Grants:Project/Rapid/Kasey Baker/Western North Carolina's Holocaust History Expansion Edit-a-thon/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2018-19 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/Kasey Baker/Western North Carolina's Holocaust History Expansion Edit-a-thon.
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? We believe we met all our goals of this and were extremely happy with the turnout content created. Our goals for this event were: Recruit new editors, Increase skills for existing editors, and Add or improve content.

The only goal we did not meet was improving the skills of existing editors, and other than the organizers, most if not all attendees had never edited Wikipedia so we were unable to achieve this goal.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Targets:

Number of events 1
Number of participants 50
Number of new editors 50
Number of articles created or improved 1-10
Number of repeat participants (for projects that include a series of events): 1-10

Outcomes:

2 Articles Created
13 Articles Edited
105 Total Edits
30 Editors
5.54K Words Added
51.1K Article Views
0 Commons Uploads

https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Asheville_Buncombe_Technical_Community_College/Expanding_History_of_Holocaust_Survivors_and_WWII_(HAYNES_BUILDING_214_and_217)/home

The outcome and the content added to Wikipedia was what I was most excited about. As seen from our event page linked below We had some really amazing content added to Holocaust Survivors and information regarding the Holocaust in general. Although it was less than expected, it should be noted, that there were about 38 people at the event, some did not actively edit, some edited later with my assistance (students that needed more time to work on their projects). There were actually quite a few more articles that were thrown out for various reasons, that needed a bit more work, I'll be taking the time over the coming months to add some of these articles back again onto Wikipedia after I make the needed improvements. I feel that 3/4's of the expected number was a good turn out as we had some issues with promoting the event as will be explained below. We also came in at about 1/4 of the cost under budget, so I feel this was equivalent with our turnout. On top of these awesome edits my students added, some of my students submitted articles directly to me which I personally added to Wikipedia as they were great, but needed some extra work to get them to a level of quality I expect in an article. Mr. Jones and I went over the content created by my students and found that excluding one article which was kicked back for too little paraphrasing (which I personally think was correctly cited and paraphrased) most of the other content stuck on Wiki and was above average work. There are also quite a few articles still in the submission queue pending approval, so that will most likely increase the total content if some or most of these get accepted. Some of my students actually submitted really great articles to the site. On top of these results, the two administrators who joined our event have spoken with me after the event about organizing a future edit-a-thon potentially next semester and get more faculty to attend. I will also be presenting the result for our department in December to promote future events and share our successes from this project. Overall I think we exceeded our expectations for the outcomes on articles created and improved. Also not included in this metric, was the article I created (that some of my students helped out with as part of thier project): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Ziffer

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
50 Editors	35 editors (5 not included in the metrics)	We had 38 people attend, some choose to not edit, or edited after tracking for the event had completed.
New editors 50	New ditors 35	everyone was a new editors
New articles created or edited 1-10	New articles created or edited 15	It should be noted, that some articles were rejected, some are still pending, and some other edits were done outside of the collection period. We exceeded our goals on this edit-a-thon

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?
What did not work so well?
What would you do differently next time?

1. We really had a great team helping manage the event. The students and administrators actually seemed to enjoy the edit-a-thon. I've already heard positive feedback on this project, and I have been asked to speak to our greater department about this event and promote future events with collaboration with our Administrators who attended.

2. The promotion of the event was the biggest issue I personally had. The PR staff at my university (AB-Tech), although publicized the event with a facebook page and email blast, it came 2 days before the event as there was some interest but they could not join at such late notice. I had provided them all the details on info to share almost 2 weeks earlier, but they simply dropped the ball until the last second. Another issue was that our featured guest (Dr. Walter Ziffer, a Holocaust Survivor) had an unexpected doctors appointment and was unable to make it, however as he in 91 this was not that much of an issue.

Another Challenge I faced was that I felt overwhelmed during the project. I, fortunately, had some family members assisting me and the gracious assistance of frankcjones for catering and assistance in the event. I could have really used a 2nd editor to help me, as there was a fantastic turnout, but if any more people actually attended, we would have been overwhelmed.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

We were lucky enough to come under budget overall for this event.

To meet the budget for travel, we only had one Wikipedian travel to this event as hotel prices have spiked recently due to high rates of tourism for the event weekend and had to find a hotel outside of the Asheville area as prices reached over $200 a night.

1. Catering 772.93 + Drinks/snacks/plates/cups/forks (supplies etc) 26.68 = Paid by me $799.61

2. Travel expenditures for Frank Jones to travel to the Wikipedia event: 647 miles round trip from his house to the hotel, to and from the event site and the return home trip * $0.545 per mile = $352.62 hotel/accommodations = $270.29 The total expenditure of Frank Jones = $622.91

Total Expenditure of the Event: $1462.52 Funds to be reimbursed to Wikimedia for the event coming under budget: $537.48

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

Funds to be reimbursed to Wikimedia for the event coming under budget: $537.48

Remaining funds from this grant have been returned to WMF in the amount of US$537.48.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

There was a lot of interest in from my department head as well as other Admins at our school in hosting an event in the future on this and possibly making this more of a regular event. I hope to make this more regular edit-a-thon and keep our momentoum going with the help of all of you who provided funds to make this possible. Thanks for everything guys! It was a blast Kayz911 (talk) 22:14, 1 December 2018 (UTC) Some pictures are included: