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CEE Newsletter
Volume 1 • Issue 2 • November 2017
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From the team: And so we shall continue

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By Kaarel Vaidla

So we did it.

In our first edition of CEE Newsletter (October 2017, published on the 1st of November) 15 regions were represented with a total of 6 regional and 26 local stories. On the first day when newsletter came out, it had 30 views and 21 on the following day, collecting a total of 127 pageviews over the course of November[1]. Also some Facebook love was shared with 16 people liking and 3 people loving the post in Central Eastern European Wikimedia Community group announcing the publishing of our very first issue[2]. In short, CEE Newsletter has been well received and is here to stay.

 
Pageviews of "meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CEE/Newsletter" in November 2017 according to pageviews tool.

We continue to share various experiences in the region and learn from each other. This month Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary and Romania (in alphabetical order) have added their content to the newsletter, making a total count of regions covered with our 2 first newsletters to 20. Any way you look at it, most of the region has already participated in newsletter initiative one way or another. As a result, the CEE Newsletter provides an excellent opportunity to stay up-to-date with activities and news from a variety of regional partners.

And there is also diversity in content, so everyone can find something of interest from the newsletter: competitions, events, educational and GLAM initiatives, project page news and many wonderful pictures. Everyone can contribute what they feel is important and everyone can read articles most relevant in their context. This also means that there is something new to learn for everyone from everyone in the newsletter.

With regional newsletter now in place we don’t have to wait for and spend our precious time on conferences or in-person meetings to hear for the first time what others are doing (although we can certainly continue to do that). We don’t have to follow attentively Facebook feeds and blogs of our dear regional partners (although we can also continue doing that). We don’t need to stay up-to-date with all the reports on meta (although this too continues to be an option). We can now add and find all our regional stories gathered and stored in one known place.

And so we shall continue.

  1. ↑ https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=meta.wikimedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&start=2017-11-01&end=2017-11-30&pages=CEE/Newsletter
  2. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/groups/1535273526719763/permalink/1984914528422325/


CEE in the news

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Armenia report

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InterWiki Women Collaboration

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By Armineaghayan
 

The idea to have an InterWiki Women Collaboration was born during Wikimania 2017 at 100wikidays Meetup in Montreal. Together with Camelia Boban, Wiki Donne from Italy and Andrea Patricia Kleiman from Wikimedia Argentina we decided to start an international collaboration which will help to fill gender gap. Wikipedians from Armenia, Argentina and Italy will have a continuous collaboration during which the participants will write on women topics according to the lists provided by the organizers or they can write on women by their choice. We welcome new countries to join to the collaboration.

15 October – 31 October, 2017

21 active Armenian wikipedians took part in the 1-st round of Interwiki Women Collaboration and during 17 days they translated 47 articles about the most prominent Italian and Argentinian women. Those who were more active and created 5 and more articles got small surprises.

3 in 1

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By Lilit Tarkhanyan, Wikimedia Armenia
 
Autumn WikiCamp group photo

Wikimedia Armenia organized 3 major simultaneous events: Autumn WikiCamp, Teacher’s WikiWeek and Wiki Loves Science edit-a-thon on October 28 - November 5, 2017.

Organizing a WikiCamp at this time of the year was our first experience which was a success. 8 day long WikiCamp began on the 28th October. 66 participants were chosen out of 153 to attend the Wikicamp based on their active participation in Wikimedia projects. The participants came from different corners of Armenia and Artsakh. During editing hours they have created and improved articles, proofread one of the Armenian encyclopedias, prior free licenced with the efforts of Wikimedia Armenia, and created neologisms in Armenian Wiktionary. As a result, Armenian Wikiprojects were enriched with 4.7 million bytes of information. We have introduced a new component to this WikiCamp, a "translation hour" after the workshop, during which children could address their questions to Russian and English language specialists.

As to the fun part of the Camp, the participants were actively engaged in sports games including table tennis, tug of war, basketball, volleyball, football, chess, etc. Apart from this they have participated in intellectual games like brain ring, time management games and more. As a change we have decided to allocate more time for cultural activities in order to boost cultural development. During these 8 days campers learned Armenian national song and dance, staged musicals and have performed ethnic dances from around the world on the last day of the camp. Children had to contribute to the creation of costumes and stage props which they had fun making and painting!

 
Teachers Wikiweek group photo

While children were having fun editing Wikiprojects another part of WMAM team was introducing Wiki editing process in another location to a number of teachers who came from different regions of Armenia. It was our 6th Teachers WikiWeek which took place from October 29 to November 3. The total of 86 teachers have applied online to be part of the seminar and only 28 were chosen among which there were also some experienced Wikipedian teachers. Some of those teachers have become wiki assistants by forming groups and helping the newcomers. Our agenda was packed with lots of editing activities. There were also discussions regarding the usage of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in the school curriculum and education process.

 
Wiki loves Science, meeting the new participants

The teachers also used the school textbooks and separated those articles (related to their own field of specialisation) that are missing or are incomplete on the Armenian Wikipedia. This list will be used for other project as a recommendation list for creating and editing articles. Teachers have created and improved more than 75 articles.

