Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014 round1/Wikimedia Nederland/Impact report form
Purpose of the report[edit]
FDC funds are allocated to improve the alignment between the Wikimedia movement's strategy and spending; support greater impact and progress towards achieving shared goals; and enable all parts of the movement to learn how to achieve shared goals better and faster.
Funding should lead to increased access to and quality of content on Wikimedia project sites – the two ultimate goals of the Wikimedia movement strategic priorities, individually and as a whole. Funded activities must be consistent with the WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, must be reported to WMF, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement. The WMF mission is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."
Each entity that receives FDC funding will need to complete this report, which seeks to determine how the funding received by the entity is leading towards these goals. The information you provide will help us to:
- Identify lessons learned, in terms of both what the entity learned that could benefit the broader movement, and how the entity used movement-wide best practices to accomplish its stated objectives.
- Assess the performance of the entity over the course of the funded period against the stated objectives in the entity's annual plan.
- Ensure accountability over how the money was spent. The FDC distributes "general funds", for both ongoing and programmatic expenses; these funds can be spent as the entity best sees fit to accomplish its stated goals. Therefore, although line-item expenses are not expected to be exactly as outlined in the entity's proposal, the FDC wants to ensure that money was spent in a way that led to movement goals.
For more information, please review FDC portal/Reporting requirements or reference your entity's grant agreement.
Basic entity information[edit]
Note you can copy this from your recent progress report if the information is the same.
Table 1
| Entity information | Legal name of entity | Wikimedia Nederland |
| Entity's fiscal year (mm/dd–mm/dd) | 01/14-12/14 | |
| 12 month timeframe of funds awarded (mm/dd/yy-mm/dd/yy) | 01/01/14 - 12/31/14 | |
| Contact information (primary) | Primary contact name | Sandra Rientjes |
| Primary contact position in entity | Executive Director | |
| Primary contact username | SRientjes | |
| Primary contact email | rientjes@wikimedia.nl | |
| Contact information (secondary) | Secondary contact name | Jan Anton Brouwer |
| Secondary contact position in entity | Treasurer | |
| Secondary contact username | JanAntonBrouwer | |
| Secondary contact email | jananton@wikimedia.nl |
Overview of the past year[edit]
HIGHLIGHTS[edit]
Success[edit]
We invested a lot of time and energy in improving relations and communications with the Wikipedia community: we went out of our way to inform them of what we were planning to do, provided lots of opportunities for input and feedback on our plans and saw to it that we could be reached easily on irc. This is paying off. Editors reach out, ask questions, come with suggestions - and more are beginning to speak up for WMNL during discussions in the Village Pump.
Lessons learned[edit]
For Wiki Loves Earth we organised several events on site in national parks. Their results were disappointing. It is very easy and very tempting for a chapter, for volunteers and GLAM partners to organize fun events around Wikipedia. Organizing activities that have a real impact is much harder and sometimes less fun. Our lesson learned is that there should be no such thing as a one-off activity. A content donation should always be followed by a writing event. Editor training is pointless unless participants are offered a mentor and follow-up events. Don't invest in partners who are not in it for the long haul. Chapter and volunteer resources are precious and should not be wasted.
_in_Nationaal_Park_De_Alde_Feanen,_Locatie_It_Wikelsl%C3%A2n_01.jpg)
SWOT[edit]
Strengths: Organizational strengths that enabled the plan
- A growing group of active, competent and highly motivated volunteers
- Experienced staff with increasingly good relations with community and understanding of the Wiki-world
- Good working relationships with leading GLAM institutions
Weaknesses: Organizational weaknesses that inhibited the plan
- Volunteers sometimes reluctant to take practical responsibility for activities, making WMNL very dependent on staff
- Changes in composition of Board with new Board Members joining who were not familiar with the Wikimedia movement
- Interaction with editing community although improving is still not at the level we would wish
Opportunities: External opportunities that enabled the plan
- Additional external funds enabling us to do more than planned
- GLAM and educational institutions keen to establish cooperation with Wikimedia Nederland
- Respect for and appreciation of Wikipedia as a ‘brand’ is increasing, giving us easy access to organizations, media etc.
Threats: Risks or threats that inhibited the plan
- Limited awareness among editor community of the support/resources available through WMNL
- Limited number of candidates with Wikipedia experience for vacancies in project management/community liaison
WIKI-FOCUS[edit]
This year we developed activities focussing on NL Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, WikiSource and Wiktionary.
GROWTH[edit]
The organisation[edit]
| Wikimedia Nederland per 12/31 | 2014 | 2013 |
| members | 243 | 215 |
| individual donors | 373 | 288 |
| staff on longterm contracts | 5 (3,4 fte) | 5 (3,4 fte) |
| staff on short term contracts/interns | 3 | 1 |
The number of members and donors of Wikimedia Nederland grew steadily over 2014. This was 'natural growth', not the result of a campaign. We are especially happy with the increasing number of donors. The additional income has allowed us to carry out more than we had originally planned. The permanent staff of the office remained level at 3.4 fte. For two activities (Education and Wikipedia in the Museum) we contracted free-lance experts. An intern from a programme designed to give post-grads extra working experience helped us organize Wiki Loves Earth.
Activities and participation[edit]
| Facts and Figures | 2014 | 2013 |
| Events organised or supported by WMNL | 44 | 48 |
| Participants in all events | 584 | 788* |
| External partners involved | 16 | 13 |
- including 150 participants for international hackathon 2013
The number of events organised, participants attending those events and cooperation with external partners remained level compared to 2014. Our focus throughout 2014 was on improving results of events and partnerships in terms of content added and benefits to the Wikimedia projects. In other words: increase impact of our activities, not just organize more activities as a goal in its own right.
Results[edit]
| Impact of WMNL on the Wikimedia projects | Through activities organised by WMNL | Through activities supported by WMNL | Through activities of Wikipedians in Residence in cooperation with WMNL | Total |
| Wikimedia Commons: files added | 4,049 | 32,777 | 36,826 | |
| Wikipedia: articles added or improved | 1,436 | 297 | 1,270 | 3,003 |
| Wikidata: items added or improved | 30,000 | 30,000 | ||
| Wikisource: documents added | 1 | 1 | ||
| Wiktionary: words added | 3,000 | 3,000 |
We are pleased that this year we are able to give a more thorough overview of the impact on the Wikimedia projects of our work than in 2013. This table shows results of activities organised by Wikimedia Nederland as part of the 2014 work plan, the results of the work done by the Wikipedians in Residence with whom we cooperate, and the results of activities organised by volunteers which we supported.
Financial summary[edit]
The FDC requires information about how your entity received and spent money over the past year. The FDC distributes general funds, so your entity is not required to use funds exactly as outlined in the proposal. While line-item expenses will not be examined, the FDC and movement wants to understand why the entity spent money in the way it did. If variance in budgeted vs. actual is greater than 20%, please provide explanation in more detail. This helps the FDC understand the rationale behind any significant changes. Note that any changes from the Grant proposal, among other things, must be consistent with the WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, must be reported to WMF, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement. The WMF mission is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."
