Wikimedia Armenia/Reports/2018-10

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2018
October

Second Western Armenian edit-a-thon

Second Western-Armenian Edit-a-thon

October 12-24, 2018

Following to the success of the first-ever Western-Armenian edit-a-thon, another one took place in mid-October.

Initially planned for the weekend of October 12-14, the first round of the edit-a-thon drew only a few participants - much less than what was anticipated based on the editors’ feedback prior to the event.

The low turnover was explained due to too many community events and activities throughout various regions in the diaspora. However, the editors expressed their willingness to take part in the second round of the edit-a-thon.

Therefore, the event was repeated on October 20 and lasted until October 24. It drew active participation from experienced and new editors of Western-Armenian Wikipedia.

Throughout the online event, 7 editors from Syria, Lebanon and France joined their efforts to create and improve a total of 27 Western-Armenian Wikipedia entries.

The second edit-a-thon focused on the two following topics:

• Charles Aznavour and his legacy
• Armenian and international theater and stage

Another edit-a-thon is planned to take place in mid-November, 2018.

CEE Meeting Lviv 2018

CEEM2018 group photo

Below you can find some of the participants reports for the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2018.

Armenuhi Voskanyan

"Introduction to Wikidata" session of Asaf Bartov

Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2018 was the second international Wikimedia event I have participated. It was a great opportunity to meet Wikipedians and wiki editors from different countries and learn something more about wiki projects. I have attended some useful trainings, presentations and discussions, such as "Wikidata’s Magic Button", "Advancing Gender Equity report", "What can we learn from the feminist movement?", "Edu Wiki camp: Interactive approach to attracting volunteers", "Querying Wikidata with SPARQL", etc. During the presentation "Introduction to Wikidata" Asaf Bartov presented the structure of Wikidata and the principles of working at Wikidata. Then I have attended the training "Partnerships for Wikimedians", where Asaf Bartov presented to research each possible partner, rank by expected impact and ease of approach and choose one or some of them. And also he presented how to organize the first meeting, what to do to continue the partnership, etc. During the discussion about the role of teachers in Wikimedia movement, teachers from Ukraine and Serbia told us how their students edit in Wikipedia.

Snezhana Strkovska from Macedonia presented how they organize wikicamps, wikiclubs, and it was interesting to learn about their experience and achievements. It was a pleasure to feel that I am a part of the group of enthusiasts who make this world more perfect.

Aleta Harutyunyan

The seventh annual meeting of Wikimedians from Central and Eastern Europe was held in Lviv, Ukraine on October 13-15, 2018.

Julia Kirchner presented a discussion on topic “How can we work better together?” That was a very attractive group discussion during which we formed some two dozens of questions on how to improve the collaboration in the CEE community. Then the groups were mixed and reformed new ones this time united under the same questions. Via interactive talks and discussions we tried to find the best solutions to those questions. Meanwhile sweet table was open with sweets from CEE countries.

Wikidata’s Magic Button session on WM CEE Meeting 2018

After the break I attended Asaf Bartov’s session on the topic “Introduction to Wikidata”. That session was quite interesting for the beginners like me. I learned how Wikidata gives one solution to two key problems, those are:

1. Dated data, lacking triggers, repetitive works,
2. Inflexible ways of lateral queries of knowledge.

Mr. Bartov then explained in a very creative way how Wikidata — an editable central storage for structured and linked data, gives us the solution to those problems. I felt very much excited with that session, realizing the real width of Wikidata’s possibilities.

After lunch I attended another session held by Asaf Bartov on the topic “Partnerships for Wikimedians” (part 1). Two basic points I learned and will always remember are

1. to evaluate benefit, risk and effort
2. to do a SWOT analysis

The second day after group photo we continued the meeting with Asaf Bartov’s session “Querying Wikidata with SPARQL”. That session was very useful for me, as I learned how I can edit infoboxes. Actually I have noticed some discrepancies in articles of English Wikipedia which I translated and edited, so I know how to correct those discrepancies in the infoboxes. After lunch I attended Nichole Saad’s session “Wikimedia & Education: developing a framework that values our community”. That was really interesting and fruitful for me, as it was actually a workshop with evaluation:

As a teacher I very much appreciate those kind of workshops, because while discussing educational issues like those I found an answer to a question like: how does using the Wikimedia projects in education contribute to our movement goal “knowledge equity”?

