CEE/Newsletter/July-August 2023
| CEE Newsletter |
|---|
| Subscribe |
| About |
| Volume 4 (2024) |
| Volume 3 (2023) |
| Volume 2 (2018) |
| Volume 1 (2017) |
- Editorial
CEE Newsletter continues to promote different projects from the CEE Region, which we categorised into three different topics: campaigns, updates from communities and opinions. Additionally, we included more sections, such as CEE Hub updates, regional reports, international updates, CEE in the News and open calls and consultations. Also, in the second edition we have category of Reader’s digest, where we bring to attention some of the important topics that were published through Diff Blog.
This first renewed edition received more than 500 views in the period of 60 days, which continue with approximate similar numbers to the second edition (main page of the Newsletter, along with the main page of that edition).
We hope that continuation of the Newsletter can bring more communities to send out proposals to our team.
There have be changes in the CEE Newsletter editorial team; our temporary editor-in-chief Wojciech Pędzich from Poland will be replaced by a new editor-in-chief Jan Beránek who is coordinator of Programs for editors in Wikimedia Czech Republic, administrator on Czech Wikipedia and a member of the CEE Youth Group. He studies journalism so he was a perfect candidate for this position. Remark: This issue will have automatically translated articles into Russian, so if you are a native speaker of Russian, feel free to correct them. |
- By: NikosLikomitros, member of WM UG Greece, Y. Caner Özyayıkçı, member of Wikimedia Community User Group Turkey and Turkic Wikimedians, and Toni Ristovski (CEE Hub)
CEE Youth Group was established in May 2023, as an initiative of the CEE Hub to informally connect young people (younger than 26 years old) from the Central and Eastern Europe across the region to support capacity building in this area. It is organised by CEE Hub coordinator Barbara Klen and SC member Klára Joklová.
Group aims to create a space for collaboration and sharing among young Wikimedians. For this reason, the Catch Up meeting held by CEE Hub and Wikimedia Foundation’s Movement Communications regional specialist Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska on 16th May 2023 was also focused on young people in the region.
As of August 2023, the group has nine members, one from Greece, Slovenia, Ukraine and Armenia, two from Turkey, and three Czech members. Toni Ristovski, Barbara Klen, Klara Joklová and Lucie Schubert from the CEE Hub and Czech Republic provide support to the group.
- Why I joined - opinion by NikosLikomitros
I am Nikos Likomitros. I joined Greek Wikipedia in 2013, and since 2015, I contribute mostly regularly. I was born in Corinth in 2004 and grew up in Argos, making me one of the youngest Wikipedians in Greek and the CEE region. I have wrote more than seven thousand articles in Greek, where I am a sysop. I also edit English Wikipedia and upload files in Commons, while I do some degree of patrolling elsewhere. I study history in Athens University, in real life.
In Greek Wikipedia, I have helped young people to make their steps in the Wikisystem, and partly thanks to my encouragement we managed to build a solid community of three to four underage Wikipedians, writing about politics, history and even animals, when before 2016 such presence was nonexistent, or better intermittent. I have even met one in person. Periodically, I have also tried to immerse local acquaintances in Wikipedia, although it didn’t gave any new (permanent contributor).
I joined the CEE Youth Group and support the Wiki Vibrance project because as a young person, I want to connect more with my peers as well provide them with all the help and information they need, because improving your own Wikipedia language project is good, but international collaboration makes you even more proud. As an university student, my desire to promote Wikipedia as a means of information and volunteering grew more. Now, I plan to begin my first university project in Greece (where we have some experience) together with a professor from the French language faculty, who recently immersed a few of her students in her faculty, in association with a leading community member. In order to further enrich my activities, but also to make new Wikimedian friends, and earn more experience highly useful for more outreach programs, I chose to join the CEE Youth Group.
- Importance of the CEE Youth Group
Young people generally don’t edit Wikipedia. As a student who knows high school realities well, many reasons make it difficult in my country. For example, tedious examination and study programs (mostly in the third grade of high school), importance of school and the use of Wikipedia primarily for information, as well some degree of lack of motivation and the volunteering, rather than paid, nature of Wikipedia, are some reasons why young people don’t edit Wikipedia, based in the very interesting article of Malgorzata Gramatnikowska from Poland, and the observations I’ve done in real life these years.
