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Grants:Project/Wiki Loves Monuments international team/2019 coordination

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Wiki Loves Monuments international team/2019 coordination
summaryWiki Loves Monuments 2019: coordination at the international level, improving infrastructure and making Wiki Loves Monuments future proof.
targetMost directly: Commons and Wikidata. Indirectly also most other projects
type of grantonline programs and events
amount33500
type of applicantgroup
granteeM.hekmatEffeietsanders
contact• M.hekmat• Effeietsanders AT gmail.com
volunteerJogiAsad
organization• Wiki Loves Monuments international team
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created on03:14, 26 November 2018 (UTC)


Project idea

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What is the problem you're trying to solve?

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What problem are you trying to solve by doing this project? This problem should be small enough that you expect it to be completely or mostly resolved by the end of this project. Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.

The international Wiki Loves Monuments team’s mission is to freely document and raise awareness of built cultural heritage, increase contributions to the Wikimedia projects and bolster local Wikimedia communities around the world. We do this by leading and facilitating an annual federated, global, low-barrier photo competition. Based on this mission and experience of the past 9 editions of the competition, the international team has identified the following issues to work on in 2019 (Note that the 9th edition is still on-going therefore some specifics may change based on our findings from this year's contest):

  1. Lack of self-sustaining processes for organizing: In its current form, the international team needs to support many local teams on a case by case basis (for example on tools, instructions, promotion etc.) thus limiting the scalability and ease of adoption by local communities.
  2. Limited local resources: A successful national Wiki Loves Monuments competition requires focus and diversity of expertise, often over extended period of time, from local organizers, who in many cases are already involved in many other Wikimedia endeavors. Finding new volunteers with the right expertise is often a big challenge.
  3. Adapting to new forms of engagement: Engagement (acquisition and consumption of content through Wiki Loves Monuments) on mobile devices is an on-going challenge.

What is your solution?

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For the problem you identified in the previous section, briefly describe your how you would like to address this problem. We recognize that there are many ways to solve a problem. We’d like to understand why you chose this particular solution, and why you think it is worth pursuing. Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.

For 2019, we would like to continue strengthening the foundation for a healthy and sustainable Wiki Loves Monuments across the world. To that end, we envision the following solutions:

  1. Collect, curate, and share best practices and building blocks (Challenge 1,2): Two conditions are necessary for a successful Wiki Loves Monuments national competition: access to best practices and consistent tools/building blocks of information or technology that local organizers can use or follow out-of-the-box while keeping the barriers for innovation low. Currently, a lot of the limited time and resources of the national (and international) organizers is spent on tasks that can be done more efficiently, through better and more user-friendly documentation as well as templates that are designed based on the learning of organizing the contest over the past 10 years. Currently, much of the documentation is several years old and somewhat outdated. The international team started the work for documenting some of the best practices in 2018, and we aim to continue this work during 2019. Our goal is that by June 2019, we have a step-by-step guide for organizing Wiki Loves Monuments though achieving this in this timeline will rely on further budget discussions.
  2. Update infrastructure (Challenges 1, 2 and 3): This is the continuation of the work picked up in 2017. During the last grant period, and with the help of Wikimedia Foundations designers, we have been updating the user experience as well as the look and feel of wikilovesmonuments.org. We will continue this line of work in 2019 by focusing on two other areas with significant impact(Note that both have external dependencies, including dependencies on Wikimedia Foundation). First, we aim to update the user experience of Montage, the jury tool that is now being heavily used by Wiki Loves Monuments and other Wiki Loves contests. This will help local organizers as well. Second, we aim to raise awareness about the challenges that our audiences (both readers and contributors) face when interacting with Wiki Loves Monuments project from a mobile device. (Note that Wiki Loves Monuments blog new design is responsive.) Creating a responsive (mobile) experience for Wiki Loves Monuments is outside the expertise of the international team; therefore, our work in this space will be focused primarily on raising awareness about the challenges and bringing the different sides to the table to help us address this problem.
  3. Maintenance work (Challenge 1): This is the continuation of the work started in 2018. We expect to continue doing the underlying maintenance work for Wiki Loves Monuments especially considering recent changes to Wikimedia Commons through Structured Data on Commons project. This effort will include both tools and documentation.

Project goals

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What are your goals for this project? Your goals should describe the top two or three benefits that will come out of your project. These should be benefits to the Wikimedia projects or Wikimedia communities. They should not be benefits to you individually. Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.

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
  • to increase contributions to the Wikimedia projects
  • to bolster local Wikimedia communities.

Like previous years, we do this through a federated model, supporting local national organizers to do what they are best at. This year, we want to pay special attention to making Wiki Loves Monuments more future proof.

Project impact

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How will you know if you have met your goals?

