Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Shared Knowledge Annual Plan 2023
- Kiril Simeonovski
- Ehrlich91
- Инокентиј
- Dandarmkd
- Иван Ж
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Applicant details[edit]
Wikimedia username(s):
- The main people related to this proposal are:
- Kiril Simeonovski
- Ehrlich91
- Инокентиј
- Dandarmkd
- Иван Ж
Organization:
- Shared Knowledge
G. Have you received grants from the Wikimedia Foundation before?
- Applied previously and did receive a grant
H. Have you received grants from any non-wiki organization before?
- Yes
H.1 Which organization(s) did you receive grants from?
- We have received grants on several occasions from the following non-wiki organisations:
- Goethe Institute in Skopje
- Government of the Republic of Macedonia
M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?
- No
M1. Fiscal organization name.
- N/A
Additional information[edit]
R. Where will this proposal be implemented?
- North Macedonia
S. Please indicate whether your work will be focused on one country (local), more than one or several countries in your region (regional) or has a cross-regional (global) scope:
- Local
S1. If you have answered regional or international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.
T. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has. (optional)
- Our organisation currently maintains the following social media pages:
- https://www.facebook.com/spodelenoznaenje — official Facebook page of Shared Knowledge
- https://www.facebook.com/mk.wikipedia — official Facebook page of the Macedonian Wikipedia
- https://www.facebook.com/Wikiexpeditions — official Facebook page of the Macedonian Wikiexpeditions
- https://www.instagram.com/wikiexpeditions_mkd/ — official Instagram page of the Macedonian Wikiexpeditions
M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?
- No
M1. Fiscal organization name.
- N/A
Proposal[edit]
1. What is the overall vision of your organization and how does this proposal contribute to this? How does this proposal connect to past work and learning?
Our mission, as described in Article 1 of its Constitution, is to further knowledge that should be free and available to everyone. Therefore, all activities planned with this proposal are aligned with this mission. Furthermore, in line with our Strategic plan 2021–2025, we aim to sustain community growth, increase content quality, improve content coverage, increase capacity development and identity new forms of knowledge that will enrich the Wikimedia projects primarily on the territory of Macedonia and among speakers of the Macedonian language.
The annual plan for 2023, which underlies this proposal, is greatly based on the programmatic structure developed in the past. Its three programmes—namely, Education & Science, Community and Partnerships—have been the cornerstones of our annual plans for years. Those projects that were successfully implemented in the past are included with no or minor changes, whereas the new projects are either revised activities that did not accomplish their goals in the past or completely new activities that were included because of identified opportunities and potential for success.
We have noted that there is a gradual improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of our annual plans from year to year, so we expect that the annual plan for 2023 will ride on the wave of our experience and learning from the past. In light of this, our proposal aims to make an optimal combination of all resources at our disposal in order to achieve its objectives.
2. What is the change that you are trying to bring about and why is this important?
Our proposal tries to make positive changes that will solve: 1) content gaps and disproportional representation, 2) active participation in volunteer initiatives and 3) preservation of heritage and data.
Firstly, there are many places in Macedonia which are rich in cultural and natural heritage sites but are relatively obscure for the general public; the country is home to many notable people who made important contributions in different fields but remain unknown; and there are many important topics that are not available in the Macedonian language. In order to fill these content gaps, we have created a diverse Community programme, which consists of projects aimed at conducting on-site research at the poorly covered places, encouraging people to produce content on underrepresented topics and getting the Macedonian Wikipedia community involved in writing content.
Secondly, a rise in the popularity of active participation in volunteer initiatives amongst the youth in the Macedonian society has been evident in the past couple of years, which is is mostly done through the educational institutions and non-governmental organisations. However, the notion that the contributions to the Wikimedia projects are a positive example of a community service is not widespread. Our plan is to tackle this problem mostly through the Education & Science programme, which includes projects whose goal is to introduce academic staff and students in secondary and higher educational institutions to the Wikimedia movement as well as to produce invaluable open educational resources as well as partially through the Community programme, which foresees organising edit-a-thons in collaboration with external thematic organisations to get their members introduced with and trained to contribute to the Wikimedia projects.
Thirdly, the tangible heritage which the GLAM institutions in Macedonia dispose of is prone to damaging if not preserved or transformed into another form; in a similar way, the platforms which the government and government-controlled institutions use to publish data can often be subject to cyber attacks that may lead to data loss. We intend to mitigate these problems and raise awareness about their potential severity through our Partnerships programme, which includes a range of activities from promoting the heritage that needs to be preserved to conducting mass uploads of open government data into Wikidata for future use on Wikipedia.
