Wikimedia Tunisie/Report 2022

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki
This is the Wikimedia TN User Group report of the year 2022

The Wikimedia Community User Group Tunisia has actively participated in various events and programs during the last year.

This report provides an overview of the activities carried out by the user group, including participating in international conferences, organizing local events and workshops and community events.

Despite a challenging year considering the Covid-19 contest, the end of the previous executive mandate, and the difficulties to attract new people to volunteer. Our user group's managed to continue promoting cultural heritage and history, working on gender equality and succeded to reduce the gender gap about tunisian personnalities on Wikipedia.


The user group organised a succesful and transparant elections to have a new board. The new elected board for 2023-2024 is :

The new elected board started working in January 2023. In the next two years, the main goals of Tunisia User Group are :

  1. Representing the Wikimedia Foundation in Tunisia.
  2. Establishing a base and a reference for all Tunisians in Wikipedia and all other Wikimedia projects.
  3. Promoting and developing the content related to Tunisia.
  4. Organizing activities, gatherings, workshops and different projects for contributors.
  5. Unifying the efforts of the contributors under one umbrella, especially those with technical skills.
  6. Gathering the contributors who live abroad and have them put some focus and efforts in enhancing content, especially what's related to Tunisia.
  7. Unifying the contribution in the international activities, such as Wiki Love… contests and others.

Projects[edit]

WikiChallenge Ecoles d'Afrique 2021/ 2022[edit]

Coordinator : Afek Ben Chahed

The Wikimedia TN User Group participated for the 4th year in the WikiChallenge Ecoles d'Afrique. This year, the WikiChallenge contest in Tunisia resulted in 27 articles created on Vikidia and 228 images uploaded on commons. The article Menzel Djerbien, created by the pupils of Habib Bourguiba primary scool Djerba won an international prize (5000 Euros) and the article Musique traditionnelle tunisienne won the national prize(2000 Euros).

Wikimedia Research in Tunisia[edit]

Coordinators : Houcemeddine Turki and Sami Mlouhi

Started in september 2021, Data Engineering and Semantics Research Unit has been created as a part of the Faculty of Sciences of Sfax, University of Sfax with the contribution of Wikimedia Tunisia. It is the first research structure specialized in Wikimedia Research in the Middle East and North Africa Region as well as in Africa.

During its first year of work, it was behind the first Wikimedia user script, the first Wikimedia bot and the first Wikimedia Tool created by the Tunisian Wikimedia Community. In 2022, researchers kept working to develop and optimize more these new tools.

It was also featured in highly-referred research journals and conferences thanks to its Wikidata-related research output about WikiProject COVID-19 and WikiProject Categories.

Houcemeddine Turki and Sami Mlouhi were appointed as Wikimedia liaisons by the Data Engineering and Semantics Research Unit for two years to keep collaboration between the created research structure and the local Wikimedia community.

Representing the Group[edit]

Wikimedia Summit[edit]

Sami Mlouhi represented our user group at Wikimedia Summit 2022 in Berlin. During the conference, he reached out to other User Groups representatives. in order to look for a potential new partnership and to see what is going on in other communities that might be helpful for our country.

Wikimania[edit]

Wikimedia TN user group organized a Wikimania 22 local event in which 9 members attended and discussed the achievements and the future of the user group.

The goal of bringing the community together and discussing was achieved, although the absence of the members of the executive office (professional engagement and Covid) limited the discussions a little. We have planned our action plan for the coming period by choosing the themes of our actions, namely education, GLAM projects and Wiki loves contests. We were also able to represent our user group during the session dedicated to us.


WikiArabia[edit]

4 members of the user group attended the WikiArabia 2022 conference in Dubai. Afek led the social media communications of the conference.

WikiIndaba[edit]

Wiki Indaba conference is the regional conference for Africans both within and in the diaspora. Wiki Indaba 2022 was hosted by The Wikimedia Community User Group Rwanda in Kigali, Rwanda.

Four members of the Wikimedia Community User Group Tunisia participated the event, volunteering on different committees and delivering presentations. Three of them attended the event, on the other hand, Sami, was a part of the Program and Community engagement.

These members are :

The presentations the made during the conference :

WikiConvention francophone[edit]

6 members participated in WikiConvention francophone 2022 in Paris. Yamen and Afek made two presentations about :

Habib, Hamed, Youssef and Mourad had several internal meetings and disscusions about the future election of the tunisian board which happened in january 2023.

The list of the participants in place from Tunisia is :

Documentary video[edit]

Joint work with Wikimedia Levant: