Grants:Simple/Applications/Shared Knowledge/2019
- Application or grant stage: in progress
- Applicant or grantee: grantee
- Amount requested: 29,068 EUR + 10% contingency fee = 31,975 EUR
- Amount granted: 16,899 EUR (includes 1,536 Euro contingency)
- Funding period:
1 January 2019 - 31 December 20191 March 2019 - 31 December 2019 - Application created: 1 November 2018
- Recommended application date: 1 November 2018
- Midpoint report due: 15 July 2019
- Final report due: 30 January 2020
Please link to or provide your annual program plan and annual budget here, and add your targets to the grants metrics worksheet.
Application edit
Annual plan edit
Budget plan edit
Staffing plan edit
Programs edit
EDUCATION
The planned educational activities for 2019 were shaped in a way to address the identified problems. First, we plan to continue with the model of collaboration implemented thus far at the Josip Broz – Tito Grammar School and Krume Kepeski Primary School in Skopje but also to expand the programme to at least two other educational institutions. Considering the size of our educational team and the other available resources, we have come to the conclusion that we can manage activities at two additional institutions while keeping the high quality of editing at the same time. Second, we plan to continue with the lectures about the processes of editing Wikipedia articles, uploading files on Wikimedia Commons and generating items on Wikidata that will be given to interested participants in three other cities in Macedonia. The target audience of these lectures will be broader than students attending the traditional educational institutions and will also include others willing to acquire new knowledge. Third, we also plan to continued with the already introduced editing contest intended only for students participating in the Education programme through the model of collaboration with educational institutions. This activity will have to stimulate participation through the awarding of prizes and also divert participants' attention to other topics of interest as an attempt to both increase retention and further fill the content gaps.
- SMART objectives
The SMART objectives of the Education programme are the following:
- to have at least 235 participants from the Education programme during the year;
- to have at least 150 newly registered users users from the Education programme during the year;
- to have at least 540 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Education programme during the year; and
- to spend at least 2,272 volunteer hours on the Education programme during the year.
COMMUNITY
EDITING CHALLENGES
The editing challenges primarily aim to increase the content quality and fill content gaps on the Wikimedia project but also to reach out to specialist groups of people and boost more productive editing by the experienced editors. The scope of the editing challenges in 2018 will remain unchanged compared to 2017 and they will thus include: edit-a-thons, editing contests, editing days and editing weekends.
The edit-a-thons have underwent a successful transition from community events intended for experienced users towards outreach events intended for new editors. Last two years all of the edit-a-thons have been organized with interested group comprised of mostly highly skilled and motivated individuals possessing high degree of knowledge on a certain topic which is decided in advance in order to cover the lack of the content on articles on those topics on Wikipedia. The last 2017 year Shared Knowledge organized 6 edit-a-thons and entirely helped on 2 other edit-a-thons providing instruction to the participants and logistical support on the events. The topic covered on this edit-a-thons were: bicycle related topics, Biology, Gender, Business Administration and Accounting and Cerebral Palsy where all of the participants who in the biggest majority were newbies who acquired knowledge of editing and working on Wikipedia and in the same time contributed by sharing their knowledge in creating over 100 new articles. The number of edit-a-thons will be maintained to six events during the year.
The editing contests have drastically improved the coverage of underrepresented topics and have also led to re-activating of users who have not been active for a pretty long time. They have also resulted in high-quality editing with 7 featured articles and 1 good article on the Macedonian Wikipedia, while in the last year aiming to reach the goal of 100,000 articles on Macedonian Wikipedia the editing contest have contributed with over 300 new articles. Because the goal of the editing contests focus on adding quality content, they mostly focus on engaging the community of experienced users, yet the participation of newly registered users is also welcome. There are no major changes that we expect to make to the editing contests during the year with regards to the selected topics and the awards distribution. The number of contests that will take place during the year will be four, while the Wikimedia CEE Spring in joint collaboration with the other communities from Central and Eastern Europe will be also a possibility for the users to participate.
