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Wikimedians of Latvia User Group/2015

< Wikimedians of Latvia User Group

This is a report for activities performed by Wikimedians of Latvia User Group in 2015.

Main milestones

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  • January 5: submitted application for creating new user group.
  • March 5: was recognized as a user group for a one-year renewable period.

Wikipedian meetings

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Vikimaratons: Partnership with Norvik Banka

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Vikimaratons poster in Riga

One on bigger projects was collaboration with Norvik Banka, called Latvijas Vikipēdijas maratons (Wiki marathon). Several other partneres were also included: University of Latvia, Latvijas Radio 5, Delfi (news portal), Valsts valodas centrs (state language agency), draugiem.lv ("Latvian Facebook"). Main activities of project were:

  • Article contest with attractive prizes (tablets and phones from Samsung), no set topic. All articles created in 6 month time frame were valid for contest. Impact of the contest was not measurable.
  • Thematic article subcontests with special prizes from other partners. Subcontests were limited to 1-2 weeks.
  • Various PR activities were performed, including contest opening ceremony, celebrities encouraging people to contribute to Wikipedia, a tram covered with campaign's advertisement and featured free Wi-Fi (first in Riga public transit).
  • However, final awards ceremony was delayed and has no set date yet.
  • Norvik Banka decided to partly sponsor our Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest.

Education program

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  • Course "Information technologies in education" at University of Latvia, one public lecture (September 9), students needed to create two articles as course assignment, taught by Viesturs Vēzis
  • April 20, public lecture at University of Latvia, course "Social media and digital culture", taught by Līva Brice

Regional cooperation

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Wiki Loves Monuments

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In 2015, for the first time, Latvian wiki community took part in Wiki Loves Monuments (initiated 2011 in the Netherlands). With numerous other "firsts" it was also the first time Latvian community applied for PEG. Grant was given, executed and report has been accepted. Additionally to funds received from WMF grant, we convinced our partner Norvik Banka to sponsor some prizes and awards ceremony. Also two persons from Norvik banka and two persons from State Inspection for Heritage Protection were members of jury.

With 66 users participating and 3537 photos uploaded the competition was considered a success. Contest was organised by 2 users from user group.

Competition was mentioned in five media: diena.lv, tvnet.lv, vesti.lv, kaskur.lv, travelnews.lv and six regional tourist informational centers websites.

Participation in regional and global Wikimedia events

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Outreach

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  • Kept spreading message about Freedom of Panorama and our signature gathering initiative which would be submitted to national parliament when 10000 votes have been gathered. We used social media and Central notice banner when there were no other activities. Right now over 2000 signatures have been gathered.

Media mentions

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During the year Latvian Wikipedia got more media mentions than all previous years combined. Main reasons for this were cooperation with Norvik Banka and Wiki Loves Monuments contest. Among them were four interviews in national radio. A radio and TV interview followed in January of 2016.

Social networks

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  • Twitter has been main means of spreading information about groups activities and receiving some feedback.
  • Facebook account has been set up recently but has limited coverage and mostly just duplicates Twitter content.


AffCom Resolutions

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