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Grants:PEG/WM HU/Annual Program Plan 2012/Report/Q3

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Interim report accepted
This interim report for a Project and Event Grant has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Introduction

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This is Wikimedia Hungary's third quarterly report in 2012, covering activities in July, August and September.

Article writing contests

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Summer article writing contests lead by Wikiprojects

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We have announced thematic article writing contests for participating Wikiprojects in order to increase the activity of the Wikiprojects and to provide activities for our editors during the summer holiday. These were smaller contests where any Wikiproject could participate that could provide two editors to create the contest notice, oversee the contest and choose the winners. Out of the active Wikiprojects on the Hungarian Wikipedia five signed up in order to organize their contests, in July Wikiprojects Tennis and IT, in August the Wikiprojects for Anime&Manga, Animals and Upper Hungary organized 4-week-long article writing contests. 21 editors participated in the 5 Wikiproject contests, creating or significantly expanding 83 articles. At the end of the contests we offered a lunch invitation to the participants and organizers, hoping that the personal meeting would help future teamwork.

These were our first thematic article writing contests that were attached to specific Wikiprojects, we hope that next year more Wikiprojects and editors will take us up on the offer to organize and participate in such contests, because they will already be familiar with the contest format and be more ready to organize and promote their Wikiproject.

Article writing contest about literature

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To complement the smaller summer contest, we have organized for autumn a bigger literature themed article writing contest. This is a longer, one and a half month long contest in October-November, that we started to prepare in September. Contestants can enter with new literature themed articles (e.g. descriptions of works, biographies, etc.) that were created and written during the time of the contest. With the contest we aimed to attract new editors as well, and therefore it was important to advertise the contest through various social media channels, to prepare a press release, add new editor friendly guidelines to the contest page, inform the community about the possible influx of new editors and ask them to help them provide patient advice through their first steps. We expect that new editors will join and lot of literature themed articles will be written. A good sign that this might work is that during the preparatory phases of the contest, a number of inactive editors have returned to Wikipedia due to the contest, and a few new editors have already indicated that they wish to participate.

WLM

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We had high hopes to repeat in 2012 the highly successful 2011 Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest, which required agreement from the National Office of Cultural Heritage to use the database of national monuments. However, the head of the Office has resigned in June due to a disagreement with the government before he could sign the cooperation agreement for 2012, leaving the decision to his successor. The new head, partly due to the tasks of taking over the Office and partly due to summer holidays could only devote time to the draft agreement in the middle of August. Finally, at the end of August, a few days before the government disbanded the Office, we had received notice that an agreement this year is not possible and we had to cancel our participation in the international photo contest.

Photowalks

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During the third quarter we held one photowalk in Budapest in the area surrounding Rákóczi út. We have compiled a summary of the 11 walks held this year: 733 photos taken out of which 664 show buildings and 69 the participants. The 664 photos serve as illustrations in 120 Hungarian and 23 other language Wikipedia articles (often one article contains more than one photo from the photowalks, and the same image might be used in more than one language edition). Out of the 120 Hungarian articles 27 are new articles created as a result of the photowalks. In addition numerous buildings were photographed that do not yet have an article, thus the number of illustrated articles will grow.

Wikimania

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Wikimania, the biggest international conference of the Wikimedia community was held in Washington DC this year. The conference is a great opportunity to exchange experience, improve technical skills and network with the editor and organizational communities from different countries. Based on scores compiled by the independent international scholarship committee we have awarded scholarships to attend the conference to 6 people, 3 of whom also presented at the conference:

  • Bináris: Efficient and flexible text manipulation, spelling correction, searching and page collections with Pywikibot (video being uploaded)
  • Oren Bochman: Article Quality Assessment - Community based Content Analytics (video, starting from 29:29)
  • Bence Damokos: Chapters Committee: past, present and future (slides, video)

Reports written by our scholars are available on Wikipedia.

Taking advantage of the Transatlantic trip our vice president and office manager visited the San Francisco office of the Wikimedia Foundation, where they had introductory meetings with midlle and upper-level managers to better understand the work of the organization and the office.

Wikicamp 2012

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The third installment of the previously very successful summer editor camp was held in Veszprém and surrounding area in 2012. The camp held between 2-5 August for editors and chapter members included excursions, sightseeing, museum and beach visits, and presentations about Wikipedia and the future of the chapter.

Chapter meetups

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During the third quarter two chapter themed meetups, meetings were held. On 18 August 5 chapter members and an outside guest gathered to discuss our 2013 programme plan and strategy. The plan started at the meeting was further developed through discussions held on our mailing list and finalized at an in-person board discussion held on 25 September. The final approval of the plan will likely take place at our general meeting held on 1 December (date to be confirmed).

Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2012

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Wikimedia Serbia has organized for the middle of October a meeting and conference for editors and Wikimedians from Central and Eastern Europe. Based on our previous promise and 2012 plan and budget, we have offered €1000 to support the costs (travel and accommodation scholarships for invited foreign attendees) of the conference. The grant agreement was signed at the end of September and the support transferred on the first days of October. Two people participated in the conference from Hungary, one of whom received travel support from us.

Publication in preparation

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To complement our list of publications (with a booklet on the chapter, and the first steps of editing Wikipedia), we are working on publishing a a guide on how to improve the quality of Wikipedia articles, based on the similar, English language booklet from the Wikimedia Bookshelf. The booklet has been translated and the design and layout is complete, we are currently working on proofreading, preparing the material for press and getting an ISBN number with production planned for November.

1%

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Our association, as an organization of public utility is eligible to receive 1% of the income tax of donors who choose to donate it to us. The citizens have allocated 1.34 million forints of their taxes paid in 2011 (based on their 2012 tax forms). Receipt of this significant support is on-going as we complete the necessary administrative tasks with the tax authority (which itself has to verify that the donors have paid their taxes), we expect the amount to be wired at the beginning of November. We are very grateful for this significant societal support which we will spend on our activities benefiting the public.

Media coverage

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We gave two interviews in the third quarter which have resulted in some further coverage on the topic of editor decline:

We have published two blog posts in the third quarter on the two article writing contests. The first aimed at promoting the Wikiproject themed contests, the second reporting on the details of our autumn literature themed contest. In addition a report about Wikicamp was published on the WMF blog.

Upcoming events

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  • The printing of the above mentioned publication in November;
  • Article writing contest between 5 October and 20 November;
  • General Meeting on 1 December (agenda to likely include board elections for 2012-14, and the finalization and approval of the 2013 programme plan and budget).