Grants:PEG/Wikipedia Connection/Semester Funding for Workshops and Events/Report

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Report accepted
This report for a Project and Event grant approved in FY Pending has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.
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Project status[edit]

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?
Yes
Is your project completed?
Yes

Activities and lessons learned[edit]

Activities[edit]

Weekly Workshops[edit]

Every week during the semester, Wikipedia Connection has hosted Weekly Workshops typically last 1 – 2 hours each in Ohio State's new Research Commons of the 18th Avenue Library. With funding from the Wikimedia Foundation for the Spring semester, Weekly Workshops are now also stocked with food, refreshments, print resources, and goodies.

The earliest workshops back in Autumn 2015 involved a handful of individuals; come Spring 2016, Weekly Workshops have grown to up to twelve participants per week. Workshops have resulted in the creation and improvement of articles, the creation of an Ohio State University portal, the uploading of images, and more.

Weekly workshops vary each week, but some of the activities include:

  • Short presentations on different aspects of Wikipedia. Some of the topics covered so far include templates, images and licensing, combatting vandalism, templates, and portals.
  • A chance to ask questions regarding editing and finding things to edit.
  • Working collaboratively to create and improve entries.
  • Socializing with peers, both similar and diverse in interests.
Stats for Spring '16 Workshops[edit]
  • 16 attendees over all workshops
  • 34 articles improved
  • 7 new articles
  • Average of ~9 attendees per workshop

Wikipedia 15 Celebration[edit]

Wikipedia Connection kicked off the Spring 2016 semester with its own celebration of Wikipedia’s 15th birthday on January 15. To celebrate the occasion, the Wikimedia community launched a framework to celebrate Wikipedia’s birthday, including guidance for event planning, a place to share media and stories, and a social media campaign using the hashtag #Wikipedia15.

In Columbus, Wikipedia Connection held a 2 hour celebration in the 18th Avenue Library with cake, snacks, and drinks provided. The event began with a short overview of Wikipedia in 2015: what Wikipedia accomplished, interesting news stories, and the major topics that drew editor attention. The rest of the event involved socializing, getting to know one another, and playing ‘The Game About Wikipedia’. The celebration also attracted the attention of a few new attendees.

Art+Feminism Edit-A-Thon[edit]

The Art+Feminism Edit-A-Thon is a global fun, inclusive one-day event that brings together diverse communities to create and improve Wikipedia articles related to women in the arts. Despite its wide reach, Wikipedia suffers from a severe gender imbalance: since most editors are men, articles conform to men's interests and perspectives. In an effort to change this, Art+Feminsm gathers diverse women and allies together to celebrate women's cultural achievements and discuss openly ongoing challenges caused by structural sexism.

The main Art+Feminism event occurs annually in New York City in early March, with over a hundred node events also happening around the world. 2016 was Columbus’ first year of hosting an Art+Feminism Edit-A-Thon, resulting in three total node events in Ohio (Cleveland and Cincinnati being the other two).

Wikipedia Connection’s event took place on Saturday, March 5th for 4 hours in Ohio State’s new Research Commons. This was the semester’s biggest event, resulting in 15 participants contributing (many of which were editing for the first time!). 28 articles were improved, and 6 new ones were created:

  • Chen Aichan
  • It Is Almost That
  • Mother Reader: Essential Writings on Motherhood
  • Patricia Fernández
  • Sadie Lee
  • Zhang Lina

Wikipedia Takes Columbus[edit]

Wikipedia Takes Columbus was a ten-day event (April 10th – 20th) for Wikipedia Connection members to upload media to the Wikimedia Commons to help illustrate Columbus and the University. The Wikimedia Commons is one of Wikipedia’s sister projects that hosts over 30 million freely-licensed educational media files.

The goal of this photography event was to:

  • Introduce members to the Commons.
  • Learn about Creative Commons licenses.
  • Learn how to upload media to the Commons and include them in articles.
  • Learn how to be a better photographer.

Members uploaded a wide assortment of photos, including photos of campus buildings, dance events, parks, politicians, a concert, a protest, hackathons, aerial shots of Columbus, and more. In all, 7 participants uploaded 135 photos to the Commons, all of which are viewable at Category:Wikipedia Takes Columbus.

Wikipedia Takes Columbus also hosted two smaller “sub-events” during the time:

  • At April 6th’s Weekly Workshop, Knowlton photographer Philip Arnold gave a presentation providing photography tips and guidance.
  • In place of April 13th’s Weekly Workshop, Wikipedia Connection hosted a Buckeye Scavenger Day, where members explored campus and took photos.

As a fun incentive, prizes were given out at the conclusion of the event. Wikipedia Connection’s Board of Trustees selected a best photo, chosen for quality, uniqueness, and creativity. Two runner-ups were also selected.

