Wikimedia Community User Group Kazakhstan

Wikimedia Community User Group Kazakhstan/Header

Wikimedia Community User Group Kazakhstan (kk. Қазақстан Уикимедиа қатысушылар тобы) is a group of people interested in improving Wikimedia projects in the Kazakhstan. The group was founded on November 05, 2023.

Who we are

Previously, in 2011, there was an attempt to create Wikimedia Kazakhstan, but it didn't succeed. Later, at the end of 2019, we decided to choose the language focus instead of the territorial one, so on November 28, 2019, we made an application for User Group status as a language-oriented community. The application was approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Affiliations Committee on March 24, 2020.

The user group of Kazakh-speaking Wikipedians was created for Kazakh-speaking Wikipedians around the world. 20% of Kazakh people live abroad from Kazakhstan. Therefore, there are a lot of Kazakh diasporas in neighboring countries that speak Kazakh: China (1 600 000), Uzbekistan (800 000), Russia (600 000), Mongolia (100 000). The Kazakh Wikipedia has active participants from Russia, Uzbekistan and other countries. One of the administrators of Kazakh Wikipedia is from Russia. One of the winners of Wiki-Spring in Kazakh Wikipedia is from Uzbekistan. Thus, the Wikimedia Community of Kazakh language User Group covers Wikipedians in Kazakh Wikipedia all over the world.

According to statistics, the most viewed Wikipedias in Kazakhstan are Russian (62 %), Kazakh (31.2 %) and English (5.9 %). About 30% of the population of Kazakhstan is not Kazakh people.. So about 70% of viewers and, probably, participants of Wikipedia from Kazakhstan aren't covered by the Wikimedia Community of Kazakh language User Group. According to the latest Kazakhstan population census 2021, 80,1% can speak Kazakh, 83.7 % can speak Russian, 2.5 % can speak Uzbek, 35.15 % can speak English. That is why we need the Wikimedia Kazakhstan user group for them. Wikimedia Kazakhstan will be created for Wikimedians living in Kazakhstan and writing in Kazakh, English, Russian, Uzbek, Uyghur, Tatar and other languages. Our main goal is to establish strong Wikimedia movement in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan has schools with medium of instruction in the following languages: Kazakh, Russian, English, Uzbek, Uyghur, Tajik. Furthermore, many other languages are taught in schools as a subject. Kazakhstan has Kazakh language as the state language and Russian language as the officially used language according to the law.

There is a successful example of language and country user groups for the Albanian language (Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group) and Albania (Wikimedia Community User Group Albania).

In 2023, Chapter Wikimedia Ru submitted for liquidation. In Russia and Belarus, support for Russianwikipedia's organization is difficult. Therefore, this user group will be support for one of the largest active sections of Wikipia -Russian Wikipedia.

We also want to state that we haven't abandoned our efforts to make Wikimedia Kazakhstan chapter to provide support for Wikimedians in Kazakhstan in all languages. After establishing the country affiliate, we will continue working on different projects to improve representation of the Wikimedia ecosystem in Kazakhstan.

The User group will support multilingual projects such as Wikimedia Commons, and conduct multilingual projects such as Wiki Loves Earth Kazakhstan, Wiki Loves Monuments Kazakhstan, etc.

Contact persons

1. Aidyn93 — co-founder, dedicated contact for Wikimedia Foundation.
2. Amangeldi Mukhamejan — co-founder, dedicated contact for Wikimedia Foundation.
3. Madi Dos — co-founder, dedicated contact for Wikimedia Foundation.

Interested in participating

1. --Kaiyr (talk) 16:51, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
2. Красный^{wanna talk?} 18:20, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
3. Written by TakingOver // Talk // Contributions 09:21, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
4. --Mardetanha (talk) 09:32, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
5. --Il Nur (talk) 10:19, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
6. --talgautb (talk) 12:00, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Join us