Dear Wikipedians from all over the world,
for 10 days now the arguably largest article writing contest has been taking place in Central and Eastern Europe - Wikimedia CEE Spring [1]. For 72 days Wikipedians from 29 communities [2] will be writing about the culture, history, important persons and much more about the region on their Wikipedias. The contest aims at closing content gaps about countries, regions [3] and languages [4] from the region. Each community created a list of at least 100 articles [5] which it would like to see written in all languages and all other communities are doing so with fervour! Communities as large communities as the Russian, Ukrainian and Polish ones, and as small as the Sakhan, Estonian and Macedonian ones, have joined. Highly motivated local organisers and guys with magical technical skills have emerged from all the communities and have made organising the contest an easy task.
At the moment of writing the Ukrainians are leading the pack when it comes to the highest amoung of created and significantly expanded articles [6] and most articles have been written from Hungary's lists [7]. Participants are gladly sharing their articles with their friends via a Facebook page [8]. Over 1000 articles from the lists and over 1400 in total have been created or significantly expanded during the first 10 days [6][7].
Some communities have special prizes aiming at closing the content gender gap, too. Most countries have put notable women in their wished topics. The project is funded by an international grant [9] which covers expenses for books and other source materials for writing articles on Wikipedia and its sister projects of up to 400 Euro per community.
Spread the word and write some articles about CEE!
Nikola Kalchev / User:Лорд Бъмбъри / Wikimedians of Bulgaria User Group On behalf of the international organising team
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Spring_2016 [2] We started with 21, but more and more are joining! [3] CEE politics is complicated [4] We claim the Esperanto language for ourselves [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Spring_2016/Article_Lists [6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:BaseBot/CEES/MMXVI/Wikis (not all Wikipedias included) [7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Spring_2016/Structure/Statisti... [8] https://www.facebook.com/WCEESpring/ [9] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Wikimedia_CEE/CEE_Spring