Wikipedia:GLAM/NZP/Guidance

Wikipedia: GLAM/New Zealand Parliament/Wikipedia Guidance

Overview

Wikipedia is a global community-written online encyclopaedia. Members of the public are free to write about New Zealand Parliament, government, politicians and politics. Wikipedia contributors do not own their contributions, and any contribution may be contested or changed at any time by other editors.

A GLAM-Wiki Project page outlines the Wikipedia goals of a GLAM (Gallery, Library, Archives and Museums) sector organisation, and assists the Wikipedia community with information and research which they may edit, or help with editing.

The Parliamentary Service has a New Zealand Parliamentary Library GLAM-Wiki Project page which outlines our shared priorities when it comes to information on Wikipedia about New Zealand Parliament parliamentary business.

The overall goal of our GLAM page is to help make information on Wikipedia about New Zealand Parliament as correct and accessible as possible. This could include assisting with library research to help broaden articles, suggesting edits to Wikipedia pages about Parliament and MPs, and fixing broken links to the Parliament website.

The editing priorities of our GLAM page have been guided by WikiProject New Zealand/politics which sets out the Wikipedia Community’s own editing priorities. The WikiProject looks at past Parliaments and politicians, as well as wider New Zealand political themes and organisations, including local government. Our GLAM page will outline what the Library can help within the New Zealand/politics project.

Our GLAM page is managed by members of the Parliamentary Library and Engagement Group, but may be contributed to by anyone across the Service or Office. It is the first known GLAM page for a Parliament that has been developed as a group initiative in consultation with Wikipedians globally.

The Wikipedia project group is considering uploading media from the Parliamentary Collection into the WikiMedia Commons (Wikipedia’s media library). This may come as part of a wider group digitisation project and is not planned for the immediate future.

The Parliamentary Service IP address has previously been blocked from editing Wikipedia due to inappropriate editing behaviour from the IP address. These guidelines set out the Parliamentary Service expectations of staff when editing Wikipedia articles and provide a public-facing explanation of the editing methodology of Parliamentary Service staff. It also acknowledges that the agency is aware of and dealing with any potential conflicts of interest in staff editing.

Our guidelines were developed using the Auckland Museum WikiProject's internal guidelines as a template, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our guidelines are published under the same license.

Guidance statement

In addition to following Wikipedia’s Policies and Guidelines when editing, people working for Parliamentary Service must adhere our Code of Conducts and the following:

When participating in Wikipedia editing, you should have your own individual Wikipedia accounts. These can be pseudonymous, so need not identify the user by name. You should disclose your affiliation with Parliament on your user page before editing. This includes if you were editing before this guidance was written.

When editing any article an impartial voice must be maintained.

When contributing to Wikipedia editing you are encouraged to have a conflict-of-interest disclaimer on your user page. This includes if you edit outside of parliamentary purposes. A template is available on Our House.

Before contributing Parliamentary Service assets (ie, digitised images of collection items, reference text, or photographs taken by Parliament staff) to Wikimedia Commons, appropriate authorisation to release the specific files must be sought and appropriate licenses used.

You must not edit articles about: 1) New Zealand Parliament as an institution, 2) any sitting Member of Parliament, or 3) any current political parties, as this may be perceived as a conflict of interest. Simple factual changes may be suggested via the article talk pages. More substantive changes should be proposed via the New Zealand Parliament project page to see whether this fits in with the project team’s focus areas.

Where desired, training may be offered to staff members who would like to know more about Wikipedia editing.

Breaches to guidelines

Breaches to guidelines may result in Parliament’s IP address being blocked from editing Wikipedia.

Where a breach has been made by an identifiable person, breaches may be reported to the appropriate manager or by contacting the Party Whip for guidance.

For further information or advice, please get in touch with the Research Team (Parliamentary Library).