Wikimedia MKD/Reports/2024-10

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2024

October

Wiki club Veles new members training workshop

Wikimedia MKD continues with its mission to educate and engage young people through the innovative educational program. The main focus of the program is the young generation, in order to encourage their love for knowledge and the free encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

Through the Wiki clubs young editors are trained to create and improve articles in the Macedonian language, contributing to the enrichment of the digital library of free information. One of the prominent Wiki clubs is Wiki Club Veles, which has been active since 2020 under the leadership of coordinator Lili Arsova.

On October 2, 2024, the club received four new members, and there was organized training for the young editors. The training started by introducing students to the basics of Wikipedia, how it works, and how important volunteering is to the global encyclopedia. Coordinator Lili Arsova guided them through the process, providing them with detailed instructions on how to create user profiles and master the basic principles of editing. After the introductory part, the practical editing training followed, where new members had the opportunity to create and edit new articles themselves, with the support of the organizer.

The students showed great commitment and desire to contribute to the enrichment of Wikipedia content. With this training, the Veles Wiki Club has grown with new editors who will continue to contribute in the future.

Wiki Camp Struga 2024

WikiCamps proved to be very successful projects that were organized in the past and one of the organization's projects that result with significant amount of contributions to the Wikimedia Projects. Since the goal of Wikimedia MKD is through volunteering and cooperation to create free knowledge available for everyone, Wiki Camps are excellent events that facilitate achieving these goals.

The sixth Wiki Camp in organization of Wikimedia MKD took place in one of the most picturesque location on the shores of Ohrid Lake - Kalishta, Struga. Hotel Biser was the exact location where 40 participants spent three wonderful days productively and effectively. The camp started on 11 October and ended on 13 October 2024.

Organized for the Wiki Club members and active participants, the Wiki Camp offers excellent opportunity to learn new things, contribute Wikipedia, have fun and achieve awards. Like almost all camps in the past, this Wiki Camp was thematic and the editing topic of the Wiki Camp participants was 'Climate Changes'. The participants were supposed to create new articles on Macedonian on the given topic and the most productive and effective participants were awarded with small awards as a sign of acknowledgment of their effort and love for creating new free knowledge. By the end of the camp the participants created 215 new articles on the Macedonian Wikipedia on the given topic.

Besides the editing, the participants were provided with lectures and opportunity to learn new things. The participants had to opportunity to learn new things on the topic 'Global Warming or Climate Changes' lecture by Prof. Dr. Igor Kuzmanovski, get to know the concept of 'Green Transition' as lectured by MA Nenad Shundovski and learnt how to protect themselves online as taught by MA Valentina Trajkoska.

This Wiki Camp proved to be highly successful, lots of new articles were created and Wikipedia got lost of new editors and free content. The share of ideas and experience facilitated the participants to produce such results that make happy all of the Macedonian Wiki community.

You can see how it went through the photographic material uploaded on Commons, but also some of the photos are bellow:

The president Nikolche Stojanoski opening the Wiki camp
Prof. Igor Kuzmanovski giving a lecture
The participants
Editing articles
The participants
The participants

Training workshop at "Kole Nehtenin" high school in Shtip

Wikimedia MKD constantly demonstrates its commitment to the education and development of young people by organizing trainings, which give young people not only the opportunity to learn new skills, but also to use them in a way that benefits the community. With these trainings, Wikimedia MKD aims to inspire young generations to embrace the concept of free knowledge and become active participants in the creation of content accessible to all.

On 24 October 2024, at SOU "Kole Nekhtenin" in Shtip, a training was held for the students of this school, in order to encourage them and get involved in the editing of Wikipedia. The event started at 10:00 am and 17 students took part in. The first part of the training started with a lecture by the executive director of Wikimedia MKD, Snezhana Štrkovska, who emphasized the importance of the free encyclopedia Wikipedia and the role of the association in the development of the Macedonian version of this platform. After the opening address of Snezana Štrkovska, the manager for the educational program of Wikimedia MKD, Bosa Filipovikj, gave speech. She emphasized the importance of Wikiclubs as an opportunity for young people to get involved in editing articles and become part of a dynamic community of editors.

After the lectures, the practical part of the training occurred, where the students, guided by their mentors, started editing Wikipedia articles. This part of the training proved to be very inspiring for the students, who were actively involved in the editing process, expressing great enthusiasm and motivation. Each student had the opportunity to independently edit an article, which allowed the students to feel the importance of their contribution to free knowledge available in the Macedonian language.

A total of 19 new articles were written. Through this training, the students not only learned how to edit Wikipedia, but also felt the importance of volunteer work and the common mission of creating and expanding free information. Many of them expressed their desire to continue editing in the future, becoming part of the community of Wikipedia editors, in order to contribute to improving the quality and quantity of the content available in the Macedonian language.

You can see how it went through the photographic material uploaded on Commons, but also some of the photos are bellow:

Snezana Strkovska giving a speech
The students listening a lecture
Editing articles
Editing articles

Editing Days

Editing days is an activity that lasts for the whole year in organization of Wikimedia MKD. Each Tuesday and Thursday different topics are given and the participants create or improve existing articles. In October 2024 there were in total 10 editing days, where participants edited on different topics in order to enrich the content of Wikipedia. The editing days and the topics were:

1.10.2024 - Paintings of people
3.10.2024 - Mosques in Bosnia and Herzegovina
8.10.2024 - Diplomacy
10.10.2024- Ethnic Albanian people
15.10.2024 - Spiritism
17.10.2024 - Steles
22.10.2024 - Churches in Moldova
24.10.2024 - Government ministries of France
29.10.2024 - Genres
31.10.2024- House types

Cumulatively, 7 different users took part in these calls and edited. In total, 63 new articles were created during the editing days in October 2024.

Editing Weekends

Editing weekends is another project that is organized during the whole year. During weekends (Saturday and Sunday) user are welcomed to take part in this project activity and improve or enrich Macedonian Wikipedia content. During these weekends, the participants are expected to edit articles on given topics. In October 2024 the following editing weekends were organized:

5-6 October 2024 - Manga
12-13 October 2024 - Archery
19-20 October 2024 - Central America
26-27 October - Philology

In total, during these weekends there were 4 different users editing on the given topics and they created 16 new articles on the Macedonian Wikipedia.

Fifth WikiExpedition for 2024 – Prilep Municipality

Wikiexpeditions logo

Wikiexpeditions projects of Wikimedia MKD are with a significant contribution to the exploration of Macedonian landscapes and the enrichment of Wikipedia content.

After the fourth wikiexpedition in which our team explored the Municipality of Brvenica, taking advantage of the extended weekend on the occasion of the October 11 holiday, our team of Wikipedians decided to visit the Prilep part of Mariovo that weekend, thus completing our last expedition for the year. On the macedonian public holiday (October 11), the team left Skopje in the afternoon, heading to the city of Prilep, where they were accommodated during the expedition.

On the first day – Saturday (October 12), at 8 am, the team of Wikipedians was on its way to Vitolište, the former municipal center of the municipality of the same name. From the village of Vitolište, the team headed to the villages of Živovo and Vrpsko, which are reached by a dirt road. After arriving in the village of Živovo, the team continued to slowly move towards the village of Vrpsko, but the road was rutted and muddy, so at one point the team decided it was better not to take any risks and the village was photographed only with our drone, as well as the church located in it. From there, our team of wikipedians returned to Živovo, where there are two churches, one of which is a well-preserved old church with beautiful frescoes, although it is located in such a remote place. Since Vitolište had already been visited by us once during the expedition in 2015, our team stayed in the village to photograph only the things that were not covered then.

After Vitolište, the historical village of Melnica followed, where the church "St. Dimitrij" was photographed, as well the house who was the birthplace of Stale Popov. Then, a visit to the villages of Polčište and Bešište followed and photographing the village church, as well as the monastery "St. Petka” located in the Satoka locality, which was once a village, but was destroyed during the Mariovo Rebellion in the 16th century. Then came the village of Manastir, and then the team headed to the next village, but stopped in front of the Rasimbegovi Bridge to take aerial photographs of the ancient city of Antanija, and later photographs of the bridge. Moving towards Dunje, the monastery “St. George”, located outside the village along the regional road, was also photographed. At the end of the day, the mountain passes Sliva and Šipad were photographed, as well as the historic village of Pisokal.

The second day – Sunday (October 13) the village of Dunje was visited, and then the village of Veprčani, where all three churches were visited, the two in the village itself and the monastery outside the village. From Veprčani, the team returned to Dunje, from where they continued to Peštani, which also had three churches, two of which were monastery churches. The monastery church attached to the rocks near the village attracted particular attention. Then we visited the village of Kalen and the village of Kokre, which was photographed only from the air, along with its two churches. After these two villages, we followed the villages of Kruševica and Čanishte, and here the regional road ends, which is planned to continue in the Bitola part of the Mariovo district, but was never completed.

After the team returned to the regional road and briefly traveled along it, we visited the village of Bonche, which had three churches. After Bonche, we visited the film village of Shtavica, where our team spent a long time, and here we found the craftsman (a resident of the village) who made the famous Film Church for the film Dust and who told us many things about the village, but also about the entire area, including the cable car near the village of Manastir, which was photographed the previous day. The expedition ended with a visit to the villages of Chumovo, Staro and Novo Lagovo.

With 11 new, 7 revisited, and 3 historic villages photographed and over 700 kilometers traveled, we can say that the team of Wikipedians had another successful expedition despite the challenges. You can view all the photographic material from the Wikiexpedition here.

In media

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