The positive evaluation of our editing days and weekends as zero-budget projects that encourage participation of community members in writing articles on a pre-selected underrepresented topic during a 24-hour and 48-periods, respectively, was convincing enough to include these two projects anew. These editing challenges are especially suitable for holidays and commemorating days but can also be used to coordinate the community towards generating local content from the available sources that we have. Considering the strategic goal of reaching 100.000 articles, last year the outcome of editing days and weekend contributed with nearly 500 articles. Thus for this year to have twenty editing days and weekends each during the year.
The SMART objectives of the Editing challenges within Community programme are the following:
- to have at least 168 participants from the Editing challenges sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 104 newly registered users from the Editing challenges sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 2228 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Editing challenges sub-programme during the year; and
- to spend at least 3388 volunteer hours on the Editing challenges sub-programme during the year.
COMMUNITY SUPPORT
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The relation between the Wikimedia affiliate and the community as a key for healthy development of the movement during the year will be enhanced through working equally on extending support for conducting photohunts and city tours, growing the community through Wikicamps and building up the community through frequent gatherings and meet-ups as well as increased participation in international events and conferences.
The photohunts have established as a successful low-budget project with high cost-effectiveness. Despite the fact that this project helps the community members to get financial support for conducting hunts for images, the project also rewards special right to the community rather than the regulatory bodies of the affiliate to make the final decision on delivering support. Considering the broadening of the scope of the photohunts with cultural events which was done in the last year, we intend to continue with photohunts with largely broadened offered list and scope for taking images with encyclopedical value, which can be properly accommodated in our entire eco-system, which is a good opportunity to attract interest not only from the experienced editors but also from the new users engaged in the other programmes, which proved to be a case last year where we have photohunts granted to a participants from the Wiki Camp, interested professional and amateur photographs.
The positive outcome of the Wikicamp Dihovo 2018 has guided us to expand this project to organising two camps in 2019, one jointly with the colleagues from Wikimedia Serbia as a cross border collaboration. The Wikicamps are a good way to introduce a group of interested people with the Wikimedia culture through an outdoor seminar. Importantly, the activities during the camps do not help only develop skills for contributing to the Wikimedia projects but also for conducting research, compiling sources for editing and improving photographic skills. The project can also be easily integrated to our eco-system because the participants at the camps will have the possibility to apply their knowledge on the other programmes, which proved to be a case whereas 1/4 of the participants of the Wiki Camp Dihovo 2018 participated in at least three other projects after the camp. This would be a strong incentive for organizing two more camps which will help to rise the knowledge of Wikipedia and also growth of the Wikimedia Community in Macedonia.
The frequency of community gatherings and meet-ups has sharply decreased in the last couple of years, whereas the Wikipedia Day celebrations remain the only formal events that socialise number of community members. For that purpose, apart from the Wikipedia Day celebration, we also plan to revive the meet-ups that took place on a regular basis in the past.
In 2019, we plan to send two representatives (including a staff member) at the Wikimedia Conference 2019, two representatives at the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2019, to award two scholarships for participation in Wikimania 2019 and to have participants at regional conferences (e.g. WikiLive in Belgrade, OSCAL in Tirana).
Programme story: Wikicamp Dihovo 2018
During the holiday weekend on the occasion of the Independence Day of Macedonia from 7th to 9th of September in the village of Dihovo on the foothills of Baba mountain near Bitola, the second Wiki-Camp was organized. The camp was attended by 20 young people from several towns in Macedonia who, through mutual acquaintance and socializing, had the opportunity to get to familiarized, instructed and be trained for editing articles on Wikipedia. Moreover all of the participants have been trained for creating a good quality articles by adding references, categorizing articles and formatting text in the articles. The second main focus of the training during the wikicamp was the uploading and licensing images on Commons Wikimedia. For the first time on this wikicamp has been conveyed presentation and workshop on Wikidata, whereby the participants have edited several subjects of articles. Apart from the editing activities the second main activity about which the participants have been trained was the manner of conducting expedition field research in the area of geography, nature, agriculture, cultural heritage, architecture and archeology through hikes on different places in the surroundings whereby over 130 photos have been taken and made available for free use. Within the editing activities during the Wikicamp in Dihovo, more than 50 new articles on Wikipedia have been created and more then a dozen were improved in Macedonian Wikipedia. Further in the month of September 1/4 of the participants of the Wiki Camp Dihovo 2018 participated in at least three other projects after the camp, which indicates the success of this camp
The SMART objectives of the Community support sub-programme are the following:
- to have at least 164 participants from the Community support sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 140 newly registered users from the Community support sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 1380 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Community support sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 534 photographs used in Wikipedia articles from the Community support sub-programme during the year; and
- to spend at least 2289 volunteer hours on the Community support sub-programme during the year.
