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CEE Newsletter
Volume 2 • Issue 6 • June/July 2018
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From the team[edit]

By Spiritia

Despite the delay in announcing that, in the summer "CEE Newsletter" will be published at a bit slower pace. Apart of the current issue being rescheduled to June/July, expect the next issue of the CEE Newsletter for the months July/August to be published in the end of August. Please use the Newsroom to add your stories and activity reports, as well as any important announcements you may want to make for the forthcoming September and onwards.

We are happy that in this issue, the Slovak wiki community for the first time share their story with the Newsletter, especially for the happy occasion of their recognition as a Wikimedia affiliate. Also, in the Regional report, you will read how a non-CEE version of Wikipedia has covered CEE women in a month-long editathon, keeping a tradition from the last year.

Have a happy summer, and enjoy your well deserved vacation! (Vacation, not wikivacation, right?!)

Regional report: Women from the CEE region now in Italian Wikipedia thanks to WikiDonne project[edit]

By Camelia

For the second time WikiDonne User Group participated online to the CEE Women contest to write about Central and Eastern European women in Italian language. Due to other commitments, we started a little bit later this year, on May 10th, but this time our results were even better that in 2017. In total, we wrote 42 new articles and improved 5 articles (from inserting resources or restoring broken links on Elena Cernei and Queen Mary of Romania page to almost rewrite Alice Voinescu, Natalia Gherman, Lucia Sturdza-Bulandra biographies). Our editathon won the Top Non-CEE languages contributor prize, with 44 articles.

Female biographies

Besides the Serbian heroine from the Second War Višnja Mosić, our focus was based on women pioneers or women in '70 and '80 folk and pop music in Romania and Moldova. Women like Elisa Leonida Zamfirescu (the first women engineer in the world), Maria Teohari (the first female astronomer in Romania), Luiza Zavloschi (first female major of a country in Romania), Sofia Ionescu, first neurosurgeon in the world, the feminist writer Adela Xenopol, the painter Elena Popea, the first Romanian female journalist, symbol of România revoluționară painted by C.D. Rosenthal Maria Rosetti, cinema and theatre actress, directors and professors Maria Filotti, Agatha Bârsescu, sisters Dina Cocea and Tanți Cocea, Aura Buzescu; Cella Delavrancea and Henrieta Delavrancea, sisters, the first was pianist and writer, the secons architect, princess Maruca Cantacuzino (George Enescu's wife), fisician Ștefania Mărăcineanu, singers Aura Urziceanu, Maria Lătărețu, Ioana Radu and Mia Braia, Romica Puceanu, Doina Badea, Ileana Sărăroiu, Corina Chiriac, Angela Similea, Dida Drăgan, Mirabela Dauer and others. All of them have national records and stories that belong to the whole humanity and we cannot forget, we need to have translated in as many language we can.

As we do always in our events, we write also related male biographies (Gică Petrescu, Dan Spătaru, Benone Sinulescu, Ion Dolănescu, Eugen Lovinescu, Gheorghe Leonida) and generic articles connected to our interests in gender gap and this was the time for Mamaia Music Festival, Labor Order medal and the ancient Brătianu family.

Cross wiki edits

The biographies in Italian Wikipedia were enriched by quotes! We further created Wikiqoute pages for a great number of articles created in Wikipedia and Wikiqoute categories where they were missing), Wikidata items and Commons uploades or new Commons categories (free images and signatures). It was a hard but also pleasant and satisfactory work, because we covered a lot of "first Romanian women who..." and a lot of female singers (folk, romances, jazz, rock and pop music) in Romania and Moldova from The Seventies and The Eighties.

Gallery


Armenia report: Quality medicine articles, Meeting of the WikiClub organizers, and Wiki Loves Yerevan[edit]

I create a vital medical article[edit]

By Dato Abuladze (WMAM), Davit Saroyan (WMAM)

Highlighting the role of Wikipedia articles related to medicine and supporting the improvement of these articles, Wikimedia Armenia, in cooperation with Yerevan State Medical University, launched an initiative to make 1000 important medical articles available also for the Armenian community.

