Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015 round1/Wikimedia Serbia/Impact report form


Purpose of the report edit

This form is for organizations receiving Annual Plan Grants to report on their results to date. For progress reports, the time period for this report will the first 6 months of each grant (e.g. 1 January - 30 June of the current year). For impact reports, the time period for this report will be the full 12 months of this grant, including the period already reported on in the progress report (e.g. 1 January - 31 December of the current year). This form includes four sections, addressing global metrics, program stories, financial information, and compliance. Please contact APG/FDC staff if you have questions about this form, or concerns submitting it by the deadline. After submitting the form, organizations will also meet with APG staff to discuss their progress.

Global metrics overview - all programs edit

We are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across our grantees' programs. Please use the table below to let us know how your programs contributed to the Global Metrics. We understand not all Global Metrics will be relevant for all programs, so feel free to put "0" where necessary. For each program include the following table and

  1. Next to each required metric, list the outcome achieved for all of your programs included in your proposal.
  2. Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome.
  3. In addition to the Global Metrics as measures of success for your programs, there is another table format in which you may report on any OTHER relevant measures of your programs success

For more information and a sample, see Global Metrics.

Education program edit

Wikipedia in schools edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 20 Number of editors who were active before and after the beginning of the program and who have had more than 5 edits during the 30 days that followed the completion of the program.
2. # of new editors 1120 These are editors with new accounts. 420 of 1120 had 5 and more edits during the 30 days that followed the completion of the program.
3. # of individuals involved 1144 It is possible that this number will be higher in the coming days because the semester will last 2 more weeks.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 375 Files collected for special project needs: Data MG, Data GF.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 2905 2822 new and 45 improved articles on Wikipedia, book (62 articles) and one article on Wikibooks.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects 29950190 This is absolute value of bytes. The vast majority was created within the Wiki Student project.


Professional development edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 2
2. # of new editors 102 5 out of 102 new editors had more than 5 edits during the 30 days after the completion of the program.
3. # of individuals involved 104 Lists of participants can be found on Seminars portal.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages /
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 55 43 new and 2 improved articles; 10 articles in another namespaces.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects 228584 215375 positive and 13209 negative bytes


Wiki Adventure edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved /
2. # of new editors 65 Some schools didn’t have enough capacities for big number of students at one workshop. List of participants can be found here.
3. # of individuals involved 71
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages /
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects /
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects /


Wiki school - Our School edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 22 These users contributed to realization of the planned activities.
2. # of new editors 60 Participants of seminars.
3. # of individuals involved 71 11 coordinators
38 teachers
22 pupils
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 113 Out of 234 (Wiki School - Our School), 113 photos are used on Wiki projects.

Usage:

5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 11 11 articles about 11 schools have been created and improved. They can be seen on Wiki project page.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects 135333


Photo content edit

Photo-safari edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 2
2. # of new editors /
3. # of individuals involved 4
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 69 Total number of photos: 978
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 14 Articles illustrated with photos.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects /


Wiki Loves Earth edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 51
2. # of new editors 0
3. # of individuals involved 54
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 268 Out of 831 uploaded photos, 268 were used on Wiki projects. Participants who were not previously involved in Wiki projects, had difficulties with photo upload and putting the appropriate template. This has probably affected the number of photos.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 2 Articles were illustrated with photos.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects /


Wikicopter edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved /
2. # of new editors /
3. # of individuals involved 4
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages /
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects /
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects /


Wiki Photo School in Petnica edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 13
2. # of new editors 14
3. # of individuals involved 27
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 33 Out of 82 uploaded photos (category 1, category 2), 33 are used on Wiki projects (category 1, category 2).
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects /
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects /


Zapis - Sacred tree edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 2
2. # of new editors 1
3. # of individuals involved 3
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 346 Out of 2961 photos on Commons, 346 are used on Wiki projects.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 4 List of sacred trees in Serbia can be seen here.


Individual articles:


Category: Zapisi

6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects 145505


Discovering Pešter edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 1
2. # of new editors 0
3. # of individuals involved 5
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 12 Out of 2939 photos on Commons, 12 are used on Wiki projects.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects /
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects /


GLAM edit

Edit-a-thons edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 54
2. # of new editors 55
3. # of individuals involved 72
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 125
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 58
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects 430571


Wiki-librarian edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 15
2. # of new editors 98
3. # of individuals involved 385 100 people were present at the lectures and there were 180 people at 3 conferences.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 284 Out of 618 uploaded photos, 284 are used on Wiki projects.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 358 358 (created and significantly improved with Wiki librarian template) + around 800 improved minor articles.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects 4014043 Number of created bytes are 4 times bigger than those in the previous 6-month period.


Digital Belgrade edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 4
2. # of new editors 30 List of new editors can be found here.
3. # of individuals involved 40
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 8 Out of 11 released photos, 8 are used in Wikipedia articles.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 100 20 articles in five languages (English, German, Russian, French, Spanish)
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects 680127 Number of bytes is bigger because of the later input of active editors, so it can not be precisely determined.


Competitions on Wikipedia edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 27
2. # of new editors 1
3. # of individuals involved 41
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages /
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 565 Projects pages:

Results:

(Competition on astronomy topics not included)

6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects 5684537


Wiktionary edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 9 5 members of 1001 Arabic Words, 4 members of the Slovakian dictionary
2. # of new editors 95 12 members of the Swedish dictionary, 8 members of the Norwegian dictionary, 15 members of the Ukranian dictionary, 40 members of the Chinese dictionary, 17 members of 1001 Arabic words, 3 members of Slovakian dictionary
3. # of individuals involved 104 Total numbers of 6 active editors on projects.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 1373 781 photos, 592 audio records.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects (1) 1073 (2) 6 (1) number of new articles on 6 active projects (2) number of new articles on Wikipedia
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects 1774481 metrics (01.01 - 30.06.2015.) ar - 546,505 b; sk - 75,561 b; no - 57,610 b; sv - 132,430 b; zh - 168,070 b; uk - 327,142 b.

metrics (01.07 - 31.12.2015.) ар - 278,972 b; sk - 82,004 b; zh - 81,653 b; uk - 24,534 b


Regional cooperation edit

Wiki Camp edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 14
2. # of new editors 1
3. # of individuals involved 15
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 98
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 25 12 articles in Bulgarian and 13 articles in Serbian
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects 113490


Workshops in Višegrad edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 3
2. # of new editors 9
3. # of individuals involved 12
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 16 Out of 161 photos, 16 were used on Wiki projects (Category 1, Category 2).
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 8 6 new and 2 improved articles.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects 18034


Spreading the idea of Wikimedia in Republic of Srpska edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 2 Active editors were teachers who promoted the work of Wikimedia Serbia. They have also created new articles along with the participants, improved the existing ones, and uploaded new photos on Wikimedia Commons.
2. # of new editors 16 In each of the four cities where the workshops were held, interested students had the opportunity to learn how to open new account, which we have sought to increase the number of new editors. This number is not entirely accurate since there is a possibility that some students opened the accounts after the workshop on their own initiative.
3. # of individuals involved 18
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 24 24 new media has been uploaded
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 9 Within the one-day workshops, 7 new articles were created and 2 were improved.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects 40182


Community support edit

Motivating the community edit

Motivating the community does not represent a standard project, but is comprised of a number of activities with a purpose to strengthen communication and the inner and outer community of Wikipedians, in other Wikimedia projects, and in the wider Wikimedia movement. One of the goals is to inform the public about the events in the Wikimedia movement through writing and translating blog posts, as well as publishing them on social media. Global metrics have already been presented through concrete projects and activities the volunteers participated in. You can read more about results of the activities in second part of the report (Storytelling).

WikiLive 2015 edit

WikiLive represents a local Wikimania, i.e. the first local conference of Wikipedians. Seeing as the event was envisioned as a conference, the global metrics chart is no longer applicable. More on the results of the conference and the organization itself can be found in the second part of the report (Storytelling).

Diversity edit

FemWiki&LGBT edit

In 2015 two FemWiki workshops have been organized at Cultural Center Rex and Women’s Studies Center. Some of the created articles are Women in science, Women’s Studies Center, Reconstruction Women’s Fund and Discrimination and Violence were improved. Besides those, several women’s biographies were created.

In addition, a list of feminist and LGBT organization was created and calls for cooperation were sent, but the response was weak.

Wiki Women’s Camp edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 6 Serbian Wikipedia. Usernames of active editors are: Bianka Terra, Milaberanova, Nataliesrb, Kuvarica, Trans Goat, Vitez Hirald
2. # of new editors 2 Serbian Wikipedia
3. # of individuals involved 9 Serbian Wikipedia
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages / Unfortunately, there was no time for a photo tour and photo upload on Commons.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 16 7 on Serbian Wikipedia and 9 on Albanian Wikipedia. Participants from Kosovo and Albania edited in pairs and everyone was writing articles on Albanian Wikipedia. Participants from Serbia were editing individually.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects 17256


Creative Commons edit

This is a specific project that can not be present through global metrics. For more results, read Storytelling.

Microgrants edit

New wave edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 1
2. # of new editors 1
3. # of individuals involved 50 Project leader, WMRS staff and audience on movie premiere New wave in SFRY as a social movement.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 1 Category with photos from movie premiere. Movie: New wave in SFRY as a social movement
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 1
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects 3308


Wiki Biodiversity edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 1
2. # of new editors 0
3. # of individuals involved 5
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 88 Out of 559 photos, 88 were used on Wiki projects.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 210 number of illustrated articles on Wikipedia: 203
number of new articles on Wikispecies: 7
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects / Goal of the project is increasing photo content and illustrating articles, so these metrics are not relevant.


Kurgans in Serbia edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 1
2. # of new editors 3 Project author and users who helped creating content: Vladimir Nimčević and Jelena Prodanović
3. # of individuals involved 3
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 72
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 40 Some articles aren’t directly related to Kurgans. Missing base was created (kurgan template, article tumulus etc). List of articles can be seen here.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects 275728


For future to know who we are, walk the free knowledge to the past edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 10
2. # of new editors 10
3. # of individuals involved 30 Volunteers who participated in the Wikipedia workshop and helped with photographing cultural monuments, research and editing articles.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 47 89 photos were uploaded on Wikimedia Commons.

Photo usage

5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 54 List of articles.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects 120651


Telling your program stories - all programs edit

Please tell the story of each of your programs included in your proposal. This is your chance to tell your story by using any additional metrics (beyond global metrics) that are relevant to your context, beyond the global metrics above. You should be reporting against the targets you set at the beginning of the year throughout the year. We have provided a template here below for you to report against your targets, but you are welcome to include this information in another way. Also, if you decided not to do a program that was included in your proposal or added a program not in the proposal, please explain this change. More resources for storytelling are at the end of this form. Here are some ways to tell your story.

  • We encourage you to share your successes and failures and what you are learning. Please also share why are these successes, failures, or learnings are important in your context. Reference learning patterns or other documentation.
  • Make clear connections between your offline activities and online results, as applicable. For example, explain how your education program activities is leading to quality content on Wikipedia.
  • We encourage you to tell your story in different ways by using videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, e.g.), compelling quotes, and by linking directly to work you produce. You may highlight outcomes, learning, or metrics this way.
  • We encourage you to continue using dashboards, progress bars, and scorecards that you have used to illustrate your progress in the past, and to report consistently over time.
  • You are welcome to use the table below to report on any metrics or measures relevant to your program. These may or may not include the global metrics you put in the overview section above. You can also share your progress in another way if you do not find a table like this useful.
Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year (projected or actual) Comments
Example Example Example Example Example

Education program edit

Education program of Wikimedia Serbia at IT High school

Education program has the longest tradition in WMRS. Cooperation with faculties and schools and activities including promoting and editing Wikipedia began back in 2005. The activities have been defined over time and have become consolidated in concrete projects (Wiki Gymnasium and Wiki Student), the program has been modified, adjusted to the conditions of certain institutions, and obtained official framework and norms. However, education program has further potential to grow and leaves constant space for learning, specialization, and progress. Wikimedia Serbia strives every year to enrich the program with new institutions, but also to bring new things to its current line of work. There is also work on overcoming the obstacles and shortcomings that have been noticed. This was the year when WMRS for the first time had a person in charge of the Education program, so the expectations were pretty high.

Education program had been set as a priority of Wikimedia Serbia for 2015. This program had a goal to educate pupils and students, as well as their teachers and professors, on how to edit Wikipedia in an academic environment through different projects. The program includes three projects:

Wikipedia in schools edit

Objectives

Members and employees of Wikimedia Serbia have been conducting training and workshops for a long time within projects for all kinds of educational institutions: elementary schools, high schools, and faculties. The objective is for the projects of Wikimedia Serbia to be used in educational purposes, as a free platform that can be used in different ways. It usually entails editing Wikipedia (seminal papers); however, the pupils or students at the training are presented with other Wikimedia projects, to which they could also contribute.

The expected outcome of the 2015 project depends on the number and size of the institutions we would cooperate with. The goal was to establish cooperation with at least 15 institutions, with at least 500 written or edited articles by the end of the year.

Activities

WMRS Education program, Gymnasium Ivanjica

In addition to the education program manager, there has been a streak of pioneer endeavors this year. Namely, the first Wiki-ambassadors have been appointed from the lines of Students Wikipedians. From the beginning of the 2014/2015 school year, we got a University of Belgrade ambassador, as well as ambassadors of the Faculty of Mathematics, Philology, and the Faculty of Security Studies. Engaging this type of volunteers has proved to be an excellent idea. The contribution in their own respective faculties was visible, in which the ambassadors agreed upon and realized training and monitored students’ edits with minimum help from the education program manager. They had become involved in training at other schools and faculties. Cooperation with the Eighth Belgrade Gymnasium has been established at the initiative of one of the ambassadors. In addition to organizing and implementing the training, ambassador was to lead Wiki-corner, a series of offline activities for students of his/her faculty. The idea was to motivate students interested in editing, regardless of their prior involvement in writing seminal papers on Wikipedia. In this way, we tend to address problem of poor retention editors involved in the educational program. The manner of implementation of these activities depends to a great extent on the creativity of ambassador and resources of the Faculty. So far, the idea of Wiki-corner has not come to life. Ambassadors are a great potential for the development of education program, but the engagement of volunteers has its limitations with their time of engagement and availability. As students, Ambassadors also have university obligations and are not always able to devote time to the project. Also, after they graduate, it is necessary to find new ambassadors. Over the course of the year there have been attempts to involve students from other partner institutions to Wiki-ambassador team. Until now, there has been no success in the recruitment of new ambassadors. More activity in this direction is planned for 2016.

