Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2014/Questions&Needs

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(Questions&NeedsWikimania)
  Survey results

The page to list ideas, questions, needs. Anything else you wish to share here, you may. Please, feel free to list:

  • Your program's strengths or what you are doing well. You can list here current, ongoing, and planned projects, etc.
  • Your program's weaknesses or what you could use help with. You can list here the projects you were going to do, or stopped doing, etc.
  • Anything your program needs, anything your program lacks.
  • Any questions you have that such a meeting might answer.
  • And who from your country may be interested in attending.

This is to understand what we are to expect from the new CEE Meeting and to shape the basis of the meeting's agenda.

Albania[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well):
    • Experience with holding weekly events for Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons
    • Translation of the Wikipedia platform in albanian through translatewiki.net
    • Women in Wikipedia: involve more women into editing Wikipedia, mainly the native language one sq.wikipedia.org
    • Documentation of our events
    • Follow ups with volunteers through frequent workshops
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
    • Short and non qualitative articles
    • Lack of public information which can be used as a reference
    • Lack of References in the articles
  • Needs:
    • More active users(long terms).
    • Training for the local coordinators who run the project of Wikipedia.
    • More active administrators for sq.wikipedia.org to check on time new articles/editings.(bad articles are deleted after 1-2 months)
    • To share experience on community building and support
    • External funding
  • Questions:
    • How to improve regional cooperation?
    • How to involve more women into editing Wikipedia? Why is this gender gap?
    • How to inspire people to be part of different projects of Wikimedia Commons (like Wiki Loves Monuments)?
  • Interested in attending:

Armenia[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well): Wikipedia Educational program, presence in media, wiki workshops and conferences
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): GLAM project
  • Needs: volunteers, technical equipment
  • Questions:
  • Interested in attending: Yes, 2-3 members

Austria[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well):
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
  • Needs:
  • Questions:
  • Interested in attending:

Azerbaijan[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well):
    • We have created Azerbaijani Wikimedians User Group (WMAZ) just two months ago and it is recognized by AffCom.
    • We started thematic months in az-wiki and still it is going well.
    • We have some very active and enthusiastic users.
    • We are among '100,000 articles' Wikipedias.
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
    • We have articles in two alphabets of Azerbaijani language: Latin (used in Azerbaijan Republic) and Arabic (used in Iran by ethnic Azerbaijanians).
    • Too much stub articles.
    • Poor wikification.
    • Not more than 20-25 permanently active users.
    • Lack of teamwork.
    • No freedom of panorama in Azerbaijan.
  • Needs:
    • More active users.
    • Coders and bot operators.
    • More pictures and wikification in Commons.
    • New wikiprojects (first of all - Wikiversity and Wikinews).
    • Bots for wikification, evaluation, spell-checking, creation of articles and categories and etc.
  • Questions:
    • Can anyone who is familiar with bots and coding help us to operate bots, create templates, MediaWiki (.css, .js) pages?
    • Has any community prints, books, booklets in English or Russian or Turkish about 'how/why to edit Wikipedia'? We need them to use in outreach work of WMAZ (further translation will be done).
  • Interested in attending:

Belarus[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well):
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
    • small community
    • lack of volunteers for projects
    • absense of teamwork habit
    • absense of public information strategy
  • Needs:
    • renewing Wikiproject Orphanage
    • planning to join WLM-2015
  • Questions:
  • Interested in attending:

Bosnia & Herzegovina[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well):
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): small comunity
  • Needs: Creating a Chapter
  • Questions:
  • Interested in attending:

Bulgaria[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well): We have been running multiple university wiki projects since 2007/8 (see here). We also can share GLAM experience with Sofia Zoo (see here) and National Archives (see here).
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): Engaging of online people into offline meetings and activities. :)
  • Needs: "Wikimedians of Bulgaria" User Group was approved on 10 Nov. 2014 (see here), and is probably the youngest CEE user group. Hence, we will benefit from learning from other chapters and user groups in the region how they organize their communities and operate, how they have prepared their bylaws, how they get and spend funding, etc.
  • Questions: Per "Needs" and "Weaknesses".
  • Interested in attending:

Croatia[edit]

Cyprus[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well):
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
  • Needs:
  • Questions:
  • Interested in attending:

Czech Republic[edit]

Estonia[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well):
    • Wikimedia Eesti has a longlasting education programwith an influence on university courses,
    • Wikimedia Eesti is starting a nationwide partnerships on wikipedization of Estonian cultural heritage,
    • Organisation of interesting competitions and collecting events (translation bee, collecting photos of nature, science photo of the year competition. --Kaarel Vaidla (WM EE) (talk) 19:21, 7 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Editing month on Greece will be organized in November (due to received information). --Visem (talk) 18:36, 26 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This editing month will be organised with the help of the Embassy of Greece in Estonia.--Kaarel Vaidla (WM EE) (talk) 19:21, 7 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
    • Small community and volunteer base,
    • Some problems with local laws, e.g. no freedom of panorama.
  • Needs:
    • Shared experience on community building and support,
    • How to improve communication with legislative body.


Wikimedia Eesti is interested in organising WMCEE meeting in the end of the next year! We believe that it will be important to attract local public attention to Wikimedia activities and help us with community building and increase our political influence. We have included this in our APG proposal.

