Grants:Project/Wiki Loves Monuments international team/2017 coordination/Final

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Report under review
This Project Grant report has been submitted by the grantee, and is currently being reviewed by WMF staff. If you would like to add comments, responses, or questions about this grant report, you can create a discussion page at this redlink.



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]

In a few short sentences, give the main highlights of what happened with your project. Please include a few key outcomes or learnings from your project in bullet points, for readers who may not make it all the way through your report.

Project Goals[edit]

Please copy and paste the project goals from your proposal page. Under each goal, write at least three sentences about how you met that goal over the course of the project. Alternatively, if your goals changed, you may describe the change, list your new goals and explain how you met them, instead.

The international team has three main goals, as stated in our mission statement. These goals are:

  • to freely document and raise awareness of built cultural heritage
We achieved this goal through organizing Wiki Loves Monuments photo competition, supporting Wikimedia community with monuments data transition to Wikidata, as well as a series of presentations and outreach activities in a variety of venues.
  • increase contributions to the Wikimedia projects
Through the competition, we welcomed 7408 new account registrants to Wikimedia projects who did at least one edit by uploading a photo to Wikimedia Commons to participate in the contest. All contributors, counting slightly higher than 10,000 in numbers, contributed more than 245,000 photos through 54 national competitions to Wikimedia Commons.
  • bolster local Wikimedia communities.
We continued to provide a framework to welcome communities who were already deeply familiar with Wiki Loves Monuments, but also welcomed 5 new communities from Australia, Croatia, Finland, Saudi Arabia, and Uganda.



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]

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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
Total participants (countries) more than 50 This exceeds the target which was 30 countries.
Number of newly registered users 7408 This target is largely driven by local organizers and the international team does not set targets towards it.
Number of content pages created or improved 245,563 uploads, 30046 used in Wikimedia projects The international team does not drive this goal directly.
90% of countries nominate at least 1 image to the international finale (in time) The goal is met.
All critical infrastructure necessary for the start will be ready before September 1, 2017 The goal is met.
The international team will ensure the availability of critical tools developed and/or maintained by the team throughout the contest and will monitor all other critical tools throughout the contest. The goal is met.
The international jury process is finalized and a jury report is published before the end of the year The goal is met.
A survey for national organizers is executed to learn about where the international team has done well and where the team and its efforts can be improved. The goal is partially met (or not met, depending on definition). No official survey was run by the international team, though the team received feedback from the local organizers throughout the campaign. The majority of the feedback was focused on the improvements required to the front-end of Montage, the international team’s jury tool.


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.

Global Participation In 2017, we witnessed for the first time after 2012 a total country participation count of over 50. While the count of national competitions participating can only be one of the many signals for a healthy project, we do see a significant amount of commitment and excitement in local organizers to continue making Wiki Loves Monuments happen every year. This is incredible to watch and be part of. We are thankful for all the work the local organizers do, and especially welcomed the 5 new countries from Africa, Asia, and Europe in 2017.

Stronger partnership The partnership with Flickr was a strong achievement for the international team and the local organizers in 2017. While the counts of photos uploaded are limited, having a strong pathway for communication and collaboration with Flickr as a partner allowed us to raise awareness about Wiki Loves Monuments. We do hope that we can continue this line of partnership and collaboration in the coming years.

Outreach The international team spent a non-negligible amount of time on outreach activities some of which are: Wikimania, Wikimedia Taiwan, Zugang gestalten in Germany, WikidataCon, and beyond. These outreach activities help raise awareness and profile of the contest which in return can help the local organizers and the international team to arrive at better results. They are also opportunities for us to connect with our existing communities and help them in a more individualized fashion.

Stories of local competitions We started gathering and writing stories of local organizers and competitions at https://www.instagram.com/wikilovesmonuments/. We put a lot of emphasis on a more diverse representation of national competitions. This specific line of work took tremendous amount of time and care from our social media folks given the language barriers and the sheer amount of content that had to be processed. The results are truly amazing to watch and read. :)

Donation The winner prize for the international competition came from an anonymous donor who offered an excellent camera and lens. Beyond the financial value of the devices donated, it was amazing to see the generosity of the donor towards Wiki Loves Monuments, their perception of its impact, and the amazing work that our colleagues and friends in Wikimedia Deutschland did to make the processing of the prize possible.

