Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Bangladesh/2020
On 21 February 2020, Wikimedia Bangladesh hosted gatherings in 3 cities of Bangladesh (Chandpur, Dhaka, and Khulna) to observe International Mother Language Day. Wikipedians of Bangladesh were standing in a public place with banners asking passersby to contribute to the Bangla Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. The day has a special meaning to Bangladeshis, as UNESCO established 21 February as International Mother Language Day as a tribute to those who were killed in the 21 February 1952 Bangla Language Movement demonstration and the ethno-linguistic rights of people around the world. The First gathering was held back in 2007 in Dhaka. Since then, Bangladeshi Wikimedians have been doing it annually.
Report of activities: 2020 edit
Ekushey Wiki gathering across Bangladesh edit
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Wiki Loves Monuments 2020 edit
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বুদ্ধ ধাতু জাদি -
ঢাকেশ্বরী মন্দির -
Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban -
Shah Jalal Dargah -
Museum of Independence, Dhaka -
Mujibnagar Memorial Complex -
Khan Jahan Ali Bridge -
Door of Chini Mosque -
National Martyrs' Memorial of Bangladesh -
Terracotta of Kantajew Temple
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Bangladesh took part in the international Wiki Loves Monuments photography competition for the 5th time in November 2020. During the competition, a total of 83 Bangladeshi participants uploaded 1,206 freely licensed photographs of different monuments and sites in Wikimedia Commons. Among all the participants, 68% were new to Wikimedia projects. The jury of the Wiki Loves Monuments Bangladesh 2020 contest selected the 10 winning photographs. They were then sent to the international contest.
Wiki Loves Earth 2020 edit
Bangladesh has taken part in the international Wiki Loves Earth (an annual international photographic competition around conservation areas of the participating countries) photography competition for the fourth time in 2020. The main motivation behind participating the competition is that many of the protected areas in Bangladesh don't have enough photographs under the free license and we aimed at creating a database of freely licensed photographs of all the protected sites of Bangladesh in Wikimedia Commons; Wiki Loves Earth offered a unique opportunity in this regard.
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Chestnut-tailed Starling (Sturnia malabarica) at Satchari National Park
Photograph: Touhid Parvez Biplob (CC BY-SA 4.0) -
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Chestnut-tailed starling (Sturnia malabarica), Satchari National Park
Photograph: Touhid Parvez Biplob (CC BY-SA 4.0) -
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Amur falcon (Falco amurensis), Tengragiri Wildlife Sanctuary
Photograph: Touhid Parvez Biplob (CC BY-SA 4.0) -
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Trimeresurus erythrurus at Sundarbans East Wildlife Sanctuary
Photograph: Md Mehedi hasan (CC BY-SA 4.0) -
Fishing boats at Jamuna river, Jamuna Bridge West Bank Eco-Park.
Photograph: Ashraful Islam Shimul (CC BY-SA 4.0)
During the competition, a total of 303 Bangladeshi participants uploaded 1,892 freely licensed photographs of 44 (of the 51 government listed protected sites of Bangladesh) different protected sites in Wikimedia Commons. The jury of the Wiki Loves Earth Bangladesh 2020 contest have selected the 10 winning photographs. They were then sent to the international team where three photos got 1st, 3rd, 7th and 15th positions.
Edit-a-thons edit
- Bangla Wikipedia Special Edit-a-thon 2020: During the first hit of the COVID-19 pandemic, people were stuck at home and a panicking situation was everywhere. Especially the students sufffered a lot as all the institutions got shut down. To encourage people to stay at home and to use this time effectively, from April 1 to April 30, a month-long online edit-a-thon was organized. One of the major sources of information for the articles of this contest was Banglapedia, the first national encyclopedia of Bangladesh published by Bangladesh Asiatic Society. A total of 223 articles were edited in the event, including 203 new articles. The number of participants was 45.
- World Environment Day Edit-a-thon 2020: A 24-hour long edit-a-thon was organized on 5th June to enhance the content on environment with special focus on birds. A total of 20 articles were created in a day.
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- Bangla Wikipedia Open Access Week Edit-a-thon 2019: Wikimedia Bangladesh hosted a week long edit-a-thon during international open access week at Bangla Wikipedia, which ran from October 19-25. The edit-a-thon aimed to increase contents on Open Access related topics as well as enhance the quality of the existing contents in the Bangla Wikipedia.
- The Goal is now 100,000 (bn: লক্ষ্য এবার লক্ষ): A special edit-a-thon on the eve of Bengali Wikipedia achieving 100,000 articles was organized by Wikimedia Bangladesh to encourage people to contribute and accelerate the crossing moment of this milestone. The Editathon ran from August 15, 2020 to December 31, 2020. The main objective of Editathon was to increase the number of articles to by keeping in mind the quality of articles. About 400 registered new and old users participated in the edit-a-thon and created 1658 articles. In order to create and expand an article, the original article was required to be a minimum of 300 words and of 6,000 bytes, except the figures and bullets. In addition to the old users, many new users took part in this edit-a-thon and created articles on various topics. This special editathon listed articles on a total of 8 different topics. Some of the notable subjects were history, science, film, geography, sports. The deadline for writing articles on subjects other than geography was 15 days (it was 30 days on the subject of geography). About 15 experienced Wikipedians have helped to create article lists, set new topics, review articles, and they ensured the quality of the articles. A maximum of 503 articles were created in the Geography sub-editathon.
