Wikimedia MKD/Reports/2024-11

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2024

November

Training workshop at Nova International School in Skopje

Wikimedia MKD continues organizing events for trainings students and the organization aims to teach and motivate young people to edit articles on Wikipedia. In this way, with the increase in the number of students, the wiki clubs also grow and the educational program of Wikimedia MKD is richer.

For the second time this year, Wikimedia MKD held a training session for new students at International School "Nova". The workshop was held on 5 November 2024. Bosa Filipovikj, the organization’s Education Program Manager, opened the session by introducing students to the core principles of Wikipedia, explaining how it operates, and underscoring the value of volunteering for this global knowledge platform.

The workshop then moved towards in-live training, where students, with the guidance of the organizers, opened user accounts and learned the essential steps of Wikipedia editing. They practiced their skills, such as creating, editing, and publishing articles. The students published four new articles. Their engagement and enthusiasm were evident, as many expressed a desire to continue editing and expanding quality content in Macedonian.

Wikimedia MKD will continue training students for Wikipedia editing in the future because we think that young people are the future of creating free knowledge.

Assembly Meeting November 2024

On 9 November 2024 Wikimedia MKD held an Assembly meeting. The organization decided that an assembly meeting is needed for the discussion of the future of the organization and its community, as well as the programme development. The meeting was held with the certain number of on-site participants and at least 10 person consulted about the topics before the meeting.

The meeting was held on 9 November 2024 in Skopje. The meeting started at 14:30 o'clock local time. The participants at the meeting gathered to discuss the future of the organization, its future development and enriching the programmes of Wikimedia MKD. Furthermore, the participants shared ideas and proposals on how to enrich the numbers of the volunteers of the Movement in Macedonia and how to find external fundraising opportunities.

Since the year's end is near, the participants of the Assembly had discussion and were proposing ideas for improving some of the activities, proposed new ideas for possible future implementation for the next year. The importance of the volunteers and its number increasing was also discussed and the participants are expecting the upcoming year to be marked with even greater success and larger number of content created by Wikimedia MKD's volunteers and supporters.

Wikimedia MKD assembly.

Editing Competition 'Music'

Editing competitions organized by Wikimedia MKD, since the beginning, have been marked by a great success and excellent results. The primary goal of these competitions is enriching Wikipedia in the Macedonian language, however, they also provide various opportunities to receive prizes for the participants who write articles. In doing so, Wikimedia MKD always tries to cover different topics in order to decrease the content gab.

The three-week edition competition organized once in the year in this format is intended for high-school students. The competition's topic was 'Music' and it started on 21 October 2024 and ended on 10 November 2024. This contest was intended to help improve existing and create new articles on the topic of "music". 24 high school students participated in the competition and a total of 92 articles were published.

All articles had to be written in accordance with the principles and rules of Wikipedia, so all articles had to be written in an encyclopedic style and have sources. The articles were reviewed by a jury, which was composed of three experienced Wikipedians. The jury made the final decision on the winners, after reviewing all the articles and scored each one individually with points from 1 to 10. The three winners of the competition are as follows:

First place: Emilija Dobreva with 394 points,
Second place: Kostovska with 392 points,
Third place: Adouuuuu with 237 points.

In addition to these prizes, there were also prizes for the best articles for each week individually. The winners of these awards are the following:

First week best article: Emilija Dobreva with the article "Севентин"
Second week best article: Emilija Dobreva with the article "Аеспа"
Third week best article: Kostovska with the article "Deftones"

Conference for professors at the "Goce Delchev" University

Conferences for teachers/ professors are one of the project activities of Wikimedia MKD through which the teaching staff receives training in using Wikipedia and guidance and instructions how to use it in the educational process. For the first time, such a conference is being held for professors from the highest level of education. Thus, on 14 November 2024, Wikimedia MKD held a conference for professors at "Goce Delchev" University in Shtip. Besides the professors, the conference was attended by interested students who wanted to learn more about Wikipedia. A total of 22 professors and students from the UGD from Shtip participated. The conference itself started at 10:00 a.m. at the premises of Campus 2 at UGD Shtip.

The conference was opened by Snezhana Shtrkovska, executive director of Wikimedia MKD, who introduced the participants to the encyclopedia itself, how Wikipedia works, what are the benefits of using Wikipedia as a teaching tool, and how to properly use Wikipedia as an information source for accurate and verified information. Towards the end of the first part, Bosa Filipović, manager of the educational program, spoke, who introduced the participants on how the educational program of Wikimedia MKD works, and then followed editing Wikipedia. The participants, assisted by the organizers, were trained and instructed on how to successfully create a Wikipedia user account. In addition, they were introduced to the basic principles of Wikipedia editing and were introduced to how to start, edit and publish new content.

