Grants:Project/Wikimedians of CEE/CEE Spring 2019
This project is funded by a Project Grant
| proposal | finances | final report |
Project idea[edit]
Note: Because of the very early grant application for this project, the pages linked here may have not been created yet. This will be done by the end of January at the latest for a planned project start on March 21st.
Wikimedia CEE Spring 2019 is a yearly event organised by Wikimedians and Wikipedians from the region of Central and Eastern Europe with the aim to support article creation about topics from every country and region in Central and Eastern Europe on every Wikipedia. This correlates with the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation to "empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally." While we will not be changing the contest drastically, we will focus on changing up a few things, so that people keep being motivated to write about the CEE region in the participating countries and around the world. Showing off diversity within the CEE region, focusing on minorities and showing off the heritage that connects us all within the CEE region will also be one of the main activities this year.
Wikimedia CEE Spring aims at joining local forces of free knowledge to accumulate and distribute information about history, culture, traditions, and people in every corner of the region to support mutual acknowledgment and understanding and to increase the quantity and quality of free knowledge available about the CEE region globally.
The event itself will take place from the 21st of March until the end of May. During this time period there will be an individual article competition on at least 25 related Wikipedias concentrating on creating and significantly editing articles about history, culture, and notable people of each and every participating country from the region. For more information about the article topics, please consult the structure page.
Local competitions will be organised by local teams and in every community the competition will have a slightly different face to take into account the local context. Contact data of the local coordinators can be found on the contacts page. They are also subscribed to a mailing list at Ceespring-localorganisers
wikimedia.bg. In the last three editions it was proved that most volunteering organisers from the different communities carried on the tasks for the contest until the end. Local teams present lists of articles about their country which they would like to see in every possible language in the world and editors from all other places create and significantly edit those articles, whereby participants can write about any topic, connected with the other participating countries and regions in Central and Eastern Europe.
Although the contest is aimed at active and very active editors, last year 13,2% of all editors (up from 10,3% the previous year) were new editors. We will continue popularizing it among non-Wikipedians in the hope that new editors will join CEE Spring and the Wikimedia movement. The resources requested in this grant will go towards creating incentives for old and new users to engage in writing articles on Wikipedia.
Besides the obvious goal of creating more high-quality freely available encyclopaedic content, we also have aims on the strategic level – closing the content gender gap and further developing the regional Wikimedia CEE cooperation, especially when it comes to minority languages within the various countries of the CEE region, which we plan to focus on more now that the competition has established itself. Our aims have been chosen in a way to not only provide new encyclopaedic information, but also to create high quality information and distribute the articles in a fair way between countries. Having this article writing contest every year provides a possibility to keep and strengthen the ties within the CEE region.
Last year 28 communities took part in the contest, around 9300 articles were created or significantly expanded (up from 8500 articles the previous year), 403 Wikipedians participated (down from 484 the previous year), 36 of them female according to their user settings (up from 28 the previous year). Despite this upwards trend with female editors and the number being the absolute minimum considering that these are only derived from user settings that not everyone uses, there is still a way to go. This is also reflected in the goals for this year.
Project goals and impact[edit]
The goals and metrics have been adjusted to reflect last year's results - while international participation outside of CEE is still something worth expanding, there is also potential in being more inclusive with small and minority languages in the CEE region. The methods used to achieve these goals are also mentioned in the "project idea" chapter.
Quantitative[edit]
Should[edit]
These goals have been set based on expectations based on quantitative data analysis from the international organising team and last year's results and will be used as a measure of success.
- Total number of participants from CEE: 450
- Total number of participants worldwide: 550
- Total number of female participants from CEE: 20% (90)
- Total number of female participants worldwide: 20% (110)
- 40% of all newly created and significantly edited biographies are about women
- At least 50 new articles on topics of every CEE community participating
- Achieved by adding international prizes for every editor who manages to write articles on all CEE communities, which will be more emphasised this year. The lower number of articles on every CEE community is based on the issue that some communities lack the proper English article base to provide enough articles to translate, which only gets lower when adding minority languages this year
Could[edit]
These goals have been set based on qualitative estimations by the international organising team.
