CEE/Newsletter/January 2018/Full

CEE Newsletter
Volume 2 • Issue 1 • January 2018

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From the team

By Spiritia, Misosoof, Magalia, antanana, Polimerek

When we concieved the idea about this newsletter, four months ago during the Wikimedia CEE Meeting in Warsaw, we planned it as a venue for sharing news, good practices, knowledge and joy derived from our local projects and regional collaborations. No one has ever thought that we may need to make sad announcements like this, and say farewells forever.

On 31 January, after several weeks of acute illness, our friend Krzysztof Machocki (user:Halibutt) passed away. He was an experienced and passionate Wikimedian and a spokesperson of Wikimedia Poland, a role model for many of us, a driving force behind many Wikimedian projects, a vivid lecturer, and a good, very good friend.

We will remember Krzysztof with his contagious enthusiasm and dedication, for his vast encyclopedic knowledge and wit, for his faith in how Wikipedia makes the world better, both online and offline. We lose him but let us not lose the faith he shared with the world. The memory of him remains and his Wikipedia legacy will continue to help the world.

There is a memorial page on Polish Wikipedia. You can leave your condolences there and they will be forwarded to Krzysztof's family.

UPDATE

Many Wikimedians from the CEE and around the world asked about possibilities of supporting Krzysztof's family in the difficult times to come. About giving back some of the kindness and goodness Krzysztof gave to the world it was created a fund for his two very little children. For their needs and dreams and safety. If you feel like contributing – here is how:

Bank transfer:
- Recipient: Anna Maria Machocka
- IBAN: PL29 1140 2004 0000 3402 7741 6832
- SWIFT: BREXPLPWMBK
- Bank: mBank
PayPal:
- E-mail: pani.anna.maria@gmail.com

Even the smallest contribution matters and helps building something good. Just like in Wikipedia.

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From the team

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Armenia report

Regional report: CEE Spring grant proposal has been submitted

By Spiritia

In accordance with the rules of Project Grants program, on 31 January the grant proposal for organization of this year's CEE Spring article contest was submitted within the deadline. While preparing it, the international organizing team borrowed the basic budgetary frame, general concept and measures of success from the 2017 grant proposal, and in the weeks to come will work with the local communities to tune some other finer details concerning the topics, and progress measuring and reporting. The team is discussing how to integrate the feedback provided by local communities while preparing the final report of the contest last year, mainly in terms of timeframe, and weekly distribution of topics. One of the things that differ this year's project from the previous editions, is that in 2018 the grant proposal was formally proposed on behalf of four individual Wikimedians, from Austria, Bulgaria, Latvia and Romania, as a manifestation of the true spirit of cross-border collaboration of CEE Spring.

In 2018, the international organizing team was joined by Strainu (Romania), while Ата (Ukraine) and Алиса Селезньова (Bulgaria) left it due to other time-demanding commitments. While hoping that all local coordinators from 2017 will remain available to serve the competition again, we encourage other volunteers to join us in making CEE Spring even more productive and enjoyable regional initiative.

In the last hours of the proposal preparation, we were struck with shock and grief from the news about the untimely passing away of our colleague and friend Krzysztof Machocki, Halibutt from Poland. We decided to dedicate this year's efforts to his memory as a token of respect and appreciation to a Wikimedian deeply engaged in the CEE history, culture and regional wiki collaboration.

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Regional report

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Croatia report

Armenia report: Wikipedia 17th Birthday celebration and collaboration with Wikimedia Austria

By Lilit Tarkhanyan, Davit Saroyan (Wikimedia Armenia)

Wikipedia 17th Birthday celebration

It has already become a tradition to celebrate Wikipedia Day at the Wikimedia Armenia office.

On January 15, the Wikipedia ‘17 celebration brought together more than 70 participants eager to share the joy and happiness of being a part of collaboratively created free encyclopedia - Wikipedia, and Wikimedia Movement.

The event was held at the renovated and cozy new space of the Wikimedia Armenia office. The celebration began with greetings from Wikimedia Armenia Board and Staff. Susanna Mkrtchyan, the President of Board, thanked all for being so passionate about the Wikipedia and Wikimedia Movement which spreads the free knowledge and makes it accessible for everyone.

