Presented on the NZ Thesis Project at the national Open Repository Days, canvassing support for a new upload.
Presented to the Collections Team in the library at University of Otago about Wikidata and the new Primo Wikidata extension, which was turned on at Otago on 11 November. I'll be producing materials for the team about how that works, and correcting errors in the library catalogue and on Wikidata.
Joined WikiProject Edit requests to contribute specifically to reviewing conflict of interest edit requests
Attended talks virtually at Wikidata Con 2025. No sooner had I joined the call for Camillo's talk on authority control, than an editor in South Africa opened a private chat with me to thank me for my thesis work on Wikidata! I also noted that Lydia's summary of what's happened on Wikidata in the past year did not cover the Ex Libris Primo Wikidata integration at all (which became active mid-2024) and yet I think this is a pretty major use of Wikidata data as it exposes data to any library catalogue user. It's currently in use at the National Library of Scotland, two NZ universities, and at least four Australian universities.
Drafted an article for the Otago Farmers Market, but need to take some pics before I publish it.
Project to Wikisource and write a page for Granny's Wonderful Chair. Involved a very fun late-night Zoom workshop with festival attendees in Ireland.
Have started Lunchipedia Friday lunchtime meetups at the university - six people came this week, after one the first week. Four were from the uni, and then two were existing editors from outside the uni.
Working on dental school stuff, have got some lovely images of the dental school released, and will publish John Walsh once I get images of the drill. Published Chris Jackson and Angela Pack and have a DYK in progress for her.
Coming up with some ideas about Landfall, to go with an exhibition and the publication of the 250th edition.
Presented to a group in the library about Wikidata integration in library catalogues, and we have agreed to turn it on. Watch this space!
Gave a 30 minute invited talk on the New Zealand Thesis Project, to open the second day of WikiCite 2025. This was great fun, and I'm looking forward to catching up with the rest of the presentations when recordings are released.
Otago: Made some changes to the writer John Mulgan's page after one of the librarians at Otago noticed it was a bit light on details around why there was speculation about his death. Improved and created some Wikidata items relating to Dunedin architects Arthur Louis Salmond, Henry Burt and Robert Vanes, connecting them to the archive held at the Hocken, and uploaded some new images by a university photographer Axel helped tracked down. Mike and I are working on a draft page and potential Wikisource project for a book by an Irish author called Granny's Wonderful Chair. Gave a talk to the Department of Anatomy, started working with the dental school, and discovered another way of dealing with COI, when you are autopatrolled (thanks Oronsay). So I intend to use that process (marking articles 'unreviewed') for Otago-related pages unless I think they might be controversial, in which case I might still put them AFC or ask someone else to look them over.
Joined the Science hub, waiting to see what activities it gets involved in. Also joined the September Memory of the World Challenge, just to support the initiative.
I've been off for oral surgery for a while, but wrote a couple of medical women's biographies, and finally started putting biographies of Otago people through Articles for Creation - Hamish Spencer, Draft:Louise Parr-Brownlie, more to come. Interested to know if others use AFC (once I'm more familiar with the processes I intend to apply to join to help out on their massive backlog). I also gave an hour-long presentation on Wikipedia to the Ministry for the Environment's Women's Network, which was recorded and available to their members for three months. I covered a lot about editing about women, why edit, and surveyed some environmental pages on Wikipedia, hoping people might be interested in improving them or filling gaps.
Mike and I wikified the third and final event in the Wikifying events project (an international congress, the ICHST), and will now start drafting our handbook of wikifying events.
As part of the follow-up from this event, Tamsin and Siobhan met online with some researchers who have been connecting data in digitised field notebooks to Wikidata.
As Wikimedian in Residence, started some work on the Sir John Walsh Research Institute (dental research), and the Public Health Communication Centre, which is hosted at Otago.
Tamsin and Mike also gave a session on engaging with Wikipedia for research students, as part of the annual ResBaz event.
I'll be giving a presentation to the Ministry for the Environment about the Women in Red project this week.
Presented briefly about the listifying talk and supporting videos at the GLAM Global call on 10 June, to try to encourage other people to do similar.
