Wikimedia Community User Group Turkey/Reports/2021
Summary
2021 started with the celebration of 20th birthday of Wikipedia. This was the first time our user group organized a Wikipedia birthday event. During the year we continued our three legged-work: Education Program activities, Partnership talks and Community Meetups.
This year our Education program grew bigger. We had opportunity to present Wikimedia projects at academic events and it proved helpful for getting connections for the Wikipedia Education Program.In partnership talks, we had a special focus on increasing content on Turkish museums in Wikimedia projects and initiated Turkish Museums Project. We also continued to contact local administrations and civil society organizations to introduce Wikimedia projects;as a result organized a list of activites together. In 12 months we made 24 community meetings and; had an opportunity to meet face-to-face once again in Istanbul during the post-Wikimania event of Wikimedians of Turkic Languages User Group.
Wikipedia 20[edit]
Wikipedia 20th birthday party was the first event of the year. This was the first Wikipedia birthday celebration organized in Turkey as we know. Due to the pandemic, we could not come together in person and share a birthday cake, but still it was a joyful celebration where participants were the contributors of Turkish wiki projects, some partners collaborating with our user group, and some professors with whom we organize Wikipedia Education Program. Before the virtual party, 34 users produced 41 articles as birthday gift, and in return they were sent wikipedia pins . That WikiProject continued until the end of January.
We were surprised and delighted to see that our small party took the attention of communities in Russia. During the party we watched the video-message of Sakha Wikimedians. User:Frhdkazan generously gave his time to translate the meeting into Russian to share the party with those communities. We were glad to get feedback that they found it useful to learn about our activities and the way we organize them; particularly watching the presentation about 2020 statistics was found useful .
Education Program[edit]
- 2020-2021 Fall term
Until June when the 2020-2021 education year ends, we continued visiting university courses online to help students and instructors in understanding the functioning of Wikipedia better and supported some of them in making their Wikipedia assignments as well.
The work with Kadir Has University where all 150 students taking a compulsory Critical Reading and Writing course in their first year were assigned creating a biography article in trwp was particularly important. Because for the first time, rather than one professor implementing it in only her class with her individual initiative, an education institution decided to implement such a program for all students in the program. Every instructor prepared a list of articles as they wished, for their students to work on. We saw that they prefered creating lists including only-women authors or names from minority groups. Another important work was the one with T3 Foundation -a foundation which grants scholarships to graduate and undergraduates from all over Turkey- asked their grantees to contribute Turkish Wikipedia and closely tracked their contributions. Members of our user group had all the time been available for supporting those students in their contributions and as a result, very good articles were produced in medicine, aeronautics, geophysics and computer science (see the list).
- Summer months
In the summer, we continued meeting with student groups online when invited to organisations held by students. We participated an in person event in Istanbul for making a presentation titled Social Insensivity and Wikipedia during the event organized for psychology students from different cities.
- 2021-2022 Spring term
In the spring term Wikipedia Education Program were implemented in courses at 3 different universities in Ankara and one univeristy course in Bursa. Additionaly, we had presented Wikipedia in a High School for the first time. This was an in person event where a user group member made presentation about Wikipediat at Çan Science Shool, Çanakkale in four different classes. They discussed how to benefit from Wikipedia more, how to check references and how they could start contributing.
List of activities[edit]
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Partnership Talks, presentations and Edit-a-thons[edit]
During the year we have tried to introduce Wikimedia projects to many institutions including GLAM institutions, local administrations and civil society organizations. Many times it was the first time our contacts were learning that they could contribute to those projects and before discussing further on how they could be contributing and how this could be a mutually beneficial partnership, they asked us to make a presentation or more for their members or staff. With some of them we took a step further and organized a thematic edit-a-thon.
Among numerous talks with many potential partners, the partnership with Kocaeli Municipality was among the most successful ones because it produced very concrete results. We have made not one but a series of webinars for volunteers from Kocaeli municipality staff and the public. In those workshops we worked on Turkish Wikipedia articles related to culture and touristic places of Kocaeli. As a result, new contributors not only created new articles about the city but also added references, uploaded many photos and used those photos - as well as some high quality photos provided by the local administration- in the articles. One article (İzmit Saat Kulesi) became a featured article. This partnership provided a good success story for future partnerships with other local administrations.
