Witty's Blog

[This is part of a series of posts from my time as
“Wikipedian in Residence” at the British Museum.]

Today is my last day at the British Museum as the “Wikipedian in Residence” project draws to the end of its five-week pilot. On Monday I head off to Gdańsk Danzig Gdańsig for Wikimania 2010 to present about what I’ve learned here.

This post will highlight some interesting outcomes from my time here and also lay some ideas for how this kind of project could be run elsewhere.

Interesting outcomes from this project that you might not know about:

• Looking at the quantitative reporting, June represented the single biggest month both in terms of organically generated pageviews to British Museum articles in Wikipedia and also in terms of clickthroughs to the BM catalogue.^[1] (See more about these stats at my previous blogpost.)

• Not only did many Wikipedians write in asking for the assistance of curators at the “one on one collaboration” page, but a couple of BM departments “pitched” notable objects and asked if any Wikipedian would like to come on-site to write an article. The first result of that has been today’s creation of the article Isabella Brant (drawing). A piece by Reubens with his first wife on the front and his second wife on the back!

• At the time of writing this, there have been 901 edits and 114 footnotes added to the article Hoxne Hoard since the day I announced the “Hoxne Challenge” event. This is a ratio of one new reference for every nine edits which is a fantastically strong showing over such a number of revisions. The article is currently a Feature Article candidate.

[The “empress” pepper pot – most famous object from the Hoxne Hoard.
The article about the object itself is also a byproduct of the “Challenge” event. Photo by BabelStone, CC-zero]

• During the Hoxne Challenge we took what I believe to be the first video of Wikipedians editing in the wild. It is a timelapse of the editing process and can be viewed in .ogg format here. It is also the first use of a Creative Commons license by the British Museum.

• OpenMoko, the people behind the Wikireader (effectivley the closest thing you’ll get to a Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galazy) generously gave us five Wikireaders for this project. Not only were they used extensively during the Backstage Pass day but they are now being used as part of the schools programe at the British Museum’s Samsung Digital Discovery Centre.

[One of the Wikireaders in action during the “backstage pass” tour. By Mike Peel, CC-by-SA]

• There are many other things that have resulted from this month-long collaboration some of which are tangible (or at least digital) whilst many are more difficult to quantify. A lot of people, from both communities, now feel that the other is not quite so scary, not quite so exclusivist, not quite so antithetical to their way of doing things. Of course, I have no proof of this other than comments that people have made but I do hope that this month marks a turning point in the way Museums and Wikipedia (and by extension, the free-web and the GLAM sector) see each other – as potential allies rather than as potential threats.

Running this project elsewhere

The key thing that I would recommend you look at if you are interested in running a similar project in your own museum (or if you’re a Wikipedian wanting to work at your local museum) is to know the rules of engagement. You need to both be aware of what you want to achieve, what are potential conflicts-of-interest, what areas of policy overlap and what diverge.

The way I defined the scope of my time here was:

“The project is to identify ways of building a sustainable relationship between the museum and the Wikimedia community that is both mutually beneficial and in accordance with both communities’ principles.”

There are a lot of keywords in that but they’re all relevant. What they mean in practice is:

• Sustainable = it’s not “all about me” but also about what happens afterwards. It’s important that resident not attempt to “own” or control subjects just because they are related “their” museum. The project should not burn-out either community from being interested in each other into the future.

• Relationship = Building a relationship is more than just asking for a donation of multimedia content. It’s not a fire-and-forget thing, but a meeting of two communities of practice.

• Mutually beneficial = there must be direct benefit to the Museum and not just to Wikimedia otherwise the project is just a charity-case rather than something that can be pointed to by management as fulfilling part of their strategy. The trick is identifying things that are beneficial to both rather than just one or the other.

• Both communities’ principles = that is, as an officially affiliated volunteer you’re responsible to both organisations to give advice that you know will not undermine either. You might be able to convince a museum to release images (for example) but if you do this by making false promises then you’ve undermined the relationship/trust. This section is also important when dealing with Conflict of Interest issues as it means you cannot be obliged to willingly undermine one community or the other.

