Ashburton’s profile on Wikipedia is about to receive a refresh, thanks to a project involving Council and Wikipedian-at-large Dr Mike Dickison.

Mike has been engaged to update the Wikipedia pages for various sites and attractions around the district and is organising a photo shoot for Wikipedia around Ashburton on Sunday 23 February to gather information.

He is coming from Christchurch with a team of experienced volunteers to help him research and write stories, and take photos for several Ashburton pages. Keen local photographers who want to donate photos to Wikipedia are welcome to join in.

The project has been co-ordinated by the Ashburton Art Gallery and Museum on behalf of Council, and director Shirin Khosraviani said the spinoff would benefit the whole district.

“Wikipedia is an online encyclopaedia, and its pages can be updated by anyone. Information on some current pages about Ashburton is a bit out of date and Mike and his volunteers are going to refresh them and post new content.

“That means that anytime someone uses AI or searches for Ashburton, or any articles on the district or our art gallery and museum, they will see modern and up-to-date content."

Mike will also be giving a free talk about Wikipedia to the community on Sunday 16 March, at 2pm.

The former museum curator and digital librarian has worked on a similar project for Banks Peninsula.

Shirin said Wikipedia was now over 20 years old and had become a crucial part of the world’s store of knowledge.

“Mike’s talk will explore how Wikipedia works, what happens behind the scenes, and what 250,000 amateur Wikipedians do to keep it alive and accurate.

“We'll also look at the threat posed by AI-generated text, which has rapidly polluted the world’s information ecosystem but so far has yet to make inroads into Wikipedia, and why the world’s richest man hates an online encyclopedia so much.”

The talk will be at the Ashburton Art Gallery and Museum.