Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Shared Knowledge/August 2017

SHARED KNOWLEDGE
Activity report

August 2017

WikiWine and Macedonian spirits edit

On 24 August, we have started our first phase of the project WikiWine and other spirits, whereas we visited the biggest winery in Strumica region „Grozd Strumica“ in southeastern Macedonia. We had opportunity to make photos of different variety of wines, as Muscat, Chardone, Vranec and the famous Macedonian spirit „Mastika“, that is special and most renown product of this winery which is famous throughout Macedonia and the Balkans. On this visit we had 4 participants: Иван Ж, Македонец, Тивериополник and Kiril Simeonovski. The project will continue during the grape harvesting and autumn months with visit of several other wineries and distilleries.

Veloexpedition in Ǵavat-Kol edit

Second weekend in August 2017, user Ehrlich91 along with four other cyclists headed to the area Ǵavat-Kol, small remote area with villages around Bitola, second most populous town in Macedonia. Area contained various villages that has no single photograph on Wikimedia Commons, and that was main purpose of the first organized group Veloexpedition to take images from small villages, old churches and nature beauties.

 
Group photo of the participants in first organized Veloexpedition in Macedonia

In the morning on August 12th, the group headed with their car to Bitola. After three hours and the breakfast in the hotel, we started our Veloexpedition. After one hour of cycling in first village, Srpci. Our main aim was to make panoramic photos of the villages, important social and religious buildings, architecture in the villages, and all other natural rarities. That was the pattern for the all seven villages visited during the veloexpedition where the highest point reached on this Veloexpedition was the old well known village of Gopeš, where the participants found the St. Transfiguration Church, which is protected cultural monument. Although, the participants hadn`t chance to take a photographs of the interior of this church, as was closed in the vicinity of the village, they explored two churches, that were not mentioned in data collected from various sources. Then, the expedition headed to the displaced villages Svinjište and Streževo. In the village Svinjište we discovered a preserved St. George Church, a remnant of the former village, which was not mentioned in the official list of religious buildings of Commission for religions in Macedonia. Although we have other plans for the route, after the cyclist reach out Lake Streževo, as they cannot ride back to the village Gopeš, they have to ride along the coast of the artificial lake Strezevo. In the end, we have to change whole route of our first day of the Veloexpedition.

On August 13th (second day), participants wanted to visit Great Pelister Lake, but due to the cold foggy weather (with only 6 degrees) they were forced to go back to the hotel. But, they still took some images during our ride from specific Molika trees on this mountain and "stone rivers" which are specific natural and geological features of the Pelister National Park and Macedonia.

During this veloexpedtition were visited and photographed seven different villages, along with many churches and other cultural and natural sights which resulted in 82 uploaded distinct photographs on Wikimedia Commons from two participants on the Veloexpedition.

Considering the fact that this was our first extraordinary well and successfully realized Veloexpedition with an organized and well prepared group of cyclist the report was also published on Wikimedia's community digest blog from where we hope that will serve and help in organizing similar type of Veloexpeditions in other countries and chapters of Wikimedia around the world.

UEFA Super Cup edit

On 8th of August, Skopje was the host of the UEFA Super Cup 2017 final match between Real Madrid and Manchester United that has been played on the National Telekom Arena Phillip II of Macedon Stadium. Our member, Mario Šarevski (User:Македонец) have attended the match and thus had the chance to made several unique images of the game and the world's best football players such as Christiano Ronaldo, Sergio Ramos, Gareth Bale etc. Real Madrid won the game with the 2:1 result while we contributed with 18 single and unique photograph of this match which were used for creation and improvement of several football-related articles on Macedonian Wikipedia.

Editing contest on the topic of Africa edit

 
Granting second award for Editing competition 2, organize by Shared Knowledge

From 19 June until 18 July, we organize our second editing competition this year, on the topic of Africa where 5 participants have created and improved 135 articles on different variety of African topics such as geography, sport, culture, history, etc. The first place was User:Тивериополник, who has an outstanding score of 106 articles edited.

Wikimania 2017 edit

The Chair of the Executive Board Kiril Simeonovski and the board member Cvetko Nedelkovski participated on Wikimania 2017, which took place in Montréal from 11-13 August, as well as on the Learning Days of the pre-conference programme from 9-10 August. The conference was, in particular, a very good opportunity to get more insights about the movement strategy process, the future collaboration within Wikimedia Central and Eastern Europe, the future cross-wiki collaborations with other communities and the most interesting projects of the other Wikimedia affiliates. Kiril Simeonovski has also been one of the moderators in the session on the topic "Growing a User Group, a roadmap for survival", which consisted of a brief introduction to all attendees and a workshop with three working groups discussing on three different topics, where he facilitated a group discussion on building the community. The group discussion allowed our represenatives to share the experience of our organisation regarding community building and it was also useful in getting opinions from the people participating in the discussion who were representing very diverse communities.