Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015 round1/Wikimedia UK/Progress report form
Purpose of the report
[edit]This form is for organizations receiving Annual Plan Grants to report on their progress after completing the first 6 months of their grants. The time period covered in this form will be the first 6 months of each grant (e.g. 1 January - 30 June of the current year). This form includes four sections, addressing global metrics, program stories, financial information, and compliance. Please contact APG/FDC staff if you have questions about this form, or concerns submitting it by the deadline. After submitting the form, organizations will also meet with APG staff to discuss their progress.
Global metrics overview - all programs
[edit]We are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across our grantees' programs. Please use the table below to let us know how your programs contributed to the Global Metrics. We understand not all Global Metrics will be relevant for all programs, so feel free to put "0" where necessary. For each program include the following table and
- Next to each required metric, list the outcome achieved for all of your programs included in your proposal.
- Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome.
- In addition to the Global Metrics as measures of success for your programs, there is another table format in which you may report on any OTHER relevant measures of your programs success
For more information and a sample, see Global Metrics.
Metric | Achieved outcome | Explanation |
1. # of active editors involved | 33 | Measured with Wikimetrics as outlined here. Carried out on 19th August 2015. This is essentially a subset of the new editors that we attracted through outreach events. It might not include active volunteer members of our community taking part on offline activities (e.g. the attendees of Volunteer Strategy Day). |
2. # of new editors | 184 | Derived from editing and training workshops. |
3. # of individuals involved | 511 | This number includes everyone who participated in our activities whether: attending events, organising/delivering events, helping out at the office etc. Our number of volunteers is lower because our definition as opposed to the one commonly used for 'individuals involved' includes a caveat that we need a contact address for a volunteer. |
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages | 733 | Derived from partnerships with institutions, project grants supporting photographers, and equipment loans to volunteers |
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects | 414 | This comprises 256 new articles and 158 other improved articles. Gauging new articles has been facilitated by Wikimetrics, but there is currently not such a function for other articles improved. The number has been gathered from project grants and some manual analysis of articles at editing events. As it is manual, it represents a significant undercount, especially given the wide ranging focus of the General Election editathon. |
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects | 2,508,798 | This comprises 730,000 bytes from project grants supporting article writing, 696,000 bytes from university courses, and 1,070,000 bytes from other editing and training events. |
Telling your program stories - all programs
[edit]Please tell the story of each of your programs included in your proposal. This is your chance to tell your story by using any additional metrics (beyond global metrics) that are relevant to your context, beyond the global metrics above. You should be reporting against the targets you set at the beginning of the year throughout the year. We have provided a template here below for you to report against your targets, but you are welcome to include this information in another way. Also, if you decided not to do a program that was included in your proposal or added a program not in the proposal, please explain this change. More resources for storytelling are at the end of this form. Here are some ways to tell your story.
- We encourage you to share your successes and failures and what you are learning. Please also share why are these successes, failures, or learnings are important in your context. Reference learning patterns or other documentation.
- Make clear connections between your offline activities and online results, as applicable. For example, explain how your education program activities is leading to quality content on Wikipedia.
- We encourage you to tell your story in different ways by using videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, e.g.), compelling quotes, and by linking directly to work you produce. You may highlight outcomes, learning, or metrics this way.
- We encourage you to continue using dashboards, progress bars, and scorecards that you have used to illustrate your progress in the past, and to report consistently over time.
- You are welcome to use the table below to report on any metrics or measures relevant to your program. These may or may not include the global metrics you put in the overview section above. You can also share your progress in another way if you do not find a table like this useful.
Transition at Wikimedia UK
[edit]Our plans and delivery of Q1-2 of 2014-15 programme year could not be expressed without presenting the transition we went through. The process started in November 2014, towards the end of our 2014-15 year, and the first phase did not finish until May 2015. Therefore the transition started after we submitted our 2015-16 activity plan to the FDC, and for this reason there are changes with regards to what was originally proposed. Below we are narrating key aspects that influenced a modified approach this year so far.
With the appointment of D’Arcy Myers as interim chief executive in November 2014, the board took the opportunity to undertake a review of the charity’s structure and organisation. The review was completed in May, and resulted in a smaller and more project-focused staff team with significantly more emphasis on closer engagement between staff and volunteers (see the staff structure, with a strong emphasis on programmes, here). This matched FDC's recommendation on reviewing the staff structure, and our plans to bring more focus to programmes.
A recent key priority for the Board has been the process of appointing a new permanent CEO. We have been looking for an ambitious individual who will provide strategic leadership and supportive management to volunteers and staff alike. The CEO will work to increase our profile and impact with our partners, engage with the volunteer community and develop our programme activity. The board believes that the charity’s model for fundraising has not been adequate and that greater diversity of income streams is essential, and to that end we have sought a CEO with significant personal expertise in fundraising from trusts, foundations and corporates, and who is capable of taking a strong personal lead within the restructured staff team. The new CEO starts in October 2015.
Project based approach
[edit]We want to transform the way we work so that we can bring volunteering right into the heart of the charity, and in June we launched the next major phase of our ongoing consultation with our members and community to ensure that we can make the very best use of our new working practices and organisational structure.
