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CEE Newsletter
Volume 2 • Issue 5 • May 2018
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CEE in the news

Regional report: CEE Spring finishes; Wiki4MediaFreedom Writing & Translation Contest

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CEE Spring 2018 finishes with 8868 articles created or improved

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By Braveheart

The preliminary results for CEE Spring 2018, which finished at midnight on May 31st, are:

  • 8923 articles were created in 25 different Wikipedias,
  • with Ukraine leading the way with 2041 articles,
    • followed by Serbia with 760,
      • and Poland with 752.

These numbers will probably change, but it is already clear that CEE Spring 2018 was a better year than 2017 :-) You can view the full stats at Wikimedia CEE Spring 2018/Statistics/Article list.

Also, the project proposal for the CEE Spring awards was timely approved during May.

Wiki4MediaFreedom Writing & Translation Contest (3 May - 15 July)

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By Rossella Vignola
Wiki4MediaFreedom contest

Drawing on a GLAM initiative called Wiki4MediaFreedom Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa has launched the Wiki4MediaFreedom Writing & Translation Contest! The Wiki4MediaFreedom initiative aims at boosting the availability of accurate knowledge on media freedom and pluralism in Europe on Wikipedia, resulting in open-access, freely reusable quality contents for the wider public in multiple languages.

So far, the Wiki4MediaFreedom editorial effort has focussed on media landscapes and other media freedom-related issues in South-east Europe, the Eastern Partnership countries, and Turkey, as well as Visegrád countries, and Baltic States.

Dozens of quality articles have been created and updated in English, focussing on specific topics like transparency of media ownership; media concentration; access to public information; censorship and self-censorship, with a set of country entries developed for each of them.

Now it is time to further share this knowledge with the wider Wikipedia community and foster societal engagement at local level to increase the ownership of Wiki4MediaFreedom in several CEE languages across Europe: that’s why on the World Press Freedom Day (May 3rd) we launched the Wiki4MediaFreedom Writing & Translation Contest to invite the community to contribute and join the Wiki4MediaFreedom initiative in support of media freedom, pluralism and quality journalism in Europe and beyond.

Within the Wiki4MediaFreedom Writing & Translation Contest, you can:

  • translate an existing article from English into the other target languages, i.e. Italian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian.
  • update and improve existing articles in English.

We invite users to translate into the target languages the articles on the recently killed journalists Daphne Caruana Galicia and Ján Kuciak which are currently present only in a few linguistic editions of Wikipedia.

Target languages are: English, Italian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian.

The contest has been symbolically be launched on May 3rd, 2018, i.e. World Press Freedom Day, and will last till July 15th, 2018.

We propose a list of articles for translation or improvement. The list is available in the page in META. Participants can freely choose to work on further items, provided they are added to the list.

A jury, composed of experts in the field of media freedom and Wikipedians, will review the articles translated, improved and updated and award prizes to the winners. Prizes will be given for the two categories, i.e. Translation and improving/updating content, to the top three scorers. Prizes are online gift voucher.

  • TRANSLATION / across languages
  1. first place: Amazon voucher of the value of EUR 50
  2. second place: Amazon voucher of the value of EUR 30
  3. third place: Amazon voucher of the value of EUR 20
  • IMPROVING / UPDATING CONTENT:
  1. first place: Amazon voucher of the value of EUR 50
  2. second place: Amazon voucher of the value of EUR 30
  3. third place: Amazon voucher of the value of EUR 20

Thank you for your kind attention! For any further information, please feel free to contact the organisers at vignola@balcanicaucaso.org

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Albania report

CEE in the news

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Turkey
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Bulgaria report

Albania report: Participation in Open Source Conference Albania

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By Margott
Wikiproject LGBTI in Albanian Wikipedia
Talk "Wikidata for beginners"
Kristina and Greta during Wikipride and diversity workshop
OSCAL 2018 - info booths 07

Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group during May participated at Open Source Conference Albania, OSCAL 2018, held in Tirana. The following activities were conducted:

  1. First edit by User puntoria.
  2. Wikidata for developers by Arianit
  3. Wiki pride and diversity by Kristina and Jona.
  4. Challenges in Wikipedia Albania when writing on LGBT-related subjects by Kristina.

