Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Follow by email

If you just want to know the updates as they are posted to the HoPAu blog, and not necessarily all the argy bargy on the email list, then check out the new 'subscribe by email' box on the HoPAu blog right side. Subscribing that way, simply gives you the announcements we post on the blog. We hope this helps some of you stay in touch with what we're doing, in a way that suites you best.

RSS, forwards to the email forum, and your ability to simply remember and come back to us at the site, all still work too.

HoPAu on Wikimedia Outreach

We've established a home on the web for all the cross wiki work going on. The Wikimedia Outreach HoPAU page, is the project portal out into the various Wikimedia Foundation spaces including Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikibooks, Wikinews and Wikiversity. We hope this page simplifies your navigation and understanding around the project. As HoPAU grows, the page on Outreach will become increasingly important in coordinating and keeping track of work across the various wiki projects. The old Wikiversity page that was originally serving this role, now becomes the space for data presentation and research, educational resource development (such as readers and courses), and the archive of the original tender.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Have you previewed the book yet?

I'm not sure if people interested in the HOPAu project have taken the time to look at the books that Laura Hale has compiled for the project. They're dynamic content, meaning as we help develop the content, the book compilation get's updated too. In this screen recording I take a look at the Australian Paralympians book, checking out how much a paper back version costs from PediaPress, and previewing the look and feel of it. I stopped short of actually buying one because well, I'm as poor (or tight) as the next guy and, the content is still rapidly developing. I'll buy one in a few months time I reckon... but others might like to think about getting a 'before' version, and an 'after' version later. Or maybe you'd just like to compile your own book, made up of your favourite Wikipedia pages about the Paralympics - yes, you can do that... see the left hand menu item called: "create a book".






Laura has also compiled another book called, Australia at the Paralympics. See if you can work out from my screen recording how to check that one out, it's equally as interesting.

The Book feature on all Wikimedia Projects - pretty cool.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Identifying competitors: Your help needed!

We have a new category in Wikimedia Commons: Unidentified paralympic competitors that groups photos that we need help identifying who everyone is in the photo.

If you can help, take a look at the image thumbnails, click one to make it larger, read the description to see who we do and don't know in the image, if you think you know who the 'other' person is then please let us know. You can do this by:
  1. editing the image page directly
  2. leaving a message on the page's discussion (tab at top of page), 
  3. leaving a comment on this blog post, 
  4. or sending a message to the HOPAu email forum. 


Any of those channels will get to us all eventually.

Here's an example:


We know who the Australian in the middle is, the one challenging for the ball, it's Amanda Carter. But who is the person playing the ball, and who is the person on the left frame? So far, the image's description reads:
Australian women's wheelchair basketballer Amanda Carter challenges for the ball in a game against the USA at the 1996 Atlanta Paralympic Games
So, if you know who the people are in the 1996 team from the USA, you can probably help us!

Friday, November 25, 2011

Tony Naar's update

This week I wanted to share our latest Wikipedia “breakthroughs”.

We have just started a mission to record the subjects of Paralympic articles reading the text of the article about themself. This is a bit innovative within Wikipedia and we feel it will give a great personal touch to the articles.

Recently in Canberra, our APC intern Nick Gregory-Roberts recorded Chris Nunn reading the first “spoken article” – catch it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Nunn. The photo of Chris and the recording were made on an iPhone.

This innovation has been covered today in The Signpost, a weekly e-newspaper dedicated to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Foundation projects - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-11-21/News_and_notes  - under the title “Autowikiography”, and includes the pic of Nunny. This newsletter is widely read by Wikipedia editors around the world.

Since the audio was recorded on Chris’ article, the number of daily views of the Wikipedia article about him has increased from an average of about 3 a day to an average of more than 10 a day, with a peak of 85 in one day when the recording was uploaded. There will certainly be a spike after today’s story.

In the past 30 days alone, 368 Australian Paralympic articles have been viewed more than 50 times each and there have been a total of 70,570 pageviews of articles about the Paralympic movement in Australia.

