CEE/Newsletter/April 2018/Full
Volume 2 • Issue 4 • April 2018
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Regional report: CEE meet-up at Wikimedia Conference and spin-off projects edit
Traditional CEE meet-up at Wikimedia Conference edit
As part of Wikimedia Conference 2018 CEE Wikimedians held their traditional meet-up to provide updates from local communities as well as for discussing possible work on regional level. The topics included:
- Local activities update
- Update on upcoming CEEM 2018 in Lviv, Ukraine
- A proposal regarding holding an international WikiCamp for the CEE
- Discussion and comments on Wikimedia CEE Spring 2018
- Capacity building, mapping of current needs and challenges
- Brief introduction to Phase II of the movement strategy process
- Asaf provided a short introduction to Community Capacity Map
For more detailed information, please consult Etherpad documentation
Cross-border CEE projects, planned during the Wikimedia Conference edit
- By Justine.toms
During the Wikimedia Conference in April 2018 in Berlin, several new cross-border collaborations were planned between Wikimedians from different countries in the CEE region. All of these collaborations are open for other communities to join if they feel interested.
June 2018  |
June 2018  |
November 2018  |
| LGBT Wiki Week | Armenian week in Bulgaria | Balkan Food Month |
| Serbia and Bulgaria | Armenia and Bulgaria | Serbia, Macedonia, Albania and Bulgaria |
We will be happy to work together on all this, and maybe even more new wiki projects!
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CEE in the news edit
- #WeMissTurkey: A year without Wikipedia in Turkey, Samantha Lien, Wikimedia Blog, 2 May 2018
- Victory in Greece: Legal case ended against Wikipedia editor, Jacob Rogers, Wikimedia Blog, 18 April 2018
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Albania report: First annual budget in preparation edit
- By Margott
During April with the help of Morgan and Winifred we are planning and applying for our first annual budget.
During April we haven't done any offline events. But we are running Wikimedia CEE Spring competition, and "Women In Red". We are planning to host a workshop in second week of May about CEE spring competition.
Also, Kristina continues her work with Wikimedia LGBT and other Wikimedians writing about diversity subject, to make sure to be translated into other languages.
Jona and Liridon were as our User Group representatives in Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, and they were focused on GLAM activities, Education Program and also diversity since these will be our main activities during the next month after our annual budget will be approved.
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Armenia report: Workshop with GLAM representatives edit
- By Khazhak Drampyan (Wikimedia Armenia)
Representatives of 11 museums were present at the meeting held on April 4 in Wikimedia Armenia office. The aim of the meeting was to teach representatives from GLAM institutions how to use Wikimedia projects.
Participants learned Wikipedia's key principles and rules, how to edit articles and upload files to Wikimedia Commons. Special reference was made to which files can be uploaded to Commons and which cannot. Copyright issues and other legal aspects were also discussed. The participants got acquainted with the structure of Wikipedia article and Wikipedia tools. Some of the participants uploaded files and edited at the workshop.
At the end of the meeting it was decided to open a working group on Facebook to discuss ongoing questions and handle communication more efficiently.
Those participants who did not attend, will participate in Saturday workshop and learn everything covered during this April 4 workshop.
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Cyprus report: WikiGap editathon inside the UN Buffer Zone edit
Over 40 Swedish embassies took an initiative called #WikiGap during which people around the world gathered on International Women's Day to add more content to Wikipedia about women profiles, experts and role models in various fields.
The Swedish Embassy of Cyprus contacted Marios Magioladitis, a member of Wikimedia Community User Group of Greece, to organise an editathon inside the United Nations Buffer Zone in Cyprus, the Green line, demilitarized zone, patrolled by the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus.
The organizers dedicated this year's International Women's Day, in Wikipedia, articles of distinguished Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot women, who have an important contribution to peace and politics. The goal was to publish 20-30 new or translated articles in Greek and Turkish. The event also aimed to show participants how easy it is to contribute to Wikipedia and thus encourage the continued involvement of women after that day.
The event had the support of Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies (MIGS) and the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus.
Most of the attendees to the event had their laptops with them, as the organizers had suggested and started creating articles.