EXPEDITIONS
The expeditionary projects have had enormous impact on the field research capabilities of our members over the last couple of years and have contributed to the creation of local content from multiple sources that had not been used for editing before as well as high-quality images of different places in Macedonia with 5 featured pictures and 1 quality image on Wikimedia Commons, so far. Moreover, expeditions have significant impact towards the general Wikimedian community and the public, thus through social media, exhibition and presentations on all other projects, considerable and constant number of new members are joining on every expedition which is an indicator about the success and the outreach significance of this programme.
Our plans for 2019 encompass having five generic Wikiexpeditions, four Geoexpeditions, two Veloexpeditions and two Archaeoexpeditions which will replace the Agroexpeditions after two years break, totalling to 13 expeditions overall.
Considering the aim to grow and expand the community this year we plan to organize the expiditions with close collaboration with highly skilled and specialized individuals and groups such as the Student's Geographical Society for the Geoexpeditions along with the Mountaneering club "Transverzalec" which is our collaborator for two years, professor and students of archaeology from the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University for the archaeoexpeditions and local support for the Wikiexpeditions. The plans and the implementation of the expeditions will be closely defined with those groups which will provide help in expertise, experience, equipment and staff which will eventually became part of the community being instructed and skillfully contributing on Wikipedia.
The SMART objectives of the Expeditions sub-programme are the following:
- to have at least 18 participants from the Expeditions sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 7 newly registered users from the Expeditions sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 3020 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Expeditions sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 2112 photographs used in Wikipedia articles from the Expeditions sub-programme during the year; and
- to spend at least 4657 volunteer hours on the Expeditions sub-programme during the year.
WIKISKETCH
Wikisketch has started as a new kind of activity intended to grow up the knowledge about Wikipedia by providing quick and fast training for working on Wikipedia by creating and editing articles, uploading images, doing a research on highly skilled individuals who are not yet contributing users on Wikipedia. The participants who have been instructed for editing and working on Wikipedia are carefully chosen primarily from the acquaintances known to have a higher degree of knowledge on a certain topic in business, sciences and professions such as economy, marketing, informational technology, banking, journalist, printing, transport etc. which lack or are scarcely covered with articles on Macedonian Wikipedia.
The instructions are given directly and individually with a person in a time span between 30 minutes and hour where the participants are given a sketch of a Wikipedia articles which they follow as a pattern in creating and editing new articles by their own choice with the support of skilled editors who show them editing with the three main tool editors: coded, visual and the translation tool with mandatory embedding image, hyperlink and references.
For 2019, we plan to extend and implement Wikisketch lessons throughout the entire year, every month during a week we will conduct fast Wikisketch lessons to individuals having experience and expertise in a field about which Wikipedia lacks content. For the purpose of this project, we invite people from different professions, such as: digital marketing, journalism, transport and logistic, students etc, in order to cover more different areas. Also, Wikisketch lessons will be provided to already registered users who do not contribute on other fields such as members of community who participate on projects just with uploading images but not with writing text and adding content on Wikipedia. Besides recruiting newly registered users with this programme we intent to improve the level of the knowledge of working and contributing on Wikipedia on the already registered members of the community. Thus, we plan to reach two goals: growth and expansion of the community and growth of the number of articles reaching the strategic goal of 100 thousand articles.