If you'd prefer to share a budget created in Google or another tool and import it to wiki, you can do so in the tables below instead of using wiki tables. You can link to an external document, but we ask that you do include a table in this form. We are testing this approach in this form.
Revenues[edit]
Provide exchange rate used:
Table 2 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.
- Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.
Revenue source Currency Anticipated Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Anticipated ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Explanation of variances from plan donations euro 4,500 1,852 14,087 1,974 20,954 38,867 6,184 53,416 membership contributions euro 4,500 2,763 154 79 1,096 4,092 6,184 5,624 Project funding euro 43,068 33,070 20,000 53,070 59,191 72,936 € 20,000 received in 2013 for WLE Project 2014 WMF grant euro 304,000 177,333 126,667 20,954 304,000 417,800 417,800 Total revenue euro 356,068 215,018 14,241 128,720 42,050 400,029 489,359 549,777 A donation of 20,000€ received last year was labelled for activities in 2014. Therefore the amount of funds available for 2014 exceeds the sum total of donations received this year
* Provide estimates in US Dollars
Spending[edit]
Table 3 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.
- (The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)
Expense Currency Budgeted Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Budgeted ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Percentage spent to date Explanation of variances from plan I. COMMUNITY: supporting and mobilizing volunteers and editors euro 30,050 1,590 303 673 16,290 18,856 41,299 25,915 62.75% Editor training usually linked to activities under programme 2 (e.g. Wiki Loves Earth, Glam partnerships). Costs are booked there, leading to underspend under this programme. II. Content: increase the amount of freely accessible knowledge euro 43,100 140 28,232 1,990 46,706 77,068 59,234 105,918 178.8% This includes some activities originally budgetted under programme I. Also we were able to expand or add activities (education programme, Wikipedia in the museum) through successful fundraising. III. WMNL: participation, support and profile euro 4,540 1,797 2,200 0 3,932 7,929 6,240 10,897 174.6% Unplanned costs for redesign newsletter. Costs printing Annual Report higher than budgeted. IV. RESOURCES: Strong and diverse funding base euro 9,300 0 5,923 0 1,177 7,100 12,781 9,758 76.3% Cost foreseen for fundraising lower than expected. V. GLOBAL: playing a role in the international Wikimedia movement euro 26,500 2,679 2,415 13,738 4,390 23,222 36,420 31,915 87.6% VI. ORGANIZATION: governance and office euro 12,500 573 3492 4,598 12,420 21,083 17,179 28,974 168,7% Costs on annual audit higher than originally budgeted. Also unplanned costs for analysis of board roles and competencies. Total program costs euro 125,990 6,779 42,565 20,999 84,915 155,258 173,154 213,378 123.2% Staff salary costs including travel [2] euro 176,500 39,808 55,552 39,854 47,974 183,188 242,572 251,763 103,8% Office rent and office costs euro 53,578 11,749 15,697 11,363 10,358 49,167 73,636 67,572 91.8% Total administrative and other non program costs euro 230,078 51,557 71,249 51,217 58,332 232,355 316,206 319,335 100.9% Total costs euro 356,087 58,336 113,814 72,216 143,247 387,613 489,538 532,713 108.8%
* Provide estimates in US Dollars
Progress against past year's goals/objectives[edit]
The FDC needs to understand the impact of the initiatives your entity has implemented over the past year. Because the FDC distributes general funds, entities are not required to implement the exact initiatives proposed in the FDC proposal; the FDC expects each entity to spend money in the way it best sees fit to achieve its goals and those of the movement. However, please point out any significant changes from the original proposal, and the reasons for the changes. Note that any changes from the Grant proposal, among other things, must be consistent with the WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, must be reported to WMF, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement. The WMF mission is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."
To increase readability, we have introduced color-coding to mark progress:
| activity successful: results meeting/exceeding expectations |
| some problems: delays or disappointing results |
| activity unsuccessful or abandoned |
| no data available as yet |
Program 1: COMMUNITY
Objective 1. To bring in new editors and new volunteers
Worldwide, the number of active Wikipedia editors is in decline. This is also noticeable on the Dutch Wikipedia. Wikimedia Netherlands wants to encourage people to become involved. Offering training in editing Wikipedia could be a means to achieve this, though in practice it is clear that without "aftercare" few participants continue to edit. In the course of Wiki Loves Earth, we organised four trainings in writing Wikipedia and four in the delivery of images to Wikimedia Commons for the general public, mainly on site in national parks during the national park week. They resulted in some content on the day, but editor retention was low.
| Dutch Wikipedia | Dec-14 | Dec-13 | Difference |
| number of articles | 1,800,000 | 1,700,000 | 6% |
| total number registered editors | 30,908 | 28,859 | 7% |
| active editors | 1,217 | 1,269 | -5% |
| very active editors | 208 | 245 | -16% |
| new editors registered during the year | 2,104 | 2,572 | -18% |
A different approach?
We decided to change our approach. We wanted to experiment with targeting membership and volunteer organisations that have some affinity with Wikimedia and Wikipedia. We were thinking of ‘knowledge oriented’ membership organizations like associations of (amateur) historians, NGOs focusing on wildlife, geology etc., groups of museum volunteers and friends. Our line of thinking is that people active in such organisations are interested in gathering and sharing information and have a lot of knowledge about different topics. That potentially might make them good Wikipedians._05.jpg)
In 2014 we established contact with a number of such organisations to test this approach, particularly in the field of nature and wildlife. We have been in touch with the KNNV (the Royal Association for Natural History) and VOFF (Foundation for Fauna and Flora Fieldstudies) So far, this has led to the appointment of one new Wikipedian in Residence, content donations, a number of data donations in preparation and a positive response from the existing community of editors working on this topic. Recruitment of new editors from KNNV and VOFF, however, remains elusive.
There are probably a number of reasons for that:
- The people we come into contact with (usually board or staff-members of KNNV and VOFF) are easily motivated to contribute content to Wikipedia, but appear somewhat reluctant to ‘share’ their volunteers with us. This is understandable: good volunteers are hard to find and you don't want to risk them 'defecting' to Wikipedia.
- We are also finding that you really need an enthusiastic Wikipedia-ambassador who is already known and respected within the potential partner organization to get things moving. An announcement in a newsletter or on a website 'to come and edit Wikipedia' is just not enough.
- Also, in some cases it makes sense to wait until the bulk of data and content donations are available before we move to editor recruitment. People will be most motivated to add 'their own' material to Wikipedia.
But although it is not as straightforward as we hoped, we are in no way abandoning our experiment with a more focused approach to editor recruitment. The Wikipedian in Residence who will start work at Naturalis, the Museum of Natural History in 2015 will provide extra impetus to mobilise natural history volunteers and we will use content and data donations as a focus for editor training and editathons. Also we are gradually strengthening the relationship with partner organisations.
