No Wiki Is an Island: Russian and Italian Editors Collaborate Across Borders

Isolated systems cannot exist; otherwise, a perpetual motion machine would be possible. For this reason, we, the North-West Russia Wiki-Historians User Group, actively seek cooperation within the Wikimedia movement. Following agreements reached during CEEM 2025, we held a joint contest with Italian Wikipedians.

The contest took place from 20 February to 20 March 2026 simultaneously in the Russian and Italian Wikipedias. Participants created new articles in Russian about Italy and Italians, and in Italian about Russians and Russia.

The fact that such contests are being held is of genuine interest, given the rapidly changing world, and the results of this edit-a-thon are undoubtedly encouraging. 31 participants in the Russian-language contest (including jury members participating outside the contest) created 312 articles. Participants wrote about works of classical painting and contemporary cinema, about landmarks and symbols of Italy, heroes of the Italian Resistance, and tough mafia figures. Finally, about athletes (and Italy is famous for more than just footballers). Based on the contest results, three winners were selected, although the work of other users is also clearly worthy of praise.

On the Italian side, 53 users took part in the contest, producing 526 articles. Italians had previously also organized an edit-a-thon with Iranians, as CEEM allows very different participants to meet and coordinate; the results of the current collaboration surpassed those of the Iranian collaboration in both the Russian and Italian Wikimedia communities, which may indicate both the growing skill of the organizers and a smaller language barrier. Italians noticeably more actively used pre-prepared wordlists compiled by the organizers. We were particularly pleased with articles about such tasty foods as vinеgret or Leningrad cake and about such charming animals as Daurian hedgehog. However, we were somewhat surprised by the lack of interest in music. 7 winners of the contest in the Italian Wikipedia receive books related to Russia as prizes.

The “Italian edit-a-thon”, following the Iranian one, allows us to hope that such “country studies” marathons will not become rare and will be held more often in the Russian section, covering new topics.

In co-autorship with Mark Ekimov