Grants:Project/Rapid/Wiki Takes Santana de Parnaíba/Report
- Report accepted
- To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/Wiki Takes Santana de Parnaíba.
- 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[edit]
Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?
Goals of Wiki Takes Santana de Parnaíba were basically threefold: content improvement, Wikimedia awareness and recruitment of new editors.
Firstly, Santana de Parnaíba is one of the important historical cities in Brazil, being established around 400 years ago, and remained poorly covered on Wikimedia projects. We aimed at creating momentum for engaging Wikimedians to work on pertaining content on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata/Open Street Map. Given this goal, we can say we have been very successful, as we have "activated" 13 members of our community to work on this project. More details are presented on the section on Outcome.
Secondly, Wikimedia awareness has been identified as a major goal for our movement in general, and we have spent quite some time before and during the event connecting to institutions and individuals we believe can play a role in our open-knowledge ecology. We have worked with the city government, particularly the Department of Culture and Tourism and the Department of Communications, the Municipal Archives (Centro de Memória e Integração Cultural Bertha de Moraes Nérici), two photography clubs in the city, local artists (Murilo Sá Toledo and Alcides Soares Maia) and the local press. Coverage on the media was satisfactory, and the city government has produced a short video on the activity and shared widely information on social media before and after the event took place (example). We have built a strong lasting relationship with the Municipal Archives and the photography clubs.
Thirdly, to recruit new editors is seen as a paramount necessity within our movement, as we want local people to be empowered to work from their perspective on knowledge pertaining to their city and culture. We have held before the event 4 training sections and talks on the projects, bringing together 83 people. During the event, around 10 people came to our edit-a-thon, but only three participants actually committed to writing at least one article. We had more success with local engagement in our photowalks, particularly because there is a tradition of photo clubs on the city, and 14 people were engaged during the event to contribute images --but most of them did not want to do the upload themselves, so we ended up going through OTRS procedures.
Outcome[edit]
Please report on your original project targets.
| Target outcome | Achieved outcome | Explanation |
| 10 Wikimedians engaged | 13 Wikimedians engaged | We have spread the word on the event on the relevant Village Pumps, with a specific banner highlighting the idea of Wikipedia Occupation (image above) and we have created a centralized page on Wikipedia that listed tasks we would focus on. |
| 250 people participating | ~150 | We were too ambitious in our planned project. But we are still very happy to have connected to many people. We were hoping to have worked with local schools, thus touching base with high school students, but this ended up not being feasible. |
| 150 new editors | ~70 | Though we were able to bring together a large crowd in our training events particularly attendees were more interested in listening than editing. In two occasions, in training sections at the local archives, there was no internet available, so our work was mostly directed to finding references we could rely on during the edit-a-thon. Again, our target outcome was too ambitious, though our result is very good. |
| no specific outcome was planned | ~1,400 images | This was an amazing outcome. One Wikimedian brought a drone, so we were able to have aerial pictures of the city. We have organized photo groups to register almost all the ~300 relevant cultural places of the city (they are recognized as part of the national cultural heritage). Local photographers have contributed several hundred images. The rate of use was around 15% (GLAMorgan report). Unfortunately, quality of images was not excellent as we had only two cameras available and most participants took pictures from old mobile phones. |
| 300 articles/items created | ~50 articles were created on Wikipedia in Portuguese (their progress may be seen at the tasks on Wikipedia at the event central page), that have led to the creation of a navbox on the city. ~300 items on Wikidata were created) | This is where we excel, to some extent: put ~10 Wikipedians in a room with food, water and internet and see what happens :) We have basically moved the ecology of knowledge around Santana de Parnaíba from roughly existing on the internet to being a major knowledge hub. Articles were written on particular cultural sites, on relevant historical people, on birds, etc. |
| no specific outcome was planned | ~250 instances contributed to Open Street Map | As we worked on improving Wikidata items we have decided to improve how mapping of Santana de Parnaíba was done on OSM. This work is now of course present on Wikidata and when it is pertaining on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. |
Learning[edit]
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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?
This activity was fun and impactful. Wikimedians and participants had a good time. This has strengthened our capacity of working together as a community, as non-regular Wikimedians have attended and enjoyed their time!
It was a good decision to postpone the event, which eventually led us to do it very close to Wiki Loves Monuments. This was an opportunity to connect this event to a broader activity on cultural heritage. At least four attendees have uploaded their images both as part of Wiki Takes Santana de Parnaíba and WLM-Brazil.
Wikidata is a key resource for this kind of activities, as it allows for efficient use of content being contributed. The list of cultural sites on Santana de Parnaíba that is now on Wikipedia is being built with Wikidata transclusion via Listeria-bot and could potentially be replicated in any other language. The same goes with Wikimedia Commons infoboxes, that rely on contributions on Wikidata.
Just before the event, we decided we would video record three key figures: the director of the local archives and two local artists. This was seen as paramount, as a lot of what we could know from Santana de Parnaíba depends exclusively on oral history. We will upload these videos when we are done with editing... but frustratingly our projects are not so good in taking advantage right now of testimonies as sources of knowledge. We hope this content we have produced will be useful some time in the future.
