Wikimedia Ukraine/Annual report 2015

About us

Wikimedia Ukraine is a not-for-profit organisation devoted to promoting and supporting Wikimedia projects in Ukrainian and in languages of other nationalities living in Ukraine.

We do this by supporting volunteer editors and contributors ('Wikimedians'), by working in partnership with cultural and educational institutions, by hosting training sessions and editing events, and by acting to advocate the benefits of open knowledge generally. Founded in 2009, as of 1 January 2016 the organisation has 61 member.

The global goal of the organisation is to provide free access to the sum of all human knowledge.

Board 2016

Ilya Korniyko, software developer
User:Ilya
Chair of the Board, works on projects with partners and tech tools for the contests.

Yuriy Bulka, musicologist
User:Yuriy Bulka
Deputy Chair of the Board, coordinator of Wikipedia Education Program, works on music projects.

Olena Zakharian, media analyst
User:Olena Zakharian
Deputy Chair of the Board, press-secretary of organisation.

Pavlo Lakiichuk, analyst
User:Pavlo1
Deputy Chair of the Board and Board secretary, works on projects with partners.

Pavlo Sokhan, IT-librarian
User:Friend
Deputy Chair of the Board, works on organisation of contests.

Nataliia Tymkiv, finance director
User:Antanana
Deputy Chair of the Board and treasurer.

Oleh Yatsozhynskyi, researcher
User:Helgi
Deputy Chair of the Board.

Board members in 2015:

Andrii Makukha, User:Amakuha

Chair of the Board

Mykola Kozlenko, User:NickK
Levon Azizian, User:Ліонкінг

Paid staff:

Vira Motorko, project manager
Anna Khrobolova, project manager
Oleksandr Kotliar, office-manager

Education Programme and Wikitrainings

In 2015 Wikimedia Ukraine continued working with universities in scope of Wikipedia Education Programme. The aim of the project is to encourage writing Wikipedia articles instead of traditional review papers.

Principles of writing Wikipedia articles and review papers are quite similar, as Wikipedia is also a review work based on reliable sources. Furthermore, Wikipedia article has more chances to be really interesting for a student and unique work that will be read by thousands of people.

One of our best educational projects this year is WikiStudia in Chernihiv. WikiStudia project in historical disciplines was created in Lazarevskyi Educational and Scientific Institute of History, Ethnology and Law of Chernihiv T.Shevchenko National Teachers' Training University. During April, WikiStudia edition 22 workshops were held and 190 articles were created, mainly about local notable people. 8 teachers and 40 students took part in the activities. Those who accomplished the course received certificates from Wikimedia Ukraine.

Another fruitful education collaboration is in Mykolaiv Oblast. Using the Education extension in Wikipedia, Taras Kremin, an assistant professor of Vasyl Sukhomlynskyi Mykolaiv National University, launched and headed the course "Culture of the South. 100 Literary Biographies". 100 articles about writers, poets, historians, literary scientists were created or improved during this course by 30 students.

Mykolaiv State Region Administration expressed its readiness to spread the word about Wikipedia to other institutions. So a memorandum of cooperation between Wikimedia Ukraine and Mykolaiv State Region Administration was signed as well.

In general, this year we have held nearly 70 wikitrainings all over Ukraine, where we taught people about Wikipedia.

Article Contests

Since 2011, Wikimedia Ukraine organises article writing contests. The main goal of such competitions is to improve Wikipedia with high-quality articles on a particular subject, with prizes being awarded for best contributions.

A user gets an award for his or her total contributions during the contest. Not only size of the article is assessed, but also its quality: completeness, structuring, verifiability. All articles are judged twice: first time on the week after it was created, and then again once the contest is over. This helps contributors to take account of all remarks and improve the article before the end of the contest.

Article contests are an efficient way to close some thematic gaps in Wikipedia.

Minister of Culture and Monuments of Ukraine: Crimea winner
One of the CEE Spring winners receives a prize

CEE Spring is an international article contest about the Central and Eastern European region, held in 21 Wikipedia project. 631 articles in Ukrainian Wikipedia were created from March till May and in total 6,892,576 bytes were added by participants of the contest. During the awards ceremony at Wikiconference in Lviv the winners were awarded books.

Monuments of Ukraine: Crimea contest was initiated to improve coverage of Crimean monuments in Ukrainian Wikipedia and was supported by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine and various Crimean Tatar NGOs and community leaders. 211 articles were created during the contest, for a total of 1,979,378 bytes added.

