Akhaltsikhe WikiCamp 2025: Committed to maintaining Wikipedia’s quality

In recent years, several Wikicamps have been held in Georgia. The goal of the project remains the same — to develop and enrich Wikimedia’s Georgian projects with the help of students and teachers from various regions of Georgia.

For the past several years, we have been holding the WikiCamp twice a year — once for teachers and once for students. One of the key aspects for attracting and retaining new editors on Wikipedia is organizing WikiCamps. During each camp, between 16 and 20 teachers or students learn wiki-technology. To encourage teachers, we offer them the opportunity to open WikiClubs in their schools, involve students in the camps, and thereby contribute to the development of Wikipedia and the growth of its content.

After announcing the 2025 WikiCamp, we specially launched a two-week marathon in Wikipedia for WikiClubs — the “Rome Week.” Within the framework of the marathon, 297 articles were created, and winners were determined by the Club, which received a ticket to WikiCamp as a prize.

In 2025, the WikiCamp was held in Akhaltsikhe. The camp included students representing the WikiClubs of Marneuli, Surami, Arali, Khidistavi, Kaspi, Samtredia, Tbilisi, and Rustavi. In addition, we invited several students of the teachers who had participated in the teachers’ WikiCamp, as we plan to open new clubs in their schools in the future. In total, 18 students participated in the WikiCamp.

The students received daily training in three sessions on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata. The sessions were led by Wikimedia Georgia members Mehman Ibragimov and Jaba Labadze, and we also invited Mimoza Gholijashvili, head of the Khidistavi WikiClub, as well as Y. Caner Özyayıkçı, a representative of Wikimedia Türkiye.

An essential aspect of this WikiCamp was that the participants and trainers focused on working on the depth of Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s ‘depth’ refers to the depth of content editing, which indicates the quality of Wikipedia. It is one of the possible approximate indicators of the encyclopedia’s development.

Within the framework of the camp, the participants actively edited Wikipedia content, created articles, and added categories to Wikipedia pages. In doing so, they were actively involved in improving and developing the quality of the Georgian Wikipedia. In addition, the students added dozens of new items about notable people to Wikidata, a Wikimedia project that is a database.

In the end, for three training days, the students learned the principles of writing articles, as well as the principles of working with Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. In total, 168 articles were created, 1,880 articles were edited, and 163 new references were added to articles. Dozens of new media files were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. The information added by the students to Wikipedia exceeded 936,000 bytes in total.

Based on the results, it’s clear that the idea of WikiCamps has proven successful, and this practice will continue to be implemented by Wikimedia Georgia. The organization’s team is also working with other Wikimedia organizations to share its experience with them.