Wikimedians of the Levant/2020
We organized a fully virtual education program
In July 2020, Wikimedia Levant launched the third edition of the Wikipedia Education Program in Hebron, Palestine. Unlike previous editions, this one was conducted completely online due to the global COVID-19 pandemic and following Wikimedia Foundation’s policies. The students were virtually taught about Wikipedia, its community and history, and its sister Wikimedia projects, and were trained on how to edit the encyclopedia properly.
Surprisingly, this was yet the most successful education program in Palestine. The 45 participating students did a magnificent job, creating about 430 articles and expanding 70 more on the Arabic-language Wikipedia, and uploading 415 photos to Wikimedia Commons. One student, all by herself, contributed a total of one hundred Wikipedia pages, completing the 100 wikidays challenge in less than two months. We are very thankful to the students who help us achieved this milestone in spite of the high number of Coronavirus infections in Hebron, which was then one of the most infected cities across the Middle East.
We helped 100 new contributors develop articles about women
Globally, males make up between 85 and 90 percent of Wikipedia editors. This disproportional percentage affects the content of the encyclopedia, resulting in few articles about women compared to articles about men. To bridge this gap, and in celebration of International Women's Day, Wikimedians of the Levant collaborated with a number of other institutions to organize a "WikiGap" workshop and develop articles about women and women's issues on Arabic Wikipedia (and, to a lesser extent, on English Wikipedia). This year's WikiGap workshop was the first time our group held the event simultaneously in both Jordan and Palestine, with a large contributor base, numbering over one hundred, who all received comprehensive training about the basics of editing Wikipedia under the supervision of established editors, resulting in adding over 160 women's articles to Wikipedia.
Additionally, the User Group organized a collaboration called Wiki Females, to coordinate between female contributors from Jordan, Palestine, and Egypt the development of Arabic Wikipedia articles, resulting in developing over 60 articles about women.
We celebrated Earth Day
Wikimedia Levant celebrated the Earth Day for the first time with an online edit-a-thon on April 22nd, contributing various articles related to environmental topics, issues, organizations and events. This was our first online activity following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it proved quite successful, resulting in the creation and improvement of over fifty articles with a total word count of nearly 100,000 over the course of a few days. Examples of articles developed include Climate, 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference, Nature and Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere.
We celebrated Arabic Wikipedia's anniversary
In a new kind of experience, Wikimedia Levant helped facilitate organized teams of contributors to collaboratively create high-quality featured content on Arabic Wikipedia's 16th anniversary (July 11th). The teams were set up a few weeks in advance, so that less-experienced users would have the to learn basic editing and prepare the required content. This year's participation to the anniversary was unique in its high focus on quality, as well as in including a very significant percentage of new users. Overall, Wikimedia Levant members contributed to and nominated 4 featured articles (examples: Binary search algorithm, Leonardo da Vinci and May Ziadeh), 6 good articles (example: Guillain–Barré syndrome, Salfit and Khalil al-Wazir) and 2 featured lists (List of Syrian banknotes and List of medical schools in the United Kingdom), all of which were successfully promoted. Additionally, several images were translated and several other articles improved or created.
We organized a competition to add images to thousands of articles
This year, we launched an new initiative called "Levantine Images (صور شامية)" aiming to enrich articles on Arabic Wikipedia with images. Participants would gain points for adding images to articles related to the countries of the Levant lacking visual content, as well as for uploading images to Wikimedia Commons, translating them, or adding Arabic descriptions to them. Despite the challenges we faced in tallying the points due to the novel nature of the competition and despite the difficulty in accurately counting the number of articles to which images were added (due to overlapping edits), the outcomes exceeded expectations. Articles enriched with images numbered about 1,300, including hundreds of articles that had zero images before. Participants also added over 500 images to Wikimedia Commons, as well as Arabic descriptions to over 1,500 images.
We launched regular online workshops to teach editing
Although it is sort of a primary objective, keeping organized group members closely connected to the online Wikimedia projects and intently familiar with them is often a challenge. Moving online after the pandemic, however, offered the advantaged of holding focused online workshops to reach participants across different geographies: which is a regular reality in the work of Wikimedia Levant. These workshops had two objectives: 1. to help teach new users and members how to edit online projects, and 2. to improve the content of Wikimedia projects in certain areas. The diverse topics of the workshops included women, Christian religious icons and lists of books, Islamic architecture and Morocco's heritage.
We expanded the 'Open Jordanian Heritage' project
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Since 2019, Wikimedia Levant has been co-running a project to promote the Jordanian heritage on Wikimedia websites. The project is a partnership with the American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR) and the Jordan Open Source Association (JOSA), and has successfully contributed hundreds of photos and articles to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Throughout this year, the project gained a far wider scope by recruiting Jordan's first ever Wikimedians in residence, as two volunteers serving at ACOR for three months each. The Wikimedians in residence, Wikimedia Levant and partners collaborated together to organize three edit-a-thons in this year (one was face-to-face in early 2020, the rest virtual). A total of around one hundred participants joined these events, contributing than 45,000 words and adding about 100 sources to Wikipedia articles on the cultural and historical heritage of Jordan.
We signed partnerships to engage in GLAM and Education
Wikimedia Levant extended its partnerships with both universities and GLAM institutions, which can help us better engage in the Education Program as well as document local and regional heritage. One of the new partnerships formed was with the German Jordanian University in Madaba, which was immediately followed with an introductory training workshop for students. We are also drafting final partnership agreements with a few other amazing institutions, including the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), Centre for Architectural Conservation (Riwaq) and International Council on Monuments and Sites in Jordan (ICOMOS Jordan).
We developed a code of conduct
As the user group was getting bigger in terms of membership and more active on various channels of communication, we felt the need to develop an internal Code of Conduct of Wikimedia Levant. The document was developed through deliberations among the group that lasted for about two months, and went into effect on July 12, 2020. Since then, the Code of Conduct became an official reference document for conflict resolution and for organizing relationships both within the user group and with the communities of Wikimedia projects. Violations for the Code of Conduct are reported through a confidential system that is only accessible to the Board, in order to ensure privacy of the parties concerned.
We developed the administrative structure of our group
Five years after the founding of Wikimedians of the Levant, we made the second set of fundamental changes to our Bylaws since they were first introduced in mid-2017. These changes were significant because they responded to the emerging needs of the group, resulting from its growth in terms of members and its scope of work. A proposal has been put forward to separate the executive and organizational roles in the structure of the user group. The changes were proposed (according to the open governance adopted by Wikimedia Levant) in an open discussion space, where conversations went on for two months, receiving a total of about 7,000 words in comments and feedback.
The adoption of these changes led to a major step in the group’s governance and professional work. The new structure coincided with a steady increase in the number of registered members during this year from about 50 members at the beginning of the year to more than 100 members at the end of the year. This increase, expectedly, reflected on the higher participation across the user group's events, activities and meetings, as the attendance of the regular monthly meeting became much larger, and the activities witnessed a larger distribution of responsibilities in organizational and operational matters. /enCategory:Wikimedians of the Levant