Basque Wikimedians User Group/Reports/2022
During 2022, the Group has kept undertaking initiatives, especially related to the Education Program. The lift on main restrictions against the Covid-19 pandemics has eased the possibility of further actions. On 19 October, the Basque Wikipedia reached the milestone of 400,000 articles, while two days later, on 21 October, its junior project Txikipedia reached 5,000 articles.
WikiEmakumeok
[edit]A subgroup of the Basque Wikimedians User Group called WikiEmakumeok devotes special attention to the presence of women in the Basque Wikipedia. For example, in Wikipedia in Basque there are 15,212 female biographies, around 26.3% of all biographies. [1]
Education Program
[edit]Our education program has been working for five years on improving target articles with university and high school students alike. We also work with some external institutions to provide content in Basque language. The overall progress can be read in a full report at c:20222 balorazioa.pdf. In general, the improvement of the articles has continued, although in some areas it will be difficult to find additional improvements. After all, once the articles are of a length, not much more can be added. When we started the project, these 2,000 articles weighed an average of 6,193 bytes and occupied a total of 12,386,636 bytes. Four and a half years later, the articles weigh an average of 18,716 bytes and occupy a total of 37,431,450 bytes. In other words, since we started the project, the weight of the target articles has tripled.
Overall, we have had more than 5,000 students in our project, with more than 9 million words added and 6,770 articles improved. This means that 1% of all the Basque speaking population have been working on Basque Wikipedia and that around 12% of all our content has been created inside our project. In the year 2022 42 courses of the Basque Country University participated, with 520 students and added around one million words and 6,976 references, excluding the work done in Txikipedia. We added other 114 students at Mondragon University, with 290 articles improved and a full course on geolocation, wikidata and wikipedia done for the first time.
We also sent a leaflet to all basque teaching schools so students know better of the work we are doing and the content they can reach.
Ikusgela
[edit]A educational video website. We have launched a project that generates free explanatory pedagogical videos in Basque: Ikusgela. We launched it in September and we've published a weekly video. These videos are designed in collaboration with the experts of each knowledge area and are used to illustrate the contents of the Education Program. Most of the images that use the videos are from Commons. The first year 14 videos were released, and these appear in the 70 Wikipedia articles in Basque. See Ikusgela.
The video series that have been launched are:
- Philosophy videos by Ikusgela (Video of Hannah Arendt has English subtitles)
- Economics videos by Ikusgela
- Basque literature videos by Ikusgela
The videos, besides being inserted into Wikipedia, have been extended through other channels:
Txikipedia
[edit]In 2018, the Basque Wikipedia started a sub-project where articles were aimed at children, named Txikipedia ("txiki" being Basque for "small"). It was inspired by an independent French project named Vikidia [fr]. Four years after the launch, the project had more than 5000 articles, most being focused on maths and natural sciences.
Txikipedia exceeded the 5,000 items barrier on 21 October 2022.
The Txikipedia project is continuing at the Zumaia Secondary School. The 2nd year students, 13 to 14 years old, have created about 300 articles for the Txikipedia. The project will continue in the coming courses.
This is our wikiproiektua portal and the Commons page:
- (Basque) Zumaiako Txikipedia Wikiproiektua.
- Commons: Txikipedia_workshop_at_Zumaia_BHI_School
The project we carried out in Zumaia has been disseminated in different forums and has trained faculty to generate new articles with students in other Secondary Schools. We have presented our work in the following forums:
- Luberri Secondary School (Donostia/San Sebastian). There we were informing some teachers of Frisia and Ireland of our project.
- Lakua BHI Secondary School (Vitoria-Gasteiz) and Elgoibar Secondary School. In these centres we have given training sessions to teachers.
- (Donostia/San Sebastian) in IRALE centre. Training sessions have been given to the teaching staff attending the course R-600.
Faculty of Informatics of Donostia/San Sebastian
[edit]On the occasion of the 10th Anniversary of Wikidata and in collaboration with the the Basque Wikimedians User Group, the Faculty of Informatics (laboratory 0.1) organized two workshops:[2]
- Wikipedia: Friday, October 21, 11:15-12:15. In the computer room of the library (Carlos Santamaría library).
- Wikidata: Wednesday, October 26, 15:30-17:00. Faculty 0.1 laboratory.
By using and programming Wikidata, a project was launched that aims at obtaining, organizing, processing and generating meteorological data graphs to incorporate meteorological information into Wikipedia articles in Basque. We're working with some students.
Erasmus+ project
[edit]We are working on an Erasmus+ project with Wikimedia Ireland Community and some Frisian partners, in order to write articles about women in three languages with secondary students. As the project will flourish in 2023, 2022 has been a year of preparation. We organized a hands-on bootcamp with teachers from the three countries in Donostia where we discussed how to make eucation material for teachers to work on this topic.
