Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Improving the Citation Generation Output of Nigerian Media Sites (ID: 23528923)/Final Report
Application type: Tech project
Parts 1-3: Project and impact
1. What was built or achieved during the project, and how did it align with your original goals, milestones and technical plan? (required)
What was built / achieved:
During the project period, I developed 54 Zotero translators for Nigerian newspaper websites. Each translator was written to correctly extract and normalise metadata required for proper citation generation via Citoid and VisualEditor, including author names, publication dates, newspaper titles, and other core fields needed to output {{cite news}} instead of {{cite web}}.
All translators were locally tested using the Zotero translation-server workflow, documented, and prepared for upstream contribution. A public tracking table was created on Meta to record the status of each translator (tests, pull requests, QA, and merge status) and to provide transparent progress updates beyond the grant timeline.
Alignment with original goals and milestones:
The original goal was to improve citation generation for frequently cited Nigerian news sites by creating approximately 50 Zotero translators within the grant period, and delivering 54 translators exceeded this target and directly aligned with the project's originally stated scope and impact objectives. The planned development cadence (approximately five translators per week) was met.
Alignment with technical plan:
My work followed the proposed technical approach: building translators from scratch, testing them locally, and submitting them for upstream merging into the Zotero translators repository. And although upstream merge timelines are outside my control, I successfully completed all development work required on my side, with ongoing tracking and coordination documented publicly on Meta.
2. Share links that demonstrate your project's impact, usage, and technical outcomes. (required)
Required links:
- Project page on relevant Wikimedia spaces (e.g. Phabricator, Wikimedia projects, Toolforge)
- Code repository (e.g. Gerrit, GitHub or GitLab)
- Documentation or user guides
- Dashboards, metrics tools, or analytics used to track usage or contributions
Optional links you may include:
- Diff or mailing list announcements
- Community feedback
- Demos or product presentations
- Survey results or user testing feedback
- Examples of integrations or usage within Wikimedia projects
Project page / tracking:
- Meta-Wiki project and progress tracking page (including translator-by-translator status table): User:Vanderwaalforces/Zotero_translators_tracking
Code repositories:
- Individual Zotero translators (one per supported Nigerian news site), linked via the Meta tracking table (each entry contains the GitHub link to the specific translator or pull request).
- Target upstream repository (pending merges): https://github.com/zotero/translators
Documentation / guides:
- Project documentation and status notes maintained on the Meta tracking page, including scope, workflow, and testing notes per translator.
Dashboards / metrics / analytics:
- Citation frequency data from Citoid logs (shared by the Editing team) used to select high-impact Nigerian news sites.
- Translator-by-translator tracking table on Meta used to monitor development, testing, QA, and merge status.
3. What are the key lessons you learned during this project, both technical and non-technical? (required)
Technical lessons:
- Citation quality in VisualEditor and Citoid is highly dependent on the availability and maintenance of site-specific Zotero translators; without them, even reputable news sites with ISSNs are consistently misclassified as
{{cite web}}. - Nigerian news websites vary significantly in structure and metadata quality, requiring custom parsing logic and regular updates rather than reusable or generic selectors. But plenty of sites use JSON-LD, which made data extraction a bit easier.
- Upstream integration (merging into the Zotero translators repository and syncing with Citoid) operates on timelines outside a grantee's control, even when the development work is complete.
Non-technical lessons:
- Short-term funding mechanisms such as the Rapid Fund are not always well suited for technical infrastructure projects that require ongoing maintenance, upstream review, and long-term integration.
- Early and continuous coordination with upstream maintainers and WMF staff is essential, but even with alignment, external dependencies must be clearly accounted for in project planning and reporting.
- Public, transparent tracking (via Meta) is important for accountability and allows progress to remain visible even when final deployment depends on third parties.
4. How did the Wikimedia community or your target audience engage with your project during its development or release? (required)
Community engagement during the project focused on early consultation and feedback during development, as the translators are still pending upstream merge and deployment. I opened a discussion at the English Wikipedia WikiProject Nigeria talk page to validate the problem and gather editor feedback on how Nigerian newspapers are currently cited in VisualEditor and how improvements could work in practice: en:Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Nigeria#Fixing_the_way_Nigerian_newspapers_are_cited.
The discussion received supportive responses from experienced editors, including technical observations about AMP pages, missing bylines, and newsroom attribution practices. This feedback helped confirm demand for the project and informed implementation decisions in the translators. In parallel, I engaged with Wikimedia Foundation staff and the Editing team regarding Citoid behavior, Zotero translator workflows, and upstream integration. Progress was documented transparently on a public Meta tracking page throughout development. Broader editor usage will occur after upstream merging and Citoid synchronisation.
5. What risks or challenges did you encounter (related to delivery, safety, or security), and how did you address them? (required)
The primary challenges encountered were related to delivery and external dependencies, rather than safety or security.
From a delivery perspective, upstream merging of Zotero translators and subsequent synchronisation with Citoid are handled by external maintainers and operate on timelines outside the grantee's control. This was addressed by completing all development work within the grant period, submitting the translators in a merge-ready state, and maintaining a public Meta tracking page to document progress, review status, and outstanding dependencies.
Another delivery challenge was the variability of Nigerian news websites, including inconsistent metadata, AMP redirects, missing bylines, and non-standard author attribution. This was mitigated by writing site-specific parsing logic, adding fallbacks where appropriate, and documenting edge cases per translator.
No user safety or privacy risks were identified, as the project works solely with publicly available webpage metadata and does not collect, store, or process personal data. Development and testing were conducted locally using standard Zotero translation-server workflows.
6. Who will maintain the project going forward, and what is your plan for long-term maintenance? (required)
I will continue to act as the initial point of contact and contributor for the translators created during this project, particularly for coordinating upstream reviews, responding to reported breakages, and submitting updates when these Nigerian news websites change.
Once merged, long-term maintenance will primarily take place through the Zotero translators repository, where translators are maintained via standard community workflows, issue reporting, and pull requests. This ensures the work does not rely on a single maintainer and can benefit from broader technical oversight.
With this project, it became clear that sustained maintenance, monitoring, and expansion of translators for Nigerian (and other African) media outlets is better suited to a long-term support model. As such, future work, including regular review cycles, expanded coverage beyond the initial set of sites, and closer coordination with Citoid deployment, would be more appropriately handled under a General Support Fund (GSF) framework rather than a short-term Rapid Fund.
(questions 7-9 are skipped)
Part 4: Financial reporting
[edit]10. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency. (required)
7338309
11. Please state the total amount spent in US dollars. (required)
4998.95
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)
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)