We opine that our direction towards addressing these three challenges would contribute to the development of a sustainable knowledge-based society in which individuals could easily access and verify the veracity of the information they encounter every day.
3. Describe your main approaches or strategies to achieve these changes and why you think they will be effective.
Our approaches to achieve the foregoing changes are based on years-long experience and learning that involved creative thinking, strategic planning, experimentation and analytic evaluation. The main approaches are the following:
- Building a network of partnerships. We plan to continue expanding the current network of partnerships that we have. There are two kind of partnerships that we will look for: 1) partnerships with Wikimedia organisations and groups, and 2) partnerships with non-Wikimedia organisations and groups. The former are important in the process of learning from the positive experiences in the movement as well as in the joint planning and implementation of programmes, whereas the latter are key in accessing knowledge that will be documented on the Wikimedia projects.
- Building a network of volunteer participants. There are two types of participants that we plan to work with: 1) experienced participants and 2) new participants. Experienced participants are people who have past involvement in the movement, both in online and offline engagements.In fact, this group of participants constitutes a stable core of the community, which will be the main driving force in implementing the activities in order to make a change.
- Developing new forms of knowledge. Our activities are based on research and involve experimentation, which often leads to sharing specific pieces of knowledge in novel forms. Some examples include the production of videos documenting scientific experiments and videos documenting lecture on topics involving advanced mathematical notation.
- Developing new forms of engagement. We managed to make a significant progress in the development of new forms of engagement in the early periods of the COVID-19 pandemic, although we had implemented a wide variety of different projects that involved working with volunteers long before it. Following the success in their implementation, we will continue to research the needs of our potential participants in order to tailor engagements that would achieve the expected outcomes.
4. What are the activities you will be developing and delivering as part of these approaches or strategies?
The activities that will be carried out as part of the foregoing approaches are elaborated in our annual plan for 2023. It consists of three programmes—Education & Science, Community and Partnerships—and is elaborated in turn.
1) Education & Science
This programme aims to extend and maintain collaborations with educational and scientific institutions with the goals of promoting Wikipedia as an educational resource, getting students and academic staff involved in the Wikimedia movement and producing open educational resources. It is divided into two sub-programmes: Education and Science.
- Education. We plan to hold academic trainings at which the staff at the educational institutions will be introduced to the Wikimedia projects, academic seminars at which they well be trained to run educational programmes, student trainings at which students will be taught to contribute to the Wikimedia projects and Wikidata workshops at which the general public will be trained about contributing to Wikidata.
- Science. This includes two related projects for producing free educational videos documenting scientific experiments in physics, chemistry and biology, as well as lectures with proofs of theorems and major results in mathematics and physics.
2) Community
The Community programme includes a wide variety of programmes with the goals of identifying topics of interest, filling content gaps, tackling the gender gap and improving content quality. It is divided into three sub-programmes: Editing challenges, Community support, Expeditions and Photo contests.
- Editing challenges. These include editing days and editing weekends as writing actions on a pre-defined topic during a 24-hour period and a weekend, editing weeks and editing contests as writing actions of competitive nature, and edit-a-thons as in-person and online writing events held in collaboration with specialised organisations with the goal of filling the content gaps.
- Expeditions. These are research activities aimed at visiting, photographing and documenting places (e.g. villages, natural sites, archaeological sites etc.) which are underrepresented on the Wikimedia projects.
- Community support. This is a general designation for a wide range of projects which include a micro-grants programme aimed at supporting photographers to produce free images, blitz trainings about Wikipedia for newbies, and editing stands in shopping malls.
- Photo contests. We plan to organise two contests in order to increase the photographic coverage of topics with Wikipedia articles. The first will be a local version of WIki Loves Folklore and the second one a local version of Wiki Loves Monuments.
3) Partnerships
This programme includes projects based on collaborations with public institutions with the goals of identifying new forms of knowledge, liberating copyrighted content and providing better access to free knowledge. It is divided into four sub-programmes: GLAM, QRpedia, Open Government Data and other partnerships.
- GLAM. We plan to collaborate with museums on organising visits to document their collections on the Wikimedia projects as well as with galleries, libraries and archives on acquiring content that they dispose with.
- Open government data. We plan to partner with the State Election Commission on obtaining census and electoral data as well as with the Real Estate Cadastre in order to obtain data about streets and localities that will be uploaded to Wikidata for future use across Wikipedia articles.
- Other partnerships. This sub-programme includes miscellaneous projects aimed at producing free knowledge through collaboration with external parties.
5. Do you want to apply for multi-year funding?
No
5.1 If yes, provide a brief overview of Year 2 and Year 3 of the proposed plan and how this relates to the current proposal and your strategic plan?
