Wikimedia Highlights, February 2016

Here are the highlights from the Wikimedia blog in February 2016.

Recording romanticism and filling Wikimedia Commons with 19th century music
What’s TPP? The problematic partnership
#BlackLifeMatters edit-a-thon bolsters Wikipedia’s coverage of black history
In brief

Recording romanticism and filling Wikimedia Commons with 19th century music

Photo by Rubén Ojeda, freely licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Wikimedia Spain collaborated with the country’s Museum of Romanticism to put on a series of classical music concerts for the Wikimedia Commons. The results are available now, free for anyone to use. The chapter invites all musicians to collaborate on Wikimedia projects and help disseminate free art and culture.

What’s TPP? The problematic partnership

Photo by Christopher Dombres, freely licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Wikipedia and its power for the creation and sharing of free knowledge are directly driven by a strong and healthy public domain. Unfortunately, TPP would extend copyright terms at a minimum of the author’s life plus 70 years, eating into the public domain. This cements a lengthy copyright term in countries where it already exists like Australia, the US, and Chile.

TPP is a problematic treaty because it harms the public domain and our ability to create and share free knowledge. It is time for countries to partner for the policies and projects that benefit everyone, like the public domain, clear copyright exceptions and intermediaries empowered to stay out of content creation with good safe harbor protections.

#BlackLifeMatters edit-a-thon bolsters Wikipedia’s coverage of black history

Dozens of black history articles were created or improved at the #AfroCROWD Wikipedia editathon in Harlem. You can watch the video here, on Youtube, or Vimeo. Video by Victor Grigas, freely licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Dozens of black history articles were created or improved at the #AfroCROWD Wikipedia editathon in Harlem, New York City. Building on events held this year and last, the event helped fill gaps in the English Wikipedia’s coverage, including on Edward Augustine Savoy.

In brief

Appeal filed in Wikimedia v. NSA: The case was dismissed on the grounds of standing, an important legal concept that refers to whether or not someone has the right to bring their claim in court. In our appeal, we detail how and why the Wikimedia Foundation and its eight co-plaintiffs have amply demonstrated that we have standing in this case.

Wiki Loves Africa brings the continent’s fashion to the world: Held in October of November of last year, the Wiki Loves Africa photo competition focused on the continent’s varied fashion traditions from north, south, east, and west. The winners came from all over the continent—Kenya, Senegal, Ghana, and Algeria. In total, 7,453 images were entered by 734 unique contributors from 51 countries around the world.

More striking photos from the European Science Photo Competition: The 2015 European Science Photo Competition saw 9793 files uploaded from 2201 authors from 40 countries. Naturally, many of them didn’t make it into the final, but there were lot of great shots besides the 328 submissions (384 separate images) that went on to compete for first place.

Andrew Sherman, Digital Communications Intern, Wikimedia Foundation