Wikimedia Armenia/Annual Report 2023
Introduction
Wikimedia Armenia gradually returned and restarted all its previous activities in early 2023 and in this reporting period WMAM is not only implementing all its major projects but also introduced new ones due to securing small and medium grants from various entities. We continued the best practice of separating three major directions for Wikimedia Armenia's project - Quality Content, Community Program, and Education.
This reporting period includes the activities from July 2023 until December 2023. The first half of 2023 was covered in previous report which you can find here.
Quality Content
Quality Content is one of the most important programmatic directions for Wikimedia Armenia. We pay close attention to the quality of contributions to Wikimedia projects. This is done in the highest level as we have a special staff member - Quality Program Coordinator - who is designing projects and edit-a-thons in a way to provide high quality of contributions. The quality is ensured in various ways which will be discussed for each project separately.
Free Speech Wiki Gathering
Within the frames of the “Combating hate speech through spreading free knowledge” project, Wikimedia Armenia and Institute of Liberal Politics, with the financial assistance from the “Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom”, the Free Speech Wiki Gathering was organized. The gathering took place in Tsaghkadzor on 20-24 September, 2023. There were 37 participants and 6 organizers. During the gathering, participants created articles related to different topics: hate speech, discrimination, and human rights. Besides editing workshops, a visit was organized to Orbeli Brothers House-Museum, a photo walk to the 11-13th century church complex Makravank, an intellectual game, movie screening and discussion. During the 4 days of the edit-a-thon, participants created 338 articles with a volume of 6,878,400 bytes.
Wiki Campaign on Armenian Topic
On the occasion of the 7th anniversary of the establishment of the "․հայ" domain, a campaign for the development of articles on Armenian topics began in Armenian Wikipedia. This campaign has become an annual collaboration between Wikimedia Armenia and "Internet Society of Armenia" NGO.
The goal of the one-month long campaign is the development and update of topics dedicated to Armenian history, culture and science in Armenian Wikipedia. Anyone with research skills, source finding skills, and willingness to be a part of this important mission joins the campaign. With the help of scientists, professors, students and every individual interested in Armenian topics, we are able to present our history and culture with its different colors and trustworthy form and inherit it to future generations.
During the competition, 32 participants of the Armenian Wikipedia created and improved 769 articles on Armenian topics with a volume of 5,730,733 bytes during the month of August.
Within the framework of the competition, those who have made a significant contribution will receive cash prizes from the "Internet Society of Armenia" NGO, and the other active participants received certificates.
Wiki Loves Living Heritage
As a tribute to the 20th anniversary of the UNESCO Convention for the “Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage” “Wiki Loves Living Heritage” international campaign was launched in March, 2023.
On August 1, 2023 Wikimedia Armenia joined the global initiative through a joint competition-project with the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports and Hovhannes Sharambeyan Museum of Folk Arts. The project consists of two parts - photo contest and edit-a-thon.
The photo contest will last until September 15, the best 5 photos will participate in the international competition. As of August 31, 3 Armenian participants of the “Wiki Loves Living Heritage” project have uploaded 22 photos related to intangible cultural heritage to WikiCommons.
The edit-a-thon will last until the end of 2023. It includes the creation and improvement of articles in Armenian Wikipedia, as well as the creation of pages and data entry related to the intangible cultural heritage values of the Republic of Armenia in Wikidata and Meta-Wiki platforms. As of August 31, 6 participants joined this part of the project by creating 17 articles in Armenian Wikipedia. Pages have been created in Wikidata for all the intangible cultural heritage values of the RA, the descriptions have been filled and, if possible, photos were added.
Wiki Loves Monuments 2023
In October 2023, Wikimedia Armenia joined the "Wiki Loves Monuments" international photo contest, which aims to collect photos of historical monuments and cultural heritage objects in Wikimedia Commons and use them in the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia and other projects of the Wikimedia Foundation.
In October, 68 participants of the "Wiki Loves Monuments" Armenian contest, 22 of whom were newly registered ones, uploaded 8118 photos of monuments from the list of monuments of Armenian history and culture to Wikimedia Commons.