CEE Youth Group is a historic opportunity for the CEE region to change it. Why it’s an opportunity:
- At first, expertised young Wikipedians, some of them with outreach experience, are ready to help the young people to make their steps. If there is solid support and a standing person, my experience helping young people has proven, we can make young people to feel comfortable to edit.
- Secondly, we have young Wikimedians, with similar features, that provides young people a degree of safety. Thus Wikipedia is becoming more attractive for young people. Uniting our powers from multiple countries of CEE region, we will be able to collaborate more with youth initiatives from around the region, thus increasing the reach of youth in Wikipedia, and teaching how volunteerism is formulating a better personality but also helping the society. We will be also able to get support in order to connect with educational institutions around the world, meaning outreach.
- Members will also get all the needed expertise to become “ambassadors of Wikipedia” and conduct their own outreach programs at educational institutions. The expanding team provides a historical chance to help increase intergenerational equity between the Wiki communities, increase retention rates of young Wikipedians, making Wikipedia a safer space for young people to contribute, and creating the ground for faster expansion of young communities. Better representation will make youth interests and voices more heard.
- Why I joined - opinion by Y. Caner Özyayıkçı
I think the potential of the youth group founded by CEE Hub on May 16, 2023 is quite high. Because, both the energy of the youth and the regional closeness create opportunities for young people to make joint projects with each other and to get to know each other's communities closely. These potentials and opportunities should not be missed.
If I talk about my own experiences; I joined Wikimedia projects in 2014. I met CEE Youth Group for the first time before Wikimania 2023. As I joined this group, I naturally started to be represented in the youth group of Wikimedia Community User Group Turkey. At Wikimania 2023 I met up with Valentyn from Ukraine, Toni from North Macedonia and Jan from the Czech Republic. We talked about how we could create an effective campaign when we got together, and we introduced the CEE Youth Group at the CEE Meeting.
In the introduction, I stated that Wikipedia Student Clubs have started to be established in Türkiye and that we will support the CEE Youth Group together with these clubs. I also informed the participants that we will declare our cooperation with all Wikipedia Student Clubs in the world, especially in the CEE region.
So what are we planning to do? First of all, we created a brand to gather Wikipedia Student Clubs in Türkiye under one umbrella (Wikipedia Student Clubs) Then, we are planning to create a general local Youth Group for support the CEE Youth Group. Because every young person isn’t student or alumni. Thus, all young people up to the age of 26 will be able to become members. Naturally, they will become members of the CEE Youth Group.
So what is my role in this program and why did I join? Because I know the young potential of the CEE region and I want to produce projects with my peers in cooperation with our communities. It will also be very useful to meet other young people in the region, listen to their own Wikimedia projects experiences and exchange ideas. Also, since I am a member of a similar program called WikiVibrance, I can be the bridge between WikiVibrance and the CEE Youth Group. It is also very exciting and positive that our region's youth group cooperates with other regions/international youth communities.
All this is possible with the CEE Youth Group. Thanks to Barbara, Klára, Toni and Lucie for bringing us together!
The Clinic was part of Let's Connect peer learning program in collaboration with the CEE Hub. The aim was to share the CEECA regional learning report that gathers insights and learning from grantee reports in the region. This is part of the efforts to use grantee data for collective learning in the region and hope that this supports current and future grantees (either affiliates or individual organisers) in their planning and also to think about regional goals and challenges collectively.
In the Clinic we were able to gather input of what was useful in the report and what information could be useful in future, like having more detailed case studies of some practices and a shared database to search for experiences by themes or learning. We were also able to discuss in more detail two insights:
- Around practices to bring in newcomers in campaigns and retaining them. Here we also discussed some of the challenges to measure this and participants shared some possible tools; and
- Staffing practices and alternative staffing models in the region. There was an interesting discussion on ways the Foundation and CEE Hub can support with further guidelines and documentation.
We encourage everyone to read the report (including the annex) and add their thoughts to the etherpad!
- Further information
Unfortunately summer is already over in some countries and nearing its end in others, but fortunately there is a new series of events and meetings coming up in the next two months to make the nearing winter season more bearable!
- News and current calls for feedback
- The CEE Hub has published an overview of the Grant proposal for 2024. You can comment on the talk page or send your ideas and feedback to User:BKlen-CEEhub and/or User:TRistovski-CEEhub. The draft will be discussed at the CEE Meeting 2023 and finalised by the end of September before being sent to the Wikimedia Foundation.
