Wikimedia Community User Group Turkey/Reports/2022
Summary
2022 was the year of wiki-birthday celebrations for the wikimedians in Turkey. After celebrating birthday of Wikipedia in January, in October, we celebrated the 10th birthday of Wikidata in Istanbul with our guests from Turkic countries. And in December we celebrated the 20th birthday of Turkish Wikipedia.
There is no doubt that 3-days Wikidata event in Istanbul we organized in collaboration with Wikimedians of Turkic Languages User Group was the most exciting event of the year as it was the first time our user group hosted an international Wikimedia event. However, the agenda of local wikimedians was full of other events as well. There were 11 edit-a-thons organized in collaboration with civil society organizations working on fields such as refugee rights, right to health, or LGBTIQ+ rights. We had first WikiGap event of Turkey organized in Istanbul; and then had another WikiGap event in Ankara. We made one online and one face-to-face event for Art&Feminism. We had 22 online meetups and as usual we had events at Turkish universities both in Turkey and this year for the first time in Northern Cyprus as well.
We always dream that after our visits to universities, further Wikimedia activities will be initiated in the leadership of the students. That dream came true with the establishment of the first Wikipedia Student Club in Turkey at Usküdar University, Istanbul at the end of the year. Please find the details of all those activities below. Happy reading!
Birthday Celebrations for wiki projects
[edit]2022 was the year of wiki birthday celebrations in Turkey! Our user group organized three birthday parties: We celebrated 21st birthday of Wikipedia in January with the students of İstanbul Bilgi University. When we celebrated 10th birthday of Wikidata, we were together with Wikimedians from Turkich world for 3-day Wikidata Conference at Üsküdar University, Istanbul. And we proudly celebrated the 20th Birthday of Turkish Wikipedia in December 2022 again at İstanbul Bilgi University.
In our community we don't have tradition of celebrating those anniversaries; the wiki-birthday parties is very new to the community members and therefore bring excitement. We believe such celebrations bring the community members together; provides an opportunity to take the attention of potential contributors of wiki projects and a good reason to eat cake for all of us!
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Wikidata Trainings For Turkic Wikimedians 2022
[edit]There is no doubt that in 2022 the most important event for our user group was organizing an international event for the first time in the history of the group. We organized Wikidata Trainings For Turkic Wikimedians 2022 in collaboration with Wikimedians of Turkic Languages User Group in Istanbul. It was a 3-day event in October. The event was attended by 35 participants from Turkic countries, in addition to participants from the local community. We had five invited speakers from WMF and Wikimedia DE, 5 speakers from the local community and 4 speakers from the international participants.
We learned very many things during those 3 days and during the organization process. For many international participants it was the first Wikimedia event they have ever attended. Therefore we felt the responsibility of sharing the Wikimedia culture with the newcomers of the global Wikimedia events and ensuring a welcoming environment. The famous Turkish hospitality we learned since childhood helped us a lot!
After the event, we are glad that the participants are still active in the telegram channel and keep chatting about Wikidata related topics there, a small group of Turkish contributors meet from time to time to work on Turkish lexemes. This event also provided a good opportunity for bringing some editors in Istanbul who had never come to user group events and helped building positive relations.
Another impact of the event was that inspired by the Wikimedians meeting in their campus, the students of Üsküdar University, the host of the event formed a Wikipedia Club in only one month after the event. We thank all participants for being a source of inspiration!