- N/A
6. Please include a timeline (operational calendar) for your proposal.
- The timeline of activities is shown on the uploaded image.
7. Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?
Our core team are members of our Executive Board that makes all of the decisions and follow-up projects. Additionally, in some of the projects our volunteer members of the Board decided to take an active role.
The Executive Board of Shared Knowledge consists of five members:
- Kiril Simeonovski (Chair of the Executive Board)
- Toni Ristovski (Treasurer)
- Cvetko Nedelkovski
- Bojan Jankuloski
- Martin Koloski
The staff includes the following two members:
- Nikola Milosevski (Community Coordinator)
- Ivan Zhivkovikj (Administration and Logistics Coordinator)
Other important people in the implementation of the proposal include:
- Nino Bogdanovski, Dean Lazarevski and Ordanče Petrov (participants in expeditions)
- Deni Ingilizovski (film producer and editor)
- Oliver Zajkov, Vladimir Petruševski, Marina Simonoska, Sara Cvetanoska, Cvetanka Cvetkoska, Marija Ljakoska and Sofija Kostadinovska (staff at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics)
- Dragana Niseva and Tvelmkd (Wikiclub coordinators)
- Тиверополник, ГП, P.Nedelkovski, BojanSpasovski9, Carshalton, Chnitke and other members of the core community.
8. 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.
Content Gender gap, Geography, Important Topics (topics considered to be of impact or important in the specific context)
8.1 In a few sentences, explain how your work is specifically addressing this content gap (or Knowledge inequity) to ensure a greater representation of knowledge.
Our work addresses the content and gender gaps as well as the geographic distribution primarily through the editing challenges but also through the community support. The topics for the editing challenges are determined upon a thorough research with the goal of identifying topics of impact. One edit-a-thon followed by an editing week will be part of the WikiGap initiative with the goal of engaging women to write articles about and related to women. Furthermore, the edit-a-thons will be planned in collaboration with organisations and groups from different cities. Finally, the Wikitours project has its main goal to visit other places in the country in order to ensure better geographic distribution.
9. 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, Human Rights, Public Policy, Climate Change and sustainability, Culture, heritage or GLAM , Open Technology, Diversity
10. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Please note, we had previously asked about inclusion and diversity in terms of CONTENTS, in this question we are asking about the diversity of PARTICIPANTS. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.
Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, Geographic , Ethnic/racial/religious or cultural background
11. What are your strategies for engaging participants, particularly those that currently are non-Wikimedia?
The strategies for engaging different categories of participants are described in turn:
- Community members. This is a broad group of people which consists of editors, photographers and affiliate members who have either contributed to the Wikimedia projects or helped to implement our annual plans. Community members will be primarily targetted through our editing challenges and the micro-grants programme.
- Students. These are the people who will be trained to edit Wikipedia in the educational institutions, as well as to use the Wikimedia projects as a useful source of knowledge.
- Academic staff. These are the people who will be taught on the basics of Wikipedia in order to both contribute to the project and teach their students to edit Wikipedia.
- Members of specialised organisations. These are the people who will have to be attracted to take part in the edit-a-thons and create content in their field of specialisation.
- Photographers. These are people who dispose of or are interested to produce photographs which can be uploaded under free licence to Wikimedia Commons. They will be mostly targetted through the Wiki loves contests and the micro-grant programme.
- Staff members at institutions. These are the people who are employed at the institutions which we collaborate with and help in the process of conducting our activities.
- Interested participants. These are the people who do not belong to any of the aforementioned groups but show interest in the Wikimedia projects and would like to learn how to contribute. This group of people will be targetted through the instant editing trainings and the editing stands in the shopping malls. Considering that all these groups of target participants have different need, we plan to develop different strategies for long-term retention.
- Community members: frequent editing challenges on diverse topics.
- Students: regular student assignments, student editing contests.
- Academic staff: production of open educational resources, networking with academic staff from other countries.
- Members of specialised organisations: recurrent edit-a-thons.
- Photographers: regular Wiki loves contests, micro-grants, involvement in other projects.
- Staff members at institutions: frequent communications, involvement in other projects.
- Interested participants: frequent communication, invitation to community events.
12. In what ways are you actively seeking to contribute towards creating a safer, supportive, more equitable environment for participants and promoting the UCOC and Friendly Space Policy, and/or equivalent local policies and processes?