- The drafts of three sections of the Movement Charter were published in July and early August and will also be discussed at the CEE Meeting 2023:
- Global Council: The draft for the global council is waiting for feedback and reading the already existing feedback on the talk page is worthwhile too. You can discuss this in your community as well and compare it with the 2030 strategy recommendations. Other communities have already commented on the differences, but adding more opinion and voices to the talk page is helpful in showing that these concerns are shared by many different people. Based on the current feedback this draft might undergo the most fundamental changes, but that is up to the Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC).
- Hubs: This draft tries to define the current situation around hub projects and how we want to work together on a regional and thematic level. The feedback so far has been positive in terms of what the draft describes, but also highlights the need to accommodate hub projects that might not follow the example of Wikimedia Europe or the Wikimedia CEE Hub.
- Roles and Responsibilities: Probably the least developed of the three drafts and still needs some refinement based on the feedback on the other two drafts. Certain parts of the roles and responsibilities have also been outsourced to other parts of the charter.
- Upcoming meetings & conferences from September to November
- Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2023 - the big regional meeting in our region! Around 150 people will gather in Tbilisi, Georgia, to work on regional projects and discuss the future of the CEE Hub. Should you want to take part online, you can do so in most sessions. You can also find the details for each session in the programme.
- WikiConvention francophone/2023 - held on September 22-23 in the French speaking parts of the world, this conference revolves around French Wikimedia projects and is being held in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. It is unclear yet if they will have live streams or not, but you can check their page closer to the event.
- WikiCon 2023 - held on September 29 to October 1 in Linz, Austria, it covers the German speaking Wikimedia projects. There will be live streams for the sessions marked in green.
- Turkic Wikimedia Conference 2023 - held on October 20-22 in Istanbul, Turkey, it is a conference for the Turkic languages. No information yet on live streams or summaries, but you can check their page closer to the event for more information.
- WikiIndaba 2023 - November 3 - 5 in Agadir, Morocco, the regional conference for Africa. Topics will include discussions on regional African networks and improvements to the Wikimedia infrastructure on the continent. The live stream capacity is not yet known.
- Recordings of past meetings & conferences in August
- Wikimania 2023 A summary of the event can be found in this newsletter, you can also find the livestreams from each room and each day on the Wikimedia Foundation Youtube account. Hopefully at some point it will be possible to find the recording for each individual sessions, but until then you will have to compare the schedule on Eventyay with the Youtube recordings and skip through a 7 hour long video until you find the session you want to watch.
- By: Wojciech Pędzich
This year’s Wikimania – the first in-person global celebration of being Wikimedians – took place in Singapore, specifically at the Suntec Convention Centre, August 16-19. Almost 700 people attended in-person, while more than twice this number decided to take part online. Taking into account the time zone at which the event was taking place, this looked to be a success.
There were a number of CEE accents scattered around the corridors and rooms of Suntec. The CEE Hub was often referenced in the session on “Wikimedia 2030 Strategy - Hubs: A joint framework on working together, but apart”. I was able to showcase Pattypan, the massive Commons upload tool that was developed by Yarl in the heart of the CEE region. Antanana and Anton Protsiuk held a lecture on decolonizing knowledge that showed the Ukrainian perspective and was an eye-opener. Ukraine was also featured in the lightning talk on the Cultural Diplomacy Month initiative. Kiril Simeonovski held a lecture on the invisible tax of free knowledge, as well as a lecture on capacity development for underrepresented communities.
The CEE representatives held a meetup during one of the local evenings – around 40 people attended in person with additional few dialing in to get together and talk over current goings-on in the CEE region and its wider context. Of special importance to the region was the Wikimedian of the Year award ceremony, where Anton Protsiuk of Wikimedia Ukraine was awarded an Honorable Mention. Once again, congratulations, Anton – this is definitely deserved. Oh, and condensed milk – the Ukrainian drink of volunteer appreciation was also mentioned on the big stage (and showcased by Anton Protsiuk in one of his sessions).
The sessions were numerous and held in multiple rooms – the richness of the programme made it difficult sometimes to choose what we wanted to see. Not to worry, though, sessions are available as long YouTube videos and will be available as individual programme items as time progresses. I would like you to go over this article without falling asleep, so I will not mention the fashion show, the karaoke, wikiraces and all the cool things that were happening during these four days.
