Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Growing the wiki spirit in Turkey, 2022/Final Report
Report Status: Under review
Due date: 2023-07-31T00:00:00Z
Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund
Report type: Final
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General information[edit]
This form is for organizations, groups, or individuals receiving Wikimedia Community Funds or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their final results. See the midpoint report if you want to review the midpoint results.
- Name of Organization: Dijital Bilgi Derneği
- Title of Proposal: Growing the wiki spirit in Turkey, 2022
- Amount awarded: 49020 USD, 720000 TRY
- Amount spent: 49980 USD
Part 1 Understanding your work[edit]
1. Briefly describe how your proposed activities and strategies were implemented.
- This year, under the “Students Edit Wiki Projects” program, we had activities at 15 schools mostly in Istanbul. However, two colleagues traveled to Kayseri, Ankara to organize wiki activities. Another visit was to Northern Cyprus where we had wiki activities in 3 Turkish universities. So, for the first time our group members went abroad to present Wikimedia projects for international university students there. One exciting development was establishing a Wikipedia student club at a university.
What inspired the students of Uskudar University to establish a club was hosting Wikimedians in their university during Wikidata Trainings for Turkic Wikimedians. Many of our community members were very active in the organization of the event and it served the goals of the “Stronger Community Program”. Some community members who had never been to a Wikimedia event joined the conference. We used the connections and friendship in this event as a way of building a stronger community. We made 22 regular community meetings during the year.
We made 6 thematic edit-a-thons with partner organizations. In addition, we started a series of activities because of the general elections in May. First was forming the Disinformation Response Taskforce with the Disinformation Team of WMF. Begining in April, we made a series of edit-a-thons with a group of law students to improve WP articles related to electoral legislation; after the elections we called long-term editors to create/improve the biographies of parliament members.
Some planned thematic edit-a-thons had to be canceled after our country was struck by the earthquake in February. Our community members mostly live out of the earthquake-hit area and after the earthquake the members pulled their efforts to fight with disinformation about earthquake. Our group tried to support those efforts by swiftly organising an online meeting to get insights from wikimedians in the world who have experience in similar situations.
2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you felt were effective in achieving your goals?
- Main activities our group organize for making more people aware of how wikimedia projects work and inviting them to contribute are wiki-editing training for students at university courses and thematic edit-a-thons organized for the general public. We organize those events either online or offline. We see that when participants are totally new to the Wikimedia projects, one event is not enough to turn them into contributors. A new approach we try is having minimum two sessions on different days with each group. First event is for presenting Wikimedia projects and discussing the pillars of Wikipedia; next events are for working together with those participants who tried editing after the introduction session and would like to get support to continue. As an example we had a 4-sessions event for editing “community” related concepts at Turkish Wikipedia and a 2-sessions event for improving topics related to refugee-rights.
We believe that in multi-session events, it works better if online and in-person activities follow each other. Our approach is either making follow up online events after an in-person event; or first making an online event and following it up with an in person visit to where participants were based. This year two people from our group traveled to Ankara in October, Kayseri in November, and North Cyprus in December; and stayed in those places to partners and educational institutions based there. Making those travels enabled us to make in-person events with the partners there.
3. Would you say that your project had any innovations? Are there things that you did very differently than you have seen them done by others?
- One of our user group’s main activities is wiki education programs at universities. Generally this program is initiated when wikimedians reach out instructors and convince them to integrate wiki-editing into their courses. However, now we started to have education programs at university courses initiated by the demand or suggestion of the students rather than instructors. This can happen in two ways: firstly, we make protocol with university to give a wiki-training in a general course taken by students of all departments (eg. critical reading, digital culture courses). After being introduced to wiki projects in such course; some students suggest having wiki editing in their departmental courses. Having such suggestions from the students is sometimes more convincing and encouraging for the instructors. Another way is through student clubs. This year, the first Wikipedia Student club in Turkey was established at Üsküdar University, Istanbul. Next year, in two more universities we are expecting to have a Wikipedia Club led by existing active wikipedians who are studying at those universities. The student clubs organize wiki activities in collaboration with our user group, they guide the user group about which instructors or university departments they could collaborate with.
Another innovation of our group is one-article edit-a-thons. As far as we know, in other places edit-a-thons are organized to create/ improve as many articles as possible on a certain topic. Our one-article edit-a-thons are organized for creating/improving only one article; all participants collaborate on improving the very same article. We select an article which is essential to develop with perspectives of experts from different fields, we prepare a draft outline, participants work in small groups to write each subtitle. We are trying to ensure that the article will reflect the diverse perspectives and knowledge fields. We don’t know any other group making edit-a-thons in this way.