In late January, we created Wiki-Thursday, one day a week when the office is open for volunteers, students etc. This option, beside new volunteers, was most helpful for students who needed additional support for editing Wikipedia and uploading files on Wikimedia Commons.

Edu-team of volunteers was formed. They have joined the training at the Faculty of Agriculture, Gymnasium in Stara Pazova and Pharmacy-Physiotherapy School. Volunteers are a great resource for the education program, but it is necessary to invest some time in their training and coordination. Group of 7 volunteers were educated to support the training, to conduct training in schools and Faculties. Their contribution, along with facilitation of training, was significant in organization of Wikimedia Serbia 10th anniversary, Education Program brochure and in realization of teacher training seminars.

During the year, we held 57 workshops in 30 partner institutions. The workshops usually included series of lectures and an interactive part (exercises), in which participants practised editing. Unlike the previous years, when the project was developed voluntarily (with fewer human resources), the groups have had two terms of workshops and one term of consultations, which resulted in a larger number of articles per participant.

The quality of a large number of articles was solid. However, we noticed that students are repeating the same mistakes, thus we have created a leaflet explaining ways to prevent common student errors and avoid mistakes.

In principle, communication with students worked well, with appropriate adjustments for the individual institutions. We had communication with students via e-mails and they received comments regarding theirs articles on their talk pages. Whenever it turned out that they were not following their talk pages, they would be contacted directly (e.g. assistants would contact them via Moodle platform). In secondary schools pupils were mostly contacted by their teachers, as it proved to be more efficient. The exception was the Seventh Belgrade Gymnasium, where the project included the same group of pupils as last year (at one pupil’s request), and they were skilled in the use of wiki syntax and how to communicate on Wikipedia.

First semester had large groups and therefore large number of entries. The problem with large input is that students had the same deadline (and they worked everything usually at the last minute), and the problem appears when you have a huge number of articles in just a few days. That leaves no time to follow the quality of the articles and send suggestions to the students.

The community does not favor the large number of articles of questionable quality at once. Experienced Wikipedians also criticized the poor quality of some articles, as well as beginner's articles. In fact, articles that students write as their seminal papers are usually their first articles on Wikipedia. We tried to overcome the problem with large entries by moving the deadlines within a single institution. In addition, we have increased the number of workshops by groups of students / pupils, to ensure better quality of work. In some places we organized "mid-term consultations" with students to make an overview. During the second semester we haven’t had this kind of problems.

Gymnasiums and secondary schools in Serbia suffered a months-long strike of teachers, which meant shortening class duration from 45 to 30 minutes. This shortening of time disrupted regular classes, and there was not much time left for additional activities. To solve this problem, we organized edit-a-thons in some schools, where in the same day we conducted training and articles were written. For these events it is necessary to pre-arrange the details with teachers (topics, literature, students to make accounts, to give instructions for the preparation of texts for articles...). Students mostly came with prepared texts. This is an excellent model of cooperation for secondary schools because they can consult us for all doubts before saving their article. Thus the resulting articles can be shorter, but the quality is higher.

The second part of the year is displayed a completely different picture. There were no aggravating circumstances, and, due to realization of the seminar, inclusion of Gymnasiums and secondary schools in the program was efficient.

This way, after attending the seminar, one professor of sociology was self-involved, and she developed Wiki Gymnasium project in Fifteenth and Third Belgrade Gymnasium. From these entries have been developed one innovation in working with high schools: communication through Facebook pages. All fourth-year students were involved in the project. Communication with students and the professor was carried out mainly through the Facebook page, which, in the case of high school, proved far more effective than Wikipedia talk page. In addition to communication with students was easier, key issues and problems were open and visible to all members of the group, so they could find an answer faster or assist each other. The first part of the year was filled with activities of localization and preparation of educational (EDU) extension. After the Serbian Wikipedia community voted on it’s deployment, Education extension was introduced in October. Using the extension made monitoring group entries implemented through the educational program Wikimedia Serbia much easier. In addition to monitoring and control input, the Extension helped to easily obtain metrics when evaluating projects.

Following the metrics, Education program has exceeded all of the plans and expectations, confirming that further focus should be on its development. It should be noted that there is a consistent difference between the period of metrics calculation and calendar school year. The school year has two semesters and the entries that were created between December and February were measured for the school year in which most of the edits were made. In 2015, the problem is particularly noticeable with calculating metrics, due to changes in the school calendar, thus the first semester ended on January 31st, 2016. Dividing entries wouldn’t be meaningful, so all the entries until the end of the January were calculated for 2015 results - when most of the articles were made. On the other hand, some entries at the end of 2014 and beginning of 2015 were attached to 2015 and some to 2014, depending on the time when most of the edits were made.

The largest entries in 2015 are presented in the table below:

# of articles added on Wikimedia projects # of articles improved on Wikimedia projects # individuals involved # of bytes added # of bytes deleted Absolute number of bytes # active users # new editors
Faculty of Engineering Kragujevac 789 5 20 15675049 521876 16196925 1 19
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of Applied Studies 296 14 107 2241778 145082 2386860 84 1
Faculty of Mining and Geology 256 0 62 195011 5798 200809 3 0
Third Belgrade Gymnasium 165 3 138 2359834 121421 2481255 0 65
Fifteen Belgrade Gymnasium 104 1 74 699150 84557 783707 0 26

In order to better follow the work of the education program, we practised communication and reporting through Trello ​​application.

The semester had series of successes, but also a number of obstacles, challenges and anecdotes:

  • During the year, we were contacted by several teachers and professors which found out about our education program on EduWiki conference 2014. This speaks of the importance and outreach of this event. Some of the teachers heard about education program from their colleagues or they learned about our work on other projects such as GLAM. The impression is that the collaborators, who started cooperation on their own initiative are more motivated and more committed to the project in which they are engaged.
  • One of the great successes of the education program is the fact that this year the Seventh Belgrade High School cooperation continued on the initiative of one pupil - Lazar. Lazar has contacted us in January with a request to organize WikiGymnasium in his school again. He had already discussed that with the principal (who led the education project in this school last year). The news of Lazar and his commitment to the project WikiGymnasium can be found in the February education newsletter.
  • At the Faculty of Geography, University of Belgrade - students don’t have computers at all, and the training was used for showing the numerous examples of articles and editing. After the workshop, several students approached the professor and asked if they could change the course (optional course) because editing seemed so hard and they didn’t have a few hours each week to do that. They understood they should write one article per week, and not one in the whole semester. It was a relief for them when they learned the right expectations.
  • This year, in addition to Wikipedia and Wiktionary, Wikibooks were also included in the framework of the education program. Students of Mining and Geology wrote the manual on how to work in AutoCAD. This kind of cooperation is a major contribution to the Wikibooks project, but we have encountered a lot of challenges and difficulties during the work. The biggest problem was the upload of illustrations (images and video animation) that students independently created, due to limitations in sending files and linking directly to Wikimedia Commons (which is not obvious for those who have no experience in working on Commons). Students have put together a manual on how to use basic functions of AutoCAD, but their illustrations were removed from Commons due to copyright protection. When they turned to us for support, convinced that the images were uploaded to Wikibooks, we found the problem was in the fact that the upload link in the side menu linked to upload on Commons. Deletion of the files was demotivating for the partners and students. So we contacted one of the administrators on Commons and we expect files soon. Some of the Wikibooks administrators will upload them to Wikibooks directly.
  • Work on the Wikibooks continued in the second semester, when students of the Faculty of Engineering, University of Kragujevac made the book LaTeX. Pupils of Mathematical Gymnasium in Belgrade are the first pupils, as a part of Wiki Gymnasium project, who edited Wikibooks. They made an analysis of the song The Beginning of the Revolt against the Dahijas.
  • One of the challenging situations occurred in a training session in the Fifth Belgrade Gymnasium. For the organization of the first part (lectures), teachers we work with have reserved a library (only the library has a projector). Since this room has no computers, we had to move to another classroom for conducting the practical part. For the purposes of this training, the presentation is uploaded to Google Drive and sent to the teachers of Informatics. The first obstacle occurred when another group of students came to the library with their history teacher to see the pictures of old Belgrade (he also scheduled for the same timeslot, but the librarian had forgotten). We spent around 15 minutes on this. Furthermore, for unknown reasons, the Internet was not working. We tried to transfer presentations from Google Drive to USB but we failed due to incompatible software and outdated version of browser. Somehow, we held a workshop and showed the pupils the basics. The students didn’t have enough time, but somehow they managed to do the task. The next training we held in the cabinet we used the projector from the WMRS office and there were no problems.
  • The first workshop in Užice was organized in an informal atmosphere of the Youth Club. Working in an environment such as this, different from the school, acted positively on the participants. High school pupils from Užice were more free and comfortable to ask us about any concerns during the workshop and, later, diligent in their work. Part of the atmosphere can be seen here.
  • As the year 2015 was declared the year of Jovan Cvijić (in honor of the 150th anniversary of birth of Jovan Cvijić), in cooperation with the Faculty of Geography we planned to celebrate this anniversary, in many different ways. The first in a series of activities (edit-a-thon) was carried out in late June, and University Library "Svetozar Marković" joined in the organization of the event. The edit-a-thon is an example of excellent cooperation with partners on various projects (Wiki Librarian and education program). The marathon was attended by 11 students (6 of them were included in the education program, and 5 were new ones) and 3 librarians (they were involved in Wiki Librarian). Eight articles were written and six were improved and 13 images were uploaded on Commons. This is the first edit-a-thon that was competitive (only students participated in the competition). The Faculty has awarded students with research summer school (camp) as a first prize, while second and third place were one-day hiking trip and a yearly subscription to the National Geographic magazine, which were awarded by Wikimedia Serbia. Much more important than awards was the fact that the students came prepared and motivated. The work was pleasant and in a lively atmosphere. After the edit-a-thon, professor Stevan Stanković, emeritus of the faculty, has done us a great pleasure and gave a lecture on Jovan Cvijić. More information can be found on the page, and the images are in the following category.
  • EDU extension was implemented on Serbian Wikipedia in October 2015 and helped tracking articles and users in many ways. As we had different tracking system, when we start using Edu extension, first we had to train teahers and assistants how to use it. Although extension make work easier for teachers and volunteers who review the articles, it seems like it’s challenging for new pupils and students. Namely registration was complicated for students who didn’t attend the training session. In addition, we found some disadvantages of extension. One of the students couldn’t register to the course. We couldn’t solve that problem even with the help of Edu collab team. The fact that Edu extension has an expiration date which is announced, is specifically concerning. This requires new changes and additional training which is time-consuming and it affects on their motivation.
  • 2015 ended with great cooperation with Mathematical Gymnasium in Belgrade. With the support of Serbian language teacher (Anđelka Petrović) pupils of 8B class created their first Wikipedia article dedicated to song The Beginning of the Revolt against the Dahijas. In order to better cover the topic and understanding of the song, they’ve created animated film and a portrait of Ilija Bircanin. With the help of teachers and parents, text was translated to English, Russian, Spanish and German language. They’ve also analyzed the work and post it on Wikibooks. This analysis was useful to all of the pupils of 8th grade. Project will be presented on New technologies in education conference, which will be held on 26th and 27th of February 2016 in Belgrade. More information about their success can be found on WMRS blog.
  • During the 2015, teachers at Pedagogical Faculty in Vranje, University of Niš, conducted training and activities with students on their own, based on activities in 2014. At the end of the 2015, Marko Stanković, Milena Bogdanović, Marija Jordanović (Pedagogical Faculty in Vranje) and Đorđe Stakić (representative of Wikimedia Serbia) wrote an article “Wikipedia as possibility for innovation in Informatics on example of Teacher Education Faculty” that was published in science journal “Innovation in teaching”.

Seminars and training edit

Objectives

This program entails a teacher/professor training for working on Wikipedia, so they could later edit Wikipedia or train their pupils/students on their own. Seminars and training are directly correlated with the educational institutions that we cooperate with through the Wikipedia In Schools project. Over the course of the year, we expect a cooperation with professors and teachers from a minimum of 10 institutions.

Activities

During the 2015, the program included ten new institutions. Over 15 staff members (teachers/professors) from these institutions were trained to work on Wikipedia, and had support for monitoring and evaluating the entries. What we are particularly proud of are the trainings at the Teachers’ Faculty in Vranje and Faculty of Agriculture, where we provided resources for teaching (presentations, brochures, pages for entries ...) and shared our experience to the professors/assistants so they conducted trainings on their own. We have tried to provide them with support for all their problems. The aim of the project is to educate as many associates as we can so they can eventually be able to independently conduct the trainings.

Professional development edit

Objectives

The aim of this project is inclusion of seminars and training in the system of professional development of teachers through participation in mandatory seminars and courses. Unlike the “Seminars and Training” project, that is not compulsory and is carried out as a type of cooperation with educational institutions, “Professional Development” is a project where teachers and professors from all over Serbia participate in a seminar within a mandatory professional development fund. During the professional development seminar, the participants learn about Wikimedia, the online resources for education benefit, and editing Wikipedia. Seeing as our accreditation is valid from this school year, we will consider this project successful if we conduct at least 3 seminars with minimum 25 (maximum 30) participants.


Activities

The context in which this project occurred represents a small victory of Wikimedia Serbia and its representatives. After many years of effort and work on education programs, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of Republic of Serbia recognized the work in a wiki environment as useful and important and added it to the curriculum of Informatics for the second year of Gymnasiums. Furthermore, in cooperation with WMRS board members, Professor Filip Marić compiled a textbook for the second year of Gymnasiums, in which a number of lessons are devoted to working with wiki tools.

The inclusion in the curriculum itself does not provide the quality education of students, and the next step was to support teachers to understand and master the work in a wiki setting, so they could transfer this knowledge more easily to students. Wikimedia Serbia was, on this occasion, in cooperation with Prosvetni pregled, accredited for the program of professional development for teachers.

The first two scheduled seminars were to be held in December 2014, but were cancelled by the Assembly of Prosvetni pregled with the explanation that they were taking austerity measures. Over the past six months, we tried to find a way to realize these seminars, for which we have funding, venue and registered participants. After the change of leadership of this society, in July we’ve got the support to continue with the implementation of the seminar.

During the first semester of school year 2015/2016 there were four professional development seminars entitled Implementation of Serbian Wikipedia in teaching and learning.

