Wikimedia Armenia/Reports/2024-01

2023
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2024

January

Wikipedia’s 23rd Birthday

On January 15, 2024, members of Wikimedia Armenia and Armenian wiki community celebrated Wikipedia’s 23rd birthday. After the “Wikimedia Armenia” president’s opening speech, projects organized by the organization throughout 2023 and their results were summarized.

As in previous years, a number of nominations were decided for this year: “The Best Newcomer,” “The Best Article,” “The Best Wikiclub Member,” and “The Best Wikipedian.”. All the winners received trophies, gifts and certificates of honor, and Slavik Sahakyan, who was recognized as the "Best Wikipedian", received the trophy for that category which is passed from one winner to another every year.

The winners of the edit-a-thon of gift-articles for Wikipedia’s anniversary were announced.The projects and activities planned for 2024 were discussed. In order to raise participants’ festive mood and to make reference to Wikipedia’s history, a small quiz called “What do you know about Wikipedia?” was played and the winner had the chance to cut the birthday cake. After the formal part of the event, the participants were given a chance to socialize and have fun.

23 Articles for Wikipedia’s 23rd Birthday

On January 15 2024, Wikimedia Armenia celebrated the 23rd anniversary of Wikipedia. One of the projects summarized during the event was the edit-a-thon of gift-articles for Wikipedia's 23rd anniversary. Before Wikipedia's birthday, Wikimedia Armenia started an edit-a-thon of gift-articles from December 15. Within the framework of the edit-a-thon, participants created and improved a number of articles as a gift for Wikipedia's anniversary. 59 editors participated in the edit-a-thon; 471 articles were created, a total of 10,613,242 bytes of contributions were made. On Wikipedia Day, the names of the 3 winners of the gift-article edit-a-thon and the participants who created the most articles within the project were announced.

Wikiclubs’ report

As of January 31, there are 151 registered members in all 7 active Wikiclubs (Goris, Ddmashen, Lernapat, Kirants, Koghb, Hatsik, and Jermuk). Wikiclub members continued the wikification of materials from the “Agricultural Encyclopedia” (“Armenian Encyclopedia” Publishing House, 2015) which was released under the Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license. Wikiclub members either created the missing items of the corresponding pages in Wikidata or linked the created articles with already existing items. Within the frames of this project 24 articles with a volume of 69,950 bytes were created in January. Since the launch of the project 366 articles, 952,855 bytes have been contributed to Armenian Wikipedia. The project will continue in February, as well. The multi-staged project called “Preferable topics” launched specifically for Wikiclubs continued in January during which Wikiclub members translated articles on various topics from other language Wikipedias. The most important factor here is that the topics were pre-decided by Wikiclub members through a survey. During the fourth stage, 124 articles with a volume of 2,615,042 bytes were created. A new survey was conducted in December, the results of which were included in the Preferable topics’ list for the 4th stage.

Wikiedits

Besides edit-a-thons and projects designed for Wikiclubs, some of Wikiclub members also participated in the edit-a-thon of gift-articles for Wikipedia’s 23rd birthday. Throughout January, out of 151 Wikiclub members 62 contributed to Wikipedia. In total, they have created 423 articles and made 2100 edits with a volume of 8,234,026 bytes. During the month of January, 52 Wikiclub members contributed to Wikidata, by making 646 edits in total.

Other events

Besides editing, the following events were organized in Wikiclubs: On January 30, a small event titled "My and your Sevak" was held at the Kirants Wikiclub. The students presented interesting details and works from Armenian poet Paruyr Sevak's biography as per their choice. Lernapat Wikiclub celebrated Wikipedia’s birthday on January 15. From January 14, the club members started to improve the Armenian Wikipedia article "Paruyr Sevak" and simultaneously edited the articles about his works on Wikipedia and Wikiquote. Koghb Wikiclub redecorated its room; a board was prepared with pictures of club members. The best editor of the month has been decided.

Preferable Topics, stage 4

In January 2024, the “Preferable Topics” project, specifically designed for Wikiclub members, continued and the 4th stage was organized. Within the frames of the project, Wikiclub members translate articles about various topics from other language Wikipedias. The distinguishing characteristic of this project is that the topics are chosen by Wikiclub members.

