2025:Program/Contribute to Connecting the World
Session title: Contribute to Connecting the World
- Session type: Poster
- Track: Community Engagement
- Language: en
The poster is supposed to visualise the twin city activities of Wikipedia:Hannover presented in the lightning talk 'New Wikimedia contacts via the old tool of town twinning'. It shows in short the activities and especially the results of the project. Examples are given for newly established contents on the German Wikipedia, new photos on Wikimedia Commons and new data records on Wikidata. The distancies between the cities are visualised approximately. Photos document the meetings of Hannover's Wikimedians with their Wikimedians from the twin cities.
Description
Wikipedia:Hannover, a so-called Local Room financially supported by Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE), was lucky to receive an inheritance and decided to use the money to organize excursions to Hannover's twin cities: Poznań (Poland) and Bristol (United Kingdom) were visited in 2023, Leipzig (Germany, formely GDR) in 2024. A fourth excursion to Rouen (France) - with a personal contribution - is planned for the end of May 2025. Travelling to the distant twin cities of Perpignan (France), Horoshima (Japan) and Blantyre (Malawi) has been out of reach for financial reasons. The results of travelling consist partly of immaterial contacts and partly of material content. As material content may count new or substantially enlarged articles in the German Wikipedia. These reach from an artificial lake (Jezioro Rusałka), that had to be built by Jewish prisoners using the grave stones from demolished Jewish cemeteries, to the oldest existing municipal library in Poznań from 1829 (Raczyński-Bibliothek) to a workshop used for the production of stained glass and art glazing in Leipzig (Glaswerkstatt Stokinger). Extremely rich has been the outcome of photos, to be found in the Commons categories Wikipedia Hannover in Poznań 2023, Wikipedia Hannover in Bristol 2023, and Wikipedia Hannover in Leipzig 2024. Work was also carried out in Commons on the categories of twin cities and twin cities of twin cities. Following the trip to Leipzig, an important project (https://w.wiki/CqLm) gained momentum: the documentation of 'Stolpersteine' (stumbling stones) on Wikidata: recorded objects increased from 21.361 in August 2024 to 34.598 in March 2025. There is a report (in German) on every trip. The poster - combined with the lightning talk - would like to encourage Wikimedians to make contact with Wikimedians in the twin cities of their hometown, to exchange information and to look for common interests and ideas for joint projects. Not every Wikimedian will have the opportunity to visit the twin cities, but every Wikimedian can check and enlarge the information about these cities in their own language Wikipedia and take care of photos and corresponding categories. Every Wikimedian can seek and ask for support from politicians, organisations or schools involved in twinning and thus strengthen the ties between cities in sometimes distant countries, helping to connect the world through peaceful and long lasting personal contacts.
- How does your session relate to the event theme, Wikimania@20 – Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?
The twin city activities of Wikipedia:Hannover are mostly connected to the overarching theme ‘Impact’ of Wikimania 2025: Seeking contact with Wikimedians in a twin city, perhaps even travelling there to see for yourself, helps to expand your knowledge to represent these cities better in the Wikimedia projects and thus contribute to a better understanding of ‘other’ countries and cultures. Networking with Wikimedians from a twin city also offers the opportunity to find common interests, to learn from each other and to start cooperation projects combining different skills, different perspectives and different knowledge.
- What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?
Everyone can participate in this session
Resources
Speakers
- Bärbel Miemietz
- I have a master's degree from 1980 and a doctorate from 1986 in Slavic Studies. After graduating, I researched and taught at universities in Germany, Switzerland and the Soviet Union. Later, I worked as an equal opportunities officer for about 20 years.
- I started editing Wikipedia on 8 March 2020. Since then, I have been an active member of Wikipedia:Hannover, since 2024 a founding member of WikiFrauen*Hannover.
- I’m mainly active on the German Wikipedia, Commons and Wikidata and like to connect these projects. Writing articles on Wikipedia I use my knowledge of Slavic languages. Mostly I choose to write about women. My favorite subjects to photograph are also women and everything connected to women. I take part in WLM, WLE and WLX. On Wikidata I create entries for streets, again esp. streets named after women. I also add data about scientists I meet or read about. Recently I created or enlarged entries for African scientists while reading the book An African History of Africa by Zeinab Badawi.
- I am involved in working groups to prepare events like the 10th anniversary of Wikipedia:Hannover, the FemNetzCon 2025 and WLX Germany 2025; I am also part of a WMDE editorial group to revise the funding guidelines.