Project Natuur/en - Wikimedia

presentation for NVBT, 2016-04-14

Hilversum, Pinetum Blijdenstein

(some of the links are to pages in Dutch)

for presentation: zoom in a couple of times.

2014: start of the project

Project Natuur started in 2014
with photo contest “Wiki Loves Earth”
in six National Parks in the Netherlands.

some price-winning pictures:

Brandganzen Ezumakeeg
Zandhagedis NPUH
Veenwortel Persicaria amphibia in NP De Alde Feanen
Paddenstoel kijken

and here are the statistics.

The project in general

From the very first beginning all activities were designed
to increase the quantity and quality of information concerning nature

on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia-projects (like Wikimedia Commons).

The project has three angles of view:

species - enhance the quality and quantity of information

about plants and animals

areas - id. about nature areas

history - id. about history of nature study and nature conservation

Activities have had different forms:

long term projects
short running activities

most of the time in cooperation with organisations:

content donations (text / images)
aimed at attracting new editors

The project is organised by a (slowly growing) group of volunteers (Wikipedians),
assisted by staff of Wikimedia Nl,
working in close cooperation with WIR(s).

The project has its own workspace(s) in Wikipedia, and on other websites.

Some results until now

In more or less arbitrary order some activities of the project:

Nozeman / Sepp <- content donation by KB
National Park Utrecht Hill Ridge <- cooperation to find new editors
Dragonflies <- content donation
WIR Naturalis
Images by Jos Zwarts
Thijsse
Floron content donation
etc.

Nozeman / Sepp - content donation: images

May 2015 the KB (Koninklijke Bibliotheek = Royal Library) donated the scans of all the images of the famous Nederlandsche vogelen (= "Dutch birds" / XVIII/XIX) by Cornelius Nozeman and Christiaan Sepp to Wikimedia Commons

We worked in May and June 2015 on spreading the information on Wikipedia worldwide.

We created directory-pages on “Commons” and started distributing the images over Wikipedia. Until now hundreds of images were used on altogether 52 different (language) wikipedias.

The blackbird takes the lead, with images in 22 different (language) wikipedias.

See the Image uptake stats for details.

National Park Utrechtse Heuvelrug (Utrecht Hill Ridge)

Aim: building long term relations with partner organisations and volunteers

in the area and surroundings of the National Park.

(and of course also at enhancing texts and images on Wikipedia.}

The project started in August 2015.

We arranged a course on editing Wikipedia - attended by a few interested volunteers.
None of them has continued working on Wikipedia.

In the meantime we created the Portal Utrecht Hill Ridge on the Dutch Wikipedia,
and some 60 articles were created on different aspects of the National Park and its surroundings.

The project took place in cooperation with:

the staff of the National Park and
I.V.N., the Dutch organisation on nature education and sustainability.

The project is still continued.

We are discussing new forms of attracting (and retaining) new editors for Wikipedia on local nature related issues; using for instance information on motivation of "citizen scientists".

Libellen (dragonflies and damselflies) - content donation: text

This was a typical short term project:

“Libellennet” (website) is part of the Vlinderstichting (Dutch Butterfly Conservation).

The text of this website is made available under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 License (Creative Commons)

in February 2015.

Since then a lot of information from the site is “copy-pasted” into the Dutch Wikipedia,
like for instance w:nl:Coenagrion mercuriale.

In total: information on 60 species has been used (until now). Nearby finished.

WIR Naturalis

WIR = Wikipedian in Residence

has been working in Naturalis Biodiversity Center from May to November 2015.
Aimed at:

content donation
internal and external information on Wikipedia

Some of the results:

upload of 1.698 images of plant type specimens of the herbarium
upload of 136.232 images of songbird specimens
upload of 111.504 images of mollusc specimens
etc. etc. -> total nr of images uploaded: 276.482
total number of articles on Wikipedia with image from this donation viewed (between May 2015 and Feb 2016): 5.014.421, etc.
writing sessions and training sessions organised for staff of Naturalis.

see:

project page on Dutch Wikipedia
page about the project on Wikimedia Commons with links to many images

especially this gallery

Content donation of images by Jos Zwarts

Jos Zwarts is a well known Dutch bird artist.

December 2015 he donated a total of some 1000 drawings to Wikimedia-Commons,
under a -license.

We started working on distributing them,
and created for instance an overview page on Commons.

Until now some 5% of them are used (a total of 100 links)
on 31 different (language) Wikipedia's.

see the stats.

Next bundle of images on its way, already!

Thijsse-week and follow up

November last year we organized a "Thijsse-week" on Wikipedia.

Part of the "Thijsse-year" (IVN, NM, KNNV, H&T-foundation, Thijsse's Hof)

Thijsse, the most famous Dutch nature conservationist, was born 150 yrs ago

total number of new articles contributed in that week on nl-wiki: 31

As a part of this activity we had a

introductory course on editing Wikipedia

in H&T-library in Hugo de Vries building (adjacent Hortus Amsterdam).

in cooperation with IVN.

Content donation by Floron: text

more or less the same kind of cooperation as with Vlinderstichting / Libellennet, but on a larger scale:

Floron (Field research on plants of the Netherlands) has made all texts in distribution atlas available under CC license in December 2015.

Since then we work on editing the still missing species of Dutch plants on nl-wiki.

For instance on March 19, 2016 <- "Wiki Saturday"

Until now 40 new species are added, like w:nl:Brede_dovenetel.

Some 300 are still to be done. Volunteers needed!

A new WIR at VOFF

Next month a new WIR will start at VOFF

etc., etc.

Birds in the Rijksmuseum
Nature on Dutch Wikisource

More information

more info on the project (in Dutch) on:

Project Natuur the project page on the wikimedia-nl-site
w:nl:Wikipedia:Wikiproject/Natuur