CEE/Newsletter/April 2018/Contents/Romania report

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Moldova and Romania report: Women, spring, and women

By Gikü

Happy faces during the March women-oriented edit-a-thon in Bucharest

For Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova, spring means a lot of projects directed towards women on Wikipedia, but also new experiences and lessons learned.

Aligning with the international effort to fight the gender gap on Wikimedia projects, multiple offline and online edit-a-thons were organized in March and April, and more are coming in May. First, the community of Romanian Wikipedians put together a list of almost 1,000 notable Romanian women that lack articles in Romanian. The list was set up by consulting Romanian thematic bibliography, but also by scanning multiple language versions of Wikipedia – particularly using Wikidata – in search for Romanian women about whom somebody over the seven seas had written articles.

The list was published in the sitenotice, and throughout the spring months visitors of Wikipedia are invited to take part in an online contest to write about women, encouraging female participation. In addition to the online contest, 5 offline workshops were scheduled for Bucharest (Romania) and Chișinău (Moldova) throughout spring months. The first such workshop took place in Bucharest in March and gathered around 10 people, with two participants coming all the way from Chișinău. The second and third workshops took place simultaneously in Bucharest and Chișinău in April, although fewer people came; in Chișinău it was a working Saturday, so only one lady showed up — which meant the organizers had to finish the snacks and pizza by themselves!

Chișinău squad during the April edit-a-thon; three of these are organizers – can you spot the sole participant?

Two more such workshops will take place in May, also in both cities. There will be an election day in Chișinău on that day, and we hope that people will flee the political mumbo-jumbo and come to make a lasting contribution on Wikipedia!

There's more to it. Romanian Wikipedia continues to establish and maintain partnerships with universities through different projects. A translation contest is underway in the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, and students of the Western "Babeș-Bolyai" University of Cluj-Napoca are being instructed on Wikipedia principles in order to write articles on the centenary of Romanian reunification with Transylvania and Moldova.

Spring also means preparations for summer. As the amateurs of photography may already be aware, there is a photo contest happening throughout the world in May and June: Wiki Loves Earth. Moldova will enter the contest the third year in a row, after more then 2,000 images of protected areas acquired in the previous years. Lists are ready, articles wait their illustrations, and the prizes have been announced, but this time organizers did the extra-mile and challenged their partners to promote the contest by taking part in a wiki-expedition. Thus, Wiki Loves Earth Moldova's two sponsors – a radio station and an ecological organization – sat in their cars and traveled to the north and south of the country hunting for undiscovered protected areas. More than 30 protected areas have been photographed for the first time, and the images will be uploaded throughout the contest by organizers. The photo contest will be in June, followed by a similarly themed writing contest in July.

With so many projects, the majority of which we the Romanian community do for the first time, we are left to draw the following conclusion: Spring inspires!

PS: And we didn't even mention CEE Spring!