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Wikimedians of the Levant/Reports/2020/Mid-Report

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This is the first Simple Annual Plan Grants (SAPG) report for Wikimedians of the Levant user group. It covers the financial and project year from April 1st, 2020 until OCtober 15th, 2020. During this period, Wikimedia Levant hosted various activities both online and offline, with a particular focus on the Education program, online editing competitions and online events.

Overview

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Capacity Building & Development

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Starting from a vision focused on capacity building as a main theme of the Wikimedia 2030 Strategy, Wikimedia Levant aimed to upscale its volunteer capacity and capabilities through skills training, community health awareness and community development. We have achieved the most significant success in the latter two goals: growing into an enormous membership base of almost a hundred volunteers, and achieving the significant milestone of buildin a Code of Conduct. Training has taken place through various group events and editing workshops, but not so much to outside audiences.

Membership

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In this activity year, Wikimedia Levant set up a systematic Membership application process where membersihp has to be renewed every year. From 66 members, in April 1st, when the annual plan started, Wikimedia Levant has grown to have 99 active members (as of October 15th, 2020). This already meets one of our annual goals, to grow into up to a total of 80 active members. Activity and engagement has also skyrocketted, with regular Wikimedia Levant meetings receiving an attendance of up to two dozen participants. The largely developed community of the user group practically showed in the greatly boosted results of our activities and programs.

Administration & structure

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Several improvements and developments in Wikimedia Levant administration took place this year to respond to its increasing membership and needs. Transparency and openess in discussion spaces have been adhered to by restricting all major user group discussions to dedicated spaces on Metawiki, with examples of major discussions including the Arab Wikimedians Committee status and the major topic of restructuring.

Towards the annual elections, which usually take place in July/August, a proposal for restructuring the user group was put forward. In the past, our user group tried out several administrative models that yielded different results: ranging from zero structure to a system of dedicated teams each active in a certain area. This year, however, and after a restructuring discussion spanning from 7 July to 5 September 2020, Wikimedia Levant officially adjusted its bylaws to properely separate between decision-making ('legislative') and executive responsibilities.

The user group is now being governed by an elected board of five members (including a Chief Coordinator, Treasurer and Secretary), with bylaws allowing for the selection or hiring of an Executive Director, if the needs comes up. This new structure has been providing an enormous room for proper delegation, governance and organized work in an user group with a circa hundred members.

Community Health

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During this year and as part of our annual plan to increase community health awareness, Wikimedia Levant created its first official Code of Conduct. Following a very real need that hasn't been sufficiently addressed for a while, the Code of Conduct was first drafted on 16 May 2020. It took nearly two months of online discussions and multiple user group meetings to approve the final version on 12 July. Since then, consenting to adhere to the code became a requirement for all those who apply to be Wikimedia Levant members, and an increasing number of members have gestured to publicly sign the Code.

Online lectures

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  • GLAM lecture

Presented an introduction about GLAM partnerships and work to the members of Wikimedia Levant. The presentation included a general overview of GLAM, examples of global partnerships and a walkthrough of the GLAM activities organized by Wikimedia Levant. About ten members attended and engaged.

  • Hamleh Center

Hamleh Center is an Arab Center for Social Media Development, the lectures held on 12 July and 16 July 2020 by using Live on Hamleh Facebook page, it's about principles of editing on Arabic wikipedia and content policies. The number of participants who have viewed the lectures about 2,000 viewer. The lectures coordinators are: Alaa Najjar and Farah Mustaklem.

  • Raje'e Center

Raje'e Center is a center that conducts research and awareness campaigns of Palestinian heritage. Upon their request, Wikimedia Levant conducted a two-hour workshop in basic Wikipedia training for their staff on 20 May 2020. The workshop was attended by over a dozen members, with lots of engagement. They expressed interest in following up and were offerred help further on, but haven't been in touch again so far.

Content

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Wikimedia Levant's Content program was the most impacted and, yet, the most positively affected by the global pandemic of COVID-19. Leading to the cancellation or virsualization of nearly a dozen in-person events and workshops, the pandemic still proved to the advantage of engagement in our online editing workshops and competitions. We received unprecedented numbers of engagement thanks to our growing user base and were able to participate considerably in community events and occasions. Content produced by the user group members during this years have generally been more focused on quality rather than quantity (e.g. producing a dozen featured/good articles in a single event and improving large amounts of existing articles). Content continues to spark the interest of our volunteers as the chief part of Wikimedia Projects thay they're passionate about, and have been successfully adapting to the changing conditions (in spite of sharp budget alterations it has caused).