After the break, the second part of the conference began, where Tony Ristovski, lectured on Wikidata. He mentioned that Wikidata is a collaborative database editing project for Wikipedia. Ristotvski also mentioned that the project was started by Wikimedia Germany with the intention of enabling a common source of certain types of data such as dates of birth, a class of certified data, to be used by all language editions of Wikipedia. This is also the first new project of the Wikimedia Foundation since 2006.

The conference took place in a pleasant and working atmosphere. The participants were interested in the way Wikipedia works, but also the possibilities that exist for using the encyclopedia as one of the teaching aids in the educational process in Macedonia.

You can see how it went through the photographic material uploaded on Commons, but also some of the photos are bellow:

Editing Wikipedia articles during the conference.
Lecturing the participants on the basic principles of Wikipedia
Helping the participants to edit Wikipedia
Helping the participants to edit Wikipedia
Giving speech at the conference
Giving speech at the conference
Giving speech at the conference

Advanced Wikipedia Editing Training Conference in Veles, Macedonia

Enriching the content of Wikipedia and its related projects with free content available to everyone is the primary goal of the entire Wikimedia MKD community. By joining volunteer forces, all active members of Wikimedia MKD strive to achieve greater results and successes.

The conferences held by Wikipedia MKD always aim to train more and more people to edit Wikipedia and become part of this global knowledge platform. Through the Wiki Clubs, which have been successfully operating for a longer period, editors are being trained to create and improve Wikipedia articles in Macedonian.

One of the more active Wiki Clubs of Wikimedia MKD is the Wiki Club Veles, which not only attracts students, but also actively engages the older population through Wiki Club Senior. These clubs function as drivers of the local Wikipedia editing initiative.

On 28 November 2024, at the City Library "Goce Delchev" in Veles, a conference on advanced editing of Wikipedia was held. This conference was intended for members of the Senior Wiki Club and was attended by 10 participants. The conference was opened by Snezana Štrkovska, Executive Director of Wikimedia MKD, who introduced the attendees to the basics of how Wikipedia works. She highlighted the benefits of using Wikipedia as an educational and informative tool, emphasizing the importance of the accuracy and verifiability of information. Furthermore, Lili Arsova, coordinator of Wiki Club Veles, spoke, who addressed the ethical aspects of editing, emphasizing the responsibility of editors when creating content.

After the short break, Bosa Filipović, Wikimedia MKD's Education Program Manager, addressed the audience, explaining in details the most common editing mistakes and presenting the basic principles of Wikipedia. Jovan Tasevski, Wikimedia MKD's Community Manager, spoke about the proper use of sources, citations, and internal links when writing articles. The seminar ended with a presentation by Bojan Velkovski, Wikimedia MKD's Communications Manager, who spoke about how to upload images to the Commons, but also about the copyright of the photos that are uploaded, the legal aspect of copyright, and how to properly use photos in articles.

The conference took place in a pleasant and working atmosphere. The attendees, who already had some basic knowledge of Wikipedia editing, were pleased with the new things they learned.

You can see how it went through the photographic material uploaded on Commons, but also some of the photos are bellow:

Snezana Strkovska giving a lecture
Lili Arsova giving a lecture
Bosa Filipovic giving a lecture
The participants
Jovan Tasevski giving a lecture
Snezana Strkovska giving a lecture
The participants

Editing Days

Editing days is an activity that lasts for the whole year in organization of Wikimedia MKD. Each Tuesday and Thursday different topics are given and the participants create or improve existing articles. In November 2024 there were in total 8 editing days, where participants edited on different topics in order to enrich the content of Wikipedia. The editing days and the topics were:

5.11.2024 - Flower paintings
7.11.2024 - Mosques in Albania
12.11.2024 - Flemish people
14.11.2024- Products by type
19.11.2024 - Songs
21.11.2024 - Churches in Slovenia
26.10.2024 - International awards
28.11.2024 - Abolitionism

Cumulatively, 6 different users took part in these calls and edited. In total, 47 new articles were created during the editing days in November 2024.

