Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015/Questions&Needs

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2015 WMCEE Map

This is to understand what we are to expect from the new CEE Meeting and to shape the basis of the meeting's agenda. We have been conducting the same survey before CEE Meeting 2014.

The core of the future meeting is sharing & learning, which happens in the form of:

  • sharing learnings from different (successful and unsuccessful) practices in the region;
  • practical workshops of projects (namely Wikidata) and different tools;
  • sharing projects that can be done with relatively low financial input;
  • collaborative work on future collaboration projects.

Thus, your input for the conference programme is to list:

  1. Valuable learnings: present an overview of a valuable learning you want to share with WMCEE group;
  2. Tools: name the tools that are most useful in your work and which could be useful for others in the region; share if there are tools that would be useful (maybe they can be developed?);
  3. Low-cost project from the community: please feature a low-cost project from your community.

Please also add your planned events / projects here WMCEE Calendar 2015.

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 organisation / community may be interested in attending.

Albania[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
    • Valuable learnings:
    • Strong long lasting Education program and expanding more with Education Program Manager.
    • Organizing local Wikipedian conference (Wikipedia Weekend 2015) - gaining new active Wikipedians.
  • Low cost project from the community:

Next oneː Wikipedia Weekend II in Tirana (Novermber 2015)

  • Strengths (or what you are doing well):
    • 2 years organizing Wiki project with Volunteers, without any budge, still we are going on with it.
    • Wikipedia Albania Community is part of the Open Labs hackerspace.
    • Working for the Gender Gap issue on Wikipedia
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
    • Small community and volunteer base
    • Low understanding of free licences in general public.
  • Needs:
    • Support for Wiki Loves Monuments, as we are organizing it for the second time, but at the first time we didnt have founds to give prices for winners;
    • We have applied for a user group, we need to help to start it up;
  • Questions:
    • For Wikipedia Albania contributors are from Kosova as well, and some of the user that participated at CEE Spring are from there, are they allowed to apply to come to Estonia as representative as Albanian Wikipedia?
    • Help from chapters or usergroupː How do you manage to coordinate or to work with contributors from different countries? I.E The Albanian Administrators are mostrly from Kosova and Macedonia but the contributors are mostly from Albania. Its is important for us to gather the community somehow to work together.(It was a challenge for me to get in touch/follow up with the participants since they were mostly from Kosova)

Armenia[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
  1. Valuable learnings:
    1. Wikipedia Education Program in Armenia. Working with young university and school students.
    2. Organizing wikicamps for young people.
    3. Organizing collaboration between 2 wiki communities.
    4. Managing "out of wiki" volunteer work.
    5. Working with diaspora communities in different countries.
  2. Tools:
    1. Translation corner. How people who do not know wiki markup and editing basics can contribute in Wikipedia.
  3. Low cost project from the community:
    1. Wikiclubs. How to create wikiclubs in the regions of Armenia.
  • Strengths (or what you are doing well)
    Education program.
    Managing and organizing many programs with small team.
    Strong connection with wiki community.
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with)
    Small community.
    Limited resources.
  • Needs and questions
    • How to organize CEE Meeting or other international projects?
    • How to manage staff?
    • How does APG grant reporting work?
    • Any interested chapter to start collaboration after Georgian-Armenian collaboration?

Austria[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
  1. Valuable learnings:
    1. How to design board/staff relations
    2. Chapter effectiveness, governance, quality management
    3. APG process and reporting
    4. Organizing photography projects and contests
    5. Volunteer support across three chapters for one language community
  • Interested in attending:
  1. --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 03:31, 24 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. --Ailura (talk)
  • Strengths (or what you are doing well)
  1. Governance, strategy and leadership
  2. Community relations
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with)
  1. Small community
  2. Limited resources, diversification of income sources
  • Needs and questions
  1. Creating strategic alliances with CEE chapters
  2. Exploring common fundraising possibilities (grants etc.)