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Preperation for the Wikidata Istanbul -
Group photo -
Logo of Wikidata İstanbul -
Day 2 -
Wikdiata 10th birthday messages from Turkic wikimedians
WLE 2022
[edit]This year's one of the greatest developments which made our members very happy came from the International Wiki Loves Earth Competition 2022. Wiki Loves Earth local photo competition was organized in Turkey for the third time this year. The local competition was very similar to the previous year: 2443 photos were uploaded by 444 uploaders and just like the previous year, Turkey was the 6th country in terms of the number of images uploaded. 89% of those contributors were registered after the competition started.[1]
What made the community so happy about this contest was that among 15 winners of WLE Turkey, 6 photos entered the first-20 photos of international WLE. This proved that how the local competition was successful in bringing good quality photos of wonderful natural beauties of our country to Wikimedia projects. Please find the story of photos here>>
Art&Feminism events
[edit]In 2022, we organized an Art&Feminism event in collaboration with a recently founded women oriented film festival association in a small town in western Anatolia: Akhisar Cinema Association. Akhisar Cinema Association tries to reach local female audiences who have limited access to cinema through Akhisar Women Film Days. As a part of the 1st Akhisar Women Film Days, a digital literacy workshop for women was organized and we made an online Art&Feminism event with the participants of this workshop.
The second Art&Feminisim event was held in Istanbul. Film lovers in Istanbul came together in the recently opened Cinematheque and using the books available in the Cinema Library and with the help of the librarians edited articles about women filmmakers.
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Art & Feminism at Akhisar Film Days -
Art & Feminism in Istanbul -
Akhisar Fim Days Art&Feminism Poster
CEE Spring
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We organized the local competition for Vikibahar 2022 Wikimedia CEE Spring between March 21 - May 31. As a result of this contest, 952 new articles were produced[2] by 17 participants.
Partnerships with sport clubs
[edit]Our group made partnership talks with sports clubs to have digital donations from them. Those are the sport clubs and events that shared their images with open licences as a result of the talks made this year:Kocaelispor, Bahçeşehir Sport Club, 5. Islamic Solidarity Games, Fenerbahçe Basketball Media Day, Beşiktaş Basketball Media Day
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Photo from 5. Islamic Solidarity Games -
Photo from Bahçeşehir Sport Club -
Photo from Kocaelispor -
Photo from Beşiktaş basketball team -
Photo from Fenerbahçe Basketball team
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Wiki trainings for museologists
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In 2022 we started a joint work with museologists to update and expand knowledge about Turkish museums at Wikimedia projects. We meet with a group of Turkish museolgists at meetings of Association of Museologists and British Institute at Ankara to expand knowledge on editing wikipedia and wikidata. We work on adding complete list of Turkish museums to wikidata.
Wikipedia training for elderly women
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In February, we experimented with Wikipedia training with an unsual group: The elderly women. For this we have partnered with Senex, an aging studies association based in Antalya. Senex organizes digital competency training for elderly women in collaboration with the local administration in Muratpaşa, Antalya.
We joined a lesson online and discussed Wikipedia from two perspectives: reader and contributor perspective. We focused on how contributing the information accessible on the net is a part of digital competencies as consuming the information critically. This experience was a step for reaching more diverse audiences with our activities.
Education Program
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- 2021-2022 Fall term
As always, the main work of our user group was centered around Education Program activities where experienced editors of Wikimedia projects visit university courses or university club events to help students and instructors in understanding the functioning of Wikipedia better. In the fall term; beginning from January 2021, 12 more activities were held at 9 universities in 5 cities (Bursa, Çanakkale, Erzurum, İstanbul, İzmir). The largest education activity was the one at Kadir Has University. This year we made a protocol with the university and 195 students from different departments taking the compulsory Civic Responsibility Project course were introduced to Wikimedia projects in their first year in the university. We presented not only Wikipedia but also Wikiquote, Commons Wikimedia and students were asked to develop a social responsibility project based on Wikimedia. We are happy with the results and would like to continue such projects in future. Please find more about this work here.
- 2022-2023 Spring term
In the spring term we made 9 education activities in 4 universities and additionally we had presentations for students in two high-school and a secondary school; 2 presentations for the teachers in another high school.
One of the largest event was meeting with 295 students of Abdullah Gül University online in their compulsory course about sustainability (AGU 300). After the online course, two wikimedians visited the city of Kayseri to meet with students face-to-face, made presentations and workshops staying in the beautiful AGU campus for 3 days.
