Basque Wikimedians User Group/Reports/2024

In 2024, the Basque Wikimedians User Group has continued to carry out initiatives along the same lines devised in previous years. It has continued to expand the Education Program and has given the Ikusgela project a major boost. It has also promoted a number of other projects outside the educational program. There is now a summary of the activities during the year. All in all, most objectives presented in the 2024 annual plan have been met, and in some cases the expectations have been surpassed. We now present the most relevant achievements done during 2024. You can also check the

Organization

At the previous year's General Assembly in January 2023, changes were made (as reflected in the 2023 report) and no further changes have been made to the structure of the Basque Wikimedians User Group.

2024-2027 strategy

2004 was the first year of the 2024-2027 strategy. This strategy has set a number of objectives for 2027 and a defined a set of indicators to achieve them. At the 2024 rate, we are exceeding them at a good pace.

500,000 articles in the Basque Wikipedia: we should have created 18,447 new articles during 2024 and 24,505 have been created.
- Women's biographies have grown considerably, we have filled gaps in sport-related content with the wave of the Paris Olympic Games, and we have added a number of articles on European geography. Moreover, we are beginning to fill some gaps, including some articles about areas in the United States, towns and villages in Germany, and municipalities in England.
- Basque Wikipedia is the 33rd largest Wikipedia
The list of 1,000 articles that all Wikipedias should contain: At the beginning of 2024, we were in 18th place and finished the year in 14th place.
As for the expanded 10,000 article list that all Wikipedias should have: We went up a position in the ranking.
- Much of this increase comes from the competition on completing too short biographies organized in June, as well as work performed in the Education program, especially with university students.
- The "History" field is the largest, and the "Society and Social Sciences" area is still lagging behind, but it has grown well this year, to the point of being equal to technology or mathematics.
Women's presence on Wikipedia: 30,000 female articles by 2027, one third of all biographies. At the beginning of 2024, the biographies of women were 17,175, and those of men were 44,912. By the end of the year, there were 22,712 women (31.98 per cent) and 48,175 men.
- Behind these results is especially the work of WikiEmakumeok. They meet weekly in Oiartzun and Durango. One of the objectives of the Basque Wikimedians User Group is to foster and promote these groups by helping the creation of similar groups when help is requested, for instance in the course created by the Library Services of the Basque Autonomous Community.
- In addition, the work carried out has included the development of a situated learning module, an Erasmus+ project and co-educational courses with HUHEZI.
Txikipedia corpus: The objective for 2024 was to create 900 articles during the year, reaching 7500 in total. At the end, 7637 articles were created.
- In a similar vein, we have worked in article growth, working with Basque Ikastolas aiming to grow article content; we are working with the Ikastolas of the Basque Country as their students have the possibility to work on specific topics in Txikipedia.
- In 2024, 29 Ikastolas and about 1,600 secondary school students participated.
- The project continues with Otso: A fortnightly comic book is published in Commons.
Deepening the knowledge of the Basque Country:
- Article content on municipalities of the Basque Country in the Basque wikipedia has improved. A large part of said improvement took place in March, for ten days, taking advantage of the fact that Korrika was on its way. 234 kb of content, 8,461 words and 238 bibliographic references were added.
- With second-year students of the HUHEZI "Global Digital Humanities" degree, article content of the regions of the Basque Country has been vastly improved. Hundred of thousands of byte content has been added to articles of twelve regions of the Southern Basque Country
- The project "History of the Basque Country in 100 objects" has been defined and has started during 2024.

Projects

Education

In the field of education, projects have been carried out in several areas.

At the university-level, the the Education Program has been present in 38 differents subjects, and 725 students have participated. At least 640 articles have been created, 5,081 bibliographic references have been added, and more than 5,400,000 characters (about 750,000 words) have been written. The subjects have been varied, and a rubric has also been developed for teaching natural sciences, linking the educational project with the research project.

In Secondary Education, Txikipedia has been promoted, in collaboration with the Ikastolas Association and a project in the Public School of Zumaia. Additionally, the Erasmus+ project has developed a gender balance plan. Presentation and training sessions have also been held with teachers from IRALE and Tolosarra.

