Wikimedia Tunisie/Report 2024
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The Wikimedia Community User Group Tunisia has actively participated in various events and programs during the last year.
This report offers a comprehensive overview of the activities undertaken by the user group, encompassing participation in international conferences, the organization of local events, workshops, community gatherings, and others activities.
Our user group has successfully advanced efforts to preserve cultural heritage and history while championing gender equality. Through dedicated work, we managed to attract new young users to actively contribute about local figures through various projects, and we continued the work done in narrowing the gender gap concerning Tunisian figures represented on Wikipedia.
The user group is represented by the same board since January 2023. The elected board for 2023-2024 is:
- Mourad Ben Abdallah (contact - president)
- Youssef Ben Haj Yahia (contact - secretary)
- Afek Ben Chahed (contact - treasurer)
The elected board continued working as of 1 January 2024. The main goals of Tunisia User Group are:
- Representing the Wikimedia Foundation in Tunisia.
- Establishing a base and a reference for all Tunisians in Wikipedia and all other Wikimedia projects.
- Promoting and developing the content related to Tunisia.
- Organizing activities, gatherings, workshops, and different projects for contributors.
- Unifying the efforts of the contributors under one umbrella, especially those with technical skills.
- Gathering the contributors who live abroad and have them put some focus and efforts in enhancing content, especially what's related to Tunisia.
- Unifying the contribution to the international activities, such as Wiki Love… contests and others.
Elections for 2025-2026 are planned to take place in March 2025.
Projects
[edit]WikiChallenge Ecoles d'Afrique 2023/2024
[edit]Coordinator : Afek Ben Chahed
The Wikimedia TN User Group participated for the 5th year in the WikiChallenge Ecoles d'Afrique. This year, the WikiChallenge contest in Tunisia resulted in 31 articles created on Vikidia and 298 images uploaded on Commons. The article Alphabet de Tifinagh, by El Fehmine Primary School in Djerba won the National Prize (2000 EUR)
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Award Ceremony at El Fehmine Primary School in Djerba -
Participants from El Fehmine Primary School in Djerba
Coordinators : Houcemeddine Turki
Created in September 2021, Data Engineering and Semantics has been created as a hub for Wikimedia researchers, open science advocates, specialists in big data, social network analysis, and knowledge engineering. Recognized by the Tunisian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, it has the right to launch research projects to develop the Wikimedia Research Community in Tunisia. As of 2024, Houcemeddine Turki was appointed as a Wikimedia liaison by the Data Engineering and Semantics Research Unit until December 2024 to keep collaboration between the created research structure and the local Wikimedia community.
In September 2024, we landed the first Wikimedia-funded Research Project in the country. The Project is entitled "Adapting Wikidata to support clinical practice using Data Science, Semantic Web and Machine Learning" and it aims to develop the representation of biomedical knowledge in Wikidata. The Project successfully published eight publications, four reports, one tutorial, six office hours, eight community conference presentations, one dataset, and one conference between 2022 and 2024.
Representing the Group
[edit]Wikimania
[edit]Wikimedia TN User Group participated in Wikimania 2024 held in Singapore with two of its members: Yamen, Afek, and Houcemeddine.
They have presented several sessions regarding the activities of Wikimedia Tunisia:
- Wikimedia & GenAI: A 360 movement panel one year later by Yamen and others.
- 5 editions of the SheSaid campaign (Poster) by Afek.
- 9 years of the Wiki Loves Women initiative (Poster) by Afek.
- Wikidata Community in the Middle East and Africa (Meetup) by Houcemeddine and others.
Houcemeddine also contributed to the development of VCut-CLI, a Python Script for Wikimania videos, featured in the Wikimania Hackathon 2024 Showcase.
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Afek with the Core Organizing Team of Wikimania 2025 and 2026 -
Houcemeddine and Afek at the Wikimania 2024 Arabic Community Meetup -
Yamen at the Generative AI Panel
Wikimedia Summit
[edit]Youssef represented our user group at Wikimedia Summit 2024 in Berlin. During the conference, he reached out to other User Groups representatives to look for a potential new partnership and to see what is going on in other communities that might be helpful for our country.
As well, Houcemeddine participated online in the revision of the guidelines for the establishment of the Global Council.
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Youssef with Arabic Wikimedians at Wikisummit 2024 in Berlin
WikiArabia
[edit]2 members of the user group attended the WikiArabia 2022 conference in Muscat. Afek led the social media communications of the conference.
One presentation was delivered by Afek during WikiArabia: Harmonizing Global Campaigns: A Unified Approach for the Arab Region.
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Afek at WikiArabia 2024 -
Naïm at WikiArabia 2024
WikiIndaba
[edit]Wiki Indaba conference is the regional conference for Africans both within and in the diaspora. Wiki Indaba 2024 was hosted by Wikimedia Morocco in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Two members of the Wikimedia Community User Group Tunisia participated in the event, volunteering on different committees and delivering presentations.
These members are :
Two presentatiosn were made during the conference:
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Habib with other Wikimedians at WikiIndaba 2024 -
Habib working with other Wikimedians at WikiIndaba 2024
WikiConvention francophone
[edit]2 members participated in WikiConvention francophone 2023 in Montréal, Canada. Yamen made two presentations about :
- Créer une application mobile pour un musée avec Wikidata, Wikipédia et Kiwix presented by Yamen and Seeris.
- Communs numériques et IA générative : quelles stratégies pour le mouvement Wikimédia? presented by Yamen.
The list of the participants in place from Tunisia is :
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Mourad at WikiConvention 2024 -
Mourad and Habib at WikiConvention 2024 -
Yamen at WikiConvention 2024
