Central Asian Community Members: Experiences and Highlights from the CEE Meeting 2024

This year the CEE Meeting regional conference was larger than ever. Among 195 participants, there were many representatives of the Central Asian communities, including Kazakh, Karakalpak, Kyrgyz, Tajik and Uzbek language projects. We asked some of them what they took home from the conference and what their personal highlights were from this event.

Mustafaalmas

“I am from Kazakhstan and representing the Russian language community.  It was my first experience. It was absolutely great. I especially appreciate meeting colleagues from other Central Asian countries. I liked the session about using AI in the projects. I guess it may become a challenge and an opportunity for the community at the same time.”

Mamatkazy

“I am from the Kyrgyz Wikipedia language community. I mostly translate articles from Russian to Kyrgyz, and this year I was in the organizing team of the Wiki Loves Earth 2024 in Kyrgyzstan. As a civic activist, I translate articles on stereotyped topics into Kyrgyz, so that accurate and reliable knowledge becomes accessible to Kyrgyz-speaking people.

The opportunity to participate in this meeting, despite being a newbie to the Wikimedia movement, gave me the motivation to be more active. I’m very grateful that this meeting connected me with the global Wikimedia family and made me feel like a part of it. 

One of the most interesting sessions for me was the results of a study conducted by the participants from Poland “Youth – the end or the future of Wikimedia?”. The topic was why young people do not read or edit Wikipedia. Based on this, the Polish participants shared how they attract and engage young people. 

Darafsh

“I am part of the Tajik Wikimedians User Group and edit Wikimedia projects under user: Darafsh. This was my second time attending the CEE Meeting. The learning day, conducted by Asaf Bartov, was especially informative and useful for me. I gained valuable insights into capacity building and learned effective ways to facilitate discussions and meetings within our user group.

One key takeaway I’d like to share is the importance of patience in building a sustainable community. For small communities, such as the Tajik Wikimedians User Group, it’s crucial to spend time with each member, help them through challenges, gradually give them responsibilities, and guide them. This approach fosters a more sustainable and effective community.”

Muzaffar Turgunov

“I am a member of the Kazakh and the Uzbek Wikipedia groups. I have been editing for more than 2 years. I started first with the Uzbek Wikipedia. Now I write articles in both languages. My favourite subjects are medicine, politics and history.

At the CEE Meeting 2024, I had the opportunity to meet different people and learn new ideas. This is my first international conference. As for what I learned in this conference, it is mainly about the need to act in line with the times, the development of Wikipedia in the era of artificial intelligence, engaging new participants, creating and fostering Wikimedia communities, running a WikiClub in cooperation with each other, organizing edit-a-thons and competitions.”

Nataev

“It just so happened that I celebrated 15 years of being a Wikimedian during the conference in Istanbul. This was my second CEE meeting, and I absolutely loved it! Everything, from the program to the delicious food, was fantastic. I reconnected with old Wikimedia friends and met new fellow Wikimedians. Importantly, we held the first-ever meeting of representatives from the Karakalpak, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, and Uzbek communities, where we exchanged ideas about learning from the CEE community and applying those lessons to foster regional cooperation in Central Asia.

I was glad to learn about both the dangers and opportunities that AI presents for wiki projects. My main takeaway is that AI is a double-edged sword: while we can harness it to accomplish many useful tasks, we must also stay vigilant about its potential to cause harm.

I really enjoyed the group facilitation session led by Asaf Bartov during the Learning Day, which took place before the main conference. The skills I learned will be useful not only for online and offline wiki activities but also for my professional career. I also found the AI workshop organized by John Cummings quite interesting. I also highly recommend checking out the recording of Marios Magioladitis’ session on AutoWikiBrowser, which is a tool that makes boring or repetitive editing tasks easier.

During the conference, Casual, a fellow Uzbek Wikimedian, and I presented on WikiStipendiya, a multi-year project led by the Uzbek Language User Group in partnership with the Youth Affairs Agency of Uzbekistan. We also discussed the challenges that a specific application of AI, namely, machine translation has created on the Uzbek Wikipedia, as well as how we have been addressing this issue. We greatly appreciate the feedback we received from those who attended our session, and we returned from the conference feeling even more motivated and energized to continue our important cleanup work.

For the future, I would love to see even more sessions on supporting and learning from small communities, as there are still quite a few of them in the CEE and CA region.”