WMAM team, inspired after the Teachers WikiWeek was ready to host young scientists and students. It was Wiki Loves Science 2-day editathon ran from 3rd till 5th of November. We had 22 participants. During the two days they have enriched the Armenian Wikipedia with their professional articles. A total of 48 articles have been created during the editathon.

Austria report: Winners of the WikiDaheim photo competition 2017 have been announced!

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By Philip Kopetzky
 
The number one picture of WikiDaheim 2017 in Austria!

As avid readers of the CEE newsletter you probably already know about the project WikiDaheim, which also included a photo contest of all pictures submitted, no matter the category. A jury then selected the 10 best pictures out of the 4500 eligible images, which you can find on Commons at WikiDaheim Winners 2017 in Austria.

The winning picture shows the interior of an old post station that was converted into a farmhouse in Meiningen, Vorarlberg. Most of the furniture and decoration dates back to the time around 1900, giving the place as much of a rustic appeal as the outside might hint at. Thanks to Böhringer for this amazing picture!

Thanks as well to all the volunteers involved in judging the 4500 pictures in the pre-jury so that the actual jury only hat around 560 images to go through. Special thanks also to our four jury members who had a very difficult task to accomplish by having to select only 10 pictures.

In order to also acknowledge the other amazing pictures that didn't quite make the cut, here are five pictures to share and enjoy:

Bashkortostan report: News feed for November

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By Рөстәм Нурыев
Date Events Illustration
November 29, 2017 The editorial office of the information and entertainment program "Salam" of Bashkir satellite television is a long-time information partner of the Bashkir Wikipedia. At least 2 times a year, invite to the morning tea talk about our affairs. Today Rustam Nuriev told about the upcoming conference on December 3.  
November 24, 2017
 
 Zufar Salikhov's note about the Volga Wiki-seminar in 2017 was published in the newspaper Bashkortostan.
read
 
November 17-18, 2017
 
 Colleagues from the Karmaskalinsky District arrived in the Burzyansky District of the Republic of Bashkortostan. Wiki-Babushkas of two districts, activists of the community «Wikimedians of Bashkortostan», independently held three seminars for librarians, employees of the district administration and the district newspaper. Well done!, wiki-Babushkas of the Karmaskalinsky District Banat Vuliyeva-Yaubasarova and Lilia Musina and wiki-Babushkas of the Burzyansky District Kunhylyu Kotlobayeva and Rashida Gizzatullina
 
November 4-6, 2017
 
 In the city of Yoshkar-Ola the first Volga Wiki-seminar was held. The head of Ministry of Culture and Relationship of Mari El Republic Igor Sadovin, the teacher of Mari El state university Marina Lastochkina and Mari language translators took part at this event. Conference participants watched a shw:ow of Mari El dancers. Cosmodemyansk historic museum expedition was organized. Bashkir Wikipedia representative Zufar Salikhov presented a new pass card for members of conference.
 
November 2, 2017
 
 The Bashkir National Club held folling interesting meeting with BashWiki Administrator Rustam Nuriev with Bashkir youth. There was an interesting conversation about Wikipedia and practical exercises.
 
October 31, 2017
 
 Radio Yuldash
Open studio
Rasul Sagitov:

- Today we will talk about Wikipedia. Because, firstly, the whole world is watching how this electronic resource is created, millions of people read articles daily in Wikipedia, and secondly, there are problems in its reliability. I want to scream: "Beware, this is Wikipedia!". However, we also know that Wikipedia was created by volunteers. They are true patriots of their native language. How does Bashkir Wikipedia live? Let's ask the volunteers Rustam Nuriev and Zaytunа Аile about this.
listen

 


Bulgaria report: Media transparency and wildlife on focus

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By Spiritia

Wiki4MediaFreedom edithaton for journalists

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Wiki4MediaFreedom editathon in the Red House Centre for Culture and Debate, Sofia, 27 November 2017

For the second time in a row, a CEE country hosts the editathon Wiki4MediaFreedom, dedicated to creating and improving Wikipedia content related to media, media freedom and media transparency. After the first edition in Belgrade in 2016, on 27 November Sofia hosted the editathon, organized by the Italian NGO Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa, in cooperation with the Association of European Journalists in Bulgaria and members of the Wikimedians of Bulgaria User Group.

Participants in this event were journalists from Bulgarian media like "Capital" and "Monitor", members of the Association of European Journalists, members of the Access to Information Programme Foundation, freelance journalists, and students in journalism. They all benefited from learning about Wikipedia from experienced wikimedians from Italy, Serbia, Germany and the Bulgarian Wikimedians Dimitar Dimitrov, Justine Toms and Vassia Atanassova. Both the participants and the wiki mentors worked together to improve, update, and translate Wikipedia articles concerning media freedom and pluralism, access to information and media transparency in Bulgaria and South-Eastern Europe.

This year, in addition to the activities in Wikipedia, the event included a Wikidata track on how to use Wikidata to find data for investigative journalism and for transparency and accountability projects. The audience was shown how to edit and add information to Wikidata, and how to run SPARQL queries. The Wikidata track has been developed by the British NGO MySociety, moving from their previous experience with Wikidata within the project "EveryPolitician", aiming at gathering and sharing data on all politicians.

