Wikimania

User:Ovedc/Scholarship

< User:Ovedc

Involvement in home wiki or the broader Wikimedia movement

Tell us about your involvement in your home wiki or the broader Wikimedia movement. What have you built or contributed to in order to improve your wiki or community? Have you lead or organized any of these activities?

Online Activities:

Wikipedia

Active contributor to a Wikipedia. Please look at my Hebrew file for all of my contributions to the Israeli Wikipedia: my contributions page in the Hebrew Wikipedia.

  • Please look at my Global CrossActivity at: crossactivity.
  • Appreciated contributor to Hebrew Wikipedia: Editor for 11 years, WikiGnome more than 9 years, more than 115,000 edits, and ranks as number 6 among the most contributing Hebrew Wikipedians. Please look at my statistics page on Wikipedia: my statistics page in the Hebrew Wikipedia. In the last year made 20,000 edits, approximately.
  • Contributed Hundreds of new articles (100 in the last year), 38 of them are for Nobel Prize Winners. Improving thousands of articles.
  • Pages I have created got more then 300,000 PageViews at the last year, and Daily Average of nearly 900 per day, Please look at this Userviews Analysis
  • 5 years Administrator (since April 2013) and 8 years Patroller (since April 2010). Thousands of Administrator's activities (Block, protect, delete etc.). Among the first five of the 45 Admins (Admins). Please look at my statistics page on Wikipedia: my statistics page in the Hebrew Wikipedia. approximately 10,000 of Administrator's activities, in which 3,000 in the last year.
  • Contributor of more than 9,000 high quality images (1,000 at the last year), both to the Hebrew Wikipedia and Wikipedia Commons. Many of the photos added to articles. Some photos used by parties outside Wikipedia. One of my photos got 5th prize at the Israeli Wiki-Love-Monuments 2013!
  • I was the Leader-and-Coordinator of the Hebrew Orphanage WikiProject, for 3 years. This responsibility included collaboration with the Wikipedians community. More details at the answer for the next questions. Thousands of articles "adopted" by me.
  • Frequent participant in Notability discussions, improving dozens of articles, with collaboration with the Wikipedians community.
  • I proposed more than 200 Featured Pictures for the Hebrew Wikipedia main page (About 50 in the last year). That means, that every month for the lasts years, two or more of the Featured Pictures presented, were proposed by me.
  • One of the "Welcoming Team" for collaboration with new Wikipedians. - Make it easier for new editors to engage. Helping new wikipedians with the manners of Wikipedia. I am giving help for years, On-line and Off-line. Gave several hundreds of "Welcome" massages for new-comers (List of "Welcome" massages).
  • More than 7 thousands "Thank You" massages sent to colleague Wikipedians users. Please look list: Ovedc-Thanks.
  • Very good relations with other fellow wikipedians, in Israel and abroad (Not even once warned or blocked). Please look at my Rewards page on Wikipedia: my stars page in the Hebrew Wikipedia.
  • Made dozens of new wiki-template, improving the ability for editors to be more productive on-wiki.
  • Made dozens of new Wiki-categories.
  • Managed the Wiki-Project of Categorizing articles, which involved 30 Wikipedians that categorized more than 11,300 articles, at 2016 and 3,700 at 2017! Please look at Wiki-Project of Categorizing articles.
  • participating in WikiProjects, like: WWI 100 years, Asia month, 6 days war 50 years, etc.
  • Participating at lot of Wiki-Women activities, to improved gender diversity. Contributing to Women-in-red project. Participated in 3 Wiki-Women contests: in 2015, 3 in 2016 - one Excellence mention! and in 2017.

Wikidata

  • More than 260 new pages and more then 3,200 of WikiData contributes, most of them in the last year. (Please see WikiData contributes).

