Wikimedia Armenia/Reports/2017-12

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2017
December

“I create a significant article” campaign

Wikimedia Armenia has launched the “I create a significant article” campaign on November 28th, 2017. The campaign started with a 2 day introductory workshop in Aghveran.

All the interested participants had one week to register to participate in the event. The announcement of the campaign was publicized using various media channels: WMAM official website, Facebook, Armenpress and Armacad. The latter became the information supporter of the initiative.

Wikimedia Armenia has received 196 applications out of which 80 applicants have been selected to participate in this campaign. Fifty seven applicants have managed to attend the workshop physically and the other ten have participated online. Fifteen participants were experienced Wikipedians who formed various groups and taught the newcomers all the editing techniques. Wikimedia Armenia staff has contacted all participants in advance regarding the articles to be edited based on their individual professional background. This made the process much easier to manage as workshop participants came with their selected articles and started working on them without delay.

As of the end of December 73 articles were assigned to be improved. So far 7 articles are completed.

	Wiki Loves Science (December 8 - October 10)
	Number of participants	Wikipedia
participants	50
created/improved articles/entries		30
edits		842
bytes (net sum)		1,045,814

Media links

Armenian-Austrian collaboration

Wikimedia Armenia in collaboration with Wikimedia Austria has launched an article writing contest on Armenian and German Wikipedia from 1-30th of November. The aim of this contest was to create and improve articles about Armenia and Austria on both Wikipedias. Wikimedia Armenia modified the criteria of the articles thus guaranteeing better quality. The editors were informed that only those articles which had at least 8000 bytes size and 5 references would be given points.

Wikimedia Armenia and Wikimedia Austria have finalized the results of the contest and announced the winners. In Armenian Wikipedia we had 19 participants who have created 270 articles and improved 2. In German Wikipedia the contest had 7 participants who created 49 articles and improved 2. From the Armenian side the winner was user:Gardmanahay who alone has created around 150 high quality articles. User:Matthias Süßen who participated in Wikimedia Austria contest has been announced as the winner. The winners will be given a wonderful chance to travel to the country they created an article about!

Wikimedia Armenia has organized several contests like this in the past. These initiatives help to foster relationships between different Wikimedia chapters and to create diverse quality content.

Meeting in Cairo, Egypt

Azniv Stepanian, Wikimedia Armenia Western Armenia Program Coordinator has attended the WikiArabia/2017 conference during which she had an opportunity to talk about the Western Armenian Wikicamps organized in different countries (Lebanon, Portugal, France). She particularly stressed the importance of Wikicamps and their role in bringing ethnic and religious minorities together in terms of language preservation by the Diaspora communities from all over the world. It is important to note that this is the first time that WikiArabia conference had a guest speaker from Armenia!

It was a wonderful opportunity to also present Wikimedia Armenia programs to the Armenian community in Cairo since there was little or no awareness about the actual projects implemented by Wikimedia Armenia. After the presentation the participants discussed the opportunities to be engaged in Wikimedia Armenia projects, particulary the Western Armenian program.

At WikiArabiaConf
At WikiArabiaConf
At WikiArabiaConf
Presentation for the Armenian community of Cairo
Presentation for the Armenian community of Cairo

For more photos of the conference see Wikimedia Commons category.

Wikipedia learning lab at TUMO Stepanakert

On October TUMO center in Stepanakert has proposed to the Stepanakert WikiClub Coordinator Irina Safaryan to manage to run a Wikipedia learning lab for 10 TUMO students. It was decided that the students will write 10 articles about Askeran Region’s 10 villages in 10 days!

Before the launch of Wikipedia learning lab at TUMO Stepanakert Irina started conducting her research to find more information about the above mentioned villages. She met with historians and linguists and had discussions on many topics concerning those villages. As a result she collected lots of books and materials which helped the students to write the Wikipedia articles. The students also drove through all 10 villages to gather photos which they used to illustrate the articles.

During the workshops students have learned Wikipedia editing tools, uploading media files to Wikimedia Commons, analyze facts, improve Armenian typing skills, and how to prepare a complete and final report on all the work done during the 10 days.

In the end the students who created 10 articles about 10 villages of Askeran Region in Armenian Wikipedia, became Stepanakert WikiClub members.

Meeting in Aleppo, Syria

Azniv Stepanian, Wikimedia Armenia Western Armenian Program Coordinator had a meeting in Aleppo with Vahe Ghazarian and Hakob Kilejian, Principals of Kare Jeppe Armenian College (Syria), on November 29th, 2017. During the meeting a discussion was held on Wikimedia Armenia, its vision, purpose and projects, Wikipedia, role of volunteers (what they gain from volunteering for Wikimedia), Wikiediting, etc.

As a result of this discussion on December 1st, 2017, Kare Jeppe Armenian College invited Azniv to introduce Western Armenian programs to 10 and 11 grade students and to share her working knowledge and experience. The participants had an interesting talk on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Armenia projects, Western Armenian clubs and Wikicamps. College teachers, moderators and administrative assistants have also attended the meetup. After the meetup the participants expressed a great interest in joining the organization's programs.

