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User:Giantflightlessbirds

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This user helps out newcomers.
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This user is a member of the
West Coast task force.
This user belongs to Team Critter.
This user attends the regular Ōtautahi Meetup.
Mike Dickison in the Auckland Museum Library

I'm Mike Dickison (mike@rove.wiki, Adzebill on BlueSky and Mastodon). I'm a zoologist by training, interested in the evolution of extinct flightless birds such as moa and the conservation of endangered New Zealand insects. I had a previous career as a graphic designer, but have been working in and around museums since 1990.

I've been an active Wikipedian since 2014, beginning with Whanganui Wiki Wednesday while Curator of Natural History at Whanganui Regional Museum. I began providing Wikipedia backup for the Critter of the Week radio show in 2015, and now coordinate a team of volunteers. I spent 2018–2019 as the NZ Wikipedian at Large funded by a WMF Project Grant (during which I invented the models Wikipedian at Large and Wikiblitz) and in 2020, 2022, and 2023 was West Coast Wikipedian at Large. From November 2020 to June 2022 I was Digital Discovery Librarian at the Westland District Library in Hokitika, New Zealand. I received a Paul Reynolds ("No Numpties") Scholarship to spend September 2022 in Europe researching the use of OpenRefine in GLAM institutions. As of 2024 I'm Aotearoa Wikipedian at Large based in Christchurch on a grant from Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand.

I'm also a freelance Wikipedia and open-knowledge consultant, helping organisations engage with Wikimedia projects and supporting volunteer activities. In my spare time I sketch (my drawings in Commons), go on nature hikes with iNaturalist, and do some amateur entomology.

Participants at the Women in Science Wikipedia workshop, Wellington, August 2017

Wikipedian in Residence

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From mid 2018 to mid 2019 I was New Zealand Wikipedian at Large, supported by a one-year project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation. My job was to travel New Zealand to help heritage and research organisations engage with Wikimedia projects as a Wikipedian in Residence, and support the New Zealand editing community through meetups and workshops. If you want to know more, there's a project page with monthly reports, media coverage, and a list of all the events.

In Nov–Dec 2019 I was Wikipedian in Residence at Lincoln University, working on increasing the visibility of the Entomology Department and uploading archival photos to Commons (see project page for details). Jan–July 2020 I worked in the Research & Enterprise office of Massey University, Palmerston North, and amongst other projects ran staff Wikipedia and Wikidata training and an edit-a-thon (see project page).

I was a consulting Wikimedian for the Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies, helping them improve various physics articles and add photos of their researchers to Commons (see the project page), and January through August 2021 I was Wikipedian in Residence for New Zealand Opera—again, more information on that project page.

With the support of Development West Coast I was the West Coast Wikipedian at Large, travelling the length of the Coast and coordinating a remote volunteer team, and working with local historians and heritage collections. The first stint was six weeks full-time Sep–Oct 2020, then ten weeks half-time Jun–Aug 2022, and six more weeks full-time Sep–Oct 2023. This project won Silver (Best Use of Digital and Social Media) and Gold (Most Innovative Campaign) at the PR Institute of NZ's 2024 awards.

In January 2023 I did a Wikipedian in Residence project with the Zoology Department of the University of Otago; in June 2023 I started a Wikipedia/Wikidata/Commons collaboration with the Healthier Lives National Science Challenge, and in January 2024 with Ageing Well National Science Challenge.

In 2024 I'm a Wikipedian at Large again, based in Christchurch, New Zealand. This will involve working with multiple GLAM institutions, training up new volunteer editors, and running public events and Wikimedia volunteer meetups. I've been working with the University of Canterbury accompanying biology students on a field trip to Cass, modeling an art exhibition with the Christchurch Art Gallery, and digitising books from the Christchurch Libraries collection.

Critter of the Week

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Since 2015 I've helped with RNZ's Critter of the Week, a weekly radio broadcast by Nicola Toki and Jesse Mulligan on native species both endangered and neglected. A group of "wikinerds" improve or create the article for each species discussed: Jesse and I chatted about it in this interview back in 2016, and I wrote about it for Forest & Bird in 2023. Good examples of improved articles are the Open Bay Islands leech, New Zealand giraffe weevil, and Mercury Islands tusked weta. Critter of the Week has a Wikipedia project page with a complete list of all critters to date, and links to each broadcast. Cartoonist Giselle Clarkson has released some of her art under an open licence for the project. Feel free to help! Volunteers receive a weekly email with information on the upcoming critter,and a To Do list, as well as online training; you can sign up here.