During summer months Wikimedia Armenia organized a survey among Wikiclub members in order to find out their main interests. The first three stages focused on 10 topics decided by the survey. For the following stages of the project, it was decided to conduct another survey in December and new topics were determined. Some of the old topics were moved to the archive, however, the participants still have the chance to create or improve articles on those topics, as well. The project is a contest. The winner receives a prize and a certificate from Wikimedia Armenia and 4 more participants receive certificates.

On January 1-31, the 4th stage took place and 19 Wikiclub members created 124 articles with a volume of 2,615,042 bytes. The 11 topics are the following (archived ones excluded):

Writers
Literary works
World-renowned people
Monuments
Geographical objects (cities, seas, waterfalls, mountains, departments (administrative division))
Animated movies
Sports
Chess
Football players, football clubs
Songs, albums
Interesting articles

635 articles with a volume of 11,355,396 bytes were created within four months of the project. The fifth stage of the project will continue in February, 2024.

Youth Winter Wikicamp 2024

On January 21-28 2024, the Youth Winter Wikicamp was held in Tsaghkadzor. 192 young people applied to participate in Wikicamp, and 100 of them were newcomers. A wiki training was organized for newcomers to prepare them for the camp. According to the results of the training, the best 16 newcomers were selected, and another 31 participants were selected from the experienced applicants. In total, Wikicamp had 47 participants and 10 staff members. During the 7 days of the Youth Winter Wikicamp, the campers contributed to Armenian Wikipedia, played intellectual and sports games, and participated in cultural activities.

Throughout the 7 days of Wikicamp, there were special editing hours during which 47 participants created and improved articles on Armenian Wikipedia. As a result of an average of 5-5.5 editing hours per day, 503 articles with a volume of 14,355,041 bytes were created during the entire Wikicamp. Most of the articles were from the list of vital articles in various fields.

Besides editing, each day campers played various games. These games included table tennis, Brain ring, assembly of a constructor, “Be unique”, “Best Chef”, bowling, archery, and Fort Wiki. The latter was organized using various sites of the whole city. "Fort Wiki" consisted of several game-tests: solving a puzzle, building a tall tower with Jenga blocks, "Find the pairs", "Find the question and answer", quick editing, "Help to walk", "Be smart".

At the beginning of the Youth Wikicamp, the 4 groups were given a task: each of them had to direct one of the famous cartoons: "Madagascar", "Ice Age", "Shaun the Sheep" and "Shrek". As a result of all competitions, the 1st group, which collected the most points, was recognized as the best.

In addition to the games, a visit to the Tsaghkadzor ropeway was organized for the participants, they went sledding and played snowball as it snowed heavily.

Wikipedia training for Winter Wikicamp

For those participants who applied for Youth Winter Wikicamp, January 21-28, and did not have any experience of working on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Armenia organized a week-long special Wikipedia training. Overall, 192 participants registered for the Wikicamp, 100 of which were newcomers. However, only 38 people participated in the Wikipedia training. Newcomers were divided into two groups each of which had three offline workshops. During the training, newcomers registered on Wikipedia, got acquainted with Wikipedia’s history, five pillars and rules, the structure of articles, editing tools, as well as they learned about sandbox and creating new articles. On the second day of the training, most of the newcomers created their first article by translating it from a foreign language. In total, 33 articles with a volume of 508,205 bytes were contributed to Armenian Wikipedia during the training. Considering the quality and quantity of created articles, 16 newcomers were selected to participate in the Youth Winter Wikicamp.

Wikimedia Armenia’s events on media outlets

Wikimedia Armenia published a newsletter article on the Community meet-up organized in Tsaghkadzor on December 7-10, 2023 in the CEE newsletter, describing the importance and role of offline community meet-ups both in the Wikimedia movement and in solving community problems.

Wikimedia Education Newsletter article tells about the wiki workshops organized by Wikimedia Armenia for students from various educational institutions.

In a post on Diff Blog, Wikimedia Armenia presented the event dedicated to the 23rd birthday of Wikipedia on January 15.