Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Editing Wikipedia Together - online free course for volunteers invested in community development and open access /Midpoint Report
Report Status: Accepted
Due date: 2022-12-26T00:00:00Z
Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund
Report type: Midterm
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General information[edit]
This form is for organizations receiving Wikimedia Community Funds (General Support) or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their mid-term learning and results. See the Wikimedia Community Fund application if you want to review the initial proposal.
- Name of Organization: Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova User Group
- Title of Proposal: Editing Wikipedia Together - online free course for volunteers invested in community development and open access
- Amount awarded: 17100 USD, 76320 RON
- Amount spent: 19854.37 RON
Part 1 Understanding your work[edit]
1. Briefly describe how your strategies and activities proposed were implemented and if any changes to what was proposed are worth highlighting?
- The project is creating content for new online trainings and for learning materials and, at the same time, is promoting the idea of joining the Wikipedia editors’ community.
We developed the materials for 3 online Courses (Levels: Beginner, Medium and Advanced). Course 1 was piloted and is being updated based on feedback, Course 2 started in December and will end in February. Course 3 is scheduled to start in February and will have the face-to-face meeting on March 17-19. The project as well as the materials and opportunities it will create were presented at the Romanian Public Library Conference: Green and Digital Libraries in Târgu Jiu, in October 2022. This helped librarians learn about the course and join in. Promoting Wikipedia for new editors is part of this project and the activities were set to start at the end of the year. We reached out externally to new organizations that we can partner with in the future (ApTI- Association for Technology and Internet, Training Caffe, "Ioan Slavici" University of Timisoara, Lucian Blaga University Library in Sibiu) and to general public promoting the Wiki Loves Romania campaign. Internally, within the editors’ community, we started to reach out to editors that have been involved in outreach and training programs in the past (like Vlad Popovici). Our initial attempt to hire a communication person from the members of Wikipedia editors failed and this delayed the implementation of a structured campaign for reaching out to larger audiences. This effort is set to start now in January and this delay is not affecting our plan. For the community of editors we launched a survey to inquire about their interest to join monthly online discussions and what topics they are interested in. The response rate was low however, building on the answers we got, we will initiate a series of online meetings starting in January.
2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you feel are being effective in achieving your goals?
- Setting the learning structure to three different levels makes the learning process more clear for new editors and they appreciate better understanding the sequences. When attracting new editors there is little talk about the time needed to be invested to learn, so a more structured presentation on three levels is helpful. Discussing the difference between learning about how to edit on Wikipedia and creating a new article has helped the team clarify the steps needed to become an experienced editor.
The talk pages of the courses are used from the beginning and they are a helpful communication tool for new editors to master. Presenting about how to become a new editor to various audiences (planning for meetings with NGOs and then having a workshop for them) is proving to be helpful for us to better understand the motivation of new editors. This is helping us better adapt training and communication materials to their needs.
3. What challenges or obstacles have you encountered so far?
- As this was the first project implemented with the help of a Fiscal sponsor, the process of finalizing the documents, setting the financial process, documenting the project and separating the roles was time consuming and required patience. The team grew organically and besides the extra time required for onboarding everyone things moved in the right direction.
We started the project aiming at the community we already knew (librarians from two regions from our network). We had good responses, however not at the rate that we anticipated. Therefore, for the next phase we plan to open the invitations for courses towards the general public. Course 1 will be taught again in January and February. The online courses are helping new editors; however, the process requires online meetings for Q&A and sharing of practices. We plan in the future to add more online meetings to our training plans. We looked for the communication coordinator among the Wikipedia community. We found an editor with good experience in both Wikipedia editing and communication and received a confirmation from him in October. However until December we were unable to sign a contract and finalize the deal so in December we had to look for someone else. That person just started working with us and in January we will start implementing our communication plan.
4. Please describe how different communities are participating and being informed about your work.
- We informed the community about the project in Cafenea/Community page and asked for help with communication materials. https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cafenea/Arhiv%C4%83/2022/septembrie
We reached out to a couple of individual editors to see how we can plan for future training/learning opportunities in 2023. With librarians we used the facebook group “Bibliotecarii ❤️ Wikipedia” to promote the courses but also discuss any topics of interest they might have. This group is growing slowly and provides support for junior editors. https://www.facebook.com/groups/951882312256187 Claudia Serbanuta had a presentation about librarians editing Wikipedia at the National Conference of public librarians Green and Digital Libraries in Târgu Jiu, in October 2022. The audience was coming from all regions of the country and new librarians joined the Facebook group but also registered for the pilot course. https://www.bibliotell.ro/2022/10/biblioteci-verzi-si-digitale-ii/ Reaching out to NGOs that we can collaborate with in the near future started with NGOs that have thematic interest related to Wikipedia’s core values and the Academic environment. While NGOs have been active in following topics important for communities at global level, universities have a goal of educating their students and we were trying to see where we can work together. Efforts to reach out and connect with representatives from both communities turned positive results so far. There is more work to be done to make sure more members of these communities learn about Wikipedia.. https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cafenea#%C3%8Ent%C3%A2lniri_ale_comunit%C4%83%C8%9Bii
5. Please share reflections on how your efforts are helping to engage participants and/or build content, particularly for underrepresented groups.