  • Best Photo: Mirror Lake from the West (By Maria Rimmel)
  • Runner-Ups: Bridge over Hoover Dam (By Kevin Payravi) and Aerial of Lawn Between Smith and McPherson (By Nora Myer)

In addition, a raffle was held that included any participants who contributed at least 15 files to the Wikimedia Commons.

The Best Photos, as chosen by our Board of Trustees, are as follows:

Lessons learned[edit]

What worked well?
Overall, Wikipedia Connection's Spring Semester was a success. As an organization, we succesfully hosted weekly workshops throughout the semester, held two major events, and kept our active members engaged. Our primary focuses for the semester were to increase participation and to increase quality, which we did at a level that we're proud of. Quantitative statistics regarding this are available in the Activities section above, and the Outcomes and impact section below.
What didn't work?
Our original plan included and budgeted for several more events/projects than we were able to accomplish. These include:
  • A second edit-a-thon (which would be in addition to the Art+Feminism edit-a-thon that we did host).
  • A Wikipedia Meets Ohio's Congress project where we collaborate with the state's Congress to improve Wikipedia's content.
  • Working with the University Archives and other departments to get images donated to the Wikimedia Commons.
The biggest reason for not hosting as many events as originally planned is a lack of time from the club organizers, in between school, other extracurriculars, and general college life. In addition, this being our second semester meant having less experience all around. However, hosting fewer events allowed more time to be spent for each one, which was a positive.
While we had good attendance at our events, retaining new members proved difficult. For example, our Art+Feminism edit-a-thon has a good turnout (15), and everyone enjoyed the event and great contributions were made - however, none of the individuals attending for the first time attended a Wikipedia Connection event afterwards.
What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?
As we plan to continue running Wikipedia Connection in the coming semesters, we have come up with several things we plan on improving on based on feedback from multiple members and officers:
  • Host more regular officer meetings. This will allow us to get more hands and thoughts for organizing events, as well as preparing younger members to take on bigger leadership roles in the coming years.
  • More structure for Weekly Workshops. We did well in our workshops this last semester, but we can improve. Some ideas:
  • For the Spring Semester, Kevin gave the majority of presentations. Having more presentations by different members brings a more diverse set of thoughts and experience, and provides a great learning opportunity for other members.
  • Work towards more collaborative editing (e.g. have people improve different sections of a single article).
  • Collaborate with other campus groups and organizations. This will allow us to expand our membership, exposure, and to experience what other campus organizations are working on.
  • Encourage members to edit more outside of Wikipedia Workshops and Events. This can be done by getting editors more comfortable with editing, as well as providing better incentives for doing so (e.g. prizes for making x amount of edits in a month).

Learning patterns[edit]

For Wikipedia Connection's Art+Feminism 2016 Edit-A-Thon at the Ohio State University, we had to reach out to the Ohio State and Columbus community to find participants and gain exposure. Some of the steps we took from within the university were to personally invite art professors and ask them to invite others that may be interested; forward an informative email to various departmental listservs (e.g. art department, English department, journalism, etc.); and hang up fliers across campus, especially focused within art/language buildings and libraries. We also reached out to the greater Columbus community by locating and contacting various art groups, such as CAW! Columbus. Finally, we also engaged social media by making various posts from our Facebook page and paying to boost those posts to targeted people in the Columbus area who had an interest in art, Wikipedia, and Ohio State - this was effective at getting viewership, but not very effective at getting people to attend. Overall, our efforts to let the community know paid off to get people to both come and be aware of our event and organization.
Wikipedia Connection is a student organization at the Ohio State University. Our PEG grant was interesting as it wasn't for one particular event; it funded an entire semester's event worth of workshops, edit-a-thons, and projects. This presented a unique opportunity to come up with a set of achievable goals that encompass an entire semester's worth of activities. Two of the target outcomes we set were creating 1-2 new articles and improving 7+ more at our weekly workshops, along with creating 5-10 new articles and improving 20+ more at our edit-a-thons. On average, we created 1.71 articles per weekly workshop and improved 5.83 more. We hosted one Art+Feminism edit-a-thon, which resulted in 6 new articles and improving 28 more. While we did not fulfill the full target outcome for our workshops, we were still pleased with the results. The best thing to come from not meeting the target was identifying why we did not meet the target. One of the biggest reasons was that many of our workshops included presentations that didn't necessarily involve editing, such as presentations on various aspects of Wikipedia, or a photography guide as we prepared for a photography event. Some of our workshops also focused on improving non-articles, such as uploading images or editing portals. While all our target outcomes were not reached, we managed to identify a positive reason why it did not happen, and will now look at how we can better work to meet our target outcomes in the future.