The participants were members of women's and non-governmental organizations from both communities, including Salpy Eskidjian Weiderud, Executive Coordinator of The Religious Track of the Cyprus Peace Process of the Swedish Embassy in Nicosia. There were participants from both sides of the island.
Unfortunatelly, creating content in Turkish Wikipedia was not possible during the event since Wikipedia has been blocked in Turkey for more than a year now.
Before the editathon Marios Magioladitis gave a talk titled "Gender online and on Wikipedia" where he focused on the participation of women online and in Wikipedia in particular.
The event had media coverage.
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Czech Report: Popular topics make a good Wikipedia article-writing contest - results from a contest on Czech heritage edit
- By Aktron
The Describe a Monument Contest helped create new articles in Czech Wikipedia, re-use pictures from Wiki Loves Monuments and focus more on Czech National Heritage.
From 15th January to 15th February 2018 an unusual editing contest took place on Czech Wikipedia: Describe a Monument! The concept was simple: Write an article about a monument in the Czech Republic which does not have an article on Czech Wikipedia (cs.wikipedia.org) yet. Based on your contributions you can earn points and then actual prizes. It is like Wiki Loves Monuments, only with articles instead of photos. More than 150 articles were created, 47 people participated in the contest and 175 000 words were added in total. The longest article about a gymnasium in Sokolov was 17.5 kb long. New articles described included 34 churches, 24 chateaus/mansions, 16 villas, 14 forts and lots of other interesting stuff from all around the Czech Republic. The contest was supported by Czech National Heritage Institute and Pro Památky magazine. Participants are looking forward to the next year of the contest that might take place in winter 2019.
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Greece report: User Group holds editathon on technology edit
Wikimedia Community User Group Greece took the initiave to hold an ediathon on Computers and Technology that takes place from April 23 to May 6, 2018.
The editathon aims to enrich the Greek Wikipedia with articles on that area that are important for the understanding of current and future evolution in the relevant space. The action is supported by Voxxed Days, an international series of events for IT developers.
In the competition, two winners, one man and one woman, will be awarded, based on the overall size and quality of the contribution to the relevant entries. Winners will be given one ticket for Voxxed Days Athens. The user group decided to distribute the awards equally between men and women in order to close the gender gap in technology.
The contestants have to create new articles from a pre-formulated list of articles related to IT. The list consists mainly of most wanted articles and non-existent articles with many incoming links.
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Estonia report: GLAM & databases, Rightsstatements.org declarations in Estonian and new version of Ajapaik app edit
- By Reosarevok & Vahur Puik (Original published in April 2018 This Month in GLAM newsletter)
Tartu Art Museum + Wikidata edit
A collaboration project is taking place between Wikimedia Eesti and the Tartu Art Museum, as the first concerted effort in Estonia of the WikiProject sum of all paintings. The first stage of this project has now been completed: to use a bot to add information about all the paintings and watercolor paintings in the museum collection to Wikidata (the data itself was extracted from the Estonian museum database MuIS). The collaboration will continue in the next months with the upload of high quality images of as many of the out of copyright artworks in the collection as possible to Wikimedia Commons (+ with the works, where it is possible to get the permission from the artist), to make them available to the public in general and to Wikipedia article writers in particular.
The technical work (see code on Github) carried out for this project should also make further collaborations easier, since most if not all of the Estonian museums have their collection data in the MuIS database.
Biographical Database of Estonian Photographers edit
In 2017 the previous custom made platform for the Biographical Database of Estonian Photographers was abandoned as it had become technically obsolete and the data was migrated to Scandinavian platform KulturNav. More than a year ago basic entries on Wikidata had been created (see GLAMwiki Newsletter from January 2017) with links to old database that needed to be updated with KulturNav IDs. The matching was performed with Mix'n'match, with the goal of adding more biographical information about the photographers in the future. Having a good overview of (early) Estonian photographers in Wikidata is interesting in itself, and will no doubt prove useful in order to discover more photographs that are in the public domain and can thus be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons to illustrate Wikipedia articles.