In the meantime, we worked on strengthening our capacity for providing effective training. In 2014, two people on behalf - and supported by - Wikimedia Netherlands took part in a train-trainers meeting organized by our British sister chapter. We started to develop tools for training, supported by a university intern.
| Quantified objectives | Progress | Comments |
| 75 new editors are active after six month | Of the 85 people who followed a writing or upload training in 2014, 7 had any activity on Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons later; 5 of these on Wikimedia Commons | The number of new editors that became active as a direct result of a Wikimedia activity is far below the target. This reflects an international trend. |
| 10 new volunteers became active | 6 new volunteers in Project Nature, 2 in Project World War II | These are volunteers who have become active 'off wiki', i.e. help organize events, act as trainers etc. In addition, some 5 more Wikipedians started to become active in WMNL activities on wiki: they give advice, help process content donations etc. |
| 5 trainers trained | 2 trainers trained | The development of the WMNL training program was delayed as a result of lack of staff availability |
(Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
- Increase participation
Objective 2. To improve and strengthen contacts and interaction between WMNL and the Wikipedia community
Supporting the community of editors in any way we can is one of the top priorities for Wikimedia Nederland. We offer a small grants program, scholarships, help in organizing events and basically are willing to tackle almost anything within our capabilities and remit to help the volunteers working on the Wikimedia projects. Furthermore, we need the input of the community to determine and implement our work program: deciding which GLAMs to work with, which topics to focus on, successfully organising online and off-wiki events all require the cooperation of the community.
However, a survey we did in 2013 showed that many Wikipedia editors were not aware of the services WMNL has to offer, or sometimes even of the fact that WMNL exists. That obviously is a drawback for successful cooperation with the community. In 2014 we wanted to improve this.
Let's talk / let's meet up
Staff and Board have invested time and energy in improving communication and interaction with the Wikipedia community. We are making use of project and meeting pages on Wikipedia and irc-channels to announce activities and ask feedback from the community. Office staff also take care to just 'hang out' on irc, so that we are 'approachable'. We planned to appoint a temporary Wikipedia liaison officer on our staff to further develop and structure our interaction with the community. We had to abandon this idea because there was little response to the vacancy. (It was part-time, temporary and required excellent Wikipedia-skills. People who fit that bill are few and far between.)
And we regularly organized events where Wikipedians get a chance to meet. The New Year's Reception at the National Library and National Archives attracted 75 participants, who also got a look behind the scenes of these two institutions..jpg)
The feedback we get from the community is that these are not only fun events and good platforms to share and collaborate, but that these ‘in real life’ meetings between editors also decrease the likelihood of conflict on-wiki.
Small and not so small grants & scholarships
We regularly advertised the possibility for community members to get financial or logistical support for activities from WMNL. This paid off: the number of applications to the small grants fund increased significantly compared to 2013 (from 3 to 10). In addition, more people participated in (international) meetings, e.g. Wikimania 2014 in London, thanks to a WMNL scholarship. (Reports of their experiences can be found on the WMNL wiki)
| How volunteers organised an international Hackathon |
|
In November 2014 a handful of volunteers for the Dutch chapter organised a Hackathon in Amsterdam. One of them tells the story: "It was a small event: 30 technical participants and 10 participants from GLAM institutions. This time we focused on anything GLAM-related. Compared to the 2013 Hackathon it was much easier to organize this event. We already knew a good venue to hold events like this and the team, both volunteers and support staff from the Dutch Wikimedia chapter were comfortable working together. The combination of these factors ensured a well-run event organised in a small time frame. Most of the work involved in organizing the event focused on who should be present. We wanted to create a focused experience for participants where progress could be made rather then an event where many junior participants would be introduced to the code for the first time. This was succesful but it also meant we had to evaluate every (potential) participant on their ability to contribute to the success of the event. Unfortunately in a few cases that meant we had to say no to somebody. Over the past two technical events which have been organised by Wikimedia Netherlands a good balance was found between work done by volunteers and work done by staff. Wikimedia Netherlands was able to support volunteers by handling contracting and securing the venue and services after volunteers had decided which venue and services where needed, while volunteers were able to focus on program aspects where the knowledge of the target communities and goals of the event mattered more." |
Working on the working atmosphere
The social interaction on Dutch language Wikipedia leaves something to be desired at times. Discussions are not always carried out in a pleasant manner, and conflicts not resolved in a way that is satisfactory to all concerned. The table above shows a decline in active editors and a decline in people signing up as editors. This may have something to do with the working atmosphere, or it may be unrelated to it. Either way, we think it is safe to assume that a pleasant and constructive environment is more likely to make people stick around, and we want to help bring such an environment about. It is tricky for WMNL to intervene directly behind the scenes of Wikipedia. We have no authority there whatsoever, and could easily jeopardize our working relations with the community if we became involved in disputes. However, when we noticed that some members of the community were discussing their concerns about the issue in on irc, we reached out. We supported them by helping them to find experts on online communication and interacting with wikipedians with specific needs (such as people with Asperger-syndrome or another disorder in the autistic spectrum) and organizing a seminar. The seminar was attended by 15 Wikipedians, most of them moderators. The presentations were illuminating (one participant remarked after the event: 'Looking back, I can now see where I could and should have reacted differently') and the discussions helped further analyse the situation. (Notes of the meeting - in Dutch)
In 2015 we want to continue and expand this line of work, developing a wider range of activities to improve the working climate. We are thinking of training in conflict resolution and mediation, or an online training module aimed at improving online communication skills. Before we do that, we will survey the editing community in spring 2015 to get more insight into how editors see things and what they feel is the best way forward.
| Quantified objectives | Progress | Comments |
| At least 15 requests for support from the community are received by WMNL and are processed in a timely and transparent manner | 10 applications Small Grant Programme, 14 applications for scholarships, 1 application support organization Hackathon | Target met |
| At least 20 active wikipedians take part regularly in (on-wiki) discussions about WMNL operations | 22 Wikipedians involved in discussions on the WMNL Wiki and Wikipedia: Village Pump | The community was especially interested in the development of the annual plan |
| Noticeable increase in community initiated contact with WMNL | -- | Lack of hard metrics. The experience of staff/board is that community members especially reach out via i.r.c. |
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
- Increase participation
PROGRAM 2 CONTENT
Objective 1. To increase the amount of knowledge freely accessible through the Wikimedia projects
To make more knowledge available to everyone is one of the core goals of Wikimedia Nederland and increasingly cultural and knowledge institutions seeking cooperation know how to find us.
In 2014, we focused on two thematic priorities (Nature and World War II); The idea was that with a longer-term and concentrated effort we could achieve more than with a wide range of one-off activities. This approach is starting to yield results. We see that volunteers, Wikipedia editors and partner institutions are beginning to develop their own initiatives and are starting to work together directly (without Wikimedia Nederland acting as a go-between).
We have made the first steps in the development of an education program to achieve cooperation with the higher education sector.
In 2014 there were six Wikipedians in Residence active in the Netherlands, who worked within a total of 18 institutions for a shorter or longer period of time. Wikimedia Nederland worked closely with them and acted as coordinator of the Wikipedian in Residence network. The results are good: a ‘in house Wikipedian' can achieve a lot in a relatively short space of time.