And as promised during the closing ceremony – we will CEE you all in Poland for Wikimania 2024 where we will celeprate the spirit of the Collaboration of the Open!
- Further information
What do they write about us? A summary of the artiles from This month in Education and This month in GLAM.
- Using Wikipedia in education: students' and teachers' view, June 2023, Wikimedia Estonia
- But we don't want it to end, June 2023, Wikimedia Poland
- Wikimedia Serbia published a paper Promoting Equity in Access to Open Knowledge: An Example of the Wikipedia Educational Program, July 2023, Wikimedia Serbia
- WikiCamp in Istog, Kosovo: Promoting Knowledge and Nature Appreciation, July 2023, Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group
- Renewed Community Wikiconference brought together experienced Wikipedians and newcomers, July 2023, Wikimedia Czech Republic
- “Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom” course launched in Ukraine, July 2023, Wikimedia Ukraine
- CEE Spring Campaign 2023, Albania and Kosovo, June 2023, Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group
- Half done in 2023, June 2023, Croatia report
- GLAM-Wiki workshops for the Czartoryski Library; Work on the GLAM-Wiki Project Page Continues; End of Internship within the "Praktykuj w Kulturze" Program, June 2023, Wikimedia Poland
- Wiki Photowalk Albania and Kosovo, 2023, July 2023, Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group
- EU GLAM Coordinators; WikiMatejko; Polona; internship program, July 2023, Wikimedia Poland
- Wikipedian in residence raises the standards, July 2023, Wikimedia Serbia
- By: Toni Ristovski (CEE Hub)
What's going on around the globe? Check out those Diff articles to stay in the loop!
The beloved Wikimedian of the Year awards, presented by Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales, recognizes extraordinary Wikimedians for their contributions in a range of categories: newcomers and established community members, contributors to media and technology, and the central category of the Wikimedian of the Year as well as a most honorable mention.
- > Read more about this on the blog post.
During the third CEE Catch Up meeting, it was discussed about Supporting community health, where it was mentioned that Foundation works to create a Mental Health Resource Center for emotional wellbeing and support.
- > Read more about this on the blog post.
Improving community health in a large, global community like the movement takes time and careful thought. Just four years ago this month, the Universal Code of Conduct conversations began in a room at Wikimania in Stockholm. Today, there is a collaboratively-created and implemented Universal Code of Conduct and Enforcement Guidelines and a draft of the Charter for the committee caring for the future of the UCoC in our movement.
- > Read more about this on the blog post.
People are always doing something. We can know some of their activities through Wikimedia Commons.
- > Read more about this on the blog post.
After three years of development, we are excited to share that Wikifunctions is slowly beginning to roll out.
Wikifunctions, the newest Wikimedia project, is a new space to collaboratively create and maintain a library of functions. You can think of these functions like recipes for a meal—they take inputs and produce an output (a reliable answer). You might have experienced something similar when using a search engine to find the distance between two locations, the volume of an object, converting two units, and more.
- > Read more about this on the blog post.
Historically image search on Wikimedia Commons has been poor. The text-based search we use on the Wikipedias is very good at finding relevant documents in a corpus of text, but not so good at finding relevant images in a collection of sparsely labelled media files. As a result many users preferred to use Google to search Commons rather than using the on-wiki search.
- > Read more about this on the blog post.
Voice your opinion! These topics are open to discusssion.
- Universal Code of Conduct: Community review period of the UCoC Coordinating Committee draft charter (conversation hours schedule), open September 22
- By: Samat (Wikimedia Hungary)
The Hungarian Wikipedia was (re)launched two years after the English-language version, on 8 July 2003. To celebrate its twentieth anniversary, a successful meetup was held in Budapest on 8 July. Since its creation in 2003, more than half a million articles have been written by its contributors, making it the largest Hungarian-language encyclopedic work. Its readers regularly visit it from around ten million devices and view one hundred million articles a month. About 5,000 occasional or regular editors are involved in expanding and improving the Hungarian edition each month.
After a multi-year break from COVID, the celebrations continued at the Hungarian WikiCamp in Debrecen, which was held at the end of July and traditionally has an international participation: to the great delight of the organizers, the Hungarian participants were able to welcome participants from the Serbian and Slovak communities.
- Further information
What was going on in Serbia in June 2023? See the reports below to find out.