Preparatory work on wikifying the 27th ICHST meeting, creating work and edition items for books in the conference book exhibition and matching to editors/authors. Matched the list of speakers and committee for the ICHST to Wikidata. Created Wikidata items for all past congresses, attached to proceedings in Wikidata, where I could find them. This Wikifying event will focus more on the content the people work on than pages about people themselves, but have still created a couple of pages (Austrian historian Marianne Klemun, French historian Elodie Edwards-Grossi).
Tidying up work from the OMS 150th (have a number of people who want their uni staff photo uploaded which requires emails to photographers).
There is a WikiCite meeting in Bern 20–31st August, I'll be presenting virtually on the NZ thesis project. The WikiCite project is about publication metadata and linking bibliographic data on Wikidata and other projects.
Obtained a catalogue of the exhibition of books by alumni and staff of the medical school to explore links on Wikidata.
Presented an impromptu version of Listful thinking at the Wikicon in Christchurch, and then a longer talk at the Wikidata and Sister Projects event. This talk had technical issues, so I re-recorded a clean version and uploaded it to YouTube as an overview/introduction to the three separate videos on listifying tools, on Listeria, Petscan and the Wiki List tool. The videos are linked from my talk pages on Wikipedia and Wikidata.
Rapid grant to Wikifying a conference was approved - thanks to those who supported it.
Am working on an assignment for anatomy students which will involve assessing Wikipedia articles on particular ankle muscles alongside AI-generated articles, and then making suggestions for improving the article. The students only have a short time for the assignment (alongside their dissection work) so we are not asking them to actually learn to edit.
The International Women's Day editathon at the university went really well, we were a small group but we learned how to add images to pages, how to add award statements, sources and how to link to other Wikipedia pages. In all we edited more than 70 pages! Later that afternoon I did a short interview with Jesse Mulligan on Afternoons. We also invented the term WikiPixie for the person who supports an editing event behind the scenes (maybe from a distance) by welcoming new editors on-wiki, giving out barnstars, checking for any reversions or other problems. Noting that we had a problem with new editors getting stuck in source mode editing without the option of visual editor, which seems to stem from the default options in preferences.
Met with University of Otago group, GEMs in STEM, who are restarting activities after a bit of a break. They had seen one of my pages from last year and the ODT article on me, and had already been talking about an editathon. We are planning an event for the 7th March, the day before International Women's Day.
Talked to Auckland Museum summer students, alongside Lisa and Mike.
Planning a talk to the Ministry for the Environment's women's group, an online group of approx 150.
Submitted a rapid grant proposal on Wikifying a Conference, with Mike. We aim to 'wikify' three events and then write a handbook for the community. We would really appreciate endorsements from people who think a handbook on how to wikify an event would be useful. Just look for and click the blue 'Endorse' button right at the bottom.
Attended the Australian Wikidata drop-in session - really worthwhile and I recommend! (their upcoming events are here /media.au/wiki/Events)
Encountered my first sockpuppet! A new account was deleting a lot of unsourced information from mainly women's biographies, and it turned out to be someone with an agenda.
Added all the people given honorary degrees by NZ universities to Wikidata, and reformatted some of the statements that were there, in order to model them consistently. There are now award items on Wikidata for an honorary doctorate at each of our universities. This was prompted by a French website showing all the French honorary doctors on Wikidata, which are 7.25% women. Ours are 19% women. (breakdown by institution is %female: University of New Zealand 0%, Canterbury & Lincoln 16%, Auckland, AUT, Massey all 17%, VUW 19%, Otago 21%, Waikato 28%)
Was in the ODT for my 367 biographies last year - thanks Sophie for media help, and all editors that supported the year's work through improvements, corrections and suggestions for people to cover. This had led to a couple of invitations, to talk to a Gems in STEM group at the university, and to talk to the national Ministry for the Environment online women's group in July.
Wikifying a conference work proceeds - we will be Wikifying the 150th Otago Med School Reunion on King's Birthday Weekend.
Almost finished on the Massey doctoral advisors list, thanks Annie for your help!
Proposal to Wikify a congress next year has been accepted by the conference organisers, will be seeking funding now. Also looking for a smallish conference or meeting to try things out on in April/May next year.
The thesis paper has finally been accepted by the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication. Wahoo!
Various meetings at Otago to drum up support re Wikimedian in Residence, which is still not signed off at a senior level (probably because everyone's too busy rather than because there is any problem with it). Pushing to get it done before Christmas.
