August 2020

Summary of this newsletter

by JP Béland (WMCA), 1 August 2020.

The Fondation Lionel-Groulx is hosting three online Wikipedia training events in French in August.
Wiki Loves Earth 2020 in Canada is now finished. We received a total of 1,174 pictures.
#WPWPCA is still on-going until August 31st, 2020. You are invited to add pictures to Wikipedia articles. Include the hashtag used in Canada #WPWPCA in the edit summary.
A call for participation has been made by Wikimedia Canada to support community initiatives.
Inverse has published an article titled "How the Internet will change our coronavirus memories" where they interviewed Dr James Heilman, a Canadian emergency physician who goes by the username "Doc James" on Wikipedia, a contributor of the WikiProject Medicine. CBC News has also published an article titled "Sask. doctor keeps COVID-19 Wikipedia info accurate with encyclopedic dedication" about him.
A new wiki project called "Abstract Wikipedia" was approved by the Wikimedia Foundation.
A community open letter asking for a pause in the rebranding process of the Wikimedia Foundation was signed by more than 70 affiliates of the Wikimedia Movement, including Wikimedia Canada.
A new version of the tool OpenRefine, allowing to clean messy data and upload them on Wikidata, was released.
The videos of the Celtic Knot Wikimedia Language Conference 2020 are now available for viewing.
The Wikimedia Foundation launched a new blog called "Diff".
From July 15 to August 15, 2020, Wikimedia España is organizing Wiki Loves the Olympics 2020.

Upcoming events in Canada

by JP Béland (WMCA), 1 August 2020.

The Fondation Lionel-Groulx will host three Wikipedia training events in French, entirely online, as part of the Rendez-vous d'histoire du Québec from 13 to 16 August:

Friday 14 August 10 a.m. to 12 a.m.: workshop "Demistify Wikipedia: Basis to find your way and contribute" with Jérémy Bouchez and Mathieu Gauthier-Pilote
Friday 14 August 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.: workshop "Put Wikipedia into practice I: the large epidemics in Quebec" with Jérémy Bouchez and Mathieu Gauthier-Pilote
Sunday 16 August 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.: workshop "Put Wikipedia into practice II: notable figures of the history of Montreal" with Jérémy Bouchez and Mathieu Gauthier-Pilote

You must register here.

Learn more >

Wiki Loves Earth

by JP Béland (WMCA), 1 August 2020.

Wiki Loves Earth is a photographic competition aiming at promoting and documenting protected natural areas.

The 2020 edition in Canada just finished. We received a total of 1,174 pictures from 167 participants. You can see all of them here of Wikimedia Commons.

Now a Canadian jury will select the top 10 winning pictures in Canada and send them to the international jury.

Thank you to all the participants!

Learn more >

#WPWPCA

by Benjamenta, 1 August 2020.

#WPWPCA (Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos in Canada) is a new annual contest aiming at adding photos to Wikipedia articles.

It is running from July 1st until August 31st, 2020. You can participate by adding a picture to a Wikipedia article. When you do so, simply add the hashtag used in Canada to the edit summary: #WPWPCA. That's all!

At the end of the contest, Wikimedia Canada will offer two $100 gift cards from an independent bookstore in your community among the participants from Canada who added the most hashtags #WPWPCA. The international team of the WPWP competition will also offer prizes.

If you wish to organize a contribution or training activity as part of this competition, or if you want to include your WikiClub, do not hesitate to contact us. It could be interesting to host a thematic activity about your city or your region to improve a series of articles that are important for you. Because of COVID-19, please note that all our activities must be online only.

Learn more >

Call for participation

by Viola-Ness, 1 August 2020.

wikimedia Canada would like to renew our call for participation from volunteers in Canada. Wikimedia Canada can offer funding to support community activities that further the mission of the Wikimedia Movement.

Those activities can take different formats, but given the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, all in-person events have been cancelled or postponed until further notice.

Here's a few ideas of projects that you can propose:

Equipment funds to purchase a mobile digitization/documentation kit for use in creating and adding more content to Wikimedia Commons
Expenses for the creation of Canadian focused training resources like presentation slide decks or videos
Expenses to write or translate documentation around specific projects like Wikidata
Prizes for contests that encourage participation

Learn more >

COVID-19

by JP Béland (WMCA), 1 August 2020.

Inverse has published an article titled "How the Internet will change our coronavirus memories". In it, they describe how Wikipedia covers the pandemic.

In particular, they interviewed Dr James Heilman, a Canadian emergency physician who goes by the username "Doc James" on Wikipedia, a contributor of the WikiProject Medicine that edits and reviews articles about medicine on Wikipedia.

CBC News has published an article titled "Sask. doctor keeps COVID-19 Wikipedia info accurate with encyclopedic dedication" about him.

The Wikimedia Foundation has published a page about the response to COVID-19 from the Wikimedia Movement.

Learn more >

A few news from the Wikimedia Movement

by JP Béland (WMCA), 1 August 2020.

The Wikimedia Foundation has announced the approval of a new wiki project called "Abstract Wikipedia". Its goal is to let more people share in more knowledge in more languages. Abstract Wikipedia is an extension of Wikidata. In Abstract Wikipedia, people can create and maintain Wikipedia articles in a language-independant way. ZDNet has published an article about it in French. Denny Vrandečić, who was at the origin of the creation of Wikidata in 2012, will join the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation to pilot this project.

A community open letter on renaming was written by the community to ask for a pause in the rebranding poject of the Wikimedia Foundation. This letter focuses more on the process than the choices of names themselves. More than 70 affiliates of the Wikimedia Movement and 900 individuals have signed it. Wikimedia Canada also signed it after a discussion among Board members.

OpenRefine version 3.4 beta 2 was released. OpenRefine is a tool that allows to clean and format messy data. It can be used to upload date to Wikidata.

PTable is a periodic table that is automatically created from data on Wikidata. It's a great example of how data from Wikidata can be used.

The Celtic Knot Wikimedia Language Conference 2020 was hapenning online on 9 and 10 July. The videos of this conference are now available for viewing.

The Wikimedia Foundation Education Team is looking for outreach collaborators. If you are interested, fill this survey.

The Wikimedia Foundation launched a new blog called "Diff". It is a "blog by and for Wikimedians, intended to provide a hub for learning. Diff exists as a resource for people to share ideas, projects, and questions across languages and borders." This means that the Wikimedia Space prototype is finally coming to a close.

From July 15 to August 15, 2020, Wikimedia España is organizing Wiki Loves the Olympics 2020. Due to COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Summer Olympics Games were postponed. The campaign Wiki Loves the Olympics 2020 is inviting people to contribute about medalists from both the Olympics and Paralympics of any edition of the games. You can participate in any language.