During the course 2023-2024, the Basque Wikimedians User Group decided to develop learning situations for secondary school students. These learning situations have been developed between the Talaios Cooperative and Faculty of Humanities and Education Sciences (HUHEZI) of Mondragon Unibertsitatea in a project called "WikIkasi, Learning Situations using Wikipedia." There are plans to create nine learning situations in four different levels and one has already been created for the first cycle ("Working on the classmates geographical diversity on Wikipedia") and one for the second cycle ("Bringing women to Wikipedia").

Ikusgela

One of the new series in 2024 is "Universal Literature". This this the video about Sappho.

One of the new series in 2024 is "History". This is the video about the Neolithic age.

Following the path begun in 2022, 74 more videos have been submitted in 2024. In these videos you can find the following series:

Philosophy
Economy
Basque Culture
Digital Challenges
Environment
Zortziko txikian (Quick recap in eight steps)

During 2024, two more series have been added to the collection:

Similarly, there has been activity in subtitling these videos. These efforts are centralized in WikiProject Subtitling Ikusgela.

It is also worth noting that Ikusgela has been awarded the 2024 Rikardo Arregi Award for Communication, arguably some of the most prestigious awards in the field of Basque Journalism.

Finally, with regard to communication action, the following have been done during 2024:

Two presentations at the Durango Fair (DA!).
Send presentation posters of different videos to educational institutions.
Sponsorship of a weekly contest in the "Egunean behin" app.
Creation of a newsletter in order to teachers to learn about the new videos released in Ikusgela.

Txikipedia (WikiChildren)

The development of Txikipedia has continued during 2024 with the collaboration of different schools. Around 30 ikastolas have taken part in the project, pushing for the creation of around 400 articles.

The Public school of Zumaia has reached 1,000 Txikipedia articles in this course (Zumaiako Txikipedia Wikiproiektua|link to Wikiproject) and they have completed the "Navigating in Txikipedia" learning situation to celebrate it. There, in collaboration with the Aquarium of San Sebastian, students from 1st baccalaureate year have produced articles and illustrations on the life on the Cantabrian sea (link to Commons category. During 2025, a similar study will take place within the Pagoeta Natural Park.

Navarre

The Basque Wikimedians User Group has had a project worker in Navarre. Moreover, in September, the Public University of Navarre (UPNA) and the user group signed a partnership agreement to contribute to Basque Wikipedia.

WikiEmakumeok (WikiWomen)

The Basque Wikimedians User Group has given its support to the different WikiEmakumeok groups that are being created. This support has been twofold: groups have received support for their project and technical support when needed. Moreover the user group has also supported the project of illustrating women portraits (check the Commons category). Similarly, during 2024, the 30.000 women project has been created, which has the aim of reaching 30,000 biographies of women, encompassing 33% of all biographies in the Basque Wikipedia by 2027.

The history of the Basque Country in 100 objects

A list of 100 objects has been collected in collaboration with existing museums in the Basque Country. The aim of the list is to describe the history of the Basque Country through these objects, starting from the Palaeolithic to the contemporary world. This is an idea inspired from the project "A History of the World in 100 Objects", co-produced in 2010 by BBC 4 Radio and the British Museum.

Other notable work

LGBTI+ Style Guide

In collaboration with EHGAM members, a project has been launched to develop a Style Guide to ensure that Wikipedia articles in Basque are appropriate or correct from an LGBTI+ perspective.

Communication in social media

Six/seven different posts (toots, posts...) have been released in social media every day through Social Media (Twitter/X, Mastodon and Faceebook). The purpose has been twofold: to show and put into value the existing content in Basque Wikipedia and to increase the presence of Basque language in social media.

Sport content

One on the activities outlined in our 2024 annual plan was to work on the sport content in the Basque Wikipedia as part of the WikiLovesOlympics initiative. Two main actions were carried out. First, with the help of students from the University of the Basque Country, articles on sports at the Olympic Games were improved, and secondly, a contest was set to include results from the Olympics and to improve the biographies of athletes (a similar initiative was done with Tokyo 2020 Summer and Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics). Basque Wikipedia was the second Wikipedia in achieving the completion of all results of the Olympics. You can find more details in the Basque Wikipedia Wikikproject Olympics page.