In order to attract new photographers to the competition, Wikimedia Armenia organized three photo walks in October. 47 participants took part in these photo walks and visited 12 historical and cultural places.
About 10 participants with no experience in uploading photos to Wikimedia Commons, who expressed their desire to participate in the project, took part in a course on uploading photos to Wikimedia Commons held at the Wikimedia Armenia office. During the course, the participants learned to upload photos and fill in the data correctly.
Photo uploading workshops and Photo walks
In order to improve the results of the "Wiki Loves Monuments" international photo contest organized in October 2023, workshops for uploading photos to Wikimedia Commons and three excursions were organized in October, during which 47 participants visited 15 historical and cultural places in 4 regions of Armenia. 20 of the participants were newcomers. The workshops were attended by 10 participants who learned how to upload photos to Wikicommons.
The first wiki excursion took place on October 7. The direction was the following: Hayravank, Noratus Cemetery, Saint Astvatsatsin Church of Noratus in Gegharkunik Province, and Orbelian's Caravanserai, Tanahat Monastery and Surb Khach Monastery in Vayots Dzor Province. The second wiki excursion took place on October 21 and the direction was Kobayr Monastery, Dsegh, Hovhannes Tumanyan House-Museum, Bardzrakash Surb Grigor Monastery, Sirun Khach. Within the frames of “Wiki Loves Monuments 2023”, the last photo walk was organized on October 29 and the trip included the Castle of Aruch, Surb Grigor Church of Aruch, Cathedral of Talin, and Dashtadem Fortress.
During the “photo walks” participants shared their experiences, took pictures of historical-cultural monuments, and then uploaded them to Wikicommons.
Wikimedia Projects' Training Courses
In early 2023, Wikimedia Armenia introduced mandatory training courses before each project. The purpose of the training courses is to teach newcomers to Wikipedia editing tools, to introduce them the movement itself and the main principles. On one side, these training courses ensure that newcomers have solid knowledge about Wikimedia projects and especially Wikipedia and they create higher quality articles during the main project. On the other hand, it provides equal opportunities both for newcomers and experienced editors especially in cases of contests.
Considering this, a couple of weeks before starting a project, it is announced that people who have no experience in editing Wikipedia can join the training courses and learn it beforehand. The courses are designed in a way that provide not only background knowledge about overall Wikimedia projects, but also information about working on Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons.
During the first two workshops WMAM experienced employees teach how to register, create sandboxes, make changes to articles, create articles, upload photos, add items on Wikidata. Afterwards, the participants start translating articles and creating them. During this period, they are under the trainers' supervision not to make major mistakes and of course to ask questions. When the training courses end, in case of major events with limited number of people (e.g. Wikicamps, Financial-Economic Wikimonth, WLE, WLM), participants are selected based on their performance.
Experienced editors are also welcome to these training courses if they need to recall some tools or editing principles.
In the past one and a half years, these training courses proved to be very productive and helpful, which is showcased by higher quality and quantity of articles created during various projects.
Small-Scale Collaborations
“Explore Philosophy” Wikiproject
From August 1 to September 10, 2023 Wikimedia Armenia in cooperation with “Ayn Rand Center Armenia” NGO launched the “Explore Philosophy” Wikiproject aiming at creating and improving articles on philosophy on Armenian Wikipedia.
Experienced editors of Armenian Wikipedia and newcomers who joined the movement by participating in wiki training organized by Wikimedia Armenia took part in the project. During the edit-a-thon, 25 participants translated articles on philosophical topics from other language Wikipedias - overall, 128 articles with 3,408,176 bytes. The participants who created the largest best quality articles received certificates mentioning their contributions. At the same time, all the other participants of the edit-a-thon were also awarded certificates of participation.
