundraising tests in the German Wikipedia. For a short period of time Jimmy Wales' personal appeal was displayed to anonymous users (not logged in). We tested a new landing page layout and some minor changes of the donation form. As always, the results are publicly available. Check out the Wikimedia Foundation's interesting new banner layouts, as well!

Finally, we are pleased to introduce two new members of our fundraising team: Wladimir Raizberg has been supporting Wikimedia Deutschland on various occasions in recent months. He joined us as a working student and permanent team member on October 1. His tasks include donor communication and administration. We also welcome new intern Johanna Havemann, who will support the fundraising team in general.

Jobs

Please find job postings on Wikimedia Deutschland's website.