Annual report 2015

Annual report 2015 for Wikimedia Denmark (WMDK).

Organization

Wikimedia Denmark (WMDK) is the organization supporting Wikimedia activities in Denmark, such as promoting Wikipedia. Most of the active members are based in Copenhagen and most activities also take place there, though a few activities have occurred outside the capital area.

The number of members of WMDK has been around 20 - the fiscal year ended with 24. We maintain around 8,000 Danish Kroner on our bank account. Apart from this amount, WMDK has received a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, which amounts to 21,685 Danish Kroner. This grant was originally intended to cover the salary for the Wikipedian-in-Residence (WiR) in 2012, but as the hosting institutions chose to fund the WiR the grant was not spent. The budget of WMDK is far less than the budget from WMDK sister chapter in Sweden, Wikimedia Sverige, which in 2015 had a budget on several million Swedish Kroner.^[1]

The board was elected in 2014 at the WMDK general assembly, which served until a new board was elected in September 2015. We have seen little change among the members of the board. The general assembly in 2014 saw no change.

Throughout the years Ole Palnatoke Andersen has been chairman and continues to be so. The board usually meets each month, alternating between face-to-face meeting and board meetings held via IRC and Skype with minutes written on Etherpad and moved to the dk.wikimedia.org wiki once finished. There are five board members and one alternate. The alternate usually participates in the meetings.

WMDK has setup a strategy with specific goals for the organization. While some goals are still far from being reached in 2015, e.g., 100 members of WMDK and 12 months of Wikipedian in residence, others have been reached with respect to WikiWednesdays and edit-a-thon.

Work in the organization

In the start of the 2014-2015 year we sent one participant to participate in the Nordic FSCONS (Free Society Conference and Nordic Summit). The purpose of the visit is networking with people from WMSE and people interested in the Wikimedia movement. Also it gives a general look at topics that might be of interest for us and our members.

Throughout the year we have had discussions with different kind of organisations, who have sought help or interest in Wikipedia/Wikimedia topics. Among others were Wonderful Copenhagen who interested in hosting Wikimania and a museum who had a copyright conflict with Google Art Project. In these cases we only say our opinion and explain how things work. We do not recommend to take or abstain from certain actions.

Furthermore the chairman has spoken to different medias, mainly newspapers and radio, when there has been a story about Wikipedia. He also participated in an interview with a group of university students.

Together with Wikimedians from around the world, WMDK participated in the Wikimedia Conference. The conference is a good way to meet other Wikimedians and learn more from them. Perhaps not a big surprise after all, it seems that other chapters also are struggling with recruiting 'fresh blood' and are in the risk of burning out.

WMDK got two sets of promotional material in 2015 with Wikimedia logos: Two roll up banners and a batch of magnetic stickers.

The "Wikimedia Danmark" group has 61 members^[2], the "Dansk Wikipedia" group 147 members^[3] and the "Wikimedia Danmark" page had 653 likes^[4] in December 2015.

Events

WikiWednesdays and "Skrivestuer"

WMDK continues to organize WikiWednesdays in the Copenhagen area. The informal meetings usually take place the first Wednesday in each month. During the summer months the events are usually outside and often resulting in an improvised photo session with photos for Wikimedia Commons. They are typically announced on Facebook and on the Danish Wikipedia by our chairman. In 2015 we had 12 WikiWednesdays.^[5]

One of the goals for the year was to organize open edit events (Skrivestuer) each month. This goal was accomplished. Events were held at cafes or at organisations who were interested in using some time to improve Wikipedia. Our organisation is very centered around Copenhagen, so it was good to see events in the second and third largest cities, Aarhus and Odense - though the first one was cancelled. A total of 10 open edit events was organised in 2015.^[6]

While these events continue to be held, they do not attract more than a few persons beyond the core group of WMDK members.

Edit-a-thons

For the International Women's Day, we helped out with We Can Edit-a-thon on 8th and 9th of March.^[7] The event had around 70 editors, with most people participating on Sunday, which makes the edit-a-thon by far the most successful in Denmark. The organizers had received support from Wikimedia Foundation. WMDK was present with several members which helped individual editors and provided tutorial talks. Another edit-a-thon took place 7th November 2015 in connection with the documentary film festival CPH:DOX 2015. Fifteen people were listed as participants. This number includes WMDK members.^[8]

The National Gallery of Denmark (Statens Museum for Kunst) was particular active with Wikipedia events in 2015 under the name "Wikilabs". With curator of digital museum practice Merete Sanderhoff as key organizer the National Gallery of Denmark and the nearby gallery, the Hirschsprung Collection, organized a series of afternoon sessions with interactions between WMDK members and people with an interest in art, particularly professionally working curators. An associated Facebook group, Wiki Labs Kunst,^[9] has 59 members. While the sessions each have been too short as an edit-a-thon with thorough development of Wikipedia articles, they have brought WMDK in close contact with a considerable number of people new to Wikipedia and brought increased interest to art in Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. Particularly WMDK member Villy Fink Isaksen was active taking photos of public domain artworks in Danish museums, uploading them to Wikimedia Commons and annotating them on Wikidata. These events will continue in 2016.

