Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 in Moldova (ID: 21906281)

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statusFunded
Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 in Moldova
proposed start date2022-08-23
proposed end date2022-11-30
grant start date2022-09-14T00:00:00Z
grant end date2022-12-31T00:00:00Z
budget (local currency)992.74 EUR
budget (USD)1000 USD
amount recommended (USD)800
grant typeIndividual
funding regionCEECA
decision fiscal year2022-23
applicant• Gikü
organization (if applicable)• N/A
Review Final Report

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Applicant Details[edit]

Please provide your main Wikimedia Username.

Gikü

Please provide the Usernames of people related to this proposal.

Gikü

TotalAnarchy

Strainu

Organization

N/A

Are you a member of any Wikimedia affiliate or group, including informal groups like Wiki Fan Clubs, emerging language communities, not recognized Wikimedia groups etc.? Please list them all.

only Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova User Group

Grant Proposal[edit]

M. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.

Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 in Moldova

Q. Indicate if it is a local, international, or regional proposal and if it involves several countries? (optional)

Local

Q2. If you have answered regional or international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.


R. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has.

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/wlm.moldova

1. What is the change that you are trying to bring about and why is this important.

Moldova has a total of 5,585 items with cultural heritage status, of following types (in descending order of frequency): archaeological, historical, architectural, artistic, vernacular architecture, and technical. Romanian Wikipedia displays the entire list in a comprehensive set of tables. There are also well systematized sets of Wikipedia articles in Romanian, Wikidata items, and Commons categories. Everything mentioned requires more illustrations. It is of course of top importance to merely illustrate an item. But even the items with existent images can benefit for additional material showing different perspectives and evolution through time.

Right now, there are images for 710 monuments out of 5,585, which is 12.7% completeness. For comparison, Wiki Loves Earth Moldova contributed in illustrating slightly more than 50% of the protected areas of Moldova. Ideally this metric should be achieved for cultural heritage monuments, too. Thus, the main challenge we are trying to solve can be phrased like this: add more illustrations of cultural heritage monuments of Moldova.

First iteration of this contest in Moldova brought good results and demonstrated that there is a chance to collect more freely licensed multimedia material of Moldovan heritage.

2. Describe your main approaches or strategies to achieve these changes and why you think they will be effective.

Beside the primary goal of the contest to add more illustrations of cultural heritage monuments of Moldova, it will also help achieve secondary goals, such as:

  1. new contributors to Wikimedia projects and a more diverse group of Wikimedians – e.g. the participants are expected to have a background in photography, heritage, and overall erudition, all of which are welcomed traits in Wikimedia contributors
  2. richer content of Wikimedia projects related to cultural heritage items of Moldova – e.g. by having an abundance of images Wikipedians may be motivated to write articles and illustrate them right away
  3. greater cohesion within the existent community – e.g. there is active interest among people already invested in Moldova subjects, to contribute in organizing the project and in using its results on wiki
  4. Wikipedia outreach – e.g. Wikimedia becomes more visible in Moldova thanks to a project that is simple to understand and does not require people to even know what Wikimedia is prior to participation; it also becomes more interesting for heritage protection NGOs of Moldova, which may find it useful for their cause to involve
  5. (not related to Wikimedia, but altruistically relevant) better visibility of cultural heritage of Moldova in the country and abroad
3. What are the activities you will be developing and delivering as part of these approaches or strategies?

Priority 1 is organizing a classical Wiki Loves Monuments contest, under the umbrella of the international contest. Technical enhancements are planned on wikis. Additional actions include an enhanced social media presence, and an outreach event in form of a bicycle quest.

  1. The classical model of a WLM contest has been tried out 100s of times, and the magnitude of international results is unquestionable. The Moldovan section of the contest demonstrated decent results on its own in its first iteration last year. Several enhancements to the organization part are going to make the contest more effective in achieving the main challenge to solve: adding more illustrations of cultural heritage monuments of Moldova
  2. Technical enhancements include:
    • a more complete set of coordinates: 1,800 (32%) of items are expected to have coordinates on Wikidata by the start of the contest; this will help participants find monuments not only through list, but also visually on a Wikidata-based map
    • preparing a page where people can report errors in the monuments lists, based on the experience of the organizers of WLM in Romania
    • adding direct links to the upload wizard from more locations. Planned as of now: the new list of public forum monuments of Moldova, the majority of which also have cultural heritage status. If time permits, links will also be added to Wikipedia articles in the infobox
  3. Based on lessons learned from past WLE and WLM iterations in Moldova, as well as using professional (privately acquired) advice from a PR professional, a social media plan is ready to be applied. It is designed to start one month before the contest, and reach the public through 6 different means.
  4. Last year, a bicycle quest was planned but not organized. There is more chance to finally organize it this year, especially since I obtained experience by holding a privately organized bicycle quest of lesser proportions during a festival on June 4.
4. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign or event? If so, please select the relevant campaign below. If so, please select all the relevant campaigns from the list below. If "other", please state which.

