Shared Knowledge/Annual plan 2023

This is the Annual plan of the activities of the Shared Knowledge user group for 2023.

Programmes

Education & Science

This programme aims to extend and maintain collaborations with educational and scientific institutions with the goals of promoting Wikipedia as an educational resource, getting students and academic staff involved in the Wikimedia movement and producing open educational resources. It is divided into two sub-programmes: Education and Science.

Education

Mentoring during a Wikidata workshop in September 2022

The education sub-programme consists of activities directed towards training students and academic staff to contribute to the Wikimedia projects. The main projects included in this sub-programme are explained in turn:

Academic trainings. The primary goal of the trainings is to train the academic staff from secondary and higher education introduced to edit the Wikimedia projects. Trainings will take place as individual or group events and will consist of editing tutorials with a focus on Wikipedia.

Student trainings. These events are very similar to the academic trainings where the target are students in secondary and higher education. Trainings will consist of editing tutorials and workshops through which students will be trained to edit Wikipedia. They will be organised in collaboration with individual educational institutions, and arrangements are planned to be made with at least three institutions to hold such events.

Wikidata workshops. These workshops aim to get people introduced to Wikidata. They will consist of lectures covering a brief introduction to the project, a step-by-step tutorial to creating an item and a basic use of the querying service, as well as a workshop in which participants will create, build up and query items themselves. The workshops will not be restricted to students and academic staff only, and a public call for participants will be published. Two workshops of this kind are planned.

Science

An experiment documenting a detonation of mixture of red phosphorus and potassium chlorate filmed at the Institute of Chemistry in Skopje in June 2022

The science sub-programme is aimed at producing open educational resources and creating digital libraries, which will be made readily available for use in education through the Wikimedia projects. The main projects included in this sub-programme are the following:

Wikiexperiments. The goal of this project is to produce high-quality videos documenting scientific experiments. Topics for filming will be primarily sought in physics, chemistry and biology through collaboration with the academic staff at higher educational institutions and institutes. Staff members at the partnering institutions will be responsible for performing the experiments and will need to give final approval of the produced videos before they get uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and used across Wikipedia articles.

Wikilectures. The goal of this project is to produce high-quality videos documenting lectures involving solving problems and proving theorems. Topics for filming will be determined primarily in mathematics through collaboration with academic staff from secondary and higher educational institutions. As many editors find the syntax for entering mathematical expressions difficult, the Wikipedia articles on topics requiring such expressions are oftentimes incomplete and not reader-friendly. The videos produced in this project will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, which would ease the adding of subtitles in order languages, and used across Wikipedia articles in order to solve the reader-friendliness problem.

SMART objectives The SMART objectives of the Education & Science programme are the following: to have at least 20 professors involved during the year to have at least 60 students involved during the year to produce at least 30 videos documenting experiments during the year to create at least 200 content pages on all Wikimedia projects during the year

Community

The Community programme includes a wide variety of programmes with the goals of identifying topics of interest, filling content gaps, tackling the gender gap and improving content quality. It is divided into three sub-programmes: Editing challenges, Community support, Expeditions and Photo contests.

Editing challenges

A scene from the Multiculturalism, Peace and Solidarity edit-a-thon held in Kumanovo in August 2022

This sub-programme encompasses projects aimed at animating the community in contributing to underrepresented topics and improving content quality. The main projects included in this sub-programme include:

Edit-a-thons. These events be organised in collaboration with specialist organisations or groups with the goal of generating content and improving content quality in specific fields. There are many underrepresented topics that cannot be improved due to the lack of editors specialised in specific fields or the lack of materials to verify the content, which incentivises holding events in collaboration with parties whose members are knowledgeable and wield materials in those fields. A total of four edit-a-thons are planned during the year.

Editing days. This activity consists of organising writing campaigns on a pre-defined underrepresented topic during a specified day. Topics are usually very specific and editors are guided to choose articles from a template. Editing days will be scheduled two times a week during work days, so their total number will be about 100.

Editing weekends. These challenges are similar to the editing days with the main difference that their duration spans a weekend. Another difference is that the pre-determined topics are usually more general, editors have more freedom in choosing the article and the resulting articles are longer in size and of higher quality. Editing weekends will be scheduled for almost every weekend in the year, so their total number will be about 50.

