Grants:Project/Rapid/Gikü/Wiki Loves Earth 2018 in Moldova/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2017-18 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

• To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/Gikü/Wiki Loves Earth 2018 in Moldova.
• You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
• You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

One goal has been met out of nine total. See details below).

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Metric	2016	2017	2018		Comments
			planned	actual
No. of uploaded images	553	1737	2500	1073	This goal I actually was not expecting to be met; the majority of the 1,700 images from last year were uploaded by a power uploader who we knew will not participate in 2018. The new power uploader was SerKo Photography but he did not have such a diverse and large archive.
Images used in articles	± 190	± 476	350	± 232	A lot of the uploaded images were on protected areas that already had had images, so fulfilling this goal was a question of illustrating newly covered areas, and squeezing fresh photos into articles that already had had images.
No. of participants (photographers)	25 (17 valid)	62 (54 valid)	50	37 (28 valid)	All participants from last years were invited but very few responded to the invitation. As a result, majority of the participants were newcomers.
No. of newcomers	15	49	30	25
No. of new items covered	63	88	50	61	Goal was met largely thanks to the photo expedition before the contest.
No. of wildlife/birds images	NA		250	37	Contrary to expectations, there were very few photographers passionate with wildlife photography that took part in the contest: only two of the participants in these category do this as a hobby and the rest were uploading accidental photos they had taken while photographing protected areas. Both were linked to our partner SPPN.
No. of participants (writers)			10	NA	Writing contest was not organized.
No. of articles improved in Romanian			20
No. of articles improved in other languages			80

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Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

• What worked well?
  • Preparations went well.
    • On Romanian Wikipedia, rudimentary articles were created for almost all protected areas and a good structure of navigational templates and categories was put in place. See this directory: Arii protejate din Republica Moldova.
    • Targeted posts were shared to Facebook groups of specific districts of Moldova, see the collection of groups: wmromd:Utilizator:Gikü/WLE2018targeted. A total of two posts per group were shared: one just before the contest. Reach was around 25–30,000 people. However, it is impossible to me to trace how much among the participants came from this kind of posts.
  • Thanks to the #fresh category, 18 protected areas with no images before the contest were illustrated with 127 photos.
  • The 'Lottery' brought good volumes of photos; for example participant Veaceslav86ialoveni uploaded a rich collection of images from a geological site in order to increase his chances for winning, and it paid out.
• What did not work so well?
  • There was a saturation feeling throughout the contest. We did not receive the same level of participation as in 2017, and it looked like the few people from Moldova that are interested in both nature photography and online contest participation, had exhausted their archives in previous years.
  • Contrary to expectations, there were very few photographers passionate with wildlife photography that took part in the contest: only two of the participants in these category do this as a hobby and the rest were uploading accidental photos they had taken while photographing protected areas. Both were linked to our partner SPPN.
  • Writing contest was not organized because
    1. judging by the participation onthe photo contest I estimated that the participation would be very low, and the prize would be awarded for a trivial number of contributions
    2. as organizer, I did not have time, having two full weeks offline in August
    3. a participant of 2017, that had been very keen to participate before the contest, announced that she wouldn't
• What would you do differently next time?
  • Most probably, there will be no next time. As organizer, I feel that the need for images of protected areas of Moldova has been saturated, and to acquire more images of still undocumented protected areas would require very directed and dedicated effort, a kind of effort that is not fitting to the specific of the contest.

Finances

Grant funds spent

The table below lists the items that need to be purchased in order to fulfill the project scope:

Item	Number of units	Price per unit (MDL)		Price per unit (USD)		Amount (USD)		Comments
		planned	spent	planned	spent	planned	spent
1,500 MDL gift certificate from the photography store Fotomax.md	1	1,500.00	1,500.00	88.60	88.60	88.60	88.60	Main prize
1,200 MDL gift certificate from Fotomax.md	1	1,200.00	1,200.00	70.88	70.88	70.88	70.88	Second place prize
1,000 MDL gift certificate from Fotomax.md	1	1,000.00	1,000.00	59.06	59.06	59.06	59.06	Third place prize
Any books from elefant.md online store in a total amount of max. MDL 1,000	1 (batch)	1,000.00	0.00	59.06	0.00	59.06	0.00	Prize for the writing contest; the contest was not organized.
Romoss Solo 6 Power Bank	1	500.00	559.00	29.53	33.02	29.53	33.02	Lottery prize
1,000 gift certificate from the outdoor sports store X-Style	1	1,000.00	1,000.00	59.06	59.06	59.06	59.06	Best fresh image
any two books from „Lumea animală a Moldovei” ("Fauna of Moldova") series	1 pair	338.00 ~ 445.00	236.60	19.96 ~ 26.28	13.97	19.96 ~ 26.28	13.97	Best wildlife photography; there are four books in the series with prices ranging from 169 to 228 MDL – winner chose two of them costing 169 MDL each, and since I acquired them directly from the publisher I was awarded a 30% discount.
Ghid pentru identificarea păsărilor (bird guide book)	1	400.00	552.00	23.63	32.60	23.63	32.60	Best birdwatching photography
Promotion (banners, FB page management, printing, etc.)	-	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	Negligible amount.
Hosting awarding ceremony	1	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	"B. P. Hasdeu" Municipal Library of Chișinău provided access to their venue for free.
Total						416.10	357.19

• Note: USD amounts are based on exchange rates provided by Oanda on September 11, 2018

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds? Yes: USD 59 I would like to subtract this amount from any upcoming grant I may write in the near 6 months.

A request for reallocation of remaining funds has been submitted by the grantee and approved by WMFon the discussion page of this grant report.

Remaining funds have been used or will be used for other approved mission-aligned activities. This use has been requested in writing and approved by WMF.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

Winning photos are here: c:Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2018 in Moldova/Winners

• Awarding ceremony, August 12
• 
  Mini-exhibition of winning photos of WLE, and birdwatching photos by SPPN
• 
  Awarding the #birdwatching and #wildlife prizes
• 
•