Other improvements and projects
[edit]We completed the list of 10,000 Wikipedia articles
[edit]We’ve created in Basque all the articles on the list of 10,000 articles that should have all wikipedias! (twitter, wikimedia.eus, Berria.eus, Naiz.eus, Argia.eus, Galder Gonzalez, 2022/12/27).
On December 27, 2022, the Basque Wikipedia managed to complete the list of 10,000 articles.
Summer courses
[edit]IEB2022 (UEU). 12th edition of the series of Basque Informatics. Session: Artificial Intelligence.
[edit]3 lectures on Basque Wikipedia:[3]
- ORES on Basque Wikipedia: Artificial Intelligence for article quality assessment EUmineralbot - by Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga (member of Basque Wikimedians User Group).
- Eumineralbot - Xabier Garmendia, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga eta Kepa Sarasola Badiola.
- Learning computer science as a Wikipedia and Wliquidata laboratory – Ekhi Azurmendi, Oier Elola, Galder Gonzalez, Josu Loidi, Kepa Sarasola, Uxer Ugarte, Aimar Zabala and Ana Zelaia.
Digital humanities projects
[edit]As a result of the agreement between the Basque Wikimedians User Group and Basque Summer University (UEU), a digital humanities scholarship was launched in February 2022 for the promotion of free knowledge by means of the Basque Wikipedia and sister projects. Two scholarships (2) were granted:
- Project "Be[di]girada – Gizaki digitalaren eta digitalizazio gizatiarraren lanketa hezkuntzan integratzeko proposamena" (Be(di)girada - Proposal for the integration of the digital human and human digitalization in education") put forward by Amaia Arroyo Sagasta and Egoitz De La Iglesia, PhD academics in HUHEZI.
- The cataloguing project in Wikidata "XVIII. mendean Euskal Herrian inprimatu idazkiak" (Works printed over the 18th century in the Basque Country) led by the Basque Wikimedians Group member Iñaki Lopez de Luzuriaga. It included the use of the application OpenRefine for its completion (data structuring). The output of the project can be accessed by a Basque Wikipedia page. Dissemination (February 2023): Txokoa announcement, Interview in the UEU page, Twitter (1), Twitter (2)
Wikibooks
[edit]Cookbook
[edit]- Cookbook A highly successful Wikibook: recipes, culinary techniques, tricks, tips, ingredients... by Gaztarrotz (member of Basque Wikimedians User Group)
Presence in the media
[edit]- ETB1, Basque public TV, Biba Zuek ("Long live you!") (2022-12-19). The TV program celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Basque Wikipedia in a December session. EntryId Professor Ana Zelaia, -Donostia/San Sebastian Faculty of Informatics-, with Wikimedians Galder Gonzalez and Gartxot participated. EITB A la carta you could see the full program (Wikipedia only in the first 40 minutes): https://www.eitb.tv/eu/bideoa/biba-zuek-2-denboraldia/7753/195039/andoni-agirregomezkorta/
- “The "wiki-opportunities" we have in college” by Kepa Sarasola Gabiola, Ana Zelaia Jauregi. Campusa, Donostia/San Sebastian (2022-09-22).
- Wikidata turns 10. Olatz Perez de Viñaspre Garralda, Ana Zelaia Jauregi. Gaur8, (2022-10-22)
- Wikidata turns 10. What is it and how can I take advantage of it? by Kepa Sarasola Gabiola, Wikimedia.eus (2022-10-26)
- Created all of the list of 10,000 articles that should have all wikipedias! (27-12-2022):
On social media
[edit]- Youtube: @Ikusgela
- Twitter: @euwikipedia, @Ikusgela, @Txikipedia
- Instagram:
- Facebook:
- Telegram:
- Mastodon: @euwikipedia, @Ikusgela, @Txikipedia @wikidosia
- Peertube: Peertube.eus: Ikusgela_kanala
Itinerancies
[edit]Korrika
[edit]Korrika, a biannual popular career to promote the Basque language, Korrika 22th edition, the Basque Wikimedians User Group participated. Like so many other active cultural groups all over the Basque Country, our group went running one kilometre in favour of the Basque language. Several members and friends of the group run a kilometre with music in a relaxed atmosphere. Basque Wikimedians User Group members completed their kilometre in Ispaster, Bizkaia. They were cheered and clapped by dozens of runners.
Sarako Idazleen Biltzarra
[edit]The Basque Writer's Fair of Sara is an yearly book fair for the promotion of Basque books and writers taking place in Sara, attended regularly by the Basque Wikimedians User Group during the last years with a view to disseminating Basque Wikipedia products and activity, as well as engaging new contributors and possibly securing new synergies. The fair took place on 10 April 2022, where the User Group set up a stand, with measures related to the Covid-19 pandemics partially still in place.