Our partners in 2014:
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Project Nature: capturing 18th century birds and 21st century dragonflies on wiki
More information about Dutch nature and wildlife on Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects: that is what Project Nature wants to achieve. Organizing the photo contest Wiki Loves Earth in the Netherlands in May was one of the first activities in this project. We worked closely with the National Parks Foundation and organized photo and write gatherings in national parks Weerribben-Wieden, Sallandse Heuvelrug, Utrechtse Heuvelrug and Drentsche Aa.
The quality of the images uploaded was high. However, only 7% of them are currently in use on wiki.
As part of the project Nature we established a cooperation with nature organization VOFF. VOFF is a federation of volunteer organizations that collect data about wildlife in the Netherlands. We will work with them on content donations; as a pilot project, we started with the preparation of an image and data donation on the 78 dragonfly species found in the Netherlands. (In 2015, we plan to move on the mushrooms and lichens!)
The fact that Wikimedia Nederland selected ‘nature’ as a central theme also inspired some of our existing partners. The Institute for Sound and Vision donated more than 500 videos of birds and organized a competition to stimulate use of the material in Wikipedia articles. At the moment 39% of the images are in use on wiki.
In December, the National Library donated the magnificent illustrations from the 18th century book "De Nederlandsche Vogelen"(The Birds of the Netherlands). In 2015 we are going to organize activities around this donation to ensure that the appropriate drawing is added to the article of the appropriate bird. (Not as straightforward as it sounds, as both the Dutch names and the Latin names of many species have changed over the past centuries. A good opportunity to involve amateur ornithologists!)
These content donations in general are proving a good way to stimulate involvement from the Wikipedia-community. They provide a clear scope for online activities that lead to tangible results on Wikipedia and the other projects. It has brought us in touch with experienced and very active Wikipedians who up till then had not been involved in WMNL activities.
Through the publicity surrounding Wiki Loves Earth we came in contact with Naturalis, the national museum for natural history ánd biodiversity data center. By the end of the year, Naturalis decided to hire a Wikipedian in Residence for a six month period in 2015. We helped them draw up a job profile and brought them in contact with Wikimedia UK and the London Natural History Museum, who could share their experiences in cooperating in a Wikipedian-in-Residence project focusing on natural history. In 2015, WMNL will participate with VOFF and Naturalis in a funding application to ensure a prolongation of the residency. The main purpose will be to ensure that the data, image and information sources held by Naturalis and the NGOs are made permanently available and suitable for integration in the Wikimedia projects, in particular Wikidata.
Our aim to also mobilize new editors through this thematic approach has been less easy to achieve than freeing content. Our overtures to a large natural history volunteer organisation were not successful. We believe the main issue was that we did not succeed in making one or more key individuals within the organisation enthusiastic about our plans: we were not successful in find ambassadors for Wikipedia. We hope to get more success next year when we plan to work with the VOFF volunteers to integrate their content donations into the Wikimedia projects. (This is described in detail under program 1).
Looking back over 2014, Project Nature appears to have developed into a fairly robust cluster of activities. It benefited from the fact that WMNL did not organize a Wiki Loves Monuments campaign in 2014. This meant that some very experienced volunteers who are good at (and enjoy) organizing editor trainings and writing events were available to take on this new challenge. However, the Wiki Loves Monuments formula could not be extended beyond the initial photo competition. Also, increasingly program evaluation data were beginning to show that retention of editor trainings is low worldwide and that online activities yield very good results. This required a mental reset over the summer months and lead to a new project plan which incorporates online work and a focus on content and data donations.
| Quantified objectives | Progress | Comments |
| Establish a working group of at least 10 volunteers/editors around Wiki Loves Earth | 8 volunteers active | - |
| Establish cooperation with at least 2 new external partners concerning Wiki Loves Earth | Cooperation with National Parks Foundation, Naturalis Museum of Natural History, VOFF | - |
| Organise the NL Wiki Loves Earth competition | May 2014 | - |
| At least 5000 nature related images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and 100 articles improved/created during the Wiki Loves Earth competition | 1349 photo's, 500 video’s added and 250 historic images donated | Choice made to introduce focus on national parks in Wiki Loves Earth, thus possibly reducing response |
| At least 100 articles improved or created | 127 articles improved through added images, 269 through added video | Response mainly through online activity, not editathons |
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
- Increase participation
- Improve quality
World War II: underground newspapers coming to the surface
In our second thematic project activities also started with a call to upload photos to Wikimedia Commons. In this case we were asking the public for images of war memorials. We were supported by the National Committee 4 and 5 May, who are responsible for the official commemoration of the war and hold a database of war monuments. In total more than 2000 images were added to Commons in the month of April. Of those, 44% are now in use on different wikis.
In the second half of the year we started to cooperate with NIOD, the National Institute for War, Conflict and Genocide Studies, to improve information on the Second World War on Wikipedia and the other projects. NIOD is the leading expert institute in the Netherlands concerning the war. They also have a vast archive of original documents. The cooperation started with NIOD releasing content: archival catalog descriptions with encyclopedic value which can be added to Wikipedia articles, and, at our particular request, a research publication on the illegal press.
During World War II, illegal ('underground') newspaper were immensely important in the Netherlands. The regular newspapers were shut down or controlled by the Nazis and these illegal newspapers were the only way for the Dutch people to get information about what was going on. The illegal newspapers (and the people behind them) were also central nodes in the wider resistance movement and played a key-role in the fight against the occupiers. All in all, there were some 1200 illegal newspapers: some with a nation-wide circulation, some being distributed only in a single village or small town. Only a handful of these have articles on Wikipedia, and these articles are not always very good.
The monograph released by NIOD holds data on almost all 1200 newspapers. With this information Wikipedia can be improved, and with the help of the National Library will be linked to the digitized versions of these illegal newspapers. This 'Wikiproject Verzetskranten' (resistance newspapers) is now being managed by a volunteer who is cooperating directly with NIOD and the National Library.
NIOD also opened its doors on Saturday, December 13th so Wikipedians could use their library.
| A GLAM partners perspective on the give and take of working with Wikipedia |
| The Wikiproject Verzetskranten is a project to systematically and uniformly describe all (approx. 1200) Dutch underground newspaper titles from World War 2 on Wikipedia and Wikidata. For users of the Dutch Wikipedia it will mean that many new articles about illegal WW2 newspapers will become available, expanding the current 18 articles to over 1200 by the end of 2015. The project brings together previously unconnected sources about the Dutch resistance press during WW2 and makes the aggregated and semantically enriched data available for open reuse. Although the primary focus will be on Wikipedia and Wikidata, the data will also be available for other initiatives such as DBpedia, Delpher (the Dutch national aggregator for historic newspapers, books and magazines) as well as data visualization purposes. .jpg) The initiator of the project, the national library of the Netherlands (KB), works together with Wikipedians, respresentatives of the Dutch DBpedia and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies to minimize barriers between disparate data suppliers. This collaboration creates a new information chain across cultural heritage institutions and Wikipedians. |
Project World War II was slower to start moving than project Nature. Project Nature was quickly picked up by volunteers experienced in organising Wiki Loves monuments, so it got off to a flying start. Also, the WMNL office was able to provide substantial support. Project World War II had to start from scratch and find its own shape, and because of limited staff resources did not have a dedicated project coordinator at the WMNL. Overall we are now seeing that editors and volunteers are being drawn to this project, determining their own focus, and calling on support from Wikimedia Nederland when needed. The projectpage on Wikipedia serves as billboard and archive. Also our partners NIOD and the National Library are now operating more independently to contribute content from their collections related to World War II. They have found their way to the Wikipedia community.
