Wikimedia Armenia/Reports/2021-05

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2021

May

Presence of Museums in Wiki Projects

In line with the theme of International Museum Day 2021, following the initiative of the International Council of Museums Switzerland and Wikimedia Foundation, joined by other European countries, the ICOM National Committee of Armenian Museums in partnership with Wikimedia Armenia Scientific and Educational NGO initiated an editing competition on the topic of “Presence of Museums in Wiki Projects” and a training course on Wikipedia.

The competition was held on May 3-18; the museum staff wrote articles about their museums, museum persons, and exhibits, and the other participants translated articles from the presented lists.

Forty-one participants took part in the competition. Four online training courses explaining the details of wiki editing were held for about 20 new participants. During the 15 days of the competition, 283 articles were edited with a total volume of 2,526,245 bytes.

The results will be summarized two weeks after the end of the competition. The participants will receive certificates, and the top five editors will receive rewards from the ICOM National Committee of Armenian Museums.

Wikipedia Training Courses

This month Wikimedia Armenia has collaborated with The Central Bank of Armenian and the Internet Society of Armenia organisation for long-term programs in future. Within the framework of these collaborations two programs - “WikiCampaign on Armenian Topics” and “WikiMonth on Financial-Economic Topics” have started since 1st of June.

Newbies have also applied for participation in these projects. They are employees of different fields, students, school students, representatives of the financial and economic sphere.

Short-term Wikipedia courses were organized for new participants in May, due to which the participants got acquainted with the Wikimedia Movement, learned to edit and got prepared for the competitions.

WikiCampaign on Armenian Topics

The courses within the framework of the Wiki.Arm project started on May 16 and lasted until May 31. Out of about 163 participants who applied for the project, the 101 were newbies.

The participants were divided into groups according to the days and hours they chose as convenient for them. In total there were 6 groups and each group had one trainer. The groups worked with their trainers 2-3 times a week. The online meetings lasted about 2 hours. During the first two meetings the participants learned about the Wikimedia Movement, created their user accounts, and did their first steps in the sandboxes. Then they learned to put sources themselves, signing in the participants page of the edit-a-thon, choosing articles from the lists. ect.

Separate article lists were created for the training, and the articles created during the training were not counted as a part of the competition. At the start of the project on June 1 the active newcomers of each group were already ready for the competition along with experienced participants.

The project ends on August 31.

WikiMonth on Financial-Economic Topics

The courses within the framework of the “WikiMonth on Financial-Economic topics” project started on May 20 and lasted until May 31.

Out of about 96 participants who applied for the project, the 72 were newbies.The participants were divided into groups according to the days and hours they chose as convenient for them. In total again there were 6 groups and each group had one trainer.

The groups worked with their trainers 2-3 times a week. The meetings which were organized online using the Zoom platform lasted about 2 hours. During the first two meetings the participants learned about the Wikimedia Movement, created their user accounts, and did their first steps in the sandboxes. Then they chose articles from the lists and started to create and improve articles. At the start of the project on June 1 the active participants/newcomers of each group were already ready for the competition along with experienced participants.

The project ends on June 30.

CEE Spring 2021

This year 41 Wikipedians from Armenia participated in the CEE Spring, an annual article writing contest, which took place from March 21 to May 31. Choosing from the articles offered by other countries and also based on their preferences, the participants wrote articles on 20 topics and 39 countries. Overall, 386 articles were written by Armenian Wikipedians during the contest.

One of the Armenian participants wrote more than 94 articles and one other wrote more than 76 articles. Armenian Wikipedians also wrote articles about women: 64 such articles were created. The most articles on this topic were written by one participant - 11 articles.

The largest article was 338,236 bytes, and the total size of all articles was 4,188,064 bytes.

"Wikipedia for Peace Online: Writing about SCI History" online Wikicamp

Service Civil International Switzerland, in partnership with Wikimedia Switzerland, launched the "Wikipedia for Peace: Writing about SCI History" online Wikicamp on April 1-7. This time the topic was the history of the SCI, its activities, and important people. Anna Bezhanyan from Wikimedia Armenia participated in the online camp and created overall 3 important articles. She shared her experience during the camp with us.

