Press releases/WikiUral
WikiUral International Competition is due to be held in the 1st half of year 2017
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- See contest page: WikiUral
WikiUral is a global competition aimed to enrich Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects with articles, images and other material dedicated to Ural region. Ural region is a very vast territory in the countries of Russia and Kazakhstan around lengthy Ural Mountains. These mountains are usually viewed as a notional borderline between Europe and Asia—parts of the world that together comprise continent of Eurasia, the largest on Earth.
| What Ural is famous for? |
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What Ural is famous for?edit Stockpot of natural resources. It is an unique mountainous area and a stockpot of natural resources. According to scientists, this mountainous system emerged in the early Paleozoic Age. The stone belt appeared when the Western-Siberian Platform overthrust the Russian Plain. The remains of formerly huge volcanic mass suggest that half a billion years ago, magma was erupting here. Local geology formed thick oil-bearing strata and other mineral deposits.[1].  Shikhan-type mountains (Russian: шиханы). Researchers find a remarkable difference between the slope structures of Ural Mountains: for several geological periods, the sea had been washing western slopes and, thus, it left up to several kilometers thick layer of sediments. By the end of the Carboniferous age, the sea had retreated. However, Bashkir shikhans, ancient sea reefs, are still there to remind us about these ancient times. The Ural Mountains continue growing slowly but steadily.[1]  Perm geological system. The Discovery of Perm geological system began with the academic expeditions of P. Pallas, P. and N. Richkov in the 18th century. An English geologist R. Murchison was the leader of another expedition, worked in the Urals in 1841. As the result of this work there was the global discovery—the discovery of Perm geological system. The main arguments in favor of Murchison's idea were the enormous fossils (more than 188 kinds), that had been found in the Urals and in the north of the European Russia. In the 1950th and 60th years the first Soviet mechanized paleontological excavations were made, headed by P. Chudinov in the village Ezhovo near Ochor. The results were incredible. Ten unknown kinds of fossil animals were found.[2]   Country of Towns. As early as 3,600—3,800 years ago, the South Urals have been a home of an unique civilization of over two dozen of cities. It was named a proto-city civilization, Russia's oldest Country of Cities. Its citizens knew metal production technology and could easily process granite, quartz and other rather hard rocks.[1] Mining industry ("Gornozavodskaya") "civilization". In the 18—19th centuries, successful surveys of various natural resources gave birth to a new Ural "civilization", now used to be called "mining civilization" ("Gornozavodskaya"). Ethnographer and literature theorist Prof. Bogoslovsky proved its existence. From the early 18th to the middle of 19th century, 260 industrial cities have been built in the Urals, i.e. more than half of the cities built in the rest of Russia within the same period. These cities had a distinct purpose and specific style of artistic design. In the first quarter of the 19th century, industrial cities grew big enough to have ensemble architecture, a governorate (regional) architect, and architects of mining factories and areas. A significant part of the Ural culture, these cities are essential from the viewpoint of global science, technology and art. In the 18th century, industrial cities made the Urals not only the area of largest industrial construction, but also the world's largest metallurgy center.[1]  Ural equipment. Many different Urals machines influenced not only domestic, but the whole world's engineering industry. For example, among the products of the Ural manufacturing plants is a giant walking shovel (dragline excavator) ESH-100.100 (boom length of 100 meters, and bucket capacity of 100 cubic meters). The journalists gave this machine a name "an exclamation mark of the domestic excavating machines consruction process".[3]
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There are many articles on Wikipedia dedicated to Ural. But there are many (maybe even more) articles that need to be created or improved. It depends on language Wikipedia edition and on overall coverage of Ural-related topics in reliable sources in corresponding languages. Indeed, Russian Wikipedia contains the largest number of such articles but still many of them are underdeveloped or even don't exist yet. The largest Wikipedia, English Wikipedia, seems to be the second largest in this topic, and probably is not as detailed as Russian—so, this looks like the way to go. There are also hundreds of other Wikipedias, so let's do it! =) Articles not less than 5 kb in size are applicable (that are not subject to deletion and urgent improvement).
WikiUral consists of 2 tours. The first tour is complete now, a number of participants wrote about half a thousand of articles, mainly in (but not limited to) Russian, Bashkir and Ukrainian languages. The winners will receive prizes from Ural—souvenirs made of Ural semi-precious stones made by Moiseikin Jewellery House!
The second tour is aimed to further enlarge the geography of Wiki authoring related to Ural. Maximum possible number of Wikipedias and Wikipedians are encouraged to participate. The contest is held until July 2017, and Award Ceremony is expected to be held afterwards in Ekaterinburg city—which is commonly called the Capital of Ural. For those winners unable to attend, prizes may be delivered in any location of the world (unless there is force majeure).
All Wikimedia chapters are invited to participate and co-operate. Wikipedia Asian Month cooperation is also planned.
Organizers: Wikimedia RU, Moiseikin Jewellery House, Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company and sponsors (see WikiUral page for the full list). Welcome!
Note: This press release was published at '14:04, 1 December 2016 (UTC)'.