After break I attended Macreanu Iulian’s session “Targeted projects - an effective tool for attracting new editors. WMROMD experience”, where I learned the following: wikimedians need wiki-vulgate: strategy, retold in simple words.

Then Christine Domgörgen’s session went to continue the meeting: “How to retain new editors”. There our group of Armenians made a poster and I was given a chance to introduce it to attendees.

After break Farhad Fatkullin’s session “Wikipedias in the languages of Russia: Growing multilingualism online” continued the meeting. That was also interesting for me, because in my opinion small language group Wikimedia communities or user groups needs more attention and aid to preserve their language or dialect and also their way of life and community approach. Piotr Gackowski then went on talking about “Not only pl.wikipedia - Polish sister projects” topic. There I saw how important the sister projects are for better Wikiworld. I was amazed to know how Mira worked with mentally ill people in wikitherapy using wikiquote and wiktionary. It was a real shock for me.

"Edu Wiki camp: Interactive approach to attracting volunteers" session

The third day’s first session I attended was Snezhana Strkovska's “Outreach in education” again about educational challenges. I was pleased to learn how many educational projects such as Wikiconferences for teachers, Wikicamps, etc. Macedonian Wikimedia has realized. Snezhana introduced Wikimedia Armenia’s experience organising educational projects as a good example for them. I think the best idea Snezhana introduced there was the idea of flyers, or leaflets, that inform what Wikipedia is and what goals it has. The “Edu Wiki camp: Interactive approach to attracting volunteers” came to continue the meeting.

After the break Hanna Petruschat’s session “Wikidata’s magic button” continues the meeting. That was actually a workshop during which we were divided into groups and discussed where we would put Wikidata’s magic button. Then we introduced our posters and concluded our knowledge gained during the three sessions on Wikidata.

That was the last session of Wikimedia CEE 2018 Meeting and after the break we also attended the closing ceremony then we were taken to tour round Lviv and had a chance to learn much about the past and present of the city.

Visits to Artsakh Wikiclubs

On October 19-21 Wikimedia Armenia employees Dato Abuladze, Mher Bekaryan and Armenian Wikipedia editor Vahagn Piliposyan visited three Wikiclubs in Artsakh - Karvachar, Togh and Stepanakert Wikiclubs. In order to make the visits effective all the WikiClub coordinators were asked beforehand what their clubbers were interested in, what they would like to learn from the visitors who could share their experience with them.

The members of Karvachar Wikiclub were especially interested in Wikimedia Armenia's activities, programs and in the policies of free and copyrighted images on Wikipedia.

There was an interesting talk with Togh Wikiclub participants about the motivation of editing in Wikipedia, the common errors in clubbers' articles on Wikimedia projects, and the ways to avoid the latters. Vahagn Piliposyan introduced his younger colleagues his experience of collaborating with Wikimedia Armenia and other Wikimedia organizations.

During the meeting with the clubbers of Stepanakert, another discussion was held about the motivation of editing in the Wikimedia projects, the free and copyrighted images on Wikipedia, as well as frequently encountered errors.

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  Karvachar Wikiclub
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  Togh Wikiclub
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  Stepanakert Wikiclub

WikiClubs coordinators Meeting

On October 27-28, Wikimedia Armenia hosted the second meeting of WikiClub coordinators with 14 WikiClub coordinators and staff members of Wikimedia Armenia. There was a need to arrange such a meeting because in time, various issues and questions relating to the activity of WikiClubs were arisen which should be addressed.

The agenda of the meeting was based on the topics proposed by coordinators, as well as on the analysis of coordinators reports and WikiClub stats.

The main goal of the meeting was to:

1. introduce new coordinators to the experienced one, support sharing of experience and ideas,
2. develop solutions for existing problems,
3. assist coordinators in capacity building, develop new skills,
4. address coordinators concerns about retaining and involving new participants.

