Wikimedia CEE Hub/Catch up

WIKIMEDIA CEE HUB

Regional hub covering Central and Eastern Europe


WELCOME TO THE WIKIMEDIA CEE HUB

CEE Catch Up is a series of bi-monthly meetings about projects, activities and communities of the CEE region. The initiative is curated by the Wikimedia CEE Hub (staff members) and Wikimedia Foundation’s Movement Communications regional specialist Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska.

Goals

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CEE Catch up initiative is a series of online gatherings which started taking place from March, 2023, focusing on communication in the CEE Region, and between the Region and WMF about major events, meetings, initiatives, or other things, that are happening or will be happening in the region and/or in the Wikimedia movement.

Catch Up organisers in Tallinn (2024)

How to participate?

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Events are open to everyone who's interested in learning about new initiatives across the region and in the Wikimedia movement.

Please register yourself on this separate event page, so you can receive a link for the next event (21st of November, 2024). You can read more details about that below.

List of events

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All times for every event are in CET (UTC+1)

Eighth Catch Up

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Join us at the next CEE Catch up on 21st of November, 2024 at 18:00 CET! This time we will be discussing about sustainability within our Wikimedia projects and Wikimedia events.

We will hear what are the activities of the Wikimedians for Sustainable Development, Kiril will shared some of his insights about sustainability within the movement, and at the end we will hear about the efforts from the Wikimedia Foundation about this topic.

Register on the event page

Seventh Catch Up

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Join us at the next CEE Catch up on June 28th at 6 PM CEST! This time we will be discussing how to use social media to promote Wikimedia projects and Wikimedia events.

We will learn about how different organizations from the CEE region use social media and we will hear from the Wikimedia Foundation about their social media strategy.

Register on the event page

Sixth Catch Up

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The sixth CEE Catch Up was held on 8th of May 2024, 19:00-20:30 CEST. This was the sixth meeting of the Catch Up initiative.

Topic of the upcoming event was Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan for the period 2024-2025, where WMF gave the introduction of the Annual Plan, and then CEE Hub team gave an update of the Year 2 of their Annual Plan. Afterwards, we had more than 20 minutes for Q&A.

Agenda of the sixth CEE Catch Up

Agenda of the sixth CEE Catch Up

Fifth Catch Up

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The fifth CEE Catch Up was held on 26th of February 2024, 18:00-19:00 CET. This was the fifth meeting of the Catch Up initiative.

Topic of the upcoming event was Why the brand is important?, and we will have four various sharers from the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimania 2024 and regional community member.

Agenda of the fifth CEE Catch Up

Agenda of the fifth CEE Catch Up

Agenda
18:00 - 18:02 - Welcome by the organisers
18:02 - 18:04 - Friendly space policy
18:04 - 18:05 - Topic introduction
18:05 - 18:15 - Speaker 1
18:15 - 18:20 - Q&A
18:20 - 18:30 - Speaker 2
18:30 - 18:35 - Q&A
18:35 - 18:45 - Speaker 3
18:45 - 18:55 - Speaker 4
18:55 - 18:57 - Q&A
18:57 - 19:00 - Closing
Report from the fifth Catch Up meeting on 26th of February, 2024

The meeting started on time (18:00 CET) with over 25 participants from the whole CEE Region, and even outside of the region, as the topic was quite interesting for the participants.

You can find a recording of this meeting below.

Welcome and introduction

At the beginning of the meeting, organisers of this initiative CEE Hub staff (Barbara Klen and Toni Ristovski) and Wikimedia Foundation’s Movement Communications regional specialist (Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska) shortly introduced themselves. As Barbara and Natalia had their backgrounds with some designs of the Wikimania 2024, they already announced the topic of this Catch Up with that. Additionally, it continued to explain more into visual identity and brand itself and why is that important. During the session we will had four sharers from different organisations.

At the end of this segment, Toni shared the friendly safe space policy with all of the participants.