The first two seminars were held within the project Wiki school - our school, implemented by the Teachers’ Association Jagodina. Seminars were held in elementary schools "Ljubisa Urosević" in Ribare (Jagodina municipality) and "Jovan Jovanović Zmaj" in Svilajnac. The other two seminars were carried out at the Third Belgrade Gymnasium (grammar school), with kind support of teachers and the school. During September and October, the seminar was attended by 104 participants from several towns in Serbia. Speakers at the seminar were: Đorđe Stakić, president of the Academic Board of Wikimedia Serbia and Filip Maljković, President of Wikimedia Serbia, both working over a decade on the development of projects of free knowledge in an academic setting. At the last seminar Svetlana Jovanović, an assistant at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences joined the team of lecturers. Together, they tried to pass on their experience in using Wikipedia and other Wiki projects in the classroom. Participants demonstrated a great interest in this type of teaching advancement. Both active participation of teachers and the results of evaluation conducted proof their satisfaction with quality of seminar. From total number of the participants (104), 78% were female and 22% male.

The participants consider the trainers as experts in the field of seminar (97.1% of respondents strongly agree), and to a large extent (83.7% of the participants) they strongly agree that attending the training will help them improve their own work.

According to participants, the communication between facilitators and participants was at a satisfactory level, and all participants feel that the training is worth recommending.

Among the major shortcomings of the seminar, the participants noted the level of customization of seminar to work experience and computer skills of the participants. Some participants took longer time to master Wiki syntax. Facilitating a seminar interesting and useful to everyone, bearing in mind that their competencies are different, was one of the greatest challenges. Wikimedia Serbia continued activities of professional development for teachers in 2016. We strive to adapt the training needs and interests of future participants of the seminar in order to support development of skills and competencies necessary for using Wiki-platform in teaching and learning. The atmosphere during the seminars was pleasant and stimulating, so we all left the room with a smile. At the end of one seminar, we’ve even received a poem from one of the participants. After a review of evaluation of participants, our satisfaction was even greater.

The most important task in monitoring the success of the seminar is further involvement and support of participants to apply what they have learned in the classroom. With the aim to support and encourage participants and to help them inspire each other, we’ve made portal Seminars, where they can find all the necessary materials, information and share their experiences. Pictures from the seminars can be found on Wikimedia Commons. Our seminars were mentioned on Wikimedia Serbia blog and global EDU blog.

Gallery

Wiki Adventure edit

The main idea of this project is implementation of Wiki Adventure in high schools in order to start a new way of education of high school pupils about editing Wikipedia. The main objectives are bringing Wikipedia closer to younger audiences in a new and interesting way, but also comparing results of this project with the ones gained through standard workshops. This will be realized through a few activities, such as:

  • translating Adventure through Wikipedia into Serbian language
  • technical implementation of Adventure through Wikipedia
  • promotion of Adventure through Wikipedia in larger cities in Serbia
  • workshops with high school pupils in larger cities in Serbia
  • evaluation
  • comparison analysis
  • presenting the results to the Community

Activities

From February to January 2015 one meeting was held and the main topics were expenses and beginning of the project realization.

From April to June 2015 translation of Wikipedia Adventure (WA) and creating evaluation forms has begun.

From June to September 2015 the biggest part of the WA translation on Serbian Wikipedia was finished.

From September to December 2015 translation was completely finished and Wikipedia Adventure was fully implemented and tested. Three workshops were held in Kikinda, Belgrade and Niš. Beside promoting Wikipedia Adventure, these workshops served for comparing WA approach and regular Edu Wiki approach. After workshops, participants filled out the evaluation forms, based of which the research was done.

One of the project goals, beside implementation and WA promotion, was comparative analysis of traditional and the new approach to editing workshops in high schools. Therefore, identical evaluation forms were made for participants of the both type of workshops. There were 27 participants who attended WA workshop and 28 who attended regular workshops.

By comparing these responses we come to the following conclusions (measuring scale was from 1 to 5):

Traditional approach
Wiki adventure approach

1.How motivated were you while you were doing this? Traditional approach: most of the participants rated motivation with 3, (39,3%), while 21,4% of participants rated it with the highest mark. The lowest mark was given by 7,1% of participants. Wikipedia Adventure approach: most of the participants rated motivation with 4, (55,6%), while 11,1% of participants rated it with the highest mark. The lowest mark wasn’t given by any of the participants. According to this we can conclude that there is a slight increase of motivation for those who attended the Wikipedia Adventure workshop.

2.How fun was this for you? Traditional approach: most of the participants rated fun with 4, (42,9%), while 14,3% of participants rated it with the highest mark (5). The lowest mark was given by 3,6% of participants. Wikipedia Adventure approach: most of the participants rated fun with 4 (44,4%), while 29,6% of participants rated it with the highest mark. The lowest mark wasn’t given by any of the participants. According to this we can conclude that Wiki Adventure was more entertaining.

3.How difficult was this for you? Traditional approach: most of the participants rated this with 2 (42,9%), while 32,1% of participants rated it with the lowest mark. The highest mark wasn’t given by any of the participants. Wikipedia Adventure approach: most of the participants thought that editing Wikipedia wasn’t difficult at all (55,6%). No one rated this with mark 5. In terms of difficulty, learning how to edit Wikipedia was easier with Wikipedia Adventure rather than using traditional approach.

4.How much did you like the training? Traditional approach: most of the participants rated this with 4, (46,4%), while 39,3% of participants rated it with the highest mark (5). The lowest mark wasn’t given by any of the participants. Wikipedia Adventure approach: most of the participants rated this with 5 (48,1%). The lowest mark wasn’t given by any of the participants. According to this we can conclude that Wikipedia Adventure is for sure more appropriate approach for high school pupils.

5.How much did you like the dynamic of the workshop? Traditional approach: most of the participants rated dynamism with 4 (60,7%), while 14,3% of participants rated it with the highest mark (5). The lowest mark wasn’t given by any of the participants. Wikipedia Adventure approach: most of the participants rated dynamism with 4 (48,1%), while 25,9% of participants rated it with the highest mark (5). The lowest mark wasn’t given by any of the participants. When it comes to dynamism of workshops, the situation seems equal with some hints that Wikipedia Adventure offers a dynamic atmosphere. 6.What was the most difficult for you? (to enter text, to formulate text, to enter wiki links, to add picture, to add references) It is clear that adding references was the most difficult both for traditional of WA approach. Then, there’s formulation of the text. Text input and wiki links also show very high similarity in both approaches. The conclusion is that the approaches do not substantially change what’s the hardest thing to beginners on Wikipedia.

7.Would you like to continue with these workshops? (yes, no) The responses indicate that participants who attended Wikipedia Adventure workshop had greater interest to continue with these workshops compared to the traditional approach..

8.Did you know anything about Wikipedia prior to this workshop? (yes, no) A higher percentage of participants of Wikipedia Adventure heard about Wikipedia before the workshop. These questions were not relevant in terms of the workshops analysis, but we used the results in other analyzes regarding the visibility of Wikipedia and its way of functioning in Serbia among high school pupils.

9.Did you know that you can edit Wikipedia? (yes, no) 92,9% of the participants knew that they can edit Wikipedia. These questions were not relevant in terms of the workshops analysis, but we used the results in other analyzes regarding the visibility of Wikipedia and its way of functioning in Serbia among high school pupils.

10.Do you plan to continue editing Wikipedia? (yes, no) Answers to this question indicate a significant difference regarding to which approach is better in order to motivate children to continue editing Wikipedia. Wikipedia Adventure approach shows greater motivation of high school pupils than traditional approach.

11.Would you recommend this workshop to your friends who have not attended it? These responses clearly indicate that WA approach is more interested to children and motivate them to talk about workshop/editing Wikipedia with their peers.

12. How useful was this for you? Traditional approach: most of the participants rated this with 4, (50%), while 25 of participants rated it with the highest mark (5). The lowest mark wasn’t given by any of the participants.

Wikipedia Adventure approach: most of the participants rated this with 4, (51,9%), while 29,6% of participants rated it with the highest mark (5). The lowest mark wasn’t given by any of the participants.

Responses to this question indicate better results for Wikipedia Adventure regarding to benefits of different approaches.

Results are presented through charts for traditional and Wikipedia Adventure approach. (English version - traditional, Wikipedia Adventure).

What worked, what did not?

Although the study shows that Wikipedia Adventure is more appealing to high school pupils, it is not ideal for group workshops. Pupils edited Wikipedia from the same IP address, so access to the Wikipedia Adventure page was disabled after a certain number of edits. This was the reason why some of the pupils finished their game at home.

Wiki school - our school edit

The main objective of the program is enhancing digital competence of teachers and students through training to use and create resources within the Wikimedia project. Specific objectives of the project are:

  • contribution to the development of free knowledge by increasing the knowledge base in the resources within the Wikimedia project;
  • developing collaborative, partner relationships of students and teachers by enhancing communication in direct contact and online environment;
  • networking the teachers, students, and schools of Pomoravlje, Resava, and Levač through cooperation and communication by the means of ICT;
  • developing awareness of elementary school teachers about the need for foreign specialization of personal and professional competences and life studies.
Planned Realized
50 teachers are familiar with the concept of Wikimedia and trained in joining the work on Wikimedia projects on the professional training seminar 60
at least 10 teachers and 20 students are actively involved in the work on Wikimedia projects 11 coordinators
38 teachers
22 students
at least 10 schools from the Pomoravlje, Resava, and Levča territory have been presented within Wikimedia projects 11
at least 50% of the members of the Teachers’ Association Jagodina are familiar with the results of the projects presented at the final meeting 53% members of the Teachers’ Association Jagodina are involved with the project in some way (workshops, meetings, final manifestation)
at least 300 photographs uploaded on Wikimedia Commons (school buildings, cultural-historical monuments, and other landmarks of Pomoravlje, Resava, and Levča) 234
at least 10 Wikipedia articles written or improved 11

Activities

Photo material gathered in Wiki School - Our School project
Photo material gathered in Wiki School - Our School project

The following activities have been conducted:

  • The action plan of realization of the project was revised, and then expanded and improved with activities suggested by a microgrant named “Pomoravlje, Resava, and Levča through a lens”,
  • An informative meeting (work lunch) was held on June 30th, 2015 in Jagodina, attended by 9 registered school coordinators, project team members, and the representatives of the Dorm for high schools and Faculty of Pedagogy in Jagodina,
  • An arranged cooperation on the project with the representatives of the Dorm for high schools in Jagodina and the representatives of the Student organization of the Faculty of Pedagogy in Jagodina,
  • Meeting of school coordinators was organized in Jagodina,
  • Professional development seminars "Applying Serbian Wikipedia in teaching and learning" were prepared and implemented in Jagodina (Ribare) and Svilajnac,
  • Within the part of the project entitled "Pomoravlje, Resava and Levač in the lens” photos of different objects have been published,
  • WMRS representatives held the consultations with the project leaders for preparing the accredited professional meeting in Jagodina,
  • intensive work of school teams in finding sources and literature for the preparation of articles about schools, consultation within and between school teams,
  • preparation and submission of applications for accreditation of the professional meeting,
  • two meetings were organized with the aim of presenting the project to the Dorm for high school students in Jagodina,
  • 7 workshops were held for coordinators and members of the school teams,
  • photos of school facilities were published,
  • 11 articles about schools were written and published,
  • final conference with project presentation was realized.

All project participants agree that the participation in the project was a valuable experience. Coordinators of school teams submitted the internal reports containing the impressions and comments of the participants. On this basis it can be concluded that the project improved their knowledge, hard to achieve in other way. They find that sustainability is the good side of this project, as they can continue writing Wikipedia articles about different things, after the project has ended. They believe that the knowledge gained is very useful and usable not only in professional but also in personal practice.

What worked and what did not?

The greatest challenges project leaders have encountered over the year were:

  • lack of a permanent Internet connection in schools
  • large dispersion of participating schools in the project hinders cooperation and exchange of experiences among the school teams. Thus, in the most remote schools we’ve had problems with the formation of school teams (in villages Kušiljevo and Sedlar we couldn’t form a school team), improvement of new articles by Wikipedia community (Resavica), publishing photos and deletion parts of the articles (Rekovac).

Photo content edit

Photo-safari edit

Objectives

Photo safari is a project present in Wikimedia Serbia for several years. The project aims to increase the photo coverage of various cities in Serbia. In addition to generating a large number of photos, such activities are suitable for attracting new volunteers and decentralization of WMRS activities. Project outcomes are are numerous photos used in Wikipedia articles and, more important, involvement of new volunteers and public education about WMRS projects.

Activities

In the period July - September two photo safaris took place in the surrounding villages of Leskovac. Three volunteers have participated in organization of the expedition, with the support of WMRS office in logistical and financial terms.It was interesting to engaging volunteers in this city. One active member of Wikipedia community, who previously took part in the local Wikimania and Wiki expedition Dimitrovgrad-Dragoman joined this expedition as well. Another member was a member of the team that won the micro grant For future to know who we are, walk the free knowledge to the past.

The theme of the expedition were villages surrounding Leskovac and everything that is typical in those places. There are 144 of villages, and two Photo-safari expedition covered 51, uploading 978 photos to Wikimedia Commons. Photographed villages can be seen on this image and number of photos for every village, so as villages that did not have photos can be found following this link.

What worked and what did not? Expeditions were successfully implemented. A large number of images is collected. A volunteer from Leskovac is interested and motivated to continue these activities. Many photos are already used in Wiki articles, which has a tendency to grow. Photo safari has once again confirmed that it is a very interesting activity, given that there is also a social component that can be put to good use for the education of new community members.

There were some logistical problems - specifically when it comes to transportation. Lack of the project is that its’ realization is difficult or even impossible without means of transportation and a driver. In this sense, when finding transport is in question, it meant a project standstill. Finally, this was successfully resolved.

