Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimédia Magyarország/2011 Activity Report

Activities of public utility

Summary

The association, just as in previous years, has conducted a wide range of activities in 2011, most important of these:

• competitions to expand free content and enable the preservation of our cultural heritage;
• presentations, workshops about Wikipedia and its sister projects;
• meetups organized to support the work of and motivate the volunteer editor community and to maintain contact with the international community;
• organized a major conference to enhance the social acceptance of Wikipedia and participated at an exhibition to showcase the Wikimedia-projects;
• issues press releases, gave interviews, maintained a website, blog and social channels (Facebook, Twitter, Google+) to provide information about its activities and projects;
• to improve and expand its activities, the association's activists participated in a number of trainings (about organizational development, fundraising), a high-performance server and other equipment (projector, screen, rollup) was purchased, a number of informational booklets were created and published, numerous merchandise and give-away gifts were produced, and at the end of the year the first employee was hired;
• several partnership agreements were signed and collaboration opportunities developed with local and international organizations, companies and government agencies.

Our activities

Competitions, grants

Wiki Loves Monuments

The most popular among 2011 competitions was the international Wiki Loves Monuments photo competition, which aimed to promote the preservation and presentation of Europe's cultural heritage.

During the competition participants took photographs of buildings designated nationally protected monuments and published them under a free licence. The initiative was internationally supported by the Council of Europe, the European Commission, the European Digital Library, the Carare project and Europa Nostra.

The awards of the photo contest were offered by Wikimedia Hungary, the monuments database was provided by the National Office of Cultural Heritage, the photo-sharing partner was Indafotó.

A record 170 thousand entries were submitted in the international contest, including over 5000 photographs of monuments in Hungary. The best Hungarian pictures stood their ground in the international competition, the special prize for Art Nouveau pictures was awarded to a egy Hungarian picture.

Travel grants

In 2011 two travel grants were awarded by the association.

We provided a scholarship to NaTToMi, an Open Street Map editor to participate in the State of the Map Europe conference in Wien. NaTToMi has published a detailed report of his participation.

In addition we have provided one partial scholarship for participation in the Wikimania conference, the annual international conference of the Wikimedia community, held in Haifa in 2011.

Reimbursement grant programme

The oldest, continuously operating grant programme of the association is the reimbursement grants', which support smaller costs connected to Wikipedia articles, thereby supporting the creation and growth of articles and new content.

The programme has received and awarded one application in 2011 from the user nicknamed Bináris, whose bot has corrected tens of thousands of errors on Wikipedia, and who has requested support to buy a book on Hungarian orthography to improve his work.

Presentations

In 2011, the following lectures were held:

• In January at the "Ten Years of Wikipedia" conference, our association's president held a lecture entitled "The new ways of human knowledge".
• During February we held two lectures at Eötvös Lóránd University (ELTE), one to students of linguistics, and the other for students majorind in editorial studies.
• In April we held a presentation for 7-9th grade students of the ELTE Apáczai Csere János Gyakorlógimnázium és Kollégium, and at the Faculty of Humanities at the Saint Stephen University, to library studies students, and finally for students at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME).
• In June we held presentations at the Károly Kisfaludy County Library for local librarians on the history, editor community, operation and use of Wikipedia.
• Also in June, one of our members and his colleague presented to interested members and Wikipedians about MTA SZTAKI's Wikipedia related Sztakipedia project, its development, status and future plans. This software complements the MediaWiki interface with a tool that helps editors automatically choose and insert categories, internal and external links, and citations.
• In July, as part of the 2nd Wikicamp, four members of our association gave lectures about topics related to Wikipedia and its sister projects.
• In October, we held a full-day encyclopedia writing workshop at the ELTE dormitory on Vezér Road to the members of the Wikiproject Sustainability, and a university lecture for students of Media&Communication Studies at BME.
• In November, we returned to ELTE and gave a presentation about copyrights and editing Wikipedia to students of andragogy.

The presentations had varying audiences, the average audience consisted of 40 to 50 people.

Meetups, gatherings

Members of Wikimedia projects and the association typically communicate online; however, in person meetups can greatly increase the efficiency of working together.