Since the clubbers also contribute to Wikisource and Wiktionary, Wikimedia Armenia attaches great importance to the quality content in these Wikimedia projects. The coordinators of the Ddmashen WikiClub Shoghik Stepanyan and Lernapat WikiClub Armenuhi Voskanyan, presented to their colleagues the most common editing tools and mistakes on these projects. The coordinators were very interested in the topic and had lots of questions to address.

In recent times, there are more editathons organized at WikiClubs. Often during these editathons there is a need to upload copyrighted images for fair use. In order to give a final answer to the questions about the usage of copyrighted images and the policies for uploading photos to Wikipedia, the coordinators were introduced to the policies of free and copyrighted images.

With the development of WikiClubs, the coordinators are requested to do more collaborative work. We noticed though, that some of them lack of using online collaborative tools. In order to fill this gap Community Program Coordinator Davit Saroyan presented to the coordinators how to work with online collaboration tools, especially with Google Drive, how to create documents, share with each others, comment, and more.

We expect that with the knowledge and skills gained at one of this meeting sessions, the coordinators will then use storytelling methods and tools more effectively, sharing more success stories and interesting cases with the community. In a special session, the Social Media and Communication Coordinator Dato Abuladze introduced the basics of writing a blog-post. After the sessions, the coordinators played a simulation game using the skills and tools they were introduced to.

The WikiClubs are attended by different age groups each of them requiring unique approaches. The coordinator of Alaverdi WikiClub and psychologist Narine Muradyan introduced the periods in a person’s development and challenges the coordinators may face when working with them. She also presented the common communication and teaching strategies professionals use when working with various age groups.

Lilit Tarkhanyan, the Education Program Coordinator, presented the main principles of working with different copyright sources. She talked about the encyclopedic style and how to transform texts into it. Afterwards, the coordinators used the knowledge to transform sources into encyclopedic style and cite them on Wikipedia.

At the end of the meeting, a group discussion was organized where the Coordinators shared their impressions and discussed common concerns.

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Teachers’ Wikiseminar

The 8th Wikiseminar for the teachers from different regions of Armenia was launched in Tsaghkadzor (October 29 - November 3). This time we had much more applicants (143) out of which the selection committee chose 44 participants.

This seminar was remarkable with the fact that it served a bridge for cooperation between Gyumri WikiClub and teachers working in different schools of Gyumri. The organizers and the coordinator of the newly opened Gyumri WikiClub worked together in finding ways to involve more people in the activities of the club. One of the ways was collaborating with the teachers who later would involve their students in the works of the WikiClub. Thus, the coordinator spread the advertisement of the seminar in Gyumri thanks to which we had a number of applicants. During the seminar the coordinator acquainted with the teachers, exchanged contacts and agreed for further collaboration.

The seminar was accompanied with different discussions on how to use wikiprojects in the curriculum of the school. The teachers actively participated in the group work and shared their ideas. During the seminar we also had a guest - Lusine Grigoryan, a media literacy specialist from Media Initiatives Center, who talked with the seminar participants about different sources, websites, etc, how to differentiate fake and non reliable sources from reliable ones.

At the end of the seminar those teachers who have continued editing on monthly basis since previous seminar, received certifications of gratitude.

	Teachers' Wikiseminar (October 29 - November 3)
	Number of participants	Wikipedia
participants	44
created/improved articles/entries		220
edits		1917
bytes (net sum)		2 145 760

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  Group photo
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  Workshop
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  Workshop
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  Visit to Kecharis Monastery

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  Media literacy seminar

LAMP autumn school visit to WMAM

The last week of October was remarkable for Wikimedia Armenia because of hosting around 40 LAMP autumn school children in our office. They learn about big scientific discoveries, about citizenship, healthy lifestyle, safe internet and etc, during the school and one of their mentors, who is also a Wikipedian, suggested inclusion of Introduction to Wikimedia into their schedule.

