GLAM Rock: The Wikipedian in Residence and the Race for the Prize

Starting in March, a longtime Wikipedian and co-host of the Wikipedia Weekly podcast, Liam Wyatt, began an unusual experiment: he has become, for a short while at least, a volunteer "Wikipedian in Residence" at the British Museum in London (which I visited in high school and where I touched the Rosetta Stone, when no one was looking, not that you care). It's the first time such an institution has created such a position (voluntary though this arrangement is) and it points toward a future where organizations with significant cultural material (GLAMs, as this project calls them) may appoint or hire individuals to be representatives or ambassadors to Wikipedia.

Along the way, Wyatt and the British Museum are doing something very interesting: they are offering cash prizes for raising articles to Featured-level status on topics related to the British Museum. From the project page:

The British Museum is offering five prizes of £100 (≈$140USD/€120) at their shop/bookshop for new Featured Articles on topics related to the British Museum in any Wikipedia language edition. Ideally, the topics will be articles about collection items.

This is the first time an organisation in the UK has put out a prize that recognises the value of fine articles on Wikipedia. This is a recognition that Wikipedia work is not only good quality but is consistent with the outreach aspect of the Museum's mission to engage the public.

It's an inventive idea, even if some of the rules are a little unclear: it almost sounds like it requires the creation of a brand new article, though that doesn't seem to be the case. Meanwhile, there are already a dozen or so articles on the English-language Wikipedia currently judged to be Good, B, or C-quality, according to Wikipedia's internal rating system. Though the prize is pointedly offered in any language edition, most will surely be won in the English, German or French language versions, and at least a few of the aforementioned English articles will be the five ones improved by the winners.

And in keeping with Wikipedia's "There is no deadline" ethos (related to the concept of "eventualism"), the competition runs until all prizes are claimed. I wouldn't be surprised if they went fast, and I wouldn't be surprised if that leads to another interesting situation: most quality articles have several major contributors, as was pointed out on a Wikipedia mailing list this week.

As Wyatt points out, getting an outside organization to care about "the value of good quality articles on Wikipedia in their own right" is a significant achievement, and the first of a kind. Now that the English-language Wikipedia has grown to include far more articles (3 million) than its veteran editors (a few thousand editing on a daily basis) can possibly handle, more ideas will be needed to generate new content for Wikipedia. Perhaps this represents the next step in the development of the human-powered "content management system" for Wikipedia. Wyatt hopes that other museums will follow in the British Museum's lead; as someone who works with companies, associations and other organizations that are frequently concerned about how they are represented on Wikipedia, I think outposts for representatives to the Wikipedia community from many organizations can be a good idea, though sorting out the conflict of interest issues is likely to be different for each.

If you're interested in joining the British Museum contest, you might start with one of the articles discussed above, or find your own in the Collection of the British Museum category. And if you're looking for a curator at the British Museum to work with, here is the page to do that.

And for more information about Wyatt's residency, see his personal blog posts here: Part 1: Making Wikipedia "GLAM-friendly"* and Part 2: Making Wikipedia "GLAM-friendly".

Exterior of British Museum by temporalata on Flickr; Great Hall by M.Chohan.

*GLAM stands for "Gallery, Library, Archive and Museum"; I had to look it up, too.