- Education Program
- Registration for the Edu Wiki Camp 2023, which will take place in Sremski Karlovci from July 24 to 27, has ended.
- The book Handbook of Research on Implementing Inclusive Educational Models and Technologies for Equity and Diversity, which contains a chapter titled "Promoting Equity in Access to Open Knowledge: An Example of the Wikipedia Educational Program" written by Nebojša Ratković and Nevena Rudinac, was published.
- A blog post about the EduWiki Conference in Belgrade was published.
- GLAM Program
- The two-month Wikipedian in Residence project has started at the Adligat Association for Culture, Arts and International Cooperation. During the first month, 384 files were uploaded on Wikimedia Commons, among which there are numerous interesting things such as the contents of a gift suitcase on the occasion of Tito's visit to Jakarta or photos from Stana Pavlić's Legate. 4 new articles were written, while 15 articles were illustrated.
- As part of the Wiki librarian project, an accredited seminar was held in the "Svetozar Marković" University Library. 11 participants attended and 11 articles were written.
- A workshop on visual editing of Wikipedia and editing of Wikidata was held in the "Svetozar Marković" University Library.
- Meetings were held with representatives of the Open Culture program within the Creative Commons organization.
- Diversity Program
- Another competition on Wikipedia in writing articles about the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, CEE Spring, has ended. This competition was realized in cooperation between Wikimedia Serbia and the Wikimedia Community of Republika Srpska in the period from March 21 to May 31. As part of the competition, 542 articles were written, while 189 were improved. A total of 19,062,665 bytes were entered, which is almost six million more than last year. User Sadko won the competition, user Ljiljana Sundać took second place, while user Zlockolicki won the third prize. In addition, two additional prizes were awarded to users Vilena66 and EmiliaITČA in the form of 2,000 RSD vouchers for the purchase of books.
- Wikimedia Serbia and the Wikimedia Community of Republika Srpska, in cooperation with the Center for Research and Development of Society - IDEAS, organized a second edit-a-thon on the occasion of World Refugee Day, which lasted from June 20 to 30. The edit-a-thon was focused on topics related to refugee crises in different countries, refugee rights, films and books that talk about this subject, etc. As part of this action, 6 editors wrote 27 articles on Serbian Wikipedia. The edit-a-thon had international character and was supported by the communities and editors on Macedonian, Greek, Turkish, Hungarian, Bosnian and Albanian Wikipedia.
- In June, two Wikipedia workshops were held for representatives of the Roma Student Initiative and the Roma Women's Network.
- During June, members of the community had the opportunity to evaluate the current strategy of Wikimedia Serbia and thus participate in the process of developing the organization's new strategy.
What was going on in Serbia in July 2023? See the reports below to find out.
- Education Program
- The Edu Wiki camp was organized from July 24 - 27 in Sremski Karlovci. Participants in this event were 17 male and female students from different parts of Serbia. During the camp, the participants had the opportunity to learn more about the programs and projects of Wikimedia Serbia, and also to improve the skills that will help them in further volunteer engagement in Wikimedia Serbia.
- The Wikipedia in School project has been finalized in all educational institutions with whom Wikimedia Serbia partnered during the past school year. During July and August, all students' term papers on Wiki projects will be reviewed.
- Activities related to reviewing term papers from the current midterm/semester, as well as calculating project metrics and planning activities from September 2023 have been set in motion.
- As part of the WikiCelebrate, the Wikimedia Foundation published a text on Meta about Sara Horvat, a Wikimedia Serbia volunteer who primarily helps in the implementation of activities within the Education Program.
- GLAM Program
- The Wikipedian in residence at the Association for Art, Culture and International Cooperation Adligat has ended. During this project, 12 new articles were written, 2 were improved, while 38 articles were illustrated. During this WIR, the largest number of files in all previous Wikipedian in residence was uploaded. As many as 1,375 files have been uploaded. Among those files are photos from Tito's diplomatic visits, photos of important cultural and historical figures, photos of the legates of Ante Ilić and Stane Pavlič, as well as numerous photos of famous places in Egypt.
- Diversity Program
- Wikimedia Serbia has started working on a research project, whose main goal is to find out what motivates and demotivates editors to contribute to Serbian Wikipedia. This research aims to better understand the needs and problems of the community. As part of the research, a short questionnaire was created, and it can be filled out by August 13th.