- 10% of the participants in all countries are new users
- At least 3 new editors in every language version of Wikipedia with less than 70 regular editors
Strategic[edit]
- Closing the content gender gap (correlates with the quantitative goal about biographies about women)
- Adding more content on minority groups in the CEE region and expanding the list of topics in order to diversify the content created
- Further development of the regional partnership Wikimedia Central and Eastern Europe
Project plan[edit]
Activities[edit]
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 participating communities will be asked to organise as few concurrent contests as possible. This will reduce the number of people not taking part in CEE Spring as a result of investing their time in other contests.
We will continue popularising the event via Facebook and the – what proved a very good idea from last year – multilingual blog www.ceespring.eu. Via the statistics, which are run mostly via PetScan, social media and the blog we will steer the participating communities so that the goals can be reached. The international organisation team will write posts directed at active Wikipedians and possible new editors.
We wish to use prize funds of up to 400 Euro per community to help us narrow down the focus of the editors in reaching those aims. By awarding prizes in certain categories we can ensure the writing of articles in the categories, chosen by each local organiser – e.g. there can be prizes for the largest number of articles about women (to close the content gender gap) on different wikis, prizes for the largest number of created articles on every wiki, prizes for excellent and good articles where applicable, as well as prizes for the best new editors on different wikis. The local organisers know their communities the best, so they will be free to choose how they will reach them. At the same time they will have strong international support if they wish to use it.
We are pleased to see that more and more groups in the CEE region have started to include CEE Spring in their annual budgets, reducing the costs for the international project budget.
We also wish to use 750 Euro for prizes on international level in order to incentivise certain project goals, depending on how well or how badly those project goals are being met by a certain date.
While we cannot measure the number of good, excellent and featured articles, because this distinguishment does not exist on some Wikipedias, we will advise local organisers to have special prize categories for the best articles on their Wikipedia.
Wikimedia Austria will be the payment processor for the grant on the international level, based on the large size of the chapter, their experience in handling grants, and the fact that being in the EU would reduce money transfer taxes to some of the participating countries. The administrative costs for this project are based on the work hours invested by Wikimedia Austria last year. Wikimedia Austria would process the grant based on the following basic rules.
Rules on international level[edit]
- CEE Spring 2019 is a set of local contests, however internationally coordinated.
- Local contests are organized in a way to select winners before the 30th of June 2019, with the reimbursement process open until late November 2019.
- In order to join CEE Spring 2019, an affiliate or community:
- selects one person as the coordinator; this person is ready to reveal to the Wikimedia Austria office their full name, contact address and bank account number in order to conduct money transfers
- prepares the set of rules of local contest and documents them on Meta.
- prepares (preferably together with their community) a list of articles (roughly 100) in ~10 categories on their community to translate/create before 15th March 2019.
- decides about the method of selection of local winners, however it must be clearly defined.
- presents to Wikimedia Austria originals or scanned copies of the invoices, for which they get reimbursed or provide an account in an online shop with a full shopping basket, so that only the payment details need be added by the payment processor. The shop must be capable of providing an invoice.
