Good day everyone.
I’m Nikolai Bulykin, the co-founder and organizer of North-West Russia Wiki-Historians User group. You may have heard about us in connection with the previous CEE Meeting in Tbilisi. For those who haven’t - we’re thematic user group focused on the topics of history, culture, nature and geography of North-West Russia that can be simply described as «Saint Petersburg and its near and far surroundings». The affiliate was created in 2019 and we’ve managed pretty descent level of activity, at least it’s more than we’ve expected at the beginning. Also, as far as I know, we’re remaining the last active Russian-language Wikimedia affiliate in Russia while others are closed (Wikimedia RU) or just dropped their activities almost to zero. There is a bit of Tatar activity in sight, tho.
We started this affiliate on the idea to unite all the editors who works on the similar topics and organize them, because we believe that 15 organized Wikimedians can do more than 90 un-organized ones. Being honest, the idea of this group was there long before my debut in the community and, maybe, even before my first edit. As an affiliate, we managed to get assistance from the Foundation that gave us plenty of experience and insights. We were happy to share them, but then COVID happened and all international relations in Wikimedia have shrinked to 50-70-person Zoom calls that didn’t give us such opportunity. Sad but ok, that was the circumstances and we still managed to maintain high level of activity both offline and on-wiki.
When the COVID have ended we had a new treat — you all know what Russian government did (and still do) and that have closed the barely opened gates of financial aid for us. Some of us had to flee the country and others passed the opportunity to visit CEEM in North Macedonia because of travel safety concerns and suddenly appeared visas. And that also were the circumstances.
In 2023 we were hit by bad news — we were not eligible for a scholarship to send delegates to CEEM in Tbilisi. The reason provided by Mehman Ibragimov was that we’re not a language or a country community and we didn’t participate in CEE Spring (although we’ve added our articles lists to the contest). But with the help of some other Russian Wikimedians, mostly Anastasiya Lvova (who later joined us) we’ve presented the poster that described ourselves and our work. We thought it would be easier in the next year and while we consider 2023 situation as wrongful, we learnt our lesson on the «new rules». So in 2024, after the closing of Wikimedia RU Anastasiya have convinced us to lead CEE Spring in Russian Wikipedia. But to our surprise, we weren’t even listed in 2024 CEEM affiliates and communities list. After a bit more than a week we received an answer that we’re not considered as a CEE Affiliate.
Representatives of the Foundation claim that local communities know better, so why does the CEE community knows that we are part of it, while the people making decisions about scholarships for CEE events don't know this and make references in their replies about reasons not to invite us on a page that anyone can edit, seemingly with little regulation?
If equity is among the values of the Foundation, its plans, and Wikimedia community as a whole, why are special rules introduced for us regarding preference for the language community, even though we meet all the criteria (reports, activity)? And should we still do this «representative work» if we're still considered as outsiders?
Links: Our page — https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/North-West_Russia_Wiki-Historians_User_Group... Our annual reports — https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/North-West_Russia_Wiki-Historians_User_Group... Our activity page — https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/North-West_Russia_Wiki-Historians_User_Group... Our poster at CEEM-2023 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NWR-Hist-Poster_2023_curves.pdf -- Nikolai Bulykin (User:Красный).
Written by myself, discussed by Organizing committee of North-West Russia Wiki-Historians: Ekaterina Borisova (User:Екатерина Борисова), Paul Kaganer (User:Kaganer), Anastasiya Lvova (User:Lvova).