Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Enhancing Lace Content in Wikipedia (ID: 22748622)/Final Report
Application type: Standard application
Part 1: Project and impact
1. Describe the implemented activities and results achieved. Additionally, share which approaches were most effective in supporting you to achieve the results. (required)
This project consisted of three main phases: an evaluation of the existing materials on the topic of lace, development of training materials, followed by a program of outreach and training to improve the lace information in Wikipedia and to identify areas for ongoing improvement.
The evaluation of the existing state of content was very successful. Deeply knowledgeable lacemakers met to evaluate and manage the scope of the project. It was the necessary foundation for the future calls to action. This provided evidence and a framework to explain to newcomers about why the project was important and relevant to the lace community, as well as improving the usability of information location.
This project has raised awareness in the lace community about the issues of the coverage gaps in Wikipedia, and has encouraged new pages to be created, edited, and images added. Importantly, many new references and citations have been added, a major upgrade to many pages that had only decades-old references before. Improvements in the usability of Wikipedia pages resulted. [1] Although it would have been nice to have more participation, the lace community is small and the pool of volunteers with available time and computer skills is a limiting factor.
2. Documentation of your impact. Please use space below to share links that help tell your story, impact, and evaluation. (required)
Share links to:
- Project page on Meta-Wiki or any other Wikimedia project
- Dashboards and tools that you used to track contributions
- Some photos or videos from your event. Remember to share access.
You can also share links to:
- Important social media posts
- Surveys and their results
- Infographics and sound files
- Examples of content edited on Wikimedia projects
Project dashboard for the original grant period captured many of the efforts. However, after the grant period extension was granted the board had closed and could not be re-opened, so this represents an under-count of the activities.
https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/campaigns/lacecouvige2024/overview
Additionally, share the materials and resources that you used in the implementation of your project. (required)
For example:
- Training materials and guides
- Presentations and slides
- Work processes and plans
- Any other materials your team has created or adapted and can be shared with others
The training materials developed are located on this site: https://www.lacecouvige.com/projectvideos/lace-in-wikipedia-project
The best central summary of the Lace contributions are probably in the Lace Table. It began as a disorganized and thinner list, it has now been alphabetized, expanded, and now includes a wider cultural reach than before the project began. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Lace_types {I would show the comparisons of before and after here but I can't figure out how to add images to this document}
In addition, important new pages were created that demonstrate the need and the opportunity for more works of this type:
A major lace organization was added: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OIDFA
An important female lace practitioner and researcher biography was created: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Whiting
3. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with this Rapid Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals. Required. Select one option per question. (required)
| A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups | Strongly agree |
| B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community | Agree |
| C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups | Agree |
| D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives | Agree |
| E. Encourage the retention of editors | Neither agree nor disagree |
| F. Encourage the retention of organizers | Strongly agree |
| G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement | Agree |
| F. Other (optional) |
Part 2: Learning
4. In your application, you outlined some learning questions. What did you learn from these learning questions when you implemented your project? How do you hope to use this learnings in the future? You can recall these learning questions below. (required)
You can recall these learning questions below: 1. What are the gaps in lace knowledge? 2. What are the barriers to editing in our community? 3. Can we create new editors and contributors in a knowledge community? 4. If we create “call to action” or “wishlist” pages to will it prompt contributions? 5. Can we provide new routes for interested people to find the lacemaking information and community that they need?
1. What are the gaps in lace knowledge?
Analysis of existing pages and of missing pages helped us to identify the areas of focus. This work began with the ‘Lace Table” as a starting point. Each item in the existing lace table was evaluated for content and structure. One of the first changes was to organize the Lace Table. Alphabetizing provided a better structure and helped to quickly determine some of the missing lace styles, as well as enhancing the usability of the table. Missing laces have been added and although some are currently ‘red” links, these are there to encourage knowledgeable parties to create the pages for those laces, and for people unfamiliar with lace to be aware that this arena has more laces than they might find in Wikipedia today.
2. What are the barriers to editing in our community?
In the lace community, there are some prejudices and perceptions that Wikipedia information isn’t of sufficient quality. My impression is that part of this stems from the origins of Wikipedia that many of the mature lacemakers witnessed, and a time when schools wrestled with the “new” web information ecosystem. Teachers prohibited the use of Wikipedia and denigrated it as an information source. It has many parallels to the AI and educational challenges of today.