Main session

Our sharers for this meeting were following:

  1. Antonino Hemmer, Head of Audience Insights, Wikimedia Foundation
Closing

Fourth Catch Up

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The next CEE Catch Up was held on 16th of November 2023, 18:00-19:30 CET (check your local time). This was the fourth meeting of the Catch Up initiative. This time we discussed Artificial intelligence (AI) tools and its implementation in our everyday work with sharers from the Wikimedia Foundation, and four different CEE communities (Slovenia, Greece, Cyprus, and Poland).

The event had live interpretation to Russian.

Agenda of the fourth CEE Catch Up

Agenda of the fourth CEE Catch Up

Agenda
18:00 - 18:05 - Welcome by the organisers
18:05 - 18:07 - Friendly space policy
18:07 - 18:10 - Topic introduction
18:10 - 18:20 - Speaker 1
18:20 - 18:30 - Q&A
18:30 - 18:40 - Speaker 2
18:40 - 18:45 - Q&A
18:45 - 19:00 - Speakers 3
19:00 - 19:05 - Q&A
19:05 - 19:15 - Speaker 4
19:15 - 19:20 - Q&A
19:20 - 19:30 - Closing
Participants
  1. --V0lkanic (talk) 18:15, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  2. NikosLikomitros (talk) 10:31, 2 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Salgo60 (talk) 19:36, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Report from the fourth Catch Up meeting on 16th of November, 2023

The meeting started on time (18:00 CET) with over 25 participants from the whole CEE Region, and even outside of the region, as the topic was quite interesting for the participants.

You can find a recording of this meeting below.

Welcome and introduction

At the beginning of the meeting, organisers of this initiative CEE Hub staff (Barbara Klen and Toni Ristovski) and Wikimedia Foundation’s Movement Communications regional specialist (Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska) shortly introduced themselves. She explained a little bit for the importance of communication and cooperation with the community, and she announced that during the session we will had an option to use Russian interpretation.

Afterwards, we explained our theme for the meeting which was "Artificial intelligence" (AI) and our five sharers from different organisations.

At the end of this segment, Toni shared the friendly safe space policy with all of the participants.

Main session

Our sharers for this meeting were following:

  1. Maryana Pinchuk, Product Manager in Future Audiences, Wikimedia Foundation
  2. Natalia Ćwik, Executive Director, Wikimedia Poland
  3. Vera Pelhan, editor, Slovenian community
  4. Marios Magioladitis and Anna Prodromou from Greek and Cypriot community

First speaker was Maryana Pinchuk, Product Manager in Future Audiences in the Wikimedia Foundation. She started with the interactive exercise for the participants, and then she started talking for the history of the Artificial intelligence in the movement. Even from the very beginning of the Wikimedia projects, bots and tools were part of it. In 2014, it was launched Content Translation tool, which is widely used by the new editors on the Wikipedia. When ChatGPT was created in November 2022, WMF started working how to implement this new technology, so just nine months later it was introduced Wikipedia plugin for ChatGPT. Then, she shared some slides that AI is a tool, that can be used if AI is human-led, equitable and transparent.

She also mentioned who is working now in the WMF on AI, and main points were building the infrastructure, open model governance and researching ways AI can support existing users. And for the end, she mentioned future ideas, such as: they are working on developing quick experiments, monitoring external trends in AI, and making recommendations for future investments.

Second speaker was Natalia Ćwik, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Poland, and she mainly focused how AI can be used if you work in the organisation, mentioning that they used AI so far for grant writing, social media posts, summary of the notes from the meeting, etc. Also, she mentioned that giving instructions to the AI is not different than giving instructions to the people. At the end, she shared where you can learn more having free seminars from TechSoup and beta versions of the AI assistants.

Third speaker was Vera Pelhan, editor in the Slovenian community, which shared her journey through the daily adventures of a Wikimedian. She shared some of the tools she used in the daily activities on Wikipedia, which helps her like direct sidebar translation and summary of the complex pages.

