CEE/Newsletter/March 2018/Full

CEE Newsletter
Volume 2 • Issue 3 • March 2018

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CEE in the news

Regional report: Almost 2000 articles in CEE Spring 2018 for just two weeks!

By Philip Kopetzky

CEE Spring 2018 under way!

CEE Spring 2018 officially started on March 21st and will be running until May 31st. During this time, every week is focused on different areas of the CEE region, outlined in the timeline. So far 28 communities in 25 language editions of Wikipedia have signed up for the contest, but it's still not too late for communities to join in if they're interested! Articles on the CEE region are also being written on the Malaylam (India), Arabic and English Wikipedias, something definitely worth following up on in the years to come.

At the time of this article (April 4th), a grand total of 1979 articles have been written so far, just 2 weeks into the contest! While countries like Lithuania, Macedonia and Belarus seem especially popular so far with almost 200 articles per country, it is also worth having a look at the smaller communities like Erzya or Crimean Tatar, which still need to reach double digits. You can find the detailed statistics at Wikimedia CEE Spring 2018/Statistics.

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Albania report

CEE in the news

Ten months later: People of Turkey still denied access to Wikipedia, Juliet Barbara, Wikimedia Blog, 11 March 2018
Confound it!—Supporting languages with multiple writing systems, Trey Jones, Wikimedia Blog, 12 March 2018

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Armenia report

Albania report: Marchː The month dedicated to women and LGBT

By Margott

On 8 March in Albania we organized the Wikigap event. The event was organized in Tirana, Shkodra and Fier in the same time. The event was organized by Swedish Embassy in Tirana, in collaboration with NGO pro-LGBT and Our User Group Wikimedians of Albanian Language. Our user group helped also Swedish Embassy in Kosova to organize the same event in Pristina. Our members in Tetova organized a workshop to celebrate the women day as well. In Albania, Kosova and Macedonia were created around 90 articles about notable Albanian women. All the documented event can be found here.

Also during March we've worked on articles regarding LGBT issues, our UG has contributed in writing wiki articles for LGBT activists and mostly for LGBT rights and their legislation in Balkan countries.

Due to some backlash against LGBT organizations in Albania, some Wikimedians of other usergrops (especially the “Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group) has contributed in documenting these attacks in the general article “LGBT rights in Albania” in English Wikipedia.

Photos from the events

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Bashkortostan report

Armenia report: Contests, Community trainings, Funding, GLAM

Austrian-Armenian contest winner in Armenia

By Dato Abuladze, Davit Saroyan (Wikimedia Armenia)

On November 1-30, 2017 Wikimedia Armenia and Wikimedia Austria organized the Austrian-Armenian collaboration month, when many Armenia and Austria related articles were improved on Armenian and German Wikipedias. The winner was selected based on the quantity and quality of written articles. Armenian winner had a chance to visit Austria for 5 days.

From the other side, the Austrian winner - Mathias Sussen - visited Armenia, many Armenian cultural and sightseeing places. On March 12, Mathias led a workshop on Mobile journalism in LOFT center, Yerevan. Many Armenian bloggers, experienced and new journalists attended the workshop. Mathias talked about the rules of mobile journalism, suggested best apps for mobile video editing and advised how to use the final product.

Media links

The Story Is Essential, And Techniques And Applications Are Secondary

Community capacity building

Media literacy workshop at Wikimedia Armenia: By Dato Abuladze, Davit Saroyan, Lilit Tarkhanyan (Wikimedia Armenia)

In order to support the capacity building of Armenian Wikimedia community, Wikimedia Armenia has decided to organize regular capacity building trainings for the community. The first one, named “Media literacy and wiki” was held at Wikimedia Armenia office, on March 16. This workshop was arranged in collaboration with Media Initiative Center.

At the workshop attendees, mostly Wikipedians, learned how to work with information sources, how to check those sources. There was also a discussion how fake news are disseminated in the traditional Armenian media and social media environment and how this process influences Wikipedia.

Copyrights workshop

On March 30 Wikimedia Armenia with its legal partner - Legallab, had organized its next capacity building seminar for its editors. The speakers were Narek Ashughatoyan and Tatevik Gharibyan, experienced lawyers in the copyrights. The participants had a chance to learn how the copyright law works and what are the most common copyright infringements in Armenia. What kind of exclusive rights have the copywriters, what is their duration in Armenian jurisdiction and when it expires. There were also discussions on fair use, public domain, different licenses and how all these processes are reflected on the Wikipedia environment. The workshop was very case directed, community members had an opportunity to learn and discuss on their own cases and questions.