4. Please describe how different communities participated and/or were informed about your work.
- When organizing thematic edit-a-thons we collaborate with civil-society partners (For example collaborate with Health Right Association for Right to Health edit-a-thon, we collaborate with Women Filmmakers Association for women filmmakers edit-a-thon) We expect partners to help us reaching the most relevant target group for contributing on that topic by inviting their members, followers, volunteers or partners. On the other hand, we prepare an event-page at Wikipedia and invite active wikipedians to register there using telegram, WikiTuesday meetings.
5. Documentation of your impact. Please use the two spaces below to share files and links that help tell your story and impact. This can be documentation that shows your results through testimonies, videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, etc.) social media posts, dashboards, etc.
- Upload Documents and Files
- Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
- EXAMPLES OF THEMATIC EDIT-A-THONS
1) Europride edit-a-thon: https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikipedi:WMTR/Vikimaraton/Europride_2022_Vikimaratonu 2) Refuegee Day Edit-a-thon:
https://www.undp.org/turkiye/news/undp-t%C3%BCrkiye-has-taken-new-step-towards-achieving-global-goals-everyone-have-access-accurate-information
3) Wiki Gap Ankara: https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikipedi:WMTR/Vikimaraton/Ankara_WikiGap_2022 4) Video from "Good City" Edit-a-thon https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%C5%9Eehrin_%C4%B0yi_Hali_2022_-_Gen%C3%A7ler_Vikipedi%E2%80%99yi_Yaz%C4%B1yor!.webm
FIGHTING DISINFORMATION
1) Electoral Legislation workshops:
https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikipedi:WMTR/Vikimaraton/Se%C3%A7im_m%C3%BCktesebat%C4%B1
2) Wiki project about 2023 elections:
https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikiproje:Siyaset/TBMM_%C4%B0%C5%9Fbirli%C4%9Fi_Projesi
STUDENT CLUBS Blog post about Üsküdar University Student Club: https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/01/25/story-of-bold-students-in-istanbul-inspired-from-a-wikimedia-event-hosted-in-their-campus/
CONTESTS Blog post about Wiki Loves Earth 2022: https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/01/05/the-stories-behind-the-wiki-loves-earth-2022-photos-from-turkiye/
STORY OF WIKIDATA EVENT AT ISTANBUL: https://tr.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata_Istanbul_Conference_Report
6. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with the support of this Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals.
| A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups | Neither agree nor disagree |
| B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community | Agree |
| C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups | |
| D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives | Strongly agree |
| E. Encourage the retention of editors | |
| F. Encourage the retention of organizers | Not applicable to your fund |
| G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement. | Agree |
7. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your efforts helped to bring in participants and/or build out content, particularly for underrepresented groups?
- N/A
Part 2: Your main learning[edit]
8. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What did you learn about these areas during this period?
- 1. "Which courses are more suitable for wikipedia assignments at university courses? " We learned that when students are intrdouced wiki editing through extracurricular activity or a general skill developing courses, they would be decision makers about which departmental course is suitable for wiki assignments.
- 2."How could we support the creation of a Wikipedia club in a university and its activities? Would that be more encouraging for students to contribute than wikipedia assignments?" First have contact persons in school administration and try to engage them with wiki projects. They would be supportive of students to create clubs.
- 3." What sort of wiki-editing related activities could be tried at secondary schools? How could we encourage secondary school teachers to implement those activities?"- A teacher who made wiki assginments at university could be very enthusiastic about implement wiki activity in teaching .We had such a geography teacher at an Istanbul high school.
- 4. "What are the main motivating factors for local administrations, governmental museums and private museums for sharing their digital assets on wiki projects" We couldn't complete our planned work with museums.
9. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities?
- The biggest unexpected event was the earthquake. Life simply stopped for everyone for sometime, outreach wiki activities were not a priority for anyone anymore. However, editing could never stop; it was important to keep Wikipedia away from misinformation related to the disaster so we worked for support active editors in their work rather than bringing in new contributors.
Secondly, when we prepared the application we didn't foresee needs that would arise related to the election in May 2023. When elections approached we realized that there is a need for preparation for the elections and a lot of work after the elections for the wikipedians and designed activities to support those work.
10. How do you hope to use this learning? For instance, do you have any new priorities, ideas for activities, or goals for the future?