For this purpose “I create a vital medical article” event was organized on May 31-June 3, 2018 in Tsaghkadzor involving different doctors and medical students. Participants learnt how to edit Wikipedia and improve different medical articles.

The articles were mostly translated from the corresponding English versions, which were chosen from the quality articles of the English Wikipedia.

57 applications were received from which 37 participants were selected. During the event 25 articles were created and 8 improved (841 edits) related to different medical topics.

Meeting of new WikiClubs coordinators[edit]

By Armen Mirzoyan (WM AM), Davit Saroyan (WMAM)

In the scope of the grant received from AGBU “Bridge for CSOs” program, Wikimedia Armenia established five new WikiClubs in Alaverdi, Goris, Koghb, Spitak and Vardenik in June. The new WikiClubs will further assist our mission to support the creation of open knowledge and education in the regions of Armenia.

On June 15-16, 2018 Wikimedia Armenia organized a training-meeting for the coordinators of newly opened WikiClubs. At the meeting, several points, methods and organizational aspects of WikiClubs work were discussed with the coordinators. The staff members of WMAM shared the main approaches of running education programs in the Wikimedia projects.

The coordinators introduced their visions of WikiClubs and plans on the activity level. They had a discussion on the local and general challenges they may face when running a WikiClub in their residence.

Edit-a-thon in the frames of “Wiki Loves Yerevan” project[edit]

By Khazhak Drampyan (Wikimedia Armenia)

On June 16, Wikimedia Armenia organized an edit-a-thon in the frames of “Wiki Loves Yerevan” project. The one day edit-a-thon was organized to create and improve articles on Yerevan.

During the edit-a-thon, skillful editors from Yerevan and also WMAM WikiClubs edited and translated articles about history of Yerevan, streets, architecture, museums, as well as renowned citizens of Yerevan.

Within “Wiki Loves Yerevan” GLAM project Wikimedia Armenia received several printed materials which were digitized and used for creating new content in the Armenian Wikimedia projects.


Austria report: WikiDaheim 2018 has started![edit]

By Philip Kopetzky
One of the pictures uploaded: A Tilia tree in the Salzburg state

In Austria we've been experimenting with a new photo contest format in the last two years, which includes elements of Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Earth and other photo contests. The result is WikiDaheim, a project that focuses on the villages and regions of Austria, which the project aims to collect information on, be it in text form or as pictures, audio or video. You can find the project page on German Wikipedia.

There is also a photo contest included in this project which runs from July 1st to October 7th. Basically, any picture taken in Austria can take part in the contest, new ones as well as historical pictures. The website is now also available in English, with plans to also provide a Hungarian, Croatian and Slovenian versions, at least. If you're interested in translating the website into your own language, please contact us! You can also contribute directly via GitHub.


Bulgaria report: Providing librarians with trainings in media literacy and Wikipedia[edit]

By Justine.toms (talk) 08:03, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia training for librarians in the Regional library in Haskovo
For this training, one of the WMF staffers, Christel Steigenberger, participated in the opening session and greeted the librarians
Brainstorming session "Five things we (do not) like about Wikipedia, with input from the audience

In 2018, several Bulgarian Wikipedians are partnering with the "Global Libraries - Bulgaria" Foundation, and provide regional libraries around the country with a total number of 28 2- or 3-day trainings on Wikipedia and on Media literacy (which also includes Wikipedia as a subtopic). The wiki team includes Vassia, Spasimir, Plamen and Justine.

While the whole training period comprises the months from April to October, in May, June and first week of July the majority of the training sessions took place in more than the half of the biggest Bulgarian towns that are also provincial centres.

In each training we educate 15 librarians from the respective province. Although we are four distinct lecturers in Wikipedia, the trainings follow more or less the same model and scenario. The training is 12-hour long, and comprises a wide variety of topics, motivational stories about Wikipedia/Wikimedia experiences, personal examples. The second day includes the practical work of editing, so that in the end of the first day the listeners can create their Wikipedia accounts at home, and thus overcome the problem with the 6 accounts per IP per day.