The SMART objectives of the Wikisketch lessons sub-programme are the following:
- to have at least 75 participants from the Expeditions sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 72 newly registered users from the Expeditions sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 300 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Wikisketch lessons sub-programme during the year;
- to spend at least 150 volunteer hours on the Wikisketch lessons sub-programme during the year.
PHOTOGRAPHIC CONTESTS
Photographic contests are proved to have considerable impact to towards the growth of community and providing high quality images for further use as a content on Wikipedia and public domain. Hence, in 2019 we will continue with organization of photographic contest which will focus on the Cultural heritage and monuments in Macedonia and will last for a longer period in order to include the national, regional and local institutions throughout the entire country for support and recruit a larger involvement of different level contributors beside just the attracted competitors.
The SMART objectives of Photographic contest sub-programme are the following:
- to have at least 53 participants from the Wiki loves contests sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 40 newly registered users from the Wiki loves contests sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 2000 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Wiki loves contests sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 800 photographs used in Wikipedia articles from the Wiki loves contests sub-programme during the year; and
- to spend at least 1030 volunteer hours on the Wiki loves contests sub-programme during the year.
WIKIGROUPS
Wikigroups sub-programme is intended to broaden the community membership by including groups which are bonded on a specific activities and tasks. This sub-programme bear resemblance and will include project activities on the similar pattern as the Education programme where the specific groups will be introduced to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects and will continue to add and improve contents on Wikipedia with information, files and content acquired through their regular activities. This sub-programme will start in 2019 with two groups: scouts in the project so-called Wiki Scout and translators in the project so-called Wiki Translate.
- Wikiscout
In the last several years on our other programmes it was noticed the increasing participation of users who are active in scouting. Regarding the information and knowledge sharing and acquiring through out door activities of the scouts, Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects are considered as very suitable and useful for their work which led us to start a joint project with scouting federation and clubs in Macedonia in 2019. The activities will include introduction of Wikipedia and all Wikimedia projects to scouts who will increase the community and enrich the contents by their information and activities shared on the wikis.
- Wikitranslate
Regarding the increased usage of the translation tool and the search for Macedonian language articles and content on internet, which was noticed to us by Amir Ahoroni on the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin in April 2018, we will start a joint projects with translators who are working as professionals, foreign language teachers, students who will be introduced to Wikipedia and will help by improving text content of the articles by their regular activities.
The SMART objectives of Wiki Groups sub-programme are the following:
- to have at least 60 participants from the Wiki Groups sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 50 newly registered users from the Wiki Groups sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 300 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Wiki Groups sub-programme during the year;
- to spend at least 600 volunteer hours on the Wiki Groups sub-programme during the year.
PARTNERSHIPS
EXHIBITIONS
The success of the photographic collaboration between Shared Knowledge and Wiki Education Brazil in 2017 has been motivating for us to introduce a separate sub-programme on organizing exhibitions. The model of the photographic collaboration that we have worked out helps to promote the cultural and natural heritage of the collaborating countries through images displayed at exhibitions but it also attracts community members to edit content on topics related to the collaborating country. In this way, the exhibitions can be easily connected to the editing challenges in our eco-system. In 2019 we plan to continue with the photographic collaboration that will result in having one exhibitions.
The SMART objectives of the GLAM sub-programme are the following:
- to have at least 50 participants from the GLAM sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 5 newly registered users from the GLAM sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 60 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the GLAM sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 30 photographs used in Wikipedia articles from the Exhibitions sub-programme during the year; and
- to spend at least 50 volunteer hours on the Exhibitions sub-programme during the year.
GLAM
Shared Knowledge has established partnerships with several GLAM institutions in Macedonia where project activities such as Wikimedian in Residence, Macedonian Dialects project have successfully been done. However, the GLAM institutions shows a little interest in using Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects as platforms for placing information and digitalizing in public domain their content of books, artworks, which led us to the idea to organize educational and instructional conference with lectures and workshops for the GLAM institution workers.