Nature Heritage in Wikipedia article contest was held simultaniously with Wiki Loves Earth photo contest. During the article contest its participants wrote 200 articles about nature protected objects including the destroyed ones.

Wiki Loves Earth international

Wiki Loves Earth is a photo contest of the natural monuments, where participants picture protected areas and upload their photos to Wikimedia Commons.

The goal of Wiki Loves Earth is two-fold. Firstly, we aim to photograph as many nature protected areas as possible and release the imagery under a free license. Secondly, we contribute to environmental protection by raising public awareness.

The idea of Wiki Loves Earth was first implemented in Ukraine in 2013. In 2014, 15 other countries from four different continents — Europe, Asia, Africa and America — joined Wiki Loves Earth.

In 2015, Wikimedia Ukraine continued to be the main organiser of Wiki Loves Earth with Wikipedia Polska being our fiscal sponsor.

The contest consisted of national contests, coordinated by local volunteers. The national juries then submitted up to 10 pictures to the international stage of the contest. With 26 participating countries, the international jury had to consider a total of 259 candidate pictures which they ranked in several stages. The international jury was composed of 9 photographers from different countries, all experienced in nature photography.

Over 100,000 pictures were submitted by the participants. These pictures are to be used to illustrate articles on Wikipedia and other Wikiprojects (Wikivoyage, Wikinews, etc.)

Steinbock, National Park "Hohe Tauern", Austria
Laurel Forest, Island of Madeira, Portugal

Wiki Loves Earth in Ukraine

Wiki Loves Earth in Ukraine aims at creating a complete information base about nature protected heritage in the country. Its goal is to gather illustrations for every nature protected object in Ukraine.

Thanks to the efforts of the project, 30% of nature protected areas and monuments in Ukraine are pictured by now, their general number being more than 8,000. Some of them are hard to identify.

In 2013, there were more than 11,000 photos uploaded, in 2014 — 12,000 images and in 2015, 14,700 pictures were received on the contest. In 2015, 172 participants took part in the contest, they sent photographs of 1674 different objects. Overall during three years of Wiki Loves Earth in Ukraine 865 participants took part, 2470 objects were pictured, more than 38,400 photos were uploaded.

The traditional nominations in the contest are:

The largest number of nature monuments pictured in the region of Ukraine (27 awards);
The best photo of the region (27 awards in total);
10 participants who pictured the largest number of nature monuments in general;
10 best pictures of the contest.

This year we also had a special nomination "Let's picture unpictured" which aimed to encourage people to take photos of nature protected areas not photographed for the contest before.

Dawn. Demerdji, Crimea
Kinburn sandbar, Mykolaiv Oblast

Wiki Loves Monuments

Wiki Loves Monuments is a photo contest for cultural heritage monuments. 2015 edition was the fourth one in Ukraine. The goal of the contest is to collect photos of all cultural heritage monuments and publish them under a free license on Wikimedia Commons for illustrating articles of Wikipedia and other projects. Moreover, in Ukraine thanks to the efforts of volunteers the most complete (as the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine hardly has any) lists of architectural, historical, archaeological as well as monumental monuments appeared on Wikipedia. In 2015, we have added around 4,000 new cultural heritage objects to the lists.

In Ukraine the contest was held in September, participants could use lists of 50 thousand monuments from all regions of Ukraine. 237 photographers took part in the contest, from beginners to experienced and recognised photographers, they uploaded 41,656 pictures of 14,142 monuments including 3845 monuments that previously had no illustrations.

The prizes went to the authors of the best photos of the regions of Ukraine and of the whole contest, and also to those who pictured the most objects by region and in general.

The contest was followed by the Cultural Heritage Wikipedia Week initiated by Kyiv Pechersk Lavra Historical and Cultural Preserve. We cooperated with The Monuments of Ukraine monthly magazine and its №2 2016 issue (96 pages) is about Wiki Loves Monuments in Ukraine.

Swallow's Nest, Crimea
One of the jury members (to the left) and Minister of Culture of Ukraine (to the right)

European Science Photo Competition

In 2011–2013, the concept of collecting high-quality scientific images to Wikipedia was successfully tested during the Estonian Science Photo Competition. In 2015, it was decided to widen the scope of the project and increase its impact by organising a pan-European science photo competition and Ukrainian Wikimedians were the first community to join the initiative.

This contest aims to engage scientists in sharing their work. Many scientific articles in Wikipedia are still not illustrated. Encouraging researchers to donate pictures is said to be hard but we managed.