Taking into account volunteers’ input at a volunteer strategy day in Birmingham in November 2014, along with views and insights from the board and staff, we have developed a project based approach which links any activities closely with volunteers. By looking at all our activities as self-contained projects we are better able to link volunteers and their ideas with partner organisations, tell richer stories, unlock external funding, and evaluate our work more effectively. When an idea is proposed by a volunteer, the staff are able to advise on how it may be developed into a project in its own right, how it might enhance an existing project or whether it could be partnered with another project idea. Staff are able to support the volunteer in developing the idea and in encouraging other volunteers to work on the project.
As the project develops, led by volunteers, the staff team with their newly-established project coordinator roles can guide and support them. Once the project is completed, evaluation helps enhance the success of future projects and ensures that we share our impact stories. Because volunteers drive and lead the projects, there is greater opportunity for people to get involved. Where a project involves an external partner organisation, the partner has an enhanced experience and is able to reach a wider audience.
Q2 was spent on building the background to this approach (like the necessary forms and process explanations for the volunteers), so we can start implementing it going forward. We also worked to communicate the changes with the community, a culmination of this was the Volunteer Strategy Day in July 2015. We created a learning pattern about this - [1].
Updated KPI system
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/89/Wikipedian_in_Residence._6_months_stats.png/400px-Wikipedian_in_Residence._6_months_stats.png)
As of Q1 2015-16, we have been working with our strategy in place for a year (see Strategy monitoring plan 2014-15 for last year's KPIs system). Over the last few months, we have been reflecting on: the activities we are engaged in, the most useful indicators regarding our performance, and the administrative burden our reporting places on staff. Alongside this, we have been restructuring, and thinking about how we can be more project focussed, and joined up in our activities. With regards to Global Metrics, while we can and will report on the performance indicators required for Wikimedia UK, in some cases the Foundations metrics are closely aligned with our own and can be readily incorporated.
In order to operate effectively, we have made the decision to scale back our KPIs, acknowledge that in places we can more effectively 'tell the story' through narrative than with a numeric indicator, and remove duplication and KPIs that proved too challenging to assess at this time. We have also added a couple of new KPIs where we saw gaps in what we were measuring. We have decided to keep both G1.1 goals without targets at this time (as we explained a year ago), however we will encourage partners to “think big”, to aim for large scale contributions alongside high quality, and may reassess this position again in the future.
The key changes are:
- Some definitions are being assessed (e.g. to alter 'bytes added' to 'bytes added and/or removed' per WMF Global Metric 6)
- A number of metrics, some of which it is not possible for us to properly assess at this time, (e.g. awareness of Wikimedia UK) have been dropped
- For clarity, a number of metrics where either a numeric indicator was given, but makes little sense alone, or that were reported as narratives, are being separated out to be reported in a narrative accompanying text. While we believe these goals to be key to our mission, reporting narratives in a KPI table makes the table harder to read, harder to use to understand our progress, and harder to understand the narratives themselves and their relationship to our activities.
Recognising the effects of a transition period, we also scaled back some of the targets.
These changes were implemented in Q1 of 2015-16 when we were able to focus more on forward planning, and so there was differences with what was outlined in our original annual plan for the FDC back in 2014.
KPI score card and context
[edit]G1.1 The quantity of open knowledge continues to increase | Number of uploads | Track | 5,513 | The largest single contributor was our partnership with the National Library of Wales. In the first six months of 2015-16, our Wikimedian in Residence uploaded 2,591 files to Wikimedia Commons. Grants to User:Diliff have resulted in 1,279 photographs uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in the same period. The grants supported the photography of the Bodleian Library and Wimbledon. A further 1,344 files were produced through equipment loans to volunteers. | |
TEXT - Sum of contribution edit size [1] | Track | 2,508,798 in the first six months
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This comprises 730,000 bytes from project grants supporting article writing, 696,000 bytes from university courses, and 1,070,000 bytes from other editing and training events. The Core Contest and Hotels and cinema project grants have project grants were particularly effective.
The restructure has meant a reduction of the amount of staff time available to support university courses. Two ran between February and July: one at the University of Portsmouth and the other at Queen Mary University of London. These two courses ran in the 2013–14 academic year, so needed less support in the 2014–15 academic year. The Portsmouth course contributed a staggering amount of text, more than 650,000 bytes. Previous work with Wikimedians in Residence meant that they continued their programmes of work in Q1 and Q2 while the restructure was ongoing. The most successful editathon was the General Election night event, which contributed nearly 400,000 bytes of text. This event was so successful in this regard because all attendees were already established editors. They could therefore focus on updating articles. The focus on the general election and updating various articles meant that there was potentially a huge amount of information to add which could be done relatively quickly. | ||
G1.2 The quality of open knowledge continues to improve | Percentage of WMUK-related files (e.g. images) in mainspace use on a Wikimedia project (excluding Commons) | 5%
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14.0% (773 files used) | The grant supporting a volunteer photographing the players in action at Wimbledon was particularly effective at producing images which were widely used. 23% of the individual files are used across 21 different language Wikipedias and Wikidata.[1] Of the files produced through equipment loans, 185 were in use (14% usage rate) Uploads in the thousands usually have a lower usage rate. Of the more than 2,000 files uploaded from the National Library of Wales 222 were used in articles, a usage rate of 9%. This is comparable to last year's donation from the National Library of Scotland (11% of 1,100 files). These images have been used in high-impact areas. Between February and June the images used were viewed 1,185,920 times.
