Crimean Tatars are the indigenous people of Ukraine. In 1944, they were deported from Crimea, their native land, by the Soviet authorities to the other part of the country – and were allowed to return only four decades later. During the last ten years of Russian occupation of Crimea many of them are again forced to live outside their home, and those remaining in occupied Crimea are under constant pressure. Crimean Tatar language and culture are in danger of extinction – higher education has not been held in the Crimean Tatar, but in Russian, so with time it became a language only for communicating with your elders, and at home. But in recent years, because of occupation, imprisonment of some prominent Crimean Tatars there, and now a full-fledged Russian invasion of Ukraine, more attention is paid to decolonization and rethinking of values not only for the Ukrainian language, but also for the Crimean Tatar language, as a language of minority, and thus it is finally gaining the deserved attention in Ukrainian society and on the state level. There is a demand for Crimean Tatar language courses, specialties devoted to Crimean Tatar culture are becoming popular, and the amount of quality Crimean Tatar literature is increasing. All this is also an act of support and solidarity with the people whose heritage is an integral part of Ukrainian history.
At the same time, few people know that the Crimean Tatar edition of the world’s most popular online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, has existed for 16 years, and even fewer people are involved in writing it. We want to change it.
Wikipedia is a shelter, haven for different languages and cultures, in particular for the Crimean Tatar. I can compare Wikipedia to the biblical Noah’s Ark, as here these languages and cultures have a chance to survive and live for the future generations. That’s why we want to popularize it in Ukraine and hold marathons on editing Crimean Tatar Wikipedia.
This year’s marathon is the second such online event named “Serbest Entsiklopediya” (“free encyclopedia” in Crimean Tatar) organized by Wikimedia Ukraine. It lasted from June 20 to August 5. The first one took place in the summer of 2021 in partnership with the Ministry for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine. Back then 15 participants created about 300 articles in the Crimean Tatar Wikipedia. The goal of the 2024 marathon remained unchanged: to fill the gaps in the Crimean Tatar Wikipedia with articles on the most important topics, as well as to contribute to the preservation of the language and the dissemination of free knowledge in the Crimean Tatar language — the more useful information there is available in the language, the more chances people will stumble across it while searching online, the more opportunities for them to join, and to contribute even more. More details about the goal and objectives can be found on the marathon page in Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar languages.
Despite the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine, the 2024 marathon turned out to be even more successful than the previous one: 14 users created 142 new articles and improved 375 existing articles. This year, in addition to a list of a 1000 topics that should be in all language editions of Wikipedia, there was also a list of 250 important Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian topics. As a result, most of the new articles are about the Crimean Tatars and Crimea and this indicates a growing interest in the culture of the Crimean Tatars.
The marathon was aimed primarily at high quality contributions of the participants, but even a small contribution is valued. Now one can read in good Crimean Tatar about the national ornament, Avdet (Crimean Tatar repatriation), rose confiture (a local delicacy), but even about electricity, wood, the city of Rome, etc. We were inspired by these articles so much that we even printed postcards about them!
During the marathon we tried to adhere to 10 important principles — follow them to organize a successful marathon:
- Communicate with local communities, speaking the target language
- Include as many native speakers as possible in the organizing committee
- Invest time in creating useful lists of articles
- Clearly outline the rules and put them on the marathon page
- Spread information on social networks and in media
- Conduct online and offline wikitrainings (check our webinar)
- Discuss all issues with the members of organizing committee
- Stay connected with your event participants and support them
- Assess intermediate results and discuss them
- Carefully evaluate each participant’s contribution and reward them with thanks and/or souvenirs
Some of the points mentioned above may be a challenge – it was difficult for us to find experts in the Crimean Tatar language interested in editing Wikipedia, for example. You might have your own challenges, depending on the context, and you might need more or less main principles, but we think that it is a good foundation for a successful project.
It is no coincidence that we put communication and cooperation with local communities at the beginning of the list. They would be the ones to speak the language and know cultural features well. They would be the most interested in improving Wikipedia in their language. Also they may have contacts of people who can also contribute to the event. This year, we organized a wikitraining at the Crimean Tatar Cultural Center in Lviv, the biggest city in the West of Ukraine, where a lot of Crimean Tatars moved after the Russian occupation of the Crimea. Some of the Crimean Tatars who participated later contributed to Crimean Tatar Wikipedia, in particular, an article both in Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar about their cultural center was created. And one of the participants created an article during the wikitraining itself!
The marathon also helped to fill in gaps about the Crimean Tatars and their culture in the Ukrainian-language edition of Wikipedia, as we had users who do not speak the Crimean Tatar language wanted to help popularize it. This also increased visibility of Crimean Tatar culture in Ukraine and improved Ukrainian Wikipedia. For example, a Ukrainian Wikipedia user Olena after participation in Lviv wikitraining created and/or improved 6 articles related to Crimean Tatars in Ukrainian. “I was amazed by the symbolism of the Crimean Tatar culture and their beautiful dances”, she said. So, editing Wikipedia also inspires people to learn about Crimean Tatars.
So, conducting such an event has large benefits, and we will continue to organize it in support of the Crimean Tatar Wikipedia – maybe even more often than before. But we really need more experts in the Crimean Tatar language, both on the jury and among Wikipedia users (and please contact us if you are the person we are looking for or spread the information if you know somebody who is!). It is also not always easy to convince people who speak the minority language to write articles on Wikipedia. But we try to motivate them to do this. In particular during our live wikitrainings we demonstrated to them that editing Wikipedia is not as difficult as they thought. In the future, we plan to attract and motivate more Crimean Tatar language teachers, as well as students of relevant specialties.
The first marathon in 2021 gave impetus to the development of the Crimean Tatar Wikipedia in general, the second contributed to the development of topics about Crimean Tatars. We are very excited about the future marathons and hope that they will inspire people not only to write Wikipedia, but also other wikiprojects in the Crimean Tatar language – there are only about 29 thousand articles now, and we need more to have a successful Wikipedia edition. We also hope that sharing our experience about organizing our marathons will be helpful to other people who are thinking about whether to do it in their own minority language or help someone to do it. Sometimes it is not only about preservation of a language. We want to help it thrive in the modern world, and thus it needs to have an online presence of its own.
- For context to those who want to understand about Ukrainian Wikipedia community and Wikimedia Ukraine’s work on decolonizing knowledge, and trying to “move a needle” on the Crimean Tatar language edition of Wikipedia, you can watch this short presentation at Wikimania 2023: Decolonizing knowledge: a perspective from the Ukrainian community
About the author: Mariana Senkiv — PhD, associate professor at the Lviv Polytechnic National University, Ukraine; member of Wikimedia Ukraine, active in the implementation of the Wikipedia educational program at her university. Member of the organizing committee of the marathon on Crimean Tatar Wikipedia 2024, participant of certified courses for studying the Crimean Tatar language
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