Our relationship with the city government was good to give us access to two areas we would have not normally been able to go: the tower of the city church --one Wikimedian even rang the noon bell to the whole city (we have it on tape!)-- and the first dam of South America.
To sum up, what we can say is that in events like this it is clear that everyone brings it own contribution. It was a wiki-potlatch :)
- What did not work so well?
We were unable to upload content from our GLAM partner, due to issues with licensing. This was very frustrating as content was digitized, and we were hoping to upload a set of ~1,000 images to Wikimedia Commons. We are still discussing with the GLAM director a possible solution.
Santana de Parnaíba is a historical city --from where bandeirantes moved forward to the West--, and we were astonished by the lack of references to most episodes related to the city. Many items we would have liked to create, and ironically which we knew would make sense to create, had no digital reference to which we could get information from. We were able to get references at the local archives, but sometimes not enough to prevent nomination to deletion (but no content ended up being deleted!).
The city government is very bureaucratic. We had been negotiated with them for over a year, and at the end they delivered less than what they said they would. In general, culture is not a political priority in Brazil, and we witnessed how our event was relegated as of minor relevance for the government. The secretary of Culture was very active, personally, but in general our relationship with the city government was frustrating.
- What would you do differently next time?
We would be more careful with how we build a relationship with a city government, particularly if activities depend a lot on them. This is a risk we were not deeply considering, as our relationship with the vice-mayor was very good.
We ended up having the luck of engaging a Wikimedia who owns a drone, but this is something we should definitely consider in next occasions. We also need better equipment, as differently from rich countries mobile phones in Brazil are not generally accessible and we still depend a lot on having cameras.
Finances[edit]
Grant funds spent[edit]
Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.
| document | date | description | value (R$) | total remaining |
| 1 | 22 maio | total received | 7,449.46 | |
| 1 | 22 maio | tax | 115.00 | 7,334.46 |
| 1 | 22 maio | IOF | 28.50 | 7,305.96 |
| 1 | 22 maio | VET tribute | 3.74 | 7,302.22 |
| 2 | 29 maio | planning meetings transportation | 16.00 | 7,286.22 |
| planning meetings transportation | 36.17 | 7,250.05 | ||
| planning meetings transportation | 20.00 | 7,230.05 | ||
| planning meetings transportation | 26.00 | 7,204.05 | ||
| planning meetings transportation | 22.05 | 7,182.00 | ||
| 3 | 4 junho | office | 60.90 | 7,121.10 |
| 4 | 14 junho | meeting Secretaria da Cultura | 28.96 | 7,092.14 |
| 5 | 18 junho | meeting Wiki Movimento | 33.90 | 7,058.24 |
| 6 | 25 junho | Banner | 260.00 | 6,798.24 |
| 7 | 25 junho | design | 551.00 | 6,247.24 |
| 8 | 25 junho | parking | 16.00 | 6,231.24 |
| 9 | 25 junho | T-shirts | 833.25 | 5,397.99 |
| 10 | 25 junho | meal | 27.40 | 5,370.59 |
| 11 | 25 junho | meal | 19.70 | 5,350.89 |
| 12 | 2 julho | toll | 4.40 | 5,346.49 |
| 13 | 2 julho | transportation | 175.15 | 5,171.34 |
| 14 | 18 julho | meal | 85.50 | 5,085.84 |
| 15 | 30 julho | fuel | 234.84 | 4,851.00 |
| 16 | 31 julho | meal | 23.59 | 4,827.41 |
| 17 | 5 agosto | printing | 300.00 | 4,527.41 |
| 18 | 15 agosto | transportation | 80.00 | 4,447.41 |
| 19 | 29 agosto | transportation | 610.00 | 3,837.41 |
| 20 | 31 agosto | meals | 700.00 | 3,137.41 |
| 21 | 31 agosto | stickers | 200.00 | 2,937.41 |
| 22 | 31 agosto | coffee breaks | 630.00 | 2,307.41 |
| 23 | 2 setembro | banner | 300.00 | 2,007.41 |
Remaining funds[edit]
Do you have any remaining grant funds?
There appears to have been a mistake in the wire process. We have received BRZ R$ 1,900 we assume to be for the purchase of the photographic equipment we had requested and ended up not being authorized by the grants officer.
There is a remaining fund of BRZ R$ 107.41 from the grant that was approved.
We await instructions from the grants team about unauthorized and remaining funding we have received. We have several activities being planned in the coming months, so this money could be directed to one of our next activities, or returned.
Anything else[edit]
Anything else you want to share about your project?
Though there was a symbolic day in which we held Wiki Takes Santana de Parnaíba it is worth highlighting several prior activities took place, like training sections and photowalks. We have depended on partners to be able to organize the event, so this process of decentralization of activities was unavoidable. For instance, drone photo taking was organized ten days before the actual city wiki occupation. Work with photo clubs happened throughout July and August, and so have activities with OSM in which volunteers walked down some city areas to map them including as many details as possible.
It is definitely not easy to organize a city occupation :) but this kind of activity is replicable and more importantly is very impactful. It is a line of action we should consider more generally in our movement.