Students uploading wildlife photos to Commons

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In the frames of a project, supported by one of the mobile operators in Bulgaria, m-Tel, named "Hi-tech Explorers of Wildlife", students from the 51st High School "Elisaveta Bagryana" are uploading photos to Wikimedia Commons, taken during their summer trips in Vitosha Nature Reserve and the protected area Dragoman Marsh. With these photos, the students are learning how to contribute to one of the sources of information they mostly use in general, Wikipedia.

This collaboration stems from the long-term collaboration of the Bulgarian Wikimedia community with Balkani Wildlife Society, who are partnering in this project. During the summer, ecologists from the Society organized several trips with the students, aimed at placing camera traps in nature, demonstration of drones, and exploring plant and animal species inhabiting two of the protected territories most closely located to the capital Sofia.

While both Vitosha Mountain and Dragoman Marsh are well covered in terms of landscape view and photos of their flora and fauna, the project aims to engage students in better documenting the local wildlife species in these territories. And if the recreational and educational aspects of the project are obvious, one of the benefits of these activities may not be so self-evident. Usually, the articles about protected territories contain sections "Flora" and "Fauna" and illustrative images of the plant and animal species typical for these habitats. Quite often, however, the chosen illustrations are not of individuals, photographed in these protected areas! For instance, in the article about Dragoman Marsh in Bulgarian Wikipedia, we discovered that the photo of the short-toed snake eagle (Circaetus gallicus) was one authentically made in France, the white stork (Ciconia ciconia) was captured in Poland, and the photo of the Eurasian wigeon (Anas penelope) was made in England, and the bird is not even in the wild, but is a captive one! And this is an important consideration, that while the images in the articles about certain species may legitimately come from the whole geographic range inhabited by them, the articles about specific protected territories should only be illustrated with photos made within this territory, because of possible habitat-based variations of the species and physical differences across the geographic range.

During a short public lecture on Wikipedia, the students in 51st High School were shown how to upload their pictures using the Upload tools of Commons and the Commons app for smartphones, which proved to be much easier for them to work with. Special attention was paid both to the meaning of the free licenses Creative Commons, as well as the importance of giving precise and detailed filenames and file descriptions, which will further ensure the better usability of the contributed content. With one of the uploaded files, a demonstration was also made of how the contributed photos can be directly used within the articles.

Estonia report: Digital Humanities Conference held as Part of Estonian Presidency of Council of the EU

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By Kaarel Vaidla

Digital Humanities conference titled "Open Licenses / Content / Data : Tools for Developing Digital Humanities" took place from the 1st to 3rd of November in Estonian National Museum in Tartu as part of the official events program of Estonian Presidency of Council of the European Union.

The main goal of the conference was to inspire and educate about the benefits of opening up the content in public collections and to build bridges between the more academic digital humanities community and the staff of memory institutions (archives, museums, libraries, galleries). As Wikimedia Eesti was one of the mainm organizers of the event, a special focus was on the GLAMwiki collaboration whereby more and more content finds its way to different wiki-projects (mainly Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, Wikipedia). The 2-day conference main program was followed by the graduate school workshops, which were open for conference participants as well.

The conference in general had a good discussing and working atmosphere with an emphasis on creating a shift towards open in digital humanities. For example already during opening of the conference, participants were given a chance to sign The Public Domain Manifesto. As mentioned before, Wikimedia had a central role in the conference, with 2 keynote speakers being Wikidata missionary Asaf Bartov and long time GLAMwiki practicioner Liam Wyatt, well known in Wikimedia CEE collab. In addition to many Estonian Wikimedians participating on the conference, they were accompanied by colleagues from Finland, Latvia and Poland.

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    Opening, signing of The Public Domain Manifesto
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    Liam Wyatt having fun conducting a GLAM-Wiki workshop
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    Klara Sielicka-Baryłka speaking enthusiastically about cooperation with Wikimedia Polska
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    Asaf Bartov smiling while giving a gentle introduction to Wikidata for humanists

GLAMwiki

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One of the central Wikimedia topic on the conference was explaining essence of Wikimedia (through Wikipedia) to digital humanities people, followed by a workshop-discussion around GLAMwiki opportunities, i.e. what collaborating with Wikimedians and contributing to Wikimedia projects could add to quotidian work of digital humanities. The keynote for this track, delivered by Liam Wyatt, was named "Wikipedia: the Endless Palimpsest" and revisited speaker's thesis, providing good insight into how Wikipedia works, as well as to aspects that are similar in the workings of Wikipedia and in the practice of academics and researchers. The talk was well received and gave a good ground for workshop discussion.

A more practical overview of GLAM cooperation with Wikimedia was given by Klara Sielicka-Baryłka from Museum of Ethnography in Warsaw, Poland, who spoke about collaboration of her museum with Wikimedia Polska. Namely, international Carpathian Ethnography Project was presented with examples of usefulness of such collaboration for GLAM institution. Generally, it can be said that an effort was made to spark interest in such collaboratives on a wider scale, which will hopefully result in some collaborative project ideas in the future.

