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Using existing open license text

on Wikipedia

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Opportunity �UNESCO staff hold a huge amount of knowledge which isn’t on Wikipedia

Problem�UNESCO staff are very busy, writing Wikipedia takes a long time.

Solution�Reuse open license text that has already written:

UNESCO has produced over 1200 open license publications
The UNESCO website is full of encyclopedic information

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There’s was no existing process for adding the text……..

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Designing a process

The process of adding open license text to Wikipedia should:

Have simple instructions
Work with Visual Editor
Have metrics to understand the impact of sharing text on Wikipedia

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Wikipedia: Adding open license text to Wikipedia

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Measuring impact

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Adding text to Wikipedia

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Publication text

UNESCO publishes in 6 official UN languages (English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Chinese) and other languages

UNESCO has published over 1200 open license publications, written by UNESCO staff members, academics etc

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Section of article from section of a publication

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New article from section of publication

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New article using a whole publication

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Recommendations from experts at UNESCO

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Education publications

UNESCO Education department have employed a contractor for 2 and half months to identify text in open license UNESCO publications, publish these recommendations on Wikiproject United Nations and add text to articles themselves.

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Science publications

�The main editor of the UNESCO Science Report is adding sections from the publication to add to existing Wikipedia articles and create new ones.

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There have been issues….

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Issues: Technical

Several sections and whole articles have been deleted as copyright violations (people using the copyvio tools and not seeing the attribution statement).�
The tone of the open license text is sometimes different to Wikipedia but there is no/very little documentation on tone (I’m working on this, please help).�
No COI guidance on adding open license text that you or your organisation created.�
Only works on English language Wikipedia so far (please help).

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Issues: Cultural

Interest: �I’m struggling to encourage Wikipedia editors to create articles from the recommendations provided by the experts.

Civility: �Expert contributors have a very different kind of interaction to their usual work experience, some Wikipedia editors are rude, blunt, accusing the experts of COI etc, the experts feel harassed, they have limited time, they can chose to do other things.

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Sources of text

There are over 9000 open license journals (searchable through DOAJ)
GLAMs websites are full of information about their collections

The Metropolitan Museum of Art licenses its whole website under CC0 including 442,676 descriptions of objects in their collection.
The Smithsonian website text is all CC0.

Any websites with encyclopedic content

The Australian Heritage database has 22,000 descriptions of built heritage sites available under CC-BY.

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Wikipedia: Adding open license text to Wikipedia

use

translate

there’s a poster next door, come talk to me

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Plugs

Go to WikiProject United Nations and take a look�
Session: Wizards, Muggles and Wikidata (Harry Potter themed)�Creating a space to collaborate on importing datasets into Wikidata�Saturday 2pm - 3pm

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Spare slides

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Potential

We can now easily import any open license text into English language Wikipedia from any source and measure the reach.

We can vastly increase the number of experts who contribute text to Wikipedia (both directly and indirectly)
It is an additional outreach activity with partner organisations similar to media releases under an open license.
Its another reason for organisations and publishers to make text and content available under an open license (text may also may be easier than images, website text has little resale value).

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Process of adding open license text to Wikipedia

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Some background

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Website text

Biosphere Reserves

Biosphere Reserves are sites that focus on conservation and sustainable use.

Biosphere Reserve descriptions made available under CC-BY-SA IGO 3.0

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Created 70 new articles

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Website text

Biosphere reserves

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A worldwide survey of 160 countries + regions on the state of open licensing

Adding these to Wikipedia will allow Wikimedia chapters, Creative Commons etc to collate information about open licensing across the world

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Background

I have been Wikimedian in Residence at UNESCO for the past 18 months working to share their knowledge and content on Wikimedia projects�

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Wikiproject United Nations

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Metrics: UNESCO visibility report

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Data

We created the Data Import Hub to help people cooperate to import data into Wikidata.

Session:�Wizards, Muggles and Wikidata

Saturday 2pm - 3pm

Blog post:�Wizards, Muggles and Wikidata: The Room of Requirement for structured knowledge

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Mediabank

Allows all people with a UNESCO email address to contribute content

Can semi automate the upload of content to Wikimedia Commons

Open source software available on GitHub soon for any organisation to use