Wiki Females project

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Wiki Females project logo

Wiki Females is a project that launched in april 2020, to be a comfort space for the girls in Arabic Wikipedia and supportive project mainly for female's content And its related topics in health, medicine, cosmetology, care, children, cultural and social aspects, etc. it aims to supporting and encouraging girls in editing, and to be contact each others. the results of this project:

  • creating 63 Articles from zero.
  • 15 editors participated.

The project coordinates are: Baraa zama'reh, Areen abu rumman and Donia Domiaty.
For more information you can click here

Earth Day's edit-a-thon

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In celebration of Earth Day which was on April 22nd, the Wikimedia Levant launched an edit-a-thon to create articles related to environmental issues and climate change. The day began on April 19 and continued until after the occasion, to allow participants to complete their articles.

there was related articles available in English, which were collected in a Google Sheet to make it easy to access and choose the right one for each participant: Environment and Climate Change Articles.
the results of this celebration Day were:

  • creating 51 Articles from zero.
  • improved 4 Articles.
  • 16 editors participated.

The program coordinates are: Mervat salman, Alaa Najjar and Abbad Diraneyya.
For more information you can click here

ACOR's edit-a-thon

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julia Domna marble head at Jerash, this photo uploaded in ACOR's edit-a-thon on wikiCommons

On 13 July 2020, ACOR held Jordanian Heritage Edit-a-thon and it was completely online, the goal was to write, edit, translate, and add citations to articles related to cultural heritage in Jordan. it was collaborating organizations (Wikimedia Levant, the Jordan Open Source Association, and the American Center of Oriental Research), that will seek to improve this free, open-access digital resource for anyone who wishes to learn more about Jordan’s past and present.

Even though they cannot gather to research and edit in person, the Open Jordanian Heritage team plans to set up a virtual space, via Slack and Zoom, to train participants in editing Wikipedia articles using open-access library and archival resources. Experienced editors were be available throughout the day to troubleshoot technical and content questions. and all of participate can be duration of time that he/she choosen. You can find the event on the dashboard. the results of this edit-a-thon Focused on: 26 editor, 24 created articles, 43 improved articles, one photo uploaded on Commons and 26.9k words added. The edit-a-thon coordinates are: Abbad Diraneyya, Areen Abu Rumman and Raya Sharbin.
For more information you can click here

Levantine Photos compeition

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Levantine Photos compeition was held on 24 April 2020 and continued throughout Ramadan until 23 may 2020. to enrich Arabic Wikipedia articles with pictures on Levantine countries, where participants compete to add images from Wikimedia Commons or upload new images to Arabic Wikipedia articles which related to the Levantine countries:Jordan, Syria, Palestine and Lebanon. the results of this compeition:

  • 8 editors participated.

For more information click here.

Arabic Wikipedia's Day edit-a-thon

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Logo of 16th Arabic Wikipedia's Day

As a part of Arabic community, Wikimedia Levant participate at 16th Arabic Wikipedia's Day edit-a-thon, Which is an annual Arabic Wikipedia event, it Happened on the first saturday after 9th of it (date of establishing Arabic Wikipedia),The duration of the edit-a-thon was 24 hours editing on Arabic Wikipedia to help in improving Articles. This year it was on 11th of July, with participating a large number from Wikimedia Levant members. Where they were organised on teams from a month before to work and improve articles. (You can get more details from here in Arabic)

The Aim was:

After finishing this day, The result was:

  • Four (4) Featured Articles.
  • Six (6) Good Articles.
  • Three (3) Featured Lists.
  • Twenty five (25) Pictures translated in Commons to Arabic Language.
  • two (2) Seeds articles improved to The perfect Article.
  • General editing to Arabic Wikipedia like Bashkir Language.

