Wikimedians of Slovakia/Reports/2019/en

This is the annual report for the Wikimedians of Slovakia UG for the year 2019.

Operational management of the organization

Name of the organization

After negotiations, the Wikimedia Foundation allowed us to use a new name, Wikimedia Slovensko, for Slovak-speaking environment. The English-language name Wikimedians of Slovakia User Group stays valid. The reason for the name change was the length of the old name (Wikimedia Slovenská republika).

General Assembly and change of management

A Special General Assembly took place on 4th May 2019. Matej Grochal was elected as the chair of the civic association and Radoslava Semanová and Dávid Štefan as vice-chairs. Patrik Kunec and Lukáš Mikulec are members of the Audit Committee.

A Special General Assembly took place on 28th September 2019. The 2018 annual report was approved there.

Organizational

Throughout the year we worked on a web hosting and email hosting change as well as the establishment of a new physical residence of the organization. We managed to arrange several banking matters, new bank cards for the organization. We keep internal accounting. We got multiple information channels under our control. We were improving our web page and we regularly updated the Slovak Wikipedia community on news in the broader community.

Organization activities

Civic association organised and co-organised these activities in 2019:

Wikimedia CEE Spring 2019

In 2019, Wikimedians of Slovakia organised the third Slovak edition of the international contest Wikimedia CEE Spring 2019 to improve the quality and number of articles about Central and Eastern Europe on Wikipedia. 15 editors participated in the contest on Slovakia Wikipedia from 22 March to 31 May 2019. Together they created 171 articles that mapped 14 countries of the region in 11 thematic areas. The most popular countries of this edition were the Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria and Poland. The majority of articles was related to history, nature/geography and culture. Users competed in two categories: one of them was reserved for original articles and the second one for translations. The top three editors were awarded in every category. The jury assessed quantitative statistics as well as the quality of the submitted articles as to the content and stylistics and the usage of bibliographic and internet resources in the articles. The winners received coupons to the Martinus bookshop ranging from 10 to 50 euro in a total amount of 160 euro from Wikimedians of Slovakia.

WikiEdit Nežná’89

On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, Wikimedians of Slovakia and Slovak Wikipedia joined the events related to this important event by organizing an edit-a-thon. The University Library in Bratislava became our partner by providing a space in the centre of Bratislava, technical support and mainly book, magazine and internet sources for the event participants. The edit-a-thon itself took place on 9 November 2019 in the Seminar Hall of the University Library in Bratislava. After the introduction of the global and the Slovak movement, we showed the participants the basics of editing. New editors could then contribute with the direct help of experienced editors. Wikimedians of Slovakia also provided catering for the event. 15 new articles were created during the event and 4 were extended or edited. 15 people participated in the edit-a-thon, 2 of them remotely (online).

Copyright reform

In March 2019 a voting took place in the European Parliament on the reform of the European copyright legislation. Wikimedians of Slovakia sent emails to the members of the European Parliament representing Slovakia thanking them for their public promise to vote against the proposed text of the Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on Copyright in the Digital Single Market or with a reasoned request not to support this proposal. Wikimedians of Slovakia provided several statements to the media and coordinated the Slovak involvement in the protest shutdown of Wikimedia projects within Europe. The blackouts happened in the second half of March 2019.

Wiki Loves Monuments

In 2019, the seventh Slovak edition of the international photography contest dedicated to monuments, Wiki Loves Monuments, took place. 1063 photos were uploaded in the competition. The professional jury chose 10 winning pieces that proceeded to the international round. The author of the winning photo of the Jewish cemetery in Jelšava is David Raška. Wikimedians of Slovakia under the coordination of Radoslava Semanová donated the prizes to the competition and managed the jury.

Wikipedia Asian Month

The second Slovak edition of Wikipedia Asian Month took place on Slovak Wikipedia in November. This international contest focuses on increasing content about Asia on Wikipedia. It runs for one month from 1 to 30 November traditionally but this year it was prolonged to 7 December due to a week-long Internet block in Iran. The engagement rate was higher than in the first edition in 2018. In 2019, 10 editors participated and they added 43 articles altogether. The topics were more diverse in comparison with the previous edition as well. Half of the editors met the criteria for the minimal number of articles to get the postcard from one of the participating Wikimedia Asian affiliates and were awarded coupons to Martinus bookstore in value of 10 euro from Wikimedians of Slovakia. The participant with the highest number of articles also received the “Wikipedia Asian Ambassador” title and got a signed certificate. The contest’s organizers were Dávid Štefan and Lukáš Mikulec.

Wikimania 2019

In 2019, the global meeting of Wikimedia movement took place in Sweden’s Stockholm. Matej Grochal participated in the meeting with the support of CivilServant organization; he participated in a workshop of Wikipedia research run by the organization. During Wikimania, he presented interesting results of research regarding wikiprojects during 2018 and 2019 with colleagues: The State of Wikimedia Research: 2018-2019. Technical resources needed for the Wiki Loves Monuments contest were successfully prepared during the event.

CEE 2019

One of the regular meetings of the Central and Eastern European region took place in Serbia’s Belgrade in October 2019. Radoslava Semanová and Matej Grochal participated on behalf of Wikimedians of Slovakia. Both of them contributed to the conference programme (Radoslava Semanová presented the project WikiEdit Slovenská ľudová kultúra that happened in 2018. Matej Grochal presented the problem with female inflection on Slovak Wikipedia). Besides these contributions, they actively participated in group and individual discussions and solving of the regional problems.

Cooperation with other organizations

During the year, we established contacts with several organizations with similar objectives in order to establish (closer) cooperation.