Wikimedia Armenia Staff Member Mher Bekaryan, began his speech by presenting the achievements of both Armenian Wikipedia and Wikimedia Armenia in 2017. Mher emphasized the role of Wikimedia Armenia events and volunteers in the development of Wikimedia projects in Armenia. He followed this with summarizing the results of the contests and joint projects of 2017. Several nominations were made for CEE Spring 2017, Europeana 1914-18 and Austrian-Armenian writing contests, as well as for the Wiki Loves Monuments 2017 Armenian participants. The best 17 contributors of CEE Spring 2017 and Europeana 1914-18 were awarded books related to the WWI and CEE countries. The winner of Austrian-Armenian writing contest was given a chance to visit Austria and get acquainted with its culture and daily life. The authors of the 10 best photos of the WLS 2017 Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh photo contest received certificates and various presents.

The presentation was finalized with the announcement of the Armenian Wikipedian of the year by Wikimedia Armenia. Throughout the year Wikimedia Armenia follows the activity of Armenian Wikipedians and awards an editor with the most contribution for the development of the Armenian Wikipedia. Wikimedia Armenia has nominated User:Sigma'am for his outstanding service, commitment and dedication to the Armenian Wikimedia Movement. For those who could not attend the event, WMAM had organized a live streaming on social media.

After the award ceremony, the evening was completed with the cutting of the traditional Wikipedia cake. The Wikipedians had a great time socializing and sharing the joy of the day.

Wikipedia cake
Cutting of the Wikipedia cake
Wikipedia sweets
The Armenian Wikipedian of Year with Susanna Mkrtchyan

More photos on Wikimedia Commons.

Armenian-Austrian collaboration

By Lilit Tarkhanyan (Wikimedia Armenia)

User:Gardmanahay (from right side) receiving his award certificate, January 15, 2018

Wikimedia Armenia in collaboration with Wikimedia Austria has launched an article writing contest on Armenian and German Wikipedia from 1-30th of November. The aim of this contest was to create and improve articles about Armenia and Austria on both Wikipedias. Wikimedia Armenia modified the criteria of the articles thus guaranteeing better quality. The editors were informed that only those articles which had at least 8000 bytes size and 5 references would be given points.

Wikimedia Armenia and Wikimedia Austria have finalized the results of the contest and announced the winners. In Armenian Wikipedia we had 19 participants who have created 270 articles and improved 2. In German Wikipedia the contest had 7 participants who created 49 articles and improved 2. From the Armenian side the winner was user:Gardmanahay who alone has created around 150 high quality articles. User:Matthias Süßen who participated in Wikimedia Austria contest has been announced as the winner. The winners will be given a wonderful chance to travel to the country they created an article about!

Wikimedia Armenia has organized several contests like this in the past. These initiatives help to foster relationships between different Wikimedia chapters and to create diverse quality content.

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Armenia report

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Georgia report

Croatia report: Wikiproject Energetics

By Fraxinus

Blu Homes mkSolaire, a green building designed by Michelle Kaufmann.

Students of The Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb (Croatian: Fakultet elektrotehnike i računarstva, abbr: FER) participated in the Wikiproject Energetics as the part of a seminar project at their Faculty which is the largest technical faculty and the leading educational as well as research-and-development institution in the fields of electrical engineering and computing in Croatia. This Wikiproject started in 2014 and has been developing every year since today. These year there were also involved foreign students of this Faculty writing in the English while other students were writing their articles in the Croatian language. They wrote about many interesting topics like: Smart City, Green vehicles, Green building, Eco village and similar things related mostly with the energetics and green techonology of the future.

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Greece report

Georgia report: Colaboration with Georgian Association of History Educators

By MIKHEIL

On January 20, colaboration with Georgian Association of History Educators was established. The project leader User:Jaba1977 organized an editathon on the topic "Cultural heritage of Abkhazia", which resulted in 136 new articles.

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Macedonia report

Greece report: WLM 2017 in Greece awards ceremony

By Geraki

A winner getting his awards.

On January 26, 2018, the award ceremony for the Greek part of the Wiki Loves Monuments 2017 took place by Wikimedia Community User Group Greece in Athens. Most of the winners, relatives and friends, as well as members of Wikimedia Community User Group Greece and other Wikipedians attended the event. The ceremony opened a WLM photo exhibition in the Trii Art Hub gallery. The ten winning pictures were exhibited at the ceremony where they really took off the impressions.

Winning photo: "Vaulted ceiling of the Church of Our Lady of the Castle in medieval city of Rhodes"

The event started with a short presentation of the competition. WLM 2017 in Greece was considered successful with its 1118 new images, of witch 120 (11%) are already used in other wikis, and 104 uploaders with 72% of them being new users.