Azerbaijan[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
  1. Valuable learnings:
  2. Tools:
  3. Low cost project from the community:
  • Interested in attending:
  1. --Wertuose (talk) 14:16, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. --Sefer azeri (talk) 14:22, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  3. -- Alismayilov (talk) 22:05, 18 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strengths (or what you are doing well)
  1. Thematic months
  2. Public relations
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with)
  1. Small community
  2. Poor understanding of wikirules
  • Needs and questions
  1. Bot operators and programmers
  2. Grants for projects like WLE/WLM, wiki-conferences, editathons, etc.
  3. Support in promoting Wikipedia

Belarus[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
    • Valuable learnings:
      1. Survey how belarusian people to understand wikipedia and what they want in it (winter 2014/2015).
    • Low cost project from the community:
      1. Wikification of communities. It is an activity program to foster different topic communities and grassroot initiatives with knowledge about wiki principles and work there. How we communicate with activists, the media and official institutions.
      2. Crowdfunding project for wiki community needs an example "Helper for new Wikimedians".
  • Strengths (or what you are doing well):
  1. High skilled and motivated administrator teams.
  2. Good contactness and help from experienced wiki-activists about any article issues.
  3. Activity with zero budget.
  4. Success with forming and registering the Wikimedia Community User Group Belarus in July 2015 due to united efforts.
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
  1. Complex relations between two language branches and sometimes non-productive competition.
  2. Russification (enormous influence of the Russian language) is a huge objective factor which tight belarusian wiki audience.
  3. Wikimedia chapter or user group absence as a result of:
    • community desintegration (lack or social activities of wiki administrators, the article building is one huge focus)
    • legislation aspects demanding to have a legal address for NGOs in administrative building (entailing necessity of book-keeping)
  • Needs:
  1. Different engagement practices (with communities and official institutions) in the region and countries with similar issues.
  2. International wiki-volunteer exchange.
  3. Foster new leaders or administrators, because current team is overburdened. Engagement of women participation in wiki life.
  • Questions:
  1. Which chapters would like to organize a Wikicamp in Belarus, i.e. in summer 2016?
  2. It is interesting to know your experience in chapter building.
  3. Does someone work in multilingual community and how to manage it (it means team climate and decision making process)?


- outdated information

Bosnia & Herzegovina[edit]

Bulgaria[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
  1. Valuable learnings:
    1. BG WP has experience with a wide spectrum of educational wikiprojects on university level, and can share some findings about designing such a project. A detailed questionnaire in support of constraint-based analysis and decision making of the WEP project design is given here.
    2. WikiDojo experiment (see https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWikimedia-CEE-2014-Kiev--WEP--Vassia--removed-fairuse.pdf&page=13)
    3. We are one of the seven chapters and user groups, which have organised Wiki Loves Earth. We did it with zero budget, with preparation for less than 4 days, and still have received 1614 contributions. Although the topic has been in the programme earlier, we can share our good and bad experiences, and help other Wikimedians do it better.
  2. Tools:
  3. Low cost project from the community:
    1. #100wikidays, although it is a challenge and not a project. #100wikidays gave evidences that social networks are not only source of distraction for the dedicated Wikipedians, but can be harnessed to serve good Wiki-causes, and add value (user-to-user and user-to-content interaction like liking, commenting, sharing, group coordination, outreach to and support/recognition from external audiences). :)
  • Strengths (or what you are doing well)
    Good performance in writing geographical/biographical/historical articles about neighbouring countries.
    A tool for category recommendations: User:V111P/WikiTranslTools/bg.js
    A tool for moving categories (Category Master): CategoryMaster.js (similar to cat-a-lot from Commons)


  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with)
    Few people are willing to engage in offline organizational activities, projects, collaborations with institutions. Reluctance for offline collaboration on larger initiatives like establishment of juridical entity, or at least shared bank account.
    Yet unable to provide own funding for cross-border and other regional cooperative actions.
  • Needs
  • Questions

Croatia[edit]

Cyprus[edit]

Czech Republic[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
  1. Valuable learnings:
    1. Arguably one of the best senior citizen education programs, running for 1 year now, with great results.
    2. Wikipedian in Residence at Masaryk University in Brno
    3. Pilot project with high school students as Wikipedians in Residence in town Kadaň
    4. ...
  2. Tools:
    1. Our own transparent tracker system for handling receipts
    2. Czech-Slovak Wikipedia semi-automatic translator
  3. Low cost project from the community:
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with)
    Solving community problems, specially on smaller projects
  • Needs
  • Questions

Estonia[edit]

See also: Wikimedia Eesti
  • Input for the conference programme
  1. Valuable learnings:
    1. a CEE Spring sharing and learning session (to talk about our experience in organizing this collaborative event on the local level);
    2. the Estonian chapter can share its experience related to administrative questions, especially financial and documentation management;
    3. a new approach with photo competitions and engaging local photo communities for WLM and WLE.
  2. Tools:
    1. The understanding of available tools, how to use them effectively is needed. Especially for "most useful least used tools" (User:Asaf (WMF), 15th of May 2015).
    2. Introduce Estonian translation tool Minority Translate to wider CEE community.
  3. Low cost project from the community:
    1. HELP. Run by Ivo Kruusamägi. It really brings quality nature photo content to Commons and Wikipedias while operating with nearly non-existent costs.
  • Interested in attending
Yes (organizing)