You can read about conference participant experience of Klara Sielicka-Baryłka in Poland report of our newsletter

Wikidata

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The tone of the conference was set by Asaf Bartov giving his keynote about Wikidata, named "Wikidata for Humanists: A Gentle Introduction to Wikimedia's Linked Data Project". Although some of the example queries were not too well supported by internet connectivity issues on the venue, the project itself impressed a number of participants. This presentation was supported by a workshop held on the third day of the conference, which provided a possibility for a more articulated overview of first steps in and possibilities of Wikidata. The workshop also provided a good chance to brush their Wikidata skills for more experienced Wikimedians - as Liam Wyatt later stated: "Having followed the workshops at the third day, I FINALLY am getting comfortable with Wikidata Queries and SPARQL."

Organizational details

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The conference was organized in collaboration of Wikimedia Eesti, Estonian Society for Digital Humanities, Estonian Literary Museum, Estonian Photographic Heritage Society, Archaeovision, Estonian Graduate School of Linguistics, Philosophy and Semiotics (GSLPS), ASTRA project of the Estonian Literary Museum (EKMDHUM), Centre of Excellence for Estonian Studies (CEES).

The event was supported by the Government Office of Estonia in collaboration with the National Foundation of Civil Society, European Union under the European Regional Development Fund (ASTRA project of Estonian Literary Museum EKMDHUM, the Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies).


Finland report: Wikimedia Suomi board 2018, Wiki Loves Monuments and Suomi 100

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Wikimedia Suomi board 2018

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By Kulttuurinavigaattori

Wikimedia Suomi, the national Wikimedia Chapter of Finland is happy to announce the board for 2018. Continuing members are Minna Turtiainen, Teemu Perhiö and Tero Toivanen. New members selected are Hanna Mäki and Jaakko Pirinen. Heikki Kastemaa was selected as the president of the chapter.

Wiki Loves Monuments 2017 for the first time in Finland

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By Tiakangaspunta

Finland participated in Wiki Loves Monuments for the first time in 2017. You can see the ten best pictures here. The competition was very successful with over 2000 pictures uploaded to Commons.

Suomi100 International Writing Competition

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By Tiakangaspunta

An international writing contest on the theme of Finland's 100th year of independence is ongoing until the 30th of November.

Germany report: Working together for a global movement – Supporting the volunteer supporters

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By Anne Kierkegaard (WMDE), with finetuning by Cornelius Kibelka (WMDE)
 
12 volunteer supporters from 10 Wikimedia Chapters, and one PEC-man.

Two international workshops took place at WMDE this fall, we want to highlight one of these in this newsletter: The Volunteer Supporters Network meeting took place in November in Berlin and it was the first of its kind. It took place as part of the follow-up work between the annual Wikimedia Conference.

There are a growing number of affiliates that have a person employed to focus on volunteer support. This can be a demanding job and sometimes a little lonely in the sense that the volunteer supporters in their own country often are the only ones focusing on that specific task.

Over the years, a natural cooperation has developed between the volunteer supporters in the chapters related to the German-speaking Wikipedia: Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE), Wikimedia Österreich (WMAT) and Wikimedia CH (WMCH). The Volunteer Supporters Network (VSN) has grown out of this existing network, therefore Veronika Krämer (WMDE) and Raimund Liebert (WMAT) hosted this first meeting. For the past years, the two of them have been giving talks at the Wikimedia conference and Wikimania about their work. In 2016, Veronika also participated in the first WikiConvention Francophone, in 2017 at the CEE meeting in Warsaw. Through this she got to know her French, Polish and Serbian colleagues, who were all interested in collaboration within the network.

 
Discussion round

The workshop focused on an exchange of experiences and challenges from the participants’ daily work, e.g. on how to best reach out to communities. Secondly, the question “what is successful volunteer support – and how is it measured?” was discussed, e.g. how do you show that you have motivated volunteers? The participants also worked out a wish list of tools and skills needed to improve the impact of their work. About the outcome of the workshop, Veronika says: “The most important thing is probably that people know each other now, and feel comfortable asking each other questions. We know what each other are working on, and can ask for input and help.” In total, twelve staff members working in volunteer support coming from ten different Wikimedia chapters joined the meeting. Among them, Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska (WMPL) and Ivana Madžarević (WMRS) from the CEE region.

Cornelius KIbelka, who has supported the organisation of the meeting, says: “My job has been to motivate people and provide some practical support in order to make these meetings happen.” This has at times been uphill, as Veronika notes, because: “there are always other things to do….”. The meeting proves that it has been worth the climb; it makes sense to increase the collaboration between affiliates and in turn, hopefully strengthen the Wikimedia Movement. Cornelius: “The impact that we’re hoping for is to build trust, stronger connections between affiliates, and stronger cohesion in the long run.”

You can find a first short summary of the workshop on Meta, more to be published. The Volunteer Supporters meetup is planned to take place again next year, possibly in Austria or France.

