Wikimedia CH/Micro-Grant/Travel expenses for OSCAL 2019

Please provide the following information for your micro-grant request:

Your Username: Albinfo

Your Country of residence: Switzerland

Amount requested: CHF 350

Planned activity: My proposal for a topic at OSCAL 2019 (Open Source Conference Albania) in May was accepted. I will held a presentation about organizing and categorizing content in Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects (e.g. Commons).
The grant will cover a good part of the travel expenses while I can bear the rest.

People involved: me, Albanian Wikipedia community, 400+ participants of the conference.
OSCAL is the biggest conference for Open Source and Open Knowledge in Albania and neighbouring countries. It is a good chance, to raise some awareness for Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects outside the community.

Please explain what influence your activity will have on Wikimedia Projects:

Sharing knowledge: While collaborating now for several years with the Albanian community, I noticed that hardly any local editor knows how to properly categorize articles or images. The presentation can help to raise awareness for this topic within the community and to improve quality in several Wikimedia projects. In addition, the new project of adding structured data to Wikimedia Commons might need some explanation. Structured data and categorizing were subjects of presentations at German WikiCons 2017 and 2018 and Wikimedia Conference 2018 – this is really an important topic.
Engaging new editors: The Albanian Wikipedia is still under development. Structures of an organized chapter are missing – but thanks to efforts of some engaged volunteers, the Albanian version is doing good progress. The Albanian Wikipedia can profit of any support that helps continuing this positive trend. With this topic, I also try to show alternatives for contributing to Wikimedia and free knowledge: Not everybody loves to write articles. But they might be interested in uploading images or organizing content. The big audience at OSCAL is a good opportunity to reach out to new people.
Foster collaboration: In 2015 and 2016, I already participated at events of the local Wikipedia community. We established good contacts for the benefit of both sides: They help me with image requests and information for my articles about Albania, I help them with new ideas, some background knowledge and 15 years of experience in editing. I was invited as jury member for WLM and WLE contests and I am part of the discussion groups of the most active editors. The conference will be a good occassion to tighten the contacts and create new ones.
Contribution to Commons: As always when travelling to Albania, I plan to bring back many pictures. After my last trip supported with a micro-grant in 2017, I added 119 new images to Commons, the year before more then 100 new images. Many of them helped to illustrate articles that didn't have an image before.

--Albinfo (talk) 11:12, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please provide links to your contributions after your project or activity ended:
Please provide the links to the categories on Wikimedia Commons, to the articles on Wikipedia or any other contributions on Wikimedia projects:

→ File:OSCAL 2019 Wikipedia Categories – Presentation Albinfo.pdf

→ 160 images uploaded to commons

→ short report on my German user page de:Benutzer:Albinfo

Sorry for the late summary, but the recent Wikipedia meeting in Liechtenstein needed also a lot of time. I noticed, that also in the German community, many experienced editors don't know much about the categories especially on Commons.

In Albania, I held my presentation at the conference for a small, but interested audience (see link to the presentation above). During the conference, I had many conversations with Albanian Wikipedians and interested people from the Open Source community. There were also other people presenting free knowledge projects – some used Wikimedia Commons as image data base. We had some talks about how to use Wikimedia ressources and possibilities of collaboration, helped each other with sharing information. I hope that this collaboration will continue, too.

Preparing the presentation, I had to learn about structured data on Commons – a new topic, unfortunately only badly documented. Like that, I learned a lot about this new Wikimeda project.

I used the time in Albania to took many new pictures. Roughly 160 images werde uploaded to Commons and many were used to illustrate articles in German Wikipedia, English Wikipedia, Albanian Wikipedia, other languages and also Wikidata items with a first or a better/more actual image. For example, I travelled to de:Adriatik (Divjaka) and en:Gërdec, where no Wikipedian went before. On the way, I took pictures of two churches (histrocial monuments) that weren't documented on Commons yet – unfortunately too late to participate in Wiki Loves Monuments, but I contributed with three pictures in Wiki Loves Earth. In addition, I created several new categories in Commons like c:Category:Shën Thanasit, Karavasta and did a lot of clean-up there. Some images will be used for future articles.

On my way home, I met a Swiss Wikipedian and an Albanian Wikipedian in Kosovo.

--Albinfo (talk) 16:15, 23 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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Lantus (talk) 21:00, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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