Wiki Loves Monuments

5. Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?
  • Gikü – coordinator, involved in all roles
  • TotalAnarchy – archaeology specialist, great role and merit in maintaining and enriching the monument lists

both are volunteers, non-salaried

6. Please state if your proposal aims to work to bridge any of the identified CONTENT knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.

Geography, Topics considered to be of impact or important in the specific context

6.1 In a few sentences, explain how your work is specifically addressing this content gap (or Knowledge inequity) to ensure a greater representation of knowledge.

I believe Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 in Moldova will address the selected knowledge gaps as follows:

  • Geography – Moldova is located in Europe but is one of the most obscure countries of the continent. It needs greater representation, and promotion of cultural heritage is a way.
  • Topics considered to be of impact or important in the specific context – Moldova is not doing too well preserving its cultural heritage monuments. Bringing them into spotlight may help saving them.
7. Please state if your proposal includes any of these areas or THEMATIC focus. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work and explain the rationale for identifying these themes.

Education, Culture, heritage or GLAM

8. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities?

Geographic

9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities?

There are four main groups of participants that the contest targets:

  1. Photographers, both professional and amateur. Cultural heritage monuments provide for good artistic subjects or backgrounds for professional photographers, as well as interesting pieces of general knowledge for amateur photographers. The contest also encourages a discovery approach, where participants would use the lists / map to discover places they've never known, and visit them.
  2. People interested in cultural heritage: professionals (who are salaried in this domain), monument protection NGOs (volunteers), and the general public. The contest can be sold to them as an additional way of promoting Moldova's cultural heritage which they are interested in preserving. Getting these people involved means a high chance of improving contest's visibility, as they are, in some sort, ambassadors.
  3. People seeking to promote their village/city. The contest can be a good way to make the a person's settlement become more visible overall, especially since in many villages and even cities the protected monuments are the only [tourist] attractions.
  4. Bicycle enthusiasts. By conducting a competitive bicycle quest, cyclists' (both amateur and professional) energy can be harnessed into a diverse set of photos of monuments. They need to be instructed to collect photos of as many monuments as possible within a fair set of rules and be motivated by actual prizes for best results.

As stated in the above CONTENT knowledge gap section, Moldova is not particularly recognizable. What is also a fact is that there are very few Wikimedian Moldovans, which means Moldova is more poorly represented in Wikimedia than other countries. This contest can only help addressing that gap.

10. In what ways are you actively seeking to contribute towards creating a safer, supportive, more equitable environment for participants?

From a safe and supportive standpoint, the classical format of the contest is more or less individualist-oriented, so there are no particular actions to be taken here – except maybe within the bicycle quest, where a few rules would take care.

From an equity standpoint, jury will be instructed (as always) to judge the encyclopedic value of an image in addition to its artistic value and technical competence, and a lottery will be organized such that non-professionals can also count on a prize.

11. Please tell us about how you have let your Wikimedia communities know about the planned activities and this proposal. Use this space to describe the processes you carried out to make the community more involved in planning this proposal. Please link the on-wiki community discussion(s) around the proposals.

Romanian Wikipedia community has been informed at ro:Wikipedia:Cafenea#Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 în Republica Moldova (permalink)

12. Are you aware of other Rapid Fund proposals in your local group, community, or region that are being submitted and that align with your proposed project?

Yes

If yes:

12.1 Did you explore the possibility of doing a joint proposal with other leaders in your group?
No
12.2 How will this joint proposal allow you to have better results?
I observed standalone grant requests from Serbia for example, but the national contests are usually done independently so we are not exploring a joint project.
13. Will you be working with other external, non-Wikimedia partners to implement this proposal? Required.

No

13.1 Please describe these partnerships and what motivates the potential partner to be part of the proposal and how they add value to your work.


14. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select a maximum of THREE options that most apply.