Articles about Troy Sachs (3,420 views), Ashley Adams (3,389), basketballer Julianne Adams (2,559), Evan O’Hanlon (2,149),Kurt Fearnley (1,574), 200 Team swimmer Casey Redford (1,217) and Steve Graham (923) all featured in the Did You Know section during that period. However, articles about other Paralympians also attracted lots of views in the past 30 days – Michael Milton (814), Louise Sauvage (798), Jessica Gallagher (543), Matt Cowdrey (529), 1964/68 Paralympian Elizabeth Edmondson(517) leading the way with more than 500 views in the past 30 days.

Rounding out the most viewed articles was Australia at the 2000 Summer Paralympics, with 507 pageviews.

Every one of these articles, except the last, has been created over the past 3 months through the history project.

So whether you’re autowikiing like Nunny, or just looking for info, it seems that there is interest in the Wiki world in Australia’s Paralympic stories!

Regards,

TN

Tony Naar
General Manager, Knowledge Services
Australian Paralympic Committee

Monday, October 31, 2011

The Brisbane workshop

The State Library of Queensland is an impressive venue. Free Wifi, prime location, lots of action, especially our wiki training day.


Craig Franklin (Treasurer of Wikimedia Australia) and John Vandenberg (President of Wikimedia Australia) lead the day, with 24 participants joining for the day. 5 people related to the HOPAu project attended, including: Peter Marsh, Vicki Epstein, Carmel Williams, Adrienne Keygan, and later in the day Murray Phillips.

  1. Peter made an edit to the history section of Wheelchair Rubgy
  2. Vicki sketched out a new page for Sporting Wheelies
  3. Carmel sketched out a page for Queensland Paralympians
  4. Adrienne skethed out a page for John Martin Paralympian

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Brisbane workshop, Monday 31 October

We're holding another wiki training day, this time in Brisbane, on Monday the 31st of October, between 9am and 5pm, at the State Library in the Southbank Cultural Precinct.

Again, we hope to connect with paralympians, their family and friends like we did in Perth, or anyone who has an interest or wants to get involved with the project.

Hope to see you there, please contact Tony Naar if you're thinking to come along: Tony.Naar@paralympic.org.au

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Our first paralympian editor

She is the youngest gold medal winning swimmer ever, continues to win medals and set records today, and recently became the first Australian paralympian to edit Wikipedia!

Elizabeth Edmondson attended our Perth workshop, and we've enjoyed watching her edits on Wikipedia, and image donations to Wikimedia Commons since.

I thought I'd get back in touch with Elizabeth, now a little time has passed, to see how she's going and what she thinks of it all.

A lady of little words, but big actions, here's what Elizabeth had to say:

How does it feel to have a Wikipedia page up about you?

I feel very proud that I have a Wkipedia page about me as it recognises the fact that I am the youngest swimmer in Australia to win Gold -able or disabled swimmers.

You've helped us build up that page, and even donated images for it which is wonderful, we hope to make it a featured article some day. Are you still motivated to help us build up your page?

Yes I look at it and update regularly. Here is another photo for you (see above). My medals after the 13th Masters Games held in Adelaide this year.

Is it getting easier, perhaps even fun, to edit Wikipedia?

I have only been editing for a few weeks - but getting more used to it. I let others upload photos.

Have you told others about your page, or about the HoPAu project?

Yes lots of family and friends.

How do you think we could get more paralympians involved in editing Wikipedia articles about each other?

Getting organisations like Wheelchair Sports WA involved

Have you considered editing the Wikipedia entries for other Australian paralympians you know about?

If I saw an error I would

Anything else you'd like to say?

I met Lyn Lilleycrapp in Adelaide- she was a Paralympian in 1976, 1988, and 19992 and would like to be involved (email added to the HoPAu email list)

Would you like to be kept in the loop with HoPAu progress generally?