Editing contests. The main goal of the editing contests is to direct editors to contribute on a pre-defined underrepresented topic during a one-month period. Editors are motivated to participate by the symbolic prizes in the form of gift cards that are reserved for the top contestants. A total of four editing contests will take place, with one of them being Wikimedia CEE Spring. Additionally, the 1Lib1Ref global contest on adding citations in underreferenced articles is also planned.

Editing weeks. These challenges are a type of editing contests with a duration of one week. Editing weeks are planned to be scheduled during the course of the global writing campaigns (e.g. WikiForHumanRights, WikiGap), so the choice of topics will depend on the focus of these initiatives. Two editing weeks are planned to take place during the year.

Community support

A training at the Wikistand in Skopje in April 2022

An editing workshop during the Wikitour in Tetovo in September 2022

The Community support sub-programme consists of projects aimed at supporting the work of community members and supporting people who are interested to produce free knowledge. The main projects included in this sub-programme are explained below:

Photohunts. This is a micogrants programme with the goal of supporting photographers willing to produce free images of unphotographed places and objects. Anyone can apply for a microgrant with a pre-defined ceiling, which will cover the expenses borne to carry out the photohunt, and the final decision will be made by the community. The application period will be open during the whole year.

Wikisketch. The goal of this project is to provide hands-on blitz trainings to people with no or little experience to edit Wikipedia. Trainees will be invited through personal acquaintances and trainings will take place in our working office. It is impossible to plan the dynamics of the project in advance, so its implementation will mostly depend on the availability of the potential trainees.

Wikistands. This project is similar to Wikisketch with the main difference that the trainings take place in public space such as shopping malls, squares and parks. A stand depicting Wikipedia's logo will be installed at a visible place, and trainees will be random pedestrians who will get interested in learning to edit Wikipedia on the spot. After completing the training and creating a Wikipedia article, each trainee will be gifted with a Wikipedia T-shirt.

Wikitours. The primary goal of this project is to increase the geographic distribution of activities by getting people from different places in the country actively involved in the Wikimedia movement to produce content on topics of local interest. These activities will include photographic tours to other towns at which photos will be taken from local institutions and cultural heritage sites as well as workshops at which locals will edit articles on relevant topics from their region.

Expeditions

An island in the Vardar near the village of Josifovo photographed in July 2022

The Expeditions sub-programmeme consists of on-site research projects aimed at documenting various places in the country. The main projects in this sub-programme include:

Wikiexpeditions. Although the coverage of villages increased significantly as a result of the implementation of this project, there are still regions that have not been visited by our team of researchers. A total of four expeditions to unexplored regions are planned during the year.

Geoexpeditions. The scope of this project experienced a major expansion recently after aerial images began to be taken from a drone that the organisation purchased. This new method of photographing allows to cover some natural localities that were inaccessible in the past. A total of two expeditions aimed at exploring natural localities are planned during the year.

Veloexpeditions. This type of expeditions proved to complement the Wikiexpeditions well in the past, especially in reaching places that are inaccessible by car. A total of two expeditions to regions with inaccessible places are planned during the year.

Archaeoexpeditions. There is a large number of articles documenting archaeological sites on the Macedonian Wikipedia that were created during the editing challenges and lack photographs. A total of two expeditions are planned during the year with the goal of addressing this problem.

Photo contests

This sub-programme aims to increase the photographic coverage of places, objects and people with Wikipedia articles. The plan is to organise the following two photo contests:

Wiki Loves Folklore. This is a relatively new photo contest that aims to expand the notion of cultural heritage from buildings to other folklore elements. Although images from the Macedonian folklore were uploaded in the past editions of the contest, this will be its first organised edition in Macedonia and the first time a photo contest loosely covers this theme after Wiki Loves Cultural Heritage took place in 2013.

Wiki Loves Monuments. As the number of articles on cultural monuments in Macedonia increases thanks to the editing challenges, there is a growing need to hold Wiki Loves Monuments once again with a specific focus on the unphotographed monuments.