We were happy to talk to schoolchildren about Wikimedia movement, Wikipedia and other projects, answer their questions on how Wikipedia was working, how the quality of Wikipedia articles was ensured and etc. They were very enthusiastic about the possibility for everyone to create an article and share knowledge and also that they could find almost everything in Wikimedia Projects. We will continue the cooperation with LAMP school in future and hopefully we will be able to engage editors.

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Submissions in the Newsletters

During October we had submitted only one article to Wikimedia Foundation Education Newsletter. The article tells about one of the active editors from Vanashen WikiClub - Syuzi Yeranyan. This was the first time that the article was written based on the online interview directly carried out by Wikimedia Armenia Social Media and Communication Coordinator - Dato Abuladze with the clubber.

WikiClubs statistics

	Community population (1)	Active users (2)	Active users index (3)	New users	New users index (4)	Female/male ratio	Bytes NET sum (5)	Bytes index (6)
Alaverdi WikiClub*	13100	25	0.191%	2	0.015%	38/14	802956	32118.2
Arevatsag WikiClub	821	39	4.750%	11	1.340%	64/52	192316	4931.2
Gyumri WikiClub* (Khrimyan)	121976	5	0.004%	1	0.001%	17/19	198706	39741.2
Gyumri WikiClub* (KASA)	121976	6	0.005%	0	0.000%	5/7	47504	7917.3
Goris WikiClub*	20300	9	0.044%	4	0.020%	33/6	364100	40455.6
Ddmashen WikiClub	2806	13	0.463%	4	0.143%	36/35	761183	58552.5
Yeghvard WikiGroup	11900	2	0.017%	0	0.000%	18/3	147395	73697.5
Lernapat WikiClub	1661	53	3.191%	30	1.806%	121/130	3544253	66872.7
Koghb WikiClub	4530	16	0.353%	5	0.110%	41/15	232475	14529.7
Hatsik WikiClub	1044	12	1.149%	2	0.192%	19/6	333098	65708.1
Mrgavan WikiClub	1606	13	0.809%	0	0.000%	30/23	255891	19683.9
Spitak WikiClub*	13100	29	0.221%	1	0.008%	26/24	776061	26760.7
Stepanakert WikiClub*	55309	14	0.025%	3	0.005%	161/58	176692	12620.9
Vanashen WikiClub	2364	21	0.000%	0	0.000%	37/7	775195	36914.0
Vardenik WikiClub	9880	30	0.304%	0	0.000%	41/21	310264	10342.1
Togh WikiClub	700	25	3.571%	2	0.286%	42/29	197781	7911.2
Karvachar WikiClub	500	35	7.000%	0	0.000%	47/35	788497	22528.5
NET sum	370473	347	22.099%	65	3.925%		9904367	29122.7
General statistics of the Education program (7)		348					10105565
How many % of the Education program participants are comprised from Wikiclubbers		99.71%					98.01%

1 - Permanent population according to the population census (RA - 2011, NKR -2015)։
2 - Users who has done 1 edit during the month.
3 - Active users/population ratio expressed in %.
4 - New users/population ratio expressed in %.
5 - NET sum bytes added in Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikisource.
6 - NET sum bytes/active users ratio.
7 - Includes also Education program other users.
* - WikiClub established in a city.

Saturday workshops

Every Saturday Wikimedia Armenia organizes open workshops-edit-a-thons at the WMAM office where new editors are taught how to edit different wiki projects. Anyone interested in wiki projects, Wikipedia, wiki editing and needing assistance, as well as wiki editors, who want to edit in pleasant atmosphere participate in these workshops-edit-a-thons.

	Saturday workshops
	October 6	October 13	October 20	October 27
participants	18	8	12	4
created/improved articles	3	0	1	4
edits	25	13	9	18
bytes (net sum)	32864	14760	2633	6055

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  October 6
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  October 13

This month in numbers

0	15789	1173	176	101
articles recorded for the Spoken Wikipedia project	pages digitized for the Digitization project	words pronounced for the Wiktionary project	vital articles improved for the I create a vital article campaign	new editors involved in all projects