Wiki Loves Earth edit

First prize
Second prize
Third prize

Objectives

This project represents a mass assemblage of photographs of cultural heritage in Serbia through a well-known contest. The contest lasted from June 1st to June 30th, and we are currently working on organizing exhibitions in which the project would be promoted. The expected objectives in the annual plan were:

Planned Realized
2000 photographs 831
50 participants 51
3 exhibitions 3
15 printed photographs at the exhibitions 20
3 institutions which would provide us with the venues for the exhibitions 3
30 visitors per exhibition 150
1 edit-a-thon 1
2 photo-tours 1
tracked media coverage 144 tracked media coverage
  • TV - 32
  • Radio - 11
  • Printed - 4
  • Web - 97

Activities

This year’s Wiki Loves Earth contest lasted from June 1st to June 30th. The cooperation with the Institute for Nature Conservation of Serbia continues - this year we were again provided with an updated list of natural heritage sites, and the first edit-a-thon, for which they provided the literature, was held in their offices. Before the competition started, the work on the project required creating the necessary pages on Wikimedia Commons, updating the official web page, designating the awards, appointing members of the jury, updating the lists of natural heritage sites, contacting the institutions which would provide us with the venues for the exhibitions, writing announcements, blog posts, and updating social network profiles. 3 volunteers participated in the project, and the result are 831 photographs (32% project use) by 51 participants. During the course of the competition, Wikimedia Serbia had already had a Manager of Communications, so a media campaign had been started, which resulted in [[w:sr:Википедија:Односи са јавношћу|12 appearances on radio and TV shows, and 21 media had reported the news about the beginning of the contest. The announcement was posted on Wikimedia Serbia blog, as well as our website. A site notice on Wikipedia was set and a Facebook event was created. Even with all these announcements, we had received many questions about how to upload and tag photos. Communication with the participants and photo upload training (online) were the main challenges. In order to ease the approach to the participants, we had created a manual on how to properly upload and tag photos. In order to animate the community and include as many participants as possible, we had organized a photo-edit-a-thon at the Institute for Nature Conservation of Serbia - a two-day event which was comprised of a Belgrade photo-tour and uploading of photos and writing articles about natural heritage. The event was announced on the blog, Village pump, website, mailing list, Facebook. The results are the following:

After the competition, an agreement with the Tourist Organization of Serbia (TOS) has been signed and we’ve started the cooperation. TOS recognized a good partner in WMRS and gladly ceded a space for the exhibition, which opened on 29 July 2015 and lasted for seven days. Before the exhibition WMRS prepared promotional materials (calendars, hand bags, catalogs), which were shared with winners, jury members, the media, partners and visitors at the opening. All of the logistical things (exhibition setting, catering, delivery of prizes) have been took care of. The announcement of the opening of the exhibition, in addition to traditional media was shared through all WMRS communication channels: blog, Village Pump, mailing list, social networks and WMRS website. At a press conference, organized at the exhibition, the audience was addressed by Vesna-Raca Radosavljević, deputy director of TOS, Aleksandar Dragišić, director of the Institute for Nature Protection, Filip Maljković, President of WMRS and Ivana Guslarević, Communications Manager WMRS. Over 20 journalists were present at the event and information about proclamation of the winners was transferred more than 130 times in media (more details can be seen in media reports). Particularly interested for the media was the fact that the winner has not attended the exhibition and we were not able to get in touch with him/her, even after several attempts. So, after the exhibition dawned a news title Chasing the winner. First prize winner contacted Wikimedia Serbia in December to collect his prize. Beside the first three awards at the exhibition were awarded praises for participants of the contest. Shortly after the announcement of the winner and seven-day exhibition in TOS the exhibition travels to the famous international jazz festival in Nis - Nisville. Nisville organizers supported the Wiki Loves Earth competition through setting up the winning photos in one of the art studios at the festival. On this occasion, important national and local media quoted official press release, news and Facebook event were also shared by WMRS. On the eve of the exhibition opening, Ivana Guslarević presented WMRS at a press conference attended by a large number of journalists. Through live telephone stream an exhibition was announced on national radio station, as well as on local TV network. The board and employees of Wikimedia Serbia visited the exhibition, as they had teambuilding in Nis in that period. For both exhibitions were printed and distributed posters and promo materials. At the end of the year, the cooperation with the Museum of Mining and Metallurgy in Bor have been renewed. This institution donated their gallery for the last Wiki Loves Earth exhibition in 2015. Among their regular activities, Museum organizes movie nights. Thus, on this occasion, there was a projection of free documentary film New Wave in SFRY as a social movement, which was the outcome of same-titled microgrant project. Visitors were showed interest in free knowledge and for repeating of Wikipedia editing workshop, which was held in early 2015 in this institution. There were many inquires about the start of the competition next year. Local media also reported on this event.

What worked and what did not?

The planning and realization of exhibitions went according to plan. TOS, Nišville organizers and representatives of the Museum of Mining and Metallurgy Bor proved to be reliable partners. Exhibitions were well covered in the media, enabling greater visibility of Wikimedia Serbia.

Exhibition of Nis was not as visited as exhibitions in Belgrade and Bor. The opening was attended mostly by journalists. This was largely influenced by the distance of the exhibition. Niš fortress is quite large, so for those who do not know the terrain, it was a not easy to find exhibition setting.

Wikicopter edit

The assemblage of the wikicopter began in the first half of the year. The project was unsuccessful in 2014 and had certain setbacks. In 2015, the main challenge for its successful continuation was a lack of volunteers who would dedicate themselves to the technical aspects and assembling the quadricopter. The first phase of assembling the copter was done at the Hacklab, and the documentation can be found in this category. Lack of human resources who could provide technical support led to failure.

Wiki Photo School in Petnica edit

Goals

Petnica Science Center (PSC) is an autonomous and independent organization engaged in the development of scientific culture, scientific literacy, education and culture. During the year, PSC organizes various workshops and trainings which attract large numbers of high-school students. We believe these workshop participants have developed awareness about volunteering, considering they attend workshops voluntarily and mostly paying a fee. This target group, as we think, can make a huge contribution to Wiki projects and it would be important to organize some Wiki activities (like Wiki school), and promotion of WMRS projects. The idea of the photo-school was for every participant to successfully choose a license and upload at least one piece of content of good quality on Commons, and use that content in some other Wikimedia project. That content should be a photograph (of a characteristic part or the end of the experiment), or a series of photographs/a video of the course of the experiment.

Quantitative measures

Planned Realized
at least 15 photos (video materials) on Wikimedia Commons 66
at least 2 participants who would continue editing Wiki projects (Wikimedia Commons) 1

Qualitative measures

Planned Realized
quality of materials quality of materials is on a high level, measured by the FastCCI tool and estimated by professional photographs at Wiki Photo School in Petnica
evaluation of participants In the evaluation sheet, 100% of subjects/participants stated that the concept of free licences is more understandable now, ~88% of participants found workshops very useful for learning basics of photography (framing, adjusting the aperture value, sensitivity and focus). They all found the experiments and photography of the experiments interesting and were interested in similar projects. All participants who had to pay the fee, stated that its amount isn’t too high.

One participant was very active after the project, as she took part in WLE, uploading some of her photos.

Activities

The project leader has been active in PSC for years now and that was an important resource once event was announced. After designing the call and application form for participation in the Wiki photo school in Petnica, there was an open call. By the end of May, we organized Photo school workshops and lectures in PSC. They included three-day workshops, photo shooting and lectures about Wikimedia Serbia and photo upload. Afterwards, the project was evaluated by participants. After the end of the project, Ivana Madžarević and Maria Cruz wrote blog post in What I Learned section.

What worked, what didn’t?

The whole workshop in the chemical laboratory was interesting. Experiments have attracted the attention of participants and therefore long stories of framing, installation and configuration of photo equipment were not hard to handle. All designed experiments were performed and photographed/documented. All planned lectures were completed successfully and well evaluated. The only thing that has not been fully carried out is the motivation of participants for continued work on Wikimedia projects (Commons, Wikipedia...).

Zapis - Sacred tree edit

Takovski Grm - one of the sacred trees in Serbia
Vezicevo - one of the sacred trees in Serbia

Objectives

The goal of the project is to form the database of zapis trees, including data about and photographs of each tree. The database will then be used to suggest addition of zapis trees to the list of intangible cultural heritage of Serbia and later of UNESCO. This would be the first database of its kind in Serbia, if not in the world, and if we manage to make the addition to the list of intangible heritage it would deepen our cooperation with state institutions.

Planned Realized
300 sacred trees whose photos has been uploaded to Wiki Commons 450
Number of photos uploaded to Wikimedia Commons 2961
List of the sacred trees in Serbia, the base for project activities List of zapisi in Serbia on Wikipedia
  • Total number of days spent on field - 59
  • Total mileage in km - using transport - 4399
  • Total mileage in km - walking/cycling - 480
  • Total number of sacred trees with defined location - 467
  • Total umber of settlement visits - 201

Activities

Main activities on a new project meant to collect data on a former and current trees, (sites, photos and videos from the past or created in the course of the project, description of the state of the tree, narratives and testimonies from other people, museums, libraries and media, other elements on which it is subsequently found a need for recording...), photo tours, and processing data and uploading photos to Wikimedia Commons. During the year, articles on Wikipedia about sacred trees or villages in which they are located are Illustrated using previously collected photographs. The list of sacred trees in Serbia was created with photographs, indicated districts and geo coordinates. Creation of the first maps with GIS capabilities was initiated- ESRI - Geo Apps. The project coordinator submitted a proposal for the annual project for the year 2016, which was accepted. At the moment when the report was written, the activities have already begun.

What worked, what didn’t?

The plan was to collect 300 photos and over 450 were collected, which exceeded the target. List of sacred trees in Serbia was created on Wikipedia page. This makes a starting point for a serious base of sacred trees in Serbia. During the project, some problems occurred:

  • Due to the slow Internet, photos are set for only 267 of the 467 trees. Provision of better Internet connection and purchase of faster computer will help recovering this backlog.
  • Categorization on Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia was not finished
  • Videos are not processed nor uploaded
  • No maps have been made
  • A large number of additional photos is not systematized, and therefore not uploaded

Discovering Pešter edit

Tour in March
Tour in June
Canyon of the River Uvac

Goals

The goal of the project is research and documentation of specific geographic and natural characteristics of Pešter in south-western Serbia, including ethnographic and social characteristics and activities of multi-ethnic population.

During the 15 days of systematic and methodologically even research, the expected end results in a period from January to December are:

  • securing the new 5000-6000 thematically categorized photographs, with a complete assemblage of defined, relevant meta attributes (meta tags);
  • improvement of existing articles about settlements and geographic coordinates of the Pešter Plateau with new, relevant photos;
  • up to 2000 files for Wikimedia projects (Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Monuments and the like);
  • up to 2000 photographs which illustrate the extreme winter conditions in Pešter;
  • up to 2000 photographs which illustrate the summer and winter habitats in Pešter.

Activities

Following settlements and parts of Pešter were visited:

Time Place Kilometers
16.03.2015. Medare, Zaječiće, Krće, Vrsenice, Kijevci, Čitluk, Cetanoviće, Rasno, Tuzinje, Karajukića Bunari, Ugao, Karajukića Bunari, Bioc, Buđevo, Raždaginja, Zaječiće, Giljeva, Medare, Sjenica 60 km
17.03.2015. Meandri Vape, Gradac, izvor Vape, Štavalj, Brnjica, Goljski put, Šarski krš, Duga Poljana, Pešter, Draževiće, Kamešnica, Peštersko polje, Rasno, Tudinje, Karajukića Bunari, Buđevo, planina Diljeva, Buđevo, Sjenica 85 km
18.03.2015. Vrela, wellhead Grabovice, Ski center Žari, Prijesek, Trijebine, Prijevorac, Krajinoviće, Višnjeva, Bare, Visočka, Manastir Kumanica, Vrdnička Laništa, Zahumsko, Bare, Osječenik, Sjenica 75 km
19.03.2015. Ski center Žari, Vrela, wellhead Grabovice, Sjenica 21 km
21.03.2015. Sjenica and surroundings 10 km
15.03 - 21.03.2015. Trip to Sjenice and back: Belgrade – Smederevo - Čačak – Požega – Arilje – Ivanjica – Sjenica 674 km
15.06 - 20.06.2015. Putovanje do Sjenice i nazad: Belgrade –Čačak – Požega – Arilje – Ivanjica – Sjenica 624 km
16.06.2015. Sjenica – Štavalj – Duga Poljana – Novi Pazar – Tutin – Ribariće – jezero Gazivode – Karajukića Bunari – Piskavica - Sjenica 252 km
17.06.2015. Sjenica – Medare – Zaječiće – Krće – Vrsenice – Kijevci – Čitluk – Cvetanoviće – Rasno – Tuzinje - Karajukića Bunari - Ugao – Karajukića Bunari – Bioc – Raždaginja - Zaječiće – Giljeva – Medare – Sjenica 87 km
18.06.2015. Sjenica – Donja Vapa – Sjenica – Gornja Vapa 24 km
19.06.2015. Sjenica – Štavalj – Duga Poljana – Novi Pazar 112

Experience, impressions and photos documented during the field trips confirmed that Pešter is a place with exceptional natural characteristics and extremely hospitable people. Among other things, it was quite interesting to visit Karajkića well where the lowest temperature on Pešter was measured: -39,4º.

During the realization of the project, cooperation with Tourist Organization of Sjenica and House of Municipality of Sjenica was achieved.

Meteorological conditions during the March tour were perfect: lots of snow and sun. Also road conditions were difficult, terms for photo shooting were great. June tour was the perfect occasion to present Pešter with the most beautiful vegetation. However, during this expedition it was rainy and cloudy for several days, so any shooting was impossible.

Walking through some fields and documenting some settlements (for example: Donja i Gornja Vapa) was very risky because of the old cluster mines. Given in mind that Pešter territory is vast (from Ibar motorway to Bar railway) and that municipality of Sjenica covers 101 places, budget was much smaller than it was necessary. All team members have invested the maximum of their willingness to visit as much as possible of above mentioned territory and to represent it in best possible way.

What worked, what didn’t?

These photos represent valuable collection in terms of comprehensiveness of the motives and uncovered parts of Pešter, which didn’t existed before this project.

Number of photos is smaller than we planned. The reason for this were bad weather conditions during the summer tour.

GLAM edit

Open Wiki GLAM of Serbia, known as Wiki GLAM, addresses GLAM institutions with the objectives being two-way cooperation, facilitating the release of photos, texts and data under free licenses, and attempts to establish cooperation with institutions we haven’t previously worked with. The project supports GLAM and other institutions that want to collaborate with Wikipedia and its sister projects in creation of an open and free content.

From May 2015, Wikimedia Serbia hired part-time Communications manager , which, in addition to communication, deals and establishing cooperation with cultural institutions that are willing to open their archives and funds, making them accessible worldwide.

Goals

The main objectives of the project is engagement of Wikipedian in Residence in at least one GLAM institution, as well as the realization of two-way cooperation with institutions of culture in order to release photos and other content. The emphasis is placed on finding reliable partners, sustainable cooperation and education of the public by increasing the number of partners. One of the important objectives of the engagement Wikipedian in Residence in one of GLAM institutions.

Wikipedian in residence edit

First workshop at Botanical Garden Jevremovac

Wikipedian internship is one of the WMRS GLAM projects. Wikipedian in residence is being chosen from experienced Wikipedians/Wikimedians and his/her role is to be the connection between GLAM institutions (galleries, libraries, archives, museums and other public institutions) and Wikimedia chapters. This Wikipedian has the opportunity to encourage institution to cooperate with Wikimedia Serbia and to provide them education regarding editing Wikipedia, free licences and so on. Types of cooperation are different and they have been mostly adjusted to institution.

First Wikipedian in residence was at University Library “Svetozar Marković”. In 2015 Wikipedian in residence have done its internship at Botanical Garden Jevremovac (BGJ) during the November and December. Botanical Garden Jevremovac is a cultural and natural monument and along with the Institute for Botany, it represent teaching unit of Faculty of Biology.

