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WikiCheese

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Translation of the crowdfunding campaign WikiCheese

The project

Wikimédia France announces WikiCheese!

The biggest encyclopedia in the world meets the country of cheese. If you read Wikipedia, you will notice that the articles about cheeses are little illustrated or not at all. Yet do you know all the cheeses at your cheese shop? What does a brie noir look like? A couronne Lochoise? The échougnac? Or the tymbsoro.

Experimented editors have imagined the WikiCheese project, to develop the articles and illustrate at least 200 types of cheeses on Wikipedia.

This campaign, led by Wikimédia France, consists of financing the purchase of cheeses, photographic equipment and books so that volunteers can illustrate and develop the articles. Every donor will receive a (French) Tax Donations Receipt.

Birth of a project

Like a lot of projects, everything started around a glass… and a cheese plate! Several leading wikimedians decided to start photographing objects and food, where Wikipedia is direly lacking, and they equipped with a photo studio. Because it is nice to have lots of articles, but it is ever better when they are illustrated!

Master class, photo and tasting session

Pyb, member of Wikimédia France, has gathered the cream of the crop of writers and photographers. These volunteers will produce high-quality photographs of cheese from every angle and will develop the Wikipedia encyclopedia.

A session will be organised once a month in the Wikimédia France office in Paris. During each session, 10 cheeses will be shot and the backers of the project will come to learn to edit articles about this treat − and taste them.

The pictures will illustrate the multilingual encyclopedia Wikipedia

All the pictures will be published in high-definition on Wikimedia Commons, the multimedia library of Wikipedia. Published under a free license, they will be viewed all around the world since they will illustrate Wikipedia in all languages. These pictures may be freely reused by everyone.

Why fund it?

We need your support to buy at least 200 types of cheeses, the necessary photo equipment and some books to write Wikipedia articles.

At the end of the project (WikiCheese will mature for 18 months) the equipment will be loan to members of Wikimedia France to help them illustrate Wikipedia and do a lot of amazing things under free license.

We would love the project to continue to grow. Here are our stretch goals:

  • €5,000: 200 types of cheeses + photo equipment + books
  • €8,000: 300 types of cheeses + a better photo equipment + books
  • €9,500: 365 types of cheeses + a documentary about artisanal cheese making + a better photo equipment + books

Who is behind this project

Pyb : Longtime Wikipedian (2004), I fell in love with this crazy project of knowledge dissemination. These past years, I set out to improve the illustrations of the encyclopedia by doing sports photography, a photo inventory of the Père Lachaise graveyard art, and developing collaborative projects (WikiGrenier, Wiki takes the Louvre, etc)

Copyright :

  • Portrait of Pyb: Marie-Lan Nguyen, CC-BY 2.5
  • cheeses: Coyau / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0