It may be true that the lace information in Wikipedia was under-developed, but the onus is on the lace community to improve it. Nobody else is coming to do this for us, and this project explained why we need to contribute. It is clear that lacemakers realize that low quality information coming from AI is affecting the community, and realization of this is beginning to alter the and raise the status of Wikipedia as a quality knowledge source[2]. This was noted during the introductory meetings. Also, many of the original referenced materials were very antique and not reflective of the knowledge in the lace community today. This has been greatly improved with new and more current references.
Some people are afraid of making public errors. But it was explained that as long as a defensible citation is provided, the information can stand. If new information later contradicts this, the new information can be added and pages easily updated. The encouragement of the habit of public editing and the presence of others in the lace community as editors may provide confidence to some of the reluctant contributors.
Some are unwilling to tackle the software. Despite some of the more user-friendly incarnations of the software, people were unable to fill some forms, upload some images, and tackle page editing.
In a small community, there are perceptions of Conflicts of Interest (COI). Because it is a close-woven community (pun intended), we are all members of the existing international and regional lace groups. We are supporters or members of the museums involved. It is difficult to avoid a perceived COI to create a page for these groups, but they are the most crucial ones for the general public to learn about and connect with for additional knowledge of this field. Another situation is that of competing interests: scholars of lace currently in the education process need publications and credits for their career path; volunteer research and writing is not at the top of their priority list. Others earn money from freelance writing, and author credentials may also influence their willingness to do work for free. But this also impacts the COI problem: some of the best lace scholarship comes from people who might be perceived as too close to the citations to edit pages in their knowledge arena.
Another barrier is image and pattern copyright concerns. These are dicey legal matters that are daunting, fraught with misinformation, and real concerns among lace designers and authors. In addition, zealous removal of images by unfriendly gangs of self-appointed adjudicators who are not lawyers but may be misusing Wikimedia policy are harmful and discouraging.
3. Can we create new editors and contributors in a knowledge community?
Yes. The lace community is deeply knowledgeable in niche arenas and they are interested in getting this knowledge out more widely. They have a strong desire to connect with potential new and young practitioners, and they wish to see lace knowledge persist. This year bobbin lace was added to the new endangered crafts list in the UK.[3] They are also aware of the threats of AI slop and misinformation that affects the lace design and publishing sphere. So there is support for this work. But many were not able to make the leap to editing themselves.
Another situation we faced was age and technology barriers. Some of the most skilled lacemakers whose knowledge and skills we want to capture at this time are not as up to date with computer tools. Trying to improve one lace page, we had permission from a lacemaker to use her work. But she was unable to fill out the form for image permission, and her work was removed from one of the lace pages that needed the information the most. It was very deflating.
While there is a reluctance to work on the pages themselves among some of the community, many are willing to share their knowledge. It is possible that a different structural model will be the best way to capture this knowledge: maybe paired skilled editor/domain specialist partnerships (although this lacks credit for the non-typist of the pair); or sessions at conferences with people who are prepared to edit while domain experts are present with specific tasks. This might be a particularly useful strategy where there is an active editing group such as the one in San Francisco that attended one of our Zoom events. Or at a place where we have a conference and could connect with the local editing group. It might be best to structure projects with a targeted lace style, a person important to lace history, industry, or scholarship for their biographies, or some specific lace topic for an event to focus on that topic or person. And then at the same time we can collect the relevant references and images. A future project in this format might be a useful path.
4. If we create “call to action” or “wishlist” pages to will it prompt contributions?
Creation of "wishlist" posts did help to focus the needs to some extent. One called "Lace Topics Needing Help" focused on areas of lace styles and information that could use support. In one of the zoom sessions where the wishlist was linked, there was wide agreement that "Tesselace" is a modern and contemporary lace that likely needs a page and at least deserved to be in the Lace Table. But constructing that page from scratch was a heavier lift that did not occur during the grant period. However, even the red links in the lace table going forward will serve as reminders that this style exists and a page is needed.
Another wishlist was "High priority pages needed, Lace organizations". Here we did find that one of the pages was created, the OIDFA page. However, all of the active participants in this project were considered too close to organizations from a COI perspective as volunteers, board members, and other affiliated roles so we couldn't create those pages. In a small knowledge community, it will be difficult to get around this problem.
