Wikimedia CEE Spring 2015/FAQ

A fragment from picture of Savrasov (A Spring Day), cropped and transformed to a WMCEE Spring header

Idea

.

Plan

FAQ

Questions about the project

What is WMCEE Spring?

WMCEE Spring is a public article competition organised by Wikimedians in the region of Central and Eastern Europe. The idea of the project is to replicate the success stories of Wikipedia collaboration months carried out in the region on a bigger and more comprehensive scale. This means that during a 3 month period (i.e. Spring) article competition will be organised in all relevant Wikipedias and articles will be written about diverse countries and cultures in the region. Such an event does not only increase the actual contentual output of an article competition, but adds to the development the regional wiki-integrity as well.

What is the scope of the project?

During the first edition in 2015 the article competition is limited to Wikimedia Central and Eastern Europe countries. We do hope to organise the competition in all relevant Wikipedias on some level and hope to see articles created about each and every country.

Who is behind the project?

WMCEE Spring is a joint effort of the chapters, user groups and Wikipedia communities in the region. The rolling out of the event was decided on the WMCEE Meeting 2014 in a collaborative manner and the organisation team has expanded ever since. A short overview of contact persons can be found on the contacts page of the event. If your country is not represented in the list, do not hesitate and get involved!

Organisational questions

My country would like to participate. How?

It is a pleasure to see your interest in the competition! The first thing to do, is to add the contact person for your country in the contacts list, which will help us to keep you updated with the project development. Secondly, it is a good idea to start organising the event itself by: 1. creating or developing the article list about your country, 2. estimating a budget for carrying out the competition in your country and securing the funds, 3. appointing a competent jury for evaluation of written articles in your Wikipedia, 4. staying in contact with other contact persons - the collaboration and cooperation is the key to organising large scope event. There are virtual meetings planned for the organising persons and also discussions going on in the mailing list (wmcee-l@tools.wikimedia.pl) and facebook group of Wikimedia CEE. If you are really interested in organising the event, do not hesitate to join us!

What is the use of article lists?

The main idea of the article lists is to inspire competition participants and provide them with ideas for article writing. Sometimes it is very hard to determine where one should begin when writing about another country and article lists are a good solution for providing a starting point. It is also a good opportunity for competition organisers to increase diversity among contributions (e.g. adding articles about notable women in one's country) or make contributing more interesting (e.g. adding article suggestions related to peculiarities of one's country). Generally article lists are a helping tool for contributors and allthough it takes time to create such lists, it is recommended to have one to make it easier for competition participants to write about your country.

Are the article lists limiting the scope of possible contributions?

At the first glance it may seem that article lists are limiting the scope of possible contributions, but usually it is not the case. Provided article lists are there to help people to start contributing to the competition, but their contributions are not limited to the extent of non-exhaustive lists. This means that once people have understood the concept of the competition and are getting more and more acquainted with countries they are writing about, they can explore areas beyond pre-given lists, as long as their contributions are aligned with the general idea of the competition. One of the tasks of the appointed jury will be an evaluation of the relevance of presented articles.

How to keep track of competition participation if contributions are not limited to created article lists?

Although it may seem a bit difficult at first, using user and article registration tables on project pages is a good solution for keeping track of competition contributions (see e.g. Ukrainian-Estonian collaboration week project page). Registration procedure guarantees that user consciously agrees to the participation in the contest and agrees that her/his contributions are related to the event.

How many articles should be included in provisional article lists about one's country?

It is recommended to have at least 100 articles listed and at least 2-3 in each category. Nevertheless, as the article lists are created for inspirational purposes, i.e. to give competition participants ideas what to write about, these article lists can be expanded to provide better overview of relevant topics in one's country. During the list creation process, however, it should be kept in mind that too long lists may have reverse effect, as too many options for article creation make it hard to make a decision what to write about and generally long lists are much harder to navigate.