Wikimedia Armenia/Reports/2018-02

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2018

February

Western Armenian ISO 639-3 code

Western Armenian Language has its own ISO code

The efforts of Wikimedia Armenia to get separate ISO 639-3 language code for Western Armenian were finally succeeded. SIL International, the ISO 639-3 Registration Authority, decided to create the code element [hyw] for Western Armenian.

WMAM initiated this process three years ago when the collaboration with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation was established in order to foster and improve free content in Western Armenian. This resulted in "Western Armenian project" where Wikimedia Armenia through different events and activities started to disseminate and support the creation of Western Armenian content with the help of local and diaspora Western Armenian community members.

From the launch of the "Western Armenian project" we were challenged with the problem that Western Armenian has no ISO 639-3 language code which did not allow the community to split Western Armenian content into a separate language Wikipedia. This problem made lots of trouble for us, as hy.wiki often had two versions of the same page.

Wikimedia Armenia with Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation eventually decided to apply for code split.

This was done mainly with the help of Michael Everson. Besides WMAM and Armenian Communities Department of Calouste Gulbenkian foundation, there were also other parties involved, such as the department of Armenian Studies of the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris and other academic institutions. The ISO code confers, moreover, international recognition to Western Armenian as a distinct language branch which is important to advocate for online services and programmes provided by corporations in the field of information technologies.

“We are so pleased to see our collaboration with Wikimedia Armenia bear such an important result,” said Razmik Panossian, the Director of the Armenian Communities department at the Foundation. “We worked on the submission process together, and received invaluable support from international experts and prominent intellectuals, resulting in a very strong application.” The effective date for the use of the new code is 23 January 2018.

References

Winter Wikicamp 2018

I create a vital article campaign (Winter Wikicamp 2018)

“I create a vital article” campaign was launched in December, where editors and interested people were invited to edit one of the most important articles every Wikipedia should have. This campaign was planned to include various events aimed at the editing process and promotion of the 1000 vital articles. As a part of the efforts to improve the 1000 vital articles on the Armenian Wikipedia, the originally planned youth winter camp of 2018, was decided to dedicate to the “I create a vital article” campaign. Wikimedia Armenia with the collaboration of “ARMACAD” organization announced the launch of the WikiCamp via different social media. The announcement attracted over 207 specialists of different backgrounds out of which the selection committee chose 53 participants. All the confirmed participants were sent the list of the “1000 vital articles” and were asked to choose the article on which they were going to work during the camp.

The Winter WikiCamp took place in Aghveran on February 2-8, 2018. The camp was enriched with discussions, role play games, cultural events, and group works. The camp was highly interactive and participatory to enhance learning, strengthen the language and editing skills of the Wikicampers.

The wiki-workshop was opened with a presentation on the Wikimedia Movement, Wikipedia and “I create a vital article” campaign. Wikimedia Armenia staff and volunteers then carried out editing sessions in groups, introducing the ground rules and editing tools to the participants.

The groups then went on to the translation and editing of their previously chosen articles, beginning with the article summaries. The process of the workshop was assisted by Wikiteam which comprised of experienced wikieditors who made the workshops interesting, interactive, educative, and participatory. The Wikicamp agenda was developed through a month long process, involving Wikimedia staff, campers, and volunteers. Sessions were designed to be as inclusive and interactive as possible, reflecting a two-way learning process between a specialist and experienced Wikipedia editor.

As a result, 27 vital articles were completed, the other 18 articles were partially improved. Those who were not able to complete the article at the camp were recommended on the next steps of the editing process after the Wikicamp. Wikimedia Armenia Communication and Social Media coordinator then follows up with them on their progress. An evaluation was done at the end of the camp on the participants' opinion of the camp agenda, editing process, and logistics. WMAM changed the location of the following edit-a-thon based on the evaluation summary.

Among the applicants who were not selected for this camp, there were many shortlisted as the selecting committee had given high points to their applications. These 34 applicants were invited to a four day edit-a-thon where they began working on 27 articles, out of which 5 were completed at the end of the camp.

	Winter WikiCamp I	Winter Edit-a-thon
Participants	53	34
Edits	1496	311
Bytes (positive and negative sum)	3,325,478	689,683
Articles created	15	16
Articles improved	27	5

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  Winter WikiCamp group photo
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  Edit-a-thon group photo

Collaboration with the Central Bank of RA

The Central Bank of Armenia and Wikimedia Armenia have jointly organized a contest on creating Wikipedia articles on financial topics. Parties decided on the list of topics which are priority for Central Bank, in terms of financial education of consumers, and Wikimedia Armenia, in terms of those topics being in the list of vital articles. Contest will consist of two stages. In the first stage interested people will submit their plans of articles, from which the financial jury will select the best candidates. Selected participants will attend wiki editing workshop by Wikimedia Armenia in April and will start writing their articles. The contest will be summarized in May and authors of the best articles will receive prizes from the Central Bank of Armenia.

Media links

• Wikipedia contest with 4 financial themes

WikiClub in Yeghvard N1 school

Twice a year Wikimedia Armenia organizes wiki seminars for the teachers of different regions of Armenia. The aim of such seminars is the promotion of wikiprojects among teachers who would later use them as education tools in their curriculum. In January one of the active Wikipedian teachers - Anahit Vardanyan, offered the school principal to open a WikiClub for the students. After a productive discussion and support of Wikimedia Armenia the WikiClub began to function at Yeghvard N1 high school since February 2. The students are working on Armenian Wikipedia creating various articles about Armenian culture.

