Education/News/April 2020/Wikimedia Serbia was organized action on improving students assignments on Wikipedia

Wikimedia Serbia was organized action on improving students assignments on Wikipedia

Author: Nebojša Ratković

Summary: The first action of improving students’ assignments on Serbian Wikipedia ran from March 20th to April 9th, 2020. The action was launched to improve the content on this Wikipedia, which meant improving student assignments that were written in bad style, reducing the number of unverified and messy assignments written within the Education Program of Wikimedia Serbia.

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  WEP in Primary School Jovan Sterija Popović in Belgrade
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  WMRS Educational program, Ninth Gymnasium

The first action of improving students’ assignments on Serbian Wikipedia ran from March 20th to April 9th, 2020. The action was launched to improve the content on this Wikipedia, which meant improving student assignments that were written in bad style, reducing the number of unverified and messy assignments written within the Education Program of Wikimedia Serbia.

A total of 18 users participated in the action and 94 articles were edited. The greatest contribution was made by the user Acaalexac who won 13 points. He is followed by the user Marina Simic who won 12.5 points. The real success of the action is reflected in the fact that never before similar actions were taken. It is planned that similar actions will be organized in the future.

"Wikipedia is every day richer for many interesting articles and photos. Students’ assignments are very much needed by Wikipedia because they are mostly written by students who are well versed in a particular topic. Wikipedians who have experience on Wikipedia are here to help with the editing articles so that student assignments can fit into the over 630,000 other articles that our Wikipedia currently has. This is a very important thing because these articles are interesting but also relevant to our project. While editing the articles, I didn't notice any major mistakes, most of them concerns encyclopedic style (pictures, bold text, wiki links ...). What I liked the most was that while I was editing the articles, I learned a lot of things I didn't know before", said Acaalexaca.

"We came up with the idea for organized this action by following discussions led by editors on Wikipedia. During one of them it was suggested to organize an action of this type. Listening to the community's suggestions and understanding the issues associated with the editing not-so-good articles by the participants in the Education Program, we felt that it was necessary to implement an action that would contribute to the improvement of those articles", said Nebojša Ratković, Education Program Manager of Wikimedia Serbia. He also mentioned that similar problems exist in other Wikipedias as well and that in the spirit of collaborative work and collaboration on which all Wiki projects are based, we need to work together to help new editors of Wikipedia to learn how to edit it properly. "At a time when Wikipedia has become a worldwide phenomenon and we are all globally looking for the ways to implement it more comprehensively in various parts of life, Wikimedia Serbia can proudly say that it has one of the oldest Educational Program in the world. I think it is very important that we take advantage of this fact, as well as that Wikipedia has found its way among school and university classrooms across Serbia, to encourage those who have shown a good will to use Wikipedia and new technologies in education. We may not always get the best results, but they certainly will not be achievable without the teamwork, encouragement of new editors and the support that can be provided by experienced Wikipedia editors”, concluded Nebojša Ratković.

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