Don Wikimedians User Group/Report 2021/en
January 16 — Traditional Winter Meeting of the Don Wikimedians
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On January 16, 2021, the traditional winter meeting of the Don Wikimedians was held. Because of the difficult epidemiological situation, a number of participants were not able to attend the meeting, but those participants who had been vaccinated by mid-January were able to meet in person. The Don State Public Library was chosen as the meeting place, but later the participants moved to the nearest coffee shop. At the meeting, questions concerning various Russian Wikipedia article writing contests and various innovations of the Wikimedia Foundation were raised and discussed. Separately, the question of the functioning of an active Wikimedia movement community around the world in the face of the spreading pandemic of the coronovirus was touched upon. Meeting participants outlined plans for the new year 2021, it was decided to hold several Wikiexpeditions, including an expedition to the Russian stage of the series of Formula One car races in Sochi (these plans have been implemented only partially).
March 1 — Participation of Don Wikimedians in the Wiki School
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In late winter of 2021, representatives of the Don Wikimedians User Group received an invitation from colleagues from the Wikimedians of Bashkortostan User Group to participate as mentors in the Rustam Nuryev Online Wikischool. The invitation was accepted. After getting acquainted with the class schedule, course program, and study materials, classes began.An experienced wikimedist Dmitry Zhukov (JukoFF) was the lecturer and workshop facilitator from the Don Wikimedians User Group. During the course Dmitry participated in the training of 3 streams of students, held respectively in March, May and July 2021. In the classes, future Wikipedians received an overview of the Wikimedia movement, as well as hands-on training in editing Wikipedia, uploading media files to Wikimedia Commons, and gaining basic knowledge about the functioning of Wikidata. In all, more than 50 students were trained in three streams, each of whom hand-wrote a Wikipedia article, illustrated it with a free image uploaded to Commons, and integrated it into Wikidata at the final exam.
April 19 — Meeting of representatives and participants of Russian user groups in Moscow
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Оn April 19, 2021, a one-day wiki excursion to the Central House of Aviation and Cosmonautics in the center of Moscow was devoted to exploring the center's exposition. Representatives of the various Russian user groups in the Wikimedia movement, both active and emerging, came to Moscow to participate in the event. After the wiki tour was over, representatives of Russian user groups organized a wiki meeting. A wiki-meeting took place in the restaurant "Patio" at "Dinamo" metro station in the evening of April, 19. There were representatives of Russian Wikimedia RU chapters, North-West Russia Wiki-Historians User Group, Don Wikimedians User Group, Wikimedians of Moscow User Group, and representatives of Yakut wikipedia - Wikimedians of Sakha Republic. The meeting was held in a friendly and creative atmosphere, and the participants shared their experiences in the functioning of their user groups and their interaction with representatives of the Wikimedia Foundation. Representatives of yet-to-be-recognized user groups received practical advice on the procedure of official recognition and integration into the international wiki space.
May 8 — WikiGap 2021
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According to the plan outlined at the beginning of the year, the representatives of the Don Wikimedians User Group decided to actively participate in a series of international events connected with WikiGap 2021, and in particular to support the Russian-language writing contest devoted to bridging the gender gap in Wikipedia in Russian and other languages of Russia. The gender composition of the Don Wikimedians User Group is in line with global trends, and its majority is male. The only female member of the user group is Elena Davydova (БИБЛИОТЕКАРЬ), a librarian working in a small rural library in the city of Donetsk, Rostov region. Elena is an active participant in Russian Wikipedia article contests and writes articles about prominent residents of the Don land. In the WikiGap 2021 article contest dedicated to outstanding women of Russia and the world, Wikimedians from Don wrote more than 120 articles, and one of the group members - Gennady Lipunov (GennadyL), won honorable third place in the contest in the category "Outstanding Women of the World" - articles in Russian. Gennady received a diploma on winning the contest from Swedish Ambassador to Russia Milena Mard, it was the Swedish embassy in Russia that initiated the article contest.
May 21 — Don Wikimedians took part in Wikimedia CEE Spring 2021
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For the fourth time in 2021, Don's Wikimedians took part in the international Wikimedia CEE Spring 2021 contest, in which Wikimedians from Central and Eastern Europe write articles about each other's cultural and historical heritage for two months, competing against each other. In March 2021 the word table of more than 150 articles that were offered to contestants to write about the cultural heritage of the Don region was significantly revised and expanded. At the same time, Don wikimedists wrote articles in Russian about the cultural heritage of other countries participating in the contest - more than 40 such articles were created. More than 100 articles in foreign languages were written about the Don land and its prominent natives as a result of the contest. This year representatives of the Don Wikimedians group acted as prize operators for the All-Russian part of the contest. Encyclopedic book sets were purchased for the 5 winners who wrote the largest number of articles in Russian within the contest and mailed to the addresses of the authors of the articles. This work was carried out in collaboration with the Russian and Austrian chapters.4
June 12 — Start of the «Discover the world. Start with the sister cities — 2021» annual contest
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June 12, 2021 was the start of the international competition «Discover the world. Start with the sister cities — 2021» to create and finalize articles devoted to the attractions of cities and districts of the Russian Federation and their foreign twin and partner territories, also within the competition participants were invited to write biographical articles devoted to honorary citizens of the twin cities around the world. The contest was organized by the Don Wikimedians User Group and WikimediaR U, with support from public organizations in the Don region. The contest established a special nomination "Rostov region" - "The best articles on the attractions of the twin cities and partner areas of towns and districts of the Rostov region", in which more than 50 articles were written. During the contest, 590 articles were created and supplemented (299 about places of interest and 291 about honorary citizens), and 1,785 free illustrations were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Twenty-four wikipedists took part in the competition, 10 of whom won prizes in various categories and special categories. A number of editatons and webinars were held to promote the contest.