Last speakers were Marios Magioladitis and Anna Prodromou from Greek and Cypriot community, respectively. Marios started first and he shared some aspect for the AI mentioning AI as the double-edged sword. He especially mentioned AI-generated images and problem that can arise here on the Wikimedia projects, but also he shared some positive aspects from the usage of the AI. At the end, Anna shared some ethical implications of bias connecting with the AI, transparency and user trust.

After every session of the speaker we had a questions from the chat or from the registration forms asked to the speakers.

Closing

At the end, Barbara and Natalia thanked to our sharers, as well to the participants. Additionally, we shared post-survey for the opinions and feedback from the participants.

Third Catch Up

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Third Catch Up was held on 31st of July 2023, 18:00-19:00 CEST, which will be third meeting of this initiative. This time we will discuss Supporting community health with sharers from Human Rights Team, Wikimedia Poland and Wikimedia Ukraine.

Agenda of the third CEE Catch Up

Agenda of the third CEE Catch Up

Agenda
18:00 - 18:02 - Welcome by the organisers
18:02 - 18:10 - Introduction
18:10 - 18:50 - Main session "Supporting community health", where sharers will present their work
18:50 - 19:00 - Updates
Participants
  1. TRistovski-CEEhub (talk) 10:59, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Vyolltsa (talk) 12:16, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Pinky sl (talk) 13:21, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  4. NikosLikomitros (talk) 23:17, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Zblace (talk) 06:08, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Mndetatsin (talk) 11:09, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Umar-askira(talk)
  8. Lebron jay (talk) 14:31, 19 July 2023 (UTC)Lebron jay[reply]
  9. Onwuka Glory (talk) 05:09, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  10. 102.88.36.192 19:56, 19 July 2023 (UTC)Dchanzstar[reply]
  11. Irdiism (talk) 10:46, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Leeturtle (talk) 10:59, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Paulina Studniczka (WMPL) (talk) 23:52, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Mehman (WMGE) 11:40, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Strainu (talk) 17:43, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  16. TohaomgTohaomg (talk) 15:13, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Report from the third Catch Up meeting on 31st of July, 2023

The meeting started on time (18:00 CEST) with over 20 participants from the whole CEE Region.

You can find a recording of this meeting below.

Welcome and introduction

At the beginning of the meeting, organisers of this initiative CEE Hub staff (Barbara Klen and Toni Ristovski) and Wikimedia Foundation’s Movement Communications regional specialist (Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska) shortly introduced themselves. Additionally, Natalia shared the safe space policy with all of the participants. As we wait for all registered participants, we talk about longest editing streak on Wikipedia and recent blog post about editor with the longest streak ever.

Afterwards, we explained our theme for the meeting which was "Community health" and our sharers from three different organisations.

Main session

Our sharers for this meeting were following:

  1. Nicky Deluggi from Human Rights Team
  2. Natalia Ćwik and Paulina Studniczka from Wikimedia Poland
  3. Anton Protsiuk from Wikimedia Ukraine

Nicky shared about plan of the Human Rights Team to set up a separate Meta page which will be Resource Center dedicated to "Mental Health", which often is neglected as a topic in our movement. This page should be published during the August, on which ordinary users can find out advices and information about mental health. As everyone knows, it is not just to create a Meta page, and everyone then to forgot about that page, Human Rights Team will try to promote and to communicate well with all of the users from the movement, this page to be visible, easily findable and to be used whole the time. During the presentation, Nicky shared link where participants from the session can ask questions about this project.

Natalia and Paulina from Wikimedia Poland talk about their new internal policy to develop and implement an anti-mobbing, anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policy and procedure. They went into complete process to organise this, which includes training for the employees. During the creation of the policy they talk with other organisations from the movement as well. Additionally, Wikimedia Poland works a lot to have safer meetings and conferences and they introduce implementation of the Universal code of conduct during their online meetings, as well to in-person activities. They adapt this policy from Wikimedia Germany, as they have proper documentation about this in their own organisation.