The wishlist for "Women in Lace: Text based research requests and tasks" yielded one crucial page, and edits to some existing pages. The page for Gertrude Whiting is now available and will continue to be improved. Hopefully this can become a model of the kinds of pages that we could have for other important women in this sphere. But like the other tasks, the model of holding targeted topic zoom meetings for a specific individual to gather the knowledge and references might be more likely to succeed than these suggestions for needed pages.
5. Can we provide new routes for interested people to find the lacemaking information and community that they need?
The edits that have been made have improved the usability of the lace pages, the findability, and raised the quality of the information. In addition, many pages have now had more recent publications included. This can connect interested readers with lacemakers and traditions that are active today and who specialize on a given lace style, for example. One case is the Mundillo lace page. At the July lace convention I met an author with a new book on this lace and purchased a copy. It is not a widely-available book but would be of enormous help for a lacemaker wishing to make that lace today and now they can seek it out. In addition, I told this author that I had been updating the Wikipedia page. She thanked me for including Black lacemakers on the page, it made her happy. And she also provided me with additional source material about the civic celebration of their lace tradition that I was able to add to enhance this page.
The OIDFA page is another example of a new connection for people exploring the lace community. Previously there was no reference to this long-standing lace organization in Wikipedia. But now people can find this organization and learn more.
5. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities? This can include both positive and negative situations. What did you learn from those experiences? (required)
Although my local area Wikipedia editors group hadn’t been scheduling events much since the pandemic, there was support and interest from the group in the early phase of the project. However, this coincided with massive political change and threats to projects and academia that were perceived to be related to DEI, and momentum cooled as local jobs and resources were threatened and people’s focus turned to immediate defensive needs. Initial enthusiasm did not convert to an event in this case, but it was a useful route to consider in the future and in other timelines it would have succeeded. I am concerned that ongoing threats to Wikipedia that were underway and widely reported in the media discouraged participation.
Later in the project, a different local group in the San Francisco area became engaged, however, and that momentum was underway at the tail end of the project. Future meetings had been planned to continue to develop lace content in Wikipedia in concert with The Lace Museum. This cooperation continues and has proven fruitful, and is expected to continue.
Another barrier to updated information in Wikipedia resulted from Wikipedia’s policies. Some editors think it is their job to delete contributions that emphasize the roles of women and enslaved people in history, and I became the target of harassment and aggressive removal of some of my contributions. Although many of them were not lace related, this attack caused me to reconsider if I wanted to encourage my colleagues to face this kind of harassment. I was not sure I could continue to encourage others to contribute if they were to become targets. In the end I persisted, but it definitely dimmed by enthusiasm at the midpoint of the project.
As the scholar Jill Lepore recently noted: “For more than half a century, the energy in the field has been devoted to work on previously neglected groups — women, slaves, immigrants.”[4] The lace arena is definitely one of those previously neglected as women's work and interests. Editing this kind of content is an uphill battle, despite other kinds of encouragement within the Wikipedia ecosystem such as this grant.
Unfortunately, knowledge from senior women was difficult to add as noted above due to technical barriers and aggressive deletions. This was frustrating and demoralizing.
On editing another page in the lace sphere, an aggressive editor attacked and removed my edits with baseless claims. Despite my attempts to engage on the "talk" page, this editor did not respond. So when I went to reinstate the legitimate items, the editor returned and threatened me with false claims about the items I was including rather than addressing this in the talk page. Again, I hesitate to encourage my colleagues to participate if this is the kind of abusive treatment they may encounter.
Ultimately I decided that continuing to edit, despite the unpleasant encounters, is a kind of "harm reduction" and although it may take multiple attempts, it is worth doing on that basis[5]. I think that community encouragement and support might also help to allay hesitation.
6. What is your plan to share your project learnings and results with other community members? If you have already done it, describe how. (required)
Although the grant period has ended, I will continue to support the project with the website, and upcoming presentations in the lace community. I will also reach out to future regional groups where our conferences are located and see if an "edit-a-thon" might be a good fit for those areas. For example, a convention next year in North Carolina might provide an opportunity to create an edit-a-thon with the new lace museum there.
In addition, one participant has expressed interest in carrying the project forward. I will offer support and guidance and assistance if their efforts yield projects.