193 participants uploaded their media files during the contest and 168 of them were newcomers who never contributed to Wikimedia Commons before. 1,221 images were uploaded which exceeded the expectations of the organisers greatly. They were evaluated in 5 categories: People in Science, Microscopy images, Non-photographic media, Image sets and General category.

The awards ceremony was held on 10 November 2015, World Science Day for Peace and Development, in Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology. Kseniia Gulak, contest organiser, believes:

Wikipedia is an outpost of popularising science — and it needs pictures for that.

Myxomycete Alwisia lloydiae
Laboratory of microclonal propagation of plants in Uman

Wikiexpeditions

Wikiexpeditions are collective (or sometimes individual) trips of Wikimedians to some cities or districts (raions) in order to:

collect materials for expanding text information and illustrating articles on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects;
bridging with local organisations and individual activists;
promoting Wikipedia.

We develop this project in Ukraine since 2011. More than 30 expeditions happened so far.

We support participants of Wiki-expeditions by refunding travel expenses if they upload a reasonable amount of photographs and/or write much into Wikimedia projects as a result of the expedition. We also provide them with Wikimedia merchandise and support letters if needed.

Ozaryntsi castle
Dzharylhach Wikiexpedition group

Inside of Living, 20 April — 21 July, an on foot expedition across Ukraine from the border with Russian Federation to the border with Slovakia. Participants visited 250 towns and villages and uploaded 1,127 images.

Wikiexpedition to Mohyliv-Podilskyi Raion, 6—7 June, involving 3 Wikimedians and 2 local historians. 382 photos were uploaded as a result, 167 of them used in wiki projects. 5 new articles were created and 34 more were improved.

Wikiexpedition to Dzharylhach Island, 10—14 September. As a result, 14 Wikipedia articles were created and expanded in 9 languages, 15 articles illustrated and 6 articles got video. In this expedition, participants uploaded only images they intended to use, thus 58 images have 170 uses in projects.

Freedom of Panorama

“No freedom of panorama” is one of the most popular deletion reasons of photos from Ukraine on Wikimedia Commons. Most Wikipedians faced this problem, but there is no understanding of it among wider public.

Freedom of panorama is a right to freely photograph, draw or film buildings, sculptures and other works of art which are located in a public place, and publish such images or videos. Such norms are adopted in copy-right laws of 83 countries from the USA to Japan, including most of the members of European Union.

At the moment Ukrainian laws allow to reproduce works of architecture and art only in order to present current events by means of photography or cinematography, in all other cases you have to get a permission from the author (architect or sculptor).

We suggested introducing 'freedom of panorama' into Ukrainian law. In autumn 2014, Dmytro Hovor, lawyer and Wikimedia Ukraine member, prepared a draft law on amendments to the Ukrainian Law on Copyright and Related Rights. It was submitted to the Parliament of Ukraine by MP Taras Yuryk and Taras Kremin, member of Committee on Science and Education, the main committee our draft law has to go through, joined the campaign as co-author of the draft law.

In 2015, we shared infographics, deployed web-site freepanorama.org.ua, put a banner in Ukrainian Wikipedia, published about freedom of panorama in our blogs, took part in expert talks, promoted e-petition to President etc.

This law will be beneficial to amateur photographers and professional, promotion of Ukraine for tourists will be improved, the development of a number of educational projects, including those under free licenses, like Wikipedia, will be boosted.

WikiConference 2015

WikiConference is an annual conference that gathers contributors, readers, experts in different fields of knowledge, journalists and other people interested in some way in Wikimedia projects. First organised in 2011, this conference has already become traditional and was held in 2015 for the fifth time.

WikiConference took place in September to attract more people. It was held in Lviv on the Faculty of Geography of Lviv University, where Ihor Kostenko, Hero of the Heavenly Hundred, studied.

For the first time, community was involved in programme design process by means of public survey. Copyright and Free Licenses, Wikipedia Education Program, Freedom of Panorama, OpenStreetMap, Wikiexpeditions, Photo and Article Writing Contests were chosen as the main topics of the conference.

Guests from other countries were present at the conference, as well as Wikimedia Foundation representative, Asaf Bartov. He offered help to Ukrainian Wikipedians through the new community capacity building programme in the Foundation.

The conference resulted in a number of ideas of improvements to the projects and new cooperations. In particular, Creative Commons Ukraine and OpenStreetMap Ukraine presented ideas of collaboration, notably around free licenses promotion. It also featured the first Train the Trainers event in Ukraine and useful discussions about improvements to article contests (and particularly CEE Spring) and Wikiexpeditions. European Science Photo Competition was also presented during the conference.