Outcomes and impact[edit]

Outcomes[edit]

Provide the original project goal here.
The original project goal can be summarized in three bullets:
  • Editors: Introducing Ohio State students to editing Wikipedia and supporting existing ones.
  • Content: Producing content for Wikipedia through weekly workshops, edit-a-thons, collaborations, and photography sessions.
  • Education: Educating students and staff about Wikipedia: how it works, how to edit, its reliability, etc.
Did you achieve your project goal? How do you know your goal was achieved? Please answer in 1 - 2 short paragraphs.
Yes! We consider our three main goals to have been accomplished, as outlined below:
For editors, we brought in 14 new editors during the Spring semester, the majority of which were students. These students were trained to edit during our Art+Feminism Edit-A-Thon and weekly workshops. We also retained many editors from the previous semester, keeping them engaged for the Spring.
For content, we managed to upload 156 new images, create and/or improve 74 articles, and establish the Ohio State University portal. These contributions were made through our edit-a-thon, weekly workshops, photography event, and personal time.
For education, many weekly workshops started with an introductory presentation to a certain aspect of editing. This semester's workshops included educating students about vandalism, templating, portals, and image licensing. Our Art+Feminism edit-a-thon began with an introductory presentation on notability, the core content policies, and how to edit. Our photography event also included learning about taking better photos, for both personal reasons and to be able to better contribute to the Wikimedia Commons. Through the course of the semester, students gained a better understanding of how Wikipedia functions, which is valuable not only to know how to better contribute, but to be able to better understand how Wikipedia works when using it as a source. Students also gained skills in research and how to identify reliable sources, which is useful not only for contributing to Wikipedia, but for performing better research for school and for personal reading.

Progress towards targets and goals[edit]

Project metrics

Project metrics Target outcome Achieved outcome Explanation
1 - 2 new articles and 7+ articles improved per weekly workshop An average of 5.83 articles improved and 1.71 articles created per workshop Wikipedia Connection's Weekly Workshops varied in contributions. Some workshops resulted in 2 new articles, while others resulted in 0; some workshops resulted in 10+ articles being improved, while others resulted in 0. One major factor in the result of each workshop was the focus of each workshops; some workshops focused entirely on editing, while others included educational presentations or discussions (such as April 6th’s Weekly Workshop in which an Ohio State faculty provided photography tips and guidance).
5 - 10 new articles and 20+ articles improved per edit-a-thon 6 new articles and 28 articles improved in one edit-a-thon Wikipedia Connection hosted one edit-a-thon (Art+Feminism), in which our 15 participants exceeded our target outcome for the event.


Global Metrics[edit]

For more information and a sample, see Global Metrics.

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 4 From January throught April, SuperHamster, Rimmel.Edits, AddisWang, & BrianGainer made at least 5 edits per month on a Wikiproject
2. # of new editors 14 8 from Weekly Workshops + 6 from Art+Feminism
3. # of individuals involved 31 7 OSU advisors + 24 unique event participants (organizers included)
4a. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 7 1 in car club + 1 in Bhangra (dance) + 1 in Mirror Lake (Ohio) + 2 in Hoover Dam (Ohio) + 1 in en:Mother Reader: Essential Writings on Motherhood:Mother Reader: Essential Writings on Motherhood + 1 in It Is Almost That
4b. # of new images/media uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (Optional) 156 135 photos from Wikipedia Takes Columbus + 21 event photos
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 74 34 articles improved during workshops + 7 articles created during workshops + 27 articles improved during Art+Feminism + 6 articles created during Art+Feminism
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects N/A As an optional metric, we have left this calculation out as the project lasted the duration of several months and included numerous events. We found a per-event analysis to be more insightful, especially as improvements to Wikipedia included both adding and removing text, and the uploading of media.
Learning question
Did your work increase the motivation of contributors, and how do you know?
Yes. We have several indications of Wikipedia Connection motivating our members edit and remain involved:
  • The majority of first-time workshop attendees attended at least one more workshop afterwards.
  • Of the new members this semester, two become officers of Wikipedia Connection, indicating a commitment towards the organization.
  • Several members edited Wikipedia outside of Wikipedia Connection events and projects.
  • After our Art+Feminism edit-a-thon, we sent out a post-survey asking for feedback. Here were some of the anonymized responses:
    • "I felt like we made real improvements in closing the gender gap on Wikipedia. I was impressed at what we did with mostly new editors."
    • "The event seemed well thought out and was a very welcoming environment for everyone."
    • "I really liked getting guidance on how to edit, and appreciated the atmosphere."


Impact[edit]

What impact did this project have on WMF's mission and the strategic priorities?