Addressing these points are crucial to making sure you remain in good standing with both communities which is itself crucial to making the project a success.

Nevertheless, be prepared for hostility. From both directions. There are some (though not many) in the museum sector who believe that working with Wikipedia or free-culture community will undermine the role of the professional cultural institution. Equally, there are some in the Wikipedia community who believe that working with museums will undermine the encyclopedia’s independence.

I’ve heard the phrase “but we must preserve the integrity of our collection” used in reference to museums arguing for control but equally I have heard the same phrase used by Wikipedians arguing why they should not interact with outside organisations. I’ve also been accused of having a conflict of interest, of being a paid-editor, of breaking UK tax law and taking the place of someone else more qualified to take the role. cf. Haters gonna hate.

Overall

Now that this month has passed (too quickly) I can safely say that I’ve never felt more engaged and able to contribute to both sectors than whilst working here. I hope other people take up the challenge and become in-house Wikipedians around the world as this spreads mutual trust and understanding. There are several other things in the works that are not ready for announcing yet but stay tuned for further British Museum – Wikipedia goodness in the future 🙂

–Liam Wyatt,
Volunteer Wikipedian in Residence, British Museum.
(not any more).

^[1]The largest month ever coincided with the release of the Indiana Jones Film “temple of the crystal skull” in 2008 with several million people arriving at the Wikipedia article Crystal skull which is actually about the British Museum object – not the film. However! A considerable number of those people subsequently visited the British Museum website which was no accident.

[This is part of a series of posts from my time as “Wikipedian in Residence” at the British Museum. If you would like to assist in this project (or just eavesdrop), please contact me to join the regular mailout list and receive news first. The project’s homepage is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/BM]

Yesterday was the “Hoxne Challenge” – an attempt to see what can be achieved if a Museum and Wikipedians work together on a specific topic in a focused effort. This culminated on Friday with an on-site tour and intensive collaboration session between Wikipedians and the relevant experts at the British Museum.

[Two of the more than a dozen gold bracelets found in the hoard: 1994,0408.20]

We chose to focus our attention on the article “Hoxne Hoard” – the largest hoard of late Roman silver and gold discovered in Britain to date. It’s a fascinating collection of beautiful objects that lay hidden underground from approx.407 AD until uncovered in 1992. The collection was brought to the British Museum and the definitive scholarly work on the subject was published less than three months ago. If you would like to know more about why we chose this topic and who were the Wikipedians and experts that assisted in this challenge please read the event page.

Stats:

• In the time since the announcement of the event (just over a week ago) the article has grown from barely more than a 2Kb long stub[1] to a 45Kb fully fleshed out article.
• There have been over 400 intermediate edits in the last week by over 30 different authors adding in nearly 80 footntotes.[2]
• Pageviews for the article have quadrupled since last month already.[3] Granted, many of these hits are from the editors themselves, but I don’t think their engagement with the subject (at such an intense level too) should be discounted from the statistics.
• “Hoxne Hoard” is now the 6th largest referrer of traffic from Wikipedia to the British Museum website whereas in April it was 27th. Wikipedia as a whole is comfortably the largest (non-search engine) generator inbound traffic to the British Museum.
• The museum even changed the front page of their highlights website to display the most prominent item from the hoard – the “empress” pepper pot in quiet recognition of our efforts.[4]

[During the backstage workshop part of the day, looking at some of the items normally in storage. In this case, some of the roughly 100 silver spoons and ladles.]

Metaphorical significance:

I recently read this amusing piece by Shane Greenstein (Professor of Management and Strategy at Northwestern University) discussing the current relationship of the British Museum and Wikipedia – which he calls a “treaty”:

“This little treaty did not involve a humiliating victory, nor a revolutionary coup. Rather, it is as if the peasants from the kingdom of the Web stormed the venerable palace and then, perched at the entry to the throne room, acted in a civilized way.  Both sides sat down to have a beer together…

Wikipedia needs the experts too. Perhaps this is a precedent.”

Perhaps it is indeed… Now, compare Wikipedia’s relationship to the GLAM sector with the metal detectorist community’s relationship to professional archaeology.