Anton from Wikimedia Ukraine talk about impact of the employees and contractors of the Wikimedia Ukraine after Russian invasion of Ukraine. He explains what the war has not changed and what the war has changed of their work and how people feel about Wikipedia even in wartime. He talks a lot about that now it is very hard and unpredictable to organise events and in-person activities, although they are still organising these events, taking a preparations for every possible scenario. He shared also some learnt lessons from dealing such unprecedented event.

Updates

At the end, it was scheduled to have an update for Wikimania 2024 from organisers team (Maciej Nadzikiewicz ), but as we did not have a time, this update will be published on social media channels.

Second Catch Up

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Second Catch Up was held on 16th of May 2023, 18:00-19:00 CEST, which was second meeting of this initiative.

Archived agenda and participants on the second CEE Catch Up

Archived agenda and participants on the second CEE Catch Up

Agenda
18:00 - 18:02 - Welcome by the organisers
18:02 - 18:10 - Introduction
18:10 - 18:50 - Main session, where sharers will present their work
18:50 - 19:00 - Updates
Participants
  1. Barbara Klen
  2. Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska
  3. Toni Ristovski
  4. Klára Joklová
  5. Jan Myšák
  6. Anton Obozhyn
  7. Hanne İsna Sevinç
  8. Yılmaz Caner Özyayıkçı
  9. Vjollca Merdani
  10. Valter
  11. Ilira Pali
  12. Meliza Bodurri
  13. Danjela Hasa
  14. Fatjon Rragami
  15. Mariam Amilakhvari
  16. Klara Sielicka-Baryłka
  17. Jan Beránek
  18. Tadeas Bednarz
  19. Maciej
  20. Patrik L.
  21. Zafir Jovanov
  22. Lucie Schubert
Report from the second Catch Up meeting on 16th of May, 2023

The meeting started on time (18:00 CEST) with over 20 participants from the whole CEE Region.

You can find a recording of this meeting below.

Welcome

At the beginning of the meeting, organisers of this initiative CEE Hub staff (Barbara Klen and Toni Ristovski) and Wikimedia Foundation’s Movement Communications regional specialist (Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska) shortly introduced themselves. Additionally, Natalia shared the safe space policy with all of the participants. Afterwards, the purpose of the session was explained, which was to get to know new young people of the CEE Region and to hear what they do in their countries. The mid/long term goal of this initiative and meeting is to create a cooperation of enthusiastic young Wikipedians and Wikimedias, who want to do something together.

Introduction

All participants were divided into breakout room, where each group could interact and make a short introduction round. After five minutes, everyone returned to the main room and each person was supposed to briefly present one new person they met.

Main session

Main session was organised with a short introduction of the sharers, which were:

  1. Mari Avetisyan from Armenia
  2. Kacper Szymański from Poland
  3. Denis Smajlović from Denmark
  4. Y. Caner Özyayıkçı from Türkiye

During the session, sharers had a chance to talk about following questions:

  1. Tell us a bit about your Wikimedia journey: how did you first engage in Wikipedia and what do you do? (started editing?)
  2. What was your opinion about Wikipedia before you engaged in the activities with the community in your country? What is your opinion now and what would you like to change (new activities/different support)?
  3. What do you think Wikipedia can give to young people? What did you learn since you are part of the Wikipedia/Wikimedia community?
  4. What about international cooperation - how do you see it and what is your experience with it?
  5. WM and newcomers: Do they think WM should be more present on social media in order to attract younger population (How can we use networks to have a better approach)? If not, what channels would they choose?

Every sharer had a chance to answer every question while Toni and Barbara facilitated the order and length of the session. Due to interesting discussion, this part took longer than expected.

Updates

At the end, Barbara invited all participants to sign-up, if they want to become part of the newly formed cooperation, which will be dedicated to WM CEE youth (people up to 26 years).