Collaboration with the National Library of Armenia
In November, 2023 Wikimedia Armenia started a collaboration with the National Library of Armenia. The goal is to present the major national and academic libraries, as well as all regional libraries in separate articles, to add materials related to the history of the Armenian book, library work and reading to the Armenian Wikipedia. The cooperation between the National Library and Wikimedia Armenia began at the National Library of Armenia, then continued at the Wikimedia Armenia office and with a series of online courses, during which the staff and librarians of the National Library of Armenia got acquainted with editing skills on Wikipedia, learned to create and edit articles. During and after the course, new articles were created and existing ones were improved. Cooperation will be continuous.
Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos 2023
In 2023, Wikimedia Armenia joined the WPWP project which is gaining momentum year by year. The project aims to enrich pages of different language Wikiprojects with existing and newly uploaded pictures. The project conditions are to add pictures to those articles which do not have pictures and to add description to added pictures. Articles can be in any language Wiki project. During the month of August, 13 wiki editors from Armenia added 2698 pictures in 19 different wikiprojects.
Community Program
Wikimedia Armenia pays a close attention to community engagement. Giving high importance to the health and engagement of the Armenian wiki community, Wikimedia Armenia organizes various activities to not only gather community members together and hear their ideas, but also to appreciate their contribution to the development and expansion of the Wikimedia movement in Armenia. The latter is done through the Wikipedia Day when we not only celebrate the birthday of the largest free encyclopedia, but also summarize the outcomes of the WMAM's activities and projects.
The purpose of the community meetups is to bring community members together and to receive feedback about Wikimedia Armenia's projects and events, to provide a platform for them to express their ideas and to keep them updated on the ongoing events and activities outside of Armenia, in the international Wikispace.
Community Meetups 2023
Online Meetups
On August 1, 2023 a community meetup was organized for community members, organization members, staff and anyone interested. Zoom platform was used for those who joined the meetup online, and others gathered at the Wikimedia Armenia office. 14 community members participated in the meetup. Establishment of new Wikiclubs was one of the discussion topics, another topic was the diversification of financial sources and expansion of the movement to involving people of different ages with different professional background.
On October 4, 2023 organization members, staff and interested members of the Armenian community gathered together to discuss ongoing projects and future plans. The meetup was organized offline at the Wikimedia Armenia office, as well as online with the help of Zoom platform. There were 10 offline and 17 online participants.
During the meetup, the staff presented the projects implemented by Wikimedia Armenia, talked about the latest CEE Meeting 2023 which took place in Tbilisi, Georgia, as well as some of the participants made suggestions for future projects, and an agreement was reached on some of the points.
Offline Meetup
On December 7-10, 2023 Wikimedia Armenia organized a pre-planned three day community meetup in Alpina hotel, Tsaghkadzor. The meetup-discussion gathered Wikimedia Armenia members, staff and community members together. Besides the offline meetings, online meeting-discussion were organized via the Zoom platform.
There were 30 offline and 8 online participants to the meetup.
During the meetup, the projects implemented by Wikimedia Armenia and the news and activities of the international wiki movement throughout the year were presented. The participants were introduced to the new wiki tools and the statistics of Armenian Wikipedia and Wikiclubs. Through a brainstorming activity the participants presented their ideas and recommendations for Wikimedia Armenia’s next year's strategy.
An online meeting took place with the Wikimedia CEE Hub Coordinator Barbara Klen. The meeting was organized using the office hours provided by the CEE Hub without a set agenda which allows Wikimedia community members to get to know about the CEE news and raise questions and express opinions.
The second online meeting took place between the Wikimedia Armenia staff and the Wikiclub coordinators. During the meeting, organizational and editing issues of Wikiclubs were discussed. The coordinators shared their opinions and recommendations.
Wikiexcursions for Community Members
Shirak Region
As a prize for the winners of Wiki editing, intellectual and sports games of the Youth Wikicamp which took place on August 17-24, 2023 Wikimedia Armenia organized an excursion. The excursion took place on October 15 and the following direction was chosen - Harichavank, Sev Berd, Marmashen Monastery, and Gyumri. The participants of the winning teams had chosen the direction by voting. During the excursion, the participants visited historical and cultural places, got acquainted with their history and took photos. The total number of participants was 21.