Greece report

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Wikimedia Community User Group Greece: From monuments to gender gap and beyond

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By Geraki

WikiFemHack

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Presentation during WikiFemHack

Wikimedia User Group Greece organised the WikiFemHack editathon/hackathon. The event showcased Gender Gap, focused on finding the roots of this phenomenon and ways to mitigate it. Among others, our main goal was to welcome women, inform them and increase their participation in technology, programming and in Wikipedia. WikiFemHack aimed at designers, scientists, educators, students and graduate and PhD students with no or a lot of experience in similar projects. Our aim was to inform and exchange views and opinions so we could, through conversation, take a step towards mitigating the Gender Gap in Technology. Everyone that attended had the chance to learn about the rules and code behind Wikipedia and the rest of the Wikimedia Foundation projects, enrich the Greek Wikipedia with content and also show off their coding skills.

CorfuPedia

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One of the CorfuPedia teams

CorfuPedia, a student project with main purpose to introduce students to Wikipedia, via creating new articles in the history of the island of Corfu was organised in cooperation with Wikimedia Community User Group Greece. The participants were 106 students, 4 teachers of informatics, 4 teachers of greek language and literature, 2 english language teachers, 2 french language teachers, and 1 german language teacher. Marios Magioladitis provided constant support while User:Geraki, User:Ggia organised online Wikipedia tutorials via Skype. The results of CorfuPedia were presented in October in an International Conference on Education held in Larisa, Greece.

Wiki Loves Monuments 2017 winners

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Winning photo: Vaulted ceiling of the Church of Our Lady of the Castle

The organizing committee of Wiki Loves Monuments 2017 in Greece announced the 10 winning photos. The photos were already submitted to the international committee. The awards event is expected in December.

Participation in conferences

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Wikipedia Community Schools Association Greece: From 8-year-olds to senior citizens

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By Manos Kefalas

Wikipedia School

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Wikipedia School, instituded in Greece since May 2014 as free systematic courses of teaching and mentoring writing in Wikipedia, continued in October 2017 in Athens. This time the courses were time bound to one month period only. Experienced wikipedians watched the seminar too and benefited from the mentoring. Wikipedia School is based on tools developed to provide equity in participation for everyone and mentoring on how to live and collaborate well in Wikipedia, in addition to editing skills developed in classes. WCSAG has been recently awarded for Wikipedia School contrubution in Education during the annual Volunteerism Festival in Athens, as in 2016 8-10% of new Greek Wikipedia articles were written by people benefited from these classes.

Primary education

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Results of a class of 26 8-year-olds case study who produced 11 articles that remained online, under an official school program during Spring 2017 were officially presented to primary educators in Athens by the school councilor who supervised the classes, in Autumn and educators from this conference day participated in Wikipedia School courses of October 2017. Results were announced in all conferences for Wikipedia School, in Autumn.

Online courses

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Wikipedia School has been using online Skype courses since 2015. In October 2017 groups were formed in Skype where screens were shared between participants, so that everyone had their turn on getting experience and giving example. Online courses continue on December, leveled now by editor experience.

Senior citizens

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Senior citizens are usually given classes on how to use email and social media, in Greece. Contributing in Wikipedia while at the same time they are being mentored in academic-like type of embracing and interacting with knowledge, is pioneering in Greece. WCSAG tried this after the succes with 8-year-old article creators, using more than 900 hours of accumulated experience in teaching people of all ages online and offline. Senior citizens from Grava, an area in Athens where chances for good education are average, participate in Wikipedia editing classes since October 2017 and courses are still ongoing.

Participation in conferences

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  • Dare to dream III conference, by Maria Kapetanidou, School Councilor in Athens, (September)
  • Skywalker Education Festival in Athens, (September)
  • eTwinning 2017 Conference for Education, in Athens, (October)
  • HIGGS NGO Fair in Athens, (October)
  • Informatics Conference in Pireaus University, (October)


Hungary report: Agreement with the University Library

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By Samat
 
University Library (by Tamás Thaler)
  • One of the Hungarian Wikimedians, Texaner participated on the WikidataCon 2017 conference in Berlin (28–29 October 2017). WikidataCon is the conference dedicated to the Wikidata community, and its main focus is the wide range of topics and questions about the Wikidata project; two days of talks, workshops, demos, meetups, and social events. After the conference he wrote an interesting report in Hungarian about his experience and shared his experience on the following meetups.
  • The Petőfi Literary Museum (PIM) asked the help of the Hungarian Wikimedia community to import the Hungarian Biographical Index (PIM IDs) into Wikidata. The Hungarian Biographical Index is a collection to group personal, biographical pieces of information and their sources; the national register for the personal namespace. It has been the largest data donation for Wikimedia in Hungary until now. Based on the register close to 10 thousands Wikidata elements were identified and filled up with data by Texaner, then bots created the connection between Wikidata and Wikipedia for around 6 thousands articles (in order to show the identifiers in the Wikipedia articles) and updated thousands earlier (dead) links to the new format.
  • The Hungarian Shakespeare Committee, the Petőfi Literary Museum, the Pázmány Péter Catholic University and the Wikimedia Hungary organized the already traditional, two-day long Shakespeare edit-a-thon on 10–11 November. The edit-a-thon offered a great opportunity to learn about Shakespeare, about his works and era, his colleagues, and to learn about Wikipedia and how to edit it. The edit-a-thon was helped by practiced Wikipedians and Shakespeare researchers.
  • Wikimedia Hungary modified its contract with the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. The University offers the headquarter for Wikimedia Hungary, but because of organizational and infrastructural changes of the University the headquarter had to move some meters in the same building. (Official address of the chapter will change as soon the Court accept the changes of the bylaws.)
  • Wikimedia Hungary signed a new agreement with the University Library (Eötvös Loránd University) on 16 November 2017. Based on the agreement Wikipedians and Wikimedians will be able to visit the library and use all services of the library free of charge. Services include among others access to many databases and collections of the library network. Beside services, according to the agreement, the University Library released their archive collections under Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license. From the other side, Wikimedia Hungary will help the library in edit-a-thons, educations and presentations about Wikipedia/Wikimedia, and offered the library a smaller yearly book donation on the field of open knowledge, open communities, or from books using free content.