The awards were cash money for the first three winners, and a poster of their winning photo for all ten winners.

Special attention in the presentation was given to Wikimedia Commons. Both winning photographers and all attendees were encouraged to freely upload multimedia files to the Commons even when no competitions are held.

The first winner was a Belgian who was unable to attend. However, we read a message that he had sent, describing how during his holiday in Rhodes last summer he took the photo that won the first place and another one, which was ranked ninth. Then the other winners talked about their works and their engagement with photography. It was very interesting to interact with all these people, of different ages, sharing the same passion for the art of photography. There was also a brief demonstration of how images are placed on the Wikipedia entries as well as an introduction to the basic editing of an entry. The event ended with a small workshop for placing images in Wikipedia articles.

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Greece report

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Poland report

Macedonia report: Wikipedia 17 meetup, Edit-a-thon "VeloCity", and an open discussion on digitization

Importance of digitization in 21 century

By Violetova

Gordana Jovik Stojkovska, Wikipedian in Residence in the City Library

On 18 January 2018 GLAM Macedonia organized open discussion "Importance of digitization in 21 century" in collaboration with the City Library "Braka Miladinovci" in Skopje. This event was organized to celebrate Wikipedia 17 in Macedonia, and also to support #1Lib1Ref campaign.

Four speakers had their presentation on importance of digitization in the GLAM institution they work for: Jasmina Najdovska, advisor for archiving material, a new period, from The State Archives of Republic of Macedonia, Daniela Mitevska, historian educator from the Museum of Macedonian struggle in Skopje, Gordana Andreeva, program manager from the City Library and Gordana Jovik Stojkovska, who is Wikipedian in Residence in the City Library.

The event itself was announced on national TV channel.

All photos from the event are in this category.

Wikipedia 17 meetup and Edit-a-thon "VeloCity"

By Ehrlich91

Wikipedia 17 meetup

On 15^th of January, the world celebrates the day of Wikipedia, on the date it was first put into use on the Internet - January 15, 2001. The wiki community in Macedonia marked the day "Wikipedia 17" with Wiki meet up in Piazza Liberta cafe where several topics and ongoing projects on Wikipedia and Wikimedia in Macedonia were discussed, and the handball match Macedonia against Montenegro was watched along with the Wikipedia birthday cake.

On 18^th of January we had the first edit-a-thon in this year. This edit-a-thon was organized jointly with the cyclists-members of the Critical Mass / NaTo4ak initiative on the topic: "Velograd" (meaning: velo-city) with the main aim to improved and broaden the content of information about cycling infrastructure and issues on the articles on Wikipedia on Macedonian language. The event took place at the self-sustainable social center "Dunja" in Skopje where over 20 people first had a lecture on Wikipedia and then 11 participants created 11 new articles.

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Romania and Moldova report

Poland report: Getting Wikimedians together and inviting librarians to Wikipedia

By Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska

Winter Retreat 2018

Winter retreat 2018 group photo

Every winter Polish Wikimedians meet on a Winter Retreat. It's a meeting aimed to create a space for our community for sharing ideas, learning, and discussing future projects. This year it took place January 12-14th in Rochna, a small village near Łódź. It was attended by 53 Wikimedians who could enjoy a 3 day program of discussion panels, lectures and workshops in two simultaneus tracks.

We worked on various topics - from education projects to the good and bad practices in photography, from editing contests to Wikimedia under political pressure. We learned how to do 3D editing and audio recordings for Wikimedia Commons. We also held a Wikimedia strategy sessions to discuss how our community would like to see Wikimedia Polska work in the context of Wikimedia Strategic Direction. A significant part of the program was dedicated to Wikidata - we had an introductory session for beginners, a SPARQL workshop and a discussion about Wikidata and Wiktionary (held by Leszek Manicki from Wikimedia Deutschland).

Wikipedia cup for the best lecture/workshop/discussion

And the speakers whose sessions were the most interesting and well prepared received a special prize - a Wikipedia Cup. Awarded speakers were chosen by a jury of experienced Wikimedia volunteers.

But Winter Retreat was never just about the program. It was also meant to bring the community togehter by various social activities. So this year we had fun with ice-breaking games, a Wikipedia themed Monopoly game variation and a bonfire.