- In July, work was also done on organizing the local version of the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos campaign, an annual competition in which Wikipedians on all language versions of Wikipedia add photos to Wikipedia articles that lack illustrations. The goal is to promote the use of digital multimedia files, which have been collected during various photo contests and photo tours organized by the Wikimedia community, in Wikipedia articles. The campaign will last from August 1st to August 31st, 2023,
- As part of the strategy development process, an evaluation of the current strategy was prepared, with the help of community feedback. Work was also done on the alignment of the organization's work with the strategic recommendations of the movement, as well as the necessary analyzes of the internal and external environment. The first draft of the strategy will be published in mid-August.
- By: Violetova (GLAM Macedonia)
Starting from February 6, 2023, within the framework of the educational program of GLAM Macedonia, the members of Art House Karev were trained to work on Wikipedia, i.e. students from the high school Nikola Karev in Skopje. Those students are part of the extracurricular activity of the teacher and mentor, Emilia Ristanovska. Those students committed themselves to create articles on mk.wiki about Macedonian rock music groups and musicians only. Several meetings, trainings and workshops were held in February, March and April.
One of the activities with this group was the workshop held on April 5, 2023 in the Javna Soba in Skopje. 10 students participated who created and edited Wikipedia in the Macedonian language with rock music groups and bands from Macedonia. Professor and mentor Emilia Ristanovska and Snezhana Shtrkovska were present at the workshop, and guests of the workshop were: the author of the Macedonian rock encyclopedia, Tosho Filipovski, who is giving the permission of using the texts from his book, and the founder of the music register Vasil Buraliev, who is giving permission of using the photos of musicians and bands from his website.
Results so far: 33 articles are edited so far. The students are on their summer holiday, and after the summer months, the activities will continue.
- Further information
- We can see the results for this activity on the project page: on mk.wiki
- On muzichkiregistar.com
- On glammacedoniamk
- By: Dandarmkd (Shared Knowledge)
How's the Shared Knowledge doing? Check out the summary below.
- Education & Science Programme
- Professors Mentorship
With coordination with the university professor Ilina Jakimovska, one article was improved and two images were uploaded on the Macedonian Wikipedia. The activities were made on June 7.
- WikiLectures
On July 1, one article was created and one article was improved. On July 3, one article was created and one article was improved. An article was created on July 26. All the editing was done by three users.
- Community Programme
- Editing Days
Shared Knowledge managed to organize 15 editions on all the Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The first one was on July 4, while the last one was on August 22 (another three editions will be held in August). Seven people became participants.
- Editing Weekends
8 editions were made on various topics. All the weekends were scheduled. Seven people were part of it and contributed on this Saturday to Sunday project.
- Photohunts
On July 2, a recurring participant with another of his new participant, visited the mountainous village of Nižepole, Bitola Municipality. On a one day trip, they photographed the village, the local church, the mosque, the former school building, the local river, and the Baba Mountain on which the village is situated, and the flora and fauna. 82 images were uploaded on Commons. Four articles were created, while six articles were improved within the project. 57 images were used in the articles.
On the same day, the June photohunter and his companion went to Tetovo Municipality, on the Šar Mountains, so they can visit and took photos of the local landscape. 40 files (37 photos and 3 videos) were made and three articles were created and improved each. From August 19 to 20, the second part of the Bozovce and Lešnica valley was made. With the same three people, 44 files (42 images and twwo videos) were made and uploaded this month. Two articles were created on August 21.
- WikiSketch Lessons
On July 28, from 18:00 to 19:40 in local time, a new person created four articles via online connection.
- Partnerships
- WikiVillage
On July 5 and 6, Vevčani was visited for research and terrain information. From that visit, 84 photographs were uploaded on Commons. On July 14, an article on the Macedonian Wikipedia was improved. On July 17, 8 articles were improved and 2 articles related to Vevčani temples were created, also on Wikipedia in the Macedonian language. On July 18, 10 articles were created on the English language Wikipedia, articles related to the temples.
- Museums Visits
On July 6, it was visited Vranishta, which is its churches and the church Museum of the St. Nicholas Church. Six temples were visited and photographed and all museum exhibits were photographed. 70 photos were uploaded. On July 21, 3 articles were improved and one article was created. On July 24, 1 article was created and 1 article was improved. An article was created on July 25. On July 26, one article was improved and created each.