  • Questions:
    • Are other organisations in the region interested in organising Science Photo Competition?
    • How can we improve regional cooperation?
  • Interested in attending:
    • Yes, 2 members

--Kaarel Vaidla (WM EE) (talk) 19:21, 7 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Georgia[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well):
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
    • Problems with forming a chapter
    • Small community
  • Needs:
  • Questions:
  • Interested in attending:

Greece[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well):
    • Wikipedia Education Program (mostly in Thessaloniki university)
    • Wiki workshops
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
    • No GLAM activities
    • Small community
    • Lack of teamwork
    • Lack of volunteers for outreach projects
    • No freedom of panorama in Greece
  • Needs:
    • Lobbying for changes in law
    • Coders and bot operators.
    • Planning to join WLE-2015
    • More active users.
  • Questions:
  • Interested in attending:

Hungary[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well):
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
  • Needs:
  • Questions:
  • Interested in attending:

Kazakhstan[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well): Support to read three alphabet of Kazakh languages: Cyrillic, Latin, Arabic. Support of government
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): Most of articles is short. A few users. Less wikification.
  • Needs: More users. More pictures and wikification.
  • Questions:
  • Interested in attending:

Latvia[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well): Stable number of new articles, length of articles, depth indicator, some trusted "expert" users.
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): Small comunity, offline activities, no freedom of panormama.
  • Needs:
  • Questions: Interested in chapter founding experience.
  • Interested in attending:

Lithuania[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well): thematic weeks in wikipedia. Work in Commons.
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): Troubles with no freedom of panormama. Small community. Lt.wiktionary: disballance between bot's (much) and "live" editor's (weak) edits.
  • Needs: Help with lt.wikiversity, lt.wikivoyage (too little/no volunteers)
  • Questions:
  • Interested in attending: Probably no.

Macedonia[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well): educational programme, photographic competitions.
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): capacity development, lack of external funding, volunteer management, external relations.
  • Needs: external funding, better cooperation with other chapters and user groups, sharing ideas about new projects, starting new international projects in the region,
  • Questions: What are the best practices in connecting with the GLAM institutions? How to get funded from external sources?
  • Interested in attending: Yes.

Moldova[edit]

(only referring to people involved; project-related questions are listed at #Romania section)

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well):
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): Very few contributors in Romanian language
  • Needs: Perhaps a promoting effort is needed, people know very little about how they are able to actually edit Wikipedia
  • Questions:
  • Interested in attending:

Montenegro[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well):
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
  • Needs:
  • Questions:
  • Interested in attending:


Poland[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well): Probably the most reach and mature chapter in the region. We are good in organizing Wikiexpeditions (which was our original idea), various contests, local conferences and microgranting program.
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): GLAM cooperation, cooperation with educative institutions, presence in main-stream media.
  • Needs: not enough volunteers ready to do things in the "real world" - better self-organization
  • Questions: How to deal with Poles - still not well answered ;-)
  • Interested in attending: Yes (depending on the progam and timing)

Romania[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well):
    • We have been able to find a mostly-working solution for FoP pictures that need to reside on ro.wp
    • We have several automated content-creation projects that work reasonably well
    • We have succeeded to educate the local Wikipedians about the significance of having correctly licensed files in our repository, and strictly following the fair use concept
    • An extensive work was done, and is still in progress, in reviewing legacy files and deleting those which do not meet current copyright policies
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
    • Lack of interest for formal organization and/or real-life meetings due to contributors living in different countries
    • Lack of knowledge of the JS libraries used in VE and other WMF initiatives
  • Needs:
    • Cross-border initiatives?
  • Questions:
    • Interested in social media initiatives that were not endorsed by a chapter
  • Interested in attending:

Russia[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well): Legislation regards the free content
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): Strict governmental regulation
  • Needs:
  • Questions: How others do internal (i.e. regional) fundraising?
  • Interested in attending: Yes

Serbia[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well): Educational projects, photo content acquisition, Microgrants, GLAM, conferences
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): getting funds from outside the movement, sustainable volunteers
  • Needs: lowering involvement of the board in everyday activities, finding a new ED, creating a good FDC grant proposal
  • Questions:
  • Interested in attending: Yes, 2-3 members

Slovakia[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well): donations from public, contact with like-minded organisations and movements
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): planed chapter in evolution, very small group, not enough volunteers for all projects or some big one again, communications and PR to public and to local communities
  • Needs: public relations, human resources
  • Questions:
  • Interested in attending: Yes, 1-2 members

Slovenia[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well):
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
  • Needs:
  • Questions:
  • Interested in attending:

Turkey[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well): not bad in thematic weeks in Wikipedia
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): lack of volunteers, problems with organizing Chapter
  • Needs: More users.
  • Questions:
  • Interested in attending:

Ukraine[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well):
    • We are going to have an online edit-a-thon on Greece during September 29 - October 12, 2014. We are going to write articles about Greece and Greek culture. That's an easy activity, so you can join us if you want. Let's start from Greeks, they have been everywhere :) --アンタナナ 22:24, 8 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • After CEE Meeting we made cooperaton Weeks with Estonians, Macedonians and Armenians. Also Ukrinians take part as a jury when Belarusan community organized Ukrainian Week (in be-x-old). Also we managed to organize International Wikiexpedition to Chernobyl Exclusion Zone where representatives from 6 countries took part. In 2013 Wikimedia Ukraine organized Wiki Loves Earth Contest and in 2014 this Contest became international. Also after CEE Meetings we had personal contacts with CEE representatives and continued cooperation: representatives from Ukraine visited Armenian, Polish and Russian Wikiconferences and representatives from Poland, Estonia and Russia visited Ukrainian Wikiconferentions. --Visem (talk) 08:26, 25 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
  • Needs:
  • Questions:
  • Interested in attending:

User Groups in the region[edit]

Esperanto kaj Libera Scio[edit]

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well): connections to Esperanto movement (Esperanto movement members are pretty willing to make their work free); international connections
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with): big diaspora; not local based
  • Needs:
  • Questions:
  • Interested in attending:

Others[edit]