Restructuring of WMAM Facebook pages

In order to coordinate the Facebook pages of Wikimedia Armenia and Armenian Wikipedia more efficiently, the Wikimedia staff has decided to merge most of the pages, thus decreasing the number of pages with almost the same content from 9 to 4. As a result the “Wikimedia Armenia” facebook page which included mainly posts in English and was created for the foreign audience merged to the “Վիքիմեդիա Հայաստան” (Wikimedia Armenia in Armenian) page which resulted in a universal “Վիքիմեդիա Հայաստան / Wikimedia Armenia”. Taking into account the fact, that Wikimedia Armenia is engaged in the popularization of Wiktionary, Wikisourse, Wikipedia Education Program and GLAM projects, the Communication and Social Media Coordinator moved the content of this pages to the “Վիքիմեդիա Հայաստան / Wikimedia Armenia” page and closed those pages on January 1, 2018․ Publication of all Wikimedia Armenia information in one page increased the visibility of the organization and enhanced the understanding of our followers on our work.

Moreover, changes were made in the “Western Armenian Wikipedia” page: the “Wikicamp in Western Armenian (Ուիքի Ճամբար)” page was renamed to “Western Armenian Wikipedia and Wikicamp (Արևմտահայերէն Ուիքիփետիա և Ուիքի ճամբար)” thus broadening the coverage of the page.

As a result Wikimedia Armenia manages these Facebook pages:

• Վիքիմեդիա Հայաստան / Wikimedia Armenia, official Facebook page of Wikimedia Armenia,
• WikiCamp - Վիքիճամբար, includes posts and photos of different WikiCamps,
• Արեւմտահայերէն Ուիքիփետրա և Ուիքի Ճամբար, posts related to Western Armenian project and Wikipedia are published, as well as photos and posts of Western Armenian WikiCamps,
• Հայերեն Վիքիպեդիա - verified page, where Wikipedia-related interesting facts, articles, data information are published.

The changes positively affected the number of likes and comments of posts, every day Wikimedia Armenia's posts are viewed at least 10,000 times, over 2000 last month, by the end of January this number has increased by 4,000.

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  Statistics of unique viewers, December 1-31, 2017
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  Statistics of unique viewers, January 1-31, 2018

Workshop for Mrgavan school

On February 20, a thematic workshop was held at the Wikimedia Armenia office for the Mrgavan Wikiclub members. During the workshop the participants learnt how to proofread Wikisource and almost completely proofread one of the works of Vrtanes Papazian.

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Collaboration with YMCA & KASA

On February 21, WMAM Western Armenian project coordinator Azniv Stepanian met Sosi Blgian from YMCA initiative group of Syrian Armenian youth who have moved to Armenia escaping from the war in Syria and now work with Syrian refugees in Armenia. Sosi is also a volunteer at the KASA Swiss Humanitarian Foundation. At the meeting parties discussed the possibility of establishing a WikiClub for local Western Armenians (located in WMAM premises), where they would meet and edit in Western Armenian. The group will meet periodically improving their editing skills.

Newsletter submissions

In February Wikimedia Armenia has submitted articles to 2 Newsletters: CEE Newsletter and WMF Education Newsletter. In CEE Newsletter Wikimedia Armenia has represented its activities (Winter Wikicamp 2018, ISO 639-3 code obtained for the Western Armenian Language, WikiClub in Yeghvard N1 school) which can be of interest to the CEE community. In WMF Education Newsletter Wikimedia Armenia has represented the story of Karvachar's WikiClub.

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	19	2.314%	0	0.000%	56/47	291621	15348.5
Gyumri WikiClub*	121976	4	0.003%	0	0.000%	17/16	422729	105682.3
Ddmashen WikiClub	2806	27	0.962%	2	0.071%	31/20	1019367	37754.3
Lernapat WikiClub	1661	34	2.047%	2	0.120%	115/108	2913730	85697.9
Mrgavan WikiClub	1606	23	1.432%	2	0.125%	30/23	349205	15182.8
Charentsavan WikiClub*	20363	2	0.010%	0	0.000%	18/3	93563	46781.5
Stepanakert WikiClub*	55309	18	0.033%	10	0.018%	131/49	232288	12904.9
Vanashen WikiClub	2364	18	0.761%	0	0.000%	33/10	512892	28494.0
Togh WikiClub	700	12	1.714%	2	0.286%	38/25	400568	33380.7
Karvachar WikiClub	500	21	4.200%	3	0.600%	41/26	652656	31078.9
NET sum	208106	178	0.086%	21	0.010%		6888619	68391.5
General statistics of the Education program (7)		290					12173694
How many % of the Education program participants are comprised from Wikiclubbers		61.38%					56.59%

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.

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. Currently WMAM is discussing the ways to diversify the work being done during these workshops, to engage more people and to have better impact on improving the quality of articles in Armenian Wikipedia.

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  February 10, 2018
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  February 17, 2018
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  February 24, 2018

This month in numbers

1	892	597	74	53
articles recorded for the Spoken Wikipedia project	pages digitized for the Digitization project	words pronounced for the Wiktionary project	vital articles improved for the I create a vital article campaign	new editors involved in all projects