Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Shared Knowledge/April 2017

SHARED KNOWLEDGE
Activity report

April 2017

Volunteer-a-thon

On April 9th the second Volunteer-a-thon was held. This time, FON University (local private university with which we started collaborating) was kind enough to let us use one of their computer labs, which made things significantly easier for the volunteers who don't own a laptop. One employee and 4 volunteers were a part of this volunteer-a-thon, where one of the volunteers was a new member. During that time, the volunteers learned and improved their skills in writing articles and created a total of 4 new articles, and improved 1 article.

Circulating currencies editing day

On April 29th an editing day was held regarding the currencies in the world that are in use. The editing day yielded 9 new articles, written by 3 users in total. April 26th marked the 25th year of Macedonia's monetary independence, thus the idea for the editing day. Users mainly used other language editions of Wikipedia as sources for their articles.

Editing contests

CEE Spring

Aegean Macedonia

Fabergé eggs editing weekend

During the period of April 15-16th, an editing weekend with Fabergé eggs being the topic was held. This topic was motivated due to the Easter holidays being in the same time. During the editing weekend 5 users in total created 19 new articles. This served a great way for the community to learn something new surrounding that culture.

Wikiexpedition to Bojmija

The weekend on April 22-23rd, a Wikiexpedition in the Bojmija region was held. Toni Ristovski, Kiril Simeonovski, Dzvonko Petrovski, Nino Bogdanovski, and Monika Pavlovska headed to Bojmija region, which nowadays it spans through three munincipalities: Gevgelija, Bogdanci, and Valandovo.

The target for the first day were the villages in Gevgelija, 17 in total, from which we visited only 13. This was due to poor road condition, and having no direct roads at all. The expedition started the day with the village Moin, heading towards Smrdliva Voda. Moving along the flow of the river Konjska. That lead the expedition to the villages Novo Konjsko, Konsko, and the recreational area Smrdliva Voda. Along the way the expedition visited the village Huma, which has no current residents anymore. On the way back to Gevgelija (in order to conclude day one), the expedition visited the village Negorci, managing to visit Kovanci and Sermenin. Sadly, poor road condition starved the expedition with time to visit Petrovo and Gabrovo. The day concluded with the visit of the villages Smokvica, Miravci, and Davidovo, where Miletkovo was just photographed panoramically.

Since on the first day it was already dark to photograph the village Mrzenci, the expedition started the second day there. From Mrzenci the expedition headed towards the village Bogorodica, and the villages from Bogdanci munincipality. First village from Bogdanci was Stojakovo, and from there the expedition headed towards Selemli. From there, due to high altitude, the expedition managed to photograph the both villages panoramically. Gjavato was the last village the expedition visited in Bogdanci munincipality. Given the circumstances, the expedition decided that it would be nice to photograph Bogdanci as well since the expedition was already there, even though it wasn't part of the original plan.

Munincipality of Valandovo was next, where the first village documented was Rabrovo which is on the edge of Valandovo. After that, the expedition headed to Brajkovci, Balinci, and Marvinci concluding that section with Grchishte which was a tad further away.

On the way back to Skopje, the expedition visited Pirava, Josifovo (as well as Kalkovo which is seperate part of Josifovo), concluding the expedition with Udovo.

The grand total is more than 600 kilometers driven in two days, documented 26 villages, 2 towns, and 1 recreational area, which makes the expedition a great success.

Areas in Gevgelija, Bogdanci and Valandovo Municipality covered by the Wikiexpedition in Bojmija

Photohunts

User Тиверополник and his daughter held the first Photohunt for this year. It was conducted from the beginning of April, and finished on April 23rd. The Photohunt targeted municipality of Bosilovo.

The Photohunt started with the visit of the monastery near the Hamzali village, and after that the villages Drvoš, Petralinci, Gečerlija, Saraj and Staro Baldovci were visited. Afterwards, villages Robovo, Ilovica, and Šutka were visited as well. In the third phase, Bosilovo, Turnovo, Ednokukjevo and Sekirnik were visited and documented, while the villages Monospitovo and Borievo were visited in the last phase.

Much of the information used for the articles was gained through conversation with the locals, which were quite kind and informative, some of them working in the churches and monasteries were of great help. Due to many of the objects being closed, only exterior photographs could be obtained.

The user captured and uploaded a total of 253 photographs, and created a total of 20 new articles, and improved 17 articles. Considering those numbers, the Photohunt was a great success.

Some of the pictures from the Photohunt

Conferences

Wikimedia Conference 2017

Our treasurer and Board Member, Toni Ristovski, and the Administration Manager Ivan Żivkoviḱ participated at Wikimedia Conference in Berlin. Besides participating at the three main conference days, he attended two pre-conference Learning Days, where he introduced the Wikiexperiments project on a poster.

At the last day of the main conference, he had a presentation with discussion on a session How to grow an user group together with Wikipedians from Brazil. He shared our gained knowledge and barriers from our beginnings in 2014.

WikiLive 2017

The Chair of the Executive Board Kiril Simeonovski and the Administration Manager Ivan Żivkoviḱ participated on WikiLive 2017, which took place in Belgrade on the weekend of 8-9 April. The conference was a good opportunity for our organisation to get more insights on the work done by our colleagues from Wikimedia Serbia and the Serbian Wikipedia community as well as to share our positive experiences. Kiril Simeonovski was one of the speakers and facilitators at the confernce. On the first day, he gave two lectures titled "Wikiexperiments" (original title in Serbian: Викиексперименти), in which he presented the Wikiexperiments project that was successfully carried out in 2015 and 2016, and "Editing challenges", in which he relied on the learnig pattern Filling content gaps on summarising the most commonly approached ways to filling content gaps. On the second day, he was also one of the facilitators of the World Café session, in which he first conducted discussions with three groups on how to attract more editors to participate in Wikipedia competitons and then presented the main ideas proposed from the participants.

Kiril Simeonovski presenting the results of the Wikiexperiments project
Kiril Simeonovski while facilitating the World Café session