Wiktionary & WikiSource

  • Administrator in the Hebrew Wiktionary.
  • Wrote more than 20 Wiktionary articles. Have more than 1,700 edits (most of them in the last year). (Please look at Ovedc Wiktionary)
  • Participated in 3 Article Writing Contests.
  • Contributed more than 5 texts to WikiSource. (Please look at Ovedc WikiSource)

Commons

  • Contributor of more than 9,300 high quality images uploaded to Wikipedia Commons. (Please look at Ovedc commons)
  • 200 of the photos added to 300 articles. (Please look at Photo by Ovedc used in projects). Some photos used by parties outside Wikipedia.
  • Participant in Wikimedia organized events as a photographer contributing to Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) (Thousands of pictures, hundreds this year).
  • One of my photos got 5th prize at the Israeli Wiki-Love-Monuments 2013!
  • enriching my home wiki community with the views and news from Wikimedia conferences, including Wikimania: Show the Hebrew Community the new tools of Commons presented in Wikimania, and help them use it well.

Enrichment

  • I have the ability to share my experiences and information with the wider community.
  • I wrote several on-wiki reports, personal blog posts, and talks/presentations given about what I learned from many events, conferences, or discussions, as follows:

Offline Activities:

I have a lot of involvement in the Wikimedia Israeli Chapter.Please also look at my Hebrew file for all of my contributions to the Israeli Wikimedia Chapter: my contributions to the Israeli Wikimedia Chapter (WM-IL).

At the Israeli Wikimedia Chapter Team:

  • I am a member of the Israeli Wikimedia Association for 8 years. Participated in all the General Assembly meetings.
  • Chairman of the Audit committee of the Israeli Wikimedia Association for 7 years.
  • Participating regularly in the Chapter Board meetings.
  • Participating regularly in the Israeli Wikimedia Board Mailing List.
  • Collaboration with the CEO of Wikimedia Israel, Acting Advisor in accounting issues.
  • Presenting the Annual Audit Committee Report at the General Assembly, for the years: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 and will for 2017.

Volunteering at the Israeli Wikimedia Chapter:

  • Leader of the "Bringing back retired Wikipedians" team, which tries to contact well known retired wikipedians, that know the wiki-grammar, but quitted editing, and tries to get them back to editing. Until now, about 10 skilled editors returned, due to these actions. More details at the answer for the next questions.
  • Participating regularly in the Israeli Wikimedia meetings and events: twice each year (continuously from 2011, including 2017) for the Hebrew Wikipedia birthday and for the global Wikipedia birthday.
  • Participated as volunteer in more than 12 meetings, 3 of them in 2017.
  • Participated and volunteered in the Israeli Wikimedia Chapter Seminar for making the Mission, Vision and Strategy Plan for the Chapter
  • Participated and volunteered in the "Wikimedia 1,000 Miles" project: more than 20 tours (3 of them in 2017). I acted as manager for few tours. Encouraged people to join tours and contribute pictures to Commons. I personally added more than 9,300 high quality pictures for the Commons, many of them added to articles.
  • Participating (with my wife) at lot of Wiki-Women activities and meetings, to improved gender diversity.

Wikipedia Love Monuments

Wikipedia Education Program:

  • Lecturing at Wiki-Med (First academic course of Wikipedia in the world) to 40 medical students about editing in Wikipedia. Wiki-Med is a curriculum academic course, which every student had to write a medical article at Wikipedia, to get a score at this course.
  • Enriching my home wiki community: Lecturing to 50 Wiki-editors at the Annual Israeli Wikimedia Chapter Birthday Meeting 2013 about the Hebrew WikiProject Orphanage (activities to enrich the wikipedians knowledge)
  • Enriching my home wiki community: One of the Lecturing-to-Wiki-editors at Israeli Wikimedia Chapter (activities to enrich the wikipedians knowledge = organizing editing workshops), examples of subjects: Categories, Orphans, etc.
  • Enriching my home wiki community: Lecturing to Wiki-editors about FREE MASONS, Via Israeli Wikimedia activities to enrich the wikipedians knowledge. Increases skills of on-wiki contributors.
  • Participating at the Israel chapter's Wikipedia Academy Israel 2012, 2013 and 2014.
  • Motivating Wikipedians to volunteer to Wikimedia Chapter. I also motivated few family members and friends to join Wikipedia (Edited some new articles) and join Wikimedia (Participated with me in the Hong-Kong and Mexico Wikimanias).
  • Donating hundreds of hard-copy books to the Israel Wikimedia Chapter Library and to fellow Wikimedians, including the 30 hard-copy volumes of The Hebrew Encyclopedia!
  • Lecturing to FREE MASONS and Students about Wikipedia, Increasing awareness about the Wikimedia project.
  • In 2017 lectured twice to Students about Wikipedia. Mainly to improved the public perception of Wikimedia as a source of reliable information, and how to help.

