Grants:Project/Rapid/Art+Feminism 2020 Wiki Editoras Lx/Report

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Report accepted
This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2019-20 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.
  • To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/Art+Feminism 2020 Wiki Editoras Lx.
  • You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
  • You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals[edit]

Overall, we are very happy with how the project went, and below we address goals individually:

  1. Recruit new editors particularly cis and trans women and gender non-conforming individuals (underrepresented in Wikipedia), engaging them to join Wiki Editoras Lx

    In this edit-a-thon, and according to the registration form, we had the participation of cis women (most of the participants) and gender non-conforming individuals. After the event, some of them continued to edit individually or during the online sessions that we have already organized (due to the COVID19 pandemic, meetings have been taking place via skype or other similar platforms). In addition, they asked to be added to our Whatsapp group - that they have been using to ask for support on Wikipedia edition, as well as our Facebook page, promoting, for example, our online sessions

  2. Increase skills for existing editors and offer basic skills training for new editors.

    In this edit-a-thon we had participants who had already edited in Wikipedia (at least 2) and the remaining participants had no editing experience.

    The editing rules on Wikipedia were shared with participants, as well as more practical tools: how to create the user on Wikipedia; how to prepare an article on etherpad; how to use the "testing" functionality on Wikipedia; insertion of citations, hyperlinks and categories; creation of paragraphs and text formatting rules; creating new articles and editing existing articles. Some participants also learned how the Wikipedia translation tool works, as well as how to create biographical files or upload photos to the Wikimedia Commons. Some of the more experienced editors had the chance to learn about creating wikidata items and to link them with the corresponding wikipedia page.

    One of the new editor’s working pairs had trouble while trying to publish the article they had been working on (Jota Mombaça’s article). Wikipedia error message linked their action to vandalism with no apparent reason. This represented an opportunity for experienced editors and co-organizers of the event to deal with a new challenging situation. We tried everything together with instructor, and even though we could not publish it that day, we later worked with one of them during an online session and were finally successful.

  3. Collectively add or improve content on women, BIPOC, queer, non-binary, and immigrant art and artists.

    Diversity is the adjective that marked this edit-a-thon. We edited about black, indigenous and immigrant artivists, queer, cis and non-binary gender artivists, young and elderly women:

  4. Integrate this editathon in Lisbon's feminist agenda in the context of the celebration of International Women’s Day.

    WikiEditorasLx signed the manifesto Juntas somos mais fortes! organized by 8 de Março. We were interviewed by the daily newspaper "Público" since we were organizing an Art+Feminism editathon, in the context of Women's month. The article covered also the A+F editathon in Porto and was published under the title Porque a Wikipédia precisa de mulheres, há uma maratona de edição no Porto.

    As a side outcome of the event communication, the group was integrated in the list of organization Feminista.pt, a website that promotes the dissemination of feminist digital communications in Portugal, improving the visibility of these kind of events at the national level and documenting the feminist movement through an digital database.

  5. Serve as a community hub for women to meet and celebrate March 08th; we will edit Wikipedia together during the day and go to the march in the evening.

    After the edit-a-thon, 9 of the participants proceeded to the Women’s March organized by Rede 8 de Março, a coalition of several feminist, anti-racist organizations as well as organizations that fight for LGBT, migrant and precarious workers’ rights.

Outcome[edit]

Target outcome Achieved outcome Explanation
Number of events: 1 1 event As we had proposed, we organized a single editathon on International Women's Day (Sunday, March 8, 2020). The event took place at the Penhasco Arte Cooperativa between 9:00 and 4:00 PM. At 4:00 PM we joined the "Manifestação - Greve Internacional Feminista"(International Women’s Strike) organized by Rede 8 de Março [1]
Number of participants: maximum of 25 seating participants + 3 organizers/facilitators + 1 main facilitator + 2 people from the venue (childcare/food services) = 31 Number of participants: 14 participants + 3 co-organizers/facilitators/editors + 1 main facilitator/editor + 1 curatorial specialist who also edited + 2 people from the venue (childcare/food services) + 1 journalist + 2 photographer/filmmaker = 24 It’s true that we were a nice group of people in the event (around 24 people), but we would like to mention that even though the edit-a-thon was fully booked (and confirmation and reminder emails were sent to participants), around 10 people did not show up.
Number of new editors: 20 people 13 new editors (during event) + 5 (during an online editing session after event, when we still worked on the artivists’ lists prepared for the event)= 18 We would like to mention that five women who learned about the edit-a-thon late/could not attend it joined us in our first regular group meeting after the event, becoming new editors while publishing some of the remaining artivists’ articles from the editathon’s curated list.
Number of articles created or improved: 25 Articles Created: 26