- The edit-a-thon ended on 31 December 2020. Meanwhile, on 25 December 2020, Bengali Wikipedia crossed the milestone of 100,000 articles after almost 17 years' journey.
Workshops edit
2020 was a really tough year for us. The COVID-19 pandemic created challenges at different levels. It was not safe at all to organize the in-person events during this time. Considering the safety of the mass people, community members, and organizers, Wikimedia Bangladesh cancelled all types of in-person gatherings until further notice [1]. Before 2020, all the workshops were organized in offline platforms through collaborations with different organizations and clubs. But in 2020, everything was shut down. Most of the Bengali Wikipedia contributors are students, therefore outreach events like workshops at the educations institutions are really important. But the educations institutions have been shut down and didn't open in 2020 at all. Still, we managed to organize three workshops in the online platform this year. Among them, two workshops are described later since they were connected with other events apart from an individual workshop.
- Wikipedia Workshop, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, August: On 10 August 2020, Wikimedia Bangladesh organized the first online workshop with the engineering students of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in cooperation with the BUET Energy Club. In the post-workshop editing program, 10 participants from various departments created 22 articles on engineering topics within 10 days after learning how to edit Wikipedia. In Bengali Wikipedia, there exists a shortage of qualitative technology-related articles, especially in the engineering-related topics. The motivation was to encourage future engineers to share their knowledge in the largest online encyclopedia — Wikipedia. Though it was scheduled to be an in-person workshop in March, due to the COVID-19 situation, the workshop was shifted to online. 25 students from various departments including Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Materials and Metallurgical Engineering, Civil Engineering, etc. participated in the workshop. Many couldn't join the workshop due to the network problems, as they live in remote areas, they were provided with the workshop video. At the very beginning of the workshop, friendly space policy was discussed, and in the following parts, they learned about Wikipedia and its various aspects, how they can contribute here, and how Wiki Education Program works — which hasn't started officially in Bangladesh yet. They participated in a few surveys during this time, which shows that 90% of the participants never edited Wikipedia before. All the participants expressed their strong desire to participate in the Education Program in the coming days.
Wikidata 8th Anniversary Celebration edit
An introductory workshop and a week-long datathon were organized for the first time to celebrate the 8th birthday of Wikidata in Bangladesh. All the events were fully online due to the COVID-19 pandemic situation.
- Workshop (October 29, 7:30-9:30 pm; UTC +6): 'An introduction to Wikidata' workshop was conducted in Bengali by Mahir Morshed.
- Week-long datathon (following the workshop; October 30-November 5): The topic of the datathon was Bengali Films.
Notre Dame Workshop and Edit-a-thon edit
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A Workshop followed by an Edit-a-thon has been organized in Notre Dame College, Dhaka. The events were organized in collaboration with Notre Dame English Club, one of the co-curricular clubs of the college. The workshop was organized on 13 November where a total of 75 students participated in the workshop. In the workshop, how to contribute to the world's largest encyclopedia was discussed along with a glimpse of the worldwide movement. The two-hour workshop simultaneously showed the steps of creating a new article. The program was broadcast live for the wider audience.
The workshop was followed by a week-long edit-a-thon. Here students created new articles from a list of articles provided by the organizers. About 108 new articles were created in one week, from which the reviewers accepted 80 articles. The highest number of articles was created by Jubayer Hossain (18). Certificates have been awarded to the participants who successfully participated in these events.
WikiMeetup edit
WikiMeetup in Chandpur edit
- January: The WikiMeetup in Chandpur took place on 27 Jauary 2020. Wikipedians from Chandpur area took part in the meetup. This meetup was arranged to celebrate the 16th birthday of Bangla Wikipedia.
WikiMeetup in Netrokona edit
- March: The WikiMeetup in Netrokona took place on 06 March 2020 at Netrokoan Sadar. Wikipedia activities in Netrokona were discussed in the meetup.
Online WikiMeetup edit
Due to COVID-19 pandemic, after March 2020, all the meetups took place in online platform.
- June: The first online WikiMeetup took place on 12 June. Over 30 Bengali Wikipedians from all over the world participated in this meetup.
- July: The second online WikiMeetup took place on 04 July. In this meetup Wikipedians from different region joined as well.
- October: The last online WikiMeetup took place on 31 October. Different issues on Bengali Wikipedia and security issues of Wikipedians were discussed in the meetup.
Online magazine: WikiBarta edit
- Wikimedia Bangladesh continued publishing WikiBarta. In Wikidata: WikiBarta (Q55905601), an online magazine for the Bengali Community, which shares news about Wikipedia, its sister projects, and all sorts news regarding the Wiki-movement happening around the world in the Bengali language. It published its first issue on April 14, 2018 (the first day of Bengali New Year). However, only 1 issue got published in 2020. National and international wikimedians wrote in these issues like the previous ones. Interviews of the Wikimedians are published in Wikibarta, this issue also contained an interview. The COVID-19 pandemic left an unwanted impact on the overall movement, different activities also reduced to some extent due to the unprecedented condition. The crisis also got reflected here, as the editorial team, writers, everyone had to face their own challenges. However, we managed to come back and published another issue on the first day of 2021.