First Catch Up

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First meeting dedicated to this initiative was held on 21st of March, 2023, which coincided with the first day of the CEE Spring competition 2023.

Archived agenda and participants on the first CEE Catch Up

Archived agenda and participants on the first CEE Catch Up

Agenda
18:00 - 18:10 - Introduction
18:10 - 18:25 - CEE Spring
18:25 - 18:45 - Wikimania 2024 Kraków update and Q&A
18:45 - 18:50 - CEE Meeting update
18:50 - 19:00 - Wiki Loves Earth
Participants
  1. --NSzafran-WMF (talk) 15:36, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  2. --AntonProtsiuk (WMUA) (talk) 15:51, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  3. --K2suvi (talk) 18:55, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  4. --Zblace (talk) 05:41, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  5. --IvanaMadzarevic (talk) 08:34, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  6. --Gorana Gomirac (VMRS) (talk) 09:09, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  7. --Vyolltsa (talk) 11:17, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  8. --TohaomgTohaomg (talk) 12:07, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  9. --Margott (talk) 12:48, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  10. --アンタナナ 18:25, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  11. --– Mehman (WMGE) 00:00, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  12. --OlesiaLukaniuk (WMUA) (talk)
  13. Nadzik (talk) 15:36, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Wojciech Pędzich Talk 16:46, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  15. --reNVoy (user talk) 17:43, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  16. Vovosz
  17. Klara Sielicka-Baryłka (WMPL) (talk) 09:33, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  18. --Jetam2 (talk) 12:36, 17 March 2023 (UTC) (for WMSK)[reply]
  19. --Branimir Pipal (WMF) (talk) 16:11, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  20. --Irdiism (talk) 18:51, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  21. --Ppt91 (talk) 18:58, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  22. --MARKELLOSLeave me a message 11:55, 19 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  23. Klára Joklová (WMCZ) (talk) 10:15, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  24. --KVaidla (WMF) (talk) 16:26, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  25. Jessica Stephenson (WMF), 16:26, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  26. Grzegorz Kopaczewski (WMPL) (talk) 09:59, 21 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  27. --AAkhmedova (WMF) (talk) 11:46, 21 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  28. [[Sadammuhammad11234 (talk) 13:03, 19 July 2023 (UTC)sadammuhammad11234Sadammuhammad11234 (talk) 13:03, 19 July 2023 (UTC)]][reply]
Report from the first Catch Up meeting on 21st of March, 2023

The meeting started on time (18:00 CET) with over 27 participants from the whole CEE Region.

Although this session was planned to be recorded due to our misperception about settings of our Google Meet call, we were not able to record the meeting.

Introduction

Due to the high volume of the participants, only organizers who consisted of two CEE Hub staff (Barbara Klen and Toni Ristovski) and Wikimedia Foundation’s Movement Communications regional specialist (Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska) shortly introduced themselves. Other participants were thereafter invited to present themselves in the chat.

CEE Spring

Short presentation about CEE Spring was given by Toni. Also, some overall statistics about the contest on a global level were discussed, which will be in detail presented in a Diff blog post this week. CEE Spring contest welcomed two new communities (see participants list this year; Aromanian and Western Armenian), therefore others from the CEE Region can write about these small minority communities dispersed throughout the whole CEE Region. Additionally, after many years, we have returnee of Sakha community in the Far East of Russian Federation as a guest community.

Wikimania 2024 Kraków update and Q&A

During the first CEE Catch Up meeting, there was an official announcement that the biggest Wikipedia conference will be held in 2024 in our region, as Krakow submission which was also endorsed by the CEE Hub and many other affiliates from the region, was accepted - next Wikimania 2024 will be held in Krakow, Poland. Maciej Artur Nadzikiewicz as a project leader of the submission for Wikimania 2024 presented all the details known so far, and also presented to the participants all planned next steps during the process of preparation of this conference.