Identify Topics for Impact, Innovate in Free Knowledge

Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation[edit]

15. What do you hope to learn from your work in this fund proposal?
  1. Was the contest useful in not only merely illustrating protected monuments, but also help showing different perspectives and their evolution through time?
  2. Did Wikipedia benefit from the newcomers coming into the project with different background (photography, cultural heritage, archaeology, etc.)?
  3. Did the materials acquired through the contest contribute to enhancing other parts of Wikipedia, e.g. motivate wikipedians to write more and better articles?
  4. Was there an improved cohesion between the members of Romanian Wikipedia community observed around this contest? How did it manifest itself?
  5. Did the contest contribute to the Wikimedia outreach efforts? Did external entities interested in the topic – like NGOs fighting for heritage protection – start to use the contest, and Wikipedia in general, to the benefit of their cause?
16. Based on these learning questions, what is the information or data you need to collect to answer these questions? Please register this information (as metric description) in the following spaces provided.
Main Open Metrics Data
Main Open Metrics Description Target
Images used in articles (Last year's planned number: 450; actual number: 282)

There are still less than 200 articles of Moldovan protected monuments on Romanian Wikipedia, in addition to 44 lists of monuments. This metric can only grow if:

  • more articles are written that can accommodate galleries – i.e. multiple illustrations per monument
  • fresh photos are added to particular monuments, which will populate the lists on Wikipedia – but with no more than 1 illustration per monument
  • images are added more actively into the articles about the settlements they are located in – should be a priority in 2022

Since dramatic improvement is not expected for any of these, the expectation this year will be less than last year.

300
New items covered (Last year's planned number: 300; actual number: between 266 and 326)

This metric can only grow if images are added to relatively obscure monuments, because the most recognizable landmarks of Moldova and almost the entire heritage of Chișinău (the capital) have already been illustrated. The expectation is thus that there will be enough new rural churches, WWII monuments, and archaeological sites uploaded into the contest to have a decent result on this metric.

200
Images uploaded through the bicycle quest (Last year's planned number: 300) 300
Items covered by the bicycle quest (Last year's planned number: 30) 30
Images of other sites uploaded through the bicycle quest (Last year's planned number: 400) 400
17. Core quantitative metrics.
Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics Description Target
Number of participants (Last year's planned number: 50; actual number: 19. For newcomers, the numbers were 30 and 9 respectively)

For 2022, based on past experience and the projected outcome of the improvements, it is expected to have:

  • about 25 participants (photographers) with at least one upload
    • about 15 of which newcomers
  • about 10 participants in the bicycle quest
35
Number of editors Not applicable for the purposes of this contest
Number of organizers The scope is narrow relative to similar contests in other countries, so it does not require a large team. Both organizers have the experience of the previous WLM in Moldova (2021) and are fundamentally familiar with the Registry of protected monuments, its translations into Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Commons, as well as the inner technicalities of the contest itself. 2
Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project
Wikimedia Project Description Target
Wikimedia Commons (Last year's planned number: 3,000; actual number: 2,872.)

Number of uploaded images to Wikimedia Commons.

Based on previous results, it looks like several thousands of images uploaded is a reasonable expectation. However, a big chunk of the images uploaded last year were organizers' own contributions, including a near-complete inventory of the monuments of Chișinău (the capital), which was a one-time effort. So the expectation this year is lower. At the same time, this year for the first time we will allow images of the archaeological monuments. We won't risk making any assumptions about the number of such images uploaded because we don't know how well the potential participants will be able to locate this kind of landmarks.

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
17.1 If for some reason your proposal will not measure these core metrics please provide an explanation.

The "Number of editors" metric is not applicable, as there are no editing events planned within this contest. The "Number of participants" metric covers the overall participation.

18. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support.

Financial Proposal[edit]

19. & 19.1 What is the amount you are requesting from Wikimedia Foundation? Please provide this amount in your local currency.

992.74 EUR

19.2 What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?

1000 USD

20. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10UGD534IrRoW1FBLsDk-J4gFKetxJR7cdN0s7OCMQCw/edit?usp=sharing

We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes

Endorsements and Feedback[edit]

Please add endorsements and feedback to the grant discussion page only. Endorsements added here will be removed automatically.

Community members are invited to share meaningful feedback on the proposal and include reasons why they endorse the proposal. Consider the following:

  • Stating why the proposal is important for the communities involved and why they think the strategies chosen will achieve the results that are expected.
  • Highlighting any aspects they think are particularly well developed: for instance, the strategies and activities proposed, the levels of community engagement, outreach to underrepresented groups, addressing knowledge gaps, partnerships, the overall budget and learning and evaluation section of the proposal, etc.
  • Highlighting if the proposal focuses on any interesting research, learning or innovation, etc. Also if it builds on learning from past proposals developed by the individual or organization, or other Wikimedia communities.
  • Analyzing if the proposal is going to contribute in any way to important developments around specific Wikimedia projects or Movement Strategy.
  • Analysing if the proposal is coherent in terms of the objectives, strategies, budget, and expected results (metrics).

Endorse