Grants:Project/WMTR/Reintroducing Wikipedia to Turkey/Final
This project is funded by a Project Grant
| proposal | people | timeline & progress | finances | midpoint report | final report |
- Report under review
- To read the approved grant submission for this project, please visit Grants:Project/WMTR/Reintroducing Wikipedia to Turkey.
- Review the reporting requirements to better understand the reporting process.
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Welcome to this project's final report! This report shares the outcomes, impact and learnings from the grantee's project.
Part 1: The Project[edit]
Summary[edit]
This was a project involving a series of events in Turkey in order to overcome the negative effects of the Wikipedia ban. First of all, a non-profit was established to execute the projects and have legal status. During 6 months 12 community meetings were held with increasing participation from the editor community and newcomers to discuss project ideas, share skills and strengthen the relations. After the schools opened at the end of September, the Wikipedia was reintroduced in several university courses in 5 cities as an education tool to develop skills of students. During fall term Wikipedia editing assignments were given in 16 courses and more than 500 students were reached in those courses additionally, larger collaboration opportunities for future were discussed with those education partners. Believing that partnering with well-known institutions could serve reintroducing Wikipedia as a more trusted platform to the general public, the project team contacted potential GLAM partners mainly in İstanbul and Ankara but in other cities like İzmit, Bursa. How they could benefit from and contribute to Wikimedia projects were presented and future GLAM project ideas were discussed.
For most of the education and GLAM institutions contacted this was the first time they were learning about the functioning of Wikipedia and their contribution opportunities, benefits of contributing to Wikipedia and; our suggestions created excitement. In a period where global pandemic affected the working of the education and GLAM institutions; the project served reintroducing Wikipedia as a friend and collaborator of those institutions as well as bringing the editor community together.
The project continued for another 6 months. In this period, there were 12 more community meetings. Wikipedia Education program were held online in 11 new university courses at cities such as Erzincan, Hatay, Sakarya, İzmir, İstanbul, Ankara. Partnership talks produced new events mainly in the form of thematic edit-athons such as "Artistic freedom of expression", "Sustainable Fashion", "WikiProject:Kocaeli", "Queer/Feminist artists", "Climate Change".
Project Goals[edit]
- Increase the number of contributors and contributions of Turkish wikipedia from Turkey.
During the project period, the number of contributors and contributions to Turkish wikipedia increased significantly as can be seen from the statistics of the increase in the number of editors, active editors and the edits at tr.wiki (see picture 1, 2, 3 showint the increase at the first 6 month period of the project).
- Create partnership opportunites with GLAM institutions and municipalities in Turkey.
During the first 6 month-period very fruitful partnership talks made with 15 institutions including Turkish Language Institution, Turkish Librarian Association, Istanbul Culture and Art Foundation, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. Tha talks continued in the second part and the number of possible partners we contacted reached to 31 . See the list at below picture (4). We did start partnering with some of them by organizing a thematic edit-a-thon.
- Increase communication between local editors living in the same cities and communication with the global community.
Because of the pandemic conditions, instead of in person local meetups, the editors brought together with fellow Turkish speaking editors -regardless of which city they live in- by regular online meetings held every two weeks. The editors were informed about the global wikimedia movement and global events through presentations and informal chats during the meetings could not be measured whether there was increased communication with the global community.
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1-Number of editors -
2-Number of active editors -
3-Number of edits -
4- Possible GLAM Partners contacted
Project Impact[edit]
Important: The Wikimedia Foundation is no longer collecting Global Metrics for Project Grants. We are currently updating our pages to remove legacy references, but please ignore any that you encounter until we finish.
Targets[edit]
- In the first column of the table below, please copy and paste the measures you selected to help you evaluate your project's success (see the Project Impact section of your proposal). Please use one row for each measure. If you set a numeric target for the measure, please include the number.
- In the second column, describe your project's actual results. If you set a numeric target for the measure, please report numerically in this column. Otherwise, write a brief sentence summarizing your output or outcome for this measure.
