Katherine Maher: Other Wikimedia communities learn from Armenia’s experience

Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Katherine Maher said that other Wikimedia communities “are looking to Armenia as a leader in this space”.

Katherine Maher shared this thought in the exclusive interview to Mediamax.

“I have also learned about the work that the Armenian community is doing around in Wikicamps and Wikiclubs. I think it is entirely unique in the world, and I’m very excited to see that the other communities are looking to Armenia as a leader in this space and as a model to follow. Of course, it will always look a little different from country to country, but the idea and the inspiration comes from Armenia, and that’s a very powerful thing.

To learn more how that has worked and how the program has grown and internationalized and expanded to have created spaces for beginners, and really think about the experience of engaging in Wikimedia from being a very young student to an accomplished editor is very impressive,” she noted.

Katherine Maher was also impressed by another project, Central and Eastern European Spring (CEE Spring).

“This was an effort by a group of individuals from around the region to work with each other to incentivize the creation of articles about each other’s countries. So it was a common thing to look at Wikipedia in a different language and see that it documents your own culture and your own history very well and global culture very well. But historically, it might not have a great article about the history of the country next door to you. There has been effort this year for the first time for people from Poland, Serbia, Belarus, Armenia to look at how they can encourage and extend the amount of information that’s available in their own languages about their neighbors. To me that is both a very impressive and innovative project, but it also speaks that spirit of international collaboration that is so much at the heart of Wikimedia projects,” she stressed.

You can read the full interview with Katherine Maher here.