Risks[edit]
Risk matrix[edit]
| Risk | Number | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Simultaneous organisation of other article writing contests | R1 | The simultaneous realisation of further article writing contests could lead to reduced participation, which would lead to the reducing of the number of created or significantly edited articles, as well as to lower quality articles. |
| Burnout / pulling out of organisers due to other obligations | R2 | Due to the high intrinsic motivation project organisers could overestimate their energy and get burned out. This could lead to a missing local organiser or more work for the international coordination team. |
| Lack of financing of prizes | R3 | Lack of financial rewards would make it harder for organisers to channel the efforts of participants in direction of the goals of the project, e.g. a number of excellent and good articles, number of articles, even distribution of articles and closing of the content gender gap |
Risk probability[edit]
Risk probability was estimated on the scale “very low - rather low - rather high - very high”
| Risk | Probability | Damage |
|---|---|---|
| R1 | high | moderate |
| R2 | rather high | rather high |
| R3 | low | rather high |
Measures[edit]
| Risk | Preventive measures | Corrective measures |
|---|---|---|
| R1 | The coverage of the contest via Facebook and the international multilingual blog will be used to draw the attention of the participants and engage them in CEE Spring. | For communities with intensive schedule of article writing contests, we will think of specific ideas for creative, mutually supportive ways to combine different contests and seek synergy with these, rather then opposition. |
| R2 | Whenever possible, responsibility will be split among a group of people, so that too much workload is not being put on individual persons. The atmosphere, even in situations of urgency and higher pressure, shall be maintained friendly and respectful. | New local and international organizers can be recruited during the project, not only due to burnout, but also as a way to empower and integrate more people. |
| R3 | The Grant Advisory Committee will be presented a well done grant proposal. | Chapters and User Groups will be asked to search for local sponsors and find immaterial ways to express their appreciation for the participants. |
Budget[edit]
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!
| Item | Cost by unit (€) | Number | Total (€) | Total (USD)[1] | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prizes on international level | 750 | 1 | 750 | 854 | For special prizes at international level, which will encompass more categories this year |
| Prizes on local level | 400 | 16 local budgets | 6400 | 7288 | 16 budgets for local prizes, handled by Wikimedia Austria for purposes of this grant according to the rules above (some chapters and user groups choose to use their own budgets for buying the prizes; APG funded affiliates will buy the prizes from their own budgets). Last year 28 communities took part, with 13 actually asked for reimbursements or buying prizes. We will not transfer money between local budgets and will return unused funds.
Affiliates funded by the international grant will most likely be Wikimedians of Albanian Language UG, Azerbaijani Wikimedians UG, Wikimedians of Bashkortostan UG, Wikimedia Community Belarus, Wikimedians of Bulgaria UG, Esperanto kaj Libera Scio, Wikimedians of Erzya language User Group, Wikimedia Community UG Georgia, Wikimedia Community UG Greece, Wikimedians of Latvia UG, Wikimedians of Moldova and Romania, Wikimedia Russia, Wikimedia Community UG Turkey - plus 4 local budgets in case other communities want to be funded this time around. Funded by their own budgets include Wikimedia Armenia, Wikimedia Austria, Wikimedia Serbia, Wikimedia Ukraine, Wikimedia Polska and Macedonia Shared Knowledge. |
| Bank transfer costs and risk | 30 | 10 transfers | 300 | 341 | 10 money transfers to various countries in various local currencies, reduced to the fact that wiring money from Austria is not as expensive. The cost to wire money can be up to 30 EUR. If some of the money is not used we will return it. |
| Administrative costs | 1000 | 1 | 1000 | 1139 | Administrative costs based on the previous years, to be used by Wikimedia Austria to cover the reimbursements process |
| Overall | 8450 | 9622 |
Notes[edit]
Get involved[edit]
Community notification[edit]
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.--> Please paste links below to where relevant communities have been notified of your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions. Need notification tips?
- A list for Wikimedians of Central and Eastern Europe: wmcee-l@tools.wikimedia.pl
- Wikimedia CEE Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1535273526719763/
- CEE Spring Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/WCEESpring/
- Meta page of CEE Spring: Wikimedia CEE Spring 2019
- Village Pump of every participating Wikipedia language edition
Endorsements[edit]
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 Camelia (talk) 12:55, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
Support, CEE Spring is a major and impactful project of Central and Eastern European region. The CEE community has discussed various improvements and future of the project at CEE Meeting 2018 in Lviv, and there was a significant interest of communities of the region to the development of the project. Supporting this project would greatly benefit over 30 language communities in the region — NickK (talk) 23:33, 10 January 2019 (UTC)- ...