Latvia report: Wikipedia reaches 80 000 articles

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By Papuass

80 000 Wikipedia articles

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The biggest event during November was local Wikipedia reaching 80 000 articles.

Wiki Loves Monuments winners published

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This year it was run without prizes, so a less impressive number of images were uploaded, however numerous previously not covered monuments had images uploaded. One of participants uploaded plenty of castle mound pictures, helping to illustrate multiple articles without images. These 10 images were selected for international round:

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    Entrance of cinema "Splendid Palace" (formerly Kino Rīga) by Papuass
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    Vaivari, Asari, Melluži, Pumpuri, Jaundubulti summerhouse district by Forestermax
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    Dwelling house, Rīga by Papuass
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    Gothic windows of St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Riga by Papuass
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    Entrance portal of dwelling house, Riga by Papuass
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    Aizkraukle castle mound by Jānis U.
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    Ezernieki devil stone - cult place by Evita wiki
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    Dwelling house, Liepāja by Papuass
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    Gulbene railway officials colony dwelling houses by ScAvenger
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    Lapmežciems "sedums" (former fishing boat piers) by RMazurs

Macedonia report: Wiki Loves Food and WWII editathon in Macedonia

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Wiki Loves Food 2017 Photographic competition

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By Македонец
 
Logo of the Wiki Loves Food photographic contest

Following the preparations during the previous month, on the 1st of November, we opened Wiki loves photographic contest, that we decided to focus on the food, especially on traditional Macedonian and regional dishes and cuisines. In previous years, Shared Knowledge have organized Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments photographic contests with significant success, and this year it was decided that Shared Knowledge will organize Wiki Loves Food competition for the first time, which is in fact only the second Wiki Loves Food contest organized world wide, after its establishment by Wikimedia India in 2015. The contest was completed with 904 images uploaded by 67 registered contestants. By mid December, the jury composed of a professional photographer, a professional cook and an experienced member of the Wiki-community will choose the winning photographs which will be awarded at a special ceremony jointly organized with Slow Food Macedonia.

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By Violetova
 
A monument dedicated to women fighters at the National Liberation War

On 20 November 2017 GLAM Macedonia volunteers and the employees of the State Archives of Republic of Macedonia held an edit-a-thon together. After several weeks of negotiation about the themes and searching the materials, the participants of edith-a-thon set the date and started to work together. The materials were provided by the Archives employees.

As a result, six Wikipedians created 11 new articles about partisans and monuments related to the WWII. This edit-a-thon was organized by Wikipedian in Residence at the Archives.

Poland report: Celebrating Wikipedia milestone, WikiVacations 2017 results, and participation in the Digital Humanities

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1 250 000 articles on Polish Wikipedia

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By Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska

Shortly before midnight on November 10th Polish Wikipedia reached an impressive milestone of 1 250 000 articles. The historical article was written by user Nedops and was about Estlé Viljoen, the South African female athlete.

It is quite symbolic that after the year in which we did a lot to fight the content gender gap, the milestone article is about a notable woman. There is still a lot of work in front of us (only about 15% of biographies being created in Polish Wikipedia are about women) but we are hopeful that projects like Wikipedia is also a woman! or special prizes for people creating articles about women in writing contests (for example CEE Spring) will help us to make those numbers better.

1 250 000 is an impresive number but quantity is not all we are about. Polish Wikipedia has been focusing more and more on the quality of the content. This year out community increased the number of Featured and Good Articles in Polish Wikipedia by 287 reaching the total number of 3426. Now how quality articles are 2,74‰ of the whole Polish Wikipedia content. And we hope that this will also rise in the future.

WikiVacations 2017 results

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By Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska

On November 1st the 20 winning photographs of the WikiVacations 2017 contest were announced. Photos were selected by the jury consisting out of professional photographers, journalists, wikimedians and a representative of the National Heritage Institute of Poland. The task was not easy: they had to choose out of more than 5000 pictures of Polish nature, monuments and art. And the decisions was even more difficult because of the overall high quality of the photos.

About 90% of the pictures were technically correct. You can see that the authors worked carefully with the light, that they had mastered the art of photographing architecture - says Kacper Krajewski, a professional photographer and a member of the WikiVacations 2017 jury. And adds - Also, judging by the effects, you can see that a number of participants had really improved their technique.