Shared Knowledge acknowledges the importance of the Universal Code of Conduct and the Friendly Space Policy as cornerstones of the Wikimedia movement, which are vital in ensuring that people from different groups and with different backgrounds can safely participate and contribute. In this regard, we have adopted the Friendly Space Policy for all in-person and virtual events that we organize; additionally, we also emphasize the concepts of mutual respect, collegiality and mutual support, while we regularly warn that any instance of harassment and vandalism will be not tolerated and sanctioned. Considering that the Universal Code of Conduct was published during the course of this year, it will be a nice complementary policy which stipulates many of the concepts that we have previously applied in addition to Friendly Space Policy in order to build a healthier and more positive working environment.
13. Do you have plans to work with Wikimedia communities, groups, or affiliates in your country, or in other countries, to implement this proposal?
Yes
13.1 If yes, please tell us about these connections online and offline and how you have let Wikimedia communities know about this proposal.
We plan to work on implementing this annual plan primarily with the Macedonian Wikipedia community. All projects whose goal is to enrich this language edition and which target editors who are active there will be documented in separate project pages created on the Macedonian Wikipedia. Additionally, target editors will be notified about the projects through other communication channels such as emailing services and social media.
We also plan to collaborate with GLAM Macedonia on jointly celebrating the Wikipedia Day as well as organising Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos and a writing contest for pupils in secondary education and Wikimedia Serbia on organising editing challenges as part of the global initiatives to address underrepresented topics.
Meta pages on our annual plans, reports and projects. All these pages are easily accessible from the landing page on the following link:
14. Will you be working with other external, non-Wikimedian partners to implement this proposal?
Yes
14.1 Please describe these partnerships and what motivates the potential partner to be part of the proposal and how they add value to your work.
We will collaborate with various non-Wikimedia partners on projects and activities included in all three programmes of our annual plan. Firstly, we will partner with the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University to hold educational workshops and produce free videos documenting scientific experiments and lectures with proofs. Secondly, we will partner with Europe House and Metamorphosis Foundation on organising Wikidata workshops and edit-a-thons. Thirdly, we will partner with the Bitola State Archive on acquiring old photos and videos produced by the Manaki brothers\ as well as with the State Election Commission and the Real Estate Cadaster to obtain data on electoral results and data about streets and localities. Finally, we will maintain our long-term partnerships with the National & University Library “St. Clement of Ohrid” and the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
15. How do you hope to sustain or expand the work carried out in this proposal after the grant?
This annual plan is part of a long-term continuous process of operating towards achieving the prioritized goals outlined in our Strategic plan 2021–2025. The structure of our annual plan with the three programmes remains unchanged, and the projects and activities included in our plan have years-long successful implementation. Yet, a significant portion of our annual plan relies on innovation and research, thus containing novel projects or novelties incorporated in the long-term projects.
Of our continuously recurring projects, the educational programme and edit-a-thons have been carried out since 2014, editing contests and expeditions since 2015, editing days and photohunts since 2016, editing weekends since 2017 and editing weeks since 2020. Other recurring projects with small disruptions are the production of videos documenting scientific experiments and the introduction of QRpedia.
In the light of our determination to follow our Strategic plan 2021–2025, this annual plan will successively be followed with another one. Those projects which will be evaluated as successful will probably be included in the next annual plan, while those that will fail to meet the expectations will be fully ceased, merged with other projects or substantially modified.
16. What kind of risks do you anticipate and how would you mitigate these. This can include factors such as external/contextual issues that may affect implementation, as well as internal issues, such as governance/leadership changes.
- The main risks related to the implementation and our plans to mitigate their effect are explained in turn:
- High inflation. The rising consumer prices have already adversely affected the implementation of our current programmes, and we expect this trend to continue during the course of the coming year. It is impossible to anticipate how much the prices will change in the future, so therefore we decided to increase the amounts for the items that showed to be most sensitive to price changes by a rate which is slightly above the recent inflation rate in order to have a buffer against a potential surge.
- Low interest in participation. This has traditionally been one the main risks that halts the implementation of our activities. Expanding the pool of potential participants proved to be the only workable approach to mitigate the effect of this risk. In other words, the more people are invited to take part in our activities, the greater the probability would be that we will achieve the desired levels of participation.
- Bureaucracy in institutions. Many public institutions that are our potential partners have a relatively slow responsiveness and decision-making process due to high level of bureaucracy in their work. This may slow down and delay the implementation of some projects and thus the overall proposal. In order to mitigate this potential risk, we intend to collaborate with smaller institutions, whose bureaucracy is not very pronounced, and to make contacts earlier in order to have more time to clinch the partnership.
17. 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.
Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, Identify Topics for Impact, Innovate in Free Knowledge
18. Please state if your organization or group has a Strategic Plan that can help us further understand your proposal. You can also upload it here.
Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation[edit]
19. What do you hope to learn from your work in this fund proposal?
The main things that we hope to learn are mostly associated with our approaches to implement the proposal.
- Building a network of partnerships. We hope to learn what are the needs and expectations that our potential partners have, think about how our future collaboration can help to meet them and take action that would be beneficial for both parties.
- Building a network of volunteer participants. We hope to learn the behaviour of our potential future participants as well as the behvarioural changes of our core community members. This knowledge would be very helpful in designing editor-retention strategies.
- Developing new forms of knowledge. We hope to learn the evolution of knowledge and how its distribution to and between its users changes over time.
- Developing new forms of engagement. We hope to learn the preferences of our potential participants in order to better design our programmes so that we reach the maximum potential for volunteer engagement.
20. 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 space provided.
| Main Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Total participants | total number of participants involved in all programmes | 615 |
| New participants | total number of new participants involved in all programmes | 419 |
| Total content pages | total number of pages (e.g. articles, templates, modules, files, items etc.) created or improved in all programmes | 35228 |
| Total photos used in articles | total number of newly taken photos used in articles | 2287 |
| Total volunteer hours | total number of hours spent by volunteers to help implement the programmes | 17753 |
Here are some additional metrics that you can use if they are relevant to your work. Please note that this is just an optional list, mostly of quantitative metrics. They may complement the qualitative metrics you have defined in the previous boxes.
| Additional Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | N/A |
| Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | N/A |
| Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability | N/A | N/A |
| Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors | N/A | N/A |
| Diversity of participants brought in by grantees | N/A | N/A |
| Number of people reached through social media publications | N/A | N/A |
| Number of activities developed | N/A | N/A |
| Number of volunteer hours | N/A | N/A |
21. Additional core quantitative metrics. These core metrics will not tell the whole story about your work, but they are important for measuring some Movement-wide changes. Please try to include these core metrics if they are relevant to your work. If they are not, please use the space provided to explain why they are not relevant or why you can not capture this data. Your explanation will help us review our core metrics and make sure we are using the best ones for the movement as a whole.
| Core metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | This metric measures the total number of participants involved in all programmes. Participants include editors, lecturers, facilitators, volunteers and other people contributing to the implementation of a project. | 615 |
| Number of editors | This metric measures the total number of editors on all Wikimedia projects during the implementation of the programmes. | 560 |
| Number of organizers | This metric measures the total number of people involved in the implementation of the programmes who will not edit the Wikimedia projects (e.g. lecturers, volunteers, facilitators etc.). In fact, this metric is a difference between the number of participants and the number of editors. | 55 |
| Wikimedia Project | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | This metric measures the total number of pages that will be edited on Wikipedia as part of all programmes. | 4369 |
| Wikimedia Commons | This metric measures the total number of images that will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons as part of all programmes. | 6090 |
| Wikidata | This metric measures the total number of items that will be populated with data on Wikidata as part of all programmes. | 24769 |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
21.1 If for some reason your proposal will not measure these core metrics please provide an explanation.
N/A
22. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected?
Metrics will be measured using the following techniques:
- manual tools (e.g. on-site counting)
- automated tools (e.g. Outreach Dashboard, GLAMorous, Quarry, Hashtag tool, Montage)
Financial Proposal[edit]
23. & 23.1 What is the amount you are requesting from WMF? Please provide this amount in your local currency. If you are thinking about a multi-year fund, please provide the amount for the first year.
- 45257 EUR
23.2 What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?
- 44103 USD
23.3 Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it.
- The budget is available on the following link:
23.4 Please include any additional observations or comments you would like to include about your budget.
- The amounts for many items have been drastically increased as a result of the galloping rise of consumer prices during 2022. According to the most recent monthly report by the State Statistical Office, the following price changes across relevant categories have been recorded:
- Transport (+20.9% in January–September and +13.6% in September 2022)
- Food and non-alcoholic beverages (+17.9% in January–September 2022 and +28.7% in September 2022)
- Restaurants and hotels (+13.5% in January–September and +26.1% in September 2022)
- Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels (+11.1% in January–September 2022 and +19.4% in September 2022)
Considering the rising tendency in price changes, we have increased the amounts by a higher rate in order to off-set a fruther surge in the tendency.
Please use this optional space to upload any documents that you feel are important for further understanding your proposal.
- Other public document(s): Annual plan for 2023:
Staffing plan for 2023:
Final Message[edit]
By submitting your proposal/funding request you agree that you are in agreement with the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and the Universal Code of Conduct.
We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.
- Yes
Feedback[edit]
- Please add any feedback to the grant discussion page only. Any feedback added here will be removed.