West Coast Wikisource

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A project that grew out of my work with Westland District Library from 2020 to 2022 was the digitisation of out-of-copyright books relating to the West Coast's literature and history. Volunteers transcribed and proofread the books in Wikisource as part of the West Coast Task Force. They were then exported as EPUBs and uploaded by the library manager to OverDrive, so they became borrowable library e-books using the app Libby—the first example I know of where Wikisource texts became borrowable library books. After I finished at Westland District Library in 2022 the project was supported with a grant from the Mātātuhi Foundation which allowed me to work with a librarian to scan books, coordinate copyright licensing, and recruit a team of volunteers. I'm continuing this work with other library collections.

Other projects

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National Digital Forum

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The National Digital Forum is an annual meetup at Te Papa of the digital galleries, libraries, archives, and museum (GLAM) sector. I've taken part in Wikipedia day (2014), the Palmerston North Barcamp session and Wikipedia panel discussion (video) (2015). I presented an Eight Important Wikifacts workshop (2016), and spoke on "What I learned about Massive Branded Projects from editing Wikipedia" (2016) and "A Wikipedian at Large" (2018). In 2019 I ran the first Wikidata workshop at NDF. I presented on seven years of collaboration between the GLAM sector and the Wikimedia movement in 2022 (links).

Workshops and edit-a-thons

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I organised the Whanganui 2015 River Week Edit-a-thon, 2016 #NZspecies at Te Papa, 2017 Women in Science at the Royal Society in Wellington, and the 2017 New Zealand Insect Cards Edit-a-thon in Auckland. See the Wikipedian at Large list for the dozens of events I ran over 2018–2019; it makes me dizzy just to read it. After that I organised the Bauer Media 2019 workshop, was conference Wikipedian for TetZooCon 2019 in London, and ran edit-a-thons on Māori women artists and Australasian endangered plants in 2019. In 2020 I helped with the socially-distanced Playmarket edit-a-thon, and in 2021 the worldwide 24-hour Women in Red edit-a-thon (here's a radio interview). Most of my Wikipedian in Residence projects involve online Wikimedia training and virtual edit-a-thons. I also ran an Introduction to Wikimedia Commons at Wikimania 2023 in Singapore.

Miscellaneous

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I helped User:Schwede66 resolve the long-running debate over the use of macrons on place names in New Zealand English articles, and created Task force tohutō to organise volunteer efforts; the "macron war" was the subject of a Stuff podcast in 2022 (see below). I created the West Coast task force as part of my role at Westland District Library. My "Wikifying GLAM" essay turned into a proposed Wikimedia strategy for Auckland Museum, which formed the basis of their current Wiki workplan. In 2022 I developed a four-part Wikipedia and Wikidata training programme (slides, exercises, and scripts) for Wikimedia Australia. I was awarded a 2023 Wikimedia Australia Wikidata Fellowship to work on a New Zealand Public Domain project. I'm writing a book on Wikimedia strategies for GLAM instutions (see the 2023 presentation I gave to Te Papa and the State Library of New South Wales).

Presentations

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Publications

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Some media coverage

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  • RadioNZ interview 23 Jan 2016, talking to Kim Hill about Wikipedia's 15th birthday
  • Easther, Elisabeth. (Sept 2018). "Mr Wiki: Mike Dickison is New Zealand’s first Wikipedian-at-Large". North and South, p.18
  • Macdonald, Nikki. (20 Oct 2018). "National Portrait: Mike Dickison, conservationist and Wikipedian". Dominion Post, p.C3
  • Graham-McLay, Charlotte. (17 Nov 2018). "From Encyclopedic Collector to ‘Wikipedian-at-Large’ in New Zealand". New York Times, A6
  • Hancock, Farah. (10 July 2019). "The travelling Wikipedia salesperson." Newsroom.
  • Te, Mandy (16 Jan 2020). "Wikipedia pages to change as Christchurch takes second place." Stuff.
  • Adams, Josie (16 July 2020). "How volunteers created Wikipedia’s world-beating Covid-19 coverage." The Spinoff.
  • Mike Dickison (12 July 2022). West Coast Wikipedian at Large 2 (Television interview). Hokitika: Breakfast. Retrieved 17 July 2022.
  • Dudding, Adam and Bingham, Eugene (18 Dec 2022). "Secret agents, midnight battles and robots: Inside Wikipedia's great macron war". (Podcast). Stuff.
  • Nicholls, Jenny. (14 Jan 2023). "Tangled copyright law denying public access to works they've a right to see." Stuff.

Accounts

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I maintain a second account, User:DemoFlightlessbirds, as a training account to demonstrate initial settings to new users and the creation of Talk and User pages. This account makes no substantial edits and does not participate in any voting, discussion, or commentary.

Pages created

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Did you know?

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Review credits: Anti male-guardianship campaign, Israa al-Ghomgham, Nucella ostrina, Cephalotes atratus, Delaware County Institute of Science, Ebenezer Teichelmann, Jacquelyn Reingold, John U. Monro,

Notes to myself

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