Grants:Project/Rapid/Niccolò Caranti (OBC)/Wiki4MediaFreedom edit-a-thons - II and III editions/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/Niccolò Caranti (OBC)/Wiki4MediaFreedom edit-a-thons - II and III editions.
• 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.

Please note that we erroneously gave a wrong title to the grant proposal page, since these really were the III and IV edition of the edit-a-thon, not the II and III.

Goals

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

• 
  Group photo in Madrid
• 
  Edit-a-thon in Berlin

We are overall satisfied by how the project went. We had not many participants, but a lot of content created! The edit-a-thons brought together 21 participants from different countries (Italy, Spain, Serbia) that created 41 new articles on media freedom-related issues in many languages, i.e. Italian, German, Spanish, English, Serbian. The articles created were highly relevant. For instance, during the edit-a-thon in Madrid on January 18th, a biographical entry was created in Spanish on Novaja Gazeta journalist Anastasia Babúrova, who had died exactly ten years earlier in Moscow at the hands of a killer, together with activist Stanislav Markelov. Last January 26th in Berlin, to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Italian journalists Dario D'Angelo, Alessandro Ota, and Marco Luchetta – killed in Mostar on January 28th, 1994 during the war in Bosnia – participants created Italian-language entries on D’Angelo and Ota. These temporal coincidences have made us reflect on the fact that every day is the right day to remember the crimes committed against journalists, often with impunity.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
2 events	2	We did two events, one in Madrid, in cooperation with Wikimedia Spain; and one in Berlin, in cooperation with Wikimedia Germany, as expected.
40 participants	21 (7 at Madrid, 14 in Berlin)	In Madrid the number of participants was considerably lower than expected: the grant was approved just a few days before the edit-a-thon so we weren't able to encourage participation by offering travel expenses as planned, and widely promote the event. In Berlin the number of participants was slightly lower than expected, but good.
15 new editors	1	We weren't lucky with our non-Wikimedia partners so we had just 1 new editor (in Berlin). In the previous editions (Belgrade, Sofia) we were more lucky with local partners from the journalism sector, that brought to the event a lot of new wikipedians.
20 articles created or improved	41 (19 in Madrid, 22 in Berlin)	We had expected some Wikipedians would have been busy with helping new editors, but they were able to write a lot instead.
2 repeat participants	2	Niccolò Caranti and Rossella Vignola (organisers)

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?

As the participants were mostly expert Wikipedians they were able to create/improve many more articles than we expected, as they were happy to engage with the media freedom topic. The cooperation with Wikimedia España and Wikimedia Deutschland went well.

• What did not work so well?

We had less participants than expected. In particular we had just one new editor.

• What would you do differently next time?

We would start earlier with the planning and grant request. We would organise the event at a time and place which is better for non-Wikipedians OR we should lower our expectation for the number of new users (and raise up our expectation for content created).

Finances

Grant funds spent

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

Please note that we re-allocated some resources, see Grants talk:Project/Rapid/Niccolò Caranti (OBC)/Wiki4MediaFreedom edit-a-thons - II and III editions.

Madrid

• Meeting with Wikimedia España, snacks and drinks for participants (€15.38)
• Dinner for participants of the edit-a-thon (€109.90)

Berlin

• Flights (plus commission) for international participants (€644.48)
• Apartment for participants (€821.74)
• Drinks for participants (€21.00)
• TOTAL €1612.50

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds? Yes.

€1,760.00 (approved budget) + €80.00 (remaining funds from another grant) - €1612.50 = €227.50

Remaining funds are due to WMF. The grantee should return these funds to WMF by bank transfer. Contact grantsadmin at wikimedia dot org to let WMF know to expect the funds. Instructions for returning funds to WMF are at Grants:Return unused funds to WMF.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

As a follow-up of our Wiki4MediaFreedom initiative we have signed a cooperation agreement with Wikimedia Italia. The first concrete step of this collaboration is the activation of project with high school students, that is involving two students of a language high school in the translation of some of the articles in the context of our Wiki4MediaFreedom initiatives, including edit-a-thons and contests.