An info-booth was also organized. A workshop about CEE Spring competition to promote and increase participation in this event was also held.

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Erzya report

Bulgaria report: Editathons in New Bulgarian University and successful end of the WikiBotevgrad initiative

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Editathons with Center Francophonie of New Bulgarian University

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By Justine

This spring we had the chance to organise two edit-a-tons at New Bulgarian University with the Center Francophonie. We had two sessions with the French language students - one was in February - "Introduction to Wikipedia" by Vassia and open task to the students to create articles in Bulgarian related to France. The second event was on 23 May, the edit-a-ton itself, aimed at helping the students to upload their developed articles and get a deeper insight on Wikipedia possibilities. We feel satisfaction with this project and great opportunity for future collaboration with the University and the Francophonie Center.

WikiBotevgrad's first QR code plate officially opened to mark the successful end of the initiative

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By Spasimir and Vassia
The first information plate in front of the Botevgrad Clock Tower
Wikimedians with staffers of the Municipality and the Town Library

On May 30, as a final event in the frames of the WikiBotevgrad initiative, the first information plate with a QR code to Wikipedia in Botevgrad was officially opened. The project was possible due to the close cooperation between Bulgarian Wikipedians, and the Botevgrad Municipality, "Ivan Vazov" Library, and the Botevgrad History Museum.

The initiative for the first wikitown in Bulgaria began in October 2017 and was organized in three stages: the end of November 2017, the end of February 2018 and the end of May 2018. In a period of 8 months, more than 60 people took part - staff members of the library and the history museum, of the cultural centres from the villages in the municipality, teachers and students from the municipal schools, as well as people from other parts of Bulgaria. More than 80% of the participants were people, who edited Wikipedia for the first time.

During the initiative, more than 150 articles in Bulgarian Wikipedia were created and edited, and the Bulgarian Wikisource now offers for the first time in the web space the full collection "With quill and sword" and other works by the most notable poet of Botevgrad, Stamen Panchev. More than 1000 files were uploladed to Wikimedia Commons - photos, historical documents, audio, and video.

Until June 15, the Bulgarian wiki team organizes international contest for creation of articles about WikiBotevgrad. Everyone who writes at least two articles will get the special postcard (with the special Bulgarian Wikipedian postage stamp from 2016!) and the first three editors with most content contributed will also obtain a special Wikibotevgrad t-shirt.

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Georgia report

Erzya report: 10 years of Erzyan Wikipedia!

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By Kaarel Vaidla
Cover photo 10 years of Erzyan Wikipedia

On May 26, 2008 Erzyan Wikipedia came out of the incubator and so this year the Erzyan Wikipedia is celebrating its 10 years!

For other communities there are 2 ways to participate in these celebrations:

  1. You can do it on social media choosing your own or your community's photo & congratulate Erzyan Wikipedia in your mother tongue using #myvwikipedia10 & #erzyawiki10 hashtags.
  2. You can do it in wiki way and participate on wiki-marathon organized by Wikimedians of Erzya language User Group. The competition kicked of on May 26th and will be ending on June 26th. You can find more information regarding this on respective project page on Erzyan Wikipedia.


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Hungary report

Georgia report: From Independence To Freedom: 100 Years Georgia's First Democratic Republic

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By Mehman97
Wikipedia logo in colors of the flag of the Georgian Democratic Republic. Official logo of the competition.