Another jury member, Jacek Halicki (winner of Polish edition of Wiki Loves Monuments in 2013 and 2014 and the author of more than 11,000 pictures uploaded to Wikimedia Commons) points out that this year the winning photos have more artistic value. He explains - In choosing our winners we focused more on the quality and the form of the pictures. This was not a contest for the most encyclopaedic or informative picture but for the most beautiful one.

In the final turn, the jury chose 20 best pictures of the whole contest and 3 best pictures in two thematic categories (Monuments and Nature). The jury decided not to award any pictures in the Public Monuments category.

Authors of the best pictures received photographic equipment and accessories of their choice. And all of the awarded monuments' photos were submitted to the Wiki Loves Monuments international finale.

Best Image

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First place: Rogalin Landscape Park, author: Michal Wrombel
 
Second place Foehn bank over Tatra Mountains, author: Eddie75
 
Third place Tatra National Park, author: Qvidemus
 
Fourth place Middle Oder Valley author: Lukaszmalkiewicz.pl
 
Fifht place Barycz Valley Landscape Park, author: Janusz Krzeszowski
 
Sixth place Milicz Lakes, author: Janusz Krzeszowski
 
Seventh place Nature Reserve Ptasi Raj, author: Danapass
 
Eighth place Saint Andrew church in Trzebieszowice, author: Poconaco
 
Ninth place Morskie Oko Lake, author: Aneta Pawska
 
Tenth place Sunset at Woliński National Park, author: Eddie75
 
Eleventh place Wołowiec Mountain author: Tomasz Góra
 
Twelfth place Morning at Three Crowns summit, author: Qvidemus
 
Thirteenth place Trzebiatów-Kołobrzeg Coastal Belt, author: Sławomir Siełacz
 
Fourteenth placeChurch of St. Mary in Gdańsk, author: Aneta Pawska
 
Fifteenth place Tatra National Park, author:Aneta Pawska
 
Sixteenth place Pieniny National Park, author: Qvidemus
 
Seventeenth place Old city in Opole, author: SuperGlob
 
Eighteenth place Leopold Kindermann Villa, author: Sławomir Milejski
 
Nineteenth place Wawel, author: Grzegorz Jermolaj
 
Twentyth place Poprad National Park, author: Eddie75

Best Images of Nature

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    First place Morskie Oko Lake, author: Aneta Pawska
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    Second place Wołowiec Mountain author: Tomasz Góra
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    Third place Pieniny National Park, author: Qvidemus

Best Images of Monuments

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    First place Saint Andrew church in Trzebieszowice, author: Poconaco
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    Second placeChurch of St. Mary in Gdańsk, author: Aneta Pawska
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    'Third place Leopold Kindermann Villa, author: Sławomir Milejski

Impressions from the Digital Humanities conference in Estonia

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Klara Sielicka-Baryłka, National Ethnographic Museum, Warsaw

Gray beginning of November can be expected if you are invited to a conference in beloved Estonia and Wikimedia Poland which you are a huge fan of decides to finance this event for you. It really happened to me; I had the unique chance to attend Open licences, open content, open data: tools for developing digital humanities conference which took place in Tartu, 1-3 Nov 2017.

As the organizers wrote:

The main goal of the conference is to inspire and educate about the benefits of opening up the content in public collections and to build bridges between the more academic digital humanities community and the staff of memory institutions (archives, museums, libraries, galleries). With sessions on: visual data, open GLAM, open data, wiki platforms, open licences across Europe, goals and results of dh in higher education.

My presentation "Ethno-wiki projects as an example how not to lose human component in digital humanities" was approved by Wikimedia Eesti and other conference organizers and included in the paralel session on the 1st day. In my abstract, I stated:

We are seeing a growing number of digital projects that are related to the material and non-material heritage of the entire world. Google Arts & Culture, Europeana, Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia, digital collections of museums and archives – they all want to collect, protect, show what man created: inspired by the beauty of the world and his own spirit. But how do you not get lost in the mass of digitized objects, thousands of written words of the most important – the other man? On the example of ethnographic and Wikipedia projects ("Ritual Year with Wikipedia", “Ethnography of the Carpathians"), I want to talk about how the OpenGLAM movement can and should place in the first place the biography of man and the biography of his work and the biography of the researcher, collector, digitizer without loss for digital reality.

It was really interesting to talk to almost non-museum audience about this ethnographic-museum-wiki projects and compare this for example to Letters of 1916 project (coordinated by Susan Schreibmann) from Ireland or to the work done by Outi Valo on Finnish folk music collector. I also heard a lot of similarities in GLAM cooperation, while listening to Outi Penninkangas from Museum of Games. Asaf Bartov's speech about Wikidata was something that guided me to the new era of my Wikipedian life, so the next day I attended his workshop, too, and I am quite addicted if you ask me about Wikidata ethnographic/museum content improvement: there is so much to be done!

During the conference, I had a chance not only to talk about EthnoWiki projects during my speech, but also I could speak briefly about this experience at Liam Wyatt’s workshop about Open GLAM.

What was wonderful for me – a museum worker from the National Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw – was that the conference took place in the amazing National Estonian Museum and we had chance to visit its exhibitions. Additionally, workshops were in Estonian Literary Museum, so you can imagine, how much I was delighted by that!


