Security topics available to the general public through Wikipedia articles

The interns talked with Nebojša Ratković, the manager of the educational program of Wikimedia Serbia, about the importance of accessible knowledge and information on the Internet through the online encyclopedia, and about creating and improving free content on Wikipedia.

“Wikimedia Serbia is an organization that deals with the dissemination of free and accessible knowledge through various educational activities, among other things. In that sense, cooperation with the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy is of great importance for achieving our goals, especially having in mind the specifics of the topics it deals with, the amount of credible literature it possesses, but also the necessity of their popularization and importance for informing the general public about security issues. Personally, I think that topics in the field of security are insufficiently represented on Wikipedia, which is why organizing workshops on editing Wikipedia and writing these articles by students will certainly help spread the available knowledge about them,” said Ratković.

BCSP is successfully organizing workshops with Wikimedia Serbia for the second year in a row.

“We have achieved good results so far, and I believe that will be the case in the coming years, especially having in mind the fact that we were motivated enough not to miss the opportunity to do this activities online this year, despite the circumstances in which we work and live,” Ratković added.

After the theoretical part of the workshop, the interns edited their texts through a practical workshop and through the examples learned how to publish them on Wikipedia. With the support of their mentors, the interns wrote articles in Serbian on the following topics: military exercises, hybrid threats, gender equality in the security sector, cyber security, face recognition technology, communal militia, community policing, transparency of the security sector, independent state bodies, radicalization and violent extremism, emergency situations and total defense.

Through posts on Wikipedia, these very important topics become more visible on the Internet and reliable content is available for use by future students, but also by the general public.

The workshop was held within the project “Empowering Youth to Promote Security Sector Reform”, which the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy is organizing with the support of the OSCE Mission to Serbia and the Government of Sweden.