May 2018 was especially significant for Georgia and its statehood, since exactly 100 years ago, on May 26, 1918, the first Democratic Republic in Caucasus — Georgian Democratic Republic – was established. This is the most significant date for the whole country, as well as for the Georgian Wikipedia, which in online and written form promotes the value of the state — preservation of the Georgian language. In connection with this, Wikimedia Community User Group Georgia holds a competition in Georgian Wikipedia to create new articles and also to improve already existing articles that are related to the Georgian Democratic Republic (1918-1921). The articles will be evaluated by the jury.

Statistics

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As of May 24, 2018, 60 new articles and 8 improved articles have been created in the Georgian Wikipedia (see all articles).

Prizes

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As prizes in the contest we have vouchers for the purchase of books, where the authors of the three best articles (according to the jury's estimates) receive vouchers in the amount of 250, 150 and 100 Lari (GEL). Also, all participants of the competition will receive certificates from UG Georgia.

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Macedonia report

Hungary report: Annual general meeting, tax campaign and article contests

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By Samat
Group photo of the meetup
  • One of our chapter members gave a presentation on the Free Software Conference in Budapest about Wikidata and the EU Open Data Portal.
  • Wikimedia Hungary organized a campaign for 1% of the individual tax payers' income tax in cooperation with the colleagues at WMF. This source is the main part of the WM-HU's budget.
  • On 19 May, Wikimedia Hungary held its Annual General Meeting. The main topics of the AGM were discussion and acceptance of the 2017 reports, (re-)election of the supervisory committee for the next two years, and discussion of the chapter's strategy. The AGM was followed by a meetup and the prize giving ceremony of an article maintenance contest, where there were many editors who participated on a meetup for the first time.
  • The end of May was the time for reporting to the government about the chapter activity and how donations were spent in the previous year, including tax declaration forms and similar administration. This is a requirement to keep the charity status of the association.
  • We are at the end of the great Wikimedia CEE Spring 2018 contest, and statistics show that editors worked on 132 articles on the Hungarian Wikipedia with 124 new and 8 improved articles of the CEE region.


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Russia report

Macedonia report: Field work of expeditions & Final editing class on the education program in "Krume Kepeski" Primary school, and GLAM activities

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Spring Agroexpedition in Sirkovo & Wikiexpedition in Pijanec region

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By Македонец
Mario Šarevski with the farmer Vele Kocev on a tractor during the Agroexpedition in Sirkovo

On 4th of May, with the visit of the crops in the village of Sirkovo in the Vardar valley of the central part of Macedonia, we have officially started the Agroexpeditions for this year. With this visit, we aimed to photographed and collect information about the most cultivated agricultural crops in this region as well as those with a long historical tradition and the newly sown crops. Primarily, we had a focus on the Papaver somniferum, commonly known as the opium poppy or breadseed poppy, which has a very long historical tradition of cultivating in Macedonia as well as it is one with the highest quality of units of morphine content in the world. Additionally, we photographed seedlings of vegetables, orchards of cherries, peaches, apricots, pears and blooming vegetable crops in this period. Agroexpeditions will continue throughout the spring, summer and early autumn with main focus of the most authentic agricultural crops and seeds of Macedonia.

Group photography of the members of the Wikiexpedition in Pijanec

This expedition in Pijanec region was supposed to be held at the end of 2017, but for many reasons it was postponed to 2018. We later said it was the first one this year and we planned it for the weekend around Easter, but because of the bad weather conditions, the expedition was not held again. However, the team was determined to go and conduct the expedition, although the weather was variable throughout the weekend. Thus, with a one-month old list of villages to be explored, with a sleeping reservation, on Friday afternoon (on May 11th) the team headed towards Delcevo in the easternmost part of Macedonia. In addition to the usual members, Toni Ristovski, Kiril Simeonovski, Nino Bogdanovski, this time a new member joined the expedition and that is our photographer, Elena Markova (Serene Survival). In two days were visited 16 villages including Trstija which according to the decision of the Ministry of Local Self Government in 2014 is one of the newest and most recently recognized villages. Within this Wikiexpedition were also explored the oldest church in the region dating back from the Medieval times, the Memorial house of the 19th century's Razlovci uprising and several other cultural-historical landmarks.