In 2019 we plan to organize a national conference about GLAM employees which will be held at a partner institution venue and will provide thorough lectures and instructions about Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and all possibilities for partnership and resident projects in the institutions such as Wikimedian in Residence, Wiki Clubs with regular lectures and editing challenges as a part of their programs and budgets in the future. The event will be intended and open for the GLAM employees from institutions nationwide (not just those with which we have signed memorandums of cooperation) thus we expect to accomplish the objectives of familiarizing with Wikipedia to the staff of specialized institutions and expand the community of newly registered users with unimpeded and constant access to materials eligible for public domain and free use, establish partnerships with new GLAM institutions as well as joint projects.
The SMART objectives of the GLAM sub-programme are the following:
- to have at least 60 participants from the GLAM sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 50 newly registered users from the GLAM sub-programme during the year;
- to have at least 120 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the GLAM sub-programme during the year;
- to spend at least 300 volunteer hours on the Exhibitions sub-programme during the year.
Reports edit
Midpoint Report edit
For the realization of the goals and metrics achieved during the midpoint period see SAPG/Metrics worksheet
For the financial report for the midpoint period see Financial Reports
COMMUNITY
This year's grant by Wikimedia Foundation is funded and oriented only towards the projects within the community support programme. Thus during the mid-point period we have started to implement and realized the following projects which were envisioned in the Annual plan: Editing challenges (2 editing competitions, 6 editing days, 7 editing weekends, 4 edit-a-thons), Expeditions (2 Wikiexpeditions, 2 Geoexpeditions, 2 Archaeoexpeditions), Wikisketch Lessons (4 lectures), WikiTranslate (5 lectures), WikiScout (1 workshop with lecture).
Programme story: WikiScout
In the last several years on our other programmes it was noticed the increasing participation of users who are active in scouting. Regarding the information and knowledge sharing and acquiring through out door activities of the scouts, Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects are considered as very suitable and useful for their work which led us to start a joint project with scouting federation and clubs in Macedonia in 2019. The activities will include introduction of Wikipedia and all Wikimedia projects to scouts who will increase the community and enrich the contents by their information and activities shared on the wikis.
The project started in cooperation with the Scout Squadron (IPO) "Galeb", with aim to help and improve existing and create new articles about scouting in Macedonian language edited by scouts and active users and editors involved in the project. At the same time, the project's goal is to introduce the scouts into the use and editing of Wikipedia and its accompanying projects such as the Wikimedia Commons for uploading and attaching images and videos and Wikidata, which, in addition to creating articles and scout-related content, the use of Wikipedia by editing content, adding pictures would help them and would continue to be used in their regular scouting activities and duties.
In May the project has started with the first training workshop at the Scout's Union of Macedonia where around 15 scouts have been introduced to the basics of Wikipedia through a presentation and then they have proceed to creating several articles through the translation tool and visual and coded editor as well as they have uploaded several images. The second part of the project will continue in the summer where the participants will attend two-day camp with tents on an open air in Macedonia where they will gather information, pictures which will be added as content on Wikipedia.
PARTNERSHIPS
Considering the usefulness and widespread use of Wikipedia and the contacts established with different institutions and organizations in this mid-point period we have started and set up the mutual collaboration with Goethe Institut which funded the "WikiLiga" project. The mutual cooperation aided (partly and thoroughly) with Goethe Institut Skopje will also continue in the second part of the year whereas during the Autumn the project of editing workshops will be extended in 4 other cities in Macedonia.
Learning story: WikiLiga
WikiLiga (on English: WikiLeague) is project started in 2019 in collaboration and funded from external funds from Goethe Institut in Skopje after month of negotiation. Project includes four lectures and edit-a-thons in duration of six hours each, conducted in space of National Library in Skopje, fully equipped with WiFI and computers. Every edit-a-thon and lecutre workshop was held on different topics: German Literature, German Film, German Music and World Heritage in Germany.