Estonian translation of Rightsstatements.org declarations in public review edit
On March 27 the 4 week public review of the Estonian translation of Rightsstatements.org declarations describing the copyright status of digitized cultural heritage items was announced. Estonian is only the second language after German Rightsstatements declarations have been translated into, several other translations are on their way. Currently the copyright statuses of the cultural heritage items are very poorly recorded and marked in the Estonian public collections and public repositories serving the content, therefore it is also hard to identify out of copyright content that could be added to Wikimedia Commons. A lot of work has to be done to raise awareness about the intellectual property rights related to cultural heritage items also among the staff of GLAMs as often the ownership of the physical items is confused with the ownership of IP. Rightsstatements declarations is one the tools to also educate about the topic. Also several public online repositories for cultural heritage are undergoing development so we hope that Rightsstatements will also be implemented rather sooner than later...
New version of Ajapaik rephotography app edit
Ajapaik – a crowdsourcing platform for geotagging and rephotographing old images – published its new version of android app for rephotography in the beginning of March. Ajapaik has mostly Estonian content (more than 125 000 historical images, mostly photographs, but also paintings, graphic art and even film stills) retrieved from the APIs of public cultural heritage repositories.
The translation of the app was moved to Translatewiki and the next plans are to integrate the app with other repositories, including Wikimedia Commons and to pilot test it with the Wiki Loves Monuments rephotography track in collaboration with Wikimedia Finland (see their newsletter).
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Latvia report: It's all about CEE Spring edit
- By Papuass
CEE Spring takes over Wikipedia edit
Wikimedia CEE Spring 2018 is popular in local Wikipedia with article creation numbers already close to last years final numbers. Challenge to write about every country and community has proven to be especially engaging with 10 people joining it.
Follow up event for librarians edit
After introductory event for librarians in February, another one took place in Ventspils, town 200 km from Riga, with local librarians gaining more Wikipedia skills.
New faces at WMCON edit
If you had grown tired of same Latvian representatives in international gatherings, there were new faces at Wikimedia Conference this year with Treisijs and Edgars2007 attending.
Wiki Loves Earth starts on May 1st edit
Wiki Loves Earth is organised for the second time in Latvia with support from Wikimedia grants program. In addition to Wikidata powered protected areas list which was used already last year, there is now an interactive map allowing image uploads. Need one for your contest? Contact Edgars2007.
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Macedonia report: Macedonian Wikiexpeditions exhibition and three workshops with the Wiki Clubs members edit
Macedonian Wikiexpeditions exhibition edit
- By Македонец
Оn 11th of April an exhibition dedicated to the Wikiеxpeditions was opened in order to present and mark the successful work of the project. The exhibition consisted 31 images taken during the Wikiexpeditions held in Macedonia and 3 posters with statistics and numbers of the content and all work done on Wikipedia. Attendees were also informed about the Wikiexpeditions project and its significance as well as the possibilities that Wikimedia projects offer for field research by volunteering and contributing in different ways i.e. taking photographs, writing articles, research through literature and helping in organization of such trips as Wikiexpeditions. The event was also used to announce the fourth season of the Macedonian Wikiexpeditions in this year. The exhibition will last several days in April, and it is planned to be displayed and shown in other cities in Macedonia in the upcoming period.
Architecture edit-a-thon edit
- By Македонец
On 13th and 14th of April, we held the third ArchiWiki workshop which as in the previous years contained a lecture and edit-a-thon. The ArchiWiki workshop was organized jointly by Shared Knowledge, the architecture studio Arhipunkt and MARCH - Macedonian Architecture website dedicated to the promotion of Macedonian architecture to the wider public. This third such workshop was held at the Faculty of Architecture in Skopje. On the first day, the participants were introduced into the workshop, the basics of editing articles in Wikipedia and the free licenses; while on the second day there was an edit-a-thon on the topic "Architecture". Having a good instruction and plan of topics and equipped with several books of referenced literature, the thirteen participants and in a time period of 6 hours created and improved 47 articles on Wikipedia and uploaded dozen images on Wikimedia Commons, making this edit-a-thon the second most successful edit-a-thon approaching close to the record of edited articles for such editing events which is 57.
Once again, this edit-a-thon prove to be one of the most successful events organized in Macedonia. Additionally, this edit-a-thon attract ten new female editors, which is huge number comparing with female editors on Macedonian Wikipedia in total.
