Our baby is 3!

Author: Irina Safaryan, Lilit Tarkhanyan, Dato Abuladze (Wikimedia Armenia)

Summary: Stepanakert WikiClub has recently celebrated its anniversary. The story tells about WikiClub foundation and development.

I’m Irina Safaryan - the coordinator of Stepanakert WikiClub, one of the WikiClubs in the Republic of Artsakh. It’s already 3 years since I have entered the room and started a job which would become a part of my life if not all my life.

Our WikiClub was established on October 15, 2015. It took enough time to spread the idea and to explain the importance of Wikipedia in our society. And the most difficult thing was to make people understand why one should edit it as a volunteer. It wasn’t easy, but it was worth the efforts as now we have our office which is called WikiClub. There are 3 WikiClubs in Artsakh which have 300 clubbers, out of which 200 are residents of Stepanakaert WikiClub.

During these 3 years over 1500 articles have been created or improved in Armenian Wikipedia, part of them about Artsakh. Around 30-40 wikipedians attend our WikiClub every week.

One of our most active editors - Vadim Abrahamyan has been an award-winner of the Summer WikiCamps twice. We have carried out dozens of interesting meetings with public workers, world champions, war veterans, Artsakh Ombudsman, and many others.

And finally our last achievement was Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town, South Africa. I participated in the conference as a coordinator of our WikiClub. It was a great chance to meet wikipedians from all over the world, as well as to meet the founder of Wikipedia - Jimmy Wales and to have lightning talk about Stepanakert WikiClub.

Stepanakert WikiClub is already 3 years old. It’s a baby who can now stand, talk, but still has a lot to learn to make more confident steps in a big WikiWorld.

Tags:WikiClubs in Armenia, Armenian Wikipedia, Stepanakert WikiClub