A community we want to be part of While tensions do arise in Wiki Loves Monuments sphere, like any other online collaborative system, the environment that we operate in (at least as much as the international team has visibility into) is generally friendly, cooperative, and collaborative. We can do much better and we should do much better, but we should not forget this aspect: It’s really rewarding to work with a community of people who are there to help each other and have empathy towards each other. In the international team, we are grateful for the opportunity to work with such people. :)

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.

  • Outreach: We gave a series of talks at Wikimedia Conference Berlin, Wikimania, Wikimedia Taiwan, Zugang gestalten in Germany, WikidataCon, and beyond. We also participated in Wiki Indaba 2018 where we learned first hand from the experience of (potential) local organizers in Africa to help us support them more effectively.
  • Direct communication: we talked with national organizers at events (Wikimania, WikidataCon, Wikimedia Conference, WikiIndaba) and through online communication on a one-on-one basis. We kept an overview of what was going on in which countries, which countries needed help. We provided them with advise and connected them with others in our networks where helpful.
  • Significant amount of backend and some frontend work: For Montage, our jury tool, as well as for setting up campaigns, communication and documentation pages on wiki, etc.
  • Significant increase in Social Media activity. We opened an Instagram account for the international team and built a 1000+ follower base (so far). We significantly increased our Twitter and Facebook activities.
  • We wrote blogs posts on Wikimedia blog as well as wikilovesmonuments blog.
  • We held meetings on an every-other-week basis where the international team met to discuss the state of tasks. These are very similar to scrum meetings: people write down 3 things they worked on, 3 things they will work on in the 2 weeks after the meeting and they would report blockers.
  • ...

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. We’re going to provide a sample of documentation points here as a comprehensive list will be very hard to compile in one place given the number of meetings, communications, and documentations we have done:

  • Social media posts:

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.

To name a few:

  • Welcoming new countries and (re-)engaging past local organizers worked well. We had one person in the international team focused on relations with past and potentially new local organizers. This helped us to create focus and engage with the corresponding communities.
  • Outreach activities are time-consuming but important. During 2017, the international team gave a variety of presentations about Wiki Loves Monuments, as linked above. These presentations helped raise the profile of the project, helped some local communities to strengthen their presence and effectiveness, and help us as a community to learn what we have achieved in the past 8 years. Our experience is that while a lot of documentation has been done in the past years, having the opportunity to do more outreach helped us create clearer and more effective pathway for communication with our current and future local organizers and partners.
  • The backend of Montage, our jury tool, got significant improvements.
  • Montage, our jury tool, was extensively used by other Wiki Loves communities: Science, Africa, Food, Folk, etc.
  • ...

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.

The design, front-end, and research resources continue to be a limit for the international team. This means that we did not deliver as much as wanted to on improving Montage, our jury tool. We also believe(d) that extensive research, design, and development is needed to help local competitions improve their landing pages. On another note, while Wikidata migration did happen in at least 13 country lists, we still have a long way to go and more resources, support, and attention is needed in this space to make the transition complete. This is a key step to make our data discoverable and improvable by many more people, institutions, etc.

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.

We implemented a number of potential improvements in our plans for 2018, especially with regards to the potential we see in countries in Africa.

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.

Expense Approved amount Actual funds spent Difference
Prizes and diplomas 7'300 EUR 6'202.27 EUR 1'097.73
Outreach, blog and branding 3'500 EUR 1'959.34 EUR 1'540.66 EUR
Jury report 400 EUR 324.04 EUR 75.96 EUR
Admin and overhead 2,000 EUR 1'851.39 148.61
Additional: WikiIndaba 1,872 USD 1'872 USD 0
Total 13,200 EUR + 1,872 USD 10'337.04 EUR + 1'872 USD 2'861.96

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:

There are some unspent funds in comparison with the budget, but I believe not everything is transferred yet to the fiscal sponsor. We trust that the finalization of funds can happen without us in the middle.

Documentation[edit]

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grantsadmin(_AT_)wikimedia.org, according to the guidelines here?

Please answer yes or no. If no, include an explanation.

Yes, the fiscal sponsor sent that information.

Confirmation of project status[edit]

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?

Please answer yes or no.

Yes

Is your project completed?

Please answer yes or no.

Yes

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!

At this point, there is not something that comes to mind that we haven't shared yet publicly or in our conversations. If there's something more specific you'd be curious for, please feel free to reach out.

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