- MakSport
On July 21, three articles were improved by one user. On July 27, five articles related to Macedonian national team players, were created by another user. An article was improved on August 1. On August 3, one article was improved, and six articles were created. An article was created on August 4. An article was significantly improved and one template was created on August 4. On August 6, Štip City Stadium and the host FK Bregalnica 2008 were visited. That day was the opening round of the First Macedonian Football League 2023-2024 in the match against FK Sileks. All the players and professional staff of FK Bregalnica 2008 were photographed, the stadium itself and the field. 102 photographs of an encyclopedic nature were uploaded on Commons. Three articles were created on August 8. Seven articles were created on August 9. 1 article was created the next day. On August 11, 8 articles were created. On August 14, one article was created and one article was improved. On August 15, 1 article was improved, while 1 article was created. On August 18, 1 article was improved and 1 template was created. All the articles and templates were created by one of the two participants in Štip.
- By: Anton Protsiuk Programs Coordinator at Wikimedia Ukraine
Throughout the summer Wikimedia Ukraine has worked on many of our core projects – organizing photo contests and article campaigns, developing the Wikipedia Education Program, supporting the local community, and more. Here’s a quick look at five of our most notable activities in the past two months.
- Wiki Loves Earth in Ukraine
Wiki Loves Earth has been held every year in Ukraine since 2013 – except for 2022 when we canceled the photo contest for security reasons amidst Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Thankfully this year we’ve been able to gather a great organizing team and resume the contest, although with notable security restrictions – only photos taken before February 24, 2022 were accepted.
Throughout July we received over 4600 Ukrainian nature heritage photos from 120+ participants, and the team is now working to identify and award best photos & most prolific contributors.
- Launch of Wikimedia Ukraine’s first mass open online course for educators
July 24 was the official start date for the first installment of the “Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom” course in Ukraine developed by Wikimedia Ukraine. 300 Ukrainian educators have studied for five weeks and will complete a final assignment designing an integration of Wikipedia their lessons.
To implement the course, we partnered with Prometheus, Ukraine’s biggest platform for online courses. The project is possible thanks to the Wikimedia Foundation, which developed the international program.
(Read more about the course’s launch in the Wikimedia Education newsletter)
- A major in-person conference for wiki educators
In early July we held the first big offline gathering of Wikimedia educators since before the pandemic. The two-day event gathered close to 35 people and included around a dozen talks on experience sharing among educators, as well as discussion on the strategy of Wikipedia Education Program’s development in Ukraine.
- Presence at Wikimania – four sessions, scholarships for virtual participation
Wikimania in Singapore was the first in-person global gathering of the Wikimedia community since 2019. Over its four days there were four sessions about Ukraine and/or Wikimedia Ukraine’s projects (links to recordings included):
- Decolonizing knowledge — a perspective from the Ukrainian community (a 20-minute presentation by Antanana and Anton Protsiuk)
- Ukraine’s Cultural Diplomacy Month 2023: three different years (a 10-minute lightning talk by Renvoy)
- Motivating volunteers and retaining newcomers – case study of Wikimedia Ukraine’s “wiki condensed milk” program (a 5-minute lightning talk by Anton Protsiuk)
- Wiki Loves Earth International — 10 years of experience (a 20-minute presentation by Olesia Lukaniuk)
Three Ukrainian Wikimedians managed to make it to Singapore in-person, and three more received small scholarships for virtual participation from Wikimedia Ukraine. (Read more about our virtual scholarships experience in a past Diff post)
- Trainings for community members on verification of information and Wikidata
Wikimedia Ukraine regularly holds training sessions on various skills that might be useful to community members.
In July and August we held two online events within this program:
- Training on verification of information organized in partnership with the National Democratic Institute and led by external expert Viktoria Romaniuk, who is a prominent Ukrainian media literacy researcher. Over 40 people joined in real time.
- Introductory training on Wikidata, with the wiki education community as the target audience. The training was held by Wikimedia Ukraine’s board member (and Wikimedia steward) Base and attracted around 15 people in real time (as well as close to 100 views on YouTube so far).
- By: Mariana Senkiv, Ph.D. in Geography, Associate Professor in Lviv Polytechnic National University, Lviv, Ukraine
For two years now, students of the Department of Tourism of the Lviv Polytechnic National University in Lviv, Ukraine have been using Wikipedia and wikiprojects for studying.
