CEE/Newsletter/June 2018/Contents/Slovakia report

Slovakia report: User Group recognition, Editathon about Slovak folk culture

By KuboF Hromoslav

Wikimedians of Slovakia User Group finally gets recognition

Wikimedians of Slovakia is now officially recognized as a User Group! The Affiliations Committee accepted us as a fully legitimate part of the international Wikimedia movement on 25 June 2018.

The whole history started back in 2006 by a public discussion on Slovak Wikipedia. But the significant move happened in 2011 when the user Rudko decided to lead the process of foundation. The Slovak Ministry of Internal Affairs accepted our founding request in that same year, on 16 December 2011. The intention of the action was to be recognised as a Wikimedia Chapter, so the organisations was called Wikimedia Slovakia from the beginning. But it was the time of change of the Wikimedia affiliations model, with a new type of Wikimedia User Group being introduced. The discussions about recognition status and name - inside the group, between the group and AffCom and inside of AffCom - lasted longer than expected and required agreements on a one-to-one basis.

Cutting the long story short - Wikimedians of Slovakia is now not only legally incorporated in Slovakia but also a recognised affiliate in the Wikimeda movement. It was a long process and it means a lot for us. Thanks to all the people who helped it happen!

Edit-a-thon about Slovak folk culture

In 2017 we were invited by SME, the biggest Slovakian newspaper, to co-organise an edit-a-thon about cancer. The event was very successful and encouraged us to repeat it with another topic. The selection fell on Slovak folk culture, partly because of previous collaboration on a project led by Wikimedia Poland, the Carpathian Ethnography Project.

The edit-a-thon was targeting mostly experts and students in the related fields, like ethnology, and accepted Wikimedians of any experience, including Wikimedians-in-creation. On the first day, 9 June, the participants mostly received an intruction to Wikipedia from the experienced editors. The next day they already edited themselves in small, self-organised groups. The participation of actual scientists and university teachers was very important. They were able to bring the content quality to a higher level. Work on this topic was more challenging than the previous year, because translation from other Wikipedias was mostly impossible and virtually all of the content needed to be created from scratch.

Example images from some of the new articles