1Lib1Ref in Poland

Imagine a world where every librarian added one reference to Wikipedia? Sounds great! So this year we organised some 1Lib1Ref related events in Poland. In cooperation with the Society of Librarians of Poland we held a 1Lib1Ref edit-a-thon on January 24th. Also throughout January a group of students of the Faculty of Journalism, Information and Book Studies at University of Warsaw worked with their teacher to add citations to Wikipedia. In total 1Lib1Ref in Poland brought references to more than 50 articles. And (hopefuly!) some more engaged librarians to Wikipedia.

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Poland report

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Russia report

Romania and Moldova report: #1Lib1Ref in Bucharest and Chișinău

By Gikü

Bucharest (January 20th)

Chișinău (January 20th)

Librarians met multiple times in both Romania and Moldova

It is January, and it's time to celebrate Wikipedia's 17th birthday. On the occasion, Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova joined other communities around the world in celebration by organizing local events for the #1Lib1Ref global initiative.

Librarians of Bucharest, Romania already had a #1Lib1Ref in 2017. This year, they used the experience and their connections with Wikimedians to organize again a edit-a-thon (or should we say, add-refs-a-thon?). A small number of participants gathered on January 20th, and they managed to add references to couple of dozens of articles, under the hashtag #1Lib1Ref in edit descriptions.

In Chișinău, Moldova, the librarians community got very interested in the initiative, after learning about it from the Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova. The Municipal Library of Chișinău invited 15 librarians from their branches to attend a hands-on presentation on how to add references to books. The event happened at the same time as Bucharest one, and, being a premiere for Moldova, attracted the interest of multiple press organizations, including national TV. This was the biggest collaboration between wikipedians and institutions in Moldova so far. The librarians continued to gather without any Wikimedians' assistance throughout the initiative period.

The event organizers got connected through a video call, and shared their experience on the learned skill. The members of the user group explained the attendees from both cities what other projects are planned for the next year.

Approx. 80 articles have been improved. The librarians committed to use their free time adding more references to problematic articles, with or without the hashtag in edit description.

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Serbia report

Russia report: #1Lib1Ref organized for the first time in Russia

From the blog of Wikimedia RU

Translated and shortened by: Kaarel Vaidla

Campaign #1Lib1Ref ("One Librarian - One Reference") has been traditionally held worldwide in January for a number of years, with the support of Wikimedia organizations and hundreds of librarians.

In 2018 #1Lib1Ref runs from January 15 to February 3 and for the first time this year it is also held in Russia, where it is organized by "Wikimedia RU".

/---/

There are quite a lot of notices of missing references in Wikipedias and only in the Russian Wikipedia they are noted in 35 992 articles. The work of factchecking is constantly underway, but the help of librarians who have access to rare books is extremely needed!

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Turkey report

Serbia report: Micro-grant results, Wikipedian in Residence, Educational Program Jubilee

WMRS Birthday and Edu Jubilee

By Miroslav Loci

Partners of Educational Program and guests

On December 3, Wikimedia Serbia celebrated 12 years of its existence. The birthday celebration was marked by another jubilee - 10 years since the first student essay was written on Serbian Wikipedia, which officially launched the Educational Program of Wikimedia Serbia, and the first article created as a student essay was ENIAC.

Today on Serbian Wikipedia, there are over 4000 essays, and more than 4000 students, teachers and professors from over 35 educational institutions took part in the project. The teachers are increasingly realizing that the internet has become an indispensable part of education. Therefore, our efforts are seen as the right way for students to focus on the use of new technologies and to take advantage of the Wikipedia's potential. In addition, it is obvious that teaching staff is increasingly willing to use the currently applicable methods in order to make teaching more creative and interactive so that the students would receive functional knowledge, and that is what encourages us.

Two Wikipedians in Residence successfully ended their work

By Miroslav Loci

One of the pieces from Museum of Leskovac exhibition

During December, the Museum of Yugoslavia in Belgrade and the National museum of Leskovac accepted WMRS proposal of cooperation, each allowing one experienced Wikipedian to digitize the available material and use the sources for writing and improving articles on Serbian Wikipedia for a whole month. The results were as follows:

Museum of Yugoslavia released 150 images of notable persons from SFRY era, around 50 writen and improved articles;

Museum of Leskovac released around 300 images from its collections, two books were digitized, 40 new and improved articles were writen, and a Wikipedia editing workshop was organised for staff members.

Small projects, great results

By Ivana Madžarević

Wikimedia Serbia proudly presents the great success of microgrant projects that have been approved in 2017. From the six accepted proposals, volunteers from all around Serbia have collected a total of 4966 photographs, and writen 262 articles on Serbian Wikipedia. More details (in Serbian) in our Blog.