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Monuments to the bombing and the fire of Rotterdam, 1940. Image uploaded during Wikimedia Nederland photo-drive -
70 year old original copy of the resistance newspaper Metro in the NIOD archive -
The NIOD archives are the main repository for information concerning World War II -
Our networkpartner NIOD opened its files and its doors for Wikipedians -
Amsterdam-NIOD edit-a-thon 29 November 2014 -
Monument for a French airman serving with the RAF. Image uploaded during Wikimedia Nederland photo-drive
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| Quantified objectives | Progress | Comments |
| At least 2000 articles concerning World War II improved/created and/or images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and/or documents made available via WikiSource | 2095 images uploaded, 170 archive-descriptors released, 1 monography released, 1049 articles improved or created | -- |
| Cooperation agreements with at least three new external partners concerning World War II | Cooperation with NIOS and National Committee 4 and 5 May | -- |
| At least one photo-competition concerning World War II monuments | Photo-competition held in April | -- |
| At least three editathons concerning World War II, drawing at least 75 participants | Editathion December 13, 10 participants | Emphasis is shifting towards online activities rather than editathons |
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
- Increase participation
- Improve quality
| A thematic approach: lessons learned so far |
|---|
|
Education: focussing on translation, style and good old-fashioned content
In some countries cooperation between universities and Wikipedia has yielded good results. We wanted to know whether such an education program could also be successful in the Netherlands. In consultation with the community we determined the main objective of collaborating with the education sector: to improve the content by including Wikipedia-editing in the curriculum. If participating students remain active as editors that would be brilliant, but recruitment is not our priority because we do not think it is very realistic.
We commissioned a small consultancy to carry out a feasibility study for us. They spoke with educational institutions and analysed experiences in other countries. Their advice was to launch three different pilot projects to test various forms of cooperation. Each pilot will have a specific focus: translating Wikipedia articles or improving style and language or improving or adding content.
The first pilot project to become operational is with ITV - college for interpreters and translators. ITV trainees will be available as of April 2015 to translate articles from other language versions of Wikipedia into Dutch, at the request of Wikipedians.
In December, Frank Meijer started as a project coordinator for the education pilot projects. The universities of Maastricht, Twente and Groningen have already expressed interest in cooperation in 2015.
| Quantified objectives | Progress | Comments |
| Decision made whether or not it will be feasible for WMNL to develop a programme in the field of education | Feasibility study carried out and reported on. Pilot projects identified. Project coordinator hired. First pilot started. | -- |
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
- Increase participation
- Improve quality
Major impact: Wikipedians in Residence
In 2014 there were six Wikipedians in Residence (WiR) in the Netherlands. Wikimedia Netherlands offered a platform for coordinating the activities of the WiRs and their organizations.(WMNL does not contribute financially - WiRs are employed and paid by the host organisations). Every 6 - 8 weeks, the Wikipedians in Residence would meet at our office to share experiences and coordinate activities; WMNL's GLAM coordinator also takes part in these meetings.
The WiRs and their host-organizations decided at the beginning of the year that they could increase their impact by selecting shared themes to cluster work around. They chose maps and cartography as a focus for joint activities: most of the institutions involved held collections of historical maps of one sort or another. As a result of this choice, perhaps not entirely surprisingly a lot of material was released which related to the Netherlands' colonial and trading history and is of global relevance. Where possible, the Wikipedians in Residence also contributed to the thematic priorities of Wikimedia Netherlands (World War II and Nature).
The activities developed by the Wikipedians in Residence led to a substantial improvement of free knowledge available via the Wikimedia projects. Wikipedians in Residence can achieve a lot in a relatively short period of time. The challenge in 2015 will be to continue the cooperation with host-institutions after the current residencies have ended. WMNL will promote that former WiR-host organisations appoint a GLAM-Wiki coordinator from their permanent staff after the residency has ended. These coordinators will be invited to attend the meetings of Wikipedians in Residence, which will become a GLAM Wiki platform.
Creating new residencies is also a challenge for 2015. When WMNL establishes 'first contact' with a potential new GLAM-partner, we always describe the different forms of cooperation that are possible: Wikipedia-training for GLAM staff, content donations, writing events and a Wikipedian in Residence. We find that a Wikipedian in Residence appeals to many institutions: a dedicated skilled staff member sounds like the answer to everything. We always explain immediately that WMNL is not able to fund residencies, but that we will support grant applications by partners to get funding. Many partners are enthusiastic enough to continue the process. We first spoke with Naturalis, the Museum of Natural History, in June 2014 and by December they had found the funds and got management approval to hire a Wikipedian in Residence for six months. We helped them draw up a job profile and a WMNL Board member sat in on the job interviews as an advisor.
| Deciding to hire a Wikipedian in Residence: the experience of Naturalis |
| "Naturalis manages the largest collection of natural history objects from the Netherlands. As of July 2015, all 37 million objects from the collection of Naturalis, of which 8 million to a high level of detail, will be made accessible via the web for all as open content. This offers new opportunities.
The content Naturalis has to offer could enricht many Wikipedia articles about topics related to life sciences. For sister projects such as Wikispecies and Wikidata our content is also highly relevant. In cooperation with Wikimedia, Naturalis has explored how to do one or more content donations. We want to offer multimedia selections to Wikimedia Commons, for use on Wikipedia pages and on the sister projects. One of the challenges is to develop metadata templates that will allow our content comes to be used to its best advantage (a template specific for natural history content has not not yet been developed for Wikimedia Commons / Wikidata). We also want to encourage use by Wikipedians by various activities such as a Wikipedia challenge and possibly some writing workshops. All together this is quite a process and a Wikipedian in Residence can help us well to pull this off smoothly. As of May 1, 2015 Hans Muller will take on this role for 6 months." Esther Herberts, Naturalis Biodiversity Centre |
A practical problem is that being a Wikipedian in Residence requires a combination of skills and knowledge that is relatively rare. A good Wikipedian in Residence has to be an experienced Wikipedian of good standing in the community, with sound knowledge of copyright issues, skilled in using upload tools etc. At the same time he/she has to be a competent teacher and mentor, and should able to fit into the culture of the host organisation. There are not that many people around who have that specific skills-set, and are also available to take on a temporary job.