These excursions have huge impact on community members:
- They learn about new places and write articles about them,
- They take pictures of natural monuments, as well as surrounding historical-cultural monuments and have the opportunity to upload them during the WLM or WLE photo contests,
- During the long trip they also discuss various topics related to Wikipedia, wiki movement and sometimes suggest interesting new ideas.
Participation in regional Wikimedia events
On September 15-17, 2023, the Wikimedia Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) meeting was held in Tbilisi. The purpose of the meeting was to create a platform where representatives of Wikimedia organizations, User groups and wiki communities from the CEE countries will have an opportunity to share their experience in the dissemination of free knowledge, present their best projects, familiarize themselves and the others with new tools and innovative programs. This year, the delegation from Wikimedia Armenia also participated in the CEE meeting, and two representatives of the organization also had speeches. In general, the CEE meeting was quite productive for the WM AM delegation both in terms of making new acquaintances and meeting old ones as well as tangible steps taken in the direction of establishing new cooperation with other wiki communities.
The projects implemented in the CEE region and the specifics of their implementation were especially interesting in comparison with the projects organized by Wikimedia Armenia. Along with many commonalities, we also discovered a number of skills that we can adopt for project organization. We reached a preliminary agreement with several organizations of the CEE region regarding cooperation in organizing various edit-a-thons.
One of the members of the delegation, being a member of the CEE Youth Group, delivered a speech, introducing the youth of the CEE countries to the youth projects implemented by Wikimedia Armenia, their results and achievements in working with young people. At the same time, at the closed meeting of the CEE Youth Group, the future activities of the group, the possibility of the upcoming meeting in the Czech Republic, and the options of participating as a group in next year's Wikimania were discussed. We hope that the youth of the Armenian wiki community will also be engaged in this group and will have the opportunity to exchange experiences and think about and initiate new projects and collaborations.
In order to share Wikimedia Armenia’s experience on important educational projects, the President of the organization presented the adaptations of the projects introduced in 2023 and the comparative results they had.
The Armenian delegation also participated in various discussions with representatives from different countries on the Wikimedia movement’s future, new models of governance, development of the movement’s new charter, etc.
On November 24-25, 2023 CEE Youth Group organized an offline meeting in Prague, Czech Republic, where Wikimedia Armenia had a participant who is one of the active members of the CEE Youth Group. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the current achievements and future plans that the group is heading towards.
Education Program
Wikicamps 2023
Teens Wikicamp 2023
Wikimedia Armenia organized a 7-day Wikicamp for teenagers in Tsaghkadzor on 7-14 July. 35 teenagers aged 13-17 took part in Wikicamp. The campers contributed to Wikipedia and Wikidata during the 7 days of the camp. In 7 days, 28 campers contributed to Armenian Wikipedia by creating 478 articles, in total 3,357,581 bytes. The other 7 participants contributed to Wikidata by translating item labels with a volume of 210,000 bytes and 5723 edits. 318 out of 478 articles created during the Wikicamp were dedicated to Armenian football - players, clubs and coaches. This topic was chosen in order to fill the gap of articles about Armenian sports in Armenian Wikipedia. In order to encourage the editors working on this topic, a “football day” was organized in Wikicamp. During this day football players from the Youth football team of Armenia visited the campers. The guests gave their jerseys to the most active campers-editors after which a friendly game was played between the Wikicamp and the Youth football team players. Besides editing, the participants also took part in sports, intellectual, and cultural games. Sports included volleyball, dodgeball, football, table tennis, tug of war and Sportlandia, and Fort Wiki. The latter includes 8 trials - editing, hammering a nail, darts, solving a metal disentangle puzzle in water, answering an intellectual question, finding the next trial inside containers filled with different items, remembering color sequence, finding the way with closed eyes.
The participants also played a “Brain ring” intellectual game answering 20 intellectual questions. The campers were assigned to prepare a video about Wikicamp starting from day one until the end of the camp. The Wikicamp participants also had music and dancing lessons. On the third day of the Wikicamp, the participants visited Tsaghkadzor ropeway.
