This year’s Wikimedia CEE Spring saw the introduction of a sub-contest named Quote me with the goal of adding quotations from prominent people, books, films and proverbs from the region of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to Wikiquote in the CEE languages as well as in the languages primarily spoken within communities in the closely associated adjacent regions (mostly the languages of Central Asia). It was the first time Wikimedia CEE Spring welcomed contributions from the Wikiquote communities, and so it has become the third Wikimedia project—after Wikipedia and Wikidata—in the focus of the regional campaign.
Wikimedia CEE Spring sub-contests
In order to encourage contributions on relevant topics as well as to secure balanced coverage of topics from the article lists prepared by the participating communities, the Wikimedia CEE Spring international team has been gradually introducing region-wide sub-contests. The main three sub-contests that have become integral part of Wikimedia CEE Spring are: CEE Women (since 2018) for writing Wikipedia articles about notable women from the region, CEE for Human Rights (since 2022) for writing Wikipedia articles on notable topics related to human rights and CEE Youth (since 2024) for writing Wikipedia articles on youth topics and about notable young people. In addition, a Hall of Fame was introduced in 2018 for all editors who have written Wikipedia articles about every single participating community in a given year.
Wikimedia CEE Spring is, however, not a writing contest that exclusively targets Wikipedia, and the idea of its expansion to the other Wikimedia projects has been brought up for consideration multiple times. In 2025, these considerations have eventually resulted in co-organising Coordinate Me, an international contest that aims to create or improve Wikidata items containing geodata, with a particular focus on the topics related to the CEE region. In 2026, Wikimedia CEE Spring has been further expanded to Wikiquote as a result of the introduction of Quote Me.
Unlike the local contests that attract participation from members of specific language communities, the sub-contests are open to all editors from the CEE region irrespective of whether their language community participates in the contest for the given year. The running period for all sub-contests is from 21 March to 31 May, and small prizes are awarded for the most prolific contributors in each of them.
The inaugural Quote Me in a nutshell
The first edition of Quote Me took place as part of Wikimedia CEE Spring 2026, and the primary goal was to encourage adding quotations from prominent people, books, films and proverbs from the CEE region to Wikiquote in the CEE languages as well as in the languages primarily spoken in the adjacent regions, such as Persian, Uzbek, Tajik, Karakalpak, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, Sakha and Tyvan. Each participant with at least 25 Wikiquote articles was eligible for a prize in the form of a voucher, and a total prize fund of €200 was reserved for the ten most prolific participants (€50 for 1st place, €40 for 2nd place, €30 for 3rd place, €20 for 4th place and €10 for 5th-10th place).
A total of 10 editors from four language communities—Uzbek, Armenian, Russian and Persian—wrote a total of 475 Wikiquote articles, and prizes were awarded to the top seven contributors who met the eligibility criteria for winning a prize. The contributions were thematically diverse, covering individuals of different nationalities and with different backgrounds. Notable people who got Wikiquote articles with their famous quotations include the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa, Emperor of Russia Nicholas II, Russian polymath Mikhail Lomonosov, Hungarian composers Franz Liszt and Béla Bartók, Romanian painter and sculptor Victor Brauner, Ukrainian chess players Vasyl Ivanchuk and Ruslan Ponomariov, philosopher and mystic George Gurdjieff and many more.
Opportunities, limitations and future plans
Following the successful inaugural edition, there are already plans to continue organising Quote Me in the future and popularise it to get more language communities involved. This could be efficiently achieved by instructing local coordinators to prepare a writing contest on Wikiquote alongside Wikipedia, which would result in defining specific rules within each participating community that would address the concerns raised this year regarding the cross-wiki evaluation of contributions. Nevertheless, a major limitation of the potential expansion of Quote Me is Wikiquote’s non-availability in all languages in the region, but this could also be an opportunity to work towards introducing the project in new languages. Finally, the integration of Wikiquote into Wikimedia CEE Spring through Quote Me could serve as a positive example for organisers of other similar writing contests in the Wikimedia movement.
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