Wikimedia Armenia/Reports/2016-11

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2016
November

Teacher seminars[edit]

On November 2-6, during school Autumn holidays Wikimedia Armenia again gathered together the teachers from different regions of Armenia to held a seminar dedicated to wikiediting. During such seminars we choose active teachers from previous seminars as well as choose new motivated ones who has expressed wish to join Wikipedia Education program. For November seminar 95 teachers have registered and WM AM chose only 26 to participate.

During these days the teachers got familiar with wikimovement, Wikimedia Armenia, Wikimedia Foundation and its projects, learned editing tools, policies and guidelines․ After learning editing tools the newbies began creating new articles or improving already existing ones.

Involving already active teachers in the seminar has several reasons: first of all they stay motivated and continue editing after the seminar, secondly they get acquainted with new editors, make friends and motivate newbies. Many teachers continue editing after the seminar, conduct workshops in their schools involving their students to Wikipedia Education program. On the basis of such teachers Wikimedia Armenia opens WikiClubs throughout Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh.

Teacher seminar (November 2-6)
Participants	26
Edits	1102
Bytes (positive and negative sum)	1,049,967 (-35346)
Articles created	134

Western Armenian program[edit]

WM AM founded another WikiClub in Beirut. On the 9th of November, 2016, Alicia Ishkhanian, a Wikipedia camp participant, presented to her Armenian Evangelical Central High School's, 7th till the 12th graders, the Western Armenian Wikipedia. Mentioning that the idea of the Western Armenian Wikipedia was introduced in 2014, Alicia talked about the several camps that took place to encourage the Western Armenian Wikipedia, starting from the one in Lebanon in which many Armenian Lebanese schools participated in, in order to develop the Western Armenian. Some of the minor editing rules of Wikipedia was also mentioned in the presentation, explaining the important details while writing or translating an article. Encouraged by this presentation, 10 students requested a WikiClub in the school so they could learn and improve furthermore the Western Armenian Wikipedia.

Wiki Loves Science[edit]

Wikimedia Armenia has organized a two day “Wiki Loves Science” editathon that ran from 4th till 6th of November. 34 people have participated in WLS editathon. During the two days participants have enriched the Armenian Wikipedia with their professional articles. A total of 108 articles has been created during this editathon.

	Wiki Loves Science (November 4 - 6)
	Number of participants	Wikipedia
participants	34
created/improved articles/entries		108
edits		819
bytes (net sum)		887,077

Norway-Armenian collaboration[edit]

Wikimedia Armenia and Wikimedia Norge came up with the idea to organize a writing contest on both Armenian and Norwegian Wikipedias after a Board member of Wikimedia Norge - Tove Eivindsen visited Armenia and the Armenian chapter in 2015. The decision along with the communities confirmation was made in early 2016, the challenge took place on November 14 - December 5.

Initially, this writing contest was aimed at the improvement and edit of Armenian and Norway related topics on Armenian and Norwegian Wikipedias. This on one hand improved the content about these countries on Wikipedia, on the other hand highly impacted on the cooperation between the wiki communities of Armenia and Norway, as well as, two affiliates.

From the side of the Armenian community, there were 34 participants, who created and edited more than 765 articles on Armenian Wikipedia. The winner was offered a chance to go to Norway and get closer to their culture and life. This will be organized later, probably in spring of 2017.

Finally, Wikimedia Norge and Wikimedia Armenia decided on writing a blogpost and a learning pattern about the challenge which will be done in late February.

Sources:

Working with schools and universities[edit]

Օn November 23 Wikimedia Armenia staff conducted a workshop for the students of American University of Armenia who were going to create or improve articles about high power electric stations of Armenia on English Wikipedia. The lecturer divided the students into a groups of four and gave a topic to each group. They were given a task to find as many references as they can, read them carefully, and try to learn about their topic as much as possible, after which they would start editing the articles. As a result the students created and improved 5 articles.

Saturday Workshops[edit]

Every Saturday Wikimedia Armenia organizes open workshops edit-a-thons at the WM AM office where new editors are taught how to edit different wiki projects and the experienced editors participate in edit-a-thons dedicated to different themes. Anyone interested in wiki projects, Wikipedia, wiki editing and needing assistance, as well as wiki editors, who want to edit in pleasant atmosphere participate in these workshops. We have about 15-20 participants in each workshop. Among them there are also active wiki editors of hywiki, hywiktionary, hywikisource, Wikidata who help to conduct the workshops.