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Kew Gardens and Wikipedia

John Cummings, Wikimedia Sverige

About me

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John Cummings�Programme Manager at Wikimedia Sverige

• Previously Wikimedian in Residence at UNESCO for 5 years
• I help UN and other large organisations share their knowledge on Wikipedia
• WMSE’s focus this year is on climate and environment, gender

Wikipedia’s mission

�“Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.”��Jimmy Wales, co founder of Wikipedia�

Wikipedia’s reach

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• 500 million people read 20 billion Wikipedia articles every month

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• Wikipedia is available in 300 languages�
• Wikipedia is written by 100,000 volunteers working together�
• Uses CC BY-SA 3.0 Open Access license (accepts any CC license which doesn’t have NC or ND) �

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Working with Wikipedia

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• Wikipedia works with many large organisations to help them share their knowledge�
• Several IGOs are working with Wikipedia including UNESCO, UNEP, WIPO, FAO, UNHCR, UNDP, UN Women, EIB and ESA�
• Wikipedia is a place to share your knowledge, not promote your organization, Wikipedia has strict rules against self-promotion.

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UNESCO images on Wikipedia

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• 6000+ UNESCO images on Wikipedia�
• Appear on articles that have been read 660 million times in 6 years�
• Appear on 50 different language Wikipedias (photos work very well across languages)

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• A tiny percentage of the collection, UNESCO has over 100,000 images, thousands of hours of audio and video

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UNESCO Open Access publication text on Wikipedia

2000 views per month

Impact of IGO text Wikipedia

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• All Wikipedia articles are on the first page on Google Search for the subject
• No drop in publication downloads, creating a new audience

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Wiki Loves Earth

The second largest photography competition in the world.

Runs in 35 countries around the world.

In 10 years it has produced over 600,000 photos seen 100s of millions of times on Wikipedia.

Worked with UNEP to share lists of protected areas around the world.

Current projects

• Create missing species Wikipedia articles(1.6 million are missing including around 75% of plant species).�
• Share species images from the Natural History Museum (NHM have ~3 million images).�
• Share the United Nations Environment Programme worldwide database of protected areas on Wikipedia.

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Images

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We can share images from Kew on Wikipedia with a worldwide audience across many languages.

Example: 1000 images from the Natural History Museum have been seen over 150 million times on Wikipedia across 30 languages.

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Wikipedia articles

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Create English language Wikipedia articles for all species known to science by work with different data providers.

POWO is the agreed best source of information for plant information on Wikipedia.

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Aim

• Significantly lower the barrier to sharing knowledge and about plants on Wikipedia: adding information to an existing Wikipedia article is a much lower barrier than creating a new article, on English Wikipedia new users are banned from creating new articles.
• Creates a place for species images to be seen on Wikipedia: having an article for every plant species will provide a place for images of species from partner organisations would really encourage them to share their content. I do a lot with partner organisations and one of their main motivations is the large audience Wikipedia has.
• Identification: one of the issues Wiki Loves Earth has is that often photographers are unable to identify species, having a species for every plant would allow easier identification and is much more accessible that Wikidata.
• Create a framework and process for other language versions of Wikipedia to do the same: The data from POWO could be used on other language versions of Wikipedia. By creating a process to use these descriptions we make it possible for other languages to follow the same process and show a process that works for using data from other sources., in addition traditional translations can also be made

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Example article (working process)

Example article (working process)

Current progress with Kew

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Working with Rafaël Govaerts to understand Kew’s data and how to use it

Creating first Wikipedia articles using Kew data

Wikipedia community discussion about how best to implement this, how to keep it up to date etc

Contact

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john.cummings@wikimedia.se

About me

About me

About Wikipedia

Example projects?

Current projects

Data

Photos

If POWO could share their data for plant species with us we could use it to create the missing Wikipedia articles, starting with English but also in other languages afterwards. Currently there are around 109,000 articles about plants on English Wikipedia, so there is a really significant gap. This would obviously be really useful for public education on plants, Wikipedia is used by 500 million people a month who read 20 billion articles. It would also encourage more images of plants to be shared on Wikipedia. As an example Wikipedia runs Wiki Loves Earth, the second largest photography competition in the world, having articles about plants would encourage people to photograph plant species without an image.

Being able to create these articles would create 100,000s of links back to the POWO website (one new link for every article created), hopefully increasing traffic to POWO significantly. We would also map POWOs species list to the Wikidata items, allowing us to share any mappings we have to other databases, along with at least 10,000s of openly licensed images POWO could use. We could also promote the collaboration on the Wikipedia social media channels.

The data we would need would be fairly basic e.g Names, URLs, Distribution, List of uses, Synonyms, Bibliography and any matching POWO has done to other databases and sources e.g GBIF. There may be other fields as well that could be useful for this, we understand that there shouldn’t be any licensing issues as the POWO website states that “Data and information on these pages are available under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC-BY)”.

We would also be really open to discussing any other projects with Kew, I know it quite well and have been a member for many years.

