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/en
Our annual reports —
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/North-West_Russia_Wiki-Historians_User_Group/Annual_reports/en
Our activity page —
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/North-West_Russia_Wiki-Historians_User_Group/Events/en
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).
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