- In the third column, you have the option to provide further explanation as needed. You may also add additional explanation below this table.
| Planned measure of success (include numeric target, if applicable) |
Actual result | Explanation |
| Increase the number of contributors and contributions of Turkish wikipedia from Turkey | In first 6 month period: increase in active editors in tr.wiki :x4 times; incresase in tr.wiki pages 1,5 during the project term; More than 500 students were introduced Wikipedia editing in 15 courses (See: List). | We can't claim those increases are only the results of the project activities; but especially the Education Program contributed to editor and edit numbers by introducig around 500 students with Wikipedia editing. |
| Create partnership opportunities with GLAM institutions and municipalities in Turkey | We have provided information on partnership opportunities with wiki projects to 27 GLAM institutions. Talks with Kocaeli municipality let them to share historic and touristic photos in their archive at Commons. 8 edit-a-thons were organized as a result of partnership talks. | We were planning to finalize at least one sample GLAM event, before the end of December. That could not be achived; but the number of talks made during the project despite the pandemic were above our expectations. In the January-July period we produced a very fruitful partnership with Kocaeli municipality and increased the number of partnership talks. Such talks did not produce a big GLAM-event but brought some thematic edit-a-thons which serve those institutions undersand the wiki projects better. |
| Increase commuication between local editors living in the same cities and communication with the global coummunity | 12 online meetings were held, on avarage 20 people attended. | Moving meetings to online platform worked better than expected; the avarage attendance to the meetings were higher than we thought at the begining - which was 8-10 person. |
Story[edit]
Looking back over your whole project, what did you achieve? Tell us the story of your achievements, your results, your outcomes. Focus on inspiring moments, tough challenges, interesting anecdotes or anything that highlights the outcomes of your project. Imagine that you are sharing with a friend about the achievements that matter most to you in your project.
- This should not be a list of what you did. You will be asked to provide that later in the Methods and Activities section.
- Consider your original goals as you write your project's story, but don't let them limit you. Your project may have important outcomes you weren't expecting. Please focus on the impact that you believe matters most.
Looking back, the Project Team is proud to see that they reintroduced the Wikipedia to Turkey as promised by the name of the project. It's not possible to claim that Wikipedia was reintroduced to the large section of the general public by this project but it was reintroduced to people from the world of academia, libraries and culture institutions; and encouraged them to consider different ways they could individually or institutionally benefit from and contribute to Wikipedia in new ways.
- A summer full of uncertainties
The story started very slow. Our first goal was establishing a non-profit organisation and we were expecting to complete this step very quickly. However, there was a global pandemic in the world that restricted travels, changed the working ways of everyone and the pace of every work. During the summer, as we wait for the procedures get completed, we also tried to concentrate on other parts of the project such as contacting some professors to talk about implementing the Wikipedia Education Program in the fall term but there was too much uncertainty about courses and nobody was open to such suggestions. Libraries and museums were also closed and did not know what kind of activities they will be able to do during the year. Therefore the user group spent the summer focusing on other activities not included in the scope of this project such as organizing online edit-a-thons, Wiki Loves Earth contest, and article writing contests. Later, we saw that every work towards the same goal feeds the success of each other. Our partnership with several organisations for edit-a-thons helped increase our social media followers and brought some education partners, whereas press coverage on WLE attracted the attention of some potential GLAM partners.
- Schools are opening!
Finally in September our group had completed all procedures for legally functioning of the non-profit established under Dijital Bilgi Derneği (Digital Knowledge Association), two members could make in-person visits to some GLAM institutions at Istanbul as well as giving half-day training to the personnel of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. In October most universities started online education; some university professors were bold enough to try something new in their classes and accepted our suggestion to teach wikipedia editing in their class. We were excited to see the project activities started slowly.