Apart from lectures and edit-a-thons held in space of the National Library, the participants have continued editing on that topic after the lecture online on Macedonian Wikipedia on a following editing competition about same topic of the lecture and edit-a-thon such as German literature, film, music, cultural heritage. Therefore, participants is part of larger competition (or league), so they received awards after the four lectures and edit-a-thons on four different topics.
This project was approved and funded from Goethe Institut in order to increase German culture on Macedonian readers through their translation of German articles in Macedonian language.
The WikiLeague project was realized in March, April, May and June whereas 34 participants in total out of which 22 distinct and 10 newly registered users have contributed with creation of 279 new articles about German literature, music, film and cinematography and Cultural heritage in Germany on Macedonian Wikipedia.
EDUCATION
This year's grant does not provide funds for the Education programme however considering that it has proved to be a successful way for engaging new users to contribute to the Macedonian Wikipedia and subsequently fill the content gaps on specialist topics through collaboration with educational institutions in the mid-point period we have continued to realize this program without funding. During this mid-point period the members of our educational team have been mostly working with students attending the Josip Broz – Tito Grammar School in Skopje on topics in physics and the activities at this institution have resulted in engaging several dozen students to create or improve hundreds of Wikipedia articles.
Final Report edit
The following sections gives a general overview of the work carried out by Shared Knowledge for the entire grant period. It breaks down into organisation's three programme areas (Education, Community and Partnerships) and it also includes a programme and learning story that showcases the organisation's success in this period. For further details, please see our activity reports per months (detailed reports).
For the realization of the goals and metrics achieved during 2019 see SAPG/Metrics worksheet
For financial reports, you can see our financial report for period 01.03.-31.12.2019.
COMMUNITY
This year's grant by Wikimedia Foundation is funded and oriented only towards the projects within the community support programme.
Thus during the entire year we have started to implement and realized the following projects which were envisioned in the Annual plan: Editing challenges (4 editing competitions along with regional competition CEE Spring 2019, 10 editing days, 20 editing weekends, 5 edit-a-thons along with new edition of WikiGap Skopje 2019), Expeditions (4 Wikiexpeditions, various visits as Geoexpeditions, 2 Archaeoexpeditions), Wikisketch Lessons (4 lectures), WikiTranslate (5 lectures), WikiScout (1 workshop with lecture), and Photographic Contest.
However besides the project activities of the grant, we have implemented project financed and conducted with partnership and funds from the Goethe Institute and Macedonian Government which have significant and considerable positive impact on the development and work of Wikipedia in Macedonia in all program fields.
Programme story: Astrophoto Contest
This November we have organized the photographic Astrophoto competition which lasted from 1st until 30th of November. With this competition we wanted to gather photos from astronomical objects, phenomena, space events that could be recorded from Earth. The main goal was these photographs to be used in documentary and informative character. The photos were uploaded on Wikimedia Commons under free license, and in future they could be used for illustrating in the articles related to astronomy, as well for other projects. This year we had planned 3 awards for the top three placed in the competition. The photographic competition has ended up with 108 images, uploaded by 11 participants. On December 19th, the awards for the best three participants were handed over.
Learning story: WikiGap Skopje 2019
After the first successfully organized WikiGap edit-a-thon in June 2018, on 16th of October was held the second WikiGap Skopje edit-a-thon on the initiative of the Embassy of Sweden in Skopje in cooperation with UN Women and Shared Knowledge as a Wikimedia chapter in Macedonia.
Event starts with an opening video-speech from the Minister of Labor and Social Welfare, Mrs. Mila Carovska. Same as in the previous year the main topic was the biographies of influential and notable woman from Macedonia and worldwide who have worked and influenced the development and promotion of democracy and human rights. This time event was held at the computer laboratory of the Technological and Metallurgical Faculty in Skopje where 20 participants have created 55 new articles and improved 2 articles on Macedonian Wikipedia.
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Swedish Ambassador Kristin Forsgren Bengtsson -
Editing -
Computer laboratory -
Editing
EXPEDITIONS
Expedition as essential part of effort of Shared Knowledge to create local content continue in 2019.