Attended education event by Wikimedia Australia, really useful to learn about Wikiversity.
Down to fewer than 16 women's bios to write before the end of the month and I'll have done 366 start class bios this year! There's still spaces so let me know of the most prominent missing NZ women (as long as they aren't sportswomen).
Am having a lot of fun doing a WikiAdvent Calendar on BlueSky. I also have a starter pack of Wikipedia-related accounts so find me if you join BlueSky and I'll add you (or not, as you prefer), I'm thneed.bsky.social
Meeting with people at Otago re projects for next year.
Thesis project data reused in the wild! This edurank page lists the 100 most viewed Wikipedia articles for alumni of Otago. When it says what degree someone studied, that has often come from the thesis project (e.g. for Grant Robertson (Q1543207) and Kieran McAnulty (Q41498761). There are of course pages like this for all the universities.
Obtained a spreadsheet of Massey doctoral advisors to reconcile with Wikidata.
Wrote a proposal to be Wikipedian in Residence to Otago for six months next year. Provisionally accepted by WANZ. Making lots of plans about what can be done!
Still slightly behind on my #1woman1day pages (8 in arrears), but still planning to finish. Currently working through honours lists, happy to take suggestions of notable women to write about, especially if they have any connection to education, science or academia. (Auckland Museum have a list, check notable deaths)
Working through thesis project people on Wikidata, trying to find at least one publication to connect to each person.
Learned the pipe trick! It's a marginally faster of way of wikilinking to a page.
Wrote a quick stub for Otago Goldfields Cavalcade this morning if anyone is into horseriding and wants to add to it!
Working on a plan to leverage Siobhan's IBC work and the WikiPortraits project into some materials for Wikifying conferences.
Also noted that sources added to Wikidata items are appearing in Wikipedia articles in other languages. This is good motivation for adding useful sources to Wikidata statements.
Attended Wikimania in Katowice, was really good for making connections, and I heartily recommend giving out flyers as a way of raising awareness about a project! see my report here.
I am well behind on #1woman1day work (about 22 pages) but still plan to catch up. There are some people I have a conflict of interest with because I know them, and some others I just can't find enough material on.
Thesis project: Found a new route to match Orcid profiles with thesis authors with quite a high success rate so matched several hundred new authors. Then used the Orcid IDs of everyone in the thesis project to extract identifiers from OpenAlex and add them to Wikidata. OpenAlex profiles contain an 'openness' score for each researcher, showing the % of their papers openly available. I was hoping to be able to use those to compare disciplines and institutions, but sadly it looks like that score specifically it isn't available via API. We are looking at doing another thesis upload of the last two years of dissertations, timing unclear.
Have talked to Otago about possibly matching the research repository to Wikidata - not necessarily adding a lot of new items, but matching up the papers openly available in the repository with their Wikidata record and adding a link to the repository version.
Got a new feature added to the Wikidata and Wikipedia tools extension for Google sheets. Happy to demo for the group or one-on-one if anyone interested.
Created a new Wikidata WikiProject for early NZ women photographers. Worked on NZ women photographers database with Te Papa, matching 81 women to existing Wikidata records, created records for all the others (400 and something new women). Project page: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_NZWomenPhotographers
Worked on the paper with Deborah, am overhauling the thesis project Wikipedia page to be a better 'front page' for the project.
Fell behind on page per day work, due to lack of motivation, but am up to 202 pages and it's the 203rd day of the year, so almost back on track!
Finally, heard on Thursday morning that a scholarship has become available so I am hopefully off to Poland for Wikimania! Short notice!
Am making a video for Coolest Tool Award, as am on the selection committee. Will hopefully get to present the award in person!
Annie matched lots of the Māori writers in Kōromako Māori writers database, for our new identifier, and I'm creating a Mixnmatch catalogue for the rest (https://mix-n-match.toolforge.org/#/catalog/6355).
Still keeping nose above water with #1woman1day - 174 start level pages this year. I have conflicts of interest with some people I know on the list, if anyone is keen to cover them (Louise Parr-Brownlie, Tammy Steeves, Hazel Chapman, Emma Wyeth, Dorothy Oorschot - their Wikidata items are linked from my worklist here and the template I use is here)
Thesis project - chugging along, much advisor matching this month (just under 1000 unmatched advisors now).