Participation in International Events

Wikimedia Ukraine members attended the following conferences:

GLAM-WIKI 2015 in Hague, the Netherlands. Topic of the conference is collaboration of Wikimedia chapters and groups of Wikipedians with museums, libraries, archives to enrich Wikipedia with materials about cultural heritage.

Wiki-Sabantuy 2015 in Ufa, Bashkortostan, Russia. Two Ukrainian Wikipedians presented our experience in organising actvities.

Wikimedia Conference 2015 in Berlin, Germany. This conference aims to share best practices of running a Wikimedia chapter. Fruitful cooperation of Wikimedians from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) was noted an the conference.

Wikimedia Polska Conference 2015 in Gdańsk, Poland. Example of a new idea brought from the event: make a training for wiki-project administrators to explain them how to be friendly to newbies.

Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City, Mexico. This year a record beating number of Ukrainians visited it, 9 persons. They presented Wiki Loves Earth and Wikipedia Education Programme in Ukraine and learned much from other Wikimedians from all over the world.

Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015 in Tartu, Estonia. Main results: Ukraine became the first country (after Estonian founders) to organise European Science Photo Competition.

Wikisource Conference 2015 in Vienna, Austria. Participant from Ukraine brought ideas for communication with libraries and archives on working with Wikimedia projects.

Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015
Wikimedia Conference 2015

Activities and events

WikiPhoto in Kharkiv is a project aimed at uploading photos from different local settlements to Wikimedia Commons by students. Students were given an optional assignment and uploaded 1,639 photos from their home towns.

To celebrate Wikipedia's birthday we held a WikiFlashMob on January 30 — February 1. Local events were held in 18 places, Wikipedia users created 762 articles during 3 days.

Mykola Lysenko and his contemporaries is another concert in the series of World Classics in Ukrainian concerts. Ukrainian translations by Yurii Otroshenko are released under CC BY-SA 3.0. The concert took place in Mykola Lysenko Museum in Kyiv.

Wikimedia Ukraine has its library. In 2015, we bought a book British Battleships of World War Two: The Development and Technical History of the Royal Navy's Battleships and Battlecruisers from 1911 to 1946 requested by a Wikipedia user who used it to improve 6 articles, 2 becoming featured.

WikiFest:Luhanshchyna was a series of workshops in Luhansk Oblast aimed to raise awareness of Ukrainian Wikipedia and the possibility of editing among the citizens of the region. Wikiworkshops took place in libraries and educational institutions of Starobilsk, Bilokurakyne, Novoaidar, Markivka, Novopskov and Kreminna.

We held OpenGLAM Benchmark Survey in Ukraine. 565 heritage institutions were contacted to measure the state of advancement of OpenGLAM (digitization, interorganisational cooperation involving the exchange of metadata, open data, crowdsourcing, linked data), to identify main challenges, to promote OpenGLAM and free access to knowledge.

We organised a system of photo grants, where we help with accreditations to various public events in order to get high-quality pictures. In 2015, we covered the concert of Yarmak in Ternopil, concert of ONUKA in Kyiv, Oleksandr Usyk — Andrey Knyazev boxing fight and Odesa International Film Festival 2015.

Preparing for Wiki Loves Monuments requires creating lists of cultural, historical, architectural and archaeological heritage monuments. Wikimedia Ukraine needed to start and win a legal case against the State Administration in order to obtain lists of cultural heritage sites in Pokrovske Raion in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.

Wikizghushchivka is our local award, given for the biggest contribution made to the Wikimedia project during a month, one for a newbie and one for an experienced user. We award it not only to most active users of Wikipedia, but also to users of other projects.

Wikipedia Asian Month is an online edit-a-thon aimed at enhancing the understanding among Asian communities through creation or improvement of the Wikipedia content. The participating community is not limited to Asia so it took place in Ukrainian Wikipedia as well and Wikimedia Ukraine sent special postcards to active participants of this collaboration.

Since 2015 Wikimedia Ukraine owns a DIY scanner (currently located in Lviv). We digitise public domain books and publish them on Wikisource. Our first digitalisation was Bible in Ukrainian where Wikimedia Ukraine obtained permission from the translator; and with this scanner we intend to digitise more valuable public domain works.

We encourage various wikimeetups of Wikipedia contributors where they can exchange experience, ask questions and present ideas for the work of organisation.