Objectives:

  • enrich the content on Wikimedia Commons with photos of plants from Botanical Garden
  • creating free content on Serbian Wikipedia
  • public education through workshops for students
Planned Realized
6000 photos (3 photos of each species)
  • between 1000 and 2000 plant species in Greenhouse
  • 300 trees
  • around 400 herbaceous species
1098
usage 20% 61
20 articles on Wikipedia 20 (list of articles can be seen on Wikipedia project page)
2 workshops 3

Activities

Representatives of Wikimedia Serbia talked with several institutions regarding Wikipedian in Residence: Museum of Yugoslav History, Historical Museum of Belgrade and Historical Archieve of Pančevo. Some of the institutions were not able to carry out this project due to the lack of resources (human resources and equipment), above all people who would be mentors to the Wikipedians and give them access to the materials for digitalization.

Botanical Garden Jevremovac was ready to get involved, so student of Faculty of Biology, Marija Gajić was hired to be Wikipedian in Residence. Her work was to photograph different species of plants, upload them to Wikimedia Commons and use them in Wikipedia articles. 1098 photos were uploaded and three Wikipedia workshops were organized. During these workshops, students created 13 and improved 7 articles on Wikipedia. This is the first time in Botanical Garden to create list of all plants in BGJ.

Results:

Gallery

Cooperation with GLAM institutions edit

Within GLAM activities initial contacts with the institutions of the culture were established in order to acheive long-term cooperation: theaters, galleries, museums, archives and libraries. Over the year, 14 theaters, 40 galleries, two archive, a museum and a library have been contacted. The concept of free content, presenting cultural heritage on the Internet and the advantages of cooperation with Wikimedia Serbia, was presented to representatives of these institutions over a dozen of meetings.

Institutions showed partial interest for cooperation. In majority of the cases, they are very interested to promote their work on Wikipedia, but having volunteers of Wikimedia Serbia writing articles on given subjects. When it comes to released content, theaters expressed the greatest interest to release photos and place on Wikimedia Commons. Over the January, negotiations with theaters were finalized.

Common problem with all of these institutions was shortage of human resources (persons to be involved with preparation of material and collection of meta-data needed for the permission).

One of the institutions with which the cooperation has been established is Belgrade City Library. In this institution one edit-a-thon was organized, where six new articles were written and seven articles improved. The City Library in Belgrade joined the project, "Wiki Takes Galleries" and their member currently photographs valuable paintings owned by the Library, which will be placed on the Commons.

Edit-a-thons edit

Edit-a-thon at Oto Bihalji Showroom

Edit-a-thons are events which have two different target groups. Firstly, there are representatives of GLAM institutions, where this event might be just the first step in long-term cooperation, secondly the participants. Depending on the chosen subject and institution where edit-a-thon will take place, participants might be (high-school/university) students and/or employees of the institution. This year we’ve started to organize combined events. For instance, we’ve connected photo tours with edit-a-tons with the same subject and participants would upload files and use them in the articles. Thus. we’d have more quality articles and more satisfied participants, who had a chance to find out more about Wikimedia Commons, which they can use in future. Workshops and lectures on edit-a-thons always passed in a pleasant working atmosphere. At the end of each edit-a-thon, participants would fill in the evaluation form. From their statements, we can conclude that they are interested in future participation in a similar activity.

Some of the participants already took part in other projects of WMRS, such as WLE and WikiLive 2015. Museum of Metallurgy and Mining in Bor offered us gallery space for one of WLE exibitions. Interesting event in this museum was named “Behind the scene”. We’ve had a chance to make a short photo tour through museum depots, and catch a glance on where artistic, archaeological and ethnological collection of the museum is being kept (not opened for public). The event was covered by media (news 1, news 2).

Beside contributing to the quality of content on Wikipedia, edit-a-thons are valuable to attract new partners and volunteers.

All edit-a-thons were announced on the blog (Museum of Metallurgy and Mining Bor, Oto Bihali- Merin Showroom, Institute for nature conservation of Serbia), sent to mailing lists, displayed on our Facebook page (Museum of Metallurgy and Mining Bor, Oto Bihali- Merin Showroom, Institute for nature conservation of Serbia), and Wikipedia Village Pump. Likewise, new Wikipedia pages were created with program, topics and participants for each event (Museum of Metallurgy and Mining Bor, Oto Bihali- Merin Showroom, Institute for nature conservation of Serbia).

Edit-a-thon in Museum of mining and metallurgy Bor

Though we strive to act proactively and explore new institutions interested in cooperation, we’ve noticed that much better outcome occurs once the institution contacts us with some suggestions for mutual project/activity.

Main challenges were:

  • getting to know CC licences and explaining terms of usage
  • getting consent for releasing files under CC licence also sometimes took a lot of time
  • mostly there are many new editors participating and it could happen that additional edits must be made on articles, so that they don’t get deleted
  • on some occasions, internet couldn’t support large number of editors and file upload could be a great challenge. Then it’s really hard to keep participants motivated to upload files from home.

QRpedia QR codes edit

General Staff, Historical Department

For QR codes placement, global metrics are not the best for presentation of the project so we will evaluate these activities through other criteria. The first placement was in February of this year. Every month, the Institute for Nature Conservation of Serbia organised a photo-contest on the subject of Serbian Nature during the last year. They declared winners at the end of each month and for 2015 traveling exhibition are planned through Serbia. For the purpose of these exhibitions, WMRS volunteers and employees have created 32 new articles and 80 QR codes are placed on the photographs. 6 volunteers participated in creating of this articles. How did it all look, it can be seen on the website of the Institute for Nature Conservation of Serbia.

Second placement was the product of continuous cooperation with organisation 3225 from Ivanjica who organised the Museum Night in this town. This year, the theme of the Museum Night was famous personalities from Ivanjica. Two volunteers worked on the creation of 11 articles. 20 QR codes are set on the exhibition.

Released content edit

The table below is an outline of the institutions, number of released photographs as well as their usage on Wiki projects. National Library of Serbia helped in communication with listed libraries and so once again helped the projects of Wikimedia Serbia. With the representatives of the Museum of Naive and Marginal Art from Jagodina we got in contact when organizing edit-a-thon in Salon Oto Bihalji-Merin.

Institution Number of photos Link to category on Wikimedia Commons Usage on Wiki projects
Library in Kruševac 4 Category:Library Kruševac Usage on Wiki projects
Library Srboljub Matić- Malo Crniće 5 Category:Library Srboljub Mitić - Malo Crniće Usage on Wiki projects
Public Library in Jagodina 4 Category:National Library in Jagodina Usage on Wiki projects
Library Dušan Matić. Ćuprija 5 Category:Public Library Dušan Matić, Ćuprija Usage on Wiki projects
Public Library of Serbia 145 Category:National Library of Serbia /
Museum of Naive and Marginal Art in Jagodina 75 Category:Edit-a-thon in Museum of Naive and Marginal Art, Serbia Usage on Wiki projects

Gallery

Digital Belgrade edit

Objectives

Digital Belgrade is a continuation of the project from previous years. The main goal is marking the Belgrade Cultural Monuments with QRpedia’s QR codes. This is the project in which Wikimedia Serbia was included as a support for the Faculty of Organisational Sciences and the Belgrade City Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments. Through codes setting, traffic on Wikipedia is increased as well as Wikimedia Serbia visibility. Also, important partners are obtained.

Activities

During the year there were several joint meetings and dynamics of work and tasks of the participants were agreed. Training for the Faculty of Organisational Sciences’ students who would work entries was held. Faculty of Organisational Sciences (FOS), Belgrade City Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments and Wikimedia Serbia signed an agreement on technical cooperation. The contract defines the obligations of each party: Belgrade City Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments provides text material with references; Students of the Faculty of Organizational Sciences undergo training organized by Wikimedia Serbia and put articles on Wikipedia; Wikimedia Serbia organizes training and provides support FOS students and employees of the Institute.

At the end of the year, training was held for the Institute’s employees so that they can be involved in the project. The city of Belgrade has supported the project by providing funds for translating texts on cultural monuments and for making boards with information and codes. Students, during the year, worked on setting up the articles in Serbian, as well as in various other languages (German, Spanish, French, Russian, etc.)

Besides all the delays and obstacles, 20 cultural monuments were selected on which are written articles on Wikipedia in multiple languages. The promotion of the event was planned for December of 2015, but it was delayed for the beginning of 2016 because of greater response. At the time of writing this report, boards are set with the logos of partners involved in the project. This was significant step for Wikimedia Serbia bearing in mind the relevant partners and their recognition of the importance of this project. The famous places in Belgrade where there are table with QR codes will allow for many people to see and visit some of the Wikipedia’s page.

What worked and what did not?

Besides all the delays and obstacles, the project is nearing completion and the boards have been successfully installed.

Within this project several times came to stoppage and obstacles. These challenges have also been present in previous years. With talks and education these problems have been successfully solved. Some of them were problem with open access and possibility that anyone can edit articles on Wikipedia, the prolongation of the submission of the translation of texts about monuments, unencyclopedian texts that were quickly been deleted from Wikipedia.

Wiki-librarian edit

The objectives of the project are information and training for librarians, as well as introduce participants to the basic projects of Wikimedia Serbia and the idea of free knowledge. Librarians in the project Viki-librarian preparing for participation in events organized by Wikimedia Serbia, regulate and set new articles and photos on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, educate about copyright and the licenses Creative Commons. This will lead to attracting and networking libraries and other cultural institutions to the Wikimedia projects to increase the quality and quantity of articles on Wikipedia.

Planned Realized
Cooperation with at least 5 towns in Serbia and at least 10 institutions Cooperation with 11 cities in Serbia and 38 institutions (17 academic libraries, 9 public libraries, Faculty of Geography, University of Belgrade, 9 cultural institutions, one archive (Archives of Serbia) and Тhe Scout Association
The organization 5-8 three-hour lectures at the University library "Svetozar Marković" and other cultural and educational institutions in Serbia, about Wikimedia Serbia, Wikipedia, the Serbian Commons and Wikipedia, as well as on editing articles on Wikipedia There were 9 lectures planned for librarians in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Banja Vrujci and Užice.
The organization 5-8 six-hour workshops in electronic classrooms (up to 12 participants per workshop) in the University library and other institutions outside Belgrade that possess the technical equipment and Internet access. There were 6 six-hour workshops.
Organisation 2-4 edit-a-thons to help interested colleagues to set up content on Wikipedia. There were 3 edit-a-thons: edit-a-thon "Open Science", edit-a-thon "Jovan Cvijić: 150 years since the birth," Article : "Librarians together on Wikipedia." At the first edit-a-thon was written (and amended) 10 articles, the second edit-a-thon was created and amended 18 articles, and the third edit-a-thon 50 articles. The increased number of written articles shows that librarians have learned to work and want to contribute to the quality of Serbian Wikipedia. The first two edit-a-thons had significant issues and also had great media coverage because of cooperation the University Library "Svetozar Marković" with National broadcast.

Activities

Workshop in Užice
Wiki-librarian in Banja Vrujci

The number of bytes at the end of the project in 2015 shows that created or amended articles were extremely detailed. Librarians have access to many sources of information (classical own library catalogs, e-catalogs, e-information resources in open access, commercial e-resources) so many articles contain a greater number of references, bibliographies, references and external links. Organize additional workshops is extremely encouraging impact on librarians to learn how to set the reference, literature and links to quality content related to topics in the articles.

There were 7 additional workshops for colleagues who have already undergone basic training for editing articles on Wikipedia. Additional training was attended by librarians from Uzice and Novi Sad as well as from other libraries in Belgrade. The National Library Uzice released exceptional photos from there fund, which gave a special contribution to the quality of the articles on Wikipedia.

Publication Forensic Medicine for Lawyers is digitized and placed on the Wikimedia Commons. The work was printed as a manuscript in the lithography technique.

Dissemination of the project

Implementers were extremely active in disseminating the project.

  • In April, the project was presented at the seminar Matching needs and opportunities in contemporary librarianship, Trebinje, 16-17. April 2015. The seminar was organized by the Library Association of the Republic of Serbian. More about the conference topics can be viewed at the following link Professional meeting, Trebinje. Presentation of the work of Aleksandra Popović, Oja Krinulović and Đorđe Stakić: IMPORTANCE OF LIBRARY AND EDUCATION IN SPREADING Wikipedia more than 100 participants from the Republic of Serbian librarians and the Republic of Serbia.
  • The work by Oja Krinulović, Stijepović Mile Đorđe Stakić: Library contribution "Serbian Wikipedia" was published in the newspaper “The voice od libraries”, Year 2015, No. 21, p 21-28, published by Public library "Vladislav Petković Dis" Cacak.
  • On September 25th and September 26th Aleksandra Popović and Milica Ševkušić attended the international science conference Digital Humanities in Belgrade, organized by University of Belgrade Faculty of Philology. Aleksandra Popović, Milica Ševkušić and Đorđe Stakić exhibitet work on the theme Libraries an Wikipedia along on the web: free knowledge for everyone. The printed book is a summary of the abstracts and full paper will be printed in 2016 for the next conference in September 2016.
  • On December 10th and December 11th Aleksandra Popović, Oja Krinlović and Đorđe Stakić participated in the work of Science opens its doors to Wikipedia: the relevant information on hand conference Service for the customers of the 21th century: use of ICT in libraries, held in the City Library. The conference program with presentations and the complete text can be viewed at this link. The plan is to publish electronic compendium during 2016.

During the project, members of the team themselves learned to contribute Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. It took more time to master the work on the creation of new articles, supplementing the existing set images to Wikimedia Commons under the appropriate CC licence. There was a lot of misunderstanding about the photos on Wikipedia due to inexperience of the team that implemented the project. It turned out that additional workshops are necessary to encourage colleagues to upload new content to Wikipedia. Only the additional workshop participants learned how to add info box, the difference between the reference and literature, adding images into text and pattern. Main problem was adding images to the Wikimedia Commons. It is necessary to create short tutorials for each segment editing wiki text. During the project lectures were changed and adjusted, the exercises in the sand box also, and there were more time left to edit the text on Wikipedia.

The result is accredited seminar Wiki-librarian at the National Library of Serbia for the year 2016. Librarians interest for the project in 2016 is high, although the results of accredited seminar at the National Library of Serbia is just published.

Competitions on Wikipedia edit

Competition on Wikipedia - biography
Competition on Wikipedia - geography
Written and improved articles per competition in 2015

Objectives

Competitions on Wikipedia are a good way to motivate the community, whether it comes to experienced Wikipedians or new volunteers. The number of participants depends on topics and interesting prizes, which are not easy things to choose. The annual plan projected goals were: minimum 300 articles created, minimum 150 improved article, at least 15 involved members of the community. In 2015, three competitions have been organised with 565 created and improved articles and over 50 members of the community.