Workshops with Wiki Clubs members edit
- By Violetova
In April 2018, there were three workshops with the members of the Wiki Clubs in the Republic of Macedonia, two of them are collaboration with GLAM institutions: Military Museum of the Republic of Macedonia, and the City Library "Braka Miladinovci" in Skopje. Seventeen new users were trained altogether, 30 new articles were created and 7 existing articles were improved.
On 2 April 2018, the Chair of GLAM Macedonia, Violetova visited Wiki Club members in their school in Dracevo and held one day workshop with the members. Fifteen new members enrolled in Wiki Club, who were introduced with the basics of editing Wikipedia. To the other members of this Wiki Club, who already create and edit articles on Macedonian Wikipedia, were shown tips and tricks, which will improve their editing skills. During the workshop 7 new articles were created and 1 existing articles was improved.
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In collaboration with the Military Museum of the Republic of Macedonia, on 17 April 2018 GLAM Macedonia held one day workshop with the members of Wiki Club Museum of Macedonian struggle in Skopje. A short documentary film about NATO was presented to the participants, and they had opportunity to visit the exhibition in the Military Museum. During the three hours of the editing workshop, eight new articles on Wikipedia were created, all biographies of people who were the General Secretaries of NATO. The selection and contents of the texts were selected by Viki Taseva from the Military Museum in cooperation with the two educators from the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle, Anna Višinova and Daniela Mitevska.
During the weekend of 21st and 22nd April 2018 weekend workshop on topics from the First World War was realized, organized by the Wikipedian in Residence in the City Library "Braka Miladinovci" in Skopje, Gordana Jovic-Stojkovska. Twelve Wikipedians and 8 members of the Wiki Club Staro Nagorichane participated, and two new Wikipedians were trained. During the weekend, 15 new articles were created, and six existing articles were improved.
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Moldova and Romania report: Women, spring, and women edit
- By Gikü
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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!
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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!
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Russia report: An article contest about coins edit
- Published in blog of Wikmedia RU
- Translated by Kaarel Vaidla
Wikimedia RU and the Autonomous Non-profit Organization International Numismatical Club partner to conduct a competition of articles "Coins from the Collection of the Museum of the International Numismatics Club" in the Russian Wikipedia.
Among them is a variety of 300 various gold and platinum coins, Russian and foreign (especially antique) coins, regular coins for domestic circulationand for international trade, coins for financing foreign military campaigns, rewards, memorabilia, test coins, Russian coins for Poland and Finland.
With the permission of the partner organization photographs of obverse and reverse of coins will be uploaded to Russian Wikipedia and will be accessible without restriction to the articles of Wikipedia.
The main goal of the competition is to improve and increase the number of articles of the Russian Wikipedia on numismatics, in particular, articles about coins from the partnering Museum's collection.
Another important goal of the competition is to increase the number of Wikipedia authors and editors. Therefore, for those who do not have the experience of creating and editing articles of the encyclopedia, special training webinars will be held during April on how to create and edit articles.
The competition runs from April 1 to September 30 without any restrictions on participation.
The contest is organized and managed by experienced editors of Wikipedia who will also determine the three winners based on the number of points scored during competition period. The score depends on the quantity and quality of articles written by the author.
In addition, the jury of experts of the International Numismatic Club will determine the three best articles. As a result a total of six places in four nominations with a prize fund of 10 to 30 thousand Russian rubles will be awarded.
For further information see following links:
- Contest page
- Web page of the Museum of the International Numismatic CLub
- List of coins eligible in the contest
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Serbia report: WikiLive 2018: A factory of ideas and positive energy edit
Wikipedians from around Serbia and the neighboring countries gathered for the fourth annual local conference in Belgrade to discuss all the important aspects of creating the largest encyclopedia in human history and other wiki projects. During the two days of the conference, more than a hundred participants actively shared knowledge, made suggestions for improving Wikipedia and other wiki projects, but first of all enjoyed meeting their colleagues, as well as a friendly atmosphere that is inevitable when it comes to working together to achieve the same goals.