Delivered two training sessions and a lightning talk in Auckland. Now working on sorting out a series of follow-up online sessions to upskill people interested in learning OpenRefine.
Have been invited to go and talk about the thesis project at University of Canterbury. Yay!
Still keeping up with #1woman1day for woman in red. I will eventually run out of NZ-based professors and emeritus professors (less than a hundred to go) so am considering what to focus on next (have a listeria of honours recipients, so may pick the interesting people out of that)
Currently writing training for OpenRefine sessions at the Auckland Wikicon. Current plan is one on Wikidata followed by one on Commons, although I think we're unlikely to get all the way through a Commons upload.
Still just about keeping up with #1woman1day for WomeninRed - one biography of a NZ woman professor (at the moment - I'll run out of professors before the end of the year so can cast my net wider) for every day of the year.
Not much change on Thesis Project work, still partway through adding missing advisors for a batch of ~1000 thesis matched to authors through Orcids. Also trying to write a lightning talk for Auckland on the thesis project.
Talked to the Auckland Museum summer interns this week about the thesis project and Wikidata/Wikipedia interactions. I hope I didn't overwhelm them, they asked some great questions and seem to have been having a very productive summer.
The OpenRefine Train-the-trainers course is progressing - things have been quiet but we had a couple of calls with some really useful details on what has worked well and not so well for trainers in the past. I also had a cocktail meetup with Pru Mitchell in Melbourne which was lovely.
I committed to trying to get all the NZ women professors into Wikipedia this year (currently just under 120 to go, although it's something of a moving target as we don't have a complete list, and I occasionally find more to add to it). I'm going to have a good go at #1woman1day this year (I managed 31 new bios in January, so, so far so good!), and am spurred on by having won a physical barnstar from Women in Red for the education event, which is winging it's way to me in Dunedin. Did I mention the importance of swag? ;)
Am providing support one-on-one to a NZ editor to audit a Wiki dataset in OpenRefine.
Have done a massive amount of author matching on the thesis project, as I did a reconciliation with Orcid and created almost a thousand new records for people who have an Orcid and a thesis but who weren't already in Wikidata (or at least, if they were, they didn't have their Orcid applied).
I nominated Carol Mutch for Did you know to run on 22 Sep, as she does research around schools coping with disasters, which was prompted by her experiences in Chch earthquakes.
DrThneed is planning two presentations, one for the ESEAP community meeting next week and the other for Wellington WikiCon, exciting! She submitted a scholarship application to go to Wikimania in Singapore in August. She is writing a response to a paper that was published by the Journal of Academic Librarianship, on doctoral theses in Wikidata, but Covid brainfog is holding up finishing that currently. DrThneed also wants to celebrate that Annie passed 300 matches in the NZThesis Mixnmatch catalogue, which is a lot of work! Thanks Annie. DrThneed also wrote her first page this year, Adrian Hailwood.
Got back into the Thesis project as explained earlier. She created a wikipedia page yesterday about a trust offering new writers residency - the Casselberg trust . It is a short page but links to all the writers and the two people it’s named after. She's looking forward to being a Wikidata fellowship mentor and there are applications for NZ and she’s also looking forward to the conference. She's been in discussions with Avocadobabygirl on how to disambiguate people via Wikidata for a data project sharing tips and tricks in OpenRefine etc. Einebillion elaborated on what Avocadobabygirl is working on for Te papa. It is the Te Papa mix'n'match creators id dataset. This dataset is actually their agents and includes people who shouldn’t be included and is old and the data has been significantly improved in 6 years. Discussion happened around this project and DrThneed says Magnus will delete if asked. Einebillion explained not Te Papa’s dataset because a third party who created it but that Avocadobabygirl is currrently working through the issues surrounding this.
Year has exploded with work so needing to schedule. Put in a proposal to go to Wikimania. There's also Wikidata conference at Taiwan later in the year, while not attending physically, will be on the organising committee. Also put in a proposal to go to LIANZA in Christchurch and talk about Thesis project. Women in Architecture editathon in Auckland on 20 May and likely to support a Dunedin in person event. Also have worked on Scholia for a Zoology department, as a new way of visualising some of the thesis data. Working on two publications and looking over a draft Wikidata toolkit for another editor.
