Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2012-2013 round1/Wikimedia Argentina/Progress report form/Q3

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Report received[edit]

Thank you for submitting a complete report for Q3. We look forward to reading more about your activities. Due to the timing of the FDC funding cycle, it will take staff a little longer than usual to offer feedback about this report and post clarifying questions. We appreciate your patience with this process, and welcome any urgent questions or concerns that you may want to address before our comments are ready. Thank you for your attention to the reporting process during this busy time and best regards, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 02:06, 9 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Winifred, we will wait for your comments. --Osmar Valdebenito (WMAR) (talk) 18:43, 11 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from FDC Staff on this report[edit]

Thank you for this report, and thank you in advance for making the effort to read and respond to our comments and questions. Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 00:39, 21 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Financial summary[edit]

  • We are reading the actual cumulative expenses in ARS as 519,328, or 47% of WMAR’s budget of 614,277 ARS. Total spending is now at 69%, while spending in Q3 has decreased from 41% in Q2 to 31% in Q3, but is still an increase over lower Q1 spending at 13.27%. Expenses across programs are uneven since several programs have been postponed while other program expenses have already exceeded the budget for the year. Staff and operational expenses are greater than 70% against the planned budget, and so are total program expenses.

Appreciation[edit]

  • Thanks to WMAR for sharing images in this report. We encourage WMAR and other entities to continue to make their reporting more rich in content other than text, such as images and videos.
  • This report contains a good level of detail and reflection about WMAR’s programs. It allows the reader to understand WMAR’s activities and how WMAR adjusting strategies as it moves forward. We see WMAR is sharing both successes and challenges and applying lessons learned in the past to improve activities: for example, through restructuring edit-a-thons to increase the quality of content contributed.
  • Congratulations to WMAR on its work with both the Space for Memory and Human Rights and the Mujeres Iberoamericanas contest. We hope WMAR will be able to track the participants in both activities over time to measure their activity on the projects and to analyze the use of content created and donated through these activities.
  • We appreciate that WMAR leveraged its Wiki Loves Monuments work in Argentina to also support other Spanish-speaking communities involved in the contests through producing videos that could also be used in countries like Bolivia and Colombia.

We would like to learn more[edit]

  • For Education program, WMAR tracks numbers of participants, agreements with institutions and numbers of events organized. How does WMAR measure the outcomes or results of these events? Does WMAR follow up with participants or institutions after an event to find to discover what the results of the events are over time?
  • In terms of the photo safari, how many images were captured? How have these images been used on the projects? Has WMAR rated the quality of the images?
  • We have tried in recent times to improve the way we track the impact of our activities after its completion. However, it has proven difficult. Many activities are presentations, so it is very difficult to verify what attendees will do after the talk is over; we have developed some surveys so we can record e-mails from participants and then analyze impact, however surveys are usually returned blank or with few answers, usually without e-mail or username.
In the case of General Belgrano activities, we have tried to track more, considering the IP range used, relevant articles edited or some usernames from the participants. However, this is not enough; because of the connectivity issues, not all students created accounts or where able to participate in the activity. From conversations with students we have done, we detect that in many cases students learn how to edit Wikipedia and make some corrections, but few remember registering and editing as users.
  • We have been able to count 345 images (8% of the total of images from the contest). It is difficult to evaluate in how many Wikipedia pages the images are used, excluding the list of monuments in Buenos Aires; the only one we have assessed is this one which is used in 3 different Wikipedia editions. In terms of quality, most of the images were better than average, but without anything special; none of the images of the safari were in the 10 nominated. Before the contest, most of the monuments in the zone didn't have images in Wikipedia nor a description and now all of them have a picture; however, there are a lot of images for the same statue with the same angle, so this is something to consider for future activities. --Osmar Valdebenito (WMAR) (talk) 19:53, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions for future reports[edit]

  • We notice WMAR is putting effort into creating outreach materials. As you continue, we encourage it to find ways to track the use and impact of these materials on the projects and on the communities they serve.
  • WMAR is tracking some targets around number of editors reached and content created. We encourage WMAR to move toward setting and reporting on stronger targets for its programs that are related to the outcomes or results of its programs, especially impact on Wikimedia projects, and to track its metrics over time in order to measure editor retention and use of content in the projects. Such measures might show editing activity of participants in its programs over time or the quality and use of the content contributed through its activities.
  • In future reports, kindly include a “TOTAL” line in the expenditures table (table 3).
  • Certainly, we will consider this in future reports and we will appreciate any suggestion or case study on how to do this.
  • We have acknowledge this and we have tried to find ways to track the impact of our activities; however, this is particularly difficult considering some of the issues we have described in this report and past ones.
  • Without doubts, we will include this in future reports. --Osmar Valdebenito (WMAR) (talk) 20:05, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]