Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2016/Needs

This page is for listing inputs, ideas, questions and needs in order to understand what Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) community members expect from the CEE Meeting 2016, Armenia and to shape the basis of the meeting's agenda and talks. The same survey was conducted before previous CEE Meetings in Ukraine and Estonia.

The core of the future meeting is sharing & learning, which happens in the form of:

sharing learnings from different (successful and unsuccessful) practices in the region;
practical workshops of projects and different tools;
sharing projects that can be done with relatively low financial input;
collaborative work on future collaboration projects.

Thus, your input for the conference programme is to list:

Valuable learnings: present an overview of a valuable learning you want to share with WMCEE group;
Tools: name the tools that are most useful in your work and which could be useful for others in the region; share if there are tools that would be useful (maybe they can be developed?);
Low-cost project from the community: please feature a low-cost project from your community.

Please, also list:

Your program's strengths or what you are doing well. You can list here current, ongoing, and planned projects, etc.
Your program's weaknesses or what you could use help with. You can list here the projects you were going to do, or stopped doing, etc.
Anything your program needs, anything your program lacks.
Any questions you have that such a meeting might answer.
And who from your organisation/community may be interested in attending the conference.

Albania

Input for the conference programme:
- Valuable learnings:

Grants. Since we are in grants applications, learning about grants had a big impact on our community.
Organizing international and regional project (WLM, WLE and CEE spring) as User Group.

- Tools:

Evaluation of Wikipedia Weekend in Tirana 2015 using Wikimetrics
Content translation useful tool that has helped users to translate articles faster
AutoWikiBrowser

- Low-cost project:
Strengths (or what you are doing well):
Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): small community, retaining new volunteers
Needs:
Questions: Interested to learn more about educational projects, and introduction wiki to universities
Interested in attending:

--Liridon (talk) 07:28, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Armenia

Austria

Azerbaijan

Input for the conference programme: Better understanding of sister projects and
- Valuable learnings: sharing education experience in different levels
- Tools:
- Low-cost project: edit-a-thons
Strengths (or what you are doing well): experiences with local governmental institutes, healthy community, irregular meetings and healthy community
'Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): small community involvement, better connection with students and universities, awareness about WMF projects should be better
'Needs: financial support for different projects, possible language converter
Questions:
Interested in attending: Mardetanha ^talk 14:13, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Belarus

Input for the conference programme:
- Valuable learnings: Survey how Belarusian people understand Wikipedia and what they want in it
- Tools: Additional servers will help with WikiProject Orphanage
- Low-cost project: "Help for new wikipedians" Вікіпедыя:Вікідапаможнік, Wiki-expedition (fusion with work shops) for pupils.
Strengths (or what you are doing well):
- Orphanage,
- Taxonomy (need help with template writing),
- Belarusian human settlements,
- zero budget activities
Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
- Small community,
- retaining new volunteers,
- complex relations between two language branches,
- russification
Needs:
- international wiki-ambasadors exchange
- community developing planning
- technical meetups (templates, bots)
Questions: interested to know your experience
Interested in attending: --Artificial123 (talk) 14:21, 29 April 2016 (UTC), --Svetit (talk) 16:50, 24 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Republika Srpska

Input for the conference programme:
- Valuable learnings:
  - Wikimedia Community of the Republic of Srpska organized a conference in East Sarajevo, 16th of January 2016: Wikimedia Start Republika Srpska 2016
  - Organized 9 editing workshops, 2 presentations and 1 seminar.
  - 3 photo projects, including photo competition Traces of Soul
  - 5 radio interviews, 10 TV appearances and about 80 media titles
  - Wikimedia Community of the Republic of Srpska has been working on creation of more streamlined and clear structure, with community bodies necessary for further improvement of the community and its upgrade to the next level.
- Tools:
  - None
- Low-cost project:
  - Editing workshop in municipality of East New Sarajevo, Notable Serbs of Sarajevo
  - Editing workshop in municipality of Sokolac, Editing workshop in Sokolac College of Business Assistance
Strengths (or what you are doing well):
- High level of self-initiative with good communication between community members.
- Dedication to work on Wikimedia projects and wish to improve upon the existing condition of the community and our local Wikipedia.
- Expressed interest in constant education, improvement and cooperation with other communities, local and global.
- Significant part of the community are educated and academic citizens who are interested in creation of firm foundations for productive and stable organization on the level of the Republic of Srpska.
- Organizing photo competitions and editing workshops.
- Cooperation with GLAM institutions.
Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
- Transitional nature of a developing country with high percentage of unemployment, low wages and low interest from the populace hampers the development of the community.
- Volunteers' engagement and lack of motivation.
- Its difficult to locate domestic partners interested in financial support of the community projects.
- Troublesome and poor internet connection, especially in more rural areas.
Needs:
- Stable source of income for more efficient work of the organization and community projects.
- Wider volunteer community with higher level of motivation.
- Further improvement of cooperation with local institutions and government and non-government organizations.
- Development of cooperation with other Chapters and communities.
Questions:
- None
Interested in attending: Ljubiša Malenica (talk) 18:19, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina

...

Bulgaria

Croatia

Cyprus

Input for the conference programme:
- Valuable learnings:
- Tools:
- Low-cost project:
Strengths (or what you are doing well):
Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
Needs:
Questions:
Interested in attending:

Czech Republic

Estonia

Georgia

Input for the conference programme:
- Valuable learnings: How to cooperate with governmental institutions and commercial organizations.
- Tools:
- Low-cost project: Education program in Universities and in schools.
Strengths (or what you are doing well): Social media activities, project of the month.
Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): Small community, lack of volunteers.
Needs: Engaging more volunteers, human resources.
Questions:
Interested in attending:

David1010, Jaba1977, MIKHEIL, BRUTE. Need scholarship.

Germany

Input for the conference programme:
- Proposed Talks by Gereon K.: Talking to the press. What the press wants from Wikipedia and how to represent Wikipedia in interviews & An affordable and successful way to get new editors and to create new content: Single Subject Writing Weeks
- Valuable learnings: How to make conferences more productive, effective and sustainable;
- Tools: the Attribution Generator that helps to create correct license attributions for pictures from Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia
- Low-cost project: "Single Subject Writing Weeks"
Strengths (or what you are doing well): How to interact with big communities; How to manage huge resources; How to write grant proposals
Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): We don't know how to retain users in the German-speaking Wikimedia community and we still try to find the best way to do so.
Needs: I (Cornelius) would love to see CEE chapters and groups taking part in Movement Strategy discussions. Let's discuss how to integrate CEE communities better in these.
Questions: n/a
Interested in attending: Gereon K. + Cornelius Kibelka (WMDE)

Greece

Input for the conference programme:
- Valuable learnings:
  - Wikimedia Community User Group Greece organized European Science Photo Competition 2015.
  - Wikimedia Community User Group Greece is organizing Wiki Loves Earth 2016 in Greece.
  - Wikimedia Community User Group Greece participated in Fosscomm 2015
- Tools:
  - Autowikibrowser - a member of the group is developer of Autowikibrowser and as a group we worked on customising it in our local Wikipedia..
- Low-cost project:
  - Adult Education program in Universities
  - Organised gender gap editathons
Strengths (or what you are doing well):

Organizing (photo and article) competitions;
Gender gap related activities
GLAM cooperation

Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):

Diverge community
Onwiki conflicts with impact on outreach activities
Small community and offline volunteer base

Needs:

Time and human resources management (avoid burn out)
Engaging and retaining volunteer participants

Questions:

Regional collaboration. How can it be achieved?

Interested in attending:
- Yes, 2 representatives (Magioladitis and Glavkos; need scholarship)