Overall this was a very exciting and informative event which laid foundation for further collaboration and cooperation between Kare Jeppe Armenian College and the Wikimedia Armenia.

Workshops

Workshop at the American University of Armenia (AUA)

Mher Bekaryan, Wikimedia Armenia staff member, conducted a workshop in the Engineering Faculty of the American University of Armenia (AUA) (College of Science and Engineering, Introductory Level General Education Course, AUA) on December 6th, 2017. The students are working on creation of articles in English Wikipedia focusing on Energy Sources and Distribution in Armenia. He particularly stressed the importance of editing and creation of new articles in Wikipedia; uploading their own photographs in Wikimedia Commons as well as using photos from the open source; working correctly with articles without violating the Intellectual Property and Copyright Law.

The AUA students were also given a task of translating and editing these articles in Armenian Wikipedia.

Workshop for Yerevan State College of Informatics students

Wikimedia Armenia organized and hosted a workshop for the members of the media team of Yerevan State College of Informatics on December 21st, 2017.

This workshop was divided into two sessions:

Theoretical
Practical

During the first part the workshop moderators presented the Wikimedia Armenia as an organization and spoke about its mission, goals and objectives. The importance of the Wikimovement and the work of the Armenian Wikipedia was stressed.

The second session was dedicated to the editing in Wikipedia. The moderators have selected a medium size article titled “United States of Europe”, broke it down into individual sections and instructed students to translate various pieces. Those who left the article unfinished will carry on working on them at home.

Saturday Workshops

Every Saturday Wikimedia Armenia organizes open workshops edit-a-thons at the WM AM office where new editors are taught how to edit different wiki projects and the experienced editors participate in edit-a-thons dedicated to different themes. Anyone interested in wiki projects, Wikipedia, wiki editing and needing assistance, as well as wiki editors, who want to edit in pleasant atmosphere participate in these workshops. We have about 15-20 participants in each workshop. Among them there are also active wiki editors of hywiki, hywiktionary, hywikisource, Wikidata who help to conduct the workshops.

One of the workshops - the one on the 23rd of December was not only a usual workshop day but also the day when wikieditors gathered together to decorate Wikimedia Armenia office and Xmas tree. Some of the editors brought ornaments which were given to WMAM office as presents!

It was a fun event that allowed people to mix, bond and feel part of the Wiki family!

December 2
December 9
December 16
Decmber 23

WikiClubs statistics

	Community population (1)	Active users (2)	Active users index (3)	New users	New users index (4)	Female/male ratio	Bytes NET sum (5)	Bytes index (6)
Arevatsag WikiClub	821	28	3.410%	0	0.000%	56/47	571411	20407.5
Gyumri WikiClub*	121976	4	0.003%	6	0.005%	17/16	410740	102685.0
Ddmashen WikiClub	2806	28	0.998%	5	0.178%	26/15	2839710	101418.2
Lernapat WikiClub	1661	36	2.167%	3	0.181%	112/103	3836530	106570.3
Mrgavan WikiClub	1606	17	1.059%	0	0.000%	28/17	412334	24254.9
Charentsavan WikiClub*	20363	18	0.088%	3	0.015%	18/3	772478	42915.4
Stepanakert WikiClub*	55309	23	0.042%	15	0.027%	117/44	796564	34633.2
Vanashen WikiClub	2364	21	0.888%	3	0.127%	32/10	660237	31439.9
Togh WikiClub	700	23	3.286%	0	0.000%	33/18	588324	25579.3
Karvachar WikiClub	500	41	8.200%	9	1.800%	35/19	1226881	29923.9
NET sum	208106	239	20.142%	44	2.332%		12115209	519827.7

General statistics of the Education program (7)		278					14476479
How many % of the Education program participants are comprised from Wikiclubbers		85.97%					83.69%

1 - Permanent population according to the population census (RA - 2011, NKR -2015)։
2 - Users who has done 1 edit during the month.
3 - Active users/population ratio expressed in %.
4 - New users/population ratio expressed in %.
5 - NET sum bytes added in Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikisource.
6 - NET sum bytes/active users ratio.
7 - Includes also Education program other users.
* - WikiClub established in a city.

CEE and Education Newletters

Wikimedia Armenia represented the work done in December in 2 international newsletters: CEE Newletter run by CEE wikicommunity and Wikimedia Foundation Education Newsletter.

WMAM welcomes L.Tolstoy School 128 students

On 27 December 5th grade students from L.Tolstoy School 128 had an exciting opportunity to visit Wikimedia Armenia office. Susanna Mkrtchyan, the President of Wikimedia Armenia, welcomed almost forty children and spoke with them about Wikipedia and the work of Wikimedia Armenia. They also watched a short inspiring film on Wikicamps.

Digitization and Spoken Wikipedia


4	2462
articles recorded for the Spoken Wikipedia project	pages digitized for the Digization project