Teacher of the Department Mariana Senkiv, together with the Wikimedia Ukraine every semester organizes wikitraining for students with the involvement of one of the experienced Wikipedians as a trainer (Andrii Grytsenko, Viktor Semeniuk, Sergii Lypko, Pavlo Sokhan). A Wikipedian not only conducts training, but also checks and evaluates students’ contributions to Wikipedia.
During and after wikitraining students create new or edit existing articles mostly in Wikivoyage and Wikipedia. Wikivoyage fits perfectly with the specialty of Tourism, and travel is a real lifestyle for many students of the Department.
Although the coronavirus pandemic, and now the war, has significantly complicated travel, students write with ease and pleasure about their hometowns and villages, which most of them know very well, in particular, in terms of organizing travel. The geography of the settlements is very diverse because students are from all over Ukraine. The desire of students to write about their native land is also facilitated by the local history training program of the Department, which they love so much because of the opportunity to travel and because it reveals to them the richness of the cultural heritage of Ukraine.
The contribution of students to Wikipedia and wikiprojects is important: among them are those who have received special awards and souvenirs from Wikimedia Ukraine for the most active participation, for example, condensed milk.
After the last wikitraining in the spring semester with Wikipedian Pavlo Sokhan (April 26, 2023), students improved 10 articles in Wikivoyage as part of the CEE Spring 2023 international competition and were awarded souvenirs.
Recently, Mariana Senkiv conducted a survey "My Wikipedia Editing Experience" among students of different years of study who participated in the Wikipedia Education Program. Most of the students highly appreciate the level of the wikitrainings and are grateful for the new experience they got. However, most of them do not edit Wikipedia after completing the Program, citing lack of time and motivation among the main reasons.
Taking into account the results of the survey, as well as understanding of the need to inculcate interest of students in Wikipedia in the long term, it's worth to organize wikischools for high-school students, promising future students of the University. Obviously, this interest must be developed from school years.
The first such school “Introduction to Wikipedia: how to start writing about your native land” was held at the end of August 2023 at the Lviv Polytechnic National University. The purpose of this school is to develop an interest in traveling around their native land among high-school students, as well as advance basic skills in working with Wikipedia and other wikiprojects, including Wikivoyage. Wikischool provides a range of interactive learning methods: discussions, quizzes, co-creation of word clouds etc. This encourages children to be active.
Together with Wikimedia Ukraine, a 5-day program of Wikischool was developed, which included lectures and trainings by experienced Wikipedians (Pavlo Sokhan, Vira Motorko, Sergii Lypko) and teachers of the Department of Tourism (Mariana Senkiv, Natalia Dnistrianska, Myroslava Gaba, Galyna Ilnytska-Gykavchuk). This cooperation proved to be quite successful. Pupils of different Lviv schools found out about the opportunity of editing Wikipedia, participating in wikicontests and receiving souvenirs. They created 15 articles and improved more than 100 articles in Wikipedia, Wikivoyage and Wikiquotes, as well as received certificates and valuable souvenirs from Wikimedia Ukraine. Most of the participants of this year wikischool are 15-year old high-school students. According to received feedback, they highly appreciated the wikischool and most of them will continue to edit Wikipedia and wikiprojects in the future.
- Gallery
-
Participants of wikitraining at the Lviv Polytechnic (April 26, 2023, Lviv). Trainer Pavlo Sokhan -
Participants of the first day of summer wikischool for high-school students at the Lviv Polytechnic (August 28, 2023, Lviv). Trainers: Mariana Senkiv and Natalia Dnistrianska -
Participants of the second day of summer wikischool for high-school students at the Lviv Polytechnic (August 29, 2023, Lviv). Wikipedia. Trainers: Pavlo Sokhan and Vira Motorko -
Participants of the third day of summer wikischool for high-school students at the Lviv Polytechnic (August 30, 2023, Lviv). Wikivoyage. Trainers: Mariana Senkiv and Myroslava Gaba -
Participants of the fourth day of summer wikischool for high-school students at the Lviv Polytechnic (August 31, 2023, Lviv). Wikiquotes. Trainer Sergii Lypko -
Participants of the fifth day of summer wikischool for high-school students at the Lviv Polytechnic (September 1, 2023, Lviv). Wikimedia Commons. Trainer Galyna Ilnytska-Gykavchuk. Completion of the wikischool and obtaining certificates
_7.jpg)
- Further information