Activities

Competition CEE Spring didn’t awake interest among the community (although it was announced via blog, mailing list, Village Pump and social networks) and resulted in a slightly smaller number of articles than expected (79). The list of articles and participants can be seen on this page. We also made the project page on Wikipedia and on Meta. Although the CEE spring 2015 had weaker results than expected, Wikimedia Serbia was satisfied with the cooperation between countries of the Central and Eastern Europe that had the common goal of strengthening relations between the countries in the region. WMRS representatives attended the Skype meeting and several preparatory meetings were held before we started the implementation of the project. Members of the jury were selected. Some of them were not included in WMRS projects but were experienced Wikipedians. The jury was very willing to cooperate and they were very effective. They are also willing to participate in future WMRS projects. The winner of the competition was one of the WikiLive participants, who continued to actively edit Wikipedia after the conference. We believe that Wiki camp in Macedonia is an interesting way to retain active editors and members of the community and to make them learn about other chapters and engage in WMRS projects. After the end of the completion a blog post with announced winners was published.

Results can be seen on following links: results in Serbia, global results.

Competition in writing biographies lasted from 9th September to 9th October 2015. Before competition, preparatory activities were done:

  • a page on Wikipedia was made
  • a list of suggestions for writing new and improving existing pages was created
  • members of the jury were chosen from the ranks of experienced Wikipedians
  • appropriate awards were selected
  • blog post was published and shared with community on Village Pump, mailing list and social networks (Facebook event has also been made)

The metrics are showing that there were much more new articles on this competition than improved. From the total of 291 articles, 247 didn’t even existed until that moment. The competition had good response and resulted with better performance than CEE spring. Reason for that lays in choosing of concrete and specific subjects.

Competition in honor of Jovan Cvijić started symbolically on 11 October, on the day of birth of Jovan Cvijić and lasted for a month. Before competition, preparatory activities were done:

  • a page on Wikipedia was made
  • a list of suggestions for writing new and improving existing pages is created
  • members of the jury were chosen from the ranks of experienced Wikipedians and from the Faculty of Geography
  • appropriate awards were selected
  • blog post was published and shared with community on Village Pump, mailing list and social networks (Facebook event has also been made)

Jovan Cvijić was a Serbian scientist, founder of Serbian Geographical Society, president of Serbian Royal Academy (Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts now), professor and rector of the University of Belgrade, honorary doctor of the Paris-Sorbonne University and Charles University in Prague. Competition was held in cooperation with the Faculty of Geography in Belgrade and University Library “Svetozar Marković” in the memorial of 150 years from the birth of Jovan Cvijić. Assistants from the Faculty of Geography participated in jurying the articles.

For the first time, a new scoring method (which we took from the Wikimedians from Ukraine) was introduced. Members of the jury were evaluating each article individually by points from 0 to 2 and then multiply with the number of bytes of new or improved article.

Challenges:

What happened was that the community are not friendly when the competition is in question. We believe that this barrier can be overcome through their involvement in the competition and some other activities.

The response itself was good as well as the results of the competition.

The jurying process was changed. In previous competitions, articles were evaluated by a score from 1 to 10. The community often protested this scoring method because it can lead to a bigger number of small articles and unfair victory of participant who works on quantity rather than quality. The new system is introduced where articles are evaluated by points from 0 to 2 and then multiplied with the number of added bytes. Benefits of this method are articles with more quality and measuring of bytes. Members of the jury were not thrilled with this kind of evaluation. It is hard to evaluate when the range is so small.

Challenges started in the process of planning and beginning of realisation of the second competition. Because of delaying communication with the Museum of African Art and giving up of this cooperation, the competition moved for 9th September. This involved small time span between two competitions which affected on the promotion of the second competition.

Wiktionary edit

Objectives

Wiktionary is a project with the goal of expanding the number and quality of the vocabulary of various languages on Serbian Wiktionary. Also, it is being worked on expanding the network of students and other volunteers who have good will to work and develop online free dictionaries.

First project, 1001 Arabic Words, started in 2013. In 2014, students from the following departments of the Faculty of Philology joined: Norwegian, Sweden, Chinese, Ukrainian and Slovakian language. All projects have goal of vocabulary enriching, education and attracting of new volunteers.

Activities

First semester

In the first half of the year, according to the annual plan, the goal of 1000 new articles on Serbian Wiktionary has been reached. In agreement with the mentors and students, Wikimedia Serbia volunteers (team members of 1001 Arabic Words) held an introductory lecture at the university, as well as editing Wiktionary training at Wikimedia Serbia office, and other workshops. At university, workshops were held during regular lectures. When necessary, workshops have been held for all further questions, to which students are given feedback, suggestions and comments by the experienced Wiktionary editors. At any time, students had a contact person available for their concerns and questions. "1001 Arabic Words" team workshops were held at Wikimedia Serbia office, as planned.

Second semester

Activities on Wiktionary project, like on any project in touch with educational institutions, were reduces during the summer period. This period is not suitable for communication with students, professors and assistants.

The assistants have been contacted in September on a matter of continuing activities in this and next year. The assistants from the Slovakian, Ukrainian and Chinese department have responded. For the purpose of better understanding of the work on Wiktionary and better upload quality, many workshops have been held with students in Wikimedia Serbia office. Following workshops helped students to overcome editing on Wiktionary on easy way and to contribute to the project. Activities continued in 2016. Trello application has been used for communication so the students could have fast feedback regarding the article on which they do.

What worked and what did not?

We recognized that the situation with new vocabulary was slightly better in terms of effectiveness mainly due to the implementation of Wiktionary project in the course, giving the students an opportunity to collect extra points for the exam. The motivation of the participants on Wiktionary whose activities couldn’t bring extra credits was slightly lower, but they have shown the initiative to extend the project in order to reach the same level as the other dictionaries.

Regional cooperation edit

Workshops in Višegrad edit

Wikipedia workshop in Visegrad

These activities began during 2014 when several meetings (offline or online) of WMRS representatives and interested volunteers from Republic of Srpska were held. The original idea was to provide support to the volunteers from Republic of Srpska in order to launch new projects and form a community that will participate in these activities and eventually establish a user group/chapter. Lecture and workshop were held in Višegrad in January this year and the results are shown in the table with global metrics. The workshop was used not just to promote WMRS projects, but also to conduct the training in the purpose of editing Wikipedia and organizing the photo tour. On this occasion we held a meeting with the leaders of the project Spreading Wikimedia ideas in Republic of Srpska and introduced them with volunteers from Višegrad. These activities were fruitful and volunteers in Republic of Srpska stayed motivated and organized another workshop and submitted the project Trace of a soul for a grant but in these activities WMRS representatives didn’t participate. Also, additional workshops have been organised with participation of local Wikipedians.

Spreading the idea of Wikimedia in Republic of Srpska edit

Objectives

The main goal of the project was to get the students and professors in Republic of Srpska acquainted with the free licenses and Wikimedia projects, as well as the idea of an equal approach to knowledge. It is planned to conduct workshops/lectures in 4 regional centers in Republic of Srpska with a goal to increase visibility of the organization. Besides, the goal was to “feel the pulse” of the young people in the four main centers in Republic of Srpska in order to eventually set a network of activists who would one day make the core of an individual branch of Wikimedia Republic of Srpska.

The criteria which has been used to evaluate the success of goal realization were the number of interested people, the level of activity during the workshops, as well as the communication after the completion of a workshop.

Activities

When it comes to the results, it can be pointed out that the “pulse” of interest was on a pretty high level. The number of attendants varied between 10 and 20, which is fairly satisfactory turnout. Besides, there is a need to point out that the promo material was sent out during the third workshop due to technical difficulties, which probably affected the level of interest. Also, there was always a group of attendants during the workshops that was more interested than the others. The records can be seen at the Wiki page.

In the period April - June 2015, four workshops has been organised in the main centers of the Republic of Srpska in the following order:

  • East Sarajevo
  • Banja Luka
  • Trebinje
  • Bijeljina

Workshops consisted of two parts. In the first part, current projects of Wikimedia Serbia has been presented, within which the work of this organization in Republic of Srpska is promoted. The second part of the workshop was devoted to practical work. Specifically, students were shown how to edit articles on Wikipedia and upload photos on Wikimedia Commons.

Wikipedian Saša Stanivuk (participant in WikiLive conference) joined the lecture in Banja Luka and shared his experiences on editing articles on Wikipedia. This is actually an indication that workshops made sense, considering that the participants had the opportunity to meet Wikipedians during the workshops and create a stronger network that could be useful in the future.

As far as the participation on the project of Spreading Wikimedia ideas in Republic of Srpska is concerned, activities were more than successful. The project involved the higher education institutions in the four main centers in Republic of Srpska, which certainly represents a significant step in increasing the visibility and adoption of new projects of Wikimedia Serbia.

Higher education institutions certainly represent very desirable partners in projects that include the promotion of free knowledge, which is really the essence of activities of Wikimedia Serbia - that knowledge is free and accessible to us all. In addition, we believe that the promotion made sense in terms of creating a network of new Wikimedians who could organize similar projects independently in the future.

What worked and what did not?

Basically everything was functioning as it was planned. Still, the biggest problems were the faculties which didn’t have sufficient computer equipment. In these situations, all participants weren’t able to edit articles independently. They worked in groups using two-three private laptop.

Wiki Camp edit

Objectives

The first Wiki camp has been held in 2014 in cooperation with Wikimedia Hungary. That is a good incentive for the community because online and offline activities are integrated. During Wiki camp, the members of the community meet with members of the other chapters, their projects, and they all together contribute to the Wiki projects (Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons). On that way, community become stronger and participants continue to edit Wikipedia of participate in other Wikimedia projects.

Objectives of Wiki camp this year were:

  • establishing cooperation between Wikimedia Serbia and user group of Wikimedians from Bulgaria
  • planning of mutual activities in the future and motivating the community
  • enrichment of Wiki projects with free content
Planned Realized
15-20 members from Serbia and Bulgaria (all-together) 15
2 edit-a-thons 2
2 expeditions 2
at least 30 articles (new and edited together) 25
minimum of 200 photographs (set on Commons, categorized and used in Wikipedia articles) 843

Activities

Participants of Wiki Expedition Dimitrovgrad - Dragoman 2015
Participants of Wiki Expedition Dimitrovgrad - Dragoman 2015
Participants of Wiki Expedition Dimitrovgrad - Dragoman 2015

Preparatory activities:

Idea for Wiki expedition of Wikimedians from Serbia and Bulgaria is mentioned for the first time on Wikimania in Mexico City. Back then, it was just a idea of two enthusiasts, but very quickly it was carried into effect. First steps were making of plan, program and budget. It was decided to be held on Dimitrovgrad (Serbia) - Dragoman (Bulgaria) route, because this area was not covered with photographs. For camp organisation it was very important to reserve accommodation, make plan, plan food and drinks for participants. The main idea of the program was to focus on GLAM for the camp part in Serbia and photo content for the camp part in Bulgaria. Organizers from Serbia contacted GLAM institutions in Dimitrovgrad like National library in Dimitrovgrad (who has museum collection) and City gallery so we could have guides and be sure that institutions will work in that period. Organizers from Bulgaria contacted people from Wetlands Conservation Centre “Dragoman Marsh”.

After planning, a page for the event is created on meta and Wikipedia. Articles for improving/writing were suggested. Wikimedia Serbia published a call for participants of Wiki expedition. A call was sent on mailing list, WMRS website, social network, Village Pump. Facebook event has been made. Also, application form was sent with the call. WMRS got 10 applications. The camp was attended by nine participants from Serbia who were provided with promo material and T-shirts.

Activities on the event:

  • Day 1 - Participants of Wiki expedition gathered in Pirot where they have visited Pirot fortress. After, they went to Dimitrovgrad where they have visited National library “Detko Petkov” and museum collection, City gallery and church of the Holly Virgin. Editorial marathon came after photo tour but because of the bac internet connection there were no conditions for editing and uploading picture on Commons. Despite this, articles were edited later that evening. Photographs can be found on this link.
  • Day 2 was dedicated for the visit of Dragoman and city tour (Municipal building, church, shcool), visit of the Dragoman Marsh Wetlands Conservation Centre and climbing on the Chepan mountain. Upon return to the Dimitrovgrad, pictures were uploaded and articles were edited. All articles can be found on this link, and photographs in this category on Commons.
  • Day 3 lasted much less because of the return. Participants visited Poganovo monastery, Erma gorge, and some of the participants also visited Sukovo monastery. Photographs can be found on this link. At the end of the expedition, participants did the wrap-up session, where they have put their impressions and ideas for improving. Wiki expedition Dimitrovgrad - Dragoman was finished with sharing of certificates to the participants.

Post-event activities: After the event, an evaluation form has been sent to the participants and blog post is published on Wikimedia Serbia blog.

What worked and what did not?

The group was very well motivated to take photos, edit articles, change experiences. The tour was interesting and participants got opportunity to learn something new, visit institutions, exhibitions and monasteries. After the expedition, participants filled evaluations by which it can be seen that satisfaction is on high level, but that there is also a space for improvement of program and activities.

Internet was the biggest problem. In hotel, it was not possible to maintain the classic Wiki marathon, but that didn’t prevent participants to write new articles and set photos after their return.

The program of the camp has been changed many times but reasons were justified. It is intended that the camp should be organised like last year: one day in Serbia, next two days in Bulgaria. The first problem was cancellation of accommodation from hotel in Bulgaria (their regular guests extended hotel stay). In that moment it was decided that the program should not be changed, just a place for sleep. New plan meant two nights in Dimitrovgrad, with two arrivals in Dragoman. Because of the long delays at the border, it was decided that the following day should be used for the visit of Erma gorge and Poganovo monastery instead of Dragoman. It was also concluded that it is better option to organise a camp in bigger cities where there are a lot of possibilities for a quick find of some other accommodation in case of cancellation.

Gallery

Community support edit

Motivating the community edit

10th birthday of Wikimedia Serbia
10th birthday of Wikimedia Serbia
10th birthday of Wikimedia Serbia

Objectives

Motivating the community is not a standard project. It consists of a set of activities aimed to strengthen the communication within the wider Wikipedian community, on other Wikimedia projects, but also in the wider Wikimedia movement. One of the goals is to inform the public about developments in the Wikimedia movement through writing and translating blog posts and publishing them on social networks. Participation in local and international conferences belongs to these activities. The funds are used to cover travel costs (or similar ones) of community members who are not from Belgrade but want to participate in events (conferences, edit-a-thon, photo tours, workshops, etc.). It is planned to write 50 blog posts, several dozen new articles on sites as well as 200 posts on social networks. We plan to involve at least 10 new volunteers. Through workshops and lectures we will promote the work of Wikimedia Serbia and existing projects. The community will be informed of the activities via blog posts, websites, mailing list and social networks so everyone could join and participate in current projects.