  • Day 1 (6 hours)
    • Brainstorming: Things we (don’t) like about Wikipedia? (and what can / cannot be done about that)
    • Lecture and Questions-and-Answers (principles, rules, free licenses)
    • Showcase of good practices of Wikipedia + GLAMs and Wikipedia + Education
    • Brainstorming: How can libraries benefit from Wikipedia?
  • Day 2 (6 hours)
    • Orientation and navigation within the wiki
    • Editing and creating new articles
    • Upload and usage of illustrative content
    • Brainstorming: How can libraries contribute to Wikipedia?

The training not only aims to answer to the multiple questions and concerns librarians have about Wikipedia, but it is also done in a relatex and fun way. It also creates value as during the training we also create or edit Wikipedia articles, and we let librarians experience to join of leaving their own trace in Wikipedia. The positive feedback which we have received as a results, encourages us that this kind of the training will remain in the schedule of the "Global Libraries Bulgaria" Foundation and we will retain at least some of the trained librarians as regular wikipedians in the future, as well.

From mid July to the end of August we have a summer break, and will restart the trainings in September.

Greece report: Wikimedia Community User Group Greece attended Voxxed Days Athens 2018[edit]

By Marios Magioladitis and Thanasis Kapelonis
Wikimedia Community User Greece at Voxxed Days Athens 2018

Voxxed is a technical news website for developers that started in 2014 and covers a wide range of technologies. Voxxed Days is an international series of conferences that take place in many different cities of the world and are organised for, but not limited to, the Voxxed community.

Wikimedia Community User Greece at Voxxed Days Athens 2018

This year, Voxxed Days Athens tooke place in Athens on 1-2 June, and was hosting more than 20 speakers in over 25 sessions while it was attended by 500 people. Wikimedia Community User Group Greece kept the tradition to support the conference, and was represented by a member of our usergroup plus our own banner.

Besides our member, there were two more attendees representing the community. A professional software developer, as well as a young lady, a rising star, also developer, who won the Marathon/Competition of creating and developing articles in Wikimedia for computers and technology, organised by Wikimedia User Group Greece.

The whole event was a huge success and was very well received by all attendants. We learned techniques for clean code, got our feet wet with quantum computing, which is coming sooner than you think, and also pondered how can someone nowadays be a “polytechnik” so as to be able to work and converse on many different topics.

Congratulations to the organizers and we hope to get the chance next year to attend the conference again.

Macedonia report: WikiLecture at Livadišta Summer Camp, WikiGap Skopje, Biology edit-a-thon, and WWI editing days[edit]

WikiLecture at Livadišta Summer Camp[edit]

By Македонец
Group photo with the kids at Livadišta Summer Youth Camp

On 18th of June, after a previous agreement with our member and collaborator Slobodan Trajkovski who is a main organizer of a youth summer camp in the autocamp Livadišta by the Ohrid Lake near the town of Struga in southwestern Macedonia, we have officially participated in the program of the camp by holding a lecture and giving interesting tasks to the pupils for collecting material to contribute as a content on Wikipedia on Macedonian language. The pupils aged between 13 and 15 collected information about the autocamp Livadišta such as its capacity, year of foundation, location, the Ohrid lake, villages and tourist sites nearby in the days of the camp and on the they when the lecture was given by Mario Šarevski who the last year participated on this youth summer camp as a hiking, mountaneering and geography guide for the kids and Ivan Živkoviċ, the kids besides being instructed how to create and edit an article and uploading images, where also given the task to take photographs of the facilities in the camp which showed as a real fun for them. Considering the limited and low quality of the internet on this mountainous place on the western coast of the Ohrid Lake and the short time scale for this activity the lecture about the basics of Wikipedia and Wikimedia was attended by all of the kids who were on this Youth Summer Camp but although only a few pupils have the chance to create and edit articles on Wikipedia on Macedonian language and upload the images on Wikimedia Commons despite all of them where attracted and contributed taking pictures and collecting information which they shared to their friends on the computers to add on Wikipedia. This activity was conducted for the first time prove to be interesting and attractive thus useful with a considerable success and we will think about to held it again with even better excellence in the future.

