Every year Wikimedia Ukraine uses Ukrainian Wikipedia’s birthday on January 30th as an opportunity to organize Wikimarathon, a campaign that aims to recruit as many new volunteers as possible to Wikipedia with an online marathon and a series of offline events.
Wikimarathon 2024 took place from January 26 to February 4 in Ukraine and around the world. These 10 days were incredible! We worked together to create history in Ukrainian Wikipedia and collectively added many useful articles, making Wikipedia even more accessible and informative for everyone.
Key achievements of Wikimarathon 2024:
- 1200+ new articles
- 365 participants, including 108 newcomers
- 36 events in Ukraine
- 11 events in other European countries
- 900+ participants in offline events
- 3 webinars
365 participants, including 108 newcomers, took part in the Wikimarathon. They created 1200 articles on various topics including geography, history, chemistry, literature, arts, cinema, sports, and others. All articles are very diverse because everyone could choose the topic that interests them and contribute it to the Ukrainian Wikipedia.
Svitlana Hutsuliak from the Ivano-Frankivsk region says: “Our participants were generally surprised that they could write articles on Wikipedia themselves, they did not know this. One of the participants was interested in adding an article about our village Kosmach, as he is interested in history and has a lot of materials about the history of the village, the church, has a lot of photos of our church and photos of different parts of the village, in particular from a bird’s eye view”.
During this Wikimarathon, a whole series of articles was created dedicated to heraldry, explaining the meaning of different symbols on coats of arms, such as trees. There was also a series of articles dedicated to desserts, such as Black Forest Cake and Maria Biscuits, the history of which turned out to be much more interesting than it seems. And a series of articles about various stadiums around the world, such as Charles Abela (Malta) and Ob Jezeru (Slovenia).
Our community organized 36 events in 17 regions of Ukraine and 11 events in 5 European countries. More than 900 people participated!
Wikimarathon in Khmelnytskyi region, Vinnytsia region and Zaandam, the Netherlands.
Olga Loboda from the Sumy region, which is close to Russia and frequently suffers from Russian rocket attacks, describes how they held Wikimarathon this year: “For the seventh year in a row, we are holding the Wikimarathon in the city of Khmeliv. During the Wikimarathon event for high school students, there was one air raid alarm. It helped a lot that a large part of the text preparation had already been done. But on January 30th, when the adults were working on creating articles, there were two air alarms and almost everyone was finishing the articles at home”.
For online participants, three webinars were held during the Wikimarathon, which are available on our YouTube channel.
Let’s also acknowledge our patrollers who played a significant role in maintaining the quality and reliability of information in new articles. We asked experienced volunteers to check every article created by newcomers during Wikimarathon and offer feedback as needed. NN people joined this program and checked NN articles.
We sincerely thank everyone who participated in Wikimarathon 2024 and joined our community. Your contribution has improved the quality and accessibility of information in Ukrainian Wikipedia for all users.
- Wikimarathon 2024 page: https://w.wiki/8ofZ
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