Youth Wikicamp 2023
On 17-24 August, 2023 Wikimedia Armenia organized a seven day Wikicamp for the youth group in Tsaghkadzor. The participants were 18 years old or older. During the seven days of the Wikicamp, the participants edited Armenian Wikipedia and created articles from a list of articles, most of which were from the list of vital articles.
43 participants of the Youth Wikicamp created 403 articles with a volume of 10,602,203 bytes during the seven days of the camp. One of the experienced editors alone - ArmSirius - created 26 articles with a volume of 906,146 bytes, meanwhile another editor who was a beginner - Sose Markosyan - created 27 articles with a volume of 518,244 bytes. They respectively received “The best experienced editor” and “The best beginner editor” awards.
Besides actively editing Wikipedia, the campers also participated in sports games and intellectual games. Competitions were held for the following sports games: table tennis, volleyball, dodgeball, bowling, Fort Wiki. The latter includes several competitions - editing, solving a metal disentangle puzzle in water, remembering color sequence, finding the way with closed eyes, intellectual game, jenga and archery. Team-building games were also organized for the participants: high tower, brain ring, be unique, delicious competition, etc.
In addition to these games, the campers also had entertainment activities: a visit to the Tsaghkadzor ropeway and a swimming pool.
Wikiclubs
Wikiclubs are one of the most crucial projects by Wikimedia Armenia as they are our direct delegates in their local communities. As of May 2024 Wikimedia Armenia has 8 Wikiclubs (Goris, Ddmashen, Lernapat, Kirants, Koghb, Hatsik, Jermuk, and Kajaran) operating in various region of Armenia. In this reporting period, we opened one more Wikiclub in Kajaran, Syunik region which is the southernmost Wikiclub in Armenia.
As we define it Wikiclubs represent the complex idea of youth+volunteering+self-education+community belonging. The club members contribute not only to Wikipedia but also to Wikisource and Wikidata. They are actively engaged in all activities and events organized by Wikimedia Armenia - edit-a-thons, Wikicamps, thematic projects. As of May 2024 there are 185 active members in 8 Wikiclubs. The number of members is gradually, but slowly increasing as the "graduates of Wikiclubs" (former members) continue their education in another city and stop attending their Wikiclubs; instead new people join Wikiclubs ensuring their stability and continuity.
Wikimedia Armenia is designing special projects and edit-a-thons for Wikiclubs in order to keep them engaged and active. Some of these edit-a-thons are "Preferable topics", wikification of materials from the “Agricultural Encyclopedia”, “Ahead of the Euro 2024”, "Women's Month in Wikiclubs", creation of articles by using the “Armenian Typography and Book Art” encyclopedia, etc.
| Participants | Newly registered | Content pages Wikipedia | Content pages Wikisource/Wiktionary/Wikicommons | |
| Quality Content | ||||
| Free Speech Wiki Gathering | 43 | 8 | 338 | |
| Wiki Campaign on Armenian Topics | 32 | 1 | 769 | |
| Wiki Loves Living Heritage | 12 | 3 | 27 | 22 Commons |
| Wiki Loves Monuments | 68 | 22 | 8118 Commons | |
| Explore Philosophy | 25 | 12 | 128 | |
| Subtotal | 180 | 46 | 1,262 | 8,140 Commons |
| Community Program | ||||
| Community meetups | 79 | |||
| Subtotal | 79 | |||
| Education Program | ||||
| Wikicamps | 78 | 27 | 881 | 5726 Wikidata edits |
| WikiClubs | 151 | 8 | 2,516 | 103 Wikisource pages / 21,231 Wikidata edits |
| Subtotal | 229 | 35 | 3,397 | 103 Wikisource pages/ 26,957 Wikidata edits |
| TOTAL FOR ALL PROGRAMS | 488 | 81 | 4,659 | 8,140 Commons / 103 Wikisource / 26,957 Wikidata edits |