SMART objectives The SMART objectives of the Community programmeme are the following: to have at least 175 new participants during the year to conduct activities in at least 10 towns around the country during the year to use at least 70% of the produced images across Wikipedia articles at the end of the year to spend at least 12,000 volunteer hours on the community projects during the year

Partnerships

This programme includes projects based on collaborations with public institutions with the goals of identifying new forms of knowledge, liberating copyrighted content and providing better access to free knowledge. It is divided into four sub-programmes: GLAM, QRpedia, Open Government Data and other partnerships.

GLAM

The GLAM sub-programme involves collaborations with GLAM institutions with the aims of enriching the Wikimedia projects with materials at their disposal and advocating the liberation of copyrighted content. The main projects included in this sub-programme are the following:

Museum visits. Different approaches have been tried throughout years to partner with museums, which mostly depended on the collections they dispose with and the attitudes of their management. This project will consist of visits to a museum with the goal of taking images from the displayed items and collections in order to use them across Wikipedia articles.

Content acquisitions. This project aims to extend collaboration with galleries, archives and libraries in order to acquire content about the materials they have at disposal. The content provided by the partnering institutions will be used across the Wikimedia projects.

Old multimedia. The goal of this project is to acquire old images and videos, which are legally in public domain because their authors died more than 70 years ago. In particular, the project will focus on the works produced by the Manaki brothers, who were pioneers in the motion picture on the territory of Macedonia in the early 20th century. Arrangements are planned to be made with the Bitola State Archive, which holds a collection of their works.

QRpedia

Two plaques with QRpedia codes in Novo Selo in August 2022

The QRpedia sub-programme is aimed at installing QRpedia codes in front of cultural monuments and public institutions in order to ease access to free knowledge. The main projects included in this sub-programme are explained in turn:

Wikivillage. This project involves mapping of cultural monuments across villages, followed by erection of plaques with QRpedia codes providing access to Wikipedia articles documenting the monuments. Arrangements will be made with the authorities in the Vevčani Municipality to fully cover the monuments located on the territory of the municipality.

Open Government Data

The primary goal of this sub-programme is to collaborate with public institutions in order acquire open government data and conduct mass imports into Wikidata for further use across Wikipedia articles. Two types of data will be

Electoral data. The plan is to extend partnership with the State Electoral Commission in order to obtain electoral data. Arrangements have already been made, and a memorandum of collaboration is expected to be signed. The data will be processed and imported into newly created Wikidata items on elections by polling stations. Finally, tabular summaries of the voting history with extracted data from Wikidata items will be added to Wikipedia articles on settlements.

Geographic data. The plan is to extend partnership with the Agency for Real Estate Cadastre in order to obtain data about streets and localities. The data will be processed and imported into newly created Wikidata items. Finally, the data will be added to templates used across Wikipedia articles.

Other partnerships

The participants in the visit of the Botanical Garden Skopje in February 2022

Other partnerships include miscellaneous projects aimed at producing free knowledge through collaboration with external parties. The main such projects are detailed below:

Botanic Garden Skopje. Following the successful project in collaboration with the Botanic Garden Skopje, the partnership will be extended in order to document more species represented in the garden.

MakSport. The primary goal of this project is to photograph sportspeople, sport venues and sport games played in the Macedonian sport competitions in order to illustrate the Wikipedia articles lacking photos. There may also be sport clubs which will open their archives and liberate photos so that they can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

Theatre actors. As there are many articles on Macedonian actors lacking photos, this project aims to take images of them in order to illustrate the articles. Arrangements will be made with theatres around the country in order to schedule photographic sessions with the actors. Additionally, the project may result in images taken from performances at the theatres.

SMART objectives The SMART objectives of the Partnerships programme are the following: to partner with at least 3 new institutions during the year to install QRpedia codes for at least 30 objects during the year to acquire at least 100 files through partnerships during the year to create or improve at least 600 pages during the year

Metrics

Metrics page (In Macedonian)

Priority levels

The following table grades the total sub-programmemes of the three programmemes on a priority scale with high, medium or low priority. The grading is mainly based on the metrics for each sub-programme, their contribution to the overall plan and their achievement in the past.

Level	Sub-programmemes
High	Science Education Expeditions
Medium	QRpedia Editing challenges Community support Open Government Data
Low	GLAM Photo contests