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G1.2 The quality of open knowledge continues to improve | |||||
Number of files (e.g. images) that have featured status on a Wikimedia project (including Commons) | 50
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43 | Our two project grants in relation to photography have been successful in supporting high-quality content. As mentioned above, these grants related to the Bodleian Library and Wimbledon. | ||
Number of new articles started on a Wikimedia site (eg any of the encyclopedias, incl Wicipedia) | 800 - will run fewer editathons and classroom assignments. Wales activities may focus less on creating articles. | 246 | Typically, university courses have focussed on improving existing articles rather than creating new articles. This is also usually true of project grants, though additional articles are sometimes created. For example the Core Contest focused on improving the English Wikipedia's most important articles; the Stub Contest - which will take place in Q3 - is about improving stub articles. As a result, most of the new articles supported by WMUK are produced through editathons.
The election editathon produced 84 new articles on UK politicians. This was four times the number of the second-highest WMUK event. It was particularly effective because the group of editors present were all established editors. It was also key that new subjects became notable on the night as MPs were elected. This contrast with the Charlie Chaplain editathon where a similar sized group of established editors produced four new articles (amongst improving other topics). When subjects become notable it becomes much easier to produce articles on them. Excluding the general election event, editathons averaged about 5.4 new articles per event. Gender gap events averaged 7.3 new articles while other events averaged 3.9. This indicates there are still more notable subjects related to the gender gap which can be created. | ||
G1.3 We are perceived as the go-to organisation by UK GLAM, educational, and other organisations who need support or advice for the development of open knowledge. | Not a KPI. Performance will be reflected in a narrative, rather than giving a numeric indicator of reputation rankings. | This is not a KPI. Narrative on our achievements will be captured though. | See narrative |
![]() In Q1 we focused on sustaining existing partnerships (mainly WIR projects carried over from 2014-15). We also audited current and dormant external relationships, to assess which ones will be given resources from WMUK (staff capacity and possibly supplementary funding). A partnership package was created, to supplement our work with external organisations - a list of possible projects that we can offer when setting up a collaboration with another organisation. This continued in Q2, although towards the end of it we were able to start building activities as the transition period was drawing to a close. Our focus on new systems was also a focus of the Volunteer Strategy Day in July 2015, where we worked through a ‘project proposal form’ aiming to bring volunteers closer to partnerships with external organisations too. The last six months were strong on delivery in existing partnerships. We concluded a Cancer Research Wikimedian in Residence project, and focused on exploring activities we can take beyond the residency (e.g. further training for researchers). As mentioned before, some 220 CRUK images are now used in English Wikipedia articles, and the great majority were added to them by other editors, rather than the WiR and those at CRUK. The page view figures achieved are larger than anticipated, at 900K to 1.4 million views per month of articles containing images (desktop figures only - mobile may be at much as the same again). In total these articles have had over 16 million desktop views in 13 months, mostly on the English Wikipedia, but also in over 20 other language versions. Importantly, as a result of the project CRUK has made a very wide commitment to releasing its material on open licenses where appropriate. The standard CRUK model release forms have been changed to allow models/subjects to opt into this in future. Developing partnerships in Wales has been very strong, as our successes from the past are leading to more interested parties being attracted. One of the key projects in Wales is the growing relationship with the National Library of Wales. We were very fortunate to be able to appoint Jason Evans for the Wikimedian in Residence, who within six months of the project’s launch (February 2015) released images that have been viewed more than a million times. He has identified around 140,000 images that can be uploaded throughout the project. Content contributions aren’t the only successes of this residency. Jason continues to be a vocal and passionate advocate for open knowledge and open content, hosting weekly drop-in sessions at the library and working to deliver events with other institutional partners. Perhaps even more importantly he has embedded sharing with the Wikimedia projects into the library’s digitisation workflow leading them to develop a model which is open by default. Sustainability has been a priority throughout the project and Jason has been training staff from the library and elsewhere to host Wikimedia-related events and training for the period after the residency. One of the biggest potentials for policy change is with the Peoples Collection Wales project, an important partner of the national Library and a very valuable resource in Wales overall ([3]). Following a series of meetings and a successful co-operative event lead by the WIR, they are committed to reviewing their current policy of only using non-commercial licenses and have even discussed sharing images automatically with Wikipedia. Negotiations are ongoing. Another partnership that started towards end January 2015 is the Museums Galleries Scotland Wikimedian in Residence. The partnership has been developing since 2011, which shows how long it can take to forge such projects. It was only really possible to start the MGS project once the institution saw how successful the National Library of Scotland WIR project was, showing how one collaboration can lead to another. The overarching idea for the project was to use the network of the MGS to reach many institutions and help them engage with open knowledge. We felt, however, that the project would be more successful if it starts with a secondment in a particular institution, so that the resident can first engage with an organisation on the ground level, and then use the learnings in the network. As a networked residency, working across multiple museums, the Glasgow Museums project was a four month secondment which took place at the beginning of the year-long residency with Museums Galleries Scotland. Reflections from the secondment can be found here. ![]() ![]() Worth highlighting is the Wiki Working Group created by the resident. ![]() The Working Group had three meetings