Statement of Activities

Description*	Amount**
Support and revenues
Grants	666442.19
* CEE Meeting 2014***	127699.08
* Programs in Ukraine 2015-1	393580.42
* International Wiki Loves Earth 2015 ****	93578.54
* Wiki Loves Monuments 2015	51584.15
Donations, membership dues and contributions	33115.00
Bank interest	4431.21
Total:	703988.40
Expenses
CEE Meeting 2014	66887.05
Programs in Ukraine	814560.50
International Wiki Loves Earth 2015	80085.05
Wiki Loves Monuments 2015	21615.44
Total:	983148.04
Opening balance 2015	514774.99
Revenues	703988.40
Expenses	983148.04
Closing balance 2015	235615.35

* Wikimedia Ukraine’s 2015 fiscal year took place from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2015

** in UAH

*** The project was in 2014, but the money was received in 2015. The whole amount was 14,137.22 USD. Wikimedia Polska received 6055.00 USD as a fiscal sponsor

**** The whole amount was 12,332.50 USD. Wikimedia Polska received 8,130.50 USD as a fiscal sponsor

Projects and goals for 2016

In 2016, we plan to continue successful projects of the previous years and also start new ones. In the new year we want to particularly work on these groups of activities:

Partnerships

Education Programme and wikitrainings: collaboration with educational and scientific institutions to engage students, lecturers and researchers to the wiki-projects.
Support of the Crimean Tatar Wikipedia and other projects in minority languages of Ukraine, collaboration with other organisations in this sphere.
Organising trainings for teachers, lecturers, mentors, volunteers.
GLAM: collaboration with galleries, libraries, archives and museums, as well as creative groups, educational and cultural organosations and institutions.
Organising Wikiexpeditions to photograph notable objects and gather local information and sources.
Promotion of free content concept.
Support of the initiatives of legal introducing of free licenses, freedom of panorama, migration of the work of state institutions into public domain etc.
Support of musical wiki-projects.

Contests

Organising article writing contests.
Taking part in organising Wiki Loves Earth 2016 international contest and organising Ukrainian part of the contest, organising Wiki Loves Monuments 2016 in Ukraine as a part of international contest.

Community support

Organising Ukrainian WikiConference and other wiki-events in Ukraine.
Support of organisation members' delivering speeches and lectures, participating in conferences and other public events.
Participation in international wiki-events, eg. Wikimedia Conference, Wikimania and CEE Meeting.
Further development of differentiated library of printed publications.
Publication of brochures and leaflets about Wikimedia Foundation projects and principles of working there.

Donors & Partners

Donors

Wikimedia Foundation

Private and anonymous donators

Partners

Ministry of Culture of Ukraine

National Union of Local Lore Researchers of Ukraine

National Ecological Centre of Ukraine

Ukrainian Society for the Protection of Monuments of History and Culture

National Society of Photo Artists of Ukraine

National Museum of Military History of Ukraine

Kyiv Pechersk Lavra Historical and Cultural Preserve

National Sanctuary "Sophia of Kyiv"

National Museum of the History of Ukraine

National Parliamentary Library of Ukraine

NGO Environment-People-Law

Maidan Monitoring Information Center

Mykolaiv State Region Administration

Department of Museum Affairs, and Cultural Values of Ministry of Culture of Ukraine

Smoloskyp Publishing House

Popular science portal “My Science”

Mykola Lysenko Museum

Ukrainian Art Song Project

America House Kyiv

CrimeaSOS social initiative

Ukrainian Library Association

Korolenko State Scientific Library

First Multimedia Library of Lviv

Mariupol Central City Library

Zaporizhzhia Oblast Library for Youth

Rivne Oblast Library

Kharkiv Regional Universal Scientific Library

and many-many others

Universities: Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology; Taras Shevchenko National University of Luhansk; Lviv National Musical Academy; Ivan Franko National University of Lviv; Sukhomlynskyi Mykolaiv National University; Ukrainian Catholic University; Kharkiv National University of Radioelectronics; Taras Shevchenko National Pedagogical University of Chernihiv; National Pedagogical Dragomanov University; and others

Many thanks to those who joined our projects!

Reach us

“Wikimedia Ukraine”

Room 516, 14/1 Mechnykova Street

Kyiv, 01133, Ukraine

wm-ua@wikimedia.org

+380673437434

https://ua.wikimedia.org/

facebook.com/Wikimedia.Ukraina

twitter.com/wikimedia_ua