Editing Weekends

Editing weekends is another project that is organized during the whole year. During weekends (Saturday and Sunday) user are welcomed to take part in this project activity and improve or enrich Macedonian Wikipedia content. During these weekends, the participants are expected to edit articles on given topics. In November 2024 the following editing weekends were organized:

2-3 November 2024 - Libraries
9-10 November 2024 - Cinema of Yugoslavia
16-17 November 2024 - Boxing
23-24 November - Turkish cuisine
30 November - 1 December - Cape Verde

In total, during these weekends there were 5 different users editing on the given topics and they created 36 new articles on the Macedonian Wikipedia.

Second Geoexpedition for 2024

Geoexpeditions logo

After the first geoexpedition in February, the second geoexpedition for 2024 took place on November 24, 2024, and the team of experienced Wikipedians visited the natural phenomenon "Kukulje". This locality is located in the Municipality of Delchevo and although the name natural rarity is used on the signs of the site itself, the locality has not been officially declared as such, because the municipality needs to prepare a special report for the same. This natural rarity is so unpromoted that even our Wikipedia does not have an article about it. This was an additional challenge and incentive for our team to explore this location.

To get to this locality, you need to arrive in the village of Nov Istevnik, which our team had already visited as part of the "WikiExpeditions" project in 2018. After the team of researchers turned off the regional road to the main part of the village, they first headed to photograph the village church "St. Dimitrij", of which our team had no previous photos. The church unfortunately no longer exists, as it burned down completely in 2021 and only remains remain. Next to the church are the village cemetery and a dining room, which was renovated in a more recent period.

From the church, the team reached the village center, from where the hiking trail leads to the Kukulje area in about thirty minutes. The trail is partially destroyed and not fully marked due to the forest fires in 2021 in the area, so we followed the sports applications for hiking or satellite images. The Kukulje area was once landscaped and there are benches and gazebos there, as well as information boards, and a protective fence has also been erected above the area. This occurrence of erosive forms has a scientific explanation, but the local population has legends about how they arose, similar to those of Kukljica.

Photographical competition "Makportret 2024"

Makportret logo

"Makportret 2024" was a photography competition that took place from October 15 to November 15, 2024, and whose main goal was to collect photographs of people from Macedonia who are involved in culture, science, education, art, music, sports, television, politics, medicine and other fields. This event was organized by Wikimedia MKD, with the aim of providing free photographs of significant Macedonian contemporary figures.

The participants, or contestants, as authors of the photographs were supposed to upload them to the Wikimedia Commons under a free license, so that in the future those photographs could be used for better illustration in Wikipedia articles, as well as for other free projects related to Wikipedia.

This photography competition turned out to be quite successful. 14 users participated and a total of 867 photographs were uploaded. A jury of 4 users announced the winners who won value vouchers from Pix+, as follows:

First prize - NickyMKD
Second prize - Aleksandar Ristovski1
Third prize - MilenaStanishkovska

In addition to these prizes, the following prize was also provided:

The best rated photo according to the expert jury's ratings is the photo taken of Beni Shaqiri, photographed by Aleksandar Ristovski1.

Archeoexpedition

Archeoexpidition logo

Archeoxpedition project of Wikimedia MKD is with a significant contribution to the exploration of Macedonian sites and the enrichment of Wikipedia content.

The Archeoxpedition planned for this year happened on November 24, when our team of Wikipedians visited Gradishte, which is located near the village of Grad, in the Municipality of Delchevo.

Our team headed towards Delchevo in the early morning hours, but with a previous stop in Makedonska Kamenica for breakfast. The archaeological site of Gradishte itself is located on the top of the hill above the village and dominates the village itself. Many of the ramparts and towers have been preserved from the fortress and it is said that the site is most likely the late antique city of Armonia. The site can be reached from both sides of the village, but our team decided to follow the course of the small river through the village and leave the car just a few hundred meters from the fortress. Before reaching the fortress itself, we took photos of the "Konjska Dupka" cave, which is the easternmost cave in Macedonia. More recently, a cross has been erected near the fortress, which towers over the towers and the village. While one of the team members operated the drone to get good footage and photos of the fortress, the other members walked through the towers and the remains of the fortress.

Since during the first visit to the village as part of the "WikiExpeditions" project, the locals were talking about some kind of tunnel under the fortress,so our team set out to find it, which the locals then said was part of the plan to build a railway to Bulgaria. After a little searching to find the exact location of the tunnel entrance, since it was completely overgrown, we managed to find it and enter only a few meters into its interior because it was filled with water.

At the end of the archaeological expedition itself, photographs were also taken of the village itself, the primary school and the village church.

This Archeoexpedition significantly enriched Wikipedia with new photos and data from this archeological site.