In 2011, two bigger editor meetups were held: in January following the "Ten Years of Wikipedia" conference a less formal celebration in Budapest, and a festive meetup on October 1 in Győr following the Hungarian Wikipedia's reaching 200 thousand articles.

During the year (in addition to the board meetings) a number of association meetings were held, usually to discuss a specific upcoming event or project. A smaller editors' Kisebb szerkesztői meetup was held in November to coincide with the Budapest visit of Josh Lim, a Wikipedian from the Philippines.

Board meetings

The board of the association held meetings on the following dates:

• January 5, 2011
• February 12, 2012 (no quorum)
• April 4, 2011
• June 25, 2011 (e-voting)
• August 29, 2011

Further important (small-scale) association meetups were held as part and in preparation of the organizational development workshop .

General Assembly

In 2011, the two general assemblies were held on the following dates:

• June 25, 2011
• September 25, 2011

The June assembly approved the 2010 public utility report, elected a new treasurer, amended the association's bylaws by establishing a supervisory committee and expanding the right to represent the association to the executive vice-president.

The September assembly has approved the 2012 Annual Plan, elected the supervisory committee, and modified the association's headquarters and the rules governing membership fees.

WikiCamp

In 2011 we organized aWikiCamp, a multi-day meetup with organized activities throughout the day, for the second time. Between July 14 and 17 Miskolc hosted the camp. Camp goers participated in guided tours (of Miskolc, Eger and its surroundings), visits to museums, exhibitions and churches, forest excursions, wine tasting, as well as interesting presentations.

Berlin chapters meeting

This year, as is usual, two members of our association represented us at Berlin Chapter Conference, the annual meeting of Wikimedia organizations, held between March 25 and 28. The main purpose of the meeting is the exchange of experiences between the international organizations and the presentation of common projects (such as Wiki Loves Monuments, which was also organized in Hungary). The programme of the 2011 conference was designed by Bence Damokos, the vice-president of our association.

Wikimania

The biggest annual event of the Wikimedia movement, Wikimania was organized in Haifa in 2011. More than 700 editors from 56 countries participated in the meeting organized in the first week of August. The Hungarian Wikipedia was represented by six to eight people, one of whose participation was possible due to the support provided by our association.

PR events

"Ten years of Wikipedia" conference

On January 15, 2011 Wikimedia Hungary has organized a conference on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the English language Wikipedia. The aim of the conference was to increase the social embeddedness and acceptance of Wikipedia among members of education, academia and media.

The conference was held in Building F of the Buda Royal Castel, in the grand hall of the National Széchényi Library in front of 150 guests. The conference was opened by Szilveszter E. Vizi, former president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, followed by a video welcome by Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, and a keynote by Frank Schulenburg, Head of Public Outreach of the Wikimedia Foundation.

This was followed by a section with three interesting presentations (Péter Gervai, president of Wikimedia Hungary and founder of the Hungarian Wikipedia, Mária Ludassy, philosopher, university professor, and Tamás Vicsek, biophysicist, university professor, member of the Academy) and a round-table discussion (Vilmos Csányi, ethologist, author, university professor, member of the Academy; Endre Kiss, philosopher, university professor, Tamás Lattmann, international lawyer, assistant professor).

The conference was followed by a press discussion, and an all-evening Wikimeetup, concluding the day with cake and presents for the editors. The event received considerable media attention and is one of the most successful of our events so far. The full content of the lectures and debates and images and video taken at the event are available to everyone.

200K

The next milestone in the history of the Hungarian Wikipedia after reaching 100 thousand articles in July 2008 was the 200-thousand article milestone. Preparation to celebrate and communicate this has started weeks before the event: acelebratory logo, banner, landing page, press release and blog post was created, and to celebrate the event a festive editors meetup was organized on October 1 in Győr, with quizzesgive-aways and cake.

In the end, thanks to the hard work of the editors the milestone on the Hungarian Wikipedia was reached on September 10, a few days before expected. The event garnered a significant media presence (eg. techline.hu, index.hu, nyest.hu, hirado.hu) and the meetup was a great success among the editors.

Free software conference and exhibition

At the invitation of the organizers, the association participated as an exhibitor at the [http://konf.fsf.hu/cgis/ossc Free Software Conference 2011 held on November 12, 2011 at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. We arrived at the exhibition with informational material about MediaWiki, Semantic MediaWiki, Translatewiki, Wikipedia and the Wikimedia community; rollups promoting Wikipedia and Wikimedia Hungary, accompanied by the best technical oriented editors of the Hungarian Wikipedia community.

