This project is funded by a Project Grant

Welcome to this project's final report! This report shares the outcomes, impact and learnings from the grantee's project.

Part 1: The Project

Summary

This grant took longer than expected to complete, mainly due to COVID disrupting our original Wiki Loves Monuments timeline.
We were eventually able to implement WLM integration in time for WLM 2021, in collaboration with the WLM organizers and community.
We also implemented Structured Data support, Nearby thumbnails, and other minor features across three releases.
Focusing on stability paid off, as our crash rate improved steadily throughout, from 0.9% at grant start down to 0.07% by the end.
Installs more than doubled, images used in Wikipedia articles grew past 53,000, and new uploads and P18 edits both exceeded targets.

Project Goals

Continuing to increase the number of Commons contributors and useful images uploaded to Commons, including for places that lack them, by improving and polishing the Commons Android app.

We blew past every metric tied to this goal. New contributors via the app: 10,556, over five times target. P18 edits: 28,141, about fourteen times target. New uploads landed around 145,000-150,000 over the grant period, well past our 70,000 goal, and active installs grew from 6,131 to 10,547.

Improving diversity among Commons contributors by implementing some of the promising methods laid out in the "Sharing small pieces of the world": Increasing and broadening participation in Wikimedia Commons study.

The study pointed to community and visible impact as strong motivators for underrepresented contributors, so we built two of the "light gamification" features it suggested: profile pages, so people can see their own and others' achievements and upload history, and Nearby thumbnails, so people can see the impact of existing contributions right on the map. However, we weren't able to collect demographic data on new contributors, so it's difficult to measure success on this metric.

Wiki Loves Monuments integration within the app.

Shipped in time for WLM 2021, in collaboration with the WLM community (full process in Story and Methods). The feature puts WLM monuments right on the Nearby map, pre-fills captions, descriptions and depicts statements, and tags eligible uploads with the correct WLM template automatically. 84 submissions came through from 18 unique uploaders, short of our 100 target. However, there were several very significant challenges with WLM integration, which we describe below.

Project Impact

Important: The Wikimedia Foundation is no longer collecting Global Metrics for Project Grants. We are currently updating our pages to remove legacy references, but please ignore any that you encounter until we finish.

Targets

In the first column of the table below, please copy and paste the measures you selected to help you evaluate your project's success (see the Project Impact section of your proposal). Please use one row for each measure. If you set a numeric target for the measure, please include the number.
In the second column, describe your project's actual results. If you set a numeric target for the measure, please report numerically in this column. Otherwise, write a brief sentence summarizing your output or outcome for this measure.
In the third column, you have the option to provide further explanation as needed. You may also add additional explanation below this table.

Planned measure of success (include numeric target, if applicable)	Actual result	Explanation
All tasks completed, final deliverable available on Google Play and F-Droid	Completed.
WLM integration set up in the app	Completed. Shipped for WLM 2021 (v3.1.0, v3.1.1).
Code coverage: 80-90% (revised up from proposal's 50% per committee request)	Not completed. 25% at grant start, 45.6% at midpoint (2 Oct 2021), 61.50% as of Jul 2022.	Code coverage improved tremendously, but at 60% we began hitting severe diminishing returns.
Crash rate: 0.1% (revised down from proposal's <0.5% per committee decision)	Completed. 0.9% at grant start, 0.28% at midpoint, 0.07% as of Aug 2022 (30-day view).
Open GitHub bug issues reduced 50% from grant start	Not completed. Increased from 640 (Feb 2020) to 901 (Aug 2022).	Our usage metrics exceeded our expectations, so bug reports grew faster than we could close them. In retrospect, probably a good problem to have.
>10,000 active installs (baseline 6,131)	Completed. 8,077 at midpoint, 10,547 as of 28 Aug 2022.
>2,000 new contributors, first upload via app (baseline 1,728)	Completed. 10,556 (Quarry query, all-time total).	I collected the stats later than intended, but the target was greatly exceeded regardless.
>35,000 distinct images used in articles (baseline 23,599)	Completed. 53,764 (128,980 total image usages, 19.59% of all images in category).
>70,000 new images uploaded, <10% deletion rate (prior grant: 57,446)	Completed. 145,000-150,000+ new uploads from 2020 Q1 onward.
>2,000 new P18 edits (baseline 1,398)	Completed. 28,141 (Quarry query, all-time total).	Same caveat as new contributors above.
Optional: >100 WLM submissions via app	Not completed. 84 submissions from 18 unique uploaders, 16 short of the 100 target.	Several factors combined: fewer countries participated in WLM 2021 due to COVID; we didn't have the resources to tailor the app to each country's specific requirements (data set, monument definitions, templates, ID systems), which made many national organizers hesitant to actively promote it to their own communities; and we ourselves prioritized a safe minimum viable product.
Committee-added: WLM team design collaboration	Completed.	Mockups iterated with WLM organizer input, data source decided via WLM mailing list consensus, scope decisions made transparently with organizers throughout the process.

Story

Looking back over your whole project, what did you achieve? Tell us the story of your achievements, your results, your outcomes. Focus on inspiring moments, tough challenges, interesting anecdotes or anything that highlights the outcomes of your project. Imagine that you are sharing with a friend about the achievements that matter most to you in your project.

This should not be a list of what you did. You will be asked to provide that later in the Methods and Activities section.
Consider your original goals as you write your project's story, but don't let them limit you. Your project may have important outcomes you weren't expecting. Please focus on the impact that you believe matters most.

The part of the grant that I'm proudest of is the Wiki Loves Monuments integration that we managed in time for WLM 2021, built with the WLM international community, and everything that we learned along the way. This was the first time that we tried to integrate campaigns into the app, even though we'd talked about it for the long time, and hopefully it will pave the way for further integration in the future.

