Edit Wikipedia's 1989 pages and win a prize!

Blog by Àlex Hinojo, Europeana Consultant.

This year, Europeana launched a project called 'Europeana 1989', asking people to share their personal experiences of 1989. The goal is to create a digital archive of first-hand accounts of the fall of the Iron Curtain and other revolutionary events of 1989 like the Baltic Way.

The Baltic Way - one of the events being documented by Europeana 1989 - CC-BY-SA

To complement this work, we now present the first Wikipedia 1989 Online challenge! Partcipants are invited to improve the Wikipedia articles in their own languages that are related to the European Revolutions of 1989. The challenge organisers have provided a short list of topics that may be improved or translated.

A Wikipedia page on the Berlin Wall - just one of the pages that could be updated as part of the challenge.

During the editing process, Wikipedians can re-use the many fantastic pictures that have been gathered so far by the Europeana 1989 project and its roadshows. These images can now be used in as many articles (and their various language versions) as possible, making sure that Europe's common history is well presented on the fifth-most-visited website in the world.

Wikipedia editors will be given points for the expansion, translation or creation of one of the articles in the topics list, and for the addition of images to the articles. The person with the most points at the end of the challenge will receive a special related prize.

Accept the challenge and register here. The contest starts on 1 October and closes on 30 December.