In Britain at least there has been for decades a dedicated community of people who go out into the fields and search for buried gold from former civilisations – it is their hobby and they are volunteers. Traditionally, there has been a feeling of ambivalence and disdain between them and the professional archaeologists (and the feeling has been mutual). Yet over the last decade, especially with the leadership of the Portable Antiquities scheme based at the British Museum, the two communities have come to recognise each other’s strengths and build a productive relationship rather than fighting for – literally – buried treasure.

The Hoxne Hoard is a perfect example of this relationship. The professional archaeologists would never have found this hoard had it not been for the diligence of metal detectorist Eric Lawes in 1992. Equally however, Eric was one of the first detectorists to leave his find untouched and call in the archaeologists (rather than dig it up himself). This choice to work with the professionals changed the course of not only the history of this hoard and our understanding of that period but also the relationship of the amateurs and the professionals. Both communities saw how valuable it could be if they worked together. They had come to a treaty and whilst the relationship is not perfect they try to see each other as allies rather than enemies.

I think that there is much similarity between the original finding of the Hoxne Hoard in 1992 and Wikipedia’s work on the same subject at the British Museum 18 years later. This is Wikipedia’s first time we’ve sat down with the experts a tried to build a mutually-beneficial relationship.

The British Museum is Wikipedia’s Hoxne Hoard. It is our treaty. From here on out Museums and Wikipedia should see each other as allies even if our relationship is sometimes rocky.

[Some of the coins not on display brought out for our viewing, and photographing, pleasure. They have a particularly interesting story to do with their spread and subsequent clipping.]

So did the Hoxne Challenge work?

The event was billed as a challenge as it was the first time that we’ve tried this methodology for the creation of content in Wikipedia. We’ve run our own editing drives and mini-competitions amongst ourselves, but never before (to my knowledge) have a group of Wikipedians been able to sit down in the same room with all the relevant experts and all of their publications.

What went well:

• We found that although it took a little time to get rolling, working 1-on-1 or 2-on-1 with a curator on a particular subsection (e.g. historical background, scientific analysis, coins…) was quite effective. Dividing up the article and then bringing the pieces back together is an effective way of working.
• It took the curators a while to get used to the Wikipedians’ insistence that everything they mention needs a page reference from their book but that’s all part of the learning about each other’s academic culture.
• Also, we found it very effective to bring the article up on the big screen to work together on the overall flow and structure of the article. It was effective to go from focusing on the detail then looking at the overall then going back to the detail again.
• By the end of the day we now have an article that is not only good by Wikipedia’s standards but also the relevant curators feel that it is an accurate and well rounded representation of the subject. For sure there are things still to be done to get it to FA status but we know that it is not missing or misrepresenting anything major – something that is hard to tell as an amateur.
• Working in the same room as each other builds a sense of camaraderie much more effectively than working remotely. As long as volunteers feel respected rather than exploited this is a good way to build community spirit – something Wikipedia often lacks.

What would we do differently:

• One Wikipedian suggested that more homework was required on the part of the attendees so we knew the subject area better upon arrival. Because of the recentness of the major publication on the Hoard not many libraries have copies. This made it harder for people to pre-prepare.
• As a very practical thing, we would probably have been better off with monitors on the tables rather than only laptops. What you might lose in portability you gain in ease of multiple people viewing the same page.
• Methodologically, when we came to the end of the day both communities were expressing a desire to leave the article overnight and to come back, by themselves, to read it again afresh. So, whilst editing as a group is effective for getting the bulk of work done, it does not fully replace the need for work by yourself. It therefore might have been good to arrange for a follow up meeting in a fortnight.

One more thing…
Did you know that the British Museum is now linking back out to Wikipedia when there is a feature quality article on one of their collection items? This is an important recognition of the quality of Wikipedia’s best work but the people who should know good quality when they see it!

The current FAs are Dürer’s Rhinoceros and Disasters of War and you can see the external links at the bottom of the page here and here respectively. Not only is this a link but the phrase used is: “See also the feature quality article about <subject> in Wikipedia.”