- We aimed at reaching out to librarians from small cities or rural communities as they are members of economically disadvantaged communities. Most of the librarians in Romania are women so helping them become editors was part of our effort. Out of 29 new participants 23 are women and about half are from small urban or rural communities.
6. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What have you learned so far about these areas during this period?
- What are the kinds of resources that librarians from small communities are familiar with and how they can be used best for Wikipedia articles? - Local libraries should have local bibliographies and monographies for their communities. Surprisingly, they are not using these materials when thinking about editing articles about their communities. Some do not even have these resources and that is strange. They are using other resources and rural librarians have been stating that they will use InterLibrary Loan to get books that they need for editing articles.
What topics are people from rural communities passionate to explore? - Topics include: Known people, historical landmarks and general presentation pages for the villages in their commune.
What technical hurdles do people face which discourage them from contributing to Wikipedia? In the initial phase they were lost on Wikipedia pages and took them a while to figure out what were the 3 pages they needed to locate (user homepage, course page and discussion page of the course). Automatic count of notes is confusing to them Reference tool - takes some serious practice to be able to understand it What communication good practices can we add to our way of communicating with the volunteers and the public?
- We need a communication plan to be able to communicate effectively with the Wikipedia community of editors.
7. What are the next steps and opportunities you’ll be focusing on for the second half of your work?
- We will follow closely the communication plan and campaigns planned and see the impact it has and what we can learn for future projects.
We will reach out to more NGOs than we initially planned as we want to increase their awareness about the opportunities Wikipedia provides for them - as many topics like environment, digital and human rights, contemporary arts and so on have limited proper documentation on Wikipedia in Romanian language.
Part 2: Metrics[edit]
8a. Open and additional metrics data.
| Open Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| References used | What references new editors use | 30 | 29 | New participants
18 on course 1 4 on Wiki Loves RO 7 on ApTI |
Course 1: https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discu%C8%9Bie_Wikipedia:WMROMD/Cursuri/Editarea_pe_Wikipedia/Curs_2
WLRO: https://eventmetrics.wmflabs.org/programs/656/events/2744 ApTI/workshops: observations from meeting |
| Categories and subcategoris of topics | List with most popular categories (and subcategories) of topics introduced by participants | N/A | 36 | New editors
26 on Wiki Loves RO 9 returning on course 2 1 @ ApTI meetings |
Course 2: https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discu%C8%9Bie_Wikipedia:WMROMD/Cursuri/Scrierea_de_articole/%C3%8Enregistrare,_alegerea_subiectului,_structur%C4%83
WLRO: https://eventmetrics.wmflabs.org/programs/656/events/2744 ApTI/workshops: self-declaration |
| Help resources | Identify the resources used by participants to find their way back into editing. | N/A | 6 | Number of organizers
4 in Wiki Loves RO 1 in communication 1 @ ApTI meetings |
N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | 786 | New Content
32 pages created 160 pages edited 694 images uploaded |
https://eventmetrics.wmflabs.org/programs/777
Note: does not include unpublished drafts of articles in course 2 https://eventmetrics.wmflabs.org/programs/656/events/2744 |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Additional Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Diversity of participants brought in by grantees | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of people reached through social media publications | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of activities developed | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of volunteer hours | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
8b. Additional core metrics data.
| Core metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | New participants
20 taking the course 1 20 participating in workshops 20 participating in competitions Returning participants 10 taking course 2 and 3 10 participating in workshops |
100 | |||
| Number of editors | 15 - participating in course 2 and 3
2 - participating in workshops 20 - participating in competitions |
37 | |||
| Number of organizers | Volunteers helping with courses - 4
Volunteer organizers of promotion workshops - 5 Volunteer communication advisors - 2 |
11 |
| Wikimedia Project | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 30 new articles
50 articles improved On Wikidata 150 edits 10 new entries |
240 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
9. Are you having any difficulties collecting data to measure your results?
- N/A
10. Are you collaborating and sharing learning with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?
- No
10a. Please describe how you have already shared them and if you would like to do more sharing, and if so how?
11. Documentation of your work process, story, and impact.
- Below there is a section to upload files, videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, e.g. communications materials, blog posts, compelling quotes, social media posts, etc.). This can be anything that would be useful to understand and show your learning and results to date (e.g., training material, dashboards, presentations, communications material, training material, etc).
- Below is an additional field to type in link URLs.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/951882312256187/posts/1253466288764453/ https://www.apti.ro/content/cum-contribuim-la-wikipedia
Part 3: Financial reporting and compliance[edit]
12. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.
- 19854.37
13. Local currency type
- RON
14. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.
- Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
- Provide links to your financial reporting documents.
- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DBC_oDSj8cqfz0QoHee-oEpDy2J1VEPODG7ZTwvbrRc/edit?usp=sharing
15. Based on your implementation and learning to date, do you have any plans to make changes to the budget spending?
- Yes
15a. Please provide an explanation on how you hope to adjust this.
- We are in the planning phase for the face to face events and from the initial analysis the prices for lodging increased since we applied for this grant. We might need extra money to cover the hotel costs.
We did not exchange all the sum to RON and when we will do this there will be differences in the total sums available in the project. We want to make sure we can cover those by the end of the project.
16. We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on how the experience of being a grantee has been so far.
- This is an exciting period as new editors are joining us! We hope for more peace in the region and more calm times so people can feel safe enough to volunteer their time and learn to how to become a wikimedian.