Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Shared Knowledge/June 2018

SHARED KNOWLEDGE
Activity report

June 2018

In the media

Considering the rapid and steady growth of the usage of Internet in the Macedonian society lot of questions and public awareness are constantly raising regarding the quality, accuracy and reliability of the infоrmation available online on the internet. Special interest is shown of the information found by the students and especially the content on the Wikipedia which is one of the most popular sources of information on the internet. On 3^rd of June on the main news on the nationwide TV "Sitel" was shown the short story Young people learn online, teachers support them with a prudence recommendation where Cvetko Nedelkovski our longstanding education program coordinator and member of the board and Mario Šarevski our employee and project manager, participated with statements.

Educational program in "Josip Broz Tito" High school

On 5 ^th of June, we had an editing activity within the Educational program in the "Josip Broz Tito" Highschool. This activities were realized on the classes on physics are conducted for the fourth consecutive year in the Josip Broz Tito High School where our member of the board and longtime contributor Cvetko Nedelkovski is a psychics teacher. Seven students of second year out of which six were newly registered users took part on the editing activities on this class of physics whereby they have created 6 new articles about asteroids (discovered by the astronomer Max Wolf) while 1 article about electric power transformer was largely improved with text by two students together with the instruction of their teacher. Some of the students who have registered user account on this class were also introduced to the new tool of translating articles thus they have started to create the articles through translation while the general content was added under the instruction of the teacher. Also, one of the students who participated and solely created the most number of articles on the Editing contest on Wikipedia which lasted for three months in this spring semester was granted with the winning award.

Wikiexpedition in Azot and Klepa regions of central Macedonia

The second Wikiexpedition planned for this year was conducted in the second weekend from 8^th to 10^th of June in the regions of Azot and Klepa in the very central part of Macedonia. On this Wikiexpedition similarly as in the previous one, there was also another new member, Natasha Velichkovska who had the winning photography on the Wiki Loves Food 2017 contest, came for the first time together with Elena Markova who came again, as did Toni Ristovski, Kiril Simeonovski, Nino Bogdanovski. In the first day the team visited the most remote mountainous villages of the former Municipality of Bogomila which are located on Dautica mountain on Mokra massif under the fourth highest Macedonian peak Solunska Glava, and than headed back to city of Veles (45 km in one direction) in order to refill gasoline as there is no gas station in the entire region. On the way back the team has visited three villages of the region of Klepa on the right side south of Babuna River and six more villages along the valley of the Babuna river including the village of Dolno Vranovci which according to the latest geographical scientific measurements has officially been declared as the geographical center of the Republic of Macedonia. On the second day the team visited eight more villages in the region driving on a very difficult terrain on off-road dirt roads thus successfully finishing this Wikiexpedition with 21 villages visited along with monasteries, rivers and other natural and cultural landmarks in this region and over 700 kilometers traveled.

WikiLecture at Livadišta Summer Camp

Group photo with the kids at Livadišta Summer Youth Camp

On 18^th of June, after a previous agreement with our member and collaborator Slobodan Trajkovski who is a main organizer of a youth summer camp in the autocamp Livadišta by the Ohrid Lake near the town of Struga in southwestern Macedonia, we have officially participated in the program of the camp by holding a lecture and giving interesting tasks to the pupils for collecting material to contribute as a content on Wikipedia on Macedonian language. The pupils aged between 13 and 15 collected information about the autocamp Livadišta such as its capacity, year of foundation, location, the Ohrid lake, villages and tourist sites nearby in the days of the camp and on the they when the lecture was given by Mario Šarevski who the last year participated on this youth summer camp as a hiking, mountaneering and geography guide for the kids and Ivan Živkoviċ, the kids besides being instructed how to create and edit an article and uploading images, where also given the task to take photographs of the facilities in the camp which showed as a real fun for them. Considering the limited and low quality of the internet on this mountainous place on the western coast of the Ohrid Lake and the short time scale for this activity the lecture about the basics of Wikipedia and Wikimedia was attended by all of the kids who were on this Youth Summer Camp but although only a few pupils have the chance to create and edit articles on Wikipedia on Macedonian language and upload the images on Wikimedia Commons despite all of them where attracted and contributed taking pictures and collecting information which they shared to their friends on the computers to add on Wikipedia. This activity was conducted for the first time prove to be interesting and attractive thus useful with a considerable success and we will think about to held it again with even better excellence in the future.

WikiGap Skopje

Group photo of the participants of WikiGap Skopje

After a notification in March and several meetings for preparations with the Swedish Embassy and the office of the United Nations for gender equality and straightening the woman's rights and position UN Women held in May and June, on 20^th of June was held WikiGap Skopje edit-a-thon. Besides the main organizers the Embassy if Sweden in Skopje, UN Woman and Shared Knowledge as a Wikimedia chapter in Macedonia this event was also organized in partnership with dozen NGO's, civil associations, initiatives and institutes dedicated to woman's and human rights, gender studies, gender equality issues. The preparations went good with a constant e-mail communication for sharing ideas for articles and literature, which was provided by our employees from the Library of Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MANU) and printed from electronic materials in our possession, while some of the participants in the days prior the event have gathered information and prepared text of biographical content for female personalities from Macedonia who had impact in the social, cultural and public life. The main title of the event was "Prominent women from Macedonia" and the main focus was creating bibliographical articles about woman which are not visible on the internet space but nevertheless other articles on female and gender topics were also tackled and covered within the scope of this edit-a-thon. WikiGap edit-a-thon as a part of the a global Swedish initiative with the idea of bridging closer the differences and gender inequalities that persist in the online world held in Skopje had 54 participants who in a period of 4 hours (1 hour opening and instructional presentation and 3 hours of editing articles) have created 103 new articles on Wikipedia on Macedonian as well as they have contributed with uploading several images to Wikimedia Commons which was added to the articles and improving exiting articles on women topics.

Biology edit-a-thon

Оn the basis of the interest shown by professors of the Faculty of Biology in Skopje considering the fact that Wikipedia on Macedonian language lacks with a lot of articles on biological topics and themes we have agreed to organize an edit-a-thon which will also be аn lecture for instruction and training for the professors, assistant lecturers and technical staff of the departments biology and mycology on the Natural sciences faculty how to work and edit on Wikipedia. Primal aim of this edit-a-thon of biology on which participated professors, assistant lecturers, technical staff, researchers and members of the Macedonian Biological Society was to create and improve as much is possible articles on biological topics with the most accurate and reliable content by experts who will later share the skills of editing to the students, thus we discussed of the possibility to start educational program on the Faculty of biology. The event was held in the afternoon and evening hours of 26^th of June in the Library of the Faculty of Natural Sciences in Skopje where 8 participants have created 13 new articles and improved one article. The work on this edit-a-thon was comprehensively and extensively done through the source editor and translation tool and the participants have edited articles by adding considerable amount of text, images, references, and in the process of compiling the results and the outcome in the aftermath we noticed that users have continued with creating and improving articles by themselves in the next days which is a sign about the interest and the possibilities for the future development of the work on Wikipedia on Macedonian language with the biologists.