Wikimania and global meetings:

  • Participated and volunteered in the organizing team of Wikimania 2011 at Haifa.
  • Participated and volunteered in the Wikimania 2013 at Hong Kong.
  • Participated and volunteered in the Wikimania 2015 at Mexico. Please look at my report to my fellow Wikipedians: My Wikimania 2015 report.
  • Participated in the Wikimedia Board Training Workshops 2014 at London: bringing the lessons learned to the Israeli Board. More details at the answer for the next questions.
  • Participated and volunteered in the Wikimania 2017 at Montreal. Please look at my report to my fellow Wikipedians: My Wikimania 2017 report.

Other Free-knowledge Non-wikimedia Activities:

  • Being head of the Publication committee of the Israeli ISACA Chapter, over 10 years. Spreading free educational articles about IT audit, control and governance.
  • Spreading free educational articles about Freemasonry at the web (Internet sites).
  • Helping improve the data at many internet free-knowledge international and Hebrew sites, like jdrf.org.il, Waze Street Map, rotter.net, isaca.org.il, maccabi4u.co.il and a lot more.
  • Voluntary Public Relations for both ISACA and JDRF Israeli chapters.
  • Very active at my society with a long list of volunteering for the community activities:
    • Member of the Students Council at my High School.
    • Volunteering at the BBYO youth movement, as a tutor for an orphan child.
    • Participating in a youth delegation from the Israeli Foreign Ministry – 3 weeks at North America.
    • Activist at the Tel-Aviv University Students Organization.
    • Several roles at the Israeli non-profit ISACA (14 years): Vice President, Treasurer, Member of the Board, Head of the Journal committee, Representative of the Israeli Chapter at the Toronto International ISACA Conference, editing COBIT books, lecturing at annual conferences, etc.
    • Member of the Israeli Juvenile Diabetes Association Board of Directors, Voluntary organizer of the Adult Diabetes Forum.
    • Spokesman for the annually money donation project, Lecturing for students about Juvenile Diabetes, etc.
    • Acting as Worshipful Master of a Freemasons Lodge and a high degree member of the Israeli Grand Lodge of Free Masons, promoter of several volunteering activities for the community.
    • Volunteering at a lower-poverty neighborhood – teaching, etc.

Something great that happened as a result of these activities

What’s something great that happened as a result of these activities? This could be described either quantitatively or qualitatively, and could impact either online or offline.

Beside the main effect of contributing to the richness of Wikipedia, and knowing that I helped spread knowledge (Lot of people know I am a Wikipedian and thanks me for it), I would like to write on a nice project I am leading: I am the Leader of the "Bringing back retired Wikipedians" team at the Israeli Chapter.

The team's main object is to try to contact well known retired-wikipedians, which already knows the wiki-grammar and how-to, but quitted editing for some time, for reasons not related to their wiki-activities.

The second object of the team is to convince the retired-wikipedians to get them back to start editing at Wikipedia again.

If they can't edit any more, we are trying to make them help the Wikimedia Israeli Chapter by volunteering in other ways, such as: lecturing to non-wikipedians about editing, lecturing to wikipedians for their knowledge enrichment, scanning free hard-copy materials for the Commons, etc.

The talks we made to this retired Wikipedians were very encouraging; most of them were happy to return to contribute.

This project started only few months ago, but has fantastic results: until now, about 10 skilled editors returned as wikipedians or Wikimedians, due to these actions.

Collaborations with other Wikimedians

What collaborations with other Wikimedians or Wikimedia organizations are you most proud of?