One of the unforeseen consequences of six Wikipedians in Residence starting work in 2014, was the impact this had on Wikimedia Nederlands own GLAM-programme. Suddenly, some of the GLAM partners we had been working with over the past years became self-supporting: they no longer depended on WMNL to bring them into contact with the community and help them with uploads and donations. Also, some of our most active and experienced volunteers became Wikipedians in Residence. Our role in the GLAM-field has shifted towards facilitator, clearing house and go-between, rather than being the main operator.
| Results WiR program 2014 | ' | ' | ' | ' | ' |
| KB/NA | WP Expedities | Special Residence | NIBG | A'dam Museum | |
| Number of participating institutions | 2 | 8 | 6 van 12 | 1 | 1 |
| Workshops Wikipedia & Commons & editathons | 11 | 3 | 28 | 3 | |
| participants | 129 | 220 | 30 | ||
| Articles added or improved | 750 | 500 | 20 | ||
| Image donations | 11.000 | 10.000 | 3.000 | ||
| Special donations (historical topographical maps) | 5.957 | 10 | |||
| Speciale donations (glass slides) | 25 | 100 | |||
| Speciale donations (video) | 30 | 2.600 | |||
| Speciale application | 1 | ||||
| Classes | 3 | ||||
| Lectures | 6 | 5 | |||
| Individual coaching and training | 50 | ||||
| Publications in magazines and journals | 2 | 12 | |||
| KB/NA = Royal Library and National Archive | |||||
| WP Expeditions = Academic Heritage Foundation (Collections and museums of Dutch universities) | |||||
| Wikipedians in Special Residence = 12 Specialized academic libraries | |||||
| NIBG = Institute for Sound and Vision | |||||
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
- Increase participation
- Improve quality
- Images released through the Wikipedian in Residence projects are internationally relevant
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Illustration of dress in Louisiana, 1688 (Louis Hennepin, Description de la Louisiane) -
Atlas Ortelius -
Map and view of Macassar -
Japanese wedding -
Map of Cape of Good Hope -
Cyprus
Public libraries: looking for focus
Also in 2014, we continued our collaboration with public libraries. A Wikimedia Netherlands volunteer once a month is present at the public library Eemland to answer questions about Wikipedia and assist novice editors.
We are finding that public libraries are becoming more interested in Wikipedia. One of our oldest GLAM-partners, the National Library, has recently also taken up a role in coordinating the work of public libraries. This opens up opportunities for further cooperation.
The challenge will be to shape that cooperation in such a way that it will lead to concrete results for the Wikimedia projects or the Wikimedia movement. The activities we have developed with public libraries so far have not yet given us a clear idea how to best use their potential. Public libraries are great venues for local events: they are usually easily accessible and 'neutral ground' most people would feel comfortable with. Also, they usually have lots of information about local history and culture which could be relevant for editathons, for example in the context of Wiki Loves Monuments. We also know that more Wikipedians are interested in setting up a monthly Wikipedia helpdesk in their local public library and we would be happy to give them all the support they need.
| Quantified objectives | Progress | Comments |
| Establish partnership with at least 2 public libraries | Cooperation established with Public Library Eemland and Zeeland | - |
| Organise at least 2 events with each of these libraries | Monthly volunteer manned Wikipedia helpdesk in library Eemland. Starters and advanced Wikipedia training given in library Zeeland | - |
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
- Increase participation
- Improve quality
Unplanned - but successful nonetheless
- GLAM Wiki toolset workshop
We promoted the use of the Glam Wiki Toolset by organising a workshop for staff from our GLAM partners.Although all participants were enthousiastic about the tool, practical problems concerning preparing especially the metadata of their collections meant that no mass uploads have taken place yet.
- Wikipedia in the Museum
A donation from a private grantmaking fund gave us the chance to develop 'Wikipedia in the Museum'. The aim is to develop an application that will privide an easy, low-cost way for museums to give the public additional information about their collection, by linking to relevant Wikipedia articles from a tablet. The application is being tested at the Catharijneconvent (museum for religious art) and the Textile Museum and will be available in 2015.
- Wiktionary: Hebrew and Yiddish words
- GLAM Hackathon, Amsterdam
Thirty developers and programmers from the Netherlands and neighboring countries came together 14 to 15 November in Amsterdam to work for three days on new and existing tools. The theme of the meeting was to work with data from libraries, archives and museums. Two examples of the development work during these three days: a tool that measures how long a visitor has looked at a photo in the Media Viewer and a website showing the paintings that have already been added to Wikidata. In addition 30,000 images of paintings were added to Wikidata.The Hackathon was organized by the team of Wikimedia volunteers that already organised the Amsterdam international hackathon in 2013. Prior to the Hackathon Wikimedia Nederland organized a workshop on Wikidata for GLAMS.
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Activities organised by Wikimedia Nederland in 2014
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Activities supported by Wikimedia Nederland in 2014
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Objective 2. To increase awareness of Wikipedia as a reliable encyclopedia and a volunteer-driven project
At the request of our members, we have begun the development of a campaign to inform the public about certain basic facts about Wikipedia that are not well known. That Wikipedia is a volunteer-project, for example, and that it receives no revenue from advertising or subsidies. We have hired pr-agency MV to develop the campaign. A working group of volunteers, board members and office staff supervised the project. The campaign was developed in 2014. On the advice of MV, implementation was postponed until February 2015.
| Quantified objectives | Progress | Comments |
| Noticeable improvement in appreciation and understanding of Wikipedia by general public compared to 2013 survey results | - | - |
| Noticeable increase in requests for information from the general public to Wikimedia Nl | - | - |
| 5% increase in donations from Netherlands | Total amount of revenue received by WMNL through donations increased by 370%. The number of donations increased by 130% (Results Wikipedia fundraiser in the Netherlands not yet released by WMF.) | - |
| 5% increase in new editors. | Number of newly registered editors on NL Wikipedia dropped by 18% | - |
| 10 % increase in membership WMNL. | 13% increase | - |
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
- Stabilize infrastructure
Program 3: WIKIMEDIA NEDERLAND: participation, support and profile
The number of recipients of the newsletter grew strongly, mainly due to a mailing sent out on behalf of Wikimedia Nederland by WMF to people who had made a donation in 2014 via the fundraising banner on Dutch Wikipedia.
| ' | 2014 | 2013 |
| Recipients newsletter | 1086 | 363 |
| Followers on twitter | 1561 | 1347 |
| Visitors website | 93,180 sessions | (New website not yet operational - no comparable data) |
| Media attention | 6 interviews for national media | 9 interviews. |
| 12 times coverage of WMNL activities. | 20 times especially regarding WikiLovesMonuments |
In 2015 we are going to repeat the survey that we conducted two years ago among members, Wikipedia community and the general public to assess how they think and feel about Wikimedia Nederland and our program of activities.
| Quantified objectives | Progress | Comments |
| Increase of membership by 10% compared to 2013 | 13% increase | - |
| No more than 10 current members decide not to prolong their membership | 8 cancellations, 31 cases on non-payment | - |
| When surveyed, members satisfaction ‘remains at same level as 2013. | Survey will be repeated 2015 | - |
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
- Stabilize infrastructure
Program 4: RESOURCES
| Quantified objectives | Progress | Comments |
| €52.000 funding from external (i.e. non-movement) sources | € 76.009 raised | We exceeded the target we set ourselves for fundraising |
| 80% of 2013 individual donors donate again in 2014 | Based on the limited details we get from the bank, it is very time-consuming to analyse data. However, number of donations increased significantly | - |
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
- stabilize infrastructure
Program 5: GLOBAL
Wikimedia Netherlands has deliberately chosen not every year to organize a major international event. In 2013 we organized the International Hackathon in Amsterdam and in 2015 we will host the GLAM-Wiki conference. Yet there was one international event in 2014: in November thirty developers met in Amsterdam for a GLAM Wiki Hackathon (described under program 2).
