User:Giantflightlessbirds

This user helps out newcomers.

This user has publicly declared that he has a conflict of interest regarding these Wikipedia articles: Mike Dickison Development West Coast

This user opposes the use of generative artificial "intelligence" software on Wikipedia.

This user belongs to Team Critter.

This user is a member of the West Coast task force.

This user attends the regular Ōtautahi Meetup.

I'm Mike Dickison (mikerove.wiki, Adzebill on BlueSky and Mastodon). I'm a zoologist by training, interested in the evolution of extinct flightless birds such as moa and the conservation of endangered New Zealand insects. I had a previous career as a graphic designer, but have been working in and around museums since 1990.

I've been an active Wikipedian since 2014, beginning with Whanganui Wiki Wednesday while Curator of Natural History at Whanganui Regional Museum. I began providing Wikipedia backup for the Critter of the Week radio show in 2015, and now coordinate a team of volunteers. I spent 2018–2019 as the NZ Wikipedian at Large funded by a WMF Project Grant (during which I invented the models Wikipedian at Large and Wikiblitz) and in 2020, 2022, and 2023 was West Coast Wikipedian at Large.

From November 2020 to June 2022 I was Digital Discovery Librarian at the Westland District Library in Hokitika, New Zealand. I received a Paul Reynolds ("No Numpties") Scholarship to spend September 2022 in Europe researching the use of OpenRefine in GLAM institutions. Currently I'm Aotearoa Wikipedian at Large based in Christchurch on a grant from Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand.

I'm also a freelance Wikipedia and open-knowledge consultant, helping organisations engage with Wikimedia projects and supporting volunteer activities. In my spare time I sketch (my drawings in Commons), go on nature hikes with iNaturalist, and do some amateur entomology.

From mid 2018 to mid 2019 I was New Zealand Wikipedian at Large, supported by a one-year project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation. My job was to travel New Zealand to help heritage and research organisations engage with Wikimedia projects as a Wikipedian in Residence, and support the New Zealand editing community through meetups and workshops. Since then I've been a Wikipedian in Residence or Wikipedian at Large with numerous organisations, somtimes funded directly by them and other times by grants from Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand. My Wikipedian at Large work with Development West Coast won Silver (Best Use of Digital and Social Media) and Gold (Most Innovative Campaign) at the PR Institute of NZ's 2024 awards.

Date	Organisation	Project page	Notes
Jul 2018 – Jun 2019	Wikimedia Foundation	Wikipedia:GLAM/NZWPAL	Invented "Wikipedian at Large" and "Wikiblitz"
Nov–Dec 2019	Lincoln University	Wikipedia:GLAM/Lincoln	Entomology department, teaching-photo archive
Jan–July 2020	Massey University	Wikipedia:GLAM/Massey	Staff Wikipedia/Wikidata training and edit-a-thon
Jun–Dec 2020	Dodd-Walls Centre	Wikipedia:GLAM/DoddWalls	Physics articles, researcher photos to Commons
Sep–Oct 2020	Development West Coast	Wikipedia:GLAM/WestCoastWPAL	First West Coast Wikipedian at Large
Jan–Aug 2021	New Zealand Opera	Wikipedia:GLAM/NZOpera	Performer articles, photo collection, modelling operas in Wikidata
Jun–Aug 2022	Development West Coast	Wikipedia:GLAM/WestCoastWPAL	TV and international press coverage
Jan 2023	University of Otago	Wikipedia:GLAM/OU	Zoology Department archives
Sep–Oct 2023	Development West Coast	Wikipedia:GLAM/WestCoastWPAL	Won PRINZ Gold and Silver awards
Jun 2023 – Aug 2024	Healthier Lives	Wikipedia:GLAM/NSC	First of five National Science Challenge residencies
Jan 2024 – Aug 2024	Ageing Well	Wikipedia:GLAM/NSC	Followed by similar work with three other Challenges
Jan–Dec 2024	Aotearoa Wikipedian at Large	Wikipedia:GLAM/AoWPAL 2024	Christchurch: Cass, Ink on Paper, digitised books
Jan–Dec 2025	Aotearoa Wikipedian at Large	Wikipedia:GLAM/AoWPAL 2025	Banks Peninsula: reserves, insects, buildings
Dec 2024 –	Ashburton District Council	Wikipedia:GLAM/Ashburton	Ashburton Lakes, history books, and a photo collection
Oct 2025 –	MacDiarmid Institute	Wikipedia:GLAM/MacDiarmid	Research and researchers into Wikipedia
Dec 2025 – Apr 2026	Kaikōura District Council	Wikipedia:GLAM/Kaikōura	Tourism images and articles and Museum photo collection
Jan 2026 –	Chch Archaeology Project	Wikipedia:GLAM/Archaeology Aotearoa	Archaeologists, publications, photos