"Are they edible, get to know them all" is a project that, through free content, aimed to familiarize the general public with the fungi that grow on the Serbian territory, the way to use them, their conservation status and whether they are edible, all illustrated with high-quality images.

"Wiki loves the Pannonian saline marshes" was created with the idea of increasing the visibility of Pannonian saline marshes and collecting photographs of protected and interesting species that inhabit them.

Within the "Wild Wiki Parks" project, the volunteers visited the four largest parks in Niš with the aim of showing the flora and fauna that inhabit these parts of nature and enriching the knowledge of park birds. The material of over 1,000 collected images is available on Wikimedia Commons and is used to illustrate the articles on Wikipedia. At the same time, their fellow citizens learned about Wikipedia through edit-a-thons and photo exhibitions.

The true idea of the project "Southeast through the lens" was to inspire a large number of individuals and institutions in the city of Niš through activities within the project: edit-a-thons, photo-tours, exhibitions and promotion of free knowledge. Through these activities volunteers worked on collecting photographs of natural and cultural sites, which contributed to the increase of content on Wiki projects.

"The pictures and words of Smederevska Palanka" is a project aimed at increasing the free content of the cultural and historical assets of Smederevska Palanka municipality. Volunteers from this region had the desire to increase the visibility of the cultural heritage of their home town and the environment on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, and they have uploaded almost 2,500 images.

"The promotion of protected heritage in southern and eastern Serbia" is a project whose name implies that it includes the collection of photo materials of canyons, cliffs, monuments and other cultural and natural assets in this region. From now on, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons are enriched with articles and images that bring the general and specific features of those sites closer to the public.

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Ukraine report

Turkey report: A research on Wikipedia usage of Turkish university students and Bridges Across Cultures

By Basak

216 students from 11 Turkish universities were interviewed on their Wikipedia usage

Students who have conducted half-strutctured interviews about Wikipedia as a requirement of their Research Methods course

The students taking Research Methods course at Uludag University Psychology Department were given an unusual assignment in 2016-2017 term. They were supposed to interview with undergraduate students in their university and other universities about their Wikipedia usage. They have interviewed 216 students from 11 different universities!

The interviews were made either face-to-face or through video-conferencing. After conducting the inverviews the students have transcribed them and submitted to the instructor with a report. Later the data was analyzed by the instructor and a research assistant.

This collaboration did not only helped students in improving their research skills but also helped Turkish Wikimedia community by producing findings about Wikipedia usage of university students. The results have been finally published in 2018.^[1] Please find some findings below.

The majority of students have reported the experience of not finding information they are looking for at Turkish Wikipedia. They don’t complain much about the quality of the information they reach but there are complaints about the insufficient number and variety of the articles.
They think Wikipedia content is static like the content in a traditional encyclopedia. Only 32% of students are aware that Wikipedia content is not static.
Roughly two third of the students see Wikipedia partially or completely satisfactory, objective, detailed and reliable.
Only 7% have edited an article and only 10% are aware of the “History” of the articles.
54% uses Wikipedia for their school-assignments.
50% report that their instructors do not approve using Wikipedia for their assignments.
37% think that WP articles were written by professional editors, 9% think that they were written by the collaboration of volunteers and professional editors.

Bridge Accross Cultures

Contest took place in October-November 2018

Turkish wikipedians are proud to take part in the first edition of Bridges Accros Culture contest despite the ongoing block in Turkey.

The results of Bridges Accros Culture, a wiki-collaboration contest which has taken place in 2017 among languages from both Latin America and the Middle East & North Africa was announced in 2018, January 12th. It was organized by Wikimedia affiliates of different countries, including Argentina, Brazil and Chile (Latin America) and Iran, Levant, and Turkey (MENA). 427 articles about Latin American culture were expanded in Arabic, Persian and Turkish Wikipedia, while 415 articles about MENA culture were done in Spanish and Portuguese Wikipedia.

Hopefully the contest will continue in 2018. If you are interested in including your language project in future versions, please get in touch with the contest’s organizers.

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From the team

Ukraine report: Ukrainian Wikipedia is 14

By antanana, anntinomy

Ukrainian Wikipedia turned 14 on January 30. Wikimedia Ukraine has organised Wikimarathon to celebrate the date. The main idea is to invite people to create at least one article to thank Wikipedia for knowledge it provides. This year Wikimarathon's edition lasted for four days: January 27-30, and included 54 offline events, during which experienced editors helped new editors to create articles. The events were hosted by libraries, schools, universities etc.