Media presence

Press releases

The press releases issued in 2011:

• Ten million free pictures on Wikipedia sister project – April 16, 2011
• Cooperation Agreement with Arcanum Database Publishing – April 18, 2011
• Hungarian Wikipedia has reached 200 thousand articles – September 10, 2011

Interviews

• Nyugat Radio, Szombathely – January 13, 2011
• Lánchíd Radio – January 13, 2011
• Heti Válasz – January 14, 2011
• Kossuth Radio – January 18, 2011
• MR6 radio – June 22, 2011

Online presence

• Our association maintains a public website and an internal wiki open to members.
• We regularly blog on the common blog of the Hungarian Wikipedia, its sister projects and Wikimedia Hungary.
• The association is present on a number of social networking sites: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, Identi.ca.
• A number of media, websites and blogs devote attention to news about our association, the Wikimedia movement, and projects.

Organizational Development

Organizational development training

In 2011, our association participated in an organizational development training, sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation. The first part of the training was lead by Anna Royon-Wiegelt on January 16 and included an assessment of the past and present of the association, as well as the most important actual challenges. The second part took place over a weekend of September 17-18, lead by Sebastian Moleski, the president of the German chapter, and its object was to plan the future of the association, establishing concrete goals for the coming period. The training contributed effectively to the organization's operational efficiency and to compiling the 2012 programme plan and budget.

Trainings connected to fundraising

In addition to the organizational development training, a few members of our association participated in two training events in June in order to make the association's fundraising more efficient:

• Fundraising training in Budapest organized by the Foundation for Development of Democratic Rights lead by Liam Cranley;
• Fundraising Summit organized in Vienna for Wikimedia organizations.

Due to a later decision our association did not directly collect donations in 2011; nevertheless, the courses help us in guiding our contact and communication with donors.

Toolserver

The highest value acquisition of the association in 2011 was the purchase of our own server, made possible by the 2010 grant of the Council of Internet Providers (ISZT). The server will serve as a toolserver, allowing its users to run tasks supporting Wikipedia's operation such as:

• running bots;
• running database queries;
• displaying the results of database queries online;
• conducting background research, analyses, and tests.

The server was chosen in the autumn of 2010 after the grant was awarded and transferred, however, the delivery of the order has taken place only in February 2011.

The selection of the hosting company, the signing of the agreement and the installation of the server took place in April-May (the first two years of hosting are also covered by the grant of ISZT).

The first project run on the server was the Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest in September and October. Bot owners of Wikipedia started to use the server in December.

Equipment

During 2011 the association purchased a number of tools to facilitate its activities. In June, a proejector and a projection screen was purchased to this end. The projector and the screen was financed through a grant awarded by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF).

The other important equipment purchased for our lectures, seminars, meetups and other association appearances were the Wikipedia and Wikimedia rollups we obtained in September.

Publications

In 2011, the association published two booklets. One of it was the "Welcome to Wikipedia" booklet, which introduces Wikipedia and Wikipedia editing in an easy-to-understand way, the other was our "Wikimedia Hungary Report 2008–2010" booklet that presented the first two and a half years of our association's activities.

The former was published in two editions, first at the beginning of the year supported by the WMF, and with updated content in the second half of the year supported by the National Civil society Fund (NCA), the report booklet was published in the first half of the year supported by the WMF.

Merchandise, give-aways

In 2011, in addition to using up our stock of existing give-aways, a number of items were made and distributed for specific occasions. Special T-shirts were made for participants in the second WikiCamp organized in 2011, as well as for the editors present at the meetup celebrating the Hungarian Wikipedia's 200 thousandth article.

We could distribute further, unique gifts (Wikipedia T-shirts, buttons and other items of value for the editors) from the package received from the Wikimedia Foundation at the celebration of the 10th anniversary of Wikipedia; and participants of the Wiki Loves Monuments contest received unique T-shirts sent by the German chapter.

In addition to our merchandise, we have prepared a number of printed flyers on Wikipedia, the Wikimedia movement and projects for use at our workshops, presentations, conferences and exhibitions.