List of activities[edit]
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Community meetups[edit]
During the year, the group had 24 meet-ups. The first one was the face-to-face meeting at Bilgi University for celebrating the Wikipedia Birthday; the others were online meetings where there were minumum 7, maximum 22 participants. The meetings held bimonthly at Tuesdays nights were called "VikiSalı" (WikiTuesday). Meeting notes of each meeting is available here (in Turkish).
List of activities[edit]
| January | - | 18 | - | - | - |
| February | 02 | - | 16 | - | - |
| March | 02 | - | 16 | - | 30 |
| April | - | 13 | - | 27 | - |
| May | - | 11 | - | 25 | - |
| June | - | 08 | - | 22 | |
| July | 06 | 20 | |||
| August | 03 | - | 17 | - | 31 |
| September | 14 | - | 28 | - | |
| October | - | 12 | - | - | |
| November | - | 09 | - | 23 | - |
| December | - | 07 | - | 21 | - |
Presentations at academic events[edit]
We made presentations at two academic events. Having a presence at those events was helpful for introducing Wikipedia projects to some academicians and getting connections for the Wikipedia Education Program.
- The first one was an oral presentation at Archiving in Turkey today and tomorrow- Women in the Archives in April where 3 women wikipedans discussed local and world wide efforts to make women more visible at Wikipedia.
- The second event was the presentation at Violence Against Women and Inequality in the Media Conference in Antalya, where two wikipedians discussed gender gap in Wikipedia.
In addition, we participated in the Linked Pasts symposium hosted by Ghent University in December where we presented our colloboration with British Institute at Ankara Research Resource Centre (BIAA) and Museums Association about adding Turkish museums data to Wikidata.
Art&Feminism event[edit]
In 2021, an Art & Feminism event was organized in Istanbul for the fourth time. Actually, it was a virtual event with participants from different cities as well. The results of the event are 30 new articles, 208 improved articles, 698 edits. More information is availale here: Art&Feminism Edit-a-thon
CEE Spring[edit]
We organized the local competition for Vikibahar 2021 Wikimedia CEE Spring between March 21 - May 31. As a result of this contest, 204 new articles were produced[1] by 28 participants.
WLE 2021[edit]
Wiki Loves Earth local photo competition was organized in Turkey for the second time this year. 2414 photos were uploaded by 549 users. Turkey was the 6th country in terms of the number of images uploaded and 93% of those users were registered after the competition start.[2]
We were happy to see that one of the international winners was from Turkey. The first place landscape photo selected by the local jury have became the fourth place winner in the international contest.[3] Due to this succeess, the WLE competition could even found place on news program at one of the major news channel and the result of the competition was announced there.
Post-Wikimania meeting of Wikimedians of Turkic Languages[edit]
Wikimedians of Turkic Languages User Group organized a post-wikimania meeting in August 2021 as a hybrid event. In-person participants of the event met at Uskudar University, Istanbul. We were happy to have this meeting in our country. A member of our user group made a presentation about the activities of WMTR group in that event.
Turkish Museums Project[edit]
During 2021, an important focus of the group was improving content on museums at Wikimedia projects. One part of this work included partnersip search: We made several talks with Pera Museum (İstanbul), Troia Museum (Çanakkale), SALT Research (Istanbul), Nilüfer Belediyesi Parkan Sanlıkol Music Instruments Musesum (Bursa) to colloborate about sharing their collections at Wikimedia Projects.
Another part of the museums work included our work to obtain list of Turkish musesums and put them on Wikidata. Beginning from April 2021, we have collaborated with British Institute at Ankara and Museums Association. In the first step, we added Wikidata the museums and museum Directorates affiliated to the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums. The work continues to add data of Painting and Sculpture Museums affiliated to General Directorate of Fine Arts as well as the data related to private museums and uncertified museums. Find the project page here: VikiGLAM.