Morocco's Day participation

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On 18 July 2020, Wikimedia Levant participated in the third Moroccan Wikipedia day that held by Wikimedia MA User Group, which is an annual Moroccan Wikipedia event, in which all Moroccan editors (and others) write articles on Morocco. The aim of this Day is to enrich the articles related to Morocco. We aim to encourage others to work on Arabic Wikipedia and publish articles as much as possible. so in this day we formed a team from 7 editors who working on developing "The Walls of Marrakesh" article to be perfect article and participate in this day.

Wiki Ladies online workshop

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Within Wikimedia Levant's vision for organizing Wikimedians who share similar interests, challenges and needs, it's extremely important to eliminate gender bias as far as possible in our community. The idea to have an InterWiki Women Collaboration was born during Wikimania 2017 at 100wikidays Meetup in Montreal, which will help to fill gender gap and enrich Arabic wikipedia content and create articles that correspond With the policies of Wikipedia, this collaborative workshop was launched in its first edition in 2020 as an extension of the idea of global wiki women's collaboration. workshop held on 1 September 2020 and ended on 21 September 2020, with the end of the InterWiki Women Collaboration 2020.

The workshop aims to:

  • learn volunteers on the content translation tool and how to use it.
  • How to edit on Wikipedia.
  • learn how adding information and documenting it with reliable references using citation templates.
  • Building knowledge bridges between new and old editors.
  • Translating and developing a number of biographical women articles and health sector.
  • spirit of cooperation and team-work between volunteers.

The results included contributed by 11 volunteers who created 17 articles. The workshop coordinates are: Mervat, Nanour Garabedian and Nada kareem22.

For more information you can click here

Alam Al-Ma'refa workshop

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This workshop is part of Wikimedia Levant activities within the Arabic Wikipedia Content, and it aims to:

in Workshop that Hold periodic online meetings on Jitsi Meet to communicate with the participants, also it took 3 months started from August to October 2020.The participants was divided into two teams to make the work more easier and effective. The results included contributed by 11 volunteers. Page size exceeded 317٬117 bytes. The list was nominated for review on 13 October 2020. The workshop coordinators are: Michel Bakni and Mervat.

For more information you can click here

Education

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Our Education program was severely impacted by the global pandemic of COVID-19, leading to far smaller work and scope than what we have intended in our annual planning. In a sort of an experiment, however, some of our volunteers went ahead to organize an online, carefully-planned summer program in the University of Hebron, which ended up as the most successful single version of the Education Program ever organized by our user group. The experience produced a non-anticipated amount of rich content to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, generated a huge engagement and recreuited many new members to Wikimedia Levant. Several interesting and invaluable learnings came out of the experience, encouraging us to take a different path in our future educational activities.

Palestine/Hebron city

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Group photo for the participants and organizers of the third edition of wikipedia education program in hebron, palestine 2020

In 11 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; since due to the global COVID-19 pandemic and following Wikimedia Foundation’s policies, it wasn’t possible to organize any on-site activities.

The Education Program’s team in Hebron opted, instead, to convene with the students online via various video conference programs. 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 professionally from A to Z.

Surprisingly, this was yet the most successful education program in Palestine. The 45 participating students did a magnificent job, creating a total of 430 articles and expanding 70 more on the Arabic-language Wikipedia, and uploading 415 photos to Wikimedia Commons. One student contributed, all by herself, the sum of one hundred Wikipedia pages, completing the 100 wikidays challenge in less than two months.

They achieved all these accomplishments despite the increasing number of infected patients with Coronavirus in Hebron, which became one of the most infected cities in the Middle East recording about 300 cases daily. Some of the participants were diagnosed positive, too. But this didn't stop them from achieving their amazing work.

The program took 2 months after 11 July 2020. it enriched Wikipedia with pages in different fields including Medicine, Biology, Geography, Sports, Sciences, Civil Engineering, astronomy, Computer science and programming, Law, Arts, Journalism, psychology, chemistry and Improving Palestinian villages articles. The program coordinates are: Bara'a Zama'rah, Tala Sarabtah and Mohammad Hijjawi.

Class Participating students Participating schools Pages created Words added Uploaded photos (WikiCommons)
Wikipedia Editing Program/Hebron City 2020 45 students 13 schools, 7 universities 430 pages + improved 70 pages 2500K bytes added 415 photos
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