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Open Access content repositories

Wikipedia

Seaweed Farming in Tanzania

Yann Macherez

CC BY-SA 4.0

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Open Access images

Pteridium pinetorum� UNESCO

CC BY-SA 4.0

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Images

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• IGOs produce a huge number of photos and graphics�
• Often the content is unique �
• We can give you metrics on any content shared with Wikipedia

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Example

UNESCO images on Wikipedia

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• 6000+ UNESCO images on Wikipedia�
• Appear on articles that have been read 660 million times in 6 years�
• Appear on 50 different language Wikipedias (photos work very well across languages)

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• A tiny percentage of the collection, UNESCO has over 100,000 images, thousands of hours of audio and video

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WIPO images on Wikipedia

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• 300 photos and graphics�
• 900,000 page views in 9 months �
• Most popular images were taken at cultural events at WIPO

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FAO images on Wikipedia

• 120 graphics from publications�
• 11 million views in 20 months

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WHO images on Wikipedia

• 300 graphics from publications�
• 15 million views in 28 months

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UN Women images on Wikipedia

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• 20 graphics �
• 3.3 million views in 20 months

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Open Access Text

A process to reuse any open license text on Wikipedia

Instructions

Wikipedia

Metrics

OA text

UNESCO Open Access publication text on Wikipedia

2000 views per month

Metrics tool

Impact of IGO text Wikipedia

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• All Wikipedia articles are on the first page on Google Search for the subject
• No drop in publication downloads, creating a new audience

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People adding text

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• Staff (FAO staff are adding the info themselves)�
• Wikipedian in Residence (we can help you find one)�
• Volunteers

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FAO publication text on Wikipedia

Report and summary

Uploading to Wikimedia Commons

Updating Wikipedia pages

*For more information on page views (Google Chrome recommended): https://tools.wmflabs.org/massviews/?platform=all-access&agent=user&source=search&target=hastemplate%3A%22Free-content_attribution%22_insource%3A%22Publisher_%3D_FAO%22&range=latest-20&project=en.wikipedia.org&sort=views&direction=1&view=list

Joint projects

Total solar eclipse� Michael S Adler

CC BY-SA 4.0

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Promoting Wikipedia Open Access photography competitions

• Promoted by UNESCO, UN and other agencies to over 10 million people�
• Create over 400,000 Open Access images per year that everyone can use including in publications

Wikipedia photography exhibition on cultural heritage in danger

UNESCO, Paris

United Nations, Geneva

Spain

Sweden

WikiGap

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• Campaign to close the gender gap on Wikipedia, both women and gender related issues.
• OHCHR, UNFPA and others have nominated names and topics.
• FAO, UN Women and UNESCO have hosted events.
• Thousands of women have new Wikipedia articles
• Share lists of important women who should have a Wikipedia article with us.

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Wiki4Women: International Women’s Day

Examples of other partnerships

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World Health Organization and Wikimedia Foundation partnership on COVID 19 information

UN Human Rights and Wikimedia Argentina partnership on human rights education��Wikimedia Sverige creating the first worldwide database of cultural heritage institutions with UNESCO delegations

Email me

If you’d like to work with Wikipedia please email me�

John Cummings: John.Cummings@wikimedia.se

Additional slides

WikiGap is a gender gap campaign in collaboration with the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It improves the representation of women and gender topics on Wikimedia projects through supporting Wikimedia groups to run events.

Running for 5 years

113 programmes in 60 countries

54 000 new/edited articles

2700 ppl involved in workshops

204 million page views

Promoting Wikipedia Open Access photography competitions

Wiki Loves Monuments

Wiki Loves Earth

Wiki Loves Africa

Coronavirus information on Wikipedia

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Many organisations are working towards addressing the pandemic and are producing information they want to share with the public on many different aspects, however they often are not reaching a wide audience.

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Wikipedia and Coronavirus

Wikipedia is one of the main sources of information people are using to understand the pandemic. However Wikipedia contributors are currently mainly focussed on the medical aspects of the pandemic leaving many topics undocumented.

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Every day in April 2021 over one million people visiting the Wikipedia Coronavirus pandemic article, Wikipedia has 100s of articles about different aspects of the pandemic.

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Process

I created a process to help organisations with knowledge on different aspects of the pandemic share it on Wikipedia in three stages:

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1. Organisations collate information

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• Information is shared with Wikipedia contributors

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• Wikipedia contributors add the content to articles

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UN Coronavirus information on Wikipedia

Three different kinds of information to share:

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1. Sources list: a list of reference sources produced by the organisation or in the their areas of work
2. Main messages: A curated list of the organisations most important pieces of information they want to share with the public with their own and other organisations documents as references.
3. Missing topics: A list of topics they have identified as missing from Wikipedia.

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Example: messages

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Wikipedia: Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare workers

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Progress

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50 messages added to Wikipedia

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5 Languages

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Articles are viewed over 15,000 times per day

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Data

UNESCO data on Wikipedia

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Wikipedia articles on World Heritage sites (that use UNESCO data) receive�7.3 million page views per month.