Yes Please (email added to the HoPAu email list)

Friday, October 14, 2011

Anatomy of an Australian Paralympic DYK


By Laura Hale


Since the start of the History of the Paralympic Movement in Australia project with the Australian Paralympic Committee, we have had nine articles become English Wikipedia, Did you know…?s (DYK) and appearing on the front of Wikipedia. We have several articles will are in the process of being nominated or will shortly be nominated. An effort has been made to get articles to Did You Know status because they draw increased views to Australian Paralympic content, increase the number of contributors to articles, lead to an overall increase in the quality of content on Wikipedia, and help reward new contributors to the project by making their contributions highly visible.
What does it take to get an article to DYK? What does the process involve? What happens after an article appears on DYK? Why do we send Australian Paralympic articles to DYK?
The article is at the heart of it. First, an article has to be newly created in the past five days or expanded five-fold in the past five days. Second, the article must be 1,500 characters of prose long. Information in the article must be verifiable, where people can verify by checking the source listed on Wikipedia. The article must also comply with other Wikipedia policies and guidelines like Biographies of Living People, which is intended to make sure articles do not contain original research, are neutral and verifiable. It also needs to be free of copyright violations and plagiarism. That’s what an article needs before it can be nominated. How are articles selected for expansion with a goal of becoming DYKs? It depends. Two articles that became DYKs were started on or expanded by people not officially affiliated with the project. These wereElizabeth Edmondson and David Hall. We saw contributors working on these articles and decided to help and encourage the contributors to get the articles to a point where they could be taken to DYK. On our own, the choice to improve articles to get them to DYK happened for a variety of reasons: An article was personally interesting to one of the contributors, getting sporadic edits by other contributors, had pictures that could be included on it, was on a priority list of articles to be improved or was near the top of the alphabet. There is no real systematic effort to get certain types of articles or a list of articles through DYK based on any set of criteria.
Once an article has been written and meets the bare criteria for DYK, the next step is to ask for help with the article. When I see an article close to being DYK ready, I like to come in and try to improve the article by fixing citations, improving prose, etc. When I am writing a DYK, I like to ask Graham87Hawkeye7LeighBlackall and John Vandenberg to do a copy edit, with an eye towards making the article ready for DYK submission. It is a useful and important step because it generally helps prevent against accusations of word padding to get to DYK, improves the clarity of the wording to make sure things are factual and match with the source, and generally improves the readability of the article. Beyond that, this step helps bring wider community engagement. People watch other people on Wikipedia and commenting on another person’s talk page means an article will likely get a few additional views and potential contributors as a result.
After an article has been copyedited, the next step is to take an article to DYK. In the case of Australian Paralympic DYKs, a few people have actually done the submission. Who does the submission is entirely up to the article writer, contributor or community. For one of our DYKS, the DYK was submitted by the non-APC project involved contributor, KansaiDan. For most of the rest, I asked Hawkeye7 or John Vandenberg to nominate the articles. This is because both of these users are very familiar with the DYK process and are capable of reviewing other DYKs because of their wider experience with content review. The familiarity with content review is important because the current DYK process requires anyone submitting a DYK must also review an article nominated for DYK. When they nominate an article, they need to find a hook for the article. The hook should be some interesting piece of interesting information that will hook people into reading the article. Examples of hooks used in APC DYKs include:
  • … that two-time US Open women’s wheelchair tennis champion Daniela Di Toro became paraplegic when a wall fell on her while she was competing at a school swimming carnival?”
  • … that Alicia Aberley is a Paralympic swimmer who has held multiple world records and works for Amway?”
  • … that wheelchair-tennis player David Hall was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 2010?”
In trying to think of hooks for Australian Paralympians, there is a bit of a personal struggle for me as a nominator/encouraging others to nominate. Paralympic medalists are fantastic competitors. They train more and can often do more athletically than I can as an able bodied person. Their performances speak for themselves. I want people to read articles about these athletes, not because they are disabled, but because they are fantastic athletes. The problem with developing hooks is the fact which would get the most readers may be seen as exploitative of the athlete’s disability. For me and others connected with the project, we try to make sure that when we nominate articles, most hooks we submit do not include a facts that could be read that way. Beyond the hook being interest, the nominator also checks to see if there is an image of the Paralympian. Articles with pictures often get more viewers. The submission needs to be properly formatted.
Once an article has been nominated, the article will be reviewed by one or more people. During this stage, the reviewer may edit the article to clarify wording or fix other minor problems. The reviewer may indicate there are some problems with the article and ask those to be fixed. For a few of the Australian Paralympic articles, people unaffiliated with the project as participants have come in to fix these problems on the article. In other cases, other editors have clarified issues where the reviewer may have concerns. This is often a second stage contribution and viewing burst associated with the article that can be seen by viewing article history and total article views. Once any and all issues have been addressed, the article is moved to the staging area and appears on the main page of Wikipedia within a few days.
During the period when an article appears on the main page and for a day or so after the article appears, the article receives a large number of article views:
These numbers are substantially higher than the normal day to day page views for the article. Beyond the increase in views, the article often sees a third burst in article contributions. For example, editors will often fix grammatical errors not previously spotted in the article, remove trivial information, add new information, improve information boxes and add the article to additional categories. In most cases, Australian Paralympic articles appearing on the main page as DYK  helps with efforts to continually improve the article from a content, formatting and community perspective.  That’s why we do send articles to DYK.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Tony Naar speaking about HoPAu at the University of Canberra