Employee

It has been a long standing plan of the association to hire a paid employee to help the work of the organization run and managed by volunteers in their spare time. The job description for the office manager position was published in October by the Board of the association, and the results were announced in December once the successful applicant has been notified and his contract signed. The new, part-time employee's wide range of tasks include foremost the precise performance of the administrate tasks and ensuring the lagel operation of the association, helping the work of the executive vice-president and the treasurer as needed, and performing tasks related to communication, public relations, representation as directed.

Contracts, agreements, partnerships

Thanks to the generous offer of the National Széchényi Library (OSZK) we held our conference on the 10th anniversary of Wikipedia in the grand hall of the library.

In January and February we discussed the possibility of use and development of the KOPI Plagium finder tool for Wikipedia, and the accompanying financial and technical requirements wit ha researcher at the MTA SZTAKI institute. In support of the young researchers of the Sztakipédia project we have written a letter of support to MTA SZTAKi, after which the project received the neede support. In order to understand the needs of the project we have conducted a join editor survey in March.

In response to a user asking for legal help, we have conducted negotiations with Axel Springer Magyarország Kft. During the discussions it became apparent that the action against the user was unlawful and the claim was retracted with a pledge that in the future such occurrences would be avoided.

We have signed a contract with GTS Datanet Kft. in March to provide colocation and hosting for our server bought at the beginning of the year.

In cooperation with Kitchen Budapest, as part of the McLuhan Centenary series of programmes, a wikisprint was organized in the Budapest Kunsthalle, with the aim to write the Wikipedia article on Marshall McLuhan.

In April, our association has signed a strategic partnerhip agreement with Arcanum Database Publishing to publish free cultural content on the internet. The agreement was announced at the XVIII. Budapest International Book Festival.

As a continuation of the cooperation with BME OMIKK, the library of BME, signed in 2010, in May 2011, a further 15 copies of 9 publications were given to the library to expand the WikiLibrary.

Following long negotiations, the association signed a lease agreement with the Budapest University of Technology and Economic (BME). As part of this agreement, the university has consented to register the headquarters of the association on the university's campus, and from June allowed the use of some office space at the Department of Sociology and Communcation.

In connection with the Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) photo contest, we have signed a cooperation agreement with the National Office of Cultural Heritage (KÖH) and the operator the indafoto.hu photo sharing portal, INDA Labs Zrt.

An open ended employment contract was signed in December with the chosen applicant for the office manager position published in October.

Our supporters

The work of Wikimedia Hungary was made possible in 2011 through revenue received from a number of sources.

In the usual year-en fundraising campaign, a large number of users and supporters of the projects donate smaller amounts in support of our activities of public utility and the worldwide movement, which aims to provide free access to knowledge to the largest possible number of people. The end-year campaign of 2010 finished in January 2011 and thus it provided a significant revenue source in 2011 (according to our agreement at the time, half of the donations given to Wikimedia Hungary were forwarded to the Wikimedia Foundation, which maintains Wikipedia and its sister projects). The year-end fundraiser of 2011 was conducted under a new approach, where all donations were collected by the American Foundation, and chapters could apply for grants. Therefore, in the A year-end fundraiser of 2011 we provided help with translation (appeals, fundraising landing pages), localization and providing local information (blog post, correspondence with donors).

The Wikimedia Foundation has already helped the association achieve its goals through grants in previous years. Such grants included the one supporting the purchase of a projector and screen, the manufacture of promotional items,the grant supporting the realization of the "Ten years of Wikipedia" conference in January 2011, or the organizational development and strategic planning training workshop, as well. The Foundation has transferred the amount of the grant awarded in support of the association's 2012 Programme Plan already at the end of 2011.

Starting in 2011, taxpayers could offer 1% of their personal income tax to our association. The National Tax and Customs Administration has transferred the taxpayers' 2011 offers (based on the tax year 2010) at the end of the year.

Following the successful grants of 2010, the association has again applied to the National Civil society Fund in 2011 and received support to cover operating costs. In practice, this grant has made possible the publication of the second edition of our informational booklet.

The targeted grant of the Council of Internet Providers in 2010 has made it possible for the association to purchase its own server in January 2011. In addition, the grant covers two years of the operating costs of the servers.