Data upload of more than 1000 more music records to Wikidata

This project, which began in 2023 and ended in 2024, has enriched Wikidata with content related to Basque music. At the end of the project, records of 300 Basque performers and 1144 albums were added to Wikidata. These 300 performers/music bands are the creators with the most production. In February, the Basque Wikimedians User Group website (wikimedia.eus) also presented 10 different visualizations to better understand the state of Basque music along with the technical specifications of the work carried out. You can also check the interview in the Elhuyar magazine to one of the participants in the proyect.

‘'Begoñako errepublika’'

In the article of the former municipality of Begoñako errepublika (Republic of Begoña), now a district of Bilbao, the content related several aspects (history, geography, demography...) has been created or improved, and we have also created articles of 100 famous people from there (check the full list) as well as including their data in Wikidata. Finally, more than 200 photos on the topic have been uploaded to Commons (check the category)

Competitions

Three competitions have been held this year:

Basque culture: To start the new season of Ikusgela, a competition was held for improving articles Basque culture. It also hade some impact in Basque media.
Short Biographies: Although all the articles present on the list of 10,000 articles all Wikipedias should have are already created in the Basque Wikipedia, several of them are very short. We focused on short biographies to assemble the list of articles to be improved and the contest obtained excellent results.
Important and short: Based again on the list of 10,000 articles that all Wikipedias should have, the shortest 600 articles were identified and the contest was centred in improving them.

Technical work

The Euskera Wikipedia Cover has been improved.
Contributions to Wikifunctions.
Contributions to the VideoWiki project.

Basque Centre data to Wikidata

A project has been launched to bring all data related to Basque Centers spread around the world to Wikidata.

Presence in media

In social media

Youtube: @Ikusgela

Twitter: @euwikipedia @ikusgela

Instagram: @Ikusgela

Facebook: @Euskarazko Wikipedia

Telegram: @Ikusgela

Mastodon: @euwikipedia, @Ikusgela, @Txikipedia @wikidosia

Peertube: Peertube.eus: Ikusgela_kanala

Itinerancies

Wikimania 2024

Wikimania 2024 was held in Katowice between 7 and 10 August. The Basque Wikimedians User Group took on not only the role of attendants, but also the role of speakers. First, Galder Gonzalez gave two lectures: “Abstract Wikipedia and the dream of a Universal Language” and "The history of X in 100 objects". Second, Koldo Biguri, gave the lecture “Alumnos de secundaria, autores de 1.000 artículos en Txikipedia” on the basis of his work at the Zumaia Public School, also mentioning other Txikipedia initiatives.

Celtic Knot 2024

Celtic Knot 2024 was organized in Port Lairgd, Waterford, had the participations of two members of the Basque Wikimedians User Group. Luistxo Fernandez presented the "Count von Count teaches Basque" lightning talk and the regular talk "Wikipedia usage in successful Basque/Welsh trivia app games", while Galder Gonzalez delivered "The history of the Basque Country in 100 objects" talk.

Korrika 2024

Korrika is a biannual popular career to promote the Basque language. In its Korrika 23rd edition, the Basque Wikimedians User Group participated. Like so many other active cultural groups all over the Basque Country, our group bought and went running one kilometre in favour of the Basque language on the 16th of March in Uharte, Navarre. They were cheered and clapped by dozens of runners. There is a Category in Commons with images of the event.

Informatikari Euskaldunon Bilkura 2024

Xabier Irastorza eta Paula Ontalvilla made a contribution in the IEB2024 Basque Computing scientific conference, outlining the work done in including meteorological data from the Basque Country in Wikipedia and Wikidata. This work was previously presented in the Basque Wikimedians User Group website.

Datu meteorologikoak Wikipedian/Wikidatan. Paula Ontalvilla, Xabier Irastorza, Galder Gonzalez, Ana Zelaia eta Kepa Sarasola. IEB2024. Informatikari Euskaldunen XIII. Bilkura. Slides used in the presentation.
Video of the presentation