Sorting out architecture editathon for May 20. Have done a lot of Wikidata work to support it, creating a NZ Women in Architecture Wikidata project and adding women, books, awards to it (very few buildings so far!). Still need to add some queries to visualise things (suggestions welcome!). Made a Listeria for the project. Created a page for Lynda Simmons and put it forward for a DYK to run on May 20 (would be nice to have a photo).
Thesis project: Created a Scholia for Otago Zoology department, to support Mike's Wikimedian in residence work. Submitted a short paper to the Journal of Academic Librarianship. Working on a longer paper. Commented on a Wikidata toolkit prepared by the librarians at LSE and York. Submitted a proposal for a talk at Lianza in Christchurch and will apply to Wanz for funding to attend.
Other: Changed my Listeria for NZ honours recipients into a women-only list so I could add it to Women in Red list of lists. Made pages for Centre of Research Excellence, Playwrights Association of New Zealand, Maria Bargh, Elspeth Tilley and Eirian Jones.
Made a bunch of Wikipedia pages for some academics and architects etc: Ineke Crezee, Diane Menzies, Margaret Bedggood, June Pallot, New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects, Isabel Castro (biologist), Jodie Hunter, Jackie Benschop, Nicole Moreham, Jackie Gillies, Margaret Munro, Min Hall, Alison Sleigh, Sarah Treadwell, Sargood Centre. DrThneed's proprosal for a presentation at the LIANZA conference (31 Oct/Nov) has been accepted, and is working on slides for that (which will be similar to slides for Wikimania, if talk is accepted) and on a manuscript with Zeborah, Deborah Fitchett. Have also been mentoring my Wikidata fellow who is beginning to get to grips with OpenRefine which is exciting! She has a great dataset which is going to really benefit NZ Wikidata.
has been adding main subject statements to theses in Wikidata, as mentioned above. She is also exploring other visualisations based on main subject statements, e.g. which taxa are best covered, a map of places mentioned in theses, what occupation you should have if you want someone to write a thesis about you, that sort of thing (see the thesis Wikidata project page). She'd love suggestions if you can think of interesting angles to take! DrThneed has had her talk on the thesis project accepted at Wikimania. Also planning a second Women in Architecture event as part of the heritage festival later in the year. Last week DrThneed and Mike did a presentation on copyright for scientists at the Department of Anatomy at Otago.
Making slides for Singapore, writing the thesis project paper, and continuing to match thesis authors etc. Annie and I broke 5% on the Mix'n'match for thesis authors! Met with Heritage NZ about running another women and architecture event during the heritage festival. Am contributing a session on Wikidata to a National Library of Singapore workshop after Wikimania.
DrThneed learned about the Wikidata Walkabout tool and wants people to know it exists (its purpose is to allow you to query Wikidata without writing any Sparql, by “drilling down” through classes). DrThneed also had her letter on Wikidata theses accepted in the Journal of Academic Librarianship (finally! It was four months in review and then got accepted with no revisions. Now available online). She has also drafted a few stub articles for political candidates (there’s a list of more that need doing here), put all the missing Greens & Labour candidates into Wikidata and added SDC to their images in Commons. Have added the National candidates to Wikidata but haven’t done SDC as their copyright isn’t sorted properly yet so images may get deleted still. Will add all remaining candidates (with electorates and list rankings) to Wikidata when the official Electoral Commission list gets published (any day now). She is also running a Women in Architecture public event in October as part of the Heritage Festival so is planning for that. She's been working on the Web2Cite tool, trying to fix PapersPast automatic citation generator problem that drives us editors nuts and as well as news websites, and has been making some inroads to fixing some. There is meant to be a community who can help but she has only found a few folks who use the tool. User:MargaretRDonald suggests reaching out to Kerry Raymond who knows the most about web2cit in Australia. She has also put in application for a Wikimedia Foundation train the trainers of OpenRefine course and is hoping to get accepted.
Architect event report - 3 articles created, 3.5k words , and 51 references
LIANZA presentation comming up on Halloween in Christchurch with Deborah on the NZ Thesis Project
Open Refine train the trainers course - accepted, need to train group before end of March (session at next Wiki meeting). Focusing on OpenRefine for Commons uploads.
