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Grants:Project/Rapid/SCAR2016/Report

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Report accepted
This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2016-17 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/SCAR2016.
  • 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

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

Our main goal was to ensure the representation of notable women on Wikipedia as part of a general shift in attitudes within the Antarctic research community. In this, we think we have been successful. Not only did we have over 100 pages accepted by WP:AfC, but the biographies were generally of high quality, well references and containing images. Promoting these efforts though an event at the SCAR 2016 conference ensured that the scientific community was aware of its significance, and preempted any "it's only Wikipedia" reactions by placing the work in the context of the history of women in Antarctica. The scientific and general press have also recognised the significance, with a range of high-impact coverage.

Outcome

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Please report on your original project targets.

For full list, see Wikipedia:Meetup/SCAR_2016


Target outcome Achieved outcome Explanation
100 new & updated pages 100 new, 19 updated, 1 translated In addition to the one page that we translated to Chinese, other editors have further translated our pages into 4 languages.
New images (no target number) 72 new images Once pages were accepted by AfC, we directly contacted the biography subjects to ask them to upload an image of themselves (copyright needed)
>250 attendees at celebration event (the number that signed up) 350-400 attendees We catered for 250 attendees with the hope of more once pople got word of the buzz surrounding the event's buildup
Reward and recognise efforts of volunteer writers Writers contributions listed in:

Postive feedback from volunteers

We catered for 250 attendees with the hope of more once pople got word of the buzz surrounding the event's buildup
Achieve recognition of event by SCAR community Mentioned in speeches: We were thrilled with the response of the whole community. Multiple people described it as the highlight of the conference. It was certainly unique in the their experience. It is indicative that it is helping to catalyse a wider attitude change in the community.
Achieve recognition of event by wider science community Science community press generated: We directly contacted Nature to ensure that efforts like these are publicised to scientific communities. We also tweeted one biography per day as @SCAR_Tweets for the whole of August, and had good success in engagement by other twitter users.
Achieve recognition of event by lay community General community press generated: We used our contacts in outreach offices in our institutions to reach out tot he general press so that the general public would hear about the work
Engage Wikipedic community Engaging Wikipedic community effectively was a great help in supporting the work
Engage event attendees
  • Panel discussion had excellent questions on diverse topics
  • Signed declaration by attendees as a permanent historic record to be kept in SCAR archives and prints to be hung in SCAR, BAS, AWI, and KOPRI.
Engaging the wider non-wikipedic community was key in boosting the legitimacy and impact of the editathon.


As of 08:14, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
Content

  • Articles improved: 19
    • of which: Articles improved in multi-language Wikipedias: 1
  • Articles created: 100
    • of which: Drafts: 8
  • Drafts declined: 8
  • Wikimedia Commons items added: 72
  • Wikidata items improved: 15
  • Wikidata items created: 74
  • Wikidata items needed: 5
  • Front page "Did you know: 5

Attendance (May-Aug 2016 editathon)

  • WikiFacilitators: 1
  • Editathon attendees (on Wikipedia): 14
  • Editathon attendees (off Wikipedia): 25
  • Total editor engagement: 39

Attendance (13 August 2016 event)

  • Conference attendees: 350-400

Learning

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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?
    1. Combining the extended virtual editathon with a celebratory event discussing the significance of the endeavour and promoting its achievements helped us to engage the wider non-Wikipedic community
    2. Reviewing each others drafts offline before submitting to AfC ensured that they were in a reasonable starting state before being placed in fromt of a reviewing editor
    3. Strongly promoting our work in the press further increased our reach
    4. Adding a formal recognition document of the event also helped people feel a part of a significant moment in history
    5. We had originally booked a room for 200 ppl, but having read the mood of the conference, we moved to a ballroom for max 500 ppl (lucky that we did, with turnout 350-400)
  • What did not work so well?
    1. The project scope increased during the editathon and volunteers were uncertain as to how much time they were being asked to commit
    2. We didn't make clear enough that non Wikipedia experience was necessary
    3. Recruitment was done entirely though online communities, but having a real-world recruitment event at the preceding conference would have "book-ended" the editathon well
  • What would you do differently next time?
    1. We can better inform recruits what the writing process entails so that they know how much work they're signing up for
    2. Next time, we could probably achieve even greater event turnout by advertising a finalised running order of talks and discussions earlier
    3. Working on MS word drafts in Dropbox worked ok, but ideally we would like to get volunteers editing on Wikipedia earlier in the draft's life-cycle. This would be ideal for reviewing and editing each others drafts.

Finances

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Grant funds spent

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

All funds spent on designated items

Remaining funds

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Do you have any remaining grant funds?

All funds were spent

Anything else

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Anything else you want to share about your project?

We are extremely thankful to the Wikimedia foundation for this. We aim to write up a manual of how we approached our editathon and associated events to act as another version of the traditional one-day and virtual editathons.