Final editing class at "Krume Kepeski" Primary School

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By Македонец

On 23rd of May, we realized our second visit of the "Krume Kepeski" Primary school where we held the final editing class with the students of the 9th (final) grade. Considering the fact that this is the first time ever to conduct the education program in the upper grades of a primary school we had considerable results and observations regarding the outcome of the entire work done within the project. The project which provisionally (and colloquially) was named "Wikipedia in elementary schools" was attended by students who attend the classes of the optional subject "Study of the homeland" whereby with their research enriched or created new articles on Wikipedia on Macedonian Language. After the introductory lecture about Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects, held in February, some of the students created accounts and tried to edit on Wikipedia but due to the lack of knowledge and instruction their work remained unpublished. On this final editing class, in a period of just around one hour we succeeded with 10 students to create 8 new articles: 7 articles for rivers in Macedonia, 1 article for a cave in Skopje region with an image taken and uploaded on the Wikimedia Commons by the student and 1 improved article about a village in Western Macedonia done by a schoolgirl who carried a written text on paper for the village of Zerkle, which was a task for her homework on the subject "Study of the homeland". Due to the limited possibilities of only 5 registered user accounts from one IP address and the fact that there was no internet in the school: from our mobile router we created 5 user accounts with students, and another 5 on the internet from a mobile device shared by the teacher Slobodan Trajkovski. Considering all the work done and its outcome, we will closely observe in the summer period and made a new plan in order to improve this project in the future.

GLAM activities

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By Violetova

In the first four months of 2018, we have four new agreements signed with GLAM institutions in the Republic of Macedonia: with the City Library "Braka Miladinovci" in Skopje, with the State Archives in the Republic of Macedonia, with the Museum of Macedonian struggle in Skopje, and with the Institute of National History, for collaboration this year. As a result of GLAM Macedonia members according to those agreements, 250 new articles were created, 104 existing articles were improved, 200 references were added and 25 files were uploaded.

The focus of interest in the first four months were the themes of the World War I and World War II, special the activities of the partisans in Macedonia.

Wiki Tour in the City Library

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By Violetova

On 4th of June 2018 we held Wiki Tour in the City Library "Braka Miladinovci" in Skopje. This is due to good collaboration between GLAM Macedonia and the City Library. The Wiki Tour was organized by Wikipedian in Residence in the Library. Wiki Club members from the secondary school in Dracevo were participants on the Wiki Tour. They were introduced to the library's facilities, to the ways on how to use the professional literature, as well as to the reading rooms and attractive programs organized by the Library. The Wikipedians were allowed to see the bookbinder room, where many of the used books are replenished. А special interest aroused the meeting with the employees in the periodical department.

The Wikipedians were introduced to the rich collection of daily, weekly and monthly newspapers and magazines. They were introduced with the first issues of the newspapers published on the territory of Macedonia. Motivated by detailed explanations from their host on the meeting, Valentina Malic-Andonovska, the Wikipedians offered a new type of cooperation: searching for texts in the magazines and newspapers, and to create articles on Macedonian Wikipedia out of the texts. The library also showed interest in such future cooperation.

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Ukraine report

Russia report: Chapter anniversary, School Olympiad on Wikipedia, and a lot of competitions

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By Lvova Anastasiya
Birthday congratulations to Wikimedia Russia from Katherine Maher

It was a surprise for us, but Wikimedia Russia has been running for already 10 years, if we consider as a start the approval as a chapter. The next time we'll celebrate our birthday in November; 21 November being the date of registration as a legal entity.

In May we started the following contests:

Ongoing events that have started earlier are:

Diplomas of students of Petrozavodsk State University. Students wrote articles in the course Research in programming Wikidata (en) of Wikiversity. 2017-2018 academic year. Diplomas signed by rector of Petrozavodsk State University (Anatolii Voronin) and director of NCP Wikimedia RU (Vladimir Medeiko)

Events that completed in May:

Also

For the first time in Russia, 14 students received diplomas signed by the state university and NCP Wikimedia RU. The certificates confirm that the students of Petrozavodsk State University are specialists in the wiki-projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. read more (en)...