WikiGap Skopje[edit]

By Македонец
Group photo of the participants of WikiGap Skopje

After a notification in March and several meetings for preparations with the Swedish Embassy and the office of the United Nations for gender equality and straightening the woman's rights and position UN Women held in May and June, on 20th of June was held WikiGap Skopje edit-a-thon. Besides the main organizers the Embassy if Sweden in Skopje, UN Woman and Shared Knowledge as a Wikimedia chapter in Macedonia this event was also organized in partnership with dozen NGO's, civil associations, initiatives and institutes dedicated to woman's and human rights, gender studies, gender equality issues. The preparations went good with a constant e-mail communication for sharing ideas for articles and literature, which was provided by our employees from the Library of Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MANU) and printed from electronic materials in our possession, while some of the participants in the days prior the event have gathered information and prepared text of biographical content for female personalities from Macedonia who had impact in the social, cultural and public life. The main title of the event was "Prominent women from Macedonia" and the main focus was creating bibliographical articles about woman which are not visible on the internet space but nevertheless other articles on female and gender topics were also tackled and covered within the scope of this edit-a-thon. WikiGap edit-a-thon as a part of the a global Swedish initiative with the idea of bridging closer the differences and gender inequalities that persist in the online world held in Skopje had 54 participants who in a period of 4 hours (1 hour opening and instructional presentation and 3 hours of editing articles) have created 103 new articles on Wikipedia on Macedonian as well as they have contributed with uploading several images to Wikimedia Commons which was added to the articles and improving exiting articles on women topics.

Biology edit-a-thon[edit]

By Македонец

Оn the basis of the interest shown by professors of the Faculty of Biology in Skopje considering the fact that Wikipedia on Macedonian language lacks with a lot of articles on biological topics and themes we have agreed to organize an edit-a-thon which will also be аn lecture for instruction and training for the professors, assistant lecturers and technical staff of the departments biology and mycology on the Natural sciences faculty how to work and edit on Wikipedia. Primal aim of this edit-a-thon of biology on which participated professors, assistant lecturers, technical staff, researchers and members of the Macedonian Biological Society was to create and improve as much is possible articles on biological topics with the most accurate and reliable content by experts who will later share the skills of editing to the students, thus we discussed of the possibility to start educational program on the Faculty of biology. The event was held in the afternoon and evening hours of 26th of June in the Library of the Faculty of Natural Sciences in Skopje where 8 participants have created 13 new articles and improved one article. The work on this edit-a-thon was comprehensively and extensively done through the source editor and translation tool and the participants have edited articles by adding considerable amount of text, images, references, and in the process of compiling the results and the outcome in the aftermath we noticed that users have continued with creating and improving articles by themselves in the next days which is a sign about the interest and the possibilities for the future development of the work on Wikipedia on Macedonian language with the biologists.

WWI editing days[edit]

By Violetova
Working day of WiR at the City Library

In memorial of the Great War, WWI, Wikipedian in Residence at the City Library "Braka Miladinovci" in Skopje organized editing days for members of GLAM Macedonia, on 10 - 13 June 2018. Twelve Wikipedians created 21 new articles, and 25 existing articles were improved. On the same subject, Wikipedian in Residence at the City Library "Braka Miladinovci" in Skopje organized an edit-a-thon in April. Twelve Wikipedians and 8 members of the Wiki Club Staro Nagorichane participated. During the weekend, 15 new articles were created, and six existing articles were improved.

Altogether with other activities of GLAM Macedonia members, in the first half of the year 2018, 51 new articles were created on the subject of World War I, 32 existing articles were improved and more than 300 new references were added to the articles on the Macedonian Wikipedia. As there are still missing articles about the World War I on Macedonian Wikipedia, GLAM Macedonia members will continue to bridge the subject gap in the next months.