- Adaptation to the pandemic
In November and December all activities went super fast. It seemed that people adapted to work under pandemic conditions, get used to continuously being online and video-conferencing with everyone. One after another we were invited to courses to help students on editing Wikipedia. Geography, Journalism, Environmental Engeineering, Psychology, Media Studies, International Relations are some of the fields the students contributed to Wikipedia. Each course also thought as new things, while students were learning about editing wiki projects, we learned looking at the projects from different perspectives: as a way of voluntarizm, a method of digital activism, a fact-checking tool, a citizen-journalism platform...
On the other hand, we were invited to talk about GLAM opportunities. Turkish Language Institutions and Association of Turkish Libraries were particularly important. Our regular contact with other open culture institutions such as Creative Commons and OpenStreetMap volunteers helped us growing our network. As the activities of the user group increased and diversified, the attendance to the community meetings also increased. We made community meetings twice a month on Tuesdays nights. At the begining we were making the meetings with 8-10 persons, the avarage number of participants increased to 20. In meetings community did not only talk about Wikipedia but also other wiki projects and at the end we saw that a new wiki project (tr.wikivoyage) came out of incubator!
- The project continues with birthday party!
The project continued in 2021 after our request to continue for 6 more months was approved. In January, the community was ready to celebrate the birthday of Wikipedia and the anniversary of the removal of the Wikipedia-block at a virutal party where all contributors and partners were invited. We made 12 more community meetings called VikiSalı (WikiTuesday) which now became a regular part of some community mem
- Education Programs spread with word of mouth
We haven't push hard for reaching out to more universities for Wikipedia Education Program a much as we did in the first period; we let it get heard by word of mouth and gave Wikipedia training as we have received invitations. As a result, we joined 12 more online courses and gave wikipedia training. We are happy that those courses are not restricted to universities of big cities (Istanbul-Ankara-Izmir) but includes universities in places like Hatay, Erzincan, Sakarya.
- Thematic edit-a-thons with partners
We concentrated more on talking with GLAM instutions as we saw that they are more conservative then academic instutions on working with wiki projects. We wanted to talk as much as GLAM instutions and person as possible to make them have heard of Wikimedia projects and the opportunities of working together. With some of them we made small begining of working together by organising an edit-a-thon. Artistic freedom of expression", "Sustainable Fashion", "WikiProject:Kocaeli", "Queer/Feminist artists", "Climate Change" edit-a-thons were the major ones. The most fruitful partnership established as a result of our talks was the one with Kocaeli Municipality. Upon their request, we have made 5 workshops with volunteers and using the high quality photos uploaded to Commons by the Municipality, the Wikipedia articles related the city was developed.
- Three important events
There were two particularly important events during the second half of the project. One was the workshop of "providing health related information at wikipedia" under the Practies of Commons" project of Goethe Institute in February. This was important because it allowed a colloborative work with other free-culture organsations in Turkey (Creative Commons Turkey, Openstreetmap Turkey , VOYD - Data Literacy Association- ) and become helpful for turhter partnership talks.
The second was 3 women wikipedians' presentation at the symposium of "Archiving in Turkey today and tomorrow- Women in the Archives" in April. Participation to this symposium was helpful in connecting with several archives intitutions in Turkey.
The third was our partnership with Öğretmen Ağı (Teachers' Network) which is a sharing and cooperation network of teachers from different disciplines. As a part of our efforts to initiate Wikipedia Education Program in highschools as well, we contacted with Öğretmen Ağı. We were happy that in May we gave our first presentation on Wikipedia to teachers in their "Change Ambassadors" program.
Survey(s)[edit]
If you used surveys to evaluate the success of your project, please provide a link(s) in this section, then briefly summarize your survey results in your own words. Include three interesting outputs or outcomes that the survey revealed.
Other[edit]
Is there another way you would prefer to communicate the actual results of your project, as you understand them? You can do that here!
Methods and activities[edit]
Please provide a list of the main methods and activities through which you completed your project.
- We filed with the Department of Associations within the Ministry of the Interior and got a non profit status for a new association called Dijital Bilgi Derneği (Digital Knowledge Association), based in Istanbul. Seven persons from 3 different cities of Turkey became the founder members.