  • Bauman Moscow State Technical University's students (Engineering Business and Management faculty, speciality Business Informatics, subject Enterprise IT infrastructure) in the frames of a training in the subject, worked on Wikipedia articles; after some independent work in the project they received the seminar about rules and editing on May 31.
  • On May 30, a training of potential wikipedians (ru) took place in Khanty-Mansiysk. Of course, we had a contest for them; the purpose was to identify the most active and productive participants of the training, which was related to the Discover Russia. Alumni and Professors initiative.
  • On May 19, in Rostov-on-Don schoolchildren competed (ru) in writing Wikipedia articles about Rostov region; they worked with English and German Wikipedias, and it was the first Russian school olympiad fully dedicated to Wikipedia.
Meanwhile

Wikimedians have been developing a Wikiquote in the Yakut language (Sakha) for the fifth month already. Recall that Russian-language Wikipedia is the largest project in Russia, but the development of small languages is important part of our discussions; this project now is a local success story. Wikiquote is softer towards its authors than Wikisource (the idea of the project is clear, the requirements for the texts are relatively simple, the copyright laws tolerate quotes), and this reduces the entry barrier for representatives of small languages.

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Regional report

Ukraine report: CEE Spring, Wiki Loves Earth, Freedom of panorama

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Israel is 70

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By antanana, anntinomy

The thematic month Israel is 70 ended on May 14. During the month 238 articles by 35 contributors were added[1], and 14 articles were improved[2]. The awards ceremony will take place on June 4, 2018 in Kyiv during an event organised by the Interdisciplinary Certificate Program in Jewish Studies at National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

Freedom of panorama activities

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By antanana

On May 15, 2018, Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine did not pass a draft law #7539 on some amendments to the Law on Copyright, and the draft law was returned to the Committee of Science and Education to be improved. The draft law is supposed to go back to Verkhovna Rada no later than June 15. The draft law introduces non-commercial "freedom of panorama", that Wikimedia Ukraine has tried to fight before. This time Wikimedia Ukraine and Creative Commons Ukraine have developed an infographics concentrated on spheres that would not gain from "freedom of panorama" being non-commercial (like education, namely textbooks and educational materials, online education etc)[3]. The next steps will be sending letters to all members of the Parliament and working with them.

Amnesty Ukraine Human Right's Defenders Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

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By antanana, anntinomy

On May 20, 2018, Wikimedia Ukraine held a Human Right's Wikipedia Edit-a-thon together with Amnesty International in Ukraine. 12 people took part in the event. This topic is not well-covered in the Ukrainian Wikipedia, so more activities might be needed.

CEE Spring article contest article contest

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By antanana

The CEE Spring article contest took part from March, 21 to May 31. 1912 articles were created and 129 articles improved[4], 78 participants took part[5]. This contest usually produces a lot of content, and this means another challenge for us: how to find volunteers (and right tools) to rate the articles and decide who wins. The awards ceremony is planned for July/August.

Wiki Loves Earth photo contest

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By antanana, anntinomy

This was the 6th edition of Wiki Loves Earth photo contest for Ukraine. 287 participants took part[6], uploaded 10 562 files. The challenge for the next few months will be evaluating the pictures and deciding on top-10 pictures to go to the International round, and also trying to integrate the pictures in the articles.

See also
References


  1. ↑ https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/26764
  2. ↑ https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/26765
  3. ↑ Законопроект 7539: кримінальна відповідальність за фото у соцмережах нікуди не зникне?
  4. ↑ Wikimedia_CEE_Spring_2018/Statistics/Article_list#uk.wikipedia
  5. ↑ https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/26882
  6. ↑ https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/27104
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