Activities

1) Volunteer service Earlier this year, we achieved the cooperation with Volunteer Service of Serbia. On the official website of the Young Researchers of Serbia (Volunteer Service is one sector of it) they have published the open call for volunteers. We received over 50 applications for the first 6 months and some of the applicants came to regular meetings (Wiki-Thursdays). Volunteers were engaged in education programs, organization of the local conference and in other activities (edit-a-thons, workshops).

In the first half of the year, we put a lot of effort into localization of the brochures and printing the promotional materials. Brochures were first translated, passed through several checks that were followed by creating a design and sending them to the printing office. All brochures are placed in this category. This was useful in case of workshops where we didn’t have printed materials. The brochures were put on Wiki pages related to education program or sent via e-mail if needed. Beside brochures we’ve also procured bags, badges, notebooks, planners, pens and such. Materials were sent to project leaders so they can use them during the promotion of WMRS and project activities.

In September, the Offpedia Month is organised. It included three thematic meetings. Blog post is published, the page on Wikipedia is created as well as Facebook event. The news about the event is shared on the mailing list, site and Village Pump. In addition, the most active Wikipedians have been personally invited to the event. The topics were: How to Wikipedia become а pleasant place to stay?, Education extension and The projects of Wikimedia Serbia. Gatherings were held in the Wikimedia Serbia office but the response was not satisfying despite the fact that the members had been invited personally or via talk page.

Planned Realized
50 blog posts 51
200 posts on social networks 205 posts on Wikimedia Serbia profile (1334 likes), 261 on Serbian Wikipedia profile (1178 likes), 18 events
10 active volunteers 15 volunteers was active on different projects of Wikimedia Serbia

2) Other results:

  • 7 organised events - community meetings (meet-up 1, meet-up 2, meet-up before WikiLive conference, meet-up 4, 3 meetings during the Offpedia month). We created Facebook events (1, 2, 3, 4) and blog posts (1, 3, 5), announced it on WMRS site, Village Pump, mailing list. We have also put these announcements within events on out website.
  • Wikimedia Serbia is contacted by the Open Education Working Group from Macedonia. They started a series of posts about free educational resources in different countries. Ivana Madžarević and Ranka Stanković (with whom a cooperation is earlier established within the educational project on the Faculty of Mining and Geology) wrote a blog about educational resources and projects of Wikimedia Serbia. Blog post is available on this page.

3) 10 years of Wikimedia Serbia celebration In 2015, Wikimedia Serbia celebrated its 10 years of existence in Startit Center. Startit is one of the partners who gladly accepted cooperation with us and gave its space for anniversary celebration. Because of the nature of their work, they are willing for further cooperation and organizing different activities with Wikimedia Serbia. Preparation for celebration included activities like:

  • Providing space for celebration in cooperation with Startit Center.
  • Promoting of event in media (blog, FB event, public announcement, FB campaign).
  • Promo video is made in cooperation with Edu TV which consists of interviews with the founders and longtime Wikipedians. The same is premiered on event. Edu TV is also one of the partners who helped with recording and editing of the video.
  • Wikipedian from Kikinda made promo video with the pupils from Elementary school who gave interesting answers about Wikipedia.
  • A decade of Wikimedia Serbia booklet has been made and published. It is also available on Commons. A long-term results of the work of Wikimedia Serbia, what have been done and what are the future goals have been represented in the booklet.
  • 3D barnstars have been made and given with a letters of thanks to the most active Wikipedians
  • A letters of thanks have been given to the partners.
  • A message from Jimmy Wales (in which he congratulate a birthday to the Wikimedia Serbia) is broadcasted on the celebration.

The event was very well visited. Among the present were Wikipedians, Wikimedians, GLAM and Edu partners. On the subject of the beginning and development of the Association, at the press conference spoke president of Wikimedia Serbia Filip Maljković, as well as founders, board members and Academic Board members - Miloš Rančić, Đorđe Stakić, Goran Obradović and Jelena Prodanović. All pictures can be seen in this category.

4) Wikipedian of the year Wikimedia Serbia participated in the voting for Wikipedian of the year. In cooperation with the National Library of Serbia and Belgrade City Library, a annual membership cards for this two institutions was given to the winner.

5) Participating in events Wikimedia Serbia had representatives on international conferences and meetings - GLAM Coordinators meeting, Wikimedia Conference 2015, Wikimania 2015, CEE Meeting. Representatives wrote reports about conference program, themes, other chapters and their projects after every conference. The same are represented to the community through the mailing list. Conferences has been used for showing the work of Wikimedia Serbia, promoting projects and other activities.

WikiLive 2015 edit

WikiLive - Day 1
WikiLive - Day 1
WikiLive - Nikola Smolenski
WikiLive - Group photo

Objectives

“Local Wikimania” or WikiLive 2015 was conceived as a gathering of Wikipedians and their mutual acquaintance. Conference was planed mostly in order to activate the community and get them familiar with Wikimedia projects, so they can take active role in their realization. Conference was organized aiming to strengthen the capacities of Wikimedia Serbia. It was planed to take place in Belgrade, as a two day event with at least 30 participants, of which 20 can have all travel and accommodation expenses covered. During those two days, Wikimedians/Wikipedians from Serbia, other chapters and partners planed to moderate at least 10 sessions (about Wikimedia projects, interesting facts on Serbian Wikipedia etc).


Activities

Organization of the conference began with gathering of the organizing team. Firstly, we published a call for volunteers in cooperation with the Voluntary Service of Serbia and volunteers were divided into several teams (program team, logistics, promo team and the team to communicate with the participants). About 10 volunteers participated in the organization. When creating the program, the program team had to get in contact with the community in order to recognize which subjects are most interesting for Wikipedians. A new Wikipedia page was created and new information about the program and events were placed in a timely manner on the WMRS website and this page. 15 topics have been covered. The lecturers were experienced Wikipedians from Serbia and we’ve had a guest speaker from Macedonia (Kiril Simeonovski). Student Cultural Center provided the support of the project by giving WMRS the conference space for free. Bearing in mind that many Wikipedians are not from Belgrade and WMRS through its activities promotes decentralization, we announced a call for applications for scholarships for participation in the conference. Out of 29 applicants, 18 received a scholarship (scholarship recipients were from Serbia, Republic of Srpska and Macedonia) which covered the cost of accommodation, travel and meals during the conference. We also set up the form for registration and had 45 registered participants. The announcement was posted on the WMRS website, blog, Village Pump, social networks and mailing lists. Facebook event was also created. Around 10 media has transferred the news of the beginning of Wiki Conference (Belgradian, RTS, UrbanBug, RTV, etc), and we had radio and TV appearances.

The conference went great. Logistically, everything went according to plan. We took this opportunity to organize community meetings before the start of WikiLive. The gathering was organized at WMRS office where we shared promo material that has been created specially for the conference (hand bags, notebooks, promotional materials and brochures). Some of the participants had already edited Wikipedia while some were interested in the projects but were not yet editors. Therefore, the program was modified so that it had a session dedicated to editing of Wikipedia, WMRS projects and those that concerned bots, Wikidata, free licenses etc. (the entire program is available here). Despite the fact that sessions were very live and interactive, with frequent involvement of the participants, the timetable was respected. At the end of the program, participants received certificates and completed the evaluation. Evaluation results tell us that the participants were very pleased with the conference and have the desire to participate again in such an event. They had ideas for projects in their hometowns. They suggested that the program includes more discussions, workshops that would leave space for the presentation of new ideas and questions. We concluded that the conference should certainly be organized next year as well. One of the participants expressed a desire to share his suggestions and advice on how to write good articles about medicine. He got 15 minutes for his presentation. After the conference, one of the participants joined the project in Republic of Srpska, other has won the article writing contest on Wikipedia and will participate in the Wiki Camp in Macedonia. He also expressed a desire to participate in the education project in the Youth center, which received one of the microgrants.


After the conference, a written report was distributed to the community blog, Village Pump, mailing lists and social networks. Photos from the conference can be found here, as well as presentations.

What worked and what did not? When it comes to conferences, there are still some challenges that we face. In this case, sometimes it was a lack of activity and responsiveness of new volunteers who were in the organizational team. Also, because of administration in Serbia, we had problems to refund travel costs to participants who are not from Serbia.

Creative Commons edit

Objectives

The original objective of the project was translating of Creative Commons 4.0 and Creative Commons Zero licenses into Serbian language. Through the establishment of a public process, we planned to animate volunteers for translation which will later be adopted by the Creative commons community in 2015.

Also, a constant maintenance of CC website is included under this project, which is a year-round process. The process of license translation consists of translation, translation exposure on public discussion, participation in it, and as a result, the publication of new licenses on our website and their integration into Wiki projects.

Activities

Activities under this program did not meet all the expected objectives.

  • A lecture about Creative Commons licenses was held during the WikiLive conference;
  • At the end of November, a short seminar was held in Politika magazine where the editors and journalists meet with CC standards;
  • Continuous maintenance and improvement of the legal and technical infrastructure of CC Serbia;
  • Updating of legal, educational and info data about open content, activities of CC Serbia, and international copyright reform;
  • Constant legal assistance about the use of CC content in different areas;
  • Presentation of the CC project as part of the WMRS anniversary celebration.

Microgrants edit

Microgrants are the way for the community to arouse interest but also to motivate new people with fresh ideas that may evolve later to projects for the annual plan. Through the new cycle of funding projects that support ideas of Wikimedia movement we wanted to motivate enthusiasts with similar ideas but also to establish cooperation in the future. The open call is designed as an incubator of good ideas devoted to smaller projects (upper limit is 500 EUR per project), which can evolve into long-term projects with a bigger budget.

This year a call for proposals was released in early March. We’ve got 27 proposals of which 4 were accepted. Contracts were signed with the project leaders and the projects were implemented in the period from June to December 2015. We supported several proposals throughout our regular activities.

New wave edit

Movie premiere
Movie premiere

Objectives

The project includes the increasing of the content on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons about musical genre named New wave through the contents from relevant books, websites, magazines and video material made through the realization of this project.

The ultimate objective of the project is to update the old and create the new content on this subject, as well as enabling its availability to the general population, which contributes to expanding and promotion of free knowledge.

Activities

The planned period of the realization of this project was from June to October of 2015. During this period, the project leader contacted the representatives of the New wave musical genre and published the interviews with them (Srđan Gojković Gile, Miško Plavi, Momčilo Rajin, Zoran Rajin). After publishing the interviews, The New wave in SFRY as a Social Movement movie was edited and placed on Wikimedia Commons.

In December of 2015, the movie premiere was held in Student Cultural Center which was also a place of numerous concerts of new-wave groups. The theme itself attracted a large number of audience and media representatives. The premiere was followed by a speakers panel. Leaflets with a link to the Commons and other promo materials were distributed to the audience.

Planned Realized
Minimum 1 article on Wikipedia about New wave musical genre 1
Minimum of 5 released photos /
Mounted material - minimum one video clip of 15 minutes 1 h 50 min
Unedited material - at least 30 minutes /
Minimum of 5 relevant written sources (books, websites, magazines) 2
Minimum 100 participants on special event 100

What worked and what did not?

Objectives were partially met. Free Documentary is made and placed on Wikimedia Commons. The premiere was successfully held in Student Cultural Center.

The collecting of materials and movie editing went slower. The photos were not placed. Musicians were willing to release their photos, but did not find the authors. The writing of articles probably went late because of the lack of motivation of volunteers.

Wiki biodiversity edit

Apfelbeckia insculpta

Objectives

The project is a continuation of the last year’s microgrant, whose main objectives are collecting and geo-referencing photographs of the flora and fauna of the south-east Serbia, regions with extremely high biodiversity, and uploading photos to Commons.

The primary animal groups that would be collected and photographed are small mammals and larvae of aquatic invertebrates, and of flora and fungi the most important plants and fungi in ecosystems would be mainly photographed. Additional objectives of the project are photographing a) ecosystems; b) settlements; c) relief; d) natural and cultural resources in the municipalities of Targovishte, Babušnica and Dimitrovgrad.

Planned Realized
number of photos on Commons - more than 500 559
number of photos used on other Wikimedia projects - more than 20 87
the number of new articles on other Wikipedias - greater than 10 203 (Wiki species)

Activities

There were two fieldwork at the beginning of October. The first included the Stara Planina and the Besna Kobila habitats, while the second included the parts of the Pčinja river in Serbia. The collected number of photographs and their usability have exceeded the planned objectives.

What worked and what did not?

The weather conditions were like last year at the same time unfavorable for taking photos of the nature (rainy and gloomy weather).

Kurgans of Serbia edit

Status of kurgans in Serbia
Status of kurgans in Serbia (schematic)

Objectives

The objective of the project is to start working on documenting data on neglected archaeological, cultural and historical immovable assets - kurgans, burial mounds of the ancient period that quickly deteriorate, while the national authorities don’t have the capacity to deal with their protection. Presenting the information about kurgans on Wikipedia seemed ideal. According to the official data, about 600 of them is identified on Serbian territory, but many believe that the real number of kurgans is much bigger. The following numbers are set as objective: 150-300 photographs (150 is absolute minimum) and 50 articles.

Activities

Time frame: June - December: field visit, determining the condition, collecting photo materials and uploading on Wikimedia Commons, writing articles on Wikipedia

Fieldwork started with site visits in attempt to identify real burial mounds so they can be perpetuated with quality photos. On the Wikipedia, that was accomplished through thematic page on Commons, and by starting articles with mound description on Wikipedia (Serbian language).

From planned, 50 field visits are realized, with the fact that some locations are visited multiple times. The making of templates, without which the articles will appear inconsistent, took away a plenty of time. The list of Kurgans has been made as workbase. Every kurgan got its code who looks like this: the first three letters show the mound area (example: BAČ=Bačka) and three numbers who serve as an identification. This code is attached to every photo and GPS coordinate so there will be no mixing and data losing. It has been tried with many techniques of data organizing, but Commons is chosen as the best alternative as a public space for uploading and data presenting. This way, a great source of data and pictures is created which can be used for educational purposes in every moment. The goal is to display much more materials through Wikipedia gradually. Besides all activities, it has also been worked on improving other articles and categories with the importance for the project (biography, history, locations, protection of the culture monuments and nature areas).

The metrics coverage during the current phase of the project is approximately 25% of the planned territory which has to be covered.

What worked and what did not?

