On the occasion of International Roma Day, Wikimedia Serbia organized the third global edit-a-thon where Wikipedia volunteers around the world wrote and improved articles on Roma people and their history and culture. This year’s edit-a-thon was supported by Shared Knowledge, GLAM Macedonia, Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group, Wikimedia España, Wikimedia Community User Group Greece, Wikimedians of Slovakia and Slovak Romani Wikipedia Community, WikiDonne, Wikimedians of Republic of Srpska and Wikimedians of Erzya language User Group. The goal of this campaign is to fight prejudice and discrimination against Roma people by spreading knowledge on Wikipedia and other Wiki projects.
Preparations
Following the example of previous years, a page was created on Meta with a table containing a list of articles showing whether they exist in the mentioned language edition of Wikipedia or not. This system also allows participants to work on translating articles if sources and literature on a given item do not exist in their language. A lot of time has been invested in inviting Wikimedia affiliates and communities to join and support this event. We were primarily focused on countries and regions that have a significant Roma minority. Fortunately the response was good and we tried to motivate our partners to find their local Roma organizations and organize a Wikipedia editing workshop for them.
Results
The edit-a-thon lasted from April 1 to April 8 which is the International Roma Day. This year, we broke the record again and 67 participants wrote a total of 279 new articles, while 4 articles were improved. Balkan communities have once again shown that in this part of the world, the visibility of knowledge related to minority and marginalized groups is of great importance. Most of the articles were written on Macedonian Wikipedia, followed by Serbian, Albanian and Greek Wikipedia.
At the event organized by the GLAM Macedonia, 27 participants wrote 128 articles in just one day. On the occasion of this extraordinary result, we asked Nataša Nedanoska from GLAM Macedonia what this event represents for them:
As you know, we are always pleased to support this kind of activity and we are glad to have such a high level of cooperation.
This edit-a-thon has raised great interest, to our satisfaction, which means that we are committed to the inclusion of minorities, promoting multiethnic values, getting to know and teaching the importance of notable people from smaller ethnic communities. This leads to improved perception and visibility of the contributions of the Roma community to the social and cultural life of North Macedonia.
Speaking of great results, we owe a special thanks to the user Gikü, who improved 119 items on Wikidata during the edit-a-thon. The final results can be viewed on this link.
Starting from last year, articles on Roma people and their culture became an integral part of the Wikimedia CEE Spring event, so interested editors from Central and Eastern Europe can contribute to this topic and participate in their local competitions until May 31st. As always, we are inviting you all to write articles on Wikipedia on the topic of any minority or marginalized group of people in order to reduce the existing knowledge gap.
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