Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2012/Brainstorming

Bellow on this page we discuss about specific issues related to the general program of the event. If you would like to share an idea or just to discuss on any of the enclosed topics, don't hesitate to do it.

Program

General overview

I think that meeting should have formal day (with lectures, possibly also given by people from outside Wikimedia projects) and informal day - with discussion panels, workshops etc. Polimerek 14:21, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

This sounds good to me. The next step should be to make a draft schedule, that will help us define how many sessions we'd be having a day.--Kiril Simeonovski 14:51, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Topics

On the wiki there is actually some topics to be taken into consideration:

• shared cultural heritage from the communist era (and in many cases also from way earlier)
• similar legal environment (many EU members or striving to be EU members)
• common copyright problems related to communist era (e. g. orphan images from dissolved organizations)
• NGO sphere underdeveloped, little willingness for donations many languages used only in a single country

Which i guess - can be rephrased to such a detailed topics for agenda:

• shared cultural heritage from the communist era (and in many cases also from way earlier)
• similar legal environment (many EU members or striving to be EU members)
• common copyright problems related to communist era (e. g. orphan images from dissolved organizations)
• NGO sphere underdeveloped, little willingness for donations many languages used only in a single country

Polimerek 14:20, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I also think we should include the idea for "Wiki Exchange" which was already discussed on the meetup in Haifa, and a new project called "Wiki Welcome" that aims to improve the welcoming of newbies on any of the Wikimedia projects by immediate templating their user and discussion page. My impression is that many newbies don't know what to do when they've just registered to the project, and the same worry was mentioned at the Chapters Meeting this year.--Kiril Simeonovski 15:02, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Language issues are actually twofold, and these consider both the movement and content creation.

• First, there are many (mostly?) regional language Wikipedias in CEE, which means we are in a somewhat different situation than those Wikipedias which cover many countries and possibly even different cultures (English, French, Spanish...). If a Wikipedia community is geographically close, it means they also have the responsibility to cover local culture in a different way than "international" Wikipedias would. It is quite natural that Czech Wikipedia, e.g., would have articles on those Czech philosophers English Wikipedia might hesitate to mention.
• Second, CEE is a geographically and linguistically complex area, having many small nations, cultures and languages mixing and overlapping. It is often hard to even identify the same person in different languages, no to talk about the need for a correct transciption of personal and geographical names. To cover a single subject, it is usually necessary to use sources in several languages.

There is also the issue of our history. CEE history is very complex, our national histories are intertwined and for every single event, there are many viewpoints, which are often hardly compatible and sometimes oppose each other. Due to our common past, our history has also a lot of emotional and political issues that need to be considered. If almost every pair of neighbours has a grudge against each other, how do you achieve objective and neutral articles on historical subjects?

I think we could benefit much from a discussion on these themes and exchanging our best practices on managing such complex themes. I don't believe we could unroll all the problems and solutions on this particular CEE Meeting, but we could establish some framework to organize further discussion, maybe arranging some future workshops or creating wikipages for CEE co-operative projects. --Oop 12:29, 4 February 2012 (UTC)