I'm also incredibly proud of my team for decreasing the crash rate to 0.07%, and for improving test coverage from 25% to 61.5%. Even though we weren't able to achieve our goal due to hitting steep diminishing returns past 60%, the improvements went a long way to making the app more stable for our users.

Our installs grew from 6,131 to over 10,500, images used in articles more than doubled to over 53,000, and uploads and P18 edits both landed well past target. It was a privilege to see our app being used by so many people to contribute to Commons.

Crash rate

Code coverage

Uploads and deletions

Active installs

Survey(s)

If you used surveys to evaluate the success of your project, please provide a link(s) in this section, then briefly summarize your survey results in your own words. Include three interesting outputs or outcomes that the survey revealed.

Other

Is there another way you would prefer to communicate the actual results of your project, as you understand them? You can do that here!

Methods and activities

Please provide a list of the main methods and activities through which you completed your project.

Three main releases:
- v3.0.0: Structured Data support, redesigned main screen, limited connection mode
- v3.1.0/v3.1.1: Wiki Loves Monuments integration
- v4.0.0: SPARQL search on Nearby map, user profiles, custom picture selector, and Nearby thumbnails
Organized a "Nearby places that need photos" walk.
Hired an additional contractor (Madhur Gupta, initially shared with Ujjwal Agrawal) to meet revised scope.
WLM collaboration: Google Meet call with international organizers at grant start, mockup iteration, a dedicated Office Hour, ongoing mailing list coordination. Full detail in the WLM planning and release pages and the midpoint report.
Beta announced on wikitech-l, mobile-l, and commons-l, and personal blog.

Project resources

Please provide links to all public, online documents and other artifacts that you created during the course of this project. Even if you have linked to them elsewhere in this report, this section serves as a centralized archive for everything you created during your project. Examples include: meeting notes, participant lists, photos or graphics uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, template messages sent to participants, wiki pages, social media (Facebook groups, Twitter accounts), datasets, surveys, questionnaires, code repositories... If possible, include a brief summary with each link.

GitHub page - our code repository on GitHub
Website - landing page for the app
Google Play store listing - where Android users can download the app
Stats tool - for visualizing uploads and deletes
WLM discussion and collaboration with organizers: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Mobile_app/WLM
WLM 2021 release announcement: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Mobile_app/WLM_release

Learning

The best thing about trying something new is that you learn from it. We want to follow in your footsteps and learn along with you, and we want to know that you took enough risks in your project to have learned something really interesting! Think about what recommendations you have for others who may follow in your footsteps, and use the below sections to describe what worked and what didn’t.

What worked well

What did you try that was successful and you'd recommend others do? To help spread successful strategies so that they can be of use to others in the movement, rather than writing lots of text here, we'd like you to share your finding in the form of a link to a learning pattern.

What didn’t work

What did you try that you learned didn't work? What would you think about doing differently in the future? Please list these as short bullet points.

Test coverage hit steep diminishing returns past 60% and didn't reach the committee's revised target. Looking back, we should have expected this to happen, as most production apps don't typically reach 80-90% test coverage either, and we should have pushed back on that expectation.
Open bug issues grew instead of shrinking again, same as last grant. We should stop using this as a target metric and lean on crash rate instead.
We underestimated how country-specific an ideal WLM implementation would need to be, as the data set, monument definitions, ID systems, templates, etc all differ by country. A truly tailored version would need a full-time team liaising with each country individually, more than a part-time volunteer team can sustain.

Other recommendations

If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please list them here.

Next steps and opportunities

Are there opportunities for future growth of this project, or new areas you have uncovered in the course of this grant that could be fruitful for more exploration (either by yourself, or others)? What ideas or suggestions do you have for future projects based on the work you’ve completed? Please list these as short bullet points.

We are working on a multiplatform Commons app prototype.

Part 2: The Grant

Finances

Actual spending

Please copy and paste the completed table from your project finances page. Check that you’ve listed the actual expenditures compared with what was originally planned. If there are differences between the planned and actual use of funds, please use the column provided to explain them.

Expense	Approved amount	Actual funds spent	Difference
Josephine's salary	34,500 USD	34,500 USD	0 USD
Neslihan's salary	15,000 USD	15,360 USD	+360 USD
Ashish's salary	12,000 USD	11,280 USD	-720 USD
Madhur Gupta's salary	15,000 USD	15,360 USD	+360 USD
Total	76,500 USD	76,500 USD	0 USD

Ashish left the project early, before completing his full contract. The remaining approximately 3 weeks of his work and pay were reallocated between Neslihan and Madhur, who picked up the extra launch work. The total budget was unaffected, as this was an internal reallocation, not a change to the approved amount.

Remaining funds

Do you have any unspent funds from the grant?

Please answer yes or no. If yes, list the amount you did not use and explain why.

No

If you have unspent funds, they must be returned to WMF. Please see the instructions for returning unspent funds and indicate here if this is still in progress, or if this is already completed:

Documentation

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grantsadminwikimedia.org, according to the guidelines here?

Please answer yes or no. If no, include an explanation.

Yes

Confirmation of project status

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?

Please answer yes or no.

Yes

Is your project completed?

Please answer yes or no.

Yes

Grantee reflection

We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on what this project has meant to you, or how the experience of being a grantee has gone overall. Is there something that surprised you, or that you particularly enjoyed, or that you’ll do differently going forward as a result of the Project Grant experience? Please share it here!

The country specificity of the WLM competition was a big surprise, I learned a lot about it thanks to the wonderful WLM community and organizers who tirelessly answered all our questions and offered suggestions and information about their own countries. Thank you.