- Todo: Areas we’ve done a bunch of work
We often present or write guides about how new people can start editing in the areas they care about.
- New Zealand Plant Conservation Network Newsletter, Trilepidea: Heidi M. Meudt and Siobhan Leachman. 2025
Wikidata for botanists: benefits of collaborating and sharing linked open data
- Annals of Botany 136: Sabine von Mering, Siobhan Leachman, Joaquim Santos, Heidi M Meudt. 7 June 2025
- Also see our images and report from the International Botanical Conference 2024, and the IBC Wikidata project in Zenodo
Staff learning sessions
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We regularly hold learning sessions for staff to provide inspiration, guidance, and practical experience in editing Wiki projects. We’ve covered:
- Referencing
- Small but impactful improvements to articles
- Uploading images
- Fixing bias
Each session involves a short presentation covering the value of these kinds of edits, and how they’re applicable to staff members’ roles. We then demonstrate how to make these edits, and get them involved in trying it out for themselves.
Avocadobabygirl (talk) presented about how we’ve made staff learning sessions work (and getting started at other organisations) at NDF 2025.
Tauoma Takatā – Running a Māori-focused editathon
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As part of our Te Maori editathons we came up with some guidance on how to make it work.
Te kaupapa o tauoma takatā: Hosting a Māori editathon
This is just a start at developing a solid kaupapa for Māori use of Wikipedia, so we’re interested in hearing about any other Māori-focused editathons and the tikanga used.
More about Te Maori and our editathons on Te Papa’s blog
GLAM project guidance
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Stitchbird2 and Avocadobabygirl presented Te Papa’s framework for scoped contribution projects as part of Wikimania 2023. It’s a useful way for an organisation to get some positive Wiki work done without overcommitting.
The framework was developed from a project to load 350 photos of Myosotis specimens using OpenRefine and a specially-created Commons template.
The Whole GLAM Package project manual
Our editors are involved with a ton of WikiProjects, including a few we started.
WikiProject Aotearoa Asian Artists
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This project builds off the directory of artists at Satellites, making that information more accessible and laying groundwork for the creation of articles.
We have created Wikidata items for all the artists who were previously missing, and have started enriching these with more details from Satellites and other sources.
WikiProject Aotearoa Asian Artists
WikiProject Exhibitions
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This project aims to develop a detailed and flexible schema for exhibitions, along with good exemplars and solid guidance. Eventually we hope to have all Te Papa’s exhibitions represented in Wikidata.
WikiProject New Zealand Women Photographers
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We have an up to date Mix n Match set for Te Papa agents (party records), and are regularly running checks to pull new matches into our own collection management system.
Te Papa regularly joins in the 1Lib1Ref campaign, getting new staff involved as editors and making the knowledge in our publications more widely available.
Drop Avocadobabygirl a line if you want to talk about holding a 1Lib1Ref session at your organisation!
We get involved!
As we publish updates and stories around the web, you’ll find them here.
Te Papa staff attended and presented at Wikimania 2023 (with the support of Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand) and Wikimania 2024 (with a partial scholarship from the Wikimedia Foundation).
2024 Hosted and provided staff time to support Ambrosia10 with the Wikidata Project: Te Papa Research Expeditions.
- Stitchbird2 is co-organiser of the WikiProject ASBS 2025 which is a package of Wiki outreach to the Australasian botanical community taking place from 14 October – 6 November 2025, for which she and colleague Ambrosia10 received funding from Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand.
- In September and October 2025, Te Papa held two editathons about Te Maori, the landmark exhibition of Māori taonga that started in 1984. As well as improving related articles, we developed tikanga for running Māori-focused editathons.
- Stitchbird2 is co-organiser with Ambrosia10 and Noracrentiss, of the first and second annual two-day NZ species edit-a-thons in October-November 2024 and August 2025 at Ōtari Wilton’s Bush, both funded by Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand.
- Stitchbird2 co-wrote and published the following article in the New Zealand Plant Conservation Network Newsletter, Trilepidea: Heidi M. Meudt and Siobhan Leachman. 2025. Ten online contributions you can make right now to the biodiversity and open science communities, from easy to advanced. Trilepidea 248:4–10.
- Stitchbird2 together with together with Ambrosia10, S.v.Mering and Joaquimsantos1978, co-organised and co-presented multiple events for the Wikidata:WikiProject IBC 2024 from 9 July to 28 Aug 2024, funded in part by the Wikimedia Foundation. Our images and report of this project are available on Commons, and many of the resources have also been uploaded to the “IBC Wikidata” project in Zenodo. A major outreach outcome was publication of our invited review, entitled, “Wikidata for botanists: benefits of collaborating and sharing Linked Open Data” an Open Access scientific article in Annals of Botany in mid-2025.
- In July 2024 Te Papa hosted the Expeditions Edit-a-Thon.
- Stitchbird2 was one of several participants in the two-day 2024 Picture This Photography Event Workshops in March and April in Wellington.
- Stitchbird2, Einebillion and others attended the Worlds of Wikimedia [[1]] and 2023 ESEAP Wikimedia Conference [[2]] in Sydney from 16–20 November 2022.
- Stitchbird2, Avocadobabygirl, Einebillion and others participated in the Women in STEAM Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon [[3]] in Wellington on 8 October 2022, editing or creating new pages in Wikipedia and Wikidata.