during the residency, and is made up of curators and other museum staff who are interested in working with Wiki. At the third meeting on 28 May it was decided that the group will meet every two months, and also discussed areas of priority and activity. These included a content audit to identify areas of Wikipedia where curators could contribute knowledge; the desire to find ways for Wiki to be integrated into work plans; to run more events involving volunteer communities with which the museums are involved, and suggesting areas of the collection suitable for an image donation so that those conversations could be progressed. This group will be headed by Tracey MacDonald, one of the Assistant Curators working on the Kelvin Hall project, with whom the resident was embedded during the residency. The Working Group structure gives internal legitimacy to the Wiki project within Glasgow Museums, as well as giving a structure likely to encourage sustainability. It is perhaps the major achievement of the Residency, and offers a template for sustainable Wiki working in GLAM organisations. A further update from the MGS can be seen here. We are continuing work with the Bodleian Libraries (the Wikimedian in Residence projects started in March 2015) - see more in G3.3 for some of the achievements. ([4] for the recent report). Despite the assumption that the Wikimedia engagement dies off after a Wikimedian in Residence project has ended, in Q1-2 we have seen evidence that, with some input from our end, this does not need to be the case.
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G2a.1 We have a thriving community of WMUK volunteers | Number of volunteers (people involved in WMUK activities) [3] | 500
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543 in trailing 12 months. 112 in Q1 and Q2 quarter |
A key engagement activity we conducted this quarter was the Volunteer Strategy Day in July 2015. In order to have the community’s ongoing input on the running of our chapter we arranged a follow up event from our previous Volunteer Strategy Gathering held in November 2014. The second event was held on 25th July 2015 in London, with a Wikimedia UK member and venue owner donating us the space for free. The day was designed to further develop our new strategy which gives volunteers even greater influence over the work of the chapter. Following on from themes picked up from the previous meeting, such as concerns about the complexity of applying for grants or starting projects, as a charity we had worked on simplifying the process for both by essentially making it one process that was scalable. We split the day in two, first running an exercise where we took people through the process and asked them to plan and apply for hypothetical projects, then took feedback. The feedback has been valuable in adding small but meaningful changes to what we proposed. We learned that we need to create simple online-interfaces for people to get involved, but that we also need to emphasise that these points of contact are the start of conversations and an iterative process, not just one way traffic. Our second exercise was a review of our new structure of committees for building partnerships with educational and cultural institutions, approving and assessing the viability of projects, and engaging volunteers. This was based on an expressed desire that volunteers needed to have stronger mechanisms for engaging with the chapter and initiating projects. Our partnerships with cultural organisations are valuable and lead to high quality content and address subject-matter gaps by engaging an organisation’s own community of experts and enthusiasts in those fields. We have found that these often engage some key volunteers but we would like to have broader participation to get more out of these relationships. The proposed structure was presented and given over to some criticism and assessment, divided into tables with a facilitator and supported with guides and handouts of areas that should be addressed when thinking about committee structures and remits. There was lively debate with good points about staff capacity to support, how these groups will be assembled, and who will be on these committees, which we are currently incorporating into any final structure we arrive at. But we learned that generally the attendees were happy that we are communicating on a regular basis with the community on high level strategic changes. We created a learning pattern based on the two strategy days, and how we aimed to make them connected - [6]. | |
Number of leading volunteers [3a] | 100
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261 in the trailing 12 months | Still seeing significant carry over from the first six months of the period, which included Wikimania 2014. Expected to drop between August 2015 and January 2016. The charity has undergone a period of transition and is trying to involve volunteers more widely, including through various working groups and making project grants easier to access. | ||
Number of activity units [4] | 1800 (if we count attendees at any events) | 577 in year to date |
Following from the Volunteer Strategy Day, we are rewriting the project grants page for easier engagement, and more activities with volunteers. Also worth highlighting is the fact that in Q1-2 we received several approaches from volunteers who we have not been in touch directly, but who were involved in activities supported by us. For example, we were contacted by the Edinburgh archaeology Wikipedia group who were planning to host a session called "Wikipedia and Archaeology" at the 2015 European Association of Archaeologists annual conference in Glasgow. The group was trained by the National Library in Scotland Wikimedian in Residence several months back, they took the ideas from the event on board, and are now running their own activity. | ||
Number of leading activity units [5] | 400 (-Wikimania and the less active period in Q1) | 69 in year to date | During the restructure WMUK has been less active in organising events. Lead volunteers have continued to be involved with projects previously organised in advance, and around Wikimedians in Residence. As the new structure settles the charity will become more active. There is interest in promoting our project grants to encourage more lead volunteers. They have been successful in encouraging both media and written content. | ||
G2a.2 WMUK volunteers are highly diverse. | Proportion of activity units [4] attributable to women | 38% | 36% in year to date |
May undercount as WIR reports include more on this topic. Art+Feminism events were held at the Hepworth Wakefield (twice) and the University of Abertay, Dundee. Connect @ Edinburgh Napier University also saw the running on an event 'Writing Women Back into History'. An Athena Swan editathon was held at Swansea Medical College, while editathons were also held on the topics of women and politics and women and food. Six of these seven events were organised and delivered by Wikimedians in Residence.