- Contacted with university professors in different higher education institutions in Turkey to discuss integrating Wikipedia editing in their courses. Started with those we had worked with before the block of Wikipedia.
- Local editor meetings were held twice a month online, meeting notes were made available on the user group meta pages after the meetings.
- In person visits to GLAM institutions at Istanbul were made. After August, all meetings were made online. Beginining form April 2021 we started to make in-person visits especially to municipalities to talk about partnership opportunities.
- Members of other open culture communities were invited to our meetings and we have visited their meetings; shared our institutional contacts with each other which helped grow the partnership network.
- Wikipedia editing was introduced at ~30 graduate and undergraduate courses at 5 different cities. 2 wikipedians introduced wikipedia training and also supported the students at doing their assignments. Professors were supported in using dahsboard to follow students' works.
Education Program activities[edit]
- CEV5247 Bursa Uludag University (Bursa) Environmental Engineering department graduate course
- CEV6221 Bursa Uludag University (Bursa) Environmental Engineering department doktorate course
- BBY 163, Hacettepe University Librarian Education department (Ankara), undergraduate course.
- PSI5117 Bursa Uludag University (Bursa) Pscyhology department graduate course
- Workshop, Sabancı University (Istanbul), online conference activity
- PSI6107 Bursa Uludag University (Bursa) Pscyhology department graduate course
- Core Program, Kadir Has University (Istanbul), graduate level Turkish course mixed group
- HAI305, İstanbul Ticaret University (Istanbul) Public Relations and Advertising Department, graduate scourse
- PA108, Yeditepe University (İstanbul) Public Administraiton department, webinar for undergraduate students
- Psychology Club,Ege University (Izmir), undergraudate mixed group
- MED 215, Bilgi University (Istanbul), New Media & Communication department, undergraduate course
- HeforShe Team, Bahçeşehir College (Istanbul), highschool extra-curricular activity
- GAZ 717, Hacı Bayram Veli University (Ankara), department of Journalism, undergraduate course
- PRA 335, İzmir Ekonomi University (İzmir), Public Relations and Advertising department, undergraduate course
- JOU 407, Galatasaray University (İstanbul) Journalism department, undergraduate course
- Jeomorphology, Sakarya University (Sakarya), Geography Department, undergraudate course
- Hatay Mustafa Kemal Paşa University Medical School interns, extracurricular activity
- Ümraniye Gökkuşağı College teachers training session on Wikimedia projecs
- Erzincan Binali Yıldırım University department of Public Administration, undergraduate research methods course
- Cerrahpaşa Universiy, Critical Thinking Skills in Foreign Language Education Course
- Kadir Has Univesity, joint course for 6 classes (150 students) taking Critical Reading and Writing (TLL101) course
- Bahçeşehir Universtiy, Gender studies course] taken by students of 5 diffrent departments
- Ankara University Faculty of Veterinary, Vetenary Club presentation
- Wikipedia training for scholarship recipients of T3 Foundation, (contributions)
- İzmir Economy University, Volunteer studies course
- Galatasaray University, Social History of Printing Techniques course
- Library Education Department at Medeniyet University, extracurricular activity.
- Izmir Katip Çelebi University, Izmir (IKCU), International Relations Department, undergraduate course
GLAM Talks[edit]
Find more detailed information about the activities listed below here.