Another important development this year was a visit by Wikimedians from Turkey to North Cyprus to give presentations about Wikimedia projects in three different Turkish universities. Wikimedians were invited by the Engineering Faculties of two universities and they were invited by student clubs to the third one. We saw that Northern Cyprus universities are heavily populated by foreign students mostly from African countries; therefore we made the presentations in English and we were hopeful that our visit to North Cyprus universities might bring new contributors for the projects in the native languages of participants.
List of activities
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Edit-a-thons
[edit]In 2022 we had 11 edit-a-thons organized with partners from civil-society and in total we have reached to 270 participants' with those activities. Those edit-a-thons mostly concentrate on editing Turkish articles about a particular rights (Refugee rights, LGBTIQ+ rights, right to health...) and we collaborate with partners who work on that field. The events we would like to highlight are the two WikiGap events (one with Consulate General of Sweden in Istanbul and other with Embassy of Sweden in Ankara) and "Young People Edit Wikipedia" workshop organized in Istanbul with 70 students from different universities.
The first WikiGap 2022 was organized in March in Istanbul. That was the first WikiGap event in Turkey. 35 people from different civil society organisations were invited by the consulate and the 5-hour event including a pizza party did not only produced new wikipedia articles but also created great opportunity to talk and know each other and discuss about issues related to women's visibility. Upon the success of the WikiGap event in Istanbul, the Embassy invited us to organize a WikiGap even in Ankara in October. The event in Ankara let us to meet even more civil society organisations from different regions of the country.
Young People Edit Wikipedia' was a part of a series of activities for young people each organized by a different organisation with the financial support of a Turkish bank. The participants were supposed to learn something new and then do a volunteer work upon what they have learned. In our event on October 15th, there were 70 students who had no idea about they could edit Wikipedia and they were very excited to what they have learned. Please find the report about the pre-event and post-event survey here (in Turkish) And here is how two participants summarized their feelings when they were interviewed for the video:
| “ | I've learned so many new things here today. I didn't know how should i use Wikipedia, how can i edit, what can i contribute here. I just knew searching for information as i study. Today i've learned how to add references, what are relevant references...therefore i am happy. | ” |
| “ | We are not coming this world for only consuming things; we come to the world to produce things and be useful for other humans and species. It (Wikipedia)'s a volunteer project that allows us to do so. Having something to give back the society makes me feel valuable as a young person. | ” |
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WikiGap Ankara 2022 -
Wiki Loves Europride in Istanbul -
Report of Young People Edit Wikipedia Project -
Refugee Rights Edit-a-thon, online. -
Sustainability Edit-a-thon, Konya -
Historians and archeologists edit-a-thon -
The psychology of climate change edit-a-thon
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List of activities
[edit]- Wikigap İstanbul 2022, Istanbul.
- Women Movie Directors Edit-a-thon, online.
- Self-confidence edit-a-thon with Teachers' Network, online.
- Refugee Day Edit-a-thon, online.
- Europride 2022 Edit-a-thon, İstanbul.
- Youth and Sustainablity edit-a-thon, Konya.
- Wikigap Ankara 2022, Ankara.
- Young People Edit Wikipedia, İstanbul.
- Historians and Archeologists Edit-a-tohon, İstanbul
- Community related topics edit-a-thon, online.
- The Pscyhology of Climate Change Edit-a-thon, online.
Community meetups
[edit]During the year, the group had 22 meet-ups. The meetings held bimonthly at Tuesdays nights were called "VikiSalı" (WikiTuesday). Meeting notes of each meeting is available here (in Turkish).
List of activities
[edit]| January | 04 | - | 18 | - | - |
| February | 01 | - | - | 22 | - |
| March | - | - | 15 | - | 29 |
| April | - | - | - | 26 | - |
| May | - | 11 | - | 24 | - |
| June | - | 07 | - | 21 | - |
| July | 05 | - | 19 | - | - |
| August | 02 | - | 16 | - | - |
| September | - | 13 | - | 27 | - |
| October | - | 10 | - | - | - |
| November | - | 08 | - | 22 | - |
| December | 06 | - | 20 | - | - |