Tony Naar was a guest speaker at the University of Canberra's unit of study, Business, Politics and Sport today. He spoke about the HoPAu project and his responsibilities for the collecting, managing and preservation the history of the Paralympic movement in Australia. In his talk, Tony takes us through the HoPAu project, and the reasons for doing it. Well worth a listen if you want to appreciate the scope and significance of what we're doing.



Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Wikipedia stubs for all games and medalists

Laura Hale scaring kids off the play gym
Ok, we'll admit it.. Laura Hale is a machine. I'm glad she's with us.

Stubs
Laura is weeks from completing Wikipedia article stubs for all the Paralympic games that Australian's participated in, as well as stubs for all Australian medalists at those games! This work pretty much maps out the primary scope of the HoPAu project, and we build up from here. We need to go to each of the pages for the games Australians participated in, and list the Australian medal winners on that page.


Statistics on the Australian medalist pages
Since 9 August we've added:
  • Three "B rated" articles to Wikipedia, about Australian Paralympic medalists, out of three total
  • Three "C rated" out of three total
  • One "Start" out of ten total
  • 298 "Stubs" out of 343 total
Statistics for the pages about Australia at the Paralympics
Since 9 August we've added:
  • Two "C rated" out of two total
  • One "Start" out of three total
  • 14 "Stubs" out of 27 total


DYK
Laura has also been working on getting a few pages onto Wikipedia's Did You Know (DYK) where if successful, can attract several thousand views to any one page, occasionally bringing in another volunteer editor, who usually assists with copy editing and the like. Here's what featured on DYK recently:


Since the start of HoPAu, we've had six articles posted on Wikipedia's Did You Know (DYK), and four scheduled to appear shortly.
  1. Elizabeth Edmondson - 4,000 views
  2. Priya_Cooper - 3,100 views
  3. Liesl_Tesch - 2,400 views
  4. David Hall (tennis) - 695 views
  5. Australia_at_the_1996_Summer_Paralympics - 498 views
  6. Frank_Ponta - 300 views
  7. Fabian Blattman - scheduled for DYK
  8. Daniela Di Toro - scheduled for DYK
  9. Alicia Aberley - scheduled for DYK
  10. Troy Sachs - scheduled for DYK


Other news
Behind the scenes we're discussing an incentive program to motivate Wikipedia editors to jump in and improve on the stubs and DYKs. We hope to make an announcement on this program by the end of November.