As part of Geoexpeditions we visit locations as volcanic lakes in Northeast Macedonia (in March) and Korab and Shar Mountain in West Macedonia (various visits). From these events, 40 articles and two new templates were newly created, along side with 24 improved articles, 351 uploaded photographs of which 81,10% were used in articles. Five users-expeditionists were included.
Wikiexpeditions make four tours in various regions. They have traveled through 112 Macedonian villages and made over 2,350 kilometers of travel, in which are included many hundreds kilometers riding on off-road conditions. They contributed in creating and improving 285 articles and usage of 1266 uploaded photos out of 1602 uploaded photos. This subgroup had four users of which one of them was new.
Veloexpeditions (on bicycle) had local tour in late autumn on slopes of mountain in northern part of Skopje, where we visited 11 villages and we have near 200 images taken in only one day.
The fourth subgroup, Archeo expeditions (archaeology), had three tours at archaeological sites. A total of three participants created two and improved six articles and uploaded 121 photos with 59,50% used photographs in articles.
WIKIGROUPS
- WikiTranslate
In April, the first project from this type was conducted. The aim was to organize events with people with good knowledge and skills of other languages, professors, students etc., in order to create articles through translations. Also, the participants will have the opportunity to create articles through the translation tool of the Wikipedia content, to correct the translation and to upgrade it. The project started at the center of foreign languages, "Angel Ves", with professors from German, Spanish and English languages. The activities in May, the Spanish was the second language covered in the project. The event was attended by a student of Spanish language who have created 3 high quality articles through translation and will participate in the project again with translation from Portuguese language. The project was active during the summer days. These months were characterised with translations from English and Russian language. The event organised in July, six user participated and created 14 articles in various topics. The project continued in October with creating new articles from two new languages which haven't been included in the activities of this project so far. One participant have created 4 new articles by translation from French and Spanish language. The articles are from different topics such as geography and tourist places in the countries, famous people such as sportsmen etc.
- WikiScout
This project was in collaboration with scout squad "Galeb", active in Poreche region in Macedonia. The project has goal to help in improving and creating articles about scouting topics in Macedonian language by the scouts who are Wikipedia users. In addition, the scouts got training lessons in using Wikipedia, editing and uploading photos and videos on Wikimedia Commons. This project took in May and 15 scouts attended and six of them became users and created six articles. They also uploaded two photographs.
PARTNERSHIPS
Considering the usefulness and widespread use of Wikipedia and the contacts established with different institutions and organizations this year of 2019 we have started and set up the mutual collaboration with Goethe Institut which resulted in launching and implementation of 2 projects, funded by their side and conducted through the spring and autumn in 5 cities in Macedonia. The projects implemented with the partnership of Goethe Institut were "WikiLiga" (March - June 2019) and "Wiki City Club (WikiStadtKlub)" (September - December 2020). The WikiLeague project was realized in March, April, May and June whereas 34 participants in total out of which 22 distinct and 10 newly registered users have contributed with creation of 279 new articles about German literature, music, film and cinematography and Cultural heritage in Germany on Macedonian Wikipedia.
Learning story: WikiLiga & WikiCityClub
WikiLiga (on English: WikiLeague) is project started in 2019 in collaboration and funded from external funds from Goethe Institut in Skopje after month of negotiation. Project includes four lectures and edit-a-thons in duration of six hours each, conducted in space of National Library in Skopje, fully equipped with WiFI and computers. Every edit-a-thon and lecture workshop was held on different topics: German Literature, German Film, German Music and World Heritage in Germany.
Apart from lectures and edit-a-thons held in space of the National Library, the participants have continued editing on that topic after the lecture online on Macedonian Wikipedia on a following editing competition about same topic of the lecture and edit-a-thon such as German literature, film, music, cultural heritage. Therefore, participants is part of larger competition (or league), so they received awards after the four lectures and edit-a-thons on four different topics.
