Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Shared Knowledge/March 2018

SHARED KNOWLEDGE
Activity report

March 2018

Startup of WikiBeer Project

On 3^rd of March, started the WikiBeer project, a new project of Shared Knowledge on Wikipedia on Macedonian language, whose principal goal is to make visits to breweries, beer festivals and events in order to help by improving existing and creating new articles for the domestic beer brands and industry, domestic breweries and pubs that are part of this industry. The project came up as an idea and closely resembles of the previous Wikiwine projects, where several industrial plant were already visited, primarily wineries and food industry plants. This visit was organized within the first Crafting beer saloon event, by Македонец, Иван Ж and our partner organization Slow Food Vodno which already helped us in organization of Wiki Loves Food 2017 photographic contest and currently we are working together to conduct Agroexpeditions project. Hence, we signed a memorandum of cooperation with Slow Food which was co-organizer of this event. Crafting beer saloon was attended by 12 producers of home made craft beers from different cities in Macedonia and one from Greece where dozens of images were photographed which in the next period will be uploaded and used for creation of articles on Wikipedias in support of this branches of the beer industry and culture. On 14^th of March was realized the second visit of the craft brewery "Temov" in Skopje's Old Bazaar.

WikiClub & Wikipedia lectures at American Corner Skopje

Lectures of Wikipedia and all associate projects of Wikimedia continued to be held in the WikiClub that has been launched in the American Corner Skopje. On 6^th of March we had the third lecture which was dedicated for the Commons Wikimedia project. The present members of the club were acquainted with the work and significance of the Commons Wikimedia as well as the licencing of the all types of multimedia files such as images, videos and animations uploaded on the Wikimedia Commons. Finally they were informed and instructed how to upload a file and use it in the article of Wikipedia. Considering the topic of this lecture, the lecturers User:Kiril Simeonovski, User:Ehrlich91 and User:Македонец presented the project Photo Hunts informing the attendants about the possibility to apply and conduct a Photo Hunt. The fourth lecture was held on 20^th of March where all of the participants had task of work on 3 articles: to improve and expand an existing article by adding an image and text, to create a new article through the translation tool from an existing Wikipedia article in English and to create a completely new article from sources and text for the object of the cultural heritage of Macedonia. All this was set in order to see the level of skill for editing on Wikipedia that the participants have acquired on the previous lectures and at the same time to improve and practice their skills for working on Wikipedia.

3^st lecture (06.03.2018)

4^th lecture (20.03.2018)

Editing competition

Thanks to our editing competition titled 1000 articles every Wikipedia should have that end on 4th of March, Macedonian Wikipedia jump from 38th to 34th place of all Wikipedia language editions per this criteria. Macedonian Wikipedia for just one month, thank to this competition, record 4,97 growth, which is best result this month of all Wikipedia language editions.

Different approach of this competition and variety of prizes brings new users to sign-up and to participate in competition, and we have record high 9 participants. Another editing competition on the end of this year will have same aim to fill hundreds of empty pages on Macedonian Wikipedia.

Shared Knowledge continues to contribute quality content on Macedonian Wikipedia and this kind of competitions is just good opportunity to include whole community to participate in that.

"Bitalon" - The Hackaton of Bitola: Official partnership & participation

After of period of preparations on an invitation of our member mk:User:Igor Izotov, who was a main organizer of the event, "Shared Knowledge" as a Wikipedia chapter in Macedonia took part and participated as an official partner of "Bitalon - The Hackaton of Bitola". Bitalon was the first ever hackathon aiming to tell the story of the old Jewish community in the Balkans through the Jewish cemetery "Beit hahaim" (Park of the living) in Bitola. The Israel ministry of foreign affairs and the ministry of IT in Macedonia invited numerous programmers, designers and developers from the IT sector in Macedonia together with mentors from companies and Universities from Israel and Macedonia to take part in developing a digital experience for the visitors in the Park of the living in Bitola, where the story of the Jewish community had a main part in its past and will have a main part in its future.Also as a part of the team had mentors from several areas who assisted the participants The team of Wikipedians from "Shared Knowledge" consisted of User:Kiril Simeonovski, User:Иван Ж and User:Македонец and a designer from other team mk:User:Marija Pet, who was a participant on Architecture Edit-a-thon in 2016, made an editing activity similar to edit-a-thon where they have created and edited several articles as well as uploaded images about personalities and the history of the extinct Jewish community of Bitola with the materials sent by organizers and by the translation tool. All of the created content and information was used by the other participants for the design and the content of their applications. Also, the members of the "Shared Knowledge" had a chance to make a short meeting with the ambassador of Israel, H.E. Dan Oryan , where were discussed several topics and exchange of previously prepared and signed memorandum of cooperation.

Wikipedia lectures in Bitola

The team of "Shared Knowledge" which was participated as an official partner and was not competing but helped the other teams of IT designers, programmers and developers with creating content and sharing information, had the chance to held a lecture an presentation about Wikipedia and all affiliate projects of Wikimedia, which was also envisaged in the work program for March in the project Lectures across cities which is a part of our education programme. In front of a smaller audience consisted of attendants such as the participants of the teams of IT designers, programmers and developers as well as the jury consisted of mentors from Israel, User:Македонец and User:Иван Ж held a lecture and presented the possibilities and opportunities given by Wikipedia and its affiliate projects especially QR-pedia, Commons Wikimedia, translation tool for editing, Wiki Citation which can be very useful for content and information for their application designed for smart phones and other devices.

Pantomime editing day

On 22^th March, traditionally, we held the editing day was on topic "Pantomime". This editing day is held regularly every year as part of the initiative to mark World Pantomime Day in 2018 in several countries around the world, stemmed by the collaboration of Wikimedia Serbia and the World Organization of Pantomimists. We used other language editions of Wikipedia, digitalized and other materials for the creation and editing of the articles . Four participants have created 8 new articles enriching the content of the Macedonian Wikipedia on the Pantomime related-topics.