Wikipedia and Europeana WW1 edit-a-thons

Volunteers around Europe and Australia will meet to remember and write about the First World War.

An edit-a-thon is an event at which people come together to write new or expand existing Wikipedia articles in a language of their choice. The events are organised by the Wikimedia movement together with Europeana (Europe's digital library and archive), local museums and other partners.

Example of imagery uploaded to Wikimedia to inspire edit-a-thon participants.
'Test-pilot for the Albatros IV planes', Europeana, CC-BY-SA

The First World War started at the end of July 1914 and so next year we will remember the 100th anniversary of this world-shaking event. At times like these, the sixth largest website in the world, Wikipedia, always experiences a spike in visitors for the articles on the topic at hand. The edit-a-thons being held this weekend will be very valuable in improving the quality of First World War articles.

'We will be using material from Europeana's enormous First World War portal so that we can add amazing pictures to the articles that we are working on. This really does add tons of value to the articles that we have on Wikipedia,' explains the coordinator of the edit-a-thons, John Andersson from Wikimedia Sverige.

The goal of the edit-a-thons, in addition to making Wikipedia better, is to get new people and new organisations involved in the work that the Wikimedia movement is doing.

'This is a great way to make connections between Wikimedia and local museums as well as between Wikimedia chapters in different countries. We want to show how far we have come and how much has changed since the war and how all kinds of new collaborations are possible through modern technology,' states John Andersson.

Edit-a-thons will take place in six countries: Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Serbia, Sweden and the United Kingdom. In Greece, people can take part through an online event.

During all of the events, participants can also take part in the Europeana Challenge, with the chance to win a travel cheque of 300 euros. The winners are judged using a points system – the more text and more articles they add, the more points they achieve.

More information

Contact the international coordinator:
John Andersson, Wikimedia Sverige
Phone: +46 (0)733965189
Email: john.andersson@wikimedia.se

Useful websites
Wikimedia World War One Edit-a-thons
The Europeana_Challenge

Notes for editors

Wikimedia is the movement behind Wikipedia, supporting the same goals on realising a world where all knowledge is freely available for every human being. This is possible through the US-based Wikimedia Foundation and a network of national associations called chapters which co-operate closely with the volunteers on the Wikimedia projects, such as Wikipedia.

Wikipedia and the related sites operated by the Wikimedia Foundation receive more than 500 million unique visitors per month, making them the sixth most popular web property world-wide. Available in more than 280 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 26 million articles contributed by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.

Europeana brings together the digitised content of Europe's galleries, libraries, museums, archives and audiovisual collections. Currently Europeana gives integrated access to 27 million books, films, paintings, museum objects and archival documents from some 2,200 content providers. The content is drawn from every European member state and the interface is in 29 European languages. Europeana receives its main funding from the European Commission. See also Europeana's website at www.europeana.eu. Contact person for Europeana regarding the edit-a-thons is Geer Oskam, geer.oskam@kb.nl.