Articles Edited: 114

26 articles were created and 114 edited during our activity tracking period, 8-30th March.
Contexts of articles' creation:
-during the editathon
-during our first online group meeting (1 week after editathon)
-individually by participants after both events
-articles were also translated from portuguese into spanish by Wikiesfera editors, our main facilitator's editor group based in Madrid, Spain. This collaboration between both groups was an unexpected outcome and definitely an important one as to strengthen female editors groups alliances.
Please check the details in our dashboard.


Learning[edit]

  • What worked well?
This was the first time that we organized an editathon as WikiEditorasLx. We still can’t believe that we were able to put everything together in such little time (around 1 month). We received the Rapid Grant approval on Jan. 28th and the event took place on March. 08th. We have also been very lucky to be able to hold the event presentially just before the Coronavirus pandemic reached Portugal (and the world).
Carrying out the event has definitely strengthened us as a group, and has specially improved our reach capacity. In order to promote the event we have taken the step to create a Facebook page [2] for our group, which now has 238 followers and 167 likes. Our whatsapp group has grown a lot and we now have 34 editors.
Some editors participating in the event shared their experience while creating wikipedia articles in social media, what generated a new sort of promotion for WikiEditorasLx[3], since some of the biographies created were about live artivists who were thrilled to learn about it, and happy to promote our group’s work. Some artists even got to collaborate with us while uploading their self-portraits images to Commons, allowing us to improve articles even more. We even had a case of an artivist whose article was created during the event, who has later joined our editors group! Some illustrated stories in twitter: Raquel Lima, Wasted Rita and Inês Mourão.
The partnership with Penhasco Arte Cooperativa worked well for the place and all the logistics - we didn’t have to worry about anything. The tutoring and knowledge shared by PatriHorrillo were very clear and engaging. The support, the curatorship in choosing the names of the biographies to be created and the introduction to the theme by Paula Guerra, also an expert in artivism. Also, collaborating with the Odjango Feminista - feminist activist collective from Angola - and , Buala - digital plataform/editorial on African Culuture - on the articles curatorial process was crucial to ensure diversity, given that we are white women from the Global North.
We managed to get attention from two media outlets (daily newspaper Público and Fumaça). Fumaça was with us at the event because they are preparing an investigative journalism piece on forgotten women in portuguese history and their invisibility in Wikipedia.
Some diversity of participants - 2 non-conforming gender individuals, several migrants, young and older cis woman.
The co-organizers managed to share the workload equally and decisions were made horizontally and democratically at all times. Team work worked really well! All the work of the co-organizers was completely voluntary and outside our working hours.
This experience was also an opportunity for co-organizers to strengthen their connection with some administrators of lusophone Wikipedia (met during the national Wiki Con Portugal), which has shown to be fundamental for our work, since sometimes articles created by new editors get to be eliminated or nominated to be eliminated unreasonably and their support to stop or revert this kind of situations has been valuable. Preventing new editors articles (that obviously comply with Wikipedia rules) from getting eliminated is key to ensure that they do not get discouraged and keep editing.


  • What did not work so well?
According to the survey we carried out with the participants, we realized that in the next editions we will have to take into account: the time of the beginning of the event (9:00 am) - the participants considered it very early; and the time given for the execution of each of the tasks that it was considered by many participants to be too long. Some of the participants pointed out that there could have been less downtime between each one of the steps of the editing learning process.
We had some technical issues with the projection, that created a delay in the beginning of the session.
Buying merchandising for the event from the official Wikipedia Store was not a very good experience due to customs problems. Portuguese customs charged us 87,65 € in order to release the products (5 water bottles, stickers and pins). We would like to take advantage of this experience to suggest that edit-a-thon's organizers produce their merchandise locally instead. Shipping and taxes cost was higher than the products itself.
It’s true that we were a nice group of people in the event (around 24 people), but we would like to mention that even though the edit-a-thon was fully booked (and confirmation and reminder emails were sent to participants), around 10 people did not show up.