  • Strengths (or what you are doing well)
    Wikimedia Eesti has a longlasting education program with an influence on university courses;
    Dedicated board and staff;
    Organisation of interesting competitions and collecting events (translation bee, collecting photos of nature, science photo of the year competition).
  • 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 organizational effectiveness.
    How to improve communication with legislative body.

Georgia[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
  • Strengths (or what you are doing well)
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with)
    • Small community
  • Needs and questions
    • How to organize CEE Meeting or Wikicamp

Greece[edit]

  • Interested in attending
  1. Magioladitis (talk)
  • Strengths (or what you are doing well)
  1. Wikipedia Education program applied in all levels
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with)
  1. Small community and volunteer base;
  2. No FoP;

Hungary[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
    • Valuable learnings:
      1. QR programs
      2. article writing contests
    • Tools
    • Low cost project from the community:
      1. Wikimeetups
  • Strengths (or what you are doing well):
    • stable infrastructure and well-prepared organizational background
    • connections with governmental and civil partners
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):
    • small community and volunteer base
    • former activists are lost in the real life
    • legal and governmental environment
  • Needs:
    • need help how to encourage the newbies to do some volunteer jobs
    • realization of strategic plan on the rebuilding of the volunteer base of the chapter (and Wikipedia)
  • Questions:

Kazakhstan[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
  1. Valuable learnings:
  2. Tools:
  3. Low cost project from the community:
  • Interested in attending:
  1. --Kaiyr (talk) 19:44, 5 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strengths (or what you are doing well)
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with)
  • Needs and questions

Latvia[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
  1. Valuable learnings:
    1. CEE Spring contest specifics in small community;
    2. Our Wikipedia has adopted lots of advanced templates and widgets from major Wikipedias, could present some of them.
  2. Tools:
    1. Generated list of missing articles by interwiki (source code)
  3. Low cost project from the community:
  • Interested in attending
  1. Papuass (talk)
  • Strengths (or what you are doing well)
  1. Relatively high article depth ratio;
  2. Healthy community with no serious incidents.
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with)
  1. Small community and volunteer base;
  2. Very few offline activities;
  3. No FoP;
  4. Gender gap;
  5. Low understanding of free licences in general public.
  • Needs
  1. All the support we can get for Wiki Loves Monuments, as we are organizing it for the first time;
  2. Support in transitioning user group (since January 2015) into a chapter in foreseeable future.
  • Questions
  1. How to effectively communicate with government/GLAM institutions as a user group, which is not a formal organization? We have some personal contacts which can be a good start, but that might not be enough for a stable relationship.

Lithuania[edit]

Macedonia[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
  1. Valuable learnings:
    1. The learnings that we have from the projects like: Wiki Women in Macedonia, Mariovo Off-Road Experience (Wikiexpedition with bicycles), also as organizers of the first CEE WikiCamp.
  2. Low cost project from the community:
    1. The collaboration with the Holocaust Memorial Center for the Jews of Macedonia.
  • Strengths (or what you are doing well)
    We are good in organizing Wikiexpeditions
    Cooperation with main-stream media,
    Education Program.
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with)
    Our volunteer capacity and small community on Macedonian Wikipedia.
  • Needs
    We need help how to encourage the newbies to do some volunteer jobs.
  • Questions

Moldova[edit]

Montenegro[edit]