We're making some progress on scanning and releasing more images, and hopefully we'll see some audio from athletes on site as well. Laura spends a day a week down at the NSIC scanning, with Tony Naar sourcing and negotiating copyrights. If you have copyrights on any imagery relating to Australia at the paralympic, please get in touch. Paralympian Elizabeth Edwards donated 6 images to aid with the development of her Wikipedia page, which successfully featured on DYK.

Further to the workshop held in Perth last month, the GLAM Newsletter on Outreach Wikimedia published a report by Laura and John Vandenberg.

    Tuesday, September 27, 2011

    How did the workshop in Perth go?



    Laura Hale, Graham Pearce, John Vandenberg and Tony Naar came together in Perth, at the State Library, to help host the Wikipedia editing workshop. Laura has shared her perspectives on that (copied below), and Graham spoke to an Adelaide radio station a few days before. Here's a copy of that audio on Archive.org.


    Copy of Laura's notes:

    One of the things I love Australia is the size, the accessibility of everyone, and the strong sense of national identity, its sport culture. It reminds me of home in the USA but even better at times, because I can see Olympians and Paralympians training as I bike around Canberra, I can call sport organisations on the phone and get a response, and I can see local professional athletes eating at the food court at the local mall. (In one case, I almost ran one over with my bicycle.) I get to meet really cool, sporty people that I might not get the chance to in the USA. That’s also why I love being involved with the APC project.


    This past weekend, I attended and help facilitate part of a Wikipedia training session in Perth, Western Australia for the Australian Paralympic Committee. This training session reminded me of why I love Australia: Three Paralympians attended. One was Elizabeth Edmondson and another was Kerrie Engel. All the Paralympians that attended were enthusiastic about the project, eager to help, and happy to be share their stories. According to Tony Narr, the Australian Paralympic Committee had not been in touch with many Paralympians over the years until they started this history project. Thus, it was great to have them in attendance, having them learn about the project, having them contribute to the project we are working on. If this project is going to succeed, they are the ones that need to be involved. They will tell other Paralympians what the APC is doing, show them the content, have them help contribute their own knowledge base and personal collection of scrapbooks to the history the APC is writing. So while only two Paralympians attended the whole day, the event was in my opinion still a success because we made contacts, the two that attended will share what they are doing their fellow Paralympians, with other athletes they still compete with, and with their friends and family. Oh, and both attendees contributed to Wikipedia after the event: Kerrie Engel and Elizabeth Edmondson.


    The training session discussed/taught several things including the scope of the APC’s project, how Wikimedia Australia is contributing to the project, how to edit a user page, how to create a new article, discussed copyright issues for images, issues with disabilist language on Wikipedia articles, the importance of sourcing, issues of notability, and showed examples of DYKs. There were several hand outs, including one I developed on Editing Sport Biographies. Graham87 talked about his experiences editing Wikipedia, and showed how article clean up was done. If I was doing this again, I might do a couple of things differently: I’d spend less time on creating a user page and creating a new article using the create a new article form. I’d focus more on editing actual articles: One of the efforts that we’ve made some headway on with APC related content is creating stub content. We should encourage people to start editing these. Research shows Wikipedia editors often start making these small edits from IP addresses. After doing this, they progress to getting an account and making more substantial edits. I’d also spend more time showing people how to use talk pages. If people use talk pages to ask for help and to explain what they are doing, their edits are less likely to be reverted, they are more likely to get the benefit of the doubt and they will help foster a sense of community.


    Positive outcomes from this training session? For me, getting a chance to meet the people I am writing about was fantastic. Beyond that, hopefully the article about Elizabeth Edmondson will become a DYK and appear on Wikipedia’s main page. We have a new article about Kerrie Engel. The National Sport Information Centre has a copy of a scrap book about Edmondson’s Paralympic experiences as told through newspapers that others can use and cite. Our Paralympians have made edits to APC related articles and continued to edit the day after the training session. Edmondson released some pictures that will appear on Commons that can be used on WMF related projects. Both Paralympians are likely to tell their friends, family, fellow athletes and other Paralympians about the good work the APC is doing in terms of documenting the history of the Paralympic movement in Australia. Ideas were generated for how to include additional photo, video and audio content into WMF related pages, and other APC related places on the Internet. Attendees improved their network of contacts. While the attendance was low, the long term consequences will be very beneficial to the Paralympic Movement in Australia.

