The 2023 Bug of the Year Edit-a-thon
editWhen a group of volunteer Wikipedia editors get together to spend the day working on one topic, it's an edit-a-thon. These can be virtual, but it's also great to work together in the same space and help each other, especially for beginners. Mike Dickison (User:Giantflightlessbirds) has been working with the Zoology Department of the University of Otago from January 2023 as its Wikipedian in Residence. He's improving the coverage of Otago's scientific research in Wikipedia, and was be in Dunedin February 7–11 to work with scientists, go through University archives, and run this public Wikipedia event.
Bug of the Year?
editIn 2022 the Entomological Society of New Zealand launched Bug of the Year, with voting open from 14 November 2022 to 14 February 2023. This was a great initiative to put the spotlight on New Zealand's amazing invertebrates, some of which aren't very familiar to the general public. To support the competition, we wanted to make sure there was a reasonable Wikipedia article for every species, with good photos. The winner of Bug of the Year 2023 was a native bee, Leioproctus fulvescens.
When and where
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- Date: Saturday 11 February 2023
- Time: 09.30–16.00 NZDT (Time in your time zone)
- Online venue: Whereby, a videoconferencing tool like Zoom that does not require a login or software; you just go to the web link and Mike will let you into the virtual room.
- In-person venue: Conservatory, H.D. Skinner Annex, 361 Great King Street North, Dunedin
Timetable
edit- 09.30 — Introductions. We can divide up the work and people can get started. Mike will keep the Whereby meeting room open all day in case anyone has questions or needs help.
- 12.00 — Lunchtime; everyone reconvenes online. Any problems? People can work together in breakout rooms to solve them.
- 16.00 — Wrap-up meeting online. Log all that we've achieved, make plans for future work.
To attend
editThe edit-a-thon is free and open to all. There will be two main sorts of attendee:
- Experienced Wikipedia editors to handle the actual page creation, expansion, and improvement.
- Anyone with expertise and experience, who can supply published references (Wikipedia is a summary of already-published sources) or photos.
The focus of the event will be on writing better content and backing it up with good references. We will work collaboratively, trying to improve articles as much as we can over the course of the day – researchers, experts, and writers can draft text while Wikipedians publish it, add references, and upload photos.
We'll be monitoring CO₂ levels to make sure the venue is well-ventilated, and mask wearing will be strongly encouraged. (In the end the venue proved to have wrap-around French doors, which made it very easy to ventilate on a lovely Dunedin summer's day.)
Attendees
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Just edit this section to add your name or username here if you're planning on taking part. Contact Mike at mike
rove.wiki if you have questions or needs some tuition to get up to speed with Wikipedia or donating photos.
- Mike Dickison / Giantflightlessbirds
- David Nind (talk)
- Fiifiagyei
- DrThneed (talk) (remotely)
- Marshelec (talk) (remotely) during the morning session
Articles to improve
editTo do: fill out table with links to Wikipedia articles (and its quality), Wikidata items, and any Commons category. Check the Critter of the Week project to see when they've aired, and for those Quality icons.
When the table's complete, check the articles to make sure the Quality is accurate, and make a list of things that need doing. Put your username beside an insect you're actively working on to avoid edit conflicts.
Useful references
edit- Andrew Crowe (2017). Which New Zealand insect?. Auckland: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-100636-9. OL 3731007M. Wikidata Q105622564.
Preparation
editWe need two sorts of resources on the day:
- Photos you've taken that could illustrate articles. If you want to add photos to Commons so they can be used in Wikipedia, they'll need to be free of any copyright (pre-1945, in NZ) or released under a Creative Commons license that lets anyone use them (which means CC BY or CC BY-SA). To apply a Creative Commons licence you need to be the copyright owner: usually, this means you took the photo (not that you own the photo or you're in the photo). If you've taken photos and are happy to donate them, great! Mike can help with the Creative Commons licensing. If you know of anyone who has good photos, approach them and ask them if they'd like their work to be seen and used by people all over the world (credited, of course). There are also many insect photos in iNaturalist but most of them are under the default, incompatible licence: CC BY-NC. You can help by contacting iNaturalist people and politely asking them to change their licence, and we have some templates to help with that.
- Sources that could be cited in Wikipedia: books, newspaper stories, magazine articles, and official publications. Wikipedia is entirely made of summaries of reliable published sources. Scientific papers about the insects are great, but many of them are paywalled: if you can persuade researchers to let you have a PDF we can cite, that would be great.
Useful links
edit- Entomological Society of the New Zealand's Bug of the Year page
- Lily Duval has designed a lovely Bugs of Aotearoa poster to accompany Bug of the Year
General
edit- This Wikiblitz will be following "friendly space" guidelines; check them out. All attendees are expected to understand and abide by the Code of Conduct for the Wikimedia Movement.
- The main English Wikipedia Help page is here. It has links on how to edit a page, contributing to Wikipedia, an introductory tutorial, and getting started.
Jobs and who's doing them
edit- Mike will be working on the new sandfly article and photos
- Dominic is adding info on nutritional composition of huhu grubs
Outcomes
edit- Three new sandfly photos added from iNaturalist, cropped and enhanced
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- Huhu pupae photos added from CC BY 4.0 scientific article
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- Information on nutritional composition of huhu grubs added to Prionoplus reticularis.
- List checked against the Critter of the Week and a '-' added where there was no article
- Commons categories checked and Depict statements added with species names
- Austrosimulium australense created
- Uropetala carovei significantly expanded (although more is planned)
- Added external links to RNZ Critter of the Week where these did not exist (about 11 of the articles), and formatted, where they did exist, the same way as more recent articles
- Checked that all articles have a Commons template box and added these where they didn't exist
- Created Wikidata items for Bug of the Year: Bug of the Year (Q116761991), New Zealand Bug of the Year 2023 (Q116762195)
To follow up
edit- Future visit to Fiifiagyei's lab to photograph the rearing and chemical analysis of huhu grubs and run a Wikipedia workshop
Acknowledgements
editThis Wikiblitz was supported by the Zoology Department of the University of Otago as part of its 2023 Wikipedian in Residence programme.