CEE Meeting update

It is planned that the next CEE Meeting will take place in Tbilisi, Georgia in September 2023, therefor on this meeting we had a chance to hear the latest news and updates from the organizer Mehman Ibragimov. In the moment when conference grant proposal will be approved by Wikimedia Foundation (which is expected to happen by April 2023) organizers will open registration forms for eligible participants from all affiliates in the CEE Region, and they will publish open a call for submissions for lectures, presentations or lightning talks for this regional conference which takes place in our region.

Wiki Loves Earth

Barbara informed participants that CEE Hub, along with the working group from Let's Connect team and International Team from Wikimedia Ukraine, is preparing a session dedicated on knowledge exchange between previous and upcoming organizers of the Wiki Loves Earth campaign which will be held on 13th April, 2023. In the upcoming weeks, CEE Hub will work on defining a list of participants and writing guidelines and we plan to send out the registration form for the upcoming event to all potentially interested communities/individuals.

Other

At the end of the meeting, we had some time to discuss other topics. This time was used to discuss more about Let's Connect network and their events and activities.

Sessions documentation

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Meetings will be recorded, so you can find recordings from the meetings here:

  1. due to the technical issues we do not have a recording from the first Catch Up which took place on 21st of March, 2023
  2. Recording from the second Catch Up meeting
  3. Recording from the third Catch Up meeting
  4. Recording from the fourth Catch Up meeting (Passcode: UK6E3.p.)
  5. Recording from the fifth Catch Up meeting (Passcode: +8LKuC4R)
  6. Recording from the sixth Catch Up meeting (Passcode: N2G%.@X&)
  7. Recording from the seventh Catch Up meeting (Passcode: =532NBpX)

Safe space policy for video conferences

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In the collapsed table you can find safe space policy for the these meetings.

Safe space policy for video conferences
Basic rules for all participants
  • Friendliness and mutual respect – contribute to a pleasant atmosphere and a climate of friendliness and fairness. Refrain from statements that are intimidating, degrading, offensive or discriminatory, or that could be understood as such, even if you are talking about non-participants. Threats of violence, incitement to violence and unwanted sexual attention are unacceptable.
  • Openness – Be open for all Wikimedians to participate. Restrictions can be made for organizational or technical reasons. Persons on the Wikimedia Foundation Event Ban list are excluded from participating in the video conference.
  • Identity – Do not attempt to impersonate another person. Do not misrepresent your affiliation with any individual or entity.
  • Privacy – Respect the self chosen degree of anonymity of all participants. Allow participation with audio only (without video). Use the names of the participants, which they themselves indicate in the video conference. If video and/or audio recordings are planned, all participants must be informed of this, including the intended purpose, before the start of the meeting. Still images (screenshots) may only be taken during the video conference with the express consent of all participants concerned.
  • Data protection – Do not collect any personal data of the participants in the context of the video conference. For instance, do not demand that participants send you wikimails or reply to your wikimails. In the case of written notes intended for publication, use quotations that can be individually assigned sparingly and carefully. Never disclose or threaten to disclose private information about a person without explicit consent.
Facilitation
  • Recognizability – The participant in the facilitation role is CEE Hub staff member.
  • Technical role – During the video conference, the facilitator has extended technical rights. This includes the ability to exclude other participants.
  • Social role – The facilitator is expected to support compliance with these rules with his or her extended technical rights and to coordinate additional measures if necessary. The facilitator may take any action to enforce these rules, including excluding participants and terminating the video conference.
Enforcement
  • Personal responsibility – All participants are responsible for compliance with these rules to the best of their ability.
  • Reporting – If you believe that someone else is not following this policy, you have the following options: (1) point out the terms openly, (2) inform only the facilitator (for example, by using the direct chat function) and/or (3) inform the Wikimedia affiliate that offers the respective video conference platform.
  • Consequences – In case of violations, the facilitator can act immediately. The Wikimedia affiliate providing the video conference platform may subsequently exclude participants from funding and a future participation in video conferences as well as, in the case of particularly serious violations, also pass on data to third parties.