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For each of your goals, we’d like you to answer the following questions:

  1. During your project, what will you do to achieve this goal? (These are your outputs.)
  2. Once your project is over, how will it continue to positively impact the Wikimedia community or projects? (These are your outcomes.)

For each of your answers, think about how you will capture this information. Will you capture it with a survey? With a story? Will you measure it with a number? Remember, if you plan to measure a number, you will need to set a numeric target in your proposal (e.g. 45 people, 10 articles, 100 scanned documents). Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.

  1. Freely document and raise awareness of built cultural heritage:
    1. In collaboration with our partners inside and outside the Wikimedia movement, we will support the shift towards Wikidata of our monuments infrastructure.
      1. An overview of datasets with their status and obstacles is available
      2. A workflow is described to include a built heritage dataset
      3. Existing tools maintained by the international team will be made Wikidata compatible where possible
      4. New datasets will be supported through Wikidata and participating countries will be encouraged and supported in switching to using Wikidata
    2. We will create documentation aimed at heritage enthusiasts, explaining how to access the monuments datasets.
  2. Increase contributions to the Wikimedia projects:
    1. Continuing impact in this category lies primarily in the support of national competitions and helping them to operate effectively. We would know our impact through a survey among the organizers.
    2. A great set of international winning pictures is always a good indication for a good process. This is of course highly subjective.
    3. Where possible, our tools and documentation can be re-used by other efforts with similar workflows. We continue making an effort to making re-use of our tools possible in other photo competitions.
  3. Bolster local Wikimedia communities:
    1. By design, Wiki Loves Monuments is a project that will bring national communities together around a common theme: their shared built cultural heritage. Communities are the building block of Wikimedia projects. By encouraging communities to form around one project (Wiki Loves Monuments), we provide an opportunity for people to build relationships and networks that they can use later on to do other projects in their corresponding communities with.
    2. Measuring the impact of Wiki Loves Monuments in communities scientifically/accurately, requires research resources that are not available in abundance in the international team. Therefore, we limit our measurements to counting the number of new countries we will help organize Wiki Loves Monuments in, in 2019. The international team will focus on the longer term this year, rather than aggressively onboard new countries.
  4. Collect and share best practices aggressively: A documentation portal is available and up-to-date describing all core information that volunteers would need to organize their national competition. This documentation will suggest a standard (with templates where possible), but may also refer to alternative approaches in less detail.
    1. We plan to attend a number of international events, where we will both have tete-a-tete and group meetings with other participants and organizers. These will help with both sharing best practices and making Wiki Loves Monuments future proof. This will lead to (at least internal) reports on the participation in these events.
    2. Continued support: see above
  5. Making Wiki Loves Monuments future proof:
    1. We will make progress in the evaluation of the framework of Wiki Loves Monuments. By early 2019, we will have at least a list of recommendations - and possibly decisions.
    2. During our meeting early 2019, we will put together a final set of recommendations/decisions, and evaluate the strategic direction of Wiki Loves Monuments. This will tangibly result in documents that will be shared with the wider community of organizers. Another aimed outcome is to have a gameplan for the 10th edition of Wiki Loves Monuments.

Do you have any goals around participation or content?

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Are any of your goals related to increasing participation within the Wikimedia movement, or increasing/improving the content on Wikimedia projects? If so, we ask that you look through these three metrics, and include any that are relevant to your project. Please set a numeric target against the metrics, if applicable. Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.

Two out of the three goals mentioned earlier are directly related to the increase in participation within the Wikimedia Movement as well as increasing/improving content on Wikimedia projects. We will use the following metrics and numeric targets to measure whether we meet that component of our goals. Note that by design, a substantial amount of work in the international Wiki Loves Monuments team is focused on empowering local organizers to organize Wiki Loves Monuments. As a result, not all metrics suggested in the link above are metrics that the international team can have direct control over. We will only report metrics over which the international team has direct control and/or metrics that the change in their value can be directly associated with the initiatives by the international team.