September 26 — International Wiki Conference 2021
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On September 25-26, the 15th international conference on the development of Wikimedia projects in Russian languages, as well as the problems of free creation and distribution of knowledge in general in Russia and around the world, was held in Moscow. In yet another year, Russia was almost the only country to hold its annual conference offline with live people - with all the precautions in place, of course. For those Russian-speaking participants in the Wikimedia movement who felt that offline meetings were unsafe given the epidemiological situation, the conference was broadcast on Zoom and YouTube. There were several representatives of the Don Wikimedian group at the conference. Two of them gave plenary speeches (one offline and one online) to the assembled conference participants and also participated directly in the dialogues that broke out as part of the discussions of the various roundtable topics. A distinctive feature of the conference was the participation of a large number of foreign participants who spoke at Zoom, especially the speech of a colleague from Wikimedia Community User Group Nigeria, who spoke about working with local libraries. The conference was held in a friendly, positive and motivating atmosphere.
October 15 — Start of the “Wiki Loves Caucasus 2021” annual contest
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On October 15, the “Wiki Loves Caucasus 2021” international annual contest was launched. The idea for the contest, now in its third year, was born during a conversation at the 2019 Berlin Summit between Dmitry Zhukov of the Don Wikimedians User Group and Mehman Ibragimov of the Wikimedia Community User Group Georgia. The contest, held for the third time, was jointly organized by Don Wikimedians User Group, Wikimedia Community UG Georgia, Azerbaijani Wikimedians UG, Wikipedians of North Caucasus UG, and Wikimedia Russia. In addition to Russian Wikipedia, the contest took place on Avar, Lezgi, Ossetian, Chechen Wikipedia editions, as well as Azerbaijani, Georgian, Tatar and Ukrainian Wikipedias. Traditionally, the contest was devoted to writing articles on topics related to the Caucasus. Its goal was to create articles directly or indirectly related to the Caucasus in the various language communities of Wikipedia. Sixteen Russian Wikipedia authors took part in the contest (one out of a competition). A total of 601 articles were created in the Russian section, 231 more than in 2020 and more than four times as many as in the 2019 contest (144). In total, more than 650 articles were written in Russian-language Wikipedia and Wikipedia in the languages of the peoples of Russia, corresponding to the theme of the contest.
November 5 — Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2021
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The Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2021 was held on November 5 and took place in virtual space because of the coronovirus pandemic. The Don Wikimedians decided to prepare a presentation and deliver it at one of the line sessions of the conference. The authors of the report were Dmitry Zhukov and Gennady Lipunov, both of whom have extensive experience in organizing and participating in various thematic competitions taking place on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. It was on the basis of this experience that the theme of the report was chosen - "Article contests in Russian and other Wikipedias in the languages of Russia", and a lot of work with statistical material was done to create the presentation. The main thesis of the report was the fact that about 10% of the articles in the Russian Wikipedia are created through contests. It was assumed that friends and colleagues from other Wikipedias would be interested in how to run contests in which authors can be motivated to create 1,000 or more articles in 45 days. The report aroused great interest among the audience, at the end of which the speaker answered all the questions that arose from the audience.
November 12 — Wiki-seminar at Volgograd State University
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On November 12, 2021, Volgograd State University hosted a lecture and master class on writing and revising encyclopedic Wikipedia articles about prominent alumni and professors of Russian universities. The event was organized and held thanks to the joint efforts of the Don Wikimedians User Group, the Wikimedia Russia, and representatives of the university. The event began with a meeting with the Rector of Volgograd University, Alla Kalinina, at the meeting it was declared a mutual interest in the development of educational, career guidance and engineering activities, including the dissemination of free to use encyclopedic, educational, scientific and reference information in the Russian Federation. Then Stanislav Kozlovsky, a representative of WMRU, and Dmitry Zhukov, a representative of the Don Wikimedians, moved to the walls of the "Terra Media" journalism school at the university's journalism faculty. More than 70 students were waiting in the auditorium for an introductory lecture, which covered important issues on the basics of editing in the universal Internet Encyclopedia. After the lecture, the most active participants of the event were invited to a master class on editing Wikipedia. Under the responsive guidance of experienced mentors, the students were offered to write their first articles of the Russian Wikipedia. The created articles were dedicated to the outstanding professors of Volgograd University, who stood at the origins of the university.
November 24 — Lecture and master class at the Russian-Kazakh forum "Young Scientists"»
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On November 24, Dmitry Zhukov, a representative of the Don Wikimedians User Group, was invited to give a lecture on Russian Wikipedia and Kazakh Wikipedia, as well as a master class on writing articles at the international scientific forum "Young Scientists", which was held in Samara in November 2021. The forum is an annual event and is aimed at developing cooperation between educational and scientific structures of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation, creating conditions for the development and implementation of joint Russian-Kazakh projects in the scientific field, as well as the development of intercultural dialogue and humanitarian cooperation between young people in the participating countries as a whole. The forum was held in a "hybrid" format, with some scientists participating offline and some online. During the forum, Dmitriy Zhukov told the audience about the principles of the Wikimedia Movement, the main projects, and in more detail about the history and statistical indicators of the Russian and Kazakh Wikipedias, finding many similarities in the history of their development. In the second part of the event, forum participants turned on their laptops, divided into teams, and began to write articles from a wordbook prepared in advance for the forum. The editaton resulted in more than 20 biographical articles, but much more importantly, more than 50 young scientists received the skill to write encyclopedic articles for Wikipedia. At the end of the event, the most active participants were given memorable prizes with Wikipedia symbols.