In the beginning, it was very difficult to learn to write the articles in the form that is suitable to Wikipedia. The kurgans are a specific topic that did not fit into system automatically. Fast deleting of the articles was quite often which turns out as a bad for the volunteers motivation. A small bunch of users is ready for a concrete help. They will do small cosmetic changes instead. Still, some of them have sent part of the literature who have had at their disposal. That is approximately 10% of the help, while deleting the content and frustration that follows take away as much the same energy.

For future to know who we are, walk the free knowledge to the past edit

Objectives

The objective of the project “For future to know who we are, walk the free knowledge to the past” is collecting, updating and publishing the new content about forgotten cultural heritage of Jablanica district.

Activities

Workshop in Leskovac

Planned time frame:

  • June: starting open competition for participating in the project and organizing a workshop on Wikipedia and free knowledge
  • July - August: collecting information about cultural and historical monuments through visiting and photographing of the same, collecting text material with reference
  • August: photo competition, photography printing, publishing publications and final ceremony (exhibition and presentation of project success)

The first activity of the project was the call for participating in the project. After the call, a workshop about the project and Wikipedia followed (what is Wikipedia, what is the purpose, how to edit and create articles,...). 10 people participated in the workshop.

From July to August, according to the plan of the project activities, information and photographs about culture monument in Jablanica district were collected. A volunteers from this district wrote 54 articles on Serbian Wikipedia and did upload of 89 photographs on Wikimedia Commons. This is very important project for Wikimedia Serbia because decentralisation and spreading Wikimedia mission outside the Belgrade is implemented.

Activities did not stop there. After successful upload of materials, a photo competition is organized which ended with photo exhibition at the end of the same month. 30 photographs in the category mentioned before is collected. The youth club Ančiki also published publication named “A guide for the culture monuments of Jablanica district” so the photographs can be used in purpose of larger informing and education.

A team of volunteers which participated in the project is very satisfied with the results. All activities are done in the same way as they are planned. For participants who did not edit Wikipedia before it was a little bit hard to keep in touch, but that was solved with a plenty time of dedicated work. In August, youth club Ančiki submitted a project named Wiki South with the goal of continuing wiki activities in this community and further implementation of the idea of free knowledge. This project is accepted and in the beginning of 2016 the contract is signed with this organisation.

Photo exhibition in Leskovac
Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
Workshops N/A 1 / Project started in the beginning of June
Number of volunteers N/A 9 10
Number of articles N/A / 54
Number of photographs N/A / 89
Exhibition N/A / 1
Publication N/A / 1

Additional information edit

The work of the Board

Wikimedia Serbia Board held 15 official and 2 closed meeting in 2015, with a total of 18 resolutions on the subjects of finance, HR and project implementation. Board members participated in the process of selecting projects for microgrants, as well as in filling two new positions - Communication Manager and Office Manager. Also, they were present during the meetings on the occasion of the site visit of Wikimedia Foundation representatives in Serbia.

Conferences

The members of the Board actively participated on the conferences of the chapters:

  • Wikimedia conference in Berlin (representative of the Board - Filip Maljković)
  • Wikimania in Mexico City (representative of the Board - Filip Maljković)
  • CEE conference in Tartu and Voore (representative of the Board - Fililp Maljković)
  • two video conferences with Foundation have been held

Two new positions

As it is explained in the paragraph The reorganisation of jobs in Wikimedia Serbia, the board has decided to open two new part-time positions instead of the position of Executive Director. Committees for the selection of candidates for the two positions were formed from the board members. Committees did the ranking and selection of candidates. In the last round of selection, all the members of the board could participate, after which the decisions were made.

Reports and annual plan

The Board of the directors participated in the following activities:

  • Six-month report
  • Quarterly tasks and evaluation of employees
  • Annual grant 2016
  • Job classification
  • Board’s rules of procedures
  • Team building
  • Website redesign plan

The reorganization of jobs in Wikimedia Serbia

During the first six months we concluded that ours and expectations of the Executive Director split up so we decided to cease the cooperation. That left us with the opportunity to re-examine this position. After a long process of discussions inside the Wikimedia Serbia board, we made a kind of an analysis for organisational needs and concluded that the best choice is splitting this position in two part-time positions: Communication manager and Office Manager. We advertised both positions right away. We got 335 application for the former and 350 application for the latter position. After a long process of candidate selection (especially for the second position), in May we hired Ivana Guslarević as the Communication Manager and Bojan Cvetanović as the Office manager in July.

With this kind of reorganisation, most job tasks of the former Executive Director are included in these two new positions, except for HR management, which was to be done by a subset of the board.

Arrival of Wikimedia Foundation representatives

WMRS Site visit

On 4 and 5 June of 2015, Wikimedia Serbia got opportunity to host representatives of Wikimedia Foundation. During these two days, Garfield Byrd, Winfred Olliff and Katy Love met with the community of Wikimedia Serbia, employees, the board and partners with whom we cooperate. They used their time for better understanding of the projects and future plans of the chapters, as well as for changing experiences and giving advice on how we could improve our activities. Meetups on international conferences allows a brief overview of our projects, but in this way, fully understanding of local context and community is enabled. How the Wikimedia movement abounds in different cultures and languages, it was important for them to understand our way of functioning in purpose of better understanding of annual plan and approval of the same. During the visit, community meeting is organised in Wikimedia Serbia office. All pictures can be seen in this category.

Assembly

14th Assembly of Wikimedia Serbia

Two Wikimedia Serbia Assembly sessions were held during 2015.

At the thirteenth regular session in February, Wikimedia Serbia Strategy 2015-2017 is adopted which gave our organisation focus for the next period. After two expandings of previous strategy (the last was realised in September 2014), we put ourselves a deadline to create a new strategy until April 1. A lot of time was devoted for examining the attitudes of different actors and stakeholders of our movement and the board has compiled a new strategy document, which was published on 1 April and will cover the period up to the end of 2017. During the process of creating a strategy document, we conducted a little survey on women's participation in editing and reading of Serbian Wikipedia. The results of our this survey can be found on the following link. Also, the change of Financial policy was brought. The purpose of this change was defining the time period for the return of funds from the user. Last year represented a big challenge for the Association due to stuff change. To show a greater degree of seriousness and maturity, for the December’s Assembly session Wikimedia Serbia prepared the amendments to the Bylaws, the Conflict of Interest Policy and Privacy Policy. Also, three new policies have been adopted: Per Diem Policy (as part of the official Travel Policy); Disciplinary Policy and Fixed Asset Policy and Procedures. Thanks to these normative acts, Wikimedia Serbia made a big step forward in protection of their own interest, assets and persons.

Human resources

Wikimedia Serbia is investing in their human resources. In August, together with the Wiki Loves Earth exhibition, team building was held. Employees and members of the Board participated in the team building. This event served to improve communication between employees and the board, build team spirit in organisation and increase motivation. Through a variety of activities, including a visit of the Wiki loves Earth exhibition within Nišvil festival, team WMRS socialize in an informal atmosphere getting to know each other a little better. In 2015, Wikimedia Serbia suffered a huge loss. Vice President of the organisation, Branislav Jovanović, died after a serious illness. This was an emotional blow for the organization. Since the founding of Wikimedia Serbia, he was a member of the Supervisory Board, the Technical Committee for Informatics, vice president and member of the Board since 2013. In the period of 2005-2007, he was administrator of the Serbian Wikipedia. His special contribution to Wikipedia is the creation of the software that enabled transcription between the Cyrillic and Latin alphabet in the Serbian language in the Media Wiki, which was the first software of its kind implemented in a wiki. As a dedicated Wikimedian and Wikipedian, strongly and actively participated in the creation and development of the organization and spreading of ideas and the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Media activities

Media Coverage by projects
Media Coverage Chronological

Since the founding of Wikimedia Serbia the media showed a certain degree of interest in the Wikimedia projects, and reported about them mostly in a positive tone. However, cooperation with the media has most often been reactive in its nature - Wikimedia Serbia helped the reporters who showed interest in topics related to media. Given the small number of staff who dealt with all aspects of the organization and implementation of the projecst, the Bord decided to engage a communication manager at part-time position. Thus, since may proactive approach is applied to cooperation with the media, resulting in better visibility of the Wikimedia projects, and the organization itself. In 2015, Wikimedia Serbia, Wikipedia, and other projects of the Foundation were mentioned in the media a total of 262 times. Most releases were related to the project “Wiki Loves Earth” - 144 (described in more detail in the framework of the project), followed by the celebration of 10 years of Wikimedia Serbia with 43 releases. Other projects, such as edit-a-thons, workshops, activities, educational programs and the like have a combined number of 20 releases. The Wikipedian “Wiki Live” conference was reported on 16 times, the encyclopedia and (world events), 15 times. Promotion of the “New wave in SFRY as a social movement” sparked media attention 14 times, the introduction of Wikipedia Zero eight times, a celebration of 14 years of Wikipedia in English was mentioned twice. It is important to emphasize that the data was collected in an amateur way, that is the members of the organization and employees in the WMRS recorded media reports which they came upon, which means that there is a strong possibility that the publication in the media regarding the activities of WMRS more frequent.

Media Coverage the Type of media

From various publications, the following could be specially emphasized:

  • The announcement of the beginning of the photo contest “Wiki Loves Earth” in the show “Žikina Šarenica” (07:23) in the National broadcast company - RTS 1 (the audience between one milion and 1.3 million viewers)
  • A report in the same show, couple of weeks later, after the proclamation of the winner (1:40:33)
  • Live reports on television with national coverage and high viewer ratings (RTV Pink, B92)
  • Performances at the national radio station - Radio Belgrade (Morning Show - 02:24:00, Time for sport and recreation – 28th minute)
  • Appearance on the IT hosted show with the longest tradition "Polarotor" on the 10th anniversary of Wikimedia Serbia (37:21)
  • Publications in the National Geography journal, in the oldest daily newspaper “Politika”

Revenues received during this period (6 month for progress report, 12 months for impact report) edit

Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.

Table 2 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

  • Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.
Revenue source Currency Anticipated Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Anticipated ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Explanation of variances from plan
Donation from WMF Еuro 98,760.00 57,610.00 0.00 41,150.00 0.00 98,760.00 129,671.88 129,671.88
Revenues from other donations Еuro 646.24 118.67 166.91 116.87 243.79 646.24 848.51 848.51
Membership fees Еuro 39.69 19.67 0.00 0.00 20.02 39.69 52.11 52.11
Total Еuro 99,445.93 57,748.34 166.91 41,266.87 263.81 99,445.93 130,572.51 130,572.51

* Provide estimates in US Dollars


In-kind donations edit

Donator In-kind donation Value (in EUR)
Interglider Hosting and server administration service 120.00 (monthly)
LINK group Recording and video editing 500.00
National Tourist Organisation of Serbia Providing space for the Wiki Loves Earth exhibition in Belgrade ~700.00
Nišville Foundation Providing space for the Wiki Loves Earth exhibition in Niš ~700.00
Museum of Mining and Metalurgy Bor Providing space for the Wiki Loves Earth exhibition in Bor ~700.00
Student Cultural Center Providing space for the Wiki Live conference ~400.00
Student Cultural Center Providing space for the premiere of the "Novi Talas" movie ~250.00
StartIT Center Providing space for the celebration of Wikimedia Serbia's 10th birthday 250.00
The Third Belgrade Gymnasium Providing space for helding the seminars ~300.00
Milan Spasić Designing a booklet on the occasion of 10 years of Wikimedia Serbia 70.00
Petnica Science Center Production of 3D barn stars 15.00

Spending during this period (6 month for progress report, 12 months for impact report) edit

Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.

Table 3 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

(The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)
Expense Currency Budgeted Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Budgeted ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Percentage spent to date Explanation of variances from plan
Office Еuro 14,780.00 2,868.38 4,406.72 2,634.04 3,107.61 13,016.75 19,406.14 17,090.99 88,07%
Staff Euro 36,630.00 9,039.61 7,157.86 8,802.07 9,030.95 34,030.49 48,095.19 44,682.03 92,90%
Services Еuro 2,050.00 580.96 559.69 364.37 347.78 1,852.80 2,691.65 2,432.73 90,38%
Reserves and Board Еuro 5,000.00 1,559.62 632.33 657.41 954.19 3,803.55 6,565.00 4,994.06 76,07%
Participation in Events Еuro 6,300.00 1,142.58 2,513.93 1,466.57 0.00 5,123.08 8,271.90 6,726.60 81,32%
Educational Program Еuro 4,400.00 250.85 2,103.17 231.00 955.92 3,540.94 5,777.20 4,649.25 80,48%
Free Photo Content Еuro 8,670.00 2,948.34 3,055.30 1,358.77 85.05 7,447.46 11,383.71 9,778.51 85,90%
Free Content Еuro 5,130.00 1,062.42 1,516.38 220.39 984.17 3,783.36 6,735.69 4,967.55 73,75%
Wikipedia Competitions Еuro 1,300.00 460.00 55.00 90.00 604.62 1,209.62 1,706.90 1,588.23 93,05%
Wiktionary Еuro 900.00 0.00 10.00 0.00 301.74 311.74 1,181.70 409.31 34,64%
Supporting Regional Cooperation Еuro 3,400.00 0.00 1,479.00 1,165.00 332.00 2,976.00 4,464.20 3,907.49 87,53%
Community Support Еuro 3,700.00 258.80 3,254.16 101.59 0.00 3,614.55 4,858.10 4,745.90 97,69%
Diversity Еuro 2,800.00 26.82 2,064.59 0.00 0.00 2,091.41 3,676.40 2,746.02 74,69%
Creative Commons Еuro 200.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 262.60 0,00 0,00%
Microgrants Еuro 3,500.00 0.00 500.00 1,161.11 295.13 1,956.24 4,595.50 2,568.54 55,89%
TOTAL Еuro 98,760.00 20,198.38 29,308.13 18,252.32 16,999.16 84,757.99 129,671.88 111,287.24 85,82%

* Provide estimates in US Dollars

Official Financial Report edit

In this section you can also find the official financial report of Wikimedia Serbia for 2015 made by accounting service "Astra" from Sremska Mitrovica.

Translated report edit

This report is also available in Serbian language on this link.

Compliance edit

Is your organization compliant with the terms outlined in the grant agreement? edit

As required in the grant agreement, please report any deviations from your grant proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.

  • There were no large deviations form our grant proposal. We did have to spend some money on things we didn't plan or foresee, such as team building weekend and 10th birthday event of Wikimedia Serbia, but those expenses were within our mission and were approved after internal re-budgeting.

Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".

  • Yes

Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Grant funds as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".

  • Yes

Signature edit

Once complete, please sign below with the usual four tildes.

Resources edit

Resources to plan for measurement edit

Resources for storytelling edit