Wikimedia Armenia/Reports/2020-12

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2021

2020

December

Wikiteam 1+3

The new phase of Wikiteam 1+3 contest was organized on December 2-15. During the preparatory phase, an announcement was spread on November 25 on the Wikimedia Armenia Facebook page. On December 1, the organizing team had an online meeting with the registered teams, during which the rules of the competition, the process and the evaluation procedure were presented.

The main process of the competition was divided into three stages. Each stage lasts for three days, and on the fourth day the checking and reviewing works are carried out. This time 3 volunteers were involved in the organizing team of the competition, they were the members of the winning team of the first season of the Wikiteam 1+3 competition. Each of them had several teams at their disposal; they had to coordinate their work.

There was another innovation in this competition framework, in addition to the editing work, games were organized during the 15 days: online puzzle gathering, online Brain Ring intellectual game. The teams actively participated in the games, and the winners received additional points.

A total of 11 teams and 47 participants participated in the 3rd season of the Wikiteam 1+3 competition. In total, 4,938,564 bytes were contributed to the Armenian Wikipedia during the competition, and 175 new articles were created.

Community Meetup

On December 18-20, Wikimedia Armenia organized a Community meetup in Tsaghkadzor. The two-day event was attended by Wikimedia Armenia members aged 18-59, active members of the wiki community. A total of 41 people were present at the event. On the way from Yerevan to Tsaghkadzor, the participants were sitting far from each other, 7 people in each 20-place transport. Throughout the event, the participants wore masks and maintained social distance. We have provided disinfectants in all the halls, the hands of all the participants have been disinfected before meals. The participants changed the masks every 2 hours, and the doctor responsible for the two-day event measured the temperature of all the participants 3 times a day and registered them in the register. No extraordinary cases, COVID-19 cases, above-normal temperatures or any other problem occurred.

During the meetup, participants had discussions on the Wikimedia movement and Wikimedia Armenia strategy, an interactive discussion on Wikidata with Shani Everstein and, of course, they had a chance to edit on Wikipedia and Wikidata. In total, in addition to discussions and meetings over the course of 2 days, users contributed 1,442,607 bytes to the Armenian Wikipedia and created 74 new articles.

Thanks to the Community meetup, the wiki community had new members who, being new to the community, had never participated in offline meetups, Wikicamps, or other similar events. For the newcomers, the meetup was a great way to get to know the active processes within the community, to get acquainted with its activities, structure, and members.

Seminar on Wikidata

One of the events organised within the framework of the Community meetup on December 18-20 was the meeting on the topic of Wikidata by lecturer, researcher, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation Shani Everstein Sigalov.

The meeting was held on December 20 both in the conference hall and in one of the spacious halls of the Alpina Hotel in Tsaghkadzor. The halls gave full opportunity to the participants to take part in the meeting, to see and hear the speaker clearly, at the same time strictly maintaining social distance. The halls had been disinfected beforehand, the chairs and tables had been arranged far from each other.

With the help of the interpreter we organised our event in two languages - Armenian and English. The halls not only ensured the social distance of the participants, but also the division of English and Armenian groups. Those who wished could join by the pre-created Zoom link and listen only to the English speech, and ask their questions directly to Shani.

An announcement including Zoom link had been published on Wikimedia Armenia’s Facebook page, so those not present in the Community meetup could also join and participate.

During the meeting, asking some questions about some of the Wikimedia projects, especially Wikidata, Shani learned that the participants were divided into two groups: Wikidata editors and newcomers. This fact made the meeting more interesting and effective. Some of the experienced editors got familiar with some of the uses of Wikidata they hadn't known before.

Shani’s presentation was divided into tree parts: Part 1. “Background”, Part 2. “Main course, Wikidata uses” and Part 3. “Dessert, conclusion and a glimpse at the future”.

In the first part Shani introduced the importance of artificial intelligence in the present days, giving a particularly important role to data. The participants learned about the invention, story and development of www (World Wide Web). Shani spoke about the way that Wikidata passed, its development and importance.

In the second part she presented some examples to show tools for data usage and their effectiveness. After the conclusion, one of the participants gave a question about the uses of Wikidata.

Discussion on Wikimedia Movement Strategy

One of the discussions organized within the framework of the Community meetup on December 19 was dedicated to the strategy of the Wikimedia Movement. The discussion was attended by members of Wikimedia Armenia, as well as other active members of the wiki community, a total of 40 participants.

The discussion consisted of two parts: Wikimedia Movement Strategy and Wikimedia Armenia Strategy. As part of the discussion of the Wikimedia movement strategy, the 10 main principles of the Wikimedia 2030 movement strategy were presented, as well as the recommendations created by the movement were discussed.

After discussing the strategy of the Wikimedia movement, an attempt was made to localize the above-mentioned principles within the Armenian wiki movement. By localizing the principle of safety and security examples were given from Wikicamps organized by Wikimedia Armenia. Concerning the collaboration and cooperation principle, the participants discussed the Prominent examples of cooperation between Wikimedia Armenia and a number of institutions, such as the National Archive for the preservation of photographs, the cooperation with museums within the framework of the GLAM, the collaborations with the RA Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Culture within the framework of Wikicamps, etc.

The principle of resilience was vividly demonstrated by the Wikiteam 1+3 project organized by Wikimedia Armenia in the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, which allowed to promote active and competitive participation of Wikiclub members and other editors, to attract newcomers to the community. In the peak of pandemic cases, taking into account the limitations of our country, 2 online Wikicamps were organized, and we had more than 100 participants. Another example of flexibility is the rapid transition of the Wikipedia courses to the online version. The latter allowed us to involve participants from different regions, who previously could not attend the courses because of the distance of our office or the training venue.

During the discussion of the strategy, questions were raised by various participants, including questions about Wikiclubs, their future, and plans to establish new ones.

Edit-a-thon within the framework of Fall Wikipedia courses for teachers

Within the framework of the Wikipedia trainings started on October 5, 2020 (the course is still in progress), when the participants were already fully acquainted with the Wikipedia tools, an edit-a-thon on the topic of "Art" was organized on December 1-10. The editathon aimed at involving the participants in the arena of competition with the more experienced editors, activating and making the process of editing and creating articles more interesting. Editors outside of the Wikipedia trainings were also participating in the edit-a-thon.

During the edit-a-thon the participants created articles from the lists "Women and art" and "Paintings" which were specifically created for the edit-a-thon purposes.

The newcomers had the opportunity to use the videos guides to learn how to register on Wikipedia and how to create articles.

Within the framework of the "Art" edit-a-thon 133 articles were created, overall 1,613,928 bytes.

"Wikipedia for Peace: Climate Justice" online Wikicamp

Service Civil International Switzerland, in partnership with Wikimedia Switzerland, launched the "Wikipedia for Peace: Climate Justice" online Wikicamp from November 9-15. This time the topic was climate justice, climate activists and their activities, organizations which deal with climate justice. Anush Mkrtchyan from Wikimedia Armenia participated in the online camp and she created overall 12 articles.

Anush Mkrtchyan

From November 9 to 15, Service Civil International Switzerland and Wikimedia Switzerland organized an online camp - “Wikipedia for Peace: Climate Justice". The camp was attended by 15 people from around the world, including members of Wikimedia Armenia.

The topic of the camp was climate justice. The participants contributed to Wikipedia by creating articles on the lives and work of climate activists. The list of articles was provided in advance, the participants suggested the articles that were not included in the list.

The educational part of the camp was quite comprehensive. Before editing, interesting games were organized to get acquainted with each other. Groups of 3-4 people were formed, the groups were given assignments, discussions were held on the main topic, each participant expressed his/her point of view. Despite being online, the camp was held in a very positive and pleasant environment; we gained new knowledge on the topic of climate justice and also on editing Wikipedia. The organizer of the camp, Thomas, used unique methods within the camp, as a result of which each of the participants acquired new skills, such as working in a team, conducting active discussions, etc. Since most of the participants were not experienced editors, the camp leader also explained how to create articles, how to upload pictures to Wikimedia Commons, the rules and toolkit for editing Wikipedia.

In general, it was a unique experience to participate in such an organized camp and to deeply understand the structure and nature of Wikipedia articles. Cultural topics were discussed in the free time of the camp, the participants presented the cultural peculiarities of their countries. The most creative part was the group pictures of the camp, as each group suggested what the group picture of the day should look like.

Seminar on "Wikipedia for human rights. Generations of Human Rights"

Norayr Baghdasaryan, an active wiki editor of Wikimedia Armenia, as well as a member of the Supervisory Committee, organized a seminar on human rights on December 17 at the Wikimedia Armenia office. Wikimedia Armenia organizes a monthly thematic meeting-seminar for both community members and newcomers. This seminar was carried out within the framework of that very initiative. The number of participants in the seminar was limited due to the coronavirus pandemic. The participants present at the seminar wore masks all the time. The Wikimedia Armenia office is quite large, which allows us to freely organize events for a small number of people, observing all the rules of social distance.

During the seminar, the speaker presented the generations of human rights and some concepts, the challenges of protection of human rights in modern legal-democratic states. The participants of the seminar addressed their questions to the speaker leading to a Q&A session.