Annual Plan discussion with the community members and Annual Plan Grant

By Gayane Vardanyan, Davit Saroyan, Lilit Tarkhanyan (Wikimedia Armenia)

Prior to development of our 2018-2019 annual plan proposal we have organized a community gathering with active Wikipedians on March and collected their ideas on further expansion of Wikimedia Movement in Armenia, as well as on Wikimedia Armenia projects. It was a facilitated discussion where everyone reflected on the work done by WMAM and made suggestions on future initiatives.

Participants were divided into 3 groups and discussed possibilities of programmatic changes in order to align these activities to WMAM and Wikimedia Movement strategic plans. This resulted in having many new ideas and change proposals which we analyzed and incorporated into our Annual Plan and into the grant proposal to the Wikimedia Foundation for the upcoming year.

Following up the community and staff discussions WMAM has set four major programmatic directions for the upcoming funding period:

Quality Content: In the proposed APG WMAM will concentrate all its efforts on the quality rather than the quantity of the articles. Considering the success of the “I create a vital article” campaign, we will initiate other thematic projects aimed at development of quality articles on different topics: medicine, law, mathematics, physics, art, etc. We will try to establish thematic councils and engage scientists and researchers of the respective fields, experienced wiki editors interested in the topic and thus will ensure the quality of the content.

Community

We will extensively work towards empowerment of our wiki community and engaging them in decision making process. We will encourage them to initiate and run projects in the framework of our current strategy and the annual plan, establish new partnerships and bring new people on board. We will establish a new culture of learning from the community and reporting back.

Education

Education will remain as one of the major programmatic direction of WMAM in this new APG. Lessons learned from our previous experience will help us to revise the teaching methodology and program approaches in general. Meeting with WikiClub coordinators in March 2018 gave us a lot of input on how to revise our strategy in this direction. We will put more stress on using Wikimedia projects as a learning source and will apply diversified approach to different age groups. We will consider each young contributor’s capacity individually, and work towards improvement of their performance. This year we will try to engage more teachers from Yerevan and revisit our approach in working with higher education institutions putting more stress on cooperation on faculty level rather than individual lecturers.

Western Armenian

During 2017 we have continued our cooperation with Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (CGF) on Western Armenian Program and succeeded in our joint effort to get separate ISO 639-3 language code for Western Armenian. Based on our joined proposal, SIL International, the ISO 639-3 Registration Authority, decided to create the code element [hyw] for Western Armenian. This achievement will become a base for our Western Armenian program in 2018 and all efforts will be directed towards creation and support of Western Armenian Wikipedia with quality content. Western Armenian Program has all above mentioned programmatic directions in itself, but as it has a special role, different geography, and target group, WMAM decided to put it as a separate programmatic direction.

To bring the organization to another level of development and ensure better implementation of our strategy and programs, we will work on organizational development, which will be done in three main directions: capacity enhancement both in terms of procedures and staff capacity, outreach, financial sustainability.

See more on our Annual Plan.

Partnership with the National Library of Armenia: Meeting with Tigran Zargaryan

By Davit Saroyan, Lilit Tarkhanyan (Wikimedia Armenia)

On March 5 Wikimedia Armenia staff met Tigran Zargaryan the head of the National Library of Armenia. WMAM had already a successful previous partnership experience with this institution. At the meeting parties discussed the current state of partnership between WMAM and NLA and the possibilities of expanding it. NLA suggested Wikimedia Armenia to get a library subscription in order to have the possibility to request books more effectively.

As always, National Library expressed willingness to share its digitized books database with WMAM. In addition, Wikimedia Armenia can request a book from the Library catalogue which will be digitized earlier than their planned timeline.

Wiki Loves Science Weekend in Tsaghkadzor

By Dato Abuladze, Davit Saroyan (Wikimedia Armenia)

On March 23-25 Wikimedia Armenia organized another Wiki Loves Science Weekend for experienced editors in Tsaghkadzor. At the editathon there were participants who edited one of the 1000 vital articles. The event was also remarkable because of the Western Armenian participants, who were working on the translation of the Western Armenian Wikipedia interface.

Western Armenian Wikipedians

Meeting with GLAM institutions

By Khazhak Drampyan (Wikimedia Armenia)

Wiki Loves Yerevan is a project implemented jointly with Yerevan Municipality with the support of cultural organizations within the framework of Yerevan 2800 anniversary celebrations. The aim of the project is to expand the information about Yerevan currently available on Wikimedia Projects.