- Fighting misinformation and disinformation is becoming a more important theme for the group's work. Our group has always been concentrate on efforts to bring new contributors form different backgrounds and expertise areas. That's also a way of fighting misinformation. However in future, our group might try to concentrate on activities for more directly dealing with the fighting against misinformation. This fight could be made more powerfully when we collaborate with wikimedians in all over the globe. Encouraging our member become more involved in global Wikimedia events would make it possible be a part of global efforts.
11. If you were sitting with a friend to tell them one thing about your work during this fund, what would it be (think of inspiring or fascinating moments, tough challenges, interesting anecdotes, or anything that feels important to you)?
12. Please share resources that would be useful to share with other Wikimedia organizations so that they can learn from, adapt or build upon your work. For instance, guides, training material, presentations, work processes, or any other material the team has created to document and transfer knowledge about your work and can be useful for others. Please share any specific resources that you are creating, adapting/contextualizing in ways that are unique to your context (i.e. training material).
- Upload Documents and Files
- Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
- N/A
Part 3: Metrics[edit]
13a. Open and additional metrics data
| Open Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Museum professionals survey | It’s a survey intended to be conducted at presentations/trainings/edit-a-thons organized with the participation of museum professionals. The aim is finding out the attitudes of museum professionals about sharing knowledge on open platforms and their perception of Wikimedia projects. | 10 | N/A | The museum project postponed after the earthquake in February. We could make only one event at Ankara and only some online wikidata training is made with a small group. Survey could not be implemented. | N/A |
| Student feedback form | Feedback form designed for collecting data from university students who submitted Wikipedia assignments (or contributed to other Wikimedia projects as a course requirement) during 2022-2023 term, on the level of their satisfaction from their assignments on Wikimedia projects and their thoughts on the assignment.We would like to compare the results taken from different schools, different types of activities. | 50 | 92 | Our survey shows that participants of our events use Wikipedia mostly for their studies (%31), information related to popular culture (%28). Less than 1% had tried editing Wikipedia before they had Wikipedia assignment. Their perception about how reliable , useful and how up-to-date information available at Wikipedia varies. On interesting result was seeing how their perceptions about Wikipedia changes in different ways after making wikipedia assignments. Some students perceive it as more reliable where some starts perceiving it less reliable (8%decline, 22% increase, %16 no change.) | We implemented a 7 question pretest and 6 question post test at our in-person events. We have collected data from 92 participants. We wanted to find out the thoughts of participants before and after the wikipedia training about credibitiliy of the site, about their intention to contribute and see the changes. |
| 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 |
| Additional Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities | Participants who continue to participate in WMTR projects since last year. | 300 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities | Organizers of WMTR activities who continue to participate after activities.Partn | 5 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability | Partners of thematic-edit-athon + partners of Education activities + GLAM instution partners | 15 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors | Feedback received from participants via forms. | 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 | followers at Twitter + followers at instagram | 4200 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of activities developed | Biweekly community meetings + Thematic-edit-athons + Wikidata birthday event + writing contests + editing contests + talks at partner organisations + presentations/trainings at educational instutitons | 48 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of volunteer hours | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
13b. Additional core metrics data.
| Core metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | The number of participants who will take part in all WMTR projects and programs.
Participants of VikiSalı meetings + participants of Thematic edit-a-thons + Participants of university students + participants of WLE contests + Participants of Wikidata Birthday + |
1200 | |||
| Number of editors | Number of editors who will contribute wiki projects at WMTR activities.
Participans of editing and photo contests + participants of thematic edit-a-thons |
500 | |||
| Number of organizers | Number of WMTR members oversee the activities of the programs. | 8 |
| Wikimedia Project | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | New/improved articles | 2000 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Wikimedia Commons | New images | 2000 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Wikidata | New/improved items. | 2000 | 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 |
14. Were there any metrics in your proposal that you could not collect or that you had to change?
- Yes
15. If you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results, please describe and add any recommendations on how to address them in the future.
- N/A
16. Use this space to link or upload any additional documents that would be useful to understand your data collection (e.g., dashboards, surveys you have carried out, communications material, training material, etc).
- Upload Documents and Files
- Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
- N/A
Part 4: Organizational capacities & partnerships[edit]
17. Organizational Capacity
| A. Financial capacity and management | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| B. Conflict management or transformation | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| C. Leadership (i.e growing in potential leaders, leadership that fit organizational needs and values) | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| D. Partnership building | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
| E. Strategic planning | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| F. Program design, implementation, and management | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
| G. Scoping and testing new approaches, innovation | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| H. Recruiting new contributors (volunteer) | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| I. Support and growth path for different types of contributors (volunteers) | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| J. Governance | This capacity is low, and we should prioritise developing it |
| K. Communications, marketing, and social media | This capacity is low, and we should prioritise developing it |
| L. Staffing - hiring, monitoring, supporting in the areas needed for program implementation and sustainability | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| M. On-wiki technical skills | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
| N. Accessing and using data | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| O. Evaluating and learning from our work | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| P. Communicating and sharing what we learn with our peers and other stakeholders | |
| N/A | |
| N/A |
17a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.
- Formal training provided from outside the Wikimedia Movement, Peer to peer learning with other community members in conferences/events, Peer to peer learning with other community members (but that is not continuous or structured)
17b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.
- Lack of training that fits contextual needs and interests, Barriers to access training because of language, Lack of knowledge of available capacity building opportunities
18. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your organizational capacity has grown, and areas where you require support?
- N/A
19. Partnerships over the funding period.
| A. We built strategic partnerships with other institutions or groups that will help us grow in the medium term (3 year time frame) | Strongly agree |
| B. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to bring in more contributors from underrepresented groups | Agree |
| C. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to build out more content on underrepresented topics/groups | Agree |
19a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.
- Permanent staff outreach, Volunteers from our communities
19b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.
- Lack of interest from partners, Difficulties specific to our context that hindered partnerships, Lack of staff capacity to respond to partners interested in working with us, Lack of knowledge or capacities to reach out to strategic partners
20. Please share your learning about strategies to build partnerships with other institutions and groups and any other learning about working with partners?
- Building partnership takes many steps. We, as experienced wikimedians, imagine lots of ways how a certain partner could benefit from Wikimedia projects better and how they could contribute; and are able plan sophisticated activities. However, we learned that for potential partners it takes time to understand and acknowledge all those. So, it's essential to go step by step. We learned that we must first make a simple presentation to their members/staff, and give some time to process what they've learned about the wikimedia projects. Later another presentation to more specific group, a workshop, a discussion about licensing their archives with free licences may come by time. It's important to keep in touch and suggest new activities and ideas by time.
Part 5: Sense of belonging and collaboration[edit]
21. What would it mean for your organization to feel a sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement?
- Wikimedia Movement is a global movement. Being represented in global events and hosting Wikimedians from other parts of the world gives a sense of belonging to the Wikimedia movement. Our group experienced this strongly when we hosted and event in Istanbul. Some community members who always remain anonymous, regard Wikimedia contribution as an individual work and had never attend an in-person user group event before have attended or at least visited the event; this international event contributed grow sense of belonging among the local community members.
22. How has your (for individual grantees) or your group/organization’s (for organizational grantees) sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?
- Increased significantly
23. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.
- N/A
24. How has your group/organization’s sense of personal investment in the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?
- Increased significantly
25. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.
- N/A
26. Are there other movements besides the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement that play a central role in your motivation to contribute to Wikimedia projects? (for example, Black Lives Matter, Feminist movement, Climate Justice, or other activism spaces) If so, please describe it below.
- N/A
Supporting Peer Learning and Collaboration[edit]
We are interested in better supporting peer learning and collaboration in the movement.
27. Have you shared these results with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?
- Yes
27a. Please describe how you have already shared them. Would you like to do more sharing, and if so how?
- We make regular online meetings with the local community. We report the results and learnings of the activities related to this fund at the meetings and make prepare detailed meeting-notes to be shared for those who do not attend the meetings. We make presentations about the activities of the group and how we run them at Turkic Wikimedians meetings. In April two members participated to a Learning Clinic Panel to share insights about organisation of WLE contest.
28. How often do you currently share what you have learned with other Wikimedia Foundation grantees, and learn from them?
- We do this occasionally (less than once a month)
29. How does your organization currently share mutual learning with other grantees?
- This usually happens when members participate to regional/global events (online or in person) and reports about heir learnings from other grantees.
Part 6: Financial reporting and compliance[edit]
30. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.
- 49980
31. Local currency type
- USD
32. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.
- Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
- Report funds received and spent, if template not used.
33. If you have not already done so in your budget report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal.
- N/A
34. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?
34a. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.
- N/A
34b. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?
- N/A
34c. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.
- N/A
35. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?
As required in the fund agreement, please report any deviations from your fund 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.
36. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?
- Yes
37. 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 Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.
- Yes
38. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here.
- There is a great unstability in the excahage rate in Turkey,
When we started the project 1 USD was 17,85TL, and at the end of the project in June 2023 it is 25,47TL. Therefore we entered USD amount.