Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Shared Knowledge/March 2017

SHARED KNOWLEDGE
Activity report

March 2017

Vernal Agroexpedition

On 2 March, we conducted our first agroexpedition, aiming to cover pictures from the process of spring plowing and sowing as well as visit several factories and agricultural industrial production plants from the food industry. We visited the villages of Sokolarci and Česhinovo in the Kočani Valley. We firstly visited the Osogovo Milk Diary and had the opportunity to document the entire process of milk production, technology and range of products. Afterwards, we visited wheat mill and rice processing plant where we photographed all the machines for drying, hulling, shelling and packing the rice. We also visited the Balkan Greenhouse, a factory for organic growing of tomatoes where the chief agronomist showed us all a glass factory, manufacturing process as well as the cultivation of greenhouses.

The second part of the expedition was realised on 4 March in Ovče Pole, where we visited 9 greenhouses with various horticultural crops which are cultiveted in this period of the year, such as: onions, garlic, strawberry, barley, spinach, clover, radish and etc. In this expedition, one of the participants was the agricultural engineer MSc Dana Uževska. On the same day, the coordinator of the project Mario Šarevski documented plowing and sowing of cereals on the fields in the eastern part of the Skopje Valley.

Participants of the Agroexpedition visiting the Balkan Green house for growing tomatoes
Greenhouse with spinach
Tractor sowing on a field
Tractor plowing on a field
Hulling and shelling rice in factory
Producing yellow hard cheese from goat in dairy

Geoexpeditions 1 & 2, Caves in the Skopje Region and Geographical features of Mariovo

This year's Geoexpeditons have changed the subject slightly, thus instead of covering an entire mountain range with all its geographical features, we decided to conduct the project focusing on the specific geographical features from similar characteristics on different places throughout the entire territory of Macedonia. That said, primarily we set the focus of the Geoexpeditions on speleology, i.e. research and photographing caves, rare hydro-graphical features such as swamps and marshlands, ponors (natural surface opening where river flows and its water appears on other places), springs, glacial lakes etc.

In the beginning of March, our member Mario Šarevski accompanied by the members of mountaineering and speleological club located 3 caves near Skopje, thus the first geoexpedition started and was completed through out the month and the beginning of April with 3 more visits to the caves to take better quality pictures. The second expedition was conducted in the Mariovo at the end of March, where we discovered and photographed 1 cave as well as 2 rivers, a mountain range with a peak and few villages. The project will continue throughout the spring and summer when glacial lakes on the high mountains will be visited for taking photographs and providing information.

Wikiexpedition to Kozjačija Region and Sredorek

The first Wikiexpedition this year was conducted on 18 March to the Kozjačija Region and Sredorek by Toni Ristovski, Kiril Simeonovski, Dzvonko Petrovski, Nino Bogdanovski and Monika Pavlovska. This was Monika's first Wikiexpedition and she participated as a photographer. The visited regions are located in the northern part of the country and are characterised by their dispersed settlements. The regions were a complete novelty for the expeditionary team, because we had previously conducted an Astroexpedition at the megalithic observatory Kokino in August 2015. During the visit, we faced some problems with the access to the villages and the geolocation of some settlements and monuments, but it was, however, not a big obstacle for the success of the expedition. The total number of visited villages with their dispersed settlements was 13 along with the visit of the ASNOM Memorial Centre near the village of Pelince and the Zabel monastery near the village of Nikuljane.

Editing days

Two editing days took place in March. The first was intended to commemorate the World Mime Day, while the second one to reference the work The Rivers in Macedonia. In a sum, they resulted in the creation of 80 new articles and improvement of 1 existing.

World Mime Day

On 22 March, an editing day commemorating the World Mime Day as part of the global initiative was held for the second consecutive year. The users created and edited articles connected to the mime art form. A total of four participants created a total of 12 new articles and improved 1 existing one. The organiser of the editing day on the Macedonian Wikipedia has given a statement, which was published in a news of the blog of Wikimedia Serbia.

Rivers in Macedonia

On 26 March, an editing day was held in order to create articles regarding the rivers in Macedonia. The challenge attempted to exploit the materials provided by our long-time contributor Mario Šarevski during his tenure as a Wikipedian in residence at the Library of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences of Arts. For this editing day, the participants were using the recent work titled The rivers in Macedonia to write articles about rivers in Macedonia. The outcome of the day was decently high with participation of seven editors who have created a total of 68 articles, making it the most successful editing day so far both in terms of participation and article creation.

Volunteer-a-thon

Volunteer-a-thon is a new project consisting of a series of small edit-a-thons for volunteers in Shared Knowledge who are willing to contribute to the Wikimedia projects. The main goal of the project is to empower mutual collaboration and collective editing of new editors by creating space where the interested editors will get to know each other, share their knowledge and create quality content. In ideal conditions, these edit-a-thons will take place in two weeks time.

On 12 March, three new users (M.pvsk, 123Ivan and firnein) coordinated by petrovskyz participated in the first such edit-a-thon. They managed to create 3 new articles and improved 1 existing.

Editing contests

Aegean Macedonia

The editing contests logo

The month-long editing contest on settlements in Aegean Macedonia started on 6 March. The goal of the contest was creating articles and content regarding settlements in Aegian Macedonia. This was the second editing contest and third editing challenge overall. During the course of the year, we plan to conduct a Wikiexpedition to Aegean Macedonia in order to visit some of the villages that the participants in these challenges were editing articles about. To summarise the outcome from this editing contest, a four participants managed to create 162 new articles and improve 105 existing ones.

CEE Spring

The CEE Spring editing contest in Macedonia began on 21 March. We are putting efforts on advertising the contest as much as possible in order to have as many participants as possible.

Additional Note

Shared Knowledge is very proud to announce that the Macedonian Wikipedia reached 89.000 articles on 27 March! The growing community and many editing activities ensure the steady growth of the article count, where the main focus is on the quality. Shared Knowledge aims to grow the community and teach the community that quality and accuracy are the most important thing for our projects. We are thankful to the volunteers involved in our projects and activities.