Saturday workshops

Four online workshops were organized in December. The topics were pre-planned.

The workshops were simultaneously “attended” by both experienced editors and newcomers. After discussing the topic of the day the Q&A session started during which the participants discussed topics and issues of their interest. Participants of Fall Wikicamp 2020 also actively took part in these workshops.

One of the workshops on December 12 was on the topic of “How to choose an article” and “Ways of choosing an article”. Choosing an article topic out of the special lists sometimes needs more time and makes difficulty especially for the newcomer. During the workshop the participants shared their experience, showed their ways of choosing articles, and gave examples of their own articles.

The thematic workshop organized on December 26 was dedicated to external and internal references, media literacy. Through an interesting video the participants got an idea of the work of the Internet.

Newsletter articles

This month Wikimedia Armenia has submitted one article in the Educational Newsletter of Wikimedia Foundation. The article “Wikipedia as a Tool to Educate and to Be Educated” represents the Wikipedia courses for teachers in detail and shows their productivity and efficiency.

WikiClubs' monthly report

During December, Wikiclubs participated in various interesting and engaging activities. The club members were more active during the "WikiTeam 1+3" contest. The works were carried out both online and offline (during the offline works all the rules of the COVID-19 pandemic were closely followed; the total number of participants did not exceed 8 people).

Alaverdi Wikiclub continued the tradition of jointly writing articles. During one of the workshops, the club members translated the article “2019 Bolivian protests”. At the beginning of the month, the finalizing meeting of the previous month was held in the club, during which the best articles of the month were selected: Paramasonry, Equinophobia, 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement. On December 17, at the end of the online workshop, a psychological game-quiz was held in the club, the aim of which was to develop the participants' memory, imagination, and other cognitive processes.

On December 25, the members of the Goris Wikiclub contacted the members of the " English from 0" group of the American Corner in Kapan via video call, who got acquainted with the wiki projects and made the first edits on Wikipedia.

Koghb Wikiclub had 6 new members in December. An event was held during the month, during which club members took a test-questionnaire about editing on Wikipedia. It was aimed to encourage the club members to make more edits on Wikipedia.

A book reading and discussion was held on December 17 at the Hatsik Wikiclub. The book "The Little Prince" was chosen by the editors (the name of the Hatsik Wikiclub’s team participating in the “Wikiteam 1+3” contest, B 612, was taken from this book - it is the name of the Little Prince’s planet). Reading and discussion were conducted as follows: each of the editors read an excerpt from the book, followed by an exchange of ideas. The reading and discussion of the book were very heated, various interesting and different comments were made.

Karvachar Wikiclub organized remote meetings twice a week during which the participants did translations from English. Each day the club members translated 2 articles.

During the month of December, an interesting article was published dedicated to the Alaverdi Wikiclub telling about its activities.

Wikiclubs' statistics

Wikiclubs	Participants	Community population	Bytes+ (Wikipedia)	Articles	Bytes+ (Wiktionary)	Articles	Bytes+ (Wikisource)	Created	Proofread	Confirmed
Alaverdi Wikiclub	54	13000	1497667	107	61829	161	14921	3	0	54
Arevstsag Wikiclub	64	960	684503	45	2	0	0	0	0	0
Gyumri (Khrimyan Hayrik 46)	33	121976	391477	7	0	0	0	0	0	0
Goris Wikiclub	36	20300	1088352	80	6	0	0	0	0	0
Ddmashen Wikiclub	25	2876	898531	39	0	0	216745	100	268	53
Lernapat Wikiclub	95	2279	2468573	117	0	0	78373	17	21	0
Kogh Wikiclub	36	5300	230337	26	49942	137	3483	0	0	50
Hatsik Wikiclub	21	1044	601097	43	0	0	0	0	0	0
Spitak Wikiclub	43	13000	91106	9	0	0	13622	5	37	0
Stepanakert Wikiclub	23	55200	367471	18	0	0	0	0	0	0
Karvachar Wikiclub	27	500	401341	51	0	0	0	0	0	0
Archis Wikiclub	11	1109	244545	20	0	0	0	0	0	0
Gandzakar Wikiclub	6	3656	17071	2	0	0	0	0	0	0
Gosh Wikiclub	14	1218	20286	3	0	0	0	0	0	0
Noyemberyan Wikiclub (high school)	16	5000	215272	17	0	0	0	0	0	0
Verin Karmiraghbyur Wikiclub	8	1837	406068	18	0	0	0	0	0	0
Kirants Wikiclub	12	298	12602	1	0	0	0	0	0	0
Mrgavan Wikiclub	61	1725	183014	15	0	0	0	0	0	0
Total	652	268329	9819313	618	111779	298	327660	125	326	157