  • Total participants: For the international team, the participants are the local organizers. We measure each country’s participation as one participant, independent of the number of community members involved in that country for organizing the contest. We set a goal to have at least 40 countries participate in Wiki Loves Monuments in 2019.
  • Number of newly registered users: This is a metric that is expected to be largely driven by the national organizers. Therefore, we are not setting a target to meet for this metric. However, the international team is interested in this metric as a measure of the health of Wiki Loves Monuments ecosystem and we will monitor this number throughout and after the contest. We do this for one or more reasons mentioned below:
    • The international team is in a good position to monitor the number of newly registered users across participating countries to identify and share best practices across projects as well as notify the countries in case an unexplained signal is observed in our trends.
    • The international team may be responsible for initiatives that can have direct impact on the number of newly registered users and for those initiatives, we will report the number of newly registered users. These initiatives are those for which the international team spends substantial effort to improve the infrastructure to lower the barriers for entry. For example, we are discussing to provide a default landing page design to the countries who choose to use it and we hypothesize that a better landing page design can increase the chances of users attempting to register an account and participate (some progress was made here last year). If we offer such a design, and if resources are available to us, we are interested in doing controlled experiments to learn the effect of such a change on the number of newly registered users as a result of this change.
  • Number of content pages created or improved, across all Wikimedia projects: Similar to the above metric, the number of uploaded images is a metric that the international team does not have direct control over. We also support the migration of datasets to Wikidata, but due to this being primarily joint efforts, it is impossible to determine which are thanks to WLM international team.
  • Basic goals: As the coordinators of Wiki Loves Monuments international competition, the international team has set the goal to meet the following targets on top of what is described above (this is working from the assumption that the framework is not changed. These goals may have to be redefined if changes are already implemented in 2018):
    • 90% of the participating countries nominate at least 1 image to the international finale.
    • All critical infrastructure necessary for the start will be ready before September 1, 2019
    • 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 international jury process is finalized and a jury report is published before the end of the year
    • The project is evaluated as part of the preparations for the team meeting at end 2019/early 2020
    • 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.

Project plan

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Activities

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Tell us how you'll carry out your project. What will you and other organizers spend your time doing? What will you have done at the end of your project? How will you follow-up with people that are involved with your project?

The international team assumes responsibility for a wide range of activities around Wiki Loves Monuments. In this section, we will describe the activities that are (directly) funded by this grant.

Preliminary work

  • Inform local organizers and affiliates about the new contest, initiatives, and projects the international team is working on;
  • Collect feedback and suggestions from local organizers;
  • Hold regular internal team meetings to review work done and plan for the work that is ahead;
  • Communicate with the WLM community periodically.

General Coordination

  • Update and communicate the international rules;
  • Update and share documentation;
  • Prepare (or coordinate for others to prepare) communication material that can be used and/or built upon by national organizations;
  • Facilitate communication channels;
  • Monitor statistics;
  • Set up clear timeline.

Project Management

  • Write grant request

Maintain communication with relevant staff at Wikimedia Foundation;

  • Collect measures and data to be reported at the end of the program.
  • Report monthly and midterm on activities to WMF
  • Report on the use of budget at the end of the program;
  • Write grant report

Technical contributions

  • Help with the setup and maintenance of the technical infrastructure for uploading;
  • Help with the setup and maintenance of the CentralNotice;
  • Maintain an international website for participants;
  • Improve Montage based on the feedback from last year in order to offer jury tool services to local and international jury members and coordinators;
  • In coordination with partners, provide support for the technical work in specific parts of the pipeline for the migration of data from Monuments Database to Wikidata.

Communication & partnerships

  • Update wikilovesmonuments.org with the necessary/useful information;
  • Update social media channels;
  • Disseminate the results of the international jury;
  • Maintain communication with international partners.
  • The partnership activities are focused on long term relationships with partners.

Follow & help national organizations

  • Give specific suggestions and support to national organizers (mostly online, though additionally we offer onboarding sessions over Hangout to the countries participating for the first time);
  • Collect & answer questions of the national teams;
  • Crisis management for national contests;
  • This year in particular: improve the infrastructure that is used by national competitions. This includes documentation, templates and perhaps some tooling.

Set up & run the international contest

  • Set up jury processes
  • Find suitable jury members for the international jury
  • Collect results of national competitions
  • Support the jury in their process
  • Provide & distribute international prizes, awards and diplomas

Budget

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How you will use the funds you are requesting? List bullet points for each expense. (You can create a table later if needed.) Don’t forget to include a total amount, and update this amount in the Probox at the top of your page too!

  • Prizes and diplomas

8,300 EUR

  • Outreach and branding

7,000 EUR

  • Travel

2,500 EUR

  • International team work meeting

12,700 EUR

  • Admin and overhead

3,000 EUR

  • Total

33,500 EUR

Considerations:

  • Prizes and diplomas: This permits the purchase of international prizes for the top-10 winners (exact distribution to be determined) and diplomas for the top-15. For the 10th anniversary of Wiki Loves Monuments, we are planning on adding a few special awards. The specific categories are still being discussed within the team and will be finalized once 2018 competition is over. Among ideas under discussion are:
    • A regional prize to encourage participation in underrepresented regions (e.g., Africa or the Middle East.)
    • A quantity-based prize for those who have contributed largest number of photos.
    • A prize category to specifically recognize first-time participating nations.
  • Outreach and branding: This includes design for material to support national competitions (templates and documentation), branding and thank-you gifts (memorabilia, T-shirts, stickers etc), and may be partially used for outreach efforts to potential participants, e.g., on social media. While the international team can prepare a significant amount of material by spending our time and existing expertise, making a truly effective, accessible, and inclusive process will require bringing in some professional design support to illustrate and create select material. All design assets will be freely licensed, so they can be reused for future competitions, and shared with national Wiki Loves Monuments organizers for additional usage and adaptation.
  • Travel: One of our focus areas is to evaluate the framework that Wiki Loves Monuments uses. It is essential to include voices beyond the international team in that process, and to be part of conversations in different fora. For that reason, the international team wants to have representatives participate in international community events such as Wikimania, WikiCon, Wikimedia CEE meeting, hackathons etc. Because the most relevant members of our team are located in the USA and Europe, we estimate these costs to be 2x~1250 EUR (travel + accommodation + incidentals).
  • International team work meeting: To finalize our evaluation process of our framework to a sufficient level, a concluding meeting of the international team along with some non-team members will have to take place. This is where we expect discussions to culminate and arrive at a set of recommendations. We might also use this meeting as opportunity to arrive at a complete(r) set of documentation and best practices (pre/post meeting). The agenda would include the longer-term directions of Wiki Loves Monuments and preparations/direction setting for beyond the 10th edition of Wiki Loves Monuments as well as tool/documentation update. It can also be partially formatted as a hackathon in which a lot of updates can be implemented during the meeting. A somewhat comparable meeting took place in early 2017, which turned out to be highly productive and helped set direction for WLM 2017 and later years. A full report is available here (Please note: we managed a very economical meeting, especially due to some cheaper-than-expected travel circumstances - a situation we don't expect to repeat to that extent). Besides international team members, we would also invite a selection of volunteers from different countries to help with understanding challenges in hard-to-reach areas as well as tool/documentation support. For 12-15 people, we expect ~6500 travel costs, 2500 accommodation, 1200 venue, 2500 food (total 12,700). We will try to plan the meeting around another Wikimedia-related conference to further reduce the costs.
  • Admin and Overhead: This is to cover various administrative costs including costs incurred to Wikimedia Austria (our fiscal sponsor). In 2018 WMAT had a sponsored administrative assistant via an external grant. For 2019 this staff capacity is no longer available, so we need to cover the additional staff resources necessary.

Community engagement

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Community input and participation helps make projects successful. How will you let others in your community know about your project? Why are you targeting a specific audience? How will you engage the community you’re aiming to serve during your project?

Wiki Loves Monuments international team uses a variety of platforms and venues to communicate about Wiki Loves Monuments 2019. The top most often pathways of communication used are wikilovesmonuments mailing list and wlm-announce mailing list. We also use Wiki Loves Monuments blog and Wiki Loves Monuments Social Media outlets (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter). We continue to be active on social media throughout the year to engage a wider audience beyond the Wikimedia community. When opportunity provides itself, we take advantage of in-person events such as Wikimedia Conference, Wikimedia Hackathon, and Wikimania to present ourselves and have meetings with national organizers. And of course, there is our Commons FAQ page and its corresponding Discussion page as well as personal communications (via email) with local organizers.

Get involved

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Participants

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Please use this section to tell us more about who is working on this project. For each member of the team, please describe any project-related skills, experience, or other background you have that might help contribute to making this idea a success.
Effeietsanders

Community notification

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Please paste links below to where relevant communities have been notified of your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions. You are responsible for notifying relevant communities of your proposal, so that they can help you! Depending on your project, notification may be most appropriate on a Village Pump, talk page, mailing list, etc. Need notification tips?

Endorsements

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Do you think this project should be selected for a Project Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project below! (Other constructive feedback is welcome on the discussion page).

  • Strong Support Stalinjeet Brar (talk) 06:03, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Support obivously, WLM is an important and successful project. Cheers, VIGNERON * discut. 15:22, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Support. WLM has been (and remains) an important incentive for creating the cultural heritage database and for gathering Wikimedians (as well as non-Wikimedians) interested in this activity. --Alexander (talk) 17:15, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Support There is so much left to do about the documentation of the world's cultural heritage. Wikimedia can contribute by WLM. --Regiomontanus (talk) 19:11, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Support WLM has been a key component in engaging cultural heritage institutions through partnership working in Scotland, I'd welcome all support for the project. Lirazelf (talk) 10:11, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Support Wiki Loves Monuments is a great gateway to contributing to Wikimedia projects. We need this contest! --Sarah Krichen WMFr (talk) 15:40, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Support WLM has been and is still a fruitful project to support -- Abdeaitali (talk) 15:41, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Support On behalf of Wikimedia UK, I'm very happy to add my support for this funding application. Wiki Loves Monuments is a highly valuable tool to engage new and existing community members here in the UK; and potentially has an even greater impact in places that are currently less well documented. LucyCrompton-Reid (WMUK) (talk) 13:01, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Support We would welcome WLM in Sindh, Pakistan, interested to participate JogiAsad (talk) 22:06, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Strong support Strong support -J. Ansari Talk 07:36, 7 January 2019 (UTC)