The fourth WikiLve conference was officially opened on Saturday, April 14, by Filip Maljković, the President of Wikimedia Serbia and a longtime member of the Wikipedian Community. He was thrilled by the presence of new members, but also happy to see many veteran editors. He emphasized the importance of the wiki-meetups as a good way to exchange new ideas and discussions.
Katy Love and Sati Houston of the Wikimedia Foundation greeted the participants in a video message. They congratulated the Serbian wiki community on a significant jubilee - 15 years since the creation of Serbian Wikipedia, as well as 257 million visits it had in 2017, and the fact that over 300 events were organized in order to bring the community together.
Nebojša Ratković, Education Program Manager of Wikimedia Serbia, spoke about Seminar papers on Wikipedia and previous results of high-school and university students. The distinctiveness of these works is evident through the articles themselves, but the problem of literacy and the lack of encyclopedic style of writing is still a problem, which led to the deletion of some articles.
One of the most important things in 2017 was certainly the strategy of the Wikimedia Movement, in parallel with the strategy of Wikimedia Foundation. Ivana Madžarević and Filip Maljković presented the three main focuses of Wikimedia Serbia for the next three years - Educational program, Free content and Community support.
The way the community can be encouraged is the allocation of micro-grants for small-scale projects. This program has been implemented for four years now, and at WikiLive, project leaders shared with the audience the successes and challenges they encountered and thus encouraged those who have some idea to apply and launch an initiative that will contribute to human knowledge.
In addition to the micro-grants, Wikimedia Serbia also awards annual grants, and Ivana Madžarević explained how to apply for them at the Project writing workshop. The crucial things that need to be explored before applying with a project were discussed, and the participants had a mini workshop through which they were in the role of the Applicant and the Committee that decides which projects are going to be selected.
A presentation on the Wikidata was held by Goran Milovanović, a data scientist working for Wikimedia Deutschland, who presented the basics of Wikidata to the participants in a very simple way, which motivated many of them to get involved in this wiki project. Goran has announced plans to start such workshops in the upcoming period, which should be a stepping stone for a wider community working on the Wikidata.
Recalling that Wikimedia Serbia has established the Branislav Jovanović award, in memory of the late Vice President of Wikimedia Serbia, Filip emphasized that although the decision was not easy, the Board tried to choose a Wikipedian who has been devotedly editing Serbian Wikipedia since its very beginning. Since this year has been anniversary of 15 years since the creation of Serbian Wikipedia, it has been decided that the Branislav Jovanović award for 2018 belongs to Mr. Dražen Dražeta, who has made more than 147,000 changes under the username Drazetad and wrote as many as 16,189 articles.
With the announcement of the winner, WikiLive 2018 conference has officially ended. Unofficially, the conference was continued at cafes and walks on Belgrade streets, where the ideas for new activities in the wiki world have come up, which we will talk about next year, with new topics in the new edition of the conference.
If you speak Serbian, you can read more about the conference here.
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Turkey report: One year without Wikipedia in Turkey edit
With April 2018 one year has passed since Wikipedia was blocked across all languages in Turkey. To address that longest block in history of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation in collaboration with numerous volunteers who participated on Wikimedia Conference 2018 has published a video reminding the knowledge we are missing as a result of that block.
#WeMissTurkey
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Ukraine report: Writing about Information Security, Israel is 70 edit
Writing about information security article contest edit
Wikimedia Ukraine and Cisco Systems has organised an article contest on writing about information security. The contest took part in April. Around 450 articles were created or improved, 30 participants took part[1]. We have also organised wikitrainings in advance for those, who wanted to find out more about editing.
Israel is 70 edit
Wikimedia Ukraine has received a request from an Interdisciplinary Certificate Program in Jewish Studies at National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy to organise a thematic month on writing articles about Israel (culture, science, history etc) during April-May, celebrating the 70th anniversary of the establishment of Israel as a state: Israel is 70. The University plans to give the active contributors some souvenirs for creating or improving content on Israel in Ukrainian Wikipedia. Wikimedia Israel will also support the most active contributors with souvenirs. So far 110 articles were created, 17 contributors took part[2], 4 articles were improved[3]. The project will continue till May 14, 2018.
- See also
- References