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Proportion of leading activity units [5] attributable to women | 28% | 45% in year to date | People involved in delivering training in particular and helping with communications have had a closer to even gender split. | ||
G2a.3 WMUK volunteers are skilled and capable. | Annual survey capability score [6] (self-identified) | Repeat survey - overall score of 4/5. Follow up on 2014 identified actions | Not yet carried out | In the background, we were considering what skill building do we need to support the project based approach and involving volunteers in organisational partnerships. We will be developing these ideas in the later half of the year. | |
G2b.1 We have effective and high quality governance and resource management processes, and are recognised for such within the Wikimedia movement and the UK charity sector. | Not a KPI | Performance can be captured as a narrative, continued work on governance processes are at this time not a key priority. | see narrative |
The charity's quality of governance has been formally recognised by our independent reviewer, and we are proud of the progress we have made over the last 12 months. That said, some aspects of implementation continue to cause inefficiencies, including our CiviCRM computer system which remains problematic. Our new staff structure, with greater focus on volunteer-facing roles, will take time to bed in, and inevitably the reorganisation has required significant internal effort to audit and improve our office systems. | |
G2b.2 We have a high level of openness and transparency, and are recognised for such within the Wikimedia movement and the UK charity sector. | Transparency compliance [10] as determined by Govcom against published transparency commitments | 4 out of 5 | Q1: 2/5 Q2: 3/5 |
Q1 Score as a result of the constraints on publication of materials during the substantial period of consultation on redundancies. This meant that for a fair amount of time we were not able to be updating the community on the work in the office, and changes that were taking place. We felt it will be most constructive to talk about the changes, with an outlook towards the future, during an in-person event. This lead to work in Q2 on the volunteer strategy day. Q2 The need to improve openness and fully bring volunteers into the heart of everything we do remains a top priority, as evidenced by last month's volunteer strategy day. Work still remains to be done to incorporate these ideas into our day to day practice, and to ensure that everyone builds the questions 'how can I help volunteers?' and 'how can volunteers help me?' into all activities. | |
G2b.3 We have high quality systems to measure our impact as an organisation. | Not a KPI | Performance can be reported as a narrative. | See narrative | We updated our KPIs system ([7]) to simplify it and bring closer in line with WMF Global Metrics, where possible. We are pleased with the results and are only marking down due to presumed underreporting of metrics. See the "Updated_KPI_system" towards the top of the report on background of how we updated the reporting system for 2015-16, and the challenges that we faced. Another reflection is that the reduced programme capacity in this period, due to the transition, meant that we know some activities are under-reported. This is particularly true of projects that would have been difficult to hand over during transition. | |
G2b.4 We ensure a stable, sustainable and diverse funding stream. | Return On Investment (with and without staff time) i.e. spend per £1 raised | To be set by the CEO with fundraising duties. | No target at this stage | The target itself will be set by the new CEO; this will then allow for reporting on this area. Our new CEO starts in post in October (Q3). | |
G3.1 Access to Wikimedia projects is increasingly available to all, irrespective of personal characteristics, background or situation. | Not a KPI | This aspect needs to be considered at project planning stage, but is not a KPI. | n/a | n/a | |
G3.2 There is increased awareness of the benefits of open knowledge. | Not a KPI | Not tracked in 2015-16 | Not tracked in 2015-16 |
In the strand of raising awareness through external events, we engaged in two key conferences. In May our head of external relations presented the lead session at the Managing Online Reputation conference in London to an audience of around 80 senior communications professionals. The presentation was designed to explain to communicators how Wikipedia works and how best to engage with the editing community. This was supplemental to a guide to Wikipedia he submitted to Corp Comms Magazine. The presentation worked to highlight the damage to Wikipedia from paid editing and PR editing, to explain how to engage with the community through WikiProjects, talk pages, noticeboards and thee Teahouse. It also recommended that in order to understand the community, it is good to become a member of the community, too. After the presentation, several people approached him to ask for follow-up sessions to larger in house comms teams of agencies and companies. Some of these are heading in interesting directions with some companies considering releasing archive materials under Wikipedia compatible licences. He has also prepared a learning pattern about this work and the thinking and activity behind it, which can be read here. Also worth mentioning is a conference