I was the Leader and Coordinator of the Hebrew on-line WikiProject Orphanage. This project involves great collaboration with the Wikipedians community:

  • 3 years of daily monitoring of new articles, by hand.
  • Marking thousands of orphanage articles.
  • Asking the fellow editors who created the orphanage articles to connect them to adopter's articles.
  • Finding adopters articles myself to hundreds of orphanage articles.
  • Explaining the WikiProject Orphanage to the Hebrew wikipedians ([1], [2])
  • Online explaining at all the Wikipedia's blogs (Village Pump, etc.), at wikipedians user pages, etc.
  • Offline explaining, at wikipedians meetings (Like Face-to-Face meetings). Lecturing to 50 Wiki-editors at the Annual Israeli Wikimedia Chapter Birthday Meeting about the Hebrew WikiProject Orphanage (activities to enrich the wikipedians knowledge)
  • Creator of lists, templates etc. for the WikiProject Orphanage.

My constant contribution to Wikipedia, and specifically to the Hebrew Wikipedia through the past years, made it better connected, by the help of the wikipedians community. I used my well connections with the fellow editors to make this project work!

Share my experiences

How do you usually share your experiences (or things you’ve learned) with your community? Examples of on-wiki summaries/reports, blog posts, meetup talks, etc. are welcome here.


I listed above the many ways of me sharing my experience to my fellow wikipedians, by lecturing, writing and so on.

I would like to emphasize in this section about one example:

I participated in the Wikimedia Board Training Workshop, held on March 2014 by Wikimedia UK at London. I was the Israeli Chapter representative and learned a lot of new tools, such as Board Administrator, Strategy, Mission and SWOT Building, Chapters dialogue, Burning Out, etc.

When I returned to Israel, I brought the lessons and tools I learned to the Israeli Board, on several occasions. By summarized handout to the Board and also by lecturing.

These lectures improve the way the Chapter dealt with the Strategy Process.

Particularly, I Participated and volunteered in the Israeli Wikimedia Chapter Seminar for making the Israeli Mission, Vision and Strategy Plan for the Chapter.


supporting underrepresented voices

Wikimania 2018's theme is focusing on supporting underrepresented voices and filling knowledge gaps in our movement. What are some communities, forms of knowledge, or subjects that are important to you and still missing from Wikimedia? How would you like to participate at Wikimania to help address this?

Wikimedia is a great movement, that tries to close all sorts of knowledge gaps: Gender, Nationality, Language and Geographical. As a Wikimedia voulonter. I try to do my best: I joined the Israeli Wiki-Women projects (see above for details), I helped the Ladino-Wikipedia for the Judaeo-Spanish language, and helped the LGBT Wiki-community.

I also helped the Age-Gap issue in Wikimedia for both ends:

  • I helped the new very-young comers understand the Wikipedia procedure. Helped the Israeli students Wiki-Summer-Camp.
  • I helped the After-Retirement senior contributors with managing technical problems.

But I think that the movement is ignoring major Age-group, contributors in the 45-55 years old segment. These editors, like me among them, can give the movement more then their experience and knowledge! They are also a group that can calm disputes, show example of good behavior and help new-comers.

As a participant in Wikimania 2018, I will try to state this idea to my fellow wikimedians. I could also enrich both the conference and the other participants, by bringing with me the versatility which I represent.

I will submit my presentation about handling Orphanage Entries at the Hebrew Wikipedia, for the Wikimania 2018, which will teach our friends from all around the world, tips and tricks from my long experience about this important aspect.

I am a little older than the average participants – Experienced in life, married with 3 children.

I have documented knowledge and expertise in several fields: Computers (both High School – 4 years, and military – 5 years), Certified Public Accountant (BA Tel-Aviv University), Certified Information Systems Auditor (11 years at an Israeli bank and 2 years at PwC), and Management (MBA Tel-Aviv University). I presented many lectures, including at international occasions. Very active at my society with a long list of volunteering for the community activities, mentioned above.

I speak excellent English and Hebrew, and fair Arabic.

Friendly, educated and eager of learning new subjects and share my knowledge and experience worldwide.

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