Since 2015 I've helped with RNZ's Critter of the Week, a weekly radio broadcast by Nicola Toki and Jesse Mulligan on native species both endangered and neglected. A group of "wikinerds" improve or create the article for each species discussed: Jesse and I chatted about it in this interview back in 2016, and I wrote about it for Forest & Bird in 2023. Good examples of improved articles are the Open Bay Islands leech, New Zealand giraffe weevil, and Mercury Islands tusked weta. Critter of the Week has a Wikipedia project page with a complete list of all critters to date, and links to each broadcast. Cartoonist Giselle Clarkson has released some of her art under an open licence for the project. Feel free to help! Volunteers receive a weekly email with information on the upcoming critter,and a To Do list, as well as online training; you can sign up here.

Zine produced for 2025 LIANZA

A project that grew out of my work with Westland District Library from 2020 to 2022 was the digitisation of out-of-copyright books relating to the West Coast's literature and history. Volunteers transcribed and proofread the books in Wikisource as part of the West Coast Task Force. These were then exported as EPUBs and uploaded by the library manager to OverDrive, so they became borrowable library e-books using the app Libby—the first example I know of where Wikisource texts became borrowable library books. As well as increasing accessibility of collections by making the books usable on an eReader, they ended up being borrowed far more that when they were on the shelves.

After I finished at Westland District Library in 2022 the project was supported with a grant from the Mātātuhi Foundation which allowed me to work with a librarian to scan books, coordinate copyright licensing, and recruit a team of volunteers. I presented on the Wikisource project to Wikisource people at the 2025 Wikisource Conference in Bali, and to librarians at the 2025 LIANZA conference in Wellington. As part of that conference I wrote, designed, and produced a What is Wikisource? zine (which you can read and download here).

Participants at the Women in Science Wikipedia workshop, Wellington, August 2017

• 2015: Whanganui 2015 River Week Edit-a-thon
• 2016: #NZspecies at Te Papa
• 2017: Women in Science at the Royal Society in Wellington, New Zealand Insect Cards Edit-a-thon in Auckland.
• (See the Wikipedian at Large list for the dozens of events I ran over 2018–2019; it makes me dizzy just to read it.)
• 2019: Bauer Media 2019 workshop, Māori women artists and Australasian endangered plants
• 2020: helped with the socially-distanced Playmarket edit-a-thon
• 2021: worldwide 24-hour Women in Red edit-a-thon (here's a radio interview)

Tamsin Brasher (DrThneed) and I have been developing guidelines for a conference Wikipedian-in-residence, the Wikifying a Conference project. With the help of a WMF rapid grant this was tested in 2025 at Printopia (2–4 May, Wikipedian in Residence page), the 150th Medical School Reunion at the University of Otago (29 May – 1 June, project page) and the International Congress of History of Science and Technology (29 June – 5 July). We wrote some useful handouts for conference attendees (text here).

I helped User:Schwede66 resolve the long-running debate over the use of macrons on place names in New Zealand English articles, and created Task force tohutō to organise volunteer efforts; the "macron war" was the subject of a Stuff podcast in 2022 (see below). I created the West Coast task force as part of my role at Westland District Library. My "Wikifying GLAM" essay turned into a proposed Wikimedia strategy for Auckland Museum, which formed the basis of their current Wiki workplan. In 2022 I developed a four-part Wikipedia and Wikidata training programme (slides, exercises, and scripts) for Wikimedia Australia. I was awarded a 2023 Wikimedia Australia Wikidata Fellowship to work on a New Zealand Public Domain project.

I'm writing a book on Wikimedia strategies for GLAM institutions:see the "Nine Wikisteps" webinar (recording and handout) I gave to Te Papa on 9 March 2023, and later at the State Library of New South Wales.

Event	Date	Presentation	Notes and links
NZ Freshwater Sciences Society	25 Nov 2015	"Wikipedia for Freshwater Scientists"	With User:StellaMcQ
Science Communicators Assn of NZ	4 Dec 2017	"Wikipedia as an Outreach Tool"
NZ Entomological Society	2018	"Wikipedia as an Entomology Outreach Tool"
ESEAP Bali	2018	"Critter of the Week"
Wikimania Stockholm	2019	"NZ Wikipedian at Large project"
TetZooCon	2019	—	Conference Wikipedian
WikidataCon, Berlin	2019	GLAM panel, iNaturalist field trip
LIANZA	22 Jul 2020	"What Wikipedia means for libraries"	My standard "what is Wikipedia?" talk
LIANZA Aoraki Weekend School	15–16 May 2021	"Getting involved with #1lib1ref"	Webinar video
LIANZA	11 Nov 2021	My work at Westland District Library	Video
ESEAP Sydney	20 Nov 2022	"Working with Commons"	Handout
Wikimania Singapore	20 Aug 2023	"Wikisource for Libraries"	Conference report
Wiki Advocacy Meetup, Chile	2–4 May 2024	—
Wikimania Katowice	August 2024	—	Conference report
GLAM Wiki Uruguay	15 Nov 2024	Wikisource workshop
Wikisource Bali	Feb 2025	"The Wikisource to Public Library Pipeline"	Conference report
" "	" "	"Wikisource as a Gateway Drug"	impromptu lightning talk
LIANZA	24 Sep 2025	"The Wikisource to public library pipeline"	Conference report, zine
GLAM Wiki Portugal	31 Oct 2025	"Developing a Wikimedia Strategy for a Museum"	Conference report

