Thesswiki

Thesswiki project is an original crowdsourcing action which aims at digitising the history and culture of the city of Thessaloniki by the citizens themselves through the global electronic encyclopedia Wikipedia. The action was organised by the Municipality of Thessaloniki and was part of the 50^th Demetria festival. It was coordinated by PostScriptum, as part of its services for the promotion of cultural heritage institutions and organisations, in cooperation with the GFOSS and the Wikimedia Community User Group Greece.

The project had as its starting point the use and reuse of open content derived from the museums, libraries and archives of Thessaloniki in order to cover remarkable sites, historical events, monuments, people and artists in as many languages ​​as possible. The action began in April and continues till today to support the enrichment of Wikipedia with entries about the history and culture Thessaloniki.

The main goal is to mobilize the Thessalonians of the World to write articles in Wikipedia on the history and culture of the city, which were integrated into the urban fabric by creating and placing QR codes in selected locations. Through QR codes guests will have the opportunity to receive information on their mobile in the location they are, utilizing open data and the platform of Wikipedia.

The project has completed four training sessions of writing articles in Wikipedia and an Editathon, with the participation of over a hundred people (members of museums and institutions, Wikipedians and many volunteers). Furthermore, ten educational webinars, which explain step-by-step the writing process, are available to the public, and can be found here, while there was constant communication and information of participants via e-mail.

The festive action of Thesswiki took place in Thessaloniki on 26^th and 27^th of September. It was including the Editathon, in which we had the honor to host Wikipedians not only from Greece but also from abroad, who were interested and supported the action, tours to selected museums and placing of the QR codes in the following organisations: Museum of Byzantine Culture, Thessaloniki City Hall, Museum of the Macedonian Struggle, Museum of Photography, Royal Theatre (NTNG) and State Museum of Contemporary Art.

The results were very encouraging as the number of new and edited articles has exceeded 100 in 8 languages. Moreover, more than 100 images were uploaded in Wikimedia Commons, which are now available to Wikipedians around the world and the online public for reuse, opening simultaneously the doors of Thessaloniki to the world.

Ambition of all of us is to continue this project over time with additional actions and to contribute to the qualitative and quantitative enrichment of Wikipedia articles, to further raise public awareness and to expand the Greek community of Wikipedians while highlighting the history and culture of Thessaloniki.

For exclusive content and updates regarding Thesswiki project visit its website and make a contribution to our Thesswiki routes.