Wikimedians of Slovakia/Reports/2021/en

This is the annual report of the Wikimedia Slovakia (WMSK) User Group for the 2021 calendar year. Due to the global pandemic, 2021 was a more challenging year as usual. It brough interesting challenges and situations.

Annual General Meeting

The annual general meeting took place online on 20 March 2021. 6 out of 7 members took part and thus it reached quorum. At the AGM:

the annual report for the 2020 year was approved

the leadership was re-elected: chair Matej Grochal, vice-chairs Radoslava Semanová and Dávid Štefan (the team that was first elected in 2019)

the 2021 annual plan was approved

Organisational

During the year we continued to consolidate internal processes and communication patters. Online meetings taking place at least once a month, often more frequently, were key.

Activities

The User Group organized and co-organized these projects in 2021:

CEE Spring 2021

Within the Slovak community, WMSK organized the fourth year of the international competition CEE Spring 2021 with the goal of increasing the quality and number of articles about Central and Eastern Europe on Wikipedia. During its run between 21 March and 31 May, 9 editors took part. They created 49 articles, 42 of those (by 7 editors) was accepted into the competition in accordance with its rules. Within the global statistics, the Slovak community placed 27th out of 30th based on article number. The special category of Jewish Cultural Heritage did not receive any articles. The competition was not quite successful, the main organizer was not able to continue his work and it took time for it to be picked up by other volunteers. We thank Dávid Štefan, Patrik Kunec, ScholastikosSVK and Matej Grochal for their efforts.

WikiGap 2020

This event was planned to take place in 2021, however, it did not take place due to the COVID-19 pandemic and lowered capacity of our partners.

Ázijský mesiac Wikipédie

The fourth edition of Wiki Asian Month on Slovak Wikipedia tok place in November and December 2021. This international competition focuses on the betterment of content about Asia on Wikipedia. During the 2021 Wikimania, we organized a cooperation with Wikimedia Taiwan. The Slovak community wrote about topics concerning Taiwan and the Taiwanese community about Slovak topics. We also orgnized an online meeting to get to know each other. The competition usually lasts between 1 and 30 November, but this year, it was extended until 31 December. 3 editors and 10 articles took part in the international part, 2 other editors and 4 articles in the Taiwan part. The organizers were Dávid Štefan and Matej Grochal.

International Cooperation

Matej Grochal took part in Wikimania 2021. One of the outcomes was the international cooperation with Wikimedia Taiwan. As a representative of WMSK, he has taken part in various other meeting such as the CEE 2021 meeting or cooperation with WMCZ, WMAT and WMHU. In September we took part in conversations around the CEE Hub (led by WMPL). We also participated in the UCoC discussions.

Grant

In cooperation with WMCZ, WMPL and WMSE we asked for a grant in the Erasmus+ program. The grant application was not successful.

Cooperation with other organizations

During the year, we have been in touch with other organizations with similar goals in order to deepen our cooperation. There are plans to work on the WikiGap initiative with the the Swedish Embassy as well as the NGO Záujmové združenie žien Aspekt. We have also been in contact with libraries (such as the University Library in Bratislava) and other organizations.

In cooperation with the library Verejná knižnica Mikuláša Kováča v Banskej Bystrici, we applied for a grant for an educational project. The project was focused on the topic of creation and spread of desinformation and hoaxes online. The first application was to the Ministry of Interior of Slovakia, the other one to Férová nadácia O2 within the "Vráťme spolu rozum na internet" initiative. However, we were not successful either times.

Grant

We cooperated on a grant for Roma Wikipedia with the organization ETP Slovensko. The grant was not approved.