we engaged in in Q2. From a connection we have developed with the festival from 2013 (coming out of our Gender Gap programme), we were invited to run a stall at the Web We Want festival in May 2015. Web We Want festival is a celebration and examination of the internet and its future. Running over a period of four days the festival brought together a programme of talks, workshops and exhibitions to bring into focus how the web was created, what future developments might look like, and also the threats the web and its users face. Wikimedia UK was invited to host an exhibition stand in the digital marketplace section of the festival on Sunday 31 May. This was the space for conversations and engagement, open to everyone and not just ticket holders. Several of our volunteers joined us to share the wiki-love - and helping people make those crucial first couple of edits. Perhaps the most important take away from the event was the potential that we have here in the UK to deliver significant impact to non-English language Wikipedias. We spoke at length with members of Somali, Amharic and Swahili language communities and there is a real appetite for working to improve the encyclopedias in those languages. This is significant because while the English language edition has almost five million articles, Swahili, for example, has only 28,000 and Amharic 13,000. As the Wikipedia Zero programme expands the audience for these editions will grow, and while internet infrastructure may not be very strong in those countries, diaspora communities are extremely well placed to lead the way. As a result of the event, conversations are continuing in order to enable Wikimedia UK to develop a fundable package of work to engage with local non-English speaking communities to share the sum of all knowledge in the sum of all languages. | |
G3.3 Legislative and institutional changes favour the release of open knowledge. | Involvement in EU and UK advocacy activities; Involvement in advocating legislative change within GLAM, Education, and other organisations - narrative | narrative - 3 cases of change / our evidence being considered | 2 for general advocacy + 3 signs of change within the WIR programme |
We were active during Q1 in a number of ways. In the UK, the work of the Speaker's Commission on Digital Democracy concluded. Wikimedia UK took part in this consultation examining how technological tools can help facilitate wider engagement with civic society. The House of Lords Select Committee on Digital Skills published its final report in February, with information from Wikimedia UK's submission included. We continued to engage with Demos and other groups to explore more fully the concept of digital democracy, particularly looking at how Wikipedia's consensus-based approach to policy creation and enactment could be applied to wider democratic processes. During this period work began on a joint funding bid (with Demos and Open Coalition) for a grant from the Knight Foundation. In European advocacy Wikimedia UK continues to be an active member of the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU. The group continued to make the case for liberalisation of copyright regulation across Europe, particularly as it applies to the freedom of panorama. This included reviewing proposed amendments to the Reda copyright reform report. Work on this continued with greater urgency in Q2. In quarter two Wikimedia UK's advocacy efforts mostly focused on campaigning around Freedom of Panorama. The Reda report on copyright reform was progressing through the European Union and initially it recommended the harmonisation of freedom of panorama. However, as the proposal went through the amendment process the opposite position gained traction and there was a real risk that a non-commercial exception was to be applied across the EU. This would have been disastrous for the Wikimedia movement and necessitated the removal of tens of thousands of files from Wikimedia Commons. In response to this, Wikimedia UK played a leading role in a campaign to prevent the loss of freedom of panorama. This included contacting members of the European Parliament (MEPs), generating media coverage for the campaign and co-ordinating a letter to The Times (a serious business in the UK) which was signed by several other organisations including associations of activists such as Open Rights Group, and trade bodies that support journalists and photographers. The end result was that the campaign was successful and freedom of panorama was maintained. Although this fell slightly short of our overall ambition of securing FoP for all European member states, maintaining the status quo can still be considered as a success. We created a learning pattern about campaigning - [8] In other advocacy news, our head of external relations was invited to the UK government's Foreign & Commonwealth Office to participate in a policy discussion related to freedom of expression. This is important recognition of the charity's growing reputation as an organisation of influence. Our head of programmes and evaluation attended a workshop on the implications of the UK voting to leave the European Union in the referendum which is likely to take place next year. This is an important first step in contingency planning for this possibility. The Wikimedian in Residence project continued to make an impact on the policy and guidelines changes in their institutions (and beyond).