"Wikitræf" and photoday

WMDK and Wikipedians are from time to time organized "Wikitræf" or "Fotosafari", whole-day events among Wikipedians from across the country. In September 2015 one was organized to the area between Kolding and Haderslev, but especially to the recent UNESCO World Heritage site Christiansfeld. A number of photos was taken.^[10] Four persons participated.^[11]

In January 2015 a "photoday" with photo shooting of items in The Royal Danish Arsenal Museum (Tøjhusmuseum) took place. It was organized by WMDK long time collaborator Charlotte S. H. Jensen‎ from the National Museum of Denmark.^[12]^[13]

Wikidag

In connection with our general assembly in September, we have since 2013 organized a wikidag (English Wikiday) with invited talks. For the Wikidag 2015 one of the speakers were Anders Christiansen, who talked about an investigation he made for his radio program; the identity of a person making vandalism to an article about a public person. Nanna Thylstrup gave a talk about the We Can Edit-a-thon which she organized. We discussed why it was such a success and some explanations were put forward in the discussion: Large network, presence in radio, a topic that interested people, Renegade Runners as energetic people with a capability to create events, 18th March as an notable topic and paid ads. Thylstrup also noted the struggle she had with her Wikimedia Foundation application and finalizing the accounting. It questions whether Wikimedia Foundation applications are worthwhile for such events.

Wikipedia radio programs

In 2014 culture researcher, author and critic Torben Sangild began a unique radio program series on the station Radio24syv. The program was entitled Wiki-værkstedet: Et program om alt (English: The wiki workshop: a program about everything). The hour-long program featured thorough discussions between Sangild and invited experts of topics related to individual Wikipedia articles. Examples have been Wegner's Danish design classic The round chair and Berlin's Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas. Apart from the topical discussion the program also explained elements of Wikipedia editing. Five programs aired in 2014 and it expanded considerably in 2015 with 27 programs. The last program aired on the 8th of August 2015 featuring former political party leader and minister Anette Vilhelmsen.^[14] The programs provide an excellent opportunity to correct, verify and extend existing Wikipedia articles. The WMDK chairman participated in one broadcast back in 2014.^[15]

Radio24syv is a government-funded talk radio setup to compete with DR (the Danish BBC-like media organization). Radio24syv claims to have 300,000 listeners on average and a growing number of podcast downloads.^[16] The programs of Wiki-værkstedet are available as podcasts from the homepage of the radio station^[17] and from iTunes.^[18]

On 4th April 2015 a particular interesting program aired which discussed Wikipedia articles on living people. The host had invited notable theatre director Jon Stephensen, whose Wikipedia article has been the subject of controversial edits. The problems on the "Jon Stephensen" article were already discussed back in 2012,^[19] and the radio program brought renewed focus on the edits. A radio program on Radio24syv focusing on culture, AK24syv, took the issue up and made an entire radio program series on the edits around the "Jon Stephensen" article and related articles in the style of investigative gonzo journalism. The program series and podcast Sincere would span 11 individual programs broadcast from April to June^[20] and later receive a nomination for the Danish "Podcast of the Year".^[21] The chairman and one member of the board were involved in the radio program.

Wikimedia projects

The Danish Wikipedia is the main wiki for Wikimedia Denmark. In 2015 it reached 200,000 articles.

WMDK Chairman Ole Palnatoke Andersen is often asked for when medias are reporting about Wikipedia. On a general basis users try to keep track of Wikipedia stories. Most of the stories is Danish media reporting about Danish language Wikipedia, but from time to time also stories about other language versions are noted. For the whole 2015 year, 14 articles have been listed.^[22]

References

[1] ttps://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Budget_2015

[2] ttps://www.facebook.com/groups/56645203730

[3] ttps://www.facebook.com/groups/danskwikipedia/

[4] ttps://www.facebook.com/wikimediadanmark/

[5] ttps://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiWednesday/2015

[6] ttps://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skrivestuer

[7] ttps://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:We_can_edit-a-thon_K%C3%B8benhavn_2015

[8] ttps://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:We_Can_Edit-a-thon_K%C3%B8benhavn_7._november_2015

[9] ttps://www.facebook.com/groups/133970093625705/members/

[10] ttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedian_meetups_in_Denmark_-_september_2015

[11] ttps://da.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Tr%C3%A6f&oldid=7654721

[12] ttps://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Wikipedia_Loves_Nationalmuseet/Projekter/T%C3%B8jhusfotodag

[13] ttps://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153599586146988

[14] ttp://www.radio24syv.dk/programmer/wiki-vaerkstedet/11952743/wiki-vaerkstedet-uge-32-2015/

[15] ttp://www.radio24syv.dk/programmer/wiki-vaerkstedet/10107665/wiki-vaerkstedet-uge-31-2014/

[16] 24syv kæmper med lyttertallene - undtagen på nettet

[17] ttp://www.radio24syv.dk/programmer/wiki-vaerkstedet/

[18] ttps://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/wiki-v-rkstedet/id896177343?mt=2

[19] Hængt ud på Wikipedia

[20] ttp://www.radio24syv.dk/programmer/sincere/

[21] ttp://prixradio.dk/nominerede-2015/

[22] Wikipedia:Presse 2015

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