The National Digital Forum is an annual meetup at Te Papa of the digital galleries, libraries, archives, and museum (GLAM) sector. I've taken part in Wikipedia day (2014), the Palmerston North Barcamp session and Wikipedia panel discussion (video) (2015). I presented an Eight Important Wikifacts workshop (2016), and spoke on "What I learned about Massive Branded Projects from editing Wikipedia" (2016) and "A Wikipedian at Large" (2018). In 2019 I ran the first Wikidata workshop at NDF. I presented on seven years of collaboration between the GLAM sector and the Wikimedia movement in 2022 (links).

• Dickison, Mike. (9 Dec 2017). "The kauri dieback muddle shows officials ignore Wikipedia at their peril" The Spinoff.
• Dickison, Mike. (May 2020). An Auckland Museum Wikimedia Strategy. Auckland, N.Z.:Auckland War Memorial Museum • CC BY 4.0
• Dickison, Mike & Bruce White. (9 July 2020). "Yes, street art is on public display – but that doesn’t mean we should share it without credit." The Conversation.
• Dickison, Mike. (February 2021). "Where credit's due: how to credit a photograph properly." Library Life 483: 43–45
• Dickison, Mike. (Winter 2023). "Let's talk about critters and Wikinerds." Forest & Bird.

• RadioNZ interview 23 Jan 2016, talking to Kim Hill about Wikipedia's 15th birthday
• Easther, Elisabeth. (Sept 2018). "Mr Wiki: Mike Dickison is New Zealand’s first Wikipedian-at-Large". North and South, p.18
• Macdonald, Nikki. (20 Oct 2018). "National Portrait: Mike Dickison, conservationist and Wikipedian". Dominion Post, p.C3
• Graham-McLay, Charlotte. (17 Nov 2018). "From Encyclopedic Collector to ‘Wikipedian-at-Large’ in New Zealand". New York Times, A6
• Hancock, Farah. (10 July 2019). "The travelling Wikipedia salesperson." Newsroom.
• Te, Mandy (16 Jan 2020). "Wikipedia pages to change as Christchurch takes second place." Stuff.
• Adams, Josie (16 July 2020). "How volunteers created Wikipedia’s world-beating Covid-19 coverage." The Spinoff.
• Mike Dickison (12 July 2022). West Coast Wikipedian at Large 2 (Television interview). Hokitika: Breakfast. Retrieved 17 July 2022.
• Dudding, Adam and Bingham, Eugene (18 Dec 2022). "Secret agents, midnight battles and robots: Inside Wikipedia's great macron war". (Podcast). Stuff.
• Nicholls, Jenny. (14 Jan 2023). "Tangled copyright law denying public access to works they've a right to see." Stuff.
• Gooch, Carly (1 January 2025). "Wikipedians to shine a light on Banks Peninsula." The Press. p 3.
• Chalmers, Kees (16 January 2025). "Putting Banks Peninsula on the WIki map." Christchurch Star. p 8.

I maintain a second account, User:DemoFlightlessbirds, as a training account to demonstrate initial settings to new users and the creation of Talk and User pages. This account makes no substantial edits and does not participate in any voting, discussion, or commentary.

• Muehlenbeckia astonii (7 May 2018)
• Leptinella filiformis (1 Jun 2018)
• Trilby Yates (24 Oct 2018)
• Des Helmore (6 Dec 2018)
• Holcaspis brevicula (11 Dec 2018)
• Oemona hirta (14 Mar 2019)
• Puke Ariki (31 Jul 2019)
• Vytautas Tomaševičius (28 Dec 2019)
• Lincoln University Art Collection (12 Jan 2020)
• The Noises (18 Sep 2021)
• Lake Brunner (4 Aug 2022)
• Hardy Browning (19 Aug 2023)

Review credits: Anti male-guardianship campaign, Israa al-Ghomgham, Nucella ostrina, Cephalotes atratus, Delaware County Institute of Science, Ebenezer Teichelmann, Jacquelyn Reingold, John U. Monro,

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• Project Ngārara
• Wikipedia for Scientists
• Ockhams
• Bees and bug hotels
• Chch Archaeology
• Natural Wonders of Canterbury