Poland[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
  1. Valuable learnings:
    1. Wiki Loves/Europena style contests - started in Berlin - focused on CEE based contests. The core idea of this would be not to make lectures about local contest (as it was in Kiev) - but rather short intro with some overall statistic and general remarks and then start discussion/sharing experiences/brainstorming for new ideas (User:Polimerek can shape the session);
    2. about textual contests - in the same way as the above - with preliminary overview of such contests. (it is harder than photo contest, as the local contest pages are usually in local languages). It could cover CEE Spring (a volunteer is needed to shape the session);
    3. Sharing administrative issues. What is a daily work-flow of documents in WMPL and how daily decisions are made and how does look like relations between our Board, treasurer, employees and accountant. We would suggest to avoid sharing during this session detailed country specific issues - as they are different in each country, but we can share general managerial methods, which might be replicable in other chapters;
    4. Crossborder GLAM cooperation - we need a critical mass for this - a discussion session with hope to establish such kind of cooperation. At the moment we have the beginning of cooperation with Goethe Institut, Polish Cultural Institutes, Hungarian Cultural Institutes and cooperation with Viadrina Univ. We were also talking about Austrian chapter reps. about the "Galicia" related project, which could be of interest for Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania and Poland: en:Galicia (Eastern Europe)
    5. Our experience with paid GLAM coordinator - what was achieved in a year of employment and what problems occurred (may be provided by our GLAM coordinator).
  2. Tools:
    1. Mass upload using Vicunia uploader - especially useful for wikiexpeditions
  3. Low-cost project:
    1. we can do it in lighting talks formula + some time for general discussion at the end. We had quite a lot of such projects - so we can select 2/3 most successful and say few words about each.
  • Interested in attending
Polimerek (talk) 10:44, 23 July 2015 (UTC) + 3-4 other people from our chapter.[reply]
  • Strengths (or what you are doing well)
    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)
    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 ;-)

Romania[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
  1. Valuable learnings:
    1. Having an NGO do financial management for you can replace the need for a chapter (with a certain overhead)
  2. Tools:
    1. Full list-management bot (created for WLM, can work for any project that respects the same structure)
  3. Low cost project from the community:
  • Interested in attending
  1. Strainu (talk) (will be sure after 8/8)
  • Strengths (or what you are doing well)
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with)
  • Needs
    more people willing to do offline work
  • Questions

Russia[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
  1. Valuable learnings:
    1. The freedom of panaroma and copyright law amendments.
  2. Tools:
  3. Low cost project from the community:
    1. Contests with an external sponsors/coorganizers (resulting in >10 000 articles and > 80 000 images in last three years).
  • Strengths (or what you are doing well)
    Legislation, education, contests, conferences and wiki-awards, GLAM.
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with)
    Restrictions on financial cooperation with foreign entities.
  • Needs
    Mutually share experience, to get knowledge on new projects and ideas.
  • Questions
    • How the CEE cooperation might be improved and advanced.

Serbia[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
  1. Valuable learnings:
    1. Planning and expanding human resources; adapting to changing requirements in order to meet our strategy goals.
    2. Cooperation with Voluntary service of Serbia - involving new volunteers into movement.
    3. Strong long lasting Education program and expanding more with Education Program Manager.
    4. Organizing local Wikipedian conference (WikiLive 2015) - great feedback from the community, gaining new active Wikipedians.
  2. Tools:
    1. Tools related to usage of photos, uploads statistics WLM, Wiki metrics with emphasis on we find useful and what needs to be improved or created (WLE tool).
  3. Low cost project from the community:
    1. Every year Wikimedia Serbia has open micro grants call for parties interested in developing low cost projects aiming to enlarge free knowledge. What we’re proud the most is the fact that some project leaders continued to create similar projects this year and had ideas for annual plan which were approved.
    2. Besides micro grants, there are several projects with a great contribution to Commons and Wikipedia. Those are Photo-safaris and workshops within Education program and FemWiki. Projects listed above don’t require much funds because we can use space and equipment from partners.
  • Interested in attending


  • Strengths (or what you are doing well)
    Strong long lasting education program with a influence on adding Wikipedia in high school curriculum
    Successfully finished our first APG/FDC grant cycle
    Creating new Strategy document for our chapter
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with)
    The core Wikipedian community is not entirely involved in Wikimedia projects.
    Public in Serbia still do not differ Wikimedia from Wikipedia.
  • Needs
    How to better share experience.
    How to improve organizational effectiveness.
    How to do better educate and motive new volunteers and prevent burnout.
  • Questions
    • How can we improve regional cooperation?

Slovakia[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
  1. Valuable learnings:
    1. possibilities for creation and using of language resources useful for Content translation (basic research and brainstorming done)
    2. sharing lists articles for Wiki Loves Monuments in more Wikipedias - problems and possible sollutions
  2. Tools:
    1. Copyvio Watchdog - tool to check and list possible copyvios
    2. article writing contest counter - useful for counting plain text added during article writing contest with some statistics
  3. Low cost project from the community:
    1. low cost financially, but possibly not-so-low cost in time measure: article writing contest with external partner (prizes donor); asking another organisations for photos for Commons
  • Strengths (or what you are doing well)
    • financial donations from public
    • contacts with like-minded organisations and movements (and, in beginning, with national institutions)
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with)
    • small group, not enough volunteers for all projects or some big one again
    • communications and PR to public, to local communities and to members
    • bridging the existing online community with offline actitivies
  • Needs
    • human resources
    • time to breathe :)
  • Questions
    • effective "cohabitation" of wiki projects in closely related languages (translations, rules in article writing contests)
    • effective and impactful supporting of wiki projects in small languages (like Rusyn)

