North-West Russia Wiki-Historians User Group/Annual reports/2019/en

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The 2019 was a very active year for North-West Russia Wiki-Historians Wikimedia User Group. The core participants gathered together and had established organizational structure and the procedure for resolving questions. Application for joining was presented to Affiliation Committee on July, 22. On October 7, 2019 the application was granted. During the year, 17 users decided to participate. 11 of them took part in various "offline" events of the group, the rest took part only in-Wikimedia actions "online".

Offline activity[edit]

During 2019, the group organized 6 sightseeing tours, so-called "rambles". 3 of them were to St. Petersburg suburbs — Sestroretsk, Kolpino and Pushkin, 2 of them were to some locations in Leningrad Oblast such as Priozersk and Kingisepp towns, and 1 was to Krestsy in Novgorod Oblast. At almost all of the events there were participants who are not Wikimedians and who received information about Wikipedia editing and about cultural heritage monuments of Russia.

For year 2020, several new trips were proposed, to Sheltozero, Soikino, Sortavala, Pechory, Vyborg, Belozersk, Lampovo, Lotsmanskoye Selenie, Likhvin, Kronstadt and to Gogland island among them. Also there are suggestions of visiting several industrial locations within Saint Petersburg to examine historic parts of them — if it is permitted properly (user-group status may be helpful with this).

Wikimedia activity[edit]

Following the rambles, many pictures were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, mainly of the heritage objects, that were missing from Wikimedia projects. Also, a Wikivoyage guide to Sestroretsk was significantly improved to reach "Full" status (an equivalent of Wikipedia's "Good" status).

Almost all of the rambles were described in Russian Wikinews articles in Russian, English and occasionally Erzya languages.

The Kingisepp edit-a-thon was launched: 3 "Well-done Articles" were written (2 were nominated for "Good Articles" status), 1 article stub was created, the "main" article on Kingisepp in Russian Wikipedia and Wikivoyage page on were significantly improved.

Also, the participants improved and updated articles about Saint Petersburg Railway Hub, Krasny Bor range and Moskovsky District of Saint Petersburg. Many edits were made in articles dedicated to history and culture of Saint Petersburg. During nomination to "Featured Article" for the article Nevsky Prospekt, user group members accomplished a deep analysis and necessary review.

Among that, user group members, on themselves, made a number of pictures of abandoned mansion of Ludwig Nobel, 2 sites of archaeological excavation in St. Petersburg, infrastructure objects and public events of Petersburg and Leningrad oblast (factories, streets, transport, railway stations and stops, Navy Day celebrations etc.) and also a series of photos of the center and suburbs of Veliky Novgorod city. More than 100 historical pictures with "public domain" status were uploaded to Commons, and more than 1000 modern photos exclusively made by user group members. Complete re-categorization of Saint Petersburg fauna was accomplished at Commons. More than 20 new objects of territorial cultural heritage objects were created at Wikivoyage.

Organization and representation[edit]

We have established contacts with user groups of Wikimedia Eesti and Wikimedia Community User Group Georgia, as well as with Tatar and Erzya language user groups. Some of our created and improved Russian articles are going to be translated into these languages. In the future, more user groups may join this process to translate these articles to more languages.

In the city of Petrozavodsk, our member Andrey Krizhanovsky presented our user group to Karelia Republic's museum workers.

Members of the group took part in various conferences and events of the Wikimedia Foundation and it affiliated organization. 5 of them took part in Russian sections of international photo contests WLE and WLM of 2019. Over 1000 photos of various heritage objects and natural monuments of Russian North-West were uploaded, some of them was made during "rambles", some as personal actions.

Financial activity[edit]

North-West Russia Wiki-Historians User Group have no sponsors. All of the current expenses are spent voluntarily with personal money of the participants.

Offline activity[edit]

Wikimedia activity[edit]

Organization and representation[edit]

Financial activity[edit]

See also[edit]