    Thursday, September 1, 2011

    Workshop in Perth 18 Sep

    Click here for full resolution poster
    On Sunday September 18 there will be a wiki training workshop for Paralympians in Perth, held at the State Library. WMAU members Graham Pearce and John Vandenberg will be there, as will Laura Hale (University of Canberra) and Tony Naar (Australian Paralympic Committee) and Murray Phillips (University of Queensland).

    The Australian Paralympic Committee, in association with the University of Canberra National Institute of Sport Studies, and Wikimedia Australia, invites you to help edit Wikipedia articles relating to:

    The History of the Paralympics for Australia (HoPAU)

    Please join us for a day of demonstrations, skills development, and collaborative editing at:

    State Library of Western Australia, Perth
    10am to 5pm Sunday 18 September 2011
    Geographe Room, 25 Francis Street
    Contact: 0408 660 268
    hopau.ucniss.net

    Tuesday, August 23, 2011

    New Wikipedia entry for Amanda Fraser

    new Wikipedia article was created about Amanda Fraser last month, by UK resident, Neil Edwards (Waacstats). The page uses an image released to Wikimedia Commons by APC's General Manager of Knowledge Services, Tony Naar.

    I've counted 10 or 11 different editors who have helped out with the Amanda Fraser page so far, with Steven Zhang making a very significant contribution. The page currently gets an average of 12 views each day. But on the 12 August, views spiked to 3800 as a result of John Vandenberg's work in successfully nominating the page for Wikipedia's Did You Know project. When a page is successfully nominated to DYK, it is linked to from Wikipedia's main page, accounting for the spike in page views.

    Waacstats is another prolific Wikipedia editor, especially focused on creating article stubs, and helping out in sorting stubs. He's been awarded a heap of Barnstars (a peer reward and recognition gesture on Wikipedia), and I'm hoping to get an interview with him when he get's back from holidays. Perhaps Barnstar awards are something the HOPAU project might consider, to give recognition to people who make significant contributions to pages to do with Australian paralympians..?

    New project blog address: hopau.ucniss.net

    The old address of ucniss-hopau.blogspot.com is now redirecting to hopau.ucniss.net, a subdomain of www.ucniss.net

    As a redirect is in place, you don't have to change links or edit any pre existing hypertext, it's just an address that should be easier to remember.

    hopau.ucniss.net

    Wednesday, August 17, 2011

    A discussion with Wikipedia editor Aridd

    When Laura was commissioned in May 2011, to do a Wikimedia Foundation project wide survey of articles and media relating to Australia and the Paralympics, we discovered Wikipedia editors who had started several articles of interest to us.

    One of those editors is Aridd, a prolific veteran contributor to not just the English Wikipedia. Arrid has started no less than 953 new articles or sections to articles, and 6 of them Australia related paralympic articles.

    I contacted Aridd on his Wikipedia talk page, to see what I could find out about him, what his motivations are, and what we at HOPAU could do to support and encourage work like his.

    Here's what Aridd had to say:




    Hello. Thank you for your message; I'm always pleased to see people involved in better coverage in the Paralympics. A great deal still needs to be done on Wikipedia in that regard... It was particularly unfortunate that there was no article on Australia at the Sydney Paralympics, and the very brief article I started... still needs completing.

    As you may have seen, I don't actually focus on Australia; I've been trying to add to Wikipedia's Paralympic coverage across all nationalities. My biggest "achievement" is perhaps to have started most of the articles on "[Nation] at the Paralympics", though it wasn't me who started Australia's...

