Grants:TPS/Elena Tatiana Chis/Wikimania/2017/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2017!

Participant

Elena Tatiana Chis

Name: Elena Tatiana Chis

User Page: [|User:Elena Tatiana Chis on WikiCommons]

Contributions: Link

Wikimedia Commons

Before Wikimania

Before Wikimania I was just a wikipedian reader and photography viewer. Just me and my computer watching and reading online what I was interested in. I was just glad that I could find most of the information I was looking for. But I never asked myself what was behind the articles I was reading, or how that subject that I was interested in, is online and is more accessible than going to the public library where probably I wouldn’t find so much information. I guess I was lucky getting to know Wikimedia Commons, or to be more specific Wiki Loves Monuments. So I uploaded some of my best shots for WLM 2016 and I guess my contribution was quite a success getting to be the winner in top 10 national for Morocco, Tunisia and Peru. But that was everything that I knew to do on Wiki: upload photos, beside the fact that I managed to edit my user page and to add some “features” about me and my Wiki contribution, but that was all of it.

Outcome

Option 3: New Creation: What was one useful outcome that was created at the event for the Wikimedia movement?

Add a link to something new that was created as a result of your participation in this event (for example, you might link to a new tool that you and your co-participants worked on at the Hackathon, or to pages created in a workshop you participated in).

Attending Wikimania for the first time was inspiring. Not only inspiring but also motivating and motivated to let more people know about it. I have also felt humble seeing all those people that I met and all the work that is and has been done (and will be done) behind a laptop/PC screen that most of us see only the information they need. I became more aware of how other communities handle their projects, and this motivates me to become more active and efficient in my local community, and even in the global one. What exactly I’m referring to, I will describe here in the next rows.

• I participated in the Scan-a-thon_BAnQ_Archives event as part of WikiConference North America. I was pleased to spend the afternoon scanning negatives illustrating the living of Firts Nation of the Abitibi and Mauricie region between 1936 and 1952. (Fonds Louis-Rogers Fafleur). All this work made me released how important was such a scan-a-thon to digitized as soon as possible those negative films that were in danger by getting oxidized.

• Asaf Bartov's Wikidata for Complete Beginners helped me understand what Wikidata means. As I was quite a beginner, I got familiar with what “items”, “property” and “value” means, the lovely story from where “Q” stands for and what the meaning of some of the numbers after “Q” mean, like “Q1” = universe and “Q2”= earth.

• Attending Wikidata in your language I put in practice what I have learned about Wikidata. VIGNERON showed me a useful tool to find items that need translation (using of Transl-a-thon). At the end of the workshop I received a nice small diploma saying that I have helped with kindness to make Wikidata more accessible and powerful at the Wikidata transl-a-thon.

• I'm still in the process of selecting and editing photos from Canada to upload them online. While I was attending Wiki Conference North America I took photos and I uploaded some of my best shots online here. I will also join this year's Wiki Loves Monuments in Canada. I have to many photos to sort out, but I still have time till the end of the month (30th of September).

• Beside all of this...I did a little bit of volunteering, helping Antoine and Romaine in the 3 days conference. I was not volunteering all the time, as I was more interested in attending sessions, but I helped when it was needed and I was present if something came up.

Connections

Even though I was expecting to find somebody from Romania too, I was not disappointed to be the only one. Actually gave me the opportunity to meet new interesting people from around the world. (UK, Ukraine, Greece, Armenia, Lebanon, Italy, USA, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, and many more).

• I met MB-one interested in the same topic as me, Wiki Commons and actually I found out about a future wiki gathering where people will discuss this topic (details and place in planning).

• I have also met Trizek who was actually looking for Romanian people to take part in a new project to come in November Wiki_loves (French) Translations which I will definitely join in Bucharest (as a contributor).

• I had the opportunity to meet a very interesting and unique person, friend and country neighbor, Visem who was very interested in helping me around Wikipedia and Wikidata, so he introduced me to how to translate from one language to Romanian and how to create a new page for a new item Parcul din Turbiv. He also introduced me to Wikidata Game, which are awesome and I have been playing it since then.

Anything else

Although I am coming from a country that has not yet developed a very tighten community group, (or I’m not aware of it) I’m open to collaborate and to get involved in other communities and to contribute as much as I can, with my knowledge in architecture, languages, travel and photography.

I was pleased and honored to receive the WMF Scholarship and I am thankful for this opportunity and I will cherish it in my future contributions and involvements in Wikipedia projects. (Wiki Loves Monuments it’s still on the top list, this year and years to come).