Russia report: Yakutsk, Moscow, All Russia bhai bhai[edit]

By Lvova Anastasiya
Wikimedia RU meetup in Moscow
Wikimedia RU and the meet-up in Yakutsk; more photos...
Hindi rusi bhai bhai

Our events[edit]

  • On 8th of June it was held a meeting (ru) of the non-profit partnership with the live broadcast. It's an important event for us, as far as we live in a big country and when we celebrated our 10th anniversary we received the wish for greater transparency in decisions. Live broadcasts also may help hold meetings and report about them, since the role of secretary can be partly taken by a person who has visited the meeting remotely.
    At the meeting it was taken a decision to hold the next Russian Wikiconference in Saint-Petersburg, 22-23.09, in the ITMO University.
  • In the beginning of June, Yakutsk became the venue for the Republican Forum of Young Librarians. This forum was visited by Vladimir Medeyko, Dmitri Zhukov and Nikolay Pavlov; they met with the staff of the library for children and youth and talked about wiki-clubs, held a working meeting on the use of open licenses in the secretariat of the republican portal of state and municipal authorities, took part in the wiki-meeting dedicated to the 10th anniversary of Sakha Wikipedia with the presentation of letters of appreciation from Wikimedia RU.
    Among other things, Wikimedia RU organized in Yakutsk a public announcement about the transfer of the collection of translations of the national writer of Yakutia, Semen Rufov (sah), to the public domain.
    In June, in the year of the celebration of the decade of Wikipedia in the Yakut language, Sakha Wikiquote was also opened; congratulations!
  • Open Library events were held in Astrakhan (ru) and Moscow (in Russian State Children's Library and Central Scientific Medical Library).
  • Within the framework of the fifth interregional Tatar-speaking forum 'Mother tongue' in Bolgar a young Russian wikimedian Timerkhan Shaykhutdinov (Zelenodolsk, Tatarstan) held the regular master-class about Wikipedia and handed over the bilingual certificates of the WMRU to the finalists of the Selet Wikischool's spring session.
  • In the middle of June we had a very productive meetup (ru) with Wikimedia India's member Rajeeb Dutta; come again everybody, we are glad to see you!

All Russia under a free license[edit]

After negotiations with representatives of Wikimedia RU, the Moscow-based Institute of Economics and Management in Industry, issued an official confirmation for the release of the 'All Russia' encyclopedia published by the Institute under the free licence Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International. Thus, 'All Russia' became the first paper encyclopedia in Russia to be released under a free licence.

The encyclopedia has an alphabetic index of cities and localities in Russia. Specifically according to the introduction at the beginning of the encyclopedia, 1448 localities of the Russian Federation are covered, including 1051 cities, 366 settlements, 25 villages, 5 stations, and one sloboda -- a large village or settlement, usually populated by non-serf (free) peasants -- Bolshaya Martynivka. The encyclopedia was first published in 2001.

According to the chairman of the editorial board of the encyclopedia Alexei Valeryevich Ryabinin,

The encyclopedia 'All Russia', being a comprehensive scientific and encyclopedic publication of enduring value, also contains unique information that was collected and summarized at the end of the 1990s, into one of the complex and contradictory periods of the history of our country. I am sure that the encyclopedia will be interesting to specialists of various professions. We are very pleased to transfer this work to free use under the open license, and are ready to support in every possible way any initiatives aimed at improving people's access to knowledge. Competence, professionalism and creative approach to business are today the basis and the driving force of progress.

The executive director of Wikimedia RU Stanislav Kozlovsky noted:

The transfer of such a monumental and beautifully illustrated work to the terms of a free license is really a breakthrough. Now in Russia there are about 800 regional encyclopedias and encyclopedic reference books, but all of them are protected by copyright and even putting them into the Web and making them accessible to citizens is a crime. I hope very much that the transition of the encyclopedia 'All Russia' to the free license will show a positive example to publishers and other encyclopedias. Knowledge must be accessible to everyone!

Over the years, the electronic layout of the encyclopaedia 'All Russia' was lost. We express our gratitude to the Central Universal Scientific Library for prompt scanning of the encyclopedia in high quality.