  • What would you do differently next time?
Even though we managed to get promoted by, for example, Lisbon's Feminist Festival (FB: 4.806 followers and Instagram 2.837) next time we would like to engage more, earlier and make stronger alliances with feminist and anti-racist organizations in the production of the editathon. Besides communication, this would improve, for example, diversity of participants as well as event's communication.
Also, it would be important that the co-organizers would have a more active role in the session, to support the main instructor and avoid downtime between each step of the article creation.
Projection must be tested the day before to prevent technical issues during the session.
Our communication efforts also need to be improved. We have now developed a database which will be useful to keep contacts organized, for mailing purposes, and others. Next time we will use a mailing tool such as mailchimp to promote the event and make sure that our message gets through easier.
We are aware that it may be difficult to make people commit to free events, but we are looking forward to learn and develop strategies to reduce last minute cancellations and no-shows. It takes a lot of work and costs to make an event happen and it’s sad not to be able to make the most out of it.

Finances[edit]

Grant funds spent[edit]

ITEM DETAILS UNIT € QUANTITY TOTAL €
1.Food expenses + logistics Breakfast, lunch and coffee, including drinks for 35 people + space logistics 14,00 35 490,00
2.Childcare Childcare during event in case participants come with children. 70,00 1 70,00
3.Social Media Paid Aid Campaign Facebook Ad Campaign - event promotion 16,00 1 16,00
4.Wikipedia Incentive Prizes/Giveaways - Merchandise Prizes/Giveaways - merchandise from Wikipedia Store, including bank fees 137,81 1 137,81
5.Local Transportation Taxi, bus for organization members/instructor/curator varies 9 trips/tickets 64,83
6.Accomodation for curator/specialist 1 night for curator/specialist 65,00 1 65,00
7.Accomodation for main facilitator 2 nights for main facilitator 61,50 2 123,00
8.Train ticket for curator/specialist Round trip ticket for curator/specialist - PORTO<LISBON<PORTO 51,20 1 51,20
9.Unforseen Expenses Posters printing and decor 30,00 1 30,00
10.Unforseen customs taxes over Wikipedia Store merchandise Customs taxes over Wikipedia Store merchandise: 5 water bottles, stickers and pins 87,65 1 87,65
1 € = 1,11 USD TOTAL EXPENDITURE € 1.135,49
TOTAL EXPENDITURE USD 1.265,45

Remaining funds[edit]

This funded event total budget was 1.100,00 € (US$ 1,225.52) and the final expenditure was 1.135,49 €, thus we have no remaining funds.
Please check the table above - Grant funds spent - to verify that there was an unforseen expense related to the merchandise bought at the Wikipedia Store. Portuguese customs charged us 87,65 € in order to release the products (5 water bottles, stickers and pins) that were bought online at the Wikipedia Store. We would like to take advantage of this experience to suggest Wikimedia to advise editathon's organizers to produce their merchandise locally instead. Shipping and taxes cost was higher than the products itself.

Anything else[edit]

Thanks, Wikimedia team, for all the resources -human and financial- that allowed us to make this editathon happen!

We would like to share our page on Wikipedia, the article on daily newspaper "Público" and our event on Facebook.
Also, we would like to share some comments and testimonies from participants that we extracted from the post-event assessment questionnaire:
"I enjoyed the feeling of giving visibility to a woman who was not on Wikipedia, as well as learning about very interesting women whose stories and goals inspired me a lot."
"I really liked the meeting's coordination, organization, the content brought by the instructors and the food (it was delicious, thank you!)."
"Thanks for everything, I loved the experience, learning to edit Wikipedia and being able to contribute."
Finally, according to 100% of the participants who answered our post-event evaluation questionnaire, overall the event was good or very good, 100% would definitely recommend the event to friends and 71% said they wanted to join our regular editing sessions.
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