And furthermore: three Dutch Wikimedians visited the Hackathon in Zurich, ED Sandra Rientjes took part in the meetings of chapter directors and GLAM Coordinator Sebastiaan ter Burg took part in the international GLAM hangouts.
| Quantified objectives | Progress | Comments |
| Budget for international travel by members of NL community of €15,000 to be made available | € 16,901 made available: 3 scholarships HackathonZürich, 11 scholarships Wikimania | Reports by scholarship recipients |
| At least 5 members of NL community attend Wikimania, funded by WMNL, of which 2 members have not previously attended | 17 participants of the Netherlands, at least 5 first timers | - |
| At least 4 members of NL community attend Wikimedia Conference. | 4 attendees | - |
| At least 2 presentations given by members of Nl Community at Wikimedia Conference | No presentations given, but member of NL community active in programme committee | - |
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
- stabilize infrastructure
Program 6:ORGANISATION: management and governance
- What are the objectives of this program? Please include metrics.
1. The administrative organisation of WMNL complies with standards and criteria
Quantified objectives
- Annual report and accounts approved by auditor 31 March 2014
- Q1,2,3,4 report submitted timely and according to WMF guidelines
- Annual plan and budget 2015 approved 1 October 2014
- FDC application submitted by deadline set by FDC
- Staff assessments carried out according to schedule
- Progress against these objectives (include metrics and # of volunteers/staff involved)?
The administrative organization of Wikimedia Netherlands is now well aligned with the reporting and accountability requirements. The audit of the Annual Report 2013 went smoothly, and the reactions of the Wikimedia Foundation to the quarterly reports, including the metrics used, were predominantly positive.
We developed our annual plan 2015 and budget in consultation with the community. Like last year, we invested time and energy in involving the community in the development of our plans. Discussions took place on wiki, in the Village pump and in real life at the WMNL office. At the request of the community we will pay more attention to the smaller Wikimedia projects (i.e. not Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons) next year. (On wiki discussions annual plan 2015 Archived discussions Discussion in De Kroeg (village pump) Discussion Wiki page AGM 20092015 (Draft) minutes AGM September 20, 2014)
2. The Board fully and effectively meets its obligations concerning good governance
Staff involved: 2. Volunteers involved: 7.
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
==Lessons learned ==
Lessons from the past[edit]
- 1. What were your major accomplishments in the past year, and how did you help to achieve movement goals?
- We are very happy with the results we are getting through our 'thematic approach', i.e. by focusing on the topics Nature and World War II instead of developing a range of unconnected activities. We are seeing the start of self-sustaining clusters of activities initiated by partners and editors.
- We were successful in raising external funds, exceeding the goals we set ourselves
- Being able to support community members in making a start with tackling the issue of conflicts and working atmosphere on Wikipedia was great.
- 2. What were your major setbacks in the past year (e.g., programs that were not successful)?
- Finding new editors remains a problem. We have not yet found the magic formula although we hope that cooperation with volunteer organisations will yield results.
- It remains difficult to recruit staff from within the Wikipedia community. We very much wanted to appoint a Wikipedia liaison officer to help us strengthen our relationship with the community but had very little response.
- 3. What factors (organizational, environmental) enabled your success?
- The main factor enabling our success remains the affection and respect people in the Netherlands have for Wikipedia.
- There is a growing group of experienced and knowledgeable volunteers with whom we are on very good terms: we can turn to them with questions and they will always help us out when they can, including warning us when we are in danger of going off the right track.
- The fact that our office and governance processes were firmly in place by the start of the year allowed us to focus on delivering the workplan.
- 4. What unanticipated challenges did you encounter and how did this affect what you were able to accomplish?
- We were a bit disappointed that many volunteers are not very keen to take on organizational and coordinating roles. This means that staff take a more managing role than we had originally planned. It also restricts the number of activities we can undertake.
- We had not expected that we would lose some of our most experienced volunteers because they became Wikipedians in Residence. It meant a realignment of our GLAM program from activity development and management, to facilitation and acting as a katalyst.
- 5. What are the 2–3 most important lessons that other entities can learn from your experience? Consider learning from both the programmatic and institutional (what you have learned about professionalizing your entity, if you have done so) points of view.
- Investing time and resources in a feasibility study before we started on our education program was a good investment. The consultants who did the study for us came up with solutions and suggestions we probably would not have thought of ourselves.
- Don't give up too easily when trying out new, experimental approaches. Our programs focusing on World War II and Nature took several months to develop momentum. Also it is very important to have a dedicated program manager for such initiatives.
- Invest time in becoming a part of the community. Show up at the venues (online and offline) where the community meets. Contribute to discussions, offer help without being asked, keep informed of what is going on (including gossip, rumour and scandal!).
Lessons for the future[edit]
- 1. What organisational or program strategies would you continue?
- We will continue with our thematic approach, at least for another year. By the end of 2015 we will evaluate whether this approach is effective, and if so whether we should continue our focus on the current themes or move to other areas.
- We will continue to promote and support the Wikipedian in Residence program, as it has been proven to be very effective
- Where relevant and appropriate, we will continue to hire people on short-term contracts to provide extra boost to specific programmes
- We will continue to work with the community on atmosphere and social mores on Wikipedia.
- 2. What might you change in organisational and program strategies in order to improve the effectiveness of your entity?
- We want to increase the number of online activities as these have been proven to be very effective, both in our own experience and in the movement worldwide
- During the Wikipedian in Residence programme we were reminded of the fact that the Netherlands GLAM institutions hold huge amounts of material on the history, geography, biodiversity and culture of nations in Asia, Africa and the Carribean. In 2015 we want to increase focus on releasing such materials, in cooperation with Wikimedia Chapters in those parts of the world.
- 3. Please create at least one learning pattern from your entity's experiences this year and link to it here.
Stories of success and challenge[edit]
Of all the accomplishments highlighted through this report, please share two detailed stories: one story of a success and one story of a challenge that your entity experienced over the past year in a few paragraphs each. Provide any details that might be helpful to others in the movement on the context, strategy, and impact of this initiative. We suggest you write this as you would tell a story to a friend or colleague. Please refrain from using bullet points or making a list, and rather focus on telling us about your organization's experience.
