Wikimedians of Latvia User Group/2015

This is a report for activities performed by Wikimedians of Latvia User Group in 2015.

Main milestones

January 5: submitted application for creating new user group.
March 5: was recognized as a user group for a one-year renewable period.

Wikipedian meetings

During 2015 there were arranged 8 meetings involving local and visiting foreign (Estonia and Ukraine) wikipedians
Additionally there were two wikiexpeditions covering streets of Riga and Wiki Loves Monuments in Jelgava Municipality

Vikimaratons: Partnership with Norvik Banka

One on bigger projects was collaboration with Norvik Banka, called Latvijas Vikipēdijas maratons (Wiki marathon). Several other partneres were also included: University of Latvia, Latvijas Radio 5, Delfi (news portal), Valsts valodas centrs (state language agency), draugiem.lv ("Latvian Facebook"). Main activities of project were:

Article contest with attractive prizes (tablets and phones from Samsung), no set topic. All articles created in 6 month time frame were valid for contest. Impact of the contest was not measurable.
Thematic article subcontests with special prizes from other partners. Subcontests were limited to 1-2 weeks.
Various PR activities were performed, including contest opening ceremony, celebrities encouraging people to contribute to Wikipedia, a tram covered with campaign's advertisement and featured free Wi-Fi (first in Riga public transit).
However, final awards ceremony was delayed and has no set date yet.
Norvik Banka decided to partly sponsor our Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest.

Education program

Course "Information technologies in education" at University of Latvia, one public lecture (September 9), students needed to create two articles as course assignment, taught by Viesturs Vēzis
April 20, public lecture at University of Latvia, course "Social media and digital culture", taught by Līva Brice

Regional cooperation

Latvia was one of countries from CEE region which participated in international article writing contest Wikimedia CEE Spring. The contest started on March 21 and completed on May 31st. As a result there were 310 new articles created by 12 users. There were no prizes on local level and none of the users accepted international prize, CEE WikiCamp in Macedonia.
4 users accepted 100wikidays article writing challenge, 2 of them successfully completed it
2 members participated in Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015 (10–13 September 2015)
Contributing to the Facebook group Central Eastern European Wikimedia Community
Meeting with Estonian wikipedians for discussion about their advances in push for FoP in Estonia, sharing experience.
Signed Statement of Intent of the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU
Article contest about Tartu University (Estonia) and prizes provided by Wikimedia Eesti. At the same time there was similar contest held in Estonian Wikipedia. There were 37 articles created during the three weeks of contest.

Wiki Loves Monuments

In 2015, for the first time, Latvian wiki community took part in Wiki Loves Monuments (initiated 2011 in the Netherlands). With numerous other "firsts" it was also the first time Latvian community applied for PEG. Grant was given, executed and report has been accepted. Additionally to funds received from WMF grant, we convinced our partner Norvik Banka to sponsor some prizes and awards ceremony. Also two persons from Norvik banka and two persons from State Inspection for Heritage Protection were members of jury.

With 66 users participating and 3537 photos uploaded the competition was considered a success. Contest was organised by 2 users from user group.

Competition was mentioned in five media: diena.lv, tvnet.lv, vesti.lv, kaskur.lv, travelnews.lv and six regional tourist informational centers websites.

Participation in regional and global Wikimedia events

Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2014, Kiev, Ukraine (1 participant: Papuass), this was event that kickstarted the user group.
10-13 September 2015: Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015, Voore, Estonia – (2 participants: Papuass, Feens)

Outreach

Kept spreading message about Freedom of Panorama and our signature gathering initiative which would be submitted to national parliament when 10000 votes have been gathered. We used social media and Central notice banner when there were no other activities. Right now over 2000 signatures have been gathered.

Media mentions

During the year Latvian Wikipedia got more media mentions than all previous years combined. Main reasons for this were cooperation with Norvik Banka and Wiki Loves Monuments contest. Among them were four interviews in national radio. A radio and TV interview followed in January of 2016.

Social networks

Twitter has been main means of spreading information about groups activities and receiving some feedback.
Facebook account has been set up recently but has limited coverage and mostly just duplicates Twitter content.

AffCom Resolutions

Affiliate Recognition - March 2015
2016 Renewal - May 2016