Resident wiki and what it is eaten with

    Habr, welcome you again!

    Almost 2 months have passed since our welcome post, your humble servant went on vacation and again is ready to share thoughts, ideas and news of the Russian branch of the Wikimedia movement. I do not forget about my promise to talk more about the internal structure of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, but today we would like to share another good news.

    Starting today, the first "resident wiki" has appeared in Russia. A resident wiki is a full-time employee of a third-party organization, uploading materials created and owned by a third-party organization to Wikimedia projects, and receiving a salary for this.

    How will it work?


    The first (and, I hope, not the last) partner of Wikimedia RU was Business Magazine, in the staffing of which a new position appeared - Wikimedia (in other words, a resident wiki). An active Wikipedia participant, Sergey Zhuravel , was involved as a Wiki , who will use a separate Kelatrat account to share the edits made as part of his duties, and during his usual participation in Wikipedia.

    Since the materials uploaded to Wikipedia must meet the requirements of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license , or another, more free license, the Business Journal issued a separate notice that these materials will be transferred topublic domain . This means that anyone can freely use, modify, distribute materials published in the framework of this project for any purpose.

    Why do we think this is so important?


    Firstly, this is our first such agreement with a media representative on the publication of materials under free licenses by the publication itself. We really hope that referring to this experience will allow us to be more successful in future negotiations with potential partners.

    Secondly, Business Magazine is one of the most popular Russian business publications of recent years with a monthly circulation of about 100 thousand copies, and joining our idea of ​​disseminating free knowledge is an unquestionable success.

    Thirdly, cooperation with archives, libraries, museums, galleries and the media is one of the priority areas of activity of both the Wikimedia Foundation and all regional branches. But more about this - below.

    Background and world experience


    The project to build partnerships with cultural institutions was called GLAM (abbreviated as galleries, libraries, archives, museums), and it was initially launched in the UK. Now the project has expanded significantly, it involves many countries, a large number of museums, libraries, archives and media resources, and this is understandable: millions of people view Wikipedia every day, 30 million articles are available in 287 languages, and it is Wikipedia that allows our potential partners to convey information about yourself, about your collections and funds to a wide audience. At the same time, becoming a full-fledged and active participant in Wikipedia is not always easy, especially for older people, who are usually museum workers, cultural figures, and other specialists. Connection of participants

    The first experience was the British Museum: in 2010, Wiki-resident Liam Wyatt uploaded the museum materials to Wikipedia for 5 weeks and established relations with museum staff. Resident wikis later worked at the Indianapolis Children's Museum , Versailles , the Picasso Museum, and other institutions. Ultimately, about 60 organizations took part in the project , with more than 30 of them resident wikis working now.

    Problems


    Wikimedia RU has previously entered into agreements with museums and various publications (for example, they received materials from Echo of Moscow, the Russian State Archive of Sound Documents , the newspaper Pereslavl Week , the RIA Novosti agency ), but in general I can single out two problems:

    • due to lack of funding, Russian museums, archives and libraries are more likely to think about survival than to expand access to their collections, access to the Internet and mass digitization of funds;
    • many believe that it is not necessary to engage in such activities, since it cannot bring benefits and profits.

    I do not think that our organization is able to cope with the first problem, but the solution to the second problem is in our hands. For example, in the case of the Business Magazine, it helped us that the new general director of the publication, Yuri Kalashnov, was an active participant in Wikipedia, and he sincerely believes that today we need to think about ways to avoid paper media and stimulate the transition to electronic publications . In many other cases, it also began with a personal acquaintance of one of the Wikipedia participants.

    Therefore, we, as in our first post, looking for helpers and like-minded people: if you have friends in museums, the media, etc., tell them about Wikipedia and the benefits of free information and get them interested. If you have any questions or need advice and help, you can feel free to write to us .

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