    To answer your questions (and of course I have no objection to you posting any of this on your blog): I'm from France, and have always lived there except for one brief year in Sydney eight years ago, during which time I was studying for my Master's (and also taught a bit of French for beginners as a tutor at Sydney Uni), though I also have British citizenship via my mother, thanks to which I'm bilingual (and able to contribute on both the French and English Wikipedias). 

    I've written (or at least started) a great number of Paralympic-related articles on the English Wikipedia, almost all of which are either an overview of a nation's participation in the Paralympic Games overall, or of a nation's participation in a specific edition of the Paralympics, or an article about a particular athlete. To give you just a few examples, these are Paralympic-related articles that I wrote and which appeared on Wikipedia's front page in the Did you know? section: Trischa Zorn (most successful Paralympian ever in terms of medals won); Pál Szekeres (Olympic medal-winner who went on to win medals at the Paralympics after an accident and disability); Tofiri Kibuuka (first African at the Winter Paralympics); Lango Sinkamba (Zambian Paralympian and president of his country's NPC); Said GomezRhodesia at the 1960 Summer ParalympicsEdward MaaloufMarathon at the Paralympics; and Ukraine at the Paralympics

    My plans for the future are rather vague, and subject to change; at present, I'm thinking of creating a few more of the many, many articles that still need to be written on nations' participation in specific editions of the Paralympics. I also hope to do more on specific Paralympians; there's still a great number of Paralympic medal winners, including many gold medal winners, about whom Wikipedia has no article. 

    One day... I'll start doing the same for the French Wikipedia, which has virtually nothing on the Paralympics. So far, I've started a few articles there providing brief overviews of particular editions of the Games, as even that had not been done (for example, Jeux paralympiques d'été de 1984).) 

    As for why I do it... I'm honestly not too sure. I enjoy contributing to Wikipedia, and there are topics I'm interested in which Wikipedia still provides comparatively little coverage of. Such as the politics of Pacific Island countries (especially in the French Wikipedia), or indeed the Paralympic Games. Call it, perhaps, trying to do my little part in balancing Wikipedia's content, and helping ensure that it's truly encyclopedic... 

    I'm irritated at the fact that the Paralympics receive less media and public interest than the Olympics, despite the fact that they're a top-quality sporting event with some extremely impressive athletes. My wish is that Wikipedia should ultimately offer as much coverage of the Paralympics as of the Olympics (just as it should, ideally, cover the politics of, say, Vanuatu, as much as those of the UK).

    Regarding what you could do to help... Well, maybe spread the word that there's heaps of work to be done in Wikipedia's Paralympic coverage! A good source to start with is the IPC website. It gives a fairly comprehensive database of results, which can be considered complete from the late 1980s onwards. Results for Australia, for instance, can be found here. That rough list can be refined and narrowed down by altering the research parameters. You can see here that Wikipedia has no coverage of Australia's participation in ten editions of the Paralympic Games, such as the Barcelona Summer Games of 1992. To find out how Australian fared in 1992, anyone can see the results here on the IPC website, and use them as a starting point to begin a Wikipedia article. Or, existing articles can be completed by adding results; the article Australia at the 1976 Summer Paralympics does not include results, which can be found here. The IPC database can also be used to search for results by athlete, and to start articles on Australia's (or any other country's) most successful or most notable Paralympians. (A list of all of Australia's gold medals can be found here.) Anyone who'd like to help can drop by the Paralympics taskforce.

    Thank you for your interest, in any case! Aridd (talk) 11:36, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

    Well no!! Thank You Aridd, some wise words of advice, and very helpful links for us,. We really appreciate Aridd's perspective and contribution to not just Australia related articles to do with the Paralympics, but the Paralympics as a whole, and the symbolic relationship that has with issues of popular focus on one thing and not another. In saying that however, we hope our growing contribution of media to the Wikimedia Commons will compel people like Aridd to focus on Australian coverage for a while ;) because like he said, there's a hell of a lot of work to do. We'll have a think on what we can do to compliment the over all coverage of the paralympics and its athletes worldwide too.

    Thanks again Aridd, keep up the great work!