Case study: Supporting a volunteer - success![edit]
Vera (User:1Veertje) is a very active contributor to the Wikimedia projects, with more than 90.000 edits to her name. Her passion is portrait photography and of late also voice recording. She has uploaded nearly 9000 files to Wikimedia Commons and started over 300 articles on the Dutch Wikipedia. She is also a developer and a regular at Hackathons. In this contribution she describes how she cooperates with Wikimedia Nederland.
“Through the support of Wikimedia Nederland I was able to take photographs at several different events. Wikimedia Nederland always covers my travel costs. In this way I could attend the Brainwash Festival and TEDxAmsterdam. For Brainwash Festival WMNL also reimbursed the entrance fee which was quite steep. Otherwise, I would not have been able to attend. WMNL GLAM coordinator Sebastiaan ter Burg even lent me some of his own camera lenses. For the first time I was able to photograph with a 50 and 85 mm lens. Below a selection of portraits taken at TEDx and Brainwash.
As soon as winter starts, I get excited about the prospect of the Rotterdam International Film Festival. I used to be involved with the festival as a volunteer checking tickets, but it was not possible to combine that with doing work for Wikipedia. This year, I wanted to try to get accreditation as an official photographer. The accreditation process was aimed at professional photographers, so this required some creative thinking. I asked Wikimedia Nederland to commission me to take photographs at the festival and in that way I coud register as a photographer working for a client. This worked and I was able to photograph at the film festival. I am still busy processing and uploading the many photographs I took there.
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TEDxAmsterdam, Henk Schiffmacher -
Brainwash Festival, Hans Sibbel, 50mm lens -
IFFR, Khavn de la Cruz -
IFFR, Glenn Kurtz, received quality image status -
Hannah Murray, image used in Wikipedia article in 20+ languages
- Voice Intro Project
With a WMNL scholarship I travelled to London to attend Wikimania. I was busy with development during the Hackathon, but of course also attended several presentations. The one that had most impact on my work for the Wikimedia projects was about the Voice Intro Project. I had sort of heard about this project but did not really understand what it added to the encyclopaedia. Before the workshop was over I had added the Dutch language category for this project. By now, I have made more than 50 voice recordings."
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my own voice
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Lieve Scheire, first Dutch WikiVIP recording, made during Wikimania
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Leading Dutch politician Diederik Samsom
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Arjen Lubach, recording was mentioned during a press interview
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Edmun Yeo, IFFR 2015, first WikiVIP recording in Mandarin
Case study: Finding boardmembers - a challenge[edit]
One of the challenges Wikimedia Nederland encountered over the past years is finding - and keeping - Board members. The Wikimedia Board usually has seven members. Since March 2012, 14 individuals have been on the Board, with only two serving the entire three years. Finding women willing to serve on the Board is a challenge all by itself. Of the 14 people who served on the Board only four were women, none of whom served more than one year.
Before the office was established in 2012, the Wikimedia Nederland Board consisted entirely of active community members. They were responsible for governance of the Association, but in actual fact also ran most of the activities developed by Wikimedia Nederland. When the office was established and the first staffmembers hired, the role of the Board changed. As WMNL grew in size and budget, more emphasis was needed on governance; practical involvement in implementing the workplan was transfered from board members to staff. This posed problems for finding candidates for the Board. Experienced Wikipedians were reluctant to take on governance and administrator's roles as these are often undertaken at the expense of participating in activities on wiki. Many preferred to remain engaged with Wikimedia Nederland as operational volunteers, participating in and organising activities with support of the newly appointed office staff. Also, there was a growing need for specific expertise on the Board, e.g. related to fundraising, strategy development and finances. Within the Wikimedia Nederland community there are not that many people with these particular skills.
We started recruiting outside the community and this is reasonably successful: people can be found who are willing to contribute time and energy to supporting free knowledge in general and Wikipedia in particular. However, it does take some time before they have developed an understanding of the idiosyncratic way in which the Wikimedia movement operates, and of the specific role of a chapter in that movement. Over the past year some initiatives were taken to improve success rates in finding and keeping Boardmembers. This year, with the help of an external consultant profiles were drawn up for the different roles within the Board, including an assessment of the skills and compentencies required. This will make it easier to target the search for candidates and makes it clearer for candidates what is expected of them, and what they can expect. Also, the Board regulations were changed so that Board members are now elected for a two-year term, instead for just one year. We hope this will create more stability.
Finding suitable female candidates remains a challenge. We are actively approaching women in our network, but success is limited.
Additional learning[edit]
- 1. What are some of the activities that are happening in your community that are not chapter-led? What are the most successful among these, and why?
- On NL-Wikipedia there is a tradition of organizing 'writing weeks' focussing on a specific country or region. These are usually planned to coincide with national holidays (when people have more time to edit) or important international (sporting) events like the Olympics or the World Socker Championships. These events mobilise editors to add or improve articles. They are easy to contribute to, any editor can choose what and when to contribute.
- There is group of active and knowledgeable community members engaged in improving GLAM-content on Wikimedia Commons and GLAM data on Wikidata. They are also engaged internationally. Some of the most experienced Wikimedians (often also founding fathers/mother of the WMNL chapter) are involved in this group.
- A group of volunteers is working on the Gender Gap. Wikimedia Nederland is providing them with support when needed.
- 2. Provide any links to any media coverage, blog posts, more detailed reports, more detailed financial information that you haven't already, as well as at least one photograph or video that captures the impact your entity had this past year.
- WMNL monthly chapter reports
- WMNL wiki
- WMNL website
- Images of WMNL 2014 activities on Commons
- Overview of media coverage 2014
Compliance[edit]
Is your organization compliant with the terms defined in the grant agreement?
[edit]
- 1. As required in the grant agreement, please report any deviations from your grant proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.
- There were no deviations to the grant agreement.
- 2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".
- Yes.
- 3. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Grant funds as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".
- Yes.
Financial information[edit]
- 1. Report any Grant funds that are unexpended fifteen (15) months after the Effective Date of the Grant Agreement. These funds must be returned to WMF or otherwise transferred or deployed as directed by WMF.
- No grant funds remained unspent.
- 2. Any interest earned on the Grant funds by Grantee will be used by Grantee to support the Mission and Purposes as set out in this Grant Agreement. Please report any interest earned during the reporting period and cumulatively over the duration of the Grant and Grant Agreement.
- * In total, € 2,665 was received by WMNL during 2014 as interest.
Signature[edit]
Once complete, please sign below with the usual four tildes.
Sandra Rientjes - Wikimedia Nederland (talk) 07:35, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
- Annual plan grant reports
- Annual plan grant reports for 2013-2014 Round 1
- Annual plan grant reports by Wikimedia Nederland
- Annual plan grant reports by Wikimedia Nederland for FDC 2013-2014 Round 1
- Annual plan grant impact report forms
- Annual plan grant impact report forms for 2013-2014 Round 1
- Annual plan grant impact report forms by Wikimedia Nederland
- Annual plan grants or proposals by Wikimedia Nederland for 2013-2014 Round 1