For our semester project, we chose to cover two impacts:
  • Increasing Participation - We managed to bring in 14 new editors, and had a total participation of 31 individuals. Our Weekly Workshops went from an average of 5 attendees last semester to 9 this semester.
  • Increasing Quality - Throughout the semester, members created of improved 74 articles and uploaded 150+ images.

Reporting and documentation of expenditures[edit]

This section describes the grant's use of funds

Documentation[edit]

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grants at wikimedia dot org, according to the guidelines here? Answer "Yes" or "No".
Yes
Our documentation was shared with the Foundation through Google Drive. Alternative ways of sharing can be provided upon request.

Expenses[edit]

Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions and dates. Review the instructions here.
Activity Category Item Budgeted Units Budgeted Cost / Unit Budgeted Total Actual Units Actual Cost / Unit Actual Total Notes
Student Involvement Fair Crafting Supplies Presentation board, supplies and other costs N/A N/A $20 N/A N/A $15 Funded to Wikipedia Connection by the Ohio State Resource Room
Wikipedia 15 celebration Food Cake 1 $30 $30 1 $29.99 $29.99
Wikipedia 15 celebration Tableware Silverware, plates, napkins, etc. N/A N/A $5 N/A N/A $10.52 Since this was one of the first purchases of the semester, the extra silverware, plates, and napkins were put towards other events throughout the semester.
Weekly Workshop Food & Drink / Tableware Food, beverage and other costs to host weekly workshops 14 $30 $420 12 $36.77 $441.28 With the semester schedule, we ended up hosting two fewer workshops than expected.
Edit-a-thon Food & Drink Catering 2 $250 $500 1 $304.58 $304.58
Wikipedia Takes Columbus Apparel Organizer t-shirts 7 $16 $112 0 $0 $0 As the event neared, we realized t-shirts wouldn't be necessary for promotion and went without.
Wikipedia Takes Columbus Food and Drink Bottle Water 2 $6 $12 0 $0 $0 Bottle water was donated by an individual and did not come out of our funds.
General Supplies Poster stand 1 $30 $30 2 $14.99 $29.98 We were able to find good cheaper stands, so we purchased 2 for use in future events.
General Advertising Advertising through bus ads and university newspapers N/A N/A $100 N/A N/A $0 Normally funded by the Ohio State Operating Fund; we did not pursue this method of advertising for our events.
General Crafting Supplies Color prints for advertising club & events 200 $.20 $40 200 $.20 $40 Funded to Wikipedia Connection by the Ohio State Resource Room
Potential Project Food & Drink / Supplies Used for potential project for "Wikipedia Meet Ohio Congress", etc. N/A N/A $200 N/A N/A $0 This budget item was included in the event Wikipedia Connection ended up hosting another event, such as Wikipedia Meets Ohio's Congress (see "What didn't work?" section above). No such events were held.
General Advertising Social media advertisements on Facebook to promote events N/A N/A $50 2 $25 + $9.02 $34.02 Facebook advertisements were used to promote Art+Feminism & Wikipedia Takes Columbus, and worked quite well in increasing exposure.
General Unforeseen costs ~10% of the total budget to cover unforeseen expenses N/A N/A $170 N/A N/A $136.14 Unforeseen expenses were taxes, checkbooks, extra tableware, extra soda, a bank transfer fee, thank you cards for club advisers, mailers for mailing cards + event awards, and a $5 Amazon gift card randomly awarded to a survey respondent.
Total project budget (from your approved grant submission)
$1,689
Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission, this total will be the same as the total project budget if PEG is your only funding source)
$1,529
Total amount spent on this project
$1,041.51
Total amount of Project and Event grant funds spent on this project
$986.51
Are there additional sources that funded any part of this project? List them here.
Funding for some crafting supplies and printing came from the Ohio State Resource Room (as indicated in the "Notes" column of the expenses table above).

Remaining funds[edit]

The funds remaining from this grant in the amount of $310.13 were deducted from another grant payment for Grants:Project/Rapid/US OH/2016 Projects.
Remaining funds have been used or will be used for other approved mission-aligned activities. This use has been requested in writing and approved by WMF.
Are there any grant funds remaining?
YES
Please list the total amount (specify currency) remaining here. (This is the amount you did not use, or the amount you still have after completing your grant.)
$542.49
If funds are remaining they must be returned to WMF, reallocated to mission-aligned activities, or applied to another approved grant.
Please state here if you intend to return unused funds to WMF, submit a request for reallocation, or submit a new grant request, and then follow the instructions on your approved grant submission.
We have submitted a request for reallocation here, to use our remaining funds to fund events and workshops throughout the summer semester at Ohio State.