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G4.1 There are robust and efficient tools readily available to enable the creation, curation and dissemination of open knowledge. | Not a KPI | Capturing activities as a narrative, but without an organisational goal towards it | See narrative | Currently working on launchpad.wikimedia.org.uk as a platform to showcase the charity's technology projects and encourage wider participation. It is hoped that this could be the first step in encouraging new technology projects. In July 2015 we held a Volunteer Strategy Gathering to discuss the new structure of the charity. Amongst the topics discussed was the function of a proposed Evaluation Working Group which would help the charity assess projects at an early stage for how they would support the charity's objectives. The conversation is on-going at this stage, and the charity will publish the results of the day once they have been written up. Our grants application process is being reviewed to make it easier to participate. | |
G4.2 There are robust and efficient tools readily available to allow WMUK - and related organisations - to support our own programmes and to enable us to effectively record impact measures. | Not a KPI | Capturing activities as a narrative, but without an organisational goal towards it | See narrative | Our CiviCRM installation, stats.wikimedia.org.uk, and QRpedia continue to be maintained by the charity. | |
G5.1 A thriving set of other Wikimedia communities | Activities held for or jointly with other chapters and Wikimedia groups | 5 (due to internal focus in 2015-16) | 6 |
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Number of UK based Wikimedia events other than WMUK events | 55
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31 events in Q1 and Q2 combined | This includes 26 meetups in 11 different cities. Wikimedians in Residence have had some success in seeding other groups. Last year the residency at the National Library of Scotland facilitated Scotwiki and meetups in Edinburgh; a similar approach at the National Library of Wales this year has resulted in the creation of an editing group at the University of Swansea. | ||
G5.2 An increased diversity of Wikimedia contributors | Not a KPI | Capturing activities as a narrative, but without an organisational goal towards it | None in this period | Excluding gender gap events which are mentioned under G2a.2. | |
G5.3 Wikimedia communities are skilled and capable. | Activities specifically directed to help train or to share knowledge with other chapters and Wikimedia groups | 2
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4 |
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G5.4 Open Knowledge communities with missions similar to our own are thriving. | Number of shared activities [14] hosted with groups or organisations having similar goals to WMUK | 10 (via the Open Coalition project)
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8 |
Over Q1 and Q2, the Open Coalition project focused on: (1) Adding and expanding chapters in Community Builders Toolkit in collaboration with Mozilla, Ushahidi, OpenDirective, SocialTIC - 1 activity. (2) Open Policy: work as a member of the steering committee of the Open Policy Network developing the programme for and selection of their second group of Open Policy Fellows - 1 activity. (3) Network building with open organisations in Berlin, including Wikimedia Deutschland, Hive Berlin, Mozilla - 3 activities. ([10]) (4) Working with Advisory Committee of the Institute for Open Leadership and will advise on the development of the Fellows programme incubated Institute (supported by Creative Commons) exists to train new leaders in education, science, and public policy fields on the values and implementation of openness in licensing, policies, and practices - 1 activity. (5) Working with Mozilla and School of Open on developing the model of Mozilla Clubs for online learning and developing literacy on the open web - 1 activity. (6) Working with Mozilla on developing plan for a session at MozFest 2015 on Open Organisations - 1 activity. | |
Learning patterns
[edit]We referenced recent learning patterns within this report, but just to highlight these separately, here are the key ones:
- Sustaining Dialogue with your Community [11]
- How to campaign on a political issue [12]
- Saving Wikipedia from PR, and saving PR from Wikipedia [13]
Footnotes
[edit]- ↑ https://tools.wmflabs.org/glamtools/glamorous.php?doit=1&category=Photos+by+User%3ADiliff+for+Wikimedia+UK+tennis+photography+grant&use_globalusage=1&ns0=1&show_details=1&projects[wikipedia]=1&projects[wikimedia]=1&projects[wikisource]=1&projects[wikibooks]=1&projects[wikiquote]=1&projects[wiktionary]=1&projects[wikinews]=1&projects[wikivoyage]=1&projects[wikispecies]=1&projects[mediawiki]=1&projects[wikidata]=1&projects[wikiversity]=1
Learning patterns
[edit]Learning Pattern: How can we reduce the amount, and impact, of PR editing? | Saving Wikipedia from PR, and saving PR from Wikipedia | ![]() |
Learning Pattern: Volunteer management | Sustaining Dialogue with your Community | ![]() |
Learning Pattern: Volunteer grants | Engaging Volunteers with the Grants Process |
Terminology
[edit]The text below is copied from wmuk:WMUK activities and volunteers. It defines terms used in the following report.
Extended content |
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The charity and its activities[edit]WMUK activity A WMUK activity is an activity or event that is arranged by, carried out, hosted or run in conjunction with WMUK, or which WMUK has significantly sponsored or paid for. To count as a WMUK activity, the charity or its volunteers, staff or trustees must have taken some leading role: merely attending is not enough. The charity does not claim as a WMUK activity external events or activities that fall outside the above definition, even if WMUK staff, trustees or volunteers attend or are involved in a non-leading capacity. That is the case regardless of whether the individuals attend or are involved on behalf of WMUK. Examples:
Tracking of volunteer activity[edit]Activity units Rather than tracking the raw number of activities that the charity and its volunteers get involved with, without regard for their size, we instead focus on a measure of personal engagement that we call an activity unit. An activity unit is defined as one person attending one event. So, a score of 5 units may represent one person attending five separate events, or five people attending one event. For this purpose, no distinction is made between people who lead or help to lead an event, and those who simply attend. If the event is a WMUK activity, then all attendees contribute one activity unit to the overall count. If the event is a non-WMUK activity, we count only the activity units contributed by volunteer attendees who are working with us in some way for that activity. Activity units at advocacy events are given a 0.1 weighting. As we are primarily interested in external volunteer engagement here, we exclude the activities of WMUK staff or trustees when they are acting in their professional capacities. However, the following are not in themselves reasons to exclude from our activity counts:
Examples:
Leading activity units A leading activity unit is defined as one person taking a leading role in one event. That may include running or helping to run the event, or being one of the lead organisers of an online activity. Leading activity units are recorded as a subset of activity units, so a person taking a leading role is counted as contributing both one activity unit and one leading activity unit. Examples:
WMUK volunteers A WMUK volunteer is a person who has, at least once during the preceding 12 month period:
Examples:
WMUK leading volunteers A WMUK leading volunteer is a person who has, at least once during the preceding 12 month period:
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Ref | Term | Definition | Notes | |
[1] | Positive edit size | Sum of edit sizes in characters where text content has been added overall to the mainspace of a Wikimedia wiki. | We are here measuring quantity not quality of educational text content. We ignore all edits where content has been deleted overall, on the basis that deletions cannot generally be equated with the negative addition of content by that editor. We are aware that such an approach is relatively broad-brush, and will actively seek improved tools/measures in this area. | |
[2] | Institution reputation rating | Our estimate of the external reputation of each GLAM, education organisation or learned society that we work with. | This information is solely to enable us to track our own charitable impact consistently, and we will not be publishing the values we use for individual organisations | |
[3] | WMUK volunteer | WMUK:WMUK activities and volunteers#WMUK volunteer | ||
[3a] | Leading volunteer | WMUK:WMUK activities and volunteers#WMUK leading volunteer | ||
[4] | Activity unit | WMUK:WMUK activities and volunteers#Activity unit | ||
[5] | Leading activity unit | WMUK:WMUK activities and volunteers#Leading activity unit | ||
[6] | Annual survey capability score | To be defined | Questions to be written | Proposed survey to be repeated annually by WMUK |
[7] | Leading volunteer drop out rate | The proportion of our leading volunteers volunteers that drop out (no longer remain actively engaged with us) annually | Determined for each volunteer one year after first activity, two years and so on. | |
[8] | Tracking/measuring systems | The manual and automated systems by which WMUK tracks outputs/outcomes in accordance with the strategic plan | ||
[9] | Transparency score | To be defined | Questions to be written | Proposed survey to be repeated annually by WMUK |
[10] | Transparency compliance | As measured by Govcom against published transparency commitments | Commitments to be defined | |
[11] | Scans of QRpedia codes | The number of times QRpedia codes are used to direct to a Wikipedia article | This a is a subset of (15) | |
[12] | Awareness score | To be defined | Questions to be written | Proposed survey to be repeated annually by WMUK |
[13] | Shared activity units | A count of the number of units contributed by volunteers (not necessarily WMUK volunteers) on shared activities (14) | With technology-based groups or organisations having similar goals to WMUK | |
[14] | Shared activities | Activities that WMUK jointly lead with some other group | Does not include activities run by other groups that WMUK volunteers or staff simply attend or engage with. Depending on context, the other group could be Wikimedia-related (eg a chapter) or could be external to the Wikimedia movement (eg OpenStreetMaps) | |
[15] | Uses of tools | The number of times in aggregate a WMUK tool is used. | ||
[16] | Eval measure | A best-judgement evaluation on a scale of 1 to 5 (5=best) | Used in lieu of a objective metric where such a metric is impossible or currently impracticable to obtain | |
[18] | WMUK activity | WMUK:WMUK activities and volunteers#WMUK activity |
Revenues received during this six-month period
[edit]Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.
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 ($US)* Explanation of variances from plan Grants GBP 314,000 78,500 78,500 78,500 78,500 157,000 566,060 566,060 Donations GBP 234,030 63,306 53,709 F G 117,015 388,490 194,245 Gifts in Kind GBP 0 0 0 F G 0 0 0 Gift Aid Claims GBP 15,000 3,260 6,033 F G 6,033 24,900 10,015 Estimated using prior year figures. Membership Income GBP 0 405 335 F G 740 0 1,228 K Discounts GBP 0 0 575 F G 575 0 955 K Conference Income GBP 0 0 894 F G 894 0 1,484 K Interest GBP 0 34 135 F G 169 0 280 K other Income GBP 0 136 63 F G 199 0 330 K
* Provide estimates in US Dollars
Spending during this six-month period
[edit]Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.
Table 3 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ 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 Community GBP 80,854[1] 41,700 17,370 F G 59,070 134,218 98,056 73%[1] No train the trainers activity. Other projects kept to a minimum spend. Promoting Free Knowledge GBP 119,089[1] 34,104 22,926 F G 57,030 197,687 94,670 28%[1] Various WiR partnership agreements negotiated but intentionally delayed. External Relations GBP 41,163[1] 21,388 26,391 F G 47,779 68,331 79,313 116%[1] £12k staff time overspend combined with £6k direct cost underspend. Cutting direct costs on these projects mean that staff time spent on them had to increase. Fundraising GBP 46,926[1] 44,893 39,623 F G 84,516 77,897 140,297 180%[1] Essentially a staff time variance and subsequent larger overhead allocation. The new CEO spends a larger proportion of time on fundraising, which was not budgeted for. Restructuring costs GBP 26,802[1] -[2] 57,019 F G 57,019 44,491 94,652 212%[1] CEO recruitment had to go through a second round, and there was no Q1 budget for staff time. TOTAL GBP 314,835[1] 142,086 163,327 F G 305,413 522,626 506,986 97%[1] N/A
* Provide estimates in US Dollars
Compliance
[edit]Is your organization compliant with the terms outlined in the grant agreement?
[edit]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 have been no deviations from the proposal other than those described above. For further background please see #Transition at Wikimedia UK.
Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".
- Yes
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
Signature
[edit]Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 16:02, 24 August 2015 (UTC)