- Pera Museum
- Goethe Institute Library
- İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) Digital Media Department
- Nilüfer Municipality Public Relations Department
- Kocaeli Metropolitan Municipality Data Analysis and Statistics Department
- Kusadası Municipality Public Relations Department
- Turkish Language Institution
- Common Knowledge and Communication Association
- Yerçizenler Association
- Istanbul Cuture and Art Foundation
- Turkish Librarians Association
- Publich Health Experts Association [video)
- Turkish Librarians Association (video)
- Gençlik Mevsimi Derneği (Youth Season Association), edit-a-thon about EU youth prgorams
- Lazuri Institute Association
- Creative Commons Turkey
- Women's Library and Information Centre Foundation
- Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Libraries and Museums Directorate
- Teyit.org Fact Checking Organisation
- AmberNetwork Festival
- Kocaeli Trade Chamber
- Turkish Coffee Culture and Research Association
- Speakup Platform(Platform Against Censorship and Self-Censorship)
- Common Knowledge and Communication Association (TBİD)
- Directorate of Culture and Tourism of Kahramanmaraş
- Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University
- Ekaİstanbul (an interdisciplinary workshop community based in Istanbul )
- Ankara City Council Culture and Art Working Group
- Directorate of Culture and Tourism of Niğde
- Hungarian Cultural Center (Istanbul)
- Istanbul Gönüllüleri (Istanbul Volunteers), a civil initiative supported by Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality.
Community Meetings[edit]
Please find all the meeting notes in below tables (in Turkish)
Project resources[edit]Please provide links to all public, online documents and other artifacts that you created during the course of this project. Even if you have linked to them elsewhere in this report, this section serves as a centralized archive for everything you created during your project. Examples include: meeting notes, participant lists, photos or graphics uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, template messages sent to participants, wiki pages, social media (Facebook groups, Twitter accounts), datasets, surveys, questionnaires, code repositories... If possible, include a brief summary with each link.
Learning[edit]The best thing about trying something new is that you learn from it. We want to follow in your footsteps and learn along with you, and we want to know that you took enough risks in your project to have learned something really interesting! Think about what recommendations you have for others who may follow in your footsteps, and use the below sections to describe what worked and what didn’t. What worked well[edit]What did you try that was successful and you'd recommend others do? To help spread successful strategies so that they can be of use to others in the movement, rather than writing lots of text here, we'd like you to share your finding in the form of a link to a learning pattern.
What didn’t work[edit]What did you try that you learned didn't work? What would you think about doing differently in the future? Please list these as short bullet points.
Other recommendations[edit]If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please list them here.
Next steps and opportunities[edit]Are there opportunities for future growth of this project, or new areas you have uncovered in the course of this grant that could be fruitful for more exploration (either by yourself, or others)? What ideas or suggestions do you have for future projects based on the work you’ve completed? Please list these as short bullet points.
Partnership talks grow like snowballing. When an institution starts an initiative others are more willing to follow. Therefore it's important to keep talks, increase awareness on how contributing to open culture would be beneficial for those institutions and start realizing small projects. There were many project ideas that was talked about during the talk but could not turn into a concrete project until the end of December. Once concrete projects are produced, the GLAM institutions would understand the value of collaboration with Wikipedia projects better. One example is our talks with the Pera Museum. We'd like to collaborate with them in increasing the content of Turkish wikipedia in topics related to the temporary exhibitions of the museum. The museum will be getting permissions from the related artists for uploading their works on Wikipedia with appropriate licences and we are willing to make edit-a-thons with the help of the curator of the exhibitions and participation of some experts invited by the museum to ensure that the topic covered well in the museum. Part 2: The Grant[edit]Finances[edit]Actual spending[edit]Please copy and paste the completed table from your project finances page. Check that you’ve listed the actual expenditures compared with what was originally planned. If there are differences between the planned and actual use of funds, please use the column provided to explain them.
* Changed as "hardware requirements"
Remaining funds[edit]Do you have any unspent funds from the grant? Please answer yes or no. If yes, list the amount you did not use and explain why.
If you have unspent funds, they must be returned to WMF. Please see the instructions for returning unspent funds and indicate here if this is still in progress, or if this is already completed:
Documentation[edit]Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grantsadmin Please answer yes or no. If no, include an explanation.
Confirmation of project status[edit]Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement? Please answer yes or no.
Is your project completed? Please answer yes or no.
Grantee reflection[edit]We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on what this project has meant to you, or how the experience of being a grantee has gone overall. Is there something that surprised you, or that you particularly enjoyed, or that you’ll do differently going forward as a result of the Project Grant experience? Please share it here!
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