Part 3: Metrics
7. Wikimedia Metrics results. (required)
In your application, you set some Wikimedia targets in numbers (Wikimedia metrics). In this section, you will describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used.
| Target | Results | Comments and tools used | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 30 | 25 | attendance at Zoom events; discussion group contacts; SFO area Wikipedians |
| Number of editors | 15 | 10 | not all editors registered with dashboard, and this likely represents an undercount |
| Number of organizers | 2 | 3 |
| Wikimedia project | Target | Result - Number of created pages | Result - Number of improved pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 50 | 3 | 196 |
| Wikimedia Commons | 50 | 129 | 48 |
| Wikidata | |||
| Wiktionary | |||
| Wikisource | |||
| Wikimedia Incubator | |||
| Translatewiki | |||
| MediaWiki | |||
| Wikiquote | |||
| Wikivoyage | |||
| Wikibooks | |||
| Wikiversity | |||
| Wikinews | |||
| Wikispecies | |||
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
8. Other Metrics results.
In your proposal, you could also set Other Metrics targets. Please describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used if you set Other Metrics in your application.
| Other Metrics name | Metrics Description | Target | Result | Tools and comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
9. Did you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results? (required)
Yes
9.1. Please state what difficulties you had. How do you hope to overcome these challenges in the future? Do you have any recommendations for the Foundation to support you in addressing these challenges? (required)
After our initial grant period, the 1 year deadline on the dashboard closed that system and new editors could not be added later, and some edits definitely came following the extension of our grant deadline. So those new editors were not captured. Also, there were edits to lace pages that came from existing editors who did not join the dashboard. Some people are understandably reluctant to have their edits tracked in today's environment.
For this project one of the crucial metrics would be "references added". Creating new references was one of the top needs on lace pages, and I think this was a large success. It is captured in the dashboard but also represents an undercount.
Recruitment and retention of editors was challenging. Although there was important verbal support of the project among the community, barriers still exist. And many of the people who are active in the lace community already have existing commitments to the newsletters, social media, website maintenance, public demonstrations, and more. Like many volunteer situations, people have many demands on their free time. Like other situations, I find that the people who are volunteering are also volunteering on other community projects as well.
The time frame was also a challenge. Despite requesting one year for the project, the preliminary work had to occur before an outreach article could be published in the community journal. So it was 6 months before widespread distribution of the information in our traditional media route was accomplished. In addition, in the community the monthly meetings and the annual convention schedules are locked down before a newly awarded grant could get into that system. I might recommend an 18 month or 2 year time frame for future infrastructure projects of this nature.
I might also recommend that for a small but deeply knowledgeable community of any craft, hobby, skill, time period, region, or other kind of cluster that domain experts be specifically paired with skilled editors in some manner. Maybe it would work to create almost like a dating app with some knowledgeable person who wants to fix some page or topic with an available editor. And people could swipe to find a project of interest and offer their knowledge without having to do the edits themselves. Or editors could find a project that strikes them as interesting and connect with the domain expert.
I do think that editing underrepresented areas can be expanded with targeted projects and wish list strategies. And the value of these will be increasingly appreciated as the AI onslaught proceeds. But new strategies to match the skilled researchers and practitioners might be required.
[No other place for my references, adding here] 1. Mangan, M. Enhancing Lace Content in Wikipedia. The Bulletin. Vol. 45. No. 3. Spring 2025 2. https://www.404media.co/bobbin-tatting-lace-ai-generated-books/ 3. https://heritagecrafts.org.uk/our-stories/red-list-2025-launched/ 4. https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-jill-lepore-nearly-quit-harvard 5. https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2025/12/in-the-face-of-ai-driven-encyclopedias-cherish-wikipedia-and-original-sources/
Part 4: Financial reporting
[edit]10. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency. (required)
4420
11. Please state the total amount spent in US dollars. (required)
4420
12. Report the funds spent in the currency of your fund. (required)
Upload the financial report
12.2. If you have not already done so in your financial spending report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal. (optional)
Although the cost for training video software slightly decreased due to a sale period, the website cost slightly more. This resulted in an even exchange of those allocated dollars.
13. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?
No
13.1. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.
N/A
13.2. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?
N/A
13.3. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.
N/A
14.1. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?
Yes
14.2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?
Yes
14.3. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the 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
15. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here. (optional)
My tax preparer asked if a document about the funds would be coming from WMF. I did not know, and one never came. We reported the funds anyway, but he would have preferred a document.