Wikimedians of Western Armenian Language User Group/2022-2023 Report

Wikimedians of western Armenian user group annual Report August 2022 - august 2023

Article Overview

Western Armenian Wikipedia currently has more than 11,500+ articles. The number of WA Wiki articles at 31th of August was 11,400+.

The User Group's activities include numerous edit-a-thons, editing education workshops, in-person workshops, partaking in global initiatives, etc. The User Group focuses on developing Western Armenian Wikipedia. Most of the User group's activities are conducted online due to the fact that the editors live in different countries․

Editors

An active group from Istanbul, Aleppo, Yerevan, Athens, Vienna, and Beirut have been diligently working towards increasing quality article quantities on Western Armenian Wikipedia. By April 2022, the number of active editors of Western Armenian Wikipedia was 65. That is the highest number on record since the foundation of Western Armenian Wikipedia as an independent entity.

Throughout the year the number of active editors of Western Armenian Wikipedia was in the range of 35-65 active users. The lowest number of edits per editor is 1, the highest is 215. This number does not include the number of edits on non-Wikipedia sister Wiki projects i.e. TranslateWiki, MetaWiki, etc.

Also, after the wiki workshops this year, we noticed that some users continued to use their newly acquired knowledge. This shows that the Wiki Workshops continue to be successful, as we did not expect all previous participants to continue their work.

Administrators

The number of admins on Western Armenian Wikipedia is officially 4, they are:

Weekly News Updates

Western Armenian Wikipedia had weekly news updates on the Main Page of the platform.

Article of the Month

Western Armenian Wikipedia had a featured article of the month on the Main Page of the platform.

Fun Facts

Western Armenian Wikipedia features fun facts on a monthly basis on the Main Page of the platform.

TranslateWiki

From 2020 to 2023, we worked with TranslateWiki and dramatically changed most of the non-Western Armenian content to Western Armenian through hundreds of back-edits. We keep translating TranslateWiki and hope to achieve more results, approaching the highest percentage of translated texts.

Online Wiki Editing Workshops

The online wiki editing workshops series also continued in 2023.

The online workshops that we organize for general beginners who want to learn editing from scratch started in April 2023.

These weekly Zoom sessions were held to teach Diaspora Armenians how to edit the Western Armenian Wikipedia in April and June.

We are delighted that after months of workshops, participants continue to edit and add information to Wikipedia.

Misc Initiatives

Wiki Editing Workshops

We host individual or small group editing workshops on a rolling basis for all those who wish to learn how to edit Western Armenian Wikipedia and also go deeper if need be. We’ve also hosted a technical workshop for 4 individuals who wish to learn how to create, translate, or edit templates on Wikipedia.

Currently, workshops on Wikipedia editing are taking place on a bimonthly basis, where totally unfamiliar individuals are taught the ways to edit, create, and cite on Western Armenian Wikipedia. We had 16 responding participants for the workshops in March 2022.

Diaspora High School Workshops

Dozens of Armenian high school students in seven schools in six countries partook in a Wikipedia editing training workshop, facilitated and hosted by our Wiki community members in the respective countries. These countries include Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Austria, Greece and Canada.

The Theological Seminary of the Catholicos of Cilicia of the Great House in Lebanon
Alex Manoogian School, Montreal
Alex Manoogian School, Montreal

CEE Spring Edit-A-Thon

Wikimedia CEE Spring aims to join local forces of free knowledge to accumulate and distribute information about history, culture, traditions, and people in every corner of the region to support mutual acknowledgment and understanding and to increase the quantity and quality of free knowledge available about the CEE region globally. This aim is achieved by article creation about every country in the region on every Wikipedia language.

We have created our own list and contributed to the creation of diaspora-centric articles that need translation and exposure on other Wikipedia language platforms. You can see the full list here.

Edit-A-Thons

Throughout the annual plan 2022-2023, we organized 2 edit-a-thons. You can find more information on our edit-a-thons here and here; the former having taken place on 14-16 October 2022, and the last one on 7-9 April 2023.

For the October edit-a-thon, the focus was mostly on creating articles.Over the weekend, 20 new articles were created and 1 article’s qualities were improved by a user.

The April edit-a-thon, was dedicated to free topic articles, 19 articles were created.

We aim to continue the edit-a-thons tradition, and intend on organizing more.

INALCO Presentation

The president of our organization/user group, Azniv Stepanian, had the opportunity to present our work and values to Armenian Studies students of the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO), a world-renowned linguistics university in Paris, France. Read about the presentation here.

Social Media and Outreach

Social Media

Our social media channels and newsletter recipients list intend on exponentially growing throughout 2022-2023.

Facebook

We launched our Facebook page on February 15 of 2021. On Facebook, we have:

More than 1.1K followers/likers;
2,900 reach;
28.8% of our likers on Facebook are men, 71.2% are women.

Twitter

Our Twitter page has helped us engage with Western Armenian and diaspora Armenian community members in a short and concise manner. Our Twitter page currently has a total of 410+ followers. Our followers include notable individuals.

Instagram

Our Instagram page has:

750+ total followers (doubled in a year);
64% of our followers are women, and 36% are men.

Our first email newsletter was sent on the 15th of January, 2021. As of April 2023, we have sent 145 newsletters every week, containing 3 different articles each, often related to weekly events. Only one of the three articles is about Armenian heritage and/or culture, as our goals include diversifying content in Armenian. The newsletters have exclusive promotional graphics prepared for them to spark curiosity among the recipient readers. Here are some facts:

Approximately 500+ individuals receive our weekly newsletter;
We’ve provided a total of 360+ exclusive promotional materials.

Notes

All of our social media pages do not use monetized promoting or sponsoring. All numbers aforementioned in this report are organic.

We have subscribed to Linktree, furthermore, our social media channels will be used to establish connections and collaborations with other Wikimedia Movement and Wikimedia Foundation affiliate organizations and user groups.

Media Outreach

The primary media outreach opportunity that we had in this period was an interview with Nor Haratch, the Armenian daily newspaper based in Paris, France. In December, the organization's president, Azniv Stepanian, had an interview that was later released to the public in February 2023. More information on that can be found here.