Anna Bezhanyan

The international online WikiCamp was organized in collaboration with Wikimedia Switzerland and focused on the topic of peace. The participants were presenting different age groups and different countries: Armenia, Russia, Germany, France, Malaysia, etc. During the camp we got acquainted with the International Civil Service, which is one of the non-governmental organizations of volunteer associations, we studied its history, activities, biographies of various persons and their contributions, and, of course, created or improved articles about them, enriching Wikipedia. I heard about this organization for the first time, it really does a lot of work for peace in the world.

All this was spiced with a variety of events, which was quite impressive and made the online camp incomparably more interesting than one might expect. During the camp we developed in many ways: we not only learned about peace work, but also got to know each other's culture, exchanged knowledge, organized thematic conversations in the evenings that we offered, and had thematic joint pictures every day. It turned out that some of the participants had been to Armenia several times, and one of them had come for the first time after the earthquake of 1988 to provide voluntary assistance. After learning that story, I was very moved, to hear about your country from a foreigner is a completely different feeling. For a long time after the camp, the impressions accompanied me. Now we are friends with many of the participants, we communicate often, we really want to meet in real life after the end of the pandemic.

Wikiclubs' report

During the month of May, the Wikiclubs continued to actively get involved in different wiki platforms and to participate in various wiki projects. The Wikiclubs actively carried out intra-club events.

Karvachar WikiClub continued to work on joint translations through meetings. On May 16, another art meeting "Meeting with Art" was organized. Elen, a member of the Wikiclub, presented the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci to her friends.

Hatsik Wikiclub has launched a new project, during which editors create articles related to their future professions.

Koghb Wikiclub members actively participated in the CEE Spring 2021 contest on Armenian Wikipedia.

Lernapat Wikiclub held a team competition on correctly translating words from Russian to Armenian on May 4, before which participants were given a list of 200 words they had learned. During the competition, the team members jointly edited an article. On May 9, an edit-a-thon dedicated to the Great Patriotic War began, which lasted until the end of the month. 11 participants took part in the edit-a-thon contest and created a total of 123 articles.

The Goris Wikiclub members contacted the students of the Goris school after Yuri Bakhshyan through a video call and introduced the participants to the wiki projects. The school students got the basic knowledge necessary to edit on Wikipedia.

Alaverdi Wikiclub continued to write articles about important days of the current month, in particular International Day for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (May 5) and International Midwives’ Day (May 5). Shahane, the person in charge of one of the May workshops, had prepared a very interesting meeting about chess. First, she talked about chess in a presentation, then she taught the basic rules of playing chess. And in the end, Erik, one of the club members, and she measured their skills in an intense chess game. The last day of the month was a book discussion day in the Wikiclub. This time the club members analyzed O'Henry's "The Last Leaf".

Wikiclubs had pretty good results during the month. This month 14 new participants have joined the Wikiclubs.

Wikiclubs' statistics

Wikiclubs	Participants	Community population	Bytes+ (Wikipedia)	Articles	Bytes+ (Wiktionary)	Bytes+ (Wikisource)	Created	Proofread	Confirmed
Alaverdi Wikiclub	40	13000	551858	46	0	0	0	0	0
Arevstsag Wikiclub	66	960	186026	31	5	0	0	0	0
Gyumri (Khrimyan Hayrik 46)	33	121976	43057	1	0	0	0	0	0
Goris Wikiclub	99	20300	647350	51	2	0	0	0	0
Ddmashen Wikiclub	25	2876	713182	22	0	63825	20	40	0
Lernapat Wikiclub	114	2279	1663492	205	0	37185	7	20	5
Kogh Wikiclub	58	5300	349938	36	0	77828	22	0	25
Hatsik Wikiclub	18	1044	610759	68	0	0	0	0	0
Stepanakert Wikiclub	34	55200	115063	14	0	0	0	0	0
Karvachar Wikiclub	25	500	530806	77	0	0	0	0	0
Archis Wikiclub	11	1109	61430	6	0	132	0	3	21
Gandzakar Wikiclub	6	3656	9100	1	0	0	0	0	0
Noyemberyan Wikiclub (high school)	16	5000	46726	5	0	0	0	0	0
Verin Karmiraghbyur Wikiclub	8	1837	748247	54	0	0	0	0	0
Kirants Wikiclub	12	298	87570	2	0	0	0	0	0
Mrgavan Wikiclub	61	1725	28253	1	0	0	0	0	0
Total	755	268329	6392857	620	7	178971	49	63	51