WikiCity Club is a new second consecutive joint project with Goethe-Institut this year which is aiming at creating and increasing content and articles for German culture into Macedonian through Wikipedia by translating content from Wikipedia into German, that goal is to bring closer the German culture and German-related topics to Macedonian readers. Entire event lasted for nearly 3 hours beginning right at 12 o'clock and ending around 15 o'clock consisting of simultaneous workshop for instruction about editing on Wikipedia both through the translation tool and source coded editor which was followed by edit-a-thon on which the participants were creating articles by choosing topics from lists about German literature, German music, German film and Cultural heritage of Germany.
During the implementation of both WikiLeague and City WikiClub projects during 2019, a total of 8 public events were held including a total of 58 participants who contributed to the creation of 358 new Wikipedia articles in Macedonian language on topics from German literature, German film, German music and Cultural Heritage in Germany. Both projects involved public maintenance events in 5 different cities in Macedonia, including: Skopje, Bitola, Kumanovo, Veles and Strumica, thus expanding the scope of projects implemented within the cooperation there was a wider geographical coverage of the territory of Macedonia including cities with the largest population.
These two project were approved and funded from Goethe Institut in order to increase German culture on Macedonian readers through their translation of German articles in Macedonian language. The successful and fruitful cooperation and partnership with Goethe Institute will continue in 2020 with several more projects including Wiki Dictionary with students of German Language, Exhibition of photographs, filming experiments etc.
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This is the statistics of WikiLeague and Wiki City Club projects after four organised events each in which participants created articles according to the specific topic.
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EDUCATION
Besides the fact that this year's grant does not provide funds for the Education programme however considering that it has proved to be a successful way for engaging new users to contribute to the Macedonian Wikipedia and subsequently fill the content gaps on specialist topics through collaboration with educational institutions in the entire period we have continued to realize this program without funding.
By the end of 2019, with the approval of the Government of Macedonia we have launched and started to implement the project Education through Wikipedia (Macedonian: Образование преку Википедија) which includes 4 separate sub-program projects such as:
- Wikipedia at your school which include the regular activities of lessons, instruction and creation of new content by students in many and varied educational institutions such as primary schools, high schools, universities and higher learning academies;
- Wikiexperiments which is focused on recording high-quality videos of systematically selected experiments for the purposes of illustrating important scientific concepts and phenomena in chemistry and physics;
- WikiCamp which is organized as a weekend outdoor seminar where participants from all around Macedonia attend lectures and workshops on Wikipedia and Commons Wikimedia, training and instruction of creating and editing articles, uploading and licensing photographs and other type of media and the means and methods of conducting expeditions; and
- WikiClub where several members during 6 lectures every 2 weeks in the next 3 months had the opportunity to get acquainted in detail with editing, searching, working on Wikipedia as well as with all the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation and Shared Knowledge in the current year, allowing the opportunity to the members to join and volunteer.
This project is a part of the Program for financing the program activities of the associations and foundations for the year 2019 by the Government of the Republic of Macedonia for which funds have been approved for the project "Education through Wikipedia" by the Government Decision, Priority 5: Education Reforms and Investment in Innovation and Information Technology.
The activities of the project begun in November 2019 and December 2019 with the 3 conducted Wikipedia lessons in primary schools of "Krume Kepeski" in Skopje and "Goce Delcev" in Negotino where 31 students have created 37 new articles. The students have also visited the City Museum in Negotino led by French professor Elizabeta Trpkovska with the purpose of collecting data from the city museum, as well as to create photographs for sharing on Wikimedia Commons and on Wikipedia articles. Also the project included lessons on the Institute of Physics on the Faculty of Natural Sciences which will also be included within the Wikiexperiments sub-project which will be implemented together with the other activities during the next year 2020. At the Josip Broz Tito High School, a competition in editing was held that lasted the first half of school year. Five contestants competed and created a total of 165 articles.
| Goal | Results | Realisation (%) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Users | 235 | 158 | 67.23% |
| New users | 150 | 156 | 104% |
| Articles | 540 | 448 | 82.96% |
| Volunteer hours | 2272 | 3128 | 137.67% |