UNESCO data in Google search results

Wikipedia

Wikipedia and

other sources

Wikipedia

UN data

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UN and Wikipedia

Mezquita de Nasirolmolk, Shiraz, Irán� Diego Delso

CC BY-SA 4.0

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Summary

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• Share your Open Access content on Wikipedia to reach a worldwide audience�
• Text, images, data, audio, video, etc�
• Wikipedia can provide metrics for all content shared�
• Wikipedia requires an Open Access license, no NC or ND�

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A model for collaboration between UN and Wikipedia

UN holds some of the knowledge the public need knowledge to fulfill the SDGs�UN’s partner organisations which hold much of the rest of the knowledge��The UN investment a huge amount in creating knowledge�The knowledge is spread over 100s of websites, in pdfs, behind paywalls etc��Wikipedia has the infrastructure to bring this knowledge together �Wikipedia is where 500 million people are looking for information�Wikipedia as a central repository for knowledge to fulfil the SDGs

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Getting started

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• I can help your agency adopt Open Access and create pilot Wikipedia projects�
• For bigger projects:
• Work with a local Wikimedia chapter
• Hire a Wikipedian in Residence, I can help you find one

�John.Cummings@wikimedia.org.uk ��bit.ly/PIAMWP

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FAO’s work�with Wikipedia�

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Starting out (2019)

• Wikipedia experts closely guide FAO Publications team

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Consolidation (2020-2021)

• Publications team edits pages, supported by subject specialists

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Broadening (2021-2022)

• Workshops to empower staff to edit pages independently
• Tentative involvement of relevant external audiences
• Focus on international days to raise profile (ahead of day)

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Top pages with FAO content (as at 18/03/2022)

• Sustainable Development Goals (4950 views/day)
• Women’s empowerment (2422 views/day)
• Biodiversity (2278 views/day)

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Additional slides

Opportunity

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• IGOs are producing knowledge through publications and their website

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• Publications are often written in an accessible way for a general audience�
• Some agencies publish under a Wikipedia compatible license

Knowledge sharing with IGOs

Margaret Hamilton, navigation software produced for the Apollo Project

Draper Laboratory

CC BY-SA 3.0

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Resources

• A central place on Wikipedia to share content from all UN agencies�
• A process to add open license text to Wikipedia from any source�
• Guidance on adopting Open Access�
• Guidance on working with Wikipedia�

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A central place to share IGO content on Wikipedia

Guidance on working with Wikipedia

Using images from Wikipedia

Wikipedia as a worldwide database for any subject

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• Wikipedia can be a worldwide database for anything, it just needs the data.

How to work with Wikipedia

Mini Wikipedia globe

Lane Hartwell

CC BY-SA 3.0

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Comparing UNESCO and Wikimedia web traffic

UNESCO website received 0.04% of the web traffic of Wikimedia in 2016

Competitions on Wikipedia

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• 1000 World Heritage Wikipedia articles created and improved across 15 languages.
• 100s of UNESCO images were added to Wikipedia articles�
• Image views increased from 1 million to 10 million per month

Instructions for adding Open Access text to Wikipedia

What kinds of text are suitable for Wikipedia

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What licenses are accepted on Wikipedia

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How to add the text to Wikipedia�

�How to attribute the text�

�Metrics, how many times the text is seen on Wikipedia

Open Access

Frost Bubble�Daniela Rapava

CC BY-SA 4.0

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The philosophy of Open Access

• Knowledge is free and should be shared among those who need it
• Access to past knowledge is essential to create new knowledge
• Everyone has a right to knowledge, and authors exercise their right to share
• Open Access is not contrary to copyright
• No individual should be discriminated due to disadvantages
• Open Access fosters development of knowledge societies

The growth of Open Access

UNESCO and Open Access

Butrint Theater in Albania�Arian Mavriqi

CC BY-SA 4.0

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UNESCO mandate on Open Access

• UNESCO has a mandate to promote Open Access, working with Wikipedia is one of UNESCO’s Open Access projects:�
• Improve awareness about the benefits of Open Access among policy makers, researchers and knowledge managers.�
• Facilitate the development and adoption of Open Access enabling policies.�
• Cooperate with local, regional and global initiatives in support of Open Access.�

UNESCO Open Access content

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• Adopted Open Access for publications in 2013�
• 1500+ Open Access publications�
• An archive of over 100,000+ photos, videos, audio files + data�

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UNESCO images on Wikipedia

FindingGLAMs�A worldwide map of cultural heritage institutions

John Cummings CC BY-SA 4.0

A worldwide database of cultural heritage institutions

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• We want to make sure all countries have their cultural heritage documented on Wikipedia

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• A free public resource for citizens, educators, tourists and companies to use in their products

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• Information on location and contact details is crucial to provide support in disasters

UNESCO and Wikipedia working together

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• Wikipedia has the network, technical knowledge infrastructure and audience �
• UNESCO has the subject knowledge, contacts, government delegations

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• Working with UNESCO delegations to identify additional datasets

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• Imported data on around 20,000 institutions (70,000 total on Wikipedia)

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• Created a tool to explore cultural heritage institutions

New cultural heritage organisation on Wikipedia since June (pink)

Cultural institutions without Wikipedia articles (orange)