Romania report: 380.000 articles and a Europeana prize

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By Strainu

The Romanian Wikipedia is happy to announce that the project has reached 380.000 articles. The lucky article was about Nicolae Iliescu, a 19th century Romanian painter who emigrated to Switzerland and painted to pay the bills. The author (Asybaris01) is an experienced Wikipedian with lots of featured and good articles written over the years. His maps of Romanian villages and 3D representations of medieval churches are used on dozens of Wikipedia projects.

In other news, the Romania in the First World War project has received two prizes in the Wikimedia 1914-18 Europeana Challenge: the overall prize for the best portofolio and the best Partnership project with a Europeana partner prize. The entirely volunteer Romanian team ran a Wikisource/Transcribathon project, uploaded files from Europeana 1914-18 crowdsourced material to Wikimedia Commons and contributed their own material to the Europeana platform. They also improved the categorisation and Wikipedia usage of Europeana 1914-18 material which had already been shared. This is an important milestone for the Romanian Wikipedia, since it is the first true GLAM project run by our community.


Serbia report: Wikipedia workshop against human trafficking in Serbia

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By: Nebojša Ratković
 
Wikipedia workshop at University Library “Svetozar Marković”

Wikimedia Serbia, Unitas Foundation, Red Cross Serbia and University Library “Svetozar Marković” organized workshop on European Day Against Trafficking in Human Beings, which was held on October 18th. Participants were students from the University of Belgrade, who wanted to acquire and improve knowledge about the fight against trafficking in human beings, critical thinking, writing skills and reading skills, communication skills and information literacy.

The aim of the workshop was to introduce students, in an interesting and interactive way, to the topic of fighting trafficking in human beings and the benefits of Wiki projects in terms of better understanding and visibility of this issue. The participants had the opportunity to listen a lecture on the fight against human trafficking, followed by a two-hour training and a workshop on editing Wikipedia, after which they had a task to write an article on Wikipedia in the Serbian language on some of the proposed topics. Participants, among other things, wrote articles on human exploitation, sexual exploitation, the World Day against Human Trafficking and the list of organizations dealing with the fight against human trafficking in Serbia.

Workshop "Using knowledge to fight human trafficking" has contributed to the diversity in the Wikipedia Educational Program in Serbia and a better understanding of different aspects of marginalization and vulnerability of people in Serbia. This type of activity is an important segment in the work of Wikimedia Serbia, which can greatly contribute to the increase of public awareness and the position of multiple vulnerable groups.

Ukraine report: Celebrating Wikipedia milestone, WLM photos illustrating books, and Lady in Red project on Ukrainian Wikipedia

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Lady in Red Month in Ukrainian Wikipedia

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Lady in Red project for Ukrainian Wikipedia logo
By antanana

On November 15, volunteers have started first ever thematic month on creating articles about women in Ukrainian Wikipedia. The idea to do it was formed in August, during WikiConference 2017 in Kherson. 13,69% (18120) biography articles on Ukrainian Wikipedia are about women. Sergento has created lists of articles about women that already exist in English and Russian Wikipedias, and do not exist in Ukrainian Wikipedia. The month turned out to be a success: more than 200 articles created in two weeks. The thematic month will continue until December 15. Wikimedia Ukraine will provide souvenirs to the most active contributors.

Wiki Loves Monuments pictures illustrate a 25 volumes bibliographic index about towns of Ukraine

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By antanana

On November 16-17, a presentation of a 25-volume bibliographic index about towns of Ukraine took place in Zabolotnoho State Scientific Architecture and Construction Library in Kyiv, Ukraine. The publishing of this edition was the result of the library's project on towns of Ukraine they have been doing since 2008. Wikimedia Ukraine has helped the library to select the pictures of the cultural monuments from the Wiki Loves Monuments contests in Ukraine, and helped to attribute the authors and correctly mention the info needed (the link, author, license). Ilya had to write a program to create a gallery of monuments from a specific towns with all monuments and all pictures with the IDs from those towns, so the library could choose the pictures they wanted. Then he had to create a simple program to convert long (as the file names are usually in Cyrillic) links to the chosen files into short links. This cooperation between the library and Wikimedia Ukraine has been going on for almost a year. In the end: 963 pictures from the photo contest Wikimedia Ukraine has been doing for 6 years now are illustrating the bibliographic index. The books will be distributed among the libraries of Ukraine and a part of them are also available for purchase. The library plans to publish these books also on their website, so they can be used even more widely. It is curious to note that a former Wiki Loves Monuments jury member has suggested the library to ask Wikimedia Ukraine about how to use pictures from Wikimedia Commons.

750 000 articles on Ukrainian Wikipedia

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750 000 articles in Ukrainian Wikipedia
By antanana

Ukrainian Wikipedia reached 750 000 articles on November 28. The lucky author was Tohaomg (Anton Obozhyn). He has been trying to publish an article that would be noted as a milestone article in the history of Ukrainian Wikipedia since the 500 000th article was published. He has prepared 5 articles in advance, working all night on them. The 750 000th article was Committees of the European Parliament - Tohaomg wanted to add an important article on something connected to Europe or the European Union. If the articles continue to be created at this pace - 280 articles per day - we expect Ukrainian Wikipedia to reach 800 000 article in May 2018.


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