On March 28 Wikimedia Armenia organized a meeting in Wikimedia Armenia office with the representatives of GLAM structures. The aim of the meeting was to discuss further cooperation with Yerevan museums within the framework of Wiki Loves Yerevan project. Representatives of 23 Yerevan museums were invited out of which 16 could attend the meeting.

Museum representatives got acquainted with the goals and objectives of Wiki Loves Yerevan project, as well as Wikimedia projects and principles. Special reference was made to GLAM. Examples of fruitful GLAM collaborations both in Armenia and other countries were presented.

At the meeting it was decided to hold a workshop on April 4 in Wikimedia Armenia office to teach the representatives of GLAM institutions how to use Wikimedia platforms and tools.

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Croatia report

Bashkortostan report: Article writing contests and collaboration with the Bashkir State University

Bashkortostan 100, 4th stage

By Рөстәм Нурыев

On February 21, the fourth stage of the "Bashkortostan 100" article writeup marathon has started; it will finish on May 31. This marathon commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Bashkortostan's national and territorial autonomy (10 November 1917) and the 100th anniversary of the Agreement between the Soviet government and the Bashkir administration about the Soviet Autonomous Bashkortostan (20 May 1919). Wikimedians of Bashkortostan User Group invite contributors to Wikipedias in all languages to create new articles and improve existing articles on topics around Bashkortostan. To help you choose, we have created a recommended Wikimedia CEE Spring 2018 list of articles. Detailed terms of the marathon are available here.

Bashkortostan in Wikimedia CEE Spring 2018

By Рөстәм Нурыев

w:en:Bashkortostan's news agency Bashinform has reported on Bashkir wiki volunteers' participation in the international writeup marathon Wikimedia CEE Spring 2018. This is the third time that the Wikimedians of Bashkortostan User Group participates in Wikimedia CEE Spring 2018. Over the last two years, they have created 718 articles in the Bashkir Wiipedia about European countries, while their colleagues from Wikipedias in 26 languages have created 638 articles about Bashkortostan. The challenge for this year is for these two numbers combined to reach 2,000.

Bashkir State University gives a souvenir card

By Рөстәм Нурыев

Bashkir State University will send a souvenir postcard to every Wikipedian who would create an article about this University or its alumni (see the recommended list of articles). To receive your postcard, please email us at bash.wiki2017@yandex.ru with your snail mail address and a link to the article(s) you have created. For every 5 more articles on these topics, you will receive an extra postcard.

Bashkir State University is the oldest college in Bashkortostan. With this initiative, the university would like to show its appreciation of Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, and create interest among Wikipedians contributing in different languages to the topics around Bashkortostan. In 2015, The Bashkir State University was the partner of an international conference devoted to the 10th anniversary of the Bashkir Wikipedia.

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Macedonia report

Croatia report: Wikiproject Winter Olympics 2018

By Fraxinus

Members of the Croatian Wikipedia participated in the Wikiproject Winter Olympics 2018. The goal was to write articles related with the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea this year. As the result there were written 36 articles in total, mostly of biographies of notable sportpeople related with this Olympics like Martin Fourcade, Kamil Stoch, Ester Ledecká or Hanna Huskova. Lots of them come from the Central and Eastern European countries which were successful at this Olympics.

This Wikiproject is the first sport-related Wikiproject on the Croatian Wikipedia and there is a plan to make such projects in the future again for the big sport events like World Cup in football this year in Russia.

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Ukraine report

Macedonia report: WikiBeer, editathons and new GLAM collaborations

Startup of the WikiBeer project

By Македонец

On 3^rd of March, started the WikiBeer project, a new project of Shared Knowledge on Wikipedia on Macedonian language, whose principal goal is to make visits to breweries, beer festivals and events in order to help by improving existing and creating new articles for the domestic beer brands and industry, domestic breweries and pubs that are part of this industry. The project came up as an idea and closely resembles of the previous Wikiwine projects, where several industrial plant were already visited, primarily wineries and food industry plants. This visit was organized within the first Crafting beer saloon event, by Македонец, Иван Ж and our partner organization Slow Food Vodno which already helped us in organization of Wiki Loves Food 2017 photographic contest and currently we are working together to conduct Agroexpeditions project. Hence, we signed a memorandum of cooperation with Slow Food which was co-organizer of this event. Crafting beer saloon was attended by 12 producers of home made craft beers from different cities in Macedonia and one from Greece where dozens of images were photographed which in the next period will be uploaded and used for creation of articles on Wikipedias in support of this branches of the beer industry and culture.

"Bitalon" - The Hackaton of Bitola: Official partnership & participation

By Македонец

After of period of preparations on an invitation of our member Igor Izotov, who was a main organizer of the event, "Shared Knowledge" as a Wikimedia User Group in Macedonia took part and participated as an official partner of "Bitalon - The Hackaton of Bitola". Bitalon was the first ever hackathon aiming to tell the story of the old Jewish community in the Balkans through the Jewish cemetery "Beit hahaim" (Park of the living) in Bitola. The Israel ministry of foreign affairs and the ministry of IT in Macedonia invited numerous programmers, designers and developers from the IT sector in Macedonia together with mentors from companies and Universities from Israel and Macedonia to take part in developing a digital experience for the visitors in the Park of the living in Bitola, where the story of the Jewish community had a main part in its past and will have a main part in its future.Also as a part of the team had mentors from several areas who assisted the participants The team of Wikipedians from "Shared Knowledge" consisted of User:Kiril Simeonovski, User:Иван Ж and User:Македонец and a designer from other team mk:User:Marija Pet, who was a participant on Architecture Edit-a-thon in 2016, made an editing activity similar to edit-a-thon where they have created and edited several articles as well as uploaded images about personalities and the history of the extinct Jewish community of Bitola with the materials sent by organizers and by the translation tool. All of the created content and information was used by the other participants for the design and the content of their applications. Also, the members of the "Shared Knowledge" had a chance to make a short meeting with the ambassador of Israel, H.E. Dan Oryan , where were discussed several topics and exchange of previously prepared and signed memorandum of cooperation.

Edit-a-thon about music articles

By Violetova

On 17 March 2018, the members of the Mixed choir "Artizan" together with members of GLAM Macedonia, a Wikimedia User Group in Macedonia, and the members of Wiki Clubs in Macedonia lead by GLAM Macedonia, created 20 new articles about music, 15 existing articles were improved and two photos regarding performance of the Macedonian choirs were uploaded on Commons. This collaboration on the theme music come after we received an invitation by several musicians in order to improve the music articles on mkwiki. The main editing together event took part at the evening hours in Public Room in Skopje.

About the event on GLAM Macedonia official web site

Two new agreements with GLAM institutions were signed

By Violetova

Two new agreements were signed between GLAM institutions in the Republic of Macedonia and GLAM Macedonia. We started a new collaboration with Institute of National History (INI), signing agreement with the officials, in order to start Wikipedian in Residence activity. This collaboration started actively in March 2018, when the first results were as following: 24 new created articles and 35 existing articles were edited by the members of GLAM Macedonia. The materials and books were provided by the WiR in collaboration with the INI employees. The second agreement was signed with the City Library "Braka Miladinovci" in Skopje. This agreement is to continue the previous successful collaboration with the Library.

GLAM Macedonia, a Wikimedia User Group in Macedonia, has four signed Agreements with GLAM institutions in Macedonia in 2018. Beside the two mentioned new agreements, we have signed agreements with the State Archives in the Republic of Macedonia and with the Museum of Macedonian struggle in Skopje, for collaboration this year.

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Regional report

Ukraine report: WikiGap 2018, article contest for libraries, Scandinavian Spring and Wiki Loves the Olympics

WikiGap 2018 - Ukraine

By antanana, anntinomy

Ukrainian Wikipedians took part in WikiGap initiative during March 17 and 18: Вікіпедія:WikiGap 2018 — Україна. We held an offline event in Kyiv and invited people to contribute online. Our partners in organising an offline event were Embassy of Sweden in Kyiv and Mohyla School of Journalism (NaUKMA). 85 articles were created^{[refs 1]}, 2 improved^{[refs 2]}. 45 participants took part^{[refs 1]}.

Martin Hagström, the Ambassador of Sweden to Ukraine

Ukraine report: Local Cultural Heritage and Notable People article contest for libraries

By antanana, Нестеренко Оля

Wikimedia Ukraine, Ukrainian Library Association and Junior section of Ukrainian Library Association has organised an article contest among libraries, librarians and readers and information seekers during March 19 - 25. Around 277 articles were created or improved. Libraries from 45 cities and towns took part. We have also organised wikitrainings in advance for those, who wanted to find out more about editing.

Ukraine report: Scandinavian Spring article contest

By antanana, Звірі

Wikimedia Ukraine and Ukrainian-Scandinavian Center (USC) have organised an article contest dedicated to the region (including Denmark, Norway, and Sweden). 1095 articles were created or improved during the contest. The results will be announced in April and the awards ceremony is planned for the first half of May.