Input for the conference programme:
- Valuable learnings:
  - Wikipedia and Education fused together by following UNESCO principles
  - "Wikitherapy" Pilot engaging mentally-ill patients to edit the Wikimedia Projects successfully run as an IEG at the Argostoli Mental Health Center
- Tools:
- Low-cost project:
  - Run Wikipedia School courses 4 times/week (average course time = 3 hours) voluntarily, Sep-Dec 2015 & March-May 2016
  - Skype courses
Strengths (or what you are doing well):
- Editor retention
- Gender gap
- Senior citizens engagement
- Special people engagement
- Diversity: adult students, minorities, morning school students and mentally-ill patients joined forces in an outreach event
- Teaching educators how to use Wikipedia as a teaching and pedagogical tool
- Successfully resisting moral harassment as Wikipedia School
- Eliminating new users biting from old users
- Healthy community with live participation in editathons
- Healthy community gatherings
- Building an association (user group with a legal entity)
- Bonds with voluntarism, our tank of editors
Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
- Move Wikipedia Schools closer to easy transportation
- Editor retention of university students
Needs:
- CRM, from willing for participation to completing the courses
- DB to track learners' leafage of wikiediting knowledge
Questions:
- -
Interested in attending:
- --Laertis333 (talk) (need scholarship)

Hungary

Kazakhstan

Latvia

Input for the conference programme:
- Valuable learnings:
  - CEE Spring local organizer experience;
  - Wikidata knowledge in general;
  - WLX lists migration to Wikidata
- Tools:
  - Involved in development of Wikidata Module:Cycling race (generates cycling race infobox, list of historic results, team roster)
  - Generated list of missing articles by interwiki (source code)
  - Scraping HTML pages, extracting information for semi-automatic article creation.
- Low-cost project:
  - Photographing and illustrating articles about streets in the capital (Riga).
Strengths (or what you are doing well):
- Healthy community with no serious incidents.
Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
- Small community and offline volunteer base;
- Gender/diversity gap (still);
- Low understanding of free licences in general public.
Needs:
- Some project management training would be useful
- Best practices for editing workshops
Questions:
- How to establish ongoing communication with government/cultural/educational institutions?
Interested in attending:
- Yes, 2 representatives (need scholarship)

Lithuania

Input for the conference programme:
- Valuable learnings:
- Tools:
- Low-cost project:
Strengths (or what you are doing well):
- Continuous improvement of quality of Wikipedia articles;
- Increase of visual content in Lithuanian Wikipedia;
- Great organization of local weekly and monthly competitions;
- Good and increasing usage of Modules and Wikidata project;
Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
- Big issues of vandalism;
- Small community and problems while retaining new volunteers;
- Lots of generated and empty content (like articles about football clubs, villages and years);
- No contacts with libraries and universities;
- There are more administrators than volunteers in all wikiprojects;
- Gender gap.
Needs:
- Tips & Tricks for time and project management in Wikipedia;
- Simple guides how to completely localize and customize wikiproject;
- Reduce the size of Technical news;
- More tools for Wikidata and translation.
Questions:
- How to start using digital archives?
Interested in attending:

Macedonia

Input for the conference programme:
- Valuable learnings: strong research and exploration approach (expeditions, editing events, Wikimedian-in-Residence), institutional collaborations
- Tools: Category Master (from our Bulgarian friends); chunked uploads on Commons (for "big" photographs and videos from various projects); glamorous (for results)
- Low-cost project: Photohunts
Strengths (or what you are doing well): result measurement, various forms of reporting
Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): engaging and retaining volunteer participants
Needs: various tools (article counter, result measurement, technical support)
Questions: none
Interested in attending: Yes

Moldova

Input for the conference programme:
- Valuable learnings:
  - How to create wiki-awareness in a country where people refuse *free* tickets to theatre. FREE, Karl!
  - How to administer a Facebook page. Are ads useful?
  - Communicating with press
- Tools: (none)
- Low-cost project:
Strengths (or what you are doing well):
- Making Wikipedia known in Moldova beyond its direct use of a simple internet resource
Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
- Little community involvement, both from organisation side and from participation side.
Needs:
- Resources are needed. Wikipedians are a scarce resource in both Romania and Moldova.
Questions:
- How to make wiki workshops attractive for students?
Interested in attending:
- Gikü (talk)

Montenegro

Input for the conference programme:
- Valuable learnings:
- Tools:
- Low-cost project:
Strengths (or what you are doing well):
Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
Needs:
Questions:
Interested in attending:

Poland

Romania

Input for the conference programme:
- Valuable learnings: lightning talk about why T-shirts are the best promotional materials
- Tools: using EventLogging for polls
- Low-cost project:
Strengths (or what you are doing well):
- We're actively involved in shaping the software use don our wiki (be it Visual Editor or other tools)
- We're starting to see some traction on the WikiMed project as well (remains to be seen if the local community can complement/add value to what the international team is doing)
Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
- Very low involvement from the community in out-of-wiki activities
- low regeneration of editor base
Needs:
Questions:
Interested in attending:
- Strainu (talk)

Russia

Serbia

Slovakia

See also: Wikimedia Slovenská republika

Input for the conference programme:
- Valuable learnings:
  - (not) collaborating with cities
- Tools:
  - Copyvio Watchdog - tool to check and list possible copyvios
- Low-cost project:
Strengths (or what you are doing well):
- financial donations from public
- contacts with like-minded organisations and movements (and, in beginning, with national institutions)
- (not perfect, but good) organising on-wiki competitions
Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
- small group, not enough volunteers for all projects or some big one again
- communications and relations to public, to local communities and to members
- bridging the existing online community with offline actitivies
Needs:
- human resources
- better planning and coordination (of organisation work and projects)
Questions:
Interested in attending:
1. (also activist of Esperanto kaj Libera Scio) KuboF (talk) 22:15, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
2. --Jetam2 (talk) 15:41, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
3. --Akdar (talk) 21:18, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
4. --Lišiak (talk) 14:39, 13 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Slovenia

Turkey

Input for the conference programme:
- Valuable learnings:

Lessons learned from the first Wikipedia Education Program of Turkey held in Uludag Universtiy, Bursa at undergratudate, graduate and doctorate levels.
GLAM cooperation with Pera Museum and applying of Wikipedia QR codes in Turkey for the first time.

- Tools:
- Low-cost project:

CEE Spring competition (by providing prizes from local sponsors)

Strengths (or what you are doing well):
Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): Lack of regular meetings of community members
Needs: Raising awareness in Turkey about that Wikipedia is not only a source of knowledge but also way of sharing knowledge and encouraging larger number of people to contribute.
Questions: How to effectively use education materials available at outreach. How to motivate instructors to get involved in education programs.
Interested in attending: Basak, Rapsar. Need scholarship.

Ukraine

User Groups (not country based)

Bashkortostan

Input for the conference programme:
- Valuable learnings: Изучение опыта работы коллег из других стран, в частности нам интерсен опыт армянских коллег по проведению летнего лагеря для молодежи.

en: Studying experience from the collegues from other countries, especially we are interested in Armenian experience about Wikicamp

- Tools:
- Low-cost project:
Strengths (or what you are doing well): Вики-Сабантуй 2015, Вики-Семинар 2016 в Янгантау. Последовательно формируется сплоченное сообщество башкирских волонтеров. Организационная и финансовая поддержка со стороны "Фонда Викимедиа" и НП "Викимедиа РУ". Информационная поддержка со стороны главного информационного агентства Республики Башкортостан - ИА "Башинформ".
Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): Нет активного участника/волонтера, владеющего свободно английским языком. Нет знаний, как можно посетить Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2016 и другие международные мероприятия. Нет собственного источника финансирования для полноценной реализации планируемых мероприятий. We need Enlish translator.
Needs:
Questions:
Interested in attending: Есть желание направить на Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2016 делегацию из 2-3 башкирских волонтеров, если такое количество возможно. Для связи мой емайл rnuriev1 gmail.com, C уважением, --Рөстәм Нурыев (talk) 16:07, 24 April 2016 (UTC).[reply]
- Хотят ехать YANBEK, Borovi4ok/Borovi4ok. Рөстәм Нурыев (talk) 18:10, 25 April 2016 (UTC) (Need scholarship).[reply]
- Hello, I am also interested in attending. Need a scholarship to travel. Borovi4ok/Borovi4ok (talk) 14:53, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I hereby confirm that YANBEK and Borovi4ok are the representatives of the Wikimedians of Bashkortostan User Group. --Рөстәм Нурыев (talk) 11:10, 14 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Esperanto

Wiki Project Med

Wikisource Community User Group

Input for the conference programme:
- Valuable learnings:
- Tools:
- Low-cost project:
Strengths (or what you are doing well):
Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
Needs:
Questions:
Interested in attending:

Collaborative translations: documentation, software, content