  • Example pages of the encyclopedia 'All Russia' (the inscription reads Вся Россия)

Contests[edit]

Шумбрачи! Карматанок ялгакс! (Erzya) #myvwikipedia10 #erzyawiki10

In June we started the following contest: Football marathon 2018 (ru) (14.06-15.07)

Ongoing events that have started earlier are:

Events that completed in June:



Serbia report: Reviving roadside memorials throughout the country[edit]

By Mickey Mystique
Krajputaš - roadside tombstone

In memory of the brave soldiers who lost their lives during the World War I exactly a century ago, Wikimedia Serbia made a project whose aim is to document as many remaining roadside memorials in Serbia as can be found.

Therefore, we have conducted a project which involves discovering these monuments and uploading their images to Wikimedia Commons, in order to preserve them from oblivion, inflicted by both harsh weather conditions and lack of care.

If you didn't know, a roadside memorial, or "Krajputaš" is a certain type of monument erected away from the cemetery. The customs of creating such monuments - or the "empty graves" - is spread throughout Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is often located along the roads and at their intersections in order to preserve memory of the deceased.

As for the shape, most of them are a human-sized monolithic stone, in the shape of a square. There are poetic heroic rhymes carved into it, along with the grotesque characters, with a hidden smile on their face, and they are painted with vivid colors. These monuments have a special value since they represent the fallen soldiers, peasants, rebels and passengers. The epitaph is regularly engraved on the monument, usually witty, and it tells us about the deceased for whom the monument was raised. From the 19th century, these monuments were erected to honor the dead warriors whose graves are not known.

The project was very successful, and there are currently more than 2300 images uploaded to Commons. So far, fifty articles have been written in Serbian Wikipedia about the particularly famous monuments, and more are to come.

Unfortunately, there are only pages in Serbian and German about them, but we encourage everyone to help us spread the word about these unique monuments.

Wikimedia Commons has more media related to:


Slovakia report: User Group recognition, Editathon about Slovak folk culture[edit]

By KuboF Hromoslav

Wikimedians of Slovakia User Group finally gets recognition[edit]

Wikimedians of Slovakia is now officially recognized as a User Group! The Affiliations Committee accepted us as a fully legitimate part of the international Wikimedia movement on 25 June 2018.

The whole history started back in 2006 by a public discussion on Slovak Wikipedia. But the significant move happened in 2011 when the user Rudko decided to lead the process of foundation. The Slovak Ministry of Internal Affairs accepted our founding request in that same year, on 16 December 2011. The intention of the action was to be recognised as a Wikimedia Chapter, so the organisations was called Wikimedia Slovakia from the beginning. But it was the time of change of the Wikimedia affiliations model, with a new type of Wikimedia User Group being introduced. The discussions about recognition status and name - inside the group, between the group and AffCom and inside of AffCom - lasted longer than expected and required agreements on a one-to-one basis.

Cutting the long story short - Wikimedians of Slovakia is now not only legally incorporated in Slovakia but also a recognised affiliate in the Wikimeda movement. It was a long process and it means a lot for us. Thanks to all the people who helped it happen!

Edit-a-thon about Slovak folk culture[edit]

In 2017 we were invited by SME, the biggest Slovakian newspaper, to co-organise an edit-a-thon about cancer. The event was very successful and encouraged us to repeat it with another topic. The selection fell on Slovak folk culture, partly because of previous collaboration on a project led by Wikimedia Poland, the Carpathian Ethnography Project.

The edit-a-thon was targeting mostly experts and students in the related fields, like ethnology, and accepted Wikimedians of any experience, including Wikimedians-in-creation. On the first day, 9 June, the participants mostly received an intruction to Wikipedia from the experienced editors. The next day they already edited themselves in small, self-organised groups. The participation of actual scientists and university teachers was very important. They were able to bring the content quality to a higher level. Work on this topic was more challenging than the previous year, because translation from other Wikipedias was mostly impossible and virtually all of the content needed to be created from scratch.

Example images from some of the new articles

Ukraine report: Wiki Loves Music[edit]

By antanana, anntinomy
Wiki Loves Music poster
Wiki Loves Music poster

Since now Wikimedia Ukraine has one more Wiki Loves X contest in portfolio. Wiki Loves Music was set up as an editing month long contest. Participants were invited to create or improve articles on any aspect of the music: music theory, elements, history, performers, composers, songs etc.

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