Election articles (including updating Wikidata items, e.g. from political candidates to elected, etc.) - final final count required (3rd November).
Election Did You Know (DYK) - please help expand bios (list here) and get them ready, we want as many as possible, but definitely more than 19! Also if you DYK, then some QPQ credits would be great.
Content: wrote four pages for women professors (Andrea 't Mannetje, Bronwen Connor, Melinda Webber, Sue Crengle), added award statements for all the RSNZ James Cook Fellows to Wikidata and made a page for the award itself (this was its last year). Added about 50 award statements for Fellows of the New Zealand Institute of Food Science and Technology to Wikidata (there are more fellows, but they need Wikidata items created, which I'm probably not going to do). Also created Wikidata items for the award scheme that will replace this and other fellowships. Added the first of the 2023 Royal Society awards statements to Wikidata (the Auckland event has been held, we will have Wellington and Christchurch in the next week). Also worked on expanding new pages for MPs to reach DYK eligibility. There are still lots of MP pages to review for the mass "Did you know" nomination if anyone wants easy QPQs. I'll add the final vote counts and results to Wikidata once the final final recounts are all in (which they might be now? I've lost track a little of the individual recounts in close electorates). Also made Wikidata items for a bunch of Dunedin streets to link to heritage buildings.
Attended Wikidatacon virtually.
Attended the first meeting of the OpenRefine train-the-trainers course (who is interested in being trained in using OpenRefine for Wiki work - Wikidata, WikiCommons?).
Presented the NZ Thesis Project to the LIANZA Conference in Christchurch which was very exciting (report pending). She's had scholia profile nibbles from Canterbury University librarians as a result of the Thesis presentation at LIANZA. Giantflightlessbirds expressed an interest in talking to Canterbury Librarians too.
2023 Election: DYK for new MPs has been an interesting experience for DrThneed this year. New MP articles totalled 19. Last year everybody leapt on them and reviewed them quickly. This year there was a debate on whether the articles should exist as a multi-hook. The articles are really easy to review. So if you are not involved in the articles they are great if you want to increase your review total. They are just sitting there just waiting to be done. Discussed this article for New MP come through on the recount. DrThneed needs help for an issue where someone has become an MP based on preliminary results but then lost this. Group agreed that often such people achieve notability even if they loose.
The DYK multihook for new MPS is still waiting for 13 more reviews although progress has been made. It now has a lovely 20-person image!
Wikidata: added new professors and associate professors as per press releases from AUT, Canterbury and Massey. The list of women professors needing pages is now 142 women long and getting longer, despite my efforts above! If anyone wants to chip in, I especially appreciate help with Otago staff. I also added to Wikidata lists of fellows for a couple of societies, and the new Royal Society awards as they were announced.
Commons: Have downloaded around 150 photos from the Royal Society award events, and have them teed up in OpenRefine with their depicts statements and captions etc just waiting to be uploaded, the RS just hasn't yet put a license statement on the Google albums. I will be walking through how I've done this as a demo with the OpenRefine Train the Trainers group on Friday so will get feedback if there are any improvements I can make. I'm also working with a batch of over 100 images of Otago professors from the Hocken, which I'm going to share as a training/scraping dataset with other people on the TTT course.
Caroline Plummer Fellowship (needs Wp page, Wd creation, then list) Wp page not done
NZIFST fellows and honorary fellows into Wikidata, page for NZIFST itself and note other awards such as JC Andrews award
Emeritus professors at University of Auckland, AUT (not in calendar),Canterbury, Massey (2021 done, can't read calendar), Otago,Lincoln, VUW,Waikato
Council protected buildings list - cross-check with Wikidata, add missing items, find way to record items on council list as opposed to HNZ list.
Possibles: Mary Isabel Turnbull, first female humanities academic at Otago (related to Barbara Calvert), Orpheus Beaumont lifejacket inventor.
Find more professors: check Wikidata against lists at Auckland, AUT, Massey, Waikato, Lincoln,Canterbury, Victoria,Otago
Find 2025 professor promotion announcements: done Canterbury, Massey, Otago, AUT, Waikato (yet to find Vic, Auckland announcements; in 2024 Lincoln were in May)