Slovenia[edit]

Turkey[edit]

Ukraine[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
  1. Valuable learnings:
    1. Some ways to communicate with Government. Ukrainian Minister of Science and Education appeal to academic community to support editing Wikipedia (User:Perohanych)
    2. How to get to radio, TV and newspapers. (User:Perohanych)
    3. Local Wikipedia Monthly newsletters. «WikiGerald» for Ukrainian Wikipedia (User:Perohanych)
      Note: it is not a newsletter but a monthly statistical bulletin, as it contains row statistical data, not news — NickK (talk) 12:42, 3 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      It does not matter how to call it Newsletter or Bulletin. What is important — it contains essential information. But as far as I understand, here is not a place for submitting own presentations, but a place for expressing own Questions & Needs — what we would like to get to know. --Perohanych (talk) 15:59, 3 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Tools:
    1. Wikimedia Ukraine's financial program for tracking of expenses and reporting developed by Illia Korniiko (User:Ilya)
    2. WLX Jury Tool is an image selection and rating tool for Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Earth contests
  3. Low cost project from the community:
    1. Wikiflashmob to celebrate Wikipedia's birthday
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with)
    How to measure effectiveness of our projects and make them effective (evaluation is not what we are good at)
  • Needs
    Improve our Education program
    Improve our Wikiexpeditions (and other projects we are currently running :)
    Improve our volunteer capacity, motivate them, educate them (perhaps?)
  • Questions
    • Does having a person responsible for Education program (Education Program Manager?) help?
    • What are the pros and cons of having a Wiki(p|m)edian in Residence?

User Groups (not country based)[edit]

Esperanto kaj Libera Scio[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
  1. Valuable learnings:
    1. program "Wikipedia helpers" - Wikipedians, who can add text to Wikipedia for persons with too low technical skills or too big fear
    2. using European Voluntary Service for wikimedia volunteers (helping to E@I)
  2. Tools:
    1. Translation center of E@I - planned for use in translation task force
    2. WikiTrans - (non-libre) tool helping with translations between Wikipedias with advanced customization (template mapping, infobox re-creation, adding source information etc.)
  3. Low cost project from the community:
    1. topic-centered translation run (in preparation): eo:Projekto:Esperanto125 (inspired by WM Medicine translation task force)
    2. QRpedia in museums
  • Strengths (or what you are doing well)
    • connections to movement of another topic
    • international connections
  • Weaknesses (or what you could use help with)
    • small team with weak connections
    • big diaspora, not local based
    • small connections with local organisations
  • Needs
    • collabouration with territory based wikimedia organisations
  • Questions
    • how to effectively collaborate in small world-wide organisation
    • possibility of collabouration about digitalisation of Esperanto-language literature in CEE countries
    • possibilities of outsourcing of text translation / preparation by language learners (maybe something similar to Duolingo translation center)

Wiki Project Med[edit]

  • Input for the conference programme
  1. Valuable learnings:
    1. comparably little activity in the CEE region or its languages, and need to interface with region activities. Substantial experience working across languages through en:Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Translation_task_force and across Wikimedia platforms, e.g. also on d:Q4099686, interested in getting more labels, descriptions and such onto Wikidata and Commons.
    2. collaboration with a medical school (cf. en:Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/UCSF) and would be interested in exploring whether similar activities would fit into the educational outreach activities.
  2. Tools:
    1. A plagiarism detection tool originally developed for medical articles is now deployed across the English Wikipedia: en:User:EranBot/Copyright/rc
    2. Another bot imports audio and video files from the biomedical literature into Commons: commons:User:Open_Access_Media_Importer_Bot.
  3. Low-cost project:
    1. started a peer-reviewed medical journal on the English Wikiversity: v:Wikiversity_Journal_of_Medicine
  • Interested in attending


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

Wikisource Community User Group[edit]

Others[edit]

Germany[edit]

Finland[edit]

Input for the conference programme
Valuable learnings
Low cost project from the community
Interested in attending
Strengths (or what you are doing well)
Weaknesses (or what you could use help with)
Needs
Questions